The Armageddon Inheritance fe-2

by David Weber

  “Time like this?”

  “While we’re making our final approach to the Imperial Guard,” Colin said, raising his eyebrows, and Cohanna wrinkled her nose.

  “What’s an Imperial Guard?”

  Vlad Chernikov shuddered as he and Baltan floated down the lifeless, lightless transit shaft. This, he thought, is what Dahak would have become if Anu had succeeded all those years ago.

  It was depressing in more ways than one. Actually seeing this desolation gnawed away at the confidence that anything could be done about it, and even if he succeeded in rejecting the counsel of despair, he could see it would be a horrific task. Dead power rooms, exhausted fuel mass, control rooms and circuit runs which had never been properly stasissed when the ship died. There was even meteor damage, for the collision shields had died with everything else. One of the planetoids might well be beyond repair, judging by the huge hole punched into its south pole.

  Still, he reminded himself, everyone had his or her own problems. Caitrin O’Rourke was practically in tears over the hydroponic farms, and Geran was furious to find so much perfectly good equipment left out of stasis. But Tamman was probably the most afflicted of all, for the magazines had been left without stasis, as well, and the containment fields on every anti-matter weapon had failed. At least the warhead fail-safes had worked as designed and rotated them into hyper as the fields went down, but huge chunks of magazine bulkheads had gone with them. Of course, if they hadn’t worked…

  He shuddered again, concentrating on the grav sled he and Baltan rode. It was far slower than an operable transit shaft, but they dared not use even its full speed. They were no transit computer to whip around unexpected bends in the system!

  He craned his neck, reading the lettering above a hatch. Gamma-One-One-Nine-One-One. According to Dahak’s downloaded schematics, they were getting close to Engineering.

  So they were. He tapped Baltan’s shoulder and pointed, and the commander nodded inside the force bubble of his helmet. The sled angled for the side of the shaft and nudged against the hatch—which, of course, stayed firmly shut.

  Chernikov smothered a curse, then grinned as he recalled Colin’s account of his “coronation.” The Captain—Emperor!—had exhausted the entire crew’s allocation of profanity for at least a month, by Chernikov’s estimate. He chuckled at the thought and climbed off the sled, dragging a cable from its power plant behind him and muttering Slavic maledictions. No power meant no artificial gravity, which—unfortunately—did not mean no gravity. A planetoid generated an impressive grav field all its own, and turned bulkheads into decks and decks into bulkheads when the power failed.

  He found the emergency power receptacle and plugged in, and the hatch slid open. He waved, and Baltan ghosted the sled inside, angling its powerful lamps to pick out the emergency lighting system.

  Chernikov did some more cable-dragging and, after propitiating Murphy with a few curses, brought it alive. Light bathed Central Engineering, and the two engineers began to explore.

  The long-dead core tap drew them like a magnet, and Chernikov felt a tingle of awe as his eyes and implants traced circuit runs and control systems. This thing was at least five times as powerful as Dahak’s, and he wouldn’t have believed it could be without seeing it. But what in the galaxy could they have needed that much power for? Even allowing for the more powerful energy armament and shield, there had to be some other reason—

  His thoughts died as his implants followed a massive power shunt which shouldn’t have been there. He clambered over a control panel which had become the floor, slightly vertiginous as he tried to orient himself, then gasped.

  “Baltan! Look at this!”

  “I know,” his assistant said softly, approaching from the far side. “I’ve been following the control runs.”

  “Can you believe this?”

  “Does it matter? And it would certainly explain all the power demand.”

  “True.” Chernikov moved a few more yards, examining his find carefully, then shook his head. “I must tell the Captain about this.”

  He keyed his com implant, and Colin answered a moment later, sounding a bit harassed—not surprisingly, considering that every other search party must be finding marvels of its own to report.

  “Captain, I am in Mairsuk’s Central Engineering, and you would not believe what I am looking at.”

  “Try me,” Colin said wearily. “I’m learning to believe nineteen impossible things before breakfast every day.”

