-13-
Faced with a multi-wave incoming attack, Tolerance did what any newbie commander would do: he panicked.
“Sir, we have incoming energy emission readings.”
I knew what that meant. I stepped back to the tactical tables and waved Captain Sarin over. “Do your magic, Jasmine. What have we got?”
She glanced once in the direction of Miklos, but then quickly got down to business.
“Looks like Phobos has fired its main gun again. But we aren’t registering any damage.”
“That’s good,” I said, leaning on the table and staring at the display intently.
Our attack was less than an hour from contact. The missiles were green slivers with traced paths ahead of them done in light blue. They were arranged in a wide dispersal pattern and they were going to slam right into the nickel-sized sphere we’d named Phobos.
“He’s shooting at something. What about the Worm ships in front of him? Have any of them been crushed or fallen out of formation?”
“They don’t have a formation in any normal sense,” she said, “but as far as we can tell, they haven’t been—oh, wait a second. I see it now. We’re so far out, it takes our optics time to register anything hitting them.”
Deftly working the screens, she brought a timer box that showed how far away in light-seconds each element of the battle was. The Worms were the farthest, a full two hundred light-seconds away. Millions of miles. I shook my head.
“As far out as that he’s able to hit them?”
“That’s just it, sir—I think he missed.”
“What?”
“All the Worm ships are accounted for. Phobos fired too early. What I’m detecting is an evasive pattern among the Worms. They’re flying in a random tangle of trajectories now.”
This was not at all unusual for the Worms. They were always chaotic, but with determination and suicidal bravery. When their ships came at you it was like being swarmed by angry wasps.
“How do we know they’re being targeted?” I asked.
“By their reactions. Their spiraling patterns have accelerated. I’m not certain they’ve been hit, but it makes the most sense. They might be monitoring the energy output and taking evasive action just in case—either that or they just took a glancing blow. A strike that didn’t destroy any ships, but which they felt.”
I watched as calmly as I could. This was all going to come down to a razor’s edge.
“If we charged in now, how long would it be until our ships came within Phobos’ effective range?”
“About forty minutes, sir. The missiles will hit long before that.”
“Or they’ll be wiped out. I’m curious as to why Tolerance decided to fire on the Worms rather than our missiles.”
Jasmine shrugged. “Smaller targets are harder to hit?”
“Maybe. But I think it’s something else. I think he’s made his decision. He’s going use a blanket, close-range blast to take out the missiles. Then he’ll let the Worms get in close. Therefore he’s not worried about the missiles right now. He knows he can destroy them all when the time comes.”
“It could be.”
“Hmm,” I said studying the screen. “Where’s Miklos? Get him over here.”
Jasmine looked up, catching me with her eyes. I knew what she was thinking: Didn’t you just fire him, Kyle? But I didn’t care. Now wasn’t the time for petty squabbles.
Miklos, once called, wandered over almost in slow-motion.
“Yes, Colonel? Is it urgent? I have fuel calculations to make.”
“Yes, as a matter of fact it is. Take a look at this.”
Miklos studied the screen and the data. “Am I permitted to speak?”
“Dammit man, why do you think I brought you over here?” I demanded.
“Well, I would say the enemy is more worried about the Worms than the missiles. That could mean Tolerance is confident he can take the missiles out when they get in close.”
“Yeah…either that, or he thinks he can ride out the missiles. But I don’t get that. Nuclear impacts seem far more likely to do real damage when we’re talking about a mile-thick rock armor shell.”
“Do you have data on that thickness, Colonel?”
“Certainly not. I’m guessing. But it’s got to be at least that thick. Such a huge ship. I wonder how they built the damned thing.”
“At least we know the gas giant has a solid core of rock down there somewhere.”
I nodded absently, then I came to a sudden decision. “Jasmine: slow down our missiles.”
“What, sir?”
“You heard me. Turn off their engines. Let them coast in. Run the projected numbers on impact as soon as you do.”
She was startled, but she did as I asked immediately. Miklos stared at me, looking like I’d killed his cat.
That was the difference between these two, I thought to myself. Miklos wanted to be in overall command, which was not his place. Captain Sarin had ambitions, but she didn’t firmly believe she’d make a better commander than I would. Therefore, she didn’t second guess everything I did. When I gave her an order she followed it first and questioned my sanity second.
The screen changed after she brought up a screen and tapped in the unusual command. Our missiles could be remotely self-destructed, and they could also change course suddenly. But they were so far out, it was going to take a good thirty seconds for any command we gave their tiny brainboxes to reach them.
“Come on, come on,” I muttered. “Not much time.”
Jasmine didn’t even look at me. She didn’t get flustered. Her fingers flew over the dialog box she’d popped up on the big screen. A moment later she looked up.
“Transmission sent. We’ll have to wait to see the results, though.”
It was a long minute. First, our command had to crawl out there, then the missiles had to react. Thirty seconds later we’d be able to see them coasting.
Assuming that the missiles were following orders, the staffers laid in a predicted path for them. I watched the timing boxes carefully. I nodded.
“Now, the missiles will hit second. Not by much, but second.”
“Sir,” Miklos said, “what if the enemy defensive weapon can now hit both the Worms and our missiles at the same time?”
“Then we’re screwed.”
He pursed his lips and shut up.
“Timing, Jasmine?” I asked.
