At All Costs

by David Weber

  * * *

  "Crap," Leonardo Ericsson muttered as the fresh drones began deploying from the outsized Manty battlecruiser.

  "So they didn't buy the decoys after all," deCastro said.

  "No." Bellefeuille shook her head. "They bought them-for a little while, at least. But whoever that is over there, she's a suspicious one. So she's doublechecking the 'clear areas' just in case."

  "Well, they're going to pick us up, emissions control or no emissions control, in about another seven minutes, Ma'am," Ericsson pointed out. "These two, especially, are coming straight down our throats."

  He tapped two light codes on his display, and this time Bellefeuille nodded.

  "Yes, they are. And they're about where we wanted them anyway." She straightened, inhaled deeply, and nodded to deCastro.

  "It's time," she said.

  * * *

  "Missile launch!" Betty Gohr barked suddenly. "Multiple missile launches!"

  Oversteegen looked up sharply as the deadly, blood-red icons appeared on the master plot.

  "Range at launch eight-five-point-two light-seconds," Gohr said flatly. "Time to attack range six-point-one-three minutes!"

  * * *

  Jennifer Bellefeuille and her staff had devised the operational plan she'd dubbed "Smoke and Mirrors" in response to the Manticorans' first set of raids. Although Chantilly had been assigned a substantially heavier system defense force than Gaston or Hera to begin with, she'd known it was grossly insufficient to hold off attacks in such strength using any conventional defensive plan, so she'd had to go outside the box.

  Her six heavily refitted Warlord-class battlecruisers and three Trojan-class destroyers were the only hyper-capable combatants she had, but she also had almost six hundred Cimeterres and almost a thousand system-defense missile pods to back them up. And she also had two hundred and forty standard MDM pods to go with it.

  The problem was that although the system-defense pods' out-sized, over-powered birds could actually slightly exceed Manticoran MDMs' acceleration rates, her standard pods' missiles couldn't quite match them, and neither of them were as accurate as Manty missiles. In addition, what had happened in Gaston demonstrated that her LACs simply could not mix it up with Katanas-on Manty terms, at least-and win. So she'd had to get creative if she wanted to do any good.

  The instant Perimeter Tracking picked up evidence the Manty's were scouting Chantilly, her battlecruisers, already in their preselected positions, had gone to stealth and strict emissions control under the Smoke and Mirrors operational plan. In addition, two-thirds of her total LAC strength had gone to immediate readiness, but been restricted to its bases. She'd continued to operate two hundred LACs normally, making certain the Manties saw them, but four hundred additional Cimeterres, based on Vespasien's main space station and a dozen other innocuous orbital platforms, outwardly indistinguishable from any freight-handling facility, had stayed completely covert.

  Now, like any good magician, Bellefeuille began her stage show by fixing her audience's attention firmly on the distraction she wanted it to see.

  * * *

  "Estimate nineteen hundred incoming," Lieutenant Commander Gohr announced.

  "Understood. Lieutenant Pattison, request Dagger One t' expedite his arrival, if you please."

  Michael Oversteegen's voice was as calm and drawling as ever as he watched the cyclone of missiles tear through space towards his command.

  "Defense Plan Alpha," he continued, and HMS Nike and HMS Hector altered course. They rolled up on their sides to turn the bellies of their wedges towards the incoming fire while Keyhole platforms deployed far beyond the boundaries of their protective sidewalls, and counter-missile defense solutions were already cycling.

  "Looks like you had a point, Sir," Blumenthal observed quietly. "Those-" he jabbed his head at the elusive impeller signatures the Gamma arrays had detected"-have to be decoys."

  Oversteegen nodded. The missiles coming at Nike and Hector had been launched from a point in space this side of Vespasien and just under one light-minute "north" of it... the next best thing to four light-minutes away from Blumenthal's decoys.

