“I noticed!” Diaz said, as everybody else on the bridge broke into relieved gasps of laughter. “Are my controls working? I’m not seeing them active.”
“Uh, Kapitan,” Kalil said, “you are talking to the controls. Me and Senior Specialist Sasaki. We’re opening and closing the circuits manually.”
“Manually? By hand?”
“Yes, Kapitan. Right now we only have two settings for the propulsion units, completely off, or fully on.”
Diaz shook his head, looking toward Marphissa with a wondering expression. “I can live with that.”
“You may live because of that,” Marphissa said. “Tell your specialists to keep the propulsion units on full.”
“Did you hear, Senior Specialist Kalil? Keep the units on full.”
“Yes, Kapitan. Uh, there is something else I should tell you. We don’t know how long this will last.”
“What?” Diaz asked, his relieved smile fading.
“Me and Senior Specialist Sasaki had to do some, uh, creative rewiring of circuits. You saw. She and I are not, um, entirely certain what all we rerouted. Because we were in a big rush, Kapitan, because you said—”
“Yes, yes! I know what I said!”
“—and so we don’t know if something might happen because we did all that changing and cross-connecting of circuits.”
Marphissa closed her eyes and gritted her teeth.
“Senior Specialist Kalil,” Diaz said with great care, “when you say something might happen, are you talking about something like the freezer’s shorting out and the ice cream melting, or something like the ship’s blowing up?”
“Uh, Kapitan, me and Senior Specialist Sasaki think it will be something between those two things. But we don’t really know. You told us—”
“Do it as fast as possible, I know.” Diaz spread his hands toward Marphissa in a helpless gesture. “Keep the main propulsion units going, Kalil. Let me know if the ship is about to blow up.”
“Yes, Kapitan, we will tell you if that is about to happen. If we know that is about to happen.”
“Keep praying,” Marphissa muttered to Bradamont.
“Already on it,” she replied. “There’s nothing we can do for Harrier?”
“Nothing. No, wait. The Syndicate flotilla has seen that we started moving again. How far off are they? Only thirty light-seconds and still closing. But their vector is altering.” Everyone studied their displays as the Syndicate warships continued changing their paths through space. “CEO Boucher is altering course to stay on an intercept with us as we move away,” Marphissa said as the reason became apparent. “If they change track enough—”
“They might pass by out of range of Harrier?” Diaz asked. “They might, Kommodor. Harrier is obviously out of commission. They might think they can leave her to finish off later.”
Minutes ticked by, then dawning hope shattered as Marphissa saw that the last two Syndicate heavy cruisers had veered off slightly from their formation. “They’re going to hit Harrier, then rejoin. Damn Boucher!”
“One and a half minutes until they get within range of Harrier,” Diaz noted, anger straining his voice.
“Kommodor,” Bradamont said, “you’re too narrowly focused.”
“What? What the hell are you talking—”
Marphissa stopped speaking abruptly as Bradamont’s meaning became clear. She and the others had been watching only Harrier and the movements of the Syndicate ships. Perhaps the Syndicate ships and CEO Boucher had also been narrowly focused, locked onto both Harrier and Manticore as targets.
All of them had forgotten about Pele.
Kontos’s battle cruiser, still accompanied by Gryphon and Basilisk, zipped upward close by the two Syndicate heavy cruisers which had left the protection of the battleship. A battle cruiser might not be a match for a battleship, but at close range one could do an awful lot of damage to a heavy cruiser.
One of the Syndicate heavy cruisers, the one targeted by Gryphon and Basilisk, must have seen the danger at the last moment, making a sudden evasive maneuver that threw off many of the shots by the Midway cruisers. But the other Syndicate heavy cruiser caught the full force of Pele’s armament.
A barrage of hell lances and grapeshot slammed into the heavy cruiser, knocking down its shields and going on to smash into the hull. The heavy cruiser jerked sideways under the impacts, then broke into several pieces that tumbled away.
The other heavy cruiser kept going, though, as Pele, Gryphon, and Basilisk went onward out of range, unable to check their velocity or turn fast enough to quickly engage the Syndicate warship again.
But the Syndicate heavy cruiser must have been spooked by the unexpected attack and by the loss of its partner. As Harrier threw out a last volley from her remaining weaponry, the heavy cruiser twisted down and away instead of closing to hell-lance range. Instead, it pumped out two missiles, then a third, all aimed at the crippled Harrier.
Harrier’s two remaining hell lances hurled out shots aimed at the oncoming missiles, but the defensive fire faltered as the hell lances overheated.
The first two missiles struck aft, detonating simultaneously and blowing apart the after half of Harrier. The third missile hit forward, and shattered on impact, cratering the surviving half of the light cruiser but leaving it still shakily intact.
“A dud!” Diaz breathed. “I’ve never been so happy to see a warhead fail.”
“That wasn’t a dud,” Marphissa objected. “The warhead on a dud would still have detonated on impact. That was a practice missile. Some poor fool accidentally loaded a practice missile instead of a warshot.”
Bradamont looked around at the faces of the others on Manticore’s bridge. “What is it you all expect to happen to that person?”
“Summary execution, if they’re lucky,” Diaz said, his voice harsh, “which would have been already carried out, or if they’re not lucky, prolonged interrogation by the snakes on that unit to determine if that person deliberately sabotaged the attack. Once they get the confession, and snakes always get a confession regardless of whether or not their victim did anything, the person’s family will be punished as well.”
“Hell of a price for a mistake,” Bradamont muttered.
“High-profile mistakes are often lethal in the Syndicate,” Marphissa said. She pointed to her display. “Thanks to that failed missile hit, the forward portion of Harrier is still intact. Some of her crew may still be alive.”
“They’ll fort up in any remaining escape pods until the fight is over,” Diaz speculated. “Not launching, because that would make them targets again, but using the life support in the pods.”
“It’s not like we can go back for them now, so I hope you’re right,” Marphissa said with a scowl. She started to say something else, then paused. There was an odd stutter in Manticore as the heavy cruiser roared at full acceleration. “Something’s off,” she said. “Feel that?”
“Now that you mention it, yes, I feel it, too,” Diaz said, studying his readouts. “Engineering watch specialist, do you know the cause?”
The specialist, an older woman who looked near retirement age, was squinting at her own display. “Kapitan, it appears that number two main propulsion unit was damaged. Its output is fluctuating.”