A Rising Thunder

Chapter Twenty-One

“Still no transmissions from our visitors, Harper?”

“No, Your Grace. Not yet, anyway,” Brantley replied.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, Your Grace,” Cardones, back on his own bridge, said from the dedicated display linked to Imperator’s command deck, “but aren’t these people here to demand our surrender?”

“That’s my understanding of their mission orders, yes, Captain Cardones,” she replied, almond eyes still gazing thoughtfully at the master plot.

“Then don’t you think they ought to be, well, demanding it?”

“I’m sure they’ll get around to it when they think the time is right, Rafe,” she said soothingly. “Don’t forget, as far as we’re aware, none of them have a clue we even knew they were coming.” She shrugged slightly. “They may figure on letting panic soften us up before they announce their surrender terms.”

“Maybe, but we just killed a bunch of recon platforms, Your Grace,” Cardones pointed out. “And not even a Solly could’ve missed seeing our wedges come up. I’d think that would be a pretty good indication we’re not feeling especially hospitable, and they’re only six minutes from the limit. If I were them and I intended to do any talking at all, I’d be thinking about opening the conversation sometime real soon now.”

“That’s because you’re a naturally talkative soul,” Honor replied with a chuckle she didn’t really feel. “Some people are the strong, silent type.”

Cardones snorted, and she smiled, but the smile faded as she contemplated the steadily developing situation. So far, everything was proceeding according to plan, yet that didn’t make her feel a lot better. As Cardones said, time was getting short, and she was always nervous when things appeared to be going this well. In her experience, Murphy always put in an appearance somewhere, and she’d anticipated from the outset that if he planned on showing up this time, he was most likely to do it in the next handful of minutes.

She’d spent a lot of time considering the timing for this entire operation, especially this part of it, and her thinking had been forced to allow for both Filareta’s probable acceleration and what he was most likely to do with his recon platforms.

Unlike the RMN, the SLN still adhered to the “maximum power” limit of eighty percent of power on its inertial compensators, and those compensators were a lot less efficient than her own. After considering what little she knew about Filareta, she’d decided he might well shave his impeller margin a bit closer than that and decided to assume he’d go with an eighty-five percent setting. That would have given him an accel of 3.5 KPS, but he’d come in at only 3.311, the old eighty-percent setting, and that bothered her. Not because it was going to make a lot of difference, but because he was apparently being more cautious than she’d allowed for. Under the original planning for his visit, that would have been a good thing from her perspective; given the revised objectives of Operation Cannae, she would vastly have preferred someone more reckless.

Well, up to the last little bit, at least, she reminded herself wryly.

The really tricky part of the timing, however, had focused on the recon drones, and she’d had better numbers to work with there. Without Ghost Rider’s onboard fusion plants, Solarian reconnaissance platforms had both lower acceleration rates and — compared to their Manticoran counterparts — pitiful endurance. Five thousand gravities was about the best they could turn out, and they couldn’t maintain even that power level for very long. On the other hand, Operation Raging Justice obviously contemplated a very…direct approach to its objectives. Filareta wasn’t going to need a lot of dwell time out of his reconnaissance shell, and he probably had more than enough platforms to replenish it if he really needed to, anyway.

On that basis, she’d assumed they’d come straight in at their maximum acceleration and timed her wedges’ activation accordingly. The trick had been to make sure Filareta got a really good look at what she wanted him to see before her outer LAC screen put out his advanced eyes, and she was pretty sure she’d accomplished that. Now he knew she really did have only forty superdreadnoughts under her immediate command, without any more of them hiding anywhere near at hand. Hopefully, he’d also seen the “superdreadnoughts” between Sphinx and Manticore, as well. There was no way he’d had time to get any of his platforms close enough to realize that they were only Navy supply ships with military-grade impellers and compensators, however, and she meant to keep it that way.

