Extremis (60 page)

They could only assume that the matching Kasugawa generator was in place in ZQ-147, just as its operators could only assume that
Goethals
had completed its voyage on schedule and not found itself faced with the imperative of self-immolation. But neither could be certain until that approaching instant arrived, when both generators were to be simultaneously activated.

“T minus ten!” Captain Cardones called out. All at once, the pervasive low rumbling sound increased in pitch and volume, while all around the chamber displays lighted up with a jump in power levels. It seemed much longer than it was before he called “Mark!” and the noise rose sharply.

The crew watched the corresponding change on the big screen: a swirling pattern of golden light like a very slow whirlpool, down whose funnel they all stared into what appeared to be infinity.

They all knew it was spurious, and that the figures told the real story. But for a time no one could stop staring at the first artificially generated warp point in history.

TRNS
Hochblitz Azhanti
, Combat Group November, Allied Fleet, Borden System

First Space Lord Li Han’s diminutive stature made her holographic image look even more ghostlike: she seemed like a diaphanous, aging sprite whose calm radiated a sense of patient yet immovable eternity.

“Captain Torrero-Suizas, do you have any questions?”

“None, Admiral. We advance with all speed until we detect the Baldies.” He almost stumbled over the last word. The term—picked up from the intelligence relays received during the two abortive attempts to retake Bellerophon—had, like the rest of those communiqués, only recently made the jump from need-to-know suppression to common knowledge. Torrero-Suizas hardly missed a beat, however. “Once we’ve detected the Baldies, we are to send signals to you and send them to hell. And if we can, we keep pushing straight on through.”

“Colorfully expressed, Captain, but a bit incomplete. Your combat group is to push through to Mercury. At each system prior to that destination, you stop, assess, and report. Once you are in Mercury, you secure the warp point for the safe passage of the fleet. As soon as the van starts coming through, and assuming there is no resistance, you take all your monitors to the Athena warp point. Being the gateway to the alien base of power back in Bellerophon, it is our primary objective. At the same time, send your light elements to patrol and hold the Treadway warp point. Once we have secured all Mercury’s warp points, we will reassess. However, be prepared to receive new orders anytime after the van starts arriving in Mercury. This is a fluid situation, Captain. So, for the immediate future, flexibility must be Combat Group November’s watchword and greatest virtue.”

Torrero-Suizas saluted smartly and suppressed a smile. “We are ever virtuous, Admiral.”

“If you would be a liar, Captain, at least endeavor not to be such a poor one. You have your orders. Carry them out.”

“Yes, Admiral.”

Li Han’s hologhost faded out.

Torrero-Suizas turned to face both his bridge staff and the holograms standing at either of his rear flanks: Captains Oleg Skorinkov of the
Thunder Child
and Petra Ganjaring of the
Devourer,
respectively. “Start your op clocks on my mark…
mark
. Scout elements begin transit in five minutes.”

Armed Auxiliary
Enset-shef-rahir
, Detached Picket, Expeditionary Fleet of the
Anaht’doh Kainat
, BR-06 Warp Point

The
selnarm
repeaters began stabbing “URGENT. ALARM. URGENT. ALARM.” at Junior Commander Hers’hetr just as she emerged from her misting chamber after a double shift at the con. She sent a spike of her own into the repeater and pulsed at her XO, who was currently on the bridge. “Met’hir, report.”

“Sir, I—” Evidently at a loss for words, Met’hir simply linked the visual relays into the
selnarm
repeater, so that Hers’hetr could see the source of the alarm for herself.

A veritable mountain of armor and weapons had emerged from the warp point—and now ponderously turned toward her. It dwarfed her own tiny craft, which was little more than a repair frigate that Admiral Narrok had retrofitted with some external missile racks and a few force beams. She reflexively fired off a
selnarm
command that both launched her hull’s ready terminal courier drone and also sent an update across the system via
selnarm
booster—which triggered an automated courier to dive through the warp point into Mercury, raising the alarm as it went.

But even as she turned her attention back to her adversary, whose immense hull now loomed over her craft, Hers’hetr found herself frozen on the horns of an ethical dilemma. Yes, she had to do her duty to the Children of Illudor—but which interpretation of that duty should she follow at this crucial juncture? Torhok always urged his warriors to fight, but Narrok exhorted them to survive: to live to observe and report at least, to harry and hamper if practicable.

