To catch anything in such a diffuse formation, however, was no simple task. Now in the “thick” of battle, the ISC cord of ships contained on average one craft every 12.5 thousand kilometers. Annihilator shots hit their targets only if the gunner correctly calculated the intersection of the target’s trajectory with the antimatter beam. With the split-second timing and huge distances involved, even minute course changes by the target made the beams miss.
Taus flooded the pipeline, brutal missiles with starship drives that let them invert into superluminal space. The ISC Jags and ESComm Solos, the most maneuverable craft in the fleets, were the only crewed ships that deliberately engaged the taus, inverting if necessary to chase the superluminal missiles. Jags normally achieved far better precision in such maneuvers than their Solo counterparts, using psiberweb links to guide them in superluminal space. But now the Jags were doing almost no better than the Solos, as the psiberweb unraveled.
A tau surged out of superluminal space almost on top of Roca’s Pride and detonated against the quasis shield.
Quasis jump, Roca’s Pride thought.
Barzun thought, Blackstars, stay on Roca’s Pride.
Aye, General. That came from the commander, of the Blackstars, a legendary Jag squadron so renowned for its combat successes that it had become notorious even among ISC forces.
Soz frowned and sent Barzun a message on their private channel. Why aren’t the Blackstars guarding Asteroid?
We need them on Roca’s Pride.
Her scowl deepened. You’re compromising the safety of Asteroid to protect mine. Put them back on Asteroid.
A sense of refusal came from Barzun. Imperator Skolia, contrary to Councilor Tikal, I agree with your decision to accompany the fleet. In fact, your value to this operation exceeds that of Asteroid. That’s all the more reason for precautions. The Blackstars stay on Roca’s Pride.
She blinked. How did you know Barcala tried to stop me?
He told me. Dryly Barzun added, He also informed me that if you returned in any condition other than your “normal ornery self,” he would “flay my flaming carcass.”
Soz smiled. That sounds like Barcala.
At web speeds, their exchange took less than a second. The battle between the Radiance and Platinum fleets went on at relativistic speeds, a form of combat ISC forced on ESComm because it favored the faster communications capability of ISC. Drone missiles pursued targets and evaded each other, while clouds of smart dust fogged space, moving with the ships. Directed by picochips embedded in the grains, the dust mucked up signals and corroded surfaces. When a grain disintegrated, the miniature warhead it carried ignited.
At 50 percent light speed, the ships, missiles, and dust all contracted relative to slower objects. For two ships moving at the same speed, the contraction offered no benefit to one craft over the other, because they both experienced it by the same amount. But it favored the quicksilver Jags, which could outpace most any other class of ship. Nor was it only speed that gave the Jags an edge; they also had the ability to alter their shape and so exaggerate the contraction effect, better using it to decrease the target they presented to slower ships. The advantages were small when all the ships were moving at relativistic speed, but for such closely matched forces it made a difference.
Time dilation could jump ships up to a full two seconds into the future for every ten seconds of travel. The consequent complications in communications normally favored ISC, because the psiberweb made them less dependent on signal transmission times. But as the web weakened, that advantage decreased. With growing disquiet, Soz realized she could see the web filling the void like a ghost, rippling, unraveling, and tearing.
The battle was also hurtling through an interstellar cloud of gas and dust natural to this region of space. Although they encountered far less dust than gas, the natural grains wreaked havoc with their smart-dust. A particle of smart-dust raced past Soz at 50 percent light speed, smashed into a mundane grain of the interstellar muck, and exploded, wasting its warhead on an innocent fleck of matter.
The gas in the cloud was diffuse, only about ten molecules per cubic centimeter. Compared to a planetary atmosphere, which might have ten million trillion particles per cc, it was nothing. Nor was the gas itself dangerous. Most of it was simply atomic hydrogen. But for ships covering over five billion centimeters per second, it became a scouring fog of corrosion. Here ESComm fared better than ISC, having designed ships and weapons adapted to dealing with the foggy weather in their home territory.
