Walter Williams - Conventions of War

In the third system, Bachun, Tork demanded that he be able to broadcast to the population. The Naxid governor declined to answer. Intercepted transmissions from the planet showed joyous celebrations in honor of a record harvest and increased industrial production, all testifying to the efficiency of the new regime.

Tork fired a missile straight at Bachun’s capital city. Without missing a beat, his messages began to be broadcast throughout the system. Tork recalled the missile.

To Martinez, it was beginning to look as if there would be no suspense until the Fleet reached Magaria.

He was wrong. When the alarms began to chirp, he was suited on his acceleration couch. He knew from the sound of the alarm tone what had happened before Warrant Officer Pan, the sensor operator, could cry his warning.

“We’re being painted by a targeting laser!”

“Engines!” Martinez shouted over him. “Cut acceleration. Pilot, rotate to heading one-two-zero by zero-eight-zero! Weapons, all point-defense lasers on automatic! Comm, get me Lady Michi! Engines, sound warning for acceleration!”

Gravity and the distant rumble of the engines ceased. The ship began its swing to its new heading. Inside the vac suit, Martinez’s heart sounded like a roll of thunder.

Michi had given the squadron standing orders for this situation. All ships would disperse without the need for an order from the flagship.

“We’re still being painted, my lord,” Pan said, more quietly.

The acceleration warning began to clatter. “Everyone med up,” Martinez said, and reached for the med injector in its holster by the side of his couch. He pressed it to his carotid and fired into it a precise dose of the drug that would-it was hoped-keep his veins and brain supple and safe from the effects of heavy acceleration.

The others in Command took their injectors and did likewise.

The ship ceased to swing. “One-two-zero by zero-eight-zero,” the pilot said.

“Engines, accelerate at six gravities.”

The roar of the engines overwhelmed the feeble warning tones of the sensor board. The room became a blur as Martinez’s acceleration couch dropped to its zero point.

“Captain, what’s the problem?” Michi’s voice, hoarse with her battle against acceleration, sounded in his earphones.

“Enemy targeting laser,” Martinez said. “Are you all right?”

“I’m in my sleeping cabin. I got to my bed in time. Does-”

The squadcom’s voice was drowned by a shout from Pan. “Here they come!”

“Ten gravities for one minute!” Martinez called.

He saw the flashes of white on the tactical display that were incoming missiles, a perfect swarm of them shooting out of Bachun Wormhole 2 like a stream of water caught by a stop-action camera.

The ship shuddered and groaned under the great surge of gravity. Martinez clamped his jaw in order to force blood to his brain. His vision darkened, narrowed to a tunnel focused on the tactical display. He saw blooms of bright light flash on the display as antimatter missiles detonated. Symbols flickered, indicating thatIllustrious ‘s point-defense weapons were firing. He fought for breath and consciousness, aware that control of the battle had never been his, that he would either live or die in the next few seconds and that he was helpless to make any difference…

The great pressure on his chest and mind eased. He had never felt he would be thankful to experience a mere six gravity acceleration.

Expanding clouds of plasma floated in the void ahead of the ship, showing where the oncoming Naxid missiles had destroyed part of the fleet’s decoy screen. Silver flickers on the display indicated rapidly receding missiles that had flashed through the system so fast they failed to acquire a target. By the time they finished decelerating and had begun their return to the point of origin, the Second Battle of Magaria would be over, one way or another.

There seemed to be no new missiles coming their way.

“Reduce acceleration to one-half gravity,” Martinez said.

Michi’s voice sounded in his earphones. “I take it we’ve survived, Lord Captain?”

“No casualties in the fleet, my lady. We seem to have lost forty or so decoys.”

“Message for the squadcom from the Supreme Commander,” said Nyamugali at the comm station.

“Forward it to her.”

Martinez heard the message secondhand, since his channel to Michi was still open when she played it.

“The lord commander,” said a chiming Daimong voice, “reminds Squadron Commander Chen that no element of the fleet is to disperse without permission of the Supreme Commander.”

Tork, Martinez thought, at least had the virtue of consistency.

More decoys were launched to fill the gaps caused by the surprise attack. Tork then launched a missile to destroy the source of the ranging laser, which turned out to be Wormhole Station 2.

“The old pirate,” Michi said, with feigned affection.

Illustrioussuffered the expected number of sprains and broken bones during the attack. No one was incapacitated. The Naxid strike had come to nothing, but the crew of the wormhole station observed the Orthodox Fleet’s reactions, and would have been able to deduce at least some of the icons on their screens that represented real ships and some that were decoys.

Perhaps that had been the whole point.

Martinez wrenched off his helmet to relieve himself of the scent of spent adrenaline that was souring his suit, then examined the spectra from the brief battle. There had been over two hundred enemy missiles, he saw. Most had missed completely. Only two squadrons had tried to starburst, his own and Sula’s.

Something about the way Sula’s squadron maneuvered seemed familiar, and he subjected the trajectories to analysis. They looked random, but on closer inspection they were not-they seemed to be following the hull of a chaotic system.

Somehow, Sula had taught the new tactics to her squadron, and presumably done so without Tork finding out.

Clever girl,he thought. He wished he and Michi had been as clever.

Martinez decided that he wasn’t going to leave Command until the campaign was over. He ordered Narbonne to bring him coffee and settled in for the approach to Bachun Wormhole 2, now marked on the display by the glowing dust that had been its station.

The Orthodox Fleet was preceded through the wormhole by the now usual swarm of relativistic missiles equipped with laser trackers and radar, and then by hundreds of decoys. In order to avoid any theoretical host of missiles waiting for them on the other side, the fleet performed some last minute maneuvers to delay their entry into the Magaria system, a movement that only served to increase suspense.

Martinez shifted to a virtual display before the fleet made its transit. The Bachun system filled his skull, the sun a white sphere, Bachun itself a tiny blue dot surrounded by a silver ring.

The wormhole sped closer. Martinez strained his thoughts to sense whatever waited on the other side. Energy raced along his nerves. He could feel his pulse beat hard in his throat.

He knew thatIllustrious had made its leap through the wormhole when the Bachun system vanished from his mind, replaced by complete darkness. His mind flailed without bearings, and then the sensors began picking up data from the scanning missiles that had been fired into the system ahead of time, and bit by bit Magaria’s system blossomed in his mind.

When Fleet Commander Jarlath had led the Home Fleet to disaster at Magaria, the battle was influenced by two gas giants, Barbas and Rinconell, that lay between Magaria Wormhole 1 and Magaria itself. This tactical map no longer existed-Barbas and Rinconell had moved on in their orbits, and Magaria itself was on the far side of its primary. The Orthodox Fleet could skate past Magaria’s sun, Magarmah, and blast straight for the enemy-held world.