Nothing yet buthe shuddered at the stupidity he’d failed to spot for so long.“Fen,” he called over thebridge net that was still running in his ear at half volume. “Pushour ’vettes out. I can clearly see two black holes with the planetbehind them.”
“Black holes?”Memnon looked at his latest sensor officer.
“Yes,lord. Consistent with the size of their corvettes. They’repositioned so our first wave can’t see them but our scout has theplanet behind them.”
“And you saidscouting was foolish,” Memnon turned to Garand.
“Indeed, lord,”answered Garand, who’d said nothing of the sort.“But, having been provenwrong, I should point out that your useful scout has shown us they’velaunched two swarms of small craft.”
Memnon was tempted towave off his concern but, previously, nobody had taken small Humanships seriously and look where that had gotten them.
The smaller they madetheir platforms, the deadlier they seemed to be.
“Tactical,ensure each ship in our force is assigned to fire on one of thosecorvettes.We need to stop that hideous abomination from launching any moresmall ships but I don’t want our best shot at those stealthycorvettes to slip awayon us.”
“Attackpatterns set, Lord,” the tactical officer advised.
Memnon raised a hand…
“Come on!” Frankshouted, grabbing Vikram by the arm and shoving him toward the stairsof their house. “This isn’t a drill!”
“How do you know?”Trisha asked, huffing from the run down from the roof. Her eyes werewide.
“Because they alwayslet us know when it’s a drill,” he said. “That way, we’re alot more amped up when there’s no caveat to the alarm.”
He led the way out intothe courtyard and through the tunnel to the street. “See?” hejabbed a thumb at a young couple across the street.
Instead ofdragging along treasured family heirlooms, they’dchosen to save their favorite clothing – birthday suits.They at least still had undergarments on. The woman also had a looseblouse but she tore it off soit wouldn’t interfere with theEVA suit module she slapped against her chest as they ran.
Frank’s family hadjust returned from their fields in the lowlands, so they had theirunderarmor suits on and the lower half of their armor still deployed.
The powered legs were agodsend after a morning of hard work and they came in handy now asthey raced after the young couple.
They rounded thelast corner as the first flashes of light heralded a close path exitforming abovethem.
There was alow rumble as energywaves propagated tothe thin fringes of Ragnarok’s atmosphere. The energy converted toheat as it hit the molecules of gas and the resultant expansionformed pressure waves that rattleddust from rooftops and scattered the avians.
The Humansreacted as well, the welter of existing shouts and calls increasingwith alarm. Several colonistsscreamed. This was a realemergency.
Someone was up there.
“Go, go, go!” somepanicked idiot was shouting from inside the drop-capsule. He wasalready inside, after all. He wanted to drop early and ensure hissurvival.
Frank resisted the urgeto kill and kept his family moving. They reached the capsule and tooktheir places.
“What’staking so damned long?” the man whined. He probably lived muchcloser to the capsule. Aslong as he was already aboard, who cared, right?
“It drops ten minutesafter the alarm,” Frank told him, “and not a second sooner.”
The whiner looked as ifhe might respond but, perhaps noticing that he was the only one infavor of abandoning his neighbors, he kept his mouth shut.
The Naidu familyarrived with just half a minute left on the counter. Kiara threwherself into Terry’s arms as the pod started its drop.
“Contact!” afighter pilot declared in a slightly raised voice. “Hells! They’reall around my position!”
“All call-signs,Kuphar,” Fen called, “Weapons free; I say again, weapons free!”
Hennessy swung hisfighter around, his wing-man trailing him. He pushed hard on thecontrols and leapt toward the newly arrived mass of ships.
The firstmissiles from his squadrons had already been fired. They’d sketchedlines of debris and plasma through cruisers and frigates, the slowlydrifting patterns looking oddly immobile, giventhe speed of the weapons that had created them.
Thefight was one-sided but not in a way Hennessy would like. The enemyships, even those that were now broken in two, had fired missiles oftheir own and all he could do was watch.
Well, not all…Hetargeted the nearest cruiser and an escorting frigate, pulsing histwo missiles straight at them, not bothering to hide his position.
He shifted hard tostarboard and ventral, bringing his guns online as his wing-man firedtwo missiles past him to port. His two targets took critical damageand he veered toward one of the frigates as missiles began impactinghis own ships.
The two corvettes wouldhave had the best chance of evading but there were just too manyweapons targeted on them. The Scimitar took five solid hits inthe first salvo.
The second wave ofwarheads simply raced through the space where the small Human warshiphad been. There was nothing big enough left to catch a trackingcomputer’s interest.
The Cutlasslooked almost as if she’d managed to dance out of the way, spittingout her own waves of hyper-velocity warheads as she moved, but oneweapon had hit her amidships. She stopped cold.
And then shedisappeared in a haze of plasma and parts.
The Kuphar…
She’d never stood achance. The old freighter had given a good account of herself – hersquadrons had torn the meat from the attackers’ bones – but shehad no hope of evading missiles at such close ranges.
At least fivemissiles, most of them from destroyed ships, slammed into her.Hennessy watched in fury asshe broke up and fell into the grav-well of the planet she’d diedprotecting.
Nearlythree thousand souls who’d volunteered, most of them retirees fromEarth. Fen had nine grandkids he’d never see again. Blackwood’swife was expecting their second child. If he was still alive, he wasprobably thinking of her right now.
A shieldgenerator was still protecting the forward third of the ship. Italmost looked as if it had a working pitch drive to slow the fall.
It barreled through theionized atmosphere, a shimmering blue sapphire set in boiling redgold. Some of her crew might survive…
The evac capsule slowedto a halt beneath the mountains. It had to wait for several capsulesahead of it to disembark their
