The Battle of Shakti
Admiral Alvaro Soong's 1st Sol Provisional Battle Force had traveled three nonstop months in hyperspace to rendezvous with newly commissioned battle groups in the Dinebikeyah System. The result was a fleet with more than four times the number of manned ships that had fought at Paraiso. The new ships came not only from the Sol System, but from new shipyards in the Indi and Eridani Systems, with colonial crews. So it was renamed the "1st Commonwealth Fleet."
The number of maces, whose performance had been so impressive at Paraiso, was also more than quadrupled. They were quicker and easier to build than manned ships, and being drones, their destruction didn't cost trained crews.
And most of the new ships, manned or drones, had the improved shield generators.
Spanish Soong remained in command. To War House and the public, he was a hero second only to Charley Gordon. Before there was any fleet at all, he'd been judged the best qualified for command, based on temperament, gaming skills, and overall service record. And so far he'd disappointed no one.
While en route to the rendezvous, Soong, via Charley, had been updated on the new fleet units by Admiralty Chief Fedor Tischendorf himself. "And Alvaro," Tischendorf finished, "Axel Tisza is delivering the convoy from the Sol System. He's also commanding one of the new battle groups."
He paused meaningfully. "I've had him in mind as your command backup when he gets there, but I haven't told him yet. I know you two have had-a mixed relationship, so I wanted to run it by you first. What do you think of the idea?"
Think? Or feel? "Admiral, Ax is as able as anyone you could find for the job. Powerful mind. Quick. Aggressive. And basically we saw eye to eye for the most part, different though we are. As midshipmen we roomed together for four years and never came to blows. Loaned each other money on occasion, drank each other's scotch when one of us could afford it. And on pass in the Springs, we backed each other up in more than one scrap."
Yes, Tischendorf thought, and you were rivals in almost everything, from the saber team to the classroom. And over Carmen Apraxin, when she came along; that's what spoiled it. "I didn't bring this up idly," he said. "You two were the chief candidates for command of the Provos, and the difference in your grades and gaming scores was thin. But in your favor. And you had the best command temperament: more objective, and I've never known you to be abrasive."
Soong examined the words and found them true. "Not that gaming scores are so important with Charley Gordon available," he found himself saying.
"True. And there's another point in your favor. You discovered Charley's talent, and had the balls to stick your neck out and make him battle master. I doubt that Ax would have done either of them. I'm not at all sure I would have."
With the specifications in hand on the fleet additions, Charley Gordon plunged into reworking his strategies, tactics, protocols, and fleet organization. At the same time considering possible changes in Wyzhnyny strategy and tactics. Charley claimed to have a good, if imperfect, sense of what those changes would be.
Soong felt uncomfortable with some of Charley's adjustments; they seemed too daring. Nonetheless he accepted Charley's new system in toto, showing no misgivings.
He'd always been stoic-his aunts and older cousins had commented on it-and rarely did that stoicism take the form of grim resignation. But now the situation was more urgent than at Paraiso. He'd also be risking much greater resources, and he needed to do even better than before. Because the Wyzhnyny were getting closer, and time-the Commonwealth's most critical resource-was shrinking.
At the rendezvous, Charley's new battlecomp package was uploaded to the entire fleet. The battle groups remained the basic tactical units, but in the enlarged fleet, a new hierarchical level was added-the battle wing-to facilitate heavier concentrations of firepower. Instead of five battle groups, there were now four battle wings of five groups each, and part of a fifth. When Vice Admiral Carmen Apraxin-DaCosta's Liberation Task Force arrived, it would complete the fifth wing, with Apraxin in command. She'd bring two savants with her, one to be transferred to Soong on board the Altai, freeing Charley Gordon to function solely as battle master.
The maces were not organized into wings and groups. They would operate as coordinated triads, grouped into second-order triads-threes of threes. So far as Soong was aware, the concept was entirely new, and the enthusiastic Charley had big plans for them.
