Tactical Error (31 page)

Deep in the Maeridyen’s conversion cannon, several kilograms of water
were suddenly converted into thousands of megatons of energy. A slender,
tubular force field leaped out of the nose of the cannon, locking onto the
Fortress, forming a pathway as that tremendous destructive force was shot
toward its target. The entire Fortress glowed red and then white for a long
instant out of time, then it disappeared in a blinding flash that leaped out
like the explosion of a small star.

“Good shot,” Velmeran commented approvingly, honestly surprised
that they had managed that tactic unaided by computers. “Now could we
please get those extra fighters away?”

“Commander Velmeran, this is Daelyn on the Karvand.” The voice
sounded distant over the com in the camera pod retracted overhead.

He looked up, fearing the worst. “Go ahead.”

“The remaining battleships are closing on Alkayja station.”

“Can you handle that?” For some reason that he could not begin
to understand, this was not the worst that he had expected.

“If you can give me the rest of the fighters at the station,”
Daelyn answered. “There are no stingships in this group, so we have
little enough to fear from missiles. I will take the Karvand right through the
middle of them.”

“Do what you can.” He glanced at Korlaran at the com station.
“Dispatch the Methryn’s remaining fighters at the station.”

Space around them continued to snap with the cannons of Starwolf ships and
the detonation of missiles, and then the blast of the Vardon’s conversion
cannon froze the scene of battle in the brilliant flash of the destruction of
another Fortress. Consherra wove the carrier deftly through the crowded skies,
while Cargin directed his weapons every time he saw a chance on his array of
targeting scanners. Velmeran watched them for a moment, realizing that he had
overlooked one important fact. His bridge crew was working as hard as any of
the fighter pilots, and he had no replacements to take their place when they
exhausted themselves.

“Commander, the Methryn just took a bad hit in her belly,”
Larenta announced suddenly.

Velmeran turned to Consherra. “Get us there quickly. If she is down,
the stingships will make short work of her.”

“On our way,” Consherra responded without looking up from her
monitors.

They found the Methryn within half a minute. The older carrier was drifting
helplessly, the perimeter cannons along her hull groove trying to hold off the
attention of half-a-dozen stingships that scattered before the
Maeridyen’s fury. The stingship crews had been coming at the carriers
from beneath, aiming their missiles at the only possible weak link in their
armor, the massive bay doors in the lower hull. The Methryn had taken a direct
hit on one of her two large holding bays, ripping away the doors and tearing
out her entire belly from her transport bays to the twin modules of her fighter
decks. Although her interior was burning and flashing with arcs of power from
broken lines, the explosion did not appear to have bitten deeply into her
engineering.

Even as the Maeridyen approached, Valthyrra managed to get main power up and
brought herself under control, moving slowly forward. None of her drives were
damaged, and she was apparently able to get power from at least one of her main
generators. Fluctuations caused her to lurch with engine fades and surges, but
she turned in a wide, slow circle as she continued to gather speed steadily.

“Maeridyen, stand away!” Valthyrra ordered sharply.

“Valthyrra, can you get yourself clear of battle?” Velmeran
asked. “We have support vessels on the way. We can save you yet.”

“To what end, Commander?” she asked. “I have told you my
opinion regarding scrap. Let me do what I can.”

“Valthyrra, please.”

“We both knew that this was inevitable,” Valthyrra insisted.
“That was the whole purpose in duplicating my memory cells, so that I
could come out here and sell my old life for the best price I could get. I
expect to fetch a very high price indeed.”

Velmeran seemed to understand what she meant. He turned to Consherra.
“Stay well clear of her, but guard her tail. She will never forgive us if
we let stingships take her.”

The Methryn continued to accelerate, orienting herself on her target. One of
the Fortresses lay directly before her, working its slow way through a series
of course corrections and seemingly unaware of her approach. At the very last
moment, she fired her conversion cannon directly into the Fortress, pouring out
all the limited power she had left. Not waiting for orders, Consherra turned
the Maeridyen away, heading for open space and safety as quickly as she could
get there. The Fortress glowed briefly as her kilometers of metal drank in the
accumulation of raw energy for as long as it could before it exploded in a
brilliant cloud of stellar heat. The Methryn did not even try to turn away as
she hurtled into the blast.

