"Transmit an immediate message to Commodore Rontved," he said. "Instruct her to activate Case Omega immediately."
"Yes, Sir." The complete absence of surprise in the chief of staff's voice showed that he'd already reached the same conclusion Maitland had. Rontved commanded the small, three-unit squadron of maintenance and support ships the Admiralty had deployed to support Maitland's picket. They were effectively unarmed, aside from a strictly limited point defense capability, and under Case Omega their job was simply to be sure that as much as possible of the infrastructure which had been built up to support the system picket was destroyed before they themselves ran for it.
"Warn her not to waste any time about it," Maitland emphasized. "We know they have multi-drive missiles now. If ONI can be that completely wrong about one thing, they can be wrong about another. So I wouldn't be surprised if a CLAC or two turned up in their order of battle."
"Yes, Sir." The chief of staff paused for just a moment, then nodded his head sideways at the master plot. "Speaking of LACs, Sir, what about ours?"
"They'll continue the attack. After all, they can't run if we lose Incubus," Maitland said harshly. Then he grunted again. "Just in case Rontved doesn't make it out, though, detach one of the tin cans. We need to be certain someone gets home with a warning."
Lieutenant Commander Jeffers stood at Henry Stevens' shoulder, staring down the tactical display while Starcrest continued to accelerate towards the hyper limit at maximum military power. The fact that their inertial compensator might fail at any moment and turn all of them into so much strawberry jam was completely beside the point as they stared at the chaos and devastation behind them.
Two of Rear Admiral Maitland's superdreadnoughts were already gone, and the flagship was dying. Incubus was still in action, but her acceleration had fallen by over fifty percent as the damage to her beta nodes mounted. The only reason she hadn't been destroyed outright, Jeffers thought grimly, was that her ship-to-ship combat capability was so limited. The Peeps had concentrated on anyone who might hurt them first; they could always finish Incubus off any time they chose.
It hadn't been entirely one-sided—only almost.
Maitland's single pod-spawned wave of missiles had hammered one Peep superdreadnought into an air-bleeding wreck and damaged two more of them. His internal launchers had concentrated on one of the two wounded SD(P)s and inflicted substantially more damage on her, and one Peep battlecruiser had been destroyed outright, while another seemed to be in little better condition.
But that was it. The LACs had done their best, and their efforts had helped to account for the one destroyed battlecruiser and inflicted damage on most of her consorts. But the Peeps aboard those starships were no longer confused and panicked by the mere sight of an impossible "super LAC." They'd had time to think and analyze, and they recognized the weaknesses of such small, relatively fragile attackers. The LAC crews had bored in with all the guts and gallantry in the universe, and they'd actually managed to inflict at least a little damage in the process. But these superdreadnoughts' sidewalls were intact, the vulnerable throats of their wedges were protected by bow walls almost as good as the RMN's own, their point defense and energy gunners were waiting, and the massive armor protecting their flanks was fully capable of withstanding the pounding of even a Shrike-B's graser long enough for their defensive fire to kill the LAC.
Incubus' group had gotten in one good firing pass on the ships of the wall. After that, the survivors had been swatted almost negligently when they tried for a second one.
Jeffers tried not to let his own sense of shocked disbelief show. It was obvious that the Peeps still hadn't quite equalized the gap between Manticoran hardware and their own. Their ECM was still nowhere near as good. Their missile pods seemed to carry fewer birds per pod, which suggested that they'd had to accept a more massive design. That meant lighter broadsides from the same tonnage of capital ships and a bigger squeeze on magazine space. And that might prove significant in the long run, for although their seeker systems seemed to have been improved almost as much as their missiles' range had, they still weren't quite up to Manticoran standards, either. Given the RMN's remaining edge in electronic warfare, long-range missile accuracy was going to favor Manticore by a probably substantial edge, but it wasn't going to be spectacular even for the RMN. So the number of missiles an SD(P) could carry was about to become extremely important. Which probably meant it was a damned good thing BuShips had pushed ahead with the new Invictus design.
Now if only that fucking idiot Janacek had let the Navy build some of them!
Jeffers felt his jaw muscle ache from how fiercely he was gritting his teeth and made himself turn away from the plot. He was a bit surprised that Starcrest had been able to make good her escape when Maitland ordered her to run for it. Probably it was simply a case of the Peeps having bigger fish to fry, he thought bitterly. But it could also have something to do with the amount of damage Maitland's superdreadnoughts and LACs had managed to inflict, as well.
Alan Jeffers was too honest with himself to pretend that he wasn't intensely grateful that Maitland's orders meant he and his crew would live. But neither could he absolve himself from a crushing sense of guilt. It was a burden, he suspected, which would cling to him for a long, long time.
"I wonder how Admiral Kirkegard did at Maastricht, Sir," Commander Tibolt murmured. He and Admiral Chong stood side-by-side on RHNS New Republic's flag bridge as TF 11 settled into orbit around the Thetis System's sole habitable planet.
"No telling," Chong replied. He watched the blue-and-white beauty of the planet on the visual display for several moments, then squared his shoulders and turned away. Another display attracted his eyes. The one that listed his task force's losses.
Only a single ship's name glowed in the blood-red color that indicated a total loss, and his lips curved in a smile of grim satisfaction. No one liked to lose any ship, or the people who crewed that ship. But after the savage losses the old People's Navy had taken at the hands of the Manties again and again, a single heavy cruiser and seventy LACs actually destroyed was a paltry price to pay for an entire star system. Not to mention the fact that the Manties had lost over two hundred of their own LACs, four heavy cruisers, and a pair of superdreadnoughts, as well.
"Actually," he told Tibolt after a moment, "I'm more curious about what's happening at Grendelsbane and Trevor's Star."
Chapter Fifty Seven
"May I ask what you think of Prime Minister High Ridge's message, My Lord?" Niall MacDonnell asked politely.
"I think that making himself sound civil probably increased his blood pressure enough to take two or three decades off his life expectancy," Hamish Alexander replied cheerfully. "One could certainly hope so, at least."
MacDonnell smiled. A native born Grayson, himself, he was sometimes bemused in many ways by the Manticoran officers who had taken service with the GSN. The Earl of White Haven was scarcely in that category, of course, although he'd fought enough battles side-by-side with Grayson units to make him one of their own by adoption, at least. But what bemused MacDonnell the most was that the Manticorans seemed so outspoken in their criticism of the High Ridge Government. Of course, they were talking about their prime minister, not their monarch, but it was difficult for MacDonnell to conceive of a serving Grayson officer expressing himself so frankly—and contemptuously—about the Protector's Chancellor.