Battle for the Stars

CHAPTER 19

It seemed to Birrel that they had been fighting by the Belt for several eternities.

But was this fighting? Standing here, in the bridge of the Starsong, and looking up at the screens, while the ship groaned and quivered like a living thing?

The screens showed dark space, with the torrents of rushing stone of the Belt only a distant, slanted blur across the upper sector, the blur slipping and heeling over as they changed course. Nothing but that and the occasional fleeting glint of polished metal as a neighboring ship in their column momentarily caught the light, and no sound, but the pounding throb of power.

Then far out, on the left of one screen, a blinding little nova burst into being. It flared, and died, and there was darkness again and nothing to show that a ship had vanished in nuclear explosion.

"We're making contact again,” said Garstang. Standing in the captain's place, his face was dark and still as iron, but with sweat shining on the edges of it. “Where the hell are those UW ships anyway?"

"Laney was hit hard,” said Birrel. “We've got to keep punching while he regroups in the drift. He'll come out again soon.'

He hoped.

He hated to go back to the radar room, where you could see nothing but flecks on a screen, but he had to, it was the commander's place in battle.

Battle? This was not battle the way he had envisaged it — this moving forward in parallel columns groping for an enemy who was using all his devices to blind and confuse radar, two forces clawing for advantageous position here, just outside the Belt's whirling jungle of drift.

It seemed like anticlimax, after their first attack. They had plunged down from their ambush above the sun on full ultra-drive acceleration. Using ultra-drive in planetary neighborhoods was so risky as to approach the suicidal. But the Fifth had gone down on carefully plotted acceleration and deceleration schedules, first building up a terrific velocity and then instantly decelerating to a manageable speed. It had worked. The Orionids had not had time to disperse their formation in defensive evasion. The Fifth had crashed down through the middle of their line like a flying axe-blade.

It had been like that in Birrel's mental picture, but not like that in reality, there was no shock, no crash, the enemy ships hardly even saw each other. Even in their comparatively tight formation, the Orionids were separated by enough open space that the whole two columns of the Fifth had cut down between them without even a near-collision. Nevertheless they had hit the Orionids, and hit them hard, for their attack had been analogous to the classic, old sea-navy tactic of “crossing the T.” The concentrated missile fire of Birrel's ships upon each end of the broken Orionid cone they raced through had been more than jamming-defenses could hold against. The missiles had smothered the ships closest them, as they raced past, and Solleremos had lost three heavy cruisers and two light ones right there.

On down, nadirward from the shattered Orionid line, the Fifth had flashed around and formed in shorter columns that spread out from each other and drove back up at the enemy. The UW ships had come boiling out of the Belt, like angry hornets, to hit them from the other side. It had looked as though it would be decided in minutes. It would have been, except for one thing — the Orionids knew how to fight, too.

They were still as strong as both the UW and Fifth together. Whoever commanded them knew his business. The UW ships were nearest, and the Orionids had slid into a front that faced the Belt and that turned all their fire on the hornets from that direction. It was more than the UW fleet could take, and, after losing four ships within seconds, Laney had pulled back into the Belt. Solleremos’ commander had had just time enough to face around as the Fifth Lyra came up at him from nadir.

Birrel had been fanning out his columns to form the cone that would flank the ends of the Orionid formation, roll it up into a concentrated target. It was too late for that. With Laney knocked back to the Belt, he would have been “coned” himself if he had persisted. He had ordered them back into columns and had started a rapidfire, one-two-three punching all along the line to keep the Orionids from maneuvering to envelop him.

He did not think he could keep punching this way for very long. Unless Laney came out of the drift and drew off at least a part of the superior forces facing him, it was only a matter of time until the heavier weight told.

Looking down at the shifting pattern on the radar screen, Birrel said sharply into his throat-mike, “Brescnik is moving his column too wide. Tell him."

"Yes, sir.” The communic officer's reply came thinly through the din. On the screen, in a moment, their left column drew back a little.

The Starsong creaked, shivered and jumped as it swerved this way and that on the evasive pattern it was following. The generators were droning in their highest key, furnishing every possible ounce of power for the missile-jamming broadcast that was their defensive armament.

"A C-22 in right column out, sir,” said Venner.

A dot in the shifting pattern had disappeared. A ship of the Fifth Lyra and its crew had vanished in a flare, as a missile got through its jamming.

Birrel's eyes flew to that part of the screen and now he noticed a significant change in the pattern of the Orionid formation.

"They're shifting ships to smother the head of our right column,” he said.

He hesitated, knowing this to be the pivotal crisis. The move could be a feint, inviting him to move forces to his right, so that the Orionids could suddenly smash at their weakened left and center. But if it wasn't a feint, their right would take an equally disastrous punch. What it came down to was that they were outnumbered and losing the initiative because of it. Where the hell were the UW ships? Laney had had time enough to regroup.

He set his teeth and gave the order. “Formations three and five to area sixteen—"

"Sir!” yelled Venner, interrupting. Birrel swung on him furiously. To interrupt a commanding officer's orders during an action was so monstrous an offense, as to be incredible.

Venner did not seem to care. He pointed at the screen and babbled, “They're coming out — the UW — look at them!"

Laney had suddenly burst out of the shelter of the Belt. Those flying flecks, tight-bunched on the radar screen, were the UW's little fleet. Disregarding all defensive evasion tactics, it was careening at highest planetary speeds toward the left end of the Orionid formation.

