by David Weber
“What I’m saying, Sir, is that while our observational data is limited, it indicates that the weapons they’ve been using against us since Raging Justice are different from—and less capable than—the ones they used against Filareta and, as nearly as we can judge, against Crandall. Now, admittedly, they’ve been shooting at battlecruisers and cruisers, not superdreadnoughts, which might explain some of that, but it’s still significant, especially when coupled with the other part of our agent’s report.”
Kolokoltsov looked at him intently, and Kingsford drew a deep breath.
“According to our agent,” he said carefully, “the ‘mystery attack’ on both Manticore and Grayson took out not just the shipyards, but their missile production facilities, as well. We’d suspected that might be the case; our agent’s brought back hacked computer files—she was a senior logistics manager for Ivaldi of Beowulf, Beowulf’s primary weapons manufacturer, and she seems to have used her access well—that appear to confirm it, however. More to the point, according to her—and, again, the files she brought out substantiate this, albeit a bit indirectly—the Republic of Haven is unable to manufacture the all-up heavy Manticoran shipkillers. They’re producing similar weapons, but the Havenite missiles’ performance is lower—substantially lower—than the Manties’ version. More than that, according to what Ivaldi was told, Haven’s general tech base and workforce will require major upgrades before they can even begin manufacturing the Manty missile. They call it ‘Apollo,’ by the way, and apparently what makes it such a killer is that it incorporates an FTL telemetry link. It’s not that it out ranges the Havenite missile, although it may; it’s that it’s many times as accurate at extreme range. But according to the Ivaldi files, it’s going to be a minimum of eight or nine months before Haven can begin producing the all up version.”
“And the Manties?” Kolokoltsov asked, leaning forward intently as rain began to lash the office’s transparent outer wall.
“They’ve got the workforce and the tech base, but they don’t have the manufacturing facilities anymore, Sir,” Kingsford said. “Not yet. According to Rear Admiral Gweon, projections are that they won’t even be able to begin new missile production in Manticore for a minimum of another three months. Not until January, and probably not until February. Grayson appears to have lost a higher percentage of its work force—that’s highly speculative, but the speculation seems pretty solid—in the attack on their Blackbird facilities, and they have more rebuilding to do, as well, which means they’re unlikely to be able to step into that gap or shorten it.
“In addition, even after the Manties get the first of their lines back up, it’ll be a lot smaller scale than the monster lines they had before they were attacked. That means their initial production rate will be low. Gweon’s people estimate that it would ramp up gradually over a ten-month period to perhaps half of what it was before what they’re calling the ‘Yawata Strike.’ Since both he and I have been burned by overoptimistic estimates before, we cut that in half. So, assuming they can get the lines back up as early as January and they can ramp up twice as rapidly as our people estimate, it would still be next May before they were back up to fifty-percent production.”
“Do you think that explains why their battle fleet’s been so…passive since Raging Justice? They’re sitting there in Manticore and Beowulf rather than coming after us because they don’t have the ammunition for a standup battle?”
“That’s one possible scenario, yes, Sir. In fact, Admiral Gweon suggests it’s a probable scenario. The fact that they might not have all the missiles they’d like to have doesn’t mean they don’t have more than enough to handle any wall of battle we threw at them, but ammunition expenditures are almost always lower for the defender than for the attacker. So there’s a distinct possibility they’re standing on the defensive to conserve their current supply of missiles.”
“So they won’t be moving offensively against us until they can refill their magazines? And they won’t have any new missile production at least until January? And they won’t have adequate missile production until May?”
Kolokoltsov’s expression had brightened, his eyes gleaming, but Kingsford shook his head.
“No, Sir,” he said regretfully, “that’s not quite accurate. Oh, it’s probable ammunition shortages explain their apparent passivity, but I’m not prepared to endorse that theory without reservations at this point. The last thing we need is to get overconfident because that’s what we want to be true. And even if it is—true, I mean—assuming ‘no new missiles until January’ would be grossly overoptimistic.
