Torch of Freedom

tubes in each broadside.

Had any SLN observer taken a good look at one of Rozsak's 'light cruisers,' he might have observed two interesting external peculiarities. First, their weapons seemed a bit asymmetrically arranged. Although they showed the very respectable (especially for a light cruiser) broadside armament of six missile tubes, five grasers, twelve counter missile tubes, and eight point defense stations, there was a peculiar gap in the middle of each broadside—one just about large enough to have accommodated two additional missile tubes. Second, they seemed to have an awful lot of additional planar arrays stuck in some odd-looking places.

The reason for the apparent peculiarity was that the ships had been designed with eight broadside missile tubes, not six. As built, however, two tubes in each broadside had been replaced by lots and lots of additional fire control. The compartments which had been intended to mount the missile tubes had then been sealed with solid plugs of armor—armor which, in fact, was substantially heavier than that which protected her actual weaponry. The peculiar plethora of arrays dotting her flanks provided the telemetry links for all that fire control, which gave them—despite the fact that they mounted only six tubes each—enough capability to simultaneously control sixty missiles in each broadside firing arc.

Ultimately, all of that massively redundant fire control would be removed and replaced with the missile tubes of the original 'official' design. At the moment, however, they were half the key to Rozsak's entire strategy for covering the gap until the Maya Sector began to take delivery of a substantial force of Erewhon-built ships-of-the- wall of its very own.

The other half of the key was represented by the Masquerades—the ships which had received the unofficial type designation of 'arsenal ship.'

Based loosely on the Silesian-designed Starhauler 'modular' merchant ship, the Masquerade massed a shade over two million tons. The original Starhauler design had featured a downsized standard, configurable internal cargo hull, surrounded by an outer shell of 'container' spaces. The idea had been to produce a vessel which could transport individually loaded cargo modules which could be dropped off in transit without taking time for routine offloading procedures. On paper, it had offered many advantages although, in practice, it had proven less successful.

What Carlucci had done in designing the Masquerade as a similar 'modular merchant ship' for the Maya Sector was to eliminate the internal cargo hold entirely. Instead, each ship had sixteen pod bays arranged along each side, and each bay had its own power and life support connections, since part of the idea was that the ship could also be fitted with passenger-carrying pods or climate-controlled or refrigerated pods. That potential power demand also explained why a merchant ship had not one, but two fusion plants.

Commercially, the ship was a pure boondoggle, which, Rozsak had no doubt, would be painfully evident to anyone back on Old Earth who ever actually looked at it as a practical freight hauler. No one was doing that, of course, given the rationale for their construction which he and Barregos had crafted for Solarian consumption.

Militarily, the Masquerade was probably the best illustration of the principle of mounting sledgehammers in eggshells Luiz Rozsak had ever seen or imagined. In fact, it was really more of a case of mounting pile-drivers in soap bubbles, as far as he was concerned.

Each of the Masquerade's pod bays just happened to be deep enough to mount three of the Erewhonese Space Navy's standard missile pods stacked end-to-end. It was considerably wider than a single missile pod, however, and CIG had been considerate enough to design a mounting for multiple pods. The initial design accommodated six pods in three rows of two pods each, but an improved design mounting only four pods each in a true 'ring' arrangement was just entering production.

The original six-pod configuration offered a greater throw weight per 'ring,' but the pods it contained were stripped down, with very lightweight grav-drivers. They weren't quite intended as single- shot weapons, but they would require extensive refurbishing before they could be used a second time. The currently available pods also contained the Mark-17-E, not full-scale multi-drive missiles.

The four-pod version's component pods, on the other hand, were far more robust., They'd be reloadable and reusable without requiring enough additional maintenance to amount to something just short of actual rebuilding, and they'd have the independent endurance to be deployed for up to a week at a time. Even more significantly, their individually larger pods would be loaded with the Mark-19, the ESN's most recent MDM variant.

Given the fact that there were sixteen pod bays in each of a Masquerade's broadsides, each arsenal ship carried up to ninety-six pods, which, with the six-pod ring gave her a total of five hundred and seventy-six pods. That was more firepower than was carried by the vast majority of pod superdreadnoughts three times her size. Unfortunately, those missiles were all she carried. She was a merchant design, with zero armor, no integral point defense capability, no core hull, no life support redundancy, no military-grade lifepods, no integral firecontrol even for her own pods, and no integral electronic warfare capability. If a genuine warship—even a dinky little pre-Manticore LAC—ever got into weapons range of her, she (and her crew) would disappear quickly from the cosmos. Which was why she wasn't supposed to get into weapons range of anyone else. Instead, she was supposed to lie safely out of range of an opponent with no multidrive missiles, launching salvo after salvo of pods which would then be taken under control by the Marksmans, with all of those redundant telemetry links.

Eventually, her class would also be provided with specially designed 'combat pods' which would contain things like counter missile tubes, point defense stations, sidewall generators, additional life support, fire control, electronic warfare systems, and the like. Unfortunately, all the 'combat pods' in the galaxy would never turn her into a proper warship which could hope to survive even minimal damage. Even more unfortunately at the moment, none of those specially designed combat pods were yet available for the only three Masquerades of which Maya had so far taken delivery.

'As I say, we're going to be short on expendable ammunition for at least another month or so,' Rozsak continued. 'It's not the missiles themselves; it's the pod rings. Carlucci is concentrating on getting as many of them produced as quickly as possible, even at the expense of pulling people and capacity off the combat pods, and he's moved the four-pod rings—and the Mark-19s for them—up in the production cute, as well. But it's probably going to be sometime late in October before CIG actually gets any of those new goodies delivered to us at Torch. In the meantime, we're just going to have to do the best we can with the simulators, and, frankly, I expect that to be pretty damned good, given the caliber of our people.'

The praise implicit in his last sentence was even more gratifying to his subordinates because of the matter- of-fact tone in which it was delivered, and he smiled slightly as he recognized the pleasure in their expressions.

'Any other comments or questions?' he asked.

'I imagine there are probably a few more thoughts chasing around in people's heads, Sir,' Kamstra replied. 'On the other hand, as you just pointed out, Edie probably has answers for most of them already built into her ops plan. Considering which, I think we should go ahead and let her bring us all up to speed. I'm sure if there are any questions left afterward, she and Jiri will be able to dispose of them.'

'And, of course, if disposing of them should prove to be beyond their merely mortal capabilities,I will be available to dispense wisdom from on high,' Rozsak agreed benignly. This time, the response was a chorus of laughter, no mere chuckles, and he gave them all a much broader smile. Then he waved one hand in Habib's direction.

'The stage is yours, Edie.'

Chapter Forty-Two

'Do you really think there's someone here who'd be interested in hiring us?' Yana's eyes, as she inspected the interior of the bar, were as skeptical as her tone of voice. 'Talk about a dive.'

'No, I don't. DuChamps wouldn't have spent that much time with me if they were just thinking of pawning me off in a routine transaction.'

'Then why are we here?'

'A test, I figure. Dusek wants to see if I really have the credentials.'