Unlike the High Ridge Government's abysmal intelligence failure (in more than one sense of the word) during the run-up to Operation Thunderbolt, no one had ignored any warning signs. Perimeter Security and Home Fleet had maintained their unceasing watch for any threat, despite the negotiations with Haven. Neither Admiral Givens' ONI nor any other of the Star Empire's intelligence services had misinterpreted, disregarded, or even overlooked a single scrap of relevant evidence that was hidden in their files. True, none of the analysts involved had been looking in the right direction, but they were scarcely alone in that, since no one outside the innermost core of the Mesan Alignment even knew the Mesan Alignment Navy existed. So it wasn't surprising Manticoran intelligence's attention had been focused elsewhere, given all the other 'distractions' the Alignment had arranged to keep the Star Empire occupied.
But because no one had been aware of the Alignment's existence, or had even a clue as to its ultimate objectives, no one had ever heard of something called the spider drive, either. Or suspected for a single moment that it might actually be not only possible but practical to launch something like Oyster Bay without its intended victims' elaborate, exquisitely sensitive, carefully maintained early warning systems detecting the attack with plenty of time to prepare for it.
Indeed, it might have been argued, although with debatable justice, that if there was a failure on the Manticorans' part, it was one of hubris. After all, the Royal Manticoran Navy had just been given overwhelming proof of its technological superiority to the vaunted SLN. Coupled with Manticore's persistent ability to stay ahead of Havenite R&D efforts, there was a certain confidence in the prowess of the RMN's hardware. To their credit, the Admiralty's strategists had conscientiously maintained their awareness that—as Thomas Theisman had demonstrated in Operation Thunderbolt—any technological advantage was transitory. Despite that, however, they were convinced that right now, at this particular moment, their overall advantage was overwhelming. And so, in most respects, it was.
The ships which had mounted Oyster Bay, however, represented a radical departure from anything the galaxy had previously seen which was just as impressive, in its own way, as anything Manticore had accomplished. They weren't a particularly graceful departure, of course. In fact, compared to any impeller- drive ship, they were squat, stumpy, and downright peculiar looking because, unlike the gravitic drives everyone else used, the spider generated no impeller wedge. Instead of using two inclined planes of focused gravity to create bands of stressed space around the pocket of normal-space which surrounded a ship, the spider used literally dozens of nodes to project spurs or spikes of intensely focused gravity. For all intents and purposes, each of those spurs was almost like generating a tractor or a presser beam, except that no one in his right mind had ever imagined tractors or pressers that powerful. In fact, at a sufficiently short range, they would have made quite serviceable energy weapons, because these focused, directional beams were powerful enough to create their own tiny foci—effectively, holes in the 'real' universe—in which space itself was so highly stressed that the beams punched clear through to the alpha wall, the interface between normal-space and hyper-space.
No single beam would have been of any particular use. Powerful as it might be, it was less than a shadow compared to the output of even a single one of any starship's beta nodes, far less an alpha node. It wasn't even enough to produce the 'ripple' along the hyper-space wall which Manticore used for its FTL communications technology. But it did lock onto the wall, and that provided the ship which mounted it a purchase point in deep space—one which was always available, anywhere, in any direction. And when dozens of those beams were combined, reaching out, locking onto the alpha wall and pulling in micro-spaced bursts, they produced something that was very useful, indeed.
The maximum acceleration the new technology could theoretically have attained was vastly lower than the acceleration theoretically attainable under impeller drive. After all, in theory an impeller wedge could be accelerated instantaneously to the speed of light. There were, however, a few shortcomings to that sort of acceleration, which was why theoretical acceleration rates had always been of far less interest to practical ship designers than the maximum rates which could be compensated for with sufficient efficiency to allow mere humans to survive without being turned into extremely thin layers of paste on the bulkheads.
