Throne of Stars (105 page)

“Sir,” Commander Talbert said quietly, “look at Tactical Three.”

Gajelis’ eyes flicked sideways, and his jaw clenched even tighter as the last of his parasite cruisers was blown apart.

“Three of Fatted Calf’s carriers are still intact, Sir,” Talbert pointed out in that same, quiet voice. “Prokorouv’s cruisers will be in planetary orbit in another four minutes—with full magazines—and his carriers will be here in less than two hours.”

Gajelis grunted in irate acknowledgment. A little voice deep inside told him it was time to give it up, but he could still do it. Yes, his ships were damaged, but
Gloria
was gone completely now—the explosion had been bright enough to be picked out clearly at twenty six million kilometers—and the three carriers still guarding the planetary orbitals were as badly damaged as his
four
surviving carriers. And the Fatted Calf cruisers had been effectively gutted, while their fighters were dodging around for their lives with his own in pursuit. He’d have to deal with Prokorouv’s cruisers, as well as Atilius’ carriers, but it would still have been little worse than an even fight, if not for Prokorouv’s carriers. Still, if he went back to maximum acceleration, just blew past Old Earth and took out the Palace in passing . . .

“We have system recon platform access, Admiral,” Tactical called out.

“Incoming encrypted message from Moonbase,” Commu-nications chimed in.

“Admiral,” Tactical went on, without a break, “system platforms report heavy phase drive emissions closing on Old Earth,” Tactical called out. “Lots of electronics, Sir. Electronics are encrypted, and we’re having a hard time sorting it out. Looks like three squadrons. We’re getting IFF off of them. One of them is CarRon 14, but the other two are squawking ‘Fatted Calf One’ and ‘Fatted Calf Two.’”

“‘Fatted Calf?’” Julian repeated with a puzzled frown.

“It’s t’e pocking Bible,” Poertena said excitedly. “You roast t’e pocking patted calp when t’e prodigal son returns.”

“Indeed,” Helmut agreed with a smile. “Sergeant Julian, you really need to brush up on your general reading.” He studied the icons on his repeater plot. “Three ships in one squadron, noted only as Fatted Calf. And all of Twelfth Squadron, which is broadcasting as Fatted Calf Two.”

“Intel update complete,” Tactical said.

“Admiral La Paz reports a tunnel drive footprint, Sir. A bunch of them. It looks like another fleet.” Silence hovered for a handful of seconds, and then Lieutenant Commander Clinton cleared her throat. “Confirmed, Sir. Admiral La Paz’s count puts it at eighteen ships.”

Gajelis looked at his own display as the central computers updated it, then shook his head.

“It’s not going to be one of Prince Jackson’s forces,” he muttered. “Not that big and coming in from there.”

“Helmut,” Commander Talbert said.

“Helmut,” Gajelis agreed bitterly. “Dark Lord of the Sixth.
Damn
that traitorous bastard!”

Commander Talbert wisely avoided pointing out that “traitorous” was, perhaps, a double-edged concept at this particular moment.

“We’ll have to withdraw,” the admiral continued.

“Withdraw to
where
?” Talbert demanded, unable to keep his anger totally out of his voice.

“Arrangements have been made,” Gajelis said flatly. “Signal the squadron to break off and head for the TD limit. Flight Plan Leonidas. I need to make a call.”

“So much for time,” Helmut sighed, and punched a command into his repeater. A much larger hologram came up, covered with icons which were so much gibberish to Julian. “Ah, there’s what we’re after!” the admiral said, reaching into the hologram and “tapping” a finger through some of the symbols. The hologram’s scale was so small that they scarcely seemed to be moving at all, but the vector codes beside them said otherwise.

“What is it?” Julian asked.

“Fourteenth Squadron,” Helmut replied. “Well . . .”

He frowned and brought up a sidebar list and studied it briefly.

“It
was
Fourteenth Squadron,” he continued. “Now, it’s Fourteenth
missing two carriers. Took a bit of a beating, apparently, but still the ones we want.”

“Why them?” Julian asked.

