32

The Secret of All Victory

The secret of all victory lies in the organization of the non-obvious.
—Spengler

RFNS Gallipoli, Main Van, Further Rim Fleet, Odysseus System

Admiral Erica Krishmahnta looked around her bridge. “Are we ready?”

The eyes of her bridge personnel and section heads already told her what Yoshi Watanabe’s voice announced. “All sections report ready and awaiting the word, Admiral.”

Krishmahnta, eyes steady but heart racing with eagerness to finally—finally—give the Baldies a taste of their own medicine, leaned back in her chair and lowered the shock harness slowly into place over her slim torso.

“Captain Watanabe.”

“Yes, sir?”

“The word is given.”

RFNS Excalibur, Strike Group Sigma, Further Rim Fleet, Odysseus System

Leopold Kurzweil didn’t need to hear the incoming Fleet signal to know that, in an instant, everything had changed. One moment the bridge had been abuzz with last-second preparations, communiqués, quips: now it was utterly focused, silent except for the voice of the ship’s CO, Commodore von Tscharner.

“Mr. Wethermere,” the commodore said, turning to his temporary tactical officer, “this is your show from here on. For the duration of your special operations, I cede restricted command of this vessel. In accordance with the special terms set out by your orders from Admiral Krishmahnta, I say three times: you have the con expressly and only for coordinating the initial attack of Strike Group Sigma.”

Wethermere stood. “Sir, I say three times, I have the con, to the extent it may be relinquished to me by Admiral Krishmahnta’s special orders.”

“Very good, Commander. Now what?”

Wethermere smiled. “Sir, I will not be getting in your way any more—or any longer—than I have to. First we let the SBMHAWKs go in—and wait.”

In a waist-high alcove just below von Tscharner’s uncommonly large feet, the tacplot showed an impossibly slow trickle of green specks entering the warp point. The codes that announced their transits alternated between those of a recon drone and those of an SBMHAWK every five minutes—a pace that had been set thirty-six hours ago and had continued ever since. It was the eighth time in the past three months that Krishmahnta had pushed the interval so tightly. On the other side of the warp point, the Baldy forces—noticeably diminished in the past two weeks—would have little reason to suspect that this time, however, Krishmahnta’s strategic equivalent of Chinese water-torture was not merely intended to fray their nerves and make them uncertain if an attack might follow. This time, hulls amounting to almost a year of ceaseless industry were poised to flood back through the warp point and drive the Baldies out of the Penelope system—either by a brilliant display of tactics or a brute-force display of tonnage.

But as Kurzweil watched, still trying to get all his recording gear up and running, the trickle of SBMHAWKs ceased—and eight larger icons began leaping dutifully through the purple hoop that signified the warp point into Penelope: AMBAMMs, off to blast their way through the Baldy minefields and any ships that happened to stray too close to the other side of the interstellar portal. A covey of RDs followed them by a second, and then the SBMHAWK transits resumed—but as a biblical flood, not a trickle. Eight at a time they disappeared into that rift in spacetime, and, no doubt, many destroyed each other upon emerging—interpenetrated—in Penelope. But those that survived were, even now, chasing the Arduan ships on the other side. In the holoplot, Kurzweil looked at the tiny icons denoting the SBMHAWKs, expecting to see them almost exhausted: instead, untold masses of them waited motionless near the warp-point icon.

Next to him, Wethermere reached up and tapped the shock harness that was hinged aloft behind Kurzweil. “You might want to think about putting that on, Leo.”

“Yeah, sure. Listen, I wanted to say how grateful I am that you’re letting me come along on this mission. The folks back on Odysseus and Tilghman will really appreciate hearing and seeing what all their work has made possible.”

Wethermere shrugged. “Don’t thank me. Thank Admiral Krishmahnta. This was her idea.”

“Yes—and not all her staff was particularly fond of it, I hear.”

Wethermere looked away. “I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

“Wouldn’t you? You’ve been in charge of this special weapons project for the last six months. Seems to me you would have inevitably been in on any discussion about a media request to witness the weapon’s first combat application. Or at least you would have heard the shouting that supposedly went on between Admirals Krishmahnta and Yoshikuni.”

Wethermere looked at Kurzweil and smiled. “You know, you’re not going to bait me into making a comment, Leo.” Then he glanced at the tacplot. “Commodore, I think it’s time we take our place in the transit line.”

