Throne of Stars (102 page)

“They’ve punched their cruisers,” Kjerulf said from the com display.

“Yeah, we sort of noticed,” Captain Atilius responded dryly. If the older officer had shown any hesitation about committing himself in the first place, there was no sign of it now. He was like an old warhorse, Kjerulf thought, faintly amused even now, despite all that was happening. Corvu Atilius probably should have made admiral decades ago, but he’d always been too tactical-minded, too focused on maneuvers and tactical doctrine to play the political game properly. “Roughhewn” was a term which had been used to describe his personality entirely too often over the course of his career, but he was definitely the right man in the right place as Fatted Calf Squadron’s senior officer. He actually seemed to be looking
forward
to what was coming.

“I always knew Gajelis had shit for brains,” Atilius continued. He shook his head. “He’s going to get reamed.”

“Maybe,” Chantal Soheile said from her quadrant of the conferenced display. “But so are we. And it’s not like he’s got a lot of alternatives.” She shook her head in turn. “He’s got the edge in carriers and missile power. Basically, the only real option he’s got is to pile in on top of us and tried to bulldoze us out of the way before Prokourov can get here.”

“Sure,” Atilius agreed. “But I guarantee you he’ll be sending in his fighters configured for combat space patrol. It’s the way his head works. He just doesn’t see them as shipkillers—not the way he does cruisers. Besides,” he bared his teeth, “his guys are going to have to deal with
Gloria
, aren’t they?”

“CruFlot 140’s punched, Sir,” a sensor technician reported. “Max accel.”

“Have they, indeed?” Senior Captain Benjamin Weintraub, CO, Cruiser Flotilla One-Twenty, replied. His ships were eighteen light-seconds ahead of their carriers, and he saw no reason to waste an additional half-minute waiting for Admiral Prokorouv’s instructions. “Take us to maximum acceleration,” he said.

Captain Senior-Grade Gloria Demesne, CO HMS
Bellingham
, narrowed her hazel eyes and considered the tactical plot as she leaned back in her command chair and sipped her coffee. It was hot, strong and black, with just a pinch of salt. Black gang coffee, just the way she liked it. Which couldn’t be said for the tactical situation.

CruFlot 150—well, actually, it was component parts of four separate squadrons, but CruRon 153 was the senior squadron, Gloria was 153’s CO, “CruFlot Fatted Calf” sounded pretty fucking stupid, and they by-God had to call it
something—
faced half again its own numbers. Not good. Not good at all, but what the hell? At least help was on its way, and if they couldn’t take a joke, they shouldn’t have joined.

Imperial cruisers carried powerful beam weapons, but for the opening phase of any battle, they relied on the contents of their missile magazines, filled with hypervelocity, fission-fusion contact and standoff X-ray missiles. They fought in data-linked networks, in which each ship was capable of local or external control of the engagement “basket.” But for all their speed and firepower, their ChromSten armor was lighter than most military starships boasted and they lacked the multiply redundant systems tunnel drive ships could carry. The far larger FTL vessels were much more sluggish in maneuver, but they were undeniably powerful units, especially in defense. Although cruisers’ acceleration meant they could chase the big bruisers down, doing so was always a risky proposition. And, despite the percentage of their internal volume given over to missile stowage, cruisers had much less magazine space than their larger motherships. Nor could they match a carrier’s missile defenses, and that might be important. Because Carrier Squadron Fourteen was in the process of making a critical mistake.

Whether through simple stupidity—she’d never had thought much of Admiral Gajelis’ brains—or because they were in a hurry, the hundred and forty-four ships of Cruiser Flotilla 140 were charging straight on in at 6.2 KPS
²
.

Obviously, Gajelis wanted to get them into range for precision KEW strikes on the Palace, which meant brushing the four Fatted Calf carriers—and their cruisers—out of his way. But his more sluggish carriers were dropping further and further behind the speeding cruisers—they’d been almost eight and a half million kilometers behind when the cruisers made turnover. By the time CruFlot 140 entered effective missile range of Old Earth orbit, they’d be over
twenty-seven
and a half million kilometers back.

Of course, missile engagement envelopes were flexible. Both cruiser-sized and capital ship shipkillers could pull three thousand gravities of acceleration. The difference was that capital missiles, fired from the launchers which only ships the size of carriers mounted, could pull that acceleration for fifteen minutes, whereas cruiser missiles were good for only ten. That gave the larger missiles an effective range from rest of over twelve million kilometers before burnout, whereas a cruiser missile had an effective range before burnout of around 2,700,000 kilometers. Platform speeds at launch radically affected those ranges, however, and so did the fact that missile drives could be switched off and then on again, allowing lengthy ballistic “coasting” flight profiles to provide what were for all intents and purposes unlimited range . . . against nonevading targets. Against targets which could evade, and which also mounted the most sophisticated electronic warfare systems available,
effective
ranges were far shorter. Then there was little matter of active antimissile defenses.

Except that in this particular case, countermissiles from Gajelis’
carriers
weren’t going to be a factor. CarRon 14’s longer-ranged capital missiles could reach past its cruisers to range on Desmesne’s ships and the Fatted Calf carriers, but their
counter
missiles would be unable to intercept the fire directed at their cruisers. That meant CruFlot 140 was more vulnerable than CruFlot 150, which was stuck in relatively tight to its own carriers, since a carrier mounted twenty-seven times the countermissile tubes a cruiser did. Gajelis’ carriers and cruisers between them mounted roughly fifty-six hundred shipkiller tubes to Fatted Calf’s combined thirty-seven hundred, but Fatted Calf had the cover of almost nine thousand
counter
missile tubes to CruFlot 140’s seven thousand. And, even more importantly, no cruiser could match the targeting capability and fire control sophistication of an all-up carrier, which meant Fatted Calf’s countermissile fire was going to be far more effective on a bird-for-bird basis. Not to mention the fact that each carrier mounted almost thirty-five hundred close-in laser point defense clusters, none of which would be available to CruFlot 140.

