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  "If you please, Commodore," Kinyon said. "You have full SAPL authority."

  "Open fire, SAPL," Commodore Clemons said.

  "He has a point, Kurt," Kinyon said. "From this range they can intercept our missiles all day. Let's engage the enemy more closely."

  "Aye, sir," Commodore Pounders said. "Firing control, engage the Orion."

  "Engage Orion, aye!"

  —|—

  "General," Captain Shoeguh said. "The fire we are taking from the Troy is rather... weak. Also coherent light, not pumped sunlight."

  "Your point, Captain?" Magamaj asked. The AVs had successfully entered the system and while the point defense of the Troy was better than anticipated, they were breaking through with missiles. And the grasers were shredding its unshielded surface.

  "They are using a very powerful laser, sir," Shoeguh said. "Not the SAPL system."

  "Our intelligence indicates that sometimes it takes it some time to come online," Magamaj said. "So it's no surprise—"

  "SAPL impact, port beam," Damage Control commed. "Shields down in sectors fourteen and sixteen. Heavy damage."

  "Port?" Magamaj said. "The only thing to port is..."

  "Fire is coming from second battlestation," Tactical reported. "Troy has launched missiles from two hundred missile tubes. One th... two th... six... ten... fourteen... Sixteen thousand missiles inbound! Troy is moving!"

  "What do you mean, moving?" Magamaj asked.

  "It has some sort of fusion drive!" Tactical said. "It's under acceleration. It is closing our position!"

  "All AVs!" Magamaj said. "Concentrate fire on the Troy!"

  —|—

  "What the hell was that?" Dana said.

  She'd felt lots of gravitational effects during her time at Troy. Centripetal, centrifugal, bad inertics. But this felt more like an earthquake. Then another. And another. Each involved a very weird, slight lurch. Barely perceptible.

  "That would be Orion," Hartwell said. "It seems the admiral wishes to adjust our position."

  "Let me guess," Dana said as the ringing of missiles and lasers hitting the surface increased. "We're not running away."

  —|—

  "We really need some shields," Sharp said.

  Missiles were rather easy for any defensive system to destroy. Solid as space missiles were, they were eggshells compared to even the lightest defensive laser. And defensive lasers could retarget and fire rapidly, destroying dozens, hundreds, of missiles.

  But each missile destroyed filled space with material. Material that missiles could fly through relatively unscathed but that degraded the utility of lasers.

  The term in radar was chaff. It had been picked up and used for laser/missile battle.

  What it meant was that the space between the AVs and the embattled station was filling with junk.

  Junk that the Troy plowed through as if through a metal fog. Appearing on the far side and exposing itself to full fire from the AVs.

  Of course, that also meant it was getting closer. And it didn't really have brakes.

  "How's our missile supply?" Kinyon asked.

  "Down about seven percent so far," Sharp said. "Mostly we're losing laser and missile apertures in the direction of the enemy."

  "Rotate, sir?" Pounders asked.

  "No," Kinyon said. "Hold off. Reduce fire. Let them think we're wounded."

  —|—

  "Enemy missile and laser fire falling off," tactical reported. "Star Mauler reports forward quadrant has sustained inoperability damage. Requests permission to withdraw."

  "Given what we're getting hit with," Captain Shoeguh said, "that's not surprising. Rotate again. Hexa Four is trashed from that damned SAPL. And Two and Three are not much better from missiles!"

  "Tell Star Mauler to stand by," General Magamaj said. "Retarget the Thermopylae."

  "Troy is continuing to close our position," the fleet tactical officer pointed out.

  "If we can't dodge something like that, we need to die and remove our genes from the pool," the general said. "Retarget the Thermopylae and bring us around to engage with main guns."

  —|—

  "Enemy is skewing," Sharp said.

  "Cease all fire," Kinyon said.

  "Sir, they're retargeting on the Thermopylae," Sharp pointed out.

  "Lambda can take it," Kinyon said. "They think we're busted. Let 'em. Kurt, I want to close to within knife-fighting range of that nearest AV before we open up again."

