“The city will have a considerable momentum,” he said, “and it will take the Invardii as long to slow it down as it did to gain that momentum in the first place. If we hold off until the city is well clear of the sun, we might be able to get behind it and attack the damaged heat exchangers. If all goes well we will be hitting the city structure where it’s already weakened.
“But that depends on us wearing the enemy warships down to the point we can come and go as we please. To do that we have to knock out the flagships.”
There was a general murmuring as the commanders faced that unpalatable fact. Cagill looked over at the screen showing the deployment of the Invardii and Buccra forces, and watched the flagships disperse to cover the city on all sides.
“It looks like we will have to go with the original plan,” said Cordez ruefully. “We target the flagships, splitting our forces into a large formation to take on each of them, and we avoid the city as best we can.
“Any questions?”
There were none. Cordez didn’t know if he could rely on the word of the Buccra leader or not. He had bested the leader in a wrestling bout in the docking bay, and that ought to count for something. He had to admit, though, that he still wasn’t sure the enemy crews would stick to the plan he had suggested to them. He hadn’t wanted to give his pilots false hope of the Buccra switching allegiance, so he had told them nothing.
The Alliance had let the captured Buccra warship go, and Cagill’s navs officer had tracked it through a trajectory to rejoin its fellows, on a wide arc around the far side of the sun. He could only hope its disappearance, and sudden reappearance, wouldn’t trigger any awkward questions from the Invardii.
Cordez hoped the Buccra had taken his message to the other warships, and they had given it just as enthusiastic a reception as the leader of the warship had given it in the loading bay.
The Alliance forces were soon circling the imposing bulk of the Invardii city, looking like toy ships tracking across its immense surface. Swinging back and forth across each other’s path, generating flight complex patterns, they made difficult targets for the city’s plasma pulse weapons.
As the first angry red bolts of plasma began to range among the Alliance ships, they separated into individual swarms, condensing above each of the giant flagships.
Cordez held his breath, and hoped the city could be disabled before the coming attack on the flagships. With the pulse weapons still active the Alliance losses would be high, far too high, and he was acutely aware of that fact.
The Javelins were the first to begin their attacking run, and the enemy forces defending the flagships came forward to meet them. The Buccra circled out from the other defenders, moving to take the Alliance ships in the flank, but then hesitated. Looking as though they were giving ground before the Alliance forces they turned, and retreated toward the safety of the Invardii city.
By the time the Invardii began to question what was happening, it was too late. The Buccra warships sent a storm of heavy missiles toward the city, the same ones they had used to such devastating effect against the Sumerian motherships. The city was soon surrounded by the sparkling trails of an ever-decreasing net. Then another ripple of missiles sped toward the city, and also a third.
The pulse weapons frantically opened fire on the Buccra, but it was too late. The great city was now at the heart of concentric spheres of death, each closing at increasing speed and unstoppable in their intent.
Cordez didn’t want to watch the destruction, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away. The innermost ring of missiles hit the city, and didn’t penetrate the hull as easily as they had the motherships.
The brilliant lights of terrible explosions blossomed all over the immense surface of the city. Craters appeared across the hull as if by magic. The navs officer zoomed in on one of them, and Cordez could see the edges of individual decks where the outer layers had been stripped away. The city was shedding debris from the craters like some great beast bleeding from surface wounds.
The second wave of missiles automatically targeted the craters because they were weakened areas. They disappeared deep inside the city, and this time Cordez didn’t see them explode. All the same, he knew they were destroying the city from the inside out, the same way they had destroyed the motherships.
The flagships, with their attendant Reaper ships, had at last realized something was terribly wrong. They began to turn on the Buccra, but it was too late. The last wave of missiles hit the city, striking to the very heart of the great structure.
There was one vivid flash, as if some great internal reactor had been hit, and then all signs of life in the city ceased. The pulse weapons stopped firing, and the immense structure began to drift randomly. It had been reduced to a cooling, motionless hulk in space.
The Buccra warships fled the scene, and the flagships began to pursue them. Cordez saw that it was time for the Alliance to buy the Buccra a chance to escape.
He sent out the commands the Alliance ships had been waiting for, and every Sumerian and Human ship fell on the flagships, tearing chunks from them on every side. Then the Valkrethi descended on the wounds the ships had opened up. The flagships were forced to stop their pursuit of the Buccra, and defend themselves from the Alliance attack.
In the outer layers of the sun, one untouched flagship watched the new developments with growing dismay. Seeing the inevitable end, the command flagship slipped deeper into the sun, and made its silent way to a point on the other side of the red super giant. It would have a chance of entering stardrive undetected from there.
CHAPTER 34
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Further away from the flagships, the last of the Druanii and Magenta forces descended on the circling Reaper ships. They created havoc among them, leaving graveyards of dead ships in their wake.
It was part of the plan to destroy the flagships and enforce the treaties. Then the Invardii would have to withdraw from the Spiral Arm. But the Reaper ships did everything they could to stop the attack on the flagships, hoping at least one of them would escape.