Large and technically upgraded though it was, Soong's fleet was still far smaller than the Wyzhnyny battle fleet, which seemed to constitute about half the armada. But if Charley's assumptions didn't backfire, it seemed realistic to Soong that he could strike, maintain contact long enough to do serious damage, and get away without critical injury.
And possibly, hopefully, slow the invader; make him wary. Buy time to build enough more ships… and come up with new, hopefully decisive weapons.
Three days after Soong's Provos had gathered with the reinforcements from the Core Worlds, Apraxin's New Jerusalem Liberation Force arrived, to begin at once the task of resupply and external maintenance. On the "evening" of the same day, immediately after supper, electronic bosuns' pipes shrilled aboard every manned vessel in the entire fleet, and shipsvoice ordered all hands to mustering stations in ten minutes. This was followed as before by the skirls of "Dilly Doo" and other Scottish martial music.
As at Paraiso, it was the admiral who spoke first. His real pep talk would come weeks in the future, not long before battle. But meanwhile, before the weeks of simdrills in hyperspace, a few words from the Old Man should help prepare them-provide context and perspective-and a sense of team, of family.
And the new people needed to meet Charley.
"… We are now the 1st Commonwealth Fleet," Soong said. "Commos for short. With the arrival of you newcomers, we are a much more powerful fleet than when we bushwhacked the Wyzhnyny at Paraiso. A fleet with a toughness and assurance derived from a core of units with successful battle experience. And a fleet with the best battle master in the galaxy-Charley Gordon.
"You old hands know Charley's work. You know I don't exaggerate the advantages he gives us. When I've finished my own short spiel, Charley will speak to you himself. And during the next day or two you'll witness his ability personally, on cubes of the Battle of Paraiso.
"Still, some of you may remain skeptical. Few of you war-gamed till you entered the service, and you may not yet appreciate what Charley does, or what it takes. But we'll all be simdrilling his updated battlecomp programs all the way to Shakti. Perhaps even to Ivar Aasen. And if you're not convinced by then, you will be when you've experienced the cauldron."
He paused. "For those who don't know, a cauldron is a large iron kettle used in ancient times to boil things. You won't be in the cauldron; that's reserved for the Wyzhnyny. Your job will be to help stoke the fire without falling in it."
Another pause. "Meanwhile, we all have things to do before we generate hyperspace again, so I'll let you hear Charley Gordon now. Welcome to the family."
Charley gave basically the same introductory talk he'd given in the Paraiso System, though he used a new example. It had much the same effect on the newcomers.
Minutes later, on a secure channel, Soong accepted a call from Vice Admiral Carmen Apraxin-DaCosta. "Hello, Admiral," he said. Presumably his wariness didn't show on the screen, but it seemed to him she'd know. "What can I do for you?"
"Not a thing, Admiral. May I call you Alvaro?"
"You may call me Al if you'd like." She still looked great. No longer young-forty-two? forty-four?-but great. She made him conscious of his thickened waist. She probably still practiced aikido.
Her laugh was not as light as it had been, but it seemed genuine. "I'll settle for Alvaro," she told him. "You're my commander now, and two grades above me. Is Charley Gordon as good as he sounds?"
"Every bit as good."
"I didn't know savants could be so… intelligent, in the usual sense. Or is articulate the word?"
"I don't know if `the usual sense' applies to Charley. He's… superman in a box. But easy to work with. Likeable."
"Hmm. Maybe I'll have a chance to talk with him sometime."
For several seconds they sat without talking, looking at one another on their screens. "I suppose," Soong said at last, "you had something on your mind when you called."
"Yes, I did. I do. It's grown out of the life reviews some of us are guilty of in times like these." She paused, hesitated. "Not so many years ago you asked me to marry you. With good reason to expect a yes. But I had an opportunity to make a four-year patrol with B Squadron-as you had earlier, you'll recall. And I chose it over marriage."
Yes, you did, he thought. She'd been given command of a frigate, the largest class of warship the Admiralty boasted then. With Axel Tisza as senior captain-commodore-in charge of the squadron. He had no doubt Tisza and she had enjoyed each other's company on the occasional layovers.
