by David Weber
If there was a single gram of cowardice in Helen Zilwicki, Abigail Hearns had never seen it. But this was even more cold-blooded and methodical than Captain Terekhov's ambush of the rogue Peeps in Nuncio. At least the Peeps had gotten into a range where they could theoretically have fired back. Eroica Station wouldn't have that option. If this Admiral Hegedusic failed to yield, hundreds, possibly thousands, of his personnel were going to be killed by weapons to which they couldn't even respond. It was a horrifying thought, and she wondered if she should say something to Helen about it.
But what could she say? She wasn't positive how she felt about it, so how could she know what to say to someone else?
There were times, as Brother Albert, her old childhood confessor, had warned her there would be, when the teachings of Father Church and the brutal requirements of the profession of arms clashed. When the desire of a loving God for all of His children to live and grow under His gentle Testing collided in a universe of imperfect humans with the unyielding fact that for some of His children to live, others of them must die. That, Brother Albert had told her gently when she first admitted that she hungered for a naval career, would become part of her Test if her wish were granted. And, he'd warned her, it was a fortunate warrior indeed—or else a madman—who was never forced to confront the ambiguity of violence. The suspicion that it was expediency, and his own desire to live, and not morality or justice or even the defense of his own nation and family, which truly drove him to kill. The selfish desire to survive, not the noble willingness to risk death for what he believed in.
Brother Albert had been right. And as Abigail had studied her trade, mastered the professional requirements of a tactical officer, she'd come to realize that the highest duty of an officer wasn't to engage in honorable, face-to-face combat. It was to take her opponent by surprise. To ambush him. To shoot him in the back, without warning, without the ability to return her fire. Because if he had that opportunity, some of her people would die. And if she gave him that opportunity when she didn't have to, then the responsibility for those deaths would be hers.
It was a bitter lesson, one she'd accepted intellectually while still at Saganami Island, and one which had been turned into polished steel and hammered home on the surface of a planet called Refuge.
Yet this was different. The disparity in weapon technology meant there could be no possibility of return fire. But wasn't that the essence of successful tactics? Captain Terekhov was doing what every captain wanted to do, using any advantage he had or could create to engage the enemy without risking the lives of his own people. She knew that. And she knew Brother Albert would have told her Father Church and, far more importantly, God Himself would understand. Would forgive her for the blood on her hands, if indeed forgiveness was required.
But God could forgive anything to the truly humble and contrite heart. The question in Abigail Hearns' mind was whether or not she could forgive herself.
* * *
"Admiral!"
Hegedusic looked up from the com screen connecting him to Alpha Prime's weapons officer. It was the communications lieutenant again.
"Sir, we just picked up a transmission. I . . . think it's from Commodore Horster."
"You think?" Hegedusic frowned, and the lieutenant gave him a helpless look.
"Sir, there's no header and no ID code. Just one word transmitted in clear."
"Well?" Hegedusic demanded when the young man paused.
"Sir, it just says 'Coming.'"
Chapter Fifty-Seven
"Commodore, I just can't guarantee the hard numbers you're asking for," the Solarian technical representative said nervously on the bridge of MNS Cyclone. The man was sweating hard, and much as he wanted to, Janko Horster couldn't find it in himself to despise the fellow for it. He was a civilian, after all. He hadn't signed on for a combat mission against a technologically superior opponent.
"I'm not asking you to guarantee it," the commodore said. "I'm just asking for your best estimate."
The civilian fidgeted, pulling at his lower lip and blinking rapidly while he thought.
Horster wanted to shake the answer out of him, but hurrying the man wasn't the way to get a reliable response. So the commodore contented himself with a tight smile, folded his hands behind himself, and took a quick turn around his commodious flag deck.
