by David Weber
“Impeller perimeter in thirty seconds,” he announced.
“Copy,” Benton-Ramirez y Chou replied. He gave his own instruments a quick look, then shrugged. “Might as well shut them down now,” he said.
He pressed one of the control studs on Anachronism’s joystick and the yacht’s impeller wedge died. She went ballistic, coasting onward towards the mammoth, growing bulk of Beowulf Alpha, the largest of the many habitats in orbit around the Beowulf System’s capital planet, and he sat back in his flight couch.
Beowulf’s impeller shutdown perimeter had been pushed out to a hundred and fifty thousand kilometers and maximum approach speed on the approach had been reduced to only fifty KPS, which meant that they were still over fifty minutes out. No doubt the system’s work-a-day pilots spent much of their time cursing the “wasted time,” but after what had happened in the Yawata Strike, they tended to keep their grumbling to themselves. At the moment, though, White Haven was actually grateful, because it gave him more time to watch their destination grow steadily before them.
Even at half a light-second, Beowulf Alpha gleamed like an enormous gem. Not surprisingly, since it was larger and much more massive than even HMSS Hephaestus had ever been, with a sheer size and pedigree that underscored just how ancient the Republic of Beowulf actually was.
Before the Yawata Strike, Hephaestus’s longest dimensions had almost matched those of Beowulf Alpha, but the original core of Beowulf Alpha had been built over eighteen T-centuries ago. That was over a millennium and a half before Hephaestus’s first girder had been put in place, and Beowulf Alpha had been growing ever since. Nor was simple seniority the only difference between them. Hephaestus had been a fairytale sculpture, a thing of components, sub units, long connecting booms, and massive industrial modules, more necklace and lacework than solid. The spacestation had been a dispersed tracery of open space and structural elements, growing in every direction—and in leaps and bounds—to meet perceived needs, with new sections added wherever seemed most convenient, completely irrespective of any master plan to coordinate that growth, and assembled in the wild Escher-like geometry of microgravity.
Beowulf Alpha hadn’t. Beowulf Alpha had expanded over the centuries in carefully planned additions, each incorporated into the existing structure only after carefully considering its impact upon the entire station, and strict zoning requirements had insured that it was home to very little heavy industry. There was a lot of light industry, dedicated to consumer-oriented products, but Beowulf had always tended to segregate its heavier industry—and the accidents which could occur on those sorts of industrial sites—away from its residential areas.
Part of that segregation was inevitable, the sort of thing one might have seen in any star system. In Beowulf Alpha’s case, that meant its light industrial modules were located on the long engineering and support booms stretching out from the main platform like the legs of some glittering spider, but the system’s resource extraction facilities were almost all associated with the Diomedes Belt and the gas refineries around Enlil, the gas giant seventy-three light-minutes from the system primary. And most of the star system’s shipyards and supporting infrastructure orbited the planet Cassandra, eight light-minutes outside the orbit of Beowulf itself, because they were so much closer to both the Diomedes extraction platforms and the hyper-limit.
There was quite a bit of industry in Beowulf orbit anyway—Ivaldi of Beowulf maintained its primary nano farms and molycirc tanks there, for example, and the main production lines for the Mark 23 and Mark 16 had been distributed among Ivaldi’s three Alviss platforms—but the really heavy industry was farther out for the most part, handier to the belt and the refineries. The volume closer to the planet was dominated by residential habitats, with Beowulf Alpha as the prime example. Alpha was first and foremost a home for its twenty-two million inhabitants, although it had also housed both Adrienne Warshawski University and the Warshawski Center for Applied Astrophysics for the better part of seven hundred T-years. It was home to close to two hundred other civilian research facilities and laboratories, as well, not to mention the George Benton Center for Interstellar Studies, with a galaxy-wide reputation for the depth and breadth of its scholarship.
It was the GBC which had drawn the conference to Beowulf Alpha. Its facilities—especially its research libraries—were unparalleled, its list of consultable experts was enormous, and it boasted a plethora of superbly equipped conference rooms and communications centers.
And I’m sure the restaurants and nightclubs just down-station from GBC didn’t have a thing to do with the choice of venues, White Haven thought.
