To Challenge Heaven, page 28
But there weren’t six of them, he thought with the crystal clarity of a shock so deep the fear hadn’t broken through yet. There were eight, and even as he watched them begin to accelerate towards Tairyon orbit, eighteen more enemy icons appeared, like curses springing into existence from some Kreptu fairy tale.
At least each of the other eighteen ships was “only” a fifth again the size of one of Navy Commander Segmar’s dreadnoughts.
If they can do that, conceal that much of their strength from us, what else can they do?
The thought ran through him like one of the nuisance animals’ chipped-flint spearheads, and he felt his hide going white and beige as the shock faded—no, it didn’t fade; it simply receded from his forebrain—when he realized he was about to find out.
PLANETARY COMMAND BUNKER,
PALACE OF GOVERNMENT,
CITY OF ITHYRA,
PLANET TAIRYS,
419.9 LY FROM EARTH,
DECEMBER 26, YEAR 42 TE.
First Minister Sherak loped out of the subbasement elevator with Yursak at her side.
She knew alarms were blaring, sirens wailing, all across Ithyra and every other town and city on the planet. There were none here, in this brightly lit, wood-paneled corridor where soft music played from hidden speakers, but wall brackets flashed the silent, dark-red equivalent as she hurried down the passageway to the command bunker’s open hatch.
Armed Prosesecha sentries saluted as she passed them, and she made herself return the courtesy. But she wasn’t really focused on military punctilio at that moment, and she wondered what was going through those guards’ minds as they watched her scurrying towards safety.
She was only here because the command bunker had the best communications and control facilities in the entire star system, of course. It was essential that the Council of Ministers maintain that control uninterrupted. That was why Second Minister Hyrak had been ensconced in the backup command bunker on the far side of the city for the last two days, providing what everyone hoped would be an unneeded degree of redundancy. Sherak herself had headed here, for the primary bunker, as soon as the human Howell cut its com link. But she’d barely started down the hallway from her office to the central elevator bank when her aural implants began crackling.
It would have been too much to call Navy Commander Segmar’s voice panicked, but not by much.
Twenty-four of them—twenty-four! They’d known there were only six of them—Segmar’s own platforms had told them that! Where in Entropy had the others been?! How had they hidden them from the Navy’s sensors once Segmar and Urdia had figured out what to look for and how?
She didn’t know the answers to those questions, but she couldn’t deny the flood of dreadful relief she felt as she passed through the hatch into the bunker. The pleasant, rushing song of the entrance chamber’s water wall was less soothing than usual, but the knowledge that she was shielded under over four siljeshes of earth and stone—not to mention the entire city of Ithyra—had an undeniably calming effect.
At the moment, the entry hatch—entry hatches, actually; there were no less than five of the sliding, sorljesh-thick, superdense tysian panels—stood open. When they were closed, nothing short of a contact fusion explosion could have breached them.
She passed through the entrance chamber and down the internal passages to the central command station. Third Minister Lyralk was already there, and she pushed up off of her chair as Sherak entered.
“What other surprises have the egg thieves produced?” the First Minister demanded harshly, and Lyralk bobbed an unhappy shrug.
“None … yet, Domynas. But given what they’ve already shown us.…”
Her voice trailed off, and Sherak gave her a curt bob of acknowledgment. She circled to her own chair and lowered herself onto it, looking at the enormous ceiling-hung display. At the moment, it mirrored the displays aboard Navy Commander Segmar’s flagship and System Command One, and her blood ran cold as a winter’s day as she watched those icons accelerating with slow, implacable purpose towards her star system’s defenders.
“Com Medical Director Mynsorlas,” she said softly to Yursak. “Tell her to prep her nanotech. We may need it after all.”
NEAR-TAIRYS SPACE,
TAIRYON SYSTEM,
419.9 LY FROM EARTH,
DECEMBER 26, YEAR 42 TE.
“Initial launch point in three minutes, Admiral,” Commander Teagan O’Mooney reported, and Francisca Swenson glanced at her operations officer.
