by David Weber
"You sound like we're already at war, Admiral!" Miazawa snapped.
"For all we know, Sir, by now we are," Sarnow replied, and Miazawa's nostrils flared.
"That will be all, gentlemen," Parks said softly. He regarded both men for some seconds, then sighed and rubbed his forehead.
"In many ways, Admiral Sarnow, I would actually prefer to adopt your proposal." He sounded as if the admission surprised him, but then he shook his head. "Unfortunately, I believe the suggestion that we avoid further escalation also has merit. And unlike you, I can't quite free myself of the suspicion that, Murphy's Law or no, they might be attempting to suck us out of position to strike with light forces behind us. Moreover, my first and foremost responsibility is to protect the civilian populations and territorial integrity of our allies. For all of those reasons, I'm afraid the idea of a forward deployment is out of the question."
Sarnow's mouth tightened briefly, but then he nodded and leaned back in his chair. Admiral Parks gazed at him a moment longer, then let his eyes trail across Honors face before he continued.
"At the moment, and barring any further reinforcement of Seaford Nine, we have at least parity with the known enemy forces in our area. As Admiral Sarnow points out, however, a sudden lunge against Yorik could slip past us unintercepted, which would make our margin of superiority moot. An attack against Alizon or Zanzibar, on the other hand, would have to move almost directly across us here, giving us an excellent opportunity to intercept it short of its objective.
"Accordingly," he drew a deep breath and committed himself, "I intend to dispatch Admiral Konstanzakis' and Admiral Miazawa's superdreadnought squadrons and Admiral Tolliver's dreadnoughts to Yorik. That will preposition twenty-four ships of the wall to cover our most vulnerable responsibility in the event that someone does slip past us, and will also protect Yorik against an attack by lighter forces inserted into the area for that purpose.
"Admiral Kostmeyer," he turned to the CO of Battle Squadron Nine, "you'll take your dreadnoughts to Zarizibar. I'm not comfortable about the losses the Caliph's units have been taking, and with so much of our strength at Yorik, they'll be the next most exposed target."
Kostmeyer nodded, not entirely happily, and Parks smiled thinly.
"I won't leave you quite alone out at the end of your limb, Admiral. I intend to recall and reassemble Admiral Tyrel's battlecruisers and send them all to join you there as quickly as possible. Deploy your sensor platforms and use those battlecruisers to patrol as aggressively as you like. If an attack comes at you in overwhelming force, yield the system but remain concentrated and in contact with them if at all possible until the remainder of the task force can come to your assistance."
"Yield the system, Sir?" Kostmeyer couldn't quite keep the surprise out of her voice, and Parks smiled frostily.
"It's our responsibility to protect Zanzibar, Admiral, and we will. But, as Admiral Sarnow says, we must engage them as a coherent whole, and moving back in to retake the system with our full strength would probably result in less actual damage to its people and infrastructure than would a desperate but unsuccessful defense of it."
Honor chewed the inside of her lip and reached up to stroke Nimitz's ears. She could not but respect the moral courage it took for any commander to order one of his admirals to voluntarily surrender an allied star system to the enemy. Even if Parks was correct and his concentrated forces sufficed to take it back undamaged, his actions would provoke a furor, and the consequences to his career could be catastrophic. But resolution or no, the idea of splitting their forces in the face of potential attack appalled her. All her instincts insisted that Sarnow was right and Parks was wrong about the best way to bring the enemy to action, but perhaps even more frighteningly, that disposed of all thirty-two of Hancock Station's ships of the wall. In fact, it disposed of everything... except Battlecruiser Squadron Five.
