But that seemed to be exactly what White Haven wasn't doing, Dimitri thought irritably, then shrugged. In another twelve minutes it would no longer matter what the Manty CO thought he was doing, because the range would be down to six million klicks. Given the geometry of the Manties' approach vector, they would be in his powered missile envelope — technically speaking — for at least two minutes before that, but against Manty electronic warfare, even six million klicks against a closing enemy might be a little optimistic. Which meant he and his people were going to have to take their lumps from the Manties before any of their own birds got home. But he'd be sending the mine-armed drones out in another four minutes, and at least he ought to be able to flush all of his pods before any of the incoming arrived, and—
A shrill, strident alarm sliced through the war room's tense calm like a buzz saw.
"Coming down on fifteen million kilometers, Sir," Trevor Haggerston said quietly, and White Haven nodded.
"Anything more on those unidentified bogies?" he asked.
"We still can't be positive, but it looks like most of them are missile pods, Sir. We're a bit more puzzled by some of the others, though. They're smaller than pods, but they seem to be bigger than individual missiles ought to be. About the size of a deep recon drone, actually."
"I see." The earl frowned, then shrugged. Missiles or drones, a saturation pattern of heavy warheads should take them out with proximity kills handily enough... and before they could do anything nasty.
The Peeps obviously didn't know it, but they'd been in his powered missile range for well over an hour, assuming he'd been willing to go for low-powered drive settings, but even with his RDs hovering just beyond the range of the Peeps' weapons, targeting solutions would have been very poor at sixty-five million kilometers... not to mention that flight time would have been the next best thing to nine minutes. That was plenty of time for an alert captain to roll ship and take the brunt of the incoming fire on his wedge, and even with Ghost Rider's EW goodies along for company, it might have given the defenders time to achieve effective point defense solutions.
Besides, there was no need to do any such thing. He still had over twelve minutes before he entered the Peeps' effective envelope, and each of his Harrington/Medusas could get off sixty six-pod salvos in that time. That was over a hundred and eleven thousand missiles from the SD(P)s alone, and they weren't alone, and he checked his plot one last time
Between the input from his drones and the long, unhurried time his fire control officers had been given to refine their data, his ships had tight locks on most of the Peep capital ships. Of course, "tight lock" at this sort of range didn't mean what it would have at lower ranges, and accuracy was going to suffer accordingly. On the other hand, the Peeps hadn't yet deployed a single decoy, and their jammers were only beginning to come on line. Which made sense, if they wanted to avoid putting too much time on their EW systems' clocks. Unfortunately, this time it was going to be fatal.
"Very well, Commander Haggerston," he said formally. "You may fire."
Citizen Admiral Dimitri's mug hit the floor and shattered, but he never noticed. Neither the sound of breaking china nor the sudden pool of steaming coffee registered even peripherally, for he could not be seeing what he saw.
But the sensors and the computers didn't care what their human masters thought. They insisted on presenting the preposterous data anyway, and Dimitri heard other voices, several shrill with rising panic, as the war room's normal discipline disintegrated as completely as his broken cup. It was inexcusable. They were trained military men and women, manning the nerve center of the system's entire defense structure. Above all else, it was their primary duty to remain calm and collected, exerting the control over their combat units upon which any hope of victory depended.
But Dimitri couldn't blame them, and even if he could have, it wouldn't have mattered. No conceivable calm, collected response could have affected the outcome of this battle in the least.
No one in the history of interstellar warfare had ever seen anything like the massive salvo coming in on his ships. Those missiles were turning out at least ninety-six thousand gravities, launched from pods and shipboard tubes which were themselves moving at over nine thousand kilometers per second, and that didn't even consider the initial velocity imparted to them by their launchers' grav drivers. A corner of Dimitri's brain wanted to believe the Manties had gone suddenly insane and thrown away their entire opening salvo at a range from which hits would be impossible. That the incredible acceleration those missiles were cranking meant they could not possibly have more than a minute of drive endurance. That they would be dead, unable to maneuver against his evading units, when they reached the ends of their runs.
But one thing the Earl of White Haven was not was insane. If he'd launched from that range, then his birds had the range to attack effectively... and none of Dimitri's did.
He watched numbly as the missiles roared down on his wall. The entire front of the salvo was a solid wall of jamming and decoys, and he clamped his jaw as he pictured the panic and terror crashing through the men and women on those ships. His men and women. He'd put them out there in the sober expectation that their ships would be destroyed, that many — even most — of them would be killed. But he'd at least believed they would be able to strike back before they died. Now their point defense couldn't even see the missiles coming to kill them.
It seemed to take forever, and he heard someone groan behind him as the Manty wall belched a second salvo, just as heavy as the first. Which was also impossible. That had to be the firepower of a full pod load out for every ship in White Haven's wall. He couldn't have still more of them in tow! But apparently no one had told the Manties what they could and couldn't do, and yet a third launch followed.
The first massive wave of missiles crashed over his wall, and his numb brain noted yet another difference from the norm. The tactical realities of towed pods meant each fleet had no real choice but to commit the full weight of its pods in the first salvo, because any that didn't fire in the first exchange were virtually certain to suffer proximity kills from the enemy's fire. They were normally concentrated on the enemy vessels for whom the firing fleet had the best firing solutions, as well, because firing at extreme range rather than waiting until the enemy had irradiated your weapons into uselessness meant even the best solutions were none too good.
All of that tended to result in massive overkill on a relatively low number of targets, but that wasn't happening this time. No, this time the Manties had allocated their fire with lethal precision. There were well over three thousand missiles in the first wave. Many of them were jammers or decoys, but many were not, and Hamish Alexander's fire plan had allocated a hundred and fifty laser heads to each Peep ship of the wall. His targets' hopelessly jammed and confused defenses stopped no more than ten percent of the incoming fire, and Havenite capital ships shuddered and heaved, belching atmosphere and debris and water vapor as massive, bomb-pumped lasers slammed into them. Hulls spat glowing splinters as massive armor yielded, and fresh, dreadful bursts of light pocked Citizen Admiral Dimitri's wall as fusion bottles began to fail.