by David Weber
Chandler managed a tight answering grin, but then she whipped back around to her display as fresh damage signals shrilled over the task group tactical net. Her grin vanished, and her lips drew back in a snarl.
"They're concentrating on Achilles and Defiant, Ma'am," Eve Chandler said, and Honor bit her lip, wondering how the Peeps had identified the two divisional flagships.
"Enemy time to minefield?"
"Five-point-two-two minutes, Ma'am."
"That's better," Admiral Chin murmured. According to the emissions signatures, DeSoto had picked himself a Redoubtable and a Homer-class battlecruiser. The older Redoubtables were on the small side, but the Homers were every bit as powerful as Havens later and somewhat larger Sultans. She watched a fresh salvo claw at Achilles' heels, and her smile was thin and cold.
A Homer would make a nice down payment on the revenge Genevieve Chin intended to collect.
"Three minutes to minefield attack range." Lieutenant Commander Oselli's voice was flat and taut.
Honor didn't even bother to nod. Her eyes were glued to the plot as missiles lashed back and forth between the warring ships. The Peep formation had overtaken and passed the crippled dreadnought they'd been pounding, hiding her from Eve Chandler's fire control behind their massed impeller wedges, and the task group shifted to a fresh target. They were getting good hits—a far higher percentage of them than the Peeps—but the enemy was sending in two missiles for every one of theirs, and all of them were targeted on Achilles or Defiant.Defiant seemed to be holding her own, but Banton's flagship had taken at least a dozen hits and lost most of her chase armament. Worse, she'd lost two beta nodes, and the strength of her wedge was falling. She could still match the task group's acceleration, but if she kept taking hits—
"Two minutes to minefield attack range."
Commander DeSoto stiffened as a faint radar return flickered in his display. Adrenaline flared as he remembered the last time his radar had picked something up, and he stabbed a key, interrogating his data base threat files. The computers considered dispassionately, then blinked an obedient reply.
"Minefield dead ahead!" he shouted.
"Roll starboard!" Admiral Chin barked instantly, and her task group swerved once more in the face of a fresh threat.
"They've seen them, Sir," Joseph Cartwright said, and Sarnow grimaced.
He'd hoped they'd come even closer—maybe even straight into the mines' attack—before they spotted them, but the Peeps had gotten a lot sharper since their initial surprise. He watched them slew sideways, and eyes of hard, green flint narrowed as new vector analyses blinked on his plot.
"They see them, but they're not going to avoid them," he said grimly.
The Havenite task group slid into range of the clustered mines like an out-of-control ground car or a ground-looping air car. Chin's lightning-fast response had blunted the threat, yet her velocity was far too high to sidestep it completely. Her ships were up on their sides relative to the field, presenting the bellies of their wedges as they came in, but the people who'd laid that field had known their business. They'd also known the exact vector on which Admiral Sarnow intended to suck her into it, and the mines were a disk perpendicular to her line of approach, stacked as "high" as they were "deep."
Space erupted in a wall of light as the bomb-pumped laser platforms spewed concentrated fury at Chin's ships. Thousands of laser beams, each more powerful than any missile laser head could generate, stabbed and tore at their prey. The vast majority wasted themselves harmlessly against her interposed impeller bands, but there were too many of them and they had too much spread for the wedges to intercept them all.
New Boston shuddered as fresh wounds cratered her massive armor and wiped away weapons and their crews. Three beta nodes and an alpha node went with them, and her flag bridge displays flickered as Fusion Four went into emergency shutdown, but her other power plants took the load and damage control and medical parties charged into her wrecked compartments. New Boston was hurt, but she was still a fighting force as she cleared the attack zone.
Other ships weren't. Alp Arslan broke in half and vomited flame as her number two fusion plants containment bottle failed, and the heavy cruisers Scimitar,Drusus, and Khopesh vanished in matching fireballs, their weaker sidewalls and radiation shielding no match for the fury that could rip straight through a dreadnought's defenses. Half a dozen destroyers joined them, and Waldensville, already lamed and crippled, reeled out of the holocaust as a dying hulk.
