Not that it will do all that much good if one of my units does open fire, she thought. But at least my skippers will be covered, whatever Janacek and his geniuses back home decide about my judgment.
"Apparently," Brigham continued, "the Andies weren't impressed by his warning. They split up into two four-ship divisions and started maneuvering to sandwich Ellis between them. According to his report, he was inclined to play tag with them in order to maintain our position on freedom of navigation, but he'd deployed his long-range recon drones, and one of them got close enough to pull a clear visual up the kilt of one Andie wedge. It saw this, Your Grace."
The chief of staff handed over a memo board, and Honor keyed the flatscreen display alive. Unfortunately, its image was too tiny for her to make out any details, so she pressed another control and activated the holographic display, instead. The much larger "light sculpture" version of the imagery appeared above the board, and she frowned. There was something odd about it. . . .
"What are those things?" she murmured, mostly to herself, and felt Nimitz raising his head on the back of her chair to gaze at the imagery with her as he tasted her intent curiosity. Then her lips tightened.
"Those are missile pods," she answered herself, and looked up at Brigham with arched eyebrows.
"More precisely, Your Grace, according to Ellis—and George's first run at the data agrees with him—those are half missile pods. It looks like they sawed a conventional pod in half lengthwise and bolted the resulting abortion onto the ship right at the upper turn of the hull."
"My God." Honor looked back at the imagery and did a quick mental estimate. Assuming that the spacing of the handful of undersized pods she could see was maintained uniformly for the length of the ship between its hammerheads, then the cruiser floating before her had to have mounted at least thirty-five or forty of them. "What about the lower turn?" she asked.
"We don't know, Your Grace. Let's face it, Royalist was dead lucky to get as much as she did. If I had to guess, though, I'd guess they probably mounted them top and bottom both. If it were me, that's certainly what I would have done, and I think we have to assume the Andies are at least as smart as I am." She smiled with absolutely no humor. "Assuming they are top and bottom, George and I estimate they probably have between sixty and eighty of them in each broadside. That gives them a maximum salvo throw weight of between three hundred and four hundred birds."
Honor's lips pursed in a silent whistle of dismay. No non-pod ship in her order of battle could even come close to that heavy a broadside. And mounting the pods directly onto the hull of the ship also put them inside the cruiser's impeller wedge and sidewalls, protecting them from the proximity "soft kills" which threatened pods deployed behind ships on tractors. Which meant the ship would be much freer of the "use them or lose them" constraints which normally affected pods deployed by light and medium combatants.
"Unless they've upgraded their fire control suites massively," she thought out loud, "no ship this size could manage a salvo that heavy."
"No, Your Grace," Brigham agreed. "They wouldn't have the telemetry links, even if they could see past the wedge interference of that many missiles to guide them in the first place. But if they use them right, they can probably fire broadsides of up to fifty, maybe even sixty, missiles each. Assuming that there's some way for them to see around the pods themselves, that it is."
"I see your point." Honor rubbed the tip of her nose in thought. The long row of pods was mounted well clear of the cruiser's standard weapon decks. As Mercedes had observed, they were carried at the turn of the hull, where the central spindle of a warship curled over into the relatively flat top and bottom of her hull. Those areas, protected by the impenetrable roof and floor of her wedge, were effectively unarmored. And they were also where most warships mounted additional active sensor arrays for their missile defenses and offensive fire control. The main arrays would be clear, but not the supporting ones used to manage individual missile telemetry links or for dedicated laser cluster fire control. Which meant that the Andie's pods almost certainly had to be interfering with her ability to see her targets . . . not to mention incoming fire.
"I'll bet you these things are designed to jettison," she told Brigham. "Probably mounted on some sort of external hard point."
"That's what's George and I think," Brigham said with a nod. "For that matter, that was Ellis' conclusion, as well."
"Yes, Ellis." Honor shook herself and turned off the holo display, then leaned back in her chair and frowned at the chief of staff. "You say he got this visual using his long-range drones?"
"Yes, Your Grace. And he doesn't think the Andies spotted them, either. Which is a little reassuring. At least they haven't broken all of Ghost Rider's advantages!"
