David Weber - The Service of the Sword

"Pour it on, Tactical!" he snapped. "Communications, raise Mörder ! Get her current position—now!"

Joel Blumenthal focused on his plot more intensely than he'd ever done anything before in his life. His eyes flicked across the display, noting shifting vectors, the enemy's fire patterns, and CIC's analysis of the other side's EW and decoys, and he grunted in partial satisfaction.

Number One and Number Two were firing full broadsides, now, and their turn had taken the vulnerable open front aspects of their wedges away from Gauntlet . Worse, the penetration aids and ECM of their attacking missiles were even harder to compensate for as the threat numbers multiplied. But his Ghost Rider recon platforms were real-timing close-range observations of the other ships' EW to him, which gave CIC's computers a much better look at them than the other side had at his own electronic defenses. And good as the pirates' EW might be, it wasn't as good as Blumenthal had originally believed. Or possibly it was; it could be lack of skill on its operators' part.

Whatever the cause, the enemy's EW was slow. However effective their decoys might be, they were much slower to adapt their emissions than Manticoran decoys would have been. Perhaps even more importantly, their mother ships' onboard EW was slow to adapt to the active sensors aboard Blumenthal's remote recon platforms.

Those platforms' FTL grav-pulse transmitters fed his targeting computers with real-time data, and their radar and lidar was getting far better hits off of their targets than they should have done against jammers that capable. He wondered if the pirates even realized how close the platforms were. Or how quickly their targeting info could make its way back to Gauntlet . There was no way to tell, and it didn't really matter, he thought, as he updated his current missile salvo's attack profiles.

"Yes!"

Tyler pounded jubilantly on the arm of his command chair, and a hungry sound of triumph rippled around Fortune Hunter 's bridge as two of their laser heads broke through the Manty's defenses. The enemy cruiser's sidewall intercepted them, bending and blunting them, and it was unlikely they'd inflicted heavy damage, but it was a start, and more broadsides were already in space.

"I've got Mörder ," Tyler's com officer announced. "I'm feeding her current position directly to Tactical."

Tyler waved one hand in acknowledgment. Then he looked down at his repeater plot as Maurersberger's cruiser appeared upon it, and his eyes flamed. Mörder was closing in on the Manty from almost directly astern, and Maurersberger was nearly in range already. The Manty's superior acceleration wasn't enough to overcome the velocity advantage Mörder had built up before the enemy ship altered course.

"Two hits forward of Frame Sixty," Commander Tyson reported from Damage Control Central. "We've lost Graser Fourteen, Laser Cluster Eight and Ten, and Lidar Two. No casualties from those hits. But we took another one aft of Frame One-Zero-Niner. It took out Missile Twenty and Graser Twenty-Four, and we took heavy casualties on the energy mount."

"Understood," Captain Oversteegen replied, but his eyes were fixed on his tactical plot as he watched Blumenthal's most recent broadsides roaring down upon Number One. Good as the enemy's missile ECM was, Gauntlet 's was better, and Oversteegen's eyes glittered in anticipation as the target's counter missiles went wide and its point defense lasers fired late.

" Shit! Heavy damage to Laser Seven and Miss—"

The voice from Damage Control chopped off in mid-word, and Jerome Tyler's hungry smile vanished as Fortune Hunter heaved madly. He clung to his command chair's arms on the bucking bridge, and his face was ashen as alarms screamed and the bridge lighting flickered. At least four missiles from the Manty's last salvo had gotten through this time, and he didn't need more reports from Damage Control to know Fortune Hunter had been badly hurt.

"Captain, our accel is dropping!" the helmsman reported, and Tyler grimaced as he stabbed a quick look at his own displays. Of course their acceleration was dropping—the goddamned Manty had just blown four nodes out of their after impeller ring!

"I've lost contact with Missile Niner, Eleven, and Thirteen," the tac officer reported. "Missile Defense Seven and Niner don't respond either. And I've lost the port decoy!"

"Roll hard port!" Tyler barked. "Get our starboard broadside to bear on them!"

"Good hits on Number One!" Blumenthal announced jubilantly. "Their wedge strength is dropping, Sir!"

"Good work, Guns!" Oversteegen replied, even as he watched Gauntlet 's defensive fire annihilate an entire incoming broadside well short of laser head attack range. Number One was bleeding air and trailing debris, and her fire seemed to have dropped. And—yes, she was rolling ship to snatch her damaged flank away from Gauntlet ! But it looked like she'd left it too late to evade Blumenthal's follow-up salvo.

"Time t' hyper limit?" he demanded.

"Four minutes, Sir," Atkins responded.

"Communications, record a transmission for Midshipwoman Hearns," Oversteegen commanded.

"Standing by, Sir," Lieutenant Commander Cheney acknowledged.

"Message beg—"

" Incoming! Missiles in acquisition, bearing one-seven-five! Impact in one-five-zero seconds!"

Oversteegen's eyes snapped back to his tactical repeater as the fresh threat came roaring in from astern. It couldn't be from Number Three—not on that bearing! Which meant there was a fourth enemy ship in the system, and they'd missed her completely!

"Stern wall!" he barked. "Get it up now !"

Tyler's eyes clung to the tactical display as the Manty missiles sliced through his badly battered defenses. He no longer had a port decoy, and his EW emitters had taken heavy damage from the hits which had lacerated Fortune Hunter 's port flank. His counter missile and point defense crews did the best they could, but it wasn't going to be good enough.

Gauntlet 's missiles raced down upon their target and detonated at ranges as short as ten thousand kilometers. The powerful X-ray lasers ripped deep into Fortune Hunter , shattering bulkheads and opening compartments like knives. Energy mounts and their crews were smashed and mangled, missile tube mass-drivers arced madly as their capacitor rings shorted, and atmosphere gushed from the brutal wounds. The cruiser heaved bodily sideways, and then the last hit came slicing in, and Number One Impeller Room exploded with a cataclysmic fury that destroyed her entire forward hammerhead.

The ship tumbled madly as her wedge unbalanced, and then her inertial compensator failed.

Whether any of her crew were still alive when the savage torquing effect on her hull snapped her back scarcely mattered.

Michael Oversteegen was peripherally aware of Number One's spectacular destruction, but he had little attention to spare for it. Not with twenty-plus missiles racing straight for Gauntlet 's kilt.

Behind the mask of his features, he cursed himself for not having found whatever ship had just fired. He knew, intellectually, that Blumenthal had done extraordinarily well just to spot Number Three, given the effectiveness of these "pirates' " electronic warfare capabilities. But that was no comfort at all as he watched those missiles come.

Gauntlet 's acceleration dropped abruptly to zero as her stern wall snapped up. She was one of the first Edward Saganami-B -class ships which had added that passive defense, and this was the very first time any of them had tested it in actual combat. It had worked well enough for the LACs who'd first employed it during Eighth Fleet's decisive offensive, but a heavy cruiser was scarcely a LAC.