Extremis (34 page)

Esh’hid and her attack force also discovered that a second tier of mines was waiting for them, farther back than the first, and that a surprising number of forts were waiting on the far side of those minefields.

All of which meant that Esh’hid and her advance assault group materialized in the center of a veritable cauldron of lethal human fire. Missile salvos and force beams turned that volume of space into a scintillant collage of overlapping explosions and savagely disruptive energies.

Not that she lived to report it. Narrok and Sarhan got the battle reports from the only two
zhed’bidr
—terminal drones—that survived to limp back through the warp point, seared and semifunctional. And Narrok could not help reflecting that this tragedy did have an upside: he was now freed from Esh’hid’s ever-prying eyes, although he had—earnestly, at the last—hoped to convince her to reconsider her impulse to lead an attack that ultimately consumed her and two dozen of the last original-construction SDs like
zifrik
pupae caught in a flame.

So Narrok simply resumed the original attack plan, knowing as he unfolded it that the costs and outcomes were almost as predetermined as the life and death of a star: there might be momentary variations, but the general course of events was unalterable.

With the humans well back from the warp point, Narrok knew that entering the system was not his major problem. Rather, survival of his units, once there, would be a thorny challenge: the forts were predominantly missile-armed, and the data from the terminal drones indicated that they had hammered out densities of heavy ballistic missiles at Esh’hid’s SDHs that neither she nor he could hope to match or deflect. So the first hulls Narrok sent through would have to survive the relentless bombardment long enough to not only close on the forts but to cut through the minefields shielding them.

Unfortunately, once away from the warp point, the
Urret-fah’ah
mine-clearers were not only useless, they were too dangerous to employ safely. Their efficacy against the minefields proximal to the warp points was a function of their speed of action: using
protoselnarmic
dead-man switches that were enabled by purpose-bred
Hre’selna
biots, each
Urret-fah’ah
did not have to wait for the post-transit electronic disruption to subside. The unicellular
Hre’selna
biots reoriented almost immediately, and, detecting that they were no longer in range of the
selnarmic
links of their controllers (who remained safely on the other side of the warp point) they collapsed, enabling a piezoelectric actuator to launch the minesweeper’s missiles almost immediately upon completing transit. But the purpose-built
Urret-fah’ah
minesweeper had modest engines, few defenses, primitive sensors, and no shields or ECM. In short, when crossing open space, it was little more than a thin-skinned chain-bomb, ready to vaporize any ships that were so unfortunate as to be within two light-seconds of it with it when it was destroyed by enemy fire.

So the approach to, and path through, the second belt of minefields would have to be blazed by fighters and SDHs. And once again, Narrok had reason to curse Torhok’s strategic myopia. Narrok had wanted smaller and more diverse hulls laid down for just this contingency: he needed purpose-built minesweepers and small, fast escorts that could draw some of the murderous fire off the fragile fighters and the SDHs—which were too precious to spend forging an approach through multiply overlapping fields of fire. But no, Torhok and his logisticians had insisted that initiating the design and construction of new ship types would only be an effort-diluting distraction. So the Arduan naval inventory remained limited to SDSs, SDHs, fighters, shuttles, multipurpose tender/transports, and a few of the
Urret-fah’ah
minesweepers. That, Narrok was told, would have to do.

His SDHs went in by the dozens, trying to survive long enough to launch their fighters. And every time one of the heavy superdreadnoughts lasted that long, the fighters were almost immediately consumed by the overlapping white-star eruptions of a constantly churning blast furnace of human antimatter warheads.

But eventually, as Narrok had known it would, the sheer weight of his numbers began to prevail. Presently, messenger drones from Narrok’s breaching force carried the story and the pictures of what was clearly a change in the tide of the battle: not all of his hulls were vaporized instantly, and they lasted long enough to divert fire from the next rank of incoming SDHs. The fighters started surviving, closing on the minefields, and clearing them—a tactic that was very nearly indistinguishable from suicide. In time, the human fire fell off—simply because their tenders could not resupply the forts’ missile tubes fast enough to maintain their initial salvo volume.

