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HMS Prince Adrian

In Hyper

August 7, 1906 PD


brandy tipped back in her chair in her tiny cabin, nursing her coffee cup in both hands, and tried not to yawn while she waited. It wasn’t that she was bored. In fact, “bored” was the last thing in the universe she was just now! It was just that it was the middle of the night for her, and her internal clock insisted she should be sound asleep. As Prince Adrian’s assistant engineer, she got the mid-watch, while Commander Yaytsev, as befitted his lordly seniority, got first watch and Lieutenant (JG) O’Brien got third watch . . . as befitted his lowly lack of seniority.

Brandy chuckled at the thought as she sipped more coffee and watched her display’s bland wallpaper. At least Captain McKeon had authorized electronic attendance from quarters, if they weren’t on watch. That helped a lot. And—

A musical tone chimed, the wallpaper on her display disappeared, and her screen was suddenly subdivided into four windows. One of them, larger than any of the other three, were occupied by the captain and Lieutenant Commander Chen. Chen was very much on the young side for a heavy cruiser’s tactical officer. In fact, he was three or four T-years younger than Brandy. But he was also very good at his job, and Captain McKeon’s status as CruDiv 33.2’s senior-officer-in-command made him the de facto tac officer for the entire division. The captains and TOs of the division’s other three ships occupied the display’s other windows, but Brandy knew every other officer of the division was auditing, just as she was.

“Good morning, people,” Captain McKeon said. “Captain Hunter has informed Admiral Nijenkamp that the entire fleet will carry out a simulated exercise of our plan of attack beginning at oh-nine-hundred tomorrow. The Admiral and Captain Bernardo have briefed all of the division COs on the ops plan, and Commander Chen will download the detailed file on our own part in the operation at the end of this conference. Before he does so, however, he’ll present a general brief of the operational plan so that all of us are on the same page both for the simulation and when we actually go in.”

Brandy nodded in approval. The RMN tradition was that ships’ companies were kept informed. No one was going to compromise security by blabbing away, but the Navy assumed that a ship’s company who knew what was going on, knew what was expected of them, were better prepared and motivated. Besides, they deserved to know what was at stake when they were committed to action, and good captains made certain they did. She’d been aboard Prince Adrian less than eight T-weeks, but she’d already decided that despite the fact that he had yet to make list, Captain McKeon wasn’t one of the “good” captains. He was one of the great captains. She’d had plenty of good, even excellent, superiors in her career; none of them had been better than McKeon.

She suspected Earl White Haven felt the same, given McKeon’s status as CruDiv 33.2’s SOIC. It was true that all of the division’s other skippers were also captains (JG), and that he was senior to all of them, but most flag officers would have thought long and hard before leaving someone yet to make list in tactical command of four of the Royal Navy’s heavy cruisers. And if White Haven—or, for that matter, Sir Cyrus Nijenkamp, CruRon 33’s CO—had possessed any doubts at all about Alistair McKeon, it would have been easy enough to swap Prince Adrian over to CruDiv 33.1 and replace her with a ship like Captain (SG) Dehnert’s Bellator. That would have been no more than a routine housekeeping decision, under the circumstances, so Nijenkamp and White Haven obviously felt CruRon 33’s “house” was just fine the way it was.

“Before Brian begins,” McKeon continued, “let me say a few words about the situation as Fleet command sees it.

“Commander O’Hanlon’s put together an analysis of everything ONI knows about our target, and—with the proviso that we can’t know for sure till we get there—it all sounds pretty solid to me.”

Brandy nodded. She’d known Commander Abdur Raheem O’Hanlon, Sixth Fleet’s intelligence officer, since her Saganami Island days. He’d been two years ahead of her, and he’d mentored her in multidimensional math. He was undoubtedly one of the smartest people she’d ever met, and she hadn’t been at all surprised when White Haven, who had an undeniable eye for talent, nabbed him for his staff.

“The one good thing about the delay in voting out the declaration,” McKeon went on, “is that the Peeps have to have settled back onto their heels a bit in this region. There’s been a lot of bickering back and forth around Grendelsbane, and we’ve pushed as aggressively as we could with our light forces to interdict their logistics, but we haven’t hit them with a real offensive anywhere since Riposte Gamma wound down back in April. Specifically, they haven’t seen squat out of us out this way, aside from a handful of long-range recon flybys and perimeter probes since January.”

His expression made his opinion of that inactivity abundantly clear, Brandy thought.

“So the odds say we’ll almost certainly have strategic surprise when we hit Samson. That surprise won’t last all that long after we hit Samson, of course, and the truth is that Samson isn’t what anyone would call a vital strategic objective. So I suspect some of you are wondering why the hell we’re hitting it in the first place.

“Well, we’re hitting it because it’s one of the perimeter bases for the Peeps’ defensive zone around Trevor’s Star. Samson isn’t officially part of the People’s Republic, but the Samson System Republic’s accepted ‘associated’ status. It didn’t have much choice, after Haven overran Trevor’s Star twenty-odd T-years ago, but it’s still nominally independent. So while that means we have to be careful about hitting any innocent bystanders, it also means this is a liberation operation of sorts. We’re not planning on hanging around, but it’s not too unlikely they’ll just leave President Turner and the Republic in peace afterward, because by the time we leave, there won’t be any basing facilities to draw them back, either.”

He bared his teeth in something too hungry to call a smile, and Brandy nodded soberly.

“It’s possible we may be looking for basing facilities of our own here in the not-too-distant future, but for right now this is basically a hit-and-run sort of operation. A case of denying the Peeps operational depth and forcing them to reinforce their satellite bases if they don’t want more of them punched out. Eventually, we’ll have to stop bobbing and weaving around the perimeter and go after Trevor’s Star itself, of course, and that’s going to be messy.”

His expression turned somber, and Brandy heard what he wasn’t saying. It was going to be a lot messier than it had to have been, thanks to the delay imposed by the Opposition’s delay of the declaration.

“Most importantly, though,” McKeon continued after a moment, “this is the first true offensive since war was formally declared. The gloves are all the way off now. That makes us the opening shot in the real contest, people, and as Admiral White Haven and Captain Hunter put it in their briefing to Sir Cyrus and Captain Bernardo, it’s up to us to begin the way we intend to continue. The Peeps got badly hurt in the opening phase, and we hurt them even worse in the course of Riposte Gamma, but now they’ve had months to get their wind back. It’s our job to knock it right back out of them, starting in Samson in about three days.”

He paused once more, looking steadily into the pickup through which dozens of other officers looked back at him. Then he nodded once, briskly.

“All right, then! Brian?”

“Of course, Sir,” Lieutenant Commander Chen said rather more formally than usual. Then he, too, looked out of the display at all those listening officers.

“The attack plan’s actually pretty simple,” he said. “Those of us with sensitive stomachs won’t like the preliminary very much, but it should be effective in attaining surprise. Unfortunately, the Peep base orbits Samson-4, a gas giant well outside the hyper limit. That makes it more vulnerable to a quick pounce, which is exactly what we intend to execute. It also means, though, that any ship with its hyper generator at readiness can hyper out before anyone engages it. On the other hand, no one’s been poking around Samson in the last couple of months. With no sign of us to make them nervous—and damn all indication that we might get our thumbs out and actually take the war to them—they may well have elected to drop back to no more than standby readiness levels, or even lower, to avoid the wear on their hardware. We can’t count on that, of course, but Fleet figures the odds are pretty heavily that they have.

