by David Weber
Megaira warned, and Alicia watched the battlecruiser rounding upon her.
The initial surprise must have been total, but the battlecruiser's weapons were ready at last. Megaira's sensors read her as HMS Cannae, and Alicia felt a sensual, almost erotic shiver as her/their targeting systems reached out and locked. Unlike Procyon, Cannae was barely three light-minutes from Megaira . . . yet she, too, thought she faced only a destroyer, for the alpha-synth's ECM still hid both her identity and the shoals of sublight missiles deployed about her on tractors. Their maximum velocity was going to be slightly but significantly lower without the initial boost of internal launchers, but pre-spotting them more than tripled the salvos Megaira could throw.
Alicia felt them through her headset, felt them like her own teeth and claws, and hunger fuzzed her vision like some sick delirium. A part of her stood aghast, stunned by her own blood-thirst. This was wrong, it whispered, no part of Monkoto's plan, but it was only a tiny whisper. She hung on the crumbling brink of a berserker's madness . . . and embraced its ferocity.
"Take her!" she snapped.
The gravitic plot showed it first. Its FTL capability could see only the gravity wells of starships, SLAMs, and SLAM drones, but unlike Procyon's light-speed sensors, it gave a virtual real-time readout at such short range. Howell was watching it narrowly, waiting for the blue stars of Cannae's first SLAMs, when the battlecruiser's Fasset drive disappeared.
Megaira's missiles erupted into Cannae's face, and the battlecruiser's cyber-synth had too little time to react to the impossible density of that salvo. It did its best, but its best wasn't good enough.
Battle screen failed, Cannae vanished in a boil of light and plasma, and Alicia DeVries' eyes were emerald chunks of Hell. The orgiastic release of violence exploded within her, brighter and hotter than Cannae's pyre. It took her like a shark, snatching her under in a vortex of hate, and her madness reached out like pestilence. It flooded through her link to Megaira, engulfing the AI as it had engulfed her, and Tisiphone stiffened in horror.
This wasn't Alicia! The fine-meshed precision and deadly self-discipline had vanished into a heaving chaos of raw bloodlust. There was no reason in her, only the need to rend and destroy . . . and the Fury realized almost instantly from whence it sprang. She'd set a wall about Alicia's loss and hate to make that distilled rage her weapon, but this mortal was stronger than even the Fury had guessed. She would not be denied what was hers of right, and somehow she had breached that wall.
Alicia DeVries forgot Simon Monkoto's plan. Forgot the need to survive. She saw only the fleet that had murdered her world and family, and her madness locked Megaira close as they charged to meet its flagship.
James Howell went white as light-speed sensors finally showed him the details of Cannae's death. God in Heaven, what was that thing?! The one thing it wasn't was a destroyer—and whatever it was had stopped decelerating. It was accelerating straight towards him at seventeen KPS per second!
SLAMs raced to meet Megaira, and Alicia dropped the Fasset drive's side shields. The black hole's maw sucked them in, and she snarled, shuddering in the ecstasy of destruction, as she flashed past Cannae's four escorting destroyers and her/their weapons wiped them from the universe.
Procyon's engineering crew broke all records bringing her drive on-line. They completed the fifteen-minute command sequence in barely ten, and the dreadnought began to accelerate. But the intruder simply adjusted its course, charging straight for her, and James Howell swallowed terror as he realized the other's suicidal intent.
Tisiphone battered uselessly at the interface of human and machine. If she could have broken Megaira free, even for an instant, the two of them might have reached Alicia, but the AI was trapped in her mother/self's blazing insanity. Yet Tisiphone had sworn to avenge Alicia upon those who had ordered her family's murder; if she allowed Alicia to die here she would stand forsworn. She would have betrayed the mortal who had trusted her with far more than her life, and so she gathered herself.
The strength of Alicia's mind had already made a mockery of her estimates. It might even be enough to survive . . . this.
Alicia DeVries shrieked as a white-hot guillotine slammed down. There was no finesse; Tisiphone was a flail of brutal power smashing through the complex web that bound her to Megaira. Another part of the Fury invaded her augmentation, goading the heart and lungs shock had stilled back to life, and she writhed in her command chair, screaming her agony.
Somehow Tisiphone held the impossible balance, forcing Alicia to live even as she killed her, but then the balance slipped. She felt it going, and screamed at Megaira like the tocsin of Armageddon.
And suddenly Megaira was free. The Fury reeled as the AI slashed back in a blind, instinctive bid to protect Alicia, but only for an instant. Only long enough to realize what had happened and hurl herself into the struggle at Tisiphone's side. For one incandescent sliver of eternity Alicia's madness held them both at bay, and then it broke at last. Megaira surged through the maelstrom to gather her in gentle arms, and Tisiphone was a shield of adamant between them both and the hatred. She faced it, battered it back, and Alicia jackknifed forward in her chair, soaked in sweat and gasping for breath.
