Conventions of War (64 page)

Nearly stammering in his haste, Martinez informed Chandra of this opportunity. The answer was immediate: fire a full fifteen-launcher flight following his trajectory, and then launch another full barrage straight at the enemy to keep their attention occupied.

Missiles leapt from the tubes, and this time Martinez fired Pinnace 3 along with them. The pinnace pilot couldn't accelerate with the same angry speed as the missiles, but would follow them and perhaps be able to see the enemy from a perspective useful enough to make vital last second corrections.

Another flight of missiles roared in on Squadron 9, and was destroyed by lasers and antiproton beams. Martinez felt anxiety gnaw his nerves with sharp, angry teeth. The enemy missiles were getting so close that it was difficult to launch countermissiles in time—the missiles just took too long getting clear of the ship in order to ignite their antimatter engines. He would have to depend entirely on the point-defense beams.

His head swiveled within the virtual environment as he saw ahead a horrific, violent series of flashes. The Daimong squadron vanished into overlapping blooms of plasma light. Martinez felt his heart lurch against his ribs. Very possibly Tork, his flagship, and his squadron had all been destroyed, annihilated in an instant like so many squadrons at First Magaria.

He wondered how hot the fireballs would be when
Illustrious
flew into them, in just a few minutes.

Chandra's urgent voice sounded in his ears. “All ships prepare to starburst.”

About time,
he thought.

“Engines,” he told Mersenne, “cut engines. Pilot, swing to course two-four-five by zero-six-zero. Engines, prepare to accelerate at eight gravities.”

Mersenne triggered the heavy-gravity warning.

“Starburst!” Chandra cried in Martinez's earphones. “All ships starburst!”

“Engines,” Martinez said, “fire engines.”

The onset of eight gravities was like being kicked in the stomach by a horse. The sound of the engines was the roar of a fire-breathing monster. The cruiser's spars and hull groaned aloud.

Martinez fought for breath. The virtual world in his head began to dim, and elements in the display flickered and faded out. The cruiser's unexpected maneuver was making it impossible for the two observation pinnaces to maintain their telemetry.

“All ships fire by salvo.” Chandra's voice was a hoarse, throaty cry against gravity. Martinez repeated the command.

“Missiles…fired.” Husayn's voice seemed to have chirped up about an octave—or perhaps, Martinez thought, heavy gravity was affecting his perceptions.

“My Lord!”
Pan's shout showed no strain at all from the gravity.
“Missiles!”

Martinez barely saw them coming before half the virtual display flared white, and then went completely dead as every sensor on that side of the ship was burned out.

“Roll ship!” Desperate urgency filled Martinez. Without sensors, the point-defense weapons couldn't see the enemy missiles coming at them.

The pilot rolled the ship, and the darkness of dead sensors exchanged places with the white of a fireball. The burst had already expanded beyond the ship, filling the vacuum with radio hash, and neither Martinez nor the sensors could see anything beyond. Martinez looked at the radiation indicators. Neutrons, gamma rays, and pions pulsed as missiles detonated nearby. The hull temperature was spiking.

The half of the universe that had gone black slowly turned white as sensors were automatically replaced.

An enormous radiation pulse blacked out half the sensors again. This was no mere missile going off. Something that big had to be the destruction of an entire ship with all its antimatter fuel and ammunition.

“Twelve gravities for two minutes!” Martinez shouted.

The engines thundered. Martinez screamed against the onset of gravity, at the darkness filling his mind. He clamped his jaw muscles and swallowed to force blood to his brain. His breath was harsh in his ears.

Oblivion was a glorious release.

He fought his way to consciousness moments later. Michi's voice rang in his ears.

“All ships fire by salvo!”

Martinez tried to speak around what seemed to be a felt-covered rubber ball in his mouth.

“Weapons, did you receive that? Fire by salvo.”

Husayn didn't reply. He was probably still unconscious. Martinez was stumbling through the sequence of oral commands that would give him command of the weapons computer when he heard Husayn's muzzy voice.