“Obviously, given that—as the Captain just pointed out—this is our first operation after the formal declaration of war, we’d really like to hammer as many of their starships as possible, and that’s what we intend to do. On the other hand, even if we can’t—even if their mobile units are able to duck into hyper before we can take them out—their base facilities—the maintenance slips, the tank farm, the logistic nodes—can’t. So even if every one of their ships get away, we’ll still take out the entire base, and that’s totally worth doing in its own right.”

He paused, as if inviting a response. But no one spoke, and he gave a brief nod.

“All right, what we aren’t going to be able to simulate tomorrow is the Alpha translation Admiral White Haven has in mind.” He flashed a quick, evil grin. “We’re going for a crash translation from the Delta bands.”

Captain Cristina Zaragoza, HMS Cestus’ CO, winced visibly, and Brandy didn’t blame her. Nor did she like to think about what a four-band crash translation would do to Prince Adrian’s hyper generator. It wouldn’t present any safety threats to a well-found ship whose generator was in good repair, which Prince Adrian’s was. It would, however, burn somewhere around two T-months of the generator’s normal overhaul cycle in less than fifteen minutes.

That didn’t even consider what that sort of sustained plunge through hyper space would do to the crews’ stomachs. They’d hit each band’s boundary at a maximum gradient, and a lot of people would be puking their guts out by the time they finished.

From Captain Zaragoza’s expression, she expected to be one of them.

Brandy’s stomach was less sensitive than many, but she still made a mental note to go easy on the pre-battle solid meal the Navy traditionally fed its people.

“Once we’ve made translation into n-space,” Chen continued, “a lot will depend on how good our astrogation was. Either way, though, we’ll be accelerating in-system at the wallers’ maximum safe pod-towing compensator settings. The screen—that’s us and Admiral Moreno’s battlecruisers—will be well out in front of the wall-of-battle. We’ll be Admiral White Haven’s primary surveillance screen, and we’ll deploy recon drones to supplement our shipboard sensors for relay to the wall. In addition, CruRon Thirty-Three and BatCruRon Five will have primary responsibility for the outer missile defense zone. Because of that—”

He went on speaking, laying out the operation’s parameters clearly and concisely, and Brandy sipped coffee as she listened.

Unlike quite a few of Sixth Fleet’s personnel, she’d seen combat. She knew how ugly it could be. But this time, the Navy would be attacking the Peeps, not the other way around, and she smiled vengefully as she contemplated that minor difference.

Samson System

August 10, 1906 PD


“oh, shit!

It came out softly, almost furtively, but that didn’t mean no one heard it.

“Excuse me, Citizen Senior Chief?” Citizen Lieutenant Barbier said sharply, and, despite herself, Citizen Senior Chief Geffroy rolled her eyes. Expressing exasperation with a superior officer could be unwise, in the current People’s Republic, although she’d at least done it without ever looking away from her display.

And it wasn’t as if she didn’t have plenty of justification.

Citizen Lieutenant Barbier, who’d been Petty Officer 2/c Barbier before the Parnell Coup, had the sensor watch in Orbit One. Geffroy didn’t much like the citizen lieutenant. There were a host of reasons for that, including how much less he knew than she did about the job she’d been doing while he was still cutting class, stealing uni-links, and mugging derelicts for fun in the towers of Nouveau Paris. Worse—and unlike some officers she could think of, like Citizen Commander Ancel, Orbit One’s XO—he was too busy upholding his shiny new authority to even try to learn anything from the experienced NCOs under his command—like one Citizen Senior Chief Geffroy—about the enormous number of things he was unable to distinguish from his own ass.

That would have been ample reason to despise him, but his revolutionary fervor was even worse. For her own part, Élisa Geffroy thought all the “citizen this-and-that” that had been forced upon the Navy was about as stupid as things came, but Barbier embraced it ardently as evidence of the Committee of Public Safety’s determination to completely eradicate the trappings of the old, corrupt, Legislaturalist regime. Of course, the fact that the Committee of Public Safety’s “New Order” was the only thing that could conceivably have allowed a piece of work like him to attain officer’s rank probably helped to account for his revolutionary ardor, as well. In many ways, though, the priggish prudishness he imposed upon his subordinates—at least in public; his own private vocabulary was rather different—was almost equally irritating. Ever since he’d discovered Lucille DeLisle, Orbit One’s people’s commissioner, disapproved of “unprofessional language,” he’d been constantly jumping “his” people for language DeLisle might find “inappropriate.”

And making certain DeLisle knew he had, of course.

Getting reamed by the people’s commissioner for something as trivial as an occasional obscenity was petty, frustrating, and stupid, but at least it was also far less dangerous than being called down for anything which might be construed as “recidivist” and attract the serious ire of the new Office of State Security. That didn’t mean Barbier hadn’t caused her more than enough grief, so she normally at least tried to stay on his good side. Or to avoid his bad side, anyway.

Just this minute, though, she had other things on her mind, and she ignored him as she brought the heel of her hand down on a large, illuminated button and an eardrum-shredding siren howled.

“What the hell, Senior Citizen Chief?!” Barbier demanded. “What the fuck d’you think you’re do—?!”

Another alarm began to wail, and Barbier’s mouth closed with a snap as the lurid icons of dozens of hyper footprints blossomed in the master plot.

* * *

“Well, this isn’t good,” Captain Byron Hunter murmured over Earl White Haven’s earbud. It was fortunate, a corner of White Haven’s brain thought, that the chief of staff was on their private channel. At least no one else could hear him.

Not that he didn’t have a point.

“Milord, I’m afraid—” someone else began.

“I see it, Wanda,” White Haven interrupted, and Lieutenant Wanda Saldaña closed her mouth.

His tone had been calm, devoid of anger or reprimand, but his staff astrogator didn’t look one bit happier. To be fair, there were a lot of unhappy people on Queen Caitrin’s flag bridge after their extended crash translation. Someone behind him continued to retch even now, and most of his personnel had made use of their sick bags as the nausea wrenched at them. That was quite enough to make most people thoroughly miserable, although translation had never bothered White Haven remotely as badly as others.

But Saldaña’s tolerance was almost as good as her admiral’s, and in her case, her unhappiness had far less to do with the mechanics of the translation than with its outcome. She was very good at her job, but her astrogation—normally as spot-on as anyone could have asked—had hiccupped this time, and at the worst possible moment.

Sixth Fleet’s ops plan had called for it to enter normal-space on a course directly toward the Samson System’s primary and thirteen light-minutes outside its 21.12 LM hyper limit. That would have put it 9,464,000 kilometers—about thirty light-seconds—from the Havenite fleet base, headed toward it. Saldaña had gotten their n-space base heading exactly right; unfortunately, that was of far less importance than the distance to their target, and White Haven’s ships had reentered n-space forty-two light-seconds from their objective. That added over 3,000,000 kilometers to their range to target, and they’d shed well over ninety-nine percent of their base velocity in the course of their translation, which gave them a current normal-space base velocity of a grand and glorious 1,324 KPS.

It would take time to increase that speed, and time was something that might be in very limited supply.

If they had, indeed, caught the Peeps with cold hyper generators, it would be at least twenty-eight minutes before even something as small as a destroyer could hyper out. That was its best possible time, assuming an engineering crew poised and ready when the order came. Superdreadnoughts would need over thirty-four minutes, in the same circumstances, and given the maintenance demands of military-grade hyper generators and what holding them at readiness did to them, White Haven was relatively confident their generators were completely down.

