Dahak heaved and pitched with the titanic violence beyond his shield. He was invisible to his foes within his globe; the hundreds of warheads bursting about him were overs, missiles which had missed their intended targets, but no less deadly for that. His shield generators whined in protest, forcing the destruction aside, and his display was blank. If it had not been, it would have shown only a glare like the corona of a star.
Tractors locked Colin into his couch, and sweat beaded his brow. This Achuultani fleet wasn’t spread out to envelope his formation. It was a solid mass, hurling its hate in salvos thick beyond belief. Nothing made by mortal hands could shrug aside such fury, and damage reports came thick and fast from his lead units. Miniature suns blossomed inside their shields, searing them, cratering their armor, pounding them steadily towards destruction.
Not even Dahak could provide verbal reports on such carnage. Had he tried, they would have been impossible for Colin to comprehend. Nor were they necessary. He was mated to his ship through his feed, his identity almost lost within the incomprehensible vastness of Dahak’s computer core, the other ships extensions of his brain and nerves as they sped into the jaws of destruction.
Hothan watched the nest-killers come on, unable to credit their incredible toughness. The bursts of his missiles were so heavy, so continuous his scanners could no longer penetrate the bow wave of plasma riding the front of that formation. Nothing could survive such punishment, much less keep coming!
But these demons could, and even through that tornado of death, they struck back. His nestlings melted like sand in a pounding rain, molten and shattered, blown apart, crumpled by those terrible warheads Sorkar had described. Yet even such as they—
There!
Colin flinched as HIMP Sekr blew apart. He didn’t know how many missiles that staggering wreck had absorbed, but finally there had been too many. Her core tap let go, and a halo of pure energy gyred through the carnage.
Trel followed Sekr into death, then Hilik and Imperial Bia, but nothing could stop them from reaching beam range now. Yet they were such terribly vulnerable targets, unable to evade, unable to bob and weave. If Dahak allowed them to wander, relativistic effects would fray his control. That was their great weakness: they couldn’t maneuver if they wanted to.
Now!
* * * Hothan groaned as the beams Sorkar’s observers had reported raked out and their targets exploded like sulq in a candle flame. He had killed almost a twelve of them, but the others crunched into his formation, and his ships were too slow to flee. They could not even scatter as the battering ram of nest- killers clove through them. Their own feeble energy weapons came into play—some of them, aboard ships which lived an instant longer than their brothers—and they were useless. Only missiles could hurt these demons, and now they were so close his thunder was killing his own nestlings!
Yet he had no choice, and he clung to his duty pad, refusing to weep as his ships blazed like chaff in the Furnace.
Battle Comp suddenly clamored for his attention, and he dropped an eye to the computers’ panel.
“Weapons free!”
Jiltanith’s voice sounded over Colin’s fold-space link, quivering with the vibration lashing through Dahak’s hull, and fifteen more ships suddenly joined the fray. They didn’t leave stealth, nor did they close to energy range, but their missiles lanced out, striking deep into the Achuultani formation.
Lady Adrienne Robbins snarled like a hungry tiger and moved her ship slowly closer, a craftsman of death wreaking slaughter, as fresh suns glared deep in the enemy’s force.
The manned ships of the Imperial Guard closed, firing desperately to cover their charging sisters as Dahak surged into the heart of his enemies.
Colin had to back out of the maelstrom. His mind could no longer endure the furious tempo of Dahak’s perceptions and commands. From here on, he was a passenger on a charge into Hell.
Deep, glowing wounds pocked Dahak’s flanks. Clouds of atmosphere and vaporized steel trailed the mighty planetoid, and the rear of the sphere thinned dangerously as more and more ships moved forward to replace losses. God, these Achuultani had guts! They weren’t even trying to run. They stood and fought, dying, seeking to ram, and they were killing his ships. Fifteen were gone, another ten savagely wounded, but the others drove on, carving a river of fire deeper into the Achuultani.
Somewhere ahead of them were the command ships. The enemy’s brain. The organizing force which bound them together.
Hothan blinked in consternation. Battle Comp was never wrong, but surely that could not be correct?! Drones? Unmanned ships? Preposterous!
But the data codes blinked, no longer informing but commanding. Somewhere inside that sphere of enemies was a single ship, its emission signature different from all the others, from which the directions flowed. How Battle Comp had deduced that from the stutter of incomprehensible alien com signals Hothan could not imagine, but if it was true—
* * * Dahak staggered, and Command One’s lights flickered.
Colin went white as damage reports suddenly flooded his neural feed. The enemy had shifted his targeting pattern. He was no longer firing at the frontal arc of their formation; his missiles were bursting inside the globe! All of his missiles!
Their formation had become a sphere of fire, and Dahak writhed at its core. The Achuultani couldn’t see him, couldn’t count on direct hits, but with so many missiles in such a relatively small area, not all could miss. Prominences of plasma gouged at his hull, stabbing deeper and deeper into his battle steel body, but he held his course. He couldn’t dodge. He could only attack or flee, and too many enemies remained to flee.
Jiltanith gasped. How had the Achuultani guessed?!
But they had guessed. Their new attack patterns showed it. They raked the inner globe with fire, and Dahak could not evade it. But their rear ranks were thinning … and their command ship was somewhere among them…
Dahak Two abandoned stealth and plunged into the space-annihilating gravity well of her Enchanach Drive—the gravity well lethal even to her sisters if they chanced too close as she dropped sublight. Not even Imperial computers could control the exact point at which Enchanach ships went sublight or guarantee they wouldn’t kill one another when they did. All of Jiltanith’s captains instantly recognized the insane
