The Honor of the Queen

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Two brutally wounded starships swept onward around Yeltsin's Star while their crews fought their damage. Medical staffs fought their own wars against the horror of maimed and broken bodies, and every mind aboard them knew their next clash must be the last.

Honor Harrington listened to the reports and forced the living side of her face to hide her desperation. Fearless's communications section had been blotted away, rendering her deaf and dumb, but there was more than enough internal bad news.

A quarter of her crew was dead or wounded, and Commander Brentworth had found a job at last. The Grayson officer manned the damage control net from the bridge, releasing Lieutenant Allgood, Lieutenant Commander Higgins' senior assistant, for other work, and Higgins needed him badly.

Fearless's entire after impeller ring was down, and her starboard broadside was reduced to a single graser and eight missile tubes. Almost worse, the combination of damaged magazines and seven minutes of maximum-rate fire had reduced her to less than a hundred missiles, and her sensors had been savagely mauled. Half her main radar, both secondary fire control arrays, and two-thirds of her passive sensors were gone. She could still see her enemy, but her best acceleration was barely a third of Saladin's until Higgins' vac-suited engineers restored her after impeller ring (if they could), and even then, she'd lost so many nodes she'd be down to barely two-point-eight KPS². If the battlecruiser's captain guessed the truth, he could easily pull out and lose her. He'd already reopened the range to almost ninety-four million kilometers; if he opened it another two light-minutes, Honor wouldn't even be able to find him, much less fight him, without Troubadour to relay from the recon drones.

Agony struck again at that thought, and she thrust it away. There was no time for it, yet try as she might, she couldn't forget that there'd been three hundred men and women aboard Alistair McKeon's ship; few of them could have survived.

But Rafe had hurt Saladin badly, too, she told herself. Maybe even badly enough. If her damage was severe enough, even fanatics might withdraw; if they didn't, it was very unlikely Fearless could stop her.

Sword Simonds held himself rigidly still as the medical orderly put the last stitch into the gash in his forehead, then waved aside the offer of a painkiller. The orderly retreated quickly, for he had more than enough to do elsewhere; there were over twelve hundred dead men in Thunder of God's hull, two-thirds of them soldiers who'd brought no vac suits aboard.

Simonds touched his own ugly, sutured wound, and knew he was lucky he'd only been knocked senseless, but he didn't feel that way. His head hurt like hell, and if he couldn't fault his exec's decision to break off, that didn't mean he liked the situation he'd found when he regained consciousness.

He clenched his jaw as the latest damage reports scrolled up his screen. Thunder's armor and the radiation shielding inside his wedge had let him live, but his port broadside had been reduced to five lasers and six tubes, and half of them were in local control. His maximum acceleration had been reduced twenty-one percent, his gravitics and half his other sensors—including all of them to port—were gone, and Workman's report on his sidewall generators was grim. Thunder wasn't—quite—naked to port, but spreading his remaining generators would weaken his sidewall to less than a third of design strength, and his radiation shields were completely gone. Simonds dared not even contemplate exposing that side of his ship to Harrington's fire ... but his starboard armament and fire control were untouched.

He touched the stitches again, and his mind was cold and clear despite his exhaustion. The bitch was still there, still stubbornly defying God's Will, and she'd hurt him. But he'd hurt her, too, and he'd checked the Havenite data profile on the Star Knight class against her missile expenditures. Even if she hadn't lost a single magazine, she had to be almost dry.

He glanced once more at his plot, his hate like ice at his core as he noted the way she continued to loaf along between him and Grayson. He didn't know how she was monitoring his every move, and he no longer cared. He was God's warrior. His duty was clear, and it was a vast relief to throw aside all distractions and embrace it at last.

"How much longer to restore the port sidewall?"

"I'll have it up in forty minutes, Sir." Workman sounded weary but confident, and the Sword nodded.

"Astrogation, I want a straight-line course for Grayson."

"He's changing course, Skipper."

Honor looked up quickly at Cardones' report, and her blood ran cold. Saladin's captain had made up his mind. He was no longer maneuvering against Fearless; instead, he'd shaped his course directly for Grayson, and his challenge was obvious.

She sat very still for a moment, mind racing as she tried to find an answer, but there was none, and she cleared her throat.

"Put me through to Commander Higgins, Mark," she said quietly.

