“Thank you, Sir,” McAvoy said, and meant it.
He would have launched, anyway, but it was nice to have permission, since the System Defense Force had been under orders to conceal Mycroft’s existence as long as possible. Technically, standing orders prohibited Mycroft’s use against anything short of “a major attack upon the system’s vital infrastructure” without direct authorization from Caddell-Markham, Chairman Benton-Ramirez, or their designated deputies. Cassandra certainly represented “vital infrastructure” and in McAvoy’s opinion four hundred battlecruisers ought to represent “a major attack” in anyone’s book, but it was like Caddell-Markham to assume the responsibility rather than leaving it on his shoulders.
“In that case, Sir,” the Beowulf CNO said, “I’ll transmit the launch order as soon as the master platforms have confirmed receipt of their targeting instructions.”
Silver Bullet Q-12
Beowulf System
Silver Bullet Q-12’s computers considered the data stream.
Unlike a human being in their place, those computers had felt no emotion at all when the platform’s sensors detected the massive hyper footprint of Task Force 790’s arrival. They’d simply activated the appropriate programs and continued observing. Of course, one of those programs had begun prepping the massive graser torpedo at SB Q-12’s heart, but the computers hadn’t cared about that, either. Nor had they cared about the sudden spike in FTL transmissions from the star system’s shell of sensor buoys and and the tactical chatter between the various System Defense Force installations throughout the star system, although it had switched fully from Standby to Ready in response to them.
Now, however, it noted a sudden spike in traffic between the inner system and the platforms it had been specifically detailed to watch.
It responded.
System Defense HQ
City of Columbia
Beowulf
Beowulf System
Corey McAvoy watched the clock. Two more minuites until Mycroft launched, he thought, and felt a distant sort of sympathy for the thousands of Sollies who were about tp die. Still, he hadn’t come looking to invate their star system and—
His head jerked up as an alarm shrilled. He’d never heard that particular alarm, even in a training exercise, and his eyes snapped towards the master status board.
“What the—?!”
He froze, staring in disbelief at the readouts.
“Sir—” Dunstan-Meyers began, then stopped and drew a deep breath. “Sir, we just lost Mycroft.”
“How?” The single-word question sounded preposterously calm in McAvoy’s own ears, and Dunstan-Meyers shook her head.
“I don’t know, Sir. We just lost the FTL feed from the master platforms. They were about—”
“Excuse me, Ma’am,” Captain Chasnikov, one of Dunstan-Meyers’s assistants said.
“What?” the ops officer half-snapped.
“Ma’am, according to Sky Watch, some of the Ghost Riders picked up graser fire right on top of the platforms.”
“Graser fire?” Dunstan-Meyers repeated. “That deep inside the limit?”
“That’s what Sky Watch says, Ma’am,” Chasnikov said, and McAvoy and Dunstan-Meyers looked at one another in shock. Then the CNO shook himself.
“Right this minute, how they did it matters a hell of a lot less than the fact that they did do it,” he snapped. “Block ship impellers to full readiness now, but do not go active without my order!”
“Yes, Sir!” Dunstan-Meyers nodded sharply, pointing at the com, and Chasnikov started speaking urgently to Cassandra Defense.
“In the meantime, Cheryl,” McAvoy went on, “upload the targeting queue directly to the pods.”
“Sir, that’s going to take at least another thirteen or fourteen minutes. We’ll have to start from scratch,” Dunstan-Meyers pointed out. “And without Mycroft, accuracy’s going to be very poor, even for Apollo.”
“It’ll still be a hell of a lot better than no accuracy at all,” McAvoy grated.
“Yes, Sir.”
SLNS Québec
Task Force 790
Beowulf System
“What the hell was that?” Vincent Capriotti demanded.
“Sir, I don’t have a clue.” Rear Admiral Rutgers was bent over one of Québec’s tactical displays. Now he straightened and shook his head, his expression baffled. “It was some kind of energy fire. The recon platforms got a pretty good look at some of it, but I don’t have any idea at all what the hell they thought they were shooting at. Whatever it was, it was scattered all around the hyper sphere.”
