At All Costs

"But look at this, Sir," Randall said, indicating the red arrows of projected vectors. "They may be going to try to open clear lines of sight to us, but on their current headings, the range will be less than seven million klicks."

"So they are a little nervous about Eridani violations," Beach observed, and smiled humorlessly. "On the other hand, our ships' best powered envelope from rest is under two million. Not a huge improvement."

"Except that we haven't fired any of our orbital pods yet, Sir," Inchman pointed out. "And the closer they come before we do, the better our firing solutions are going to be."

"True." Beach nodded and frowned thoughtfully down at the plot. "I know doctrine says to kill the CLACs as our first priority in a situation like this one," he said, after a moment, "but they aren't being obliging enough to bring them in closer. If we had more pods, if we could get a better salvo density, it might still make sense to go after them, first. Under the circumstances, though, I think we'll hold our fire as long as we can, then concentrate it all on Alpha. Run your firing solutions accordingly, Sandra."

"Yes, Sir."

"And while we're waiting, Myron," Beach turned to the chief of staff, "tell the LACs to continue to fall back. If they can, I want them drifting towards system east."

"You want them in position to hit Alpha if the pods actually get through, Sir?"

"Exactly."

"What about us, Sir?" Randall waved one hand at the icons representing Beach's battlecruisers.

"It's tempting, but it wouldn't work." Beach shook his head. "We're too far away. Even at our best acceleration, it would take us over an hour to get into our range of them. Unless the pods and the LACs do a hell of a lot better than I expect, they'd pick us off with MDMs before we ever reached them. Worse, as soon as we left the planetary shadow, Beta would nail us." He shook his head again. "No. We stay put, using the planet for cover against Beta. If we can hammer Alpha, so much the better, but we can't afford to get out into deeper water against sharks like these."

"That's a pretty cool customer over there, Ma'am," Commander Manfredi said.

"That it is, Oliver," Henke agreed. "I don't think it's going to do her a lot of good in the end, though. She's obviously decided to play it all the way out, but she's holding a losing hand."

She swivelled her command chair to face Lieutenant Commander Stackpole, her operations officer.

"John, I think she's going to hold fire on her pods to the last possible minute. I know I would, in her place. And notice the way her LACs are shifting oh so casually over to flank our vector."

"You think he's going to concentrate on us and ignore the carriers, Ma'am?"

"It's what I'd do. She can't possibly hope to kill them, anyway, and she's not going to beat off our attack. So the only thing left for her to do is to inflict whatever losses she realistically can. Which means us."

Stackpole considered it for a moment. Although he was physically attractive-taller than Honor and almost as dark as Henke herself, with high cheekbones and a powerful nose-he was nowhere near as decorative as Manfredi's holo-star good looks. He was probably, however, even better at his job.

"You're thinking about the pods, aren't you, Ma'am?"

"I am."

"Well," he said thoughtfully, "we've still only picked up a couple of hundred of them. With hard locks, I mean. CIC's projecting general zones for about twice that many, but we don't have anything we could use for reliable targeting information on them. We could kill most of those we've actually found with proximity warheads, but they're all awfully close to the planet, Ma'am."

"Too close," Henke agreed. "Especially for MDMs at this range. We might have a nasty accident, and Duchess Harrington wouldn't like that."

"No, Ma'am, she wouldn't," Stackpole agreed with feeling.

Honor had made it abundantly, one might almost say painfully, clear that she would not be amused by anything which might be remotely construed as a violation of the Eridani Edict's prohibitions, even by accident. And if smacking an inhabited planet, however accidentally, with a ninety-five-ton missile moving at fifty percent of light-speed couldn't be construed as using a "weapon of mass destruction" against it, very few things could be.

"I think we've still got to find a way to make them use them at longer-range, though," Henke said. "Albert."

"Yes, Ma'am?" Lieutenant Kaminski replied.

"Message to Admiral Truman. My compliments, and I would appreciate it if she could order the LACs to go after the pods."

"Yes, Ma'am."

"Antonio."

"Yes, Ma'am?" Lieutenant Commander Braga, her astrogator, responded.

"Compute us a new course. I want to end up in the same spots, but assuming the Admiral agrees to let the LAC jockeys kill pods for us, I want to reduce our acceleration to give them more time."

"Yes, Ma'am. How much more time?"

"They've reduced their acceleration, Sir."

Beach swung his command chair to face Commander Inchman.

"By how much?"

"Almost fifty percent," Inchman replied.

"And their LACs?"

"Changing course and coming straight in on the planet, Sir." It was apparent from Inchman's tone that she'd anticipated her admiral's second question, and Beach nodded unhappily.

"So they aren't going to reach their originally projected firing points until after the LACs' get close enough to start killing pods," he said.

"No, sir, they aren't. And," Inchman turned her head to meet Beach's eyes, "if they're close enough to kill pods, they're also close enough to kill all our orbital platforms on their side of the planet."

"Are the LACs on profile for a zero-zero approach?"

"Yes, Sir. They'll hit turnover on their current profile in about twenty minutes."

"Crap." Beach drummed on the arm of his command chair for a moment, then shrugged.

"So much for using the Cimeterres against Alpha. Contact Captain Abercrombie. Order him to reverse course and engage the Manties' LACs."

"Aye, Sir."

"At least they'll meet far enough from their battlecruisers and cruisers to be out of standard shipboard weapons range," Commander Randall observed quietly.

"That should help some," Beach agreed, although both of them knew it wouldn't make a great deal of difference. Gaston System Command had three hundred and twenty Cimeterre-class LACs. The Manty attack force had just over two hundred Shrike and Ferret-class LACs, and they must know about the "Triple Ripple" by now. Given the difference in the basic capabilities of the two sides, Beach's LACs were about to face a painful exchange rate.

In theory, Beach could have moved his battlecruisers out to support them, since the Manty LACs would have to enter the reach of his own shorter-ranged shipboard missiles. But that would have required him to come out from behind the planet and expose his ships to MDM fire.

He couldn't do that. And so he sat in his command chair, watching the plot, as his Cimeterres swept around and headed directly towards their much more dangerous foes.

"Vector change!" Lieutenant Veronika Chernitskaya a

"They have to protect their pods, Vicki," Captain Tremain replied philosophically. "Frankly, I'm a bit surprised they didn't make the move sooner."

"Probably didn't like the odds, Skip," Chief Harkness replied from HMLAC Dacoit's engineering station. "Might've taken whoever's in command a few minutes to decide he had to bite the bullet and do it anyway."

Tremain nodded, but his attention was focused on Dacoit's plot as the tight formation of Havenite LACs accelerated towards his own formation at almost seven hundred gravities. Numerically, the odds were better than three-to-two in the Havenites' favor; in terms of actual combat power, they weren't even close. Examination of the Havenite light attack craft captured at the Battle of Sidemore made it clear the Cimeterres carried carried more missiles than even a Ferret, but those missiles were much less capable than those in Tremain's LACs' magazines. And the Havenites had nothing remotely comparable to the massive grasers built into his Shrikes.