The Tahn antimissile officer had seen the hit on the Swampscott, seen the Kali begin its aimless orbiting, and told the Kiso's target acquisition systems to ignore the now-harmless missile.
The Kali came alive! The Tahn officer's hand was moving toward his computer's controls when it hit.
The missile struck the Kiso in its drivetubes, ripping apart the AM2 fuel storage and sending the antimatter cascading toward the ship's bow.
The Kiso vanished in one hellish, soundless explosion.
Foss had time to see the flash light the inside of the bridge, to watch it turn red, and to realize that the red was his own blood, spraying across his suit's faceplate, before his eyes looked beyond anything and he sagged forward onto his controls.
Before Sten reached the CIC, his new command center, the Swampscott, took three more hits.
Sten struggled on, praying there would still be something left to command.
Most unusual, he thought, seeing one of the corridors twist and warp in front of him. I am hallucinating. But I am not wounded.
He was not hallucinating. One of the Tahn rockets had hit near one of the ship's mainframes, and the Swampscott was bent and twisted.
Sten forced his way through the warped steel tube. His mind recorded observations as his ship rocked around him and explosions sent shock waves through the hulclass="underline"
Here was a casualty clearing station. Shock blast had killed everyone inside it but left them frozen. Here was one of Sten's med officers, his arms still in the access holes of a surgical bubblepak. Behind him were his corpsmen standing ready. And the casualty inside the pak.
All dead.
Here was an antifire-foam-flooded compartment, where the sensors had evidently gone wild and dumped foam on a fire that could not exist. Sten saw three suited forms struggling toward the exit through the foam but had no time to help them.
A temporary damage-control station, where an officer—Sten recognized the black-anodized suit arms that were used to denote command rank—was calmly ordering damage teams into action. Sten wondered if that was the drawling, unruffleable control officer he had been on the com with earlier.
And then he found the hatchway into the CIC, undogged the two hatches, and returned to command of the Swampscott.
Coms chattered at him, and specialists tried to keep the chaos in some sort of order:
"Forward Goblin launchers do not respond to inquiry. No verbal reports from stations."
"Secondary engine room reports damage now under control."
"All controls to forward laser station fail to respond."
There wasn't much left of the Swampscott to command. But still, filling a screen—and not a magnified view this time—was the bulk of the Forez. Lady Atago's flagship.
The battleship was vomiting fire, firing everything—anything—to stop the Swampscott.
There was an extremely unauthorized broadcast: "Ah hae y' noo, lass." The chortle came from the weapons station on the deck above. Then Kilgour launched two Vydals, one slaved to the missile under his control, and sent them surely homing into the Forez.
Fire fed on oxygen, and flame and explosion mushroomed down the corridors of the Forez. The explosion tore a wall chart from a bulkhead and sent it pinwheeling into Admiral Deska. His eviscerated corpse spun back into Lady Atago, smashing her helmet into a control panel.
She would not return to awareness until long after the battle ended. But command switched smoothly to the Forez's own CO. The battle continued.
The next strike was on the Swampscott.
It was deadly, crashing through the armor plating into the ship's main engine room before the weapons officer commanding it touched the det switch.
A hell of sudden fire filled the engine room and then disappeared.
Tapia had been swearing at the engine temperature gauges, praying that they were lying and knowing they were not, when the rocket exploded. A tiny bit of shrapnel cut through a superpressure hydraulic line. Hydraulic fluid razored out at more than 10,000 feet per second.
The fluid cut Tapia in half as neatly as a surgical saw.
The Swampscott went dead in space, still holding its original speed and course.
The two ships, the Forez and the Swampscott, slid toward each other. None of the Tahn warships could chance firing—the odds of a missile hitting the wrong target were too great.
The battleship loomed up toward the Swampscott.
And the cruiser's chaingunners found a target.
The chainguns that lined the two hideous midships bulges were useful only against ground troops or close-range in-atmosphere targets. But now, in deep space, the gunners had a target.
They held their firing keys down; their shells yammered toward the Forez and tore the battleship's sides open as if they were tinfoil.
Sten stood on his command deck wordlessly. There was nothing left for him to order.
Another explosion rocked the Swampscott, and Sten fought to stay on his feet.
A hatch slammed open, and Kilgour dropped down into the CIC. "Tha's nae left f'r me to do ae there," he explained. "Shall we b' boardin't th' clot?" He still sounded unconcerned.
A larger blast shattered around them, and Sten was down, losing consciousness for bare seconds. He recovered groggily and got back to his feet.
Where was his CIC officer?
Oh. There. Lying with a splinter of steel through his faceplate.
Sten numbly saw that there were still two screens alive in the CIC. One showed the fast-vanishing drives of the convoy, the other, the gutted hulk of the Forez, still vomiting fire at him.
Where was Alex? He might know what to do.
Sten stumbled over a suit. Kilgour lay sprawled at his feet. Sten bent and touched monitors. All showed zero.
Sten wove toward a still-functioning com panel. His gloved fingers found a switch, and he began broadcasting.
"Y...Y...Y..."
The universal signal for surrender.
And would they never stop? And would they never receive?
The Forez ceased fire.
Sten slumped down on the deck and waited for the Tahn boarding party. Maybe they wouldn't board. Maybe they would just stand off and obliterate his ship.
And Sten did not care what they did.
He was very tired of the killing.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
CHRIS BUNCH is a Ranger—an airborne-qualified Vietnam Vet—who's written about phenomena as varied as the Hell's Angels, the Rolling Stones, and Ronald Reagan. ALLAN COLE grew up in the CIA in odd spots like Okinawa, Cyprus, and Taiwan. He's been a professional chef, investigative reporter, and national news editor of a major West Coast daily newspaper. He's won half a dozen writing awards in the process.
BUNCH AND COLE, friends since high school, have collaborated on everything from the world's worst pornographic novel to over fifty television scripts, as well as a feature movie. This is their second novel.