War Of Honor

plot as his overstrength task group headed towards the alpha wall. He spared the visual display a brief glance, struck even now by the familiar, flickering beauty of his flagship's Warshawski sails. He could pick out the sails of at least another half-dozen of his starships, but he had other things on his mind and the maneuvering plot gave him a far more accurate idea of their positions.

He had less carrier support than some of the other attack forces set up by Operation Thunderbolt, but he shouldn't need it, either. Maastricht, according to NavInt, was picketed by a single reinforced division of pre-pod superdreadnoughts, supported by one CLAC and a battlecruiser squadron. Given the draw-down in Manticoran naval units, that was a fairly hefty picket for a single system which was far less important to the Manticoran Alliance than it was to the Republic of Haven. And by the standards of the earlier war years, it should have been able to give an excellent account of itself even against a task group as large as Kirkegard's.

But those standards no longer obtained . . . as Kirkegard was about to teach the Manties.

* * *

'Admiral Kirkegard should be hitting Maastricht just about now, Sir,' Commander Francis Tibolt, chief of staff for Task Force Eleven observed, and Admiral Chong Chin-ri nodded.

'I'm sure Wilson has the situation well in hand,' the tall, dark haired admiral agreed. 'Do we?'

'Unless the Manties have run substantial reinforcements into Thetis on us at the last minute without NavInt catching them at it,' Tibolt replied.

'I suppose there's nothing anyone can do about that possibility,' Chong agreed. 'Not that a proper chief of staff wouldn't be busy reassuring me that they couldn't possibly have done that.'

'Believe me, Sir. If I'd observed any signs of pre-battle jitters, I'd be reassuring the hell out of you.'

'They're there,' Chong told him. 'I'm just better at concealing them than most.'

'That's one way to put it, I guess,' Tibolt said with a smile, and Chong chuckled, then glanced at the date/time display.

'Well, we'll probably be finding out whether or not they're justified in about forty minutes,' he said.

* * *

'That's funny.'

'What?' Lieutenant Jack Vojonovic looked up from the solitaire game on his hand comp.

'Did I miss something important on the shipping schedule?' Ensign Eldridge Beale replied, turning his head to look at his training officer.

'What are you talking about?' Vojonovic set the hand comp aside and swiveled his chair to face his own display. 'We don't have anything big on the ship sched until tomorrow, Eldridge. Why? Did you—'

Vojonovic's question chopped off, and his eyes widened as he stared at the preposterous icons on his display. One or two merchantmen or transports arriving unannounced would have been almost routine. No one ever managed to get everything onto the shipping schedules, however hard they tried. But this was no singleton turning up without warning. It wasn't even a convoy, and Vojonovic felt his stomach disappearing somewhere south of the soles of his shoes as he saw what had just come over the Grendelsbane alpha wall.

He couldn't get a count yet. The point sources were too jumbled together. But he didn't need a count to know there were a hell of a lot more of whoever they were than there was of Admiral Higgins' task force.

That thought was still racing through his brain as his thumb came down on the big red button.

* * *

'We're gonna get reamed,' Lieutenant Stevens said flatly, watching the oncoming Peep task force on his tactical display as it swept steadily deeper into Maastricht.

'We're outnumbered, sure,' Lieutenant Commander Jeffers replied in a distinctly reproving tone. The tac officer turned his head to look at HMS Starcrest's CO.

'Sorry, Skipper,' he apologized. 'It's just—'

He gestured at the display, and Jeffers nodded grudgingly, because he knew his tac officer had a point.

'It doesn't look good,' he conceded quietly, leaning towards Stevens to keep their conversation as private as possible on the destroyer's relatively small bridge. 'But at least we've got LACs and they don't.'

'I know,' Stevens said, still apologetically. 'But Incubus' group is at least two squadrons understrength.'

'That bad?' Jeffers knew he hadn't quite managed to keep the surprise out of his voice and went on quickly. 'I mean, I knew they were short a few LACs, but two whole squadrons?'

