Sabatine blinked the flashes of varicolored light from behind her eyes. The multiple quick transits they had undertaken where brutally jarring but they had succeeded in deploying a cone of missiles in a sixty degree arc with their focus on the Hikendorf's crater. The calculations had been run a half dozen times, correcting for gravity from the primary and the moon. Even though the math was complex, the astrogation computer had been built to solve multidimensional calculus that was orders of magnitude more complicated. The missiles accelerated to 0.6 of lightspeed over their three minute acceleration burns and then broke into three segments to spread the footprint. Each segment weighed a quarter of a ton, carrying enough potential energy to gut a battleship. The missiles were deployed sufficiently far enough from the alliance ships that they had remained out of sensor range. Lumps of iron without electronic signatures were far harder to detect than a star ship and so, by the time the alliance realized they had incoming, the missiles were only a few minutes from impact. Both the K-21 and the Halifax reacted as Kaiden had planned, they began to accelerate away from the moon, firing their plasma cannon at maximum rate. The plasma cannons were designed to nudge the missiles off their flight paths but at maximum velocity and at the sharp angles they were coming in, relative to the orginal positions of the two destroyers. Because they were inside the arcs of the missiles, even a direct hit provided minimal deflection. Sabatine had no doubt that both Alliance skippers were frantic to save their crippled cruiser. Kaiden's plan was, well to call it daring was to understate the point.
"Extracting," someone called as knives of ice drove into Sabatine's temples. The Vickie snapped into sidereal space 18,000 off the K-21 stern, a little more lateral than the plan had called for. Kaiden's course calculations had been refined with up to the minute observations in the matrix. His astrogation was good, better than Sabatine's, though both of them would have preferred Micha had handled it. The former captain had refused to even entertain the idea, threatening both of them with execution once they got back to Cinnabar. That might happen, but it was much, much more likely that they would be vaporized in the next few seconds. Sabatine's console lit up with a gunnery display, a redundancy incase the rapid in and out jumps knocked Gravling out of commission. As it happened she needn't have bothered. Helena was already swinging the targeting reticule onto the stern of the K-21. The destroyer had certainly detected them and its ventral guns were already swinging to bear on them, but because Kaiden knew the trajectory of the incoming missles, he knew what bearing K-21 had lain her guns upon. Their extraction wasn't perfect, but it still meant the destroyer had to swing its heavy guns nearly 140 degrees. A starships cannons floated on frictionless electromagnetic bearings, but the inertia of several tons of steel still meant they needed time to traverse. Graveling fired, the kick of the cannons slamming through the ship like a trip hammer as both barrels fire in close syncopation. The first bolt struck the hull of K-21 just aft of her turret, whipping the destroyer like a kicked dog. The second shot hit the turret housing itself, dishing in hull plating.
"Stand by for maneuver," Kaiden called, though the ship was already shifting, gravity altering with the thrusters. The plasma cannon slammed again and this time the K-21's plasma cannon errupted in a jet of blue white that slammed the destroyer sideways. Jets of pressurised air jetted from a dozen places, forming gyesers of ice crystals as seams started from the whipping of the impact.
"Hikendorf is firing," Ottis called. Sabatine tapped a key and remoted the midshipman's terminal onto her own. He had pulled up a plot position indicator which showed the tracks of the incoming missiles as cyan tracks well as the position of the two destroyers. Three of the missiles had been deflected by the combined gunfire but that still left 27 incoming projectiles. The cruiser itself was now firing with its ventral guns. The 20 centimeter guns were far heavier than those the destroyers mounted, but the rounds were coming in with nearly zero deflection. Even a direct hit wasn't sufficient to stop the missle segments as they slashed in.
"Dear god," Sabatine breathed as she scrolled the video back a few seconds. Dozens of men in rigging suits had been crawling over the hull of the cruiser, doubtlessly trying to fix the damage the Vickie had done in her initial assault. As a group they leaped from the ship and started to bound away across the moons surface. That probably didn't save them from the side scatter when the heavy guns cracked. Sabatine winced. The alliance spacers were her enemies, but she didn't take any pleasure in watching them broiled alive in their suits. The Vickie slammed as two more missiles launched. Both rounds were aimed at the distant Halifax which was desperately breaking to try to aid her crippled consort.
"Impact," Sabatine reported as the first missile struck. It was a hundred yards from the Hikendorf's stern, but the detonation was spectacular lifting a cloud of lunar dust that billowed out in all directions. A moment later the second round hit, this one less than twenty yards from the Hikendorf. The blast lifted the bow six feet into the air, the ship dropped into the ensuing crater, the lower gravity lessened the impact but that didn't discount the impact of several thousand tons of steel. Sabatine watched the back of the cruiser break before the billowing dust obscured her view. More missiles struck into the cloud, lighting it with flashes and roiling the dust. The Vickie's crew was cheering, those without duties having been watching on flat panel displays.
"Halifax is inserting!" Ottis yelled, raising Sabatine's opinion of the midshipman even further.
"What?" Kaiden demanded, looking up from the missile attack he was furiously plotting. Even as he spoke the dot on the PPI representing the Halifax wavered and vanished as the ship slipped into the matrix ahead of Kaiden's salvo.
"She is running," Sabatine said flatly, not quite daring to believe it. Either of the destroyers ought to have been able to handle the Vickie, even after she had crippled the K-21.
"RCN Viceroy, This is AFS K-21," a panic voice yelled over the 30 meter emergency band, "Cease fire, cease fire, we surrender!"
"They had crew dismounted, probably half at least," Sabatine surmised. She scrolled the image back and tapped a few commands into her console. A forest of carrots sprang up marking crewmen who had been engaged in the repair effort.
"Probably half the crew from both destroyers, maximum effort to free her," Sabatine concluded.
"RCn VIceroy, I repeated, we surrender, ceasefire!"
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