by David Weber
Honor shook her head, smiling faintly, but she also checked the digital timer counting down in one corner of the main plot. She could have used the Hermes buoys planted along with the stealthed recon platforms to conduct her conversation with Filareta in what amounted to real-time. In this instance, though, the lag of light-speed communications worked in her favor, and she glanced at Lieutenant Commander Brantley.
“Time for round two, Harper.”
“Yes, Your Grace.” The communications officer nodded. “Live mike.”
“I see rationality still isn’t a hallmark of the Solarian officer corps, Admiral Filareta,” she said, looking straight into the pickup. “I can’t say that comes as a dreadful surprise, given the uniformly disastrous decisions Solarian flag officers—and especially Battle Fleet flag officers, now that I think of it—seem to have been making for some time now. Hasn’t anyone in Solarian uniform noted that you haven’t come out on top in a single one of the engagements you’ve provoked? Except, of course, when your courageous personnel choose to open fire without warning on ships which don’t even have their wedges up. Which, I point out to you, is not the case in this instance.”
Her lip curled, brown eyes glittering with scorn, and the contempt in her expression and her voice was genuine.
“Obviously, I can’t prevent you from sailing your entire fleet into an even worse disaster than Sandra Crandall’s. I do warn you, however, that this entire exchange has been recorded and will be provided—at no charge—to the prosecution at the court-martial I’m sure you’ll be facing, should you happen to be one of the survivors of the fresh debacle the Solarian Navy is about to experience. I repeat my original warning. If the forces under your command cross the hyper limit of this star system, you will be engaged and destroyed and a state of war will exist between the Solarian League and the Star Empire of Manticore and its allies.
“Alexander-Harrington, clear.”
* * *
“Alexander-Harrington, clear.”
Massimo Filareta’s nostrils flared at the cold, biting disdain in that soprano voice, yet he made himself stop and think.
So far, the exchange had used up two and a half minutes, leaving him just over three minutes from the hyper limit. He’d bought himself a little extra cushion with his instructions to Daniels, but even so, he had to make the call within the next two minutes.
The woman had to be insane. She was outnumbered ten to one, with a base velocity of zero relative to the planet, while Eleventh Fleet came at her at over five thousand kilometers per second. She’d have to have one hell of a lot more of a compensator advantage than even the wildest tales suggested if she hoped to pull away from him under those circumstances!
Unless she seriously believes she can pound us to pieces with those damned missiles of theirs before we get into our range of her, despite our velocity advantage, he thought. That might be it. But she’s already in our powered range, whether she knows it or not. Accuracy may suck, but we can reach her, and I’ve got ten times as many ships as she does! And I’m not going to get another chance like this one. Not another tactical situation where the frigging Manties can’t stay away from us, pick us apart from outside our effective range. This is a chance to take out what looks like it’s at least a third of their remaining wall of battle, and they can’t survive that kind of loss rate even if they take out my entire command in return.
But, damn it, she’s got to know that, too! So why is she goading me this way?
He glanced at the time display again, then drew a deep breath and made his choice. He waved one hand sharply at Sedgewick.
“Live mike, Sir,” the com officer told him, and he glared into the pickup.
“You obviously have a very high opinion of your capabilities, Admiral,” he said coldly. “Well, I have a high opinion of my fleet’s capabilities as well. I think we’ll just have to see which one of us is correct. You have ten minutes to decide what you’re going to do. If you have not struck your wedges in preparation to surrender your vessels at that time, you will not be given another opportunity to do so.
“Filareta, clear.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
______________________________
“Cantata’s made translation, Sir.”
“Thank you, Frazier.”
One thing Commander Frazier Adamson hadn’t done during their prolonged visit to Manticore, Lester Tourville reflected, was to grow an imagination. When it came to anything beyond the purview of his operational responsibilities, he was still the same unflappable, my-brain’s-busy-elsewhere-so-don’t-bother-me sort he’d always been, and that could still be irritating as hell. It did have its advantages upon occasion, however. In fact, there were times Tourville wondered if having a little less imagination wouldn’t have been a good thing for him, too.
