At All Costs

by David Weber

  "Oh my God," Mercedes Brigham said softly as the plot abruptly altered. The FTL feed from the recon platforms made what had just happened all too hideously clear.

  "You were right, Your Grace," Rafael Cardones said flatly. "They aren't stupid."

  Honor didn't reply. She was already turning to the sidebars of her own tactical display. Sixteen of her thirty-two superdreadnoughts were still in Trevor's Star, as were all of Samuel Mikl¢s' carriers and thirty of her battlecruisers. She looked at the numbers for perhaps one heartbeat, then turned back to her staff.

  "Mercedes, send a dispatch boat back to Trevor's Star. Inform Admiral Miller that he's in command and that he's to hold all of our battlecruisers there. Tell him he's responsible for covering Trevor's Star until we get back to him. Then instruct Judah to bring Admiral Mikl¢s' carriers and all the rest of the wallers through in a single transit."

  Her voice was crisp, calm, despite her own shock, and Brigham looked at her for a moment, then nodded sharply.

  "Aye, aye, Your Grace!"

  "Theo," she continued, pointing one index finger at Commander Kgari, "start plotting a new micro-jump. We'll go straight from here; no dogleg. I want us at least fifty million kilometers outside these newcomers. Seventy-five to a hundred would be better, but don't shave it any closer than fifty."

  Kgari looked at her for a moment, and she tasted his shock. She was allowing him a much larger margin of error than Admiral Kuzak had allowed Third Fleet's units, but she was also requiring him to jump straight from a point inside the RZ to one on its periphery. Safety margin or no, that was extraordinarily risky, given the fact that his start point's coordinates were going to be subject to significant uncertainty, whatever he did.

  But despite hus shock, his voice was clear.

  "Aye, aye, Ma'am!"

  "Harper," she continued, turning to the communications section. "Immediate priority message to Admiral Kuzak, copied to Admiralty House. Message begins: 'Admiral Kuzak, I will be moving to your support within-" she looked at the chronometer, but nothing she could do could make time move more slowly "-fifteen minutes. If I can reduce that, I will.' Message ends."

  "Aye, aye, Your Grace!"

  Honor nodded, then sat back in her command chair and rotated it slowly to face the rest of her flag bridge personnel. She could see the echo of her own horror on their faces, taste it in their mind-glows, as they realized what was about to happen to Third Fleet, whatever they might manage to do.

  They stared back at her, but they saw no horror in her calm expression. They saw only determination and purpose.

  "All right, people," she said. "We know what we have to do. Now let's be about it."

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Admiral Genevieve Chin, CO Fifth Fleet, stood on the flag bridge of RHNS Canonnade and let the background murmur of readiness reports wash over her.

  "We've got them, Ma'am!" Commander Andrianna Spiropoulo announced exuberantly. "Astro put us less than fifty million klicks behind them-right on the money!"

  "So I see." Chin might have quibbled with her operations officer's assessment of their astrogation, since they were several million kilometers further from the limit than they should have been. She suspected that Lieutenant Commander Julian had deliberately dropped them in a bit further out than she'd specified. But Spiropoulo's assessment of the tactical situation matched hers perfectly, and she fought hard to keep the exuberance out of her own voice.

  She also knew she hadn't succeeded completely.

  Well, maybe I didn't, she thought. But if I didn't, I've earned it. We all have, after the way they pounded us in the last war. But it's more than that for me.

  "All right, Andrianna," she said, turning her back to the plot and the icons of the Manty wallers whose crews were beginning to realize they'd walked straight into a trap, "we don't have a lot of time before they run out of our envelope. Let's start rolling pods."

  "Aye, Ma'am!"

  Andrianna's dark eyes gleamed, and Chin glanced at Captain NicodŠme Sabourin. Her chief of staff looked back, and then, unnoticed by the rest of Flag Bridge's personnel, he nodded, ever so slightly.

