Well, let them try. The cruisers were carrying full point-defense loads, and if Heissman wanted to waste his missiles battering against them he was more than welcome to do so.
Except…
With a curse, he spun around to the status board. There, still glowing red amid the field of green, were the lights marking Copperhead’s troubled ventral autocannon.
And if one of the Manticoran missiles happened to come in from the side with the bad tracking sensor…
“All ships: cease acceleration on my mark,” he snarled, turning back to the tac. The two standard responses to a situation like this would be for Copperhead to either yaw to starboard, turning her port side towards the attack and her faulty starboard sensors away from it, or else pitch up or down to interpose its wedge between the ship and the incoming missiles.
Unfortunately, if the rest of the force was under acceleration at the time, both countermoves would instantly break the Volsungs’ formation. The only way to maintain their relative positions would be for all six ships to kill acceleration and coast.
Of course, that would also give the Green Two ships a breather from the doom arrowing in on them. Still, it was hard to imagine what they could do with those extra few minutes. The rear ship, the one Heissman was clearly hoping would get clear with data from the battle would gain a little distance, but it was already too little too late.
As for the other three ships, they would have to do another turnover if they hoped to do any more running themselves. Any such move would be relatively slow and instantly telegraphed.
No, Heissman’s force wasn’t going anywhere. Gensonne could afford the time to do this right. “All ships, cease acceleration: mark. Imbar?”
“All ships coasting,” Imbar reported. “Formation maintained.”
Gensonne nodded, peering at the tac display. Copperhead was already taking advantage of the lull and was starting her starboard yaw.
Hell with that. If they were going to be forced to coast anyway, there was no reason for Copperhead to waste any of her point-defense weaponry. “Von Belling, belay your yaw,” he ordered into his mike. “Pitch wedge to the incoming fire.”
“I can handle it,” von Belling’s voice came from the speaker.
“I said pitch wedge,” Gensonne snapped.
“Aye, aye, Sir,” von Belling said with thinly disguised disgust. “Pitching wedge.”
On the tactical, Copperhead changed from her yaw turn to a vertical pitch, dropping her bow to present her roof to the incoming missiles. Gensonne watched, splitting his attention between the cruiser and the incoming missiles. If von Belling’s momentary bitching had left the maneuver too late, the admiral promised himself darkly, he’d better hope the Manticoran missiles got to him before Gensonne did.
Fortunately, it wasn’t going to come to that. Copperhead turned in plenty of time, and as Odin’s autocannon roared into action Gensonne watched the incoming salvo split into two groups, one set of four targeting each of the cruisers. The ones aimed at Copperhead disintegrated harmlessly against her roof, while Adder’s countermissiles and autocannon made equally quick work of the other group. “Stand by for acceleration,” Gensonne ordered. Copperhead was starting her reverse pivot, and as soon as she was back in position the Volsungs could resume their full-acceleration pursuit of the Manticorans.
Meanwhile, there was no reason Gensonne had to wait for acceleration before he took the battle back to Heissman. “Missiles ready?” he called.
“Missiles ready,” Imbar confirmed.
“Six at the light cruiser,” Gensonne said. “Fire.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Winterfall’s first hint that something was seriously wrong was when he arrived at the House of Lords to find that the usual pair of ceremonial guards at the entrance had been replaced by a quartet of Marines.
Armed Marines.
Breakwater’s brief summons had made the unspecified crisis sound serious. Apparently, it was more serious than Winterfall had realized.
There were a few other Peers visible in the vast entryway foyer, which was usually a place for conversational greetings and small talk. But no one was lingering this morning. Everyone Winterfall saw was on the move, hurrying toward their offices or the offices of friends and political allies.
No. Not everyone. At the entrances to the two office wings were another pair of armed Marines.
What in the world was going on? Some kind of insurrection? Civil unrest?
A coup?