"It was a great opportunity," he finished.
She looked at him mildly, but he had no doubt she saw through him.
"In a year this war will be over," she said. "One way or another. Then, assuming I'm still alive, I expect to leave the service. What about you?"
"I-hadn't thought about it." For a moment the realization surprised him, but it made sense. The prospect of surviving the war wasn't something he wanted to distract himself with. The odds seemed too poor.
"I can understand that," she said, and paused for a moment. "All I really called about was to invite you to ask me again when this is over."
He nodded slowly. "Thanks, Carmen. I'm surprised, and more than anything else, complimented. It's the nicest thing anyone ever said to me."
"Good. Now all we have to do is win the war." She paused. "We both have things to do. I'd better let us get at them."
Soong nodded. "Right. And Carmen, thank you very much for calling. I probably won't return this personal call till afterward."
They disconnected then, Soong wondering what he'd meant by "afterward." It had just popped out. He might survive the upcoming battle, but the war? He hadn't felt-and wouldn't feel-any concern at all about dying. His great fear was of losing, and associated with that, he feared that Charley Gordon might die. That, he told himself, would be a tragedy.
But if he did survive, and if Carmen did…
He resolved to lose weight.
The admiral seated himself in the chair indicated by Ophelia Kennah. It was always that chair, an AG chair set at 0.7 gee, large enough to accommodate his burly body comfortably. In front of him, the large wall window was set to a sky view within Terra's atmosphere. Judging from the elevation of Crux, it might be from somewhere near Rio de Janeiro, where Charley had lived most of his life.
Beside Soong's chair stood a small stand with several non-fattening hors d'oeuvres. No more goose-liver paste. Knowingly or not, Kennah was cooperating with his efforts to lose weight. Had she read his mind? With her that wasn't inconceivable, but more probably the command officers' chef had talked to her. He sampled one, washed it down with carbonated punch, then swiveled his seat slightly to face the life-support module and its occupant. "Good morning, Charley," the admiral said.
A tiny light-play danced briefly over Charley's sensorium, perhaps equivalent to an embodied human switching off a music or video cube, and swiveling his seat to face a visitor. "Ah, Admiral!" Charley said. "Since I completed our new battlecomp package, we seldom meet. What may I do for you?"
"I've called twice lately," Soong answered. "Each time, Kennah told me you were studying." Actually she'd said he was "studying deeply," whatever that meant. "And that unless it was urgent, she'd rather not waken you. But today when I called, she said you were listening to music, and suggested it was a good time to visit." He lifted an eyebrow. "And by now, of course, I'm curious about your studies."
"Ah." Charley paused as if considering how to put it. "I have been exploring another facet of my potentials, one I dabbled in occasionally when I was younger, without realizing I was merely dabbling. Actually I was being appropriately cautious. But now Ophelia acts as my security officer, an anchor to prevent my being… swept away. And though some risk remained, it seemed something I needed to do at this time. You see."
Risk? There was a pause of several seconds. He'd been jarred by Charley taking a needless risk, when his ability to function at a high level was so vitally important. "No, Charley," he said softly, "I don't see. You'll have to enlighten me."
Charley did, and he didn't. "I have," he said, "been visiting the Wyzhnyny grand admiral. At the… soul level you might say. It is not a matter of telepathy, but of… call it integration. At the level of souls, that is. Something the grand admiral is not aware of at the physical or personality level. Though his essence is."
Soong stared. Uncertainties stirred in his belly like a nest of snakes wakening from hibernation. "Do you know his thoughts?" he asked.
"His thoughts belong to his personality, not his essence. My level of merging is not so strong that I sense them explicitly. But in a general sense I am aware of his fears, his hopes, his desires. Call it empathy in the fullest sense. The admiral is, of course, a product of his people-his culture and class-and I now understand him, and them, much more deeply than before. In fact, through him I have attained a degree of empathy with them as well."
Charley's answer did not assure the admiral. "Well then-" Soong found himself reluctant to ask the question, but reluctance seldom ruled him in matters of duty. "Can you influence him?"