Von Tscharner nodded. “Very good, Commander. Helm, at my mark, take us toward the warp point, ahead slow. Comms, apprise Admiral Krishmahnta that we have the ball and inform her when we start the clock. Ops, start the clock on my mark…and three, two, one: mark.”

Kurzweil detected no change in motion, not even a tug. That only happened when a craft was traveling at the upper limits of its pseudo-velocity envelope. At that point, real space started breaking through in a manner that felt remarkably like drag, or the rearward push of acceleration. The tri-vid action shows still liked the drama of showing people pressed back by what they dramatically labeled “gee-forces.” Despite some superficial similarities in appearance, they had entirely different causes—and sometimes, startlingly different effects.

But although the physical sensations of the Excalibur remained unaltered, the mood on the bridge had changed again. The crew exchanges were quiet, clipped, efficient. Kurzweil glanced up at the ops clock: they were one minute in. Which meant that, as per the stipulations put in place by Admiral Krishmahnta, he was now allowed to ask Wethermere about the “big surprise” they were going to spring on the Baldies. Krishmahnta’s chief of security had insisted upon that one-minute mark because, at this point in the countdown, all nonsecure commo links were terminated: Kurzweil no longer had any way to transmit off the supermonitor Excalibur—even if he had wanted to. He looked over at Wethermere—who was already looking at him—and waiting. “So, Commander, I know that whatever secret project you’ve been working on involves the five supermonitors of this task force, and that it involves energy torpedoes.”

Wethermere’s left eyebrow climbed a bit, but he didn’t look too surprised. “Oh? And how did you learn that?”

“Yard talk, sir. Consider the details you couldn’t keep a lid on. Five ships being modified in lockdown. No news about the armaments going in. But it was easy enough to find out which batteries were being dismounted—almost all the force beams. It was harder to find out what might be taking their place.”

“And how did you do that, Leo?”

“By keeping an eye on where other projects fell short of parts, Commander. Your plans—whatever they were—hit the shipyards late. Caused a stir. Grumbles rose up whereever parts designated for a project or a hull got diverted into yours. And it was always energy-torpedo batteries. But more than that—well, I haven’t a clue.”

“For which I’m thankful, Leo. As it is, you managed to get through one or two clearance layers. You are to be congratulated.”

“Well, rather than congratulations, I’d like answers.”

“Fair enough. Tell me, Leo, what do you know about energy torpedoes?”

Two months ago, Kurzweil had known nothing about them, but by now he’d become a minor expert. “Pre-fusion plasma wrapped in a very short-lived drive envelope. Travels very close to the speed of light. Almost as much punch as an antimatter warhead. Starts losing some accuracy beyond ten light-seconds but can still reach out beyond twenty. Hard to intercept because it’s moving so fast and because most defensive arrays find a blob of plasma harder to target than a regular solid object, like a missile.”

Wethermere nodded appreciatively. “Very good. So, if the energy torpedo is such a wonder weapon, then why haven’t we phased out other weapon systems?”

Kurzweil frowned. “Because of that limited range. And at close range, although the energy torpedo does a lot of damage, the studies say it would have be about twenty percent more powerful to offer destructive performance equivalent to an equal volume of force-beams. So missiles are superior at range, force-beams superior at close range.”

“But what if you double-fire the energy torpedoes?”

Kurzweil leaned back. “Double-speed fire burns out about twenty-five percent of the capacitors—every time you try it.”

“Yes—that’s why it’s not done. But what happens when you do actually fire that many torpedoes?”

“Oh—that’s pure lethality. Double-firing an energy torpedo battery makes its other failings insignificant. Sure, each torpedo is still less accurate than a missile—but now you’ve got twice as many of them heading downrange. Except at very long ranges, the aggregate hit possibilities are now all on the side of the energy torpedoes. And at short range, you’re putting so much hurt so fast on an adversary that they easily outperform the force-beams. And at middle ranges, where they’re already superior, they become—”

Kurzweil stopped, noticing how broad Wethermere’s smile had become. And then he knew. “You’ve found a way to reduce the double-fire burnout of ET batteries.”

“No,” answered Wethermere, “we’ve found a way to eliminate the burnout entirely.”

Kurzweil started to stand, eager with the reflex to send the story—and suddenly realized why Krishmahnta et al. had insisted he not be told until the operation clock was a minute in. Wethermere’s hand was on his shoulder.

“Have a seat, Leo—and last warning: swing that harness down and seal it. It just might save your life.”

