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Chapter Four
"They've fired on us!
"

There is an unfortunate principle in human hierarchies, particularly military ones, that people are promoted not just to their limit of competence but of necessity just past it. Military strategists write endlessly about disastrous decisions made by officers, both junior and senior and yet, unlike the Orions, have no real solutions to this problem.


Whether it is a decision based on lack of knowledge, say of monsoon wind patterns leaving an army slogging unsupplied through the most deadly desert in the known world, orders that sent light cavalry into the teeth of heavy cannon, or a miscommunication that plunged battlecruisers into combat with superdreadnoughts, humans tend not to summarily execute the officer in question, preferring to wait for courts-martial years later. Sometimes—though not often enough from the enlisted point of view, given that officers like these tend to lead from the rear—the engagement itself does humanity the favor.


 


For twenty-two days the Montana had been his. Captain James Hajii leaned forward, sweat beading his forehead and upper lip. Those things, whatever they were, were not going to take her away from him. His ship versus unknown monsters out of deep space. His beautiful ship.


"They're firing on us, sir!"


"I can see that!"


"Captain, our point-defense—" The huge salvo from the alien SDs was massive enough to swamp the Montana and her sisters' defenses. Captain Hajii, though he had been an exemplary junior officer, was less certain about his own ability as captain and knew that it showed. He feared his new-minted position even as he'd accepted it in the rush to get allied forces out to meet the new aliens. Alien threat is what he'd thought, though everyone was careful not to say any such thing.


He'd been tense as wire and had ordered the active sensors as much to reassure himself that he was doing something . . .anything, as to gather information. He seized the arms of his chair to brace himself. The point defenses of the Montana and her sisters, Novalis and Temuchin's were good for a battle group that hadn't fought together before. With all the skill of their training over the days to interception they swatted alien missiles out of space but the massive salvo couldn't all be stopped.


The Montana staggered, as one, then two and three alien missiles, too many for her point defense to handle, overloaded and tore through her screens, blasting James Hajii's crew. Alarms screamed and blast doors slammed shut. The ship lurched, a sickening feeling when everyone's life depended on unchanging stability, wrenching and twisting her into ugliness.


He bit his lip and held his silence for a long moment, feeling the fear twisting in his gut. Montana reeled as another missile found its way into her vitals and threw people jolting against their shock-frames. "Return fire!"


In his ear, he could hear Admiral Waldeck, "Captain Hajii! Cease fire! That's a direct order!"


 


"Sir!" Thompson's voice cut across the flag bridge. "The Montana's bringing up active scanners!" Sean turned to stare at the tank even as he heard Cyrus's order along the command-link.


"Montana! Shut down! Captain Hajii, passives until further notice!"


"Aliens launching missiles, sir."


"Defensive fire only, Cyrus!" Sean snapped. "Fall back, Defensive formation—Abel 2." Even as his orders rang out to pull his ships back, the Montana, followed by Novalis and the Temuchin carried the fight to the aliens.


"Hits on the Montana, sir. She's firing—sir, they're firing back."


"Pull back, all units, disengage!" Sean could feel the whole engagement slipping out of his hands in a way that no one could have anticipated. They might still cool things down, make contact. It was possible.


The attempted peaceful contact unraveled like wet paper.


 


"Support Junior Admiral Vakelnar," Torhok snapped and the defense squadrons from Ahknemakseht and Rahmehk launched missiles. Thank Illudor that the "Others" heresy had us building "obstacle removal" missiles or we'd have nothing with which to defend ourselves against these . . .genocidal ghouls.


Ankaht closed all three eyes to shut out what was happening, clamping down hard on her (Rage, dismay, outrage.), though her selnarm was lost in the reaction of the Destoshaz. This is all incorrect, she thought before being caught up in the flow of selnarm of the whole First Fleet, in defense of the Race.


 


"Pull back! Pull back from those sublight monsters!" Sean leaned forward and realized his mistake as all of the alien fleet attacked. The Behemoths opened fire as well and he'd have to consider them targets, though their salvos weren't anywhere near the weight of fire from the SDs. Individually they didn't seem to have much, given their size, but when they added their fire the total amount of ordnance was staggering.


