Torch of Freedom

  "Yes, Sir."

  Womack frowned in obvious thought for several seconds, his eyes looking off-screen, where they were no doubt considering the command deck's repeater plot. Rozsak waited patiently. The one hole he had not yet filled in his own staff was Operations. He needed to do something about that, and he intended to, although he didn't expect Dirk-Steven Kamstra to be especially delighted when the commodore found out who Rozsak had in mind for the position. Despite his youth, Robert Womack had thoroughly demonstrated both his competence and his levelheadedness, and Rozsak had been impressed by his performance since they'd arrived here in Torch. He had every intention of stealing Womack from Kamstra as soon as the current operation was over. What mattered at the moment, though, was that in the course of the task force's exercises, the lieutenant had demonstrated a better grasp of the Mark-17-E missile's capabilities—and limitations—than Rozsak himself had, in some ways.

  "Judging from our own exercises, and the data we've amassed on our new birds' capabilities, Sir," Womack said after a moment, "and bearing in mind that we know exactly how Halo works, which means we know how to allow for it, we can probably expect it to degrade our targeting and fire control by about . . . say, fifteen percent. It might be a little worse than that; it might be a little better than that. A lot's going to depend on operator proficiency, and there's no way we can know about that one way or the other ahead of time.

  "At the same time, we're starting from a significantly better probability of hit percentage, thanks to the Erewhonese upgrades, so we still ought to have a significant advantage in terms of accuracy over anything they've got. And I doubt very much that the Havenite-built ships have Halo, at all. I could be wrong, but the onboard side of the system would have to have been squeezed in somewhere, and there's not room for that without taking something else fairly big out to compensate.

  "To be honest, I think Aegis would be a bigger problem for us, at least where the Indefatigables are concerned. If they've got it, they're going to be able to thicken up their missile defenses quite a bit. They're still going to be weaker in point defense clusters than the Havenite units, but they'll be able to kill more of our birds in the outer and middle defense zones. Of course, the downside for them is that they're going to have standard SLN counter-missiles in the tubes—and the canisters—and they aren't as good as ours. And using Aegis is going to decrease their shipkiller throw weight, as well."

  He paused, head slightly cocked, as if considering what he'd just said, then shrugged.

  "Bottom line, Sir, is that the combination of Halo and Aegis will probably give us a per-missile hit probability against an Indefatigable that's only thirty-five or forty percent better than against a Warlord. Assuming the people on board the ships are fully familiar with their systems and trained to Frontier Fleet standards, that is."

  Rozsak felt his lips twitch slightly at Womack's qualifying last sentence. "Frontier Fleet standards" implied a degree of contempt for Frontier Fleet's Battle Fleet colleagues which was unfortunately (or fortunately, depending upon one's viewpoint) fully justified. Probably because Battle Fleet spent all of its training time firing simulated missiles at simulated defenses all under the command of officers who not only never had seen combat but almost certainly expected that they never would see it. And in an environment where umpires and simulation managers knew better than to make potential enemies out of future senior officers by grading their results too critically. Luiz Rozsak was familiar with Frontier Fleet's own version of the Solarian League's institutional arrogance from direct, personal experience, but he fully shared Womack's estimate of Battle Fleet's capabilities. In fact, it was one of the things he and Oravil Barregos were counting on, when he came right down to it.

  "All right," he said. "That's about what I expected. The bad news is that it's going to take lots of missiles to kill these people—probably a lot more missiles than we'd estimated. The good news is that we've got 'lots of missiles' to do it with. Lieutenant Wu," he looked at the com image of Lieutenant Richard Wu, Marksman's astrogator, "how long to normal-space?"

  "We'll be making our translation in seventy-five seconds, Admiral." Wu's voice was remarkably calm, given the translation conditions Alpha Two called for.

  "N-space velocity after translation?"

  "Two-point-five thousand KPS, Sir," Wu replied, and more than one face grimaced.

  Rozsak's wasn't one of them, but he understood perfectly. Crash hyper translations were never excessively pleasant, and crossing the alpha wall into normal-space fast enough to carry that much velocity across the interface would be even more unpleasant than normal. And they'd be able to manage it in such a short time window only because Torch lay in a gravity wave, which made enormously higher rates of acceleration possible.

