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And, he thought under the surface of his battle orders, perhaps it was not as bad as it might have been. These nest-killers had known where to meet his ships, and not even those arrays could have told them that, so they must have already destroyed one scout force—probably Furtag's, given the timing—and followed its couriers hither. Yet if they could muster but a single twelve of ships, however powerful, against him, then the ships under his command were more than enough to feed them to the Furnace. Even at this extreme range, he had an incalculable advantage in launchers. Not so good as theirs, perhaps, but more than enough to make up any disadvantage.
"Colin, they press us sore," Jiltanith said, and Colin nodded sharply. The plan had been to empty their magazines into the Achuultani, but the shit was too deep for that. Birhat had taken only one hit, but Two had taken three and Tor had taken five. Five of those monster warheads!
These ships were tough beyond belief, but any toughness had its limits. He winced as yet another massive salvo exploded against Two's shield and the big ship plowed through the plasma like a drunken windjammer. It was only a matter of time until—
"Tor reports shield failure," Two's Comp Cent a
"Withdrawal unsuccessful," Two said emotionlessly, and Colin's face went bone-white as Tor's dot vanished forever.
"Execute Bug Out," he grated.
"Acknowledged," Jiltanith said coolly.
The nest-killers vanished.
Sorkar stared in disbelief at the reports of his hyper sca
But what mattered was that it was possible. And that his sca
It could not be their homeworld, not so coincidentally close to the rendezvous, but whatever it was, Sorkar knew what to do if they were stupid enough to tie themselves to its defense, too deep in its gravity well to escape into hyper. He could wade into their fire, take his losses, and crush them by sheer numbers, for he had already proven they could be destroyed.
He did not like to think how many hits it had taken to kill that single nest-killer, but they had killed it. And his own losses were scarcely three greater twelves, grievous but hardly fatal.
He plugged into Battle Comp, but he already knew what his orders would be.
Colin hoped his expression hid the depth of his shock as his ships darted away. He'd known they would take losses, but he hadn't expected to start taking them so soon, and they'd destroyed less than a half-percent of the enemy. He'd counted on more than that, and no losses of his own, damn it!
But he couldn't have brought more ships without Dahak to run them, and Dahak had no hyper drive. That was the crunch point, because the Achuultani had to know where he and his ships had run to.
And because of that, Senior Fleet Captain Roscoe Gillicuddy and his crew had died, and Colin had lost six percent of his autonomous warship strength. He didn't know which hurt more, and that made him feel ashamed.
But the mousetrap had been baited. They'd lost more heavily than allowed for, yet they'd done what they set out to do. He told himself that, but it wasn't enough to hold the demons of guilt and the fear of inadequacy at bay.
A warm, slender hand squeezed his tightly, and he squeezed back gratefully. Military protocol might frown on a warlord holding hands with his flagship captain, but he needed that touch of beloved flesh just now.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Thirty-six days after the brief, savage battle, Dahak kept station on Zeta Trianguli Australis-I and Colin stood in Command One, contemplating the planet his crews had dubbed The Cinder.
He and Jiltanith had tried to name The Cinder something else ('Ta
The Cinder was worse, for Zeta Trianguli was brighter than Sol—much brighter. But The Cinder had been chosen very carefully. There were other worlds in the system, including a rather nice, if cool, third planet fifteen light-minutes further out. Zeta Trianguli was old for its class, and III had even developed a local flora that was vaguely carboniferous, but Colin was just as happy it had only the most primitive of animal life.
He folded his hands behind him, watching the display, glancing ever and again at the scarlet hyper trace blinking steadily just inside the forty-light-minute orbital shell of Zeta Trianguli-IV.
Fleet Commodore the Empress Jiltanith sat on her command deck and touched the gemmed dagger at her belt. She'd owned that weapon since the Wars of the Roses, and its familiar hilt had soothed her often over the years, but it helped little today. She knew it made excellent sense for her to be where she was, and that, too, was little help.
She wanted to rise and pace, but it would do no good to display her fear, and there were still many hours to go. Indeed, she ought to be in her quarters—her lonely, empty quarters—resting, but here she could at least see Dahak's light code and know how Colin fared.
An even dozen Trosan-class planetoids with their heavy energy batteries floated in the i
Jiltanith's eyes moved from the three-dimensional schematic of the Zeta Trianguli System to the emptiness about her own ship. The fourteen surviving crewed units of the Imperial Guard floated more than six light-hours from the furnace of the star, and Vlad Chernikov's titanic repair ship Fabricator had labored mightily upon them. Much of the damage had been too severe to be fully healed—Two, for example, still bore two wounds over sixty kilometers deep—but all were combat ready. Ready, yet carefully stealthed, hidden from every prying sca
Jiltanith did not like to consider why they were not with Dahak, but the reasoning was brutally simple. If Operation Mousetrap failed, the crewed ships would return to Terra to hold as long as they might and evacuate as many additional Terra-born as possible to Birhat when they could hold no more, but the unma
There would be no point retaining them, for they were useless in close combat without Dahak's control, and Dahak—and Colin—would be dead.
Great Lord Sorkar's crest flexed thoughtfully as his portion of the Great Visit neared normal-space once more. This star was suspiciously young to have evolved nest-killers of its own, which reinforced his belief that it could be but a forward base. That was bad, since it gave no hint what star these demons might call home. Unless one of them was obliging enough to flee into hyper and head directly thence, which he doubted any ships as fast as they would do, he could not even guess where their true home world lay.