Tactical Error (30 page)

“Good enough so far,” Velmeran commented. “Long-range
scan. Where are they?”

“The entire force is moving forward at high sublight speed, the small
ships in a tight group ahead of the Fortresses,” Larenta at the scan
station reported. “Anticipated arrival in seven minutes at sustained
speed.”

“Those Fortresses will need a full fifteen minutes at least to get
themselves slowed down. They should start braking any time now,” Velmeran
mused, and looked up. “We will hold position twenty million kilometers
out and let them come to us. I will not allow them to draw us too far away from
the Base. Put me through to the Karvand.”

The wait was somewhat longer than he was used to with Val-thyrra’s
instant response in opening channels. “Daelyn of the Karvand here.”

“Hold your position here,” he ordered. “The Karvand is to
remain out of the immediate battle. Your duty is to remain near the station.
When those Mock Starwolves arrive, they will probably be coming in behind us. I
want your carrier and all of your fighters guarding Alkayja, with your pilots
unfought and fresh for battle.”

“Yes, of course,” Daelyn responded. The Karvand was already
slowing to a stop. “You are picking on my poor ship, you know.”

“The Maeridyen and the Vardon have superior shields,” he
explained. “The Methryn, I am sorry to say, is expendable. The Karvand is
vulnerable, and she has her active crew still on board. Besides, this probably
only means that the Mock Starwolves will destroy you first on their way to get
us.”

“Oh, that is different.” Daelyn sounded quite mollified.
Velmeran made a vague gesture to cut the channel, then remembered their present
circumstances and directed that motion toward the communications console.

Consherra glanced up at him from the helm. “She is definitely your big
sister.”

“She has also been in command of that ship only two months.” He
turned to the main viewscreen. “Could we have a tactical schematic of long-range
scan up here?”

That was apparently no problem at all, once it was asked for. He missed
Valthyrra’s quiet efficiency more than ever, and her long experience that
always allowed her to know what was wanted before it was called for. The bridge
crew did not know such things because Valthyrra had always been there to do it
for them. They would learn a lot by the time they came through this battle,
assuming that they did come through it.

The wide main viewscreen partitioned itself, its right one-third becoming a
three-dimensional schematic of the area surrounding the carriers, the left
third identifying individual targets, and the middle remaining a completely
uninformative visual image of space ahead. Velmeran stood for a moment,
watching the scanner map. The Fortresses were already braking, falling well
behind the broad line of stingship carriers and battleships. The smaller ships
could drop speed in a hurry, at least compared to the Fortresses, and he
thought that they might close half of their remaining distance before they
would begin braking. At the same time, he thought that the carriers would have
to begin launching their sting-ships at any moment, to give themselves time to
get their own forces in space, then circle around out of danger of battle themselves.

“No activity from those stingship carriers?” he asked.

“They are just now beginning to swing out their racks,” Larenta
reported.”By what I remember of stingship operation, they should take
over a minute to deploy their racks, and another two minutes before the first
stingships are launched.”

Velmeran nodded. This was more like it. “Relay orders to the Vardon.
They are to launch six packs, moving to intercept those stingships. Get me some
estimate on the number of stingships they have.”

The battleships would be more of a navigational hazard than anything; their
own batteries could not penetrate the shields of the Starwolf carriers, but the
carriers could take out even the largest battleships with a single shot from
their massive, forward cannons. The stingships, though, were a very real
danger. They would be carrying high-speed, shielded missiles, which could
penetrate even heavy battle shields. He would move the fighters against the
stingships, where they were most useful but in the least danger themselves. The
Starwolf carriers, with their quartzite-shielding detonating missiles and their
conversion cannons, were the only weapons that could take on the powerful
Fortresses.

The first task was to use his own fighters to open a hole through those stingships.
Starwolf pilots were good only for some fifteen minutes of hard flying before
hypermetabolism wore them down and left them in need of a rest. It was actually
more efficient for him to send the packs into battle in small groups rather
than all at once, at least in a fight that they could not win within the first
fifteen or twenty minutes.

