Imperfect Sword

Chapter Two

Drakon met Colonel Rogero as he reentered the ground forces headquarters complex. “Did you see off Captain Bradamont?”

Rogero nodded, looking unhappy as he did so. “It would be easier for me to be going off to face a tough fight than to see her doing it.”

“You know the same is true for her if she had to watch you go. I’ve just informed Colonels Gaiene and Kai of something, and I need to tell you in person as well.” Drakon did his best to keep his voice level. “Effective immediately, neither you nor anyone else is to follow orders from Colonel Morgan, even if she says those orders are coming from me.”

To his credit, Rogero managed not to show any reaction to the statement. “I understand, General. May I ask why—”

“No. Colonel Morgan is going on special detached duty, so you won’t be seeing her. But if she does contact you, follow the orders I just gave you.”

Rogero nodded. “Yes, sir. Given the… change in policy contained in your orders, may I ask if the status of Colonel Malin has changed in any way?”

Drakon took a few seconds to think that through before answering. For the last few years, Morgan and Malin had been his right and left hands. Losing one hand was bad enough, and too difficult to explain at this time. Cutting off the other might well hurt him more than it did any hypothetical plots that Malin might be working on. “No. Except in one respect. If Colonel Malin conveys orders to you that he says are from me, follow your instincts. If anything about those orders smells wrong to you, check with me directly before you carry them out.”

“Understood, General.”

“Good,” Drakon said, knowing just how many questions were boiling under Rogero’s impassive surface. But he wasn’t ready to answer any of those questions yet, so he shifted topics to another issue of concern. “How is your brigade doing?” He had asked that question many times before, so Rogero would know that Drakon was asking not about readiness statistics but about the mental and emotional state of his soldiers.

“No significant problems,” Rogero replied. “But when I talked to my senior specialists this morning, they said they are noticing an increase in the number of odd rumors making the rounds that they believe are being fed to our ground forces.”

“Odd rumors?” Drakon pressed. “Anything new?”

“Just in the specifics.” Rogero frowned outward toward the rest of the city as he thought. “They fall into three broad categories. One set argues that you and President Iceni are only doing what you are in order to stay in control of this star system, that you remain Syndicate CEOs in all but name. That one isn’t gaining much traction since our men and women know you by your actions and know that President Iceni has banned labor camps. The second set of rumors is that you and the president intend betraying this star system and the people in it by using it as a base to establish your own Syndicate successor empire. I’ll be frank in saying that the soldiers are worrying about that more than I’m comfortable with. And the third set of rumors are variations on claims that President Iceni is planning on assassinating you and wiping out your ground forces to ensure her own place as ruler of this star system.”

Drakon laughed sharply. “How is Iceni supposed to accomplish that? With planetary militia?”

“No, sir. That’s one of the devious things about that set of rumors. It claims that some of our own ground forces, whole units or just officers, will betray the rest and help Iceni.” Rogero twisted his lips in a crooked grin. “So the rumors foster distrust of President Iceni and of their fellow soldiers.”

“Clever,” Drakon admitted. “I don’t believe for a moment that President Iceni is plotting that, but it’s a well-crafted set of rumors to generate fear and suspicion.”

Rogero inhaled deeply, blew out again, then fixed a keen look on Drakon. “You are certain the president will not try to kill you? There have been some attempts on you and on me.”

“I know.” It was Drakon’s turn to smile without humor. “But if President Iceni were really the one plotting to kill me, we wouldn’t hear any rumors of it. I’d just be dead whenever she gave the order. She’s that good. Besides, I know I can trust you and that you’d spot any real plotting by some of the soldiers in your brigade.”

“Thank you, General,” Rogero said. “You know you can trust Colonel Gaiene as well. He may not keep track of affairs inside his brigade as closely as he should, but his executive officer is making up for that.”

“And Colonel Kai has always been loyal,” Drakon noted.

Rogero grinned hugely. “You can count on Kai, sir. For him to betray you would require Kai to act quickly and recklessly. When has Kai ever been quick or reckless?”

This time Drakon laughed. “He’s like a rock, for better and for worse. No one’s going to move him. Try to counter the rumors, keep me informed of them, and see if your senior specialists can trace the rumors to any sources. I would really like to speak to whoever is introducing those rumors into the ranks.”

“Yes, sir. So would I.”

“And, Donal, if anyone can handle that Syndicate attack force on the way, it’s Captain Bradamont and that Kommodor.”

It was easy to tell that Rogero forced his answering smile. “Yes, sir. If anyone can.”

This time, the alert resounding through Manticore’s bridge did not warn of anything as easy to handle as a courier ship.

“One battleship,” the senior watch specialist announced. “Three heavy cruisers. Five light cruisers. Ten Hunter-Killers. All are broadcasting Syndicate identification. They are arranged in Standard Box Formation One.”