Probably not, though. He’d needed a certain … mental flexibility to handle the rapid-fire sequence of events which had snatched him abruptly out of captivity and made him once again the commander of Second Fleet (although it wasn’t the Second Fleet he’d brought to the Manticore System) and assigned that fleet as the Havenite component of what had become known as Grand Fleet.
The designation had been suggested by Eloise Pritchart, and Tourville supposed it made sense. It had been one way to avoid submerging any of its constituent fleets into subunits of someone else’s fleet. He didn’t think that would have bothered him particularly, but he knew it would have bothered quite a few Havenite officers. And it for damned sure would have pissed off any number of politicians back in Nouveau Paris. Especially the ones who figured they could make some sort of political capital out of being pissed off over it. Hell, enough of them were going to be offended that Duchess Harrington had been named to command it without even worrying about what the damned thing was called!
Hitting the ground running with that sort of an assignment had been no picnic, but at least he’d been permitted to keep his staff together during their stay in Manty custody, and its members had been kept busy dealing with his many responsibilities as the senior officer of the original Second Fleet’s surrendered personnel. (For that matter, he’d been the most senior Republican POW taken during the entire war, which he considered a somewhat dubious distinction.) As a result, it had remained a functional, well-integrated team when he needed it, although getting all of its members used to the notion of fighting with the Manties, rather than against the Manties, hadn’t been the easiest thing he’d ever done. Which was fair enough. Getting himself used to the notion after so many years had taken some doing. In many ways though, Tourville suspected, Adamson’s lack of imagination had actually made it easier in the operations officer’s case.
“Signal from Commander Pruitt, Sir.” Lieutenant Commander Anita Eisenberg remained far and away the most youthful staff officer Tourville had ever had, but her promotion from lieutenant during her stay as a POW had been amply merited. He hadn’t had all that much need for a communications officer per se, yet she’d made herself invaluable in dozens of other ways. “Cantata’s initiating download now.”
“Thank you, Ace.” Tourville gave her a brief smile, then looked back at Adamson. “Any changes, Frazier?”
“Don’t see any, Sir.” Adamson’s tone was a bit absent as he watched his side plot updating from HMS Cantata’s download. “Looks like Filareta’s maintaining acceleration. If he does, he’s going to cross the limit in about another four minutes. At which point”—the ops officer’s tone shifted from absent to intensely satisfied; he did have a lively imagination when it came to tactics, and he’d been looking forward to this ever since the ops plan had been explained to them—“he is going to be well and truly screwed.”
Tourville nodded. His expression was thoughtful, but his fingers were busy unwrapping one of his trademark cigars, and it was a bit hard to hide the smile which might have undermined his flag officer’s gravitas as he realized every officer and rating on RHNS Terror’s flag bridge was watching him. Those cigars were part of his im
age, and he felt ripples of anticipation radiating outward, as if those men and women—most of whom had known him only by reputation until he arrived to take command—had been waiting for the evidence that they truly were going to do this.
The treecat perched on the back of his command chair, on the other hand, made a soft sound of mingled resignation, amusement, and scolding. Lurks in Branches didn’t like the smell of burning tobacco. Or he claimed he didn’t, anyway; Tourville had caught him sniffing at it with what looked suspiciously like appreciation once or twice. Either way, he seemed willing to put up with it as part of the price of looking after his assigned two-leg, although he definitely wasn’t above making his public attitude clear. Tourville’s ability to read sign was still rudimentary, but he didn’t need to be able to read it fluently to understand Lurks in Branches’ message when the ’cat’s long-fingered true-hands sealed his skinsuit helmet as soon as the human started unwrapping the cigar.
