Shadow of Victory

by David Weber

  He’d hoped Tremaine had done the same thing—that the massive salvo already streaking towards him had represented all the pods available to Sierra One—but it appeared he’d been wrong. Either that, or Manty warships mounted about twenty more tubes per ton—tubes big enough to launch missiles with that kind of performance—than any Solarian ship did!

  “Well,” he said to Yountz, never taking his attention from the tactical display, “at least it would appear they didn’t have a lot more birds in reser—”

  “Third launch!”

  Tamaguchi’s eyes snapped to the ops officer, and Levine looked up at him.

  “Sir, it’s another seventy-two-bird launch and both of them are pulling ninety-two thousand gravs acceleration.”

  He sounded puzzled, and well he should, Tamaguchi reflected. Why fire multiple, smaller salvos rather than clump them into another single, massive pulse, like Sierra One’s first salvo, to swamp BatCruRon 720’s defenses? And at that acceleration they couldn’t possibly have the range to reach Tamaguchi’s ships, anyway…could they?

  For just a moment, the possibility that they truly could terrified Winslet Tamaguchi, but then he drew a deep breath and shook off his sudden, almost superstitious dread.

  No, of course they couldn’t! If their impellers had that kind of endurance, the first wave would’ve been fired at far higher acceleration! But in that case…?

  It seems like a stupid move, he thought, turning back to the tactical display. His first-wave missiles’ second stages would activate in less than twenty seconds now, and he felt himself tightening internally. Yet his brain continued to worry at it. Yes, it seems like a stupid move, but Tremaine hasn’t done anything else stupid all afternoon! So why should he launch in a pattern that—

  He jerked upright in his command chair as he found out why.

  * * *

  One hundred fifty seconds and 10,149,210 kilometers after launch, the Mark 23 Ds of Scotty Tremaine’s “Barricade launch” adjusted their courses with finicky precision. One might have wondered why they were altering trajectory when they were still well over eighteen million kilometers—and three and a half minutes’ flight time, even at that acceleration—short of their targets. But that would have been because their targets weren’t what one might have expected.

  They spread out, taking station on one another in response to Adam Golbatsi’s commands. Those commands were thirty-four seconds old by the time the missiles received them, but it didn’t really matter. Their targets had been obligingly stacked in a (relatively) small volume of space, they couldn’t change course, and the Ghost Rider platforms midway between Alistair McKeon and BatCruRon 720 had plotted their vectors very, very carefully at the moment their first stage impellers burned out.

  Those Mark 23s knew exactly where to find their prey.

  The seventy-two missiles of Tremaine’s “Barricade” drove directly through the heart of Tamaguchi’s first five hundred-missile salvo. Although a Mark 23’s impeller wedge was bigger than any standard missile’s, it remained considerably smaller than the outsized wedges counter-missiles used to sweep incoming fire out of existence.

  Against non-evading targets unprotected by any wedges of their own, however, it worked just fine.

  * * *

  “Those bastards!” Apumbai Peng blurted.

  Captain Vangelis looked up from his com link to Flag Deck at his tactical officer’s totally uncharacteristic outburst. He started to demand an explanation, but Peng had twisted around to face him before he got his mouth fully open.

  “Sir,” he told Tamaguchi’s flag captain, his voice tight and strained, “I don’t know how many of them they got, but they just killed a lot of our initial launch.”

  “What?” Vangelis frowned. Maximum counter-missile range was no more than three million kilometers—four million, tops—and their birds were still more than eleven million from Sierra One!

  “We’ll know how many they got in another—” Peng flicked a glance at a time display “—eleven seconds, but I already know they got a lot.”

  “What you talking about?” Vangelis demanded.

  “They took advantage of the ballistic phase,” Peng said, his own eyes back on the tactical plot. “They must’ve used recon platforms to get solid reads on them when the first stages shut down, and—”

  He broke off as the plot was suddenly dotted with icons which hadn’t been there the moment before. At such extended ranges, active sensors were useless, and passive sensors were limited to light-speed. But impeller signatures produced a ripple along hyper-space’s alpha wall that was effectively faster than light, and that plot should have been liberally dusted with small, powerful impeller signatures as BatCruRon 720’s first launch activated its second-stage drives.

