War Of Honor

lay much closer to the system primary than the Junction itself lay to Manticore-A. Still, there was the better part of three light-hours between it and Trevor's Star itself. Even with the powerful forts which had been built to cover it, the sheer distance between the system's inhabited planet and the terminus had created an almost insuperable difficulty for Admiral Theodosia Kuzak.

Her Third Fleet could be in only one place at a time, unless she wanted to accept an extremely dangerous dispersion of its strength. In theory, the forts could deal with most attacks on the terminus itself. Actually, calling them 'forts' was something of a misnomer. To most people, the term 'fort' implied a fixed fortification, something ponderous and immobile. But while the terminus forts were certainly ponderous, they were not—quite—immobile. Instead, they might be better thought of as enormous sublight superdreadnoughts. Ships so huge that their low acceleration made them totally unsuited to mobile operations, but which remained capable of at least minimal combat maneuvers . . . and which could generate the impeller wedges which were the first line of defense for any warship.

But for all their massive size, thick armor, and potent weaponry, they—like Benjamin the Great—were an obsolescent design. Their rate of fire in a missile engagement was only a fraction of that which a Harrington —class ship could produce. If they had time to deploy missile pods before a battle, they could throw stupendous salvos as long as the pods lasted, of course. But that was another way of saying they could fire for as long as no one could get warheads close enough to take out their pods with proximity kills.

When only the Manticoran Alliance had possessed SD(P)s, no one had worried particularly about pod vulnerability. First, because no other navy in space could produce the weight of fire an SD(P) was capable of, and, second, because no other navy in space could match the range of the Alliance's multi-drive missiles. Which meant that the forts' pods would be able to wreak havoc on any attacker before that attacker could possibly get close enough to kill their remaining pods. But the navy Thomas Theisman had built did have SD(P)s. And it was just possible that those SD(P)s had multi-drive missiles of their own.

And under those circumstances, pod vulnerability became a very serious concern, indeed.

All of which helped to explain why a conscientious system commander like Theodosia Kuzak had been so unhappy about her mutually contradictory defense obligations. The official Admiralty view, that there was no evidence that the forts could no longer look after themselves against anything the Peeps might bring to bear against them, was cold comfort for the officer on the spot. Completely ignoring the potential consequences for her career if the Peeps managed to get in and destroy the forts, the sheer loss of life such attack would entail had undoubtedly been enough to give her nightmares. So it was with enormous relief that she had turned responsibility for supporting the forts over to MacDonnell's task force while she concentrated her own SD(P)s and supporting CLACs to cover San Martin and the inner system.

'If you were the Peeps, and you were planning to attack this system, My Lord,' he asked White Haven now, 'which would you concentrate on? The terminus, or San Martin? Or would you go for both simultaneously?'

'I asked myself those same questions a lot when I was trying to take the system away from the Peeps,' White Haven replied. 'The biggest problem is that the terminus and the inner system are close enough to offer each other a degree of mutual support that just isn't possible at the Manticore end. It's not the easiest thing in the galaxy for the defense to arrange, you understand, but an attacker going after one objective can never afford to forget about what can come up his backside from the other while he's doing it. That was bad enough for us when the Peeps held the system. For the Peeps, who can never be absolutely certain that a sizable chunk of Home Fleet isn't in range for an emergency transit direct from Manticore, it's even worse.'

'Granted,' MacDonnell agreed. 'But if you're going to attack this system at all, you have to pick one objective.'

'Oh, certainly!' White Haven grinned wryly. 'In my case, I chose to concentrate on their fleet, squeezing it to defend the inner system. After all, San Martin was a lot more important to them than the terminus of a wormhole junction they couldn't use anyway! And they didn't have anywhere near the terminus fortifications we've put into place since we took the system away from them. Even so, I had to be pretty cautious.'

'That's not exactly the way I heard it, My Lord,' MacDonnell told him with a smile. 'I heard that in the end you threw an assault straight through the Junction.'