“You mean all around the half of the hyper sphere we can see, Sir,” Commodore Schlegel put in. The ops officer turned towards him, and TF 790’s staff intelligence officer shook his head. “I’ve been looking at the distribution of the energy fire we picked up,” he said, and looked at Capriotti. “Sir, it matches almost perfectly with ONI’s estimate of how the Manties would have to distribute the FTL control platforms Admiral Gweon’s sources reported, allowing for the fact that our platforms are only far enough out to see half—a little less, really—of the total hyper sphere.”
“You’re suggesting they decided to blow up their own control platforms?” Angelica Helland asked incredulously.
“No, Ma’am.” Schlegel faced the chief of staff squarely. “I’m only saying that what we’ve seen correlates exactly with the projected distribution of their fire control systems. And someone was sure as hell shooting at something.” He shrugged. “I don’t have any more idea of who or what it might have been than you do.”
Helland’s expression got no less skeptical, but Capriotti nodded. Not so much in agreement as an acknowledgment of Schlegel’s information.
But if it wasn’t us, then who the hell was it? Angelica’s right—there’s no way the Manties and Beowulfers would take out their own defense systems, and it sure as hell wasn’t us! But who else would—?
His thought paused. No, that was ridiculous! He was getting as paranoid as the Manties! And yet…
“How long until the second stages launch?” he asked out loud.
“The Hastas have been ballistic for twenty-three minutes, Sir,” Rutgers said. “Call it another twenty-four and a half minutes.”
Capriotti nodded and leaned back in his command chair, brain whirling. Up until this point, the ops plan had worked perfectly. And if somebody really had decided to…clear the road for them, the odds of his ships’ survival might just have risen. But if there truly was someone with that capability, someone willing to use it against the Manties, then was it possible the entire Solarian League truly was being used as that someone’s puppet? And if it was—
“Move up Breakaway,” he said, looking at the time display. “Reprogram it for execution five minutes before the second stages launch.” He bared his teeth. “Five minutes either way won’t make a lot of difference to the targets, but given that we don’t have any idea what the hell else may be going on around here, I’d just as soon start for home a little earlier.”
Industrial Annex No. 6
Beowulf Alpha
Beowulf System
Hamish Alexander-Harrington’s uni-link pinged, and he paused, raising one hand at Jacques Benton-Ramirez y Chou. The two of them, Samantha, and Bark Chewer’s Bane had docked with Beowulf Alpha barely five minutes ago. Benton-Ramirez y Chou had locked up his ship and they’d headed for the nearest slidewalk. From every indication, the Beowulfer’s estimate of how long it would take them to get anywhere had been grossly optimistic, the earl reflected. At the moment, they were between slidewalks, passing through an enormous waste recycling plant.
“White Haven,” he said, acknowledging the com request.
“Tom Caparelli, Hamish.”
The voice which replied carried a harsh undertone of tension, and White Haven’s eyebrows rose as he turned to look at Benton-Ramirez y Chou.
“What is it, Tom?”
“The bastards just killed Mycroft,” Cap
arelli said flatly.
“What?!”
“Happened about four minutes ago.” Caparelli sounded as grim as White Haven had ever heard him. “Don’t have any details yet. According to Corey McAvoy, though, the control platforms may have been taken out—may have been taken out—by graser fire. That remind you of anybody?”
“Mesa,” White Haven hissed, remembering the horrific damage the “graser torpedoes” had inflicted during the Yawata Strike. But then he frowned.
“If they could get some kind of silver dart into the system and it was capable of not just taking out the Mycroft platforms but finding them in the first place, then why the hell didn’t they just go ahead and use them to take out whatever the hell these people are here to attack?”
“There some reason you think I’ve suddenly become a mindreader?” Caparelli shot back. “How do I know why the hell these people do anything?”
“Misdirection,” Benton-Ramirez y Chou put in.
