"Which just about sums up the military side of our options," Hamish said, and Honor tasted another flash of that disappointment from him. This time there was an answering flicker, one of stubborn exasperation, from Elizabeth. And an echo of it from William Alexander, as well.
"Yes, I suppose it does," Elizabeth agreed, with a very slight but unmistakable note of finality. Then she glanced at her chrono.
"And it sums it up just in time," she said more briskly, with a wry grimace. "Honor, you and Willie and I-and you, Hamish-have a dinner appointment in the Crown Chancery in about twenty minutes. So," she smiled at Honor, "let's be about it, you three!"
Chapter Eight
"Anything from Admiral Duval, Serena?" Rear Admiral Oliver Diamato, Republic of Haven Navy, asked quietly.
"No, Sir." Commander Serena Taverner, his chief of staff shook her head.
"Good."
Diamato nodded to her, rose from his command chair, and crossed to the master plot on the battlecruiser William T. Sherman's flag bridge. Sherman was no longer "his," and he'd already discovered just how much he missed the hands-on command of a ship. But at least the Octagon had let him keep her as his flagship.
He examined the plot carefully, hands folded behind him. By now, the posture was so familiar that it had become truly his, no longer an affectation deliberately copied from Captain Hall. He studied the icons, then nodded once in approval and turned away. This was the first time he'd served with Rear Admiral Harold Duval, CO of the 19th CLAC Division, and Duval had a reputation as a bit of a worrywort. Diamato had been half afraid he might come up with some last-minute alteration of the plan, but it seemed he'd been doing his superior an injustice, and that was good. He hated last-minute surprises.
Now he gazed at the pair of CLACs-RHNS Skylark, the flagship, and her sister Peregrine-his own squadron was escorting, then checked the time display ticking down in the corner of the plot. The combined force would translate out of hyper in another twenty-seven minutes, right on the hyper limit of the Zanzibar System's G4 primary.
After which, he thought, things will get... interesting."
"We have a hyper footprint, Ma'am."
Rear Admiral of the Green Dame Evelyn Padgorny looked up from her routine paperwork at her ops officer's announcement. Commander Thackeray stood in the flag briefing room's hatch, his voice a bit deeper than usual, and Padgorny cocked an eyebrow at him.
"I assume from the fact that you're telling me this that it isn't a scheduled footprint, Alvin," she said dryly.
"No, Ma'am. It isn't." Thackeray gave her a tight grin. "The outer reconnaissance platforms make it twelve units. At the moment it looks like a pair of either superdreadnoughts or their CLACs, with a battlecruiser squadron riding shotgun and a couple of light cruisers or big tin-cans for scouting."
"Another raid, then," she said.
"That's what it looks like to CIC and System Defense Command," Thackeray agreed. "The question, of course, is whether they are CLACs... or SD(P)s."
"You do have a way of cutting to the nub of a matter, don't you, Alvin?"
Padgorny smiled humorlessly, logged off her terminal, and stood. Thackeray stepped back to let her precede him through the hatch, then followed her across the deck to HMS Prince Stephen's master plot. At least the plot's details were clear, she thought. The FTL links to the reconnaissance platforms planted around the system periphery were real-timing their take to Prince Stephen, and she pursed her lips thoughtfully as she studied the crimson icons.
Assuming they were, indeed, Havenite units-and Padgorny couldn't think of any reason for anyone else to be coming in without identifying themselves this way-Thackeray's question was well taken. Prince Stephen and the other four units of the understrength Thirty-First Battle Squadron weren't precisely cutting-edge. Although the oldest of Padgorny's ships was less than eight T-years old, none of them were pod-layers. All five were surrounded by shoals of missile pods, waiting to tractor themselves to their hulls upon command, but they weren't really optimized for pod-based combat. They simply lacked the sophistication of the fire control built into ships of the wall which had been intended from the outset for the new operational environment. Prince Stephen could "tow" as many as five or six hundred of the new pods, whose internal tractors glued them limpet-like to a ship's hull, but loading up with that many would seriously compromise her combat ability by blocking sensor and firing arcs. Worse, the maximum number of missiles she could actually simultaneously control effectively at range was no more than a hundred. One of the Invictus-class SD(P)s could control two or three times that many birds, even without the new Keyhole platforms, and she had to assume Peep pod-layers would also have several times the missile telemetry channels her ships had.
On the other hand, she reminded herself, if these people really want to shoot at us, then they've got to come to us. Which means, in this case, not simply us, but all the rest of Zanzibar System Defense Command.
Unless, of course, the Peeps in question were prepared to simply flail away at extreme range. It was unlikely they would choose to risk even accidentally violating the Eridani Edict, but they were Peeps, after all. The bastards hadn't been at all shy about killing thousands of Padgorny's fellow naval officers and ratings in their goddamned sneak attack, so they might not lose any sleep about the odd civilian mega-death or two, either.
"Any communication from them yet?"
"No, Ma'am," the com officer of the watch replied. "Of course, they've just come over the Alpha wall."
"Yes, they have," Padgorny agreed. "But by now, even the Peeps know our sensor platforms are out there and that they're FTL. Don't you suppose they might have figured out that a light-speed omnidirectional broadcast would be picked up and relayed to us?"
"Ah, yes, Ma'am," the hapless communications officer said. Obviously the Old Lady was not in a good mood, he noted.
"Sorry, Willoughby," Padgorny said a moment later, lips twitching in a wry smile. "Didn't mean to bite your head off."
"Yes, Ma'am," Lieutenant Willoughby said in a somewhat different tone, and returned her smile.
Padgorny nodded and turned away from him. She didn't really require any self-identifications from the intruders. The lack of any transmissions from them meant they had to be Peeps, since any Allied units most definitely would have identified themselves by now. So there was no point in taking out her frustration on Willoughby. Still, she would dearly love to know exactly what-
"LAC separation!" a voice announced. "We have LAC separation on Bogeys Alpha and Bravo! Estimate six hundred-plus inbound at six-eight-zero gravities!"
Well, it seemed that sometimes wishes came true. At least she knew, now, and it was unlikely the Peeps intended any Eridani violations if they were sending in LACs armed with short-ranged missiles.
"What about the battlecruisers?" she asked.
"They're maintaining constant decel with the CLACs, Ma'am," Thackeray replied. "Looks like this is more of a probe than a serious attack. The battlecruisers are hanging back to cover the CLACs while their birds are away."