Under the training mission scenario, the three ships of the First Division—Cyclone and her sisters Typhoon and Hurricane—had been tasked to penetrate Eroica Station's sensor perimeter and get to attack range before they were detected. Given the sensor upgrades the Station had received from the Technodyne people, Horster hadn't been ragingly optimistic about his chances, but he'd been determined to give it the best try he could. Which was why he'd arranged to embark a dozen tech reps aboard each ship for any "emergency adjustments" which might be required. After all, it was less than three weeks since the ships had completed their full-powered engine trials. There was no telling what sort of small things might go wrong. And if the tech reps who just happened to be aboard to deal with them also just happened to be qualified EW instructors who could just happen to actually take over the systems—purely in order to demonstrate their proper operation to his own people, of course—well, so much the better.
He'd used the marvelously effective stealth systems of his wonderful new toys to cover his relatively low-powered impeller signatures while he accelerated to a velocity of 37,800 KPS. Then he'd shut down to the absolute minimum impeller strength. He would have liked to shut down completely, but even with hot nodes at standby he would have been looking at a significant delay in bringing the wedge back up. So instead he'd held it at the barest possible maintenance level, which would let him bring it back to full power in less than eighty seconds if he needed to.
For the last two hours he'd been barreling through space on a ballistic course. Now he was 48.6 million kilometers short of the Station, which put him just under 58.7 million kilometers from the Manties . . . headed straight for them.
"Commodore," the civilian said finally, "I'm sorry. We just don't know enough about their sensor capabilities. Another Indefatigable couldn't see us until we got much closer, probably down to under five million kilometers, given how little emissions signature we're showing. Against Manties, who knows? I hate to say it, but if they've deployed remote arrays, they might be able to see us right this minute."
"No," Horster said. "If they could see us, they'd've already reacted."
"How, Sir?" the civilian asked, and Horster snorted.
"They're still decelerating, and they haven't fired on the Station or, apparently, demanded we break off. Given our closing velocity, they can't avoid us unless we break off. So if they're maintaining profile without even mentioning us to the Station, they don't know we're here."
The Solarian nodded slowly, and Horster shrugged.
"At this point, we're going to get to them," he said flatly. "The only way they could prevent that would be to spot us and destroy us first, and I don't think they're going to do that."
"I hope to hell you're right, Commodore," the tech rep said fervently. Which, Horster thought sardonically, wasn't exactly the most reassuring thing one of the people supposed to be teaching him how the ships worked could possibly have said.
He nodded courteously to the civilian and waved him back towards the EW section, then turned to the main plot and puffed out his cheeks as he considered the geometry.
If he'd only started the exercise sooner, he might have been able to intercept the Manties before they attacked the Station. Then again, if the Technodyne people were right about the maximum attack ranges of current-generation Manticoran missiles, they were already in range to attack Eroica. He'd just have to hope this Terekhov was running a bluff, that he wouldn't really inflict the massive casualties an all-out attack on the Station would produce. Surely the thought of how galactic public opinion—and especially Solarian public opinion—would react to something like that in time of peace, without eve
n a formal declaration of hostilities, should give the lunatic pause!
* * *
"All right!" Hegedusic smacked his palms together and grinned at Levakonic. "The odds seem to be shifting," he observed.
"At least in the direction of having a fighting chance," Levakonic agreed a bit more cautiously.
"But we could shift them even further if we could keep this Captain Terekhov coming in fat, dumb, and happy."
Hegedusic thought a moment longer, then turned back to the communications section.
"Send a message to the Manties. Tell them I've decided to evacuate the Station, but that it's going to take some time. Tell them I estimate a minimum of two and a half to three hours, even using every available vessel from the civilian platforms."
"Yes, Sir."
Hegedusic turned to another staffer.
"Get down to flight ops. Tell them I want a steady stream of lighters and shuttles moving between the Alpha platforms and the Beta platforms. I don't need anybody aboard them but the flight crews; I just need small craft in motion where the Manties can see it."
"Yes, Sir!"
* * *
"Well, thank God!" Bernardus Van Dort heaved a huge sigh of relief as the message came in. "Congratulations, Captain. It looks like you've managed it without killing anyone, after all."
