“Fine.” Hatcher acknowledged the last report and blinked back into focus, wishing yet again that Dahak had returned. If Colin MacIntyre had been gone this long, it meant he hadn’t found aid at Sheskar and must have decided he had no choice but to hope Earth could hold without him while he sought it elsewhere. And that he might not be back for another full year.
He activated his com panel, and Horus’s taut face appeared instantly.
“Governor,” the general reported, knowing full well that Horus already knew what he was about to say and that he was speaking for the record, “I have to report that I have placed our forces on Red Two. Hyper wakes presumed to be hostile have been detected. ETA is approximately—” he checked the time through his neural feed “—seventeen-thirty hours, Zulu. System defense forces are now on full alert. Civil defense procedures have been initiated. All PDC and ODC commanders are in the net. Interceptor squadrons are at two-hour readiness. Planetary shield generators and planetary core tap are at stand-by readiness. Battle Squadrons One and Four are within thirty minutes of projected n-space emergence; Squadrons Two and Six should rendezvous with them by oh-seven-hundred Zulu. Squadrons Three, Five, Seven, Eight, Nine, and Ten, with escorts, are being held in-system as per Plan Able-One.
“Have you any instructions at this time, Governor?”
“Negative, General Hatcher. Please keep me informed.”
“I will, sir.”
“Good luck, Gerald,” Horus said softly, his tone much less formal.
“Thanks, Horus. We’ll try to make a little luck of our own.”
The screen blanked, and Gerald Hatcher turned back to his console.
Assistant Servant Brashieel checked his chronometer. Barely four day twelfths until emergence, and tension was high in Vindicator, for this was the Demon Sector. It was not often the Protectors of the Nest encountered a foe with an advance technical base—that was why they came, to crush the nest-killers before they armed themselves—but five of the last twelve Great Visits to this sector had been savaged. They had triumphed, but at great cost, and the last two had been the most terrible of all. Perhaps, Brashieel thought, that was the reason Great Lord Tharno’s Great Visit had been delayed: to amass the strength the Nest required for certain success.
That alone was cause enough for concern, yet the disquiet among his nestmates had grown far worse since the first nest-killer scanner stations had been detected. More than one scout ship had been lured to his death by the fiendish stations, and the explosions which slew them meant their surviving consorts had learned absolutely nothing about the technology which built those stations … except that it was advanced, indeed.
But this star system would offer no threat. Small Lord Hantorg had revealed the latest data scan shortly after Vindicator entered hyper for this last jump to the target. It was barely three twelves of years old, and though electronic and neutrino emissions had been detected (which was bad enough), there had been none of the more advanced signals from the scanner arrays. Clearly the Protectors must see to this threat, yet these nest-killers would have only the lesser thunder, not the greater, and they would be crushed. Nothing could have changed enough in so short a time to alter that outcome.
Captain Adrienne Robbins sat in her command couch aboard the sublight battleship Nergal. Admiral Isaiah Hawter, the senior member of the Solarian Defense Force actually in space, rode Nergal’s bridge with her, but he might as well have been on another planet. His attention was buried in his own console as he and his staff controlled Task Force One.
Captain Robbins had been a sub-driver, and she’d never expected to command any flagship (subs still operated solo, after all), far less one leading the defense of her world against homicidal aliens, but she was ready. She felt the tension simmering within her and adjusted her adrenalin levels, pacing her energy. The bastards would be coming out of hyper in less than two hours, and tracking had them pegged to a fare-thee-well. TF One knew where to find them; now all they had to do was wreck as many as they could before the buggers micro-jumped back out on them.
And, she reminded herself, pray that these Achuultani hadn’t upgraded their technology too terribly in the last sixty thousand years or so.
She did pray, but she also remembered her mother’s favorite aphorism: God helps those who help themselves.
“Task Force in position for Charlie-Three.”
“Thank you,” Hatcher said absently.
The images of Marshals Tsien and Chernikov shared his com screen with Generals Amesbury, Singhman, Tama, and Ki. Chiang Chien-su had a screen all to himself as he waited tensely in his civil defense HQ, and Hatcher could see the control room of PDC Huan Ti behind Tsien. The marshal had made it his HQ for the Eastern Hemisphere Defense Command, and a brief flicker of shared memory flashed between them as their eyes met. Tama and Ki sat in their Fighter Command operations rooms, and Singhman was aboard ODC Seven, serving as Hawter’s second-in-command as well as commanding the orbital fortifications.
“Gentlemen, they’ll emerge in thirty minutes, well inside our own heavy hyper missile range of a planetary target, so I want the shield brought to maximum power. Keep this com link open.” Heads nodded. “Very well, Marshal Chernikov; activate core tap.”
Lieutenant Andrew Samson winced as the backlash echoed in his missile targeting systems. ODC Fifteen, known to her crew as the Iron Bitch, floated in her geosynchronous orbit above Tierra del Fuego. Which, Samson now discovered, was entirely too close to Antarctica for his peace of mind.
He adjusted his systems, edging away from the core tap’s hyper bands, and sighed with relief. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, after all, but that was one hell of a jump from the test runs! God help us all if they lose it, he prayed—and not just because of what it’ll do to the Bitch’s power curves.
Howling wind and flying ice spicules flayed a night-struck land. The kiss of that wind was death, its frigid embrace lethal. There was no life here. There was only the cold, the keening dirge of the wind, and the ice.
But the frigid night was peeled back in an instant of fiery annunciation. A raging column of energy, pent by invisible chains, impaled the heavens, glittering and terrible as it pierced the low-bellied clouds.
The beacon of war had been lit, and its fury flowed into the mighty fold-space power transmitters. Man returned Prometheus’s gift to the heavens, and Earth’s Orbital Defense Command drank deep at Vassily Chernikov’s fountain.
“Here they come, people,” Captain Robbins said softly. “Stand by missile crews. Energy weapons to full power.”
Acknowledgments flowed back through her neural feed, and she hunkered deeper into her couch without realizing she had.
Assistant Servant of Thunders Brashieel gave his instruments one last check, though there could be no danger here. They would pause only to select a proper asteroid, then be on their way, for there were many worlds of nest-killers to destroy. But he was a Protector. It was a point of pride to be prepared for anything.
My God, the size of those things! They’ve got to be twenty kilometers long!
The observation flared over the surface of Captain Robbins’ brain, but beneath that surface trained reactions and responses flowed smoothly.
“Tactical, missiles on my command. Take target designation from the Flag.” She paused a fraction of a second, letting the computers digest the latest updates from the admiral’s staff while more monster starships emerged from hyper. Ship after cylindrical ship. Dozens of them. Scores. And still they came, popping into reality like demon djinn from a flask of curses.