Daniel smiled faintly. They’d never build a computer that could fight battles successfully: to win, sometimes you had to do things that made no logical sense. You had to be willing to die as well, but an RCN officer was just as willing to die as any machine was.
On the attack screen, three Alliance missile tracks intersected that of the Petty. The destroyer was braking at three gravities, thrust that was certain to ripple plates and start seams. The scale was too small for certainty: to the last Daniel was able to hope that what looked like a hit was in fact a narrow miss.
The Petty’s image deformed. A ball of gas puffed around the destroyer like blood pooling beneath a corpse. The fusion bottle failed then, devouring everything astern of the blast wall in a white flash. Debris from the bow section shotgunned away. Some of the fragments might be suited crewmen, but there was no possibility of them being rescued.
“Sir!” Mon said urgently. “We’re accelerating on our previous course. I’ve figured thrust to produce the greatest possible tangent. Shall I take the conn?”
“Negative, negative!” Daniel said. “Mr. Mon, I’ll determine the Sissie’s course!”
He checked his display to make sure that he hadn’t handed off control to the BDC at some past moment and failed to retrieve it. It was absolutely critical that the course remain exactly as he’d set it.
Even if he’d guessed wrong. A ship could have only one captain, and Daniel Leary was the Princess Cecile’s at present.
One of the stern airlocks cycled with a hesitation noticeable to a spacer experienced in the Princess Cecile’s patterns. The inner valve had warped, though it must still be sealing adequately or Pasternak’s crew wouldn’t have been able to use the lock without authorization from the command console.
An RCN missile hit the Yorck forward. Three seconds later, a missile from Der Grosser Karl spitted the Alliance heavy cruiser at virtually the same frame but from starboard instead of the port side.
The Yorck continued on its previous course. A bubble of atmosphere surrounded the vessel, expanding slowly. That the cruiser stayed centered in the ball of gas showed that its High Drive had shut down: until the double impact, the Yorck had been braking hard in a desperate attempt to avoid the kill zone.
The Winckelmann was so distant from the Alliance battleship that missiles the ships launched at one another burned all their fuel, then continued on ballistic courses. At burnout the missile separated into four segments, closely spaced but nonetheless increasing the coverage area considerably. Though the difference didn’t show at the scale of Daniel’s display, he knew that the missiles about to intersect both flagships were more likely to achieve hits than those launched at closer targets.
“Tube Alpha ready!” Betts shouted. Daniel’s finger was already stroking the firing switch. The thump! of the missile launching was simultaneous with the whang! of Bett’s team breaking free the outer door of Tube Beta with a charge of explosive.
“Sir, permission to fire?” Sun begged. He was poised over the key that would trigger the four plasma cannon.
Der Grosser Karl’s Parthian shot continued its track toward the Sissie. It was very close to burnout now, but its twelve-gee acceleration had given it more than sufficient residual velocity to overhaul the corvette in another ninety seconds.
“Negative!” Daniel said. “I’ll give the order. Not till I give the order!”
Der Grosser Karl ran through the path of the Winckelmann’s first salvo. There were seven missiles; the eighth had ruptured the Yorck. Either Pettin or his Chief Missileer had done a brilliant job of targeting. It wouldn’t have been possible without Adele’s intercepted course data, but not every officer would have thought to aim so as to threaten two enemy ships at a considerable distance from one another.
A segment struck the battleship’s port outrigger, retracted since lifting from its berth on Tanais. There was a bright flash: metal blasted to vapor by kinetic energy. The secondary shock wave—the ball of glowing gas exploding from the impact at a significant fraction of light speed—hammered Der Grosser Karl’s hull, whipping the vessel despite its enormous mass.