The Ascendant Stars (48 page)

‘It’s ready now, Vice-Admiral. If you pull your vessels back
from a channel along these coordinates then wait for the shield signal … ’

‘I have the coordinates now, Lieutenant. This shouldn’t take long.’

‘The Pyreans have a weapon?’ Greg murmured as Ngassa’s picture shrank into a corner. ‘What does it do?’

‘Something they got from the Roug,’ Ash said. ‘I just hope it’s enough to take out some of those maulers. Otherwise we’ve got real problems … ’

Moments later Vice-Admiral Ngassa confirmed that the manoeuvres were complete, as did the Imisil commander. Ash then informed K’ang Lo, who smiled.

‘My engineers have monitored the progress and we have already acquired our target. The dragon is ready.’

The Earthsphere vice-admiral nodded gravely. ‘Shield will open along that channel in ten … nine … eight … ’

The other screens still showed the Hegemony formation, the spread-out X of vessels with the mauler ships clustered around the centre. They were firing off massive bursts of energy and energised particles which were hammering against the interlocked shields of the defending fleet. Then the vice-admiral’s countdown reached one … and for a heartbeat there was nothing, an instant of hollow dread, a millisecond of panic …

Then the dragon roared.

A pillar of force and energy leaped along that channel cleared through the loose formation of vessels and stabbed out towards the oncoming Hegemony ships. It was almost too bright to watch but the visual systems quickly filtered and enhanced. Greg stared open-mouthed as that ferocious torrent smashed into the Hegemony vessels, scything through hulls like laser drills through paper, cutting them apart, grinding them up. In fact, those formerly fearsome ships appeared to be dissolving in that annihilating incandescence.

And abruptly, it was gone.

Without that immense sunfire-spear, all seemed to suddenly plunge into darkness until the visual systems adapted. One screen
showed the remnants of the X-formation in full retreat, leaving clouds of glowing fragments in their wake. Greg could hear cheers from elsewhere on board but he couldn’t help thinking about the hundreds of Sendrukans who must have experienced a moment or two of searing agony before being sent to their deaths.

They would have surely done the same to us and without hesitation
, he thought.
Disnae make me feel any better, though
…

‘Why have they stopped firing, Lieutenant?’

Vice-Admiral Ngassa’s face was glaring down at Ash.

‘The weapon can only fire continuously for about fifty seconds, Vice-Admiral,’ Ash said. ‘Then it needs just under three minutes to charge.’

‘Three minutes?’ Ngassa was incredulous. ‘If that’s true then we cannot maintain our current position. They are already preparing the next attacks and we must not become a sitting duck … ’

Ash switched his attention to the screen with the long-range scan data and schematics, seemingly taking it all in with a two-second glance.

‘Carriers and launcher platforms,’ he said. ‘Could be a problem.’

‘Worse than that, Lieutenant – the Supreme Overcommander is toying with us, advancing another of his hundred-piece formations rather than committing his entire force.’

Ash grinned. ‘Perhaps we should move out to engage with the next wave and unleash the dragon when it’s ready.’

‘Aye, but if it was up to me,’ Greg said, ‘I’d find out where the Supreme Thingummy is hiding hisself and go after him, full tilt, all guns blazing.’ He paused, suddenly aware of Ash and Ngassa’s intent stares. ‘But that’s just me … ’

‘Actually,’ said Ash, ‘that is a fair summation of the Imisil commander’s recommendation.’

‘My tactical officer proposes a curved trajectory around Darien,’ Ngassa said. ‘With the
Retributor
positioned at our formation’s leading flank it can target that weapon across a
wider field. Using short bursts more tightly focused – and watching out for the Supreme Overcommander’s flagship, of course.’

By now they had been joined by Admiral Olarevic, the Imisil First Proposer Conlyph, and the Duizhang K’ang Lo, who was quick to agree with the Earthsphere plan. Olarevic was reluctant and had to be convinced, essentially by the possibility of Vox Humana ships being left to fend for themselves.

