We Few

At such short range, countermissiles were far less effective than usual. They simply didn't have the tracking time as the offensive fire slashed across their engagement envelope, and they stopped perhaps thirty percent of the incoming birds. Point defense clusters fired desperately, and there were thousands of them. But they, too, were fatally short of engagement time. They stopped another forty percent... which meant that "only" twenty-four thousand got through.

Maximum effective standoff range for even a capital shipkiller laser head against a starship was little more than seven thousand kilometers. At that range, however, they could blast through even ChromSten armor, and they did. Carriers were tough, the toughest mobile structures ever designed and built by human beings, but there were limits in all things. Armor yielded only stubbornly, even under that incredible pounding, but it did yield. Atmosphere streamed from ruptured compartments. Weapon mounts were blotted away. Power runs arced and exploded as energy blew back through them. Their own fire ripped back at their enemies, but Niedermayer's sheer wealth of point defense blunted the far lighter salvoes Mahmut's outnumbered ships could throw, and his carriers' armor shook off the relative handful of hits which got through to it.

By the time CarRon 15 and what was left of CarRon 14 reached energy range, three of its seven carriers and forty-one of its seventy-two cruisers had been destroyed outright.

By the time the traitorous carrier squadrons crossed the track of Niedermayer's task force, exactly eleven badly damaged cruisers and one totally crippled carrier survived.

"Admiral," Lieutenant Commander Clinton said with a gulp. "We just got swept by lidar! Point source, Delta quadrant four-one-five."

"What does that mean?" Adoula demanded sharply. He was sitting in a hastily rigged command chair next to the admiral's.

"It means someone's out there," Gajelis snapped. He'd left his handful of cruisers and fighters behind to assist Mahmut. His flagship was going to be fighting whoever it was with only onboard weapons.

"Captain Devarnachan is sweeping," Tactical said. "Emissions! Raid designated Sierra Five. One hundred twenty-five fighters, closing from Delta Four-One-Five."

"Damn Helmut!" Gajelis snarled. "Damn him!"

"Leviathans! Six hundred twenty-five vampires!"

"Three minutes to Tsukayama Limit," Astrogation a

"They'll only get one shot," Gajelis said, breathing hard. "Hang on, Your Highness..."

"Damn and blast," McBain snarled as the distinctive signature of a TD drive formed. At such short range and with such short flight times, Trujillo's countermissiles had been effectively useless, and over fifty of the Leviathans had managed to get through the carrier's desperately firing point defense lasers. They'd ripped hell out of her, and he'd hoped that would be enough to cripple her, but carriers were pretty damned tough.

"We got a piece of her, Cobalt," his XO replied. "A big one. And Admiral Niedermayer kicked hell out of the rest of them. Doesn't look like any of them got away."

"I know, Allison," McBain said angrily, though his anger certainly wasn't directed at her. "But a piece wasn't enough." He sighed, then shook himself. "Oh, well, we did our best. And you're right, we did get a piece of her. Let's turn 'em around and head back to the barn. Beer's on me."

"Damn straight it is!" Commander Stanley agreed with a laugh. Then, as their fighters swept around through a graceful turn and began decelerating back towards their carriers, her tone turned more thoughtful. "Wonder how things went at the Palace?"

"Your Highness, your mother's been through... a terrible ordeal," the psychiatrist said. He was a specialist in pharmacological damage. "Normally, we'd stabilize her with targeted medications. But given the... vile concoctions they used on her, not to mention the damage to her implant—"

"Which is very severe," the implant specialist interrupted. "It's shutting down and resetting itself frequently, almost randomly, because of general system failures. And it's dumping data at random, as well. It has to be hell inside her head, Your Highness."

"And nothing can be done about it?" Roger asked.

"These damned paranoid ones you people have, they're designed to be unremovable, Your Highness," the specialist said, with a shrug which expressed his helpless frustration. "I know why, but seeing what happens when something like this goes wrong—"

"It didn't 'go wrong,'" Roger said flatly. "It was made to fail. And when I get my hands on the people who did that, I intend to... discuss it with them in some detail. But for right now, answer my question. Is there anything at all we can do to get this... this thing out of my mother's head?"

"No," the specialist said heavily. "The only thing we could do would be to attempt surgical removal, Your Highness, and I'd give her a less than even chance of surviving the procedure. Which doesn't even consider the probability of additional, serious neurological damage."

"And the implant, of course, responds to brain action, Your Highness," the psychiatrist noted. "And since the brain action is highly confused at the moment—"

"Doc?" Roger said impatiently, looking at Dobrescu.

"Roger, I don't even have a degree," Dobrescu protested. "I'm a shuttle pilot."

"Doc, damn it, do not give me that old song and dance," Roger snapped.

"All right." Dobrescu threw his hands into the air almost angrily. "You want my interpretation of what they're telling you? She's totally pocked in the head, all right? Wackers. Maybe the big brains—the people who do have the degrees—can do something for her eventually. But right now, she's in one minute, out the next. I don't even know when you can see her, Roger. She's still asking for New Madrid, whether she's... in or out. In reality, or out in la-la land. When she's in, she wants his head. She knows she's the Empress, she knows she's in bad shape, she knows who did it to her, and she wants him dead. I've tried to point out that you're back, but she's still mixing it up with New Madrid. With all the drugs and physical duress, on top of the way they butchered her toot, they've got her half convinced even when she's got some contact with reality that you were in on the plot. And when she's in la-la land..."

"I was there to see enough of that." Roger's face tightened, and he looked at Catrone. "Tomcat?"

"Christ, Your Highness," Catrone said. "Don't put this on me!"

"That was the deal," Roger told him. "As you asked me, not so long ago, are you going back on your word?"

Catrone stared at him for several seconds, then shrugged.

"When she's in, she's in," he said. "All the way in. She's still got a few problems," he conceded, raising a hand at Dobrescu, "but she knows she's Empress. And she's not willing to step aside." He looked at Roger, his face hard. "I'm sorry, Roger. It's not because I don't trust you, but she's my Empress. I'm not going against her, not when she still knows who she is. Not when it's too early to know whether or not she can get better."

"Very well," Roger said, his voice cold. "But if she's in charge, she needs to get back into the saddle. Things are in very bad shape, and we need her up," he continued, looking at the doctors. "There are people she has to meet."

"That would be... unwise," the psychiatrist said. "The strain could—"

"Either she can take it, or she can't," Roger said flatly. "Ask her. I'm out of this decision loop, starting right now."

"Like hell," Catrone said angrily. "Are you going to go off into one of your Roger sulks? You can't just throw the weight of the entire Empire onto her shoulders, damn it! She's sick. She just needs some recovery time, goddamn it!"