“I don’t know. Something.”
“Let me know the instant you figure out what it is.” He focused back on the enemy force. The dark ships were coming onward without any alterations in vector, aiming straight for the center of the Alliance subformation at the tip of the task force’s V. Aiming for the subformation centered on Dauntless.
It was almost time to make his move. Almost time to make that small, last-moment adjustment in vectors. Geary’s hand hovered over his comm controls, ready to send the command.
“Admiral.” Desjani spoke abruptly but with utter certainty. “Break off the attack. Now. Take every ship wide of a firing run. Any direction.”
He had literally only a second or two in which to decide whether to do as she said and lose what seemed to be a perfectly set up firing run, or to ignore Tanya’s advice and stick with his plan.
Only a second or two.
Damn!
Sixteen
Geary’s hand came down on his comm control. “All units in Task Force Dancer, immediate execute, up one five degrees!”
Dauntless jolted upward, along all of the other Alliance warships. Geary fought down a wave of disappointment over the lost opportunity, matched with anger at Tanya for spoiling the attack run. He was only partially aware of the moment in which the dark ship formations rocketed past beneath them, some of the dark ships tossing out shots that scored a few hits on the lowermost ships in Geary’s formations.
Wait a minute. “How could any of them have been in range when we made that big a vector change? Even with their advantage in maneuverability, they shouldn’t have been able to do that.”
“Because they did last-minute maneuvers to bracket one of our formations with all of theirs,” Desjani said, pointing viciously at her display. “If you’d executed your firing run as planned Badaya’s subformation would have been torn apart. Replay the last maneuvers on the display if you don’t believe me.”
Geary began to turn his ships farther up, planning on bending them all the way around to reengage the enemy. “How did you know that they’d do that?”
“Because it’s what you would have done. Have you ever run sims based on your previous engagements?”
“You mean replayed the battles we’ve fought? No.” Once of each had been more than enough.
“I have,” Desjani declared. “Because I wanted to learn more about your way of fighting. I’ve played the enemy against you in those sims, and as those dark ships came at us, I suddenly realized that it felt exactly like one of those sims replaying your moves. That’s what was bothering me.”
“They’re copying me?”
“This isn’t just copying! This is you. They’re using automated maneuvering tactics based on what you’ve done, based on how you fight. They’ve got a simulated Black Jack calling their shots.”
Things had just gotten a lot worse. “How do I outsmart myself? Why didn’t we understand this hours ago, so I could review those battles and see what lessons that sim would be using?”
She gave him an annoyed look. “Well, pardon me for not figuring it out sooner!”
“That’s not what I—” He saw his formations reaching just past the vertical as they turned to reengage the dark ships, and he hit his comm controls. “All units in Task Force Dancer, immediate execute, turn up one two zero degrees.” That would curve his task force away from an intercept, throwing off the dark ships, whose own courses would be based on the assumption that he would reengage as quickly as possible. Because that was what Black Jack did.
But the dark ships were reacting fast, twisting into tighter turns than Geary’s ships could achieve and accelerating at faster rates than his ships could match. “All units, immediate execute, come starboard eight zero degrees.”
All three Alliance subformations swung over at almost a right angle from their previous vector, heading almost straight for the distant star once again.
“I need time to think. Maybe if I split off the other two formations, have them operate independently—” Which was just what something programmed to think like Black Jack would want, he realized, because while Tulev was a good commander, and Badaya wasn’t bad, either one could more easily be caught and overwhelmed if Geary was trying to deal with three formations moving on totally different vectors against an opponent as good as he was.
How could he break contact with a force that was more maneuverable and could accelerate faster?
“We’ve got to try another firing run,” Geary said. “I need to disrupt them enough to gain time to think about this, and only a firing run offers the chance to do that.”
Desjani hesitated, then nodded, a slight sign of worry creasing her brow.
He brought his ships all the way down and around, swinging the course change as tight as he could to try to catch the back end of the three dark ship formations as their V passed overhead.
But the dark ships reacted too quickly, tightening their own turns even more and changing vectors for another head-on encounter.
Geary tried to decide which part of the enemy formation to aim for, which subformation was most vulnerable. The geometry of the situation left him unable to turn tightly enough to go high, and he didn’t want to aim right and low again, so he aimed for the left side.
Did he actually see, in the last moments when it could make a difference, the beginnings of a countermove by the dark ships? A countermove that would catch Badaya’s subformation in a deadly vise? Or did he just sense it?
“All units, immediate execute, down two zero degrees!”
The Alliance warships lurched through the sudden change, sliding dangerously close to the dark ships, which were indeed diving straight toward where Badaya’s ships would have been.
They missed each other by far too close a margin, out of range of most weapons but close enough for the dark ships to volley out missiles.
“All units pivot and engage missiles,” Geary ordered.
Every battle cruiser, heavy and light cruiser, and destroyer swung completely around, their heaviest armament aimed toward the oncoming wave of missiles while the ships themselves continued moving backwards at the same rate they had been going. Hell lances lashed out, destroying most of the missiles short of their targets, but some ships had to fire point-defense bursts of grapeshot to hit missiles on final approach.
And the dark ships were coming around again.
He could feel what was happening. He was reacting. The dark ships had the initiative and weren’t letting go. This was a path leading to disaster.
Geary looked toward Desjani, who was gazing fixedly at her display, not saying anything, not offering advice as she usually did. Because she knows this isn’t the usual situation. She doesn’t know what advice to give when I’m fighting myself. And I miss having her suggestions because sometimes they have saved my butt and—
Of course. “Tanya, they may have a sim of how I fight battles, but they don’t have you.”
“That’s very flattering,” she said in a tight voice. “But I don’t see the relevance in terms of winning this fight. I wasn’t single-handedly winning the war before you showed up, remember?”
“My point is, we work as a team,” Geary explained with a patience he didn’t really feel. “You see things I don’t, I see things you don’t. Whatever Black-Jack sim the dark ships are using won’t have that. And I feel certain they loaded that sim with century-old tactical procedures that people had increasingly ignored during the war, but I have used because they’re what I knew. I noticed the attack on the courier ship was carried out exactly how those procedures mandated that specific type of operation. That means the sim is programmed to counter my tactics.”