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another, as only combat could. The three thousand men, women, and AIs in her crew would be watching her just as closely to see if she four-o’d their inspection, qualifying for the command seat on a Constellation-class star carrier.

Speaking of the Constellation—the lead ship of her class was in position a thousand kilometers high and to starboard, invisibly small to the naked eyebut visible in-head and on the bridge repeater screens. Admiral Kevin Rasmussen was the fleet commander, ensconced on theConnie’s flag bridge. She’d served with him before, at Kapteyn’s Star and elsewhere. A good man, she thought, experienced and sharp.

She just wished Trevor Gray was here with the America. The ship was old, but her value lay far more in who commanded her than in the date of her commissioning.

“Enemy is opening fire, Captain,” Yorktown’s combat officer announced. “The Monongahela’s been hit.”

“What kind of weaponry are we looking at, Commander?”

“A fist, Captain. A big one. Gravitic induction, but I’ve never seen this sort of range on those things. Or power.”

Humans had encountered that weapon before in their struggle against the Rosette Consciousness. Its general principle was wellunderstood. Human starships could project a momentary zone of intense gravitic induction ahead of a ship, creating a drivefield, but the Rosetters’ advanced alien technologies could project such an effect across thousands of kilometers and useit to crush a target vessel. How they managed that trick was still a big unknown, however, and the largest asteroid ship aheadhad just crippled a light cruiser, the Monongahela, at the astonishing range of half a million kilometers.

The planetoid starships advanced with surprising speed, closing the range rapidly. “All units,” Admiral Rasmussen’s voicesaid over the intrafleet command link, “target that big son-of-a-bitch, designated Target Alfa. We can mop up the small stufflater.”

Taggart wasn’t entirely sure the “small stuff” would be all that amenable to a later mopping, but it made sense to go all-out against the largest asteroid, a 250-kilometer monster roughly as large as the asteroid Juno in Earth’s solar system.

It would not be easy, however. According to the ship’s sensor department, that largest planetoid massed something like 3 x1019 kilograms. Take a roughly spherical divot out of the Earth about the width of the state of West Virginia or the nation ofScotland, and that was the enemy vessel . . . except that it was made up mostly of nickel-iron instead of sandstone. You couldslam nuke after nuke into that mass and not even get their attention.

“Let’s put our squadrons into space, CAG,” she told Captain Philip Palmer, the officer in command of Yorktown’s fighter squadrons. “Target Alfa—nukes and nano-D.”

“Aye, aye, Captain.”

Moments later, the first of Yorktown’s fighters spilled into space alongside the carrier, forming up by squadron. Yorktown carried six fighter squadrons in addition to two recon units and a SAR squadron. They would be going in at maximum dispersal,the idea being that the enemy would be faced with a large number of widely scattered targets rather than a close-packed group;no one knew how large an area of effect that gravitic weapon projected, but the humans did not intend to make it easy forthem.

As the last squadron formed up in a broad echelon formation, they began moving toward the Tango-Alfa object.

They would make contact in scant minutes.

 

Lieutenant Michael Cordell

VFA-427, The Renegades

Mars Orbit

1226 hours, FST

Mike Cordell felt the steady flow of incoming data humming in his brain, felt the kinesthetic sense linked through his SG-420 Starblade fighter convincingly letting him feel that he physically was the fighter falling through open space. Within his mind, he could see the vastly magnified images of the aliens—massive, potato-shaped rocks, some with minute buildings or other structures gleaming in the wan light of a distant sun.

Cordell could see some slight, shifting distortion to the rocks and structures as they moved, as though he were viewing themthrough rippling water; evidently, each ship was gravitationally distorting space around it—throwing out defensive shieldsprotecting them from incoming beams and warheads. That was going to make things interesting.

“Okay, Renegades,” the squadron CO called over the combat channel. Commander Jenna Forsley was sharp and competent; she hadthe complete respect of Cordell and all of the other Renegade blade drivers. “Form up on me. Wide dispersal. We don’t wantone nuke to get us all.”

Nukes Cordell knew and understood. This alien gravitic weapon, though, was an unknown, and a scary one. It simply reachedout and crushed the target vessel, and since space itself was what was being crushed, there seemed to be no way to shieldagainst it.

Far off to Cordell’s portside, the Vladivostok was launching fighters as well, and he wondered if Katya Golikova was among them.

Then Forsley gave the order to boost, and Cordell was too busy to think about anything, or anyone, else.

 

Nungiirtok Fleet

Mars Orbit

Sol System

1227 hours, FST

The Nungiirtok raiders had been slowing as the human fleet approached, and as clouds of fighters began emerging from the star carriers, they slowed further still. Despite many years of fighting the humans, little was known about their military capabilities, and 4236 Xavix wanted to invite the Earthers to attack first in order to reveal both their strength and their tactical understanding. Unfortunately, the human fleet was slowing as well, a wall of ships numbering in the hundreds, steadily spreading out to either side, and above and below.

“What is the range?” he demanded of Ashtongtok Tah’s weapons specialist.

“Forty chag, Lord.”

Still too far for the Tok weapons to be effective against the enemy’s main body.

The Tok Lord thought it saw a possible strategy, however, one that would take advantage of the humans’ dispersal.

“All ships,” it said. “Advance, slow walk.”

 

USNA CV Yorktown

Mars Orbit

1228 hours, FST

“What the hell are they up to?” Captain Taggart said, eyes narrowing as she studied the main tactical screen.

“If I didn’t know better,” Mathers said, “I’d swear they were begging us to englobe them!”

“A little too easy, huh?”

“Englobement means squeezing in closer, Captain,” Mathers said. “And that puts us within easy reach of their fist.”

What, she wondered, would Rasmussen do? Hold back? Or advance?

A destroyer, the Bartold, was maneuvering