Final Assault (22 page)

"As I said before, sir, proximity to the sun augments our scan cloak," said K'Tran.

"I don't believe that," said N'Trol. "Your scan cloak either works or it doesn't, and it's useless once they're within visual pickup range." He held up a hand as K'Tran started to protest. "Forget I asked—it's your battle, K'Tran."

"Enemy coming within mangier range," reported one of the lower tiers.

"Upship, Engineer. Now," said K'Tran, pointing to the ramp.

"Very well," said N'Trol. His gaze shifted between A'Tir and K'Tran. "Luck to you." He looked over the railing of
Alpha Prime's
bridge, now manned by living men and women, preparing for a hopeless battle.

"Luck to you all," he called, and turned for the ramp.

"One last thing," said K'Tran.

N'Trol turned back, a quizzical look on his face.

"Are you really the Emperor?"

"Not yet," said N'Trol, "I'm the Heir. Or, as Admiral L'Guan says, the Heir Unapparent."

"Do Heirs Unapparent live longer than Heirs Apparent?" asked K'Tran.

N'Trol chuckled. "Oh, much longer." He stopped chuckling as K'Tran drew his blaster. Taking it by the barrel, he silently extended the grips to N'Trol. The Heir touched the grips. "Fortune grace your arms, corsair captain."

"As they defend your House, My Lord," said K'Tran, reholstering his weapon and completing a ritual not heard since the Fall.

"Master computers of the Golden Fleet," called N'Trol.

"Lord?" said the perfect voice.

"Obey K'Tran's orders as if they were my own."

"Yes, Lord."

Without a backward glance, N'Trol descended the ramp and left the bridge.

"You should have had him bless our ragged asses, too," said A'Tir, looking up from her work.

"Word is," said K'Tran, checking the status scan, "that he already blessed yours. Ah! They've reached the manglers." He studied the tacscan for a moment, then touched the commkey. "First group, stand by."

One of the K'Ronarin Empire's most diabolical weapons, the mangier. It looked and scanned as spaceborne rock until touched by a shield matrix—a catalyst that released its multimegaton potential.

The R'Actolian mindslavers had improved on the manglers, working on them through their long centuries of isolation in Blue Nine. Now no two scanned alike—iron and nickel, igneous rock, yes, but all in different proportion, all innocuous-seeming asteriods of different shape and size.

The foremost battleglobe was almost to the far side of the mangier belt when K'Tran said, "Computers."

"Sir?"

"There are five hundred battleglobes advancing. Why do the others stand off?"

"Assuming AI tactics haven't changed since the Revolt," began the machines.

"Why should they have?" said K'Tran. "They worked."

"Then this is a reconnaissance group. If they penetrate this solar system and advance to their next jump point without incident, the main body will follow."

"And if not?"

"Then unless you demonstrate invincibility, Captain K'Tran, a much larger force will attack."

The lead battleglobe had reached the last line of manglers.

"Let's demonstrate something," said K'Tran. He looked at A'Tir. "Activate manglers, Number One."

A slim finger touched a control. Forty million miles away, a new sun flared as the entire minefield detonated, a nuclear vortex that swept aside impregnable shields, touching off a chain reaction of exploding battleglobes and secondary craft that tripled the size of the initial firestorm.

"Gods!" cried K'Tran a few moments later, as the light from the explosion burst over
Alpha Prime's
dark side, a fierce wave of light strobing across the bridge just as the armorglass darkened. "What were they carrying?" he asked, rubbing his eyes.

"Planetbusters," said the computers just as all of the tacscans went dead.

There was nothing for a long moment—just the faint hum of the electronics and the blank, sea-green vidglass of a few hundred monitors. Angry and frustrated, voices rose from the lower tiers. "Anyone getting any scans?" asked A'Tir over the commlink.

As she spoke, the screens came up on standby, displaying the starship-and-sun emblem of the K'Ronarin Empire.

"Data," said K'Tran tensely, standing. "I need data."

