Rob Geary had the destroyer Saber on an intercept with the three attacking ships. He didn’t have the luxury of waiting until the enemy commander made a mistake on his own. Hopefully the commander could be nudged into a mistake.
The three enemy ships, the light cruiser, the destroyer, and the freighter, were moving through space at a crawl, only about a thousand meters per second. That was to accommodate the freighter carrying the invading troops, which couldn’t accelerate or brake at anything like the rate a warship could. Freighters were designed to move a lot of cargo at efficient speeds, and refitting them with life support in the cargo areas so they could carry a lot of soldiers instead of cargo didn’t change that. Fortunately for Rob and the people of Glenlyon Star System, Old Earth hadn’t yet sold to the aggressors out here any surplus military ships designed for moving troops quickly through space.
Saber was approaching the three enemy ships from below and to the left as seen using the human conventions that allowed people to orient themselves in space, where no real up or down existed. Humans defined the plane in which a star’s planets orbited as a basis for “up” and “down,” and the star itself for deciding if something was to their left (away from the star) or right (toward the star). It was rough and simple, but it worked to give common references in space. Instead of coming in with a swift stroke befitting her name, Saber was moving at a moderate velocity for a warship, only point zero one light speed, or about three thousand kilometers per second. There had been plenty of time to accelerate up to point zero two light speed, but Rob hadn’t wanted to burn the fuel necessary to do that since he had no idea when he’d be able to refuel Saber, and the slower velocity allowed better accuracy. “If we get a shot,” Rob told his bridge crew, “I want to make sure we get as many hits as possible.”
The officers on the bridge, all of them Earth Fleet veterans, understood how tough the situation was, how bad the odds were. But, because of how well things had gone during the fighting at Kosatka a few months ago, they had an amount of confidence in him that Rob found worrisome. Overconfidence could lose battles at least as surely as a lack of confidence. That’s what Mele Darcy had told him during one of her rambling discussions of military theory and history, and Rob had no reason to doubt her. Not on that matter, anyway. Some of Mele’s stories about her own experiences in life seemed a little . . . exaggerated, but then Mele was a Marine, and she never told stories about what she’d done in combat except to offer an occasional learning lesson.
“Half an hour to intercept, Captain,” Lieutenant Cameron reported.
“Very well,” Rob said. He magnified the image of the enemy ships on his own display, seeing they remained in the same triangular formation, the destroyer and light cruiser positioned so that they could hit Saber before Saber could get in any shots at the freighter carrying the enemy troops. Rob had lined up the intercept course to offer an apparent chance for the enemy to better concentrate fire on Saber by moving the light cruiser “down” and to one side, in hopes that the enemy commander would take advantage of that without noticing that it would offer a chance for Saber to make a last-minute change of course to hit the freighter, with lower odds of being hit herself. But so far the enemy hadn’t changed anything about their approach.
Lieutenant Commander Vicki Shen, who was already in engineering in anticipation of the upcoming fight, called him. “He’s not going to bite, sir.”
Rob nodded as much to himself as to her words. “He spotted the trick.”
“No, I doubt that,” she replied. “I’ve gone back over every maneuver that guy in command of the enemy force has made since they arrived at this star system. Every single move, every single formation shift, has been by the book. Exactly by the book.”
“We guessed he was an Earth Fleet veteran,” Rob said. “It’s not surprising that he’d still be using Earth Fleet procedures.”
“I think this is more than that. I worked for a few people like this guy. They couldn’t even spell ‘imagination’ because they didn’t think they’d ever need it.” Shen shook her head. “I don’t think he saw the possible opportunity we offered. He’s not looking for that. He’s got his ships arranged by the book. Anything we do, he’ll counter by the book.”
“Hell.” Rob leaned his head back, staring at the tangle of wiring and piping and ducts attached to the overhead of the bridge. “If we had superiority, or even odds, we’d be able to take him apart if he’s that predictable. But when he has this much superiority, we can’t use that predictability against him. We need him to make a mistake, and you’re telling me that he’s not going to do that.”
“I don’t think so, no.” Shen paused. “The combat simulation system estimates that if we continue this intercept, we have a two percent chance of inflicting significant damage on the freighter, and a ninety percent chance of our own ship suffering serious damage when both enemy ships hit us. As second in command, I feel obligated to advise you against making this attack.”
“Thank you,” Rob said, feeling as if acid were eating at his insides. “You’re right. Is there anything we can do? You know Earth Fleet procedures better than I do. Even if all we can do is force him to use more fuel, that’s something.”
