At All Costs

by David Weber

  It had been a massacre, and not one for which he could blame Bressand. A part of him would have liked to, and he could actually make a case for it, if he really tried. After all, Bressand could have exercised his discretion and declined to engage such a massively superior force. But the reason that force had been so superior to his was that his own superiors-headed by one Thomas Theisman-had failed to adequately support him.

  Bressand had done his job with what he had, and, like Bellefeuille in Chantilly, he'd obviously hoped to inflict at least attritional damage on the raiders. And that, Theisman reminded himself, was probably a direct consequence of the staff analysis he'd ordered shared with all of his system commanders. Given the numerical advantage the Republic enjoyed-or shortly would enjoy-even an unfavorable exchange rate was ultimately in Haven's favor. He'd ordered that analysis disseminated because it was true, yet it had been much easier to accept its truthbefore so many thousands of Navy men and women had died in Augusta.

  "Do we have a better read on the damage Bellefeuille managed to inflict?" he asked Marquette, resolutely turning his mind away from Bressand.

  "We hurt their LACs pretty badly, relatively speaking," Marquette said. Then he grimaced. "I can't believe I just said that. Bellefeuille took out about seventy of their LACs, including fifty or so of their Katanas, in return for just over five hundred of our own. As exchange rates go, that sucks, but it's the equivalent of about three quarters of one of their LAC groups, and much as I hate to say it, we can replace our personnel and materiel losses more easily than they can.

  "On the starship side, we didn't do as well. Mostly because those damned new battlecruisers of theirs are a hell of a lot tougher than a battlecruiser has any right being. We hammered one of their pod-layers pretty badly-her wedge strength was down, and she was venting a lot of atmosphere by the end. Bellefeuille's other main target-that big-assed 'battlecruiser' that just has to be this new Nike we've been hearing rumors about-got off with what was probably only minor damage."

  Marquette shook his head, his expression rueful.

  "That's a very tough ship, Tom. And they appear to have armed her with that new, smaller MDM NavInt's also been hearing about. By the way, that's how the staff weenies figure they've managed to cram so many missiles into their battlecruiser pod-layers' pods. They're using pods big enough to fire all-up missiles, but loading them with these smaller ones. It costs them something in total powered envelope, but it also increases their throw weight, and accuracy at extreme range's so poor the heavier fire more than compensates across the effective envelope. And the reports that they're somehow firing both broadsides simultaneously from their more conventionally armed ships-and doing it while they're rolled on their sides relative to their targets, to boot-seem to be confirmed."

  "Wonderful." Theisman turned his chair to gaze out the window behind his desk at the massive towers of the city of Nouveau Paris, all of them freshly refurbished and properly maintained for the first time in his memory. Clean windows glittered in the slanting rays of the westering sun, air cars and air buses moved steadily in the traffic lanes, and the walkways and pedestrian slideways were crowded with busy, purposeful people. It was a scene of rebirth and revitalization-of rediscovery-of which he rarely tired, but today, his expression was profoundly unhappy.

  "How are we going to respond, Tom?" Marquette asked quietly after a moment, and Theisman's expression turned unhappier still. He stared out the window into the sunset for several more seconds, then turned back to face the Chief of Staff.

  "We've got two options-well, three, I suppose. We could do nothing, which wouldn't exactly sit well with Congress or the public at large. We could immediately launch a general offensive, which might succeed, but probably wouldn't-at least until we've got more of the new construction up to speed and ready for action-and which definitely would entail heavy casualties. Or we dust off the contingency plans for Operation Gobi and hand it to Lester."

  "Of the three, my gut reaction is to favor Gobi," Marquette said. "Especially given the intelligence we've managed to gather and the operational data Diamato brought back."

  "I think I agree with you, but that doesn't make me extraordinarily happy. It's going to divert us and disperse at least a sizable fraction of the striking force we've been working so hard to build up. Worse, it's going to take at least three weeks or a month for Lester to get it up and running. If the Manties stick to their apparent operational tempo, that means they'll hit us again at least once while we're hitting them."

  "We could have him try something a little more extemporaneous." Marquette didn't seem especially pleased by his own suggestion, but he continued anyway. "He's got Second Fleet's core organization just about set up, and he's got a nucleus of experienced units to go with the new ones. He could probably slice off a battle squadron or two for a quick-and-dirty, off-the-cuff job if we told him to."

  "No." Theisman shook his head firmly. "If we hand him Gobi-and I think we're going to have to-he gets time to set it up right. I saw too many operations fucked up when the old management decided to improvise and demand miracles. I won't send our people in without adequate time to prepare unless there's absolutely no other alternative."

  "Yes, Sir," Marquette said quietly, and Theisman smiled almost apologetically at him.

  "Sorry. Didn't mean to sound like I was biting your head off. I think maybe I'm using you to rehearse what I'm going to wind up saying in front of the Naval Committee when it wants to know why we haven't already kicked the Manties' asses."