  Chin nodded back. Sabourin was probably the only member of her staff who could fully savor her own sense of... completion. She'd come a long way to reach this point. She'd survived being scapegoated by the Legislaturalists for the disaster of Hancock Station at the very start of the last war. She'd survived long, dreary years in the service of the Committee of Public Safety-never quite trusted, too valuable to simply discard, always watched by her people's commissioner. She'd even survived Saint-Just's ascension to complete power... and the chaos following his overthrow.

  She'd been "rehabilitated" twice now. Once by Rob Pierre's lunatics, solely because she'd been scapegoated by the previous r‚gime. And once by the new Republic, because she'd damned well done a good job protecting her assigned sector despite the psychotic sadist they'd assigned as her people's commissioner.

  This time, she actually believed it was going to stick. She'd still lost a lot of ground in the seniority game. Men and women who'd been junior officers, or even enlisted personnel, when she'd already been a flag officer, were senior to her now. Thomas Theisman, for one, who'd been a commander when she'd been a rear admiral. But she was one of only a handful of people who'd made admiral under the Legislaturalists who were still alive at all, so she supposed that was something of a wash.

  And whether the universe was always a fair place or not, she couldn't complain about where she was today. The woman who'd been saddled with the blame for the Legislaturalists' disastrous opening campaign against the Star Kingdom of Manticore, was also the woman who'd been chosen to command the decisive jaw of the trap which would crush the Star Kingdom once and for all. She'd waited fifteen T-years for this moment, and it tasted sweet.

  NicodŠme Sabourin understood that. She hadn't known it for quite some time, but he'd been a second-class petty officer aboard one of her dreadnoughts at Hancock Station. Like her, he was looking forward to getting some of his own back this afternoon.

  "How are your target solutions, Andrianna?" she asked calmly.

  "They look good, Ma'am, considering their EW."

  "In that case, Commander," Genevieve Chin said formally, "you may open fire."

  * * *

  "We walked right into it," Theodosia Kuzak said bitterly. "I walked right into it."

  "It's not like we had much choice, Ma'am," Captain Smithson said.

  The two of them stood staring into the plot, watching the overwhelmingly superior force which had suddenly cut in astern of them as it rolled pods. Waiting. The orders were already given. Their own missiles were already launching. There was, quite literally, nothing at all Kuzak could do at this point except watch other people execute her orders.

  She turned her head, looking at her chief of staff, and Smithson shrugged.

  "We couldn't let them punch out Sphinx, and that meant coming in after them," he said. "You did."

  "I should have seen this coming," she shot back, but quietly, quietly, keeping her voice down. "After what Harrington did to them at Lovat, it was the logical response."

  "Oh?" Smithson cocked his head, smiling ironically despite the hurricane of missiles rushing towards them. "And I suppose you were supposed to somehow use clairvoyance to realize they had another hundred wallers in reserve? That they were going to throw three hundred and fifty superdreadnoughts at us? Just you-not Admiral Caparelli, not ONI, not Admiral D'Orville, or Admiral Harrington. Just you. Because, obviously, this is all your fault."

  "I didn't mean-" she began angrily, then stopped. She looked at him for a moment, then reached out and squeezed his shoulder.

  "I guess I did deserve that. Thanks."

  "Don't mention it." Smithson smiled sadly. "It's one of a chief of staff's jobs."

  * * *

  "All right, Alekan," Alistair McKeon told his ops officer harshly. "We're the only squadron with Apollo. Admiral Kuzak has authorized us for i
ndependent targeting to make best use of the system. That means it's going to be up to you."

  "Understood, Sir." Commander Slowacki nodded hard.

  "I want to concentrate on this new bunch," McKeon continued. "They haven't been hit yet, their fire control and their tactical departments are going to be in better shape. We'll take them one ship at a time."

  "Understood, Admiral," Slowacki said again, and McKeon pointed at the icons of Genevieve Chin's task force.

  "Good. Now go kill as many of those bastards as you can."