Kurzweil complied absently. Like the true newsperson he was, the story had wiped any thought of his own safety from his mind…for now. “But this—this changes everything, Commander. Energy torpedoes on perpetual double-fire? God, that will obsolete so many other weapons so quickly, that…”

Wethermere shrugged. “I wouldn’t rush to any conclusions, Leo. They said the same thing about the fighter almost a hundred years ago, and here they are, still helping to decide the fate of this war. But yes, it’s going to change a lot of things—one day.”

“What do you mean, one day?”

“I mean we only managed to convert these five supermonitors to the new ET armament suite.”

“I see. Well, how did you do it? What was the breakthrough?”

“Oh, there wasn’t any breakthrough, Leo.”

Von Tscharner, evidently eavesdropping, snorted out a quick laugh.

Kurzweil fixed Wethermere with a stare. “The commodore doesn’t seem to agree.”

“Well, look, I just had a harebrained scheme. It was really the engineers who—”

Kurzweil jabbed a finger at the countdown chronometer. “Enough with the semi-genuine humilities, Commander. We are, quite literally, on the clock here. The facts—and fast, if you please.”

“Okay. Look, an energy-torpedo generator is about two-thirds capacitor and one-third launcher. In the double-fire mode, the capacitor is twenty-five percent overtaxed, meaning about twenty-five percent of the systems burn out. So you’d need twenty-five percent more power to get fully reliable function in the double-fire mode. Follow me?”

“Uh—yeah, I think so.”

“So I just sat down and asked some engineers: What if we could provide each ET generator with twenty-five percent more power? ‘Fine,’ they said, ‘that would keep the weapons from frying. But where are you going to get those extra gigawatts? Every system on the ship has its own closely balanced power supply, so there’s not a whole lot of surplus, even from the engines.’ ”

“So what did you do?”

“Well, I asked if we could remove one weapon from every battery of five generators. That put us down to four generators, but in place of the missing weapon, we put in an extra capacitor, with room to spare. That extra capacitor is like having an extra one hundred percent power surplus to spread around each battery. And since each of the four remaining ET generators requires a twenty-five percent surplus over their own output…”

Kurzweil gaped. “So now each generator has access to the extra twenty-five percent power it needs for double-fire! My God, that’s so—so simple!”

Von Tscharner smiled without looking over. “Which is probably why nobody thought of it before—and because naval designers rarely think about reducing armament, even if that would mean an increase in total offensive power. Leave it to a non-engineer—a guy who thinks outside that box because he has to—to come up with that solution.”

Kurzweil nodded. “Okay—but it’s got to put a hell of a strain on all the support systems. Is that why you also had to draw so much extra coolant from supplies? Does the system have a tendency to overheat?”

Wethermere smiled. “Oh, you heard about the coolant, too, did you? Well, actually the system doesn’t have an overheating problem. In fact, we’re using the coolant for—”

“Approaching warp point,” announced the helmsman crisply.

In a tone he might also have used to ask a mess-mate to pass the salt, von Tscharner instructed, “Sound general quarters. Mr. Wethermere, your instructions?”

“Missiles ready. Energy torpedo generators charged to full. All cargo bays designated for coolant venting, stand by.”

Von Tscharner nodded to Commo, who passed along the orders.

Kurzweil looked in the plot, saw the green blip of the Excalibur approaching the warp point, one similar speck ahead of her, three more behind.

“Caladbolg transiting, sir,” Ops reported to von Tscharner.

“Very good. We’re next. Shock harnesses down, Mr. Kurzweil. Combat has a tendency to get a bit—kinetic.”

Kurzweil swallowed, pulled down the cuirasslike seat restraint, and suddenly realized: Holy God above, I’m about to go into combat. Forgetting himself, he murmured, “I could be killed.”

Von Tscharner looked down from the promontory of his con. “Indeed you could, Mr. Kurzweil, indeed you could. All stations, rig for transit. Shields full. Restoration of PDF and data links have first priority upon arrival. And now—in we go.”

And then they were gone.

* * *

A moment later, the Excalibur blinked into existence in the Penelope system and was immediately surrounded by a seething storm of antimatter explosions. But the shields were already coming up and bore the brunt of those detonations.

“Tactics: report.”

“Caladbolg bloodied but steady, sir. Dyrnwyn just coming out behind us now.”

“The minefields?”

“A clear path through them, sir.”

