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  III

  Four hours had passed since the start of battle. By this point, the Fourth Fleet of the Alliance Navy could hardly be called a fleet at all. There was no tidy, well-organized battle formation. No unified chain of command. It was nothing more than scattered pockets of desperate resistance: isolated, cut off, single ships in every quarter waging a losing battle.

  The flagship Leonidas was now a colossal hunk of metal wandering in the void. Within, there was nothing left that lived. The body of Commander Pastolle had been sucked out into the vacuum by the air-pressure differential in the instant that concentrated enemy fire had opened up a large crack in the bridge’s hull. What condition his corpse was in and where in space it was drifting, nobody knew.

  Meanwhile, Reinhard knew by this point that he had just secured a complete victory. The report came in from Merkatz by way of his comm screen.

  “Organized resistance has ended. From this point forward we’re to switch over to mop-up operations, but …”

  “No need.”

  “Sir?” Merkatz’s narrow eyes narrowed further.

  “The battle’s only one-third finished. You can leave the remnants be—we need to save our strength for the next battle. Further instructions will follow. Until then, get our formations reorganized.”

  “As you wish—Your Excellency.”

  With a solemn bow of his head, Merkatz’s image vanished from the comm screen.

  Reinhard looked back at his redheaded chief adjutant.

  “Even he’s changed his attitude just a little.”

  “Yes, he must have little choice.”

  This is a great first-round victory, Kircheis thought. Even the admiralty will have to admit Reinhard’s tactical plan worked well. The soldiers will take heart, and the enemy will be stunned when they see their unbeatable formation destroyed.

  “Which fleet do you think we should attack next, Kircheis? The one to starboard or to port?”

  “It’s possible to circle around to the aft of either, but surely you’ve made up your mind already?

  “Pretty much.”

  “Their Sixth Fleet, positioned to starboard, must have the weaker force strength, correct?”

  “Exactly.” A satisfied smile appeared around the mouth of the young, blond-haired commander.

  “The enemy may be expecting that. That’s the one slight concern that I have, but …”

  Reinhard shook his head. “There’s no danger of that. If they do guess what we’re doing, they won’t continue with a battle plan that uses divided forces. They’ll try to rendezvous as early as they possibly can. After all, together they still outnumber us vastly. That they aren’t doing so is proof they don’t understand our fleet’s intent. We’ll circle around to the Sixth Fleet’s aft starboard flank and attack them there. How many hours will we need?”

  “Less than four.”

  “Look at you, you’d worked it out already.” Reinhard smiled again. When he smiled, his face was like a boy’s. But what wiped that smile from his face in a heartbeat was the realization that several sets of eyes were looking intently his way. Reinhard would not show his smile easily to anyone but Kircheis.

  “Relay that to the whole fleet. Gradually shift our course clockwise as we proceed, and attack the enemy’s Sixth Fleet on its aft starboard flank.”

  “As you wish,” Kircheis replied, but he was looking at his blond-haired senior officer as though he still had something to say.

  Reinhard drew his brows together in suspicion and returned the stare. “You have some objection?”

  “It isn’t that. I was just wondering if we might let the men have a break since we now have some time to spare.”

  “Oh, that’s right. I hadn’t realized.”

  Reinhard issued orders that the soldiers be given breaks of an hour and a half each, to be taken in two shifts. During that time, they were to eat and rest up in their tank beds.

  A tank bed was essentially a large aquarium made of light plastic and filled to thirty centimeters’ depth with strongly salinated water, the temperature maintained at a constant 32 degrees centigrade. Anyone who lay floating in its interior would enjoy a state of perfect peace and quiet, isolated from all color, lighting and heating, sound, and other external stimuli. Spending one hour in the tank was said to have the same effect on one’s mind and body as eight hours of sound sleep. There was nothing like it for quickly restoring soldiers worn down in body and spirit by combat.