  "Aye, aye, Sir!"

  "I wish Her Grace were here, Sir," Commander Roslee Orndorff said quietly beside McKeon as Slowacki and his assistants began updating their targeting solutions.

  "I don't," McKeon told Orndorff, his voice equally quiet, and shook his head. "This is one not even she could get us out of, Roslee."

  "I guess not," Orndorff agreed. "And you're right. I shouldn't wish she was stuck in here with the rest of us. But-no offense, Sir-I... miss her."

  "So do I." McKeon reached out and stroked the head of the treecat perched on Orndorff's shoulder. Banshee pressed back against his hand, but only for a moment. Then the 'cat pressed his cheek against the side of his person's head and crooned softly to her.

  Orndorff reached up, caressing him tenderly, without ever taking her eyes from the plot.

  * * *

  Unlike Oliver Diamato's battlecruisers, Third Fleet couldn't dodge the pulser dart. Admiral Kuzak's command was too deep, pinned inside the RZ. Kuzak had intended to catch Second Fleet between her command and the Sphinx planetary defenses; now she was caught between the oncoming hammer of Genevieve Chin's MDMs and the battered anvil of Lester Tourville's surviving SD(P)s.

  At least Third Fleet's base velocity was almost fourteen thousand kilometers per second higher than Fifth Fleet's, and almost directly away from it. Given that geometry, Chin's powered missile envelope was only fifty-one million kilometers. But the range was only 41,700,000 kilometers, and that meant Chin could keep Kuzak's ships under fire for eleven minutes before Third Fleet could run out of range.

  Eleven minutes. It didn't sound like such a long time, but it was longer than Home Fleet had survived against Lester Tourville. And Home Fleet hadn't been running directly into the fire of one foe while the fire of a second came ripping into it from behind.

  * * *

  "Open fire!" Lester Tourville snapped.

  "Aye, Sir!" Frazier Adamson acknowledged, and Tourville watched the icons of his missiles reaching out towards the Manties.

  He'd almost left it too late, he thought. Chin's astrogation had been off by a good ten million kilometers, although it was hard to fault her for that. She'd had only a handful of minutes to adjust her position after MacArthur's arrival, thanks in no small part to how long Tourville had waited, and making that kind of delicate, short-ranged micro-translation was always infernally difficult.

  Given that any error placing her alpha translation on the wrong side of the zone boundary would have resulted in the destruction of every ship under her command, it was inevitable-and proper-that she should err on the side of caution. Besides, it had never been part of the ops plan for her ships to move inside the resonance zone or hyper limit until she and Tourville were certain they'd dealt with the defenses. All the defenses.

  Still, eleven minutes of concentrated fire from ninety-six SD(P)s should smash the hell out of the Manties' combat capability, even if it failed to destroy them outright. And in the meantime, he could do a little something to help Chin along.

  The range for his missiles was only 32,955,000 kilometers, and unlike the range from Chin's ships, it was dropping by over a million kilometers per minute. Not to mention the fact that unlike Chin, his tactical officers had been tracking the Manties steadily, updating their firing solutions for the last thirty or forty minutes.

  He checked the time display. Flight time for his missiles was just under six minutes, two minutes less than for Chin. Although she'd fired first, his missiles would reach their targets before hers.

  * * *

  "We are truly and royally screwed, Skipper," Chief Warrant Officer Sir Horace Harkness said quietly from HMLAC Dacoit's engineering station.

  Scotty Tremain glanced at him, then looked back at the plot, and wished there were some way he could disagree.

  "You have a message from Admiral Truman, Captain," Dacoit's com section AI said. "Personal to you."

  "Accept, Cental," Tremain said. A moment later, Alice Truman appeared on his com display.

  "Admiral," he said, watching the missile icons spreading like the tracks of pre-space wet-navy torpedoes.