Her own heavily stealthed platforms were deployed to cover a sphere over ten light-minutes across, centered on HMS Imperator, and Ghost Rider’s sensors were far better than anything they’d seen examining Sandra Crandall’s surrendered hardware. She had detailed information on Filareta’s superdreadnoughts, and Ghost Rider was managing to keep pretty fair tabs on the Sollies’ platforms, as well. As a result, she knew Filareta had reacted to the destruction of his advanced drones much as she’d hoped he would. He was vectoring his more distant, surviving platforms in on Honor’s ships, trying to get them close enough to replace the ones he’d lost. In his place, she’d almost certainly have done exactly the same thing.

And, hopefully, it’s going to bite him on the butt just as hard as it would have bitten me when I did, she thought with grim amusement. Now if I can only convince him to keep on accelerating…

“Excuse me, Your Grace,” Andrea Jaruwalski said. “The forward recon platforms confirm their superdreadnoughts are deploying pods.”

“Deploying them? Or were they towing them all along and we just now noticed them?”

“Deploying, Your Grace,” Jaruwalski said firmly. “They must have had them tractored inside their wedges.”

“You were wondering if that accounted for their accel rate, Your Grace?” Brigham asked, and Honor nodded.

“It would have been one explanation. Any sign their acceleration’s dropping further now that they’ve deployed, Andrea?”

“Not so far, at least, Your Grace,” Jaruwalski responded, “and given the numbers they seem to have deployed, maintaining their current accel has to be pushing up their compensator loads by a good eight to ten percent. So I’d say the fact that they’re not reducing power is a sign they’re feeling pretty serious.”

“Point,” Brigham conceded. “The thing I’m wondering most about is what’s in the pods, though. Last time I looked, the Sollies didn’t have any missile pods.”

“You’re thinking about those Technodyne pods Terekhov ran into at Monica, Ma’am?” Jaruwalski said thoughtfully.

“Something like that. Or whatever the hell Mesa used against Rozsak at Congo.” Brigham shrugged. “Either way, I don’t think they’d bother with them unless they were stuffed with something they figure is superior to their standard tube-launched birds. I don’t like the thought that they might have a point about that, but if they are thinking that way, it’s going to have at least some impact on how willing — and eager — they are to bring it to us.”

“I think you’re exactly right,” Honor said. “And bearing that in mind, I also think it’s time we welcomed our visitors.” She looked at Brantley. “Ready, Harper?”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

“And are you ready?” Honor asked, turning to Theisman with a crooked smile.

“Oh, I believe you could say that, Your Grace,” he replied. “And I’m sure Lester is, too.”

“Then just make sure you’re out of the pickup’s field of view until the appropriate moment.”

She made shooing motions, and Nimitz bleeked in laughter as the Havenite Secretary of Defense obeyed the gesture. The ’cat’s skinsuit’ kept him from flirting his tail the way he would have under other circumstances, but his amusement was obvious, and Springs From Above (who’d been fitted with his own skinsuit) laughed back from Theisman’s shoulder.

Honor waited another moment to make sure everyone was where he or she was supposed to be, then nodded to Jaruwalski.

“Send Cantata through to Admiral Tourville, Andrea.”

* * *

“We’ve got clearance, Skipper!” Brynach Lacharn said suddenly. “Number seven in the queue!”

Hamilton Trudeau looked up in surprise at the announcement. He hadn’t really expected the Manties to let DB-17025 make transit at all, and certainly not this early in the queue. Maybe the people who’d picked the INS cover weren’t as dim as he’d thought they were.

“All right, Tommy,” he said briskly, turning to Ensign Thomasina Tsiang, the dispatch boat’s astrogator and third in command, “get us in line! The last thing we need is to miss our slot now that they’ve given us one.”

“Aye, Skipper.”

The dispatch boat was small enough for Tsiang, who enjoyed being hands-on whenever possible, to take the helm herself instead of simply passing orders to someone else, and DB-17025 accelerated smoothly, sliding out of the mass of waiting freighters and passenger liners. Trudeau suspected there were some alarmingly high blood pressures on the bridges of the ships they were leaving behind, but that was fine with him. He only wished he had some better intelligence — like any intelligence — on how the rest of Operation Raging Justice was making out.

