New Contract (Perimeter Defense Book #3) (38 page)

"Yes they are, tuki-tuka-de-sa. All space around the station has been mapped out. Coordinates for all prewarp points have been entered. Three divisions of five bombers each are standing by. Immediately after the mine explosion, we are ready to attack. In every group there is one electromagnetic bomb, a gravity bomb and three thermonuclear ones."

I closed my eyes and threw myself back into my chair, trying to ignore the hustle and bustle going on around me. There were four minutes left before the battle that would define the fate of, at the very least, the Swarm. If we lost, the Iseyek would be erased from the star map in short order. And after them, it would be a matter of months before Sector Nine fell. There would be no one to defend it. Practically all of its ships were here today in the unnamed D56KT system.

"We are ready, Georg. Miya is leading our trio of Truth Seekers. Marian Sabati and I are backup, and the Beta Iseyek are behind us providing support. Seven Purple House psionics have joined us as well! And now the Blues have linked up. Krista, and with her... Woah-ho-ho!!! What am I doing standing in front of stars like these?!"

Florianna's joy and amazement forced me to open my eyes and look at the screen. And there was plenty to be surprised at. Forty additional black-robed women I didn't recognize had joined us. There was another woman with them, though, who I knew very well. The Dark Mother!!! I gave a deep bow to show my respect to the most powerful Truth Seeker and activated my microphone.

"Attention, fleet! Ten seconds until the enemy arrives! Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Detonate!!!"

I don't know if there had ever been an official record in the Empire for the longest fireworks display ever, but today we must have broken it. Twenty-five hundred miles of fiery hell! A surreal spectacle! Katerina, in obvious elation from the image on screen, gave me a thumbs up.

The voice of Max Gregor returned me to reality:

"The enemy hasn't been defeated. All the large Alien ships are still on the battlefield. Distance: six hundred eighty miles. Two hundred forty-seven
Behemoths
, five
Mammoths
and one
Queen
. And... one
Tyrant
-class battleship!"

"It’s
Orange Majesty
, Viscount Sivir ton Mesfelle’s ship," I explained to the officers. "I would love to kill that traitor, but we should probably try to take him alive... The devil!!! Remaining bomber groups, delay attack!"

The last sentence came at almost the same time five of my cloaked bombers appeared forty miles from the enemy fleet. They were totally destroyed instantly. It seemed like the cloakers weren't yet ready to launch bombs and were forced out of invisibility. A message came in from the communications officers:

"The
Queen
is emanating strong electromagnetic pulses at three second intervals!"

"She is interfering with our radio frequencies, jamming our communications!"

What an unpleasant surprise. There was no way to approach the Alien fleet invisibly now; the
Queen
had revealed our cloaked frigates with her pulses.

"The enemy fleet has begun maneuvers! It is coming in our direction!"

"Attention, fleet! Accelerate toward the sun. Keep your distance from the enemy."

In a few minutes, Max Gregor turned toward me, turned off his microphone and said:

"Crown Prince, the enemy has no small or even medium-class ships, only battleship-class and higher. They are slow and cannot reach firing distance. What are they hoping to accomplish?"

"Excellent observation, Max. You're making headway!" I said, praising my assistant.

The slow
Behemoths
, and even slower
Mammoths
and
Queen
couldn't get near my ships. Even the
Quasar
and
Uukreshes
could go a bit faster than the enemy ships with their main thrusters. On the other hand, both the
Mammoths
and the
Queen
, essentially motherships, could release a black cloud of the speedy little frigates inside of them. For that reason, I sent several
Pyros
out in front of the fleet to provide us with warp jump coordinates and make sure my ships would be able to quickly move away from the enemy if necessary.

"Attention! All ships warp to
Pyro-26
," the worried scream ripped itself from me when the Alien ships started warp jumping in our direction one after the other.

Three thousand ships of my fleet jumped four hundred miles forward, fleeing the predicted arrival of the deadly enemy. No Aliens showed up in the place we fled from, though.

"Find out where they went, now!" I demanded.

Ten seconds later, an answer followed from Valian ton Corsa:

"Crown Prince, based on trajectory calculations, all enemy ships went to the second planet."

The second planet? I realized almost immediately what they wanted and laughed happily. Who cares, though? Let them search for their invisible dock. On my order, the battleship
Svetlana the Great
had dragged it to the other end of the star system and hid it among the massive moons of the eleventh planet. Meanwhile, a group of engineers had already detected and removed all the signal beacons that had once sent messages to its former owner on the location of the dock and the manufacturing progress.

"Crown Prince, incoming call from an enemy ship!"

I gave my approval, and Viscount Sivir came on screen in a strange outfit made of sticks and leaves instead of the standard Orange House uniform. In an utterly lifeless tone, not expressing any emotion, he said:

"Georg, give us the
Mammoth
and your fleet will be allowed to leave unharmed."

"If I wanted to leave, I would have done so long ago. And I wouldn’t have had to ask anyone’s permission, either. The thing you're looking for has already been gone for some time."

"My kind masters wanted to first offer you a peaceful solution to this conflict. But I already knew you would refuse it. Now you will die. Georg, you aren't even close to imagining the forces at play here."

The screen went out, and the call cut off.

"He doesn't look too much like a living person!" Bionica commented on what we'd seen. "He wasn't blinking, and his facial muscles didn't move. An android doing such a bad job of imitating human behavior would be labeled defective and dissembled for parts."

"That was not Sivir," my cousin confirmed, standing nearby overhearing our conversation. "Some kind of zombie, sure, but no human."

