Free Accord of Honor by Kevin O. McLaughlin

under power.
    The second ship was less lucky. Ten of the missiles got past their defenses. Ten uranium javelins blew through the hull. The ship veered off course, venting air from compartments all over the ship. It wasn’t firing missiles anymore, and I could imagine the panic that had set in among any crew who had survived. The ship started to spin, the streams of air it vented twisting the heading around madly.
    Meanwhile, the first volley of our missiles were impacting the ship that had split off toward the station. This was a mix of nuclear and SABOT rounds. I could see that it was trying to shoot them down, but explosions blossomed on my screen. It would be a bit before scans cleared enough to assess damage, but I already had thirty two more missiles bearing down on them. I was confident it would overpower their defenses.
    Then it was our turn. The first wave of enemy missiles came screaming in toward Defender. Our computer took over defense, firing all four gatlings continuously. Anti-missile missiles licked out, short range but fast, carrying only a light payload but designed to blow up incoming shots. The defense missiles took out twelve of the wave. The gatlings did a superb job and killed another twenty birds. That left four. I had just enough time to thumb the general intercom and holler, “Brace for impact! Incom...” And then the ship was hit, smacked like a giant had slapped a hand against the hull. Then two more shuddering impacts, the shriek of twisting metal audible even in our suits. Then one last crushing blow.
    I was dazed. The suits protected against a lot of the impact, but it was still an overload. I shook my head gently. Red lights were flashing on my console, and I could see smoke drifting across the bridge. That meant we still had atmosphere.
    “Damage report,” I croaked out, barely audible.
    I tried again. “Damage report!” Better. Suited bodies around the bridge started moving again, people pulling themselves together.
    A damage control readout popped onto the heads up display on my helmet’s faceplate. Two nukes had impacted near the ship. I had known in theory that we could survive hits like that. Now I had proof to back up the theory. In atmosphere, a nuclear weapon does most of its damage with a shock wave, which isn’t carried well in space. A nuclear blast might scorch the ship a bit, fry electronics, even shatter a few hull plates. And the shock certainly transmits through the interior, and shakes up the crew, I thought a bit ruefully. But most of the impact is simply wasted against the exterior of a ship designed to survive space.
    Two SABOT rounds had also penetrated. One seemed to have hit some empty crew quarters, and the blast doors had automatically shut the area off to preserve the rest of the ship. The other, though, had pierced one of the missile control bays. No response from the crew of four who had been in there, which meant they were almost certainly dead. There would be time to mourn them later. We’d lost function in the four tubes controlled from that bay, which cut our rate of fire drastically.
    The EM field seemed to have protected most of the sensitive electronics. Backups had already kicked in for failed units. One of the anti-missile turrets had gotten slagged a bit, too. It was locked up, probably some melted metal jammed in the mechanism somewhere.
    Even as I took this all in, I was watching the scan console again. The first enemy ship we had targeted, the one that had run off by itself toward the station, was gone. Our radar picked up only chunks of scrap metal drifting where it had been. One of our hits had damaged something critical. Maybe the fusion engine that powered the ship’s ion drive had lost containment and exploded, or perhaps we had gotten lucky and hit some explosive ordnance. But the result was the same. One enemy ship was annihilated.
    The ship we had hit so badly before – was it really just minutes ago? – had stopped accelerating