Ashes Of Victory

"It's White Haven," he rasped. "It has to be their Eighth Fleet. Maybe with their Third Fleet along to side it, judging from the preliminary numbers. Which means we're probably screwed, Citizen Commissioner."

Co

"We can still give them a fight, Citizen Admiral," she said, and he nodded.

"Oh, we can certainly do that, Ma'am, and I intend to make them aware of that fact, too. I just wish I knew why they made translation so far out... and why they're coming in so slowly. I don't object to an enemy who gives me time to assemble all my forces to meet him, but I do have to wonder why he's being so obliging."

"I had the same thought," Co

The angry red pockmarks of a hostile fleet hung in that display, twenty-six-point-three light-minutes from Enki and headed for it at an unhurried six thousand KPS with an acceleration of only three hundred gravities. Preliminary intercept solutions were already coming up on a sidebar display, providing Dimitri with his entire menu of choices. Not that he intended to use any of the ones that involved sending his mobile units out to meet that incoming hammer. His outnumbered units would undoubtedly score a few kills if he were stupid enough to do that, but none would survive, and his fixed fortifications and LACs would be easy meat for an unshaken, intact wall of battle. Nor did he intend to waste his long-ranged mines. Those would wait until he could coordinate their attacks with those of his mobile units' missiles. Which narrowed the only numbers he really needed to think about to the ones which showed what the Manties could do to him.

Assuming they maintained their current acceleration all the way in and went for a passing engagement with Enki's close-in defenses, they could be on top of him in just under five hours. But they'd go ripping right on past him at over fifty-three thousand KPS. They could go for that option, but he doubted they would. It would get them to him a bit sooner, but that obviously wasn't a factor in their thinking, or they'd have made their translation further in and be coming in under a much higher acceleration. Besides, there was no point in their opting for a passing engagement. The fighting would be all over, one way or the other, by the time they reached Enki's orbital position, and if they overshot, they'd simply have to decelerate to come back and occupy the ruins.

No, the way they were coming in, they meant to go for a leisurely but traditional zero/zero intercept. Which meant, assuming they stuck with their ridiculously low accel, that they would come to rest relative to Enki (and ready to land their Marines) in six and a half hours... by which time, all of his units would be so much drifting wreckage.

But that wreckage was going to have a lot of Manty company, he thought grimly. That was all he could really hope for, and if he could take a big enough chunk out of those slow-moving, overconfident bastards, they might just find themselves fatally weakened when Operation Bagration went in, took Grendelsbane away from them, and started rolling them up from the southeast.

He glanced at another display and grunted in approval. This one showed his mobile units, racing from their scattered patrol positions to form up with the forts. Another one showed the readiness states on his LACs, with squadron after squadron blinking from the amber of stand-by to the green of readiness, and he nodded sharply. He'd have plenty of time to assemble and prepare his forces, and the bastards didn't know about the new mines and pod arrangements he had to demonstrate for them.

His upper lip curled, showing just a flash of white teeth, and he turned back to the main board, waiting patiently for solid enemy unit IDs to appear.

"Here comes the first info, My Lord."

Admiral White Haven looked up from a quiet conversation with his chief of staff, Captain Lady Alyson Granston-Henley, as the new data blinked onto his plot.

"I see it, Trev." White Haven and Granston-Henley moved over beside Commander Trevor Haggerston, Eighth Fleet's dark-haired, heavy-set ops officer. The Erewhonese officer was attractive, in a rough-hewn craggy sort of way, and White Haven suspected that he and Granston-Henley might be getting just a bit closer than a narrow interpretation of the Regs would have approved. Not that the earl had any intention of finding out anything that would require him to take official notice of their relationship. They were entirely too valuable to Eighth Fleet's command team for him to worry about such foolishness.

Now he and his chief of staff paused beside Haggerston, and watched with him as the FTL drones began reporting in.

There were only a spattering of additional icons at first, but the initial spray grew quickly into a wider, deeper, brighter blur of light codes, and White Haven pursed his lips as CIC began evaluating the data. Unless the Peeps were trying to be sneakier than usual, they had considerably fewer ships of the wall than he'd anticipated. That probably indicated that Caparelli's diversionary efforts down around Grendelsbane had worked, White Haven thought, with a mental nod of respect for the First Space Lord's efforts.

Of course, there was a downside to Caparelli's success. Under normal circumstances, fewer ships meant fewer opponents, which would have been a very good thing. In this instance, however, fewer ships simply meant fewer targets.

"What do we make it so far, Trev?" he asked after a moment.

"CIC is calling it twenty-two of the wall, ten battleships — there could be a couple more of those hiding behind the wedge clutter — twenty to thirty battlecruisers, forty-six cruisers of all types, and thirty or forty destroyers. Looks like they've got forty to forty-five of their forts on-line, as well, and there's one hell of a lot of LACs swa

"Um." White Haven rubbed his chin. Seven hundred was a lot of LACs... for a navy that didn't have Shrikes or Ferrets. Older style LACs simply weren't effective enough to build in huge numbers, and McQueen must have scraped the bottom of the barrel to put that many in one system. Unless, of course, the PN had started building the things again themselves. They'd be largely useless against hyper-capable warships, but enough of them could still inflict painful losses on the newer LAC types. The exchange rate would be ruinously in favor of the Shrikes and the Ferrets, but McQueen had already proved herself capable of playing the attrition game when that was her only option.

Not that seven hundred old-style LACs or even twice that many were going to be much of a problem for Alice Truman's boys and girls.

Assuming they had to fight them at all.

"Range to their forces?"

"We've been inbound for thirty-seven minutes, Sir. Range to zero/zero is roughly four hundred sixty-six million klicks — call it twenty-six light-minutes — and we're up to a smidge over seventy-two hundred KPS. Long way to go yet even for Ghost Rider, Sir."