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# 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!

Now Vindicator rode the mighty projectile's flank, joined with his brothers in a solid phalanx to guard their weapon.

They must be seen soon, but the Hoof's defenses were strong, and the nest-killers could not even range accurately upon it without first blasting aside the half-twelve of great twelves of scouts which remained. They would defend the Hoof with their own deaths and clear a way through what remained of the nest-killers' defenses, for they were Protectors.

"Oh my God."

Sir Frederick Amesbury's Plotting teams were going berserk trying to analyze the Achuultani's current maneuvers, for there was no sane reason for them to be clustered that way on a course like that. But something about the whisper cut through the weary, frantic background hum, and he turned to Major Joanna Osgood, his senior watch officer.

"What is it, Major?" But her mahogany face was frozen and she did not answer. He touched her shoulder. "Jo?"

Major Osgood shook herself.

"I found the answer, sir," she said. "Iapetus."

Her Caribbean accent's flattened calm frightened Amesbury, for he knew what produced that tone. There was a realm beyond fear, for when no hope remained there was no reason to fear.

"Explain, Major," he said gently.

"I finally managed to hyper an array out-system and got a look at Saturn, sir." She met the general's gaze calmly. "Iapetus isn't there anymore."

"It's true, Ger." Amesbury's weary face looked back from Hatcher's com screen. "It took some time to get a probe near enough to burn through their ships' energy emissions and confirm it, but we found it right enough. Dead center in their formation: Iapetus—the eighth moon of Saturn."

"I see." Hatcher wanted to curse, to revile God for letting this happen, but there was no point, and his voice was soft. "How bad is it?"

"It's the end, unless we can stop the bloody thing. This is no asteroid, Ger—it's a bleeding moon. Six times the mass of Ceres."

"Moving how fast?"

"Fast enough to see us off," Amesbury replied grimly. "They could have done that simply by dropping it into Sol's gravity well and letting it fall 'downhill' to us, but we'd've had too much time. They've put shields on it, but if we could pop a few hyper missiles through them, we might be able to blow the bugger apart before it reaches us. That's why they're bringing it in under power; they don't want to expose it to our fire any longer than they have to.

"Their drives are much slower than ours are, but they've got the ruddy gravity well to work with, too. I don't know how they did it—even if they hadn't been picking off our sensor arrays, we were watching the asteroids, not the outer-system moons—but I reckon they started out with a very low initial acceleration. Only they're coming from Saturn, Ger. I don't know when they actually started, but we're just past opposition, which means we're over one-and-a-half billion kilometers apart on a straight line. But they're not on a straight-line course . . . and they've been accelerating all the way.

"They're coming at us at upwards of five hundred kilometers per second—seven times faster than a 'fast' meteorite. I haven't bothered to calculate how many trillions of megatons that equates to, because it doesn't matter. That moon will punch through our shield like a bullet through butter, and they'll reach us in about six days. That's how long we've got to stop them."

"We can't, Frederick," Hatcher sighed. "We just can't do it."

"I bloody well know we can't," Amesbury said harshly, "but that doesn't mean we don't have to try!"

"I know." Hatcher made his shoulders straighten. "Leave it with me, Frederick. We'll give it our best shot."

"I know," Amesbury said much more softly. "And . . . God bless, Ger."

Faces paled as the news spread among Earth's defenders. This was the end. When that stupendous hammer came down, Earth would shatter like a walnut.

Some had given too much, stretched their reserves too thin, and they snapped. Most simply retreated from reality, but a handful went berserk, and their fellows were almost grateful, for subduing them diverted their minds from their own terror.

Yet only a minority broke. For most, survival, even hope, were no longer factors, and they manned their battle stations without hysteria, cold and determined . . . and desperate.

Servant of Thunders Brashieel noted the changing energy signatures. So. The nest-killers knew, and they would strive to thrust the Hoof aside, to destroy it. Already the orbital fortresses were moving, concentrating to meet them, but many smaller hooves had been prepared to pelt the planetary shield, driving it back, exposing those fortresses to the Protectors' thunder. They would clear a path for the Hoof, and nothing could stop them. The nest-killers could not even see the Hoof to fire upon it unless they destroyed Vindicator and his brothers, and they would never do that in time.