"Maybe." Terekhov frowned at the master plot, then glanced at Abigail Hearns. "Any sign of confirming movement?"
"As a matter of fact, Sir, there may be," the Grayson lieutenant said after a moment. "I've got half a dozen—no, a total of nine—small craft impellers moving away from the military portions of the Station."
"You see?" Van Dort's grin grew even broader. "Hegedusic must've realized he didn't have a choice."
"I'd certainly like to think so," Terekhov agreed, his frown beginning to ease at last. "Amal, inform them that as long as they appear to be making a good-faith effort to evacuate the Station, I'll hold my fire. But warn them that restraint on our part is dependent on their continued compliance with our instructions."
* * *
"How obliging of him," Hegedusic said, and looked back at the tactical officer on his screen. "They're holding profile, correct?"
"Yes, Sir. They're about eighteen minutes from zeroing their velocity relative to the Station. And," the tac officer smiled thinly, "they're just over ten-point-one million kilometers out."
"Patience, patience, Commander," Hegedusic said. "If they're willing to come closer, I'm certainly willing to let them."
* * *
"Ms. Zilwicki?"
"Yes, Traynor?" Helen said, turning to the senior sensor rating assisting her with the remote arrays.
"The Alpha-Seven array's picking something up," Traynor said.
"What?" Helen asked. It was scarcely a proper contact report, she reflected. Assuming, of course, that it was an actual contact at all.
"It may be nothing at all, Ma'am. Maybe just a ghost. Look here, Ma'am."
He flicked keys, transferring the data he'd been examining to Helen's secondary plot. She gazed at it herself for several seconds before her eyes narrowed. She input a command sequence, playing with the data, trying to refine it, and frowned.
She considered briefly, then shrugged and sent a request to CIC for the master computers to take a close second look at the suspect datum. Seven seconds later, a scarlet icon flicked into existence on the master plot, strobing with the rapid flicker of an unconfirmed contact.
"Captain," Helen announced, astonished that her own voice sounded so calm, "we have a possible impeller signature, very weak, inbound at three-point-two light-minutes. Apparent closing velocity four-one-five-seven-two kilometers per second."
* * *
"Range now ten-point-zero-seven million kilometers," Hegedusic's tac officer said. "Velocity now three-seven-seven-three KPS."
* * *
"Range to enemy now five-seven-point-six million kilometers," Commodore Horster's tac officer reported. "Closing velocity four-one-five-seven-two KPS."
* * *
"CIC, I need confirmation, one way or the other." Terekhov kept his tone as level as possible.
"Yes, Sir. We know. We're doing our best to—"
"Captain, Alpha-Seven has a second possible contact in close company with Bogey-One," Helen announced. She hesitated a moment, then cleared her throat. "Sir, the array's at less than eleven light-seconds from whatever this is."
"Your point, Ms. Zilwicki?"
"Sir, these arrays don't pick up ghosts at that short a range. If they're seeing something that close to them, it's really there. And if they can't see it clearly, it's because whatever it is is doing its damnedest to imitate a hole in space."
"She's right, Skipper," Naomi Kaplan said from AuxCon. She'd been studying the frustratingly inconclusive data herself. "And if that's what we've got here, Sir," she continued grimly, "whoever it is has got much better EW than any Monican unit ever had."
"Guthrie?" Terekhov looked at his EWO. Bagwell didn't even hesitate.
"Concur, Sir. My guess is that we're looking at a maintenance level impeller wedge covered by some damned good stealth technology. Probably almost as good as our own."
"Understood."
Terekhov leaned back in his command chair, thinking furiously. All eleven of the Solarian battlecruisers Copenhagen had discovered were still at Eroica Station.
Which means these people weren't at the Station when the drone made its pass. Battlecruisers they'd already refitted? Possible. Probable, really. They could've been running trials or training missions out-system, where Copenhagen couldn't see them. Or these may be Solly units that never were intended to be refitted. Either way, I've got a pair of bogeys coming at me that I have to assume are at least battlecruisers . . . and there's no way Hegedusic didn't know about it when he sent me that "We're evacuating as quickly as we can" message. But—
"Captain, we've got a third possible contact."