“First, we have reports from agents we’ve managed to place in Erewhon that suggest Haven is probably closer than eight months to beginning limited production of its own. Their information suggests it could be as little as five months, although it’s to be expected their initial production rates will also be low. And, by the way, something else I think we need to discuss—and we probably do need Permanent Senior Undersecretary MacArtney’s input for this one—those same reports from Erewhon suggest Oravil Barregos and Luis Rozsak are getting just a bit cozier with Erewhon than their reports suggest.”
“What do you mean, ‘cozier’?” Kolokoltsov asked sharply.
“Sir, we’re still evaluating that—or, rather, Admiral Gweon is still evaluating it. From what he’s said so far, I don’t think there are any glaring warning lights, but given the Erewhonese’s treaty with Haven and their long-term relationship with Manticore before that, I do find it…moderately worrisome when a sector governor and his senior naval commander start getting overly friendly with them. Everything Barregos and Rozsak have told us about that relationship makes sense. I’m just not as confident as I was that they’ve told us everything about it.”
“Wonderful,” Kolokoltsov said again. “But get back to the missile production business. What do Erewhon and Maya have to do with that?”
“Nothing, beyond corroborating our Beowulf agent’s report—although their timetable’s more pessimistic, from our viewpoint—about how quickly Haven can start building the new missiles. However, even though the Manties’ combat patterns seem—or may seem—to confirm that they’re being careful about ammunition expenditures, the other point in the Ivaldi report is that they have an alternative source for their high-end missiles.”
“Beowulf,” Kolokoltsov growled, and Kingsford nodded.
“Beowulf,” he confirmed. “Specifically, Ivaldi of Beowulf. Apparently, the Beowulfan tech base was able to put them into production from a standing start a hell of a lot faster than the Manties could rebuild or the Havenites could upgrade. According to our agent, they began production even before the plebiscite, and the numbers are ramping. They aren’t anywhere near the peak wartime numbers for Manticore—apparently even Beowulf hit a few snags—but they’re climbing.”
“That’s why the bastards wanted Beowulf so badly.” This time, it wasn’t a growl; it was a snarl. “They knew they needed a new source for their frigging missiles if they were going to stand up to us!”
“That’s certainly one interpretation, Sir.”
“So cut to the chase, Admiral. What does all this really mean?”
“We’re still working on that, Sir. There are several imponderables, things we haven’t been able to nail down and may never be able to establish with certainty. But what it looks like is that: One, the Manties appear to be husbanding their heavy missiles, these ‘Apollo’ birds of theirs. Two, we have what appears to be pretty solid evidence that at this time, Beowulf—specifically, Ivaldi of Beowulf—is effectively the ‘Grand Alliance’s’ sole source for ‘Apollo,’ and probably will be for a minimum of three months. Three, Ivaldi will probably be the primary source for additional missiles for another five to six months after that, call it until June 1923. Four, at the end of those eight to nine months, however, all three sources combined will be producing almost as many missiles as Manticore alone was producing prior to the Yawata Strike. And, five, from that point on thei
r production rates will bend upwards—bend steeply upwards—to a far higher total than Manticore ever produced solely from its own resources.
“And what all that means, Mister Permanent Senior Undersecretary, is that we have a window of three to four months in which they’ll probably continue to be tactically and operationally handicapped by an ammunition bottleneck. But it also means that by August or September of next year, unless we’re able to put matching weapons into production to supplement things like Hasta, our military situation will be hopeless.”
NOVEMBER 1922 POST DIASPORA
HMS Imperator
Manticore Binary Syastem
Star Empire of Manticore
“Bleek!”
Nimitz looked up over his shoulder, ears pricked high, green eyes sparkling with triumph, and Honor shook her head.
