A Rising Thunder-ARC (40 page)

“Who’s the message from, Reuben?” Filareta continued, turning his back on the main plot to face Captain Reuben Sedgewick, his staff communications officer.

“It’s from Admiral Harrington, Sir,” Sedgewick replied, but there was something odd about his tone, and Filareta frowned. Any light-speed com request had to be coming from Tango Two if it had reached them this soon, and he was a little surprised Harrington was there, instead of with Tango One. But that wasn’t enough to account for the odd note in Sedgewick’s response.

“Is there a problem, Reuben?”

His own tone was a bit colder than it had been.

“It’s just…” Sedgewick paused, then shrugged very slightly. “It’s just that she asked for you, specifically, by name, Fleet Admiral. And she, ah, asked for you as the commanding officer of Eleventh Fleet.”

Filareta felt his expression stiffen. He gazed at the com officer a moment longer, then looked back at Burrows. The chief of staff’s amusement had vanished, and he met his superior’s eyes with a frown.

“So much for operational security,” Filareta observed.

“Yes, Sir.” Burrows shook his head in disgust. “Somebody must have blabbed back on Old Terra.”

“One of the many joyful disadvantages of having to come the long way round while the other side can get intelligence reports directly through the damn Junction.”

Filareta’s light tone was almost whimsical; his expression was not.

“I wonder how long they’ve known?” Burrows continued, thinking out loud.

“That
is
an interesting thought, isn’t it?”

Filareta showed his teeth. Burrows had an excellent point. If the Manties had learned of his orders far enough in advance, there was no telling what sort of welcome they might have decided to set up.

Stop it
, he told himself firmly.
Yes, they must have known you were coming, but knowing a two hundred-kilo sumo wrestler is about to rip your head off doesn’t help a lot if you weigh fifty kilos dripping wet. It only means you can watch it coming longer, not that you can get out of the way. And it sure as hell doesn’t mean you can
beat
the bastard once he gets his hands on you!

“Time to the hyper limit, Yvonne?” he asked calmly.

“Just under six minutes, Fleet Admiral. Call it one-point-five-seven million klicks.”

“Thank you.”

Filareta looked at Burrows again. Their current velocity, relative to Sphinx, was up to 3,882 KPS; by the time they crossed the hyper limit, it would be up to over five thousand, exactly as Approach Bravo specified. At that velocity, it would take twenty-six minutes just to decelerate to zero, and they’d be the next best thing to 3.9 million kilometers
inside
the limit when they did. From that position, they’d need
another
twenty-six minutes to get back across the limit where they could reenter hyper-space.

All of which meant they theoretically had six minutes in which they could break off with relative impunity…after which, they would be stuck inside the Manticore-A limit for the next best thing to an hour.

Interesting timing
, a corner of his mind thought.
Did they wait this long to contact us—and let us know they already knew we were coming—in an attempt to panic me into breaking off before we cross the limit?

“Bill.”

“Yes, Fleet Admiral?” Admiral Daniels looked up from his console.

“I want the entire fleet scheduled for an alpha translation twenty seconds short of the limit.”

“Excuse me, Sir?” Daniels looked as if he couldn’t quite believe what he’d just heard. Which wasn’t too surprising, perhaps, given his superior’s decision to go with Approach Bravo.

“Is that a problem for you, Admiral?” Filareta asked, looking at his operations officer coldly.

“Uh, no, Sir. Of course not! I just…wasn’t expecting it.”

Filareta continued to eye him coolly for a second, then relented.

“I didn’t say we were actually going to translate,” he pointed out. “We can abort any time up to the last fifty seconds of the cycle, correct?”

“Yes, Sir.” Daniels nodded, his eyes narrowed as understanding dawned. “You just want to have the extra three minutes in hand if you need them, is that it, Sir?”

“Exactly.” This time, Filareta smiled. “It’ll give me at least another couple of minutes to think, anyway.”

Daniels nodded again, more energetically, and began passing instructions while Filareta looked back to the communications officer.