“We’ve got it on the display now. There will be about a minute between the Worm ships hitting and the missiles hitting.”
“Okay,” I said, “Now, have the missiles hit the gas again. Full thrust. Send them in for that final diving attack. I want them concentrated on the aft area where we identified some structures previously.”
Jasmine tapped wildly. Miklos looked at me like I was insane. But, to his credit, he didn’t say a word.
When she was done transmitting the order, she looked up at me. “Sir? What was the purpose of that exercise?”
“To throw off Tolerance. He’s all alone on that big ship of his, and he’s a rookie. I want to rattle him. I want all his plans to be in question. If he makes a mistake, he doesn’t have a staff full of caretakers to back him up like I do.”
I tossed Miklos a meaningful glance, which he did his best to ignore.
We had about twenty more tense minutes to wait around. During that time, Tolerance fired his cannon—whatever it was—twice more. Both shots were hits, taking out two Worm ships.
“Cut out the engines again,” I said.
“Sir?”
“I’ve been watching the missiles and the timing them very closely. If they coast now, they should still cross that last fifty thousand miles a minute ahead of the Worm fleet. I don’t think Tolerance can reload that fast.”
“You don’t think—?” began Miklos, then he broke off.
Jasmine and I both looked at him sharply. “What was that, Commodore?”
“Nothing, Colonel.”
We watched as the missiles flew in deadly silence. Everything was locked in by the last minute or so. One only has so much control over a missile that is millions of miles distant in any case. Soon, projected impacts were blossoming. We had no idea, however, if the projections were real or not. We had to wait for the optics.
“Marvin?” I called. “Where’s Marvin? Oh yeah…”
I realized that I’d let him run off to take samples of the wreckage that was once Gatre. I hoped he was having fun out there. I pulled up a brainbox substitute and formed a transmission to the Worms.
“What are you going to tell them, sir?” Jasmine asked me.
“To hit whatever they can and get the hell out of there in less than ten minutes. Honor will have been satisfied.”
The symbols suggested by the brainbox swam quietly into view on the screen. A warrior, pictured in full retreat.
“No, no!” I shouted. “That won’t work! What kind of a second-class box did Marvin build, here? The Worms must be told they’re doing something of great import full of honor—no matter what it is.”
The box tried again, this time coming up with two pictures: an empty chariot and a setting sun. Or was it the sun rising? I frowned at that, uncertain of the meaning.
“We have to send it soon if they’re going to get it in time.”
“All right,” I growled. “Just transmit it. And switch off our fleet’s engines, too.
“The screen is updating, sir.”
I watched the main table we all circled with interest. Frequently, I glanced up at the holotank as well. We were in close now and things were getting exciting. The holotank did a much better job of pinpointing a strike on a moon-sized object.
During the next update, the missiles vanished. All but two of them. I whooped with a mixture of relief and excitement. Everyone looked at me the way they usually did at such moments.
“The Worms are still on the board,” I explained. “That blanket effect doesn’t have the reach to nail an entire wave of missiles, much less the Worms. That’s great news. In fact, we should have staggered the missiles into ten small waves. Next time, we will.”
“The Worms aren’t all the way down to the target yet,” Miklos pointed out.
I nodded, conceding the point. “Yeah, but Tolerance has less than a minute to reload.”
“True, but we have no data on the reload time of this wide area effect weapon. It could be done in less time than the long range weapon.”
I frowned. “Well,” I sighed. “We’re going to find out soon. Or rather, the Worms are.”
They were on their final approach now. Our missiles zoomed down and impact marks appeared. They looked ridiculously small on the surface of that vast ship. It was as if a freshly-birthed moon had just gotten its first two craters.
“They aren’t going to be able to do a damned thing,” Miklos said quietly.
“Probably not,” I admitted. “It’ll be a shame if they get wiped out.”
The Worm ships swarmed around the two polar points where the vessel was shaped differently. I watched as they utterly ignored my suggestion to retreat. They fired their weapons and churned in spirals. But what could they do? They were gnats attacking an elephant. Tolerance was probably barely aware of the damage they were doing to the surface.
We watched each update as the minutes crawled by. As the clock approached the ten minute mark, I began to wince every time a big redraw came in.
Finally, the inevitable happened. One screen showed Worm ships twirling around, firing rays of accelerated particles and the like. The next showed an empty surface. There were scorch marks, a few dents, and dozens of crumpled chunks of metal. It looked like someone had sprinkled glitter on the poles of Phobos.
The Worm ships were all gone. They’d all been destroyed.
“It looks like we have our data, sir,” Miklos said.
I looked up at him sharply, not in any mood to be mocked.
“It’s good news, actually,” Miklos continued. “The enemy’s defensive weapon has a timer on it. That has been proven. And it appears to be just as long as the primary weapon’s timer. In fact, I would hazard to guess that the weapons are one and the same. Tolerance can increase the area of effect while lessening the range, making a defensive weapon, or he can fire a very tightly focused attack at a distant object. But in either case, it takes a long time to recharge.”
I stared at him, unable for a moment to shake my thoughts of all those brave comrades dying at once. They’d been out there one moment, attacking for all they were worth, and then the next they were obliterated.
I gave my head a shake, sucked in my breath and nodded to Miklos.
“You’re right, Commodore. This is good news. The enemy has a limitation. Now, it’s up to us to figure out how to exploit it.”