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“I’ve been calling it ‘braiding
with photons,’” Marisea told him. “Should they start now?”

“Not yet,” Park told her, “I
don’t want the Dark Ships to have time to adjust. We’ll start moving just as we
fire our long range missiles.”

There was another long wait until
the time came to move at last. After that all hell broke loose. Each group of
Alliance ships moved to attack Dark ships that were not turned to face them. It
was a risky move and one that depended on surprise and the ability for everyone
to cover for each other. Park had time to see the first wave of missiles hit
their targets before the screech of tearing metal filled his ears and the
stasis plating activated. When the noise subsided, reports came in almost too
fast to follow.

“Twenty-one Dark Ships
remaining,” Iris reported, “We still have eight high speed darts en route, but
they are attempting to run.”

“Fleet status?” Park asked.

“It’s bad, Park,” Marisea told
him. “Over half our ships are dead in space, most have been the energy draining
weapon, and Admiral Gilatino reports eleven were completely destroyed.”

“Damn!” Park swore. “We’ll have
to let the Dark Ship survivors get away. Our own people are too important.”

“Five seconds to impact,” Iris
reported referring to the final missile shots. “Three, two, one… three impacts.
The other shots went awry, the energy drainer again, I think.”

“Analyze the battle data,” Park
told her. “It looks to me like only some of their ships have these new weapons.
The rest have the old metal screechers. I want to know how many of which we
have to deal with.”

“I’ll run it through the
computer,” Iris promised. “Maybe there’s a way to figure out which is which.”

“Okay, let’s go pick up the
pieces,” Park told everyone resignedly.

“The Dark Ships must have been
relying on their ability to incapacitate ours,” Ronnie told them all during a
council of the admirals several days later. “The energy draining weapon is a
one-trick pony. All it does is cause you to lose all power. It’s obvious their strategy
had been to drain as many of our ships as they could, beat up the rest and then
go back for the others. Now according to Iris’ analysis it looks as though
roughly twelve and a half percent of their ships are equipped with this new
energy draining weapon.”

“And it is pretty damned
devastating,” Admiral Hurri, who had been brevetted to command of the Third
Fleet. “Nearly all my ships were knocked out of the fight by it.”

“You were unlucky,” Park
commented. “From what we can tell your men and women ran directly into a unit
of Dark Ships who were equipped with that weapon. They would have been better
to space them out and mix them evenly with the other ships, but I, for one, am
happy they did not.”

“Darned poor tactics on their
part,” Gilatino commented, “not that I’m complaining.”

“There may be a good reason they
grouped their ships like that,” Ronnie told them. “It is possible the two
weapons types are mutually incompatible; that one interferes with the other.
The plain fact of the matter is we do not know how either of those weapons
works, we merely know one is designed to somehow disintegrate an enemy ship and
the other…”

“Disntegrate?” Hurri questioned
the term.

“I mean that in a quite literal
way, Admiral,” Ronnie told him. “The causes all the parts of a ship to try to
move away from each other. The screeching metal sound is what you get when our
rivets and welds try to come apart. Fortunately, the weapon, while effective,
takes time to actually make a ship fall apart, so we take damage, sometimes a
lot of damage, but for the most part our ships stay in one piece, at least the
first time they get hit. Second hits are sometimes fatal and third hits almost
always are.

“The other weapon drains the
energy out of a target ship,” she continued. “I have tried to study it, but came
up dry. We don’t know how accurately it can be aimed. It may have a wide field
of effect, but it doesn’t seem to affect other ships armed with it. It could be
that all such ships in a unit help to power each other’s weapons, I suppose,
but I doubt that. It just doesn’t add up, unless I’m missing something. And if
the field of effect is that hard to aim without hitting a friendly ship, the
weapon might not be considered worth using. But it is possible that the two
weapons are related. They may even just be two applications of the same
technology, therefore they might get in each other’s way.

