The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Steadfast (30 page)

“All right,” Geary said. “I agree that’s probable.”

“And they’ve got four escorts tucked in very close, which would worry even a skilled, experienced ship driver.”

“They’ll use automated maneuvering as well as having the escorts’ maneuvering systems slaved to their own?” Geary asked.

“I think it’s pretty certain. We need to outthink that automated system, what it will do when it sees us coming toward the stern of that battleship.”

There were circumstances in which an hour and ten minutes could feel like a very long time. But not when racing toward an encounter with an enemy battleship.

Geary tried tactic after tactic, approach after approach, as he ran sims, knowing that Captain Duellos and his crew were doing the same, trying out every option. Since the battle cruisers’ superior ability to accelerate and maneuver compared to the battleship was their primary advantage, he kept pushing the velocity of encounters as high as possible. But each time the velocity of the battle cruisers went up, the complications got bigger as well. Higher velocity meant larger turn radii, which were already huge at the speeds warships traveled. It also made it harder to change vectors in short distances or times, and if they were going to counter the attempts of the battleship to pivot against their attacks, they would have to make significant last-moment changes in their approaches.

Geary sat back, glowering at his display in frustration. He was reaching to try another sim, one that pushed encounter velocity a little higher, when his hand paused in midmotion.
Why am I only thinking in terms of going faster? Why am I locked into focusing on that one advantage? Because while intercepting that battleship as quickly as possible is necessary, is making the actual encounter at higher speeds a good thing? The sims keep telling me it isn’t. Instead of beating my head against a wall that just gets harder, why not try the opposite approach and see what happens?

He cut the velocity of the encounter dramatically, enough so that the necessary braking maneuvers required far more time than he was comfortable with. But when the sim ran, he had partial success this time.

He cut the velocity more. He tried some options.

He smiled.

Duellos noticed. “I hope that means you’ve found something.”

“We can’t let the battle cruisers use their acceleration for the fastest possible attacks,” Geary explained.

“We can’t—?” Duellos peered at Geary. “What? That’s why they’re battle cruisers.”

“That’s how we usually employ them. Fast approaches and fast attacks. But what we need here is a slow approach.” Geary pulled up his most successful try. “Look. We come in at a slow relative velocity, aiming for sequential firing runs on the battleship’s stern. He starts pivoting to turn his stern away from us. He has to do that. Once he commits his maneuvering thrusters and momentum to that pivot, we use the battle cruisers’ superior capabilities to alter the order in which they attack. That completely changes how the battleship wants to be oriented to counter each individual firing run.”

Duellos nodded, smiling with satisfaction as well. “He’ll see our vector changes, and start trying to change his pivot. But he’s got so much mass and momentum driving it at that point, and has less ability to alter how he’s moving, so we can readjust faster than he can.” His smile faded. “But at those relative velocities, our ships will make much better targets for him if he can bring enough firepower to bear.”

“If we can keep our approaches directly off his stern, that will limit his available weapons. How precise is our knowledge of Syndic battleship maneuvering capabilities?” Geary asked.

“On that model of ship? Very good. Alliance warships have watched them in action in many engagements and analyzed their movements afterwards. What we have in the sims is not perfect, but it is very accurate.”

“So, we can predict when he’ll start trying to change his pivot and how long it will take the battleship to react. This wouldn’t work if the battleship had strong escorts to interfere with our movements and disrupt our attacks, or if there were two battleships that could cover each other’s stern from receiving multiple attacks over a short period. But against one battleship, which has decided to protect its escorts instead of having the escorts protect it, this can work.”

This time Duellos did not reply immediately as he studied every aspect of Geary’s work. “Sir, I do feel obligated to point out that the extra braking time required to get the relative velocity to the battleship low enough for this is considerable. If this does not work, we won’t have much time to come up with alternatives before the battleship gets within range of the freighters.”

“You’re right,” Geary said. “Anything else?”