An ISC frigate loomed ahead—and vanished in a flash of radiation as an ESComm Stinger hit it with an antimatter bomb. Then the Stinger exploded, caught by an ISC tau that dropped into normal space almost “on top” the Stinger. Another ISC tau flashed by Soz, chased by an ESComm drone. The tau inverted out of real space—and reappeared behind the drone, having come around at superluminal speed. It impacted the ESComm ship and both exploded in a shower of energy.
Data flowed into Soz’s nodes. ESComm had lost 200 thousand ships, a third of their force, leaving them with 400 thousand. ISC had also lost 200 thousand, but that was only a fourth of their fleet. Most of the destroyed craft were drones piloted by EI brains. But the losses in human life wrenched Soz, as many thousands gave their lives in the gargantuan engagement.
A glittering fog of dust spread around her. The reason for its scintillation fast became clear: an ESComm Starslammer shot straight “through” her, its huge bulk dwarfing her virtual body, the lights on its hull sparkling. Two ISC Asps were chasing it and she arrowed after them. The ESComm smart-dust came with them, harassing the Asps, igniting in tiny explosions against their hulls, forcing them into quasis again and again. The continual quasis jumps made it difficult for the Asps to increase their speed, and the ESComm Starslammer pulled farther ahead.
A Jag suddenly dropped out of inversion right in front of the Starslammer, matching its trajectory with a precision coordinated through the psiberweb—and the Jag blasted the Starslammer out of existence with its relativistic exhaust. Then the Jag hurtled on, leaving Soz alone in space.
Soz read her displays—and exhaled a long breath of virtual air. ISC still claimed 450 thousand ships and ESComm had dropped to 90 thousand. As she watched, the ESComm number decreased to 85 while ISC stayed constant.
Imperator Skolia, Admiral Barzun thought. Colonel Izarson on channel 6.
Got it, Soz thought, withdrawing her awareness back into the control chair above the bridge.
Izarson spoke in a quiet voice. “Roca’s Pride, this is the ESComm Rapier. We surrender our forces to you.”
“Surrender accepted,” Soz said.
Then she saw the red light on a panel in front of her chair. Izarson was using his captive telops to blast a message through a hacked node in the disintegrating ISC psiberweb. The job was so sloppily done that every ISC ship picked it up, but by then it didn’t matter.
Izarson’s warning cut straight through to Glory: Code One. 450 thousand ISC ships incoming from Platinum Sector. And then he added: Their web is failing.
29
Dehya sat on the couch in Tikal’s living room, still in her sleep shift, her arms wrapped around her torso, her body shaking. People surrounded her, officers and telops, many in sleep clothes themselves, having been summoned out of bed. Tikal was kneeling in front of her, his eyes level with hers, while General Majda had taken a seat on one side of her and Admiral Casestar on the other.
“Are you sure?” Tikal was saying.
“Yes.” Dehya’s voice had an eerie distant quality. “ESComm has located the Orbiter.”
“Can you give us any more details on their force?” Majda asked. “How many? What weapons?”
“Ahhh…” Dehya’s body rippled like the surface of a lake. “I’m trying to reach them.”
Watching his wife literally fade in and out of reality, Eldrin struggled to stay calm. “Don’t push her so hard. If she goes any deeper into the web, she’ll never get out.”
T
ikal glanced at him, compassion showing on his gruff features. “I’m sorry, Lord Eldrin. But we have no choice.”
Knowing Tikal was right made it no easier. Eldrin pressed the knuckles of his fists together in front of his body, willing Dehya to keep her tenuous link with reality. He was in a Rhon meld with her now, giving her his stability, but he feared it wasn’t enough. How could she be in the web without a link? What if he lost her altogether, as her mind, perhaps even her body, dissolved into a place where space and time had no meaning?
He felt their son Taquinil in the next room, linked into the web via a console. Like Dehya, his work consisted of subtle intricacies, all nuances and finesse. Dehya spun the web, Taquinil held it together, and Eldrin supported them like a deep sea.
