"There they go."
Chin didn't look up. He was certain whoever had spoken didn't even realize he had, and his own attention was locked to the fourteen-minute-old icons in the plot.
Squadrons began to flash from green to amber as they salvoed their FM3 missiles from just outside the Bugs' point defense envelope. It was like some bloodless simulation . . . or would have been, if every man and woman on Psyche's flag bridge hadn't known what would happen when the "simulation's" survivors reached the task force.
The long launch range didn't help. It reduced accuracy by almost fifty percent, and the fighters needed at least five hits to saturate the Bugs' point defense and guarantee a kill. That took most of a squadron's entire missile load at this range, and he had only twenty squadrons.
Bug icons began to vanish, and he felt the hungry approval of his officers and ratings. The fighters were doing a little better than projected; some of the squadron COs had clearly opted to ignore orders and split their fire between multiple targets-no doubt they'd figured out how unlikely they were to survive to be reprimanded-and this time disobedience was paying off.
The last fighter salvoed its ordnance and broke off, still never having entered the Bugs' range, and he waited while Maslett tallied the results.
"Twenty-seven, Sir," the ops officer announced. "They're down to a hundred sixty-nine. They'll be entering our capital missile envelope in twelve more minutes."
"Turn the support ships away," Chin directed. "Let's slow their overtake."
"And the escorts?"
"We'll stay right where we are, Andy." Chin smiled mirthlessly. "According to the boffins, their gunboats' sensors aren't as good as our recon fighters', and they're probably pretty fixated on the support ships right now. Let's see if we can't play road block."
"It's worth a try, Sir," Maslett agreed with a matching smile.
The enemy changed course at last. There was still no sign of his warships-the attack craft had vanished aboard their cloaked mother ships-but it was likely the escorts were waiting somewhere between the gunboats and their prey. Yet they could not engage the gunboats without revealing their own positions when they fired, and the massed squadrons bored in for the kill.
"Here they come, Sir," Maslett muttered, and Chin glanced at his com link to Commodore Haasnaahr aboard OADCS Zirk-Cothmyriea.
"Ready, Haasnaahr?"
"Yesss, Sssir," the fierce-beaked Ophiuchi replied, and Chin nodded.
"Good. Inform Admiral Triam she may engage, Andy."
"Aye, aye, Sir."
Five battle-cruisers and five superdreadnoughts began slamming CMs into the gunboats. Their fire control was far better than any fighter's, and their capital missiles were much harder to stop. Gunboats tore apart, and Chin watched the fireballs sweep closer. The incoming missiles told the Bugs where the firing ships were, and they altered course to race straight for them.
"Now, Haasnaahr!" Chin snapped, and a hundred and twenty Ophiuchi fighters suddenly launched behind the Bugs. Splitting off those carriers and their escorting Broadswords had been a gamble, but now the fighters launched at such short range they were already in firing distance-and the gunboats' blind spot-before the Bugs even realized they were there.
Shoals of FM3s streaked out, unopposed by the point defense the Bugs couldn't bring to bear, and the Broadswords' heavy broadsides came with them. Over eighty gunboats died in barely forty seconds, and the Bug formation came apart. There were still almost a hundred of them, and half looped back, looking for the carriers. Most of the others continued their runs on the battle-line units, but perhaps twenty ignored carriers and superdreadnoughts alike, racing across the escorts' engagement envelope to pursue the support ships.
The escorts did their best to nail the evaders, but they had to defend themselves, as well, and thirteen Bugs got away clean. Chin swore viciously as he watched them go, but the ones actually engaging his warships were like spiders in a flame. The Ophiuchi pilots fired their last missiles and drove into them with internal lasers, and the close-range plot dissolved into a swirl of dogfighting madness. Ship-launched missiles continued to reach out into the carnage, homing on the more powerful emissions of the gunboats' hybrid drives, and the Bugs were slaughtered.
But some of them closed to FRAM range before they died, and TFNS Scharnhorst found herself targeted by at least a dozen. FRAMs smashed the battle-cruiser's shields flat, and then, despite her wild evasion maneuvers, two gunboats rammed her cleanly. All three vessels vanished in an intolerable glare, and the last two gunboats swerved to attack her sister Guam, only to be bounced and killed barely a thousand kilometers short of target by an Ophiuchi fighter squadron.
And then, suddenly, it was over. Scharnhorst was gone, but she was the only warship Chin had lost. It looked like Haasnaahr had lost twenty or thirty irreplaceable fighters, but the rest of the escorts were intact. In fact, none of the survivors reported more than minor damage, and he let himself smile with cold pleasure. They'd massacred the bastards, and badly as Scharnhorst's loss hurt, it could have been far, far worse.
He opened his mouth to congratulate his people, but Maslett spoke before he could.
"Captain Hardiman's just reported, Sir," the ops officer said quietly. "I'm afraid we've lost Dover, Cromarty, and Columbine."
Chin winced, his satisfaction suddenly ashes in his mouth. Dover and Cromarty were bad enough-the mobile shipyards had each carried a crew of fifteen hundred-but Columbine had been a transport, with over five thousand Fleet replacement personnel on board.
"Shit," someone said bitterly behind him. Chin began to turn to see who it was, when a com rating stiffened at her panel, and he looked at her, instead.
"Excuse me, Sir," the young woman said. "Commodore Haasnaahr reports that Cestus has just picked up another strike seventy light-minutes astern and closing."
"How many?" the admiral asked Maslett harshly, and the ops officer queried CIC. Chin watched his shoulders tighten before the commander turned his chair to face him.
"Plotting says at least three hundred, Sir-and another group's coming in from port. They're still too far out for a count, but they may be even stronger."
"Christ," someone whispered, and Chin's mouth tightened. Six hundred more-at least. Given the gunboat complements Bug superdreadnoughts mothered, that meant there were at least fifty capital ships out there somewhere. Their obvious mission was to close off Second Fleet's retreat, and he doubted they'd let themselves be diverted from that to chase down his task force. But they didn't need to divert from it. They could use only their gunboats and destroy every ship he had without even slowing their own progress towards Anderson Five.