Shadow of Freedom

“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.”