“However, I could be entirely
wrong about that,” Ronnie admitted. “We know nothing about the Dark Ship
aliens. For all I know there might be religious reasons why ships with the two
weapons do not mix. In any case, so far they have each been in their own units.
We might be able to rely on that, but I wouldn’t until we know more. For now,
just keep an eye out for new tricks and keep in mind that we’ve really only
analyzed one battle this way. It might not be typical.”

“Fortunately,” Park cut in, “We
were able to give the drained ships jump-starts as we used to call them.
Running power from one ship to power up the engines that generate power on the
next. I wonder if that power-draining thing would drain an unconnected
battery.”

“I don’t know,” Ronnie admitted,
“but then I haven’t figured out exactly how any of their tech does what it does.”

“What’s that?” Park asked. “You
say you haven’t figure it out exactly? What have you learned in general, then?”

“Oh, I’ve managed to duplicate
that weird alloy they use in ships,” Ronnie replied. “It’s a strange mix of
titanium, mercury, neon and a dozen other elements. I knew that after a single
spectroscopic scan, of course. Putting it together into molecules was the
tricky part and then duplicating the alloying process… that was just odd. I’d
have to show you in a very long lecture and demonstration, so just believe me
when I say they have to have discovered it by accident. Anyway, while I’ve
duplicated the alloy in my lab, I still can’t make it do any trick other than
melt and reform. Those ships are programmed somehow. They have to be, and they
may only have a limited number of shapes.”

“What about that recent new
ability to let your Pirate missiles pass through without causing damage?” Hurri
asked. “They can’t know in advance where a missile will strike.”

“No,” Ronnie shook her head, “but
I am willing to bet the hole they make to let a missile go by is the same shape
every time. In any case we have resolved that issue by installing proximity
fuses in as many missiles as we can. When a Dark ship ‘swallows’ a missile like
that, we have them set to explode while inside. The results are even more
effective tham exploding on contact. The problem is, I’ve run out of parts with
which to build the retrofitted fuses and I wouldn’t be surprised if the Dark
Ships come up with a way to lessen the effectiveness of a device that has that
sort of fuse.”

“How?” Park asked.

“A ship might extend some sort of
slim appendage out toward the missile,” Ronnie shrugged, “causing it to explode
too early with only minimal damage to the Dark Ship. I can’t say they’ll have
thought of that yet, but whatever else the Dark Ship aliens are, they’re no
dummies.”

“True enough,” Park agreed.
“Admirals, I know we have wounded who must be brought back to Felina and ships
incapable of continuing the fight. How quickly can we fully man the ships that
are still operational?”

“That is going to mean a lot of
reassignments,” Gilatino replied. “Reassignments within the Alliance Fleet are
not common unless being promoted.”

“This is a special circumstance,
Admiral,” Park told him. “We need fully manned ships, but such reassignments
can wait until we return to Felina System. We’ll be at the Stierdach limit in
just under six hours. That should be time enough to take stock on who will
switch ships and who will take the wounded down to Felina.”

“If only it weren’t Felina,”
Hurri shook his head. “The Felinans and their Code of Behavior. It gets in the
way constantly.”

“Admiral,” Park chuckled, “you
are obviously a man of actions, not words. But I didn’t find the Code so hard
to work with. Just be polite and phrase all demands as requests. Most Felinans
feel obliged to treat all polite requests as commands, especially from guests.
It’s only when such requests are impolite that they give you trouble.”

“If it makes you feel better,”
Gilatino added, “The Felinan Grand Council voted just before we left to put the
Code in abeyance in regard to forreigners for the duration of this conflict. I
doubt that will make much difference on how we should behave and in fact it
will make showing our respect for the Code all the more important since I think
the Felinans will appreciate the respect all the more because it is not
required, but they are trying to meet the rest of us halfway.”

“I had not thought to phrase
everything as a request,” Hurri admitted. “Very well. My mother always said,
‘What is, is.’ As usual she was right. Admiral McArrgh, I’ll have my crews
ready to change ships as soon as we enter Felinan space if need be. This is
going to mean a lot of retraining, you know.”

