by David Weber
"All ships, stand by to come to course oh-niner-oh by two-seven-oh!" she barked. It wasn't much, but it would turn her sterns at least a little further away from the LACs and twist her vector violently away from the Manty SDs. Even with their new compensators, those SDs had a lower max accel than her battleships, and if she could just draw out of their range—
"Flush remaining pods at the LACs!" she snapped, her brain whirring like a computer as she considered options and alternatives. She didn't know how many missiles she had left, but she had a decent chance of keeping the ships of the wall from getting into energy range. That meant it was the damned LACs which were the real threat. They, and they alone, had the acceleration and, more importantly, the position from which to overtake her fleeing units. Which meant that every one of them she killed would be—
The incoming missile from Rear Admiral Truitt's superdreadnoughts detonated nineteen thousand kilometers in front of Schaumberg, and the battleship writhed like a tortured animal as two massive X-ray lasers, vastly more powerful than anything the LACs could have fired, slashed into her. One destroyed three missile tubes, breached a magazine, demolished a graser mount and two of the ship's bow lasers, and killed eighty-seven people. The other smashed straight through armor and blast doors and bulkheads with demonic fury, and Citizen Rear Admiral Jane Kellet and her entire staff died as it blew her flag deck apart.
* * *
Joanne Hall felt her ship lurch, heard the alarms, saw the flag bridge com screen go blank, and knew instantly what had happened. Disbelief and horror foamed up inside her, but she had no time for those things. She knew what Kellet had been thinking and planning, and as the crimson bands of battle damage flashed in her plot, ringing the icons of the task force's ships, she had no idea who was the surviving senior officer. Nor was there time to find out.
"Message to all ships!" she told her com officer without even looking away from her plot. "'LACs are primary targets. Repeat, LACs are primary targets. All ships will roll starboard and execute previously specified course change.'" She looked over her shoulder at last, meeting the white-faced Citizen Lieutenant's eye. "End it Kellet, Citizen Rear Admiral," she said flatly.
The Citizen Lieutenant's eyes darted to Calvin Addison. The citizen commissioner looked at Hall for one brief instant, then back at the com officer and nodded sharply.
* * *
"They're turning away from us, Skipper," Ensign Thomas reported. "Looks like they're trying to evade Admiral Truitt."
"I see it," Harmon replied. She gazed at her plot with narrow eyes, her mind racing. The Peeps were clearly trying to run for it, and after the hammering they'd already taken, they wouldn't be back any time soon. All she and her LACs really had to do was chase them; catching them was no longer necessary to save Hancock, because those ships weren't going to stop running as long as a single Manticoran starship or LAC appeared on their sensors.
But her plot showed their projected vector, and she swore silently. It was going to take them out of Truitt's envelope—not without giving him the chance to batter them with missiles, but staying well out of his energy range—and that meant a lot of them were going to get away. Only three battleships, two destroyers, and six heavy cruisers had actually been destroyed so far, and she gritted her teeth at the thought of letting all those cripples get away. But the only Manticoran ships which could possibly overtake them and keep them from escaping were her LACs, and they were out of missiles. Which meant graser-range attacks on targets which were individually enormously more powerful than her ships were. And which also meant turning the wing's bows dangerously close to its enemies as it pursued.
And they're learning, she thought grimly as two LAC icons flashed crimson on her plot. One broke off, limping away from the battle while the data codes of severe damage blinked beside it; the other simply vanished. They know we're out here, and they're not running scared or shocked anymore, so if we do follow them up, it's going to get ugly. Uglier, that is, she corrected herself grimly, for she'd already lost four ships—five with the latest casualty.
She didn't have to do it. Not to save the system. And what had already happened was a brilliant vindication of Operation Anzio. But that wasn't the point, was it?
* * *
"The LACs are pursuing, Citizen Captain," Diamato reported.
"The superdreadnoughts?"
"They're turning to cut the angle on us as well as they can, but they're not going to be able to overtake, Ma'am. I make their closest approach something over a million and a half klicks—well outside effective energy range, anyway. Whoever that is out-system of us could, but she's not trying to." He actually managed a death's head grin. "I don't think I would, either, if I had her missile range," he added.
"Understood," Hall grunted. She glanced at the damage report sidebar scrolling down her plot and winced. A third of the surviving battleships had been hammered into wrecks. And despite what Diamato had said, two of them, at least, weren't going to make it clear after all. They'd taken too much impeller damage to stay away from the Manty capital ships, yet the task force had no choice but to leave them behind and save as many other units as it could.
I hope to hell the other attacks are doing better than we are, she thought bitterly.
"Citizen Captain, I have a com request from Citizen Rear Admiral Porter. He wants to speak to the Citizen Admiral," the com officer said quietly.
He would, Hall thought, watching the missiles fly. And I have to give him command... which I wouldn't mind at all—at least I could also let him have the responsibility!—except that he doesn't have a clue what to do with it.
She darted a look at Addison.