He couldn’t be positive of that, however, and even if their generators were down, he was much less confident about their impeller nodes. No ship could get underway under impeller-drive from a completely cold start in less than forty minutes. A competent engineering department could bring up a ship’s wedge in little more than fifteen minutes, however, if her impeller rooms were at standby readiness, with their plasma conduits charged and the grav tuners spun up but not yet engaged. Holding beta nodes at standby for long periods of time stressed their components and burned through their operational lifespans, which required both more intensive (and better trained) maintenance and more frequent overhauls and replacement. That was why engineers hated doing it when they didn’t have to. But even at standby, they suffered far less wear than a hyper generator did. For that matter, keeping just a trickle charge on an impeller room’s plasma conduits cost only a tiny bit of power, caused only minimal wear on the system, and shaved about ten minutes off the activation cycler. So it was entirely possible they were powered, although it was unlikely they were fully active.

Assuming they did nothing more than keep the conduits fed, the aforesaid competent engineering staff could have a ship up and moving in a bit less than half an hour. A good staff could shave even more time off that—perhaps as much as four or five minutes, if they were really good and knew their systems well—whereas poorly trained or inexperienced engineers could take considerably longer. The People’s Navy had always relied on officers and its never sufficiently abundant long-term NCOs to perform jobs the RMN, with the advantage of the Star Kingdom’s better educational system, trusted to junior NCOs and noncommissioned spacers. Given ONI’s assessment of how many experienced officers “the Parnell Purge” had cost the Havenites, these ships were far more likely to have poorly trained complements that couldn’t begin to match his own people’s performance. But if they had hot nodes, they could get underway far more quickly than he would prefer, and covering those extra 3,000,000 kilometers would cost him an additional 18.7 minutes.

If the Peeps got underway in the next fifteen minutes or so, they’d probably be able to completely screw over his ops plan. In the long run, they couldn’t stay out of Sixth Fleet’s missile envelope—not forever—if they were stuck in n-space. Low as Sixth Fleet’s initial velocity was, it was still 1,300 KPS higher than the Peeps’. By the time White Haven’s prey got their impellers online, even assuming they were all parked there at standby and set a new all-time galactic record, Sixth Fleet’s velocity would be over 3,480 KPS, which would be ample overtake to run them down in normal-space eventually. Except, of course, that they only had to stay away for an additional twenty or thirty minutes—long enough to get their hyper generators online and disappear into h-space forever.

He felt his staff’s consternation and he totally understood the hunch of Wanda Saldaña’s tight shoulders. She was a good, conscientious young officer, and she had to feel it even more keenly than anyone else.

“All right,” he said calmly. “We’re not quite where we wanted to be, but at least we’re all here, and the formation looks really tight.” Which it did, and which also owed a little something to Saldaña. “Get us underway, Wanda. And, Byron, poke Admiral Nijenkamp gently. We need those recon drones launched now.”

* * *

Citizen Rear Admiral Carmella Secordo, commanding officer, Battle Squadron 43, came out of PNS Véracité’s flag bridge lift at a run three minutes after the alert signal reached her flagship. People’s Commissioner Frouzan Hashemi was right behind her, and the flag bridge personnel popped to attention as they arrived.

“As you were!” Secordo snapped. “Get back on your consoles!”

Her staff, although calling it her staff was something of a stretch, with Hashemi perched like some carrion crow at her shoulder, turned hastily back to their tasks, and Secordo strode across to the master plot.

It wasn’t any better than the preliminary report, she thought grimly. In fact, it was worse. Battle Squadron 43 was the primary heavy maneuver element—hell, the only maneuver element—assigned to Citizen Rear Admiral About’s Samson System Command. Citizen Vice Admiral Costa’s understrength Task Group 37 wasn’t even supposed to be there; he was only waiting for the rest of Battle Squadron 107 to join up with him before he moved on to his own station in the Corrigan System. His presence had been a welcome—if temporary—addition to the SSDC’s order of battle when he arrived, and he’d been here T-weeks longer than his original movement orders called for because of the endless delays in his remaining SDs’ arrival. There’d been a lot of those delays over the last several T-months, and in the privacy of her own thoughts, Secordo had been very happy about this one. But there was no way in hell they could hope to beat off an attack this heavy, even with TG 37 in support.

CIC hadn’t yet tagged any of the impeller wedges headed in-system with class IDs, but they didn’t need to. From that formation, the Manties had brought at least three complete battle squadrons to the party—possibly four, depending on whether the lead group was a screen of battlecruisers or another dreadnought squadron. Costa had exactly four superdreadnoughts and six battlecruisers, with a single screening destroyer flotilla, and aside from the orbital bases’ fixed defenses, Citizen Rear Admiral About had only Secordo’s eight battleships and an understrength light cruiser squadron.

We’re toast, she thought. And that’s assuming the damned Manties don’t have any of their frigging pods on tow, which they certainly do.

At least the icons of her own command had blinked from red to the amber of “Stations Manned,” and as she watched, Allégeance’s light code actually turned green, although she doubted that Citizen Captain Reed’s ship really was completely cleared for action just yet.

“Anything from Command Central yet?” she asked.

“No, Ma—uh, Citizen Rear Admiral,” her com officer replied.

Hashemi glared at the hapless citizen commander with dagger-sharp eyes, and Secordo bit her tongue—hard.

Would it really hurt anything, she wondered mordantly, if someone slipped up and said “Ma’am” or “Sir” just once? Especially at a moment like this? It’s only natural to revert to a lifetime’s habits when the shit hits the fan, damn it!

“Thank you, Charlotte,” she said, instead of the comment she wanted to make. She’d found herself tending toward much greater familiarity with her subordinates than she might once have allowed herself, if only because using their given names was one way to avoid the Committee of Public Safety’s comic opera “citizen whatever.”

Besides, it wasn’t so very long ago that Citizen Rear Admiral Secordo had been Lieutenant Commander Secordo, herself.

A display blinked to life at her elbow, and she looked down as Citizen Captain Kilian Ambros, Véracité’s commanding officer, and People’s Commissioner Milo Marchant, the battleship’s political officer, appeared upon it.

“The ship is closed-up at battle stations, Citizen Rear Admiral,” Ambros reported.

“Good,” Secordo replied. “Engineering?”

“We’re working on it, Citizen Rear Admiral. Best estimate right now is hot impellers in”—he looked down, obviously checking a time display—“thirty-six minutes.”

Bit of an overoptimistic estimate there, Kilian, Secordo thought.

She very much doubted that Citizen Commander Shepherd, Véracité’s engineering officer, would be able to give her hot nodes in less than forty-five minutes. She’d be delighted to discover she was wrong, but there was no point pretending that was likely to happen. Nor was that Ambros’ fault. He’d commanded Véracité for just over five T-months, and he’d spent that time drilling and training his people hard. But too much of that training had been in simulators, not hands-on with the actual hardware, and there were too many holes in the experienced chain of command he ought to have had. Many of the “citizen whatevers” promoted because of the post-purge People’s Navy’s desperate need for officers had the potential to become good officers—some of them outstanding officers—in time. But that was the rub. Even the best of them still needed time—a lot of time—to become proficient in their duties.

And if the intelligence Hashemi’s deigned to share with me is anywhere near accurate—which I wouldn’t bet on, because I know it sure as hell isn’t complete—the Manties are finally getting their act together. The only thing that’s saved our asses this long has been that their politicos are at least as stupid as ours. But we’ve always known even they’d have to greenlight the resumption of offensive operations sometime, and it looks like “sometime” is now. Which means training time just ended. From now on, it’s going to be a matter of how many of us survive long enough to learn just what the fuck we’re doing.

