Shadow of Freedom-eARC (9 page)

Hence the current exercise.

Why do I have a bad feeling about this?
Kaplan asked herself.
I mean, there they sit, plodding along at barely forty thousand kilometers per second—slow, fat, dumb, and happy. Sure, they’ve got a pair of light cruisers to back the destroyers, but that’s still no match for a pair of
Rolands,
damn it!

She frowned some more, one dark-skinned hand playing with a lock of bright blonde hair. On the face of it, there wasn’t much the putative Solly escorts could do to stop
Tristram
and
Kay
from skinning their convoy like a Sphinxian prong buck. Kaplan’s Mark 16s had over three times the reach of the SLN’s Javelin-class shipkillers, which meant she could destroy all of those merchies without ever even entering their escorts’ range.

Of course, a
Roland
carried only 240 Mark 16s, and accuracy would be significantly degraded at maximum range, even against merchantships. True, the simulation’s parameters assumed the raiders were accompanied by a missile transport from which they could resupply, but with the Yawata Strike’s catastrophic consequences for missile production, no one wanted to waste any of the limited number available. So the logical move was to get as close to her prey as she could without ever entering the escorts’ powered envelope. That would maximize the accuracy (and economy) of her own fire while maintaining her immunity from the defenders.

Which is exactly what I was planning to do
.
And so far I haven’t seen any reason to change my mind. Not one I could put my finger on, anyway. But still
…

Her eyes narrowed as she finally realized what was bothering her. She didn’t know Captain Zavala as well as she wished she did, but he struck her as quite a different proposition from the larger-than-life, almost boisterous Commodore Chatterjee. No one who’d ever served with Chatterjee could have doubted the commodore’s competence, but his enthusiasm and inexhaustible energy had been the first things to strike almost anyone on first acquaintance, and he’d had a very…direct approach to problems. Not only was Zavala barely two thirds as tall as Chatterjee had been, he was also far quieter, with a thoughtful, almost preoccupied air which she’d quickly realized was deceptive. Chatterjee had been well suited to his nickname of “Bear,” but Zavala was a treecat—compact, sleek, and with the confident, composed watchfulness of a patient predator.

She’d also done a bit of quiet research since he’d assumed command of the squadron and found that
Commander
Zavala been a senior tactical instructor at Saganami Island for four years. He’d been slated for command of a destroyer at the time Oscar Saint-Just had been toppled, but he’d lost that appointment in the Janacek build-down and been sent to the Academy instead. In fact, his Saganami Island stint had coincided almost exactly with Edward Janacek’s tenure as First Lord of Admiralty, and being beached by the Janacek Admiralty was a recommendation in its own right, as far as Kaplan was concerned. From the look of things, he’d done a damned good job as an instructor, though, and the
White Haven
Admiralty had given him command with almost indecent haste. He’d posted a pretty good record as a destroyer skipper since, too. In fact, he’d been jumped straight past captain (junior-grade) to captain of the list on the basis of his performance with Eighth Fleet. Well, that was scarcely surprising. All false modesty aside, Kaplan knew the Navy wasn’t choosing
Roland
skippers at random, and every CO in the squadron had amply demonstrated his or her capabilities before being selected.

Yet for this exercise, Zavala had relegated himself to the role of a passenger aboard his flagship. He was only there to observe, he’d explained, and
that
was the reason Kaplan’s mental antennae were quivering.

An observer, yes, but to observe exactly
what
, I wonder?

She stroked one eyebrow with an index finger, remembering how straightforward the simulation had sounded when she read the initial ops order. In fact, it had gone beyond mere straightforwardness to the absurdly simple, and for the life of her she couldn’t remember the last time a
good
senior officer had organized a training sim as a “gimme.” The Manticoran tradition was to train its people in exercises which were deliberately
harder
than actual operations were likely to prove. That obviously wasn’t the case here, yet someone like Zavala was unlikely to forget the tradition. Which meant there was a nasty hook somewhere inside that tasty-looking bait. But what sort of hook…?

“Abigail,” she said.

“Yes, Ma’am?” Lieutenant Hearns looked over her shoulder, one eyebrow raised.

“Do you have those reports on what happened at Torch handy?”

“Such as they are and what we have of them, yes, Ma’am.”

