Extremis (67 page)

His staff signaled (understood, resolved, ferocity, race-pride), and he returned it all—just as his communications prime intruded a less stirring note of (apology). “Admiral, on the Fleet command-repeater—Senior Admiral Torhok.”

Of course. You can’t just follow along, can you?
Narrok slipped a tendril of his
selnarm
into the repeater as willingly as he would have handled
griarfeksh
droppings. “Yes, Senior Admiral?”

“Narrok, what illogic and impertinence is this? How dare you advance the SDS echelons without consulting me?”

“Sir, I thought our plan was clear enough. We now have multiple data points that suggest the humans are readying the device they use to modify warp points. We have no time to waste. Our ships are very slow.”

“All the more reason to let the human vanguard move slightly deeper into the system. They would have been so far behind us that they might not have caught up to us before we engage their warp-point force.”

“Unfortunately, waiting that long might also make us too late to prevent the humans from activating their device—and that is and must remain our primary objective. Besides, had we let the human vanguard go farther, they would still have turned and caught up with us…from directly behind. I suspect that vulnerability might even have proven fatal to these twelve SDSs.”

Torhok obviously did not want to be distracted by either facts or the dictates of tactical prudence. “Admiral Narrok, your reasons may or may not be sound—but you were to consult with me before ordering an advance. This is the nature of command. You are relieved of your post.”

So, Torhok was determined to try that gambit. But Narrok and the remaining Council of Twenty had prepared for this eventuality. “Senior Admiral, I am sorry to point out that you no longer have the the authority to relieve me. The prerogative to dismiss your second-in-command vests in your holding
two
positions simultaneously, that of senior admiral and that of councilor. In boycotting the Council, you left its remaining members no choice but to reassign your seat there. Consequently, you can no longer relieve me. You can of course contest my orders—and supplant those you feel wiser.” Before he finished on that note, Narrok had checked his plot: all twelve SDSs were still moving at best speed toward their objective in four echelons of three upright triads—including Torhok’s own flagship.

Torhok was still for a long moment. “Slow your echelon, Narrok. I will close distance so all our weight of metal arrives together. And after this battle is done—should you survive it—be assured that I will discarnate you in personal combat. Which I anticipate most eagerly.”

The link broke.

Narrok smiled. He had read a human axiom some months ago that was most suited to this moment: Violence is the last recourse of the incompetent. That wisdom applied just as readily to his own species, it seemed. He opened his
selnarm
link to his bridge staff again.

“Maintain course, speed to three-quarters. Launch all fighters. Missiles to pre-launch mode. Now we triumph for the unity that is the Race’s embodiment of Illudor!”

TRNS
Lancelot
, Allied Fleet, Charlotte System

Shock can be so overwhelming that it defeats itself. Li Magda’s moment of stunned immobility lasted only a couple of heartbeats before she burst out, “What in the hell are those things
doing
here?” Her tone reflected too much indignation to leave room for panic.

But Trevayne was already responding, barking out a series of orders that would send the reinforced vanguard into a fighting retreat. Only afterward did he reply, in a voice that was almost too composed.

“It’s obvious in retrospect. We’ve always
known
that something massing a billion tonnes—five hundred times a devastator—can’t possibly transit any warp point God ever made. So we’ve comfortably assumed the system-defense ships are confined to Bellerophon, where the Baldies created them by breaking up some of their generation ships.” His smile held absolutely no humor. “Why didn’t it ever occur to us that if they can break up a generation ship they can also break up an SDS? That must be how they did it. They sent the things through in pieces and reassembled them here.”

“What a colossal effort!” she breathed. “But the one thing we know for certain about the Baldies is that they don’t think small.”

“
I’m
the one who’s stereotypically supposed to be given to understatement!” Trevayne permitted himself another quick, humorless smile, then turned toward the comm station. “Raise the First Space Lord.”

It had been a long time since he had referred to her as that.

* * *

“Well,” Li Han said briskly, “we can stop wondering why they positioned themselves so far from the warp point, can’t we? It was necessary to conceal things that size with cloaking ECM.”

“We can also stop wondering why they didn’t try any tricks with our recon drones,” said Li Magda bleakly.

