Final Assault Read online

  “My Lord,” said Admiral Awal with remarkable restraint. “A battleglobe the size of a pregnant moon’s closing on the Empty Quarter. When it delivers its gift, our day’s done. Have you any good news for us?”

  “Standby,” said the Heir, listening to Satur.

  We have their firing patterns, said Satur. Now?

  Yes, thought Kyan. Galy?

  Ready.

  “Starting our run, Admiral.”

  “Fortune grace you, My Lord.” And all of us, thought Awal, his and all eyes in FleetOps eyes on the tacscan.

  Satur led, Kyan beside him. The pair danced in on the battleglobe, utterly dependent on their symbiosis with their ships.

  It came to Olat, a memory out of the deep pool of his memories. “There’s no comm chatter because they’re telepathic—pilots, ships. They appear to disappear because they do—they’re telekinetic and flit their ships away the instant before a hit. And yes, they are reading Central Gunnery’s mind.”

  “Here they come again,” reported Tactics. “There’re two more of them.”

  Olat saw it. Perhaps still time, he thought. “Crew the guns! Gunnery array to stand down by battery as weapons are crewed. Tactics, can you identify and track those two new ships?”

  “No. The enemy’s ability to flit nullifies our tracking—we can’t set unique identifiers.”

  “Assume the two new fighters will breach the shield. Project probable sectors. Activate surface batteries and countermeasures.”

  “Launch fighters?” suggested Tactics.

  “Not against those ships and what’s flying them.” Hasi watched the salvos of red fusion bolts fire into space—silent, deadly and ineffectual. He checked a telltale. “Close enough. Launch the weapon and jump on my command.”

  Satur leading, he and Kyan flitted between the fusion beams, closing on the battleglobe’s shield, a shimmering, curving eternity of blue. Make ready, Satur advised, triggering his own special device, last of its kind. Behind him, Kyan armed the planetbuster Galy carried.

  They knifed through the shield one after the other, Satur’s Imperial shield lance flawless after eons in stasis. Banking, Galy released her squat black load as both ships turned soaring out past the shield, the bomb tumbling slowly toward the battleglobe’s deck. Below and behind them, something dark and long flashed from a launch port toward Kronar.

  After it, said Kyan.

  Jump to formation! ordered Satur, bringing the surviving fighters to his and Kyan’s sides. I have it. Link to me. Jump!

  The fighters were gone.

  “Missile launched.”

  “Jump!’ ordered Hasi.

  “Shield breach!” warned Tactics.

  New Dawn hit jump threshold as the planetbuster was freed from stasis, sparking instant conversion of both to pure energy, and dread to joy on Kronar as the battleglobe briefly flared away the night.

  The cheers ringing across the planet were still echoing in FleetOps when Awal was told, “There’s a problem.”

  “Seventy count to shield collision,” reported Tactics as Destiny and Avenger closed, behemoths charging to their doom. “Avenger’s not diverting.”

  “No one’s going to blink,” said Detrelna as Avenger came at them, its flanking ships pounding them. Suddenly one of them broke off, firing high and to the rear as it pulled sharply away, its shield hit by missiles. In an instant the battleglobe was replaced by an expanding cloud of gas.

  “That wasn’t us,” said the First Leader.

  “Secret allies?” asked Detrelna.

  “Dead enemies,” he said, reading the data trailing across his tacscan. “Decision time, Hasi,” he said, looking at Avenger.

  “No!” said Hasi, absorbing New Dawn’s loss amid a surprise attack. “Who is it? Where is it?”

  “Cloaked,” reported Motal. “The data readings are anomalous.”

  Had Hasi pressed him further, he’d have known the enemy, but Hasi was preoccupied. “All ships form on me to jump point. Tight group. Interlace gunnery arrays and maintain continuous sweeping fire,” he ordered as a second battleglobe was vaporized. Hasi’s Avenger changed direction, just missing Sutak’s flagship. Avenger at their center, the four battleglobes raced for jump point, firing blindly.

  “New Dawn confirmed destroyed, sir, and Kronar is unharmed,” reported Tactics. “They’d entered jump threshold when the weapon activated—it prevented damage to the planet.”

  “I should have gone myself.”

  Alarms screamed. “Incoming missiles,” reported Motal.

