Wait. What was that? Something had suddenly departed into hyper. And there—another hyper trace! And another! What—?
He barked an order, and a scanner section obediently redirected its instruments. What were those things? Certainly not Sorkar’s nestlings—indeed, they were too small to be ships, at all! And why would ships enter hyper at a time like this? But if not warships, then what … ?
Nest Lord! They were weapons … and Sorkar was dead.
He did not know how he suddenly knew, but he knew. Sorkar was no more, and just as he had been ambushed, so had Hothan! Not by warships, but by something worse—and he could do nothing but watch as the enigmatic weapons vanished … and his nestlings did not emerge. The holes in his formation were suddenly and dreadfully comprehensible, for Sorkar had been right. These were the demon nest-killers of legend!
But he fought his dread, made himself think. Perhaps there was something he could do. He snapped orders, and Deathdealer’s thunder ripped at the weapons which had not yet attacked. Furnace Fire flashed among them, and they had no shields. They died by great twelves, and now other ships were firing, raking the floating clouds of killers with death.
Colin felt a moment of ungrudging respect as anti-matter warheads glared. Damn, but somebody over there was quick! He’d realized what was happening and done the only thing he could.
That big a fleet took time to emerge from hyper. Its units’ emergences must be carefully phased lest they interpenetrate in n-space, so its commander couldn’t just run without abandoning those still to come; he could only attack the mines which had not yet attacked. He couldn’t kill many with a single missile, but he was firing thousands of them, which gave him a damnably good chance of saving an awful lot of the follow-up echelons.
Unless something distracted him from his minesweeping.
“Alert! Alert! Incoming fire!”
Great Lord Hothan’s head whipped up, but he was not really surprised. Any nest-killer cunning enough to lay so devilish a trap would cover it with his own ships if he could. But expected or not, it presented Hothan with a cruel dilemma. He could kill mines while his ships already in n-space died, or he could engage the enemy’s ships and let his nestlings in hyper die.
Yet he had already realized that only a fraction of those weapons were finding targets. Best trust the Nameless Lord for the safety of those still to come and respond to this new attack … assuming he could find the attackers!
Adrienne Robbins watched the first Achuultani ships die and suppressed an oath. Herdan herself seemed to strain against the prohibition from firing before Jiltanith released her weapons, but it made sense … even if seeing so many targets she couldn’t attack was hard to endure.
Great Lord Hothan sent his fleet fanning out in search of its killers and gritted his teeth at how his own actions paralleled Sorkar’s. It should not be so. He should have planned and prepared better. Yet how could one prepare for this sort of thing? How did one fight ghosts one could not even see?
Great twelves of his questing nestlings died, and still their enemy was hidden! Only the fleeting wisps of his missiles’ incoming hyper wakes even suggested his bearing, and Hothan’s lead scouts were already at their own hyper missile range from Deathdealer. How far out could the nest-killers be?!
Colin watched the Achuultani flow towards him, re-orienting to drive deliberately into the zone of maximum destruction, trying to deduce his bearing from the furrows of death his missiles plowed through them. It was horrible to see such courage and know the beings who possessed it were bent upon the murder of his entire race.
But they had a long way to come, and Dahak was a sniper, picking them off by scores and hundreds. If only Colin had more missiles, he could have backed away indefinitely, faster than they could pursue, flaying them with fire from beyond their own maximum range. But he didn’t have enough missiles to stop a million enemies, and if he had, they would only have fled into hyper. If he would destroy them, he must scatter them. Their weapons were deadly enough, but short-ranged and individually weak compared to his own; it was coordinated, massed fire which made them lethal, so he must split them up—scatter them for ’Tanni to harry to destruction. And for that he must get into energy weapon range and blow the heart and brain out of their formation with weapons not limited by the capacity of his magazines.
“Advance,” he said coldly, and a phalanx of battle steel moons moved forward, plowing the wake of its missiles.
At last! Almost all of his nestlings had emerged from hyper, and it was time to forget pride, time to flee. His formations were rent and over-extended, and too many of his command ships were among the dead. He needed time to sort things out and reorganize in light of these demonic weapons.
“They will complete emergence in twenty-seven seconds,” Dahak announced.
“Execute Laocoon,” Colin replied.
“Executing.”
The colliers ringing the minefield engaged their Enchanach Drives. No human rode their command decks, but none was needed for this simple task. They flashed through their preprogrammed maneuvers in an intricate supralight mazurka, exchanging positions so quickly and adroitly that, in effect, one of them was constantly in each cardinal point of a circle twenty light-minutes across.
They danced their dance, harming no one … and wove a garrote of gravity about the Achuultani’s throat. They were invisible stars, forging a forty-light-minute sphere in which there was no hyper threshold.
Great Lord Hothan stared at his instruments. No one could lock an entire fleet out of hyper space!
But someone could, and his plan to hyper out was smashed at a blow. He did not know how it had been done, but his Protectors had become penned qwelloq awaiting slaughter.
He shook aside panic, if not his fear. So. He could not flee, and the incoming salvos were arriving at ever shorter intervals. That meant only one thing: the nest-killers had him trapped and they were closing for the kill.
But he who entered the sweep of a qwelloq’s tusks could die upon them.
“Hast done it, my Colin,” Jiltanith whispered. “They cannot flee!”
A susurration of inarticulate delight answered her whisper, but, like her, her bridge crew did not look away from Two’s display. The mines must have been twice as effective as projected, for barely three-quarters of a million Achuultani ships had emerged. That augured well, but now Dahak was closing with the enemy. Soon there would be deaths they would mourn, not cheer.
Hothan was a Great Lord, and his orders came crisp and sure.
Greater twelves of his ships had died, but higher twelves remained, and the enemy was coming to him, so he need not continue the useless expansion of his formation to seek him. A tendril continued to lick out in the direction of the incoming fire, its end a comet of flame as the ships which made it died, but the rest of his formation gathered itself.
He was proud of his Protectors. They must be as frightened as he, but they obeyed quickly. Holes remained, weak links in the chain of order where too many command ships had been slain, but they obeyed.
And there were the nest-killers!
He swallowed a spurt of primal terror as he saw their relayed images. As vast as Sorkar had described them, and more numerous. Four twelves, at least, sweeping towards him behind the glare of their thunder, huge as moons, driving lances of the Furnace’s Fire deep into his fleet. But they had not yet reached its vitals, and their own tremendous speed brought them into his reach.