“Think we’ll be in trouble for being late?” he asked as Anachronism drifted onward.
“Nonsense! We’re not late, just fashionably tardy,” Benton-Ramirez y Chou told him, and Samantha and Bark Chewer’s Banewf bleeked with laughter as White Haven gave him a martyred look.
Actually, he and Benton-Ramirez y Chou had both attended the conference’s opening sessions. Afterward, however, they’d accompanied Chairman Benton-Ramirez down to Columbia and then headed out for a family event, not an official function. Among other things, it had been White Haven’s responsibility to show off several terabytes of video of Caspar Benton-Ramirez y Chou and Jennifer Feliciana Benton-Ramirez y Chou’s newest great-grandchildren, and the great-grandparents in question had been vacationing on a skiing trip to Cassandra’s spectacular Freyja Mountains.
Cassandra had a hydrosphere of only thirty-two percent, which made it a dry world by the standards of most inhabited planets, and it was decidedly on the cool side. It was, after all, four light-minutes farther from its primary than Mars was from Sol. It was also, however, far more massive than Mars—or even Old-Terra, for that matter—with a diameter of over 32,000 kilometers, a gravity of 1.5 G and a moon almost half as big as it was. That produced a lot of tectonic activity, which, in turn, produced an exceptionally active greenhouse effect which—coupled with its gravity well—had allowed it to retain both a deep atmosphere and an average surface temperature well above freezing. A gravity fifty percent higher than the one in which humanity had evolved remained a deal-breaker for the majority of potential immigrants, despite all grav plates could do, but the skiing really was fantastic, as Benton-Ramirez y Chou had demonstrated to him.
He’d felt more than a little trepidation about meeting Jennifer, however. The redoubtable grand dame of the Benton-Ramirez y Chou clan had been one of the galaxy’s very first prolong recipients when she was twenty-seven T-years old. She’d just celebrated her hundred and thirtieth birthday, but she remained as vigorous as she’d ever been and she’d been one of the leading geneticists of Beowulf for three-quarters of her life. Given Beowulf’s preeminence in the biosciences, that put her in what might be called “elite company.” Worse, Jennifer had enjoyed a…tempestuous relationship with her daughter before Allison’s flight to Manticore. And that relationship had been made no better over the next fifteen or twenty T-years as Allison proceeded to become on Manticore precisely what she had refused to become on Beowulf.
Under the circumstances, Jennifer had concluded—reasonably, in White Haven’s opinion—that Allison’s refusal to embrace the career her mother had chosen for her on Beowulf stemmed solely from the fact that it was the one Jennifer had chosen for her. Relations had been…strained, and turning that around had actually been Honor Alexander-Harrington’s first major tactical triumph.
Which she had achieved, just over sixty-three T-years ago, by being born as Jennifer’s first granddaughter.
Given that history, White Haven had been prepared for a formidable, daunting matriarch. What he’d gotten was a silver-haired, exquisitely groomed, charming, obviously brilliant woman with a tennis fanatic’s tan and an ironic, biting sense of humor. She was also tiny, as small as her daughter, and her smile as she watched the video of Raoul and Katherine could have illuminated half a planet.
The side excursion had been eminently worthwhile, he thoug
ht.
“Tell them we’re coming,” Benton-Ramirez y Chou said as they finally floated across the actual impeller perimeter, and White Haven pressed the transmit button.
“Beowulf Alpha Flight Control, this is Sierra-Lima-Charlie-One-Niner-Six-Five-Tango, private yacht Anachronism, at impeller shutdown perimeter on approach from Cassandra. Strobing transponder now.” He touched the transponder stud. “Request approach instructions. Anachronism, clear.”
“Sierra-Lima-Charlie-One-Niner-Six-Five-Tango, Beowulf Alpha Flight Control. We have your transponder. Your vector looks good. Maintain heading on Approach Charlie Alpha Seven and begin decel at fifteen gravities in forty-four minutes from my mark…mark!”
“Beowulf Alpha Flight Control, SLC-One-Niner-Six-Five-Tango. Anachronism copies approach looks good. Maintain heading on Charlie Alpha Seven and begin decel at one-five gravities at seventeen-twenty-three-sixteen hours zulu. I make that time to docking tractor lock of twenty-nine minutes and three seconds after the hour.”