  "Obviously they wanted t' get us in as close as they could before launchin', so they kept us lookin' somewhere they weren't," he agreed. But even as he spoke, something continued to bother him.

  * * *

  "All Daggers, Dagger One!" Commander Dillinger snapped. "Flyswatter. I say again, Flyswatter!"

  The forty-eight Katanas of Dagger Flight changed acceleration in almost instant response. One moment they were decelerating at seven hundred gravities, sixty thousand kilometers astern of Nike and slowing neatly towards rendezvous; the next, they were accelerating at the same seven hundred gravities as they charged to catch up with and pass the battlecruisers. Although they were smaller and far frailer than any battlecruiser, they were also much more difficult targets for long-range missile fire, and they raced towards the enemy to place their own defensive missile launchers between the incoming MDMs and their targets.

  * * *

  "The Katanas are moving to intercept, Ma'am," Ericsson announced, and Rear Admiral Bellefeuille jerked her head in combined acknowledgment and approval. The possibility of Cyrus' surviving the next half-hour or so was remote, but she'd actually managed to put that out of her mind as she concentrated on the task in hand.

  "Remind the Mirror Box platforms that they do not launch without my specific order," she said.

  "Aye, Ma'am."

  * * *

  "Damn," Michelle Henke said, far more mildly than she felt. The fact that her instincts had been correct didn't make her feel much better as she watched the massive missile launch sweeping towards Nike and Hector.

  "Take us to maximum acceleration," she told Stackpole. "Close us up on Oversteegen and prepare to support his missile defenses."

  "Aye, aye, Ma'am!" her ops officer said crisply. "But it's going to be awfully long range for our CMs," he pointed out. "And we're really too far out to coordinate with Nike and Hector. Even with FTL telemetry, we're simply too far away to data share effectively."

  "I understand that, John. But, worst case, any attack bird we kill is simply one Oversteegen would have nailed anyway. And if we take out one he would have missed...."

  "Yes, Ma'am."

  Stackpole began issuing orders, and Henke turned back to her own display. The ops officer was certainly correct about the dispersal problem, she thought. Her own battlecruiser division was two and a half million kilometers behind Oversteegen. She had the reach-barely, with the new extended-range counter-missiles-to bolster his defensive umbrella, but her support would be far less effective from this far out. Still, something about the attack pattern-

  "There aren't enough birds," Oliver Manfredi said suddenly. She looked up, turning towards the chief of staff, and Manfredi shook his golden head. "There's less than two thousand in the salvo, Ma'am. That's less than three hundred of their standard pods. So where are the others?"

  Henke looked at him for perhaps three seconds, then spun her chair to face Lieutenant Kaminski.

  "Get me an immediate priority link to Captain Oversteegen!"

  "Aye, aye, Ma'am," the communications officer replied instantly.

  * * *

  "Weapons free!" Commander Dillinger snapped, and the Katanas of Dagger Flight began punching counter-missiles at the incoming fire.

  Dillinger didn't really like to think about just how expensive each of his LACs' "counter-missiles" actually was. The systems built into the Viper for its anti-LAC role meant it cost twice as much as the standard extended-range Mark 31 CM on which it was based. But the Viper retained the Mark 31's basic drive system, and a counter-missile's impeller wedge was what it used to "sweep up" attack missiles. Which meant the Viper was still perfectly capable of being used defensively, and earmarking a percentage of them for missile defense, rather than using magazine space on dedicated Mark 31s which couldn't be used in the anti-shipping role, simplified their ammunition r
equirements and gave them a potentially useful cushion both offensively and defensively.

  Now the Vipers bored out of their launch tubes, streaking to meet the incoming missiles, and Dillinger smiled nastily. He was willing to bet the Peeps had never seen LACs kill missiles at this range!

  * * *

  "You were right, Ma'am," deCastro said. "They do use those things for counter-missiles, too."

  "Made sense," Bellefeuille said almost absently, watching her plot. "The signatures Admiral Beach recorded at Gaston made it pretty clear they were basically the same missile body and drive package, after all."

