the Naxid pursuit: now they would increase the rate at which the two forces converged.
Minutes ticked by. The nearest Naxid decoys maneuvered like real squadrons, adjusting their velocities to that of Chenforce. Other decoys, making no pretense that they were warships, came screaming at inhuman accelerations from remote corners of the system, and would be used as weapons. Bleskoth’s squadron punched through the cooling plasma screen and for the first time saw that the loyalists were headed for Wormhole 3, not a circuit of the system, and that Chenforce was inviting a fight.
The Naxid force dropped its acceleration while it considered its options. No doubt Bleskoth wanted to clear his head and think. Martinez gave a shout of pure rage while he beamed course and speed changes to the missiles approaching Okiray, to keep them hidden from Bleskoth’s radars.
When the Naxids’ engines flared again, Martinez was ready. Another set of course changes were sent to the missiles, and then Martinez looked up at Lady Michi.
“Permission to starburst, my lady?” he asked.
She nodded. “Permission granted, lord captain.”
“All ships,” Martinez sent, “Starburst Pattern One. Execute at 18:22:01.”
Coen chanted off acknowledgments from the other captains. Acceleration abruptly ceased and sent Martinez’s stomach lurching unexpectedly into his throat.Illustrious reoriented, Martinez’s cage swinging gently with the movement, and then the acceleration resumed and his couch crashed violently in a direction that was suddenly “down.” The elements of Chenforce began to separate, moving in a seemingly random pattern determined by the bit of chaotic mathematics that Caroline Sula had built into the new Fleet maneuvers, gliding along the convex hull of a dynamical system.
Bleskoth’s squadron reoriented for its burn past Okiray. No matter what they saw Chenforce do, it was too late for them to change their intended course now.
“All ships,” Martinez sent, “fire by salvo.”
“Illustriousacknowledges.Challenger acknowledges…”
By the time a hundred and sixty missiles and another pair of pinnace pilots leaped into space and began their burn for the enemy, all Naxids were unconscious from the high gravities they were pulling on their approach to Okiray. They would have to deal with the salvo after they woke up.
And if Martinez was lucky, they wouldn’t wake up at all.
The rebel Light Squadron 5 hurled itself into Okiray’s gravity well. And the hundred and twenty-eight missiles that had been lurking in the planet’s shadow flashed forward to intercept them.
On his displays Martinez saw little but a sudden roil of angry antimatter energy, a concentrated burst of gamma rays and energetic neutrons that poured from the heart of the expanding plasma. It was clear that the Naxids’ automated laser defense systems had caught a number of the attacking missiles, and that these had probably blown up other missiles arrowing to the same targets. But surely, Martinez insisted to himself, some must have got through.
There was a strange crunching noise in Martinez’s ears as he searched the displays for any sign of the enemy. At some point he realized that the sound was the grinding of his own teeth. He relaxed his jaw muscles through a deliberate effort.
Seconds passed, and then his heart sank as he saw ships flying out of the expanding, cooling plasma cloud.Two, he counted,three, seven . No more.
Ten had flown in. His ambush had accounted for almost a third of the Naxid strength.
It should have been more, he thought in a sudden burst of passion, and then his head snapped up at the sound of Michi Chen’s voice.
“All ships,” she said, “fire by salvo.” Coen at the comm station transmitted the order to the other ships.
Another hundred and sixty missiles launched, their precise paths guided by the individual ships’ weapons officers. Martinez felt a surge against his spine asIllustrious made a course shift, all in accordance with Starburst Pattern One.
One of the Naxid ships, he saw, was on a diverging course from the others. Its engines were no longer firing. But he saw missile flares appear near the single ship, and knew it was still in the fight.
The other six had all fallen intoIllustrious ‘s wake. Martinez had been right. Bleskoth had planned all along to hang on to Chenforce’s tail until one side or another was beaten.
The six Naxid ships ceased acceleration. Missiles leaped off their rails. Then the warships rotated and began a fierce deceleration burn, trying to slow the rate at which they were overtaking Chenforce. They knew they were in trouble.
Martinez felt a wild grin distorting his features. It was all working brilliantly.
“Another salvo,” said Michi Chen.
The enemy spat out missiles at a fantastic rate, many intended as countermissiles, the rest flying to the attack. The Naxid decoys, receiving new orders, began to home in on targets. Individual ships’ captains and weapons officers ordered countermissile fire.
Martinez watched it all, surprised by the comparative silence and order of the Flag Officer Station. In his previous battles he’d been in Command, a hive of energy as sensor operators called out their findings, signals traffic flashed back and forth, weapons officers fired missiles and worked out their plots, the officer at the engine controls repeated course and acceleration orders, and he himself shouted his own commands into the din.
Here there was very little sound, only the rumble of the engines, Lady Michi’s occasional orders, and the signals lieutenants calling out other ships’ acknowledgments. Now that the battle was fully joined, Martinez was little more than an observer. He could offer advice to Lady Michi, but she seemed to be doing fine on her own.
Throwing out too many missiles for his taste, but in general doing well.
Enemy lasers began to rip into the oncoming missile salvo. Expanding plasma shells brightened the darkness. Soon the Naxids vanished from the displays, their very existence concealed behind the plasma screen.
But the plasma bursts were closer to the enemy than they were to Chenforce, and the Naxids were racing toward the plasma screens that baffled and confused their sensors, while the loyalists were increasing their distance. Martinez felt triumph hum in his veins at the thought of the screen moving closer and closer to the enemy until it enveloped them, leaving them prey to missiles they couldn’t even see.
Chenforce’s own point-defense lasers began their fire at oncoming enemy missiles, joined shortly thereafter by the bright lances of the antiproton beams mounted on the heavy cruisers. The mutually supporting fire wove patterns through the darkness like swords clashing in the night, impaling oncoming missiles with high-energy fire. Plasma flares dotted the night. A blazing curtain seemed to have been flung across half the universe.
Martinez shifted to a virtual display so that he could better study the developing situation, and found, as the system blossomed in his skull, that he now seemed to be sailing in serene silence amid a hellish scene of unspeakable violence. He shifted his perspective so that he seemed to be closer to the enemy, just in front of the advancing plasma screen. He had moved back in time as well, the time it took for light from this point to reachIllustrious ‘s sensors. Missiles leaped out of the screen on wild, frenetic dodging paths. Lasers quested after them. A pillar of light blazed off Martinez’s right shoulder as several incoming missiles were hit at once, a line of fury pointing like a long arm toward the frigateBeacon . Martinez realized that he—or rather his position in the virtual display—was about to be engulfed by blazing plasma and his view of the action turned to electromagnetic hash. He pulled back to zoom across space, and up time’s axis, in pursuit of Chenforce.
“Fire by salvo,” said a woman’s voice.
The flashes were continuous now, a curtain of sparks winking against the cooler background of expanding plasma. Against the pulsing background lights it was difficult to perceive one area as different from any other, and so it took him a few moments to see the looping coil of missiles that were again in pursuit ofBeacon, all jumping out of the long arm of cooling plasma that he had noted earlier. It took another moment or two for Martinez to perceive thatBeacon was in genuine danger.
His pulse thundered suddenly in his ears. Martinez banished the virtual display with an angry wave of his hand and jabbed with his thumb the bright square on his display labeledtransmit, all ships .
“All ships: concentrate defensive fire to aidBeacon !Beacon is the subject of a focused attack!”
No sooner had defensive weapons begun to weave a pattern of protective energies near the frigate thanBeacon ‘s own lasers struck an attacking missile a slightly off-center blow that sent it tumbling, spilling out a spray of antimatter that flung itself into space like beach sand being flung from the hand of a child. The result was
