But there were none left.
“Good shooting, Tiger,” said Cameron. “We lost Red Fourteen, and Red Nine had to eject. The rest of us are ready to go.”
“Let’s try to get to the nestship before the next wave of fighters hits us,” said March, turning the Tiger towards the huge starship.
“We might have an advantage if we can engage close enough to the nestship,” said Adelaide.
“Why’s that?” said Cameron. “Additional cover?”
“No,” said Adelaide. “The Wasp fighters might not be willing to fire if they risk hitting the nestship. They couldn’t do much damage to it, but maybe it would be like a human stabbing himself. They might not be able to make themselves do it.”
“Hell,” said Cameron. “Makes sense. Guess we’re about to find out if you’re right or not. Resume formation! Let’s get the Tiger to that nestship.”
March continued the flight towards the nestship, the remaining fighters of Red Squadron falling in place around the Tiger. Twice more they were attacked by groups of interceptors, and twice more they fought their way through. Red Four was destroyed before the crew had a chance to eject, overwhelmed by the impact of three missiles, and Red Eight managed to eject after a missile hit disabled the Phalanx’s reactor.
But then less than a thousand kilometers separated the Tiger and the remaining twelve Phalanxes of Red Squadron from the nestship. As they drew closer, the ship reminded March of a colossal tumor, a tumor that had somehow fused with an insect and perhaps an octopus. Something about it looked wrong, made an instinctive part of his mind recoil with rage and fear. He knew that was a common human reaction to encountering alien life, and that sometimes that instinctive reaction was wrong. Some of the alien races most hideous to human eyes had absolutely no interest in humans whatsoever and kept to their own affairs.
But given what the Wasps had done to the Fourth Empire, and what they would do to Vesper’s World, March knew that his reaction was justified.
“Almost there,” said Cameron as the remaining kilometers counted down. “Tiger, when we get within a hundred kilometers, I suggest we stay fifty kilometers above the ship’s surface. That will give us an altitude floor for any evasive maneuvers.”
“Agreed,” said March.
“And stay away from any of those glowing domes on the nestship’s hull,” said Adelaide. “I think those are nerve clusters or command centers or something, and they’re surrounded by growths that look a lot like the plasma emitters on the fighters we just fought.”
“Good advice,” said Cameron. “Red Squadron, stay away from any domed structures on the surface of that ship. Try to keep to flat areas.”
March watched the sensors, waiting for any sign of a response or hostile activity coming from the nestship. So far none had occurred. A light fighter screen had surrounded the nestship, but nothing more. Perhaps the Wasps had scanned them and decided that they posed no serious threat. Or maybe the scoutships were getting ready to hyperjump and defend the nestship.
Or maybe the Eumenidae had something else planned.
They passed the hundred kilometer mark.
They were so close that if he had wanted, March could have cut the Tiger’s drive and let the nestship’s gravity pull them to a crash landing on the surface.
“We’re here,” said Cameron. “Head for an altitude of fifty kilometers and start orbiting this place. Stay away from the domed things, whatever the hell they are, and keep your eyes open. Admiral said we only need to hold here for three to five minutes…”
The sensor displays flashed, detecting multiple surges of dark energy from the surface of the nestship.
“Shit!” said Red Three. “Are those missile launches?”
“No,” said Adelaide. “Those fighter sacs we saw earlier? I think they just hatched.”
The radar detected multiple inbound contacts rising from the surface of the nestship, accelerating as they pushed away from the ship.
“More interceptors, looks like,” said March.
“Then let’s welcome them to the party,” said Cameron. “Red Squadron, attack pattern Nine-Alpha-Two. Missiles first, then guns. Tiger, if you can shoot down any of their missiles, I’d be much obliged. Go!”
The Phalanxes took a new formation, plunging towards the hull of the nestship. March had the Tiger keep pace behind them. Once again, he switched the laser turrets to point defense, and Adelaide started feeding firing calculations to his console.
