Angles of Attack (Frontlines #3)(76)

“God, what a shitload of steel,” Sergeant Fallon says from behind my left shoulder. She waves a half-eaten emergency ration bar at the screen. “You want to know why the welfare civvies are eating shit, there’s your answer. That’s where all the money went.” She takes another bite from the bar and makes a face. “Speaking of eating shit. This is awful. It tastes like a chunk of boot sole that someone marinated in sweat for a week. I thought the fleet ate better than the mudlegs.”

“Those are emergency rations,” I reply. “Once you’re down to those, you don’t care much about flavor. One thousand calories per bar.”

“Give me your unadulterated fleet-trained, combat-experienced opinion, Andrew. How good is this battle plan they cooked up?”

I think about it for a moment—not that I haven’t played out the scenario in my head a hundred times since the briefing earlier today. I’m no longer invited to the all-brass conferences, but the COs of the HD battalions were, and they were courteous enough to brief their senior NCOs.

“It’s actually pretty damn smart,” I say. “The little Korean brigadier cooked it up. Sly son of a bitch. I’d hate to fight a battle against him.”

Indy will play scout again. They combed through all the data we brought back from our scouting run and came up with an algorithm for the predictable patrol pattern of the Lanky seed ships. In another forty-five minutes, Indy will accelerate and transition back to the solar system by herself, and if the algorithm is on the money, she will pop out of the node at a moment when the Lanky ships are at the far ends of their patrol ellipse. Seven minutes later, the now-empty supply ships will follow Indy and play bait before the rest of the task force comes through at maximum safe-transit velocity. The crews of Indy and the supply ships will be stripped to their bare minimum. The remaining crew members have all volunteered for what is dreadfully close to a suicide run. If all goes well, the Lankies will give chase to the empty supply ships and make way for the rest of the task force to come through the node seven minutes later.

“What if they mined the exit after you guys went through right between them?”

“Then the supply ships are going to be minesweepers,” I say. “Nonreusable ones.”

“Damn.” Sergeant Fallon wraps up her emergency ration bar again and sticks it into the chest pocket of her tunic. “Don’t ever let me say again that fleet deck moppers have no balls.”

We watch the resupply ballet as the smaller combatants take their turns on both sides of the Portsmouth. There’s nothing left on the supply ships but reactor fuel and drinking water. We used up the last of the packaged rations and New Svalbard bring-alongs yesterday, and now we’re down to emergency bars. They’ll keep us alive until we get back—if we get back—but they take all the fun out of chow time. Under normal circumstances, I would get bored watching frigates refueling from a fleet oiler, but right now I wouldn’t mind the whole process taking longer, because when it’s over, we are jumping back into the shark tank again. Everyone on this flight deck is nervous and anxious, and we’re all trying to pretend that we’re not.

When the refueling queue is finally serviced, the supply ships break formation and take up position in front of the task group and slightly above. I don’t see Indy on the optical feed at all—it’s difficult to spot the stealth ship unless you know exactly where to point the lens, even at short range—but I know she’s out there right now, swinging around the task group to gather speed for the transition. I feel guilty for not being in her CIC right now, even though there’s absolutely no good I can do over there on this mission. All nonessential personnel have been transferred off Indy, which would have included me anyway, but it doesn’t ease the feeling of letting Colonel Campbell and Major Renner down, irrational as it is.

“Combat stations, combat stations. All hands, combat stations. This is not a drill. I repeat: combat stations, combat stations.”

The combat-stations alert sounds a lot louder in the cavernous flight deck than it did in Indy’s CIC. We will be on alert for the entire Alcubierre transition back, because we know that as soon as we come out on the solar system side, we will be fighting and running for our lives.

Then the 1MC comes to life again.

“Attention all hands: This is the CO. We are cleared for transition in T-minus twenty-one. Stand to and man your stations. Regulus goes to battle.”

Out in the distance toward the transition point, a set of position lights glows briefly, as if in salute.

“Indianapolis, you are cleared for transition in one minute. Good luck, and Godspeed.”

I listen to the radio chatter on the ship-to-ship channels as all the ships in the task force send their own salutes to Indy.

If you don’t make it through, I hope you make a bright comet, I think.

“Transition in thirty. Beam lock confirmed. See you on the other side. Indianapolis out,” Major Renner’s voice comes over the speakers. She doesn’t sound anxious in the least.

“Twenty seconds,” Regulus’s tactical control says. “Ten seconds. Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one. Indy has transitioned out.”

“T-minus seven for Flight Two. Flight Two, advance to your transit positions.”



Time ticks away as we wait for the supply ships to maneuver into position. Indy went through the node at slow speed, to maximize her stealth when she came through on the other side. The supply ships, going through exactly seven minutes after Indy, are transitioning while going at full acceleration. When they are through, they will shoot out of the Alcubierre node at five hundred meters per second, to play the hares that give the foxes something to chase. The supply ships swing wide around the task force and accelerate toward the node. Then they are gone in a blink, off at superluminal speed and away to a point twenty-seven light-years in the distance.