The Shadow of Saganami

dozen patches of plating blowing away from the freighter's hull. One of the sudden openings was almost directly in front of the pinnace, and she saw something in it. It was an indistinct, barely visible shape, but there was something naggingly familiar about that half-glimpsed form, and it seemed to be turning to point in her direction.

God, it's a-!

Ragnhild Pavletic never completed the thought.

* * *

The universe punched Helen Zilwicki in the belly. Nothing else could have explained the sudden, hoarse exhalation. The way her heart stopped and her lungs froze as Hawk-Papa-One exploded.

Point defense cluster , an icy voice said in the back of her brain, clear and precise-a stranger's voice, surely not her own.

Shock at the sheer, suicidal stupidity of what they'd just seen gripped every officer on Hexapuma's bridge. Every officer but one.

'Laser clusters only-force neutralization!' Captain Aivars Aleksandrovich Terekhov snapped. ' Fire! '

* * *

'You fucking idiot!' Duan howled.

His hands closed on Egervary's neck from behind. His shoulders and arms heaved ferociously, and the security officer flew up out of his seat. All Duan had really been thinking about was getting the maniac away from the tactical panel before he did something even stupider-as if there'd been anything stupider he could do! He succeeded in that, but the savage, panic-driven strength with which he tore Egervary away from the console also snapped the man's neck like a stick.

The corpse was still in midair when Hexapuma fired.

The range was less than four thousand kilometers.

At that range, point defense lasers capable of taking out incoming, wildly evading missiles at ranges of sixty or seventy thousand kilometers were more than enough to deal with any unarmored target not protected by a sidewall or an impeller wedge. It wasn't often that a warship had the opportunity to use its point defense against even hostile small craft, far less another starship, because nobody was insane enough not to surrender when a naval vessel got that close.

Usually, at any rate.

The good news for Marianne was that Hexapuma's laser clusters were far less powerful than her broadside energy mounts. One of the heavy cruiser's grasers would have blown entirely through the freighter's civilian hull, and probably broken her back in the process. The laser clusters wouldn't do that, but dozens of them studded each of Hexapuma's flanks, and the Royal Manticoran Navy believed in being prepared. Rare though the opportunity to use the normally defensive weapons offensively might have been, BuWeaps had considered how best to do so when the chance offered itself, and Naomi Kaplan's vengeful finger punched up a stored fire plan. The tactical computer considered the data coming back to it from the active sensors briefly— very briefly-then established its targets, assigned each of them a threat value, assigned them to specific point defense stations, and opened fire.

Stilettos of coherent light stabbed out from Hexapuma . Each of a cluster's eight lasers was capable of cycling at one shot every sixteen seconds. That was one shot every two seconds from every cluster in Hexapuma's starboard broadside and Marianne's hull plating seemed to erupt outward. The strobing laser clusters tracked across her, precisely, carefully, almost literally unable to miss at such an absurdly short range, as Hexapuma savaged the ship which had killed her pinnace. They scourged her with whips of barbed energy, shattering and smashing, wiping away weapons, sensors, impeller nodes.

It took precisely twenty-three seconds from the instant Terekhov gave the command to fire to reduce the ship which had just murdered eighteen of his people to a shattered, broken wreck that would never move under its own power again.

* * *

Alarms screamed. The bridge quivered and jerked like a small boat in a gale as Marianne's four-million-ton hull shuddered in agony. Transfer energy hammered her as Hexapuma's fury flayed alloy flesh from her bones.

There were other screams, here and there throughout her hull. Human screams, not electronic ones, and- for the most part-very brief. Low-powered laser clusters might be, compared to regular broadside weapons, but atmosphere belched out of the holes smashed into her. Some of it came from cargo holds, but most came from the ship's compartments. From impeller rooms which were torn open by laser talons, spilling men and women in coveralls and shirt sleeves into the merciless vacuum. From passageways inboard from targeted laser clusters. From berthing quarters directly inboard from her broadside lasers. From messing compartments inboard from her main broadside sensor array.

There were fifty-seven men and women aboard Marianne before Hexapuma fired. That was an extraordinarily large crew for a merchantship, but then most merchantships never had to worry about cargoes of desperate slaves.

By the time Zeno Egervary's body hit the deck and stopped sliding, there were fourteen still-living men and women aboard the freighter's shredded wreck.

* * *

' Cease fire! ' the terror-distorted voice screamed over the com. ' For God's sake, cease fire! We surrender! We surrender! '

Aivars Terekhov's face was like hammered iron. His visual display showed the rapidly dispersing wreckage of Ragnhild Pavletic's pinnace. The pieces were very, very small.

'Who's speaking?' Frozen helium was warmer than that voice.

'This is... this is Duan Binyan,' the other voice gasped, jagged and shrill with panic. 'I'm... I was the captain, but I swear to God I never ordered that! I swear it! '

'Whether you ordered it or not, it was your responsibility, Captain ,' Terekhov said with a flat, terrible emphasis. 'I will be sending a second pinnace. This one will contain a full platoon of battle-armored Marines. At the first sign of resistance, they will employ lethal force. Is that understood, Captain ?'

'Yes. Yes! '

'Then understand this, as well. You've just murdered men and women of the armed forces of the Star Kingdom of Manticore. As such you are guilty, at the very least, of piracy, for which the sentence is death. I suggest, Captain , that you spend the next few minutes trying to think of some reason I might consider letting you continue to live.'

Aivars Terekhov smiled. It was a terrifying expression.

'Think hard, Captain ,' he advised almost gently. 'Think very hard.'

Chapter Forty-Eight

Helen knelt on the decksole and slowly, carefully dialed the locker's combination. Aikawa was on duty-the Captain was keeping him there, she knew, because he blamed himself. If he hadn't identified the freighter, none of this would have happened. It was foolish to condemn himself for it, but he did, and the Skipper was too wise to let him sit and brood.

But someone had to do this, and it was Helen's job.