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"Two hits on Number One!" one of Blumenthal's ratings a
Still, it was better than the other side had done.
Fortune Hunter bucked, and alarms shrilled, as two X-ray lasers slammed into her bow. They came in from almost dead ahead, with no sidewall to interdict, and armor shattered under their ferocious power. Point Defense Four blew apart, and the same hit drove deep, severely damaging Gravitic One and breaching Magazine Two. The second hit came in at a broader angle, with no carry back into the hull, but it also came in directly on top of Missile Four. Seventeen men and women died under those two hits, and six more were wounded, and Tyler felt a deep, panicky stab of near-superstitious dread.
But then the Manty's change of course registered, and his eyes narrowed. He still didn't have any idea how the other cruiser had managed to target him with what had to be both broadsides simultaneously, but it was obvious that the enemy ship was ru
"The bastards are ru
"Maybe so, but they're also hammering us a lot harder than we're hammering them!" his executive officer shot back.
"Hell, yes, they are," Tyler agreed with a snort. "And if we'd fired fifteen times as many missiles at them, we'd probably have hit them more often, too! Look at how close two of our birds did get before they stopped them!"
"Well, yeah . . ."
The exec had been with Tyler for almost four T-years, and he had a tendency to try to second-guess his CO. And he was also a fellow Silesian, with the same near phobic respect for the Royal Manticoran Navy. But his panic seemed to ease slightly as he considered the pirate captain's point.
"Damned right, 'well'!" Tyler shot back now, and looked past the other man at his helmsman. "Bring us hard to starboard! Put us as close to parallel with them as you can!"
"They're changing heading to open their broadsides, Sir," Blumenthal reported as Gauntlet's third double broadside blasted from her tubes.
"Not surprisin'," Oversteegen replied in a calm, cool voice. "Only thing they can do, really. But they're not goin' t' be able t' put themselves on a headin' t' follow us across the wall. Stay with Number One, Guns."
Jerome Tyler had already reached the same conclusion as Michael Oversteegen. Whatever he did, Fortune Hunter and Samson Lamar's Predator were going to slide in-system past Gauntlet. But they'd have time for at least eight or nine more broadsides first, and his lips ski
"Pour it on, Tactical!" he snapped. "Communications, raise Morder! Get her current position—now!"
Joel Blumenthal focused on his plot more intensely than he'd ever done anything before in his life. His eyes flicked across the display, noting shifting vectors, the enemy's fire patterns, and CIC's analysis of the other side's EW and decoys, and he grunted in partial satisfaction.
Number One and Number Two were firing full broadsides, now, and their turn had taken the vulnerable open front aspects of their wedges away from Gauntlet. Worse, the penetration aids and ECM of their attacking missiles were even harder to compensate for as the threat numbers multiplied. But his Ghost Rider recon platforms were real-timing close-range observations of the other ships' EW to him, which gave CIC's computers a much better look at them than the other side had at his own electronic defenses. And good as the pirates' EW might be, it wasn't as good as Blumenthal had originally believed. Or possibly it was; it could be lack of skill on its operators' part.
Whatever the cause, the enemy's EW was slow. However effective their decoys might be, they were much slower to adapt their emissions than Manticoran decoys would have been. Perhaps even more importantly, their mother ships' onboard EW was slow to adapt to the active sensors aboard Blumenthal's remote recon platforms.
Those platforms' FTL grav-pulse transmitters fed his targeting computers with real-time data, and their radar and lidar was getting far better hits off of their targets than they should have done against jammers that capable. He wondered if the pirates even realized how close the platforms were. Or how quickly their targeting info could make its way back to Gauntlet. There was no way to tell, and it didn't really matter, he thought, as he updated his current missile salvo's attack profiles.
"Yes!"
Tyler pounded jubilantly on the arm of his command chair, and a hungry sound of triumph rippled around Fortune Hunter's bridge as two of their laser heads broke through the Manty's defenses. The enemy cruiser's sidewall intercepted them, bending and blunting them, and it was unlikely they'd inflicted heavy damage, but it was a start, and more broadsides were already in space.
"I've got Morder," Tyler's com officer a
Tyler waved one hand in acknowledgment. Then he looked down at his repeater plot as Maurersberger's cruiser appeared upon it, and his eyes flamed. Morder was closing in on the Manty from almost directly astern, and Maurersberger was nearly in range already. The Manty's superior acceleration wasn't enough to overcome the velocity advantage Morder had built up before the enemy ship altered course.
"Two hits forward of Frame Sixty," Commander Tyson reported from Damage Control Central. "We've lost Graser Fourteen, Laser Cluster Eight and Ten, and Lidar Two. No casualties from those hits. But we took another one aft of Frame One-Zero-Niner. It took out Missile Twenty and Graser Twenty-Four, and we took heavy casualties on the energy mount."
"Understood," Captain Oversteegen replied, but his eyes were fixed on his tactical plot as he watched Blumenthal's most recent broadsides roaring down upon Number One. Good as the enemy's missile ECM was, Gauntlet's was better, and Oversteegen's eyes glittered in anticipation as the target's counter missiles went wide and its point defense lasers fired late.
"Shit! Heavy damage to Laser Seven and Miss—"
The voice from Damage Control chopped off in mid-word, and Jerome Tyler's hungry smile vanished as Fortune Hunter heaved madly. He clung to his command chair's arms on the bucking bridge, and his face was ashen as alarms screamed and the bridge lighting flickered. At least four missiles from the Manty's last salvo had gotten through this time, and he didn't need more reports from Damage Control to know Fortune Hunter had been badly hurt.
"Captain, our accel is dropping!" the helmsman reported, and Tyler grimaced as he stabbed a quick look at his own displays. Of course their acceleration was dropping—the goddamned Manty had just blown four nodes out of their after impeller ring!