"Let's not fret ourselves into assigning them superhuman powers, Mercedes," Honor said with a small, crooked smile. "I'm sure they have some additional surprises for us, but by the same token, I'm sure we have some for them. And everything we've seen out of them so far is still effectively a case of their playing catch-up with where we already are. Which inclines me to think that whether they want us to realize it or not, they have to be at least as nervous about what we might be able to do to them as we are about what they might be able to do to us."
"No doubt that's true," Brigham replied with a dry chuckle. "On the other hand, Your Grace, my sympathy for what they may be worrying about is decidedly limited just now."
"Yours and mine both," Honor assured her. "But getting back to Walther. What did Ellis do when he got the visual?"
"Well, it took him a few minutes to recognize what he was looking at," Brigham told her. "When he did, he realized his two battlecruisers would be on the extremely short end of the stick if missiles started flying. By the same token, he was determined not to be driven out of the system. So he deployed close-in drones, and the mid-range EW platforms, and accelerated to meet one of the two Andie forces."
"He took on four cruisers armed like this one—" Honor tapped the deactivated memo board "—with just two Reliants?"
"Well, according to his report, he figured he'd probably gotten a better look at them than they could have gotten at him," Brigham said. "So in addition to the decoys he'd put out to duplicate his ships' emissions signatures for the bad guys' fire control, he also deployed an additional two dozen decoys behind each battlecruiser."
She paused, and Honor looked at her suspiciously.
"What sort of decoys?" she asked.
"He had them set to look like missile pods, Your Grace," Brigham told her, and chuckled at Honor's expression. "And he was careful to hold his accel down to something he could have managed with that many pods on tow, too."
"He was running a bluff on them?"
"Precisely, Your Grace. And it looks like he pulled it off, too. Apparently, however aggressive the Andies might be feeling, they didn't want to take on a pair of battlecruisers, each of whom were prepared to put two hundred and fifty missiles into space in a single broadside."
"I wouldn't have wanted to either," Honor agreed. Then she frowned. "Still, if your estimate of their own broadsides is accurate, then theoretically four of them could have put out three times the weight of fire they figured both of Ellis's ships together could have laid down."
"That's why I said this incident wasn't as bad as the last one, Your Grace. No shots were fired, and the Andies backed off. They didn't maintain the full twenty million-klick separation Ellis had demanded, but they were careful to stay well outside anything approaching standard missile range. And eventually, they cleared Walther and went on about their business. Ellis had a couple of fairly anxious days first, but we got out of this one without any shooting. Which, given the disparity in the weight of fire, might indicate that they had orders not to pick a fight."
"Um." Honor rubbed her nose in more, then shook her head unhappily. "Actually, I think, Mercedes, we just lucked out this time. I think we had an Andermani squadron commander who wasn't particularly eager
to die for her Emperor and figured that at least some of her ships were going to catch it right along with Ellis' battlecruisers if it came down to it. And if these people had orders not to pick a fight, what about those idiots at Schiller?"
It was Brigham's turn to look unhappy, and she nodded slowly. The confrontation in the Schiller System had ended far less happily than the one at Walther. The Andermani senior officer in that case had seen fit to ignore the senior Manticoran officer's warning to maintain separation when he caught the Manticoran patrol separated. Instead, the understrength three-ship Andermani division of light cruisers had continued to bore in on the single Manticoran heavy cruiser which had been operating in a detached role.
Fortunately, in that instance the Andies obviously hadn't had any of their handy-dandy strap-on missile pods. The three light cruisers had continued to close, and the Manticoran cruiser Ephraim Tudor had opened fire when they approached to within fifteen million kilometers.
