David Weber - At All Costs

"If they do, they're wrong, Ma'am," MacNaughton said.

"We think they are, Ewan," Giovanni corrected. "Although, if they've got the sense God gave a Legislaturalist, at least they'll stay out of our inner-system missile envelope!"

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-Hamilton. 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.

"Coming up on Point Samar in five minutes, Your Grace," Jaruwalski said.

"Thank you, Andrea."

Honor looked up and checked the time display. Her units had been accelerating towards rendezvous with Forge for thirty-five minutes at a steady 4.81 KPS2 from their relatively low initial velocity. They were up to 11,750 KPS, and they'd traveled just over fourteen million kilometers. They were still seventy-four minutes from turnover for a zero/zero intercept, but the one thing she felt absolutely confident of was that none of the defenders expected her to be making any zero/zero rendezvous with Forge.

Of course, they might be wrong, she thought coldly.

She returned her attention to the tactical plot. The old-style superdreadnoughts, which Jaruwalski had designated Bogey One, were holding their positions in-system, close to Forge, but the forward sensor drones showed that their impeller wedges were up, and their sidewalls were active. The massive LAC force their scouts had reported was also clearly in evidence. Whoever the system commander here in Lovat was, she didn't appear to have opted for the sort of deceptiveness Admiral Bellefeuille had displayed at Chantilly.

But appearances can be... deceiving, Honor reminded herself, with a slight smile. I hope they are, anyway. I'd hate to have wasted all this preparation if this is really all they've got.

She pursed her lips slightly, looking down at the smaller repeater plot deployed from the side of her command chair. Unlike the main plot, it was configured to show the entire system, and her gaze rested on the green sphere which represented the Lovat hyper limit.

"Any time now, Your Grace. If we've got it figured right, at least."She looked up. Mercedes Brigham stood beside her command chair, looking down at the same repeater, and Honor nodded.

"If it were me, I'd figure I had the patsies right about where I wanted them," she agreed. "And by now, their recon platforms have to have gotten a good enough look at us to be sure we're not just drones."

Brigham nodded back, and the two of them watched the plot, waiting.

"Admiral, they're seventy minutes from turnover."

"Very good, Ewan. Send the execute to Tarantula."

"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.

"Admiral, Admiral Giovanni's platforms confirm that one of the superdreadnoughts matches the emissions signature of the ship that got away at Solon," Marius Gozzi said.

"So," Javier Giscard said softly, "'the Salamander' is back."

He shook his head with more than a trace of sadness. Eloise had tried to hide her despair in her last letter to him, but he knew her too well. When Elizabeth Winton had accepted her offer of the summit, it had been like watching the sun come out. And when whatever the hell had happened on Old Earth and Torch crushed any prospect of a negotiated settlement, it had been like watching a late blizzard bury the frozen blossoms of a murdered spring.

He supposed he couldn't really blame the Manties for leaping to the conclusion that the Republic was behind what had happened. It didn't make sense, in a lot of ways, yet people-and star nations-all too often did things that didn't make sense. But however well he might understand their reasoning, he still had to cope with the consequences of their actions.

And so do they, he thought grimly, watching that outnumbered force go to military power. Not that it was going to do it a great deal of good. Its six superdreadnoughts were thoroughly outgunned by the sixteen SD(P)s and four CLACs in each of his three intercepting forces; the inner-system's missile pods were far more numerous than they'd been at Solon; and he'd been able to plot his own translations much more closely. Unlike Solon, these Manties would be unable to avoid entering the effective missile envelope of at least one of his intercepting forces.

"Open fire, Sir?" Selma Thackeray asked, but Giscard shook his head.

"Harrington showed us at Solon what she could do to long-range missile fire," he told the ops officer, "and she's got a lot more defensive platforms than she had then. No. We'll just follow along. We're the beaters; Moriarty is the hunter. Once Giovanni chews them up, we'll worry about cleaning up the remnants."

"Yes, Sir," Thackeray acknowledged, and Giscard returned his attention to the plot.

They shouldn't have sent you out with so few ships, Your Grace, he told the light code of HMS Imperator.

"All right, Andrea," Honor said, glancing at the time display once more. Twelve minutes had passed since the Havenite ambush force had translated in behind her. "Execute Ozawa."

"Aye, aye, Your Grace!" Jaruwalski said, her voice sparkling with excitement, and tapped a single command into her console.

"There's the execute signal, Ma'am!" Lieutenant Harcourt announced.

"Understood," Commander Estwicke replied, and looked at her astrogator. "Take us out, Jerome."

"Aye, aye, Skipper," Lieutenant Weismeuller acknowledged, and HMS Ambuscade popped back up into hyper-space.

Weissmuller had plotted his translation with care, and he'd had plenty of time to position his ship perfectly in normal-space before executing it. Ambuscade arrived precisely where she was supposed to be, and her plot suddenly blossomed with the light codes of capital ships.

"Communications, pass the word to Admiral Yanakov," Estwicke said.

"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."

Giscard nodded, and hoped he looked calmer than he felt.

Mousetrapped, by God, he thought. And the same way we did it to her at Solon.

He shook his head in brief admiration, but well executed as Harrington's maneuver had been, it still wasn't perfect. The wallers coming up behind him were at almost three light-minutes' range. They had him deep enough inside the hyper limit that he couldn't avoid action, but their astrogation had been poor, and they'd made their own alpha translation 2.8 light-minutes outside the hyper limit. At that range, even Manty MDM accuracy was going to be significantly degraded, and he had sixteen pod-layers to their twelve. The LACs they were deploying outnumbered his, and they'd be more effective in the missile-defense role, but he was too far ahead of them, with too great an advantage in base velocity for them to overtake him.