by David Weber
HMS Phantom
Hypatia System
“All three targets destroyed, Sir!” Commander Ilkova announced exultantly.
“Excellent!” Rear Admiral Kotouč replied. “Good work, Markéta. Now let’s see how well the rest of the plan works.”
“Yes, Sir!” Ilkova nodded crisply, but her blue-green eyes glittered with satisfaction. And with good reason, Kotouč thought.
So far, at least.
He’d hoped, when Vice Admiral Hajdu relented and granted the first extension on his truncated time limit, that the Solly would allow total evacuation, after all. Throwing his own people’s lives into the scale to save “only” industrial platforms and the Hypatians’ homes would have been an even harder decision. He might have made it in the end, after all, but if Hajdu had simply waited long enough for Vukodlak and some of the other promised reinforcements to arrive, he wouldn’t have needed to. Under those circumstances, the Solly might have thought better of committing an act of wanton destructiveness on such a scale. It was always easier to make the right moral decision when there was somebody waiting to shoot you between the eyes if you didn’t. So, yes, Hajdu might have opted to leave Hypatia intact if he’d seen a Manticoran squadron bearing down upon him with what looked like a superdreadnought leading the way.
Not that Kotouč had really expected it. If Hajdu was willing to cold-bloodedly murder several million Hypatians who simply hadn’t gotten out of his way in time, then the odds said he’d send off as massive a missile salvo as it took to ensure the system’s infrastructure was destroyed before he disappeared into hyper. And unless Vukodlak had come along on exactly the right vector, not even Manticoran compensators could have overhauled him before he crossed the hyper-limit and escaped.
But it would’ve been nice, he thought almost wistfully. I’ve always admired Edward Saganami; I never really wanted to be him, though.
It had been clear that the Sollies had failed to detect Kotouč’s ships, especially after he’d moved them so much deeper into the Alexandria Belt, away from the central node where they’d been quietly sequestered upon arrival. Given that head start, simply avoiding Hajdu’s ships would have been child’s play, even without the advantages state-of-the-art Manticoran stealth systems provided. Maneuvering into a position from which he could attack them, instead, had been a more ticklish proposition.
The good news had been that even if he’d been detected coming in, the Sollies could never have intercepted him against his will. His acceleration advantage was too great, and despite his position “inside them,” he could have dodged around the inner system almost indefinitely, or else simply turned away and shown them his heels as he accelerated across the hyper-limit long before they overtook him. The bad news had been his certainty that if they’d detected him, they would have accelerated “Operation Buccaneer” to complete it before he got close enough to intervene. Although, to the fair, they might have been confident enough—given the numerical odds—to stand and fight, instead.
He certainly would have been.
But he’d managed to creep very cautiously, at a mere trickle of acceleration, from his hiding place in the Belt to a position considerably closer to Hajdu’s task force. He, Clarke, and Ilkova had taken their time analyzing the Solly flag officer’s dispositions, and the one thing Kotouč could fault him on—tactically, at least; there was quite a lot he could fault him on in terms of moral leprosy—was that he was so busy watching his back, it never seemed to have occurred to him that his adversaries might actually have beaten him to Hypatia. His remote platforms were spread along the hyper-limit, with much sparser, almost casual-afterthought coverage of the inner system. He didn’t have enough overlap even along the hyper-limit to reliably defeat current generation Manticoran stealth, although that wouldn’t have been an issue against a new arrival, since no stealth system could hide the energy flare of a hyper footprint. In the inner system, however, the lack of overlap had created chinks through which TG 110.2 could pick a surreptitious way.
Picking a spot to creep to had been a tad less simple.
Initially, his ships had been little more than nine million kilometers from Hypatia, but he’d moved them—slowly and carefully—all the way around the system primary from the capital planet to get them safely away from any Solarian sensors in orbit around the planet. That had seemed only prudent when the Sollies first arrived; it wasn’t until Hajdu’s Buccaneer ultimatum that he’d realized just how badly placed he was to intervene. Fortunately, he’d had a lot of star system to work with, and he’d moved to a point just over eighty million kilometers from Hypatia, then held that position relative to the planet for the next forty-five hours.