“I know we don’t have much detail,” Kaplan acknowledged, which was unfortunately true. Admiral Luis Rozsak and the Erewhonese were keeping any reports of the actual engagement pretty close to their vests. “But I’m thinking more about ONI’s speculations. About the performance of the missiles Mesa equipped those StateSec retreads with.”

“We don’t have any hard numbers, Ma’am.” Abigail’s own expression turned thoughtful as she paged through her orderly mental files. “In fact there’s nothing specific about the Mesan-supplied missiles at all. But one of the analysts on Admiral Hemphill’s staff did suggest they may not have been standard Solly issue. Is that what you were thinking of, Ma’am?”

“That’s exactly what I was thinking about.” Kaplan nodded. “Refresh my memory.”

“Well, as you said yourself, it’s all speculative, Ma’am. But stripped of all the statistical analysis, his basic point was that we know Erewhon is building new units for Governor Barregos. We also know Erewhon has multidrive missiles of its own. They’re still the big, bulky capacitor-powered model, but they’ve got plenty of legs, and their warheads and seekers are better than anything the Sollies have. For that matter, Erewhon certainly ought to be able to manufacture the old Mark 13 extended-range missile for smaller launchers, and he suggested Barregos and Rozsak would have held out for at least the Mark 13. Whatever they may or may not be telling Old Chicago,
they’re
obviously aware missile ranges have been climbing in our neck of the woods. That being the case, they probably would have insisted on buying the longest-ranged birds they could get.”

She paused, as if to be sure her CO was with her so far, and Kaplan nodded again.

“The point he made—the one I’m pretty sure you’re thinking about, Ma’am—was that given Rozsak’s reported losses and assuming he
had
acquired longer-ranged missiles from the Erewhonese, he must either have fought like a complete and total idiot (which isn’t what his résumé would lead someone to expect) or else significantly underestimated his
enemies’
range. If he hadn’t, he never would have entered it in the first place. If he did, he may have shaved the margin too tightly trying to get in close enough to maximize his hit probabilities.”

“Exactly.” Kaplan smiled thinly. “We don’t know what the range actually was, but I think your analyst was onto something, Abigail.”

“I admit it makes a lot of sense, Ma’am. But we’ve gotten really good intel on the Sollies’ weaponry since Spindle. We haven’t found any extended range missiles in any of their magazines. For that matter, there’s absolutely no reference to anything of the sort in their tac manuals or the training sims we captured from them. I’ve been playing with their missile doctrine—offense and defense—ever since we got access, and it’s all concerned with really short-range engagements, at least by our standards. And they obviously never saw the range of the Mark 16 or the Mark 23 coming at Spindle.”

“I know. In fact, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if whatever the Mesans handed their mercenaries for the attack on Torch was another little toy their good friends and fellow scum at Technodyne whipped up just for them. I’m thinking about those system-defense missiles they surprised us with at Monica.”

Their gazes met, and Kaplan saw the same memory in Abigail’s gray-blue eyes. The memory of how those system-defense missiles had ravaged Aivars Terekhov’s scratch squadron—and damned near killed Naomi Kaplan—from far beyond the threat range Kaplan herself had projected based on known Solarian missile performance.

“Those were awfully big missiles, Ma’am,” Abigail pointed out. She wasn’t arguing, Kaplan realized. She was simply thinking out loud. “We haven’t seen any sign these people have pods on tow, and no Sally cruiser or destroyer could launch birds that size without being virtually rebuilt. Even then, they probably couldn’t get more than four or five launchers and forty or fifty missiles aboard something the size of one of their light cruisers. And even completely ignoring the mass and volume penalties of launchers that size, I’d be surprised if one of their tincans could squeeze in more than twenty birds that big. On a good day.”

“Agreed. But suppose Technodyne came up with something smaller that still offered a significant range increase over the standard Javelin? They wouldn’t have to have the kind of legs we ran into at Monica to come as a nasty surprise to someone who thought she knew exactly what kind of range they
did
have. And somehow I can’t escape the suspicion that Captain Zavala may just have read the same reports—and the same ONI ‘speculation’—you and I read. In which case, I think we might want to consider the possibility that these foolishly overconfident escorts know something
we
don’t know about their missiles.”

