The twelve ships of Cruiser Squadron 94 and Cruiser Division 96.1 fired just over fifteen hundred missile pods at Task Force 496, Solarian League Navy.
* * *
"Estimate twelve thousand—repeat, twelve thousand— incoming!"
Sandra Crandall's head snapped around at Ou-yang Zhing-wei's hard, flat announcement. She stared at her ops officer, eyes huge, too shocked by the numbers to register even disbelief. At that, she was doing better than Pйpй Bautista. Her chief of staff's expression was that of someone infuriated by a lie rather than someone stupefied by astonishment.
"Halo active," Ou-yang continued. "Missile Defense Plan Able activated."
* * *
"Commodore Terekhov's opened fire, Ma'am."
Dominica Adenauer's report was one of the least necessary ones Michelle Henke had ever heard. The thousands upon thousands of icons streaking across the master plot were painfully evident. None of which absolved Adenauer of her formal responsibility to tell her admiral about it.
"Acknowledged," Michelle said softly.
* * *
Scotty Tremaine watched the hurricane racing toward the Sollies with something very like a sense of awe. He'd seen larger salvos—not once, but many times. For that matter, the mutual holocausts Home Fleet and Lester Tourville's Second Fleet had inflicted upon one another at the Battle of Manticore dwarfed even this. But a full third of these missiles had come from ships under his command, and that realization sent an icy chill through his blood.
He glanced for just a moment at Horace Harkness' profile and felt an obscure, irrational flicker of reassurance. Harkness' elemental solidity, his unflappable sense of who and what he was, was like a touchstone. It was a reminder of all the challenges Tremaine had met and surmounted in the twenty T-years since he'd first set eyes on that battered, competent face, and in the wake of finding himself cast in the role of Juggernaut, Scotty Tremaine took a warm and very human comfort from it.
* * *
Helen Zilwicki stood at Terekhov's side, watching the same plot, and thought about how different this was from the Battle of Monica.
As Terekhov's flag lieutenant, she'd been there when he and Admiral Gold Peak and Admiral Oversteegen and their ops officers threshed out their plans for Operation Agincourt. Fire distribution had been one of the critical points, and no one had been prepared to make any unwarranted assumptions about the ease with which Solly missile defenses might be penetrated. They'd all been aware that Solarian anti-missile doctrine and capabilities were . . . seriously flawed compared to those of the Republican Navy, but they'd forced themselves to adopt the most pessimistic estimates of their ability to capitalize on those flaws.
Of the 12,288 standard Mark 23s in that stupendous initial launch, fully one quarter—just over three thousand—were EW platforms. The remaining nine thousand plus were distributed over twenty-three of Sandra Crandall's seventy-one superdreadnoughts. Experience against the Republic of Haven indicated that two hundred to two hundred and fifty Mark 23 hits would destroy—or mission-kill, at least—even the latest Havenite SD(P) . . . which was why Fire Plan Alpha had allocated four hundred missiles to each of its targets.
"Spot and allocate the Bravo launch," Sir Aivars Terekhov said.
* * *
The wavefront of destruction roared towards Sandra Crandall's superdreadnoughts from far, far beyond the Solarians' own range of Aivars Terekhov's command. There was no fear-pumped adrenaline surging through the minds of the tactical officers behind that stupendous missile launch. Despite the pygmy size of their own vessels, compared to those of their opponents, they recognized the full, deadly depth of their advantages. Knew the men and women aboard those superdreadnoughts could not effectively threaten them in any way.
Knowing that, those minds ticked with cool, merciless precision, watching their displays, monitoring their missiles and the EW environment with hawk-like attentiveness.
* * *
There was no matching coolness aboard Joseph Buckley or the other units of Task Force 496.
No one in the entire task force, in his darkest nightmare, could have anticipated the sheer weight of fire streaking towards them. By any meterstick of the Solarian League Navy, it was simply and starkly impossible. The surprise and disbelief that generated were total, yet for all of the SLN's institutional arrogance and complacency, all of their own shock, the men and women of Sandra Crandall's command were professionals. Astonishment, even terror, might reach out to paralyze them, but training slotted into place, like a bulwark between them and panic's palsy.
Jacomina van Heutz heard the quick, purposeful flow of orders and responses around her, and even in the midst of her own shock, she felt a glow of pride. Fear might flatten her people's voices, incredulity might echo in their tones, but they were doing their jobs. They were responding , doing their best, not simply gaping in horror.
Yet behind that pride, there was another emotion—sorrow. Because however well they did their jobs, it wasn't going to matter in the end.
* * *
Hago Shavarshyan watched Ou-yang Zhing-wei and her assistants grapple with the horrifying surprise of that massive missile launch.
Shavarshyan was no tac officer, but he'd had enough tactical training to know that what was coming at them was not the blind-fired covering barrage Ou-yang had suggested to Crandall and Bautista. The most cursory analysis of those missile signatures showed that every one of them was maneuvering as part of a coherent, carefully managed whole. The fact that that was flatly impossible didn't mean it wasn't happening, and the ops officer was totally focused on her displays, on her earbug, on the reports flowing in to her from the task force's huge array of sensor platforms.
The intelligence officer envied her. At least she had something to distract her.
"It's got to be some kind of EW!" Bautista protested hoarsely. The chief of staff was staring at the plot, shaking his head again and again.
"That's no ECM, Pйpй," Crandall grated. She jabbed her chin at the secondary displays showing Joseph Buckley 's combat information center's analysis of the incoming impeller signatures. "They're there."
"But . . . but they can't possibly control them." Bautista turned his head to stare at Crandall. "They can't have the control links! And . . . and even if they did , at this range their accuracy has to suck!"
"I doubt even Manties would have fired missiles they can't control." Despite her own shock, despite her truculence and undeniable arrogance, Sandra Crandall's eyes were dark with a refusal to hide behind simple denial. "You may be right about the accuracy penalty, but if they can throw enough salvos this size, even crappy accuracy's going to rip our ass off."
Bautista's eyes went even wider at her harsh-voiced admission. He opened his mouth once more, as if to say something, but no words came, and he closed it again.
Crandall never even noticed.
* * *
"Good telemetry from the advanced platforms, Sir." Stillwell Lewis sounded almost jubilant. "They're bringing up their Halo platforms, but their shipboard systems show very little change. No surprises so far."
"Let's not get overconfident, Stilt," Terekhov replied calmly.
"No, Sir."
Helen suppressed an inappropriate urge to smile. Lewis' tone was chastened as he acknowledged Terekhov's admonition, and she knew the commodore was right. Yet at the same time, she understood exactly where the ops officer's confidence came from.
The Ghost Rider platforms watching the Solarians were three light-minutes from Quentin Saint-James . But those three light-minutes equated to less than three seconds of transmission lag for their FTL transmitters. For all intents and purposes, Lewis was watching Crandall's ships in real time. Without Keyhole-Two platforms, there was no FTL telemetry link between Terekhov's cruisers and their missiles, yet the time lag built into their fire control and EW loop was still only half that of any navy without Ghost Rider.