Honor Among Enemies

Margaret Fuchien slammed her fists together, eyes burning with shame as she glared down at A

"I've reached Main Hyper, Skipper," he said grimly. "It's a mess down here. Half the power runs are out, we've lost pressure, and we've got fourteen dead."

Fuchien closed her eyes in anguish. The Peep's initial broadside had taken all of them by surprise. She couldn't imagine what an enemy battlecruiser had been doing lying absolutely doggo here in the middle of the Rift, but it had paid off for the bastards. With their impellers and active sensors down, there'd been no emissions signature to warn Hawkwing, or Artemis, until they launched, and they'd obviously misread Artemis for a battlecruiser. That was all that had prevented Hawkwing's instant destruction, and Ward had done almost impossibly well to stop seventy-five percent of the incoming fire. Fuchien knew that, but the five bomb-pumped lasers which had gotten through had done grievous damage. By God's mercy none of her passengers had been killed, but thirty of her crew were confirmed dead, she'd lost three beta nodes and two of her outsized lifeboats, and one of the hits had burned straight into Main Hyper.

"The generator?" Fuchien asked harshly, refusing to let herself think about her dead.

"Not good, Skip." Commander Cheney's voice was flat. "We lost both upper-stage governors; their molycircs fried when the power runs went. The basic system's intact, but if we try to go higher than the delta bands, the harmonics'll rip us apart."

"Damn," Fuchien whispered. She opened her eyes and stabbed another look at Ward's plot. The Peep was charging the destroyer now, bearing down on her at maximum acceleration, and Hawkwing was too lamed to hold the range open. She might last another fifteen minutes; every second beyond that would require a special miracle. When she was gone, the Peeps would be coming after Artemis, and if Fuchien couldn't climb higher than the delta bands, there was no way in hell she could outrun them. She could match them kilometer for kilometer in actual velocity, but she'd been caught in the delta bands because the accompanying freighters could go no higher. From Cheney's report, she couldn't either, now, and that was going to be fatal. Unlike her, the Peeps could still pop up into the epsilon or zeta bands, overfly her easily, then drop back down into the deltas right on top of her.

The captain made herself look away from the plot as more missiles tore down on the destroyer in her wake. She couldn't let herself think about Usher and his people. It was her job to save her passengers and her snip, to make Hawkwing's sacrifice mean something, but how...? "Helm, take us to maximum military power," she said, and felt her officers' shock, despite their desperate circumstances, for Artemis had never maxed her drive since her trials. At maximum military power, the fail-safes were off-line, leaving zero tolerance for compensator fluctuation, and if the compensator failed, every human being aboard Artemis, including Fuchien’s passengers, would die. But...

"Aye, aye, Skipper. Coming to maximum military power."

Fuchien held her breath as her helmsman redlined his impellers, but Artemis took the load like a champion. Fuchien could feel her beautiful ship strain, stretching every sinew to meet her harsh demands, and wanted to weep, for she already knew it would be too little. Yet it was the only chance she had. She couldn't climb to evade the Peeps, but if she could open the range enough, put enough distance between her and the enemy's sensors while Hawkwing delayed them, she might be able to dive far enough. If she dropped a couple of bands, or even clear back into n-space, then cut her drive and all active emissions, she might avoid the bastards yet.

Might.

"There go Hawkwing's forward impellers!" someone groaned, and Fuchien clenched her jaw as she tried to think of something, anything!, more she might do.

"Skipper, I'm showing another bogey!" Ward a

"Another Peep?" she asked harshly.

"I don't think..." Ward broke off, then shook her head. "It's not a warship at all, Skipper. It's a merchantman."

"A merchantman? Where?" Ward highlighted the bogey on her plot, and Fuchien's eyes widened. It was a merchantman, closing from starboard, and it was headed straight for Artemis. Closing velocity was already over thirty thousand KPS, and the bogey was accelerating at a full two hundred gravities. But that was crazy! Even civilian sensors had to be able to pick up the detonation of laser heads at this range, and any sane merchant skipper should be ru

"Com, warn her off!" Fuchien ordered. There was no point at all in adding another ship to the Peeps' bag. The unknown freighter was still light-minutes away, and Fuchien turned to her own ship's survival rather than wait out the com delay. She punched for Cheney again "Sid, what's your best estimate for repairs?"

"Repairs?" Cheney laughed bitterly. "Forget it. We don't begin to have the spares for this kind of damage. It'd take a fully equipped repair ship a week just to run them up."

"All right. You say it's just the upper-stage governors?"

"I think that's all," Cheney corrected. "That and the power runs. But we're still tearing things apart down here, and working in ski

"I need to know soonest, Sid. If we can't go up, we'll have to go down, and I need to know if the generator'll stand a crash translation."

"A crash translation?" Cheney sounded doubtful. "Skip, I can't guarantee she'll hold together through that even if I don't see anything else wrong. We took an awful spike through the control systems, and if they're not a hundred percent when you try that, we're all dead."

"We may all be dead if I don't try it," Fuchien said grimly. "Just get me the best info you can as quick as you can."

"Yes, Ma'am."

"Oh, Jesus." A

"Would we see life pod transponders at this range, A

"No, Ma'am," the tac officer replied, equally quietly. "But I doubt there are any. She went off the display too fast, and I read an awful sharp energy bloom. I think it was her fusion bottle, Skipper."

"God have mercy on them," Margaret Fuchien whispered. And now it's our turn, a small, still voice said in her brain. "All right, A