“I don’t think—” She paused, her brow lowering in thought. “Leader Class light cruisers have a single missile launcher. We don’t know if that ship has any missiles aboard. But if it does, Earth Fleet manuals spell out exactly when to fire.”
“How are you thinking we can use that?”
“Maybe we can trick him into using up some of his missiles by knowing when he’d fire and being ready to evade them.”
He took a moment to think. His own, limited, experience had been in the small fleet that the Old Colony star system Alfar had maintained. If Vicki Shen saw something in the enemy commander’s actions that her Earth Fleet experience could identify, he’d be a fool to disregard that. “That’s not much, but it’s something. And lessening the threat from the missiles on that cruiser will help our odds when we do close to a fight.” Rob turned to look at the officers at their watch stations aligned along the back of the bridge, focusing on the weapons officer. “Ensign Reichert, what do you know about Earth Fleet parameters for firing missiles?”
Reichert, concentrating on her weapons display, jerked with surprise at the question. “Missiles? I haven’t employed any, sir, but I’ve still got the manual loaded into the combat systems for reference. That was required by Earth Fleet regulations, but by your orders the combat system is no longer slaved to the manual to govern when to fire.”
“Good. The executive officer tells me the enemy commander is doing everything exactly as Earth Fleet manuals dictate,” Rob said. “I want to know under what conditions he’ll fire a missile at us, and then I want to know how we can evade that missile.”
Reichert nodded, her eyes intent. “It’ll be based on probability of a hit. I’m sure of that.”
“Get me what I need to know, because I needed to know it five minutes ago.”
“Yes, sir! Do I assume we continue on this approach vector to intercept?”
“Yes. Lieutenant Cameron, work with Ensign Reichert on the evasive maneuvers.”
“Yes, Captain. Uh . . . twenty-five minutes to intercept, sir,” Cameron added. “We should have an answer to you well before then.”
Sitting, watching his display, and not interrupting proved to be one of the hardest things Rob had done. He had to keep fighting himself to avoid demanding progress updates from Reichert and Cameron, because he knew those disturbances in their work would slow them down. He’d seen enough of both Reichert and Cameron to be sure they’d get the job done, but it was still hard as hell to wait it out while they worked as the timer on his display kept counting down the seconds and minutes until the intercept.
Twenty minutes prior to the intercept the general quarters alarm sounded, calling everyone aboard Saber to their battle stations. There wasn’t any rush of sailors through the ship in response to the alarm, which wasn’t a surprise. Rob wondered if there was anyone on the ship who wasn’t already in position, ready for battle.
He pulled out the survival suit stored at his seat and put it on in case Saber took a hit bad enough to open this part of the ship to space. He kept the helmet unsealed to make it easier to talk with everyone else and to conserve the suit’s oxygen recirc system. The familiar routine momentarily took his mind off of the welter of worries about what to do if the answer couldn’t be found in time.
“We’ve got it, Captain,” Ensign Reichert announced breathlessly. “The exact circumstances of when to fire are determined by the situation. Since we have the same Earth Fleet manuals as the enemy does, we know what they call for in this exact situation. If he follows the engagement rules in the manual, he’ll fire when the combat systems estimate a seventy-five percent chance of a hit regardless of whatever evasive maneuvers we carry out.”
“We can determine exactly when that will be on our approach to intercept,” Lieutenant Cameron said.
“Seventy-five percent?” Rob said. “No matter how we evade?” He tried to keep the disappointment out of his voice. How could he take that kind of risk?
“Yes, sir,” Cameron said. “But, as Ensign Reichert pointed out to me, that’s assuming the targeted ship doesn’t know in advance when that missile will be fired at it. If we do know that, and we initiate an evasive maneuver based on that rather than waiting to detect the launch of the missile before we try to dodge, that buys us at least a couple of seconds, and our chances of evading the missile will be very good.”
“That’s the best news I’ve heard in a while,” Rob said. “Good work, you two. What does ‘very good’ mean in terms of us not getting hit by a missile?”
“Pretty close to a hundred percent, sir,” Reichert said. “The probability of hit calculations assumes the targeted warship will continue its vector at least until missile launch is detected. At the velocities we’re traveling, even a tiny shift in vector a couple of seconds earlier than that will be more than a missile can compensate for.”
“Let’s set it up,” Rob said. “We don’t have a lot of good options, but if this allows us a means to deplete his supply of missiles, it’ll help the odds we’re facing. We’ve got less than ten minutes left to intercept.”
“The maneuver will be sometime in the last minute,” Lieutenant Cameron predicted confidently. “We’ll have it for you before then, sir.”