Von Tscharner looked in the plot, saw dozens of Baldy SDHs equidistantly ringing the mouth of the warp point. “Range to threat forces?”

“Between twelve and fifteen light-seconds, sir. Seems that last, pre-transit rush of SBMHAWKs really caught them off guard. It certainly backed them off the warp point.”

Von Tscharner turned to look at Wethermere and nodded down at the plot in something like admiration. “So far so good on your tactical soothsaying, Commander. What next?”

Wethermere looked in the plot as the last two green icons of Strike Group Sigma emerged. “Gotta wait for the data links to come up, Commodore.” As he spoke, Wethermere started tapping his targeting stylus into a dense cluster of the red enemy icons on the left flank of the half-globe of Baldy hulls.

Von Tscharner snapped orders. “I need those data links up now.” He turned to Tactics. “Shields? PDF systems?”

“Shields up and holding, sir. PDF just coming online. And—Tyrfing is in the net, sir. The Strike Group’s data links are complete. Shall I—?”

But Wethermere was already shouting. “Fire control, acquire lock on the eight targets I just designated.”

“Already done, sir.”

“Then all missile tubes: salvo at max rate for fifteen seconds.”

Kurzweil felt the deck beneath his feet and buttocks begin to tremble, as if the precursor tremors of an earthquake were repeating endlessly, stuck just shy of the culminating seismic spike. Tactics made what seemed a redundant announcement. “Missiles launching, sir.”

Kurzweil was about to ask a question, then noticed the sweat beading Wethermere’s brow as he watched the ops clock. When eight seconds had elapsed from the beginning of the missile salvos, the commander said—in a loud, sharp tone: “Now—vent ready coolant tanks to space. And energy-torpedo batteries: prepare to double-fire.…”

Arduan SDH Unshesh’net’ah, Odysseus Cluster Containment Flotilla, Anaht’doh Kainat, Penelope System

Fleet Third Kez’zhem watched his PDF systems begin to pick off the first of the human missiles that were coming into range. It had been a massive salvo, although it was curious that more of the enemy supermonitors did not keep streaming in after these first five. But there wasn’t time to wonder about that now. Surviving this salvo was the first order of business. “Will our PDF systems intercept all the missiles?”

(Uncertainty) tinged his sensor prime’s rapid send. “Hopefully, Fleet Third. But if it wasn’t for our data-hub coordination, we’d surely be—sir!”

“Yes, what is it?”

“The human vessels are—are venting gases and liquids, Fleet Third.”

“What? Have we damaged them?”

“Maybe—but that can’t be the cause, sir. They are all venting the same amount of volatiles—and at the same time.”

“Analysis of the volatiles?”

“Spectrography says the vapor is…is a coolant, sir. The standard human coolant for their high-energy weapons systems.”

Coolant? And all at once—?

That was when the long-range sensors not only conveyed quantitative but visual proof—clear to the unaided eye from over ten light-seconds—of a terrible and ominous spectacle: the space around the human ships sudden flashed alive with blue-white beams, stabbing toward Kez’zhem’s combat group with murderous speed. But the actinic shafts only looked like beams: instead, moving so swiftly that the eye could not see each as a discrete object in motion, they were in fact—

“Energy torpedoes, sir,” reported Tactics. “But—”

“But what? Quickly!”

“Sir, this is impossible. They are firing without stopping. It is as if the armament of two supermonitors is contained in each hull.”

A cool finger of regret for impending failure traced Kez’zhem’s spine, followed closely by an icy surge of race-dread. “Time to missile impact?”

“Seven seconds, sir.”

“Energy torpedoes?”

“They’re much faster, sir. Given their launch delay—also, seven seconds.”

Kez’zhem pulsed the order to Helm and Engineering (URGENT. REVERSE. URGENT. REVERSE.) along with the permission. “Do it, even if you have to burn out the engines.” Then he switched back to Tactics: “PDF intercept ratio?”

Tactics was too overcome by surprise to create lexical selnarm. Instead he signaled (despair, hopelessness).

Kez’zhem did not change the targeting of his PDF systems: the missiles were slower and easier to hit—not that it would really matter. He simply sent his thanks—to the entirety of his staff—and pulsed “For the Race” even as Engineering was slamming the engines into immediate reverse, thereby risking their complete burnout.

As it turned out, a flurry of eighteen energy torpedoes from the Durendal handled the job of incinerating the Unshesh’net’ah’s engines—and all the rest of her—an eyeblink later.