  “Fire at their launch points,” ordered Hasi.

  “Missiles just uncloaked—there’s no back-trace.”

  They swept in, as dark and as old as the ships that fired them, turning Avenger’s sisters into great flaming orbs quickly gone.

  “Enough,” said Hasi. Avenger slowed. “This is Second Leader Hasi aboard Avenger. Show yourselves.”

  “What is it that you’re leading, Leader Hasi?” replied the unseen ships’ commander. “Those billions of corpses accusingly trailing you? Hold station or be destroyed. You’ll await the judgment of Lord Kyan.”

  “No,” said John.

  “Gods, no!” cried Lawrona.

  “Kill him!” snapped Laguan.

  “Does his luck never run out?” marveled Detrelna.

  Line laughed, savoring the moment.

  “Who is that?” asked Sutak.

  “Gentlemen. First Leader. We’re ships loyal to the Heir Apparent, Lord Kyan. Uncloaking now.”

  The mindslavers appeared, surrounding Avenger.

  In FleetOps, battleglobes, Line and cruisers, Kotran’s face filled the screens. Kronar’s civilian vid channels picked up the signal, sending his image around the planet and into the Confederation, the captured battleglobe visible on the board behind him. He was smilingly at ease in his command chair, wearing an admiral’s uniform and sipping t’ata, the archetype of the triumphant Fleet officer. “And I am my Lord’s most unworthy servant, Admiral Yidan Kotran.”

  “Shoot me,” ordered Admiral Awal.

  “So, Kotran, not dead?” said Detrelna.

  “Relieved you’re well, too, Commodore. I believe I outrank you? Restored and returned, through my good Lord’s grace. We just escaped the deadliness of an idyllic paradise—much overrated paradise. My crews wanted to come home. They’ve earned it. And the Heir needed us. Where is he?”

  “With new friends,” said Detrelna.

  Kyan felt it coursing from Galy’s sensors, machine perceptions recast for the human mind: Coming fast, burning with cold fire, wreathed in cold flames. Take it, ordered Satur.

  They took it, their ships enmeshing the missile in forcefield and stasis, Satur dampening its inertia as the two ships and their cargo veered away from Kronar, waiting.

  “We won’t be waiting on Lord Kyan,” said Hasi, glancing at the mindslavers. “Since we can’t run, we’ll hide.”

  “How do you hide a battleglobe, sir?” asked Motal.

  “By asking the right question,” said Hasi. “‘Where do you hide a battleglobe?’”

  “Among other battleglobes?”

  “Precisely.” He studied the tacscan. “Three phalanxes—as we left them. Hundreds of millions of our almost-dead ships—our forward guard, the middle, where Sutak was, and the third phalanx. No need to make jump point—that many ships jumping and we leave as we arrived, through jump accretion. Find us a place in the middle of that second phalanx.”

  “It will be tight, Second Leader.”

  “We stay here, we’re dead.” We will survive, he thought. We will go on. And we’ll be back.

  Kotran was mulling his prospects for public office—Councilman perhaps?—when alarms and cries of surprise snapped him back to the present. “The battleglobe jumped,” said Atir needlessly as they stared at the empty swath of space still targeted by their weapons

  “It wouldn’t have left the system without the others. Find it, Atir.”

  “Where is that battle
globe, Admiral Kotran?” demanded Laguan with secret delight.

  “Searching now, Grand Admiral.”

  “Got it,” said Atir. “It jumped into their zombie fleet’s middle formation. I can’t tell where.”

  “Something I’d have thought of.” Kotran stared pensively into space. “But why? He’s even further from jump point.”

  “Sir,” said one of the Restored manning the bridge. “I was once with the Syal’s Twelfth Fleet.”

  “My sympathy. And?”

  “If that battleglobe can activate enough sister ships and jump-tie to them, they can all leave as the Twelfth did, through a massed accretion jump.” Short and compact, with golden skin and newly-regrown silver hair, Pytrin looked the very competent engineering officer she was. As with the rest of the Restored, she wore a brown duty uniform without insignia.

  “Thank you. Commander Pytrin, isn’t it?”

  “It was, sir.”

  “And is again. Thank you, Commander. Kronar still has need of your skills. The skills of all of you,” he said to his Restored crew. “Monitor the AI fleet, Commander. I’d welcome your insight.”