He watched his magnificent instruments as Lord of Order Chirdan shifted formation, placing a thicker wall of his nestlings between the Hoof and the nest-killers' world. Vindicator anchored one edge of that wall.

Lieutenant Andrew Samson felt queerly calm. Governor Horus had shifted his remaining forts to give the Bitch support, but the Achuultani had expected that. Kinetic projectiles had hammered the planetary shield back for days, stripping it away from the ODCs. Raiding squadrons had charged in, paying a high price for their attacks but picking off the battered ODCs. Of the six which originally had protected the pole, only the damaged Bitch remained, and she'd expended too much ammunition defending herself. Without Earth's orbital industry, just keeping up with expenditures was difficult . . . not to mention the risk colliers ran between the shield and the ODCs to resupply them.

Andrew Samson had long ago abandoned any expectation of surviving Earth's siege, but he'd continued to hope his world would live. Now he knew it probably would not, and that purged the last fear from his system, leaving only a strange, bittersweet regret.

The last fleet units would make their try soon. They'd been hoarded for this moment, waiting until the Achuultani were within pointblank range of Earth's defenses. Their chances of surviving the next few hours were even lower than his own, but the ODCs would do what they could to cover them. He checked his remaining hyper missiles. Thirty-seven, and less than four hundred in the Bitch's other magazines. It wouldn't be enough.

Acting Commodore Adrienne Robbins checked her formation. All fifteen of Earth's remaining battleships, little more than a single squadron, were formed up about her wounded Nergal. Half Nergal's launchers had been destroyed by the near-miss which had pierced her shield and killed eighty of her three hundred people, but she had her drive . . . and her energy weapons.

The threadbare remnants of the cruisers and destroyers—seventy-four of them, in all—screened the pitiful handful of capital ships. Eighty-nine warships; her first and final task force command.

"Task Force ready to proceed, Governor," she told the face on her com.

"Proceed," Horus said quietly. "May the Maker go with you, Commodore."

"And with you, sir," she replied, then shifted to her command net, and her voice was clear and calm. "The Task Force will advance," she said.

Brashieel watched in grudging admiration as the nest-killers advanced. There were so few of them, and barely a twelve of their biggest ones. Their crews must know they would be chaff for the Furnace, yet still they came, and something within him saluted their courage. In this moment they were not nest-killers; they were Protectors, just as truly as he himself.

But such thoughts would not stay his hand. The Nest had survived for uncountable higher twelves of years only by slaying its enemies while they were yet weak. It was a lesson the Aku'Ultan had learned long ago from the Great Nest-Killers who had driven the Aku'Ultan from their own Nest Place.

It would not happen again.

Gerald Hatcher felt sick as Commodore Robbins led her ships out to die. But the fire control of his orbital and ground-side fortresses couldn't even see Iapetus unless an opening could be blown for them, and those doomed ships were his one hope to open a way.

"If we get a fix, lock it in tight, Plotting," he said harshly.

"Acknowledged," Sir Frederick Amesbury replied.

"Request permission to engage," Tama Hideoshi said from his own screen, and Hatcher noted the general's flight suit. They had more fighters than crews now, but even so Hideoshi had no business flying this mission. Yet there was no tomorrow this time, and he chose not to object.

"Not yet. Hold inside the shield till the ships engage."

"Acknowledged." Tama's voice was unhappy, but he understood. He would wait until the Achuultani were too busy punching missiles at Robbins' ships to wipe his own fragile craft from the universe.

"Task Force opening fire," someone said, and another voice came over the link, soft and prayerful, its owner not even aware he had spoken.

"Go, baby! Go!" it whispered.

Adrienne Robbins had discussed her plan with Horus, not that there was much "planning" to it. There was but one possible tactic: to go right down their throat behind every missile she had. Perhaps, just perhaps, they could swamp the defenses, get in among them with their energy weapons. None would survive such close combat, but they might punch a hole before they died.

And so Earth's ships belched missiles at her murderers, hyper and sublight alike. Their launchers went to continuous rapid fire, spitting out homing sublight weapons without even worrying about targeting. The lethal projectiles were a cloud of death, and the first hyper missiles from Earth came with them.

