by David Weber
"Time to intercept, Guns?" she asked calmly.
"Eighteen minutes, Skipper—missile range in six-point-five."
"Very well." She laid her forearms very precisely along her command chair's arms. "Stand by point defense."
* * *
"Captain Edwards!"
"Yes, My Lord?" Reliant's captain's voice was hushed, as he, too, watched tragedy unfold before him.
"Bring the division ninety degrees to starboard. I want broadside fire on Saladin right now."
"But-" Edwards began in shock, and Alexander cut him off harshly.
"Do it, Captain!"
"At once, My Lord!"
Byron Hunter looked sidelong at his admiral and cleared his throat.
"Sir, the range is over a hundred million klicks. There's no way we can score at-"
"I know the range, Byron," Alexander never turned away from his own display, "but it's all we've got. Maybe Harrington will pick them up on radar—if she still has radar—as they close. Or maybe Saladin's suffered sensor damage of her own. If she isn't trying to break off because she doesn't know we're here, either, maybe she will if we let her know we are. Hell, maybe we'll actually score on her if she holds her course!"
He looked up at last, and his chief of staff saw the despair in his eyes.
"It's all we've got," he repeated very, very softly as Battlecruiser Division 17 turned to open its broadsides and went to rapid fire.
* * *
The first missiles spewed out from Thunder of God, and Fearless's crippled sensors couldn't see them above a half million kilometers. That gave Rafe Cardones and Carolyn Wolcott barely seven seconds to engage them, far too brief a window to use counter missiles.
Their damaged jammers and decoys fought to blind and beguile the incoming fire, and they'd learned even more about Thunder's offensive fire control than Lieutenant Ash had learned about theirs. Three-quarters of the first broadside lost lock and veered away, and computer-commanded laser clusters quivered like questing hounds, pitting their minimal prediction time against the surviving laser heads' acquisition time.
Rods of coherent light picked off targets with desperate speed, but Fearless couldn't possibly stop them all, and she didn't. Most of those which got through wasted their fury against her impenetrable belly band, but a few raced across "above" and "below" her to attack her sidewalls. Damage alarms wailed again, men and women died, weapons were wiped away, but the cruiser shook off the damage and kept closing, and there was only silence on her bridge. Honor Harrington sat immovable in her command chair, shoulders squared, like an eye of calm at the heart of that silence, and watched her plot.
Seven more minutes to intercept.
* * *
Matthew Simonds snarled as Fearless kept coming through the whirlwind of his fire. Seventy-two missiles per minute slashed out at the cruiser, his magazine levels fell like a sand castle melting in the rain, but she hadn't fired a single shot back at him, and her unflinching approach sent a chill of fear through the heart of his exhaustion-fogged rage. He was hitting her—he knew he was hitting her!—but she came on like some nerveless juggernaut only death itself could stop.
He stared at the light bead in his display, watching atmosphere spill from it like blood, and tried to understand. She was an infidel, a woman. What kept her coming for him this way?
* * *
"Intercept in five minutes, Skipper."
"Understood."
Honor's cool soprano was unshadowed by her own fear. They'd already endured Saladin's fire for six minutes and taken nine more hits, two serious, and the battlecruiser's fire would only grow more accurate as they closed.
* * *
A massive salvo hurtled through space, eighty-four missiles spawned by four battlecruisers from a base closing velocity of thirty thousand KPS. Another came behind it, and another, but the range was impossibly long.
Their drives had burned out three minutes and twelve-point-three million kilometers after launch, at a terminal velocity of almost a hundred and six thousand KPS. Now they tore onward, riding a purely ballistic course, invisible on Hamish Alexander's plot, and his stomach was a lump of iron. Thirteen minutes since launch. Even at their velocity, they would take another four minutes to enter attack range, and the chance of their scoring a hit raced downward with every second of flight time.
* * *
Fearless rocked as a pair of lasers slashed into her port side.
"Missile Six and Laser Eight gone, Captain," Commander Brentworth reported. "Dr. Montoya reports Compartment Two-Forty open to space."