"Sir, those missiles  . . ." The scan-tech's voice only faltered a moment. ". . .approximately thirty-four hundred, Sir . . . I'll have more accurate numbers . . .ah, thirty-four hundred three hundred eighteen, Sir."


If there was one thing that Sean Remko was not, it was incompetent. Certain people never find their limits, not in a single life, anyway. "Belay that last order. Engage. All units engage." If he wanted to save anyone out of this mess, they'd have to fight them to a ... not a standstill. The sublight ships would keep coming whether they were in one piece or not.


Hostile. He had to think not only of all the people in his fleet, but all of Bellerophon, the twenty-three million people on that planet and the rest of the arm behind. The Behemoths wouldn't be able to transit warp points, but the tenders were small enough to. Even if they hadn't figured warp technology, whatever they were, they weren't stupid.


All this had only taken a moment's thought, his orders continued smoothly. "Least Claw, launch your fighters, pick your targets."


"Acknowledged, Shaaann Remmmko, they will feel our fangs." Even the flattening effect of the translator couldn't mask the Orion's fight-rage.


"Sir, the missiles seem to be SBMs but they're not as heavy—not as light as an HBM, though."


The weight of the missiles wasn't the problem; it was their sheer number. A second and a third launch equal to the first roared out from the alien ships. Eye-searing radiation bloomed silently in space as the alien missiles were destroyed, or clawed and raged and died against the Contact Fleet's screens. But as efficient as those defenses and screens were, they couldn't stop all those missiles, and icons in Sean's tank began to flare out.


"Sir, we've lost Etla. Sir . . . Sir, one of the alien battleships just rammed."


He turned from the tank to stare. "They what?"


"Rammed, Sir."


Waldeck's voice crackled across the command link. "Sean, we can't concentrate on the SDs. The bulk of those missiles are coming from those Behemoths."


"Yes. Target this one, Cyrus." The icon in the tank began flashing. "Help Zteeffwiit and Captain MacDonald. We'll cover you on that side. We'll stop them. We have to. Cy, I'll even throw my dirty socks at them if that's all I have."


"That, my friend, may actually win the day. Acknowledged." There was no hint of what Waldeck was feeling in the dry-as-dust tone, but Sean knew him well enough that he could hear the unspoken Be careful. "Helm . . ." He paused a moment, realizing what was about to happen. "Take us in."


 


Ankaht watched in silent horror (Desperation.) as fire blossomed all around the Home Ships and her claws clenched and spread. She wasn't Destoshaz and found it nearly impossible to separate herself from the selnarm. Torhok snapped orders quietly as the screen flared and darkened, struggling to compensate for the violence happening all around them in space. She felt that they were suddenly falling into a fiery pit that had sprung open before them and could only watch as the battleship Maatsehnk sacrificed herself to destroy one of the monster's ships. Their selnarm thread of absolute dedication to the survival of the race—to the survival of God— made their deaths bearable. They died too quickly to transmit more than a flash of pain and that, one that the entire Race was used to. Teaching on that was universal. It was fear of that pain that slowed one's transition into the state of death and retarded attainment of holodah.


"All ships, all ships." Torhok's voice was harsh as a whip-crack. "Home Ships, energy batteries, open fire!" The massive generation ship's batteries sprang to life as well as their missiles as the alien ships came into range. Originally meant to defend against unknown threats or Oort objects in the target system, against Sean's fleet they flared to life with deadly effect.


Only one or two of Ankaht's lives had been Destoshaz and she found it very hard to access those memories. She closed her eyes and submerged into the selnarm necessary, keeping a kernel of reservation locked tight against the emotional surges of the Shiplings, the Destoshaz who had never known anything but space, vacuum, and constant threat. It took all of her training to maintain her individual thought. She struggled to access her tactical and strategic memories, aided by swimming in the selnarm of all the others because she had to do something, but forced into the role of the passive observer.


