by David Weber
Despite a brief, instinctive panic reaction, Giovanni quickly reached the same conclusions Giscard had, and her smile was much more unpleasant than his expression had been.
So the great 'Salamander' can fuck up just like the rest of us mere mortals, she thought. Pity about that.
"Range from Forge?" she asked.
"Still one-one-point-two light-minutes, Ma'am," MacNaughton replied. "Roughly another thirty-six minutes to missile range for Moriarty."
"Thank you," she said, and turned back to the outer-system plot as the multi-drive missiles began to launch.
* * *
The range was almost fifty-four million kilometers, and Bogey Two was running away from TF 82 at a relative velocity of more than four thousand KPS. Missile flight time was over eight minutes, and as Giscard had demonstrated at Solon, even Manticoran accuracy at that range was going to be poor.
Except....
* * *
"Sir, there's something... odd about the Manties' launch," Thackeray said.
"What do you mean, 'odd'?" Giscard asked sharply.
"Their attack birds are coming in... well, 'clumped' is the only word I can think of for it, Sir. They aren't spreading out in a proper dispersion pattern."
"What?"
Giscard punched a command into his own repeater plot and frowned. Thackeray was right. His own outgoing missiles were spreading out, distancing themselves from one another to reduce wedge interference with their telemetry links to the ships which had launched them. Everyone's missiles did that.
But the Manties' missiles weren't.
"Query CIC," he told Thackeray. "I want an analysis of this pattern. There's got to be some reason for it."
"CIC's already on it, Sir,. So far, they don't have any explanation."
Giscard grunted in acknowledgment. Actually, he realized, the attack missiles were spreading out, just not the way they should have. They were coming in in discrete clusters, spread across an attack front which would bring them all in simultaneously in the end, but making the trip in relatively tight groups of about eight or ten missiles each.
No, he thought as a preliminary analysis from the Combat Information Center came up as a sidebar to his plot. They're coming in in clusters of exactly eight missiles each. Which is stupid, since they have twelve missiles in each pod!
* * *
It was called "Apollo," after the archer of the gods.
It hadn't been easy for the R&D types to perfect. Even for Manticoran technology, designing the components had required previously impossible levels of miniaturization, and BuWeaps had encountered more difficulties than anticipated in putting the system into production. This was its first test in actual combat, and the crews which had launched the MDMs watched with baited breath to see how well it performed.
Javier Giscard was wrong. There weren't twelve missiles in an Apollo pod; there were nine. Eight relatively standard attack missiles or EW platforms, and the Apollo missile-much larger than the others, and equipped with a down-sized, short-ranged two-way FTL communications link developed from the one deployed in the still larger Ghost Rider reconnaissance drones. It was a remote control node, following along behind the other eight missiles from the same pod, without any warhead or electronic warfare capability of its own.
The impeller wedges of the other missiles hid it and its pulsed transmissions from the sensors of Giscard's ships, and from his counter-missiles. But its position allowed it to monitor the standard telemetry links from the other missiles of its pod. And it also carried a far more capable AI than any standard attack missile-one capable of processing the data from all of the other missiles' tracking and homing systems and sending the result back to its mothership via grav-pulse.
The ships which had launched them had deployed the equally new Keyhole II platforms, equipped not with standard light-speed links for their offensive missiles, but with grav-pulse links. Virtually every Manticoran or Grayson ship which could currently deploy Keyhole II was in Eighth Fleet's order of battle, and Honor Alexander-Harrington had taken ruthless advantage of the capability when she formulated her attack plans.
The updated sensor information from the on-rushing missiles crossed the distance to the tactical sections and massively capable computers of the superdreadnoughts which had launched them virtually instantaneously. As did the corrections those tactical sections sent back.
In effect, Apollo gave the Royal Manticoran Navy real-time correction ability at any attainable missile range.
* * *
Javier Giscard's tactical officers didn't realize at first what they faced. In fact, most of them never did realize.
The Manty missiles ignored their decoys almost contemptuously, and those peculiar clumps of MDMs maneuvered with a precision no missile-defense officer had ever seen before. It was almost as if each clump were a single missile, one which bored in through the defensive shield of the task group's electronic warfare as if it didn't exist.
Counter-missiles began to fire, and something else very peculiar happened. The EW platforms seeded throughout the Manticoran salvo didn't come up simultaneously, or in groups, the way they ought to have. Instead, they came up individually, singly, almost as if they could actually see the counter-missiles and adjust their own sequences.
Dragons Teeth activated at precisely the right moment to draw the maximum number of counter-missiles into attacking the false targets. Dazzlers blasted the onboard sensors of other counter-missiles... just as the attack missiles behind them arced upward, or dove downward, to drive straight through the gap the Dazzlers had burned in the defensive envelope.
Not all the defensive missiles could be blinded or evaded, of course. There were simply too many of them. But their effectiveness was slashed.
