Engaging the Enemy by Elizabeth Moon
“Then you should withdraw.”
“I can’t leave the rest of them—”
“I knew you were a person of honor, Captain Vatta. I was right to return.” His head turned away from the screen; she heard noises in the background. “It will not show on your scan for four minutes,” Zavala said. “But we’re now engaged. I will transmit to you the information my tactical computer gets—it may help you.”
Ky’s blood ran cold. He had no chance. Up on her screen came a string of numbers; she shunted them to Jessy’s board, then opened the intercom.
“Enemy’s insystem; prepare for battle. This is not a drill. Repeat, this is not a drill.” The bridge crew stared at her, eyes wide, then turned to their own boards.
“Battery one, ready,” came Jon Gannett’s voice. “No target data.”
“Estimate four minutes—no, three and a half,” Ky said. Zavala had left his voice channel open; she could hear his crisp, calm orders to his crew in their own language. Though she could not understand the words, she could imagine what they would be. Their voices, in the background, were barely audible, but none sounded panicky. She didn’t try to speak to him. Zavala spoke to her directly only once more.
“Captain Vatta, you also need to know what I was told at my last port. They have taken another system. They know about you—they know you have Osman’s ship. You must not let yourself be destroyed, Captain Vatta.”
“I don’t intend to be destroyed,” Ky said. “I will do my best for the others.”
“We have serious damage,” Zavala said. “Our shields are down. We have perhaps one more shot—” Then a burst of white noise, and the connection ceased.
Ky turned to her shocked bridge crew. “We have to tell the others,” she said as she tried to open a channel to Andreson. Andreson had the unit off; it should be beeping at her com officer, but he might be on break or something.
Finally he answered. “Flower com; what’s the problem?”
“Raiders insystem,” Ky said, and started to transmit the coordinates she had, but he interrupted her.
“Raiders? What d’you mean?”
“Get the admiral: we have raiders insystem, estimate two to four light-minutes or less.” She overheard a murmur of voices from the other ship.
“There’s nothing on scan,” the com officer said.
“There will be. They’re close, they’ll show up anytime now.”
“She won’t like it,” he said. “She doesn’t want to be disturbed for the next two hours, she said.”
“I don’t like it,” Ky said, putting an edge on her voice. “Get her.”
Andreson looked rumpled as well as annoyed when she appeared onscreen a few seconds later, her pale hair standing out in damp spikes. Had she been in the shower? “What is it, Captain Vatta? Do you think you have better scans than we do?”
Ky suspected that she might, but didn’t say so. “No, Admiral. I had had an ansible message from Captain Zavala just now. He is—was—in this system and reported eight enemy ships—”
“He led them here!” Andreson said.
“No,” Ky said; she knew she sounded angry. “He did not. He found out in his next port that they knew about our training location and were planning to attack us; he was afraid we might not receive, or pay attention to, an ansible message. He chose to come back here, knowing the danger, to give us a chance to survive.”
“Well, where is he then? I see nothing on scan!”
“Scan lag,” Ky said. She could not believe that Andreson didn’t figure that out for herself. “They’re close enough that they blew Zavala’s ship, and he was four and a half light-minutes away from me. I have Zavala’s data from the battle; he sent it to me from his tac computer…”
“What battle?”
“The one in which he was killed,” Ky said, anger getting the better of judgment. Her chronometer ticked down the seconds. She should see something anytime now…
“Oh.” Andreson sounded abashed, for once. “I’m—that’s too bad. But I don’t see—”
On Osman’s enhanced scan, a fuzzy speck appeared, then two more, then three, then two…emerging from jump in a classic attack formation. Two groups of four, properly spaced to avoid damage from the destruction of a nearby ship, and converging on the tight formation Andreson had demanded.
“They’re on my scan now.” Ky sent the position data to Andreson’s ship. “Eight of them. There’s Zavala, jumping into the middle of that mess—” A ninth speck had appeared.