“SLC-One-Niner-Six-Five-Tango, Beowulf Alpha Flight Control confirms,” the crisply professional voice said. Then it shifted tone. “Welcome back, Admiral White Haven. Is that idle layabout Jacques making you do all the hard work?”
“Of course I am,” Benton-Ramirez y Chou said, raising his voice to be heard. “It’s what I do!”
“Ain’t that the truth!” The voice at the other end of the com link laughed. “Free for poker tonight, Jacques?”
“Only if you’ve got money you really want to lose,” Benton-Ramirez y Chou replied.
“Hah! That’ll be the day! I’ll screen you when I come off duty.”
“Sounds good, Terry. See you then.”
“That’s affirmative, SLC-One-Niner-Six-Five-Tango. Beowulf Alpha Flight Control, clear.”
HMS Fafnir
Task Force Thirty-One
Third Fleet
Beowulf Terminus
“Actually, Marianne, I thought the exercise went very well,” Admiral Alice Truman said, as the stewards cleared away the supper dishes.
“For what it was, yes, Ma’am,” Vice Admiral Marianne Holmon-Sanders replied a bit more formally than she was in the habit of addressing Truman. “It’s just that all my people feel like we’re only marking time until they scrap our ships. Like we’re not pulling our weight in the defense of our own star system.”
Truman frowned at Holmon-Sanders across the table in her dining cabin. The diminutive Beowulfer—she wasn’t quite 155 centimeters tall—who commanded Third Fleet’s second task force was a solid professional. She might look like someone’s pre-prolong teenage sister, but no one who’d ever seen her on a superdreadnought’s flag bridge would make that mistake. At the moment, however, what she looked most was pissed. Not at Truman, her task force commander, but at the weapons she’d been given. Or at fate, perhaps.
“If your people think you aren’t pulling your weight, you’re the only ones who do,” Truman said a bit sternly.
“Oh, we don’t think it’s because we’re slacking, Ma’am.” Holmon-Sanders shook her head. “What we think is that at this moment, all the other members of the Grand Alliance will do any real fighting while we sort of stand there with our thumbs up our backsides and watch.” She grimaced. “Let’s face it, none of our wallers is even in shouting distance of your wallers.”
“There’s something to that,” Truman conceded after a thoughtful sip of coffee. She set her cup down, trapped it in an open diamond formed by her thumbs and forefingers, and frowned down into it. Then she looked back up at Holmon-Sanders.
“Compared to a current-generation Manticoran SD(P), your Lysander really is obsolescent. No offense, Captain François.”
“None taken, Ma’am,” Henriette François, Holmon-Sanders’s flag captain replied. “The truth is the truth.” She shrugged. “I love Lysander, and I’d hate to give her up, but she’s the better part of forty T-years old, and there’s a limit to what upgrades and refits can do.”
“Especially when someone goes and introduces a revolution in missile warfare and none of the new launchers will even fit,” Holmon-Sanders said acerbically.
“Well, yes,” Truman acknowledged. “But you’re comparing her to current-generation Manticoran, Havenite, or Grayson ships, not one of which is even ten T-years old. And I think the point you need to bear in mind is that that’s not who you’ll be fighting, if it comes down to it. Who you’ll be fighting are the Sollies, whose ships are a lot farther behind the curve than yours are. Your ships are obsolescent; theirs are obsolete deathtraps. Trust me, if it comes to a shootout with the SLN, your people will hold up your end. Maybe the newer ships will do the really heavy lifting, but your people will be a huge part of our defensive envelope, and with Admiral Foraker’s latest version of the Donkey, you’ve got a hell of an offensive punch, at least in the opening phase.”
“I know,” Holmon-Sanders said, and snorted. “Actually, I think a lot of it’s simple envy! We want our new ships, and we want them now!”
“Of course you do. And they’re coming.” Truman picked up her cup and drank more coffee, then shrugged. “Truth in advertising, though. They won’t be here the day after tomorrow.”
“I know.”
