“Very well, Citizen General,” the cold, flat voice from his com said. “Your time is up. What happens now will be on your head.” She looked out of the field of the pickup. “Switch to the all-ships frequency,” she said.

“What? What does she mean?” Thornegrave demanded, but Yang had already spun away from him. She ignored him completely, snapping urgent commands for her com officer to get her a link to the other captains. But there wasn’t time, and Thornegrave saw Harrington turn back to face the pickup.

“To all units orbiting Hades,” she said flatly. “This is Admiral Honor Harrington, Grayson Space Navy. I am in control of Hades and all of its facilities, including its orbital defenses. You are locked up by my fire control as I speak. You will immediately cut all power to your drives, shut down all active sensors, and await boarding. Any delay in the execution of or disobedience to any of those instructions will result in the destruction of the disobeying vessel. This is your first, last, and only warning. Harrington out.”

“All ships,” Yang was barking into her own microphone. “All ships, this is the Flag! Comply with all instructions from Charon! I repeat, comply—”

“Citizen Commodore—the Attila!”

Yang swung towards the master plot, and a spiked fist grabbed her stomach and squeezed as PNS Attila’s StateSec CO panicked. She couldn’t really blame him, she thought numbly—not when Harrington’s demand came at him cold that way. If that idiot Thornegrave hadn’t blustered and delayed, it might not have happened. As it was, every captain was on his or her own, and Attila’s impellers were still at standby. Yang would never know exactly what Citizen Captain Snellgrave had hoped to achieve. Perhaps he’d thought that if he got the wedge up fast enough, brought his sidewalls on-line quickly enough, he might last long enough to take Charon out with a missile strike before the orbital defenses killed his ship. Perhaps he actually thought he could maneuver clear under the cover of his wedge, though only a fool—or someone driven to fatal stupidity by panic—could have believed anything of the sort. The most likely answer was that he simply didn’t think at all; he just reacted.

Whatever he thought he was doing, it was the last mistake he ever made. Attila hadn’t even moved yet. Her emergency reaction thrusters flared wildly, and her impeller strength shot upward, spinning towards full power, and Charon’s sensors must have seen it the instant it began to change. The wedge was only beginning to form, still far too nebulous to interdict incoming fire, when eight remote graser platforms opened fire simultaneously. All eight scored direct hits, and beams that could have ripped through unprotected battle steel at three-quarters of a million kilometers smashed into her from less than two thousand. They punched straight through her hull like battering rams, shattering plating, tearing anyone and anything in their paths to splinters, and the battlecruiser’s emissions signature spiked madly as the grasers shed energy into her. Her thrusters were still firing, turning her on her long axis, and the energy fire gutted her like a gaffed shark. And then, with shocking suddenness, her fusion plants let go.