by David Weber
Her plot beeped as a third salvo launched, and she bit the inside of her lip—too hard on the dead left side; she tasted blood before she could ease the pressure. That made ninety missiles, and that was already more than she'd believed Haven would have handed over to fanatics like the Masadans. If there was a fourth launch, she was going to have to forget about taking that base intact and blow it away.
Four missiles from the first salvo broke through the middle intercept zone, and lights blinked on Fearless's tactical panels. Her computers were working overtime, already plotting solutions for her own missiles on the third salvo even as they targeted Apollo's and Troubadour's missiles on the second and brought all three ships' lasers to bear on the remnants of the first, and Honor felt a fierce stab of pride in her squadron as the last missile of the first flight blew apart thirty thousand kilometers ahead of Fearless.
* * *
Admiral Wesley Matthews' heart had gone into his throat when he saw the sheer density and acceleration of the hostile launches and remembered what far smaller and slower missiles had done to the Grayson Navy. But this was no ambush, and Harrington's ships had been built by sorcerers, not technicians! There was a smooth, clean efficiency to them, a lethal, beautiful precision that cut down the attacking missiles in threes and fours and fives.
His bridge crew forgot professionalism, cheering and whistling like spectators at some sporting event, and Matthews wanted to join them, but he didn't. It wasn't professionalism that stopped him. It wasn't even dignity or an awareness of the example he ought to be setting. It was the thought that somewhere beyond those incoming missiles was at least one other ship which could match what Harrington's were doing.
* * *
"There go the last of them, Skipper," Hillyard said bitterly, and Theisman grunted. Just like Franks to throw good money after bad, he thought savagely. Good as Harrington's point defense had proven itself, her systems had to be working at full stretch. If Franks had been willing to hold his follow-up salvos till the range closed and she had less response time ... But, no! He was trying to swamp her with sheer volume, when anyone but an idiot would have realized timing was more critical than numbers.
He checked his plot. Harrington was still thirty-five minutes out. There was time for a little judicious adjustment of his position ... assuming Franks didn't think he was trying to run and burn him down.
It wouldn't make much difference in the end, but the professional in him rebelled against going down without achieving anything. His fingers flew as he punched a trial vector across his display, and he nodded to himself.
"Astrogation, download from my panel!"
"Aye, Sir. Downloading now."
"Prepare to execute on my command," Theisman said, then turned to Lieutenant Trotter. "Com, inform the Flag that I will be adjusting my position to maximize the effectiveness of my fire in—" he glanced at his chrono "—fourteen-point-six minutes from now."
"Aye, Sir," Trotter said, and this time Theisman smiled at him, for there was no more question in his com officer's voice than there had been in his astrogator's.
* * *
Blackbird's second salvo fared even worse than its first, and Honor relaxed slightly when there was no fourth launch. Either they'd shot their wad or they were being sneaky, and the rapidity of those first three salvos made her doubt it was the latter. She looked up at Venizelos.
"I don't think we'll have to nuke the base after all, Andy," she said as the last wave of missiles came in. "That's good. I'm still hoping we—"
A crimson light glared, and Honor's head whipped around as an alarm squealed.
"Point Defense Three's rejecting the master solution!" Cardones' hands flew across his console. "Negative response override."
Honor's fists clenched as three missiles charged through a hole that shouldn't have been there.
"Baker Two!" Cardones snapped, still fighting the malfunction lights.
"Aye, aye, Sir!" Ensign Wolcott's contralto voice was tight, but her hands moved as rapidly as his. "Baker Two engaged!"
One of the missiles disappeared as Apollo responded to Wolcott's commands and blew it away, but two more kept coming. Fearless's computers had counted them as already destroyed before Point Defense Three put itself out of the circuit; now they were scrambling frantically to reprioritize their firing sequences, and Honor braced herself uselessly. It was going to be tight. If they didn't stop them at least twenty-five thousand kilometers out—
Another missile died at twenty-seven thousand kilometers. The port decoy sucked the other off course, but it detonated six hundredths of a second later, fine off the port beam, and HMS Fearless bucked in agony.
