Uncompromising Honor, page 81
part #19 of Honor Harrington Series
McAvoy nodded. The intruders had been back in normal-space for almost twenty-minutes now, and the very first thing they’d done was launch their RDs. And as Dunstan-Meyers had just suggested, he couldn’t blame them, either, after what had happened at Hypatia. Or to Eleventh Fleet at Manticore, for that matter. After the number of buzzsaws the SLN had run itself into, he’d have launched a recon shell dense enough he could damned well walk to his target across it, if he’d been the Solly CO.
“Their recon birds aren’t as stealthy as ours,” Dunstan-Meyers continued, “but that’s actually helping them just now. The RDs are ‘noisy’ enough their interference is knocking back our passives’ look at their ships’ signatures, and none of our active systems can really see them at all—at least until we can get Ghost Rider into position. As I say, though, Sky Watch is pretty confident.”
McAvoy nodded again. Active sensors or no, there really wasn’t anything else the intruders could be. Their acceleration numbers were right on the eighty percent level for Solly battlecruisers, which was actually a bit high by prewar Solly standards, since they had to be towing hefty swarms of Cataphracts. Unless he wanted to suppose they’d dropped by his star system to let him blow them all out of space without bothering to bring any offensive punch with them.
“What’s the status on Mycroft?”
“Uploading the targeting queue now, Sir. Sky Watch estimates eleven minutes to complete the uploads to the master platforms and confirm receipt.”
“Good. And Cassandra Defense?”
“The block ships are spinning up their impellers now. They should be at full readiness within another five minutes.”
“Very good.” McAvoy smiled fiercely at her.
The block ships were mostly freighters—God knew Operation Lacoön had idled enough merchantmen!—deployed around priority targets, like critical industrial infrastructure and major orbital habitats, throughout the Beowulf System. Once upon a time, the defense planners would have been relatively unworried about protecting civilian habitats; recent events in places with names like Hypatia had changed that.
The ships mounted no weapons, but they stood ready to form a protective hemisphere around the targets under their protection, interposing their impeller wedges between them and the threat axes from any attackers. They’d been reduced to skeleton crews, and the handful of people still aboard them would be leaving shortly, transferring control of their ships to remote stations dirtside or on the orbital platforms they’d been tasked to protect. It was unlikely they’d be directly targeted, at least in the initial wave of any missile attack, but it was virtually certain one or more of them would eat a missile which had been aimed at the platform it was guarding. Given merchant ships’ lack of armor, active defenses, or compartmentalization, even one hit would probably be fatal, but until and unless that happened, it would shield that platform against incoming fire.
“Let me know if there’s any change or the instant those bastards launch anything towards Cassandra,” the CNO added.
“Yes, Sir.”
McAvoy nodded, then looked back at the com display connecting him to Gabriel Caddell-Markham. The director of defense—along with over half the planetary Board of Directors—was aboard Beowulf Alpha for the conference Alpha was hosting. At the moment, Admiral McAvoy would vastly have preferred for all of them—and especially Caddell-Markham—to be right here in Columbia.
“You heard, Sir?” he said.
“I did.” Caddell-Markham nodded. “We’re keeping tabs up here as well as we can, Corey, but you’re the man in the chair. You’re authorized to launch whenever seems best to you.”
“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 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 minutes until Mycroft launched, he thought, and felt a distant sort of sympathy for the thousands of Sollies who were about to die. Still, he hadn’t come looking to invade 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 it,” he snapped. “Block ship impellers to full readiness now. They may adjust position on thrusters, but their wedges 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 poor, even for Apollo.”
“It’ll 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 as he remembered another report of graser fire just suddenly appearing out of empty space. 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, just the way Manticore and its allies claimed it was? 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, Tobias Stimson, 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 with Stimson in the lead.
“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,” Caparelli 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 as 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 six 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 already positioned them on the threat axis. She’s fine-adjusting their alignment now. I only wish I had more of them!”
