The heavy laser heads detonated in rapid succession, bubbles of brimstone birthing x-ray lasers that ripped and tore at their targets. The superdreadnoughts' wedges intercepted many of those lasers. Their sidewalls bent and attenuated others. But nothing built by man could have stopped all of them.
The massively armored superdreadnoughts shuddered and bucked as transfer energy blasted into them. Armor and hull plating splintered, atmosphere gushed from gaping holes, and weapons, communications arrays, and sensors were torn apart. HMS Victorious staggered as her forward impeller ring went into emergency shutdown. Her wedge faltered, and then she staggered again, like a seasick galleon, as a half-dozen more laser heads detonated almost directly ahead of her. Her bow wall stopped most of the lasers, but at least twelve stabbed straight through it, hammering the massively armored face of her forward hammerhead. Her forward point defense clusters went down, her chase energy weapons were pounded into broken rubble, and one of her forward impeller rooms blew up as the massive capacitors shorted across.
For a moment, it looked like that was the extent of her damage. But deep inside her, invisible from the outside, the energy spike of that demolished impeller room drove deeper and deeper. Circuit breakers failed to stop it, control runs exploded, power conduits blew up in deadly sequence, and then, suddenly, the ship herself simply exploded.
There were no small craft, no life pods. No survivors. One moment she was there; the next she was an expanding sphere of fire.
Her squadron mates were more fortunate. None of them escaped unscathed, however, and HMS Warrior lost over half her port sidewall. HMS Ellen D'Orville lost half the beta nodes in her after impeller ring, and HMS Bellona's port broadside point defense clusters and gravitic arrays were beaten into scrap. HMS Regulus escaped with only minor damage, but HMS Marduk lost a quarter of her broadside energy weapons. All of them survived, and their ability to deploy pods remained intact, but the follow-up salvo from Second Fleet was close on the heels of the first, and the first salvo from Fifth Fleet came crunching in almost simultaneously.
Third Fleet's defenses were simply spread too thin. Twelve thousand missiles came pounding down on it from Lester Tourville. Another 11,500 came crashing in from Genevieve Chin, and there simply weren't enough counter-missiles and Katanas to stop them all.
Second Fleet's second salvo concentrated on the same targets as the first, and those targets' were already damaged, their defenses thinned. Warrior blew up, and Marduk took a catastrophic series of hits which virtually destroyed her starboard sidewall. Bellona staggered, impeller wedge dying, life pods beginning to fan out from her hulk. Ellen D'Orville took at least twenty more hits, but continued to run, and Regulus moved up on Marduk's naked starboard flank, trying to shield her consort from the third salvo already streaking towards them.
The gallant effort to protect her sister cost Regulus her life twenty-three seconds later as over eight hundred laser heads took the only target they could see.
"We just lost Bayard, Sir," Molly DeLaney said, and Lester Tourville nodded, hoping his expression disguised his pain.
Second Fleet had sprung the trap exactly as planned, except for the fact that it had been supposed to close on Eighth Fleet, as well, and he tried to feel grateful. But it was hard. There came a time when phrases like "favorable rates of exchange," however accurate, were cold comfort in the face of so much death, so much destruction. And however hopeless Third Fleet's position, there was nothing at all wrong with the Manties' determination and sheer guts.
They recognized Second Fleet as the greater prize-and the greater threat-despite its previous damages. It was still the larger of Tourville's two task forces, and the one in the best position to strike Sphinx, and they were pouring fire into his bleeding ranks. He'd already lost three more superdreadnoughts, counting Bayard, and it was only a matter of time until he lost more.
Theodosia Kuzak stared into the master plot as the Havenites task forces sledgehammered her fleet again and again. Battle Squadron Ninety-One was effectively destroyed in the first sixty seconds, and Second Fleet's follow-up salvos switched to BS 11. Her own missiles were striking back, and the system reconnaissance platforms showed fireballs glaring amid Second Fleet's formation, but she knew the exchange rate was completely in the Republic's favor, and there was nothing she could do about it.
"Incoming! Many incoming!" Commander Latrell barked suddenly, and HMS King Roger III heaved like a maddened animal as a storm of laser heads blasted into her.
"Jesus Christ! What the fuck is that?" Commander Spiropoulo demanded harshly as RHNS Victorieux blew up.
"It's got to be that new targeting system they used at Lovat," Captain Sabourin replied harshly. "Somebody over there has it, after all. But it can't be coming from more than a few of their ships, thank God!"
"Any is too goddamned many, NicodŠme," Genevieve Chin grated. "And I don't like whoever the hell it is's targeting!" she added, and Sabourin nodded.
Most of Fifth Fleet's wallers were more than holding their own against the Manties' fire. That was largely because at least three-quarters of that fire was still raining down on Lester Tourville's superdreadnoughts. Probably, Chin thought, because Tourville was still headed in-system. It looked as if Kuzak had decided stopping him was more important than shooting at ships which could vanish into hyper any time they chose.
But if most of Third Fleet's missiles were headed in-system, three or four of Kuzak's ships were firing on Chin's wall with deadly accuracy. Their missiles seemed threaded through the cauldron of counter-missiles, EW, and blazing laser clusters like awls. It was as if they could literally see where they were going, think for themselves, and they were coming in behind a deadly shield of closely coordinated electronic warfare platforms. Her missile defenses were hopelessly outclassed against them, and whoever was coordinating their targeting had chosen one of her battle squadrons and begun working her way through it.
Each individual salvo wasn't particularly large. Indeed, by the standards of pod-based combat, they were ludicrously tiny. But all of them seemed to be getting through. None of them wandered off. None wasted themselves by detonating high, or low, where t their target's impeller wedge might stop them. And as they sent their avalanches of lasers through that target's wavering sidewall in deadly succession, they killed.
"Goddamn it!" she heard Sabourin say with soft, passionate venom as RHNS Lancelot slewed suddenly out of formation, impeller wedge dying.
"Is there any way to identify where this is coming from, Andrianna?" she demanded.
"No way, Ma'am," Spiropoulo said through gritted teeth. "They could be coming from anywhere in the middle of that mess." She jabbed an angry index finger at the crimson icons of Manticoran capital ships. "There's no way to localize who's actually firing the damned things!"
"Just thank God there aren't more of them, Ma'am," Sabourin said tightly. "It looks like Admiral Theisman was right. If we'd waited until they had that thing in general deployment, we'd have been toast."
Dame Alice Truman watched her plot sickly as missile after missile slammed its lasers into Third Fleet's superdreadnoughts. Her carriers were taking hits, too, but nothing compared to the agony of Kuzak's wall. It looked to Truman as if most of the hits on her carriers were overs or unders-MDMs which had lost the wallers on which they'd been targeted and found one of her carriers instead.
The bastards figure they can always get around to killing carriers later, she thought coldly, and felt an incredible stab of guilt as she realized how grateful she was. Yet she couldn't help it, for the people aboard her ships were her people, the people for whom she was responsible, and she wanted them to live.