The Service of the Sword

'Two hits forward of Frame Sixty,' Commander Tyson reported from Damage Control Central. 'We've lost Graser Fourteen, Laser Cluster Eight and Ten, and Lidar Two. No casualties from those hits. But we took another one aft of Frame One-Zero-Niner. It took out Missile Twenty and Graser Twenty-Four, and we took heavy casualties on the energy mount.'

'Understood,' Captain Oversteegen replied, but his eyes were fixed on his tactical plot as he watched Blumenthal's most recent broadsides roaring down upon Number One. Good as the enemy's missile ECM was, Gauntlet's was better, and Oversteegen's eyes glittered in anticipation as the target's counter missiles went wide and its point defense lasers fired late.

'Shit! Heavy damage to Laser Seven and Miss—'

The voice from Damage Control chopped off in mid-word, and Jerome Tyler's hungry smile vanished as Fortune Hunter heaved madly. He clung to his command chair's arms on the bucking bridge, and his face was ashen as alarms screamed and the bridge lighting flickered. At least four missiles from the Manty's last salvo had gotten through this time, and he didn't need more reports from Damage Control to know Fortune Hunter had been badly hurt.

'Captain, our accel is dropping!' the helmsman reported, and Tyler grimaced as he stabbed a quick look at his own displays. Of course their acceleration was dropping—the goddamned Manty had just blown four nodes out of their after impeller ring!

'I've lost contact with Missile Niner, Eleven, and Thirteen,' the tac officer reported. 'Missile Defense Seven and Niner don't respond either. And I've lost the port decoy!'

'Roll hard port!' Tyler barked. 'Get our starboard broadside to bear on them!'

'Good hits on Number One!' Blumenthal announced jubilantly. 'Their wedge strength is dropping, Sir!'

'Good work, Guns!' Oversteegen replied, even as he watched Gauntlet's defensive fire annihilate an entire incoming broadside well short of laser head attack range. Number One was bleeding air and trailing debris, and her fire seemed to have dropped. And—yes, she was rolling ship to snatch her damaged flank away from Gauntlet! But it looked like she'd left it too late to evade Blumenthal's follow-up salvo.

'Time t' hyper limit?' he demanded.

'Four minutes, Sir,' Atkins responded.

'Communications, record a transmission for Midshipwoman Hearns,' Oversteegen commanded.

'Standing by, Sir,' Lieutenant Commander Cheney acknowledged.

'Message beg—'

'Incoming! Missiles in acquisition, bearing one-seven-five! Impact in one-five- zero seconds!'

Oversteegen's eyes snapped back to his tactical repeater as the fresh threat came roaring in from astern. It couldn't be from Number Three—not on that bearing! Which meant there was a fourth enemy ship in the system, and they'd missed her completely!

'Stern wall!' he barked. 'Get it up now!'

Tyler's eyes clung to the tactical display as the Manty missiles sliced through his badly battered defenses. He no longer had a port decoy, and his EW emitters had taken heavy damage from the hits which had lacerated Fortune Hunter's port flank. His counter missile and point defense crews did the best they could, but it wasn't going to be good enough.

Gauntlet's missiles raced down upon their target and detonated at ranges as short as ten thousand kilometers. The powerful X-ray lasers ripped deep into Fortune Hunter, shattering bulkheads and opening compartments like knives. Energy mounts and their crews were smashed and mangled, missile tube mass-drivers arced madly as their capacitor rings shorted, and atmosphere gushed from the brutal wounds. The cruiser heaved bodily sideways, and then the last hit came slicing in, and Number One Impeller Room exploded with a cataclysmic fury that destroyed her entire forward hammerhead.

The ship tumbled madly as her wedge unbalanced, and then her inertial compensator failed.

Whether any of her crew were still alive when the savage torquing effect on her hull snapped her back scarcely mattered.

Michael Oversteegen was peripherally aware of Number One's spectacular destruction, but he had little attention to spare for it. Not with twenty-plus missiles racing straight for Gauntlet's kilt.

Behind the mask of his features, he cursed himself for not having found whatever ship had just fired. He knew, intellectually, that Blumenthal had done extraordinarily well just to spot Number Three, given the effectiveness of these 'pirates' ' electronic warfare capabilities. But that was no comfort at all as he watched those missiles come.

Gauntlet's acceleration dropped abruptly to zero as her stern wall snapped up. She was one of the first Edward Saganami-B–class ships which had added that passive defense, and this was the very first time any of them had tested it in actual combat. It had worked well enough for the LACs who'd first employed it during Eighth Fleet's decisive offensive, but a heavy cruiser was scarcely a LAC.

More to the point, it took time for the wall to come up, and time was in very short supply.

Samson Lamar stared in horror at the broken, lifeless wreckage which an instant before had been a heavy cruiser. The sheer, blinding speed with which Fortune Hunter had been transformed into so much splintered rubble stunned him. And it also terrified him, because he knew who the next target of the Manty's wrath had to be.

He opened his mouth to order his helmsman to turn Predator up on her side relative to the Manty, sheltering behind the impenetrable roof of her wedge. But before he could get the order out, Dongcai Maurersberger's missiles exploded dead astern of the enemy ship.

HMS Gauntlet bucked in agony as the incoming laser heads detonated. Her after point defense had knocked out twelve of them, despite the surprise of their launch from stealth. Five more were sucked off by the cruiser's decoys. But the remaining six ran straight in on their target and detonated eighteen thousand kilometers astern of her.

If not for her stern wall, she would have died then and there. Even with it, the damage was terrible. The wall was still spinning up to full power when the lasers came slashing in. It could bend and attenuate them, but it couldn't stop them, and damage alarms shrieked.

'We've lost the after ring!' Tyson barked from Damage Control Central. 'Grasers Thirty-Two, Thirty-Three, and Thirty-Four are gone! We've lost at least half the after laser clusters, and I'm getting no response from Environmental Four or Boat Bay Two!'

Oversteegen's jaw tightened. Raising the stern wall had cut Gauntlet's acceleration to zero when it closed the after aspect of her wedge, but without the after impeller ring, it would be halved even after the wall came down. And with his after missile defenses so badly damaged, he dared not lower it at all until he'd wrenched his stern away from the previously unsuspected attacker.

'Can we get the wedge back?' he asked Tyson sharply.

'I can't say for certain, Sir,' the engineer replied. He was hammering at his keyboard even as he spoke, eyes locked to the scrolling diagnostic reports.

'I don't like t' rush my officers,' Oversteegen said, 'but it would be most helpful if you could expedite that