Storm From the Shadows

by David Weber

  Of course—

  "Missile separation!" Ingeborg Aberu announced suddenly. "Multiple missile separations! Range, forty-five million kilometers. Missile acceleration four-six-thousand KPS2! Estimated flight time at constant acceleration, five-point-seven minutes."

  "Missile Defense Aegis Five!" Byng's snapped command was automatic, a response which never had to consult his forebrain at all . . . which was fortunate, since his forebrain wasn't working very well at the moment.

  My God, she actually did it! She actually launched missiles at the Solarian Navy! I didn't think anyone could be that crazy! Doesn't she know where this has to end?

  Yet even as that thought ripped through him, there was another, one that was darker and more terrifying by far. Gold Peak wouldn't have launched from that far out unless she genuinely had the range to score on his ships, and that meant Mizawa's concerns hadn't been so much blathering nonsense after all.

  The range at launch was over two and a half light-minutes, but with a closing velocity of 53,696 KPS, the geometry meant the Mark 23's maximum powered envelope was well over ninety-five million kilometers. Even a Mark 16, with only a pair of drive systems, would have had a powered envelope of almost forty-nine million kilometers . . . which meant her Mark 23s could reach their targets without ever activating their third drive system and still have the necessary endurance for final attack maneuvers. That was the real reason Michelle Henke had closed to that range before firing. It would give her ample opportunity to make her point, but she could do so while concealing a full third of the MDMs' powered endurance. At the same time, she wanted to finish this without using her broadside launchers at all, if she could. No doubt the Solarian survivors—If there are any, her mind supplied grimly—would figure out that she'd used pod-launched missiles, and that was the way she preferred it. If the hammer was really coming down, she wanted the Mark 16's existence to come as a complete surprise to the first Solarian officer unfortunate enough to face it in combat.

  "Sir, CIC estimates that these things were launched from pods, not tubes." Ingeborg Aberu's voice was harsh, tight with fear and also with something else. Something plaintive, almost petulant. An anger stoked by the sudden realization that the Star Kingdom of Manticore really could produce technology well in advance of anything the Solarian League had even considered deploying. "They must have had them tractored inside their wedges. That's why their acceleration dropped just before they launched; they had to deploy them clear of the wedge perimeter."

  "Understood," Byng replied tersely.

  At least I was right about that much, he thought bitterly. They can't launch things this big from the broadside tubes we saw at Monica . . . not that that's going to make things any better. Unless they don't have very many of the damned pods available.

  "Sir," Aberu said a moment later, her voice flatter than it had been, "CIC is projecting that all their missiles have been targeted on a single unit." She turned her head to look at him.

  "On us," she said.

  Warden Mizawa swore viciously as Ursula Zeiss reported the same conclusion to him.

  That fucking idiot! That stupid, arrogant, Battle Fleet prick! Now he's going to get all of us killed, and for absolutely nothing!

  "Time to impact five minutes," Zeiss said harshly.

  "Stand by missile defense," Mizawa said, and glanced into the display which showed him the face of Hildegard Bourget, in Command Beta. From her tight, bitter expression, she'd obviously guessed exactly the same thing he had.

  Looks like getting you off the ship worked out even better than I'd expected, Maitland, a corner of his brain thought even now. Sorry I never told you personally what a job you did for me, but I guess I'm not going to have the chance to make up for it. Good luck, boy—and watch your ass! The Navy's going to need you, I think.

  God, I wish I'd been wrong, Maitland Askew thought sickly, his face white and clenched as he watched the master tactical plot on Admiral Sigbee's flag bridge and thought of all the men and women he knew aboard Josef Byng's flagship. God, why couldn't I have been wrong?!

  Despite all of the simulations BuWeaps and BuTrain had been able to put together after examining the hardware captured at Monica, Michelle and Dominica Adenauer were only too well aware that their knowledge of actual Solarian capabilities was limited, to say the least. They had no real meter stick for the toughness of the Sollies' missile defenses, so they'd decided to err on the side of caution. Each of their Nikes had eighty "flat pack" pods limpeted to her hull, and each of the Saganami-Cs had forty. That gave Michelle a total of nine hundred and sixty pods, or the next best thing to ten thousand missiles. Operating on her assumption that the Sollies' actual defensive capability was twice that of the captured vessels examined at Monica, Michelle had decided that two hundred and fifty of those missiles ought to do the trick. They might not destroy their target outright, but that was fine with her. In fact, she would really prefer that outcome. She wasn't the sort of homicidal maniac who enjoyed killing people, after all. She'd be more than willing to settle for demonstrating that she could destroy their vessels . . . and she'd be delighted if that convinced them to throw in the towel before she actually had to.

  The Solarian League Navy had been the premier navy of the explored galaxy for centuries. Indeed, no one could remember a time when it hadn't been acknowledged as the most powerful fleet in existence. But that very preeminence had worked to undermine its efficiency. There was, quite simply, no enemy for it to take seriously, no peer against which to measure itself, no Darwinian incentive to identify weaknesses and correct them.

