Honor Harrington (№1) - On Basilisk Station

He watched his display, noting the cool professionalism with which Fearless had held her counter-fire until she had perfect targets, and filed that away with all his other data on Commander Harrington's capabilities. A dangerous, dangerous woman, he told himself as two of his missiles were decoyed off course and exploded harmlessly outside Fearless's sidewalls. But not dangerous enough to make up for the difference in firepower.

"Go to rapid fire on twenty and twenty-one, Jamal," he said.

Honor winced inwardly as the Q-ship ahead of her began to spit paired missiles at fifteen-second intervals. They came racing astern from the big freighter, and the sheer prodigality of that stream of deadly projectiles was frightening. At that rate of fire, Sirius would fire off more missiles than her own forward magazines held in barely seven minutes, and she doubted it was a panic reaction. Coglin had been too cool and deliberate throughout. He knew precisely what he was doing, and that meant he had the magazine capacity to burn through ammo this way.

"Evasion pattern Echo-Seven-One, Chief Killian," she said.

"Aye, aye, Ma'am. Commencing Echo-Seven-One."

Echo-Seven-One was just about the simplest evasion pattern Honor had practiced with Killian, little more than an erratically timed barrel roll along the same vector. It only moved them a few dozen kilometers either side of their base course each time they rolled, but there wasn't a lot else Fearless could do to evade Sirius's fire. Not unless Honor wanted to angle far enough off the base track to interpose a sidewall, and that would give away too much of her acceleration advantage over the Q-ship. Yet it wasn't quite as useless as one might have thought, for she'd included Cardones and McKeon in the same drills. Now Cardones retained control of his active defenses, but McKeon took over the passive systems and began a deliberate jingle-jangle between the flanking decoys. Fearless's rolling progress swept them in a complete circuit about the cruiser, and the exec shifted their power levels in a carefully timed pattern which gave the impression that the ship's heading was veering from side to side, as well. It wasn't, of course, but, hopefully, Sirius's tactical officer would be forced to use up missiles covering the course changes the cruiser might be making because he couldn't be certain she wasn't.

Honor certainly hoped he would. The Q-ship's missiles were still burning out before they came in, but the engagement time between salvos was too short for Cardones to wait them out. He had to launch sooner, with poorer solutions and lower counter-missile accelerations to give him more time—and range—on their impeller wedges. The laser clusters began to fire as a handful of Sirius's shots got past his counter-missiles, and she looked up at the main visual display as incandescent bursts of brilliance pitted the starfield ahead of her. Unless she missed her guess about the warheads those missiles carried, she had to stop them at least twenty thousand kilometers short of her ship, and they looked frighteningly close.

But none of them were getting closer than a hundred thousand ... yet.

"Coming up on twenty-four light-seconds' range, Captain," Lieutenant Commander Jamal reported. "We're getting them in closer, but those decoys of theirs are better than anything I've ever seen before."

Coglin grunted acknowledgment without even looking up from his tactical display. Jamal was right. Oh, there was more than a bit of ass-covering in his remark, but Fearless's ECM was a hell of a lot better than NavInt had believed possible, and it was making Jamal's job a pain in the ass. It was also using up a lot of ammunition, and he hated to think about how much money each of those missiles cost. He knew damned well some braided idiot was going to climb all over him for the expense, but they cost a lot less than Sirius did.

Honor flinched as Cardones finally missed an incoming missile. It darted in to twenty-two thousand kilometers; then it vanished in a brilliant eyeblink, and she bit her lip as her worst fears were confirmed. Sirius was using laser warheads, turning each missile into a remotely targeted cluster of bomb-pumped x-ray lasers.

The rate of closure was over seventy-seven thousand KPS, which didn't allow for a lot of accuracy from the fire control that could be squeezed into a warhead, especially not fire control dazzled by McKeon's ECM, but one of the beams picked off her port decoy. McKeon deployed another without orders or comment, but there was no need for comments. Fearless carried only three more decoys; when they were gone, her ECM's effectiveness would be more than halved, and she hadn't even gotten into range of her opponent yet.

Captain Coglin's smile was thin as his first warhead got close enough to detonate. There was no sign it had inflicted any damage, but that would come in time.

