Bolo!

“You have a better opinion of me than I do,” Maneka said.

“Because you perceive all of your faults from within,” Benjy said serenely. “I, however, am able to observe your responses and actions from without. You would not have been able to coordinate so well with Captain Belostenec had you been ‘terrified out of your wits.’”

“Maybe,” Maneka conceded dubiously.

Actually, she thought, for all of the time she and Belostenic had spent discussing possible tactical situations and responses to them, there hadn’t really been a great deal of pla

The Ninth Marines were a potent fighting force, at least the equal of any Melconian Army division, and arguably superior to two of them in actual combat power. But neither their personal armor nor their vehicles had the firepower and toughness to stand up to Melconian combat mechs. If the Thirty-Ninth could get it through the perimeter of the Melconian LZ, the Ninth would undoubtedly prove its worth, but getting it through that perimeter in the first place was going to be supremely difficult.

“Captain Jeschke informs me that we will be dropping out of hyper in approximately twelve minutes,” Benjy informed her suddenly, and she twitched in her command couch. That “approximately twelve minutes” had to have come directly from Jeschke, Ta

The thought made her giggle unexpectedly, and she blinked as she realized her unanticipated amusement was entirely genuine.

Maybe I’m not quite such a hopeless basket case, after all, she thought.

“Understood,” she said aloud. “Please make sure Captain Belostenec also has that information.”

“I have.”

“Then I guess all we can do is wait.”

The relief force from Santa Cruz dropped out of hyper in a single, perfectly coordinated transition, and tactical displays aboard the Navy task force’s warships began blinking alive with a rash of ominous red icons.

Commodore Selkirk’s entire combat strength consisted of one four-ship battlecruiser division and one carrier, supported by eight heavy cruisers, nine light cruisers, and twelve destroyers. From the reports Chartres Near-Space Command had managed to get out before the subspace communications satellites were taken out, he already knew that even after the attackers’ losses against Chartres’ orbital defenses—which had not been insubstantial—he still faced six Melconian battleships, five battlecruisers, and twenty screening “fists.” Like the Melconian ground unit of the same name, a naval “fist” consisted of three ships, in this case a heavy cruiser supported by a light cruiser and a destroyer. The comparative number of hulls—thirty-four human vessels opposed to sixty-nine Melconian ships—was bad enough. The to

Despite that, Selkirk had certain offsetting advantages. One was that unlike the deep-space arrays which had given Chartres two full days of warning before the Melconians’ arrival, even a battleship’s detection range against a unit approaching through hyper was severely limited. The Melconian CO had been given less than four hours’ warning before Selkirk’s ships came piling out of hyper, and his combat strength was still out of position. Another advantage was that every one of Selkirk’s ships possessed a fully self-aware AI… and that those ships’ command crews were neurally linked with them. They literally thought and fought at the same hyper-heuristic speed as Bolos.

None of which changed the fact that the battleship component of the enemy force alone out—massed his entire task force by more than two-to-one.

Orders flashed outward from Selkirk’s flagship. He had arranged his approach very carefully, and his task force and the accompanying transports deployed with smooth efficiency. The commodore had deliberately dropped most of his warships back into normal-space well inside the three-light-minute sphere of the Chartres jump point. That was precisely where the Melconians had been expecting him, although he still managed to emerge into n-space outside their immediate engagement range. But the transports, accompanied by the carrier Indomitable and two of his destroyers, had made the transition to normal-space out on the very rim of the jump point at its closest approach to the i

It had been a calculated risk, since it was always possible the Melconian CO might have anticipated the maneuver and deployed to smash the transports first, but it had paid off. The main body of the Melconian fleet was exactly where Selkirk had hoped it would be—well out—system from the transports’ emergence point, with the commodore and his main combatants between it and the transports.

The eight transports, trailing their three escorts, arrowed straight towards the planet while Selkirk and his brutally outnumbered force squared off to keep the Melconians off their backs. Maneka felt physically sick to her stomach as her tactical plot showed the sea of hostile icons sweeping towards the commodore and his handful of ships. She wasn’t trained in Navy tactical iconography, but she didn’t need to be to recognize the dreadful imbalance between the two forces.

She didn’t have a great deal of time to think about that, however. Four Melconian “fists” had apparently been providing orbital fire support for their ground forces, now that the deep-space defenses had been suppressed, and now they came peeling out of Chartres planetary orbit as the transports steadied down on their approach.

“Incoming missiles,” Benjy a

“Stand by for antimissile defense,” Maneka replied—more, she was aware, for something to say than because Benjy needed any instructions from her.

“Standing by.”

On each of the Sleipners, pairs of Bolos brought up their battle screen, activated tracking systems, and waited with psychotronic calm as the Melconian missiles shrieked towards them. And, to her own immense surprise, Maneka Trevor felt her own pulse steady as she watched the arrowhead-shaped missile icons race to meet Ta

More icons blossomed on Benjy’s tactical plot, and Maneka recognized them as Indomitable’s outgoing fighters. There were eighty of them, and they headed straight for the enormously larger Melconian warships under maximum power. The missiles targeted on the transports ignored them, and Maneka bared her teeth as she recognized the Melconians’ error.

They should have tried to nail Indomitable before she launched, she thought. And they’re about to find out that they just wasted their entire initial salvo.

Hypervelocity countermissiles were already spitting outward from the Bolos. Designed for planetary combat, they moved slowly compared to the deep-space weapons charging to destroy the transports, but “slowly” was a purely relative term. They moved quickly enough when they were directed by a Bolo’s targeting and computational systems, and groups of them relentlessly bracketed each incoming missile, boring in through defensive electronic countermeasures.

One-by-one, the Melconian missiles were picked off far short of attack range. Only fourteen got through the countermissile interception envelope, and thirteen of those were picked off by infinite repeater fire far short of their targets. Only one got close enough to actually detonate against the battle screen protecting its intended victim, and that battle screen—reinforced by the full power of the Bolo on the opposite side of the transport’s hull—held.