"Acknowledged." Honor closed her eye in pain, for Two-Forty had been converted into an emergency ward when the casualties spilled out of sickbay. She prayed the wounded's emergency environmental slips had saved some of them, but deep inside she knew most of those people had just died.
Her ship bucked again, and fresh tidings of death and injury washed over her, but the time display on her plot ticked steadily downward. Only four more minutes. Fearless only had to last another four minutes.
* * *
"Intercept in three-point-five minutes," Lieutenant Ash said hoarsely, and Simonds nodded and slid down in his chair, bracing himself for the holocaust about to begin.
* * *
"Missiles entering attack range . . . now!" Captain Hunter rasped.
* * *
A proximity alarm flashed on Lieutenant Ash's panel, a warning buzzer wailed, and a shoal of crimson dots appeared on his radar display.
The lieutenant gaped at them. They were coming in at incredible speed, and they couldn't be there. They couldn't be there!
But they were. They'd come over a hundred million kilometers while Thunder of God moved to meet them, and their very lack of drive power had helped them evade all of Thunder's remaining passive sensors. Ash's radar had a maximum range against such small targets of just over a half million kilometers, and that was less than five seconds at their velocity.
"Missiles at three-five-two!" he cried, and Simonds' head jerked towards his secondary plot.
Only five of them were close enough to attack Thunder, and they no longer had any power to adjust their trajectories—but Thunder had held her undeviating course for over two hours. They raced across her bow and rolled on attitude thrusters, bringing their laser clusters to bear down the unprotected throat of her wedge, and all five of them detonated as one.
Thunder of God bucked like a mad thing as half a dozen lasers ripped into her port beam, and Matthew Simonds went white with horror as he saw the second incoming broadside racing down upon him.
"Hard a starboard!" he shouted.
The coxswain threw the helm hard over, wrenching Thunder's vulnerable bow away from the new menace, and Simonds felt a rush of relief.
Then he realized what he'd done.
"Belay that helm order!" he screamed.
* * *
"He's turning!" Rafe Cardones shouted, and Honor jerked upright in her chair. It couldn't be! There was no-
"Roll port! All batteries, engage!"
* * *
"Engage with forward batteries!" Simonds yelled desperately.
He had no choice. Thunder was too slow on the helm, and he'd compounded his original mistake. He should have completed the turn, gotten around as quickly as he could to interpose his wounded port sidewall while he rolled to block with the top or belly of his wedge; instead, his helmsman obeyed the orders he'd been given, checking the turn to come back to port in the same plane, and Thunder hung for a few, short seconds bow-on to Fearless.
The battlecruiser's forward armament spat fire, two powerful spinal lasers blazing frantically at the target suddenly square across her bow. The first salvo wasted itself against the belly of Fearless's wedge, but the cruiser was rolling like a snake. Thunder fired again, pointblank energy fire ripped through her sidewall, and armor was no protection at that range. Air and debris vomited into space, but then her surviving broadside came to bear.
Four lasers an
d three far more powerful grasers went to continuous rapid fire, and there was no sidewall to stop them.
Matthew Simonds had one flaming instant to know he'd failed his God, and then HMS Fearless blew his ship apart around him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Honor Harrington stepped into a trill of bosun's pipes, and Nimitz stiffened on her shoulder even as her good eye widened in surprise. Admiral White Haven had summoned her for a final, routine meeting before she took Fearless home, but Ambassador Langtry waited beside him in Reliant's boat bay. That was odd enough, yet no lesser personages than Admiral Wesley Matthews and Benjamin Mayhew himself stood with them, and speculation frothed through her even as her hand rose in automatic salute.
* * *
Hamish Alexander waited for Protector Mayhew and Sir Anthony Langtry to find chairs, then sat behind his desk and considered the woman before him.
Her treecat was obviously restive, but she looked calm, despite the surprise she must be feeling, and he remembered the first time he'd seen her. She'd been calm then, too, when she'd come aboard to report her damages and casualties with an indifference which had repelled him. She hadn't even seemed to care, as if people were simply part of a ship's fittings, only weapons to be expended and forgotten.