"Citizen Commissioner?" She couldn't ask him for what she really wanted, not in so many words. But he recognized her expression and drew a deep breath. He looked back at her for several seconds, then spoke to the com officer without even glancing in the young woman's direction.
"Inform the Citizen Rear Admiral that Citizen Admiral Kellet is... unavailable, Citizen Lieutenant," he said flatly. "Tell him—" He paused, thinking hard, then nodded once. "Tell him our com systems are badly damaged and we need to keep our remaining channels clear."
"Aye, Sir," the Citizen Lieutenant said in a tiny voice, and Hall turned back to her plot.
* * *
"All right!"
Michael Gearman heard Ensign Thomas' cry of delight as Harpy and the rest of Gold Section concentrated the fire of their grasers on one of the Peep cripples. The battlecruiser-weight weapons blasted through armor and structural members like battleaxes, and their target heaved, belching atmosphere and debris and bodies. Gearman shared Thomas' exultation, but he remembered another battle, another ship—this one a superdreadnought—heaving as she was battered to wreckage and her people were slaughtered... or maimed. His hand went to the thigh of his regenerated leg, and even in the heart of his own battle fury, his lips murmured a silent prayer for their victims.
* * *
"We've drawn out of range of their superdreadnoughts, Ma'am," Diamato reported hoarsely.
"Understood." Hall nodded. Yes, they'd left the ships of the wall behind, but not before their fire, coupled with those incredible missiles coming in from the lone dreadnought so far astern of her— and, of course, the LACs—had killed another four battleships. That made nine gone out of thirty-three, with all of the survivors damaged. All the tin cans were gone, as well, and only two heavy cruisers remained to her, both badly damaged.
Which means I have no screen at all, she thought coldly as the LACs raced back up on her flanks like shoals of sharks. She had a count on them now, and her people had managed to destroy sixteen of them outright and drive another five off with damage. But that left seventy-five, and their acceleration was incredible. The bastards were hitting her with what was obviously a well-thought-out maneuver; charging up on TF 12.3's flanks, taking their licks from her missiles—which were far less effective than they ought to be— until they reached their attack points, and then
slashing in in coordinated runs from both sides. They were scissoring through her formation, firing as they came, and the damage they were doing was immense.
But they lost ground and velocity on her each time they crossed her base course. For some reason, they appeared to completely stop accelerating each time they turned in for a firing pass, but they were turning out over six hundred and thirty gravities of acceleration before they turned in, and they snapped right back up to it as they turned back to parallel her course once more at the end of each pass. Which meant they had more than enough maneuvering advantage to continue battering away at her remaining twenty-six ships all the way to the hyper limit.
Which meant the only way out was going to be through them.
* * *
"All right," Jackie Harmon told her squadron and section commanders. Her voice was still relaxed, almost drawling, but her face was taut. She'd lost three more LACs, two of them on cowboy solo attacks they should never have attempted, on the last firing run.
She was down to seventy-two effectives now, and she tried not to think of all the people who had died aboard the LACs she no longer had. "Admiral Truitt's lost the range, so it's all up to us, now. I want full squadron attacks—no more individual horse shit, here, people, or I will provide some unfortunate souls with new anal orifices!" She paused a moment to be sure it had sunk in, then nodded. "Good! Ensign Thomas will designate targets for the next attack run."
* * *
"They're turning in on us again, Ma'am!" Diamato snapped.
"I see them, Oliver," Hall said calmly. "Citizen Admiral Kellet's" orders had already gone out, and she bared her teeth at her plot. She knew what was going through the mind of whoever was in command over there. The LACs were enormously outmassed and outgunned, despite TF 12.3's damage. But her opponent simply couldn't stand to see her getting away, and the Manties were clearly out of missiles. They had to come into knife range and engage with energy weapons, where they should have been easy meat for battleships, but she and Diamato had already deduced that there was something very peculiar about these particular LACs. Not only did their acceleration fall to zero whenever they fired their grasers, but even the accel for their lateral maneuvers dropped enormously, almost to what she would have expected out of old-fashioned reaction thrusters. She didn't know precisely what it meant, but they were incredibly resistant targets—extremely difficult just to lock up on fire control and almost as hard to actually kill even when Tracking had them firmly. Could they be generating some sort of shield forward? Something like a sidewall? But how was that possible?
A vague suspicion glimmered at the corner of her adrenaline-exhausted brain, but there was no time to follow it up now. She'd have to be sure she mentioned it to NavInt later, though, and—
"Here they come!"
* * *
LAC Wing One altered course and came slashing in, firing savagely. Another Peep battleship blew up, and one of the surviving cruisers, but the enemy had been waiting for this, and their own energy batteries replied savagely. Even more dangerously, the Peeps were firing missiles past them now, as if someone on the other side had figured out about their bow walls. A passing shot was always a harder targeting solution, but the laserheads exploding astern of the LACs probed viciously at their wedges' open after aspects. One of them died, then two more, then a fourth, but the others held their courses, unable to accelerate as they locked their bow walls and poured fire into the enemy.