When the Ghost Rider platforms informed Kotouč that Hajdu had begun deploying the missile pods to execute Buccaneer he’d known he could wait no longer. So two and a half hours ago, his ships had begun accelerating toward the Sollies at a miserly 175 G and acquiring a closing velocity of just over 15,000 KPS in the process. And while they were doing that, Commander Ilkova had sent the final programming—by light-speed directional laser, to avoid any betraying FTL com grav-pulses—to the quartet of Ghost Rider platforms she’d maneuvered into position and parked unobtrusively in Hypatian orbit long before Hajdu approached the planet.
Wish I’d left more of them, Kotouč thought now. And if I’d had a clue Markéta might come up with an off-the-wall inspiration like this one, I damned well would have! Of course, if I’d left enough to take a real bite out of Hajdu’s task force, even the Sollies probably would’ve spotted them, whether or not they were actively emitting at the time. But there were only four of them, damn it, and those frigging missile colliers had to go.
“First salvo should enter their CM basket in…twenty-four seconds, Sir,” Ilkova said, unaware of his thoughts. “Penaids coming up in twenty seconds from…now.”
“Very good,” Rear Admiral Kotouč replied once more, and settled himself more firmly into his command chair’s shock frame.
SLNS Camperdown
Hypatia System
“Where—what—are they launching from?” Hajdu Gyôzô demanded as the first incoming missile salvo was followed by a second, equally massive, twenty seconds later.
“Sir, I don’t know—not yet,” Koopman replied. “We only know where to look because we caught the flare as their impellers came up, but we can’t see a frigging thing out there! I’ve got half a dozen recon platforms closing on the launch locus, but until they get closer—”
The commodore shrugged. It was a gesture of frustration and anger—mostly self-anger, Hajdu knew—and the vice admiral nodded in unhappy understanding.
“Sir,” Commodore Brigman said quietly, standing beside Hajdu’s command chair. Hajdu looked at him, and the chief of staff leaned closer. “Sir, we’ve got to return fire.”
“At what target?” Hajdu asked tartly. “Until we can at least tell the missiles what to look for, our chance of hitting anything at this range doesn’t exist.”
“But if we throw enough birds into their faces, it might push them back onto defense long enough for Daphne’s platforms to ID them. Or at least find them.”
“And under normal circumstances, I’d do just that.” Hajdu’s tone was sharper, and he shook his head, lips pressed together and eyes glittering. It took him a second or two to regain command of his voice. Then he said, “These people—whoever the hell they are, and however they got here—knew exactly what they were doing when they went after the freighters. The pods that’re already deployed are the only ones we’ve got now, Fred. That means we can’t waste them on blind fire.”
Brigman looked at him for a moment, then shook himself.
“Yes, Sir.” He grimaced. “I hadn’t thought that all the way through.”
“Understandable, given the surprise quotient.” Hajdu shrugged. “And don’t think I enjoyed thinking about it myself.”
Brigman nodded, his expression grim, and Hajdu nodded back, trying very hard not to think about
the literally millions of missiles which had been eliminated along with the three TUFT freighters. He’d gone from an effectively bottomless pool of ammunition to the twenty thousand pods he’d already deployed plus his internal magazines…and only his battlecruisers could launch even first-generation Cataphracts internally. Of course, each of those pods contained six improved Cataphracts, and applying the adjective “only” to 120,000 missiles was patently absurd. Except that it wasn’t. Not against Manty EW and Manty missile defenses.
Maybe not, he thought grimly, but whoever these bastards are, and however they got here, there can’t be very many of them. Not with salvos that size.
Each of the incoming salvos—there were eight inbound now, and as he watched the display a ninth wave of impeller signatures blossomed upon it—was “only” about three hundred and seventy missiles strong. And they were spaced twenty seconds apart. That meant they were coming from internal launchers, because a pod-launched salvo would have been much heavier. He was realist enough to know his missile defense crews would be hard-pressed—at best—to stop the next best thing to four hundred Manty missiles. What had happened to Eleventh Fleet at Manticore was ample proof of that. But they’d be one hell of a lot more effective against four hundred than they would have been against four or five thousand, and the Manties had to know that as well as he did.
