The Armageddon Inheritance

“We can’t, Frederick,” Hatcher sighed. “We just can’t do it.”

“I bloody well know we can’t,” Amesbury said harshly, “but that doesn’t mean we don’t have to try!”

“I know.” Hatcher made his shoulders straighten. “Leave it with me, Frederick. We’ll give it our best shot.”

“I know,” Amesbury said much more softly. “And … God bless, Ger.”

Faces paled as the news spread among Earth’s defenders. This was the end. When that stupendous hammer came down, Earth would shatter like a walnut.

Some had given too much, stretched their reserves too thin, and they snapped. Most simply retreated from reality, but a handful went berserk, and their fellows were almost grateful, for subduing them diverted their minds from their own terror.

Yet only a minority broke. For most, survival, even hope, were no longer factors, and they ma

Servant of Thunders Brashieel noted the changing energy signatures. So. The nest-killers knew, and they would strive to thrust the Hoof aside, to destroy it. Already the orbital fortresses were moving, concentrating to meet them, but many smaller hooves had been prepared to pelt the planetary shield, driving it back, exposing those fortresses to the Protectors’ thunder. They would clear a path for the Hoof, and nothing could stop them. The nest-killers could not even see the Hoof to fire upon it unless they destroyed Vindicator and his brothers, and they would never do that in time.

He watched his magnificent instruments as Lord of Order Chirdan shifted formation, placing a thicker wall of his nestlings between the Hoof and the nest-killers’ world. Vindicator anchored one edge of that wall.

Lieutenant Andrew Samson felt queerly calm. Governor Horus had shifted his remaining forts to give the Bitch support, but the Achuultani had expected that. Kinetic projectiles had hammered the planetary shield back for days, stripping it away from the ODCs. Raiding squadrons had charged in, paying a high price for their attacks but picking off the battered ODCs. Of the six which originally had protected the pole, only the damaged Bitch remained, and she’d expended too much ammunition defending herself. Without Earth’s orbital industry, just keeping up with expenditures was difficult … not to mention the risk colliers ran between the shield and the ODCs to resupply them.

Andrew Samson had long ago abandoned any expectation of surviving Earth’s siege, but he’d continued to hope his world would live. Now he knew it probably would not, and that purged the last fear from his system, leaving only a strange, bittersweet regret.

The last fleet units would make their try soon. They’d been hoarded for this moment, waiting until the Achuultani were within pointblank range of Earth’s defenses. Their chances of surviving the next few hours were even lower than his own, but the ODCs would do what they could to cover them. He checked his remaining hyper missiles. Thirty-seven, and less than four hundred in the Bitch’s other magazines. It wouldn’t be enough.

Acting Commodore Adrie

The threadbare remnants of the cruisers and destroyers—seventy-four of them, in all—screened the pitiful handful of capital ships. Eighty-nine warships; her first and final task force command.

“Task Force ready to proceed, Governor,” she told the face on her com.

“Proceed,” Horus said quietly. “May the Maker go with you, Commodore.”

“And with you, sir,” she replied, then shifted to her command net, and her voice was clear and calm. “The Task Force will advance,” she said.

Brashieel watched in grudging admiration as the nest-killers advanced. There were so few of them, and barely a twelve of their biggest ones. Their crews must know they would be chaff for the Furnace, yet still they came, and something within him saluted their courage. In this moment they were not nest-killers; they were Protectors, just as truly as he himself.

But such thoughts would not stay his hand. The Nest had survived for uncountable higher twelves of years only by slaying its enemies while they were yet weak. It was a lesson the Aku’Ultan had learned long ago from the Great Nest-Killers who had driven the Aku’Ultan from their own Nest Place.

It would not happen again.

Gerald Hatcher felt sick as Commodore Robbins led her ships out to die. But the fire control of his orbital and ground-side fortresses couldn’t even see Iapetus unless an opening could be blown for them, and those doomed ships were his one hope to open a way.

“If we get a fix, lock it in tight, Plotting,” he said harshly.

“Acknowledged,” Sir Frederick Amesbury replied.

“Request permission to engage,” Tama Hideoshi said from his own screen, and Hatcher noted the general’s flight suit. They had more fighters than crews now, but even so Hideoshi had no business flying this mission. Yet there was no tomorrow this time, and he chose not to object.

“Not yet. Hold inside the shield till the ships engage.”

“Acknowledged.” Tama’s voice was unhappy, but he understood. He would wait until the Achuultani were too busy punching missiles at Robbins’ ships to wipe his own fragile craft from the universe.

“Task Force opening fire,” someone said, and another voice came over the link, soft and prayerful, its owner not even aware he had spoken.

“Go, baby! Go!” it whispered.

Adrie

And so Earth’s ships belched missiles at her murderers, hyper and sublight alike. Their launchers went to continuous rapid fire, spitting out homing sublight weapons without even worrying about targeting. The lethal projectiles were a cloud of death, and the first hyper missiles from Earth came with them.

Lord of Order Chirdan’s head bobbed in anguish as his nestlings died. He had known the nest-killers must come forth and hurl their every weapon against him, yet not even Battle Comp had predicted carnage such as this!

The missile storm was a whirlwind, boring into the center of the wall defending the Hoof. Anti-matter pyres and gravitonic warheads savaged his ships, and his i

He could not allow that, and his orders went out. The edges of his wall of ships thi

Time had no meaning. There was only a shrieking eternity of dying ships and a glare that lit Earth’s night skies like twice a hundred suns. Adrie