The twelve superdreadnoughts of Task Force 82 had rolled quadruple patterns before they launched. Two hundred and eighty-eight Apollo pods had launched nineteen hundred attack missiles and and four hundred EW platforms, along with two hundred and eighty-eight control missiles.
Javier Giscard's counter-missiles stopped only three hundred of the attack birds. His desperate point defense clusters, in the single volley each of them got, killed another four hundred.
Twelve hundred got through.
* * *
Damage alarms screamed on Sovereign of Space's command deck and flag bridge. The huge ship shuddered and bucked as not one, or two, but scores of Manticoran missiles ripped straight through the heart of the task group's missile defenses. Armor splintered, atmosphere spewed into space, weapons mounts and point defense clusters were blasted into shattered wreckage, and the drum roll of destruction went on and on and on.
All of Judah Yanakov's fire had been concentrated on only two ships. Partly, that was because no one had really known how effective Apollo would prove against live opposition, and partly it had been because superdreadnoughts were simply so inconceivably tough. Killing targets that rugged was hard, and Honor and Yanakov had been determined to do as much damage with the first salvo, before the enemy had any chance to adjust to the new threat, as they could.
They did.
Javier Giscard clung to the arms of his command chair, surrounded by the frantic combat chatter of his task group, listening to the shrilling alarms, the desperate reports of damage control parties fighting the tidal wave of damage. His link to Damage Control Central lacked the detail of Captain Reuman's displays, but huge swathes of crimson damage blasted their way across the ship's schematic as he watched.
And then there was one brief, terrible flash as something ripped into the far end of the flag bridge. His head whipped up, and he just had time to see Selma Thackery and her tactical party torn apart by the blast front screaming towards him. Just long enough for his brain to begin to realize what was happening.
"Eloi-" he began, his voice soft in the hurricane of alarms and devastation.
He never finished her name.
* * *
"Jesus Christ," Ewan MacNaughton whispered, his face
white.
The first Manticoran missile salvo had killed two of Admiral Giscard's superdreadnoughts outright... including Sovereign of Space.. The second salvo, rumbling in on the first launch's heels forty-eight seconds later, killed two more, and the one after that, two more.
It took a total of eleven salvos-less than eight minutes' fire-to kill every superdreadnought in Bogey Two.
"How the hell did they do that?"
MacNaughton didn't even realize he'd asked the question aloud, but Admiral Giovanni answered it anyway.
"I don't know," she said, her voice ugly. "But it's not going to help their lead ships in another twenty-five minutes."
* * *
"CIC estimates another twenty minutes until we hit the envelope for their inner-system pods, Your Grace," Mercedes Brigham said quietly, and Honor nodded.
Imperator's flag bridge was oddly silent. Far astern of them, Judah Yanakov's missile batteries had just finished off the helpless CLACs of Bogey Two. He wasn't wasting any of his fire on the orphaned LACs. Instead, he'd recovered his own LACs and translated back out, and Honor watched her display, waiting.
Then Task Force 82 translated back into normal-space yet again. This time, much closer to the limit, and directly behind Bogey Three.
"Admiral Yanakov is launching against Bogey Three, Your Grace," Jaruwalski reported, and Honor nodded.
"Too bad he won't have time to catch Bogey Four before it gets too far in-system for him to range on, as well, Your Grace," Brigham said. "I'd love to make a clean sweep."
Honor glanced at her, remembering what had happened to her own command at Solon. Part of her agreed entirely with Brigham, and not just because of the professional naval officer in her. But the taste of revenge had a bitter tang, and she looked back at the plot.
"We'll just have to settle for what we can get," she said calmly. "And it's about time to see how vulnerable Balder really is. Andrea," she looked back up at Jaruwalski.
"Yes, Your Grace?"
"Activate the Mistletoe platforms."
* * *
"What the-?"
Commander MacNaughton stiffened in consternation.
"Admiral Giovanni! We've got-"
Giovanni was still turning towards her display when the explosions began.
* * *
The Havenite tracking crews had become accustomed to the fact that they simply couldn't localize and destroy the highly stealthy Manticoran reconnaissance platforms used to scout their star systems. It was galling, but true. And so, aside from a certain deep-seated irritation, they'd actually paid relatively little attention to the long-endurance Ghost Rider reconnaissance drones the Manticorans had distributed throughout the inner system of Lovat.
Which was unfortunate.
Sonja Hemphill had personally chosen the name "Mistletoe" in honor of the dart which had killed the god Balder in Norse mythology, and the name proved apt.
* * *
"Where the hell are they coming from?" Giovanni demanded.
"I don't know, Ma'am!" MacNaughton replied, his voice as anguished as his expression as the Manticoran laser heads ripped into the Moriarty platforms. Not just one of the platforms; all three of them. The stealth and dispersion which were supposed to have protected them obviously hadn't, he thought, and closed his eyes for a moment as the relentless avalanche of fire blew them apart.
