Angles of Attack (Frontlines #3)(66)

“No sign of anything but Lima-20 and 21 as far as our optical gear can look, sir.”

“Sons of bitches are damn near invisible even this close. The other guy could be fifty thousand klicks further out, and we wouldn’t even see him unless we knew exactly where to look. How the hell do they manage to hide something that big so well?”

On the optical feed, the Lanky ships are slow-moving blotches against the background of deep, dark space. Their hulls don’t reflect light the way our metal alloy hulls do. They’ve always reminded me more of bug carapaces than spaceship armor. Indy is stealthy because she is small and because she is crammed to the gunwales with the very latest in stealth technology. Nobody knows yet why the Lanky ships are so damn stealthy that they don’t even show up on radar, thermal imaging, or gamma-ray scopes. It’s hard to study something that will blow you full of holes when you get close enough to spot it.

“How many drones left in the racks?” Colonel Campbell asks.

“Six, sir.”

“Get four of them into the tubes and warm ’em up. I want to have eyes on this from all angles before we try and make our dash.”



The flight of stealth recon drones launches five minutes later. At this range, less than fifty thousand kilometers away, their propulsion systems only need to burn for acceleration a few seconds. They spread out from the icon marking Indy’s location and rush toward the Lanky ships.

“They give the slightest hint that they spotted us, we’re reversing course and going for full burn back the way we came,” Colonel Campbell says.

“Tickling the dragon’s tail.” Major Renner watches the little blue icons on the plot closing the distance with the larger orange ones. “All fun and games until the dragon turns and bites you in the ass.”

The drones are on their run for thirty minutes when the Lankies change course, both seemingly at the same time.

“Lima-20 turning to bear negative ten degrees relative. Fifteen degrees. Twenty.”

The icon for Lima-20 shows the Lanky making a sweeping turn, but he’s not turning toward us or the drone that is now within a thousand kilometers off his port side. He’s turning away from us. At the same time, the icon for Lima-21 changes direction as well, going in the same direction but with hundreds of kilometers of space between them. We now have stern-aspect views of both Lanky ships.

“They’re circling the transition point,” the colonel muses. “Remember when we came in? Like sharks searching for prey.”

The data from the drones bears out the colonel’s observation. We watch as the Lanky ships execute another leg in their pattern, then change course again. Their elapsed track on the plot begins to form an elliptical racetrack pattern, with both ships at opposite ends of the ellipse from each other, and the transition point in the center of the racetrack.

“Surely they’re not that dumb,” the XO says when we’re five or six turns into the pattern.

“What’s that, Major?”

“What’s the first rule of planning and executing a patrol route?” Major Renner asks nobody in particular.

“You make patrol random,” Dmitry says. “So enemy cannot predict.”

The XO and Colonel Campbell look at Dmitry with a mix of mild surprise and amusement.

“Ten points to our Russian guest,” the XO says. “That’s precisely it. But it’s not what these guys are doing. Wait for the next turn.” She points at one of the icons on the plot.

“Lima-20 will turn to relative one-seven-five in ninety seconds. Lima-21 will turn to relative three-zero-zero five or six seconds later. Watch.”

I divide my attention between the plot and the chronometer readout on the CIC bulkhead. Sure enough, a minute and a half after the XO’s prediction, the icons change direction on the plot again, exactly the way she predicted. Major Renner picks up the marker pen from the holotable and clicks a trajectory onto the plot.

“There’s the patrol pattern, and it’s entirely predictable, down to five seconds and a kilometer or two.”

“That’s weapons-grade stupid,” the tactical officer says.

“By our standards, sure.” Colonel Campbell pans the map around and changes the scale to get a better spatial sense of the Lanky patrol pattern relative to our position. “But they’re not human. We don’t have a clue how they think. If they think. They could be acting on instinct alone. Think of the shark analogy. Does a shark have to care whether it’s predictable or not?”

“Maybe they know as little about us as we do about them,” I say.

“Maybe. Problem is, they don’t have to give a shit about figuring us out. Sharks and minnows and all that.”

Colonel Campbell taps the plot again to reset the range scale. “We’ll observe their pattern for a little while, make sure it stays constant. I want a best-time trajectory to the transition point, calculated for the precise moment when both those ships are as far away from the node as their pattern takes them. We’re going to have to loop around and burn for speed.”

“What about creating a little diversion?” the XO asks. “Just to be on the safe side.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“Well, we can use the parasite fighter we have left. Load it with tactical nukes, coast it in from the far side, and stick a few megatons into the nearest Lanky.”