She was still in the process of deciding which course of action truly defined her duty to the Race in this circumstance when a force beam cut through her stateroom’s bulkhead and sliced her freshly washed body cleanly in two. Two seconds later, the beam performed an analogous vivisection on the
Enset-shef-rahir
’s fusion containment rings and, in that same instant, the late Junior Commander Hers’hetr’s first humble command transformed itself into a brief, tiny replica of a star.

The other two Arduan ships near the Trebuchet warp point—a shuttle tender/transport and a fighter—were similarly reduced to subatomic particles within the ensuing twenty seconds. By that time, the three monitors, eight heavy cruisers, two light carriers, four scout cruisers, and two destroyers of Combat Group November had all transited the warp point and were making best speed for their objective: the BR-06-Mercury warp point.

Deployed in their rapidly receding wake, four courier drones plunged back into the warp point to Trebuchet to send the word:

The way is clear. Advance the fleet.

* * *

“Do you think they know we’re coming?”

Captain Marco Torrero-Suizas cocked an eyebrow at his tactical officer of one month, Lieutenant Brian Lewis. “Of course they know.”

“Well, I thought that we got all the Baldy ships and drones so fast that—”

“Listen, what little we know about these Baldies from the intel squeaks we snatched during the last two Battles of Bellerophon tells us one thing clearly—they have some kind of very fast communication, possibly something on the order of telepathy. If that’s the case, then their first response to an attack coming through a warp point would be to send a message as far and fast as they can to their rear areas.”

“But we hit all their drones, Captain.”

“Yes—all the drones that we
saw
. But what if their hoodoo mind powers reach back as far as twenty light-seconds…or more? If they do, then they could have rung the alarm on us before the second of our ships completed transit. Face it, Lewis—we’re going to have company as soon as we transit.”

“Which is imminent,” Helm chimed in. “Coming in four, three, two, one—transit!”

The
Hochblitz Azhanti
plunged into the warp point in BR-06, where it was instantly yanked out of one part of the space-time continuum—

—only to be hurled back into it, and out of the linked warp point, in the Mercury system—where force beams and lasers immediately began peppering the
Hochblitz Azhanti
.

“See what I mean?” Torrero-Suizas grinned sourly at Lewis.

The young tactical officer, ashen-faced, gripped the edge of the holotank as the monitor shook around him. “Our electronics are back online, sir. Orders?” The viewscreen blanked: overloaded. Lewis looked at his terminal again and reported, “Our defensive batteries are going to be overwhelmed soon, sir. They just intercepted twenty-nine capital missiles in the space of four seconds. More inbound.”

“But not just at us anymore,” Torrero-Suizas muttered around a grim smile. For in the tacplot, a second green icon had emerged into the Mercury system, where approximately three dozen red specks faced them.

“Their weapons are adjusting to hit
Devourer
, sir.”

“And split between us, they will do less than half the damage to each.” Not that the aliens had much choice, Torrero-Suizas allowed. If they failed to attack one of the two human monitors, the other, unharried ship would surely use that freedom to concentrate its many batteries on—and thus, savagely gut—one alien craft after another. “Tactics, hold missile launch until we’ve got
Thunder Child
with us and the datalinks established. In the meantime, concentrate all beam fire on the most proximal enemy ships and launch our fighters. Let’s keep the Baldies busy and take our lumps, as we planned.”

Ops nodded into the holoplot. “
Blackwyrm
intercepted a salvo meant for
Devourer
. Too many missiles got through her active defenses. Major damage in most sections—”

The stricken cruiser’s green icon acquired a yellow limning: in naval parlance, it had been marked by a damage pennant.

“Rotate
Witchbane
into
Blackwyrm
’s place. Try to get her—”

But the yellow-ringed green icon fluttered, disappeared, and became an omega symbol.

“Captain Torrero-Suizas,
Blackwyrm
is Code Ome—”

“Thank you, Ops. My eyes still work. Unfortunately.
Witchbane
is to continue forward and plug the hole left by
Blackwyrm
.” He stared at the most recently arrived large green icon—that denoting
Thunder Child
—and tapped an impatient finger. “Datalinks?”

