by David Weber
Nor were counter-missiles all those ships had launched.
* * *
“Dazzlers in five seconds, Sir,” Commander Constanta Solis, CruRon 912’s electronic warfare officer, announced, and Lessem nodded.
The Dazzlers had been originally devised as a penetration aide, designed to knock down and blind the sensors feeding a target’s defensive fire control with massive spikes of electromagnetic and gravitic interference. They were especially effective against counter-missiles, which relied on their ability to home in on the impeller signatures of their targets, because counter-missiles were designed to be produced in the largest possible numbers, and the fact that they didn’t need sophisticated seekers helped hold the price down. Nothing in the galaxy was more glaringly obvious than the impeller signature of a missile accelerating at 98,000 gravities, after all. Spotting one of them was rather like trying to see a million-candlepower searchlight in a darkened room. Only a blind man could have missed it.
But that was what the Dazzler produced: blind men. The counter-missiles’ seekers couldn’t possibly cope with those enormous bubbles of jamming. That meant they lost lock on their targets, and if it was timed correctly, both they and their targets were moving too rapidly for them to reacquire after the Dazzler’s pulse. Even if they reacquired something, their onboard electronic brains were seldom up to the task of reacquiring the proper something without guidance from their human masters.
That was what the Dazzler had been designed to do, but as the Fleet’s missile officers played around with it, they’d quickly realized it had another function. After all, attack missiles and the ships controlling them relied on their onboard sensors, too.
* * *
“Ma’am!” Rear Admiral Rosiak said sharply. “The Manties—”
He broke off, looking over his shoulder at Admiral Isotalo, and Isotalo gave him a choppy nod as the tactical plot went momentarily berserk.
“What the hell is that?” she demanded.
“Some kind of jamming,” Rosiak replied. “I don’t know how they’re doing it, though. We can’t see shi— That is, we can’t see very much through all the garbage, but CIC’s computers say it’s coming from at least a couple of dozen sources. That means it has to be some kind of independent platform. I don’t see how they could sustain emissions at this intensity for very long without burning out any emitter you could put into a drone, though, and—”
He paused again, pressing the fingers of his right hand against the earbug in his right ear and listening intently. His lips tightened, and he looked back at Isotalo.
“CIC doesn’t think they are sustaining emissions for more than ten to fifteen seconds per platform, Ma’am. But there are a lot of them, and they’re running them in a cascade pattern. That’s going to play hell with the attack birds’ seekers.”
* * *
Task Force 1012’s upgraded Cataphract-Cs were far superior to the Cataphracts Commodore Adrian Luft and the ill-fated People’s Navy in Exile had taken to disaster at the Battle of Congo. They were longer-ranged, faster, equipped with heavier warheads, and fitted with seeking systems which relied upon both better sensors and more effective onboard software. They were far more capable of thinking for themselves, and their ability to differentiate between false targets and real ones and to penetrate enemy ECM was at least thirty percent better than Luft’s had been.
But they still had to see their targets…and thanks to the Dazzlers, they couldn’t for several long, long seconds. Their electronic brains knew where to look when the interference cleared, however, and eventually, it had to clear, since their targets had to be able to see them if they meant to intercept them. And so the Cataphracts’ computers waited with uncaring, incurious patience for the range to clear and let them find their targets once more.
* * *
“Decoys coming up…now,” Commander Solis said calmly, and the fusion-powered Lorelei platforms keeping station on Sir Martin Lessem’s cruisers and destroyers suddenly switched on their emitters. Powered by the same micro-fusion reactors that made Ghost Rider possible, Lorelei had a far higher energy budget than anyone else’s ECM or EW platforms. With no need for beamed power from the ships they were protecting, however, the platforms could actually maneuver independently, mimicking moving starships almost perfectly. And even as the cruisers’ stealth systems knocked back their emission signatures; the Loreleis’ emitters deliberately enhanced theirs. They couldn’t match the full power of a Saganami-C or Saganami-B’s actual signature but they could—and did—duplicate the signature of a Saganami-C or Saganami-B hiding under stealth.