Rob felt himself relaxing as he watched his display. Physics ruled in space. Go fast enough and relativity started to really mess with things, but Newton’s old rules governed most matters that humans had to deal with. Anything like this, the movements of ships in space, their curving tracks through the emptiness and their velocity and the time when they’d pass close enough to each other to exchange fire, could all be calculated precisely, down to the last decimal place. The math, as complicated as it could get, was easy and predictable.
What wasn’t predictable were the actions of humans. Which was why Rob was in command of Saber instead of some artificial intelligence program. “There are two basic problems with AIs in command of weapons,” one of Rob’s instructors back at Alfar had told the class. “The first is that, from the point of view of the enemy, an AI is too predictable. It has to operate by the rules written into its code, even if that code is supposed to be mimicking human thought process. The second problem, though, is that from the point of view of our own side, an AI is unpredictable in all the worst ways. Think of every time your comparatively simple home computer systems have malfunctioned or glitched or done the wrong thing, even when no malware was involved, and imagine that in charge of weapons that can kill you. That’s why humans remain in the loop for critical systems. Each of you has to decide whether the AIs assisting your actions and decision making are giving you the best advice, or even good advice. Don’t default to letting them decide for you, or you won’t know how to decide for yourself when you need to.”
That wasn’t how Earth Fleet had worked, though. They’d been wedded to checklists and procedures that made decisions for them. If Vicki Shen was right, the commander of the enemy force had no practice in making his own decisions because he always did what the book said. And Rob finally had a way to use that weakness.
“He’ll launch at fifteen seconds before intercept,” Ensign Reichert reported. “If he follows the Earth Fleet combat rules programmed into his weapon controls.”
“And if he has missiles,” Lieutenant Cameron added.
“All right,” Rob said. “I want to set up a maneuver to evade the missile, and then . . . come back around for another intercept.” That return maneuver would require enough time for him to figure out what to do next.
“Yes, sir.” Cameron’s hands flew across his display. “Sending to you, Captain.”
Rob’s display lit up with the proposed maneuver, a wide swing up and around, making the most efficient use possible of Saber’s existing momentum. He checked the time left, seeing that it was just less than two minutes, then approved the maneuver. “I’m putting this one on automatic to make sure we shift vector at just the right moment,” he told Cameron.
Touching the glowing control marked “confirm,” Rob let out a slow breath to calm his voice before activating Saber’s internal communications. “All hands,” he said. “This is the captain. We’re less than two minutes to intercept. We’re going to try to fool the enemy into expending some of his missiles on this run, so stand by for last-moment evasive maneuvers.”
One minute left.
A Leader Class light cruiser could carry only four missiles because of their size and mass. The missiles had to be big enough to carry enough thrust and fuel to engage a target, as well as the necessary sensors to track the target, and the warhead itself, which was big enough that a single missile hit would have a good chance of inflicting damage on a destroyer like Saber. Reduce how many missiles the enemy had, or confirm that the enemy hadn’t purchased missiles along with the cruiser, and the odds against Saber would go from impossible to only extremely bad.
But if he was wrong, if Vicki Shen and he had misjudged the actions of the enemy commander, and that missile was fired a second earlier at, say, a fifty percent chance of a hit, then Saber might very soon be in serious danger. This wasn’t a sure thing. But it was the best he had.
In the final seconds before the evasive maneuver, as Saber and the enemy warships rushed through the final thousands of kilometers that had separated them, Rob had a moment to wonder which Leader the light cruiser had originally been named for. Whoever it was, how would they feel if they could know that the ship once named in their honor was now being used by those intent on conquering nearby star systems? Or had the leader themselves once been a conqueror who was crowned by success into someone to be admired by people many generations removed from the carnage?
The maneuvering warning alarm blared.
Five seconds later, as the automated command activated, Saber’s thrusters kicked in hard, pitching the destroyer up onto a higher vector that would carry her past the three enemy ships at too great a distance for an engagement. Some of the force of the sudden change in her path leaked past the ship’s inertial dampers that kept the stress from tearing apart Saber and her crew. Rob heard Saber’s hull protest with a prolonged groan of metallic pain as he felt that force push him down into his seat.
The thrusters had just begun firing when another alarm sounded, high-pitched and urgent. “Missile launch detected from the light cruiser!” Ensign Reichert called out, her own voice strained by the effort of dealing with the stress of the vector change. “The launch was exactly when predicted.”
Rob kept his gaze on his display as the symbol representing the missile fired from the light cruiser leapt out and raced toward an intercept with Saber. The ships were moving so fast that the destroyer was past the enemy in an instant, the enemy warships just out of range of Saber’s weapons. Rob’s display showed him what had happened in those moments of time during which human reflexes were too slow to cope, the missile’s path jerking as it tried to compensate for Saber’s course change, the violent stress of the necessary maneuver shattering the missile into a shower of fragments that raced off into space.