Her port sidewall caught a dozen lasers, bending most of them clear of her hull, but two struck deep through the radiation shielding inside her wedge. The composite ceramic and alloys of her heavily armored battle steel hull resisted stubbornly, absorbing and deflecting energy that would have blown a Grayson-built ship's titanium hull apart, but nothing could stop them entirely, and damage alarms screamed.
"Direct hits on Laser Two and Missile Four!" Honor slammed a fist into her chair arm. "Magazine Three open to space. Point Defense Two's out of the loop, Skipper! Damage Control is on it, but we've got heavy casualties in Laser Two."
"Understood." Honor's voice was harsh, yet even as she grated the response, she knew they'd been lucky. Very lucky. Which wouldn't make the families of the people who'd just died feel any better than it made her feel.
"Point Defense Three is back on line, Captain," Ensign Wolcott reported in a small voice, and Honor nodded curtly.
"Put me through to Admiral Matthews, Com," she said, and the Grayson appeared on her command chair com.
"How bad is it, Captain?" he asked tautly.
"It could have been a lot worse, Sir. We're working on it."
Matthews started to say something else, then stopped at the expression on the mobile side of her face. He nodded instead.
"We'll clear Blackbird in—" Honor glanced at her plot "—twenty-seven minutes. May I suggest we shift to our attack formation?"
"You may, Captain." Matthews' voice was grim, but his eyes glittered.
* * *
Theisman grunted in relief as Principality began to move and none of her "friends" killed her. His ship was the wrong one for an action this close, for her heavy missile armament left little room for energy weapons, and at this range that was going to be fatal. But Harrington had made a mistake at last; she was holding her entire force together as she swept around Blackbird after the enemy she knew had to be hiding behind it—just as he'd expected.
She couldn't know exactly what she was up against, so she wasn't taking any chances on getting her units caught in isolation by something big and modern. It was the smart move, since anyone who hoped to take her would have to hold his forces together or run the same risk of defeat in detail. But there was no way in hell Franks was going to beat her. That meant Principality wasn't going to survive anyway, and the options were different for a kamikaze.
The Havenite destroyer accelerated, streaking around Blackbird in the same direction as her enemies.
* * *
"Engage at will!" Honor snapped as enemy impeller sources suddenly speckled the plot. There was no time for careful, preplanned maneuvers. It was a shoot-out at minimum range, and she who shot first would live.
The numbers were very nearly even, and the Grayson LACs were bigger and more powerful than their opponents while nothing in Masada's order of battle even approached Honor's ships. But Blackbird Base's sensors were feeding them targeting data before their enemies even saw them, and they got off their first shots before even Fearless could localize them.
The cruiser shuddered as a shipboard laser blasted through her starboard sidewall at pointblank range and a direct hit wiped away Laser Nine. A Grayson LAC blew up just astern of her, and Apollo took two hits in rapid succession, but fire was ripping back at the Masadans, as well. Two of their LACs found themselv
es squarely in Covington's path, and Matthews' flagship tore them apart in return for a single hit of her own. The destroyer Dominion locked her batteries on Saul and reduced the Grayson ship to a wreck, but Troubadour was on Saul's flank, and her fire shredded the Masadan ship like tissue paper. Dominion vanished in a ball of flame, and a pair of Grayson LACs went after her sister ship Power in a savage, twisting knife-range dogfight.
Ernst Franks cursed hideously as enemy ships tore through his formation. Solomon's lasers killed a Grayson LAC, then another, but the action was too close and furious for her computers to keep track of. She fired again, at a target that was already dead, just as Power blew apart, and then some sixth sense jerked his eyes to the visual display as HMS Fearless flashed across his flagship's bow.
The cruiser's massed beams ripped straight down the open throat of Solomon's impeller wedge, and the last cruiser in the Masadan Navy vanished in an eye-tearing flash as her fusion bottles let go.