"Most of our satellite net's gone," reported

Tactics. "Transferring to onboard sensors."

Processing the fresh data, the computers fed it to the bridge. The screens came back to life, filling with tacscans and datatrails.

"Recon force destroyed," said A'Tir. "And all of our manglers."

"Total enemy force remaining?" said K'Tran as he again took the centermost of the seven command chairs.

"Ninety-nine million, nine hundred and five battleglobes, plus an average of one thousand secondary craft per battleglobe." She turned to a different scan. "Secondary craft are roughly equivalent to one of our heavy cruisers."

"That's their total force," said K'Tran, frowning.

"Isn't that enough?" said A'Tir.

"No. I mean, that is their total force, Number One—the entire Fleet of the One —according to everyone from R'Gal to Guan-Sharick. The question arises, who's minding the shop?"

"Not likely we'll be told," she said. "Here they come," she added, nodding at the screen.

"It's how they come that's important, Number One," said K'Tran, leaning forward intently.

The mindslavers were blue dots on the tactical projection—blue dots strung across the apex of a triangular opening through the star system's multiple asteroid belts—an opening quickly becoming pockmarked by swarms of red dots as the AI reaction force advanced.

"I'd trade this ship for a thousand manglers right now," said A'Tir.

"No, Number One," said K'Tran. "The manglers are even more useful now that they're gone. 'In weakness is my strength,' to quote the motto of a failed House."

Something in the way he spoke made her ask, "Yours?," though not expecting an answer. Fifteen years together and she knew nothing about him before his Academy years.

"The infamous S'Yal's," said the corsair captain. "He scattered his unproclaimed throughout the Empire—I'm descended from one of them."

She was about to tell him about a yet-unborn unproclaimed when he said, "Look at this, A'Tir," and pointed to the command tier's main screen with its tactical projection of their rock-strewn solar system. "What do you see?"

"What I've been seeing for three watches." she said. "One old, tired L'Raq class star, ringed by hundreds of millions of asteroids. No planets. And a new feature—ten thousand AI battle phalanxes closing on the system's periphery."

"And twenty-two mindslavers lying in wait," said K'Tran, straight-faced.

A'Tir laughed. "The slaver didn't blunt your unique perception, Y'Dan. Why do you think we're lying in wait and not waiting to be slaughtered?"

"The rocks, A'Tir," he said, stabbing a finger at the board. "The bloody damned rocks. This must be the classic invasion route from the AI universe to this. The next jump point out from the Rift is in this system. Any sizable force in a hurry's going to come through here. And someone, probably the Trel, blew up every world in this system just to take out some AIs."

"I still don't see . . ."

"Look at it from the perspective of the AI commander," he said. "You've just lost your advance group to what tacscan showed to be rocks. All you still see here are rocks. Are you going to plunge into those rocks? Or are you going to take the only open route—the one that leads right to our welcoming arms?"

"They're not crazy enough to think we've got millions of manglers?" she asked uncertainly.

"Of course they do," he said. "They're paranoid—any system that exists on slavery and holds grudges over a million years is paranoid. That AI commander isn't seeing rocks on his tacscan, Number One—he's seeing manglers. And that's going to bring him right here, a million battleglobes strong."

"And then?" said A'Tir.

"And then, Number One, we're going to hand him his ass."

"Welcome back, sir," said B'Tul as N'Trol stepped onto
Implacable'^
otherwise deserted hangar deck.

"Thank you, Gunney," he said as the two walked toward the lift.

"Some . . . persons . . . from the slaver worked on the drive," continued B'Tul as the lift whisked them toward the bridge. "Supposedly it'll cut our run to K'Ronar down to three jumps—tight-jumps.''

"Let's hope it works," said N'Trol, watching the level indicators flash past. "Anything else?" he said, sensing the other's diffidence.

"We monitored your call from Line and Admiral L'Guan," he said, his big hands rubbing the seams of his trousers.

