Bit of Analysis: Honor Harrington III

[White Haven]

Far more sensible to act smug about Admiral Henke.

*smugsmugsmug*

[Mr Bean]

I'll note I think Grayson is going to prove to be wrong on the Honor II because at the range Apollo allows and the amount of fire a MDM equipped podnaught can kick out. Combat ranges are such that a podnaught can fire itself dry 3 times over before the first return salvo hits. Yest there might be engagements where a superdreadnaught has to fight four or five separate engagements in a short time frame but it's extremely unlikely.

Either you meet up, engage volly's and the victor counts up the dead or it's long range and you can run golden BB or no.

[Simon_Jester]

That's a fair point. Although... strictly speaking, in the eight or nine-minute flight time typical of extreme range MDM duels, a pod combatant can fairly easily launch, um... eight times five is forty pod salvoes, although that's only about 240 pods, which is at most 1/2 to 1/3 the complement of a typical podlayer.

It's when both sides have time to 'roll' and 'stack' pods while still outside of the enemy missile range that they really get to exchange volleys once and see who is right and who is dead.

[Mr Bean]

That's a fair point. Although... strictly speaking, in the eight or nine-minute flight time typical of extreme range MDM duels, a pod combatant can fairly easily launch, um... eight times five is forty pod salvoes, although that's only about 240 pods, which is at most 1/2 to 1/3 the complement of a typical podlayer.

It's when both sides have time to 'roll' and 'stack' pods while still outside of the enemy missile range that they really get to exchange volleys once and see who is right and who is dead.

Does that assumes a fight that opens right at 30 million kilometers exactly?. I'm assuming them meeting at theoretical max range which is technically unlimited. But the hard cap was something like 60 million kilometers or there about?

[Simon_Jester]

Ah. I was thinking of any combat where the missile drives are fired sequentially at or near their minimum acceleration and maximum burn time- which gives roughly three minutes per drive for nine minutes total.

Any shot longer ranged than that is a bit dubious. With Apollo it can be done, but it still has serious limitations- remember that Honor had to use prepositioned relay buoys to coordinate even a tiny missile salvo against a target 150 million kilometers off.

Even at sixty million kilometers, missile flight times are just not that high- because you put the ballistic cruising phase after the second stage burnout, and by that point the missile is going at about, by my estimate, 0.6c (high enough that relativistic effects should be a serious issue in determining the terminal velocity of third stage burnout). So adding another ten million kilometers to the range at that point only adds about another minute to the flight time... and five more pod salvoes out the hatches.

[Ahriman238]

...Since when have I acted smug about the Medusa-B?

Manticore has one BC(L) and 6 BC(P)s with another 6 in the pipeline. Both are ready for rapid production as needed. Toscarelli earns himself major points, but goes a step beyond with the 3rd gen podnought, the Medusa-B. Like the Saganami variants, it has only a passing resemblance to a Medusa/Harrington. By drastically reducing beam weapons and using automation for the smallest ever capital ship crew (just over a thousand) Toscarelli designed an SD(P) to carry 2,000 pods and still keep internal launchers for MDMs with magazines fit for two hours of intense combat. By all means, devote at least a little shipbuilding capacity to that. It'll be worth the extra 6-10 months.

Well... sort of?

Anyway, more seriously, I suspect Janacek knew exactly what his design teams were doing with these "B" and "C" variants and approved. He may not have felt he could pry loose the money to build newer, more powerful ships, and remember that his mandate was in essence to preside over the demobilization of the fleet. But that doesn't mean he would have disapproved of the idea of someone at least designing improved ship designs that make full and proper use of modern equipment.

Possibly, Weber once mentioned IIRC, something about how the HRG and Janacek Admiralty did keep R&D going, which just made it seem all the more unlikely to them that Haven could have caught up in any meaningful way.

I'll note I think Grayson is going to prove to be wrong on the Honor II because at the range Apollo allows and the amount of fire a MDM equipped podnaught can kick out. Combat ranges are such that a podnaught can fire itself dry 3 times over before the first return salvo hits. Yest there might be engagements where a superdreadnaught has to fight four or five separate engagements in a short time frame but it's extremely unlikely.

Either you meet up, engage volly's and the victor counts up the dead or it's long range and you can run golden BB or no.

Possibly, but for their internal armament they gave up, what, a bit less than 10% the pod numbers? That still gives them a lot more than a Harrington, and certainly more than their Havenite equivalent. I'd call the Invictus a superior design based just on how much more missile defense it has.

[Simon_Jester]

...Since when have I acted smug about the Medusa-B?

Manticore has one BC(L) and 6 BC(P)s with another 6 in the pipeline. Both are ready for rapid production as needed. Toscarelli earns himself major points, but goes a step beyond with the 3rd gen podnought, the Medusa-B. Like the Saganami variants, it has only a passing resemblance to a Medusa/Harrington. By drastically reducing beam weapons and using automation for the smallest ever capital ship crew (just over a thousand) Toscarelli designed an SD(P) to carry 2,000 pods and still keep internal launchers for MDMs with magazines fit for two hours of intense combat. By all means, devote at least a little shipbuilding capacity to that. It'll be worth the extra 6-10 months.

Well... sort of?

What I am being smug about has nothing to do with the magazine capacity of the Medusa-B.

Possibly, Weber once mentioned IIRC, something about how the HRG and Janacek Admiralty did keep R&D going, which just made it seem all the more unlikely to them that Haven could have caught up in any meaningful way.

True. Also, since the new ship classes rely more on automation and less on massive crews (and systems that presumably required all those extra personnel to maintain them)... honestly, I suspect the RMN would actually save money by switching to Rolands and Saganami-Cs as opposed to, say, Chansons and Star Knights.

The real US Navy is experiencing something like this with certain ships like the Zumwalt-class destroyers.

Possibly, but for their internal armament they gave up, what, a bit less than 10% the pod numbers? That still gives them a lot more than a Harrington, and certainly more than their Havenite equivalent. I'd call the Invictus a superior design based just on how much more missile defense it has.

[/quote]Since missile defense seems to be a lot more significant and decisive, I agree.

Basically, if your ship only has 2/3 as many defensive antimissile systems, it may suffer defense saturation and be obliterated by a relatively 'small' salvo (say, 2000 missiles per SD(P) targeted) that wouldn't even seriously faze a ship with more launchers.

[Ahriman238]

"Very well, Isabel," Detweiler said finally. "'Explain' what happened."

"We don't know yet, not fully," she admitted. "We won't know for some time. The only hard fact we have at this time is that somehow a Manty cruiser captain named Terekhov and Bernardus Van Dort figured out what was happening. Terekhov put together what I strongly suspect was a completely unauthorized attack on Monica. And as Aldona and I told you at our last meeting, the program to refit the battlecruisers we—or, rather, Technodyne—were providing had fallen behind schedule."

More and more connections between books. Apparently four of the Monican BCs were just a week from completion.

"Having said that, and assuming no new revelations suggest it really was your fault, I'm inclined to agree that the failure almost certainly stemmed from factors outside your control." He shrugged. "As I said at the beginning, it was always a crap shoot, and apparently we crapped out. So, starting from that, what's your feeling as to whether or not OFS is going to let this stand?"

"I think they are," Anisimovna said. Managing the Solly bureaucracies was her own area of expertise. "Verrochio is livid, and he's going to be even angrier if the Manties are able to prove his involvement. But he doesn't have the forces under his own command to take unilateral action, and the other Frontier Security commissioners won't support him. Not after something as spectacular as what the Manties did to Monica, and especially not if Tyler or any of his cronies roll over on us and cooperate with a Manty investigation."

"We don't need him to win," Detweiler pointed out. "You say he's 'livid' over this. Is there any probability of playing on that anger to maneuver him into a direct military confrontation? Whether the other commissioners approve or not, that would be something our friends in the League could probably spin into the pretext for intervention we need. Especially if he gets the crap shot out of him.."

"I don't see any way to do it," Anisimovna replied.

Lorcan Verrochio and his poor likelihood of further involvement in this mess.

"Under normal circumstances, I might think along the same lines," Detweiler said. "But Winton's been adopted by one of those frigging treecats, and you can bet she won't attend a conference without the little monster."

"Oh." Anisimovna grimaced.

"Yes, we can't afford to overlook the little bastards any longer, can we?" Detweiler growled.

It was unusual, to say the least, for him to allow his ire to show that clearly, but Sphinx's treecats had been a sore point with Manpower and Mesa literally for centuries. The possibility of unlocking the secret of telepathy had been impossible for the bioengineers of Mesa to resist, but they'd been remarkably unsuccessful in obtaining specimens. In fact, they'd managed to obtain only one living treecat in over three hundred T-years, and they'd discovered quickly that a treecat in captivity simply died. They still had some of the creature's genetic material, and some work continued with it in a desultory fashion, but without much prospect of successfully building the ability into humans.

The fact that the wretched little animals were even more intelligent than Manpower's own worst-case assumptions had come as an unpleasant revelation. And the ability of a fully functional telempathic to communicate its observations about the mental state of someone on the other side of high-level diplomatic negotiations was something political analysts were going to take some getting used to.

The Mesans are maybe a touch bitter about their ongoing inability to replicate treecat telepathy. And the ongoing threat treecats pose to their preferred weapons of political manipulations and assassinations.

"What do you think the Sollies are going to do, Your Grace?" Rafe Cardones asked quietly.

-snip-

"That's hard to say, Rafe," Honor replied, after a moment. The long-awaited courier from Aivars Terekhov and Augustus Khumalo had finally arrived the day before, with news of Terekhov's crushing victory over the Monican Navy. And of the horrific price his hastily organized squadron had paid for it.

"It's pretty obvious," she continued after a moment, "that at least some Sollies had to be in on this up to their necks. The Solarian Navy doesn't just 'lose' more than a dozen modern battlecruisers."

"You think the League Navy was directly involved?" Cardones was more than a little worried by the thought, and Honor didn't blame him.

"Not the Navy as such." She shook her head. "I'm more inclined to think it was some rogue element within the Navy, or else some private interest, one of their big builders, like Technodyne or General Industries of Terra. Either of them could have provided the ships, if they'd been willing to run some risks, although I'd bet on Technodyne, given their involvement with Mesa at Tiberian. We won't know who it was for certain for quite a while, though. Admiral O'Malley's detachment won't even get there for another four days, and until he arrives, Terekhov and Khumalo are going to have all they can do just to keep the system nailed down. They certainly aren't going to be able to start conducting any investigations."

Status of Talbott at the moment.

"Torch, Madam President," the Secretary said, and Pritchart sat back in her chair with a suddenly thoughtful expression.

"You know," she said, after a few seconds, "that really should have occurred to us. It's the one neutral port where we both have contacts." She chuckled suddenly. "Of course, if it had occurred to me, I probably wouldn't have suggested it anyway. I'd have figured they wouldn't want to risk their monarch anywhere near our half-tame lunatic, Cachat!"

Hey! Victor isn't that bad. I'm sure it's generally quite safe to share a system, and even a planet with him. As long as you're not working with Manpower, or against Haven.

Colonel Andrew LaFollet, Captain Spencer Hawke, Sergeant Jefferson McClure, Sergeant Tobias Stimson, and Corporal Joshua Atkins stood between the parents' family and the observation gallery's single entrance in a solid wall of Harrington green. Alfred and Allison Harrington stood side-by-side, each with an arm around the other, to Emily's left. Faith and James stood in front of their parents, watching with huge eyes and most imperfectly suppressed excitement. Lindsey Phillips, their nanny, stood beside them, keeping a watchful eye peeled, and Miranda LaFollet and James MacGuiness stood to Hamish's right, with Farragut cradled in Miranda's arms. Willard Neufsteiler and Austen Clinkscales had arrived from Grayson for the event, accompanied by Katherine Mayhew and Howard Clinkscales' widows, and Michelle Henke, Alice Truman, and Alistair McKeon completed the party.

Almost, that was. The Queen of Manticore and her Consort were also present, along with their treecats, and half a dozen of the Queen's Own to bolster the Harrington security cordon. Not to mention the additional security clamped around the outside of the building.

The "immediate family" come to witness the birth/uncapping of Honor's child. The maid, steward, nanny, Clinkscales, royals and security aren't family, but I doubt the clinc is prepared to ask them to leave. Not sure how treecats count as far as hospital rules go. What are we calling birth from a mechanical womb anyways?

On the other side of the glass, Illescue and his team opened the unit. The inner chamber rose smoothly, and Honor found herself holding her breath, knew that despite her best efforts she was crushing Hamish's hand—she'd engaged the governor on her left hand to protect Emily—as she saw their unborn son floating in the amniotic fluid. The child stirred, kicking, drifting, and she felt the thread of his own sleepy, unformed wonder, as if he sensed the impending moment, even through the corona of joy rising about her. The emotions of her family and friends were like some enormous sea, deep, intense, and powerful, yet focused. Not precisely peaceful, yet equally not tempestuous. They were vibrant, quivering with anticipation like a strummed guitar string, and so brightly, warmly supportive—so happy for her—that tears blurred Honor's vision.

Illescue tapped buttons on a console, and the top of the inner chamber slid open. A fibrous-looking mat floated on the fluid, and he used a vibro scalpel to slice it open. The umbilical cord had been attached to the mat, and it coiled lazily as his gloved, sterile hands reached down and lifted the tiny, fragile, infinitely precious body.

Honor's lungs insisted that she breathe. She ignored them, her entire being focused on Illescue's gentle, competent hands as he and his team severed the umbilical and cleaned the air passages, and the baby's emotions shifted abruptly.

The actual removal process.

She closed her eyes, reaching out with mental hands, trying to touch the infant mind-glow as drowsy contentment turned into fear and confusion, shock as he left the soft, warm safety of the womb for the cold and frightening unknown. She felt him protesting, squirming, fighting to return, and then, in a fashion she knew she would never be able to explain to another human being, Nimitz and Samantha were with her. And so was Farragut, and behind him came Ariel and Monroe.

The treecats reached out with her as the first, thin squall of protest sounded, and suddenly, as easily as slipping her hand into a glove, she touched him. Touched him as she had never touched another human being, even Hamish. It was as if her hand had reached out into the dark, and a smaller, warmer, utterly trusting hand had found it with unerring accuracy.

Honor has a psychic connection with her son, I guess.

"This is my son," she said to them all, her eyes locked with the man who had been her personal armsman for so many years, "Raoul Alfred Alistair Alexander-Harrington. Flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone, heir of heart and life, of power and title. I declare him before you all, as my witnesses and God's."

"He is your son," Austen Clinkscales replied, bowing deeply. "So witness we all."

"This is my son," she repeated more softly, speaking only to LaFollet, "and I name you guardian and protector. I give his life into your keeping. Fail not in this trust."

LaFollet looked back at her, then dropped to one knee, resting his hand lightly on the blanket-wrapped baby, and met her eyes unflinchingly.

"I recognize him," he said, his voice soft yet clear as he spoke the ancient formula, "and I know him. I take his life into my keeping, flesh of your flesh, bone of your bone. Before God, Maker and Tester of us all; before His Son, Who died to intercede for us all; and before the Holy Comforter, I will stand before him in the Test of life and at his back in battle. I will protect and guard his life with my own. His honor is my honor, his heritage is mine to guard, and I will fail not in this trust, though it cost me my life."

