David Weber - Storm From the Shadows

"But the Manticorans aren't a typical—"

" Don't tell me about their super weapons again, Mr. Commissioner," Crandall snapped. "I'll grant you that they obviously have much longer ranged missiles than we'd appreciated. That may actually make some sense of the preposterous stories we've been hearing about their damned war with the Havenites. But what they could do against a dozen Frontier Fleet battlecruisers won't help them very much against modern, integrated missile defense from nine squadrons of the wall, plus screen. Trust me, they'll need something more than a few fancy tricks with missiles to stop my task force! And I don't intend to stand here with my thumb up my ass while they get themselves organized."

"What do you mean, 'organized,' Admiral?" Hongbo asked in a carefully unprovocative tone.

"I mean they obviously didn't have any idea my task force was anywhere in the vicinity, or they wouldn't have tried this shit in the first place. But they damned well know now. Or they know more than they did, at any rate. Just who the hell do you think that mysterious hyper footprint yesterday morning was, Mr. Hongbo? I don't know what it was doing here, but I know damned well it was a Manty, and whoever it was, she's on her way straight back to tell her superiors about my wall of battle. Well now that they know, I don't intend to give them time to send wallers of their own through from Manticore!"

"Admiral," Verrochio said as forcefully as he could (speaking for the recorders, of course), "I cannot authorize any sort of action or reprisal against the Manticorans without approval from higher authority within the Ministry!" He raised one hand like a stop sign and continued quickly as Crandall seemed to swell visibly. "I'm not saying you aren't totally justified in your feelings. And assuming the information available to us at this time is accurate, I think it's extremely likely Ministry approval would be forthcoming. As you say, allowing something like this to go unchallenged, to set some sort of precedent for other neobarb navies, could be disastrous. But making a decision which would amount to going to war with a multi-system stellar power, especially one so deeply involved in the League's carrying trade, is well beyond the scope of my authority as a Frontier Security governor."

Hongbo felt an unusual glow of admiration for his nominal superior's footwork. If Verrochio had shown the ability to play Byng like a violin, he was playing Crandall like an entire string quartet! This was working out even better than either of them had hoped, at least from the perspective of evading responsibility. From the perspective of what was about to happen to other people, it was something else entirely, he supposed. But there wasn't much he could do about that, and from a purely selfish viewpoint, it could hardly have been better. He and Verrochio had performed to specification, which ought to get Ottweiler and his employers off their necks, and managed to cover their tracks quite neatly along the way. It had been Byng's decision to depart for New Tuscany, and while Hongbo was genuinely shocked at what the Manties had done—and how easily they'd done it—no one could possibly fault him or Verrochio for it. And now Verrochio had gotten himself, and by extension Hongbo, on record as the civilian voice of reason in the face of spinal-reflex military pugnacity.

Which is probably going to be a very good thing if it turns out that our good admiral has underestimated the Manties even half as badly as I think she has , the vice-commissioner thought. She's thinking in terms of standard reprisals against uppity neobarbs, something the Navy's done hundreds of times, whether it admits it or not. But these aren't your typical neobarbs, even based solely on what's happened already. Unfortunately, she doesn't even have a clue how different they are, and she's not prepared to listen to someone like Thurgood. After all, he's only Frontier Fleet. What could he know about fights between ships of the wall?

"Well," Crandall didn't quite sneer, in response to Verrochio's protest, "you undoubtedly know the limits of your authority better than I do, Sir. However,Iknow the limits of my authority, and I also recognize my responsibilities. So, with all due respect for your need for Ministry approval, I have no intention of waiting for it."

"What do you mean?" Verrochio asked, his voice taut.

"I mean I'll be underway within forty-eight hours, Mr. Commissioner," Crandall said flatly, "and the Manties won't be happy to see me at all."

"Well, Theresa?" Admiral Frederick Topolev said, looking at his chief of staff.

"Captain Walsh says we're ready to go, Sir," Commander Theresa Coleman replied. "And Felicidad's boards are all green."

Coleman nodded her head in the direction of Commander Felicidad Kolstad, Topolev's operations officer. It was odd, a corner of Topolev's thoughts reflected for far from the first time, that three of the four most important officers on his staff were not only all female, but all quite attractive, in their own very distinct ways. Although, perhaps, that attractiveness shouldn't have been such a surprise, since all of his officers were the products of alpha, beta, or gamma lines.

At the moment, Kolstad was concentrating all of her own attention on the readouts which showed the exact position of every unit of Topolev's task force, literally down to the last centimeter. All twenty of his ships were tractored together into two big, ungainly formations, nine hundred kilometers apart, as they floated with the closest thing possible to a zero velocity relative to one another and to the normal-space universe they'd left three months earlier.

"All right, people," Topolev said as calmly as he could, "let's do this."

"Yes, Sir," Coleman acknowledged, and passed the order to Captain Joshua Walsh, MANS Mako 's captain.

Absolutely nothing seemed to happen for the next two or three minutes, but appearances were deceiving, and Topolev waited patiently, watching his own displays, as Task Force One of the Mesan Alignment Navy translated ever so slowly and gradually back into normal-space.

This maneuver had been tested against the Mesa System's sensor arrays by crews using the early Ghost -class ships even before the first of the Shark -class prototypes had ever been laid down, and Task Force One had practiced it over a hundred times once the mission had been okayed. Despite all that, Topolev still cherished a few reservations about the entire operation. Not about the abilities of his people, or the technical capabilities of his vessels, but about the timing.

And about the fact that we were never supposed to carry this out with the Sharks in the first place, Freddy, he reminded himself. Don't forget that minor point! This was what the Leonard Detweiler class was supposed to be for after the Sharks proved the basic concept. They weren't supposed to carry out the actual mission themselves; they were supposed to serve as training ships for the crews of the ships that would execute the mission .

He felt himself scowling down at his console as the familiar, worn-out thread of worry trickled through the back of his mind. He banished the expression quickly—it was hardly the confident, calm look his officers needed to see at this particular moment—and wished he could banish the worry with equal speed.

No one seemed to have noticed his momentary lapse, and his own concern smoothed into concentration as readouts began to slowly flicker and change. Both groups of his ships slid gradually, carefully towards the hyper wall, making the slowest possible translation back into normal-space.