War Of Honor

far managed to achieve, that limited them to very short and simple messages or to the use of preplanned ones which could be transmitted in shorthand code groups. Which was the reason Sovereign of Space's CIC couldn't receive the raw sensor data directly; there simply wasn't enough bandwidth available.

Yet, she reminded herself once again.

'They're coming in for a head-on engagement,' Commander Clapp reported. 'Our lead LACs are reporting radar and lidar hits consistent with known Manty fire control systems.'

'Now that's a surprise,' Commander Doug Lampert observed ironically. As Captain Reumann's tactical officer, he really ought to have been on Sovereign's command deck, but this battle was going to be fought beyond the reach of even her broadsides. Since that was the case, Lampert had opted for a ringside seat here in CIC, with its superb instrumentation and far more detailed master plot.

'Maybe not,' Anders replied. 'But I'm still not sure this is their most logical response. They've got to realize we're sending in a wave of LACs, and they must know we wouldn't be doing it unless we figured our LACs can stand up to theirs.'

'I think it was reasonable to assume this was how they'd respond,' Foraker disagreed quietly, her eyes never leaving the plot as the crimson hostile icons swept closer and closer to the incoming green light codes of her own light attack craft. 'Of course they realize we're sending in LACs. But they've never seen the new birds in action. As far as we know, they're not even aware the Cimeterre class exists. So the only way for them to find out what they're up against is to come out and see. And when you couple that with the edge their hardware's always enjoyed, this is a perfectly reasonable thing for them to do.'

'I understand the logic, Ma'am,' her chief of staff replied in a tone of quiet stubbornness. 'I'm just uncomfortable planning our entire doctrine around that assumption.'

'With all due respect, Captain,' Clapp put in diffidently, 'we're not actually planning doctrine around this specific response. We simply anticipated it for the first few engagements.'

'Granted,' Anders acknowledged. 'But I can't help feeling that 'the first few engagements' are going to set the pattern for our doctrine. All I'm saying, Mitchell, is that we need to be aware that they're going to adjust their operational patterns as soon as they realize what we've got. Which means what we really ought to be modeling at this point is not only how we expect them to react the first time they see the Cimeterres, but also what we expect them to do to adapt to the new threat.'

'No one's disagreeing with you, Five,' Foraker intervened mildly. 'Obviously they're going to adapt, just like we've done in introducing the Cimeterres in reaction to their LACs. But the only thing worse than not allowing for adaptation on their part at all would be to project too far ahead with too little data. We believe we know more about their hardware and capabilities at the moment than they know about ours, but there are still a lot of things we're only guessing about. Without a more definite idea of what their options are, we could easily doublethink our way into a complete misestimate of the ones they'll choose.'

'I know.' Anders glowered at the plot for a moment, then puffed his cheeks, exhaled, and gave his admiral a slightly sheepish smile. 'Sorry about that,' he said. 'I guess it's the engineer in me. I know we live in the real universe, where we can't nail things down the way we would in an R&D program. Especially not when the one thing we can count on a potential enemy doing is whatever it is we didn't want him to do in the first place.' He grimaced and nodded to Clapp. 'I didn't mean to sound like I was carping, Commander. It's just—'

'Just that one of a chief of staff's jobs is to play Cassandra, especially when everyone else seems to be feeling overly optimistic,' Foraker completed for him with a smile. 'Not that you'd make a very good Greek princess, Five,' she added, and her smile turned into a grin as she contemplated the shininess of his hairless pate.

'Thanks . . . I think,' Anders replied.

'They're about to enter missile range,' Lampert put in. Sovereign of Space's tactical officer was not a student of Old Earth mythology at the best of times, and, unlike the other three, he'd never taken his eyes from the onrushing wavefronts of icons in the plot. Now his announcement pulled their attention back to it, as well.

He was right, and as Foraker's eyes sought out the tactical sidebars, she saw the icons of the Manticoran LACs double, then redouble, then redouble yet again as the combination of their hellishly effective onboard EW and even more frustrating drones and remote platforms came online.

'Right on schedule,' Clapp murmured to himself at her elbow, and she glanced at him. The commander was clearly unaware he'd spoken aloud, and Foraker hid a smile as she recognized an echo of her old self in him.

Mitchell Clapp had come to his present duties via a less than orthodox route. Unlike the majority of naval officers who aspired to senior command, he'd never even considered the shipboard engineering or tactical career tracks. His first love and lasting allegiance had been given to the Navy's small craft, and he'd made quite a name for himself as one of the relatively few homegrown officers to distinguish himself almost equally on the engineering and test pilot sides of the People's Navy's pinnace and shuttle development and upgrade programs. The job he'd done was a vital one, but it was also one which partook of very little martial glory, at least in the estimation of his fellow officers. Which was one reason a man who had accomplished so much had been a mere lieutenant when Oscar Saint-Just suffered a mischief.

'Just about . . . now,' the commander breathed, and the plot altered suddenly as a vast wave of still tinier icons separated from the green dots of the Republican LACs and sped to meet the oncoming sea of red.

Foraker felt herself holding her breath as she watched his tiny, fiery green darts slashing into the Manties' faces. No doubt any Manticoran who saw that launch would have put it down to panic. Manifestly, no Republican LAC missile seeker was going to be able to penetrate the solid wall of decoys and jammers the Manties had thrown up, much less defeat the onboard electronic warfare systems of the Manticoran LACs themselves. Counter missiles raced to meet them anyway, of course, but not in the numbers one might have expected against more capable missiles from larger combatants. Scores of the incoming birds were wiped away, but clearly the Manty missile defense officers were holding onto their limited stores of counter missiles for use against a more credible threat than Havenite LAC missiles.

After all, they knew that the hundreds of Havenite missiles racing toward them couldn't possibly hurt them.

As it happened, they were even correct about that . . . up to a point. The point which was reached as the Republican missiles reached the ends of their runs while still almost forty thousand kilometers short of the Manticoran vessels and the first echelon detonated.

They had no standoff attack range against spacecraft, because they weren't laser heads. Nor were they standard nuclear warheads in any usual sense of the word. And they didn't carry any of the sophisticated and devilishly capable electronic warfare systems the Manticorans had produced, either, because much though it galled Shannon Foraker to admit it, it would be years—probably decades—before the Republic of Haven was able to match the technical competence of the Star Kingdom of Manticore. So as Commander Clapp had suggested to her over two T-years ago, the only practical solution was to find a way around the Manties' technological advantage.

Which was precisely what the Cimeterre —class LAC and its armament were designed to do. Clapp's solution undoubtedly owed a great deal to how much time he'd spent thinking about and modeling the short-range, cluttered, high-threat environment in which pinnaces and assault shuttles routinely operated. Very few tactical officers thought in terms of that sort of combat where 'proper' spacecraft were concerned, even when the spacecraft in question were mere LACs. Pinnaces and assault shuttles, after all, were expendable. Everyone knew a certain percentage of them were going to be lost, whatever tactical doctrine they followed. Fortunately, they were cheap enough and had small enough crews compared to starships that even a relatively high degree of attrition was acceptable as long as it allowed them to accomplish their missions.

But that, Clapp had pointed out, was also the primary tactical advantage of the LAC. It was just that because it weighed in at thirty or forty thousand tons, people didn't really think of it that way. Even those who'd grasped the tactical reality intellectually hadn't done the same thing on a deep, emotional level. And so they'd continued to think in terms of standoff engagement ranges, sophisticated shipboard systems, and all the other elements which made a LAC a miniaturized version of larger, vastly more capable hyper-capable ships.

Mitchell Clapp had begun his own design process by going back to a blank piece of paper. Rather than