If they couldn't stop, or at least severely damage, those oncoming leviathans before the two forces interpenetrated, there would be no tomorrow, and so as the range dropped to 11.4 million kilometers, they went to rapid fire at Hexapuma's maximum rate.
Janko Horster realized he'd made another mistake, one far worse than failing to open his broadsides earlier. Each of his battlecruisers had twenty-nine tubes in her broadside. With Typhoon gone, that gave him fifty-eight-two-thirds as many as the Manties had-with a minimum cycle time of thirty-five seconds. Worse, his tactical crews had no information at all on the Manties' electronic warfare capabilities, while it was quickly and dismally apparent the Manticoran CO had learned a great deal about his EW during the approach.
His people were doing their best, but seven weeks of combined simulator and hands-on training wasn't enough. It wasn't second nature to them, wasn't instinctive. The slight hesitation in their responses, the friction in the decision loops, might not have been apparent against another Verge navy. But he didn't face another Verge navy. He faced the Royal Manticoran Navy, and that was a mistake few survived.
In the next two hundred and sixteen seconds, Aivars Terekhov's cruisers and destroyers fired nine hundred and ninety attack missiles and one hundred and twenty Dazzlers and Dragon's Teeth. Seven hundred and thirteen missiles and seventy-nine of the electronic warfare birds were in space before the first salvo landed. In the same time period, Cyclone and Hurricane fired three hundred and thirty-six missiles... and no dedicated EW platforms at all.
It was a holocaust.
The Manticoran missiles went through the Monicans' electronic defenses like white-hot awls. Counter-missiles managed to kill dozens of them, point defense laser clusters killed dozens more, but for every missile that was stopped, five got through. The battlecruisers' tracking capacity was simply overwhelmed by the Dragon's Teeth's false images of incoming warheads. Their sensors were hashed by blinding bursts of static. They were a third-class navy up against what might well be the premier combat fleet of the explored galaxy, and they were outclassed in every quality but courage.
Janko Horster saw it coming. Realized even Technodyne's "experts" had underestimated the enormous technological edge the Manticoran Navy held over their own hardware. Realized, even more gallingly, how outclassed his crews-and he-were by the crews aboard those Manticoran warships. His ships were battlecruisers, armed and armored on a scale none of his opponents could match. But what use armor when hundreds upon hundreds of laser warheads ripped and tore and gouged? What use massive energy batteries that were shattered and broken, reduced to ruined battle steel and dead and dying crewmen before ever they got into range of an enemy?
Space itself seemed to shudder around the two ships writhing at the heart of the furnace, surrounded by a seething cauldron of nuclear flame as laser head after laser head detonated and hurled its fury at them. Armor and hull plating shattered, atmosphere gushed from gaping wounds like blood, and men died-some instantly, like the switching off of a light, and some screaming in broken agony, alone and trapped in the wreckage of their ships.
By the time Cyclone and Hurricane reached energy range of the first Manticoran ship, they were little more than hulks, wedges dead, power gone, trailing atmosphere, escape pods, and wreckage.
But they didn't die alone. Outclassed they might have been, with faulty training and poor doctrine, but there was nothing at all wrong with their courage. And however justified Aivars Terekhov's actions might have been, the fury they felt at his attack burned with a clear, white heat. Three hundred of their missiles reached Terekhov's squadron before the blowtorch of his own attack seared them, and the destroyer Janissary and the light cruiser Audacious died with them. Hexapuma , Warlock , Aegis , and Aria survived. Four ships, all that was left of Terekhov's squadron, every one of them severely damaged.
"— and Surgeon Commander Simmons abandoned Vigilant successfully with a pinnace full of wounded before she blew. They'll be aboard directly, Sir," Amal Nagchaudhuri said wearily. With Ansten FitzGerald still unconscious and Naomi Kaplan even more badly injured, and with Ginger Lewis working like a titan to deal with Hexapuma's brutal wounds, Nagchaudhuri was Terekhov's acting executive officer. He looked exhausted, out on his feet, and Terekhov sympathized, for he felt exactly the same.
"Good, Amal," he said crisply, and the com officer wondered where the Captain found his energy. No one could look that clear-eyed and alert after what they'd all been through, but somehow, the Captain managed it. "We'll have to find room for the wounded somewhere," he continued. "But thank God we can get a proper doctor in here!"
"Yes, Sir," Nagchaudhuri agreed. He pressed the page key, bringing up his next screen of notes. "We've lost six beta nodes in the forward ring, and eight betas and two alphas out of the after ring. Our best acceleration's about three hundred gravities, but Ginger's working on that. We're down to two grasers in the port broadside-none at all to starboard, although Ginger thinks she may be able to get one of them back eventually. We've got eight operable tubes to starboard, and eleven to port, but we shot ourselves dry. We're even out of counter-missiles. The after chase armament's pretty much trashed, and I don't think Ginger's going to be able to do anything about that. The forward chasers came through untouched, somehow. And we still have the bow wall. But if it comes to another fight, Skipper, we've got the firepower-maybe-of a destroyer, and we have exactly one starboard sidewall generator."
Terekhov grimaced. They were no unexpected revelations in Nagchaudhuri's report. Indeed, if anything surprised him it was that they had even one broadside energy mount left.
"And our people?" he asked quietly, and Nagchaudhuri winced.
"We're still working on the numbers, and we've still got people unaccounted for who may be alive in the wreckage. But so far, Skipper, it looks like sixty dead and twenty-eight wounded."
Terekhov's jaw clenched. Eighty-eight might not sound like very much compared to what the Monicans had lost. Or the other ships of his own squadron, for that matter. But Hexapuma's total company, including Marines, was only three hundred and fifty before her earlier casualties and detachments. Nagchaudhuri's numbers-which still weren't complete, he reminded himself-represented thirty percent of the people he'd taken into battle with him.
And Hexapuma was one of the lucky ships.
"What about the rest of the Squadron?"
" Aegis is the closest thing we've got to combat-capable, Sir, and she's down to sixty-two missiles and five grasers. Warlock doesn't have a single operable weapon left, and Aria is almost that bad. Lieutenant Rossi says-"
"Excuse me, Skipper." Terekhov looked up. It was Jefferson Kobe.
"Yes, Jeff? What is it?"
"Sir, Helen's arrays are picking up several Monican warships headed our way. It looks like half a dozen LACs, four destroyers, and a pair of light cruisers. And we've just received a message from an Admiral Bourmont. He demands that we surrender or be destroyed."
Terekhov looked at him, then at Nagchaudhuri. The lieutenant commander's expression was tight, his eyes dark, and Terekhov understood that, too. Obsolete though the regular Monican Navy might be, it was more than adequate to destroy his own shattered survivors.
"How long for their first unit to get here?"
"Toby says four hours for a zero/zero, Sir. Three hours, fifty minutes if they settle for a flyby firing pass."
"Very well." Terekhov strode out of the briefing room onto Hexapuma's bridge and waved for Kobe to resume his station at Communications. He felt his bridge crew's tension, felt them wanting to turn and look at him even as discipline kept them focused on their displays. These people hovered on the ragged brink of exhaustion, and they knew as well as he that they couldn't fight the Monicans.
"First, Jeff," Terekhov said calmly, "get Commander Badmachin on the FTL."
"Aye, aye, Sir."
It took less than a minute to make the connection. Hexapuma and her three battered consorts floated in space, less than nine million kilometers from Eroica Station with zero relative motion. That put the ammunition ship, still hovering at the hyper limit, 12.2 million kilometers further out.