by David Weber
"No, Sir." Gohr looked up from her own console and half-turned to face her CO. "But as Commander Sturgis pointed out, his platforms had a very difficult time picking them up in the first place on passives," she reminded him. "It's probably not too surprising there's a discrepancy."
"Perhaps not. But are our numbers high compared t' his, or low?"
"Low, Sir. We seem to be coming in at least twenty-five percent lower than his original numbers overall."
"That's what I thought," Oversteegen said softly, and Blumenthal gave him a sharp look. One that turned suddenly speculative.
"Precisely," Oversteegen said, then looked at his communications section. "Lieutenant Pattison, I believe I need t' speak t' Admiral Henke again. Would you be so kind as t' see if she's prepared t' take my call?"
* * *
"I think Oversteegen's onto something, Ma'am," Michelle Henke told Dame Alice Truman.
"But how could they have moved them without Sturgis' arrays seeing them?" Truman's question was thoughtful, not dismissive.
"Very carefully," Henke replied dryly. Truman made a face, and Henke chuckled humorlessly.
"Seriously, Ma'am," she went on, after a moment, "think about it. Whoever this is, she's cool enough, and she's thought far enough ahead, to get her mobile units-aside from her LACs-into stealth before our arrays found her. Personally, I'm betting she did it as soon as her sensors picked up Greyhound and Whippet's hyper footprints. And I'm also betting she'd already decided what she was going to do with her pods if it came to it. So what she's probably been doing is quietly using some of that near-planet 'merchant traffic' Sturgis reported to pick up and drop off previously deployed pods. If she did, I think we need to rethink our recon doctrine."
"Go ahead and park one or two in close and just let them sit?"
"Yes, Ma'am."
Henke didn't mention that she'd already suggested that modification only to have the Powers That Were at Admiralty House shoot it down. They were concerned that a stationary platform would be more readily tracked down, especially since it would be inside most of the system's defenders' surveillance platforms, which would give them a far better chance of detecting the array's directional transmissions and triangulating on their source. Having the arrays localized and destroyed would have been bad enough, but the present generation of recon drones had all the Ghost Rider bells and whistles, including the very latest grav-pulse coms and several other goodies Erewhon had never had to turn over to Haven in the first place. The possibility that one of them might be disabled without being destroyed, while slight, did exist, and Admiralty House strongly objected to the notion of handing the Star Kingdom's latest and best hardware to the other side for examination.
"I think you were probably right all along, Mike," Truman said after a moment. "Certainly, if they did what Oversteegen thinks they did, having a couple of platforms-or even just one-keeping a close, permanent eye on near-planet space would probably've caught them at it."
"Maybe. The question, though, Ma'am, is what we do about it," Henke pointed out.
"Well, I see two possibilities. First, we send in the LACs. That means radically slowing your ships' approach while Scotty and his LAC jockeys get themselves organized and catch up with you. Second, we go right on doing what we're doing. Which do you vote for?"
"A variant of Option Two," Henke said without any appreciable hesitation. "I don't want to waste any more time than we have to, since we don't know where any response force they've sent for is coming from, or exactly how long it's going to take to get here. What I propose is that I send the Katanas ahead to catch up with Oversteegen. Hopefully, the bad guys won't have guessed we've taken a page from their own missile-defense doctrine, but whether they have or not, forty-eight Katanas should help out quite a bit."
"I don't know, Mike," Truman said dubiously. "Scotty would only need a couple of hours more than Oversteegan to get there, and Shrikes and Ferrets are a lot harder targets for their fire control than battlecruisers."
"And a lot easier to kill if they get hit," Henke pointed out. "Besides, we're already inside their powered missile envelope, if they're where we think they are. At the moment, they're not firing because we're still closing, and they're willing to wait until we give them better firing solutions. But if we suddenly break off, they're going to fire anyway, well before we could get a LAC strike in close enough to start killing platforms. Since we've already stepped into their parlor, I think our best chance is to just keep going, offer Oversteegen as the most attractive target, and back him up with the best missile-defense capability we can."
Truman thought some more. Then she nodded, once, sharply.
"All right, Mike. Do it."
* * *
"They've definitely figured out roughly what we're doing with our main combatants, Ma'am," Leonardo Erickson said. He tapped the projected vectors CIC was throwing into the master plot. "Look at this."
The four squadrons of LACs which had been glued tightly to the second Manty battlecruiser division were accelerating away from it, closing rapidly on the lead division. At the same time, some of the near-planet sensor platforms were beginning to pick up the shadowy ghosts of Manticoran recon drones. They weren't finding many of them, but that didn't mean they weren't there; the drones were hellishly difficult sensor targets at the best of times. The limited number they were actually seeing suggested there was probably a solid shell of them, spreading out in front of the oncoming Manty starships, and CIC was doing its best to project where that shell was in three-dimensional space. The tracking crews' hard data was limited, but Bellefeuille felt confident they'd gotten it effectively correct, and the shell they were projecting was aligned all too closely upon her own ships' positions.
