Shadow of Freedom

Zavala reached up to put his hand on the taller Auerbach’s shoulder and squeezed gently. And, he admitted to himself, the chief of staff had a point. No one in DesRon 301 had been particularly happy with Fire Plan Zephyr, the alternative to Sledgehammer, yet he had to concede that it would be more elegant and might—might!—reduce the severity of the incident which was about to occur here in Saltash.

The problem was that it would also be riskier…and far less personally satisfying.

I wonder how honest I’ve been with myself about this? Zavala thought. It would be riskier, but how much have I allowed that satisfaction quotient to color my thinking?

He made himself stand back and consider the alternatives one more time.

Zephyr would be more in the way of a demonstration of the consequences of unreasonableness than a serious attack: a concentrated salvo of Mark 16s fired from far beyond the Sollies’ effective range to penetrate their defenses without hitting anything, much as Duchess Harrington had done to the Havenites’ Second Fleet with Apollo at First Manticore and Captain Ivanov had done more recently, in Zunker. In theory, a reasonable Solarian commander would realize most of his ships would be pounded into ruin in the fifteen or sixteen minutes it would take him to get into his own range of Zavala’s squadron. At which point, that hypothetical reasonable Solarian commander would conclude he had no alternative but to stand down after all.

There was, however, a minor weakness in that logic: it presupposed a reasonable Solarian commander. There’d been precious few of those in evidence since Josef Byng had come upon the scene. Worse, if the commander on the other side refused to take the hint, Zavala would have wasted one of his salvos for no return, and a Roland’s limited magazine space was its Achilles’ heel. With only twenty rounds for each of his tubes, he couldn’t afford to “waste” ammunition. And, still worse, even a Solly who wasn’t totally unreasonable might decide he could survive whatever DesRon 301 could throw at him for fifteen minutes and still get to grips with the destroyers. Zavala didn’t think Dubroskaya could, but his analysis of the only engagement between a Mark 16-armed force and Solarian-designed battlecruisers suggested that they might. Of course, Aivars Terekhov had been equipped with the first-generation Mark 16 at the Battle of Monica, whereas DesRon 301’s birds mounted the latest Mod G laser heads. That probably changed the equation considerably, but there was no way for Zavala to know that.

Either way, given their closing velocity, the Sollies were going to overfly his own ships before they could decelerate, and any of the battlecruisers which survived the crossing might well escape into hyper after all. Zavala doubted any of them would survive, and even if they did get into their own missile range of DesRon 301 before they were knocked out, a Roland-class destroyer’s missile defenses were actually considerably tougher than an Indefatigable’s, given the superiority of Manticore’s counter missiles, decoys, and ECM.

But his destroyers were no better armored than any other destroyer or light cruiser. If Zavala was wrong about his defenses’ ability to fend off incoming missiles, and if the Sollies got lucky, it wouldn’t take very many Javelin hits to ruin a Roland’s entire day.

Besides, he thought grimly, we don’t owe these bastards a frigging thing, and I’m damned if I’m going to put my people at risk trying to keep the arrogant pricks from getting themselves killed!

It was possible, he conceded, that he wasn’t cut from the right material for a successful diplomat. On the other hand, Countess Gold Peak had known that when she sent him out.

“I’ve thought about it, George,” he said. “I really have. But no, we’re not going with Zephyr.”

“Yes, Sir.” Commander Auerbach gazed into the display or a second or two, then shrugged.

“Actually, Sir, I’m fine with that,” he said.

* * *

“Com request from the Manties, Ma’am,” Commander Gervasio Urbanowicz said. Vice Admiral Dubroskaya glanced at him, and the communications officer shrugged. “It’s that Captain Zavala, Ma’am, and I think his signal’s being relayed by whatever he used to speak to the Governor FTL. It’s a standard com laser coming from some kind of platform just ahead of us, at any rate.”

Dubroskaya glanced at Captain Kiernan.

“Interesting timing, Ma’am,” Kiernan said. “Maybe McGillicuddy was onto something after all.”

“I suppose we’re about to find out,” Dubroskaya said, and nodded to Urbanowicz. “Put it on the main display, Gervasio.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”