Samson snorted in sudden alarm. The stallion's head snapped up and around, as if to peer back the way he'd come, and Jackson frowned. He'd never seen Samson react that way, and he turned his own head, staring back along their path and straining his ears.
He heard nothing for several moments but the whisper of the wind. But then he did hear something. Or perhaps he only felt it, for the low rumble was so deep it throbbed in the bones of his skull. He'd never heard anything like it, and sheer curiosity held him motionless for several seconds while he concentrated on identifying it rather than worrying about its source.
But that changed quickly as he peered into the west and saw . . . something.
The moonlight was too faint for him to tell what it was, but there was light enough to see that it was huge . . . and moving. In fact, it was headed straight towards him—a stupendous black shape, indistinct and terrifying in the darkness, moving with only that deep, soft rumble—and panic flared. Whatever that thing was, it was coming from the direction of the old battle site, and if he'd inadvertently awakened one of those long-dead weapon systems . . . !
Flight Leader Ukah checked his navigational display. Assuming his systems were working properly (which was no longer always a safe assumption), his shuttles were approaching the nearest of the emission clusters Lieutenant Janal had plotted.
"Flight, this is Lead," he said. "Red One and Two, follow me. We'll make a close sweep. Yellow One, hold the rest of the flight at four hundred kilometers until I clear for approach."
"Lead, Yellow One. Affirmative," Sub-Flight Leader Yurahk acknowledged, and Ukah and his two wingmen slashed upward and went to full power to close the objective.
Jackson cursed as he scrabbled for the radio only to drop it. It vanished into the night and tall grass, and he swore again as he flung himself from the saddle, clinging to Samson's reins with one hand while he fumbled after the radio with the other. He had to warn the steading! He—
That was when the three bright dots streaked suddenly in from the northwest, and he felt fresh panic pulse in his throat at their speed. The colony's five remaining aircraft were too precious to waste on casual use. Their flights were rationed out with miserly stinginess, and none of them could move that fast, anyway. But if they weren't from Landing, then where—?
None of the three shuttles detected the heavily stealthed sensor drone Shiva had deployed to drive his anti-air systems, but the Bolo himself was far too obvious to be missed.
"Lead, Red Two! I'm picking up something to starboard! It looks—"
Ukah Na-Saar's eyes snapped to his own tactical display, but it was already far too late.
Something shrieked behind Jackson, and Samson reared, screaming as the eye-tearing brilliance of plasma bolts howled overhead. Sharp explosions answered an instant later, wreckage rained down in very small pieces, and Jackson understood the stallion's fear perfectly. But despite his own bone-deep fright, he clung to the reins, fighting Samson's panic. Every nerve in his body howled to run, but he'd been flash-blinded. Samson must have been the same, and Jackson refused to let the horse bolt in a blind, frantic flight across the rolling fields which could end only in a fall and a broken leg . . . or neck.
The stallion fought the bit, bucking in his terror, but Jackson held on desperately until, finally, Samson stopped fighting and stood trembling and sweating, quivering in every muscle. The horse's head hung, and Jackson blinked against the dazzling spots still dancing before his eyes, then found the bridle's cheek strap by feel. He clung to it, mouth too dry to whisper false reassurances, and fought his own terror as the basso rumble he'd first heard headed towards him.
He could hear other sounds now. There was a squeak and rattle, and a rhythmic banging, like a piece of wreckage slamming against a cliff, and he blinked again and realized his vision was beginning to clear. The blurry, light-streaked vagueness which was all he could see wasn't much, but it was infinitely better than the permanent blindness he thought he'd suffered. And then he cringed, hand locking tighter on Samson's bridle, as brilliant light flooded over him. He could actually feel the radiant heat on his face, and his hazy vision could just make out a cliff-like vastness crowned with glaring lights that blazed like small suns. He trembled, mind gibbering in panic, and then a mellow tenor voice spoke from behind the lights.
"Unit One-Zero-Niner-Seven-SHV of the Line reporting for duty, Commander," it said.
Yurahk Na-Holar flinched as Flight Leader Ukah's three-shuttle section was obliterated. The remaining shuttles were too far back and too low to see the source of the fire which did it, but the explosions had been high enough to get good reads on.