Kommodor Marphissa nodded, keeping her eyes on her display. Standard Box Formation One was as frequently used by Syndicate mobile forces as its name implied. The battleship occupied the center of a box formed by the smaller units with it, the three heavy cruisers holding three of the front corners along with one light cruiser at the fourth, while the other light cruisers held the back four corners and the small, expendable Hunter-Killers were evenly arrayed in the region between the cruisers and the battleship. “Is it the same battleship that was here last time?”

“Yes, Kommodor,” the watch specialist said. “It is broadcasting BB-57E unit identification code, the same unit as was in the last Syndicate flotilla.”

Kapitan Diaz turned a disapproving eye on the specialist. “Just because it is broadcasting that code does not mean it is the real code for that ship. See if you can spot the hull features that will confirm the battleship’s identity.”

“Yes, Kapitan,” the specialist said, looking worried at his mistake. Things had changed on these warships since the revolt against the Syndicate, but no one could forget the experiences they had under the old system. Not answering a supervisor’s question accurately, even for the best of reasons, often produced tongue-lashings or worse punishment.

But, having been on the receiving end of plenty of those tongue-lashings herself, Marphissa had vowed to reserve them for real, serious screwups. All she did was grimace, wondering what tricks the Syndicate flotilla might have up its sleeve. “At least the information from CEO Boyens was mostly correct. Let us see who is in command of this flotilla.”

Kapitan Diaz glanced over at her. “Do you want me to—”

“No maneuvers, yet, Kapitan. They’re ten light-minutes away. I want to watch what they do before I decide what we should do.”

Captain Honore Bradamont came onto the bridge, moving fast. “It’s them?”

The spectacle of an Alliance officer on the bridge of a former Syndicate warship was strange enough. Even stranger was that the specialists and officers on the bridge greeted her arrival with relieved smiles. Bradamont might be an officer of the hated Alliance, but she was also one of Black Jack’s officers, and one who had played a critical role in ensuring the success of some recent operations by Marphissa’s warships. To the crew of Manticore, she was no longer an enemy officer but one of theirs.

“It’s them,” Marphissa confirmed, turning a brief smile of her own on Bradamont. “They’ve got a battleship, all right.”

“Damn.” Bradamont came up next to her seat and squinted at Marphissa’s display. “Where’s Pele?”

“Still twenty light-minutes away.” The battle cruiser had been charging toward the hypernet gate for the last several hours, accompanied by the heavy cruisers Basilisk and Gryphon. Far behind them, lumbering along its orbit as it had for countless years, was the gas giant planet near which Midway’s main ship-repair facility hung in space, looking oddly forlorn now that Pele, the heavy cruisers, and the battleship Midway had left it.

Unlike the battle cruiser, though, Midway was slowly heading away from the other warships. Her projected path formed a huge arc through space, finally merging with the orbit of the main inhabited world where most of the humans in this star system lived and worked. At the sluggish rate she was accelerating, it would take Midway a week to cover the distance to that world.

Bradamont bent close to Marphissa’s ear. “Is Pele really that ready for battle? Her shields and weaponry look in great shape.”

“Kontos wouldn’t fake the readiness of that ship,” Marphissa said. “Not to us. I’ve known many an executive and CEO who would, to curry temporary favor, but not Kontos. He’s too honest.” She smiled again, bitterly this time. “He wouldn’t have lasted another year under the Syndicate. Speaking truth to CEOs is a deadly habit.”

“He’s not being too honest about the status of Midway,” Bradamont noted, nodding toward the depiction of the battleship on Marphissa’s display. “It looks like the ship has suffered a recent major propulsion casualty rather than having full capability as it really does.”

“That’s some impressive camouflage, isn’t it?” Marphissa said. “It looks just like more than half of the main propulsion units blew up. But that’s misleading the enemy, not his own superiors. I’m perfectly fine with that. If Midway looks like a bird with a broken wing, the Syndicate flotilla should leave her alone and plan to nail her after they’ve gained control of the star system.”

“Or they might try something foolish, thinking she’s an easy target. You’re keeping this formation?” Bradamont asked, phrasing the loaded question diplomatically. Marphissa had arranged her own warships in Standard Box Formation One as well, though in this case the two heavy cruisers with her, Manticore and Kraken, occupied the center, with the light cruisers Falcon, Osprey, Hawk, Harrier, Kite, and Eagle at six of the eight corners of the box, and her twelve Hunter-Killers at the other two corners and positioned inside the box.

“For now,” Marphissa replied. “I know it’s not the best formation to engage that Syndicate flotilla, but I want the Syndicate commander to think I’m still following Syndicate doctrine.”

“Good idea,” Bradamont approved. “The longer they believe you’re going to fight a predictable battle, the better.”