“Why did he do that?” Andreson asked.
Wrong question, wrong time, but maybe the answer would shake Andreson out of her immobility. “To help us. What are your orders?”
“I don’t—I can’t—this isn’t how we planned it.”
War didn’t care about plans; Ky remembered one of her instructors saying that; surely anyone engaged in warfare knew that. Ky tried analysis. “They’re in the system; we’re maneuvering close to serious mass, so we can’t just jump out of here.”
“Is that what you want to do?” Andreson asked. “Run away?” She sounded scornful.
“No, but we are outnumbered. Maybe Zavala did them some damage and maybe not. We won’t know until we can see the battle on scan, and by then they’ll be much closer. They could pop out of FTL flight in the middle of our formation, if we got really unlucky.”
“We need to boost out, then, get away from here—”
“Not necessarily. We can use the mass to shield us, if they’re in close…” She wanted to explain to Andreson the sequence she and Hugh had come up with in case of attack, but she wasn’t sure how much Andreson could absorb. Meanwhile, her crew used Osman’s enhanced scan to detect the enemy weapons and shunt those data to her board. Missile batteries…she had to assume well stocked with missiles. Beam weapons—she couldn’t yet tell how they were mounted, but twice as many as their own force mustered. They’d better run; they weren’t going to defeat this force.
Once she’d marked them as enemies, the tactical scan back-computed their courses, finding images no one had noticed with all the junk in this part of the system. The current scan suggested that they were within four light-minutes, their position four minutes ago. Time had passed—how close were they now? For an instant, she wondered why instantaneous communications had not led to FTL scan that would give the real-time position of ships in space. But she had no leisure to think about that.
“Arm weapons,” Andreson said. “Maintain course and formation. Uh…general call, all ships—” That was to her crew, no doubt. It was stupid to continue on their present course, to make such easy targets of themselves.
On her own scan, Zavala’s ship still moved, as did the enemy’s. Serene little blips—one green, the rest red, jewels on velvet sliding on glittering wires of their calculated course, the fine lines of missiles in flight, the slightly thicker ones of beam weapons reaching out, all as elegant as an etched circuit. It was hopeless; Zavala and his crew were already dead, but Ky could not help watching as the deadly lacework closed about Dona Florenzia and then she flared to debris as her shields failed.
Though they outnumbered him, the enemy had had to maneuver a little to attack him. Zavala’s sacrifice had bought them another minute or two, and disarranged the neat pincer attack: now the group on the other arm of the X would reach them first. One of them lagged; Ky could not tell if it was damage or intention, but again, it might help. It was a tiny advantage, but in this desperate situation every advantage counted.
“We have to open out,” Ky said, watching for any sign of comprehension in Andreson’s frozen expression. “We’re bunched; we’re easy meat here—”
“We can protect each other,” Andreson said.
They could have if they’d ever practiced it. If they had defensive assignments. If they could manage evasive maneuvers in close formation. If, if, and if.
“We can’t,” Captain Argelos said. “We need to get spaced out, Ky’s right.”
“This is no time t
“Right,” Argelos said. “I’m not arguing; I’m moving out.”
“You can’t—!” Her face contorted into a mask of fear or rage; Ky was not sure which.
“Captain Vatta, what’s your analysis?” Argelos said.
Ky stared at the screen, momentarily taken aback. Then she glanced at her tac analysis. “We can improve the odds by dropping toward the planet, work with that gravitation to build velocity and get some of that mass between us and at least one of the groups. Spread out enough to make targeting harder for them and give us room to shoot without hitting each other. Have to watch out for the smaller satellites and the rings…”
“Shoot me your figures,” Argelos said.
“You’re a coward!” Andreson said.
“You’re an idiot,” Argelos said, his voice cold as frozen air. “I should never have agreed to your command.” On the screen, his ship’s icon grew an orange triangle of delta vee, lengthening as he pushed his insystem drive to its capacity and it drew away from the formation.
“Captain?” Lee said, hands poised above his board.