He looked up as a third strobing icon appeared in formation with the other two. Helen, a corner of his brain noted, still sounded crisp and professional, but not quite as calm as she'd been with the first two.
And I can't blame her for that! That's three we know about; God only knows how many we haven't found yet. He studied projected vectors, and his mouth tightened. At their closing velocity, his squadron's vector intersected almost exactly head-on with the three bogeys' vector in less than twenty-four minutes. There's no way we can avoid them now, but there's still the units waiting to be refitted. So what do I do? I can hardly even see these probable Sollies. I certainly can't justify wasting missiles on them at this range, not with the miserable hit probabilities we'd have! But if I hold my fire until the range drops and then go for an engagement with them, I could lose everything I've got and leave eleven untouched battlecruisers behind me.
His jaw tightened.
"Ms. Hearns."
"Yes, Sir."
It was remarkable, he thought, how that soft Grayson accent actually got more musical as the stress mounted.
"We can't leave the battlecruisers in the yard behind us. I want to hold the pods—we may need them against these newcomers. Do you have a good firing solution on the Station?"
"Yes, Sir," she said steadily.
"Very well," he said. "Execute Fire Plan Sierra, broadside launchers only."
"Fire Plan Sierra, aye, aye, Sir," she said, and entered a command sequence.
* * *
"Missile launch! I have multiple hostile launches! Estimate thirty-plus inbound!"
"Goddamn it!"
Isidor Hegedusic smashed his fist down on his own knee. Missile Defense was tracking the incoming missiles—or trying to, at least—and there didn't seem to be many of them. No more than thirty or forty. But the Station's anti-missile defenses hadn't been upgraded. There hadn't been time to do everything, and he and Levakonic had concentrated on giving Eroica Station sharper eyes and longer teeth. Nor had they counted on the fiendishly effective EW platforms scattered am
ong the attack missiles to assist them in penetrating Hegedusic's defenses.
He hesitated, but only for a single heartbeat.
If they take out the battlecruisers, there's no tomorrow, anyway, he thought grimly, and looked at the tactical officer on his screen.
"Engage the enemy, Commander!"
The missile pods provided by Technodyne were very stealthy platforms. In fact, they had even smaller sensor signatures than the RMN's pods did. In virtually every other respect, however, they were inferior to Manticore's weapons. Their single-drive missiles had lower accelerations, less sensitive seekers, poorer EW, and much, much shorter powered attack ranges. But inferior as they might have been in all of those categories, they were far better than anything the SLN had ever had before. They were better than ONI's worst-case estimates. And they were already inside the attack range their improved drives made possible.
To reach their targets with enough time left on their drives for the necessary terminal attack maneuvers, the missiles would have to restrict themselves to half-power, "only" 43,000 gravities and a terminal velocity of "only" .32 c. They were big—larger even than a standard capital missile, more like something a ground-based system would have fired—and the designers had been able to squeeze only eight of them into each out-sized pod. But Hegedusic and Levakonic had deployed one hundred and twenty of those pods. Deployed them amid the concealing clutter of Eroica Station's platforms and in the protective radar shadows of handy asteroids.
"Incoming fire! Estimate nine hundred-plus!"
"Point defense free! Case Romeo!" Terekhov snapped.
"Case Romeo, aye, aye, Sir!" Helen Zilwicki responded instantly.
"Fire Plan Omega!"
"Fire Plan Omega!" Abigail responded.
She had assigned Helen responsibility for missile defense while she concentrated on Fire Plan Sierra, targeting her missiles as carefully as possible on the helpless battlecruisers. Now she made the snap decision to leave the midshipwoman in charge. Missile flight times were going to be under a hundred and sixty seconds. This was no time to confuse the situation by interfering. Besides, she had her own priorities.