“Kommodor,” the communications specialist announced, “we have just received a transmission from the Syndicate flotilla. It is addressed to the commander of our force.”

“Bounce it to me,” Marphissa said.

The window that appeared before her showed a woman whose wide mouth and cheekbones appeared to be set in a perpetual state of kind merriment. She would have seemed the personification of a warm, happy grandmother except for the jarring juxtaposition of the finely tailored Syndicate CEO suit that she was wearing.

“Happy Hua,” Kapitan Diaz murmured, horrified. “That’s really her, isn’t it?”

“Speaking of false appearances,” Marphissa said. “Even though I’ve heard of her, I still have trouble believing someone who looks like that is the most ruthless bitch in the Internal Security Service.”

Hua began speaking. Her voice would have been pleasant enough, but the words she was speaking destroyed any illusion of congeniality. “To the commander of the rebellious mobile forces in this star system. You have two choices. Surrender your mobile forces to me, and be allowed the opportunity to prove your usefulness to the Syndicate Worlds once again, or die. I expect an immediate response. For the people, Boucher, out.” As usual in Syndicate communications, the CEO droned out the “for the people” phrase in a quick slur of rote words that her delivery made clear were meaningless.

“That was clumsy,” Bradamont snorted. “She should have tried to fool you into letting her get a lot closer before she issued that ultimatum.”

“She’s a snake,” Diaz said. “She’s not used to negotiating with her victims. I guess their offers to surrender or confess and you might live must fool some people because they always say that, but no one who was really guilty would be dumb enough to believe it.”

Marphissa nodded. “That offer only catches the innocent who think their innocence will protect them. That CEO threatened me right off, Honore, because she doesn’t realize how hard it will be to catch our ships with her battleship. Unless you’ve done space operations, it’s hard to grasp just how huge the battlefield is. I bet she’s thinking in planetary surface terms. Like, she can see us, so we can’t be all that far away.” She paused to think. “Comms. Give me a broadcast to every ship in the Syndicate flotilla.”

“You have it, Kommodor. Key Two.”

“Also prepare a copy of the record we have of the destruction of that Syndicate light cruiser the last time they were here. The one that mutinied.”

“In a moment, Kommodor. One moment. Ready. Attachment Alpha.”

Marphissa gestured Bradamont away from her seat, so that the Alliance officer would not show in the transmission, then took a deep breath and tapped the control. “To the people in the crews of the mobile forces still under control of the Syndicate, this is Kommodor Asima Marphissa of the free and independent star system of Midway. We are no longer slaves of the Syndicate. We rule ourselves. Every snake in this star system is dead, so we do not serve the whims of internal security or fear for the safety of our families and loved ones. We are free, and you can be as well! Do not serve those who see you and treat you as cattle! Rise and slay the snakes among you, then join us, or return to your own homes to help them gain the freedom we have fought for. But beware of snake tricks. They will slay you without warning or cause, as they did the crew of this unfortunate light cruiser which belonged to the last Syndicate flotilla to come here. Join us, who value and respect all, workers and supervisors alike. For the people!” she ended, emphasizing and giving power to each word. “Marphissa, out.”

She tapped the attachment control, sending the image of the light cruiser being blown to fragments by its own power core. Did the crews of the other Syndicate vessels know that light cruiser had been destroyed to prevent its crew from taking the ship? They would now.

“Those ships must be crawling with snakes,” Diaz muttered. “What chance of successful mutiny do any of the crews have?”

“Probably none,” Marphissa admitted. “But all of those snakes will be redoubling their watching of the crews of their own ships, worried about them, instead of watching and worrying about what we’ll do. The snakes will question everything anyone in the crews does, slowing their actions and making them hesitate. You’ve been there, just like me. You know what it’s like.”

“Don’t remind me! There were times I was afraid I might breathe wrong.”

It would take ten minutes for the defiant reply to reach the Syndicate flotilla, but only three minutes later the operations specialist reported movement. “The Syndicate mobile forces are accelerating and coming onto an intercept vector with our formation, Kommodor.”

“Standard acceleration profile for a battleship formation,” Diaz noted. “Happy Hua is doing everything by the book.”

Marphissa nodded again, her eyes once more on her display. “What are you thinking?” she asked Bradamont.

“If this CEO is inexperienced in space combat,” Bradamont replied, “then, if it were me, I wouldn’t merge this formation with Kapitan Kontos’s when Pele gets close enough. I’d have Kontos operate separately. That CEO will have a lot more trouble grasping the situation and deciding what to do if she has two attacking formations to deal with instead of one.”

“She’s going to use the automated systems,” Diaz said. “Don’t you think? Hua Boucher won’t trust the supervisors or workers in the crews, but she will trust the software because people that high up always believe their own propaganda about how perfect the automated systems are.”

