The Armageddon Inheritance fe-2

by David Weber

  No, this time he was going to have to let them in.

  “All task forces, withdraw behind the primary shield,” he said. “Instruct Fighter Command to stand by. Bring all ODC weaponry to readiness.”

  Adrienne Robbins swore softly as she retreated behind the shield. She knew going out to meet that much firepower would be a quick form of suicide, but Nergal had twenty-seven confirmed kills and nine probables, more than any other unit among Earth’s tattered survivors, and letting these vermin close without a fight galled her. More, it frightened her, because whether anyone chose to admit it or not, she knew what it meant.

  They were losing.

  Vassily Chernikov made a minute adjustment through his neural feed, nursing his core tap like an old cat with a single kitten. He’d been right to insist on building it, but all he felt now was hatred for the demon he had chained. It was breaking its bonds, slowly but surely, under the strain of continuous overload operation in a planetary atmosphere; when they snapped, it would be the end.

  * * *

  Lieutenant Samson’s belly tightened as he watched the developing attack pattern. They were coming in from the south this time—had they spotted the core tap? Realized how vital to Earth it was?

  Either way, it made little difference to Samson’s probable fate. The Iron Bitch was right in their path, floating with five other ODCs to help her bar the way … and the planetary shield was drawn in behind them.

  “Red Warning! Prepare for launch! Prepare for Launch! Red Warning!”

  The fighter crews, Terra-born and Imperials distinguishable now only by their names, charged up the ladders to their cockpits. General Ki Tran Thich settled into the pilot’s couch of his command fighter and flashed the commit signal over his neural feed. Drives hummed to life, EW officers tuned their defensive systems and weaponry, and the destruction-laden little craft howled up from their PDC homes on the man-made thunder of their sonic booms.

  Brashieel blinked inner and outer lids alike as his display blossomed with sudden threat sources. Great Nest! Sublight missiles at this range?

  But his consternation eased slightly as he saw the power readings. No, not missiles. They were something else, some sort of very small warships. He had never heard of anything like them, but, then, he had never heard of most of the Tarhish-spawned surprises these demon nest-killers had produced.

  “Missile batteries, stand by,” Gerald Hatcher ordered softly. This was going to be tricky. He and Tao-ling had trained to coordinate their southern-hemisphere PDCs, but this was the first time the bastards had come really close.

  He spared a moment to be thankful Sharon and the girls were safely under the protection of Horus’s Shepard Center HQ. It was just possible something was coming through this time.

  Andrew Samson swallowed as the interceptors drilled through the shield’s polar portal and it closed behind them. They were such tiny things to pit themselves against those kilometers-long Leviathans. It didn’t seem—

  “Stand by missile crews.” Captain M’wange’s voice was cold. “Shield generators to max. Deploy first hyper salvo.”

  The hyper missiles floated out of their bays, moored to the Bitch by chains of invisible force, and the Achuultani swept closer.

  “All ODCs engage—now!” Isaiah Hawter snapped.

  Nest Lord! Those were missiles!

  Slayer and War Hoof vanished from his scanners, and Brashieel winced. The nest-killers no longer used the greater thunder; they had come to rely almost entirely on those terrible warheads which did not explode … and for which the Nest had no counter. Slayer crumpled in on himself as a missile breached his shields; War Hoof simply disappeared, and the range was far too long for his own hyper missiles. What devil among the nest-killers had thought of putting hyper drives inside their missiles that way?

  More missiles dropped out of hyper, and Vindicator lurched as his shields trembled under a near-miss. And another. But Small Lord Hantorg had nerves of steel. He held his course, and Brashieel’s own weapons would range soon.

  He made his fingers and thumbs relax within the control gloves. Soon, he promised himself. Soon, my brothers!

  The small warships darted closer, and he wondered what they meant to do.

  Andrew Samson whooped as the huge ship died. That had been one of the Bitch’s missiles! Maybe even one of his!