Genevieve Chin listened to the torrent of loss and damage reports, and her face was hard, hating stone. Again. They'd suckered her again! But how, damn it?! There was no way a minefield should be sitting way the hell out here, and she was the one who'd picked her approach vector! The Manties had matched her course, not lured her onto one of their choosing, so how in hell could they have known exactly where to put their field?
The last of her battered ships—the ones that survived—streamed out of the attack and rolled back down to engage the enemy once more, and her mouth was a knife-thin line as she absorbed her losses. She was down to only two battle-cruisers, both old Tiger-class ships and both damaged, and five dreadnoughts, all damaged to greater or lesser degree. Kaplan's armament had been almost completely gutted, and Merston had lost half her energy weapons and a third of her starboard sidewall. New Boston,Havensport, and Macrea's Tor were hurt less badly, but the lighter ships of her screen had been devastated. Barely half of them remained combat effective, and God only knew what else the goddamned Manties had waiting for her!
She opened her mouth to order the pursuit broken off, then froze as the data on her plot changed once more.
A fierce, harsh sound of exultation filled Nike's bridge, and Honors eyes glittered. They were hopelessly outgunned by the ships behind them, but they'd already destroyed more than twice their own total tonnage! If Parks had left even a single battle squadron to support them, they could have annihilated the Peeps' lead element, maybe even saved the entire system, but the task group had nothing to reproach itself for. And maybe, just maybe, their fresh losses would finally convince the Peeps to break off after all.
Then the dreadnoughts rolled back down. Only four of them remained combat effective, but their course change had brought their full broadsides to bear, the range had fallen to little more than five million kilometers, they'd had time to absorb and adjust to the task groups defensive EW patterns, and their furious, humiliated gunners had blood in their eyes.
Two hundred and fifty-eight missiles erupted from the battered dreadnoughts and their surviving escorts, and twenty-two of them broke through everything the task group could throw at them.
HMS Defiant staggered sideways under the stunning body blow. Her port sidewall vanished, and half her after impeller ring vaporized. Two of her three fusion plants went into emergency shutdown, and she rolled over on her back, trailing air and shattered plating. There was no one left alive on her bridge, but her executive officer took one look at his displays in Auxiliary Control and knew she was done. The heel of his hand slammed down on a red button, and abandon ship alarms screamed over every speaker and suit com aboard her.
Barely a sixth of Defiant's crew escaped before the followup salvo killed her, but she was luckier than Achilles, and Honor's face went white as Commodore Isabella Banton's flagship blew up with all hands.
"Yes!"
DeSoto's shout was swallowed in the hungry bray of triumph from Admiral Chins other officers as the Manticoran battlecruisers died, and her eyes flamed. She swallowed the impulse to break off and threw her ops officer a savage grin.
"Coming up on Point Delta."
Charlotte Osellis soft voice broke the stunned silence, and Honor had her expression back under control as she looked down at her com screen. Admiral Sarnow had to be as shaken as she was by the loss of his two senior division commanders and a quarter of his squadron, but he met her eyes levelly.
"Course change, Sir?" she asked.
"Bring th
e task group fifteen degrees to starboard," Sarnow replied, and Honor heard someone inhale sharply.
They'd planned to alter course at Point Delta all along, for the mines had been their last trump card. With no more tricks to play, their sole chance to buy the base—and Admiral Danislav—a few more hours lay in convincing the Peeps to alter their own vector away from it to pursue the task group. But fifteen degrees was the sharpest alteration they'd discussed. It would let the enemy cut inside them, hold them in missile range longer.
She knew what Sarnow was thinking, for the same thought had occurred to her. Coupled with what had just happened, that big a course change would make the temptation to pursue them almost irresistible. His decision was a cold, calculated bid to offer the chance to destroy his entire squadron as bait to win the base time that probably wouldn't matter anyway.
Dame Honor Harrington looked back into her admiral's eyes and nodded.