At the heart of the action the Valkrethi had descended on the giant enemy ships, dropping into the rents and chasms created by the first waves of the attack. They were in many cases able to bypass the weapons the Invardii kept in the outer layers of the great ships.
Then the Valkrethi fought their way to the massive reactors at the core of the flagships, and set about destroying them. The giant ships succumbed, one by one, until most of them were drifting silently in space. Then one of the flagships blew apart from within, and the last flagship was shredded by a swarm of Valkrethi.
Cagill looked at the slowly expanding debris of the last flagship. There was still some mopping up to do, but it looked to him like the Invardii threat was over.
Even as the last of the Reaper ships were being systematically annihilated, Cordez knew there was a flagship missing. Congratulatory messages started to come in to his South Am headquarters. They were from dignitaries who had been following proceedings on sub space links. He cut them off abruptly.
It only needed one flagship to reseed the territory the Invardii claimed as their new cell. And once the last remaining flagship had escaped into the nothingness of stardrive, it would be able to play cat and mouse with the Alliance forever. Building up new shipyards, gathering resources in out of the way places, the Invardii would eventually be the same threat to Humanity they had been before.
Leaving the final phases of the battle to play themselves out, Cordez put through a priority call for his commanders to reconvene on the bridge of Cagill’s Javelin as soon as possible.
The Alliance commanders quickly grasped the importance of the missing flagship. The treaties between the three races that had descended from the Caerbrindii couldn’t be used to force the Invardii back to the core until the last flagship was destroyed. The thought the flagship might escape, and rebuild the Invardii presence in the Spiral Arm, was a bitter prospect for them all.
“S
preading our forces throughout Alliance space, and trying to pick up stardrive signatures, would exhaust us economically,” said Cordez. “We can’t maintain our forces at their present strength indefinitely.”
“Can we track the flagship in sub space?” said Finch, having discussed the problem previously with Matsu at Prometheus.
“Possibly,” said Cordez, “but the flagship only needs to keep moving. It will always take us days to assemble a sizable force and get it to the flagship’s last known location. I think it’s more likely it will hide out on the edges of known space, and rebuild its forces where we can’t detect its presence.”
The problem seemed insurmountable. The Alliance had come so far, and now they were foiled by the vastness of space and the elusiveness of one enemy ship.
“I take it your problem is finding out where the last flagship is,” said Fedic’s voice conversationally. It was emerging out of thin air in the center of the bridge.
There was a stunned silence, and then Cordez said, “Fedic, man, is that you?”
“What, you don’t recognize me?” said the voice jovially.
“Actually, we can’t see you,” said Cagill carefully.
“Really?” said Fedic, sounding genuinely puzzled. “I can see you, all of you. Nice to meet up again, by the way.”
“Fedic, we don’t know it’s you,” said Cordez from the sub space screen. “It could be someone, or something, impersonating you.”
“Oh, right,” said Fedic. “It’s this being dead thing I suppose.
“Ah, not, ah, literally,” he said, when he saw the expressions on their faces.
“Look, can we put my existence or non-existence aside for the moment? It’s rather hard to explain. What you want is the coordinates of the remaining flagship, right?
“Well, it’s in stardrive, but the coordinates of its exit point are BetaC4, 8.6 light years at 23.83/16.10 degrees. Got that?”
There were confused looks around the room. No one had ever been able to predict an exit point from an enemy ship in stardrive before.
Cagill glanced at the others. Opinion was clearly divided on the truthfulness of the information they were getting. Fedic had been thought of as dead, especially after the torus failed to surface out of the sun after the attack on the Invardii city.
However, one of them was more optimistic.
“Let’s do it,” said Cordez. He was convinced by the inflections in the voice of their invisible guest. It was Fedic’s speech pattern, and he knew Fedic better than anyone. If it felt to him like his stealth operative was in the room, then he probably was.
“We’ll know how good this information is within a couple of days,” continued Cordez, “and we can afford that much time.
“How will we contact you when we get to these coordinates, if we want further information?” he continued, addressing Fedic.
“I’m coming with you,” said Fedic. “Or ahead of you I think. Look, I don’t know how it’s going to be done, but I’ll be there by the time you get there, okay?”
“Okay,” said Cordez, his voice a lot steadier than he felt. Part of him was stunned by Fedic’s apparent resurrection, and part of him dared not hope his old friend was still alive. It seemed an odd sort of life that Fedic now had. He was alive somehow, somewhere, though not apparently here, and whether he had a physical presence was unknown.
The hastily assembled pursuit fleet was soon in transit to the coordinates Fedic had given them. It had almost reached its destination when Fedic’s voice appeared once again. He was still in his eerie, disembodied form, and Cagill had to resist the reaction to jump out of his skin when Fedic started to speak right alongside him.
“Come out of stardrive short of the flagship,” said Fedic quietly, “and get Cordez on sub space. There’s something I have to discuss with him.”
Cagill opened the sub space link, and tied in the Alliance commanders so they could hear as well.
“Good to hear your voice again, Fedic,” said Cordez. “Would be even better to see you.” They could tell he was smiling as he said it.