  On the other hand, it also made minor errors in astrogation into potentially catastrophic ones, he reflected.

  "Well, Richard," he said, smiling at the astrogator, "let's all hope you've got your sums right."

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  "Hyper translation!" Citizen Commander Pierre Stravinsky announced suddenly, his voice sharp.

  Citizen Commodore Luff's head snapped around, eyes narrowing, but Stravinsky didn't even notice. The ops officer was leaning forward, staring intently at his display. A handful of seconds ticked by, then Stravinsky looked up, meeting Luff's gaze.

  "They're directly astern of us, Citizen Commodore," he said. "Range right on twelve million kilometers—sixteen point sources. All we've got so far are the impeller signatures, but they're accelerating after us at four-point-seven-five KPS-squared."

  Luff frowned, then looked at Citizen Commander Hartman and raised his eyebrows.

  "Hard to say, Citizen Commodore," she said in response to the unspoken question. "It could be anybody. But whoever it is, they're obviously responding to us. They must have had a picket out beyond the limit, monitoring their sensor platforms." She shrugged. "Now whoever it was has come back with friends."

  "But what sort of friends?" Luff murmured, half to himself, and glanced at Captain Maddock.

  The Mesan only shrugged in turn—which, Luff had to admit, was about all anyone could have done at this point. At twelve million kilometers, it was going to take the better part of forty seconds for any light-speed emissions from the suddenly appearing bogeys to reach them. On the other hand, Hartman clearly had a point about how those bogeys happened to be there, and that suggested several very unhappy possibilities to the citizen commodore. First, it suggested that someone had known, or at least strongly suspected, that an attack like this one was coming. People didn't "just happen" to set up this sort of elaborate response unless they thought they might need one, and responses didn't come in this quickly unless the people behind them were poised and ready. Second, if these bogies had been summoned by a system picket which had detected and identified them before going for help, then, unlike Luff, they ought to have a very good notion of what was on the other side. Which suggested that they thought they had the firepower to do something about it. . . .

  Don't leap to any conclusions, Adrian, he reminded himself. At that acceleration rate, there can't be anything back there bigger than a battlecruiser—not unless it's got a Manty compensator, and the Manties are too busy closer to home to be worrying about us at a time like this. But if they've got an accurate count on us, then they know they're outnumbered by three-to-one. So if they don't have anything heavier than a battlecruiser, they have to be lunatics.

  Or desperate.

  The citizen commodore grimaced unhappily at that thought. Given that these bogeys clearly had been waiting in hyper, then somehow word of the attack must have leaked after all. And if some warning of the attack had leaked, then the defenders might know—or have guessed—Operation Ferret's true objective. In which case, the people accelerating after them might well be desperate enough to pursue the PNE no matter how outnumbered they were.

  If that were my planet, if that were my family down there on it, I'd be going af
ter anybody who planned on doing what we plan on doing whether I really thought I could stop them or not, he thought grimly.

  On the other hand, he might just be wrong about whether or not the Manties could have shaken a task group loose for something like this, especially if they'd had enough warning to know it was coming.

  "Time for us to get back across the limit, Astro?"

  "Just a moment, Citizen Commodore," Citizen Lieutenant Commander Philippine Christiansen replied. She punched numbers quickly, then looked back at him. "Approximately thirty-nine minutes assuming current acceleration, Citizen Commodore. Twenty-one minutes if we go to maximum military power."

  "And how long for these bogeys to reach missile range of the hyper limit, Citizen Commander Stravinsky?" Luff asked.

  "Assuming they maintain their acceleration profile and that their missiles have a powered range of seven-point-five million kilometers from rest, approximately . . . seventeen minutes, Citizen Commodore."

  Luff grunted. He strongly suspected that whoever that was back there had undershot his planned translation point. Unless he had multidrive missiles, he was a good four million-plus kilometers outside his own missile range at the moment, and that had to represent an astrogation error. Luff rather doubted that he'd wanted to arrive at a range where he couldn't immediately engage the people attacking Torch, after all. But if he'd undershot, he hadn't undershot by a large enough margin for Luff to change his mind, reverse acceleration, kill his current velocity, and then get back across the hyper limit and disappear into the alpha bands before he could be engaged.

