Extremis (12 page)

“Thank me after you’ve worn it a while, Lieutenant. Wartime promotions come quickly for a reason—lots of officers die.”

“Yes, sir.”

“So, we’ve been keeping you pretty busy, eh?”

“Yes, sir.”
This guy is the admiral’s chief of staff, and technically CO of this ship. What the hell is he doing spending jaw time with
me
?

“A pretty pitched battle in Beaumont, from what I’ve seen of the reports. Is that how it felt to you, Lieutenant?”

How it
felt
? He wants to know how I
feel
? I thought CMOs were responsible for psych evaluations—
“Pretty much so, sir. But I was just a bystander. The real heavy action was out in the first screen—and with the local fighters. We had it pretty easy back where we were, I think.”

“So did we.” Watanabe looked around at the mostly superficial bridge damage.

“Sir, I haven’t heard yet. What
did
happen back in Raiden?”

The captain shrugged. “Not many losses for us, a fair amount for them—but nothing like the last time they tried to visit us there. I think their new admiral is suitably cautious. We lost an MT and, unfortunately, most of our cruisers.”

“Cruisers? How, sir? Why were they even in the line of battle?”

Watanabe looked Ossian in the eye and spoke with slow precision. “Hear this, Lieutenant. I know that the experts say that nothing under the rating of an SD even qualifies as a ship of the line anymore, but out here we use whatever we’ve got. Yesterday we used cruisers. But not in the line. They’re fast, so the admiral kept them back outside the Desai limit. As we met the Baldies just inside our edge of the limit, the cruisers went around on a flanking maneuver, running under stealth all the time.”

“But I thought the Baldies can—well, pull stealth apart, sir.”

“They can—at close range. And they’re getting pretty fair at long-range detection, as well. But yesterday, just before the Baldies were going to close in, we had our cruisers nose into detection range. The Baldies knew something was out there but couldn’t tell how big it was. However, they
did
know it was on their rear flank, so they split into two task forces, one to face us, one to chase the cruisers.” Now Watanabe smiled.

“I see, sir—then what did you do?”

His smile broadened. “You tell me.”

A test? Watanabe was testing him? Well, okay, that was his prerogative. So, what had they done? Krishmahnta rushes forward, engages the reduced main van of the enemy fleet? No: that would still be too costly. However…“Admiral Krishmahnta held position. The Baldy main van didn’t have the odds it wanted anymore, so they slowed. Meanwhile, the cruisers reversed bearing, got back over the Desai line, but slow enough to entice the Baldies to come after them. The enemy gave chase long enough to pull them so far out of position that the admiral was able to back up, get over the Desai line, use that doubled speed to engage the overextended and much smaller Baldy chasing force, and then withdraw to the warp point—just ahead of the main enemy task force. But because you had to use the cruisers both as bait and flypaper, you had disproportionate losses there. Sir.”

Captain Watanabe’s smile disappeared for a moment. When it came back, it was fainter, but it also seemed very—well, pleased. “Correct, Lieutenant. Now come along.”

“Yes, sir.” A beat as they walked toward the chart room’s hatchway. “Sir, exactly where are we going?”

“The admiral’s briefing. She’s been working the details with Commanders Mackintosh and La Mar on the withdrawal into Achilles. It’s going to be tricky.” The hatchway irised open: Watanabe went through.

Wethermere followed—and found himself in a room crowded with both live and holographic people. Most of the CO’s in Krishmahnta’s fleet were present, along with a few specialists and section chiefs. Yoshikuni wasn’t present: she couldn’t be, since she was still light-hours away, guarding the warp point back into Beaumont. But it was a certainty that the proceedings were already being beamed to her.

Krishmahnta rose to her feet. The room quieted. “We’re here to get every hull of both fleets back to Achilles safely. That is not our optimal outcome. That is our minimum definition of success. Is that clear?”

Murmurs and nods.

“Then let’s get down to business. Here are the key facts of this system: the warp-point locations.” She waved a stylus at the main plot—an immense circular holotank.

“The warp point to Raiden—”

At about the seven o’clock position on the circle, a purple hoop appeared—

“—the warp point to Achilles—”

Another purple hoop. This one was at about eleven o’clock and, like the first, was about halfway between the center of the table and its outer edge.