  “Power levels rising throughout the middle phalanx,” reported Atir.

  “The power increase—did it spread from one location?”

  “No, Yidan,” she said after a moment. “It was a simultaneous increase.”

  “Thus masking the point of origin. We can’t take out several hundred million battleglobes. Pytrin, how long before they can jump?”

  “Once they link and synchronize jump drives—for the Twelfth it was a few moments.”

  “Admiral Kotran, this is First Leader, Sutak. Hasi and Avenger can’t be allowed to escape with those phalanxes. With their combined resources they’d quickly replace our lost personnel and restore our fleet—with its original unenlightened intent.”

  “Suggestions, First Leader?” asked Kotran

  “I’m sorry, Admiral. No.”

  A new voice spoke. “I have a suggestion.”

  “My Lord Kyan!” cried Kotran.

  “All but two battleglobes are jump-ready,” said Motal as Avenger’s crew took their jump stations.

  “Excellent. We’ve the nucleus of a new empire and a revitalized race. We’ll begin in the isolation of the human’s Blue 6, their Ghost Quadrant. In a few years, we’ll return to Kronar.”

  “We’re not going back home?”

  “Only after the plague’s done its work there for us. For which we thank Guan-Sharick. Status on those mindslavers?”

  “No change.”

  “All ships jump on my mark.”

  “My Lord Kyan!”

  “Admiral Kotran,” said the Heir from where his and Satur’s fighters hung in space, backdropped by Kronar. “I heard you lost something. Report.”

  “We can’t take them out with a planet buster,” said Kyan as Kotran finished.

  “We haven’t confirmed the captured weapon’s type, My Lord,”

  “We can’t, Satur—it’s shielded. We’re assuming.”

  “With respect, My Lord, I know what it is,” said a voice from the mindslaver—the Restored Commander Pytrin. She looked up from a data scan. “The Ractolians had superior sensor technology—it’s a phased singularity weapon, Trel in origin. It can be telepathically triggered.”

  “I never authorized a worm-maker!” said Sutak. “If that device can’t be controlled …”

  “Gods,” said Detrelna, exchanging worried glances with his officers.

  “My Lord,” said Line. “The AI fleet’s approaching jump threshold.”

  “No pressure,” said Lawrona.

  “What’s a worm-maker?” asked Zahava.

  “Gone wrong—the death of all,” said Kiroda.

  “Satur, can you do it?” asked Kyan, looking at the figure in the adjacent fighter.

  “My Lord, the risk—”

  “Is acceptable, given the alternative. Can you do it?”

  “Not alone.”

  Space rippled around the Heir and vertigo touched him. Shaking his head, he found himself and Galy part of a tight circle of fighter craft facing the missile.

  Satur gave his orders. Lock on me. Jump as one. Direct placement. Radius limited induction. Use their own grid to mark radius. Set and leave. Questions? Very well. “Freedom or Death!” he cried.

  “Freedom or Death!” they replied.

  “Freedom or Death!” Satur and Kyan answered.

  “Luck,” said the Heir. Kyan and Galy were alone.

  “Several hundred Kronarin fighter craft have appeared within our phalanx,” reported Motal. “Avenger can’t fire without revealing our position. And the plague destroyed most of our other ships’ weapons systems.”

  “There was no jump signature alert,” said Hasi.

  “They were suddenly here, sir. I can’t explain it.”

  Hasi could. “Imperial biofabs. All battleglobes, initiate jump on my ten-count!”

  “They’re gone, but they left something,” said Motal, looking out into space. “And a message—‘Keep it. Kyan.’”

  Hasi checked the tacscan, then again. “Oh no,” he said. His gaze followed his Tactic’s officer’s to where a purple haze was encapsulating the fleet. “Jump!” he ordered.

  “Jump’s inhibited.”

  “It’s our worm-maker,” said Hasi, hope gone.

  They watched from Sutak’s battleglobe, Implacable’s officers, the Terrans and Sutak, battle repairs underway around them. The restored armorglass again served as the bridge’s eyes, sensors and viewing appendages watching as the AI fleet’s middle phalanx was englobed within a sphere of lavender, completing as they watched. The sphere began shimmering.

