David Weber - Torch of Freedom

He reached out to activate the terminal built into his dining table, but—

"I make it right on two hundred minutes from his alpha translation to the planet, if he's going for a zero-zero, Boss," Edie Habib said before he actually touched it. She was looking at the display of her minicomp, her expression thoughtful. "Call it a hundred and forty minutes for a straight flyby." She looked up at Rozsak. " Turner did a good job getting us the data this quickly."

Rozsak nodded. He'd been impressed by the Royal Torch Navy from the outset. It had been obvious to him, as his units exercised with it, that quite a few members of its officer corps had come from professional naval backgrounds before immigrating to Torch. Several of them spoke with pronounced Beowulf accents, and at least three of the frigates' skippers had clearly been born and raised—and trained—on Manticore, although all of them appeared to be descended from genetic slaves. The RTN might be tiny, but with that hard kernel of professionalism as a starting point, and with the ruthless training schedule Thandi Palane had insisted upon, its crews were as good as any he'd ever seen. He wasn't surprised by how promptly Nate Turner had been able to identify the invaders' ship classes, but as Habib had said, the frigate had done an outstanding job to get the information to him so rapidly.

Now it's time I do something with it, he thought.

"Well, they're here," he said, and turned to his other dinner guest. "Dirk-Steven, I think we'd better get underway. Given the numbers, it looks like Alpha Two's our best bet."

"Yes, Sir," Commodore Kamstra acknowledged, and began speaking quietly into his personal com as Rozsak returned his attention to Georgos.

"Thank you, Karen," he said. "I assume that's for me?"

"Yes, Sir," she replied, laying the memo board in his outstretched hand.

"We'll see you on Flag Bridge in a few minutes," Rozsak continued. "Go ahead and rout out the rest of our people and get them assembled there, please."

"Of course, Sir." Georgos braced briefly to attention, then disappeared, and Rozsak smiled across the table at Habib.

"Is it my imagination, or has Karen gotten even younger since we got the Torch?"

"It's just having Thandi back in reach again, Boss." Habib smiled. "I knew they'd been buddies, but I hadn't realized how badly Karen had missed her."

"I know—neither had I," Rozsak agreed, but his tone was more absent than it had been, and his attention was on the memo board's display.

"Alpha Two's been activated, Sir," Kamstra reported, then pushed back from the table. "With your permission, I'll head for the command deck now."

"Of course, Dirk-Steven." Rozsak looked up, meeting his flag captain's eyes levelly. "Please go ahead and send Turner a 'well-done' for getting this to us so quickly, too. I should've remembered to have Karen do that for me."

"I'll see to it, Sir." Kamstra gave his superior a respectful nod, smiled briefly at Habib, and headed for the dining cabin door.

"Sounds like Manpower's really loaded these bastards up with firepower, Boss," Habib commented, bringing Rozsak's attention back to her. She was gazing down at the memo board herself, her expression thoughtful. " Ten ex-SLN battlecruisers?" She shook her head and looked up at him with a tart smile. "They don't exactly believe in subtle, do that?"

"Edie, they're planning an Eridani Edict violation, whatever they want to call it. Compared to that, what's a dozen or so Indefatigables one way or the other?"

"Point," Habib conceded.

"Well." Rozsak looked at his half-full wine glass thoughtfully for a moment, then shrugged and drained it. "Let's be getting to the flag deck."

"All right, people, they're here," Rear Admiral Luiz Rozsak said six minutes later, smiling thinly at his staff on SLNS Marksman 's flag bridge. "Unfortunately, we hadn't counted on quite how many people they were bringing to the party," he observed.

"I can't say I'm too happy about those emission signatures, either, Sir," Lieutenant Commander Thomas Szklenski said from his quadrant of the outsized com screen which tied Flag Bridge to Auxiliary Control. As in the Royal Manticoran Navy, Marksman 's Erewhonese designers had placed the emergency command deck as far from the cruiser's normal bridge as they possibly could and still keep it inside the armored protection of her core hull. As Marksman 's executive officer, AuxCon was Szklenski's battle station, and his brown eyes were narrow as he contemplated the tactical plot in front of him. " Ten Solarian battlecruisers?" He shook his own head as he unwittingly echoed Habib's earlier remark. "Where the hell did they get their hands on those? "

"At least they're all Indefatigables , not Nevadas ," Lieutenant Robert Womack pointed out from his own com display. Womack, the cruiser's tactical officer, was with Commodore Kamstra on Marksman 's command deck.

"A point, Robert," Rozsak acknowledged. "On the other hand, I don't think we can afford to assume Manpower just picked these things up in a boneyard somewhere. From all the reports we've seen, the units they supplied to Monica had first-line electronics on board. I don't think there's any reason to hope these units don't.

"No, Sir," Habib agreed, gazing down at the plot. "At the same time though," she looked up again, "the Indefatigables ' missile defenses are going to be a lot weaker than what those four Warlords will be able to manage."

"Oh, thank you, Edie!" Rozsak said, shaking his head at her with a much broader smile. "It's such a comfort to know I can always count on you to find the silver lining in even the darkest cloud."

"You're welcome, Sir," Habib replied from behind a perfect poker face, and Rozsak waved a finger under her nose.

"You can be replaced, you know," he warned her, and she nodded.

"I realize that, Sir," she said gravely.

"Good!"

Rozsak gave his finger one more wave, then turned his attention back to Lieutenant Womack. The lieutenant, like most of the other officers physically or electronically present, was smiling at the byplay between the admiral and his chief of staff. That was a good sign, Rozsak thought, especially given the tactical plot's current display.

I've been telling everyone we had to assume they'd been heavily reinforced, but I never figured on there being this many of them , he told himself. At least I picked the right threat axis . . . assuming, of course, that they haven't given these bastards even more ships than we've already seen to come sneaking in from somewhere else! He suppressed an urge to shake his head as his own eyes went back to the plot. On the other hand, let's not get too carried away here, Luiz. They're already using a sledgehammer to crack a peanut, given the resistance they undoubtedly expect. Given their firepower advantage, there's no point in their trying to fool around with some kind of fancy misdirection .

"Commander Habib almost certainly has a point about their active defenses, Robert," he said out loud. "But I think we're going to have to assume these people have the Aegis upgrade. I know—I know!" He half-raised one hand. "The units at Monica didn't have Aegis. Well, they didn't have Halo, either, and I think we're going to have to assume these people have that, too. If they don't, there's no harm done. If they do have them, though, and we assume they don't, things could get uglier than they have to. So, assuming they do, tell me what you think that means for targeting priorities."

"Yes, Sir."

Womack frowned in obvious thought for several seconds, his eyes looking off-screen, where they were no doubt considering the command deck's repeater plot. Rozsak waited patiently. The one hole he had not yet filled in his own staff was Operations. He needed to do something about that, and he intended to, although he didn't expect Dirk-Steven Kamstra to be especially delighted when the commodore found out who Rozsak had in mind for the position. Despite his youth, Robert Womack had thoroughly demonstrated both his competence and his levelheadedness, and Rozsak had been impressed by his performance since they'd arrived here in Torch. He had every intention of stealing Womack from Kamstra as soon as the current operation was over. What mattered at the moment, though, was that in the course of the task force's exercises, the lieutenant had demonstrated a better grasp of the Mark-17-E missile's capabilities—and limitations—than Rozsak himself had, in some ways.