The Phalanxes and the Wasp interceptors released their missiles at the same time, and then both formations of starfighters went evasive. This time, two of the interceptors targeted the Tiger, and March had to join the evasive pattern, firing out a cloud of flak and setting the lasers to target the incoming four missiles. Fortunately, two of the missiles struck the flak cloud, and the lasers disabled the other two. March set the turrets back to automated point defense, and drove the Tiger into the fray.
He locked onto the nearest interceptor as Adelaide fed him a firing solution. Plasma bolts and a round from the railgun made short work of the Wasp interceptor. Two more of the interceptors pursued Major Cameron’s Phalanx, the big fighter dodging and weaving as the gunner sent volleys of plasma bolts from the rear turret. March shot down one of the interceptors. The second Wasp interceptor banked to avoid a railgun round, which put in right it the path of Cameron’s rear turret.
The next volley of plasma bolts ripped apart the interceptor.
“Thanks for the assist, Tiger!” said Cameron.
“Glad to be of help,” said March, sending the Tiger in pursuit of another interceptor. He risked a glance at the chronometer. About ninety seconds had passed since they had come within one hundred kilometers of the nestship, and that meant they had to wait another ninety to two hundred seconds for Stormreel’s plan to work.
Whatever the hell the plan was.
And assuming the admiral really did know what he was doing.
Another interceptor moved in pursuit of Red Leader, and March dropped behind the starfighter, firing with the plasma cannons. The interceptor weaved and dodged, and Adelaide sent him another firing solution. March’s next volley ripped the interceptor apart. He slowed the Tiger, preparing to bring the ship around in a tight turn…
And then the Tiger just stopped.
The inertial absorbers and the internal gravitics absorbed most of the shock. If they hadn’t, March and Adelaide would have been killed when the sudden deacceleration turned their bodies to bloody paste. As it was, March was flung back into his seat with terrific force, the smart foam of the chair molding itself to his body. He heard Adelaide let out a startled gasp of pain, and red warning lights flashed across his displays as an alarm blared.
Something was holding the Tiger in place, but the engines and the ion thrusters were still going at full blast. If he didn’t dial them back, they would tear the ship apart. March growled and pulled himself forward, slapping at the switches on the board. The engines throttled back with a whine, and March sat up straighter, trying to figure out what had happened.
“Gravitics,” croaked Adelaide. “The nestship.”
“Tiger, what the hell just happened?” said Cameron. “It’s like we’re stuck. We can’t move.”
March looked at the sensor display. “The nestship. It’s generating a local gravitic distortion, and it’s holding us in place.”
“Is that even possible?” said Cameron.
“Hell if I know,” said March, “but looks like it is. And we’re changing position.” He felt a chill. “The gravitic distortion is pulling us towards the nestship.”
“They grabbed us,” said Cameron. “They grabbed us, and they’re pulling us in.”
“Looks that way,” said March.
Why bother doing that? Why not simply grow more fighters and swamp them, or summon the scoutships to deal with them? The Wasps didn’t know about Stormreel’s plan, or so March hoped.
The communication panel began pinging.
&
nbsp; “They’re calling us,” said Adelaide, stunned. “That’s a tight-beam transmission from the nestship. I don’t think the Eumenidae ever tried to talk to anyone during their war with the Fourth and Fifth Empires.”
“Why the hell would they want to talk to you?” said Cameron.
“I don’t know,” said March, but that was a lie. A cold certainty had settled over him.
The Wasps knew about the relics in the strong room.
“I’ll talk to them,” said March. “The longer I can keep them talking…hell, maybe I can eat up the rest of the five minutes.”
He didn’t wait for an answer but switched the communication channel to the Wasp transmission. If they wanted to talk about relics, he didn’t want Cameron to overhear it.
“This is the Tiger,” said March.
There was a hiss of static, and then a voice spat a single word.
“Apes.”
