Mistress Of The Ages (In Her Name, Book 9) (34 page)

And so, her patience finally at an end, Syr-Nagath had decided to draw out her younger opponent by attacking the Great Moon, the only ground the child still retained, and something else that Syr-Nagath greatly desired. She was not worried about destroying the precious Books of Time, for if they had survived the cataclysm of the Final Annihilation, they would likely survive the coming attack. And if not…then so be it.

The squadrons of the armada fanned out into their predetermined positions and began their approach. Neither finesse nor subtlety were part of the battle plan. She hoped to keep the defenses of the palace occupied while thousands of landing craft bearing her warriors were disgorged on the far side. The landing craft would streak across the surface to attack the palace from all points of the compass.

And if that failed, she would reduce the moon’s surface to molten slag as her distant ancestors had done.

“All squadrons report readiness,” her First reported.

“Commence the attack.”

As one, five thousand warships moved forward, and space was filled with countless bolts of energy as the dreadnoughts took the great palace under fire.

***

“It has begun,” Keel-Tath said softly into the silence that had fallen on the bridge of her flagship. She had known the attack was coming, for she could sense the souls of the warriors in Syr-Nagath’s fleet who were not of purely Ka’i-Nur blood. She had felt their surge of anticipation when the Dark Queen’s fleet had jumped into Homeworld space, just as she had felt the fear and determination of those aboard the ships she had left behind. She clenched her fists as she felt their deaths through the Bloodsong, their melodies snuffed into silence. “You shall be remembered,” she whispered, “as shall all this day who die with honor.”
 

“Your orders, mistress?” Dara-Kol asked.
 

With only a moment’s hesitation, Keel-Tath said, “Jump the fleet.”

As Dara-Kol relayed the command, Ka’i-Lohr, who stood beside Keel-Tath’s command chair, said, “This will be a day long remembered.”

With a nervous smile, she looked at him. “Let us pray that it is our children who remember it, and not those of Syr-Nagath.”

Reaching out, he touched her cheek. “If we still had gods, I would indeed pray for the day we had our own children. But for now, hope must suffice.”

Keel-Tath took his hand and held it tight as the ship and hundreds of its sisters leaped into hyperspace, the familiar star-filled darkness in the viewing display giving way to a murky gray.
 

“I hate being on ships. They are so…tiny.”

She turned to see Drakh-Nur, who wore an uncharacteristic scowl on his face. The huge warrior had survived countless battles, and had saved her life more than once, as she had his own. He had discovered claustrophobia while living aboard ship. “Be of stout heart, warrior. We will not be confined in these metal shells for much longer.”

He nodded, but his expression remained dour.
 

Time dragged on until the shipmistress announced, “We are nearly there. Emergence…now!”

The dull, swirling gray on the viewing screen resolved into the black of deep space and the familiar stars of home. Dead center, filling half the display, was the Great Moon. The flagship’s shipmistress had brought the fleet out at exactly the right position, sandwiching Syr-Nagath’s fleet between Keel-Tath’s ships and the Great Moon. The enemy ships, preoccupied with blasting away at the moon, had come as near as they dared to it, leaving their vulnerable sterns pointing toward where Keel-Tath’s fleet had emerged.

But Keel-Tath’s initial exultation at her fleet’s superior tactical position gave way to despair as the ship’s intelligence tallied up the enemy ships.

“
Five thousand
,” Ka’i-Lohr whispered, incredulous.

“Your orders, my mistress?” Dara-Kol asked, her voice tight.
 

“Nothing has changed,” Keel-Tath told them, forcing herself to be calm. “We expected to be outnumbered, and we have not been disappointed. Honor shall be ours.” To Dara-Kol, she said, “The fleet shall advance and close with the enemy. Focus on the ships attacking the palace. Fire at will!”

No sooner had the words left her mouth than her own ship opened fire. The air was filled with a basso thrum as the main weapons discharged. The energy was gathered and accumulated for a fraction of a second before it was released, sending a titanic emerald green globe of searing energy at the speed of light toward the target ship. The globe hit the ship square in the stern, and the entire aft quarter exploded into shards of metal and a cloud of plasma. With its ability to maneuver gone, the ship began to roll and pitch, which in one of the many ironies of war allowed it to bring its main weapons to bear. Bolts of energy from its main batteries lanced out toward Keel-Tath’s flagship.

