Nike and her squadron mates accelerated at a steady .986 gees, screened by Van Slyke's heavy cruisers and the ten light cruisers Cartwright and Ernie Corell had exempted from their picket deployments. The task group seemed to crawl at such a low accel, yet there were limits to even the best electronic warfare capabilities. While the RMN's stealth systems were highly efficient against active sensors like radar, the only effective way to limit detection range against an impeller wedge was to reduce its power.
But slow or not, Sarnow's main striking force was exactly on Charlotte Oselli's course towards its massive foes, and the Peeps were, indeed, maintaining the separation Eve had noticed. That was goodas good, at least, as they had any right to hope for against such a tremendous weight of metal. Operation Sucker Punch wasn't predicated on any ridiculous assumption that battlecruisers could stop ships of the wall, nor was it without serious risks, but it offered a definite chance to bleed the enemyespecially when the enemy was obliging enough to come in split up this way. And it was remotely possible they could delay the Peeps long enough for Danislav to arrive.
Remotely.
She completed her scan of the displays and leaned back to cross her legs and radiate the calm it was her job to display. She looked around the bridge and noted with satisfaction that none of her people were watching her. They had their eyes where they belongedon their own displays.
She touched a com stud.
"Auxiliary Control, Commander Henke," a furry contralto answered.
"This is the Captain. I'm on the bridge."
"Aye, aye, Ma'am. You're on the bridge, and you have the con."
"Thank you, Mike. I'll see you later."
"Yes, Ma'am. You owe me a beer, anyway."
"I always owe you a beer," Honor complained. "I think there's something wrong with your bookkeeping." Henke chuckled, and Honor shook her head. "Clear," she said, and released the stud.
She would have preferred, in a way, to have Mike on the bridge with her, but unlike any of her earlier ships, Nike was big enough for a duplicate command deck at the far end of her core hull. Known informally as Coventry, Auxiliary Control was manned by a complete backup of her own bridge crew under Henke's supervision. It was a chilling thought in some ways, but knowing someone she trusted was waiting to look after her ship for her eased her mind more than she'd once expected it could.
She settled herself more comfortably in her own chair and checked the plot. The minelayers had already completed their part of the initial operation and started back for the base, and she wished with all her heart that Paul were among the people they were about to pick up. But he wasn't, and at least the base wasn't totally helpless. It mounted no offensive weapons, but it was fitted with generators for a spherical sidewall "bubble" almost as strong as Nike's own, and its active antimissile defenses were excellent. They'd been unable to adapt its defensive fire control to handle parasite pods, so it still had no offensive punch, but it could protect itself quite welluntil, at least, some Peep capital ship got into beam range.
And that was going to happen. She made herself face it. Sarnow would do his best, but not even his best was going to change Paul's fate. Even if the task group succeeded in drawing the Peeps' lead element after it and away from the base, they could only delay the inevitable. Oh, Danislav might get here in time, but no one was stupid enough to count on that... and even if he did, his own ships would be hopelessly outnumbered.
No, they weren't going to save the base, but at least the Admiral had ordered Paul's CO to surrender once the enemy reached energy range. The thought of losing him to a POW campespecially a Peep POW campwas heartbreaking, but he'd be alive. That was the important thing, she told herself. He'd be alive.
She allowed herself one more moment of silent anguish, then put all thought of Paul Tankersley into a cupboard in her brain and closed the door upon it as lovingly and gently as she'd closed Nimitz's life-support module. Her face smoothed, and she touched another com stud.
"Flag Bridge, Chief of Staff."
"This is the Captain, Ernie. Please inform the Admiral that I'm on the bridge awaiting his orders."
Rear Admiral Genevieve Chin watched her display on PNS New Boston's flag bridge and tried not to fidget. It wasn't nerves, she told herself. Not in the traditional sense, anyway. The fact that she'd been tapped to lead the first real assault on the enemy despite her relative lack of seniority would be a tremendous feather in her cap, and aside from the pair of tin-cans hovering stubbornly just beyond her missile envelope, there wasn't a sign of the Manties. Of course, those spying destroyers meant the defending CO was getting excellent information on her, wherever he was hiding, but she wasn't too concerned. EW or no, there was no way he was going to sneak into range under power without her seeing him. And unless he'd been in exactly the right position when the first light-speed reports of her arrival came in, there was no way he'd have time to get into an attack positionnot, at least, one that wasn't suicidalwithout coming in under power.
Yet despite her own reasoning, she felt undeniably tense. She was almost to turnover, so where were the bastards? They should have shown up by now... unless they'd decided to abandon Hancock without offering battle.
Assuming her information on their strength was accurate, that would certainly be a rational move, yet it would also be completely at odds with her own assessment of the Manticoran Navy. Edward Saganami had set the RMN's standards in his final engagement when he died defending a convoy against five-to-one odds. His inheritors had proven themselves worthy of their founder over the centuries, and that sort of tradition wasn't built in a moment; somehow she couldn't picture any Manticoran admiral letting it be torn down without a fight.
No, he was out there somewhere, and he was up to something. She couldn't see him, but she didn't have to see him to know that.
"Drive shutdown in five minutes," Oselli reported.
"Thank you, Charlotte." Honor looked down at the screen, which now showed Mark Sarnow's face, and started to open her mouth.
"I heard," he said, and his expression was less tense than it had been before. In fact, it was almost relaxed, as if he, too, were relieved that the moment was approaching. And, she thought dryly, that they'd gotten this far without being spotted. The Peep dreadnoughts had made turnover twenty-eight minutes ago, and they'd hardly be continuing their deceleration if they knew the enemy was now directly ahead of them.
"Yes, Sir. Any orders?"
"None, thank you."
"Very well, Sir."
She leaned back again, resting her elbows on the arms of her command chair, and looked back at the plot. Six and a quarter hours had passed since the Peeps' arrival; now the crimson data codes of enemy ships of the wall plowed up their wake, decelerating steadily but still overtaking at over twenty thousand KPS, and the fact that that was exactly what Hancock's defenders wanted them to do didn't make it any less unnerving.
"Argus is reporting something, Sir."
Rollins stopped pacing to dart a quick look at Captain Holcombe. The chief of staff was bent over Captain Santiago's shoulder, watching the ops officer's display, and the admiral made himself wait without comment while the data coalesced.
"Five ships, Sir," Holcombe said finally. "Acceleration about four-point-niner KPS squared. They're on the far side of the inner system, headed directly away from the Manty baseand Admiral Chintoward the hyper limit." He glanced at a time readout. "Transmission lag is about thirty-three minutes from the platforms that picked them up, Sir."