He settled back into his chair and inhaled deeply. Then he closed his eyes for a moment, willing his temper back under control, commanding himself to focus. When he was confident he had himself back in hand, he opened his eyes once more and looked at Kodou’s holographic image.
“Put Captain Zavala through, Maxence,” he said coldly.
* * *
The official wallpaper of the Saltash System’s governor’s office disappeared—finally—from Jacob Zavala’s display, replaced by the same fair-haired, hazel-eyed Solarian to whom he’d already spoken. There was something different about that face this time, though, and there damned well should be. The idiot had taken over ten minutes to respond, and it wasn’t as if he had time to burn. DesRon 301 was only thirty-two minutes from Cinnamon orbit now, its velocity down to 10,568 KPS, and the range to Cinnamon was barely more than thirty-three light-seconds. Zavala would have thought that someone who’d just gotten the better part of six thousand of his own men and women killed might have felt a little urgency about keeping any more of them from dying, and he felt anger seething up inside him as he glared at the other man.
Just sit on that, Jacob, he told himself harshly. Yes, he fucked up and got a lot of people killed, but so did you. You didn’t have to sequence those launches that closely together. You could’ve put a couple of minutes between the first one and the second one—given Dubroskaya more time to react. But you didn’t, did you?
No, he hadn’t, and he doubted anyone would ever fault him for it…except himself. Any board of inquiry would consider his actions and decisions fully justified by the disparity between his squadron’s ability to absorb punishment and its adversary’s potential firepower. And the accuracy of his own fire—and the sheer destructiveness of the Mod G laser heads—had taken him by surprise. He’d anticipated that it would take at least two salvos to completely cripple or destroy one of his adversaries. That was why he’d targeted one salvo on each battlecruiser, expecting to hammer it with enough damage even a Solly had to take note of it and consider that it might be wise to surrender quickly. He’d certainly never expected to blow up battlecruisers with a single launch each!
All of that was true, but he’d still had time. Perhaps he hadn’t had the ammunition to justify going for Fire Plan Zephyr and simply wasting an entire double broadside that didn’t inflict any damage at all. But he could have stretched Sledgehammer out, launched the first salvo with exactly the same targeting but waited a full minute, or even two, before launching the follow on salvos. If he’d done that, that first launch would have turned into a far more emphatic sort of Zephyr and given Dubroskaya one last chance to recognize the truth…and the time to save more of her people’s lives.
He hadn’t, and he knew that was one reason he felt such stark, murderous fury when he looked at Damián Dueñas.
“I trust you realize you’ve just murdered several thousand Solarian military personnel,” Dueñas said without preamble. “I assure you the Solarian League isn’t going to forget it!”
“Vice Admiral Dubroskaya—and you, Governor—were given ample opportunity to stand down and avoid any casualties,” Zavala replied flatly, stepping on his own anger yet again. “And speaking of avoiding casualties, there’s the small matter of those destroyers you’ve got hiding behind Cinnamon’s moon.”
“What about them?” Dueñas sounded like a man biting pieces out of a sheet of copper, and Zavala’s eyes hardened.
“Governor, if I was prepared to engage your battlecruisers, what makes you think I won’t engage your destroyers, as well? At my present deceleration, I’ll enter their powered envelope in four minutes, and I’m no more prepared to allow them to shoot at my vessels than I was to permit Vice Admiral Dubroskaya to do the same thing. Given the piss-poor performance of your missiles and the obvious inadequacy of your antimissile defenses—not to mention your delay in bothering to reply to me—I will give your crews five minutes to begin abandoning ship. I don’t intend to go any deeper into their engagement basket than that, however, no matter how crappy their weapon systems are. If they haven’t begun evacuating their ships within that time limit, they’ll receive the same treatment Vice Admiral Dubroskaya’s battlecruisers received.”
“Captain Zavala, the Solarian League doesn’t respond well to threats, and even less well to the unprovoked massacre of its military personnel! You and you alone bear full responsibility for everything that’s happened since you intruded into the sovereign territory of an independent star system under the protection of the Office of Frontier Security. Don’t think for one moment that the League is going to overlook what you’ve done here today! Your actions have just enormously decreased any possibility of a peaceful resolution of the tensions between your star nation and mine. I have no doubt whatsoever that one of the Solarian League’s demands if Manticore wishes to avoid the devastating war it’s invited will be your surrender to face trial as a war criminal!”
“You’ve just used up forty-five seconds your destroyers don’t have,” Zavala replied in a voice of iron. “They now have four minutes and ten seconds.”
“Are you totally insane?” Dueñas demanded. “Aren’t you listening to a thing I’m saying?”
“Four minutes, Governor. And you might want to ask Vice Admiral Dubroskaya—or her ghost—if I abide by my time limits.”
Their eyes locked, and Zavala found himself wondering just how pigheaded a single human being could be.
“Sir, I have another com request!” Lieutenant Wilson said quickly over his earbug. “It’s a Captain Myau of the destroyer Avenger.”
“Put it through—now!” Zavala said, and Dueñas’ face vanished from his display, replaced by that of a tall, thin woman in the uniform of the Solarian League Navy. Her expression was hard, stony with hate as her eyes burned out of the com at him, but she had herself under better control than he would have expected.
“Captain Zavala?” she said flatly.
“Speaking.”
“I am Captain Myau Ping-wa,” she said in that same iron voice. “I feel certain the consequences of your actions are going to be profound, far-reaching, and ultimately disastrous for your star nation and your navy. Unfortunately, at this moment I’m forced to concede my tactical inferiority. It’s obvious your weapons far outrange my own, and it’s equally obvious you’re prepared to use that advantage. I have to assume you’re not prepared to enter my missile envelope before you do so, either. In your position, I certainly wouldn’t be.” Her lips might have twitched with the faintest shadow of a bitter smile. “That suggests you intend to destroy my destroyers as you did Vice Admiral Dubroskaya’s battlecruisers unless I accept your previous terms and stand down before you do enter my range. In light of how little time that leaves, as the senior officer—the senior surviving officer, at any rate—present, and absent instructions from the civilian authority in this star system,” this time the flicker in her eyes was unmistakable, Zavala thought, “I’m ordering my personnel to abandon ship.”