Extremis (66 page)

But now he and Li Magda stood on
Lancelot
’s flag bridge and studied reports that confirmed those drones’ findings: save for its primary—a close G5v/M7vi binary—and its one colonized planet, the Demeter system was empty.

“Well,” Trevayne sighed, “we may as well send word to your mother to advance the Fleet while we’re sending recon drones through this system’s other two warp points to probe the Polo and Charlotte systems.”

“Yes.” Mags chewed a knuckle in a rare display of perplexity. “They’re obviously pulling their assets back—leading us on. But leading us on into what?”

“A more defensible position, from their standpoint.” Trevayne turned to a flat screen that gave the strategic display and pointed at Demeter. “Both the Polo and Charlotte warp lines are impassable to devastators. If the Baldies’ intelligence analysts are as good as I suspect they are, they understand that limitation as well as we do.”

Mags nodded. “So wherever we go from here—and Charlotte, of course, is where we
want
to go—we’re going to have to enter the next system without the benefit of our devastators. Until, that is, we dredge the warp line to accommodate them. Surely the Baldies know by now that we can do that.”

Trevayne had never seen Mags this way. She was not normally given to brooding. But now it was as though she lay under a cloud of foreboding that blocked the sunlight he had come to know so well in her.

* * *

“Well, Ian, it appears that you were right,” said Li Han crisply as she paced in her ready room on the
Taconic
’s flag bridge and addressed the two holo images from
Lancelot
.

“Yes,” said Trevayne, with no evidence of feeling vindicated. “There’s a fairly sizable force in Polo, but the main body is quite obviously massed in Charlotte.”

“Which, of course, makes sense,” Li Magda put in. “They assume Charlotte is our next stepping-stone on the route to Bellerophon. And, once again, they’re right.”

Li Han was getting better at reading Trevayne’s expression through the unavoidable distortion of even the best holo imagery. “You seem preoccupied, Ian. Are you seeing something in the data that I’ve missed?”

“No, nothing in the data. But…well, I know I have nothing standing behind this statement except a very strong gut feeling, but I can’t rid myself of the impression that we’re facing someone new.”

“A command shakeup among the Baldies?”

“It would be a natural reaction to the shock of our arrival in the Bellerophon Arm and our initial successes. And the change is clearly not good news for us. We’ve come to expect to be one step ahead of them tactically. I believe that expectation is no longer justified. There’s
someone
over there who has a shrewd sense of our strengths and weaknesses, and is altogether too bloody inventive in taking advantage of the latter and neutralizing the former.”

“And,” Li Magda interjected, “this hypothetical personage may have a special advantage.” She paused a moment to gather her thoughts. “It’s been obvious for a long time that the Baldies can communicate in some way we don’t understand. I’ve heard terms like ‘hoodoo’ among our people. Whatever it is, we have no way of knowing what its limitations in range and speed of propagation are. We also don’t know whether they have technology for enhancing it.”

“So,” Trevayne said slowly, “you think they enjoy a significant advantage over us in communications—possibly on the strategic as well as the tactical scale?”

“It would certainly be a powerful tool in the hands—or whatever—of someone like you’re postulating, who’s smart enough to take full advantage of it.”

Li Han let the thoughtful silence last only a few seconds, then drew herself up. “Well, if all this speculation is correct, I don’t want to give them any more time to prepare whatever it is they’re preparing in Charlotte.
So I’m going to take a calculated risk and hit it with almost everything we have. That means you two will have to clear the way—using supermonitors, at most—for the Kasugawa generator so our devastators can go through. Ian, will you want to transfer your flag to one of the Rim Spruance II class that are configured as command ships?”

“No, I’ll stay where I am. I’ve grown rather fond of
Lancelot.”

“Well,” Li Han said primly, “I’m going to have to transfer
my
flag—and my combat command staff—from
Taconic
, because I intend to personally lead the bulk of our supermonitors through directly behind you, just before the Kasugawa generator makes transit.” She held up a hand before they could protest. “I can’t delegate this—it’s too crucial. While you engage the enemy, I’m going to form a defensive globe of supermonitors around it.”

Neither Ian nor Mags liked it, but they had no answer. Han could see that in the look they exchanged.

She could also see the real reason Trevayne was fond of
Lancelot.

