by David Weber
No, he told himself. There really isn't any question at all, is there? You can't let those missile pods get any closer to Sphinx than you can help. But, Jesus-over three hundred ships?
"Does Tracking have a breakdown yet, Madelyn?" he asked, turning to his operations officer.
"It's just coming in now, Sir," Captain Madelyn Gwynett told him. She watched the information come up on her display, and he saw her shoulders tighten.
"Tracking makes it two hundred and forty superdreadnoughts, Sir. At this time, it looks like they're all pod-layers, but we're trying to get drones in closer to confirm that. They've also got what looks like sixteen CLACs and a screen of roughly ninety cruisers and lighter units, as well."
"Thank you, Madelyn."
D'Orville was pleased, in a distant sort of way, by how calm he sounded, but he understood why Gwynett's shoulders had stiffened. Home Fleet contained forty-two SD(P)s and forty-eight older superdreadnoughts. He was outnumbered by better than two and a half-to-one in capital ships, but the ratio was almost six-to-one in SD(P)s. He had twelve pod-laying battlecruisers, as well, but they'd be spit on a griddle against superdreadnoughts.
Still, he told himself as firmly as possible, the situation wasn't quite as bad as the sheer numbers suggested. The new tractor-equipped "flat-pack" missile pods would allow each of his older superdreadnoughts to "tow" almost six hundred pods inside their wedges, glued to their hulls like high-tech limpets. That was a hundred and twenty percent of a Medusa-class's internal pod loadout, and the ships were already loading up with them. Unfortunately, they didn't have the fire control to manage salvos as dense as a Medusa could throw. Worse, they'd have to flush the majority of their pods early in order to clear the sensor and firing arcs of their point defense and its fire control arrays. So he was going to have to use them at the longest range, where their accuracy was going to be lowest.
"Katenka," he said to Lieutenant Commander Lazarevna "get me Admiral Caparelli."
"Aye, aye, Sir."
Caparelli appeared on D'Orville's com display almost instantly.
"Sebastian," he said, his voice level but his expression taut.
"Tom." D'Orville nodded back, thinking about how many times they'd greeted one another exactly the same way before... and wondering if they'd ever do it again.
"I think I've got to go out to meet them," D'Orville continued.
"If you do, you lose the inner-system pods," Caparelli countered. "You'd have to take them on without any support, and they've got a huge edge in numbers. You'll lose everything you've got if you meet them head on."
"And if I don't take them head-to-head, I let them into range of the planet," D'Orville countered harshly.
"So far, they've stayed away from anything which might look like a violation of the Eridani Edict," Caparelli pointed out.
"And so far they haven't invaded our home system, either," D'Orville shot back. The Manticoran tradition was that the Admiralty did not second guess a fleet CO when battle threatened-not even Home Fleet's commander. What D'Orville did with his fleet was his decision. Admiralty House might advise, might provide additional intelligence or suggest tactics, but the decision was his, and it wasn't like Thomas Caparelli to try to change that.
But D'Orville wasn't really surprised by Caparelli's reluctance to admit what he knew as well as D'Orville did had to happen. The First Space Lord knew too many of the men and women aboard D'Orville's ships... and he couldn't join them. He would be safely back on Manticore when the hammer came down on Home Fleet, and Sebastian D'Orville knew Caparelli too well, knew exactly what the other admiral was feeling, the miracle he wanted to find. But there were no miracles, not today, and so D'Orville shook his head.
"No, Tom," he said almost gently. "I'd like to hang back-believe me, I would. But we can't count on continued restraint where their targeting's concerned. This one is for all the marbles. They've got thirty squadrons of SD(P)s-the equivalent of forty of our squadrons, with over a million people aboard them-coming at us, right into the heart of our defenses. That means they're ready for massive losses. I don't think we can expect them to take that kind of punishment without handing out whatever they can in return, and even if they never intentionally fire a single shot at the planet, think about how damned inaccurate end-of-run MDMs are. I can't let hundreds of those things go flying around this close to Sphinx."
"I know." Caparelli closed his eyes for a moment, then inhaled deeply and opened them once more.
"I've ordered the Case Zulu message transmitted to all commands," he said, his voice more clipped, his dread of what was to come cloaked in reflex professionalism. "Theodosia can start responding from Trevor's Star in about fifteen minutes, but most of Eighth Fleet is off the terminus, on maneuvers. I don't know how quickly it can get back there, but I'm guessing it'll take at least a couple of hours just for Duchess Harrington to get to the terminus. I'm recalling Jessup Blaine's squadrons from the Lynx Terminus, as well, but our best estimate on his current response time is even longer than Eighth Fleet's."
"And even Theodosia can't do it in a mass transit," D'Orville said grimly. "She's going to have to do it one ship at a time, the same way Hamish did it when the bastards hit Basilisk, because we're going to need everything she's got."
Kuzak could have put almost thirty superdreadnoughts through the Junction in a single mass transit, but the destabilizing effect would have locked down the Trevor's Star-Manticore route for almost seventeen hours. Even in a sequenced transit, each ship of the wall would close the route for almost two minutes before the next in the queue could use it.
