"I can't say I don't feel at least a little the same," Raycraft admitted. Alpha One would have turned Anvil Force into a true anvil, with the light cruisers and Hjálmar Snorrason's destroyers advancing from Torch to catch the attackers between themselves and Rozsak's Hammer Force. "On the other hand, the Admiral was right. Alpha One probably would be a case of gilding the lily. If he can't do the job with six of the Marksmans, we probably couldn't do it with eight, either. Besides, I imagine there'll be time to go to Alpha Three, if it comes to it. And if it doesn't, then not giving ourselves away with active impeller signatures strikes me as a pretty good notion."
"Oh, I agree, Ma'am," Dobbs told her mildly, and she snorted once, then turned back to Siegel.
"How long until the Admiral has Hammer Force in position?" she asked.
"It looks like they came up about two million klicks short on their planned translation, Ma'am," Siegel replied, and Raycraft nodded. She already noticed that Lieutenant Wu's astrogation had been a little off, and she wasn't surprised. In fact, she was all in favor of coming up short in a situation like this one, herself. "Assuming constant accelerations across the board, though," Siegel continued, "Hammer Force will close to the specified range in about fifty-eight minutes. At that point, the enemy will be just under a hundred and twelve million kilometers—call it six-point-two light-minutes—from Torch."
Raycraft nodded again, then turned to the com image of Lieutenant Richard McKenzie, Artillerist's chief engineer.
"Stand ready on the wedge, Richard. We may want it in an hour or so."
"Velocities have equalized, Citizen Commodore," Citizen Lieutenant Commander Pierre Stravinsky said quietly, and Adrian Luff glanced at the master plot again.
There'd been no further communication with Admiral Rozsak, assuming it really was Admiral Rozsak behind them, although that didn't necessarily strike him as a good sign. Not that anything the other man might have said was going to cause him to rethink his own plans and options at this point. He'd decided what he was going to do, and he wasn't going to start second-guessing himself at this late point.
The range between his ships and their pursuers had opened while the bogeys made up their initial velocity disadvantage. With an acceleration advantage of just under one kilometer per second, that had taken 9.75 minutes. The range between them had risen to just over 13.3 million kilometers during that time; now that velocities had equalized at 7,886 KPS, the range had begun to drop once again. From here on, their pursuers would steadily eat away the distance between them.
He looked up and beckoned for Citizen Commander Hartman to join him. She stepped up on his left side, gazing at the plot with him, and he waved one hand at its icons.
"They're still almost eleven million kilometers short of the hyper limit," he observed, "so I suppose it's remotely possible they really don't have MDMs over there and they're trying to run a bluff on us. They could still be hoping our nerve will crack and we'll break off . . . and planning on hypering back out instead of coming across the limit after us and getting into standard missile range, if we don't. Just between you and me," his tone was dry enough to evaporate the Frontenac Estuary back home in Nouveau Paris, "I'd really like to think that's what's happening here. Unfortunately, what I think is really happening is exactly what you and Stravinsky suggested from the outset. Those are Erewhonese ships, whoever's aboard them, and those two big bastards are mil-spec freighters loaded with missile pods. The question I've been turning over in my mind for the last five or six minutes is how close they're going to want to get before they start rolling pods at us. May I assume you've been devoting some thought to the same problem?"
"Yes, Citizen Commodore." Hartman gave him a smile of her own, although hers showed a bit more of the tips of her teeth. "As a matter of fact, Pierre and I have been kicking that around, and we've consulted with Citizen Captain Vergnier and Citizen Commander Laurent, as well."
"And have the four of you reached a consensus?"
"We're all agreed on what they're going to try to do," Hartman replied. "We're still a little divided over the exact range they're looking for, though. Obviously, they're planning to close to a range lower than twelve million kilometers, or they would have fired before the range began to open. That being the case, they're clearly trying to get their fire control close enough to give them a reasonable hit percentage, exactly as Pierre suggested, which makes a lot of sense, if those six cruisers are the only fire control platforms they plan on using. Personally, I think they want to come as close as they can while staying out of our range, so I'm figuring eight million klicks. That would put them a half million kilometers outside standard missile range, and they've obviously got the acceleration advantage to hold the range at that point if they choose to.
"Pierre agrees with me, but he thinks they'll shoot for nine million klicks in order to give themselves a little more wiggle room after our birds go ballistic. Citizen Captain Vergnier and Citizen Commander Laurent argue that with two freighters full of missile pods, they'll probably be willing to start wasting ammunition sooner than that, so they're both thinking in terms of something more like ten million klicks."
Luff nodded thoughtfully.
"I think I'm inclined to agree with Stravinsky," he said. "If it weren't for the fact that they have got those two ammo ships back there, I'd agree with you and shave it a little closer, because that extra five hundred thousand kilometers is going to cost them a little accuracy. But Olivier and Citizen Commander Laurent have a point about how much ammunition they've got to burn. And the fact that it looks like they're bringing the ammo ships in with them suggests to me that they probably would like at least a little more time and distance for evasive maneuvers after our birds' drives go down."
"You and Pierre may well be right, Citizen Commodore." Hartman shrugged. "The important thing, though, is that they are bringing the ammo ships in. They've still got time to drop them off well back from the firing line, but I think if they were going to do that, they already would have. At their current velocity, they're committed to crossing the hyper limit now—assuming they want to stay in n-space where they can roll pods after us, at any rate—and with the observed range of even early generation MDMs, they wouldn't have to've gotten even this close to bring us under fire. The fire control ships, yes, but not the ammo carriers."
"Agreed." The citizen commodore grimaced. "I suppose it's something of a judgment call. Leave them well back, but essentially unprotected if it should happen we've got somebody still waiting in hyper to pounce, or bring them along with you, where your fire control ships and destroyers can keep an eye on them but they still don't have to come quite into our missiles' envelope."
"I'm pretty sure that's exactly what they're thinking, Citizen Commodore. And, in their position, I'd have done the same thing. Less because I'd be afraid the other side actually had left somebody in hyper 'to pounce,' as you put it than because, with that kind of range advantage over the known threat, there wouldn't be any reason not to protect myself against the possibility of an unknown one sneaking in on me, however remote that might be."
"Exactly. Of course," Luff bared his teeth, "it'd be a pity if it turned out they were protecting themselves against the wrong 'known threat.' "