A Rising Thunder

“The choice is yours. Alexander-Harrington, clear.”

The tall, implacable image disappeared from Filareta’s com, and he turned to face his staff.

Every one of them looked as stunned as he felt.

“Well, John?” He gave Burrows a smile he suspected looked as ghastly as it felt. “Do you think she’s bluffing?”

From his expression, Burrows wanted desperately to say exactly that. Instead, he shook his head.

“No, Sir,” he said flatly. “She set all of this up too well. She knows too much about our ops plan, and she’s showing us too much tactical detail. Worse, she’s showing us way too much about their capabilities — things like their platforms’ stealth and sensor reach, the number of pods she’s got deployed, those LAC carriers or whatever the hell they are the Havenites must have.” He shook his head again. “She wants us to know what she has, wants us to know exactly what she can do to us, and she wouldn’t be giving us that good a look if she wasn’t just as confident as she sounds. She may be exaggerating her antimissile capabilities, but I don’t think so. And even if she is, it won’t make any difference to us once the wreckage cools.”

“And I went charging straight over the limit so we can’t even try to run, instead.” Filareta heard the bitterness in his own voice.

“It’s what our orders specified, Sir,” Burrows replied with a shrug. “Whoever thought this operation up was obviously operating on the basis of a few…flawed assumptions. Now we’ve been handed the shit-end of the stick.”

Filareta nodded slowly, yet unlike Burrows, he very much doubted that “whoever” had truly come up with this operation had been operating on “flawed assumptions.” No. Harrington had it right; Mesa was ultimately behind it all. He couldn’t imagine why, or what Mesa hoped to accomplish, but it didn’t matter, either. There were over four hundred superdreadnoughts on his plot, and if they were even half as capable as Harrington had described, they were more than enough to cut through every active unit of Battle Fleet like a laser through ice cubes. Which didn’t even consider what would happen to him personally, or to the almost three million men and women aboard Eleventh Fleet’s starships, because they wouldn’t even work up a light sweat dealing with his command.

“Bill?” He looked at Daniels.

“Sir,” the operations officer’s expression was desperately unhappy, “I think she’s telling the truth — about her capabilities, anyway. And if she is, we’re…Well, John’s right, Sir. If she pulls the trigger, we’re toast. We may be able to hurt them more than she’s suggesting, but there’s no way we survive.”

* * *

“What do you think he’s going to decide, Tom?” Honor asked quietly.

“Given the options, he’s going to strike his wedges and blow those pods, unless he’s a complete and total idiot,” Theisman replied succinctly. “Of course, he may be a complete and total idiot, but I think you made our position eloquently clear. For that matter,” he smiled slightly, “I doubt my own modest contribution hurt.”

“No, I don’t think it did,” she agreed, right cheek dimpling with a sudden, much broader smile of her own.

“You do realize you weren’t exactly truthful with the poor shmuck, Your Grace,” Rafe Cardones pointed out from his com screen, and she cocked an eyebrow at him. “You didn’t fall all over yourself giving him accurate info on our capabilities,” her flag captain expanded, and she shrugged.

“I disagree with your assessment, Rafe. I didn’t tell him we could do a single thing we can’t do, I just…understated the numbers a bit. Sooner or later, at least some of these people will be going home again — at least I darned well hope they will! — and I don’t see any reason to give away all our little secrets before they do. Hopefully, we’re finally going to put the brakes on this thing today. If we don’t, though, I want to keep the Sollies guessing about the actual ceiling on our abilities for as long as I can.”

“I agree completely.” Theisman nodded firmly. “Keeping at least some of your capabilities in reserve as long as possible is always a good idea. Besides,” he snorted dryly, “they might not have believed you if you’d told them how good your tech—our tech — really is! He might’ve decided you were lying and running a bluff after all.”

“I’m with Admiral Theisman, Your Grace,” Mercedes Brigham offered. “Besides, you didn’t need to tell the bastards everything. What you did tell them was plenty bad enough from their perspective, and while I’ll agree you were both pretty eloquent, I think the tactical situation’s even more persuasive.” She shook her head. “I’ve never seen a fleet in a worse hole than this one, even in a simulation, and”—she glanced at Theisman for a moment—“that’s saying something, after some of the scrapes we’ve been in.” She shook her head again. “Surrender’s the only option you’ve left him.”

“That was the general idea, Mercedes,” Honor said softly, her eyes on the crimson icons of Eleventh Fleet.

* * *

Massimo Filareta took one last look at the horrific array of firepower which had closed its battle steel jaws on his command. He remembered the shock with which the SLN had responded to the surrender of Josef Byng’s task force. The even greater shock — and disbelief — of what had happened to Sandra Crandall. The impact of this was going to dwarf all of those other shocks, all of that other disbelief.

And there wasn’t one damned thing he could do about it.

Well, actually, there is, he told himself. I can at least put one right in those Mesan bastards’ eye and refuse to be an even more disastrous Crandall for them.

“Very well.” His voice sounded flat, defeated and broken, even to him. “Strike our wedges and send the pod self-destruct command, Bill.”

“Yes, Sir,” Daniels said.

“I suppose you should go ahead and get Harrington back, Reuben,” Filareta continued, turning to the communications officer. “She’ll want—”

Admiral William Daniels reached for his console to transmit the orders Admiral Filareta had given him. He was still in a state of shock, of disbelief, yet what he felt most strongly was relief. Relief that Filareta had been willing to recognize reality. Relief that Eleventh Fleet wasn’t going to be destroyed after all.

Relief that abruptly vanished as he saw his own hand flip up a plastic shield and hit the button under it.

Filareta stiffened in horrified disbelief as fifty-one hundred pods launched fifty-one thousand missiles in a single enormous salvo.

“What the fuck d’you think you’re do—?!”

The fleet admiral never completed the question. Before he could, William Daniels’ hand, still under someone — or something—else’s command kept right on moving. The operations officer fought desperately to stop it, but it moved smoothly, efficiently, punching in a numerical command code he’d never learned or even seen before.

The command that detonated the bomb a petty officer named Harder had installed in his console and killed every man and woman on SLNS Philip Oppenheimer’s flag bridge.

* * *

“Missile launch!” Andrea Jaruwalski barked. “Multiple missile launches! Fifty thousand-plus, incoming!”

Honor Alexander-Harrington’s breath stopped. For just an instant, she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Couldn’t believe anyone, even a Solly, could be that insane. That arrogant. That willing to see his men and women slaughtered.

But someone obviously could.

She looked at that incoming tide of destruction for perhaps another two seconds. Then she drew a deep breath.

“Engage the enemy,” her soprano voice said evenly. “Fire Plan Thermopylae.”