He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. Saber was still coming up and around, her course bending in an immense curve that would steady out on a vector to once again intercept the enemy, though this time the destroyer would be approaching from above and to the right of the invaders. The stress of the maneuver had lessened, though, as the ship bent on a more leisurely change of its course. “Okay,” he said, trying to sound confident rather than shaken. “That worked.”
“Captain?” Vicki Shen said, calling once more from engineering. “Do it again.”
“What?” Rob glanced from the display to the image of his executive officer. “That’d be a waste of fuel, wouldn’t it? He saw what we did. He has to assume we’ll do the same thing on the next approach.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Shen said. “I went through I don’t know how many evaluation drills in Earth Fleet that all came down to whether or not you did what the checklists and the procedures said. It didn’t matter whether or not it worked. What mattered was that you followed the procedures. That guy we’re fighting is a successful product of that system. He got his rank by doing exactly what the procedures told him to do. I think if we make another run at him, he’ll do exactly what procedures say, and fire another missile when the hit probability reaches the right number.”
“Even though he knows we’ll dodge it?”
“Even though. I worked for guys like him, sir. He knows what the book says to do, and that’s what he’ll keep doing.”
Rob rubbed his face with both hands, trying to decide whether or not to risk it.
Would the enemy expect him to do the same thing? That’d be a stupid thing for Rob to do. But . . . the enemy commander didn’t know the dodge had been deliberate. He might convince himself it had been a lucky coincidence.
“All right,” Rob said. “It’s worth the risk if we can get rid of another one of his missiles. Lieutenant Cameron, Ensign Reichert, I want the same thing worked up. Figure out exactly when he’ll fire a missile at us and how we need to evade it.”
The two officers bent to their tasks while Saber continued around through space. Despite her velocity, immense by the standards of any world, to the humans inside her she seemed to be motionless. Even the nearest references, the three enemy ships, were so far distant at this point in the turn that they were mere specks of light against the star-spangled darkness.
With Saber approaching this time from behind and above the enemy, and the relative speed at which the destroyer closed on the enemy slower than when all the ships were heading toward each other, the point at which the light cruiser would hopefully fire another missile was at a different place along the intercept curve. Still, it was just math.
“Got it, Captain,” Ensign Reichert said. “He’ll fire when we reach this point, which will be at this time.”
On Rob’s display, a point along the projected intercept route glowed, showing him the place and time Reichert had worked out. “Excellent. Lieutenant Cameron, can we manage a good evasion from there?”
“Yes, sir,” Cameron said. “If we break upward again at the moment he fires, we should have a one hundred percent chance of getting clear.”
“We broke upward last time,” Rob said. Repeating the same tactic twice in a row was worrisome enough, but doing it in exactly the same way? “And that’ll require a more intense maneuver than steepening our turn and diving faster, won’t it? More stress on the ship and the crew.”
“Yes, sir. Captain, you said to do the same thing, so . . .”
“So you laid out the same thing.” Rob waved an apologetic hand. “Sorry. You did what I said. Can we evade the missile by diving instead of bending our course up?”
“I need to run that, sir.”
“But we can evade by turning upward if we need to.”
“Yes, sir. But, as you said, it’s a more intense maneuver. More stress on the ship and crew. We’d be at least in the yellow stress zone, and might shade into the red.” He paused as one of his hands danced over his display. “Yes, sir, we can ensure successful evasion of the missile by diving.”
“All right. We’ll dive. Give me the maneuver.”
“Yes, sir.” Lieutenant Cameron worked quickly, reminding Rob that while Earth Fleet hadn’t valued imagination or initiative it had trained its people extremely well in carrying out tasks. “Then . . . twenty-two minutes until we evade.”
“Enter the maneuver into the system and I’ll set it to take place automatically again,” Rob said.
“Yes, sir.”
The maneuver command popped up on Rob’s display. He authorized it, then once again had nothing to do but wait.
Once more, time counted down at what seemed a very slow pace.
As the moment of the maneuver approached, Rob felt himself tensing. If the enemy commander ordered a missile launch earlier than the book dictated, it might put Saber at risk of being hit.
He silently counted off the last seconds before the maneuvering alarm sounded, followed by Saber’s thrusters firing, and once again a report from Ensign Reichert.
“Missile launch detected, exactly when predicted.”
Saber tore past the enemy once more, this time diving under the three warships. Rob watched the missile race above Saber, too far off to engage the destroyer, and continue on into empty space. “When will it self-destruct?”