Marphissa nodded, chewing her lower lip as she thought. “Yes. Kapitan, you are right. And so are you, Captain Bradamont.”

“Are your automated systems that bad?” Bradamont asked.

“It’s not that they’re so bad, though they’re far from perfect; it’s that we know them. We’ve got older versions of whatever CEO Boucher has, so we will know pretty much what those automated systems will tell her to do.”

“Taking down a battleship is still going to be tremendously difficult with the forces you’ve got,” Bradamont cautioned. “The ideas we discussed before are still your best options. Peel away the escorts, destroy them during repeated attacks, and leave the battleship alone so you can keep pounding it. They’ll probably still be able to get away if they run, but if they stay to fight, you can eventually do enough damage to knock it out. It’ll very likely cost you, though, and if you push the attacks too close, too early, your ships will get torn apart by that battleship’s firepower.”

“I have to be aggressive,” Marphissa insisted.

“Yes. And patient. It’s a tough combination. Syndic… I mean Syndicate battleships of that model are best hit on their stern flanks. That’s where their shields and armor are weakest. You face more firepower than if you hit them dead astern, but their shields facing directly aft are a lot stronger.”

Diaz gave Bradamont a troubled look, which Marphissa understood. The Alliance captain had gained her knowledge through experience, through battles against Syndicate warships like that battleship, and like the heavy cruiser which she now rode. It was jarring to be reminded of that, of how many times Bradamont had fought and killed their own comrades, while their comrades had done their best to fight and kill her. Only months, not years, separated those times from now. “Those were Syndicate,” Marphissa murmured. “We are not.”

Diaz bit his lip and nodded, while Bradamont looked away, understanding their discomfort. “Who is in command of Midway now?” she asked, deliberately changing the subject.

“Kapitan Freya Mercia,” Marphissa said. “One of the Reserve Flotilla survivors we brought back. President Iceni was very impressed by her.”

Bradamont looked away again. That hadn’t been a safe topic after all. She had been in command of an Alliance battle cruiser, the Dragon, when Black Jack’s fleet had destroyed the Syndicate Worlds’ Reserve Flotilla. “I met her, too. If she is half as capable as she seems, Kapitan Mercia will do a good job in that command.”

“But Midway is not in this fight,” Marphissa said as she took another glance at her display. “And Kapitan Mercia can do little without weapons no matter how capable she is. We will reposition and begin making things as difficult as we can for CEO Boucher.”

For all their mutual hostility, the Alliance and the Syndicate Worlds had retained the same simplified conventions for determining directions in the vast reaches of space that otherwise had no defined directions. Every star system had a plane in which its planets orbited. Humans designated one side of that plane as up, and the other as down, anything toward the sun was starboard or starward, and anything away from the sun was port. It wasn’t precise, but it got the job done, where otherwise a command to “turn left” might find ships turning in every conceivable direction.

The Syndicate flotilla had finished turning their way, but would still require more than an hour and a half to intercept Marphissa’s ships because of the battleship that was the enemy flotilla’s greatest strength but also a drag on the flotilla’s ability to accelerate. Because they were on a direct intercept, constantly closing the range, the Syndicate warships remained just off to the left of Marphissa’s formation and slightly above it. They would stay in that aspect, getting closer and closer, unless and until Marphissa maneuvered her own ships.

Pele was way behind Marphissa, below and about fifteen degrees to the right relative to her. At least, that’s where she had been twenty minutes ago. Midway was much farther away, nearly three light-hours, below and twenty degrees to the right relative to Marphissa’s warships. “We will drop back toward Pele, so we can conduct simultaneous attacks with Kapitan Kontos. I want a vector that brings us within two light-minutes of an intercept with Pele, and maintains four light-minutes’ distance from the Syndicate flotilla until then. Work it up.”

Diaz gestured to his specialists, who began calculating the maneuvers. It wasn’t hard, given the assistance of the automated systems. Input the variables, tell the systems where you wanted to go, and the answer would display itself in less than a second. It was just physics and complex math, measured against the exact capabilities of the warships under Marphissa’s control, all of which automated systems were very good at. “Four light-minutes?” he asked Marphissa.

“It’s not too close,” she told him. “I don’t want to end up within reach of that battleship’s firepower unless it’s on my terms. Four light-minutes gives us time to see what the Syndicate ships are doing and counter it. But it should also be close enough to make CEO Boucher very frustrated as she tries to close that gap and can’t come to grips with us.”

“So near, yet so far?” Diaz said with a grin.

“Exactly. She’s a senior snake. She’s used to the universe bending over backward at her command. No one defies her orders. But we will.”

“We have the maneuver prepared, Kommodor,” the senior watch specialist reported.

