A Rising Thunder

than we think. They’ve certainly been given plenty of incentive to…reconsider their training standards, at least. On the other hand, Mercedes,” she looked at the older woman, “Rafe’s got a point. For someone with zero real experience, they’ve done well to hit this close to their deadline.”

Brigham looked back at her for a moment, then nodded.

“You’re probably right, Your Grace — both of you. And either way, they’re here now.”

“And pretty much where we anticipated they’d arrive, Ma’am,” another voice said.

There was more than a hint of satisfaction in Captain Jaruwalski’s observation, and Honor nodded. Not that it had taken a tactical genius to recognize the Sollies’ most probable approach vector.

She wasn’t accustomed to knowing her adversary’s actual instructions before battle was ever joined, but she wasn’t about to complain when it finally happened. Nor was she about to rely blindly on that sort of advantage, which was why she’d copied Michelle Henke’s Spindle tactics and deployed system-defense pods and most of her heavy cruisers and battlecruisers to cover Gryphon, just in case Filareta had chosen to strike that way, instead. Still, despite any insurance policies against unlikely contingencies, she’d been confident in her own mind that he would head straight for Manticore-A, as both his orders and the Solarian Navy’s fundamental strategic doctrine required.

Even so, that had left the question of which of Manticore-A’s inhabited planets he’d choose to attack. In the eleven T-months since Lester Tourville executed Operation Beatrice, Sphinx had moved out of the resonance zone, the conical volume of space between the Junction and Manticore-A in which it was virtually impossible to translate between hyper-space and normal-space. That meant the planet was no longer shielded from a direct approach, which left Honor’s home world — barely 15.3 million kilometers inside the hyper limit — very little defensive depth.

Personally, Honor would have found that very exposure a temptation to attack Manticore rather than Sphinx, on the theory that her opponent would have been forced to deploy her forces to protect the more exposed target. Given the two planets’ current positions, a good astrogator could actually have dropped a fleet back into normal- space closer to Manticore than any mobile units deployed around Sphinx. It would have been riskier in some ways, since attacking the capital planet would require a deeper penetration of the hyper limit. That would make it more difficult to withdraw into hyper if the attacker ran into an unanticipated ambush, yet the potential payoff in catching the defense out of position might well prove decisive.

But if Filareta was as much smarter than Crandal as she believed, he wasn’t about to get any deeper than he had to. He’d want to stay shallow enough to break back across the limit and escape into hyper quickly if it turned out the reports about Manticoran missile ranges were accurate, after all. No, he’d go for Sphinx, not Manticore, specifically so he could cut and run if it all went south on him.

Which she had no intention of allowing him to do.

Her eyes hardened at the thought, and she felt Nimitz stiffen on her shoulder as he shared the bleak bolt of savage determination that went through her.

Her expression never even flickered, but she made herself draw a deep mental breath and step back from the brink of that fury.

Down, girl, she told herself firmly. The object is to make these people surrender, not just massacre them. Whatever else they may be guilty of, they aren’t the ones who carried out the Yawata Strike, and you know it.

“What’s their projected vector look like, Theo?”

Her soprano was calm, almost tranquil, unshadowed by hatred or anticipation, and Lieutenant Commander Theophile Kgari, her staff astrogator, doublechecked his readouts before he replied.

“They came in about twelve light-seconds shy of the limit, Your Grace,” he said. “Call it eighteen-point-niner million kilometers to Sphinx. Current velocity relative to the planet is thirteen hundred kilometers per second, and it looks like they’re taking their acceleration easy. At the moment, they’re building delta vee at just over three-point- three KPS-squared. With those numbers, they could make a zero-zero intercept of the planet in seventy-three- point-six minutes. Turnover at thirty-three-point-six minutes, range to planet niner-point-five-seven million klicks. Velocity at turnover would be just over seven-point-niner thousand kilometers per second.”

“Thank you.”

Honor never looked away from the plot as she considered the numbers, which confirmed her own initial rough estimate. As she thought about them, however, she was acutely conscious of the brown-haired officer who stood gazing into the plot beside her with another skinsuited treecat on his shoulder. Some people might have worried that an officer of Thomas Theisman’s towering seniority would be tempted to do a little backseat driving, or at least kibitz, no matter whose flagship he was on. Yet what Honor tasted from him most clearly was something very like serenity, and she wondered if she’d ever be able to stand on someone else’s flag bridge at a moment like this without simply itching to start giving orders.

That question was only a secondary thought, however, while the majority of her attention was on the coming engagement’s geometry.

The maximum powered range from rest of the SLN’s standard shipkillers was just under 7,576,000 kilometers. From a launch speed of 7,900 KPS, that powered range would be as close to 9 million kilometers as made no difference, however. So within the next thirty-five minutes or so, Filareta would have brought anything in orbit around Sphinx into his powered missile envelope…assuming, of course, that nothing changed.

And assuming”standard shipkillers” are what he has in his tubes, she reminded herself. We still don’t know exactly what Mesa used on Rozsak at Congo, Honor. Of course, we also don’t know that this ‘Alignment’ is prepared to hand the same weapons to the Sollies, either.

Under their initial defensive planning, they would have concentrated on stopping Filareta short of the limit (and convincing him to withdraw), long before he ever got that close to the planet. She still intended to stop him before he got that close to her home world, but as for the rest of it…

“I don’t see any reason to change our minds at this stage,” she said out loud, her soprano as cold as it was calm. “We’ll go with Cannae.” She looked up from the plot at Lieutenant Commander Brantley. “Pass the preparatory signal to High Admiral Yanakov and Timberlake, Harper.”

* * *

“Signal from Flag, Ma’am.”

“And that signal would be exactly what, Vitorino?” Lieutenant Commander Jacqueline Summergate, HMS Timberlake’s commanding officer, inquired, looking up from the small tactical repeater deployed from the base of her chair.

“Sorry, Ma’am.” Ensign Vitorino Magalhaes was on the young side for the senior communications officer in any starship’s company, even that of a somewhat elderly destroyer like Timberlake, and he colored slightly. But if he was flustered, there was no sign of it in his tone, at least. “‘Execute Cannae Alpha,’ Ma’am.”

“Very well.” Summergate nodded, she’d been anticipating exactly that since the first Solarian superdreadnought made its alpha translation.

Now, now, Jackie, she reminded herself. You mean the first unidentified superdreadnought. After all, there’s no proof these are Sollies invading your home star system without benefit of any formal declaration of war. Why, they could be from Andromeda, instead!

She smiled very slightly at the thought, then glanced at Lieutenant Selena Kupperman, Timberlake’s tactical officer.

“Is your tac data updated yet, Guns?”

“Just about, Ma’am,” Kupperman replied. “The last of its coming in now.”

“Very good.” Summergate nodded. “Astro, take us out of here. We have some mail to deliver.”

* * *

So far, so good. Filareta felt his lips twitch, but he restrained the smile as he sat motionless in his command chair, watching the plot.I wonder what’s going through their minds?

“Nice job, Yvonne,” he said out loud.

“Thank you, Sir,” Admiral Yvonne Uruguay replied.

Eleventh Fleet’s alpha translation had been as neat as any Filareta had ever seen, with minimal scatter of its