It was a chorus of voices, all of them twisted and inhuman and speaking in perfect harmony. It sounded as if billions of them were speaking at once. The strange chorus made the hair on the back of March’s neck stand up. Perhaps he was projecting human emotions onto the Wasps, but he heard hunger and hatred and malevolence in that chorus.
“You are apes,” said the chorus. “We are the Hive. We are ancient. We are older than your race, older than your civilization. We have moved from star to star and galaxy to galaxy, consuming all who stand in our way. Yet on your vessel, we sense the presence of the relics of the ancient masters of old. Where did you obtain them?”
March shared a startled look with Adelaide. The ancient masters?
“Then you served the Great Elder Ones?” said March.
“We are the Hive,” thundered the chorus. “The ancient masters wrought us and gave us the hunger. We have moved from star to star and galaxy to galaxy, and we had devoured civilizations beyond your ability to comprehend. We shall devour all life and consume the cosmos itself. But you have the relics of the ancient masters. Where did you obtain them?”
“Where do you think we obtained them?” said March, taking a glance at the chronometer.
“The apes have changed themselves since last we fought you,” said the Wasps. “Those you call the Final Consciousness have mutilated themselves, joined their flesh to the technology of the great masters. We shall destroy your civilization, and then we shall destroy the Final Consciousness. We shall gather the technology of the great masters and open the door for their return. Then every star shall be quenched, and the galaxies shall go dark, and the Hive shall be the only life in the cosmos.”
“Sure of that?” said March. “You might be in for an unpleasant surprise.”
“Your defiance is the result of physiological responses and not logic,” said the Wasps. “We shall take your vessel and secure the relics. The answers will be harvested from your neurological system.”
The Tiger shuddered again, and March saw the distance dwindling to the nestship.
“They’re pulling us in,” said Adelaide.
March took a deep breath and cut the transmission. More than five minutes had passed. Either Stormreel’s plan was running late…
Or it wasn’t going to work at all.
There was only one thing left to do.
He reached for the reactor controls, preparing to set the fusion reactor to go critical and destroy the ship.
“You’re going to blow up the ship, aren’t you?” said Adelaide.
“Yes,” said March. “It’s the only way left. If they take us alive, they’ll pull everything we know from our minds. If they get the relics, that’s bad enough. We both have heads full of secrets. The Wasps can’t have those.”
Adelaide closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Yes, yes, you’re right.” Her eyes opened. “And considering they’ll cut us apart to get those secrets, at least this way will be quicker.”
“I’m sorry,” said March.
“No, don’t be,” said Adelaide. “I’m glad, I’m so glad I met you, Jack. I don’t regret any of it, even this. I had forgotten…” She swallowed. “I had forgotten what it was like to care so much about someone. I just wish that there had been more time.”
The words tangled in March’s throat. What could he tell her? That while he regretted bringing her to her death, he didn’t regret meeting her? That her kiss was like fire and made his nerves sing? That she was smart and brave and could actually make him laugh?
He squeezed her fingers with his right hand. “I don’t regret any of it, either.”
She took a deep breath. “Then we’ll finish it together.”
March nodded, still holding her hand, and reached for the reactor controls with his left hand.
There were worse ways to die, he supposed.
The sensors trilled, and so did the communications panel. Cameron was calling, and…
“What the hell?” said Adelaide, frowning at her own displays.
The sensors had just detected a huge surge of dark energy right on top of them.
Had the nestship called the scoutships to its aid? Why bother? The Tiger and the Phalanxes were trapped in the gravitic distortion, and…
The dark energy spiked and the terminus points of nine hyperspace tunnels appeared less than five kilometers from the Tiger and the Phalanxes.
The Roncesvalles and her escorts shot back into normal space.
“What the hell?” said Adelaide, as shocked as he had ever heard her. “That’s not possible. That’s…”
The Roncesvalles, the two cruisers, the two destroyers, and the four corvettes fired every single one of their missiles in unison.
