The Return of the Emperor (23 page)

Watches passed. Gregor felt himself proven right.

Negative contacts. Except for two.

One was reported as a small squadron of light attack craft. System patrol? Raiders? Gregor neither knew nor cared. The 23rd was far too strong for them to attack.

The second contact was laughable.

A trading ship blundered across the 23rd's path. A destroyer matched orbits with the ship. Nothing to worry about—just a trader, from some unknown culture called the Bhor. The ship's intelligence—also mail, censorship, sports, and recreational fund—officer took the time to check a fiche. Bhor? He whistled to himself. They were a very, very long way from home looking for business.

Sten looked at the projection of the based mushroom. He spun it through a couple of 360s, muttered, then brought the focus in to as tight as his "trading" spy ship had managed to get. He ignored the immediate breakdown of estimated forces on another screen. He had it memorized already.

A third screen lit:
BATTLE ANALYSIS READY
.

Sten ignored that screen, too.

He got up and started pacing back and forth. He had an estimated four E-days, given the Imperial fleet's current speed, to come up with a Plan, position his troops, and attack.

Kilgour and Otho sat nearby. Alex was busy at his own computer; Otho was stroking his beard and looking at that mushroom.

"Straight in, straight on. They won't expect that," the Bhor chieftain said.

"No," Sten agreed. "Neither would I. But I'll bet I could figure out a response before we got in range."

"It was a suggestion."

"Accepted as such, rejected as such."

He looked at Kilgour's screen. Kilgour was scrolling the hourly update from Sten's fleet.

Fleet. Eighty-three ships. Most of them warships, but none of them lighter than an equivalent Imperial cruiser-class, and all of them intended for cluster security/inter-diction missions. Others were armed traders and armed auxiliaries. Weapons, electronics, and countermeasure suites would be at least one and more likely five full generations behind the Imperial warships. Not good.

Worse: fuel status. Maximum range, at full drive: eleven E-days. Getting fuel for the raid had stripped the Lupus Cluster nearly dry. At present the fleet was "parked," with all nonessential systems off. They were masked from the projected trajectory of the Imperials behind a collapsed star.

The status screen cleared, then added a needless worry:

MAXIMUM TIME REQUIRED TO ABORT… UNDER PRESENT CONDITIONS… Meaning that if they stayed parked, they had the equivalent of two E-centuries.
UNDER NORMAL DRIVE
… eleven ship-hours…
UNDER BATTLE DRIVE
…

Sten did not look at that figure. He concentrated on the mushroom. It would not have been his choice for a convoy formation—the heavies were concentrated at the front. Better to carry them outside the formation near the center, for ready response in any direction if an attacker feinted. Feinted. Hmm. Yes, Admiral. With what are you going to pull your ruse? Eighty-three ships, remember? Against… against too many.

On-screen, the mushroom's cap started sliding back and forth on the fleet's "stem," like a winding-down toy gyro. Kilgour was beaming at him.

"Dammit, Alex! Quit gamin'!"

"Thae gamin', ae y'put it, i' another suggestion, Boss. Or hae Ah noo leave't' suggest?"

Otho rose. "By my mother's insect-infested beard, we must cure this bickering disease." He owled a prox screen. "Nearest contact… we have lifetimes. Time for stregg, time even for the hangover. I'll get the horns." He palmed a bulkhead door and slid out.

"Sorry, Alex," Sten said.

"Dinnae fash. Y' want't' hear what I was thinkin't? 'Tis jus' a wee thought, Boss. Ah nae hae a scheme."

The mushroom's gyroing, Alex went on, came as he projected near-simultaneous attacks from various directions at the Imperials. "Slide aroun', slide aroun', an' sooner come later, thae'll lose comman' cohesion. All Ah need f'r't't' be a plan is, p'raps, anoth'r two, three hundred ships."

Otho came back with the stregg. Sten had something wandering in his backbrain. He put the horn in its stand untouched.

"My turn," Sten said. "First, I know where to hit them." He touched a point on the fleet's projected overall passage. "Here."

"Good. Thae'll be sloppy then."

"Maybe even how. Clot the ships. Clot the weapons. Clot that they've got all the damned AM2 in the universe. Think about the troopies. Who we going against?"

