“Evasion pattern Echo-Seven-One, Chief Killian,” she said.

“Aye, aye, Ma’am. Commencing Echo-Seven-One.”

Echo-Seven-One was just about the simplest evasion pattern Honor had practiced with Killian, little more than an erratically timed barrel roll along the same vector. It only moved them a few dozen kilometers either side of their base course each time they rolled, but there wasn’t a lot else Fearless could do to evade Sirius’s fire. Not unless Honor wanted to angle far enough off the base track to interpose a sidewall, and that would give away too much of her acceleration advantage over the Q-ship. Yet it wasn’t quite as useless as one might have thought, for she’d included Cardones and McKeon in the same drills. Now Cardones retained control of his active defenses, but McKeon took over the passive systems and began a deliberate jingle-jangle between the flanking decoys. Fearless’s rolling progress swept them in a complete circuit about the cruiser, and the exec shifted their power levels in a carefully timed pattern which gave the impression that the ship’s heading was veering from side to side, as well. It wasn’t, of course, but, hopefully, Sirius’s tactical officer would be forced to use up missiles covering the course changes the cruiser might be making because he couldn’t be certain she wasn’t.

Honor certainly hoped he would. The Q-ship’s missiles were still burning out before they came in, but the engagement time between salvos was too short for Cardones to wait them out. He had to launch sooner, with poorer solutions and lower counter-missile accelerations to give him more time—and range—on their impeller wedges. The laser clusters began to fire as a handful of Sirius’s shots got past his counter-missiles, and she looked up at the main visual display as incandescent bursts of brilliance pitted the starfield ahead of her. Unless she missed her guess about the warheads those missiles carried, she had to stop them at least twenty thousand kilometers short of her ship, and they looked frighteningly close.

But none of them were getting closer than a hundred thousand… yet.

· · • · ·

“Coming up on twenty-four light-seconds’ range, Captain,” Lieutenant Commander Jamal reported. “We’re getting them in closer, but those decoys of theirs are better than anything I’ve ever seen before.”

Coglin grunted acknowledgment without even looking up from his tactical display. Jamal was right. Oh, there was more than a bit of ass-covering in his remark, but Fearless’s ECM was a hell of a lot better than NavInt had believed possible, and it was making Jamal’s job a pain in the ass. It was also using up a lot of ammunition, and he hated to think about how much money each of those missiles cost. He knew damned well some braided idiot was going to climb all over him for the expense, but they cost a lot less than Sirius did.

Honor flinched as Cardones finally missed an incoming missile. It darted in to twenty-two thousand kilometers; then it vanished in a brilliant eyeblink, and she bit her lip as her worst fears were confirmed. Sirius was using laser warheads, turning each missile into a remotely targeted cluster of bomb-pumped x-ray lasers.