Lord of Order Chirdan's head bobbed in anguish as his nestlings died. He had known the nest-killers must come forth and hurl their every weapon against him, yet not even Battle Comp had predicted carnage such as this!

The missile storm was a whirlwind, boring into the center of the wall defending the Hoof. Anti-matter pyres and gravitonic warheads savaged his ships, and his inner lids narrowed. They sought to blow a hole and charge into it with their infernal energy weapons! They would die there, but in their dying they might expose the Hoof to their fellows upon the planet.

He could not allow that, and his orders went out. The edges of his wall of ships thinned, drawing together in the center to block the attack, and his own, shorter-ranged missiles struck back.

* * *

Time had no meaning. There was only a shrieking eternity of dying ships and a glare that lit Earth's night skies like twice a hundred suns. Adrienne Robbins saw it reaching for her ships, saw her lighter destroyers and cruisers burning like coals from a forge, and she adjusted her course slightly.

The solid core of her out-numbered task force drove for the exact center of that vortex of death, and their magazines were almost dry.

"Go!" Tama Hideoshi snapped, and Earth's last surviving interceptors howled heavenward. He rode his flight couch, his EW officer at his side, and smiled. He was fifty-nine years old, and only his biotechnics made this possible. Three years before, he'd known he would never fly combat again. Now he would, and if his world must die, at least he had been given this final gift, to die in her defense as a samurai should.

Nest Lord! Their small ships were attacking, too! Brashieel had not thought so many remained, but they did, and they charged on the heels of their larger, dying brothers, covered by their deaths.

A few of the Bitch's launchers still had hyper missiles, but Andrew Samson was down to sublight weapons. It was long range, too much time for the bastards to pick them off, but each of his weapons they had to deal with was one more strain on their defenses. He sent them out at four-second intervals.

Lord Chirdan cursed. The nest-killers were dying by twelves, yet they had cut deep into his formation. Six twelves of his ships had already perished, and the terrible harvest of the nest-killer beams was only starting.

Their warships vanished into the heart of his own, robbing his outer missile crews of targets, and they retargeted on the orbital fortresses.

Gerald Hatcher's face was stone as the first ODC died. Missiles pelted the planetary shield, as well, but he almost welcomed those. Even if they broke through, killed millions of civilians, he would welcome them, for each missile sent against Earth was one not sent against his orbital launchers.

He sat back and felt utterly useless. There was no reserve. He'd committed everything he had. Now he had nothing to do but watch the slaughter of his people.

Missiles coated the Iron Bitch's shield in a blinding corona, and still she struck back.

Andrew Samson was a machine, part of his console. His magazine was down to ten percent and dropping fast, but he didn't even think of slowing his rate of fire. There was no point, and he pounded his foes, his brain full of the thunder wracking the Achuultani formation.

He never saw the hyper missile which finally popped the Bitch's shields. He died with his mind still full of thunder.

* * *

Tama Hideoshi's fighters slammed into the Achuultani, and their missiles flashed away. Scores of Achuultani ships died, but the enemy formation closed anyway. Commodore Robbins' ships vanished into the maelstrom, and the fighters were dying too quickly to follow.

They exhausted their missiles and closed with energy guns.

Adrienne Robbins was halfway through the Achuultani, but her cruisers and destroyers were gone. The back of her mind burned with the image of the destroyer London as her captain took her at full drive directly into one of the Achuultani monsters behind the continuous fire of his energy weapons, bursting through its weakened shield and dragging it into death with him. Yet it wasn't enough. She and her battleships were alone, the only units with the strength to endure the fury, and even they were going fast. Nergal herself had taken another near miss, and tangled skeins of atmosphere followed her like a trail of blood.

Another Achuultani ship died under her energy weapons, but another loomed beyond it, and still another. They wouldn't break through after all.

Adrienne Robbins drove her crippled command forward, and Nergal's eight surviving sisters charged at her side.

Tsien Tao-ling's scanners told him Commodore Robbins would not succeed. Yet . . . in a way, she might yet. His eyes closed as he concentrated on his feed, his brain clear and cold, buttressed against panic. Yes. Robbins had drawn most of the defenders onto her own ships, thickening the center of their formation but thinning its edges. Perhaps—

The hail of missiles from the PDCs stopped as his neural feed overrode their firing orders. He felt Hatcher's shock through his cross feed to Shepard Center, but there was no time to explain.

