Read Online Accord of Honor by Kevin O. McLaughlin - Free Book Online Page A

It’s Governor Clarke on a laser comm. Channel nine.”
    I tapped a button to open the channel. “George, what’s up?” I said. “I’m sure you’re aware that we’re about to be pretty busy over here.”
    “Nick, what the hell do you think you’re doing? I appreciate the shots you fired at the rocks, and I hope they work. I’ve already ordered everyone to evacuate the station anyway. We’ve got a few people left here, but not many.”
    “Here?” I asked. “You’re on the station? George, you need to get out of there. It’s got to be their primary target.” There was no way I could adequately defend the station and move to engage the enemy ships at the same time. Most of Defender’s missile defense was fairly short range stuff.
    “I’ll get out when my people get out, Nick. That’s beside the point. Your ship... I guess that’s what you wanted to get from R&D?”
    “Well yes, George. I did say it was something we didn’t want them to get their hands on, I believe.” I smiled.
    “I’d be remiss as a government official if I did not inform you that your actions are in violation of the Lunar Accord treaty and subject to mandatory death sentence by every nation on Earth,” Clarke replied. “But since this is Mars, not Earth, and you’re trying to save our butts up here, I’m going to quietly wish you good luck and good hunting. Be careful, Nick.” Then his eyes widened. My own gaze shot to our plot, and a moment later six new signatures appeared on the screen, accelerating lightly on a vector that took them closer to both us and the station.
    “I see them, George. Got to cut this short now, we’re about to get some customers.”
    I cut the link. We had strong tracking on all six ships now, and the computer had compressed the red probability matrix from where it thought they might be, down to where they could plausibly maneuver next. They were well off to one side of the track I’d fired those missile volleys down. Off to the side and high, but burning hard now to change their vector and come around at us. On our present course, we’d close to powered missile range in under a minute.
    Then our first shots connected with the asteroids, and all three signatures vanished from the screen. So the first attack was foiled. And the enemy knew we had weapons to worry about. Almost in answer to the explosions, the computer showed a large number of bright red dots break off from the enemy ships and start moving toward my own ship.
    “Con, radar: missiles inbound. I track thirty six missiles.”
    Interesting. Either their missile envelope was much bigger than ours, or they were firing basically blind. “Hold fire,” I said. “Don’t return fire until we’re in our envelope, then full rapid fire, two volleys per enemy ship, mixed nukes and sabots.” Six of those missiles had come from each enemy ship. Was that their number of tubes? Or just a test of our reactions? “Stand by on missile countermeasures. Helm, get us out of the incoming missile path. I think those birds will just be drifting by the time they reach us, but lets not blunder into the path of one.”
    The weapons officer – Sergeant Grant, I recalled – sounded off. “Ten seconds to powered missile envelope, sir.”
    “Fire the planned sequence the second we hit range.” The ships were hurtling toward each other at an incredible speed now, but something was changing. The red line demarking the vector of one of the ships was turning, heading back – toward Mars Station. “Belay that! New fire coordinates, focus first three volleys at the ship that is turning, designate target alpha.” I could still see the small blips of shuttles and escape pods trying to jet away from the station. I had to buy them more time.
    “Helm, bring us around to a bearing that will carry us between that ship and the station.” Then the gentle nudges that were our first missile launches, computer coordinated to fire in twos on opposite sides of the ship.