Which was why D'Orville was so relieved the new forts were finally operational. Much smaller than the old prewar fortifications which had been decommissioned to provide the manpower to crew new construction, they were actually more powerfully armed, thanks to the same increased automation and weapons developments which had gone into the Navy's new warships. And each of those forts was surrounded by literally hundreds of missile pods, with the fire control to handle stupendous salvos. It would take an attack in overwhelming force to break those defenses, which had freed D'Orville to move Home Fleet closer to a more traditional covering position, locating his command in Sphinx orbit.
His new station provided Sphinx with badly needed, close-in protection. And with the planet of Manticore still trailing its orbital position, and so still deeper into the zone and (as always) further inside the hyper-limit, he was actually better placed to cover Manticore than he would have been anywhere else. Any least-time course to Manticore would require the attacker to get past his position at Sphinx, first, and he could easily intercept the opposing fleet short of its objective.
The solution wasn't perfect, of course. For one thing, the move left Manticore-B and its inhabited planet of Gryphon more exposed then it had been when Home Fleet was stationed at the Junction, since D'Orville would now have to get clear of the zone before he could hyper out to the system's secondary component. But the extra danger wasn't very great, now that Sphinx was within eight light-minutes of the zone's boundary. And more vulnerable or not, Gryphon had the smallest population and industrial base of any of the Star Kingdom's original inhabited worlds. If something had to be exposed, cold logic said Gryphon was a better choice than the other two planets, and the Admiralty had compensated as best it could by assigning the buildup of Manticore-B's fixed defenses a higher priority than Manticore-A's. In fact, Manticore-B's forts and space station were already refitting with Keyhole II and would begin deploying the first of the system-defense Apollo pods within the nest three weeks, on the theory that it would need them worse since it couldn't call as readily on Home Fleet's protection.
And once Manticore-B's defenses were fully up to speed, Sphinx would receive the next highest priority, despite the fact that the planet of Manticore had the largest population and the greatest economic and industrial value of any of the binary system's worls. Like Manticore-B, Sphinx was simply more exposed than Manticore.
D'Orville agreed with both those decisions, although that didn't mean he was happy about the policy they implied. It was simply, in his opinion, the best of several options, none of which could have been completely acceptable. And at least the Strategy Board's decision that Gryphon would have to look after itself instead of relying upon immediate intervention by Home Fleet had enormously simplified D'Orville's responsibilities and problems.
But today, Sebastian D'Orville and half of Home Fleet were back out at the Junction, waiting. Waiting not for an enemy attack, but to welcome back two of the Manticoran Navy's own.
He had to admit that he felt a twinge or two of anxiety over taking his command so far from its new inner-system station, but his qualms were tiny things. And given the way the Solarian League was pulling in its horns over events in the Talbott Cluster, the entire Star Kingdom owed a stupendous debt of gratitude to the two ships who were coming home today. Queen Elizabeth and her government had chosen to acknowledge that debt, and Sebastian D'Orville was out here to do just that.
He glanced at the date/time display, and nodded in satisfaction. Another thirty-two minutes to go.
Honor Alexander-Harrington glanced at the date/time display, and nodded.
If she'd had the choice, she would have loved to have been back in the Manticore System in about half an hour. Unfortunately, she didn't really have that choice. Vizeadmiral Lyou-yung Hasselberg, Graf von Kreuzberg, and the leading elements of his Task Force 16, IAN, had arrived at Trevor's Star less than a week earlier. Two of his three battle squadrons were at full strength, and the Imperial Andermani Navy, like the Republic of Haven's, still used eight-ship squadron organizations. His third battle squadron was still short one of its four divisions, but what had already arrived had added twenty-two SD(P)s-every one of them Keyhole II-capable-to Eighth Fleet's order of battle.
Unfortunately, none of those ships had ever functioned as part of Eighth Fleet before, and eleven of them had finished their post-refit working up exercises less than two weeks before they deployed forward to Trevor's Star. And, just to add a little more interest to the situation, Vizeadmiral Bin-hwei Morser, Graffin von Grau, Hasselberg's second-in-command, was not one of the Royal Manticoran Navy's greater admirers. In fact, she was a holdover from the same anti-Manticoran faction within the IAN which had produced Graf von Sternhafen, who'd done so much to help make Honor's last duty assignment... interesting.
The rest of Hasselberg's senior flag officers seemed much more comfortable with the notion of their Emperor's decision to ally himself with the Star Kingdom, and she suspected that Chien-lu Anderman had had more than a little to do with their selection for their present assignments. Morser obviously had patrons of her own, however, since she'd received command of the very first squadron of refitted Andermani SD(P)s. And, Honor admitted just a bit grudgingly, she also appeared to be very good at her job. It was just unfortunate that she found it difficult to conceal the fact that she would have preferred to be shooting at the rest of Honor's fleet, rather than accepting her orders.
Still, the graffin's attitude only lent added point to the need to get TF 16 fully integrated into Eighth Fleet as quickly as possible. And the best way to do that was to drill the Andermani ships in conjunction with the rest of her units.
At least Vizeadmiral Morser's professionalism was responding to the challenge. She couldn't have enjoyed admitting that the Andermani simply weren't quite up to Manticoran or Grayson standards of proficiency, but neither could she deny it. Of course, the IAN hadn't spent most of the last twenty T-years fighting for its survival against the People's Republic of Haven, either. A navy either got very, very good under those circumstances, or else the star nation it was charged to defend got very, very dead and both Grayson and the Star Kingdom were still here. The complacency the Janacek Admiralty had allowed to blunt the RMN's finely honed edge during the cease-fire had been a major factor in what happened during the Republic's Operation Thunderbolt, but most of it had been scoured away by the grim sandblaster of combat. The less than brilliant but politically acceptable flag officers and captains Janacek had appointed to sensitive positions had been shuffled aside or eliminated in the opening battles, and the officers who remained had been given a rather brutally pointed refresher course.
The bottom line, though, was that the Manticoran and Grayson navies were the explored galaxy's most experienced, battle-hardened fleets. Their margin of superiority over the revitalized navy of Thomas Theisman was far narrower than it once had been, but it remained the Alliance's most significant advantage. And the Andermani, although they were very, very good by any less Darwinian standard, simply weren't up to their allies' weight.
Yet, at least.
Hasselberg appeared to have understood that even before his arrival, which was another bit of evidence that Herzog von Rabenstrange had handpicked him for his assignment. Hasselberg clearly intended to bring his command up to Manticoran standards as quickly as possible, and if any of his subordinates-including Vizeadmiral Morser-had entertained any reservations about that, they were smart enough to keep those reservations to themselves. And, in all fairness, they'd buckled down hard.
They still had a way to go, though, which was the real reason Honor had turned down Admiral D'Orville's invitation to join him aboard HMS Invictus for today's ceremony. She'd scheduled yet another in her series of increasingly rigorous training problems for Eighth Fleet, and she couldn't justify giving herself the day off while she made everyone else work.