Too many! Jacquelyn Harmon thought. I'm losing too many! They're running now, and their fire's too heavy for us to take them alone.
"Last pass, boys and girls," she announced over the com. "Make it count, then break off and head back for the Minnie."
Another battleship blew up, then yet another, and she stared into her plot as Harpy reached her own turn-in point and began to pivot.
* * *
PNS Schaumberg staggered drunkenly as three grasers burned through her port sidewall like red-hot pokers. The sidewall flickered and died, then came back up at half strength, and four of her energy mounts and two missile tubes were torn to wreckage by the same hits.
But then a fourth graser struck home, and Oscar Diamato slammed his helmet shut as the port bulkhead shattered and air screamed out of the breached compartment. Fragments of battle steel blasted across the bridge, killing and wounding, but Diamato hardly noticed. His eyes were on the lurid damage codes for the port sidewall, and he darted a desperate look at the plot. There! If he rolled ship just right—
"Roll ship twelve—no, fourteen degrees to port!" he shouted.
"Rolling fourteen degrees port, aye!" the helmsman's voice replied over his suit com, and Diamato gasped in relief as the ship turned. But then a sudden, icy shock washed through him as he realized he hadn't heard the Citizen Captain confirm his order.
He turned his head, and his face twisted with horror as he saw thick, viscous blood bubbling from Citizen Captain Hall's skinsuit as the last of the bridge's air fell away into vacuum.
* * *
"Damn, I didn't think she could do that," Jackie Harmon muttered as she watched her target roll. Whoever was in charge over there must have ice water in her veins. She'd managed to roll at exactly the right angle to turn her weakened port sidewall away from the LACs following Lieutenant Commander Gillespie in from port for a followup shot. Unfortunately for the Peep, however, it had forced her to give Harmon's group an almost perpendicular shot at her other sidewall, and that was about as good as it was going to get this side of a hot tub, a good-looking man, and a chocolate milkshake.
"Stand by to take us in, Ernest," she told Lieutenant Takahashi.
"Aye, Ma'am." Takahashi checked his own plot, then looked up at Harpy's engineers. "Watch the power to the forward nodes when I call for the wall, PO," he reminded Maxwell.
"I'll watch it, Sir," Maxwell promised him.
"Yeah, I've heard about you and forward nodes, 'Silver Hammer,'" Takahashi said with a grin, and the hirsute petty officer chuckled.
"Take us in—now!" Harmon snapped as the numbers matched on her plot.
* * *
"Captain! Captain Hall!"
Diamato knelt beside the command chair while fat, blue-white sparks leapt and spat silently in the vacuum. Citizen Captain Hall sat upright on the decksole, but only because he held her there, bracing her shoulders against his body while he tried desperately to get her to respond. By some miracle, his tactical section was untouched, and so was the com and the helm. Everything else was gutted, and he fought nausea as he tried to ignore the slaughterhouse which had engulfed his fellow officers and friends.
Citizen Commissioner Addison had been torn almost in half, and most of the rest of the bridge personnel were just as dead. But Citizen Captain Hall was still alive... for the moment.
He'd slapped patches over the worst holes in her skinsuit, but her life-sign readouts flickered on the med panel. Diamato was no doctor, but he didn't need to be one to know she was dying. There was too much internal bleeding, and no one could do anything about it without taking her out of her suit... which would kill her instantly.
"Captain!" he tried again, and then froze as the dark eyes inside the blood-daubed helmet opened.
"O-Oliver." It was a faint, thready sound over his suit com, with the bubbling sound of aspirated blood behind it, and his hands tightened on her shoulders.
"Yes, Skipper!" He felt his eyes burn and blur and realized vaguely that he was crying. She must have heard it in his voice, for she reached out and patted his skinsuited thigh feebly.
"Up... to you," she whispered, her eyes burning into his with the fiery power of a soul consuming itself in the face of approaching death. "Get—" She paused, fighting for breath. "Get my people... out. Trust... you, Oli—"
Her breathing stopped, and Oliver Diamato stared helplessly into the eyes which had suddenly ceased to burn. But something had happened to him, as if in the moment of Joanne Hall's death, the spark had leapt from her soul into his, and his nostrils
flared as he drew a deep breath and laid her gently down.
Then he rose and crossed almost calmly to his panel. Half his starboard energy weapons were gone, he noted, and most of the other half were in local control. But that meant half of them remained, with on-mount crews to fire them, and he bared his teeth as his gloved fingers flew. There was no time to set it up with proper double-checks, and his internal data transmission links had taken too much damage for him to rely on computer target designation. He was going to have to do this the hard way—the deep-space equivalent of shooting from the hip—but his eyes were cold and very still.
There, he thought. Those two.
He laid the sighting circles by eye, hit the override button that stripped the targeting lidar away from the central computer's command, and painted his chosen targets for his energy battery crews' on-mount sensors. Green lights blinked — he couldn't tell exactly how many—as at least some of his crews picked up the designator codes and locked onto them. However many it was, it would have to do.
