out towards Earth found themselves being fired upon the instant they approached
shooting distance of the wall; those who expanded in the opposite direction were not as
immediate a threat, and could be discounted for the time being.
Benevenuto spent little time gloating about the success of his strategy. All he had done
was prevent a crisis from becoming a catastrophe. His forces were still woefully
outnumbered, and there was little that could be done about it any more except trust to
fate. Now that the battle had been joined in full, strategy took on a secondary
importance. Although his forces would try to hold the wall as best they could, the fighting
now belonged to individual ships and the fighting prowess of the two navies.
The morale boost in forcing the pirates to commit themselves first was a big one for the
Empire’s fighters, and gave them an initial surge into battle. Their guns blazed across the
emptiness of space as they ripped out against the rebel invaders. There was a small
flurry of flashes on the computer screen at Luna Base as the first real volley of the war
wiped several pirate vessels off the board. The pirates recovered their equilibrium in a
minute, though, and a more accurate tenor of battle established itself.
There were simply too many pirate ships to be contained easily. As more and more of
them spread out from the center of the original cluster, they moved parallel to the wall in
an effort to skirt around and behind it. At Benevenuto’s order, the ships comprising the
wall spread apart a little more-but never so far apart that an enemy ship could slip
between the spaces and get past them.
When the wall had expanded to its maximum permissible size and still the pirates were
circling around, the edges of the wall bent backward as the Navy once more gave
way-but again, the “retreat” served a specific function. At no time was an invading ship
allowed to slip behind a defender; the Navy’s vessels were always between the pirates
and the planet they were defending. Eventually, Benevenuto knew, his wall would be
twisted into a sphere surrounding the Earth-at which point, the pirates would have
successfully englobed them. The Navy was saying to the attackers. though, “If you want
to harm Earth, you’ll have to go through us first.”
It was a noble sentiment-but unfortunately, the pirates had enough ships to do the job,
given the time. Earth’s only hope was that the reinforcements would arrive and not give
them enough time.
Hours passed, and the insurgent forces hammered relentlessly at the Navy’s positions.
Back and back the defenders were pushed, giving way reluctantly, until, as Benevenuto
had known would happen, they circled the Earth like a sphere of fireflies. The moon itself
was outside the sphere of defense; several of the pirates’ bigger ships came overhead
and began pounding at Luna Base. But though all Earth’s ships were busy in defense of
the mother planet, Luna Base was not completely helpless. Its big surface-mounted guns
blasted forth, crippling one of the pirate ships and making the others back off to a more
respectful distance. The blasts from the ships did some surface damage to the base, but
the command levels, buried deep beneath the lunar soil, remained protected.
The Earth was bathed in a web of fire as the pirate forces picked at it, probing
constantly for some weakness, some hole they could slip through to the surface below.
The Navy fighters held up their shields and locked together in tight formation, refusing to
let the enemy pass. Whenever an Empire ship was hit and disabled, the others around it
quickly closed up to block the opening. They did their share of damage, but there were
many more of the attackers than there were defenders. Slowly, the sphere around the
Earth was tightening-just like a noose.
By now, the news had spread throughout the Empire that Earth was. under attack by an
insurrectionist movement “of unknown origin.” The general call was put out for Navy
vessels not on urgent duty elsewhere to rally to the capital planet’s defense-but no hope
could really be put there. The battle would be over before most of them could reach the
solar system. By that time, either the Stanley Dynasty would have been upheld … or
chaos would rule in the Galaxy.
The inhabitants of Earth hardly had to be told that something out of the ordinary was
happening; their eyes provided ample evidence of the war of fire. People living in the
nighttime hemisphere saw their sky alive with new stars and meteors as the two
opposing fleets battled for supremacy. The ships themselves were invisible to the naked
eye, but the trails made by their energy beams were spiderwebs of light crisscrossing
the constellations-and when a direct hit was made, the bright explosion was a nova
against the dark sky.
The defending ships were sorely pressed. Already some of them were dipping slightly
into the upper levels of Earth’s atmosphere. They could not shrink back any further-but if
too many more of their number were destroyed, there would be holes in their shell of
protection that the enemy ships could penetrate. The havoc those ships could wreak on
the surface of a highly populated planet like Earth was almost inconceivable.
Then, when the high command at Luna Base was beginning to despair, other ships
appeared on the screen near the orbit of Venus and closing in fast on the Earth.
Benevenuto’s first thought, that these were the reinforcements he’d been expecting, was
crushed as he realized that those ships could not possibly arrive for another ten hours.
His next thought was that these might be more pirate ships, brought in to reinforce the
already dominant fleet. But that idea, too, proved to be wrong as the incoming messages
began to arrive.
These were ships from near-Earth bases, the ones that had been bypassed in the initial
strategy discussions between the Navy, the Emperor and SOTE. Their incoming
communications had been sabotaged in some unknown manner, but they were warned of
the upcoming invasion by the arrival of Commander Fortier in person, bringing with him
documentary proof of what was to occur. Rising to the occasion in the best tradition of
the Imperial Navy, the ships set out at once to assist the beleaguered forces of Earth.
Because of the sabotage to their communications equipment, the various bases had
been unable to coordinate their efforts. Scout ships were sent to each individual base,
alerting them of the danger and requesting help. As a result, the reinforcements arrived in
groups of five, ten or as many as fifty ships at a time-but even so, each newcomer was a
welcome sight indeed to the admirals of the high command. Each new ship meant that
much more life for Earth, that much less domination by the traitors.
The pirates were obviously surprised by the late arrivals, and seemed unsure for a little
while how to cope. The attack on Earth did not abate, but the rebel leaders deployed
some of the ships that had been backing up the attack to take care of the threat from the
new direction instead. This cheered the weary crews of the defense ships; they’d been
on duty for close to a full day without letup, while the attackers had had sufficient
numbers to relieve one another every so often. Now that more pressure was on them as
well, the pirates would not be quite so relaxed.
Reinforcements from the near-Earth bases straggled in during the course of the next
eight hours. These new forces were fresher than either the pirates or the Earth-based
naval units, and brought a renewed vigor to the fighting. Even counting the newcomers,
the Navy’s forces were still slightly fewer in number than those of the attackers; but the
ferocity with which the reinforcements fought more than made up the difference. The
rebel leaders realized at last that they had a fight on their hands.
At this point the battle-which had begun to look like a rout by the pirates-could have gone
either way. The rebels had superior numbers and a slight edge in position, but they were
now fighting on two fronts at once and could not concentrate on breaking through the last
of Earth’s defenses. The Imperial forces, on the other hand, were hampered by an
apparent breakdown in their computer system. Reports that should have been tallied
instantly were taking too long to reach the high command; simulations were either
incomplete, inaccurate, or too late to do any good. Confusion somewhere along the line
of programming, it was assumed, was fouling up what had been touted as an infallible
network for strategic calculations. More and more often coordination broke down, and
individual commanders had to make spot decisions on their own. In some cases, this
cost the Imperial forces key tactical positions, but they made the best of it nonetheless.