“—and the warp point to Beaumont.”

Which blinked into existence at the two-o’clock position, a little farther out than the other two.

“The key to this operation is making the enemy from Beaumont believe that the warp point to Achilles”—she indicated the one at eleven o’clock—“is actually out
here.
”

With a wave of her stylus, a fourth, almost fuchsia, hoop flashed into existence at the one-o’clock position, but all the way out at the edge of the table. Restless, seat-shifting noises surrounding the mainplot suggested surprise, perhaps confusion.

“Here’s why we want the enemy to think that the warp point to Achilles is all the way out here”—and she indicated the far, fuschia hoop at one o’clock again. “In simplest terms, we have some pretty slow hulls in our formation—particularly the damaged MTs. And the ones coming from our fleet, here at the Raiden warp point, have an awful long journey to make for their exit at Achilles.” She drew a line between the seven o’clock warp point and the eleven o’clock warp point. It was a respectable stretch of space. “Bottom line: our ships will not complete that journey in time if they’re racing against an enemy that comes through the Beaumont warp point and that knows to head directly to the Achilles exit point.” She drew a line from the two o’clock warp point to the eleven o’clock warp point: most decidedly shorter.

“And don’t forget that the enemy may elect to only put undamaged ships through from Beaumont. If that’s the case, not even the Desai drive is going to help our slowest ships. So we’ve got to send our opponent on a wild-goose chase that we can set up relatively quickly and will pull them far enough out of position that they won’t have enough time to backtrack, once they realize they’ve been duped.

“So, first things first: how to set up a fake warp point. Three cruisers from Admiral Yoshikuni’s fleet will make best speed for the coordinates we’ve designated as the false warp point. There they will deposit some telltale rubbish consistent with a real warp point—two unexploded mines and a powered-down buoy ostensibly silenced by us to keep our enemies from finding the warp point. One of the cruisers—the
Kris
—will play the part of the door guard. She will be abandoned in place, drives running low. Her stealth will be up but faltering in a manner consistent with modest combat damage. When the Baldies start sweeping for warp points, they should spot these clues pretty quickly, and, we believe, will come sniffing around that area of space. Considering how long a full system sweep takes, and how very close you have to be to an inert warp point to actually detect it, the odds are pretty good that they’ll not only take this bait but think themselves extremely lucky.”

The hologram of Captain Cicescu stirred. Krishmahnta noticed. “Jaroslav?”

“Admiral, I know we’ve observed this operational quirk of theirs before—but can we really trust that the enemy will, once again, ignore our system charts, which they must surely have taken from various data sources?”

Krishmahnta nodded slowly. “That’s an excellent question. I wish I had an excellent answer. All I can say is that it’s been their unexceptioned
modus operandi
thus far to ignore our star charts. I think we can be relatively sure that this has not been an attempt to mislead us so that they can surprise us now—they’ve taken too many severe beatings already because of this stubborn refusal to believe our maps.” Krishmahnta poised her stylus. “At any rate, we have little choice. And if they do make straight for the actual Achilles warp point, then it’s a running fight and withdrawal.”

“Won’t we hold the Beaumont warp point until the last minute?”

Krishmahnta shook her head. “We can’t. Firstly, they still have enough weight of metal to push past us. Secondly, Admiral Yoshikuni’s fleet is almost entirely out of missiles. That means defending the warp point would have to be a close-range fight—which she’d be sure to lose. Thirdly, we’ve got a lot of ships to sequence through the Achilles warp point, so they can’t arrive there all at once. But finally, Admiral Yoshikuni’s fleet is already committed to performing a far more important task.”

Captain Everson of the
Actium
raised his patrician chin. “What task is that, Admiral?”

Krishmahnta reactivated her stylus. “They’re going to be our stalking horse. They are going to take up positions here”—she indicated the twelve-o’clock position on main plot, half way to the periphery—“and, if the enemy enters, they will commence traveling on a direct heading to the false warp point at best speed. In short, it will look like they’re running for home.” She drew a line from that spot at twelve o’clock to the
faux
warp point, which was at the extreme edge of the one-o’clock position. “With the evidence we’ve planted at the false warp point, and with this fleet making best speed directly toward that same warp point, this maximizes the odds that the Baldies will fall for our ruse. At the same time, our ships withdrawing from the Raiden warp point”—she put her stylus on the seven-o’clock hoop—“will also be moving directly for that same point.” She drew a line of light reaching from the seven-o’clock point all the way to the fuschia hoop at the opposite edge of the table.

