a sheet of blazing particles drawn across the night, a sheet that completely obscured a pack of attacking missiles from the ships that were trying to aid the frigate.
Beacon was on its own, and its trained Daimong crew destroyed four missiles before the fifth and sixth engulfed the frigate within their fireball. Martinez gave a roar of pure rage and smashed his couch arms with both fists.“No!” he shouted, then chanted, “damn-damn-damn” before realizing he was still transmitting to all ships, and angrily punched at the display to give himself a moment of private, scorching fury.
He had promised himself a one-sided victory like Hone-bar, where the loyalist forces suffered no casualties, and now he had broken that promise. The fact that he had not spoken the promise aloud in the presence of another person made no difference: the most important promises are those one makes to oneself. He wanted to seize Bleskoth by the throat and shriek,You made me break my word!
It was the absence ofBeacon within the squadron’s defensive fire pattern that caused the next casualty. Through the gap came one of the Naxid decoy missiles, now turned to an attacker with an overlarge radar signature. In spite of its being a seemingly easy target the missile led a charmed life, darting and rolling by pure chance behind plasma screens created by less lucky attackers.
Martinez wasn’t aware of the intruder until it got perilously close toCelestial, when it was destroyed by the light cruiser’s concentrated defensive fire at the last instant. Hard radiation slammed the ship, and the superheated fireball flashed toward its hull. Martinez shrieked out another long, frustrated string ofdamns as the cruiser disappeared into the burning plasm, and he turned his attention to the enemy with thoughts of revenge on his mind.
It was only then that a new realization dawned, that there seemed to be many fewer missiles in the display. The defensive batteries were picking the attackers off: no friendly ship was under immediate threat.
No new aggressor missiles had flown out of the plasm screen in the last couple minutes.Why have they stopped firing? he wondered, and then the answer dawned.
“My lady”—Martinez began, and then remembered he’d shut down his comm line. He called up the private channel between himself and the squadcom. “My lady,” he said after he made the connection, “I think the fight’s over. We’ve won. They’re all dead.”
His words coincided with one of the random course changes dictated by Starburst Pattern One, and as the engines cut and the cruiser rotated, Michi and Martinez stared at one another in the sudden weightlessness, floating in their cages, eyes locked, amid the sudden silence.
“Congratulations, my lady,” Martinez said. “It’s a victory.”
Lady Michi held his gaze for a moment, and then touched her transmit button. “All ships,” she said. “Cease offensive fire.”
Martinez went to the virtual view, and the first thing he saw wasCelestial sailing out of the cooling plasma sphere, its engines still a brilliance in the night. A silent cheer rose in Martinez’s throat. The cruiser hasn’t been destroyed after all, and the propulsion systems, at least, still worked.
“Comm: message toCelestial, ” Michi said. “Ask Captain Eldey for a status report.”
Martinez turned his attention to the Naxids. Their ships should be flying out of the cooling plasma cloud at any second.
The Naxid squadron didn’t come. There was one Naxid ship only, the cripple that had lost its engines on the approach to Okiray and was flying on a different trajectory from the rest. All the other Naxids had been wiped out, and Chenforce hadn’t even noticed when it happened.
The single surviving Naxid ship wasn’t capable of maneuver and wasn’t firing missiles—probably it had used them all up, except perhaps for a handful to be used defensively. It might well drift on forever into the cold gulf between the stars, like Taggart and theVerity.
A suitable punishment, Martinez thought in his anger. Let them starve to death.
“All remaining missiles,” Lady Michi said, “target on that lone ship.”
From her tone Martinez knew she, too, was in the mood for vengeance, but that she thought starvation too good for the Naxids. Orders pulsed out to the remaining missiles from the last salvo, and these reoriented and began a furious burn for the sole remaining enemy.
The Naxids had to have known the fate that awaited them. Apparently they had no missiles, or at any rate no missile launchers that worked. Their point-defense lasers flashed out and the missiles began to die. Michi simply fired more. The lone survivors of Light Squadron 5 died a good half-hour after their comrades, after fighting with a bravery and skill that no other Naxid would ever see or celebrate.
Martinez watched the ship die without finding in himself the sympathy he’d displayed for the crews of the wormhole stations. The enemy warship was nearly as helpless as the relay stations, but it had helped kill a lot of his comrades, and he watched its death agonies with bitter satisfaction.
“All ships reduce deceleration to one-half gravity,” Michi ordered. “Prepare to retrieve pinnaces and remaining missiles.”
“Message fromCelestial, my lady, by radio,” reported Coen. “Lieutenant Gorath reporting.”Celestial had remained silent since Michi’s initial query, though since the cruiser had continued to maneuver according to the dictates of Starburst Pattern One, it had been clear that there were survivors and that there would probably be communication as soon as the means were restored.
“Lieutenant Gorath believes that four forward compartments are breached,” Coen reported, “and that Captain Eldey and everyone in Command is dead. The ship is maneuverable. Lost sensors are being replaced. Communication and point-defense lasers non-responsive. One missile battery is believed destroyed, but it’s too hot to go out there right now to make certain.”
“Signal Lieutenant Gorath—Well done,” Michi said. “Tell her we stand ready to provide any assistance she may require.” She turned to Martinez. “Captain Martinez, please tell all ships to make a complete visual sensor survey ofCelestial and send the results to Lieutenant Gorath.”
“Yes, my lady.” Locked in Auxiliary Command, the Torminel officer had nothing but remote sensors to inform her of the state of her ship, and most of the sensors had probably been knocked out. Pictures would undoubtedly help.
The squadron ceased deceleration, rotated, and began acceleration again toward Protipanu Wormhole Three, still nearly five days away, and then the crew stood down from action stations. The few surviving missiles were retrieved by the ships that had fired them. Of the fourteen pinnace pilots that had been shot into space to shepherd missiles toward the foe, eight weathered the battle, one of themBeacon ‘s sole survivor. These returned to their ships, all save for the deeply traumatized Daimong cadet who was brought aboard the flagship to replace a pilot who had been killed. The cadets’ berth would smell less sweetly, but Martinez suspected the cadets would not complain. They would know how easilyIllustrious itself could have been reduced to radioactive dust cooling in the solar wind.
Martinez knew he would not enjoy seeing theBeacon cadet’s pale, startled face, though not on aesthetic or olfactory grounds. The Daimong would be a reminder of his own failure to protect theBeacon and fulfill his promise to himself of another victory without casualties.
Martinez left the Flag Officer Station, returned the vac suit to its storage closet in his quarters, showered, and dressed. The comm chimed with an invitation to dine with the captain, and he accepted.
In his head he kept seeing the arm of fire reach forBeacon. If he had been able to keep his mind properly focused on its significance he would been able to foresee the missiles that would have raced out of it, and had the squadron’s defensive fire ready to concentrate in that area.
Bleskoth, you bastard, he thought. The Naxids’ destruction of theBeacon was a personal affront. It was a deliberate attack on the value that Martinez placed on the quality of his own mind.
There was a soft chime from Martinez’s comm, and a light flashed on the display. It was a reminder he’d set for himself, and normally he would remember what it was, but now he was too tired for the recollection to come into his mind. He ordered the comm to deliver its message and was told that Wormhole Station 3 should at this moment have been destroyed, though it would take ten hours for the light from the explosion to reachIllustrious and confirm the kill.
The wormhole station had been destroyed hours before any of the light from the battle would have reached it. No observer would be able to send the results of the combat on to Naxas or to the Naxid fleet. They would have to wait for Chenforce to pop out of the other side of the wormhole at Mazdan, and even then they wouldn’t knowhow Bleskoth’s squadron had been destroyed.
