'Yes, Citizen Admiral,' the ops officer said. 'The enemy's velocity is up to just over nine thousand KPS— closure rate is... twenty-three-point-one-five-two KPS, and range is just under a hundred thirty-nine million klicks. Assuming all headings and accelerations remain constant, we'll hit a zero-range intercept in almost exactly forty-six minutes.'
'Very good.' Giscard nodded and glanced at Pritchart from the corner of one eye. At moments like this, he almost wished he had one of the other people's commissioners—the sort he wouldn't miss if
The Manties were coming hell for leather, and he didn't blame them. Even with their present high accel, his task group would be only thirteen minutes' flight from Medusa when their vectors converged. It was hardly likely that the Manties would break off at this late date, but they had to survive clear across his missile zone to get to energy range... and even with a closure rate of over sixty thousand KPS, he doubted very much that any of them would.
He grimaced at the thought, already feeling the weight of all the deaths about to occur. Yet what made him grimace was the fact that even knowing the nightmares he would face in years to come, he was eager for it. His Navy had been humiliated too many times. Too many men and women he'd known and liked—even loved—had been killed, and he was sick unto death of the handicaps under which he had taken other men and women into battle so many times. Now it was his turn, and if his execution of Esther McQueen's plan was working even half as well as the two of them had hoped, he was about to hurt the Royal Manticoran Navy as it had never been hurt. Hand it not one but an entire series of simultaneous defeats such as it had not known in its entire four-hundred-year history.
Yes, he thought coldly. Let's see how your damned morale holds up after this, you bastards.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Michel Reynaud heaved a sigh of relief as the last protesting merchant skipper moved aside before the implacable approach of Cynthia Carluchi's pinnaces. A good quarter of the waiting merchantmen had already taken themselves off into hyper, where they were undoubtedly putting as many light-seconds as possible between themselves and Basilisk. The others—less than twenty ships all told, now—remained, hovering just beyond the half light-second volume of the terminus in hopes that normalcy would be restored and they would still be able to make transit to Manticore.
Personally, Reynaud didn't think there was a chance in hell 'normalcy' would be restored to Basilisk any time soon.
He grunted at the thought and checked his plot once more. Almost exactly one hour had passed since the Peeps first turned up, and they were considerably less than nine light-minutes out from Medusa. Admiral Markham's horribly outnumbered task group was headed to intercept them, and Reynaud's stomach churned every time he thought of what would happen when they met.
Admiral Hanaby had been underway for forty-four minutes now, which put her over sixteen million klicks from the terminus, with her velocity up to 12,424 KPS. Which sounded impressive as hell, he thought bitterly, until he reflected that it meant she'd covered almost exactly one-and-a-half percent of the distance between the terminus and Basilisk. But at least the first of White Haven's destroyers should be arriving within another thirteen minutes, and—
An alarm shrilled. Michel Reynaud jerked bolt upright in his chair, and his face went paper white as the blood-bright icons of unidentified hyper footprints blossomed suddenly on his plot.
Citizen Rear Admiral Gregor Darlington swore with silent savagery as the plot stabilized. He felt his astrogator cringing behind him, and he wanted to turn around and rip the unfortunate citizen commander a brand- new rectum. It would have done the citizen admiral an enormous amount of good to vent his fury, but he couldn't. It wasn't really Citizen Commander Huff's fault, and even if it had been, Darlington would never have raked him down in front of a people's commissioner. The People's Navy had given up enough martyrs as scapegoats.
'I see we seem to have misplaced a decimal point, Gorg,' he said instead, unable to keep an edge of harshness out of his voice, however hard he tried. Then he cleared his throat. 'How bad is it?'
'We... overshot by one-point-three light-minutes, Citizen Admiral,' Citizen Commander Huff replied. 'Call it twenty-three-point-seven million klicks.'
'I see.' Darlington folded his hands behind him and rocked on his toes, digesting the information. Of course, it wasn't quite as simple as 'overshot' might be taken to imply, he thought grimly. Task Group 12.4.2 had been supposed to emerge from hyper four million klicks from the Basilisk terminus, headed directly towards it with a velocity of five thousand kilometers per second. That would have put them in missile range and firing by the time the defenders could realize they were coming. And with any luck at all, the picket force normally stationed on the terminus would have been headed in-system at max for a full hour, which would have put those ships safely out of the way and left only the two operational forts to deal with. Thirty-two million tons of fort would still have been a handful, but he had eight dreadnoughts, twelve battleships, and four battlecruisers— a better than three-to-one edge in tonnage—and he should have had the invaluable advantage of complete and total surprise, as well.
But Citizen Commander Huff had blown it. In fairness, it was expecting a great deal to ask anyone to cut a hyper translation that close, but that was exactly what he'd been trained for years to do... and the reason TG 12.4.2 had dropped back into n-space less than two light-months out to allow him to recalibrate and recalculate. And he hadn't actually missed it by all that much, had he? His error was—what? Less than two-thousandths of a percent of the total jump? But it was enough.
'Time to decelerate and return to the terminus?' the citizen rear admiral demanded after a moment.
'We'll need about twenty-one minutes at four KPS squared to decelerate to relative zero,' Huff said, watching the back of the citizen admiral's neck carefully. He saw its muscles tighten, and though there was no explosion, he decided not to mention that the battleship component could have decelerated considerably faster than that if they left the dreadnoughts behind. Citizen Admiral Darlington knew that as well as he did; if he wanted the numbers for just the battleships, he'd ask.
'After that,' the citizen commander went on, working furiously at his console as he spoke, 'we'll be just over thirty million kilometers out. A zero/zero intercept with the terminus would take us a hundred and eleven minutes from now, with turnover for the original braking maneuver at twenty-one minutes and for the intercept at sixty-six minutes from now. A least-time course would get us to range zero in... eighty-four-point-three minutes from now, but our relative velocity at intercept would be almost sixteen thousand KPS.'
'Um.' Darlington grunted and bounced on his toes once more. The Manties had seen him now; their forts were bringing up every jammer they had, including some remote platforms that seemed to be doing things the PN had never heard of before, and decoys were lighting off all over the place, as well. The entire area of the terminus was disappearing into a huge ball of electronic and gravitic fuzz that his sensors would be unable to penetrate at ranges much above four million kilometers. That was bad. On the other hand, he had a fix on the Manty dreadnoughts and battlecruisers normally assigned to watch the terminus, and they were a hell of a lot further from it than he was.
'Time for the Manty picket force to return to the terminus?' he demanded of his ops officer.
'Forty-five-point-two minutes just to kill their present in-system vector, Citizen Admiral,' the ops officer said instantly. Clearly he'd been anticipating his CO's thoughts... and had no intention of being caught out like the unfortunate Huff. 'At that point, they'll be almost two light-minutes in-system, and they'll need ninety more minutes to get back here. Assuming they begin decelerating immediately, call it a hundred and thirty-five minutes.
'Thank you.' Darlington pondered a moment longer. He didn't like closing into all that jamming. Even with his Solarian-upgraded ECM and sensors, he'd have to cross something just under a million kilometers in which they'd be able to shoot at him, but he couldn't pick out a clear target to shoot back at. At the relatively low closing velocity he could generate between now and then, it would take him almost a minute to cross that fire zone. Which wouldn't have been all that bad if he hadn't been confident those forts were going to have missile pods—lots of
