Marshall released two missiles, then two more, holding steady on his target and refusing to be drawn off by the dire threat behind him.
"Shields are failing," he said as he released the missiles, his voice almost matter of fact now. "Looks like you're on your own now, Colonel. For what it's worth. I'm proud I flew with you . . ."
And then his fighter was gone, too, an expanding cloud of flame and smoke and whirling debris. Blair thought he caught a glimpse of the Excalibur's escape pod boosting clear of the explosion, straining to reach orbital velocity but he wasn't sure. And even if Maniac had somehow managed to survive that blast, he wouldn't be playing any further part in this battle.
Blair was alone.
He threw the Excalibur into a tight turn to port and opened fire with his blasters just as Marshall's first two missiles detonated against Thrakhath's shields. The Bloodfang passed close beside Blair's craft, and he maintained his tight turn to stay lined up on the Kilrathi fighter. The other missiles struck the Prince's rear shields, and Blair squeezed the trigger again. Beams tore through the weakened shields, chopping through armor.
"Curse you, ape!" Thrakhath snarled. "You have won today, Heart of the Tiger: But it will not bring back your mate . . . and it will not save your kind from the vengeance of the Empire. This I swear!"
Explosions tore through the Bloodfang, and it seemed to stagger in mid-air before plunging downward. Blair watched as Thrakhath fought to maintain control, saw the nose just start to come up as the Prince managed one last masterful maneuver. But it was too late. The Bloodfang ploughed into the red-lit desert floor, erupting in fire and thunder.
There were still several fighters above Blair, but they seemed stunned by the loss of their leader. He turned his fighter back toward the canyon and opened up his throttles. Perhaps there was just time to start his run before the Kilrathi recovered . . .
He dropped down into the steep-sided, twisting gorge It took all his skill to weave through that narrow gash in the desert. His HUD reeled off the range to the preprogrammed drop coordinates, and Blair's thumb grew tense hovering over the switch that would release the Temblor Bomb from the belly of his fighter.
A part of him recoiled from what he had to do. The destruction of an entire planet, warriors and civilians alike. Once he would never even have considered making this desperate gambler's last throw. What had led to this moment, then? Was it just a thirst for vengeance? Thrakhath's death had left him feeling curiously empty of feeling, as if all his hate after Angel's death had been for nothing. It had been the same with Hobbes. In the end, revenge was a sterile thing. He could slaughter every Kilrathi, here and in the farthest reaches of the Empire, and the killing would never change the facts. Angel and Cobra and Vaquero and all the others would still be dead, and his life would still be empty.
He felt as if they were all there in his mind Vagabond . . . Flint . . . even Maniac, who in the end had risen above their long rivalry and given his life so that Blair could finish the mission. But in the long run, he knew it was wrong to use that bomb in the name of those who had died.
His range indicator continued to count down . . .
Blair thought of the ones who hadn't died. Paladin and Eisen, Admiral Tolwyn and his nephew. Rachel Coriolis, who had accepted the fact that he might never come back and still dared to love him. They were the ones who counted. And if the War went on, they would ultimately pay the same price as all the ones who had gone before. He pictured Victory broken and shattered as he had last seen Concordia, imagined plagues spreading across Terra as they had spread on Locanda Four. It was war to the knife with the Kilrathi.
Kill or be killed. Not for revenge. Not for hate. But for simple survival of the human species.
He gritted his teeth and watched the range tick down. The target was coming up fast. It was now or never . . .
His thumb stabbed down on the release, and as the bomb dropped away he jerked hard back on the steering yoke and cut in his afterburners. The Excalibur climbed fast, the atmosphere screaming past as the fighter accelerated. A Vaktoth had followed him into the canyon and opened fire as Blair pulled up. The Kilrathi pilot followed, but at that moment the Temblor Bomb went off, and the shock wave threw the Imperial craft against the side of the narrow trench. The fireball was lost in the greater blast of the bomb.
He had to wrestle with his own controls as the blast battered at his Excalibur. The rear shields failed, and Blair thought he could feel the impact of bits of debris against the tail section of the fighter. He had no way of telling how much damage he took, but the controls were feeling heavy and sluggish under his hands as he continued his steep climb, clawing for the safety of open space.
Behind and below him, the force of the Temblor Bomb triggered a quake in one of the major fault lines. The effects spread, and spread again, until the entire canyon was trembling with the force of a seismic event of unparalleled ferocity.
Blair didn't see the effects of the bomb. It took time for the first quakes to trigger subsidiary effects, radiating outward through all the interconnected fault lines. The Excalibur had already reached orbit by the time the quakes became planet-wide, collapsing Kilrathi-made buildings and structures within the major quake zones. The Imperial Palace was one of the first to suffer, as the entire massive edifice caved in on itself, crushing the Emperor and his court before they had a chance to react to the violence consuming their world.
The ground was heaving even in regions far from the fault lines now, as the pent-up energy of the entire world's tectonic stresses was all released at once. Dust clouds rose into the atmosphere, huge rents opened up in the crust of the planet. As Blair finally cut his engines and looked down at the planet, it was to see Kilrah disfigured by angry orange gashes spreading across the face of the globe The Kilrathi homeworld was coming apart before his eyes . . .
And then it happened. Overcome by the awful forces set free by the Temblor Bomb, the planet's core exploded, hurtling huge chunks of the mantle and crust outward. Vast planetoids tore through the orbital yards, smashing the assembled might of the Kilrathi Grand Fleet. Only a few ships, those under power and able to maneuver escaped the death of the Homeworld.
Blair managed to steer clear of the largest of the debris, but his Excalibur was battered by smaller fragments. As Kilrah came apart, spreading out into a cloud of drifting asteroids, the fighter's engines finally failed. He was drifting free now . . . trapped in the doomed system.
Christopher Blair sagged back in his acceleration couch, closing his eyes. He was exhausted, drained of anger and fear and hope alike. He knew he would die here, along with the planet and the empire his bomb had brought down.
Barely conscious, Blair didn't see the Kilrathi carrier that edged through the whirling debris toward his drifting fighter. Tractor beams lanced out to seize the Excalibur and pull it down toward the flight deck. He realized, too late, that his death would not be as quick and easy as he had hoped. He would, after all, face the enemy one more time.
Kilrathi guards in the elaborate harness of the Imperial Guard hauled Blair from the cockpit of his battered Excalibur and used gunbutts and nerve prods to herd him through a maze of dim-lit corridors. Still barely recovered from the beating his ship had taken, staggering with exhaustion, Blair still tried to force himself to remain stiffly upright. He remembered the last images of Angel, the pride she'd conveyed even after torture and imprisonment. The least he could do was to emulate her now.