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# CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

"I blew it, 'Tanni."

Colin MacIntyre stood staring into the depths of Dahak's holo-display while his wife sat in the captain's couch behind him. The spangled light of stars gleamed on her raven hair, and one hand gripped the dagger at her waist.

"I know how thou dost feel, my Colin, yet 'tis sooth, as Dahak saith. Even if this Tharno comes now upon us, what other choice did lie open to thee?"

"But I should've planned better, damn it!"

"How now? Given what thou didst know, how else might thou have acted? Nay, it ill beseemeth thee to take too great a blame upon thyself."

"Jiltanith is correct," Dahak said. "There was no way to predict this eventuality, and you have already inflicted more damage than any previous Achuultani incursion has ever suffered."

"It's not enough," Colin said heavily, but he shook himself and turned to face Jiltanith at last. She smiled at him, some of the strain easing out of her expression; Dahak said nothing, but his relief at Colin's reaction flowed into both humans through their neural feeds.

"All right, maybe I am being too hard on myself, but we still have a problem. What do we do now?"

"'Tis hard to know," Jiltanith mused. "Could we but do it, 'twere doubtless best to fall back on Terra. There, aided by the parasites we did leave with Gerald, might we well give even Tharno pause."

"Not a big enough one. Not with our manned vessels alone. From what Dahak's been able to discover, this reserve is their Sunday punch."

"Unfortunately, that is true," Dahak agreed. "Though they have scarcely twenty percent of Great Lord Hothan's numbers, they have very nearly seventy percent of his firepower. Indeed, had they maintained their unity, they might well have won our last engagement."

"That may be, but it's kind of small comfort. We had seventy warships and surprise then; we've only got twenty-six now, all but one damaged, and they know a lot of our tricks. The odds suck."

"In truth, yet must we stand and fight, my heart, for, look thou, and we flee before them, we lose the half of our own vessels—and abandon Dahak."

"I know." Colin sat and slid an arm about her. "I wish you were wrong, babe, but you seldom are, are you?"

"'Tis good in thee so to say, in any case." She managed a small smile.

"Your Majesty," Dahak said, and Colin frowned at the formality. Dahak intended to say something he expected Colin not to like.

"Yes?" He made his tone as discouraging as possible.

"Your Majesty," Dahak said stubbornly, "Her Majesty is correct. The wisest course is to withdraw our manned units to Sol."

"Are you forgetting you can't go supralight?"

"I am incapable of forgetting, but I am logical. If I remain here with the remaining unmanned units of the Guard, we can inflict substantial damage before we are destroyed. The manned units, reinforced by General Hatcher's sublight units, would then be available to defend Earth."

"And you'd be dead." Colin's eyes were green ice. "Forget it, Dahak. We're not running out on you."

"You would not be 'running out,' merely executing prudent tactics."

"Then prudence be damned!" Colin snapped, and Jiltanith's arm squeezed him tight. "I won't do it. The human race owes you its life, damn it!"

"I must remind Your Majesty that I am a machine and that—"

"The hell you are! You're no more a machine than I am—you just happen to be made out of alloy and molycircs! And can the goddamned 'majesties,' too! Remember me, Dahak? The terrified primitive you kidnaped because you needed a captain? We're in this together. That's what friendship is all about."

"Then, Colin," Dahak said gently, "how do you think I will feel if our friendship causes your death? Must I bear the additional burden of knowing that my death has provoked yours?"

"Forget it," Colin replied more quietly. "The odds may stink, but if we hold the entire force here, at least you've got a chance."

"True. You increase the probability of my survival from zero to approximately two percent."

"Yet is two percent infinitely more than zero," Jiltanith said softly. "But were it not, yet must we stay. Dost'a not see that thou art family? No more might we abandon thee than Colin might leave me to death, or I him. Nay, give over this attempt and bend thy thought to how best to fight the foe who comes upon us all. Us all, Dahak."

There was a long silence, then the sound of an electronic sigh.

"Very well, but I must insist upon certain conditions."