And the most important question remained. Where were those Mock Starwolves?
Would they hit early on, or when his own pilots were already tired of battle?
He could not move his 700 pilots against their thousands and expect to win. His
only hope of winning was that they would come in grouped together. Then he
could have the Karvand swing around and take out the largest group of them with
a sustained low-intensity blast of her conversion cannon, cutting their numbers
enough for his more experienced pilots to handle. He might possibly win this
battle, but he would need many lucky breaks and no surprises.

“Commander, I count 200 stingship carriers,” Larenta reported
after a moment. “At 20 for each carrier, that comes to 5,000
stingships.”

“Thank you. I always appreciate bad news,” Velmeran remarked
drily. “Tell six of the twelve packs from the Methryn to launch and move
quickly to reinforce the group attacking the stingships.”

“That will leave only six packs at Alkayja base,” Consherra
reminded him.

He nodded. “I believe that we would do best to solve our immediate
problem. That will leave us with one less problem staring us in the face when
the next one presents itself.”

The first group of fighters intercepted the leading edge of the first attack
force, largely ignoring the battleships and aiming their more powerful
accessory cannons at the stingship carriers. Those large ships, essentially
just long racks with engines and crew cabins at either end, were largely
unprotected, and most were still trying to get their racks of stingships clear
and away. The Starwolf cannons ripped into the lightly-shielded carriers,
tearing them apart. Many exploded under the concentrated barrage of heavy fire,
taking their cargoes of small, swift warships with them.

But many stingships were already away, and many more were able to clear
their racks while only 54 fighters did their best to deal with 200 carriers. In
the end, nearly a fifth of the original 5,000 stingships survived the initial
attack. The stingships were long, slender machines, all engines, generators,
and weapons with a minimal crew encased in acceleration suits and supportive
couches that protected them against turns and accelerations on the very limit
of human endurance. As fast and as powerful as the stingships were, their
performance still fell well short of the abilities of the Starwolf fighters and
genetically engineered pilots.

The stingships turned as a group, moving swiftly through the advancing lines
of the battleships as they oriented on the Starwolf carriers. The fighters were
on their tails immediately but the stingships were swift and shifty, bobbing in
small, sudden movements that made them difficult to hit, for all that the
Starwolves’ natural abilities made them better targeting computers than
even their own tracking scanners. The Union forces possessed the added
advantage of sheer numbers, outgunning the defenders more than eighteen to one.
Then the second set of Starwolf fighters, the six packs of the Methryn that had
launched from the station, moved swiftly past their own carriers and into the
middle of the mass of stingships.

With the Starwolf carriers moving in swiftly, the stingships suddenly broke
off their attack and looped around to join the Fortresses, allowing the line of
battleships to move forward into battle. Velmeran figured that the Union
commander had looked upon the destruction of four-fifths of his stingships as
the loss of protection he needed for his Fortresses, and decided to sacrifice
his battleships to the task of wearing down the Starwolves and their known
inability to endure a long conflict. Possibly he had also looked upon those
four carriers as at least twice as many as he had expected, and he could only
assume that each of those carriers possessed at least ten packs of its own. He
could not have known that one of those carriers lacked both packs and a
sentient computer system.

Velmeran also anticipated that, with the unexpected loss of most of his
stingships, the Union Commander would have called up his Mock Starwolves to
take the defenders from behind, opening a new line of attack, forcing the
Starwolves to spread themselves thin to handle everything. Velmeran knew that
his force could not last more than a few minutes, once they did attack. And
still they did not come.

“Relay to all carriers,” he ordered suddenly. “Engage
shields to stealth intensity and loop around the battleships to attack the
Fortresses directly. Valthyrra, you come with us to the right, Vardon to the
left. Have shield detonation missiles standing by. Execute now.”