  “Very well, here is number twenty. This ship has both Enchanach and hyper capability.”

  There was a pregnant pause.

  “What,” Colin finally asked very carefully, “did you say?”

  “I said, sir, that we have here both an Enchanach and a hyper drive, engineered down to a size that fits both into a single hull. I am not yet positive, but I would judge that the combined mass of both units is less than that of Dahak’s Enchanach Drive, alone.”

  “Great day in the morning,” Colin muttered. Then, “All right. Take a good look, then get back over here. We’re having an all-departments meeting in four hours to discuss plans for reactivation.

  “Understood,” Chernikov said, and broke the connection. He and Baltan exchanged eloquent shrugs and bent back to the study of their prize.

  ”…can’t be specific until we’ve got the computers back up and run a complete inventory,” Geran said, “but about ten percent of all spares required controlled condition storage. Without that—” He shrugged.

  Most of Colin’s department heads were present in the flesh, but a sizable force from the recon group was prowling around other installations, and Hector MacMahan and Ninhursag attended via holo image from the battleship Osir’s command deck. Now all eyes, physical and holographic alike, swiveled to Colin.

  “All right.” He spoke quietly, leaning his forearms on the crystalline tabletop to return their gazes. “Bottom line. Mother’s time estimate is based on sixteen-hour shifts for every man and woman after we put at least one automated repair yard back on line. According to the reports from Hector’s people, we can probably do that, but I expect to find ourselves pushing closer to twenty-hour shifts by the time we’re done. We could increase the odds and decrease the workload by concentrating on a dozen or so units. I’m sure that’s going to occur to a lot of people in the next few weeks. However—” his eyes circled their faces “—we aren’t going to do it that way. We need as many of these ships as we can get, and, ladies and gentlemen, I mean to have every single one of them.”

  There was a sound like a soft gasp, and he smiled grimly.

  “God only knows how hard they’re working back on Earth, but we’re about to make up for our nice vacation on the trip out. Every one of them, people. No exceptions. We will leave this system no later than five months from today, and the entire Imperial Guard Flotilla will go with us when we do.”

  “But, sir,” Chernikov said, “we may ask for too much and lose it all. I do not fear hard work, but we have only a finite supply of personnel. A very finite supply.”

  “I understand, Vlad, but the decision is not negotiable. We’ve got highly motivated, highly capable people aboard this ship. I feel certain they’ll understand and give of their very best. If not, however, tell them this.

  “I’ll be working my ass off right beside them, but that doesn’t mean I won’t be keeping tabs on what they’re doing. And, people, if I catch anyone shirking, I’m going to be the worst nightmare he ever had.”

  His smile was grim, but even its micrometric amusement looked out of place on his rock-hard face.

  “Tell them they can depend on that,” he finished very, very softly.

  Book Two

  Chapter Fourteen

  Assistant Servant of Thunders Brashieel of the Nest of Aku’Ultan folded all four legs under him on his duty pad as he bent his long-snouted head, considering his panel, and slid both hands into the control gloves. Eight fingers and four thumbs twitched, activating e
ach test circuit in turn, and he noted the results cheerfully. He had not had a major malfunction in three twelves of twelve watches.

  Equipment tests completed, he checked Vindicator’s position. It was purely automatic, for there could be no change. Once a vessel entered hyper space it remained there, impotent but inviolate, until it reached the pre-selected coordinates and emerged into normal space once more.

  Brashieel did not understand those mysteries particularly well, for he was no lord—not even of thunders, much less of star-faring—but because Small Lord of Order Hantorg was a good lord, he had made certain Vindicator’s nestlings all knew whither they were bound. Another yellow sun, this one with nine planets. Once it had boasted ten, but that had been before the visit of Great Lord Vaskeel’s fleet untold high twelves of years before. Now it was time to return, and Vindicator and his brothers would sweep through it like the Breath of Tarhish, trampling the nest-killers under hooves of flame.

  It was well. The Protectors of the Nest would feed their foes to Tarhish’s Fire, and the Nest would be safe forever.

