Without direct observation, not even these demon-spawned nest-killers could kill the Hoof before it struck, and his scouts had already spread back out to deny them that observation and hide the damaged shield quadrants.
He bared his teeth in a snarl, turning back to the five surviving nest-killer warships. He would give them to the Furnace, and their deaths would fan the Fire awaiting their cursed world.
Hatcher’s momentary elation died. It had been a magnificent try, but it had failed, and he felt himself relax into a curious tranquillity of sorrow for the death of his planet, coupled with a deep, abiding pride in his people.
He watched almost calmly as the thinning screen of Achuultani ships moved still closer. There were no more than three hundred of them, four at the most, but it would be enough.
“General Hatcher!” His head snapped up at the sudden cry from Plotting. There was something strange about that voice. Something he could not quite put his finger upon. And then he had it. Hope. There was hope in it!
Nergal was alone, the last survivor of Terra’s squadrons.
Adrienne Robbins had no idea why her ship was still alive, nor dared she take time to consider it. Her mind blazed hotter than the warheads bursting against her shield, and still she moved forward. There was no sanity in it. One battleship, her missiles exhausted, could never stop Iapetus. But sanity was an encumbrance. Nergal had come to attack that moon, and attack she would.
The wall was thinning, and she could feel the moon through her scanners. She altered course slightly, smashing at her foes—
—and suddenly they vanished in a gut-wrenching fury of gravitonic destruction that tossed Nergal like a cork.
Lord Chirdan saw without understanding. Three twelves of warships—four twelves—five! Impossible warships. Warships vaster than the Hoof itself!
They came out of nowhere at impossible speeds and began to kill.
Missiles that did not miss. Beams that licked away ships like tinder. Shields that brushed aside the mightiest thunders. They were the darkest nightmare of the Aku’Ultan, fleshed in shields and battle steel.
Lord Chirdan’s flagship vanished in a boil of flame, and his scouts died with him. In the end, not even Protectors could abide the coming of those night demons. A pitiful handful broke, tried to flee, but they were too deep in the gravity well to escape into hyper, and—one-by-one—they died.
Yet before the last Protector perished, he saw one great warship advance upon the Hoof. Its missiles reached out—sublight missiles that took precise station on the charging moon before they flared to dreadful life. A surge of gravitonic fury raced out from them, even its backlash terrible enough to shake the wounded Earth to her core, triggering earthquakes, waking volcanoes.
Yet that was but an echo of their power. Sixteen gravitonic warheads, each hundreds of times more powerful than anything Earth had boasted, flashed into destruction … and took the moon Iapetus with them.
Gerald Hatcher sagged in disbelief, too shocked even to feel joy, and the breathless silence of his command post was an extension of his own.
Then a screen on his com panel lit, and a face he knew looked out of it.
“Sorry we cut it so close,” Colin MacIntyre said softly.
And then—then—the command post exploded in cheers.
Chapter Seventeen
General Hector MacMahan watched the shoals of Imperial assault boats close in about his command craft, then turned his scanners to the broken halves of the Achuultani starship tumbling through space in the intricate measures of an insane dance. The planetoid Sevrid hovered behind her shuttles, watching over them and probing the wreckage. There was still air and life aboard that shattered ship, and power, but not much of any of them.
MacMahan grunted in satisfaction as Sevrid’s tractors snubbed away the wreck’s movement. Now if only the ship had a bay big enough to dock the damned thing, he and his people might not have to do everything the hard way.
He had no idea how many live Achuultani awaited his assault force, but he had six thousand men and women in his first wave, with a reserve half that size again. The cost might be high, but that wreck was the single partially intact Achuultani warship in the system. If they could take it, capture records, its computers, maybe even a few live Achuultani…
“Come on, people, tighten it up,” he murmured over his com, watching the final adjustment of his formation. There. They were ready.
“Execute!” he snapped, and the assault boats screamed forward.
Servant of Thunders Brashieel waited in the wreckage in his vac-suit. One broken foreleg was crudely splinted, but aside from the pain it was little inconvenience. He still had three good legs, and with the loss of the drive gravity had become a ghost.
He watched his remaining instruments, longing to send the thunder against the foe, but his launchers had died. Perhaps a fifth-twelfth of Vindicator’s energy weapons remained serviceable, but none of his launchers, and no weapons at all on the broken tooth of his forward section.
Brashieel tried to reject the nightmare. The nest-killers’ world still lived, and these monstrous warships foretold perils yet more dire. The lords of thought had believed this system stood alone. It did not. The makers of those ancient scanner arrays had rallied to its defense, and they were powerful beyond dreams of power. Why should they content themselves with merely stopping the Protectors’ attack? Why should they not strike the Nest itself?
He wondered why they had not simply given Vindicator to the Fire. Did their own beliefs in honor demand they face their final foes in personal combat? It did not matter, and he turned from his panel as the small craft advanced. He had no weapons to smite them, but he had already determined where he and his surviving nestlings of thunder would make their stand.
MacMahan flinched as the after section of the wrecked hull lashed his shuttles with fire. The crude energy weapons were powerful enough to burn through any assault boat’s shield, but they’d fired at extreme range. Only three were hit, and the others went to evasive action, ripping at the wreck with their own energy guns. Sevrid’s far heavier weapons reached past them, and warp beams plucked neat, perfect divots from the hull. Air gushed outward, and then the first-wave assault boats reached their goal.
Their energy guns blasted one last time, and they battered into the holes they’d blown on suddenly reversed drives. They crunched to a halt, and assault teams charged into the violated passages of the broken starship, their soot-black combat armor invisible in the lightless corridors. A handful of defenders opened fire, and their weapons spat back, silent in the vacuum.
MacMahan’s command boat led the third wave, staggering drunkenly as it slammed to a halt, and the hatches popped. His HQ company formed up about him, and he took them into the madness.
Brashieel waited. There was no point charging blindly to meet the nest-killers. Vindicator was dead; only the mechanics of completing his nestlings’ deaths remained, and this was as good a place to end as any.
He examined his nestlings’ positions in the light of his helmet lamp. They had made themselves what cover they could, a hoof-shaped bow of them protecting the hatch to main control, and Brashieel wished Small Lord Hantorg had survived to lead their final fight.
His nostrils flared in bitter amusement. While he was wishing, might he not wish that he knew what he was about? He and his nestlings were servants of thunders—they smote worlds, not single nest-killers! He cudgeled his brain, trying to remember if he had ever heard of Protectors and nest-killers actually facing one another so directly. He did not think he had, but his mind was none too clear, and it really did not matter.