  It wasn’t. Instead of hundreds, there were simply scores of them.

  “They knew where they were, Sir,” Peng said bitterly. “And we used a standard dispersal pattern.”

  The ops officer’s mouth twisted in disgust, directed at himself, not anyone else, and Vangelis’ jaw tightened. SOP for the SLN—and every other Navy, for that matter—had always kept shipkillers in close proximity, relatively speaking, in order to minimize the communication problems. The available window for any ship’s broadside com arrays was sharply constricted by the roof and floor of its wedge, which extended for dozens of kilometers on either side of even the smallest warship. That meant keeping missiles in a small enough volume—the smallest wedge fratricide allowed, really—while their mother ships monitored their telemetry and updated their attack instructions. If they strayed much wider than that, they moved out of the launching ship’s transmission window.

  Attack missiles would normally be preprogrammed to spread wider as they approached their final attack runs, but even that degree of dispersal was often limited. Maximum tactical effectiveness required them to be brought in on their target as close to simultaneously as possible and to bring their lasers to bear through the narrow aperture of that target’s sidewalls, and the extent to which they could be spread and then maneuvered into position to accomplish those two ends depended entirely on how much time was left on their drives for the final attack run. Indeed, in some instances, where particularly heavy counter-missile fire was anticipated, doctrine actually called for bringing them in “in trail,” stacking them one behind the next, in lines two or even three deep on exactly the same trajectory, like beads on a string. That deliberately sacrificed the lead missiles and accepted a shorter time window for the following missiles’ onboard sensors to directly acquire the target, but it also used the leaders’ impeller wedges to take out the counter-missiles which might otherwise have reached the trailers.

  And of course BatCruRon 720 had seen no reason to disperse their shipkillers during their ballistic phase, because no one could possibly have targeted them at that range, so—

  “Their second stages are programmed to light off at least six million klicks short of CM range,” the ops officer went on bitterly, completing Vangelis’ thoughts for him, “so there’d be plenty of time for them to disperse during their final attack runs. Only we forgot how frigging long the Manties’ burn times are…and no one’s ever used attack missiles as CMs. We couldn’t have done it even with their birds; there wouldn’t’ve been enough time to track, launch, and guide. But they must really have FTL capability with enough bandwidth for tactical control, or at least communication. Their frigging RDs tracked our birds and had the transmission speed to send their tracking data back in a tight enough window for them to feed it to their birds and launch. And it never even occurred to us that anyone might be able to do that. So we handed them a nice, tight target, and they just cut the crap right out of it with their shipkillers’ wedges!”

  Vangelis felt the blood draining out of his face, and the tac officer shook his head slowly, wearily, like a very old man.

  “It wasn’t very efficient,” he said. “From a cost effectiveness perspective, taking them out this way instead of using
standard CMs must’ve cost at least a hundred times as much for each kill, not to mention using up a slew of missiles they won’t have to use as shipkillers now. But it damned well worked, and the cost per kill’s going to come down, because they’re about to do the same thing to all our other launches. The computers say they only lost two of their own birds—must’ve been to direct collisions, since there wasn’t any wedge fratricide, although I’d hate to try to figure the odds of kinetic intercepts in that kind of volume—and they’re already reorienting. In fact, they’ve already passed through our second launch, and they’re bearing down on number three.”

  “And there’s a second and third wave coming behind this one,” Vangelis said grimly as his brain grappled with what had just happened.

  “Yes, Sir. They waited to be sure we wouldn’t have time to send any new commands to our birds before they interpenetrated. It means they got less of the first wave, but we can’t tell any of the others to evade before they’ve driven all three of their follow-on launches right through them. And if I were them, I’d have more of those frigging FTL platforms sitting out there tracking the survivors from each of our follow on waves so they can tweak the trajectories on their follow on waves.”

