restraint where their targeting's concerned. This one is for all the marbles. They've got thirty squadrons of SD(P)s- the equivalent of forty of our squadrons, with over a million people aboard them-coming at us, right into the heart of our defenses. That means they're ready for massive losses. I don't think we can expect them to take that kind of punishment without handing out whatever they can in return, and even if they never intentionally fire a single shot at the planet, think about how damned inaccurate end-of-run MDMs are. I can't let hundreds of those things go flying around this close to Sphinx.'
'I know.' Caparelli closed his eyes for a moment, then inhaled deeply and opened them once more.
'I've ordered the Case Zulu message transmitted to all commands,' he said, his voice more clipped, his dread of what was to come cloaked in reflex professionalism. 'Theodosia can start responding from Trevor's Star in about fifteen minutes, but most of Eighth Fleet is off the terminus, on maneuvers. I don't know how quickly it can get back there, but I'm guessing it'll take at least a couple of hours just for Duchess Harrington to get to the terminus. I'm recalling Jessup Blaine's squadrons from the Lynx Terminus, as well, but our best estimate on his current response time is even longer than Eighth Fleet's.'
'And even Theodosia can't do it in a mass transit,' D'Orville said grimly. 'She's going to have to do it one ship at a time, the same way Hamish did it when the bastards hit Basilisk, because we're going to need everything she's got.'
Kuzak could have put almost thirty superdreadnoughts through the Junction in a single mass transit, but the destabilizing effect would have locked down the Trevor's Star-Manticore route for almost seventeen hours. Even in a sequenced transit, each ship of the wall would close the route for almost two minutes before the next in the queue could use it.
'You're right,' Caparelli agreed. 'Allowing for her screening units, she's going to need almost two hours just to make transit.'
'By which time these people will be about an hour out from Sphinx, and she can't possibly catch them,' D'Orville said.
'We're scrambling every LAC we've got,' Caparelli said. 'We should be able to get five or six thousand of them to you by the time you engage.'
'That will help-a lot,' D'Orville said. 'But they've got sixteen carriers with them. That gives them over three thousand of their own.'
'I know.' Caparelli looked out of the display, his eyes and face grim. 'All you can do is the best you can do, Sebastian. We'll do whatever we can to support you, but it isn't going to be much.'
'Who would have thought they'd throw something this size at us?' D'Orville asked almost whimsically.
'Nobody on the Strategy Board, that's for sure.' Caparelli's voice was briefly saw-edged with bitter self- reproach, as if there were some way he could have kept this nightmare from coming. Then he got control of it again. 'Actually, I suspect Harrington's the only one who would have believed they might throw the dice this way. And I honestly don't think even she would have expected them to.'
'Well, they're here now, and my nodes are coming up. It looks like we're going to be pretty busy in a little while, Tom. Clear.'
'Your Grace!'
Honor stepped back from her sparring match with Clifford McGraw and looked up in astonishment as one of Major Lorenzetti's Marines came skidding through the gymnasium hatch. Spencer Hawke and Joshua Atkins wheeled towards the sudden, unexpected arrival, hands flashing to their pulsers, and she spat out her mouth protector and threw up her own hand.
'No threat!' she snapped.
Hawke continued his draw, but his pulser stayed pointed at the deck. He didn't even look at her; his attention was locked on the Marine, who, Honor knew, didn't begin to realize how close he'd just come to being shot. In fact, probably the only thing that had saved him was her armsmen's faith in her and Nimitz's ability to sense what was going on inside someone else.
But not even that faith was going to get Hawke's sidearm back into its holster until he knew positively what was happening.
At the moment, however, that was a completely secondary concern for Honor beside the consternation and turmoil boiling inside the Marine.
'Yes, Corporal... Thackston?' she said, reading the Marine's name off of his nameplate and deliberately pitching her voice into the most soothing register she could. 'What is it?'
'Your Grace-' Thackston stopped and shook himself. 'Beg pardon, Your Grace,' he said after a moment, his voice under tight control. 'Captain Cardones' compliments,' he touched the communicator at his belt as if to physically indicate where Cardones' message had come from, 'and we've just received a Case Zulu from the Admiralty.'
Honor jerked fully upright. She couldn't have heard him correctly! But even as she told herself that, her memory flashed back to another day, aboard another ship. The last time someone had transmitted the code phrase 'Case Zulu.' In the Royal Manticoran Navy, those two words had only one meaning: 'invasion imminent.'
'Thank you, Corporal,' she said, her voice crisp yet calm enough the Marine looked at her in something very like disbelief. She nodded to him, then wheeled to Hawke and Atkins while Nimitz came bounding across the gym towards her.
'Spencer, get on the com. Find Commodore Brigham. Tell her we're in the gymnasium, and that I'll see the staff on Flag Bridge in five minutes.'
'Yes, My Lady!' Hawke reholstered his pulser with one hand and reached for his communicator with the other, and Honor opened her arms as Nimitz leapt into them, then turned to Atkins.
'Joshua, com Mac. Tell him I'll need my skinsuit and Nimitz's on Flag Bridge as soon as possible.'
'Yes, My Lady!'
'Clifford,' she said over her shoulder to her third armsman as she started for the hatch, 'just grab your gunbelt. You can worry about the rest of your uniform later.'
'Yes, My Lady!'
Sergeant McGraw snatched up his weapons belt and buckled it over his own gi.
Fifteen seconds after Corporal Barnaby Thackston, RMMC, had delivered Rafe Cardones' message, Admiral Lady Dame Honor Alexander-Harrington was headed purposefully for the lifts with her armsmen jog trotting to match her long-legged strides.
'It seems they've made up their minds, Sir,' Commander Frazier Adamson observed, watching the icons of the Manticoran Home Fleet.
'It's not as if we've left them a lot of options,' Lester Tourville said without looking at his operations officer.
Adamson was a competent tactician, an efficient organizer, and a loyal subordinate. He was also a pretty fair pinochle player, and Tourville liked him quite a lot, under normal circumstances. But outside his area of professional interest, the commander had about as much imagination as a wooden post. It wasn't that he was a shallow person, or insensitive in his personal relationships. It was simply that it would never have occurred to him to put himself inside the minds and emotions of the people aboard the ships accelerating away from Sphinx to meet Second Fleet.
At the moment, Lester Tourville, who was cursed with entirely too much imagination, bitterly envied that inner blind spot.
'They can't feel confident we won't bombard the planetary orbitals-or even the planet itself-from long range,' he continued. 'So they're going to come to meet us, at least try to thin us down to something the fixed defenses can handle before we hit them.'
'Yes, Sir,' Adamson said. 'That's what I meant.'
He seemed surprised by his admiral's restatement of the obvious, and Tourville made himself smile.
'I know it was, Frazier. I know it was.'
He patted the ops officer on the shoulder and walked a couple of paces closer to the main tactical display. He stood gazing into it until he sensed a human presence at his side and looked down to see Captain DeLaney standing there.
'Frazier means well, Boss,' his shorter chief of staff said quietly.
'I know he does.' Tourville smiled again, more naturally, but it was a sad smile, all the same. One only those he knew and trusted were ever allowed to see, since it accorded so poorly with his 'cowboy' persona.
'It's just that he only sees them as targets,' Tourville continued, equally quietly. 'Right now, I wish I did, too.