“About now,” Ensign Reichert said, just as an alert appeared on Rob’s display showing the detonation of the missile’s warhead. “Damn, I’m good.”
“What was that, Ensign?”
“Nothing, sir.”
Rob called Lieutenant Commander Shen. “Do you think he’ll do it again?”
“Maybe.”
“‘Maybe’ isn’t a recommendation. You can get inside this guy’s head better than I can.”
She paused, thinking, then slowly nodded. “Yes, sir, I think he will.”
“What if he anticipates our evasion maneuver this time and fires early?”
“He won’t do that.”
“Why not?” Rob asked. “It’s a logical response to what we’ve been doing.”
“Because,” Shen said, “he doesn’t have any guidance on how to do that. There’s nothing in the manual about what to do in this situation. I’ll guarantee you that he’s looking for such guidance right now and finding nothing. That leaves him only two choices. Either fire exactly when the book says to fire, or don’t.”
Rob sat back, trying to decide if this was worth the risk. “I find it hard to believe a commander would find it that hard to think for themselves.”
“Sir, you saw the after-action reports from the survivors of Claymore.”
Shen didn’t add anything else. She didn’t have to. Rob recalled his disbelief as he read those reports, wondering why the commanding officer of Claymore and the Commodore had kept looking for answers in their checklists rather than doing something, anything. “All right. Lieutenant Cameron, let’s bring her around for a third pass. Ensign Reichert, as soon as we have that maneuver worked out, I want to know when he’ll fire at us.”
Rob waited for any sign of worry or skepticism from his crew as they prepared to do the same thing for a third time. The approach vectors had been different the first two times, and would be different again this time, but it was still the same tactic. It worried him that he saw no concern in his officers as they worked. Did they trust him that much? Or was this a product of their Earth Fleet training, where doing what you were told mattered much more than the results of whatever you did?
Once again Saber swooped in, the enemy warships repositioning in another by-the-book maneuver so they could hit her before Rob could get in any shots at the freighter. Once again, Rob waited, tense, until the maneuvering warning sounded and Saber altered vector, followed by the report of an enemy missile fired from the light cruiser. This time the enemy missile tried another radical maneuver to catch Saber, breaking into two large pieces from the stress. The front portion self-destructed, while the stern part of the missile spiraled off into space, heading “up” on a path that would take it into the endless dark between stars.
“One more time?” Lieutenant Cameron asked.
“Yeah,” Rob said.
Barely ten seconds later Ensign Reichert called out, “Captain! Problem!”
He swung to look at her. “What is it?”
Reichert was studying something on her display, her eyes intent. “Sir, a Leader Class light cruiser carries four missiles. He’s fired three. The manual seems to say he should fire again on our next pass, but I’ve been running a simulation of the enemy cruiser alongside our own actions as a check, and a warning just popped up on it. I tagged it, and the combat manual says since the cruiser is down to one missile, it should reserve firing it until hit probability exceeds ninety percent.”
“Ninety percent?” Rob looked at his display, which showed the long, projected path of Saber curving toward a fourth intercept with the cruiser. “Lieutenant Cameron, what are our chances of successfully evading if he waits for a ninety percent hit probability before firing?”
“Working it, sir.” Cameron paused, finally looking distressed. “Captain, that’d require us to hold our approach longer, making evasion harder. That leaves such a short time to change vector . . . the system is estimating something less than fifty percent chance of evading the missile.”
“Less than fifty percent?”
“Yes, Captain. Possibly as low as twenty percent depending on how the missile reacts.”
Rob rested one hand over his eyes, thinking, but almost immediately lowered it. “Give me a vector to place Saber in a position above and slightly forward of the enemy formation at a distance of one light second.”
Three hundred thousand kilometers. Close enough to menace the enemy, and to pounce if the enemy made a mistake, but far enough off that if the enemy warships suddenly turned to charge Saber he’d have time to react. Only a few minutes, but Rob had confidence that his crew could respond that quickly.
Feeling an obligation to explain what was happening, Rob tapped the ship’s general announcing system. “All hands, this is the Captain. We’ve tricked the enemy into expending most of their missiles, but any further attempts are too likely to result in damage to Saber. Our presence here is the only thing hindering the enemy’s ability to act, so we will maintain a close watch on them, waiting for an opportunity to strike. We’ll be standing down from full combat alert, but everyone has to be prepared for action on only a few minutes’ notice. That is all.”
This was the point, Rob Geary thought, at which his ship was supposed to charge into battle and defeat the invaders of Glenlyon, overcoming impossible odds. After all, he’d done that before.
