The Shadow of Saganami

Ansten FitzGerald, Naomi Kaplan, and eleven other men and women were caught in the path of the explosion. FitzGerald and Kaplan both survived; most of the others were less fortunate.

Isidor Hegedusic felt a moment of incredible triumph as the missile pods fired.

That tsunami of destruction surpassed anything he'd ever dreamed of commanding, and only ten cruisers and destroyers stood in its path. Whatever happened to Eroica Station, those ships were doomed.

Yet even as he thought that, before the first counter-missile had intercepted the first missile, the Manticoran pods fired. He'd sent nine hundred and sixty missiles to crush the Manties; Abigail Hearns sent seventeen hundred back into his teeth, and his defenses were nowhere near as good.

Damage reports flooded into the bridge, and Helen cringed.

Javelin, Rondeau , and Gallant were gone . Audacious was -savagely damaged and lamed, with less than a quarter of her weapons left. Vigilant was little more than a hulk, and Warlock was severely damaged. Hexapuma 's more modern point defense-and an inordinate share of pure luck-had let her escape with far less damage than her older sisters, but all things were relative. Her maximum acceleration, even without pods, was no better than four hundred gravities. She was down to thirty-five tubes, and a quarter of her broadside grasers-sixty percent of her starboard energy broadside-and one of her after chasers were gone. Thirty-seven of her people were confirmed dead, with at least another seventeen wounded... including Surgeon Commander Orban. His sick berth attendants were doing their best, but none of them were fully trained physicians.

It was her fault. She knew that was insane, yet a small, cruel voice deep down inside whispered that she'd been in charge of the missile defenses. She was the one who was supposed to stop this from happening.

She stared at the com screen still co

Aivars Terekhov surveyed the damage, and his jaw clenched painfully.

He'd walked straight into it, and a third of the Squadron's ships had been destroyed because he had. It was all very well to remind himself no battle plan ever survived contact with the enemy. He even knew it was true. But it didn't make him feel one bit better about the dead and maimed who'd counted on him to get it right.

He drew a deep breath and turned his attention to Eroica Station and felt a stab of vengeful satisfaction. Those damned missile pods had savaged his squadron, killed his people, but their own fire had shattered the military components of the Station. The close-in drones made it obvious that at least eight of the nine battlecruisers in the military yard had been wrecked beyond any hope of repair even by a Solarian shipyard, far less Monica's facilities. The other one might be repairable, but it would take a fully equipped shipyard months, possibly T-years, to do the job. The two on the civilian side of the installation were still intact, but there wasn't much he could do about that, even using laser heads instead of conventional nukes, without killing hundreds of civilians. He didn't want to do that, and he wouldn't... if he had any choice at all. And at least Eroica Station itself had been thoroughly neutralized as a threat.

Which, unfortunately, wasn't true of the oncoming battlecruisers.

Janko Horster's face was white with mingled shock and fury. His sensors couldn't give him as clear a picture of what had happened to Eroica Station as Terekhov's could, but he didn't need details to know the Monican Navy had just been mangled. Most-probably all-of the other battlecruisers were gone, and the same was almost certainly true of the older units which had been laid up at Eroica to provide perso

And that didn't include the casualties. The men he'd known and served and trained with for decades. The friends.

Yet the Manties had been hurt, too. Badly. And they must have fired every pod they had to inflict such damage on Eroica Station.

Their long-range missile advantage was gone, and the bastards who'd raped his Navy couldn't get away from him now.

"Get me Vigilant ," Terekhov grated.

"Aye, aye, Sir," Nagchaudhuri acknowledged, and fifteen seconds later, he found himself facing a lieutenant he'd never seen before.

"Commander Diamond?" he asked.

"Dead, Sir," the lieutenant said hoarsely. "We took a direct hit on the bridge. No survivors, I'm afraid." He coughed on the thin haze of smoke swirling about him, and Terekhov realized he was co

"Who's in command, Lieutenant?" he asked as gently as he could.

"I guess I am, Sir. Gainsworthy, third engineer. I think I'm the senior officer left."

Dear God, Terekhov thought. Their casualties must be almost as bad as Defiant's were.

"What's your maximum acceleration, Lieutenant Gainsworthy?"

"I don't know for sure, Sir. It can't be much over a hundred gravs. We've lost the entire after ring, and the forward ring's badly damaged."

"That's what I was afraid of." Terekhov drew a deep breath and squared his shoulders. "You're going to have to abandon, Lieutenant."

"No!" Gainsworthy protested instantly. "We can save her! We can get her home!"

"No, you can't, Lieutenant," Terekhov said, gently but implacably. "Even if she could be repaired, which is doubtful, she can't stay with the rest of the Squadron. Those bogeys will run right over her. So get your people off and set the scuttling charges, Lieutenant Gainsworthy. That's an order."

"But, Sir, we-!" A tear carved a white streak down one dirty cheek, and Terekhov shook his head.

"I'm sorry, son," he said, cutting the lieutenant off quietly. "I know it hurts to lose her-I've done it. But however much you love her, she's only a ship, Lieutenant." A lie , his brain shouted. You know that's a lie! "She's only alloy and electronics. It's her people that matter. Now get them off."

The final sentence came slowly, measured, and Gainsworthy nodded.

"Yes, Sir."

"Good, Lieutenant. God bless."

Terekhov cut the circuit and turned back to the ships he might still be able to save.