“All right, Reuben,” he said. “Put it on the main display.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Filareta turned towards the indicated display as the holo image of a very tall woman appeared above it. She wore a white beret, rather than the black beret that was standard for Manty flag officers, but he recognized her immediately from the file imagery. Even if he hadn’t, her skinsuit carried the four broad cuff bands and four golden stars of a fleet admiral, and the six-limbed creature on her shoulder would have been sufficient clue if it hadn’t. She also had remarkably cold brown eyes as she gazed out of the display at him.

Alexander-Harrington’s recorded image stood motionless for a moment, until Sedgewick entered the “play” command.

“Fleet Admiral Filareta,” she said then, her soprano voice as cold as her eyes. “In case you haven’t already figured it out, my name is Alexander-Harrington. I have the honor to command the forces assigned to the defense of this star system, and the fact that I know both your name and that you’re the commanding officer of Eleventh Fleet should be an indication that I know precisely why you’re here. In case you require further evidence of just how thoroughly your plans have been blown, however, I’ll add for the record that I also know you’re here to execute ‘Operation Raging Justice,’ which I find a rather…ironic way to describe the forcible conquest of the Star Empire of Manticore by the Solarian League Navy without the bothersome details of niggling little things like a formal declaration of war or any consultation with the League’s own Assembly. I suppose that’s just the way the League’s grown accustomed to doing things, and it’s worked fairly well for it so far.”

“But trust me, Admiral.
This
time, it isn’t going to happen.”

Her smile was a razor, and the treecat on her shoulder bared needle-sharp-looking fangs.

“I suppose you may actually believe your intelligence services’ conclusion that the Yawata Strike has crippled our defenses. I assure you, that isn’t the case. I suppose it’s also possible you believe that the fact that I have only forty superdreadnoughts in my wall indicates you have the force advantage. If you should be thinking anything of the sort, I suggest you remember what happened to Admiral Crandall, when Admiral Gold Peak had
no
superdreadnoughts in her order of battle.”

She paused, as if to allow that to sink in, then continued in that same icy voice.

“I hereby inform you, Admiral, that you are in violation of Manticoran territorial space. I further inform you that the Star Empire of Manticore considers your presence here, given the many previous instances of blatant and unprovoked Solarian aggression against the Star Empire, an act of war. Should you not immediately depart Manticoran territorial space, Her Majesty’s Navy and its allies will respond to that act of war with deadly force. Should you cross our hyper limit after this warning, I am instructed to inform you that Empress Elizabeth and her government will take it as incontrovertible proof that, despite its pious diplomatic protestations and posturing, the Solarian League in fact actively desires a state of war between it and Manticore. Should that be the case, we will certainly give you one.”

She paused once more, briefly, her brown-flint eyes hard with confidence.

“Whatever the people who sent you here may have thought, Admiral, you have no chance whatever of completing your mission. If you attempt to do so, especially after this warning, the consequences—including the thousands of your own personnel who will die and the general war between the Star Empire and the Solarian League which most assuredly
will
result—will rest upon your head and those of the corrupt bureaucrats who sent you here without a single shred of legal authority or moral justification.

“Alexander-Harrington, clear.”

She stopped speaking, and in the silence which enveloped SLNS
Philip Oppenheimer
’s flag bridge, it required all of Filareta’s willpower to keep his own face expressionless.

She sure as hell doesn’t
sound
like she’s bluffing
.
And she obviously does know—or seems to, anyway—all about our orders. But, damn it, she’s got less than
fifty
wallers! And nobody could fight as many battles as this woman is supposed to’ve fought without learning to bluff convincingly!

“Record for transmission,” he heard himself say.

“Yes, Sir,” Sedgewick replied. “Live mike.”

“Admiral Alexander-Harrington,” he made himself match the chill of her own smile, “obviously you
do
know why I’m here. That being the case, I see no reason not to cut right to the heart of matters. There’s obviously a wide difference between your star nation’s interpretation of recent events and the Solarian League’s, and I have no intention of debating those interpretations. While I might not choose to use ‘conquest’ to describe my mission orders, I
am
here under orders to demand, in the name of the Solarian League, the stand down and surrender of all Manticoran military forces, the reopening of the wormholes you have illegally closed to all Solarian traffic as an act of economic warfare against the League in direct contravention of every principle of freedom of trade and passage, and the surrender of your civilian government. You may genuinely believe you have the capacity to defeat my forces. For that matter, you may actually have that capacity, although I beg to differ. Even if you do, however, you won’t accomplish it without taking significant losses of your own, and you might want to consider the fact that in addition to the other fifteen hundred superdreadnoughts actively in commission, the Navy has over eight thousand more in the Reserve. My presence here should indicate to you just how seriously the League takes this situation, and I assure you that, however many of those other ten thousand ships-of-the-wall it may require, the Solarian League
will
win in the end.”

