At All Costs

by David Weber

  "Communications, pass Lieutenant Bibeau's current sensor data on to Tarantula. Tell them I recommend an immediate relay to Admiral Giscard."

  * * *

  The dispatch boat one light-minute outside Merlin's orbit received the Durand's FTL transmission, relayed to its light-speed communications arrays by the Tarantula net, seventy-two seconds after it was transmitted. The boat's computers updated, and it translated smoothly across the alpha wall. Javier Giscard's task force was waiting exactly where it had been for the past week and a half, and the dispatch boat quickly relayed the tactical update to his flagship.

  "Sir, it looks like the Manties smelled a rat," Commander Thackeray reported. "Their CLACs just translated out."

  "Damn it," Gozzi muttered, but Giscard only showed his teeth in a tight grin.

  "Actually catching them that far outside the limit would have been problematical, at best, Marius," he said. "You know how hard it is a to plot a hyper jump this short. And they weren't exactly likely to be sitting there with their hyper generators off-line and their impeller nodes cold. Unless we'd translated down right on top of them, they'd have had time to get into hyper before we could range on them." He shrugged. "I'd figured we were going to lose them from the moment the Manties left them behind. However," his grin turned positively lupine, "if the carriers are gone, the LACs are stuck, aren't they?"

  He looked at the updated plot for a few more seconds, then nodded decisively to himself.

  "Selma, execute Ambush Three."

  * * *

  "Oh, crap," Commander Harriman muttered.

  "Talk to me, Yolanda!" Raphael Cardones said quickly.

  "CIC reports multiple hyper footprints, Skipper," Imperator's tactical officer reported harshly. "Three separate clusters-one dead astern of us at three-zero-point-four million clicks, one at polar north, and one at polar south. They've got us boxed, Sir."

  Cardones felt his jaw muscles clench as his own tactical plot updated with the new icons.

  Well, the Old Lady's been warning us the Peeps were eventually going to get wise, he told himself. I could wish they hadn't gotten quite this wise, though!

  * * *

  "It's confirmed, Your Grace," Andrea Jaruwalski said. "Three separate forces, a total of eighteen wallers and six CLACs, plus screening elements. We're designating the Arthur detachment Bogey One, the task group to system north is Bogey Two, the one to system south is Bogey Three, and the one astern of us is Bogey Four."

  "And their units are evenly distributed between Two, Three, and Four?"

  "That's what it looks like, Your Grace."

  "So, three-to-one in wallers, at best," Mercedes Brigham said quietly, her expression taut. "Nine-to-one if they manage to concentrate. Plus the older ships in-system, of course!"

  "If we let them concentrate on us, we'll deserve whatever happens to us." Honor's soprano was completely calm, almost detached.

  The good news was that the three ambushing task groups had clearly been waiting in place in hyper, motionless relative to Solon. They'd come across the alpha wall with an effectively zero velocity, and though they were accelerating hard at five hundred and twenty-nine gravities, which meant their compensator safety margins must be down to zero, it was going to take them time to build a vector, whereas her own command was already up to over fourteen thousand kilometers per second. Moreover, her maximum acceleration rate was higher than theirs, so the force astern of them couldn't possibly overtake them unless they suffered drive damage. The bad news was that they were only thirty million kilometers back... and on low-powered settings, current-generation Havenite MDMs had a powered range of almost sixty-one million kilometers from rest.

  "Missile defense, go to Plan Romeo," she said crisply. "Shift to formation Charlie. Theo."

  "Yes, Your Grace?" Lieutenant Commander Kgari said instantly.

  "We'll break south," Honor told her staff astrogator. "Take us to military power and plot me a course that bends us the maximum distance away from Bogey One but maintains at least current separation from Bogey Four."

  "Aye, aye, Ma'am."

  Kgari bent over his console, and Honor returned her attention to the tactical plot, watching the icons of her formation shift rapidly.

  It won't be long now, she thought.

  * * *

  "Sir, we've got about the best targeting solutions we're going to get," Commander Thackeray reported. Giscard looked at her, and she met his gaze frankly. "Our accuracy isn't going to be very good at such extended range," she said.

  "Understood, Selma. On the other hand, we've got a lot of missiles. Let's start getting them into space. Fire Plan Baker."

  "Aye, Sir!"

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  "Missile separation!" Andrea Jaruwalski announced. "I have multiple missile separations. Range at launch three-zero-point-four-five million kilometers. Time to attack range seven minutes!"

  "Understood. Do not return fire."

  "Do not return fire, aye, aye, Ma'am," Jaruwalski replied.

  "Your Grace, I have that course," Kgari said.

  "Give it to Andrea."

  "Come to two-niner-three, zero-zero-five at six-point-zero-one KPS squared," Kgari said.

  "Two-niner-three, zero-zero-five, six-point-zero-one KPS squared," Jaruwalski repeated, and the task force altered course while the first salvo howled up its wake.