  In small squads where tank bed facilities were lacking, stimulants were sometimes used, but oftentimes these were not just dangerous to the body, they had a bad effect on the military organization itself. Drug-addicted soldiers had absolutely no value as a human resource, so accordingly, this measure was taken only in the worst of circumstances.

  The wounded were also being treated. It had been widely known since the late 1900s on the AD calendar that electrons could stimulate the body’s cells, increasing their natural healing abilities by leaps. Add to that the development of cyborg technology, and an age had arrived in which 90 percent of wounded soldiers who managed to see a military doctor could be saved. Though of course it was possible to be driven to a state wherein death would be better …

  In any case, the crews of the Imperial Navy vessels were visited by a temporary period of peace and tranquility. Cheerful bustle swirled through the mess halls of every vessel. Though alcohol was forbidden, the crew members were in thrall of a drunkenness born of battle and victory, and the food tasted better to them than it actually was. “Even our young commander’s actually pretty good, don’t you think?” whispered some back and forth. “I was thinking he was just here as a decoration, with nothing going for him but his looks, but he’s really quite the tactician. Maybe even the best since Admiral Wood in the old days …”

  The question of why, and for whom, they and their unseen, unknown enemies were killing one another was nowhere to be heard among the soldiers at that time. They were simply and honestly rejoicing in their survival and their victory. But within the next few hours, a portion of these survivors would be added to the ranks of the newly dead.

  IV

  “Vessel’s shadow sighted at 4:30. Identification impossible.”

  When the report was received from a destroyer in the rear guard, Vice Admiral Moore, commanding officer of the Alliance Navy’s Sixth Fleet, was in the middle of a meal with his staff officers. Knife hovering over his gluten cutlet, the vice admiral scowled at the officer who had delivered the message. Riveted by a gaze sharper than the knife, the officer felt frightened. Vice Admiral Moore was widely known to be a fair-minded but coarse man.

  “At 4:30, you say?”

  The vice admiral’s voice was a match for his gaze.

  “Y-yes, sir. At 4:30. We can’t tell yet if it’s friendly or not.”

  “Oh? Well, which 4:30 are we talking about? Morning or afternoon?”

  Caustic remarks notwithstanding, Moore broke off his meal and stepped out of the officers’ mess. Looking back at his alarmed staff officers, his burly shoulders quivered as he laughed.

  “Will you look at these deer-in-the-headlight faces! The enemy’s in the same direction we’re headed—they can’t rightly be at 0430, now can they?”

  The vice admiral continued to speak in a loud voice. “We’re rushing toward the battlefield. The Second Fleet’s no doubt taking the same action. That being the case, we can hit the enemy from behind from both starboard and port. We have a very good chance of winning—no, in fact, we will definitely win. From the perspective of numbers, from the perspective of formation …”

  “But, Commander—”

  The man interrupting the vice admiral’s foray into eloquence was one of the staff officers, Lieutenant Commander Lappe. He was wiping grease from his mouth with a handkerchief.

  “What?”

  “What if the enemy’
s moved the battlespace? Such a thing is certainly not outside the realm of—”

  “You want to abandon the Fourth Fleet?”

  “This is difficult to say, sir, but the junior officers are projecting that the Fourth Fleet has been defeated already.”

  The vice admiral’s excessively lush eyebrows drew together. “That’s a bold and most disagreeable projection, isn’t it, Commander? All that grease seems to have your mouth running like a well-oiled machine.”

  Embarrassed, Lieutenant Commander Lappe put away his handkerchief.

  By that time, they had ridden the intraship beltway as far as the bridge, when unexpectedly the gravitational-control system lagged for a moment, and they both nearly stumbled. It had been forced by an acute change of course, though a measuring device was registering directional energy sufficient to destroy the ship just beyond the hull.

  “Enemy attacking aft starboard flank!”

  The comm channels of the Sixth Fleet erupted in surprised cries, which were immediately erased by static.

  Officers shuddered, for the confused transmissions themselves testified eloquently to the fact that the enemy was positioned very near.