His voice fogged on the final sentence, and his eyes were suspiciously bright as he rose from his knee. Honor smiled at him, and worked one tiny, preposterously delicate hand free of the swaddling blanket. LaFollet extended his own hand, fingers opened, and she placed her son's palm against his.

"I accept your oath in his name. You are my son's sword and his shield. His steps are yours to watch and guard, to ward and instruct."

Honor's son is named, and it's a mouthful. I'm just going to call him Raoul, Okay? Formal ritual for the birth of a Steadholder's heir, as well as the transfer of Andrew Lafollets' oaths to the boy.

"Beloved," Telmachi said, "we have gathered here to baptize this child. As he is the child of two planets, so also is he the child of God in two traditions. We have examined the doctrine of the Church of Humanity Unchained, as the Church of Humanity Unchained has examined that of Mother Church. We find no irreconcilable conflict between them, and as this child stands heir to high office and titles in both of his worlds, we baptize him here in God's most Holy Name for both Mother Church and the Church of Humanity Unchained."

Baptized in his mother's faith and the Grayson Church of Humanity Unchained.

Telmachi paused, then beckoned once more. In the Grayson tradition, there were four godparents: two godfathers and two godmothers, and Honor smiled as Elizabeth Winton, Justin Zyrr-Winton, Katherine Mayhew, and Alistair McKeon stepped up on either side of the parents.

Godparents include the Queen and Queen-consort of Manticore, The Protector of Grayson's eldest wife, and a Manticoran admiral, Honor's first XO, Alistiar McKeon.

"I said you don't lie worth a damn. In fact, you're so bad at it that the two or three times I've seen you try, the people you were talking to simply assumed you were deliberately pretending to lie in order to make a point."

Webster regarded him narrowly, and Carmichael shrugged.

"You're simply an honest man. It comes across. And that's rare—very rare—for someone operating at the level you currently are. Especially here." Carmichael grimaced. "There's a taint of decadence in the air here on Old Earth, which may be why honesty's so rare. But why ever it is, they don't really understand you, in a lot of ways, because you do come out of the military, and very few of them do. But when you say something, personally or as the Queen's representative, they're confident you're telling them the truth. At the moment, especially with the dispute over our correspondence with the Peeps and the shenanigans in the Talbott Cluster, that's incredibly important, Jim. Don't undervalue yourself."

James Bowie Webster, former First Spacelord, a close friend and confidant of White Haven's, and now Manticoran Ambassador to Earth. Still clings to the idea that he's an honest officer, not some filthy politician.

"The credit transfers have been made, backdated, and then erased . . . mostly. I handled the computer side myself." He smiled and shook his head. "The Havenites really ought to hire a good Solarian firm to update their systems security. It shouldn't have been this easy to hack."

"Count your blessings," his current employer said sourly. "Their accounting software may be vulnerable, but we've tried about four times to break into their other secured files without much luck. Actually, I suspect you got into their banking programs from the Solly end, didn't you?"

"Well, yes," Tallman admitted. "I invaded their interface with their banks."

"That's what I thought." His employer shook her head. "Don't take this personally, but a lot of Sollies make some rather unjustified assumptions about their technological superiority. One of these days, that may turn around and bite all of you on the ass. Hard."

"I suppose anything's possible." Tallman shrugged. It wasn't as if anyone could threaten the League, after all. The very idea was preposterous.

Transactions erased enough to look suspicious later, Haven data security.

"Good!" She smiled. "That's exactly what I needed to hear. And now, for your fee."

She reached into her smartly tailored jacket, and Tallman let his chair come back fully upright, reaching out his hand—then froze in shock.

"Wh—?" he began, but he never finished the question, for the pulser in her hand snarled. The burst of darts hit him at the base of the throat and tracked upwards across his neck and the left side of his face, with predictably gruesome results.

Never agree to do anything sneaky for the Mesans. They pay in pulser darts.

If pressed, Webster was prepared to admit that the citizens of planets like Old Earth and Beowulf at least meant well. The fact that they had little more clue than a medieval peasant about things that went on outside their own pleasant little star systems was unfortunate, but it didn't result from any inherent malevolence. Or even stupidity, really. They were simply too busy with the things that mattered to them to think much about problems outside their own mental event horizon. But the fact that they complacently believed that the Solarian League, with its huge, corrupt bureaucracies and self-serving, manipulative elites, was still God's gift to the galaxy made it difficult, sometimes, to remember that most of their sins were sins of omission, not commission.

Prevailing attitudes in the Old League, the core worlds.

At least he and Carmichael were making some progress dealing with the bloody events in Talbott. Accounts of the Battle of Monica were really only just beginning to trickle in to Old Earth, and from everything he'd seen so far, the revelations were going to get worse, before they got better. The good news, he supposed, was that it was remotely possible even the Solarian public might get exercised over such flagrant—

Webster never saw the pulser in the hand of the Havenite ambassador's chauffeur.

The Mesans arranged for the Havenitre ambassador's chauffeur to be turned into a lone gunman and shoot Webster. They also left an incriminating money trail to be found later, to try and break up negotiations. I know Dettweiler said to make it obvious, because sometimes you have to lead "neobarbs" to the right conclusions, but isn't that kind of suspiciously direct for an assassination?

"The driver wasn't a Havenite national. He was a Solly, provided by the limo service with the transportation contract for the Peeps New Chicago embassy."

"A Solly," Grantville repeated carefully.

"A Solly," Langtry confirmed, "who's received the equivalent of just over a hundred and twenty-five thousand Manticoran dollars over the past half T-year—seventy-five thousand of them in the last three weeks—in unrecorded, unreported credit transfers from a Havenite diplomatic account."

The money trail I mentioned.

"And my point is that this whole thing is stupid. Assume the Peeps have access to whatever they used to make Timothy Meares try to kill Honor. In that case, why in hell would they choose their own ambassador's driver as their assassin? They could have picked someone with absolutely no connection to them, so they used his driver. Does that make any sense to you at all?"

"I—" Elizabeth began. Then she paused, obviously beginning to think at last.

"All right," she said, after a moment. "I'll grant that that's a legitimate question. But what about the credit transfers the Solly police turned up?"

"Ah, yes," White Haven said. "The credit transfers. Transfers made directly out of Havenite diplomatic funds. Not exactly the least incriminating payment method I've ever heard of. And if they used whatever they used against Honor, why bother to pay him at all? Let's not forget, that killer was on what anyone but an idiot must have recognized would be a suicide mission. Like the reports say, there were police eyewitnesses. At the very least, he was looking at certain arrest and conviction for murder. Would you do that for less than a hundred and fifty thousand dollars? How much good would the money do you lying dead on the sidewalk, or after it was confiscated by the courts when they convicted and sentenced you for murder? So if they could get him to do the job under those circumstances, the amount they could pay him certainly wasn't the controlling factor. And if it wasn't, why hand him money and establish a direct link between him and them in the first place?"

Man's got a point, if there's one thing working against the new Havenite regime, it's that they have an extensive history and institutional knowledge of assassination. No way they'd put together something this sloppy.

"But if we're going to entertain the possibility that it wasn't them, who else could have wanted Jim dead?" Grantville asked.

"I can't answer that one, Prime Minister," Shemais admitted. "There could be any number of other people who might have had an interest in killing him. But an analyst can get herself into a lot of trouble by wandering off into too much speculation based on too little hard data, and there are two salient points which stand out to me. First, the timing. It could simply be a coincidence, but I'm naturally suspicious of coincidences, and while we're in the middle of a war with another star nation, the reasons that nation might want one of our ambassadors dead go to the head of my own queue. And second, this entire affair certainly does sound very similar to the attempt on Duchess Harrington's life. In that case, unlike this one, there's not much question about why the Peeps wanted her dead, but it's the similarity of technique that strikes me so strongly. When we think about who else could have wanted Admiral Webster dead, we also have to think about who would have the resources and technical capability to put his assassination together this way. From what happened in Duchess Harrington's case, it seems evident that the Peeps have it, but we don't have any evidence that anyone else does. And if it wasn't them, someone went to an awful lot of trouble to convince us it was."

So Haven gets implicated by the similarity to another assassination you just assumed was them anyways? Okay, it still sounds a lot more likely than an ancient conspiracy of genetic supermen, but still...

"No," she said. "I'm not going to play the think and double-think game. For now—for the moment—I'll operate on the assumption that it may not have been the Peeps. You've got that much. We'll go ahead with the summit, and we'll see what they have to say. I'd be lying if I said what's happened wasn't likely to make me a lot less willing to believe anything they say on Torch, but I'll go. But I'm getting incredibly tired of having these bastards murder people I care about, members of my government, and my ambassadors. This is it, as far as I'm willing to go."

Hey! The summit's still on! Ha! Take that ya Mesan rat-bastards, think you can just kill a coupla' people and everyone will just react the way you-


-snip copy paste of the gas attack attempt on Berry and Ruth from Torch of Freedom-

"Not one word," Elizabeth Winton said flatly. "Not one word about why they might have done it, or who else might have wanted to do it."

-snip-

"They killed Sir James and tried to kill Berry Zilwicki and my niece on the same damned day. All the available evidence from Old Terra says it was a Peep operation, and who else knew we were planning a summit meeting on Torch? The Peeps and the Erewhonese, and does anyone in this room believe the Erewhon honor code would have let them do something like this? Even assuming they'd had any conceivable reason to?"

-snip-

"They invited us—me—to a summit meeting. I don't think they actually expected me to accept. I think it was essentially planned as yet another of their damned diplomatic lies. They probably intended to publish the correspondence of their invitation and my refusal as proof that they're the 'reasonable party' in this war. It would have bolstered their claim that they've been telling the truth about our diplomatic correspondence from the beginning.

"But then I accepted their invitation, and we nominated Torch for the site and invited Erewhon to provide security, with the possibility of repairing the damage to our relations with the Erewhonese. They hadn't counted on that. And even though they'd probably never expected to sit down and negotiate seriously, they found themselves in a position where they might actually have to do that. Where it was even possible we'd sound like the voice of reason. So they decided to avoid the entire problem by killing Berry and Ruth—after all, what's the death of two more teenaged girls to bastards like Peeps? For that matter, if the girls' schedule hadn't slipped, they probably would have killed Thandi Palane and decapitated the Torch military, as well. Obviously, the confusion and chaos which would have resulted would have made Torch completely impossible as a conference site. And even if it hadn't, they could always point to their concern about security issues and the safety of their precious President Pritchart as reasons they couldn't possibly meet with me there. After, of course, sending me their lying condolences for my niece's death—just like Saint-Just did after he murdered Uncle Anson and Cal!"

Oh. Nevermind.

"One thing that's changed is that Eighth Fleet's had longer to receive munitions and train with them. We've got a few new wrinkles we think are going to make our ships considerably more effective, and the additional training time will stand Eighth Fleet in good stead. However, at this time, Eighth Fleet is the only formation we've got which is fully trained with the new weapons. It's also the only formation that's equipped with the new weapons, because only the Invictuses and the Graysons' late-flight Harringtons—" he smiled wryly at the class name, despite his somber mood "—can operate them without refitting."

"Why is that?" Grantville asked. "I thought the pods were the same dimensions?"

"They are, but only the ships built with Keyhole capability from the outset can handle the Mark Two platforms, and they're essential to making the new missiles work. We can refit with Keyhole II—in fact, the decision to build that in is part of what's delayed the Andermani refits—but it requires placing the ship in yard hands for at least eight to ten weeks. And, frankly, we can't stand down our existing ships that long when we're this tightly strapped. All our new construction is being altered on the ways to be Keyhole II-capable, and when it starts coming into commission, we can probably start pulling the older ships back for refit.

Introducing Keyhole II- This time it's personal FTL. Also problems refitting ships to carry Keyhole II mean for now their latest 'wrinkle' will be confined to Eighth Fleet.

"We're in a little better shape in Talbott, as well, because O'Malley's on station at Monica now. Given ONI's current estimates of Solarian capabilities, and bearing in mind Terekhov's after-action report on the performance of the Solly battlecruisers the Monicans used, O'Malley can almost certainly destroy anything Verrochio could assemble to throw at him for at least the next two to four months. In fact, Verrochio would have to be heavily reinforced before he'd have any chance at all of evicting us from Monica, much less the Cluster as a whole.

"As far as direct action against the home system by the League is concerned, sheer distance would work in our favor. They aren't going to invade us successfully through the Junction, not with the number of missile pods we've got covering the central nexus. That means they've got to do it the hard way, which leaves them with something on the order of a six-month voyage just to get here. Which doesn't even take into consideration the fact that they're going to have to mobilize, bring together, and logistically support a fleet with overwhelming numerical superiority if they expect to offset our tactical and technological advantages.

"To be honest, I'm reminded of something a wet-navy admiral from Old Earth once said. For eighteen months to two years, possibly even twice that long, we'd run wild. It's unlikely the Sollies recognize just how much things have changed in the last five to ten T-years, which probably means they'd commit grossly inadequate force levels, at least initially. Eventually, they'd realize what was happening, though. And if they had the stomach for it, they could use their sheer size to soak up whatever we did to them while they got their own R and D to work on matching weapons and cranked up their own building capacity.

"The bottom line is that my current estimate is that we could do enormous damage to them—far more, I'm certain, then any of their strategists or politicians would imagine was possible. But quantity has a quality all its own, and we simply aren't big enough to militarily defeat the Solarian League if it's prepared to buckle down and pay the cost to beat us. We don't have the ships or the manpower to occupy the number of star systems we'd have to occupy if we wanted to achieve military victory. They, on the other hand, have effectively unlimited manpower and productive capacity. In the end, that would tell. And even if that weren't true, it overlooks the fact that the Peeps already have—or soon will have—enough wallers with broadly equivalent capabilities to pound us under. Especially if we're distracted by dealing with the League."

The probable shape of a war against the Solarian League, if anyone were inclined to start one. Manticore would kill everything the League could throw at them with ease for the first 18 months to 2 years. After that, they'll start heavily losing the numbers game, and the industrial production game. ANd once the Sollies get a good look at what they're doing they'll duplicate it a hell of a lot faster than Haven could.

"That's a given," Elizabeth said, nodding. "But you say we'll be deploying the system-defense Apollos shortly. That would bolster our rear area security, wouldn't it?"

"Considerably," Hamish replied. "But we don't have them deployed yet."

"Still, Eighth Fleet already has Apollo, and it's part of Home Fleet's strategic reserve, isn't it, Ham?" Grantville asked.

"Yes it is, but it can only be in one place at a time," Hamish pointed out. "If it's out raiding Peep star systems, then it can't be here, defending the home system."

"But if we launch Sanskrit, then immediately bring Eighth Fleet home to Trevor's Star, it would be back in its covering position before Theisman could react to the new weapons systems, wouldn't it? I mean, one of the advantages of basing Eighth Fleet at Trevor's Star is that it's ninety light-years closer to Haven than Manticore is. So even if we hit a target like Lovat, Eighth Fleet can be back in position to cover the home system a good three weeks before Theisman could get a fleet here to attack us, even if he sent it straight from Haven the instant he heard about Sanskrit, right?"