"I have, Admiral, I have. Not to do some particular act, or assume some particular point of view. At the essence level, that is impossible. But he is influenced by the contact, and to an extent enabled by it."
"Enabled." Soong spoke the word cautiously. "Will he be more dangerous then?"
"Not dangerous. But he may break free of old acculturation and self-protective mechanisms. And do things he previously could not."
Soong looked troubled. After a moment Charley added, "Perhaps more to the point, I have a better sense of our joint vectors."
"Ah!" With relief. "So what you've done is beneficial to our cause. Our defense."
"Definitely, Admiral; definitely beneficial. This will be a costly battle, as you well know, but the vectors appear… not unpropitious."
Not unpropitious. From Charley, Soong would have preferred something more positive. "Good," he replied. "We need all the advantages we can have."
For a minute or so then, they spoke of trivia, until Soong was walking to the door. Then Charley added: "And, Alvaro. Do not worry if I seem changed. During my studies, I have changed. For the better. I discovered and dropped certain features of my personality that I am better off without."
As the admiral walked back to his quarters, his discomfort persisted. And not just because of possible troubles growing out of Charley's "integration" with the Wyzhnyny admiral. If it was real. Soong wondered if Charley might be less than sane, perhaps deluded by some experience in trance.
Meanwhile, he realized what the change had been in Charley's personality. Previously it had included a subtle sense of ingratiation that Soong assumed grew out of living under constant threats since infancy. Threats of equipment failure, a moment's carelessness by a caregiver… even gossip or rumor. Being bottled, Charley's very existence had been illegal. And if the Institute had been shut down, what would have become of him? His only defense had lain in being liked and thought harmless. Yet today that ingratiation had been entirely absent. Remarkable, after so many years of conditioning by fear.
He'd talk about it with Kennah someday, he decided.
Meanwhile, there was one thing he did not doubt: Without Charley Gordon, the coming battle could not end well.
Admiral Axel Tisza had spoken with Soong previously since his arrival, their exchanges strictly business. Before supper, he called again.
"I was impressed with your battle master," said the Ax. "God! A damned tragedy he hasn't been cloned. One damned salvo of torpedos and he could be-gone! There might never be another like him."
The comment annoyed Soong. Cloning humans had become common in the 21st century, and again in the 23rd. More than enough to establish that much of what made a human valuable-beyond athletics and potential intelligence-the members of a clone were more or less different. Sometimes very different.
"Cloned?" he said. "You don't know what sort of body he had, or what he went through while he wore it."
Tisza examined his old roommate, and nodded. "I suppose. My savant reminds me of a frog. But he's worth his weight in anything you'd care to name, even if he's not a Charley Gordon." He shrugged. "Did Fedor appoint me your backup? Or did you?"
"Fedor. Conditionally."
"What condition?"
"That I agreed." What the hell good is a conversation like this? Soong thought. He was too old now to play power games.
"If he'd given you your choice, who would you have selected?"
"You. We were always neck and neck. You were always more hair-triggered than I was, and more abrasive when you felt the urge." Or charming if you wanted to be. He wished he had some of Tisza's charm. "But if the Altai gets cooked, or blown apart, and there's no more Charley Gordon and no more Alvaro Soong, this fleet might still have a chance, with you in command."
Tisza nodded slowly, thoughtful now. "I'd thought you might have chosen Carmen. She's had battle experience."
"I probably would have, if you were still at a desk in Kunming." He paused. "Ax, I've got some things to take care of before we generate hyperspace. Is there anything else we need to talk about?"
He'd put just a little emphasis on need.
"No, there isn't." It was Tisza's turn to pause. "Thanks, Spanish. But I do want to say I think Fedor appointed the right fleet admiral when he gave you the job. And it's assuring to know you approved me as your backup. Fedor thinks a lot of you. And while you may not know it, I do too. Always did. Ever since we were plebes."
And with that he disconnected, leaving Soong staring at his screen, wondering if he'd been petty.
