Walter Williams - Conventions of War

Michi Chen gave her ships one hour of free time each day, when the acceleration was reduced to one gee and no drills were scheduled, time that allowed people to leave their couches, stretch, and empty the waste collection bags from their vac suits. Never a pleasant job, the crowding at the toilets and waste disposers now made it worse. Sula rejoiced in her private toilet and her private shower. She wasn’t prepared to share them with anyone.

She hardly had to abuse her new captains at all. They had seen what she’d done at Second Magaria, and all were now believers in Ghost Tactics.

She meet Martinez in virtual conferences with Michi and other officers. She was civil. He was civil. He reported progress with his squadron. So did she. Everyone was learning fast, under the pressure of imminent combat. Sula wanted them all to learn their moves before the constant pounding of heavy gravity made them stupid and careless.

There were three systems between Magaria and Naxas, a swollen red giant, a blue-white star boiling off angry radiation, and a neutron star surrounded by the wreckage of a planetary system it had destroyed in a great supernova. The systems were mostly barren, and when the two fleets entered them, their population doubled or tripled.

Chenforce pressed the Naxids and narrowed the distance. The Naxids didn’t respond to the loyalists’ increased acceleration until five hours had gone by, and then they matched their pursuers’ acceleration without trying to increase their lead.

On the second day, on an hour when Chenforce had reduced its acceleration, the Naxids sent a swarm of pinnaces, shuttles, and other small craft to ferry crew away from one of their ships. Michi saw what was happening and ordered a fast, hard burn in pursuit. The Naxids finished their evacuation and raced away. When they were a safe distance from the abandoned vessel, they blew it up with a missile.

One of the damaged Naxid ships hadn’t been able to stand the increased pressure that Michi Chen was applying. That left the enemy fleet with twenty-nine. Sula approved.

The pursuit went on. Sula peeled med patches off her neck and applied new ones. She ate badly and slept badly, her dreams choked with asphyxiation and blood. Casimir called to her from his pilfered tomb.

Once, she felt his warm touch on her skin. She reached to take his hand, and found that the hand wasn’t Casimir’s, wasn’t long and thin, but broad and blunt-fingered, the hand of Martinez-and she woke, eyes wide and staring at the man who touched her, and he wasn’t Martinez but the almost-Martinez, Terza’s son, who gazed at her in malicious triumph from beneath his heavy brows…and then she wokeagain, heart lurching against her ribs, and saw the glowing pastel displays of Command and the crew drowsing at their stations while Haz in Auxiliary Command conned the ship.

Both fleets were going to have to decelerate in order to have a hope of maneuvering in the Naxas system. Until they arrived at the turnover point where the deceleration would normally start, Michi continued her accelerations. The Naxids continued to flee before them. Michi was going to wreck the Naxids’ schedule past all repair.

Sula began to think that Michi should continue the accelerations regardless. Press the Naxids to the point where it was impossible for either side to maneuver in the system, only to flash through it on their way to the next wormhole. The Naxids would have to accept straight-up combat this side of their home planet in order to keep Chenforce from blasting the place en route to somewhere else.

She contacted Michi and made this suggestion. Michi said she’d take a few hours to think about it, and a few hours later sent Sula a message saying she’d decided against the idea.

“We don’t know what’s there,” she said. “Going in slower gives us more time to work out our options.”

Sula shrugged with shoulders three times their normal weight. She concluded that Michi probably had a point.

Chenforce rolled and began its deceleration. The Naxids rolled and decelerated as well. Due to the delay in rollover, gee forces were heavier than during the accelerations. Sula felt as if the big hand of the almost-Martinez had clamped on her throat. Her heart raced to erratic surges of panic. She fought against the fear. In the shower, she scrubbed herself with perfumed soap to scour off the sour odor of spent adrenaline.

The Naxids’ deceleration wasn’t quite as heavy as that of Chenforce. The loyalists were slowly overtaking them. Sula checked the trajectories and matched them against a current map of the Naxas system, which featured eleven planets dotted around the primary. Chenforce would overtake about halfway toward the Naxid home world, having just passed the orbits of three gas giants.

Therewere reinforcements then. Most likely they would sweep around one or more of those gas giants and burn like fury to join the Naxid fleet before the battle.

Sula messaged these speculations to Chandra Prasad. The tactical officer answered that she, Michi, and Captain Martinez had already worked it out, but thanks anyway.

Sula consoled herself with the thought that at least there were a few other keen minds in the squadron.

A swarm of Naxid missiles raced into the systems, hundreds of them. Alarms flashed along Sula’s displays. The missiles decelerated, approached the Naxid ships, and were taken aboard.

The loyalists weren’t the only ones to have worked out this method of resupply.

The wormhole to Naxas approached. The Naxids formed into a long line and vanished through it. Hot on their heels came loyalist missiles, racing at relativistic velocities with their lasers and radars pounding out to light up the system before Chenforce arrived.

Chenforce took its time. Michi reduced the deceleration to three-quarter gravity and gave everyone three hours’ holiday. Meals were laid on the mess room tables for the first time since pursuit had begun, and the crew ate in shifts. A modest amount of alcohol was decanted, enough to produce a glow in the crew.

Alone in her cabin, Sula drank fragrant tea sweetened with clover honey, ate her dinner, then had three desserts. Every cell in her body rejoiced at the low gravities. She lay on her bed and slept in dreamless peace till Spence arrived to help her into the vac suit.

Reduction in deceleration of course meant that the fleets would meet earlier, not later. And Michi was still pushing ahead, still doing her best to demolish the Naxid timetable.

Chenforce flashed into the Naxas system with every sensor operator straining for sign of the enemy, and with Sula having switched her display to virtual. The sensor missiles that had gone into the system earlier had done their work-bits of the system flashed into her mind almost immediately, jigsawing together until she saw, like a spatter of brilliant stars against the blackness, what the Naxids had been running toward.

For a moment her heart lurched. It seemed that a vast enemy fleet lay ready in the system-but of course at this stage it would look that way, the real ships surrounded by scores of decoys that loyalist observers had not yet sifted out from the genuine warships. But even if ninety percent of the enemy force were bogus, the size of the force still surprised her.

They were right where Sula had thought they’d be, having swung in succession around a pair of the outer gas giants, and were now burning at eight or nine gees acceleration for a rendezvous with the survivors of the Magaria fleet, which was decelerating briskly in an effort to keep the rendezvous.

Those heavy gravities that were torturing the Naxids were Michi’s fault, for having pressed the pursuit.

“Sensors, I want ranging lasers on those new blips,” Sula said.

“Already done, my lady.”