At All Costs

Chapter Eight

"Anything from Admiral Duval, Serena?" Rear Admiral Oliver Diamato, Republic of Haven Navy, asked quietly.

"No, Sir." Commander Serena Taverner, his chief of staff shook her head.

"Good."

Diamato nodded to her, rose from his command chair, and crossed to the master plot on the battlecruiser William T. Sherman's flag bridge. Sherman was no longer "his," and he'd already discovered just how much he missed the hands-on command of a ship. But at least the Octagon had let him keep her as his flagship.

He examined the plot carefully, hands folded behind him. By now, the posture was so familiar that it had become truly his, no longer an affectation deliberately copied from Captain Hall. He studied the icons, then nodded once in approval and turned away. This was the first time he'd served with Rear Admiral Harold Duval, CO of the 19th CLAC Division, and Duval had a reputation as a bit of a worrywort. Diamato had been half afraid he might come up with some last-minute alteration of the plan, but it seemed he'd been doing his superior an injustice, and that was good. He hated last-minute surprises.

Now he gazed at the pair of CLACs-RHNS Skylark, the flagship, and her sister Peregrine-his own squadron was escorting, then checked the time display ticking down in the corner of the plot. The combined force would translate out of hyper in another twenty-seven minutes, right on the hyper limit of the Zanzibar System's G4 primary.

After which, he thought, things will get... interesting."

"We have a hyper footprint, Ma'am."

Rear Admiral of the Green Dame Evelyn Padgorny looked up from her routine paperwork at her ops officer's a

"I assume from the fact that you're telling me this that it isn't a scheduled footprint, Alvin," she said dryly.

"No, Ma'am. It isn't." Thackeray gave her a tight grin. "The outer reco

"Another raid, then," she said.

"That's what it looks like to CIC and System Defense Command," Thackeray agreed. "The question, of course, is whether they are CLACs... or SD(P)s."

"You do have a way of cutting to the nub of a matter, don't you, Alvin?"

Padgorny smiled humorlessly, logged off her terminal, and stood. Thackeray stepped back to let her precede him through the hatch, then followed her across the deck to HMS Prince Stephen's master plot. At least the plot's details were clear, she thought. The FTL links to the reco

Assuming they were, indeed, Havenite units-and Padgorny couldn't think of any reason for anyone else to be coming in without identifying themselves this way-Thackeray's question was well taken. Prince Stephen and the other four units of the understrength Thirty-First Battle Squadron weren't precisely cutting-edge. Although the oldest of Padgorny's ships was less than eight T-years old, none of them were pod-layers. All five were surrounded by shoals of missile pods, waiting to tractor themselves to their hulls upon command, but they weren't really optimized for pod-based combat. They simply lacked the sophistication of the fire control built into ships of the wall which had been intended from the outset for the new operational environment. Prince Stephen could "tow" as many as five or six hundred of the new pods, whose internal tractors glued them limpet-like to a ship's hull, but loading up with that many would seriously compromise her combat ability by blocking sensor and firing arcs. Worse, the maximum number of missiles she could actually simultaneously control effectively at range was no more than a hundred. One of the Invictus-class SD(P)s could control two or three times that many birds, even without the new Keyhole platforms, and she had to assume Peep pod-layers would also have several times the missile telemetry cha

On the other hand, she reminded herself, if these people really want to shoot at us, then they've got to come to us. Which means, in this case, not simply us, but all the rest of Zanzibar System Defense Command.

Unless, of course, the Peeps in question were prepared to simply flail away at extreme range. It was unlikely they would choose to risk even accidentally violating the Eridani Edict, but they were Peeps, after all. The bastards hadn't been at all shy about killing thousands of Padgorny's fellow naval officers and ratings in their goddamned sneak attack, so they might not lose any sleep about the odd civilian mega-death or two, either.

"Any communication from them yet?"

"No, Ma'am," the com officer of the watch replied. "Of course, they've just come over the Alpha wall."

"Yes, they have," Padgorny agreed. "But by now, even the Peeps know our sensor platforms are out there and that they're FTL. Don't you suppose they might have figured out that a light-speed omnidirectional broadcast would be picked up and relayed to us?"

"Ah, yes, Ma'am," the hapless communications officer said. Obviously the Old Lady was not in a good mood, he noted.

"Sorry, Willoughby," Padgorny said a moment later, lips twitching in a wry smile. "Didn't mean to bite your head off."

"Yes, Ma'am," Lieutenant Willoughby said in a somewhat different tone, and returned her smile.

Padgorny nodded and turned away from him. She didn't really require any self-identifications from the intruders. The lack of any transmissions from them meant they had to be Peeps, since any Allied units most definitely would have identified themselves by now. So there was no point in taking out her frustration on Willoughby. Still, she would dearly love to know exactly what-

"LAC separation!" a voice a

Well, it seemed that sometimes wishes came true. At least she knew, now, and it was unlikely the Peeps intended any Eridani violations if they were sending in LACs armed with short-ranged missiles.

"What about the battlecruisers?" she asked.

"They're maintaining constant decel with the CLACs, Ma'am," Thackeray replied. "Looks like this is more of a probe than a serious attack. The battlecruisers are hanging back to cover the CLACs while their birds are away."

Padgorny nodded in agreement with Thackeray's assessment.

"They're going to get hurt," another voice said, and Padgorny looked up as Commander Thomasina Hartnett, her chief of staff, arrived on the flag bridge. "Sorry I'm late, Ma'am," Hartnett continued with a grimace. "My pi

"Inconvenient of them," Padgorny replied with a thin smile, "but what can you expect out of Peeps?"

"Anything from Defense Command?" Hartnett asked Willoughby even as she accepted a memo board with a full situation update from Thackeray.

"Not after the initial alert, Ma'am," Willoughby said.

"Probably waiting to see whether or not they launched LACs," Padgorny said with a shrug, when Hartnett looked at her.

"Well, Ma'am," the chief of staff said, eyes sca

"A point which I suspect has occurred to them, as well," Padgorny said. "But it all depends on how deep in they want to get, Tommy."