“Yes,” Park nodded, “I understand
each Alliance ship is actually owned by a specific member world and built to
their specifications, but I also noticed that neither Dannet of Dennsee nor
Sartena, the ambassador from Tzantza to Earth had very little trouble adapting
to our control panels. If it’s a learning curve, put transferees in as seconds
at least for the first shift or two until they are comfortable with the new
controls.”

The council signed off a few
minutes later, but Park got calls from both commanding admirals and some of
their underlings in charge of battle groups for the rest of the trip to the
Stierdach limit. At first it annoyed him, but then he realized that it was
giving him something to do and it made the time pass quickly. He was busy and
constantly pressed for answers to questions that should have been obvious, but
the constant stream of activity, he decided, was preferable to alternating
between sitting in his “Captain Kirk” chair and pacing the deck.

Park had not previously felt the
need for an office on board one of his ships, but this time he actually used
the room just outside the bridge for that purpose and he conferred with the
other admirals and captains as they made their way back to Felina. He also
started reviewing Iris’ battle simulations in that room, making small changes
and running them again.

“So much for that idea,” he
muttered to himself after a particularly disastrous change in the sim. “Face
it, McArrgh. Iris is the better tactician. She ought to be in charge of this
fleet.”

“Not a good idea,” Iris told him
from the doorway. “That might leave you at the guns.”

“More likely it would leave me
back on Earth, exploring the hinterlands of Pangaea,” Park laughed. “Looking
back, I don’t know how I ever allowed myself to be in charge of the space navy.”

“It started, you may recall, with
a pleasant voyage down the river,” Iris chuckled. “Once we met Marisea and
Taodore everything just sort of went from one step to the next.”

“And Tack,” Park added. “Don’t
forget Okacktack. He was there too.”

“I could use him here,” Park shook
his head. “Maybe his fortune-telling ability would help.”

“You don’t believe in
precognition,” Iris reminded him. “We’re coming up on the Stierdach limit in a
few minutes. You usually like to be on the bridge.”

“These days it’s essential,” Park
replied. “Never know what we’re jumping into. Thanks for coming to get me.”

It took nearly half an hour to
coordinate the organized use of star drive by all the ships in the fleet at
once. “Why isn’t this standard procedure?” Park grumbled.

“Each ship has to make its own
calculations,” Marisea explained, “and then they all have to compare notes to
make sure no one will pop back into normal space on top of another ship.”

“Wouldn’t it be more efficient if
one ship did all the calculations and relayed them to the others?” Park asked.
“I’ve seen the math and it seems to me that if we all use the same jump
calculations we’ll arrive in formation.”

Cousin had been sleeping near
Marisea’s feet, but now she got up and with a “Meep,” jumped into Park’s lap
and looked at him for attention. Park immediately started petting the small
primate and she settled down.

“I think you’re right,” Iris
commented. “I’ll talk to Ronnie about it, though. I understand the math, but
she’s handled it more than I have.”

“If I’m right, I want all fleets
to jump together that way so long as I’m in charge,” Park told her. “This
waiting is ridiculous.”

Finally, they made the jump and
Park relaxed for a few minutes until Marisea announced, “Admiral, call coming
in for you. It’s Fleet Admiral Relaviss.”

“McArrgh!” Relaviss hailed him
even as his holographic display was resolving. Park studied the man and decided
he had even less sleep under his belt than Park had recently. “How soon can you
take the fleets to Trohavn? The Premm have finally done it. We’re at war.”

“What’s our
casus belli
?” Park asked automatically. Cousin made an entreating
noise and he stroked her fur.

“Our what?” Relaviss responded.
“My translator failed on that phrase.”

“I’m not surprised,” Park
chuckled. “It’s a phrase from a language that is ancient even to me. I meant
what is our cause of war? What’s changed since we went out to swap blows with
the Dark Ship aliens? What did the Premm do that caused the Diet to reverse
itself and actually declare war.”

“The Premm have declared war on
us and demanded our surrender,” Relaviss replied. They are demanding we give
them twenty member systems to become part of their holy empire.”