The petite, black-haired O’Mooney was a far more dangerous person than her fine-boned, forty-seven-kilo frame, oval face, and high, delicate cheekbones might suggest to the unwary. She looked, in fact, like an escapee from an old-fashioned girls’ school. What she actually was, however, was a coldly logical, highly skilled practitioner of the art of war who calculated odds with the cold precision of an old riverboat gambler. And despite her fragile appearance, the ops officer had an equally cold, focused killer instinct. It was O’Mooney who’d put together 2nd Fleet’s attack plan, and she’d taken merciless advantage of both 2nd Fleet’s firepower and humanity’s technological advantages when she did.
“Their dreadnoughts are moving, Ma’am,” Captain Howell said quietly, beside Swenson, and she nodded.
The Liatu had only ten dreadnoughts in-system, and Inexorable, alone, out-massed all ten of them by a factor of four. No doubt they’d thought the dozen massive weapons platforms in orbit around Tairys, each of them well over twelve billion metric tons of weapons and defenses, would square the balance against the six superdreadnoughts they’d been allowed to see. In fact, her eight superdreadnoughts, alone, out-massed the combined Liatu warships and platforms by over sixty percent. Her two heavy cruiser squadrons added “only” 6.8 billion metric tons to her combined displacement … which was just over twice the combined tonnage of Segmar’s dreadnoughts. Of course, each of those “cruisers” also out-massed a Liatu dreadnought by almost seventeen percent.
It looked as if the Liatu must have begun to recognize just how badly they’d miscalculated the military balance. The three courier vessels her recon platforms had identified in planetary orbit had begun to accelerate away from Tairys, and the dreadnoughts weren’t advancing to attack 2nd Fleet. Instead, they’d fallen in to escort those couriers in what certainly looked like a desperation move to break at least one starship out of the system to carry word to the Hegemony Council in the Erquoid System. She’d expected the couriers to try to escape Tairyon no matter what, but assigning their entire dreadnought force as escorts was an interesting move. Perhaps they genuinely believed the active and passive missile defenses of a solid globe of dreadnoughts could absorb enough of 2nd Fleet’s fire for at least one of their messengers to get clear.
If so, they were wrong, she thought with grim satisfaction.
Judson Howell wanted the Liatu defenses smashed, not just broken. He wanted them turned into rubble, and he wanted it done as quickly—and mercilessly—as possible. Swenson was no fonder of massacring hopelessly outclassed foes than the next woman, but she understood the Ambassador’s thinking … and she agreed with it.
Given the Liatus’ intransigence, 2nd Fleet’s response was inevitable. Even if Swenson had wanted to avoid this attack—and she didn’t—it would have been impossible. The Liatu’s defiant gauge had been cast down, and the Terran Alliance had no option but to pick it up, if it meant for the Hegemony to take it seriously. And since they had it to do, anyway, she was totally in favor of shattering the best defense they could mount so utterly and so decisively that neither Sherak and her ministers right here in Tairyon nor the rest of the Hegemony, once word did reach Erquoid, would ever be able to deny or ignore the totality of their defeat.
And, she admitted to herself, thinking about the centuries of nightmare existence to which the Liatu had so casually condemned the Tairyonian “nuisance animals,” she couldn’t think of a species that better deserved the honor of becoming the Alliance’s “teaching moment” for the entire Hegemony.
“Fire Plan Bravo,” she said. “I want those dreadnoughts nailed, Teagan.”
“Aye, aye, Ma’am,” Commander O’Mooney replied. “Retargeting now.”
“Very good.”
“Put the scare into them,” Swenson thought. You were a racist, slave-owning bastard, Nathan Bedford Forrest, you and your Klan. But you knew how to win battles, didn’t you? And I’m going to take a great deal of satisfaction in applying your advice to a species a hundred times worse than even you were.
“One minute, Ma’am.”
“Engage as specified, Commander,” Swenson replied calmly.
