All right, Steve thought, as he looked at the display. Oddly, he found himself wishing he knew who he faced. Maybe the knowledge would have provided an insight into the Horde’s plans. If you want Earth, you bastards, we’ll claw you good and proper as we go down.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Sol System
“They’re approaching the minefield,” Mongo said. “But they’re also sweeping space very carefully.”
Steve gritted his teeth. The Hordesmen had been fooled once — and it was clear that they didn’t want to be fooled again. Their advance was odd — it seemed to be a cross between a reckless charge and a careful approach to the enemy — but there was a strong possibility they’d pick up the minefield before they entered attack range and the mines went active.
“Contact the fleet,” he ordered. “We will prepare to advance and engage the enemy.”
He ran through the odds quickly in his head. Eleven Horde starships were gone and four more were significantly damaged, but that still left ten warships in reasonably good condition. He had three warships and a handful of modified freighters. The odds were not good. He could delay the Horde, perhaps distract them from going after the mines, but he couldn’t stop them. Only the minefield could do that, he knew.
We should have asked Friend for a war fleet, he thought. But that would have compromised our independence too badly.
“We will advance on my command,” he said, grimly. If they could keep the enemy from looking for threats, they might just be able to pull off a victory. “I say again, we will advance on my command.”
“Stay in formation, damn you,” Yss!Yaa roared at one of his subordinate commanders. “We need to stay in formation!”
He cursed again as it became clear that it was a futile effort. His subordinates wanted blood, human blood, and they all wanted the honour of landing the first blows against Earth. His formation was a formation in name only, now that several of his officers had recovered from their shock and were advancing rapidly towards Earth. And, despite the best he could do, he couldn’t keep them focused on the possibility of another trap.
“The human world is coming into range,” his weapons officer reported. “Human defences might be insufficient to stop our missiles.”
“Good,” Yss!Yaa said. “Open fire.”
“They’ve started to launch missiles,” Mongo reported. He sounded puzzled. “Missiles?”
Steve shared his puzzlement. The Galactics rarely used missiles, knowing that any halfway capable point defence network could simply swat them out of space. Even antimatter warheads wouldn’t cause much damage unless they impacted directly against a target’s shields. It was unusually stupid, even for the Horde. They didn’t gain anything by giving the human ships free targets…
His blood ran cold as the truth sank in. “They’re firing on Earth,” he whispered. Unlike a starship, a planet couldn’t dodge… and Earth’s defences were puny compared to any Galactic world. The best he’d been able to set up was a handful of point defence weapons and sensor networks, enough to take down any human missile launch, but nowhere near enough to tackle a swarm of Galactic-level missiles. “They want to kill us all!”
Kevin swore out loud. “We have to stop them!”
Steve gritted his teeth. The missiles would pass through the outer edge of the fleet’s engagement envelope, but only for a few seconds. In hindsight, the missile trajectories were obvious clues as to their targets. It was vaguely possible, he knew, that the Horde might be shooting at the planet’s orbital industries, but a miss would be absolutely disastrous in any case. The missile would fly onwards and strike the planet…
But if they altered course to engage the missiles, they’d run the risk of being unable to cover the minefield. And they’d lose their best chance to stop the enemy dead in their tracks.
“Continue on our current course,” he ordered, harshly.
Mongo looked up, sharply. “Steve…”
“We don’t have a choice,” Steve snapped. He hated himself for saying the words, but he didn’t have a choice. The entire world would hate him… yet they’d be alive to hate him. It was better than a dead or enslaved world. “If we don’t stop them, here and now, we lose everything.”
Yss!Yaa watched, dispassionately, as the missiles passed through the human engagement envelope — five of them being picked off before they made it out again — and roared towards the human world. Whatever the odder structures in orbit actually were, he noted, relatively few of them had any kind of point defence. Seven more missiles were picked off; three more were redirected by their smart warheads to take out the automated orbital weapons platforms and clear the way for the second salvo. The remaining missiles plunged into the planetary atmosphere and sought targets. Seconds later, nuclear detonations flashed into existence for long seconds before fading away, leaving devastation in their wake.
“Twelve human cities have been destroyed,” the weapons officer reported. “Should I fire a second salvo?”
“No,” Yss!Yaa said. They were getting far too close to infringing the convention against genocide as it was. The Galactics might cheerfully ignore any law that couldn’t be enforced effectively, but almost every power would assist in hunting down the Horde, if they were publically charged with genocide. “Concentrate on the human warships.”
He smiled. On the display, the human ships were growing closer. He wouldn’t underestimate them again, he vowed, but he couldn’t see how they could hope to match his firepower, no matter what they stuffed into a freighter hull. This time, he told himself, it would be different.
“New York is gone,” Kevin said, flatly. “Manchester, England; Paris, France; Warsaw, Poland; Moscow, Russia…”
Steve barely heard him. The devastation was simply impossible to imagine, the death rate even more so. New York alone had over eight million people. Between all eleven targets — one missile seemed to have plunged into the water, triggering tidal waves across East Asia — there might well be a hundred million dead. But it was beyond his ability to grasp. The aliens had slaughtered so many humans that they might as well be nothing more than statistics.
No wonder we rarely react when we are told so many thousands have died, the morbid part of his mind whispered. We simply can’t grasp it.
“Enemy ships coming into range,” Mongo reported. “They’re locking weapons on us.”
“Fire at will,” Steve ordered.
The Hordesmen kept coming towards the small human fleet, firing as they came. Steve watched, dispassionately, as bursts of energy flared through the void, some slamming into his shields while others pulsed onwards and faded into the darkness. The Horde, it seemed, was showing off, while the human ships were more careful with their fire. One Horde ship exploded as she was caught in a crossfire, another rolled over and came to a halt as she took major damage. But the remainder of the Horde ships were closing in.
“Slip into evasive pattern delta,” Steve ordered. Most of the Horde ships were smaller than Shadow Warrior, but that didn’t make them ineffective. Instead, they were firing savagely and weakening his defences. “And inch us back towards the minefields…”
The display bleeped, a low mournful sound. “Vincent Hastings is gone, sir,” Kevin reported. His voice was very calm, too calm. They’d named the Q-ship after their dead friend, but they’d known she wasn’t a real warship. The only advantage she had was sheer mass and it wasn’t enough to keep the Horde from killing her. “I don’t see any lifepods.”