What that meant was that Crandall's ships-of-the-wall could neither run away from her nor catch her if they tried to go in pursuit. And with Michelle outside Crandall's position, coming up her ships' wakes, there was really no way she could dodge, either. Nor could she possibly make it all the way across the hyper sphere to the opposite edge of the limit without being brought to action. And however confident Crandall might be of her task force's defensive capabilities, the Solarian admiral had to know her missiles were substantially out-ranged. In fact, just on the basis of what Michelle had done at New Tuscany before that first dispatch boat translated out, Crandall damned well ought to know her own anti-ship missiles' maximum powered envelope from rest was at best less than a quarter of that of the missiles which had killed Jean Bart . So, given her unpalatable menu of maneuver options, the one she was pursuing actually made the most sense. However nimble Michelle's ships might be, the planet couldn't dodge, and it was what Michelle had to defend. So if Crandall could get into her own range of Flax with what she no doubt believed to be her crushing superiority in missile tubes, she could compel Michelle to either come to her or concede strategic defeat regardless of any tactical advantages the RMN might possess.
And if we're wrong about our ability to penetrate their defenses, it could still work for her , Michelle conceded grimly.
She gazed into the plot for several more seconds, then turned and crossed to her command station. She settled into the chair, looking down at the com which was kept permanently tied in to Artemis ' command deck.
"Captain Armstrong, please," she told the com rating monitoring the link.
"Yes, Ma'am!"
The rating disappeared. The crossed arrows of Artemis ' wallpaper replaced her image for a moment, then disappeared in turn as Captain Victoria Armstrong appeared on Michelle's display.
"You called, Admiral?" she inquired. Her dark green eyes were guileless, but Michelle had long since discovered the wicked sense of humor which was just as much a part of Armstrong as the chestnut-haired flag captain's confidence and rock-steady competence.
"I believe I did," she replied. "Now, let me see . . . There was something I wanted to discuss with you, but . . . ."
Her voice trailed off, and Armstrong grinned appreciatively at her.
"Could it have had something to do with that unpleasant person headed for Flax, Ma'am?" the captain suggested in a politely helpful tone, and Michelle snapped her fingers.
"That was what I wanted to talk about!" she said wonderingly, and heard someone behind her chuckling. Then own expression sobered. "So far, it looks pretty much like the alpha plan right down the line, Vicki."
"Yes, Ma'am," Armstrong replied, equally seriously. "Wilton and Ron and I were just discussing that. I have to wonder what's going through this Crandall's mind at the moment, though."
"I'd guess we gave her a bad few minutes when we turned up, judging by the way she delayed her turnover, but I imagine she got over it once she figured out we don't have any superdreadnoughts. At any rate, I don't expect her to be screening us with any surrender offers anytime soon."
"That would make it simpler, wouldn't it, Ma'am?"
"Probably. But it looks like it's going to take Admiral Khumalo and Commodore Terekhov to convince her of that, after all. In the meantime, go ahead with the Agincourt Alpha variant. We'll just quietly follow along behind until—and unless—we're needed."
"Yes, Ma'am."
Michelle nodded to the captain, then turned back to the plot, tipping back her chair and crossing her legs as she considered the imagery.
At this scale, even Crandall's task force seemed to crawl across the display, and her own ships' motion was barely perceptible as they began building on the vector they'd carried across the alpha wall with them. Given the steady, consistent improvements in compensator design over the last ten or fifteen T-years, Manticoran captains—and admirals, she thought wryly—no longer fretted anywhere near as much as the officers of other navies over compensator safety margins. The fact that they'd been operating on a wartime basis for twenty T-years or so, rather than the peacetime basis of the rest of the galaxy had something to do with that, as well. The RMN had discovered that even with old-style compensators, "Book" safety margins had been excessively cautious, and Michelle's current acceleration rate was 6.5 KPS2 . She'd thought about restricting her accel, but there wasn't really much point. Even if the acceleration she'd displayed at New Tuscany hadn't been reported to Crandall, it must have already been reported to the SLN back on Old Earth in Sigbee's official report. And if Crandall hadn't already been aware of it, perhaps seeing it now might rattle the Solly.
Not that Michelle really expected it to have any impact on what was about to happen, and her mouth tightened as she recognized an all-too-familiar awareness deep down inside herself. She'd seen too many tactical plots like this one not to know what was coming, not to sense the inevitability. It was like watching two ground cars slide towards one another, knowing it was too late, that nothing anyone did could possibly prevent the oncoming collision.
She remembered the first time she'd seen a plot like this and known it wasn't a simulation. She'd trained for that moment her entire professional life, and yet, deep inside, she hadn't quite believed it was real. Or that it couldn't somehow be averted at the very last moment, at least. She'd done her best to prepare herself, and she'd thought, in her inexperience, that she'd succeeded.
She'd been wrong. Despite the most realistic exercises the Royal Manticoran Navy had been able to provide, she hadn't been ready—not truly—for mortality. Still hadn't come face-to-face with the reality that she could die as easily as anyone else. That the universe could survive her personal extinction and go right on. And, even worse perhaps, she hadn't really recognized that all the weapons and targeting systems would do precisely—and inevitably—what they'd been designed to do. That once those missiles were fired in earnest, other people were going to die in shocking, horrifying numbers, whether she did or not.
And now it was the turn of Sandra Crandall and all of the officers and enlisted personnel aboard her starships to face that recognition. She wondered how many would survive the experience?
* * *
Gervais Archer watched his admiral and wondered what was going through her mind. As a rule, he felt generally confident of his ability to read her moods. She wasn't the most inscrutable person he'd ever met, after all. She could be as tactically sneaky and subtle as anyone he'd ever seen, but her personality was open and direct, not to mention stubborn, with a distinct tendency to come at things head on.
Yet at this moment, he couldn't read her body language. Not clearly. There was no sign of hesitance or uncertainty, no indication of second guessing herself, no sign any concern over future consequences would be permitted to erode present determination. But there was something. Something he wasn't accustomed to seeing from her, and he wondered why the word he kept thinking of was "sorrow."
* * *
Michelle Henke drew a deep breath and squared her shoulders, unaware of her flag lieutenant's thoughts as she ordered her own to attend to the business at hand.