Hellbores. The analysis flashed on Yurahk's tactical display, and he felt muscles tighten in the fight-or-flight instinct the People shared with their Human enemies. Yield estimates suggested weapons in the fifteen to twenty-five-centimeter range, and that was bad. Such heavy energy weapons could destroy any of the transport ships—or, for that matter, Starquest herself—and their effective range would be line-of-sight. That was frightening enough, yet there was worse. Lieutenant Janal's rough plot indicated that the emissions cluster directly ahead was one of the smaller ones, and if something this small was covered by defenses so heavy, only the Nameless Ones knew what the big population center was protected by!
The pilot who'd inherited command drew a deep breath and made himself think. Only three shots had been fired, which indicated either that the ground battery's commander had total faith in his fire control or else that there were only three weapons and the defenders had simply gotten lucky, and the second possibility was more likely. The Humans must be as desperate to survive as the People. If the defenders had possessed additional firepower, they would have used all of it to insure they got all the enemies they'd detected.
But Yurahk still had twenty-six shuttles . . . and if the origin point of the fire which had destroyed his CO was below his sensor horizon, he knew roughly where it had come from.
"Plot the origin coordinates," he told his tactical officer coldly. "Then enable the missiles."
Jackson Deveraux stared into the glare of light. It couldn't be. It was impossible! Yet even as he thought those things, he knew who—or what—that voice belonged to. But why was it calling him "Commander"?
"W-who—" he began, then chopped that off. "What's happening?" He made himself ignore the quaver in his own voice. "Why did you call me that?"
"Hostile forces tentatively identified as Kestrel-class shuttles of the Imperial Melconian Navy have begun hunter-killer operations against the Human population of this planet," the tenor replied calmly, answering Jackson's taut questions in order. "And I addressed you simply as 'Commander' because I do not yet know your name, branch of service, or rank."
The huge machine spoke as if its preposterous replies were completely reasonable, and Jackson wanted to scream. This wasn't—couldn't!—be happening! The Bolo he'd ridden past and around and even under this morning had been dead, so what could have—?
The shuttles! If Melconian units had reached Ararat, and if the Bolo had only been inactive, not dead, then its sensors must have picked up the Melconians' arrival and brought it back on-line. But in that case—
"Excuse me, Commander," the Bolo said, "but I detect seventy-eight inbound terrain-following missiles, ETA niner-point-one-seven minutes. It would be prudent to seek shelter."
"Seek shelter where?" Jackson laughed wildly and waved his free hand at the flat, wide-open plain rolling away in every direction.
"Perhaps I did not phrase myself clearly," the Bolo apologized. "Please remain stationary."
Jackson started to reply, then froze, fingers locking like iron on Samson's bridle, as the Bolo moved once more. It rumbled straight forward, and panic gibbered as its monstrous, five-meter-wide treads came at him. Track plates four times his height in width sank two full meters into the hard soil, yet that still left more than three meters of clearance between the tremendous war machine's belly and Samson's head, and the space between the two innermost track systems which seemed so narrow compared to the Bolo's bulk was over ten meters across. It was as if Jackson and the sweating, shuddering horse stood in a high, wide corridor while endless walls of moving metal ground thunderously past, and then another light glowed above them.
The Bolo stopped, and a ramp extended itself downward from the new light—which, Jackson realized, was actually a cargo hatch.
"Missile ETA now six-point-five-niner minutes, Commander," the tenor voice said, coming now from the open hatch above him. "May I suggest a certain haste in boarding?"
Jackson swallowed hard, then jerked a nod. Samson baulked, but Jackson heaved on the reins with all his strength, and once the stallion started moving, he seemed to catch his rider's urgency. Shod hooves thudded on the ramp's traction-contoured composites, and Jackson decided not to think too closely about anything that was happening until he had Samson safely inside the huge, cool, brightly lit compartment at its head.
Yurahk Na-Holar checked his time-to-target display and bared his canines in a challenge snarl his enemies couldn't see. That many missiles would saturate the point defense of a fully operable Ever Victorious-class light cruiser, much less whatever salvaged defenses this primitive Human colony might have cobbled up!