"In the meantime," Parks continued evenly, as if he'd heard her thoughts, "you, Admiral Sarnow, will remain here in Hancock with your squadron as the core of a light task group. Your function will be to cover this base against attack, but, even more importantly, Hancock will continue to function as the linchpin of our entire deployment I'll leave detailed orders for Admiral Danislav, but for your planning information, I intend to hold his battle squadron here, as well. The two of you will be well placed as our central information relay and to cover Alizon against direct attack, and I'll detach another light cruiser flotilla to thicken up our Seaford pickets. That should enable them both to retain sufficient strength to shadow the enemy as a precaution against deception course changes and to alert you in time for you to move to reinforce Admiral Kostmeyer should Haven attack Zanzibar. I realize Admiral Kostmeyer will be much more poorly placed to come to your assistance, but so long as Admiral Rollins doesn't know we've pulled any substantial forces out of Hancock, he'll have to scout the system before committing himself to attack it, and that should alert us in time to bring one or both of the detached forces back to Hancock."
He paused, watching Sarnow's face, then went on quietly.
"I realize I'm leaving you exposed here, Admiral. Even after Admiral Danislav's arrival, you'll be heavily outnumbered if Admiral Rollins' units slip by us before we can redeploy to cover you, and I'd prefer not to put you in that kind of position. But I don't think I can avoid risking you. The overriding function of this base is to protect our allies and maintain control of this general area. If we lose Zanzibar, Alizon, and Yorik, Hancock will be effectively isolated and cut off from relief, in which case it loses both its value and its viability, anyway."
"I understand, Sir." Sarnow's clipped voice was free of rancor, yet Honor noted that he hadn't said he agreed with Parks.
"Very well, then." Parks pinched the bridge of his nose and looked at his staff ops officer. "All right, Mark, let's look at the nuts and bolts."
"Yes, Sir. First, Admiral, I think we have to consider how best to distribute our available screening units between Admiral Kostmeyer and the rest of our wall. After that—"
Captain Hurston went on speaking in crisp, professional tones, but Honor hardly noticed. She sat back in her chair, hearing the details and recording them for future reference but not really listening to them, and she felt Captain Corell's matching stiffness beside her.
Parks was making a mistake. For the best of reasons and not without the support of logic, but a mistake. She felt it, sensed it the same way she sensed the sudden fusion of a complicated tactical problem into a single, coherent unity.
She could be wrong. In fact, she hoped—prayed—that she was. But it didn't feel that way. And, she wondered, just how much of Admiral Parks' final decision was based on logic and how much on the desire, conscious or unconscious, to leave Admiral Mark Sarnow and his bothersome flag captain safely on a back burner, unable to upset his peace of mind?
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The faces in Nike's briefing room were unhappy, and Honor leaned back in her chair as Commander Houseman unburdened himself.
"... realize the gravity of the situation, Admiral Sarnow, but surely Sir Yancey must realize we can't possibly hold this system against an attack in force! We don't begin to have the firepower, and—"
"That's enough, Commander." There was no expression at all in Mark Sarnow's voice, but Houseman closed his mouth with a snap, and the admiral bestowed a wintry smile upon the assembled commodores, captains, and staff officers of what was about to become Task Group Hancock 001.
"I asked for your frank opinions, ladies and gentlemen, and I want them. But let us stick to the relevant, if you please. Whether or not our orders are the best possible ones is beside the point. Our concern has to be making them work. Correct?"
"Absolutely, Sir." Commodore Van Slyke gave his chief of staff a rare public look of disapproval and nodded emphatically.
"Good." Sarnow ignored Houseman's flush and looked at Commodore Banton, his senior divisional commander. "Have you and Commander Turner completed that study Ernie
and I discussed with you Monday, Isabella?"
"Just about, Sir, and it looks like Captain Corell and Dame Honor are right. The sims say it should work, anyway, but we've got to nail down exactly what fire control modifications will be required, and the availability numbers are still up in the air. I'm afraid Gryphon has other things on her mind than our data requests just now." Banton allowed herself a smile that matched her admiral's, and one or two people actually chuckled.
"At the moment, Sir, I'd have to say that, unless Admiral Parks changes his mind and takes them with him, there should be enough pods to pull it off. I gave Captain Corell our latest figures when we came aboard this evening, and Commander Turner is working out the software changes now."
