Jack Campbell - Imperfect Sword

Black Jack had shown them a different way to fight. The trick was to make tiny changes in your vectors at a time when they could take effect but not so soon that the enemy could see it and counter your moves. If done right, it allowed your full force to hit a small portion of the enemy, inflicting a lot of damage but not suffering much in return. If done wrong, by only a tiny amount compared to the distances around them, it could result in your completely missing the enemy, or running head-on into them.

Simple. But very complicated.

Marphissa waited, intent on her display, as the remaining distance shrank rapidly. At two minutes before contact, she gave the order. “All units, execute maneuver using local controls. Come port zero one degrees, up point five degrees.”

Only five seconds before contact, Marphissa sent the maneuvering order she had already prepared. “All units, full acceleration.” By the time that order was received and the ships responded, they would be past the enemy.

In those last moments, Marphissa realized that she had miscalculated slightly. In her eagerness to ensure the firing run was not wasted, she had underestimated the final maneuver. Or perhaps Hua had slid her own formation in the same directions as Marphissa, by sheer luck doing just the right thing. Marphissa’s formation would slide through the port side of the Syndicate formation closer than Marphissa had intended, and not as high. Not a direct head-to-head encounter, but far too close to that. It gave her warships better shots at the Syndicate ships, but also gave the Syndicate more chances to hit her. Too late. Damn. Too late.

The instant of combat came and went too fast for human senses to register, automated systems pumping out hell lances and grapeshot at targets whipping past at immense velocities.

Manticore jolted heavily several times. The lights flickered, Marphissa’s display wavering in and out before steadying again. She waited for the surge of acceleration as the main propulsion units cut in, but felt nothing.

“The battleship targeted us. Our shields got knocked down, and we took several hits,” Kapitan Diaz was reporting, his expression grim. “We have only partial thruster capability for maneuvering. All main propulsion is off-line.”

No main propulsion. Manticore was nearly motionless in space and unable to change that.

Marphissa stared at her display. The firing run had done damage to the Syndicate forces. One of the Syndicate light cruisers was drifting out of formation, powerless and heavily damaged. A spreading ball of gas and debris marked where the second targeted Syndicate light cruiser had been. In addition, one of the small Syndicate Hunter-Killers had broken in half under the impacts of several hits.

But the Midway warships had been close enough to the Syndicate battleship for its firepower to be felt, and they had paid a price for that.

Marphissa’s display showed red damage markers on many of her ships. The Syndicate had not concentrated their fire, so none of Midway’s ships had been knocked out completely or destroyed. But few had come through the encounter unscathed. And, in addition to Manticore , the light cruiser Harrier had lost main propulsion and was also hanging helplessly in space not far distant. The other warships were accelerating away, only just realizing that their stricken comrades had been left behind.

The Syndicate formation had seen the same things. It was beginning to bend upward in as tight a turn as the battleship could manage, a vast curve through space that Marphissa knew would come nearly full circle. It would take more than half an hour for the enemy warships to finish that turn, but when they came back, Manticore and Harrier would be sitting ducks.

“Can you fix your main propulsion?” Bradamont demanded of both Marphissa and Diaz.

“The answer is probably not,” Marphissa murmured.

Diaz was speaking on an internal comm circuit, and now ended the call with a curse. “Leytenant Gavros is dead. Senior Specialists Kalil and Sasaki say the control circuits are shot to hell.”

“But the main propulsion units themselves are fine? You can’t replace or fix the control circuits?” Bradamont asked again.

“This is a Syndicate-designed ship!” Diaz erupted in frustration. “It is efficiently designed! Crew size is optimized for efficiency! Significant repairs are to be carried out at leased maintenance facilities!”

“Can’t your senior specialists—”

“The senior specialists aren’t trained to make repairs and aren’t supposed to make repairs! The circuits are black boxes! They’re not supposed to be fixed! All you’re supposed to do is take out the broken one and put in a working one. We have a few black box spares aboard, but we don’t have any working black boxes of the exact type we need to replace those broken black boxes.”

Marphissa glared at Diaz. “Tell them to try! Tell Kalil and Sasaki and the other specialists in engineering that the old Syndicate rules against unauthorized repairs no longer apply. Tell them to break into those boxes and see what they can do. Break into every circuit they need to. Jury-rig, improvise, cross-connect, anything. If we are still sitting here in half an hour, this ship will be blown to hell!”

Diaz took a deep breath. “Yes. Why not try? What’s the worst that can happen? A big explosion? We’ll die anyway if we don’t try.” He called engineering, passing on the orders. “Kommodor, I want to go down there personally. I will be back within twenty minutes, before any Syndicate ship can get to us.”

“Permission granted. Go.” As Diaz bolted off the bridge, Marphissa glowered at her display, one hand moving as she set up another maneuver for the formation under her command that was speeding away from her. The display froze in midsolution, causing Marphissa’s guts to tighten, but then jerked back into motion.

Pele , Gryphon , and Basilisk had finally reached the area, catching the lower edge of the opposite side of the Syndicate formation from the one Marphissa’s formation had hit. Kontos had more luck or judged the approach better, Pele hammering the Syndicate heavy cruiser on that corner until it exploded, while Gryphon and Basilisk knocked out another light cruiser.

CEO Boucher ignored the blow, though, the Syndicate formation continuing on its path to come back to finish off Manticore and Harrier . Maybe, Marphissa thought, I shouldn’t have personally taunted Happy Hua the way I did. She sure wants me dead. But then this is Hua Boucher. She would probably want me dead regardless. “All units,” she transmitted. “Continue accelerating to point zero eight light speed, turn port zero two degrees, turn up one four seven degrees at time five zero.”

The Syndicate formation was looping up and over, the formation inverting as it went through the circle formed by its path through space. Marphissa’s ships could turn faster, even though that was a relative term. Planetary observers would doubtless describe the turn radius as huge, but what mattered was that it was less huge than that of the Syndicate formation encumbered by a battleship. This new maneuver would bring the remaining ships in Marphissa’s flotilla back and across to sweep over the top of the Syndicate formation as it neared the summit of its loop.

“Good thing that CEO is inexperienced,” Bradamont muttered. “With us sitting nearly dead in space, if she had simply braked and come back, that Syndicate formation would have gotten back here quicker. But instead, she’s going through that turn.”

“It’s only buying us a few minutes,” Marphissa pointed out. “Getting that battleship stopped and going again in the opposite direction isn’t easy.” She sent a separate transmission to Kraken , the remaining heavy cruiser in her formation. “Kapitan Seney, you are to assume command of the formation as it engages the Syndicate flotilla again. I’ll be too far away to make any necessary last-moment adjustments in the attack. Don’t get too close. We can’t afford to lose Kraken .”