BuShips and BuWeaps hadn't precisely been letting grass grow under their feet, either, Honor thought grimly. Her ships mounted at least three times as many counter-missile launchers as ships of their classes had mounted before the advent of pod-based combat.
Their telemetry and control links had been increased by an even higher factor, and each of her ships had deployed additional Mark 20 electronics platforms at the ends of dedicated tractor beams. Nicknamed 'Keyhole' by the Navy, the Mark 20 wasn't a traditional tethered decoy, or even an additional sensor platform or Ghost Rider EW platform. These platforms were placed much further from the ships which had launched them, and they had only one function-to serve as fire control telemetry relays. They extended well beyond the boundaries of their motherships' impeller wedges, like an old-style wet-navy submarine's periscope, and they gave the tactical crews aboard those ships the ability to look 'down' past the blinding interference of their own outgoing counter-missiles' wedges.
To a civilian, that might have sounded like a small thing, but the implications were huge. The Keyhole platforms were massive and expensive, but they allowed a ship to control multiple counter-missiles for each dedicated shipboard fire control 'slot.' And they also allowed counter-missile launches to be much more tightly spaced, which added significant depth to the antimissile engagement envelope.
And as a final refinement, the grav-pulse com-equipped reconnaissance arrays deployed in a shell three and a half million kilometers out watched the incoming missiles' EW with eagle eyes, and their FTL data streams provided the missile defense crews aboard Honor's ships a priceless eleven-second advantage. Although the missile controllers and their AIs were still limited to light-speed telemetry links, they were able to refine and update targeting solutions with much greater speed and precision than had ever been possible before.
Shannon Foraker had been forced to rely on mass and sheer numbers, to build a wall in space using thousands of weapons whose individual accuracy was very low. Manticore had approached the problem from a different direction, relying on its technological advantages and superior technique.
The first counter-missile launch killed only a hundred and six of the incoming MDMs. The second, intercepting them less than ten seconds later killed another hundred. But the third launch, with almost twenty seconds for its controllers to react, killed three hundred.
Tom Milligan turned away from the pinnace's tiny display without a word. He returned to his seat, staring out the viewport once again, and his expression was bleak.
One hit, he thought. Surely one frigging hit wasn't too much to ask for!
But the Republic hadn't gotten it. Only forty of Beauchamp's MDMs had broken through the Manties' counter-missiles, and the point defense laser clusters-whose numbers also seemed to have been hugely increased- had blasted those threadbare survivors out of existence well short of attack range.
We knew they were improving their antimissile doctrine, but nothing I ever saw suggested that they'd improved it this much! And it's going to play hell with our system defense doctrine.
Hera's defenses had been weak, even by the existing standards of the Republican Navy. He should have had at least three times the missile pods he'd actually been able to deploy, and they ought to have been backed up by a much stronger LAC force, at a bare minimum. But given what he'd just seen, even the defensive strength he ought to have had wouldn't have stopped Harrington.
I've never failed this completely at anything before in my life, he thought bitterly. At least I didn't get all of my people killed for nothing, but just at the moment, that's pretty cold comfort.
He stared broodingly into the endless ebon infinity of space. It looked so peaceful out there, so calm. And that cold, merciless vista was infinitely preferable to what was about to happen closer to the life-giving beacon of the star called Hera.
'That's the last of them, Your Grace,' Jaruwalski said. 'They may have some additional pods squirreled away, but if they could have reached us with more of them, they would have. Anything else they throw our way will be lighter, easier to handle.'
Honor didn't respond for several seconds. She was gazing into her plot, her eyes picking out the icons of orbital factories, extraction facilities, power satellites, warehouses. By the standards of a wealthy star system like the Manticore home system, or of a major transportation node, like one of the Junction's termini, Hera's orbital and deep-space facilities might seem sparse, but they still represented decades of investment. They were where people worked, what powered over half the star system's economy. They represented literally billions of dollars of investment, and even more earning potential, all in a star nation struggling doggedly to overcome more than a century of ongoing economic disaster.
And she was here to destroy them. All of them.
'One of the platforms in planetary orbit just blew up, Ma'am,' Brigham reported. Honor looked at her, and the chief of staff pointed into the plot, indicating the icon of the platform in question.
'That one,' she said. 'According to CIC, it was one of the LAC basing platforms, so it looks like they're making good on Milligan's stand down order.'
'Yes, it does.' Honor's chocolate eyes were sad, and her fingers caressed Nimitz's silken coat while she drew strength from the bright, fierce power of his support and love, but her voice was calm, unshadowed.
'All right, Mercedes, Andrea,' she said after a moment, turning her command chair to face them. 'We came to wreck this system's space-going economy, and it would appear the way is clear. So let's be about it.'
Chapter Twenty
'What the hell are those things?' Rear Admiral Beach murmured. Behind him, he could hear the disciplined bedlam as his communications staff coordinated the evacuation of Gaston's deep-space industrial infrastructure, but his attention was focused on two of the tentatively identified Manty battlecruisers.
'They've got to be battlecruisers,' Commander Myron Randall, his chief of staff, replied.
'I know that,' Beach said, just a bit impatiently. 'But look at the tonnage estimates. According to CIC, these things mass dammed close to two million tons. That's a big dammed battlecruiser, Myron!'
'The Graysons' Courvoisier IIs mass over a million tons,' Randall pointed out.
'Which is still considerably smaller than these are.' Beach shook his head. 'I'll bet you this is the Manties' version of a pod-laying battlecruiser.'
'Wonderful,' Randall muttered.
'Well,' Beach said, glancing at the shoals of LACs which had launched themselves from the incoming CLACs, 'how much worse can it get, Myron? We've got three hundred Cimeterres, the missile pods, and four battlecruisers. I don't think the fact that they've brought along some of their newer toys is going to make a lot of difference in the long run.'
'Message from Admiral Henke, Ma'am.'
'Put it on my tertiary display,' Dame Alice Truman replied, and a moment later Michelle Henke's ebony face appeared on the tiny flatscreen by Truman's knee.
'Mike,' the vice admiral greeted her.
'Admiral,' Henke responded.
'To what do I owe the honor?'
'We've been going over the fresh data from Intruder's platforms over here, Ma'am. Have your people noticed that odd little cluster of blips they're picking up in Charlie-Two-Seven now that they've gone active?'
'Just a minute, Mike.' Truman looked up from the display, and beckoned to her chief of staff. Captain Goodrick crossed to her immediately, and she waved him forward into the field of her own com pickup. 'Would you repeat that for Wraith, Mike?'
'Have your people noticed that cluster of blips in Charlie-Two-Seven?' Henke asked, after nodding a welcome to Goodrick.
'You mean the ones just to system north of the refitting platform?' She nodded again, and he shrugged. 'We've seen them, but so far we've put them down as just orbital clutter. You know how sloppy a lot of civilian facilities are about disposing of their trash.'
'Tell me about it,' Henke said sourly. 'In this case, though, I don't think that's what it is.' Goodrick raised his eyebrows, and she grimaced. 'The arrays aren't getting very clear returns off of them. In fact, it looks to us over here as if that could be because we're not supposed to.'
'Low-signature platforms?' Truman asked.
'Definitely a possibility,' Henke agreed. 'Especially if you look at how they're distributed. Captain LaCosta's
