The Short Victorious War

curled out across the display.

Numbers flashed with CIC's analysis. Twenty-six minutes. That was how much longer the Peeps had to keep chasing Sarnow to reach the point of no return. Just twenty-six minutes and they couldn't possibly escape Danislav's oncoming dreadnoughts.

He turned back to his com to give Captain Harrington the news.

Twenty-four missiles sped toward the task group. Five of them lost lock over a million kilometers out as jammers blinded their sensors. Another three locked onto decoys. Two of them couldn't see their primary target and shifted to the secondary, arcing away to strike at the heavy cruiser Warrior, and countermissiles smashed six more of them to bits.

Eight of them broke through the outer defense zone and bore in, weaving and bobbing while their own ECM parried and thrust with the systems trying to kill them. They were outclassed... but they were also closing at fifty- five thousand KPS. Laser clusters killed one of them, then two more. A fourth. The surviving quartet made their final course correction, two more of them blew apart, and then the last pair of missiles detonated.

HMS Nike heaved and twisted as x-ray daggers sank deep into her armored flank. Laser Seven and Graser Five exploded into wreckage. Radar Five went with them, along with Communications Two, Missile Thirteen and Fourteen, Damage Control Three, Boat Bay Two, and ninety-three men and women.

A secondary explosion boiled up out of Com Two and Damage Control Three. Incandescent gas and flying chunks of battle steel erupted into CIC from below, gutting it and killing or wounding twenty-six more people. Fire and smoke filled the compartment, and the massive concussion smashed across it and into its after bulkhead—the one that separated it from Nike's flag bridge.

The ruptured bulkhead spat out splinters with deadly velocity. One of them tore Admiral Sarnow's yeoman in half. A second killed three of Joseph Cartwright's ratings. Another shrieked across the flag bridge and decapitated Casper Southman, then ricocheted into Ernestine Corells console. It missed the chief of staff by centimeters, and she lurched back from her shattered displays in horror, coughing and choking on smoke as the man beside her vanished in an explosion of blood.

And a fourth deadly splinter ripped into the back of Admiral Mark Sarnow's command chair.

It sheared through the chair, spinning end-for-end like a white-hot buzz-saw. The impact snapped the admirals shock frame and hurled him forward, but the splinter caught him in midair. It severed his right leg just above the knee and mangled his left calf, chunks of the chair itself blasted into his back, and his ribcage shattered like a wicker basket as he impacted on the master plot and bounced back like a broken doll.

Samuel Webster flung himself toward his admiral while slamming blast doors chopped off the cyclone of escaping air. Sarnow's skin suit had already inflated emergency tourniquets on either thigh, and his scream was a faint, thready exhalation as Webster moved him gently to check his life-sign monitors.

The admiral stared up at his com officer, fighting the searing agony. 'Don't scatter!' he gasped with all his failing strength, and his hand plucked at Webster's arm like a fevered child's. 'Tell them not to scatter!'

Webster's face was white as Sarnow's terrible injuries registered, and his fingers darted across the skin suit's med panel. Blessed relief spread through the admiral, deadening the pain. Unconsciousness beckoned, but he fought it as he had the pain, clinging to awareness, as Ernestine Corell appeared beside him.

'Don't scatter!' he gasped again, and Corell looked at Webster.

'What did he say?' she demanded, and Webster shrugged helplessly.

'I don't know, Ma'am.' Grief clogged his voice, and he touched Sarnow's shoulder gently. 'I can't make it out.'

Corell leaned closer, and Sarnow tried again, desperate to get the order out, but the blackness took him first.

Damage reports flooded into Nike's bridge, and Honor heard herself acknowledging them—calm and controlled, like a stranger—while her shocked eyes clung to the blank screen by her right knee.

She tore her gaze from it and looked at her own tactical repeater. CIC was gone, but Tactical's fire control systems had taken over the plot. She saw the cruisers Sorcerer and Merlin racing into new positions, taking up station on Nike's flanks to support her point defense as the task group recognized the Peeps' new target, and her flying thoughts were clear and cold.

She knew what Sarnow had been about to say. She'd been his tactical alter ego too long not to know... but he hadn't said it.

Command passed with the admiral. She knew that, too, yet there were no flag officers left. Captain Rubenstein was senior officer now, but Onslaught's gravities were gone, her com section heavily damaged; she could neither receive the sensor platforms' transmissions nor pass orders effectively... and Rubenstein didn't know Danislav had arrived or what the admiral had intended.

She felt George Monet watching her, knew he was waiting for her order to inform Rubenstein he was in command, and said nothing.

The task group raced onward, flailed by the Havenites' fire, and its return fire grew weaker and more sporadic as laser heads blew away missile tubes and clawed at sidewalk and hulls. The range was opening again, but slowly, and it had dropped to less than three million kilometers first. Mark Sarnow's captains clung grimly to their courses, knowing they'd done all they'd set out to do and waiting for the flagship's order to scatter.

Captain Pavel Young sat white-faced and sweating in his command chair. Warlock was untouched, one of the few ships which could say that, and her gravities had picked up the same information as Nike's. He knew the relief force had arrived, and terror gnawed at his vitals as he waited for his ship's unnatural exemption to end.

He stared at the flagships cursor, tasting blood from a bitten lip as direct hits and near misses lashed at her, their savagery made somehow more terrible by the quiet of Warlock's bridge. But even through his near-panic a corner of his brain exulted, for Van Slyke's death had given him squadron command at last, and command experience in a battle like this, however it had come his way, would wash away the Basilisk fiasco's stigma at last!

They reached the prearranged scatter point, end he tensed to order a radical course change at the flagships command. But no command came. They passed the invisible dot in space, still charging forward, still on course... still writhing under the enemy's fire, and his eyes widened in disbelief.

He stared at Nike's data code desperately, almost beseechingly. What the hell was wrong with Sarnow? There was no more need for this! The Peeps would spot Danislav's dreadnoughts within twenty minutes—thirty-five at the most! Surely he knew they'd break off the action then anyway. Why wasn't he letting them save themselves?!

And then Warlock's immunity ended. The missile wasn't even meant for her, but her port decoy sucked it away from Invincible. It detonated at twenty-four thousand kilometers, blasting through her sidewall to blot away Laser Four and rip Magazine Two open to space, and panic roared through Pavel Young's soul on the wail of damage alarms.

'Squadron orders!' His tenors shrill, raw edges turned every head on his bridge in shock. 'All ships scatter! Repeat, all ships scatter!'

Honor Harrington stared at her display as Heavy Cruiser Squadron Seventeen peeled away. It was too soon. They needed another twelve minutes—just twelve more minutes—to insure their pursuers' destruction!

Five of the heavy cruisers swerved away as she watched. Only Merlin held her course, glued to Nike's flank like a limpet, her laser clusters firing in desperate defense of the flagship.

'Contact Warlock!' she snapped. 'Get those ships back in position!'

Pavel Young stared at his com officer.

'Orders, Sir?' His exec's voice was harsh, and Young wrenched his wild eyes back to his plot. The Peeps were ignoring his fleeing ships to hammer savagely at the battlecruisers exposed by his defection.