The brief engagement which followed had not gone well for the Andermani. Apparently, the best powered attack range for missiles carried by their medium combatants was no more than twelve million kilometers, for they'd closed to that range before launching their first birds. It also seemed obvious that Ephraim Tudor's electronic warfare capabilities had been better than theirs. They'd scored three hits on the Manticoran cruiser, inflicting damage that was surprisingly light . . . and killing nine of her crew. Another seven members of her company had been wounded, but in return for that damage, one of the Andermani light cruisers had been battered into an air-leaking, powerless wreck. One of the others had also suffered serious damage to her impeller ring, judging by the drop in her wedge strength and acceleration, and whoever was in command on the other side had decided it was time to exercise discretion. Both of the light cruisers still capable of combat had rolled up on their sides, interposing the roofs of their wedges against additional incoming fire from Ephraim Tudor, and maneuvered to cover their crippled sister in their impeller shadows.
In compliance with Honor's orders to minimize tensions as much as possible, Ephraim Tudor had broken off the engagement when it became obvious the Andies were maneuvering to avoid further action. Honor had no reports on exactly how bad Andermani casualties had been, but she knew they had to have been much heavier than her own. Not that the thought was going to offer much comfort to the families of her dead.
"Maybe the Andie SO in Walther had heard about what happened in Schiller," Brigham suggested. "It's obvious that they haven't been able to match the defensive side of Ghost Rider—or, at least, to find a way around that side. Maybe what Ephraim Tudor managed to do to them is making them more cautious."
"It's possible," Honor conceded. "But given the time interval, any courier from Schiller would have had to cut it pretty tight to pass that word to the second force before it headed out for Walther. And whatever was going through their heads when Ellis decided to run his bluff, it certainly looks like they'd been planning to crowd him, at the very least, before he managed to convince them he had so much firepower in reserve."
"Well," Brigham said, "at least we've gotten all of our units warned by now. And unless someone's managed to ambush one of our people even after we'd warned them, we shouldn't lose any more ships without making the Andies pay the ferryman."
"I know." Honor smiled again, more crookedly than before. "I know, Mercedes. The only problem is that I'd just as soon not kill anyone. Vengeance won't bring back anyone we lose, and the more shooting incidents we have, even if we 'win' all of them, the tenser things are going to get out here. If there's any chance of containing this thing, we've got to get a handle on it before it spins entirely out of control."
"You're right, of course," Brigham agreed. "But Sternhafen's response to your message doesn't strike me as a good sign. If he's so unwilling to consider even the possibility that his man could have made a mistake that he's officially rejected any board of inquiry, it doesn't sound like he's very interested in containing the situation, does it?"
"No," Honor agreed somberly, remembering the uncompromising communique Admiral Sternhafen had released to the Silesian and interstellar media in response to her message to him.
"No, it doesn't sound like it," she admitted.
* * *
"Perhaps, Herr Graf, you would be so kind as to explain this to me?" Chien-lu Anderman, Herzog von Rabenstrange, requested in tones of icy courtesy as he tapped the message chip. It was in the color-keyed folio which identified an official naval press release, and it lay on the corner of the desk which belonged—so far, at least—to Admiral Xiaohu Pausch, Graf von Sternhafen.
That, of course, was subject to change.
"There is nothing to explain, Gross Admiral," Sternhafen replied in a flat, politely defiant voice. "A Manticoran heavy cruiser fired upon one of our merchant ships after Kapitän der Sternen Gortz had repeatedly instructed it to break off its attack run. Under the circumstances, Kapitän der Sternen Gortz had no option but to engage the Manticoran to protect the safety of our own nationals. In the ensuing engagement, provoked by the Manticorans, there was very heavy loss of life on both sides. Given those self-evident facts I saw no reason to subject the Emperor's dignity to the humiliation of a Manticoran-directed 'investigation' into the actions of a navy of a sovereign power. Not only would submission to such a thinly veiled demand on Harrington's part have been insulting and demeaning to both His Imperial Majesty and the Navy, but the obvious prejudice of the Manticorans would have made any 'impartial' verdict's conclusion that we were at fault inevitable. I had no desire to participate in such a farce for the benefit of exonerating the officer actually responsible for this atrocity, and as His Imperial Majesty's representative in Silesia, I so informed the Manticoran commander at Sidemore in no uncertain terms. And in order to foreclose the possibility of allowing her to score any sort of propaganda triumph out of this, I acted to get the true version of events into the media's hands as rapidly as possible, as was my obvious duty."