"Your mind has fled," Otho said. "We are fighting the Empire, and you are lacking stregg. Drink, my Sten."

Sten ignored him and went on. What kind of Imperials were they facing? This was hardtimes and peacetimes. The ships would most likely be officered and crewed by an odd mixture—experienced war veterans/careerists and new, or fairly new, volunteers.

"Thae hae th' facts ae history arguin' wi' you," Alex agreed slowly.

"Second. Their Admiral Whoever. Rules and regulations. Right way, wrong way, navy way."

"Frae one formation? Estimate frae insufficient data. Theory only."

Sten grinned at his stocky friend, who seemed to have found a new avocation as a strange-talking battle computer.

"Formation, yes. Also the response to the trading ship. Destroyer screens shifted… like so. Heavies closed toward area of threat…so. Reaction—one ship to close with unknown, two detached in front of the screen for backup. Just like the fiche tell you in Staff School."

"Still theory."

It was.

"Second. Alex, if I give you… four ships, can you rig two spoofs?"

Alex thought. "Ah kin. But thae'll noo be world-class. No' enow time, no' enow gear f'r a good 'llusion."

"One more time. Think about the troopies."

"Ah."

"Now, won't that get your mushroom slippin' an' slid-in'?"

"Might." Kilgour sank his horn and got up. "But we'll hae't' hit 'em hard an' fast. Ah hae a sudden date wi' a tech. If y'll excuse me?" And he was gone.

Otho winced. Hard and fast. That meant full power and being marooned in space if they did not capture the freighters.

Sten caught his expression. "Don't worry. If we lose—and are still alive but out of power—we'll have Kilgour knock out the ports, issue oars, and we'll row home."

Otho laughed and smacked his lips. The upcoming battle promised to be fast and nasty. He had an addition to the unformulated plan. Would this fleet have a common com-link frequency to the admiral? Very probably. Could it be detected quickly? Almost certainly. Could it be analyzed, pirated into, and blanketed? Given a com with enough power… yes.

"Four of my ships, at the least, have links strong enough to shout from here to Hades in a whisper. That is not a factor," Otho said.

Shout… whisper? Sten put aside Otho's idea of analogies and asked what he had in mind. Otho continued. When he was finished, Sten sat down, drank stregg, and ran the idea through. It was brutal. Bloody. Practical. About what one would expect from a Bhor warrior—or a Mantis operative.

"Service soldiers," Sten thought aloud, "would want revenge. Conscripts… particularly if these people have seen hard times on Honjo, as we've heard. Yes.

"Refill the horn, my friend. My mind is starting to work. One slight modification to your idea, however. We'll need six, maybe eight, of your best and bloodiest…"

Cind went ballistic one nanosecond after getting the orders from her section officer. She was detached for special duties and ordered to turn in her weaponry except for her pistol and combat knife. Then she drew her weapon for this battle—a battle that would be led by Admiral Sten himself. A battle that would win glory for all.

Her weapon was a small camera with a transmitter attached. A joke? No. Because she was human, and those clottin' Bhor never really…No. She was the only human. The other seven beings in this special detachment were Bhor—all of them just as homicidally angry as Cind.

She refused the order. The officer shrugged and ordered her confined to quarters. She relented but wanted to protest the assignment.

" 'Twill do you no good, woman."

"Why not? I've got rights!"

"So file a protest if you like. I was ordered to pick eight of my best shipboard fighters. Eight who were most likely to find themselves in the heart of battle. And eight who might survive the fray. I chose accordingly."

"Clot the compliments! I want to protest."

"As I said, protest as you like. The orders came directly from the Great Otho and Admiral Sten himself."

Cind recovered her chin from where it sat on her collarbone. Sten? Why this shaming?

No. Stop being a child. Sten was Sten.

There must be a reason.

If you can understand Sten's thinking, she told herself, then you may truly be on the Way of the Warrior.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

T
he 23RD Imperial Fleet was attacked less than one ship's day from safety.

Once contact was made with Al-Sufi and the waiting reinforcements, Gregor relaxed. He ordered stand down from General Quarters. Modified Readiness—one third at combat stations—was the new status. The rest of the Imperial sailors were ordered to clean ship and themselves.

