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But now, thanks primarily to fallout from the Star Kingdom's ongoing emphasis on improving its grav-pulse FTL communications capability, BuWeaps had completed field testing and begun production of a new generation of substantially more powerful gravity generators for the cruiser-weight Mark 16. In fact, they'd almost doubled the grav lens amplification factor, and while they were at it, they'd increased the yield of the missile warhead, as well, which had actually required at least as much ingenuity as the new amplification generators, given the way warheads scaled. They'd had to shift quite a few of the original Mark 16's components around to find a way to shoehorn all of that in, which had included shifting several weapons bus components aft, but Helen didn't expect anyone to complain about the final result. With its fifteen megaton warhead, the Mark 16 had been capable of dealing with heavy cruiser or battlecruiser armor, although punching through to the interior of a battlecruiser had pushed it almost to the limit. Now, with the new Mod G's forty megaton warhead and improved grav lensing, the Mark 16 had very nearly as much punch as an all-up capital missile from as recently as five or six T-years ago.
Producing the Mod G had required what amounted to a complete redesign of the older Mark 16 weapons buses, however, and BuWeaps had decided that it neither wanted to discard all of the existing weapons nor forgo the improvements, so Admiral Hemphill's minions had come up with a kit to convert the previous Mod E to the Mod E-1. (Exactly what had become of the Mod F designation was more than Helen was prepared to guess. It was well known to every tactical officer that BuWeaps nomenclature worked in mysterious ways.) The Mod E-1 was basically the existing Mod E with its original gravity generators replaced by the new, improved model. That was the only change, which had required no adjustments to buses or shifting of internal components, and the new warheads could be fused seamlessly into the existing Mark 16 weapons queues and attack profiles. Of course, with its weaker, original warhead it would remain less effective than the Mod G, since its destructiveness was "only" doubled . . . while the Mod G laser heads' throughput had increased by a factor of over five.
And, she thought, if they apply the same approach to the Mark 23—assuming the new grav lens scales—and then couple it with whatever it was Duchess Harrington's fire control used at Lovat . . .
"And what else did the Commodore discuss with you about them, Ensign Zilwicki?" Lynch's question recalled her from her thoughts, and she gave herself a mental shake.
"Sir, it's all on the chips there," she said respectfully, indicating the folio she'd just delivered.
"I'm sure it is," Lynch agreed. "On the other hand, I've come to know the Commodore at least a little better since he came aboard, and I'm inclined to doubt that he 'just happened' to discuss this with you before he sent you off to deliver his memo to me. He doesn't strike me as the sort who 'just happens' to do much of anything without a specific purpose in mind. So why don't we just consider this an opportunity for a little hands-on tactical brainstorming session for just you and me?"
Helen felt a distinct sinking sensation and suppressed a powerful urge to swallow hard. Then, as Lynch tipped his chair further back, she saw the amusement in his eyes. Not the amusement at having put her on the spot she might have seen in some superior officers' eyes, but the amusement of watching her work through his reasoning and discover he was almost certainly right about what the Commodore had had in mind.
"All right, Sir," she replied with a smile, settling herself more comfortably in her own chair. "Where were you thinking we should begin?"
Her tone was respectful, but almost challenging, and he smiled back at her as he heard it.
"That's the spirit, Ensign Zilwicki! Let's see . . ."
He swung his chair gently back and forth for a few moments, then nodded to himself.
"You've already mentioned what happened at Monica," he said. "I've read the tac reports from the battle, and I know you were on the bridge during the engagement. In fact, you were acting as missile defense officer, correct?"
"Yes, Sir." Helen's eyes darkened slightly at the memories his question brought back. Memories of her, sitting at Abigail Hearns' side, managing the entire squadron's missile defenses while the Monican-crewed battlecruisers stormed steadily closer.
"In that case, why don't we start with your evaluation of how the availability of the Mod G—or, for that matter, the E-1—would have affected Commodore Terekhov's choice of tactics?"
Helen frowned thoughtfully, the darkness of memory fading as she concentrated on his question. She considered it carefully for several seconds, then gave her head a little toss.
"I think the main change in his tactics might have been that he'd have gone for early kills."
"Meaning what, exactly?" Lynch's tone was an invitation to explain her thinking, and she leaned slightly forward.
"The thing was, Sir, that I think we all knew the only way we could realistically hope to stop those battlecruisers was with massed missile fire at relatively short range. Oh, we got one of them at extreme range, but that had to have been a Golden BB. No way did we manage to get deep enough to hit anything that should have blown her up that way!"
She shook her head again, her expression grim as she recalled the spectacular destruction of MNS Typhoon and her entire crew. Then she shook herself mentally and refocused on the present.
"Anyway, we knew we sure couldn't afford to let them into energy range of us, and because our laser heads were so much lighter, we knew we were going to have to concentrate a lot of hits, both in terms of location and time, if we were going to get through their armor. TheKitty—I mean,Hexapuma—was the only ship we had that was Mark 16-capable, and that meant we couldn't achieve that kind of concentration outside standard missile range. So what the captain was actually using our long-range fire for was to get the best possible feel for the Monicans' active defenses and EW capabilities. He was using the Mark 16s to force them to defend themselves so we could get a read on their defenses and pass it to the rest of the squadron to maximize our fire's effectiveness once they came into the range of the rest of our ships.
"But if we'd had Mod Gs, instead of the old Mod Es, we would have been able to get through battlecruiser armor even at extreme range and without the kind of concentration we had at the end of the battle. So, in that case, I think he still would have been probing for information, but at the same time—"
Helen Zilwicki leaned further forward in her chair, hands begi