Which meant he could still kill her, and perhaps-
'SLAMs!' Rahman screamed. 'SLAMs bearing oh-oh-three, one-two-seven!'
Howell's head whipped up in horror as malignant blue dots speckled his display. Where had they come from?! There was nothing out there! It was-
And then his sublight sensors finally picked up the ships ahead and 'above' him, firing down past his drive masses as he decelerated towards them.
'Go, Simon!' Megarea shrieked, and Alicia's blood-lust spasmed against the web. A strand parted, and Tisiphone hurled herself at the weakness, blocking the thrust of madness. She didn't get it all. A tentacle of fire groped through Alicia's brain, and breath hissed between her teeth.
The SLAMs flashed in, and Howell's ships lunged into frantic evasive action. The short range meant the SLAMs were still building velocity when they arrived, and she snarled as Procyon evaded an even dozen, but two battle- cruisers were less fortunate, and she twitched in ecstasy as they died.
Eleven capital ships hung on James Howell's flank, their velocity within ten percent of his own, and he'd lost Trafalgar and Chickamauga. Verdun replaced Trafalgar in the tactical net, but only she survived to support Procyon. Had the dreadnought's AI remained, she alone might have matched all eleven of her opponents, but it didn't. She retained her brute firepower and defensive strength-not the fine-meshed control to make it fully effective.
Understanding filled him. There had been an ambush, but not of Fleet units. The energy signatures told it all. Somehow, DeVries had linked up with the mercenaries at Ringbolt. An alpha synth-and only an alpha synth- might have nailed Gregor and had the speed to reach Ringbolt before making for the rendezvous to bait the trap. There was only one way those slow-footed battleships could have brought him to action, and he'd swallowed the bait whole. But what about the ships even now breaking sublight? They couldn't have been part of the plan; he knew Monkoto's reputation, and the mercenary would have been in place long since with every unit he had.
Conjecture raced through his mind in split-second flashes of lightning. The other units couldn't be from Gomez's Fleet district-not unless Brinkman had been found out and the whole operation broken from the other end, and in that case there'd be a hell of a lot more than thirty drive sources! Could they be still more mercenaries? Some last minute ally of Monkoto's who'd arrived late?
It didn't matter. What mattered was that the only way to avoid fighting both enemy forces was to take Monkoto head on … and that was suicide.
But perhaps not for everyone. If any of his people could break through the mercenaries, they might turn true pirate, or perhaps take service with a Rogue World far enough from Franconia not to realize what they'd been. It wasn't much, but it was all he could offer them-that and a chance to kill some of the bastards who'd ambushed them.
'Come to poppa, you bastards,' Simon Monkoto whispered. He'd hoped for still more SLAM salvos, but then he'd expected the renegades to accelerate back up to wormhole out. They hadn't, and now they were hidden behind the drives pointed straight at him. The battle to come had just turned even uglier, but his own ships matched the 'pirates'' maneuver. Thanks to the battleships, their maximum deceleration was less than the enemy's, but it would be enough to insure a long and deadly embrace.
'Up their asses, Megarea!' Alicia snarled.
'Are you sure, Alley? I'm not in good enough offensive shape to add much to Simon's firepower.'
Megarea's worried voice tore at the corona of violence building in Alicia's mind. She clenched her teeth, sweating, trying to make herself think, and a part of her screamed in warning. The web about her madness sang with stress, and it was crumbling. She felt Tisiphone between her and it, felt the Fury pouring herself into the fraying web. She writhed in her chair, fighting to keep her jaws locked on the order to engage. She could break off. She could curl away from Howell and leave him to Monkoto's unwounded ships, and she knew she had to. She and her companions were the only ones who knew the truth about Treadwell. They couldn't let themselves die yet. She knew it; yet she couldn't let go. She held her course, and the most she could do was strangle the order for Megarea to redline her deceleration.
The edge of James Howell's squadron 'overtook' Monkoto's. Screening destroyers and light cruisers suddenly found themselves broadside-to-broadside at ranges as low as fifty thousand kilometers, and energy torpedoes and beams ripped back and forth. Point defense was irrelevant; misses were almost impossible, and battle screens were blazing halos wrapped about fragile battle steel. Two renegade destroyers and a light cruiser vanished in star-bright fury, but Commodore Falconi's heavy cruiser flagship went with them, and the death toll was only starting.
Monkoto and his allies had known what it would be like the instant they realized Howell wasn't going to run for it. They could have broken off, but they hadn't come to break off. The two fleets interpenetrated and merged, racing side-by-side while the hammering match raged.
Procyon's massive beam and energy torpedo batteries opened fire, and a dozen destroyers and cruisers died in the first salvo. Verdun poured her own fire into the maelstrom, but two of O'Kane's battle-cruisers locked their batteries on her, and her fire slackened as more and more of her power was shunted frantically into her battle screen. She writhed, cored in their fire, and Procyon blew one of her attackers to vaporized wreckage.
Not in time. Verdun's screens failed, a tight-focused salvo of particle beams ripped through them, and she vomited flame across the stars.
Procyon rounded vengefully upon her killer, but Audacious and the battleship Assassin were on her like mastiffs. They were far smaller, slower, less heavily armed, but their cyber synths were intact, and thunder wracked the vacuum as the leviathans spread their arms in lethal embrace. Two more battle-cruisers raced to join them, then a third, and all six rained javelins of flame upon the dreadnought.
Eight million tonnes of starship heaved as something got through a local screen failure, and Monkoto's wolves set their fangs in the flanks of the crippled saber-tooth. Howell ripped his attention away from them long enough to check the main plot and swallowed a groan. Procyon was attracting more and more of the mercenaries' attention, but there were more than enough destroyers and cruisers to pair off in duels with his own units. Ships flashed and vanished like dying sparks, damage signals snarled in his synth link, and Tracking had finally identified the newcomers: Fleet battle-cruisers, already gaining on Procyon with their higher rate of deceleration.
He glared at the red switch on his console. He could engage the shield and laugh at Monkoto's attack … but there was no point. He couldn't accelerate with the shield up; only drift, knowing that when he finally lowered it, the enemy would be waiting. He raised fiery eyes to Commander Rahman.
'Get the battleships!' he snarled.
Alicia's nails drew blood from her palms as the battleship Assassin blew apart. She remembered Esther Tarbaneau's gentle brown eyes, and her lips writhed back from her teeth as the red holocaust broke free within her.
The hell with Treadwell! The hell with everything! The mercenaries were fighting her fight, dying her death.
