No, de Groot's reservations had stemmed from the fact that the Staff had expressly ruled out any pre-attack reconnaissance of Tequila.
Agnes de Groot had risen to flag rank in a fleet which had experienced a seemingly unending series of drubbings—interrupted only occasionally by something like Operation Icarus—at the hands of the Manticoran Alliance. In light of that experience, she'd found it . . . difficult to accept NavInt's estimates of the enormous decline in the efficiency of the Royal Manticoran Navy. She'd been certain that the spooks had to be overestimating the degree to which the Manties had lost their edge. Or thrown it away, if there was a difference. Which meant that she had also found it difficult to accept that they could have been stupid enough to reduce their picket in Tequila to the levels NavInt insisted they had.
She knew all about the reports the intelligence types had generated. But she also knew that the data on which those reports were based had come solely from the civilian-grade sensors of merchantmen passing through the system. It wouldn't have been hard for any navy, and especially not for one with the Manties' EW capabilities, to hide an entire fleet from a merchie's sensor suite, and de Groot had been privately certain that that must be what had happened.
It seemed she'd been wrong.
Her own recon drones were twelve million klicks—over forty light-seconds—ahead of her screen, with a secondary shell thrown out to cover her flanks and rear. While she was always prepared to recognize the Manticorans' supremacy in the field of electronic warfare, she found it difficult to believe that she wouldn't have gotten at least a sniff of any heavy units closing to missile range of her own command. Of course, there was missile range, and then there was missile range. Judging from their performance immediately before the cease-fire, Manty multi-drive missiles had a powered attack range of somewhere around sixty-five million klicks, which was at least eight million more than the RHN's new weapons could manage. But not even Manties were going to score many hits against alert targets at ranges of better than three and a half light-minutes. To be effective, they were going to have to come a lot closer than that, and her platforms should have started getting a sniff of them well before they got within five light-minutes of the outer shell, much less her actual starships.
A part of her still insisted that they had to be out there somewhere, but she told herself that was just the last gasp effort of her own paranoia. If they'd really had heavy ships, those vessels would be where her drones could see them. They'd have to be if they were going to offer any support at all to the two hundred and eleven LACs sweeping to meet her.
And if the Manties really hadn't shot themselves in both feet and one kneecap where their readiness states and training are concerned, she thought with grim satisfaction, those LACs would be doing something a hell of a lot smarter than what they're doing now.
She supposed whoever was in command over there was being brave enough, but Lord God was she stupid! What NavInt's estimates insisted was the entire LAC strength based on the system, allowing for four or five down for routine maintenance, was coming straight at the invaders with absolutely no attempt to maneuver for advantage. It looked like the Manty CO intended to charge straight down de Groot's throat, possibly in an effort to avoid the Republican broadsides and sidewalls. Of course, that would also expose her LACs to the fire of de Groot's entire squadron's chase armament as she closed, but maybe she figured she could survive that long enough to get into range. If so, she was an idiot . . . or even more unaware of the improvements in the Republic's naval hardware—including the new classes' bow walls—than de Groot would have believed was possible.
Of course, she probably thought she was facing only ships of the wall, too.
* * *
"Another message from the COLAC, Skipper," Chief Petty Officer Lawrence announced. Flanagan turned her command chair to face Switchblade's com officer and waved one hand in an unspoken "tell me" command. She tried very hard not to let the gesture radiate her disgust, but she knew she'd failed.
"Captain al-Salil instructs all Shrike commanders to remember to close to minimum range before firing," Lawrence said as expressionlessly as possible.
"Acknowledge," Flanagan replied, and this time she didn't bother with concealing her emotions. It wasn't as if it was going to matter very much longer, and she knew her entire squadron must be as disgusted as she was. Both LAC groups had been accelerating steadily to meet the oncoming Peeps for over two hours. They were less than forty minutes from intercept, and the idiot was still sending fatuous, stupid "reminders" instead of anything approaching useful attack orders.
