CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Thunder of God arced her way through a huge outside loop in an effort to cut in behind her opponents, and damage control teams labored furiously. It took time to complete their surveys, but Matthew Simonds listened in weary wonder as their reports flowed into the bridge.

It didn't seem possible. Those hits would have destroyed any Masadan ship, yet for all the gaping wounds in Thunder's flanks, his broadside had lost only one missile tube and a single graser.

Simonds chewed his hate as his enemy executed her own loop inside his, matching him move for move, yet under his hate was a dawning comprehension of why Yu had been so confident he could destroy Fearless, for Thunder was tougher than the sword had dreamed. A sense of his own power, his own ponderous ability to destroy, suffused his tired brain . . . and with it came a sour appreciation for how clumsily he'd misused that power.

He checked the plot again. Two hours had passed since he'd broken off action, and the range was back up to sixteen and a half light-minutes. Workman assured him Missile Twenty-One would be back on line in another thirty minutes, but time was ticking away, and he was only too well aware of how he'd allowed Harrington to dictate the conditions of engagement. He had at least two days before anyone from Manticore arrived to help her, but she hovered stubbornly between him and Grayson, and he'd let her burn up precious hours in which he should already have been about God's Work.

No more. He stood and crossed to the tactical station, and Ash looked up from his conference with his assistants.

"Well, Lieutenant?"

"Sir, we've completed our analysis. I'm sorry we took so long, but-"

"Never mind that, Lieutenant." It came out more brusquely than he'd intended, and Simonds tried to soften it with a smile. He knew Ash and his people were almost as tired as he was, and they'd had to run their analyses with reference manuals almost literally in their laps. That was one reason he'd been willing to waste time trying to outmaneuver Harrington. He'd been fairly certain the attempt would fail, but he'd had no intention of reengaging until Ash had time to digest what he'd learned from the first clash.

"I understand your difficulties," Simonds said more gently. "Just tell me what you've learned."

"Yes, Sir." Ash drew a deep breath and consulted an electronic memo pad. "Sir, despite their missiles' smaller size, their penaids, and especially their penetration ECM, are better than ours. We've programmed our fire control to compensate for all of their EW techniques we've been able to identify. I'm sure they have tricks we haven't seen yet, but we've eliminated most of the ones they've already used.

"Defensively, their decoys and jammers are very good, but their counter missiles and point defense lasers are only a little better than our own, and we've gotten good reads on their decoy emissions and updated our missiles' exclusion files. I think we'll be able to compensate for them to a much larger extent in the next engagement."

"Good, Lieutenant. But what about our own defenses?"

"Sword, we're just not experienced enough with our systems to operate them in command mode. I'm sorry, Sir, but that's the truth." Ash's assistants looked down at their hands or panels, but Simonds simply nodded again, slowly, and the lieutenant went on.

"As I say, we've updated the threat files and reworked the software to extrapolate from our analysis of what they've already done. In addition, I've set up packaged jamming and decoy programs to run on a computer-command basis. It won't be as flexible as a fully experienced tactical staff could give you, Sir, but taking the human element out of the decision loop should increase our overall effectiveness."

The lieutenant didn't like admitting that, but he met Simonds' eyes without flinching.

"I see." The sword straightened and massaged his aching spine, then looked over his shoulder. "Is your course updated, Astrogation?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Then bring us around." Simonds gave Ash his most fatherly smile. "We'll give you a chance to show us the fruits of your labor, Lieutenant."

"They're coming back in, Skipper."

Honor set her cocoa in the beverage holder on her arm rest, cocked an eyebrow at Cardones, then looked down at her own repeater. Saladin had reopened the range to almost three hundred million kilometers, but now she was decelerating towards Fearless at four-point-six KPS².

"What do you think he's up to this time, Ma'am?"

"I imagine he's spent the last couple of hours thinking over what we did to him, Andy. If he's coming back for more, he must think he's figured out what he did wrong last time."

"You think he'll try to close to energy range, then?"

"I would in his place, but remember the saying about the world's best swordsman." Venizelos looked puzzled, and she smiled crookedly. "The world's best swordsman doesn't fear the second best; he fears the worst swordsman, because he can't predict what the idiot will do."

The exec nodded his understanding, and Honor turned to her com link to Troubadour. She opened her mouth, but McKeon grinned and shook his head.

"I heard you talking to Andy, Ma'am, and I wish you were wrong. Too bad you're not."

"Even so, he probably learned a lot the last time, Alistair. If he has, he'll concentrate his fire as he closes."

"Yes, Ma'am." McKeon didn't say any more, but they both knew Saladin's logical target. Troubadour could take far less damage than Fearless, and her destruction would eliminate a quarter of Honor's launchers.