And in that respect, even the spider drive's lower theoretical maximum acceleration presented a definite challenge, given the fact that it produced no impeller wedge. Without a wedge, it also produced no convenient 'sump' for an inertial compensator, and that meant the maximum survivable normal-space acceleration for a spider drive-equipped ship was limited by the ability of currently available grav plate technology to offset the consequences of acceleration. Unfortunately, grav plates were far less capable in that respect than inertial compensators, which had an inevitable effect on the maximum accleration a spider-drive ship could attain. It also meant that unlike impeller-drive vessels, a spider-drive ship's decks had to be aligned perpendicular to its axis of movement rather than parallel, which was a large part of what produced its shorter, 'squatter' hull form, not to mention requiring some significant rethinks about the way spacecraft designers had been arranging ship interiors literally for centuries.
Although the Alignment's physicists had been inspired to push grav plate technology harder than anyone else, there were still limits. Up to an actual acceleration of one hundred and fifty gravities, it could achieve an efficiency of over ninety-nine percent, producing a 'felt' acceleration of only one gravity. Above that level, however, the plates' efficiency fell off dramatically. The physical plant itself grew larger and more massive on a steeply climbing curve, which cut into internal volume, and even then, each additional gravity of actual acceleration produced a 'felt' increase of approximately .05 g . That didn't sound too terrible, but what it meant was that fifty additional gravities produced an apparent increase of two and a half gravities, which raised the ship's internal gravity to 3.5 g , at which point the crew's ability to move about and perform even routine duties began to become . . . impaired. And it also meant that grav plates powerful enough to produce that effect required almost twice the volume required to produce the 150:1 ratio.
After considering the situation carefully, the architects had designed and stressed the ship structures and control stations to permit effective maneuvering and combat at up to four gravities, but combat efficiency began to decline noticeably at that rate of acceleration due to the physiological limitations of the crew. Moreover, that still equated to an actual acceleration of only two hundred and ten gravities, which was pathetic by the standards of any impeller-drive warship. Actual acceleration could be pushed—in emergencies, and briefly, at least—to almost three hundred and ten gravities, but that produced a 'felt' gravity of 9 g . Crew acceleration couches were provided for just that contingency, yet three hundred and ten gravities was still barely half of the acceleration which the RMN's biggest superdreadnought could currently attain, and even with the best acceleration couches in the universe, no one could stand nine gravities for long. Worse, smaller spider-drive ships had no acceleration advantage over larger ones. And the need to stabilize the ship relative to the hyper wall required at least three sets of 'spider legs,' which led directly to the 'triple skeg' hull form which had been adopted. Which, in turn, meant that instead of two broadsides, a spider-drive ship had three . . . none of which could be protected by the impenetrable barrier of an impeller wedge. That meant both that areas no impeller-drive ship had to armor did require massive armor protection aboard a spider-drive warship and that there was no wedge floor and roof for a side wall to stitch together. And just to make matters even more interesting, the spider drive could not be used through a spherical sidewall like the ones fortresses generated.
All of that was true,and all of it constituted indisputably significant disadvantages. But the spider also had one overwhelming ad vantage: it was effectively undetectable by any sensor system deployed by any navy (including the MAN itself) at any range much beyond a single light- second. Even for the MAN, it was damnably hard to detect; for someone who didn't even know what to look for, the task was about as close to outright impossible as challenges came. For all intents and purposes, a spider-drive ship's drive field was invisible, and it was actually the drive signature of a ship for which virtually all long-range passive sensors searched.
Which explained how Admiral Frederick Topolev's and Rear Admiral Lydia Papnikitas' strike forces had been able to deploy their missile pods without anyone's ever noticing they were there. And it also explained how Commodore Karol Шstby's and Commodore Milena Omelchenko's scouting forces had been able to prowl undetected about both components of the Manticore Binary System for over two months, while Commodore Roderick Sung's scouts and Admiral Jennifer Colenso's strike ships had done exactly the same things at Yeltsin's Star.
And no one knew a thing about it or even suspected what was about to happen.
