A poisoned blade, of course. If it even nicked her...
He swung it like a back-alley thug. Antonia lashed out with one foot, took him in the forearm, hearing the bones shatter. He shouted, leaped back, whipped up his other hand to reveal the plasma derringer he was holding.
He was too far away this time. Antonia saw him squeeze the trigger, and ducked away uselessly.
The shot splashed fire off the ceiling.
Antonia looked up. Gordia was beside the fleet captain, her silver blade held back over her shoulder, the end point of a mighty swing. Seleucus was still upright, holding the gun out, but he was missing everything from the eyebrows upwards.
His jaw dropped open, tongue working.
Antonia shoved him over backwards, ripping the gun from his grasp and blasting the nearest of his guards in the face. As the man's head exploded his companions flung themselves away, raising their holy weapons, but Gordia was already among them. She snapped the great blade to her left, kicked out, whipped it to the right, leaping over the bodies as they fell in spouting sections. Antonia ducked a burst of staking pins, put a shot through a man's torso in such a way that his superheated entrails would scald the trooper to his right, and by that time Gordia's squad was through the door and blasting away.
It didn't last for very long after that.
Even as the last man fell, the desk was still squawking. Antonia stepped back to it. "Thank you for your diligence, infirmary."
"Het Admiral, we heard-"
"Physician, you heard nothing that need concern you. Now gather your team and transfer to the Voice of Pain. Bring the fleet admiral with you."
She moved away, flicking blood from her glove. Seleucus was still making noises. Antonia watched Gordia put the tip of her blade to his throat and shove it through to the deck.
"Gordia, once again you've excelled yourself."
The shocktrooper let her sword fold away, the silver blade collapsing in on itself until nothing but the hilt remained. "It is my honour to serve, Het."
"And my stupidity to let him get so close. If you'd not stopped the door from locking-"
"The door to an admiral's chambers, Het, does not lock." She put the blade back over her shoulder, where it snapped into place. "I am always careful to make sure of that."
"I've learned so many things today..." Antonia flipped her linker on. "Captain Teresh. How much trouble are we in?"
"Rather a lot, Het Admiral. The killships are moving into attack position."
"Very well. I'll be on the bridge in five minutes." She changed the cipher. "Comms officer?"
"Right here, Het Admiral."
"Open the fleet channel."
There was a faint rustle from the linker, a series of clicks as the radio frequencies engaged. Antonia's voice would now carry from the Voice of Pain to the Shalem internal net, and the comms systems of every ship in the fleet. Every one of her people would hear her next words.
For a moment, she wished she'd had time to prepare what she was going to say next. But then, if she had, it would have meant knowing in advance of what had just happened. "Iconoclasts of the Shalem fleet, this is Admiral Huldah Antonia."
Be calm, girl. The thought was hers, but the voice was her father's. She smiled to herself.
"There are twenty killships moving into attack formation around Shalem. Their captain was under orders to take over control of the temple-station and arrest me for treason. However, he also saw fit to attempt my assassination. I was luckier than Fleet Admiral Trophimus, who died by poison earlier today.
"These events are the result of actions committed by Lord Tactician Saulus." Speaking his name, her fist clenched involuntarily. "This man is the real traitor, responsible for the deaths of thousands of Iconoclast warriors. His insane plan, if it continues, will turn Iconoclast against Iconoclast until there is no one left. Humankind will be an open target for the mutants and their Tenebrae terrorists."
She looked across at Gordia. The trooper was watching her closely. "Warriors of Shalem, the killships will attempt to take the station by force. I do not believe we have the strength to stop them, but their victory will be hollow. My life as an Iconoclast is at an end, but I swear by my blood and pure genes that I will not let them take you too! All vessels, defend yourselves! Bathe the traitors in cleansing fire!"
She shut the linker down. When she tried to clip it back to her belt, her fingers were shaking too much to work the lock, and it fell to the deck.
Gordia reached down for it. "Here, admiral. You'll need this."