"Stick close. Whatever he's up to, it's going to open with a missile exchange, and I want you inside Fearless's inner point defense perimeter."

"Aye, aye, Skipper."

"Rafe," she turned back to Cardones, "call Lieutenant Harris to relieve you, then you and Carol get some rest. You, too, Chief Killian," she added with a glance at the helmsman. "We've got four or five hours before missile range, and I want all three of you sharp when it happens."

* * *

Sword Simonds shoved himself firmly against the command chair's cushioned back.

Part of him wanted to wade right in, get to close grips with his enemies, and destroy them once and for all, yet he dared not. Harrington had handled Thunder too roughly in the first engagement. Prudence was indicated until he was certain Ash had made sufficient adjustments to their own defenses, so he'd ordered a turnover to kill their closing velocity and hug the edge of the missile envelope once more rather than get in too deep too quickly.

Harrington had turned away enough to extend his closure time, and he gritted his teeth as the long, exquisite tension tore at his nerves. She'd played her games with him for fourteen hours now, and he'd been on Thunder's bridge continuously for forty-five, broken only by brief, fitful naps. Now his stomach was awash with acid and too much coffee, and he wanted it to end.

"He is going for another missile engagement."

Rafael Cardones had just come back on watch, relieving Lieutenant Harris, and despite her own tension—or perhaps because of it—Honor felt an almost overpowering urge to giggle at the disgust in his voice.

"Count your blessings, Guns," she said instead. "If he's willing to stay out of energy range, I certainly am."

"I know, Skipper. It's just-" Cardones bent over his console, updating himself, and Honor shook her head fondly at his back. "He'll enter range in another ten minutes," Cardones announced after a moment. "Closing velocity will be down to four hundred KPS at that point."

"Close up your missile crews, Lieutenant," Honor said formally.

The range fell to six-point-eight million kilometers, and Thunder of God spat missiles towards her foes, their computers crammed with every tactical improvement Ash had been able to think of. This time she went to rapid fire with the first salvo; a second broadside followed fifteen seconds later, then a third, and a fourth. Two hundred and sixteen missiles were in space before the first reached attack range, and Manticoran broadsides raced to meet them.

"They're concentrating on Troubadour," Cardones said tautly, and Honor gripped her chair arms.

"Yankee-Three, Alistair."

"Aye, aye, Ma'am. Executing Yankee-Three." McKeon's voice was flat and metallic.

"Chief, take us to Yankee-Two," Honor went on, and Fearless slowed and rolled "up" towards Saladin. Troubadour slid past her, tucking in to hide as much of her emission signature behind the more powerful ship as she could without blocking her own fire. It was a cold-blooded maneuver to place the cruiser's tougher sidewalls between her and the enemy, but Saladin had detailed scans on them both. It was unlikely her missiles would be fooled into going for Fearless, and they still had plenty of maneuver time on their drives.

"Missile Defense Delta."

"Aye, aye, Ma'am. Initiating Plan Delta." Wolcott sounded calm and cool this time, and Honor felt a brief glow of pride in the young woman.

The glow faded as she turned back to her plot and the sheer density of the Masadan fire. Saladin carried far more ammunition, and she was using it ruthlessly. Honor longed to reply in kind, for Fearless mounted the new Mod 7b launcher, with a cycle time of only eleven seconds. She could have pumped out twenty percent more fire than Saladin—but only while her ammo lasted, and the range was too long for her to burn through it that way.

Sword Simonds' lip drew back in a canine grin as he watched Ash's efforts pay off. Harrington's decoys were less than half as effective this time, and freed from the effort to coordinate Thunder's defenses, Ash and his staff were adjusting far more rapidly to her other defensive measures, as well.

Missiles tore down on the Manticoran ships, and even at this range he sensed the pressure they placed on Harrington's defenses. Seven of the first broadside broke past her counter missiles, and if her lasers stopped all of them short of lethal range, the rapidity of Ash's fire gave her far less engagement time on each salvo.

He tore his eyes from that display to check missile defense, and his heart rose still higher. Ash's prerecorded ECM programs were performing much better than he'd hoped. Ten of the incoming missiles lost lock and veered away, seeking Thunder's own decoys, and counter missiles and lasers easily burned down the six that held their course.

Five minutes passed. Then six. Eight. Ten. Somehow, Carolyn Wolcott stopped every single missile Saladin threw at her, but the enemy was adapting to Fearless's defensive ECM far more quickly. His fire was more accurate and heavier, and this time he wasn't flinching away. Cardones hit the battlecruiser once, then again, and a third time, and still she bored in, pounding back, shrugging aside her injuries.