  “Outer perimeter tracking confirms hyper wakes approaching from galactic east,” Sir Frederick Amesbury said.

  Gerald Hatcher nodded without even looking up. His neural feed hummed with readiness reports, and his eyes were unfocused.

  “Got an emergence locus and ETA, Frederick?”

  “It’s bloody rough, but Plotting’s calling it fifty light-minutes and forty-five degrees above the ecliptic. Judging from the wake strength, the buggers should be arriving in about twelve hours. Tracking promises to firm that up in the next two hours.”

  “Fine.” Hatcher acknowledged the last report and blinked back into focus, wishing yet again that Dahak had returned. If Colin MacIntyre had been gone this long, it meant he hadn’t found aid at Sheskar and must have decided he had no choice but to hope Earth could hold without him while he sought it elsewhere. And that he might not be back for another full year.

  He activated his com panel, and Horus’s taut face appeared instantly.

  “Governor,” the general reported, knowing full well that Horus already knew what he was about to say and that he was speaking for the record, “I have to report that I have placed our forces on Red Two. Hyper wakes presumed to be hostile have been detected. ETA is approximately—” he checked the time through his neural feed “—seventeen-thirty hours, Zulu. System defense forces are now on full alert. Civil defense procedures have been initiated. All PDC and ODC commanders are in the net. Interceptor squadrons are at two-hour readiness. Planetary shield generators and planetary core tap are at stand-by readiness. Battle Squadrons One and Four are within thirty minutes of projected n-space emergence; Squadrons Two and Six should rendezvous with them by oh-seven-hundred Zulu. Squadrons Three, Five, Seven, Eight, Nine, and Ten, with escorts, are being held in-system as per Plan Able-One.

  “Have you any instructions at this time, Governor?”

  “Negative, General Hatcher. Please keep me informed.”

  “I will, sir.”

  “Good luck, Gerald,” Horus said softly, his tone much less formal.

  “Thanks, Horus. We’ll try to make a little luck of our own.”

  The screen blanked, and Gerald Hatcher turned back to his console.

  Assistant Servant Brashieel checked his chronometer. Barely four day twelfths until emergence, and tension was high in Vindicator, for this was the Demon Sector. It was not often the Protectors of the Nest encountered a foe with an advance technical base—that was why they came, to crush the nest-killers before they armed themselves—but five of the last twelve Great Visits to this sector had been savaged. They had triumphed, but at great cost, and the last two had been the most terrible of all. Perhaps, Brashieel thought, that was the reason Great Lord Tharno’s Great Visit had been delayed: to amass the strength the Nest required for certain success.

  That alone was cause enough for concern, yet the disquiet among his nestmates had grown far worse since the first nest-killer scanner stations had been detected. More than one scout ship had been lured to his death by the fiendish stations, and the explosions which slew them meant their surviving consorts had learned absolutely nothing about the technology which built those stations … except that it was advanced, indeed.

  But this star system would offer no threat. Small Lord Hantorg had revealed the latest data scan shortly after Vindicator entered hyper for this last jump to the target. It was barely three twelves of years old, and though electronic and neutrino emissions had been detected (which was bad enough), there had been none of the more advanced signals from the scanner arrays. Clearly the Protectors must see to this threat, yet these nest-killers would have only the lesser thunder, not the greater, and they would be crushed. Nothing could have changed enough in so short a time to alter that outcome.

  Captain Adrienne Robbins sat in her command couch aboard the sublight battleship Nergal. Admiral Isaiah Hawter, the senior member of the Solarian Defense Force actually in space, rode Nergal’s bridge with her, but he might as well have been on another planet. His attention was buried in his own console as he and his staff controlled Task Force One.

  Captain Robbins had been a sub-driver, and she’d never expected to command any flagship (subs still operated solo, after all), far less one leading the defense of her world against homicidal aliens, but she was ready. She felt the tension simmering within her and adjusted her adrenalin levels, pacing her energy. The bastards would be coming out of hyper in less than two hours, and tracking had them pegged to a fare-thee-well. TF One knew where to find them; now all they had to do was wreck as many as they could before the buggers micro-jumped back out on them.

