She stabbed a button, and the display went blank.
* * *
"All right, Clement," Karol Шstby said quietly, "let's not stub our toes at this point, okay?"
"Yes, Sir." Commander Clement Foreman, Шstby's operations officer, smiled tautly at him on MANS Chameleon' s cramped flag bridge.
The scout ship had reached her rendezvous with Ghost and Wraith as all three of them crept ever so cautiously towards the final deployment point. This was, in many ways, the most critical aspect of their entire lengthy mission—or the riskiest moment of it, at any rate; all of its elements had been "critical" to the operation's success—and the tension on the flag bridge could have been carved with a blade.
Foreman considered his displays for a moment, then keyed his mike.
"All emplacement teams, this is Control," he said. "Proceed."
Absolutely nothing changed on the flag bridge itself, yet Шstby felt an almost tangible release as the order was finally given. Which was about as irrational as responses came, he supposed. The scout ships themselves were extraordinarily stealthy, and the arrays they were about to emplace were equally so. Which meant they were actually entering the moment of maximum danger as they deployed their work parties with the tools and equipment necessary for their task, since those tools and that equipment, while still very hard to detect, were considerably less stealthy. And still, however unreasonable it might be, there was that sense of relief—not relaxation, only relief— as they actually set about it at last.
He watched his own displays, listening over his earbug as progress reports flowed into flag bridge. He knew perfectly well that it wasn't really taking as long as it felt like it was taking, just as he knew how critical it was that they take the time to be sure it was done right, but whatever he might know intellectually, it didn't feel that way.
He looked at the date/time display, and a fresh sense of confidence swept through him. His people had trained far too hard, mastered their duties far too completely, to screw up now. They would fail neither him nor the Alignment . . . and in another fifteen days, the entire galaxy would know that as well as he did.
Chapter Twenty
"All right, Jacomina," Sandra Crandall said flatly. "These people have just run out of time."
"Yes, Ma'am." Captain Jacomina van Heutz, SLNS Joseph Buckley 's commanding officer, nodded from the small display on Crandall's flag bridge. The admiral looked over her shoulder at Bautista and Ou-yang, and both of them nodded, as well. Shavarshyan thought Ou-yang's nod seemed less cheerful than Bautista's, although that could have been his imagination.
But whatever the ops officer might be feeling, it didn't matter. Not anymore. As Crandall had just observed, the Manties' time had run out, and she wasn't wasting any effort on additional attempts to communicate. Nor was she demonstrating a great deal of finesse, although the intelligence officer supposed there wasn't much point being fancy when you were a sledgehammer and your target was an egg.
He'd helped Ou-yang work on her analysis of the sensor ghosts her recon platforms had been picking up, and he'd come to the conclusion that the operations officer was correct. Those "ghosts" really were there, although it had proven impossible to wring any details out of the frustratingly vague data. Apparently the reports about the efficacy of Manticoran stealth systems had actually understated the case, which didn't make Shavarshyan a lot happier when he reflected on all the other reports which had been so confidently dismissed by naval intelligence at the same time. And to add insult to injury, it seemed the ops officer's fears about the Manties' ability to pick up their recon platforms had been well founded. They'd tried getting in close enough for a better look, and each time their platforms had been detected, localized, and killed before they could get close enough to penetrate their targets' stealth. He wasn't at all certain Solarian sensors could have locked them up that well, but from Ou-yang's reaction, he suspected it would have been at best a toss-up.
On the other hand, there were only ten of those ghosts. Even if every one of them was a superdreadnought, Crandall's force still outnumbered the enemy by a margin of almost seven-to-one, and even if every single story about Manticoran capabilities proved accurate, those were still crushing odds. And if, as seemed much more likely, they were simply more of those outsized battlecruisers, Bautista's confident expectation of a rapid, devastating victory was amply justified.
Shavarshyan wondered if he was the only one who felt dismay at that prospect. He'd continued to hope the Manties might recognize the insanity of taking on the entire Solarian League. Both sides had painted themselves thoroughly into corners, yet he'd hoped—almost prayed—that Medusa would recognize she was dealing with a maniac. That Crandall really would destroy every single Manticoran ship in the star system unless the Manticoran governor gave her what she wanted.
But it would appear Medusa was just as done talking as Crandall. Despite the horrific odds, she'd declined to take the only escape available to her uniformed men and women, and now Hago Shavarshyan was going to be an unwilling party to their massacre. That was bad enough, yet what was going to happen when word of this reached the capital system of the Star Empire of Manticore would be even worse. When the SLN did come face-to-face with a true Manticoran battle fleet—when Manty superdreadnoughts squared off against their Solarian counterparts in anything remotely resembling even numbers—the carnage was going to be incredible. Whatever Crandall and Bautista thought, he knew better, and so did Ou-yang Zhing-wei. And the inevitability of the League's final victory was going to be very cold consolation to the mothers and fathers and wives and husbands and children of the thousands of people who were going to be killed first.
It was like watching helplessly from an orbiting satellite as an airbus loaded with schoolchildren plummeted directly towards a mountainside, and even though none of it had been his decision, he felt contaminated—unclean—as the eagerness of Crandall, Bautista, and the others like them flowed about him.
At least it should be fairly quick , he thought grimly as the battle boards at Ou-yang's station flickered from the amber of standby to the unblinking blood-red of readiness. Then he grimaced at his own reflection. Sure it'll be "quick;" and isn't it a hell of a thing when that's the best I can think of?
* * *
"So much for any last-minue outbreak of sanity on their side."
Captain Loretta Shoupe looked up from her displays and wondered if Augustus Khumalo was as aware as she was of how calm his voice sounded. She glanced at his profile as he studied the icons in HMS Hercules ' flag bridge master plot, and the calmness of his expression, the steadiness of his eyes, were not the surprise they once would have been.
He's grown , she thought, with a possessive pride whose fierceness did surprise her a bit, even now. He's no happier about this than anyone else, but if there's a gram of hesitation anywhere in him , I can't see it .