by David Weber
Brashieel cried out in shock, shaming himself before his nestmates, but he was not alone. What were those things?
A twelve of ships vanished in a heartbeat, and then another. His scanners told the tale, but he could not believe them. Those weapons were coming through hyper space! From such tiny vessels? Incredible!
He felt his folded legs tremble as those insignificant pygmies ravaged the lead squadrons. Ships died, blown apart in fireballs vast beyond belief, and others tumbled away, glowing, half-molten, more than half-destroyed by single hits. Such power! And those strange warheads—the ones which did not explode, but tore a ship apart in new and horrible ways. What were they?
But he was a Protector, and Vindicator had a reputation to uphold. His hands were rock-steady in the control gloves, arming his own weapons, and Small Lord Hantorg’s furious voice pounded in his ears.
“Open fire!” the Small Lord snarled.
Adrienne Robbins made herself throttle her exultation. Sixty of the buggers in the opening salvo! They knew they’d been nudged, by God! But those had been the easy kills, the sitting ducks with unstable shields. Now her sensors felt those shields slamming into stability, and the first return fire spat towards TF One.
She opened her cross feed to the electronic warfare types as decoys went out and jammers woke. She would have felt better with some idea of Achuultani capabilities before the engagement, but that was what this was all about. Task Force One was fighting for the data Earth needed to plan her own defense, and she studied the enemy shields. Pretty tough, but they damned well should be with the power reserves those monsters must have. Technically, they weren’t as good as Nergal’s; only the difference in power levels made them stronger. Which was all very well, but didn’t change facts.
The first Achuultani missiles slashed in, and Captain Robbins got another surprise. They were normal-space weapons, but they were fast little mothers. Seventy, eighty percent light-speed, and that was better than anything of Nergal’s could do in n-space. They were going to give missile defense fits.
Assistant Servant of Thunders Brashieel snarled as his first salvo smote the nest-killers. Half a twelve of missiles burst through all their defenses, ignoring their infernally effective decoys, and the Furnace roared. Matter and anti-matter merged, gouging at the nest-killers’ shield, and Brashieel’s inner eyelids narrowed at its incredible resistance. But his thunder was too much for it. It crumbled, and Tarhish’s Breath swept the ship into death.
* * *
Captain Robbins cursed as Bolivia burned. Those fucking warheads were incredible! Their emission signatures said they were anti-matter, and great, big, nasty ones. At least as big as anything Earth’s defenders had.
Bolivia was the first to go, but Canada followed, then Shirhan and Poland. Please, Jesus, she prayed. Slow them down!
But the huge Achuultani ships were still dying faster than TF One. Which was only because they were getting in each other’s way, perhaps, but true nonetheless, and Adrienne Robbins felt a fierce exultation as yet another fell to Nergal’s missiles.
“Close the range,” Admiral Hawter said grimly, and Adrienne acknowledged. Nergal drove into the teeth of the Achuultani fire.
“Stand by energy weapons,” she said coldly.
They were not fleeing. Whatever else these nest-killers might be, they had courage. More of them perished, blazing like splinters of resinous mowap wood, but the others advanced. And their defenses were improving. The efficiency of their jammers had gone up thirty percent while he watched.
Captain Robbins smiled thinly. Her EW crews were getting good, hard data on the Achuultani targeting systems, and they knew what to do with it. Another three ships were gone, but the others were really knocking down the incoming missiles now.
Whatever happened, that data would be priceless to the rest of the Fleet and to Earth herself. Not that Adrienne had any intention of dying out here, but it was nice to know.
Aha! Energy range.
Brashieel gaped as those preposterous warships opened a heavy energy fire. Tiny things like that couldn’t pack in batteries that heavy!
But they did, and quarter-twelves of them synchronized their fire to the microsecond, slashing at their Aku’Ultan victims. Overload signals snarled, and frantic engineers threw more and more power to their shields, but there simply was not enough. Not to stop missiles and beams alike.
He watched in horror as Avenger’s forward quadrant shields went down. A single nest-killer beam pierced the chink in his armor and ripped his forward twelfth apart. Hard as it was for any Protector to admit another race could match the Aku’Ultan, Brashieel knew the chilling truth. He had never heard of weapons which could do what that one was doing.
He groaned as Avenger’s hull split like a rotten istham, and then another impossible, Tarhish-spawned warhead crumpled the wreckage into a mangled ball. Avenger’s power plants let go, and Vindicator’s brother was no more.
But Brashieel bared his teeth as his display changed. Now the nest-killers would learn, for his hyper launchers had been given time to charge at last!
“Hyper missiles!” Tactical shouted, and Adrienne threw Nergal into evasive action. Ireland and Izhmit were less fortunate. Ireland’s shield stopped the first three; the next four—or five, or possibly six—got through. Izhmit went with the first shot. How the hell had they popped her shield that way?
It didn’t matter. TF One was losing too many ships, but the Achuultani were dying at a three-to-one ratio even now. A hyper missile burst into n-space, exploding just outside the shield, shaking Nergal as a terrier shook a rat, but the shield held, and she and her ship were one. They closed in, energy weapons raving, and her own sublight missiles were going out now.
