Steadman's massed batteries of x-ray lasers fired as one, knifing through Bulldog's shields at a range which allowed for no attenuation, and mere metal meant nothing in that storm of invisible energy.
But even as Bulldog died, her sisters Rottweiler, Dire-hound, and Malamute emerged and began to launch their broods.
The wreckage of the anti-carrier strike fell back, fighting to reform, and Captain Martens cut her way through to them. The Thebans broke off, desperate to kill their attackers yet forced to retreat to rearm. They had to use the barges; none of the carriers remained.
Thirty-one of the one hundred forty-four attacking fighters escaped.
Hannah Avram dragged herself back to awareness and pain, to the sliminess of blood flowing from her nostrils and lungs filled with slivered glass, and knew someone had sealed her helmet barely in time.
She pawed at her shockframe. Her eyes weren't working very well - they, too, were full of blood - and she couldn't seem to find the release, and her foggy brain reported that her left arm wasn't working, either. In fact, nothing on her left side was. Someone loomed beside her, and she blinked, fighting to see. The vac suit bore a captain's insignia. Danny, she thought muzzily. It must be Danny.
A hand urged her back. Another found the med panel on her suit pack, and anesthetic washed her back into the darkness.
TFNS Gosainthan emerged into reality at the head of Second Fleet's last five superdreadnoughts. Ivan Antonov remained expressionless as he waited for communications to establish contact with Berenson. Preliminary reports allowed him to breathe again as he studied the plot while Tsuchevsky collated the flood of data. The Theoan fighters still on the warp point were a broken, bewildered force, he saw grimly, vanishing with inexorable certainty as Berenson's pilots pursued them to destruction.
Gosainthan's heading suddenly altered, and he glanced at his tactical read-outs as Captain Chen took his ship and her squadron to meet the surviving Theban super-dreadnoughts. The admiral nodded absently. Yes. things could, indeed, be worse.
"The Wings are rearming, sir. They'll begin launching again in seven minutes."
Admiral Panhanal grunted approval, but deep inside he knew it was too late. Those cursed small carriers had diverted him, sucking his fighters off the warp point just in time for the fleet carriers to erupt into his face. Five of the newcomers had been destroyed, others damaged, but they'd gotten most of their fighters off first. And enough survived to rearm every infidel fighter in the system.
He'd lost. He'd failed Holy Terra, and he stared with burning, hate-filled eyes at the fleeing fleet carriers and the battle-cruisers guarding their flanks. He was so focused on them he never saw the trio of emerging infidel superdreadnoughts that locked their targeting systems on Charles P. Steadman's broken hull.
For the first time in far too many hours, David Beren-son had little enough to do - acknowledge the occasional report of another Theban straggler destroyed, keep Anto-nov apprised of the pursuit's progress - that he could sit on Bearhound's flag bridge and look about him at the system that had been their goal for so long.
Astern lay the asteroid belt, with its awesomely regular cleared zone, where Antonov had wiped out the last of the Theban battle-line. Must tell Commander Trevayne how accurate her holo simulation turned out to be, he thought with a wry smile. Ahead gleamed the system's primary stellar component, a GO star slightly brighter and hotter than Sol, whose fourth planet had been dubbed Thebes by that extraordinary son-of-a-bitch Alois Saint-Just. The red-dwarf stellar companion, nearing per-iastron but still over nine hundred light-minutes away, was visible only as a dim, ruddy star.
"Another report, Admiral." Mendoza was going on adrenalin and stim pills, but Berenson hadn't the neart to order him to get some rest. "A confirmed kill on the last fighter barge.
Berenson nodded, and a small sigh escaped him. The destruction of the remaining Theban mobile forces had been total. The TFN now owned Theban space. The beings who ran the planet that lay ahead now had no hope at all and would surely surrender. Wouldn't they?
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT A World at Bay
Fire wracked the skies of Thebes as the planet's orbital fortresses died.