Somehow, he felt sure, Admiral Tsang would probably wish the same thing.

* * *

“Are we sure this is a good idea, Ma’am?”

Christopher Dumbrowski tone sounded more than a bit doubtful as he watched the dispatch boat’s icon moving towards the terminus to Beowulf.

“Define ‘good idea,’” Admiral Stephania Grimm replied with a wry smile.

“Well, it just seems to me it would have been simpler all around to sit on them,” Captain Dumbrowski said. “I mean, they wouldn’t be going anywhere without our permission. We could’ve just kept them cooling their heels right here until it was all over one way or the other, without ever bringing the Beowulf end into it at all. Seems to me that keeping Beowulf up our sleeve as a holdout card in case we need to play it even worse later on might have a lot to recommend itself.”

“In some ways, I’m inclined to agree with you,” Grimm acknowledged. Given their positions and the role they had to play, she and Dumbrowski knew quite a lot about the thinking behind this part of the plan. And in Grimm’s opinion, the captain had a very valid point. But…

“It’d be a hard call for me, either way,” she said finally. “I’m sure it was for everyone else involved, too. In fact, even though no one’s told me this in so many words, I think it was ultimately the Beowulfers who made the decision, not anyone at our end. And I think the deciding factor was probably that they’re really and truly royally pissed off at this Mesan Alignment. There’s no way in this universe they’re going to sit on the sidelines when we go after them, and they’re about as disgusted as anyone could possibly get with the way Kolokoltsov and the Mandarins have botched the entire situation. For that matter, they’re disgusted as hell with all the rest of the League for letting itself get turned into such a bitched up mess instead of a star nation in the first place. So this is their way of punctuating all the reasons they’re doing what they’re doing — jumping ship to sign up with us, I mean. And I think they want to draw Admiral Tsang in, get her to openly commit to her part of ‘Operation Raging Justice,’ so they’ll have that additional evidence of just how fast and loose with the League Constitution Kolokoltsov’s apparatchiks are really willing to play.”

She paused, lips pursed in thought, then shrugged.

“Anyway, senior and better-paid heads made the decision, not us, so that’s the way it’s going to be. And,” she smiled slightly, “I have to admit I’m going to be interested as hell to see how it all works out in the end.

* * *

“All right, Harper,” Honor said as she watched HMS Cantata’s icon disappear from her plot. “Why don’t you go ahead and put me through to Admiral Filareta now?”

* * *

“Fleet Admiral, we have an incoming communications request.”

Filareta glanced at Admiral Burrows and arched one eyebrow at the announcement. At 14,875,000 kilometers, the grossly outnumbered Manty wall of battle remained motionless, holding position relative to the planet, fifty light-seconds from his own far larger formation. He was astonished that they hadn’t even begun accelerating away from him, but he wasn’t going to complain about it.

“I wondered how much longer it would take them,” he said.

“Frankly, I’m surprised they managed to wait this long, Sir!” Burrows replied with a harsh chuckle.

“Who’s the message from, Reuben?” Filareta continued, turning his back on the main plot to face Captain Reuben Sedgewick, his staff communications officer.

“It’s from Admiral Harrington, Sir,” Sedgewick replied, but there was something odd about his tone, and Filareta frowned. Any light-speed com request had to be coming from Tango Two if it had reached them this soon, and he was a little surprised Harrington was there, instead of with Tango One. But that wasn’t enough to account for the odd note in Sedgewick’s response.

“Is there a problem, Reuben?”

His own tone was a bit colder than it had been.

“It’s just…” Sedgewick paused, then shrugged very slightly. “It’s just that she asked for you, specifically, by name, Fleet Admiral. And she, ah, asked for you as the commanding officer of Eleventh Fleet.”

Filareta felt his expression stiffen. He gazed at the com officer a moment longer, then looked back at Burrows. The chief of staff’s amusement had vanished, and he met his superior’s eyes with a frown.

“So much for operational security,” Filareta observed.

