"Bring her up on our starboard side. Tuck her in as tight as you can and reduce our accel to match hers.
"Instruct her to maintain station on us—then order the rest of the task group to scatter."
Admiral Chin's frown deepened as the Manty task group unraveled. There was no mistake about it this time; each ship spun away from its fellows, scattering far and wide in what was clearly a carefully planned maneuver.
All but two of them. One pair of battlecruisers clung together, so tight her sensors could hardly distinguish one from the other, and she nodded. The closer one was the Reliant-class ship, and she was obviously covering a damaged consort, which made the two of them her logical target. But even as she thought that she continued to stare at the decelerating impeller sources of Rollins' superdreadnoughts.
Now why would they be doing that, unless—
The battered Havenite dreadnoughts slowed abruptly, and Honor bared her teeth. They'd figured it out at last. She didn't know how, but they knew . . , only they didn't know it was already too late.
The dreadnoughts completed their turn, decelerating as hard as they could, and she pictured the scene on their flagship's bridge. Their CO couldn't know what bearing the threat was coming from. Until her own sensors picked up Danislav's ships she could only decelerate back the way she'd come, and every second of deceleration increased Nike's relative velocity by nine KPS. Which made it time to make the Peeps' targeting problems a little worse.
"Execute Shell Game," she said.
Eve Chandler punched commands into her panel, and eight EW drones erupted away from the two battlecruisers. They scattered in four different directions, each pair tucked in tight, mimicking the signatures of their mother ships, and Nike and Cassandra altered course sharply to charge off on yet a fifth vector.
The sudden multiplication of targets did exactly what Honor had intended. Unable to be certain which were the real ships, the Peep commander chose not to waste her ammunition on might-have-beens... especially when she must have figured out she was going to need every missile she had very shortly.
All fire ceased, and the brutally wounded flagship of TG-H001 and her crippled consort raced for safety.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Hereditary President Harris looked around the magnificently decorated dining room and tried not to show his worry. It was his birthday, and the glittering horde of well-wishers had gathered as it always did, but this time there was a difference. The soft clink and clatter of tableware sounded completely natural; the near total absence of conversation did not.
His mouth quirked mirthlessly, and he reached for his wineglass. Of course there was no conversation; no one wanted to talk about what all of them knew was true.
He drank deep of his wine, hardly noticing its exquisite bouquet, and let his eye run over the tables. As it did on every Presidents Day, the Republic's government had virtually shut down for the celebration, since anyone in government who mattered simply had to be here. Only Ron Bergren and Oscar Saint-Just were absent. The foreign secretary had departed for the Erewhon Wormhole Junction, en route to the Solarian League and a desperate (and probably futile) effort to convince the League that Manticore had started the war. Saint-Just, on the other hand, had been working eighteen-hour days ever since Constances assassination—without getting any closer to her killers. But every other cabinet member was here, as were the heads of all of Haven's most prominent Legislaturalist clans and their immediate families.
Harris set the glass back down and stared into its tawny heart. Despite the forced air of festive normality, there was a terrible, singing tension in this room, for the growing fear spawned by Constance's unexpected murder had been fanned by the disastrous reports from the frontiers.
They'd been mouse-trapped. Harris made himself admit that. They'd set their plans in motion, confident the game was theirs to direct as it always had been, only to discover that, after fifty years of conquest, they had finally met a foe even more cunning than they were.
He'd read the dispatches. Given what Admiral Rollins had known, Harris had to agree he'd had no choice but to move against the Hancock System, yet hindsight proved only too clearly that the Manties had known all about the "secret" Argus net. They'd used it to offer Rollins an irresistible bait by "withdrawing" their ships, and the result had been devastating. The arrival of the dreadnoughts which had compelled Admiral Chin to surrender would have been bad enough, but it hadn't been the end. Oh, no. Not the end.
Harris shuddered. The second jaw of the Manty trap had failed by the thinnest margin when the rest of Admiral Parks' "dispersed" task force dropped out of hyper barely thirty minutes too late to intercept Rollins before he hypered out, yet his escape hadn't saved him in the end. Reinforced to almost a third again of his prewar strength, Parks had moved instantly against Seaford Nine and Rollins' weakened task force. Seaford's defenders had destroyed a couple of ships of the wall and damaged others, but only three of their own capital ships had survived, and Rollins' flagship hadn't been one of them. PNS Barnett had blown up early in the action, killing Rollins and his entire staff, and the command confusion that followed had finished Seaford off.
And then Parks had left one battle squadron to hold Seaford and returned to Hancock... just in time to meet Admiral Coatsworth as he moved in, expecting to find Rollins in possession. At least Coatsworth had gotten most of his ships out, yet his lead squadrons had taken a terrible pounding, and without Seaford's repair facilities, he'd been driven clear back to Barnett with his damaged units while his courier boats reported the disaster to Haven.
Public Information had clamped down a total news blackout, but rumors had leaked. That was one reason Harris had gone ahead with his annual birthday celebration, as an effort to convince people of the governments "business as usual" confidence in the face of those rumors. Not, he thought bitterly, that he expected it to do any good. The only thing that could really calm the public would be the news that Admiral Parnell's attack on Yeltsin's Star had succeeded, and it would take at least another week for Parnell's report of victory to reach Haven.
Assuming, of course, that he had a victory to report.
Harris grimaced at his own gloomy thoughts and straightened in his chair. One thing that wouldn't help was for the President to look as if his best friend had just died, and—
His thoughts broke off as the head of his security detachment walked quickly across the room towards him. The security man's expression was neutral, but his body language communicated an entirely different message.
"What is it, Eric?" the President asked quietly.
"I'm not certain, Sir." The security man's New Geneva accent was more pronounced—and anxious—than usual. "Capital Traffic Control's just picked up half a dozen Navy shuttles entering city airspace without prior clearance."
"Without clearance?" Harris pushed his chair back and stood. "Where are they headed? What did they say when Control challenged them?"
"They say they're an unscheduled training mission authorized by Naval Security to test CTC's readiness states, Mr, President."
"A security test?" Harris wiped his mouth with his napkin and dropped it beside his plate. "Well, I suppose that makes a degree of sense, under the circumstances, but contact Secretary Saint-Just and get InSec to validate."
"We're trying, Sir, but Secretary Saint-Just is away from his com."
"Then screen Undersecretary Singh. Someone must know—"
The Presidential Security Force man stiffened, pressing his hand to his unobtrusive earbug, then paled. His right hand seized the President by the sleeve, and Harris staggered as he was half-flung towards an exit.