She’d rather hoped she’d be among those who had the time to truly master her new responsibilities. Too bad she wouldn’t.

“Hyper generator?” she asked Ambros, and felt Hashemi stiffen beside her.

“Longer, Citizen Rear Admiral,” the citizen captain said. “Best estimate right now is forty minutes.”

“Stay on it.”

“Of course, Citizen Rear Admiral.”

Secordo turned from the display and almost ran into her people’s commissioner. Unlike altogether too many people’s commissioners, the dark-haired, dark-eyed Hashemi had at least served in the pre-coup navy. Unfortunately, she’d been only a third-class petty officer, despite almost seven T-years of service. That, as far as Secordo was concerned, was an eloquent comment on her . . . limited competency. Unfortunately, Hashemi was convinced it had been due solely to her Dolist origins. Worse, she was positive her lower-deck experience qualified her judgment in all things naval.

Which it manifestly did not.

Now Hashemi glared at Secordo, deliberately blocking the path to her command chair, and those dark eyes burned with suspicion.

“Hyper generator, Citizen Rear Admiral?” she said in icy tones.

“It’s an obvious tactical question, Ma’am,” Secordo replied. People’s commissioners were the only people who got that honorific.

“At this point, hyper generators should be a secondary consideration—at best,” Hashemi half-snapped.

In other words, I’m being “defeatist” to even consider the possibility of trying to get some of my people out alive, Secordo thought bitterly.

“Ma’am, hyper generators, like impeller wedges, are a critical component of our ships’ maneuverability, and maneuverability is a critical component of our combat capability. Citizen Captain Ambros would be derelict in his duty if he wasn’t trying to get the generator online, and I would fail in mine if I didn’t ask him about it. For that matter, Citizen Commander Gwaltney”—she waved one hand at her ops officer—“would be equally derelict if he wasn’t collecting the same information from every unit of the squadron. Without it, we can’t project our maneuvering capabilities for combat, and since this is obviously an attack in force, we’re definitely going to be fighting sometime very soon.”

“I see.” Hashemi’s dark, narrowed eyes burned with cold suspicion, and Secordo made herself meet them levelly. What she really wanted to do was to point out to Hashemi how hopeless the situation was, if only to see just how far the other woman’s revolutionary ardor went in the face of certain death. Unfortunately, Hashemi probably lacked the imagination—and she certainly lacked the naval experience, despite her vociferous insistence to the contrary and her authority to second-guess and countermand any order Secordo gave—to truly understand just what was about to happen.

Yet, at least.

“I suppose that makes sense,” the people’s commissioner said after a slow, tense pause. “So long as it’s not a pretext for defeatism, at any rate.”

“I assure you, Ma’am, that my people and I are prepared to do their duty, no matter what it is and no matter what it costs. It’s why we’re here.”

Hashemi looked at her a moment longer, then nodded and moved aside, and Secordo crossed to her command chair and settled into it as Hashemi turned back to the master plot. The citizen rear admiral looked at the people’s commissioner’s back and allowed herself a cold, unseen smile. It was bitter, that smile. Bitter with the memory of the husband and young son back home in Nouveau Paris . . . and with the thought of what would happen to them in the name of “collective security” if anyone suspected for even a moment that their wife and mother wasn’t “prepared to do her duty.”

I would’ve liked to see you grow up, Tommy, she thought. I really would’ve.

She held those two beloved faces in her mind’s eye for another moment, then glanced at the master plot’s status board. All of the squadron’s icons blinked angry red eyes at her now, and she drew a deep breath.

“Charlotte, inform Command Central the Squadron’s weapons and active defensive systems are fully manned and ready. We’ll advise them of the status of our impellers and hyper generator at ten-minute intervals.”

* * *

Brandy Bolgeo sat back in her chair in Prince Adrian’s Damage Control Central. As the heavy cruiser’s assistant engineer, that was her duty station. She only wished it didn’t bring back memories of the Battle of Hancock and Cassandra’s DCC. Not that this battle was going to be the sort of desperate affair that one had been. She knew that.

Unfortunately, ships got damaged—even destroyed—even in battles their side won.

That was something else Hancock had taught her.

There wasn’t really anything for her and her people to do, just at the moment, and, frankly, she would be simply delighted if things stayed that way. But because there wasn’t, and because Captain McKeon believed in keeping his people in the loop, her earbud was tied into the feed from the bridge, and she frowned as she considered what she’d heard from Commander Alférez, Prince Adrian’s astrogator.

Brandy was an engineer, not an astrogator, but the Academy had forced her to study at least the rudiments of the astrogator’s trade. Which meant she understood how hard it could be to hit a pinpoint n-space locus after a lengthy hyper voyage, and especially after a crash translation across so many bands. The truth was that Lieutenant Saldaña had done well to be off by only twelve light-seconds . . . although Brandy doubted anyone aboard Queen Caitrin—probably especially Saldaña—thought that right now.

But Sixth Fleet was underway now, accelerating ponderously in-system, and Prince Adrian and the rest of CruRon 33 were already well over a hundred thousand kilometers closer to the Peep naval base than the rest of the fleet. That meant very little for their onboard sensor systems, but they were responsible for Sixth Fleet’s outer missile defense zone. A hundred thousand kilometers was barely two seconds’ flight time for an incoming laserhead, but the gap was already growing. Unlike the wallers, or Admiral Moreno’s battlecruisers, for that matter, CruRon 33 had no missile pods on tow. That gave it a maximum acceleration of 5.0 KPS², over twice the two hundred forty-five gravities a pod-laden superdreadnought could manage, and the velocity differential between Prince Adrian and her heavier consorts was increasing at 1.5 KPS every second as her squadron accelerated steadily away from the more ponderous dreadnoughts and superdreadnoughts. With that geometry, CruRon 33 could be as much as 1.3 million kilometers closer to the enemy than Sixth Fleet’s wall-of-battle in only ten more minutes.

They wouldn’t want to get too far ahead of the heavy mob lest they make themselves too inviting a target for Peep fire control to pass up, but anyone over there with a lick of sense would be focused on running away, not standing and fighting. Not against three-to-one odds in ships-of-the-wall and four-to-three odds in battlecruisers. There were also those battleships to factor in, but all eight of them combined massed no more than 35,000,000 tons. Even with them cranked in, the Peep mobile units massed barely thirty percent as much as Sixth Fleet.

Of course, Peep battleships were missile-heavy, which might go a little way toward improving the odds. Or would have, if the Peeps had possessed missile pods. Which they didn’t . . . and which explained Sixth Fleet’s lethargic acceleration. Each of White Haven’s dreadnoughts had ten pods on tow. The superdreadnoughts had twelve, although the battlecruisers had only six each. That was over three hundred pods, each packed with ten of the Royal Manticoran Navy’s missiles, and Peep missiles were perhaps sixty percent as good as the latest Manticoran hardware.

She had no idea how many launchers the three orbital bases might boast between them. It was at least remotely possible—although “remotely possible” actually meant “unlikely as hell,” in a minor base like Samson—that they had enough to equalize the numerical odds. But orbital bases were immobile, unable to move or maneuver in any way, which, coupled with the fact that it was literally impossible to armor them the way heavy warships were armored, made them hideously vulnerable to missile attack.

