The Honor of the Qween

Across the bridge from her, Ensign Carolyn Wolcott smiled down at her console at the confidence in the Captain's voice.

The command chair felt bigger, somehow, than it had looked when Yu sat in it, and Simonds' tired eyes burned as he watched his plot. Harrington had chosen to let Thunder close, but she was maintaining her position between him and Yeltsin. And when he'd reversed acceleration to slow his rate of approach, she'd matched him, almost as if she were hoping for a missile duel.

That worried Simonds, for Thunder was a battlecruiser. His missiles were bigger and heavier, with a significantly greater penaid and ECM payload. The Faithful had already seen bitter proof that Manticore's technology was better than Haven's, but did she believe her margin of superiority was enough to even the odds? And, far more frightening, could she be correct?

He made himself sit back, feeling the ache of fatigue in his bones, and held his course. They should reach extreme missile range in twelve minutes.

"All right, Andy—take us back up to GQ," Honor said, and the howl of the alarm resummoned her people to their battle stations as she slid her hands into her suit gloves and settled her helmet in the rack on the side of her chair. She supposed she ought to put it on—though Fearless's well-armored bridge was deep at the ship's heart, that didn't make it invulnerable to explosive depressurization—but she'd always thought captains who helmeted up too soon made their crews nervous.

At least she'd managed a three-hour catnap in the briefing room, and the quiet voices about her sounded fresh and alert, as well.

"What do you think he'll do, Ma'am?"

The quiet question came from her blind side, and she turned her head.

"That's hard to say, Mark. What he should have done the minute he saw us was come straight for us. There's no way he's going to sneak past us—the way we intercepted him should have proven that. All he's done so far is waste about six hours by trying to shake us."

"I know, Ma'am. But he's coming in now."

"He is, but not like he really means it. Look how he's decelerating. He's going to come just about to rest relative to us at six and three-quarters million klicks. That's extreme range for low-powered missile drives, which isn't exactly the mark of an aggressive captain." She shook her head. "He's still testing the waters, and I don't understand it."

"Could he be afraid of your technology?"

Honor snorted, and the right side of her mouth made a wry smile.

"I wish! No, if Theisman was good, the man they picked to skipper Saladin ought to be better than this." She saw the puzzlement in Brentworth's eyes and waved a hand. "Oh, our EW and penaids are better than theirs, and so is our point defense, but that's a battlecruiser. Her sidewalls are half again as tough as Fearless's, much less Troubadour's, and her energy weapons are bigger and more powerful. We could hurt him in close, but not as badly as he could hurt us, and even in a missile duel, the sheer toughness of his passive defenses should make him confident. It's—" She paused, seeking a comparison. "What it comes down to is that in a missile duel our sword's sharper, but his armor's a lot thicker, and once he gets in close, it's our sword against his battleaxe. He ought to be charging to get inside our missile envelope, not sitting out there where we've got the best chance of giving as good as we get."

Brentworth nodded, and she shrugged.

"I don't suppose I should complain, but I wish I knew what his problem is."

"Missile range!" Ash said, and Simonds straightened in his chair.

"Engage as ordered," he replied flatly.

"Missile launch! Birds closing at four-one-seven KPS squared. Impact in one-seven-zero seconds—mark!"

"Fire Plan Able." Honor said calmly. "Helm, initiate Foxtrot-Two."

"Aye, aye, Ma'am. Fire Plan Able," Cardones replied, and Chief Killian's acknowledgment was right behind him.

Troubadour rolled, inverting herself relative to Fearless to bring her undamaged port broadside to bear, and both ships began a snake-like weave along their base course as their own missiles slashed away and the decoys and jammers deployed on Fearless's flanks woke to electronic life.

"The enemy has returned fire." Lieutenant Ash's voice was taut. "Flight time one-seven-niner seconds. Tracking reports sixteen incoming, Sir."

Simonds nodded acknowledgment. Thunder had an advantage of two tubes, as well as his heavier missiles. He hoped it would be enough.

"Enemy jamming primary tracking systems," Ash a

Rafael Cardones fired his second broadside thirty seconds after the first, and Troubadour's launchers followed suit, slaved to his better fire control. A third broadside followed, then a fourth, and he nodded to Wolcott as Saladin launched her fourth salvo.

"Counter missiles now," he told his assistant.

Sword Simonds watched his plot and swallowed bile as half his first salvo lost lock and wandered away. The others charged onward, already up to more than fifty thousand KPS and still accelerating, but the Manticorans belched counter missiles to meet them at more than nine hundred KPS?.

Honor frowned as Ensign Wolcott picked off Saladin's first missiles. The battlecruiser was splitting her fire between Troubadour and Fearless, and that was the stupidest thing her captain had done yet. He ought to be concentrating his fire, not dispersing it! His opponents were lighter and far more fragile; by targeting both of them, he was robbing himself of his best chance to overwhelm them in detail.

Simonds cursed under his breath as the last missile of his first launch vanished far short of target. Lieutenant Ash was updating the second salvo's jammers, but the bitch had already killed six of them, as well ... and Thunder had stopped only nine of her first broadside.

His hands tightened like claws on the command chair's arms as the surviving Manticoran missiles streaked in. Two more perished, then a third, but three got through, and Thunder of God shuddered as X-ray lasers clawed at his sidewall. Damage alarms wailed, and a red light flashed on the damage control schematic.

"One hit, port side aft," Workman a

"I think we got one— Yes! She's streaming air, Ma'am!"

"Good, Guns. Now do it again."

"Aye, aye, Ma'am!" Rafael Cardones' grin was fierce, and his sixth broadside belched from Fearless's launchers. Ensign Wolcott's face was almost blank at his side, and her fingers flew across her console as her sensors noted changes in the incoming missiles' ECM and she adjusted to compensate.

Thunder of God's second salvo fared almost as badly as the first, and Simonds wrenched around to glare at his tactical section, then bit back his scathing rebuke. Ash and his assistants were crouched over their panels, but their systems were feeding them too much data to absorb, and their reactions were almost spastic, flurries of action as the computers pulled it together and suggested alternatives interspersed by bouts of white-faced impotence as they tried to anticipate those suggestions.