Bayley, Barrington J - Novel 10 (9 page)

 
          
Archier
sighed. The doubts he had expressed to Arctus had referred to a technical
problem the Empire had never resolved satisfactorily, how did one communicate with
a feetol ship? Likewise, was there any way of maintaining communication with
the far-flung worlds of the Empire except by despatching such ships?

 
          
It
could be done and it was done, but only within limits. There was in nature a
phenomenon that propagated itself with a velocity that was practically
instantaneous as compared with the tardy progress of light, but it was, so to
speak, only half a phenomenon. The basic force in nature was the linear
recession that took place between all particles—though it exhibited itself as
an actual motion only between very distant objects, such as the farther
galaxies. The rate of this recession was what determined c, the velocity of
light. But discovery of the recession lines left an old problem in physics only
partly resolved: the Newtonian problem of Action at a Distance. There had to be
a component of the line, it was surmised, that simultaneously
"informed" each of the two particles at its ends of the recession of
the other.

 
          
Eventually
this component had been identified. It was styled "the leader tone."
It responded to spatial attenuation as effected by a feetol generator; and
because its reaction time was near-zero throughout the length of the line information
could be passed down it from a vibrating feetol field. In the same way, it
could be used for light-years-range radar.

 
          
Yet
the leader tone had no independent existence. It was, almost, nature's mirror
trick, and seemed unable quite to overcome the normal constraints of
information theory. Any data imparted down it had to be incomplete. Messages
with more than
a small
information content became
garbled or ambiguous. Likewise, the radar was generally unreliable.

 
          
It
was as if the principle once embedded in physics, that no message could be
transmitted faster than light, still fought back. The closer it got, the more
certain the ranging figures on the Escorian fleet would become—but then its
usefulness would be much reduced.

 
          
"Nothing
on numbers, Arctus?" he said querulously.

 
          
Arctus
was silent for a moment. He was speaking on his in-brain communicator to the
radar room. At his request they were sacrificing range-data to try to gain some
notion of the size of the fleet. The dots blurred, became a patch, disappeared.

 
          
"Could
be up to two hundred vessels," the elephant announced in a mild, neutral
voice.

 
          
"Two
hundred?" echoed the captain of a front-line-o'-war incredulously.
"How could they assemble such a force without us knowing?"

 
          
"All
too easily, I'm afraid," Gruwert grunted fatalistically. "The
Empire's failure is mainly one of supervision. Well, let's see if we still have
what it takes to smash a revolt!"

 
          
"Data
will be harder in a few minutes, Admiral," Arctus said. "They are
closing fast."

 
          
"All right.
Excuse me, then, while I take a
stroll."

           
In body Archier did not move. Here
in the command room mental access was much enhanced, and he wanted to take a
last look around the flagship.

 
          
He
flitted invisibly from point to contact point, pausing but briefly at most
stations. Finally, he toured the gun turrets, of which
Standard Bearer
carried twenty-eight, more than any other ship of
the fleet. The crews were motley: animals, children, one or two human adults.
Turret fourteen was manned entirely by children under the age of ten—youngsters
of that age volunteered eagerly for gun duty—while the crews of two more
consisted of animals officered by a child no older.

 
          
Archier
felt no misgivings over the performance of these young persons. Their training
was excellent, and they knew how to use their comps to maximum effect. What was
more, they were full of enthusiasm.

 
          
He
had nearly finished his cursory tour when a voice in his ear brought him back
to the Command Room. "Ranging close, sir," Arctus murmured, his voice
uncharacteristically tense. "Look!"

 
          
In
the pool Archier saw one of the rebel ships; radar had gained an image of
visual quality. From the look of it the ship had once been a passenger liner.
It carried more than passengers now. Welded crudely and seemingly haphazardly
over its elegant hull, like ugly metal slabs, were casemates roughly similar in
shape to the turrets that studded
Standard
Bearer.

 
          
Some
of those present drew in their breath in dismay. So the rebels had feetol cannon.
That these weapons could have been built outside Diadem—unless, inconceivably,
they had somehow been smuggled out of there—came as a shock to Archier. He had
assumed the Escorians would endeavour to get in close, so they could fight
using short-range weapons.

 
          
"Coming
within cannon range," Archier advised.

 
          
"Very
well," Archier responded.
"Order opening volley as
applicable."

 
          
"Volley
away!" Gruwert wheezed, almost immediately.

 
          
"Combat
mode," said Archier.

 
          
With
those words the pool, the Command Room itself, vanished, and the battle proper
started. Archier and his staff were suddenly in combat space, a seeming void in
which they were disembodied entities perceiving the elements of the conflict
directly.

 
          
There
were really two levels to this space. One was merely a three-dimensional
spacetime—the arena in which the battle was to take place. The other was an
information space. The commanders conducted the engagement by plugging
themselves into a data network that shunted to and between them a flow of
constantly updated battle reports.

 
          
Ordinary
language was too slow to suffice in circumstances like this. Gradually, over a
course of minutes, the command staff lapsed into battle language: an
abbreviated, syncopated form of speech which relayed information and commands
fast enough to take advantage of the speed of machine talk.

