David Weber - Ashes of Victory

The first massive wave of missiles crashed over his wall, and his numb brain noted yet another difference from the norm. The tactical realities of towed pods meant each fleet had no real choice but to commit the full weight of its pods in the first salvo, because any that didn't fire in the first exchange were virtually certain to suffer proximity kills from the enemy's fire. They were normally concentrated on the enemy vessels for whom the firing fleet had the best firing solutions, as well, because firing at extreme range rather than waiting until the enemy had irradiated your weapons into uselessness meant even the best solutions were none too good.

All of that tended to result in massive overkill on a relatively low number of targets, but that wasn't happening this time. No, this time the Manties had allocated their fire with lethal precision. There were well over three thousand missiles in the first wave. Many of them were jammers or decoys, but many were not, and Hamish Alexander's fire plan had allocated a hundred and fifty laser heads to each Peep ship of the wall. His targets' hopelessly jammed and confused defenses stopped no more than ten percent of the incoming fire, and Havenite capital ships shuddered and heaved, belching atmosphere and debris and water vapor as massive, bomb-pumped lasers slammed into them. Hulls spat glowing splinters as massive armor yielded, and fresh, dreadful bursts of light pocked Citizen Admiral Dimitri's wall as fusion bottles began to fail.

But even as the SDs and DNs reeled and died under the pounding, a second, equally massive wave of missiles was on its way. This one ignored the surviving, mangled ships of the wall. Its missiles went for Dimitri's lighter, more fragile battleships and battlecruisers, even heavy and light cruisers. Fewer of them went after each target, but even a battleship could take no more than a handful of hits from such heavy laser heads... and none of them could begin to match the point defense capability of a ship of the wall.

The third wave bypassed the mobile units completely to swoop towards Enki's orbital defenses. They ignored the fortresses, but their conventional nuclear warheads detonated in a blinding, meticulously precise wall of plasma and fury that killed every unprotected satellite, missile pod, and drone in Enki orbit.

And then, as if to cap the insanity, a tidal wave of LACs—well over fifteen hundred of them—erupted from stealth, already in energy range of the broken wreckage which had once been a fleet. They swept in, firing savagely, and a single pass reduced every unit of Dimitri's wall to drifting hulks... or worse. The LACs were at least close enough that his fortresses could fire on them, but their EW was almost as good as the capital ships, and they deployed shoals of jammers and decoys of their own. Even the missiles which got through to them seemed to detonate completely uselessly. It was as if the impossible little vessels' wedges had no throat or kilt to attack!

The LACs had obviously planned their approach maneuver very carefully. Their velocity relative to their victims had been very low, no more than fifteen hundred KPS, and their vector had been designed to cross the base track of Dimitri's wall at an angle that carried them away from his forts and his own LACs. A few squadrons of the latter were in position to at least try to intercept, but those who did vanished in vicious fireballs as hurricanes of lighter but still lethal missiles ripped into their faces. Then the Manty LACs—Esther McQueen's much derided "super LACs," Dimitri thought numbly—disappeared back into the invisibility of their stealth systems. And just to make certain they got away clean, that impossible Manty wall of battle blanketed the battle area with a solid cone of decoys and jammers which made it impossible for any of the surviving defenders to lock onto the fleet, elusive little targets.

Alec Dimitri stared in horror at the display from which every single starship of his fleet had been wiped without ever managing to fire a single shot. Not one . And as he stared at the spreading patterns of life pods, someone touched him on the shoulder.

He flinched, then turned quickly, and his com officer stepped back from whatever she saw in his eyes. But he stopped, made himself inhale deeply, and forced the lumpy muscles along his jaw to relax.

There was no more shouting, no more cries of disbelief, in the war room. There was only deep and utter silence, and his voice sounded unnaturally loud in his own ears when he made himself speak.

"What is it, Jendra?"

"I—" The citizen commander swallowed hard. "It's a message from the Manties, Citizen Admiral," she said then. "It was addressed to Citizen Admiral Theisman. I guess they don't know he's not here." She was rambling, and her jaw tightened as she forced herself back under control. "It's from their commander, Citizen Admiral."

"White Haven?" The question came out almost incuriously, but that wasn't the way he felt, and his eyes narrowed at her nod. "What sort of message?"

"It came in in the clear, Citizen Admiral," she said, and held out a message board. He took it from her and punched the play button, and a man in the black-and-gold of a Manticoran admiral looked out of the holographic display at him. He was dark haired and broad shouldered... and his hard eyes were the coldest blue Alec Dimitri had ever seen.

"Admiral Theisman," the Manty said flatly, "I call upon you to surrender this system and your surviving units immediately. We have just demonstrated that we can and will destroy any and all armed units, ships or forts, in this system without exposing our own vessels to return fire. I take no pleasure in slaughtering men and women who cannot fight back. That will not prevent me from doing precisely that, however, if you refuse to surrender, for I have no intention of exposing my own people to needless casualties. You have five minutes to accept my terms and surrender your command. If you have not done so by the end of that time, my units will resume fire... and we both know what the result will be. I await your response. White Haven, out."

The display blanked. Dimitri stared at it for several seconds, his stocky body sagging around its bones. Then he handed the message board back to the com officer, squared his shoulders, turned to Sandra Connors, and made himself say the unthinkable.

"Ma'am," his quiet voice cut the silence like a knife, "I see no alternative." He inhaled deeply, then went on. "I request permission to surrender my command to the enemy."

"Citizen Admiral Theisman, report to the bridge! Citizen Admiral Theisman, report to the bridge at once! "

Thomas Theisman's head jerked up from his book viewer as Citizen Lieutenant Jackson's voice rattled from the speakers. Theisman had been less than overwhelmed by Jackson when he first boarded the citizen lieutenant's boat. Not that he'd thought the man couldn't handle his present duties. In fact, Jackson was, in many ways, what Theisman considered the perfect courier commander: stolid, phlegmatic, predictable, and utterly incurious. Men like that were never tempted to tamper with or snoop around among the sensitive documents in their computers. From a security perspective, that was wonderful, but it didn't exactly recommend them for any job except that of a postman.

But the voice jarring from the intercom was anything but phlegmatic, and Theisman didn't even think about hesitating. Aboard a ship this small he could reach the bridge almost as quickly as he could have screened it, and he dropped the book viewer and was out his cabin hatch and thundering down the passage before it hit the decksole.

What in God's name can his problem be? The question crackled in Theisman's brain as he pounded towards the ladder. The passage here from Barnett was so routine, Denis and I almost died of boredom, and his translation back into n-space was obviously nominal. So what in hell is going on?!