Shadow of Saganami

by David Weber

  She paused again, waiting to see if there were any questions. There were none, and she resumed.

  "In addition to the naval units and repair ships, the drone also picked up half a dozen large freighters. There's no way to know why they were there, but it seems like an excessive concentration of merchant tonnage for a system like Monica, especially that far away from its only inhabited planet. Until we actually secure control of the Station, we can only guess at what they're up to, but my gut feeling is that they're involved in the arrival of all these battlecruisers and, possibly, Jessyk's support for the FAK and MIM. Unless they do something to convince us they represent an immediate threat, however, we intend to treat them as more of the civilian infrastructure and attempt to limit damage to them if it comes to a shootout."

  She banished the schematic of Eroica Station back to the borders of the system display and a green line drew itself from a point just outside the system hyper limit to an arrowhead pointed directly at the Station.

  "In the broadest possible terms, what we intend to do is make our alpha translation just beyond the hyper limit. As soon as we emerge into normal-space, Volcano will begin decelerating, since we have no intention of taking your ship into the path of any missiles, Captain Badmachin."

  "That's nice to know, Commander," Commander Badmachin said with a throaty chuckle. "My hull's too thin to react well to sharp pointy objects or lasers."

  "That's what the Captain thought, too," Kaplan told her with a grin. "At the same time as you begin decelerating, however, you'll also begin deploying missile pods. We're reverting to older tactics, and we'll go in with heavy loads on tow. Eroica Station may have Solly capital missiles for its tubes, but there's no way they have anything that can match the powered range of our pods or Hexapuma's Mark 16s.

  "Once the pods are distributed, we'll continue towards Eroica Station. We'll make turnover to decelerate to rest relative to the Station at approximately eight million kilometers, which should put us a million and a half klicks outside their best range. That will enable us to keep them under our guns while we negotiate. We'll also deploy a shell of sensor remotes to cover our flanks. Frankly, it would be suicidal for the remainder of the Monican Navy to try to engage us, even if it had a chance of sneaking through our sensor coverage, but we don't intend to take any chances.

  "If the Captain and Mr. Van Dort achieve a negotiated resolution, we'll also be close enough to get positive sensor confirmation of their evacuation of Eroica Station. Once we're reasonably confident the Station has, in fact, been evacuated, we'll send in the Squadron's Marines in pinnaces to secure it. If, however, the Monicans refuse to stand down and evacuate, we will attack.

  "Even the most accurate bombardment with laser heads is going to inflict collateral damage," she said, looking up from the system plot to meet their combined gazes squarely. "At eight million klicks, our fire control should give us good accuracy, and we'll do our level best to restrict our fire to the battlecruisers. Our objective is to neutralize those ships, Ladies and Gentlemen, not to kill Monicans and not to wreck Eroica Station. We aren't even interested in destroying their defensive missile launchers or their point defense stations, if we can take out the battlecruisers without engaging those installations. Nonetheless, if it comes down to it and we're required to open fire, we are going to inflict serious damage to at least the military component of the Station, and we are going to kill Monican personnel. We'll do our best to avoid that, but we aren't going to take the Squadron into a range at which we suffer avoidable ship losses or casualties just to hold down Monican casualties."

  She fell silent again, looking at them while they looked back, then nodded slightly.

  "That's the general outline," she said. "Now I'll take you back through it in more detail and discuss individual ship assignments. I'd appreciate it if you'd hold questions till the end, when I'll try to go back and answer them all as fully as possible."

  She waited until everyone nodded in understanding, then began.

  "As soon as we make our alpha translation, Captain Badmachin, your ship will—"

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  "Any word on Commodore Horster's little invasion force?" Isidor Hegedusic asked.

  "No, Sir." The communications officer half-turned in his comfortable chair on the spacious "flag bridge" of Alpha Prime, Eroica Station's main military component, to face the admiral. "Do you want me to try to raise him, Admiral?"

  "No, no." Hegedusic shook his head, smiled, and turned away. He had plenty to do, and fretting over the way Janko Horster played with his new toys was unprofessional, to say the least.

