She considered the data for a moment, then tapped a command.
“Tactical, I need at least three drones for a suicide sweep,” she told Durendal’s ATO. “There’s something fishy about these gunships.”
“Swapping control of drones X3-75D through 75G to you,” the other Lieutenant said instantly. “They’re close in and running low on fuel, anyway; I’ve got replacements inbound already.”
“Perfect. Thanks, Davids,” Roslyn told him. It took her a moment to bring up the control protocol, but then she had four drones relaying her data from over ten million kilometers away.
Suicide sweep was exactly what it sounded like. There was enough fuel left in the drones to do a slow and steady return to the fleet—or to do a high-acceleration approach to the enemy with the expectation that they’d be lost to the hostile defenses.
“Samurais launching,” Kulkarni reported behind her. New icons spackled her display, and Roslyn quickly looked up the data on the missiles, incorporating their approach into her timing. She’d get the probes a lot closer if the enemy were focused on the incoming high-speed bombardment missiles.
She finished her programming and leaned back, rubbing her hands together as she double-checked her work. The Samurai’s reduced flight time combined with the time delay meant she had barely enough time to fix the two mistakes she’d made and transmit to the drones, but she wrapped it in time.
The sensor probes lit up their engines at full power moments before the Samurais passed them. They had a “mere” five thousand gravities of acceleration to the big missiles’ thirty thousand, and a lower base velocity as well.
They were stealthier than the Samurais and more maneuverable as well, but the course Roslyn had set them on was going to doom them. The heavy missiles would hopefully buy them a few critical extra seconds.
Lasers and missiles in defensive mode lit up the scanners, and Roslyn waited. Everything she was seeing was still delayed by over forty seconds, and there was nothing she could do to influence the success or failure of her robotic minions.
Out of the corner of her eye, she watched the Samurai salvo charge into the teeth of over sixteen thousand RFLAM turrets. The Republic had clearly updated their targeting programs to account for the new weapons’ speed and acceleration, but they could only do so much about the physical traversal ability of the turrets themselves.
Two dozen missiles made it through and flung themselves into the fortress, antimatter explosions tearing apart the cylindrical hull in a series of cataclysmic detonations.
“Target One destroyed,” Kulkarni reported behind her. “They’re adapting, sir. We probably won’t do as well with the next salvo. They’re still ninety seconds out.”
“We’ll get what we get,” Alexander said calmly. “I’ll settle for hitting all fifteen of them, Kulkarni.”
The data was coming in from the sensor drones, and Roslyn winced as their death codes showed up. The robotic spacecraft had made themselves targets, trying to get the data she’d wanted, and they’d paid for it as expected.
They’d got what she needed. The closest drone had been barely fifty thousand kilometers from the nearest gunship when it was destroyed—close enough for a far more detailed visual than anyone in the fleet could get.
“Sir, take a look at this,” she told Kulkarni. “The gunships are running external engines.”
“They’re what?” she asked.
“All of the gunships have a strapped-on fusion booster engine,” Roslyn explained, sending the imagery to Kulkarni’s screens. “Their engines are still in antimatter mode. They’re trying to make us think they’re in fusion mode.”
“Why would they do that?” her superior asked.
“We’re assuming they’re low on antimatter,” Roslyn suggested. “If they were, they wouldn’t be spending it on gunships—but if those gunships were running on fusion drives, they’d have burned a good chunk of their available delta-v in their defensive maneuvers.”
“Where instead, they’ve burned out a temporary rocket and still have their full antimatter storage,” Kulkarni agreed. “And if they’ve got the antimatter to fuel their gunships…”
“They’ve got the antimatter to fuel their missiles and not worry about expending them,” Roslyn told her. “I don’t know if that changes the plan, sir, but I think we need to consider it.”
“We do,” the other woman said. “We truly do. Well done, Lieutenant.”
Kulkarni turned her attention away.
“Admiral Alexander, Mage-Lieutenant Chambers has picked up an interesting layer to our Republic friends’ maneuvers,” she told the Admiral. “Those gunships are set up in antimatter mode and faking being fusion-driven. The external boosters are probably even getting in the way of their defensive fire.”
Missiles hammered into a second fortress as they spoke. This one survived—barely. From its power signature, Roslyn didn’t expect it to be participating much in the battle to come.
“That’s a lot of effort to fool us on something small, Kulkarni,” Alexander said. She paused. “Except that they want to let us keep thinking they’re short on antimatter. Fascinating.”
There were several seconds of silence as the Mage-Admiral considered the situation, then Alexander shook her head.
“Chambers, get me an all-Captains channel,” she ordered.
Roslyn had a pre-coded program sitting in her console for that. She hit it, confirmed it had worked, then looked up at the Admiral.
“You’re on, sir.”
“Everyone, this is Admiral Alexander,” the fleet commander said calmly. “Our Republican friends are playing games to conceal their true capabilities, and I can only think of one reason they’re doing that.
“Expect to come under fire as we reach launch point bravo. We will continue to reduce the fortresses with the Samurais, but I suspect we’ve taken too long to bring the war to the Republic. Our general range advantage may already be gone, but we still have options they don’t.”
Roslyn hadn’t even thought of that possibility. Neither, she suspected, had most of the Captains and flag officers, from the tone of their acknowledgements.
“Kulkarni, let’s get the destroyers a bit more spread out,” Alexander ordered after a moment. “Formation Romeo-Seven, I think.”
“Understood.”
R-7, if Roslyn remembered it correctly, would interlace the Cataphracts and their augmented missile defenses with the older ships. It would also move the destroyers forward in the fleet formation, putting them at the greatest risk.
The theory was that the destroyers were low-value targets that the Republic would try to shoot past, but it was a theory that could result in a lot of wrecked destroyers if Admiral Alexander guessed wrong.
Another salvo of Samurais tore through the Republic fortresses as the destroyers maneuvered through Second Fleet’s formation. This time, the targeted fortress vanished from the displays as antimatter tore it apart. From this distance, Roslyn couldn’t say if the RIN had failed to stop as many missiles as the previous salvos or if the RMN had scored a lucky hit, but it hardly mattered.
“That’s three fortresses destroyed and four badly damaged or crippled,” Kulkarni reported. “Three salvos still en route. Should we reassess targeting, sir?”