Marphissa squinted a bit as she studied the plan on her display. It showed her formation swinging into a wide arc up and to the right that steadied out onto a flattened curve reaching to meet the projected course of Pele and the two heavy cruisers with her. Next to the lines were time marks, indicating when to initiate each stage of the maneuver. With systems like that to produce solutions, it was easy for someone lacking experience (like CEO Hua Boucher) to think that they didn’t need such experience to match those with a lot of time driving ships in space.

“The maneuver is acceptable,” Marphissa said. Nothing fancy, nothing to cause Hua to worry about the skills or predictability of her opponent. “We’ll let CEO Boucher think that’s how we’ll maneuver when we fight.”

“She must know you’re better than that,” Diaz said. “The Syndicate has seen you command in fights here and at Indras.”

“If reports of those fights have made it to the right people rather than being buried in the databases,” Marphissa replied. “And if anyone who read them paid attention to them. I’ll hope for anonymity born of ignorance or arrogance when it comes to what CEO Boucher may know about me.”

After that, it was just a matter of waiting. Warships could boost to awesome velocities when measured in planetary terms. Pele was now coming toward Marphissa’s formation at point two five light speed, Kontos having increased velocity once he saw the arrival of the Syndicate flotilla. Point two five light speed was the equivalent of seventy-five thousand kilometers per second. The human mind couldn’t really grasp such distances or such velocities. Even the universe itself partially rejected them. By the time a spacecraft reached point two light speed, its vision of the universe outside it had begun stretching and distorting. Human equipment could compensate for that, could provide a “true” image of the outside, but once beyond those velocities, once a ship reached for point three or even point four light speed, human ingenuity could not prevail against the relativistic distortion that made the universe appear to be stretched and bunched like loose, elastic fabric. And the ship itself grew heavier, its mass increasing, making it ever harder to increase velocity. The cost and complications made such velocities much more expensive for trade than the extra days needed for travel cost. In practice, only warships boosted to point one and point two light speed, and didn’t try to fight at higher speeds than that because of the impossibility of scoring hits on one another when their view of the universe was warped too badly.

Despite the obstacles facing them, humans had found the means to travel to different stars. Jump drives that pushed ships into a different place where distances were much shorter and the rules of this universe did not apply. The hypernet that used quantum entanglement to transport ships between stars without, technically, ever moving them. Humans had used those to settle the worlds orbiting other stars, trade between those worlds, and fight wars spanning the stars.

Wars like that of the last century, started by the Syndicate Worlds and sustained by the refusal of the Alliance to surrender and the refusal of the Syndicate to stop fighting. In the end, with both sides tottering on the brink of collapse, a man who had supposedly died a century before, the legendary Black Jack Geary, had reappeared just in time to save the Alliance fleet. Geary had annihilated the Syndicate forces sent to catch him and forced an end to the war. Defeated, with its mobile forces decimated and economy reeling from the costs of the long war, the iron grip of the Syndicate government finally slipped, and star systems began breaking free.

Star systems like this one.

“Five minutes to maneuver time,” the senior watch specialist announced.

Marphissa shook herself out of her reverie. “Execute maneuver on time using automated controls. Link all ships in this formation.” The precision with which the maneuver would be executed would make it clear to outside observers that they were using the systems to control the ships. That should further lull CEO Boucher into complacency.

“Link all ships and execute maneuver using automated controls,” the watch specialist repeated to ensure that he had heard the order properly. “I understand and will comply.”

At the mark, every ship in Marphissa’s formation swung up and to the side, coming around under the push of thrusters and main propulsion units. The turn-together maneuver meant that every ship remained in the same spot relative to the other ships in the formation. They changed their facing and accelerated toward a meeting with Pele, but the box formation had not altered.

“You know,” Captain Bradamont commented, “if Admiral Geary had required his ships to maneuver on automated controls, he would have had to fend off scores of complaints from his ship captains.”

Kapitan Diaz gave her a skeptical look. “They only would have complained once, though. Right? Then he would have replaced them.”

“No. It took him a while to assert authority over his ships, and even now his decisions get questioned at times.”

Marphissa shot Bradamont an irritated glance. “Seriously? Before Black Jack came back, we saw the Alliance ships attack us in swarms rather than rigid formations, but we thought that was doctrine.”

“In a way, it was.” Bradamont sounded angry herself. “We’d forgotten that courage needs to be paired with discipline, individual initiative with support to your comrades. Admiral Geary reminded us that fighting as a team is much better than a bunch of ships battling individually. You’ve loosened a lot of the controls the Syndic government put on you, Asima. Be careful you don’t let too much freedom into your military forces.”

“But this is better,” Diaz argued.

“It is. Just remember the need for balance, for tying everything into the goal of creating an effective military team that makes as much use as possible of the individual skills of your people.”

