The Armageddon Inheritance

range! Herdan’s defenses were incomparably better than Nergal’s, and her shield covered twenty times the hyper bands, but her sheer size meant it extended even further from the hull than Nergal’s had, and there were going to be a lot of missiles headed her way very soon.

“Stand by missile defense; stand by ECM!” she snapped, and then, Dear Jesus, here it came.

Great Lord Sorkar spit an incredulous curse. A twelve of them! A single twelve had already slain a greater twelve and more of his ships, and their defenses were as incredible as their firepower. Targeting screens blossomed with false images, sucking his sublight weapons off target. Jammers hashed the scan channels. Titanic shields shrugged the greater thunder contemptuously aside. And still his ships died and died and died…

Yet nothing could stop the twelves of twelves of twelves of missiles his ships were hurling, and he bared his teeth as the first hyper missile slashed through a nest-killer shield. There! That should show them that—

He blinked, and his blood was ice. What sort of monster could absorb a direct hit from the greater thunder and not even notice it?

Alarms screamed as a ten-thousand-megaton warhead exploded almost on top of Royal Birhat. The huge ship quivered as the furious plasma cloud carved an incandescent chasm twenty kilometers into her armored hull. Air exploded from the dreadful wound, blast doors slammed … and Birhat went right on fighting.

“Moderate damage to Quadrant Theta-Two,” the sexy contralto said calmly. “Four fatalities. Point zero- four-two percent combat impairment.”

Colin winced as the flashing yellow band of combat damage encircled Birhat. He’d lost track of the kills they’d scored, but he’d fucked up. They were too frigging close!

“All ships, open the range,” he snapped, and the Imperial Guard darted suddenly astern at sixty-five percent of light-speed.

Tarhish, they were fast! Sorkar had never seen anything but a missile move that quickly in n-space. They fell back out of range of his sublight weapons, retreating toward the edge of his hyper missile envelope, but their own weapons seemed totally unaffected, and he had never seen such accurate targeting. Indeed, he had never seen anyone do anything these nest-killers were doing to him, but that did not make them night-demons. It only meant his Protectors faced a test worse than he had ever imagined, and they were Protectors.

And, he thought under the surface of his battle orders, perhaps it was not as bad as it might have been. These nest-killers had known where to meet his ships, and not even those arrays could have told them that, so they must have already destroyed one scout force—probably Furtag’s, given the timing—and followed its couriers hither. Yet if they could muster but a single twelve of ships, however powerful, against him, then the ships under his command were more than enough to feed them to the Furnace. Even at this extreme range, he had an incalculable advantage in launchers. Not so good as theirs, perhaps, but more than enough to make up any disadvantage.

“Colin, they press us sore,” Jiltanith said, and Colin nodded sharply. The plan had been to empty their magazines into the Achuultani, but the shit was too deep for that. Birhat had taken only one hit, but Two had taken three and Tor had taken five. Five of those monster warheads!

These ships were tough beyond belief, but any toughness had its limits. He winced as yet another massive salvo exploded against Two’s shield and the big ship plowed through the plasma like a drunken windjammer. It was only a matter of time until—

“Tor reports shield failure,” Two’s Comp Cent announced. “Attempting to withdraw into hyper.” Colin’s eyes darted to Tor’s cursor, and the flashing yellow circle was banded in crimson. He stared at it in horror, willing the ship’s hyper drive to take her out of it, as missile after missile went home—

“Withdrawal unsuccessful,” Two said emotionlessly, and Colin’s face went bone-white as Tor’s dot vanished forever.

“Execute Bug Out,” he grated.

“Acknowledged,” Jiltanith said coolly.

The nest-killers vanished.

Sorkar stared in disbelief at the reports of his hyper scanners. Almost a greater twelve times light-speed? How was it possible?

But what mattered was that it was possible. And that his scanner crews had noted the charging hyper fields in time to get good readings on them. He knew where they would emerge—at that bright star less than a quarter-twelve of light-years ahead of his fleet.

It could not be their homeworld, not so coincidentally close to the rendezvous, but whatever it was, Sorkar knew what to do if they were stupid enough to tie themselves to its defense, too deep in its gravity well to escape into hyper. He could wade into their fire, take his losses, and crush them by sheer numbers, for he had already proven they could be destroyed.

He did not like to think how many hits it had taken to kill that single nest-killer, but they had killed it. And his own losses were scarcely three greater twelves, grievous but hardly fatal.

He plugged into Battle Comp, but he already knew what his orders would be.

* * *

Colin hoped his expression hid the depth of his shock as his ships darted away. He’d known they would take losses, but he hadn’t expected to start taking them so soon, and they’d destroyed less than a half-percent of the enemy. He’d counted on more than that, and no losses of his own, damn it!

But he couldn’t have brought more ships without Dahak to run them, and Dahak had no hyper drive. That was the crunch point, because the Achuultani had to know where he and his ships had run to.

And because of that, Senior Fleet Captain Roscoe Gillicuddy and his crew had died, and Colin had lost six percent of his autonomous warship strength. He didn’t know which hurt more, and that made him feel ashamed.

But the mousetrap had been baited. They’d lost more heavily than allowed for, yet they’d done what they set out to do. He told himself that, but it wasn’t enough to hold the demons of guilt and the fear of inadequacy at bay.

A warm, slender hand squeezed his tightly, and he squeezed back gratefully. Military protocol might frown on a warlord holding hands with his flagship captain, but he needed that touch of beloved flesh just now.

Chapter Twenty-One

Thirty-six days after the brief, savage battle, Dahak kept station on Zeta Trianguli Australis-I and Colin stood in Command One, contemplating the planet his crews had dubbed The Cinder.

He and Jiltanith had tried to name The Cinder something else (’Tanni had favored “Cheese”), but perhaps the crews were right, Colin thought sourly. With a mean orbital radius of five-point-eight-nine light-minutes, The Cinder was about as close to Zeta Trianguli Australis as Venus was to Sol, and Colin had always thought Venus,