The rate of closure was over seventy-seven thousand KPS, which didn’t allow for a lot of accuracy from the fire control that could be squeezed into a warhead, especially not fire control dazzled by McKeon’s ECM, but one of the beams picked off her port decoy. McKeon deployed another without orders or comment, but there was no need for comments. Fearless carried only three more decoys; when they were gone, her ECM’s effectiveness would be more than halved, and she hadn’t even gotten into range of her opponent yet.

Captain Coglin’s smile was thin as his first warhead got close enough to detonate. There was no sign it had inflicted any damage, but that would come in time.

“Range coming down to twenty-three-point-four light-seconds.” Cardones’s harsh voice showed the strain of thirteen minutes under fire to which he could not reply, but there was exultation in it, as well.

“Very good, Guns.” Honor heard a shadow of matching hunger in her own voice. They’d lost another decoy, but they’d been incredibly lucky so far. Fearless was undamaged—and she had the range at last.

“Fire plan Tango on my command,” she said.

“Aye, aye, Ma’am. Setting up fire plan Tango.” The lieutenant punched commands into his systems. “Fire plan Tango locked.”

“Then you may engage, Guns.”

“Engaging.”

“Incoming fire!” Jamal snapped, and Coglin smothered a curse. Damn it, what did it take to hit that frigging ship?! He’d fired over ninety missiles so far; six of them had gotten through Fearless’s counter-fire, but the cruiser’s ECM was hellishly effective, and not one of them had scored a hit! Now Harrington was shooting back, and despite his firepower advantage, he felt a shiver of anxiety. But if the range was low enough to let her fire full-power shots, the same was true for him, he told himself firmly.

“Jesus!”

Coglin’s head jerked up as Jamal spat out the incredulous curse. A damage alarm screamed, the bridge twitched, and he whipped around to his display in panic, then relaxed convulsively. The laser warhead had savaged Sirius’s flank, ripping number four cargo hold open to space like a huge talon, but number four was empty, and Sirius had suffered no casualties. Her capabilities were unimpaired, and he swiveled his cold eyes to the tactical officer.

“Well, Jamal?” he snapped.

“They suckered me, Sir,” Jamal admitted. Sweat beaded his forehead, but his fingers were already racing across his panel. “They fired a pair of laser warheads and staggered their launch.” He pressed the commit key, locking his new firing orders into the point defense computers, and twisted around to return his captain’s look. “The interval was less than half a second, but the lead missile mounted some kind of ECM emitter, Captain. I’m not sure what it was, but it covered the gap between their launch times. The computers thought they were coming in simultaneously, and our fire solution missed the separation, so we nailed the lead bird, but the second one got through. It won’t happen again, Sir.”