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It ruthlessly made use of its local, concentrated strength. It was outnumbered in the whole battle area by not less than ten to one. But the Mekinese fleet was scattered. Where it struck, the Kandarian fleet was four and five, and sometimes twenty, ships to one.
I'm going to ask the king to insist that the Sylva get away from here fast! Before the Mekinese turn up." Gwenlyn shook her head, her eyes searching his face. "The Sylva's not here. It's gone to Kandar as a sort of dispatch-boat." Bors groaned. "Then I'll try to get another ship assigned to take you away," he said formidably. "Maybe one of the captured cargo-ships I sent back."
And if he, Bors, had only been properly skeptical, the fleet would have been destroyed and Kandar now occupied by the Mekinese doomed to servitude but not necessarily to annihilation and other worlds would also be safely servile. They'd still be resentful and they'd bitterly hate Mekin, but they would not have before them the monstrous vengeance now in store.
Hopelessly and uselessly though the new low-power drive worked well in action but it would fight. The First Admiral said stonily, "If I were in the position of the Mekinese admiral, and I agreed to terms of capitulation, and if it were then shown to me that the basis of the terms was a deceit, I would not feel bound by my promise.
It identifies itself as the ship Liberty, of Cela. It declares that it has come to place itself under your command." Bors stared. He had forgotten about the two Cela-built ships which the Deccan rebels told him about the first of which had gone on a trial run with a Mekinese crew and failed to return, and the second of which, with a Celan crew, had gone off to look for Bors and his marauders.
But presently it was alone, and the battle was raging confusion scattered over light-minutes, and somebody went down in to the engine room and brazed in a low-power overdrive unit providentially made by a junior officer and the flagship of the Kandarian fleet waded in erratically, never knowing where it would come out, but rarely failing to find a Mekinese ship to launch at.
"If I did," Bors answered, "I suspect that somehow that ship would land itself on Mekin and blow up as it touched ground." The vice-admiral raised his eyebrows. Bors saluted quickly and left. Presently he was back on the Sylva. His new command would be supplied with extra missiles from other ships. Despite the fleet action against the Mekinese, there was not yet a shortage of such ammunition.
He pointed, not out a port but at a screen where a boiling mass of bright specks showed the Mekinese fleet just out of overdrive and speeding toward the dummy formation, sorting itself into attack formation as it moved. "The king's not here on time," observed Bors grimly. "We have to play his hand for him, Uncle. We haven't the right to commit Kandar by beginning to fight ourselves.
It appeared in the middle of a Mekinese sub-formation, loosed missiles and vanished before anything could be intercepted. There was no target for Mekinese bombs to home on when they got to where the Liberty had been. Then the fleet of Kandar appeared. It broke out in single ships and in pairs, and then in groups of fives and tens.
He had Morgan standing by to explain the part of Talents, Incorporated if required. King Humphrey said heavily, "This is probably the last cabinet meeting before the coming of the Mekinese. I do not think oratory is called for. I put the situation as it stands. A fleet will come from Mekin for our answer to their ultimatum. Our space-fleet will not surrender.
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