David Weber - The Shadow of Saganami

At that range, unopposed by any sidewall, Hexapuma 's energy weapons could have disemboweled a superdreadnought. What they did to a mere heavy cruiser was unspeakable.

Anhur 's after hammerhead shattered. Heavy armor, battle steel structural members, impeller nodes, power runs, chase weapons, sensor arrays-all of them blew apart, ripped and torn like tissue paper. The energy weapons' superconductor rings erupted in volcanic secondary explosions as they arced across. The forward impeller rooms were brutally opened to space, more superconductors gave up their stored energy, and still Hexapuma 's rage tore deeper and deeper. Through internal armored bulkheads. Through weapons compartments. Through magazines. Through berthing compartments, mess compartments, damage control points, life-support rooms, and boat bays. Her fire ripped a third of the way up the full length of the central spindle before its fury was finally spent. Broadside weapons were taken from the side, unprotected by the ship's heavy side armor as the energy fire came from the one angle the ship's designers had assumed it simply could not. Still more uncontrolled power surges and secondary explosions lashed out, erupting along the flanks of the central vortex of destruction, and her after fusion plant managed to go into emergency shutdown a fraction of an instant before the Goshawk-Three reactor's unstable bottle would have failed.

The stricken cruiser reeled aside, after impeller ring completely down, wedge flickering, sidewalls stripped away from the after half of her hull. In that single firing pass, in the space of less than six seconds, HMS Hexapuma and Captain Aivars Aleksovitch Terekhov killed over thirty-five percent of her ship's company outright and wounded another nineteen percent. Thirty-one percent of Anhur 's shipboard weapons had been destroyed. Her maximum possible acceleration had been reduced by over fifty percent. She'd lost forty-seven percent of her sidewalls, all of her after alpha and beta nodes, and her Warshawski sails. Fifty percent of her power generation was gone, her after fire control and sensor arrays had been gutted, and almost two-thirds of her tactical computers had been thrown into uncontrolled shutdown by power spikes and secondary explosions.

No ship in the galaxy could survive that punishment and remain in action, no matter what incentive her crew might have to avoid surrender.

" Enemy cruiser! " The voice screaming in Terekhov's earbug was no longer hard and harsh-it was raw and ugly with sheer, naked terror. "Enemy cruiser, we surrender! We surrender! Cease fire! For God's sake, cease fire! "

For just an instant, an ugly light blazed in arctic-blue eyes that glowed now with furnace heat. The order to continue firing hovered on the tip of Terekhov's tongue, with the salt-sweet taste of blood and the copper bitterness of his own dead, crying out for vengeance. But then those eyes closed. His jaw clenched, and silence hovered on Hexapuma 's command deck while the voice of Anhur 's captain screamed for mercy.

And then Aivars Terekhov opened his eyes and jabbed a finger at Nagchaudhuri. The com officer pressed a button and swallowed.

"Live mike, Sir," he said hoarsely, and Terekhov nodded once, hard and choppy.

" Anhur ," he said in a voice colder than the space beyond Hexapuma 's hull, "this is Captain Aivars Terekhov, commanding Her Majesty's Starship Hexapuma . You will cut your wedge now. You will shut down all active sensors. You will stand by to receive my boarders. You will not resist them in any way, before or after they enter your vessel. And you will not purge your computers. If you deviate from these instructions in any detail whatsoever, I will destroy you. Is that clearly understood?"

More than one person on his own bridge swallowed hard as they recognized the icy, total sincerity of his promise. Anhur 's captain couldn't see his expression, but she didn't need to. She'd already seen what he could do.

"Understood! Understood, Captain Terekhov!" she said instantly, gabbling the words so quickly in her terror that they were almost incomprehensible. Almost. "We understand!"

"Good," Terekhov said very, very softly.

Helen Zilwicki swallowed hard. She was glad her skinsuit's helmet at least partially concealed her expression from the pinnace's other passengers, although she couldn't help wondering how many of them felt the same way.

She turned her head, glancing at the midshipman seated to her left. She would have preferred being paired with Leo Stottmeister, since neither Aikawa nor Ragnhild were available, but she hadn't been consulted. Commander FitzGerald had simply looked at the three middies still aboard Hexapuma , then jabbed with a forefinger, assigning Leo to his pinnace and Helen and Paulo d'Arezzo to the one with Commander Lewis and Lieutenant Commander Frank Henshaw, Hexapuma 's second engineer. Then he'd looked at all three midshipmen, and his expression had been grim.

"It's going to be bad over there," he'd told them flatly. "Whatever you can imagine, it's going to be worse. You three are being assigned primarily to assist me, Commander Lewis, and Commander Henshaw. Despite that, you may find yourselves in positions where you have to make on-the-spot decisions. If so, use your own judgment and keep me or Commander Lewis informed at all times. Major Kaczmarczyk and Lieutenant Kelso will be responsible for securing enemy personnel. You'll leave that to them and their Marines. Our job is to secure the ship herself, and in doing so, we will be guided by three primary considerations. First, the security and safety of our own people. Second, the need to secure the ship's systems and deal with damage which might threaten further destruction of the ship. Third, the need to prevent any acts of sabotage or data erasure. Are there any questions?"

"Yes, Sir." It had been d'Arezzo, and Helen had glanced at him from the corner of her eye.

"What is it, Mr. d'Arezzo?"

"I understand the Marines will be in charge of securing the prisoners, Sir. But what about their wounded? I'm sure we're going to be running into trapped injured personnel-and, for that matter, probably unhurt crewmembers-once we start clearing wreckage and opening damaged compartments."

"That's why you have sidearms, Mr. d'Arezzo. All of you," the Exec's eyes had bored into theirs, "remember what you're dealing with here. Commander Orban's sickbay attendants will have primary responsibility for stabilizing any wounded personnel and returning them to Hexapuma for treatment. No matter who these people are, or what they've done, we'll see to it that they receive proper medical attention. But don't make the mistake of lowering your guards simply because this ship has surrendered. At the moment, her people are probably too terrified and shocked-and grateful to be alive-to pose any threat, but don't rely on that. It only takes one lunatic holdout with a grenade or a pulse rifle to kill you or an entire work party. And it won't make you, or your parents, feel one bit better to know whoever killed you was shot himself five seconds later. Do you read me on this one, People?"

"Yes, Sir!" they'd replied in unison, and he'd nodded.

"All right." He'd jerked his head at the waiting pinnace boarding tubes. "Get aboard, then."

Now Helen looked out the port beside her as Commander Lewis' pinnace held station to port of and just below Anhur 's broken hull. It was the closest Helen had ever come to a Havenite-designed vessel, and her blood ran cold as the damage the ship had suffered truly become clear. There was a difference, she discovered, between floating here beside the wreck, looking at it with her own eyes, and even the best visual image on a display. The shattered cruiser was just to sunward of the pinnace, and drifting -wreckage-some in chunks as large as the pinnace itself-drifted hard-edged and black across Nuncio-B's brilliance. Her mind replayed Commander FitzGerald's warning, and she knew he was right. It was going to be worse than she could possibly imagine inside that murdered ship.