Yvonne Rowlandson, Baroness Tweenriver, was already waiting in Breakwater’s office when Winterfall arrived. “Come in, Gavin, come in,” Breakwater said, beckoning him toward the conversation circle. His movements were nervous and jerky, Winterfall noted mechanically, the movements of someone who’d been shaken badly off balance. “I’ve just received word from Defense Minister Dapplelake that the Star Kingdom has been invaded.”
Winterfall felt his eyes widen, fighting suddenly for balance as his foot caught on the carpet. “Invaded?”
“Six warship-strength contacts have been spotted approaching Manticore,” Tweenriver said, her voice quavering a little.
“I see,” Winterfall said, hearing some of the same tremor in his own voice.
“There’ll be an official announcement from the Palace sometime in the next half hour,” Breakwater said. “By that time, all of Parliament should have been informed, and Burgundy will have convened an emergency session.”
“Understood,” Winterfall said. Breakwater was trying to keep his voice under control, but Winterfall could see the same fear he and Tweenriver were feeling in the Chancellor’s eyes.
Only in Breakwater’s case, it wouldn’t be just the possibility that the Star Kingdom might be facing the end of its existence. Piled on top of that fear would be the bitter knowledge of how tirelessly Breakwater and his allies—including Tweenriver and Winterfall—had worked to strip the Navy of its strength, weapons, and manpower. To undermine the very Navy that was now all that stood in the way of their own destruction.
And with that additional bitterness was the certainty that even if the invaders were somehow miraculously driven off, Breakwater’s own career was over.
As was Winterfall’s, probably. Of all of Breakwater’s allies, he’d been the most vocal and the most visible.
“The reason I asked you here ahead of the official convening,” Breakwater continued, his voice almost an intrusion into Winterfall’s swirling thoughts, “is that I’ve been informed that the first group of ships in the invaders’ path is Green Task Force Two, the so-called Janus force. Leading that force is the light cruiser Casey.” He paused. “I don’t know if you’ve kept up…but that’s your brother Travis Long’s ship.”
Winterfall stared, his stomach suddenly churning. God—in all his petty political angst he’d completely forgotten about his brother. “You’re sure that’s where he is?” he asked, silently cursing himself for not knowing. Breakwater was right—he hadn’t kept tabs on his brother’s career.
And now Travis was facing an invading force immensely larger than his own.
Which meant he was about to die.
A dozen images flashed across Winterfall’s vision. Their mother, and how Winterfall was going to tell her of her son’s death, and whether she would really care. His own last meeting with Travis, nearly three T-years ago—or was it four?—a brief chat over a hurried lunch, hurried because Winterfall had to get back to Parliament to vote on some damn bill he couldn’t even remember and that clearly hadn’t made a scrap of difference to the Star Kingdom. The half dozen times since then when Travis had been available on Manticore, and Winterfall had thought about screening him, and somehow never gotten around to it.
But then, why should he have? There was no rush. He and Travis were both young and healthy, and a job in the Navy was as safe as a career in Parliament. There was plenty of time.
Only now, that time was gone. Gone forever.
“All MPARS forces have been alerted, of co
urse.” That was Breakwater again, his voice sounding distant and irrelevant. “But Cazenestro has ordered them to stand down. The crews aren’t really set up for this sort of thing, and none of them is close enough to reach the battle region in time anyway. Of course, if Gryphon comes under attack as well, the MPARS ships there may be able to assist.”
“Yes,” Winterfall murmured.
“Right now the reports are fairly sketchy,” Breakwater continued. “But I have a direct line to the Central War Room, and I should get any news as soon as it comes in. If you’d like, you can wait here until Burgundy calls us to order.”
“Thank you,” Winterfall managed through the tightness in his throat. “I think I will.”
* * *
“All missiles destroyed,” Lieutenant Rusk reported from the tracking station. “No hits.”
“Acknowledged,” Heissman said. “Alfred? What have we learned?”
“Their point-defense seems comparable to ours,” Woodburn said, peering closely at CIC’s running analysis. “Countermissiles on the cruisers, autocannon on everyone else. Looks like a pretty high quality of both. Their ECM is also good—they got a soft kill on at least one of our missiles, possibly two. They also don’t seem shy about spending ammo.”