  "I suppose it shouldn't really have come as a surprise that a genuine representative government's no more immune to the 'But what have you done for me recently?' syndrome than the Legislaturalists were," Marquette said sourly.

  "No, it shouldn't have. But it's still a lot more satisfying to work for. And at least we don't have to worry about being shot, just fired."

  "True."

  Marquette stood for a moment, rubbing his chin thoughtfully, then cocked his head.

  "Actually, Tom," he said slowly, "there may be a fourth option. Or, at least, one we could try in conjunction with Gobi."

  "Really?" Theisman regarded him quizzically.

  "Well, Lewis and Linda have handed me their tea leaf-readers' best guess as to the most threatened systems. Their report is full of qualifiers, of course. Not so much because they're trying to cover their asses, as because they really don't have a good predictive model. They're having to use more intuition and old fashioned WAGs than number-crunching at this point, and they don't like it. Despite that, though, I think they're on to something."

  "Tell me more," Theisman commanded, and pointed at one of the chairs facing his desk.

  "Basically," Marquette said, sitting obediently, "they tried looking at the problem through Manty eyes. They figure the Manties are looking for targets they can anticipate will be fairly lightly defended, but which have enough population and representation to generate a lot of political pressure. They're also hitting systems with a civilian economy which may not be contributing very much to the war effort, but which is large enough to require the federal government to undertake a substantial diversion of emergency assistance when it's destroyed. And it's also pretty clear that be want to impress us with their aggressiveness. That's why they're operating so deep. Well, that and because the deeper they get, the further away from the 'frontline" systems, the less likely we are to have heavy defensive forces in position to intercept them. So that means we should be looking at deep penetration targets, not frontier raids."

  "All of that sounds reasonable," Theisman said after considering it. "Logical, anyway. Of course, logic is only as good as its basic assumptions."

  "Agreed. But it's worth noting that two of the systems they predicted might be hit were Des Moines and Fordyce."

  "They were?" Theisman sat a bit straighter, and Marquette nodded.

  "And Chantilly was on their secondary list of less likely targets."

  "That is interesting. On the other h
and, how many other systems were on their lists?"

  "Ten on the primary list and fifteen on the secondary."

  "So they hit three out of a total of twenty-five. Twelve percent."

  "Which is a hell of a lot better than nothing," Marquette pointed out.

  "Oh, no question. But we could fritter away an awful lot of strength trying to cover a list of systems that long without being strong enough in any one place to make a difference."

  "That wasn't really what I had in mind."

  "Then tell me what you did have in mind."

  "You and I-and our analysts, for that matter-agree that these raids represent what's basically a strategy of weakness. They're trying to hurt us and throw us off balance for a minimal investment in forces and minimal losses of their own. So I would submit that we don't really have to stop them dead everywhere; we just have to hammer them really hard once or twice. Hurt them proportionately worse than they're hurting us."

  "All right." Theisman nodded. "I'm in agreement so far."

  "Well, Javier's doing a lot of expansion work, too, if not as much as Lester. He's been discussing training missions and simulations to fit his new units into existing battle squadrons and task group organizations, and he'd really like a chance to try some of his task force and task group commanders in independent command before it's a life-or-death situation. What if we were to take, say, three or four-maybe a half-dozen-of those task groups and pull them back from the front? We're not going to be committing them to offensive action anytime soon, and it's obvious the Manties aren't going to launch any frontal assaults when they're running this sensitive about losses. So it wouldn't weaken our offensive stance, and it would give us some powerful forces close to likely targets."

  "Ummmm...." Theisman gazed into space, the fingers of his right hand drumming lightly on his blotter. He stayed that way for quite some time, then refocused on Marquette.

  "I think this has... possibilities," he said. "I should've thought of a similar approach on my own, but I guess I've been too fixated on maintaining concentration instead of swanning around in understrength detachments the way we used to operate. There are still some risks involved, though. Strategy of weakness or no, this is clearly their first team were talking about. If it weren't, Harrington wouldn't be in command of it. So it's not something we want to throw green units in front of."

  "I was figuring we'd use detachments working up a relatively smaller percentage of new units," Marquette replied. "And, while I'm thinking about it, I think it would be a very good idea to put Javier himself in position to cover the system we think is most likely to be hit."

  "Now that is a very good notion." Theisman nodded enthusiastically. "He's still kicking himself over Trevor's Star, and pointing out to him that he's being wise with the benefit of hindsight doesn't seem to help much. It'd make a lot of sense for him to be involved in training his own squadrons, and if he just happened to kick the ass of a Manty raid...."

  "That's what I was thinking," Marquette agreed. "It would do a world of good for his confidence, and the shot in the arm it would provide for public and fleet morale wouldn't be anything to sneer at, either."

  "And if we get some of Shannon's new goodies deployed to help him out, things could get hot enough for even 'the Salamander' to think twice about climbing back into the oven again," Theisman said.

  He thought about it again for several seconds, then nodded once more.