If she had been intact with hull shields up on full, she might well have
emerged unharmed, but the Methryn was wrecked and burning already. She shot out
the other side of the white-hot cloud, her armored hull battered and rent, the
entire forward quarter of her nose and the leading edges of her wings ripped
and melted away. And yet she lived still, finding just enough power for her
field drives to correct her course before her nose dipped and she began to
tumble slowly. A second Fortress lay ahead, coming directly toward her, and
there was nothing it could have done. Its shell was of little use against solid
objects, and it’s quartzite hull shield was gone. It saw her coming and
tried to evade, but the Fortress was only just beginning to turn away when the
Methryn slammed against its forward hull. Their combined impact speed of more
than a quarter that of light vaporized both ships in an explosion as fierce and
brilliant as the detonation from a conversion cannon.

Velmeran looked away, having no moment to spare for memories or grief. He
noticed that every member of the bridge crew was staring at the exploding image
on the main viewscreen, mesmerized. “Look sharp.”

The Maeridyen turned away, rotating her protective upper hull to the force
of that double explosion. Somewhere far away, another carrier took advantage of
the moment of confusion to fire her conversion cannon, and yet another of the
immense Fortresses disappeared in the glare of white-hot gasses. Velmeran knew
that they had been very lucky, reducing the fleet of Fortresses to half in a
matter of minutes while losing only one of their own carriers. But he knew also
that their luck could not last. The host of stingships that had been plaguing
the carriers suddenly seemed very scarce, and the Union battleships were
nowhere to be seen.

“Commander, this is Daelyn of the Karvand.” The warning came
over the main comm abruptly. “The Union forces are pushing directly at
Alkayja station. We cannot hold them.”

“We will do what we can,” he promised her. “Val... Ah, Korlaran.
Order the Vardon around to reinforce the Karvand. Consherra, as soon as the
Vardon is in position, call around ten packs and we will try to squeeze the
Union forces between us. We will go in for the remaining Fortresses. Do we
still have both cannons left?”

“The cannon we fired is in perfect condition,” Cargin reported.
“It will be cooled and charged up within three minutes. The second cannon
is ready for immediate firing.”

“Very good. Korlaran, see if you can get me Admiral Laroose.

Velmeran watched the scan image. Half of the Fortresses were destroyed but 5
remained, and that was no small matter. He also guessed that some 300
stingships and perhaps 60 battleships were left in that crowd between his own
carrier and the base, moving steadily toward Alkayja Station with single-minded
determination. They were almost heedless of their own losses, as if the
destruction of that station was more important than anything. Were they
expecting 16 Mock Starwolf carriers to come to their rescue at any moment? That
seemed the only possible explanation for these tactics. Why had the Mock
Starwolves held back even this long?

“Laroose speaking. Go ahead, Commander.”

“Admiral, there is less than a minute before the first of those ships
comes with firing range of the station,” Velmeran said. “There
seems to be little that we can do to stop them. Could you bring those automated
units around to protect your position?”

“We are working on a solution, Commander,” Laroose assured him.
“You Starwolves take care of yourselves.”

“Admiral?”

“Just don’t let them get the Karvand. We cannot afford the loss
of another carrier.”

“Closed channel, Commander,” Korlaran reported.

All of space lit up like the birth of a new star, lingering for no more than
three seconds before dying quickly away. As soon as the scanners recovered from
the image overload, there was one less Fortress to be found. The odds were
evening up in a hurry.

