The Honor of the Qween

demanding his surrender; that could only mean they were prepared to try something more direct.

But what? Williams didn't know, and ignorance shuddered in his blood like another layer of anger. That bitch! If she hadn't come back—back to a star system neither she nor her whore of a queen had any business in—Masada would have completed God's Work. But she had come back, she and her accursed ships, and smashed the entire remaining Navy except Virtue and Thunder in two short days. She'd set herself against God's Work and Will, just as women always had, and Williams cursed her with silent ferocity as he paced.

It wasn't supposed to happen like this. As Blackbird Base's CO, he'd known about Maccabeus, known all the military maneuvers were but window dressing for the real operation, and he'd wondered, deep inside, if perhaps the Elders weren't being just a bit too clever. Yet they'd spent decades creating the Maccabeans, and the Apostates' security had never suspected a thing. Surely that had been a sign God approved! And then the heathen Havenites had offered the final, crucial ingredient, the means to create the crisis Maccabeus needed. What better proof of the workings of God's Will could there be than the opportunity to use infidels against the Apostate?

Yet Williams had doubted, and in the nightmares which had haunted him since Jericho—and especially since the bitch's return—a fresh doubt had tormented him. Had his lack of Faith turned God's Heart from them? Had it been he who allowed Satan's bitch and her ships to thwart the Work?

Such thoughts could not be allowed, yet neither could he stop them. Even prayer and penance had failed him, but his sleepless nights had revealed another truth. Satan's servants must be punished, and so he had punished them, hoping to turn God's Wrath from the Faithful by proving his own Faith anew.

And he'd failed. God still turned His Heart against His Faithful. Why else had Thunder of God not returned to destroy the bitch? Why else had Blackbird's missiles failed to destroy even a single LAC? There could be no other answer, and as he paced and worried and fury knotted his belly, he prayed desperately for God to turn once more to His People and save them.

* * *

'Covington reports ready, Major.'

'Thank you.' Tomas Ramirez acknowledged the report and looked up. Sergeant Major Babcock stood beside him in the crowded pinnace troop bay, her gray eyes cool and very still in the open visor of her battle armor, and a pulser tri-barrel thrust up behind her right pauldron. 'Are we ready, Gunny?'

'Aye, Sir. All weapons checked, and Cap'n Hibson's company and the HQ section are armored up. We had to downcheck one set of armor, but Apollo had a prepped spare. The Captain says she's ready to drop.'

'Good, Gunny,' Ramirez murmured, and silently thanked God that Susan Hibson's last assignment had been with one of the heavy assault battalions. She'd spent it practicing exactly the sort of thing her people faced today, which was why he'd made her Fearless's designated assault commander the day she came aboard.

'Give me a direct feed to Covington.'

'Aye, Sir,' the com tech replied, and a tone beeped as Ramirez's armor com dropped into the circuit.

'Covington, this is Ramrod. Do you copy?'

'Covington copies, Ramrod. Go ahead.'

'Begin your drops, Covington. I say again, begin your drops.'

'Covington copies,' the voice in his earphones said. 'Beginning drops now. May God go with you, Ramrod.'

'Thank you, Covington. Ramrod clear.' The major punched a chin switch to plug into the Manticoran net. 'Ramrod to Decoy Flight. Commence your runs.'

'Aye, Ramrod. Decoy Flight copies. Beginning our runs.'

* * *

'Captain Williams!'

Williams whirled at the shout. His plotting officer pointed urgently at the master display, and the captain swallowed in sudden fear. Dozens of small craft were plummeting from the orbiting warships, and leading the way were two pinnaces with impossible energy signatures.

They gathered speed even as he stared at them, slicing down into Blackbird's wispy hydrogen atmosphere, and crimson projections showed their targets.

'They're going for the vehicle entrances!' Williams snapped. 'Alert the ready teams and get Colonel Harris' men moving!'

* * *

The Manticoran flight crews were tense faced, nerves clenched against the ground fire they all expected. But there was none, and the pilots pulled out of their steep approaches, kicking the counter-grav to a hundred twenty percent and riding their thrusters to convert momentum into howling dives straight for their targets.

'Coming up on IP. Arm, arm, arm,' the master weapons officer aboard Fearless chanted into his com. Amber standby lights blinked to red aboard each pinnace, and the gunners' hands curled about the triggers on their joysticks.

'Launch your birds! Launch your birds!' the weapons officer sang out, and two waiting fingers squeezed.

Quad-mounted fifty-centimeter rockets ripple-fired like brief-lived, flame-tailed meteors. Twelve of them blasted ahead of each pinnace—twenty-four one-thousand-kilo warheads with a yield man once could have gotten only from atomic weapons—and the pinnaces charged onward down their wakes.

* * *

Captain Williams went white as a rumbling fist of thunder smashed through Blackbird Base. The entire facility shuddered, lighting flickered, and eyes jerked anxiously up as overhead rock groaned. Dust sifted down over the command room equipment, and the first bellow of destruction was followed by another. And another. And another!

* * *

The final rockets smashed home, and the pinnaces' bow-mounted pulsers opened fire. Thirty thousand thirty-millimeter shells per second ripped into the smoke and dust billowing in Blackbird's thin atmosphere, and then they flashed directly over their targeting points and the plasma bombs dropped.

Most of the men guarding those portals were already dead; the rest died instantly as the heart of a sun consumed them.

* * *

'God the Merciful, be with us now!' Williams whispered in horror. He'd lost all of his pickups in the immediate lock areas, but remote cameras showed the smoke and dust—and the thick plumes of atmosphere howling up through it—and his eyes whipped to the base schematic. They'd blown their way over a hundred meters into the base! Emergency blast doors slammed, and the captain licked his lips in terror as troop shuttles grounded two kilometers from the breaches and began disgorging hundreds of suited figures.

'Tell Harris to hurry!' he shouted hoarsely.

* * *

'Well,' Ramirez murmured, 'that was impressive, wasn't it, Gunny?'

'As the Major says,' Sergeant Major Babcock's smile was predatory. 'Think they took the hint, Skipper?'

'Oh, I'd say it was probable,' Ramirez said judiciously. 'At least we knocked on the door hard enough to get their attention.' He glanced at the chrono and keyed his mike. 'Ferret Leader, this is Ramrod. Stand by for run- in in one-zero minutes.'

* * *

Decoy Flight screamed upward, then pushed over and came in again. The remaining Masadan surface arrays saw them coming, but even as Colonel Harris screamed a warning to his troops, the anti-radiation missiles blasted off the racks. Six seconds later, they put out Blackbird Base's eyes, and then the pinnaces rolled back onto their original attack headings and bored straight in.

The Masadan defenders went flat, rolling off into side passages wherever possible, and then the entire