  Envy, he told himself with a mental snort. Pure, dyed-in-the-wool envy. I'd a hell of a lot rather be out there on a real flag bridge than playing senior officer here in this goldplated ration tin. Well, in another couple of weeks I'll have enough of them to justify taking Janko's toybox away from him and playing in it myself.

  He chuckled and stepped through the hatch into his private office. The attention light blinked steadily on his personal com, and he dropped into his desk chair and pressed the acceptance key. Izrok Levakonic's personal wallpaper filled the display, and a courteous computer voice asked Hegedusic to hold briefly.

  It couldn't have been more than fifteen seconds before the wallpaper vanished, and Levakonic smiled at him from the screen. Hegedusic smiled back. Although he'd been determined not to like the Technodyne executive—who, after all, was only one more corrupt, overachieving capitalist with a personal avarice on steroids—he'd ended up doing it anyway. He was scarcely blind to Levakonic's manifold character flaws. Most, however, were dismayingly common by the standards of those who surrounded President Roberto Tyler. Levakonic had simply had the advantage of falling into a larger feeding trough than most Monicans ever dreamed of. And, on a personal level, he had a ready sense of humor and a willingness to roll up his shirt sleeves and dig in when the task at hand required.

  "Isidor," Levakonic said with a nod.

  "Izrok," Hegedusic responded.

  "Just thought I'd check and see how Horster's training maneuver is going so far," Levakonic said, and Hegedusic chuckled.

  "You, too? I was just out pestering the com staff for any reports. So far, nothing."

  "Good! I told you you'd like the EW capabilities."

  "And I never doubted it. What I doubted, and still do doubt, for that matter, is whether or not our people will be able to get the same performance out of them that Solarians could."

  "Solarian Navy crews aren't ten meters tall, and they don't take shortcuts by hiking across large bodies of water," Levakonic said dryly. "Basic education counts, sure. It counts for a lot. But not as much as hands-on training with good instructors. And you've got my people to do the training. I guarantee you that the people who built the systems in the first place know more about what they can do than the uniformed types who actually use them in the field."

  "I believe you. In fact, I'm inclined to think Janko's probably cheating a little right now. I'll bet he's got those same 'instructors' actually operating the systems for him. Otherwise, somebody would've spotted him by now. And, just between you and me, I hope to hell somebody does spot him pretty soon."

  "Why?" Levakonic furrowed his brow. "Don't get me wrong, Isidor, but if he screws up and lets your people pick him up, that's a pretty bad sign. The Manties' sensors are a lot better than anything you've got—quite a bit better than anything we've got, for that matter, despite the opinions of several of our own senior R and D people that ours are the best in the universe, if our field reps' reports are accurate. We haven't been able to get any of those idiots in the SLN's R and D departments to pay any attention to us, of course. They're all locked into the 'Not Invented Here' automatic rejection reflex. Well," he added with a charming little-boy grin, "that and an equally automatic suspicion that we're only telling them all those tall tales about Manty capabilities to scare them into funneling more money into our R and D programs. Which there might be just a teeny-ti
ny bit of truth to.

  "But my point is, that if you people can pick him up, then it's for damned sure the Manties could."

  "Don't doubt you," Hegedusic said with a grin. "But this is still very early days. Hell, he's only had eighteen days to practice, and one thing about Janko, he's always had a pretty steep learning curve. I'm sure he'll manage to sneak tracelessly up on us soon enough, but there's an expensive dinner and an even more expensive bottle of wine riding on how well he does today. So, if it's all the same to you, I'll settle for his surprising hell out of us tomorrow as long as I don't have to feed his greedy face tonight."

  "Ah! I hadn't realized the military stakes in today's exercises were quite that weighty. Now, of course, I fully understand."

  "Good. And don't worry, I'll let you know as soon as—"

  "Excuse me, Admiral."

  Hegedusic turned his head at the interruption. A youthful-looking lieutenant stood in the open office hatch.

  "Yes, what is it?" the admiral asked, with a trace of irritation at having someone break in on him in a private conversation.

  "Admiral, I'm very sorry to disturb you. But we've just picked up a sizable hyper footprint."

  "Hyper footprint? Where?"