Matthew Simonds mouthed an oath as yet another hit slammed into his ship, but then his bloodshot eyes glowed as a shout of triumph went up from his tactical crew.

HMS Troubadour vomited debris and atmosphere as the X-ray laser chewed deep into her unarmored hull. Plating buckled and tore, an entire missile tube and its crew vanished in an eyeblink, and pressure loss alarms screamed. The destroyer raced onward, trailing wreckage and air, and her surviving missile tubes belched back at her massive foe.

Honor winced as the laser ripped into Troubadour. Saladin had learned even more than she'd feared from that first engagement. Her ECM was far more efficient, her heavier, more numerous point defense stations burned down incoming fire with dismaying efficiency, and each hit she scored hurt far worse than the missiles that got through them hurt her.

She should have given Rafe his head earlier. She should have pursued Saladin before the big ship's inexperienced crew had time to adjust to their weapons, but she hadn't quite been able to believe her own suspicions then. And, she told herself pitilessly, she'd let herself be dissuaded not just by the need to stay between Saladin and Grayson, but by her own desire to live.

She bit her lip as another Masadan missile was picked off less than a second short of Troubadour. She'd lost her best chance to kill Saladin while she was still clumsy; now too many of her own people were going to die because of her failure.

"Look! Look!" someone shouted from the back of Thunder's bridge.

Sword Simonds wrenched around in his chair to scowl at the culprit for breaking discipline, but his heart wasn't in it. He, too, had seen two more missiles break through everything the bitch could throw against them.

"Direct hits on Missile Nine and Laser Six, Captain!" Lieutenant Cummings reported harshly. "No survivors from either mount, and we've got heavy casualties in Tracking and CIC."

Alistair McKeon shook his head like a punch-drunk fighter. Dust motes hovered in midair, the stink of burning insulation and flesh had leaked into the bridge before the ventilator trunk to CIC slammed shut, and he heard someone retching.

"Beta Fifteen's down, Skipper!" Cummings told him, and he closed his eyes in pain. There was a pause, and then his engineer's voice went flat. "Captain, I'm losing the port sidewall aft of Frame Forty-Two."

"Roll her, Helm!" McKeon barked, and Troubadour spun madly, whipping her rent sidewall away from Saladin. "Engage with the starboard broadside!"

Thunder of God heaved as another missile got through, but a sense of indestructible power filled Matthew Simonds. His ship had lost two lasers, a radar array, two more tractors, and another missile tube—that was all, and his sensors could see the shattered plating and wreckage trailing from the bitch's destroyer. Another broadside belched out as he watched, the exultation of his bridge crew flamed about him like a fire, and he felt himself pounding the arm of his chair as he urged those missiles on.

Sweat dripped from Rafael Cardones' face onto his panel. Saladin's electronic warfare patterns flowed and changed with incredible speed compared to their original, arthritic slowness, and the battlecruiser's point defense seemed to be seeing straight past his own birds' ECM. He could feel Wolcott's anguish beside him as more missiles stabbed through her over-strained defenses to maim and mangle Troubadour, but he had no time to spare for that. He had to find a chink in Saladin's armor. He had to!

"Jesus C—!"

Lieutenant Cummings' voice died with sickening suddenness. Fusion One went into emergency shutdown a fraction of a second later, and the destroyer faltered as Fusion Two took the full load.

There were no more reports from Damage Control Central. There was no one left to make them.

"Go to rapid fire on all tubes!"

Honor's eye was locked on the com link to Troubadour, and the live side of her face was sick as she heard the tidal wave of damage reports washing over Alistair's bridge. Ammunition or no, she had to draw Saladin's fire from Troubadour before it was too-

The com link suddenly went dead, and her eye whipped to the visual display in horror as Troubadour's back broke like a stick and the destroyer's entire after third exploded like a sun.

Cheers filled Thunder's bridge, and Matthew Simonds pounded the arms of his chair and bellowed his own thick-voiced triumph.

He glared at his plot and the single godless ship which still stood between him and the Apostate, his face ugly with the need to kill and rend. But even through his bloodlust, he saw the sudden quickening of Fearless's fire. Thunder lurched, alarms screaming, as another laser head got through, and this time he snarled in fury, for the hit had cost him two of his own tubes.

"Kill that bitch, Ash!"

It was Fearless's turn now.

Damage alarms screamed like tortured women as the first Masadan broadside lashed her, and Honor tore her mind away from the horror and pain of Troubadour's death. She couldn't think about that, couldn't let herself be paralyzed by the friends who'd just died.