All three of the attacking carriers suddenly disappeared from scan, at the
same time engaging their main drives and accelerating hard. The Kelvessan could
still sense the phasing of their powerful engines very clearly, but they had
completely vanished as far as the human pilots were concerned. Even visual was
no use, with dull, black ships moving through space across distances of
thousands or even millions of kilometers. They circled wide around the battle
between their own fighters and the Union battleships and stingships, coming in
at the Fortresses suddenly and swiftly.

Still moving cloaked and at high speed, they made their first run at the
seemingly motionless Fortresses. Each ship launched several missiles at their
targets and, approaching from different directions, they were able to hit the
immense ships from both sides. The automatic tracking systems in the Fortresses
flashed into life as soon as they identified the missiles and brought their
defensive cannons around quickly, but those shut down an instant later as eight
of the ten Fortresses tried to shield themselves. The ships suddenly
disappeared inside their hazy, white shells of high-intensity shields.

Neither defense was effective against the Starwolves. The shielded missiles
cut through the defensive shells of the Fortresses with a brief but brilliant
flare of discharged energy, slamming into the hulls of the large ships almost
in the same instant. The quartzite shielding on the hulls of the Fortresses
turned the tremendous explosions harmlessly, but then a backwash of searing
energy began to move through the shielding, cracking its matrix and stripping
it away. Automatic systems dropped the outer shields, then stole power from the
engines and guns to pour even more energy into the quartzite shielding, trying
to arrest the destructive process. That only fed it even more, although the
partially sentient computer systems of the giant ships could not comprehend
that. The process continued to completion in a matter of minutes, stripping the
Fortresses of their second major defense.

The loss might seem almost inconsequential. The Fortresses still had their
outer shields, and the Methryn had been unable to cut through those when she
had fought the Challenger twenty years earlier. But the Starwolves were now
ready to show the Fortresses the mistake in their design. The big shields took
every trace of power from the massive warships, leaving them unable to fight or
even maneuver while shielded, nor could they hold their shields for very long.
Every time the Fortresses dropped their shields, the swift carriers were
waiting with their powerful cannons, picking off turrets and engines.

But the Fortresses had an even deadlier fault, for they were only massive
armor frames drawing their power from their replaceable cannon and engine
modules. Those modules, each with their own generator, were by necessity on the
surface of the ship, vulnerable to attack. The shields may repel bolts from the
Starwolf cannons, but no shield was proof against shielded missiles, and the
carriers had hundreds of missiles bearing small conversion charges. Although
the carriers were forced to fire blind into the shields, each explosion cut a
large hole in the unprotected hulls of the Fortresses.

Velmeran had just made the final shift of advantage unavoidable, and he knew
it. The Mock Starwolves would surely be closing by now, coming to the rescue of
the Fortresses. Whatever they have been waiting for, this was more important.
He guessed that they would strike either at the carriers themselves or at
Alkayja Base, distracting the Starwolves from their prey. He would do both,
demanding a division of forces. The Starwolves had only one hope, to take out
as many of the Fortresses as they could, while they could.

When it came, the response surprised him. The area was suddenly full of
stingships, bringing their own missiles and cannons to bear on the carriers,
and the fighters that were slowly but steadily cutting away their numbers.

“Relay this order to the Vardon and the Karvand,” he shouted.
“Launch all remaining packs.”

“Hold that order!” Consherra declared, and turned to Cargin.
“That one will be dropping her shields any moment. I doubt very much she
sees us. I will hold us on target.”

“Building to power now,” Cargin answered. “I can give it
seventy percent instantly.”

The end of the wait came suddenly, the Fortress some 1,000 kilometers ahead
dropping her shields. The Maeridyen had been flying sideways, engines still,
while Consherra held the nose of the carrier locked on target. The carrier
shuttered once as a half-megaton warhead rolled harmlessly off her reinforced
shield, then Cargin had a clear shot at his target.