stomach was awash with acid and too much coffee, and he wanted it to end.
* * * 'He is going for another missile engagement.'
Rafael Cardones had just come back on watch, relieving Lieutenant Harris, and despite her own tension—or perhaps because of it—Honor felt an almost overpowering urge to giggle at the disgust in his voice.
'Count your blessings, Guns,' she said instead. 'If he's willing to stay out of energy range, I certainly am.'
'I know, Skipper. It's just—' Cardones bent over his console, updating himself, and Honor shook her head fondly at his back. 'He'll enter range in another ten minutes,' Cardones announced after a moment. 'Closing velocity will be down to four hundred KPS at that point.'
'Close up your missile crews, Lieutenant,' Honor said formally.
* * * The range fell to six-point-eight million kilometers, and Thunder of God spat missiles towards her foes, their computers crammed with every tactical improvement Ash had been able to think of. This time she went to rapid fire with the first salvo; a second broadside followed fifteen seconds later, then a third, and a fourth. Two hundred and sixteen missiles were in space before the first reached attack range, and Manticoran broadsides raced to meet them.
* * * 'They're concentrating on Troubadour,' Cardones said tautly, and Honor gripped her chair arms.
'Yankee-Three, Alistair.'
'Aye, aye, Ma'am. Executing Yankee-Three.' McKeon's voice was flat and metallic.
'Chief, take us to Yankee-Two,' Honor went on, and Fearless slowed and rolled 'up' towards Saladin.Troubadour slid past her, tucking in to hide as much of her emission signature behind the more powerful ship as she could without blocking her own fire. It was a cold-blooded maneuver to place the cruiser's tougher sidewalls between her and the enemy, but Saladin had detailed scans on them both. It was unlikely her missiles would be fooled into going for Fearless, and they still had plenty of maneuver time on their drives.
'Missile Defense Delta.'
'Aye, aye, Ma'am. Initiating Plan Delta.' Wolcott sounded calm and cool this time, and Honor felt a brief glow of pride in the young woman.
The glow faded as she turned back to her plot and the sheer density of the Masadan fire. Saladin carried far more ammunition, and she was using it ruthlessly. Honor longed to reply in kind, for Fearless mounted the new Mod 7b launcher, with a cycle time of only eleven seconds. She could have pumped out twenty percent more fire than Saladin —but only while her ammo lasted, and the range was too long for her to burn through it that way.
* * * Sword Simonds' lip drew back in a canine grin as he watched Ash's efforts pay off. Harrington's decoys were less than half as effective this time, and freed from the effort to coordinate Thunder's defenses, Ash and his staff were adjusting far more rapidly to her other defensive measures, as well.
Missiles tore down on the Manticoran ships, and even at this range he sensed the pressure they placed on Harrington's defenses. Seven of the first broadside broke past her counter missiles, and if her lasers stopped all of them short of lethal range, the rapidity of Ash's fire gave her far less engagement time on each salvo.
He tore his eyes from that display to check missile defense, and his heart rose still higher. Ash's prerecorded ECM programs were performing much better than he'd hoped. Ten of the incoming missiles lost lock and veered away, seeking Thunder's own decoys, and counter missiles and lasers easily burned down the six that held their course.
* * * Five minutes passed. Then six. Eight. Ten. Somehow, Carolyn Wolcott stopped every single missile Saladin threw at her, but the enemy was adapting to Fearless's defensive ECM far more quickly. His fire was more accurate and heavier, and this time he wasn't flinching away. Cardones hit the battlecruiser once, then again, and a third time, and still she bored in, pounding back, shrugging aside her injuries.
* * * Matthew Simonds mouthed an oath as yet another hit slammed into his ship, but then his bloodshot eyes glowed as a shout of triumph went up from his tactical crew.
* * * HMS Troubadour vomited debris and atmosphere as the X-ray laser chewed deep into her unarmored hull. Plating buckled and tore, an entire missile tube and its crew vanished in an eyeblink, and pressure loss alarms screamed. The destroyer raced onward, trailing wreckage and air, and her surviving missile tubes belched back at her massive foe.
* * * Honor winced as the laser ripped into Troubadour.Saladin had learned even more than she'd feared from that first engagement. Her ECM was far more efficient, her heavier, more numerous point defense stations burned down incoming fire with dismaying efficiency, and each hit she scored hurt far worse than the missiles that got through them hurt her.
She should have given Rafe his head earlier. She should have pursued Saladin before the big ship's inexperienced crew had time to adjust to their weapons, but she hadn't quite been able to believe her own suspicions then. And, she told herself pitilessly, she'd let herself be dissuaded not just by the need to stay between Saladin and Grayson, but by her own desire to live.
She bit her lip as another Masadan missile was picked off less than a second short of Troubadour. She'd lost her best chance to kill Saladin while she was still clumsy; now too many of her own people were going to die because of her failure.
* * * 'Look! Look!' someone shouted from the back of Thunder's bridge.
Sword Simonds wrenched around in his chair to scowl at the culprit for breaking discipline, but his heart wasn't in it. He, too, had seen two more missiles break through everything the bitch could throw against them.
* * * 'Direct hits on Missile Nine and Laser Six, Captain!' Lieutenant Cummings reported harshly. 'No survivors from either mount, and we've got heavy casualties in Tracking and CIC.'
Alistair McKeon shook his head like a punch-drunk fighter. Dust motes hovered in midair, the stink of burning insulation and flesh had leaked into the bridge before the ventilator trunk to CIC slammed shut, and he heard someone retching.
'Beta Fifteen's down, Skipper!' Cummings told him, and he closed his eyes in pain. There was a pause, and then his engineer's voice went flat. 'Captain, I'm losing the port sidewall aft of Frame Forty-Two.'
'Roll her, Helm!' McKeon barked, and Troubadour spun madly, whipping her rent sidewall away from Saladin. 'Engage with the starboard broadside!'
* * * Thunder of God heaved as another missile got through, but a sense of indestructible power filled Matthew Simonds. His ship had lost two lasers, a radar array, two more tractors, and another missile tube—that was all, and his sensors could see the shattered plating and wreckage trailing from the bitch's destroyer. Another broadside belched out as he watched, the exultation of his bridge crew flamed about him like a fire, and he felt himself pounding the arm of his chair as he urged those missiles on.
* * * Sweat dripped from Rafael Cardones' face onto his panel. Saladin's electronic
