And if there isn't , he thought grimly, there's always Admiral Gold Peak, isn't there?
* * *
"Captain?"
"Yes, Nicolette?" Captain Jacomina van Heutz looked across Joseph Buckley 's command deck at Commander Nicolette Sambroth.
"Ma'am, I'm still picking up those grav pulses," Sambroth said, and van Heutz frowned.
Sambroth was one of the better tac officers with whom she'd served, but the commander appeared to have been badly spooked by the implications of the Manties' apparent FTL com ability. Not that van Heutz really blamed her, assuming the report of the single dispatch boat to escape the New Tuscan debacle was accurate. Not only that, but she knew Vice Admiral Ou-yang shared Sambroth's concerns.
And I'm not too damned happy over them myself. Especially when I think about what's going to happen two or three engagements down the road, when we run into a real Manty wall of battle. But for right now . . . .
"You're passing your observations along to Admiral Ou-yang?" Her tone made the question a statement, and Sambroth nodded.
"Of course, Ma'am."
"Then we're just going to have to assume Admiral Crandall has that information as well," van Heutz pointed out rather gently.
Sambroth looked up from her displays. Their eyes met for a moment. Then the tactical officer nodded again, with a rather different emphasis.
Van Heutz nodded back, returned her own attention to her plot, and settled back in her command chair.
Josef Byng always was a frigging idiot , she thought. I'm not even going to pretend I miss him, either. But this —
She shook her head, eyes hardening on the plot, and wondered how many other members of the SLN officer corps secretly recognized that Byng's demise could only improve that officer corps' overall efficiency. Probably more than she was prepared to believe, actually. She certainly hoped so, at any rate, given what the ability to deny that reality implied. Yet as she contemplated what his removal was about to cost the Star Empire of Manticore—and ultimately cost the Solarian League Navy—the price tag seemed exorbitantly high.
And it's only going to get worse. No matter how bad I think it's going to be, it's only going to get worse .
* * *
Captain Alice Levinsky, commanding officer of LAC Group 711, watched the Shrikes and Katanas of Carrier Division 7.1 forming up around Her Majesty's Light Attack CraftTyphoon . She was aware of a certain queasiness as she contemplated the juggernaut of superdreadnoughts rumbling steadily towards Flax. Against a Havenite wall of battle, even the Manticoran Alliance's newest-generation LACs no longer possessed anywhere near the survivability they'd boasted when the Shrike-A was first introduced all of nine T-years ago. And even if they had, superdreadnoughts—even Solly superdreadnoughts—were normally too heavily armored for even a Shrike 's enormous graser to damage significantly. Of course, the Shrike-B , like her own Typhoon , had significantly improved its graser's grav lensing when the newest generation of bow wall came in. The Bravos really could blast their way through SD armor, assuming they could get close enough.
Despite that, two-thirds of her LACs were Katana -class space-superiority fighters with magazines packed with Viper dual-purpose missiles, because Manticoran LAC doctrine had changed—especially after the hideous losses of the Battle of Manticore—to emphasize the missile defense role rather than the strike role. LACs were smaller and much more elusive targets than any hyper-capable ship and, especially with Mark 33 counter-missiles (or the Vipers based on the same missile body and drive), one of them could provide very nearly as much screening capacity as an all up destroyer. Which meant a LAC group had become the most effective (and least costly) means of bolstering a wall of battle's missile defenses, which also freed up the perpetually insufficient number of lighter starships for deployment elsewhere.
But, Levinsky reminded herself coldly, these weren't Havenite superdreadnoughts. They were Sollies , and that was an entirely different kettle of fish. Like the rest of Tenth Fleet's officers, Levinsky had studied the technical data from the captured Solarian battlecruisers attentively, and unless that data was grossly inaccurate, the Sollies' anti-LAC capabilities were even more primitive—a lot more primitive—than the Havenites' had been during Operation Buttercup.
Which suggested all sorts of interesting tactical possibilities to one Alice Levinsky.
* * *
"Commodore Terekhov confirms Agincourt, Sir," Lieutenant Stilson MacDonald said.
"Thank you," Scotty Tremaine acknowledged. There was no need for his communications officer to know just how much calmer his voice was than he was.
Had Captain Levinsky only known, a part of Tremaine—a rather large part, as a matter of fact—would have preferred to be sitting where she was rather than in his palatial command chair on the flag deck of a brand spanking new heavy cruiser. It wasn't so much that he doubted his competence in his present role as that he'd become so comfortable in his previous role.
How did a nice boy who only wanted to be a shuttle pilot end up sitting here, of all places? he thought wryly.
He'd really assumed that when he finally got starship command it would be of a carrier, not a cruiser. But he'd also long since concluded that BuPers worked in mysterious and inscrutable ways. True, this one seemed a bit more inscrutable than most, but when the Navy offered you a command slot like this one, you took it. He couldn't imagine anyone who wouldn't, and if anyone had turned it down, the idiot in question would have signed the death warrant for any hope of future promotion. The Navy wasn't in the habit of entrusting its starships to people whose own actions demonstrated they lacked the confidence for that sort of responsibility.
And if they really insist on prying me out of the LACs, this is one hell of a lot better than a kick in the head , he admitted. Not only that, but at least they let me have the EWO I wanted .
He glanced at the battered and bedamned-looking chief warrant officer sitting at the electronic warfare officer's station. Aboard any other starship he could think of, that position would have been held by a commissioned officer. Aboard a unit as powerful as a Saganami-C , especially on a division flagship's staff, the officer in question would have been at least a senior-grade lieutenant, and more probably a lieutenant commander. But CWO Sir Horace Harkness was pretty much a law unto himself within the RMN.
"Of course you can have Harkness!" Captain Shaw, Admiral Cortez' chief of staff, had snorted when he'd made the unusual request. "There's a note somewhere in your personnel jacket that says we're not supposed to break up Beauty and the Beast." The captain's lips had twitched at Tremaine's expression. "Oh, you hadn't heard that particular nickname, Captain Tremaine? I hadn't realized it had escaped your attention."
Then Shaw had sobered, tipping back in his chair and regarding Tremaine with thoughtful eyes.
"I don't say it's the sort of habit we really want to get into, Captain, but one thing Admiral Cortez has always recognized is that there are exceptions to every rule. Mind you, if it were just a case of favoritism, he wouldn't sign off on it for a minute. Fortunately, however, the two of you have demonstrated a remarkable and consistently high level of performance—not to mention the fact that between you, you and his wife seem to have permanently reformed him. So unless we have to, no one's interested in breaking up that particular team. Besides"—he'd snorted in sudden amusement—"even if we were, I'm quite sure Sir Horace would be more than willing to massage the computers in your favor."