As always, some of those multitudes had gotten through-more than enough, for Vanessa Murakuma's money. But her gaze held steady as she studied the totals of ships damaged or, in a few cases, destroyed outright. It had to be considered an acceptable loss ratio, given how few gunboats of the attack wave had made it back to their planetary bases.
The shuttles had fled back there, too. Lagging behind the gunboats, they-or, rather, whoever or whatever did their thinking for them-had seen the futility of pressing on with an independent attack on ships they'd have had difficulty overtaking in any case. So, along with a second, as yet uncommitted wave of gunboats, they'd retired to the planets which they knew to be the Allies' objectives, evidently concluding that they need only wait for the Allied combined fleets to enter their effective attack envelope, as they must do sooner or later in order to reach those objectives.
It was, Murakuma reflected, a perfectly logical conclusion on their part. It just happened to be wrong.
"So, Ahhhdmiraal," Koraaza's voice from the com screen brought her back to the present, "matters are now in the doubtless capable hands of your Small Claw Tahlivver."
Murakuma chuckled inwardly. Koraaza, without the spelling to mislead him, came closer to pronouncing Paul Taliaferro's surname accurately than most humans who didn't come from the region on Old Terra's North American continent known as Virginia.
"Indeed, Lord Khiniak-as soon as we can locate enough asteroids that meet his somewhat exacting requirements," she agreeed, and Koraaza favored her with a tooth-hidden smile.
"I, too, am not altogether unacquainted with the foibles of engineers. But we have an entire asteroid belt to choose from. Shall we proceed?"
The case for abandoning the outer system to the Enemy had been an unexceptionable one. If the speed differential between gunboats and shuttles made it impossible to coordinate a single overwhelming attack as planned, the obvious solution was to draw all available resources of both sorts back around the Worlds Which Must Be Defended, where the Enemy must come to them and would surely be swamped by sheer numbers. Viewed in that light, there was no need for undue concern over the fact that the Enemy's carriers for their small attack craft had vanished into cloak in the outer system.
However, the Enemy's subsequent behavior had continued to refuse to conform to expectations. It was extremely difficult for the Fleet's scout craft to penetrate the dense shells of small attack craft the Enemy was maintaining about his starships. And, lacking a foothold in the asteroid belt itself, the Fleet possessed no sensor stations in position to substitute for that lack of reconnaissance with direct observation.
Still, the essential facts seemed clear enough, judging from the handful of fragmentary reports from the few gunboats which had gotten through and lived long enough to send back any data at all. In contrast to the usual pattern of events, the Enemy was preparing for a protracted campaign by constructing bases on three of the largest asteroids and six smaller ones. The defensive installations being emplaced on those asteroids were certainly consistent with the hypothesis.
"Coming up on Sledgehammer Three, Commodore."
Paul Taliaferro, sitting in the position from which he'd unceremoniously displaced the copilot, grunted something unintelligible. The pilot expected no better in the way of a response, accustomed as she'd become to the commodore's preoccupied taciturnity, so she went on piloting.
Taliaferro wasn't quite the surly misanthrope his reputation suggested. Indeed, he occasionally wished he possessed more of the social graces whose lack-in the opinion of many, including and especially his former wife-helped account for his failure to rise above the rank of commodore. He just didn't have the time for them . . . nor, to be honest, the motivation. When manipulating and reshaping the inanimate physical universe through engineering, there was generally one best way to do a thing, and that was that. It was so straightforward! None of the irritating ambiguities and irrationalities with which humans insisted on complicating their lives. Often they actually seemed to resent having the path of maximum efficiency pointed out to them as succinctly as possible. He wondered why.
It was different, though, with Admiral Murakuma. She understood!
Now the asteroid they'd dubbed Sledgehammer Three was visible in the shuttle's lights, waxing to fill the viewport whose presence was the reason Taliaferro had appropriated the copilot's seat. He studied the asteroid with care, for this was his last stop on his last inspection tour of it and its two mates, and of the lesser asteroids designated Hammer One through Six.
Sledgehammer Three was a rugged sphere almost four hundred kilometers in diameter. As far back as the twentieth century, it had been recognized that above a certain minimum mass an astronomical body's own gravity would prevent it from retaining a grossly irregular shape. Only four of Sol's asteroids were above that minimum. Here in Home Hive Two's fifth orbital position, though, it was pretty clear that the unborn planet would have been a true whopper if it had succeeded in clumping together. In spite of a vastly greater radius, this asteroid belt was as dense as Sol's, and held far more giant members. The three Sledgehammers had been easy to find, the six smaller rocks for the mere Hammers effortless.
Then had come the toil of constructing the installations which Taliaferro now observed. Over a hundred robotic point-defense emplacements dotted Sledgehammer Three's wild and barren surface. Also, buried deep under the crevasses and craters, were the command datalink facilities that would enable Taliaferro's eleven Guerriere-C-class command ships to coordinate the three Sledgehammers' defensive fire. The six Hammers mounted proportionately lighter defensive works.
All of that, however, was secondary, meant only to keep these asteroids in existence long enough to fulfill their destiny. Only one engineering work on Sledgehammer Three really mattered-the one that couldn't be given a trial run.
"Get me Commander Lin," Taliaferro muttered. The pilot had barely complied before he leaned forward and snapped into the grille. "What's the word on that flaw in the pusher plate?"
"We're not certain there is one, Sir," Lin Yu-hsiang replied from his temporary command post on the surface of Sledgehammer Three. "When it comes to constructing Orion drives, we don't exactly have much experience-and having to stop what we're doing to answer questions about it doesn't exactly help!"
The pilot blanched, expecting thunderbolts. But Taliaferro actually chuckled-partly in recognition of a kindred spirit, and partly at what had become a standing joke in TG 64.1. When the name for what the task group was constructing had reached the Tabbies, they'd thought they were being honored. No one had had the heart to tell them that the name dated back to a time centuries before humanity had dreamed their race existed.