White Haven looked at him, and he shrugged with some difficulty. He was a much smaller man than White Haven. That made it more awkward for Bark Chewer’s Bane to ride his shoulder the way Samantha rode White Haven’s or Nimitz rode Honor’s, so he usually carried the ’cat the way he might have carried a human infant, instead. Today, though, he needed both hands to manipulate hatch controls and for handholds when they crossed through zero-gravity sections.
“That’s the name of the game for these bastards,” he expanded now. “Well, maybe the word I really want is ‘deniability.’ It’s the same thing, really, though. They aren’t attacking Beowulf directly; they’re only enabling the Solly attack. I wouldn’t be surprised if nobody in the SLN knew they were going to, either. This way, whatever happens to us will be the Sollies’ fault, and even if we figure out someone else plowed the road, the rest of the galaxy will think we’re only seeing Alignment bogeyman under our beds all over again.”
“I think you’re onto something,” White Haven said, after a moment’s thought, reaching up to caress Samantha as she leaned into the side of his neck. “But I can’t help wondering if there’s something more to it, as well.”
“What kind of ‘something more’?” Caparelli asked from his uni-link.
“If I knew that, I wouldn’t be wondering about it.” White Haven shook his head. “No. I don’t know what it is, but we’re missing something here.”
He frowned some more, then his eyes narrowed suddenly. Samantha twitched on his shoulder, ears flattening, and he cocked his head at Benton-Ramirez y Chou.
“Tell me, Jacques,” he said, “if you were the Sollies, and you figured you might get one shot at attacking Beowulf—getting in clean, at least, whatever happened to you on your withdrawal—would you go for Cassandra?”
“That’s where the shipyards and the industry supporting the reconstruction work in Manticore are located,” Benton-Ramirez y Chou replied slowly.
“But if you were going to get only one shot at the apple, would you use it going after the yards or would you use it going after the one thing Bolthole can’t produce?”
“I don’t like where you’re going with this, Hamish,” Caparelli said.
“I don’t much like it, either.” White Haven stood motionless, only the fingers of his raised hand moving as they stroked Samantha. Then he inhaled and shook himself.
“I don’t like it, either, and I’m probably being paranoid,” he said. “A lot would depend on what they knew or suspected about our production capabilities. We haven’t exactly taken out any ads on the public boards in Old Chicago about them, but we also don’t know what their people—the Sollies’ people or the Alignment’s people—might have picked up here in Beowulf before the referendum vote. So it’s possible. The question would be why they’re so busy heading for Cassandra, if that’s the case.”
“You’re right,” Caparelli sounded as thoughtful as White Haven. “But what if—” his voice had sharpened “—the Sollies don’t know about the missile lines but the Alignment does? What if there are more of those graser torpedoes—or something like them—in-system waiting to hit us in coordination with the Sollies’ attack on Cassandra?”
“Could be.” White Haven nodded. “Coordinating it would be a bitch, but they obviously managed to coordinate the strike on Mycroft, didn’t they?”
“Could’ve been just a simple as waiting until their strike platforms detected a hyper-footprint on the right bearing,” Caparelli pointed out. “For that matter, they could have one of their people aboard any one of those battlecruisers in a position to transmit an execution code. In which case—”
“In which case another transmission code could be headed our way right now,” Hamish finished for him.
“Exactly.”
“Find Gabriel. Tell him about this.” White Haven shook his head, his face like stone. “I hope to hell I’m wrong, but if I’m not, we may be running out of time fast!”
System Defense HQ
City of Columbia
Beowulf
Beowulf System
“I hate to say it, Sir, but Earl White Haven may have a point.” Corey McAvoy’s brown eyes were dark, his lips tight. “We’re still reprogramming the Apollo pods. It’s taking a lot longer without Mycroft—and they’re not going to be as accurate—but we should be ready to launch within the next nine minutes, and we’ve got a lot of them. That’s not going to help us if the bastards’ve snuck something into the inner system, though.”