Arduan SDS
Unzes’mes’fel
, Consolidated Fleet,
Anaht’doh Kainat
, Charlotte System

“Admiral,” sent Narrok’s communications prime, “a Fleet signal.”

Narrok reluctantly linked his
selnarm
to his flagship’s command repeater-receiver and found himself in contact with a mind the had learned to loathe.

Torhok’s.

“So, Narrok, are you ready to do your part?” asked the senior admiral.

(Reassurance.) “Quite ready, Senior Admiral.”
An ironic question, since it’s been you who’s been ceaselessly contacting me to get familiarized with my battle plan. To no avail, of course. You are a
bilbuxhat
in a crystal-cutter’s shop, Torhok: you’ll no more attend the nuances of this plan than that oafish beast would avoid shattering the glassware. And it will be everything I can do to keep the plan on course—while you get all the credit for it.

Torhok was signaling (appreciation) for Narrok’s considerate behavior even as he chided: “There can never be too much coordination between subordinates and their superiors, Narrok. How else am I to know if you are, in fact, prepared for battle? At any rate, you seem to have done a most passable job readying these ships.”

“So you are happy with the results of my offensive initiative?”

“Yes. I do not know how you managed all the disassembly in Bellerophon, and then all the portage to and reassembly here in Charlotte. But I must also wonder just how truly aggressive these
system-defense ships can be. They carry as much—more—firepower and armor than a warp-point fort, but are so very slow, and too big to transit a warp point.”

“True, but unlike a warp-point fort, these SDSs can still maneuver. Not swiftly, but enough to keep up with a fleet—and, as we have seen, their firepower is more than a match for anything the humans can bring to bear. I believe that even several of their so-called devastators would be overmatched. And having these SDSs available also frees up most of our SDHs for more mobile operations.”

“Yes, I appreciate that—although I find what you have done with the SDSs’ fighter wings most unsettling. All of them are to be piloted—well, remote-controlled—by
selnarm
link?”

“Why not, Senior Admiral?
Selnarm
is instantaneous. The advantages gained by having the pilot actually in the fighter are minimal. This way, we will no longer lose our senior pilots—and as soon as one fighter is destroyed, another can be deployed to instantly take its place, and in the hands of the same expert pilot who directs it from the safety of the SDS on which he is stationed. Also, by stripping out the life support, rad shielding, and cockpit accommodations, we have lightened our fighter craft. This brings the performance of our fighters to a point that approaches parity with the humans.”

Torhok’s response was not praise, merely: “That achievement is overdue. My main concern is our distance from the warp point, Narrok. Are we not too far off to engage the humans in time, if they bring through one of their—er, warp-point modifiers?”

“I share your misgivings at the distance we must maintain—but maintain it we must. Keeping the massive signatures of the SDSs cloaked is a difficult job under the best of circumstances—but if we were to put them any closer to the warp point, we would surely lose the element of surprise. If we are to use these twelve SDSs to crush their entry into the system and disrupt their expansion of the warp point, we must begin well back, entirely out of their detection range.”

“It is not to my liking,” complained Torhok. But he did not disagree nor change the plan.

TRNS
Lancelot
, Allied Fleet, Charlotte System

At least the Baldies, for reasons best known to themselves, hadn’t emplaced orbital forts at the Charlotte end of the warp line, and their mobile forces were deployed farther from that warp point than Trevayne had expected. So the SBMHAWKs he had sent ahead were still speeding toward their intended prey when
Lancelot
entered the system. They were also speeding into the local sun, which the Baldies had behind them.

Then they watched as clouds of fighters flashed past, over, and under and to both flankson a sunward course. The need to clear the warp point for Li Han’s oncoming formations of supermonitors had precluded the traditional carrier tactic of making transit, launching fighters, and then returning to safety. So the assault carriers and fleet carriers followed behind Trevayne’s phalanx of monitors and supermonitors, from which wings of superdreadnoughts and battlecruisers extended and were now sweeping forward in an enveloping motion. The deck vibrated under their feet as
Lancelot
’s HBM launchers, like those of the rest of the heavy capital ships, sent forth their great missiles in a salvo timed to coincide with the SBMHAWKs. Mere seconds passed before the Baldies’ own missiles were detected.

