by David Weber
"I'm sure it does," Caparelli said calmly. "What struck me most strongly, however, was how light your losses were, given what you sailed into."
His raised hand stopped her protest, and his eyes met hers levelly.
"I know exactly what I'm talking about, Honor, so don't tell me I don't. You walked into a carefully prepared ambush. I've reviewed your reports, and those of your surviving captains, and the log recordings from your flag bridge and from Imperator's tactical section. I reviewed them very carefully, and whether you want to believe this or not, I also reviewed them very critically. And, on the basis of what you knew, when you knew it, I can't see a single thing you did wrong."
"What about sailing directly into that last missile launch?" Honor challenged. "If anyone should have seen that coming, I should have!"
"The fact that you and Mark Sarnow used similar tactics at Hancock Station sixteen T-years ago doesn't make you clairvoyant," Caparelli replied. "You did realize they were coming in out of hyper behind you, and I doubt very much most flag officers would have figured it out as quickly. And without knowing the size of the salvos Bogey One could throw, your decision to stay away from a force which outnumbered you three-to-one in ships of the wall was the only reasonable one you could have made."
"And what about abandoning Ajax?" Honor's voice was so low it was almost a whisper.
"That, too, was the proper decision, Your Grace," Caparelli said quietly. Honor looked up, meeting his eyes once more, tasting his sincerity. "It was hard. I know that. I know how close you and Admiral Henke were. But your overriding responsibility was to the ships you could still get out, and with the damage you'd already suffered, slowing to cover Ajax would have made that impossible. If you'd been able to evacuate her personnel, that might have been one thing. But you couldn't."
"But-" Honor began, eyes burning, and Caparelli shook his head.
"Don't. I've been there, too, and I know leaving people behind, however correct the tactical decision may have been, always hurts. You always ask yourself if there wasn't some way you could've gotten everyone out, and curse yourself at night for not having found one. The fact that you and Countess Gold Peak were so close, for so long, has to make that still worse, but I've come to know you. Whether Michelle Henke had been aboard that ship or not, you'd still feel what you're feeling right now."
Honor blinked, then looked away for just a moment. He was right, and she knew it. And yet, remembering Mike-
She closed her eyes, her memory replaying the last she'd seen-the last she would ever see-of Michelle Henke. She and her other survivors had gotten across the hyper limit, with Bogey Two and Bogey Three in hot pursuit. Rifleman had performed her part of Omega One by translating up into hyper to rejoin Samuel Mikl¢s' CLACs at the designated rendezvous once the task force's other survivors were across the limit. And Mikl¢s' squadron had executed a flawless micro-jump to rendezvous with Honor's survivors, in turn. They'd gotten the surviving LACs aboard the carriers and translated out less than fifteen minutes before Bogey Three crossed the hyper limit after them, but that hadn't been soon enough to prevent her from knowing what happened.
She wished there'd been time for at least one last personal message, but Ajax's communications section had taken massive damage in the first salvo Bogey Two had fired into Henke's lamed flagship. There'd been no way to communicate-even the remote sensor arrays had been too far away to see it clearly-but from the sensor recordings, it looked as if Ajax had taken at least one battlecruiser with her. The explosion when her own fusion plants let go, however, had been far clearer.
"I left her," she said softly. "I left her behind to die."
"Because her drive was damaged," Caparelli said, deliberately misinterpreting the pronoun's antecedent. "Because you had no choice. Because you were a fleet commander, with a responsibility for the survival of the other ships under your command. It was the right decision."
"Maybe."
Honor looked back at him, and the First Space Lord cocked his head. She could taste him accepting that that "maybe" was as close as she could yet come to agreeing with him, and her mouth moved in an almost-smile.
"But whether it was the right decision or not, I still got my backside kicked right up between my ears and didn't take out my objective. Exactly what Eighth Fleet wasn't supposed to have happen to it."
"It's not given to us to simply command victory," Caparelli told her. "The other side has an interest in winning, as well, you know. And when you're consistently given the most difficult jobs to do, the chances of running into something like you ran into at Solon go up rather steeply.
"As for your failure to hit your objectives, yes, you did. Admiral Truman, on the other hand, operating according to your plan, blew the Lorn shipyard, every bit of its supporting industry, and every mobile unit in the system into scrap for the loss of six LACs."
"I know she did," Honor conceded. "And I also know our primary objective was to force the Republic to redeploy, which-on the evidence of Solon-they've certainly done. But I feel depressingly confident that the way this story is going to be spun for their civilian population will dwell on how hard they hit my task force, not how well Alice's did."
"I think we can all safely depend upon that," Caparelli agreed. "Especially since you've been the one blacking their eyes up until now. The defeat of 'the Salamander'-and I agree that, however well you did to salvage what you did, it was a defeat-is going to be page-one news in every Peep 'fax. They're going to play it up to the max, exactly the way our own 'faxes have been playing up Eighth Fleet's successes.
"Nor, I'm afraid," he said, much more bleakly, his emotions suddenly far darker, "is that the only thing they're going to have to play up."
