Jack Campbell: The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Steadfast

“All units, immediate execute, down two zero degrees!”

The Alliance warships lurched through the sudden change, sliding dangerously close to the dark ships, which were indeed diving straight toward where Badaya’s ships would have been.

They missed each other by far too close a margin, out of range of most weapons but close enough for the dark ships to volley out missiles.

“All units pivot and engage missiles,” Geary ordered.

Every battle cruiser, heavy and light cruiser, and destroyer swung completely around, their heaviest armament aimed toward the oncoming wave of missiles while the ships themselves continued moving backwards at the same rate they had been going. Hell lances lashed out, destroying most of the missiles short of their targets, but some ships had to fire point-defense bursts of grapeshot to hit missiles on final approach.

And the dark ships were coming around again.

He could feel what was happening. He was reacting. The dark ships had the initiative and weren’t letting go. This was a path leading to disaster.

Geary looked toward Desjani, who was gazing fixedly at her display, not saying anything, not offering advice as she usually did. Because she knows this isn’t the usual situation. She doesn’t know what advice to give when I’m fighting myself. And I miss having her suggestions because sometimes they have saved my butt and—

Of course. “Tanya, they may have a sim of how I fight battles, but they don’t have you.”

“That’s very flattering,” she said in a tight voice. “But I don’t see the relevance in terms of winning this fight. I wasn’t single-handedly winning the war before you showed up, remember?”

“My point is, we work as a team,” Geary explained with a patience he didn’t really feel. “You see things I don’t, I see things you don’t. Whatever Black-Jack sim the dark ships are using won’t have that. And I feel certain they loaded that sim with century-old tactical procedures that people had increasingly ignored during the war, but I have used because they’re what I knew. I noticed the attack on the courier ship was carried out exactly how those procedures mandated that specific type of operation. That means the sim is programmed to counter my tactics.”

Her eyes lit up with a fierce enthusiasm. “The more I influence your tactics, the more I suggest the ways we did things that don’t match your tactical training, the less that sim will be able to predict them.”

“Exactly. You said you were studying those sims of my past battles to help you learn how to fight more like me. Now we need you to help me fight less like me. But still good enough to kick the butts of the dark ships.”

She grinned. “Then I can tell you exactly what to do on the next firing pass.”

“What?” he demanded, watching the dark ships steady out below and behind the Alliance task force, a couple of light-minutes distant on a stern chase.

“Do the exact same thing that you planned to do last time. Hitting the left and back subformation, right? Do exactly that again.”

“What?” Geary repeated, baffled.

“You never repeat a maneuver right after you’ve used it, Admiral. Never. Those ships will expect you to aim for another attack point. They will act assuming that you are aiming for another attack point because their sim will tell them you never hit the same spot twice in a row in the same way.”

He stared at her. “I love you.”

“Excuse me, Admiral?” Desjani asked, though she also smiled.

“Sorry.” If the rest of the bridge crew had heard his words, they were doing a very good job of pretending not to have.

He brought his task force on down, all three formations completing a vertical loop that found them facing back toward the dark ships. If there had really been an up or down, his ships would probably be upside down compared to their previous alignment, but that didn’t matter in space. What mattered was that the dark ships had adjusted their formation as well, coming down a bit to head for another direct intercept.

“That’s exactly how I would have lined them up if I were commanding those dark ships,” Geary said. “You’re right. You are absolutely right.”

“Have we reached the point where you can just start assuming that?” she asked.

“We already have. I pulled us out of the first attack run, didn’t I?”

The two V formations weren’t aligned in the same plane. Geary’s three subformations were tilted up on one side relative to the subformations of the dark ships. Which was all to the good this time around. “Formation Delta One, come port zero two degrees, down zero one degrees at time four one. Formation Delta Two, come port zero six degrees, down zero three degrees at time four zero point five. Formation Delta Three, come port zero one degrees at time four two. Engage targets in the farthest port enemy subformation.”

This is all wrong. Every bit of training and experience he had told him not to do this, not to aim to hit that left side of the dark ship formation again in an approach as nearly identical as possible to the last one. But if I feel that way, then it’s actually right this time.

In the last moments before contact, beginning with Badaya’s formation on the upper left of the task force, the three subformations altered vectors, swinging slightly to concentrate on where Geary expected the farthest-left dark ship formation to be as the dark ships also moved to intercept where they thought Geary would go.

The instant of firing came and went, automated fire-control systems hurling out weapons during the vanishingly small moment of time when the opposing ships were within range of each other.

Geary felt Dauntless shuddering from hits and felt a tightness in his gut, wondering if she had been badly damaged.

Then the displays updated as the sensors on the Alliance warships peered backwards to evaluate the results of the encounter.

It hadn’t been perfect. Not quite. But the dark ships had swung up and to the right, expecting him to target there. The swift, precisely executed maneuver had resulted in most of the dark ships being out of position, but with the Alliance warships nearly surrounding the left-hand dark ship subformation, subjecting it to the concentrated fire of all twelve battle cruisers, eight heavy cruisers, thirteen light cruisers, and twenty-five destroyers.

One of the dark ship battle cruisers was completely gone, a cloud of debris marking where it had been. The other had broken into several pieces, which were slowly flying apart, shedding smaller fragments as they went. The dark ship heavy cruiser had been crippled, spinning off down and to one side with no maneuver controls and almost all weapons out of commission, while of the four dark ship destroyers in that subformation, three had been blown apart, and the fourth was nearly broken into two large pieces which were barely holding together.

Geary took that in, then looked for the damage to his own ships. The enemy, in the seconds before contact in which he could spot what had happened and prioritize targets, had clearly concentrated his fire on the central subformation of Geary’s task force. Despite being badly outnumbered, the extra weapons on the dark ships had allowed them to score some blows. Daring had taken several hits and lost a hell-lance battery as well as two missile launchers. Victorious had also been hit and lost half her missile launchers, but both battle cruisers had not suffered any maneuvering or propulsion damage. Adroit , though, was sliding off to port without any maneuvering control at all.

He could hear the damage reports coming in to Tanya Desjani. Hits amidships. Two hell-lance batteries out of commission. Minor damage to maneuvering systems. Through luck or her position in the subformation, Dauntless had come off relatively lightly.