Its escape attempt was futile. Two seconds later, the unseen agency of pinpoint destruction went back to work. A cyclone of debris and ruin traced a long jagged line down the cruiser’s flank, as if the hull was an immense technological fish being gutted by a dull knife. As the beam—almost certainly a shift-cruiser’s spinal-X-ray laser—blasted its way aft, secondaries inside the human cruiser went off, bursting more of the hull outward from inside. Then the missile bay exploded, tearing an immense chunk out of the ship’s side, which was immediately followed by a blast of blinding whiteness that blanked the screen.
The view changed. That same, blinding whiteness was now a small sun, expanding in the background, the foreground dominated by two Arat Kur ships that were experiencing difficulties of their own. The larger one, a distinctively streamlined shift-cruiser, was struggling to maintain attitude with her plasma thrusters. Her main engineering decks were slashed open to space, intermittent jets of flame vying with actinic power arcs that looked akin to a collection of Van der Graaf generators gone mad. But, although she was nearly motionless, her hyperactive defense batteries briskly annihilated the nearest threats from a steadily converging hemisphere of human drones and occasional missiles, one of which bloomed into the bright white sphere of a tactical nuclear device.
In addition to protecting herself, the shift cruiser was clearly trying to extend her active defenses to shield a Hkh’Rkh destroyer which was maneuvering alongside in an attempt to tow the larger, stricken ship to safety. But a covey of passing human drones retroboosted, tumbled, burned hard to side-vector into an approach trajectory that the cruiser could not interdict because the destroyer was in the way of its PDF batteries. Small hits began peppering the starboard side of the destroyer: single-shot chemical lasers from drones that then dove in afterward, attempting to kamikaze against the destroyer. One slammed into the modular fuel tank nestled in its lower starboard quarter, where the keel-trusses joined the rest of the ship to its engine decks. Fragments of the tank blew outward. The destroyer’s drives faltered as her own PDF batteries swiveled wildly—right before a pattern of spinal rail gun projectiles tore her bridge and forward sensor cluster into silvery-white streamers of debris.
The destroyer was now more of a danger to the shift cruiser than a help. The Arat Kur heavy rotated her thrusters to get what distance she could, lest the destroyer’s drives go up and take her along with them. Her PDF batteries spun smartly into new configurations—just as an invisible beam cut down across her aft section, a blizzard of hull panels and bulkheads flinging themselves out into the void for one brief second before the shift cruiser vaporized in a blue-white ball. Darzhee Kut froze the image on the screen.
Hu’urs Khraam spoke slowly, heavily, it seemed to Caine. “I am sure you could have chosen many such scenes of destruction, Darzhee Kut. Why did you select these two?”
“Because they are the most instructive, Hu’urs Khraam. You will note how the human cruiser was destroyed: by a small number of hits from a single weapon. This is how we are typically inflicting losses on our enemies: by striking them with superior weaponry that enjoys superior targeting at distance.
“The death-images of our own ships are no less revealing. They illustrate how the humans are typically destroying us: by overwhelming our defenses. They harry us with drones, degrade our vessels by disabling one subsystem after another, and then—with our defenses dedicated to eliminating the most proximal threats—they strike their killing blow from longer range.” His claw-embedded laser pointer traced a bright line from the exploding shift cruiser to a small, bright, white sphere in a corner of the starfield. “What you see here, so small in the distance, is the detonation of what the humans call a ‘nuke-pumped’ X-ray laser. These are their ship-killers, Hu’urs Khraam, the ones to which our human collaborators alerted us. They are fabulously expensive and wasteful weapons, mounted on an overlarge drone and easily distinguishable from regular drones at close and medium ranges. But as our scanners become overwhelmed by the unprecedented number of human drones and decoys, they become unable to find all of these threats in time.”
“Still,” objected First Fist, “you are destroying at least two ships of theirs for every one of your own. You are prevailing.”
“For now, yes. But we cannot retroboost and match vector with the first echelon to capitalize upon our successes, because the second echelon is following close upon it. And I warn you, Hu’urs Khraam, I suspect that the first echelon was merely the chisel; the hammer is only now approaching.”
“Why do you say this, Speaker Kut? Because there are more ships in the second echelon?”
“That is the lesser part of my worry, First Delegate. Our analysts have been monitoring the rate at which the human first echelon has been expending these X-ray laser missiles I have just shown you. Since they did not lose these munitions at Barnard’s Star and we conjecture that some of the concealed drones launched from hidden sites on the Moon must be of this kind, we expected our enemy to employ more of these than he has.”
Yaargraukh’s rumble was grim. “So, you suspect that it is their second echelon which shall deploy this increased firepower.”
“Precisely.” Darzhee Kut turned, pointed to the second, vast wave of red blips in the holoplot. “The second echelon is much larger than the first. It has many more platforms from which to optimally launch and control such missiles, and more drones to confound and overwhelm our defenses. And they have two other profound advantages that the first echelon did not enjoy.”
Yaargraukh pony-nodded. “They have broken up our formation and, at the same time, may be relatively sure we have no new tricks or technologies with which to confound them. For we would certainly have used them to ensure a more favorable outcome with the first echelon.”
“Exactly,” agreed Darzhee Kut, who then turned to stare at Riordan. “I suspect this was the strategic intent of the humans’ three-echelon battle plan. Does that sound correct, Mr. Riordan?”
“I cannot say. Obviously, I was not involved in, nor made privy to, any of the military planning for this counterattack. However,” and he let a slight smile slip, “your conjecture is eminently plausible.”
Hu’urs Khraam shifted on his platform-couch. “So. We have scored a marginal victory in space, but have yet to fight the much larger of what will be at least two battles. And here on the planet, we now find ourselves ringed by submersibles equipped with nuclear weapons which the humans have proven they will fire at their own possessions and populations, given sufficient provocation.” He turned to face Darzhee Kut directly. “And so I ask again, Speaker Kut. When I forbade renewing negotiations with the humans, was I too hasty?”
Caine watched Darzhee Kut seem to contract as every exosapient eye in the room turned toward him. In the Arat Kur’s position, Caine was quite sure he would not enjoy the sensation, either.
Chapter Forty-Six
Darzhee Kut felt all the eyes upon him as he offered his counsel to Hu’urs Khraam. “Esteemed Hu’urs Khraam, you were not rash to refuse to negotiate with the humans, given what we knew then. But perhaps this new information must make us reconsider speaking with them.”
Graagkhruud’s interjection was, quite literally, a snarl. “We should only be speaking to them to demand their immediate surrender.”
“First Fist Graagkhruud, why would they surrender at this moment? We are unable to intercept all their missiles and air vehicles and submarine launches. Whatever we choose to do, they will still have options remaining which might defeat us. They attrited our PDF intercept capability so that our groundside forces have to rely on orbital interdiction support for survival—and now, with half our fleet off to engage the human fleet, we simply do not have enough assets to do so.”