On Basilisk Station

And dead men, he thought, told no tales.

He told himself he had to consider all the options, had to evaluate and decide coldly and calmly, and he knew it was a lie. He'd suffered too much at that ship's hands to think calmly.

"Bring us about, Mr. Jamal," he said harshly.

". . . nothing left at all in the port broadside," Alistair McKeon's hoarse voice reported from Central Damage Control, "and the port sidewall's down clear back to Frame Two Hundred. We've lost an energy torpedo and Number Two Laser out of the starboard broadside, but at least the starboard sidewall is still up."

"And the drive?" Honor demanded.

"Still up, but not for long, Ma'am. The entire port impeller ring's unbalanced forward. I don't think I can hold it another fifteen minutes."

Honor stared around her bridge, seeing the exhaustion, tasting the fear. Her ship was dying about her, and it was her fault. She'd brought them all to this by refusing to break off, by not being smarter and quicker.

"Sirius is turning, Skipper." Rafael Cardones sat awkwardly hunched to one side, favoring obviously broken ribs, but he was still watching what was left of his sensor readouts. "She's coming back at us!"

Honor's eyes whipped down to the helmsman's maneuvering display in front of her. It wasn't as detailed as a proper tactical display, but it was still live, and she saw the angry red dot of the Q-ship swinging to decelerate savagely towards her. Coglin was coming back to make certain.

"Skipper, if you bring us hard to port, I can get off a few shots from our starboard missile tube," Cardones said urgently, but Honor shook her head.

"No."

"But, Skipper—!"

"We're not going to do a thing, Rafe," she said flatly. Cardones whipped around to stare at her in disbelief, and she smiled at him, her eyes like brown flint. "Not a thing except let her close . . . and bring up the grav lance," she said very, very softly.

Johan Coglin listened to the thunder of his pulse as his ship braked with all her power. Fearless limped slowly and painfully to port, turning her starboard side toward him, but her acceleration was a crawl. Even with Sirius's node damage, it would take her less than five minutes to reach pointblank range.

Jamal sat stiff and silent at Tactical, poised over his missile defense panel. A small sigh of relief had escaped him as Sirius's turn brought his undamaged forward sensors to bear, but he obviously dreaded what Fearless's broadside might do to him.

Only it wasn't doing a thing, and Coglin felt a bubble of vengeful laughter tearing at the back of his throat. He'd been right! The cruiser's armament must have been gutted—no captain would pass up the opportunity to fire his full broadside down the throat of a wide open impeller wedge!

He completed his turn, swinging the vulnerable front of his wedge away from Fearless, closing at an oblique angle and presenting his port broadside to her. The range fell with flashing speed, and his smile was ugly.

"Range five hundred thousand," Cardones said tautly. "Closing at three-three-nine-two KPS."

Honor nodded and eased the helm another degree to port. Her crippled ship turned like a dying shark, and Sirius plunged towards her.

"Four-eight-five thousand." Cardones's voice was harsh. "Four-seven-five. Four-six-zero. Four-four-five. Rate of closure now four-zero-two-one KPS. Time to energy range one-one-point-nine seconds. Time to grav lance eight-two-point-six-five seconds."

"Stand by grav lance." Honor's voice was quiet, and her mind raced. Would he come all the way in? Or would he stand off? He had less than a minute and a half to make his mind up, and if no fire came at him. . . .

She sat very still at the helm, gloved right hand poised lightly on the stick, and watched the range fall.

"Give her a broadside at four hundred thousand," Coglin said softly. "Let's see how she likes that."

"Four-zero-zero thous—"

Even as Cardones spoke, Honor whipped Fearless up on her side.

"Shit!"

Coglin slammed a fist into his chair arm as the limping cruiser spun suddenly. Damn it, didn't Harrington know when it was over?! She was done. All she could do was stretch out the agony, but she didn't seem to know it, and her turn presented her impenetrable belly stress band even as he fired, as if she'd read his mind. He'd more than half expected it, but that didn't make him any happier to see it.

Sirius's side flashed with the fury of a Fleet battlecruiser, and Honor had cut her maneuver just a fraction of a second too late. Fearless's belly bands came up in time to intercept the missiles, but two of the lasers got through. The sidewall bent and attenuated them, but not enough, and the cruiser lurched as they ripped deep into her hull and smashed her single, unfired missile tube and two of her energy torpedoes.

Yet she survived . . . and so did her grav lance.

"All right, goddamn it," Coglin snarled. "Take us in, Jamal!"

"Aye, aye, Sir."

Honor watched the chronometer tick down, and her mind was cold and clear, accepting no possibility of failure. The sensors she had left couldn't track Sirius clearly through her belly stress band, and her current vector gave the Q-ship four options: retreat and break off the engagement, roll up on her own side relative to Fearless and shoot "down" through the starboard sidewall as she overflew the cruiser, cross her bow, or cross her stern. She might do any of them, but Honor was betting her ship—and her life—that Coglin would cross her bows. It was the classic maneuver, the one any naval officer instinctively sought—and he knew her forward armament had been destroyed.

But if he was going to do that, then he ought to be coming into position . . . just . . . about . . . now!

She slammed the helm over, wrenching her ship still further round to port and rolling to swing the broadside she'd denied Sirius back towards her with blinding speed.

Lieutenant Commander Jamal blinked. It was only for an instant, only the briefest hesitation. There was no logical reason for Fearless to suddenly swing back, and for no more than a heartbeat, he couldn't quite believe she had.

And in that heartbeat, Rafael Cardones targeted his grav lance and fired.

Sirius staggered. Captain Coglin jerked upright in his chair, his eyes wide, face shocked in disbelief as his sidewall went down, and then Fearless's four surviving energy torpedo launchers went to rapid, continuous fire.

The armed merchant raider Sirius disappeared forever in a devastating boil of light and fury.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Captain Honor Harrington, Royal Manticoran Navy, stood once more in a spacedock gallery aboard HMSS Hephaestus. Her hands were clasped behind her, and Nimitz sat very tall and straight on her shoulder. One hand-paw rested lightly atop her beret—the plain, back beret of the RMN undress uniform—and his green eyes were dark mirrors of her emotions as she stared through the thick, armored plastic.

HMS Fearless floated beyond the window, her hull broken and shattered, like a toy stepped on by some careless child. The gaping hole where Dominica Santos had died faced the window, stretched back along the cruiser's flank in a long, ink-black wound of broken bulkheads and melted frames. Other wounds marred that once sleek and immaculate hull. Small, some of them looked, hiding the reality of the ruin within them, and Honor felt her eyes sting as she recalled once more the people who had died under her command.

She blinked angrily, drew a deep breath, and straightened her spine, and her mind went back—back to the numbed moment when she and her surviving crew had realized they'd won while the terrible fury of Sirius's destruction lingered in the visual display like a curse. Judging by the Q-ship's performance and the weaponry she'd revealed, Sirius must have had a crew of at least fifteen hundred, and there had been no survivors. Even now, Honor could close her eyes and resummon that cauldron of light and energy in every hideous detail and feel the same sick revulsion at the work of her own hands and mind . . . and the vaulting exultation and triumph.