"Yes, Ma'am," Brentworth replied. There was a brief pause, then a strained voice spoke over her intercom.

"Higgins," it said.

"James, this is the Captain. How much longer on those control runs?"

"Another ten minutes, Ma'am. Maybe a bit less."

"I need them now," Honor told him flatly. "Saladin is coming back."

There was a moment of silence, and the chief engineer's voice was equally flat when he replied. "Understood, Ma'am. I'll do what I can."

Honor turned her chair to face Stephen DuMorne.

"Assume we get our remaining after impellers back in ten minutes. Where can we intercept Saladin?"

She felt her bridge crew flinch at the word "intercept," but DuMorne only bent over his console, then looked back up at her.

"On that basis, we can make a zero-range intercept one-five-two million klicks short of the planet in just over one-five-seven minutes, Ma'am. Velocity at intercept will be two-six-zero-six-eight KPS." He cleared his throat. "We'll enter missile range eleven minutes before intercept."

"Understood." Honor pinched the bridge of her nose, and her heart ached for what she was about to do to her people. They deserved far better, but she couldn't give it to them.

"Bring us around to your new course, Steve," she said. "Chief Killian, I want the belly of our wedge held towards Saladin."

"Aye, aye, Ma'am."

Fearless began her turn, and Honor turned to Cardones.

"We should be able to run a fair plot on Saladin with our belly radar, Rafe, but tracking missiles through the grav band will be difficult."

Cardones nodded, and his face was very still. Honor saw the understanding in his eyes, but she had to say it.

"I intend to hold the belly of our wedge towards her all the way in. We don't have the ammunition to stop her with missiles, so we're going to close to pointblank range unless she shears off. Set up your fire plan on the assumption that I will roll to bring our port energy broadside to bear at twenty thousand kilometers."

Cardones simply nodded once more, but someone hissed. That wasn't energy weapon range; it was suicide range.

"She won't know exactly when we intend to roll," Honor went on in that same, calm voice. "That should give us the first shot, and at that range, it won't matter how tough her sidewalls are." She held Cardones' gaze with her single eye and spoke very softly. "I'm depending on you, Rafe. Get that first broadside on target, then keep firing, whatever happens."

Matthew Simonds' grin was ugly as his ship accelerated towards Grayson. There were no fancy maneuvers for the bitch now. Harrington was still inside him, still able to intercept, but this time it would be on his terms, not hers, and he watched her projected vector stretch out to cross his own. They met 152 million kilometers short of the planet, but Fearless would never survive to reach that point.

"Andy."

"Yes, Ma'am?"

"Go aft to Auxiliary Fire Control. Take Harris with you, and make sure he's completely updated on Rafe's fire plan."

Venizelos' mouth tightened, but he nodded.

"Understood, Skipper." He hesitated a moment, then held out his hand. Honor squeezed it firmly, and he nodded once more and stepped into the lift.

The warships slanted towards one another, and there was a finality in their movements. The challenge had been issued and accepted; they would meet at an invisible point in space, and one of them would die there. There could be no other outcome, and every soul aboard them knew it.

"One hundred minutes to intercept, Sir," the astrogator reported, and Simonds glanced at his tactical officer.

"If she keeps coming in behind her wedge, we won't have very good shots until she rolls down to engage, Sir," Ash said quietly.

"Just do your best, Lieutenant."

Simonds turned back to his own plot and the crimson dot of the enemy ship with an inner sense of total certainty. Harrington wasn't going to roll for a missile duel. She was going to carry straight through and engage him beam to beam, and he felt a grudging, hate-filled respect for her. Her ship would never survive at that range, but if she reached it alive, the damage to Thunder would be terrible. He knew it, and he accepted it, for terrible or not, Thunder would live to attack Grayson. He knew that, too.

God would not permit any other result.

Neither of the maimed, half-blind ships any longer had the capability to look beyond the other even if they'd wanted to. And because they didn't, neither of them noted the wide-spaced hyper footprints as sixteen battlecruisers and their escorts suddenly emerged from hyper 23.76 light-minutes from Yeltsin's Star.

"That's it, My Lord," Captain Edwards said. "Tracking's got good reads on both impeller signatures. That's the battlecruiser at three-one-four; the one at three-two-four has to be Fearless. There's no sign of Troubadour."