  "Sit down with Linda. Draft me a preliminary plan for it by tomorrow afternoon."

  Chapter Thirty

  "Excuse me, Your Grace."

  Honor paused in her conversation with Mercedes Brigham, Alice Truman, Alistair McKeon, and Samuel Mikl¢s, and one eyebrow rose in surprise. It was very unlike James MacGuiness to obtrude into a serious meeting like this. He was a past master at unobtrusively refilling coffee and cocoa cups, sliding food in front of people when they started looking peaked, and otherwise keeping them provided with whatever they needed. But the key word was "unobtrusively." Most of the time, people never even realized he'd been there until he was already gone.

  That was her first thought. Her second was more concerned as she tasted his emotions.

  "What is it, Mac?" she asked as Nimitz sat upright on the back of her chair and pricked his ears at the man who still insisted on functioning as Honor's steward.

  "You have a personal message, Your Grace. From your mother." Honor stiffened, eyes darkening with concern. "I have no idea what it's about," he continued quickly, "but it came up in the standard mailbag from Jason Bay. If it were really bad news, I'm sure it would have been delivered by special courier. For that matter, Miranda would have dropped me a line about it, as well."

  "You're right, of course, Mac," she said, smiling in thanks for his reassurance.

  "On the other hand, Your Grace," he said, "it does carry a priority code. I really think you ought to view it as soon as possible."

  "I see."

  MacGuiness bobbed his head and withdrew, and Honor frowned thoughtfully for a moment. Then she shook herself and returned her attention to her guests.

  "I think we're just about at a decent stopping point, anyway, aren't we?" she said.

  "I think so," Truman agreed. "We need to spend a little more time kicking around what happened at Chantilly, but we can do that later. I'd never heard of this Admiral Bellefeuille until she screened me after the shooting was over to thank us for arranging the full evacuation of the civilian platforms before we blew them. She was floating around in a pinnace-or maybe even a life pod-for most of that time, I understand. But I think we need to bring her name to ONI's attention. This woman is sneaky, Honor. She reminds me a lot of what you've said about Shannon Foraker, and if she'd had better information on our defensive capabilities, we'd have gotten hurt a lot worse."

  "It was bad enough, anyway," McKeon growled, shaking his head. "Hector's going to be out of action for at least three months."

  "I know, I know," Truman sighed. "But at least Hanover's personnel casualties were light. To be perfectly honest, I'm more distressed by what happened to my Katanas. We managed a four- or five-to-one exchange rate even after Bellefeuille tricked us into firing off so many of their missiles, but that's pretty cold comfort. And," she looked at Honor, "Scotty blames himself."

  "That's ridiculous," McKeon said sharply.

  "I agree entirely," Truman replied. "The deployment decision was mine-not his, not Mike Henke's, but mine. Given what I knew at the time, I'd do the same thing again, too. But Scotty seems to think he should have argued with me, although exactly what form of clairvoyance was supposed to tell him this was coming eludes me."

  "And how is Mike taking it?" Honor asked quietly.

  "Better than I was afraid she might, actually," Truman said. "She's not happy about it, and especially not about the fact that she was the one who suggested using Hector and Nike as her point. But the truth is that she was right. Hector may have gotten hammered, but her core hull was never penetrated, and she and Nike stood up to missile attack even better than BuShips predicted they might. And if Dillinger hadn't used up so many of his Vipers defending Oversteegen's division, he'd have made out much better against the Peep LACs. I think she's drawn the right conclusions."

  Honor nodded. She knew both Truman and McKeon well enough to be confident they understood why she was concerned without getting any more specific.

  "I hope you and she both have," she said aloud, smiling wryly at Truman. "The two of you are developing a nasty habit of always finding the feistiest system defense forces! I'd appreciate it if you'd cut that out."

  "Hey, you're the one assigning the targets," Truman shot back. "Well, you and Mercedes here."

  "Don't blame me!" Brigham protested. "My idea of how to assign the task forces was to pull system names out of a hat. For some reason, neither Andrea nor Her Grace thought that was a wonderful idea."

  "Nonsense," Honor said as the other admirals laughed. "What I said was that it didn't seem very profe
ssional and it wouldn't do very much for the public's confidence in the Navy if we did it that way and word got out."

  "As long as it works as well as it seems to be working so far, I don't think they'd have any problems," McKeon said, and Truman and Mikl¢s nodded in agreement.

  "Then let's keep it that way, shall we?" Honor replied. "And on that note, I think we should probably adjourn and let me find out what's on Mother's mind. Alice, could you have dinner with me this evening? And invite Mike and Oversteegen along? For that matter, bring Scotty and Harkness, too; I haven't seen either of them in a while, and their perspective on something like this is almost always worth getting. Let's go over it with all of them in person. As you say, we need to get a better feel for what Bellefeuille did to us, and I'd like to give Mike and Oversteegan, especially, a chance to talk out their own reactions to it."