She supposed, in fairness (although she had very little interest in being fair to al-Salil under the circumstances), that he had specified an attack plan . . . of sorts. Unfortunately, like the missile loads his LACs were carrying, Attack Plan Delta-Three, was purely generic, little more than a vague set of objectives and procedures. It had been obvious to Flanagan for months that neither al-Salil nor Schumacher had believed, even as the diplomatic situation worsened, that the Peeps would dare to attack Tequila. So neither of them had spent much time or effort thinking about serious defensive plans. All of their thinking had been directed towards maintaining "system security" against any purely local disorder or some sort of scouting foray or harassment the Peeps might have attempted with light forces. Delta-Three would probably have worked fairly well against a destroyer sweep, or a few flotillas of light cruisers. Even a battlecruiser squadron or two. Against what they actually faced, it was about as useful as a screen door on an airlock.
At least it looked as if the Peep commander must have missed almost as many classes in tactics as Flanagan's superiors had, because her formation might have been purposely designed to actually let Delta-Three hurt her. Flanagan wasn't certain what the Peep was thinking of, but the attack commander wasn't making any effort to deploy her escorting units in the sort of anti-LAC defensive shell the RMN had devised in its own wargames. She was keeping all of her cruisers tucked in unreasonably tight. They'd be able to mass their energy fire effectively against the Shrikes as the LAC groups closed in for point blank energy attacks, but they were interfering with one another's long-range sensor envelopes, and they were going to offer extremely vulnerable targets to the massed missile fire the Ferrets would be pumping out any minute now.
She watched the Peep icons change color on her own tactical repeater as al-Salil's tactical officer designated missile targets. The escorting cruisers turned crimson, one by one, as the COLAC assigned a massive overkill to them. In some respects, it was an admission of despair, a concession that the cruisers were the only ships they had the firepower to kill, although Flanagan doubted that al-Salil would have admitted it. Delta-Three called for a converging attack, taking out the flank guards first, to clear a path for the graser-armed Shrikes to execute a minimum-range attack on the core of any enemy force. Which would have been all well and good if their targets had been battlecruisers, or even battleships. Against superdreadnoughts with their sidewalls up and their weapons on-line, the Shrikes would be impossibly lucky to inflict damage that was more than merely cosmetic.
Still, she told herself grimly, the Peeps would at least know they'd been nudged. And she owed it to her own people not to let her own crushing sense of despair affect her own effectiveness. If they were going to die anyway, then it was her job to keep her own head clear and make their deaths mean at least something by expending them as effectively as possible. And, who knew, maybe—The plot changed suddenly, and Sarah Flanagan's heart seemed to stop.
Apparently the Peep commander wasn't quite the idiot she'd thought.
* * *
Agnes de Groot smiled like a hungry wolf as the master plot changed.
The incoming Manty strike was a confusing mass of red light dots. That was their infernally effective onboard ECM, coupled with the capability of their decoys and jammers. Still, as far as de Groot could tell, there were fewer EW birds covering them than had been projected, and CIC seemed to
be getting a better count on the hostiles than she'd hoped for. It was always possible, of course, that they were being allowed to get "a better count" by Manty electronics officers with their ECM in deception mode, but she didn't think so. It looked to her as if she had genuinely caught the Manties completely unprepared and with very little idea of how to respond to the unanticipated threat.
Which, she thought ferociously, had just become an even greater threat than they'd imagined.
The large green beads of three of her "superdreadnoughts" were suddenly surrounded by clouds of smaller green fireflies, dashing away from them, as they launched full groups of Cimeterre-class LACs. NavInt's sources all confirmed that the Manties had stuck with their original, basically dreadnought-sized CLACs. Given the compensator advantages which the Manticoran Alliance had enjoyed for years, it gave them the best combination of LAC capacity and acceleration. But the Republican Navy had adopted a different philosophy. Its CLACs were visualized as primarily defensive platforms, mobile bases for the LACs intended to protect the wall of battle from long-range Manty LAC strikes. As such, there was no reason to make them any faster than the superdreadnoughts they would be protecting, and all of that lovely tonnage advantage could be put into additional LAC bays.
