A Rising Thunder

“While they’re checking that,” Theisman continued, “simply allow me to say that every word Duchess Harrington’s just said is fully supported by both myself personally and my government. The Solarian League’s current lunacy is only the most recent and spectacular manifestation of its arrogant, corrupt foreign policy. The League’s blatant disregard for any interstellar law, treaty, or independent star nation which happens to get in the way of its own desires and the expansion of its OFS ‘protectorates’ has been tolerated by the rest of the galaxy for far too long. The fact that no one in the League seems bright enough to figure out how your star nation’s allowed itself to be played like a violin by an even more corrupt regime which isn’t even a League member only makes you even more dangerous to any other star nation. To all other star nations, in point of fact. As such, the Republic of Haven is fully prepared to stand with the Star Empire of Manticore and its allies against the Solarian League’s most recent unprovoked aggression.”

Theisman stopped speaking, and Filareta looked over his shoulder. Commodore Sobolowski was working frantically at his console. Then the intelligence officer’s eyes widened and he looked up at Filareta and nodded once.

The fleet admiral’s stomach muscles clenched at the confirmation that it really was Theisman. Or a damned convincing facsimile of him, anyway, although he couldn’t imagine what in the name of sanity the Havenite secretary of war was doing on a Manticoran flag bridge. And what the hell was Theisman doing with a treecat on his shoulder?

Filareta shook the questions aside. However perplexing — or vital — they might be in the greater scheme of things, they had exactly zero relevance for his present position. He turned back around to the pickup and opened his mouth, but Harrington spoke before he could.

“Before we go any further, Admiral Filareta, let me summarize the tactical situation,” she said coldly. “Your fleet is between two hostile forces, which combined have effective parity with your superdreanought strength. Our recon platforms report that you have approximately fifty-one hundred pods on tow behind your ships. Each of those pods has ten missile cells, for a total of fifty-one thousand missiles. In addition, each of your superdreadnoughts has a broadside of thirty tubes, allowing for the two you’ve taken out and replaced with Aegis fire control stations. We’re assuming the missiles in question are at least equal in capability to the ones Mesa supplied to the mercenary fleet dispatched to carry out a genocidal attack on the planet of Torch not so very long ago. Under those circumstances, I estimate that my own forces are currently inside your powered envelope.”

She paused, as if inviting comments, and Filareta fought to keep his face from sagging at the accuracy with which she’d summarized his capabilities. It just got worse and worse, he thought. She must have had her platforms practically inside his wall to get that kind of information, and his sensors had never even seen the damned things!

“My own forces have rather more pods deployed,” she said, and Daniels sucked in sharply behind Filareta.

“Sir—!”

“What?” Filareta snapped, venting some of his own tension as he wheeled to face the operations officer.

“Sir, the plot…”

Filareta looked back at the master plot and felt his blood turn to ice. She hadn’t paused to invite comments, he realized distantly; she’d paused until the light-speed transmissions from the beacons which had suddenly turned the plot into an almost solid mass of point sources could reach Philip Oppenheimer.

“Those are my missile pods, Admiral,” a soprano icicle told him. “Or some of them, to be more precise. I imagine you’re having a little difficulty getting a detailed count, so I’ll save you the effort. There are just over a quarter million of them…which represents less than ten percent of the total available to me. Moreover, every missile in those pods has a powered engagement range of better than forty million kilometers. And unlike you, we have the advantage of faster than light data transmission for fire control and electronic warfare management.”

“Which won’t do you personally a great deal of good if my admittedly inferior missiles blow you and every damned superdreadnought in company with you into plasma,” Filareta heard his own voice say harshly.

“No, it wouldn’t. But that’s not going to happen, Admiral. First of all, we’ve had the advantage of examining Sandra Crandall’s units in some detail. On the basis of that examination, we know your fire control is capable of managing salvos of no more than seventeen to eighteen thousand missiles. Each of my superdreadnoughts, on the other hand, can manage more than two hundred missiles apiece…in real-time, without transmission lags. I’ll let you do the math.”

She looked at him coolly.

“Bearing in mind that capability, do you really think we haven’t developed a defensive doctrine to deal with far heavier volumes of fire than your fleet can possibly lay down or control? I’m sure you’ve observed all of the LACs screening my forces, for example. I’m also sure you dismissed them as ‘only’ LACs. Before you do that, however, you might want to remember just how badly you’ve underestimated the rest of our hardware.”

She showed her teeth in another of those icy smiles as she let that sink in, then continued with the same, cold dispassion that was more terrifying than any rant could ever have been.

“Each of those LACs has more missile defense capability than one of your Rampart-class or War Harvest-class destroyers,” she told him. “In fact, they probably have more antimissile capability than one of your cruisers. And at this moment there are two thousand of them deployed with each of my forces. Which doesn’t even consider what our onboard defenses and EW will do to your birds.” She shook her head. “Your fire isn’t getting through my defenses, Admiral. Not enough of it to do you one bit of good.”

Filareta’s jaw tightened. He wanted, more than he’d ever wanted anything in his entire life, to believe she was lying. That it was all still an elaborate bluff. But he knew better. There was too much certitude, too much confidence in those frozen brown eyes. And her body language — for that matter, the body language of every officer and rating in her pickup’s field of view — was just as confident as her eyes.

Silence lingered for several seconds, then he drew a deep breath and squared his shoulders.

“And your point in explaining all of this to me is—?”

“For the last eight T-months, the Solarian League government — or, rather, the corrupt bureaucratic clique which dictates the Solarian League’s policies — has ignored every effort on the Star Empire’s part to divert it from a catastrophic collision,” Harrington said in that same battle steel soprano. “We’ve repeatedly sought a diplomatic resolution of the crisis provoked and sustained by the League. The unelected bureaucrats ruling the League with complete disregard for the League’s own Constitution, however, have made it clear they prefer the path of military confrontation, regardless of how many human beings — including men and women in the uniform of the Solarian League Navy — might be killed along the way. We’ve recently discovered, and have shared with the League through our ambassador in Old Chicago, evidence that strongly supports our contention that the crisis between our star nations was deliberately engineered by certain parties in the Mesa System. We also invited Permanent Senior Undersecretary Kolokoltsov and his…associates to send someone through the Junction to Manticore with the authority to order you to stand down before anyone was killed. That invitation was declined, from which we can only conclude Kolokoltsov continues to prefer war to a peaceful resolution.”

She paused once again. Her eyes narrowed, and Filareta wondered if she’d seen something in his own eyes when she mentioned Mesa.

“Since war is clearly what he prefers, and since no one in the League seems to be prepared or in a position to dispute his policies, then war it will be.” Harrington’s voice was colder than the space beyond Oppenheimer’s hull. “Which leaves you with a decision, Admiral Filareta. The Star Empire and its allies are prepared to accept your surrender and the surrender of the vessels under your command. Should you so surrender, we will guarantee your personnel proper treatment under the Deneb Accords. We will further guarantee your personnel’s repatriation to the Solarian League as soon as a reasonable and mutually satisfactory resolution of all disputes between us and the League has been concluded. Should you choose not to surrender, we will engage you, and the consequences for your fleet will be disastrous. You have five minutes to consider our terms. At the end of that time, if you have not announced your surrender, struck your wedges, and scuttled your missile pods, we will open fire.