"Range coming down to twenty-three-point-four light-seconds." Cardones's harsh voice showed the strain of thirteen minutes under fire to which he could not reply, but there was exultation in it, as well.

"Very good, Guns." Honor heard a shadow of matching hunger in her own voice. They'd lost another decoy, but they'd been incredibly lucky so far. Fearless was undamaged—and she had the range at last.

"Fire plan Tango on my command," she said.

"Aye, aye, Ma'am. Setting up fire plan Tango." The lieutenant punched commands into his systems. "Fire plan Tango locked."

"Then you may engage, Guns."

"Engaging."

"Incoming fire!" Jamal snapped, and Coglin smothered a curse. Damn it, what did it take to hit that frigging ship?! He'd fired over ninety missiles so far; six of them had gotten through Fearless's counter-fire, but the cruiser's ECM was hellishly effective, and not one of them had scored a hit! Now Harrington was shooting back, and despite his firepower advantage, he felt a shiver of anxiety. But if the range was low enough to let her fire full-power shots, the same was true for him, he told himself firmly.

"Jesus!"

Coglin's head jerked up as Jamal spat out the incredulous curse. A damage alarm screamed, the bridge twitched, and he whipped around to his display in panic, then relaxed convulsively. The laser warhead had savaged Sirius's flank, ripping number four cargo hold open to space like a huge talon, but number four was empty, and Sirius had suffered no casualties. Her capabilities were unimpaired, and he swiveled his cold eyes to the tactical officer.

"Well, Jamal?" he snapped.

"They suckered me, Sir," Jamal admitted. Sweat beaded his forehead, but his fingers were already racing across his panel. "They fired a pair of laser warheads and staggered their launch." He pressed the commit key, locking his new firing orders into the point defense computers, and twisted around to return his captain's look. "The interval was less than half a second, but the lead missile mounted some kind of ECM emitter, Captain. I'm not sure what it was, but it covered the gap between their launch times. The computers thought they were coming in simultaneously, and our fire solution missed the separation, so we nailed the lead bird, but the second one got through. It won't happen again, Sir."

"It better not," Coglin growled. "It's a hell of a long walk home." He glared at his display and bared his teeth. So Commander Harrington wanted to show him a few surprises, did she? Well, he had one for her, as well.

"Go to rapid fire on all after tubes," he said coldly.

"A hit, Ma'am!" Cardones crowed. The gush of escaping air was clear to his sensors, like blood on a wounded animal's flank, and a soft sound of approval rippled across the bridge.

Honor didn't share it. She was watching her other sensors, and there was no change in Sirius's energy profile. She understood Cardones's jubilation perfectly—a similar hit on Fearless would have inflicted serious damage—but he'd forgotten how big Sirius was. She could suck up far more destruction than Fearless could, and—

The tactical display blinked, and Honor inhaled sharply. Sirius was no longer firing salvos of two missiles each; she was firing six at a time.

The two ships charged onward, and Fearless writhed from side to side under her opponent's steady pounding. Honor felt sweat trickle down her temple and wiped it irritably away, hoping no one had noticed it. She was losing a tiny fraction of her effective acceleration advantage, yet she had no choice; the shallow S-turns she'd added to Killian's wild, erratic rolls weren't much, but she'd lost another decoy. She had only one spare left, now, and the hail of missiles sleeting at her from Sirius was inconceivable. A regular capital ship might have fired more in a single salvo but no warship—not even a superdreadnought—boasted the magazine capacity to keep up such density for so long! She herself was able to fire little more than one salvo a minute; for every missile she sent after Sirius, the Q-ship sent twelve back into her teeth.

Sweat plastered Cardones's hair to his scalp, and McKeon's face was etched with strain as the two of them battled against that incredible weight of fire and tried to strike back. They were outclassed. She knew it, and every one of her officers knew it as well, but she no longer even thought of breaking off. She had to stop that ship, and somehow—

Fearless lurched. The entire ship bucked like a terrified thing, alarms howled, and Killian's head jerked up.

"Forward impellers down!" he barked.

Dominica Santos's face went white in Central Damage Control as the focused blast of X rays slashed into Fearless's bows. Alarms shrieked at her, screaming like damned souls until Lieutenant Manning stabbed the button that killed them.