Alessandra Giovanni's face was white with shock. With the Moriarty platforms gone, she had nothing that could control missile salvos of the size needed to batter down Manticoran missile defenses. And given what the Manties had already done to Admiral Giscard's forces, it was painfully obvious her own anti-missile defenses were going to be at best marginally effective.
"The recon platforms!" MacNaughton said suddenly. "The bastards put laser heads on their goddamned recon platforms!"
Giovanni blinked, then shook her head and looked sharply at MacNaughton. He was right, she realized. It was the only explanation.
"But how did they find Moriarty?" she demanded. "Unless-"
"Unless what, Ma'am?" MacNaughton asked when she broke off suddenly.
"Suarez," she said sharply. "That's what Suarez was all about! They figured out what happened to them at Solon, and they used their EW drones to trick us into activating the Moriarty net at Suarez after they'd already planted their recon platforms deep enough in-system to see them. They had complete, detailed fingerprints on what they were looking for!"
"And then they mixed in armed recon drones to kill them after they found them," MacNaughton said through clenched teeth.
"That's exactly what they did," Giovanni agreed harshly. "Damn! They can't have the acceleration to be very effective against moving targets at any sort of range, but against fixed targets, especially when the attack birds know exactly what to look for...."
"Commander MacNaughton!" a rating called, and MacNaughton whipped back to his own displays. His shoulders went absolutely rigid for a moment, then slumped, and he looked back at Giovanni.
"Not just Moriarty, Ma'am," he grated. "It looks like we're going to have to start deploying the system defense pods further apart. They just took out three-quarters of the Beta echelon and almost that many of the Delta birds."
"How?" Giovanni asked flatly.
"More of their damned recon platforms. It had to be. They got old-fashioned nukes-the yields are somewhere in the five hundred megaton range-close enough to the pods to take them out with proximity explosions."
Giovanni nodded silently. Of course. If you could put laser heads on the things, then why not regular nukes? Not that they'd really had to. Given the accuracy they'd just shown against Giscard, they could take the pods out with proximity-armed MDM launches from beyond any range at which she could possibly expect to score hits in return.
"Admiral Giovanni," a shaken communications officer said, "Admiral Trask is asking for you."
Alessandra Giovanni glanced once more at the plot where the heart and mind of her defenses had just been annihilated, then drew a deep breath. Of course Trask wanted to speak to her. His obsolescent superdreadnoughts were going to be little more than targets for Harrington's SD(P)s, and Giovanni wasn't optimistic about her LACs' chance to get through Harrington's defensive fire and damned Katanas without the support of massed attacks from the system defense missile pods.
Which meant that if she committed Admiral Wentworth Trask's ships, he and all of his people were going to die..
* * *
"According to the standard recon platforms, we just took out all three of their control stations, Your Grace!" Jaruwalski announced jubilantly.
"Very good, Andrea. In that case, we'll proceed with the Alpha plan. Let's whittle their deployed pods down as far as we can before we enter their envelope."
"Aye, aye, Your Grace."
Honor nodded and turned back to her plot, hoping that whoever was in command over there would realize how helpless her defensive starships were and surrender before she had to kill them all.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
"How bad is it?" Eloise Pritchart asked flatly.
Thomas Theisman looked at her for a moment before he replied.
She looked... broken, he thought. Not in spirit, not in her determination to meet her responsibilities. But if those remained intact, something else, deep inside was a bleeding wound, and his own heart ached in sympathy. She wasn't just his President. She was his friend, just as Javier had, been and Javier's death, after all he and she been through, all they'd faced and survived under the Committee of Public Safety, was a bitter, bitter blow.
She returned his gaze across her desk, her eyes as flat and lifeless as her voice, and he knew she knew what he was thinking. But she said nothing more. She simply waited, motionless.
"It's very bad," he said finally. "Lovat, and all the LACs, support ships, and munitions we were building there, are simply gone. Harrington took them all out. Not to mention destroying thirty-two podnaughts, four CLACs, all twenty-four of Admiral Trask's older
superdreadnoughts, and something like ten thousand LACs. I can't even begin to compute the straight economic cost. Rachel's people are still in a state of shock just looking at the preliminary numbers, but I think you can safely assume that they just at least doubled the total economic and industrial cost of all their previous raids combined." He shook his head." Compared to this, what we did to Zanzibar was a love tap."
Pritchart's face had tightened with fresh pain as the litany of destruction rolled out.
"Fortunately, the loss of life was much lower than it might have been," Theisman continued. "Admiral Giovanni had the sense to order Trask to stand down his superdreadnoughts when Harrington started punching out her system defense missile pods with proximity warheads. He scuttled them himself, to prevent their capture, but all of his people got off alive first. We lost more of the LAC crews. They had to at least try, and no one can fault Giovanni for thinking there ought to have been enough of them to let them swarm Harrington's lead task force. Except that every single one of the LACs covering that task force was a Katana. Combined with their new counter-missiles and whatever they used on our wallers, they massacred our Cimeterres. Even the new Alpha birds."