"So you think she's basically hoping to bluff us into breaking off," DeLaney said.
"I suppose you might put it that way," Tourville conceded. "I wouldn't express it quite that strongly, myself. I think she intends to continue to give us the opportunity to decide this was a bad idea, break off, and go home right up to the last minute. It's not a 'bluff,' Molly, because I don't think she actually expects us to break off for a moment. But knowing Harrington, she figures that it's her responsibility to give us the option, and she's determined to do it. Which," he added almost regretfully, "probably also means that she'll hold her fire until the range drops to what she believes is just outside the maximum at which we could engage her effectively."
"The range is down to three light-minutes, Your Grace," Mercedes Brigham said in the tone of voice of someone politely reminding someone else of something she might have forgotten.
"So I see," Honor replied with a slight smile, despite the tension coiling inside her. At fifty-four million kilometers, they were well inside her own maximum powered-attack missile range.
"Still no response to our challenges, either, Ma'am," Brigham pointed out, and Honor nodded.
"How good is your targeting information now, Andrea?" she asked.
"It's still not anything I'd call satisfactory, Your Grace," Jaruwalski responded promptly in a slightly sour tone. "Whatever else they may have managed, they've improved their ECM significantly. It's still not as good as ours is—or, for that matter, quite as good as what we've seen out of the Andies over the last few months. But it's a lot better than it was during Operation Buttercup. I'd estimate that we should expect at least a fifty or sixty percent degradation in accuracy at this range. Possibly a little bit more."
"And even without worrying about ECM, accuracy against a target under power isn't anything to write home about at this range," Brigham observed.
"No, but theirs is probably worse," Honor said, and Brigham nodded in unhappy agreement.
Honor knew that Mercedes still thought that her own insistence that they operate on the assumption that the Republic's new SD(P)s' missiles could match the full range of their own MDMs was unduly pessimistic. On the other hand, Honor would far rather find out that she had, in fact, been overly pessimistic than suddenly find herself under fire at a range which she had assumed would give her ships immunity from attack.
"And whatever their base accuracy might be, Your Grace," Jaruwalski put in, "from everything I've seen so far, our ECM is going to degrade their accuracy a lot more than theirs is going to do to us. That's even assuming that they've managed to improve their missile seekers as much as they have their EW capabilities."
"Well, given that it looks like they have at least twice as many SD(P)s as Admiral McKeon does, that's probably a good thing," Honor replied with another smile, and Jaruwalski chuckled in appreciation as Honor turned to Lieutenant Kgari.
"How far are they from Suriago's point of no return, Theophile?" she asked.
"They've been inbound for about two and a half hours at two hundred and seventy gravities, Your Grace. Their base velocity is up to two-six-point-seven thousand KPS. Assuming they maintain heading and acceleration, they'll hit no return in another eleven-point-five minutes, Your Grace," her staff astrogator told her.
"Then I suppose it's about time," Honor said almost regretfully. "Harper, pass the word to Borderer to stand by to execute Paul Revere in twelve minutes."
"Aye, aye, Your Grace."
Twelve more minutes passed. Second Fleet's base velocity rose to just over 28,530 KPS and Task Force 34's velocity reached 19,600 KPS. The range continued to fall, gnawed away by a closing velocity of almost sixteen percent of light-speed. It dropped from fifty-three million kilometers to barely thirty-seven and a half million, and then HMS Werewolf transmitted a brief FTL message to HMS Borderer. The destroyer, almost ten full light-minutes outside the system hyper limit received the transmission, acknowledged receipt, and translated up into hyper . . . where it sent a second transmission.
Twenty-six seconds later, the Protector's Own, Grayson Space Navy, made its alpha translation out of hyper, directly behind Second Fleet, and began accelerating furiously in-system in its wake.
"Hyper footprint!" Commander Marston announced. "Multiple hyper footprints, bearing one-eight-zero, zero-two-niner, range approximately one light-minute!"
Lester Tourville snapped upright in his chair and spun to face the ops officer. Marston stared at his readouts for a few more seconds, then looked up to meet his admiral's eyes.
"They're more Manties, Sir," he said in a tone of disbelief. "Either that . . . or Graysons."
"They can't be," DeLaney protested almost automatically and waved one hand at the plot. "We've got positive IDs on all of Harrington's ships. They can't have fooled the RDs at such close range—not even with their EW!"
Tourville's mind fought to grapple with Marston's impossible announcement. DeLaney was right. The range to Harrington's ships was less than two light-minutes. It might have been possible for Manticoran electronic warfare systems to fool shipboard sensors even at that short a range, but Second Fleet's recon drones had closed to within less than three light-seconds. At that range, they could make visual identification on a superdreadnought or a LAC carrier, and they'd accounted for every single ship Harrington had.
Or, his mind told him coldly, for every ship NavInt said she had, anyway.
For just an instant, Lester Tourville was five years in the past, when no admiral had been able to trust the intelligence appreciations produced by Oscar Saint-Just's StateSec analysts. A dreadful sense of betrayal flashed through him at the thought that Thomas Theisman's NavInt had just proven itself equally unreliable. But then he shook himself. Whatever had happened here, NavInt had proven its fundamental reliability too often over the last four T-years. There had to be an explanation, but what?
"We have hard IDs on the new bogeys' types," Marston said flatly. "CIC makes it twelve Medusa —class SD(P)s, six Covington —class CLACs, and six battlecruisers. CIC isn't positive, but it thinks the battlecruisers are probably Courvoisier —class ships."
"Covingtons? Courvoisiers?" DeLaney shook her head. "Those are Grayson types!" She turned to face Tourville. "What are Graysons doing out here in the middle of Silesia?" she demanded almost plaintively.
Tourville stared back at her for perhaps four seconds, then muttered a short, pungent obscenity.
"It's the Protector's Own," he said flatly. "Damn! NavInt told us they were off on some long-ranged deployment training mission. Why didn't it even occur to us that that sneaky bastard Benjamin might have sent them here?"
"But why here?" DeLaney protested.
"I don't know," Tourville replied, but his mind continued to race even as he spoke, and he grimaced. "Best guess? Benjamin and Harrington discussed it before she ever came out here. Damn! I'll guarantee you that's what happened. She knew High Ridge wasn't going to give her what she needed to do her job, so she borrowed it from her other navy without even telling anyone she was doing it!"
He shook his head in brief, heartfelt admiration. Obviously, he thought, NavInt needed to update its estimate of Harrington as a brilliant military technician to include a degree of political sophistication no one had expected from her. But then he brushed the thought aside. There was no time for it—not when his entire fleet had just been mousetrapped with consummate professionalism.