“I don’t have any problem with that, Ma’am,” Abigail agreed with a smile.

“Of course, there’s the little problem that we don’t know just how much of a range extension Captain Zavala might have opted for,” Kaplan mused out loud. Several of her other bridge officers were listening in now, and other smiles began to blossom. “I think the simplest way for him to go about it would have been to simply double their effective range,” she went on. “Of course, he may have settled on some other multiplier just to be difficult, but their accuracy at any sort of extended range is going to be a lot worse than ours. Unless he’s decided to go ahead and give them Ghost Rider, as well!”

It’s always possible he’s done exactly that
, she reflected to herself.
But let’s be reasonable here. The idea’s to make exercises
difficult,
not automatically suicidal! Well, unless you’re Lady Gold Peak pinning back Admiral Oversteegan’s ears, at least.

She chuckled at the thought, but it was unlikely Zavala would have been quite as nasty as Lady Gold Peak. After all, the countess and Oversteegan had something of a history, according to the rumor mill.

“Sixteen million kilometers, you think, Ma’am?” Abigail asked politely, interrupting her thoughts.

“Let’s make it seventeen,” Kaplan demurred. “It gives us a little more of a fudge factor, and with Ghost Rider, we ought to be able to punch out merchies at that range without wasting
too
many attack birds.”

“Yes, Ma’am.” Abigail glanced down at her displays, lips pursed, then looked back up at Kaplan. “I’ll need five or six minutes to reconfigure my firing plans, Ma’am.”

“Well, by my calculations it’s going to take us another three hours to get to seventeen million klicks,” Kaplan observed dryly. “I think we’ve got time.”

* * *

“Used up quite a few missiles there, didn’t you, Captain Kaplan?” Jacob Zavala inquired testily. “They don’t grow on trees, y’know! Especially not now.”

“No, Sir, they don’t,” Naomi Kaplan acknowledged with a mildness which would have raised warning flags with anyone who knew her well. “On the other hand, we did take out every one of the freighters without ever entering the escorts’ reach.”

“True, but you could’ve saved at least twenty percent of your ammo expenditure if you’d closed another five or six million kilometers, and that still would’ve left you outside even Javelin range,” Zavala pointed out.

“Yes, Sir, it would have.” Kaplan nodded. “On the other hand,” she continued in the same mild tone, “it probably
wouldn’t
have left me outside the range of the missiles you actually gave the Sollies for the exercise.”

“What’s that?” Zavala cocked his head, blue eyes narrowed as he gazed quizzically at Kaplan. “Are you suggesting I’d
cheat
, Captain?”

“To quote one of my tac instructors at the Crusher, Sir, if you aren’t cheating, you’re not trying hard enough.” Kaplan shrugged. “Just as a matter of curiosity, how much of a range boost
did
you assign?”

“You, Captain Kaplan, have a disrespectful and insulting opinion of my fair-mindedness,” Zavala said severely, then snorted. “As a matter of fact, they had a nominal effective range of twelve million kilometers. A twenty-five percent jump seemed about right.”

“Really?” Kaplan smiled. “I figured you’d settle for a nice round number and just double it, Sir.”

“Now
that
, Captain,
would
have been underhanded, unfair, sneaky, and generally despicable. Which is why I’ll probably do exactly that to Captain Morgan’s
division when it’s his turn in the barrel.” Zavala waggled a finger in Kaplan’s direction. “And don’t you go warning him, either!”

“Me?
Warn
him about it?” Kaplan laughed. “Oh, don’t worry about that, Sir. As a matter of fact, I’ve already bet him a bottle of Glenfiddich Grand Reserve that he can’t match our score on the sim. I’ve known Captain Morgan for a while, you know. And somehow I seem to’ve forgotten to mention to him the range at which
we
engaged the convoy. I hate to say it,” she assumed a mournful expression, “but under the circumstances, I strongly suspect he’s going to decide that if he closes to just outside Javelin range, he’ll be able to punch out all of the merchies with a lot less missiles than we expended.”

She shook her head sadly, and Zavala laughed.

“A woman after my own underhanded, unfair, sneaky, and generally despicable heart,” he observed. “I definitely see an admiral’s flag in your future, Captain Kaplan!”

Chapter Six