  “All fighters—execute Bravo-Three!” General Ki barked, and Earth’s interceptors slashed into the Achuultani formation, darting down to swoop up from “below” at the last moment. They bucked and twisted, riding the surges from the heavy gravitonic warheads Terra hurled to meet her attackers, and their targeting systems reached out.

  Brashieel twitched in astonishment as the tiny warships wheeled, evading the close-in energy defenses. Only a few twelves perished; the others opened fire at pointblank range, and a hurricane of missiles lashed the Aku’Ultan ships. They lacked the brute power of the nest-killers’ heavy missiles, but there were many of them. A great many of them.

  Half a twelve of Vindicator’s brothers perished, like mighty qwelloq pulled down by tiny, stinging sulq. Clearly the nest-killers’ lords of thought had briefed them well. They fought in teams, many units striking as one, concentrating their fire on single quadrants of their victims’ shields, and when those isolated shields died under the tornadoes of flame blazing upon them, the ships they had been meant to save died with them.

  In desperation, Brashieel armed his own launchers without orders. Such a breach of procedure might mean his own death in dishonor, yet he could not simply crouch upon his duty pad and do nothing! His fingers twitched and sent forth a salvo of normal-space missiles, missiles of the greater thunder. They converged on a quarter-twelve of attacking sulq, and when their thunder merged, it washed over the nest-killers and gave them to the Furnace.

  “Good, Brashieel!” It was Small Lord Hantorg. “Very good!”

  Brashieel’s crest rose with pride as he heard Vindicator’s lord ordering other missile crews to copy his example.

  General Ki Tran Thich watched the tremendous Achuultani warship rip apart under his fire. He and Hideoshi had drawn lots for the right to lead the first interception, and he smiled wolfishly as he wheeled his fighter. The full power of the Seventy-First Fighter Group rode at his back as he searched for another target. There. That one would do nicely.

  He never saw the ten-thousand-megaton missile coming directly at him.

  * * *

  “Missile armaments exhausted,” General Tama Hideoshi’s ops officer reported, and Tama grunted. His own feeds had already told him, and he could feel his fighters dying … just as Thich had died. Who would have thought of turning shipkillers into proximity-fused SAMs? His interceptors’ energy armaments weren’t going to be enough against that kind of overkill!

  “All fighters withdraw to rearm,” he ordered. “Launch reserve strike. Instruct all pilots to maintain triple normal separation. They are to engage only with missiles—I repeat, only with missiles—then withdraw to rearm.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Earth’s fighters withdrew. Over three hundred of them had perished, yet that was but a tithe of their total strength, and the Achuultani probe had been reduced to twenty-seven units.

  The flight crews streamed back past the ODCs, heading for their own bases. It was up to the orbital fortifications, now—them, and the fire still slamming into the Achuultani from Earth’s southernmost PDCs.

  Brashieel watched the small warships scatter, fleeing his fire. The Protectors had found the way to defeat them, and he—he, a lowly assistant servant of thunder—had pointed the way!

  He felt his nestmates’ approval, yet he could not rejoice. Two-thirds of Vindicator’s brothers had died, and the nest-killers’ missiles still lashed the survivors. Worse, they were about to enter energy weapon range of those waiting fortresses. None of the scouts had done that before; they had engaged only with missiles at extreme range. Now was the great test. Now was the Time of Fire, when they would l
earn what those sullen fortresses could do.

  Andrew Samson watched the depleted fighters fell back. Imagine swatting fighters with heavy missiles! We couldn’t’ve gotten away with it; our sublight missiles are too slow, too easy to evade.

  The full Achuultani fire shifted to the Bitch and her sisters, and the ODC shuddered, twitching as if in fear as the warheads battered her shield. Her shield generators heated dangerously as Captain M’wange asked the impossible of them. They were covering too many hyper bands, Samson thought. Sooner or later, they would miss one, or an anti-matter warhead would overload them. And when that happened, Lucy Samson’s little boy Andrew would die.

  But in the meantime, he thought, taking careful aim … and bellowed in triumph as yet another massive warship tore apart. They were coming to kill him, but if they had not, how could he have killed them?