"I beg your pardon?"
Honor looked at him, and he shrugged heavily.
"The initial report came in this morning. Their Admiral Tourville is apparently back from Marsh, and they've given him a new fleet to replace the one you trashed. Units under his command hit Zanzibar about the same time you were attacking Lorn and Solon."
Honor inhaled sharply, looking back and forth between Caparelli and Hamish.
"How bad was it?"
"About as bad as it could have been," Hamish replied. She looked at him, and he sighed. "He came in with four full battle squadrons of pod-layers, and their battle squadrons are still eight ships strong. He also had a couple of divisions of carriers and at least two battlecruiser squadrons to support them, and although we'd reinforced heavily after Admiral al-Bakr's fiasco-and I use the word deliberately," he added bitterly "-it wasn't heavily enough. He hit the defenses like a hammer, and he started right out by sweeping the asteroid belt with remote arrays of his own, followed by LAC strikes on our pre-deployed pods. Not only that, he'd brought along fast colliers stuffed with additional missile pods. He left them tucked away in hyper, came in just far enough to draw our mobile units away from their own support bases, and engaged them at long range until both sides had burned most of their ammo. Then he pulled back across the limit, reammunitioned, and came right back in before we could replace the expended defense pods get our own pod-layers back in-system to rearm. It was a massacre."
"How bad?" she repeated.
"Eleven SD(P)s and seven older superdreadnoughts," Caparelli said grimly. "Plus seven hundred LACs, six battlecruisers, and two heavy cruisers. Those were our losses. Most of the Zanzibaran Navy went with them. Not to mention," the First Space Lord added harshly, "the near total destruction of Zanzibar's deep-space industry. For the second time."
Honor paled. Those losses made her own seem almost trivial.
"I think we can all safely agree," Caparelli continued, "that as things stand right this instant, it's going to be relatively easy for the Peeps to convince their public-and possibly even our own-that the momentum's just shifted. Which makes it even more imperative for us to convince them they're wrong."
"What do you have in mind, Sir Thomas?" Honor asked, watching his face closely.
"
You know exactly what I have in mind, Honor," he told her. "That's one reason I came out here with Hamish. I know you're hurting, and I know your people have to be shocked by what happened at Solon. And I also know it's going to take at least several weeks for you to be in any position to plan and mount another op. But we need you-and your people-back in the saddle, and we need you there quickly. We'll do what we can to reinforce you and replace your losses, but it's essential, absolutely essential, that Eighth Fleet resume offensive operations at the earliest possible moment. We simply cannot afford to allow the enemy, or ourselves, to believe the initiative has passed into his hands."
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Thomas Theisman watched through the viewport as the shuttle made its final approach to the stupendous superdreadnought. The Republic's Secretary of War and Chief of Naval Operations smiled as he remembered the last time he'd made this trip. His waiting host had been in a somewhat different mood that time.
The shuttle slowed to a halt relative to the superdreadnought, and the boat bay's docking tractors locked onto it. They snubbed away the remainder of its motion, then drew it smoothly into the bay. It settled into the docking arms, the personnel tube ran out, and Theisman and Captain Alenka Borderwijk, his senior naval aide, climbed out of their seats.
"Don't lose that, Alenka," Theisman said, tapping the case under Borderwijk's left arm.
"Don't worry, Sir," the captain replied. "The thought of being shot at dawn holds absolutely no attraction for me."
Theisman grinned at her, then turned to lead the way down the tube into Sovereign of Space's boat bay gallery.
"Chief of Naval Operations, arriving!" the announcement rang out, and Theisman smothered another grin.
Technically speaking, he should have been referred to as the Secretary of War, since the Secretary was the CNO's civilian superior. It was common knowledge throughout the Fleet, however, that he preferred to think of himself as still an honest admiral, not a politician, and he was always amused when the Navy's uniformed personnel chose to pander to that particular vanity of his.
"Welcome aboard, Sir," Captain Patrick Reumann said, stepping forward to greet him before he could request formal permission to board.
"Thank you, Pat." Theisman shook the tall captain's hand, then looked past him to Javier Giscard.
"Welcome aboard, Sir," Giscard said, echoing Reumann as they clasped hands.
"Thank you, Admiral." Theisman raised his voice slightly. "And while I'm at it, allow me to express my thanks-and the Republic's-to you and all the men and women under your command for a job very well done."
He still felt a bit silly playing the political leader, but he'd learned not to despise the role, and he saw the smiles on the faces of the officers and enlisted personnel in range of his voice. What he'd said would be relayed throughout the ship-and, later, throughout Giscard's entire command-with a speed which mocked the grav pulses of an FTL com. And although he knew Giscard understood what he was doing perfectly, he also saw the genuine pleasure in the other man's eyes as his ultimate service superior made certain his thanks had been publicly delivered.
"Thank you, Sir," Giscard said, after a moment. "That means a lot to me, just as I know it will to all our personnel."
"I'm glad." Theisman released Giscard's hand as Reumann finished greeting Alenka Borderwijk and she stepped forward to join him and Giscard. "And now, Admiral, you and I have a few things to discuss."