  And, she reminded herself, pray that these Achuultani hadn’t upgraded their technology too terribly in the last sixty thousand years or so.

  She did pray, but she also remembered her mother’s favorite aphorism: God helps those who help themselves.

  “Task Force in position for Charlie-Three.”

  “Thank you,” Hatcher said absently.

  The images of Marshals Tsien and Chernikov shared his com screen with Generals Amesbury, Singhman, Tama, and Ki. Chiang Chien-su had a screen all to himself as he waited tensely in his civil defense HQ, and Hatcher could see the control room of PDC Huan Ti behind Tsien. The marshal had made it his HQ for the Eastern Hemisphere Defense Command, and a brief flicker of shared memory flashed between them as their eyes met. Tama and Ki sat in their Fighter Command operations rooms, and Singhman was aboard ODC Seven, serving as Hawter’s second-in-command as well as commanding the orbital fortifications.

  “Gentlemen, they’ll emerge in thirty minutes, well inside our own heavy hyper missile range of a planetary target, so I want the shield brought to maximum power. Keep this com link open.” Heads nodded. “Very well, Marshal Chernikov; activate core tap.”

  Lieutenant Andrew Samson winced as the backlash echoed in his missile targeting systems. ODC Fifteen, known to her crew as the Iron Bitch, floated in her geosynchronous orbit above Tierra del Fuego. Which, Samson now discovered, was entirely too close to Antarctica for his peace of mind.

  He adjusted his systems, edging away from the core tap’s hyper bands, and sighed with relief. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, after all, but that was one hell of a jump from the test runs! God help us all if they lose it, he prayed—and not just because of what it’ll do to the Bitch’s power curves.

  Howling wind and flying ice spicules flayed a night-struck land. The kiss of that wind was death, its frigid embrace lethal. There was no life here. There was only the cold, the keening dirge of the wind, and the ice.

  But the frigid night was peeled back in an instant of fiery annunciation. A raging column of energy, pent by invisible chains, impaled the heavens, glittering and terrible as it pierced the low-bellied clouds.

  The beacon of war had been lit, and its fury flowed into the mighty fold-space power transmitters. Man returned Prometheus’s gift to the heavens, and Earth’s Orbital D
efense Command drank deep at Vassily Chernikov’s fountain.

  “Here they come, people,” Captain Robbins said softly. “Stand by missile crews. Energy weapons to full power.”

  Acknowledgments flowed back through her neural feed, and she hunkered deeper into her couch without realizing she had.

  Assistant Servant of Thunders Brashieel gave his instruments one last check, though there could be no danger here. They would pause only to select a proper asteroid, then be on their way, for there were many worlds of nest-killers to destroy. But he was a Protector. It was a point of pride to be prepared for anything.

  My God, the size of those things! They’ve got to be twenty kilometers long!

  The observation flared over the surface of Captain Robbins’ brain, but beneath that surface trained reactions and responses flowed smoothly.

  “Tactical, missiles on my command. Take target designation from the Flag.” She paused a fraction of a second, letting the computers digest the latest updates from the admiral’s staff while more monster starships emerged from hyper. Ship after cylindrical ship. Dozens of them. Scores. And still they came, popping into reality like demon djinn from a flask of curses.

  “Fire!” she snapped.

  Brashieel gaped at his read-outs. Those ships could not exist!

  But his panic eased—a bit—as he digested more data. There were but four twelves of them, and they were tiny things. Bigger than anyone had expected, with no right to be here, but no threat to Vindicator and his brothers.

  He did not have time to note the full peculiarity of the energy readings before the enemy fired.

  Adrienne Robbins winced as the universe blew apart. She’d fired gravitonic and anti-matter warheads before (the Fleet had reduced significantly the number of Sol’s asteroids during firing practices) but never at a live target. The hyper missiles flicked up into hyper space, then back down, and their timing was impeccable. The Achuultani shields had not yet stabilized when the first mighty salvo arrived.