* * *
THE RELENTLESS-ALPHA superdreadnoughts and their Sword-Alpha-class heavy cruiser consorts reached launch range and 15,732 missiles erupted from them in a single titanic wave. Seventy-five percent of them were Mjölnirs, configured with the laser-rod warheads. Five percent of them were Yúnzhōngzǐ jammers. Another ten percent were Shango decoy missiles, and the final ten percent were Aegis escort missiles, designed to shoot the Mjölnirs through to their targets.
They didn’t bring up their drives. They simply coasted outward at the 600 KPS of their grav-driver launchers. A second, identical launch followed forty-five seconds later. Then a third.
In just ninety seconds, the Planetary Union Navy put 47,196 missiles into space, and their drives came up in carefully timed succession, their acceleration rates calculated to fuse all three launches into a single, coordinated, time-on-target salvo … all of it targeted on the Liatu Defense Force’s ten dreadnoughts.
* * *
“NAVY COMMANDER—”
“I see it,” Segmar, Second Hatched of His Brood, Son of Kalisar, of the Line of Jorik, said heavily.
He glanced at the stupendous orbital fortifications that girdled Tairys in a protective shield, and thought about his cousins, Horkan and Urdia. They would live at least a little longer than he, he thought grimly. It was unlikely it would be for more than a few siltahls. Certainly no more than a stohmahl.
Nor was his ghyrsal the only one today’s holocaust was about to gut.
Your fault, a voice said in the back of his brain. This is all your fault. You knew these creatures—these humans—had concealed at least some of their number. But you were so damned proud when you found the two you knew about, weren’t you? And a corner of your brain knew it was possible you still hadn’t found all of them, didn’t it? But you couldn’t admit that, could you? Not even to yourself, you fool! And so you assured the Ministers you could at least maul the humans if they attacked. Well, you were wrong, weren’t you?
At least he wouldn’t have to bear the shame of surviving the debacle of his own creation, he thought, watching that unbelievable torrent of missiles bear down upon his flagship and its consorts.
* * *
THERE WERE THIRTEEN starships in the fleeing formation, targeted by over 47,000 missiles, 33,000 of them Mjölnir shipkillers. That was over 2,500 per ship, and they reached the end of their runs sixteen minutes after the third salvo had launched. The Mjölnirs came howling in behind the covering Shango decoys and the Yúnzhōngzǐ jammers, spaced just far enough apart to avoid fratricide when they detonated, and the Aegis escort missiles riding shotgun ripped apart the handful of counter-missiles that actually managed to acquire lock.
A hemisphere of nuclear fusion wrapped itself around the flank of Segmar’s formation, hurling brimstone harpoons from the Mjölnirs’ lasing rods, and no one on either side would ever know exactly how many hits that fiery hurricane actually scored. It didn’t matter. When the glare of explosions faded, there was nothing but a spreading cloud of shredded, half-molten debris which had once been three billion tons of warships … and 9,250 Liatu crewmen.
* * *
ORBITAL COMMAND COMMANDER Horkan stared at the plot in numb horror.
His cousin Segmar had been less than the most brilliant male Horkan had ever known, and he’d had a tendency to bluster out a response before he’d truly thought about a question. But he’d deserved better than that.
He gazed at the plot for another few moments, then made himself look away as those demonic human starships spawned yet more missiles.
His brood mate and her surveillance crews had gleaned at least some data on the humans’ weapons capabilities. His tactical officers were already frantically programming that data into their computers, replanning their point defense firing solutions on the fly, and his orbital weapons platforms’ defensive armaments were enormously more powerful than any dreadnought’s. They’d do a far better job of degrading the humans’ fire, he knew, especially with the new data to help.
It wouldn’t be enough.
He watched a fresh wave of missiles building as they belched from the alien starships’ launchers. Like the salvo which had killed Segmar, the new missiles’ drive activations were staggered so that all of them—and there were almost twice as many, this time—would arrive in a single, irresistible torrent. His counter-missiles might pare away a bit of their strength, whittle their numbers a little. But that battering ram of fire would smash through any frail shield he could erect in its path, and he knew—knew—every single one of those missiles would be targeted upon a single weapons platform.
