The Honor of the Qween

ass kicked up between his ears by a frigging destroyer—what did he think two cruisers were going to do to him?!

But there was no point arguing. Franks had heard too much criticism of his previous tactics, insisted too doggedly that only the superior range of Madrigal's missiles and the way they'd reduced his force before he ever engaged had caused his heavy losses. This time he had the range advantage from Blackbird Base, and he was determined to prove he'd been right the first time.

'What are your orders, then, Sir?' Theisman demanded in a curt voice.

'The task force will form up behind Blackbird as planned. Our base launchers will engage when the Apostate enter their range. Should any of the Apostate—or your Manticorans—survive that, we will be able to engage them with equivalent base velocities at close range.'

'I see.' That was probably the stupidest battle plan Theisman had ever heard, given the quality of the two forces, but short of running on his own, there was nothing he could do about it. And, from Franks' expression, he suspected the Masadans had their energy weapons dialed in on Principality. If they thought she was pulling out, they'd blow her out of space themselves.

'Very well, Sir.' He cut the circuit without further ado and cursed for two minutes straight.

* * *

'Coming down on forty minutes, Ma'am,' Stephen DuMorne reported. 'Range is approximately ten-point-six million kilometers.'

'Com, ask Admiral Matthews to open the wall. Let's take a look,' Honor said. If the Peeps had given the Masadans what she was afraid they had, she and Matthews would be finding out about it in approximately one hundred and forty seconds.

* * *

'I frigging well knew it!' Commander Theisman spat.

His own sensors were blind from back here, but the base's systems were now feeding Principality's displays ... for what it was worth. The tight wall of LACs had just spread, revealing the far stronger—and larger—impeller signatures behind it. It was Harrington ... and she was just as good as ONI said she was, damn it! Even as he watched, her ships were sliding forward through the Grayson wall, spreading out into a classic anti-missile pattern and deploying decoys while the Graysons vanished behind them.

* * *

Admiral Matthews watched his display and waited. Covington was still short five missile tubes, but her energy weapons and sidewall generators had been repaired in record time. For all that, he knew just how helpless she would have been before the attack Captain Harrington was deliberately inviting. He'd been horrified when she first told him about the endurance their larger, more robust drives gave Haven's ground- based missiles, but she'd seemed confident.

Now it was time to see if that confidence had been justified. If those missiles had the endurance she estimated, they would accelerate to an incredible 117,000 KPS and reach eight-million-plus kilometers before burnout. Given their ships' closing velocity, that equated to an effective powered engagement range of well over nine million kilometers, and that meant the base should be launching right ... about ... now.

* * *

'Missile launch!' Rafael Cardones snapped. 'Birds closing at eight-three-three KPS squared. Impact in one- three-five seconds—mark!'

'Implement point defense Plan Able.'

'Aye, aye, Ma'am. Initiating Plan Able.'

* * *

Commander Theisman managed to stop swearing and raised his eyes from his plot to glare at Lieutenant Trotter as the first Manticoran counter missiles scorched out. It wasn't Trotter's fault he was one of the very few Masadan officers aboard Principality. In fact, Trotter was a pretty decent sort, and he seemed to have become even more so by a sort of process of spiritual contamination during his time aboard Theisman's ship. Unfortunately, he was Masadan and he was handy.

Trotter felt his captain's eyes, and his face reddened with a curious blend of humiliation, apology, and answering resentment. He opened his mouth, then closed it, and Theisman made himself stop glaring. He gave the Masadan an apologetic half-shrug, then looked back at his plot.

* * *

There were thirty missiles in the salvo, more than Honor had expected, and they were big, nasty, and dangerous. Each of them massed a hundred and sixty tons, more than twice as much as her own missiles, and they put all that extra mass into tougher drives, better seekers, and penaids no shipboard Havenite missile could match.

But she'd suspected what was coming, and Rafe Cardones and Lieutenant Commander Amberson, Apollo's tac officer, had the squadron in a classic three-tiered defense plan. Fearless's counter missiles were responsible for long-range interceptions, with Apollo's and Troubadour's taking the leakers. Any that got through both missile layers would be engaged by the massed laser clusters of all three ships under Fearless's control.

Now Honor punched a plotting overlay into her tactical display, tracking the vectors of the incoming fire back to Blackbird to pinpoint their launchers.

'Engage the launchers, Captain?' Cardones asked tensely as his counter missiles began to launch.

'Not yet, Mr. Cardones.'

If she could get it, Honor wanted that base intact, for she still had no positive identification of what she faced in the way of modern warships. She might find that out the hard way very shortly; if she didn't, somewhere in that base were the records—or the people—who could tell her.

A second missile salvo launched. It contained exactly the same number of birds, and she nodded as she checked the time. Thirty-four seconds. ONI estimated three-round ready magazines and a firing cycle of thirty to forty seconds for the newest Peep ground-based systems, so the launch times suggested thirty tubes were all there were. Now the question was how many missiles each tube really had.

She looked back to the first salvo. Their ECM was better than ONI had predicted. Fifteen of its birds had broken through Cardones' outer intercept zone, but his computers were already updating their original solutions and feeding them to Apollo and Troubadour. The attacking missiles' powerful drives gave them an incredible velocity—they were already moving fifty percent faster than anything of Fearless's could have managed from rest—but simple speed was no magic wand, and the range gave lots of time to plot intercepts.

Her plot beeped as a third salvo launched, and she bit the inside of her lip—too hard on the dead left side; she tasted blood before she could ease the pressure. That made ninety missiles, and that was already more than she'd believed Haven would have handed over to fanatics like the Masadans. If there was a fourth launch, she was going to have to forget about taking that base intact and blow it away.

Four missiles from the first salvo broke through the middle intercept zone, and lights blinked on Fearless's tactical panels. Her computers were working overtime, already plotting solutions for her own missiles on the third salvo even as they targeted Apollo's and Troubadour's missiles on the second and brought all three ships' lasers to bear on the remnants of the first, and Honor felt a fierce stab of pride in her squadron as the last missile of the first flight blew apart thirty thousand kilometers ahead of Fearless.

* * *

Admiral Wesley Matthews' heart had gone into his throat when he saw the sheer density and acceleration of the hostile launches and remembered what far smaller and slower missiles had done to the Grayson Navy. But this was no ambush, and Harrington's ships had been built by sorcerers, not technicians! There was a smooth, clean efficiency to them, a lethal, beautiful precision that cut down the attacking missiles in threes and fours and fives.

His bridge crew forgot professionalism, cheering and whistling like spectators at some sporting event, and