For that matter, even though they still hadn’t managed to locate the Manties, the short range at which they were attacking was revealing. According to ONI’s best guesstimate, their missiles really could reach a powered range of thirty million kilometers, yet they were attacking from less than half that. That put them deep inside his own range basket, and while he might have lost the pods still aboard Troubadour, Merchant Mart, and Stevedore, he still had the ones they’d already deployed in preparation for Buccaneer. So if he could only find them, and if there were as few of them as he thought there were…
“First salvo entering the outer zone in twenty seconds,” Koopman announced. “So far—”
She broke off, then suddenly raised her right arm, pumping her fist exultantly.
“Got them, Sir!” she announced. “Three—no, four—bogeys at one-four-point-five-seven million klicks! Looks like at least one of those huge ‘battlecruisers’ of theirs. The others might be smaller battlecruisers or those outsized heavy cruisers. Either way, we’ve got them.”
“Program an alpha launch,” Vice Admiral Hajdu Gyôzô said. “Let’s see how the bastards like that.”
HMS Arngrim
Hypatia System
“The Sollies have launched, Ma’am!” Lieutenant Bill Berden announced.
The tactical officer’s voice was crisp and professional, yet there was an odd softness to it, as well. Like everyone else aboard HMS Arngrim, he knew about his captain’s engagement. In fact, he’d been the assistant TO aboard Cinqueda when it was announced, and he’d attended their engagement party aboard the heavy cruiser. In the wake of the Yawata Strike, it had been a welcome reaffirmation that life went on.
And now Jayson and Cinqueda were 60,000,000 kilometers from Arngrim and a tidal wave of missiles had just erupted from the Solarian battlecruisers.
“Estimate one hundred twenty thousand inbound, and they’re turning out better acceleration than Filareta’s Cataphracts showed at Manticore,” Berden continued. “I’m reading eight-four-one-point-eight KPS squared. Time-of-flight,” he finished quietly, “one-five-two seconds.”
“Thank you, Guns.”
Megan Petersen made herself sound calm as she sat very still in her command chair, her eyes on the tactical plot. It wasn’t easy. She would far rather have been the target of those missiles herself, she realized. At least then the threat would have been to her, and not to the man she loved. And knowing that he would have felt exactly the same way, had the situation been reversed, only made her love him more.
She’d argued, when Admiral Kotouč gave her her orders. She didn’t know whether or not the admiral knew about her engagement to Jayson, and she hadn’t brought it up, either. She’d simply suggested, respectfully, that his logic was flawed.
Task Group 110.2 wasn’t going to survive. That was a given, something every man and woman aboard every one of Jan Kotouč’s ships knew as well as he did. This was their Saganami moment, the one every Manticoran officer knew might one day come to her, and as the Admiral had pointed out, it didn’t matter that Hypatia was someone else’s star system. It never had mattered, really. Ellen D’Orville had proved that in the Ingeborg System two centuries ago. Duchess Harrington had reaffirmed it in Grayson less than twenty T-years ago. And now it was their turn, here in Hypatia, to prove the tradition still lived.
Yet the fact that they were about to die didn’t mean they couldn’t accomplish their mission first. The odds were against it, but, like Edward Saganami himself, they might pull it off. Even if they didn’t, they could be certain a lot fewer Solarian battlecruisers would go home to brag about the atrocity they’d committed.
And we will by God show every other star system in this galaxy that the Star Empire of Manticore and its Allies stand by their friends, come hell or high water, she thought now. It’s just that I’ve seen so much aftermath. I’m tired of it. I’m tired of picking through the bodies and the rubble. I’m tired of being the survivor who has to tell other people the ones they loved didn’t make it. And, God, I don’t want to lose Jayson!