"Hotel-Eight, Helm!" she ordered, and her soprano voice was a stranger's, untouched by anguish or self-hate.

"We've lost the control runs to the after ring, Skipper!" Commander Higgins reported from Damage Central. "We're down to two-sixty gees!"

"Get those impellers back for me, James."

"I'll try, but we're shot clean through at Frame Three-Twelve, Skipper. It's going to take at least an hour just to run replacement cable."

Fearless twisted again as a fresh laser gouged deep.

"Direct hit on the com section!" Lieutenant Metzinger's voice was ugly with loss. "None of my people got out, Skipper. None of them!"

Thunder heaved as two more lasers ripped at him, and Simonds swore. Missiles were coming in so fast and heavy even computer-driven laser clusters couldn't catch them all, but he was pounding Harrington with equal fury, and his ship was far, far tougher. A readout flickered on the edge of his plot as Fearless's impeller wedge suddenly faltered, and his eyes flamed.

"Increase acceleration to max!" he barked. "Close the range. We'll finish the bitch with energy fire!"

Fearless staggered yet again as another laser head evaded Ensign Wolcott. The fresh blast of X-rays wiped away two more missile tubes, and Rafael Cardones tasted despair. He was hitting the bastards at least as often as they were hitting Fearless, but Saladin was so damned tough she didn't even seem to notice, and he was down to nine tubes.

And then he froze, staring at his readouts. That couldn't be true! Only an idiot would run his EW that way—but if the Captain was right about who was in command over there. . . .

The analysis flashed before him, and his lips thinned. Saladin's ECM was under computer control. It had to be, and the engagement had lasted long enough for his own sensors to spot the pattern. The battlecruiser was cycling through a complex deception plan that shifted sequence every four hundred seconds—but every time it did, it reset to exactly the same origin point!

There was no time to clear it with the Captain. His flashing hands changed his loading queues, updated his birds' penetration profiles . . . and slammed a lock on all offensive fire. He ignored the consternation around him as his fire ceased. His eyes were glued to his chrono, watching it turn over, and then he pressed the firing key flat.

Simonds frowned as the Fearless's fire suddenly died. Fifteen seconds passed without a single answering shot, then twenty. Twenty-five. He felt his lungs fill with air as he prepared to shout his joy, then swore in savage disappointment as her broadside fired again.

Nine missiles charged through space, and Thunder of God's computers blinked in cybernetic surprise at their unorthodox approach. They came in massed in a tight phalanx, suicidally tight against modern point defense . . . except that the three lead missiles carried nothing but ECM. Their jammers howled, blinding every active and passive sensor system, building a solid wall of interference. Neither Thunder nor their fellows could possibly "see" through it, and a human operator might have realized there had to be a reason Fearless had voluntarily blinded her own missiles' seekers. But the computers saw only a single jamming source and targeted it with only two counter missiles.

One jammer died, but the other two survived, spreading out, varying the strength and power and shape of the transmissions that baffled Thunder's follow-up counter missiles. They charged onward, and then, suddenly, they arced up and apart to expose the six missiles behind them.

Last-ditch point defense lasers swiveled and struck like snakes, spitting rods of coherent light as the computers finally recognized the threat, but the jammers had covered them to the last possible moment, and the attack missiles knew exactly what they were looking for. One of the six died, then another, but the final quartet came on, and an alarm screamed on Lieutenant Ash's panel.

The lieutenant's head whipped around in horror. He had less than a single second to realize that somehow these missiles had been programmed to use his EW systems, as if his decoys were homing beacons, not defenses, and then they rammed headlong into their target.

Two of them vanished in sun-bright fireballs that shook Thunder to her keel as twin, 78-ton hammers struck her sidewall at .25 C. For all their fury, those two were harmless, but their sisters' sidewall penetrators functioned as designed.

Fearless writhed as a fresh hit killed two more missile tubes, but then someone emitted a banshee shriek of triumph, and Honor stared at her repeater. It wasn't possible! No one could get old-fashioned nukes through the very teeth of a modern warship's defenses! Yet Rafe Cardones had done it. Somehow, he'd done it!

But he hadn't scored direct hits. Saladin's impeller wedge flickered as she staggered out of the fireballs, clouds of atmosphere and vaporized alloy streamed back from where her port sidewall had died, but she was still there, and even as Honor watched, the maimed battlecruiser was rolling desperately to interpose the roof of her impeller wedge against the follow-up missiles charging down upon her. Her wedge restabilized, and her drive went to maximum power as her vector swung sharply away from Fearless.

She accelerated madly, breaking off, fleeing her mangled opponent, and HMS Fearless was too badly damaged to pursue.