The Honor of the Qween

* * *

Sword Simonds watched his plot and swallowed bile as half his first salvo lost lock and wandered away. The others charged onward, already up to more than fifty thousand KPS and still accelerating, but the Manticorans belched counter missiles to meet them at more than nine hundred KPS?.

* * *

Honor frowned as Ensign Wolcott picked off Saladin's first missiles. The battlecruiser was splitting her fire between Troubadour and Fearless, and that was the stupidest thing her captain had done yet. He ought to be concentrating his fire, not dispersing it! His opponents were lighter and far more fragile; by targeting both of them, he was robbing himself of his best chance to overwhelm them in detail.

* * *

Simonds cursed under his breath as the last missile of his first launch vanished far short of target. Lieutenant Ash was updating the second salvo's jammers, but the bitch had already killed six of them, as well ... and Thunder had stopped only nine of her first broadside.

His hands tightened like claws on the command chair's arms as the surviving Manticoran missiles streaked in. Two more perished, then a third, but three got through, and Thunder of God shuddered as X-ray lasers clawed at his sidewall. Damage alarms wailed, and a red light flashed on the damage control schematic.

'One hit, port side aft,' Workman announced. 'Tractor Seven is gone. Compartments Eight-Niner-Two and Niner-Three open to space. No casualties.'

* * *

'I think we got one— Yes! She's streaming air, Ma'am!'

'Good, Guns. Now do it again.'

'Aye, aye, Ma'am!' Rafael Cardones' grin was fierce, and his sixth broadside belched from Fearless's launchers. Ensign Wolcott's face was almost blank at his side, and her fingers flew across her console as her sensors noted changes in the incoming missiles' ECM and she adjusted to compensate.

* * *

Thunder of God's second salvo fared almost as badly as the first, and Simonds wrenched around to glare at his tactical section, then bit back his scathing rebuke. Ash and his assistants were crouched over their panels, but their systems were feeding them too much data to absorb, and their reactions were almost spastic, flurries of action as the computers pulled it together and suggested alternatives interspersed by bouts of white-faced impotence as they tried to anticipate those suggestions.

He needed Yu and Manning, and he didn't have them. Ash and his people simply didn't have the exper—

Thunder of God heaved as two more lasers ripped through his sidewall and gouged into his hull.

* * *

'Lord God, but he's fighting dumb,' Venizelos murmured, and Honor nodded. Saladin's responses were slow and heavy-handed, almost mechanical, and she felt a tingle of hope. If this kept up, they might actually be—

Ensign Wolcott missed an incoming missile. The heavy warhead detonated fifteen thousand kilometers off Fearless's starboard bow, and half a dozen savage rods of energy slammed at her sidewall. Two broke through, and the cruiser leapt in agony as plating shattered.

'Two hits forward! Laser Three and Five destroyed. Radar Five is gone, Ma'am. Heavy casualties in Laser Three!'

The right side of Honor Harrington's mouth tightened, and her good eye narrowed.

* * *

'A hit, Sir! At least one, and—'

A thundering concussion ripped across Lieutenant Ash's voice. The command deck lurched, the lighting flickered, and damage alarms howled.

'Missile Two-One and Graser One gone! Heavy damage in the boat bay and Berthing Compartment Seven- five!'

Simonds blanched. That was six hits—six! —and they'd scored only one in return! Powerful as Thunder was, he couldn't take that kind of exchange rate for long, and—

The battlecruiser bucked yet again, more crimson lights glared, and the Sword made up his mind.

'Starboard ninety degrees—maximum acceleration!'

* * *

'She's breaking off, Ma'am!' Cardones crowed, and Honor watched in disbelief as Saladin turned through a full ninety degrees. She was just far enough abaft Fearless's beam to deny them an 'up the kilt' shot through the wide-open after end of her wedge, but Honor couldn't believe how close the battlecruiser's captain had come to giving her that deadly opening. And now he was going to maximum power! Preposterous as it was, Rafe was right—she was breaking off the action!

'Shall we pursue, Ma'am?' Cardones' tone left no doubt as to his own preference, and Honor couldn't blame him. His missile armament was untouched, and he'd outscored his opponent at least six-to-one. But Honor refused to let her own enthusiasm suck her out of her guard position.

'No, Guns. Let her go.'

Cardones looked rebellious for a moment, then nodded. He sat back, calling up his magazine lists and shifting ammunition to equalize his loads, and Ensign Wolcott looked over her shoulder at her captain.

'I'm sorry I missed that one, Ma'am.' She sounded miserable. 'It took a jog on me at the last minute, and—'

'Carol, you did fine, just fine,' Honor told her, and Cardones looked up to nod firmly. The ensign looked back and forth between them for a moment, then smiled briefly and turned back to her own panel, and Honor beckoned to Venizelos. The exec unlocked his shock frame and crossed to her chair.

'Yes, Ma'am?'

'You were right about the way he was fighting. That was pitiful.'

'Yes, Ma'am.' Venizelos scratched his chin. 'It was almost like a simulation. Like we were up against just his computers.'

'I think we were,' Honor said softly, and the exec blinked at her. She unlocked her own shock frame, and he followed her over to the tactical station. She keyed a command into Cardones' panel, and they watched the master tactical display replay the brief battle. The entire engagement had lasted less than ten minutes, and Honor shook her head when it ended.

'I don't think that's a Havenite crew over there at all.'

'What?!' Venizelos blushed at the volume of his response and looked quickly around the bridge, then back at her. 'You don't really think the Peeps turned a ship like that over to lunatics like the Masadans, do you, Skipper?'

'It sounds crazy,' Honor admitted, pulling gently at the tip of her nose as she brooded down on the display, 'especially when they kept their own man in command of Breslau, but no Peep skipper would've fought his ship that way. He gave us every advantage there was, Andy. Add that to the ham-handed way he came in in the first place, and—'

She shrugged, and Venizelos nodded slowly.

'Haven has to know it's put its hand into a sausage slicer, Ma'am,' he said after a moment. 'Maybe they just pulled out and left Masada to its own devices?'

'I don't know.' Honor turned to walk back to her own chair. 'If they did, why didn't they take Saladin with them? Unless—' Her eye narrowed. 'Unless they couldn't, for some reason,' she murmured, then shook her head.