The Shadow of Saganami

ammunition, and they were firing their birds with low-power drive settings. That suggested that they must have the reach to engage under power even at this range, -presumably with plenty of time on their clocks for terminal attack maneuvers. Still, there were less than forty in each salvo. They had to be coming from a single ship, so perhaps the Manties actually had at least one battlecruiser of their own out there. Either way, there weren't enough birds to saturate his division's defenses, so-

His eyes narrowed still further as the lead salvo abruptly vanished from the plot. One instant it was there; the next all thirty-plus missiles just disappeared. Five seconds later, they reappeared, but not as the steady, blood- red light codes they'd been before. Now they strobed rapidly, almost flickering, and he jabbed an angry glance at the tech rep.

'I don't know!' the civilian said, correctly interpreting the look. 'It must be some sort of jamming platform. That-' he stabbed an index finger at the flickering icons '-indicates we can see them, but we don't have hard locks. And look-look there! Goddamn it!'

Horster didn't swear out loud, but his teeth ground together as his division's entire initial salvo of counter-missiles lost lock and went stumbling off into ineffectuality.

Terekhov bared his teeth at the tactical plot. Despite the range, the FTL reports from Helen's recon drones gave him a real-time, close-range picture of what was happening. He hadn't given Abigail specific instructions on how to employ the EW platforms seeded into her attack salvos, but he recognized what she'd done. She'd used all of the available slots in the initial double broadside for Dazzlers but locked them down until they detected the launch of the enemy's first counter-missiles. When the powerful jammers did come on-line, the Monican CMs had already established lock and been cut loose from the launching ships' control links. But the counter-missiles' onboard seekers weren't up to the challenge of that sudden, massive pulse of jamming right in their faces.

The attack salvo jinked and wove, threading through, past, and around the suddenly dazed and clumsy interceptors which were supposed to have stopped it, then drove past the second wave of CMs, which had already locked onto Abigail's next attack wave. Four of the first wave's birds abruptly wavered, losing lock, veering away as the Monicans' own EW lured them astray. Then a fifth followed them. But thirty held lock, and their closing velocity was so great the defenders had no time to vector yet another wave of counter- missiles onto them.

Then Bogey One's forward laser clusters opened fire.

* * *

This time Janko Horster did swear.

Typhoon's shipboard sensors were less affected by the Manties' infernal jammers than the counter-missiles' seekers had been, but it was painfully obvious they hadn't been un affected. They fired late, and their solutions were poor. An Indefatigable -class battlecruiser's point defense clusters should have been more than equal to a salvo that size, but she stopped only fourteen of them. The other sixteen got through.

Fortunately, three of the leakers must have been EW platforms. But thirteen laser heads detonated in sequence, so rapidly it looked like one, continuous eruption, directly ahead of Typhoon . The bomb-pumped lasers stabbed straight down the throat of her wedge, unobstructed by any sidewall.

Typhoon's forward hammerhead was massively armored against just such an attack, but not even her armor could shrug off that staccato thunder of stabbing X-ray lasers. It stopped a dozen of them, but another half-dozen blasted straight through it. They knocked out two of her chase missile tubes, one of her chase energy mounts, two counter-missile tubes and a laser cluster. And, far worse, one shattered her forward radar array. It blinded her, put out the eye of her forward missile defenses, and a second wave of attacking missiles was only twenty-five seconds behind.

* * *

Lieutenant Julio Tyler staggered as Typhoon shuddered. The engineering officer was in charge of Power One, the battlecruiser's forward fusion plant, and he went pale as damage alarms screamed. Power One was far enough aft and heavily enough armored to make it highly unlikely any cruiser-sized laser head could reach it. But from the sound of the alarms, these laser heads were ripping much deeper than they should have.

Tyler swallowed hard and looked around the brightly lit, spacious compartment. He'd been transferred into Typhoon's company three days after the rest of her crew to replace a man who'd managed to fall down an emergency ladder and break his hip, and he knew the rest of the battlecruiser's engineering department wasn't overly impressed with him. He was used to that jealous reaction to his rapid promotion. Relatively few officers made it to senior lieutenant's rank before their twenty-first birthday, but Tyler had always tried to do his job. To actually deserve the fast-track promotions his last name earned.

Yet this time, he was painfully aware of his shortcomings. In the last two weeks he'd begun finding his way around, well enough, at least, that he was pretty sure his ratings and petty officers were no longer laughing behind his back. And he had to admit the Technodyne technicians were right; Typhoon's power rooms really were laid out better, with controls that were easier to use. They just weren't the controls Tyler had spent three and a half T-years learning like the back of his own hand aboard the cruiser Star Fury .

As he listened to the alarms howl, he hoped the damage control parties had learned their equipment better than he'd learned his.

* * *

'Many hits on Bogey One!' Helen Zilwicki announced, half-hunched over her displays. Her eyes were narrowed as she studied the data coming in from her remote arrays. 'I think we just took out her forward radar, Sir!'

'Excellent!' Terekhov acknowledged, but he knew that had been the most effective single salvo they were going to get in, and now that they knew for certain he'd seen them, the Monicans were no longer trying to hide. Their wedges were up, and they were accelerating directly towards the Squadron at five hundred gravities. That was going to reduce his missile engagement time, he thought grimly, but it was hardly unexpected. And at least if they were going to chase him, it meant exposing the throats of their wedges to his fire.

And Indefatigable -class battlecruisers didn't mount bow walls.

He watched the plot as Abigail's second double broadside roared into the Monicans' outer defense zone. He saw the instant that its Dazzlers came on-line and the counter-missiles which had been speeding to meet them veered aside. But this time there was time for a follow-on wave of CMs to be vectored onto them. Seventeen of them were intercepted and blotted away, and then the laser clusters began to fire. Another twelve were picked off, but six got through, and Bogey One staggered as more stilettos drilled through her armor.

* * *

Typhoon shuddered as a second wave of X-ray daggers bored through her armor. She should have stopped more of them-all of them-with her lavish anti-missile defenses, but she couldn't see them. Her point defense lasers had become dependent upon relayed tracking reports from Cyclone and Hurricane , and that simply wasn't adequate against targets coming in so fast. -Especially not targets as elusive as Manticoran Mark 16 missiles. Fresh -damage reports inundated her bridge, and her acceleration faltered as four of her beta nodes blew.

Power surges cascaded through her systems, starting in Impeller One and Laser Three. Automatic circuit breakers stopped most of them, but three of the breakers themselves had been knocked out. Rampant energy surged past them, and a broadside graser's superconductor ring blew, shattering internal bulkheads and adding its own massive power to the surge.

The surge that came roaring down the graser's main feed trunk and straight into Power One.

The untamed torrent of energy thundered into the compartment, and an already nervous petty officer leapt back as his control panel blew up. He fell to the decksole on the seat of his pants as electrical fires danced through the control runs, and an alarm began to scream.

* * *

Aivars Terekhov sat in his command chair, projecting an aura of granite determination. It was all he could