"You're right," Caparelli agreed. "Allowing for her screening units, she's going to need almost two hours just to make transit."
"By which time these people will be about an hour out from Sphinx, and she can't possibly catch them," D'Orville said.
"We're scrambling every LAC we've got," Caparelli said. "We should be able to get five or six thousand of them to you by the time you engage."
"That will help-a lot," D'Orville said. "But they've got sixteen carriers with them. That gives them over three thousand of their own."
"I know." Caparelli looked out of the display, his eyes and face grim. "All you can do is the best you can do, Sebastian. We'll do whatever we can to support you, but it isn't going to be much."
"Who would have thought they'd throw something this size at us?" D'Orville asked almost whimsically.
"Nobody on the Strategy Board, that's for sure." Caparelli's voice was briefly saw-edged with bitter self-reproach, as if there were some way he could have kept this nightmare from coming. Then he got control of it again. "Actually, I suspect Harrington's the only one who would have believed they might throw the dice this way. And I honestly don't think even she would have expected them to."
"Well, they're here now, and my nodes are coming up. It looks like we're going to be pretty busy in a little while, Tom. Clear."
* * *
"Your Grace!"
Honor stepped back from her sparring match with Clifford McGraw and looked up in astonishment as one of Major Lorenzetti's Marines came skidding through the gymnasium hatch. Spencer Hawke and Joshua Atkins wheeled towards the sudden, unexpected arrival, hands flashing to their pulsers, and she spat out her mouth protector and threw up her own hand.
"No threat!" she snapped.
Hawke continued his draw, but his pulser stayed pointed at the deck. He didn't even look at her; his attention was locked on the Marine, who, Honor knew, didn't begin to realize how close he'd just come to being shot. In fact, probably the only thing that had saved him was her armsmen's faith in her and Nimitz's ability to sense what was going on inside someone else.
But not even that faith was going to get Hawke's sidearm back into its holster until he knew positively what was happening.
At the moment, however, that was a completely secondary concern for Honor beside the consternation and turmoil boiling inside the Marine.
"Yes, Corporal... Thacksto
n?" she said, reading the Marine's name off of his nameplate and deliberately pitching her voice into the most soothing register she could. "What is it?"
"Your Grace-" Thackston stopped and shook himself. "Beg pardon, Your Grace," he said after a moment, his voice under tight control. "Captain Cardones' compliments," he touched the communicator at his belt as if to physically indicate where Cardones' message had come from, "and we've just received a Case Zulu from the Admiralty."
Honor jerked fully upright. She couldn't have heard him correctly! But even as she told herself that, her memory flashed back to another day, aboard another ship. The last time someone had transmitted the code phrase "Case Zulu." In the Royal Manticoran Navy, those two words had only one meaning: "invasion imminent."
"Thank you, Corporal," she said, her voice crisp yet calm enough the Marine looked at her in something very like disbelief. She nodded to him, then wheeled to Hawke and Atkins while Nimitz came bounding across the gym towards her.
"Spencer, get on the com. Find Commodore Brigham. Tell her we're in the gymnasium, and that I'll see the staff on Flag Bridge in five minutes."
"Yes, My Lady!" Hawke reholstered his pulser with one hand and reached for his communicator with the other, and Honor opened her arms as Nimitz leapt into them, then turned to Atkins.
"Joshua, com Mac. Tell him I'll need my skinsuit and Nimitz's on Flag Bridge as soon as possible."
"Yes, My Lady!"
"Clifford," she said over her shoulder to her third armsman as she started for the hatch, "just grab your gunbelt. You can worry about the rest of your uniform later."
"Yes, My Lady!"
Sergeant McGraw snatched up his weapons belt and buckled it over his own gi.
Fifteen seconds after Corporal Barnaby Thackston, RMMC, had delivered Rafe Cardones' message, Admiral Lady Dame Honor Alexander-Harrington was headed purposefully for the lifts with her armsmen jog trotting to match her long-legged strides.
* * *
"It seems they've made up their minds, Sir," Commander Frazier Adamson observed, watching the icons of the Manticoran Home Fleet.
"It's not as if we've left them a lot of options," Lester Tourville said without looking at his operations officer.
Adamson was a competent tactician, an efficient organizer, and a loyal subordinate. He was also a pretty fair pinochle player, and Tourville liked him quite a lot, under normal circumstances. But outside his area of professional interest, the commander had about as much imagination as a wooden post. It wasn't that he was a shallow person, or insensitive in his personal relationships. It was simply that it would never have occurred to him to put himself inside the minds and emotions of the people aboard the ships accelerating away from Sphinx to meet Second Fleet.
At the moment, Lester Tourville, who was cursed with entirely too much imagination, bitterly envied that inner blind spot.
"They can't feel confident we won't bombard the planetary orbitals-or even the planet itself-from long range," he continued. "So they're going to come to meet us, at least try to thin us down to something the fixed defenses can handle before we hit them."
"Yes, Sir," Adamson said. "That's what I meant."
He seemed surprised by his admiral's restatement of the obvious, and Tourville made himself smile.