* * *
Honor stared into her display, her single eye aching with concentration. The Masadan ships were dying even more rapidly than she'd hoped, but where were the Havenites? Had they come all this way just to miss them?
She winced as another Grayson LAC blew up, but there were only a handful of Masadan LACs left, with no starships to support them, and Matthews' units were picking them off with methodical precision.
"Come to two-seven-zero, Helm!"
"Aye, aye, Ma'am. Coming to two-seven-zero."
HMS Fearless curved out from Blackbird, clearing her sensors to look for the enemy Honor knew had to be somewhere.
* * *
"Stand by," Commander Theisman whispered as his ship flashed around the craggy moon with ever gathering speed. The base's sensors still fed his plot, and his teeth drew back. "Stand ... by... . Now!"
* * *
"Skipper! Astern of us—!"
Lieutenant Commander Amberson's shout wrenched Commander Alice Truman's eyes back to her display, and her face whitened in horror.
"Hard a-port!" she barked, and Apollo swerved wildly in response.
It was too late. The destroyer behind her had timed it perfectly, and her first broadside exploded just behind the open rear of Apollo's impeller wedge. X-ray lasers opened the light cruiser's port side like huge talons, and damage alarms screamed like damned souls.
"Bring her around!" Truman shouted. "Bring her around, Helm!"
A second broadside was already roaring in, and a corner of her mind wondered why the Peep was using missiles at beam ranges, but she didn't have time to think about that. Her cruiser clawed around, interposing her sidewall, and two of the incoming missiles ran physically into it and perished before their proximity fuses could trigger. Four more detonated just short of it, stabbing through the sidewall into already shattered plating, and a seventh streaked all the way past her and detonated on her starboard side. Smoke and screams and thunder filled Apollo's bridge, and Truman's face was bloodless as her starboard sidewall went down and the Havenite closed in for the kill.
* * *
Theisman snarled in triumph, yet under his snarl was the bitter knowledge that his triumph would be brief. He could finish the cruiser with another salvo, but he'd already crippled her. The Captain would finish her off; his job was to damage as many Manticorans as he could before Thunder came back.
"Take the destroyer!" he barked.
"Aye, Sir!"
Principality slewed to starboard, presenting her reloaded port broadside to Troubadour, but the Manticoran destroyer saw her coming, and her skipper knew his business. Theisman's entire body tensed as the Manticoran fired a laser broadside three times as heavy as his own into him, then snapped up to present the belly of his wedge before the missiles could reach him. Principality heaved in agony, and the plot flickered. Two of his birds popped up, fighting for a look-down shot through Troubadour's upper sidewall, but her point defense picked them off, and Theisman swore as the Manticoran rolled back down with viperish speed to bring her lasers to bear once more.
But Principality was rolling, too, and her starboard broadside fired before Troubadour had completed her maneuver. His ship bucked again as energy blasted deep into her hull, but this time one of his laser heads got through. There was no way to tell how much damage it had done—there wasn't enough time to tell what his damage was!—but he knew he'd hurt her.
"Come to oh-niner-three three-five-niner!"
Principality dived towards the moon, twisting to present the top of her own wedge to Troubadour while her surviving missile crews fought to reload. The single laser in her port broadside picked off a Grayson LAC that never even saw her, and then she shuddered as a Grayson light cruiser put a laser into her forward impellers. Her acceleration dropped and her wedge faltered, but the ready lights glowed on the four surviving tubes of her port broadside, and Theisman sent her rolling madly back to bring them to bear on the Grayson.
He never made it. Fearless came screaming back on a reciprocal of her original course, and a hurricane of energy fire ripped through Principality's sidewall as if it hadn't existed.
"Sidewall down!" Hillyard shouted. "We've lost everything in the port broadside!" The exec cursed. "Emergency reactor shutdown, Skip!"
Principality went to emergency power, and Theisman's face relaxed. His ship was done, but she'd accomplished more than Franks' entire task force, and there was no point throwing away those of her people who still survived.