Why they're going forward with Sanskrit. That and with the possibility of a war with the League over Monica, they need to settle things with Haven quickly and decisively. Interesting that they were looking at system defense with Apollo before modifying most of their ships with it.

"Willie, I'm going to draft a note to Pritchart. It's not going to be pretty. I'm going to officially and publicly denounce her actions and notify her that I have no intention of meeting anywhere with someone who uses assassination as a routine tool. And I'm also going to notify her that we intend to resume active military operations immediately."

-snip-

"Tony," Elizabeth continued, turning to the Foreign Secretary, "I want our notice that we're going back to active operations very clearly stated. Unlike them, we're not going to be launching attacks without declaring hostilities first, and I want that point made to the galaxy at large by publishing our note in the 'faxes at the same time we send it. There's not going to be any room for anyone to accuse us of altering correspondence after the fact this time. Clear?"

"Clear, Your Majesty," Langtry said, and the Queen turned back to Hamish.

"Hamish, I want orders cut to Eighth Fleet immediately. Operation Sanskrit is reactivated, as of now. I want active planning to begin immediately, and I want Sanskrit to hit the Peeps as soon as physically possible."

The smile she produced was one a hexapuma might have worn.

"We'll give them their formal notice," she said grimly, "and I hope the bastards choke on it!"

Sigh. Only an eternity of slaughter and carnage, and the laughter of Mesan ubermenschen.

"My God," Theisman said. "They killed King Roger because they expected Elizabeth to be weaker?" He barked a harsh laugh. "Well, that little brainstorm certainly fucked up!"

"I believe you could safely say that," Pritchart agreed. "But you see what Kevin's driving at, don't you? The Legislaturalists and Internal Security murdered her father. The Committee of Public Safety and State Security tried to murder her, and did murder her uncle, her cousin, and her prime minister. So if two totally different Havenite régimes were willing to murder members of her family, why shouldn't a third régime attempt to murder her niece? Is it any wonder she has to be thinking it's impossible for this particular leopard to ever change its spots?"

Some fans of the series complain that Elizabeth is to hawkish, a few have called her a warmongering lunatic. It's not so, she has plenty of history and reason to distrust Peeps, and Haven has always had pious platitudes about democracy and the rule of law. I think this attitude is a symptom of being the omniscient audience. We know that she's wrong, that it's a manipulation of Mesa playing Manticore and Haven against each other, and we'd like the war to stop. But Elizabeth isn't willing to extend a small fifth chance to the nation that routinely lies and assassinates everyone precious to her. How unreasonable.

"We've been collating reports and rumors over at FIS for some time now. We really started looking after the attempt to kill Harrington, since we knew we hadn't done it. It became apparent to us rather quickly that there were a lot of parallels between the attempt on her life and the Hofschulte affair in the Empire. In fact, it looks like whatever technique was used was identical in both cases. We haven't heard anything yet direct from Old Earth about the Webster assassination, but looking at the indictment Elizabeth attached to her note, it looks very much to me as if Ambassador DeClercq's driver may have been another application of the same technique. And the attack on Berry Zilwicki may have been yet another—notice that in all four cases, for example, the apparent assassin had no personal motive to kill his victims and no chance at all of surviving the mission.

"From the outside, and bearing in mind how little forensic evidence we have, it sounds as if the same technique was used on Grosclaude. Not to make him kill anyone else, but to make him kill himself."

And as the omniscient audience, we already know all about the lone gunmen, so people seem slow to put together the pieces.

"I don't know that," Trajan admitted. "Given the operation on Torch, I'd be tempted to point the finger at Mesa. After all, Mesa and Manpower don't much like us or the Manties, for a lot of reasons. But I'm not sure why they would have used Hofschulte to try and kill the Andy Emperor's younger brother. For that matter, the real culprits may have figured we'd automatically assume it was Mesa if they attacked the ruler of Torch. It could have been a bit of misdirection on their part, and aside from getting us both out of Manpower's hair—keeping us from inhibiting their slaving operations, at least in our respective sectors—I just don't see what sort of reason Mesa could have for committing the obvious time and resources necessary to set all of this up."

You know, I still sincerely have no idea why they'd kill the Andy Emperor's brother.

"There's got to be some way to dodge this pulser dart," Nesbitt argued urgently. "If Wilhelm's suspicions are remotely accurate, then both of us are playing into someone else's hands if we go back to war!"

"But if Tom's time estimate is accurate," Henrietta Barloi said harshly, "there's nothing we can do. If the Manties hit us as hard and as fast as the tone of that note suggests, we're going to get pounded somewhere before we could possibly get a note from Haven to Manticore. Even assuming Elizabeth were prepared to believe any of this—and I'm not at all sure she would be—there's no way to tell her about it before she pulls the trigger."

"And if she does 'pull the trigger,'" Pritchart said grimly, "then it's going to be harder than hell to convince anyone in Congress to try for a second summit agreement."

"In addition," Montreau pointed out unhappily, "we couldn't expect the Manties to take any such second proposal seriously unless we badly defeat whatever operation they mount."

Everyone looked at the Secretary of State, and she shrugged.

"Right now, Elizabeth's assuming we set this entire thing up for some unknown, underhanded, devious reason of our own. If they attack us successfully, inflict more damage, and get off unscathed, or with only minor damage of their own, then as far as she'll be concerned, we'll have even more reason to stall, or whatever the hell it is we were trying to accomplish. If we beat them severely, though, then send her another message, along with at least a partial explanation of Director Trajan's suspicions, we'll be speaking from a position of strength, tactically and psychologically. If we say to them 'Look, we just knocked the crap out of your last attack, and we're telling you we think someone else is manipulating both of us. So if you'll at least sit down and talk to us, we won't press our immediate advantage while you do it' they're a lot more likely to actually take this seriously."

So all the Haven Cabinet, who know they're innocent, can do is try and beat the Manticorans badly enough to bring them back to the table and hope that it doesn't just stiffen their resolve. You know, like the last time Haven tried to beat Manticore badly enough to make them negotiate in good faith.

[Mr Bean]

You know, I still sincerely have no idea why they'd kill the Andy Emperor's brother.

Something tells me they might have an Adviser on the inside for whoever the next in line for the throne or something else that involves playing the long game. It would not surprise me to learn that the Alignment has looked at who will inherent next and prefer the number 2 or 3 over the number 1. Maybe the Andy Emperor is childless so inheritance would go to brother's children instead. Either way I'm guessing the Alignment prefers that the brother's family die to help a goal 40 years down the line.

Or maybe Andy succession says the best gets the job so have lots of kids everyone so some branch of the family will turn out good. Considering the little story about the female Andy Emperor who was legally declared a man I'm thinking they have to have some history with uncertain successions and have built in measures to prevent a War of the Five Kings or some other such nonsense.

[Terralthra]

You know, I still sincerely have no idea why they'd kill the Andy Emperor's brother.

Something tells me they might have an Adviser on the inside for whoever the next in line for the throne or something else that involves playing the long game. It would not surprise me to learn that the Alignment has looked at who will inherent next and prefer the number 2 or 3 over the number 1. Maybe the Andy Emperor is childless so inheritance would go to brother's children instead. Either way I'm guessing the Alignment prefers that the brother's family die to help a goal 40 years down the line.

Or maybe Andy succession says the best gets the job so have lots of kids everyone so some branch of the family will turn out good. Considering the little story about the female Andy Emperor who was legally declared a man I'm thinking they have to have some history with uncertain successions and have built in measures to prevent a War of the Five Kings or some other such nonsense.

He was pro-Manticore, at a time (the interbellum) when Anderman policy hadn't yet been decided on open conflict with the SKM/SEM over Silesia. Killing him puts the balance of voices in Gustav XI's council chamber a little more toward conflict, which can only be good for Mesa. Also, he's anti-slavery.

[Ahriman238]

So now Theisman has his people come up with two major ops plans, Beatrice and Camille, for blacking Manticore's eye in such a way that will make a negotiated peace possible.

"Basically, Camille is intended for a situation in which the Manties attack one of our star systems, and we fight them off with relatively light losses on either side. The consequence of a sparring match, you might say, and not a death grapple.

"In that situation, as we understood your directive, what we want is an operation which will punish them, but without radically raising the stakes on either side. A declaration that we've absorbed and parried their blow, and that we're prepared to deliver similar blows of our own.

"The basic problem is that, despite the way they've been forced to divert battle squadrons to cover places like Zanzibar and Alizon, they have proportionately heavier system defense forces on most of their important targets than we do. They simply have fewer systems to defend, which lets them cover up in greater depth, despite their numerical inferiority. So even something we intend as a relatively minor attack is going to require a significant commitment of force on our side. We have the resources to do that; my only real concern is that using a task force or fleet of the size we need is likely to be perceived by the Manties as an escalation on our part, whether we want that or not.

"Bearing that in mind, what we propose under Camille is an attack on Alizon, similar to the one we launched against Zanzibar. We'd probably put Lester in command again, and we'd commit six battle squadrons—forty-eight podnaughts—with carrier support and screening elements. That's a significantly heavier force than the one we used against Zanzibar, but the Manties have shored up the Alizon defenses since then, and we'll need the additional firepower to break in.

"Assuming our force estimates are accurate, our six squadrons should be sufficient to get the job done, but their Office of Naval Intelligence has to have at least a fair notion of our current strength. They'll recognize that six battle squadrons represents only a small portion of our total deployable ships of the wall. Hopefully, they'll conclude from that that we're deliberately operating on a reduced scale, although they may not conclude that it's for the reasons we want them to think it is. In that case, we may require some diplomatic contact to underscore the point that we could have hit them harder. That's one reason we picked Alizon as our target. It's significant politically, diplomatically, and in terms of their public's morale; it's not especially significant any longer in terms of their actual war-fighting ability, though. What we hope is that taking out Alizon's military infrastructure will underscore our capabilities without being perceived as a mortal threat.

Trying to not escalate by going for a limited strike, limited forces against a nonessential target.

"I hope you and Leslie are both remembering that using military operations as a way to shape a diplomatic climate is always problematical. It's much simpler—and more reliable, frankly—to think in terms of accomplishing specific military goals than it is to come up with ways to elicit specific desired political responses from your opponent. He's always going to find some way to screw up what it was you thought you were going to get, and any secretary of war or admiral who tells you differently is either a lunatic or a liar. In either of which cases, you should get rid of his sorry ass as quickly as possible."

Truer words, Tom, have rarely been spoken to one's boss.

"Basically, Beatrice is a direct attack on the Manticoran home system," Theisman told her. "There's not much finesse to it. We'll take forty-two battle squadrons—three hundred and thirty-six SD(P)s; equal to eighty-plus percent of their entire modern wall of battle, including the Andies, according to NavInt's current estimates—and we'll throw it straight at their toughest defenses and their most critical defensive objective. They'll have to fight to defend Manticore, and the system astrography is going to leave Sphinx especially exposed. Essentially, we'll be able to get at Sphinx quickly enough their Home Fleet will have no choice but to meet us head-on, however bad the odds are from their perspective. And the odds will be bad. Because they've had to deploy so much of their strength to cover other, secondary objectives, they'll be significantly outnumbered at the point of contact.

"We'll take along several thousand LACs. The attack force, which will be under Javier's command, with Lester as his second, will also be accompanied by a full press fleet train—repair ships, ammunition ships, hospital ships, everything. We'll be prepared to repeat Lester's Zanzibar tactics, complete to reloading our SD(P)s several times, if necessary.

"Even in the best-case scenario," he said soberly, "our losses will be heavy—very heavy. Don't think they won't. We'll be hitting very hard, well-prepared defenses—probably the toughest in the explored galaxy, at the moment—manned by highly motivated people, and they'll still have the technological advantage, even though we've narrowed it. Not only that, but we don't estimate we'll be able to hold the system against counterattack, even after we win. Certainly not indefinitely.

And Beatrice, which is essentially throwing the dice with a brute force, all-or-nothing strike on the Manticore system itself. A bid for outright military victory after which they'll negotiate on Prichart's terms.

"At the moment, their Home Fleet consists of about fifty SD(P)s and the same number of older superdreadnoughts, according to NavInt. They have another fifty of the wall in Third Fleet, and Eighth Fleet has another twenty-four to thirty. Against Home Fleet alone, we'll have a better than three-to-one advantage in total hulls, and seven-to-one in SD(P)s. Their fixed defenses and the LACs they've deployed for home system defense will offset some of that advantage, but not as much as you might think. According to NavInt's latest reports, some of the dispositions they've been forced to make to protect Manticore-B and the Junction have forced compromises in Manticore-A we think we can make work for us.

"If both Third Fleet and Eighth Fleet are called in from Trevor's Star, the numerical odds will shift from seven-to-one in pod—layers to approximately four-to-one, but we don't really know how likely it is that both of them will be committed. They've got to worry about the fact that the force we're throwing at Manticore, big as it is, represents only a portion of our total wall of battle. That means they'll have to be worried about the possibility that we've got an additional fleet sitting in hyper waiting to pounce on Trevor's Star if they uncover it. They may dither at least a little and commit one of the Trevor's Star forces first, hoping it will be enough. In some ways, that would be good—it would bring them in in smaller packets, easier to defeat in detail. But one variant of Beatrice we're considering—Beatrice Bravo—would try to entice them to come through together.

Home Fleet strength, ~50 SD(P), 50 SD, 16 carriers. But they can be reinforced by Third Fleet's 50 podnoughts and Honor's four squadrons of wallers. But they may try and commit a limited amount at first, lest there's a trap, and won't be concentrated unlike the Haven ships which will still outnumber them by a comfortable margin.

"After that, and if the Trevor's Star detachments come in together, he may have to break off the attack, if his own losses against Home Fleet and the fixed defenses have been significant. Otherwise, especially if we adopt the Bravo variant's deployment, he ought to be in a position to engage the remaining fleet elements in succession, utilizing his numerical advantage, or ignore the forces coming up behind him while he heads directly through the system, taking out industrial infrastructure—and especially their dispersed shipyards—as he goes. A lot will depend on how heavy his own losses were and whether or not he still has the firepower to deal with the inner defenses. Ammunition consumption is going to be an especially ticklish problem, I suspect.

"If he's able to inflict heavy damage on their infrastructure, Beatrice might not prove immediately fatal to the Manties, but the long term effects on the strategic balance would be clearly decisive. Without the Manticoran yards, their Alliance can't possibly match our construction ability, and they'll know it. Which means they'll have no choice but to surrender.

"It he's able to engage Third Fleet and Eighth Fleet in detail, after already trashing Home Fleet, he'll probably be able to completely destroy or cripple just under half the total modern Manty wall of battle and then take out the infrastructure. In that case, Beatrice would definitely be immediately decisive."

Sounds pretty decisive. And nasty, with millions of casualties.

"You say we'd commit almost three hundred and fifty ships of the wall," she said, finally. "What does that leave us if things go wrong?"

"We'll have a total of just over six hundred and twenty SD(P)s in commission at that point," Theisman told her. "There'll be another three hundred or so older superdreadnoughts to support them, although by that point we'll be decommissioning the older ships steadily to provide crews for the new construction."

Haven is sitting pretty comfortably as far as SD(P) numbers right now. Over half again the entire Manticoran Alliance's numbers. Then again, Haven always had a large margin of numerical superiority, and it didn't help the Legislaturists or Committee did it?