It was not a winning position for the defenders, she thought.

* * *

Henri Costa, CO, Task Force 37 of the People’s Navy, stared at the plot. The Samson Defense Force’s passive arrays had finally pulled in enough light-speed data for PNS Montressor’s CIC to tag the crimson icons of the incoming hostiles with tentative class IDs. He watched them blink for a moment, then looked at the status boards for his command, and a ball of frozen helium settled into the pit of his stomach.

We are so screwed, he thought. I knew I should’ve argued with Bozonnet, damn it!

“What’s happening, Citizen Vice Admiral?” People’s Commissioner Aaron Bozonnet demanded.

“The Manties are attacking in strength, Sir.” There was more bite in Costa’s voice than was safe, but under the circumstances, that was a much lesser worry than it had been.

“What?” It was Bozonnet’s turn to stare into the plot, although Costa knew how little ability to read its icons the people’s commissioner truly possessed. “What do you mean, ‘in strength’?”

“I mean that that’s a minimum of three times our strength coming at us, Commissioner. I’m guessing they made translation farther out than they meant to, but that’s not much help, since we can’t maneuver.”

“What? Why not?!”

Costa wheeled from the plot to stare at the people’s commissioner in disbelief.

“Because,” he said after a second or two, in a dangerously patient tone, “our impeller nodes were completely off-line at the moment they arrived. And so were our hyper generators.”

“Well . . . well, get them online!” Bozonnet barked.

“That’s exactly what we’re trying to do, Sir. But we need time, and unless the Manties fuck up by the numbers, we don’t have enough of it to go from cold nodes—which, I remind you, you insisted upon in order to save wear on the components—before those people”—he jerked a thumb at the plot—“are in range. And without an impeller wedge, sidewalls are useless. So aside from our counter-missiles and point defense, we’re going to be mother naked when their missiles come in on us. Sir.”

Bozonnet swallowed hard, his eyes enormous, then wheeled back to the plot as if he could somehow change its iconography just by trying hard enough, and Costa turned from him to his ops officer.

“I know our commanders are already doing all they can, but remind them we need constant status reports. Those”—he twitched his head at the status boards—“can tell us how far along they are right now; I need a running update on how much time they think they might be able to shave off.”

“Of course, Citizen Vice Admiral!” Citizen Captain Marlowe had been only a lieutenant seven T-months earlier—about the same time Costa had been a commander—and his face was pale. But his voice was commendably steady, and Costa touched him gently on the shoulder.

“And tell them for me,” he added with a crooked smile, “that Engineering’s safety protocols are officially relaxed today.”

* * *

“How bad is it, Hervé?” People’s Commissioner Camille asked in a lowered tone, and Citizen Rear Admiral About looked at him.

“About as bad as it gets,” he said, equally quietly, and Camille’s jaw tightened.

“In that case, I’ll just stay out of your way,” he said, and About nodded before he turned back to his staff on Orbit One’s command deck.

In many ways, he knew, he’d been unreasonably fortunate to draw Jonathan Camille as his commissioner. Camille had possessed exactly zero naval experience when he was selected for his present duties. What he had possessed, in abundance, however, was revolutionary fervor and a commission in Internal Security with service as a “liaison” with the People’s Army. His InSec rank hadn’t been that high—About didn’t know precisely what it had been, but a high-ranking officer in Oscar Saint-Just’s security forces would have been assigned to a more prestigious base than Samson—and About had never been all that fond of InSec. But at least the man understood how a military chain of command had to work, and he’d tried hard to keep his thumb out of the soup.

The good news was that Camille had both understood that constant interference in About’s orders could only engender confusion in his subordinates and recognized his own lack of experience where the Navy was concerned. The bad news was that he hadn’t recognized the same thing in others, like that poisonous bitch Hashemi. About had suggested as firmly and tactfully as he could that Camille should overrule Hashemi on several points, including the readiness levels of the Samson System Defense Command’s mobile units’ impeller rooms and hyper generators. Unfortunately, Hashemi had used her boundless naval experience to convince Camille she knew what she was doing.

And now that’s all come home to roost, About thought bitterly, because there was one other bit of bad news about having Camille for his people’s commissioner. Jonathan Camille was a true man of principle, despite his InSec background. His support for the revolution went to the bone . . . and there wasn’t a single gram of cowardice in the man’s entire body.

Which meant the Samson Defense Command was about to fight gallantly to the death against impossible odds, and there wasn’t one damned thing Hervé About could do about it.

* * *

“Milord, we’re getting better data from the drones,” Commander Eccles said.

White Haven paused in his conversation with Captain Hunter and Commander O’Hanlon and turned to face Commander Eccles. He raised an eyebrow at her, and she grimaced.

“It’s not a lot better, Sir,” she said, “but the drones are close enough now to get emission signatures on at least some of their impeller nodes. It looks like their lighter units may be able to get underway in the next twenty-five minutes or so.”

“Thank you, Laura,” White Haven said, and looked back at his plot.

Sixth Fleet had been in normal-space for just over twelve minutes, accelerating at a steady 2.4 KPS². In that time, it had traveled almost 1,580,000 kilometers, and its velocity relative to the Peep base was up to 3,053 KPS.

“Ditch the pods, Milord?” Captain Hunter asked quietly, and White Haven snorted.

“No point,” he replied, equally quietly. “They’re not moving yet. Our overtake’s already so great they can’t possibly get away unless their generators come online and they hyper out on us.”

“And if they do get their generators online, Milord?”

“Then we could lose their mobile units,” White Haven conceded. “But we’re going to want the pods against the orbital platforms, even if their starships manage to bug out on us, and I think we’ll still get close enough for our shot before they can. Probably.”

Hunter nodded, and White Haven twitched a brief smile. Passive sensors could pick up the gravitic distortion of impeller nodes ramping up to activation, but there was no way to do that for a hyper generator. All they had was their original guesstimate where that was concerned.

We’re not getting close enough for the engagement I had planned on, he admitted. Can’t take the chance they will hyper out on us.

The good news was that if the Peeps’ generators had been at Standby levels, even their superdreadnoughts would have been hyper-ready by now. And, if they hadn’t been at least at Standby, it was unlikely they’d been active at all. For that matter, if they’d had their impellers down, it was unlikely as hell they would have had their generators up, considering the relative maintenance costs. That meant a cold start, which gave him the thirty-seven-minute window, at least for their wallers, he’d hoped for. Probably, anyway.

Which was just fine, as far as it went, but—

If the game were easy, anyone could win, he thought with a grimace.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t. His original plan—assuming they’d hit their hyper translation exactly—had been to accelerate for fifteen minutes, at which point he would have brought the platforms and the ships riding orbit with them 80,000 kilometers inside his powered missile envelope while the Peeps were still fifteen to seventeen minutes short of hypering out. Missile flight time would have been just under three minutes, which meant the first birds would have arrived on their targets eighteen minutes after Sixth Fleet broke the Alpha wall. And that would have meant the Peeps had to stand Sixth Fleet’s fire for at least twelve minutes before they could escape. In that much time, he could not only have flushed his pods in a single enormous opening salvo but gotten in up to forty-eight follow-on broadside launches. Short of direct divine intervention, the Peeps could never have survived that deluge of fire.