Ivan Antonov had no intention of allowing those fortresses to figure in whatever action he finally took - or was required by his `t't>oh't'tica't't xnastexs, to teSse - NN't't't't't'tY respect to the planet. Nor did he have any intention of bringing his surviving capital ships within range of the weapons mounted by those forts and the planet they circled. Even assuming that the planetary defenses had not been strengthened since Lantu's fall from grace (and Antonov cherished no such fatuous assumption), Thebes was best thought of as a fortress itself - a world-sized fortress with gigatonnes of rock to armor it and oceans to cool the excess neat produced by its titanic batteries of weapons. So Second Fleet stood off and smashed at the orbital forts with SBMs. Fighters also swooped in, their salvos of smaller missiles coordinated with the SBMs to saturate the Theban defenses. They took some losses from AFHAWKs, but the forts had no fighters with which to the battle-cruisers guarding their flanks. He was so focused on them he never saw the trio of emerging infidel superdreadnoughts that locked their targeting systems on Charles P. Steadman's broken hull.
For the first time in far too many hours, David Beren-son had little enough to do - acknowledge the occasional report of another Theban straggler destroyed, keep Anto-nov apprised of the pursuit's progress - that he could sit on Bearhound's flag bridge and look about him at the system that had been their goal for so long.
Astern lay the asteroid belt, with its awesomely regular cleared zone, where Antonov had wiped out the last of the Theban battle-line. Must tell Commander Trevayne how accurate her holo simulation turned out to be, he thought with a wry smile. Ahead gleamed the system's primary stellar component, a GO star slightly brighter and hotter than Sol, whose fourth, planet had oeen dubbed Thebes by that extraordinary son-of-a-bitch Alois Saint-Just. The red-dwarf stellar companion, nearing per-iastron but still over nine hundred light-minutes away, was visible only as a dim, ruddy star.
"Another report, Admiral." Mendoza was going on adrenalin and stim pills, but Berenson hadn't the neart to order him to get some rest. "A confirmed kill on the last fighter barge.
Berenson nodded, and a small sigh escaped him. The destruction of the remaining Theban mobile forces had been total. The TFN now owned Theban space. The beings who ran the planet that lay ahead now had no hope at all and would surely surrender. Wouldn't they?
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT A World at Bay
Fire wracked the skies of Thebes as the planet's orbital fortresses died.
Ivan Antonov had no intention of allowing those fortresses to figure in whatever action he finally took - or was required by his political masters to take - with respect to the planet. Nor did he have any intention of bringing his surviving capital ships within range of the weapons mounted by those forts and the planet they cir-clecf Even assuming that the planetary defenses had not been strengthened since Lantu's fall from grace (and Antonov cherished no such fatuous assumption), Thebes was best thought of as a fortress itself - a world-sized fortress with gigatonnes of rock to armor it and oceans to cool the excess heat produced by its titanic batteries of weapons.
So Second Fleet stood off and smashed at the orbital forts with SBMs. Fighters also swooped in, their salvos of smaller missiles coordinated with the SBMs to saturate the Theban defenses. They took some losses from AFHAWKs, but the forts had no fighters with which to oppose them. The drifting wreckage to which Second Fleet had reduced the enormous Theban orbital shipyards would build no more, and all of Thebes' limited number of pilots had been committed to the captured carriers and barges. and died with them.
Everyone made a great production of stressing that point to Winnifred Trevayne: the Shellheads' fighter strength had been limited after all. It didn't help. She might sometimes fall into anguished indecision when lives were immediately at stake - her well-hidden but painfully intense empathy, Antonov had often reflected, would have made her hopeless as a line officer - but in the ideal realm of logic, with the actual killing still remote enough to admit of abstraction, her conclusions were almost always flawless. It was a weakness, and a strength, of which she was fully cognizant. Yet this time a misas-sessment of a mentality utterly foreign to her own had led her to a conclusion as inaccurate as it was logical. No one blamed her for the lives which had been lost. no one but herself.