Duellos grinned as the watch-standers on the bridge let out cries of approval.
Geary designated the three battle cruisers as Formation Alpha, then paused to look over the situation carefully before calling the maneuvers. The large, unwieldy formation of refugee ships and Alliance escorts was still a bit over three light-hours from the inhabited world, which orbited only seven and a half light-minutes from the star. If Batara had been Sol, the home star of Old Earth, that would have rendered the planet uncomfortably hot for humanity, but Batara’s star burned a bit less fiercely, so the planet was only warm by human standards. Because the planet orbited so much closer to the star, the progress of the Alliance and refugee ships appeared to be aimed just slightly to the left of the star at this point.
What Geary now designated Flotilla One, the two light cruisers and four HuKs near that planet, was also directly ahead of the Alliance ships but light-hours distant.
Only fifteen light-minutes off the starboard bows of the Alliance ships were the battleship and its escorts, which Geary designated Flotilla Two. The battleship flotilla was coming in from the right as seen from Inspire, aiming to intercept the refugee ships as they headed inward. Because the enemy ships were on a direct intercept—even though the paths of the ships formed a huge arc across space—their bearing relative to the refugee ships would not change as the enemy drew closer and closer. To the freighters, the battleship would remain off their bows, but grow steadily and implacably larger as the distance between the ships shrank.
The super-Earth planet ahead of the Alliance formation had already crossed just beneath the Alliance ships’ vector, orbiting oblivious to the tiny actions of humans. By the time the Alliance ships themselves reached the path of that orbit, the planet would be slightly off to their left and moving away at the relatively sedate pace of about twenty kilometers per second as it swung around the star. If there were also enemy warships hiding behind that planet, they would spring out at the right time and come at the refugee ships from the front and left.
Whoever set this up did some clever planning. If we had just barreled in and reacted to each attack as it developed we would have been in a real mess by the time that third attack force appeared. “Inspire, Formidable, and Implacable, this is Admiral Geary. You are now Formation Alpha. Our task is to take out that battleship. At time five zero, come port two seven degrees, down zero two degrees, accelerate to point one five light speed. Geary, out.”
A few minutes later, Geary felt Inspire swing to the right. The command port meant to turn away from the star, whereas starboard or starward meant turning toward the star. Upon arrival in the star system, the Alliance warships had automatically designated one side of the plane in which the planets orbited as up and the other as down. It was all extremely arbitrary, a human system for establishing mutually understood directions of right and left, up and down, in space where such things didn’t exist. If he had told Formidable to turn “right” the other battle cruiser might have swung in a direction one hundred and eighty degrees different from that of Inspire. But with the star just off to the left of the ships’ bows, everyone knew which direction turning away meant.
Inspire’s main propulsion kicked in at full power, the force of the acceleration causing the ship’s inertial dampers to whine in protest. Geary felt himself being pressed back into his seat as some of that force leaked past the dampers. No other warship could accelerate like a battle cruiser, which carried more propulsion than a battleship but also sacrificed much of the armor, shield generators, and weaponry that loaded down the battleships. Battle cruisers were designed to get where they were needed fast with a lot of firepower. They weren’t designed to tangle with battleships.
Geary watched the vector for the battle cruisers lengthen dramatically as they charged toward the battleship.
“One hour and ten minutes to contact with Flotilla Two,” Inspire’s operations watch reported. “Remaining distance twenty nine point seven light-minutes. Closing rate point two seven light.”
“They’re coming on at point one two light,” Duellos commented to Geary. “They won’t slow down to fight us.”
“No. I don’t think they will,” Geary agreed. “They want to get to those refugee ships and force us into desperate attacks to protect those ships. We’ll brake before contact to bring the engagement speed below point two light.” Above that velocity, distortion in the appearance of space caused by relativity got too bad for human-designed systems to compensate, rendering an already very difficult fire-control problem almost impossible.
“How are we going to do this?” Duellos asked after about a minute of silence.
“I’m still working on that.”
“The captain of that battleship is Syndic,” Duellos mused. “By-the-book thinking and behavior.”
“Unless he or she is a rebel, in which case a more creative and unconventional junior officer might have suddenly been propelled into the position of captain,” Geary said. “You remember what some of the former Syndic officers in the rebellious forces at Midway were like.”
“That is something to worry about,” Duellos conceded. “However, those former Syndics at Midway were experienced at ship handling. They hadn’t been in the war zone facing the Alliance, dying in battle almost as fast as they arrived. Any Syndics here are the survivors of the last battles in the war, and any fighting since then. They probably have minimal training and not much experience.”
“All right,” Geary said. “I agree that’s probable.”
“And they’ve got four escorts tucked in very close, which would worry even a skilled, experienced ship driver.”
“They’ll use automated maneuvering as well as having the escorts’ maneuvering systems slaved to their own?” Geary asked.
“I think it’s pretty certain. We need to outthink that automated system, what it will do when it sees us coming toward the stern of that battleship.”
There were circumstances in which an hour and ten minutes could feel like a very long time. But not when racing toward an encounter with an enemy battleship.
Geary tried tactic after tactic, approach after approach, as he ran sims, knowing that Captain Duellos and his crew were doing the same, trying out every option. Since the battle cruisers’ superior ability to accelerate and maneuver compared to the battleship was their primary advantage, he kept pushing the velocity of encounters as high as possible. But each time the velocity of the battle cruisers went up, the complications got bigger as well. Higher velocity meant larger turn radii, which were already huge at the speeds warships traveled. It also made it harder to change vectors in short distances or times, and if they were going to counter the attempts of the battleship to pivot against their attacks, they would have to make significant last-moment changes in their approaches.
Geary sat back, glowering at his display in frustration. He was reaching to try another sim, one that pushed encounter velocity a little higher, when his hand paused in midmotion. Why am I only thinking in terms of going faster? Why am I locked into focusing on that one advantage? Because while intercepting that battleship as quickly as possible is necessary, is making the actual encounter at higher speeds a good thing? The sims keep telling me it isn’t. Instead of beating my head against a wall that just gets harder, why not try the opposite approach and see what happens?
He cut the velocity of the encounter dramatically, enough so that the necessary braking maneuvers required far more time than he was comfortable with. But when the sim ran, he had partial success this time.