RFNS Excalibur, Strike Group Sigma, Further Rim Fleet, Penelope System

Leo finally realized his mouth was open: he shut it with an audible snap. “Holy hell,” he breathed.

No one seemed to be paying any attention to him—or evinced any reaction other than a series of fierce, tight grins when the eight SDHs Wethermere had targeted simply vanished all at once from the tacplot, wiped away as if they had never been there. In their place, a large gash gaped in the thin fabric of the Baldy containment force.

Tactics reported the enemy fleet evolution as it was unfolding in the plot. “They’re moving away, Commodore.”

Von Tscharner’s voice suggested a desire for a more precise report. “Are they retreating, Tactics?”

“No, sir. I’d say they’re giving ground—grudgingly.”

“Good enough. Mr. Wethermere?”

“Almost. Send the all-clear drone back through the warp point. Maintain rate of fire and ahead three-quarters. Push ’em, make them give more ground.”

“Very good, Mr. Wethermere. Helm, you heard the commander: make it so.” Von Tscharner’s pale blue eyes went back to the plot, and he grinned broadly. “And here comes the Grand Dame Herself.” And sure enough, in the tacplot, more SMTs had started to pop into the system, immediately arraying themselves into a loose but evenly spaced skirmish screen with two layers. Within half a minute, twenty-three SMTs were in place, advancing slowly while Strike Force Sigma pushed generally at the Baldy center, but angling so as to widen the edges of the hole they had made in the enemy line.

Von Tscharner looked at the growing distance between his strike group and the van that had come in with Krishmahnta. “Commander? We’re getting a little exposed out here.”

Wethermere was watching both the ops clock and the distances in the tacplot with almost monomaniacal focus. “Let’s press them a few more seconds.”

“It’s your show, Commander. But tell me—why push them so hard?”

Wethermere looked at the plot intently, evidently measuring distances with great precision. “I don’t want them to get too close a look at our next trick.”

Von Tscharner looked perplexed for a moment, then smiled. “Ah, I see. You know, you’re not half bad at this, Commander.”

“Not half good, either, sir.”

Von Tscharner looked away, still smiling. “Oh, you’ll do.”

Tactics’ next report sounded a bit nervous, Kurzweil noted—which made him even more nervous. “Commodore, the Baldies are still backing off, sir, but they’re slowing down. I think they might be preparing to—”

Wethermere interrupted. “Are they twenty light-seconds from the warp point yet?”

“Just now, sir.”

“Then signal Admiral Krishmahnta. It’s time to spring her half of the trap.”

Arduan SDH Ateth’te’senmir, Odysseus Cluster Containment Flotilla, Anaht’doh Kainat, Penelope System

Fleet Second Sems’shef, who was still busy trying to dress his line and transfer command data to his new fleet third, saw the spectrography scanners probing at the main body of the human fleet even before his sensor prime could alert him to the activity. “Prime, those new SMTs: are they—?”

“Yes, sir. They are all venting vapor and gas.”

“The same gas that the first five emitted just before they fired?”

“Identical, sir!”

Sems’shef glanced quickly into his holotank: twenty-three more SMTs. If they salvoed missiles the same way the first five SMTs had, and then opened up with the same impossible density of energy-torpedo fire, that meant those twenty-three ships had a short-term firepower equal to almost seventy normal ships of their class. And even if they ran out of normal missiles, they would still have this miraculous energy torpedo firepower, making them equal to more than forty of their fellows. The math was not merely unpromising: it was brutally conclusive.

Sems’shef sent his selnarm orders out with typical briskness. “Fleet signal: all about and full speed back to the Agamemnon warp point.”

“We are fleeing, Fleet Second?”

“We are saving ourselves so we may help save the Race, Tactics. We need to warn Agamemnon to ready their defenses, and they will need every hull—including all of ours—if we are to stand against this kind of compact firepower. It is unclear to me if we can even hold that warp point.” Then Sems’shef cleared his mind. Spiking his selnarm into a system-wide repeater, he reached out toward one of the commo drones waiting at the edge of the Agamemnon warp point, preparing to initiate a cascade of similar relays that would soon find and furnish Admiral Narrok with the dire portents of the Second Battle of Penelope.

