A Rising Thunder

After all, how good did some neobarb have to be if all she was going to do was beat up on other neobarbs? That had been before the Battle of Spindle, however. Since the Battle of Spindle, he’d revised his estimate of all Manticoran officers significantly upward.

Presumably, the Republic of Haven’s technological capabilities had to at least generally match the Manties’, since the war would have been over a long time ago if they hadn’t. That had been an unpleasant conclusion, as well, especially since Filareta remembered a time when the technologically backward People’s Navy had been desperate for any scrap of Solarian tech it could get. But the critical point at the moment was that if Harrington — clearly the cream of the Manty crop — had racked up an unbroken string of victories against an opponent who could come remotely close to matching Gold Peak’s performance at Spindle, she was obviously no one to take lightly, so—

“Update!” Daniels snapped suddenly.

Filareta wheeled back around just in time to see what looked like several hundred additional impeller signatures appear in the plot. They were much smaller and weaker than the earlier ones: far too small and weak to belong to starships. But they were also at least two million kilometers closer to Eleventh Fleet and—

“LACs, Sir,” Daniels said a moment later, his tone bitter. “They must have pretty damned good stealth, too. We never got a sniff of them until they brought their wedges up, and the bastards just killed every one of my advanced platforms.”

“I see.”

Filareta understood Daniels’ anger, but as he studied the sidebars on the weaker impeller signatures, he was more concerned about the timing. Daniels was right. They had to be light attack craft, but their signatures were more powerful than any LAC impeller wedge Filareta had ever seen. And they’d killed the advancing front of Daniels’ reconnaissance shell five million kilometers short of Tango Two. They’d done it with energy weapons, too, which suggested they had an awful lot of reach for such light units. Still, recon drones were fragile. They relied far more on stealth than evasive maneuvering for survival, too, and, as Daniels said, they hadn’t had a clue the Manties were out there. Assuming the other side had picked them up early enough, there’d been plenty of time to track them and establish hard locks while they came bumbling in all fat, dumb, and happy. And if the LACs had been able to generate firing angles that avoided the platforms’ impeller wedges…

He frowned unhappily at the thought of what that said about Manty sensors and their ability to track elusive targets, but LACs were still LACs. No matter how accurate they were, they couldn’t pack in the firepower to seriously threaten a waller! And the Manties had let the platforms get close enough to do a hard count on the SDs in Tango Two before they killed them, too. Which meant he knew there weren’t any more wallers hiding out there. No admiral this side of Sandra Crandall or Josef Byng would leave his ships sitting with cold impellers if there was even a chance missiles might be flying around shortly. And no matter how good Manty stealth might be, an SD’s impellers would have burned through it at that piddling a little range.

They’re close enough I can get to them and too far from Tango One for anyone to support them.

Anticipation glowed within him, even hotter because he’d never dared to hope Harrington would present him with an opportunity like this one, and he made himself stand back and think.

Alpha or Bravo, Massimo? he asked himself. Take it slow, or run right in?

He glanced at the chrono. His original ops plan had called for him to make the decision about his final approach to the hyper limit at about this point anyway, but the Manties’ faulty dispositions lent added urgency to the choice. Under Approach Alpha, Eleventh Fleet would begin decelerating, reducing its velocity to a relative crawl by the time it hit the limit in order to minimize how long it would take to get back across the limit, if that became necessary. Under Approach Bravo, the fleet would maintain acceleration all the way in, which would get it into effective range of the planet (and any defenders) as quickly as possible but also meant he’d have to go far deeper into the system before he could kill his approach velocity and get back to the hyper limit.

The truth was that he’d seen Bravo as a desperation move, the rush of a boxer trying to get close, inside a larger opponent’s longer, heavier reach where he might be able to get in a few punches of his own. And, he admitted, given the Manties’ reported higher acceleration rates, he hadn’t really expected it to work.

But he’d caught Tango Two just sitting there. The acceleration numbers Tango One was putting up now that it had its impellers on line were fairly shocking, of course, despite earlier reports. In fact, they indicated the Manties had an advantage of almost forty percent over his own current acceleration. But Tango One was a minimum of three hours away, even so, whereas Eleventh Fleet could reach Tango Two’s current position in thirty-five minutes — and Sphinx orbit in thirty-eight. And it would take Tango Two forty-seven minutes just to match velocity with him, even assuming it began accelerating directly away from him this instant. He’d close the range to less than ten million kilometers before that happened, though…and he’d be 6.9 million kilometers inside Sphinx’s orbit when it happened.

Tango Two wasn’t going to let that happen. Not when he’d be able to take control of Sphinx’s orbitals and legitimately demand the planet’s surrender. The Manties might move away from him, fall back closer to the planet, to hold the range open as much as possible. That would be the smart move on their part, anyway, although he doubted they’d let him get any closer to it than they had to before engaging him. But maintaining his own accel would tighten the time window on them, keep them from opening the range as far before they stood and fought, and that was no minor consideration, given how poor missile accuracy had to be at such extended ranges. Indications were that Manty accuracy was going to be significantly better — at least — at long range than his own, too, so keeping Tango Two from staying any further away from him than he could (and punching his lights out with its longer-ranged missiles) struck him as a very good idea. And so did the notion of finishing Tango Two off as quickly as possible, while he was still able to engage it completely isolated from Tango One’s support!

And I can still change my mind and translate out before we hit the limit if something new enters the picture.

“Well, at least we know they know we’re here now,” he said out loud. “Get some additional recon platforms in there, Bill. In the meantime,” his nostrils flared slightly as he committed himself, “we’ll go with Approach Bravo.” He smiled thinly. “And I expect we’ll be hearing something from them shortly.”

Chapter Twenty-One

“Still no transmissions from our visitors, Harper?”

“No, Your Grace. Not yet, anyway,” Brantley replied.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, Your Grace,” Cardones, back on his own bridge, said from the dedicated display linked to Imperator’s command deck, “but aren’t these people here to demand our surrender?”

“That’s my understanding of their mission orders, yes, Captain Cardones,” she replied, almond eyes still gazing thoughtfully at the master plot.

“Then don’t you think they ought to be, well, demanding it?”

“I’m sure they’ll get around to it when they think the time is right, Rafe,” she said soothingly. “Don’t forget, as far as we’re aware, none of them have a clue we even knew they were coming.” She shrugged slightly. “They may figure on letting panic soften us up before they announce their surrender terms.”

“Maybe, but we just killed a bunch of recon platforms, Your Grace,” Cardones pointed out. “And not even a Solly could’ve missed seeing our wedges come up. I’d think that would be a pretty good indication we’re not feeling especially hospitable, and they’re only six minutes from the limit. If I were them and I intended to do any talking at all, I’d be thinking about opening the conversation sometime real soon now.”