“Not yet. Hold inside the shield till the ships engage.”
“Acknowledged.” Tama’s voice was unhappy, but he understood. He would wait until the Achuultani were too busy punching missiles at Robbins’ ships to wipe his own fragile craft from the universe.
“Task Force opening fire,” someone said, and another voice came over the link, soft and prayerful, its owner not even aware he had spoken.
“Go, baby! Go!” it whispered.
Adrienne Robbins had discussed her plan with Horus, not that there was much “planning” to it. There was but one possible tactic: to go right down their throat behind every missile she had. Perhaps, just perhaps, they could swamp the defenses, get in among them with their energy weapons. None would survive such close combat, but they might punch a hole before they died.
And so Earth’s ships belched missiles at her murderers, hyper and sublight alike. Their launchers went to continuous rapid fire, spitting out homing sublight weapons without even worrying about targeting. The lethal projectiles were a cloud of death, and the first hyper missiles from Earth came with them.
Lord of Order Chirdan’s head bobbed in anguish as his nestlings died. He had known the nest-killers must come forth and hurl their every weapon against him, yet not even Battle Comp had predicted carnage such as this!
The missile storm was a whirlwind, boring into the center of the wall defending the Hoof. Anti-matter pyres and gravitonic warheads savaged his ships, and his inner lids narrowed. They sought to blow a hole and charge into it with their infernal energy weapons! They would die there, but in their dying they might expose the Hoof to their fellows upon the planet.
He could not allow that, and his orders went out. The edges of his wall of ships thinned, drawing together in the center to block the attack, and his own, shorter-ranged missiles struck back.
Time had no meaning. There was only a shrieking eternity of dying ships and a glare that lit Earth’s night skies like twice a hundred suns. Adrienne Robbins saw it reaching for her ships, saw her lighter destroyers and cruisers burning like coals from a forge, and she adjusted her course slightly.
The solid core of her out-numbered task force drove for the exact center of that vortex of death, and their magazines were almost dry.
“Go!” Tama Hideoshi snapped, and Earth’s last surviving interceptors howled heavenward. He rode his flight couch, his EW officer at his side, and smiled. He was fifty-nine years old, and only his biotechnics made this possible. Three years before, he’d known he would never fly combat again. Now he would, and if his world must die, at least he had been given this final gift, to die in her defense as a samurai should.
Nest Lord! Their small ships were attacking, too! Brashieel had not thought so many remained, but they did, and they charged on the heels of their larger, dying brothers, covered by their deaths.
A few of the Bitch’s launchers still had hyper missiles, but Andrew Samson was down to sublight weapons. It was long range, too much time for the bastards to pick them off, but each of his weapons they had to deal with was one more strain on their defenses. He sent them out at four-second intervals.
Lord Chirdan cursed. The nest-killers were dying by twelves, yet they had cut deep into his formation. Six twelves of his ships had already perished, and the terrible harvest of the nest-killer beams was only starting.
Their warships vanished into the heart of his own, robbing his outer missile crews of targets, and they retargeted on the orbital fortresses.
Gerald Hatcher’s face was stone as the first ODC died. Missiles pelted the planetary shield, as well, but he almost welcomed those. Even if they broke through, killed millions of civilians, he would welcome them, for each missile sent against Earth was one not sent against his orbital launchers.
He sat back and felt utterly useless. There was no reserve. He’d committed everything he had. Now he had nothing to do but watch the slaughter of his people.
Missiles coated the Iron Bitch’s shield in a blinding corona, and still she struck back.
Andrew Samson was a machine, part of his console. His magazine was down to ten percent and dropping fast, but he didn’t even think of slowing his rate of fire. There was no point, and he pounded his foes, his brain full of the thunder wracking the Achuultani formation.
He never saw the hyper missile which finally popped the Bitch’s shields. He died with his mind still full of thunder.
Tama Hideoshi’s fighters slammed into the Achuultani, and their missiles flashed away. Scores of Achuultani ships died, but the enemy formation closed anyway. Commodore Robbins’ ships vanished into the maelstrom, and the fighters were dying too quickly to follow.
They exhausted their missiles and closed with energy guns.
Adrienne Robbins was halfway through the Achuultani, but her cruisers and destroyers were gone. The back of her mind burned with the image of the destroyer London as her captain took her at full drive directly into one of the Achuultani monsters behind the continuous fire of his energy weapons, bursting through its weakened shield and dragging it into death with him. Yet it wasn’t enough. She and her battleships were alone, the only units with the strength to endure the fury, and even they were going fast. Nergal herself had taken another near miss, and tangled skeins of atmosphere followed her like a trail of blood.
Another Achuultani ship died under her energy weapons, but another loomed beyond it, and still another. They wouldn’t break through after all.
Adrienne Robbins drove her crippled command forward, and Nergal’s eight surviving sisters charged at her side.
Tsien Tao-ling’s scanners told him Commodore Robbins would not succeed. Yet … in a way, she might yet. His eyes closed as he concentrated on his feed, his brain clear and cold, buttressed against panic. Yes. Robbins had drawn most of the defenders onto her own ships, thickening the center of their formation but thinning its edges. Perhaps—
The hail of missiles from the PDCs stopped as his neural feed overrode their firing orders. He felt Hatcher’s shock through his cross feed to Shepard Center, but there was no time to explain.
And then the launchers retargeted and spoke, hurling their massed missiles at a sphere of space barely three hundred kilometers across. Two thousand gravitonic warheads went off as one.
Twenty kilometers of starship went mad, hurled end-for-end as the wave of destruction broke across it. Servant of Thunders Brashieel clung to his duty pad, blood bursting from his nostrils as the universe exploded about him, and Tsien Tao-ling’s fury spat Vindicator forth like the seed of a grape.
“Contact!” Sir Frederick Amesbury screamed, his British reserve shattered at last. Tsien had blown a brief hole through the Achuultani flank, and Amesbury’s computers locked onto Iapetus. The data flashed to the PDCs and surviving ODCs, and their missiles retargeted once more.
Lord Chirdan cursed and slammed a double-thumbed fist into the bulkhead. No! They could not have done that! Not while the Hoof had so far to go!
But he fought himself back under control, watching missiles rip at the Hoof even as his ravaged nestlings raced to reposition themselves. Shields guttered and flared, and one quadrant failed. A missile dodged through the gap, its anti-matter warhead incinerating the generators of yet another quadrant, but it was too late.