The brightly lit expanse of Imperator’s small arms range stretched out around them. The range was open to anyone on a first-come basis, outside the Marine detachment’s regular scheduled practices, but when Admiral Harrington “requested” its use, things changed. Not only was she an admiral, but her personal security detachment was…unhappy, to put it mildly, about allowing her to be surrounded by other people with weapons in their hands. That was especially true since the death of Timothy Meares, and Major Hawke had made it crystal clear that she would be allowed on the range only when no one else was using it. Given the fact that Rafe Cardones had endorsed her senior armsman’s intransigence, there wasn’t much Honor could do about it.
And, unhappily, she knew Hawke had a point.
So she and Nimitz had the entire range to themselves and one of her old-fashioned targets—what had once been called a “B7 Silhouette,” according to her SCA sources—hung in tatters at a range of ten meters. Pulser darts tended to make very small holes, but the target’s surface had been coated in a smart skin that glowed bright red wherever it was broken. At the moment, the target looked like someone with a case of old-fashioned measles, she thought critically. There were dozens—more like scores, really—of red dots scattered across it, but no more than a scant handful inside the eight-ring and only three inside the ten-ring.
“That’s still…pretty bad, Stinker,” she told her furry henchman.
Nimitz’s ears flattened indignantly, and she snorted. Then she punched the button that ran a second target out beside the first one and picked up the long barrelled, three-millimeter Descorso pulser she’d inherited from her father on her sixteenth birthday. The military weapon had been heavily customized, and her dad had changed out the grips to fit her hands when he gave it to her. Now it settled into them as naturally as breathing and she raised the weapon in a two-handed stance.
“Like this,” she said, and squeezed the trigger.
It whined in full-auto, ripping off a ten-shot burst in approximately 1.2 seconds, and the second target’s ten-ring disintegrated into a two-centimeter chasm fringed in livid red. There wasn’t another hole anywhere on the paper, and she looked down at Nimitz and grinned as she laid the weapon back down on the bench in front of her.
“Bleek.”
There was a certain scolding note in that sound, she thought.
“Not as easy as it looks,” she told him. “I’d hoped the holo sight would do the trick, but obviously not. So, it’s time for Plan C.”
She laid down the Descorso and picked up the other pulser. A few seconds’ work with a small magnetic decoupler removed the bulky—relatively speaking—holo sight and she laid it aside. It took her two or three times as long to attach her chosen replacement under the barrel, and she checked her work twice before she looked back down at the ’cat.
“I figure we’re getting close to the end of our options, Stinker,” she told him. “Now concentrate.”
He gave her a disgusted look, but he also nodded, and she closed her eyes.
Not even Alfred Harrington had been able to restore Nimitz’s ability to mind-speak. He believed he’d made some progress, but he still had a long way to go. The treecats’ “distributed brain” was unique in humanity’s experience, and no one really understood how its “transmitters” and “receivers” worked even now. Alfred had developed several models and he was confident one of them was correct. The problem was figuring out which one, and in the meantime, the damage Nimitz had taken when he and Honor attacked their StateSec guards on the planet Enki continued to defy his best efforts.
Those efforts had been put on hold—for reasons Nimitz and Samantha understood and accepted—by his return to active duty at Bassingford. In the meantime, the treecats had continued to strengthen their ability to transmit images to one another using Nimitz’s intact empathic transmitter. They hadn’t realized that channel was available—no ’cat had realized it could be used that way, as an at least partial standalone in place of their regular transmission modes—before Honor and Nimitz forged their own connection. But Honor had never had the ability to actually mind-speak with Nimitz. Their link had been primarily through his telempathic sense—with what she suspected had been a few “sideband” elements from his telepathic receiver—and it hadn’t been crippled by the damage he’d suffered. It had never been suited to complex exchanges of information, despite its depth, and that wasn’t what he and Samantha used it for these days, either. But he and Honor had discovered long ago that they could transmit mental images to one another. Nimitz found the sign language Adelina Arif had modified and taught the ’cats far better suited for sharing complex information, even between him and Samantha, but he and his mate had learned to exchange “mind-pictures” the same way he and Honor did, and Samantha had shared that ability with the rest of their species in a memory song.