"I see. And you have Kapitän der Sternen Gortz' own sworn testimony as to precisely what events occurred in Zoraster, I suppose?"
"Of course not, Gross Admiral," Sternhafen half-snapped, his outward courtesy fraying noticeably under the lash of Rabenstrange's frigid sarcasm.
"Ah, yes. I'd forgotten. Kapitän der Sternen Gortz is dead, is he not, Admiral?" The smallish gross admiral smiled coldly at the considerably taller Sternhafen and watched the other man visibly bite his tongue. There were advantages, Rabenstrange reflected, to being the Emperor's first cousin.
"And because Gortz is dead," he continued after a moment, "it's impossible for you to ascertain with complete certainty precisely what he did or didn't do, is that not correct?"
"We have the testimony of the three surviving bridge personnel," Sternhafen replied hotly. "All of them agree that—"
"I've viewed their statements, Herr Graf," Rabenstrange interrupted him. "None of them were communication ratings, however. They were concentrating on other duties at the time, and their memory of precisely what Gortz said to this Captain Ferrero is extremely vague and scarcely reliable. Moreover, what little they can tell us, vague as it is, pertains only to Gortz' side of the conversation, because none of them actually heard Ferrero's transmissions to him. So the fact that they agree that their captain reacted nobly and selflessly to a totally unprovoked Manticoran attack upon an innocent merchant ship might be just the slightest bit suspect, don't you suppose, Herr Graf?"
"I protest your tone, Gross Admiral," Sternhafen said curtly. "I'm fully aware of your rank, and of your position in the Imperial Family. However, I am still His Imperial Majesty's commander in Silesia until you formally relieve me of my duties. And while I am the Silesian commander, I am not required to submit to your verbal abuse of myself or of the personnel—especially of the personnel who have given their lives in the Emperor's service—under my command!"
"You're quite correct," Rabenstrange told him after a brief, taut moment of silence
. "Of course, the question of precisely what command you'll ever hold again remains open." He smiled thinly as Sternhafen's eyes flinched ever so slightly away from his own. Then he drew a deep breath, folded his hands behind him, and made himself take a quick turn around Sternhafen's ground-side Sachsen office.
"Very well, Herr Graf," he said finally, turning back to face the taller man once more. "I'll attempt to amend my manner. But you, Graf, will answer my questions. And I warn you now, I am not interested in defensive temporizations. Is that understood?"
"Of course, Your Grace," Sternhafen replied stiffly.
"Very well," Rabenstrange repeated. "The point I was attempting to make was that so far as I've been able to determine from your reports, neither you nor anyone in your command made any attempt to discover whether or not Duchess Harrington's hypothesis as to what transpired in Zoraster might be accurate before you summarily rejected her offer of a joint investigation."
"Your Grace," Sternhafen sounded dangerously patient, but Rabenstrange decided to let it pass . . . for now, "Harrington will naturally attempt to put the best possible face upon her captain's actions. No doubt you'll argue that I must feel the same temptation in Gortz's case, and you may well be right. However, this particular Manticoran ship had established a clear pattern of arrogance and confrontation in previous encounters with Hellbarde. I believe any fair reading of the Fleet base's file copies of Hellbarde's communication log of Captain Ferrero's previous messages will bear out Kapitän Gortz' view of Ferrero as a dangerously provocative woman.
"When the final encounter between these two ships occurred—in, may I point out, the sovereign territory of a third star nation and definitely not Manticoran territory—Ferrero was clearly maneuvering with the intention of stopping and, at the very least, searching an Imperial-flag merchant vessel proceeding about its lawful concerns. That, at least, was the completely reasonable conclusion of Kapitän der Sternen Gortz. While the testimony of the surviving fire control ratings as to the precise content of the message traffic exchanged between Jessica Epps and Hellbarde may not be conclusive, all three of them agree messages were exchanged. Moreover, all three agree that Kapitän der Sternen Gortz's demand that Ferrero break off her harassment of the vessel in question was not only rejected by her but clearly preceded her decision to open fire upon that vessel.