"Exactly where I would have placed them myself," he said quietly to DeLaney, who nodded vigorously.
Second Fleet had started edging away from its original Sphinx-bound vector from the moment the shooting stopped. Five minutes later, it had altered course much more sharply, and at the moment, it was very obviously retreating from its original objective. In fact, Tourville had made the decision to sacrifice his worst lamed cripples within ten minutes. Any ship which couldn't produce an acceleration of at least 370 g had been abandoned, scuttling charges set. He hadn't liked doing that, but he couldn't afford to be hampered by them even if the rest of Beatrice worked perfectly. Even without them, Second Fleet's current maximum acceleration was barely 3.6 KPS2, and that was too low for it to completely avoid the Sphinx defenses' missile envelope, whatever he did. Which didn't even consider the vengeful presence of Third Fleet coming in from the side to pin him between Sphinx and its own batteries.
Under the circumstances, Tourville had had no choice-for several reasons-but to settle on a course which formed a sharp angle from his original vector. Since he couldn't avoid going at least as far as Sphinx, he had pitched up vertically, to climb above the plane of the ecliptic, while simultaneously changing heading by 135ø. That let him pile on side vector to generate as much separation from the planet as he could get as he slid past it... which also happened to be the fastest way out of the system. The Manticoran resonance zone was so much "taller" than it was "broad" that the faces of the cone were almost parallel to one another, even this close to its base. Sphinx lay 102,002,500 kilometers inside the zone, and his original heading had been directly towards the planet, which defined just how much side vector he actually needed.
Even on his current profile, his restricted acceleration meant he'd pass within less than forty million kilometers of Sphinx, but he'd be further out-and longer getting there-than almost any other heading would have produced. If he hadn't changed course at all, he would have overflown Sphinx (and its defenses) seventy minutes after the brief, titanic engagement with Home Fleet, at an effective range of zero. If he'd changed heading by ninety degrees, he would have made his closest approach to Sphinx eight minutes later than that, at a range of only thirty-five million kilometers. On his current heading, his units' closest approach would come eighty-three minutes after changing course, and the range would be 39,172,200 kilometers.
He didn't much care for any of those options, given the pounding Home Fleet had given him, but the one he'd chosen was the best of the lot. It was still going to give the planet's defenders a shot, which he'd hoped wouldn't happen-yet, at least-but it would be long-ranged enough to degrade the Manties' accuracy, and the fire wouldn't be coming straight into his teeth the way Home Fleet's had. His missile defenses would be far more effective against whatever Sphinx had, and he frankly doubted that it had anything as heavy as ninety SDs had been able to hand out, anyway. And he'd needed to break back out across the RZ boundary for several reasons. Partly to get his cripples safely out of harm's way, but mostly because-as Taverner had just pointed out-he was critically low on ammunition. He needed to rendezvous with his ammunition ships and restock his magazines before driving back into the system defenses.
But Sphinx wasn't all he had to worry about, and Kuzak had dropped her own units in further "up" the zone's outer surface than he had. That put her in a position to move quickly to Sphinx's relief, accelerating directly towards the planet on a least-time course along the shortest passage through the RZ... which would also catch him between her fire and Sphinx's. In fact, Third Fleet would be less than 33,000,000 kilometers from him at the moment of his closest approach to Sphinx. Yet if he turned away from her, he would have no choice but to flee deeper and deeper into the resonance zone (without reammunitioning), and her higher base acceleration would readily permit her to overhaul him there. So he had no choice but to hold his present course.
It was a masterful move on Kuzak's part... and exactly the one Lester Tourville had hoped for.
The orphaned LAC survivors of Sebastian D'Orville's fleet came slashing in towards Second Fleet's screening units.
The screen had taken losses of its own-heavy ones-during the massive missile exchange, but, like the Manticoran LACs, the damage had been purely collateral. No one had been wasting missiles deliberately trying to hit battlecruisers when there were SD(P)s shooting back. But the inaccuracy for which long-range MDM fire had become justly famed had come into play, and "lost" missiles intended for superdreadnoughts had latched onto whatever targets they could find.
There were still thirty-three battlecruisers and forty-one heavy cruisers waiting for the incoming strike, ready to begin punching missiles at it as soon as they had the range. But the Manticoran LACs' closing velocity was over fifty thousand kilometers per second. Current-generation Havenite single-drive missiles had a powered range from rest of just over seven million kilometers. Given the geometry, they had a theoretical maximum range of almost 16.5 million, as did the LACs' attack missiles. That sounded like a lot... except that, at the Manticorans' closing velocity, they would streak straight across the entire engagement envelope in 317 seconds.
That wouldn't give much time for a lot of launches, and Republican accuracy against Alliance LAC electronic warfare capabilities was poor.
"Get on them! Get on them!" Captain Alice Smirnoff barked.
She was Second Fleet's senior surviving COLAC, and the crews of her twenty-seven hundred LACs, positioned between the cruisers screening Lester Tourville's battered ships of the wall and the incoming Manties, fought manfully to obey her orders.
Over two thirds of Smirnoff's ships were Cimeterre Alpha and Cimeterre Beta birds, built around the new fission power plants and improved capacitors Shannon Foraker and her technical crews had been able to produce after the windfall of technical data from Erewhon.
The Alphas were equipped with lasers powerful enough to punch through the sidewalls and armor of destroyers and cruisers at normal engagement ranges. They couldn't match the performance of the massive grasers of the Alliance's Shrikes, but they were far more dangerous in energy range than any Republican LAC had ever been before. The Betas weren't a lot more combat capable than the original Cimeterres had been, since they were still armed solely with missiles and those missiles hadn't been significantly improved. But-like the Alphas-they had bow walls and vastly enhanced power budgets and endurance.
Now, for the first time, they went up against the Alliance in truly significant numbers.
The engagement was brief. It had to be, with the Manticorans barreling in at such a high closing velocity. Smirnoff had arranged her LACs "above" and "below" the sensor and firing arcs she'd left open for the screen, and her own shorter-legged missiles streaked towards the incoming strike. She had more units then the Manties did, but the Alliance's superior EW more than offset her sheer numerical advantage.
Her Alphas never really got the chance to use their lasers. Their targets were too hard to lock up, streaking across their engagement window too quickly, and her firing angle meant all too many of the laser shots which were fired wasted themselves on the roofs or bellies of their targets' wedges. But her Betas' missiles, although less accurate and capable than the Katanas' Vipers, were fired in enormous numbers.
Six hundred of the Alliance LACs were killed in the fleeting moments Smirnoff had to engage them, but at a price. It was the first time, the Allied LAC crews had gone up against someone else's LAC bow walls, but Alice Truman's reports from Lovat had been taken to heart. They might never have encountered it before, but they'd allowed for the possibility, and although the new technology made the new Republican LACs far harder to kill, they still lost at a two-to-one rate as the Allied strike roared past them, into the teeth of the screen's fire.