But that wasn’t happening this time.
Saber took up position shadowing the enemy force.
Unless something changed the odds, there wasn’t much else he could do.
This conference room on the orbital facility had been stripped of valuable equipment, but the chairs and big table hadn’t been worth hauling down to the surface in the time available. Mele sat at one end of the table, looking down its length at the Marine and ground forces officers and senior enlisted. Aside from her, the only other Marine officer was newly promoted Lieutenant Shahid Nasir. Shahid had been an easy pick for the lieutenant job since he’d been in officer training on Luxor when that Old Colony followed along with the others and drastically cut back the already small military force it had maintained. Almost completely qualified in a job for which there was no longer local demand, he had, like many others, looked outward to where humanity was rapidly expanding deeper into the galaxy.
For Mele the deciding factor had been that when Shahid was approached by recruiters for Apulu he’d balked at their terms of service and demands for obedience to all orders. “History shows the dangers of such things,” he had explained to Mele. “Demanding that all orders be obeyed regardless of legality or humanity. Any government that fears the consciences of its own soldiers is not a government to be trusted.”
“You do understand,” Mele had replied, “that you need to have a really good reason for refusing to obey an order, right?”
“I hope never to have to disobey an order,” Shahid said. “But if you do not trust me to know when an order is illegal, or when such an extreme circumstance exists, perhaps you should not entrust me with an officer position on which the lives of others rest.”
“Good point.”
Lieutenant Nasir sat next to Gunnery Sergeant Moon. Opposite them sat Captain Batra, along with Lieutenant Keith Paratnam, Lieutenant Jana Killian, and Master Sergeant Teri Savak. They all looked worn-out. Mele imagined she looked at least as bad. “We’ve got twenty hours before the enemy arrives if they maintain their current velocity,” she said. “I want to ensure everyone gets some rest before then. We’re not going to have many opportunities for rest after that.”
Mele gestured toward the display still mounted on one wall. “The enemy ships started braking velocity exactly when expected. They’re maintaining a vector to bring them next to this facility, with the facility between them and the planet below.”
“It’s too bad we don’t actually have any antiorbital weapons on the surface,” Lieutenant Killian commented, her eyes somber.
“We do have fakes,” Mele said, drawing surprised looks. “Colonel Menziwa briefed me on them. This information does not go outside this room. The government has set up decoys in a dozen places. The decoys generate the same passive and active signals as real concealed antiorbital weapons sites would. From orbit they’ll look like actual hidden weapon locations. Aside from keeping the enemy ships nervous, we’re hoping they’ll expend their bombardment projectiles on those sites so every other place will be safe.”
Captain Batra smiled. “It would take a half dozen standard projectiles to eliminate each suspected site. At the least, that would use up a lot of their supply.”
“But why would the enemy believe we really have such sites?” Killian asked. “Aren’t we fairly sure they have spies on the planet who would’ve spotted something like that?”
Mele nodded. “At least one of those spies has been identified, and deliberately allowed access to details on the top-secret antiorbital weapons program.”
“Nice,” Killian admitted. “It’s good to know we’ve been punching back on the covert junk.”
“The goal of the deception was to discourage the enemy from attacking the planet again,” Mele said. “It failed in that. Hopefully it’ll work better as a way to soak up the enemy bombardment capabilities.”
“How close do the enemy ships have to get before they launch a bombardment?”
“I was told the soonest they’d probably launch would be ten hours from now. By then they’ll be close enough to be fairly sure of accurate drops on their rocks. But it’s possible they won’t bombard if they think they can capture this facility. They probably want to capture intact as much weaponry and industry on the planet as they can.”
Lieutenant Paratnam rubbed his eyes. “Do we have any better estimate for how long we’ll need to hold out once they get here?”
“No,” Mele said. “There are too many variables with unknown quantities. Especially the fuel supplies on the enemy warships. The more damage we do, the more we force them to use energy, the sooner they’ll have to withdraw.”
“A death grapple,” Captain Batra grumbled. “I wish we knew exactly who we were up against.”
“It’s unlikely to be Reds,” Sergeant Moon said. “The enemy knows they need well-trained troops to take a facility like this.”
“Maybe Red shock troops to take the damage from our initial defense,” Lieutenant Killian suggested. She nodded as if confirming her own words. “Use them to wear us down, and limit the losses to their good troops.”
Mele was about to reply when a high-priority message alert sounded. “Ninja? Not a great time.” From what could be seen in the image on Mele’s pad, Rob’s wife was sending this message from inside a tent.
