The Insurrection

Firing at longer ranges meant longer flight times and gave Swiftsure a better chance to detect their approach in time to get a drone off. On the other hand, the closer her ships came, the more likely Swiftsure was to detect them, which made deciding exactly when to fire a nice problem in balanced imperatives.

"Open fire, Mister Kan," she said quietly, and Longbow twitched as she flushed her external ordnance racks. The missiles lifted away, drives howling as they slammed across the vacuum between Han's squadron and her victim at sixty percent of light speed. She watched the speckled lights on her display as the missiles arrowed towards their target, and her brain concentrated on Swiftsure's blip, watching like a hawk, hoping the doomed cruiser would die unknowing. But another part of her hummed with a sort of elated grief.

The missiles bore down on Swiftsure, and Han heard a murmur of excitement around her.

Clearly their enemy had never suspected their proximity--comeven her point defense was late and firing wide. Only three missiles were stopped by her desperate, close-in defenses; the others went home eighteen seconds after launch in a cataclysmic detonation brighter than the star of Aklumar.

The dreadful fireball died, sucked away by the greedy emptiness, and Han stared at her display, her heart as cold as the void around her ship. There was nothing left. No courier drones--noto escape pods. Just, ,. nothing.

She stared at Battle One for perhaps five seconds, and somewhere deep within her was a horrified little girl. She was a warrior. This wasn't the first time she'd participated in the death of another ship and its crew. But it was the first time she'd struck down fellow Terrans from the shadows like an assassin.

She'd given them only warning enough to know death had come for them. Only enough to feel the terror.

She knew her success would save hundreds of her eom-rades when the Battle of Cimmaron began, but knowing did nothing to still her shame or the shocked sickness of triumph crawling down her nerves.

She turned her command chair to face Lieutenant Chu. ""Take position two light-seconds from the warp point on the task force approach vector, Mister Chu, then get the XO racks rearmed." Her face was serene. "We'll wait here for further orders." "Aye, aye, sir," Lieutenant Chu said.

He hesitated a moment, but his enthusiasm was too great to resist. "That was beautiful, sir.

Beautiful!" ""Thank you, Lieutenant," Hah said coolly, and her eyes met Tsing's. He regarded her steadily, his face unreadable as he reached for the pipe lying on his console. He stuffed it slowly, and Hah looked away.

"Battlegroup formed up for warp, sir." "'Thank you, Commodore Tsing." Hah drew a deep, unobtrusive breath, tasting the oxygen in her lungs like wine, and felt Longbow gathering her strength about her.

Her "beccutiful, deadly Longbow, ready to plunge through the maelstrom of warp, eager to engage her foes. And suddenly Han, too, was eager eager to confront her enemies openly. She allowed herself a last glance at the long, gleaming line of dots stretched out astern of her battlegroup, then touched a stud.

"Flagship." The voice in the implant behind her ear was brisk and professional, but she heard the tension blurring its edges.

Full military, power, Commander Tomanaga." "Aye, aye, sir!" Tomanaga's face split in a sparkling grin of mingled tension and anticipation. His fingers flew over his command panel, and program codes flashed from his terminal to the datalink equipment sprawled across the electronics section. Rezniek watched them flicker across his monitor, ready to reenter them if any of his delicate circuitry, suddenly died, and Commander Sung sat beside him, feeling unutterablv useless away from his station on the bridge. His Battlegroup Twelve awoke. The individuality of its ships vanished into the 'vast, composite entity of their data net. Drives snarled, snatched awake by signals flowing from Tomanaga's computer, harnessed and cha

Hah held her breath as the line of ships flashed towards the small, invisible portal--the tinv flaw in space which would hurl them almost two hundred light-years in a fleeting instant spent somewhere else. Oniv one ship at a time would enter that magic gateway; death was the penalty for ships which transited a warp point too close together. Two ships could emerge from warp in the same instant, in the same volume of normal space--but only for the briefest interval. Then there would be a single, very violent explosion, and neither ship would ever be seen Now BG 12 led the Terran Republican Navy's first offensive, and the battle-cruisers struck at the warp point like a steel serpent.

TRNS Bardiche vanished into the whirlpool of gravitic stress like a fiery dart, followed by Bayonet, and then it was Longbow's turn. Han drew one last breath, her mind focused down into a tight, icy knot of concentration, and Longbow leapt instantly from the calm of Aklumar into the blazing nightmare of Cimmaron.

"Incoming Fire!" Kan snapped.

"Missiles tracking port and starboard." Damn, those gu

Their missiles must have been launched even before they'd seen Longbow--launched on the probability that someone would be coming through from Aklumar to meet them.

Thank God Swiftsure had been less alert!

If the forts had been granted any more warning @u.

. if they'd had their energy weapons on line.

More missiles flashed towards her ships. She ignored them. There was nothing she could do about them. They were Kan's responsibility, his and the point defense crews"; she had responsibilities of her own, and through the blur of battle chatter and the soft beeping of prioriWill warning signals she heard Tsing hammering his keyboard as he and Tomanaga and Reznick fought to restabilize the net and feed her the data she needed.

There! The display cleared suddenly, the dots of her battlegroup clear and sharp, and they were all there!

Dwarfed by the massive, crimson dots of the forts they might be, but they had all survived, and suddenly the data net had them. Missiles flashed away as their XO racks flushed.

But missiles were still screaming towards BG 12, and Han saw the dots of her ships flash crazily as Skywatch's warheads crashed among them.

Longbow's datalink took control of BG 12's point defense systems, dragooning them into a tigtlt-woven network in defense of the entire battlegroup, and Hah caught a brief impression of her two escort destroyers as their missile defenses flared like volca- noes against the incoming tide of destruction.

But not all of it could be stopped.

"Signal from Bardiche, Commodore! Code Omega!" Han's eyes darted to her lead ship, the one in the spot Tomanaga had wanted for Longbow. The ancient, inverted horseshoe-symbol of death for the ships of Terra--flashed across her blip, brilliant precursor of her doom. Then her dot vanished, and Li Hah no longer commanded four battle-cruisers.

"Close the range, Commodore Tsing.

Missiles to sprint mode. Stand by to engage with hetlasers." "Good hits on target two, sir!" Lieutenant Kan's voice rang in Han's ears. He had precious little time for reports, for it zsthis panel, feeding through the datalink, which controlledthe gu

"Two's datalink is gone, Gu

"Drop it. Concentrate on one and three." "Aye, sir. Fire shifting now!" "Falchion's out of the net, sir!" Tsing reported sharply. ""leAlso her to withdraw," Han said, not even looking up from Battle One. Without the protection of synchronized point defense, Falchion was helpless before the hurricane of missiles slashing in upon her. Her only hope was to break off. If she could. If the forts would let her go.