The Honor of the Qween

'We should be able to run a fair plot on Saladin with our belly radar, Rafe, but tracking missiles through the grav band will be difficult.'

Cardones nodded, and his face was very still. Honor saw the understanding in his eyes, but she had to say it.

'I intend to hold the belly of our wedge towards her all the way in. We don't have the ammunition to stop her with missiles, so we're going to close to pointblank range unless she shears off. Set up your fire plan on the assumption that I will roll to bring our port energy broadside to bear at twenty thousand kilometers.'

Cardones simply nodded once more, but someone hissed. That wasn't energy weapon range; it was suicide range.

'She won't know exactly when we intend to roll,' Honor went on in that same, calm voice. 'That should give us the first shot, and at that range, it won't matter how tough her sidewalls are.' She held Cardones' gaze with her single eye and spoke very softly. 'I'm depending on you, Rafe. Get that first broadside on target, then keep firing, whatever happens.'

* * *

Matthew Simonds' grin was ugly as his ship accelerated towards Grayson. There were no fancy maneuvers for the bitch now. Harrington was still inside him, still able to intercept, but this time it would be on his terms, not hers, and he watched her projected vector stretch out to cross his own. They met 152 million kilometers short of the planet, but Fearless would never survive to reach that point.

* * *

'Andy.'

'Yes, Ma'am?'

'Go aft to Auxiliary Fire Control. Take Harris with you, and make sure he's completely updated on Rafe's fire plan.'

Venizelos' mouth tightened, but he nodded.

'Understood, Skipper.' He hesitated a moment, then held out his hand. Honor squeezed it firmly, and he nodded once more and stepped into the lift.

* * *

The warships slanted towards one another, and there was a finality in their movements. The challenge had been issued and accepted; they would meet at an invisible point in space, and one of them would die there. There could be no other outcome, and every soul aboard them knew it.

* * *

'One hundred minutes to intercept, Sir,' the astrogator reported, and Simonds glanced at his tactical officer.

'If she keeps coming in behind her wedge, we won't have very good shots until she rolls down to engage, Sir,' Ash said quietly.

'Just do your best, Lieutenant.'

Simonds turned back to his own plot and the crimson dot of the enemy ship with an inner sense of total certainty. Harrington wasn't going to roll for a missile duel. She was going to carry straight through and engage him beam to beam, and he felt a grudging, hate-filled respect for her. Her ship would never survive at that range, but if she reached it alive, the damage to Thunder would be terrible. He knew it, and he accepted it, for terrible or not, Thunder would live to attack Grayson. He knew that, too.

God would not permit any other result.

* * *

Neither of the maimed, half-blind ships any longer had the capability to look beyond the other even if they'd wanted to. And because they didn't, neither of them noted the wide-spaced hyper footprints as sixteen battlecruisers and their escorts suddenly emerged from hyper 23.76 light-minutes from Yeltsin's Star.

* * *

'That's it, My Lord,' Captain Edwards said. 'Tracking's got good reads on both impeller signatures. That's the battlecruiser at three-one-four; the one at three-two-four has to be Fearless. There's no sign of Troubadour.'

'Understood.' Hamish Alexander tried to keep his own emotions out of his voice as he acknowledged his flag captain's report. If Reliant couldn't see Troubadour, that meant Troubadour was dead, yet all the way here, he'd known they were almost certain to arrive too late, despite the risks he'd run with his hyper generator settings. Now he knew they hadn't, and a sense of elation warred with the blow of the destroyer's loss.

He'd spread his battlecruisers by divisions, spacing four separate formations about Grayson's side of the primary as they translated from hyper to give himself the best possible coverage, and brought them into n-space in a crash translation. He could hear someone still vomiting behind him, but he'd carried the highest possible velocity across the alpha wall with him, and it was as well he had.

Reliant's own division had come in with Grayson directly between them and Yeltsin, covering the most important arc of the half-circle, and the vectors projecting themselves across his plot told their own tale. Alexander's ships were not only ahead of the two warships on his plot but cutting their angle towards Grayson. That gave him an effective closing velocity of almost twenty thousand KPS, and the range to Saladin was barely twelve light-minutes, which meant Reliant would cross her course five-point-six light-minutes short of Grayson ... and enter extreme missile range three minutes before that.

They were in time. Despite all the odds, despite Troubadour's loss, they were in time for Grayson and HMS Fearless.

'I don't understand why Saladin isn't trying to run,' Edwards muttered. 'Surely she doesn't think she can fight all of us, My Lord!'

'Who knows what religious fanatics think, Captain?' Alexander smiled thinly at Reliant's commander, then looked back at his plot and hid a wince.

Fearless's course made Harrington's intentions brutally clear. It was no less than he would have expected of an officer with her record—which made him respect her courage no less—and he thanked God she wouldn't be called upon to make good her determination after all.

He raised his eyes to Alice Truman, and for the first time since she'd come aboard Reliant, some of the strain had faded from her face. She'd brought the relief force to Yeltsin two full days before it should have been possible ... and that meant Fearless would live.

But he knew from Truman's report that the cruiser's gravitics were gone, and without Troubadour, she had no one to relay from the recon drones for her. That meant Harrington couldn't know his ships had arrived unless he told her, and he turned to his com officer.

'Record for transmission to Fearless, Harry. `Captain Harrington, this is Admiral White Haven aboard HMS Reliant, closing from zero-three-one with BatCruDiv One-Eight, range twelve-point-five light-minutes. I estimate eight-two minutes before I can range on Saladin. Break off and leave her to us, Captain. You've done your job. White Haven clear.''

'On the chip, Admiral!' the lieutenant said with a huge grin.

'Then send it, Harry—send it!' Alexander said, and leaned back with a matching grin.

* * *

The range continued to fall, and Honor knew there could be only one outcome. She'd made herself accept that from the moment Saladin started back in. She understood the fear she felt about her, for she, too, wanted to live, and she, too, was afraid. But this was why she'd put on the Queen's uniform, accepted the responsibility and privilege of serving her monarch and her people, and it didn't matter that Grayson was someone else's planet.

'Joyce.'