Li Han’s tone grew even more clipped, and it was as though she were donning a robe. “Self-reproach is useless. Let us consider our position. Given what we know of the weaknesses of the SDS—its extreme slowness and and even more extreme lack of mobility, and its seeming fragility—I believe we can still win this battle if we can bring our devastators into this system.” For a split second, the robe seemed to flutter. “At any rate, we
have
to act on that assumption. The two Kasugawa generators will activate at the preset moment, which defines how long we have to hold out. And that moment can’t be advanced, given the requirement that the generators be synchronized. Ian, you’ve done exactly the right thing by falling back ahead of the SDSs, which can’t catch you.”

“Especially,” he added with a glance at the navplot, “given their position. They’re not aligned in the same axis as us and the warp point. They’re starting to converge from about a thirty-five degree angle, and we’re ahead of them.”

“Good. We’ll combine forces and defend the generator as long as it needs to be defended.”

There seemed nothing else to be said.

* * *

Trevayne’s force was far faster than the SDSs. But it wasn’t faster than their heavy bombardment missiles, and it wasn’t faster than their fighters—about five hundred fighters each. Trevayne’s fighters were better, but they had already taken losses, and he hadn’t had time to recover and rearm all of them, so some of them had already expended their depletable munitions. Still, they gamely kept up a running duel, and the point defense of the capital ships and their escorts was for the most part capable of dealing with the repeated flurries of long-range missile fire.

But, as Trevayne came to realize, what he really had going for him was that those titanic ships weren’t really interested in him. They were lumbering inexorably toward the warp point, and their extended-range missile fire was already erupting in voracious fireballs against the shields of Li Han’s ships.

“It’s obvious,” he reported to Li Han, “that they’re resolved to close with you.”

“Which means, close with the generator,” she replied emotionlessly. “They must have identified it. I’ve detached practically all my escort cruisers to globe up around it, practically shield-to-shield, and do their best to fill the volume of space surrounding it with an inferno of point defense.”

“There’s only one thing to do,” Trevayne said. “Mags and I will abruptly change course to intercept them short of you. We’ll break up their formation, force them to maneuver to deal with us.”

Han shook her head. “You don’t have the tonnage and firepower. There’s no guarantee you’d be able to delay them until the activation sequence is completed. No, there’s only one alternative.” For the barest instant, she locked eyes with her daughter, and her eyes shone with a strange intensity, as though desperate to memorize every detail of that face. “I’m coming out.”

“
What?
” Li Magda’s voice rose to falsetto and then broke. “But—”

Li Han made a decisive chopping motion with her hand. “No time. We’re all going to have too much to do. Signing off.”

The comm screen went black. And in the tactical plot, serried ranks of supermonitors were surging out from the vicinity of the warp point, for all the world like charging knights.

* * *

Trevayne gave a quick series of orders that wrenched the vanguard into a tight turn of the sort possible to inertia-canceling drives. A furious battle raged as the remains of the lighter Baldy units fought to keep him off the SDSs. He and Mags were thrown off their feet as a near-miss shook
Lancelot
’s tonnage, showering the flag bridge with ruptured metal and plastic and filling it with acrid smoke. Damage-control klaxons whooped, and the saturnalia of destruction went on.

But it paled beside what was happening as Li Han’s force and the leading SDSs slid together.

As they approached, the intervening space was crisscrossed by rapid-fire missile exchanges. Then, as they drew closer, they belched out missile salvos at ranges where interception grew more and more difficult, and the antimatter fires seemed to merge into a quasi-solid mass of lightning, a ravening energy expenditure that must surely strain the metrical frame of spacetime itself.

It was, Trevayne thought in awe, a battle that was itself an astronomical event. He found a moment to wonder if, on any undiscovered planets nearby in Newtonian space, there were alien astronomers who in few years would watch this bright star momentarily grow even brighter, and wonder why.

Then the supermonitors—not as many as there had been—were actually in among the leading echelon of SDSs.

By most standards, supermonitors were neither fast nor maneuverable. But among the SDSs they were almost like fighters weaving around capital ships, working their way into the blind zones.