"And you're as uncomfortable as hell," said N'Trol, smiling as the lift stopped and the doors hissed open.

"Well, how would you feel?" said B'Tul.

"Uncomfortable as hell," said N'Trol as the bridge snapped to attention, something not even flag rank rated.

"Sit down," said N'Trol wearily. "Please." The crew looked uncertainly at the gunnery master. B'Tul nodded and the men sat.

"The command chair, sir," said B'Tul, motioning to the raised captain's chair.

"It's got a fine beverager," said N'Trol, "but I prefer the engineering station.

"Are we ready to go home?" he said, pressing the commswitch as he took the engineer's seat.

"Yes, sir," came the reply. "Tight-jump plotted to K'Ronar. May not come out the other side, but we're jump-enabled."

"Very well," said N'Trol. He looked at the main screen, with its view of the dark slaver and the flaming sun. "Have a last look at K'Tran and the slavers, lads—something to tell the grandchildren. Jumping . . . now."

"Coming up on us now," said A'Tir. Compressed in an almost solid field of red, the lead battleglobes opened fire on the mindslavers. On the tacscan, the space between red and blue became flecked with silver as hundreds of thousands of missiles streaked toward the defenders.

"Plasma tap—now," ordered K'Tran.

A green tendril flashed from
Alpha Prime
down into the sun—a tendril instantly turned a blinding white from the energy soaring up it—up and out along the network of tendrils now extending to the other slavers, tendrils whose energy was used to augment the ships' overlapping shields as the AI missile swarm struck.

Wrapped in a common, cylindrical-shaped shield, twenty-two mindslavers stood before the sun as a lesser sun blossomed around them: the white firestorm of the missiles tearing at the blue of the fusion screen. Wave after wave of missiles struck the shield, slowly turning it to a rippling, red-flecked ocher.

"Now for the fusion batteries," said K'Tran, watching the distance close between the battleglobes and the slavers. He read the data trail: two hundred AI battle phalanxes were inside the triangle—two million battleglobes.

"They'll be trying to englobe us," said A'Tir as the battleglobes soared above and below the plane of ellipse, free of the encircling asteroids. "Only our rear's safe."

As she spoke, every battleglobe and secondary craft that could range on the mindslavers opened fire with their fusion batteries, millions of beams coalescing into one just before the shield wall, striking it centerpoint, a single massive beam.

"Shield's going to critical," reported Tactics. "And our sun's becoming highlv unstable."

Outside, the missile attack stopped as the beam continued boring at the shield, the area surrounding its hitpoint now an angry red.

"Another phalanx is moving in," said A'Tir.

"Two million, ten thousand," said K'Tran. "Good enough." He leaned forward, touching the commlink. "All ships, fire on my ten count and jump. We'll hold shielding for you. Ten, nine, eight..."

At zero, the first of two hundred and four waves of missiles streaked from the mindslavers and through the common shield. Disdaining secondary targets, they homed on the battleglobes. Easily avoiding electronic and beam defenses, each released another hundred smaller missiles, each of which struck a battleglobe. The beam attack on the mindslavers halted as the Fleet of the One looked to its own defense.

No chipping away at shields for the slaver missiles—whenever they touched a battle-globe, that battleglobe disappeared in a pillar of blue-red flame.

As the last missiles left the slavers, the slavers themselves left, jumping far from the battle. Only
Alpha Prime
remained, last as she was first, safe behind a much smaller shield, watching the carnage.

The slavers' missiles plowed on, sowing havoc among the battleglobes.

"I think we should be thankful," said K'Tran, "that this universe and not the AIs' discovered a way to hold matter/antimatter in stasis and release it at will."

"Ten hundred thousand gone," said A'Tir. "Gods."

It was then that the missiles reached the close-packed squadrons of battleglobes, halfway down the triangle, setting off secondary explosions that coalesced into one cascading sea of flame that only died when it reached the base of the pyramid and the last ship in the AI attack group.