Honor chewed the inside of her lip and reached up to stroke Nimitz's ears. She could not but respect the moral courage it took for any commander to order one of his admirals to voluntarily surrender an allied star system to the enemy. Even if Parks was correct and his concentrated forces sufficed to take it back undamaged, his actions would provoke a furor, and the consequences to his career could be catastrophic. But resolution or no, the idea of splitting their forces in the face of potential attack appalled her. All her instincts insisted that Sarnow was right and Parks was wrong about the best way to bring the enemy to action, but perhaps even more frighteningly, that disposed of all thirty-two of Hancock Station's ships of the wall. In fact, it disposed of everything... except Battlecruiser Squadron Five.
"In the meantime," Parks continued evenly, as if he'd heard her thoughts, "you, Admiral Sarnow, will remain here in Hancock with your squadron as the core of a light task group. Your function will be to cover this base against attack, but, even more importantly, Hancock will continue to function as the linchpin of our entire deployment I'll leave detailed orders for Admiral Danislav, but for your planning information, I intend to hold his battle squadron here, as well. The two of you will be well placed as our central information relay and to cover Alizon against direct attack, and I'll detach another light cruiser flotilla to thicken up our Seaford pickets. That should enable them both to retain sufficient strength to shadow the enemy as a precaution against deception course changes and to alert you in time for you to move to reinforce Admiral Kostmeyer should Haven attack Zanzibar. I realize Admiral Kostmeyer will be much more poorly placed to come to your assistance, but so long as Admiral Rollins doesn't know we've pulled any substantial forces out of Hancock, he'll have to scout the system before committing himself to attack it, and that should alert us in time to bring one or both of the detached forces back to Hancock."
He paused, watching Sarnow's face, then went on quietly.
"I realize I'm leaving you exposed here, Admiral. Even after Admiral Danislav's arrival, you'll be heavily outnumbered if Admiral Rollins' units slip by us before we can redeploy to cover you, and I'd prefer not to put you in that kind of position. But I don't think I can avoid risking you. The overriding function of this base is to protect our allies and maintain control of this general area. If we lose Zanzibar, Alizon, and Yorik, Hancock will be effectively isolated and cut off from relief, in which case it loses both its value and its viability, anyway."
"I understand, Sir." Sarnow's clipped voice was free of rancor, yet Honor noted that he hadn't said he agreed with Parks.
"Very well, then." Parks pinched the bridge of his nose and looked at his staff ops officer. "All right, Mark, let's look at the nuts and bolts."
"Yes, Sir. First, Admiral, I think we have to consider how best to distribute our available screening units between Admiral Kostmeyer and the rest of our wall. After that—"
Captain Hurston went on speaking in crisp, professional tones, but Honor hardly noticed. She sat back in her chair, hearing the details and recording them for future reference but not really listening to them, and she felt Captain Corell's matching stiffness beside her.
Parks was making a mistake. For the best of reasons and not without the support of logic, but a mistake. She felt it, sensed it the same way she sensed the sudden fusion of a complicated tactical problem into a single, coherent unity.
She could be wrong. In fact, she hoped—prayed—that she was. But it didn't feel that way. And, she wondered, just how much of Admiral Parks' final decision was based on logic and how much on the desire, conscious or unconscious, to leave Admiral Mark Sarnow and his bothersome flag captain safely on a back burner, unable to upset his peace of mind?
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The faces in Nike's briefing room were unhappy, and Honor leaned back in her chair as Commander Houseman unburdened himself.
"... realize the gravity of the situation, Admiral Sarnow, but surely Sir Yancey must realize we can't possibly hold this system against an attack in force! We don't begin to have the firepower, and—"
"That's enough, Commander." There was no expression at all in Mark Sarnow's voice, but Houseman closed his mouth with a snap, and the admiral bestowed a wintry smile upon the assembled commodores, captains, and staff officers of what was about to become Task Group Hancock 001.
"I asked for your frank opinions, ladies and gentlemen, and I want them. But let us stick to the relevant, if you please. Whether or not our orders are the best possible ones is beside the point. Our concern has to be making them work. Correct?"
"Absolutely, Sir." Commodore Van Slyke gave his chief of staff a rare public look of disapproval and nodded emphatically.
"Good." Sarnow ignored Houseman's flush and looked at Commodore Banton, his senior divisional commander. "Have you and Commander Turner completed that study Ernie and I discussed with you Monday, Isabella?"
"Just about, Sir, and it looks like Captain Corell and Dame Honor are right. The sims say it should work, anyway, but we've got to nail down exactly what fire control modifications will be required, and the availability numbers are still up in the air. I'm afraid Gryphon has other things on her mind than our data requests just now." Banton allowed herself a smile that matched her admiral's, and one or two people actually chuckled.
"At the moment, Sir, I'd have to say that, unless Admiral Parks changes his mind and takes them with him, there should be enough pods to pull it off. I gave Captain Corell our latest figures when we came aboard this evening, and Commander Turner is working out the software changes now."
Sarnow glanced at Corell, who nodded in confirmation. A few people—notably Commander Houseman—looked skeptical, but Honor felt a trickle of satisfaction. The concept might be a tactical antique, yet its very outdatedness should keep the Peeps from expecting it in the first place.
A parasite pod was nothing more than a drone slaved to the fire control of the ship towing it astern on a tractor. Each pod mounted several, usually a half-dozen or so, single-shot missile launchers similar to those LACs used. The idea was simple—to link the pod with the ship's internal tubes and launch a greater number of birds in a single salvo in order to saturate an opponent's defenses—but they hadn't been used in a fleet engagement for eighty T-years because advances in antimissile defenses had rendered them ineffective.
The old pods' launchers had lacked the powerful mass-drivers which gave warships' missiles their initial impetus. That, in turn, gave them a lower initial velocity, and since their missiles had exactly the same drives as any other missile, they couldn't make up the velocity differential unless the ship-launched birds were stepped down to less than optimal power settings. If you didn't step your shipboard missiles down, you lost much of the saturation effect because the velocity discrepancy effectively split your launch into two separate salvos. Yet if you did step them down, the slower speed of your entire launch not only gave the enemy more time to evade and adjust his ECM, but also gave his active defenses extra tracking and engagement time.
It was the tracking time that was the real killer, for point defense had improved enormously over the last century. Neither LAC launchers nor the old-style pods had been able to overcome the advantage it now held (which was one reason the Admiralty had stopped all new LAC construction twenty Manticoran years ago). Moreover, the RMN's data on the People's Navy's point defense, available in no small part thanks to Captain Dame Honor Harrington, indicated that the Peeps' missile defenses, while poorer than Manticore's, were still more than sufficient to eat old-style pod salvos for breakfast.