“Yes, Sir.” Burrows shook his head in disgust. “Somebody must have blabbed back on Old Terra.”

“One of the many joyful disadvantages of having to come the long way round while the other side can get intelligence reports directly through the damn Junction.”

Filareta’s light tone was almost whimsical; his expression was not.

“I wonder how long they’ve known?” Burrows continued, thinking out loud.

“That is an interesting thought, isn’t it?”

Filareta showed his teeth. Burrows had an excellent point. If the Manties had learned of his orders far enough in advance, there was no telling what sort of welcome they might have decided to set up.

Stop it, he told himself firmly. Yes, they must have known you were coming, but knowing a two hundred-kilo sumo wrestler is about to rip your head off doesn’t help a lot if you weigh fifty kilos dripping wet. It only means you can watch it coming longer, not that you can get out of the way. And it sure as hell doesn’t mean you can beat the bastard once he gets his hands on you!

“Time to the hyper limit, Yvonne?” he asked calmly.

“Just under six minutes, Fleet Admiral. Call it one-point-five-seven million klicks.”

“Thank you.”

Filareta looked at Burrows again. Their current velocity, relative to Sphinx, was up to 3,882 KPS; by the time they crossed the hyper limit, it would be up to over five thousand, exactly as Approach Bravo specified. At that velocity, it would take twenty-six minutes just to decelerate to zero, and they’d be the next best thing to 3.9 million kilometers inside the limit when they did. From that position, they’d need another twenty-six minutes to get back across the limit where they could reenter hyper-space.

All of which meant they theoretically had six minutes in which they could break off with relative impunity…after which, they would be stuck inside the Manticore-A limit for the next best thing to an hour.

Interesting timing, a corner of his mind thought. Did they wait this long to contact us — and let us know they already knew we were coming — in an attempt to panic me into breaking off before we cross the limit?

“Bill.”

“Yes, Fleet Admiral?” Admiral Daniels looked up from his console.

“I want the entire fleet scheduled for an alpha translation twenty seconds short of the limit.”

“Excuse me, Sir?” Daniels looked as if he couldn’t quite believe what he’d just heard. Which wasn’t too surprising, perhaps, given his superior’s decision to go with Approach Bravo.

“Is that a problem for you, Admiral?” Filareta asked, looking at his operations officer coldly.

“Uh, no, Sir. Of course not! I just…wasn’t expecting it.”

Filareta continued to eye him coolly for a second, then relented.

“I didn’t say we were actually going to translate,” he pointed out. “We can abort any time up to the last fifty seconds of the cycle, correct?”

“Yes, Sir.” Daniels nodded, his eyes narrowed as understanding dawned. “You just want to have the extra three minutes in hand if you need them, is that it, Sir?”

“Exactly.” This time, Filareta smiled. “It’ll give me at least another couple of minutes to think, anyway.”

Daniels nodded again, more energetically, and began passing instructions while Filareta looked back to the communications officer.

“All right, Reuben,” he said. “Put it on the main display.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Filareta turned towards the indicated display as the holo image of a very tall woman appeared above it. She wore a white beret, rather than the black beret that was standard for Manty flag officers, but he recognized her immediately from the file imagery. Even if he hadn’t, her skinsuit carried the four broad cuff bands and four golden stars of a fleet admiral, and the six-limbed creature on her shoulder would have been sufficient clue if it hadn’t. She also had remarkably cold brown eyes as she gazed out of the display at him.

Alexander-Harrington’s recorded image stood motionless for a moment, until Sedgewick entered the “play” command.

“Fleet Admiral Filareta,” she said then, her soprano voice as cold as her eyes. “In case you haven’t already figured it out, my name is Alexander-Harrington. I have the honor to command the forces assigned to the defense of this star system, and the fact that I know both your name and that you’re the commanding officer of Eleventh Fleet should be an indication that I know precisely why you’re here. In case you require further evidence of just how thoroughly your plans have been blown, however, I’ll add for the record that I also know you’re here to execute ‘Operation Raging Justice,’ which I find a rather…ironic way to describe the forcible conquest of the Star Empire of Manticore by the Solarian League Navy without the bothersome details of niggling little things like a formal declaration of war or any consultation with the League’s own Assembly. I suppose that’s just the way the League’s grown accustomed to doing things, and it’s worked fairly well for it so far.”

