Эрик Флинт - The Service of the Sword

Of course, if Shobhana's maneuver failed and Bogey One managed to get broadside-to-broadside with Gauntlet . . .

"Helm, come starboard nine-five degrees, roll one-five degrees to port, and pitch up four-zero degrees on my mark," Shobhana said.

"Starboard nine-five, roll one-five to port, and pitch up four-zero, aye, Ma'am!" the helmswoman responded crisply, and Abigail held her breath as another double handful of seconds trickled past. Then—

" Execute! " Shobhana snapped, and HMS Gauntlet snapped up and around to starboard even as she rolled to present her broadside to her huge, charging opponent.

It was the universe's turn to hold its breath, but the sim's AI decided that Gauntlet 's unanticipated maneuver had completely surprised Bogey One's hypothetical flesh-and-blood captain. The battlecruiser held her course, her chase armament continuing to hammer away at where she'd thought Gauntlet was going to be, even as the Manticoran cruiser swerved and rolled.

And then Gauntlet 's broadside grasers swung onto target and fired.

The range was still long, and the armor protecting a battlecruiser's forward hammerhead was thick. But there was no bow wall, the range wasn't long enough, and the armor was too thin to withstand the sledgehammers of energy Shobhana Korrami sent crashing into it. It shattered, and the grasers ripped into the ship it had been supposed to protect. The range was too great for the grasers to completely disembowel a ship as big and tough as a Warlord , but they could do damage enough. The torrent of destruction smashed the battlecruiser's chase armament into wreckage, and the big ship's wedge fluctuated madly as her foreword impeller ring was blown apart.

The savagely wounded ship swung sharply to port, snatching her mangled bows away from her impudent opponent and bringing her own starboard broadside to bear. But Shobhana's helm orders had already sent Gauntlet streaking back onto her original course, and the Manticoran cruiser went bounding ahead under maximum military power at almost six hundred gravities. Wounding a kodiak max badly enough to run away from it was one thing; standing still to let it rip you apart after wounding it was quite another.

A tornado of missiles came crashing after Gauntlet from Bogey One's undamaged broadside, and Bogey Two—no longer in any doubt as to which was decoy and which was actual cruiser—charged after her, as well. Damage sidebars flickered as a handful of hits from the enemy's laser head missiles punched through Gauntlet 's sidewalls, but her active defenses were too good and her passive defenses just good enough to fend off the tide of destruction while she pulled steadily away from the lamed battlecruiser.

Bogey Two continued the pursuit for another ten minutes, but she was no match for Gauntlet without the Warlord 's support, and her skipper—or, at least, the sim's artificial intelligence—knew it. The enemy cruiser had no intention of finding herself all alone in energy range of a ship which had just crippled a battle cruiser, and she broke off before Gauntlet could lure her out from under the Warlord 's missile umbrella.

"Well, that was certainly an interestin' . . . adventure," Captain Oversteegen remarked. "All hands, secure from simulation. Division officers, we'll convene in my briefin' room for the post-simulation critique at zero-nine-hundred." He paused for a moment, then surprised Abigail once again with something which would have sounded suspiciously like a chuckle from anyone else. "Commander Blumenthal, you may consider yourself excused from the debrief, in light of your many and serious wounds. I believe that Actin' Tactical Officer Korrami can take your place today."

Abigail didn't actually see Lieutenant Stevenson's hand coming. In fact, she couldn't have analyzed exactly what it was she did see. It might have been a slight shift in the Marine's weight, or perhaps it was the way his shoulder dipped ever so slightly, or it might even been nothing more than a flicker of his eyes. Whatever it was, her own right arm moved without any conscious thought on her part. Her forearm intercepted the left hand slicing towards her head and parried his arm wide to the outside, her own left hand shot out and upwards in a palm thrust to his chin, and her torso pivoted as she twisted in a circle to her left.

The lieutenant's head snapped back as her palm impacted on his jaw, but his right arm looped up and around, and his hand snaked back down on the inside of her left elbow. His fingers closed on her upper arm, his own arm straightened, binding hers, and he shifted his weight to the outside, even as his right ankle hooked into the back of her left calf.

Abigail's feet went out from under her, and the lieutenant's considerably greater weight yanked her sideways. She managed to break his grip on her arm, but not in time to keep herself from going down hard. She hit the mat on her left shoulder and rolled quickly, just managing to avoid Stevenson as he dropped, arms outspread, to pin her. He'd misjudged her speed, and he landed hard on his belly as she spun sideways, pivoting on her buttocks, and her scything legs slashed his arms from under him.

She rolled onto her side, snapping her torso backward, and her elbow slammed hard into the back of his head. The protective headgear they both wore shielded him from the full force of the blow, but it was still enough to knock him ever so briefly off stride, and Abigail used the opportunity to continue her roll. She twisted, supple as a serpent, and landed on his back. Both hands flashed, darting up and under his armpits from behind, and he grunted as they met on the back of his neck. She exerted pressure—not very much; the hold she'd secured was dangerous—but enough for him to recognize the full-Nelson.

His right palm slapped the mat in token of surrender, and she released her hold, rolled off of him, and sat up. He followed suit, and shook his head, then removed his mouth protector and grinned at her.

"Better," he said approvingly. "Definitely better that time. If I didn't know better, I'd have thought you were really trying to hurt me!"

"Thank you . . . I think, Sir," she said after removing her own mouth protector. Actually, she wasn't entirely certain how to take his last remark. Despite her natural athleticism, hand-to-hand combat had been the hardest course for her to master at Saganami Island. She'd enjoyed the training katas, and the way in which the training had sharpened her reflexes and coordination. But she'd had problems—serious ones—when it was time for her to apply her lessons.

The reason hadn't been difficult for her to figure out; it was fixing it that had been hard.

Grayson girls were reared in a culture in which actual physical confrontations were unthinkable. Unlike boys (who everyone knew were rambunctious, obstreperous, and generally ill behaved), well brought up girls simply didn't do things like that. Grayson girls and women were to be protected by those same obstreperous boys and men, not to demean themselves by engaging in anything so crude as fisticuffs!

It was a cultural imperative which had been societized into Graysons for the better part of a thousand T-years, and Abigail had been aware of it—in an intellectual sort of way—long before she reported to Saganami Island. She'd also thought that she'd prepared herself to overcome it. Unfortunately, she'd been wrong. Despite her determination to wear down her father's resistance to her decision to pursue a naval career, she was still a product of her home world. She didn't mind the sweat, the exercise, the bruises, or even the indignity of being dumped on her highly aristocratic posterior in front of dozens of watching eyes. But the thought of actually, deliberately attacking someone else with her bare hands, even in a training situation, had been something else entirely. And to her chagrin and humiliation, her hesitation had been even more pronounced against male sparring partners.