Honor Among Enemies

'Good.' Honor nodded in satisfaction. There'd never been much doubt, but it was nice to be certain they'd be killing the right people.

She gazed into her plot, watching Wayfarer's bead move steadily towards the planet while the cruisers sidestepped the 'oblivious freighter.' They were maintaining a tight-interval formation, too. That was nice. It would put them all in range simultaneously when the time came.

'Reply, Fred,' she said. 'Thank them for their assistance, and tell them we'll maintain profile. Be sure you include Dr. Ryder’s description of our crew casualties for their 'surgeons.''

Sherman stifled a sense of guilt as she watched the hapless freighter sail straight into her trap. Replacing that vessel's alpha nodes would be a gargantuan task for their repair ship, they'd have to build the damned things from scratch, since none of their ships used nodes that powerful, but it could be done. And Andre would be delighted to add her to his list of prizes. Better yet, there was a whole crew of trained spacers over there, people who could be 'convinced' to provide some of the additional technical support they needed.

It'd be more merciful just to blow them apart, she thought grimly, but I can't. Andre would take his time killing me if I blew away a prize. She watched the light dot of the freighter, less than ten minutes from rendezvous now, and her eyes were haunted. I'm sorry, she told the blip, and turned her chair to face her tac officer once more.

'Nine-and-a-half minutes to intercept, Ma'am,' Jennifer Hughes said. 'They're folding in from starboard, rate of closure just under two thousand KPS, decelerating at two hundred gees. Present range to Bogey One just over three-one-one-thousand klicks; range to Bogey Four is four-zero-niner thousand. We're picking up fire control emissions from Bogey Two, but the others aren't even pulsing us. We've got 'em where we want 'em, Milady.'

Honor nodded. The 'Confederacy cruisers' had made com contact hours ago, and the woman who'd introduced herself as 'Admiral Sherman' was actually in Silesian uniform. Or her com image was, anyway. Honor's own image had gone out in Andermani merchant uniform, courtesy of a little computer alteration. But unlike 'Admiral Sherman,' Honor knew the face on her screen was lying, for Tactical had tracked Warnecke’s cruisers' entire maneuver, and it bore no resemblance at all to the one 'Sherman' had described.

'All right, people.' She glanced up at Caslet, and the Peep nodded back. 'Begin your attack, Commander Hughes,' she said formally.

'Aye, aye, Ma'am. Carol, roll the pods.'

'That's funny.'

Sherman turned to look at Commander Truitt, and the tac officer shrugged.

'I just picked up something separating from the target,' he said. 'Not sure what it is. It looks like debris of some sort, but it must be pretty small, the radar return's mighty weak. It's falling astern of her now, and...' He frowned. 'There goes another batch of it.'

'What sort of debris?'

'I don't know,' Truitt admitted. 'Looks like they could be jettisoning cargo or, There goes another batch.' He grinned suddenly. 'You don't suppose they were running contraband into the Confederacy, do you?'

'Maybe,' Sherman said, but her tone was doubtful. If Sternenlicht was, in fact, carrying contraband, and most captains did in Silesia, she'd want to get rid of it before a Confed squadron sent people aboard her. But if she was going to dump cargo, why wait this long? Surely she had to know Sherman's ships were close enough to see it on radar. Of course, from their medical reports, they had some pretty seriously hurt personnel over there. What with a major engineering failure and casualties, it might just have slipped her captain’s mind until now.

A fourth wave of debris had kicked out the rear of the freighter's wedge while Sherman pondered. Now a fifth followed... and then the freighter suddenly rolled ship, turning the belly of her wedge towards the cruisers, and Rayna Sherman discovered what that 'jettisoned cargo' truly was.

In light of any missile pod's complete vulnerability to any weapon, BuWeaps was still trying to come up with a design made out of sufficiently low-signature materials to defeat enemy fire control. They hadn't quite managed that yet, but they had come up with one whose radar return was far weaker than something its size ought to have been, and their new optical coating was much more effective against both visual detection and the laser pulses of the lidar most navies favored for short-range fire control, as well. Which meant they didn't look big enough to be any particular threat... a fact upon which Honor had counted when she, Cardones, and Hughes planned their initial tactics.

Five complete salvos spilled astern, ejecting cleanly from the outsized cargo doors, and the pods' onboard fire control was programmed for delayed activation. The first salvo waited forty-eight seconds, the second thirty-six, the third twenty-four, and the fourth twelve...

The last fired on launch, and three hundred capital missiles streaked straight into the privateers' teeth.

The range was under a half-million kilometers, and the RMN's latest capital missiles accelerated at 92,000 KPS?. Flight time to the closest enemy ship was twenty-four seconds; time to the most distant was only four seconds longer, and Hendrickson, Jarmon, and Willis never had a chance.

Seventy-five immensely powerful laser heads screamed in on each of them, and they didn't even have their fire control on-line, far less their point defense. There was no need for it. They were the hunters, and their prey was only a huge, slow, totally defenseless freighter. They'd known that, or thought they had. Now captains shouted frantic helm orders, trying to roll ship and interpose their wedges, and Jarmon actually managed it... not that it did her any good. Jennifer Hughes' exquisitely timed missile storm slashed down on them, and her birds had plenty of time left on their drives for terminal attack maneuvers. Bomb-pumped lasers smashed through their targets' sidewalls as if they were tissue, detonating at ranges as short as a thousand kilometers, and no heavy cruiser ever built could survive that sort of fire.

Warner Caslet stared at the plot in disbelief as the missile traces spawned like hideous serpents of light. He whirled to the visual display, and then staggered back a step as the laser heads detonated. The range was little more than a light-second and a half, and the savage white glare of nuclear fire stabbed at his eyes despite the optical filters.

God, he thought numbly. Dear sweet God, this is only a Q-ship! What the hell happens if they fit a warship with... with whatever the hell that was?!

Rayna Sherman went paper-white as the missiles tore down on President Warnecke. Her flagship had been about to demand the 'freighters' surrender, and her fire control was on-line for the task. Warnecke's merely human crew was taken totally by surprise, but her point defense computers observed the sudden eruption of threat sources and engaged automatically, salvoing counter-missiles and snapping the laser clusters around to engage the leakers.

Unfortunately, her defenses were too weak to stop that much fire even if they'd known in advance that it was coming. She was only a heavy cruiser, and not even a super-dreadnought could have thrown seventy-five missiles at her in a single broadside. She stopped a lot of them, but most got through, and Sherman clung to her command chair as lasers slashed into her ship. Plating shattered under the kinetic transfer, air belched out in huge, obscene bubbles, damage alarms screamed, and there was nothing, nothing at all, Sherman could do about it.

Warnecke's wedge fluctuated madly as alpha and beta nodes were blasted away. Half her radar and all her gravitics were blown to bits, and a raging wall of blast and fragments crashed through her communications section. Both sidewalls flickered and died, then came back up at less than half strength, and two thirds of her armament was totally destroyed. She reeled sideways, alive but dying, and her half-crippled plot showed the unmistakable radar returns of LACs exploding from the flanks of the huge 'freighter.'