"I know it was, Frazier. I know it was."
He patted the ops officer on the shoulder and walked a couple of paces closer to the main tactical display. He stood gazing into it until he sensed a human presence at his side and looked down to see Captain DeLaney standing there.
"Frazier means well, Boss," his shorter chief of staff said quietly.
"I know he does." Tourville smiled again, more naturally, but it was a sad smile, all the same. One only those he knew and trusted were ever allowed to see, since it accorded so poorly with his "cowboy" persona.
"It's just that he only sees them as targets," Tourville continued, equally quietly. "Right now, I wish I did, too. But I don't. I know exactly what they're thinking over there, but they're going to come out to meet us, anyway."
"Like you said, Boss," DeLaney's smile was a mirror of his own, "we didn't leave them much choice, did we?"
* * *
"Forget the screen!" Admiral Theodosia Kuzak snapped. "We can cut fifteen minutes off our total transit time if we leave them behind, and it's not like cruisers and destroyers are going to make any difference, is it?"
"No, Ma'am," Captain Gerald Smithson, her chief of staff replied. He was a tall, spare-looking man, his dark hair and complexion a stark contrast to Kuzak's red-hair and fair skin, and he seemed to be coming back on balance after the shock of the Admiralty's Case Zulu.
"Has Astro Control responded?" Kuzak demanded, wheeling around to Lieutenant Franklin Bradshaw, her communications officer.
"Yes, Ma'am," Bradshaw said. "As a matter of fact, Admiral Grimm's courier boat just came back though from the Manticore end. She'd already started clearing the Junction even before she sent it through the first time. Now she's working out the best dispositions for our units to help screen the arrival terminus from Peep drones. And she's also moving tugs to the inbound nexus in case any of our units require assistance."
"A nice thought," Kuzak said with a mirthless smile, "but if any of our wallers bump, tugs aren't going to be much help."
"Take what we can get, Ma'am," Smithson said with graveyard humor, and Kuzak snorted a harsh chuckle.
"Actually, Ma'am," Smithson continued in a low-pitched voice, "I've just had a rather nasty thought. What if this isn't their only fleet? What if they've got another one waiting to hit Trevor's Star as soon as we pull out for Manticore?"
"The same thought occurred to me," Kuzak replied, equally quietly. "Unfortunately, there's not a lot we can do about it, if they do. We've got to hold the home system. If they punch out Hephaestus and Vulcan, take out the dispersed yards, it'll be a thousand times worse than what happened at Grendelsbane. I hate to say it, but if it's a choice between San Martin and Sphinx or Manticore, San Martin loses."
"At least the system defenses are better than they were when the shooting started," Smithson said.
"They are. But that's another reason we can't afford to lock down the Junction with a mass transit. If they do have something like that in mind, we've got to be able to get back as quickly as we left."
"What about Duchess Harrington?" Smithson asked. "She's too far out to rendezvous with us before we make transit. Should we ask her to stay behind and mind the store while were gone?"
"I wish we could, but I we'll have to see what happens with Home Fleet. And of course, I can't give her direct orders, since-"
"Excuse me, Ma'am. You have a com request from Duchess Harrington," Bradshaw interrupted suddenly.
"Throw it to Jerry's display," Kuzak said, bending over the chief of staff's console rather than waste time walking back to her own. An instant later, Smithson's flatscreen lit with the image of Eighth Fleet's commander.
Harrington had obviously been as surprised as everyone else, Kuzak thought, noting the gi she hadn't burned up time changing out of.
"Admiral Harrington," she said with a choppy nod, and Honor nodded back.
"Admiral Kuzak," she replied, then continued, getting straight to business. "I assume you're already planning an immediate transit to Manticore with Third Fleet. I'm sending my battlecruisers ahead, but it's going to take most of my units another two hours-plus to reach the terminus. With your permission, I'll temporarily assign Admiral McKeon's battle squadron and Admiral Truman's carriers to you."
"Thank you, Admiral," Kuzak said very, very sincerely.
"The sooner they get there, the better," Honor replied. "And please remember that three of Alistair's superdreadnoughts are Apollo-capable. I don't know how much difference it's going to make, but-"
She shrugged, and Kuzak nodded grimly.
"I'll remember, Your Grace. I only wish I had more of them."
"I'll bring the rest through as quickly as I can," Honor pro
mised.
"And I'll try to make sure there's still a Star Kingdom when you do," Kuzak replied.
* * *
"Well, Sir," Commander Zucker said, "the good news is that they don't seem to be deploying anything but LACs to cover the Junction. The bad news is that they've got a hell of a lot of them."
"So I see," Oliver Diamato murmured. Like Zucker, he was delighted he wasn't already having to play tag with hordes of Manty battlecruisers or-worse!-those damned MDM-armed heavy cruisers he'd heard so much about from NavInt since that business at Monica. But the shoals of LAC impeller signatures sweeping outward from the Junction were building a solid wall of interference which made it almost impossible for his shipboard sensors to see a damned thing, even at this piddling little range. The density of that LAC shell also augured poorly for the survival of his recon drones when they finally got close enough for a look of their own.