It took just over a minute for all the vessels of the combined fleet to embed the new course data, then they set off in unison. At the same time some had to manoeuvre aside within the cluster of ships to allow the bulky, irregular mass of the
Retributor
to move forward. All this while the Hegemony forces kept up a sustained bombardment of pulse rounds, missiles and submunition clusters – ninety per cent of their vessels were maintaining their stand-off positions yet they were still contributing to the incessant barrage of destruction that clawed at the defenders’ interleaved shields.

‘Duizhang K’ang Lo,’ said Ngassa. ‘Is your weapon ready to fire?’

‘Yes, Vice-Admiral,’ K’ang Lo said. ‘Our dragon knows where the enemies are.’

‘You have control of the shields, Duizhang. The timing is fully in your hands so please, teach these intruders a lesson.’

K’ang Lo smiled wordlessly before his image vanished.

This time Greg could see the weapon itself. Visual feeds relayed from ships near the
Retributor
showed an odd geodesic-like structure on top of the asteroid habitat. The dome’s polyhedrals were translucent, almost with a shimmering moiré effect, while within a knot of something impossibly bright burned. Then with a shocking suddenness the dazzling column of energies lanced out for two seconds then cut out. Then it appeared again, pointing in a different direction, two seconds then off. And again and again and again. On the big screens Greg could see the sheer havoc that the Roug weapon was wreaking in the ranks of the enemy, ships sliced in half, some
half-wrecked but spiralling off with uncontrolled thrust drives burning, others blowing themselves apart and catching other vessels in the blast radius.

All the Hegemony ships were breaking formation now, frantically trying to spread out and make less obvious targets. At the same time they were managing to keep up the attack barrage, much of which was now directed at the
Retributor
. Missiles, hull-leeches and swarmers converged on that particular spot in the flank of the defenders’ formation and the nearby warships managed to intercept nearly all of them. Beam weapon bursts and particle pulses were harder to neutralise and the first time a string of them struck the rockhab Greg felt his mouth go dry.

Shattered rock and clouds of grit and dust erupted here and there, and a couple of times an assembly housing or external pipe junction was hit, resulting in a flare of vaporised metal burning up. Greg started to realise how much punishment a big asteroid could absorb.

But now it was the defenders’ turn to become an easy target. Crowded together in a comparatively slow-moving teardrop formation, this allowed the enemy vessels to concentrate their fire – but even Greg knew this couldn’t go on. Minutes later Ngassa was back on the big screen with a new plan – divide the combined fleet in three, a command group based on the vice-admiral’s flagship and the
Retributor
, and two support groups based on the Imisil and Vox Humana vessels respectively, strengthened with Earthsphere units.

The Imisil commander, First Proposer Conlyph, nodded emphatically, his facial markings shimmering an impatient silver.

‘Dividing our numbers adds to our manoeuvrability while dividing the enemy’s firepower.’

The Vox Humana admiral, Olarevic, was unconvinced but Ngassa’s promise of five Earthsphere heavy cruisers brought her round. Ash had Berg in the
Starfire
and Braddock in the
Vanquisher
go with them too, while deciding to commit the
Silverlance
to the Imisil group.

‘Our strategic goal,’ Vice-Admiral Ngassa said over the group-channel visual, ‘is to locate and destroy the Hegemony flagship, thus removing the Supreme Overcommander.’ The image of a bulky, carrier-sized ship bristling with weapons appeared below his face. ‘Clear skies and good hunting!’

Greg raised an eyebrow at Ash. ‘So, my idea wasnae so dumb, after all, eh?’

‘It depends on how you define the word.’

‘What – define “dumb”?’

‘No – “idea”.’

But the task ahead, spiritedly depicted as formidable or even challenging, soon showed its true face. The enemy ships were too numerous and the collective potency of their weapons was too strong for overloaded, overstretched shields and weakened hulls. Formationless, the Hegemony vessels converged on the three groups of defending ships, imposing carriers unleashing hundreds of interceptors that fell upon them in wave after wave. On the control screens in the
Silverlance
’s engineering deck, Greg watched the attack runs against a Vox Humana light assault cruiser which had become separated, explosive rounds stitching lines of fire along its hull, the bursts of argent violence as generators or fuel stores ignited, the pale outgassing from a hundred breaches, the ragged gaping crater where an out-of-control enemy craft had rammed the ship and exploded. And dozens of escape pods jetting away, location signals pinging on the emergency channels.