Her emotionless detachment had appalled him . . . but then the report came in that Commander McKeon had somehow gotten almost a hundred of his crew away in his single surviving pinnace, and the mask had slipped. He'd seen her turn away, trying to hide the tears in her good eye, the way her shoulders shook, and he'd stepped between her and his staff to block their view and guard her secret as he realized this one was special. That her armor of detachment was so thick because the pain and grief behind it were so terrible.
His memory flickered ahead to another day—the day she'd watched in stone-faced silence as the men who'd raped and murdered Madrigal's crew faced a Grayson hangman. She hadn't enjoyed it, but she'd watched as unflinchingly as she'd headed into Saladin's broadside. Not for herself, but for the people who would never see it, and that unyielding determination to see justice done for them had completed his understanding of her.
He envied her. He was twice her age, with a career to make any man proud, including the freshly accomplished conquest of the Endicott System, yet he envied her. Her squadron had been harrowed and riven, its two surviving units battered into wrecks. Nine hundred of her crewmen had died, another three hundred were wounded, and she would never, ever believe—as he would never have believed in her place—that the death toll couldn't have been lower if she'd been better. But she was wrong, as he would have been wrong, and nothing could ever diminish what she and her people had done. What her people had done for her because of who and what she was.
He cleared his throat, and as she turned to look at him, he was struck once more by the clean, sharp-edged attractiveness of her. He felt it even with half her face paralyzed and her anachronistic eye patch, and he wondered what her impact must have been like before she was wounded.
"Obviously, Captain Harrington," he said quietly, "I asked you aboard for something besides the traditional pre-departure meeting."
"Indeed, Sir?" Her slurred soprano was no more than politely inquiring, and he smiled slightly and tipped his chair back.
"Indeed. You see, Captain, there've been a lot of dispatches flowing back and forth between Grayson and Manticore. Including," he let his smile fade, "a rather sharp protest from the Honorable Reginald Houseman."
Her steady regard never flickered.
"I regret to inform you, Captain, that the Lords of Admiralty have placed a letter of reprimand in your personnel file. Whatever the provocation, and I grant there was provocation, there is no excuse for a Queen's officer's physically attacking a civilian representative of the Crown. I trust it will never be necessary for me to remind you of that again?"
"So do I, My Lord," she said, and her tone meant something very different from his. There was no arrogance in it, no defiance, but neither was there any apology, and he leaned across the desk.
"Understand me, Captain," he said quietly. "No one can dispute your accomplishments here, nor is any officer of the Queen inclined to waste much sympathy on Mr. Houseman. My concern is not for him. It's for you."
Something happened in that cool, brown eye. Her head cocked a bit to one side, and her treecat mimicked the movement, fixing the admiral with his unblinking green gaze.
"You're an outstanding officer." Her sharply carved face blushed, but she didn't look away. "But you have the vices of your virtues, Captain Harrington. Direct action isn't always the best policy, and there are limits. Overstep them too often, whatever the provocation, and your career will end. I would consider that a tragedy, both for you and for the Queen's service. Don't let it happen."
He held her gaze for a moment, and then she bobbed a small nod.
"I understand, My Lord," she said in an entirely different voice.
"Good." Alexander leaned back again. "Now, however, at the risk of undoing my effort to put the fear of God into you, I must inform you that, aside from your tendency to pummel her diplomats, Her Majesty is quite pleased with you, Captain. In fact, I understand she intends to express her thanks to you in person upon your return to Manticore. I imagine that should, um, offset any potential consequences of your reprimand."
Her blush turned dark and hot, and for the first time since he'd met her, she looked almost flustered.
"I also have to inform you that a certain Captain Alfredo Yu, lately in the service of the People's Republic of Haven, was picked up in Endicott. He's requested asylum from the Crown." Harrington straightened in her chair, her eye very intent, and he nodded. "I'll be sending him home aboard your ship, Captain, and I expect you to show him the courtesy due his rank."
