At All Costs

Thirty-six seconds later, a second, identical salvo roared out of its pods.

And thirty-six seconds after that, a third.

In the space of six and a half minutes, eleven salvos-just under twelve thousand missiles-went hurtling after Task Force 82.

In a traditional engagement, the pursuing Republican superdreadnoughts would have been able to fire only a handful of missiles from their bow-mounted chase tubes. In an era of pod-layers, that limitation had long since disappeared, but what remained true was that missiles closing from directly ahead or directly astern faced the weakest defensive fire. There simply wasn't room to mount as many point defense laser clusters and counter-missile tubes on a warship's ends as on her broadside. The clusters mounted were the most powerful ones in her entire armament, but there could be only a few of them. Telemetry links to counter-missiles were also limited, and the fact that wedge itself offered no protection against fire from those angles only made the situation worse.

And, of course, just to make things even better from Task Force 82's perspective, Havenite MDMs carried bigger and more powerful warheads as compensation for their poorer accuracy and penetration aids.

"Why aren't they returning fire?" Gozzi asked quietly.

"I don't know," Giscard replied. "Maybe they don't want their own attack birds' wedges interfering with their fire control. Besides, unless they want to alter heading to open their broadsides, they can't have the control links to manage a salvo dense enough to get through our point defense."

Gozzi nodded, and Giscard turned his attention back to the plot. His hypothesis was at least superficially logical, but deep inside, he didn't believe it himself.

Bogey Four's first salvo's MDMs raced onward, crossing the vast gulf between the ships which had launched them and their targets. Seventy lost lock and arced off uselessly four minutes into their flight, due to a telemetry glitch. One thousand and ten continued on course.

"Enemy fire appears to be tracking in on Imperator and Intolerant," Jaruwalski reported tensely.

"Not surprising, I suppose," Mercedes Brigham muttered.

"But maybe not the smartest targeting," Honor replied calmly. Brigham looked at her, and Honor shrugged. "I admit, it would pay the highest dividend if they managed to knock out an alpha node on one of the superdreadnoughts, but their defenses are a lot tougher than anyone else's, and given the geometry, they'll have a long time to throw missiles at us. If I were in command over there, I'd start with the battlecruisers, or maybe even the heavy cruisers."

"Kill the weaker platforms first and attrit our missile defenses," Brigham said.

"Exactly. Each of them represents a smaller percentage of our total defensive capability, but they'd be a lot easier to kill or cripple." Honor shrugged again. "You could argue it either way, I suppose-go for the 'golden BB' on an SD(P), or chew up the weaker escorts first. Personally, I'd have done it the other way."

She stood gazing into the master tactical plot, left hand resting on the corner of a tactical rating's console, right hand slowly, gently stroking Nimitz's head, and her expression was calm, thoughtful.

"Counter-missile launch in... fifteen seconds," Jaruwalski a

The powered range from rest for the Mark 31 counter-missile was 3,585,556 kilometers, with a flight time of seventy-five seconds. Given the geometry of the engagement, effective range at launch was over 12.5 million kilometers, and the defensive missiles started to go out ninety seconds before the Havenite MDMs reached standoff attack range of their targets. The Mod-2-XR counter missile launcher had a cycle time of eight seconds, which meant there was time for eleven launches per tube.

In the old days-all of four T-years ago-that wouldn't have mattered all that much, since the interference of the counter-missiles' own wedges would have blinded follow-up launches. Even now, that would have been true of a Havenite ship, although with the changes Sha

But the Royal Manticoran Navy had added the Keyhole platforms to its bag of tricks.

Instead of a half-dozen or a dozen counter-missiles per ship, they could bring the fire of their entire broadside counter missile batteries to bear. They weren't restricted to the telemetry links physically mounted on their after hammerheads; they had sufficient links to control all of their counter-missiles aboard each Keyhole, and each ship had two Keyholes deployed. And as missile defense Plan Romeo rolled Honor's ships up on their sides, those platforms gained sufficient "vertical" separation to see past the interference of subsequent counter-missile salvos fired at far tighter intervals than had ever before been possible.

They still couldn't control eleven salvos... but they could control eight, and each of those eight contained far more missiles than anyone else could have managed.

Javier Giscard's staff had anticipated no more than five CM launches, and they'd allowed for an average of only ten counter-missiles per ship, for a total of two hundred per launch. Their fire plans had been predicated on facing somewhere around a thousand ship-launched CMs, and perhaps another thousand or so from the Katanas.

What they got was over seventy-two hundred from Honor's starships alone.

"My God," Marius Gozzi said softly as the impeller signatures of their attack missiles vanished under the swarm of Manty counter-missiles. "How in the hell did they do that?"

"I don't know," Giscard gritted, "but that's why they didn't counter-launch MDMs. They figure their defenses can handle whatever we throw, and the bastards are simply conserving their ammo!"

He glared at the display, then looked up at Thackeray.

"Abort Baker. We're going to need a lot heavier salvos to get through that."

He jerked his head at the plot, where his second salvo had just disappeared as tracelessly as the first.

"I don't know if we can throw a dense enough salvo to get through it, Sir," Thackeray said. Her expression was almost shocked, but her eyes were intent, and it was obvious her brain was still working.

"Yes, we can," Giscard told her flatly. "Here's what I want you to do."

He explained for a few seconds, and Thackeray nodded sharply when he finished.

"It'll take me a little while to set it up, Sir."

"Understood. Go."

Giscard pointed at her console, and as she dived back into the tactical section, he returned his attention to Gozzi.

"I never counted on that level of defensive fire, either," he said. "But I think it means we're going to have to change our plans for Deutscher."

"What do you want him to do, Sir?"

"Their new vector is going to take them within fifty million kilometers of Arthur. Given that that's almost certainly Honor Harrington in command over there, I don't expect them to peg any missiles at the civilian orbital platforms as they go by. Of course, it may not be her, or I could be wrong about what she's going to do. At any rate, we're not going to be able to prevent her from passing that close. But given that, I don't want Deutscher getting any closer to her than he has to. Besides, if he stops accelerating now, he'll have extra time to build his own side of the trap."

"I understand, Sir."