Commodore (27 page)

"Damn!" Heinrich hissed. "Of all the lucky shots!"

I maintained my silence, but my grip tightened on the command-chair seats. Luck was a factor in any naval battle, and had been since the days when ships had fired iron balls or even catapulted stones at each other. Meanwhile,
Equalitie
didn't miss a beat. She merely shifted her fire to
Tennyson
and kept the salvoes coming hot and heavy. "Form up on me in echelon to starboard!" Beckendorf signaled to all ships—presumably he didn't mean us, of course. "Fall back!" And even as I watched, the flagship's prow swung towards Point Three. Towards home, and yet another small, limited defeat.

And that was all I needed to see. "Damnit!" I raged. "Damnit all to hell! Those Imperial ships are half-crippled for lack of fuel and maintenance, for heaven's sake! They're not as impressive as they look—they
can't
be! Their flagship was drifting dead in the sky due to a breakdown not all that long ago! And if we take command of local space, they'll be isolated from their ground-support and with it all hope of maintaining an effective force. This fight is life-or-death for them! If they lose, for their side the war's all but over!" By now we'd wandered perilously near the maximum range of the Imperial's weapons, and I had no illusions as to who they'd choose as their next target if I but offered them a clear shot. Gently I eased the helm over, keeping the Royal ships between me and the Emperor's forces. It felt like rank cowardice, even though it was the smart thing to do. "And yet, he's going to retreat before the fighting even really gets started, due to one single lucky hit. You just heard him say so!"

"That hit did take out two of his three most effective dreadnoughts, David" Heinrich pointed out. "And the third was hurt badly during the breakthrough."

I waved my hand dismissively. "So now the odds are nearly even in capital ships. Is that a good reason to run away from a potentially war-winning battle? When will we have such a strategic opportunity again? And look at the light forces—we're far stronger in them, thanks to the fencibles. And the raiders, too— because of them the Imperial destroyers are all out on convoy escort!" I blinked. "In fact…"

Then, in an instant I was on the radio again. "Commodore Birkenhead to Admiral Beckendorf—urgent!"

There was a long pause. "Yes, Commodore?"

"I'd like to suggest a torpedo attack. Right down their throats, sir! We have a preponderance in force there."

"Not by enough," he replied. "And the heavy forces are too far apart. The losses on the run-in would be catastrophic."

"Not as catastrophic as theirs will be after we've killed a few dreadnoughts, sir! We can replace our small-ship losses faster and more efficiently than they can. Besides, there's the squadron-leader cruisers to help."

"I can't afford to lose those," he replied, his voice growing dark. "Have you any idea what they
cost
, Commodore?"

"Not a fraction as much as the Imperial battlefleet, sir!" I countered. "Even in as poor a condition as it now must be. Or its ground support echelon, currently located on Wilkes Prime. As I'm sure you're fully aware. If we score just a few good hits—"

"Out of the question," the admiral replied. "I won't be responsible for taking such a needless risk. Thank you, but no thanks. You may be competent to fight a single-ship duel, Commodore. And I'll grant that you're more than competent at defending fixed installations. But this is a fleet action, Birkenhead, something you're not trained to handle. Please keep your suggestions to yourself in the future—I'm a very busy man. Beckendorf out."

There was a long moment of silence on the 483's bridge as we all absorbed what we'd just heard. "I'm sorry, David," Heinrich finally said.

"Me too, sir," Nestor added.

Then something inside me finally snapped. "Don't be." First I opened the unarmed and unarmored ex-Imperial courier's throttles wide-open to full-emergency power. Then I pointed us directly towards the enemy fleet.

"Sir!" Heinrich objected. "What… I mean..."

But I didn't answer him. Instead I typed out some fleet orders of my own. "Imperious and all her wicked minions await justice just beyond the enemy fleet you now see on your screens," I posted to every ship within hearing. "I know the way there. Who among you dares follow?" 

54

For a long ghastly moment as we surged through the Royal formation and then on towards the Imperials, I feared that no one would join us. I'd have to go through with it nonetheless; now that I'd attempted to usurp my legal superior this battle was every bit as much a victory-or-death affair for me as it was for the Imperials. Would we have to charge down the Imperial muzzles alone? Had I killed Heinrich and Nestor and all the others for no good purpose?