"Aye, aye, Sir," she said softly.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
"They're altering course, Ma'am. It's not just an evasion maneuver; their base vector's coming fifteen degrees to starboard."
"I see." Admiral Chin's smile was a hungry wolf's. Those "SDs" had to be drones; if they'd been real ships of the wall, the battlecruisers would never have stopped running to meet them. And the course change itself, with its obvious invitation to pursuit, meant only one thing. The Manties had just run out of tricks. They wanted her to chase them in order to keep her out of energy range of their base because they damned well couldn't stop her any other way.
She knew what they were up to. They'd suck her well clear of the base, then scatter. They'd lose the advantage of their massed point defense when they did, but the range would be opening again by then. Only her dreadnoughts would have the weight of fire to get through their individual defenses, and she could only fire at a few of them.
She was tempted to ignore them, but the base wasn't going anywhere, and she might just get lucky. The Manties had lost a quarter of their battlecruisers and one heavy cruiser, and other ships were hurting. If they were willing to let her chase them, she was willing to accept the invitation in hopes of killing a few more of them before they scattered.
"They're taking the bait, Ma'am."
"I see it, Eve." Honor rubbed the tip of her nose and wondered if she were really pleased. The dreadnoughts' fire had eased as their swing back onto a pursuit vector restricted them once more to their chase armament, but their fire control was adapting to the task group's EW. Their targeting remained less effective than Sarnow's, but their warheads were far more powerful and, despite their losses, they still had the edge in launchers. Especially, a grim mental voice told her, now that Defiant and Achilles were gone.
Nike twisted around, leading her squadron through yet another evasion maneuver, and Honor bit her lip as fresh salvos of missiles tore down on Agamemnon and Cassandra. The damaged heavy cruiser Circe cut across Cassandra's stem as the screen conformed to the battle-cruisers' movements, and six of the birds targeted on Captain Quintan's ship lost lock. They picked up the cruiser, instead, and their sudden swerve to pursue her took them clear of the counter missiles racing to meet them. Circe's laser clusters stopped two of them; the other four got through... and shattered the cruiser like a toy.
"Formation Reno, Com—get those cruisers in tighter!"
"Aye, aye, Ma'am. Formation Reno." George Monet's flat voice sounded incongruously calm as he acknowledged and passed the order, and only then did Honor glance at her flag bridge com screen. She'd given the order without thinking about Sarnow, intent only on bringing the escorts in closer to the battlecruisers for mutual support. But Sarnow only nodded in agreement, then turned his head as Cartwright spoke.
"The Peep SDs are starting to move, Sir," the ops officer said. "They're heading for the base."
"Admiral Rollins is moving in, Ma'am," Commander Klim announced.
Admiral Chin merely nodded. It was about time he figured out what those "SDs" were and got his ass in gear, she thought sourly. Not that it would have changed what had already happened to her, but a little psychological support might have been nice.
Of course, it probably meant the Manties would scatter sooner. There'd be no point in their taking any more lumps once they realized Rollins was moving on the base behind her own ships.
HMS Agamemnon never even saw the missile coming. It rolled up from astern, slicing through a narrow sensor gap where a previous hit had blinded her radar, and detonated just off her port quarter.
For a moment the damage seemed minor; then her entire after half exploded. The mangled stub of her forward hull lurched to the side, and then it, too, blew up, and her consorts raced away from the fading clouds of gas and heat which had once been a battlecruiser and her crew.
Mark Sarnow's face was bleak and hard. The Peeps' steadily growing accuracy already exceeded his projections, and the task group was still fifteen minutes short of its planned scatter point.
His people had performed superbly—but eight thousand of them had died doing it, and the Peep SDs were coming. There was no point throwing away more lives to protect a base he couldn't save anyway.
He looked at his com screen and saw the same, bitter thought in Honor Harrington's brown eyes. She knew the scatter order was coming, and he opened his mouth to give it.
"Sir! Admiral Sarnow!"
His head snapped around in surprise, for the voice was Lieutenant Commander Samuel Webster's. He'd almost forgotten Webster's presence, but the com officer was pointing at his display—the one tied into the FTL sensor net.