But there was no time, and she jerked back erect as the Fury triggered her pharmacope and lashed her shuddering system back from the brink of collapse. Reason returned, and she raised her head, her eyes no longer pits of madness, to discover she had committed herself to a death-ride.
James Howell stared helplessly at the display. The accelerating intruder's Fasset drive devoured his fire, and it was barely four light-minutes away, tracking Procyon's every desperate evasive maneuver. Rendlemann and the dreadnought's AI fought desperately to escape, but they simply didn't have the velocity. His ship had eighteen minutes to live, for there was no way those charging madmen would relent. They couldn't. If they broke off their suicide run now, Procyon and her consorts would tear them apart to nothing as they passed.
Horror and disgust reverberated somewhere inside Alicia, sickening her with the knowledge of what she had become, but there was no time for that. The tick flooded her system, goading her thoughts, and Megaira and Tisiphone snapped into fusion with her, a three-ply intelligence searching frantically for an answer. The enemy capital ships were spreading out, and their own velocity was back up to ninety-two thousand KPS and climbing. They were barely seventeen minutes from the dreadnought, but one or both of the battlecruisers could bring their weapons to bear around the shield of Megaira's Fasset drive within twelve.
Thoughts flashed between them like lightning. Decision was reached.
Commodore Howell winced as no less than six SLAM drones flashed away from the intruder. A battlecruiser. At least a battlecruiser, to carry that many. But if it was a battlecruiser, where had its own SLAMs been this long?
It didn't matter. He was about to die, but stubborn professionalism drove him on. The drones were charging directly away from Procyon, and he snapped an order to his com officer. A light-speed signal flashed after them, and he bared his teeth in a death snarl of triumph. Unless those bastards were clairvoyant, they couldn't know he had the authenticated self-destruct codes. Their precious sensor data would die with their ship . . . and his own.
Alicia monitored the signal as it burned past her, and bared her teeth in an icy smile of her own. Monkoto's plan was back on track. Now if only Megaira could get them out of the trap she'd shoved them all into . . ..
The AI named Megaira gathered herself. What she was about to try had been discussed in theory for years, but only in theory. No opportunity to attempt it had ever arisen, and most Fleet officers had concluded it wouldn't work, anyway. But none of them had expected to try it with an alpha-synth AI.
It had to be timed perfectly. She had to get in close, cut the transmission lag to the minimum, yet launch her attack before the hostile battlecruisers could engage her, for what she/they planned would reduce her defensive capability to a ghost of itself, but there was no other way.
She felt Alicia's warm, supporting presence and the Fury's hungry approval pulsing within her, and the chance of failure scarcely even mattered. They were together. They were one. Live or die, she knew no other AI would ever taste a fraction of the richness that was hers in this moment, and she waited while the seconds trickled past.
The accelerating SLAM drones exploded in spits of fire, but Howell hardly noticed. It was down to the final handful of minutes. Either his battlecruisers would stop the onrushing hammer of that Fasset drive by destroying the ship which mounted it, or Procyon would die.
Megaira struck.
The "pirates" had used their ability to penetrate Fleet security systems to kill her own SLAM drones, but it had never occurred to them that a Fleet unit might pierce their systems in return, and she was into their tactical net before they even realized she was coming.
The battlecruisers' AIs were slow and clumsy beside Procyon's; by the time they could respond, she had slashed them from the net with a band saw of jamming. This was between her and Procyon, and the dreadnought's cybernetic brain roused to meet her, but she had a fleeting edge of surprise, for she had known what was about to happen.
And she wasn't alone; Tisiphone rode her signal into the heart of the enemy flagship.
Howell lurched back in his chair as chaos exploded in his synth-link. Cries of anguish filled the flag bridge, hands scrabbled to snatch away tormenting headsets, and one high, dreadful keen of agony rose above them all as Tisiphone left Megaira to her battle. She sought a different prey and stabbed out, searching the net for a mind which held the information she needed, and Commander George Rendlemann screamed like a soul in Hell.
Procyon's AI was more powerful than Megaira, but it was also more fragile, and she was far faster. She was a panther attacking a grizzly, boring in for the kill before it brought its greater power to bear, and she drove a stop thrust straight to its heart. She made no effort to oppose the other AI strength-to-strength; she went for the failsafes.
Those failsafes were intended to protect Procyon's crew from the collapse of an unstable cyber-synth, not to resist another AI's attack. They didn't even recognize it for what it was, but they sensed the turmoil raging in the systems they monitored, and they performed their designed function.
Procyon's entire control net crashed as Megaira convinced it to lobotomize its own AI.
Procyon writhed out of control, systems collapsing into manual control, leaving her momentarily defenseless as Megaira rampaged through them. Circuits spat sparks and died, backup computers spasmed in electronic hysteria, and Howell did the only thing he could. His hand slammed down on the red switch on his board. HMS Procyon vanished into the security of her shield, and he wondered if it was enough. In theory, nothing could get through an OKM shield—but no one had ever tested that theory against a battlecruiser's full-powered ramming attack.