"Forward hold open to space. Mooring Tractor One's gone. Heavy casualties in Fusion One," Manning snapped. "Oh, Jesus! We've lost Alpha Two, Ma'am!"

"Shit!" Santos pounded on her keyboard, querying the central computers, and swore again as a scarlet-daubed schematic of the forward impeller nodes flashed before her. She studied the damage for just a moment, dark eyes bitter, then hit her intercom key.

"Bridge. Captain," a cool soprano, barely frayed about the edges, said in her ear.

"Skipper, this is Santos. The whole forward drive segment's gone into automatic shutdown. We've lost Number Two Alpha node, and it looks like Beta Three went with it."

"Can you restore them?" There was urgency in the captain's voice, and Santos closed her eyes in furious thought.

"No way, Ma'am," she said through gritted teeth. Her eyes popped back open, and she traced the blinking schematic with a fingertip while her mind raced. Then she nodded to herself. "The main ring's broken at Alpha Two and Beta Three. I think we've got some more damage at Beta Four, but the rest of the ring looks okay," she said. "I can probably route around the wrecked nodes, then run up Beta Two and Four—assuming Four's still with us—to compensate in the impeller wedge, but it's going to take time."

"How long?"

"Ten, maybe fifteen minutes, Ma'am. At best."

"Very well, Dominica. Get on it as quickly as you can."

"I'm on it, Skipper!" Santos unlocked her shock frame and jerked up out of her chair. "Allen, I'm going forward. You're damage control officer till I get back."

"But what about Fusion One?" Manning demanded. "It's open to space and we've lost two-thirds of the forward power watch!"

"Oh, shit!" Santos bent over his panel, studying the readouts, and her face tightened. Not only were most of her people dead, but there was already an imbalance in the fusion bottle temperature. She stabbed keys and grunted in relief as the data readouts changed.

"The bottle's holding steady," she said quickly. "Cut the reactor out of the circuit to be safe—Fusion Two can handle the load—and keep an eye on that temperature. If it starts climbing any faster than it is, let me know."

"Yes, Ma'am." Manning bent back over his console, and Santos headed for the hatch at a run.

"Direct hit, Sir!" Lieutenant Commander Jamal announced, and Coglin nodded in sharp approval. At last! And about damned time, too; they'd been firing at Fearless for over seventeen minutes.

"Her acceleration's falling, Sir." Jamal's voice was sharp with excitement, and he grinned hugely. "We must have taken out her forward impellers!"

"Good, Jamal. Very good! Now do it again," Coglin growled.

"Aye, aye, Sir!"

Honor bit her lip so hard she tasted blood, but somehow she kept the sickness from her face. Fearless had just dropped to half power, which was bad enough, but the loss of the alpha node could be disaster. Despite the loss in acceleration, she was continuing to close the range on Sirius, if more slowly, for her velocity was almost fifteen hundred KPS higher than the Q-ship's. But Sirius was now out-accelerating her by almost 1.5 KPS

Yet that was the least of Honor's worries. She stared into the visual display, watching it sparkle and flash as Fearless's over-strained point defense beat aside the missiles coming in at shorter and shorter intervals, and fought her despair.

Without the alpha node, Fearless couldn't reconfigure her forward impellers for Warshawski sail. If Sirius broke through into hyper space and reached the Tellerman, she would run away from Fearless at over ten times the cruiser's maximum acceleration ... and Honor couldn't follow her into the wave on impellers alone, anyway.

She had forty-three minutes to destroy the Q-ship; otherwise, it had all been for nothing.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Surgeon Lieutenant Montoya didn't even look up as the sickbay hatch hissed open yet again. Three crewmen stumbled through it, white-faced and pale and carrying another survivor from Fusion One. They fought to protect their moaning burden from bumps or jars, but the sudden, wrenching impact of a second hit threw them off balance just as they entered sick bay. They staggered against a bulkhead, and the woman they carried shrieked in agony as her shattered legs took the shock.

Montoya looked up at that. His face was blank of all expression, driven into non-feeling by the horror about him, and his eyes were flat as they darted to the injured woman. Her scream died into a sobbing gasp of hurt, and he grunted as he identified her condition as one which was not immediately life-threatening. He lowered his head once more, flipping it to drop his magnifiers back down off his forehead as his wet, scarlet-gloved hands moved in the shattered wreckage which had once been a power room tech's torso.