"What for?"
"To signal victory to the fleet." Her eyes blinked wetly over the breath-mask. "The bridge awaits, admiral..."
Just outside the bridge, she stopped. "Gordia? I'm excommunicated now - why would they fight for me?"
"Because they have always fought for you. And you have always prevailed." The shocktooper reached out an armoured hand and keyed the hatch. "Have you forgotten the cheers upon your return from Broteus?"
Antonia stepped out onto the upper gallery, looking over the bridge. No, she thought. No, I haven't.
Neither had anyone else.
Space was aflame.
The far end of the bridge was one huge holopanel, showing the forward view from the flagship. There was almost no black on it at all, so much antimat fire was ripping across it in every direction.
Antonia could barely see what was going on. She ran to the nearest empty workstation, Gordia clattering after her. Not all the vessel's crew spaces had been filled.
She jumped over the side of the egg-shaped station and felt it close around her as she hit the seat. A few keypresses brought up a tactical display and a direct link through to Captain Teresh. "I see you started without me, captain."
"My apologies, Het Admiral. The traitors were eager to dance, and it seemed churlish to deny them."
Antonia spun the tactical display, putting Shalem in the centre, her viewpoint far above the command dome. Twenty long red triangles stabbed towards it from the lower left, splitting into six wings of three as she watched, an odd two moving ahead of the pack. Around Shalem's disc, a pitiful array of green dots, sliding around to join the blue pointer that represented Voice of Pain.
But that, of course, was only the two-dimensional view. She tilted the view, saw that the enemy killships had formed into a sloping wall, while Shalem's vessels were moving above or below the temple-station's ecliptic plane, giving a clear line of fire to the hunger-guns.
She glanced up at the real view at the far end of the bridge. Lances of brilliant light were stabbing towards her from a distant haze of gleaming motes. The killships were using their particle cannon to try and find a way through Voice of Pain's forcewalls.
Antonia switched cipher. "Omri? Get Galahad and Excelcis Dei up ahead of the rest, full speed! Make them look eager."
On the tactical, two killships began to accelerate away from the others.
The traitors were splitting up. Two wings were curving up and to starboard, one down and to port. The odd two and another wing had joined to make an arrowhead of five vessels, concentrating their fire on the ships to Voice of Pain's right. Antonia saw a frigate icon flare and fade out.
"The Merodach," called Teresh. "She launched her daggerships before the core blew."
The Shalem fleet was moving apart too. The corvettes were darting forward, faster than anything else in the fleet. Four frigates arcing off to port, two at starboard forming up with the dreadnought there. Omri's surprise ships powering forward. She hoped none of the traitor captains would make anything of the fact the two killships hadn't opened fire yet.
She swung the view. The wing of five traitors were punishing their drives, heading for the gap they'd made by taking out the Merodach. "Captain Teresh," she snarled. "Those five ships - open fire. All weapons."
Teresh needed no more encouragement than that. The bridge lit up as the holofield blazed with light. A road of fire suddenly connected the front edge of Voice of Pain with t
he five traitors.
Two superheavy fusion lances, sixty forward-mounted hunger-guns, two hundred antimat phalanx turrets... Antonia knew the specs off by heart. What she didn't know was whether they would be enough.
Up on the holo, the five killships were close enough to be definite shapes; narrow blades of gleaming metal, spitting light. Suddenly one of them seemed to shiver, become a cloud of glittering dust expanding out from a point. Another jetted flame from every deck, a third merely dissolved as the pure-white beam of a fusion lance carved through its reactor deck. On the tactical, five red triangles had become two, and one of those was pulsing, losing speed. "Good shooting, captain."
The two waves of ships were almost among each other, but the relative numbers were becoming more uneven. Three frigates to far port had been caught by the massed forward batteries of two wings of killships, and had simply been vaporised by the concentration of antimat fire. Another frigate on the starboard flank was gone, but amazingly the daggership shoals it had unleashed had joined with those from the Artemis and succeeded in crippling a killship. The two corvettes were still racing ahead. Not a single shot had succeeded in hitting them yet.
