A target source appeared on his panel. Another blinked into sight, and another, as his nestlings spent their lives merely to find them, and Nest Lord, they were close! Some sort of cloaking technology. The thought was an icicle in his brain, for it was far better than anything the Nest had, but he had targets at last. He moved to order his nestlings to open fire, but Battle Comp had acted first. He heard his own voice, calm and dispassionate, already passing the command.
"Burn, baby! Burn!" someone whooped.
"Silence! Clear the net!" Adrienne Robbins cracked, and the exultant voice vanished. Not that she could blame whoever it had been, for their opening salvos had been twice as effective as projected. Unfortunately, that was because they were three times as close as planned. The hyper drives aboard these larger ships were slightly different from those the scouts had mounted, and their calculations had been off. By only a tiny amount, perhaps, but minute computational errors had major consequences on this scale.
They were going to burn through the stealth field a hell of a lot quicker than anyone had expected. She knew she had more experience against the Achuultani than anyone else, and perhaps her earlier losses had affected her nerve, but, damn it, those buggers were inside their own sublight and hyper missile range! Herdan's defenses were incomparably better than Nergal's, and her shield covered twenty times the hyper bands, but her sheer size meant it extended even further from the hull than Nergal's had, and there were going to be a lot of missiles headed her way very soon.
"Stand by missile defense; stand by ECM!" she snapped, and then, Dear Jesus, here it came.
Great Lord Sorkar spit an incredulous curse. A twelve of them! A single twelve had already slain a greater twelve and more of his ships, and their defenses were as incredible as their firepower. Targeting screens blossomed with false images, sucking his sublight weapons off target. Jammers hashed the scan channels. Titanic shields shrugged the greater thunder contemptuously aside. And still his ships died and died and died....
Yet nothing could stop the twelves of twelves of twelves of missiles his ships were hurling, and he bared his teeth as the first hyper missile slashed through a nest-killer shield. There! That should show them that-
He blinked, and his blood was ice. What sort of monster could absorb a direct hit from the greater thunder and not even notice it?
Alarms screamed as a ten-thousand-megaton warhead exploded almost on top of Royal Birhat. The huge ship quivered as the furious plasma cloud carved an incandescent chasm twenty kilometers into her armored hull. Air exploded from the dreadful wound, blast doors slammed... and Birhat went right on fighting.
"Moderate damage to Quadrant Theta-Two," the sexy contralto said calmly. "Four fatalities. Point zero-four-two percent combat impairment."
Colin winced as the flashing yellow band of combat damage encircled Birhat. He'd lost track of the kills they'd scored, but he'd fucked up. They were too frigging close!
"All ships, open the range," he snapped, and the Imperial Guard darted suddenly astern at sixty-five percent of light-speed.
Tarhish, they were fast! Sorkar had never seen anything but a missile move that quickly in n-space. They fell back out of range of his sublight weapons, retreating toward the edge of his hyper missile envelope, but their own weapons seemed totally unaffected, and he had never seen such accurate targeting. Indeed, he had never seen anyone do anything these nest-killers were doing to him, but that did not make them night-demons. It only meant his Protectors faced a test worse than he had ever imagined, and they were Protectors.
And, he thought under the surface of his battle orders, perhaps it was not as bad as it might have been. These nest-killers had known where to meet his ships, and not even those arrays could have told them that, so they must have already destroyed one scout force-probably Furtag's, given the timing-and followed its couriers hither. Yet if they could muster but a single twelve of ships, however powerful, against him, then the ships under his command were more than enough to feed them to the Furnace. Even at this extreme range, he had an incalculable advantage in launchers. Not so good as theirs, perhaps, but more than enough to make up any disadvantage.
"Colin, they press us sore," Jiltanith said, and Colin nodded sharply. The plan had been to empty their magazines into the Achuultani, but the shit was too deep for that. Birhat had taken only one hit, but Two had taken three and Tor had taken five. Five of those monster warheads!
These ships were tough beyond belief, but any toughness had its limits. He winced as yet another massive salvo exploded against Two's shield and the big ship plowed through the plasma like a drunken windjammer. It was only a matter of time until-
"Tor reports shield failure," Two's Comp Cent announced. "Attempting to withdraw into hyper." Colin's eyes darted to Tor's cursor, and the flashing yellow circle was banded in crimson. He stared at it in horror, willing the ship's hyper drive to take her out of it, as missile after missile went home-
"Withdrawal unsuccessful," Two said emotionlessly, and Colin's face went bone-white as Tor's dot vanished forever.
"Execute Bug Out," he grated.
"Acknowledged," Jiltanith said coolly.
The nest-killers vanished.
Sorkar stared in disbelief at the reports of his hyper scanners. Almost a greater twelve times light-speed? How was it possible?
But what mattered was that it was possible. And that his scanner crews had noted the charging hyper fields in time to get good readings on them. He knew where they would emerge-at that bright star less than a quarter-twelve of light-years ahead of his fleet.