“But trust me, Admiral. This time, it isn’t going to happen.”

Her smile was a razor, and the treecat on her shoulder bared needle-sharp-looking fangs.

“I suppose you may actually believe your intelligence services’ conclusion that the Yawata Strike has crippled our defenses. I assure you, that isn’t the case. I suppose it’s also possible you believe that the fact that I have only forty superdreadnoughts in my wall indicates you have the force advantage. If you should be thinking anything of the sort, I suggest you remember what happened to Admiral Crandall, when Admiral Gold Peak had no superdreadnoughts in her order of battle.”

She paused, as if to allow that to sink in, then continued in that same icy voice.

“I hereby inform you, Admiral, that you are in violation of Manticoran territorial space. I further inform you that the Star Empire of Manticore considers your presence here, given the many previous instances of blatant and unprovoked Solarian aggression against the Star Empire, an act of war. Should you not immediately depart Manticoran territorial space, Her Majesty’s Navy and its allies will respond to that act of war with deadly force. Should you cross our hyper limit after this warning, I am instructed to inform you that Empress Elizabeth and her government will take it as incontrovertible proof that, despite its pious diplomatic protestations and posturing, the Solarian League in fact actively desires a state of war between it and Manticore. Should that be the case, we will certainly give you one.”

She paused once more, briefly, her brown-flint eyes hard with confidence.

“Whatever the people who sent you here may have thought, Admiral, you have no chance whatever of completing your mission. If you attempt to do so, especially after this warning, the consequences — including the thousands of your own personnel who will die and the general war between the Star Empire and the Solarian League which most assuredly will result — will rest upon your head and those of the corrupt bureaucrats who sent you here without a single shred of legal authority or moral justification.

“Alexander-Harrington, clear.”

She stopped speaking, and in the silence which enveloped SLNS Philip Oppenheimer’s flag bridge, it required all of Filareta’s willpower to keep his own face expressionless.

She sure as hell doesn’t sound like she’s bluffing. And she obviously does know — or seems to, anyway — all about our orders. But, damn it, she’s got less than fifty wallers! And nobody could fight as many battles as this woman is supposed to’ve fought without learning to bluff convincingly!

“Record for transmission,” he heard himself say.

“Yes, Sir,” Sedgewick replied. “Live mike.”

“Admiral Alexander-Harrington,” he made himself match the chill of her own smile, “obviously you do know why I’m here. That being the case, I see no reason not to cut right to the heart of matters. There’s obviously a wide difference between your star nation’s interpretation of recent events and the Solarian League’s, and I have no intention of debating those interpretations. While I might not choose to use ‘conquest’ to describe my mission orders, I am here under orders to demand, in the name of the Solarian League, the stand down and surrender of all Manticoran military forces, the reopening of the wormholes you have illegally closed to all Solarian traffic as an act of economic warfare against the League in direct contravention of every principle of freedom of trade and passage, and the surrender of your civilian government. You may genuinely believe you have the capacity to defeat my forces. For that matter, you may actually have that capacity, although I beg to differ. Even if you do, however, you won’t accomplish it without taking significant losses of your own, and you might want to consider the fact that in addition to the other fifteen hundred superdreadnoughts actively in commission, the Navy has over eight thousand more in the Reserve. My presence here should indicate to you just how seriously the League takes this situation, and I assure you that, however many of those other ten thousand ships-of-the-wall it may require, the Solarian League will win in the end.”

He paused to let her consider his words, then straightened his shoulders and looked straight into the pickup.

“I intend to complete my mission, Admiral Alexander-Harrington, and I will. To use your own words, if you persist in resisting, the consequences — including the thousands of your personnel who will die — will rest upon your head and the Star Empire of Manticore’s. I demand that you stand down your fleet immediately. If you refuse, I will engage you.

