Sula pushed him away. She heard the twanging sound as he rebounded off the bars of her acceleration cage.
“Display!” she called. “Cancel virtual!”
The limitless space of the virtual display was replaced by the soft lights and close confines of Command. Ikuhara, clumsy in his vac suit, floated over her couch. His face was a mirror of concern mingled with a touch of fear.
Something dark floated in the air between them, something round and shiny like little marbles.
“What the hell’s going on?” Sula demanded.
“Acceleration canceled,” Ikuhara said. “Health risk to an officer.”
At quarters the state of the crew was constantly monitored by detectors in their sensor caps. Any threat to the health of the crew—any cerebral hemorrhage, blood pressure spike, or heart malfunction—was monitored, and action taken in accordance with a preset program. If enlisted crew stroked out during a battle or even an exercise, it was usually the pulpy’s hard luck; but a threat to an officer could shut down the engines.
“Who was it?” Sula said. She’d have him off her ship the second they could shuttle the invalid away to a nice safe desk job, preferably on the most distant planet available.
Ikuhara’s expression suggested that he was suffering some gastroenteric malady. “You, my lady,” he said. “Your blood pressure was extremely high and—”
“Right,” Sula said. “Get back on your couch, I’m fine now.”
“You have a nosebleed, my lady.”
She put a hand to her nose and felt the wet. A blob of blood detached itself from her nose and joined the others in the air, a formation of perfect spheres. She could taste the blood running—floating—down the back of her throat.
“I’ll deal with it,” she said. She looked at the displays before her. “Haz!” she cried.
“Yes, my lady.”
“Light the engines! What is thisinsanity about cutting the engines completely during a battle, for all’s sake?”
She groped for a tissue in the necessity bag webbed to the couch.
“It was programmed, my lady.”
“Engine startup in fifteen, my lady,” said Engineer First Class Markios.
“Accelerate at three gravities.” Sula jammed a tissue to her nose.
“I am in command, my lady,” Haz said in her ear. “Your blood pressure is still—”
“It isn’t, and you’re not,” Sula said. “Three gravities, Engines.”
“Yes, my lady,” Markios said smoothly.
She enlarged her biomonitor display and saw that her blood pressure was returning rapidly to something like normal. Her heart rattled in her chest with fear, but at least it wasn’t in the process of giving her a stroke.
This had happened to her once before, at First Magaria. There might, she thought with a burning resentment, be something wrong with her heart or its wiring that would make it impossible for her to stand high gees.
Make it impossible to do her job.
The engines caught and snarled. The droplets of blood in the air fell like hail, and spattered the breast of her vac suit.
Gravities swung Sula’s couch through a series of decreasing arcs. Her blood pressure elevated slightly with the gravities, but within acceptable limits.
Other lights flashed on her display. She enlarged them and saw a big radiation spike, then another.
Somewhere in the radio darkness of the plasma bubble, missiles were finding targets.
Martinez held his breath. Only six of the nine ships belonging to Light Squadron 17 had flown out of the great furnace of plasma and sundered matter that had concealed them for several nerve-wringing minutes. A glance at the shifting sphere dictated by the Martinez Method showed gaps in the formation. Sula seemed to have lost a third of her command.
He wondered if Sula had been lost along with them.
And then a seventh ship flew out of the great dissipating bubble. The others regrouped, adjusting their formation to their new number, arranging around the late arrival like a flock of angry geese around an injured comrade.
Martinez sent out orders. He had isolated a pair of enemy and had them ready for the kill, but now he ordered Squadron 31 to shift in the other direction, toward Sula’s squadron and the enemy they were engaging. He wasn’t going to let the Naxids take advantage of the disorder in her squadron.
The Naxids seemed startled by this unexpected movement, and scattered before his advance. The two ships he’d cut off were too isolated to take advantage of their sudden reprieve.
Squadron 17, once it had resumed its formation, made a similar movement, toward him. It had likewise cut off a pair of enemy, and likewise ignored them.
Martinez and Sula now found themselves with scattered enemy between their two fires. The two loyalist squadrons moved, dodged, fired. It was as if, without communicating with one another, they were moving in accordance with some higher version of Sula’s formula, one that encompassed the whole battle.
Martinez felt a stream of astonishment and delight. It was as if he and Sula were reading one another’s minds.
The ships darted like swallows.
Sulahad to be alive, he thought. No one else had the kind of genius that so thoroughly complimented his own.
The combat was like a ballet.
It was like telepathy.
It was like great sex.
Naxid ships flamed and died. The few that remained were scattered, and the loyalists could pick them off whenever they wanted.
Only the converted transports and the squadron facing Michi was still putting up resistance. Michi was fighting the Naxid heavy cruisers, better armed and better able to defend themselves, and though she’d destroyed four of them, she’d lost two of her own.
“Message to Captain Tantu,” Martinez said. “Take Division One and go after the converted transports. End message.”
Division 1 was four ships, including the two light cruisers. Division 2 was five frigates, includingCourage, and he was going to take it to Michi’s relief.
After expressing brief thanks for having at least half of his old command back, Tantu ordered his ships into a heavy acceleration for the transports, regrouping into a separate Martinez Method formation as he went.
Martinez swung his own five ships away from Sula’s squadron, rolling down on the Naxid heavies. Joy danced in his heart as he saw Sula detach four of her own ships and roll away from him with the remaining three, coming to Michi’s aid.
The Naxid heavies didn’t last long, attacked from three directions and by superior numbers. After that, ignoring the few Naxid warships that still danced around the perimeter of the fight, all of Chenforce went after the converted transports with everything they had.
The big ships didn’t last long either, particularly once they’d starburst. They were configured for offense, and their defensive abilities left a lot to be desired. In addition, Michi’s antiproton cannon kept blowing big chunks off them.
After that, the remaining Naxid warships were hunted down, one after another, and dispatched.
An anthem of triumph began to thunder in Martinez’s veins.
Chenforce had lost four ships to the enemy’s forty. His Squadron 31 had lost none.
In the course of the war, in the battles in which he’d either commanded a squadron or had an influence on the tactics, he had lost only one ship, at Protipanu.
He was as proud of that as of the victories themselves.
He didn’t count Second Magaria, where his advice had been ignored.
Tork could have that one, if he wanted it.
Before the last sphere of plasma had cooled and dispersed, Michi called for a simultaneous conference between herself and Chandra, Martinez, and Sula.