Tisza too sat with his eyes on the now-blue screen. Alvaro should have transfered his flag to one of the new battleships, with their two-layered shields, he thought. For the sake of Charley Gordon, if nothing else. But it was late for that. And it might affect morale poorly, to trade the more vulnerable Altai, with its single-layer shield, for one of the better-protected new ships.
The Commo fleet didn't get to the Aasen System. The armada had reached Maitreya's World earlier than expected, and might arrive at Aasen before the Commos were ready. Which would put the fleet at a needless and severe disadvantage. En route in hyperspace, simdrills would groove them all on Charley's revised program. But officers, crews, and Charley himself needed to follow the simdrills with adequate steel drills. So the Commos emerged in the fringe of the Shakti System. And there they waited, drilling until the Commos were fully confident of their skills, and even their fleet admiral was reasonably satisfied with their performance.
If my Commos had half-even a third-of the Wyzhnyny firepower, Soong thought, we'd win. Unfortunately they had nowhere near that. But then, he reminded himself, they didn't need to win if they did well enough, then escaped with losses that weren't too severe.
When the klaxons sounded, and shipsvoice called, "Battle stations! Battle stations! Battle stations!" the tension generated was more anticipation than fear. Alvaro Soong had already suppressed his misgivings, and his fleet was as ready as it could be. The Tao would favor him or not.
Aboard the Meadowlands, the alarm was a six-second blast of raucous horns, scant seconds after emergence. This time the grand admiral was on the bridge, not in bed. A human fleet lay in the same octant of the local system as his own, but an hour's warp jump insystem. An hour.
This time, he told himself, the humans would not strike him by surprise. His warfleet had re-formed its formations only 11.38 hyperspace hours outsystem; they could be tightened quickly. "Shipsmind," he said calmly, "order all battle wings to generate warpspace on my count. We will move outsystem far enough to satisfy the parameters of Plan 1.3, then initiate Phase A. One minute and counting: ninety… eighty…"
On zero his warfleet winked out of F-space.
Charley Gordon was on the bridge, his cart secured at the battle master's station. Alvaro Soong sat on his command seat, his hands resting loosely on its command board. For the moment his curved display screen was unsegmented, and inactive except for small analog and digital system displays.
Charley had predicted the Wyzhnyny would generate warpspace, move farther outsystem, and set ambushes before emerging. In warpspace, ambushes usually weren't very practical, but facing Wyzhnyny numbers, the risk was substantial. So the Commos would stay put. He predicted the Wyzhnyny would then make a warp jump back insystem, and attack simultaneously from multiple surrounding points. He intended to meet them aggressively. His cool confidence had infected all the bridge watch, including his admiral, whose stoicism just now approached tranquility.
They waited, Charley in a trancelike calm, poised, alert, perfectly ready; a state in which durations registered with no sense of waiting. On his orders, shipsmind provided music chosen to calm without dulling. It began with Gustav Holst's Planets Suite, thence to Colin Jokisaari's Uusisuomi Spring, and others. After a while, a messman brought a lunch cart, and the bridge watch ate at their stations. All but Charley, who never ate and didn't seem to miss it.
Soong wondered how someone could get over wanting to eat. He'd always assumed it was hardwired.
Grand Admiral Quanshuk had emerged in his new, more distant location. Time passed, enough that electromagnetic evidence, poking along at 186,000 miles per second, had informed the human fleet where he now was. Then more time, enough to tell Quanshuk that the humans would not be baited. They were leaving the offensive to him. Clearly this human fleet had a different commander than he'd dueled with before.
"Very well," he muttered. "We'll give them more than they'll like." He spoke his next order with a feeling approaching confidence.
It was late in the following watch, midway through Aleksandr Borodin's In the Steppes of Central Asia, that klaxons clamored aboard the Altai, cutting off the music. Shipsvoice's strident "Battle Stations! Battle Stations!" was redundant. Officers and ranks were already there. Charley Gordon's Situation One was unfolding.