“Coming sir…”

Now
Witchbane
began to flash bilious, as Torrero-Suizas’s own hull tossed around him. “Communications, I need those—”

“Datalinks are up, sir!”

Torrero-Suizas turned to Lewis. “Target the cluster of SDHs bearing 34 by 300, thirteen light-seconds range. All monitors fire all tubes: salvo external racks. Maintain your fire.”

“How long, sir?”

“Until all the bastards shooting at us are dead.”

TRNS
Cimarron Rebuke
, Allied Fleet, Mercury System

Flying his lights from a monitor reminded Ian Trevayne of the early days of the Fringe Rebellion, or whatever the Terran Republic now called it. In those days, a monitor had been the largest warship type available. He had led a battlegroup including four of them on an epic flight through rebel-held space and the benevolently neutral Khanate of Orion to Zephrain, gateway to the loyal systems of the Rim. There, he himself had organized the construction of the first supermonitors, which had come as a nasty surprise to Li Han when the rebels (
I really must stop thinking of them as that
, he chided himself, not for the first time) had made a second attempt to take Zephrain.

Of course, TRNS
Cimmaron Rebuke
was very different in many ways from those ships. Those differences were part of the reason he still had Andreas Hagen, now a full commander, on his staff. Nevertheless, he felt increasingly confident of his ability to cope with the multiple revolutions that had overtaken military technology while he had lain in biotechnological limbo.

After a courier drone from Combat Group November had announced the way was clear, he had led the vanguard through to the Mercury system, deploying Mags (Li Magda had finally worn him down) ahead with her carrier-centered task force, adding her fighter strength to Torrero-Suizas’s firepower as they pushed the remaining Arduans back from the warp point. He himself hung back for now with the monitors and superdreadnoughts, forming a shield wall around the BR-06 warp point and the unprepossessing thing that had just emerged from it.

As he watched the image transmitted from a remote pickup, the voice of the
Cimarron Rebuke
’s captain intruded on his thoughts. “Excuse me, Admiral, but the technicians report that the Kasugawa generator is now in position with relation to the warp point.”

Trevayne glanced at the navplot and saw that the generator’s rudimentary reactionless drive had brought it to a halt. “Excellent, Captain. Tell them to make preparations to activate at the prearranged time.” Prearranged in conjunction with the identical generator Li Han was watching even now in BR-06. “And don’t bother giving me a countdown.”

Cimarron Rebuke
didn’t have Dr. Kasugawa’s artsy visual representation of warp points, and Trevayne hadn’t asked for it. He merely watched the pickups until he heard the background hubbub that indicated successful activation.

And, very shortly thereafter, the inconceivable mass of TRNS
Taconic
appeared in a warp point which hitherto could not have accommodated her, or any of the other devastators that now appeared, one after another.

Arduan SDH
Hrun’pah’ter
, System Defense Force, Expeditionary Fleet of the
Anaht’doh Kainat
, Mercury System

In the
Hrun’pah’ter
’s holopod, Fleet Second and System Commander Unshezh stared as the hoop denoting the warp point to BR-06 seemed to shimmer, flicker, wink out for a second, and then reassert.

“What happened?” she insisted of her sensor prime on the open
selnarm
link. “What caused that energy spike? Did another human craft materialize within this strange vessel of theirs?”

The sensor prime pulsed (urgent, wait) and kept studying his results.

“Sensor Prime! I must have the information, or your best estimate, immed—”

“Fleet Second, I…I cannot say with certainty, but I believe the humans have—have
modified
the warp point.”

“They have
what
?”

“Modified the warp point, Fleet Second. Its entire signature has changed, and its gravitic flux wave has drastically increased.”

“Hypothesis—and fast. What do these alterations signify?”

“I am not sure, but the warp point’s overall distortion of non-Myrtakian space is far more profound than it was beforehand. By two orders of magnitude. At least.”

Unshezh stifled the impulse to declare this impossible. Something extraordinary had occurred—and with all the human hulls that had already streamed out of the warp point, it seemed a certainty that the humans had some trick, some technology which had either allowed them to hide an entire fleet in the open expanses of the Trebuchet Trace, or which enabled them to somehow—