“Enemy has opened fire,” Dahak said, and Colin tensed.
Sorkar managed not to cheer as the first greater thunder burst among the enemy. Now, Nest-Killers! Now comes your turn to face the Furnace!
More and more of his ships entered range, hurling their hyper missiles into the enemy, and his direct-vision panel polarized as a cauldron of unholy Fire boiled against the nest-killers’ shields.
Jiltanith tasted blood, and her knuckles whitened on her dagger as a second star blazed in the Zeta Trianguli System. It grew in fury, hotter and brighter, born of millions of anti-matter warheads, and Colin was at its heart.
The enemy continued to close, dying as he came, trailing broken starships like a disemboweled monster’s entrails. But still he came on, and the weight of his fire was inconceivable. She knew the plan, knew Colin fought for information as well as victory, but this was too much.
“Now, my love,” she whispered. “Fly now, my Colin! Fly now!”
“Trosan has been destroyed. Heavy damage to Mairsuk. We have—”
Dahak’s voice broke off as his stupendous mass heaved. The display blanked, and Colin paled at the terrible reports in his neural feed.
“Three direct hits,” Dahak reported. “Heavy damage to Quadrants Rho-Two and Four. Seven percent combat capability lost.”
Colin swore hoarsely. Dahak’s shield had been heavily overhauled at Bia. It was just as good as his automated minions’, but his other defenses were not. He was simply slower and far less capable, than they. If the enemy noticed and decided to concentrate on him…
“Gohar destroyed. Shinhar heavily damaged; combat capability thirty-four percent. Enemy entering energy weapon range.”
“Then let’s see how tough these bastards really are!” Colin grated. “Execute Plan Volley Fire.”
Sorkar blinked as the nest-killers moved. All this time they had held their positions, soaking up his thunder, killing his ships. Now, when they had finally begun to die, they moved … but to advance, not to flee!
Then their energy weapons fired at last, and he gasped in disbelief.
“Yes! Yes!” Colin shouted. Dahak’s energy weapons were blasts of fury that rent the molecular bindings of their targets; those of the Empire were worse. They shattered atomic bindings, inducing instant fission.
Now those dreadful weapons stabbed out from the beam-heavy Trosans, and Colin’s missiles suddenly became a side show. No Achuultani shield could stop those furious beams, and their kiss was death.
Sorkar’s desperate pleas for advice hammered at Battle Comp. Were these nest-killers the very Spawn of Tarhish?! What deviltry transformed his very ships into warheads of the lesser thunder?!
Unaccustomed panic pounded him. With those beams, they might yet cut their way through his entire fleet, and the closer he came to them, the more easily they could kill his Protectors!
But Battle Comp did not know what panic was, and its dispassionate analysis calmed his visceral terror. Yes, the cost would be terrible, but the nest-killers were also dying. They would wound the Great Visit more deeply than Sorkar had believed possible, but they would die, Tarhish take them!
“We are down to seven units,” Dahak reported. “Approximately two hundred ninety-one thousand Achuultani ships have been destroyed.”
“Execute Plan Shiva,” Colin rasped.
“Executing, Your Majesty,” Dahak said once more, and the Enchanach Drives of eight Imperial planetoids roared to life. In one terrible, perfectly synchronized instant, eight gravity wells, each more massive than Zeta Trianguli’s own, erupted barely six light-minutes from the star.
A twelve of greater twelves of Sorkar’s ships disappeared, torn apart and scattered over the universe, as the impossible happened. For an instant, his mind was totally blank, and then he realized.
He was dead, and every one of his nestlings with him.
Had it been intended from the outset that the nest-killers should suicide? Destroy themselves with some inconceivably powerful version of the warheads which had ravaged his ships?
He heard Battle Comp using his voice, ordering his fleet to turn and flee, but he paid it no heed. They were too deep into the gravity well; at their best speed, even the outer sphere would need a quarter day segment to reach the hyper threshold.
His FTL scanners watched the tidal wave of gravitonic stress reach Zeta Trianguli Australis, watched the star bulge and blossom hideously.
He bowed his head and switched off his vision panel.
The sun went nova.
Dahak and his surviving companions fled its death throes at seven hundred times the speed of light, and Colin watched through fold-space scanners in sick fascination. Dahak had filtered the display’s fury, but even so it hurt his eyes. Yet he could not look away as a terrible wave of radiation lashed the Achuultani … and upon its heels came the physical front of destruction. But those ships were already lifeless, shields less than useless against the ferocity of a sun’s death.
The nova spewed them forth as a few more atoms of finely-divided matter on the fire of its breath.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Brashieel rose carefully and inclined his head as the old nest-killer called Hohrass entered his nest place. It was not the full salute of a Protector, for he did not cover his eyes, but Brashieel knew this Hohrass was a Great Lord of his own … people.
It had taken many twelve-days to decide to apply that term to these nest-killers, yet he had little choice. He had come to know them—some of them, at least—and that, he now knew, was the worst thing which could happen to a Protector.
He should have ended in honor. Should have spent himself, made them kill him, before this horror could be inflicted upon him. But they were cruel, these nest-killers, cruel in their kindness, for they had not let him end. For just a moment, he considered attacking Hohrass, but the old nest-killer was far stronger. He would simply overpower him, and it would be shameful to neither kill his foe nor make his foe kill him.
“I greet you, Brashieel.” The voice came from a speaker on the wall, rendering Hohrass’s words into the tongue of Aku’Ultan.
“I greet you, Hohrass,” he returned, and heard the same speaker make meaningless sounds to his—visitor? Gaoler?
“I bring you sad tidings,” Hohrass said, speaking slowly to let whatever wonder translated do its work. “Our Protectors have met yours in combat. Five higher twelves of your ships have perished.”
Brashieel gaped at him. He had seen the power of their warships, but this—! His shock shamed him, yet he could not hide it, and his eyes were dark with pain. His crest drooped, and his fine, dark muzzle scales stood out against his suddenly pallid skin.
“I am sorry to tell you this,” Hohrass continued after a twelfth-segment, “but it is important that we speak of it.”
“How?” Brashieel asked finally. “Have your Protectors gathered in such numbers so quickly?”
“No,” Hohrass softly. “We used scarcely a double twelve of ships.”
“Impossible! You lie to me, Hohrass! Not even a double twelve of your demon ships could do so much!”
“I speak truth,” Hohrass returned. “I have records to prove my words, records sent to us over three twelves of your light-years.”
Brashieel’s legs folded under him, despite every effort to stand, and his eyes were blind with horror. If Hohrass spoke the truth, if a mere double twelve of their ships could destroy a full half of the Great Visit and report it over such distances so quickly, the Nest was doomed. Fire would consume the great Nest Place, devour the Creche of the People. The Aku’Ultan would perish, for they had waked a demon more terrible even than the Great Nest-Killers.