“Yes, my lady?” Chandra said. The camera showed her properly suited, with her helmet in place. Sula, whose helmet was not in place, suddenly felt exposed.
“Those big blips,” Sula said. “They’re large converted transports.”
Distance caused a few seconds’ delay between Sula’s words and the response.
“Yes, my lady,” Chandra said. “We’ve worked that out.”
There was the tiniest bit of condescension in her voice.Yes, we know that, don’t bother us.
“Have you worked out how many missile tubes a large transport can carry? Something like six hundred.”
A few seconds later Sula saw Chandra’s face fall.
“I doubt they carry that many,” Sula said. “For one thing, transport from the magazines would be incredibly complicated. But we shouldn’t dismiss those ships just because they started out as merchants.”
Her tone echoed Chandra’s condescension. It was the least she could do.
“I’ll tell the squadcom,” Chandra said.
Ten seconds later Michi had joined the conversation.
“Sixhundred ?” she demanded. “How do you figure that?”
Sula explained. The huge hemispheric hull of a transport had a vast surface area. Each missile launcher took only so much of that surface area. Add it all up, there could be lots of launchers.
Missiles were cheap. Launchers were cheap. The offensive element was the cheapest part of a warship—the most expensive components were the engines, and merchant transports came with those already fitted.
The limitation on the total number of launchers wasn’t a factor of the surface area, but of the amount of plumbing necessary to feed the missile batteries their reloads. Missile batteries needed to be near the magazines, and both the magazines and the batteries needed heavy radiation shielding, and the heavy shielding needed structural support. Sula guessed that most of the big ships were completely empty except where missile batteries had been jury-rigged to the exterior, all on special support struts.
“Thank you for this,” Michi said. There was a little X between her brows, just beneath the bangs. “I’ll give this some thought.”
“No matter how big the ship,” Sula said, “it still takes only one missile to destroy it.”
Michi gave a weary smile. “I’ll bear that in mind, Captain.”
Michi had two days to think about the converted transports, because at the current rate of closing it would take that long for Chenforce to catch the enemy. The Naxids could always maintain distance, but they would still have to fight before they got to Naxas.
Sula knew the battle was going to happen wherever the Naxids wanted it to. If Michi had adopted her suggestion and pressed the pursuit without decelerating, she would have caught the enemy-before the reinforcement could have caught up with the Magaria survivors. She would have destroyed the Magaria contingent and then swept on to Naxas before the converted transports could have interfered.
She didn’t mourn Michi’s decision. At least Michi had reasons for what she did, not useless prejudices like Tork.
There was no reply to Michi’s demand for surrender. Sula considered this yet more evidence that Dakzad was dead. She hoped his replacement was equally old and useless.
The two days to the Battle of Naxas was filled with activity. Officers and sensor techs scrutinized displays, trying to figure which return signal meant a genuine warship and which did not. The Magaria survivors were known quantities, but the reinforcements weren’t. The nine overlarge signals were real ships, and it was decided that at least two of the others were genuine, though whether real warships or converted civilian craft, it was impossible to say. They seemed to be the size of frigates.
The analysis was all performed under heavy deceleration. Increased gravities strained bodies and slowed minds. Sula stuck one med patch after another on her neck, twitched through dreams of disconnected horror, and fueled herself with coffee and sweets.
Michi gave Chenforce another three-hour break before the engagement, a few blessed hours under low gravity for the crew to have a hot meal and a few hours to relax the knots that heavy gravities had put in their muscles.
Sula called a drill instead. She was worried that Squadron 17 might have lost its edge in the long, dull prelude to the battle.
After the drill, she was glad she’d spoiled her crews’ quiet moment, because her ships performed raggedly. She issued a series of brisk corrections, then had the crouchbacks’ meal served at their stations.
She ate coffee ice cream on her couch, caffeine and sugar combined in a single efficient delivery system, and watched the Naxids come closer.
She was ready for whatever was to come. The converted transports might have large missile batteries, but they could be killed just like any other ship.
She was still the point of the spear. She was going to trust her luck, and trust Ghost Tactics.
This would be the last battle of the war, and she would be in at the kill.
Martinez watched the Naxids coming closer and didn’t like what he was seeing.
Nine enormous missile batteries, screened by twenty-nine warships, or perhaps thirty-one. Worse, Chenforce was following them, in pursuit. When the shooting started and burning plasma began blooming between the two fleets, Chenforce would flytoward the radio-opaque screen, and the Naxids away from it. As the battle intensified, Chenforce would grow more blind just as more enemy missiles were launched.
He had seen this situation once before, as a tactical officer at Protipanu. The situations had been reversed then, and he deliberately used the missile splashes to dazzle and confuse the enemy, and to hide whole volleys of missiles.
The Naxids had not survived that battle. He’d killed ten ships in less than two hours.
He sent a message to Michi pointing out the similarities in the current situation. In response, he was yoked into an encrypted datalink with Michi and Chandra.
“Any solutions to the problem, Captain?” Michi asked.
“There are no choke points the way there were at Protipanu. The enemy had to line up to slingshot around Okiray, and we were able to swamp them with missiles as they came at us. That’s not going to happen here— there’s nothing between us and Naxas.”
A curl of auburn hair had escaped Chandra’s sensor cap and was dangling in her eyes. She grinned.
“You’re suggesting that we go in on a broader front.”
“Why not? We have the time and the distance. Tork made the mistake of feeding his squadrons in one at a time and lost more than half his force. Instead we send our three squadrons against the enemy all at the same moment. We can link our sensor data together, so that maybe we can see around those plasma clouds, and we can throw out pinnaces to extend our range. Each squadron can use the Martinez Method so as to maneuver on its own while still providing maximum protection for its own elements.”
“Thewhat method?” Michi asked.
Martinez blinked. “The Martinez Method.” When Michi failed to react, he added, “I had to call itsomething .”
Michi frowned at him. “You didn’t think to name it after your highly supportive force commander?” she asked.
Dismay filled him. Michi and Chandra began to cackle. With effort, Martinez summoned his dignity.
“Would youlike the tactics named after you, Squadron Commander? You’re already going to get credit for the victory and for winning the war.”
Michi affected to give the matter her consideration. “I suppose in view of my impending glory I can afford to throw out a few tidbits to my juniors.” She gave a gracious wave of her gloved hand.
“The Martinez Method it is.”
Engines fell silent. Ships made minor adjustments in their trajectories. Engines flared again.
Each squadron’s deceleration was slightly different. Sula’s deceleration was the heaviest, Martinez’s the lightest, Michi’s somewhere in the middle. Their courses began to diverge.
Communications and sensor techs fed the sensor data of all Chenforce into one vast, webbed system. The technology had existed for ages, but it was complex—the computers had to compensate for the amount of time it