“Then I suppose we should get ready to dance,” he said dryly, and smiled at the hermetically protected treecat as he stuck the cigar into his mouth. He made sure he had it at the proper, jaunty angle before he looked at the com displays which tied him to the flag bridges of the brand-new Second Fleet’s three constituent task forces.
He’d worked hard to fit into his new command assignment ever since he’d found out he was going to have it, and it helped that he knew all three of his task force commanders reasonably well. It still hadn’t been easy. After the next best thing to a solid T-year away from a command deck, he’d felt undeniably rusty, and he’d wondered how the three of them were going to feel about taking the orders of an admiral who’d rather decisively lost the last battle he’d fought in this very star system. For that matter, he still wondered how Admiral Pascaline L’anglais, the commanding officer of Capital Fleet, had felt when almost seventy percent of her wall of battle was suddenly stripped away and sent off to fight under someone else’s command. In her place, Lester Tourville would have been royally pissed, and he wouldn’t have cared who knew it.
Of course, at that point the plan had been for Thomas Theisman to command the reconstituted Second Fleet, and not even someone with L’anglais’ well-known temper would have cared to argue that point. That had changed along with the initial plan for dealing with Filareta, however. The suggestion that Theisman might actually contribute even more effectively from someone else’s flagship had come from Duchess Harrington, but somewhat to Tourville’s surprise, Theisman had embraced the idea enthusiastically, which had left Second Fleet with no flag officers who’d ever actually commanded a full-scale fleet in action.
Except for Lester Tourville, that was.
“All right, people,” he told his task force COs. “Commander Adamson is sending all of you the execute signal now. The timer’s ticking. Any last immortal words anyone wants to say?”
He raised his eyebrows, then produced an old-fashioned silver lighter, activated its tiny plasma bubble, and puffed the fragrant tobacco carefully alight.
“I don’t know about ‘immortal words,’ Admiral,” Vice Admiral Oliver Diamato said with an off-center smile, “but I guess we’re about as ready as we’re going to get.” He shook his head. “I have to say, though, I’m still wondering when we’re going to wake up and find out this was all a really weird dream.”
“It may be a dream, Oliver,” Vice Admiral Jennifer Bellefeuille said from her quadrant of the display, “but, frankly, the thought of fighting Sollies instead of Manties makes it more pleasant than quite a few I’ve had!”
Vice Admiral Sampson Hermier, Tourville’s third task force commander, only shook his head with a rather bemused smile of his own. He was almost as young as Diamato, which was an accomplishment for an officer of his seniority, and he was one of the few survivors of what had once been a moderately prominent Legislaturalist family. Tourville knew him less well than he did Diamato or Bellefeuille, but his combat record was excellent. If it hadn’t been, Thomas Theisman would never have tapped him for task force command.
Especially not command of one of these task forces.
“Well,” Tourville said thoughtfully, squinting through a haze of smoke before the ventilators wisped it away, “with the exception of Sampson, here, we’ve all had our butts kicked at one time or another by the Manties. So I’ll grant you it feels a bit bizarre. But to be honest, Jennifer, I think you’ve got a point. And speaking only for myself, I have to admit part of me really wants to see these goddamned arrogant Sollies taken down a peg. Besides”—his smile disappeared—“we know who the real enemy is now.”
His eyes had hardened along with his tone, and his subordinates looked back at him in grim agreement. He held their gazes for a moment, then continued more briskly.
“Hopefully, this is going to work out without anyone else’s getting hurt. It may not, though, depending on how stupid Filareta’s feeling. And if it doesn’t, then we are going to hammer these people. Clear?”
All three vice admirals nodded, their expressions hard.
“Good.”
He glanced at the digital display counting steadily downward in one corner of the plot, then at Molly DeLaney, his chief of staff.
