The Honor of the Qween

'That is good news!' Yanakov said enthusiastically. 'I'll get right on it. I'll pick you up in my car in fifteen minutes.'

* * *

Printers chattered madly as the admirals arrived at Command Central, and the two of them turned as one to the main display board. A dot of light crept across it with infinitesimal speed. That was a trick of scale—any display capable of showing a half light-hour radius had to compress things—but at least gravitic detectors were FTL so they could watch it in real time. For all the good it was likely to do them.

Madrigal had, indeed, gotten her CIC tied into the net. The board couldn't display individual impeller sources at such a long range, but the data codes beside the single blotch of light were far too detailed for Grayson instrumentation. That was Courvosier's first thought; his second was a stab of dismay, and he pursed his lips silently. There were ten ships out there, accelerating from the low velocity imposed by translation into normal space. Not even Madrigal could 'see' them well enough to identify individual ships, but the impeller strengths allowed tentative IDs by class. And if Commander Alvarez's sensor crews were right, they were four light cruisers and six destroyers—more tonnage than the entire Grayson hyper-capable fleet.

A projected vector suddenly arced across the display, and Yanakov cursed beside him.

'What?' Courvosier asked quietly.

'They're headed straight for Orbit Four, one of our belt mining processing nodes. Damn!'

'What have you got to stop them?'

'Not enough,' Yanakov said grimly. He glanced up. 'Walt! How long till they hit Orbit Four?'

'Approximately sixty-eight minutes,' Commodore Brentworth replied.

'Anything we can intercept with?'

'Judah could reach them just short of the processors.' Brentworth's voice was flat. 'Nothing else could—not even a LAC.'

'That's what I thought.' Yanakov's shoulders slumped, and Courvosier understood perfectly. Sending a single destroyer out to meet that much firepower would be worse than pointless. 'Signal Judah to stand clear of them,' the Grayson admiral sighed, 'then get me a mike. Orbit Four's on its own.' His lips twitched bitterly. 'The least I can do is tell them myself.'

* * *

The holo sphere sparkled with individual lights and shifting patterns of information as Matthew Simonds stood in Thunder of God's CIC. Captain Yu stood beside him, face relaxed and calm, and Simonds repressed a flare of disappointment. He should be on Abraham's bridge, not standing here watching one of his juniors lead Masada's most powerful attack ever on Yeltsin's Star!

But he couldn't be. And powerful as this attack was, it was but one aspect of the overall plan—a plan whose entirety not even Captain Yu knew.

* * *

Orbit Four's CO watched his com, and a drop of sweat trickled down his face. The transmission had taken almost half an hour to reach him, but he'd known what it was going to say for over twenty minutes.

'I'm sorry, Captain Hill, but you're on your own,' High Admiral Yanakov's voice was level, his face like stone. 'Aside from Judah, nothing we've got can intercept, and sending her in alone would be suicide.'

Hill nodded in silent agreement. His own lack of bitterness surprised him, but there was no point condemning Judah to share his command's death. And at least he'd gotten the collector ships out; three were down for repairs, but the others were well away, packed with Orbit Four's dependents, and his gravitics had already picked up the squadron headed towards them from Grayson. Unless the Masadans broke off from Orbit Four to pursue the fugitives in the next five minutes or so, they could never intercept short of the relief force. At least his wives and children would survive.

'Do your best, Captain,' Yanakov said quietly. 'God bless.'

'Put me on record,' Hill told his white-faced com officer, and the lieutenant nodded choppily.

'Recording, Sir.'

'Message received and understood, Admiral Yanakov,' Hill said as calmly as he could. 'We'll do what we can. For the record, I concur completely in your decision not to send Judah in.' He hesitated a second, wondering if he should add some last, dramatic statement, then shrugged. 'And God bless you, too, Bernie,' he ended softly.

* * *

Captain Yu's expression had yielded to a slight frown. He leaned to one side, checking a readout, then straightened with a small shrug. His frown disappeared, yet there was a new intentness in his eyes. It was almost a look of disappointment, Simonds thought. Or of disapproval.

He started to ask what Yu's problem was, but the range was down to three and a half million kilometers, and he couldn't tear his attention from the sphere.

* * *

'They're late.' Admiral Courvosier's statement was barely a whisper, yet Yanakov heard him and nodded curtly. The Masadan commander had missed his best chance to kill Orbit Four from beyond its own range ... not that it was going to make any difference to Captain Hill's men in the end.

* * *

The Masadan ships' velocities mounted steadily. Their courses were already curving up in the arc which would take them inside Orbit Four and back the way they'd come, and weapons crews crouched over their consoles as the range dropped. There was tension in their faces, but no real fear. They had the protection of their impeller wedges and sidewalls; the weapon stations guarding Orbit Four were naked to their fire, protected only by point defense.

'We've got a good target setup, Sir.'

Admiral Jansen looked up aboard the light cruiser Abraham, flagship of the Masadan Navy, as his chief of staff spoke.

'Range?'

'Coming down on three million kilometers.'

Jansen nodded. His missiles were slower than Thunder of God's. Their drives would burn out in less than a minute, and their maximum acceleration was barely thirty thousand gravities, but his fleet's closing speed was over 27,000 KPS. His missiles would take seventy-eight seconds to reach their targets from that initial velocity; Orbit Four's missiles would take a minute and a half to reach him. Only a twelve-second difference—but unlike asteroids, his ships could dodge.

'Commence firing,' he said harshly.

* * *

Captain Hill's face tightened as his gravitics picked up missile separations. At this range, even given their closing speed, drive burnout would send his missiles ballistic and deprive them of their homing ability over 800,000 kilometers short of target. That was why he'd held his own fire, hoping against hope that they'd keep coming until he opened up. Not that he'd expected them to, but it had been worth praying for. There was little point throwing away birds that couldn't maneuver when they reached the enemy—missiles that had gone ballistic were easy for impeller drive ships to evade or pick off—but they'd already come closer than he'd had any reasonable right to expect, and even a ballistic bird was better than none when he and his men had at most three salvos before the Masadan missiles arrived.

'Open fire!' he barked, and then, in a softer voice, 'Stand by point defense.'

* * *

The range was too great even for Madrigal's systems to plot single missile drives, but the display flashed as the destroyer's sensors noted a sudden background cascade of impeller sources. Courvosier stood silently beside Yanakov, watching the Grayson admiral's gray, clenched face, and knew there was nothing at all he could say.

* * *

Sword Simonds shivered as he watched the missiles on Thunder of God's