“Missile trace, two,” Rusk called. “Thirty-five hundred gees, estimated impact time one hundred fifty-three seconds. Correction: four missiles, same impact projection…correction: six missiles. Missile trace, six, impact one hundred forty-eight seconds.”
“Not stingy with their missiles, either,” Woodburn amended tightly.
Travis winced. Six missiles, with all four of the Manticoran ships at only sixty percent of point-defense capacity.
Woodburn was clearly thinking along the same lines. “Commodore, I don’t think we’re ready to take on that many birds.”
“Agreed,” Heissman said. “But we also need to pull more data on their capabilities.”
“So we’re going to take them on?” Belokas asked.
“We’re going to split the difference,” Heissman corrected. “Start a portside yaw turn—not a big or fast one, just a few degrees. I want to cut the starboard sidewall across the missile formation, letting just one or two of them past the leading edge and trusting the countermissiles to take those out. That way we get a closer look at the missiles and their yield without risking having too many coming in to block.”
Travis stole a glance at Woodburn, waiting for the TO to point out the obvious risk: that if the incoming missiles’ sidewall penetrators functioned like they were supposed to, taking four or five on Casey’s sidewalls could be a quick path to disaster. Most of the time that kind of maneuver was a decent enough gamble, given the notorious unreliability of such weapons. But any time there were that many threats things could get tricky.
Especially if Tamerlane’s ships were carrying more advanced sidewall penetrators that weren’t so finicky.
But Woodburn remained silent. As Travis had known he would. The commodore had already agreed that Casey’s mission was to gather information that would be crucial in helping Locatelli defeat this invasion.
The missiles crept closer. Travis watched the tac display as Belokas fine-tuned Casey’s position, a vague idea starting to form at the back of his mind. If he’d seen what he thought he’d seen during the first Janus salvo…
He swiveled around to his plotter and ran the numbers and geometry. It would work, he decided. It would be tricky and require some fancy timing, but it might just work.
There was a throbbing hum from the launchers’ capacitors as Casey sent a salvo of countermissiles blazing out into space…and it occurred to him that if Heissman’s trick didn’t work, there was a good chance he would never know it. At the speed the missiles were traveling, they would reach the edge of the countermissiles’ range barely two tenths of a second before reaching Casey herself. If the defenses failed to stop the attack, or the sidewall was breached—
There was a muted double flash on the tac as two of the missiles slammed into the countermissiles and were destroyed. Travis’s eyes and brain had just registered that fact when the deck abruptly jerked beneath him and the tense silence of the bridge was ripped apart by the wailing of emergency alarms.
He spun to the status board. None of the four missiles that had slammed into the starboard sidewall had penetrated, but two of them had detonated a microsecond before impact, and the resulting blast had overloaded and possibly destroyed the forward generator.
“Sidewall Two is down!” Belokas shouted her own confirmation across the wailing alarm. “Sidewall Four undamaged, taking up the slack.”
“Casualties,” Chief Kebiro added tensely from Coms. “Seven down, condition unknown. Corpsmen on the way; crews assessing damage.”
Travis mouthed a useless curse. Each of the two generators on each side of the ship was designed to be able to maintain the entire sidewall. But as the old saying went, two could live as cheaply as one, but only for half as long. Casey’s starboard sidewall was still up, but it was running now at half power. Another double tap like that one, and it could go completely.
And the cruisers and battlecruisers out there were showing no signs of running out of missiles to tap them with.
The alarm cut off. “Alfred?” Heissman asked, as calm as ever.
“Their missiles seem comparable to ours,” Woodburn said, his own voice more strained. “Slightly better ECM, I think, but our countermissiles handled them just fine.”
“Which again suggests mercenaries rather than some system’s official fleet,” Heissman said. “Certainly not any fleet connected with the Solarian League. They wouldn’t be using second- or third-generation equipment.”