  “Don’t lose your heads, people!”

  Vice Admiral Moore’s pep talk was half directed at himself. His regrets slapped him hard across his thick jowl.

  The fleet’s cutting-edge warships were not deployed in the rear guard. There was no way the older vessels there could withstand an assault from behind.

  The imperial force is behind us! Did that mean the Fourth Fleet was destroyed? Or had the empire readied a large, separate force?

  “Intercept and open fire.”

  As confusion welled up in his heart, the vice admiral issued a bare minimum of orders, not yet able to resolve his confusion.

  The imperial force commanded by Merkatz, a seasoned full admiral, had assumed a neat and orderly attack formation and launched the assault on the Alliance Navy’s Sixth Fleet. Neutron-beam cannons slung glittering flashes of death against the low-output force fields cast by the older alliance vessels, piercing the fields and impaling the ships.

  Through his viewscreen, Merkatz looked on at a scene of dazzling fireballs, blossoming and fading amid the darkness eternal. It was a sight that had become familiar over the last forty years, but this time he felt something deep and powerful that he had never felt before.

  Merkatz was no longer looking at Reinhard as merely that “blond porcelain doll.” That initial victory had been no fluke. It was the proper result of a bold change in thinking, based on keen insight and careful decision making. Allowing one’s forces to be attacked from three directions, just to launch separate attacks on a divided force before it could close the net.

  There was no way he could have done that. His comrades in arms from the old days were the same. This was only possible for a young man, one not yet shackled by convention.

  The era of old soldiers like us may have passed on already. Unwittingly, he had actually thought such a thing.

  Even during his moment of reflection, the battle was growing more fierce.

  The imperial force drilled into the ranks of the alliance like an auger, steadily gaining the upper hand both in exchanges of cannon fire and in close combat. It looked like the whole force was riding high, making the most of the advantage that came with drawing first blood. The alliance force was launching a desperate counterattack, but with the commanders unable to recover from their confusion, there was little hope for much of a rally.

  Vice Admiral Moore, standing frozen like a temple sculpture in the midst of the bridge floor, shouted, “All ships, come about!” At last he had made up his mind. Up until then, he had only been saying, ‘What’s going on?’ over and over.

  “Commander! Even if we turn around, we’ll cause nothing but confusion. I think we should proceed full speed ahead while executing a clockwise change of course—plow into the enemy from behind.”

  Lieutenant Commander Lappe’s suggestion collided with the vice admiral’s burly frame and bounced off meaninglessly.

  “By the time we hit the enemy’s back side, most of our ships would be destroyed. Turn and fire.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Be quiet!”

  Vice Admiral Moore gave an angry shout that made his whole body quiver, and the lieutenant commander closed his mouth, understanding clearly that his commanding officer had lost his head.

  When the giant hulk of Pergamum, flagship of the Sixth Fleet, began to come about, the other vessels following behind it did likewise. But it was not an easy maneuver to accomplish while under fire. The seasoned Merkatz leapt on his enemy’s confusion right away.

  The beam cannons of the imperial force struck hard with cascades of glowing beams that streaked across the sky like meteor showers. In every quarter, energy-neutralizing force fields overloaded and collapsed, and the alliance’s vessels were destroyed.

  The surging billows of energy already seen in the previous battlespace were beginning to form again in this one, and Vice Admiral Moore and Lieutenant Commander Lappe alike had the feeling that only the ships of the alliance were being tossed by them.

  “Multiple small vessels closing rapidly on Pergamum,” an operator shouted. One of the screens was showing a large swarm of walküren, and in no time at all they occupied the screens of numerous consoles. Nimbly demonstrating their maneuverability, they came in firing beams at point-blank range.

  “It’s gonna be a dogfight. Launch the spartanians.”

