Walter Williams - Conventions of War

He ate a sandwich and drank a cup of coffee.

Always about the money,he thought.

He opened the 77–12 that he’d viewed just that morning and looked again at the serial number of the ventilation blowers. He backtracked through the record and found that Rao had corrected the serial number from the purely fictional one that Francis had originally recorded in the log.

Every item inIllustrious, Martinez knew, came with its own history. Every pump, every transformer, every missile launcher, every robot, every processor, and every waste recycler came with a long and complex record that included the date of manufacture or assembly, the date at which it was purchased by the Fleet, the date at which it was installed, and each date at which it was subject to maintenance or replacement.

Martinez called up the history of the air blowers on Deck 8 and discovered that, according to the records, the blowers had been destroyed with theQuest, a Naxid frigate involved in the mutiny at Harzapid.

Rebel Data,he thought.

He checked the history of the turbopump that had failed at Arkhan-Dohg, and found that the turbopump had been decommissioned three years earlier, replaced by a new pump fresh from the factory, and sold as scrap.

His mouth was dry. He was suddenly aware of the silence in his office, the easy throb of his pulse, the cool taste of the air.

He knew who had killed Kosinic and Fletcher, and why.

Once the Fleet Control Board and their staff had come aboard,Galactic cast off from the ring in order to build the delta vee necessary for escape in the event the Naxids came to Antopone. A few hours later the two brand-new heavy cruisers launched. Their Daimong crews were inexperienced, and the ships hadn’t yet received their weapons. They couldn’t fight, and so would have to flee.

A squadron of eight Naxid ships had departed the fleet guarding the Zanshaa system: they were heading for Zanshaa Wormhole 2 at a steady four gees acceleration. At that rate they could be at Zarafan in less than ten days.

From Zarafan they could continue to Laredo, normally a journey of three months, but less if they continued to tenderize themselves with heavy gravities. Or from Zarafan the Naxids could take a wormhole that could lead them eventually to Antopone and, from there, Chijimo; or alternately, they could use another wormhole to take them through a series of barren systems to Seizho, from which they could return to Zanshaa.

This last was thought unlikely. If they wanted to raid Seizho, they could go there direct from the capital.

“They’ve learned from us,” Mondi said in his precise way. He adjusted the dark goggles he wore over his night-adapted eyes. “Our raids must be hurting them if they’re launching a raid themselves.”

“But is this theironly raid?” Pezzini wondered. “This could be a probe designed to get our defenses off balance, and then they launch a larger strike elsewhere-Harzapid and what remains of the Fourth Fleet, for example.”

Lord Chen contemplated mosaics on the walls, with their bright warships rocketing out of wormholes, and shook his head.

“That doesn’t matter, my lords,” he said. “We don’t have the ships to oppose more than one raid, and in any case Laredo has to be protected.”

He was just a politician, he thought, not a Fleet officer, but even he knewthat. He could already picture in his mind the panicked series of instructions from the Convocation, demanding that the Fleet save them from the Naxids.

“Very well,” said Lord Tork. “We shall order Lord Eino to move his forces in this direction, to guard the Convocation if necessary.”

Tork was in the process of dictating this order to the secretary of the board when the secretary’s comm unit chirped-a message from Lord Eino Kangas stating that the Home Fleet was already in motion, heading for Antopone.

Kangas had read the situation as the board had, and reached an identical conclusion.

Bulletins arrived almost hourly, so Lord Chen and the others were kept well-informed of the movements of the various players. The Naxids took ten days to reach Zarafan, a journey that normally took a month. Once there, they destroyed the few civilian ships that hadn’t made their escape and demanded and received the planet’s surrender. It had been hoped that the Naxids might detach ships to remain in the system-detachments could be picked off later-but instead they reduced their fierce acceleration and swung through Wormhole 3 on a course that would eventually take them to Antopone. The course of the enemy raid was now clear: Zarafan-Antopone-Chijimo, and then the return to Zanshaa. It was an unambitious raid compared to those Michi Chen and Altasz had launched into Naxid space, but perhaps it was a rehearsal for others.

Now that Kangas knew where the enemy were bound, he increased his acceleration and headed for Antopone, his ships crossing paths with theGalactic and the two refugee cruisers heading the other way. Kangas wanted to arrive at Antopone ahead of the Naxids to protect the shipbuilding facilities on the planet’s ring.

Kangas’s ships were ready for a fight. The five survivors of the Home Fleet burned to avenge their defeat at Magaria, and Do-faq’s seven ships were confident of victory, having already wiped out a Naxid squadron at the Lai-own home world of Hone-bar.

Kangas succeeded in arriving first, placing his forces between Antopone and the arriving Naxids. The raiders-seven frigates led by a light cruiser-arrived in the system to find twelve heavy cruisers driving for them head-on, with barrages of missiles already launched.

The Fleet Control Board, in their meeting room onGalactic, watched the battle courtesy of the amazingly detailed spectra gathered by detectors on the Antopone ring, and projected in three-dimensional holographic images above the board’s long table. The illusion that they were watching in real time was perfect, and Lord Chen had to keep reminding himself that the battle had in fact occurred fifteen hours before. They saw the missiles launched at a target that had not as yet appeared through the wormhole, the Naxid squadron entering “hot” with radars and ranging lasers hammering, and then a frenzy of countermissile firings and maneuvers as the Naxid commander rearranged his formation.

“The Naxid’s pissing his pants by now,” Pezzini said with satisfaction.

“No!”Tork cried, his melodious voice edged with an uncanny shimmering quality that Lord Chen had never heard before. Chen stared at him, and then at the display.

“Starburst,” Pezzini said critically. “And damned early too.”

The compact bundle of ships that was Kangas’s command were separating, flying apart like the casing of an exploded bomb.

“Kangas may just have lost the war!” Tork said. Anger buzzed in his voice. “He has shamed us before our ancestors!”

Chen knew that warships usually clumped together in rigid formations that enabled the commander to communicate with them, and that at some point in a battle the ships would “starburst”: separate from one another in order to provide a less compact target. He also knew that his son-in-law, Captain Martinez, had devised a new tactical system based on the ships separating from one another early and engaging in maneuvers governed by some rather obscure branches of mathematics. Lord Tork and other conservative officers were bitterly opposed to these new ideas.

“Do-faq has corrupted Kangas!” Tork said. “Do-faq, who was corrupted by Martinez and has practiced these innovations! The fleetcom has fallen a victim to these dangerous new fashions!”

“The Home Fleet’s advantage was in numbers,” Pezzini remarked. “Kangas has thrown that all away. With his ships separated that way, each is fighting on its own.”