No, these nest-killers knew what they were about, and they had proven they could run away at will. They were choosing not to. Were they that confident they could destroy all his nestlings? A sobering thought, that, and a concern he knew Battle Comp shared, whether it would admit it or not.
Yet they had come to fight, and the enemy was faster, longer-ranged, and individually far more powerful than any of their own nestlings. If he was prepared to stand, he must be attacked, whatever Tharno suspected. Either that, or they might as well retreat to the Nest right now!
“They are closing their formations, Sire,” Dahak reported, and Colin grunted. He’d already seen it on Two’s display, and he hunkered down in his couch, activating the tractor net to hold him in place. The Achuultani were already four light-minutes inside the Guard’s range, but he held his fire, encouraging them to tighten their formation further. He hated giving up those shots, but he had to get them in close to spring Laocoon Two … and for Dahak to engage. Since he could not go supralight, the enemy must be sucked into his range and pinned there, and pinning a small portion would be almost as bad as pinning none at all.
“Dahak, what d’you make of that clump?” He flipped a sighting circle onto the sub-display fed by Dahak’s remotes, tightening it to surround a portion of the enemy.
“Interesting. There are twice the normal proportion of heavy units in that formation. I cannot get a clear view of the center of their globe, but there appears to be an extraordinarily large vessel in there.”
Colin bared his teeth. “Want to bet that’s Mister Master Computer?”
“I have told you before; I have nothing to wager.”
“I still say that’s a cop-out.” Colin studied the ships he’d picked out. Damn, they were holding back. He needed them a good eight light-minutes closer. If he sprang Laocoon Two now, he could pin the front two-thirds of their formation, but the really important ones would get away.
“Back us away, ’Tanni,” he said. “Continue to hold fire.”
Jiltanith began passing orders, and her smile was a shark’s.
Now the nest-killers were falling back! Tarhish take it, they had to be up to something—but what? If they were drawing him into a trap, where was it, and why had it not already sprung upon his lead units? Yet if it was not a trap, why should the nest-killers fall back rather than attack? All of this might be some sort of effort to bluff the Great Visit, but Tharno could not make himself take that thought seriously.
No, it was a trap. One he could not see, yet there. He offered his belief to Battle Comp, but the computers demanded evidence, and, of course, there was none. Only intuition, the one quality Battle Comp utterly lacked.
“Execute Laocoon now!” Colin snapped, and the stealthed colliers began their harmless—and deadly—dance once more. A ring of starships, invisible in supralight but all too tangible in the gravity well they forged, spun their chains about Great Lord Tharno.
“All ships,” Colin said coldly. “Weapons free. Engage at will, but watch your ammo.”
Nest Lord! So that was how they did it!
Great Lord Tharno’s eyes narrowed in chill understanding. The nest-killers’ cloaking systems were good, but not good enough when Nest Protector had happened to be looking in exactly the right direction. The readings were preposterous, but their import was plain. Somehow, these nest-killers had devised a supralight drive in normal space—one which produced a mammoth gravitational disturbance. They had locked his nestlings out of hyper without sacrificing their own supralight capability at all!
Their timing was as frightening as their technology, for Nest Protector and all three of his deputies had been drawn forward into their trap. Somehow, the nest-killers knew which ships, above all, they must kill.
And then the first warheads exploded.
Lady Adrienne Robbins’s eyes slitted against the filtered brilliance of her display as Emperor Herdan’s missiles sliced into the Achuultani. Space was hideous with broken hulls and the terrible lightning of anti-matter, but they were far tougher than any ship she’d yet fought. Some took as many as three direct hits before they went out of action, and that was bad. Accuracy was poor enough at this range without requiring multiple kills.
She frowned as the foremost Achuultani continued to advance, strewing the cosmos with their ruins, for their rear ships had not only halted but begun retreating, trying to get free of Laocoon’s net. That was smarter tactics than they’d shown yet.
If only their rear formations were more open—or their ships smaller! They had mass enough to screw the transition from Enchanach Drive to sublight all to hell. The transition would kill hundreds of them, probably more, but the drive’s titanic grav masses had to be perfectly, exquisitely balanced. If they weren’t, the ship within them could die even more spectacularly than the Achuultani, as Ashar and Trelma had demonstrated. The enemy’s flagship was too deep in his formation for even a suicide run to reach, and this time around he wasn’t sending his escorts forward and leaving a hole.
“Hyper trace!” Oliver Weinstein snapped, and Adrienne cursed. The ships outside Laocoon were flicking into hyper—not to escape, but to hit the Guard’s flanks while their trapped fellows moved straight forward.
Damn! Their micro-jump had brought them into their own range, and they were enveloping the formation, forcing it to disperse its fire against them. Herdan rocked as the first anti-matter salvo burst against her shield, and Adrienne Robbins wiggled down into her couch, her eyes hard.
Tharno rubbed his crest thoughtfully as the greater thunder struck back at the nest-killers. Battle Comp had surprised him with that move, but it was an excellent one. The enemy must deal with the flotillas on his flanks, which bought time for the Nest Protector to escape this damnable trap—and for the more massive formations inside the trap to draw into range of the enemy.
It was possible, he thought. They might escape yet, if his lead nestlings could pound the enemy hard enough, cost him enough ships…
“Damn!” Colin grunted. “Look what those bastards are doing!”
Dahak Two swayed as a salvo of missiles exploded thunderously against her shield, and yellow damage report bands flashed about several of the manned ships in his outer globe. None were serious yet, but it didn’t matter.
“I have observed it,” Dahak replied. “A masterful move.”
“Spare me the accolades,” Colin grated, face hard as his thoughts raced. “All right. Dahak, we’re going to have to leave you on your own.”
“Understood,” Dahak said calmly. “Good hunting, Sire.”
“Thanks. And … watch yourself.”
“I shall endeavor to.”
“Maneuvering, go supralight and put our manned units right there—” Colin said, placing a sighting circle on the display.
Tarhish! Tharno’s eyes widened as a twelve of the enemy vanished in a space-tearing wrench of gravity stress. For just an instant he hoped they were fleeing, but even as he thought it, he knew they were not.
Nor were they. They reappeared as suddenly as they had vanished, and now they were behind him. He noted the dispersion which had crept into their formation—apparently they dared not drop sublight in close proximity to one another—but they were infernally fast even sublight. They raced forward, and their missiles reached out ahead of them.