David Weber - We Few

Gajelis had obviously decided to expend his cruisers in an effort to inflict crippling damage on Fatted Calf before his carriers came into range of Demesne's cruisers. He could "stack" shipkillers from his carriers to some extent by launching them in fairly tight waves, with preprogrammed ballistic segments of staggered lengths so that they arrived in CruFlot 140's control basket as a single salvo. It was going to be ugly if— when —he did, but the capital missiles would be significantly less accurate staging through the fire control of mere cruisers. And if something nasty happened to be happening to his advanced fire control platforms, it would throw a sizable spanner into the works.

It wasn't as if he had an enormous number of options, she reflected. For that matter, Fatted Calf didn't have a huge number of options, either. But a lot depended on the way the two sides chose to exercise their options.

The details. It was always in the details.

"Emergence... now," Astrogation said.

"It will take some time for us to get hard word on what's going on in the system," Admiral Helmut said, glancing over at Julian. They were in the Fleet CIC, watching the tactical plots and wondering if the trick was going to work.

"Sir, no response to standard tactical interrogation, of the outer shell platforms," the senior Tactical Officer reported after several minutes. "We're getting what appears to be a priority lockout."

"Directed specifically against us?" Helmut asked sharply.

"I can't say for certain, Sir," the Taco replied.

"In that case, contact Moonbase directly. Tell them who we are, and ask them to turn the lights back on for us."

"Sir," Marciel Poertena's executive officer said just a bit nervously, "far be it from me to second-guess the Admiral, but do you really think he knows what he's doing here?"

"Don't be pocking silly," Poertena said. "Of course he does. I t'ink."

He looked at his display. HMS Capodista would never, in the wildest drug dream, be considered a war ship. She was a freighter. A bulk cargo carrier. The only thing remotely military about her was her propulsion, since she had to be able to keep up with the fleet elements she'd been designed to serve. Which, unfortunately, meant that her tunnel and phase drive plants were both powerful enough for the Dark Lord of the Sixth's current brainstorm.

At the moment, she, Ozaki , and Adebayo were squawking the transponders of HMS Trenchant , Kershaw , and Hrolf Kraki , otherwise known as Carrier Squadron Sixty-Three. Nor were they the only service ships which had somehow inexplicably acquired the transponder codes of their betters.

"Of course he does," Captain Poertena muttered again, touching the crucifix under his uniform tunic.

"What the hell is that?!" Admiral Ernesto La Paz demanded as a fresh rash of icons appeared in his tactical display. It was basically a rhetorical question, since there was only one thing it really could be.

"Major tunnel drive footprint astern of us!" Tactical called out at almost the same instant. "Eighteen point sources, right on the Tsukayama Limit."

"Eighteen." La Paz and his chief of staff looked at each other.

"It's got to be Helmut," the chief of staff said.

"And isn't that just peachy," La Paz snarled. He glowered at the display for several more seconds, then turned his head.

"Communications, dump a continuous tactical stream to all other squadrons."

"Aye, aye, Sir."

"Maneuvering, come twenty degrees to starboard, same plane. Astrogation, start calculating your first transit to Point Able."

"Sir," the Tactical Officer announced suddenly, "we have two phase drive signatures directly in front of us, range approximately four-point-five light-minutes. BattleComp reads their IFF as Courageous and Damocles . They're accelerating towards the inner system at one-point-six-four KPS squared. Current velocity, one-three-point-three thousand KPS."

"Ah, yes," Helmut murmured. "That would be our friend Ernesto. But only two ships? And already up to over thirteen thousand?"

He tapped his right thumb and forefinger together in front of him, whistling softly. Then he smiled thinly at Julian.

"It would appear that the party started without us, Sergeant Julian. How irritating."

" Courageous and Damocles are changing course, Sir," the Taco said. "They're coming to starboard."

"Of course they are," Helmut snorted. "La Paz isn't about to fight at one-to-nine odds! And he knows damned well we can't catch them if he just keeps running. No doubt he'd like us to try to do just that, though."

He glanced at Julian again and snorted at the Marine's obviously confused expression.

"I keep forgetting you don't know your ass from your elbow where naval maneuvers are concerned, Sergeant," he said dryly. "At least a part of what's happening is obvious enough. The attack on the Palace must have kicked off at least six hours ahead of schedule, because we arrived within one minute of our projected schedule, despite our little side excursion, and to have reached that velocity, CarRon 13 must have been underway for a bit over two and a half hours. And since it would have taken over twenty minutes for movement orders from Old Earth to reach La Paz, that gives us a pretty tight lock on when the balloon must have gone up. And we, unfortunately, are still nine-point-eight hours away from Old Earth. So it would appear that the plan to divert Adoula's squadrons away from the planet before the attack isn't really likely to work."

Julian's face tightened, but the admiral shook his head.

"Doesn't mean he's failed, Sergeant," he said, with a gentleness he seldom showed. "In fact, all the evidence suggests the attack on the Palace itself probably succeeded."

" What evidence?" Julian demanded.

"The fact that the system reconnaissance platforms have been locked out, that La Paz was obviously headed in-system just as fast as he could go, and that his carrier squadron is down to only two ships," Helmut said.

"The recon lockout had to have come from Moonbase—that's the only communications node with the reach to shut down the entire system. And if Adoula were in control of the situation, he certainly wouldn't be ordering his own units locked out of the system reconnaissance platforms. So the lockout order almost certainly came from someone supporting Prince Roger... which means his partisans have control of Moonbase.

"The fact that La Paz was headed in-system suggests the same thing—Adoula and Gianetto are calling in their loyalists, and they wouldn't be doing that unless they needed the firepower because of the situation on the Old Earth.

"And the fact that La Paz is down to only two ships—that half his squadron is someplace else—suggests that someone has been doing a little creative force structure reshuffling. My money for the reshuffler is on Kjerulf. Which would also make sense of Moonbase's defection from the Adoula camp."

"Sir," the Taco put in, "we're also picking up additional phase drive signatures. Looks like four carriers coming in from out-system—we're too far out for IFF—about half a light-minute out from Old Earth, decelerating towards orbit. We've got six more signatures coming out from the inner-system, decelerating towards the same destination."

"Gajelis and... Prokourov," Helmut said thoughtfully. He glanced at Julian again. "The six coming out from sunward have to be Gajelis and CarRon 14. I'm guessing the other four are CarRon 12, which probably means Prokourov's decided to back your Prince. I can't think of any reason even Gianetto would think he needed ten carriers and over two hundred cruisers to deal with an attack on the Palace. Mind you, I could be wrong. He always did believe in bigger hammers."