He split his attention between his panel and the chronometers as they clicked over the last segment, and a corner of his brain double-checked the override between Battle Comp and his own panel. Battle Comp seldom took a hand directly, but it was comforting to know it could.
There! Emergence.
He watched his instruments approvingly. It was impossible to coordinate the translation between hyper space and n-space perfectly for so many units, but the time spread looked more than merely satisfactory, and the spacing was exemplary. His Protectors had learned their duties well over the—
“Alarm! Alarm! Incoming fire! Incoming fire!” a voice yelped, and Great Lord Sorkar jerked half-upright. They were light-years from the nearest star—who could be firing on them here?
But someone was, and he watched in horror as missiles of the greater thunder and something else, something beyond belief, shredded his proud starships like blazing tinder.
Nest-killers! The Demon Nest-Killers of the Demon Sector! But how? He’d studied all the previous great visits to this sector. Never—never!—had nest-killers struck until one or more of their worlds had been cleansed! Had those mysterious sensor arrays alerted them after all? But even if they had, how could they have known to find the rendezvous? It was impossible!
Yet the missiles continued to bore in, sublight and hyper alike, and his scanners could not even see the attackers! What wizardry—?
A raucous buzzer cut through his thoughts, and his eyes flashed to Battle Comp’s panel. Data codes danced as the mighty computers took over his fleet, and Great Lord Sorkar was a passenger as his ships deployed. They spread apart, thinning the nest-killers’ target even as they groped blindly to find their enemy. It was a good plan, he thought, but it was costing them. Tarhish, how it was costing them! But if there truly was a nest-killer force out there, if this was not, indeed, the night-demons of frightened legend, then they would find them. Terrible as his losses were, they were as nothing against his entire force, and when Battle Comp found a tar—
A target source appeared on his panel. Another blinked into sight, and another, as his nestlings spent their lives merely to find them, and Nest Lord, they were close! Some sort of cloaking technology. The thought was an icicle in his brain, for it was far better than anything the Nest had, but he had targets at last. He moved to order his nestlings to open fire, but Battle Comp had acted first. He heard his own voice, calm and dispassionate, already passing the command.
“Burn, baby! Burn!” someone whooped.
“Silence! Clear the net!” Adrienne Robbins cracked, and the exultant voice vanished. Not that she could blame whoever it had been, for their opening salvos had been twice as effective as projected. Unfortunately, that was because they were three times as close as planned. The hyper drives aboard these larger ships were slightly different from those the scouts had mounted, and their calculations had been off. By only a tiny amount, perhaps, but minute computational errors had major consequences on this scale.
They were going to burn through the stealth field a hell of a lot quicker than anyone had expected. She knew she had more experience against the Achuultani than anyone else, and perhaps her earlier losses had affected her nerve, but, damn it, those buggers were inside their own sublight and hyper missile range! Herdan’s defenses were incomparably better than Nergal’s, and her shield covered twenty times the hyper bands, but her sheer size meant it extended even further from the hull than Nergal’s had, and there were going to be a lot of missiles headed her way very soon.
“Stand by missile defense; stand by ECM!” she snapped, and then, Dear Jesus, here it came.
Great Lord Sorkar spit an incredulous curse. A twelve of them! A single twelve had already slain a greater twelve and more of his ships, and their defenses were as incredible as their firepower. Targeting screens blossomed with false images, sucking his sublight weapons off target. Jammers hashed the scan channels. Titanic shields shrugged the greater thunder contemptuously aside. And still his ships died and died and died…
Yet nothing could stop the twelves of twelves of twelves of missiles his ships were hurling, and he bared his teeth as the first hyper missile slashed through a nest-killer shield. There! That should show them that—
He blinked, and his blood was ice. What sort of monster could absorb a direct hit from the greater thunder and not even notice it?
Alarms screamed as a ten-thousand-megaton warhead exploded almost on top of Royal Birhat. The huge ship quivered as the furious plasma cloud carved an incandescent chasm twenty kilometers into her armored hull. Air exploded from the dreadful wound, blast doors slammed … and Birhat went right on fighting.
“Moderate damage to Quadrant Theta-Two,” the sexy contralto said calmly. “Four fatalities. Point zero-four-two percent combat impairment.”
Colin winced as the flashing yellow band of combat damage encircled Birhat. He’d lost track of the kills they’d scored, but he’d fucked up. They were too frigging close!
“All ships, open the range,” he snapped, and the Imperial Guard darted suddenly astern at sixty-five percent of light-speed.
Tarhish, they were fast! Sorkar had never seen anything but a missile move that quickly in n-space. They fell back out of range of his sublight weapons, retreating toward the edge of his hyper missile envelope, but their own weapons seemed totally unaffected, and he had never seen such accurate targeting. Indeed, he had never seen anyone do anything these nest-killers were doing to him, but that did not make them night-demons. It only meant his Protectors faced a test worse than he had ever imagined, and they were Protectors.
And, he thought under the surface of his battle orders, perhaps it was not as bad as it might have been. These nest-killers had known where to meet his ships, and not even those arrays could have told them that, so they must have already destroyed one scout force—probably Furtag’s, given the timing—and followed its couriers hither. Yet if they could muster but a single twelve of ships, however powerful, against him, then the ships under his command were more than enough to feed them to the Furnace. Even at this extreme range, he had an incalculable advantage in launchers. Not so good as theirs, perhaps, but more than enough to make up any disadvantage.
“Colin, they press us sore,” Jiltanith said, and Colin nodded sharply. The plan had been to empty their magazines into the Achuultani, but the shit was too deep for that. Birhat had taken only one hit, but Two had taken three and Tor had taken five. Five of those monster warheads!
These ships were tough beyond belief, but any toughness had its limits. He winced as yet another massive salvo exploded against Two’s shield and the big ship plowed through the plasma like a drunken windjammer. It was only a matter of time until—
“Tor reports shield failure,” Two’s Comp Cent announced. “Attempting to withdraw into hyper.” Colin’s eyes darted to Tor’s cursor, and the flashing yellow circle was banded in crimson. He stared at it in horror, willing the ship’s hyper drive to take her out of it, as missile after missile went home—