If she'd had even a moment longer, Megaira might have stopped the shield before it activated, but she didn't have a moment. There was barely time to snatch Tisiphone out of the dreadnought's circuitry before the shield chopped off her access, and even that delay was nearly fatal.
She'd cut her margin too close. HMS Issus opened fire with every weapon, and Megaira was locked into too many tasks at once. Her defenses were far below par. She was too close for SLAMs, but at least six sublight missiles and three energy torpedoes went home against her battle screen.
The alpha-synth writhed at the heart of a manmade star. Screen generators screamed in agony, local failures pierced her defenses, and elation filled Issus' captain. Nothing short of a battleship could survive that concentrated blow!
A battleship . . . or an alpha-synth. Megaira staggered out of the holocaust, blistered and broken, trailing vaporized alloy and atmosphere. A third of her weapons were twisted ruin, but she was alive. Alive and deadly, no longer distracted, as she turned upon her foe.
Her holo projector was gone, and the battlecruiser's captain had one instant to gawk in disbelief as Megaira stood revealed. Then answering fire slammed back. A direct hit wiped away Issus' bridge. More fire ripped past her weakened defenses, and panic flashed through Howell's squadron. Their flagship had been driven behind her shield. Cannae and her escorts had been destroyed. Issus was a shattered, dying wreck . . . and now they knew their enemy. Knew they faced an alpha-synth which had carved its way through the very heart of their battleline.
Only the battlecruiser Verdun stood in her path, and Verdun refused to face her. She spun away, interposing her own Fasset drive, and Megaira screamed past at thirty-six percent of light-speed.
Chapter Sixty-Three
The lethal chaos receded astern, and Alicia cursed herself viciously. Monkoto had planned for her to play the part of a battlecruiser, slightly damaged in the inevitable engagement with Howell's screen, and she'd blown it. Howell had killed her SLAM drones—exactly as intended—but she could carry the same word in person . . . unless he stopped her. Yet thanks to Megaira's damage, he knew what she was. Dreadnoughts were built for speed as well as power; Procyon might have overhauled a battlecruiser with battle damage, but nothing he had could hope to overtake an alpha-synth. So he wouldn't even try, and —
Her head jerked up as Megaira's drive died. The ship sped onward, but she was no longer accelerating, and Alicia's mouth twisted bitterly.
"Nice try, but you don't really think you can trick them with a fake drive failure, do you?"
"You what?"
The AI snapped as diagnostic programs danced.
Alicia gripped the arms of her command chair, face white, monitoring remotes that ripped out huge chunks of broken hull and buckled frame members to get at the damaged control runs. There was no time for neatness; Megaira was inflicting fresh and grievous wounds upon herself as she raced to make repairs which should have taken a shipyard days.
More missiles sizzled in from Verdun—but only missiles. She must have exhausted her SLAMs against Megaira's mad charge, yet her two surviving sisters hadn't, and they were closing fast. One would reach firing range within fifty minutes; the other in an hour; and Procyon still had SLAMs in plenty once she came out from behind her shield.
James Howell sat grimly silent as damage control labored. Commander Rahman had replaced the shrieking, drooling Rendlemann, but Procyon no longer had a cyber-synth. No one knew how it had been done, but her AI was gone, and massive damage to the manual backups left the big dreadnought defenseless. There wouldn't even be battle screen until damage control could route around the wrecked subsystems, and even if they replaced them all, Procyon would be at little more than half normal capability without her AI.
Which meant he dared not drop his mauled flagship's shield despite a desperate temptation to do just that. Verdun and Issus had almost certainly killed those madmen, assuming they hadn't destroyed themselves against the shield. But if they had somehow survived and fled, his people might need Procyon's SLAM batteries to stop them—except that if they'd survived and hadn't fled, a single missile salvo would rip his crippled ship apart. And so he sat still, watching his crew wrestle furiously with their repairs, and waited.
"Why the hell aren't they coming after us?" Alicia worried, watching lightning glare as Megaira's point defense dealt with incoming missiles.
"Not them—Procyon. Why doesn't she drop her shield and fry us?"
"Yeah, but for how much longer?"
"I know, honey. I know!" Alicia said contritely. "It's just that—"
The battlecruiser Trafalgar raced towards rendezvous with Verdun. Another twenty minutes. Just twenty, and her SLAMs would have the range.
Circuits closed. Power pulsed through jury-rigged shunts and patches, and the alpha-synth began to accelerate once more. At little more than two-thirds power, but to accelerate, and Megaira turned her attention to other wounds. She could do little for slagged down weapons, but her electronic warfare systems' damage was mainly superficial, and it as looked as though she might need them badly. Soon.
"Engineering estimates another fifty-five minutes to restore Fasset drive, Sir," Rahman reported, "but we've restored as much basic combat capability as we can without cyber-synth."