Everson nodded. “And so, as far as the enemy can tell, all the roads lead to the warp point—which is not there.”

“Exactly. Their sensors and all our vectors will tell them the same thing: we are headed to this point.” Again she indicated the false warp point at one o’clock. “When they’ve taken the bait, and our computations show that we can do so safely, all our ships will then turn toward the actual warp point to Achilles. We will have the advantage of position—and of speed. All our vessels will be in Desai space. Conversely, not all of theirs even have that drive—at this point, probably less than forty percent.”

Captain Cicescu frowned. “Why wouldn’t they try to cut us off this way?” He drew a very short line, that ran directly from the Beaumont warp point at two o’clock to the false line of withdrawal, intercepting it at the twelve-thirty position.

Krishmahnta nodded. “Baldy might try that, and then the race would be very close, and the last of our hulls will be exiting under fire—if they get out at all. But I’m pretty sure our adversary is not going to risk that fast-intercept vector.”

“No? Why?”

“Because if the Baldies do that, they’d be horribly vulnerable to any force of ours that might come through from what they will now believe is the Achilles warp point.” Krishmahnta tapped it yet again. “No, for Baldy to both intercept us
and
adequately protect his own rear, he’s got to mount a proximal defense of the warp point that he believes leads to Achilles. So instead of coming out to get us, he’ll sit and wait for us there. And he’ll have no reason
not
to do so, because he knows we’re too weak to push through his forces guarding the supposed warp point. He also knows that the other Baldy fleet is due in from Raiden. So in the mind of the Baldy admiral coming in from Beaumont, it’s just a matter of time before we’re caught between his anvil and the hammer swinging in from Raiden.”

Everson stared at the seven o’clock warp point. “Yes—and what about the Raiden warp point? What if the enemy fleet there comes through while we’re in the middle of this dance of deception?”

Krishmahnta nodded. “That is the wild card in the deck. Did we give them a bloody enough nose in Raiden to make them pause and lick their wounds? We don’t know. They’ve sent a few probes after us just in the last hour, and we’ve vaporized them all. So they have no precise intel on what’s here, but they have to consider that we may be holding this warp point in force. And that means they’ll want to bring up almost all of their own forces before they come through. Or they may feel the need to launch a manned recon sortie, if we keep burning off all their recon drones. So for a little while longer, we’ll keep a number of our faster SDs here to make this point look as hot and uninviting as possible. But there’s going to be about a two-hour period where we’ve got to have those SDs under way, during which the Baldies could still come through from Raiden and catch us.”

“So what’s the answer to that problem?”

Krishmahnta looked down. “We will leave two extremely fast ships back there to cover us during that critical interval, ships that can still catch up with us just before the last of our big hulls are projected to make transit to Achilles.”

“That sounds like a lousy job.”

“No doubt about it, it’s the short straw. And the folks who draw it will either have the best or worst day of us all. Either the Baldies in Raiden have decided to take time to regroup and consolidate—in which case our folks watching the warp point will just twiddle their thumbs until it’s time to rejoin us. Or the enemy will decide to move swiftly—and our covering force will catch a faceful of Baldies. No middle ground, I’m afraid.”

“And who gets this delightful job?”

“Our two fastest ships. One is our speediest mix of muscle and stealth, with enough defensive batteries to burn down up to a dozen RDs all at once. That’s the cruiser
Balu Bay
. The other, smaller hull is there for its sensors, enhanced ECM and shielding suites, and a disproportionately large defensive battery: the DD-courier
Bucky Sherman
.”

Wethermere was not startled by the choice: he had heard it coming. But he had not considered the onerous detail that Captain Watanabe then whispered as an aside: “Given your promotion, I believe you’re now the XO of that courier.” Watanabe started scribbling on his data tablet as the briefing began breaking up. “So, how are you liking your first field assignment in a shooting war, Lieutenant Wethermere?”