“Go!” she said; Lee’s hand moved and their ship surged ahead; in that instant she saw a line of incandescence streak the atmosphere below them—a ranging shot with a beam weapon as the enemy ships appeared out of a microjump, now only light-seconds distant. A moment later a white flare grew around Cornet as one of the enemy’s beams hit its shields squarely. Their own shields flared slightly with backblow; then they were beyond that range. Flower’s batteries launched at the attackers.
“No damage,” Hugh said. “Our shields are still one hundred percent.”
“Target acquisition, battery one,” Jon Gannett said in her earbug. “Permission to engage?”
“Engage,” Ky said. The ship shivered as their number one battery launched.
“Target acquisition, battery two!”
“Easy beam distance, Captain.”
“Engage battery two. Go ahead, beam, one discharge.” Again a slight shiver, but no dimming of lights or any sign that the massive power discharge had caused them any difficulty. On scan, Flower’s missiles were almost to the enemy group; she watched them sparkle against powerful screens, not penetrating, or miss entirely.
“Lousy gunnery,” Jessy said. “Wrong fusing options, among other things. They’d better get out of there.”
But even as he spoke, multiple missiles hit Cornet’s weakened shields, and its ansible link went dead. Flower killed acceleration, its lengthening wedge dropping to nothing, and swapped ends, bringing its forward-mounted beam weapon into play, stabbing out at the nearest enemy ship. That was a solid hit, but the enemy shields held. Flower had only one beam weapon, with a slow recharge rate; more flights of missiles left its batteries, but they were no more accurate than the first. Cornet continued to be pounded by missiles and then another beam; it burst open and most of its arms blew up with the ship. Now the enemy beam concentrated on Flower.
Ky had no time to worry about Cornet as a pod of missiles probed their screens; none penetrated, but the telltales showed that it had been a near thing.
“One of ours got in,” Jessy said. “Second ship in the formation.”
“Damage estimate?”
“Impossible to say. Scan’s getting messy.” It was, indeed; the overlaid symbols for courses of ships and courses of missiles, color-coded for relative velocity, crisscrossed the screen.
“How low d’you want to go?” Lee asked suddenly.
“As low as we can,” Ky said. “Just like we plotted before.” Those few hours, when she and Lee and Hugh and her weapons teams had discussed what could be done if someone attacked while they were pinned against a mass that prohibited an FTL jump. They hadn’t expected to have to use those figures, not without going over them again. “Our best bet is to make them swing around with us, force them all into a stern chase; the more velocity we pick up, the faster we’ll reach a jump radius on the other side, and that’s really our only option.” If the enemy captains were smart enough, they’d hold back one group, but maybe they’d believe they had easy prey.
“Bassoon’s with us,” he said. “And it looks like Flower’s boosting at last.”
Another salvo flared against their shields without penetrating. “They want us to run,” Ky said. “They think they can pick us off singly.” She called to Bassoon and Flower. “Keep up with us,” she said. “Maintain ten-klick spacing.”
“I can’t,” Andreson said. “We’ve got damage. We don’t have full power on insystem, and we can’t jump.” Her face was as cold and closed as ever. “Get them out, Vatta, if you can. Go find better partners. I did my best, and I’ll get one of them before they get us, if it’s the last thing I do.”
It would be the last thing she did, if she could do it. Andreson had never lacked courage, just skill and that indefinable instinct that made a good combat commander. “I know you did your best,” Ky said. “I’ll do mine, Admiral.” That title was the only comfort she could give, as Bassoon edged nearer and Flower fell behind, with three ships now concentrating on her.
Where were the others, the ones that had engaged Zavala? Would they reconstruct the pincer formation on different axes? She would have, but she had no idea how pirates thought about space war.
Their velocity increased steadily as they dove into the planet’s gravity well, using it for additional acceleration. Now the enemy missiles burned out their engines before reaching them, and the enemy’s beam weapons concentrated on Flower.