This time it came out as a sigh, and Holmon-Sanders sat back from the table and crossed her legs. She and François knew as well as Truman did why those ships wouldn’t arrive next week. The Grand Alliance had rationalized its industrial output ruthlessly, with most of Bewoulf’s heavy fabrication capacity dedicated to rebuilding the Manticore Binary System after the Yawata Strike. It hadn’t ended there, though, because the Alliance’s existing SD(P) strength was more than sufficient to handle anything the SLN had, Because of that, the proportion of Beowulf’s industry not dedicated to rebuilding Manticore had been switched to the fleet support role, not new construction.
Facilities like Ivaldi of Beowulf had begun churning out Mark 23 MDMs, Mark 16 DDMs, Ghost Rider drones, Dazzlers, and Dragon’s Teeth, but while ammunition—and spare parts—were critical, future expansion hadn’t been total neglected. Other facilities were producing the components—like micro fusion plants and miniaturized FTL coms—Haven’s industrial base couldn’t manufacture quite yet, and that was likely to accelerate the delivery of Beowulf System Defense Force’s first modern capital ships.
Bolthole’s stupendous shipyards had undertaken an ambitious construction program of SD(P)s, built to a new common Manticore-Haven design. Haven’s basic technology in areas like FTL coms and missile tech—Keyhole-Two came to mind in that connection—remained significantly inferior to that of Manticore and Grayson, but Bolthole’s construction rate was almost as high as Manticore’s had been at the peak of its pre-Yawata Strike capacity. That meant there’d be a lot of new hulls remarkably soon, but they’d be completed in what could only be called a barebones configuration. They’d be fitted with engines, life-support, point defense, counter-missile launchers, armor, missile cores and pod rails, broadside weapons, and basic sensors, then transitioned to Beowulf’s Cassandra yards for the installation of Keyhole-Two, FTL coms, and current-generation fire control and ECM suites to create an end product fully as capable as the RMN’s Invictus-class. Spreading production between multiple locations was enough to make any logistician queasy, given the way it multiplied potential failure points. If it worked as planned, though, it would increase building rates by something like thirty percent, provide complete commonality of weapons, support systems, spare parts, and maintenance procedures for all the Allied navies’ future construction, and get the first of the new ships into commission at least six T-months earlier than any other approach.
And one quarter of all the ships fitted out here in Beowulf would be assigned to the Beowulf System Defense Force’s component of Grand Fleet.
But not tomorrow.
“Leaving aside your unbecoming greediness for new toys,” Truman said now, her smile taking any sting from her choice of words, “what’s your assessment—your real as
sessment, Marianne—of your people’s performance?”
“Well, put that way, I’d say my assessment would have to be…not too shabby,” Holmon-Sanders said with an answering smile. “Mind, I want more time for my people to work with yours.”
“Not a problem now that Mycroft’s operational,” Truman said with a shrug, and Holmon-Sanders nodded.
The Beowulf Terminus was critical to the Grand Alliance, and the task of protecting it had been assigned to Task Force 31, the Manticoran portion of Truman’s Third Fleet. Actually, she wore two “hats,” as the CO of both Third Fleet and TF 31, and her task force covered the terminus mostly because the Manticoran ships had the missile range and firepower to punch out any Solarian attack foolish enough to head its way. Politics and the need to keep “foreigners” out of the inner system had played their own part prior to the referendum, and however much Holmon-Sanders might have yearned for more modern ships, she’d never doubted her own superdreadnoughts’ ability to defend the inner system using the towed missile pods her allies had provided. But until Mycroft was able to relieve her task group of that responsibility, opportunities for joint training with the rest of Truman’s ships had been few and far between. Now that Mycroft was online and had passed every check with flying colors, she’d been able to pull TF 32, Third Fleet’s second task force, out of the inner system, join Truman on the terminus, and start joint training with a vengeance.
“With that in mind,” Truman continued, “Captain Kovalenko and I have been thinking about the next exercise’s parameters. Given the fact that your ships’ current configuration gives them a massive initial throw weight but very little in the way of sustained engagement capacity, it occurred to us that we might—”
Her com pinged suddenly, and she stiffened as she recognized the urgent priority signal. She raised her left hand in a “hold that thought” gesture and stabbed the acceptance key with her right index finger.