  * * *

  Each of Javier Giscard six SD(P)s could roll six pods simultaneously, one pattern every twelve seconds, and each pod contained ten missiles, each a bit larger than the Royal Manticoran Navy's own first-generation MDMs. The range was extremely long for accuracy, especially using Havenite fire control systems, so Giscard opted for maximum density salvos, both to saturate the enemy's defenses and to give him more possibilities of hits.

  Each of his ships deployed three patterns-a total of one hundred and eight pods-programmed for staggered launch. And then, precisely on schedule, all of them launched and sent a total of almost eleven hundred multi-drive missiles screaming up Task Force 82's wake.

  The range at launch was 30,450,000 kilometers. Given the relative motion of the two forces, actual flight distance was 36,757,440 kilometers. At that distance, and an acceleration of 416.75 KPS2, the MDMs attained a velocity relative to the primary of 175,034 KPS, which equated to an overtake velocity against Task Force 82 of 152,925 KPS, or fifty-three percent of light-speed.

  Thirty-six seconds later, a second, identical salvo roared out of its pods.

  And thirty-six seconds after that, a third.

  In the space of six and a half minutes, eleven salvos-just under twelve thousand missiles-went hurtling after Task Force 82.

  In a traditional engagement, the pursuing Republican superdreadnoughts would have been able to fire only a handful of missiles from their bow-mounted chase tubes. In an era of pod-layers, that limitation had long since disappeared, but what remained true was that missiles closing from directly ahead or directly astern faced the weakest defensive fire. There simply wasn't room to mount as many point defense laser clusters and counter-missile tubes on a warship's ends as on her broadside. The clusters mounted were the most powerful ones in her entire armament, but there could be only a few of them. Telemetry links to counter-missiles were also limited, and the fact that wedge itself offered no protection against fire from those angles only made the situation worse.

  And, of course, just to make things even better from Task Force 82's perspective, Havenite MDMs carried bigger and more powerful warheads as compensation for their poorer accuracy and penetration aids.

  * * *

  "Why aren't they returning fire?" Gozzi asked quietly.

  "I don't know," Giscard replied. "Maybe they don't want their own attack birds' wedges interfering with their fire control. Besides, unless they want to alter heading to open their broadsides, they can't have the control links to manage a salvo dense enough to get through our point defense."

  Gozzi nodded, and Giscard turned his attention back to t
he plot. His hypothesis was at least superficially logical, but deep inside, he didn't believe it himself.

  * * *

  Bogey Four's first salvo's MDMs raced onward, crossing the vast gulf between the ships which had launched them and their targets. Seventy lost lock and arced off uselessly four minutes into their flight, due to a telemetry glitch. One thousand and ten continued on course.

  "Enemy fire appears to be tracking in on Imperator and Intolerant," Jaruwalski reported tensely.

  "Not surprising, I suppose," Mercedes Brigham muttered.

  "But maybe not the smartest targeting," Honor replied calmly. Brigham looked at her, and Honor shrugged. "I admit, it would pay the highest dividend if they managed to knock out an alpha node on one of the superdreadnoughts, but their defenses are a lot tougher than anyone else's, and given the geometry, they'll have a long time to throw missiles at us. If I were in command over there, I'd start with the battlecruisers, or maybe even the heavy cruisers."

  "Kill the weaker platforms first and attrit our missile defenses," Brigham said.

  "Exactly. Each of them represents a smaller percentage of our total defensive capability, but they'd be a lot easier to kill or cripple." Honor shrugged again. "You could argue it either way, I suppose-go for the 'golden BB' on an SD(P), or chew up the weaker escorts first. Personally, I'd have done it the other way."

  She stood gazing into the master tactical plot, left hand resting on the corner of a tactical rating's console, right hand slowly, gently stroking Nimitz's head, and her expression was calm, thoughtful.

  "Counter-missile launch in... fifteen seconds," Jaruwalski announced.

  * * *

  The powered range from rest for the Mark 31 counter-missile was 3,585,556 kilometers, with a flight time of seventy-five seconds. Given the geometry of the engagement, effective range at launch was over 12.5 million kilometers, and the defensive missiles started to go out ninety seconds before the Havenite MDMs reached standoff attack range of their targets. The Mod-2-XR counter missile launcher had a cycle time of eight seconds, which meant there was time for eleven launches per tube.

  In the old days-all of four T-years ago-that wouldn't have mattered all that much, since the interference of the counter-missiles' own wedges would have blinded follow-up launches. Even now, that would have been true of a Havenite ship, although with the changes Shannon Foraker had made, any ship in a Havenite formation could now "manage" any other ship's counter-missiles, as long as both units had arranged the handoff prior to launch. That meant a Republican formation with the same degree of separation between units as Task Force 82 could have managed perhaps three times the number of counter-missiles it once could have.

  But the Royal Manticoran Navy had added the Keyhole platforms to its bag of tricks.

