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"Range?"
"Coming down on three million kilometers."
Jansen nodded. His missiles were slower than Thunder of God's. Their drives would burn out in less than a minute, and their maximum acceleration was barely thirty thousand gravities, but his fleet's closing speed was over 27,000 KPS. His missiles would take seventy-eight seconds to reach their targets from that initial velocity; Orbit Four's missiles would take a minute and a half to reach him. Only a twelve-second difference—but unlike asteroids, his ships could dodge.
"Commence firing," he said harshly.
Captain Hill's face tightened as his gravitics picked up missile separations. At this range, even given their closing speed, drive burnout would send his missiles ballistic and deprive them of their homing ability over 800,000 kilometers short of target. That was why he'd held his own fire, hoping against hope that they'd keep coming until he opened up. Not that he'd expected them to, but it had been worth praying for. There was little point throwing away birds that couldn't maneuver when they reached the enemy—missiles that had gone ballistic were easy for impeller drive ships to evade or pick off—but they'd already come closer than he'd had any reasonable right to expect, and even a ballistic bird was better than none when he and his men had at most three salvos before the Masadan missiles arrived.
"Open fire!" he barked, and then, in a softer voice, "Stand by point defense."
The range was too great even for Madrigal's systems to plot single missile drives, but the display flashed as the destroyer's sensors noted a sudden background cascade of impeller sources. Courvosier stood silently beside Yanakov, watching the Grayson admiral's gray, clenched face, and knew there was nothing at all he could say.
Sword Simonds shivered as he watched the missiles on Thunder of God's displays. They slashed out from attacker and defender alike, tiny drops of ruby blood that were somehow beautiful and obscenely tranquil. There should have been fury and thunder. Should have been the sights and sounds and smells of battle. But there was only the hum of ventilation systems and the calm, quiet murmur of sensor technicians.
The tiny dots moved with agonizing slowness across the holo sphere's vast scale, and time held its breath. Another salvo followed thirty-five seconds later, and another, answered by the Graysons' replies. Then the first salvo's dots vanished as their drives burned out, and Admiral Jansen altered course, twisting away from the defensive fire which had gone inert and clumsy. Simonds pictured Jansen's missiles driving on through God's own emptiness, invisible on passive sensors at such a range, and there was an inevitability, almost a dreaminess, about it now.
Orbit Four's defenses had never been intended to stand off eighty percent of the Masadan Navy all by themselves. The fixed fortifications were sitting ducks for missile solutions; anything fired at them was almost bound to hit, unless it was stopped by point defense, and there simply wasn't enough point defense to stop the scores of missiles coming at them.
Radar locked onto the incoming warheads, and counter missiles raced to meet them. The chances of interception were far lower than they would have been for more modern defensive systems, but Captain Hill's men did well. They stopped almost a third of them, and lasers and last-ditch autoca
Admiral Jansen stared at his visual display, ignoring the salvos of Grayson missiles flashing towards him. The first one didn't matter, anyway; it would be ballistic and harmless long before it reached him. The second would still have a few moments on its drives, but only enough for straight-in attacks with no last minute penetration maneuvers. Only the third posed a real threat, and his smile was a shark's as huge fireballs glared, eye-hurting and savage even at ten light-seconds and despite the display's filters.
Sword Simonds leaned closer to the holo sphere as the flashing time display counted down to impact for the first Grayson salvo. None of Jansen's impeller signatures vanished, and the task force altered course again to evade the second salvo. His eyes darted back to the secondary plot monitoring Orbit Four's launch times, and his mouth curved up in a smile of triumph.
Something like a soft, silent moan—sensed, not heard—swept through the background printer clatter of Central Command as the data codes blinked. More missile projections traced their way across the glass ... and every one of them was headed away from the attackers.
Courvosier's shoulders slumped. They'd deserved better than that, he thought. They'd deserved—
"They got one of the bastards!" someone screamed, and his eyes jerked back to the board.
The missile was an orphan from Captain Hill's third and final salvo. In fact, it should have been from his second salvo, but its launch crew had suffered a momentary loss of power. By the time the frantic techs got their weapon back on line, their bird launched almost five seconds after the third salvo, and all of them were dead by the time it entered attack range. The orphan neither knew nor cared about that. It drove forward, still under power while its sensors listened to the beacon of its chosen target. The Masadan defensive systems almost missed the single missile entirely, then assigned it a far lower threat value as it tagged along behind the others.
Admiral Jansen's ships writhed and twisted far more frantically, for unlike the first salvo, this one still had drive power. But Tracking had its birds pegged to a fare-thee-well, and counter-missiles charged to meet the most dangerous ones.
Defensive fire smashed some of the orphan's fellows. Others immolated themselves uselessly against impeller wedges they couldn't possibly penetrate. A handful struck squarely at the far weaker sidewalls protecting the open sides of those wedges, and one of them actually penetrated. Its target lurched, damage alarms screaming, but the Masadan destroyer's damage was slight, and only the orphan was left. Only the orphan with the low threat value.
The two counter-missiles targeted on it flashed past, clear misses without the better seeking heads of more modern navies, and its target's sensors, half-blinded by the artificial grav wave of its own belly stress band, lost lock. There was no last-minute laser fire, and the missile bobbed up, programmed for a frontal attack, and threw every erg of drive power it still had into crushing deceleration. There wasn't time to kill much velocity, even at 30,000 gees—but it was enough.
The unprotected, wide open throat of the light cruiser Abraham's impeller wedge engulfed the warhead like a vast scoop. Primary and backup proximity fuses flashed as one, and a fifty-megaton explosion erupted one hundred meters from the Masadan flagship.
Sword Simonds' face went bone-white as the impeller signature vanished. Air hissed in his nostrils, and he peered at the holo sphere for one, frozen moment, unwilling to accept it, then turned to stare at Captain Yu.
The Havenite returned his gaze gravely, but there was no shock, no horror, in his eyes. There wasn't even any surprise.
"A pity," Yu said quietly. "They should have launched from farther out."
Simonds clenched his teeth against a mad impulse to scream at his "adviser." Twenty percent of the Masadan wall of battle had just been obliterated, and all he could say was they should have launched from farther out?! His eyes blazed, but Yu flipped his own eyes to the members of the Sword's staff. Most of them were still staring at the sphere, shocked by the totally unanticipated loss, and the Havenite officer pitched his voice high enough for them to hear as he continued.