  The nature of the Solarian League itself, dominated by the permanent bureaucrats who actually ran it rather than the political leadership which had long since lost any power to rein in those bureaucrats, was another factor. As with the civilian bureaucracies, the naval bureaucracy had become immovably entrenched, and the internecine warfare between competing departments for limited funding had been both intense and brutal. Funding decisions were fought out on the basis of who had the most clout, not the greatest need, and owed very little indeed to any impartial analysis of actual operational requirements. So it probably wasn't very surprising that the fundamental assumption of Solarian technological supremacy in all things meant R&D's budget was the smallest of all. After all, since the SLN's technology was already better than anyone else's, why waste money on that when it could more profitably be spent on prestigious things like additional superdreadnoughts . . . or quietly eased into the private banking accounts of Navy procurement officials?

  All of which helped to explain why the SLN had also been one of the galaxy's most conservative navies. With thousands of ships in commission, and more thousands mothballed in reserve, its margin of superiority over any conceivable opponent had been utterly decisive. Which meant getting money even to build new ships, or to radically overhaul and modernize existing ones, had always been a difficult exercise. As one consequence, the SLN had been slow to recognize the potential of the laser head, and even slower to adopt it. And because no one had ever used similar weapons against it, its evaluation of the threat the new weapon presented—and of the doctrinal changes necessary to defeat it—had lagged behind even its own hardware.

  That lag was about to have serious repercussions for SLNS Jean Bart.

  "Those platforms are definitely decoys, Ma'am," Sherilyn Jeffers said flatly as she watched her displays. "They've spun up now, and Ghost Rider's giving us good data on them."

  "What do they look like?" Naomi Kaplan asked.

  "It looks as if the system as a whole is pretty good, Ma'am." The electronics warfare officer tapped a few keys, her eyes intent as she absorbed CIC's analysis of the reconnaissance platforms' datastream. "I'd say the individual platforms probably aren't quite as capable as what we've been seeing out of the Havenites lately, but their combined capability is actually better."

  "Enough better that we should've used more missiles, do you think, Guns?" Kaplan asked.

  "Oh,
no, Ma'am." Abigail never looked up from her own displays and telemetry, and her smile could have frozen a star's heart. "Not that much better. In fact, I'd say their hardware is better than their doctrine. Either that, or their helmsmen are a little shaky. The interval between their units is at least three times anything the Havenites would accept, and that means the other ships' decoys are too far from the target to give it much cover. Our attack birds are going up against just its own platforms, and they aren't good enough to hack it against that much fire without a lot more support."

  "Launching counter-missiles," Ursula Zeiss announced tersely, and Mizawa gave a jerky nod of acknowledgment.

  He wasn't certain how much good the counter-missiles were going to do. The LIM-16F was a third again as capable as its predecessor, but even so, there wouldn't be time for a proper, layered defense. By the time they reached Jean Bart, the Manticoran missiles' closing velocity would be up to seventy-nine percent of the speed of light. The LIM-16's drive simply didn't have the endurance to hit the monsters the Manties had launched far enough out for an effective second launch at the same targets before they zipped right through the entire defensive envelope.

  That's going to be a bitch for the laser clusters, too, he thought harshly. And they obviously know where that asshole Byng's been talking to them from. I can hardly fault them for wanting to kill his worthless ass, but I'd just as soon they hadn't decided to kill mine at the same time!

  Despite everything—despite his own fear, despite his desperate concern for his ship and his crew, despite even his incandescent fury at Josef Byng—he actually smiled as the last sentence ran through his brain.

  Aboard the attacking MDMs, computers consulted their pre-launch instructions, and suddenly jammers and decoys began to blossom. The Solarian counter-missiles were basically sound pieces of technology, but despite the SLN's belated awareness that something peculiar had happened to missile combat out in the Haven Sector, it was only beginning any sort of serious attempt to upgrade its active anti-missile defenses. Worse, neither the hardware nor the officers groping towards some new defense doctrine had profited from the last two decades of savage combat which had refined their Manticoran and Havenite counterparts. Their counter-missiles' software wasn't as good, the doctrine for their use was purely theoretical, without the harsh Darwinian input of survival, and the officers doing their best—not just aboard Jean Bart, but aboard all of Byng's battlecruisers—had no true concept of the threat environment into which they had intruded.

  For all of its towering reputation, all of its size, all of the wealth and industrial power which stood behind it, the Solarian League Navy was simply outclassed. Even Frontier Fleet was accustomed only to dealing with pirates, the occasional slaver, or the privateer gone rogue. No one had destroyed a Solarian warship in combat in almost three centuries, and the complacency that had engendered had produced fatal consequences. Despite its preeminent position, the SLN was a second-rate power, inferior even to many of the Solarian system-defense forces it had derided as "amateurs" for so many decades. Far, far worse, the men and women of its officer corps didn't even recognize their own inferiority . . . and Josef Byng's ships found themselves matched against what was by almost any measure the most experienced, battle hardened, and technologically advanced fleet in space.