“People, Sergeant. People,” Helmut sighed. “It’s not the ships, it’s the minds within them. Fourteenth is Adoula’s most loyal squadron. Where
else
would the Prince run to? The one squadron that would beat feet the instant my fleet turned up and Adoula got on board, which is why I had Admiral Niedermayer come in where he did.”

“Is it going to work?”

“Well, we’ll just have to see, won’t we?” Helmut shrugged. “The bad guys aren’t precisely where they should be—thanks to the fact that your Prince had to start early. Remind me to discuss the importance of maintaining operational schedules with him.” The admiral bared his teeth in a tight smile. “As it is, we’ll just have to wait and see. It’ll be some time, either way.” He banished the plotting hologram and brought up a 3-D chessboard, instead. “Do you play, Sergeant?”

“I wish I could have welcomed you aboard under better circumstances, Your Highness,” Victor Gajelis said in a harsh, grating voice as Prince Jackson was shown into his day cabin. The admiral bent his head in a bow, and Adoula forced himself not to swear at him. It had become painfully obvious that Gajelis was not the best flag officer in the Imperial Navy. Unfortunately, all of the ones better than him seemed to be working for the other side, which meant the prince was just going to have to make do.

“You had no way of knowing Prokourov was going to turn traitor,” he said as Gajelis straightened. “Neither did General Gianetto and I. And I still don’t see how they coordinated this closely with Helmut. I know you could still have turned it around, if it hadn’t been for
his
arrival, Victor.”

“Thank you, Your Highness,” Gajelis said. “My people gave as good as they got. But with Prokourov going over to the other side and bringing Helmut’s numbers up even more—”

“Not just Prokourov, I’m afraid,” Adoula said more heavily. “Admiral Wu turned
her
coat, too. She didn’t have it all her own way. Captain Ramsey refused to obey the orders to go over to the other side, but all three of her other carriers supported her.
Hippogriff
is gone, but Ramsey hammered
Chimera
and
Halkett
pretty severely before she went. But that leaves only Eleventh, Thirteenth, and Fifteenth to support you—thirteen carriers for us, against twenty-six for them, counting the Home Fleet defections. No, Admiral, you were right to break off when you did. Time to get out with what we can and reassemble for a counterattack. General Gianetto and I have already transmitted the order to our other squadrons. Admiral Mahmut will rendezvous with you on your way to the Tsukayama Limit. Admiral La Paz and Admiral Brettle will proceed independently to the rendezvous.”

“CarRon 14’s changed course, Sir,” Tactical said twenty-seven minutes later. “It’s broken off.”

“Has it?” Helmut replied without looking up from the chessboard as he considered Julian’s last move. He moved one of his own rooks in response, then glanced at the Tactical officer. “He’s headed for system north, yes?”

“Yes, Sir.” The Taco seemed completely unsurprised by Helmut’s apparent clairvoyance.

“Good.” The admiral looked back at the chessboard. “Your move, I believe, Sergeant?”

“How did you know, Sir?” Julian asked quietly. Helmut glanced up at him, one eyebrow quirked, and Julian gestured at the tactical officer. “How did you know he’d go north?”

“Gajelis is from Auroria Province on Old Earth,” Helmut replied. “He’s a swimmer. What does a swimmer do when he’s been down too long?”

“He goes for the surface,” Julian said.

“And that’s what he’s doing—trying to break for the surface.” Helmut nodded at the tactical display. “When he breaks vertically for the TD sphere, four times out of five he has his ships go up.” He shrugged. “Never forget, Sergeant. Predictability is one of the few truly unforgivable tactical sins. As Admiral Niedermayer will demonstrate in about eight hours.”

“Excuse me, Admiral, but we have a problem,” a tight-faced Commander Talbert said as he entered the briefing room where Adoula and Gajelis had been conferring electronically with Admiral Minerou Mahmut. The three carriers of Mahmut’s CarRon 15 had rendezvoused with CarRon 14 less than ten minutes earlier. Now both squadrons were proceeding in company for the Tsukayama Limit, less than four light-minutes ahead of them.

“What sort of problem?” Gajelis demanded testily. On their current flight profile, they were less than twenty-five minutes from the limit.

“Seven phase drive signatures just lit off ahead of us, Sir,” Talbert said flatly. “Range two-point-five light-minutes.”