He paused to let her consider his words, then straightened his shoulders and looked straight into the pickup.

“I intend to complete my mission, Admiral Alexander-Harrington, and I will. To use your own words, if you persist in resisting, the consequences—including the thousands of your personnel who will die—will rest upon your head and the Star Empire of Manticore’s. I demand that you stand down your fleet immediately. If you refuse, I
will
engage you.

“Filareta, clear.”

* * *

“Well, that wasn’t exactly unexpected,” Honor observed fifty-odd seconds later. “Except for the bit about reopening the termini. I guess there was time for Old Chicago to tell him about that before he sailed, after all.”

“It’s certainly
arrogant
enough for me to believe it came from a Solly,” Mercedes Brigham half-muttered, her expression baleful.

Honor shook her head, smiling faintly, but she also checked the digital timer counting down in one corner of the main plot. She could have used the Hermes buoys planted along with the stealthed recon platforms to conduct her conversation with Filareta in what amounted to real-time. In this instance, though, the lag of light-speed communications worked in her favor, and she glanced at Lieutenant Commander Brantley.

“Time for round two, Harper.”

“Yes, Your Grace.” The communications officer nodded. “Live mike.”

“I see rationality still isn’t a hallmark of the Solarian officer corps, Admiral Filareta,” she said, looking straight into the pickup. “I can’t say that comes as a dreadful surprise, given the uniformly disastrous decisions Solarian flag officers—and especially
Battle Fleet
flag officers, now that I think of it—seem to have been making for some time now. Hasn’t anyone in Solarian uniform noted that you haven’t come out on top in a single one of the engagements you’ve provoked? Except, of course, when your courageous personnel choose to open fire without warning on ships which don’t even have their wedges up. Which, I point out to you, is
not
the case in this instance.”

Her lip curled, her brown eyes glittering with scorn, and the contempt in her expression and her voice was genuine.

“Obviously, I can’t prevent you from sailing your entire fleet into an even worse disaster than Sandra Crandall’s. I do warn you, however, that this entire exchange has been recorded and will be provided—at no charge—to the prosecution at the court-martial I’m sure you’ll be facing, should you happen to be one of the survivors of the fresh debacle the Solarian Navy is about to experience. I repeat my original warning. If the forces under your command cross the hyper limit of this star system, you will be engaged and destroyed and a state of war will exist between the Solarian League and the Star Empire of Manticore and its allies.

“Alexander-Harrington, clear.”

* * *

“Alexander-Harrington, clear.”

Massimo Filareta’s nostrils flared at the cold, biting disdain in that soprano voice, yet he made himself stop and think.

So far, the exchange had used up two and a half minutes, leaving him just over three minutes from the hyper limit. He’d bought himself a little extra cushion with his instructions to Daniels, but even so, he had to make the call within the next two minutes.

The woman had to be insane. She was outnumbered ten to one, with a base velocity of zero relative to the planet, while Eleventh Fleet came at her at over five thousand kilometers per second. She’d have to have one hell of a lot more of a compensator advantage than even the wildest tales suggested if she hoped to pull away from him under those circumstances!
Unless she seriously believes she can pound us to pieces with those damned missiles of theirs before we get into our range of her, despite our velocity advantage
, he thought.
That might be it. But she’s
already
in our powered range, whether she knows it or not. Accuracy may suck, but we can
reach
her, and I’ve got
ten times
as many ships as she does! And I’m not going to get another chance like this one. Not another tactical situation where the frigging Manties
can’t
stay away from us, pick us apart from outside our effective range. This is a chance to take out what looks like it’s at least a third of their remaining wall of battle, and they can’t survive that kind of loss rate even if they take out my entire command in return
.