Each of his OWPs massed almost forty times as much as one of Segmar’s dreadnoughts had. So it was remotely possible one of them might survive a single salvo even that size.
It couldn’t possibly survive two of them.
He watched the human missile drives light off at last, accelerating them across the vast gulf still stretching between them and Tairys. Their launchers had already begun pre-spotting the next massive missile strike, and he wondered how many siltahls of life he still had.
PLANETARY COMMAND BUNKER,
PALACE OF GOVERNMENT,
CITY OF ITHYRA,
PLANET TAIRYS,
TAIRYON SYSTEM,
419.9 LY FROM EARTH,
DECEMBER 26, YEAR 42 TE.
First Minister Sherak stared at the master display and the broken, shattered wreckage of her star system’s defenses with sick, hate-filled eyes.
Three of Horkan’s OWPs showed the icons of technically intact installations, but that was a lie. Not one of those atmosphere-streaming lumps of debris still possessed a trace of offensive firepower. The human recon platforms parked virtually on top of Tairys, no longer even trying to hide their presence, were obviously close enough to determine that.
Any of the orbital forts, however badly damaged, which still had functional weaponry had been systematically eliminated in much smaller, precisely coordinated missile strikes, at any rate. The humans were obviously making a point by not finishing off the remnants of the three that could no longer harm them.
Although, a bitter thought reminded her, none of the others could have “harmed” them, anyway.
The humans had never even entered Horkan’s effective range.
Orbital Command had fired its own thousands of missiles in reply, anyway. In fact, it had been able to stack salvos even larger than those the humans had fired. But the alien starships had maneuvered with elegant precision, forcing Horkan’s tactical officers to expend precious drive endurance just to reach them. By the time any of those hundreds of thousands of missiles actually entered attack range, they were little better than ballistic targets for human missile defenses which were far more effective than anything Navy Commander Segmar’s forces could ever have mustered.
The Tairyon System’s defenders hadn’t scored a single hit against the humans.
Not one.
And now those completely undamaged human warships were settling into orbit around her planet.
“First Minister.”
Sherak swiveled one eye from the display to Adjunct Yursak.
“Let me guess,” she said bitterly. “Howell is on the com.”
“I’m … afraid so, Domynas.” Yursak’s hide was an interesting blend of anger’s orangey-red, anxiety’s gray, and sorrow’s green, but he met her gaze levelly.
“Put him through,” she said harshly, and the human’s hated face replaced the tactical display’s bitter icons.
“First Minister,” it said.
She still had no clue how to read human expressions, but the satisfaction—and confidence—in its tone came through the translating software perfectly. She glared at it silently, and its shoulders moved.
“By our calculations, your decision against surrendering has already cost well over four hundred thousand Liatu lives. Will it truly be necessary for even more of your people to die before you recognize the inevitable and acknowledge our control of this star system?”
“Do whatever you want with the rest of the system,” Sherak told it venomously. “But not a single member of your loathsome, insane species will ever set foot on this planet!”
“Really?” Howell tipped its head to one side and the ridiculous little strips of pelt above its deep-set eyes arched. “And why should I think anything of the sort, First Minister?”
“Because I’ve taken steps to ensure you won’t.”
“And those steps would be … what, exactly?” The alien’s tone of mild interest rasped Sherak’s fury on the quick.
“You say you’re so concerned about the nuisance animals,” she shot back. “That’s the entire reason you’re here, isn’t it? Or that’s what you claim, anyway. Personally, I think you’re lying. You don’t truly care about the nuisance animals any more than any other species that’s actually sentient would. But, assuming there’s a shred of truth in your pretense of concern, know this—if you attempt to land on my planet, Ambassador Howell, every single one of those … creatures will be dead within four planetary days!”
“Really?” Howell moved its head from side to side in another of those grotesquely flexible human gestures. “I’m not surprised a threat like that would occur to someone—something—like you.” The contempt in its translated tone cut like a knife. “Did you really think this possibility wouldn’t suggest itself to us, First Minister? I assume you’ve had your scientific staff cook up a suitable bioweapon? That does seem to be your species’ default solution, doesn’t it?”
