House of Steel The Honorverse Companion - By David Weber Page 0,87

a blinding, meticulously precise wall of plasma and fury that killed every unprotected satellite, missile pod, and drone in Enki orbit.

And then, as if to cap the insanity, a tidal wave of light attack craft—well over fifteen hundred of them—erupted from stealth, already in energy range of the broken wreckage which had once been a fleet. They swept in, firing savagely, and a single pass reduced every unit of Dimitri’s wall to drifting hulks . . . or worse. The LACs were at least close enough that his fortresses could fire on them, but their EW was almost as good as the capital ships’, and they deployed shoals of jammers and decoys of their own. Even the missiles which got through to them seemed to detonate completely uselessly. It was as if the impossible little vessels’ wedges had no throat or kilt to attack!

The LACs had obviously planned their approach maneuver very carefully. Their velocity relative to their victims had been very low, no more than fifteen hundred KPS, and their vector had been designed to cross the base track of Dimitri’s wall at an angle that carried them away from his forts and his own LACs. A few squadrons of the latter were in position to at least try to intercept, but those who did vanished in vicious fireballs as hurricanes of lighter but still lethal missiles ripped into their faces. Then the Manty LACs disappeared back into the invisibility of their stealth systems. And just to make certain they got away clean, that impossible Manty wall of battle blanketed the battle area with a solid cone of decoys and jammers which made it impossible for any of the surviving defenders to lock onto the fleet, elusive little targets.

Alec Dimitri stared in horror at the display from which every single starship of his fleet had been wiped without ever managing to fire a single shot. Not one. And as he stared at the spreading patterns of life pods, someone touched him on the shoulder.

He flinched, then turned quickly, and his com officer stepped back from whatever she saw in his eyes. But he stopped, made himself inhale deeply, and forced the lumpy muscles along his jaw to relax.

There was no more shouting, no more cries of disbelief, in the war room. There was only deep and utter silence, and his voice sounded unnaturally loud in his own ears when he made himself speak.

“What is it, Jendra?”

“I—” The citizen commander swallowed hard. “It’s a message from the Manties, Citizen Admiral,” she said then. “It was addressed to Citizen Admiral Theisman. I guess they don’t know he’s not here.” She was rambling, and her jaw tightened as she forced herself back under control. “It’s from their commander, Citizen Admiral.”

“White Haven?” The question came out almost incuriously, but that wasn’t the way he felt, and his eyes narrowed at her nod. “What sort of message?”

“It came in in the clear, Citizen Admiral,” she said, and held out a message board. He took it and punched the play button, and a man in the black-and-gold of a Manticoran admiral looked out of the holographic display at him. He was dark haired and broad shouldered . . . and his hard eyes were the coldest blue Alec Dimitri had ever seen.

“Admiral Theisman,” the Manty said flatly, “I call upon you to surrender this system and your surviving units immediately. We have just demonstrated that we can and will destroy any and all armed units, ships or forts, in this system without exposing our own vessels to return fire. I take no pleasure in slaughtering men and women who cannot fight back. That will not prevent me from doing precisely that, however, if you refuse to surrender, for I have no intention of exposing my own people to needless casualties. You have five minutes to accept my terms and surrender your command. If you have not done so by the end of that time, my units will resume fire . . . and we both know what the result will be. I await your response. White Haven, out.”

December 1914 PD

THE BEDSIDE COM chimed softly, and the mahogany-skinned woman’s eyes opened. The man beside her stirred, but her hand darted out and silenced the chimes before he fully waked. She looked at him for a moment, smiling gently in the light of the com’s still flashing attention signal, then eased out of bed and padded across the bedroom floor on bare feet. He’d found himself awakened