"Vanessa, please," he leaned towards her, extending one hand. "You've done a brilliant job. God knows, if anyone in this universe has a right to lose her grip you're her, and I don't want-God, how I don't want!-to dump anything else on you. But we both know you're right. You can't take much more of this. You know you can't."
"What do you want me to do?" she asked in a bleak, terrible voice. "Request my own relief? Dump the responsibility on Demosthenes? Go back to the rear and say, 'Well, you gave it your best shot, Vanessa. Now let someone else shoulder the guilt'?"
He flinched, then shook his head.
"You're not God. None of this is your fault, and, intellectually, you know that. But this battle plan . . ." He shook his head again. "Vanessa, you can't stake an entire star cluster's survival on holding them here, not if they keep coming like they have."
"Oh yes I can," she said, and he heard the ring of steel in her deadly-soft voice. "This time we hold. Not the Bugs, not the devil, not God Himself, is pushing me out of Sarasota. No more retreats. No more slaughtered children. No more parents who die knowing the Fleet abandoned them. Not this time, Marcus!"
"But-"
"No." She cut him off again, more sharply, and a dangerous fire flickered in her eyes. "I know the risk, but there's a point where 'military logic' becomes irrelevant, and that point is right here, right now. There are a hundred million humans in this system, and I won't let these fucking monsters have it while I have a single starship or fighter to throw at them!"
She paused, glaring at him, then drew a deep breath and made her voice calm.
"Oh, you're right-if I dig in to hold to the last ship, I can lose it all, but have you really considered what happens if I don't dig in? How many systems can we write off out of 'military necessity' without devastating not only our own morale but our allies', as well? The first Ophiuchi units are only two weeks out, with the first Orions right behind them. We're stronger than we've ever been, reinforcements are on their way, and Remus is right behind us. If we lose that system, we lose the entire cluster, and this is the last place we can stand short of it. If we don't fight to the last ship here, what does that say to the next CO . . . or the civilians of the next system on the Bugs' list? They just keep coming, Marcus-not like a navy, but like some pestilence or forest fire. You've seen how desperate our people are. You know why they have to regard Redemption as a major victory. If they don't, they have to admit it's hopeless, and if we ever admit that, what happens to our will to fight? No." She shook her head sharply. "We have to stop these monsters somewhere, whatever it costs, and that somewhere is here. This time, we hold!"
LeBlanc sat back, staring at her while madness edged her voice, and knew, with absolute certainty, that she'd made her decision for all the wrong reasons. All her arguments, however logical, were no more than afterthoughts to her own bleeding need to die before she fell back again. Yet that didn't necessarily make them wrong, and he wondered, suddenly, how many of history's great stands had been fought by people who simply couldn't make themselves do anything else. Leonidas and the Three Hundred, Maccabeus and Masada, Zizka and his war wagons, Castle Saint Elmo and the Siege of Malta, Hougemont and La Haye-Sainte, Travis and Bowie, Gordon and Khartoum, Leningrad, the Warsaw Ghetto, First Tannerman, Second Redwing-the list went on and on, and if all too many of those desperate stands had ended in death and defeat, a handful had not. And even the ones which had weren't always in vain. . . .
" 'They shall not pass,' " he murmured. Murakuma blinked at him, and he smiled sadly. "From another war, Vanessa. From another war." He cocked his head, and a faint edge of true amusement edged his smile's sadness. "Sometimes it takes a madman-or woman-doesn't it?"
"Am I mad?" she asked with almost childlike wonder, and he shook his head.
"Maybe you are, but your secret's safe with me." Her shoulders twitched with relief, and he smiled again. "Go fight your battle, Vanessa. And, do you know, I think you may be right. We may just hold this time after all."
CHAPTER FIFTEEN In Good Company
Losses to date, though much higher than projected, were acceptable in light of the systems captured and the size of the Reserve, and the enemy was either far weaker or else so sensitive to losses he was unwilling to press attacks home. Only his technological advantages made him dangerous, and those advantages would not last. Already the first new weapons had reached the Fleet, and the serried ranks of waiting superdreadnoughts would be far more dangerous. No doubt many would still die-probably far more than they killed. But there were far more of them . . . and this time the Fleet knew how to force the enemy to stand and fight.
One moment all was calm in the Sarasota System; in the next a lightning bolt of starships erupted from the warp point. But this wasn't quite a simultaneous transit-the Bugs spent all of thirty seconds sending their ships through, which reduced the kills from interpenetration.
Reduced, but did not eliminate, and as alarms wailed and men and women rushed to battle stations, searing explosions announced Juggernaut's arrival as laser buoys and primary platforms added their fury to the blazing cauldron pent within the minefields. Over sixty cruisers were blown apart and a score more were reduced to wrecks, but that left seventy, and Vanessa Murakuma's eyes flicked to the tactical sidebar scrolling down her plot.
Unlike Second Justin, the Bugs had brought along a solid phalanx of those damnable Cataphracts. More, they'd held them back, phasing their transits to decrease their losses. It was hard to be certain from this range, but it looked like at least thirty of them had survived. That promised agonizing losses for her fighter jocks, yet the Bugs' failure to send their light units crashing into the mines was almost more ominous.
Assault Fleet had accomplished its mission to secure the warp point. It was unfortunate the enemy had once more declined to deploy within reach of its weapons, but aside from the mines and energy buoys, its cruisers were beyond his range, as well. Courier drones returned to Justin, announcing success, and the superdreadnoughts and their escorts began to make transit.
"Here come the big boys," Mackenna murmured.
Capital ships came steadily, deliberately, through the warp point, like some nightmare pre-space freight train, and Murakuma's belly tightened. Forty. Fifty. Sixty. They kept on coming, flowing into existence in an endless stream of alloy, shields and weapons, and she fought the urge to lick her lips. Every instinct screamed to hit them now, but she couldn't contest the warp point without crippling her own fleet too early. She had to let them in, give them room to deploy, and pray her speed and range advantages were enough to stop them once she had.
If you can stop them, her mind whispered mercilessly. If they haven't learned enough, adapted enough. If they haven't figured out some way to offset your advantages. If-
She strangled the whisper and checked her display again.
The computers were losing track-with so many ships packed into so small a volume mutual interference made it impossible to generate an accurate drive field count-but Plotting estimated there were already ninety-plus Bug SDs in the system, and Fifth Fleet's total order of battle was only a hundred and seventeen ships, twenty percent of them tugs or antimissile escorts without a single offensive weapon. The odds were even more daunting than she'd feared, and she toyed with the seal of her vac suit.