Shadow of Victory

by David Weber

  “Sometimes it’s really as simple as it looks, Sir,” Vice-Admiral Yountz said, joining the conversation. “I admit it’s usually better to assume it isn’t, but it could be he really is just charging in without thinking it through.”

  “That, unfortunately, sounds more like our friends in Battle Fleet than the Manties,” Tamaguchi observed acidly. “And from how many of these oversized heavy cruisers we’re seeing, the damned things are obviously their conceptual equivalent of our battlecruisers—‘ships of force,’ with lots of firepower for their size, sent out to find hot spots and deal with them. They aren’t likely to hand those over to just anybody any more than we would, and the Manties have a lot of experienced combat commanders to choose from. So this fellow may be young, he may be wrong, and he may be making a serious mistake, but one thing he isn’t is stupid. And if he knows anything about the Cataphracts’ range, he also knows he’s coming into our reach. Why would a terrier—even a really nasty terrier—come into reach of a Great Dane?”

  “Well, if he doesn’t think he’s going to be able to take us with missiles, why not just run the hell away in the first place?” Yountz asked reasonably.

  “A bluff?” Levine didn’t sound like he put much stock in his own suggestion, but he shrugged when his superiors looked at him. “If he thinks we’re terrified of his missile advantage, maybe he hopes we’ll break and run and leave him the system without a fight.”

  He had not, Tamaguchi noted, suggested that Tremaine hoped BatCruRon 720 simply wouldn’t stop running. Tactful of him.

  “He may’ve hoped that initially, but it must be pretty clear by now that we aren’t going to,” Yountz pointed out, and Levine nodded.

  “That’s true, Sir. But he’s showing a big enough acceleration advantage that he can still break back and avoid us. If he did that any time in the next—” the ops officer glanced at a display “—in the next thirty-six minutes, he’d never come within thirty million kilometers of us.”

  Yountz frowned, and Tamaguchi didn’t blame him, because Levine’s logic was impeccable. Of course, if Tremaine didn’t break off in Levine’s time window, the range would fall to 8.9 light-minutes, still vastly out of range, but with a closing velocity of 22,502 KPS. Even if Tremaine suddenly decided engaging was a bad idea at that point, Sierra One’s current acceleration couldn’t overcome that differential without letting Tamaguchi close to within 30,000,000 kilometers. On the other hand, Tamaguchi reminded himself, the Manties almost certainly had at least some acceleration in reserve—he definitely wouldn’t have shown the other side all he had—so it was probable Tremaine could continue to close a little longer than that and still avoid action.

  And then, of course, there was the other side of Levine’s logic. If Tremaine didn’t break off within the next thirty-six minutes, BatCruRon wouldn’t be able to avoid Sierra One, either.

  It was an uncomfortable thought, but Tamaguchi had accepted it from the moment he turned back. And whatever anyone else might think, he hadn’t reversed course for fear of the career repercussions if he’d “run away” from such a “vastly inferior” force. He knew those would have happened, but he’d cared one hell of a lot less about that than he had about keeping the men and women under his command alive…something Solarian admirals hadn’t been managing too well, lately. Nor was he especially interested in securing the Włocławek System—not now that he knew the Manties truly had been involved in its unrest. Getting that confirmation home would be more valuable than adding one more Verge system to Frontier Security’s collection, yet even that was secondary, for Winslet Tamaguchi was no accountant, no credit-cruncher fretting over cash flows and budgets. No, he sought a different sort of information.

  However much it galled him to admit it, Manticore had earned the right to the infuriating sense of superiority officers like this prick Tremaine radiated. And—even more galling admission—the SLN’s confidence in the inevitability of its tactical and technological superiority had betrayed the League into one disaster after another. But Solarians weren’t the only ones who could be betrayed into arrogance by overconfidence, and despite what he’d just said to Yountz, Tremaine was obviously young. He might really be as good as he thought he was…but he might not be, too.