I have not yet located the Enemy's surviving launch platforms, but my look-down drone's track on his missiles suggests they are programmed for a straight-line, least-time attack. This seems so unlikely that I devote a full point-six-six seconds to reevaluating my conclusion, but there is absolutely no evidence of deceptive routing. Whoever commands the Enemy's shuttles is either grossly incompetent or fatally overconfident, but I do not intend, as Diego would have put it, to look a gift horse in the mouth if the Enemy is foolish enough to provide a direct pointer to his firing position, and I launch another drone, programmed for passive-only search mode, down the incoming missiles' back-plotted flight path.
Point defense systems fed by the air-defense drone simultaneously lock onto the missiles, and optical scanners examine them. They appear to be a late-generation mark of the Auger ground-attack missile. Attack pattern analysis suggests that nine are programmed for airburst detonation and hence are almost certainly nuclear-armed. Assuming standard Melconian tactics, the remaining sixty-nine missiles will be equally divided between track-on-jam, track-on-radar, and track-on-power source modes and may or may not also be nuclear-armed.
My internal optics watch my new Commander—who is even younger than I had assumed from his voice—enter Number One Hold. His horse is clearly frightened, but its fear appears to ease as I close the hatch. I consider employing subsonics to soothe it further, but while comforting the beast would certainly be appropriate, it would be most inappropriate to apply the equivalent of tranquilizing agents to my Commander.
These thoughts flicker across one portion of my awareness even as my defensive systems lock onto the incoming missiles, my drone's remote tracking systems search for the Enemy shuttles, and my communications subsection listens carefully for any transmission between them and their mother ship or ships. These efforts require fully two-one-point-three-two percent of current Main CPU capability, which would, under normal circumstances, be quite unacceptable. Given my present status, however, this is adequate if frustrating.
"Missile ETA is now two-point-one-one minutes, Commander," the tenor voice said respectfully.
Jackson managed not to jump this time. He considered saying something back, then shrugged and sat on the deck, still holding Samson's reins.
"I regret," the voice said after a moment, "that I was unable to invite you to your proper station on the Command Deck. Command One was destroyed by Enemy action in my last engagement, but Auxiliary Command is intact. Unfortunately, it would have been impossible for your horse to scale the hull rings to Command Two, and there is no internal access to it from your present location. If you will direct your attention to the forward bulkhead, however, I will endeavor to provide you with proper situation updates."
"I—" Jackson cleared his throat. "Of course," he said. "And, uh, thank you."
"You are, welcome, Commander," the Bolo replied, and Jackson watched in fascination so deep it almost—not quite, but almost—obscured his fear as a tri-vid screen came to life on the cargo hold's bulkhead. He couldn't begin to interpret all the symbols moving across it, but he recognized vector and altitude flags on what appeared to be scores of incoming arrowheads.
Arrowheads, he realized suddenly, that were all converging on the center of the display . . . which made him suddenly and chillingly positive of what those innocent shapes represented.
The Melconian missiles howled in on their target. Their attack had been calculated to swamp any defenses by bringing them all in simultaneously, and the nukes lunged upward. Their function was less to obliterate the enemy—though they should suffice to do just that if they detonated—than to force him to engage them to prevent them from detonating, thus exposing his active systems to the homing sensors of the other missiles.
That, at least, was the idea. Unfortunately, the attack plan had assumed that whatever had destroyed the first three shuttles was immobile. Any Human vehicle which had mounted such heavy weapons had also mounted at least one reactor to power them, but Starquest's sensors had detected only one fusion plant on the planet, and that one was hundreds of kilometers away. No reactor meant no vehicle, and if they weren't vehicle-mounted, then they must be part of one of the old manned, capacitor-fed area support systems, and those were much too heavy to have been moved any appreciable distance before the missiles arrived.
Sub-Flight Leader Yurahk's logic was as impeccable as it was wrong, for it had never occurred to him that his adversary was, in fact, a Mark XXXIII/D Bolo which had no reactor signature simply because it had long ago exhausted its reaction mass. And because that never occurred to him, his threat estimate was fatally flawed.
The Bolo named Shiva tracked the incoming fire without apprehension. His battle screen was operable at ninety-five percent of base capability, and no missile this light could break through it. Of course, he was also responsible for protecting the nearby Human settlement for which his new Commander had been bound, but though he might have lost many of his point defense weapons, he retained more than enough for his present task, and he waited calmly, weapons locked, for the missiles' flight to offer him the optimum fire solution.
