Topic Actions

Topic Search

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Google [Bot] and 40 guests

UC Snippet 15

Join us in talking discussing all things Honor, including (but not limited to) tactics, favorite characters, and book discussions.
UC Snippet 15
Post by runsforcelery   » Sat Aug 18, 2018 10:54 pm

runsforcelery
First Space Lord

Posts: 2425
Joined: Sun Aug 09, 2009 11:39 am
Location: South Carolina

It was scarcely a proper report, Megan Petersen reflected, but under the circumstances, she wasn’t about to complain. The Cataphracts speeding outward from Hypatia were obviously the older version, identical to the ones they’d found in Filareta’s magazines at Manticore. Flight time at this range would be forty seconds longer than for her own Mark 16s, and her attack would reach its target over seven minutes before they reached theirs.

Despite which, she knew Berden was almost certainly right. There was still time for the situation to change, if the Sollies realized they’d been snookered, but they’d have to do it before their birds’ first stages shut down. So unless they figured it out in the next two and a half minutes or so, they’d just wasted almost three hundred more missiles.

“You and Pat did good, Bill,” she said. “It looks that way so far, at least,” she added, throwing out a sheet anchor, just in case.

“I don’t think they’ve got a clue what we just did to them, Ma’am,” Lieutenant Commander Thirunavu said, shaking his head. “And they sure as hell don’t have another platform close enough to tell them in time to do anything about it!”

“I don’t think they’ve figured it out, either, Rolf,” Megan replied. “I’m just remembering what pride goes before.”

“Good point.”

The XO nodded, although it was evident he didn’t believe anything of the sort was going to happen here, and Megan honestly didn’t blame him. At the same time they’d launched their counter-missiles with inert drives, they’d spotted all half dozen of their available Loreleis in strategic locations. One of those locations had been on the far side of the counter-missiles she’d used to take out the recon drone, but almost two hundred thousand kilometers farther away from Arngrim. From the Cataphracts initial track, they certainly seemed to have been targeted on the pair of “Rolands” which were nothing of the sort.

I wish I could see Gogunov’s face when — if — he figures it out, she thought with vicious satisfaction. In fact, the only thing that would please me more would be if he never figures it out because he comes down with a serious case of dead first.



SLNS Lepanto
and
SLNS Yashima
Hypatia System


Megan Petersen’s missiles came slicing in on what was left of TF 1030.

This time, the Dazzlers didn’t come as a surprise. Nor did the Dragon’s Teeth. The Solarian missile-defense officers had seen them before, knew what they were.

Unfortunately, knowing what they were wasn’t the same thing as knowing how to defeat them.

There were far fewer missiles this time, only thirty-six rather than the three hundred and ninety-six in each of Jan Kotouč’s salvos. On the other hand, Hajdu Gyôzô’s battlecruisers had been able to bring 1,568 broadside CMs and 1,960 point defense clusters to bear against those larger salvos. Against Arngrim’s, Gogunov’s surviving battlecruisers had only 141 launchers and 176 clusters. Despite the paucity of lighter Solarian units’ missile defenses, his cruisers and destroyers actually more than trebled his firepower as the Mark 16s tore into his formation.

It wasn’t enough — not in the face of the Dazzlers and the Dragon’s Teeth, and not when Lieutenant Brendan and Lieutenant Crouch had the detailed emissions signatures of every unit under Gogunov’s command, relayed by the Ghost Rider platform they still hadn’t realized was there. The range was too great for any last-second adjustments, but their missiles had been told precisely what to look for and where to find it.

The counter-missiles picked off five genuine shipkillers and twenty-six Dragons Teeth “ghosts.” Point defense stopped fourteen more shipkillers, which was a better performance than Megan Petersen had anticipated. In the end, only thirty-two percent of her birds got through everything the desperate defenders of TF 1030 could throw at it.

Just nine laserheads. But each of those Mark 16-G laserheads was more powerful than a Solarian Trebuchet capital missile, and every one of them was looking for the same target.

Its name was Lepanto.

* * * * * * * * * *

Sandra Haskell’s shock frame hammered her savagely as the Manty laserheads ravaged her ship.

Only someone who’d actually experienced the reality of missile combat — and until today, Sandra Haskell hadn’t, whatever she might have thought — could have truly imagined what it was like. The long, drawn out minutes while you knew dozens of missiles were driving towards you to kill you. The frozen ball of ice in your belly as you realized they were targeting your ship, not her consorts. The crisp commands, the voices that got more clipped, went higher in pitch, as the minutes turned into seconds, racing through your fingers. The heart-stopping terror when the incoming fire burst through the counter-missile zones and the laser clusters went to frantic maximum-rate fire.