Sarnow glanced at Corell, who nodded in confirmation. A few people—notably Commander Houseman—looked skeptical, but Honor felt a trickle of satisfaction. The concept might be a tactical antique, yet its very outdatedness should keep the Peeps from expecting it in the first place.
A parasite pod was nothing more than a drone slaved to the fire control of the ship towing it astern on a tractor. Each pod mounted several, usually a half-dozen or so, single-shot missile launchers similar to those LACs used. The idea was simple—to link the pod with the ship's internal tubes and launch a greater number of birds in a single salvo in order to saturate an opponent's defenses—but they hadn't been used in a fleet engagement for eighty T-years because advances in antimissile defenses had rendered them ineffective.
The old pods' launchers had lacked the powerful mass-drivers which gave warships' missiles their initial impetus. That, in turn, gave them a lower initial velocity, and since their missiles had exactly the same drives as any other missile, they couldn't make up the velocity differential unless the ship-launched birds were stepped down to less than optimal power settings. If you didn't step your shipboard missiles down, you lost much of the saturation effect because the velocity discrepancy effectively split your launch into two separate salvos. Yet if you did step them down, the slower speed of your entire launch not only gave the enemy more time to evade and adjust his ECM, but also gave his active defenses extra tracking and engagement time.
It was the tracking time that was the real killer, for point defense had improved enormously over the last century. Neither LAC launchers nor the old-style pods had been able to overcome the advantage it now held (which was one reason the Admiralty had stopped all new LAC construction twenty Manticoran years ago). Moreover, the RMN's data on the People's Navy's point defense, available in no small part thanks to Captain Dame Honor Harrington, indicated that the Peeps' missile defenses, while poorer than Manticore's, were still more than sufficient to eat old-style pod salvos for breakfast.
But the Weapons Development Board, not without opposition from its then head, Lady Sonja Hemphill, had resurrected the pods and given them a new and heavier punch. Hemphill rejected the entire concept as "retrograde," but her successor at the WDB had pushed the project energetically and Honor couldn't quite see the logic behind Hemphill's objections. Given her vocal advocacy of material-based tactics, Honor would have expected her to embrace the pods with enthusiasm... unless it was simply that something inside the admiral equated "old" weapon systems with "inherently inferior" ones.
As far as Honor was concerned, an idea's age didn't necessarily invalidate it—especially not with the new launchers, whose development Hemphill herself had overseen. Of course, Hemphill hadn't intended them to be used in something as ancient as pods. She'd been looking for a way to make LACs effective once more as part of the tactical approach her critics called the "Sonja Swarm." The new launchers were far more expensive than traditional LAC launchers, which was the official core of Hemphill's opposition to "wasting" them in pods, but expense hadn't bothered her where the LACs were concerned. Building one with the new launchers pushed its price tag up to about a quarter of a destroyer's, especially with the fire control upgrade needed to take full advantage of the launchers' capabilities, yet Hemphill had lobbied hard for the resumption of LAC construction, and she'd succeeded.
Like most of her jeune ecole fellows, she still regarded LACs as expendable, single-salvo assets (which didn't endear her to their crews), but at least she'd seen the virtue in increasing their effectiveness while they lasted. The fact that it also gave them a better chance of survival was probably immaterial to her thinking, but that was all right with Honor. She didn't care why Horrible Hemphill did something, on the rare occasions when it was the right something. And however loudly the cost effectiveness analysts might complain, Honor had a pretty shrewd notion how LAC skippers felt about the notion of living through an engagement.
But the point at hand was that the same improvements could be applied to parasite pods, and, despite Hemphill's objections, they had been. Of course, the new pods—with ten tubes each, not six—were intended for ships of the wall, which had plenty of redundant fire control to manage them, not battlecruisers. But it sounded like Turner was finding the answer to that, and their missiles were actually heavier than the standard ship-to-ship birds. With the new lightweight mass-drivers BuShips had perfected, their performance could equal or even exceed that of normal, ship-launched missiles, and their warheads were more destructive to boot. The pods were clumsy, of course, and towing them did unfortunate things to a warship's inertial compensator field, which held down maximum accelerations by twenty-five percent or so. They were also vulnerable to proximity soft kills, since they carried neither sidewalls nor radiation shielding of their own, but if they got their shots off before they were killed, that hardly mattered.
