Conquerors' Pride

"Ruptures aren't sealing," Rico called. "Too hot for the sealant to work. Starboard two and four are honeycombing. Starboard three... honeycombing has failed."

Pheylan clenched his teeth. There were ten duty stations in that section. Ten people who were now dead. "Chen Ki, give us some motion—any direction," he ordered the helm. If they didn't draw the aliens' lasers away from the ejected honeycombs, those ten casualties were going to have lots of company. "All starboard deck officers are to pull their crews back to central."

"Yes, sir."

"The ship can't handle much more of this, Captain," Rico said grimly from beside him.

Pheylan nodded silently, his eyes flicking between the tactical and ship-status boards. Rico was, if anything, vastly understating the case. With half the Kinshasa's systems failing or vaporized and nothing but the internal collision bulkheads holding it together, the ship had bare minutes of life left to it. But before it died, there might be enough time to get off one final shot at the enemy who was ripping them apart. "Rico, give me a second missile salvo," he ordered. "Fire into our shadow, then curve them over and under to pincer into the middle of the bogie formation. No fusing—just a straight timed detonation."

"I'll try," Rico said, his forehead shiny with sweat as he worked his board. "No guarantees with the ship like this."

"I'll take whatever I can get," Pheylan said. "Fire when ready."

"Yes, sir." Rico finished his programming and jabbed the firing keys, and through the crackling and jolting of the Kinshasa writhing beneath him, Pheylan felt the lurch as the missiles launched. "Salvo away," Rico said. "Sir, I recommend we abandon ship while the honeycombs are still functional."

Pheylan looked again at the status board, his stomach twisting with the death-pain of his ship. The Kinshasa was effectively dead; and with its destruction he had only one responsibility left. "Agreed," he said heavily. "Hauver, signal all hands: we're abandoning. All sections to honeycomb and eject when ready."

The damage alarm changed pitch and cadence to the ship-abandon signal. Across the bridge, board lights flickered and went dark as the bridge crew hurriedly disco

Pheylan himself, however, still had one task left to perform: to ensure that those alien butchers out there would learn nothing about the Commonwealth from the wreckage of his ship. Getting a grip on the underside of his command board, he broke it open and began throwing the row of switches there. Nav computer destruct, backup nav computer destruct, records computer destruct, library computer destruct—

"Bridge crew reports ready, Captain," Rico said, a note of urgency in his voice. "Shall we honeycomb?"

Pheylan threw the last switch. "Go," he said, pulling his hands back inside the arms of his chair and bracing himself.

And with a thudding ripple that jerked Pheylan against his restraints, the sections of memory metal whipped out from the deck and ceiling, wrapping around his chair and sealing him in an airtight cocoon. A heartbeat later he was jammed into his seat cushion as the bridge disintegrated around him, throwing each of the individual honeycomb escape pods away from the dying hulk that had once been the Kinshasa.

"Good-bye," Pheylan murmured to the remains of his ship, fumbling for the viewport shutter-release control. Later, he supposed vaguely, the full emotional impact would hit him. For now, though, survival was uppermost in his mind. Survival for himself, and for his crew.

The shutters retracted, and he pressed his face up to the viewport that looked back on the Kinshasa. The other escape pods were dim flickers of light drifting outward from the twisted and blackened hull still being hammered by the aliens' lasers. There was no way to tell how many of the honeycomb pods were intact, but those that were should keep their occupants alive until they could be picked up. Moving carefully in the cramped confines of the pod, he got to the viewport facing the main part of the battle and looked out.

The battle was over. The Peacekeeper task force had lost.

He floated there, his breath leaving patches of fog on the viewport, too stu

And the Jutland—the powerful, Rigel-class defense carrier Jutland—was twisting slowly in space. Dead.

And the four alien starships were still there. Showing no damage at all.

"No," Pheylan heard himself murmur. It was impossible. Utterly impossible. For a Rigel-class task force to have been defeated in six minutes—six minutes—was unheard of.

There was a flicker of laser fire from one of the aliens; then another, and another. Pheylan frowned, wondering what they were shooting at. Some of the Jutland's Dragonfly fighters, perhaps, that were still flying around? The aliens fired again, and again—

And with a jolt of horror Pheylan understood. The aliens were firing on the honeycomb pods. Systematically and painstakingly destroying the survivors of the battle.

He swore viciously under his breath. The pods were no threat to the aliens—they weren't armed, armored, or even equipped with drives. To destroy them like this was to turn a military victory into a cold-blooded slaughter.

And there was nothing that he could do about it except sit here and watch it happen. The pod was little more than a minuscule cone with a power supply, a dioxide/oxygen converter, a backup oxygen tank, an emergency radio beacon, a short-range comm laser, two weeks' worth of rations, a waste-reclaimant system—

He was clawing the equipment access panel open almost before the thought had completely formed in his mind. The aliens out there weren't just blasting every chunk of rubble in sight; they were specifically and deliberately hunting down the pods. And suddenly it was blindingly obvious how they were doing that.

The emergency beacon was a deliberately simple gadget, as unbreakable and foolproof as anything in the Peacekeepers' inventory. But foolproof didn't necessarily mean sabotage proof. A minute later, every wire and circuit line to it cut and the blade of his multitool jabbed into its internal power backup, it had finally been silenced.

Pheylan took a deep breath, feeling the coolness of sweat on his forehead as he turned back to the viewport. The flashes of laser fire were still flickering through the battle debris as the aliens went about their grisly business. One of the ships was working its way his direction, and he wondered tensely whether any of his crew had figured out what was going on and had knocked out their own beacons.

But there was no time to think about that now. That alien ship was coming almost straight toward him, and if they were really determined to be thorough about this, there were other ways besides the beacon to pick him out of the flotsam. Somehow he had to get the pod moving. Preferably in the direction of the watchships that should still be skulking out there somewhere.

He watched the ship's deliberate approach, mentally ru

It took longer than he'd expected to get to the oxygen tank release valve on the far side of the narrow equipment bay, and the alien ship was looming large in the viewport by the time he was finally ready. Mentally crossing his fingers, he tweaked the valve release open.