Which meant that whereas a Manty CLAC could pack approximately one hundred and twelve LACs into its bays, a Republican Aviary-class carried well over two hundred.
Now seven hundred-plus Cimeterres went charging outward to meet less than a third that many Manty LACs which were far too close at far too high a closing speed to even hope to evade them.
* * *
They were all dead . . . and for nothing.
The thought stabbed through Sarah Flanagan's mind with cold, unspeakable bitterness as she realized how utterly the Royal Navy had failed in its most basic responsibilities to its Queen and to its own people. It wasn't just al-Salil and Schumacher after all. It was the entire Navy, from ONI to Flanagan herself, and something deep inside her—the something which had sent her into her Queen's uniform in the first place—shriveled in shame.
The Peeps had CLACs . . . and no one had even suspected it. Or, even worse, if anyone had, they'd kept their suspicions to themselves. And this was the result. Disaster unmitigated.
Even as the huge cloud of LACs flashed towards her, some detached observer in her brain was visualizing all of the other system pickets. Most of them, unlike Tequila, had at least a division of capital ships, or a battlecruiser squadron, or a dozen cruisers or so, to back up the LACs expected to bear the brunt of system defense. But it wasn't going to matter. If the Peeps had committed three CLACs to Tequila, where they had to know the picket was so understrength, then they'd committed more to the systems where they expected something approaching respectable resistance. And no one in any of those systems knew what was headed for them any more than al-Salil and Schumacher had.
It would be like an avalanche. Not one of snow and tumbling boulders, but of laser heads and grasers. Waves of LACs and thundering broadsides. Of broken Manticoran starships and shattered light attack craft. And there was nothing at all that anyone could do to stop it. Not now.
She heard her own voice issuing orders, overriding the COLAC's targeting designations. Her own Shrikes' tac officers responded quickly, almost as if they didn't realize how complete the catastrophe was. She heard al-Salil frantically issuing commands of his own, but she paid them little heed. They were half incoherent to begin with, and even if they hadn't been, it was too late.
Her squadron launched even while al-Salil was still gibbering away. She launched on her own authority, with no orders, and at the oncoming enemy LACs rather than the starships whose defenses her Shrikes' light missile loads could never have penetrated.
Then she hunkered down in her command chair, braced her forearms on the armrests, and watched the holocaust come.
* * *
De Groot grimaced as a single Manty LAC squadron launched every bird it had. The rotary launchers which were the central feature of modern LAC design couldn't be "flushed" in a single salvo the way the old-style box launchers could be. But they could come close, and that single squadron got every offensive missile away before her own squadrons reached launch range.
That fire reached deep into her LACs' formation. Eighteen of them were destroyed outright. Seven more were crippled, five so badly that there wouldn't be any point in repairing them. Another eight took lighter damage.
But then it was the turn of the remaining seven hundred and sixty Cimeterres.
Commander Clapp's "triple ripple" roared outward. The magazines of two hundred of the Republican vessels fed that onrushing wave of missiles. The other five hundred and sixty held their fire, waiting.
Agnes de Groot watched the first wave of ferocious detonations sweeping away Manty EW drones like a broom of brimstone. Even from here, she could almost feel the despair enveloping the enemy as they realized what was happening, but it was far too late for them to do anything about it.
The second wave of explosions lashed at the Manties, hashing their sensors, crippling their onboard electronics ever so briefly. And then, exactly as Clapp had predicted, the third wave of missiles swept through the hopelessly disorganized Manticoran defensive envelope.
Thirty-three Manticoran LACs survived the triple ripple.
None of them survived the single massive salvo which followed it up.
De Groot's total losses were less than forty.