But at this range, he had a far less favorable missile geometry. Instead of accelerating for fifteen minutes to reach attack range, he would have to accelerate for twenty-six, and even then, he’d still have to launch from almost 600,000 kilometers farther out than originally planned, with commensurately lower accuracy. But if he didn’t fire by then, and if they were getting their generators online, missile flight times would mean they got away scot-free. Dropping the pods would buy him no more than a minute or so of engagement time, which would—possibly—give him time for four additional broadside salvos. But playing for that wasn’t remotely worth giving up the saturation effect of his initial salvo . . . assuming he got to fire at the Peep starships at all before they disappeared.

And if those bastards do get away, I guarantee the Opposition newsies won’t pay much attention to what happens to their base facilities, now will they? He shook his head with a wry chuckle. Of course not! So I’ll just have to see to it that they don’t.

* * *

“Capacitors at seventy-seven percent!” Citizen Petty Officer Dombrosky called out.

“What’s the charge gradient?” Citizen Lieutenant Mercier-Pascal demanded.

“Sixty-one percent, Citizen Lieutenant,” Citizen Chief Aria replied.

Mercier-Pascal caught his lower lip between his teeth and glanced at the Engineering status board, then at the time display. Almost fourteen minutes had passed since the Manties were detected. According to the book, a fully trained engineering crew was supposed to need only ten minutes to fully charge the plasma capacitors, but Impeller Room Six still didn’t have power to its beta nodes.

Mercier-Pascal’s impeller room was scarcely alone in that, but all the others were at least closer than Impeller Six. That was sure to earn a reaming from Citizen Captain Philidor—or, at least, Citizen Commander Rust—which was more than bad enough. But until they had power on the impellers, Montressor was a sitting duck, and the Manties were rumbling steadily closer.

“Increase the gradient. Take it to seventy-five percent.”

“Citizen Lieutenant, we’re already eleven percent above Book levels,” Citizen Chief Aria pointed out.

“I know that,” Mercier-Pascal half-snapped. “But without a wedge, we can’t even raise sidewalls, Citizen Chief! So which do you prefer? Taking a chance on blowing the capacitors, or sit around buck naked, waiting until we take a laserhead up the ass?”

Consuela Aria sucked her teeth for a moment. It was her job to remind Mercier-Pascal about little things like the potential to blow up the entire forward impeller ring, and the truth was that she didn’t trust Mercier-Pascal’s judgment. Or, no, that wasn’t really fair. He seemed to have pretty decent judgment; it was experience he lacked.

Jumping the plasma flow that high before any of the nodes were actually online, actually drawing power, came under the heading of Really Risky. On the other hand, Mercier-Pascal had a point about sidewalls and laserheads.

“Aye, aye, Citizen Lieutenant,” she said, and entered the command. “Plasma gradient seven-five percent.”

* * *

“Sir, I have active fire control emissions coming up across the board,” Lieutenant Commander Chen said. “So far, the profile pretty much matches what our last reconnaissance probe showed, at least as far as the orbital bases, permanent installations, and battleships are concerned. Flag’s designated the fixed installations as Bogey Alpha. The mobile units we already knew about are Bogey Beta, and they’re calling the newcomers Bogey Gamma. Gamma looks like a light task force, about half a squadron of SDs, a half-dozen battlecruisers, and destroyer escorts. Based on active emissions, CIC estimates that all four of the wallers are Duquesne-class.”

“And the small fry?” Alistair McKeon asked.

“Aside from the battleships, it looks like six Tonnerre-class battlecruisers, Sir. IDs on the light cruisers and destroyers are a lot more tentative. Looks like Bogey Beta’s little guys”—the tac officer touched his display and a cluster of seven icons riding the same orbit around the gas giant as the battleships flashed on the plot—“are light cruisers, probably Gardienne-class. We have what might be a Conquérante down here in Gamma with the superdreadnoughts. Destroyers look like a mix of Bastogne and Desforge classes.”

“Good.” McKeon nodded. “Still no indication of active impeller wedges?”

“No, Sir. The drones are close enough to pick up emissions that indicate some of them are at least getting power to the nodes, but it’ll be a while before they have any wedges online. It looks like we must’ve caught them with completely cold impeller rooms. If we hadn’t, they’d be a lot further along by now. At present, CIC’s best estimate is that we’re still looking at a minimum of twenty-six minutes for the first beta node activation.”

“Thank you, Brian.”

McKeon nodded again and tipped back in his command chair, fingertips drumming lightly on the helmet racked on the chair’s right armrest, while he projected the air of calm his people needed from him at the moment. And which was all he could give them at the moment, really.

Prince Adrian’s preparations were complete. Her entire crew was skinsuited, the air had been evacuated from her outer compartments, and every station was fully manned. She was as ready for battle as a ship could be.

And she also seemed very small and frail when he thought about things like Duquesne-class superdreadnoughts. They weren’t the very latest Peep ships-of-the-wall—the Haven-class’s design was a good twenty T-years younger—but they were still very capable platforms. Haven had always had a tendency to short its battleships on upgrades and refits, but their wallers’ systems had been regularly updated, at least until the Parnell Coup, which meant the Duquesnes were about as dangerous as Peep ships got. The latest Manticoran Gryphon-class ships—none of which happened to be in Sixth Fleet’s order of battle at the moment—were just over a million tons bigger, but the Gryphons had been designed before the current, far more lethal generation of missiles had become available to the RMN. Most of the additional tonnage had gone not into launchers and magazines, but into a much more powerful energy battery for what the designers had expected to be the decisive, close-range slugging match that would decide the outcome of a clash between walls-of-battle. In terms of missile launchers, there was very little to choose between the Duquesnes’ armament and that of a Gryphon, and even the “smaller” Havenite ship was almost thirty times as massive as his own Prince Adrian.

He was rather more aware of that at the moment, since Rear Admiral Nijenkamp’s cruisers were just over a million kilometers closer to the aforesaid Duquesnes than the rest of Sixth Fleet. Admiral White Haven’s entire force had been accelerating for fifteen minutes now, and Prince Adrian’s base velocity was up to 5,823 KPS, 2,330 KPS higher than the lumbering ships-of-the-wall. In fact, it was just about time—

“Signal from Circe, Sir,” Lieutenant McCloskey said, as if on cue, and McKeon grimaced wryly.

“What does Admiral Nijenkamp have to say, Andy?” he asked.

“The screen will reduce acceleration to zero and begin decelerating at two-five-zero gravities in”—McCloskey glanced at the chrono—“twenty-seven seconds, Sir.”

“Very good. Please thank the Flag, with my respects, for the warning.”

“Yes, Sir!”

McKeon looked back at the master plot. Sixth Fleet was still beyond powered missile range of its opponents, and that meant they were beyond effective range, as well. Given the nonexistent chance that missiles on a ballistic approach could penetrate modern missile defenses, there was no point sending in birds whose drives burned out before they reached attack range. Sixth Fleet’s fire control could achieve solid targeting solutions, even launched from here, yet without the ability to maneuver, very few of them would get through to their intended victims.

But that would change once the opponents did reach powered missile range of one another, and at the moment, the screen was barely 600,000 kilometers inside the counter-missile envelope of Sixth Fleet’s wall-of-battle. It would be approximately eight minutes before velocities equalized and the distance between them stopped increasing, even with the screen decelerating while the heavy ships maintained acceleration. At that point, the screen would be only about 200,000 kilometers inside the wallers’ counter-missile envelope, which was far shallower than McKeon might have wished. But it would also put the screen’s outer interception zone right on 3,000,000 kilometers from Queen Caitrin and her consorts, which would allow the defenders at least five additional counter-missile launches. CruRon 33 had too few launchers to take an enormous bite out of the incoming fire, but the longer engagement window would force the attack birds to spin up their penetration aides earlier and give the tac crews more priceless time to analyze the Peeps’ penetration ECM for the waiting wallers. The downside was that if the Peeps were prepared to waste the limited number of missiles they were likely to get off before their destruction on the screen, things could get dicey. On the other hand, cruisers were much nimbler than lumbering ships-of-the-wall, and their massive consorts’ defensive missile batteries would still offer devastating coverage against the laserheads’ last 170,000 kilometers of flight.