“That’s the good news,” Woodburn said. His voice was subtly louder, Travis noted distantly, as he if was leaning over Travis’s shoulder. “The bad news is that their missiles are as good as ours and they probably have a hell of a lot more of them.”
“I wonder what they’re waiting for,” Heissman mused. “This is the perfect time to launch a second wave.”
“Probably taking a moment to analyze their data,” Belokas said. “I imagine they’re as eager to assess our strengths and weaknesses as we are to find theirs, and trying not to spend any more missiles than they have to. They’ll certainly want to know everything they can about us before they tackle Aegis.”
“And since we can’t stop them from doing that,” Heissman said calmly, “it looks like our best-hope scenario is still to slow them down long enough for Gorgon to collect and transmit as much data as we can collect, while we inflict the maximum damage possible.”
“Between us and the corvettes we still have eighteen missiles, plus four practice ones,” Belokas said. “If we throw everything we’ve got, we should at least be able to take down one of those cruisers.”
“We can’t control nearly that many at once,” Woodburn reminded her.
“As long as Tamerlane’s ships aren’t evading, that may not matter,” Belokas pointed out. “They’ll still have to defend, and even if all we can accomplish is to drain their point defenses it’ll be worth it.”
“Or we might be able to do a bit better,” Woodburn said. “Mr. Long has an idea.”
Travis twisted his head to look up at the other. “Sir?”
Woodburn pointed at the simulation Travis had been running. “Tell them,” he ordered.
Travis felt his throat tighten. Suddenly, he was back on Phoenix’s bridge, offering half-baked advice to Captain Castillo.
But Heissman wasn’t Castillo. And if the trick worked…
“I think the upper cruiser’s ventral autocannon is having trouble,” he said. “If it is, then—”
“How could you possibly know that?” Belokas interrupted, frowning at him. “They never even fired them.”
“Because he was starting to turn to starboard when he shifted to rolling wedge instead,” Travis said. “That looked to me like he was getting ready to favor that side when he changed his min
d.” He felt his lip twitch. “I had some experience with balky autocannon back on Phoenix. That definitely looked like a sensor miscalibration problem.”
“Alfred?” Heissman asked.
“He could be right,” Woodburn said. “I just checked, and that aborted yaw is definitely there.”
“Assume you’re right,” Heissman said. “Then what?”
“We start by assuming Tamerlane’s as smart as he thinks he is,” Travis said. “If so, he’ll have seen his cruiser’s brief yaw and guess that we also saw it and came to the correct conclusion. If we did, he’ll expect us to try to take advantage of the weakness by throwing a salvo of missiles at it.”
“At which point he’ll again have to either use an iffy point-defense system or else roll wedge,” Woodburn said, reaching over Travis’s shoulder to key the simulation over to the commodore’s station. “If he does the latter, we may be able to catch him by surprise.”
For a couple of heartbeats Heissman gazed at the display. Then, his lip twitched in a small smile. “Yes, I see. It’s definitely a long shot. But long shots are where you go when you’ve got no other bets.”
He gave a brisk nod. “Set up the shot.”
* * *
“Analysis complete, Admiral,” Imbar announced as he hovered over Tactical Officer Clymes’s shoulder. “Similar countermissiles as ours, with about a thirteen-hundred-klick range, and similar autocannon loads.”
Gensonne scowled. So the Manticorans’ countermissiles had a shade less range than the equipment aboard Copperhead and Adder.
And Casey was supposedly the most advanced ship of the Manticoran fleet. If Llyn had been right about that, then the weaponry aboard the larger Green One ships burning space toward him would be even more subpar.
Yes, it could have been worse. But it could also have been a whole lot better. He’d tried like the fires of hell to talk Llyn into providing him with more cutting-edge equipment, but the damn little clerk had turned down every request. The Volsungs didn’t need anything better, he’d insisted soothingly, and furthermore the Solarian League would rain down on all of them if they ever got wind of it.