  This order as well came too late and cost them dearly. The walküren had been waiting for the instant when the spartanians would separate from their carriers. When a flood of glowing beams burst mercilessly forth, the alliance’s fighter craft blew apart in balls of fire, deprived even of the right to die in battle.

  “Commander, look at that!” An operator was pointing at one of the screens. An imperial battleship was closing in on them. And behind it, and behind what was behind it, one overlapping with the next, could be seen the shadows of more vessels. The bridge was suffused by an oppressive air of menace.

  Pergamum was now surrounded by multiple rings of ships.

  “They’re sending a flash signal,” the operator reported in a near whisper.

  “See if you can decode it.” Vice Admiral Moore was silent; the prompting came from Lieutenant Commander Lappe. Even his voice was low and dry.

  “Decoding … ‘You are completely surrounded and without any means of escape. Surrender, and I promise to treat you graciously.’ ”

  The decoded message repeated once and then ended, and countless stares and countless silences stabbed into the massive frame of Vice Admiral Moore. Every one of them was urging a decision from the fleet commander.

  “ ‘Surrender,’ he says …” The vice admiral’s face turned a dark red as he growled out his answer. “Forget it! I may be a washout, but I won’t be a coward.”

  Twenty seconds later, a white flash enveloped him.

  V

  The accumulated store of unease was just about to reach saturation point.

  An invisible thunderhead seemed to hang over the bridge of Patroklos, flagship of the Alliance Navy’s Second Fleet. When would a blistering discharge come arcing down from it? As orders to assume a stage-one battle formation were issued, all crew were changing into space suits. Still, the unease was passing right through their suits, making them break out in gooseflesh.

  “The Fourth and Sixth Fleets have apparently been destroyed.”

  “We’re all alone out here. And by now the enemy’s force is larger than ours.”

  “I want information. What’s going on? What’s the present situation?”

  Speaking out of turn was prohibited, but if they didn’t say something, the unease would be unbearable. This wasn’t in the plan. Weren’t they going to catch an enemy half their size in a
three-way pinch, wipe them out, and raise a song of victory … ?

  Suddenly, an operator’s voice rang out across the bridge from his microphone. “Enemy fleet closing.”

  “From either one or two o’clock …” Yang murmured. Though he spoke only to himself, the following report came as if in answer:

  “Bearing 0110, elevation minus eleven degrees, closing at high speed.”

  Yang did not respond to the tension that then gripped the bridge of the flagship Patroklos in its talons.

  This was all as he’d anticipated. The imperial force had struck the alliance Sixth Fleet on its aft starboard flank and bored right on through to emerge from the fore on its port side, tracing a natural curve as it now turned its spearhead toward its last remaining enemy, the Second Fleet. With the Second Fleet advancing straight ahead, it only followed that the imperial fleet should appear from somewhere between one and two o’clock.

  “Battle stations!” ordered Vice Admiral Paetta, and Yang thought, You’re too slow.

  To wait for the enemy to come to you and then fight back was the orthodox tactic, but in this case, it was impossible to ignore the fact that Paetta’s thoughts were locking up. Measures that needed to be taken also needed proper timing to work. With rapid maneuvers, it wouldn’t have been impossible to hit the enemy force from behind and then coordinate with the Sixth Fleet to catch them in a pincer movement.

  In battle, it was impossible to sacrifice no one. Yet at the same time, the effect of victory was lessened in inverse proportion to mounting losses. It was in finding the point that made both propositions compatible that tactics as a discipline found its raison d’être. In other words, it meant getting the maximum effect for the minimum losses, or to put it more coldly, finding the most efficient way to murder your comrades. Yang wondered doubtfully whether his commander understood that.

  It was too late to do anything for those sacrificed already. And from the start, this wasn’t something that could be swept under the rug by saying, “It couldn’t be helped.” The military leadership should be hanging their heads in shame for their poor tactical leadership. But that would come later, after all was said and done—what they had to think about now was how to prevent an expansive reproduction of their mistake and how to come up with some way of turning a disaster into a blessing.