It could not be their homeworld, not so coincidentally close to the rendezvous, but whatever it was, Sorkar knew what to do if they were stupid enough to tie themselves to its defense, too deep in its gravity well to escape into hyper. He could wade into their fire, take his losses, and crush them by sheer numbers, for he had already proven they could be destroyed.
He did not like to think how many hits it had taken to kill that single nest-killer, but they had killed it. And his own losses were scarcely three greater twelves, grievous but hardly fatal.
He plugged into Battle Comp, but he already knew what his orders would be.
* * *â â â
Colin hoped his expression hid the depth of his shock as his ships darted away. He'd known they would take losses, but he hadn't expected to start taking them so soon, and they'd destroyed less than a half-percent of the enemy. He'd counted on more than that, and no losses of his own, damn it!
But he couldn't have brought more ships without Dahak to run them, and Dahak had no hyper drive. That was the crunch point, because the Achuultani had to know where he and his ships had run to.
And because of that, Senior Fleet Captain Roscoe Gillicuddy and his crew had died, and Colin had lost six percent of his autonomous warship strength. He didn't know which hurt more, and that made him feel ashamed.
But the mousetrap had been baited. They'd lost more heavily than allowed for, yet they'd done what they set out to do. He told himself that, but it wasn't enough to hold the demons of guilt and the fear of inadequacy at bay.
A warm, slender hand squeezed his tightly, and he squeezed back gratefully. Military protocol might frown on a warlord holding hands with his flagship captain, but he needed that touch of beloved flesh just now.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Thirty-six days after the brief, savage battle, Dahak kept station on Zeta Trianguli Australis-I and Colin stood in Command One, contemplating the planet his crews had dubbed The Cinder.
He and Jiltanith had tried to name The Cinder something else ('Tanni had favored "Cheese"), but perhaps the crews were right, Colin thought sourly. With a mean orbital radius of five-point-eight-nine light-minutes, The Cinder was about as close to Zeta Trianguli Australis as Venus was to Sol, and Colin had always thought Venus, with a surface hotter than molten lead, was close enough to Hell.
The Cinder was worse, for Zeta Trianguli was brighter than Sol-much brighter. But The
Cinder had been chosen very carefully. There were other worlds in the system, including a rather nice, if cool, third planet fifteen light-minutes further out. Zeta Trianguli was old for its class, and III had even developed a local flora that was vaguely carboniferous, but Colin was just as happy it had only the most primitive of animal life.
He folded his hands behind him, watching the display, glancing ever and again at the scarlet hyper trace blinking steadily just inside the forty-light-minute orbital shell of Zeta Trianguli-IV.
Fleet Commodore the Empress Jiltanith sat on her command deck and touched the gemmed dagger at her belt. She'd owned that weapon since the Wars of the Roses, and its familiar hilt had soothed her often over the years, but it helped little today. She knew it made excellent sense for her to be where she was, and that, too, was little help.
She wanted to rise and pace, but it would do no good to display her fear, and there were still many hours to go. Indeed, she ought to be in her quarters-her lonely, empty quarters-resting, but here she could at least see Dahak's light code and know how Colin fared.
An even dozen Trosan-class planetoids with their heavy energy batteries floated in the inner system with Dahak, and two Vespa-class assault planetoids orbited The Cinder, tending the heavy armored units doing absolutely nothing worthwhile on its fiery surface... except generating a massive energy signature not even a blind man could have missed.
Jiltanith's eyes moved from the three-dimensional schematic of the Zeta Trianguli System to the emptiness about her own ship. The fourteen surviving crewed units of the Imperial Guard floated more than six light-hours from the furnace of the star, and Vlad Chernikov's titanic repair ship Fabricator had labored mightily upon them. Much of the damage had been too severe to be fully healed-Two, for example, still bore two wounds over sixty kilometers deep-but all were combat ready. Ready, yet carefully stealthed, hidden from every prying scanner, accompanied by sixty loyal, lifeless ships.
Jiltanith did not like to consider why they were not with Dahak, but the reasoning was brutally simple. If Operation Mousetrap failed, the crewed ships would return to Terra to hold as long as they might and evacuate as many additional Terra-born as possible to Birhat when they could hold no more, but the unmanned planetoids would be sent directly to Birhat and Marshal Tsien.
There would be no point retaining them, for they were useless in close combat without Dahak's control, and Dahak-and Colin-would be dead.
Great Lord Sorkar's crest flexed thoughtfully as his portion of the Great Visit neared normal-space once more. This star was suspiciously young to have evolved nest-killers of its own, which reinforced his belief that it could be but a forward base. That was bad, since it gave no hint what star these demons might call home. Unless one of them was obliging enough to flee into hyper and head directly thence, which he doubted any ships as fast as they would do, he could not even guess where their true home world lay.
