Honor clung to her command chair, and her ship’s agony whiplashed through her own flesh. Her ECM panel went down. The main tactical display locked as the forward sensors died. Chief Killian’s shock frame broke, and the coxswain flew forward over his console. He thudded into a bulkhead and slid limply down it, and every damage sensor in the ship seemed to blaze in scarlet fury before her eyes.

She slammed the release on her own shock frame and lunged towards the helm.

“Look at that, Sir!” Jamal exulted.

“I see it.” Coglin fought his own exultation, but it was hard. Fearless staggered sideways and her fire died suddenly. He didn’t know exactly what Jamal had hit, but whatever it was had gutted the cruiser at last.

Yet she wasn’t dead. Her wedge was weakened and fluttering, but it was still up, and even as he watched someone was bringing her back under command. He stared at the crippled cruiser, and something hot and primitive boiled deep within him. He could run now. But Fearless was still alive. Not only alive, but battered into a bloody, broken wreck. If he left her behind, the Royal Manticoran Navy would have far more than instrument data to prove Sirius had been armed.

He sensed the danger of his own emotions and tried to fight his way through them. What had happened out here was an act of war—there were no two ways to look at that—and Haven had fired the first shot. But no one knew that except Sirius and Fearless, and Fearless was helpless behind him.

And dead men, he thought, told no tales.

He told himself he had to consider all the options, had to evaluate and decide coldly and calmly, and he knew it was a lie. He’d suffered too much at that ship’s hands to think calmly.

“Bring us about, Mr. Jamal,” he said harshly.

“… nothing left at all in the port broadside,” Alistair McKeon’s hoarse voice reported from Central Damage Control, “and the port sidewall’s down clear back to Frame Two Hundred. We’ve lost an energy torpedo and Number Two Laser out of the starboard broadside, but at least the starboard sidewall is still up.”

“And the drive?” Honor demanded.

“Still up, but not for long, Ma’am. The entire port impeller ring’s unbalanced forward. I don’t think I can hold it another fifteen minutes.”

Honor stared around her bridge, seeing the exhaustion, tasting the fear. Her ship was dying about her, and it was her fault. She’d brought them all to this by refusing to break off, by not being smarter and quicker.

“Sirius is turning, Skipper.” Rafael Cardones sat awkwardly hunched to one side, favoring obviously broken ribs, but he was still watching what was left of his sensor readouts. “She’s coming back at us!”

Honor’s eyes whipped down to the helmsman’s maneuvering display in front of her. It wasn’t as detailed as a proper tactical display, but it was still live, and she saw the angry red dot of the Q-ship swinging to decelerate savagely towards her. Coglin was coming back to make certain.