At All Costs

"And their missile pods?"

"No word on those, Sir. Probably the reason the system CO hasn't contacted you directly," Slowacki said. "He's not prepared to stand them down, as well, and he's afraid you might insist he do so."

"Damned straight I would," McKeon half-growled. Then he shook his head. "Not that I'd be inclined to commit any atrocities if he declined. Mind you, it'd tempting, but Duchess Harrington would feed me to Nimitz, one bite at a time if I did anything like that!"

"That's probably an understatement, Sir," Orndorff said with a ghost of a smile.

"Whatever." McKeon brooded over the plot for several more seconds, then nodded decisively.

"Okay. They're abandoning the system-or, at least, they aren't going to defend it with anything except the pods-and according to Venturer and Mandrake, they don't have more than a hundred or so of those. I'm going to assume they have at least twice as many as we've actually found, however. And if they don't want to get their LACs killed, I don't see any reason we should get ours killed, either. Contact Admiral Corsini. I want only the Katanas deployed, strictly in the missile defense role. We'll take Intransigent and Elizabeth in, covered by Gottmeyer's cruisers and the Katanas. Corsini is to retain Atchison's cruiser division and the destroyers as a screen for the carriers and stay outside the hyper limit. If any unpleasant strangers appear, she's too immediately withdraw and return directly to Trevor's Star."

"We could probably sweep up the pieces faster with a couple of LAC groups, Sir," Orndorff pointed out in a diplomatic tone, and McKeon nodded.

"Yes, we could. On the other hand, a couple of SD(P)s can wipe out every significant platform out there in less than fifteen minutes if we have to. I'm not going to send in the LACs while holding the wallers out of missile range, and if I'm going to take the division in anyway, there's no point exposing Shrikes and Ferrets to potential lucky hits from the pods. If it takes us a little longer to do the job this way, so be it."

"Aye, aye, Sir," Orndorff said, and waved Slowacki towards the flag bridge's com section.

Captain Arakel Hovanian, acting commodore of the 93rd Destroyer Squadron, Republican Navy, glared at the master plot showing the icons of four CLACs, four battlecruisers, and seven destroyers and light cruisers sweeping inward from the hyper limit of the Des Moines System.

"Sir, Governor Bruckheimer is on the com," Commander Ellen Stokley, the skipper of the destroyer RHNS Racer and Hovanian's flag captain said quietly.

"Switch it to my display," Hovanian directed, and the small com flatscreen filled with the image of Governor Arnold Bruckheimer as the commodore slid into his command chair.

"Commodore Hovanian," the Governor said without preamble. "What the hell are you still doing here?"

"I beg your pardon?" Hovanian's eyes narrowed in surprise.

"I asked you what the hell you're still doing here," Bruckheimer repeated flatly. "Aside from the very high probability of getting yourself and all of your perso

"Governor, I'm responsible for the defense of this system, and-"

"And if you try to defend it, you're going to fail," Bruckheimer interrupted brusquely. "I can still read a tactical plot, you know."

Hovanian had opened his mouth to reply hotly, but he closed it again with a click at the reminder that Bruckheimer was a retired admiral.

"Better," Bruckheimer said a bit more conversationally. Then he cocked his head to one side, his eyes compassionate. "Commodore-Arakel-you just got dropped straight into the crapper through absolutely no fault of your own. If they'd waited another three weeks, we'd have had some significant reinforcements waiting for them. But they didn't, and you don't have a single capital ship under your command. There are exactly twenty-six Cimeterres in this entire star system; I know even better than you just how thin our missile pods are stretched; and you've got less than half your own squadron present for duty. There's no way you're going to stop this with three destroyers, and," Bruckheimer's voice hardened around the edges once more, "if you try-and survive the experience-I will personally see you court-martialed. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes, Sir," Hovanian said after a long, still moment. "Yes, Sir. You do."

"Good." Bruckheimer ran the fingers of his right hand through his hair and grimaced. "We're going to have to come up with some sort of response to this strategy of theirs, but I'm damned if I know what the Octagon's going to do about it. In the meantime, get your people out of here before they all get killed."

"Aye, Sir," Hovanian said. He nodded to Stokely, who began issuing the necessary orders, then looked back at Bruckheimer. "And... thank you, Sir," he said to the man who had just saved his life.

"I wonder what other systems they're hitting today?" Admiral Bressand said.

"Maybe they aren't hitting any other systems, Sir," Commander Claudette Guyard, his chief of staff said.

"Oh, please, Claudette!" Bressand shook his head.

"I didn't say I thought they weren't, Sir. I just pointed out a possibility."

"Theoretically, anything is possible," Bressand said. "Some things, however, are more likely-or, conversely, less likely-than others."

"True, but-"

Guyard paused as Lieutenant Commander Krenckel appeared quietly at her elbow.

"Yes, Ludwig?" she said.

"We've confirmed it," Bressand's ops officer said. "Assuming they haven't decided to try to spoof our identification for some reason, two of those ships are definitely a pair of the Invictuses that hit Hera. I'm guessing one of them is the Manties' Eighth Fleet's flagship."

"Which means we probably are about to play host to 'the Salamander' herself," Guyard observed. "There's an honor-you should pardon the pun-I could have done without."

"You and me both," Bressand said, remembering his conversation with Poykkonen. "Not that it's going to take any tactical genius to kick the crap out of us with this kind of force imbalance."

"Maybe not, Sir," Krenckel said. "On the other hand, there's a sort of backhanded compliment in getting pounded by the other side's best."

"Did I ever mention that you're a very strange man, Ludwig?" Guyard asked.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

"It looks like we caught them with their pants down, doesn't it?" Vice Admiral Dame Alice Truman observed as her Task Force Eighty-One accelerated steadily in-system towards Vespasien, the inhabited planet of the Chantilly System.

"Yes, it does," Michelle Henke agreed from the vice admiral's com. "Of course, I have this sneaky suspicion that it's supposed to look that way."

"Why, Admiral Henke! I hadn't realized you had such a broad streak of paranoia."

"It comes from associating with people like you and Her Grace," Henke said dryly. Then she continued more seriously. "As Honor keeps pointing out, the Peeps aren't stupid. And this time around, they don't have political masters insisting they act as if they were. They haven't had time to reinforce heavily, but Chantilly is a jucier target than Gaston was. It should have been more heavily defended to begin with, and they sure as hell had more hyper-capable units in-system than the three destroyers our arrays have picked up. Which suggests to my naturally suspicious mind that as soon as they realized we'd inserted those arrays, they went to full-court stealth on their main combatants."

"It's what I'd do," Truman agreed. She drummed lightly on the arm of her command chair for a few moments, then shrugged. "Our arrays are good, but their stealth systems have gotten a lot better, and any star system represents a huge volume. If you were going to hide your defensive task force, where would you put it?"