They were far faster than the anti-fighter missiles carried by the Phalanxes and could carry a much larger warhead.
And every single one of the hundreds of missiles was armed with a high-yield neutron warhead.
The missiles spread out in a cone and slammed into the side of the nestship, their impacts dispersed evenly across the side of the huge ship.
Hundreds of fireballs bloomed along the nestship’s flank, the nuclear detonations blasting huge craters into the hull, debris jetting into space. It was an impressive and terrifying spectacle of destruction, and March remembered the ruin of Martel’s World, remembered the Machinists firing their nukes into the planet’s atmosphere.
But the explosions were nothing compared to the colossal wave of deadly radiation unleashed by the bombs. The Tiger’s radiation shield drained by forty percent as the radiation pulse washed over the ship, and static filled every single communication channel.
The effect on the nestship was far more dramatic.
The nestship heaved, writhing like a wounded animal. Huge black blisters erupted across the entire ship, and March realized they were tumors, created by the DNA damaged in the neutron blasts. The bombs had turned the Wasps’ mastery of biological technology against them. They could grow new starfighters within moments, and their DNA was shared among the entire swarm like a mesh network. But if the DNA was corrupted by radiation, the errors were replicated across the swarm in an instant.
More and more black tumors erupted across the nestship, and as the tumors exploded, the huge starship started to rip itself apart, disintegrating like a leaf caught in a fire. March looked at the dark energy sensor display and saw the energy readings from the scoutships scattered across the system fluctuating.
They, too, were being torn apart.
“How?” said Adelaide. “How could they possibly do that? A hyperspace jump of that accuracy is impossible.”
It wasn’t. March knew exactly what had happened, and in hindsight Stormreel’s plan was obvious. He had known that a Navigator’s macrobe could sense the quantum beacon from any distance. So, he had arranged for the quantum beacon to be taken in utter secrecy to the Vesper system, he had made sure that Caird’s macrobe had seen and sensed the beacon, and he had sent the device aboard the Tiger to the Vesper system.
And the plan had worked.
The nestship ripped itself ap
art in front of the Tiger, its own organic technology devouring itself.
“No one can calculate a jump like that,” said March, “but Caird can. That’s why the Navigators are such a closely guarded secret.”
He saw the comprehension go over Adelaide’s face. She might not know the truth of the Navigators’ nature, but she wasn’t stupid.
“That was the entire point of that damned beacon, wasn’t it?” she said. “Caird had to see it, so he could…I don’t know, home in on it somehow so he could calculate the jump. That was how he was able to do it…and I shouldn’t ever tell anyone about this, should I?”
“I really wouldn’t,” said March. “And I wouldn’t tell anyone about our little chat with the Wasps, except for Censor himself.”
“Agreed,” said Adelaide. “Speaking of that, I think we should answer some calls.”
March nodded, took a deep breath to steady himself, and connected to Cameron’s fighter.
“Red Leader, you there?” said March. “Can you move?”
“We can,” said Cameron. “The gravitic distortion just went away. What the hell just happened?”
“Classified,” said March.
“Right,” said Cameron. He heard the grimace in the major’s voice. “Speaking of that, it looks like the Lord Admiral wants to talk to you.”
“Acknowledged,” said March, and he switched channels. “Admiral?”
“Congratulations, Captain March, Dr. Taren,” said Stormreel. “You have performed excellently. I am pleased that my assessment of you at our initial meeting was correct. The contagion of radiation-damaged DNA has spread through the entire Wasp force. A danger of networking biological-based technology, I expect. The ships and the individual Eumenidae are dying as we speak.”
“And our cargo?” said March.
“You may continue to your original delivery,” said Stormreel. “I expect my small addition to your strong room will not provide undue trouble. Land on the Roncesvalles. I want to have a brief word with you before you depart.”
Chapter 10: Teamwork
As it turned out, it was three hours before March and Adelaide landed and spoke to Stormreel again.
Wasp Hand Page 16