A harried sick berth attendant—the only one he could spare from emergency surgery to triage the wounded—hurried over to the newcomers, and Montoya's hands flew as he fought to save the fading life before him.

He failed.

The flat, harsh buzz of the monitors told its tale, and he stepped back from the corpse, already stripping off his gloves to re-glove for the next. A fresh, limp body was lifted into position, a woman who'd lost one arm already and was about to lose another, and Montoya moved like a machine as he jammed his hands into the fresh gloves and bent over the table once more. He leaned forward into its sterile field with a face of stone ... and the hatch hissed open behind him yet again.

"Not there—here!" Dominica Santos snapped. "Get your ass over here and heave, goddamn it!"

Huge, blue-white sparks spat and glared about her, silent in the vacuum of the shattered drive compartment, and Boatswain MacBride grabbed one of her suited repair party and literally dragged the man into position.

"Get your back into it, Porter!" the bosun snarled at the electronicist, and stepped up close beside him.

There was neither time nor space for them to reach into the conduit with tools, and the two of them wrapped their gauntleted hands about the half-molten, fire-fountaining cable run. Bright, savage discharges rippled up their arms and haloed their shoulders, and the harsh, straining grunt of their effort echoed over Santos's suit com. One end of the cable harness ripped loose, the sparks died, and Santos stepped in with a laser cutter. She stood ankle-deep in burned out circuit boards and bits of bulkhead blown away by battle damage or chopped frantically aside by her damage control party. Wreckage slid and shifted about her feet, and she gasped in triumph as she got the cutter in and slashed away the end of the damaged cable.

MacBride and Porter staggered backward, crashing into the compartment's rear bulkhead, and the engineer waved savagely at the work party behind her.

"Get that replacement cable in here now. Move, damn you!"

Johan Coglin flinched involuntarily as yet another of Fearless's missiles punched through Jamal's defenses. It detonated, and the deadly rapiers of its clustered lasers clawed at his ship. One of them hit, punching through the radiation shielding inside the wedge as if it were tissue paper, and a fresh boil of atmosphere gushed from Sirius's side.

"Heavy casualties in after control!" a voice shouted. "We've lost Damage Control Three, Sir!"

Coglin spat a curse and glared at his tactical display. Damn it, what was keeping that fucking ship alive?! He'd hit her at least twice, possibly three times, and she was still back there—lamed, perhaps, out-gunned and out-massed and bleeding air, but there, and she was still hitting him. Her salvos were far smaller than his, yet she was getting almost as many hits in as he was, for her missiles were incredibly hard targets for point defense. The Manticoran Navy's electronic missile penetration-aids were at least as much better than estimated as their defensive ECM was. He knew that, and it made him feel absolutely no better about his damage and casualties. He jerked around toward Jamal with fiery eyes and opened his mouth—then froze as one of the tactical officer's warheads detonated less than a thousand kilometers from Fearless's prow.

The universe went mad. Stilettos of X-ray radiation stabbed deep into Fearless's lightly-armored hull, breaching compartments, killing her people, clawing and rending at her bulkheads and frame members. And then, a sliver of a second later, the light cruiser smashed into the blast front of the warhead itself.

It was below her as she drove forward, not the direct frontal collision from which nothing could have saved her, but a savage eruption of plasma spumed up beneath her belly through the vacuum of space. Generators howled in protest as the massive shock front of radiation and particles smashed at her shielding like a flail, but they held—barely—and Fearless heaved like a goaded horse as she shot the rapids of destruction.

Dominica Santos screamed as she was hurled from her feet. She wasn't alone, and her com was a cacophony of other screams and cries as her work party was hurled about the compartment like so many discarded dolls. The concussion slammed her into and through a half-fused bank of circuit-breakers, scattering it in an explosion of debris. She bounced back, arms windmilling in a wild clutch for any anchorage, and a terrible, bubbling shriek filled her ears. She caught the heat-slagged edge where cutters had slashed away a buckled access panel, jerking her body to a brutal halt, and swallowed vomit as she saw electronicist 2/c Porter clawing at the spearlike hull fragment projecting from the belly of his suit. The wreckage thrust out from the bulkhead behind him, impaling him, and he writhed upon that dreadful spike like a soul in hell while his scream went on and on and on, even as blood and internal organs began to bubble and boil from the wound. Globules of blood and more horrible things sprayed out into the vacuum, and then, mercifully, the 'tronicist's ghastly sounds sobbed into silence and his arms went slack. He hung on the wreckage, the inside of his helmet opaque with the blood that had sprayed from his mouth and nostrils, and Santos stared at him, petrified by shock and nausea, unable to make herself look away.