  “Shit,” Captain Ephron Vangelis, Solarian League Navy, said very quietly and precisely.

  * * *

  “Fire Plan Bravo,” Scotty Tremaine said.

  “Fire Plan Bravo, aye, Sir,” Lieutenant Commander Golbatsi acknowledged.

  “Wish we had Apollo, Sir,” Sir Horace Harkness remarked, never looking away from his own displays, as TG 10.2.9’s first Barricade launch slashed through the oncoming Cataphracts. “Be nice to be able to steer them into even better intercepts.”

  “Don’t be greedy,” Tremaine admonished. “What we’ve got is more than enough to piss the Sollies off.”

  “Yes, Sir. Guess it is.”

  * * *

  At least now I know why Tremaine’s been so goddamned willing to let me close the range…some, Tamaguchi thought bitterly.

  The Manties’ crystal-clear impeller and emission signatures had just become abruptly far less clear. They didn’t disappear—no EW in the galaxy could have managed that—but they were suddenly far, far weaker. And even as he watched enormously powerful—impossibly powerful—decoys came to life, duplicating the full-powered gravitic and electronic signatures of the warships which had deployed them. They might have been less effective against missiles which were still under shipboard control, but Tamaguchi’s missiles weren’t. They couldn’t be, at that range, and without that control their internal seekers were all too likely to lock up the strongest signature they could see…whether it was actually a warship or not.

  Only ninety-one of his first-wave missiles had survived the Manties’ long-range interception. And, somehow, he suspected that less than a hundred blind-fired missiles were going to be severely overmatched by their defenses.

  * * *

  Tamaguchi’s surviving shipkillers streaked towards TG 10.2.9 at an acceleration of 98,000 KPS² and a closing velocity that was already above 102,000 KPS. By the time they reached their targets, it would be well over 170,000 KPS…assuming they reached them.

  Given their velocity and acceleration, the effective launch range for the RMN’s Mark 31 counter-missile was in excess of six million kilometers. The first wave of CMs launched thirty-four seconds after the surviving Cataphracts’ second-stage impellers activated. The second launched ten seconds after that. The third launched ten seconds after that…and then, with four hundred and thirty-two Mark 31s headed down range in final acquisition, Tremaine’s entire force—aside from the LACs—rolled ship.

  Between them, his cruisers and destroyers mounted a total of one hundred and four counter-missile launchers backed up by a hundred and forty-eight laser clusters. That was far more defense than Tamaguchi had allowed for. His own ships mounted only sixty-nine percent more tubes—and fifty-four percent fewer laser clusters—on seven times TG 10.2.9’s tonnage. With Ginger Lewis’ detached LACs, Tremaine actually had only eight fewer launchers and better than three and a half times as many laser clusters.

  Of course, he’s got seven times the tonnage to absorb damage, too, Tremaine reflected. And if these are like the missiles Filareta had, they’ve got capital ship laserheads. We can’t take many hits from something that heavy.

  Fortunately, they wouldn’t have to.

  * * *

  Tamaguchi’s face was carved from stone as the preposterous—the equally preposterous, a little voice said in the back of his brain—waves of counter-missiles lashed out from the Manticoran ships.

  They have to be firing the things from both broadsides, he thought. That’s another thing we can’t do. Dubroskaya’s survivors said they could launch off-bore, but I didn’t really believe it. They must have an incredible redundancy in control links, though. Of course, that would make sense, given the kinds of missiles they and the Havenites must’ve been throwing back and forth out in their isolated little corner of the galaxy. He snorted in harsh self-reproach that was far more bitter than anything Commander Peng could possibly have felt. I suppose that’s another logical implication I should’ve taken into consideration.

  * * *

  BatCruRon 720’s Cataphracts encountered TG 10.2.9’s Lorelei platforms.