“ESComm is using their Lock to reach ours.” Dehya shivered in her flimsy shift, her gaze focused on a point between Tikal’s head and the leg of the hulking Jagernaut standing next to him. Seeing her surrounded that way made Eldrin grit his teeth. He felt them penning her, like a sense of compression.
“You’re crushing her,” he said. “You have to ease up.”
“Dryniniiii.” Dehya’s voice echoed. “I have to do this.”
“If you lose yourself in the net,” he said, “you won’t be able to do anything.”
General Majda looked from Eldrin to Dehya. “Pharaoh Dyhianna, are you still able to pull out?”
“Yes…” Dehya took a breath. “They’re in! ESComm just linked into Orbiter web.”
Casestar stiffened and an officer behind the couch swore. General Majda spoke into the comm on her wrist gauntlet. “Colonel Gaithers, we have reason to believe the incoming ESComm force has broken into our web.”
“We’re on it,” Gaithers said. “We’re already countering them. We’ll keep you posted.”
“They only have a few ships,” Dehya said. “Onyx broke them.”
“You made contact with Onyx?” Majda asked. “We haven’t heard anything out of there for hours.”
“Onyx is … gone,” Dehya said.
“Gone?” Tikal asked. “How?”
“Broken. Onyx. ESComm.”
“You mean ESComm is broken?” Casestar asked.
“Almost no ships,” Dehya said.
Casestar glanced at Majda. “Do we have news from Radiance?”
She shook her head. “Our web links with them have been down almost as long as the Onyx links.”
Suddenly Dehya said, “Two ESComm Starslammers are incoming to the Orbiter. And a few Solos. That’s it. No, there’s a Stinger too.” She pulled her arms around her torso for warmth. “Desperate.”
“Desperate?” Tikal asked.
“The ESComm force that went into Onyx is gone.” She took a breath and sat up straighter. Eldrin could feel her pulling her mind back into her body. “They’ve nowhere near enough forces to secure the Orbiter,” she said in a stronger voice. “They’re sending a special operations team, meant to get in and out fast. They’re after something specific.”
“You,” Tikal said.
Dehya swallowed. “Me. Taquinil. Eldrin. They know the web is collapsing. They want as many Keys as they can get and they want to kill the rest, to make it easier for them to rebuild the web, after this is over, and harder for us.”
Tikal turned to General Majda. “What about the rest of the Ruby Dynasty?”
“We heard from the Allieds before we lost our links with them,” Majda said. “They pulled Denric Valdoria off Sandstorm and took him back to Lyshriol, to stay with the rest of the family. The Allied forces have tripled the Lyshriol defenses. Web Key Eldrinson and Councilor Roca are on Earth, which is even better defended.”
Casestar spoke into his gauntlet comm. “Security, send the Abaj Jagernauts here.”
“On their way,” Security answered.
“General Majda.” Gaithers’s voice crackled from her comm. “We’ve a problem. The ESComm lines into our web are locking up our operations.”
“Can you get a reciprocal fix?” Majda asked “Follow their lines back into their web?”
“We’re trying,” Gaithers said. “So far they’ve evaded us.”
“ESComm is hacking our web with provider-telops.” Dehya’s fist clenched in her lap. “Their providers can’t do it. They’re dying. But they’re just equipment to the Traders. ESComm is using them up almost as fast as they install them.” She shivered. “They don’t care what it takes. They don’t want to lose this chance at the Orbiter. If the psiberweb fails, that’s it.”
Tikal watched her face. “Will it hurt the Triad if the web collapses?”
“I don’t know.” She looked almost translucent, her delicate beauty hollowed by exhaustion. “Never happened before.”
Tikal stared at her, then at Majda. “It’s never gone down?”
“Not all at once,” Majda said.
“Parts have crashed,” Admiral Casestar said. “Sections of the EO network or small regions of the psiberweb. But it’s always been localized. We’ve never had a full-scale shutdown.”
“It might not all go this time either,” Dehya said. “We’ve lost the long-distance nodes, but psiberspace itself is intact.”