 
          
The
first words Archier heard in this echoing void were those of his pig Fire
Command Officer. "Two hits!" Gruwert squealed. "Forward right,
Admiral!" Then he added casually: "Enemy guns appear to be taking
aim."

 
          
Archier
had hoped for better results from his opening volley. He could see the Escorian
fleet clearly now. It was fanning out ahead of them. One large and one small
vessel had converted into sparkling nebulae: that was how combat-mode display
presented a ship disintegrating when hit by a tritium shell.

 
          
He
rattled out orders.
"One—volley-two; two—bowl plan,
effect!
Three—FCO direct fire."

 
          
He
was taking a calculating risk, getting in a following opening volley. A more
textbook procedure would have been to disperse the fleet into bowl plan after
only one. But while his ships were bunched together in one big feetol bubble
their shells could range further; and Archier was counting on still being out
of range of the Escorian guns. With luck, they would not have mastered the
technique of combining feetol bubbles yet.

 
          
He
was right, but only just right, given the aggregate speed of approach of the
two fleets. He watched a briefly dazzling pinprick display of shells exploding
on proximity fuses among the Escorian ships; three more rebels nebulaed. At the
same time the Escorians had also opened fire; their shells fell short, falling
below c while still one-tenth of a light-year distant.

 
          
Meantime
the ships of Ten-Fleet were deserting the common feetol bubble, emerging from
it like drops of oil until, in moments, it had entirely disappeared. They lost
much in speed and maneuverability; but no admiral could keep his ships so
vulnerably close together during battle. They were adopting bowl plan—spreading
out in a huge concave formation with the enemy as close as possible to its
focus. The fleet's front-line-o'-warships then began using their prodigious
rate of fire on selected targets.

 
          
With
satisfaction Archier observed the havoc they wrought in the brief interval
before the Escorian
fleet's
rapidly developing
dispersion rendered the bowl-and-focus concept redundant. He had been waiting
to see what game plan the rebels would adopt; ruefully he recognised that they
had opted for what was probably the best plan of all in their case—namely,
none.

 
          
It
made sense. They had none of Diadem's military experience; no centuries-old
archives on tactics and strategy. Rather than try to outfox professionals, they
were attempting to pre-empt tactics altogether by means of enforced chaos. Like
an explosion the rebel ships leaped for all points in Ten-Fleet's formation,
firing as they went. The bowl deformed and twisted as the two fleets merged
and began to slug it out ship by ship.

 
          
For
the staff of the Command Room, this was the most frustrating type of situation.
It particularly irked Archier to find his task as battle director reduced to a
primitive level, having to bend his efforts to seeing that rebel groups did not
isolate and surround an Imperial ship so as to outgun it. As he dealt with the
reports flooding in from the raging firefight, looking in the Command Room's
combat space like a war of fireflies, he quickly realized that the Escorians
had created a melee in which their greater numbers could, conceivably, tell
against the superior gunnery of Ten-Fleet. Further, they had achieved their
objective of coming in at close quarters so as to deploy those weapons not hitherto
denied Diadem's subject worlds—electromagnetic beams whose temperatures were
stellar in intensity and whose density was that of steel; quake beams, a
variant of feetol technique, that disintegrated solid matter by quantum
shaking; and, of course, an endless variety of self-guided missiles, sub-c in
velocity but deadly dangerous when combat distances were measured in light
minutes.

 
          
A
cry of alarm came from the Fleet Maneuvers Officer. "We're losing control,
Admiral! We're dispersing!" In the stress of the moment she had forgotten
to use combat speech. "Combat region now exceeds gunnery range,"
Gruwert squealed in agreement.

 
          
Archier
had been aware of this danger for some minutes; it offered another advantage to
the enemy. He told the FMO to disengage temporarily, to pull out all ships in
order to regroup. As long as they could keep to the tactically effective repertoire
of formations that had been proven in the past, he believed victory would
eventually be theirs.

 
          
But
evidently someone on the Escorian side had already thought this through. The
FMO had no trouble reducing the battle perimeter, but she found it impossible
to extricate the fleet from the enemy. Wherever it went, the Escorians
followed, able to match speeds as long as Ten-Fleet did not take up galaxy
formation and mesh bubbles. The two fleets went hurtling through Escoria,
speeding heedlessly past star after star and clinging together in a furiously
energy-spitting mass.

 
          
A
blinding flash of coruscating purple light suddenly enveloped the Command
Room's combat space.
When it had gone, so had the combat
space.
Normal lighting had returned Archier was sitting on the throne,
blinking, only his flagship staff before him.

 
          
Even
the pool was dead.

 
          
After
a moment the Damage Assessment Officer spoke up. "We have sustained a near
miss. The hull's combat mode receptors have been burned off."

 
          
"What
about the rest of it?"

 
          
The
officer paused. "Other communications continue to function."

 
          
"Weaponry too," Gruwert announced.
"It was
some Simplex-damned converted gas carrier got in a shot at us. Have range;
training all guns . . ." He tailed off, his small eyes glazed in
concentration.