  —|—

  Now it was Thermopylae's turn to take the full weight of the enemy's still not inconsiderable fire. Tens of thousands of missiles lashed out at the battlestation but what was worse was when the sixty petawatt lasers of the AV main guns struck the relatively soft nickel-iron of the battlestation's surface.

  —|—

  "That one shot took out most of our missile tubes, Admiral," Commodore Clemons reported. "And pretty much all our defensive clusters. Not to mention raising the temperature in the whole sphere a bit. We've still got good SAPL, but that's about it."

  "Don't need much more, Commodore," Kinyon said. "Just keep pounding hell out of them. They think we're trying to ram them."

  "Looks that way from here, sir," the commodore said.

  "You've got the SAPL," the admiral said. "We've got the missiles. They're about to find out how hard it is to stop missiles when the launchers are right in their lizard faces."

  —|—

  "Time to withdraw," General Magamaj said, looking at the Fleet damage report. "Skew to head for the gate."

  "That will bring us almost in contact with the Troy," the fleet navigational officer pointed out. "And leave us broad on to the Thermopylae. Which is still firing SAPL with good effect."

  "Again, I'm sure we can dodge that... thing," the general said distastefully. "Powerful but vulnerable as I suspected. And as to the SAPL... that is why we make AVs. Go to continuous rotation. That will spread the beam."

  —|—

  The three superdreadnoughts skew turned, rotating through three dimensions while spinning to spread the power of the SAPL and keep any one shield from failing. Hundreds already had and as the beam hit any unprotected area, the refractory armor flashed into so much carbon gas. Despite the rotation, the beam often dug deep into the gargantuan ships, dipping down to the very vitals.

  —|—

  "Star Mauler reports..." the fleet damage officer said then looked up and gestured to the viewscreen.

  The Mauler had, in fact, broken in half. And with one of its halves rotating to open up unprotected vitals to the Thermopylae, that part didn't last much longer. Five kilometers of the most powerful dreadnought in the galaxy was turned to incandescent gas by the ravening power of the SAPL.

  The rear half retained enough control to rotate away from the fire, keeping its shields between its vulnerable interior and the Thermopylae. But it could barely creep along and would probably never make it to the gate and safety.

  "Pity," Magamaj said. "But we estimated losing at least one AV. And for all its vaunted power, the Troy has been less than useless in this battle."

  "As you say, General," Captain Shoeguh said. "I did not, however, appreciate that first broadside."

  "Close their missile ports and it's useless," Magamaj said.

  "Admiral," the Fleet Tactical officer said. "The Troy—!"

  —|—

  "That is more like it."

  The Troy had moved back to very close to its original position, perched "above" the gate like a raven over the entrance to a graveyard. General Magamaj had chosen to take much the same route to move to the far side of the gate and return to the Eridani system. Which meant that the three AVs and the battlestation closed to within five thousand kilometers, closer than knife-fighting range in space, before the Troy opened fire again.

  The Troy was made up of six zones, North, South, East, West, One and Two. South was the main hatch with its spiffy new Orion drive. The Orion had been hit by fifteen missiles during the course of
the battle. Each of the missiles had the kinetic equivalent of a ten-megaton nuke.

  The "minor taps" that the Orion drive was expending to accelerate the Troy were made from twenty-five megaton clean-pumped fusion bombs. The hits from missiles had impacted mostly on the edge piston area and had, in fact, sprung some of the welds. But not enough to affect function. The main effect had been to cause the acceleration vector to be slightly off. Troy movement control, which was an entire department, was still trying to figure out why, having not even noted the missile impacts. They were just scratching their heads that the Orion wasn't flying quite straight.

  North had been the direction pointed at the gate. Since the whole purpose of Troy was to be a defender at the gate, the admiral had insisted Apollo actually put some laser clusters and missile tubes on North. Apollo had gone along, reluctantly, because North wasn't scheduled for any construction for two more years. They'd installed five of each.

  Those were the missile and laser tubes taken out by the Rangora AV squadron. The missile tubes that launched sixteen thousand missiles before they were closed. The tubes, when full open, were capable of firing ten Thunderbolt missiles, each with an impact power of twenty megatons, a second.

  Zone Two was the first one worked on. And there was still much work to be done. But it was mostly complete. It still needed armoring and shield generators. But it had defensive laser clusters, two hundred laser tubes and one hundred missile tubes complete.

  It was also where all the missiles were stored.

  Zone West was not anywhere near complete. All it had were laser and missile tubes. And a missile bay Tyler had chosen not to mention to his friend Niazgol.

  Those were complete. All of them. And the missile bay was full. It also had a building laser power room. One that had only been filled with the new Destructor Terra-designed two hundred terawatt lasers.

  It had ten of them. Twenty petawatts of laser power in one room that could be fired through any of the four hundred laser ports. And, in fact, the laser room in Zone Two was capable of nine petawatts of output, not one.

  The Troy opened fire at the nearest complete AV from Zone West with full missile spread and full laser, while the Thermopylae simultaneously engaged from out-system.

  One hundred and ninety petawatts of SAPL fire hit the shields of the Star Vengeance at the same time as twenty-nine petawatts of coherent light. Nine hundred and forty-eight penetrator missiles, the survivors of the initial flight of two thousand, arrived a second later. They were mostly expended on breaching shields. But they were followed by two thousand more per second.

  The combined fire, the Troy striking down from above and Thermopylae to port and slightly up, started at the front of the AV and walked back. The desperately rolling AV managed to keep up ten percent of its shields and about a third of its armor as the fire walked down its length.

  But what emerged from the coordinated torrent of kinetic explosions and blazing laser fire was a wreck. It was listing and bleeding and completely out of control. A moment later its back broke about a third of the way down. Neither portion seemed either to have helm control or fire control.

  "Shift fire," Admiral Kinyon said, coolly. "Let's finish taking these bastards out."

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  "Magamaj should have been back by now," Lhi'Kasishaj said.

  The enemy had, naturally, increased jamming of the hypercom as soon as the gate activated. They'd gotten some minor data transmissions right after emergence and then nothing.

  "If you had much experience of battle, Star Marshall, you would know that these things never go exactly according to plan," High Marshall Gi'Bucosof said. "And despite your working group's report, it is likely that he has already taken the system."

  Or he's defeated, Lhi'Kasishaj thought.

  "As you say, High Marshall," Lhi'Kasishaj replied.

  "It is time," Gi'Bucosof said. "Early, but let us get this over with. Second wave, transfer."

  —|—

  "This thing doesn't exactly stop on a dime, does it," Admiral Kinyon said. "What's the status on damage?"

  Troy's run by the now shredded assault vectors had taken it close to the gate. The orbital dynamics were not particularly complex. Since until the Orion drive was installed the Troy didn't have a drive, and since the gate was maintained by the Grtul in an unstable orbit "local" to Sol's single inhabited planet, the Troy had never really been in a stable orbit. It had been moved slowly past the gate and headed "outbound." This eventually left it outward from the gate and moving away from it to spinward.

  To intercept the AVs, therefore, it had had to drop into a lower orbit and "swing" around the gate. It also was back in a no-win situation with the gate, going "past" it at a fairly high relative velocity. Slowing down was the next step.

  "Getting there, sir." Captain Neil Pohlman, OIC of Movement Control, was the "pilot" of the Troy. Which meant he commanded the thirty-two personnel responsible for determining how best to maneuver the battlestation. "Unless you want us to go to a higher delta-V."

  "Nope," the admiral said, holding onto the edge of the tactical station. The position of CIC and its angle to the Orion meant that the acceleration was across the compartment and slightly down. "I know why space ships don't have seat belts. Anything that's going to interfere with inertial compensators means that the crew is going to end up as goo. But I think we might need some."

  "We got some significant slosh in the water tank," Colonel Helberg said. He was holding watch at Damage Control. "And some of the equipment and salvage welded into the main bay came loose. Oh, and we've got about a third of our laser ports and half our missile ports out of action. Down about thirty percent on missiles. Internal laser systems all nominal."

