"We've lost Thomas!" someone announced, and this time Hughes swore out loud. Three raiders were already dead, but that was the fourth LAC the enemy had picked off, and Captain MacGuires Gudrid had taken a beating, as well.
"Targeting change! Stand by port!" the tac officer snapped, punching keys at her console, and Wayfarer's massive energy batteries quested hungrily as someone finally entered their range.
"Breakdown on Graser Five!" someone barked, and Aubrey heard terminal keys rattle. "Damn, damn, damn! It's operator failure!"
"Crap!" Hughes bent over her terminal. Wayfarer's people were still too raw, and it was showing. She input a query and spat a silent curse. "Override Five! Try to slave it to central!"
"Slaving," the first voice announced. "Coming in, now! Back on-line in central control!"
"Tracking!" Hughes' chief yeoman said. "Tracking... tracking... lock!"
"Fire!"
Eight grasers, each as heavy as any ship of the wall might mount, fired as one, blazing away through the "gun ports" in Wayfarers sidewall, and a battlecruiser-sized raider vanished in the brilliant flash of a failing fusion bottle.
"That's one!" someone snarled.
"Yeah, but now they know what we're armed with," someone else said grimly.
"Permission to deploy pods?" Wolcott called, but Hughes shook her head violently.
"Negative. We still haven't found their missile platforms."
Wolcott nodded unhappily. Gudrid had lost her after cargo doors to a freak hit early in the attack, crippling her missile pod system. That meant Wayfarer had the only heavy missile capacity left to Hughes, but if she revealed it against the targets she could see, the ones she couldn't see would concentrate all their fire on her.
Given Wayfarer's fragility, that would be disastrous, and Aubrey swore under his breath as the panel of his diagnostic flickered. Numbers and schematics cascaded across it as it interrogated the gravitic systems software and test programs examined the hardware. He needed Ginger and her instinct for troubleshooting, but Ginger was a casualty down in Gravitic One, and...
A red light flashed, and his display froze. His eyes darted across the schematic, and he swore again. The hit which had destroyed Gravitic One had spiked the main array. The fail-safes had protected the array itself, but the spike had bled back through the data transmission chain and burned out the primary data coupling from Gravitic Two. Fixing the problem was going to require complete replacement, and that would take hours.
"There goes Linnet!" a plotting rating announced as the convoys last regular escort blew apart.
"They're coming in on us now, Ma'am!" Wolcott said suddenly. "Bogies Seven and Eight coming up from astern and low, two-four-zero by two-three-six." Her voice was already taut; now it went even harsher as she completed her report. "Thirteen and Fourteen are swinging in from starboard and high, too, Ma'am. One-one-niner by zero-three-three. Looks like they're trying to overtake and cross our T!"
"Show me!" Hughes snapped, and Wolcott dumped her data onto the main tactical plot. The lieutenant commander studied the icons for an instant, then nodded. "Roll port and come to three-three-zero, same plane!"
"Rolling port, coming to three-three-zero, same plane, aye," Chief O'Halley acknowledged, and Wayfarer began a ponderous swerve.
"John and Andrew just nailed Bogie Nine," Hughes' yeoman reported, but the tac officer said nothing. Her eyes were glued to her display as the lumbering converted merchantman rolled up on her port side, presenting her belly to the threat from starboard, and turned back across the convoy's track. The maneuver brought her port side down toward the two cruiser-range raiders coming in from "below" her, and Hughes' fingers flew over her panel.
"Radar lock on Bogies Seven and Eight," her yeoman announced.
"Fire as you bear," Hughes replied grimly.
"There goes Gudrid," someone groaned. "She's breaking up!"
"Carol, find me those missile ships!" Hughes said, and Aubrey closed his eyes while his mind raced.
The raiders had caught the convoy at its most vulnerable moment, as it transited between grav waves in the depths of hyper-space. The two waves were over a half-light-day apart at this, their closest approach. At the convoy's best h-space speed it would take thirty hours to make the transition, and by catching the convoy here, the raiders had been able to come in under impellers. They'd not only intercepted when the merchantmen were slowest and least maneuverable but done so under conditions which let them use their own sidewalls and missiles. Worse, no one had spotted them because of the poor sensor conditions and their unexpectedly good EW until their opening salvos had savaged both destroyers and crippled Gudrid's pods. The fact that they weren't currently in a grav wave had at least let Hughes get her LACs away, and their unanticipated appearance, and power, had given the enemy pause, but it hadn't driven them off. Apparently they'd decided anything this heavily defended had to be worth capturing, and despite their own losses, they were still driving in hard. Without their missile support, Wayfarer and her remaining LACs could still take all of them, but doing anything about their missile platforms required the ability to at least see them, and with the coupling down, how the hell did Aubrey...
Wait! His eyes popped open, and he punched a query into his probe, then grinned fiercely. It was completely against The Book, and it would be cumbersome as hell, but if he took down Radar Six and routed the input from Grav Two through Six's systems to Auxiliary Radar at Junction Three-Sixty-One, then ran a hardwired shunt from AuxRad....
"Port battery firing, now!" Hughes' yeoman snapped, and fresh energy howled from Wayfarers grasers as they came to bear. Two more raiders blew up, but one of them lasted long enough to fire back. Her weaker lasers blew right through the Q-ship's underpowered sidewall and nonexistent armor to rip Graser Three, Graser Five, and Missile Seven and Nine apart, with near total casualties on both energy mounts.
Aubrey's fingers flew, setting up the required commands. He was working as much by feel as training, for no one had ever tried anything like this before, so far as he knew, but there wasn't time to work it all out properly. His execution files were quick and dirty, but they ought to do the trick, and he dropped his control box and ripped open his tool kit.
"Keep an eye on those suckers to starboard," Hughes ordered.
"Enemy missile fire shifting to us from Gudrid," Lieutenant Jansen reported from Missile Defense.
"Do your best," Hughes said grimly, and Aubrey hurled himself under the radar display, burrowing into the limited space so quickly Jansen didn't have time to get out of the way. The lieutenant gave a chopped off, surprised cry, then snatched his feet out of Aubreys path, and the tech ripped the front off the main panel. He forced himself to take a moment, making sure of his identification, then clamped the heavy alligator clips to the input terminals. He rolled onto his back, sat up, grabbed the edge of the console, and sent himself slithering across the decksole on the seat of his trousers, then rolled under Wolcott's panel.