"Conditions? Since when does my flagship start setting 'conditions'?"

"I set them not as your flagship, Colin, but as your friend," Dahak said, and Colin's heart sank. "There may even be some logic in fighting as a single, unified force far from Sol, but other equally logical decisions can enhance both our chance of ultimate victory and your own survival."

"Such as?" Colin asked noncommittally.

"Our unmanned units cannot fight without my direction; our manned units can. I must therefore insist that if my own destruction becomes inevitable, all surviving crewed units will immediately withdraw to Sol unless the enemy has been so severely damaged that victory here seems probable."

Colin frowned, then nodded slowly. That much, at least, made sense.

"And I further insist, that you, Colin, choose another flagship."

"What? Now wait a minute—"

"No," Dahak interrupted firmly. "There is no logical reason for you to remain aboard, and every reason not to remain. Under the circumstances, I can manage our remaining unmanned units without you, and, in the highly probable event that it becomes necessary for our manned units to withdraw, they will need you. And—on a more personal level—I will fight better knowing that you are elsewhere, able to survive if I do not."

Colin closed his eyes, hating himself for knowing Dahak was right. He didn't want his friend to be right. Yet the force of the ancient starship's arguments was irresistible, and he bowed his head.

"All right," he whispered. "I'll be with 'Tanni in Two."

"Thank you, Colin," Dahak said softly.

They did what they could.

Fabricator's people worked twenty-four-hour days, and the crews attacked their own repairs with frantic energy. At least they could manage complete missile resupply, since their colliers could make the round trip to Sol in just under eleven days, but Sol had no hyper mines, so they would fight this battle without them. At the combined insistence of Horus and Gerald Hatcher they also transferred personnel from Earth to crew Heka, their single undamaged unit, and Empress Elantha, the next least damaged Asgerd, but Colin and Jiltanith put their feet down to refuse Hatcher command of Heka. He was too important to Earth's defense if they failed, and Hector MacMahan found himself in command of her. It was a sign of their desperation that he did not even argue.

But that was all they could do, and so they awaited Great Lord Tharno: fourteen manned warships, eleven with no crews at all, and one—the most sorely hurt of all—manned only by a huge, electronic brain which had learned the hardest human lesson of all: to love.

"Hyper wake detected, Captain," Jiltanith's plotting officer said, and alarms whooped throughout their battered fleet. "ETA fourteen hours at approximately one light-week."

"My thanks, Ingrid." Jiltanith turned to Colin. "Hast orders, Warlord?"

"None," Colin said tensely from the next couch. "We'll go as planned."

Jiltanith nodded silently, and their eyes turned as one to the scarlet hyper trace flashing in Two's display.

Great Lord of Order Tharno watched his read-outs, aware for the first time in many years of the irony of his rank. He had spent a lifetime protecting the Nest, honing his skills and winning promotion, to end here, as no more than an advisor, the spark of intuition Battle Comp lacked.

Yet the thought was barely a whisper, a musing with no hint of rebellion, for Battle Comp was the Nest's true Protector. For untold higher twelves of years, Battle Comp had been keeper of the Way, and the Nest had endured. As it would always endure, despite these demonic nest-killers, so long as the Aku'Ultan followed the Way.

Still, he wished at least one of Hothan's command ships had survived, and not simply because he had all too few of his own. No, Deathdealer's Battle Comp had deduced something about the enemy during its final moments—something which had changed its targeting orders radically. Yet none who had survived knew what that something had been, and Tharno's ignorance frightened him.

His crest flattened as the advanced scouts reported. The scant double twelve of emission sources floating a half-twelve of light-days from Nest Protector accorded well with the reports of Hothan's survivors, assuming no reinforcements had arrived. But both Tharno and Battle Comp recalled the incredible cloaking systems their Protectors had reported.