Flower blew just as they were about to pass out of line-of-sight around the planet’s curve.
“They’ll be on us in a bit,” Ky said. “Launch mines.”
“How many?”
“Half of what we have. We’ll hold the other half for the ones on the other side.”
“That’s…several hundred…”
“Better too many than too few,” Ky said. “If we get through this, we can buy more mines; if we get killed being cheap…” She spoke to Pettygrew on Bassoon. “Don’t fall behind. There are some hazards back there now.”
“Doing our best,” Pettygrew said.
“Vatta, do you have a plan?” asked Argelos. Sharra’s Gift showed weapons hot on scan, but she was still accelerating faster than Vanguard.
“Are you with us?” Ky asked. “Or have you decided to go solo?”
“Solo against eight? No. My adviser’s telling me the only chance is to link up with you, if you have a plan in mind.” A pause, then, “He doesn’t.”
“I have an idea,” Ky said. “Drop back a little, and hold at about ten klicks off me, if you can. If they’re smart, we’ll meet four of them as we come out the back side of this maneuver. And if we’re lucky, it’ll be only four against three at that point. Damage?”
“None,” Argelos replied, and then Pettygrew.
“Fine, then. Ready for attack; fire the moment you have a firing solution, pour it on. They have calibrated microjumps, but they should be crossing our course on insystem drive; we may get some of them. Then we try to break through and get to jump radius. Be ready to jump the instant you can; don’t wait for anyone else. We won’t be at the mapped jump point, so just get out of range—”
“I can’t calibrate short jumps,” Pettygrew said.
“Doesn’t matter. If you get a few light-hours out, you’ll be able to detect the jump point before they can find you again. Or do an uncalibrated jump out one light-year. There’s not another star that close, and unlikely to be a large mass. Rendezvous—” Where should they go? Where would they not be expected to go…? “Ciudad,” she said. “We can tell them about Zavala’s heroism.”
“We’ll have to be lucky as well as good,” Argelos said, after a minute or two. “But my adviser said it’s possible.”
His adviser, who hadn’t come up with a plan of his own. Ky wondered again just who the adviser really was.
“We won’t have much maneuvering ability on insystem at those velocit
“Yes, ma’am,” Pettygrew said. He sounded steadier, almost confident.
“I can, too,” Argelos said.
“Then we should start now.” Moment by moment she talked them into the starting positions she wanted, and specified the diameter of the spirals.
“There goes one,” Jessy said suddenly as they completed their second circuit of the spiral. The first group of the enemy, three ships spaced evenly and one lagging, had appeared around the planet’s limb on scan; one had encountered a mine, its shields flaring in response. “And another—” A second flare on scan. As the flares died, the ship icons reappeared, but now decelerating, opening a distance. “Aha. If they slow to worry about mines, they’ll have to power up to get out of the well, where they are. Very good thinking, Captain.”
“I want them dead,” Ky said. Surely they’d hit some of the other mines; surely some of them had done damage…
“One down!” said Hugh. A flare surrounded the icon of the last ship in pursuit and did not die. Two of the pursuing ships had fallen farther behind.
“Lowest point,” Lee said. “We start coming up now…”
Ky watched the plot for a moment. They had gone very low indeed, inside the rings, much closer to the second smallest satellite than she liked, and Pettygrew would be closer still. But Bassoon would miss it, and now they were on their way out. Her stomach tightened. They should find the second group soon.
Behind, flare after flare showed where the pursuers kept running into mines. None was quite powerful enough to cause damage, but each hit on the shields cost them power, and they could not afford even an instant with the shields down, an instant in which to fire their own beam weapons. They fell farther behind, not yet negligible, but not an immediate threat. The immediate threat was ahead of them, four ships armed and dangerous and eager to kill.
Ky felt in herself the same eagerness. She had told her companions to make a run for it; she intended to make a run for it herself, but…she wanted a solid kill, something more satisfying than having the damaged pirate run into a mine.