Only then did Admiral Krishmahnta’s fleet show up—fully repaired and in superb readiness. Every human hull that had survived the battles at Raiden and Beaumont now confronted Narrok’s commanders again, but the humans were evidently better armed and better supplied than before. Their firepower, both missile and beam, changed the balance of the battle back against the Arduans, and, for a few moments, there was even some question as to whether or not the Children of Illudor would keep their tenuous toehold in the Ajax system.…

Narrok held his next stroke until the reports were unequivocal—that the human fleet had genuinely committed itself—for that was the moment he had been waiting for. He ordered one last torrent of SBMHAWKs to go streaming through the warp point. They inflicted no damage upon the human ships or forts, but both had to devote the majority of their firepower and attention to counteract that new threat. And hard on the heels of the SBMHAWKs came almost half of the Arduan fleet, led by Second Admiral Sarhan himself.

Over a dozen SDHs were lost, simply to the misfortunes of simultaneous transit, the immense hulls rematerializing in overlapping volumes of space, obliterating each other with blinding glares that made antimatter missiles look like firecrackers by comparison. But most of the dozens that survived quickly swept out of the cauldron, their data nets multiply integrated and cross-patched against any possibility of failure, their defensive batteries cloaking them in an almost unbroken sphere of counterfire. Inside that brief, turtlelike shell of protective energies, Admiral Sarhan pressed through the partial gaps the fighters had cut in the second minefield and closed to effective range with the forts.

The carnage as they did so was unspeakable. At one point, Sarhan lost no fewer than eight SDHs in the space of twenty seconds. But finally attaining close range, several of his SDHs—having been retrofitted with tractor beams—exploited the rigidity of the forts’ structures by literally pulling them apart; the beams, once locked on, began to swiftly alter their polarization. It was a desperate tactic, useful only at just such close ranges, but the forts, being immobile, had no means of dancing away from this unanticipated threat. The same reinforced and inflexible structures that gave them such wonderful resistance against missiles and the other destructive energies of most attacks now became their Achilles’ heels: unable to run or bend, they broke.

But Sarhan paid the price. In order to keep his ships in place long enough to do this strange execution, they were compelled to endure the full, desperate fire of the forts—and most of them died in the attempt. And when Krishmahnta’s fleet came charging forward to intervene, Sarhan’s uncommitted SDHs—although terribly outnumbered—screened the others that were still working on the forts. They did not survive—but they lasted long enough to seal the fate of the forts: three were shattered, two more disabled, the remaining three isolated on one flank and unable to bring their fires to bear on the more distant areas of engagement.

Which was when, ten minutes ago, Narrok had transited the warp point with the bulk of his fleet. He moved it quickly out of the last forts’ fields of fire and began swinging it through an arc that would ultimately bring it into direct engagement with Krishmahnta’s main body, which was still trying to annihilate the last of Sarhan’s ships.

But just as Sarhan had expended SDHs to give his ships enough time to tear apart the forts, so Krishmahnta sent a fast screening force of carriers and cruisers to delay Narrok. The human ships were vulnerable but nimble, and although they did more to distract and delay than to inflict damage, their form fit their function: not to close and destroy, but harry and hamper.

As they did, Krishmahnta pulled her main body away sharply, losing three superdreadnoughts and two older, slower monitors in so doing. But her newer supermonitors remained mostly unscathed, and, leaving her last three forts behind to carry out whatever assignment she had given them in the event of her withdrawal, the human admiral made for the warp point to Agamemnon.

Which was what Narrok had anticipated. For Krishmahnta to have fled “north” along this arm of the Rim—to Aphrodite—would have been pointless: she would have been abandoning Odysseus and Tilghman, the two industrial worlds that sustained her forces. To defend them, she had to fall back on Agamemnon.