Andreas Hagen, who more and more filled the role of a general staff liaison for Trevayne, approached. “Admiral, the Kasugawa generator has made transit. Admiral Li is forming her defensive globe around it as it moves into position.”

“Ah, thank you, Commander. That evolution should be complete by the time we close to beam-weapon range.”

Then the enemy missiles arrived, and the viewscreens stepped down even further to preserve human eyes from the stroboscopic eruption of innumerable antimatter warheads. Most were detonated short of their targets by point defense, but all too many worked their way in and delivered their shattering discharges close enough to rock even supermonitors. Those big ships were clearly the Baldies’ primary targets—which was just as well for mere monitors like
Lancelot
in this cataclysmic combat environment.

“We seem to be getting somewhat the better of the missile exchange,” Mags remarked, studying readouts. “Our fighters are doing their job of disrupting them by threatening to work around into their blind zones.”

“And taking serious losses doing it,” Trevayne added.

Then they were past the long-range missile envelope and using their external ordnance racks and backup launchers to engage with intermediate-range missiles. Meanwhile, the battlecruiser “wingtips” of the formation had curved around and were at optimal energy-weapon range.

Less than a minute later, the central formations of big ships crunched together. Trevayne’s lead ships blasted a path ahead with energy torpedoes at short range. Space was racked with the inconceivable energy expenditures, and Code Omega transmissions began coming in with sickening rapidity. Only to be expected, of course: without the mass of supermonitors under Li Han’s direct command, Trevayne was at a disadvantage in numbers and tonnage.

But he was doing his job of clearing the way. Things were going according to plan. Or seemed to be.…

He knew better than to be surprised when Mags read his expression. “Something’s bothering you,” she stated rather than asked.

“The Baldies’ tactics bother me. They just don’t seem to make particularly good sense. They must know by now that we can dredge the warp line and bring in our devastators, after which they will have to beat a retreat. So what’s the point of this battle? Why don’t they draw us even farther along the warp chain, lengthening our supply lines and shortening theirs?”

“In short, it seems out of character for the new Baldy commander you’ve been postulating.”

“It certainly does,” Trevayne muttered.

Arduan SDS
Unzes’mes’fel
, Consolidated Fleet,
Anaht’doh Kainat
, Charlotte System

Narrok felt the tentative probe from the sensor second whom he had tasked to watch for anything unprecedented or unusual in the human fleet. “Yes, Sensor Second?”

“Admiral, this is probably nothing urgent—”

“Do not so assume. Tell me at once.”

“Amidst the cluster of enemy ships which just made transit in rapid sequence, I detect a craft—or possibly an object—that seems to be different in configuration. Unlike any of the other ships in their formation, or any others that we have seen.”

“And this craft’s drive signatures?”

“Again, different, Admiral. Its tuner is running unusually high for a human craft, but its power output is somewhat low.”

As if they are running a lighter engine at higher speeds, unconcerned that it will burn itself out quickly—because it was never meant to last very long at regular maneuver speed.
A logical design feature for a self-consuming warp generator…but Narrok had to be sure. “What about anomalous gravitic readings or non-Myrtakian emissions?”

“Sir, I can’t be sure abou—wait. Yes, sir. This is odd. There are gravity fluctuations which are starting to counterpoint those of the warp point.”

“Counterpoint?”

“Yes, sir. In any given period of time, when the gravitic-distortion waves generated by the warp point’s own cycle are at peak intensity, this object is sending out the very opposite. Its distortions are at an inversely symmetrical nadir. Conversely, when the warp point’s fluctuations are at nadir, the object’s are peaking.”

So, a countervailing force that takes its inverted shape from, yet also works directly against, the signature of the warp point itself.
This was it then: the human warp-point modifier preparing to discharge. And sooner than he had thought. Narrok pulsed a brief (gratitude, excellent) at the sensor second and then opened his
selnarm
to the bridge. “The humans have brought in their warp-point device and are preparing it for activation. Communication Prime: alert Admiral Torhok. Navigation Prime: best speed toward the warp point. Tactics: call in Fleet Second Memshef’s battlegroup to come along our flank and interpose herself between us and the human advance force. The human vanguard will no doubt turn back and try to intercept us. Bear this uppermost in your mind at all times: our target is the human warp-point generator. We cannot allow any detours or deviations from that objective.”