She nodded, and he nodded back.
"That completes what I needed to say to you, but I believe Protector Benjamin has something to say." Alexander turned politely to Grayson's ruler, and she followed suit.
"I do, indeed, Captain Harrington," Mayhew said with a smile. "My planet can never adequately thank you for what you did for us, but we are keenly aware of our debt, not simply to you but to your crews and your Kingdom, and we desire to express our gratitude in some tangible fashion. Accordingly, with Queen Elizabeth's permission through Sir Anthony, I ask you to sign our draft treaty of alliance in her name."
Honor inhaled sharply, and his smile turned sad.
"Had he lived, Admiral Courvosier would have signed. I feel certain there is no one he could have more desired to do so in his place than you, and I ask you to complete his work here for him. Will you do it?"
"I-" Honor had to stop and clear her throat. "I'd be honored to, Sir. Very honored. I-" She broke off and shook her head, unable to continue.
"Thank you," Mayhew said softly, then waved a hand. "There are, however, two other small matters. With the benefits of our new relationship with Manticore, we expect to expand our orbital farms—and population—at a much faster rate, and the Chamber has, at my request, authorized the Grant in Organization of a new steading on our southernmost continent. With your permission, we intend to call it the Steading of Harrington, and I ask you to assume the office of its Steadholder for yourself and your heirs."
Shock jerked Honor so suddenly to her feet that Nimitz swayed for balance, digging his claws deep into her padded shoulder.
"Sir—Protector Benjamin—I can't—I mean, you can't-" She floundered, trying desperately to find the words to express her feelings. Her shock and disbelief, and the residual memory of what a freak she'd been treated as when first she arrived here.
"Please, Captain," Mayhew interrupted her. "Sit down." She obeyed numbly, and he smiled at her again. "I'm a pragmatist, Captain. I have more motives than one for asking you to accept this post."
"But I'm a Queen's officer, Sir. I have other duties, other responsibilities."
"I realize that. With your permission, I intend to nominate a regent to see to the day-to
-day affairs of your steading, but your title will be very real, Captain, and documents will be forwarded to you from time to time which will require your signature and authorization. Moreover, Yeltsin and Manticore aren't that far apart, and we hope to see you here often, though the Chamber fully realizes it will be impossible for you to personally govern your people. But aside from the income—which will be substantial, in a few years' time, and which the Chamber earnestly wishes you to have—there is a much more pressing reason for you to accept. You see, we need you."
"Need me, Sir?"
"Yes. Grayson faces tremendous changes over the next few decades, political and social as well as economic. You'll be the first woman in our history to hold land, but you won't be the last, and we need you as a model—and a challenge—as we bring our women fully into our society. And, if you'll forgive my frankness, your . . . determined personality and the fact that you're a prolong recipient means you'll be a very strong model for a very long time."
"But-" Honor looked at Langtry. "Sir Anthony? Would this even be legal under Manticoran law?"
"Normally, no." The ambassador's eyes gleamed with unmistakable delight. "In this instance, however, Her Majesty has personally authorized it. Moreover, the House of Lords has determined that your dignities as a noblewoman of a sovereign ally of the Kingdom will equate to those of an earl of the realm. Should you accept them—and Her Majesty's Government asks you to consider doing so most seriously—you will become Countess Harrington as well as Steadholder Harrington."
Honor stared at him, unable to believe a word of it yet unable to disbelieve, either, and felt Nimitz's tail twitch against her spine.
"I-" She paused once more, then shook her head and smiled crookedly. "Are you sure about this, Protector Benjamin?"
"I am. All of Grayson is."
"Then I suppose I have to accept. I mean," she blushed hotly, "I would be honored to accept."
"I know precisely what you mean, Captain. We've jumped out and bagged you without warning, and you'd really rather we did it to someone else, but you'll accept anyway." Her blush went wine-dark, and his smile became a grin. "On the other hand, this sort of thing sometimes happens to people who hold pistols to a government's head, and I think-" his grin grew positively wicked "—that once you get over the shock, the idea will grow on you."