Twelve mighty wings of Wyzhnyny warcraft had emerged on the fringe of Soong's fleet. Beyond them, on a larger perimeter, were twenty-four more. Outsystem a hundred million miles, the armada's transports and support craft had entered the relative security of warpspace.
The Wyzhnyny wings were differently constituted than the Commo wings, but comparable in power, and there were far more of them. They began their attack at once, accelerating in gravdrive, generating shields as they came. The Commo wings in turn started toward the Wyzhnyny. The maces led, accelerating much faster than humans or Wyzhnyny could survive. In brief seconds they reached the maximum speed at which they could carry out the intended evasion maneuvers. Then, by triplicate triads-threes of threes-they directed coordinated beam fire at selected Wyzhnyny battleships. While following evasion courses designed to confound target locks.
Quanshuk stared, chagrined. He'd learned before, the hard way, that certain human cruisers-presumably robots-could maneuver at high speeds. But he'd overlooked the acceleration potentials that implied. Nor had they previously shown him coordinated maneuvers on so large a scale.
His own ships responded promptly with both war beams and torpedoes, the action swift and violent, with too many craft over too large a volume of space for organics to follow the action. But the battlecomps on both sides took it all in, reacting with a quickness far beyond human or Wyzhnyny. Shields shimmered beneath the onslaught of war beams, flared and collapsed from multiple torpedo strikes. Hulls incandesced, exploded.
Then the surviving maces were through the Wyzhnyny formations. The Commo battle groups followed, their battleships wielding heavy beamguns. Firing torpedoes required complex shield topologies that made them more susceptible to destruction, so it was their corvette and cruiser outriders that wielded torpedoes. The smaller ships' safety lay partly in numbers, and partly in the Wyzhnyny tactic of focusing on human battleships.
Concentrating on battleships was a sound strategy for both sides. The Commos needed to destroy as many Wyzhnyny as possible, which meant maintaining fighting contact as long as they could-before the Wyzhnyny could gang up on them. Inevitably they did gang up on some of them, of course. The trick then became to disrupt the Wyzhnyny teamwork by throwing in maces. But meanwhile Commo ships were lost.
With the Wyzhnyny concentrating on the manned wings, the maces dropped their shields, generated warpspace, and disappeared. Their battlecomps had their orders and knew the drill. So far their losses had been modest, and they'd disordered the Wyzhnyny formations, disrupting their larger-scale coordination before the Commo battle groups struck. More ships died then, mostly Wyzhnyny, while the Wyzhnyny battle groups coordinated their fire as best they could.
From the bridge of the battleship Pyrenees, Axel Tisza saw the Altai caught in a crossfire from three Wyzhnyny battleships, her shield shimmering strongly with intercepted energy; her shield generator would soon overload. With a quick touch he turned two war beams on one of the attackers; another touch simultaneously ordered torpedoes engaged. Automatically his shield reconfigured, the torpedoes fixing on targets, and launching. A moment later a salvo struck the Pyrenees, and her outer shield layer collapsed. On the bridge, the lights flickered. Systems display windows showed generator status red and pulsing. Damage Control cut off the war beam, lessening the stress on the matric tap, in order to regenerate the shield layer. But there was too little time; another salvo struck, and almost simultaneously another. The lights flared and died, returning almost instantly as the emergency backup system responded. Klaxons clamored briefly before two more salvos struck, and the Pyrenees died. Axel Tisza hadn't even had time to see if he'd succeeded in saving the Altai and Charley Gordon.
Soong had. The two battle groups had been keeping pace. He saw the torpedos flash against the Pyrenees' shield, which seemed to expand, then disappear, the instant almost too brief to register. Jabbing he locked a monitor on her. Almost simultaneously, another window showed one of the Altai's three attackers lose her own overstressed shield, and her beam, as Tisza's first salvo struck; her generator, if not her matric tap, had blown. A second lost her shield a moment later, to torpedoes from the Altai's cruiser escorts. The third, seeing the Pyrenees shieldless, turned its beams on her. Sprays of molten hull metal scintillated where the beams had locked. Then the final blow struck-two salvos, from two Wyzhnyny cruisers-and the Pyrenees ripped apart.