  Of course, any engaging would take place at very long-range, he reflected. They probably couldn't score a whole lot of hits before we hypered out, no matter what they've got back there.

  He glanced once more at Maddock, this time unobtrusively, out of the corner of one eye. The Mesan captain had to know why Luff had asked Christiansen those two questions, but if he was concerned about the citizen commodore's possible decision, no sign of it showed in his expression. Which could mean confidence on his part, or simply that he knew Luff knew what would happen to any hope of further support from Manpower if he blew this mission off. Or, for that matter, it could even mean Maddock would be simply delighted if the PNE scampered off to safety, taking his own personal skin along with it.

  Part of Luff wanted to do exactly that. There was always the distinct possibility that the people chasing him truly were confident of their ability to deal with him if they caught him. And if they were, they might be right.

  Of course, they might be wrong, too, he told himself. Especially if they don't know about the Cataphracts. But be honest with yourself, Adrian. What you're really thinking is that this could offer you an excuse not to do something you don't want to do, anyway.

  "Citizen Commodore, we're getting some tonnage estimates from CIC," Stravinsky said.

  "What kind of estimates?"

  "According to CIC, it looks like eight units in the hundred and twenty-five-ton range, six in the two hundred and eighty-five hundred-ton range, and two at around two million tons, Citizen Commodore."

  "And they're all pulling four-point-seven-five KPS-squared?" Hartman asked just a bit sharply.

  "Yes, Citizen Commander," Stravinsky replied, and Hartman grimaced.

  "It seems the Erewhonese are here after all, Citizen Commodore," she said, turning back to Luff. "Nothing that size could pull that much accel without an improved compensator."

  "Excuse me, Citizen Commodore," Citizen Lieutenant Yvonne Kamerling, Luff's staff communications officer, said. Luff frowned reflexively at the interruption, but he smoothed the expression quickly. He knew Kamerling wouldn't have broken in on him and Hartman at a moment like this if she hadn't believed it was important.

  "What is it, Yvonne?"

  "Sir, we're beginning to pick up grav pulses. Whoever that is behind us is using an FTL com to talk to someone further in-system."

  "Manties?" Luff asked rather more sharply than he'd intended to as visions of great big, nasty multidrive missiles flickered through his brain.

  "I don't think so, Citizen Commodore," Kamerling replied. "The pulse rate and the modulation are both wrong. It's a bit more sophisticated than we were seeing out of the Manties during the final phases of the last war, but based on our current intel, it's a lot less sophisticated than anything we'd expect to see out of them now."

  "I see."

  Kamerling was probably right, Luff thought. It made sense, anyway. Then again . . .

  "How confident is CIC about those tonnage estimates?" he asked Stravinsky. The ops officer looked at him, and the citizen commodore waved a hand. "I'm thinking about those reports on the Manties' new battlecruiser class. Two million tons is too small to be a waller, even a dreadnought, but isn't that new battlecruiser of theirs supposed to mass right around that much?"

  "The Nikes actually come in at around two and a half million, Citizen Commodore," Captain Maddock said before Stravinsky could respond. Luff transferred his gaze to the Mesan, who shrugged. "That intelligence has been pretty conclusively confirmed, according to our sources," he said. "And I think your CIC crews are too good to underestimate a mass reading by twenty percent at this short a range."

  "Captain Maddock has a point, Citizen Commodore," Hartman said. "Coupled with what Yvonne's just told us about their communications, it's got to be the Erewhonese."

  "But Erewhon doesn't have anything anywhere near that tonnage range," Luff pointed out.

  "They don't have any warships in that tonnage range, Citizen Commodore," Hartman replied grimly. "What they could have back there, though, is a couple of smallish freighters with mil-spec compensators and cargo holds packed full of missile pods."

  Luff felt his stomach muscles tighten. Their "benefactors' " latest intelligence reports all insisted that Erewhon's multidrive missile capability was extremely limited compared to that of Manticore. Or, for that matter, of the counterrevolutionaries in Nouveau Paris, at this point. But even with the original, first-generation Manty MDMs they would outrange anything he had. Except—

  "If they had MDMs, they'd already be shooting at us," he heard his own voice say calmly. "Twelve million kilometers is less than a quarter of the powered range they're supposed to have."