"Of course, Sir. If you'll accompany me to my flag briefing room?"
* * *
"I meant what I said, Javier," Theisman said, as the briefing room hatch closed behind them. "You and your people did a damned fine job. Combined with what Lester did to Zanzibar, the Manties have to be feeling as if they strayed in front of an out-of-control freight shuttle at the bottom of a gravity well."
"We aim to please, Tom," Giscard said, waving the CNO and his aide into chairs, then dropping into one himself. "Linda and Lewis are the ones who really made it possible by guessing right. Well, them and Shannon." He shook his head, his wry grimace less than amused. "If it had been just my mobile units, she'd have gotten away clean."
"I think that's a bit pessimistic," Theisman disagreed. "Based on the system sensor platforms' data, you got a hell of a good piece of one of the SDs before Moriarty ever got a shot at them."
"Yeah, and I shot six SD(P)s dry to do it," Giscard responded. "I'm not trying to denigrate what my people accomplished, and I'm not trying to poor mouth my own accomplishments. But that missile defense of theirs." He shook his head. "It's a bear, Tom. Really, really tough."
"Tell me about it!" Theisman snorted. "I know you haven't seen Lester's after-action report on Zanzibar yet, but he makes exactly the same point. In fact, he feels that the only reason he managed to carry through was the reloads he'd brought along for his superdreadnoughts. Basically, he ran them out of ammunition at extreme range, then closed in to almost single-drive missile range to get the best targeting solutions he could. And even then, he needed a superiority of three-to-one."
He shrugged.
"It's something we're going to have to deal with. The next-generation seekers are about ready to deploy-that should help some-and Shannon's already working on other solutions... in her copious free time." He and Giscard both chuckled at that one. "In the meantime, we're having to rethink our calculations over at the Bureau of Planning on the relative effectiveness of our units. At the moment, we're still confident we'll attain it, but it's beginning to look as if it will take longer than we'd anticipated."
"How much longer?" Giscard asked, his expression faintly alarmed.
"Obviously, I can't answer that definitively yet, but nothing we've seen so far indicates more than a few months slippage-six or seven at the outside-from our original schedule. We're not talking about requiring construction not already in the pipeline, only about needing more of that construction ready to go than we'd thought we would. And given that our margin of superiority was going to continue growing for a full year beyond our original target date, six or seven months is completely acceptable."
"I hope it doesn't run longer, but-" Giscard paused for a moment, then shrugged and continued. "The thing that concerns me, Tom, is that our projections are based on what they've already shown us and what we've been able to extrapolate on that basis. But we didn't correctly extrapolate the improvement in their defensive capability. We knew it was going to get better, but I think it's safe to say none of us anticipated the actual margin of improvement. Just like none of us anticipated this dogfighting missile of theirs. What if they do the same thing to us with their MDMs?"
"That's a completely valid point," Theisman said gravely, "and I'd be lying if I said I hadn't had the occasional qualm myself. I think, though, that what we've already seen with Moriarty and the steady improvement in our own FTL communication and coordination ability, indicates we're still making up ground faster than we're losing it. And at the moment, it appears both we and the Manties are up against a fairly hard limit on the accuracy of full-ranged MDM exchanges. Theirs is better than ours, but with improvements like the new seekers, ours is getting better faster than theirs is."
He tipped back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest.
"I've got Linda and Op Research running every combat report through every analysis we can think of. We're charting the qualitative and quantitative improvements on both sides as accurately as we can, and we're constantly readjusting our projections. It's possible something will come along to overturn all our calculations. I don't think it will, and I hope it doesn't. But if it does, we ought to spot it in time to rethink both our options and our plans. And the bottom line is that I have no intention of committing the Navy to a decisive offensive operation unless I'm confident our calculations haven't been invalidated."
"And, with all due respect, Admiral Giscard," Alenka Borderwijk put in, "what you accomplished at Solon completely validated the Moriarty concept. We're moving ahead rapidly with deployment in o
ther star systems, beginning with the most vital ones. On the basis of Solon, we believe our defensive doctrine and capabilities are sufficient to make it impossible for the Manties to accept the attritional losses major offensives of their own would entail."
"It certainly looks that way right now," Giscard agreed. "On the other hand, remember that at Solon we were up against only one task force, with only a single division of Invictuses. The missile defense of an entire Manty fleet would be much deeper and more resilient. I think you're right that Moriarty represents what's currently our best option for fixed system defenses, but it's going to have to be deployed in even greater depth than it was at Solon if it's going to stand up to a major Manty offensive."
"Granted," Theisman said, amused-and deeply pleased-by the confidence and persistence of Giscard's arguments. It was a far and welcome cry from the way Giscard had persisted in second-guessing-and blaming-himself after Thunderbolt.
"Granted," the CNO repeated. "And we're working on that. In addition, Shannon has the new system defense missiles almost ready to go into actual production. We still haven't been able to figure out a way to fit them into something an SD(P) can handle, but they ought to give the Manties fits when they run into them. That's the plan, anyway."