  Tremaine didn’t have many of them. They were a very new system, and they’d been produced in only limited numbers before the Yawata Strike destroyed the Star Empire’s military industrial base. Fortunately, Beowulf’s industry had proved fully capable of building them, once Manticore provided the specs, and the supply ships which had reached Montana in company with the Charles Ward had delivered a few hundred of them. More were in the pipeline behind them, though, and Admiral Culbertson had dipped deep into his initial supply to send seventy-five with each of his task groups on the theory that he’d soon be receiving replacements from home.

  Adam Golbatsi had deployed only twelve of them, but the fusion-powered platforms were many times as capable as any previous independently powered decoy. Their power plants also let him deploy them substantially farther from TG 10.2.9’s starships than he could have with tethered decoys, dependent upon their motherships for the energy needed to successfully imitate a starship’s impeller wedge. In fact, Loreleis were capable of independent maneuvers, which let them counterfeit starships even more effectively.

  And the Cataphracts’ onboard sensors were nowhere near as sophisticated as those of a Mark 23 D.

  Thirty-three of the seventy-one survivors of Barricade’s ambush fell to Lorelei’s seduction. They swung wide, arcing away from Alistair McKeon and her consorts.

  The first-wave counter-missile launch killed fifteen of the fifty-eight which resisted the decoys’ blandishments. The second wave of Mark 31s killed eighteen more. Nine actually made it through all three waves of counter-missiles, but the forward laser clusters of the LACs deployed in the antimissile role ahead of TG 10.2.9’s starships nailed eight of them.

  The single survivor streaked past, racing to within less than ten thousand kilometers of HMS Alistair McKeon…and wasted all ten of its powerful X-ray lasers on the roof of the impeller wedge no laser could possibly penetrate.

  * * *

  Winslet Tamaguchi felt every muscle in his body tighten as the last of his initial launch vanished. That single missile might—might—have actually inflicted damage, but the Manty cruiser’s impeller wedge never even flickered.

  Only forty-three of his second wave had survived Barricade. There were fourteen in the third…and twenty-one in the fourth. That was it: a total of only one hundred and sixty-nine—less than nine percent—had lasted even to reach the Manties’ counter-missile perimeter. Somehow he doubted the remaining threadbare triple handful of shipkillers were going to be any more successful than the first wave had been.

  And now two hundred Manticoran missiles came hurtling in into his defensive envelope.

  Counter-missiles streamed to meet them, and he
leaned forward in his command chair, pressing against the shock frame as if he could somehow will those CMs into greater effectiveness.

  * * *

  “Penetration ECM coming up…now,” Sir Horace Harkness said.

  * * *

  Thirty-six of TG 10.2.9’s missiles carried only penetration aids, not laserheads, and BatCruRon 720’s electronic defenses shuddered as the Dazzlers came to life. They blasted huge, blinding gaps in the intricate sensor coverage upon which missile defense absolutely relied, and behind them, taking advantage of the confusion they’d generated, the Dragon’s Teeth activated. The number of threat sources ballooned impossibly, more than doubling, then doubling again, and missile-defense computers and counter-missiles’ onboard sensors, already hammered by the Dazzlers, found themselves hopelessly overloaded.

  Counter-missiles killed nine of Scotty Tremaine’s attack missiles. Point defense killed ten more. One hundred and forty-five survived…and every single one of them drove in on SLNS Lorraine.

  TG 10.2.9 lacked the Keyhole Two platforms which would have let Adam Golbatsi monitor and update his Mark 23 Ds in real time at that range. But each pod had included one Mark 23 E, the most capable and sophisticated forward fire control platform yet built. Each 23 Echo took in the feed from the sensors of every 23 Delta in its pod, then added the shared take of every other Echo in the salvo, and the Solarian decoy platforms were useless against them. In fact, they were worse than useless. The Halo system and the manuals detailing the doctrine behind it had been analyzed to a fare-thee-well by the Royal Manticoran Navy and fed into the Echoes’ AIs. Instead of misleading the attackers, the platforms actually helped define the volume in which their targets must lie! The Echoes took note of that, added it to the rest of their commands, crunched the numbers, and updated their detailed, pre-launch targeting orders.