B. Larson - Conquest

“I should have maintained my velocity.”

“What?”

“I made a mistake,” I said. I didn’t add by listening to you, but I was thinking it. “I should have caught them before they reached the ring and engaged them. Now, they’ve made it through the ring first. They could be laying mines in front of us on the far side.”

Miklos looked alarmed. He nodded, acknowledging the possibility. “They could be,” he agreed. “Or maybe they will hit the brakes, wait for us to zoom through, and fire every missile they have left into our faces.”

I nodded slowly, but gave no orders.

“Decelerate, Colonel,” Miklos said urgently. “We’ll pull up to the ring and send through a few scouting ships. When we know the situation on the far side, we can fly after them safely-if that is the best course.”

I drummed armored fingers on the command chair. Metal struck metal in a repeating pattern, making a rhythmic, ringing sound. The helmsman turned and frowned at me in irritation. I ignored him. The drumming helped me think.

“No,” I said at last. I stopped drumming, and watched the helmsman relax in visible relief.

“Helmsman, reduce speed by ten percent. Relay that to the fleet. Tighten up the formation more. We’ll fly through in a column.”

“Fly through, sir?” Captain Miklos asked nervously. “I thought we-”

“You thought wrong, Captain. I know the Macros. I know how they think. If they want to ambush us, they’ll do it by firing a barrage in our faces. They’ll do it by timing us, so we can’t get out of the way. Slowing down by ten percent will make us hit the ring several minutes late. Their missiles, if they fire any, will come through the ring to hit us at our last projected speed and course. If we don’t see them show up, there aren’t going to be any.”

Miklos flopped back into his chair in defeat. He relayed the orders without further complaint. Did he think himself a doomed man with a mad commander? It was quite possible he was right on both counts.

“Let me explain myself, Captain,” I said. “I know we are taking a risk, but the enemy can’t be allowed to escape us if at all possible. This force of cruisers knows our tactics. They may well do a great deal of damage to our biotic friends in the Helios and Eden systems. Almost as importantly, we have to press home the advantage we have now. I don’t want to fight these ships again as part of a larger force at a later date. I don’t want them to rearm, form up with another dreadnaught, or even report home. I want to knock them out while they are weak. I want to get the most we can out of this victory.”

“We’ve driven them from our home system,” Captain Miklos said reasonably. “Isn’t that enough?”

“No. It really isn’t. We need more. We need to hurt them, and we must take risks to do so. We are the underdogs in this war, Captain. Don’t ever doubt it. Possibly, the entire affair is hopeless. What if they have thousands of systems and millions of ships? Perhaps we are fleas on a T-Rex.”

“What’s the point then, in that case?”

I shrugged. “We don’t know the truth. But I’m pretty sure they are stronger than we are, far stronger. In order to have a chance, we have to get lucky. You get lucky by going for opportunities when they present themselves. I think the destruction of this enemy task force is just such an opportunity. I’ve read every book I can find on strategy lately-including the writings of many historical figures on the subject, from Caesar, to Napoleon, to Sun Tzu. We must turn this marginal victory into a decisive one. Not only to hurt the enemy’s fleet, but to worry them. The Macros are conservative, and they like to attack with overwhelming force. They might not attack again for years after this beating, convinced we are stronger than we really are.”

“All right sir,” Miklos said thoughtfully. “I understand your reasoning. But at some point we’ll have to give up on killing them all if they keep escaping us. How far from Earth are you willing to go? Once we leave the system, we won’t be able to tell what’s happening behind us. More Macros could come back through the Venus ring and we wouldn’t know we were needed back home.”

“Hmm,” I said, thinking it over. He had a good point. I quickly came up with a partial solution. “How about this? We’ll leave a small ship behind at the ring. Their job will be to dash back and forth through it, every few hours. They can relay messages and scan both systems. If we do that at every ring we pass through, it won’t cost us many ships, and will put us within a few days transmission time from several systems away.”

He nodded appreciatively. “A pony express system?”

“Something like that,” I said, smiling.

“They said you were inventive.”

“They told me you were a hard-ass.”

We both laughed and turned our attention back to the screen. We had just about reached the ring. The time came and passed when the enemy missiles should have showered through, trying to hit us in the face. I had just begun to smile, figuring I had Miklos on this one, when a mass of contacts did appear.

“Evasive action, sir?” the helmsman asked, his voice cracking.

“How many are there?”

“Sixteen, sir.”

“Decelerate! Shoot them down!”

My hundred-odd ships all began firing at once. This time, we were playing the part of the Macro vanguard, leading the way at the head of a column of ships into the unknown. Beams slashed out from hundreds of projectors. The missiles popped one after another, but two got through. There were no direct hits, but the explosions buffeted our destroyer when they went off nearby. I could see by the boards we’d lost at least one small ship-and then everything on the screens vanished and reset.

“We’re going through the ring, sir!”

“I feel it.”

I hadn’t even had time to assess fleet damage. We’d have to figure that out on the far side of the ring. As always it sent a thrill through my body like an electric shock to know I was traveling across lightyears of space in an instant. When we came out on the other side of the ring, however, we got the biggest surprise of the voyage.

“Enemy ships sir!” the helmsman all but screamed.

I scanned the screens in irritation. Of course there were enemy ships. What did the young officer think we had been chasing?

But then I saw the panels shift and shimmer. The new system leapt into life. The three stars were there, Alpha, Beta and the distant, dim red dwarf known as Proxima Centauri. None of this was surprising. What did shock me were the number of enemy ships that quickly populated the scene. There were somewhere around two hundred of them, plus clouds of what could only be debris-fragments of destroyed spacecraft.

“What the hell?” I asked no one. My mind leapt to a dozen conclusions, none of them good.

“The Macros must have known they had supporters out here,” Captain Miklos said. “They weren’t running from us, they were luring us into a trap.”

“Trap?” I asked. “There are a lot of blown-up ships here.”

“Maybe our mines took some of them out as they passed through.”

None of it made sense to me. Things looked bad, but I refused to panic.

“Are we under fire?”

“No sir, no reports of incoming fire. Our ships have locked on the nearest alien vessels-they are quite small, sir.”

“Hold your fire,” I ordered the gunner. “Relay that, helmsman.”

“But sir-”

“Show me the configuration of the new ships,” I demanded. “What are we facing?”

“They are considerably smaller than any Macro ships we’ve ever encountered.”

“Put one up on the damned screen,” I told him. “Give me a close-up.”