And then the sledgehammer. The shock like Thor’s hammer as the laserheads detonated and bomb-pumped lasers shredded battle steel and human flesh with demonic fury. It wasn’t a series of detonations, not really. Oh, it was a series, but at those closing velocities, in the finely focused, impeccably sequenced attack that was the Royal Manticoran Navy’s hallmark, no human brain, no human senses, could measure the sequence. It was one pitiless, pulverizing instant ripped from the heart of eternity and burned indelibly into the blood, bone, and brain of anyone who managed to survive it.

The universe heaved insanely. Damage alarms screamed, three quarters of the ship schematic on the after bulkhead simply flashed from green to lurid crimson, more quickly than the human eye could follow. Something ripped through Flag Bridge’s heart — something so vast, so terrible, a mere mortal couldn’t even start to grasp it. The bridge depressurized — not gradually, the way it did in simulations; instantly, with an explosive decompression, a hellhound howl that shrieked over her skinsuit helmet’s pickups . . . and then went suddenly, abruptly silent.

And then it was over.

She felt the air sobbing in her lungs as she gasped for breath. As she realized she was still alive. That somehow, someway, she’d survived that holocaust.

So far, at least. There was still time for the ship to break up — or blow up. God knew she’d seen enough of that this horrific day!

The gravity died suddenly, and her nostrils flared as every primary lighting element went dead and the emergency lights came up. For an instant, she sat paralyzed before she realized that was probably a good sign. Losing power was far better than having a fusion bottle fail, and if there was no power to the grav plates, then there was no power to the impellers, either, and that meant a failing inertial compensator wasn’t going to let Lepanto’s impeller drive turn all of her surviving crew into gruel.

It meant she might get to go on surviving . . . unless someone on the Manties’ side was in the mood for reprisal after Vice Admiral Hajdu’s Deneb Accords violation.

Nothing you can do about it if they are, Sandy, she told herself. Best to be concentrating on what you can do something abou t.

She unfastened her shock frame and pushed off from her command chair, pirouetting in midair — well, in mid-vacuum, she supposed — as her eyes took in the savagely maimed bridge and the drifting bodies who’d been friends of hers thirty seconds before.

“All hands channel,” she told her skinsuit’s computer.

“Shipboard all hands channel disabled,” the suit’s musical contralto told her.

“General skinsuit broadcast, then.”

“General broadcast link opened,” the computer said, and she drew a deep breath.

“All personnel, this is Commodore Haskell,” she said as clearly and levelly as she could. “Flag Bridge had been hit hard. I need search and rescue personnel ASAP. I repeat, Flag Bridge has been hit, and I need —”

She broke off, barely managing to stifle a yelp of surprise, as something fastened on her left ankle. She looked down, and her eyes widened as she saw Martin Gogunov.

The rear admiral was still alive. In fact, he didn’t appear to have been injured at all, which was remarkable, given the tangled wreckage to which his command chair had been reduced. His shock frame was buckled, broken, and jammed — she could see where he’d pulled the emergency release pin, and nothing at all had happened — and the panel on his skinsuit’s right pauldron had been half torn away. It seemed impossible that it could’ve taken that much damage without ripping clear through the skinsuit, but it obviously hadn’t. Looking through the crystoplast of his helmet, she could see the green glow that confirmed good suit pressure.

But there was no way they were getting him free without cutting gear.

That was her first thought, but then she wondered why he’d grabbed her ankle instead of calling for assistance over his com. It would have been –

He looked up at her, made eye contact, then released her ankle and thumped the side of his helmet with his right hand. He pointed through it at his right ear and nodded vigorously. Then he opened his mouth, obviously saying something, and shook his head with equal force.

Of course, she thought. The com was mounted behind the right shoulder in an SLN skinsuit.He could still hear her, but he couldn’t transmit.

She nodded to show that she understood, but then he pointed again, and she frowned. He pointed a third time, harder than ever, and her eyes widened. He was pointing at the tactical section . . . where the corpse which had been Commodore Gregory Ham sat headless in his chair. She looked back at him, and his lips moved again, shaping a single word she couldn’t hear, forming it slowly enough she could read it, instead.

