by David Weber
He smiled thinly.
"We Graysons have had a lot of experience worrying about what might happen to our orbital habitats. Trust me, I know exactly what's going through Admiral Kuzak's mind. She's got to keep the pressure on if she's going to keep them running."
"Judah's right," Honor said. "Our lead superdreadnought won't even transit the Junction for another eight minutes. We'll need another seventy-five minutes just to get the superdreadnoughts and your carriers through, Samuel. That's almost an hour and a half. She can't give them that long to think about things, not when they're already so close to the planet."
She spoke calmly, almost dispassionately, but she tasted the emotions of her staffers and, especially, her flag captain. They knew what was hidden behind that fa‡ade, she thought. Knew she couldn't forget that the planet they were talking about was the world of her birth. That all too many of the people on it were people she'd known all her life-family, friends. That it was the homeworld of the entire treecat species.
But what not even they knew was that at this very moment, both of her parents, and her sister and brother, were on Sphinx visiting Honor's Aunt Clarissa.
"The question before us," she continued, "is what we do after we make transit."
"We'll probably have instructions from the Admiralty, Your Grace," Mercedes Brigham pointed out. She smiled without any humor at all. "Thanks to the grav com, the central command can actually give real-time orders at interplanetary distances now."
"You may be right," Honor acknowledged. "So far, though, Admiral Caparelli's been refraining from backseat driving. And even if he doesn't, I want all of us to be thinking on the same page."
"One thing I don't believe we can do, Your Grace," Cardones said, "is commit ourselves before all our units have passed through the Junction."
Despite his relatively junior rank, the flag officers listened carefully. As Honor's flag captain, he was her tactical deputy.
"I strongly agree, Your Grace," Brigham said. "And at least we should have time to see how the situation's developing before we commit."
"I agree, too," Honor said. "But let's get some lighter units through as quickly as we can. Admiral Oversteegen, I want your squadron to take lead and transit as soon as you reach the terminus. Commodore Bradshaw and Commodore Fanaafi, you and your Saganami-Cs are attached to Admiral Oversteegan." She smiled grimly. "If the Havenites are still trying to keep an eye on the Junction, let's give whoever's minding their drones something else to worry about."
Chapter Sixty-Six
"Sir, we've got impeller signatures moving clear of the Junction!" Commander Zucker said sharply.
"How many?" Diamato asked tautly.
"Hard to say with all this wedge interference, Sir." Zucker grimaced. "I make it at least fifty, though."
"Right." Diamato nodded and looked at his com officer. "Immediate priority for the Flag. Tell them we have fifty-plus wallers deploying for a hyper translation! Tell them-"
He broke off, as the deploying impeller signatures abruptly vanished.
"Correction!" he said sharply. "Inform the Flag that fifty-plus wallers have just translated out!"
* * *
"Captain Houellebecq says damage control has that fire in CIC under control, Sir."
"Thank you, Ace." Lester Tourville nodded to Lieutenant Eisenberg, and then returned his attention to Captain DeLaney.
"The numbers are still coming in, Boss," the chief of staff told him, her expression grim. "So far, they don't sound good. At the moment, it sounds like we can write off over half our wall of battle. Probably more than that, if we don't control the star system when the dust settles."
"We always knew we were going to get hammered," Tourville said, his own voice and expression calmer than DeLaney's. And it was true. His losses were twelve percent higher than his pre-battle estimate-almost twenty-five percent higher than the Octogan staff weenies had estimated-because he hadn't anticipated how tightly the Manties would bunch their salvos. But from the beginning, everyone had understood that Second Fleet was going to take severe losses.
"But we cost them almost as many ships of the wall as we lost," he continued, "and if NavInt's estimates are accurate, we've got damned near three times as many of them as they do. Did. Not to mention the fact that we're about to take at least temporary control of their home star system away from them."
"I know," DeLaney said. "But I'm a little concerned about their LACs. We've got twenty-three hundred of them still coming in on us, and we're a lot lower on ammo than I'd like. We've fired off sixty percent of our MDMs, and we've lost effectively half our wall. I don't have exact numbers, but the current availability has to be no more than about two hundred thousand rounds. If we burn them trying to keep their Shrikes out of knife range, we're going to be sucking vacuum against Third Fleet."
"Then we'll have to let the Cimeterres and the screen fend off their LACs," Tourville said unflinchingly. "They'll get hammered at least as badly as we did, but they'll do the job."
"Yes, Sir." DeLaney gave herself a little shake, then bobbed her head in agreement. "I know we're still on profile for the operation, Boss. I guess I just never really thought about the sheer scale of things. Not emotionally."
"I made myself sit down and do that the day Thomas Theisman and Arnaud Marquette explained Beatrice to us," Tourville said grimly. "I didn't like it then, and I don't like it now. For that matter, they didn't like it. But it's a price we can afford to pay if it ends this goddamned war."
"Yes, Sir."
"Frazier."
"Yes, Sir?"
"What's our-"
"Excuse me, Sir!" Lieutenant Eisenberg said suddenly, pressing her hand to her earbug as she listened intently. "Admiral Diamato says the Manties have just translated into hyper!"