That, she knew, was the real reason she’d argued with Admiral Kotouč. She’d made the case that they were going to do need every launcher they had…and Arngrim had twenty-four of them, with twenty Mark 16s per tube. That made her a more effective platform than any of his three Saganami-Bs, with their Mark 14 tubes. That was the argument she’d made, when deep inside she’d known her real reason was her bleeding need to be there when the rest of the squadron—and Jayson—walked into the furnace at Kotouč’s side. She’d known that, deep inside, and a part of her hated herself for it. Her pain was no excuse for throwing away the lives of Arngrim’s people, even though her entire crew shared her sense of betrayal, of having abandoned their fellows in the ships standing to die with their admiral.
But Kotouč had been correct in at least one sense. In the final analysis, the weight Arngrim’s magazines and missile tubes might have added to the task group’s striking power would never change the final outcome. All she could really have accomplished would be to die beside her larger consorts, and there was no justification for sending another sixty-seven people to their deaths when that was true.
Especially not when he had another mission for her ship.
“The discussion is closed, Captain,” he’d said flatly, his expression stern on Megan’s com. “Someone has to bring Captain Acworth up to date when Vukodlak gets here. Acworth’s a good man, not the sort to take chances, but that doesn’t mean he can’t sail straight into an ambush if there’s not someone to keep him from doing that. Your ship is best equipped for that. You’ve got the speed, you’ve got the best ECM in the task group, after Phantom herself, and you do have Mark 16s to discourage anyone who gets too close to you, anyway. That makes it your job to be Acworth’s eyes and ears here in Hypatia. Now go do it.”
“Yes, Sir,” she’d replied. It was the only response she could make, and so she’d watched the rest of the squadron—Phantom and the three heavy cruisers—get underway for their rendezvous with Hajdu Gyôzô while Arngrim headed equally cautiously in the opposite direction.
And now she was doing her job. She was watching through the Ghost Rider platforms, downloading the Admiral’s complete tactical feed through the Hermes bouys he’d deployed. She was seeing all of it, getting every instant of it for the record and for later tactical analysis…and unshed tears burned her eyes as that stupendous missile salvo streaked towards the man she loved.
HMS Phantom
and
SLNS Camperdown
Hypatia System
“CIC confirms it, Sir,” Captain Clarke said quietly, standing beside Jan Koto
uč’s command chair as they watched the master plot. “They’re coming in almost eighty percent hotter than they should have. Must be a new bird, which makes our missile defense projections a lot more problematical. And they’ve flushed at least three quarters of their deployed pods at us. Looks more like eighty or ninety percent, actually.” He smiled ever so slightly. “I suppose we should take that as a compliment.”
“One way to look at it,” Kotouč acknowledged.
“Might as well look on the bright side, Sir. While we can, anyway.”
Kotouč only grunted in acknowledgment, his eyes on Commander Ilkova as she and her assistants bent over their consoles.
“Range at launch twelve-point-zero-two million kilometers. Time-of-flight one-five-two seconds,” she announced, updating her initial projections. Her voice seemed preposterously calm, but it was the calm of concentration, not lack of understanding or imagination. The tension in her eyes showed that clearly enough. “At current acceleration, they’ll enter the outer defense zone in…one-one-five seconds. First wave counter-missile launch in forty seconds.”
Only twelve million kilometers, Kotouč thought. Judging by the timing, it must have taken the Sollies longer than he’d dared hope to localize his ships. Each of his four ships had put ten double broadsides into space—and closed well over two million kilometers at their base velocity of 15,125 KPS—while the Sollies looked for him, and he had time for another nine launches before that massive wavefront of Cataphracts could reach him.
Of course, when it did reach him…
True, that hundred and twenty thousand-strong salvo had to be blind-fired. All the Solarian battlecruisers combined—they’d identified ninety-eight, all Nevadas and Indefatigables—could bring less than four thousand telemetry links to bear, only three percent of what they’d need to control that many birds. But the numbers worked out to roughly 37,500 missiles for each of his ships. Assuming a mere one percent hit rate, that was almost four hundred per ship. Not even a Nike could shake off that kind of hammering, and the sheer volume of fire was guaranteed to swamp even Manticoran missile defense.