“Launch.”

She looked down at him for a handful of seconds, and then, slowly, shook her head.

He froze. For a moment, he didn’t seem to react at all. Then his face contorted, dark with fury, and his mouth moved again. She knew he was shouting the command again and again, but only he could hear it. And when she didn’t respond, his lips started shaping other words, a torrent of invective.

She gazed at him almost compassionately. As far as she could tell, he was uninjured, and that meant he was still in command. But to be in command, he had to be able to exercise command, and that required the ability to communicate.

The Articles of War were clear. She knew exactly what her commanding officer was ordering her to do, assuming she could somehow get the order out beyond Lepanto’s broken hull. That meant she had no option, as his chief of staff, but to see that order was relayed and executed.

“General skinsuit broadcast,” she told the computer again.

“General broadcast link opened,” the computer replied.

“All personnel,” she said crisply, strongly, gazing down into Martin Gogunov’s furious blue eyes, “Commodore Haskell. If anyone has access to a working intership com, contact Rear Admiral Yountz immediately. Inform him that he’s in command. Repeat, inform Admiral Yountz that he is in command.”

Gogunov twisted furiously, ripping at the imprisoning shock frame, roaring the curses no one could hear, and Haskell pushed herself down onto the deck beside him, just beyond the reach of his flailing arms. She switched to the flag command link built into her skinsuit com. If he could hear the general link, perhaps he could hear this one, too.

“I’m sorry, Sir,” she said. “I’m so sorry. But I can’t let you. I just can’t. And I think Yountz won’t, without your specific order. I’m sorry.”

* * * * * * * * * *

“Sir, I have a com request,” Commander Holečková said in an odd voice.

“I’ve got plenty of those already, Taťána!” Thomas Yountz snapped at his com officer, and God knew it was true. Including one he wished to hell he hadn’t gotten, from Captain Indira Turner, relaying Commodore Haskell’s message passing command to him.

He’d always wanted task force command, but not like this! The only good thing was that Gogunov hadn’t had time to execute the Buccaneer launch before his flagship was taken out.

“Sir, this one’s from the Manties,” Holečková said, and Yountz froze.

From the Manties? It couldn’t be! The salvo Gogunov had gotten off before Lepanto was crippled had taken out both Manties. They had positive confirmation of that from the second recon drone vectored in on their location! There wasn’t even any wreckage left! But —

“You’re sure it’s not someone down on Hypatia trying to screw with our minds?”

“Sir, it’s coming from about thirty thousand kilometers from Yashima. I suppose it could be a Hypatian trick, but it doesn’t . . . well, it doesn’t feel like that, Sir.” Holečková shook her head. “I think it’s genuine, Sir.”

“Shit,” Yountz muttered, softly enough Holečková could pretend she hadn’t heard. Then he shook himself.

“In that case, I suppose I’d better take the call, shouldn’t I?” He crossed to sit in his command chair again. “Put it up.”

“Yes, Sir.”

An instant later, the image of a sturdily built brunette with remarkably hard eyes wearing the skinsuit of a Royal Manticoran Navy commander, appeared on his display.

“I’m Rear Admiral Thomas Yountz, Solarian Navy,” he said. “And you are —?”

He sat back to wait out the transmission lag, then twitched as she responded barely seven seconds later.

“Commander Megan Petersen, Royal Manticoran Navy.” Her voice was as cold as her eyes were hard. “I assume Admiral Gogunov got my message?”

Yountz’s jaw tightened. He’d wondered what freakish fate had selected Lepanto as that single salvo’s target. But perhaps it hadn’t been “fate,” at all. Yet if she was seriously claiming to have deliberately targeted TF 1030’s flagship — and if she was telling the truth — then how in hell had she pulled it off? And how did she even know who Martin Gogunov was?

Stupid damned question, he realized an instant later. Even if we didn’t take out the ships that launched, she’s got to be at least three or four light-minutes from here, and it’s sure as hell not taking six minutes for com turnaround, now is it? If they’ve got enough FTL bandwidth to relay through some kind of buoy or platform only thirty thousand klicks from here and we can’t even see the frigging thing, she’s probably been in communication with Vangelis the entire time! And if that’s true, who the hell knows what other nasty little sensor platforms are floating around out there?

He told himself he couldn’t afford to ascribe supernatural capabilities to Manticoran technology. The last thing he could let this Commander Petersen do was convince him she could accomplish wonders beyond his imagination.