“Do you want me to set up the braking maneuvers for the three battle cruisers?”

“Yes.” He knew he wasn’t the most talented ship driver in the world, not nearly as good as Tanya Desjani and probably not as good as Roberto Duellos. This would be a good chance to see Duellos at work up close.

“Admiral,” the operations watch said as alerts sounded, “Flotilla One is altering vector. They’re turning outward and accelerating, coming onto an intercept with our Formation Echo.”

“Preplanned maneuver,” Duellos said.

Geary nodded. Flotilla One, light-hours distant near the inhabited world, had started its move hours ago. If the battleship flotilla had not been flushed early, it would have been sighted by Geary’s ships only a brief time ago, followed closely by the sight of Flotilla One also heading for the refugee ships. “It’ll be about an hour and a half yet before they realize their timing got thrown off. If they keep coming, Commander Pajari will handle them.”

There was some superstition in that last statement, too, which was both an assertion of confidence in Pajari and an attempt to wish his hopes into reality with a bold assertion.

He focused back on the battleship, trying to feel the motion of all of the ships and the time delays between them caused by the vast distances that light had to cross, trying to anticipate and be ready for whatever the next moves should be.

He could hear the muffled sounds of the bridge watch-standers doing their jobs and speaking to each other in low voices, hear Duellos passing on the maneuvering orders and handling subsequent
what-the-hell-are-we-doing?
calls from the commanding officers of
Formidable
and
Implacable
.

Inspire
pitched over, coming almost completely around. Her main propulsion lit off again. Nearby,
Formidable
and
Implacable
matched the maneuvers. The huge velocities built up earlier were now being fought against, the propulsion systems laboring to shed momentum along one vector and build it up again in the same direction the battleship was going.

The track of the battle cruisers through space bent, swinging downward toward the battleship and his escorts. The relative velocity kept slowing as the battle cruisers swept past the oncoming enemy, above and slightly to one side of the battleship, still out of range of all but long missile shots that the enemy chose not to attempt.

A moment came, aft of the enemy flotilla, when their vectors momentarily matched. For that instant, the Alliance battle cruisers and the enemy flotilla were suspended in space, unmoving relative to each other.

Then, their propulsion units straining at maximum, their hulls and inertial dampers protesting audibly at the forces being employed, the battle cruisers began accelerating straight for the battleship.

Duellos still sat in his command seat as if relaxed, but his eyes were on Geary, waiting for the orders that would, hopefully, make the attack runs as successful as they needed to be.

“All weapons ready,” the combat systems watch reported. “Shields at maximum. Damage control at full readiness.”

A blip appeared on Geary’s display as two of the missile launchers on
Implacable
suddenly went out of commission. “Power junction failure!”
Implacable
’s captain reported, sounding as if she were ready to bite a hole in her own hull out of frustration. “I’ll have them operational when we get in range if I have to jump-start the damn things by hand!”

She wouldn’t have long to work on the problem. The battle cruisers kept accelerating, closing on the battleship.
Inspire
was lined up to hit the battleship first, followed by
Formidable
, then
Implacable
. There wasn’t any fancy formation this time.
Formidable
was almost directly behind
Inspire
, but out slightly to one side, while
Implacable
was behind
Formidable
, slightly out on the opposite side. Geary had kept the formation as simple as possible, so as to present solutions as deceptively simple as possible for the automated maneuvering controls on the battleship and to lull the human officers into complacency.

“They’re not cutting the escorts loose,” Geary murmured, relieved. If the battleship commander had told the heavy cruisers to move off and attack the Alliance battle cruisers, it would have seriously complicated Geary’s approach.

“There he goes,” Duellos breathed in a very low voice.

The battleship had begun pivoting, his stern dropping and his bow coming up and over. Geary didn’t have to check his maneuvering display to know that, if everyone kept on the same courses and speeds, the battleship would be pivoting at exactly the right rate to meet with its heaviest armament and armor in its bow each oncoming battle cruiser as it passed.

