The Insurrection

Ru

"Admiral" Yoshinaka a

Things clicked in Trevayne's mind. Of coursel The rebels had known he was as likely as themselves to deduce that Zapata was the logical place for them to make a stand--so they'd decided to make it elsewhere! Iphigena? Probably. It didn't matter. What mattered was ti objective for this battle was to strip him of his screen for the decisive clash... just as their false "fortresses" had already stripped him of most of his SBMHAWK'S. And, he thought grimly, they were going about it in an ali-too-rational fashion. Caught between these new baffle-cruisers and the force with which he was already engaged, Remko would be overwhelmed before he could disengage.

But... the rebels had forgotten the onward-lumbering battle-line's heavy external ordnance load of SBM'S. Yet there was no time to lose, or the battle-cruisers would soon draw out of range. He gave the command, and the capital ships' external ordnance lashed outward, the salvos of SBM'S thickened by the supermonitors' internally launched HBM'S.

Trevayne sat back, awaiting further reports as the missiles speckled his display.

Those battle-cruisers were doomed. Nothing that size could stand up to that hurricane of missiles. Nothing. Yet there remained the unidentified worry nagging at the back of his mind, the sense of something overlooked. He was still scratching at the mental itch when Yoshinaka turned a carefully controlled face to him.

"Admiral, we've lost missile lock. Those "battle-cruisers" @u@u. it seems they were scout cruisers with their ECM in deception mode. They've dropped it and gone to evasive action." Their eyes met, and neither needed to speak.

The rebels had just stripped the battle-line of its external ordnance.

Somewhere in the back of Trevayne's mind a part of him reflected that perhaps he'd been too worried about his subordinate's cockiness to recognize it in himself. Or had he simply fallen into a belie pounds in the infallibility o pounds his own judgment? It was easy to do, when M'n'iam wasn't around.

It only remained to learn why the rebels had mousetrapped him into firing off: his missiles.

"hey've taken the bait, sir!" Tomanaga's voice was exultant. 'hey just flushed their XO racks at the decoys!" "Tracking reports at least ninety percent of their external ordnance fired, sir," David Reznick confirmed. "Sir, their battle-line's flank scouts will clear the planet in eleven minutes," Stravos Kollentai reported. "Very well." Han drew a deep, unobtrusive breath, remembering another battle aboard another ship. She glanced at Tsing Chang and saw what might have been a shadowy smile of memory on his imperturbable face.

"Yours is the honor, Admiral," she said simply. "Prepare to move out." "Aye, aye, sir. Immediately." "Admiral Windrider is launching!" Rezniek reported.

"Very well. Admiral Tsing, engage the enemy." "Aye, aye, sir." The superdreadnought TRNS Arrarat rumbled to life, drive field bellowing muted thunder through her iron bones as Battle Group Nine, Terran Republican Navy, moved out to battle.

"Sir! Admiral Trevayne! The sca

A chain of lights crept around the disk of Zapata III in a sullen, crimson line of hostile capital ships. He sat quietly, his brain racing to assimilate the new data, as eight monitors and gventy-four battleships and superdreadnoughts abandoned their hiding place in the planet's shadow. They were too close and fast for his battle-line to avoid.

And even as they emerged from the shadows there came more reports--reports of swarms of strikefighters spewing out of the asteroid belt behind Fourth Fleet.

Of course, he thought coldly, filled with an ungrudging respect for his opponent's tactics.

Escort carriers. They had one advantage over larger carriers--with their power down and a little luck, they could be mistaken for asteroids by even the best sca

Not that they'd needed much luck, he thought grimly, remembering the cloaking ECM on the escort carriers raiding his communications. He'd thought it a financially extravagant way to build such cheap carriers--notow he understood why it had been done.

He was back on stride by the time the final report came in. He knew what was happening, understood the deadly ambush into wh he and his ships had strayed. This was no mere attempt to stop Fourth Fleet; it was a full-blooded bid to destroy it.

That was why they'd let him into the system unopposed- -comto catch his slower battle-line between warp points, unable to retreat, while they hit him from all sides. And with Fourth Fleet gone, the rebels could sweep into Zephrain at last. Oh, yes, he understood--and perhaps alone among all the perso

Trevayne watched the ruby chips of the outgoing rebel fighters with bitter satisfaction@u He'd been right all along @u.. the decisive battle would come at Zapata, but it would be such an engagement as none of them had dreamed of in their worst nightmares. On either side, he thought grimly. "Admiral," Yoshinaka was saying, "should I recall Commander Sandoval?" The ops officer was on his way to Togo to confer with his opposite number on Desafs staff. Trevayne shook his head.

Trevayne remained confident@u The rebel battle-line was powerful, but clearly no match for his own. The incoming fighters from the belt were a threat, but not enough to even the balance if Remko and Stoner could fend off the rebel carriers long enough. They were in for a nasty series of external ordnance salvos from the rebel's capital ships, but when they closed to energy weapon range his superior weight of metal would tell. And he could still draw first blood with his HBM'S before they entered SBM range.

But it wasn't that simple, as his first HBM salvo revealed. The Republic's RandD teams hadn't produced such spectacular results, perhaps, but they had not been idle. For the first time, the Rim encountered a Republican weapon that was as much a breakthrough as the grav driver. The rebels mounted shields which were outwardly identical to" those which had been in use for over two hundred years, and so they were, to a point. But conventional shields collapsed as they took damage and their massive fuses blew; these reset automatically and virtually instantaneously. They didn't "collapse" they simply flashed out of existence, then bounced back.., as good as new!