"Were you filming that for the viewers?" I clarified with Katerina, and she nodded.

I shook my head in frustration. Too bad. the fact that I had a
Mammoth
had just become an open secret. After the battle, there were sure to be unpleasant questions. On the other hand, the footage could also be used for propaganda purposes. I turned on the microphone.

"We've just seen a graphic example of what happens to traitors who surrender to the Aliens. There are no emotions left, no person, just an empty husk controlled by its masters. So then, if the
Queen
tries to tempt anyone else with her promises, remember what became of the unfortunate Viscount Sivir. He trusted her. Do not repeat his mistake. And now, get ready." The Alien fleet had "slightly missed" by a half a billion kilometers and jumped to the wrong coordinates. But now, they would be returning and were sure to be quite peeved.

A few minutes went by, and my prediction came true. The enemy fleet did in fact return to the D56KT warp beacon, and was now just two hundred fifty miles from my ships, right in our path. We had to take immediate maneuvers to maintain a safe distance.

"All ships, change direction! Turn toward the sixth planet. Heavy cruisers, do not lag behind, step on your main thrusters for all they've got, otherwise we'll be in firing range of the
Behemoths
in one minute!"

And meanwhile, the enemy was clearly up to something. Our computers were simply wailing trying to depict all the new red markers on the tactical map.

"They're releasing frigates! The
Behemoths
too!" reported Max Gregor with surprise in his voice, before immediately correcting himself. "No, those are not frigates. They are combat drones. A black cloud of combat drones!!!"

I had already seen the red dots pouring out on the map. The tactical computer began noticeably freezing up, no longer even trying to show the data from the targeting system, but having plenty of trouble simply counting the number of drones the enemy had released. A few seconds later, the computer coughed up a number on the screen: 281,825.

"That is impossible! That must be a mistake! Where did they all come from?!" Bionica, sitting next to me, said with completely authentic notes of panic in her voice.

"It is accurate though, unfortunately," I answered my assistant. "Each
Behemoth
can carry around six hundred fifty drones, and there are two hundred forty-seven
Behemoths
here. There are also the
Mammoths
and the
Queen
, who seem to also have brought combat drones with them instead of the light ships we usually tear straight through in battle. Perhaps they were sitting in Himora for so long precisely because they were stocking their huge ships with drones. In Himora, by the way, there is a huge freight station with big storage facilities. There were more than enough materials...

But now, the next logical question must be asked: what should we do with this black cloud? My heavy ships need one more minute to turn around, and there definitely isn’t enough time for that. Every Alien combat drone has firepower equal to that of a frigate. Almost three thousand of them are tearing off toward us, with every second noticeably closing the gap. For some reason, the image of turd coming into contact with the blades of a fan is coming to mind. The shit has hit the fan. There is no other way to put it here.

Release all
Leech-A
s to cut them off! Have them launch their nuclear bombs to stop the drones from getting any closer! Second division of
Surprises
, attack immediately after that! All ships, after the cloaker attack, release all of our drones! Frigates, prepare for combat! Work as quickly as possible! Antisupport, you need to..."

I wasn't able to finish explaining what exactly I wanted from my destroyers and other ships for destroying fast targets. I was overcome with pain. An unseen weight began pushing my head into my chest.

"SO THAT'S WHERE YOU GOT OFF TO!"

The Alien
Queen
! I was expecting just such a mental attack. It was the basis of my whole plan of attack against the
Queen
. But it hurt a lot! And where were the psionics now? It was growing harder to resist with every second.

"THAT'S RIGHT! THIS TIME YOU WEREN'T ABLE TO RESIST ME! I CAN NOW GET YOU BACK FOR ALL THE PAIN YOU CAUSED ME BEFORE. OH, NO. I WILL NOT KILL YOU. I AM INTERESTED IN STUDYING YOUR ABILITIES."

My vision grew hazy. It felt like there was barbed wire being twisted around my head. The pressure grew, the barbs dug into my skull... And suddenly, I felt surprise and amazement come over my tormentor.

"Begin the attack!"
came a voice in my head, though I was unable to tell whose it was.

The
Queen
began trying to break the mental connection in fear. But she was not able. My consciousness, though, rushed back out into the real world.

I opened my eyes. My cousin was leaning over me in panic. In her hands there was a blood-soaked napkin.

"Did it work?" Katerina asked, just after seeing that I had come back to my senses.

"I don't know. I was only used as live bait. They let the Alien
Queen
swallow me whole, and now they’re reeling her in."

I looked out the corner of my eye at the tactical screen and watched what was happening. A huge cloud of red dots had totally swallowed up the green dots of my fleet. Another second later, having forgotten my weariness, pain and spinning head, I jumped up, donned my helmet and began issuing commands into the microphone:

"Corvettes, why the hell aren't you in battle?! Everyone out of the carriers immediately! All
Leech-C
's to the
Behemoths
. Do not allow them to come within firing distance!"

"Prince, we have lost the battleship
Princess Astra
! The battleship
Master of Tesse
’s shield is down!"

"All carriers immediately recharge the shield of
Master of Tesse
! Hold it at all costs!"

I looked out the corner of my eye at the number of enemy drones marked on the tactical map. One hundred six thousand. It was too many. The best thing to do was retreat from battle to save at least some of the fleet. But the fact that a large proportion of my ships were already under enemy warp disruptor bore eloquent witness to the fact that we would no longer be capable of warping out of battle. We had to fall back on a time-tested method: