Judging from the footprint of the powered track, the doors of these hangars were more than a meter thick. Plasma bolts couldn’t penetrate them. The missile from the Goldenfels’ starboard tube lit a few yards outboard and curved toward Hangar E1 ahead of a line of dazzling corruscance, the signature of matter/antimatter annihilation.
The angle on Daniel’s display made him momentarily concerned that the missile’s course would take it through the paired fire from Sun’s dorsal and ventral turrets, raking the Alliance destroyer. It didn’t, streaking on untouched till it slammed the hangar as a huge sledge.
The door, a sandwich of concrete within steel, buckled inward. Portions of the powdered core puffed out. Air jetted from the interior, touched the friction-heated facing metal, and exploded in a blaze as hot as an arc light.
The missile penetrated the hangar’s interior. The remainder of the door valve hid the destruction it did within, but sparks from the hole sprayed hundreds of feet out onto the crater floor. Heaven knew what had been inside—probably the utility vessel the base used as a hack—but it wouldn’t be of much use to the Alliance in the future.
The missile launched from the port tube dropped almost three hundred feet in splutters of radiance before its motor reached full output; one or both the High Drive feed lines had been clogged. Again, that wouldn’t have been a problem at astronomical ranges, but here it meant that the missile didn’t stabilize in time. It traced a sine curve fifty feet in amplitude until it struck the crater wall just above the door to Hangar SW1.
Rock shattered as the missile sprayed itself across the door and the face of the cliff. Antimatter still in the converter made a black flash which left behind a ragged pockmark.
The guns continued to hammer. The jolts from the 10-cm turrets were scarcely perceptible but the 15-cm weapons made the Goldenfels shudder violently. Missiles were rolling from the magazine toward both launchers, but only the port tube bore on occupied hangars.
Reloading took a maddening seventy-five seconds, but there was no help for it. Missiles were massive items, dense as well as heavy, and they simply couldn’t be flung around like footballs.
The Goldenfels slithered above the crater like a snake, twisted by the recoil of her lateral turrets. Her wreck and recovery at Morzanga had warped her frame, probably beyond even a major dockyard’s ability to correct, but the pounding of these plasma cannon was beyond anything she’d have been able to take for long on the day she came from her builders. A belly plate fell off, winking with the reflection of the big guns.
Air-loss alarms were sounding; the crew already wore the light vacuum suits that were standard for emergency use, but Daniel knew from past experience that now some of the spacers would be locking down their faceplates. He didn’t have time for that himself, nor was there need—yet.
The port-tube icon glowed green, then launched its missile automatically because Daniel hadn’t countermanded the pre-programmed attack sequence. This round lit instantly, so close to the tube that Daniel could feel the bacon-frying sizzle of antimatter in the exhaust slaking its fury against the Goldenfels’ hull.
The missile’s course curved so slightly that it looked like a straight line on Daniel’s display. It struck squarely in the center of the door to SW3, punching through. For an instant there was nothing more; then a blast blew the hangar door into the crater and a second blast spewed fire and debris as far as the wreck of the destroyer Sun was working over.
A wave of gas and plasma made the Goldenfels yaw to starboard. The 15-cm guns couldn’t correct quickly enough and ripped bursts high and low, gouging the crater floor to starboard and the top of the cliffs to port. Daniel’s harness caught him; the shock would otherwise have flung him out of the console.
Icons pulsed across the top of the command display like a tiara of rubies. A dozen compartments were open to vacuum. Daniel slammed down his faceshield; some of the air-tight doors had dropped into place but others were jammed in their tracks. You couldn’t blame them. . . . The portside 15-cm turrets had stopped firing, and the channel carrying the reload missile to the port launcher had kinked when the missile leaped from its track and fell back.