Of course, what she’d already accomplished was bad enough.

“Who’s Admiral Gogunov?” he asked.

“The maniac who told President Vangelis he intended to murder six million Hypatian citizens in about thirty-seven minutes from now,” Peterson replied icily. “The maniac aboard SLNS Lepanto, which is currently drifting without power and shedding life pods.”

Yountz inhaled. So much for what other “nasty little sensor platforms” were keeping an eye on him. Vangelis could have told her who Gogunov was, but he couldn’t have told her Lepanto’s current condition.

But you already knew that, really, he thought. You knew it the instant you realized she’d deliberately targeted Gogunov’s ship.

“I don’t know if the Admiral is dead or alive,” he heard himself say in a flat tone. “At the moment, I’ve assumed command. So whatever you have to say, say it to me.”

“All right, I will.” She smiled ever so slightly. The expression reminded him of an Old Terran shark.

“The people of Hypatia have decided to secede from the Solarian League,” she told him. “I realize the League denies their right to do anything of the sort. Obviously, my Star Empire and its Allies disagree with that . . . constitutional interpretation. Until this very day, however, it would never have occurred to me that the Solarian League Navy, that paragon of all virtues, that guardian of everything which is just and true, would undertake a deliberate Eridani violation. Then again,” that smile disappeared into a battle steel expression, “I wouldn’t have expected the SLN to violate the Deneb Accords quite so blatantly, either. I don’t know why I wouldn’t have. We all know what your Navy’s done from time to time in the service of Frontier Security, don’t we?”

Yountz felt his face go dark, but he couldn’t deny her accusation. In fact, he realized, that was the real reason he was so angry. Because she was right about what the Fleet had done in the Protectorates all too often . . . and about what Hajdu Gyôzô had done right here in Hypatia.

“I won’t lie to you, Admiral Yountz,” Peterson went on after a moment. “My ship is the only Manticoran vessel currently in the system . . . now, at least. But you’ve already seen what four Queen’s ships can do to a hundred Solarian battlecruisers, and I’ve just demonstrated what mine can do to a single chosen, targeted battlecruiser. I can do it again. I can do it again as often as I have to, but unlike Vice Admiral Hajdu and Rear Admiral Gogunov, I really don’t like killing people when I don’t need to. Not even Solarians who’ve just finished killing two thousand of my friends.”

Her eyes bored into him, and something inside shriveled before their frozen menace.

“I can’t compel you to do anything without killing more of your ships, Admiral,” she said flatly, “and between the two of us, I think enough people have already died today. So here’s my proposition. You take your surviving ships, and you get the hell out of Hypatia. I’m sure the Hypatians will take care of rescuing all your surviving personnel, assuming they can stop trying to save the civilians — the children — the Solarian League is willing to murder to make a political statement. If you don’t want to do that, that’s fine. You’ve got ten minutes to make up your mind. If you decide to stay, then I suppose you and I will find out how many more of your battlecruisers I can take out, one-by-one, until you — or your successor — finally figure out where I really am and manage to return fire. Of course, even when you do, my defenses are designed to stand up to Manticoran missile fire, aren’t they? And, trust me, I’m one hell of a lot faster than anything you’ve got. You can’t find me, you can’t hit me, you can’t catch me, and you damned well can’t outrun me.

“So you make up your mind, Admiral Yountz. You tell me what you’re going to do and whether or not I have to start killing more Sollies today after all."



HSP Shuttle Asteria
Hypatia System


Paulette Kilgore should have been grounded by Flight Control. For that matter, she should damned well have grounded herself, and she knew it. Tired pilots made mistakes; exhausted pilots made catastrophic ones.


"Oh, bother!" said Pooh, as Piglet came back from the dead.
Top
Re: UC Snippet 15
Post by ksandgren   » Sat Aug 18, 2018 11:54 pm

ksandgren
Captain (Junior Grade)

Posts: 342
Joined: Tue Jun 14, 2011 6:54 pm
Location: Los Angeles, California

Snippet! Now we have everything linked to the out of sequence snippet of long ago. Thanks RFC.
Top
Re: UC Snippet 15
Post by TangoLima   » Sun Aug 19, 2018 12:16 am

TangoLima
Captain (Junior Grade)