"So," she said flatly, "the question is whether we fire now, when it's pretty clear they haven't quite locked in our positions, or wait a little longer in hopes of improving our firing solutions. Opinions, anyone?" She looked up from the plot. "Ivan?"
"Wait," Commander deCastro said, quickly and positively. She cocked an eyebrow, and he shrugged. "We're so outgunned that one good shot is all we're likely to get, Ma'am," he pointed out. "That being the case, I'd like it to be as effective as we can make it. That's what Smoke and Mirrors was all about to start with."
"I see. Leonardo?" she looked at her ops officer.
"Normally, I'd tend to agree with Ivan," Erickson said after a moment. "But I don't like this." He indicated the steadily accelerating icons of the enemy LACs once more. "They've been careful to keep them between our known LAC concentrations and the rest of their ships. To me, that suggests they're probably Katanas in the escort role. But now they're sending them in along with their probe, and I'm wondering if they've evolved something like our LAC fleet missile-defense doctrine. If they have, then the people we're going to have the improved firing solutions on are also going to've significantly improved their defenses by the time we finally fire."
"On the other hand, Ma'am," deCastro pointed out, "the closer they get to us, the further they are from their main body. And if they are a sizable chunk of the Manties' Katana force, mousetrapping them now might be the best thing we could do. Especially since they also seem to've completely missed Mirror Box."
Jennifer Bellefeuille nodded slowly, and her senior staffers waited. She always invited opinions, careful to avail herself of the best advice available, and she always made the final decision herself.
"We wait," she said. "Not as long as you'd probably like, Ivan, but long enough for our solutions to tighten up. I think we'll wait until their Katanas-and I think you're right about what they are, Leonardo-are about ten minutes from matching vectors with their battlecruisers. I'd actually have liked to catch them close enough to engage our missiles with their counter-missiles but still too far out to use their laser clusters, but that's not going to work, given the geometry. I think we'll go with a staggered launch, though."
"Staggered, Ma'am?" Erickson repeated.
"The first one t
o concentrate on their battlecruisers," she said, with a thin smile. "I'll want it heavy enough to get their attention pretty emphatically, too. Particularly, I'd like their Katanas to commit as many as possible of their counter-missiles to stopping the first wave."
Her thin smile grew vicious, and her staffers found themselves returning it slowly.
* * *
"Dagger One, Ramrod."
"Ramrod, Dagger One," Commander Dillinger replied. "Go."
Dillinger and his Katanas were over five million kilometers in front of Scotty Tremain's command LAC and the rest of the carrier division's strike, but there was no perceptible delay in their grav-pulse FTL conversation.
"I'm getting that uncomfortable feeling between my shoulder blades, Crispus," Tremain continued more informally. "I don't know why, but I've got the feeling there's something nasty waiting out here."
"Ah, Ramrod," Dillinger said with a smile, "I'm afraid I didn't quite copy that threat analysis. Could you repeat all after 'something.'"
"Dagger One, you're a smart ass," Tremain told him. Then his tone sobered. "Seriously, Crispus. Watch your six. I don't like how conspicuous these people's inactivity has been. I don't know exactly what they're up to, but they're up to something. That much I am confident of."
"Ramrod, I hear you," Dillinger responded, his smile fading. "So far, though, I haven't seen a thing you haven't."
"I know." Tremain frowned as he gazed at his own plot aboard Dacoit. "That's what worries me. Ramrod, clear."
* * *
"Another ten minutes, I think," Jennifer Bellefeuille said quietly.
She stood beside Commander Ericsson, gazing into the master plot of RHNS Cyrus, her battlecruiser flagship, at the icons of the oncoming warships. Even a few years before, she knew, the Manties would already have localized her own ships, opened fire, and almost certainly destroyed them by now. But one of the Manty drones had passed within less than ten light-seconds of her flaship and simply continued on its way, which made it obvious the improvements in the Republic's stealth systems were giving the enemy's sensors a hard time. The fact that none of her starships had their wedges up and that all of them had gone to total emissions control undoubtedly helped, but even so, she felt the tension prickling sharper in her palms. Cyrus and her consorts were barely one light-minute from Vespasien, and the Manties were clearly looking for them hard.
But they haven't found us yet, she reminded herself. So it's time to give them something else to think about before they do.
"Initiate Decoy," she said.
"Aye, Ma'am," Ericsson said , and nodded to the com officer. "Send 'Initiate Decoy.'"
* * *
"I have something, Sir!" Lieutenant Commander Gohr said sharply. "The Gamma-Three array is picking up what looks like stealthed impeller wedges. Bearing three-four-niner, zero-zero-niner from the ship, range approximately five-six-point-eight million klicks!"
Michael Oversteegen punched a command into the small-scale plot deployed from the arm of his command chair, and his eyes narrowed as the display zoomed in on the indicated datum.