The alien ships, bigger than the tenders, smaller than the Home Ships, swatted missiles away from themselves like a swarm of blood-flies. They were moving into a different configuration that she could see was offensive. In response? Ankaht seethed at her own sensations. (Helplessness, fear, outrage.) This . . . finally one of her Destoshaz lives gave up its memories to her. This was probably all a miscommunication, like the siege and burning of Tel Mirmarnan. It felt like that disastrous sack of a city after the war was already over but neither side on the field knew. It felt the same. This is all wrong.


The alien ships were moving into a split wall that targeted the two nearest the Home Ships, effectively using their sheer bulk to block energy fire from the majority of the fleet. That kind of tactic obviously didn't work with missiles but it reduced their effectiveness.


Are they so confident? They are so few against the First Fleet. They cannot hope to stop us.


 


"Sir, we've lost Novi Berkley." Thompson's voice was calm, though what they'd just seen had startled the bridge into silence again. The alien ship had closed to energy range and though Berkley had fought back with her primary beams, cutting into the alien hull like a sword into a charging bull, even dead on its feet, with its heart pierced, the bull can still kill you.


"They rammed. They didn't even try to . . . try to . . . they just rammed. Sir, Temuchin is reporting fusion—"


"I see it, Nora." Sean sat back in his chair, making the restraints whine. They worked on the same principle as the compensators but being such small units they didn't adapt well to sudden motion.


"Ensign Perry, given that we don't know their design, pick your targets—but I would suggest, here." His light pen indicated an area on the schematic he'd just opened. It was near the collar of the enormous engines and the eye-searing light of the deceleration flare. Eye-searing despite the best filters, and the largest numbers of question marks from his analysts like—fuel?—scribbled in the margin of the flimsy. That particular note still sat on his desk in his ready cabin.


"Captain, pass along the suggestion."


"Aye, Sir."


The ensign didn't look away from her screens, acknowledging automatically as her eye skimmed over the unfamiliar design. How can he be so calm? They were heading into the thick of it and her fingers hammered down harder on the keys than absolutely necessary. Her body knew it was going into a fight and adrenaline overrode the knowledge of required force. Even the most highly trained, on some level, are when fighting the equivalent of a primate with a rock. But Sean had been fighting for most of his life and his calm was iron clad. Only he knew how hard it was for him to appear so cool.


As good as the human defense was, Dame Margaret and her sisters were taking damage as they closed. An alien primary sliced through the flag bridge, and amidst the shrieking alarms human cries mingled and Lieutenant Thompson silently fell sideways onto the floor, flooding it with blood as it sliced up through her torso and neck.


That was when Judith Perry fired primaries and the Contact Fleet found out a crucial bit of information about the aliens' fuel source.


The Arduans had not hauled a source of fuel with them, nor dealt with cumbersome "cumulative" drives. Deep in layers and layers of shielding and controls, using up 98 percent of the energy it produced just to control it, was a pinhole-sized black hole, a drive source that was never meant to withstand true combat. Even at their most "prepared for everything" thinking, the designers of the evacuation ships could not imagine facing intelligent species in combat, so this hardware that had worked well for almost fourteen hundred years failed. In the Ankseksumarnat some of the controls on the electron-sized hole vanished and it simply evaporated.


It was the sun blinking. One hundred seconds of a star's output compressed into one. The fourteen-kilometer ship just—disappeared along with half a dozen of her own defenders. Remko, the Dame Margaret, and her crew vanished mid-thought, along with twelve of her sisters. In that one second one hundred thousand beings died.


Nefrexhat, the sister ship to Ankseksumarnat, was just barely three light seconds away and lasted two full seconds, just long enough for her engineers to start to react before she blinked out as well, taking all eighty thousand Arduans aboard quite suddenly into the between life, as well as five of her own SDs.


 


(Shock, fear, rage, Rage, Rage, Rage.) The wave of selnarm rolled through the First Fleet turning the remaining Home Ships into the deadliest of reactions. Torhok, as senior admiral, threw his guidance into the surge. His officers, as green as they were, were also able to amplify his direction.