Then a familiar voice spoke, and a sense of relief poured into me as if a dam had broken. "I know where victory lies too, shipmate. Let's go take some more prizes together; it's been far too many years!
Lancer's
squadron, break left! I say again, break left! Break, break, break! And form up on a
real
leader!"

"Thank you, Sir Leslie," I whispered into my mike. "I hadn't noticed you were here."

"No worries, David!" he answered. "You've been sort of busy. I'm commanding
Lancer
these days; she's brand new and the finest torpedo cruiser in the fleet!" I nodded to myself mentally—that's what some officers were calling the specialized destroyer-leader cruisers these days. "But slow down a bit so we can form up properly! Or do you want to get there first and steal all the glory for yourself as usual?"

"There'll be
plenty
of glory to go around today!" another unknown voice added. "But Sir Leslie's right. Slow down a mite, David, and let us form up properly."

After that the channel descended into chaos again, the outraged admiral's voice lost in the sea of excited conversation. It was obvious that everyone else knew their part—this was the sort of thing rehearsed in a thousand drills—so I took my ex-shipmate's advice and throttled back the smuggler-ship. My eyebrows rose, however; the control rod temps were solidly in the red after just a short burst of speed.

"Not good, sir," Heinrich opined—while he'd never found time to qualify as a watch-standing engineer, he loved engines as much as I did. It was too bad in some ways that he'd not been able to follow in his father's footsteps as a Field theorist; now, almost certainly, he'd never get the chance.  Still, I'd had much reason over the years to be glad that he'd become a marine instead.

"No," I replied. "It's not." Then I frowned. "Someone's going to have to babysit these things full-time, Heinrich. And you've always been a better pilot than me anyway. How about you take the helm? I'll ride the rods as best as this miserable make-do layout allows."

He shrugged. "As you wish, sir. But perhaps Lieutenant Jeffries ought to do the honors? No one knows this ship better than he does—it's one of the few truthful claims he makes."

I thought about it a moment. "Right. We've got to free him anyway; even the meanest prisoner doesn't deserve to die welded into a box. So let's give him one last chance to do his duty as a King's officer should."

"Perhaps," Heinrich replied with a shrug. "I could care less if he dies screaming in the dark now that I've actually met the man, to be quite honest.

I turned to Nestor. "Take the other Rabbits and go let Jeffries out," I ordered.  "I want you personally holding that palm-blaster he was going to pull on us to his head at all times. He's not to be trusted. Got it?"

"Aye-aye, sir!" he replied, and I wasted not another brain cell worrying about that end of things. One by one all eleven squadrons of Royal destroyers were forming up in echelon around the tiny 843 on all four primary axis—left, right, above, and below. Nestled immediately around me were the haughty torpedo-cruisers—Captain Blaine almost caused not one but several collisions nudging his way into the spot of honor off my starboard quarter. It was the sort of thing that would've caused Admiral Beckendorf apoplexy, but which I took as evidence of eagerness and high spirits.

"The first dead Imperial battleship is for King James!" someone declared.

"And the second for Commodore David!" another added. "To whom we owe this great day!"

"We'll slaughter them all!" someone else added. "They'll never stand up to this charge! Muzzle to muzzle at last, by god! And long overdue it is!"

By now there was mail coming in; the Imperials had switched their fire from the capitol ships to us, perceiving our imminent attack as the greater threat. They hammered out salvo after salvo, as fast as the big guns could cycle. Which wasn't all that quickly, really; that was the great disadvantage of such large-bore weapons. The larger the diameter of a blaster-bolt, the greater its range and the more terrible the damage should it find a target. But simple physics dictated that large-diameter bolts took longer to form up and stabilize. Therefore fewer could be generated and fired in a given amount of time. Our formation consisted of small, fast, and nimble vessels with plenty of space between to allow for weaving and dodging; for my money the Imperials would've been better off to maintain the heat on the Royal battleships. I looked at Admiral Beckendorf's twisted, broken formation and shook my head. It wasn't his fault that things were such a mess—everything went back to the lucky hit and the emergency maneuvers that followed. They'd never form up again in time to contribute materially to the battle. I could but imagine their captains' collective impotent rage as they watched the light forces go in unsupported. Then another idea occurred to me. After all, one might as well be hung for sheep as for lamb, and doing something was almost always better than doing nothing at moments like these. Once again I typed an illegal order into the communications console. "What's the matter, old ladies?" I asked in a message addressed specifically to the capital ships. "Afraid of getting your petticoats dirty? There's plenty of work for us all! Follow me! You tend to score more hits at close range, or so I hear!"