Chapter Fifty-Six
"We're coming up on translation in five minutes, Sir," Lieutenant Commander Akimoto said.
"Thank you, Joyce." Admiral Wilson Kirkegard thanked his staff astrogator as gravely as if he hadn't been watching the translation clock for the last hour.
"You're welcome, Sir," Akimoto replied, and the grin she gave him told him that she knew perfectly well that her formal announcement had been superfluous, to say the very least.
Kirkegard smiled back, then turned to Captain Janina Auderska, his chief of staff.
"Any last-minute details waiting to bite us on the ass, Janina?" he asked quietly.
"Can't think of any, Sir," she said, wrinkling her nose in thought. "Of course, if I could think of them ahead of time, they wouldn't be waiting to bite us on the ass, I suppose."
"As profound an analysis as I've ever heard," Kirkegard approved, and she chuckled.
"Sorry. Bad habit of mine to indulge myself in the obvious when I'm nervous."
"Well, you're not alone in that," Kirkegard assured her, and turned his attention back to the maneuvering plot as his overstrength task group headed towards the alpha wall. He spared the visual display a brief glance, struck even now by the familiar, flickering beauty of his flagship's Warshawski sails. He could pick out the sails of at least another half-dozen of his starships, but he had other things on his mind and the maneuvering plot gave him a far more accurate idea of their positions.
He had less carrier support than some of the other attack forces set up by Operation Thunderbolt, but he shouldn't need it, either. Maastricht, according to NavInt, was picketed by a single reinforced division of pre-pod superdreadnoughts, supported by one CLAC and a battlecruiser squadron. Given the draw-down in Manticoran naval units, that was a fairly hefty picket for a single system which was far less important to the Manticoran Alliance than it was to the Republic of Haven. And by the standards of the earlier war years, it should have been able to give an excellent account of itself even against a task group as large as Kirkegard's.
But those standards no longer obtained . . . as Kirkegard was about to teach the Manties.
* * *
"Admiral Kirkegard should be hitting Maastricht just about now, Sir," Commander Francis Tibolt, chief of staff for Task Force Eleven observed, and Admiral Chong Chin-ri nodded.
"I'm sure Wilson has the situation well in hand," the tall, dark haired admiral agreed. "Do we?"
"Unless the Manties have run substantial reinforcements into Thetis on us at the last minute wi
thout NavInt catching them at it," Tibolt replied.
"I suppose there's nothing anyone can do about that possibility," Chong agreed. "Not that a proper chief of staff wouldn't be busy reassuring me that they couldn't possibly have done that."
"Believe me, Sir. If I'd observed any signs of pre-battle jitters, I'd be reassuring the hell out of you."
"They're there," Chong told him. "I'm just better at concealing them than most."
"That's one way to put it, I guess," Tibolt said with a smile, and Chong chuckled, then glanced at the date/time display.
"Well, we'll probably be finding out whether or not they're justified in about forty minutes," he said.
* * *
"That's funny."
"What?" Lieutenant Jack Vojonovic looked up from the solitaire game on his hand comp.
"Did I miss something important on the shipping schedule?" Ensign Eldridge Beale replied, turning his head to look at his training officer.
"What are you talking about?" Vojonovic set the hand comp aside and swiveled his chair to face his own display. "We don't have anything big on the ship sched until tomorrow, Eldridge. Why? Did you—"
Vojonovic's question chopped off, and his eyes widened as he stared at the preposterous icons on his display. One or two merchantmen or transports arriving unannounced would have been almost routine. No one ever managed to get everything onto the shipping schedules, however hard they tried. But this was no singleton turning up without warning. It wasn't even a convoy, and Vojonovic felt his stomach disappearing somewhere south of the soles of his shoes as he saw what had just come over the Grendelsbane alpha wall.
He couldn't get a count yet. The point sources were too jumbled together. But he didn't need a count to know there were a hell of a lot more of whoever they were than there was of Admiral Higgins' task force.