Heirs of Empire

Sean bit down on a yell of triumph. The ground source might be hiding, but the weapon platforms were stark naked! Not even a shield!

“Hit them, Sandy!” he snapped, and Israel’s next salvo went out even as the third hostile salvo came in.

Vroxhan groaned as another dozen emeralds vanished. That was almost a tenth of them all, and the Demons still lived! If they destroyed all of God’s Shields, nothing would stand between them and the world’s death!

“Warning.” The Voice was as beautiful as ever, yet it seemed to shriek in his brain. “Offensive capability reduced nine-point-six percent. Defense mode input required.”

Blood ran into Vroxhan’s beard as his teeth broke his lip, but even as he watched the demons were spawning yet again. He had no choice, and he spoke the words from the Canticle of Maintenance Test.

“Cycle autonomous mode selection!” he cried.

He felt the others stare at him in horror, but he made himself stand upright, awaiting the stroke of God’s wrath. Silence stretched to the breaking point, and then—

“Autonomous defense mode selection engaged,” the Voice said.

“Shit!”

Sean smashed a clenched fist against the arm of his couch. They’d gotten in a third salvo, but the quarantine system had finally noticed they were killing its weapons. Shields popped into existence around the scores of surviving orbital bases, and decoys of their own blinked into life. They were only Fourth Empire technology, nowhere near as good as the improved systems Dahak and BuShips had provided Israel, but they were good enough. It would take every missile they could throw to take out even one of them now, yet they had no other target. They still hadn’t localized the ground base controlling them and the range was now too great to try.

He started to order Sandy to reprioritize her fire, massing it on single targets, but she was already doing it.

The battleship writhed again, yet the ferocity was less and he felt a surge of hope. Sandy had nailed almost forty bases; maybe she’d thi

They’d been engaged for four minutes, and they’d started ru

Israel heaved yet again, and another damage signal snarled. Crap! That one had taken out two of Sandy’s launchers.

Vroxhan stared at the stars, and hope rose within him. Only one of the Shields had vanished that time. Perhaps none of them might have perished if he’d known what God and the Voice truly demanded, but at least he was still alive and the rate of destruction had slowed. Did that mean God smiled upon him after all? The Writ said man could but do his best—had God granted him the mercy of recognizing his best when he gave it?

Israel sped outward, bobbing and weaving as Sean, Brashan, and the maneuvering computers squirmed through every evasion they could produce, and Harriet abandoned Plotting and plugged into the damage control sub-net to help Tamman fight the battleship’s damage. Two more near-misses had savaged her, and her speed was down to .6 c from the loss of a drive node, but the incoming fire was less and less accurate. Sandy had picked off thirteen more launch stations, ripping huge holes in the original defensive net, but Sean could see the surviving weapon platforms redeploying, with more coming around from the far side of the planet. Still, Sandy’s fire might just have whittled them down enough to make the difference in the face of Israel’s ECM.

Even as he thought that, he knew he didn’t really believe it.

He rechecked the range. Thirty-four light-minutes. Another seven minutes to the edge of the missile envelope at their reduced speed. Could they last that long?

Another salvo shook the ship. And another. Another. A fresh damage signal burned in his feed. They weren’t going to make it out of range before something got through, but they were coming up on thirty-five light-minutes, and each salvo was still spreading its fire to engage their decoys. They hadn’t managed to break lock, but if the bad guys’ targeting was so bad it couldn’t differentiate them from the decoys, they might be able to get into—

Vroxhan watched the demons spawn yet again. They must have an inexhaustible store of eggs, but God smote every one they hatched. A fresh cloud of crimson dots profaned the stars—and then they vanished.

They all vanished, and the ring of God’s wrath was empty. Empty!

Silence hovered about him and his pulse thundered as the assembled priests held their breath.

“Target destroyed,” the Voice said. “Engagement terminated. Repair and replacement procedures initiated. Combat systems standing down.”

“They’ve lost lock,” Sandy reported in a soft, shaky voice as Israel vanished into stealth mode, and Sean MacIntyre exhaled a huge breath.

He was soaked in sweat, but they were alive. They shouldn’t have been. No ship their size could survive that much firepower, however clumsily applied. Yet Israel had. Somehow.

His hands began to tremble. Their stealth mode ECM was better than anything the Fourth Empire had ever had, but to make it work they’d had to cut off all detectable emissions. Which meant Sandy had been forced to cut her own active sensors and shut down both her false-imaging ECM and the outer shield, for it extended well beyond the stealth field. He’d hoped synchronizing with the decoys’ destruction would convince the bad guys they’d gotten Israel, as well, but if their tracking systems hadn’t lost lock, they would have been a sitting duck. They wouldn’t even have been covered by decoys against the next salvo.

His hands’ shakiness spread up his arms as he truly realized what a terrible chance he’d just taken, and not with his own life alone. It had worked, but he hadn’t even thought about it. Not really. He’d reacted on gut instinct, and the others had obeyed him, trusting him to get it right.

He made himself breathe slowly and deeply, using his implants to dampen his runaway adrenaline levels, and thought about what he’d done. He made himself stand back and look at the logic of it, and now that he had time to think, maybe it hadn’t been such a bad idea. It had worked, hadn’t it? But, Jesus, the risk he’d taken!

Maybe, he told himself silently, Aunt Adrie