A third clumping of Mekinese ships. The Kandarian fleet overwhelmed it; overrode it; used exactly the tactics the Mekinese might have used. 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.
It was a smaller fleet in every class of ships, but it was compact and controlled and it made slashing plunges through the dispersed and confused enemy. With ordinary missiles three ships could always destroy two, and four could destroy three. But in the battle of the gas-giant planet, where there was fighting the Kandarians were never less than two to one. They were surrounded by enemies, but when those enemies tried to gather together for strength, the mass of murderously-fighting ships of Kandar swung upon the incipient group and blasted it.
Nearly half the Mekinese fleet was out of action before Bors's ship fired a single missile. He'd sat in the skipper's chair, and from time to time, the course of all the fleet was changed, and he saw that his ship kept its place rigidly in formation. But he had given not one order out of routine before the enemy strength was half gone. Then the communicator said coldly:
"All ships attention! With old-style missiles we could do everything we've accomplished so far. But the Mekinese are refusing battle now. They'll begin to slip away in overdrive if we keep chopping them down in groups. We have to give them a chance or they'll run away. The new missile system works perfectly. All ships break formation. Find your own Mekinese. Blast them!"
Bors said in a conversational voice, "There are three Mekin ships yonder. They look like they're willing to start something. We'll take them on."
He pointed carefully to a spot on the screen. His small ship swung away from the rest of the fleet. It plunged toward a battleship and two heavy cruisers who had joined forces and appeared to attempt to rally the still-stronger-than-Kandar invaders.
They became objects rather than specks upon the screens. They were visible things on the direct-vision ports. Something flashed, and rushed toward the little Kandarian space-can.
"Fire one, two, three," Bors ordered.
Things hurtled on before him. A screen showed that the missiles first fired by the enemy went off-course, chasing the later-fired missiles from the Isis. The Mekinese shots had automatically become interceptors when Kandarian missiles attacked their parent ships. But they couldn't anticipate a curved course and their built-in computers weren't designed to handle a rate of change of acceleration. The three Mekinese ships ceased to exist.
"Let's head yonder," said Bors.