Of course, the raider was expecting only an unarmed merchantship. However prepared they thought they were, the sheer surprise of finding themselves suddenly broadside-to-broadside with a King’s ship was bound to shock and confuse them at least momentarily. And it was entirely possible that they wouldn’t even have closed up all of their weapons crews simply to deal with a “merchantman.”

“Stand ready, Mr. Saunders,” the Captain said calmly. “Prepare to alter course zero-nine-zero degrees to starboard and roll port at one hundred ten thousand kilometers.”

“Aye, aye, Sir,” Lieutenant Saunders acknowledged. “Standing by to alter course zero-nine-zero degrees to starboard and roll port at range of one hundred ten thousand kilometers.”

“Stand by to fire on my command, Ms. Harrington,” Bachfisch added.

“Aye, aye, Sir. Standing by to fire on your command.”

“Get ready, Commander Acedo,” Anders Dunecki said quietly. “At this range he won’t risk challenging us or screwing around demanding we surrender, so neither will we. The instant he rolls ship to clear his wedge, blow his ass out of space.”

“Yes, Sir!” Acedo agreed with a ferocious grin, and he felt just as confident as he looked. The other ship would have the advantage of knowing when she intended to alter course, but Annika had an even greater advantage. The commander of the enemy cruiser had to be completely confident that he had Annika fooled, or he would never have allowed her to come this close, and the only thing more devastating than the surprise of an ambush was the surprise of an ambusher when his intended victim turned out not to have been surprised at all.

“Coming up on one hundred ten thousand kilometers, Sir!”

“Execute your helm order, Mr. Saunders!” Thomas Bachfisch snapped.

“Aye, aye, Sir!”

War Maiden responded instantly to her helm, pivoting sharply to her right and rolling up on her left side to swing her starboard broadside up towards the raider, and Honor leaned forward, pulse hammering, mouth dry, as the icons on her plot flashed before her. It almost seemed as if it were the raider who had suddenly altered course and position as the strobing amber circle of target acquisition reached out to engulf its blood-red bead.

“Stand by, Ms. Harrington!”

“Standing by, aye, Sir.”

The amber circle reached the glowing bead of the contact and flashed over to sudden crimson, and Honor’s hand hovered above the firing key.

“Fire!”

Both ships fired in the same instant across barely a third of a light-second.

At such a short range, their grasers and lasers blasted straight through any sidewall any cruiser could have generated, and alarms screamed as deadly, focused energy ripped huge, shattered wounds through battle steel and alloy. Surprise was effectively total on both sides. Commodore Dunecki had completely deceived Captain Bachfisch into expecting Annika to be fatally unprepared, but despite his discussion with Commander Bajkusa, Dunecki had never seriously considered for a moment that War Maiden might be anything except a Silesian warship. He was totally unprepared to find himself suddenly face to face with a Manticoran heavy cruiser. War Maiden’s tautly trained crew were head and shoulders above any SN ship’s company in training and efficiency. They got off their first broadside two full seconds before Dunecki had anticipated that they could. Worse, Silesian ships tended to be missile-heavy, optimized for long-range combat and with only relatively light energy batteries, and the sheer weight of fire smashing into his ship was a stunning surprise.

But even though Dunecki was unprepared for War Maiden’s furious fire, the Manticoran ship was still smaller and more lightly armed than his own. Worse, Captain Bachfisch had assumed that Annika was a typical pirate and anticipated at least a moment or two in which to act while “Captain Denby” adjusted to the fact that the “freighter” he was stalking had suddenly transformed itself from a house tabby to a hexapuma, and he didn’t get it. It was the equivalent of a duel with submachine guns at ten paces, and both ships staggered as the deadly tide of energy sleeted into them.

Honor Harrington’s universe went mad.

She’d felt herself tightening internally during the long approach phase, felt the dryness of her mouth and the way her nerves seemed to quiver individually, dancing within her flesh as if they were naked harp strings plucked by an icy wind. She had been more afraid than she had ever been in her life, and not just for herself. She had won friendships aboard War Maiden during the long weeks of their deployment, and those friends were at risk as much as she was. And then there was Nimitz, alone in his life-support module down in Snotty Row. Her mind had shied away from the thought of what would happen to him if his module suffered battle damage… or if she herself died. ’Cats who had adopted humans almost invariably suicided if their humans died. She’d known that before she ever applied for Saganami Island, and it had almost made her abandon her dream of Navy service, for if she put herself in harm’s way, she put him there, as well, and only Nimitz’s fierce, obvious insistence that she pursue her dream had carried her to the Academy. Now the reality of what had been only an intellectual awareness was upon them both, and a dark and terrible fear—not of death or wounds, but of loss—was a cold iron lump at the core of her.

Those fears had flowed through her on the crest of a sudden visceral awareness that she was not immortal. That the bloody carnage of combat could claim her just as easily as any other member of War Maiden’s company. Despite all of her training, all of her studies, all of her lifelong interest in naval and military history, that awareness had never truly been hers until this instant. Now it was, and she had spent the slow, dragging hours as the contact gradually closed with War Maiden trying to prepare herself and wondering how she would respond when she knew it was no longer a simulation. That there were real human beings on the other side of that icon on her plot. People who would be doing their very best to kill her ship—and her—with real weapons… and whom she would be trying to kill in turn. She’d made herself face and accept that, despite her fear, and she had thought—hoped—that she was ready for whatever might happen.

She’d been wrong.

HMS War Maiden lurched like a galleon in a gale as the transfer energy of PSN Annika’s fire bled into her. The big privateer carried fewer missiles and far heavier energy weapons than her counterparts in the Silesian navy, and her grasers smashed through War Maiden’s sidewall like brimstone sledgehammers come straight from Hell. The sidewall generators did their best to bend and divert that hurricane of energy from its intended target, but four of the heavy beams struck home with demonic fury. Graser Two, Missiles Two and Four, Gravitic Two, Radar Two and Lidar Three, Missile Eight and Magazine Four, Boat Bay One and Life Support Two… Entire clusters of compartments and weapons bays turned venomous, bloody crimson on the damage control panel as enemy fire ripped and clawed its way towards War Maiden’s heart. Frantic damage control reports crashed over Honor like a Sphinxian tidal bore while the ship jerked and shuddered. Damage alarms wailed and screamed, adding their voices to the cacophony raging through the heavy cruiser’s compartments, and clouds of air and water vapor erupted from the gaping wounds torn suddenly through her armored skin.

“Heavy casualties in Missile Two!” Senior Chief Del Conte barked while secondary explosions still rolled through the hull. “Graser Six reports loss of central control, and Magazine Four is open to space! We—”