"Come on, you people!" Sally MacBride's voice cracked like a whip. "Move your asses—now!"

Dominica Santos dragged herself up out of her pit of horror and stumbled back towards the gutted drive circuits.

Honor clutched at her command chair, head snapping savagely back despite her shock frame as Fearless leapt about her. Fresh damage signals shrilled, and she shook her head, fighting off the blurred vision and confusion of concussion.

She made herself look at her battle board. At least a dozen compartments were open to space now, and Lieutenant Webster smashed both fists against his own console.

"Direct hit on the com section, Ma'am," he reported in a voice of raw, dull anguish. He turned to look at her, his face shocked and white, and tears gleamed in his eyes. "It's gone. Dear God, half my people went with it, too."

"Understood, Lieutenant." The sound of her own voice startled her. It was too calm, too detached. She was murdering her own ship by matching it against Sirius. She knew she was ... just as she knew she wouldn't—couldn't—break off. She wanted to say something else, to share Webster's pain and loss, but the words wouldn't come, and she turned back towards Cardones just as he punched his firing key again.

A missile spat from Fearless, but only one, and a warning buzzer snarled. Cardones jerked at the sound and hit a system-test button. Then his shoulders clenched, and he turned towards his captain.

"Missile One is down, Ma'am. We're down to one tube."

Honor stabbed her intercom key. "Damage Control, this is the captain. What's the status of Missile One?" she snapped.

"Sorry, Ma'am." Lieutenant Manning's voice was slurred and indistinct. "Two of my people are dead down here. We've got damage reports from all over the ship, and—" The acting damage control officer paused, and his voice strengthened as he dragged himself back together. "Sorry. What did you say, Ma'am?"

"Missile One. What's the status of Missile One?"

"Gone, Ma'am. We've got a four-meter hole in the starboard bow. The whole compartment's gone—and its crew."

"Understood." Honor released her key and looked back at Cardones. "Continue the engagement with Missile Two, Guns," she said.

"That last one must have hurt her bad, Sir," Lieutenant Commander Jamal said, and Coglin grinned back at him in triumph. The range was down to under six million kilometers, and the vaporized alloy and atmosphere streaming back from Fearless's bow was plain on their sensors. More than that, the cruiser was firing only single-missile salvos. Now if only—

Sirius shuddered as another Manticoran missile detonated just astern of her, and crimson damage signals flashed on Coglin's panel.

"Spinal Four gone, Sir!" someone reported. "We've lost the secondary fire control sensors, too. Primaries unaffected."

Coglin spat out a savage curse. "Hit that fucker again, Jamal!" he snarled.

Dominica Santos waved MacBride aside and slammed the last replacement box into place. The green ready light glowed, and she switched back to Central Damage Control's net.

"We're back up, Al!" she snapped.

"Understood, Ma'am. I'm initiating circuit tes—"

"Fuck that!" Santos barked. "There's no time for tests. Just tell the Captain we're in and give these impellers juice now!"

Honor's eyes blazed like hot, brown steel as Fearless's acceleration surged suddenly back up. The maimed cruiser gathered herself, driving forward, and she sensed her ship's determination like her own. Numbers flickered upward on her maneuvering plot, and her lips drew back in a hungry snarl as Killian read them off.

"Five hundred ... five-zero-three ... five-zero-six ... five-zero-eight gravities, Captain!" the helmsman announced. "Steady at five-zero-eight."

"Excellent, Chief Killian! Go to Delta-Niner-Six."

"Aye, aye, Ma'am. Going to Delta-Niner-Six."

"Their acceleration's coming back up, Captain," Jamal reported tensely. "It doesn't seem— No, Sir, it's definitely not going all the way back up. It's leveling off."

"What is it?" Coglin snapped.

"I make it approximately five-oh-eight gees, Sir. Call it five KPS squared. And she's starting to make some real evasion maneuvers."