  For just a moment, Hegedusic wondered if it could be Horster. He was supposed to be "sneaking up" on Eroica Station, but Janko believed The Book had been written solely for him to personally ignore. That was why Hegedusic had chosen him as his first divisional commander. And it was possible he'd decided to try an open approach, pretending to be someone else and using his new EW to disguise his impeller signatures as merchants or something equally silly.

  "Celestial azimuth zero-six-three, almost dead on the plane of the ecliptic, and about three-point-eight million klicks outside the hyper limit, Sir," the lieutenant replied.

  Then it can't be Janko, was Hegedusic's first thought. His flight path originated at Monica; there's no way he could have gotten out across the hyper limit, circled around, and come in from the other side like this. Not this soon.

  That was his first thought. His second was, But if it isn't Janko, who the hell is it?

  * * *

  "Sorry, Sir," Lieutenant Commander Wright said. "I undershot a bit."

  "Stop fishing for compliments, Toby," Terekhov said, never looking away from the astrogation plot. "Five hundred k-klicks off on a thirty-eight light-year jump? Sounds like a bull's-eye to me."

  He looked up in time to see Wright's grin. The astrogator remained probably the most private person aboard Hexapuma, and he continued to ration words as if someone were levying a surcharge on them. But he did have his own dry sense of humor, and that grin told Terekhov he'd caught the lieutenant commander exercising it.

  "I suppose it's fairly close, Skipper," Ansten FitzGerald observed over the communications link to Auxiliary Control.

  Terekhov had rethought things just a bit, and FitzGerald had Naomi Kaplan with him on the backup command deck. Terekhov had kept Guthrie Bagwell on the bridge, to run Hexapuma's electronic warfare systems for him, but he'd flipped Abigail Hearns and Kaplan. He planned on making his own tactical decisions, anyway, and if something happened to him, Ansten would have the best, most experienced tac officer in the ship to help him deal with it. Paulo d'Arezzo would run the EW console for her, and Aikawa Kagiyama would serve as her junior tac officer. Helen Zilwicki, who Terekhov privately believed was the best tactical specialist among the midshipmen, held the JTO's slot with Abigail, here on the bridge.

  "Why, thank you, Sir," Wright said, and Bernardus Van Dort shook his head. The skinsuited Rembrandter—who, when it came right down to it, had no business at all on Hexapuma's bridge—sat to one side of Wright, in one of the jump seats the ship's midshipmen usually used when observing the astrogator. From his expression he was pretty sure there was still a shoe waiting to drop . . . and he was right.

  "What I was going to say is five hundred thousand's fairly close . . . for someone who has trouble counting to eleven with his boots on," the XO said, and Terekhov chuckled.

  It was a somewhat absent chuckle, and his attention was back on the plot, checking alignments. The Squadron had made its alpha transition in close formation and relatively gradually from a base velocity in hyper of 62,500 KPS. With the inevitable velocity bleed-off, that gave them an n-space velocity of almost exactly 5,000 KPS . . . headed directly for Eroica Station. At the moment, they were decelerating at 350 gravities in order to stay with the ammo ship, which was braking as hard as she could to stay clear of the hyper limit, and their formation looked close to perfect.

  "Commander Badmachin reports Volcano is rolling pods, Sir," Amal Nagchaudhuri announced.

  "I have them on lidar, Sir," Abigail Hearns confirmed from Tactical. "Warlock's picking up her allotment now."

  "Very good," Terekhov acknowledged.

  "Sir, we're being challenged by the Monicans," Nagchaudhuri said, and Terekhov snorted.

  "That was fast," he said dryly. Of course the fact that Eroica Station was so close to the hyper limit meant the transmission lag was only a little over ninety seconds. "No response yet," he continued to the com officer. "We'll let them sweat a little longer."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Lieutenant Bagwell," Terekhov said, still never looking away from the plot, "let's get the EW platforms deployed."

  "Aye, aye, Sir. Deploying now."

  "Very good. Ms. Zilwicki."

  "Sir?"

  "Deploy the recon shell."

  "Deploy the recon shell, aye, aye, Sir," Helen acknowledged, and began tapping commands into her console.