"Strike the wedge," he said quietly.
Hillyard looked at him in shock for just one instant, then stabbed his panel, and Principality's impeller wedge died.
Theisman watched his display, wondering almost calmly if he'd been in time. Striking the wedge was the universal signal of surrender, yet if someone had already committed to fire—or wasn't in the mood to accept surrenders ...
But no one fired. Troubadour rolled up onto his port side, streaming air from her own wounds, and Theisman sighed in relief when Principality trembled as a tractor locked onto her and he realized he and his remaining people would live after all.
"Sir," Lieutenant Trotter said softly, "Fearless is hailing us."
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Honor leaned back as the hatch sighed open and a very ordinary-looking brown-haired man in the scarlet and gold of a Masadan commander walked through it, escorted by Major Ramirez.
Ramirez was six centimeters shorter than Honor, but San Martin, the single habitable planet of Trevor's Star, was one of the heaviest-gravity worlds man had settled. Its sea-level air pressure was high enough to produce near-toxic concentrations of carbon-dioxide and nitrogen, and the major reflected the gravity to which he had been born. He was built like a skimmer turbine with an attitude problem, and he hated the People's Republic of Haven with a passion no native-born Manticoran could match. At the moment, his complete non-expression showed exactly how he felt, and she sensed the battle between emotion and life-long discipline which held those feelings at bay.
Yet it was the major's prisoner who interested her. He looked far more composed than he could possibly be, and she felt an unwilling respect for him as he gazed levelly back at her. He'd done an outstanding job—better, she suspected, than she could have done under the circumstances—yet she sensed an odd sort of strain under his self-possessed surface and wondered if it had anything to do with his request for this interview with her.
The commander tucked his cap under his arm and braced to attention.
"Commander Thomas Theisman, Navy of the Faithful, Ma'am," he said crisply—in an accent that had never come from Masada.
"Of course you are, Commander." Honor's irony was impaired by her persistently slurred speech, and she saw his eyes widen as he took in her dead, ravaged face and bandaged left eye. But though she waited expectantly, he refused to rise to the bait of her response, and she shrugged.
"What was it you wished to see me about, Commander?"
"Ma'am, I —"
Theisman glanced at Ramirez, then back at
her, his appeal for privacy as eloquent as it was silent. The major stiffened, but Honor regarded the Havenite thoughtfully as he closed his mouth tight and stared back at her.
"That will be all for the moment, Major," she said at last, and Ramirez bristled for an instant, then clicked to attention and withdrew in a speaking silence. "And now, Commander?" she invited. "Was there something you wanted to tell me about why the People's Republic attacked Her Majesty's Navy?"
"Captain Harrington, I'm a registered Masadan citizen," Theisman replied. "My vessel is—was—the Masadan Naval Ship Principality."
"Your ship was the destroyer Breslau, built by the Gunther Yard for the People's Republic of Haven," Honor said flatly. His eyes widened a fraction, and the mobile corner of her mouth smiled thinly. "My boarding parties found her builder's plaque, as well as her splendidly official Masadan registry, Commander Theisman." Her smile vanished. "Shall we stop playing games now?"
He was silent for a moment, then replied in a voice as flat as hers.
"My ship was purchased by the Masadan Navy, Captain Harrington. My personnel are all legally Masadan citizens." He met her eye almost defiantly, and she nodded. This man knew his duty as well as she knew hers, and he was under orders to maintain his cover story, patently false or not.
"Very well, Commander," she sighed. "But if you intend to stick to that, may I ask why you wanted to see me?"
"Yes, Ma'am," Theisman replied, yet for the first time he appeared clearly uncomfortable. "I—" He clenched his jaw, then went on steadily. "Captain, I don't know what you intend to do about the base on Blackbird, but I thought you should know. There are Manticoran personnel down there."
"What?!" Honor half-stood before she could stop herself. "If this is some kind of—" she began ominously, but he interrupted her.