And then, all at once,
Lancelot
was through the tatters of the Baldy mobile forces, and more and more of the vanguard’s survivors followed her into the brawl of the titans.

The SDSs were predominantly missile and fighter platforms. They were at a disadvantage at close range. And not even a billion tonnes of matter is immune to a contact antimatter explosion.

Their relentless progress toward the generator was thrown off as they maneuvered clumsily to evade their attackers. It wasn’t always enough. Trevayne heard Mags—and himself—cheering as he watched one of them go up in an explosion beyond the powers of any gods humankind had ever imagined.

Then they identified Li Han’s flagship—limping, streaming air—as it doggedly worked its way around into beam-weapon range of an SDS’s blind zone.

“Raise the First Space Lord!” he commanded.

“Yes!” Li Magda said in tones of desperation. “Tell her to disengage. It’s almost time for the generator to—”

“Fleet flag isn’t responding, Admiral,” said the comm officer.

But then the supermonitor and its giant prey practically vanished in an insanely suicidal short-range exchange of fire. The SDS began to erupt in a series of secondary explosions that blew it apart—but it flung out chunks of debris huger than starships. One of them collided with the supermonitor in a holocaust that consumed both and sent their mingled wreckage tumbling sunward.

With a sobbing wail, Li Magda fell into Trevayne’s arms.

“She did it!” he breathed into her ear as she clung to him. “Look, Mags, she did it! See, the attack by the leading wave of SDSs has been broken up, lost its momentum. And now…”

He pointed to a telltale, in which energy readings jumped. The Kasugawa generator’s final activation sequence was beginning.

“She
did
it!” he repeated. Magda looked up, and her eyes blazed through their film of tears.

Arduan SDS
Unzes’mes’fel
, Consolidated Fleet,
Anaht’doh Kainat
, Charlotte System

“Admiral Torhok’s flagship is…is gone, Admiral. So is Commander Ums’shet’s SDS.”

Narrok (affirmed) sent. “I see it, Prime. Tactics: Range to target?”

“Sixteen light-seconds.”

“Data hubs?”

“Intact sir, but the humans are inflicting considerable damage on our—”

“All missile tubes: continuous launch. Flush external racks.”

“Any targets other than the unidentified object, Admiral?”

“No other target. That one target only. Fighter wings Two, Seven, and Eight: close on the target, tuners at max.”

“They will not get through, Admiral.”

“They are not supposed to. They will draw the fire from all the nearby enemy defense batteries. Because of that, the humans will not be able to destroy all our missiles.”

Narrok felt the tremor—very faint in the massive SDS beneath his feet—as the torrent of missiles began rushing out toward the single human construct.

His ops prime signaled anxiously. “Sir, the human vanguard ships are now in among our echelons. They are—”

“Continue firing. All other fighter wings sweep through this arc”—he drew a glittering path in the holoplot with his light-stylus—“and attempt to engage the human vanguard from the rear.”

“Sir, the humans have ample time to turn and—”

“—and in turning, they will be less of a threat to us for a few more minutes. By which time, our job should be done.”

“Yes, sir.”

Tactics called for (attention) to the plot. “Sir, intercept in ten seconds.”

“Very good, Prime. The human defense batteries?”

“They have eliminated almost all of our fighters.”

“Anticipated. The effect of the batteries upon our missile salvos?”

Tactics checked his readouts. “Negligible, Admiral. And intercept in two, one…now.”

It took about ten seconds for the flash to reach them—a flash that seemed to writhe and pulse as over four hundred missiles detonated one after the other in the same cubic light-second of space. After four seconds, the angry, roiling glow dimmed down to occasional flickers, then a vaguely luminous haze. And then, the dark, infinite stillness of open space reasserted.

“Target destroyed,” announced Tactics calmly.

TRNS
Lancelot
, Allied Fleet, Charlotte System

Trevayne and Li Magda thought they had no room for any additional horror and despair after watching the immolation of the generator. But then the telltales pitilessly showed a huge, meaningless energy pulse that abruptly winked out. They knew what it meant. The generator in Demeter had also activated, uselessly, wasting itself. Their paired generators were gone.