The Lost Stars: Imperfect Sword (3 page)

“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.”