"Why not take more of them to Manticore, then?"

"For four main reasons. First, out of that total number of pod-layers, something like a hundred will still be working up. They won't be up to full efficiency, their ships companies won't be fully integrated. In short, they won't really be fully combat-effective units.

"Second, the force we're committing ought to be enough to do the job, and it's going to be the biggest fleet of superdreadnoughts ever committed to action in a single battle by anyone, including the Solarian League. Even under a worst-case scenario, it should be more than powerful enough to beat an organized retreat with minimum losses. I realize Murphy's still likely to put in an appearance, but there would have to be some truly radical shift in the basic operational parameters for the Manties to seriously threaten its ability to look after itself.

"Third, we simply can't be certain where their Eighth Fleet is going to be at the moment we launch Beatrice. Suppose, for example, that they've sortied from Trevor's Star on another raiding expedition. In that case, our margin of superiority at Manticore would be even greater, but we've got to cover our own absolutely essential rear areas—like Bolthole, although there's no indication they've figured out where Bolthole is yet—against whatever Eighth Fleet might be doing while we're trashing Manticore.

"Fourth, there's the Andermani. The Manties and Graysons have lost about twenty superdreadnoughts—twelve of them pod-layers—since Thunderbolt wrapped up. That's about seven percent of their total podnoughts. But the Andies are still out there somewhere, and so far, we've seen very few of their capital ships. There are at least a couple of squadrons of them assigned to the Manties' Home Fleet, but that's about it. By our estimates, they should have somewhere around a hundred and twenty pod-layers by now—just about a third of the Manticoran Alliance's total—and we haven't seen them yet. We know they aren't at Trevor's Star, and intelligence suggests there's still some technical problem with them. We know they were conducting a major refit program on the Andy wallers, and we're assuming that explains their continued absence. But it's possible more of them will come forward before we launch Beatrice. And whatever happens in Manticore, the Andy ships that aren't there can't be destroyed. So we've got to retain enough of our own forces uncommitted to provide a strategic reserve against the sudden appearance of the Andermani Navy."

Reasons to not send anyone and ensure the greatest overkill in naval history. Covering against Eighth Fleet and the Andermani (and where's the proper respect, and fear, of Grayson?) a lot of those ships remaining behind won't be -quite- combat ready yet, and if they need a bigger fleet they've already lost the war.

"All right, Tom, Arnaud. I'll review your summaries. On the basis of what you've said so far, I'm inclined to think you're probably right about the two we're most likely to be choosing between, unfortunately. I hope it will be Camille, but go ahead and assume the worst. Start deploying your units on the basis that Beatrice will be necessary."

Whee. So very many innocent people are going to die.


-snip Victor's meeting Honor and explaining Haven is blameless, also from Torch-

"You can't be serious!" Baron Grantville blurted, looking incredulously at his sister-in-law.

"Yes, I certainly can be, Willie," Honor replied, with just a hint of a chill in her tone. "I'm not exactly in the habit of making jokes about things like this, you know."

The Prime Minister colored, and shook his head apologetically.

"Sorry. It's just that to be bringing this up at this late date, and with no evidence to support the theory. . . ."

Honor tries to tell the Prime Minister of Manticore that Haven wasn't behind the assassination attempts, and convince him to help her persuade the Queen. It's not going well.

"Willie," she said after a moment, "you and I have disagreed about the fundamental nature of the current Havenite régime from the beginning. That means we've both got mental baggage at this point, and I don't want to lock horns with you on this issue. First, because you're the Prime Minister, not me. Second, because I'm a serving officer, and Queen's officers take the orders of their civilian superiors. And third, frankly, because the fact that Hamish and I are married now puts me in an uncomfortable position when I'm arguing not simply with the Prime Minister, but with my brother-in-law.

"Despite that, I truly believe you need to reconsider the position of Her Majesty's Government on this particular issue. Anton Zilwicki's in a far better position than anyone here in the Star Kingdom to know whether or not there was direct Havenite involvement in the attempt to kill his daughter. He still has contacts in the area which we've lost, he's intimately familiar with the situation on Torch itself, and he has a direct relationship with a fairly senior Havenite spy. You know this man's reputation, what he's already accomplished. And you know he's going to be highly suspicious of anyone who explains to him that they didn't have anything to do with the attempt to murder his daughter, so would he kindly not shoot them on sight. Or do I have to remind you what happened on Old Earth when his older daughter was kidnapped?"

Still got a problem of it being two men's word against, well, everyone's.

"You had a known senior secret agent of a star nation with whom we're at war aboard your flagship in a restricted military area, and from what you're saying, I feel quite confident he's not still there in a cell. Is he?"

"No, he isn't," she said, meeting his cold anger with a hard eye.

"And just what information did you allow him to take away from this completely unauthorized meeting, Admiral?"

"None he didn't bring with him."

"And you're prepared to prove that before a court-martial, if necessary?"

"No, Prime Minister, I'm not," she said in a voice of matching ice. "If my word isn't sufficient for you, then file charges and be damned to you."

That got nasty fast, But Willie closes his eyes, counts to ten and backs away from the brink.

"So what am I supposed to do, Honor? We're in the middle of a war, we've already announced we're resuming operations, the Peeps have probably already resumed operations on the basis of our note, and the fact that Cachat didn't have anything to do with the attempt to kill Berry and Ruth doesn't prove someone else from Haven didn't."

He shook his head slowly, his expression sad.

"I'd like to believe you're right. I want to believe you are. But I can't make my decisions, formulate the Star Kingdom's policy, based on what I'd like to believe. I believe you military people are familiar with the need to formulate plans based on the worst-case scenario. I'm in the same position. I can't dislocate our entire strategy on the basis of what Zilwicki and Cachat believe to be true. If they had one single scrap of hard evidence, that might not be so. But they don't, and it is."

Ouch.

"I realize that," Grantville said, and looked into her eyes. "And because I know you genuinely feel that way, I have to ask you. Are you still prepared to carry out your orders, Admiral Alexander-Harrington?"

She looked back, hovering on the brink of the unthinkable. If she said no, if she refused to carry out the operation and resigned her commission in protest, it would almost certainly blow the entire question wide open. The consequences for her personally, and for her husband and wife, would be . . . severe, at least in the short term. Her relationship with Elizabeth might well be permanently and irreparably damaged. Her career, in Manticoran service, at least, would probably be over. Yet all of that would be acceptable—a small price, actually—if it ended the war.

But it wouldn't. Grantville had put his finger squarely on the one insurmountable weakness: the lack of proof. All she had was the testimony of two men, in private conversation. At best, anything she said about what they'd told her would be hearsay, and there was simply no way she could expect anyone outside her immediate circle to understand—or believe—why she knew they'd told her the truth.

So the war would continue, whatever she did, and her own actions would have removed her from any opportunity of influencing its conduct or its outcome. That would be a violation of her responsibility to the men and women of Eighth Fleet, to her Star Kingdom. Wars weren't always fought for the right reasons, but they were fought anyway, and the consequences to the people fighting them and to their star nations were the same, whatever the reasons. And she was a Queen's officer. She'd taken an oath to stand between the Star Kingdom and its enemies, why ever they were enemies. If the Star Kingdom she loved was going back into a battle in which so many others who'd taken that oath would die, she couldn't simply abandon them and stand aside. No, she had no choice but to stand beside them and face the same tempest.

"Yes," she said quietly, her voice sad but without hesitation or reservation. "I'm prepared to execute my orders, Willie."

That lack of proof, and Honor very nearly takes a stand on principle, goes conscientious objecter, but she has other principles, ones deeply important to her, and she couldn't stop the war anyways. So good people on both sides march to their doom once again.

[Ahriman238]

The Lovat System had originally been settled by the Aamodt Corporation, one of the huge industrial concerns which had helped build the original Republic of Haven's enormous wealth and power only to go the way of the dinosaur under the People's Republic. The current system governor, however, Havard Ellefsen, was a direct descendent of the Aamodt Coporation's founder, and Lovat had somehow avoided the worst consequences of the PRH's efforts to kill every golden goose it could lay hands on. Despite the fact that it was less than fifty light-years from the Haven System, Lovat had remained one of the unquestioned bright spots of the People's Republic's generally blighted economy, and the system's industrial concerns had played a major role in the Republic's industrial renaissance since the economic reforms Rob Pierre had forced through and the restoration of the Constitution.

Among other things, Forge's current population of almost three billion was deeply involved in the enormous naval construction programs Thomas Theisman had initiated after going public about the existence of the Republican Navy's new ship types. To be sure, the Lovat System wasn't one of the primary yard sites. Its local industry was much more heavily committed to the construction of light units—light attack craft and the new light cruiser classes—and fleet support vessels—ammunition ships, personnel transports, general cargo haulers, and repair ships. Despite that, it was among the Republic's twenty or so most important star systems, and its system defenses reflected that importance.

Industrial and economic worth. Lovat may not be the most important system in the Republic of Haven, but it's in the top 20.

Just over eight thousand LACs were based on Forge and the system's orbital platforms. A permanent covering force of three battle squadrons—admittedly, of pre-pod types, but still a total of twenty-four superdreadnoughts—was assigned, and the system was liberally blanketed with system defense missile pods. In the last six months, Lovat had also received not just one Moriarty platform, but three, the second pair to serve solely as backups for the first.

24 SD, a massive Moriarty pod network (with three stations for redundancy) and 8,000 station or possibly ground based LACs covering Lovat.

"We've got their arrays in several quadrants of the inner system," he continued, indicating the wavering icons representing the ghostlike sensor traces which were the best his platforms could do against current-generation Manticoran stealth technology. "They've been buzzing around for over sixty hours now, and we've still got hyper footprints jumping in and out all around the periphery. It's starting to get on my nerves, Ma'am."

"Which is exactly what it's supposed to do," Giovanni pointed out.

"I know that, Ma'am. And so do our LAC crews. But that doesn't keep it from being irritating, and Commander Lucas reports that Moriarty's gold crew is beginning to suffer from fatigue."

"I told the Octagon we needed more personnel," Giovanni growled. "Unfortunately, we don't really have them yet—not for Moriarty. Or, rather, we could have complete backup crews . . . if we were willing to do without backup platforms."

They're pretty confident the scouts are harrassment and diversion, not a prelude to an attack, exactly as they're meant to think. Seems Moriarty is manned after all. The three platforms are designated gold, silver, and bronze.

"Harper, pass the execute command."

"Aye, aye, Your Grace," Lieutenant Brantley acknowledged, and the eight CLACs of Alice Truman's reinforced carrier squadron launched almost nine hundred LACs as Alistair McKeon's BatRon 61 headed in-system, screened by fifteen Manticoran and Grayson BC(P)s and HMS Nike under the overall command of Rear Admiral Erasmus Miller. Michelle Henke would have had the command, except that the terms of her parole precluded her from serving against the Republic. So she'd been sent to Talbott, where Honor knew she would prove enormously useful, and Michael Oversteegen, promoted to Rear Admiral, had been given her squadron. But much as Honor approved of Oversteegen's demonstrated capability, he was junior to Miller. And the Grayson rear admiral was more than merely competent in his own right, she reminded herself.

Winston Bradshaw and Charise Fanaafi's twelve heavy cruisers, eight of them Saganami-C-class ships, backed Miller up, and six light cruisers under the command of Commodore George Ullman, who'd replaced Commodore Moreau when she died aboard HMS Buckler at Solon, thickened the screen.

It's the new Eighth Fleet, short several of the carriers they had in the beginning. And a few of the SDs they were promised. Still, 15 BC(P)s, far more podnoughts and with 8 Saganami-Cs in the screen. And that's not counting their shiny new toys.

"Admiral Truman reports all LAC wings away, Your Grace," Andrea Jaruwalski announced.

"Very good. Instruct her to hyper out to the Alpha rendezvous."

Honor is again playing this the Grayson way for carriers. They drop their LACs, and then they leave.

Honor glanced at the date/time display and smiled sadly. If Illescue was on schedule, her daughter would be born in almost exactly eight minutes.

Katherine Allison Miranda Alexander-Harrington. She sampled the name silently, wishing with all her heart that she were there, watching the miracle of life, tasting her daughter's newborn mind-glow, and not here, orchestrating the deaths of thousands. She inhaled deeply, and sent a thought winging across the light-years.

Happy birthday, baby. I hope God lets me watch you grow up . . . and that you never have to do something like this.

Isn't Katherine technically Emily's daughter? Oh well, if you're going to do polygamy you may as well hold that they're everyone's kids.

"Hyper footprint! We have major hyper footprints directly astern and at system north and system south," Andrea Jaruwalski reported. "Designate these forces Bogey Two, Bogey Three, and Bogey Four! They're accelerating in-system at five-point-zero-eight KPS-squared."

"Very well," Honor said calmly.

She leaned back in her command chair and crossed her legs, stroking the plushy fur between Nimitz's ears.

Giscard again, pulling the same sort of trap he did at Solon. I'm actually surprised, given the system commander's confidence that they fingered this system as Honor's next target.

"Hyper footprint!"

Javier Giscard's head snapped up at the unanticipated announcement. Commander Thackeray was bent over her console, fingers flying as she massaged the contact, and then she looked up, her face taut.

"Admiral, we've got eighteen superdreadnoughts or CLACs, well outside the hyper limit, directly astern of us. Range five-three-point-nine million kilometers. Velocity relative to Lovat two-point-five-zero-one thousand KPS. They—"

She broke off for just a moment, looking back down at her plot, then cleared her throat.

"Update, Sir. It's twelve SD(P)s and six carriers. The carriers just launched full LAC complements."

And mouse-trapping the mouse-trap.

"Sir, there's something . . . odd about the Manties' launch," Thackeray said.

"What do you mean, 'odd'?" Giscard asked sharply.

"Their attack birds are coming in . . . well, 'clumped' is the only word I can think of for it, Sir. They aren't spreading out in a proper dispersion pattern."

-snip-

Giscard grunted in acknowledgment. Actually, he realized, the attack missiles were spreading out, just not the way they should have. They were coming in in discrete clusters, spread across an attack front which would bring them all in simultaneously in the end, but making the trip in relatively tight groups of about eight or ten missiles each.

No, he thought as a preliminary analysis from the Combat Information Center came up as a sidebar to his plot. They're coming in in clusters of exactly eight missiles each. Which is stupid, since they have twelve missiles in each pod!

Oh dear. Javier, my good man, that is a very, very bad sign. Even at a range where their accuracy has historically been terrible.

It was called "Apollo," after the archer of the gods.

It hadn't been easy for the R&D types to perfect. Even for Manticoran technology, designing the components had required previously impossible levels of miniaturization, and BuWeaps had encountered more difficulties than anticipated in putting the system into production. This was its first test in actual combat, and the crews which had launched the MDMs watched with bated breath to see how well it performed.

Javier Giscard was wrong. There weren't twelve missiles in an Apollo pod; there were nine. Eight relatively standard attack missiles or EW platforms, and the Apollo missile—much larger than the others, and equipped with a down-sized, short-ranged two-way FTL communications link developed from the one deployed in the still larger Ghost Rider reconnaissance drones. It was a remote control node, following along behind the other eight missiles from the same pod, without any warhead or electronic warfare capability of its own.