  And information lag cuts both ways, Tamaguchi reminded himself. He’s one hell of a long way from home, and whatever the Manties may’ve learned from anything they captured from Filareta, Tremaine may not’ve gotten the word yet. That could explain a lot. If I were him, and if I didn’t know what the Cataphract can do, I’d damned well get as close to the edge of my opponent’s envelope as I could, too, to maximize my fire control solutions while still staying just out of his reach.

  He smiled thinly at that thought. It was speculative as hell, and he knew it, but to paraphrase an ancient wet-navy admiral of Old Terra, in a space battle, something had to be left to chance. Warships that couldn’t—or wouldn’t—engage the enemy might as well not exist…and some things were worth taking quite a lot of chances to obtain.

  To the best of his knowledge, this was the first head-on engagement in which an SLN force with a significant tonnage advantage could be certain there were no additional ships hidden in ambush, no missile pods deployed in orbit. And as he’d suggested to Yountz, that made it the best opportunity yet for the Solarian League to actually evaluate Manticore’s war-fighting technology. To nail down hard sensor reports on their missiles, on their stealth and electronic warfare capabilities…and this time get that information home.

  It was always possible, Tamaguchi thought grimly, that Captain Tremaine did have the capacity to defeat his much heavier and larger force. He couldn’t really bring himself to believe it, not on any sort of an emotional level, but he’d faced the possibility of his battlecruisers’ total destruction at least intellectually.

  More probably, his squadron was about to be hurt far more badly than he believed it could be, but not so badly as Tremaine thought it would be, and that was entirely acceptable—not desirable, but acceptable under the circumstances. He was prepared to lose virtually his entire force to get even a single ship home with the data he sought. So far, the Manties had been given ample opportunity to examine Solarian technology, to evaluate Solarian defensive and offensive systems in action. The SLN needed that same look into Manticoran capabilities, and it needed it now—quickly—without the delays inherent in any bloodless way of getting it. Without it, it was impossible to formulate any meaningful doctrine or strategy, and whether it wanted to admit it or not, the Navy desperately needed a new doctrine and strategy.

  Winslet Tamaguchi was no berserker. Nor, whatever certain of his far distant ancestors might have been, was there any kamikaze in his makeup. But he was quite prepared to die facing his star nation’s enemies if that could provide the window into its foes’ weapons that might ultimately give it victory.

  Chapter Seventy-Two

  “Coming up on Point Fearless, Sir,” Lieutenant Dreyfus announced, and Scotty Tremaine nodded.

  “Thank you, Elspeth,” he said, then looked at the display which connected him to Alistair McKeon’s bridge. “Time to turn around, Mary-Lynne. They’re deep enough in they can’t outrun us to either hyper limit now. I just hope,” he added piously, “that they realize in the end this is all for their own good.”

  “Aye, aye, Sir,” Mary-Lynne Selleck, his flag captain, acknowledged with a broad smile. “I’m sure they will—realize what nice people we are, I mean…eventually,” she added, and Tremaine sat back in his command chair with a much thinner smile of his own.

  “What do you figure Tamaguchi’s going to do now, Sir,” Lieutenant Commander Golbatsi asked quietly.

  “Well, that’s an interesting question,” Tremaine replied. “At the moment, I’m pretty sure he’s busy trying to figure out what the hell we think we’re doing. And I’m equally sure he’s going to have some uncomplimentary things to say about us when he finds out.”

  * * *

  “Well, he’s no Admi
ral Giovanni, Sir,” Vice-Admiral Yountz observed as he watched the chronometer, and Tamaguchi snorted. Ysidro Giovanni, victor of the Eridani Campaign, was regarded as the best tactician the Solarian League Navy had ever produced. He’d never failed in a single operational assignment, and he’d been almost as good a teacher as he was tactician and strategist. It was little wonder he’d become the SLN’s institutional pattern of operational excellence.

  It’s a pity Battle Fleet’s fallen on such sad times since, he reflected, briefly contemplating what Giovanni would have had to say to officers with names like Byng and Crandall. He doubted it would have been pretty, but Yountz had a point about Tremaine.

  Sierra One had passed the thirty-six-minute mark three minutes ago, with no sign of breaking off. The range was still increasing—in fact, it was up to 215,365,000 kilometers—but it was going to start decreasing…now.