Captain DeLaney looked back at him, and something dark and hungry flickered in her eyes. She had more reservations than the staff’s younger members about the Republic’s allying itself with the Star Empire, if only because she’d lost so many more friends than they to the wars with Manticore. She’d kept those reservations to herself well enough that anyone who didn’t know her well could be excused for not realizing she felt them, but she’d also been with Tourville longer than any other member of his staff. He did know her well, yet as he looked into her eyes, he felt no doubt about her commitment to whatever was about to happen. Not, in her case, because she hated Sollies, although she was no fonder of them than any other naval officer who’d ever had to deal with their arrogance, but because she was impatient.
Filareta was only a distraction, as far as she was concerned. The entire Solarian League was only a distraction, when it came down to it, and one she wanted disposed of as promptly as possible. Molly DeLaney might not like Manticorans, and she might have a few qualms about finding herself allied to them, but those were secondary considerations whenever she remembered the nightmare slaughter of the Battle of Manticore. She didn’t really blame the Manties for the carnage. She might not like them, but she did respect them, and they’d only been doing exactly what she would have done if someone had attacked her home star system. Besides, she knew now that the Star Empire had been manipulated just as skillfully as the Republic by someone who intended to see both of them destroyed. And because she knew that, she wanted the people who’d sabotaged the Torch summit talks and sent Second Fleet into that holocaust. She wanted them with a pure and blazing passion, and she was willing to fight beside anyone who might help her get to them.
“On the clock, Frazier,” Tourville said, looking away from DeLaney. “On the clock.”
* * *
Eleventh Fleet crossed the hyper limit, charging towards Sphinx with a closing velocity of just over five thousand kilometers per second. There was no actual physical sensation involved, yet in the instant the flagship’s icon crossed the perimeter of the amber sphere indicating Manticore-A’s hyper limit, something like a deep, silent sigh went through SLNS Philip Oppenheimer’s flag bridge.
Fleet Admiral Filareta stood silently, expression controlled but with grim eyes locked to the plot. Tango Two was still just sitting there, not even trying to evade him, and anticipation pulsed somewhere deep inside him, hot and eager. He felt the same emotion coming back at him from the staff assembled about him, yet he felt something else as well. A sense that there was no turning back. Win or lose, they were committed, and despite all of their simulations with the new missiles, despite their huge margin of superiority over Tango Two, the reports of what had happened to Sandra Crandall echoed and reechoed in the depths of their minds.
Hell, they�
�d be more than human if they weren’t worried! he thought coldly. But whatever happens to us, Tango Two is screwed. There’s no way in this universe that forty superdreadnoughts can match the defensive firepower of four hundred and thirty of them!
A minute passed. Two minutes. Three.
Eleventh Fleet’s velocity rose to 5,647 KPS. The hyper limit lay 963,000 kilometers behind Oppenheimer, and the range to Tango Two had fallen to 12.3 million kilometers. The Manties were 3.2 million kilometers inside Cataphract’s powered envelope, even with no ballistic phase built into the attack run, although projected accuracy at forty-one light-seconds would be abysmal. On the other hand, he only had to worry about forty targets, and each of his superdreadnoughts had twelve missile pods towing astern. That gave him over five thousand pods, each containing ten missiles, which didn’t even count his tubes. Each of his superdreadnoughts had given up a pair of tubes in each broadside to squeeze in Aegis, but that left them thirty per side. If he flushed all of his pods and fired a full broadside from each of his superdreadnoughts, he could put over 64,000 missiles into space simultaneously.
Their simulations had demonstrated that they couldn’t hope to usefully control more than 17,000 or so at a time, of course. But if he used only 4,200 pod-launched missiles to back his broadsides each time he launched, he could fire twelve salvos that size before he exhausted them. That would be better than four hundred missiles per launch for each and every one of Tango Two’s wallers, and his fire plan concentrated his entire first salvo on only half his potential targets. No superdreadnought ever built could fend off eight hundred and fifty capital ship missiles arriving in a single, cataclysmic salvo! So it was only a matter of them—
“Status change!” William Daniels snapped suddenly. “New impeller signatures. Many new impeller signatures!”
Massimo Filareta’s eyes flew wide as the plot abruptly changed.