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"I've lost contact with Missile Niner, Eleven, and Thirteen," the tac officer reported. "Missile Defense Seven and Niner don't respond either. And I've lost the port decoy!"
"Roll hard port!" Tyler barked. "Get our starboard broadside to bear on them!"
"Good hits on Number One!" Blumenthal a
"Good work, Guns!" Oversteegen replied, even as he watched Gauntlet's defensive fire a
"Time t' hyper limit?" he demanded.
"Four minutes, Sir," Atkins responded.
"Communications, record a transmission for Midshipwoman Hearns," Oversteegen commanded.
"Standing by, Sir," Lieutenant Commander Cheney acknowledged.
"Message beg—"
"Incoming! Missiles in acquisition, bearing one-seven-five! Impact in one-five-zero seconds!"
Oversteegen's eyes snapped back to his tactical repeater as the fresh threat came roaring in from astern. It couldn't be from Number Three—not on that bearing! Which meant there was a fourth enemy ship in the system, and they'd missed her completely!
"Stern wall!" he barked. "Get it up now!"
Tyler's eyes clung to the tactical display as the Manty missiles sliced through his badly battered defenses. He no longer had a port decoy, and his EW emitters had taken heavy damage from the hits which had lacerated Fortune Hunter's port flank. His counter missile and point defense crews did the best they could, but it wasn't going to be good enough.
Gauntlet's missiles raced down upon their target and detonated at ranges as short as ten thousand kilometers. The powerful X-ray lasers ripped deep into Fortune Hunter, shattering bulkheads and opening compartments like knives. Energy mounts and their crews were smashed and mangled, missile tube mass-drivers arced madly as their capacitor rings shorted, and atmosphere gushed from the brutal wounds. The cruiser heaved bodily sideways, and then the last hit came slicing in, and Number One Impeller Room exploded with a cataclysmic fury that destroyed her entire forward hammerhead.
The ship tumbled madly as her wedge unbalanced, and then her inertial compensator failed.
Whether any of her crew were still alive when the savage torquing effect on her hull snapped her back scarcely mattered.
Michael Oversteegen was peripherally aware of Number One's spectacular destruction, but he had little attention to spare for it. Not with twenty-plus missiles racing straight for Gauntlet's kilt.
Behind the mask of his features, he cursed himself for not having found whatever ship had just fired. He knew, intellectually, that Blumenthal had done extraordinarily well just to spot Number Three, given the effectiveness of these "pirates' " electronic warfare capabilities. But that was no comfort at all as he watched those missiles come.
Gauntlet's acceleration dropped abruptly to zero as her stern wall snapped up. She was one of the first Edward Saganami-B–class ships which had added that passive defense, and this was the very first time any of them had tested it in actual combat. It had worked well enough for the LACs who'd first employed it during Eighth Fleet's decisive offensive, but a heavy cruiser was scarcely a LAC.
More to the point, it took time for the wall to come up, and time was in very short supply.
Samson Lamar stared in horror at the broken, lifeless wreckage which an instant before had been a heavy cruiser. The sheer, blinding speed with which Fortune Hunter had been transformed into so much splintered rubble stu
He opened his mouth to order his helmsman to turn Predator up on her side relative to the Manty, sheltering behind the impenetrable roof of her wedge. But before he could get the order out, Dongcai Maurersberger's missiles exploded dead astern of the enemy ship.
HMS Gauntlet bucked in agony as the incoming laser heads detonated. Her after point defense had knocked out twelve of them, despite the surprise of their launch from stealth. Five more were sucked off by the cruiser's decoys. But the remaining six ran straight in on their target and detonated eighteen thousand kilometers astern of her.
If not for her stern wall, she would have died then and there. Even with it, the damage was terrible. The wall was still spi
"We've lost the after ring!" Tyson barked from Damage Control Central. "Grasers Thirty-Two, Thirty-Three, and Thirty-Four are gone! We've lost at least half the after laser clusters, and I'm getting no response from Environmental Four or Boat Bay Two!"
Oversteegen's jaw tightened. Raising the stern wall had cut Gauntlet's acceleration to zero when it closed the after aspect of her wedge, but without the after impeller ring, it would be halved even after the wall came down. And with his after missile defenses so badly damaged, he dared not lower it at all until he'd wrenched his stern away from the previously unsuspected attacker.
"Can we get the wedge back?" he asked Tyson sharply.
"I can't say for certain, Sir," the engineer replied. He was hammering at his keyboard even as he spoke, eyes locked to the scrolling diagnostic reports.
"I don't like t' rush my officers," Oversteegen said, "but it would be most helpful if you could expedite that estimate."
"I'm on it, Sir," Tyson promised, and Oversteegen looked up from his com screen.
"Helm, reaction thrusters. Bring us ten degrees to starboard and pitch us up fifteen degrees."
"Ten degrees starboard, pitch up fifteen degrees, aye, Sir!"
"Tactical, we need t' find this gentleman astern of us," Oversteegen continued, swiveling his eyes to Blumenthal's section.
"We're on it, Sir," Blumenthal replied. "We've got a good fix on the missiles' launch locus, and these bastards' EW isn't good enough to hide from us when we know where to look for them!"
"Good. Astro," Oversteegen turned towards Lieutenant Commander Atkins, "recompute our course t' the wall t' reflect my last helm orders. Then generate a random course change as soon as we cross the wall. With our after ring down, these people are goin' t' be able t' stay with us after all."
"Aye, aye, Sir."
"Guns," Oversteegen turned back to Blumenthal, "forget about Number Two for now. She's goin' t' slide past us whatever she does; it's Number Three and this Number Four we have t' worry about right now."
"Aye, aye, Sir. I'm recomputing now."
"And as for you, Commander Cheney," Oversteegen said, returning his attention to the communications officer with a thin smile, "I believe we were about t' record a transmission for Ms. Hearns."
" . . . so things are gettin' just a little tight up here, Ms. Hearns." Abigail stared at Captain Oversteegen's impossibly composed face on the pi