On the tactical map, the Derecho shifted toward the incoming ships, but the rest of Naomi’s fleet held steady. Fifty-odd flecks of blue diffused through the ring space and half a dozen red clustered like a knife driving toward the station at its center. Diving toward the Roci and the Falcon and Jim. If the dots seemed to move slowly, it was only because the distances were so huge.
“What are you looking at?” Alex called.
“Not sure yet,” Naomi shouted back, and six more dots appeared on the tactical map, falling in from gates on the opposite side of the ring space. “That. I was waiting for that.”
The comms chirped out an error, and Naomi cursed. Alex pulled up a mirror of her screen, just to see what the issue was. Broad-spectrum jamming coming from all the enemy ships. The whole broadcast spectrum shimmered with noise and false requests stacked one on another until the Roci gave up and rebooted the antennas. Alex had been in a lot of fights, and he’d never seen anything this comprehensive outside a pirate attack.
“Alex, can you get me tightbeam locks?”
“Tell me who you want to talk to, and I’ll get them up.”
A list appeared on his screen, and he started queuing. Getting the lock, sending the orders, and moving to the next ship didn’t take that much longer than broadcast would have, but the invisible hand on the back of his head weighed a little heavier. Coordinating Naomi’s forces without broadcast meant building an ad hoc network that kept track of where all the other ships were and bounced between them, trading data back and forth as quickly as the lasers could carry them. In theory, it was entirely possible. In practice, it was more complicated. Any ship that had a buffer fail would mean slowing down the whole system. Any laser that lost alignment meant lost orders, the doubling up of retransmission requests, the opportunity for confusion and corruption and mistakes.
The enemy were outnumbered five to one, and the enemy ships burned in weird, spiraling paths, drawing Naomi’s fleet toward them and then spinning away before they got in range. Tempting Naomi’s forces to overreach, but never engaging. Alex wasn’t sure this was even a real attack so much as a feint to see how Naomi would react until the Derecho came inside firing range of the first group of ships.
The timing of the attack was astounding. The farthest of the ships bloomed, emptying its torpedoes like a dandelion shedding seeds. Then the next nearest, then the next, then the one closest. Wave after wave, with the first torpedoes going just slightly slower to give the missiles behind them time to catch up. Alex set the Roci’s scopes to track what it could.
The Derecho was a Storm-class destroyer. The backbone of the Laconian Navy. The other ships were weaker, smaller, with fewer weapons. If anyone had asked him, Alex would have put his money on the Derecho against all of them without a second thought. The full loads of all the ships poured out and fell onto the Derecho with impact times coordinated to the millisecond. The Derecho’s PDCs were in constant fire, its counter missiles taking out a dozen enemy torpedoes at a time, and it was still overwhelmed.
The impact was like seeing a sudden, brief sun. When it faded, the destroyer was on the drift, spinning slowly toward the annihilating edge of the ring space with nothing that could rescue it. He hoped that everyone aboard was already dead.
“Holy shit,” Naomi said.
“I get the feeling this isn’t going to be like other fights,” Alex said over the comms. He was pretty sure his voice wasn’t shaking.
“Easier to take something out when you don’t give a shit about what comes after,” Amos agreed. “Those ships are finished, but I don’t think anyone on ’em cares.”
It’s all right to let go. Put down your weapons now, and you will be saving humanity, not destroying it. Don’t be afraid of the changes that are coming, they are the only thing that can save us all. Alex gritted his teeth until his jaw ached.
“Alex!” Naomi shouted, and he realized it wasn’t the first time she’d done it.
“Sorry, sorry,” Alex said. “I’m here. What’s going on?”
“I need a tightbeam to the Godalming. I need it now.”
Alex scrambled, finding the ship. It was a pirate that worked with the underground. He found it at the edge of Naomi’s forces, almost on the other side of the ring space from the corpse of the Derecho. The light delay to it was small enough that they could talk in real time.
“Godalming,” Naomi said, “this is the Rocinante. You’re off your assigned pattern.”