  Instead of a half-dozen or a dozen counter-missiles per ship, they could bring the fire of their entire broadside counter missile batteries to bear. They weren't restricted to the telemetry links physically mounted on their after hammerheads; they had sufficient links to control all of their counter-missiles aboard each Keyhole, and each ship had two Keyholes deployed. And as missile defense Plan Romeo rolled Honor's ships up on their sides, those platforms gained sufficient "vertical" separation to see past the interference of subsequent counter-missile salvos fired at far tighter intervals than had ever before been possible.

  They still couldn't control eleven salvos... but they could control eight, and each of those eight contained far more missiles than anyone else could have managed.

  Javier Giscard's staff had anticipated no more than five CM launches, and they'd allowed for an average of only ten counter-missiles per ship, for a total of two hundred per launch. Their fire plans had been predicated on facing somewhere around a thousand ship-launched CMs, and perhaps another thousand or so from the Katanas.

  What they got was over seventy-two hundred from Honor's starships alone.

  * * *

  "My God," Marius Gozzi said softly as the impeller signatures of their attack missiles vanished under the swarm of Manty counter-missiles. "How in the hell did they do that?"

  "I don't know," Giscard gritted, "but that's why they didn't counter-launch MDMs. They figure their defenses can handle whatever we throw, and the bastards are simply conserving their ammo!"

  He glared at the display, then looked up at Thackeray.

  "Abort Baker. We're going to need a lot heavier salvos to get through that."

  He jerked his head at the plot, where his second salvo had just disappeared as tracelessly as the first.

  "I don't know if we can throw a dense enough salvo to get through it, Sir," Thackeray said. Her expression was almost shocked, but her eyes were intent, and it was obvious her brain was still working.

  "Yes, we can," Giscard told her flatly. "Here's what I want you to do."

  He explained for a few seconds, and Thackeray nodded sharply when he finished.

  "It'll take me a little while to set it up, Sir."

  "Understood. Go."

  Giscard pointed at her console, and as she dived back into the tactical section, he returned his attention to Gozzi.

  "I never counted on that level of defensive fire, either," he said. "But I think it means we're going to have to change our plans for Deutscher."

  "What do you want him to do, Sir?"

  "Their new vector is going to take them within fifty million kilometers of Arthur. Given that that's almost certainly Honor Harrington in command over there, I don't expect them to peg any missiles at the civilian orbital platforms as they go by. Of course, it may not be her, or I could be wrong about what she's going to do. At any rate, we're not going to be able to prevent her from passing that close. But given that, I don't want Deutscher getting any closer to her than he has to. Besides, if he stops accelerating now, he'll have extra time to build his own side of the trap."

  "I understand, Sir."

  * * *

  "Your Grace, they've ceased fire!" Andrea Jaruwalski reported jubilantly.

  "No, they haven't," Honor replied quietly. Jaruwalski looked at her, and Honor smiled thinly. "What they're doing over there right this minute, Andrea, is deploying a lot more pods. I'd guess they'll probably roll at least ten or twelve patterns each. Sequencing that many launches for a simultaneous time on target will be complicated, but not all that difficult."

  "You're probably right, Your Grace," Jaruwalski conceded after only a moment's thought. "It's the obvious counter, now that you've pointed it out."

  "So the next salvo is going to be just a bit more difficult to kill. In which case," Honor said grimly, "it may be time to distract them just a bit. I want the battlecruisers held in reserve-they don't have enough ammo capacity to use up pods at this range-but Imperator and Intolerant will engage the enemy. Pick one superdreadnought and pound it, Andrea."

  "Aye, aye, Ma'am!"

  "Admiral," one of Jaruwalski's ratings said, "Bogey One just killed its acceleration."

  "I expected that," Honor said. "Bogey One was never strong enough to fight us. I suspect the only reason it headed towards us in the first place was to contribute to the impression of a system defense force that was thoroughly uncoordinated and panicked. Now that the trap's been sprung, they're not going to want to get any closer to us than they can help."

  * * *

  "We're ready, Admiral," Selma Thackeray said.

  "Very well. Execute."

  Javier Giscard's task group abruptly altered heading by ninety degrees, bringing its broadsides to bear on Task Force 82. The maneuver cut their acceleration towards the Manticoran ships to zero. But their relative velocity was losing ground steadily, anyway, and the turn also brought all of their broadside fire control to bear. Which meant they had many times as many control links as they'd had before. He was effectively conceding the pursuit in order to maximize his chances of crippling one or more of his foes.

  "Missile launch!" Thackeray's assistant operations officer barked suddenly. "We have multiple missi
le separations, Admiral! Range at launch three-niner-point-four-oh-four million kilometers! Time to attack range seven-point-six minutes!"

  "Well, that wasn't exactly unexpected," Giscard said, just a bit more calmly than he actually felt. "They've figured out what we're up to, and they want to force us to 'use them, or lose them.'"

  "Launching now, Sir!" Thackeray said, and Giscard nodded.

  * * *

  "So, they have a few new wrinkles of their own," Honor observed.