  “What is it?” asked John. “It’s like a spider enfolding its prey.”

  “A phased singularity bomb—a wormhole-maker,” said Lawrona. “It encapsulates objects within a given area, opens a wormhole and sends them away. The Empire tried and failed to perfect them. We don’t build them and shoot anyone who does.”

  “No genocidal fleet is complete without one,” said Detrelna.

  “What defines the area of the wormhole?” asked Zahava, seeing the risk.

  The sphere grew brighter, the shimmering becoming a glare occluding their view of the battleglobes.

  “The area of the target,” said Tolei, turning from the armorglass. “It’s a Trel weapon. The Trel were telepaths and configured it for their use. Satur and the Guard used the weapon’s original program to target a phalanx of the AI fleet.”

  “They’ve jump-linked their ships,” reported Kyan, appearing beside them with Satur. “Captain Satur had the weapon englobe all jump-tied AI vessels. It worked.” He bowed to Satur. “Well done, sir.”

  “My Lord,” Satur bowed. “It wasn’t just me,” he said as the more of the gray-uniformed Guard flitted onto the battleglobe’s bridge. “We did it as one.”

  “It’s a hellish weapon, My Lord,” said Lawrona. “It could easily destroy our entire star system.”

  “And the AIs wouldn’t, Hanar?”

  “We’re awfully close to the action, My Lord.”

  “Kotran,” said Detrelna as the former corsair’s image filled a commscreen, Atir at his side.

  “You all know Commander Atir,” said Kotran.

  “Indeed,” said Kyan.

  “My Lord,” she nodded.

  “My force is nearest the singularity, My Lord,” said Kotran. “If it continues to expand, we’ll be the first to go.”

  “But not the last. Hold station.”

  “Very good, My Lord.”

  “I’d offer you all refreshments,” said the Sutak, “but the party will soon be over.” The AI nodded toward the purple sphere, unbearably bright but for the scan’s filters. Above it a hole was opening, a widening circle revealing a swirling vortex of blue-black energies.

  “It’s going to absorb the AIs?” asked John.

  “At least,” said Satur. “If we didn’t get it right, it will devour all, first
taking the AIs we nicely trussed up for it, then expanding to absorb far more.”

  The wormhole’s entrance was now as wide as the AI phalanx.

  “It’s tugging us in,” said Motal. “We can’t reverse out—it’s a primal force. Final orders, sir?”

  “Send the message. Then advise the crew to prepare for our brief journey.”

  “Hasi just sent a battleburst,” reported Sutak. “Not in any code we can read.”

  “There’re no AIs left there to hear it,” said Kiroda.

  “It’s not an AI code and not on an AI frequency, Commander,” said Sutak.

  “A sobering thought.” Detrelna stood watching the purple sphere begin its slow spin toward the maw of the wormhole.

  “A question for another day,” said the Heir. “Let’s live through this one.”

  Without protest, several hundred million AI battleglobes slipped into the yawing mouth of the wormhole, disappearing down a swirling, narrowing funnel made to compress them into a solid mass as it transported them to oblivion.

  No one cheered. All eyes were on the wormhole.

  “Not expanding,” reported Sutak’s Tactics officer.

  “Not closing, either,” said Kyan.

  “My ships are slowly being dragged in,” said Kotran. “The weapon’s inhibiting our jump drives.”

  “It’s designed to do that,” said the First Leader. “Maximizes enemy losses.”

  “You’ll have to move your ships away on their engines, Kotran.”

  “Impossible, My Lord,” said Kotran. “It’s taking all we have not to be sucked in.”

  “We can’t move either,” said Sutak. “And we’re slowly being pulled toward it.”

  “No need to launch Implacable, then, Hanar,” said Detrelna. “Ideas, anyone?”

  “A soothing cup of t’ata, Commodore?” suggested Kiroda.

  “Not my favorite beverage, Tolei. Why did everyone always assume I was drinking t’ata?”

  “It should have closed by now, My Lord,” said Satur, tight-lipped.

  “Not fair, Satur,” said Lawrona. “Held in stasis for centuries only to be devoured after a few days of very stressful freedom.”

  “You think life is fair, Captain?” he said with a sad smile.

  “Never. But calculatingly cruel? You haven’t even had shore leave.”