As his spoken words were transcribed into text by the computer he sent them forth. He had ordered the course change “relative,” meaning with relation to the squadron’s current heading, rather than “absolute,” in reference to the arbitrary coordinate system that had been imposed on every star system by the conquering Shaa.
He gave further instructions to the missile barrage he’d sent out ahead of the squadron, and then decided it was time to send another message to Do-faq. “My lord,” he said into the camera, “I am enormously gratified at the confidence you have expressed in me by taking my suggested course. If you will further oblige me by ordering your squadron onto a heading of zero-one-five by zero-zero-one absolute after you pass Soq, I will do my best to provide cover and prevent the enemy from detecting you.
“Thank you again for your trust. I shall try to prove worthy of it. Message ends.”
As he sent the message to Do-faq he was aware of a light prickle of sweat on his forehead. He felt a sudden awareness of how much he was taking on himself, the fate of the Hone-bar system, the lives of thousands of crew. He looked at his displays and hoped that Kreeku wouldn’t prove to be a genius.
At 27:14:01 the missile barrage exploded, creating a wall of hot plasma in front of the squadron, and the ships commenced their maneuver. If the Naxids had been able to see it, they would have seen the squadron make a kind of diagonal move in front of them, from a course that would pass between the Naxids and Hone-bar to one that would pass outside of both planet and squadron. It might look as if Martinez had changed his mind about how he wanted the battle to develop.
What Martinez actually wanted was an excuse to create the plasma screen in the first place, any reason to hide Do-faq’s force. The maneuver itself was secondary.
Some time later the ships passed through the screen they had created, andCorona traveled for several minutes in a bubble of hot radio hash, blind to the universe outside, the hull temperature rising. And then they were clear, and the other ships of the squadron appeared, their formation unaltered, their torches burning.
Martinez shifted their heading again, aiming for where he suspected Kreeku would appear after his transit around Hone-bar’s sun, and then he rearranged their formation. The Naxids would see them arranged in a wheel,Corona at the hub surrounded by a constellation of seven ships. But the Naxids wouldn’t see the ships themselves—what they would see instead would be the ships’ tails of antimatter fire pointing straight toward them, obscuring anything behind.
What would be obscured behind, Martinez hoped, would be the eight ships of Do-faq’s squadron, flying in Martinez’s wake and accelerating at a steady 2.3 gravities, the highest acceleration the frailty of the Lai-own physique would permit. Any radiation from Do-faq’s engine torches would, Martinez hoped, be taken for his own squadron’s engine exhaust.
If Martinez had worked his calculations aright—and if the Naxids’ own maneuvers were reasonably conventional—he would lead Do-faq’s heavy squadron right onto the enemy without Kreeku’s being aware of their existence.
Do-faq, without comment, followed Martinez’s suggestion and put his squadron on the course that would enable Martinez to guard the fact of his presence. Hours ticked by. Martinez could spot the moment when Kreeku first saw Light Squadron 14 fly through Wormhole 1—the deceleration burn ceased, and then the squadron reoriented and began a deceleration at higher gees.
When Kreeku burned around Hone-bar’s sun and emerged on the track Martinez had most desired, he felt relief melt his limbs like butter. He made some fine adjustments to the positions of his squadron, and sent another suggestion to Do-faq that enabled Martinez to more efficiently screen his force as the angle between the opposing forces changed with their movement toward one another.
Martinez and Kreeku, now four light-hours apart, were approaching each other at a combined speed of nearly seven-tenths the speed of light. They would meet in less than six hours—though by then, of course, a great many people would be dead.
A flower of something like vanity began to blossom in Martinez’s heart. He had actually done it—he had smuggled eight large warships into the Hone-bar system without the enemy learning of their existence. He was giving orders to his own superior officer, the formidable and unforgiving Do-faq, and Do-faq was obeying them without comment. Even theenemy seemed to be flying in obedience to Martinez’s will.
This battle would be studied by generations of Fleet officers, Martinez knew. Even if, as seemed perfectly possible, he was killed in the next few hours, he had assured himself a place in history.
Martinez celebrated by reducing his deceleration to one gravity and sent his crew to supper. Though he felt no hunger himself, he thought his crew would fight better on a full stomach.
Once food was placed before him he found he was ravenous, and he shoveled Alikhan’s fare into his mouth at a relentless rate. When his plate was empty he paged the premiere to his office, then explained to Dalkeith his plans for the upcoming battle, which she would need if he was killed and she, by some wild chance, survived.
“Who do you have on your comm boards?” Martinez asked her.
“Yu, my lord. Backed by Signaler/2nd Bernstein.”
“Are they satisfactory?”
She seemed unsurprised by the question, but then she was unsurprised by most things. “I have no complaints, lord elcap.”
“Good. I want them transferred to Command. Trainee Mattson is too inexperienced, and Shankaracharya—well, he hasn’t worked out.”
A tremble in Dalkeith’s watery blue eyes demonstrated a pattern of thought that she chose not to voice. “Very good, my lord,” she said.
Martinez told Shankaracharya as the Command crew returned to their stations following the meal. “You and Mattson will be going to Auxiliary Command,” Martinez told the lieutenant. “Yu and Bernstein will serve the comm boards here.”
Shankaracharya’s face didn’t show surprise—instead there was a kind of spasm, a tautening of the muscles of the neck and cheek, and then no expression at all. “I’m, ah, sorry, my lord,” he said. “I–I’ll try to do better in future.”
“I regret the necessity, lieutenant,” Martinez said. “I’ll do what I can for you, later.”
And what he could do would include never putting Shankaracharya in combat again, at least not in a position in which lives could possibly hang in the balance.
The young lieutenant left Command with his helmet under his arm, his body straight and his eyes fixed resolutely ahead, refusing to meet the pity in the eyes of the other control room crew. It was only then that Martinez remembered that Shankaracharya was his sister’s lover.
Sempronia’s going to really hate me for this.
Yu and Bernstein arrived and settled into their seats. A check showed the crew ready to resume higher gees. Martinez ordered the squadron to increase deceleration to two gravities.
Time passed, and Martinez grew fretful. He wondered if there were a traitor on Hone-bar or some of the other inhabited parts of the system, and if that traitor would see Do-faq’s squadron and alert Kreeku to its existence.
In his long hours, isolated in his foul-smelling suit and with death flying toward him at a significant fraction of the speed of light, Martinez began to believe wholeheartedly in the existence of the traitor. In the traitor’s messages. In Kreeku’s genius, who fully alerted by the traitor was now luring the loyalist squadrons to their doom. Martinez was glad when the shooting started, and he didn’t have to think about the traitor anymore.
The approaching forces were still two hours apart when both sides began firing missiles, waves of onrushing destruction that maneuvered in the empty space between the converging warships. When he saw the missile flares on his display, Martinez made a transmission to his ships.