The impeller wedges of the other missiles hid it and its pulsed transmissions from the sensors of Giscard's ships, and from his counter-missiles. But its position allowed it to monitor the standard telemetry links from the other missiles of its pod. And it also carried a far more capable AI than any standard attack missile—one capable of processing the data from all of the other missiles' tracking and homing systems and sending the result back to its mothership via grav-pulse.

Impossible to keep a surprise in this thread. Here's Apollo, an FTL comm fitted to a missile allowing them to guide the 8 other missiles from it's pod at absurd distances. It's also got far more brain than any previous missile, but that's just management. There a couple of flaws, it's not quite real-time and there's a comm delay of about 1 second for every 10 million klicks. But all that means is that a missile salvo is equally deadly at a few light seconds and halfway across the system. Because there's a human hand and a ship's computer telling the missiles what to do. No getting lost on the way to the target, no suboptimal use of EW. And they can have missiles boost on two drives, go ballistic and activate the third some time later, for effectively unlimited range.

This is what the people who read the book have been talking about. This is the missing piece to complete the MDM podnought weapon system and with that, it's roughly as profound a military advancement as the MDM podnought. Think of it this way, they've had to fire tens of thousands of missiles to get good hits, because missiles wander off, because they're stupid alone, because there's so much tracking time involved. Now imagine similar sized salvos, but most of the missiles are going to hit.

The ships which had launched them had deployed the equally new Keyhole II platforms, equipped not with standard light-speed links for their offensive missiles, but with grav-pulse links. Virtually every Manticoran or Grayson ship which could currently deploy Keyhole II was in Eighth Fleet's order of battle, and Honor Alexander-Harrington had taken ruthless advantage of the capability when she formulated her attack plans.

Apollo can only be used with Keyhole II, because no one previously had the ability or a reason to build ships with FTL fire control links, and it's easier to just build a new Keyhole with the links they need then to spend weeks or months refitting existing ships for them. For the moment, that makes them an Eighth Fleet exclusive, that and a few serious production bottlenecks on the Apollo missiles.

The grav-pulse transmissions were faster than light, although they weren't instantaneous. Actual transmission speed was "only" about sixty-four times the speed of light, but that was enormously better than anyone had ever been able to do before. The updated sensor information from the on-rushing missiles crossed the distance to the tactical sections and massively capable computers of the superdreadnoughts which had launched them, and at this range, the transmission lag was less than three seconds. For all practical purposes, they might as well have made the trip instantaneously. As did the corrections those tactical sections sent back.

I wonder if that's true for other FTL comms and gravitic sensors, that they travel at 64 c.

Javier Giscard's tactical officers didn't realize at first what they faced. In fact, most of them never did realize.

The Manty missiles ignored their decoys almost contemptuously, and those peculiar clumps of MDMs maneuvered with a precision no missile-defense officer had ever seen before. It was almost as if each clump were a single missile, one which bored in through the defensive shield of the task group's electronic warfare as if it didn't exist.

Counter-missiles began to fire, and something else very peculiar happened. The EW platforms seeded throughout the Manticoran salvo didn't come up simultaneously, or in groups, the way they ought to have. Instead, they came up individually, singly, almost as if they could actually see the counter-missiles and adjust their own sequences.

Dragon's Teeth activated at precisely the right moment to draw the maximum number of counter-missiles into attacking the false targets. Dazzlers blasted the onboard sensors of other counter-missiles . . . just as the attack missiles behind them arced upward, or dove downward, to drive straight through the gap the Dazzlers had burned in the defensive envelope.

Not all the defensive missiles could be blinded or evaded, of course. There were simply too many of them. But their effectiveness was slashed.

The twelve superdreadnoughts of Task Force 82 had rolled quadruple patterns before they launched. Two hundred and eighty-eight Apollo pods had launched nineteen hundred attack missiles and four hundred EW platforms, along with two hundred and eighty-eight control missiles.

Javier Giscard's counter-missiles stopped only three hundred of the attack birds. His desperate point defense clusters, in the single volley each of them got, killed another four hundred.

Twelve hundred got through.

Do you see the kind of force multiplier Apollo is for MDM combat?

All of Judah Yanakov's fire had been concentrated on only two ships. Partly, that was because no one had really known how effective Apollo would prove against live opposition, and partly it had been because superdreadnoughts were simply so inconceivably tough. Killing targets that rugged was hard, and Honor and Yanakov had been determined to do as much damage with the first salvo, before the enemy had any chance to adjust to the new threat, as they could.

They did.

Javier Giscard clung to the arms of his command chair, surrounded by the frantic combat chatter of his task group, listening to the shrilling alarms, the desperate reports of damage control parties fighting the tidal wave of damage. His link to Damage Control Central lacked the detail of Captain Reuman's displays, but huge swathes of crimson damage blasted their way across the ship's schematic as he watched.

And then there was one brief, terrible flash as something ripped into the far end of the flag bridge. His head whipped up, and he just had time to see Selma Thackery and her tactical party torn apart by the blast front screaming towards him. Just long enough for his brain to begin to realize what was happening.

"Eloi—" he began, his voice soft in the hurricane of alarms and devastation.

He never finished her name.

Nineteen hundred missiles concentrated on two SDs, including the flagship. Javier Giscard dies.

The first Manticoran missile salvo had killed two of Admiral Giscard's superdreadnoughts outright . . . including Sovereign of Space. The second salvo, rumbling in on the first launch's heels forty-eight seconds later, killed two more, and the one after that, two more.

It took a total of eleven salvos—less than eight minutes' fire—to kill every superdreadnought in Bogey Two.

"How the hell did they do that?"

Less than 8 minutes for Honor's forces to kill the sandwiched task group of Giscard's.

"Admiral Yanakov is launching against Bogey Three, Your Grace," Jaruwalski reported, and Honor nodded.

"Too bad he won't have time to catch Bogey Four before it gets too far in-system for him to range on, as well, Your Grace," Brigham said. "I'd love to make a clean sweep."

Honor glanced at her, remembering what had happened to her own command at Solon. Part of her agreed entirely with Brigham, and not just because of the professional naval officer in her. But the taste of revenge had a bitter tang, and she looked back at the plot.

There will be survivors who live to spread the tale of Lovat, and the Havenites will remember, and tremble once more at the name of Eighth Fleet.

The Havenite tracking crews had become accustomed to the fact that they simply couldn't localize and destroy the highly stealthy Manticoran reconnaissance platforms used to scout their star systems. It was galling, but true. And so, aside from a certain deep-seated irritation, they'd actually paid relatively little attention to the long-endurance Ghost Rider reconnaissance drones the Manticorans had distributed throughout the inner system of Lovat.

Which was unfortunate.

Sonja Hemphill had personally chosen the name "Mistletoe" in honor of the dart which had killed the god Balder in Norse mythology, and the name proved apt.

Ah, I'd thought it was because it snuck up on you and gave you a kiss.

"Where the hell are they coming from?" Giovanni demanded.

"I don't know, Ma'am!" MacNaughton replied, his voice as anguished as his expression as the Manticoran laser heads ripped into the Moriarty platforms. Not just one of the platforms; all three of them. The stealth and dispersion which were supposed to have protected them obviously hadn't, he thought, and closed his eyes for a moment as the relentless avalanche of fire blew them apart.

Alessandra Giovanni's face was white with shock. With the Moriarty platforms gone, she had nothing that could control missile salvos of the size needed to batter down Manticoran missile defenses. And given what the Manties had already done to Admiral Giscard's forces, it was painfully obvious her own anti-missile defenses were going to be at best marginally effective.

"The recon platforms!" MacNaughton said suddenly. "The bastards put laser heads on their goddamned recon platforms!"

They figured that one out pretty quick.

"Suarez," she said sharply. "That's what Suarez was all about! They figured out what happened to them at Solon, and they used their EW drones to trick us into activating the Moriarty net at Suarez after they'd already planted their recon platforms deep enough in-system to see them. They had complete, detailed fingerprints on what they were looking for!"

"And then they mixed in armed recon drones to kill them after they found them," MacNaughton said through clenched teeth.

"That's exactly what they did," Giovanni agreed harshly. "Damn! They can't have the acceleration to be very effective against moving targets at any sort of range, but against fixed targets, especially when the attack birds know exactly what to look for . . ."

Right again, they got a great look at Moriarty in Suarez, and told the drones what to look for. SUre they're not much use against ships under power, but you didn't pin your system defense on starships, did you?

"Not just Moriarty, Ma'am," he grated. "It looks like we're going to have to start deploying the system defense pods further apart. They just took out three-quarters of the Beta echelon and almost that many of the Delta birds."

"How?" Giovanni asked flatly.

"More of their damned recon platforms. It had to be. They got old-fashioned nukes—the yields are somewhere in the five-hundred-megaton range—close enough to the pods to take them out with proximity explosions."

Giovanni nodded silently. Of course. If you could put laser heads on the things, then why not regular nukes? Not that they'd really had to. Given the accuracy they'd just shown against Giscard, they could take the pods out with proximity-armed MDM launches from beyond any range at which she could possibly expect to score hits in return.

And nuke equipped Mistletoe platforms take out dense pod clusters. 500 megatons makes these the biggest nukes we've gotten yield figures on for this series. Though normally it's a vague "megatons" so I'll take what I can get.

"Admiral Giovanni," a shaken communications officer said, "Admiral Trask is asking for you."

Alessandra Giovanni glanced once more at the plot where the heart and mind of her defenses had just been annihilated, then drew a deep breath. Of course Trask wanted to speak to her. His obsolescent superdreadnoughts were going to be little more than targets for Harrington's SD(P)s, and Giovanni wasn't optimistic about her LACs' chance to get through Harrington's defensive fire and damned Katanas without the support of massed attacks from the system defense missile pods.

Time to surrender, flee and scuttle the ships. It's like being on the wrong side of Buttercup all over again, your choices are die needlessly for the flag accomplishing nothing or run and live, and hey, this time you probably won't get shot afterwards.

"How bad is it?" Eloise Pritchart asked flatly.

Thomas Theisman looked at her for a moment before he replied.

She looked . . . broken, he thought. Not in spirit, not in her determination to meet her responsibilities. But if those remained intact, something else, deep inside was a bleeding wound, and his own heart ached in sympathy. She wasn't just his President. She was his friend, just as Javier had been, and Javier's death, after all he and she been through, all they'd faced and survived under the Committee of Public Safety, was a bitter, bitter blow.

Prichart is not coping that well.

"It's very bad," he said finally. "Lovat, and all the LACs, support ships, and munitions we were building there, are simply gone. Harrington took them all out. Not to mention destroying thirty-two podnaughts, four CLACs, all twenty-four of Admiral Trask's older superdreadnoughts, and something like ten thousand LACs. I can't even begin to compute the straight economic cost. Rachel's people are still in a state of shock just looking at the preliminary numbers, but I think you can safely assume that they just at least doubled the total economic and industrial cost of all their previous raids combined." He shook his head. "Compared to this, what we did to Zanzibar was a love tap."

Pritchart's face had tightened with fresh pain as the litany of destruction rolled out.

"Fortunately, the loss of life was much lower than it might have been," Theisman continued. "Admiral Giovanni had the sense to order Trask to stand down his superdreadnoughts when Harrington started punching out her system defense missile pods with proximity warheads. He scuttled them himself, to prevent their capture, but all of his people got off alive first. We lost more of the LAC crews. They had to at least try, and no one can fault Giovanni for thinking there ought to have been enough of them to let them swarm Harrington's lead task force. Except that every single one of the LACs covering that task force was a Katana. Combined with their new counter-missiles and whatever they used on our wallers, they massacred our Cimeterres. Even the new Alpha birds."

Haven losses at Lovat. Also, they've rolled out the Cimetere Alpha and Beta variants, which are pretty much Shrikes and Ferrets less the fission piles and some of the more esoteric EW gear. And a generation or two of inertial compensators behind. Not that it was enough to go head to head with Grayson Katanas.

"We should have realized that sooner or later they were going to strap weapons onto their recon drones. They've demonstrated they can operate them deep inside our defended areas with virtual impunity, and they probably took a certain pleasure from applying a variant of the same technique Saint-Just used to destroy Elizabeth's yacht in Yeltsin. The bad news is how close they can get them; the good news—such as it is—is that, even so, they can't get them all the way into attack range in stealth. They still have to get into range to execute their attacks, and not even Manty stealth systems can hide them during the last hundred thousand kilometers or so of their runs. They don't have the sort of acceleration rates missiles do, either, and to be used properly, they have to attack virtually from rest, or else they can't loiter until the proper moment. So they have relatively low closing velocities when they come in, and they can be engaged by counter-missiles and standard point defense, now that we know they're out there. Our intercept probabilities won't be good, especially given how little warning we'll have between the moment their drives peak and the moment they reach attack range, but we can probably cope with the threat."

Defense against Mistletoe.

"Actually, this part of it's largely my own personal fault," he said unflinchingly. "Shannon warned me from the beginning that the Moriarty platforms' stealth wouldn't be good enough to hide them if the Manties figured out what they should be looking for. She wanted to build them into purpose-built superdreadnoughts, or at least add them as strap-on components to larger, more heavily defended platforms. I overruled her because of the need to get Moriarty into service as quickly as possible. I shouldn't have. She was right."

More heavily defended platforms make a lot of sense. I'm not as confident of a dedicated fire control SD, but sticking one in a squadron of podnoughts could probably give you some really scary results. Good to see Shannon Foraker is still thinking outside the box.

"They've obviously incorporated an FTL link into their missile telemetry. I'm guessing it has to be an entirely separate, dedicated platform—a roughly missile-sized bird they've managed to squeeze the grav-pulse com into—that serves as an advanced data processing node. Nobody ever considered doing anything like that before, because there really wasn't any point. Light-speed limitations were light-speed limitations, and using this sort of approach must tie all the missiles the command platform is controlling into a fairly tightly bunched cluster. That should make them more vulnerable to interception, and before the FTL com came along, any control platform would have been just as far from home and just as sluggish responding to telemetry commands as any other missile.

"But what they've done gives their missiles the next best thing to real-time command control input from their shipboard tac sections, Eloise. You aren't a professional naval officer, so you may not realize just what a huge advantage that is. Even with conventional single-drive missiles, there's always been a light-speed telemetry lag which makes it impossible to exert effective shipboard control at extended missile ranges. Or to get improved targeting data back from one set of your attack birds' sensors and use it to update the targeting of another set.

"But apparently that isn't true for the Manties anymore. They don't have to preprogram evasion maneuvers into their missiles. Don't have to launch with a locked-in attack profile, or even prepackaged EW profiles. They can use their shipboard computational ability to analyze counter-missile patterns, electronic warfare emissions, and then they can make changes on the fly, adjust everything as they get steadily closer, get steadily better data on the defenses they have to penetrate. They can command their electronic warfare missiles to activate at precisely the most effective moment—decided by the capabilities of a superdreadnought's tactical computers, not just what can be squeezed into a missile body. And on top of that, they can direct the flight of their attack missiles to take the greatest possible advantage of the holes their EW opens up.

"In short, their accuracy's going to be enormously greater than ours in any maximum-range engagement, and their missiles' ability to penetrate our defenses is going to be much higher, as well. So they're going to get through with more laser heads, and those laser heads are going to be much more accurate when they arrive."