Yurahk gawked at his display as the telemetry from his missiles went dead. All of it went out, from every single bird, in the same instant, and that was impossible. Starquest herself could scarcely have killed that many missiles simultaneously, yet that was the only possible explanation for the sudden cessation of telemetry.
He had no idea how it had been done, but he felt ice congeal in his belly, and he punched up his com.
"Flight, this is Lead. Come to three-five-three true, speed two thousand—now!"
One or two of the acknowledgments sounded surly, but he wasn't surprised by that. Nor did their obvious unhappiness at "running away" deter him. Despite endless hours in simulators, none of his pilots—nor he himself, for that matter—had ever flown combat against first-line Human systems. That might make some of the others overconfident, but Yurahk was responsible for their survival. Not just because they were his pilots, but because their shuttles were irreplaceable, as valuable now as superdreadnoughts once had been. And because that was true, he sent them skimming back to the north and safety while he pondered what had just happened.
But for all his caution, he'd ordered their retreat too late.
* * *
My second drone acquires the Enemy shuttles but remains below them, hiding its already weak signature in the ground clutter, as I consider its information. Were my magazines fully loaded, obliterating the Enemy craft would be simplicity itself, but my anti-air missile levels are extremely low. At the same time, the shuttles remain very close to the ground, below the horizon from my present position and thus safe from my direct fire weapons, but—
"What's happening?"
My Commander's voice demands my attention. I have now had ample time to conclude that he is a civilian and not, in fact, a member of any branch of the Republic's military. This conclusion has no bearing on his status as my Commander—the voice-impression imperatives of my creche-level restart are clear on that point—but his lack of training will require simplification of situation reports and makes it doubly unfortunate that he is trapped in Cargo One rather than on Command Two. Were he at his proper station, my neural interface could transmit information directly to him, yet I feel a certain relief that I cannot do so. He is as untrained in use of the interface as of any of my other systems, and the interface can be dangerous for an inexperienced user. Moreover, the fuzzy confusion still wavering in the background of my thought processes would make me wary of exposing my Commander to my potentially defective gestalt.
Yet without the interface, I must rely solely upon voice and visual instrumentation, both to report to him and to interpret his needs and desires. My internal optics show me that he has risen once more and walked closer to the display. His expression is intent, and I realize he has noted—and apparently recognized—the shuttle icons which have appeared in it.
"The Enemy is withdrawing," I reply.
"Withdrawing?" my Commander repeats sharply. "You mean running away?"
"Affirmative, Commander."
"But if they get away, they can come back and attack the steading again—or attack somewhere else. Somewhere too far from here for you to stop them!"
"Correct," I reply, pleased by how quickly he has reached that conclusion. Formal training or no, he appears to have sound instincts.
"Then stop them!" he directs. "Don't let them get away!"
"Yes, Commander."
I have been considering and discarding options even as my Commander and I speak. Absent proper missile armament, there is but one practical tactic. It will force a greater degree of temporary vulnerability upon me and impose a severe drain on Reserve Power, and it may provide the main Enemy force an accurate idea of what it faces, but it should be feasible.
* * *
Yurahk shifted com channels to report what had happened, and Commander Tharsk himself took his message. The flotilla CO was clearly shaken, and Yurahk split his attention between flying and his commander's questions as he did his best to answer them. And because he was concentrating on those things, he never noticed what was happening behind him.
Unit 1097-SHV of the Line shut down his battle screen in order to channel power to his counter-grav. The Mark XXXIII Bolo had been designed with sufficient counter-grav for unassisted assault landings from orbit, but Shiva didn't need that much ceiling this night. He needed only twelve thousand meters to give him a direct line of sight on the fleeing shuttles, and he pivoted to bring his undamaged starboard secondary battery to bear.
* * *
Lieutenant Janal cried out on Starquest's command deck as his sensors peaked impossibly, and Humans as far away as Landing cringed at the fury unleashed across the heavens. Seven twenty-centimeter Hellbores, each more powerful than the main battery weapons of most light cruisers, went to rapid fire, and the javelins of Zeus stripped away the darkness. No assault shuttle ever built could withstand that sort of fire, and the deadly impact patterns rolled mercilessly through the Melconian formation.
Nine-point-three seconds after the first Hellbore fired, there were no shuttles in the air of the planet renamed Ararat.