A Rising Thunder

“That’s because you’re a naturally talkative soul,” Honor replied with a chuckle she didn’t really feel. “Some people are the strong, silent type.”

Cardones snorted, and she smiled, but the smile faded as she contemplated the steadily developing situation. So far, everything was proceeding according to plan, yet that didn’t make her feel a lot better. As Cardones said, time was getting short, and she was always nervous when things appeared to be going this well. In her experience, Murphy always put in an appearance somewhere, and she’d anticipated from the outset that if he planned on showing up this time, he was most likely to do it in the next handful of minutes.

She’d spent a lot of time considering the timing for this entire operation, especially this part of it, and her thinking had been forced to allow for both Filareta’s probable acceleration and what he was most likely to do with his recon platforms.

Unlike the RMN, the SLN still adhered to the “maximum power” limit of eighty percent of power on its inertial compensators, and those compensators were a lot less efficient than her own. After considering what little she knew about Filareta, she’d decided he might well shave his impeller margin a bit closer than that and decided to assume he’d go with an eighty-five percent setting. That would have given him an accel of 3.5 KPS, but he’d come in at only 3.311, the old eighty-percent setting, and that bothered her. Not because it was going to make a lot of difference, but because he was apparently being more cautious than she’d allowed for. Under the original planning for his visit, that would have been a good thing from her perspective; given the revised objectives of Operation Cannae, she would vastly have preferred someone more reckless.

Well, up to the last little bit, at least, she reminded herself wryly.

The really tricky part of the timing, however, had focused on the recon drones, and she’d had better numbers to work with there. Without Ghost Rider’s onboard fusion plants, Solarian reconnaissance platforms had both lower acceleration rates and — compared to their Manticoran counterparts — pitiful endurance. Five thousand gravities was about the best they could turn out, and they couldn’t maintain even that power level for very long. On the other hand, Operation Raging Justice obviously contemplated a very…direct approach to its objectives. Filareta wasn’t going to need a lot of dwell time out of his reconnaissance shell, and he probably had more than enough platforms to replenish it if he really needed to, anyway.

On that basis, she’d assumed they’d come straight in at their maximum acceleration and timed her wedges’ activation accordingly. The trick had been to make sure Filareta got a really good look at what she wanted him to see before her outer LAC screen put out his advanced eyes, and she was pretty sure she’d accomplished that. Now he knew she really did have only forty superdreadnoughts under her immediate command, without any more of them hiding anywhere near at hand. Hopefully, he’d also seen the “superdreadnoughts” between Sphinx and Manticore, as well. There was no way he’d had time to get any of his platforms close enough to realize that they were only Navy supply ships with military-grade impellers and compensators, however, and she meant to keep it that way.

Her own heavily stealthed platforms were deployed to cover a sphere over ten light-minutes across, centered on HMS Imperator, and Ghost Rider’s sensors were far better than anything they’d seen examining Sandra Crandall’s surrendered hardware. She had detailed information on Filareta’s superdreadnoughts, and Ghost Rider was managing to keep pretty fair tabs on the Sollies’ platforms, as well. As a result, she knew Filareta had reacted to the destruction of his advanced drones much as she’d hoped he would. He was vectoring his more distant, surviving platforms in on Honor’s ships, trying to get them close enough to replace the ones he’d lost. In his place, she’d almost certainly have done exactly the same thing.

And, hopefully, it’s going to bite him on the butt just as hard as it would have bitten me when I did, she thought with grim amusement. Now if I can only convince him to keep on accelerating…

“Excuse me, Your Grace,” Andrea Jaruwalski said. “The forward recon platforms confirm their superdreadnoughts are deploying pods.”

“Deploying them? Or were they towing them all along and we just now noticed them?”

“Deploying, Your Grace,” Jaruwalski said firmly. “They must have had them tractored inside their wedges.”

“You were wondering if that accounted for their accel rate, Your Grace?” Brigham asked, and Honor nodded.

“It would have been one explanation. Any sign their acceleration’s dropping further now that they’ve deployed, Andrea?”

“Not so far, at least, Your Grace,” Jaruwalski responded, “and given the numbers they seem to have deployed, maintaining their current accel has to be pushing up their compensator loads by a good eight to ten percent. So I’d say the fact that they’re not reducing power is a sign they’re feeling pretty serious.”

“Point,” Brigham conceded. “The thing I’m wondering most about is what’s in the pods, though. Last time I looked, the Sollies didn’t have any missile pods.”

“You’re thinking about those Technodyne pods Terekhov ran into at Monica, Ma’am?” Jaruwalski said thoughtfully.

“Something like that. Or whatever the hell Mesa used against Rozsak at Congo.” Brigham shrugged. “Either way, I don’t think they’d bother with them unless they were stuffed with something they figure is superior to their standard tube-launched birds. I don’t like the thought that they might have a point about that, but if they are thinking that way, it’s going to have at least some impact on how willing — and eager — they are to bring it to us.”

“I think you’re exactly right,” Honor said. “And bearing that in mind, I also think it’s time we welcomed our visitors.” She looked at Brantley. “Ready, Harper?”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

“And are you ready?” Honor asked, turning to Theisman with a crooked smile.

“Oh, I believe you could say that, Your Grace,” he replied. “And I’m sure Lester is, too.”

“Then just make sure you’re out of the pickup’s field of view until the appropriate moment.”

She made shooing motions, and Nimitz bleeked in laughter as the Havenite Secretary of Defense obeyed the gesture. The ’cat’s skinsuit’ kept him from flirting his tail the way he would have under other circumstances, but his amusement was obvious, and Springs From Above (who’d been fitted with his own skinsuit) laughed back from Theisman’s shoulder.

Honor waited another moment to make sure everyone was where he or she was supposed to be, then nodded to Jaruwalski.

“Send Cantata through to Admiral Tourville, Andrea.”

* * *

“We’ve got clearance, Skipper!” Brynach Lacharn said suddenly. “Number seven in the queue!”

Hamilton Trudeau looked up in surprise at the announcement. He hadn’t really expected the Manties to let DB-17025 make transit at all, and certainly not this early in the queue. Maybe the people who’d picked the INS cover weren’t as dim as he’d thought they were.

“All right, Tommy,” he said briskly, turning to Ensign Thomasina Tsiang, the dispatch boat’s astrogator and third in command, “get us in line! The last thing we need is to miss our slot now that they’ve given us one.”

“Aye, Skipper.”

The dispatch boat was small enough for Tsiang, who enjoyed being hands-on whenever possible, to take the helm herself instead of simply passing orders to someone else, and DB-17025 accelerated smoothly, sliding out of the mass of waiting freighters and passenger liners. Trudeau suspected there were some alarmingly high blood pressures on the bridges of the ships they were leaving behind, but that was fine with him. He only wished he had some better intelligence — like any intelligence — on how the rest of Operation Raging Justice was making out.

Somehow, he felt sure, Admiral Tsang would probably wish the same thing.

* * *

“Are we sure this is a good idea, Ma’am?”

Christopher Dumbrowski tone sounded more than a bit doubtful as he watched the dispatch boat’s icon moving towards the terminus to Beowulf.