''We can never tell when we'll need to switch to a new random route. Face it, Nelly, they've got computers, too. And if they figure out one of your random sets, we need a backup and another, and another. Got it?''
''Yes, Your slave-driving Princessship,'' Nelly said.
Around the room, hands covered poorly suppressed grins. None of them referred to Kris as anything but Lieutenant. Aboard ship or ashore, she was Navy, never Princess, to her shipmates.
But what her own computer did to her… Well, that was a hoist of another petard.
''One more thing,'' Kris said. ''We've got 18-inch pulse lasers. They give out a quick, powerful burst of energy on our target. But there are no reloads. We have motors, not reactors that could refill our capacitors. It's one shot and then we're done.''
Heads nodded. They'd all read the manuals.
''We need to make sure that our shots do as much damage as they can. If we're coordinating our approaches, maybe we could do something else.''
Phil and Singh leaned close. Others folded their arms; they'd be a hard sell. Kris ignored her melting ice cream and got into sales mode.
''Thirty thousand kilometers to the target,'' Tom reported from his station on weapons at Kris's elbow. ''Close range for the secondary armament.''
And this close, the battlewagon's ranging and search systems, radar, lasers, magnetic and gravitational measurements would be picking up solid returns on even the tiny signatures of the fast patrol boats. Time to make their firing solutions as complicated as possible.
''Take the division up to three g's acceleration. Implement evasion scheme 1 on my mark,'' Kris ordered. ''Begin Foxing.'' She paused for the other boats to make ready, then ordered, ''Mark.''
Evasion scheme 1 was nothing if not more evasive. And now when each PF changed direction—more often, more wildly—it launched Foxing decoys as well. At each course change, a mist of iron needles, aluminum strips, and phosphorus pellets shot out just as the boat made the turn. The chaff showered out along the old course as the PF turned toward the battleship for a new course. For that fraction of a second, while the boat itself was nose on, the Foxer decoyed the radar, laser, infrared, and magnetic sensors into showing the boat on the same old course.
That was usually just long enough to get a shot off from the battleship's secondary lasers—at empty space.
The Foxer's chaff also gave color to the lasers as they cut through the space where your ship wasn't.
Unlike dances and fancy planet-bound fireworks shows, Navy lasers in space should show nothing. A hammer and tongs battle between a dozen ships of the line is a dark, silent affair with nothing more to show than when the ships are swinging around the station. At first, at least. For a while.
Then laser hits flash ice armor into steam that shoots off in jets that quickly freeze again. Those crystals catch laser light, reflect it, refract it, and turn horrible murder and butchery into something unspeakably lovely that the poets write about. If they survive. That artists try to capture in paint and steel and graphics for the rest of their lives. If they live to old age. Like twenty-five.
But PFs like Kris's had no ice to boil off. For them, the chaff created the living color that just might let them live.
''Wow. Did you see that?'' Fintch gaped at the main ahead screen for a moment as near misses lit up the decoys around them.
''Pass it along to all hands,'' Kris said. There was painfully little to do as they raced toward simulated death, their death or a battleship's. It was either done and done right, and all the crew had left to do was watch gauges stay in the green, or it was done poorly and they'd fail as badly as the other two divisions.
''Twenty thousand kilometers,'' Tom said. ''All four lasers are nominal and hot.''
''Division, go to evasion scheme 6. Prepare to execute evasion and attack on my mark,'' Kris said.
''Yeah. Go, girls,'' Nelly said, breaking her ordered quiet.
Kris waited, gave the division an extra count. Do it, Nelly.
The division scattered, going into a dance that left them high, low, and medium on the battlewagon. Then, after a series of twists and turns that left Kris's head bouncing off her headrest, it was time.
''Fire,'' Kris ordered. If Nelly had done her work right, the order was unnecessary, but this was Kris's command, and she'd give the order herself, thank you very much.
''Lasers firing,'' Tom yelled. ''All four away at sixteen thousand kilometers. All fired by the timer.''
''Begin escape evasion,'' Kris ordered. And held her breath.
Was the battleship still there? Blown up? Damaged but still fighting?
''Just what do you young rascals think you just did?'' came over the command channel. At least Commodore Mandanti was calling them rascals today, not hooligans.
''A coordinated attack, sir,'' Kris answered. It being Tuesday, she had the lead of the division, so it fell to her to explain just what they had decided to do, her and Phil and Chandra. Heather had gone along with them, though she had her doubts. They'd persuaded the tall redhead that the entire division had to do it if it was to work at all.
''Well, quit your bouncing around, put some decent deceleration on your boats, and explain to an old man who only happens to be your commanding officer just what this is that you call a coordinated attack, Lieutenant.''
''Yes, sir, cease evasive maneuvering. Rotate ship, begin deceleration at one point five g's. Motors, spread the radiators.'' When she got her replies, Kris took a deep breath and began the explanation she'd prepared for.
''Sir, an 18-inch pulse laser sounds mighty powerful when you read the book on it, but even the smallest battleship has a lot of ice armor, and it's rotating at a clip intended to prevent our laser from burning through in the short time that we're hitting their ice.''
''That's just part of the sad realities of being a mosquito boat skipper in a big-ship Navy.''
''Yes sir, but what if we hit the same spot on the battlewagon with two pulse lasers simultaneously?''
''There you go using that ‘we' again. Who am I talking to, a princess or a Navy Lieutenant?''
Kris gritted her teeth; the Commodore had only hit her with the princess gig two or three times. Kris was about to reply when she found she didn't have to.
''That ‘we,' sir, includes me,'' Phil said. ''And me,'' said Chandra. ''And me,'' said Heather. ''We all kind of figured,'' Phil went on, ''that there wasn't much good of going through all this risking of our fair young necks—''
''Or old ones,'' Chandra cut in.
''If we weren't going to leave some dead battlewagons lying around when we were done. As you saw, sir, by coordinating our approach evasion courses, we managed not to step into each other's paths and let your defense gunners get two hits for the price of one, or hit one when they were aiming at the other.
''Anyway, Kris suggested that if we coordinated our final approach, we might get some solid double hits on the battlewagon that would cut through the armor to the soft, chewy insides.''
Kris was content to leave the talking to Phil now. It seemed that the Navy Way included its own way of talking about murder and mayhem. Kids brought up Navy knew how to talk to their elders. Kris wasn't always sure the English she spoke did the job as well.
It was good to have Phil and Chandra along to translate.
''Hmm,'' came back. ''Well, then. I was going to give you credit for thirteen hits out of sixteen on the old target drone, but since you raised the stakes, let me see how many of your shots qualified as solid double hits.''
''Damn,'' Tom whispered beside Kris. ''I bet if the old man found a pile of presents under his Christmas tree, he'd first check to see if Saint Nick tracked in any reindeer dung.''
''Of course he would, Mr. Lien,'' came Chief Stanislaus over the ship's net. ''The Navy Way don't include having no reindeer crap all over the front parlor when visitors might come calling.''