Commander Francis DeSoto bared his teeth as the third Manty battlecruiser died. He didn't need Admiral Chin's orders to look for a replacement target, and he searched his display hungrily. Another Homer. That was what he wanted—but then he stiffened as an icon suddenly changed. Agamemnon's destruction and a shift in the Manticoran formation had opened a hole in the maze of mutually interfering impeller signatures, and New Boston's computers got their first clear look at HMS Nike.
The updated plot blinked at DeSoto again, and his eyes glittered. That ship was five percent larger than a Homer, and that made her one of the new Reliant-class ships.
"It is Admiral Danislav, Sir!" Joseph Cartwright's confirmation of Webster's report was jubilant, and Sarnow fought his own elation. The enormous hyper footprint was well beyond Nike's onboard sensor range, but there was no question of who it was. The ten dreadnoughts at the formation's core burned sharp and clear, and Danislav must already be querying the sensor net.
The admiral made himself sit still and silent, watching the plot Webster was feeding from the sensor platforms' FTL transmissions. Danislavs ships held their arrival vector for ten seconds, then twenty, coasting without acceleration at the bare 8,000 KPS of their translation into normal space, and then the plot blinked. Danislav's heading changed, his ships went to an acceleration of four hundred and thirty gravities, and a new vector curled out across the display.
Numbers flashed with CIC's analysis. Twenty-six minutes. That was how much longer the Peeps had to keep chasing Sarnow to reach the point of no return. Just twenty-six minutes and they couldn't possibly escape Danislav's oncoming dreadnoughts.
He turned back to his com to give Captain Harrington the news.
Twenty-four missiles sped toward the task group. Five of them lost lock over a million kilometers out as jammers blinded their sensors. Another three locked onto decoys. Two of them couldn't see their primary target and shifted to the secondary, arcing away to strike at the heavy cruiser Warrior, and countermissiles smashed six more of them to bits.
Eight of them broke through the outer defense zone and bore in, weaving and bobbing while their own ECM parried and thrust with the systems trying to kill them. They were outclassed... but they were also closing at fifty-five thousand KPS. Laser clusters killed one of them, then two more. A fourth. The surviving quartet made their final course correction, two more of them blew apart, and then the last pair of mi
ssiles detonated.
HMS Nike heaved and twisted as x-ray daggers sank deep into her armored flank. Laser Seven and Graser Five exploded into wreckage. Radar Five went with them, along with Communications Two, Missile Thirteen and Fourteen, Damage Control Three, Boat Bay Two, and ninety-three men and women.
A secondary explosion boiled up out of Com Two and Damage Control Three. Incandescent gas and flying chunks of battle steel erupted into CIC from below, gutting it and killing or wounding twenty-six more people. Fire and smoke filled the compartment, and the massive concussion smashed across it and into its after bulkhead—the one that separated it from Nike's flag bridge.
The ruptured bulkhead spat out splinters with deadly velocity. One of them tore Admiral Sarnow's yeoman in half. A second killed three of Joseph Cartwright's ratings. Another shrieked across the flag bridge and decapitated Casper Southman, then ricocheted into Ernestine Corells console. It missed the chief of staff by centimeters, and she lurched back from her shattered displays in horror, coughing and choking on smoke as the man beside her vanished in an explosion of blood.
And a fourth deadly splinter ripped into the back of Admiral Mark Sarnow's command chair.
It sheared through the chair, spinning end-for-end like a white-hot buzz-saw. The impact snapped the admirals shock frame and hurled him forward, but the splinter caught him in midair. It severed his right leg just above the knee and mangled his left calf, chunks of the chair itself blasted into his back, and his ribcage shattered like a wicker basket as he impacted on the master plot and bounced back like a broken doll.
Samuel Webster flung himself toward his admiral while slamming blast doors chopped off the cyclone of escaping air. Sarnow's skin suit had already inflated emergency tourniquets on either thigh, and his scream was a faint, thready exhalation as Webster moved him gently to check his life-sign monitors.