"The Imperials are forming up for a torpedo attack too," Heinrich warned me. "If they get among our battleships..."

"If they get among our battleships there'll be losses," I snapped back at him. "Terrible losses, even! But we'll come out ahead overall—you can take that to the bank!" I gestured at the torpedo cruisers nestled all around us. "These four ships alone are carrying sixteen oversized warheads apiece, my friend! The Imperials have nothing to match them." I pounded on my console for emphasis. "This is
our
day, Heinrich! Ours and ours alone, if we but see it through to its bloody end. The Imperial officers... They know it in their hearts too, you see. They know full well how poorly their equipment is working, how low their fuel supplies are, how perilously close to the front lines their heavy repair facilities are, even how savagely the people of Wilkes Prime immediately at their rear are resisting them." I gestured at the long, lean, pitiless warships all around us. "They won't stand much of this, Heinrich! They
can't
, being made of mere flesh and blood like the rest of us. By today's end, the long war will for all practical purposes be over. Yes, there'll be some serious mopping up left to do afterwards—the Empire won't die easily. But we'll by god have it won!"

Just then there was a flash so bright at the overhead viewport that I was nearly blinded before the automatic damping kicked in. There are no shock waves in space, but the 483 surged and bucked regardless as our Field interacted with the collapsing black hole that'd once been the engine room of the torpedo cruiser directly above us—
Hussar
, she'd been named. Then we were past, leaving perhaps seventy five dead or dying men in our wake. There was no practical way to pick any of them up. "It was a direct hit, sir, from a main-battery weapon. They never knew what hit 'em."

I nodded and returned my attention to the control rods—we'd accelerated back up to almost full emergency power and despite my best efforts they were warming up again. I'd known we'd take losses on the run-in—everyone had known it, not least Admiral Beckendorf who'd decided we were much too far away to begin a successful torpedo run. So why was my stomach churning now that I'd taken an entirely predictable loss?
Seventy-five men
, my subconscious reminded me.
More souls sacrificed to the Emperor's bloody ego!
I was just about to say something to calm the rest of the men when the destroyer-squadron's second-in-command beat me to the punch. "Ah, lads! There's a fine ship gone, but we'll mourn our mates later. Edge in closer to the flagship now, and we'll make the Emperor pay dearly for our loss."

"Hurrah
Hussar
!" another voice added. "Hurrah!"

By now we were within range of the Imperial heavy cruisers as well as the dreadnoughts, and with their somewhat quicker-cycling guns they were by far a deadlier threat. Heinrich's face was slack with concentration now as he watched the Imperial laser-bolts coming in and ducked and weaved accordingly. 483 was a tiny, elusive target even compared to a destroyer, but it seemed that half the enemy guns were trained on us and us alone. Eventually our luck would run out, we all knew—Heinrich's dodging was more about disrupting the Imperial fire-control than anything else. But one could only do what one could do. Meanwhile the rod-temps were trying to spike again, and I had to rip my eyes away from the control screen in order to kick in the reserve coolant and reset the synchronization. I was just about to hit the "execute" key when a hand came clapping down on top of mind. "What kind of idiot engineer are you?" snapped the unpleasant voice of Lieutenant Jeffries. "We don't need the reserve yet!"

I looked up at him and scowled. "We're at ninety-two percent load and red-zone temps," I countered. "Standard procedure—"

"Hah!" Jeffries declared, gesturing wide with his arms so as to indicate all of space surrounding us. "Who are
you
to lecture
anyone
about standard procedure after
this
little escapade, snotty? I'm a deserter and a criminal, maybe. But it's all as nothing compared to what
you're
going to have to face after you've lost half the fleet!"