by David Weber
Let's not double-think ourselves into a panic, there, Lester, he told himself dryly. Yeah, she's sneaky. And smart. But she doesn't really have a lot of options here. And besides . . .
"It may just be that she's still hoping to get out of this without anyone shooting at anybody," he murmured aloud, and DeLaney's eyebrows rose.
"That seems . . . unlikely, Sir," she said, and Tourville grinned at her tone of massive restraint.
"I didn't say it was likely, Molly. I said it was possible. And it is, you know. She has to have IDed at least some of our emissions signatures by now, so she knows we're Republican. And she'd have to be a hell of a lot stupider than I know she is if she didn't suspect exactly why we're here. But at the same time, she can't know what's going on back home—not yet. So there's probably at least an edge of caution in her thinking right now. She's not going to shirk her responsibilities, but she's not going to want to start a war out here that could spill over on the Star Kingdom's own territory unless she absolutely has to, either. I'd guess that's why they're continuing to challenge us despite the fact that we haven't answered them."
"Do you think she'll actually let us into range because she doesn't want to fire the first shot, Sir?"
"I doubt very much that she's going to be that obliging," Tourville said dryly. "We are in violation of the territorial space of a Manticoran ally at the moment, you know. That means she's in a very strong position under interstellar law if she decides to shoot some dumb son-of-a-bitch who's too much of an idiot to even reply to her communications attempts!"
He flashed his teeth in a white smile under his bristling mustache, and DeLaney heard someone chuckle.
"On the other hand, if NavInt is right and the Manties still haven't confirmed that we have MDMs of our own, she may let us get in a lot closer before she gets around to opening fire. She knows we have SD(P)s, but she also knows by now that at least some of the SDs we brought with us are pre-pod designs. On top of that, she has to suspect from our acceleration rates that our older ships are towing heavy pod loads. She, on the other hand, isn't, even though NavInt says that she has only six SD(P)s of her own. She may have some pods tractored inside her other superdreadnoughts' wedges, but she can't have as many of them there as we're towing. Combined with how openly she's coming to meet us, that suggests to me that she still believes she has a decisive range advantage. That she can open fire at a range of her own choosing, from outside our effective reach, and hold it there."
"Do you think she knows about the new compensators, Sir?"
"I wouldn't be a bit surprised if she's figured out that we've improved our performance, whatever her ONI reports might be telling her," Tourville said. "She's certainly smart enough to realize that we must have made overcoming their acceleration advantage a very high priority. Unfortunately, for all their improvements, our compensators still aren't anywhere near as efficient as theirs are . . . and she's smart enough she's probably figured that out, too. So if she thinks she has the range advantage, she'll expect to be able to prevent us from closing with her."
"So you think she's basically hoping to bluff us into breaking off," DeLaney said.
"I suppose you might put it that way," Tourville conceded. "I wouldn't express it quite that strongly, myself. I think she intends to continue to give us the opportunity to decide this was a bad idea, break off, and go home right up to the last minute. It's not a 'bluff,' Molly, because I don't think she actually expects us to break off for a moment. But knowing Harrington, she figures that it's her responsibility to give us the option, and she's determined to do it. Which," he added almost regretfully, "probably also means that she'll hold her fire until the range drops to what she believes is just outside the maximum at which we could engage her effectively."
* * *
"The range is down to three light-minutes, Your Grace," Mercedes Brigham said in the tone of voice of someone politely reminding someone else of something she might have forgotten.
"So I see," Honor replied with a slight smile, despite the tension coiling inside her. At fifty-four million kilometers, they were well inside her own maximum powered-attack missile range.
"Still no response to our challenges, either, Ma'am," Brigham pointed out, and Honor nodded.
"How good is your targeting information now, Andrea?" she asked.
"It's still not anything I'd call satisfactory, Your Grace," Jaruwalski responded promptly in a slightly sour tone. "Whatever else they may have managed, they've improved their ECM significantly. It's still not as good as ours is—or, for that matter, quite as good as what we've seen out of the Andies over the last few months. But it's a lot better than it was during Operation Buttercup. I'd estimate that we should expect at least a fifty or sixty percent degradation in accuracy at this range. Possibly a little bit more."
