didn't matter. What mattered was doing their best to clean up the mess they'd created here. Shifting her attention back to her displays, she began tagging primary and secondary targets. The leading ships were almost in range...
'Signal to all ships,' Admiral David announced. 'Pull back. Repeat: pull back.' Shada flashed him a frown. 'What?'
'I said pull back,' David repeated, flashing an almost curious look at her in return. 'Which part didn't you understand?'
Shada started to say something blistering; choked it back as Karrde squeezed her shoulder warningly. 'She was thinking about the fact that the
'Understood,' David said. 'The order remains. Pull back.'
'Chief?' Dankin asked.
Shada glanced up again. Karrde was looking at David, measuring the man with his eyes.
'Transmit the order, Chin,' he said, his tone suddenly thoughtful. 'Dankin, go ahead and retreat, but keep us in formation with the other ships. Shada, have the gunners lay down covering fire.'
'Right.' Shada keyed her intercom, her eyes searching the displays as she tried to figure out what was going on. The usual tactical reason for pulling back toward a planetary surface was to lure an enemy within range of either ground-based weapons or a surface-launched ambush. But every ship Exocron had was already up here, and H'sishi's sensor probes would certainly have picked up any ground weaponry powerful enough to reach this far into space.
The fleet was beginning to move now, backing toward Exocron as ordered. Some of the armed civilian ships were already firing uselessly at the Corsairs arrowing silently in at them, wasting energy on out-of-range targets. Shada looked at David, but either he hadn't noticed or didn't especially care what they did. Were the civilians nothing but sacrificial lures to him? 'Keep retreating,' he said instead. 'All ships.'
The Corsairs were nearly in range, the larger warships formed up behind them now in a straightforward assault line. Little wonder; considering the opposition, there was no need for them to try anything fancy. A. straight slice through the ships arrayed against them, then probably a low strafing loop over Exocron's major population centers, taking out Supreme Admiral Darr's pitiful Airfleet along the way...
'Keep retreating,' David said again. 'Tactical display, please.' H'sishi hissed acknowledgment and the tactical overlay came up. The defenders were all well within Exocron's gravity field now, far too late for any of them to change their minds and try to escape to hyperspace. Was that what David was going for? Shada wondered. Putting them in a position where they had no choice but to fight to the death?
Even as that disturbing thought occurred to her, the last of the pirates passed within that invisible boundary, as well. They were all totally committed to this battle now. Neither the attackers nor the defenders would be leaving Exocron until one side or the other had been destroyed.
'Here they come,' David murmured.
Shada looked at him, a bitter retort bubbling in her throat. Of
And abruptly, H'sishi snarled in disbelief.
Shada snapped her attention back to the viewport. The pirates were still there, still coming. But they weren't the ones David had been referring to. Behind the pirates' line, something else had appeared.
It was a spaceship, of course. But it was a ship like nothing Shada had ever seen. Roughly ovoid, half again as big as the Marauders, it was covered with thick hull plates that gave it the appearance of some sort of armored sea creature. Conical projections, possibly exhaust ports or thruster pods, jutted out from the hull with no symmetry or pattern that Shada could spot. A magnified image popped up on one of the displays, showing an intricate array of symbols and alien glyphs covering the hull. At close range, the hull itself looked disturbingly like something alive... Someone on the bridge swore, very quietly. Shada looked at the viewport again, just in time to see three more of the ships wink into existence. Not
And then, almost casually, the first alien ship drove up behind one of Rei'Kas's Marauders; and with a glittering, filigreed sheet of blue-green energy discharge sliced it in half. H'sishi snarled. [What are these?] she demanded.
'They're called the Aing-Tii monks,' David said, his tone a strange mixture of satisfaction and awe. 'Alien beings who spend most of their lives near the Kathol Rift. There's not a lot we know about them.'
'Yet they're coming to your aid,' Karrde pointed out. 'More significantly, you knew they would.'
'They hate slavers,' David said. 'Rei'Kas is a slaver. It's very simple.' A second Marauder flashed with fire and streaming air as one of the other Aing-Tii ships sent another of the strange flower-blossoms of energy through its