  "It looks like we're going to get hammered, Scotty," Truman told him bluntly. "I want you to detach your Katanas. Leave them behind to help thicken Admiral Kuzak's defenses. Then take all the rest of your birds and head for the in-system force now."

  Tremain looked at her for just a moment. He knew what she had in mind. His Ferrets and Shrikes, especially the former, were preparing to help bolster Third Fleet's missile defenses, yet compared to his Katanas, their contribution would have been relatively minor. But by sending them against the survivors of the first Havenite attack force, she might compel it to divert its fire. It no longer had a screen, its attached LACS had taken severe losses, and it couldn't simply run away from him into hyper. It would have no choice but to stand and fight, and if it let him get into attack range without severe losses of his own....

  "Understood, Dame Alice," he said. "We'll do our best to keep their heads down."

  "Good, Scotty. Good hunting. Truman, clear."

  * * *

  "Crap," Molly DeLaney muttered, and Lester Tourville chuckled harshly.

  "They're a little quicker off the mark with it than I expected," he said, watching the Manty LACs' arc away from Third Fleet. Missile flight times were long enough-and the Manty reaction fast enough-that their course change was already evident, even though Second Fleet's first salvo had yet to reach attack range.

  "Still," he continued, "it was the logical move, once we lost the screen. Frazier."

  "Yes, Admiral?" Commander Adamson replied.

  "Send Smirnoff out to meet these people."

  "Captain Smirnoff is dead, Sir," Adamson said. "Commander West is COLAC now."

  Tourville winced internally. He hadn't known Alice Smirnoff well. Only met the woman twice, actually, and then only in passing. But somehow her death, unnoticed in the general carnage, suddenly seemed to symbolize the hundreds of thousands of his personnel who had perished in the last three hours.

  "Very well," he said, an edge of harshness burring his otherwise level response, "send West out to meet them."

  "Aye, Sir."

  "Is that going to be enough, Boss?" DeLaney asked quietly, and Tourville shook his head.

  "No. They aren't sending in as many, but these people are fresh, and Smirnoff-West-and his people burned too many missiles stopping the last attack. We're going to have to take them with MDMs."

  "Do you want to shift targeting?"

  "Not yet." Tourville shook his head. "That's what they want us to do, and I'm not taking any pressure off Kuzak until we have to. But it's going to limit the number of salvos we can give her."

  He punched in a command, calling up the fleet status display. He studied it for several seconds, then looked at Adamson.

  "Frazier, tell Admiral Moore and Admiral Jourdain to abort their engagement of Third Fleet. I want their squadrons to reserve their total remaining pods for use against the Manty LACs."

  "Yes, Sir."

  Tourville nodded and sat back in his command chair. Moore and Jourdain had taken the lightest losses of any of his battle squadrons. Between them, they still had fourteen SD(P)s, and much as he hated taking them out of the firing queue at this particular moment, he had a feeling he was going to need their missiles badly in another half-hour or so.

  * * *

  "Here it comes," Wraith Goodrick murmured, and Alice Truman nodded.
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  Counter-missiles tore into the oncoming MDMs, and at least this time they hadn't been able to deploy whatever had let them throw such monster salvos at Home Fleet. These were merely "normal" double-pattern broadsides from over a hundred SD(P)s.

  Nothing to worry about, she told herself; only twelve thousand missiles or so. No more than a couple of hundred per ship. Just a walk in the park.

  Except, of course, that they weren't spreading them over all of Third Fleet's ships.

  Scotty Tremain's detached Katanas were tucked in close, hovering "above" Third Fleet, rather than going out to meet the incoming missiles as normal doctrine would have dictated. Normal doctrine, after all, hadn't anticipated a situation in which a fleet would screw up so badly it found itself squarely between two widely separated enemy fleets, each numerically superior to itself, and in range of both. The LACs couldn't place themselves between one threat and the rest of Third Fleet without leaving it uncovered against the other, and so they held their position, spitting Vipers against the wall of destruction crashing towards Theodosia Kuzak's command.