Her weapon was a small camera with a transmitter attached. A joke? No. Because she was human, and those clottin' Bhor never really...No. She was the only human. The other seven beings in this special detachment were Bhor-all of them just as homicidally angry as Cind.
She refused the order. The officer shrugged and ordered her confined to quarters. She relented but wanted to protest the assignment.
" 'Twill do you no good, woman."
"Why not? I've got rights!"
"So file a protest if you like. I was ordered to pick eight of my best shipboard fighters. Eight who were most likely to find themselves in the heart of battle. And eight who might survive the fray. I chose accordingly."
"Clot the compliments! I want to protest."
"As I said, protest as you like. The orders came directly from the Great Otho and Admiral Sten himself."
Cind recovered her chin from where it sat on her collarbone. Sten? Why this shaming?
No. Stop being a child. Sten was Sten.
There must be a reason.
If you can understand Sten's thinking, she told herself, then you may truly be on the Way of the Warrior.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The 23RD Imperial Fleet was attacked less than one ship's day from safety.
Once contact was made with Al-Sufi and the waiting reinforcements, Gregor relaxed. He ordered stand down from General Quarters. Modified Readiness—one third at combat stations—was the new status. The rest of the Imperial sailors were ordered to clean ship and themselves.
Gregor thought himself a humane commander and knew his troops would not want to port looking like tramps. Also, if there were livie cameras there, a formation of slobs would reflect poorly on Gregor himself.
The first attack came as Gregor was luxuriating in the fresher: "All Hands... Battle Stations... Raiders Attacking! "
Gregor found himself on the bridge wearing the full-dress white mess jacket he had laid out-and briefs. He quickly analyzed the screens.
"Sir, I've already ordered the formation shift toward the enemy's angle of attack as per your standing instructions."
Gregor swore at the Officer of the Deck and then punched up the ECM officer.
"Screen the attackers."
The man seemed puzzled, then touched keys slowly, as if he did not have his signal orders memorized as reflexes. Nothing happened. The attackers continued in, coming from the high forward port quadrant. He ran another program... the raiders vanished! Only two ships remained on-screen.
Gregor was about to scream at his flag officer and break the ECM officer when another alarm shrilled. Another formation was coming low forward center-the real attack. Gregor took command and ordered the battle formation shifted down toward the foe.
The mushroom cap seemed to spin as the battleships changed formation and their cruiser and destroyer screens followed. There were two collisions-a cruiser physically "brushed" a destroyer, and two destroyers slammed into one another. The cruiser had some survivors.
In the ECM center, the officer was still following orders and screening the attackers. On his fourth try, just as he was convinced that these were for real, the second set of raiders disappeared. Once more, two ships-the spoofers-remained.
There was a stunned silence on the bridge. Then alarms once more, and a third, larger, near-fleet-size attack began.
"Flag!"
"Sir."
"I want you in ECM. Make damned sure we aren't being fooled again."
The officer ran. Gregor determined to wait for a few seconds before he ordered more changes. Meanwhile, his twin set of orders and their countermands continued wiggling the mushroom's cap as ship captains and squadron commanders tried to reformulate the dome of attack.
The third attack was most real.
Sten shut the chatter of battle commands out of his mind and focused on the bridge's main battle screen.
He was attacking in a crescent formation. He would dearly have loved to have several hundred more units—the halfmoon was very thin. Necessarily so—Sten, hoping the Imperials would be stupid enough to think he was planning an envelopment, wanted the tips of the crescent spread beyond the Imperial defense dome's area.
The Imperial mushroom was looking a little ragged. Part of its cap was shifting toward the attackers. But a segment appeared not to have gotten the word and was restabilizing into normal convoy formation.
At the rear of the stem, the cruisers were deploying fairly efficiently, the base swinging up to cover the transports.
"Com! Are we linked?" Sten asked.
"All ships receiving."
"Sten to all ships. Standby on Longlance launch—as ordered."
"Waiting... waiting... all ships ready, sir."
"Countermeasures," he said to another officer. "What're they doing?"
"Their detectors have us... two... six launches made. Five ineffective... one acquired."
"Kilgour. Talk to me."
"Range closin't... seven seconds... three... mark!"
"All ships. Launch!"
Missiles spat from the Bhor fleet—but not at the same time. Sten had ordered a ripple fire from the rearmost ships forward. As the missiles cleared the forwardmost Bhor ships, weapons officers armed and aimed the ship-killers. There were not that many missiles launched—at least for a major battle—but all were meant to arrive on target at the same moment.
"Alex. I want that wedge between the heavies exploited. First section... individual control... acquire and launch when ready.
"Countermeasures! What're they doing?"
"B' Kholoric... not much!"
"Report, dammit!"
The Bhor tried his best to assume the role of an efficient, toneless Imperial officer. "Minor launches... most directed at incoming missiles. Correction. I have a mass launch. Central control is on overload."
On-screen, there were sparkles between the two closing fleets: operator-guided antiship missiles, Kali II's, most likely. They would be taken out—or they would hit. That was not part of what Sten should be thinking about.
He turned off the "but what if we're one of the unlucky ones" part of his mind and looked beyond the sparkles. He grinned suddenly and made a comment frowned on in Basic Admiral School.
"Kilgour! You owe me a stregg! The bastard's by-the-book!"
Gregor was, indeed. There were many possible responses to an envelopment. The best response would have been for Gregor to break the dome into a spearhead or even line formation and attack the center of Sten's fleet, break through the crescent—which was no more than two ships deep—circle, and destroy Sten's fleet in detail.
But that would have meant leaving his transports unguarded except by the cruiser force. No doubt this Imperial admiral had read of Cannae. But there was a big difference: Sten was not Hannibal, nor did he have any heavy infantry to slam the horns of the crescent shut and trap the attacker.
Instead, the admiral was putting his fleet on-line. It was counterenvelopment evidently, such as the Turks should have used at Lepanto. Not bad. It would, in time, destroy the Bhor fleet. In time.
The gap that formed when the Imperial formation was still in its dome remained as ships clouded toward the new formation, ready for Sten to exploit.
"All ships," Sten ordered. He was broadcasting in clear, having no time for codes or the polyglot spoken on the Bhor bridges. He hoped that the Imperial admiral's response time would continue as laggardly as it had so far.
"Standing by, sir."
"I want a blink on that hole in the Imperial formation," he ordered another com officer. "To all ship screens. Now."