Ashes Of Victory

Shrikes and Ferrets slashed through the heart of the inferno like demons.

But it wasn't quite all one-sided, and Scotty Tremaine swore bitterly as he watched icons blink and flash on his plot. Even some of the ships which had been unable to bring their wedges up had managed to get at least a few of their weapons on-line. They were probably in local control and feeding only from the capacitor rings, but they struck back with the defiant gallantry of despair. Here and there a graser or laser got lucky and slammed its way through a LAC's sidewall or bow-wall. One actually scored a direct up-the-kilt hit on a Ferret that had its bow-wall, and not its sternwall, on-line.

Two of Tremaine's strike died, then a third. A fourth. Three more flashed the amber of serious damage, but they were through the Peep formation and streaking away, safe from further harm while their crews fought to make emergency repairs.

The three squadrons Tremaine had diverted to the battlecruisers swarmed over their massive foes, firing savagely. The sheer fury of their headlong attack seemed to touch them with invulnerability, and two of the Peep ships blew up in spectacular boils of light as raking graser shots slammed down the throats of their wedges and directly down their long axes. But the third survived, brutally wounded, probably dying, but still in action, and her commander wrenched his broken ship around, rolling his less-damaged broadside onto his attackers as they overflew him and receded rapidly into space's immensity.

His fire ripped at them, and the sternwalls Roden and his crew had designed proved their worth as they bent and diverted the handful of shots which struck home.

But even as relief began to flash through Tremaine, the single Peep battlecruiser got off one last broadside... and a single graser struck squarely on the grav eddy Horace Harkness had spotted so long ago.

Her Majesty's Light Attack Craft Cutthroat exploded as violently as any of her victims had, spewing herself into the void like a fleeting nova, the only casualty of the three-squadron strike on the battlecruisers.

There were no survivors.

CHAPTER FORTY

'You'd better talk to him, Tom. Someone has to, and I can't risk making him suspicious of me.'

'I see.' Thomas Theisman gave his people's commissioner a long, cool look across the conference table. 'So since we can't risk making him start to feel suspicious of you, we have to go ahead and make him more suspicious of me?'

'Actually, yes.' Denis LePic smiled crookedly. He'd gotten just as little rest as Theisman since their return to the capital, but the lines in his face were less deeply grooved, and there was actually a faint gleam of genuine humor in his eyes. 'Face it, Tom. You're a regular. That means he's automatically suspicious as hell whenever you suggest something. At the same time, you're the man he picked to command Capital Fleet, and he hasn't un picked you, which suggests he distrusts you less than he does most regular officers. The fact that you've been so matter-of-fact about acknowledging that he has reasons to feel suspicious probably helps with that, and I think he actually respects you a bit for standing up to him over Graveson and MacAfee. But the main point is that the one thing we can't afford is for him to decide he has to replace me with some commissioner who'd be... less disposed to protecting your confidences, shall we say?'

'Um.' Theisman nodded, though his expression was sour. The problem was that Denis was right, and he knew it. Which meant he really had no choice but to yet again examine the backsides of the lion's teeth by poking his head down its throat.

He sighed and scrubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, once more wishing Esther McQueen and Rob Pierre were still alive so he could strangle both of them with his bare hands. What in hell's name had those two idiots thought they were doing? To kill each other off and throw the PRH's entire command structure, civilian and military alike, into chaos at a moment like this?

He lowered his hands and made himself step back from the useless rage. Not only were its objects safely beyond his reach, but it was unfair to blame them for the exact timing of the clash between their mutually homicidal ambitions. They hadn't had any way to know the Manties were about to unveil a quantum leap in interstellar warfare. And, truth to tell, the timing probably wouldn't matter in the end. If the reports from MacGregor, Mylar, Slocum, Owens, and — especially!—Barnett were accurate, nothing was going to matter, because the Fleet was screwed. And the Republic with it.

His jaw tightened . He didn't like admitting that. In fact, his belly knotted every time he contemplated the Navy's helplessness. But there was no point pretending. The new Manty missiles were able to engage from far beyond any range at which the PN could return fire. On top of that, it was obvious now that the reports about their new EW hardware from Operation Scylla had, if anything, under stated its capabilities. Worst of all, or most demoralizing, at least, it appeared every one of Esther McQueen's fears about the much derided 'super LACs' had been totally justified.

Personally, Theisman suspected that the LACs were probably the one system the People's Navy had some hope of mastering, or at least offsetting. But the preliminary reports indicated that most of the survivors had actually found the LACs more psychologically devastating than the new missiles. The fleet little craft's maneuverability, high acceleration rates, massive short-range armament, and apparent near invulnerability to defensive fire were a completely new departure. Long-range missile duels had always been part of the naval mix, and especially in the last few years as both sides deployed the updated pod technology. The PN's personnel had been given time to adjust to that fact of life, and while they might intellectually recognize the threat of the Manticoran range advantage, it hadn't come at them completely cold, as it were. The LACs had, and word of the massacre of Citizen Commodore Ryan's picket force had sent a shudder of terror through the rest of the Navy. And, Theisman admitted, the thought of LACs which could actually kill ships of the wall, no matter how bizarre the circumstances which had made it possible, was terrifying. Such tiny, relatively inexpensive craft could be built in enormous numbers, and there were those who believed the Battle of MacGregor proved traditional capital ships had been rendered obsolete overnight.

Theisman didn't think so. Ryan had been caught completely unprepared for the attack. That was hardly her fault, and Theisman was honest enough to admit that the same thing probably would have happened to him under the same circumstances. Certainly the defensive plan Alex Dimitri had ridden down in flames at Barnett had been the product of Theisman's own planning sessions, although that (fortunately, perhaps) seemed to have escaped Oscar Saint-Just's attention. But the burned hand taught best, and it was unlikely the Manties would be able to repeat MacGregor's devastating, close-in run on ships of the wall with cold nodes. Which meant they would be unable to get any more of those perfect, lethal shots against the unarmored portions of their targets' hulls, which meant, in turn, that dreadnoughts and superdreadnoughts would be as hard for them to kill in the future as they ought to have been at MacGregor. Besides, impressive as the new LACs were, enough old-fashioned light attack craft, operating purely defensively, should be able to considerably blunt their effectiveness. They couldn't possibly be as tough as the more panicky analysts suggested. Theisman was willing to concede that they obviously had something new in the way of sidewalls to go along with their EW, but it was also obvious that it had been possible to get through their defenses occasionally... and that they were no tougher than any other LAC when someone actually hit them. So if he could swamp them with old-style LACs and generate lots and lots of firing angles, he should be able to kill them. Or at least force them to operate far more circumspectly, which would be almost as good.

But nothing the Navy had was going to offset the enormous range advantage of the new Manty missiles. Or their new rate of fire. Theisman might still be in the dark about how they'd achieved such a leap forward in range, but, unlike many of his fellow officers, he'd at least realized almost instantly how they must have managed to sustain such a heavy volume of fire. Of course, he'd had the advantage of long discussions with Warner Caslet about the citizen commander's sojourn aboard Honor Harrington's armed merchant cruiser in Silesia. Caslet had long since figured out how HMS Wayfarer must have been modified to produce the weight