"And even without worrying about ECM, accuracy against a target under power isn't anything to write home about at this range," Brigham observed.
"No, but theirs is probably worse," Honor said, and Brigham nodded in unhappy agreement.
Honor knew that Mercedes still thought that her own insistence that they operate on the assumption that the Republic's new SD(P)s' missiles could match the full range of their own MDMs was unduly pessimistic. On the other hand, Honor would far rather find out that she had, in fact, been overly pessimistic than suddenly find herself under fire at a range which she had assumed would give her ships immunity from attack.
"And whatever their base accuracy might be, Your Grace," Jaruwalski put in, "from everything I've seen so far, our ECM is going to degrade their accuracy a lot more than theirs is going to do to us. That's even assuming that they've managed to improve their missile seekers as much as they have their EW capabilities."
"Well, given that it looks like they have at least twice as many SD(P)s as Admiral McKeon does, that's probably a good thing," Honor replied with another smile, and Jaruwalski chuckled in appreciation as Honor turned to Lieutenant Kgari.
"How far are they from Suriago's point of no return, Theophile?" she asked.
"They've been inbound for about two and a half hours at two hundred and seventy gravities, Your Grace. Their base velocity is up to two-six-point-seven thousand KPS. Assuming they maintain heading and acceleration, they'll hit no return in another eleven-point-five minutes, Your Grace," her staff astrogator told her.
"Then I suppose it's about time," Honor said almost regretfully. "Harper, pass the word to Borderer to stand by to execute Paul Revere in twelve minutes."
"Aye, aye, Your Grace."
* * *
Twelve more minutes passed. Second Fleet's base velocity rose to just over 28,530 KPS and Task Force 34's velocity reached 19,600 KPS. The range continued to fall, gnawed away by a closing velocity of almost sixteen percent of light-speed. It dropped from fifty-three million kilometers to barely thirty-seven and a half million, and then HMS Werewolf transmitted a brief FTL message to HMS Borderer. The destroyer, almost ten full light-minutes outside the system hyper limit received the transmission, acknowledged receipt, and translated up into hyper . . . where it sent a second transmission.
Twenty-six seconds later, the Protector's Own, Grayson Space Navy, made its alpha translation out of hyper, directly behind Second Fleet, and began accelerating furiously in-system in its wake.
* * *
"Hyper footprint!" Commander Marston announced. "Multiple hyper footprints, bearing one-eight-zero, zero-two-niner, range approximately one light-minute!"
Lester Tourville snapped upright in his chair and spun to face the ops officer. Marston stared at his readouts for a few more seconds, then looked up to meet his admiral's eyes.
"They're more Manties, Sir," he said in a tone of disbelief. "Either that . . . or Graysons."
"They can't be," DeLaney protested almost automatically and waved one hand at the plot. "We've got positive IDs on all of Harrington's ships. They can't have fooled the RDs at such close range—not even with their EW!"
Tourvill
e's mind fought to grapple with Marston's impossible announcement. DeLaney was right. The range to Harrington's ships was less than two light-minutes. It might have been possible for Manticoran electronic warfare systems to fool shipboard sensors even at that short a range, but Second Fleet's recon drones had closed to within less than three light-seconds. At that range, they could make visual identification on a superdreadnought or a LAC carrier, and they'd accounted for every single ship Harrington had.
Or, his mind told him coldly, for every ship NavInt said she had, anyway.
For just an instant, Lester Tourville was five years in the past, when no admiral had been able to trust the intelligence appreciations produced by Oscar Saint-Just's StateSec analysts. A dreadful sense of betrayal flashed through him at the thought that Thomas Theisman's NavInt had just proven itself equally unreliable. But then he shook himself. Whatever had happened here, NavInt had proven its fundamental reliability too often over the last four T-years. There had to be an explanation, but what?
"We have hard IDs on the new bogeys' types," Marston said flatly. "CIC makes it twelve Medusa-class SD(P)s, six Covington-class CLACs, and six battlecruisers. CIC isn't positive, but it thinks the battlecruisers are probably Courvoisier-class ships."
