On Basilisk Station

"Go to rapid fire on twenty and twenty-one, Jamal," he said.

Honor winced inwardly as the Q-ship ahead of her began to spit paired missiles at fifteen-second intervals. They came racing astern from the big freighter, and the sheer prodigality of that stream of deadly projectiles was frightening. At that rate of fire, Sirius would fire off more missiles than her own forward magazines held in barely seven minutes, and she doubted it was a panic reaction. Coglin had been too cool and deliberate throughout. He knew precisely what he was doing, and that meant he had the magazine capacity to burn through ammo this way.

"Evasion pattern Echo-Seven-One, Chief Killian," she said.

"Aye, aye, Ma'am. Commencing Echo-Seven-One."

Echo-Seven-One was just about the simplest evasion pattern Honor had practiced with Killian, little more than an erratically timed barrel roll along the same vector. It only moved them a few dozen kilometers either side of their base course each time they rolled, but there wasn't a lot else Fearless could do to evade Sirius's fire. Not unless Honor wanted to angle far enough off the base track to interpose a sidewall, and that would give away too much of her acceleration advantage over the Q-ship. Yet it wasn't quite as useless as one might have thought, for she'd included Cardones and McKeon in the same drills. Now Cardones retained control of his active defenses, but McKeon took over the passive systems and began a deliberate jingle-jangle between the flanking decoys. Fearless's rolling progress swept them in a complete circuit about the cruiser, and the exec shifted their power levels in a carefully timed pattern which gave the impression that the ship's heading was veering from side to side, as well. It wasn't, of course, but, hopefully, Sirius's tactical officer would be forced to use up missiles covering the course changes the cruiser might be making because he couldn't be certain she wasn't.

Honor certainly hoped he would. The Q-ship's missiles were still burning out before they came in, but the engagement time between salvos was too short for Cardones to wait them out. He had to launch sooner, with poorer solutions and lower counter-missile accelerations to give him more time—and range—on their impeller wedges. The laser clusters began to fire as a handful of Sirius's shots got past his counter-missiles, and she looked up at the main visual display as incandescent bursts of brilliance pitted the starfield ahead of her. Unless she missed her guess about the warheads those missiles carried, she had to stop them at least twenty thousand kilometers short of her ship, and they looked frighteningly close.

But none of them were getting closer than a hundred thousand . . . yet.

"Coming up on twenty-four light-seconds' range, Captain," Lieutenant Commander Jamal reported. "We're getting them in closer, but those decoys of theirs are better than anything I've ever seen before."

Coglin grunted acknowledgment without even looking up from his tactical display. Jamal was right. Oh, there was more than a bit of ass-covering in his remark, but Fearless's ECM was a hell of a lot better than NavInt had believed possible, and it was making Jamal's job a pain in the ass. It was also using up a lot of ammunition, and he hated to think about how much money each of those missiles cost. He knew damned well some braided idiot was going to climb all over him for the expense, but they cost a lot less than Sirius did.

Honor flinched as Cardones finally missed an incoming missile. It darted in to twenty-two thousand kilometers; then it vanished in a brilliant eyeblink, and she bit her lip as her worst fears were confirmed. Sirius was using laser warheads, turning each missile into a remotely targeted cluster of bomb-pumped x-ray lasers.

The rate of closure was over seventy-seven thousand KPS, which didn't allow for a lot of accuracy from the fire control that could be squeezed into a warhead, especially not fire control dazzled by McKeon's ECM, but one of the beams picked off her port decoy. McKeon deployed another without orders or comment, but there was no need for comments. Fearless carried only three more decoys; when they were gone, her ECM's effectiveness would be more than halved, and she hadn't even gotten into range of her opponent yet.

Captain Coglin's smile was thin as his first warhead got close enough to detonate. There was no sign it had inflicted any damage, but that would come in time.

"Range coming down to twenty-three-point-four light-seconds." Cardones's harsh voice showed the strain of thirteen minutes under fire to which he could not reply, but there was exultation in it, as well.

"Very good, Guns." Honor heard a shadow of matching hunger in her own voice. They'd lost another decoy, but they'd been incredibly lucky so far. Fearless was undamaged—and she had the range at last.

"Fire plan Tango on my command," she said.

"Aye, aye, Ma'am. Setting up fire plan Tango." The lieutenant punched commands into his systems. "Fire plan Tango locked."

"Then you may engage, Guns."

"Engaging."

"Incoming fire!" Jamal snapped, and Coglin smothered a curse. Damn it, what did it take to hit that frigging ship?! He'd fired over ninety missiles so far; six of them had gotten through Fearless's counter-fire, but the cruiser's ECM was hellishly effective, and not one of them had scored a hit! Now Harrington was shooting back, and despite his firepower advantage, he felt a shiver of anxiety. But if the range was low enough to let her fire full-power shots, the same was true for him, he told himself firmly.

"Jesus!"

Coglin's head jerked up as Jamal spat out the incredulous curse. A damage alarm screamed, the bridge twitched, and he whipped around to his display in panic, then relaxed convulsively. The laser warhead had savaged Sirius's flank, ripping number four cargo hold open to space like a huge talon, but number four was empty, and Sirius had suffered no casualties. Her capabilities were unimpaired, and he swiveled his cold eyes to the tactical officer.

"Well, Jamal?" he snapped.

"They suckered me, Sir," Jamal admitted. Sweat beaded his forehead, but his fingers were already racing across his panel. "They fired a pair of laser warheads and staggered their launch." He pressed the commit key, locking his new firing orders into the point defense computers, and twisted around to return his captain's look. "The interval was less than half a second, but the lead missile mounted some kind of ECM emitter, Captain. I'm not sure what it was, but it covered the gap between their launch times. The computers thought they were coming in simultaneously, and our fire solution missed the separation, so we nailed the lead bird, but the second one got through. It won't happen again, Sir."

"It better not," Coglin growled. "It's a hell of a long walk home." He glared at his display and bared his teeth. So Commander Harrington wanted to show him a few surprises, did she? Well, he had one for her, as well.

"Go to rapid fire on all after tubes," he said coldly.

"A hit, Ma'am!" Cardones crowed. The gush of escaping air was clear to his sensors, like blood on a wounded animal's flank, and a soft sound of approval rippled across the bridge.

Honor didn't share it. She was watching her other sensors, and there was no change in Sirius's energy profile. She understood Cardones's jubilation perfectly—a similar hit on Fearless would have inflicted serious damage—but he'd forgotten how big Sirius was. She could suck up far more destruction than Fearless could, and—

The tactical display blinked, and Honor inhaled sharply. Sirius was no longer firing salvos of two missiles each; she was firing six at a time.