RFNS Excalibur, Strike Group Sigma, Further Rim Fleet, Penelope System

Kurzweil watched Krishmahnta’s SMTs spread out, slow and surly as if disappointed that they had not been given the opportunity to fight. Fifteen seconds ago, the last of them had finished venting coolant: five seconds ago, the Baldy flotilla had—literally—turned tail and run for the system’s far warp point.

Kurzweil turned toward Wethermere with a crooked smile. “Well, I guess I can’t trust you any more than the other military types, Commander.”

Wethermere raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean, Leo?”

“Don’t give me that. You told me you had only been able to convert five SMTs over to the new boosted energy-torpedo system.”

Wethermere smiled. “That’s right.”

Kurzweil jabbed an indignant finger at the phalanx of large green icons in the tacplot. “Oh? Well, how do you explain these other twenty-three ships? They vented the coolant, too.”

Wethermere’s smile became broader. “Yes, they did, didn’t they?”

The reporter frowned, annoyed, and looked over at von Tscharner—who was smiling at least as broadly as Wethermere himself. And then it hit him. Kurzweil turned back toward Wethermere. “The coolant. It isn’t…isn’t really coolant. I mean, that’s the compound, sure—but you don’t actually need to vent it before you fire.”

Wethermere nodded. “Right. That was just some theater for the benefit of the Baldies.”

“So, when they saw the next rank of ships do the same thing that your first five had done—”

“They drew the inevitable conclusion. But this time they had to concern themselves with twenty-three more supermonitors firing all that ordnance. I figured that when they did the tactical math, they wouldn’t like the answer very much.”

“And if they had stopped to question whether the coolant was real or a trick?”

“Well, the outcome wouldn’t have been much different, although our casualties would have been significantly higher. But we crafted our tactics so that the Baldies didn’t have the time to stop and question anything. They were confronted with a situation which was going to hell in a handbasket, and they had to act quickly.”

Kurzweil changed topics but kept his recorder running, all the while calculating the increased circulation this story was going to generate. “And so how far back do we push the Baldies, Commander?”

Wethermere shrugged. “I don’t know—and I’m no longer in a position to speculate on that pursuit, let alone order it.” He faced von Tscharner. “Sir, it has been an honor and a privilege. As of now, my special orders have been discharged in full, so I cede my operational prerogatives. And I say three times: you have the con in full, sir.”

Von Tscharner nodded. “I say three times, I have the con. You are dismissed. Now go get some rest. And Commander…”

Wethermere, already headed for the lift, turned back. “Sir?”

Von Tscharner smiled. “As they used to say in the wet navy that defended the land where you were born, Bravo Zulu, Mr. Wethermere.”

RFNS Gallipoli, Further Rim Fleet, Agamemnon System

A day later, Erica Krishmahnta watched the last Baldy SDH’s red icon dive into the purple hoop of the Ajax warp point and whispered, “Good riddance.”

Captain Watanabe nodded enthusiastically, but his tone was wry. “Admiral Yoshikuni does not seem to share your sentiments, sir. Comm just told me she’s hopping mad that the Baldies wouldn’t stand and fight. She’s champing at the bit to lead the vanguard when we go to Ajax.”

“Tell her she’s welcome to the first chair, Yoshi—when we go to Ajax. Which might not be so very soon. I’m betting they’ve had enough time to prepare some better defenses there. And they’ve fallen back with almost seventy percent of what they started with in Penelope, and all their assets from here in Agamemnon.”

“True. A pity we didn’t inflict more casualties.”

Krishmahnta glanced sideways at her chief of staff and confidante. “Now you’re starting to sound like Miharu, Yoshi.”

Watanabe literally recoiled. “Me? Sound like the Iron Admiral? I should hope not. I’m simply pointing out that, since we didn’t fight them in these systems, we’re going to have to fight them later on—and probably all at once. And that’s going to be a lot more costly.”

Krishmahnta nodded. “Yes. But we won these two systems back at an incredible bargain: no ships lost, fewer than four hundred crew dead. We’ll be back up to full supply on our SBMHAWKs within the week. And the civilians back in the cluster are just going to love this victory—and the way we won it—when Kurzweil files his story.”

“Yes, about that. Aren’t you a bit worried about how it might make Wethermere a bit of a—well, a celebrity?”

“Worry? Why should I worry? Look, Yoshi. Until someone gets out here to rescue us, those people are all we’ve got, and we’re all they’ve got. We need each other. And we needed this win. And now we get to send the happy news home with less than a thousand body bags and no hulls lost? If they want a hero, let them have a hero.”