"Covingtons? Courvoisiers?" DeLaney shook her head. "Those are Grayson types!" She turned to face Tourville. "What are Graysons doing out here in the middle of Silesia?" she demanded almost plaintively.
Tourville stared back at her for perhaps four seconds, then muttered a short, pungent obscenity.
"It's the Protector's Own," he said flatly. "Damn! NavInt told us they were off on some long-ranged deployment training mission. Why didn't it even occur to us that that sneaky bastard Benjamin might have sent them here?"
"But why here?" DeLaney protested.
"I don't know," Tourville replied, but his mind continued to race even as he spoke, and he grimaced. "Best guess? Benjamin and Harrington discussed it before she ever came out here. Damn! I'll guarantee you that's what happened. She knew High Ridge wasn't going to give her what she needed to do her job, so she borrowed it from her other navy without even telling anyone she was doing it!"
He shook his head in brief, heartfelt admiration. Obviously, he thought, NavInt needed to update its estimate of Harrington as a brilliant military technician to include a degree of political sophistication no one had expected from her. But then he brushed the thought aside. There was no time for it—not when his entire fleet had just been mousetrapped with consummate professionalism.
He pushed himself up out of his chair and crossed to the main plot, staring into it as data sidebars updated and acceleration vectors established themselves. The numbers flashed and danced, then settled, and Admiral Lester Tourville felt a ball of ice congeal in his belly.
"The Graysons are launching LACs," Marston reported. "Tracking reports over six hundred impeller signatures already."
Tourville only grunted. Of course they were launching their LACs, but that wasn't what was going to do most of their killing. Not today. Both Harrington and the Protector's Own were well within MDM range of Second Fleet, and his own twelve SD(P)s, which had been supposed to give him a two-to-one advantage over Harrington's Medusas were suddenly outnumbered by two-to-one, instead. And if NavInt was right about the Graysons new Courvoisier II battlecruisers, Harrington had an additional six pod-launcher types. Given the Manticoran and Grayson advantages in electronic warfare and missile defense, that gave them a devastating edge in the pounding match about to begin. And Harrington had timed things perfectly. Second Fleet was too far inside the hyper limit, sandwiched between two forces, both of which had higher fleet acceleration rates than it did.
"Alter course one-two-zero to starboard," he said. "Maximum military power for the SDs. Shift formation to Mike-Delta-Three and prepare to launch LACs."
Acknowledgments came back to him, and he could almost taste the sense of relief that flooded through his staff as they heard a trusted voice giving crisp, clear orders. It was, he thought bitterly, a reaction that was going to be repeated over and over again on the ships of his fleet. Repeated because he had taught his people that they could trust him. Because they had faith in him.
But this time, that faith was going to be disappointed. Even on his new course, his units were going to continue to slide into the arms of Harrington's Manticoran units. His new vector would start generating lateral separation quickly, and it was the fastest possible course back to the system's hyper limit. But it wouldn't kill velocity quickly enough to prevent the range between him and the Manties from closing by at least another thirty light-seconds. And by the time he could kill an appreciable fraction of his closing velocity, the Graysons would be on a direct course for the point at which he would hit the hyper limit out-bound. If he could maintain his present acceleration, they wouldn't—quite—catch him from their much lower base velocity, but they'd sure as hell overrun any cripples who fell behind. And the entire time he was trying to run away, they were going to be pounding him with a hurricane of missile fire precisely to produce as many cripples as they possible could. Not to mention LAC strikes.
Which meant that his fleet, and his people, were about to be destroyed.
* * *
"So, they do have CLACs," Honor said quietly as the display blossomed with hundreds upon hundreds of fresh impeller signatures.
"Yes, Ma'am," Jaruwalski confirmed. The ops officer stood beside Lieutenant Commander Reynolds where they'd been studying the latest reports from the system surveillance platforms. Now she turned to face Honor and gestured at the LAC drives blazing in the plot.