'At least, Skipper,' Stevens told him. 'A buddy of mine is Incubus' assistant logistics officer. He says Captain Fulbright has been pestering the Admiralty for a couple of months, trying to get his group back up to strength. But—'

He shrugged, and Jeffers nodded unhappily. Maastricht had been at the back edge of nowhere as far as replacements and reinforcements were concerned for as long as Starcrest had been here. The rumor mill said the situation was tight everywhere, but Jeffers' ship wasn't 'everywhere.' She was right here, and he didn't much care what 'everywhere' else had to put up with.

'Well,' he said with perhaps a bit more confidence than he actually felt, 'Admiral Maitland's good. And if Incubus is understrength, that's still better than no LACs at all.'

'You're right,' Stevens agreed, but his eyes drifted back to the display and the oncoming icons of eight superdreadnoughts. Assuming what the sensor platforms were seeing was what was really there, Rear Admiral Sir Ronald Maitland's short superdreadnought division was outnumbered by almost three-to-one. 'I just wish we had an SD(P) or two to even things up.'

'So do I,' Jeffers admitted. 'But at least we've got the range advantage for the pods we have.'

'Which is a darned good thing,' Stevens acknowledged. His eyes were still on the display, where the diamond dust icons of Incubus' LACs were fifteen minutes from contact with the Peeps. The LACs' FTL reports accounted for the detailed accuracy of Starcrest's tactical plot, and Stevens didn't envy their crews a bit. It was bad enough for Starcrest, attached to the superdreadnoughts' screen, but at least Starcrest was the better part of thirteen million kilometers from any enemy missile launchers. The LACs weren't.

He looked at the light codes of Maitland's superdreadnoughts and his single CLAC and visualized the long, ungainly trail of missile pods towing astern of them. As Jeffers had suggested, Sir Ronald had a reputation as a canny tactician—one which in the humble opinion of Lieutenant Henry Stevens was well deserved. Unlike all too many system picket commanders, Maitland believed in hard, frequent drills and battle maneuvers, and he had kept his 'task group' at a far higher state of readiness than some of the other pickets could boast. His announced battle plan had made it obvious that he recognized the weight of metal the Peeps had sent his way, too, but he planned to fight smart to offset the discrepancy in tonnages.

According to ONI's analysts, his missiles had an enormous range advantage over anything the Peeps could have produced. Stevens tended to take those reports with a grain of salt, and it was evident to him that Sir Ronald did, too. ONI had assured them that the maximum powered range the Peeps might have managed to get their missiles up to was on the order of seven or eight million kilometers. Sir Ronald had added a twenty-five percent 'fudge factor' to the spooks' estimate just to be on the safe side, which brought their theoretical max range up to somewhere around twelve million klicks. That was well within the effective range of the RMN's multi-drive capital missiles which, in theory, had a maximum range at burnout more than five times that great. Of course, that could hardly be considered 'effective' range, since not even Manticoran fire control was going to be able to hit a powered, evading target at that distance.

But Rear Admiral Maitland wasn't going to try to accomplish anything that preposterous. He intended to allow the range to drop to thirteen million kilometers, then start pumping missiles out of the pods on tow behind all of his capital ships and cruisers. Given his range advantage, he'd elected to tow maximum loads, which reduced his acceleration to a crawl but would allow him to throw at least a half-dozen heavy salvos from outside any range at which the enemy could reply. Accuracy wouldn't be anything to write home about, but at least some of them would get through. And if he timed things properly, they would come in in conjunction with his LACs. The combined attack would put a considerable strain on the Peeps' defensive systems, which should increase the effectiveness of LACs and missiles alike.

And if it all hits the crapper anyway, Stevens thought, we'll be far enough away that at least we can break off and run for it. Which the LAC jockeys can't—not from three-quarters of the way down the kodiak