Mitchell Clapp had come to his present duties via a less than orthodox route. Unlike the majority of naval officers who aspired to senior command, he’d never even considered the shipboard engineering or tactical career tracks. His first love and lasting allegiance had been given to the Navy’s small craft, and he’d made quite a name for himself as one of the relatively few homegrown officers to distinguish himself almost equally on the engineering and test pilot sides of the People’s Navy’s pinnace and shuttle development and upgrade programs. The job he’d done was a vital one, but it was also one which partook of very little martial glory, at least in the estimation of his fellow officers. Which was one reason a man who had accomplished so much had been a mere lieutenant when Oscar Saint-Just suffered a mischief.

“Just about… now,” the commander breathed, and the plot altered suddenly as a vast wave of still tinier icons separated from the green dots of the Republican LACs and sped to meet the oncoming sea of red.

Foraker felt herself holding her breath as she watched his tiny, fiery green darts slashing into the Manties’ faces. No doubt any Manticoran who saw that launch would have put it down to panic. Manifestly, no Republican LAC missile seeker was going to be able to penetrate the solid wall of decoys and jammers the Manties had thrown up, much less defeat the onboard electronic warfare systems of the Manticoran LACs themselves. Counter missiles raced to meet them anyway, of course, but not in the numbers one might have expected against more capable missiles from larger combatants. Scores of the incoming birds were wiped away, but clearly the Manty missile defense officers were holding onto their limited stores of counter missiles for use against a more credible threat than Havenite LAC missiles.

After all, they knew that the hundreds of Havenite missiles racing toward them couldn’t possibly hurt them.

As it happened, they were even correct about that… up to a point. The point which was reached as the Republican missiles reached the ends of their runs while still almost forty thousand kilometers short of the Manticoran vessels and the first echelon detonated.

They had no standoff attack range against spacecraft, because they weren’t laser heads. Nor were they standard nuclear warheads in any usual sense of the word. And they didn’t carry any of the sophisticated and devilishly capable electronic warfare systems the Manticorans had produced, either, because much though it galled Shannon Foraker to admit it, it would be years—probably decades—before the Republic of Haven was able to match the technical competence of the Star Kingdom of Manticore. So as Commander Clapp had suggested to her over two T-years ago, the only practical solution was to find a way around the Manties’ technological advantage.

Which was precisely what the Cimeterre-class LAC and its armament were designed to do. Clapp’s solution undoubtedly owed a great deal to how much time he’d spent thinking about and modeling the short-range, cluttered, high-threat environment in which pinnaces and assault shuttles routinely operated. Very few tactical officers thought in terms of that sort of combat where “proper” spacecraft were concerned, even when the spacecraft in question were mere LACs. Pinnaces and assault shuttles, after all, were expendable. Everyone knew a certain percentage of them were going to be lost, whatever tactical doctrine they followed. Fortunately, they were cheap enough and had small enough crews compared to starships that even a relatively high degree of attrition was acceptable as long as it allowed them to accomplish their missions.