The Honor of the Qween

go.

* * *

Honor stared into her display, her single eye aching with concentration. The Masadan ships were dying even more rapidly than she'd hoped, but where were the Havenites? Had they come all this way just to miss them?

She winced as another Grayson LAC blew up, but there were only a handful of Masadan LACs left, with no starships to support them, and Matthews' units were picking them off with methodical precision.

'Come to two-seven-zero, Helm!'

'Aye, aye, Ma'am. Coming to two-seven-zero.'

HMS Fearless curved out from Blackbird, clearing her sensors to look for the enemy Honor knew had to be somewhere.

* * *

'Stand by,' Commander Theisman whispered as his ship flashed around the craggy moon with ever gathering speed. The base's sensors still fed his plot, and his teeth drew back. 'Stand ... by... . Now! '

* * *

'Skipper! Astern of us—!'

Lieutenant Commander Amberson's shout wrenched Commander Alice Truman's eyes back to her display, and her face whitened in horror.

'Hard a-port!' she barked, and Apollo swerved wildly in response.

It was too late. The destroyer behind her had timed it perfectly, and her first broadside exploded just behind the open rear of Apollo's impeller wedge. X-ray lasers opened the light cruiser's port side like huge talons, and damage alarms screamed like damned souls.

'Bring her around!' Truman shouted. 'Bring her around, Helm!'

A second broadside was already roaring in, and a corner of her mind wondered why the Peep was using missiles at beam ranges, but she didn't have time to think about that. Her cruiser clawed around, interposing her sidewall, and two of the incoming missiles ran physically into it and perished before their proximity fuses could trigger. Four more detonated just short of it, stabbing through the sidewall into already shattered plating, and a seventh streaked all the way past her and detonated on her starboard side. Smoke and screams and thunder filled Apollo's bridge, and Truman's face was bloodless as her starboard sidewall went down and the Havenite closed in for the kill.

* * *

Theisman snarled in triumph, yet under his snarl was the bitter knowledge that his triumph would be brief. He could finish the cruiser with another salvo, but he'd already crippled her. The Captain would finish her off; his job was to damage as many Manticorans as he could before Thunder came back.

'Take the destroyer!' he barked.

'Aye, Sir!'

Principality slewed to starboard, presenting her reloaded port broadside to Troubadour, but the Manticoran destroyer saw her coming, and her skipper knew his business. Theisman's entire body tensed as the Manticoran fired a laser broadside three times as heavy as his own into him, then snapped up to present the belly of his wedge before the missiles could reach him. Principality heaved in agony, and the plot flickered. Two of his birds popped up, fighting for a look-down shot through Troubadour's upper sidewall, but her point defense picked them off, and Theisman swore as the Manticoran rolled back down with viperish speed to bring her lasers to bear once more.

But Principality was rolling, too, and her starboard broadside fired before Troubadour had completed her maneuver. His ship bucked again as energy blasted deep into her hull, but this time one of his laser heads got through. There was no way to tell how much damage it had done—there wasn't enough time to tell what his damage was!—but he knew he'd hurt her.

'Come to oh-niner-three three-five-niner!'

Principality dived towards the moon, twisting to present the top of her own wedge to Troubadour while her surviving missile crews fought to reload. The single laser in her port broadside picked off a Grayson LAC that never even saw her, and then she shuddered as a Grayson light cruiser put a laser into her forward impellers. Her acceleration dropped and her wedge faltered, but the ready lights glowed on the four surviving tubes of her port broadside, and Theisman sent her rolling madly back to bring them to bear on the Grayson.

He never made it. Fearless came screaming back on a reciprocal of her original course, and a hurricane of energy fire ripped through Principality's sidewall as if it hadn't existed.

'Sidewall down!' Hillyard shouted. 'We've lost everything in the port broadside!' The exec cursed. 'Emergency reactor shutdown, Skip!'

Principality went to emergency power, and Theisman's face relaxed. His ship was done, but she'd accomplished more than Franks' entire task force, and there was no point throwing away those of her people who still survived.

'Strike the wedge,' he said quietly.

Hillyard looked at him in shock for just one instant, then stabbed his panel, and Principality's impeller wedge died.

Theisman watched his display, wondering almost calmly if he'd been in time. Striking the wedge was the universal signal of surrender, yet if someone had already committed to fire—or wasn't in the mood to accept surrenders ...

But no one fired. Troubadour rolled up onto his port side, streaming air from her own wounds, and Theisman sighed in relief when Principality trembled as a tractor locked onto her and he realized he and his remaining people would live after all.

'Sir,' Lieutenant Trotter said softly, 'Fearless is hailing us.'

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Honor leaned back as the hatch sighed open and a very ordinary-looking brown-haired man in the scarlet and gold of a Masadan commander walked through it, escorted by Major Ramirez.

Ramirez was six centimeters shorter than Honor, but San Martin, the single habitable planet of Trevor's Star, was one of the heaviest-gravity worlds man had settled. Its sea-level air pressure was high enough to produce near-toxic concentrations of carbon-dioxide and nitrogen, and the major reflected the gravity to which he had been born. He was built like a skimmer turbine with an attitude problem, and he hated the People's Republic of Haven with a passion no native-born Manticoran could match. At the moment, his complete non-expression showed exactly how he felt, and she sensed the battle between emotion and life-long discipline which held those feelings at bay.

Yet it was the major's prisoner who interested her. He looked far more composed than he could possibly be, and she felt an unwilling respect for him as he gazed levelly back at her. He'd done an outstanding job—better, she suspected, than she could have done under the circumstances—yet she sensed an odd sort of strain under his self-possessed surface and wondered if it had anything to do with his request for this interview with her.

The commander tucked his cap under his arm and braced to attention.