At All Costs

Warhead after warhead, literally hundreds of them, detonated in a hellish pattern of strobes-bubbles of nuclear fusion spitting deadly harpoons of coherent radiation that crashed through Intolerant's wavering sidewalls and ripped deep, deep into her massively armored hull. Mike Henke's battlecruisers did their best to beat that tide of destruction aside, but they simply lacked the firepower, and they themselves were not immune from attack.

Honor clung to the arms of her command chair, feeling Imperator shudder under the pounding of her own hits, tasting Nimitz in the back of her brain, clinging to her with all his fierce love and devotion as death thundered and bellowed about their ship. Yet even as she did, her eyes were on the plot, watching the lethal wave of fire washing over Intolerant.

No one would ever know how many hits the superdreadnought took, but however many there were, it was too many. They ripped into her again, and again, and again, until, suddenly, she simply disappeared in the most brilliant, eye-tearing flash of them all.

Nor did she go alone. The light cruisers Fury, Buckler, and Atum vanished from Honor's plot, as did the battlecruisers Priam and Patrocles. The heavy cruisers Star Ranger and Blackstone were reduced to crippled hulks, coasting onward ballistically without power or drives. And HMS Ajax faltered suddenly as her entire after impeller ring went down.

Imperator took over a dozen direct hits of her own, yet the flagship's actual damage was incredibly light. Her thick armor shrugged off most of the hits with little more than superficial cratering, and despite the loss of half a dozen energy mounts, she remained fully combat capable.

Honor gazed into the bitter ashes of her display, tasting the cruel irony of her flagship's apparent inviolability as she saw the harrowed wreckage of the rest of her command. Of the twenty starships and five hundred and sixty LACs she'd taken across the hyper limit, only twelve starships, all but two of them damaged, and three hundred and forty-nine LACs survived. And even as she watched, Ajax and the heavy cruiser Necromancer were falling behind due to impeller damage.

"Your Grace," Andrea Jaruwalski said quietly. Honor looked at her. "The remote arrays confirm the destruction of two of their minelayers and heavy damage to one of their superdreadnoughts."

"Thank you, Andrea." Honor was astounded by how calm, how normal, her own voice sounded. It was a pathetic return for what the Havenites had done to her, but she supposed it was better than nothing.

"Harper," she said, "get me a link to Admiral Henke."

"Yes, Your Grace."

Several seconds passed before Michelle Henke's strained face appeared on Honor's com.

"How bad is it, Mike?" Honor asked as soon as she saw her friend.

"That's an interesting question." Henke managed to produce at least the parody of a smile. "Captain Hamilton and his exec are both dead, and things are... a bit confused over here, just now. Our rails and pods are still intact, and our fire control looks pretty good, but our point defense and energy armament took a real beating. The worst of it seems to be the after impeller ring, though. It's completely down."

"Can you restore it?" Honor asked urgently.

"We're working on it," Henke replied. "The good news is that the damage appears to be in the control runs; the nodes themselves look like they're still intact, including the alphas. The bad news is that we've got one hell of a lot of structural damage aft, and just locating where the runs are broken is going to be a copperplated bitch."

"Can you get her out?"

"I don't know," Henke admitted. "Frankly, it doesn't look good, but I'm not prepared to just write her off yet. Besides," she managed another smile, this one almost normal looking, "we can't abandon very well."

"What do you mean?" Honor demanded.

"Both boat bays are trashed, Honor. The Bosun says she thinks she can get the after bay cleared, but it's going to take at least a half-hour. Without that-" Henke shrugged, and Honor bit the inside of her lip so hard she tasted blood.

Without at least one functional boat bay, small craft couldn't dock with Ajax to take her crew off. There were emergency perso

And her flag bridge was not among the stations which fell into that category.

"Mike, I-"

Honor's voice was frayed around the edge, and Henke shook her head quickly.

"Don't say it," she said, almost gently. "If we get the wedge back, we can probably play hide and seek with anything heavy enough to kill us. If we don't get it back, we're not getting out. It's that simple, Honor. And you know as well as I do that you can't hold the rest of the task force back to cover us. Not with Bogey Three still closing. Even just hanging around for a half-hour while we try to make repairs would bring you into their envelope, and your missile defense has been shot to shit."

Honor wanted to argue, to protest. To find some way to make it not true. But she couldn't, and she looked her best friend straight in the eye.

"You're right," she said quietly. "I wish you weren't, but you are."

"I know." Henke's lips twitched again. "And at least we're in better shape than Necromancer," she said almost whimsically, "although I think her boat bays are at least intact."

"Well, yes," Honor said, trying to match Henke's tone even as she wanted to weep, "there is that minor difference. Rafe's coordinating the evacuation of her perso

"Good for Rafe." Henke nodded.

"Break north," Honor told her. "I'm going to drop our acceleration for about fifteen minutes." Henke looked as if she were about to protest, but Honor shook her head quickly. "Only fifteen minutes, Mike. If we go back to the best acceleration we can sustain at that point and maintain heading, we'll still scrape past Bogey Three at least eighty thousand kilometers outside its powered missile range."

"That's cutting it too close, Honor!" Henke said sharply.

"No," Honor said flatly, "it isn't, Admiral Henke. And not just because Ajax is your ship. There are seven hundred and fifty other men and women aboard her."

Henke looked at her for a moment, then inhaled sharply and nodded.

"When they see our accel drop, they'll have to act on the assumption Imperator has enough impeller damage to slow the rest of the task force," Honor continued. "Bogey Three should continue to pursue us on that basis. If you can get the after ring back within the next forty-five minutes to an hour, you should still be able to stay clear of Bogey Two, and Bogey One is pretty much scrap metal at this point. But if you don't get it back-"

"If we don't get it back, we can't get into hyper anyway," Henke interrupted her. "I think it's the best we can do, Honor. Thank you."

Honor wanted to scream at her friend for thanking her, but she only nodded.

"Give Beth my best, just in case," Henke added.

"Do it yourself," Honor shot back.

"I will, of course," Henke said. Then, more softly, "Take care, Honor."

"God bless, Mike," Honor said equally quietly. "Clear."