The updated sensor information from the on-rushing missiles crossed the distance to the tactical sections and massively capable computers of the superdreadnoughts which had launched them virtually instantaneously. As did the corrections those tactical sections sent back.
In effect, Apollo gave the Royal Manticoran Navy real-time correction ability at any attainable missile range.
Javier Giscard's tactical officers didn't realize at first what they faced. In fact, most of them never did realize.
The Manty missiles ignored their decoys almost contemptuously, and those peculiar clumps of MDMs maneuvered with a precision no missile-defense officer had ever seen before. It was almost as if each clump were a single missile, one which bored in through the defensive shield of the task group's electronic warfare as if it didn't exist.
Counter-missiles began to fire, and something else very peculiar happened. The EW platforms seeded throughout the Manticoran salvo didn't come up simultaneously, or in groups, the way they ought to have. Instead, they came up individually, singly, almost as if they could actually see the counter-missiles and adjust their own sequences.
Dragons Teeth activated at precisely the right moment to draw the maximum number of counter-missiles into attacking the false targets. Dazzlers blasted the onboard sensors of other counter-missiles... just as the attack missiles behind them arced upward, or dove downward, to drive straight through the gap the Dazzlers had burned in the defensive envelope.
Not all the defensive missiles could be blinded or evaded, of course. There were simply too many of them. But their effectiveness was slashed.
The twelve superdreadnoughts of Task Force 82 had rolled quadruple patterns before they launched. Two hundred and eighty-eight Apollo pods had launched nineteen hundred attack missiles and and four hundred EW platforms, along with two hundred and eighty-eight control missiles.
Javier Giscard's counter-missiles stopped only three hundred of the attack birds. His desperate point defense clusters, in the single volley each of them got, killed another four hundred.
Twelve hundred got through.
Damage alarms screamed on Sovereign of Space's command deck and flag bridge. The huge ship shuddered and bucked as not one, or two, but scores of Manticoran missiles ripped straight through the heart of the task group's missile defenses. Armor splintered, atmosphere spewed into space, weapons mounts and point defense clusters were blasted into shattered wreckage, and the drum roll of destruction went on and on and on.
All of Judah Yanakov's fire had been concentrated on only two ships. Partly, that was because no one had really known how effective Apollo would prove against live opposition, and partly it had been because superdreadnoughts were simply so inconceivably tough. Killing targets that rugged was hard, and Honor and Yanakov had been determined to do as much damage with the first salvo, before the enemy had any chance to adjust to the new threat, as they could.
They did.
Javier Giscard clung to the arms of his command chair, surrounded by the frantic combat chatter of his task group, listening to the shrilling alarms, the desperate reports of damage control parties fighting the tidal wave of damage. His link to Damage Control Central lacked the detail of Captain Reuman's displays, but huge swathes of crimson damage blasted their way across the ship's schematic as he watched.
And then there was one brief, terrible flash as something ripped into the far end of the flag bridge. His head whipped up, and he just had time to see Selma Thackery and her tactical party torn apart by the blast front screaming towards him. Just long enough for his brain to begin to realize what was happening.
"Eloi-" he began, his voice soft in the hurricane of alarms and devastation.
He never finished her name.
"Jesus Christ," Ewan MacNaughton whispered, his face white.
The first Manticoran missile salvo had killed two of Admiral Giscard's superdreadnoughts outright... including Sovereign of Space.. The second salvo, rumbling in on the first launch's heels forty-eight seconds later, killed two more, and the one after that, two more.
It took a total of eleven salvos-less than eight minutes' fire-to kill every superdreadnought in Bogey Two.
"How the hell did they do that?"
MacNaughton didn't even realize he'd asked the question aloud, but Admiral Giovanni answered it anyway.
"I don't know," she said, her voice ugly. "But it's not going to help their lead ships in another twenty-five minutes."
"CIC estimates another twenty minutes until we hit the envelope for their inner-system pods, Your Grace," Mercedes Brigham said quietly, and Honor nodded.
Imperator's flag bridge was oddly silent. Far astern of them, Judah Yanakov's missile batteries had just finished off the helpless CLACs of Bogey Two. He wasn't wasting any of his fire on the orphaned LACs. Instead, he'd recovered his own LACs and translated back out, and Honor watched her display, waiting.
Then Task Force 82 translated back into normal-space yet again. This time, much closer to the limit, and directly behind Bogey Three.
"Admiral Yanakov is launching against Bogey Three, Your Grace," Jaruwalski reported, and Honor nodded.
"Too bad he won't have time to catch Bogey Four before it gets too far in-system for him to range on, as well, Your Grace," Brigham said. "I'd love to make a clean sweep."
Honor glanced at her, remembering what had happened to her own command at Solon. Part of her agreed entirely with Brigham, and not just because of the professional naval officer in her. But the taste of revenge had a bitter tang, and she looked back at the plot.
"We'll just have to settle for what we can get," she said calmly. "And it's about time to see how vulnerable Balder really is. Andrea," she looked back up at Jaruwalski.
"Yes, Your Grace?"
"Activate the Mistletoe platforms."
"What the-?"
Commander MacNaughton stiffened in consternation.
"Admiral Giovanni! We've got-"
Giovanni was still turning towards her display when the explosions began.
The Havenite tracking crews had become accustomed to the fact that they simply couldn't localize and destroy the highly stealthy Manticoran reconnaissance platforms used to scout their star systems. It was galling, but true. And so, aside from a certain deep-seated irritation, they'd actually paid relatively little attention to the long-endurance Ghost Rider reconnaissance drones the Manticorans had distributed throughout the inner system of Lovat.
Which was unfortunate.
Sonja Hemphill had personally chosen the name "Mistletoe" in honor of the dart which had killed the god Balder in Norse mythology, and the name proved apt.
"Where the hell are they coming from?" Giovanni demanded.
"I don't know, Ma'am!" MacNaughton replied, his voice as anguished as his expression as the Manticoran laser heads ripped into the Moriarty platforms. Not just one of the platforms; all three of them. The stealth and dispersion which were supposed to have protected them obviously hadn't, he thought, and closed his eyes for a moment as the relentless avalanche of fire blew them apart.
Alessandra Giovanni's face was white with shock. With the Moriarty platforms gone, she had nothing that could control missile salvos of the size needed to batter down Manticoran missile defenses. And given what the Manties had already done to Admiral Giscard's forces, it was painfully obvious her own anti-missile defenses were going to be at best marginally effective.