Posts: 286
Joined: Wed Sep 13, 2017 2:54 pm

A much smaller jump in time than I surmised.
It is good to have it nailed down.
Top
Re: UC Snippet 15
Post by jeremyr   » Sun Aug 19, 2018 7:02 am

jeremyr
Lieutenant Commander

Posts: 149
Joined: Fri Mar 25, 2011 9:33 pm
Location: Corinth, TX

Great snippet!
Top
Re: UC Snippet 15
Post by TFLYTSNBN   » Sun Aug 19, 2018 11:05 am

TFLYTSNBN

Now if only this epic battle that upholds the legacy of THE HONOR OF THE QUEEN can be followed up by an after battle scene where the exhausted, studily built RMN Captain retires to her cabin to take a shower.
Top
Re: UC Snippet 15
Post by isaac_newton   » Sun Aug 19, 2018 1:40 pm

isaac_newton
Rear Admiral

Posts: 1182
Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 6:37 am
Location: Brighton, UK

Brilliant

BUT once again that final sentance leaves us in the dust craving one more little snippet. sigh...
Top
Re: UC Snippet 15
Post by roseandheather   » Sun Aug 19, 2018 3:24 pm

roseandheather
Admiral

Posts: 2056
Joined: Sun Dec 08, 2013 10:39 pm
Location: Republic of Haven

I love Megan Petersen. She is mine now. No one else can have her and I will fight anyone who tries to take her away from me.
~*~


I serve at the pleasure of President Pritchart.

Javier & Eloise
"You'll remember me when the west wind moves upon the fields of barley..."
Top
Re: UC Snippet 15
Post by TFLYTSNBN   » Sun Aug 19, 2018 4:20 pm

TFLYTSNBN

roseandheather wrote:I love Megan Petersen. She is mine now. No one else can have her and I will fight anyone who tries to take her away from me.



Okay,
But Abby Hearnes is MINE!
Top
Re: UC Snippet 15
Post by Bill Woods   » Sun Aug 19, 2018 4:49 pm

Bill Woods
Captain of the List

Posts: 571
Joined: Tue Jun 11, 2013 12:39 pm

runsforcelery wrote: “I’ve got plenty of [com requests] already, Taťána!” Thomas Yountz snapped at his com officer, and God knew it was true. Including one he wished to hell he hadn’t gotten, from Captain Indira Turner, relaying Commodore Haskell’s message passing command to him.
Why is Turner still sending messages? When last seen, several minutes before,
“Then you are relieved, Madam. Captain Yoshizaki will replace you as Lepanto’s commanding officer, and you will retire to your quarters and consider yourself under arrest. Now, are you prepared to obey that order, or do I need to send Marines to forcibly remove you from the command deck?!”
“You have the authority to relieve me, and I will accept relief,” [Turner] said coldly,


“I won’t lie to you, Admiral Yountz,” Peterson went on after a moment. “My ship is the only Manticoran vessel currently in the system . . . now, at least. But you’ve already seen what four Queen’s ships can do to a hundred Solarian battlecruisers, and I’ve just demonstrated what mine can do to a single chosen, targeted battlecruiser. I can do it again. I can do it again as often as I have to, but unlike Vice Admiral Hajdu and Rear Admiral Gogunov, I really don’t like killing people when I don’t need to. Not even Solarians who’ve just finished killing two thousand of my friends.”
[bold added.]
She's giving away more bits of information than is necessary. She could have left the Sollies with the impression that Kotouč really had nine ships with him.
----
Imagined conversation:
Admiral [noting yet another Manty tech surprise]:
XO, what's the budget for the ONI?
Vice Admiral: I don't recall exactly, sir. Several billion quatloos.
Admiral: ... What do you suppose they did with all that money?
Top
Re: UC Snippet 15
Post by evilauthor   » Sun Aug 19, 2018 7:40 pm

evilauthor
Captain of the List

Posts: 724
Joined: Mon Jul 21, 2014 8:51 pm

Bill Woods wrote:She's giving away more bits of information than is necessary. She could have left the Sollies with the impression that Kotouč really had nine ships with him.


She may be assuming (wrongly) that the Sollies figured out that the decoys were actually decoys.

If anything, it would arguably be worse to say that nine ships had destroyed the Solly BCs if the Sollies had figured out that four ships had been decoys. Because then she'd be caught lying, which would undercut the threat she's trying to present.

The Sollies might still think she's lying by saying there were five Manty ships destroyed when they saw nine, but they couldn't be SURE she's lying, especially after the dazzling display of ECM they just saw.
Top

Return to Honorverse