"Shit!" Coglin caught himself before he punched the arm of his chair again, then glared at the weaving, dodging dot on his display. Goddamn it to hell, what did it take to stop that ship?!

Lieutenant Commander Santos headed aft, running back towards Central Damage Control. She didn't know what else had happened while she was up forward, but she knew it had been bad, and—

A fresh, brutal blow threw her from her feet, and she skidded down the passageway on her belly.

The warhead detonated at fifteen hundred kilometers, and twenty-five separate beams of energy stabbed out from its heart.

Two of them hit Fearless.

One struck almost amidships, ripping inward through half a dozen compartments. Nineteen men and women in its path died instantly as it gutted forward life support, slashed through the forward crew mess, and reduced two of the cruiser's port energy torpedo launchers to wreckage, but it didn't stop there. It sliced deep, just missing the combat information center, and ripped its ghastly way clear to the bridge itself.

Plating shattered, and Honor slammed her helmet shut as air screamed out through the gaping hole. Her suit whuffed tight, protecting her against vacuum, but some of her people were less lucky. Lieutenant Panowski never even had time to scream; the hit blasted huge chunks of bulkhead into splinters, and a flying axe of steel decapitated him in a fountain of gore, then carried on to smash his entire panel to spark-spewing ruin. Two of his yeomen died almost as quickly, and Chief Braun had been out of his chair, unprotected by his shock frame. He flew through the thinning air and slammed into a bulkhead, stunned and unable to move. He died in a flood of aspirated blood before anyone could reach him to close his helmet for him.

Mercedes Brigham's suit was daubed and streaked with scarlet where Panowski's blood had sprayed across her. She'd been looking at the astrogator when he died, and more of his blood dripped down her face where it had splashed before she closed her own helmet. She couldn't even wipe it, and she spat to clear it from her mouth as she brought her own computers on line to replace Panowski's.

Honor swept her gaze about the bridge. Sparks and smoke streamed up into the near vacuum as Panowski's splintered command station consumed itself, and her mouth tightened as she saw the way Webster clutched at his chest through his suit. The com officer hunched forward in his chair, his face gray, and blood bubbled at his nostrils.

"Damage control to the bridge! Corpsman to the bridge!" she barked, and made herself look away from her injured officer.

The second beam hit further forward, and Lieutenant Allen Manning stared at his console in horror as a lurid light began to flash. He unlocked his shock frame and shoved a corpse which once had been a friend from the chair beside him to clear an emergency panel, and his hands darted across it.

Nothing happened. The light continued to flash, and a harsh, ominous audio signal joined it. He hammered an alternate command sequence into the console, then tried still a third, and the light only flashed brighter still.

"Commander Santos!" he gasped into his intercom. There was no answer. "Commander Santos, this is Manning! Please respond!"

"W-what is it, Allen?" The senior engineer sounded shaken and woozy, but Manning almost wept when he heard her voice.

"Fusion One, Ma'am! The mag bottle's fluctuating and I can't shut down from here—something's cut the circuits!"

"Oh, Jesus!" Santos's voice was no longer blurred. It was sharp and frightened. "I'm on my way. Get forward and join me!"

"But, Commander, I can't leave Cen—"

"Goddamn it, Allen, move! Put Stevens on it!"

"I can't, Ma'am," Manning said wildly, then clutched at his self-control. "Stevens is dead, and Rierson can't leave Fusion Two. I'm all alone—there's no one left to take over down here!"

"Then tell the Skipper to fucking well get you someone," Santos snarled. "I need you up there right goddamned now!"

"Yes, Ma'am!"

Honor paled as Manning's frantic message registered. Fearless could move and fight on a single reactor. She only had two for the security of redundancy, and that was also why they were at opposite ends of the hull, but if that mag bottle went down—

"Understood, Manning. Go. I'll get somebody down there to replace you."

Manning didn't waste time replying, and she raised her head to scan her bridge, trying to think who she could send. There was only one choice, she realized with a sudden, icy calm.

"Mr. McKeon!"

"Yes, Skipper?" He made it a question, but she saw in his eyes that he already knew.

"You're the only one I've got with the experience for it. Slave your ECM panel to my remotes and get down there."

He wanted to argue, to protest. She read it in his face, but he didn't.