"Understood." Hamish Alexander tried to keep his own emotions out of his voice as he acknowledged his flag captain's report. If Reliant couldn't see Troubadour, that meant Troubadour was dead, yet all the way here, he'd known they were almost certain to arrive too late, despite the risks he'd run with his hyper generator settings. Now he knew they hadn't, and a sense of elation warred with the blow of the destroyer's loss.

He'd spread his battlecruisers by divisions, spacing four separate formations about Grayson's side of the primary as they translated from hyper to give himself the best possible coverage, and brought them into n-space in a crash translation. He could hear someone still vomiting behind him, but he'd carried the highest possible velocity across the alpha wall with him, and it was as well he had.

Reliant's own division had come in with Grayson directly between them and Yeltsin, covering the most important arc of the half-circle, and the vectors projecting themselves across his plot told their own tale. Alexander's ships were not only ahead of the two warships on his plot but cutting their angle towards Grayson. That gave him an effective closing velocity of almost twenty thousand KPS, and the range to Saladin was barely twelve light-minutes, which meant Reliant would cross her course five-point-six light-minutes short of Grayson ... and enter extreme missile range three minutes before that.

They were in time. Despite all the odds, despite Troubadour's loss, they were in time for Grayson and HMS Fearless.

"I don't understand why Saladin isn't trying to run," Edwards muttered. "Surely she doesn't think she can fight all of us, My Lord!"

"Who knows what religious fanatics think, Captain?" Alexander smiled thinly at Reliant's commander, then looked back at his plot and hid a wince.

Fearless's course made Harrington's intentions brutally clear. It was no less than he would have expected of an officer with her record—which made him respect her courage no less—and he thanked God she wouldn't be called upon to make good her determination after all.

He raised his eyes to Alice Truman, and for the first time since she'd come aboard Reliant, some of the strain had faded from her face. She'd brought the relief force to Yeltsin two full days before it should have been possible ... and that meant Fearless would live.

But he knew from Truman's report that the cruiser's gravitics were gone, and without Troubadour, she had no one to relay from the recon drones for her. That meant Harrington couldn't know his ships had arrived unless he told her, and he turned to his com officer.

"Record for transmission to Fearless, Harry. `Captain Harrington, this is Admiral White Haven aboard HMS Reliant, closing from zero-three-one with BatCruDiv One-Eight, range twelve-point-five light-minutes. I estimate eight-two minutes before I can range on Saladin. Break off and leave her to us, Captain. You've done your job. White Haven clear.'"

"On the chip, Admiral!" the lieutenant said with a huge grin.

"Then send it, Harry—send it!" Alexander said, and leaned back with a matching grin.

The range continued to fall, and Honor knew there could be only one outcome. She'd made herself accept that from the moment Saladin started back in. She understood the fear she felt about her, for she, too, wanted to live, and she, too, was afraid. But this was why she'd put on the Queen's uniform, accepted the responsibility and privilege of serving her monarch and her people, and it didn't matter that Grayson was someone else's planet.

"Joyce."

"Yes, Ma'am?"

"I think I'd like a little music, Joyce." Metzinger blinked at her, and Honor smiled. "Punch up Hammerwell's Seventh on the intercom, please."

"Hammerwell's Seventh?" Metzinger shook herself. "Yes, Ma'am."

Honor had always loved Hammerwell. He, too, had come from Sphinx, and the cold, majestic beauty of her home world was at the heart of everything he'd ever written. Now she leaned back in her chair as the swirling strains of Manticore's greatest composer's masterwork spilled from the com, and people looked at one another, first in surprise and then in pleasure, as the voices of strings and woodwinds flowed over them.

HMS Fearless sped towards her foe, and the haunting loveliness of Hammerwell's Salute to Spring went with her.

"Fearless isn't breaking off, My Lord," Captain Hunter said, and Alexander frowned. His message must have reached Harrington over five minutes ago, but her course had never wavered.

He checked the time. At this range, it would take another five or six minutes for her reply to reach him, and he made himself sit back.

"She may be afraid Saladin will launch against the planet unless she keeps the pressure on," he said to Hunter, but his voice sounded self-convincing even to himself.

"Intercept in seven-five minutes," Simonds' astrogator reported, and the Sword nodded.