'Well, yes,' the earl said with a slightly uncomfortable expression. 'It was something close to a council of despair, you understand. Esther McQueen was commanding here at the time, and she was a holy terror. Just between you and me, I've often thought that she may well have been a better tactician than I was, and she was a devilishly good strategist, as well. She'd forted up here with battleships and superdreadnoughts in a defense in depth, and however I maneuvered, she managed to stay close enough to keep me from having a free hand for either objective. So I settled in to convince her that I was prepared for what amounted to a siege of the inner system, and when I'd convinced her—or, rather, her replacement, after Pierre and Saint-Just pulled her out for Octagon duty—to redeploy to face it, well—'

'So basically, you forced the Peeps to commit to protecting one objective, then hit the other one with a surprise attack,' MacDonnell observed.

'Yes. But I had certain advantages Theisman and his people wouldn't have in attacking the system. Despite the disadvantages a fleet faces in using a junction as an avenue of attack, the element of surprise tends to offset them to a considerable degree. But Theisman won't have a friendly fleet sitting at the other end of the terminus. So he can't really threaten it from two directions at once, the way I did. That would have given Theodosia the opportunity to repeat McQueen's defensive deployments against him.

'In the end, I suspect he could probably have taken her anyway. If our more pessimistic assumptions about what he may have added to his fleet mix without mentioning it to anyone are accurate, the odds swing even further in his favor. But in answer to your question, if I were him, I'd concentrate on the inner system.'

'But as long as the Star Kingdom continues to hold the terminus, it can always reinforce or counterattack,' MacDonnell pointed out.

'That assumes it has something to counterattack with,' White Haven said in a much grimmer tone, and waved a hand at the gleaming icons of the inner system. At this range and on such a scale, all of Third Fleet's ships of the wall formed a single green bead. 'Third Fleet has almost a hundred ships of the wall in its order of battle, including forty-eight of our SD(P)s, Niall, and two SD(P)s are down for local refit. We have exactly two—count them; two—more squadrons of them with Home Fleet. We have another squadron of them assigned to Sidemore Station. We have a fourth squadron assigned to Grendelsbane. And we have, at the moment, four more of them in various stages of overhaul and working up back home but not assigned to Home Fleet. That's it, even with the dribs and drabs Janacek has managed to add to his order of battle. If Theisman could take out Third Fleet, he'd destroy around a third of our pre-pod wall and two-thirds of our total modern wall. That makes Theodosia's ships his true objective, and if he can pin them against the star, force her to defend San Martin, he has an opportunity to destroy them.

'If he pulled that off, he could deal with anything we had left with relative ease. To be perfectly honest, the only remaining counterweight the Alliance would have would be your own fleet, and Grayson would find itself facing much the same quandary the Manticore System faces. How much of your home fleet can you afford to commit to offensive operations?'

'To be honest?' MacDonnell shook his head. 'We've probably actually exceeded that limit by what we've deployed here. Not that I think it was a mistake to send us,' he added hastily. 'I think Lady Harrington and Mr. Paxton are correct in arguing that the Peeps are unlikely to make Grayson one of their priority objectives. That could change, of course, especially once word gets back to them that a sizable portion of our Navy is reinforcing here at Trevor's Star. But at the moment, they almost have to be assuming the GSN is still concentrated at Yeltsin, and they aren't going to want to provoke us until after they've dealt with your SD(P)s.'

'Exactly,' White Haven agreed, hiding any trace of the instinctive irritation he felt. It wasn't anything MacDonnell had actually said. Nor was it anything White Haven could have disagreed with, even if the Grayson had put it into so many words. But it was unutterably galling for any senior Manticoran admiral to hear a Grayson calmly assessing the RMN as only the second ranking navy of the Alliance.

Especially given the fact that, at the moment, that assessment was entirely accurate.

'Actually,' he went on, 'the best-case scenario would be for Theisman to realize that you've reinforced us here before he kicks off any attack. The realization that the GSN is prepared to reinforce us this promptly, despite any . . . difficulties you may be experiencing working with our present deplorable Prime Minister, would almost have