“Damn it!” Adoula snarled. “Who?”

“Unknown at this time, Sir,” Talbert said. “They’re not squawking IFF, but phase signature strengths indicate that they’re carriers.”

“Seven,” Gajelis said anxiously. “And fresh, presumably.” He looked at the prince and grimaced. “We’re . . . not in good shape.”

“Avoid them!” Adoula said. “Just get to the nearest TD point and
jump
.”

“It’s not that easy, Your Highness,” Talbert said with a sigh. “We can jump out from anywhere on the TD sphere, but they’re sitting almost bang center of where we were
going
to jump, and they were obviously prepositioned. They just fired up their drives—the best em-con in the galaxy couldn’t have hidden carrier phase drives from us at this range if they’d been on-line. It’s like they read our minds, or something.”

“
Helmut
,” Gajelis snarled. “The son of a bitch must’ve dropped them off at least four or five light-days out, outside our sensor shell. Then he sent them in sublight on a profile that brought them in under such low power the perimeter platforms never saw them coming! But how in hell did he know
where
to deploy them, damn it?!”

“I don’t know, Sir,” Talbert said. “But however he did it, they’re inside any vector change we can manage. We’ve got velocity directly
towards
their position—forty-six thousand KPS of it. We can jink round a little bit, try to feint them off, but we’re already nine million kilometers inside their missile range. The geometry gives even their
cruisers
over thirty million kilometers’ range against our closing velocity, and we’re only forty-five million out. By now they’ve already launched cruisers—probably their fighters, too—and they’re only holding their missile fire till they can generate better firing solutions and get their cruiser missiles into range. And at our velocity, we’re going to end up in
energy
range of them in another sixteen minutes.”

“Launch decoy drones,” Gajelis said. “Launch fighters for cover, and launch the cruisers, those that are spaceworthy. You, too, Minerou,” he added to the admiral on his com display.

“Agreed,” Mahmut said. “On my way to CIC. I’ll check back in when I get there.”

The display blanked, and Gajelis looked back up at Talbert.

“Go,” he said sharply. “I’ll join you in CIC in a minute.”

“Yes, Sir.” Talbert nodded and left quickly.

“You’re going to fight?” Adoula asked incredulously.

“We’ll
have
to,” Gajelis replied. “You heard Talbert, Your Highness. We’ll have to engage them.”

“No, as a matter of fact, you
won’t
,” the Prince replied. “Have the rest of your forces engage, but getting me to Kellerman is the priority. This ship will avoid action and get out of the system. Have the others cover you.”

“That’s a bit—” Gajelis began angrily.

“Those are your
orders
, Admiral,” Adoula replied. “Follow them!”

“This is going to be interesting,” Admiral Niedermayer remarked. “Observe
Trujillo
,” he continued. “Breaking off as predicted.”

“Sometimes the Admiral scares me, Sir,” Senior Captain Erhardt replied. “How did he know Gajelis was going to head
here
?”

“Magic, Marge. Magic,” Niedermayer told the commander of his flagship. “Unfortunately, it would appear he was also correct about Adoula.”

Niedermayer’s flagship had been tapped back into the system recon net ever since Captain Kjerulf had reconfigured his lockout to allow Sixth Fleet access. He’d used that advantage to adjust his ships’ position slightly, but it really hadn’t been necessary. As Erhardt’s last remark indicated, Admiral Helmut had called Adoula’s and Gajelis’ response almost perfectly. Only the timing had changed . . . and Helmut had gotten them here early enough for the timing not to be a problem.

“I can’t believe the rest of them are just going to come right on in to
cover
him.” Erhardt shook her head, staring at the plot where six of the seven enemy carriers had altered heading to accelerate directly towards them even as the seventh accelerated directly
away
from them. “The bastard is running out on them, and they’re still going to fight for him?”

“Jackson Adoula is a physical coward, Marge,” Niedermayer said. “Oh, I’m sure he’s found some other way to justify it, even to himself. After all, he’s the ‘indispensable man,’ isn’t he? Without his stronghold in the Sagittarius Sector, it’d all the over but the shouting once the Prince retakes the Palace. So, much as I may despise him, there really is a certain logic in getting him away.”