Lord of Order Furtag was gone with his flagship, and command devolved upon Lord Chirdan. Chirdan was a fighter, but not blind. They were destroying the nest-killers, but his nestlings were dying in unreasonable numbers, for they had no weapon to equal those deadly beams. He could smash these defenders even at this low range, but only at the cost of too many of his own. He gave the order, and the scouts of the Aku’Ultan micro-jumped away.
The enemy vanished.
They shouldn’t be able to do that, Adrienne Robbins thought. Not to just disappear that way. We should have detected the hyper field charging up on something that size, even for an itty-bitty micro-jump. But we didn’t. Well, that’s worth knowing. Won’t help the bastards much when they get too far in-system to micro-jump, but it’s going to be a bitch out here.
And the buggers can fight, she thought grimly, shaken by her read-outs. Task Force One had gone in with forty-eight ships; it came out with twenty-one. The enemy had lost ten times that many, possibly more … but the enemy had more than ten times as many starships as Earth had battleships.
Admiral Hawter turned in-system. Magazines were down to sixty percent, thirty percent for hyper missiles, and half his survivors were damaged. If the enemy was willing to run, then so was he. He’d gotten the information Earth needed for analysis; now it was time to get his surviving people home.
The first clash was over, and humanity had won—if fifty-six percent losses could be called a victory. And both sides knew it could. The Aku’Ultan had lost a vastly lower percentage of their total force, but there came a point at which terms like “favorable rate of exchange” were meaningless.
Yet it was only the first clash, and both sides had learned much. It remained to be seen which would profit most from the lessons they had purchased with so much blood.
Chapter Fifteen
The great ringed planet of this accursed system floated far below him, but Lord of Order Chirdan had no eyes for its beauty as he watched his engineers prepare their final system tests.
The asteroids they had already hurled against the nest-killers’ planetary shield had shown Battle Comp that small weapons would not penetrate, while those of sufficient mass were destroyed by the nest-killers’ weapons before impact. They would continue to hurl
asteroids against it, but only to force it back so that they might smite the fortresses with other thunders.
But this, Chirdan thought, was another matter. It would move slowly, at first, but only at first, and it was large enough to mount shields which could stop even the nest-killers’ weapons. His nestlings would protect it with their lives, and it would end these demon-spawned nest-killers for all time. Battle Comp had promised him that, and Battle Comp never lied.
“I don’t like it,” Horus said. “I don’t like it, and I want a way around it. Do any of you have one?”
His chiefs of staff looked back from his com screen, weary faces strained. Gerald Hatcher’s temples were almost completely white, but Isaiah Hawter’s eyes were haunted, for he’d seen seventy percent of his warships blown out of existence in the last four months.
One face was missing. General Singhman had been aboard ODC Seven when the Achuultani warhead broke through her shield.
There were other gaps in Earth’s defenses, and the enemy ruled the outer system. They were slow and clumsy in normal space, but their ability to dart into hyper with absolutely no warning more than compensated as long as they stayed at least twenty light-minutes out.
Earth had learned enough in the last few months to know her technology was better, but it was beginning to appear her advantage might not be great enough, for the Achuultani had surprises of their own.
Like those damned hyper drives. Achuultani ships were slow even in hyper, but their hyper drives did things Horus had always thought were impossible. They could operate twice as deep into a stellar gravity well as an Imperial hypership, and their missile launchers were incredible. Achuultani sublight missiles, though fast, weren’t too dangerous—Earth’s defenders had better computers, better counter-missiles, and more efficient shield generators—but their hyper missiles were another story. Somehow, and Horus would have given an arm to know how, the Achuultani generated external hyper fields around their missiles, without the massive on-board hyper drives human missiles required.
Their launchers’ rate of fire was lower, but they were small enough the Achuultani could pack them in in unbelievable numbers, and they tended to fire their salvos in shoals, scattered over the hyper bands. A shield could cover only so many bands at once, and with luck, they could pop a missile through one the shield wasn’t guarding—a trick which had cost Earth’s warships dearly.
Their energy weapons, on the other hand, relied upon quaint, short-ranged developments of laser technology, which left a gap in their defenses. It wasn’t very wide, but if Earth’s defenders could get into it, they were too close for really accurate Achuultani hyper missile-fire and beyond their effective energy weapon range. The trick was surviving to get there.
And they really did like kinetic weapons. So far, they’d managed to hit the planetary shield with scores of projectiles, the largest something over a billion tons, and virtually wiped out Earth’s orbital industry. They’d nailed two ODCs, as well, picking them off with missiles when the main shield was slammed back into atmosphere behind them by kinetic assault.
To date, Vassily had managed to hold that shield against everything they threw at him, but the big, blond Russian was growing increasingly grim-faced. The PDC shield generators had been designed to provide a fifty percent reserve—but that was before they knew about Achuultani hyper missiles. Covering the wide-band attacks coming at him took every generator he had, and at ruinous overload. Without the core tap, not even the PDCs could have held them.
Which was largely what this conference was about.