  "And it's a reasonable decision from the viewpoint of ammo supply, too," Ericsson agreed, then showed his teeth. "Of course, sometimes even the most reasonable decisions can bite you right on the ass."

  "Especially if someone else helps it do it," deCastro said with a tight, answering grin.

  * * *

  "Tactical," Michael Oversteegen said suddenly. "Have the near-planet pods we've located launched?"

  "Sir?" Lieutenant Commander Gohr sounded startled. It took her a fraction of a second to shake her mind loose from the anti-missile engagement as the steady vibration of counter-missile launches shook Nike. The first wave of Vipers from Dagger Flight was beginning to rip holes in the Havenite salvo, and her own missile defense section was running at full stretch, analyzing the attack missiles' EW patterns. But then she stabbed a quick look at a secondary plot, and Oversteegen saw her twitch upright in her chair as the data registered.

  "No, Sir," she said, turning her head to look directly at him. "None of this fire's coming from Vespasien orbit!"

  "That's what I thought," he said grimly. "Com, get me Dagger One."

  "Sir," Lieutenant Pattison said, "you have an immediate priority signal from Admiral Henke."

  "Put it through, Jayne-and get me Dagger One!"

  "Aye, aye, Sir."

  Michelle Henke's face appeared on Oversteegen's display, her expression tense.

  "Michael, I'm looking at the missile density, and-"

  "And it's too low," Oversteegen broke in. "We've just confirmed the near-planet platforms haven't launched a single bird." A window opened in the corner of his display, showing Crispus Dillinger's face. "And now, I've got t' go," Oversteegen told his admiral, and punched the button that brought Dillinger to the center of the display.

  "Yes, Sir?" Dillinger said.

  "There's somethin' peculiar about their attack pattern, Commander," Oversteegen said quickly. "They're only using a fraction of their total missile power-and everything they're actually firin' is coming from further away, with what have t' be poorer targetin' solutions."

  "Sir?" Dillinger looked puzzled, and Oversteegen shook his head impatiently.

  "They're tryin' t' distract us-and quite possibly t' lure us into expendin' counter-missiles before their real attack."

  "But-"

  "This isn't a debatin' society, Commander," Oversteegen said. "Abort your missile defense of this division-now!"

  * * *

  Crispus Dillinger looked at the face on his communications display with something very like incredulity. The man had to be insane! There were almost a thousand missiles tearing down on each of his ships, and he wanted Dillinger to stop defending them?!

  But-

  "All Daggers," he said harshly, "Dagger One. Abort Flyswatter. Repeat, abort Flyswatter. Missile Defense Alpha is now in effect."

  * * *

  "Well, it was nice while it lasted," Jennifer Bellefeuille said as the torrent of counter-missiles pouring from the Katanas slowed abruptly to a trickle. She looked at Ericsson. "Estimates on their expenditure, Leonardo?"

  "Assuming they have the same basic magazine space as the Manty missile LACs we were able to inspect after Thunderbolt, and that these things are basically the same size as their standard counter-missiles, that has to be at least fifty percent of their total loadout, Ma'am. Possibly as high as sixty, if they've committed additional volume and mass to more point defense clusters, as well."

  "And they did a real number on our missiles with them, too," deCastro pointed out. "Their kill percentages are damned close to twice what Cimeterres would have managed, even at much shorter ranges."

  "True." Bellefeuille nodded. "On the other hand, there are less than fifty of them, and if Leonardo's right, they don't have a lot of missiles left."

  She gazed at the plot a second or two longer, then nodded again, crisply.

  "Initiate Phase Two, Leonardo."

  * * *

  HMS Nike twisted sinuously as the depleted missile storm tore down upon her and her division mate.

