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“Direct hit, Ma’am!” Venizelos screamed, and Honor permitted herself a fierce grin of triumph as the Aggressor flagship went ballistic. Other ships peeled out of formation to maintain safe separation, but King Roger was “dead,” locked down by her own computers to simulate her total destruction at the hands of a lowly light cruiser! It was almost worth being Horrible Hemphill’s handpicked hatchet woman just to see it.

But there was still the little matter of Fearless’s own survival.

“Bring the wedge up now!” Honor’s soprano was a bit higher than usual, if far calmer than her tac officer’s voice, and Engineering’s response was instantaneous. Lieutenant Commander Santos had been standing by for over an hour; now she closed the final circuit and Fearless’s impeller wedge sprang to life.

“Helm, execute Sierra Five!”

“Sierra Five, aye,” the helmsman replied, and Fearless rolled madly on her gyros and attitude thrusters. She flipped up on her side relative to the Aggressor wall of battle, interposing her belly impeller bands just as the first Aggressor energy weapons began to fire. Incredulous fire control officers poured laser and graser fire at the tiny target which had suddenly materialized on their displays, but they were too late. The impeller bands bent and splattered their fire harmlessly, and Honor felt a huge smile transform her strong features.

“All right, Chief Killian.” She allowed herself an airy gesture at the forward visual display. “That away—full military power.”

“Yes, Ma’am!” the helmsman replied with an equally huge grin, and HMS Fearless leapt to an instant acceleration of five hundred and three standard gravities.

Fifty years of self-discipline allowed Admiral D’Orville to stop cursing as the computers permitted his command chair’s tactical display to come back up. His com systems were still locked, preventing him from doing anything about it, but at least he could see what was happening. Not that it made him feel any better. The light cruiser that had “killed” his flagship with a single broadside held its course, speeding with ever-mounting velocity on a direct reciprocal of his own fleet’s vector. Its course took it through the optimum firing arc of his entire wall, but its impeller bands laughed at his capital ships’ best efforts, and not even his light units had a hope in hell of catching it. They could never dump enough velocity to overhaul, and he could almost hear its captain’s jubilant rasberry as he sped towards safety.

“You were right, George,” he told Lewis, fighting hard to keep his voice normal. “Sonja was up to something.”

“Yes, Sir,” Lewis said quietly. He rose from his own command chair to stand at D’Orville’s shoulder and watch the only operational tactical display on the bridge. “And there’s the rest of it,” he sighed, and D’Orville winced as his chief of staff gestured at Hemphill’s main body.

The Defender wall of battle was changing its vector. It went from partial to maximum deceleration, and even as it did the entire formation shifted. Its new course cut sharply in towards the Aggressor task force’s, and the range raced downward as Sonja’s formation slowed. The separation was still too great for her to achieve the classic ideal and cross his “T,” firing her full broadsides straight into his teeth while only his leading units’ bow weapons could reply, but the obviously pre-planned maneuver, coupled with the command confusion created by King Roger’s “destruction,” was enough to let her leading units curl in around his own. The Defenders’ broadsides were suddenly ripping down his wall’s throat, and if the angle remained acute, it was still sufficient to send missiles racing in through the wide-open frontal arcs of his impeller wedges. Point defense was stopping a lot of them, but not enough, and bright, vicious battle damage codes appeared beside the light dots of his lead units as long-range beam fire ripped at those delicious, unprotected targets, as well.