Keel-Tath put her hands over her ears as a deafening ringing momentarily filled the bridge just as her ship fired another salvo, which struck the target ship dead center. After the glare of the resulting explosion faded, nothing was left but glittering debris.

“Minor damage only,” the shipmistress reported in a calm voice as the ship fired again at a new target. With the range closing rapidly, the ship’s secondary and tertiary weapons had begun to fire, as well, and the hull echoed with thrums and hums as they discharged.
 

The space between the two fleets had become a hellish no man’s land of searing energy, and Keel-Tath’s ships savaged those of the enemy. Soon enough, the tide began to turn as the enemy fleet reoriented itself to meet Keel-Tath’s onslaught, and ships on both sides danced and died by the score.
 

“The ships on the far side of the moon are redeploying,” the shipmistress reported. On the screen, thousands of pinpoints of light representing the enemy ships began to swing around the moon toward them.
 

“If they surround us,” Dara-Kol said quietly, “we will not last long.”

Keel-Tath tensed, her talons digging into the metal armrests of her command chair. “I have no intention of letting that happen.”
 

The ship jolted to one side as if something solid had slammed into it, and warning indicators blinked into life on the various command consoles.

“Shields are down on the starboard side,” the shipmistress reported in a taut voice. A moment later, the viewing display began to rotate as she rolled the ship to put their vulnerable flank away from the greatest threat, even as the ship’s weapons continued to fire.
 

Keel-Tath watched the display, her eyes locked on the clouds of ships sailing at full speed around the moon toward them. “Order the second and third squadrons to carry out their attack plan.”

“Yes, mistress!”

“You are taking a huge risk,” Ka’i-Lohr whispered.
 

She glanced up at him, her mouth curving up in a knowing smile.

***

Syr-Nagath cursed as yet more of her ships were wiped from the skies by Keel-Tath’s puny fleet. She had to credit the white haired whelp with great courage to remain in-system against such odds. By her own estimation, her fleet outnumbered Keel-Tath’s by at least ten to one. But Keel-Tath was using the elements of surprise and superior position to the utmost, raking the sterns of Syr-Nagath’s warships that had been concentrating on suppressing the moon’s considerable defenses.

But the young Desh-Ka’s killing spree was already coming to an end as Syr-Nagath’s ships maneuvered to take their tormentors under fire. The other ships that had been preparing their ground assaults were being redeployed, for this was the perfect opportunity to crush Keel-Tath once and for all. The attack on the moon could wait. It would still be there once the fleet battle was over.

As her ships under attack reoriented themselves, establishing a screen facing Keel-Tath’s fleet, the balance of power began to tell as more and more of Keel-Tath’s ships, which were far superior to the best Syr-Nagath had been able to build, took hits and began to die.
 

“Close with them,” she ordered, pounding her armored fist on the armrest. “Get us into boarding range.” No matter how good Keel-Tath’s ships were, once the fleets mingled and the ships came close enough for warriors to board, the battle would be over.

Her First bowed his head. “Yes, mistress!”
 

The shipmaster looked up, an expression of shock on his face. “Part of the enemy fleet has jumped!”

Looking at the display, Syr-Nagath saw that two-thirds of Keel-Tath’s fleet had vanished. A moment later they reappeared, shockingly close to the moon, and directly behind the squadrons steaming around from the far side. Before she could utter a word, tiny icons representing her ships began to wink out of existence, destroyed. “
Curse her!" she
hissed. “How did her ships jump so deep inside the gravity well?” It was a feat that her own ships dare not try.

The shipmaster shook his head as the ship shuddered from the explosion of the ship beside it. “I do not know!”

“It matters not.” Syr-Nagath seethed as she glared at the screen. “We have more than enough ships.”

“Mistress…” Her First pointed toward the viewing display. “The enemy ships facing us. They have jumped!”

Before Syr-Nagath could say a word, the shipmaster cried out, “
The moon!
”

***

“How were our ships able to jump so deep into the moon’s gravity well?” Ka’i-Lohr asked, still shocked at the audacity of the maneuver.

“The ship minds are linked to that of the moon itself, which is vastly more intelligent,” she told him. “They jumped with information it provided. It is something we could only do here, and only in close proximity to the moon.” She looked at the display, where her other two squadrons were wreaking havoc on Syr-Nagath’s ships.
 

