“Thank you, Madam President. Do you wish to transfer—?”
“No. I will remain aboard this ship.”
Mercia nodded to Marphissa. “Let’s show them what a real battleship can do.”
“Stand by for maneuvering orders,” Marphissa said, then ended the call.
“I wouldn’t have thought of that,” Kontos confessed. “The battleships are so slow, I think I stopped thinking about them as anything but defensive assets.”
She shook her head at him. “The trick is getting the enemy to bash his head against your strongest point, right? These enigmas think they know us, but what they know is the Syndicate.”
The enigmas had begun braking as well. Both forces were sweeping together for a first clash that might well decide who would triumph.
“You’re in command?” Rogero asked as he knelt in the ruins of a portable command shelter littered with the remains of those who had been in the shelter when the initial enigma attack hit. Most of his soldiers had fallen back to this area, only some scouts remaining to watch the enigma hole for signs of new trouble.
The Syndicate soldier facing him nodded, the gesture wobbling with weariness. “Senior Worker Hams. All of our supervisors are dead, either in the first attack or soon afterward. Are you who I talked to before you landed? You sound like him.”
Rogero nodded. “Yes. What about snakes?”
Hams managed a snort of laughter. “All dead. Some were just wounded in the first strike, but they, uh, didn’t survive their wounds. We made sure of that. What the hell are we fighting?”
“They’re called enigmas. We know very little about them. But we’ve now learned they are very tough in ground combat situations.”
“Yeah.” Hams lowered his head, then raised it again with some difficulty. “We’re about one-third strength, I think. Lost a lot of people.”
“How are the citizens?” Rogero asked.
“Most of them are all right. They were separated from the ground forces and wearing nothing but survival suits, so the enemy weapons haven’t targeted them.”
A warning sounded on Rogero’s armor. He and Worker Hams lay flat as another major barrage by the enigmas swept over the area.
“How long can they keep this up?” Hams asked despairingly as the assault waned again. “We’ve got nobody to shoot at. Just distance weapons tearing us up.”
“Can your people pull back?” Rogero asked. “We’re still sitting over what may be part of their base.”
“We are? Damned CEOs! Why did they drop—”
“Answer,” Rogero snapped, knowing the Syndicate-standard command would shock Hams out of his fatigue-induced rage.
“I understand and will comply.” Hams gestured to his right. “If your unit helps, we can move. Cover us, help us get the wounded moved. We can do it. But the citizens… the aliens haven’t targeted them yet. If they start moving, though…”
That was a problem. Rogero wished he could rub his forehead through his helmet visor, but the atmosphere of this wreck of a planet was even more toxic than usual thanks to all of the enigma weapons that had detonated in this area. “How many of your supplies are left? My people need active countermeasure reloads and replacement power packs.”
Hams lowered his head again, shaking it slowly from side to side. “Nothing. All blown to pieces. The shuttles just dropped it all over the place, and the enemy weapons have been tearing it up ever since they opened fire. Sir, we’re gone. It’s over. Right? Nobody’s coming for us.”
“Wrong,” Rogero said, as calmly and forcefully as he could. “My side has a flotilla up there, including a battleship.”
“A battleship?” The hope in the question was easy to hear. “But we’re just workers—”
“Listen. One of our heavy cruisers risked itself to pull three workers off this planet who had survived the attack that destroyed the Syndicate base here. You understand? They weren’t our people. They weren’t supervisors. They were just workers who needed help. And our mobile forces came for them. They’ll come for us, too, and they’ll pull you off with us.” Rogero made that sound as if it were a certainty. And it would be, if the Midway flotilla survived the fights with the enigmas and the pirate.
Hams stayed silent, looking at Rogero. “Sir, that’s… hard to believe.”
“Two of them came back with my unit. They volunteered to come back. You can talk to them. But first, I need you to tell everyone in your unit that all humans down here are on the same side.”
“Sir, you could have wiped us out if you wanted. I surrender the unit.”
“I don’t want you to surrender, I need you to keep fighting alongside my soldiers! Can you do that?”
Hams nodded. “I understand and will comply.” He sounded a lot steadier now. “Let me get the word out.”
“Go.” Rogero settled back against a broken section of portable wall, breathing deeply and trying to believe that they still had a chance.
Chapter Sixteen
Marphissa held her flotilla’s vectors as the enigmas arced slightly down and starward and her own force curved to meet them, rising slightly and angling a little bit to port. Having slowed to point one light speed, the warships had pivoted again so that their bows faced toward the enemy once more. It was a textbook approach to an engagement, technically perfect and totally lacking in imagination.
“All units,” Marphissa broadcast. “Turn up zero one point five degree at time three seven.” It was a very minor adjustment, but given the speeds being traveled and the distances covered, it would produce a significant change in the projected encounter. “Engage targets as they enter weapon envelopes.”
When two formations were closing at a combined rate of sixty thousand kilometers per second, the enemy went from a very distant speck to right there in what felt like a moment of time. But even that was a bit of illusion created by the human mind. The ships were moving so fast relative to each other that they were never actually seen when close. They were far ahead, then far behind.
But in that instant, Marphissa felt a thrill of elation as she realized she had guessed right. The enigmas had assumed her formation would not shift its vector.
The enigmas had run head-on into the firepower of a human battleship, while the battle cruiser Pele and the heavy cruisers Basilisk and Kraken skimmed the top of the enigma formation, only targeted by the enigma warships there and able to concentrate their fire on that same fraction of the alien armada.
Marphissa blinked, her eyes fixed on her display as the sensors on her ships evaluated a combat engagement whose duration was measured in much less than a second. Humans had not pulled any triggers in that engagement since their reflexes were far too slow. Only automated fire control systems could choose targets and fire in the time allowed. But with so little time to hit the enemy, the awesome firepower of the Midway had been in its element.
Thirty-three enigma warships had entered the engagement. Twelve of those in the center of the enigma formation had been blown to pieces by Midway’s broadside. A half-dozen others were staggering from damage inflicted by the battleship.
On top of the enigma formation, five more enigma warships had been knocked out by the combined fire of Pele, Basilisk, and Kraken.
Even the battleship’s shields hadn’t been sufficient to shrug off the enigma return fire, though, and in some places her armor had also been penetrated. Marphissa waited tensely as damage reports scrolled down, seeing that nothing critical had been hit on Midway. Pele had taken several hits, one knocking out a hell lance battery and another spearing through the shuttle hangar, but was still in fine combat shape, while the other ships in the Midway flotilla had suffered only minor damage as the enigmas tried to take out the human capital ships.