"Good, Isabella," Sarnow's voice recalled Honor to the conversation at hand. "If we can get him to leave them here, we can put at least five on tow behind each of our battlecruisers—six, for the newer ships. Even the heavy cruisers can manage two or three," He smiled thinly. "It may not help in a long engagement, but our initial salvos should make anyone on the other side wonder if they've run into dreadnoughts instead of battlecruisers!"
Unpleasant smiles were shared about the table, but Houseman wasn't quite finished, though he was careful about his tone when he spoke up again.
"No doubt you're correct, Admiral, but it's the idea of a long engagement that worries me. With the repair base to protect, we won't be able to mount a real mobile defense—they can always pin us down by going straight for the base—and once the pods are exhausted, your battlecruisers are going to find themselves hard-pressed by ships of the wall, Sir."
Honor's eyes narrowed as she examined Houseman's face. It took nerve for a commander to keep arguing after two different flag officers, one his own immediate CO, had just more or less told him to shut up. What bothered her was where Houseman's nerve came from. Was it the courage of his convictions, or was it arrogance? The fact that she disliked the man made it hard to be objective, and she warned herself to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Sarnow seemed less charitably inclined.
"I realize that, Mr. Houseman," he replied. "But at the possible expense of boring you, let me repeat that the purpose of this conference is to solve our problems, not simply to recapitulate them."
Houseman seemed to shrink into himself, hunching down in his chair with a total lack of expression as Van Slyke gave him an even colder glance, and someone cleared his throat.
"Admiral Sarnow?"
"Yes, Commodore Prentis?"
"We do have one other major advantage, Sir," Battle-cruiser Division 53's CO pointed out. "All our sensor platforms have the new FTL systems, and with Nike and Achilles to coordinate—"
The commodore shrugged, and Sarnow nodded sharply. Nike was one of the first ships built with the new grav pulse technology from the keel out, but Achilles had received the same system in her last refit, and their pulse transmitters gave both battlecruisers the ability to send FTL messages to any ship with gravitic sensors. They had to shut down their own wedges long enough to complete any transmission, since no sensor could pick message pulses out of the b
ackground "noise" of a warship's drive signature, but they would give Sarnow a command and control "reach" the Peeps couldn't hope to match.
"Jack has an excellent point, Admiral, if you'll pardon my saying so." This time Van Slyke didn't even glance at Houseman as he spoke—which suggested there was going to be a lively discussion when they returned to Van Slyke's flagship. "If we can't match them toe-to-toe, we'll just have to use our footwork to make up the difference."
"Agreed." Sarnow leaned back and rubbed his mustache. "Do any other advantages we've got—or that we can create—spring to mind?"
Honor cleared her throat quietly, and Sarnow cocked an eyebrow at her.
"Yes, Dame Honor?"
"One thing that's occurred to me, Sir, is those Erebus-class minelayers. Do we know what Admiral Parks intends to do with them?'
"Ernie?" Sarnow passed the question to his chief of staff, and Captain Corell ran one fine-boned hand through her hair while she scrolled through data on her memo pad. She reached the end and looked up with a headshake.
"There's nothing in the flagship's current download, Sir. Of course, we haven't received their finalized dump yet. They're still thinking things over, just like us."
"It might be a good idea to ask about them, Sir," Honor suggested, and Sarnow nodded in agreement. The minelayers weren't officially assigned to Hancock—they'd simply been passing through on their way to Reevesport when Parks read Admiral Caparelli's dispatch and short-stopped them. It was probably little more than an instinctive reaction, but if he could be convinced to hold them here indefinitely...