Greg saw similar ship deaths played out on the screens, a repetition of desperate tragedy. Half an hour after Ngassa’s stirring send-off, their combined numbers were down to eighteen at the last count. Braddock’s
Vanquisher
was a drifting hulk, its captain missing. The Vox Humana’s Admiral Olarevic lost her flagship but transferred to one of the Earthsphere cruisers. Including Berg’s
Starfire
, their own group was down to four.

The Imisil group were numerically better off – two Imisil cruisers, three Earthsphere attack cruisers and Ash’s
Silverlance
– but the damage sustained was widespread and serious. The Imisil
commander had decided on a tactical withdrawal out past the orbit of Nivyesta.

The
Retributor
had been put out of action. K’ang Lo’s brutal Roug weapon managed to account for perhaps two hundred Hegemony ships before enough missiles and interceptors finally broke through the shield and fire cordon provided by Ngassa’s heavy cruisers. Greg had only caught glimpses of the rockhab as it was enveloped in a wreath of detonating payloads and flaming energies just before the dome of the dragon’s breath exploded, a burst of light accompanied by sprays of sparks while pulverised fragments expanded outwards. Watching it was almost too much to bear.

Now the asteroid vessel looked powered-out, a darkened mass drifting with a slight axial spin, all external floods and signal lights dead. Just a few jets of escaping gas creating clouds of ice crystals in its slow wake.

Meanwhile, Vice-Admiral Ngassa’s flagship and a handful of battered vessels were being steadily corralled by the remaining hundreds of Hegemony ships. Complete defeat seemed to be staring them in the face.

Whatever happened to that Imisil fleet?
Greg wondered.
Did that black Vor ship we saw stop them in their tracks?

Ash was standing before the screens, arms crossed, face unreadable. The central panel had been tiled into a score or more of feed frames, each showing a separate scene from some part of the sprawling, world-encircling battlezone. Several audio channels were muttering in the background, the only sound in the sombre hush.

‘I found out why they opened fire while you were in mid-rebuttal,’ Ash unexpectedly said to Greg. ‘It appears that the Vashutkin message was made on a Sorik dataslate, which is a command-level piece of equipment aboard Tygran ships, and it was recorded nearly an hour before it was widecast. Best of all, there was a short message in Sendrukan encrypted into one of its layers, which said: “Operation Reclaim now commencing.” In other words, it was a signal.’

‘So Becker was involved,’ Greg said. ‘But if that was over an hour ago they could be getting up to any kind of deviltry – and we’ve no way of knowing what it is … unless … ’

Ash shook his head. ‘That damned interference is still blanketing the colony. Nothing but garbled static … ’

The face of the Imisil commander, First Proposer Canlyph, appeared at one side of the screen.

‘Lieutenant Ash, I have some unfortunate news – it appears that the remainder of the Imisil fleet has encountered a second wave of attackers in hyperspace. I’m afraid that the fleet’s High Initiator has decided to turn back and to see if an alternative route can be found. On a less regretful note, I can report that our probes have sent back an interesting morsel of information – relaying it to you now.’

Greg’s heart sank, appalled that his own inner speculations could turn out to be true.

Another frame popped up on the screen, showing the lush green curve of the forest moon, Nivyesta. The visual zoomed forward in stages, finally revealing the ship that was hanging there in stationary orbit on the other side of the moon, a massive and distinctive-looking ship, weapons jutting from stepped layers of decks.

‘It is the Hegemony flagship, the
Dominion Of Light
,’ said the First Proposer. ‘I believe that we should gather our strength and attack it. The Earthsphere captains have already agreed.’

Ash hesitated and Greg thought, even half-hoped that he’d decline what would almost certainly be a suicide mission. Then he gravely nodded.

‘Two-part assault?’ he said. ‘The Earthers and ourselves go in hot to draw off the escort while your ships stealth up close to the flagship’s stern, targeting the drives?’