A chime sounded and Eldrin heard a door open. Boots thudded in the entrance foyer of the house. Then eight Abaj Jagernauts strode into the living room. They towered, seven feet tall or more, their height inherited from their ancestors, the Abaj Tacalique that six thousand years ago swore to defend the Ruby Dynasty and still honored that pledge. They wore black Jagernaut uniforms and black boots, massive leather-and-metal gauntlets all the way to their elbows, and huge black Jumbler guns glinting heavy on their hips.
Casestar assigned four of the Abaj to Eldrin and Dehya, adding them to the four Jagernauts already on their bodyguard, and sent the other four into the next room. They reemerged with a wearied Taquinil in rumpled clothes, his hair in disarray from pushing his hand through it, his expression disconcerted as the Abaj towered around him, two heads taller than he and more than twice his weight.
Majda spoke into her comm. “Gaithers, do you have any more on the incoming ESComm ships?”
“Our web is still locked up,” Gaithers said. “The whole flaming thing. But we’ve followed their lines back to their web and have locks on their computers now. We can’t shoot at them, but they can’t shoot at us either.”
“They’ll try infiltrating the docking bay system,” Casestar said. “So they can board.”
“They’re already in the docking web,” Taquinil said.
“All over it,” Dehya said. “Even the auxiliary bays.”
Majda spoke into her comm. “Gaithers, don’t let them dock! I don’t care how you do it. Ram their ships with your own if you have to. But keep them off the Orbiter.”
“We’re trying to regain control with manual overrides,” he said. “But the systems won’t respond. We could end up ramming the Orbiter.”
Casestar swore. “We have a city full of civilians here, with no defenses against ESComm commandos.”
“It’s the Ruby Dynasty they want,” Tikal said. “Not City.”
Dehya looked at him. “They want you also, Barcala.”
Casestar spoke into his comm. “Security?”
“We’re monitoring you all,” Security said. “Almost every defense system within the Orbiter is focused on the house. Right now it’s the best protected place in the station.”
“It’s not enough,” Dehya said.
Casestar turned to her. “Why?”
“ESComm is worming holes in the security web.”
Casestar spoke into his comm. “Security, do you have a breach? Assembly Key Selei says ESComm sent in worms.”
“Affirmative,” Security said. “We’re killing them as fast as we find them. We’ve dropped several nodes altogether because of the infestation.”
Gaithers spoke on Majda’s comm. “General, we estimate the ESComm ships will arrive in about two minutes.”
“You’ve got to block them,” Majda said
. “If your navigation systems are frozen, theirs must be too.”
“We’re trying. The damn web is fluctuating all over creation. We can’t—that’s it.”
“Gaithers?” Majda asked.
“Our estimate was off. They’re here. Two Starslammers, four Solos—hell, that Stinger is—”
In the sudden silence, another voice said, “General, this is Colonel Marland. The Traders hurled a Stinger right into Gaithers’s ship. Both craft were destroyed.”
Majda clenched her fist and a surge of anger mixed with grief rolled out from her mind. “What about the other ships?”
“Our Jags have engaged the ESComm Solos,” Marland said. “We’re holding off one Starslammer, but the other is docking.”
Eldrin stepped forward, aware of his towering guards moving with him. “We can’t stay here.”
Tikal stood up next to him. “You heard Security. This is the best defended place on the Orbiter right now.”
Eldrin felt Dehya’s mind straining to follow ESComm’s invasion into the Orbiter web. “It’s not enough.”
Security spoke from Casestar’s comm. “Lord Eldrin, We’re giving it everything we have. Hell, we’ll attack them with our bare hands if we have to. I swear to you, we won’t let ESComm take your family.”
“And you have our abiding gratitude.” Eldrin watched Dehya, feeling what she felt, the silent relentless invasion. “But it’s not enough. If we stay on the Orbiter, ESComm will capture us.”
“You can’t get off the Orbiter now,” Majda said.
“We can,” Dehya answered.
“Take us to the First Lock,” Eldrin said.
“No,” Casestar said. “The War Room is harder to secure.”
“You have to take us there,” Dehya told him.
“The Lock is our only chance,” Eldrin said.
“Why?” Casestar asked. “You’re more vulnerable there.”