“I don’t see an option, Horus,” Hatcher said finally. “We’ve got to have that tap. If we shut down and they hit us before we power back up—”
“Gerald,” Chernikov said, “we never meant this tap to carry such loads so long. The control systems are collapsing. I am into the secondary governor ring in places; if it goes, there are only the tertiaries to hold it.”
“But even if we shut down, will it be any safer to power back up?”
“No,” Chernikov conceded unhappily. “Not without repairs.”
“Then, Vassily, it is a choice between a possibility of losing control and the probability of losing the planet,” Tsien said quietly.
“I know that. But it will do us no good to blow up Antarctica and lose the tap—permanently—into the bargain.”
“Agreed.” Horus’s quiet voice snapped all eyes back to him. “Are your replacement components ready for installation, Vassily?”
“They are. We will require two-point-six hours to change over, but I must shut down to do it.”
“Very well.” Horus felt responsibility crushing down upon him. “When the first secondary system goes down, we’ll shut down long enough for complete control replacement.”
Tsien and Hatcher looked as if they wanted to argue, but they were soldiers. They recognized an order when they heard it.
“Now.” Horus turned his attention to Admiral Hawter. “What can you tell us about your own situation, Isaiah?”
“It’s not good,” Hawter said heavily. “The biggest problem is the difference in our shield technologies. We generate a single bubble around a unit; they generate a series of plate-like shields, each covering one aspect of the target, with about a twenty percent overlap at the edges. They pay for it with a much less efficient power ratio, but it gives them redundancy we don’t have and lets them bring them in closer to the hull. That’s our problem.”
Heads nodded. Hyper missiles weren’t seeking weapons; they went straight to their pre-programmed coordinates, and the distance between shield and hull effectively made Earth’s ships bigger targets. All too often, a hyper missile close enough to penetrate a human warship’s shield detonated outside an Achuultani ship’s shields—which, coupled with the Achuultani’s greater ability to saturate the hyper bands, left Hawter’s ships at a grievous disadvantage.
“Our missiles out-range theirs, and we’ve refined our targeting systems to beat their jammers—which, by the way, are still losing ground to our own—but if we stay beyond their range, we can’t get our warheads in close enough, either. Not without bigger salvos than most of our ships can throw. As long as they stay far enough out to use their micro-jump advantage, as well, we can only fight them on their terms, and that’s bad business.”
“How bad?” General Ki asked.
“Bad. We started out with a hundred and twenty battleships, twice that many cruisers, and about four hundred destroyers. We’re down to thirty-one battleships, ninety-six cruisers, and one hundred and seven destroyers—that’s a loss of five hundred and thirty-six out of an initial strength of seven hundred and seventy. In return, we’ve knocked out about nine hundred of their ships. I’ve got confirmed kills on seven hundred eighty-two and probables on another hundred fifty or so. That’s one hell of a lot more tonnage than we’ve lost, and, by our original estimates, that should have been all of them; as it is, it looks like a bit less than fifty percent.
“What it boils down to is that they’ve ground us away. If they move against us in force, we no longer have the mobile units to meet them in deep space.”
“In short,” Horus interjected softly, “they’ve won control of the Solar System beyond the reach of Earth’s own weapons.”
“Exactly, Governor,” Hawter said grimly. “We’re holding so far, but by the skin of our teeth. And this is only the scouting force.”
They were still staring at one another in glum silence when the alarms shrieked.
Both of Brashieel’s stomachs tightened as Vindicator moved in-system. The Demon Sector was living up to its name, Tarhish take it! Almost half the scouts had died striving against this single wretched planet, and if the scouts were but a few pebbles in the avalanche of Great Lord Tharno’s fleet, there were many suns in this sector—including the ones which must have built those scanner arrays. It could not have been these nest-killers, for none of their ships were even hyper-capable. But if these nest-killers had such weapons, who knew
what else awaited the Protectors?
Yet they were pushing the nest-killers back. Lord of Thought Mosharg had counted the nest-killers they had sent to Tarhish carefully, and few of their foes’ impossibly powerful warships could remain.
Still, it seemed rash to press an attack so deep into the inner system. The nest-killers were twice as fast as Vindicator when he could not flee into hyper. If this was an ambush, the Great Visit’s scouts could lose heavily.
But Brashieel was no lord. Perhaps the purpose was to evaluate the nest-killers’ close defenses before the Hoof of Tarhish was released upon them? That made sense, even to an assistant servant like him, especially in light of their orders to attack the sunward pole of the planet. Yet to risk a half-twelve of twelves of scouts in this fashion took courage. Which might be why Lords Chirdan and Mosharg were lords and Brashieel was an assistant servant.
He settled tensely upon his duty pad as they emerged from hyper and headed for the blue-white world they had come so far to slay.
“Seventy-two hostiles, inbound,” Plotting reported. “Approximately two hundred forty additional hostiles following at eight light-minutes. Evaluate this as a major probe.”
Isaiah Hawter winced. Over three hundred of them. He could go out to meet them and kick hell out of them, but it would leave him with next to nothing. Those bastards lying back to cover their fellows with hyper missiles made the difference. He’d lose half his ships before his energy weapons even engaged the advanced force.