“You always make things complicated,” Marphissa grumbled. Her ships had steadied out on their new vectors, but were still accelerating, aiming to match the velocity of the oncoming Syndicate flotilla. “I was thinking, you said Pele should operate separately from my own formation, and I still agree that is a good idea. But if I timed Pele’s attacks to match my own, we would present CEO Boucher with a complication, but still she would be dealing with one set of attacks at once, then have time to recover while we repositioned for our next attack.”

“That’s true,” Bradamont agreed.

“But if I just cut Kontos loose, tell him to hit the escorts and keep hitting them, and conduct my own attacks independent of him, then CEO Boucher will face more frequent attacks, from different angles. It will be harder for her to keep track of things and decide which recommendation to accept from her automated combat systems. And Kontos,” Marphissa added with a sly smile, “is likely to do something unexpected, something that the combat systems on the Syndicate ship do not anticipate.”

“Kontos still doesn’t have a lot of experience himself,” Bradamont reminded her. “He’s good. Hell, he’s brilliant at times. But he’s young, and he hasn’t been doing this long. A miscalculation on his part, a risk whose magnitude he doesn’t fully appreciate because of a lack of experience, could be disastrous when we’re facing a battleship.”

“True.” Marphissa pondered the matter as her ships finally matched the velocity of the Syndicate flotilla. The two formations were now tearing through space, separated by four light-minutes, heading toward a much faster intercept with Pele. “I believe that Kontos can do this, Honore. President Iceni moved him to command of Pele because she has confidence in him. President Iceni is a good judge of character. You know as well as I do that we need something extra. Something big extra. We might be able to destroy every escort that Syndicate battleship has got, but stopping the battleship itself with what we’ve got is going to take a miracle.”

“It’s your call, Kommodor,” Bradamont said. “You are right about how hard it will be to hurt that thing without losing all of our own ships in the effort.”

Marphissa tapped her comm controls. “Kapitan Kontos, I want you to use your three ships to conduct attacks on the enemy independently of my formation. We want to eliminate the battleship’s escorts, confuse and frustrate the Syndicate commander, and ultimately wear down the battleship’s defenses. Keep me informed as necessary of your intentions and planned actions. For the people, Marphissa, out.”

“Syndicate flotilla is accelerating,” the combat watch specialist reported.

“Match their acceleration using automated controls,” Marphissa ordered the maneuvering watch specialist. “Maintain four light-minutes’ distance between us.”

“You could let CEO Boucher get closer,” Bradamont murmured to Marphissa. “Let her think she’s slowly gaining on you.”

“I’m not trying to lead her anywhere,” Marphissa said. “I want to taunt her and frustrate her, like a cat on a fence, just out of reach of the dog trying to get it.”

“Kommodor,” the senior watch specialist said, “our systems assess that the battleship is exceeding safe limits on main propulsion. If they continue to push their acceleration at the current rate, the chances of catastrophic component failure will rise rapidly.”

“How long?” Marphissa demanded. “Do we have an estimate of how much longer they can accelerate at current rates?”

“There are some uncertainties, Kommodor. But they cannot sustain their current effort for more than another sixteen minutes at the most.”

Marphissa stared intently at her display, imagining the scene on the bridge of the battleship. She had been in such situations before, the workers or junior executives warning of danger, a clueless CEO insisting that the current effort be continued, the sub-CEOs and most of the senior executives seeking foremost to avoid confronting the CEO and thus refusing to back up their juniors as danger readings crept closer toward disaster. More often than not, automatic safety routines had finally activated while senior ranks still denied or debated.

It was one area where automated systems had saved a lot of Syndicate ships.

Sure enough, the entire Syndicate flotilla kept accelerating at a rate that was unsustainable for the battleship. Kept accelerating for another twelve minutes, at which point the main propulsion on the battleship abruptly cut back.

“Syndicate battleship is now accelerating at eighty percent of capacity,” the senior watch specialist said. “That is the standard recovery rate for overstressed systems.”

“Reduce our acceleration to match,” Marphissa ordered.

“Kommodor, the Syndicate flotilla has ceased accelerating and is changing course slightly.”

On her display, Marphissa watched the long curve of the Syndicate flotilla’s projected path shift. Four minutes ago, the enemy had bent their path a few degrees to port. “CEO Boucher is trying to position herself between us and Pele.”

“She wants to prevent Pele from joining our formation?” Kapitan Diaz asked.

“Syndicate doctrine,” Marphissa replied. “Concentrate forces. We still look Syndicate because we use Syndicate equipment, so Boucher is assuming we’ll still fight like the Syndicate. She will soon learn otherwise.”

