And wasn't it nice of BuWeaps to leave the Echo's sub-light telemetry links in place, too? he thought coldly, watching the icons of Sandra Crandall's ships sweeping closer and closer.
Chapter Twenty-Two
SLNS Joseph Buckley plowed implacably closer to the planet Flax, decelerating steadily. Task Force 496's approach velocity dropped towards nineteen thousand KPS, and the tension on Sandra Crandall's flag deck ratcheted steadily upward.
No one was going to admit that, of course. But as Hago Shavarshyan watched the men and women around him, he'd realized that quite a few more of them were more aware of the implications of what was about to happen than they cared to reveal. Or than he himself had suspected.
Part of the tension was an odd mix of apprehension and anticipation. For some, it represented eagerly sought retribution for the destruction of Jean Bart , but for the majority it was something far less welcome: the anticipation of launching the first real war the Solarian League had ever fought. Because that was what this really was. Crandall could present it any way she wanted, but this no simple "police action." For the first time in its history, the Solarian Navy faced an adversary which had a genuine battle fleet, a true wall of battle, even if that wall was far smaller than the SLN's. And little though any Solarian officer wanted to admit it, most of the men and women around Shavarshyan were clearly aware that they were about to go up against an experienced adversary. Confident in their own equipment and doctrine or not, however contemptuous of "neobarbs" they might be, they were far from immune to the anxious butterflies which always affected the novice when he looked across the field of battle at a grimly prepared veteran foe in battered, well-used armor.
And this particular bunch of novices is suddenly realizing just how grateful it is that it's not up against ships-of-the-wall this time , he reflected with grim humor.
* * *
"Range five-six-point-seven-five million kilometers," Lieutenant Commander Golbatsi announced, and his eyes flitted from the icons on his plot to the time-to-range display ticking steadily down to one side. "Closing velocity one-nine-point-three-eight thousand KPS. Point Longbow in three minutes from . . . now."
"Thank you, Adam," Scotty Tremaine acknowledged, and quirked an eyebrow at Lieutenant MacDonald. "May I assume you would have mentioned anything we'd heard from Commodore Terekhov, Stilson?"
"You may, Sir," the com officer replied, and Tremaine smiled.
Every member of his staff, with the exception of Lieutenant Yelland, had seen combat before. None of the others had seen as much of it as he and Horace Harkness, but none were showing any signs of panic, either. Which, given the sheer tonnage rumbling towards them, was a not insignificant accomplishment, technical superiority or no technical superiority, he supposed.
"Any changes in their EW, Chief?" he asked.
"No, Sir." Harkness shook his head, his eyes intent as he studied his own displays. "We're picking up a little activity on those 'Halo' platforms of theirs, but nobody's bringing them online just yet. We should see them pretty soon, though—this looks like pre-battle systems tests to me."
* * *
Sandra Crandall crossed her arms and chewed her lower lip thoughtfully as she gazed into the tactical plot.
"Halo system test completed, Ma'am," Ou-yang Zhing-wei told her. "EW appears nominal."
The admiral nodded curtly, and her frown deepened. Assuming the range numbers from the New Tuscany dispatch boat were accurate, her task force was little more than ten million kilometers outside the maximum powered missile envelope of those ships orbiting Flax. It still seemed likely the Manties would wait to open fire at their maximum effective range, however. The longer the range, the less accurate their fire control would be under any circumstances, and when she cranked in her task force's better EW ability and active defenses, "effective range" got a lot shorter against an alert fleet of superdreadnoughts than it would have been against Josef Byng's surprised battlecruisers. Still, if Ou-yang was right about what those fleeing impeller wedges had dropped off, the Manties probably had far more missiles than they could possibly control, and no special reason to conserve ammunition. Under those circumstances, they'd want to start whittling away at her as soon as possible, even at relatively poor hit probabilities. She was committed to close combat with them now, which meant they were committed to close combat with her , as well, and they'd want to reduce her offensive power as much as possible before that happened. And they might always get lucky. Even unlikely things sometimes happened.
But there were also those grav pulses Ou-yang had reported, and some of them seemed to be originating from surprisingly short ranges. If they really were from FTL recon platforms, the fact that they could get that close and survive said unhappy things about how stealthy they were. That was bad enough, but it also meant the Manties were getting disgustingly good looks at her SDs, and she felt no inclination to start showing them an active Halo system any sooner than she had to. There was no point giving their computers additional time to analyze her EW. Still . . . .
"Activate Halo at forty million kilometers," she said.
* * *
"Point Longbow in one minute, Ma'am."
"Thank you, Dominica."
Michelle Henke's acknowledgment of Dominica Adenauer's report sounded preposterously calm. Particularly, Michelle realized a moment later, because that was exactly how she felt. This moment lacked the vengefulness of New Tuscany. Instead, there was a balanced, singing tension at her core. A sense of something almost but not quite like detachment. A poised, cat-like something, she realized, that she'd seen more than once in Honor Alexander-Harrington but never expected to experience herself.
God, I refuse to turn into another Honor! The thought sent a ripple of amusement through her, a flicker of welcome warmth. Lord knows I love her, and we all need her, but I flat out refuse to grow up that much!
She shook her head, unaware of the way her staff was looking at her, or the way her sudden smile swept across her flag deck like a calming breeze.
* * *
"Point Longbow, Sir."
Stillwell Lewis' taut-voiced announcement cut through the disciplined silence of Quentin Saint-James ' flag deck, and Sir Aivars Terekhov nodded.
"Engage," he said simply.
* * *
"Missile launch! "
Jacomina van Heutz twitched as Commander Sambroth's warning rapped out sharply, and her eyes flicked to the fountain of fresh icons which suddenly speckled the plot.
"Range at launch five-three-point-niner-six million kilometers." Sambroth sounded as if she couldn't really believe her own numbers. "Assuming constant accelerations, time of flight seven-point-five minutes!"
"Stand by missile defense," van Heutz heard her own voice say, but it seemed to come from someone else, far away, as she saw the impossible number of missiles screaming towards her ship.
* * *
The Saganami-C -class heavy cruiser massed four hundred and eighty thousand tons. It mounted forty missile launchers in each broadside, and it had been designed to fire double broadsides at its enemies, then provided with a sixty percent redundancy in control links as a reserve against battle damage. That gave each of Aivars Terekhov's cruisers one hundred and twenty eight telemetry links, and each of those links was assigned to one Mark 23-E missile, which, in turn, controlled eight standard Mark 23s.