What she did not tell him was that her own mind was linked with the moon, although not in the same way as the ships. Just as when the moon had created the palace, seemingly taken from images in her mind, it also obeyed her commands. It was much like a living thing that could hear her thoughts, and only hers. Considering what she saw on the display, she said to Dara-Kol, “Have our squadron jump to a high orbit position over the Homeworld.”

“Mistress?” Dara-Kol was confused.

“Do as I say, quickly!”

With a look at Ka’i-Lohr, Dara-Kol relayed the orders. “Ships ready to jump,” she reported after the shipmistress had chosen coordinates and the information was passed to the other ships.

“Jump the fleet,” Keel-Tath ordered as she focused her mind on what she wanted the moon to do, just before the squadron vanished under a hail of fire from Syr-Nagath’s ships.

***

Globes of energy, hundreds of times larger than those fired by Keel-Tath’s dreadnoughts and far more intense, rose in a cloud from weapons that were buried beneath the moon’s surface. They passed into the midst of Syr-Nagath’s main fleet where they detonated like miniature stars going nova. Ships that were overtaken by the expanding clouds of orange radiance simply vanished without a trace, and the fiery spheres consumed whatever they touched of ships that were at the edge of the effective radius. Dozens of ships at a time were exterminated, while others were left adrift, bleeding air and crew where the spheres had bitten through their hulls like titanic beasts of the sea.

Syr-Nagath’s own flagship narrowly escaped destruction. A near miss took out a chunk of the starboard side, leaving a wound in the armored flank that followed the radius of the huge energy sphere that had obliterated eight other nearby warships.

Another wave of the hellish globes rose from the moon’s surface. Syr-Nagath knew that even her armada could not long sustain such crippling losses. Her other squadrons, those that had been rounding the moon before being set upon by Keel-Tath’s detached squadrons, were now gaining the upper hand, but could be in peril if they were not reinforced. Syr-Nagath’s ships could not jump that close to the moon, nor did she relish sailing through the approaching mass of deadly weapons. The enemy squadron that had just jumped toward the Homeworld, which Syr-Nagath suspected was commanded by Keel-Tath herself, was holding position, as if taunting her, daring her to engage them.

“Your orders, mistress?” The shipmaster’s voice was full of fear as the second wave of deadly globes approached.
 

“Have our ships jump right on top of the enemy squadron.”

“But our ships could interpenetrate…”

Syr-Nagath rounded on him. “Do it or I’ll cut out your heart!”

“Yes, mistress!”

The shipmaster quickly laid in the coordinates and relayed them to the fleet. The squadron jumped just as the wave of globes arrived, but another fifty-seven ships, a fraction of a second late in their departure, were destroyed.

***

“
Enemy ships close aboard!
”
 

The warning of the shipmistress did not come as a surprise to Keel-Tath. She had expected no less of Syr-Nagath, and her warriors and ships were prepared. Her ships opened fire the instant the enemy ships appeared. While her own squadron was still outnumbered, the moon’s defenses had destroyed as many as a thousand of the enemy’s warships, and perhaps more. In the meantime, her other two squadrons still in orbit around the moon were maneuvering to lure their opponents into range of the palace’s devastating defenses.

The display blanked out and the ship shuddered as an enemy warship materialized in the space occupied by one of her own, both ships disappearing in a tremendous fireball. Several other interpenetrations occurred with equally devastating results.

Her flagship quivered and shook as it took the nearest enemy ships under fire and took their fire in return. Shields weakened and failed, armor flashed into vapor, and more ships died on both sides as they gutted one another at point blank range.

“
Boarders!
”
 

All present on the bridge looked up at the viewing display, which now showed a constellation of thousands of tiny pinpricks of light, each one an individual warrior, streaming from the enemy ships toward her own. The robed ones displayed little reaction, while the warriors clenched their fists and hissed in eager anticipation. Fighting from ships was a necessity in space just as it was on the sea, but no warrior worthy of the name would ever forsake the opportunity to close with the enemy to do battle with sword and claw. While the ships still hammered one another with their main batteries, the warriors — none of whom were Ka’i-Nur — were allowed to pass unmolested. They would be warmly welcomed aboard Keel-Tath’s warships by war hammers and gleaming swords.