“Filareta, clear.”

* * *

“Well, that wasn’t exactly unexpected,” Honor observed fifty-odd seconds later. “Except for the bit about reopening the termini. I guess there was time for Old Chicago to tell him about that before he sailed, after all.”

“It’s certainly arrogant enough for me to believe it came from a Solly,” Mercedes Brigham half-muttered, her expression baleful.

Honor shook her head, smiling faintly, but she also checked the digital timer counting down in one corner of the main plot. She could have used the Hermes buoys planted along with the stealthed recon platforms to conduct her conversation with Filareta in what amounted to real-time. In this instance, though, the lag of light-speed communications worked in her favor, and she glanced at Lieutenant Commander Brantley.

“Time for round two, Harper.”

“Yes, Your Grace.” The communications officer nodded. “Live mike.”

“I see rationality still isn’t a hallmark of the Solarian officer corps, Admiral Filareta,” she said, looking straight into the pickup. “I can’t say that comes as a dreadful surprise, given the uniformly disastrous decisions Solarian flag officers — and especially Battle Fleet flag officers, now that I think of it — seem to have been making for some time now. Hasn’t anyone in Solarian uniform noted that you haven’t come out on top in a single one of the engagements you’ve provoked? Except, of course, when your courageous personnel choose to open fire without warning on ships which don’t even have their wedges up. Which, I point out to you, is not the case in this instance.”

Her lip curled, her brown eyes glittering with scorn, and the contempt in her expression and her voice was genuine.

“Obviously, I can’t prevent you from sailing your entire fleet into an even worse disaster than Sandra Crandall’s. I do warn you, however, that this entire exchange has been recorded and will be provided — at no charge — to the prosecution at the court-martial I’m sure you’ll be facing, should you happen to be one of the survivors of the fresh debacle the Solarian Navy is about to experience. I repeat my original warning. If the forces under your command cross the hyper limit of this star system, you will be engaged and destroyed and a state of war will exist between the Solarian League and the Star Empire of Manticore and its allies.

“Alexander-Harrington, clear.”

* * *

“Alexander-Harrington, clear.”

Massimo Filareta’s nostrils flared at the cold, biting disdain in that soprano voice, yet he made himself stop and think.

So far, the exchange had used up two and a half minutes, leaving him just over three minutes from the hyper limit. He’d bought himself a little extra cushion with his instructions to Daniels, but even so, he had to make the call within the next two minutes.

The woman had to be insane. She was outnumbered ten to one, with a base velocity of zero relative to the planet, while Eleventh Fleet came at her at over five thousand kilometers per second. She’d have to have one hell of a lot more of a compensator advantage than even the wildest tales suggested if she hoped to pull away from him under those circumstances! Unless she seriously believes she can pound us to pieces with those damned missiles of theirs before we get into our range of her, despite our velocity advantage, he thought. That might be it. But she’s already in our powered range, whether she knows it or not. Accuracy may suck, but we can reach her, and I’ve got ten times as many ships as she does! And I’m not going to get another chance like this one. Not another tactical situation where the frigging Manties can’t stay away from us, pick us apart from outside our effective range. This is a chance to take out what looks like it’s at least a third of their remaining wall of battle, and they can’t survive that kind of loss rate even if they take out my entire command in return.

But, damn it, she’s got to know that, too! So why is she goading me this way?

He glanced at the time display again, then drew a deep breath and made his choice. He waved one hand sharply at Sedgewick.

“Live mike, Sir,” the com officer told him, and he glared into the pickup.

“You obviously have a very high opinion of your capabilities, Admiral,” he said coldly. “Well, I have a high opinion of my fleet’s capabilities, as well. I think we’ll just have to see which one of us is correct. You have ten minutes to decide what you’re going to do. If you have not struck your wedges in preparation to surrender your vessels at that time, you will not be given another opportunity to do so.

“Filareta, clear.”