  * * *

  Byng stared at the master plot in disbelief as the Manticoran missiles suddenly and magically reproduced. There were no longer hundreds of incoming missiles—there were thousands, and the counter-missiles trying to kill them went berserk. Scores of them targeted the same false images, went after the same decoys, and then the EW platforms the Manticorans called Dazzlers spun up, radiating with impossible power. No one in the Solarian League had realized that the RMN had managed to put actual fusion plants aboard their missiles, so no one had even considered what jammers or decoys could do with that sort of energy budget. And, unfortunately for Jean Bart, it was far too late to start thinking about that sort of thing as the hell-bright bubbles of multi-megaton nuclear explosions spawned x-ray lasers.

  Despite the Manticoran penetration aides, despite weaknesses in doctrine, despite surprise and the disastrous underestimation of the threat, the Solarian League Navy managed to stop seventy-three of the incoming missiles. Another thirty of the Mark 23s had carried nothing but penetration EW, which left "only" one hundred and forty-seven actual shipkillers. One hundred and forty-seven missiles, each of which carried six individual laser heads designed to blast through superdreadnought armor.

  A hungry, wordless sound flowed across HMS Tristram's bridge as rapiers of focused x-rays stabbed deep into Jean Bart.

  No, not "rapiers," Abigail Hearns thought from behind the hard, cold anger of her eyes as the fury of the bomb-pumped lasers ripped huge splinters and mangled chunks from the battlecruiser's hull. That's too neat, too precise. Those are axes. Or chainsaws.

  The Mark 23 was designed to kill superdreadnoughts, ships with incredibly tough armor that was literally meters thick. Ships which were intricately compartmentalized, honeycombed with blast doors, internal bulkheads, and cofferdams—all designed to contain damage. To channel it away from vital areas. To absorb almost inconceivable hammerings and remain in action.

  But SLNS Jean Bart was no superdreadnought.

  Her wedge stopped dozens—scores—of lasers. Her decoys attracted still others away from her hull. But more dozens of them were neither stopped nor decoyed, and they blasted through her battlecruiser sidewalls and battlecruiser armor with contemptuous ease. They ripped at her vitals like the talons of some huge demon. And then, abruptly, she simply . . . came apart.

  Abigail Hearns watched the next best thing to a million tons of starship disintegrate, and her stony eyes never even flickered. Deep within her, there was a sense of horror, of terrible regret, for the thousands of human beings who had just died. Most of them had been guilty of nothing worse than obeying the orders of a criminally stupid and arrogant superior. She knew that, and that inner part of her mourned for their deaths, but not even that could dim her sense of triumph. Of justice done for her ship's murdered squadron mates.

  "Behold, I will make you a new threshing sledge with sharp teeth; you shall thresh the mountains and beat them small, and make the hills like chaff," her mind recited the old, old words coldly as the wreckage began to spread on her tactical plot. "You shall winnow them, the wind shall carry them away, and the whirlwind shall scatter them."

  But all she said aloud was—

  "Target destroyed, Ma'am."

  Well, that was a case of overkill after all, Michelle thought, gazing at the spreading cloud of debris and gas which had once been a Solarian battlecruiser, but the thought was muted, almost hushed. Even for her, even after all the death and destruction she'd seen in two decades of warfare, there was something dreadful about Jean Bart's execution. And "execution" was exactly the right word for what had happened, she reflected. She'd expected the Sollies to be fat, happy, and soft, expected to kill the ship with her single salvo, but her wildest estimates had fallen far short of just how great an edge the Royal Manticoran Navy currently enjoyed.

  But that's the rub, isn't it, girl? That word "currently." Well, that and the fact that the Sollies have probably got at least four times as many superdreadnoughts as we have destroyers! But done is done, and maybe somebody on their side will be smart enough to realize just how many of their spacers are going to get killed before that size advantage of theirs lets them carry through against us. I'd really like to think sanity could break out somewhere, at any rate.

  No trace of her thoughts touched her expression as she turned to look at Commander Edwards.

  "All right, Bill," she told the communications officer calmly. "Let's see if the next link in their chain of command is prepared to see reason now."

  Chapter Forty-Six

  "You know, I'd really like to meet this Anisimovna one day," Michelle Henke said as she accepted a fresh cup of steaming black coffee from Chris Billingsle
y. She gave the steward a quick smile of thanks, and he continued around the table to her two guests with his coffee pot, refilling and topping off, then withdrew from the day cabin.

  "I don't imagine you're alone in that, Ma'am," Aivars Terekhov said grimly. "I know I'd like an hour or two alone with her."

  "She does seem to get around, doesn't she?" Bernardus Van Dort agreed. "Assuming this really is the same person Tyler claims to've met with."

  "Same name, same description," Michelle pointed out. She sipped from her cup, then set it back down and leaned back in her chair. "I realize there are a lot of women in the galaxy, Bernardus, but how many gorgeous, man-eating blondes with Mesan accents, Manpower credit chips, Solly task groups in their back pockets, and a taste for slumming in the vicinity of the Talbott Cluster so they can arrange operations designed to break our kneecaps are there?"