Watanabe shrugged. “Personally, I think von Tscharner’s the real hero. It’s not every officer who can stomach having a lieutenant commander in charge of his strike group and ship—not even for ten minutes.”

“Well, I’m glad von Tscharner did so well, because he’s next in line for rear admiral.” She looked at Watanabe with a bit of melancholy. “Right after you, of course.”

“Me? But I don’t want—”

“Yoshi. You of all people should know that this war has never been about what we want. You’re too valuable to the effort to be here with me. With all the new ships and crews we finally have available, I don’t have enough seasoned group leaders. And you’re in line and overdue. Besides, we’ve got our hands full of real problems. Such as the way the Baldies have changed their game: whoever we’re fighting against now is using different tactics, thinking more strategically.” She mused, resolved not to chew her lower lip, which was almost devoid of its customary swelling. “I wish I knew more about him or her.”

Watanabe leaned back. “Well, I can tell you one thing about your adversary.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

“Today, he’s really pissed.”

Arduan SDH Shem’pter’ai, Consolidated Fleet, Anaht’doh Kainat, Charlotte System

Narrok considered the reports from Ajax again. “We must not panic.”

Sarhan’s response was as laconic as ever. “Why not?”

Narrok spontaneously pulsed out (amusement, rue). Although Admiral Sarhan’s body had been blasted by fire and radiation at the Battle of Ajax, he was still the shrewdest intellect, and most refreshingly sardonic peer, that Narrok had in the fleet. “Do you really think this news from Penelope and Ajax indicates that the humans who pushed in from the Mercury Trace have recontacted those in the Odysseus Cluster?”

“How can we eliminate the possibility, Senior Admiral? Since we know next to nothing about how their Kasugawa generator works, we have no way of knowing if, perhaps, they have opened another new warp point into the Tilghman system, for instance.”

Narrok nodded. “I would agree—if we were to constrain our speculations to the science alone. But from a strategic and logistical standpoint, it seems unlikely.”

Sarhan lifted a half-amputated cluster; the tentacles he waved in speculative curiosity were withered, scorched smooth and pasty. “How do you deduce this from their strategy and logistics?”

“Consider, good Sarhan. If the groups had made contact, would they not have coordinated actions more closely? As it is, they have given us challenges in a manageable sequence, not all at once. And why would they not equip the forces in the Odysseus Cluster with their new devastator class? Similarly, if this near-miraculous energy-torpedo battery was brought in from outside the Odysseus Cluster, why did the Allied Fleet not have it to use in their offensive down the Arm? It might have turned the tide of battle at Charlotte. No, I am convinced that the human groups are still separate, are still operating in mutual ignorance.”

“Perhaps so. But it will not long remain the case, I suspect.”

Narrok sent (accord, appreciation) for Sarhan’s perspicacity. “Probably not. And with the humans emerging in force from Odysseus, I feel we have little choice but to withdraw from Ajax.”

“And give up that system’s two warp points?”

“Frankly, I am more worried about splitting my forces between the two warp points of the Ajax system. And that situation would be all the worse if their devastators arrive, fitted with these new energy-torpedo batteries—”

“Senior Admiral, I am frail. I should be discarnate. Please do not shock me into my demise with such speculations. But yes, of course, we must anticipate that, too. Although I confess I have also wondered: Did the humans perhaps trick us at Penelope?”

Narrok sent (appreciation, camaraderie) to the old warrior. “You are thinking that the vented coolant was a ruse? That the larger group of ships was not actually armed as the first?”

“The timing and structure of the engagement makes it impossible not to entertain the hypothesis.”

“I agree. But we will never know. And by the time we face the humans again, it probably will not matter. Unless they are in a terrible rush, they will have enough time to retrofit even more of their ships with this new weapon system.”

Sarhan sadly (concurred). “Either way, our job of holding them has become more difficult—which means it is all the more urgent that we fortify the systems you have selected as our minimum safe perimeter. About which: Is the assembly on schedule?”

Narrok signaled (affirmative). “Slightly ahead of schedule, actually. SDSs are entering the final phases of construction in Suwa, Polo, Andromeda, BR-02, and Raiden.”

“And if the humans attack before they are all completed?”

“Then, friend Sarhan, we shall truly shotan—live and taste—the meaning of this human term which Ankaht now routinely utters. We shall indeed be in extremis.”