Now he closed his eyes, as well, concentrating hard on the carefully formed image flowing from his person. The very tip of his tail twitched as he focused on it and they stayed that way for a very long time. Then he bleeked again, softly, and Honor opened her eyes and looked down at him again.
“So, this time you think you’ve got it?” she asked with more than a hint of skepticism. He nodded firmly, and she arched an eloquent eyebrow. “I believe that’s what you thought the last three times,” she pointed out, and the ’cat sent her a flash of wounded dignity. “Okay, fine,” she said. “Put your money where your mouth is, Mister!”
Nimitz gave her the sort of look he normally reserved for chipmunks, and she laughed. Then she tapped controls, running the first silhouette in close to the bench so she could remove it from the clips and replace it with a fresh one. She’d just sent it back out to its ten-meter range when a warning buzzer sounded.
She looked over her shoulder in surprise, wondering who Clifford McGraw and Joshua Atkins were willing to allow onto the range with her, then smiled in recognition as the door opened.
“Anton!” She turned and held out her hand, and Anton Zilwicki gripped it firmly. “I didn’t expect you this early.”
“Harahap and I finished this morning’s session sooner than we expected,” he replied, and she nodded.
The decision to keep Harahap aboard Imperator—where no one was finding out about his existence—and let the analysts who absolutely had to know come to him, had actually been suggested by Commander Lassaline, who had become Patricia Givens’s personal Liaison to the ex-Gendarme’s exhaustive debrief, but Honor and Zilwicki both thought it was an excellent one. That was why the massive Highlander had become a more or less permanent member of Imperator’s ship’s company. Now he released her hand and shrugged.
“Never thought I’d find myself actually liking ‘Firebrand’!” he admitted wryly.
“I didn’t exactly expect it myself.” She shrugged. “On the other hand, he’d almost have to be likeable to accomplish everything he has, wouldn’t you say? Besides, who am I to argue with treecats?”
Nimitz made an emphatic sound of agreement. His fingers flickered, and Honor laughed. Zilwicki hadn’t learned to read sign, and he raised an eyebrow at her.
“Nimitz just agreed with me,” she
explained. “And while he was agreeing, he asked when I was going to be smart enough to stop doing it anyway.”
“Sounds like a trio of teenagers I used to know,” Zilwicki said with one of his deep, rumbling laughs.
“Used to know?”
“Well, I still know them, but none of them are teenagers anymore. Not that their doddering old age has made them any less stubborn.” He shook his head. “Don’t have any idea where they could’ve gotten that from.”
“Of course not.” It was Honor’s turn to shake her head. “Should I assume this morning went well?”
“It did, actually.” Zilwicki shrugged his massive shoulders. “Which isn’t to say I don’t wish to hell we knew more about their internal dynamic. And I can’t say I like a lot of what we are putting together. Coupled with what Harahap’s had to say and what I’d already seen on Mesa, I’m starting to think their ‘inner core’ is hidden in more depth than we’d expected, even now. We won’t know for sure until we can start looking—openly, I mean—on Mesa itself, but if I’m right about what was going on with all those ‘terrorist’ strikes and they really were pulling key people out, I’m inclined to doubt they plan on leaving much evidence of their existence behind.”
“I’m sure they aren’t, but how much evidence could they really erase?” Honor leaned her hip against the shooting bench and crossed her arms. “Even if we assume every single soul on Mesa who knows something we’d like to know has been fitted with this suicide nanotech of theirs—and, frankly, I’m inclined to think equipping every possible information source with it would be a nontrivial challenge—something that’s been operating this long has to leave a physical fingerprint. It can’t have been as busy rearranging the galaxy to suit itself as we know it has without requiring a major support structure, Anton!”