  The range readout froze, then began to edge downward, and he smiled to himself as the plot shifted. Sierra One no longer had the acceleration to keep him out of range. Unless, he conscientiously reminded himself it still had a lot of accel in reserve. But their closing velocity was up to 24,687 KPS, and—

  “Sierra One’s reversed acceleration, Sir!” Levine announced.

  Tamaguchi kept his face impassive as he watched the numbers on the display change.

  The range continued to fall, and at their current accelerations, BatCruRon 720 would still get into range—closer range—of Sierra One. But Tremaine’s timing certainly seemed to support the notion that Manticore’s missiles were indeed capable of thirty million kilometers. At their present accelerations, closing velocity would be down to only 11,119 KPS when they reached that range. But that would take over another hour, now…and it would be impossible for Tamaguchi to cross a 60,000,000-kilometer range basket and get out its farther side. They’d still overfly one another, but unless he destroyed Sierra One in passing, any of its survivors could hold him under fire all the rest of the way back across the system.

  Nothing you hadn’t already counted on, he reminded himself. And this could give Tremaine the worst of all worlds. You’ve got to have more magazine capacity than him, it’ll take ninety minutes for velocities to equalize, and you’ll be within less than a hundred thousand klicks when that happens—if that happens. And if you can get inside four or five million kilometers, eight battlecruisers should damned well kick the shit out of any six cruisers ever built!

  He told himself that firmly. He even knew it should be true, but he couldn’t quite convince himself it was true. And the timing—the decision to let him close at all, instead of turning and running early enough to prevent that—suggested at least one man was convinced it wasn’t.

  He only hoped Tremaine was wrong.

  * * *

  “Coming up on Point Nike, Sir,” Elspeth Dreyfus announced, and Scotty Tremaine straightened in his command chair.

  For the last hour and ten minutes, Alistair McKeon and her consorts had decelerated steadily as they approached Admiral Tamaguchi’s battlecruisers. Their velocity was now up to 7,187…directly away from Tamaguchi’s flagship. Of course, Tamaguchi’s velocity was up to 18,305 KPS, giving him an overtake of over 11,000 KPS, but he was also just over 30,000,000 kilometers astern. Given their current accelerations, he’d continue to gain slowly for the next hundred and sixteen minutes and actually overfly Tremaine by about eight million kilometers.

  Oh, yes, he reminded himself. Given “current accelerations.” However…

  He watched the time readout spin downward, then looked back at the com link to Alistair McKeon’s command deck.

  “Show him our next surprise, Mary-Lynne,” Prescott Tremaine said.

  “Aye, aye, Sir,” Captain Selleck replied, and turned to her astrogator. “Turn up the wick, Frannie,” she said.

  * * *

  “—getting good reads from the drones, Sir,” Apumbai Peng said, watching the data scroll across his tactical section’s displays. “Not as good as I’d like, in a lot of ways.” He shook his head. “I know Captain Levine would really love to get in closer, and those damned counter-missiles—not to mention their ability to even see our RDs clearly enough to target them at that range—say things I’d rather not hear about their missile defense. But we’ve still got hard reads on all of them, and their emission signatures are actually clearer than I’d’ve expected.”

  “And their drones?” Ephron Vangelis asked with just a hint of gentle malice, and Peng grimaced.

  “I know they’re out there, but trying to localize them isn’t a lot harder than bailing out the Pacific Ocean with a teacup,” he admitted. “I don’t think they’re getting inside a light-second or two, but I’d be lying if I said I could guarantee that, Sir.” HMS Triumphant’s tactical officer’s grimace turned into something much more like a scowl. “To be honest, that’s one reason I’m a little surprised their ships’ emissions are as clear as they are. If they can build that kind of stealth into their remote platforms, why aren’t their starships stealthier?”

  Vangelis nodded. He enjoyed needling the TO just a bit, but that was because Peng was one of the best tactical officers he’d ever had. He was smart, he was determined, and he wasn’t one of the idiots who persisted in rejecting the “impossible rumors” about Manty capabilities. In fact, he’d actively sought out every “rumor” he could get his hands on and inserted all of them into his worst-case analyses.