And it’s not like those poor bastards will have very long to shoot at us, either, McKeon thought grimly.

By the time velocities equalized, Sixth Fleet would be only four minutes from its projected launch point. After the ships-of-the-wall flushed their massive load of pods, their acceleration would increase by over a third, and the gap between them and the screen would close much more rapidly. But that same massive load of pods would have sent almost five thousand missiles into the Peeps’ teeth.

Which was the reason those poor bastards wouldn’t have long to shoot.

* * *

The deck jerked against the soles of Citizen Vice Admiral Costa’s feet.

He wheeled toward the display that linked his flag deck to Montressor’s bridge just in time to see Citizen Captain Philidor’s head snap around to the structural schematic of the enormous superdreadnought. Whatever had sent that sharp, angry twitch through the deck had to have been massive to affect the seven-million-ton vessel, and Costa felt sickly certain of what he was about to hear.

He waited, forcing himself to remain silent despite his agonizing awareness of the seconds dragging past. The Manties had been in n-space for almost seventeen minutes now. They couldn’t be far short of their launch point, and he hated every instant of lost time. But whatever he might feel, he couldn’t begrudge Philidor the time to make certain of his facts before he reported.

Besides, Montressor was Philidor’s ship, whatever the Committee of Public Safety might have decreed. Dealing with her needs—her people’s needs—came even before keeping the task group commander informed.

“Sorry, Citizen Vice Admiral,” Philidor said finally, turning back to the display with a grim, bitter expression. “Impeller Six just blew up. Impeller Five went with it—looks like a sympathetic detonation of the plasma capacitors. And Impeller Three and Seven took significant collateral damage when Five and Six’s conduits breached.”

“Do we know how significant yet?” Costa asked.

“For the moment, they’re both completely down, but at least most of Three’s people survived.” Philidor’s tone was tight, clipped. “Doesn’t look like anybody got out of Six, and casualties in Five and Seven are ‘heavy.’” He shrugged, his eyes bitter. “That’s all they can tell me yet, Citizen Vice Admiral. Just ‘heavy.’”

“Understood.” Costa’s jaw tightened. “Status on the rest of the starboard nodes?”

“The automatic cutouts threw when Six blew,” Philidor said grimly. “The entire starboard ring is down. We’re trying to override, but the automatics dumped the plasma. And”—his eyes were bleak—“Sidewall Two went up along with Six. Four doesn’t look good, either. It’s off-line now while we try to reroute power to it. Engineering says at least six minutes.”

From the citizen captain’s expression, that “six minutes” was probably more like sixteen minutes, Costa thought, not that his engineers were going to admit anything of the sort.

He made himself pause a moment. Think before he spoke.

The news was even worse than he’d feared. Unlike a merchant ship’s enormous, roomy impeller rooms, a warship subdivided the engineering spaces into individual, heavily bulkheaded and armored compartments. In Montressor’s case, there were twelve of them. From Philidor’s report, a third of them—all serving the starboard beta nodes—had just taken catastrophic damage. Still worse, the undamaged—or, at least, probably undamaged—impeller rooms in her starboard impeller ring had vented their plasma capacitors. That meant a restart from completely “cold” nodes, even after Engineering managed to override the computers’ safety protocols. And if Sidewall Two and Four were down as well . . . 

“Do what you can, Josh,” he said finally, and looked directly into his flag captain’s eyes. “And start getting all nonessential personnel off the ship.”

“Yes, Citizen Vice Admiral.” Anguish flickered in Philidor’s expression, but he nodded.

“Keep me informed,” Costa finished with a nod of his own.

He turned from the display, then stopped abruptly as he found himself face-to-face with Aaron Bozonnet.

“I want the names of those traitors, Citizen Vice Admiral!” the people’s commissioner snapped.

“Traitors?” Costa looked at him in disbelief.

“If this wasn’t intentional sabotage, it was still somebody’s responsibility to be certain it never happened,” Bozonnet grated. “I want the names of those people, and I want them now!”

“Sir, assuming that anyone was actually responsible for what just happened”—aside from you, you pompous, vindictive, pig-ignorant son of a bitch—“they’re dead now. It’s a little late to start accusing them of anything.”

“Those who fail the Revolution will pay the price,” Bozonnet shot back. “And you know the Committee’s policy in this matter as well as I do, Citizen Vice Admiral Costa! I advise you to remember that.”

The unspoken words “collective responsibility” lay between them, like the poisonous stench of rotting fish, and Costa’s eyes hardened.

“Sir,” he bit each word off like a sliver of ice, “assuming either one of us is alive to write our after-action reports, I will be delighted to assist you in obtaining all relevant information. At the moment, however, I estimate that we’re no more than ten or twelve minutes from the Manties’ missile launch. I have other things to deal with just now. Excuse me.”

He nodded curtly as Bozonnet gawked at him, then stepped around the people’s commissioner. He crossed to his communications officer.

“General message to all task force COs.”

“Yes, Citizen Vice Admiral?”

“On my authority, all units are to begin immediate evacuation of nonessential personnel. Anybody we don’t need to actually fight the ships, goes. They are authorized to use all available life pods and small craft. I want them off in the next ten minutes—max.”

“Citizen Vice Admiral!” Bozonnet barked from behind him. “That kind of defeatist—!”

“Shut the hell up!” Costa wheeled back to the people’s commissioner. “You can put whatever you want in your damned report, assuming you’re alive to make it, but I’m not getting anyone killed if I can keep them alive. We’ll fight, Citizen Commissioner, but I’m stripping down to just the people we need to do that. That way at least some of our people—my people—may actually survive this clusterfuck!”

Bozonnet jerked back, his expression shocked, and Costa knew exactly what the other man’s final report would say about his outburst. But he couldn’t help it. Not anymore. Montressor could still move on just her after-impeller ring, even with her forward ring completely down—or could have, assuming they’d had time to get it up—but she’d been brutally lamed, and with Sidewall Two gone and Four off-line, she’d lost half her starboard sidewall, as well. Spreading her remaining capacity to cover the gap would weaken that sidewall catastrophically. Of course, the state of her sidewalls would be supremely unimportant if she couldn’t get her impeller wedge up to protect her hull’s unarmored top and bottom in time.

He glared at Bozonnet, saw the awareness of his own impending mortality finally dawning in the people’s commissioner’s eyes. Those eyes darted around the flag bridge, and he opened his mouth, only to pause as a harsh buzzer sounded over every earbug and speaker in the ship. Then—

“This is the Captain speaking.” Philidor’s voice was as hard and harsh as the buzzer had been, but it continued unflinchingly. “All Logistics, Support, Maintenance, Astrogation, Medical, Administrative, Marines, and Engineering personnel not currently manning weapon systems or damage control are to evacuate the ship immediately. I say again, all personnel not currently manning weapons stations or damage control, lay to the nearest boat bay or life pod launch station at once. And”—that hard voice cracked for just a moment, then strengthened—“and may God go with you all.”