Which meant there was a possibility—if Narrok kept the pressure on her, stayed hard enough on her heels—that the terrible price he had now paid at Ajax might buy him another system as well. And if he was lucky, as the humans fled before him, using carrier squadrons to delay and harry his pursuers, he might also find the opportunity to cull one of the humans’ less speedy fighters from its flock, by damaging it selectively, moderately—and so have a relatively intact model for his technical intelligence specialists to analyze. Maybe some good would come of this day yet.…

* * *

Willing the recent memories into oblivion, Narrok opened his eyes and saw the viewscreens that ringed the multi-tiered oval of his bridge as if they were the inward-facing facets of a gem turned inside out. More than half of the screens showed wrecks floating in space. These were the proud smooth-shaped hulls favored by his people, the ones he had led into battle: rent, outgassing, some still convulsed with internal explosions that flared from jagged wounds in their sides, sending flame and fragments and his writhing brothers and sisters into the merciless vacuum of space.

Narrok looked away. Half a year ago, when he witnessed such scenes of agony and devastation, he had routinely envisioned a fur-topped human face as the architect of that misery. It was a face he had imagined ripping and tearing and sundering until it could no longer have been recognized even by its own murdering breed.

Now, he did not see a human face.

Now, he saw Torhok’s.

RFNS
Gallipoli
, Further Rim Fleet, Ajax System

Erica Krishmahnta rubbed her eyes and leaned away from the tacplot. “We’ve hardly started fighting, and we’re already running. And leaving the forts to fend for themselves.”

Captain Watanabe shrugged. “They’ll be able to use escape pods when the time comes. That’s a better chance than the crews of the other forts had.”

“Gods, Yoshi, I just didn’t see that coming. I mean, you can find it in the fine print of the training and doctrine manuals: alternating-polarity tractor beams used against the fortresses. And sure, it works—too damned well. But the expense in ships to get that close—I couldn’t believe that even the Baldies would stand for losses that bad.”

Watanabe shrugged. “Given what they’ve been losing up to now, it was probably a pretty good trade for them. Which is probably why almost none of us anticipated it.”

Erica looked up. “
Almost
none of us?”

Watanabe looked away uncomfortably. “Uh…a lieutenant pointed it out in a memo recently. He cited the Baldy willingness to absorb casualties and that the alternating-polarity tractor-beam concept might be the only reasonable way they had to break through our defenses here, since they didn’t have the monitors and supermonitors that could stand up to our massed fires long enough to survive.”

“And why didn’t you tell me about this memo?”

“Because it wouldn’t have made any difference. You might be surprised that the lieutenant didn’t advise against the placement or design of the forts. Quite the contrary, he thought it was our best option. If we handled it correctly.”

“Oh? And did I handle it correctly, according to the lieutenant’s expectations?”

“Uh—actually, you followed his recommendations to the letter. Let the Baldies come in, commit to the assault, and use their need for an extended close engagement with the forts as a way of pinning them in place. Their sacrifice of free maneuver is what gave us the opportunity to inflict murderous casualties on them—as long as we remembered to stay light on our feet to avoid the predictable Baldy follow-up strike from the warp point.”

“Which of course means we were following a plan which necessarily ends with us running like hell and giving up the system. Again. Damn it, Yoshi, I’m awfully tired of showing the Baldies our heels.”

“Me, too, Admiral. But we blew apart almost ninety SDHs back there.”

“Yes, but there are almost twice as many again coming after us. And they’re close, Captain. Too close.”

Watanabe nodded. “Yes, it’s going to be tight getting through the warp point, getting turned around, and getting in formation to defend in time.”

Krishmahnta looked at the plot, watching the lead edge of the pursuing Baldies pushing at the remaining carriers and cruisers of her covering screens. Those fragile ships were falling back, tucking in behind the main van of her fleet, feinting, striking, harrying in an attempt to delay the attackers. Their success was moderate; their losses were mounting. “Captain, you’re going to need to draw up an alternative plan for our arrival in the Agamemnon system.”

“Sir?”

Erica closed her eyes and spoke each word slowly, distinctly, hating each one as she uttered it. “I need a contingency plan for making an immediate and orderly withdrawal to Penelope. I need all the fallback points preplanned, all detachments for delaying actions rostered and assigned, so that as we cross the Agamemnon system, we can attenuate our van and get it into a sequence that allows us to get everyone through the warp point to Penelope without breaking stride—and then turned right around into a defensive line on the other side.”