“No,” Alexander said grimly. “Those forts are likely more heavily armed than the cruisers, but their limited mobility makes them easier targets, especially for long-range weapons like the Samurais.”
Durendal shivered beneath them as the hammerhead-mounted bombardment-missile launchers fired again.
“Any change in aspect on our friends?” the Admiral asked.
“Nothing material,” Kulkarni reported. “The gunships have formed up in front of the fleet, but they’re the ones suffering most against the Samurais. Their lasers are too restricted by their physical design to be able to easily track the higher-velocity missiles.”
She shook her head.
“Now that I know they’re there too, I suspect the fusion boosters are hurting their target tracking as well,” she noted. “They aren’t nearly as maneuverable as they’re designed to be.”
And that lack, Roslyn estimated, had killed about fifteen thousand people so far. She shivered as another fortress icon grayed out, long-distance scans suggesting a fifth crippled station.
“Chambers, double-check the sensor data on those cripples,” Alexander ordered. “If they’re playing games in one place, they might be playing them in others.”
“Yes, sir.”
Roslyn didn’t even need to ask Chief Jian to assist her. The noncom was already pulling the data from Durendal’s sensor suite as the Flag Lieutenant set to work.
“I’m not seeing anything to suggest they’re gaming us,” the Chief told her. “Gas venting, lost energy signatures, the works. They probably have some weapons left, but we’ve hit them hard.”
It took a lot of very carefully designed armor to withstand hits from antimatter weapons, too. The Royal Martian Navy Academy tried to make sure its students understood just how much power they had at their command. A single gigaton-range antimatter warhead was a planet-killer, after all—and even the lightest modern warships would take multiple such hits to breach their armor.
“Get me the data on the active stations as well,” Roslyn ordered Jian. “Just looking at our damaged targets in isolation might not answer the question.”
More data appeared on her screens as the ever-helpful Chief Petty Officer gave her what she needed, and Roslyn stared at the comparison between Target Four, one of their cripples, and Target Sixteen, a station they had never intended to shoot.
The comparison looked right. Target Four had been hit by multiple antimatter warheads, gouging immense holes in her armor and hull. Based off the scans of Target Sixteen, Target Four had lost multiple fusion plants and was nearly helpless.
But something didn’t seem quite right…
Every salvo of Samurais was in space. Every tactical officer in the fleet was busy building firing plans and guiding missiles into their targets. The only people with the time to step back and look at oddities were the Admiral’s staff—and even there, most of Roslyn’s seniors were actively involved in the battle.
If there were an answer here, she was the only one looking at it. She pulled up the data from the four drones she’d sent on their suicide pass and found the visual images of Target Thirteen.
Target Thirteen was being hit by Samurais even as Roslyn dug into the visuals, the most detailed pictures they had of the fortresses, and her feeling of unease sharpened.
“Chief, I don’t recognize this installation,” she told Jian, passing the noncom a chunk of imagery. “What do you make of it?”
“That’s a major heat radiator,” Jian told her. “I guess they’d need more heat radiation with the fusion plants instead of an antimatter plant…”
“They don’t have any offensive lasers,” Roslyn realized as the computer analysis finished. “And they’re using heat radiators to augment their power signatures. Fu—”
She cut off her own curse and turned to her boss.
“Kulkarni, sir,” she said swiftly. “The fortresses…they’re defensive platforms only. They have a full RFLAM loadout, but they don’t have full power-generation suites, lasers or missiles. They’re using radiators to look more complete and more dangerous to our long-range scans.”
She sent her data over to Mage-Captain Kulkarni’s console as she spoke, and the flag bridge was silent for several key seconds as Roslyn realized she’d sworn loudly enough for everyone to hear.
“She’s right,” the operations officer said as their last Samurai salvo hammered into Target Fifteen. “They might not all be decoys, but at least some of them—probably most of them—are. Were.” Kulkarni looked like she wanted to swear as well.
“They wanted us to use our bombardment missiles on them,” she continued. “They’re not useless—they’ll still cover their fleet against our regular missiles—but we drastically overestimated their offensive firepower.”
The silence hung in the bridge for another few seconds.
“Captain Kulkarni,” Alexander said very calmly. “When this is over, I very much want to know who is in command over there. And if we can possibly take the bastard alive, I’d like to talk to them.
“Assuming I can manage not to punch them. Fleet will prepare to receive enemy fire. Ignore the gunships; they’ll be dry by the time our missiles reach them. Primary focus is the enemy battleships and the carrier.”
She grimaced.
“And you know what to do with salvos three through eight,” she concluded, leaning back in her chair. “Our Republican friends may have snookered me, but unfortunately for them, I still have the biggest damned hammer in the galaxy.”
7
“Launch point bravo in twenty seconds,” Kulkarni reported quietly. “All ships standing by, primary firing patterns downloaded. We are ready.”
Roslyn forced herself to release the breath she was holding. Even her quiet background analysis was no longer needed once the real shooting started. It would take just over nine minutes for Second Fleet to empty the magazines of her older ships.
Seven minutes for each salvo to reach their targets. Even if the Republic force deployed out against them, the acceleration of the two fleets was low enough compared to their missiles that nothing was going to materially change that flight time.
The entire hundred-million-ton mass of the dreadnought shivered under the thrust of four hundred missile launches. The icons of the fleet’s warships were almost drowned on the display by the new icons of their weapons.
“First salvo away.”
“And now the moment of truth, I think,” Alexander murmured, barely loud enough for Roslyn to hear her. “You’ve been playing all kinds of games, my friend; what is your secret?”
“Enemy launch! Twenty-four thousand plus inbound!” Kulkarni barked. “Republic fleet launched twenty seconds before we did.” She shook her head. “Assuming the same powered range as our missiles, they’ll be at the end of their flight time when they reach us, but they’ll be active.”
“Antimatter missiles, I presume?” Alexander asked clearly.
“Yes, sir. They appeared to be a modified version of the Excalibur Five,” the operations officer confirmed. “Our tactical teams are analyzing, but it looks like they stepped down the acceleration to increase the flight time. We’re showing nine thousand six hundred gravities of acceleration, and Tactical is estimating five hundred twenty-five second flight time.”