July 1927 PD (Part I)

Trantor System
INS Gustav VII

Admiral Bin-Hwei Morser understood why Grand Alliance 4th Fleet had a secondary role in operation Cottontail. Its core units were the Gustav Anderman I-class SD(P)s designed with heavy Manticoran input and laid down during the second Havenite War (and completed after that war's conclusion). As such, unlike 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Fleets, 4th Fleet's units did not posses the Grand Alliance's version of the Mesan Alignment's Streak Drive. Which didn't have any impact on her ships' capabilities in combat, but it did mean the other three Grand Alliance fleets could strike deeper within the League in the same amount of time. 1st and 3rd Fleet were preparing to move on the Aligment's home system (wherever it should turn out to be was bound to be closer to one or the other), and there were too many targets in Cottontail for 2nd Fleet to cover on its own without running risks the high command felt were unacceptable.

It was arguably the largest-scale naval operation in human history. True, both the Havenite and Solarian attacks on the Manticore system had involved more wallers. And since those ships had lacked the degree of automation that modern Alliance construction used, they had involved far more personnel. But those had been concentrated attacks on a single target, and had involved fewer hyper-capable vessels in total than 2nd fleet and 4th fleet. Cottontail proposed to take out every known military shipyard in the League, and every major fleet anchorage, in a matter of months, and used two fleets with nearly two hundred wallers combined, all Apollo-capable, to do it.

And she was beginning it here. Trantor (which despite the name, was nowhere near the center of the galaxy, or even the League) was not home of the largest shipyard remaining in the League, but it was the closest one to Grand Alliance space. Or had been, until Morser's task force arrived.

Now, of course, was another matter.

Sol System
SUN Fleet Headquarters

"Your request to transfer to Grand Alliance 3rd Fleet is denied." Aravind Thenuwara told his son-in-law. Aravind could still think of Jared Richt as that despite Indira's death, he thought. If they had been together for the three years they had been married and a year or two prior, he didn't think Richt would be near as broken up as he was. But in truth there'd been no one else serious in either's life since they met seventy-odd years ago. "In the first place, you're too senior for what we can send out there; you'd outrank everyone except Admiral Marrone, and we only have one squadron of the wall with 3rd Fleet. That's not going to change soon, especially not now.

"In the second place, while I'd pull Rajiv out of 3rd Fleet if there was time, I wouldn't be sending you to replace him even if we could spare enough wallers to justify a full Admiral out there. Someone looking to avenge his aunt isn't ideal, but it's nowhere near as bad as someone looking to avenge his wife. You are on compassionate leave indefinitely, effective as of the end of Indira's state funeral. She wouldn't have wanted the state funeral, but she doesn't get a vote. She might not have created the Solarian Union, but she damn well is why it's going to last.

"And in the third place, my grandson ought to get a chance to grow up with at least one of his parents."

Solarian Union Prime Minister's Office

"The engineers are going to keep working on it, but the preliminary results of investigating the captured MCN ships and interrogating their personnel are in. Nothing is going to surprise your, or anyone back home on Manticore very much." Ruth Winton said. She was officially an advisor lent to the Union from Queen Berry of Torch, but in practice she'd become the de facto head of the Solarian Union's intelligence services. The titular holder of that position was excellent in the public parts of the job, and a long-standing political ally of Diaz'. And he knew the non-public parts well enough to know that when he could get help of Ruth Winton's quality, he took as much advantage of it as he could.

"So what were our good friends from Mannerheim up to?" Prime Minister Diaz asked.

"Hard to say. The junior personnel – officers and enlisted – seemed to think military action was perfectly reasonable escalation of a trade dispute. The senior ones were more skeptical, and a great many of the not only believed the Mesan Alignment existed, they believed they were part of it. Unfortunately, they have no more information on where any 'bolthole' the Alignment has might be than we do." Ruth said.

"And their hardware?"

"It's pretty impressive. Nothing we couldn't have had ten years ago if we'd thought of it, but I'd defy anyone short of the elves to match it without Manticoran aid. The fire control relay drones got the most attention from us – and deservedly so – but they aren't really any more advanced than first-gen Ghost Rider recon drones, just designed for a different purpose. They also brought three-stage capacitor missiles with similar performance characteristics to our initial MDMs – and good deal better than Haven's. The Hellcats and Corsairs clearly were a surprise to their LAC crews, and they just as clearly don't have advanced fission plants, but they definitely pushed the envelope of what was possible without it. We sent some captured ships out to Rivendell, Manticore, and Bolthole, but I don't think they'll find much we didn't. It does look the FTL fire control system was developed in-house at KHI, which we don't think is an Alignment front. What that means to the system becoming available to the Alignment directly or the Sollies, I couldn't guess yet."

Osgiliath orbit, Rivendell System, aboard RNSPaksenarrion Dorthansdotter

"So now that you've seen a Paladin in person, what do you think?" Admiral Marrone told his uniformed commander.

"Very impressive. Gabe's people do good work. I'm almost tempted." Fleet Admiral Caitlin Michaels said.

"You wouldn't dare." He said with mock sincerity.