  "Agreed, Citizen Commodore," Hartman said. "But everything we've seen suggests the real problem is that they've got more range than they have fire control capability. If they're chasing us with a pair of missile freighters, then those six heavy cruisers are probably planning on acting as forward fire control platforms. They'll try to bring them in close enough to improve their hit probabilities—probably just to the edge of single-drive missile range—while they keep the freighters far enough back to be outside our own range of them when they roll the pods."

  "That makes a lot of sense, Citizen Commodore," Stravinsky said. "Assuming they are Erewhonese—and given what Yvonne's just said about their FTL com, I think the Citizen Commander's right about that—I agree they could be firing on us now, if our two bigger bogies are freighters and they are carrying MDMs. But Citizen Commander Hartman's also absolutely right about the accuracy penalty they'd pay at this range. Manties might not worry about that, if there's anything to the scraps we've heard about the Battle of Lovat, but Erewhon's accuracy at extended MDM range is going to be extremely poor. At the same time, they brought a lot more velocity over the alpha wall with them than we did, and they've got the acceleration edge on us—or, at least, their heavy cruisers do—so they must figure they can bring us into the range they want before we get into our own powered envelope of the planet. They may have lots of missiles, but why waste a bunch of them at this kind of range when they don't have to?"

  Luff felt himself nodding slowly in agreement with his subordinates' logic. Given the Erewhonese Navy's capabilities, it made perfect sense. In fact, it was probably what he'd be doing. And it explained why sixteen ships were chasing forty-eight. It didn't matter how outnumbered they were if their weapons could r
each their enemies and their enemies' weapons couldn't reach them.

  Of course, he thought coldly, there's a tiny flaw in their logic. They don't know—

  "Citizen Commodore, we have an incoming transmission," Kamerling said, and Luff turned back towards her. "It's from a Rear Admiral Rozsak."

  Luff's eyes widened abruptly, and he heard a hiss of indrawn breath from Hartman. Rozsak? It couldn't be—not with those observed acceleration rates! And yet . . .

  "Who is it addressed to, Yvonne?" he asked.

  "To you, Citizen Commodore," she replied. "Not by name, but—With your permission, Citizen Commodore?"

  She indicated the secondary com display at his command station, and he nodded. A moment later, the face of a man Luff had never met, but recognized instantly, appeared on the display.

  "This is Rear Admiral Luiz Rozsak, Solarian League Navy." The voice was cold, hard. "I wish to speak to the senior officer of the State Security forces currently planning to attack the sovereign planet of Torch."

  Luff felt an icy hand squeeze his heart as a crawl from CIC across the bottom of his display confirmed that, according to Leon Trotsky's intelligence base, the image he was looking at and the voice he was listening to truly did belong to the senior Solarian naval officer in the region. Who obviously knew who they were.

  No, he thought a heartbeat later. No, he knows what we are—or he thinks he does, anyway—but not who we are. The Warlords and the Mars-Cs would make him pretty sure we're State Security, even if he'd never had any idea at all what was coming. Besides, if he knew names and faces, he'd be using them now—asking for me by name. He'd know exactly how badly that would shake the nerve of any CO in my position.

  He felt a flicker of relief at the thought, even though he knew it was irrational. If it wasn't the Erewhonese back there, if it really was the Solarian League Navy, the consequences for all of the PNE's plans and hopes could be catastrophic.

  The Haven Quadrant was hundreds of light-years from the League, and the SLN's total disinterest in the Manticore-Haven conflict had been obvious for years. As far as the man-in-the-street's view of things was concerned, Solarian public opinion since the resumption of hostilities had tended to favor Haven over Manticore, and at the moment, given the confrontation between the League's interests and Manticore in the Talbott Cluster, there was little doubt that Solarian antipathy towards the Star Kingdom had hardened significantly. But all of that could—would—change in a heartbeat in the wake of an Eridani Edict violation. The Edict was the single element of Solarian foreign policy which enjoyed near-universal acceptance and support from all of the League's citizens. If Havenite units violated it . . .