Zavala had originally been the senior officer of Destroyer Squadron 301’s second division. He’d inherited command of the entire squadron from Commodore Ray Chatterjee following the massacre of three quarters of DesDiv 301.1 at New Tuscany, however, and reorganized the squadron’s surviving five ships into two understrength divisions. As part of that reorganization, he’d shifted his flag from HMS Gawain to HMS Kay and left Gawain in DesDiv 301.2, where her skipper, Captain Frank Morgan, had become the division’s new senior officer. At the same time, Kay had been detached from DesDiv 301.2 and, along with Kaplan’s own Tristram, now constituted a half-strength DesDiv 301.1. They’d been promised enough ships to make up the squadron’s losses and bring both divisions back to full strength, but that had been before the Yawata Strike. Now it was anyone’s guess how long they’d have to wait…or, for that matter, if they’d ever see the promised replacements at all. Frankly, Kaplan didn’t think it was likely they would.
In the meantime, it seemed probable the squadron was going to find itself tasked for independent operations. Its Roland-class destroyers were big, powerful units, and the devastating, long-range punch of their Mark 16 missiles made them ideal commerce-raiders. They also made excellent convoy escorts, of course, but locating convoys in hyper was hellishly difficult, and the Talbott Quadrant’s member star systems were already well protected against raiders once a ship dropped back into n-space. That meant Tristram and her sisters could be dispensed with in the escort role, which left them available for other duties. Given the fact that Manticore’s confrontation with the Solarian League was likely to get a lot worse before it got any better, and given the further fact that the Madras Sector’s star systems were not well protected against Manticoran raiders, whatever Frontier Fleet might fondly imagine, it wasn’t hard to figure out how DesRon 301 was likely to find itself employed in the painfully near future.
Hence the current exercise.
Why do I have a bad feeling about this? Kaplan asked herself. I mean, there they sit, plodding along at barely forty thousand kilometers per second—slow, fat, dumb, and happy. Sure, they’ve got a pair of light cruisers to back the destroyers, but that’s still no match for a pair of Rolands, damn it!
She frowned some more, one dark-skinned hand playing with a lock of bright blonde hair. On the face of it, there wasn’t much the putative Solly escorts could do to stop Tristram and Kay from skinning their convoy like a Sphinxian prong buck. Kaplan’s Mark 16s had over three times the reach of the SLN’s Javelin-class shipkillers, which meant she could destroy all of those merchies without ever even entering their escorts’ range.
Of course, a Roland carried only 240 Mark 16s, and accuracy would be significantly degraded at maximum range, even against merchantships. True, the simulation’s parameters assumed the raiders were accompanied by a missile transport from which they could resupply, but with the Yawata Strike’s catastrophic consequences for missile production, no one wanted to waste any of the limited number available. So the logical move was to get as close to her prey as she could without ever entering the escorts’ powered envelope. That would maximize the accuracy (and economy) of her own fire while maintaining her immunity from the defenders.
Which is exactly what I was planning to do. And so far I haven’t seen any reason to change my mind. Not one I could put my finger on, anyway. But still…
Her eyes narrowed as she finally realized what was bothering her. She didn’t know Captain Zavala as well as she wished she did, but he struck her as quite a different proposition from the larger-than-life, almost boisterous Commodore Chatterjee. No one who’d ever served with Chatterjee could have doubted the commodore’s competence, but his enthusiasm and inexhaustible energy had been the first things to strike almost anyone on first acquaintance, and he’d had a very…direct approach to problems. Not only was Zavala barely two thirds as tall as Chatterjee had been, he was also far quieter, with a thoughtful, almost preoccupied air which she’d quickly realized was deceptive. Chatterjee had been well suited to his nickname of “Bear,” but Zavala was a treecat—compact, sleek, and with the confident, composed watchfulness of a patient predator.
She’d also done a bit of quiet research since he’d assumed command of the squadron and found that Commander Zavala been a senior tactical instructor at Saganami Island for four years. He’d been slated for command of a destroyer at the time Oscar Saint-Just had been toppled, but he’d lost that appointment in the Janacek build-down and been sent to the Academy instead. In fact, his Saganami Island stint had coincided almost exactly with Edward Janacek’s tenure as First Lord of Admiralty, and being beached by the Janacek Admiralty was a recommendation in its own right, as far as Kaplan was concerned. From the look of things, he’d done a damned good job as an instructor, though, and the White Haven Admiralty had given him command with almost indecent haste. He’d posted a pretty good record as a destroyer skipper since, too. In fact, he’d been jumped straight past captain (junior-grade) to captain of the list on the basis of his performance with Eighth Fleet. Well, that was scarcely surprising. All false modesty aside, Kaplan knew the Navy wasn’t choosing Roland skippers at random, and every CO in the squadron had amply demonstrated his or her capabilities before being selected.
Yet for this exercise, Zavala had relegated himself to the role of a passenger aboard his flagship. He was only there to observe, he’d explained, and that was the reason Kaplan’s mental antennae were quivering.
An observer, yes, but to observe exactly what, I wonder?
She stroked one eyebrow with an index finger, remembering how straightforward the simulation had sounded when she read the initial ops order. In fact, it had gone beyond mere straightforwardness to the absurdly simple, and for the life of her she couldn’t remember the last time a good senior officer had organized a training sim as a “gimme.” The Manticoran tradition was to train its people in exercises which were deliberately harder than actual operations were likely to prove. That obviously wasn’t the case here, yet someone like Zavala was unlikely to forget the tradition. Which meant there was a nasty hook somewhere inside that tasty-looking bait. But what sort of hook…?
“Abigail,” she said.
“Yes, Ma’am?” Lieutenant Hearns looked over her shoulder, one eyebrow raised.
“Do you have those reports on what happened at Torch handy?”
“Such as they are and what we have of them, yes, Ma’am.”
“I know we don’t have much detail,” Kaplan acknowledged, which was unfortunately true. Admiral Luis Rozsak and the Erewhonese were keeping any reports of the actual engagement pretty close to their vests. “But I’m thinking more about ONI’s speculations. About the performance of the missiles Mesa equipped those StateSec retreads with.”
“We don’t have any hard numbers, Ma’am.” Abigail’s own expression turned thoughtful as she paged through her orderly mental files. “In fact there’s nothing specific about the Mesan-supplied missiles at all. But one of the analysts on Admiral Hemphill’s staff did suggest they may not have been standard Solly issue. Is that what you were thinking of, Ma’am?”