"It looks like at least eight of their 'superdreadnoughts' are actually CLACs, Your Grace," she said. "That makes them a hell of a lot bigger than anything we have, and it looks like each of their groups is at least a third again the size of a Covington's. CIC estimates that they have right on two thousand of them."
"Then they're screwed," Rafe Cardones said confidently from Honor's com screen. "Two thousand gives them less than two hundred more than we have," he went on, lumping the Manticoran and Grayson LAC groups together. "I can't believe they could possibly have managed to improve their tech enough to keep us from tearing them apart when we're that close to parity with them numerically."
"You're probably right," Honor replied. "But let's not get overconfident. ONI never even guessed they had CLACs, so we don't have any meter stick at all for evaluating their LAC effectiveness."
"You're right, Your Grace," Cardones admitted.
"Should we commit our own LACs, Your Grace?" Jaruwalski asked.
"Not yet," Honor said. "Before we do that, I want to whittle down their shipboard defenses. I'm not going to throw away our LAC groups by committing them against an unshaken wall that knows they're coming."
"If we don't commit them soon, we may not have an opportunity to use them at all, Your Grace," Jaruwalski warned, gesturing at CIC's projection of the Peeps' new course. "If we hold them back more than another fifteen or twenty minutes, they won't have the accel to overcome the Peeps' base velocity advantage and overhaul short of the alpha wall."
"Granted," Honor conceded. "But I'm not prepared to accept massive casualties if we don't have to. Especially when we don't know for certain what the Andies will do if we take heavy losses against the Republic. If we can beat these people without getting our LACs chewed up, so much the better."
Jaruwalski nodded in understanding, if not total agreement, and Honor looked at Lieutenant Brantley.
"My compliments to Admiral McKeon and Admiral Yu, and instruct them to open fire."
* * *
"Missile separation!" Marston announced. "I have hostile launches—many hostile launches!"
"Return fire," Tourville said almost calmly.
"Aye, Sir! Returning fire—now."
* * *
Multidrive missiles howled out across the endless light-seconds of emptiness. No fleets in history had ever engaged one another at such a prepostero
us range. More than two full light-minutes lay between TF 34 and Second Fleet, and it would take almost seven minutes for even Manticore's missiles to cross that stupendous gulf of vacuum. Second Fleet's missiles, with their marginally lower accelerations, would take even longer to reach TF 34. But the Protector's Own was closer than that. The flight time for Alfredo Yu's missiles was little more than three minutes.
Both sides' starships had extra missile pods on tow, and both sides flushed them all in the initial salvo. Second Fleet had seventy-eight capital ships: forty-six superdreadnoughts, eight CLACs, and twenty-four battlecruisers, but its planned margin of superiority had been more than erased by the presence of Alfredo Yu's command. TF 34 and the Protector's Own between them had a hundred and six capital ships: forty-three superdreadnoughts, ten CLACs, eleven dreadnoughts, and forty-two battlecruisers. Still, eleven of Honor's ships of the wall were only dreadnoughts and forty-four percent of her other "capital ships" were mere battlecruisers, and although the Allies' weapon systems remained superior to those of the Republic, the margin of superiority was thinner than it had ever been before.
The Havenite missile pods contained fewer missiles because those missiles had to be thirty percent larger than Manticoran missiles to approximate the same performance. But since she'd had no choice but to build enormous missiles because of the mass requirements of their drive elements and power plants, anyway, Shannon Foraker had been able to give them larger payloads than their Manticoran counterparts, as well. She'd used some of that volume to increase the destructive power of their warheads, but most of it had gone into additional sensor capability. The result was a weapon with eighty-eight percent as much range, very nearly eighty percent as much accuracy, and greater hitting power than anything Manticore had.
But that accuracy still had to get through Manticore's superior ECM, and decoys and jammers went to work on both sides as the deadly tides of destruction swept down upon them. False targets offered themselves, singing to targeting systems, beckoning and seducing them away from the actual starships they sought to destroy. Jammers howled, threshing space with active interference to blind sensitive seeking systems, and as the range fell still further, counter missiles went screaming out to meet the incoming fire with kamikaze devotion.