And there were dozens of them.
* * *
The master plot aboard SLNS Foudroyant cleared as the jamming platforms went down at last, and Isotalo found herself leaning forward in her command chair, eyes narrowed as she watched the icons of the Manticoran ships reappear upon it. There they were, and—
“Ma’am, we’re picking up—”
“I see it, Bart.” She cut Rosiak off and shook her head. “Not quite the same thing as believing it, I’m afraid,” she added harshly.
The number of targets on her tactical plot had quintupled. From this range, not even her passive shipboard sensors could positively differentiate between the sudden rash of false targets and the real ones. Her shipboard sensors had lost lock thanks to the jamming, just as the Cataphracts had, and the Manties had used their temporary cloak of invisibility well. The energy budget on those decoys had to be much higher than the SLN’s Halo platforms, and they were clearly maneuvering independently, so they obviously weren’t using beamed power from their motherships. However the Manties were doing it, though, their decoys had come online when no one in TF 1021 could see a thing. There’d been no way to plot them and keep track of them as they came up, and once the jammers shut down, Foudroyant and her consorts found themselves trying—and failing—to tell which of the sixty “cruisers” on the plot were real and which were false.
Even as she watched, numbers flickered under each of the cruiser icons—percentage values, changing rapidly to reflect CIC’s confidence as its analysis winnowed through the input to find the Manty starships once more. They were unlikely to accomplish that before her missiles reached attack range, unfortunately, and there was no way no way the less capable sensors the missiles themselves mounted would be able to.
That was…disconcerting, and she glanced across at Maleen Lamizana.
The intelligence officer looked back steadily, and Isotalo made herself nod. Lamizana had warned her and Rosiak that all their data on Manty EW was sketchy. “Problematic,” was the way she’d delicately put it as they reviewed ONI’s current guesstimates. Isotalo and Rosiak had tried hard to bear that in mind, but her intel officer had made it tactfully clear that she’d believed they were still underestimating the problem.
Now it would appear that even Lamizana had underestimated it.
* * *
Commodore Lessem watched the plot with an expression which was rather calmer than he actually felt. Intellectually, he knew the 6,000 missiles sweeping towards his command were far less capable than a similar launch by the RMN’s old Havenite opponents would have been. But 6,000 missiles were still 6,000 missiles, and it looked like all of them had been directed at his heavy cruisers.
What’s to worry about, Martin? he thought sardonically. That’s only about four hundred birds per ship, isn’t it?
Neither Clas Fleming nor any of his other ships mounted the Keyhole-Two platforms which were the secret of Apollo. Without those—and without the Mark 23-E control missiles—he couldn’t have taken full advantage of the Mark 23s aboard David K. Brown, which was why he’d decided against even trying to.
More to the point at the moment, however, Thomas Wozniak couldn’t manage the defensive engagement nearly as effectively as he might have with Keyhole-One or Keyhole-Two available. His ability to hand off his interceptors between different control platforms was much more limited, and he couldn’t establish d
irect telemetry links around the “dead spots” created by his own ships’ impeller wedges. What he could do, however, was to spread his Ghost Rider drones as broadly as possible and use their sensors to track the incoming fire. He could also—albeit with a certain degree of risk—roll ship to bring Clas Fleming’s or one of her consorts’ control links to bear on those dead zones and update the counter-missiles’ targeting solutions. At the current range, the risk was small; as the range closed, and time to roll back up disappeared, it could get risky indeed.
Ghost Rider couldn’t substitute for Keyhole’s telemetry links to the CMs, but it could feed the cruiser’s tactical section just fine, even in Clas Fleming’s current attitude, and the effect of the Loreleis was immediately obvious. At least a thousand of the incoming missile swarm peeled off, targeting one or another of the decoys. It was always possible some of them would require one of his cruisers, or even lock onto one of the destroyers in default of of its betters. That was unlikely, but unlikely things happened, and missiles which reacquired were often more dangerous than missiles which had never lost lock in the first place.
