A fresh, brutal blow threw her from her feet, and she skidded down the passageway on her belly.
The warhead detonated at fifteen hundred kilometers, and twenty-five separate beams of energy stabbed out from its heart.
Two of them hit Fearless.
One struck almost amidships, ripping inward through half a dozen compartments. Nineteen men and women in its path died instantly as it gutted forward life support, slashed through the forward crew mess, and reduced two of the cruiser's port energy torpedo launchers to wreckage, but it didn't stop there. It sliced deep, just missing the combat information center, and ripped its ghastly way clear to the bridge itself.
Plating shattered, and Honor slammed her helmet shut as air screamed out through the gaping hole. Her suit whuffed tight, protecting her against vacuum, but some of her people were less lucky. Lieutenant Panowski never even had time to scream; the hit blasted huge chunks of bulkhead into splinters, and a flying axe of steel decapitated him in a fountain of gore, then carried on to smash his entire panel to spark-spewing ruin. Two of his yeomen died almost as quickly, and Chief Braun had been out of his chair, unprotected by his shock frame. He flew through the thinning air and slammed into a bulkhead, stunned and unable to move. He died in a flood of aspirated blood before anyone could reach him to close his helmet for him.
Mercedes Brigham's suit was daubed and streaked with scarlet where Panowski's blood had sprayed across her. She'd been looking at the astrogator when he died, and more of his blood dripped down her face where it had splashed before she closed her own helmet. She couldn't even wipe it, and she spat to clear it from her mouth as she brought her own computers on line to replace Panowski's.
Honor swept her gaze about the bridge. Sparks and smoke streamed up into the near vacuum as Panowski's splintered command station consumed itself, and her mouth tightened as she saw the way Webster clutched at his chest through his suit. The com officer hunched forward in his chair, his face gray, and blood bubbled at his nostrils.
"Damage control to the bridge! Corpsman to the bridge!" she barked, and made herself look away from her injured officer.
The second beam hit further forward, and Lieutenant Allen Manning stared at his console in horror as a lurid light began to flash. He unlocked his shock frame and shoved a corpse which once had been a friend from the chair beside him to clear an emergency panel, and his hands darted across it.
Nothing happened. The light continued to flash, and a harsh, ominous audio signal joined it. He hammered an alternate command sequence into the console, then tried still a third, and the light only flashed brighter still.
"Commander Santos!" he gasped into his intercom. There was no answer. "Commander Santos, this is Manning! Please respond!"
"W-what is it, Allen?" The senior engineer sounded shaken and woozy, but Manning almost wept when he heard her voice.
"Fusion One, Ma'am! The mag bottle's fluctuating and I can't shut down from heresomething's cut the circuits!"
"Oh, Jesus!" Santos's voice was no longer blurred. It was sharp and frightened. "I'm on my way. Get forward and join me!"
"But, Commander, I can't leave Cen"
"Goddamn it, Allen, move! Put Stevens on it!"
"I can't, Ma'am," Manning said wildly, then clutched at his self-control. "Stevens is dead, and Rierson can't leave Fusion Two. I'm all alonethere's no one left to take over down here!"
"Then tell the Skipper to fucking well get you someone," Santos snarled. "I need you up there right goddamned now!"
"Yes, Ma'am!"
Honor paled as Manning's frantic message registered. Fearless could move and fight on a single reactor. She only had two for the security of redundancy, and that was also why they were at opposite ends of the hull, but if that mag bottle went down
"Understood, Manning. Go. I'll get somebody down there to replace you."
Manning didn't waste time replying, and she raised her head to scan her bridge, trying to think who she could send. There was only one choice, she realized with a sudden, icy calm.
"Mr. McKeon!"
"Yes, Skipper?" He made it a question, but she saw in his eyes that he already knew.
"You're the only one I've got with the experience for it. Slave your ECM panel to my remotes and get down there."
He wanted to argue, to protest. She read it in his face, but he didn't.
"Aye, aye, Ma'am." He unlocked his shock frame and dashed for the lift, and Honor ran a quick check of the ECM. She was down to her last two decoys, but the programs McKeon had set up seemed to be working well. She started to key in a modification, then stopped as Cardones spoke without looking away from his console.
"Skipper, we're down to twelve birds for Missile Two, and I'm out of laser heads."
"What about Missile One's magazine?"
"Twenty-three rounds left, including eleven laser heads, but the transfer tube's been breached."
"Engage with standard nukes," she told him, and plugged her suit com into the damage control net.
"Bosun, this is the Captain. Where are you?"
"Just finishing a bulkhead patch at frame forty, Ma'am," MacBride replied instantly.
"Take a work party and get forward. I need you to shift missiles from Missile One to Missile Two and the transfer tube is down. Move the laser heads first."
"Aye, aye, Ma'am. I'm on it," MacBride said flatly.
"Thank you, Bosun," Honor said, and MacBride's eyebrows rose. She hadn't even protested the impossibility of the assignment, for she was beyond protest. She was a professional, and she knew survival was no longer a realistic option. Yet the Captain's voice had been almost absently courteous despite the the stress she had to be feeling.
The bosun drew a deep breath and glared at the people around her. "You heard the Old Lady!" she barked. "Harkness, Lowellget me a dozen Mark Nine counter-grav collars. Yountz, I need drag lines. Find me a spool of number two wire and a cutter. Jeffries, you and Mathison get forward and check the tractor grab in Passage Nineteen. I want to know if"
She went on spitting orders, goading her subordinates into action, and far behind her on Fearless's bridge, Honor Harrington returned her attention to her ECM just as a fresh salvo of missiles came streaking in.
Johan Coglin peered at his display in disbelief. He'd pounded Fearless for almost thirty minutes, hit her at least half a dozen times, and she was still after him. Not only after him, but already making up the velocity advantage she'd lost while her forward impellers were down! Goddamn it, why couldn't Harrington just leave him the hell alone? All he wanted was to get out of here and tell the task force not to come!
Another missile exploded just short of the ship, and he winced as the huge fireball blossomed astern. They must be out of laser heads. That had been a standard megaton-range warhead, and that could be very, very bad news. The standard nukes weren't stand-off weapons; they had to get in much closer to inflict damage, which gave the laser clusters more time to kill them, but a near-miss from one of those monsters could wreak untold havoc.
Sweat beaded his forehead, and he wiped at it irritably. His ship was far more powerful than Harrington's. He'd reduced her cruiser to a wreckshe had to be some kind of wizard just to hold it together, much less go on shooting at him! He longed to turn on her, finish her off, and get the hell away to safety, but all the old arguments against a close-range action remained.
Or did they?
He cocked his head, eyes narrowed as he rubbed his chin in speculation. She was still on his tail, yes, but she was firing only single missiles at a time, even if she was firing at shorter intervals, and the fact that she was using standard nukes was a clear sign her forward magazines were running low. Which didn't make any sense at all. A Courageous- class ship had a seven-tube broadside, for God's sake, and her overtake velocity was over eleven hundred KPS. Why wasn't she veering to bring those tubes to bear? She could zig-zag back and forth across his stern pouring in broadsides as she crossed, and hit him with more missiles than he was firing at her, damn it!