The Orionid flecks shifted swiftly to form front and meet this reckless flank punch. But two of the flecks winked out as missiles hit them and through that gap in their formation Laney flung the UW fleet.

It was a suicidal attack that could not possibly persist for long against the superior Orionid weight. But it kept on going, the UW tight formation like a sword that was being thrust right into the bigger fleet. The Orionids started to bunch around that sword, to destroy it within the next few minutes by a concentrated missile fire that could not possibly be jammed.

But Birrel had instantly realized the one reason why Laney had made his desperate sortie. It was up to the Fifth to do the rest.

"Cone out!” he ordered into the mike that carried his voice to every ship in the Fifth.

The columns of the Fifth seemed to explode, on the radar screen. They flew apart, the individual ships racing toward the bunched-up enemy and, at the same time, shifting into a new formation. The cone — a gigantic candle-snuffer speeding toward the Orionid mass.

The Orionid commander had not time enough to disengage with Laney and fan out defensively. The Fifth's cone was almost upon him. The Orionid ships recoiled from the threat, toward the edge of the Belt. The UW cruisers, hanging on like dogs to a bear, went with them.

The Fifth was committed, and Birrel ran out of the radar room to the bridge. The Starsong heeled over, its generators screaming now and its fabric shuddering, and Birrel pitched and stumbled into the bridge where the screens were now alive with light.

Garstang's face flashed, wild and sweaty. “We're crowding them into the Belt. They can't disengage in time — by God, look at those Earthmen!"

They were in such comparatively close contact now that the view-screens, drawing upon short-range radar to build their visual images, showed the whole scene.

The fight had barged into the fringes of the Belt. Drift was all around them, from particles of sand that tapped and banged and clattered against the Starsong's hull, to massive boulders that came at them like juggernauts of stone. The automatic proximity-warnings kept up a schizophrenic screeching in the calc-room, and their imperative orders to the control-relays constantly contravened the human helmsman. All around them the ships of the Fifth were similarly floundering, were awing, and then pressing forward again in a staggering, crazy battle. The Orionids, drawing back as they frantically sought to re-form, were even more deeply entangled in the drift and could not reform.

Witch-fires of unholy brilliance began to flare here and there through the tangle, great bloomings of nuclear flame that paled the stars and then winked out. Birrel, appalled, thought at first that both sides must be losing ships at an incredible rate. Then he glimpsed a fifty-ton boulder, that came whirling down on the Starsong, suddenly explode in a white fury that blanked out all the screens. It had been hit by a missile, and that Orionid missile had undoubtedly been intended for their ship.

"Those aren't ships that are getting hit — most of the hits are on the drift,” muttered Garstang. “How the devil can you fight in a mess like this?"

"Laney and his boys are doing it,” Birrel said. “Keep pressing them."

Starships — the majestic giants of the far galaxy intended to operate in the endless parsecs of deep space — were out of their element in the Belt. That went for the Fifth Lyra as well as their enemy. The smaller, old-fashioned UW ships had an advantage here in maneuvering, and they were taking it to the full.

They couldn't stay in here, Birrel thought. They'd all smash up, something had to give, to break — The Orionids did.

There was no change in the wild confusion on the visual view-screens, but Venner yelled suddenly from the radar room. Birrel ran back there.

"Pulling up zenithward,” babbled Venner. “Look, they—"

Birrel saw for himself. Ceasing their futile efforts to reform in the drift, the flecks that were Orionid ships were individually bolting up out of the Belt.

"Follow them, before they can regroup,” Birrel ordered. “Zenith, all ships."

The Orionids were already regrouping, he saw an instant later. But they were doing it while going at accelerating speed away from the Belt and the whole system of Sol.

The Fifth Lyra and the UW ships came fast up out of the drift after them. Falling into a ragged formation of short parallel columns, they moved zenith and west until they were high above the curious, big, ringed planet — Birrel could not remember its name, at the moment — when a message came from Laney. It gave Birrel a sharp pleasure to hear the old admiral's voice.

"Are they really pulling out?"

I think so,” Birrel answered, looking at the radar screen. The Orionid ships were, he estimated, building up a long-jump acceleration program. “Yes. Their surprise strike failed, and they got hurt. We'd better start pursuit."

Laney demurred to that. “Not without authorization from the Chairman. I'll set up a three-way visual circuit. Hold on."

Birrel chafed at the delay. He wanted to start the pursuit-acceleration at once, the chance would not be there for long. But he had lost three light cruisers and one heavy one, as well as half a dozen scouts, and, without the UW ships, he would not be able to bring sufficient fire-power to bear on the Orionids when he did catch up to them.

"Politicians,” he muttered. “Why do they always have to meddle in a fight?"

When he faced both Laney and Charteris on a split screen a few minutes later, his forebodings were justified. Charteris, looking as though he had had as bad a time waiting as they had had fighting, spoke firmly.

"No pursuit. Keep watch out there until it's certain that they're on their way back to Orion."

"And we just let them go?"

Charteris nodded. “We do. This thing isn't generally known yet, though there are rumors. I shall announce that an unidentified force of ships, apparently from some totally unknown power beyond the civilized galaxy, attempted to attack Earth and were repelled by the UW fleet and the Fifth Lyra."

"For God's sake!” cried Birrel. “You're giving Solleremos an out — deliberately!"

"Yes,” said Charteris.

"But why?"

"We've had to fight a battle,” said the chairman. “Thanks to your help, we won it. But we don't want to have to fight a war."