  "Not bad for three AVs," Kinyon said. "Time to repair the damage?"

  "Days for some of it," Helberg replied. "We'll have about twenty percent of the missile tubes back up in a couple of—"

  "Gate activation," tactical cut in. "Unscheduled."

  "That may have to wait," Admiral Kinyon said. "Get us maneuvered back around to engagement position."

  "Recommend engage from Zone Two," Colonel Helberg said. "Zones West and North sustained the most damage."

  "Make it so," Kinyon said.

  "Maneuver to engagement position, aye," Captain Pohlman said. "Zone Two primary, aye."

  "Admiral," Captain Sharp said. "One note."

  "Yes?" Kinyon said, thinking about what little they knew about Rangora doctrine.

  "We are... rather close to the gate exit zone..."

  "How close?" Kinyon asked, looking at the tactical readout. The gate was simply one more feature to consider. But now that he considered it. "Uh-oh."

  —|—

  "Gate emergence," Squadron Tactical commed. "There are... uh..."

  The commanding officer of the Singularity didn't bother to wait for orders.

  "Maneuvering!" Captain Pequlhiw shouted. "Come about to one-four-three mark... minus twenty?"

  He also knew it was a doomed attempt. The AVs had come through the gate at a velocity of three kilometers per second. The mass of Troy filled the forward viewscreens at a range of barely thirty kilometers. It was nine kilometers across, practically as wide as the gate.

  AVs didn't maneuver on a dime, either.

  But they had forward lasers that were their heaviest weapons.

  "Open fire all forward lasers," Pequlhiw said. "Launch fire for effect all missiles."

  "It's not like we can miss," Singularity's tactical officer said, keying in the command. "All fire, full spread."

  —|—

  AV assaults used a standard doctrine that, so far, had worked with remarkable effect. AVs rarely worked as single ships and the doctrine was "the more you use, the fewer you lose." Even assaults on minor systems used three AVs in a rotating triangular formation, four hundred meters apart. For heavily defended systems as many as twenty-seven had been used in three separate nine-AV assaults. Those formations had ships on
the "inside" and "outside," which rotated in and out while simultaneously spinning to spread damage.

  They were also well prepared for collision. Many races used large kinetic impact systems to combat gate entry. Being prepared for a large asteroid hitting you on your nose was just good sense.

  There was large and then there was large. AVs were the biggest ships ever produced by any race in the local arm. In an undamaged condition, an assault vector could ram a Glatun Ritapol-class battleship and break it in half. The AV would barely be damaged.

  The three-AV squadron had just met something not only bigger than themselves but much massier. And it had, by accident more than intent, lumbered straight into their path.

  —|—

  "Sound brace for collision," Admiral Kinyon said calmly. Remotes were showing the chewing Troy was sustaining. The heavy guns of the AVs, which previously had been deployed against the Thermopylae, were hammering Sector East.

  The flip side was that East didn't have anything in it. Which meant he also couldn't engage with his own lasers.

  "Fire back, sir?" Captain Sharp asked.

  "Why waste the missiles?" Kinyon said. "This is going to be... interesting."

  —|—

  Each of the assault vectors massed four billion tons. They were traveling in an initially tight formation. As they recognized their peril, they, in more or less unison, spread out like the petals of a flower.

  However, to miss the Troy they had to have a turning ability exceeding nine gravities of acceleration. They barely had nine gravities of acceleration forward much less in lateral.

  The Mira Destroyer, Neutron Star and Singularity, in near simultaneity, impacted nose first into the Troy at an angle of thirty, thirty-three and thirty-six degrees, respectively at three wide points of Zone East.

  The combined squadron had a mass of twelve billion tons and was going more or less three kilometers per second relative to the Troy, which was slowly passing across their nose. The Troy had a mass of two point two trillion tons.

  Think of a very small deer hitting a large pickup truck. It was about the same ratio. Just a lot faster.

  The deceleration constant of their impact was approximately three thousand gravities. High compensator Glatun, and now Terran, warships could handle up to a five hundred gravities of delta-V. No ship known could handle three thousand.