She turned serious in reply. "No. I'm still not sure I should have gone out with the fleet for Sanderson myself back when we first got involved with all of this. But after you and Steve, our fleet commanders were very inexperienced, anyone else would have been junior to Thenuwara, and at the time she was still SLN and we had just seceded from the League. Still, there are some in the Alliance who are very skeptical of handing an operation this important to someone who hasn't fought a major fleet engagement. No one from 3rd Fleet, of course. The least offensive suggestion from that end has been for me to go with you, rather than handing over command to a Manticoran or Havenite officer. But it's also been suggested that we wait for 1st Fleet to get there and let Admiral Alexander-Harrington assume command."

"I can understand the appeal. Haven, Beowulf, and the old Manticoran Alliance have enormous respect for her. Hell, I've met her and I do too. And considering what Frodo brought back, having 1st Fleet along couldn't hurt. But it would mean kicking things off no earlier than three months out instead of next month. And with 2nd and 4th Fleet charging through the League, 3rd preparing to attack the Alignment's secret base, and 5th Fleet's activation delayed after the losses at Sol, 1st Fleet is the only reserve the Grand Alliance has. Which are two very good reasons to go ahead without waiting for them."

"That's my opinion as well. Also Secretary Theisman, First Lord White Haven, and Alexander-Harrington herself, if you were wondering. So we're leaving you and Paks in charge."

Yildun System
RHNS Javier Giscard

"I seem to remember our intelligence reports saying a rather larger force was stationed here." Admiral Lester Tourville said. "I suppose they could have tucked away most of their fleet in hyper, but I don't see how it would them much good."

"Technodyne has been involved in the Mesan's plots from the beginning, and is one of the League's biggest shipbuilders. It's almost impossible to think they'd leave Yildun this uncovered. It's the second-biggest shipyard complex in the League. And the Manua Lea Group's yards in Oahu at least traditionally have devoted a lot more of their capacity to customers other than the SLN, even if NavInt says they're concentrating on the SLN's needs now." Commodore Houellebecq replied.

SUNS Harmony

Vice-Admiral Sang was right. They weren't going to leave us alone much longer. Rear Admiral Kotik thought. He'd agreed, but he thought the Manticorans and their allies might wait long enough for Sang to talk Fleet HQ out of their insane plan to strip the system's defenses.

Not that they could have stopped what was coming with the entire task force. Operations Analysis' best estimate – which Kotik still thought contained a fair amount of wishful thinking – was that Unity-class SD(P)s could take on Manty pod layers with a 3:1 advantage. But the force that had just translated in had sixty ships of the wall, and almost all of them seemed to be one of the variants of the Manties' Invictus-B that almost everyone in their alliance was using. His people's sensors couldn't tell an Invictus-B from a Havenite Javier Giscard or a Rivendell Allomancer, at any rate.

He couldn't stop the attacking force. It would not even be possible to set up a passing attack at any range where his missiles would have a realistic hit probability. His ships' Cataphract II-C missile were the longest-ranged missiles the SLN had ever employed, but they still had two drives, not the three they'd been forced to accept their enemies' all-up capital missiles had. And his fire control still had light-speed limits.

Fortunately, the astrography of the Yildun system offered a few advantages. With no habitable planets, human activity was centered around the wormhole junction. And that junction's powerful resonance zone meant he was able to position his fleet where it would be all but impossible for any attacker – even with Many compensators – to catch him before he hypered out.

RHNS Javier Giscard

"Do we try and chase them, sir?" Commodore Houellebecq asked.

"We couldn't catch them with anything heavier than a LAC. And as nice as the toys our friends in the Alliance put together are, that's still not a good idea." Tourville replied. Without the wormhole's resonance zone, it would be different. Tourville's ships might not be able catch the SLN battle squadron, but his missiles certainly could if he used Apollo's full capabilities. And he suspected the Admiral on the other side knew it, too.

"Missile launch!" A rating shouted, and gave the locus. Not from the fleeing SD(P)s. When had the Sollies snuck a system defense pod network in here?

"Defense plan Epsilon." A flank attack from system defense pods was something he had worried about in planning. But they were concentrating fire on only four of his SDs, and firing over two thousand missiles at each of them. His ships were designed to be able to handle that kind of fire even operating solo. And they were integrated into a fleet-wide defensive network. But they hadn't detected the pods until they fired, and they had fired from well inside their maximum powered range. In fact, they were close enough that the Cataphract II-C's main drive used its maximum acceleration setting.

The fleet's tactical officers worked furiously to focus the integrated defense network on defending the targeted ships, but too many were out of range to aid effectively, or reacted too slowly. Six thousand, eight hundred and forty-seven missiles remained when they closed enough that defensive fire from other starships and LACs could not be useful. Another two thousand, three hundred and twelve were destroyed by the four SD(P)s second launch of counter-missiles. Point defense laser clusters destroyed another one thousand eight hundred and fifty-two. Fifteen percent of the reaming missiles were pure EW warheads. A quarter of the actual missiles struck one ship or another's wedge harmlessly. But that left one thousand, seven hundred and eleven, and six hundred eighty-four of those were targeted on RHNS Péricard. Modern SD(P)s were extremely tough warships. But nothing could survive that.

In the abstract, suffering the loss of one SD(P) and heavy damage to three was an extremely light price to pay for capturing Yildun, even with the Alliance's tech advantages. That did not make Tourville any happier, even a few hours after the 'battle'.

"I don't see any choice but to detach the rest of the squadron, a carrier, and a division or two of light cruisers." Tourville said. "And I have to expect the fleet that was here the last time we checked will be at Oahu waiting for us."