  “Stand by energy weapons,” Admiral Hawter said harshly. ODCs Eleven, Thirteen, and Sixteen were gone; there was going to be one hell of a hole over the pole, whatever happened. Far worse, some of their missiles had gotten through to Earth’s surface. He didn’t know how many, but any were too many when they carried that kind of firepower. Yet they were down to nineteen ships. He tried to tell himself that was a good sign, and his lips thinned over his teeth as the Achuultani kept coming.

  They were about to discover the difference between the beams of a battleship and a three-hundred-thousand-ton ODC, he thought viciously.

  Brashieel flinched as the waiting fortresses exploded with power. The terrible energy weapons which had slain so many of Vindicator’s brothers in ship-to-ship combat were as nothing beside this! They smote full upon the warships’ shields, and as they smote, those ships died. One, two, seven—still they died! Nothing could withstand that fury. Nothing!

  “All right!” Andrew Samson shouted. Six of them already, and more going! He picked a target whose shields wavered under fire from three different ODCs and popped a gravitonic warhead neatly through them. His victim perished, and this time there was no question who’d made the kill.

  “Withdraw.”

  The order went out, and Brashieel sighed with gratitude. Lord of Thought Mosharg must have learned what they had come to learn. They could leave.

  Assuming they could get away alive.

  “They’re withdrawing!” someone shouted, and Gerald Hatcher nodded. Yes, they were, but they’d cost too much before they went. Two missiles had actually gotten through the planetary shield despite all that Vassily and the PDCs could do, and thank God those bastards didn’t have gravitonic warheads.

  He closed his eyes briefly. One missile had been an ocean strike, and God only knew what that was going to do to Earth’s coastlines and ecology. The other had hit Australia, almost exactly in the center of Brisbane, and Gerald Hatcher felt the weight of personal despair. No shelter could withstand a direct hit of that magnitude, and how in the name of God could he tell Isaiah Hawter that he had just become a childless widower?

  The last Aku’Ultan warship vanished, fleeing into hyper before the reserve fighter strike caught it. Three of the seventy-two which had attacked escaped.

  Behind them, the southern hemisphere of the planet smoked and smoldered under twenty thousand megatons of destruction, and far, far ahead of them, Lord Chirdan’s engineers completed their final tests. Power plants came on line, stoking the furnaces of the mighty drive housings, and Lord Chirdan himself gave the order to engage.

  The moon men called Iapetus shuddered in its endless orbit around the planet they called Saturn. Shuddered … and began to move slowly away from its primary.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Servant of Thunders Brashieel crouched upon his new duty pad in master fire control. He still did not know how Vindicator had survived so long, but Small Lord Hantorg seemed to believe much of the credit was his. He was grateful for his small lord’s confidence, and even more that his new promotion gave him such splendid instrumentation.

  He bent his eyes on the vision plate, watching the rocky mass which paced Vindicator. The Nest seldom used such large weapons, but it was time and past time for the Protectors to finish these infernal nest-killers and move on.

  Gerald Hatcher felt a million years old as he propped his feet on the coffee table in Horus’s office. Even with biotechnics, there was a limit to the twenty-two-hour days a man could put in, and he’d passed it long ago.

  For seven months they had held on—somehow—but the end was in sight. His dog-weary personnel knew it, and the civilians must suspect. The heavens had been pocked with too much flame. Too many of their defenders had died … and their children. Fourteen times now the Achuultani had driven hyper missiles past the planetary shield. Most had struck water, lashing Earth’s battered coasts with tsunamis, wracking her with radiation and salt-poisoned typhoons, but four had found targets ashore. By God’s grace, one had landed in the middle of the African desert, but Brisbane had been joined by over four hundred million more dead, and all the miracles his people had wrought were but delays.

  How Vassily kept his tap up was more than Hatcher could tell, but he was holding it together, with his bare hands for all intents and purposes. The power still flowed, and Geb and his zombie-like crews kept the shield generators on line somehow. They could shut down no more than a handful for overhaul at any one time, but, like Vassily, Geb was doing the impossible.