Ponderously their formation began to broaden and deepen as the enormous ships widened the light seconds between them so that they would no longer be a danger to each other, their parasite ships that remained became a webwork, the instinctive defensive cluster, in space, became almost a flattened sphere, somewhat like a red blood cell.


Torhok pulled himself further out of the beserkergang gestalt that the First Fleet had become and turned to Ankaht with a snarl. "Shaxzhu. Do you honestly think that this is all a misunderstanding? A mistake? They've proven how bloodthirsty they are. These vermin would grind half the universe against the other half to slaughter it. Our new Home is covered with ravening animals who would send the whole Universe into its next life. I will defend the Race and I will hear nothing from you that is not sensible. No more pacifistic nonsense in the place of advice!" Without waiting for her response he turned back to the battle that had turned into an interstellar equivalent of a brass knuckles brawl.


The Arduans had to batter the RFN back to missile range since their big ships were so very vulnerable, but even as they fought to do so, Telalamrhat and Buvastash both blinked into miniature suns.


Torhok leaned forward, folding his tentacle clusters together. "All junior ships. Announce targets before you destroy them. We have the numbers of the small ships. Save the Fleet and you are assured a quick rebirth. We will celebrate you in your next life, Destoshaz."


 


"Pull back." Waldeck's voice was even, as always, but his hands on the arms of the chair were white-knuckled. Dammit, Sean. His initial shock of grief at losing his friend and all the people in those ships could only be expressed to himself in that inappropriate and inadequate thought. "Missiles rage, ah, range." No one even twitched at the Freudian slip.


The RFN didn't have the forces to be able to take out the Behemoths at energy-weapon range and he wasn't about to order anyone into what was blatantly a suicide mission. And he'd mourn later. His job now was to make sure that these things didn't make it to Bellerophon and her state-of-the-art shipyards. We will all have the luxury of mourning, later. I swear.


"Sir, we've lost thirty-eight percent of the Fleet." Flag Captain Hodgson's voice was barely audible.


Then there was a totally unmilitary exclamation from Lieutenant Pearson. "Oh, shit, Sir."


"What is it, Lieutenant?"—barely out of Waldeck's mouth before he saw for himself.


"Sir . . ."


The aliens were kamikazeing. All the little ships, and something inside him winced at calling something the size of an SD "little," targeted and went after the RFN's supermonitors, completely unheeding of their own survival. He snapped, "All units, evasive action! Zteeffwiit, MacDonald, get your people out of range," even as ships not designed for close-quarter maneuvers were forced into them in an effort to save themselves.


The SMs writhed out of range of their attackers, brutally flushing their racks to keep the aliens off. Even in a battlefield light seconds across it was too close for these kinds of explosions. The aliens were not perfect in their coordination, targeting multiply redundant attacks on some ships while leaving others, like Williamsburg, Antietam, and Vicksburg, completely untouched.


For twenty-two days, four hours, two point zero seven seconds, the Montana had been Captain James Hajii's beautiful ship. And then she was an expanding ball of searing wreckage mixed with the remnants of the alien ship. Captain Hajji never knew that the Montana's last missile flight had chewed a hole in the screens of the Turankaton, one of the largest of the Home Ships, and destabilized her drive.


When the sixth alien Behemoth blew up, along with the kamikaze attacks of the smaller parasite ships, it crippled any hope that Cyrus might have had to actually destroy the rest of what he was now thinking of as an invasion fleet. In that last stupendous explosion, there came a pause in the battle, a hiccup in the flow that any good commander seizes control of the moment it becomes apparent. In some cases it is a shift in advantage.


"All units, disengage. Disengage. Everyone pull back."


The alien commander was also pulling his parasite ships back to their big ships, and the two sides pulled apart, Cyrus retreating faster than the alien heavies. In this instance neither commander had the weight to follow up on the enemy's retreat, neither could seize the advantage.


"Analysis! I need all the information I can get!" Waldeck's aristocratic accent was harsh over the flood of damage reports. Lieutenant Pearson cleared his throat before announcing. "Sir. Sir, we've lost forty-eight percent of the Contact Fleet. So far."