Just how many traditional limitations on missile combat, things most of us hadn't considered despite reading the series so long, are shattered by Apollo. It truly is a revolution and they have absolutely nothing that can compete, no clever trick to counter with, no equivalent weapon or tactic they've been preparing to roll out. No hope whatsoever of winning this war. No hope but one small, thin one.

"Eloise, this is a new weapon, just deployed. Obviously, it's possible they've refitted with it across the board. I don't think they have, though."

"Why not?"

"Eighth Fleet's been their first team ever since they activated it. It's got their most modern ships, and what I believe is their best fleet commander. It's also been their primary offensive weapon. But Eighth Fleet obviously didn't have this capability at Solon, five and a half months ago. If they'd had it, they sure as hell would've used it when Javier blindsided them.

"For that matter, if they'd had it in general deployment two and a half months ago, when Elizabeth accepted your invitation to a summit, she probably wouldn't have accepted in the first place. You know how she feels about us, and why. Do you really think she would have agreed to sit down to negotiate if she'd had this broadly deployed and ready to go?" He snorted in harsh, bitter derision. "No, if this had been available to Elizabeth Winton on that sort of scale, she would have told us to pound sand. And then she would have gone onto the offensive, taken back every single thing we took away from them in Thunderbolt, and carried straight on through to punch out Haven and occupy Noveau Paris the way they should have at the end of the last war."

Thinking it through.

"Then why do it to Lovat?" he asked simply. "If they had enough ships capable of deploying and using this weapon, why not go directly for Haven? Hit us with their own version of Beatrice? Trust me, Eloise—Caparelli, White Haven, and Harrington are at least as good as strategists as anyone on our side. And if we had a weapon like this available in decisive quantities, or if we had any prospect of having it available in those quantities in the immediate future, we would never tell the other side we had it by taking out a secondary target, however attractive it might be. We'd save it, keep it completely under wraps, until we could use it in a single offensive which would end the war. Think about it. That's exactly what they did last time around, in Operation Buttercup—sat on their new ships and weapons until they were ready, then hammered us into scrap."

"So you're saying what they did at Lovat indicates they don't have it broadly deployed?"

"I think that's exactly what it indicates. I think they showed it to us early because they know as well as we do what the tonnage numbers look like right now, and they're really sweating the possible Solarian threat. They're not just still trying to force us to redeploy, to fritter away our strength. They probably won't mind if they can convince us to waste time doing that while they carry out their refits, or iron out the production bottlenecks, or whatever it is they need to do to get this thing deployed throughout their wall of battle. But they'd really prefer for us to think they already have. They want this war over, before the Sollies horn in, and they're hoping we'll decide we're screwed and throw in the towel. And when they do get it deployed, we will be screwed, make no mistake about that."

"So what are you suggesting, Tom?"

"I'm saying we have three options. First, get them to agree to talk to us again and settle this thing without anyone else getting hurt on either side. Second, surrender before they get their new weapon fully into service and slaughter thousands more of our personnel the way they did in Buttercup. The way they did to Javier at Lovat. Third, go ahead and hit them with the Bravo variant of Beatrice before they can get it into full deployment."

Hope they haven't generally deployed it and go straight to Beatrice, an all-or-nothing strike against the Manticore system itself in the single largest space battle of human history. Their one desperate hope for victory.

"In a lot of ways," he admitted, "I'd almost prefer surrender. I've been fighting the Manticorans for a long time now, Eloise. Hell, I started fighting them in Yeltsin, before the first war ever began! My emotions where they're concerned are probably as tangled up and knotted as those of anyone else in the Republic, but I'm tired of seeing men and women under my command, men and women who follow my orders because they trust me, killed. Especially when they're being killed because of a stupid fucking misunderstanding.

"But I'm an admiral; you're the politician. Is a surrender to them possible?"

"I don't know." She inhaled deeply, her eyes glistening with unshed tears. "I just don't know. I could carry the Cabinet with me, but I don't see how I could possibly carry the Senate, even if I told them everything we suspect about Arnold at this point. And I don't have the power, as President, to declare war or conclude peace—or surrender—without the advice and consent of the Senate. God only knows what would happen if I tried. Our legal system and chains of authority are still so new, they might shatter outright if I ordered a surrender and Congress repudiated my orders. Everything we've worked for could collapse. Even your navy could come apart. A lot of it would probably obey the order if you endorsed it, but other parts might ignore it and try to keep prosecuting the war. We might even wind up with another round of civil war!"

Likelihood of surrender, declaring peace whether Elizabeth of Manticore wants it or not.

"Maybe it was. But the way we got here doesn't change where we are, or the options we've got. So, if we can't negotiate, and we can't surrender, what can we do except launch Beatrice? It's an 'all-costs' situation, Eloise, and thanks to your preliminary authorization and the forward redeployments we've already carried out, we can launch it far sooner than the Manties probably expect any response to this. And Beatrice Bravo was specifically designed to take out Eighth Fleet, as well. If we manage that, we knock out the only force we know is equipped with the new missiles, but even that's pretty much beside the point if the main op succeeds. That's really what it comes down to, now. If we wait, we lose; if we attack and I'm wrong about their deployment status, we lose; but if we attack and I'm right, we'll almost certainly win. It's that simple."

He looked into her eyes once again, still holding her hand.

"So which way do we go, Madam President?"

Personal anecdote, my father is a huge buff of submarine movies, Crimson Tide being a particular favorite. He remarked often that if you're ever put in a position as briefly happened with men in a flooding room, to sacrifice a few to save the entire group, well there's only one choice you can make and it'll still be the hardest decision of your life.

High level politics and war just bring everything up to a whole new scale though, life and death not weighing three men against a hundred, but millions and billions of lives. Put that way, there's only one choice Eloise Prichart can make, and right after losing her longtime lover? It may just destroy her.

[VhenRa]

"Fortunately, the loss of life was much lower than it might have been," Theisman continued. "Admiral Giovanni had the sense to order Trask to stand down his superdreadnoughts when Harrington started punching out her system defense missile pods with proximity warheads. He scuttled them himself, to prevent their capture, but all of his people got off alive first. We lost more of the LAC crews. They had to at least try, and no one can fault Giovanni for thinking there ought to have been enough of them to let them swarm Harrington's lead task force. Except that every single one of the LACs covering that task force was a Katana. Combined with their new counter-missiles and whatever they used on our wallers, they massacred our Cimeterres. Even the new Alpha birds."

Haven losses at Lovat. Also, they've rolled out the Cimetere Alpha and Beta variants, which are pretty much Shrikes and Ferrets less the fission piles and some of the more esoteric EW gear. And a generation or two of inertial compensators behind. Not that it was enough to go head to head with Grayson Katanas.

Er. I believe the Cimeterre Alpha and Beta have fission piles...-Checks At All Costs-

Oh, that isn't revealed until later in the book. Cimeterre Alpha has fission piles, bow-walls and a cruiser-grade laser. Cimeterre Beta just has the fission piles and bow-walls. Alpha loses some missile capability to install the spinal laser.

[Crazedwraith]

So I read At All Costs over the last couple of days. I'm actually ahead of the analysis for once! Though I have been skipping the Mesan councils of doom which seem unreadably dull to me.

Isn't Katherine technically Emily's daughter? Oh well, if you're going to do polygamy you may as well hold that they're everyone's kids.

I think that's been explicitly stated to be the Grayson view as well in past books. Kids belong to everyone.

-

There's one thing I'm not getting about the Apollo System. They can send commands and updates out at FTL right? But aren't all the sensors that are receiving info on the EW and the sidewalls and all the other tactical info still operating at lightspeed? Isn't that going to bottleneck its capabilities just as bad. Or are they throwing the FTL drones around constantly in combat?

The other thing I was thinking was... why does Prichart not even try the surrender option? I mean she doesn't think she can get it past the Senate etc. But doesn't she still have the moral obligation to at least try? When the option is killing millions upon millions on both sides?

[gigabytelord]

The other thing I was thinking was... why does Prichart not even try the surrender option? I mean she doesn't think she can get it past the Senate etc. But doesn't she still have the moral obligation to at least try? When the option is killing millions upon millions on both sides?

From the way I read it, it seems she was deathly afraid of a possible Civil War if she tried to surrender. Perhaps a civil war would be far more disastrous in the long term?

[Simon_Jester]

There's one thing I'm not getting about the Apollo System. They can send commands and updates out at FTL right? But aren't all the sensors that are receiving info on the EW and the sidewalls and all the other tactical info still operating at lightspeed? Isn't that going to bottleneck its capabilities just as bad. Or are they throwing the FTL drones around constantly in combat?

Well, mostly. Ships have gravitic sensors that can detect and home in on impeller wedges, and those are heavily used during combat.

What it does mean is that lightspeed systems like radar and infrared tracking aren't all that helpful until the 'terminal approach' phase of the missile's attack, when it's within, oh, several hundred thousand kilometers of the target.

But the missile can keep transmitting data from the gravitic sensor(s) in its own seeker head back to the mothership this way, and vice versa.

The other thing I was thinking was... why does Prichart not even try the surrender option? I mean she doesn't think she can get it past the Senate etc. But doesn't she still have the moral obligation to at least try? When the option is killing millions upon millions on both sides?

One consideration is the effect on Havenite morale: "Gee, this new enemy weapon is so badass we're pretty much bound to surrender. Wait, Congress, you don't want to surrender? Hey, Havenite Navy! Let's send half our ships to go pick a fight on the front doorstep of the people who built the unstoppable God weapon!"

Yeah. Not going to go over well with the Navy.

The "immediate family" come to witness the birth/uncapping of Honor's child. The maid, steward, nanny, Clinkscales, royals and security aren't family, but I doubt the clinc is prepared to ask them to leave. Not sure how treecats count as far as hospital rules go. What are we calling birth from a mechanical womb anyways?

Well, in Brave New World they called it decanting, but that's a bit disrespectful... then again, it's also rather accurate.

So Haven gets implicated by the similarity to another assassination you just assumed was them anyways? Okay, it still sounds a lot more likely than an ancient conspiracy of genetic supermen, but still...

It's extremely believable if you believe that basically everything wrong with the universe is directly or indirectly the fault of Haven, which is pretty much true in the Manticoran frame of reference and has been for the past seventy years.

Why they're going forward with Sanskrit. That and with the possibility of a war with the League over Monica, they need to settle things with Haven quickly and decisively. Interesting that they were looking at system defense with Apollo before modifying most of their ships with it.

In the system defense role they can just plop down a "Keyhole II" missile telemetry control platform floating in space; they don't have to engineer a warship to carry the control system. By contrast, almost all their existing ships were designed at best "for but not with" Keyhole II, and therefore cannot control Apollo missiles until they are equipped with Keyhole II.

Pretty much the same way that the first extended range missiles and MDMs created by the Manticore-imitators are these huge bulky things that, frankly, are a lot more suitable for deployment in the system defense role. You have a lot more flexibility in how you distribute, deploy, and use equipment if it doesn't have to fit inside a warship hull along with all the other stuff that has to go in there.

You know, I still sincerely have no idea why they'd kill the Andy Emperor's brother.

Well, it was certainly a good field test of the control nanites under field conditions, but that alone is not a good enough reason to pick such a high profile target in a nation that just might somehow be able to locate the nanites in an autopsy if they act fast enough.

So all the Haven Cabinet, who know they're innocent, can do is try and beat the Manticorans badly enough to bring them back to the table and hope that it doesn't just stiffen their resolve. You know, like the last time Haven tried to beat Manticore badly enough to make them negotiate in good faith.

To be fair, that would probably have worked if the Manticorans hadn't known they were trying to negotiate in good faith. Hell, even the High Ridge government was, at the end... but the Havenites didn't believe they were trying because of the edited correspondence.

"I hope you and Leslie are both remembering that using military operations as a way to shape a diplomatic climate is always problematical. It's much simpler—and more reliable, frankly—to think in terms of accomplishing specific military goals than it is to come up with ways to elicit specific desired political responses from your opponent. He's always going to find some way to screw up what it was you thought you were going to get, and any secretary of war or admiral who tells you differently is either a lunatic or a liar. In either of which cases, you should get rid of his sorry ass as quickly as possible."

Truer words, Tom, have rarely been spoken to one's boss.

Since Theisman narrowly avoided getting his ass shot off at Fourth Yeltsin due to an attempt by a schemy admiral to manipulate his enemies into a highly specific course of action... yeah.

And Beatrice, which is essentially throwing the dice with a brute force, all-or-nothing strike on the Manticore system itself. A bid for outright military victory after which they'll negotiate on Prichart's terms.

Right. Even if Manticore doesn't simply surrender at missilepoint during the attack, a Havenite victory in Beatrice would totally cripple their war effort.

It's worth remembering that literally all the advanced Manticoran superweapons, and nearly all the ship production, are being made in one star system. That's it. Grayson, likewise. One system. Knock out that industry and their ability to prosecute a protracted war drops really, really fast.

Home Fleet strength, ~50 SD(P), 50 SD, 16 carriers. But they can be reinforced by Third Fleet's 50 podnoughts and Honor's four squadrons of wallers. But they may try and commit a limited amount at first, lest there's a trap, and won't be concentrated unlike the Haven ships which will still outnumber them by a comfortable margin.

Of course, given the sheer size of the RHN at this point, any trap they do set would probably be set for bear, so sending a penny-packet force in may just ensure it gets annihilated by the trappers.

Six of one, half dozen of the other, I guess...

Haven is sitting pretty comfortably as far as SD(P) numbers right now. Over half again the entire Manticoran Alliance's numbers. Then again, Haven always had a large margin of numerical superiority, and it didn't help the Legislaturists or Committee did it?

To be fair, at this instant Haven has finally reached superweapon parity with Manticore- everything Manticore has, Haven has a version of that's good enough to blunt their advantage.

THEN Manticore pulls Apollo out of their pocket, of course...

Poor Havenite R&D...

Reasons to not send anyone and ensure the greatest overkill in naval history. Covering against Eighth Fleet and the Andermani (and where's the proper respect, and fear, of Grayson?) a lot of those ships remaining behind won't be -quite- combat ready yet, and if they need a bigger fleet they've already lost the war.

The Grayson fleet is, as I interpreted evens in this and War of Honor, pretty much totally committed just providing the reinforcements for Third Fleet and covering the home system. They don't have enough strength left to pose a major offensive threat. Unlike the Andermani they can't suddenly go FOOMP onto the scene with a hundred new SD(P)s that nobody's ever fought before.

Impossible to keep a surprise in this thread. Here's Apollo, an FTL comm fitted to a missile allowing them to guide the 8 other missiles from it's pod at absurd distances. It's also got far more brain than any previous missile, but that's just management. There a couple of flaws, it's not quite real-time and there's a comm delay of about 1 second for every 10 million klicks. But all that means is that a missile salvo is equally deadly at a few light seconds and halfway across the system. Because there's a human hand and a ship's computer telling the missiles what to do. No getting lost on the way to the target, no suboptimal use of EW. And they can have missiles boost on two drives, go ballistic and activate the third some time later, for effectively unlimited range.

Well, the Apollo FTL transceiver has range limits in its own right, which we unfortunately can't pin down any more precisely than, oh, somewhere between 70-140 million kilometers. But aside from that, yeah, effectively unlimited accurate range.