Missile defense was a game of probabilities, and one of the defender’s critical objectives was to assess those probabilities. Missile defense officers had only a limited number of counter-missiles and point defense clusters, and those limited numbers were allocated dependent on the threat hierarchy established by analyzing the incoming fire. Those missiles most likely to hit were targeted first, working from most likely to least likely in descending order until the defenders ran out of CMs or PD, and missiles which had clearly lost lock were at the very end of the targeting queue. So when one of those missiles suddenly reacquired a target at the very last instant, there was seldom a counter-missile or point defense cluster available to deal with it.
On the other hand…
* * *
Admiral Isotalo looked back at the plot just as the first wave of counter-missiles reached her oncoming attack. Then her jaw tightened in fresh consternation. Solarian interception probabilities on a first-launch, at maximum range, against the Cataphracts’ accompanying electronic warfare platforms and penetration aides, would have been on the order of ten percent.
The Manties did just a bit better than that.
* * *
The first wave of CruDiv 912.1’s CMs ripped into the oncoming Cataphracts.
The improved Solarian missile drives were accompanied by better penetration aides than the RMN had anticipated based on BuShips’ analysis of the contents of Massimo Filareta’s magazines. The difference was slight, but quantifiable, and Clas Fleming’s CIC took due note of it for the squadron’s after-action report.
In terms of the Mark 31 counter-missile’s performance, however, it was a negligible factor.
Five hundred and twenty Manticoran CMs slammed into the oncoming Cataphracts. A first-wave counter-missile launch, intercepting at maximum range, was always the least accurate of a defensive engagement. That was true in this case, as well, and the 520 Mark 31s intercepted only 152 of TF 1027’s Cataphracts…just under three times the kill ratio Barthilu Rosiak had estimated.
* * *
Jane Isotalo’s eyes narrowed and fury burned in their depths.
She’d thought the Manties’ decision to remain at rest relative to the terminus had indicated they intended to translate out as soon as a serious attack came their way. And, to be honest, she hadn’t intended her first salvo as a serious attack. She had expected them to either disappear into hyper or take some significant damage from it, however.
Not going to happen, Jane, she thought now, hands tightening on her command chair’s armrests as the second wave of CMs, with more time to acquire their targets, intercepted 260 attack missiles.
They’re still feeding at least some telemetry to those damned things, she thought grimly. They have to be. But how in hell can they even see my birds through their frigging wedges?!
The third wave intercepted 300 attack missiles. The fourth intercepted 393, and the fifth took down 471, a staggering 90.5% interception rate. All told, the Manticoran counter-missiles intercepted 1,183 Cataphracts, almost 20% of her total launch, and like all good missile defense officers, the Manties had concentrated on the fire most likely to find a target. They’d done a remarkably good job of ignoring the hundreds of Cataphracts which veered off to chase decoys or simply went off on a vector to God only knew where when they lost both sensor lock and telemetry.
Still, of the 6,000 missiles she’d launched, just over 3,800 got past both the counter-missiles and the electronic counter measures and came screaming in on the Manticoran starships.
* * *
“Forty-three seconds,” Commander Wozniak said flatly. “Stand by Point Defense.”
* * *
Task Force 1027’s missiles executed their programmed attack profiles, trying for “look down” shots through the Manticoran sidewalls as they passed “over” or “under” their targets, or seeking the even more deadly “down-the-throat” or “up-the-kilt” attack positions which were every tactician’s dream.
The attack birds were up to a closing velocity of 240,319 KPS—0.802 cee—as they howled down on their targets, and Isotalo smiled grimly. The SLN had stopped tweaking the software for its point defense clusters to deal with the higher closing rates of multistage missiles and completely replaced it instead, and TF 1027 had trained hard with the new systems, in both sims and live fire exercises against inert laserheads. The improvement was enormous…it just still wasn’t anything Jane Isotalo would have called adequate against targets coming in at the sorts of velocities Cataphracts could produce. She didn’t much like that. On the other hand, physics played no favorites. At those velocities, an awful lot of her missiles were going to get through even the Manties’ defenses, she thought vengefully, and—
* * *
“Point Defense engaging…now!” Wozniak snapped as the attack missiles swept through the squadron’s formation, and the laser clusters went to maximum-rate fire.