"And so it begins," Tourville murmured softly, then gave his head an irritated shake as he realized how pretentious that sounded.
But that didn't make it untrue, and he watched the master plot intently, waiting for Kuzak's ships to reappear upon it.
He didn't have to wait long. Less than fifteen minutes after they'd vanished from the Junction, they reappeared dangerously close to the RZ's boundary. It was an impressive display of pinpoint astrogation-one that showed a steel-nerved willingness to cur their margin razor thin. And one which also put the Manties well out on Second Fleet's flank and headed for Sphinx on a least-time course.
"Exactly where I would have placed them myself," he said quietly to DeLaney, who nodded vigorously.
Second Fleet had started edging away from its original Sphinx-bound vector from the moment the shooting stopped. Five minutes later, it had altered course much more sharply, and at the moment, it was very obviously retreating from its original objective. In fact, Tourville had made the decision to sacrifice his worst lamed cripples within ten minutes. Any ship which couldn't produce an acceleration of at least 370 g had been abandoned, scuttling charges set. He hadn't liked doing that, but he couldn't afford to be hampered by them even if the rest of Beatrice worked perfectly. Even without them, Second Fleet's current maximum acceleration was barely 3.6 KPS2, and that was too low for it to completely avoid the Sphinx defenses' missile envelope, whatever he did. Which didn't even consider the vengeful presence of Third Fleet coming in from the side to pin him between Sphinx and its own batteries.
Under the circumstances, Tourville had had no choice-for several reasons-but to settle on a course which formed a sharp angle from his original vector. Since he couldn't avoid going at least as far as Sphinx, he had pitched up vertically, to climb above the plane of the ecliptic, while simultaneously changing heading by 135ø. That let him pile on side vector to generate as much separation from the planet as he could get as he slid past it... which also happened to be the fastest way out of the system. The Manticoran resonance zone was so much "taller" than it was "broad" that the faces of the cone were almost parallel to one another, even this close to its base. Sphinx lay 102,002,500 kilometers inside the zone, and
his original heading had been directly towards the planet, which defined just how much side vector he actually needed.
Even on his current profile, his restricted acceleration meant he'd pass within less than forty million kilometers of Sphinx, but he'd be further out-and longer getting there-than almost any other heading would have produced. If he hadn't changed course at all, he would have overflown Sphinx (and its defenses) seventy minutes after the brief, titanic engagement with Home Fleet, at an effective range of zero. If he'd changed heading by ninety degrees, he would have made his closest approach to Sphinx eight minutes later than that, at a range of only thirty-five million kilometers. On his current heading, his units' closest approach would come eighty-three minutes after changing course, and the range would be 39,172,200 kilometers.
He didn't much care for any of those options, given the pounding Home Fleet had given him, but the one he'd chosen was the best of the lot. It was still going to give the planet's defenders a shot, which he'd hoped wouldn't happen-yet, at least-but it would be long-ranged enough to degrade the Manties' accuracy, and the fire wouldn't be coming straight into his teeth the way Home Fleet's had. His missile defenses would be far more effective against whatever Sphinx had, and he frankly doubted that it had anything as heavy as ninety SDs had been able to hand out, anyway. And he'd needed to break back out across the RZ boundary for several reasons. Partly to get his cripples safely out of harm's way, but mostly because-as Taverner had just pointed out-he was critically low on ammunition. He needed to rendezvous with his ammunition ships and restock his magazines before driving back into the system defenses.
But Sphinx wasn't all he had to worry about, and Kuzak had dropped her own units in further "up" the zone's outer surface than he had. That put her in a position to move quickly to Sphinx's relief, accelerating directly towards the planet on a least-time course along the shortest passage through the RZ... which would also catch him between her fire and Sphinx's. In fact, Third Fleet would be less than 33,000,000 kilometers from him at the moment of his closest approach to Sphinx. Yet if he turned away from her, he would have no choice but to flee deeper and deeper into the resonance zone (without reammunitioning), and her higher base acceleration would readily permit her to overhaul him there. So he had no choice but to hold his present course.
It was a masterful move on Kuzak's part... and exactly the one Lester Tourville had hoped for.
* * *
The orphaned LAC survivors of Sebastian D'Orville's fleet came slashing in towards Second Fleet's screening units.
The screen had taken losses of its own-heavy ones-during the massive missile exchange, but, like the Manticoran LACs, the damage had been purely collateral. No one had been wasting missiles deliberately trying to hit battlecruisers when there were SD(P)s shooting back. But the inaccuracy for which long-range MDM fire had become justly famed had come into play, and "lost" missiles intended for superdreadnoughts had latched onto whatever targets they could find.
There were still thirty-three battlecruisers and forty-one heavy cruisers waiting for the incoming strike, ready to begin punching missiles at it as soon as they had the range. But the Manticoran LACs' closing velocity was over fifty thousand kilometers per second. Current-generation Havenite single-drive missiles had a powered range from rest of just over seven million kilometers. Given the geometry, they had a theoretical maximum range of almost 16.5 million, as did the LACs' attack missiles. That sounded like a lot... except that, at the Manticorans' closing velocity, they would streak straight across the entire engagement envelope in 317 seconds.
