He cut the velocity more. He tried some options.
He smiled.
Duellos noticed. “I hope that means you’ve found something.”
“We can’t let the battle cruisers use their acceleration for the fastest possible attacks,” Geary explained.
“We can’t—?” Duellos peered at Geary. “What? That’s why they’re battle cruisers.”
“That’s how we usually employ them. Fast approaches and fast attacks. But what we need here is a slow approach.” Geary pulled up his most successful try. “Look. We come in at a slow relative velocity, aiming for sequential firing runs on the battleship’s stern. He starts pivoting to turn his stern away from us. He has to do that. Once he commits his maneuvering thrusters and momentum to that pivot, we use the battle cruisers’ superior capabilities to alter the order in which they attack. That completely changes how the battleship wants to be oriented to counter each individual firing run.”
Duellos nodded, smiling with satisfaction as well. “He’ll see our vector changes, and start trying to change his pivot. But he’s got so much mass and momentum driving it at that point, and has less ability to alter how he’s moving, so we can readjust faster than he can.” His smile faded. “But at those relative velocities, our ships will make much better targets for him if he can bring enough firepower to bear.”
“If we can keep our approaches directly off his stern, that will limit his available weapons. How precise is our knowledge of Syndic battleship maneuvering capabilities?” Geary asked.
“On that model of ship? Very good. Alliance warships have watched them in action in many engagements and analyzed their movements afterwards. What we have in the sims is not perfect, but it is very accurate.”
“So, we can predict when he’ll start trying to change his pivot and how long it will take the battleship to react. This wouldn’t work if the battleship had strong escorts to interfere with our movements and disrupt our attacks, or if there were two battleships that could cover each other’s stern from receiving multiple attacks over a short period. But against one battleship, which has decided to protect its escorts instead of having the escorts protect it, this can work.”
This time Duellos did not reply immediately as he studied every aspect of Geary’s work. “Sir, I do feel obligated to point out that the extra braking time required to get the relative velocity to the battleship low enough for this is considerable. If this does not work, we won’t have much time to come up with alternatives before the battleship gets within range of the freighters.”
“You’re right,” Geary said. “Anything else?”
“Do you want me to set up the braking maneuvers for the three battle cruisers?”
“Yes.” He knew he wasn’t the most talented ship driver in the world, not nearly as good as Tanya Desjani and probably not as good as Roberto Duellos. This would be a good chance to see Duellos at work up close.
“Admiral,” the operations watch said as alerts sounded, “Flotilla One is altering vector. They’re turning outward and accelerating, coming onto an intercept with our Formation Echo.”
“Preplanned maneuver,” Duellos said.
Geary nodded. Flotilla One, light-hours distant near the inhabited world, had started its move hours ago. If the battleship flotilla had not been flushed early, it would have been sighted by Geary’s ships only a brief time ago, followed closely by the sight of Flotilla One also heading for the refugee ships. “It’ll be about an hour and a half yet before they realize their timing got thrown off. If they keep coming, Commander Pajari will handle them.”
There was some superstition in that last statement, too, which was both an assertion of confidence in Pajari and an attempt to wish his hopes into reality with a bold assertion.
He focused back on the battleship, trying to feel the motion of all of the ships and the time delays between them caused by the vast distances that light had to cross, trying to anticipate and be ready for whatever the next moves should be.
He could hear the muffled sounds of the bridge watch-standers doing their jobs and speaking to each other in low voices, hear Duellos passing on the maneuvering orders and handling subsequent what-the-hell-are-we-doing? calls from the commanding officers of Formidable and Implacable.
Inspire pitched over, coming almost completely around. Her main propulsion lit off again. Nearby, Formidable and Implacable matched the maneuvers. The huge velocities built up earlier were now being fought against, the propulsion systems laboring to shed momentum along one vector and build it up again in the same direction the battleship was going.
The track of the battle cruisers through space bent, swinging downward toward the battleship and his escorts. The relative velocity kept slowing as the battle cruisers swept past the oncoming enemy, above and slightly to one side of the battleship, still out of range of all but long missile shots that the enemy chose not to attempt.
A moment came, aft of the enemy flotilla, when their vectors momentarily matched. For that instant, the Alliance battle cruisers and the enemy flotilla were suspended in space, unmoving relative to each other.
Then, their propulsion units straining at maximum, their hulls and inertial dampers protesting audibly at the forces being employed, the battle cruisers began accelerating straight for the battleship.
Duellos still sat in his command seat as if relaxed, but his eyes were on Geary, waiting for the orders that would, hopefully, make the attack runs as successful as they needed to be.
“All weapons ready,” the combat systems watch reported. “Shields at maximum. Damage control at full readiness.”
A blip appeared on Geary’s display as two of the missile launchers on Implacable suddenly went out of commission. “Power junction failure!” Implacable’s captain reported, sounding as if she were ready to bite a hole in her own hull out of frustration. “I’ll have them operational when we get in range if I have to jump-start the damn things by hand!”
She wouldn’t have long to work on the problem. The battle cruisers kept accelerating, closing on the battleship. Inspire was lined up to hit the battleship first, followed by Formidable, then Implacable. There wasn’t any fancy formation this time. Formidable was almost directly behind Inspire, but out slightly to one side, while Implacable was behind Formidable, slightly out on the opposite side. Geary had kept the formation as simple as possible, so as to present solutions as deceptively simple as possible for the automated maneuvering controls on the battleship and to lull the human officers into complacency.
“They’re not cutting the escorts loose,” Geary murmured, relieved. If the battleship commander had told the heavy cruisers to move off and attack the Alliance battle cruisers, it would have seriously complicated Geary’s approach.
“There he goes,” Duellos breathed in a very low voice.
The battleship had begun pivoting, his stern dropping and his bow coming up and over. Geary didn’t have to check his maneuvering display to know that, if everyone kept on the same courses and speeds, the battleship would be pivoting at exactly the right rate to meet with its heaviest armament and armor in its bow each oncoming battle cruiser as it passed.
“Give him five more seconds to build up momentum,” Geary said. Three… two… one. “All units in Formation Alpha. Immediate execute, main propulsion at zero.”