HMS Sloan Tompkins, like her sisters Bristol Q. Yakolev and Cheetah, was a Saganami-C-class heavy cruiser, and each of them mounted twenty launchers in each broadside. With the RMN’s ability to fire off-bore missiles, that gave them the ability to fire forty-missile strong double broadsides in a single launch, and they were armed with the internally launched Mark 16 dual-drive missile. Because of that, their tubes (and, just as importantly, their fire control) had been designed take advantage of the Mark 16’s drive flexibility and fire what were actually quadruple broadsides—salvos of eighty missiles each, not “just” forty—in order to “stack” their fire and saturate an opponent’s missile defenses.

At the moment, Hiram Ivanov’s ships had literally dozens of missile pods limpeted to their hulls, as well, and those missile pods were loaded with full capability Mark 23 multidrive missiles, with even more endurance and powered range (and heavier laser heads) than the Mark 16. MDMs were in shorter supply than Mark 16s, though, and Ivanov had no intention of using them up unless he had to. So Volley Alpha used only the cruisers’ internal tubes, and even the Roland-class destroyers attached to his force were mere spectators at the moment. They had barely a quarter of the cruisers’ magazine capacity, and Ivanov had no more intention of wasting their limited ammunition than he did of wasting MDMs.

Which was why “only” two hundred and forty missiles, launch times and drive activations carefully staggered to bring all of them in as a single salvo, went howling towards Rear Admiral Liam Pyun’s battlecruisers.

* * *

“Two hundred-plus inbound,” Josette Steinberg reported tersely. “Acceleration approximately four-five-one KPS-squared. Activate all Halo platforms now!”

“Activating Halo, aye, Ma’am!”

“Damn,” Steven Gilmore said, so quietly only Pyun could possibly have heard him. “That’s got to be a warning shot, Sir!”

“You think so?” Pyun’s eyes were on the tac display now, watching the scarlet icons of the Manticoran missiles streak towards his command.

“Has to be, Sir.” Gilmore shook his head. “Even assuming they’ve got the legs to reach us without going ballistic, their targeting solutions have to suck at this range.”

“I imagine that’s what Sandra Crandall thought, too.” Pyun showed his teeth. “Assuming the Battle of Spindle really happened, of course.”

Gilmore started to reply, but a fresh report from Steinberg cut him off.

“Admiral, assuming these drive numbers hold up, those things are going to be closing at better than a hundred and seventy thousand KPS when they get here.” She looked over her shoulder at Pyun. “It looks like I may’ve been wrong about whether or not they can reach us, Sir.”

“Time to attack range four minutes, Ma’am,” one of her ratings told her, and she nodded.

“Halo active,” another rating confirmed.

* * *

“This is not good,” Lieutenant Commander Austell Pouchard muttered under his breath.