Apollo can only be used with Keyhole II, because no one previously had the ability or a reason to build ships with FTL fire control links, and it's easier to just build a new Keyhole with the links they need then to spend weeks or months refitting existing ships for them. For the moment, that makes them an Eighth Fleet exclusive, that and a few serious production bottlenecks on the Apollo missiles.

Since building an Apollo control missile requires the production of one of the most miniaturized and advanced gravitic comms units in history, and building enough to fully load a few squadrons of SD(P)s requires building thousands of them... yeah, I can see why there are bottlenecks.

I wonder if that's true for other FTL comms and gravitic sensors, that they travel at 64 c.

In the Honorverse, yes. In real life, well, real life doesn't work that way as far as we can tell. The 64c limit is supposed to be because the gravitic signals are interacting with the interface between the lowest alpha band of hyperspace and the Euclidean space we know and love.

"The recon platforms!" MacNaughton said suddenly. "The bastards put laser heads on their goddamned recon platforms!"

They figured that one out pretty quick.

To be fair, it's got to be an easy thing to do, anyone could have done it. The stealth missiles used to assassinate Cromarty were arguably sort of like this, but you may have already pointed this out. Can't remember.

Right again, they got a great look at Moriarty in Suarez, and told the drones what to look for. SUre they're not much use against ships under power, but you didn't pin your system defense on starships, did you?

Well, they also wouldn't work well against the originally planned Moriarty platforms, which wrap several million tons of defenses (probably including sensors that really should be able to spot the drone before it gets into attack range) around that big solid core of fire control systems.

But the platforms actually deployed just have the fire control, not the defensive equipment.

And nuke equipped Mistletoe platforms take out dense pod clusters. 500 megatons makes these the biggest nukes we've gotten yield figures on for this series. Though normally it's a vague "megatons" so I'll take what I can get.

Note that the drones are physically larger than a missile, so there's nothing stopping them from including a (much) heavier warhead.

Haven losses at Lovat. Also, they've rolled out the Cimetere Alpha and Beta variants, which are pretty much Shrikes and Ferrets less the fission piles and some of the more esoteric EW gear. And a generation or two of inertial compensators behind. Not that it was enough to go head to head with Grayson Katanas.

I think the main thing making that an issue is that the Graysons' EW equipment and dedicated 'space superiority' quasi-missiles let them shoot a lot straighter than any Havenite LAC when it comes to missile exchanges.

High level politics and war just bring everything up to a whole new scale though, life and death not weighing three men against a hundred, but millions and billions of lives. Put that way, there's only one choice Eloise Prichart can make, and right after losing her longtime lover? It may just destroy her.

I think she's got enough steel in her spine to pull through, myself, though I never really evaluated her after this for signs of psychological collapse.

[Terralthra]

There's one thing I'm not getting about the Apollo System. They can send commands and updates out at FTL right? But aren't all the sensors that are receiving info on the EW and the sidewalls and all the other tactical info still operating at lightspeed? Isn't that going to bottleneck its capabilities just as bad. Or are they throwing the FTL drones around constantly in combat?

Well, they have recon drones, but the point of the command missiles is to be the "cut-off man" for the EW sensor information from the missiles under their control.

Controlling even single-drive missiles directly from the ship was an exercise in arthritic command and control: range from rest was usually given as around 7 million kilometers (allowing us to estimate grav driver launch speed, by the by). This means that any commands to be executed by the missile on its terminal attack run have to be sent 23 seconds before it gets to attack range. Given honorverse missile defense ranges, that's way outside the range at which decoys and laser clusters start to be a threat, and the information one bases those commands on was sent 20ish seconds before that, at which point we're talking about before the missile even really enters CM range. Divide those times by 64 and then add on at most a half-second for the loop from attack missile to command missile, and you can start to see the advantage.

To return to the parentheses - we know single-drive missiles' acceleration (roughly 46,000 gravities), we know their flight time (180 seconds), and we know their range (usually given as 7 million km from rest). Putting all of those numbers into the distance as a function of acceleration, time, and velocity and solving for Vi is child's play. Converting into meters and seconds for ease of reading:

D = Vit + 0.5at^2
7 * 10^9 m = Vi*180 + 0.5(414,000 m/s^2)*180^2
7 * 10^9 m = 180Vi + 6706800000 m
7000000000 - 6706800000 = 180Vi
293200000 = 180Vi
1628888 m/s = Vi

Assuming I didn't fuck up my math at some point, grav drivers shit missiles out at 1629 km/sec. For reference, that's about 2.6 times escape velocity for Sol. I can see that being pretty huge (harkening back to why the missile pod fell out of vogue in the first place, pre-miniaturization around First Hancock).

[VhenRa]

As a note, don't they have 10 missiles in a pod? Not 12?

[Simon_Jester]

Terralthra, your calculation is correct and thank you; we can safely use a ~1500 km/s figure for missile tube grav driver muzzle velocity. Note that this is fast enough to get an impeller-drive missile clear of the launching ship's wedge within a matter of 0.1 to 0.2 seconds, which is probably the point of using it. On the other hand, it also represents the same delta-V that the missile's own drive imparts over the course of a three or four second burn. It isn't that large a fraction of the total terminal velocity of the missile, so it kind of makes me wonder why the grav drivers are such a big deal.

On a missile pod I can see why it matters because having the (better protected) mobile shipboard launchers be able to outrange the (unprotected) pod launchers makes the pod practically useless. But on, for example, a LAC, the LAC's own electronic warfare and wedge (even if it has no point defense) should make it difficult to target the LACs at extreme missile range, so they should be able to get close enough to ripple-fire their own missiles and withdraw in reasonable safety, grav drivers or no grav drivers.

Maybe it has more to do with getting the missiles clear of the wedge quickly so that the launching platform can maneuver in safety? And/or ensuring that the missiles clear each other quickly so that given pod's salvo doesn't have to spend several seconds floating around in empty space waiting to be blown up by a random nuke before they get far enough apart to engage their wedges?

Side note: note that your figure for solar escape velocity is from the surface of the Sun, where the surface gravity is very powerful. From 1 AU up in the Sun's gravity well, solar escape velocity is only a tiny fraction of this, on the order of tens of kilometers per second rather than hundreds.

As a note, don't they have 10 missiles in a pod? Not 12?

That figure has fluctuated wildly throughout the series as hardware sizes increase and decrease. The size of the pod is determined by the size of an SD(P)'s launch rails and hatches, but the number of missile tubes you can fit into it depends on the diameter of the missile and how much space it takes to mount a viable grav driver plus the hardware to power up the missiles.

So even if Weber is being consistent, there are good reasons why the number would change from book to book.

[VhenRa]

Yes... but other books set at roughly the same point, firing the same missile out of pods indicate 10 missiles per pod. (Battle of Monica for instance).

Even same book from memory...

[Simon_Jester]

Well then, that would seem to decide matters.

"Oops."

[Ahriman238]

"Duchess Harrington!"

"Over here, Duchess Harrington!"

"Duchess Harrington, would you care to comment on—?"

"Duchess Harrington, did you know—?"

"Alvin Chorek, Duchess Harrington, Landing Herald United Faxes! Are you going—?"

"Duchess Harrington! Duchess Harrington!"

Someone's making headlines again.

The reporter's brashness appeared to have deserted him. Hawke made absolutely no threatening gesture, but none was needed, and as Honor watched gravely, her own unsmiling expression hid an inner chuckle as she wondered if "Newsy Intimidation 101" was a course listing on an armsman's training syllabus somewhere.

It is, but only for Harrington Steading. Like lifeguard courses it's an essential part of keeping up with their eccentric Steadholder.

"Better get used to it," he advised her. "The news broke yesterday. Coupled with what Terekhov did at Monica, Lovat has public morale and enthusiasm soaring to new heights. It's actually rebounded harder because of the contrast to what happened at Zanzibar before the cease-fire. Not to mention the fact that Her Majesty's subjects are in the most murderous mood I've seen since your 'execution' over what happened to Jim and almost happened to Berry and Ruth. And since Terekhov won't be back from Talbott for another month or so, all of it's going to be focusing on you, Madam Salamander."

"God, I hate this kind of stuff," she muttered.

Public morale and determination after recent events.

"You have no idea how a ravening mob of newsies affects a treecat's empathic sense!"

"No, but I've been basking in the reflected glow of your glory enough lately for Samantha to give me a shrewd notion the effect isn't good."

"To put it mildly."

What treecats think of large mobs of reporters.

"What I was wondering," Scarlotti continued, "is exactly what sort of reinforcements we're going to receive?"

"According to the Octagon's latest numbers, we're going to be reinforced to a total strength of something over three hundred of the wall," Tourville said calmly.

More than one of the officers around the table sat back in his or her chair as the number hit them squarely between the eyes. Even Scarlotti blinked, and Tourville smiled thinly.

"I'm well aware of the sorts of rumors which have been circulating around the fleet," he said. "Some of them have been so wild as to be outright ridiculous. For example, the one that says we're going to launch a direct attack on the Manticoran home system in response to Lovat. The very idea is preposterous."

"And with that out of the way, let me brief you on the plan to launch a direct attack attack on Manticore in response to Lovat." Lester Tourville gets 300 podnoughts for this little operation, as originally planned Giscard would command Beatrice but he's sort of busy being dead.

"No one in my shop, with the possible exception of one or two very junior officers who haven't yet learned the limits of their own mortality, is prepared to make any unqualified predictions at this point, Your Grace," Givens said. "The consensus, however, is that Apollo's effectiveness, in particular, has to have come as a significant shock to their systems. In fact, it was more effective in action than we expected, even after your exercises, and it came at them completely cold. Given the way Sanskrit has to resonate with what happened to them in Buttercup," she nodded at Hamish, "they've got to be wondering if we're prepared to do the same thing to them all over again."

"I don't doubt that," Honor replied. "And don't misunderstand me, I'm not trying to say the analysts are wrong. I'd just like everyone to remember that Thomas Theisman wasn't prepared to roll over and play dead when we introduced the missile pod, and they didn't have it. And when we introduced the SD(P) and MDM, he and Shannon Foraker simply sat down and came up with effective responses to both of them."

Haven's probable reactions to Apollo.

"I wish, though, that we could at least find this 'Bolthole' of theirs. I know it's not likely to be as critical to their building capacity as it was, and it's got to be becoming steadily less so as the units under the construction in their other yards progress. But that seems to be where Admiral Foraker and her little brain trust are working on their various new weapons and doctrines, and that makes it a target well worth hitting any time."

"We all agree, Your Grace," Givens told her feelingly. "Unfortunately, we still haven't found it. Which leads me to suspect that our fundamental assumptions were in error."

"How?" Honor asked curiously.

"We assumed it was located in a Peep star system," Givens said simply, and Honor blinked.

Bolthole.

"Yes, it does. But I've been going over some of our older intelligence summaries looking for clues. Some of those summaries date clear back to before the Pierre Coup, and a couple of very interesting ones came out of debriefs of some of the people you brought back from Cerberus, as well. On the basis of that, I'm beginning to suspect they didn't move into any star system's existing infrastructure, at all. I think they built it from the ground up in one where no one already lived."

"What?"

"I also think I'd like to sit down and discuss it with Admiral Parnell," Givens told her with a crooked smile. "Unless I miss my guess, he's the one who actually started the project even before President Harris was assassinated. Some of the people you brought back from Cerberus have mentioned large labor drafts from the political prisoners there. There was always some of that going on, of course, but assuming their memory of the timing is accurate, we can't account for where quite a few of them might have gone. That's not conclusive; the People's Republic was a big place, and they always had 'black projects' of one sort or another going on somewhere. We couldn't possibly have identified or tracked all of them. But I'm beginning to think 'Bolthole' is actually a complete secret colony of theirs somewhere. One the Legislaturalists started. I wouldn't be a bit surprised to find out that Pierre and the Committee took it and ran with it—probably on a scale Harris had never initially contemplated. But if I'm right, the reason we haven't found it despite all of our scouting efforts is because we don't have any idea where to look for it in the first place. It may even be outside the Republic's official borders!"

Building Bolthole, and like Hades it has a long history and outlived the regime that began it.

"Lovat," the First Space Lord continued, "was an important target, but secondary. It hurt them, no question of that, and it was a major escalation from the sorts of targets we'd been hitting. But as far as their economy and central war effort is concerned, it was still a peripheral target, in a lot of ways. The Strategy Board thinks it's time we went for a first-rank target, instead, and we think we've found one which may not be Bolthole but still ought to get their attention. Jouett."

He paused again, and despite her earlier suspicions, Honor's nostrils flared. The planet of Shadrach, in the Jouett System, was one of Haven's oldest daughter colonies. The system had been colonized from Haven less than fifty T-years after the colony ship Jason reached an uninhabited planet called Manticore, and the system's population was well up into the billions. It was also the site of the oldest of the Republican Navy's satellite shipyards, and its defenses were almost as heavy as those of the Haven System itself.

Jouett among the first colonies of Haven, one of their core planets and one of just a few worlds almost as populous, politically important and well-protected as Haven itself. Also, the proposed target of Sanskrit II (why bother with a random name generator if you're going to keep reusing names?).

"We agree entirely," Caparelli said gravely. "And before you raise the point, yes, it's possible we're suffering from a degree of operational hubris here. We're trying to protect ourselves against that by being as skeptical as we can, and we're also determined to avoid pushing you and Eighth Fleet into a tactical situation you can't control."

"I'm certainly in favor of that," Honor said with a wry smile. Then her smile faded, and she shrugged. "Assuming it's possible, of course."

"Of course," Caparelli agreed. "First, we have no intention of sending you in without thoroughly scouting the system ahead of time.

Jouette's going to be kind of a tough nut, even with Apollo.

"Second, we're getting a handle on the production bottlenecks we've been experiencing. We're going to have a lot more of the Mistletoe-modified drones available, starting in about three weeks, and production of the Apollo pods and control platforms is beginning to accelerate, as well. We've got enough now to completely re-ammunition your command and began establishing a modest stockpile to support your operations. The system-defense version is still lagging; we won't be able to begin deploying those pods for another couple of months. But things are definitely looking up on the offensive front.

Production and R&D difficulties on the new weapons.

"Third, we intend to support any attack on Jouett by shotgunning them with feints all over their inner perimeter. We're going to be scouting every system we can, and after what happened in Lovat, they aren't going to be able to disregard any scouting operation. Hopefully, that will induce them to spread their defenses thinner.

"Fourth, your battle plan will be designed from the beginning from the perspective of breaking off the attack and withdrawing if the opposition seems tougher than our threat analyses have projected. In other words, this won't be any sort of all-costs target, Your Grace. It's an operation we want to succeed; not one we need to succeed, and your instructions would reflect that."

Plus feinting by scouting surrounding systems, hoping to disperse the defenders and giving hOnor license to break off if she so much as thinks she might smell a rat.

"But whatever we do to prepare for and support the operation, there's still the question of force levels. I'm as impressed as anyone by what Apollo accomplished at Lovat, but at the moment, my entire order of battle is less than a hundred ships, and only fifteen of them can operate the new pods. And while it's true the effectiveness of each shot in their magazines has just gone up, it's also true that we've just taken a twenty-five percent hit on our total magazine capacity. In other words, my fifteen SD(P)s only have as many rounds onboard as eleven ships with standard pods."

