“Range,” Helu said.
Energy beams stabbed. The scattered, wasted photons which burned along their paths were the barest fraction of the power within.
One touched Hooting Star. The boat’s automata veered her before it could penetrate her thin plating. That was a roar of sidewise thrust. The interior fields couldn’t entirely compensate for the sudden high acceleration. Rochefort was crammed back against his harness till it creaked, while weight underfoot shifted dizzyingly.
It passed. Normal one-gee-down returned. They were alive. They didn’t even seem to need a patchplate; if they had been pierced, the hole was small enough for self-sealing. And yonder in naked-eye sight was the enemy!
With hands and voice, Rochefort told his boat to drive straight at that shark shape. It swelled monstrously fast. Two beams lanced from it and struck. Rochefort held his vector constant. He was hoping Wa Chaou would thus be able to get a fix on their sources and knock them out before they could do serious damage. Flash! Flash! Brightness blanked. “Oh, glorious! Ready torps.”
The Ythrian drew nearer till the human could see a painted insigne, a wheel whose spokes were flower petals. That’s right, they put personal badges on their lesser craft, same as we give unofficial names. Wonder what that’n means. He’d been told that some of their speedsters carried ball guns. But hard objects cast in your path weren’t too dangerous till relative velocities got into the tens of KPS…
She fired a torpedo. Wa Chaou wrecked it almost in its tube. Hooting Star’s slammed home.
The explosion was at such close quarters that its fiery gases filled the Terran’s screen. A fragment struck her. She shivered and belled. Then she was past, alone in clean space. Her opponent was a cloud which puffed outward till it grew invisible, a few seared chunks of metal and possibly bone cooling off to become meteoroids, falling away aft, gone from sight in seconds.
“If you will pardon the expression,” Rochefort said shakily, “yahoo!”
“That was a near one,” Helu said. “We’d better ask for antirad boosters when we get back.”
“Uh-huh. Right now, though, we’ve unfinished business.” Rochefort instructed the boat to change vectors.
“No fears, after the way you chaps conducted yourselves.” They were not yet at the scene when joyful broadcasts and another brief blossoming told them that a hornet swarm of boats and missiles had stung the enemy battleship to death.
VIII
Slowly those volumes of space wherein the war was being fought contracted and neared each other. At no time were vessels ranked. Besides being unfeasible to maintain, formations tight and rigid would have invited a nuclear barrage. At most, a squadron of small craft might travel in loose echelon for a while. If two major units of a flotilla came within a hundred kilometers, it was reckoned close. However, the time lag of communication dropped toward zero, the reliability of detection swooped upward, deadly encounters grew ever more frequent.
It became possible to know fairly well what the opponent had in play and where. It became possible to devise and guide a campaign.
Cajal remarked in a tape report to Saracoglu: “If every Ythrian system were as strong as Laura, we might need the whole Imperial Navy to break them. Here they possess, or did possess, approximately half the number of hulls that I do — which is to say, a sixth the number we deemed adequate for handling the entire Domain. Of course, that doesn’t mean their actual strength is in proportion. By our standards, they are weak in heavy craft. But their destroyers, still more their corvettes and torpedo boats, make an astonishing total. I am very glad that no other enemy sun, besides Quetlan itself, remotely compares with Laura.
“Nevertheless, we are making satisfactory progress. In groundling language — a technical summary will be appended for you — we can say that about half of what remains to them is falling back on Avalon. We intend to follow them there, dispose of them, and thus have the planet at our mercy.
“The rest of their fleet is disengaging, piecemeal, and retreating spaceward. Doubtless they mean to scatter themselves throughout the uninhabitable planets, moons, and asteroids of the system, where they must have bases, and carry on hit-and-run war. This should prove more nuisance than menace, and once we are in occupation their government will recall them. Probably larger vessels, which have hyperdrive, will seek to go reinforce elsewhere: again, not unduly important.
“I am not underestimating these people. They fight skillfully and doggedly. They must expect to use planetary defenses in conjunction with those ships moving toward the home world. God grant, more for their sakes than ours, most especially for the sakes of innocent females and children of both races, God grant their leaders see reason and capitulate before we hurt them too badly.”
The half disk of Avalon shone sapphire swirled with silver, small and dear among the stars. Morgana was coming around the dark side. Ferune remembered night flights beneath it with Wharr, and murmured, “O moon of my delight that knows no wane—”
“Hoy?” said Daniel Holm’s face in the screen.
“Nothing. My mind drifted.” Ferune drew breath. “We’ve skimpy time. They’re coming in fast I want to make certain you’ve found no serious objection to the battle plan as detailed.”
The laser beam took a few seconds to flicker between flagship and headquarters. Ferune went back to his memories.
“I bugger well do!” Holm growled. “I already told you. You’ve brought Hell Rock too close in. Prime target.”
“And I told you,” Ferune answered, “we no longer need her command capabilities.” I wish we did, but our losses have been too cruel. “We do need her firepower and, yes, her attraction for the enemy. That’s why I never counted on getting her away to Quetlan. There she’d be just one more unit. Here she’s the keystone of our configuration. If things break well, she will survive. I know the scheme is not guaranteed, but it was the best my staff, computers, and self could produce on what you also knew beforehand would be short notice. To argue, or modify much, at this late hour is to deserve disaster.”
Silence. Morgana rose further from Avalon as the ship moved.
“Well…” Holm slumped. He had lost weight till his cheekbones stood forth like ridges in upland desert. “I s’pose.”
“Uncle, a report of initial contact,” Ferune’s aide said.
“Already?” The First Marchwarden of Avalon turned to the comscreen. “You heard, Daniel Holm? Fair winds forever.” He cut the circuit before the man could reply. “Now,” he told the aide, “I want a recomputation of the optimum orbit for this ship. Project the Terran’s best moves… from their viewpoint, in the light of what information we have… and adjust ours accordingly.”
Space sparkled with fireworks. Not every explosion, nor most, signified a hit; but they were thickening.
Three Stars slammed from her cruiser. At once her detectors reported an object. Analysis followed within seconds — a Terran Meteor, possible to intercept, no nearby companions. “Quarry!” Vodan sang out. “Five minutes to range.”
A yell went through the hull. Two weeks and worse of maneuver, cooped in metal save for rare, short hours when the flotilla dipped into combat, had been heavy chains to lift.
His new vector pointed straight at Avalon. The planet waxed; he flew toward Eyath. He had no doubts about his victory. Three Stars was well blooded. She was necessarily larger than her Imperial counterpart — Ythrian requirements for room — and therefore had a trifle less acceleration. But her firepower could on that account be made greater, and had been.