“If you’re with the attack group, the Whirlwind won’t budge. Not ever. I don’t like it any more than you do, but your ship used to be theirs. They know it’s the best tech in our fleet. They’re not going to take their eyes off it. They think you’re the number one threat because you are.”
Despite herself, the younger woman smiled. “They’re right about that.”
“I’m redeploying you. Move to accompany the Armstrong. When the time comes—”
“I’ll be part of the bait,” Jillian said. “I don’t love it.”
“It’s a risk. But it’s worth it.”
“Understood,” Jillian said, and dropped the connection. Naomi stretched and checked her system. Eight more minutes before the next burn. She tried to decide if she wanted to wash off or get a bulb of tea. If she didn’t pick soon, she wouldn’t have time for either.
Or maybe she could do both.
“Alex. Postpone the burn for half an hour. There’s something I want to do.”
“You bet,” Alex said.
Naomi went down to her cabin and her private shower, the map of the system in her mind. With the Storm on its own, she could reroute the Carcassonne and fifty or so of the other, smaller ships toward the transfer station. The Roci, Quinn, Cassius, and Prince of the Face would be a minor threat and could loop down sunward, using the innermost planet as a gravity assist.
There was a way that the whole process was like playing golgo. Judging her shot, how the ball would bounce and spin off the other bal
ls, how the next person would react to that. How each decision changed the state of the table. The Bobbie that lived in the back of her head said: A challenge of intellect, technique, and skill.
Naomi saw how easy it would be to forget that the stakes were people’s lives.
When the Laconian capital was surrounded—ships answering to the underground and the Transport Union at every angle throughout the system—the barrage began. The transfer station was forgotten. Not just long-range missiles, but rocks. Cheap, deadly. Every ship in the group sending nukes and accelerated titanium rods and holds full of gravel into intersecting orbits. Some moved fast, some would take months to arrive at Laconia—which was a message in itself about how long the underground was prepared to draw out the fight. Nothing targeted major population centers, but there was no way for Laconia to know that for sure. To be safe, they had to defend everything.
The barrage kept going, day after day. Rock after rock to intercept. Torpedo after torpedo to shoot down. An endless rain of threats, wearing them down hour by hour by endless hour. That was the third lesson: Playing defense means being endlessly ground down. Someday something will get through.
The Whirlwind stayed in its place, guarding the gravity well over Laconia, but the destroyers ranged farther and farther. When the enemy came too near, Naomi’s fleet scattered like children running from the police. Not everyone escaped. The Tucumcari, a rock hopper retrofitted to fight pirates in Arcadia, caught a torpedo on its drive cone and died in a ball of fire. The Nang Kwak, a private security company stealth ship two generations out of date, didn’t dodge a line of PDC fire. Disabled, it tried to surrender. The Laconian ships destroyed it instead. There were others. A handful. Each of them one too many. And every chance Naomi had to strike back at the enemy, to lure them out and end one or two of them, she let pass. It was the cardinal rule that she sent to every ship, all through the system. Laconian military that came out after them went home intact.
Because that was the final lesson she taught her enemy: It’s safe to chase after us. It’s how you’ll win.
And it was a lie.
The first sign of fresh cheese in the mousetrap was the Bellerophon changing its drive signature. The Donnager-class battleship was burning away from Laconia, heading in the rough direction of the Verity Close. Even from half the system away, the drive plume would have been visible to the naked eye, a faint but moving star.
And then, for a moment, it blinked out.
The Roci and her three escort ships were on the float, skating on the far side of the sun from Laconia. She’d led them in toward the corona until even with pumping spare water onto the ship’s skin and letting it evaporate, the built-up heat was at the edge of tolerance. Even when the temperature was in the error bars of normal use, it baked the resins and ceramic. The air smelled different, and it left Naomi and the rest of the crew jumpy and uncomfortable. But with Laconia’s fighting ships near the planet, they were in a blind spot. Out of sight.
When the Bellerophon’s drive lit back up, it was dirty. Half a minute after that, it went off again. The way an apex predator lured lesser hunters by mimicking the sound of wounded prey, the Bellerophon called out for help. And Naomi’s fleet answered. The Storm, the Armstrong, the Carcassone, and almost a quarter of the other ships started burning on courses that would meet the Bellerophon. The Bellerophon wasn’t halfway to the Verity Close, but the light delay from it to Laconia was still over seventy minutes.
A malfunctioning ship would be interesting to Duarte and his admirals. An escort fleet coming to its aid looked like something more. It looked like a mistake. And an opportunity.
“Come on,” Naomi said.
“Should I start up?” Alex asked.
“Put us at half a g,” Naomi said. Even if it didn’t work, they’d want to be out of here soon. As comms officer, Ian passed the word along to the other ships, and the Roci eased up from beneath her.
Two hours later, the Whirlwind moved. At high burn, she headed out toward the Bellerophon and the gathering escort ships. For anyone who’d seen the Tempest destroy the combined forces back in Sol, it was like seeing a shark darting toward a beach full of toddlers.
Three hours after that, several hunt groups on the other side of the heliosphere started burning in toward Laconia, and the destroyers went on intercept courses, ready for a slice of their own glory.
There was a point long before any battle came that was her window. Not just how long it would take the Whirlwind to get back, but how long it would have to decelerate before it could even start to reduce the distance to Laconia again. And the same for the destroyers. It was a window of time defined by mass and inertia, thrust, and the frailty of the human body. The time it would take even long-range torpedoes to reach them. Naomi ran the numbers, and she knew when they would see her and her little force diving in from sunward. And that it would be too late.
“Alex?”