“This is business,” Ninja snapped in reply. “Here,” she added as a pop-up window appeared. “A network on the enemy freighter lit off, probably somebody testing the gear just before action who hit the wireless command by accident when they were supposed to be using only physical links. Before it went off I was able to ping it and get it to send back identification. Here are who some of the people you’re facing used to be.”
Mele stared at the ID. “Perfect timing. Any luck getting into that network?”
“Not yet. It shut down before I could make a serious try. As soon as they activate again I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thanks, Lyn. You’re a wonder.”
The others stared at their pads as Mele forwarded the message. “Old Earth military,” Captain Batra said. “These guys are good.”
Master Sergeant Savak cleared her throat. “Sir, most of those units were only maintained as cadres,” she said. “Officers and senior enlisted, but very few junior enlisted. They were expected to fill out their ranks if needed using activated reserve forces.”
“Reserves.” Batra pondered that. “People with their own jobs, and lives outside the military. Far less likely to have felt cut loose and be lacking for employment when militaries were drastically cut back.”
“And far more likely to have stayed at home,” Sergeant Savak said. “We’ll be facing really good leaders, and whatever rankers they’ve been able to sign up. Taking out the leaders will be even more important than usual.” Savak didn’t seem to be particularly worked up over that, but then from what Mele had seen, Sergeant Savak didn’t get particularly worked up over anything.
“You said most units like that were organized that way,” Mele said. “Some were all professionals?”
Savak hesitated, then nodded. “That’s right, Captain. It is possible that we’ll face an outfit like that.”
“We’ll have to assume the worst until we find out otherwise,” Gunny Moon said.
Captain Batra aimed a sharp look at Savak. “Master Sergeant, somebody on the other side got careless and gave us some very important information. Let’s be very sure that none of our people make a similar mistake.”
“They all know I’ll use their guts to decorate the outside of this facility if any of them screw up like that, sir,” Sergeant Savak said with a smile.
“Perhaps one of them should,” Gunnery Sergeant Moon said in the way of someone who’d just had a thought. He grinned at the surprised looks sent his way. “I mean, let something false out that gives them a misleading impression of us.”
“Disinformation?” Batra said. “They should know who we are, Sergeant Moon. Our unit came to Glenlyon some time ago.”
“Yes, Captain,” Moon agreed. “But they don’t know who is up here, and what our readiness is or our morale.”
“I see. Make them think we’re scared or sloppy? Ready to crumble?” Batra asked.
“Maybe this leak to us was also deliberate,” Killian suggested.
“If so, they were trying to impress us. To scare us.” Batra frowned. “Captain Darcy, how do we want the enemy to approach us?”
“Do you mean as a threat?” Mele asked. “If they overestimate us, they’ll be more cautious, and employ more firepower straight off regardless of the damage it does to the facility.”
“But,” Sergeant Moon said, “if they underestimate us, they might come charging in hard and fast, hoping we’ll break easy and let them capture this place almost intact.”
Sergeant Savak smiled in an unnervingly serene manner. “If they come in hard and fast, with little preparation, we can have a very impressive reception waiting for them.”
Captain Batra nodded. “Captain Darcy, with your permission I’d like to have my hack-and-cracks create some false identities who sneak messages past security protocols to lament to their friends about the very sad state of the defending forces here.”
“Go ahead,” Mele said. “Give the impression that we have too few people and too little in the way of weapons, that we’re a sacrificial force left in a hopeless position to make it look like the government didn’t simply abandon this facility.” She paused, realizing that she’d just described the situation that she’d been in at Kosatka. But if any of the others noticed, none of them reacted. “Sergeant Moon, make sure Glitch provides any assistance Captain Batra’s people need to carry this off. We want the enemy to think our Marines are shaky, too.”
“Yes, Captain.” Moon gave her a speculative look. “Maybe Sergeant Giddings can add in some information about the Marine commander being so severely impacted by post-traumatic stress suffered at Kosatka that she’s walking wounded.”
“Anything that causes the enemy to underestimate me is fine.” Mele noticed the ground forces soldiers trying to hide smirks. “Is there a joke I missed?”
The smirks disappeared. Over the last week all of the ground forces leaders had learned what happened when they messed with Captain Darcy. There had been more than one tense “instructional moment,” but at this point open disagreement at least was a thing of the past.
“Good,” Mele said. “Because I was thinking that if this deception works, when will we find out?”
A pause, then Lieutenant Killian answered as cautiously as someone worried about a trick question. “When they attack.”
Captain Batra nodded. “If they expect heavy resistance, their warships will conduct heavy fire support before they land, hitting anyplace they think might be a strongpoint. If they think we’re going to cave, they’ll risk doing without a heavy pre-assault in order to limit damage to the facility.”