What if there were no Mock Starwolves? Not even Lenna had actually seen one,
only sixteen empty bays and a fair amount of evidence that they had been there
until fairly recently. And yet the reasons for such an elaborate hoax were as
inexplicable as their continued absence from this battle. Had Donalt Trace
simply been trying to frighten him? Or more likely, had that greatest of
threats been meant only to draw Velmeran’s full attention to the attack
on Alkayja Station from an even more important target? Velmeran could think of
no target that could be more important, except for Commander Trace’s
claim that he was on his way to Terra. Velmeran wondered if everything had been
designed to present him with two conflicting choices, and invite him to choose
the wrong one.

“One group of stingships is moving quickly toward the station,”
Larenta reported. “Fighters are in pursuit.”

This could be it. Alkayja Station lacked the shields or the guns to protect
itself from attack, relying upon its defensive drones. Only a few hits from the
nuclear warheads carried by the stingships would reduce it to ruins. Velmeran
looked up at the magnified scanner image of the station to one side of the main
viewscreen. A dozen stingships were making a high-speed run at the station with
half as many Starwolf fighters in close pursuit, taking one of the larger ships
out every few seconds. But they were already looping around the curve of the
planet, and there would be enough survivors to complete the attack run.

Then, at the very last instant, Alkayja Station abruptly disappeared.

Consherra glanced up from her console, then did a startled double-take.
“Varth!
Val traron de altrys caldayson bentheral!”

Those were very much Velmeran’s own sentiments on the matter.

“But where did it go?”

“They jumped,” Velmeran said, only just understanding that for
himself. “Of course they would have jump drives for the new carriers, and
it was probably a simple matter to connect them up for power and computer
control. Bless that old man! He is crafty enough to be a Starwolf
himself.”

“It reminds me of the sort of foolish tricks you will try,”
Consherra remarked as she stared at her scan monitors. “Cargin!”

“On it!” he assured her.

Consherra brought the nose of the Maeridyen around sharply, orienting on a
Fortress that had just dropped her shell. It was a long shot, three-quarters of
a million kilometers across the entire width of the area of battle, but the
command crew of the Fortress would not have been expecting an attack from such
a distant ship. The brilliant beam of the conversion cannon leaped out with
deadly accuracy.

“Three against three. Even odds, if the Karvand can stay lucky long
enough and avoid the missiles,” Velmeran commented. “How are the
packs?”

“I am trying to monitor reports from the pack leaders,” Korlaran
reported, turning to face him, “They seem to be holding out well
enough.”

All the same, Velmeran knew that those first packs to go out could only
endure a few minutes more. Consherra had been operating on hypermetabolism as
much as any of the pilots, and he was using her as a good indication of the
condition of the others. Although she was not yet getting slow or imprecise,
she looked like she was nearing the end of her strength. When she reached the
end, it would come suddenly. Velmeran wondered if his limited experience with
flying a carrier would be enough for him to take her place.

Another conversion cannon flashed in the darkness of space, and one of the
three remaining Fortresses vanished in flame.

“Commander, this is Daelyn of the Karvand. We just burned out our
conversion cannon.”

“Understood. See if you can find what Laroose did with that station
and help them out.” Velmeran walked over to stand behind the com station.
“Get me the Vardon.”

As he waited, he watched the scanners. The two remaining Fortresses, now
outnumbered, began to accelerate as they made the tightest turns they could
manage, heading back out into open space. If they had been waiting for the Mock
Starwolves to provide reinforcement, they had apparently given up any hope of
that and were intent only upon saving their very big, expensive, and vulnerable
ships. The loss of eight Fortresses would be a serious blow to the Union
Combined Fleet, which had only twenty-five or so of the behemoths before this,
and especially if the only return was the destruction of only one aging
Starwolf carrier. One thing that Donalt Trace had not anticipated was the new
carriers whose hull shields could survive the warheads that he was throwing at
them.

“Commander?” Tregloran answered after a moment.

“This is just about over,” Velmeran said. “I do not want
to see those two carriers escape. I believe that we can take them.”

“Right, Commander.”

Velmeran turned to Consherra. “Bring this ship around and accelerate
to intercept. Cargin, I will need sequential firing of both conversion
cannons.”