  The Katanas had thinned it considerably before Oversteegen ordered them to stand down. Of the nineteen hundred missiles which had launched, the LACs had killed seven hundred. The battlecruisers' counter-missiles killed two hundred and sixty, and another hundred and fifty or so simply lost lock and wandered off on their own. Three hundred and twelve more locked onto the Ghost Rider decoys Nike and Hector had deployed, and another sixty looped suddenly back towards the Katanas, only to be ripped apart by the LACs' point defense clusters.

  But that left four hundred and seventy-eight, and as they streamed past the Katanas, the battlecruisers were on their own.

  Oversteegen watched them come, absolutely motionless in his command chair, narrow eyes very still. Thirty point defense laser clusters studded each of Nike's flanks. They were individually more powerful than any past Manticoran battlecruiser had ever mounted, with fourteen emitters per cluster, each capable of cycling at one shot every sixteen seconds. That came to one shot every 1.2 seconds per cluster, but that was only twenty-five per broadside per second, and these were MDMs. They had traveled over twenty-five million kilometers to reach their targets, their closing speed was almost 173,000 KPS-fifty-eight percent of the speed of light-and they had a standoff attack range of 30,000 kilometers.

  They crossed the inner perimeter of the counter-missile interception zone, losing another hundred and seventeen in the process. Of the three hundred and sixty-one survivors, fifty-eight were electronic warfare platforms, which meant"only" three hundred and three missiles-barely fifteen percent of the original launch-actually attacked.

  The space about Nike and Hector was hideous with incandescent eruptions of fury, and bomb-pumped lasers ripped and gouged at their targets. But these battlecruisers had been designed and built to face exactly this sort of attack. Their sidewalls-especially Nike's-were far tougher and more powerful than any previous battlecruisers had mounted, and both of them were equipped with the RMN's bow and stern walls. The fact that they'd been able to keep their wedges turned towards the incoming fire even while they engaged it with their own counter-missiles presented additional targeting problems for the Havenite missiles' onboard systems. Instead of the broadside aspect ships were normally forced to show attack missiles' sensors, all these missiles saw was the wedge itself. But no sensor could penetrate a military-grade impeller wedge, which made it impossible for them to absolutely localize their targets. They could predict the volume in which their target must lay, but not precisely where within that volume to find it.

  And that was why Nike and Hector survived. The missiles' sensors could have seen through the battlecruisers' sidewalls, but the sidewalls were turned away from them. Most of them streaked "above" and "below" the Manticoran battlecruisers, fighting for a "look-down" shot, while others crossed the Manticorans' bows or sterns, trying for "up-the-kilt" or "down-the-throat" shots. Tough as Nike's passive defenses were, they were no match for the raw power of the Havenite lasers, but the very speed which made MDMs such difficult targets for short-range point defense fire worked against them now. They simply didn't have time to find their targets and fire in the fleeting fragment of a second they took to cross the Manticoran ships' tracks.

  * * *

  "No damage, Sir!" Lieutenant Commander Gohr announced jubilantly. "None!"

  "Well done, Guns," Oversteegen replied.


  "Captain Hanover reports one hit forward on Hector, Sir," Lieutenant Pattison reported. "No casualties, but she's lost one graser and a laser cluster."

  "Good," Oversteegen said. "In that case, let's-"

  "Missile launch!" Gohr said suddenly. "Multiple launches! Sir, I have LAC separation from in-system platforms!"

  Oversteegen's eyes flew to the main plot, and his jaw tightened as threat sources exploded across it. A fresh wave of MDMs had abruptly appeared, launched from the same spot as the first salvo. But this one was considerably more massive. The next best thing to six thousand missile icons spangled the display, streaking towards his ships-and also Dillinger's LACs and Michelle Henke's division-and Gohr was right about the LAC launches, as well. The two hundred Task Force 81 had already known about went suddenly to full acceleration, charging towards the Manticorans, but twice that many more were erupting into space, turning towards Dillinger's Katanas and the battlecruisers behind them.