“Give him five more seconds to build up momentum,” Geary said.
Three . . . two . . . one.
“All units in Formation Alpha. Immediate execute, main propulsion at zero.”

The battle cruisers shut off their main propulsion. They were still closing on the battleship, but as they were no longer accelerating, their rate of closure was no longer increasing.

The automated systems controlling the battleship’s maneuvers would spot that, would take the necessary action to counter it, firing thrusters at maximum as they tried to slow the turn of the massive battleship, still trying to ensure that when
Inspire
reached weapons range the battleship’s bow would face the battle cruiser.

If the person in charge of the battleship was sharp enough, experienced enough, they had time to spot what Geary was doing, to guess what his plans were. They had barely time enough to override the automated controls and swing the battleship’s bow back. The escorts could have done the same, and faster, but the overwhelmed command staff on the battleship had probably, for these few hectic, precious moments, forgotten that the heavy cruisers and HuKs couldn’t maneuver on their own until released from control.

“
Implacable
, accelerate at maximum, adjust course as necessary to target main propulsion,” Geary ordered.

Seconds later, “
Formidable
, accelerate at maximum, adjust course as necessary to target main propulsion.”

And, as everyone on the bridge of
Inspire
waited anxiously, “
Inspire
, accelerate at maximum. Get his propulsion!”

The battle cruisers leaped forward again, but their order had suddenly shifted. Now
Implacable
would be the first in line, then
Formidable
, and finally
Inspire
. Along with the order of the attack, the exact times when they would be within range of the battleship had changed. The battleship’s thrusters fired again in another attempt to compensate, trying to counter its own earlier moves. The enemy ship wavered under contending momentum and the push of its maneuvering controls, momentum trying to keep its huge mass turning in one direction while the maneuvering thrusters were working all out to reverse the direction of turn. A sudden shove from its main propulsion might have helped throw off the battle cruisers’ attacks, but that would have been an unconventional move, not something that automated systems or officers trained to do as they were told would think of.

The battleship hung momentarily suspended between competing forces, its bow pointing straight “up.”

The relatively few weapons on the battleship that could bear on a target coming in on its stern opened up for the very brief moment when
Implacable
was within range as the battle cruiser swept onward at a relative velocity of thousands of kilometers per second. Humans couldn’t aim and fire under such circumstances. Only automated fire-control systems could judge the precise instant when a target flying past at such a velocity could be hit.

Geary saw
Implacable
’s two broken missile launchers report themselves ready to fire seconds before the battle cruiser tore past under the stern of the battleship, volleying out missiles, hell lances, and even grapeshot set for the smallest possible dispersion patterns at the farthest possible dispersal range. As the battle cruiser shot away from the battleship,
Implacable
’s hell lances fired repeatedly at missiles the battleship had launched despite the poor intercept angles, destroying most of the missiles before they could score hits.

Formidable
came right behind, hammering the same stern area, her missiles, hell lances, and grapeshot flashing against shields already fading under the blows being absorbed. But the battleship was better prepared this time, more weapons coming to bear as it angled a bit off the vertical, slamming blows at
Formidable
as well as another volley of missiles that pursued the battle cruiser as it opened the range once more.

Geary had his eyes locked on his display, seeing the battleship begin to finally push over, more weapons coming to bear as
Inspire
made the last, most dangerous, and most important firing run.

Inspire
raced past the battleship, hurling out shots toward the battleship’s immense main propulsion in the moments after the rear shields collapsed and before they could rebuild.

Geary felt
Inspire
shudder, not just from the launching of her own weapons but from multiple hits.
Inspire
lurched heavily as something big struck aft, perhaps one or more missiles. Alarms went off, and portions of the display flickered as power was automatically rerouted. He could only hope the battle cruiser hadn’t been hit too badly and remain focused on the battleship as the sensors on
Inspire
and the other battle cruisers looked back and tried to evaluate what damage had been inflicted.