  Yes, Hatcher thought, Earth had its miracle-workers … but at a price.

  “How—” He paused to clear his throat. “How’s Isaiah?”

  “Unchanged,” Horus said sadly, and Hatcher closed his eyes in pain.

  It had been terrible enough for Isaiah to preside over the slaughter of his crews, but Brisbane had finished him. Now he simply sat in his small room, staring at the pictures of his wife and children.

  His friends knew how magnificently he’d fought, rallying his battered ships again and again; he knew only that he hadn’t been good enough. That he’d let the Achuultani murder his family, and that most of the crews who’d fought for him with such supreme gallantry had also died. So they had, and too many of the survivors were like Isaiah—burned out, dead inside, hating themselves for being less than gods in the hour of their world’s extremity.

  Yet there were the others, Hatcher reminded himself. The ones like Horus, who’d assumed Isaiah’s duties when he collapsed. Like Adrienne Robbins, the senior surviving parasite skipper, who’d refused a direct order to take her damaged ship out of action. Like Vassily and Geb, who’d somehow risen above themselves to perform impossible tasks. Like the bone-weary crews of the ODCs and PDCs who fought on day after endless, hopeless day, and the fighter crews who went out again and again, and came back in ever fewer numbers.

  And, he thought, the people like Tsien Tao-ling, those very rare men and women who simply had no breaking point … and thank God for them.

  Of the Supreme Chiefs of Staff, Singhman and Ki had been killed … and so had Hawter, Hatcher thought sadly. Tama Hideoshi had taken over all that remained of Fighter Command, but Vassily was chained to Antarctica, Frederick Amesbury was working himself into his own grave in Plotting, trying desperately to keep tabs on the outer system through his Achuultani-crippled arrays, and Chiang Chien-su couldn’t possibly be spared from his heartbreaking responsibility for Civil Defense. So even with Horus taking over the remnants of Hawter’s warships and ODCs, Hatcher had been forced to hand the entire planet-side defense net over to Tsien while he himself concentrated on finding a way to keep the Achuultani from destroying Earth.

  But he was a general, not a wizard.

  “We’ve had it, Horus.” He watched the old Imperial carefully, but the governor didn’t even flinch. “We’re just kicking and scratching on the way to the gallows. I don’t see how Vassily can keep the tap up another two weeks.”

  “Should we stop kicking and scratching, then?” The question came out with a ghost of a smile, and Hatcher smiled back.

  “Hell no. I just needed to say it to someone before I
go back and start kicking again. Even if they take us out, we can make sure there are less of them for the next world on their list.”

  “My thoughts exactly.” Horus squeezed the bridge of his nose wearily. “Should we tell the civilians?”

  “Better not,” Hatcher sighed. “I’m not really scared of a panic, but I don’t see any reason to frighten them any worse than they already are.”

  “Agreed.”

  Horus rose and walked slowly to his office’s glass wall. The Colorado night was ripped by solid sheets of lightning as the outraged atmosphere gave up some of the violence it had been made to absorb, and a solid, unending roll of thunder shook the glass. Lightning and snow, he thought; crashing thunder and blizzards. Too much vaporized sea water, too many cubic kilometers of steam. The planetary albedo had shifted, more sunlight was reflected, and the temperature had dropped. There was no telling how much further it would go … and thank the Maker General Chiang had stockpiled food so fanatically, for the world’s crops were gone. But at least this one was turning to rain. Freezing cold rain, but rain.

  And they were still alive, he told himself as Hatcher stood silently to leave. Alive. Yet that, too, would change. Gerald was right. They were losing it, and something deep inside him wanted to curl up and get the dying finished. But he couldn’t do that.

  “Gerald,” his soft voice stopped Hatcher at the door, and Horus turned his eyes from the storm to meet the general’s. “In case we don’t get a chance to talk again, thank you.”

  The Hoof of Tarhish pawed the vacuum. Not even the Aku’Ultan could accelerate such masses with a snap of the fingers, but its speed had grown. Only a few twelves of tiao per segment, at first, then more. And more. More!