We flew on for hours. Slowly, we were gaining on the enemy. We ran the numbers, and double-checked them. Our smaller ships were faster than their cruisers. We were going to catch them before they could reach the ring and fly through it.
“Maybe we should slow down, sir,” Captain Miklos suggested.
I gave him a disgusted look.
“No, no, sir. I don’t say this out of cowardice. I’m simply suggesting we let the enemy hit the minefield at the Tyche ring at full speed before we get into range to finish off their damaged ships.”
I nodded. “A reasonable suggestion,” I said. “Yes, the more I think about it, the more I like it. Helmsman, ease-off to three-quarters velocity and relay the command to the rest of the fleet. We’ll hang back just a little and hope they don’t know what they’re running into.”
The chase went on for two solid days. When the Macros finally reached the Tyche ring, they did something unexpected. They fired a barrage of missiles.
“Missiles launched!” shouted the weapons officer.
“Count?”
“About twenty, sir. Make that thirty.”
“Scatter the fleet,” I ordered.
“Second barrage sir, pulsed thirty seconds after the first.”
“One mile between ships,” I said. “Globular formation, relay and execute. How long do we have before they hit us?”
“No estimate yet, sir. But at this distance, we’ll have less than half an hour.”
I watched the screens tensely, as did every commander in the fleet. The battle monitors slowly filled with a crowded mass of tiny red contacts. The contacts finally moved a pixel, and I raised my eyebrows in surprise. The two clouds of missiles were not moving toward us.
“They didn’t fire at us?”
“No sir,” the weapons officer replied. “They seem to have fired—at the ring, sir.”
I stared at the screens and frowned. I couldn’t find any fault with the information I was receiving.
“They know about the mines,” Captain Miklos said. His voice sounded dead and distant. I surmised he’d been hoping for an easy end to this.
“Yes,” I agreed, reviewing the data. The enemy was laying down a blast pattern directly in front of their advancing ships. They intended to destroy the mines we had floating in a tight cluster around the Tyche ring. Either that, or they meant to blow up the ring itself.
In either case, I was less than happy.
“Increase our speed,” I ordered. “Push the engines up to one hundred percent, and tighten up our formation again.”
“Is that wise, sir?”
I looked at Miklos. I wanted to ask him what had happened to the bravado I’d witnessed in him the last time I’d been aboard his vessel. Perhaps that was the answer right there. We’d had some close calls last time I’d flown with him. Maybe he’d had time to think about his mortality and realize how close we’d come to destruction on that occasion. Or perhaps, he’d had a few bad moments serving under Crow when they’d chased down and taken out the dreadnaught. Fleet had lost some good crews that day. In any case, he’d become overly-cautious. It was a common enough problem among my new officers.
“We’re going after them, Captain. Give the damned order.”
He did so without further comment. I thought his face was slightly red over his beard. Perhaps he felt a little embarrassed by his hints that we should slow down. If that was the case, I was glad. The first step toward real bravery was to admit you were afraid of the enemy.
God knew this enemy was worthy of our fears.
-43-
The first barrage exploded just short of the ring, punching a hole in the minefield we had waiting for them in front of the opening. The second barrage charged through that pall of vapor and vanished. Presumably, those missiles exploded on the far side of the ring to destroy the twin minefield we had placed in the Alpha Centauri system. Macro Command had learned a thing or two about our tactics, and responded accordingly.
I now felt sure this was one of the reasons they’d managed their missile supplies so closely. They knew they needed the missiles to destroy our minefields, if nothing else. It was enough to make me grind my teeth in frustration. These Macro ships weren’t dying. They were slipping away, and I knew that the further they got from Earth the greater the temptation would be to let them go, to allow them to leave us and slip away into the vast dark of space. The problem with that was they could return at any time, with fresh ships and fresh ideas on how to defeat us.
“Colonel,” Captain Miklos said. “If we are going to slow down, or change course, we need to do it now.”
I didn’t look at him. I sighed instead. Things were not going as planned.
“Sir?” Miklos prompted. “Any orders? Or are we just going to blast right through after them?”
“I should have maintained my velocity.”
“What?”
“I made a mistake,” I said. I didn’t add by listening to you, but I was thinking it. “I should have caught them before they reached the ring and engaged them. Now, they’ve made it through the ring first. They could be laying mines in front of us on the far side.”
Miklos looked alarmed. He nodded, acknowledging the possibility. “They could be,” he agreed. “Or maybe they will hit the brakes, wait for us to zoom through, and fire every missile they have left into our faces.”
I nodded slowly, but gave no orders.
“Decelerate, Colonel,” Miklos said urgently. “We’ll pull up to the ring and send through a few scouting ships. When we know the situation on the far side, we can fly after them safely—if that is the best course.”
I drummed armored fingers on the command chair. Metal struck metal in a repeating pattern, making a rhythmic, ringing sound. The helmsman turned and frowned at me in irritation. I ignored him. The drumming helped me think.
“No,” I said at last. I stopped drumming, and watched the helmsman relax in visible relief.
“Helmsman, reduce speed by ten percent. Relay that to the fleet. Tighten up the formation more. We’ll fly through in a column.”
“Fly through, sir?” Captain Miklos asked nervously. “I thought we—”
“You thought wrong, Captain. I know the Macros. I know how they think. If they want to ambush us, they’ll do it by firing a barrage in our faces. They’ll do it by timing us, so we can’t get out of the way. Slowing down by ten percent will make us hit the ring several minutes late. Their missiles, if they fire any, will come through the ring to hit us at our last projected speed and course. If we don’t see them show up, there aren’t going to be any.”
Miklos flopped back into his chair in defeat. He relayed the orders without further complaint. Did he think himself a doomed man with a mad commander? It was quite possible he was right on both counts.
“Let me explain myself, Captain,” I said. “I know we are taking a risk, but the enemy can’t be allowed to escape us if at all possible. This force of cruisers knows our tactics. They may well do a great deal of damage to our biotic friends in the Helios and Eden systems. Almost as importantly, we have to press home the advantage we have now. I don’t want to fight these ships again as part of a larger force at a later date. I don’t want them to rearm, form up with another dreadnaught, or even report home. I want to knock them out while they are weak. I want to get the most we can out of this victory.”
“We’ve driven them from our home system,” Captain Miklos said reasonably. “Isn’t that enough?”
“No. It really isn’t. We need more. We need to hurt them, and we must take risks to do so. We are the underdogs in this war, Captain. Don’t ever doubt it. Possibly, the entire affair is hopeless. What if they have thousands of systems and millions of ships? Perhaps we are fleas on a T-Rex.”