Torch of Freedom

Less than one minute had passed since Hammer Force's first laser head detonated, and seven of Luff's fourteen battlecruisers had already been destroyed or crippled.

Rozsak's fifth salvo came screaming in twelve seconds later.

Our turn. It's our turn, now.

The thought flashed through Adrian Luff's mind as he saw the attack pattern develop on the plot. The deadly ruby diamond chips of incoming missiles swerved, coalescing suddenly out of chaos into a precisely targeted, tightly coordinated hammer. They drove straight through the PNE's harrowed defenses, numbers melting like snow in the furnace of defensive fire, yet somehow sweeping onward.

Luff brain's whirred like another computer, thinking too quickly, too furiously, for his own sudden stab of terror to register.

"Message to Citizen Commodore Konidis," he heard his own voice saying crisply, decisively. "If we lose communication, he's to continue with the mission as per our original orders."

"Yes, Citizen Com—"

The arrival of Luiz Rozsak's missile storm interrupted Citizen Lieutenant Kamerling's acknowledgment.

There was no way for Hammer Force's tactical officers to identify the PNE's flagship. That was all that had sparedLeon Trotsky in their initial salvos. But probability plays no favorites. Eventually, the uncaring odds catch up with everyone, and Luff had been correct. This time it was, indeed, Trotsky's turn.

A hundred and eighty missiles hurled themselves at her and her division mate, Mao Tse-tung, and there was no stopping them. Or no stopping enough of them, anyway. They'd been lost in the clutter of autonomously-guided missiles until the very last instant, and they came down like a battle ax.

The battlecruiser heaved indescribably, writhing at the heart of a hellish latticework of bomb-pumped lasers. Entire sections of her heavily armored hull disintegrated, and raw craters blasted into her, ripping their way through deck after deck, seeking her vitals. Power surges cascaded through her systems, the heavily armored control capsules of on-mount perso

No mere human being could have kept track of the incredible damage which rained down on Adrian Luff's flagship. It took less than two seconds from the first hit to the last, and the carnage and devastation in its wake was impossible for the brutally shaken survivors to truly grasp. Yet even in the heart of that furnace, men and women clung to their training and their duty.

"Direct hit, Tracking Seven!"

"Direct hit, Graser Five!"

"Point Defense Niner and Ten in local control!"

"Missile Twenty-Three out of the net!"

"Fusion One, emergency shutdown!"

"CIC, direct hit! I can't get anyone on the com, Citizen Commander!"

The damage control reports poured in, a mounting litany of destruction and death. The master plot went dead as the Combat Information Center dropped out of the circuit, and it stayed dead as the auxiliaries which should have taken over to drive it died under hits of their own.

"Direct hit, Impeller Two!"

Leon Trotsky's acceleration faltered.

"Missile Defense Four is down, Citizen Commander! No response from on-mount perso

"Dir—"

Adrian Luff, Millicent Hartman, Pierre Stravinsky, and every other man and woman on Leon Trotsky's flag bridge died instantly as the trailer—the lonely, orphaned, autonomously-controlled missile no one had noticed in time—slipped through the flagship's shattered defenses like a dagger.

Trotsky and Mao Tse-tung staggered onward, too hideously maimed to do more than defend themselves feebly, and Hammer Force's sixth salvo went streaking in on PNES George Washington and PNS Ho Chi Minh.

Citizen Commodore Santander Konidis stared at his plot, white-faced.

Citizen Commodore Luff's flagship was still there—barely—but there was no way to misread the lurid damage codes under her icon. Even if Luff was still somehow, impossibly, alive over there, his communications were clearly out. Which meant Santander Konidis was now the senior surviving officer of the People's Navy in Exile.

What there was of it.

He shook himself and made himself look up from his plot and meet his chief of staff's eyes.

"Pass the word to all units," he said harshly. "I'm assuming command."

"Yes, Citizen Commodore!" Citizen Commander Gino Sanchez responded immediately, and Konidis gave him a tight smile. He'd never really liked Sanchez—the man was too brutal when it came to shipboard discipline, and he had an undeniable tendency to browbeat and terrorize junior officers—but there wasn't a gram of quitter anywhere in him, and at the moment, Konidis found him remarkably reassuring.

Then the citizen commodore returned his attention to his plot, and any reassurance Sanchez might have engendered disappeared as George Washington and Ho Chi Minh staggered out of the missile holocaust.

Washington's tactical links were still up, although Sanchez would be astonished if even half her offensive and defensive weapons remained effective. Ho Chi Minh, on the other hand, was completely out of the net—another clear mission-kill.

My God, I'm down to three effective battlecruisers—and that's counting Washington as effective!

It didn't seem possible. Surely six heavy cruisers couldn't have mangled the PNE's battlecruisers this way!

It's those goddammed pods. They just keep pouring them on, and they're ripping us to pieces!

Adrian Luff's third salvo came down on Hammer Force like a guillotine.

SLNS Sniper blew up as fresh hits blasted through her defenses, adding catastrophically to her earlier damage.

There were no life pods.

David Carte's Sharpshooter lurched off course as half the beta nodes in her forward ring went down. More hits slammed into her like the hammers of hell, yet somehow she hauled back on course, maintaining her heading, her surviving missile defenses still in operation.

More missiles pounded down on the destroyer William the Conqueror. Her desperate point defense stopped twenty-seven laser heads short of detonation range; eleven others got through, and Conqueror blew up as spectacularly as Sniper . . . and with just as few survivors.

And then, with a sort of horrible inevitability, five laser heads got past the tattered defensive umbrella of Luiz Rozsak's two surviving cruisers and his three remaining destroyers. Bomb-pumped lasers ripped out yet again, enveloping SLNS Masquerade's unarmored hull in a spider web of lightning, and suddenly Rozsak had no more arsenal ships.

Citizen Commodore Konidis gri

I just hope to hell ours isn't, too, he thought grimly as Hammer Force's seventh salvo came rumbling in.

Luiz Rozsak was down to three cruisers, two of them badly mangled, and four destroyers, one of them crippled. That was all he had left, and the missile waves which had already been launched were the only ones he was going to get.