"God knows, Commander. You've seen some of the ships they've sent out of the Mote, and from all we know they've had decades to prepare for this. They could have a whole fleet of dreadnoughts just waiting for orders."
"Ugh. Yeah. Okay, here we go." Rawlins turned to his bridge crew. "Let's do it. Hank, get us into place to enter Mote system. Phidippides, then Atropos, then Sinbad."
5 The Battle of Crazy Eddie's Sister
To delight in war is a merit in the soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain, and a positive crime in the statesman
George Santayana
A brown blur swept past his eyes, too close; came wobbling back, taking on definition. Arm, fingers; fingers searching, closing on his shoulder, a nose nearly touching his. "Kevin. Captain. We." Joyce Trujillo blinking, trying to work her mouth. "We're being shot. At."
Cameras had been pulled inside for the Jump. Through the viewport Kevin saw murky red light where he should have seen black. Enemy lasers must be bathing Sinbad's Langston Field. No hot spots.
"Yeah. Okay. Field's holding. You... recover quick... Joyce." Renner looked around. His head wanted to swivel too far. Buckman was cursing as he tried to get his fingers working, to poke a camera through the Field. Blaine's arms jerked as he tried to bring them to his instruments. Horace Bury was contemplating nirvana with vacant eyes and a trace of a smile.
His doctors had finally got through to him. Stroke, heart failure, ulcers, ruined digestion, and you won't be through it a moment sooner. Don't fight Jump shock!
"Got prr. Probe," Buckman said. A picture appeared in Renner's monitor, and wobbled, and hunted, and found a green glare. "There. One ship using lasers only. Who's gunnery officer?"
"Me." Renner couldn't trust Blaine to kill. Navy trained, but raised by Mediators. Blaine wasn't functional anyway, not even as much as Trujillo. And Sinbad didn't have much for guns: a signaling laser that was several thousand times more powerful than it needed to be, good enough to keep armed merchantmen at bay, nowhere near enough power to be useful against real warships.
How hardened a target was the enemy ship? Would it be worth firing back? And where was Atropos? Sinbad had gone through last. It should be Rawlins's job to protect Sinbad.
The green glare wavered. Lost focus. Now it was a green point ringed in red, a yellow-white halo, glare green and expanding, an inflating violet sphere, poof, gone in seconds.
And with that enemy gone, the sky cleared.
It was a birthday-party sky, a black starfield full of colored balloons linked by bright strings. Sinbad had fallen into a battle. Ships must number in the hundreds. No telling how many sides, or who was who. But Sinbad's Field was murky red and darkening, shedding stored energy and no longer under attack.
"Buckman, get an antenna through that!"
"Done. We've got ships in all directions... not so many toward the Mote... I think I see Atropos."
An orange blob, close, cooling... darkening to red, but not contracting. Definitely Atropos. The Moties' expanding Langston Field had revolutionized Empire warfare; but Atropos had been built for duty at the Eye, where an expanding Field only meant more surface area to absorb heat from the star.
"I have Atropos on the line."
"Good. Rawlins, what's your situation?"
"Stable. We were attacked the moment we came through, Captain Renner. Two fleets, one that shoots at us, one that shoots at the other fleet.
"When the Motie embassy ship, Phidippides, came through, one fleet started shooting at her. I moved in front of her and shot back. When I did, everyone else got in the act."
"How's Phidippides?"
"That's her on the other side of us, with an expanding Field, yellow and getting worse. The one that's not shooting back. Now that we're in front of her it's not critical unless they're hit by torpedoes."
"Can you protect them?"
"Yes, sir. We can't talk to the other fleet, but they cooperate. Between us we slagged one of the enemy just after you came through. Commodore, we haven't seen torpedoes yet, just lasers and particle beams. We're in a general fleet engagement, but beyond watching over you and the Motie ship I don't know the objective. It's all guns, all the ships have expanding Fields-"
"Sinbad, this is Phidippides. Are you unhurt?"
The Motie was speaking in Horace Bury's voice, blurred by noise, probably still affected by Jump shock despite having gone through well before Sinbad. Renner grimaced. He said, "Carry on, Commander Rawlins. You're doing fine. I'll try to get information."
It was pointless to remind the Moties that the passage was supposed to be safe. "Eudoxus, this is Renner. Who's shooting at us?"
Static made a ragged silhouette of the Motie shape. "Call them Ghengis Khan and the Mongol Horde. They're bandits, a large, well-established group. We were under attack from the Khanate when the Crazy Eddie point moved, but we thought they were after our comet."
"Comet, Eudoxus?"
"Resources, Kevin. We moved a comet out of the Waste to feed the industrial needs of Medina's monitoring fleet at the new Jump point we were expecting. Dammit, most of them are protecting the comet-"
"Speed it up, Eudoxus. Who are we fighting? Do we have allies? How do we recognize them? How safe are you? You can't fight."
"Protection is coming. Don't try to fight, Kevin. I will lead you away to our base, to safety. Medina's Warriors are moving to protect us now. They'll guard our withdrawal."
Renner saw it quite suddenly. "You're not from Mote Prime at all."
"No, no, no." the Motie said immediately. "On Mote Prime they've blasted themselves back to the invention of the brick. Medina Trading is at present based in the Oort Cloud, with allies in the Mote Beta moons and other regions. We've been using that wonderful protection field of yours to scoop up mass and debris, but a comet is better."
The pattern of distant ships was changing... had been changing for some time. Brilliant points and larger colored dots, ships under attack and ships not under attack, several hundreds of them, were converging into place between Sinbad's position and the main congestion of warships. Phidippides's Field was cooling, shrinking, as her allies destroyed the ships that were attacking her.
It wasn't easy to see what they were doing, until you remembered the lightspeed gap. Even the nearest ships hadn't been seen to move for the first half-minute. The battle must be scattered up to three or four light-minutes across, tens of millions of klicks. They were all... no, only the nearby ships were reacting to the sudden appearance of three ships in the new Jump point. Some had moved to protect Phidippides and the Empire ships she escorted; some to attack. But far beyond, other glare-white sparks swarmed around the cold white glow of a comet's tail.
It was war among the asteroid civilizations for possession of the I-point, the Jump point into Empire space. Kevin Renner had led them right into it. Asteroid civilizations... and all his preparations had been made for Mote Prime!
Bloody Hell! Renner raged at himself. He couldn't even claim he'd been lied to, though of course he had. And now he was being told to run... but without knowing who was who, how could he argue?
"Stand by," Renner said curtly. "Rawlins?"
"Sir?"
"You're better at analyzing battles than I am. Is there any way we can get a message back to Agamemnan?"
"No, sir. The longboat wouldn't have any chance to get back to the I-point, and Atropos wouldn't have much more. None unless we could coordinate with the Motie fleet that's not shooting at us."
"Thanks. That won't happen. Okay, follow us and watch our backs. We're not going to Mote Prime. We're headed for the comets, outbound from the sun. I'll send the course when I have it."
"Sir-"
"Rawlins, when I know more, you will! Now I have to talk to the Moties. Out."
"No rest for the wicked," Joyce said.