“Never mind, Lord Captain, I've got that.” There was a pause. “Missiles away.”

Illustrious
was still inside a plasma fireball, though the fireball was thinning and cooling. Martinez returned his attention to the radiation counter. The pulses were small and therefore distant. Hull temperature was beginning to drop.

Radars and ranging lasers lashed out into the radio murk. The images of a few ships nearby resolved out of the gamma ray haze, other survivors of Cruiser Squadron 9.

Three, Martinez counted, four. Five if you counted
Illustrious
.

A few minutes earlier they had been nine.

“All ships fire by salvo.” It was Chandra's voice this time. Presumably she'd just regained consciousness.

Another salvo was fired at the enemy they couldn't see. Martinez wished he could link his sensors with those of the two observation pinnaces.

The plasma fog was cooling and dispersing rapidly. A ship appeared, vaguely, ahead, proving there had been at least one survivor of Tork's Daimong squadron. Ahead of the single Daimong ship, Martinez could see the flares of missile explosions. There were many more explosions behind.

And then, within the space of a few seconds, the plasma surrounding the ship dispersed to the point where the ship's sensors were suddenly able to receive data from one end of the fleet to the other.

Martinez looked at first for the enemy squadron he had been engaging, and saw nothing but the flights of missiles he had just sent at them. He supposed the Naxids were still concealed by cooling plasma bursts.

At least no missiles seemed to be heading in his direction.

Astern, opposing squadrons were still smashing at each other. Ahead, one more Daimong cruiser had materialized, and this one was tentatively identified by the computer as the
Judge Urhug,
Tork's flagship. At any rate, it was maintaining
Urhug
's course.

Farther ahead a battle blazed against the brightness of Magaria's sun. Martinez saw ships whirling around the action in a series of irregular curves, and his heart gave a shout as he realized that Sula's squadron was still fighting, still deploying the new tactical system.

She had destroyed the squadron she'd first engaged, apparently, and then decelerated to attack the next enemy squadron from its unengaged flank, the classic doubling maneuver that the rearmost squadrons had failed to accomplish. After destroying the second group of enemy, Sula and the second loyalist squadron were now dropping back to engage a third enemy force.

He could see at least five of Sula's ships, and their pattern of movement implied that there were more survivors that he couldn't detect. A song of relief caroled through his heart at the realization that Sula was almost certainly alive.

“My lord,” said Choy. “Message from Pinnace Three.
‘Attack successful. Enemy destroyed. Request orders.'”

Martinez looked in surprise at the space that had been occupied by the enemy squadron. Even though the plasma bursts had thinned, no enemy ships had appeared. It appeared that
Illustrious
had just fired a series of missile barrages at enemies that had already been vaporized.

A burst of cold satisfaction raced through him. “Order Pinnace Three to return to the ship,” he said. “Weapons, direct all remaining missiles to attack the enemy next astern. Engines, reduce acceleration to one-half gravity.”

Relief akin to euphoria flowed through his sinews as the great pressure of eight gravities eased. The hull gave a series of cracks and shudders as if it were flexing vast limbs. Martinez pressed the touchpad that would connect him with Chandra.

“Request permission to decelerate and double the enemy next astern.”

Chandra's answer was swift. “We've only got twenty-two minutes to our nearest approach to the sun,” she said. “We'll have to wait till after our slingshot.”

Martinez looked in surprise at the display and saw that she was right. He'd been paying so much attention to the battle that the range to Magarmah had escaped him. Hours had gone by since the first Naxid squadron fired its initial flight of missiles, and meanwhile the sun had been growing closer.

“All ships to form on the flag,” Chandra said, this time over the general broadcast channel. “
Illustrious,
here's your course.”

The cruiser altered its heading to bring it onto the course Tork had ordered for the fleet after the solar passage. Three other survivors of the battle took station near
Illustrious,
each keeping a wary distance from the flagship and each other in order to avoid getting fried by the other ship's blazing antimatter tails. The last survivor did not acknowledge any of Michi's transmissions, but shaped its own course for the solar approach. It was unable to communicate though it was clearly under command, and it probably hadn't received Michi's order. The other ships stayed clear lest it do something unexpected.

