The Armageddon Inheritance

The solid core of her out-numbered task force drove for the exact center of that vortex of death, and their magazines were almost dry.

“Go!” Tama Hideoshi snapped, and Earth’s last surviving interceptors howled heavenward. He rode his flight couch, his EW officer at his side, and smiled. He was fifty-nine years old, and only his biotechnics made this possible. Three years before, he’d known he would never fly combat again. Now he would, and if his world must die, at least he had been given this final gift, to die in her defense as a samurai should.

Nest Lord! Their small ships were attacking, too! Brashieel had not thought so many remained, but they did, and they charged on the heels of their larger, dying brothers, covered by their deaths.

A few of the Bitch’s launchers still had hyper missiles, but Andrew Samson was down to sublight weapons. It was long range, too much time for the bastards to pick them off, but each of his weapons they had to deal with was one more strain on their defenses. He sent them out at four-second intervals.

Lord Chirdan cursed. The nest-killers were dying by twelves, yet they had cut deep into his formation. Six twelves of his ships had already perished, and the terrible harvest of the nest-killer beams was only starting.

Their warships vanished into the heart of his own, robbing his outer missile crews of targets, and they retargeted on the orbital fortresses.

Gerald Hatcher’s face was stone as the first ODC died. Missiles pelted the planetary shield, as well, but he almost welcomed those. Even if they broke through, killed millions of civilians, he would welcome them, for each missile sent against Earth was one not sent against his orbital launchers.

He sat back and felt utterly useless. There was no reserve. He’d committed everything he had. Now he had nothing to do but watch the slaughter of his people.

Missiles coated the Iron Bitch’s shield in a blinding corona, and still she struck back.

Andrew Samson was a machine, part of his console. His magazine was down to ten percent and dropping fast, but he didn’t even think of slowing his rate of fire. There was no point, and he pounded his foes, his brain full of the thunder wracking the Achuultani formation.

He never saw the hyper missile which finally popped the Bitch’s shields. He died with his mind still full of thunder.

Tama Hideoshi’s fighters slammed into the Achuultani, and their missiles flashed away. Scores of Achuultani ships died, but the enemy formation closed anyway. Commodore Robbins’ ships vanished into the maelstrom, and the fighters were dying too quickly to follow.

They exhausted their missiles and closed with energy guns.

Adrie

Another Achuultani ship died under her energy weapons, but another loomed beyond it, and still another. They wouldn’t break through after all.

Adrie

Tsien Tao-ling’s sca

The hail of missiles from the PDCs stopped as his neural feed overrode their firing orders. He felt Hatcher’s shock through his cross feed to Shepard Center, but there was no time to explain.

And then the launchers retargeted and spoke, hurling their massed missiles at a sphere of space barely three hundred kilometers across. Two thousand gravitonic warheads went off as one.

Twenty kilometers of starship went mad, hurled end-for-end as the wave of destruction broke across it. Servant of Thunders Brashieel clung to his duty pad, blood bursting from his nostrils as the universe exploded about him, and Tsien Tao-ling’s fury spat Vindicator forth like the seed of a grape.

“Contact!” Sir Frederick Amesbury screamed, his British reserve shattered at last. Tsien had blown a brief hole through the Achuultani flank, and Amesbury’s computers locked onto Iapetus. The data flashed to the PDCs and surviving ODCs, and their missiles retargeted once more.

Lord Chirdan cursed and slammed a double-thumbed fist into the bulkhead. No! They could not have done that! Not while the Hoof had so far to go!

But he fought himself back under control, watching missiles rip at the Hoof even as his ravaged nestlings raced to reposition themselves. Shields guttered and flared, and one quadrant failed. A missile dodged through the gap, its anti-matter warhead incinerating the generators of yet another quadrant, but it was too late.

Without direct observation, not even these demon-spawned nest-killers could kill the Hoof before it struck, and his scouts had already spread back out to deny them that observation and hide the damaged shield quadrants.

He bared his teeth in a snarl, turning back to the five surviving nest-killer warships. He would give them to the Furnace, and their deaths would fan the Fire awaiting their cursed world.

Hatcher’s momentary elation died. It had been a magnificent try, but it had failed, and he felt himself relax into a curious tranquillity of sorrow for the death of his planet, coupled with a deep, abiding pride in his people.

He watched almost calmly as the thi

“General Hatcher!” His head snapped up at the sudden cry from Plotting. There was something strange about that voice. Something he could not quite put his finger upon. And then he had it. Hope. There was hope in it!

Nergal was alone, the last survivor of Terra’s squadrons.

Adrie

The wall was thi

—and suddenly they vanished in a gut-wrenching fury of gravitonic destruction that tossed Nergal like a cork.

Lord Chirdan saw without understanding. Three twelves of warships—four twelves—five! Impossible warships. Warships vaster than the Hoof itself!