"The closest warp point and its defenses is Pegasus but they aren't heading anywhere near those coordinates," Commander Lawrence Nickle offered from his station.


Waldeck nodded thoughtfully as he stared at the tank. The four warp points were scattered almost equidistant along the ecliptic of the system, but the battle that had just happened was above them all, and the fourth warp point, Astria, was "below" the whole system slightly.


The reinforcements from further down the line wouldn't be able to get here in time to help them, vid heroes notwithstanding. They wouldn't be here for months. The planetary forts . . . only defended the yards themselves. They wouldn't be worth a tinker's damn trying to defend the planet itself.


"Nothing from the aliens, Sir."


"Thank you, Ensign."


The forts at the warp points could not be moved. They were equipped with station-keeping ability and that was about it. What was left of the fleet could, perhaps, defend the inner system if they pulled back all the way.


The mining in the major asteroid belt had been shut down days ago as a just-in-case, and he frowned, realizing that even if the last ships in the yards had been anywhere near completion they would have also been destroyed or hidden. How does one hide something that big? In plain sight. One turns a hull into an unpowered "asteroid" and hopes to find it again.


But. But. The big ships could obviously not transit warp, but the parasite ships were small enough. They could just spread down the arm while we were holed up here defending the planet. He unbent enough to pinch the bridge of his nose while he was thinking. A whanging headache was starting up behind his eyes. It was something he could only relieve in the privacy of his own cabin, if he had the time to grieve. No one would see him lose control. Not even now. So he ignored it, composing his features.


"We can defend the planet. Or we can hold Astria." His gut twisted in time to the pounding in his head but he'd never been one to let his emotions get the better of him. Better that he feel it physically. "We know that other forces are on the way; if we're lucky it will be as little as three months away. We cannot let these aliens through." It was a bitter, vile thought. He could not defend the twenty-three million citizens on Bellerophon. The ringing silence from his officers marked their own reactions as they worked it through and came to the same conclusions.


"All units. Retreat to Astria. Repeat, all units retreat to Astria."


"Sir, Graf Spee reported that she will not be capable of matching speed, but is taking on survivors from Yasuyoshi Maru and Indefatigable. With repairs she might make it to the yard."


"Acknowledged. Tell Captain Sedore to do what she can and join us at Astria. If not . . ." He paused for a long moment. "She is to leave the ship with the yard dogs and aid the planetary population as she sees fit. Her contact will be Commander Elizabeth Van Felsen at the Fleet Base."


 


"Senior Admiral." Torhok put down his drinking vessel with a carefully controlled click. Finally. The selnarm was full of the seething frustration of being held back and the willingness to change state, rage and fear offered freely to the Destoshaz commanders. It was a sweet and wild outpouring into his senses, echoing his own ecstatic urge to fight, to smash the danger, and he savored it like a fine meal. He was ready. He'd been ready days ago, but had ordered his officers to rest and care for themselves before the next—and last—push.


It hadn't taken as long as it could have. When the aliens had begun retreating to a point away from the inner planets it had only made it clear that it was one of these "transfer" points that apparently led to other habitable solar systems. Even though the Arduans didn't have that technology, they were already working trying to reverse engineer it beginning with clues offered by the broadcasts.


The Home Ships hadn't changed their deceleration, except for Kungankseht. Her damage was bad enough that even though they hadn't lost control of the fuel, they were required to divert enough power to that end that they hadn't been able to decelerate at the same rate. They'd overshoot the target and would have to work their way back unless things were settled enough here that another ship would be able to assist, later.


The lesser commander proffered a pad with the numbers blinking steadily downward. "We are within twelve transfers of clearing the noncombatants from Hurusankham. Alamirinehk will be cleared of all non-Destoshaz in five more and Kirru will be ready in one."


"Excellent. Then we will make this system safe for us all, Huremheb."


"Yes, Sir!"


 


"Here they come." Lieutenant Commander Huang's voice was soft as she called it and Waldeck nodded. The human forces had dropped back to the cover of the forts and minefields at the warp point. Even with fully 53 percent of the original fleet gone, there was a good chance that they'd be able to hold the point. The aliens had followed, ponderously in the case of the Behemoths, while their fighter SDs had harassed the human fleet as they fell back.