Costs of Apollo, right now there are just 15 Apollo-capable ships in the entire Manticoran Alliance.

"And speaking of nuts and bolts, and although we haven't put together hard numbers yet," Caparelli continued, "we already know we'll be able to reinforce Eighth Fleet more strongly than we'd anticipated."

Honor felt her right eyebrow rise, and Caparelli chuckled.

"Your old friend Herzog von Rabenstrange contacted me a couple of weeks ago, just after you'd sortied for Sanskrit. Apparently the Emperor decided a month or two before that to express his displeasure at how long their refit programs seem to be dragging out. Apparently, he expressed it rather vigorously, and his navy decided they ought to take him seriously and reallocated their efforts. Basically, they pulled their yard dogs off of about a third of the total number of ships they'd been working on—the ones farthest from completion at this point—and concentrated the additional effort on the units which were already most advanced."

The First Space Lord shrugged.

"That decision has its downsides, of course. Among other things, it means the ships they were pulled off of are going to be even later in completing, and their concentration only covered about a quarter of their total SD(P) strength. Still, it means that somewhere between twenty-five and forty additional pod-layers, all refitted to handle the Keyhole II platforms and the flat-pack pods, are going to be coming forward over the next month and a half or so. Our intention at the moment is to assign all of them to Eighth Fleet. Which will just happen to finally make your command the biggest and most powerful we have. That's what we're planning to commit to Sanskrit II."

Eighth Fleet is due to get between 25-40 new Keyhole II (and thus Apollo) capable podnoughts in the next six weeks. From the Andermani, as it happens, making their first major contribution to Eighth Fleet.

"We'd have to pretty much stand down until they do arrive," she said thoughtfully. "I don't really like that. We'll be taking the pressure off of them. But if we're going to hit a target as hard as Jouett, I can't afford any avoidable losses in the interim. It won't do us much good to reinforce if I've lost offsetting numbers. And we'll need to train hard with the Andies if we're going to integrate them properly."

"The Strategy Board came to the same conclusion," Caparelli replied. "We don't believe you could plan on launching the operation for at least another seven to eight weeks. And you're absolutely right about the need to train with the Andies as they come forward. Fortunately, Trevor's Star is well suited for all our purposes. With the entire star system under military control, it's as secure a place to exercise and work up new units as we've got. You can conduct training operations on just about any scale you want, without worrying about anyone reporting what you're doing to the Peeps. At the same time, you'll be well placed for us to recall you and your Apollo-capable ships quickly to the home system if we start picking up any indications that Theisman is still feeling frisky. And, of course, you're still closer to your potential targets in the Republic than any of the Peeps' forward bases are to the home system or Yeltsin's Star.

"While you're getting your new Andy units worked up to operational standards, we'll try to keep the pressure on them by continuing your previous strategy of scouting their systems. As I said, that's been part of our preliminary strategy concept from the beginning."

Standing down Eighth Fleet for a few more weeks again, training and incorporating the Andies at Trevor's Star.

Honor swam strongly down the exact center of the swimming lane, listening to the music playing over the underwater sound system. The pool, below the outer edge of the Bay House terrace, was what was still called "Olympic-sized," and she was on the thirtieth of her forty laps. Much as she enjoyed swimming, lap work could be excruciatingly boring, and she'd insisted on a first-class sound system when she had the pool put in. She'd gotten what she paid for, and now she chuckled inside as the music segued abruptly from classical Grayson to Manticoran shatter-rock. That transition was guaranteed to send anyone's boredom packing.

Sound system in Honor's Olympic-sized pool. Isn't "classical Grayson" country/western?

"Actually, though," the ex-Countess of the Tor said, her own smile fading, "I had a serious reason for screening you this morning. I have a message for you from Anton."

"Do you?" Honor arched her eyebrows, and Montaigne nodded.

"He asked me to tell you that he and his associate believe they may be on the trail of evidence which will confirm the hypothesis they discussed with you last month."

A little more time please?

"I'd like to say I'm glad to be back," Honor replied with a small smile. "Unfortunately, that would be a lie. Not that I'm not glad to see you, of course. It's just that I had to leave a very charming young gentleman and lady behind."

"But you brought lots of pictures, I hope," he replied, and she chuckled.

"Only a couple of dozen gigs worth. And I've changed out my personal wallpaper, of course."

The bane of everyone with a friend whose become a parent, baby pictures. Countless gigabytes of baby pictures.

Honor's staff and senior flag officers sat around the outsized table in her dining cabin. The familiar cups of coffee, tea, and cocoa had made their appearance on schedule, following the dessert dishes, and Judah Yanakov extracted a worn briar pipe from his tunic pocket. He held it up and raised an eyebrow at his hostess.

"That's a truly disgusting habit, Judah," she told him with a smile of affection, and he nodded.

"I know it is, My Lady. And we'd almost stamped it out on Grayson, until you Manties came along with all your modern medicine. Now I can indulge myself and know your decadent, worldly medical science will preserve me from the consequences of my own excesses."

Honorverse medicine can largely protect one from the consequences of smoking. Good thing for Lester Tourville.

"All right," she said as Yanakov got his pipe properly stoked, "I think we can all agree that what the Strategy Board has in mind is, as Alice says, an 'impressive itinerary.' It's also going to be the most powerful single attack the Alliance or any of its members has ever launched. I had a personal message from Herzog von Rabenstrange just before I returned to the fleet. His current estimate is that we should have at least thirty-five Andermani Apollo-capable SD(P)s and sixteen of their BC(P)s joining us here. The first ten or twelve wallers will actually be here within the next two weeks; the others will arrive as they complete their working up exercises with the new systems.

"Assuming he meets his minimum estimate of thirty-five, we'll have a total of fifty-three pod-superdreadnoughts, fifty of them Apollo-capable. That's fifteen percent of the Alliance's total SD(P)s. And until the rest of the Andermani superdreadnoughts complete their refits, it's over twenty-seven percent of the total actually available. It's also more pod-layers, not even counting the battlecruisers, than Earl White Haven had for Buttercup, and none of his ships had Apollo."

Specifics of the Andy reinforcements, 35 podnoughts, and 16 podlaying BCs, giving Honor 53 podnoughts total in Eighth Fleet, just 11 less than Manticore had in total for the entire interbellum period.

"On the other hand, how much good will it to do them to know what's coming? How the hell do you establish a viable defensive doctrine against something like this?"

"Admiral Hemphill and the ATC simulators are developing one right now, Alistair," Samuel Miklós pointed out.

"They're trying to develop one," McKeon corrected. "I'm willing to bet they aren't having a lot of luck so far, and unlike the Peeps, they know exactly what Apollo can do. I'm not saying no one will ever come up with a doctrine which won't at least knock back Apollo's effectiveness. I just don't see any way the Peeps can have done it yet. I certainly can't think of anything they could do about it, and I've spent the odd couple of dozen hours thinking about it."

"I think you've got a point, Alistair," Honor said. "But so does Judah. And let's not succumb to any hubris about Apollo, either. I agree that so far it's proved more effective than my most optimistic estimate, but it's not a god weapon. So far, they haven't had a really good look at it, but all it really does, if you want to come right down to it, is to extend our effective control loop by about a factor of sixty."

Defensive doctrine against Apollo is in the works, 60x the range of effective missile control from Apollo.

"I'm not trying to downplay what an advantage that gives us, especially now. But once we get out beyond three or four light-minutes, even the grav-pulse com starts imposing a measurable lag in the real-time communications loop. We'll be able to adjust and adapt far more rapidly than anyone else can, which is still going to give us an enormous edge. But our powered missile envelope from rest is over three and a half light-minutes. At that range, the transmission lag, one-way, is going to be three-point-four seconds. That's a minimum command and control loop of six-point-eight seconds."

"Which equates to a range to target of eight and a half light-seconds, with a closing velocity of point-eight light-speed," McKeon pointed out. "That means that our two-way communications loop would be shorter than their one-way loop, even if their counter-missiles had that sort of engagement range."

"Of course it does." Honor shook her head again. "I admit it's going to give us a huge advantage, at least until someone else figures out how to do the same thing. I'm just saying that as the range extends, our ability to adapt in real-time to their electronic warfare, and to steer our birds around their counter-missiles, is going to degrade. That's why Mercedes, Andrea, and I have been stressing the need to get as close to the edge of the enemy's powered envelope as we can without quite crossing over into it in order to maximize our own effectiveness. And don't forget, we carry a lot fewer rounds than we used to. That means we've got to make each of them count. So even though the Lovat effectiveness numbers would support a pullback of at least fifty percent, I think we have to factor in Judah's concerns, and only cut our original density estimates by thirty or forty percent."

Degree of overkill (200%) in the last battle and range limitations of Apollo. 3.4 second comm delay at maximum powered (uninterrupted) MDM range.

"Well, we really didn't turn it up until we started our intensive post-battle analysis back here at Trevor's Star," Truman admitted. "But when we took a good hard look, it became fairly obvious that they've got at least one, and probably two, new LAC classes. And unless I miss my guess, they're using fission power plants."

"I don't like the sound of that," Vice Admiral Morris Baez, commander of Battle Squadron 23, said.

"From the acceleration numbers, they don't have the new beta nodes yet," Truman said. "But their energy budget is obviously higher than it used to be, and, defensively, I suspect they've added at least bow walls. One of the two possible new classes we've tentatively identified seems to be the closest they could come to a clone of the Shrike. It packs a laser, instead of a graser, but it's an awful lot more powerful than any energy weapons we've ever seen out of a Peep LAC before. We're not absolutely certain about the other possible new design. We think they've done their best to duplicate the Ferret, as well. If they have, they still can't get as much out of the design as we can, though, because of the inferiority of their missiles."

Cimeterre Alpha and Beta. I was wrong, they've got fission piles. It makes sense the LAC technology would spread via Erewhon, considering the HRG used LACs as a systems-defense panacea.

[Terralthra]

Terralthra, your calculation is correct and thank you; we can safely use a ~1500 km/s figure for missile tube grav driver muzzle velocity. Note that this is fast enough to get an impeller-drive missile clear of the launching ship's wedge within a matter of 0.1 to 0.2 seconds, which is probably the point of using it. On the other hand, it also represents the same delta-V that the missile's own drive imparts over the course of a three or four second burn. It isn't that large a fraction of the total terminal velocity of the missile, so it kind of makes me wonder why the grav drivers are such a big deal.

On a missile pod I can see why it matters because having the (better protected) mobile shipboard launchers be able to outrange the (unprotected) pod launchers makes the pod practically useless. But on, for example, a LAC, the LAC's own electronic warfare and wedge (even if it has no point defense) should make it difficult to target the LACs at extreme missile range, so they should be able to get close enough to ripple-fire their own missiles and withdraw in reasonable safety, grav drivers or no grav drivers.

It's not such a huge deal now, maybe, but the infodump on missile pods and grav drivers in SVW mentions that pods became obsolete due to advances in missile defense eighty years ago. SVW is in 1905 PD, meaning the aforementioned point defense improvements occur around 1825 or so - predating laser heads. Given that counter-missiles were invented in the 1700s PD, the advances they're talking about must be something like fast-cycle laser clusters.

Given the timing involved, everyone's still using nuke heads, and this is during the late phase of the Great Missile Decline, when everything seemed stacked against missiles. By my reckoning, the wide deployment of the laser head in multiple navies in the late 1800s was the first step in reversing that pendulum.

So we have the Reign of the Nuke Head, lasting up until the early 1700s, when combat was launching fuck-off nukes at each other with only literal point defense cannons trying to shoot them down with bullets, which works ok against nukes, enough that energy combat is still seen as "more deadly".

Then in the 1700s, the Great Missile Decline begins when PDCs get supplemented by impeller-drive counter-missiles. Nuke heads have a harder time getting through, and we probably see an emphasis start to get put on saturation salvo fire. PDCs fired waves of bullets or frag rounds in fairly quick succession, after all, so you don't need to saturate it so much as you just need to get lucky. CMs, on the other hand, come in fixed numbers, waves and fairly small intercept zones, so if you swamp them with enough missiles at once, you win. This is the last time missile pods were used before the main series. Thicken the initial salvo enough and you get a contact nuke hit. Congratulations, victory.

Then the 1820s come along and something else gets added in, laser clusters. Now your shit is getting zapped by three different systems, having a large salvo is even more important, and your missiles really need to All Come In At Once for any to get through. This is the nadir of the Great Missile Decline, and when people stopped using pods because their choices were either a) have a shitty salvo that didn't have the swamping effect or b) have a slower salvo with more tracking time that gave the defensive systems more time to deal with being swamped. This is the time at which people were deciding "fuck pods. they're not worth it."

~1500 kps from the grav driver is what, 2% of the terminal velocity of modern missiles, sure, but what percentage it forms is not super-relevant. The only relevant thing is, is whatever percent difference it is enough that by the time the missiles enter the defensive CM/laser cluster envelope, the CM launcher or laser cluster gets another shot off? If the answer is "yes", then you're wasting your time. The difference could be 0.00001% and that would still be the case if the defensive measures get a second shot off.

This is the environment laser heads were borne into, which is why PDCs went out of fashion, but they still weren't deadly enough for missiles to become the predominant threat of the era. Missiles are nice to soften up or feel out an opponent, but energy broadsides are how the job gets done.

We see this philosophy at work with the SLN's Aegis system - since they're still stuck in that mentality of missiles being the picador's dart, not the matador's sword. "oh, they have more missiles? Psh, we'll just shove a couple more counter-missiles in canisters out of our missile tubes. That'll take care of the problem, and it's not like our missiles were seriously going to kill them anyway."

As for LACs - from my understanding, LACs went out of style for a number of reasons. Lack of grav drivers was a tiny reason, which is why even when they developed the miniature grav drivers, LACs didn't suddenly become economical. The number of ways pre-1908 LACs sucked would take a while to recount.

Maybe it has more to do with getting the missiles clear of the wedge quickly so that the launching platform can maneuver in safety? And/or ensuring that the missiles clear each other quickly so that given pod's salvo doesn't have to spend several seconds floating around in empty space waiting to be blown up by a random nuke before they get far enough apart to engage their wedges?

Valid enough, I suppose, but to me, the "is the gap big enough that we get another defensive shot off?" is the real determinant.

[VhenRa]

Uh. I believe Manty vessels in the 1500s (In A Call to Arms, which leads into the new prequel novels) have counter-missiles. Of course, If I am reading stats correctly, they are fired out of the same launchers the shipkillers are shot out of.

[Terralthra]

Uh. I believe Manty vessels in the 1500s (In A Call to Arms, which leads into the new prequel novels) have counter-missiles. Of course, If I am reading stats correctly, they are fired out of the same launchers the shipkillers are shot out of.

They might be counter-missiles, but they're not impeller-wedge counter-missiles, meaning they're just hilariously outclassed if they're fired at impeller drive attack missiles. In the 1500s, it might have been reaction-drive missiles vs reaction-drive CMs, in which case it's a fair fight, but not much more advanced than current technology in terms of what we can build. By the late 1600s, it was definitely impeller-drive missiles and reaction-drive CMs, which was..not a fun time to play missile defense.