David Weber - Torch of Freedom

"Direct hit, Tracking Seven!"

"Direct hit, Graser Five!"

"Point Defense Niner and Ten in local control!"

"Missile Twenty-Three out of the net!"

"Fusion One, emergency shutdown!"

"CIC, direct hit! I can't get anyone on the com, Citizen Commander!"

The damage control reports poured in, a mounting litany of destruction and death. The master plot went dead as the Combat Information Center dropped out of the circuit, and it stayed dead as the auxiliaries which should have taken over to drive it died under hits of their own.

"Direct hit, Impeller Two!"

Leon Trotsky 's acceleration faltered.

"Missile Defense Four is down, Citizen Commander! No response from on-mount personnel!"

"Dir—"

Adrian Luff, Millicent Hartman, Pierre Stravinsky, and every other man and woman on Leon Trotsky 's flag bridge died instantly as the trailer—the lonely, orphaned, autonomously-controlled missile no one had noticed in time—slipped through the flagship's shattered defenses like a dagger.

Trotsky and Mao Tse-tung staggered onward, too hideously maimed to do more than defend themselves feebly, and Hammer Force's sixth salvo went streaking in on PNES George Washington and PNS Ho Chi Minh .

Citizen Commodore Santander Konidis stared at his plot, white-faced.

Citizen Commodore Luff's flagship was still there—barely—but there was no way to misread the lurid damage codes under her icon. Even if Luff was still somehow, impossibly, alive over there, his communications were clearly out. Which meant Santander Konidis was now the senior surviving officer of the People's Navy in Exile.

What there was of it.

He shook himself and made himself look up from his plot and meet his chief of staff's eyes.

"Pass the word to all units," he said harshly. "I'm assuming command."

"Yes, Citizen Commodore!" Citizen Commander Gino Sanchez responded immediately, and Konidis gave him a tight smile. He'd never really liked Sanchez—the man was too brutal when it came to shipboard discipline, and he had an undeniable tendency to browbeat and terrorize junior officers—but there wasn't a gram of quitter anywhere in him, and at the moment, Konidis found him remarkably reassuring.

Then the citizen commodore returned his attention to his plot, and any reassurance Sanchez might have engendered disappeared as George Washington and Ho Chi Minh staggered out of the missile holocaust.

Washington 's tactical links were still up, although Sanchez would be astonished if even half her offensive and defensive weapons remained effective. Ho Chi Minh , on the other hand, was completely out of the net—another clear mission-kill.

My God, I'm down to three effective battlecruisers—and that's counting Washington as effective!

It didn't seem possible. Surely six heavy cruisers couldn't have mangled the PNE's battle cruisers this way!

It's those goddammed pods. They just keep pouring them on, and they're ripping us to pieces!

Adrian Luff's third salvo came down on Hammer Force like a guillotine.

SLNS Sniper blew up as fresh hits blasted through her defenses, adding catastrophically to her earlier damage.

There were no life pods.

David Carte's Sharpshooter lurched off course as half the beta nodes in her forward ring went down. More hits slammed into her like the hammers of hell, yet somehow she hauled back on course, maintaining her heading, her surviving missile defenses still in operation.

More missiles pounded down on the destroyer William the Conqueror . Her desperate point defense stopped twenty-seven laser heads short of detonation range; eleven others got through, and Conqueror blew up as spectacularly as Sniper . . . and with just as few survivors.

And then, with a sort of horrible inevitability, five laser heads got past the tattered defensive umbrella of Luiz Rozsak's two surviving cruisers and his three remaining destroyers. Bomb-pumped lasers ripped out yet again, enveloping SLNS Masquerade 's unarmored hull in a spider web of lightning, and suddenly Rozsak had no more arsenal ships.

Citizen Commodore Konidis grinned savagely. Chao Kung Ming 's master plot was less detailed than Leon Trotsky 's had been, but it was good enough for him to know the impeller signature of the enemy's second ammunition ship had just disappeared. Without light-speed confirmation, he couldn't be positive that it had actually been destroyed . If it hadn't, it could probably roll another three or four pod waves before the PNE's next salvo arrived to finish it off, but either way, its end was in sight.

I just hope to hell ours isn't, too , he thought grimly as Hammer Force's seventh salvo came rumbling in.

Luiz Rozsak was down to three cruisers, two of them badly mangled, and four destroyers, one of them crippled. That was all he had left, and the missile waves which had already been launched were the only ones he was going to get.

There were three hundred sixty missiles in each of those waves, but all three of his remaining cruisers between them could manage only a third of them, and that wasn't going to be good enough.

Which was why he'd ordered Charlie-Zulu-Omega. They'd trained for the possibility, but they'd never tried it in action. As far as Rozsak knew, no one had, and he would never have attempted it against an intact missile defense. But Hammer Force had already torn great, bleeding wounds in the StateSec renegades' anti-missile defenses. It might just work . . . and it wasn't as if he had a lot of options.

There wasn't time to implement Charlie-Zulu-Omega before his next two waves arrived, but the one after that would be different.

Santander Konidis felt his shoulders tightening as the seventh enemy salvo came slashing into the PNE. It was like watching storm-driven surf, he thought. Like watching wave after wave pound forward, driving itself up over the beach, ripping at the sand dunes behind it.

"Impact in five seconds!"

Citizen Lieutenant Commander Rachel Malenkov's soprano was higher and shriller than usual. Not that Citizen Commander Jarko Laurent blamed her. With Leon Trotsky 's command deck completely cut out of the brutally wounded ship's internal communications net, she'd inherited command of what was left of Trotsky 's tactical department . . . exactly as Laurent had inherited command of the entire ship from Citizen Captain Vergnier.

Not that either one of us is going to have to worry about it much longer .

"—ponse from Missile-Seventeen!"

He heard the litany of damage reports still coming in, still being faithfully attended to by the people fighting his ship's desperate wounds.

"Negative response Search and Rescue Bravo-Three-Alpha-Niner! Negative res—"

I wish there was going to be time to tell them how proud of them I am , he thought, as two fresh salvos coalesced out of the onrushing mass of shipkiller missiles. Obviously, they'd hammered the other side's control platforms into scrap. Too bad that hadn't been enough to stop what was about to happen.

Citizen Commodore Konidis felt a surge of hope as he watched the same pattern emerge.

For the first time, the enemy's targeting had gone after the wrong prey. The hammer of destruction came crashing down on what was left of Mao Tse-tung and Leonid Trotsky , and neither one of them was contributing a thing to the PNE's offensive fire.