"They're accelerating, sir, coming in at five point four eight Gs." It was an oddness to speak of acceleration, which with modern human drives was a nonexistent measurement. But the Behemoths did not have the reactionless drives their smaller ships had.


"It seems that that is the best speed they have," Huang said.


"Yes, Commander." Waldeck wanted very badly to rub his face but restrained himself. "Our ships are much faster and tougher. If we're lucky, the Big Mothers will not be able to avoid the mines."


Waldeck's ships were already engaging the Behemoths, hoping to stop them more than three light seconds out from the forts. If he managed to destroy those monsters they'd take out the forts even as they died. If the RFN did enough damage to make them leave the point open, that was enough.


Least Claw Zteeffwiit and his battered carrier had retreated, as ordered, to the BR-01 warp point to support Vice Admiral Erica Krishmahnta who commanded the forces trapped on the other side of it, ready to head down the line with every bit of information that had been gleaned from the last battle and whatever could be understood from here.


At least that's one Tabby I could make see sense. The Orion's beloved fighters were all but useless against the Behemoths and could only engage the battleships and there seemed to be few of those. Whatever these aliens thought, they certainly built big.


He'd sent Captain Kirby-Hypher and her Eldorado through Andromeda with all the information for the forces there.


"No attempt to communicate at all?" Waldeck turned to his com tech, who shook her head.


"Nothing, sir. There doesn't even seem to be a lot of intership chatter. I've even tried the Bug frequencies and there's nothing there."


"Keep trying, Ms. Brooker."


"Yes, Sir."


Over the days they'd had for preparation as the aliens slowly changed course and came after them, the tension had strung tighter and tighter, like a violin bow arching itself the wrong way. The relief to be doing something other than repairs and trying to recoup losses was palpable. The frantic scrambling aftermath of the battle had butchered morale as well as ships and crews. Now, they had a chance to hit back, when Fleet Admiral Waldeck leaned forward slightly and said, "Engage."


Temuchin and Novalis, now part of Flag Captain Anderson's group, were the first to falter in coordination and a dozen alien missiles out of the hundreds roaring down on them slammed home.


Waldeck cursed to himself as he saw the alien parasites refusing to engage his supermonitors but skittering around his formation to attack the forts directly. Kamikaze again. There seemed to be no attempt to save their own lives at all. No lifeboats. Fort Maenad expanded into a blazing boil of energy as two SDs rammed home.


Williamsburg and her sisters pounded at a Behemoth as Waldeck began to realize that he couldn't hold the point after all. The aliens were avoiding the minefields, targeting the immobile forts with a complete disregard for their own lives. Against that he didn't have the firepower.


"Retreat. All units, retreat." The words were bitter in his mouth but he had to get what was left of the fleet out of an untenable situation.


"Commander, I'm forced to retreat."


A strange voice answered him. "Commander Stokes here, sir. The LC's dead. Get everyone left out. We'll cover your a—backs."


"And surrender after, if you can."


"Yes, Sir."


The pounding that the Williamsburg was taking was enough to start shaking things around him. "Drone message to Van Felsen. We are being forced to retreat. Offer no resistance to the aliens, Elizabeth. Surrender, and that's a direct order."


"On the tick, Sir."


"Thank you, Lieutenant."


The RFN forces were falling back, one after the other making transit under the cover of the others, and just as the last units were pushing through, Ozymandias struck a final lucky blow. Her primary beams sliced into and through one of the aliens' mobile moons.


That Behemoth actually seemed to stagger as the governors on the pinhole singularity in her belly vaporized, and under the fading glare of that blast, Williamsburg managed to limp through the warp point, barely able to make transit, leaving the system undefended. The humans and their allies had destroyed eight of the most enormous ships they'd ever seen, unknowingly killing almost four million of the aliens for whom the hady no name.


We lost fifty-eight percent of our force and took out eight percent of theirs, Waldeck thought. A Pyrrhic defeat.


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