Chapter Sixty-Six

"Sir, we've got impeller signatures moving clear of the Junction!" Commander Zucker said sharply.

"How many?" Diamato asked tautly.

"Hard to say with all this wedge interference, Sir." Zucker grimaced. "I make it at least fifty, though."

"Right." Diamato nodded and looked at his com officer. "Immediate priority for the Flag. Tell them we have fifty-plus wallers deploying for a hyper translation! Tell them-"

He broke off, as the deploying impeller signatures abruptly vanished.

"Correction!" he said sharply. "Inform the Flag that fifty-plus wallers have just translated out!"

"Captain Houellebecq says damage control has that fire in CIC under control, Sir."

"Thank you, Ace." Lester Tourville nodded to Lieutenant Eisenberg, and then returned his attention to Captain DeLaney.

"The numbers are still coming in, Boss," the chief of staff told him, her expression grim. "So far, they don't sound good. At the moment, it sounds like we can write off over half our wall of battle. Probably more than that, if we don't control the star system when the dust settles."

"We always knew we were going to get hammered," Tourville said, his own voice and expression calmer than DeLaney's. And it was true. His losses were twelve percent higher than his pre-battle estimate-almost twenty-five percent higher than the Octogan staff weenies had estimated-because he hadn't anticipated how tightly the Manties would bunch their salvos. But from the beginning, everyone had understood that Second Fleet was going to take severe losses.

"But we cost them almost as many ships of the wall as we lost," he continued, "and if NavInt's estimates are accurate, we've got damned near three times as many of them as they do. Did. Not to mention the fact that we're about to take at least temporary control of their home star system away from them."

"I know," DeLaney said. "But I'm a little concerned about their LACs. We've got twenty-three hundred of them still coming in on us, and we're a lot lower on ammo than I'd like. We've fired off sixty percent of our MDMs, and we've lost effectively half our wall. I don't have exact numbers, but the current availability has to be no more than about two hundred thousand rounds. If we burn them trying to keep their Shrikes out of knife range, we're going to be sucking vacuum against Third Fleet."

"Then we'll have to let the Cimeterres and the screen fend off their LACs," Tourville said unflinchingly. "They'll get hammered at least as badly as we did, but they'll do the job."

"Yes, Sir." DeLaney gave herself a little shake, then bobbed her head in agreement. "I know we're still on profile for the operation, Boss. I guess I just never really thought about the sheer scale of things. Not emotionally."

"I made myself sit down and do that the day Thomas Theisman and Arnaud Marquette explained Beatrice to us," Tourville said grimly. "I didn't like it then, and I don't like it now. For that matter, they didn't like it. But it's a price we can afford to pay if it ends this goddamned war."

"Yes, Sir."

"Frazier."

"Yes, Sir?"

"What's our-"

"Excuse me, Sir!" Lieutenant Eisenberg said suddenly, pressing her hand to her earbug as she listened intently. "Admiral Diamato says the Manties have just translated into hyper!"

"And so it begins," Tourville murmured softly, then gave his head an irritated shake as he realized how pretentious that sounded.

But that didn't make it untrue, and he watched the master plot intently, waiting for Kuzak's ships to reappear upon it.

He didn't have to wait long. Less than fifteen minutes after they'd vanished from the Junction, they reappeared dangerously close to the RZ's boundary. It was an impressive display of pinpoint astrogation-one that showed a steel-nerved willingness to cur their margin razor thin. And one which also put the Manties well out on Second Fleet's flank and headed for Sphinx on a least-time course.

"Exactly where I would have placed them myself," he said quietly to DeLaney, who nodded vigorously.

Second Fleet had started edging away from its original Sphinx-bound vector from the moment the shooting stopped. Five minutes later, it had altered course much more sharply, and at the moment, it was very obviously retreating from its original objective. In fact, Tourville had made the decision to sacrifice his worst lamed cripples within ten minutes. Any ship which couldn't produce an acceleration of at least 370 g had been abandoned, scuttling charges set. He hadn't liked doing that, but he couldn't afford to be hampered by them even if the rest of Beatrice worked perfectly. Even without them, Second Fleet's current maximum acceleration was barely 3.6 KPS2, and that was too low for it to completely avoid the Sphinx defenses' missile envelope, whatever he did. Which didn't even consider the vengeful presence of Third Fleet coming in from the side to pin him between Sphinx and its own batteries.

Under the circumstances, Tourville had had no choice-for several reasons-but to settle on a course which formed a sharp angle from his original vector. Since he couldn't avoid going at least as far as Sphinx, he had pitched up vertically, to climb above the plane of the ecliptic, while simultaneously changing heading by 135ø. That let him pile on side vector to generate as much separation from the planet as he could get as he slid past it... which also happened to be the fastest way out of the system. The Manticoran resonance zone was so much "taller" than it was "broad" that the faces of the cone were almost parallel to one another, even this close to its base. Sphinx lay 102,002,500 kilometers inside the zone, and his original heading had been directly towards the planet, which defined just how much side vector he actually needed.

Even on his current profile, his restricted acceleration meant he'd pass within less than forty million kilometers of Sphinx, but he'd be further out-and longer getting there-than almost any other heading would have produced. If he hadn't changed course at all, he would have overflown Sphinx (and its defenses) seventy minutes after the brief, titanic engagement with Home Fleet, at an effective range of zero. If he'd changed heading by ninety degrees, he would have made his closest approach to Sphinx eight minutes later than that, at a range of only thirty-five million kilometers. On his current heading, his units' closest approach would come eighty-three minutes after changing course, and the range would be 39,172,200 kilometers.

He didn't much care for any of those options, given the pounding Home Fleet had given him, but the one he'd chosen was the best of the lot. It was still going to give the planet's defenders a shot, which he'd hoped wouldn't happen-yet, at least-but it would be long-ranged enough to degrade the Manties' accuracy, and the fire wouldn't be coming straight into his teeth the way Home Fleet's had. His missile defenses would be far more effective against whatever Sphinx had, and he frankly doubted that it had anything as heavy as ninety SDs had been able to hand out, anyway. And he'd needed to break back out across the RZ boundary for several reasons. Partly to get his cripples safely out of harm's way, but mostly because-as Taverner had just pointed out-he was critically low on ammunition. He needed to rendezvous with his ammunition ships and restock his magazines before driving back into the system defenses.

But Sphinx wasn't all he had to worry about, and Kuzak had dropped her own units in further "up" the zone's outer surface than he had. That put her in a position to move quickly to Sphinx's relief, accelerating directly towards the planet on a least-time course along the shortest passage through the RZ... which would also catch him between her fire and Sphinx's. In fact, Third Fleet would be less than 33,000,000 kilometers from him at the moment of his closest approach to Sphinx. Yet if he turned away from her, he would have no choice but to flee deeper and deeper into the resonance zone (without reammunitioning), and her higher base acceleration would readily permit her to overhaul him there. So he had no choice but to hold his present course.