I waited, trying not to sweat as the message traveled through emptiness to her ship, and she had time to digest it. No response came in for a long time. I began to worry. Many unpleasant scenarios went through my head. Was she trying to talk Welter and Miklos into joining her? Were they arguing-arresting one another? I was out of the loop, and it was agonizing.
I thought of a dozen things to transmit as another hour slipped by without a response. I recorded them, but when I listened to each statement afterward, I could only see that each one made me sound weak. I’d made my argument and given my orders. Prattling on and repeating myself would only remind people I wasn’t there to enforce my words. Command at a long distance was an art form. I wasn’t a master by any means, but I did know you didn’t want to sound needy.
In the end, the answer didn’t come in the form of a transmission. Instead, I witnessed things unfold directly. When Socorro made her banking course change and headed for Eden-9, the Star Force ships left orbit over Eden-11 and set out for the target world. All of them were moving, and all of them were flying with me into the teeth of the Macro fleet.
But even as I began to congratulate myself, a transmission came in from Sarin: “Colonel Riggs. You are not close enough to the forces to run this operation in real time. I request operational command.”
I thought about it for a minute or so, scowling. She had a strong point. If the tactical situation changed dramatically, I could hardly call the shots from several million miles away. Finally, I transmitted my response. “All right, Jasmine. You’ve always wanted a command role in a pitched battle. Well, now you’ve got it. Show me what you can do. Good luck.”
— 36
At first, the trick I’d played on the Nanos worked perfectly. It was hardly surprising. I’d pulled off similar deceptions in the past. These ships tended to be highly predictable. They had certain imperatives built into their software, and one of them was to attack threats immediately. This strategy worked well enough when the ships were in a single group, but when they were far apart and a threat was recognized, they would charge the enemy and arrive at different times. They were much easier to defeat that way, as it is always easier to fight three groups of ten ships at a time, rather than all thirty at once. We’d gotten around such problems back in the early days of Star Force by ordering the ships to attack distant targets, rather than the nearest ones. They accepted the order, as we were still attacking something. By switching targets, we were able to delay engaging with our ships until we were ready to mass up all our ships on a single target.
Their simplistic approach to tactics was a known weakness in the Nano ships. To fix the problem, the Blues had programmed them to pick up local command personnel to give them better ideas. That was how the whole business of kidnapping and testing people had started.
Right now, only one of the Nano ships had a commander-mine. For an experienced robot-baiter such as myself, it was a relatively easy matter to trick the ships into chasing Socorro. But I wasn’t sure how it would all turn out in the end. I wasn’t in direct command of this fleet, and I was forced to fly with them. When the moment of truth came, I hoped they would fight the Macros when they closed to within range. I wasn’t certain they would engage, however. One complication involved my own Star Force ships. We had to head toward the Macros now, and hit them soon after the Nano ships did in order to be most effective. If we waded into the battle too soon, the Nano ships might well start shooting at us instead of our joint enemy, the Macros. If we waited too long, the battle might be over before we arrived.
I sipped water in my ship and tried to relax while the final hours slid past. I wasn’t sure if I would live to see another day, but at least I was going to have a front row seat for all the action. A message came in over the command channel from Star Force when I was about an hour from the Macro line. Up until this point, the enemy had not moved their cruisers. They sat parked in orbit over Eden-9. I was pretty sure they wouldn’t stay there much longer.
“Colonel Riggs?” Miklos asked over a private channel. Our two fleets were close enough to talk with only a few seconds delay between transmissions.
“Miklos? What’s up over there? I see your ships moving toward the enemy. Tell me everything is all right.”
“Maybe sir, maybe. I’m calling about the local command structure. Rear Admiral Sarin has informed all the Fleet units she is in operational control of this action. Should I ignore her orders-or seek to remove her from command?”
I sat up straighter. “Negative, Miklos. That’s not how I wish you to proceed. You will obey her tactical orders in the coming action. I’m too far out, and I might not survive in any case. Sarin is in a better position to run the battle than I am.”
“But sir, please examine our formation. I don’t think she knows what she’s doing.”
I ordered Alamo to bring up a detailed positional diagram of our fleet. I pursed my lips as I regarded it. Instead of leading with the new gunships, she had the destroyers and her own cruiser on the front line. Behind this group came a widely-spread formation of gunships.
“I’ll talk to her,” I told Miklos, and broke the connection.
I cursed for a while in private, getting it out of my system. When I thought I could stay calm and polite, I requested a private channel with Sarin. After a long minute or two, she answered me.
“What is it Colonel? I’m very busy right now.”
“I’m sure you are. I wanted to go over the tactical formations with you, if you don’t mind.”
She hesitated. “Go over them? Are you suggesting you should take operational command again? I-”
“No,” I said. “Not until you’re dead or proven incompetent. But it always makes sense to discuss these things.”
“All right, here’s my plan. I’ve placed the laser armed ships on the front line, that way-”
“You do realize that the gunships have a much shorter effective range, right?”
“Of course,” she said, sounding miffed. “As I was saying, if they fire missiles at us during our approach, I want to have our laser ships forward to shoot them down. Before we engage, the laser-armed ships will brake and fall back. The gunships will accelerate into the front line and we’ll meet them with all our firepower maximized.”
I thought about it, and I liked it. “That sounds pretty good, Sarin. Thanks for the update. Carry on.”
“Thank you, Colonel,” she said, sounding pleased and prideful.
As the last minutes rolled slowly by, I was squirming in my chair. I thought of a thousand reasons to contact Sarin and tell her to make adjustments. I resisted these urges with difficulty. The problem was, the enemy had not yet released the expected barrage of missiles. This variation from expected behavior didn’t improve my mood. They had a plan, some kind of plan. They always did.
By the time we were closing in to tactical range, I had the nanites working overtime on the forward bulkhead. They depicted all three forces now as clusters of bumpy metal. The circle representing Eden-9 hung between us, under the watchful eye of the Macros, who had yet to move. Projected arcs showed the path the two attacking fleets were taking, and we were bearing down on the enemy fast. Two other groups of cruisers were coming this way too-but they would arrive after the battle had begun.
When the Macros finally made a move, we were all taken by surprise.