Gregor thought himself a humane commander and knew his troops would not want to port looking like tramps. Also, if there were livie cameras there, a formation of slobs would reflect poorly on Gregor himself.

The first attack came as Gregor was luxuriating in the fresher: "
All Hands… Battle Stations… Raiders Attacking! "

Gregor found himself on the bridge wearing the full-dress white mess jacket he had laid out—and briefs. He quickly analyzed the screens.

"Sir, I've already ordered the formation shift toward the enemy's angle of attack as per your standing instructions."

Gregor swore at the Officer of the Deck and then punched up the ECM officer.

"Screen the attackers."

The man seemed puzzled, then touched keys slowly, as if he did not have his signal orders memorized as reflexes. Nothing happened. The attackers continued in, coming from the high forward port quadrant. He ran another program… the raiders vanished! Only two ships remained on-screen.

Gregor was about to scream at his flag officer and break the ECM officer when another alarm shrilled. Another formation was coming low forward center—the real attack. Gregor took command and ordered the battle formation shifted down toward the foe.

The mushroom cap seemed to spin as the battleships changed formation and their cruiser and destroyer screens followed. There were two collisions—a cruiser physically "brushed" a destroyer, and two destroyers slammed into one another. The cruiser had some survivors.

In the ECM center, the officer was still following orders and screening the attackers. On his fourth try, just as he was convinced that these were for real, the second set of raiders disappeared. Once more, two ships—the spoofers—remained.

There was a stunned silence on the bridge. Then alarms once more, and a third, larger, near-fleet-size attack began.

"Flag!"

"Sir."

"I want you in ECM. Make damned sure we aren't being fooled again."

The officer ran. Gregor determined to wait for a few seconds before he ordered more changes. Meanwhile, his twin set of orders and their countermands continued wiggling the mushroom's cap as ship captains and squadron commanders tried to reformulate the dome of attack.

The third attack was most real.

Sten shut the chatter of battle commands out of his mind and focused on the bridge's main battle screen.

He was attacking in a crescent formation. He would dearly have loved to have several hundred more units—the halfmoon was very thin. Necessarily so—Sten, hoping the Imperials would be stupid enough to think he was planning an envelopment, wanted the tips of the crescent spread beyond the Imperial defense dome's area.

The Imperial mushroom was looking a little ragged. Part of its cap was shifting toward the attackers. But a segment appeared not to have gotten the word and was restabilizing into normal convoy formation.

At the rear of the stem, the cruisers were deploying fairly efficiently, the base swinging up to cover the transports.

"Com! Are we linked?" Sten asked.

"All ships receiving."

"Sten to all ships. Standby on Longlance launch—as ordered."

"Waiting… waiting… all ships ready, sir."

"Countermeasures," he said to another officer. "What're they doing?"

"Their detectors have us… two… six launches made. Five ineffective… one acquired."

"Kilgour. Talk to me."

"Range closin't… seven seconds… three… mark!"

"All ships. Launch!"

Missiles spat from the Bhor fleet—but not at the same time. Sten had ordered a ripple fire from the rearmost ships forward. As the missiles cleared the forwardmost Bhor ships, weapons officers armed and aimed the ship-killers. There were not that many missiles launched—at least for a major battle—but all were meant to arrive on target at the same moment.

"Alex. I want that wedge between the heavies exploited. First section… individual control… acquire and launch when ready.

"Countermeasures! What're they doing?"

"B' Kholoric… not much!"

"Report, dammit!"

The Bhor tried his best to assume the role of an efficient, toneless Imperial officer. "Minor launches… most directed at incoming missiles. Correction. I have a mass launch. Central control is on overload."

On-screen, there were sparkles between the two closing fleets: operator-guided antiship missiles, Kali II's, most likely. They would be taken out—or they would hit. That was not part of what Sten should be thinking about.

He turned off the "but what if we're one of the unlucky ones" part of his mind and looked beyond the sparkles. He grinned suddenly and made a comment frowned on in Basic Admiral School.

"Kilgour! You owe me a stregg! The bastard's by-the-book!"

Gregor was, indeed. There were many possible responses to an envelopment. The best response would have been for Gregor to break the dome into a spearhead or even line formation and attack the center of Sten's fleet, break through the crescent—which was no more than two ships deep—circle, and destroy Sten's fleet in detail.