“Right,” Mele said. “Which means we have to be ready to shift our defense on the spur of the moment. We won’t know which type of attack we’re going to face until we see it coming at us.”
Captain Batra waved aside Mele’s concern. “We’re force reconnaissance. My soldiers are trained to move fast and often. That is exactly the type of battle we’re best suited for.”
“What about the heavy weapons platoon?”
“They also move fast and often,” Lieutenant Paratnam said. “If they stay in one place for any length of time, the enemy can fix their position and hit them. They won’t have any trouble shifting position after every couple of shots. It’s what they do anyway.”
“Our Marines are light infantry,” Sergeant Moon said. “So the same is true of them. We’re actually better off in a mobile fight than if we all dug in and fought from fixed positions.”
Captain Batra fixed Mele with a sharp look. “You planned for that kind of fight all along.”
“Of course I did,” Mele said. “It offers us the best chance.”
“What if the enemy had come in preparing for a different kind of fight?”
Mele grinned. “This is our battlefield. We get to choose how we fight. If they’re not prepared for that kind of fight, it’ll hurt them.”
“Captain Darcy,” Lieutenant Killian said, “what if they decide the fight is too tough, withdraw their troops, and set off charges to shove this facility into a decaying orbit? That’d deny them use of the facility, but it would also eliminate Glenlyon’s ability to use it. And of course none of us would survive that.”
“That’s a possibility,” Mele conceded. “If that happens, we’ll react in the best manner we can given the exact circumstances.”
“What could we do?” Captain Pradesh asked. “If it comes to that?”
“That’ll depend on exactly what’s happening.” What Mele thought was a simple, common-sense recognition that it was impossible to predict exactly what would be the best thing to do was met with concerned frowns from the ground forces officers. “If they’re losing badly enough to give up on capturing this place,” she added, “that’ll mean we have the ability to mess with anything else they try to do. The enemy may outnumber and outgun us, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make them dance to our tune.”
This time Captain Batra nodded along with encouraging looks at his subordinates. “Captain Darcy is right. If we keep the enemy off-balance, he’ll have a hard time acting as he wishes.”
“All right,” Mele said. “Company’s coming. Let’s get the final preps done for a nice, warm welcome when they get here.”
Once the ground forces soldiers had left, she gestured to Lieutenant Nasir and Sergeant Moon. “Get going on that disinformation. The more we can make the enemy complacent about what they’ll find here, the more we can knock them back hard when they get here. Gunny, is Sergeant Giddings working with Ninja?”
“Lyn Geary?” Moon asked. “Are you asking if Glitch is officially or unofficially working with her?”
“Officially, from this point on,” Mele said. “On my authority. I want Ninja to know what the ground forces code monkeys are doing so our efforts don’t stumble over each other.”
“I’ll notify Glitch immediately,” Moon said.
“Good. Lieutenant,” Mele added, “can you check on the modifications to the exterior surface of this facility on the side where we expect the attack to come in?”
“Yes, Captain. I’ll get you a complete status report.”
As she left the conference room, Mele stood aside for several soldiers and a civilian worker who tromped into the room and hefted up the table and a few of the chairs. “These are going into the barricades,” the worker told Mele. “They won’t stop those guys, but they’ll slow ’em down. That’s the idea, right? We’re gonna rope-a-dope these guys?”
That was a new one on her. “‘Rope-a-dope’?”
“Yeah.” The worker paused to answer her, setting down the two chairs he was carrying. “Back on Old Earth that’s what we called backing up and protecting yourself while the bad guys wear themselves out throwing useless punches. Isn’t that what we’re gonna do?”
“That’s exactly what we’re gonna do,” Mele said. Rope-a-dope. Maybe the great military theorists like Sun Tzu and Clausewitz hadn’t come up with that term, but it was exactly the tactic and the strategy she was planning on. “Why is it called that?”
The worker shrugged as he hefted the chairs again. “I don’t know. Something to do with boxing, I think. Or wrestling? They’ve both got ropes around the ring.”
“Thanks. Are you heading down soon?”
“I guess.” The worker paused, looking conflicted. “I hate to leave you guys. I mean, I might be able to help if I stay up here.”
Mele gripped his shoulder. “Head for the surface. We’ll handle the fighting. People like you are going to be needed to put this place back together after we finish saving it.”
He smiled, perhaps relieved to have his offer rejected. “Try not to trash it too bad when you kick their butts.”
“I’ll do my best.” Mele watched the worker head away from her, hoping that when the fight was done there’d be a facility left for him to fix.