“Agreed.” Caddell-Markham’s expression was as unhappy as McAvoy’s. “Still, they’d’ve been taking an awful risk trying to sneak something too deep inside the hyper-limit. I’m not saying they wouldn’t have tried, and I’m not saying they couldn’t’ve done it, but I think our chance of catching them at it would have been a hell of a lot higher.”
“Which probably means anything coming at us will be coming from outside Beowulf’s orbit.” McAvoy nodded. “I’d give a couple of million credits to be sure of that, but I think we have to go on that assumption. At least the inner-system block ships’ impellers are hot under Code Red and Cheryl’s positioned them on the threat axis. I only wish I had more of them!”
“And that we weren’t going to lose most of them to the bastards’ initial launch, assuming they launch against the inner system at all,” Caddell-Markham agreed grimly. “If the clever buggers have set something up as a follow on strike…”
“The best we can do is the best we can do, Sir. And with your permission, I’ll go see about doing it.”
Planetary Director’s Office
City of Columbia
Beowulf
“Should we try to evacuate, Gabe?” Planetary Director Benton-Ramirez asked, his expression agonized.
“No real point, Chyang,” Caddell-Markham replied from his com screen. “Assuming Hamish isn’t just being constructively paranoid and there’s a real threat, there’s no time to evacuate enough people to make any difference. All we’d do would be to create a panic, and probably get quite a few people trampled to death even if there isn’t a real threat.” The defense director shrugged. “I don’t like it, and, frankly, I think Hamish probably is being a bit overly paranoid, but it is what it is. I think Corey’s done just about everything we can do, really.” He bared his teeth briefly. “And whatever happens in the inner system, things are going to get a bit lively in the outer system in about—” he consulted his chrono “—another three minutes.”
SLNS Québec
Task Force 790
Beowulf System
Lyang-tau Rutgers sensed Angelica Helland hovering behind him, but it was only a vague awareness. His attention was centered on the tactical information pouring in from the thick shell of recon platforms he’d deployed. The shells—plural—actually. One hemisphere of drones raced towards Cassandra, sweeping the volume ahead of TF 790, while another sped towards the inner system from TF 790’s original n-space emergence point. Transmission lag had become an issue on the inner-system flight, but the truth was that any data f
rom them was only icing on the cake. Their true function had very little to do with the gathering of tactical information and a great deal to do with misdirection. In fact, the entire Fabius operational plan relied on misdirection, and it seems to be working well.
Aside from those mysterious grasers. He’d reworked the numbers a dozen times, and Schlegel was right. Rutgers couldn’t prove someone—someone besides the SLN—had been taking out control stations, but the locations were right.
He checked the time again. TF 790 had been in Beowulf space for almost three quarters of an hour. Under the original ops plan, they’d have altered course in another nineteen minutes. Given Admiral Capriotti’s revision, they’d change course in only fourteen, and Rutgers was entirely in favor of the revision. In fact, he’d just—
“Status change!” one of his tracking ratings announced suddenly. “Missile launch—multiple missile launches! Range at launch two-zero-five-point-two million kilometers. Acceleration four-five-one-point-zero-seven-six KPS².”
Rutgers’s eyes darted to the tactical plot, and he swallowed hard as CIC’s uncaring computers updated it. Hundreds—thousands—of missile icons raced outward from a launch point one light-minute outside Beowulf’s orbit.
“Sir, they’ve just fired approximately six thousand missiles at us,” he heard his own voice reporting.
“Time-of-flight?” Capriotti asked sharply.
“Sir, this is the longest range we’ve ever seen them launch at. We do know—now—that their birds can incorporate a ballistic phase, just like the Cataphract, but that was from what we think are their cruiser-range missiles. And we still don’t know what the maximum endurance on their missile drives is, even for their cruiser missiles. We don’t have any idea what it might be for their capital missiles, and if this is a system-defense variant we haven’t seen before—”
The ops officer shrugged.
“Assuming they could make the entire run at their present acceleration—and I don’t see how anybody this side of God could pull that off—we’d be looking at sixteen minutes from time of launch. As it is—”