For perhaps two seconds Soong stared, then he snapped out of it. He'd seen-at the Academy they'd all seen-just such episodes in virtuality many times, preparing for a moment like this. Which helped. But seeing it in reality, and knowing who commanded, the moment stabbed him deeply.
The Commo battle wings passed through the enemy ring, many of the Commo battleships with Wyzhnyny target locks still attached. Then the maces returned. In self-defense the Wyzhnyny turned their guns and torpedoes on them; the Commo wings dropped shields and escaped, most of them, into warpspace before the outer ring of Wyzhnyny could engage them.
This time the maces continued outward, engaging the outer Wyzhnyny ring, striking selected wings and ignoring others. And scarcely had they passed through the outer ring when the Commo battle groups reappeared in F-space at a distance, re-forming formations for their next assault-in which they would change tactics on the Wyzhnyny, keep them guessing and off balance.
When the confusion had peaked again, the human formations, superbly synchronized, disappeared into strange-space. Quanshuk stared after them. The bridge of the Meadowlands stank with musk and sweat. Almost at once, status reports began to scroll. Watching them, Quanshuk's guts shriveled.
After several minutes it seemed apparent the humans would not return. But the grand admiral did not at once leave the bridge. It would amount to abandoning the watch in a time of trauma. Besides, who could be sure? The humans might suddenly reappear.
This time, when the battle was over, Charley Gordon wasn't jubilant. Instead he "sagged" in sudden exhaustion. With the Commo escape into warpspace-that's what it had been, an escape-the battle master's bridge orderly wheeled him to his quarters, where Ophelia Kennah took charge. Ophelia: Charley's nurse, confidante, and best friend.
Alvaro Soong wasn't jubilant either, nor about to take his fleet back into that maelstrom. Reports were incomplete, of course. A host of data had been recorded by the Altai's sensors, and more had been forwarded automatically in real time from his hundreds of other ships. All to be processed-compiled, analyzed and summarized. Only shipsmind could manage it, organizing and prioritizing, then scrolling at a rate his staff could deal with.
But what he did know was he'd lost about a third of his battleships and personnel, including the Pyrenees and Axel Tisza. The Altai herself had twice been in serious trouble, and been bailed out.
Inevitably his maces had taken the heaviest losses. About half were gone, despite their evasiveness and layered shields. They'd fought the most, where the risks were greatest. Without them, Charley could not have maintained battle contact with the Wyzhnyny for nearly as long, nor done nearly the damage.
In numbers, Wyzhnyny losses had been much greater, especially of crews. But again, in terms of percentages, Soong's Commos had gotten the worst of it. As expected.
Nonetheless, given the relative numbers and firepower, Charley had performed another miracle. Soong wondered what the Wyzhnyny commander made of it. Was he shocked? Enraged? Dismayed? Or possibly pleased?
After ordering hot tea and honey for the bridge watch, he went to his channeling savant, to send a preliminary report to War House. A full debrief could wait. He'd emerge in F-space in the cometary cloud; F-space was a necessary intermediate between strange-spaces. Then, after pulsing updated orders to his fleet, he'd generate hyperspace, and debrief to Kunming. And tomorrow-next shipsday-they'd reemerge for a fleet review and memorial service.
Finally Soong retired to his stateroom. He'd just closed the door, the lock engaging behind him, when it hit-the nervous exhaustion, the loss, the shock-all at once. He sank shaking onto a chair, put his face in his hands, and for the first time since he'd learned of his mother's death, he wept. All those men. All those men.
It lasted perhaps thirty seconds. After another minute he stripped and showered, then poured himself a brandy, read for a few minutes from Innocent XV's Soul and Body, and went to bed. Where his last thought was of Ax. I wish, he told himself, there'd been time to get drunk together again, after so many years. Then he fixed his attention on his old roommate and rival, and sent a thought. "Maybe next time," he murmured aloud. The prayer of a skeptic. He wondered if there was anyone, or anything, "out there" to hear it.