Except, of course, that it almost certainly had been Lord Furtag's scouts which had roused these nest-killers to fury. They must have followed a courier to find Sorkar, and only a courier from Furtag's force could have reached this rendezvous so soon. And that gave Sorkar a volume of space in which at least one of their important worlds must lie. That might be enough. If it was not, it was at least a start. And this star system was another.
Those monster ships' sheer size impressed him deeply, yet anything that large must take many years to build, so each he slew would hurt the nest-killers badly. He only hoped those who had already clashed with his nestlings would be foolish enough to stand and fight here.
A soft musical tone sounded, and he made himself relax, hoping that Battle Comp noticed his tranquillity. The queasy shudder of hyper translation ran through his flagship, and Defender dropped into phase with reality once more.
"Achuultani units are emerging from hyper," Dahak's mellow voice said.
Colin nodded as the dots of Achuultani ships gleamed in the display. He looked around the empty bridge, wishing for just a moment that he'd let the others stay. But if this worked, he and Dahak could pull it off alone; if it failed, those eight thousand-odd people would be utterly invaluable to 'Tanni and Gerald Hatcher. Besides, this was fitting, somehow. He and Dahak, together and alone once more.
"Keep an eye on 'em," he said. "Let me know if they do anything sneaky."
"I shall." Dahak was silent for a moment, then continued. "I have continued my study of energy-state computer technology, Colin."
"Oh?" If Dahak wanted to distract him, that was fine with Colin.
"Yes. I believe I have isolated the fundamental differences between the energy-state 'software' of the Empire and my own. They were rather more subtle than I originally anticipated, but I now feel confident of my ability to reprogram at will."
"Hey, that's great! You mean you could tinker them into waking up?"
"I did not say that, Colin. I can reprogram them; I still have not determined what within my own programming supports my self-aware state. Without that datum, I cannot recreate that state in another. Nor have I yet discovered a certain technique for simply replicating my current programming in their radically different circuitry."
"Yeah." Colin frowned. "But even if you could, you'd have problems, wouldn't you? They're hardwired for loyalty to Mother-wouldn't that put a crimp into your replication?"
"Not," Dahak said rather surprisingly, "in the case of the Guard. Its units were not part of Battle Fleet and do not contain Battle Fleet loyalty imperatives. I suppose-" the computer sounded gently ironic "-Mother and the Assembly of Nobles calculated that the remaining nine hundred ninety-eight thousand seven hundred and twelve planetoids of Battle Fleet would suffice to deal with them in the event an Emperor proved intractable."
"Guess they might, at that."
"The absence of those constraints, however, makes the replication of my core programming at least a possibility, although not a very high one. While I have made progress, I compute that the probability of success would be no more than eight percent. The probability that an unsuccessful attempt would incapacitate the recipient computer, however, approaches unity."
"Um." Colin tugged on his nose. "Not so good. The last thing we need is to addle one of the others just now."
"My own thought exactly. I thought, however, that you might appreciate a progress report."
"You mean," Colin snorted, "that you thought I was about to get the willies and you'd better distract me from 'em!"
"That is substantially what I said." Dahak made the soft sound he used for a chuckle. "In my own tactful fashion, of course."
"Tactful, shmactful," Colin grinned. "Thanks, I-"
He broke off as the glittering hordes of Achuultani light codes suddenly vanished only to blink back moments later, much closer in-system.
"They are advancing," Dahak said calmly. "A trio of detached ships, however, appear to be micro-jumping to positions on the system periphery."
"Observers, damn it. Well, no one can count on their enemies being idiots."
"True, though that will be of limited utility if we are able to repeat our earlier success and destroy them before they rendezvous with the main body."
"Yeah, but we can't be sure of doing that. It's a lot shorter jump this time, and they can cut their arrival a hell of a lot closer. Tell 'Tanni to lay off. Last thing we need to do is to try sneaking up on 'em and alert them to the fact that there's more of us around."
"Acknowledged," Dahak replied. "Two has acknowledged," he added a moment later.
"Thanks," Colin grunted.
His attention was on the display. The Achuultani had micro-jumped with beautiful precision, spreading out to englobe Zeta Trianguli at a range of twenty-seven light-minutes. Now they were closing in normal space at twenty-four percent light-speed. They'd be into extreme missile range in another ten minutes, but it would take them almost an hour to reach their range of The Cinder, and he and Dahak could hurt them badly in that much time.
But not too badly
. They had to keep closing. He needed them deep into the stellar gravity well for this to work, and-
He snorted. There were over a million of the bastards-just how much damage did he think his fifteen ships could inflict in fifty minutes?
"Open up at fifteen light-minutes, Dahak," he said finally. "Timed-rate fire. We don't want to shoot ourselves dry."
"Acknowledged," Dahak said calmly, and they waited.
Great Lord Sorkar fought his exultation. The nest-killers had not even attempted to cloak themselves! They simply sat waiting, and that was fine with Sorkar. Many of his nestlings were about to die, but so were the nest-killers.