Hamish Alexander's frown deepened. Reliant had been in Yeltsin space for over thirty minutes, and still Harrington's course held steady. She was still boring in for her hopeless fight, and that didn't make any sense at all.

He had four battlecruisers, supported by twelve lighter ships, and there was no way Saladin could outrun them with their initial velocity advantage. With that much firepower bearing down on her enemy, there was no sane reason for Harrington to keep coming this way. The separation was still too great for Saladin to range on her, but unless she broke off in the next ten minutes, that was going to change.

"Dear God." The hushed whisper came from Alice Truman, and Alexander looked at her. The Commander had gone bone-white, and her lips were bloodless.

"What is it, Commander?"

"She doesn't know we're here." Truman turned to him, her face tight. "She never got your message, My Lord. Her communications are out."

Alexander's eyes went very still, and then he nodded. Of course. Harrington had already lost Troubadour, and her own acceleration was barely 2.5 KPS². That spelled battle damage, and if her com section had been destroyed as well as her gravitics—

He turned to his chief of staff.

"Time to missile range, Byron?"

"Three-niner-point-six minutes, Sir."

"Time until their vectors merge?"

"Nineteen minutes," Hunter said flatly, and Alexander's jaw clenched in pain all the worse for his earlier elation. Twenty minutes. Less than an eyeblink by the standards of the universe, yet those twenty minutes made all the difference there was, for they hadn't been in time after all.

Grayson would be safe, but they were going to see HMS Fearless die before their eyes.

The soaring finale of Salute to Spring swept to its climax and faded away, and Honor inhaled deeply. She straightened and looked at Cardones.

"Time to intercept, Guns?" she asked calmly.

"Eighteen minutes, Skipper—missile range in six-point-five."

"Very well." She laid her forearms very precisely along her command chair's arms. "Stand by point defense."

"Captain Edwards!"

"Yes, My Lord?" Reliant's captain's voice was hushed, as he, too, watched tragedy unfold before him.

"Bring the division ninety degrees to starboard. I want broadside fire on Saladin right now."

"But—" Edwards began in shock, and Alexander cut him off harshly.

"Do it, Captain!"

"At once, My Lord!"

Byron Hunter looked sidelong at his admiral and cleared his throat.

"Sir, the range is over a hundred million klicks. There's no way we can score at—"

"I know the range, Byron," Alexander never turned away from his own display, "but it's all we've got. Maybe Harrington will pick them up on radar—if she still has radar—as they close. Or maybe Saladin's suffered sensor damage of her own. If she isn't trying to break off because she doesn't know we're here, either, maybe she will if we let her know we are. Hell, maybe we'll actually score on her if she holds her course!"

He looked up at last, and his chief of staff saw the despair in his eyes.

"It's all we've got," he repeated very, very softly as Battlecruiser Division 17 turned to open its broadsides and went to rapid fire.

The first missiles spewed out from Thunder of God, and Fearless's crippled sensors couldn't see them above a half million kilometers. That gave Rafe Cardones and Carolyn Wolcott barely seven seconds to engage them, far too brief a window to use counter missiles.

Their damaged jammers and decoys fought to blind and beguile the incoming fire, and they'd learned even more about Thunder's offensive fire control than Lieutenant Ash had learned about theirs. Three-quarters of the first broadside lost lock and veered away, and computer-commanded laser clusters quivered like questing hounds, pitting their minimal prediction time against the surviving laser heads' acquisition time.

Rods of coherent light picked off targets with desperate speed, but Fearless couldn't possibly stop them all, and she didn't. Most of those which got through wasted their fury against her impenetrable belly band, but a few raced across "above" and "below" her to attack her sidewalls. Damage alarms wailed again, men and women died, weapons were wiped away, but the cruiser shook off the damage and kept closing, and there was only silence on her bridge. Honor Harrington sat immovable in her command chair, shoulders squared, like an eye of calm at the heart of that silence, and watched her plot.

Seven more minutes to intercept.

Matthew Simonds snarled as Fearless kept coming through the whirlwind of his fire. Seventy-two missiles per minute slashed out at the cruiser, his magazine levels fell like a sand castle melting in the rain, but she hadn't fired a single shot back at him, and her unflinching approach sent a chill of fear through the heart of his exhaustion-fogged rage. He was hitting her—he knew he was hitting her!—but she came on like some nerveless juggernaut only death itself could stop.