Omri's two were still accelerating. Any second now, thought Antonia.
The deck lurched, and the holo flickered. Antonia felt an impact above her - Gordia had grabbed the roof of the workstation to avoid being thrown off her feet.
"Captain?"
"Daggerships," he said. "We've lost a fusion core."
"What about the dampers?" Ever since Broteus, Antonia had suffered nightmares about being caught on a ship with the dampers gone.
"The dampers are intact. Launching daggerships - I need the hunger-guns on those killships, not wasted on anti-fighter attacks."
There must have been thousands of daggerships out there now, Antonia realised. Her tactical display wasn't set to show them. If it had, it would have been like looking into a snowstorm.
"Those six killships," said Gordia, pointing at the tactical. "Why are they hanging back?"
"Reserves?" Antonia shrugged. She had noticed the two wings earlier, still far behind the primary battlefront. "Maybe waiting until the way to Shalem is clear."
It almost was, at that. Another frigate, the last she had to port, was gone. Its dampers down, it had rammed a killship, its crew of six hundred selling their lives dearly. The dreadnought it had impaled was left functional, but barely; its fire control wrecked, most of its decks open to space. A daggership shoal took it without trying.
The traitors still had fourteen intact killships, one crippled. Shalem was protected by the Voice of Pain, two killships, two corvettes that were still ripping through space at full speed, and Omri's surprises... Suddenly, Antonia saw the icons representing Galahad and Excelcis Dei sparkling on her display. They were taking multiple weapons hits. "Omri! Time to unwrap the presents!"
"Presents?" said Gordia. And then the holofield went white.
Antonia winced, screwed her eyes up against the glare. There hadn't been time to warn the bridge crew. She hoped that not too many of them would have their sight permanently damaged.
"Admiral? What in the name of-"
"The ships were uncrewed," said Antonia. "We left them empty to fill Voice of Pain. Omri had the idea of rigging their cores to blow by radio signal... Holy father."
She had just seen what the exploding killships had done. Galahad, ripped in two by a wing of traitors, had exploded harmlessly far above the ecliptic plane. Excelsis Dei had made it into the midst of the enemy before detonating.
Omri had somehow connected almost every major systems on the two ships before he had sealed the hatches and sent them on their way. The empty dreadnoughts, on his signal, had tried to collapse their forcewalls, open jump-points and detonate their fusion cores, all at the same time. The effects had been truly awesome.
An entire wing of three enemy killships no longer existed. Every solid object in a hundred-kilometre wide globe of space was simply gone - dreadnoughts, daggerships, missiles, everything.
Some of the bridge crew, the ones who weren't still trying to see, were cheering.
"Admiral?" That was Teresh. "I'm getting a report from Captain Gehazi, on the corvette Asagiri. She says there's something odd about those six killships at the back."
"What do you mean odd?"
"They've been fitted with something, it looks like a weapons system she doesn't recognise."
Antonia felt a chill behind her ribs, as she had when Silvanus had first spoken about her father's illness. The feeling that something was about to go very badly wrong. "Get her to describe it."
"A long tube, very long, welded outside the hull. Roughly where the fusion cores would be-"
"Captain, drop out of the plane. Now."
They almost didn't make it. Antonia felt the deck sliding from under her as Voice of Pain fired all its upper thrusters at once, pushing it down through Shalem's ecliptic plane, heard the groan of overstressed hull-plating. Everything on the holo slid upwards.
Twelve slender beams of crimson light carved the blackness above Voice of Pain's fin.
The bridge seemed to shiver under the bloody light, every workstation grow dark, every control become hot with static. The holopanel dimmed, flickered. Antonia kept her eyes on it, seeing the beams remaining constant, seconds stretching out until one dimmed, then another. Five seconds, and they were all out.
The bridge brightened. There was the rising whine of returning power. "What in God's name was that?"