Marphissa knew that she had to sound confident even though she still had no specific idea how to stop that Syndicate battleship. Any hint of uncertainty, of fear, in her voice and attitude would be scented by the specialists on the bridge and race through this ship and the rest of flotilla like a plague moving at the speed of light. She could lose this battle before a single shot was fired if her crews lost confidence in her.

At least her next move was fairly simple. Both her formation and the Syndicate formation were now racing through space along almost the same path at point two light speed, which meant their relative velocity was zero, the two groups of ships staying the exact same distance apart even though both were moving very quickly. It reminded Marphissa of two ground vehicles on a highway, both moving fast in the same direction at the same speed.

Her formation, in front, would need to slow down to get within weapons range of the Syndicate formation. “We’ll need to brake down to point one light,” she told Diaz as she set up the maneuver. “The timing is right for us to hit the Syndicate flotilla just as Pele is about to get there. Hua is going to have to watch both of our formations and decide what to do.”

Marphissa considered options, then decided to stick with automated control of the maneuver one more time. “All units in Midway flotilla primary formation, I have sent the command for our ships to pivot one hundred eighty degrees and begin braking.”

Thrusters on Manticore and the other ships pushed their bows up and over, so that the ships were now moving stern first through space, their bows facing the oncoming Syndicate flotilla. To an observer on a planet, their feet firmly planted in a place with an up and down, Marphissa’s ships would have appeared to have looped onto their backs, the crews now upside down compared to their previous alignment. But to the crews, nothing felt different or looked different except that they were now facing the opposite direction. As the pivots ended, main propulsion lit off on all the ships, braking their velocity so that the pursuing Syndicate warships could finally begin to catch up.

“This is pretty simple,” Diaz commented. “We’ve already got our bows with our strongest shields and armaments pointed at the enemy. All we have to do is slide over a little at the last minute to avoid going head-to-head with that battleship.”

Marphissa nodded, then noticed the frown on Bradamont. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” Bradamont said. “I just don’t trust situations that seem too simple and too easy.”

“We’ve got over an hour before we get within range of them,” Marphissa said. “I expect they’ll start braking soon, too, now that they see we’re ready to fight.”

But as the minutes crawled by, the Syndicate flotilla kept charging onward at point two light speed. “We’re getting down toward point one light,” Diaz reported, “but the Syndicate is still moving at point two light speed along the same vector as us. If they don’t brake, we’ll meet them at a relative velocity of point one light.”

“That’s not good,” Marphissa said. Human fire control systems could do a decent job of scoring hits at velocities of up to point two light speed. Higher speeds than that caused accuracy to fall off fast. But slower speeds caused accuracy to increase just as rapidly. “They’ve got too much of a firepower advantage for us to meet them at point one light. We could get badly chewed up passing through them. Why aren’t they braking? Is CEO Boucher smart enough to realize how that complicates our attack?”

“How could she be?” Diaz protested. “Happy Hua doesn’t know enough— Oh, hell. That’s why.”

“What?”

Diaz waved an angry hand at his display. “You and I look at the situation and say, all right, we’re still forty minutes from contact. Plenty of time to pivot the ships and prepare for the engagement. But Hua Boucher is looking at it and sees us getting closer to her. She is told that to brake she must turn her ships so that their sterns face us, the most vulnerable parts of the ships where the least firepower can be brought to bear. And because she can see us coming and doesn’t really understand how great the distance is between us, she won’t do that. To her, it’s too close to a fight for her to allow her ships to present their sterns to us.”

Bradamont slapped her forehead. “Damn. Kapitan Diaz is right. Boucher is making this a lot harder for us because she doesn’t know what she’s doing.”

“Great,” Marphissa said. “That’s great.” She ran both hands through her hair, thinking. “We have to brake our own velocity down more.”

“How much more?” Diaz asked.

“They’re coming at us at point two light and not slowing down, and we want to engage them at a relative velocity of point two light! We have to get as close to zero absolute velocity as we can, maybe point zero one or point zero two light.”

“That’s very slow for a battle situation,” Bradamont cautioned.

“I know! But what happens if they can target us too well when we get near that battleship? The slower we’re going, the harder it will be for them to hit us, right?”

“Right,” Bradamont agreed. “And Boucher is certain not to understand that, since it’s so counterintuitive for someone thinking in planetary terms. For what it is worth, Kommodor, I concur in your assessment of the necessary tactics here.”

Marphissa’s hands moved rapidly as she set up the next maneuver. “We keep braking at a rate that will bring us down to point zero one light when we meet the Syndicate flotilla. I’ll let all of my ships maneuver on their own during the attack run because that will mess up enemy firing solutions assuming our movements will be perfectly coordinated by the automated systems, but I’ll also have an order already in the ships’ systems to begin accelerating again the moment after we pass through the Syndicate formation. The Syndicate ships will be moving so fast they won’t be able to turn back and hit us before we get our velocity up again.”