That wouldn't give much time for a lot of launches, and Republican accuracy against Alliance LAC electronic warfare capabilities was poor.
* * *
"Get on them! Get on them!" Captain Alice Smirnoff barked.
She was Second Fleet's senior surviving COLAC, and the crews of her twenty-seven hundred LACs, positioned between the cruisers screening Lester Tourville's battered ships of the wall and the incoming Manties, fought manfully to obey her orders.
Over two thirds of Smirnoff's ships were Cimeterre Alpha and Cimeterre Beta birds, built around the new fission power plants and improved capacitors Shannon Foraker and her technical crews had been able to produce after the windfall of technical data from Erewhon.
The Alphas were equipped with lasers powerful enough to punch through the sidewalls and armor of destroyers and cruisers at normal engagement ranges. They couldn't match the performance of the massive grasers of the Alliance's Shrikes, but they were far more dangerous in energy range than any Republican LAC had ever been before. The Betas weren't a lot more combat capable than the original Cimeterres had been, since they were still armed solely with missiles and those missiles hadn't been significantly improved. But-like the Alphas-they had bow walls and vastly enhanced power budgets and endurance.
Now, for the first time, they went up against the Alliance in truly significant numbers.
The engagement was brief. It had to be, with the Manticorans barreling in at such a high closing velocity. Smirnoff had arranged her LACs "above" and "below" the sensor and firing arcs she'd left open for the screen, and her own shorter-legged missiles streaked towards the incoming strike. She had more units then the Manties did, but the Alliance's superior EW more than offset her sheer numerical advantage.
Her Alphas never really got the chance to use their lasers. Their targets were too hard to lock up, streaking across their engagement window too quickly, and her firing angle meant all too many of the laser shots which were fired wasted themselves on the roofs or bellies of their targets' wedges. But her Betas' missiles, although less accurate and capable than the Katanas' Vipers, were fired in enormous numbers.
Six hundred of the Alliance LACs were killed in the fleeting moments Smirnoff had to engage them, but at a price. It was the first time, the Allied LAC crews had gone up against someone else's LAC bow walls, but Alice Truman's reports from Lovat had been taken to heart. They might never have encountered it before, but they'd allowed for the possibility, and although the new technology made the new Republican LACs far harder to kill, they still lost at a two-to-one rate as the Allied strike roared past them, into the teeth of the screen's fire.
The screen killed another three hundred, but the price it paid for its success was far higher than the one Smirnoff had paid. The Alliance lost six thousand men and women aboard the LACs Smirnoff's units had killed, and she'd lost roughly eighteen thousand, in return. Now the Alliance lost another three thousand people with the LACs the screen had killed. But as the surviving graser-armed Shrikes crashed over the screening cruisers which could not avoid them, they wreaked havoc.
There were "only" sixteen hundred Allied LACs left, but nine hundred of them were Shrikes, and they ignored the heavy cruisers. Those they left to the missile-armed Ferrets, whose light shipkillers were unlikely to do more than scratch the paint of a capital ship. Since they couldn't hurt wallers anyway, there was no point saving them, and three hundred Ferrets flung every missile they had into the teeth of Second Fleet's heavy cruisers. They fired at the last moment, at the shortest possible range, when their victims' defenses would have effectively no time at all to engage with anything except laser clusters. They paid heavily to get to that range, but when they reached it, they spewed out well over sixteen thousand shipkillers.
Those missiles carried only destroyer-weight laser heads, but a heavy cruiser's sidewalls were weaker than a battlecruiser's, and it mounted very little armor compared to any capital ship. Certainly not enough to survive against a fire plan which hit each ship with four hundred missiles from a range at which each laser cluster had time for-at most-a single shot.
The Ferrets fired at a range of 182,000 kilometers, and it took their missiles barely two seconds to cross the range. In those two seconds the heavy cruisers' desperate offensive fire killed another hundred and twelve LACs, but when the surviving Ferrets crossed the screen's position one and a half seconds behind their missiles, the
y did it in the glaring light of the failing fusion plants of the cruisers they had just slaughtered.
None of the screen's heavy cruisers, and very few of the fifty thousand men and women aboard them, survived.
The battlecruisers fared no better. There were fewer of them, and three times as many attackers. True, each of those attackers got only a single shot, but they were using grasers as powerful as most battlecruisers' chase weapons. They drove straight into the teeth of the battlecruisers' broadsides, closing with grim determination, and they fired at a white-knuckle range of less than seventy-five thousand kilometers.
Four hundred and eighty-one Shrikes and roughly another five thousand Allied personnel died, blown apart by the battlecruisers' energy weapons in the brief engagement window they had. In return, twenty-eight Republican battlecruisers were completely destroyed, five more were reduced to shattered, broken wrecks, and seventy-seven thousand more of Lester Tourville's personnel were killed.
