"I'm sorry to hear you won't listen to reason," Wolfe said. As Wolfe talked, Russo could see his sensor operators were having trouble with their screens as the Nemesis blasted them with high-power radar at close range and appeared to be hitting the optical sensors with diffused, low-power fire from their forward laser cannons. If it wasn't for the fact the Nemesis had her beacon lit up, they'd almost not be able to tell who the hell it was.

Russo's stomach dropped. Realization of what Wolfe was doing hit him just as the first alarms went off.

Boom!

Something slammed into the Implacable with enough force it shook the deck. Alarms blared, and he heard someone shouting they'd been hit with a kinetic strike. Then all hell broke loose.

"Incoming missiles!"

"The Nemesis hasn't fired any—"

"Not from her!" the tactical officer shouted. "We're surrounded by—"

The deck heaved as the battlecruiser took hits along both flanks and on her dorsal surface right behind engineering. He could feel the ship losing power as the engines lagged and the artificial gravity compensated for the fluctuating RDS fields.

Boom!

Another hit took them in the aft as two more salvos from the flanks ripped into them. The automated point defense was able to take out some, but the ships firing on them were too close. Amid the sensor washout from the Nemesis's tricks, Russo could see the other three Fed destroyers had somehow moved to within a hundred thousand kilometers. They were within range of the Implacable's lateral launchers, but the flanking destroyers had picked their targets carefully and had hit the tubes with laser cannon fire while their Shrikes tore into the hull.

Smoke billowed from the air-handler vents, acrid and black, as more hits from nuclear missiles blew chunks off the battlecruiser. The tactical officer and CIC tried to fight the ship as best they could in the absence of leadership from either him or Kohl, but the destroyers were now moving and hard to get a lock on. They tore into the floundering Implacable like a pack of wolves, hammering them with lasers and mag-cannons from close range to devastating effect.

"I gave you more of a chance than you gave any of the innocent people you've slaughtered, you son of a bitch," Wolfe's voice drifted from the com over the din of shouts and alarms. "Now, you can die with your ship."

"Goddamn you, Wolfe!" Kohl raged, his eyes red-rimmed, foam from his mouth clinging to his moustache. "Damn you to Hell!"

Russo looked up at the main display in time to see the Nemesis unload a full volley on them before the deck heaved and his vision went black. His last conscious thought was of relief that this godforsaken assignment was finally fucking over.

* * *

"Anybody damaged or have casualties?" Jackson asked over the open channel.

"Broadsword took some light hull damage from a direct blast from their point defense," Risher said. "No casualties or injuries."