At All Costs

"Thank you," Tourville said, and closed his eyes briefly.

My God, he thought. I came into this thinking I knew what the casualties were going to be like, but I didn't. Neither did Tom Theisman, really. No one could have projected this kind of carnage, because no one's had any experience, even now, with this kind of fight. Both sides are so far outside our standard operational doctrines that we're in virtually unknown territory. Podnaughts aren't supposed to close head on until they get into mutual suicide range. And we're not supposed to let LACs get that close to our starships. Our wall is supposed to be able to kill them before they ever get to us. But I didn't have the missiles left to do it, and they whipped through our engagement window so quickly our energy weapons couldn't stop them in time, either.

He opened his eyes again, looking back into the plot. In a galaxy where indecisive maneuvers had been the norm for so many centuries, two decades-even two decades like the ones which had begun at Hancock Station-simply hadn't been enough to prepare anyone for this.

But the galaxy had better get used to it, he thought grimly. Because one thing he knew; the lethal genies were out of the bottle, and no one was going to get them back inside it.

"Any new orders, Sir?" DeLaney asked, and he shook his head.

"No."

"Hyper footprint at two-point-three-six million kilometers!" Commander Zucker barked. "Many footprints!"

Oliver Diamato's head whipped around as the erupting footprints speckled the plot. There were eighteen of them, and he swore with silent, vicious venom as they sparkled like curses in the display.

Whoever had taken the Sherman as his intended target had come in far closer than most of the others, but all of them showed remarkably good astrogation for such a short jump. Then the vector readouts came up, and he swore again. From their headings, and especially from their velocity numbers, they'd obviously managed to hyper out of the Junction without his ever noticing, then come back in after building their velocity in hyper, so the jump wasn't quite a short as he'd thought it was.

Not that he had much time to think about it.

"Missile launch!" Zucker said. "Many missiles, incom-!"

Diamato's mouth had opened before the ops officer spoke, and his order chopped off the end of Zucker's a

"All units, Code Zebra!" he barked.

RHNS William T. Sherman blinked into hyper less than three seconds before HMS Nike's missiles would have detonated. Two of Diamato's other battlecruisers were less fortunate, a bit slower off the mark. They took hits-RHNS Count Maresuke Nogi lost most of her after impeller ring-but they, too, managed to escape into hyper.

Diamato breathed a sigh of relief when he realized all his units had gotten out. But however relieved he was by their survival, the fact remained that he'd been driven off his station. Frustratingly incomplete as his observations had been, his had been the only eyes located to watch the Junction at all for Second Fleet.

"Admiral Diamato's been forced to fall back to the Alpha Rendezvous, Sir," Lieutenant Eisenberg reported.

"Damn," Molly DeLaney murmured, but Tourville only shrugged.

"It was bound to happen sooner or later, Molly. On the other hand, it may actually be good news."

"Good news, Sir?"

"Well, they didn't bother to send through screening units to chase him off before, because they were too busy bringing in their wallers. If they've sent in battlecruisers and cruisers now, it probably confirms that they've already got all their capital ships through the Junction. In which case, this-" he nodded at the oncoming rash of scarlet icons, already well inside their theoretical MDM range of his own battered survivors "-probably is all we've got to deal with."

"With all due respect, Sir, 'this' is quite enough for me."

"For all of us, Molly. For all of us."

Tourville considered the plot for several more seconds, then looked back at Eisenberg.

"Ace, message to MacArthur. 'Stand by to execute Paul Revere.'"

"Aye, Sir."

"Any change in his heading, Judson?" Admiral Kuzak asked.

"No, Ma'am. He's maintaining exactly the same heading and acceleration," Commander Latrell replied.

"What the hell does he think he's doing, Ma'am?" Captain Smithson asked quietly, and Kuzak shrugged in irritation.

"Damned if I know," she acknowledged frankly. "Maybe he just figures he's still got the firepower to take us. After all, he's still got a hundred and eighteen wallers, and we've only got fifty-five, even with Duchess Harrington's orphans."

"But he's had the crap hammered out of him, Ma'am," Smithson objected. "The recon platforms indicate he's got heavy battle damage to at least half his survivors, and his acceleration rate would be proof enough of that, even without the platforms' reports. So say he's got the equivalent of eighty wallers' combat power-which is generous, I'd say-and they're still Peep SD(P)s. We don't have as many units as Home Fleet had, but all of ours are Medusas or Harringtons. Not only that, but he's got to have used up a lot of ammo. Hell, he didn't fire a single MDM at the LACs, and you saw what they did to his screen. His magazines have to be close to empty."

"So if his situation is so desperate," Judson Latrell asked, "why didn't he abandon the rest of his ships with impeller damage and run for it at a higher acceleration rate in the first place?"

"I suppose the answer to that depends at least in part on exactly what their actual objective is," Kuzak said.

She glanced at the master plot. Twenty-six minutes had passed since Third Fleet had translated back into normal-space. It was hard to believe that barely two hours ago, Home Fleet and all of its units had been safely in orbit around Sphinx. Now they were gone, reduced to spreading patterns of wreckage, and her own command was accelerating steadily towards battle with their killers at 6.01 KPS2. Her base velocity was up to almost ten thousand kilometers per second, she'd traveled the next best thing to eight million kilometers into the RZ, and the range to Second Fleet was coming down to right on sixty million kilometers. Which meant, of course, that they were already in her range, just as she was in theirs.

"Whatever they're up to," she said grimly, "I think you've got a point about their ammunition supply, Jerry. In which case, they aren't going to be hitting us with any more of those monster salvos. And it also means they haven't got enough birds left to waste them firing at long range, with their hit probabilities. We, on the other hand, have full magazines."

"You want to open fire now, Ma'am?" Commander Latrell asked, but she shook her head.

"Not just yet. In fact, not until they do." Her thin smile was cold. "Every kilometer the range drops increases our accuracy by a few thousandths of a percent. As long as they're willing not to shoot, so am I."

"They'll be coming into range of Sphinx in another ten minutes or so, Ma'am," Smithson said quietly.

"A good point." She nodded. "But that means the defense pods deployed around Sphinx are going to be coming into range of them, too, and the system reco

"But there aren't many of them," Smithson said.

"No. In fact, they've got a lot less than we do," Kuzak agreed. She considered numbers and ranges, then turned to Communications.

"Franklin, contact Admiral Caparelli. Tell him I recommend that the Sphinx defenses not fire on these people unless and until they launch against Sphinx."

"Yes, Ma'am," Lieutenant Bradshaw replied.

"Are you sure about that, Ma'am?" Smithson asked. Kuzak looked at him, and he looked back levelly. After all, one of a chief of staff's jobs was to play devil's advocate. "If they're going to bombard the planet, letting them get the first launch off unopposed is likely to cost us," he pointed out.