And then the launchers retargeted and spoke, hurling their massed missiles at a sphere of space barely three hundred kilometers across. Two thousand gravitonic warheads went off as one.

Twenty kilometers of starship went mad, hurled end-for-end as the wave of destruction broke across it. Servant of Thunders Brashieel clung to his duty pad, blood bursting from his nostrils as the universe exploded about him, and Tsien Tao-ling's fury spat Vindicator forth like the seed of a grape.

"Contact!" Sir Frederick Amesbury screamed, his British reserve shattered at last. Tsien had blown a brief hole through the Achuultani flank, and Amesbury's computers locked onto Iapetus. The data flashed to the PDCs and surviving ODCs, and their missiles retargeted once more.

Lord Chirdan cursed and slammed a double-thumbed fist into the bulkhead. No! They could not have done that! Not while the Hoof had so far to go!

But he fought himself back under control, watching missiles rip at the Hoof even as his ravaged nestlings raced to reposition themselves. Shields guttered and flared, and one quadrant failed. A missile dodged through the gap, its anti-matter warhead incinerating the generators of yet another quadrant, but it was too late.

Without direct observation, not even these demon-spawned nest-killers could kill the Hoof before it struck, and his scouts had already spread back out to deny them that observation and hide the damaged shield quadrants.

He bared his teeth in a snarl, turning back to the five surviving nest-killer warships. He would give them to the Furnace, and their deaths would fan the Fire awaiting their cursed world.

Hatcher's momentary elation died. It had been a magnificent try, but it had failed, and he felt himself relax into a curious tranquillity of sorrow for the death of his planet, coupled with a deep, abiding pride in his people.

He watched almost calmly as the thinning screen of Achuultani ships moved still closer. There were no more than three hundred of them, four at the most, but it would be enough.

"General Hatcher!" His head snapped up at the sudden cry from Plotting. There was something strange about that voice. Something he could not quite put his finger upon. And then he had it. Hope. There was hope in it!

Nergal was alone, the last survivor of Terra's squadrons.

Adrienne Robbins had no idea why her ship was still alive, nor dared she take time to consider it. Her mind blazed hotter than the warheads bursting against her shield, and still she moved forward. There was no sanity in it. One battleship, her missiles exhausted, could never stop Iapetus. But sanity was an encumbrance. Nergal had come to attack that moon, and attack she would.

The wall was thinning, and she could feel the moon through her scanners. She altered course slightly, smashing at her foes—

—and suddenly they vanished in a gut-wrenching fury of gravitonic destruction that tossed Nergal like a cork.

Lord Chirdan saw without understanding. Three twelves of warships—four twelves—five! Impossible warships. Warships vaster than the Hoof itself!

They came out of nowhere at impossible speeds and began to kill.

Missiles that did not miss. Beams that licked away ships like tinder. Shields that brushed aside the mightiest thunders. They were the darkest nightmare of the Aku'Ultan, fleshed in shields and battle steel.

Lord Chirdan's flagship vanished in a boil of flame, and his scouts died with him. In the end, not even Protectors could abide the coming of those night demons. A pitiful handful broke, tried to flee, but they were too deep in the gravity well to escape into hyper, and—one-by-one—they died.

Yet before the last Protector perished, he saw one great warship advance upon the Hoof. Its missiles reached out—sublight missiles that took precise station on the charging moon before they flared to dreadful life. A surge of gravitonic fury raced out from them, even its backlash terrible enough to shake the wounded Earth to her core, triggering earthquakes, waking volcanoes.

Yet that was but an echo of their power. Sixteen gravitonic warheads, each hundreds of times more powerful than anything Earth had boasted, flashed into destruction . . . and took the moon Iapetus with them.

Gerald Hatcher sagged in disbelief, too shocked even to feel joy, and the breathless silence of his command post was an extension of his own.

Then a screen on his com panel lit, and a face he knew looked out of it.

"Sorry we cut it so close," Colin MacIntyre said softly.

And then—then—the command post exploded in cheers.

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