"Forced-quantum razers," said Antonia thickly. "I saw a superdreadnought fitted with them at Noamon, but I had no idea they could be fitted to killships."
"They can't," replied Teresh. "Those six ships are dead. No power."
"So why use them?" Gordia was staring up at the holo, transfixed by the sight. "If they can only be used once per ship, what's the point?"
Antonia knew exactly what the point was. "Captain? Turn the view back to Shalem, please."
The holo swung a hundred and eighty degrees, and Gordia choked out a curse.
Shalem had been struck by all twelve beams. The entire temple-station was coming apart.
Antonia opened the workstation and climbed out, her eyes on the holo the whole time. She could see the Cloister Ring was breaking away in pieces, shedding landing bays and fabrication modules. The command dome was split in two and spilling fire. As she watched, the angel vault began to peel apart, great strips of plating moving past each other like a diagram of tectonic drift, the main lock tilting aside.
One last hunger-gun was still firing, pitifully, as if in impotent rage.
"The traitors are going superlight," growled Teresh.
"Us too," said Antonia. "Captain, signal the fleet. Any surviving vessels to head for the rendezvous point. There's no reason to stay here now, especially if Shalem's reactors go nova."
"Thy will be done."
Antonia turned away, walked past Gordia and off the gallery. As she reached the door there was a burst of light from behind her, outlining her shadow hard against the deck. The Voice of Pain going superlight, Shalem exploding, she couldn't be sure.
It really didn't matter any more.
Back in her quarters, Antonia sat at her desk and looked at the comms panel for a long time. Someone had already been in to clean the place up.
She had been sitting for an hour, while the flagship raced through jumpspace to the rendezvous point. The rest of her fleet, the few tattered remnants that survived, would join her there. The daggerships would return to their hangars and be refuelled, Omri and his repair crews would seal the blasted hulls and replace the seared wiring. The infirmaries were already filling with injured men and women, and more would come.
And for what? Once they were all there, what could she tell them?
"No," Antonia whispered to herself. "I'll not make it in vain."
To do what she wanted was going to be an awful risk. If she sent a needle-beam message, it could be picked up and the ship
's location in jumpspace traced. If she made more than one message, or stayed on the line too long, someone might get a fix on her course, too.
To send a needle communiqué to a friendly location would be dangerous. To send one back to Noamon would be close to suicide.
It might be worth it, though. She keyed the narrow-band comm system, and began tapping in the series of ciphers that would, eventually, let her speak with special agent Nira Ketta.
12. A TABLE FOR THREE
The briefing hall felt much bigger with the lights out.
The last time Red had been here it had been bright, the lumes set high and the coruscating light from tactical holographic displays lapping the walls. Half the bench seats had been occupied, starship captains and squad leaders crowded about her, eyes on the rostrum and the shapes that spanned above it. Now shadows hid the walls, faded the corners, and without the voices of Jubal and the other Umbrae Nova commanders there were no echoes to give it a sense of scale. If she closed her eyes, she could imagine she wasn't in a ship at all, but in a cave somewhere, a space of ancient stone, dark and cold and silent.
Red had to admit that, against all previous experience, she preferred the hall like this.
She sat hunched on a bench seat, down by the rostrum, quiet and still. All she could hear was her own soft breathing and the faint, almost inaudible humming of the huge starship around her.
The airy height of the place calmed her. It was the first time she'd been alone since waking up in the bedchamber, and the constant buzz of activity aboard Emissary had started to beat at her nerves. It hadn't bothered her in the build-up to the assault. She'd been too busy, too focussed to let anything intrude. And once she was aboard Persephone and the operation had been under way, the job at hand had simply carried her along. It was only when the battle was over that the reality of the past few days had started to sink in. Now, with the Umbrae Nova gearing up for the second phase of Dathan's plan, Red had suddenly found it all too much. She had needed a place to sit down, shut the world away, and try to work out just what the sneck was going on.
The Omega Solution Page 14