“I set them not as your flagship, Colin, but as your friend,” Dahak said, and Colin’s heart sank. “There may even be some logic in fighting as a single, unified force far from Sol, but other equally logical decisions can enhance both our chance of ultimate victory and your own survival.”
“Such as?” Colin asked noncommittally.
“Our unmanned units cannot fight without my direction; our manned units can. I must therefore insist that if my own destruction becomes inevitable, all surviving crewed units will immediately withdraw to Sol unless the enemy has been so severely damaged that victory here seems probable.”
Colin frowned, then nodded slowly. That much, at least, made sense.
“And I further insist, that you, Colin, choose another flagship.”
“What? Now wait a minute—”
“No,” Dahak interrupted firmly. “There is no logical reason for you to remain aboard, and every reason not to remain. Under the circumstances, I can manage our remaining unmanned units without you, and, in the highly probable event that it becomes necessary for our manned units to withdraw, they will need you. And—on a more personal level—I will fight better knowing that you are elsewhere, able to survive if I do not.”
Colin closed his eyes, hating himself for knowing Dahak was right. He didn’t want his friend to be right. Yet the force of the ancient starship’s arguments was irresistible, and he bowed his head.
“All right,” he whispered. “I’ll be with ’Tanni in Two.”
“Thank you, Colin,” Dahak said softly.
They did what they could.
Fabricator’s people worked twenty-four-hour days, and the crews attacked their own repairs with frantic energy. At least they could manage complete missile resupply, since their colliers could make the round trip to Sol in just under eleven days, but Sol had no hyper mines, so they would fight this battle without them. At the combined insistence of Horus and Gerald Hatcher they also transferred personnel from Earth to crew Heka, their single undamaged unit, and Empress Elantha, the next least damaged Asgerd, but Colin and Jiltanith put their feet down to refuse Hatcher command of Heka. He was too important to Earth’s defense if they failed, and Hector MacMahan found himself in command of her. It was a sign of their desperation that he did not even argue.
But that was all they could do, and so they awaited Great Lord Tharno: fourteen manned warships, eleven with no crews at all, and one—the most sorely hurt of all—manned only by a huge, electronic brain which had learned the hardest human lesson of alclass="underline" to love.
“Hyper wake detected, Captain,” Jiltanith’s plotting officer said, and alarms whooped throughout their battered fleet. “ETA fourteen hours at approximately one light-week.”
“My thanks, Ingrid.” Jiltanith turned to Colin. “Hast orders, Warlord?”
“None,” Colin said tensely from the next couch. “We’ll go as planned.”
Jiltanith nodded silently, and their eyes turned as one to the scarlet hyper trace flashing in Two’s display.
Great Lord of Order Tharno watched his read-outs, aware for the first time in many years of the irony of his rank. He had spent a lifetime protecting the Nest, honing his skills and winning promotion, to end here, as no more than an advisor, the spark of intuition Battle Comp lacked.
Yet the thought was barely a whisper, a musing with no hint of rebellion, for Battle Comp was the Nest’s true Protector. For untold higher twelves of years, Battle Comp had been keeper of the Way, and the Nest had endured. As it would always endure, despite these demonic nest-killers, so long as the Aku’Ultan followed the Way.
Still, he wished at least one of Hothan’s command ships had survived, and not simply because he had all too few of his own. No, Deathdealer’s Battle Comp had deduced something about the enemy during its final moments—something which had changed its targeting orders radically. Yet none who had survived knew what that something had been, and Tharno’s ignorance frightened him.
His crest flattened as the advanced scouts reported. The scant double twelve of emission sources floating a half-twelve of light-days from Nest Protector accorded well with the reports of Hothan’s survivors, assuming no reinforcements had arrived. But both Tharno and Battle Comp recalled the incredible cloaking systems their Protectors had reported.
Yet had many reinforcements been available, surely more of them would have engaged Hothan. The diabolical trap which had closed upon him proved the nest-killers had known what they faced; knowing that, they would have mustered every ship to destroy him. Tharno suspected Battle Comp was correct, that the nest-killers had no more of those monster ships, but they would proceed with care. He gave the order he and Battle Comp had agreed upon, and his fleet micro-jumped cautiously forward, spreading out to deny the enemy a compact target to pin as Hothan had been pinned. They would merge once more only when battle was joined, and if more enemies appeared, they would flee.
To return to the Nest would mean Tharno’s death in dishonor, perhaps even the ending of Nest Protector’s Battle Comp. Yet that would be better than to perish to the last nestling.
And Tharno was well aware of his nestlings’ danger. They were outclassed. To triumph, they must fight as a unit, closely controlled and coordinated, and too many command ships had perished. Nest Protector had but a quarter-twelve of deputies, and none approached his own capabilities. So Nest Protector must be warded from harm until his enemies were gathered for the Furnace.
The remnants of the Great Visit micro-jumped towards their foes, and Nest Protector followed, protected by them all.
“Lord, what a monster,” Colin murmured as the holo image floated above Two’s command deck. One task group had emerged into n-space close enough for a stealthed remote to get a good look at its units. Their emission signatures told a great deal about their capabilities, but this visual image seemed to sum up their menace far better.
“Aye.” Jiltanith’s mental command turned the holo of the sleek, powerful cylinder for her own perusal. ” ’Tis seen why these craft do form their reserve.”
You can say that again, babe, Colin thought. That mother’s a good ninety kilometers long, and she just bristles with weapons. Not just those popgun lasers, either. Those’re disrupters—not as good as our beams, but bad, bad medicine. And she’s got a lot of them…
“Dahak?” he said aloud.
“Formidable, indeed,” Dahak said over the fold-space com. “Although smaller, this unit appears fully as powerfully armed as was Deathdealer.”
“Yeah, and they’ve got twenty-four of them in each flotilla.”
“That may be correct, but it is premature to conclude it is. We have actually observed only six such formations.”
“Right, sure,” Colin grunted.
“It would certainly be prudent to assume all are at least equally capable,” Dahak agreed calmly.
“I don’t like the way they’re sneaking in on us,” Colin muttered, tugging on his nose and frowning at Two’s display.
“Yet bethink thee, my Colin. What other way may they proceed?”
“That’s what bothers me. I’d prefer for them to either rush straight in or run the hell away. That—” Colin gestured at the display “—looks entirely too much like a man who knows what he’s doing.”
Great Lord Tharno frowned over his own read-outs. He saw no sign of any device which might have been used to trap Hothan in n-space, but what he did see disturbed him. The nest-killers were neither running away nor attacking the individual scouts pushing ahead of his main formations. He would have liked to think that indicated irresolution, but no one who had seen the reports of Hothan’s survivors could make that comfortable mistake.