  “Could be as simple as older tech in the ships,” Captain Richardson suggested from Command Two, and Vangelis cocked an eyebrow at his XO’s com image. “Recon drones are a lot smaller and a lot cheaper than starships, Sir,” Richardson pointed out. “Building new generations of remotes is easier than building ships, and platforms are usually a hell of a lot less expensive—or time consuming—than upgrading existing ships!”

  Vangelis nodded. Every SLN officer knew about the huge numbers of hulls in the Reserve which—in theory—were ready for instant deployment…as soon as they were de-mothballed and technology that might be as much as a couple of T-centuries out of date was updated. Which shouldn’t take very long at all, should it? After all, how rapidly did naval technology change? Hadn’t the same basic design and combat philosophy applied for over a hundred and fifty T-years? Of course it had! And it was far cheaper to let the Reserve wait until it was needed than to be constantly fussing with incremental upgrades to ships you wouldn’t need anytime soon, anyway. Besides, Battle Feet wallers already in commission had outnumbered all existing fleets by a comfortable margin!

  Ephron Vangelis had had his doubts about certain of those comforting assumptions even before the Solarian League started figuring out just how much “updating” any ship expected to live in combat with a Manty was likely to need. Now he strongly suspected it would be both faster and cheaper to just build from scratch if they wanted effective (and, hopefully, survivable) ships in an era of Manty-driven missile ranges.

  Once we figure out how to build the damned things, that is, he thought grimly. Probably not something I need to be bringing up at the moment.

  “The only problem with that, Lance,” he said instead, “is that, according to Apumbai’s best estimate, these people appear to be from the Manties’ most recent classes. Seems to me they’d be likely to have the most recent generations of ECM and EW fitted.” He shook his head. “I’ve got a nasty feeling he’s onto something we aren’t going to like.”

  “At least we’re running good firing solutions, Sir,” Peng said. “Accuracy would really, really suck at this range, but at least our birds would go hunting for them on a first-name basis!”

  “That’s nice to know,” Vangelis said dryly. “Unfortunately, I can’t quite rid my mind of the suspicion that if we’re getting good targeting info on them, when we can’t get our drones any closer than we are, then they must be—”

  “Excuse me, Captain.”

  Vangelis’ expression showed his surprise as Peng’s assistant tactical officer interrupted him.

  “Yes
, Janice?” From some SLN captains, the question would have come out sharply, under the circumstances. From Vangelis, it was simply…crisp.

  “Sir, I’m sorry to interrupt,” Commander Rendova said, “but Sierra One’s acceleration’s just changed, and, well—”

  She pressed a button, throwing the new data onto Vangelis’ command chair display. The flag captain looked down at it, and his expression tightened.

  * * *

  “Admiral, they’ve gone to an accel of six-point-four-one KPS squared,” Captain Levine said quietly, and Tamaguchi’s jaw clenched.

  Six-point-four-one KPS²? A ship the size of that cruiser could pull better than six hundred and fifty gravities of acceleration?

  He remembered his earlier thoughts, when Sierra One had increased to only 5.9 KPS2. That heavy cruiser back there didn’t have a seventeen percent advantage; it had at least a thirty percent edge! And he had to assume Tremaine was still maintaining at least some margin. This was clearly a preplanned maneuver, and he could have tweaked his acceleration rate earlier and used a smaller increase, pushed his compensator limit less severely, if he’d wanted to. So the numbers were almost certainly worse even than that!

  My God. That implies a zero-margin acceleration that’s at least seven hundred gravities, maybe even seven-twenty, if he’s gone to a ten percent margin. That’s damned near a forty-five percent advantage!

  “Projections, Astro?” He felt vaguely surprised by how normal his voice sounded.

  “Sir, if they can sustain this acceleration,” Captain Shreeyash sounded shaken, despite the qualifier, “velocities will merge at two-niner-point-four thousand kilometers in eighty-nine minutes.” She looked up at him. “From that point, we’ll lose ground at just over two-point-one KPS squared.”

  “He timed it well,” Tamaguchi observed, “but he’s still in trouble.”