He stared at the light bead in his display, watching atmosphere spill from it like blood, and tried to understand. She was an infidel, a woman. What kept her coming for him this way?

"Intercept in five minutes, Skipper."

"Understood."

Honor's cool soprano was unshadowed by her own fear. They'd already endured Saladin's fire for six minutes and taken nine more hits, two serious, and the battlecruiser's fire would only grow more accurate as they closed.

A massive salvo hurtled through space, eighty-four missiles spawned by four battlecruisers from a base closing velocity of thirty thousand KPS. Another came behind it, and another, but the range was impossibly long.

Their drives had burned out three minutes and twelve-point-three million kilometers after launch, at a terminal velocity of almost a hundred and six thousand KPS. Now they tore onward, riding a purely ballistic course, invisible on Hamish Alexander's plot, and his stomach was a lump of iron. Thirteen minutes since launch. Even at their velocity, they would take another four minutes to enter attack range, and the chance of their scoring a hit raced downward with every second of flight time.

Fearless rocked as a pair of lasers slashed into her port side.

"Missile Six and Laser Eight gone, Captain," Commander Brentworth reported. "Dr. Montoya reports Compartment Two-Forty open to space."

"Acknowledged." Honor closed her eye in pain, for Two-Forty had been converted into an emergency ward when the casualties spilled out of sickbay. She prayed the wounded's emergency environmental slips had saved some of them, but deep inside she knew most of those people had just died.

Her ship bucked again, and fresh tidings of death and injury washed over her, but the time display on her plot ticked steadily downward. Only four more minutes. Fearless only had to last another four minutes.

"Intercept in three-point-five minutes," Lieutenant Ash said hoarsely, and Simonds nodded and slid down in his chair, bracing himself for the holocaust about to begin.

"Missiles entering attack range ... now!" Captain Hunter rasped.

A proximity alarm flashed on Lieutenant Ash's panel, a warning buzzer wailed, and a shoal of crimson dots appeared on his radar display.

The lieutenant gaped at them. They were coming in at incredible speed, and they couldn't be there. They couldn't be there!

But they were. They'd come over a hundred million kilometers while Thunder of God moved to meet them, and their very lack of drive power had helped them evade all of Thunder's remaining passive sensors. Ash's radar had a maximum range against such small targets of just over a half million kilometers, and that was less than five seconds at their velocity.

"Missiles at three-five-two!" he cried, and Simonds' head jerked towards his secondary plot.

Only five of them were close enough to attack Thunder, and they no longer had any power to adjust their trajectories—but Thunder had held her undeviating course for over two hours. They raced across her bow and rolled on attitude thrusters, bringing their laser clusters to bear down the unprotected throat of her wedge, and all five of them detonated as one.

Thunder of God bucked like a mad thing as half a dozen lasers ripped into her port beam, and Matthew Simonds went white with horror as he saw the second incoming broadside racing down upon him.

"Hard a starboard!" he shouted.

The coxswain threw the helm hard over, wrenching Thunder's vulnerable bow away from the new menace, and Simonds felt a rush of relief.

Then he realized what he'd done.

"Belay that helm order!" he screamed.

"He's turning!" Rafe Cardones shouted, and Honor jerked upright in her chair. It couldn't be! There was no—

"Roll port! All batteries, engage!"

"Engage with forward batteries!" Simonds yelled desperately.

He had no choice. Thunder was too slow on the helm, and he'd compounded his original mistake. He should have completed the turn, gotten around as quickly as he could to interpose his wounded port sidewall while he rolled to block with the top or belly of his wedge; instead, his helmsman obeyed the orders he'd been given, checking the turn to come back to port in the same plane, and Thunder hung for a few, short seconds bow-on to Fearless.

The battlecruiser's forward armament spat fire, two powerful spinal lasers blazing frantically at the target suddenly square across her bow. The first salvo wasted itself against the belly of Fearless's wedge, but the cruiser was rolling like a snake. Thunder fired again, pointblank energy fire ripped through her sidewall, and armor was no protection at that range. Air and debris vomited into space, but then her surviving broadside came to bear.

Four lasers and three far more powerful grasers went to continuous rapid fire, and there was no sidewall to stop them.

Matthew Simonds had one flaming instant to know he'd failed his God, and then HMS Fearless blew his ship apart around him.