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He needed Yu and Ma
Thunder of God heaved as two more lasers ripped through his sidewall and gouged into his hull.
"Lord God, but he's fighting dumb," Venizelos murmured, and Honor nodded. Saladin's responses were slow and heavy-handed, almost mechanical, and she felt a tingle of hope. If this kept up, they might actually be—
Ensign Wolcott missed an incoming missile. The heavy warhead detonated fifteen thousand kilometers off Fearless's starboard bow, and half a dozen savage rods of energy slammed at her sidewall. Two broke through, and the cruiser leapt in agony as plating shattered.
"Two hits forward! Laser Three and Five destroyed. Radar Five is gone, Ma'am. Heavy casualties in Laser Three!"
The right side of Honor Harrington's mouth tightened, and her good eye narrowed.
"A hit, Sir! At least one, and—"
A thundering concussion ripped across Lieutenant Ash's voice. The command deck lurched, the lighting flickered, and damage alarms howled.
"Missile Two-One and Graser One gone! Heavy damage in the boat bay and Berthing Compartment Seven-five!"
Simonds blanched. That was six hits—six! —and they'd scored only one in return! Powerful as Thunder was, he couldn't take that kind of exchange rate for long, and—
The battlecruiser bucked yet again, more crimson lights glared, and the Sword made up his mind.
"Starboard ninety degrees—maximum acceleration!"
"She's breaking off, Ma'am!" Cardones crowed, and Honor watched in disbelief as Saladin turned through a full ninety degrees. She was just far enough abaft Fearless's beam to deny them an "up the kilt" shot through the wide-open after end of her wedge, but Honor couldn't believe how close the battlecruiser's captain had come to giving her that deadly opening. And now he was going to maximum power! Preposterous as it was, Rafe was right—she was breaking off the action!
"Shall we pursue, Ma'am?" Cardones' tone left no doubt as to his own preference, and Honor couldn't blame him. His missile armament was untouched, and he'd outscored his opponent at least six-to-one. But Honor refused to let her own enthusiasm suck her out of her guard position.
"No, Guns. Let her go."
Cardones looked rebellious for a moment, then nodded. He sat back, calling up his magazine lists and shifting ammunition to equalize his loads, and Ensign Wolcott looked over her shoulder at her captain.
"I'm sorry I missed that one, Ma'am." She sounded miserable. "It took a jog on me at the last minute, and—"
"Carol, you did fine, just fine," Honor told her, and Cardones looked up to nod firmly. The ensign looked back and forth between them for a moment, then smiled briefly and turned back to her own panel, and Honor beckoned to Venizelos. The exec unlocked his shock frame and crossed to her chair.
"Yes, Ma'am?"
"You were right about the way he was fighting. That was pitiful."
"Yes, Ma'am." Venizelos scratched his chin. "It was almost like a simulation. Like we were up against just his computers."
"I think we were," Honor said softly, and the exec blinked at her. She unlocked her own shock frame, and he followed her over to the tactical station. She keyed a command into Cardones' panel, and they watched the master tactical display replay the brief battle. The entire engagement had lasted less than ten minutes, and Honor shook her head when it ended.
"I don't think that's a Havenite crew over there at all."
"What?!" Venizelos blushed at the volume of his response and looked quickly around the bridge, then back at her. "You don't really think the Peeps turned a ship like that over to lunatics like the Masadans, do you, Skipper?"
"It sounds crazy," Honor admitted, pulling gently at the tip of her nose as she brooded down on the display, "especially when they kept their own man in command of Breslau, but no Peep skipper would've fought his ship that way. He gave us every advantage there was, Andy. Add that to the ham-handed way he came in in the first place, and—"
She shrugged, and Venizelos nodded slowly.
"Haven has to know it's put its hand into a sausage slicer, Ma'am," he said after a moment. "Maybe they just pulled out and left Masada to its own devices?"
"I don't know." Honor turned to walk back to her own chair. "If they did, why didn't they take Saladin with them? Unless—" Her eye narrowed. "Unless they couldn't, for some reason," she murmured, then shook her head.
"Either way, it doesn't change our mission," she said more crisply.
"No, but it may make our job a whole lot easier, Skipper."
"It may, but I wouldn't count on it. If that's a purely Masadan crew over there, God only knows what they'll do. For one thing, they're probably a lot more likely to nuke Grayson if they get the chance. And inexperienced or not, they've got a modern battlecruiser to do it with. That's a lot of ship, Andy, and they made so many mistakes this time they have to have learned at least something from them."
She leaned back in her chair, and her good eye met his gaze.
"If they come back at all, they'll come in smarter," she said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Thunder Of God arced her way through a huge outside loop in an effort to cut in behind her opponents, and damage control teams labored furiously. It took time to complete their surveys, but Matthew Simonds listened in weary wonder as their reports flowed into the bridge.
It didn't seem possible. Those hits would have destroyed any Masadan ship, yet for all the gaping wounds in Thunder's flanks, his broadside had lost only one missile tube and a single graser.
Simonds chewed his hate as his enemy executed her own loop inside his, matching him move for move, yet under his hate was a dawning comprehension of why Yu had been so confident he could destroy Fearless, for Thunder was tougher than the Sword had dreamed. A sense of his own power, his own ponderous ability to destroy, suffused his tired brain ... and with it came a sour appreciation for how clumsily he'd misused that power.
He checked the plot again. Two hours had passed since he'd broken off action, and the range was back up to sixteen and a half light-minutes. Workman assured him Missile Twenty-One would be back on line in another thirty minutes, but time was ticking away, and he was only too well aware of how he'd allowed Harrington to dictate the conditions of engagement. He had at least two days before anyone from Manticore arrived to help her, but she hovered stubbornly between him and Grayson, and he'd let her burn up precious hours in which he should already have been about God's Work.
No more. He stood and crossed to the tactical station, and Ash looked up from his conference with his assistants.
"Well, Lieutenant?"
"Sir, we've completed our analysis. I'm sorry we took so long, but—"
"Never mind that, Lieutenant." It came out more brusquely than he'd intended, and Simonds tried to soften it with a smile. He knew Ash and his people were almost as tired as he was, and they'd had to run their analyses with reference manuals almost literally in their laps. That was one reason he'd been willing to waste time trying to outmaneuver Harrington. He'd been fairly certain the attempt would fail, but he'd had no intention of reengaging until Ash had time to digest what he'd learned from the first clash.
"I understand your difficulties," Simonds said more gently. "Just tell me what you've learned."
"Yes, Sir." Ash drew a deep breath and consulted an electronic memo pad. "Sir, despite their missiles' smaller size, their penaids, and especially their penetration ECM, are better than ours. We've programmed our fire control to compensate for all of their EW techniques we've been able to identify. I'm sure they have tricks we haven't seen yet, but we've eliminated most of the ones they've already used.