“More suicide attacks?” Geary asked. With the new warships fairly close and accelerating toward intercept, they were only about twenty minutes from getting within range of his ships. And his fleet was still crawling along at point zero zero three light speed, putting them at a disadvantage. “All units in First Fleet, immediate execute increase velocity to point one light speed. The warships approaching us are assessed hostile. You are authorized to engage and destroy them if they enter your weapons envelopes.”
Another transmission, this one on standard coordination and emergency frequencies. “To the unknown warships approaching the formation of the Alliance First Fleet, you are forbidden to approach within weapons range of any Alliance ship. If you come close enough to engage, we will fire upon you and take all other necessary measures to defend ourselves. There will be no further warnings.”
And what were the Dancers up to?
The six Dancer ships were doing loops around Invincible while matching the movements of the massive Kick superbattleship as Invincible was towed along with the fleet. Whatever the reasons for their actions, as long as they stay close to Invincible, and Invincible is kept deep inside the Alliance formation, I don’t have to worry too much about the Dancers.
Desjani shook her head, her expression bleak. “Normally, it would be hard as hell to stop a heavy cruiser on a suicide run. But with us starting out so slow and them accelerating from so close, our engagement velocity will be way under point two light. With the amount of firepower we can bring to bear, we’ll massacre them.”
“That bothers you?” Geary asked, startled.
“I don’t mind killing Syndics. But I don’t enjoy the idea of people ordered to kill themselves by bosses who are a long, long ways off and perfectly safe.”
Yet another alert, calling attention to a high-priority message. Geary saw who it was from and hit the accept command.
Jane Geary looked out at him. “Admiral, what if this isn’t a suicide attack? What if those warships intend to survive?”
That was the entire message. Geary frowned at where Jane Geary’s image had been. “Tanya?”
Desjani frowned as well. “If they intend to survive? The only way they could do that— Damn! They’d hit some unit or units that are exposed on the edge of our formation.”
Geary’s surprised check of his formation revealed that he had plenty of those in the region where the Alpha and Bravo warship groups were headed. Several destroyers and light cruisers were on the outer boundary of the formation, screening higher-value units farther inside the formation. But if those destroyers and light cruisers were themselves the targets, they were dangerously exposed. Even those small groups of Syndic ships could take out a destroyer or two in a single pass if they concentrated their fire on one Alliance ship on the outside of the fleet’s formation.
“It looks like you were right, Tanya.” Changing tactics aimed at slowly wearing down this fleet, taking it down piece by piece and ship by ship, until it was weak enough for the Syndics to try a conventional attack to finish off the remnants. “The Syndics can’t hide in space the way ground forces can on a planet, but they’re still trying to keep us off-balance with constantly shifting threats and tactics.”
There was no time to call out individual ships or plan maneuvers on the display. “Fourth Destroyer Squadron, Seventeenth Destroyer Squadron, Tenth Light Cruiser Squadron, immediate execute turn port zero… three zero degrees. Eighth Heavy Cruiser Division, immediate execute turn starboard zero one zero degrees.”
It would take precious seconds for the command to reach the ships, then more seconds for the orders to be understood and carried out. He could only hope that there would be enough seconds left to make a difference, and that these sudden alterations of position among those ships would not expose the formation as a whole to greater damage if the Syndics really did try suicide runs again.
“She really is a Geary,” Desjani murmured in admiring tones as she watched her own display. “The rest of us were thinking about what had happened last time, but she thought about what could happen this time.”
“What does that make me?” Geary asked, mentally lashing himself for not seeing what Jane had, for making assumptions about what the enemy would do, for being—
“Not perfect,” Desjani replied. “And smart enough to listen when someone reminds you that you might have missed something.”
Watching the two groups of new warships racing to meet his formation as it climbed above the plane of the star system, Geary could not find much comfort in her words. The exposed destroyers and light cruisers were moving, their vectors curving in toward the mass of the formation, while the warships of the heavy cruiser division nearest those destroyers and light cruisers were curving out slightly to help cover them. Had he acted in time, had Jane Geary’s suggestion been right, what would the Syndics actually do…
Groups Alpha and Bravo shot past the Alliance formation, their tracks changing at the last moment to curve outward, weapons slamming shots toward the Alliance light cruiser that was still most exposed.
“Pectoral took a hit through her shields,” Lieutenant Yuon announced. “Minor damage. One hell lance off-line.”
Groups Alpha and Bravo were still turning, arcing up and over in a maneuver Geary knew very well. “They’re going to make another run.”
Another alert pulsed on his display.
“Groups Cable and Delta are accelerating onto intercept courses,” Lieutenant Castries said.
Geary glowered at his display, knowing his options were limited. If I send a pursuit force after any of those groups, I expose that pursuit force to attack by the other three groups while the group it targets avoids contact. If my pursuit force is strong enough to handle that threat, it will be too slow to catch the highly maneuverable groups of Syndic warships, and it will weaken my main formation.
Tanya was watching him, confident he would order some sort of pursuit, but Geary shook his head. “They’ve got us reacting to them. They want me to send ships out of the formation to chase them. I’m going to do the opposite, to give us time to think.”
The necessary formation was the oldest in the book, a sphere. But he needed to designate where his units would go on the surface of that sphere, and how large it would be. “Armadillo,” he told Desjani.
“What?”
“Formation Armadillo.”
“Is that real?” She entered the request, then started in surprise. “Are you serious? A perfect sphere? That formation is—”
“Lousy. It disperses firepower. Against a strong opponent, it’s a disaster because the opponent can concentrate against any point on the sphere. But if your opponent is a lot weaker than you, it offers no vulnerable points to attack. Everything is equally well defended.”
“We’re going on the defensive?” she asked, her voice growing sharp. “They’ll see this and think we’re afraid. They’ll think we’re curling up in a fright ball and too scared to fight them. The fleet won’t understand that kind of behavior before the enemy.”
He felt a stab of anger at her tone of voice and the pointed questions she was asking. “Yes, Captain Desjani, we are going on the defensive until I have time to think and evaluate what’s going on in this star system. We are going to frustrate the Syndic tactics aimed at destroying our escorts, and we’re going to frustrate whatever plans the Syndics have to stampede me into making decisions.”