Judge Urhug
gave no orders and did not alter its course. Its engines were unlit, and as a result Squadron 9 was slowly closing on it. Martinez wondered if Tork's cruiser was a ship of the dead.

Ahead of
Urhug
there was a ferocious blaze of action and then silence. Sula's squadron broke its formation and began heavy accelerations to line up for the passage across Magarmah.

If they had left any Naxids alive, the enemy was hidden by expanding plasma bursts.

Engines roared and
Illustrious
quaked as Squadron 9 burned around Magarmah. Martinez clenched his teeth in the face of high gravity and managed to hold onto consciousness.
Illustrious
maintained heavy thrust for another four minutes after the passage, to shape its course for Magaria, and Martinez looked ahead.

There were nothing but friendly ships between Squadron 9 and Magaria. Sula's Squadron 17 was already dispersing again into its whirling formation and decelerating to engage the enemy. Martinez counted seven ships remaining in her squadron, and fourteen in the other friendly squadrons ahead.

Judge Urhug
hadn't fired its engines during the solar bypass, and so hadn't shaped the course that Tork himself had ordered for the fleet. The flagship was flying by itself toward the interstellar void.

“Prepare to decelerate,” came Chandra's voice on the all-ship channel. “We will double the enemy squadron to our rear.”

Martinez hung weightless as
Illustrious
rotated to its new heading. He could only imagine what was happening on the other side of Magarmah as the two fleets approached the same point. Annihilating flights of missiles would be fired at point-blank range, as much a danger to the aggressor as the target. Possibly on account of the danger, they'd stop shooting missiles entirely, but that didn't mean they were through fighting. As the opposing squadrons fell into line ahead and astern of one another, they would be close enough to begin deploying their antiproton beams as offensive weapons, and cause the same kind of carnage that Harzapid had seen on the first day of the mutiny. The opposing forces would roar around the sun shooting great chunks out of each other, and if they didn't separate sufficiently after the transit, they'd just keep on shooting.

Martinez was at a loss as to how he'd be able to aid friendly ships if that were the case. He might not be able to fire missiles for fear of hitting his own side.

“Decelerate on my mark, at three gravities,” Chandra said. “Five, four, three, two, one, mark.”

Deceleration kicked Martinez in the spine. He saw that most of the other survivors began decelerating at the same moment—all but Sula's, which had been decelerating all along—and he wondered if Michi was the senior surviving officer and had given them all an order.

Two ships didn't decelerate. One was the cruiser that had been unable to communicate, which plodded along on its preset course, and the other a ship farther up the line, which might be in the same condition.

Martinez saw specks whirl around the sun, their torches flaring to bring them on track for Magaria. It was impossible to tell whether they were loyalist or Naxid, and Michi transmitted a demand that they identify themselves.

The reply flashed back at the speed of light. The new arrivals were Cruiser Squadron 20, five ships that remained of the ten that had started the battle.

The sun spat out another line of ships, tiny bright seeds flying across the darkness. They were on a different heading from the loyalist squadrons and therefore presumed to be enemy.

“All ships fire by salvo,” Chandra said. “No—wait. Stand by.”

The new arrivals' course was peculiar. They weren't racing after the loyalists, and they weren't shaping a course to get between the loyalists and Magaria. In fact they didn't seem to be heading anywhere in particular, and were soaring more or less into empty space.

No, Martinez realized. Not quite empty…

He stabbed the virtual button to send a message to Chandra.

“They're running!”
he said. “They're heading for Wormhole Five.”

Which, he recalled, would eventually take them to the Naxid home world of Naxas.

“We've got to go after them!” he told Chandra. “The enemy fleet
is
the rebellion now. Magaria is nothing without them.”

“Fire by salvo,” Chandra said. “Stand by for course correction.”