Nike and Hector were still 20,589,000 kilometers from Vespasien, but their velocity was down to a mere 5,265 KPS as they continued to decelerate at a steady 5.31 KPS2. Their present flight profile would bring them to a halt, relative to the system primary, one light-minute short of the planet. That was close enough to bring all the near-planet orbital infrastructure into sufficiently short range to avoid any embarrassing accidents... like unintentional missile strikes on an inhabited world. But it was also far enough out to keep him at least two light-minutes from his own estimate of the enemy's closest probable position.
Commander Dillinger's Katanas were continuing to close from astern. Their higher acceleration rate meant they'd been able to attain a higher base velocity before they began decelerating towards a rendezvous, and their current velocity was 6,197 KPS. Their vectors would merge with Nike's in another ten minutes, at which point they would both be down to a velocity of 2,079 KPS and less than four hundred thousand kilometers from their planned zero-zero point-or about 18,400,000 kilometers from Vespasien.
The new emission signatures Gohr had picked up were just over two light-minutes inside Vespasien's orbit. Assuming the ships responsible for the signatures had pods of multi-drive missiles, that would put his ships inside their effective range, but far enough out for Havenite accuracy to be very, very poor.
"Move the platforms closer, Betty," he said, after a moment. "And don't forget t' watch the other approaches, as well."
"Yes, Sir."
* * *
Jennifer Bellefeuille watched her own plot, gray-green eyes slitted in concentration. It was impossible to tell whether or not the Manties had bitten, but the decoy emissions looked very convincing to her own recon platforms. She didn't have much faith in their ability to fool the Manties for long, but if CIC's projection of their recon shell's probable deployment was correct, it would take them precious minutes to get even one of their drones close enough to realize the units they were picking up were actually the recon variant of the Cimeterre. There were eight of them out there, each with a standard tethered decoy tractored to it, and their only job was to "leak" enough of an impeller signature to keep the Manties looking in their direction just a little longer.
* * *
"Dagger Flight will match vectors with us in about six minutes, Sir," Lieutenant Commander Gohr announced.
"Very good. Anythin' more on those impeller signatures?"
"Not a lot, Sir. But the arrays are closing in, and so far it looks like a half-dozen or so point sources. Maybe a few more."
"I see." Michael Oversteegen grimaced. Over the years, he'd learned to trust his instincts, and those instincts told him something wasn't quite right. He looked up and waved Blumenthal closer to his command chair.
"Yes, Sir?"
"Why d'you suppose these fellows are just sittin' there?"
Blumenthal frowned. He gazed down into Oversteegen's plot for a second or two, then looked back up.
"If they're planning to let us continue to close, which seems to be what they've been doing so far, then they're probably waiting until they're sure they've been detected," he said, in the tone of a man who wondered if he'd just been asked a trick question.
"Unless they're complete and total idiots, like my beloved cousin, Countess Fraser," Oversteegen replied, "they've got t' have a pretty shrewd notion we've already picked them up." He pointed an index finger at the blue-white icon of Vespasien. "One thing Commander Sturgis was able t' positively confirm, Joel, is that the space around Vespasien is crawlin' with Havenite reconnaissance assets. D'you seriously think we managed t' get that many of our own drones right past the planet without any of those assets noticin' as they went by?"
"Well, no, Sir. Of course, they are very stealthy."
"Yes, they are," Oversteegen agreed dryly. "But good as our stealth technology is, it's not yet perfect. And, much as it pains me t' admit it, between what they got from the Erewhonese and what they've probably managed t' pick up on their own from examinin' captured hardware, our cloak of invisibility's probably just a tad thinner than any of us would like t' think. I'm not sayin' they can get solid lockups on our platforms. But when we operate this many of them, in such close proximity and so deep into the other side's sensor envelope, they're bound t' pick up at least some of them. And if they've managed t' do that, any tac officer worth his salt should be able t' project our basic deployment pattern. In which case, they damned well ought t' know that if they're sittin' there with active impeller wedges, we're goin' t' have picked them up by now."
"Put that way, Sir, you may have a point," Blumenthal conceded. "At the same time, they may be waiting until our platforms go active and they know we've got them."
"Maybe so, but why put themselves that far from the planet?" Oversteegen asked. "It puts Vespasien outside their best MDM envelope by a considerable margin, which means they're riskin' an accidental hit on the plan
et if they engage us. They didn't have t' let us this close t' the planet in the first place. They ought t' be at least a light-minute closer, and if they aren't, then they ought t' still be lyin' doggo." He shook his head. "No, they've got somethin' else in mind."
He brooded down at the plot for a few more seconds, then looked up at Gohr.
"Launch another shell," he said. "I want t' sweep this area again."
He tapped a command into his armrest alphanumeric pad, highlighting the indicated volume of space on Gohr's larger plot.
"Sir, I can recall the Beta platforms to cover that volume," she pointed out.
"I'm certain you could," he agreed pleasantly. "Unfortunately, that would require at least twenty minutes, and I want it swept now."
"Yes, Sir."
Gohr beckoned to her assistant, and the two of them began punching in commands to deploy the specified drone shell to cover the area to system north of Vespasien once again.