“Yes, well, sorry about that,” said Fedic. “The Caerbrindii say it’s a lot easier this way at the moment, rather than sending me to you physically. I’m not, er, all here yet.”
Cordez’ eyebrows went up several notches at the mention of the Caerbrindii, but he said nothing.
“The Caerbrindii, who are . . . well . . . it’s hard to explain . . . here with me, want to deal with the flagship themselves.
“There’s one Invardii they want to honor, one they want to make into a legend in their culture. If they can leave a pointer to a different way of looking at things, it may bring about change for the Invardii.
“This individual they want to honor killed off the super mind that ran the city, rather than let it make senseless decisions that would have led to destruction just for the sake of it. The Caerbrindii think, on the basis of that, there is hope for the Invardii yet.
“I have to go and set the story in motion, provide a basis for the myth, so to speak. The final moments of the flagship will be broadcast to all the Invardii cells in the core, and I have to put on a show for them.”
Cordez nodded. He didn’t really understand what Fedic was going to do, but he understood that sometimes evil was capable of change.
“You want us to wait here until you return,” he said, a statement of understanding more than a question.
This time it was Fedic’s turn to nod. Realizing Cordez couldn’t see him, he said “yes” from his position alongside Cagill, and vanished from the bridge.
Several light years away, he materialized in front of Kalken and her commanders, at the heart of the flagship’s command sphere. For this, the Caerbrindii had given him a body, of sorts, and a pale cloud of breathable air. It gave him a faint blue tinge. It was quite a contrast to the orange glow from the Invardii who were working around the command sphere.
Kalken recognized him as a rock dweller at once. She had seen the scans of their cities, seen their dead bodies floating in space after her forces had cut their ships open.
Once she had thought of them as insignificant scum on the gravity-bound wasteland of planets, but they had proved her wrong about that. Now, they had defeated an entire Invardii cell, and she had to accept that this was possible.
She also had no idea how this rock dweller had appeared on her flagship. No proximity alarms had sounded, no ships had been detected nearby – but here was this creature anyway.
Fedic held his arms straight out from his sides, and raised his hands slowly, palms out, in the Invardii gesture to honor a fallen enemy. One of Kalken’s commanders moved to fire a plasma pulse at the small figure in front of them, and she commanded him to let it say its piece.
For the first time she realized how different she was to the Invardii all about her. They would fight to the death, because that was all they knew. She would fight when it was needed, and she would also learn, and change, when that was the better choice. It struck her forcibly how unlike the others of her race she had become.
For a moment she was aware of the significance of each move she made now. Every detail of this encounter was being sent to the cells in the core. The death of a flagship was always a story to be recorded for future generations, and she was glad of that.
It was going to be the death of her flagship this time, she realized. Whatever force could send this rock dweller into their midst could easily destroy her ship, whatever she tried to do about it. She was surprised at how calm she felt
She also felt tired, as if the unrelenting hostility of the Invardii way of life was, for the first time, a burden to her. She brought her hands together to honor a great victory, knowing it was the victory of her enemy.
Fedic accepted the salute, and nodded to himself. It was finished.
He moved his arms, pointing to one of the great control banks around the command sphere, then another, then a third. The fail-safe protectors around the massive nuclear firestorms at t
he heart of the flagship withdrew, and the stuff of suns wound up toward critical in one tumultuous surge. Kalken looked at the energy spike, and knew there was nothing she could do to stop the overload.
She turned and saluted Fedic again, making sure the Invardii in the core knew she bowed before his superior way, and then the flagship disappeared in an enormous ball of white-hot fire.
The pursuit fleet picked up the detonation on their long-range scanners, and wondered what had happened. Then Fedic appeared on Cagill’s bridge, in his full physical form this time. Something seemed to let go of him, as if it had supported him through the last few days, and he slumped to the floor.
Cagill leaped from his chair and called the ship’s medics. He soon established that Fedic’s heartbeat and breathing were normal enough, and the medics were able to confirm he was more exhausted than anything else.
Back on Earth, a few days later, Cordez ushered Asura into the waiting vertical lift craft, and closed the door against the tumultuous crowds and the endless chanting of well-wishers.
They had done their duty as the two most powerful Regents of the trade blocks, as the media-dubbed ‘king and queen’ of Earth. They had been the architects of the Alliance of planets that had saved them all.
They had done it for more than the maximum legally allowed Regents’ term, and now they were the focus that allowed the people of Earth an outpouring of jubilation at the Alliance victory. It was a catharsis that would help the planet put the past behind them.
The Regents would help their people let go of a war footing, and return to a time of peace. It was enough. No one could ask any more of them.
“What do you think it will take?” said Asura.
“To disappear?” said Manoba. “Some surgery, a sex change, and major pigment augmentation!”
Asura laughed. “No, seriously,” she continued, “where can we go to start a normal life?”
There was a long silence as they thought about the possibilities. The vertical lift craft hummed quietly as it spirited them away to Cordez’ retreat in the hills.
Antares Crucible Page 22