Gajelis had obviously decided to expend his cruisers in an effort to inflict crippling damage on Fatted Calf before his carriers came into range of Demesne’s cruisers. He could “stack” shipkillers from his carriers to some extent by launching them in fairly tight waves, with preprogrammed ballistic segments of staggered lengths so that they arrived in CruFlot 140’s control basket as a single salvo. It was going to be ugly if—
when
—he did, but the capital missiles would be significantly less accurate staging through the fire control of mere cruisers. And if something nasty happened to be happening to his advanced fire control platforms, it would throw a sizable spanner into the works.

It wasn’t as if he had an enormous number of options, she reflected. For that matter, Fatted Calf didn’t have a huge number of options, either. But a lot depended on the way the two sides chose to
exercise
their options.

The details. It was always in the details.

“Emergence . . . now,” Astrogation said.

“It will take some time for us to get hard word on what’s going on in the system,” Admiral Helmut said, glancing over at Julian. They were in the Fleet CIC, watching the tactical plots and wondering if the trick was going to work.

“Sir, no response to standard tactical interrogation of the outer shell platforms,” the senior Tactical Officer reported after several minutes. “We’re getting what appears to be a priority lockout.”

“Directed specifically against us?” Helmut asked sharply.

“I can’t say for certain, Sir,” the Taco replied.

“In that case, contact Moonbase directly. Tell them who we are, and ask them to turn the lights back on for us.”

“Sir,” Marciel Poertena’s executive officer said just a bit nervously, “far be it from me to second-guess the Admiral, but do you really think he knows what he’s doing here?”

“Don’t be pocking silly,” Poertena said. “Of course he does. I t’ink.”

He looked at his display. HMS
Capodista
would never, in the wildest drug dream, be considered a
war
ship. She was a freighter. A bulk cargo carrier. The only thing remotely military about her was her propulsion, since she had to be able to keep up with the fleet elements she’d been designed to serve. Which, unfortunately, meant that her tunnel and phase drive plants were both powerful enough for the Dark Lord of the Sixth’s current brainstorm.

At the moment, she,
Ozaki
, and
Adebayo
were squawking the transponders of HMS
Trenchant
,
Kershaw
, and
Hrolf Kraki
, otherwise known as Carrier Squadron Sixty-Three. Nor were they the only service ships which had somehow inexplicably acquired the transponder codes of their betters.

“Of course he does,” Captain Poertena muttered again, touching the crucifix under his uniform tunic.

“What the hell is that?!” Admiral Ernesto La Paz demanded as a fresh rash of icons appeared in his tactical display. It was basically a rhetorical question, since there was only one thing it really could be.

“Major tunnel drive footprint astern of us!” Tactical called out at almost the same instant. “Eighteen point sources, right on the Tsukayama Limit.”

“Eighteen.” La Paz and his chief of staff looked at each other.

“It’s got to be Helmut,” the chief of staff said.

“And isn’t that just peachy,” La Paz snarled. He glowered at the display for several more seconds, then turned his head.

“Communications, dump a continuous tactical stream to all other squadrons.”

“Aye, aye, Sir.”

“Maneuvering, come twenty degrees to starboard, same plane. Astrogation, start calculating your first transit to Point Able.”

“Sir,” the Tactical Officer announced suddenly, “we have two phase drive signatures directly in front of us, range approximately four-point-five light-minutes. BattleComp reads their IFF as
Courageous
and
Damocles
. They’re accelerating towards the inner system at one-point-six-four KPS squared. Current velocity, one-three-point-three thousand KPS.”

“Ah, yes,” Helmut murmured. “That would be our friend Ernesto. But only two ships? And already up to over thirteen thousand?”

He tapped his right thumb and forefinger together in front of him, whistling softly. Then he smiled thinly at Julian.

“It would appear that the party started without us, Sergeant Julian. How irritating.”

“
Courageous
and
Damocles
are changing course, Sir,” the Taco said. “They’re coming to starboard.”

“Of course they are,” Helmut snorted. “La Paz isn’t about to fight at one-to-nine odds! And he knows damned well we can’t catch them if he just keeps running. No doubt he’d like us to try to do just that, though.”

He glanced at Julian again and snorted at the Marine’s obviously confused expression.

“I keep forgetting you don’t know your ass from your elbow where naval maneuvers are concerned, Sergeant,” he said dryly. “At least a part of what’s happening is obvious enough. The attack on the Palace must have kicked off at least six hours ahead of schedule, because
we
arrived within one minute of our projected schedule, despite our little side excursion, and to have reached that velocity, CarRon 13 must have been underway for a bit over two and a half hours. And since it would have taken over twenty minutes for movement orders from Old Earth to reach La Paz, that gives us a pretty tight lock on when the balloon must have gone up. And we, unfortunately, are still nine-point-eight hours away from Old Earth. So it would appear that the plan to divert Adoula’s squadrons away from the planet
before
the attack isn’t really likely to work.”