  Her pulse, she knew, was quicker than usual, yet in almost too many ways, this felt like just another training sim. Which, she supposed, was the point of spending so much time in simulators in the first place.

  The first remote sensor arrays launched, spreading out in a vast, hollow sphere around the Squadron. At the same time, she saw the electronic warfare platforms spreading out around the individual ships and settling into a closer, tighter defensive formation than the arrays.

  A corner of her mind couldn't help thinking the Skipper was being a little paranoid. The Monicans couldn't possibly have known they were coming, and even the best Solarian missiles had a maximum powered attack envelope of no more than 6.5 million kilometers from rest, even at half-power settings. Not to mention the fact that while Manticoran electronics were the best any navy had ever deployed, the Monicans' basic surveillance systems were obsolescent League crap at least forty T-years out of date. There was no way any threat this system could mount could get through her sensor shell to attack range without plenty of warning.

  But only a corner of her mind thought that. The rest of it recognized yet another example of the Skipper's infinite attention to detail. He would dot every "i" and cross every "t" ahead of time, when he had the leisure to be sure it was done right. Who was it, back on Old Earth, who'd said to ask him for anything but time? She rather thought it had been Napoleon. Of course, despite all his strategic genius on land, Napoleon hadn't known how to pour piss out of a boot where navies were concerned, but that particular bit of advice translated quite well across the centuries for any officer.

  "Warlock has her full pod load, Sir," Nagchaudhuri reported. "Commander Diamond is moving up with Vigilant."

  "Thank you, Amal," Terekhov said. His tone was courteous and a bit abstracted, but Helen knew better than that. It was a reflection of how intensely he was concentrating, not of absentmindedness.

  She thought about Lieutenant Commander Diamond. How did he feel right now? From all she could discover, he'd been with Commander Hope for at least two T-years. Now she'd been hustled off aboard the dispatch boat, returned to Spindle ignominiously with the Captain's dispatches, like so much unwanted freight. If this operation turned into the disaster she'd evidently predicted, she'd probably emerge as the only CO of the Squadron with an intact reputation. But if it succeeded, she'd be known throughout the Navy as the commander of a Queen's ship who'd r
efused, for whatever reason, to face the enemy when ordered to do so. And whichever way it came out, Diamond would have to live with the fact that he'd elected to succeed her in command rather than follow her into exile.

  She watched her own plot as the highly stealthed pods clustered about Vigilant's icon. The latest wrinkle BuWeaps had come up with was to incorporate a small tractor beam into each individual pod. Although their design was maximized for deployment from the new hollow-core SD(P)s and even newer BC(P)s, there were still plenty of old-style ships or smaller vessels—like the ones of Captain Terekhov's small squadron—which could only deploy pods on tow. One limiting factor for those ships had always been the way the number of tractor beams they mounted restricted the numbers of pods they could deploy. By mounting tractors on the pods themselves, that particular problem was overcome, and Captain Terekhov was using that advantage to the maximum. By the time he got done his ships would do well to manage 350 g, but they'd have a devastating long-range punch. Even the destroyers would have ten pods tagging along. Each of the three light cruisers would have fifteen, Warlock and Vigilant would have twenty-three each, and Hexapuma would have no less than forty. Altogether, it added up to a hundred and seventy-one pods for a total of 1,710 missiles. Capital missiles of the Royal Manticoran Navy—the longest ranged, most deadly missiles in space.

  Somehow, she rather doubted anything Monica had was going to be able to stand up to that!

  * * *

  No, not Janko, Isidor Hegedusic thought. And whoever they are, I don't care for the way they're coming in. They sure as hell aren't merchies, they're completely ignoring our challenges, and approaching from this bearing, the shipyards are their only possible target.

  His expression was grim. There was only one navy he could think of who'd have both an interest in depriving Monica of the Indefatigables and the sheer big brass balls to launch some sort of preemptive strike to accomplish that deprivation. And if the reports and rumors Levakonic had shared with him were accurate, those people had the range to turn his entire complex—and the irreplaceable battlecruisers lying helpless in its midst—into drifting debris from beyond the effective range of any weapon he possessed.