“Looks good,” Bradamont said, then shook her head. “Warn Kontos on Pele.”

“Warn him?”

“He’s also assuming that the Syndicate flotilla will brake before the encounter. That will throw off his own approach. I’ve noticed that you young officers tend to push your ships to the limits of their capabilities on your maneuvers, so if Kontos misjudges what the enemy is doing here, Pele won’t physically be able to compensate. Kontos will overshoot the encounter and miss his firing run.”

“Ah! Thank you for that warning!” Marphissa called Kontos, explaining what she thought CEO Boucher was thinking and planning, then sat back, rubbing her forehead. “I have so much left to learn.”

Marphissa’s formation continued braking, going slower and slower, though only their instruments told them that. Just as it was hard in the immensity of space, without nearby references, to tell when you were going very fast, it was equally difficult to know when you were dropping your speed to what amounted to a crawl for warships. It all felt the same.

“Ten minutes to engagement range,” the senior watch specialist announced.

“All units,” Marphissa ordered, “we will hit the upper, port edge of the Syndicate formation. I want fire concentrated on the two light cruisers holding the corners of that edge. Enemy Hunter-Killers are secondary targets if you can’t get a good shot at one of the light cruisers. Don’t waste any fire on the battleship even if it looks like a hit is possible. It’ll just bounce off his shields. For the people, Marphissa, out.”

At the velocities of space combat, enemy ships went from being way out there to there in what seemed the blink of an eye. If you were following standard Syndicate tactics, that wasn’t much of a problem because you were headed straight for the enemy and hopefully your automated maneuvering systems, operating far faster than a human could react, would avoid collisions as the two forces went directly head-to-head. But standard tactics led to bloody encounters as the two sides slugged away at each other.

Black Jack had shown them a different way to fight. The trick was to make tiny changes in your vectors at a time when they could take effect but not so soon that the enemy could see it and counter your moves. If done right, it allowed your full force to hit a small portion of the enemy, inflicting a lot of damage but not suffering much in return. If done wrong, by only a tiny amount compared to the distances around them, it could result in your completely missing the enemy, or running head-on into them.

Simple. But very complicated.

Marphissa waited, intent on her display, as the remaining distance shrank rapidly. At two minutes before contact, she gave the order. “All units, execute maneuver using local controls. Come port zero one degrees, up point five degrees.”

Only five seconds before contact, Marphissa sent the maneuvering order she had already prepared. “All units, full acceleration.” By the time that order was received and the ships responded, they would be past the enemy.

In those last moments, Marphissa realized that she had miscalculated slightly. In her eagerness to ensure the firing run was not wasted, she had underestimated the final maneuver. Or perhaps Hua had slid her own formation in the same directions as Marphissa, by sheer luck doing just the right thing. Marphissa’s formation would slide through the port side of the Syndicate formation closer than Marphissa had intended, and not as high. Not a direct head-to-head encounter, but far too close to that. It gave her warships better shots at the Syndicate ships, but also gave the Syndicate more chances to hit her. Too late. Damn. Too late.

The instant of combat came and went too fast for human senses to register, automated systems pumping out hell lances and grapeshot at targets whipping past at immense velocities.

Manticore jolted heavily several times. The lights flickered, Marphissa’s display wavering in and out before steadying again. She waited for the surge of acceleration as the main propulsion units cut in, but felt nothing.

“The battleship targeted us. Our shields got knocked down, and we took several hits,” Kapitan Diaz was reporting, his expression grim. “We have only partial thruster capability for maneuvering. All main propulsion is off-line.”

No main propulsion. Manticore was nearly motionless in space and unable to change that.

Marphissa stared at her display. The firing run had done damage to the Syndicate forces. One of the Syndicate light cruisers was drifting out of formation, powerless and heavily damaged. A spreading ball of gas and debris marked where the second targeted Syndicate light cruiser had been. In addition, one of the small Syndicate Hunter-Killers had broken in half under the impacts of several hits.

But the Midway warships had been close enough to the Syndicate battleship for its firepower to be felt, and they had paid a price for that.

Marphissa’s display showed red damage markers on many of her ships. The Syndicate had not concentrated their fire, so none of Midway’s ships had been knocked out completely or destroyed. But few had come through the encounter unscathed. And, in addition to Manticore, the light cruiser Harrier had lost main propulsion and was also hanging helplessly in space not far distant. The other warships were accelerating away, only just realizing that their stricken comrades had been left behind.

The Syndicate formation had seen the same things. It was beginning to bend upward in as tight a turn as the battleship could manage, a vast curve through space that Marphissa knew would come nearly full circle. It would take more than half an hour for the enemy warships to finish that turn, but when they came back, Manticore and Harrier would be sitting ducks.