warfare patterns flowed and changed with incredible speed compared to their original, arthritic slowness, and the battlecruiser's point defense seemed to be seeing straight past his own birds' ECM. He could feel Wolcott's anguish beside him as more missiles stabbed through her over-strained defenses to maim and mangle Troubadour, but he had no time to spare for that. He had to find a chink in Saladin's armor. He had to!
* * * 'Jesus C—!'
Lieutenant Cummings' voice died with sickening suddenness. Fusion One went into emergency shutdown a fraction of a second later, and the destroyer faltered as Fusion Two took the full load.
There were no more reports from Damage Control Central. There was no one left to make them.
* * * 'Go to rapid fire on all tubes!'
Honor's eye was locked on the com link to Troubadour, and the live side of her face was sick as she heard the tidal wave of damage reports washing over Alistair's bridge. Ammunition or no, she had to draw Saladin's fire from Troubadour before it was too —
The com link suddenly went dead, and her eye whipped to the visual display in horror as Troubadour's back broke like a stick and the destroyer's entire after third exploded like a sun.
* * * Cheers filled Thunder's bridge, and Matthew Simonds pounded the arms of his chair and bellowed his own thick-voiced triumph.
He glared at his plot and the single godless ship which still stood between him and the Apostate, his face ugly with the need to kill and rend. But even through his bloodlust, he saw the sudden quickening of Fearless's fire. Thunder lurched, alarms screaming, as another laser head got through, and this time he snarled in fury, for the hit had cost him two of his own tubes.
'Kill that bitch, Ash!'
* * * It was Fearless's turn now.
Damage alarms screamed like tortured women as the first Masadan broadside lashed her, and Honor tore her mind away from the horror and pain of Troubadour's death. She couldn't think about that, couldn't let herself be paralyzed by the friends who'd just died.
'Hotel-Eight, Helm!' she ordered, and her soprano voice was a stranger's, untouched by anguish or self- hate.
'We've lost the control runs to the after ring, Skipper!' Commander Higgins reported from Damage Central. 'We're down to two-sixty gees!'
'Get those impellers back for me, James.'
'I'll try, but we're shot clean through at Frame Three-Twelve, Skipper. It's going to take at least an hour just to run replacement cable.'
Fearless twisted again as a fresh laser gouged deep.
'Direct hit on the com section!' Lieutenant Metzinger's voice was ugly with loss. 'None of my people got out, Skipper. None of them!'
* * * Thunder heaved as two more lasers ripped at him, and Simonds swore. Missiles were coming in so fast and heavy even computer-driven laser clusters couldn't catch them all, but he was pounding Harrington with equal fury, and his ship was far, far tougher. A readout flickered on the edge of his plot as Fearless's impeller wedge suddenly faltered, and his eyes flamed.
'Increase acceleration to max!' he barked. 'Close the range. We'll finish the bitch with energy fire!'
* * * Fearless staggered yet again as another laser head evaded Ensign Wolcott. The fresh blast of X-rays wiped away two more missile tubes, and Rafael Cardones tasted despair. He was hitting the bastards at least as often as they were hitting Fearless, but Saladin was so damned tough she didn't even seem to notice, and he was down to nine tubes.
And then he froze, staring at his readouts. That couldn't be true! Only an idiot would run his EW that way —but if the Captain was right about who was in command over there... .
The analysis flashed before him, and his lips thinned. Saladin's ECM was under computer control. It had to be, and the engagement had lasted long enough for his own sensors to spot the pattern. The battlecruiser was cycling through a complex deception plan that shifted sequence every four hundred seconds —but every time it did, it reset to exactly the same origin point!
There was no time to clear it with the Captain. His flashing hands changed his loading queues, updated his birds' penetration profiles ... and slammed a lock on all offensive fire. He ignored the consternation around him as his fire ceased. His eyes were glued to his chrono, watching it turn over, and then he pressed the firing key flat.
* * * Simonds frowned as the Fearless's fire suddenly died. Fifteen seconds passed without a single answering shot, then twenty. Twenty-five. He felt his lungs fill with air as he prepared to shout his joy, then swore in savage disappointment as her broadside fired again.
* * * Nine missiles charged through space, and Thunder of God's computers blinked in cybernetic surprise at their unorthodox approach. They came in massed in a tight phalanx, suicidally tight against modern point defense ... except that the three lead missiles carried nothing but ECM. Their jammers howled, blinding every active and passive sensor system, building a solid wall of interference. Neither Thunder nor their fellows could possibly 'see' through it, and a human operator might have realized there had to be a reason Fearless had voluntarily blinded her own missiles' seekers. But the computers saw only a single jamming source and targeted it with only two counter missiles.
One jammer died, but the other two survived, spreading out, varying the strength and power and shape of the transmissions that baffled Thunder's follow-up counter missiles. They charged onward, and then, suddenly, they arced up and apart to expose the six missiles behind them.
Last-ditch point defense lasers swiveled and struck like snakes, spitting rods of coherent light as the computers finally recognized the threat, but the jammers had covered them to the last possible moment, and the attack missiles knew exactly what they were looking for. One of the six died, then another, but the final quartet came on, and an alarm screamed on Lieutenant Ash's panel.
The lieutenant's head whipped around in horror. He had less than a single second to realize that somehow these missiles had been programmed to use his EW systems, as if his decoys were homing beacons, not defenses, and then they rammed headlong into their target.
Two of them vanished in sun-bright fireballs that shook Thunder to her keel as twin, 78-ton hammers struck her sidewall at .25 C. For all their fury, those two were harmless, but their sisters' sidewall penetrators functioned as designed.
* * * Fearless writhed as a fresh hit killed two more missile tubes, but then someone emitted a banshee shriek of triumph, and Honor stared at her repeater. It wasn't possible! No one could get old- fashioned nukes through the very teeth of a modern warship's defenses! Yet Rafe Cardones had done it. Somehow, he'd done it!
But he hadn't scored direct hits. Saladin's impeller wedge flickered as she