Rods of coherent energy stabbed out, matching the speed of cybernetic reflexes against the attackers’ incredible velocity as the Cataphracts’ cleared the shadow of their targets’ impeller wedges. Missiles, unlike starships, couldn’t generate sidewalls. That meant they could be taken down by laser fire even before they dropped their wedges, if the geometry was right.
The geometry was right for quite a few of the Solarian missiles, and the waiting lasers punched straight through them. Many of their fellows simply streaked across the vulnerable sides of the cruisers’ wedges without ever finding a target in the fleeting moments their preposterous velocity gave their sensors. Others were more fortunate in that regard, and missle wedges vanished and laserheads rolled on incredibly powerful thrusters as they fought to align their lasing rods with their targets.
But the point defense was waiting for them.
* * *
Jane Isotalo watched the display. At thirty-six million kilometers, the light-speed lag was just over two minutes. Impeller signatures were FTL, so Tracking could plot her missiles’ inbound positions in near real-time—there was still a 1.89 second delay—but her sensors would need the full two minutes to detect anything else, including nuclear detonations. Because of that, she couldn’t really “see” a thing once the missiles’ impellers went down, and she waited impatiently, along with everyone else on Foudroyant’s flag deck, for the telltale flare of detonating laserheads.
* * *
Manticore’s electronically steered laser clusters cycled much more rapidly than the SLN’s did. It was, Sir Martin Lessem reflected, a prime example of those Darwinian processes that worried him where the Sollies were concerned. The increasing deadliness of the missile environment in Manticore’s long war with the People’s Republic of Haven had given the Royal Manticoran Navy’s R&D people no choice but to improve cycle time. In fact, Clas Fleming’s cycle time was almost fifty percent more rapid than that of an earlier flight Saganami-C, and each of her clusters mo
unted not the eight emitters of an early flight ship but twelve, almost twice as many as a Nevada-class battlecruiser’s clusters.
Cycle time didn’t matter all that much this time. The window of engagement was so brief that not even a Manticoran emitter could have fired two shots in the available time. On the other hand, each of Clas Fleming’s broadsides mounted twenty-four point defense clusters with a dozen emitters each. That was 288 shots from each broadside—576, in total—with the same from each of his other three Saganami-Cs and an additional 288 from each of his six Saganami-Bs, with fewer emitters per cluster but more total clusters per ship. In all, including his destroyers, his squadron mounted over three thousand emitters…already coached into waiting positions by the Ghost Rider tracking reports.
The tension on Clas Fleming’s bridge could have been chipped with a knife, because no one knew better than Manticorans that any ship could be killed, however good its defenses, however skilled its crew. But this was a deadly ballet the Royal Manticoran Navy had danced countless times in the last twenty T-years. Its officers and ratings knew its measures better than anyone else in the galaxy, and the space around Sir Martin Lessem’s squadron was suddenly a tornado of disintegrating Cataphracts as the defenses picked them off with viper speed and metronome precision. Shattered missile bodies tumbled onward into the endless dark, broken and inert. But even in the midst of their destruction, scores of surviving laserheads disappeared in bubbles of intolerable brilliance and bomb-pumped x-ray lasers stabbed out at CruRon 912.
* * *
They must have had even better tracks on the incoming fire than she’d thought from their counter-missiles, Isotalo realized as impeller signatures began vanishing too early for end-of-run detonations. Thanks to the light-speed delay, she had ample time to contemplate the implications of those…premature disappearances, and she didn’t like them one bit. Her salvo hadn’t melted like a sand castle, because there hadn’t been enough time for that. One heartbeat it had been streaking towards its target…the next the Manty point defense had ripped it to shreds. She’d never seen anything like it, never imagined mere cruisers could produce that volume of defensive fire.
