In contrast, Ira’s Sierra Echelon required the greatest operational flexibility, needing to be able to adapt to both the battlefield results and the enemy’s unknown capabilities and doctrine. If the Arat Kur had been significantly weakened by Halifax, it was Silverstein’s job to capitalize on that weakness by slowing to match vectors and hammer them harder, and to keep hammering until Tango Echelon under Vasarsky arrived to add its weight to the effort. If, however, the Arat Kur were still in relatively good formation and only moderately damaged after engaging Foxtrot Echelon, Sierra Echelon was to achieve what Foxtrot had not: the disruption and attrition of the enemy fleet, so that Vasarsky’s Tango Echelon could deliver a coup de grace.
Behind him, Altasso’s voice sounded vaguely teasing. “Sir, the technicians have assured me that the InPic crown will only work if the user actually places it on his or her head.”
Ira cut his eyes at her, made his voice a growl so that he wouldn’t succumb to his urge to smile. “Tend your duties, Commander”—and he put on the InPic headpiece, sliding the 3-D monocle into place with a click.
With that click, the CIC of the Trafalgar was suddenly all his right eye could see, and all he could hear through the speakers near his right ear. A young lieutenant leaned over toward the Lord Admiral, whispered in his ear. Halifax turned to wave in the general direction of Ira’s vantage point. “I’m told you’ve joined us, Ira. Hope you enjoy the show. Must get back to work.”
Halifax turned to his command staff. “Lieutenant Madratham, do you have a tactical summary on results of the Mousetrap deployment?”
“Aye, sir,” she responded crisply. “Estimating mission kills on almost sixty percent of the chase drones sent by the Arat Kur orbital blockade element, and significant dispersion of the remainder.”
“Net impact on our drones?”
“I do not have definitive figures yet, Admiral, but no more than twenty percent of our Earth-launched drones have been lost.”
“And the drone sorties from the hidden lunar sites?”
“Apparently a complete surprise, sir. No interdiction to speak of. Forty percent have already reached the rear of our echelon. The remainder won’t catch us. They are dropping back to join the lead elements of Sierra Echelon.”
“Very good, Lieutenant Madratham. Lieutenant Pennington?”
“Yes, Lord Admiral?”
“Have our Gordon-class sloops achieved full drone integration, yet?”
“Not quite, sir. Although most of the lunar-launched drones are in the net, some of the non-Commonwealth models are proving a bit finicky on the data-handshake, sir.”
“Hrmph. Who are the culprits?”
“Mostly TOCIO-built drones, sir. There are discrepancies between the data protocols supplied by the bloc authorities and the actual systems on the drones. Appears that not all the drones were updated to the latest software standard, sir.”
“Well, bring them in line as best you can. Any that have less than ninety percent reliability are to be redesignated as decoys and expended accordingly. Commander Somers?”
“Aye, sir?”
“How’s our evolution into attack formation Bravo Two coming along, David?”
“Handsomely, sir.” His plasma pointer cast a glowing beam where it interacted with the colorless reactive gas inside the holotank mainplot. The luminous wand danced among blue motes of light arrayed as a open-based inverted cone. “Our control sloops are arrayed along our leading skirts here.” The light wand traced the open rim of the cone. “Here at the bottom of the well”—the wand of light moved to indicate a cluster of slightly larger blue lights at the rearward tip of the inverted cone—“is our main body. You’ll note all the cruisers in the core, our frigates in a screening ring, slightly farther out.”
“Very good, Commander Somers.” Halifax checked his watch. “I’d expect that our drones are about to come into range of their drones.”
“Coming up on their observed maximum ranges, sir.”
In the background, Ira could hear the ship’s captain, Ian Stead, rapping out orders to the bridge crew in the next room. “Lieutenant Worthington, let’s not get out ahead of our own formation. Bring back the plasma thrusters two percent. Lieutenant Dunn, deploy ordnance package two.” The hull thrummed—even Ira could sense it—as an immense disposable missile pod salvoed all its birds and was then jettisoned. “Watch the post-launch change in displacement, Mr. Worthington; keep us in trim.”
Halifax nodded at his staff. “Very well, ladies and gentlemen, let’s take a look at the big picture, shall we?” He nodded at the ensign who oversaw the operation of the holotank.
The image changed abruptly. The inverted cone shrank to slightly less than one-tenth its former size. Red motes—the Arat Kur fleet—were approaching it. There were perhaps a third as many of them as there were blue motes in the cone of Foxtrot Echelon.
“Add in drones, if you please,” Halifax murmured.
The tidy arrangements of finite blue and red motes were suddenly half-lost amidst dense, pointillist shrouds of similarly colored pinpricks.
“Give me group markers, not individual guidons, Ensign.”
Who blushed and hastened to comply. The diaphanous veils of red and blue pinpricks shrank down into a finite number of red and blue triangles. The blue triangles were clustered in three predominant groups. The first were the lunar-launched drones drawing up from behind Foxtrot Echelon, beginning to form a protective sleeve around the cruisers clustered at the rear-facing point of the cone. The second group, Foxtrot’s own drones, was larger and arrayed in a forward-deployed screen that looked like a slightly concave lid which had popped off the open end of the cone. And the third group, which was much larger again, was rising into the picture from the direction of Earth, moving decisively toward the lower right rear quadrant of the red motes’ battlesphere.
Halifax nodded his satisfaction, just as the space separating some of the red and blue triangles at the rear of the Arat Kur formation started flashing with pinhead pulses of white or yellow: threat and friend damage markers, respectively. “Right on time,” Halifax murmured. “Enemy reaction to the attack on their rear flank?”
“No reaction from their capital ships, sir. However, look at their drone squadrons.” A third of the red triangles were now drifting down in the direction of the right rear area of the Arat Kur fleet, shifting to intercept the drones that had been launched from Earth.
“Excellent,” Halifax muttered, drawing a well-seamed index finger across his snow-white moustaches. “Lieutenant Madratham, I would like a revised estimate of drone ratios at our projected point of contact with the enemy.”
She had already worked it out. “After the Arat Kur reconfiguration, best estimates give us a five-to-one drone advantage.”
Ira smiled. At the disastrous second Jovian engagement, the drone ratio had been almost even and the consequences had been dire. Now let’s see how your superior technology handles five-to-one odds against our most advanced systems, directed by Gordon-class FOCALs.