Bozonnet froze. He looked at Costa again, eyes huge, then swallowed hard, turned, and started for the flag bridge hatch.

“Where are you going, Citizen Commissioner?”

Costa’s voice crackled across the sudden silence. Com traffic continued to mutter in the background, but it seemed muted, distant, serving only to perfect the silence.

Bozonnet wheeled back to face the citizen vice admiral and the flag bridge’s other uniformed men and women, and his mouth worked as every one of them looked back at him.

“I—” he began, then stopped, and Costa smiled thinly.

“I said we’d evacuate nonessential personnel, Sir,” he said. “According to my instructions and the Committee of Public Safety’s directives, people’s commissioners are essential to our ships’ operation. I’m sure someone who isn’t essential can make use of your shuttle seat. I suggest you buckle back into your command chair.”

Bozonnet swallowed, then darted a look over his shoulder at the two State Security troopers standing just inside the flag bridge hatch. Despite Philidor’s evacuation order, they’d made no move to leave their stations. He started to open his mouth . . . until he saw the same cold disdain looking back from their eyes.

He looked around the flag bridge a moment longer. Then his shoulders hunched and he turned and walked silently back to his command chair.

* * *

“Milord, sensors report what looks like an explosion aboard Gamma Three.”

Admiral White Haven raised a hand, pausing his conversation with Captain Goldstein, and turned to Commander Eccles.

“Do we know what kind of explosion?” he asked, his eyes automatically seeking the icons of the force CIC had labeled Bogey Gamma. A crimson band pulsed around one of them. One of the superdreadnoughts, he noted.

“We can’t absolutely confirm it, Milord, but it almost certainly has to be an impeller room. Probably more than just one, actually. Judging from the plasma vent, they may have lost the entire forward ring.”

“Sounds like somebody over there doesn’t know what he’s doing,” Captain Hunter said, and White Haven snorted harshly.

“They probably don’t,” he said. “Not if ONI’s right. I think—”

“Excuse me, Milord.”

“Yes, Laura?”

“I’m sorry to interrupt, Milord, but the drones are also picking up what look like escape pods from Gamma Three.”

“They’re abandoning ship?” White Haven’s eyes narrowed. Had the damage been severe enough to actually threaten the ship? But Eccles shook her head.

“No, Milord. There aren’t enough of them.”

“What the hell are they—?” Captain Hunter began.

“Anything from the rest of Gamma?” White Haven asked Eccles.

“No,” she began, then paused. “Yes, Milord!” she corrected herself and looked back at him, her eyes surprised. “We’re getting life pods and at least some small craft from more of Gamma’s heavy ships.”

“How many?”

“Hard to say from this far out, Milord. At least till the pod transponders come up. Rough guess, maybe twenty percent of a Duquesne’s estimated pod load-out. I don’t think it could be a lot higher, at any rate, although we are seeing more small craft. Looks like they may be launching all of those.”

“I see.”

White Haven nodded, then turned back to Captain Hunter and the display connecting him to Goldstein.

“Things are getting even uglier than I expected them to,” he said grimly.

“Milord?” the flag captain quirked an eyebrow at him, and the earl snorted harshly.

“Somebody over there’s just accepted that they can’t fight us and survive,” he said. “I’m as sure as I’m standing here that whoever it is, he just ordered his ships to strip down to essential personnel. He’s getting as many of his people as he can out of our gunsights. And probably trying to get his small craft out for search and rescue after the missiles stop flying.”

“Laura said there weren’t enough life pods for that,” Captain Hunter pointed out.

“No, there aren’t. But that’s why I said things are going to get even uglier. Whoever that is”—he jerked his head at the hostile icons in the master plot—“he’s accepted that his ships can’t survive . . . and he’s going to fight anyway.” He looked at his flag captain and chief of staff. “That’s a hell of a different attitude from what we saw during Riposte Gamma.”

“All he can hope to manage is to get even more of his people killed,” Goldstein objected. Not to White Haven’s analysis, but to the thinking that could have led to it.

“That’s all he’s going to manage here,” White Haven said heavily, “but given the tonnage imbalance between us and the Peeps, attrition works for them, even at a steep differential. Every ship we lose will hurt us a hell of a lot more than every ship they lose hurts them. If what I think we’re seeing here starts happening across the board, it’ll be painful. Painful as hell.”

“Launch point in eight minutes, Milord,” Eccles said.

* * *

“How much longer?” Jonathan Camille asked quietly, standing beside Citizen Rear Admiral About and watching the oncoming Manticoran icons sweep across the plot toward Orbit One and the rest of About’s hideously outweighed command.

“I’d guess another minute,” About replied, equally quietly. “Maybe two, but I wouldn’t count on that.”

Camille nodded. He absentmindedly blotted the drops of sweat from his forehead, and About pretended not to notice.

The Manties had been in-system for almost twenty-five minutes. Their velocity was up to over 5,000 KPS, and the range had fallen to 7,586,000 kilometers. From that geometry, Manticoran missiles had a powered range of almost 7,700,000 kilometers, so every unit of Sampson Defense Command was already inside their range basket. They wouldn’t wait a lot longer, About knew. Not when they couldn’t be positive none of the defending starships had been able to get their hyper generators spun up.

* * *

“Launch point in fifteen seconds,” Commander Eccles announced, and White Haven nodded.

It all came down to this, he thought.

Part of him—a big part—wanted to wait still longer, but some of the lighter Peep units—four destroyers and three of the light cruisers—had their wedges up now. It couldn’t take very much longer for some of their larger consorts to follow suit, and he still couldn’t know for certain about their hyper-generator status.

And even from this range, his missiles would take just under one hundred fifty seconds to reach their targets. Two and a half minutes in which some of those targets might yet escape into hyper.

“Ten seconds,” Eccles said quietly. Then—

“Launch point!”

* * *

“Dear sweet God,” Citizen Senior Chief Geffroy whispered.

Her eyes darted to a computer display, watching the readout spin upward as the computers evaluated the stupendous tide of missile icons. That tsunami sped toward Sampson Defense Command and Task Force 37 like God’s own curse, accelerating steadily at 441.3 KPS², and then—

“Tracking estimates minimum four thousand—I say again, four-zero-zero-zero—missiles inbound. Time of flight one-four-eight seconds,” someone else announced with her voice.

* * *

Henri Costa felt something almost like relief as the Manties finally fired.

He’d guessed the instant they arrived that they’d come with heavy loads of their accursed missile pods, and their heavy ships’ leisurely acceleration had supported that initial assessment. Now the hideous rash of crimson icons racing toward his frail command confirmed it once and for all.

There was no way in the universe his ships, his men and women, could withstand that deluge. He knew that. But at least the agonizing wait was over now . . . or would be, in just over two minutes.

“All ships, Com,” he said.

“Live mic,” his communications officer replied quietly, and he faced his pickup.

“This is Cit—” He paused. “This is Vice Admiral Costa,” he said. “I’m proud of all of you. It’s been my honor to command you. And now, we have a job to do. God be with you all.”

He looked into the pickup a heartbeat longer, then cut the circuit and settled back, distantly aware of the whimper coming from Bozonnet. Even now a corner of his brain reflected on how the Committee’s watchdogs would have responded to that broadcast if they’d ever known about it. But the thought was distant, buried under his curiously serene calm. What mattered was that his people knew.

That he’d told them.

He fastened his shock frame as he prepared to face the missile storm at their side.


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Framed