The Sundering by Walter Jon Williams Read Free Book Online Page B

was added by the fact that Shankaracharya was the beloved of Martinez’s younger sister, Sempronia. Sempronia, who was, as part of a plot laid by Martinez and his other sisters, engaged to marry someone else entirely.
    It seemed unfair to Martinez that he was beset by family intrigues as well as service politics. One or the other were within his realm of competence; but the both together made his head spin.
    “Mathematical formulas?” he prompted.
    Shankaracharya touched his youthful mustache with a napkin. “There would be three major subproblems, I think,” he said in a voice that was barely audible. “Since we know the effectiveness of our point defenses, and since we now have a lot of empirical data on the behavior of offensive missiles, we should be able to calculate the maximum dispersion at which we can place our ships without the interwoven laser and particle beam defenses losing their effectiveness.
    “A second subproblem would involve the maximum dispersion for our ships before any massed offense would begin to lose its punch—that number would be a lot larger, I’d think.”
    Shankaracharya took another sip of wine, and again touched his mustache with the napkin.
    “And the third subproblem?” Martinez asked.
    “I forget.” Shankaracharya looked blank, and during that moment Alikhan brought in his second course, slices of dense pâté, each surrounded by a yellowish gelatin rind that gave off a strong aroma of liver. With this came pickles and flat unleavened biscuits from a can.
    The others were looking at their plates when Shankaracharya added, “No, wait, I remember the third parameter. It has to do with the area of destruction caused by a salvo of enemy missiles, so that you can calculate the likelihood of more than one ship being destroyed, but that’s not as important as the first two.” He cleared his throat. “It should be possible to come up with a single rather complex mathematical statement for all of this, once we calculate all the variables concerning the capabilities of the ships, numbers of launchers and defensive beams and so on, and you’d be able to calculate the most efficient manner of dispersion for a whole fleet.”
    Martinez crunched a pickle between his teeth. Any solution to the problem would require partial differential equations, which Martinez had studied at the academy, but his memory for all that had grown foggy—since graduation, all he’d been required to do was plug numbers into existing formulae, then let the computer do the work.
    But Vonderheydte had been studying for his exams before Martinez made the exams unnecessary by promoting him, and Cadet Kelly had been preparing for her exams when the war interrupted. They’d be much more useful on this approach than Martinez—or, presumably, Dalkeith.
    He’d just have to let the younger folk take the lead on this one, preferably without letting them notice that Martinez wasn’t exactly in charge.
    Martinez shifted the wall screen to the Structured Mathematics Display.
    “Right,” he said. “Let’s begin.”
     
    “My lords,” said Junior Squadron Commander Michi Chen, “Chenforce has now arrived in the Zanshaa system. We await your orders.”
    At the sight of his sister, Lord Chen felt his anxiety begin to loosen its grip on his heart. Which was irrational, since Chenforce consisted of only seven ships scraped together from the damaged remnants of the Fourth Fleet at Harzapid. The Naxid revolt had failed at Harzapid, but only just, with ships blasting each other at point-blank range with antiproton beams. Michi Chen had come to Zanshaa with the few undamaged survivors—the rest had either been destroyed or were in dock for urgent repairs. It would be months before Harzapid could send another squadron.
    But at least Zanshaa now had a force to defend it besides the six battered, exhausted survivors of the Home Fleet plus the swarm of pinnaces and improvised warships that would be swept away in the event of