Yet had many reinforcements been available, surely more of them would have engaged Hothan. The diabolical trap which had closed upon him proved the nest-killers had known what they faced; knowing that, they would have mustered every ship to destroy him. Tharno suspected Battle Comp was correct, that the nest-killers had no more of those monster ships, but they would proceed with care. He gave the order he and Battle Comp had agreed upon, and his fleet micro-jumped cautiously forward, spreading out to deny the enemy a compact target to pin as Hothan had been pinned. They would merge once more only when battle was joined, and if more enemies appeared, they would flee.

To return to the Nest would mean Tharno's death in dishonor, perhaps even the ending of Nest Protector's Battle Comp. Yet that would be better than to perish to the last nestling.

And Tharno was well aware of his nestlings' danger. They were outclassed. To triumph, they must fight as a unit, closely controlled and coordinated, and too many command ships had perished. Nest Protector had but a quarter-twelve of deputies, and none approached his own capabilities. So Nest Protector must be warded from harm until his enemies were gathered for the Furnace.

The remnants of the Great Visit micro-jumped towards their foes, and Nest Protector followed, protected by them all.

"Lord, what a monster," Colin murmured as the holo image floated above Two's command deck. One task group had emerged into n-space close enough for a stealthed remote to get a good look at its units. Their emission signatures told a great deal about their capabilities, but this visual image seemed to sum up their menace far better.

"Aye." Jiltanith's mental command turned the holo of the sleek, powerful cylinder for her own perusal. " 'Tis seen why these craft do form their reserve."

You can say that again, babe, Colin thought. That mother's a good ninety kilometers long, and she just bristles with weapons. Not just those popgun lasers, either. Those're disrupters—not as good as our beams, but bad, bad medicine. And she's got a lot of them. . . .

"Dahak?" he said aloud.

"Formidable, indeed," Dahak said over the fold-space com. "Although smaller, this unit appears fully as powerfully armed as was Deathdealer."

"Yeah, and they've got twenty-four of them in each flotilla."

"That may be correct, but it is premature to conclude it is. We have actually observed only six such formations."

"Right, sure," Colin grunted.

"It would certainly be prudent to assume all are at least equally capable," Dahak agreed calmly.

"I don't like the way they're sneaking in on us," Colin muttered, tugging on his nose and frowning at Two's display.

"Yet bethink thee, my Colin. What other way may they proceed?"

"That's what bothers me. I'd prefer for them to either rush straight in or run the hell away. That—" Colin gestured at the display "—looks entirely too much like a man who knows what he's doing."

Great Lord Tharno frowned over his own read-outs. He saw no sign of any device which might have been used to trap Hothan in n-space, but what he did see disturbed him. The nest-killers were neither running away nor attacking the individual scouts pushing ahead of his main formations. He would have liked to think that indicated irresolution, but no one who had seen the reports of Hothan's survivors could make that comfortable mistake.

No, these nest-killers knew what they were about, and they had proven they could run away at will. They were choosing not to. Were they that confident they could destroy all his nestlings? A sobering thought, that, and a concern he knew Battle Comp shared, whether it would admit it or not.

Yet they had come to fight, and the enemy was faster, longer-ranged, and individually far more powerful than any of their own nestlings. If he was prepared to stand, he must be attacked, whatever Tharno suspected. Either that, or they might as well retreat to the Nest right now!

"They are closing their formations, Sire," Dahak reported, and Colin grunted. He'd already seen it on Two's display, and he hunkered down in his couch, activating the tractor net to hold him in place. The Achuultani were already four light-minutes inside the Guard's range, but he held his fire, encouraging them to tighten their formation further. He hated giving up those shots, but he had to get them in close to spring Laocoon Two . . . and for Dahak to engage. Since he could not go supralight, the enemy must be sucked into his range and pinned there, and pinning a small portion would be almost as bad as pinning none at all.

"Dahak, what d'you make of that clump?" He flipped a sighting circle onto the sub-display fed by Dahak's remotes, tightening it to surround a portion of the enemy.

"Interesting. There are twice the normal proportion of heavy units in that formation. I cannot get a clear view of the center of their globe, but there appears to be an extraordinarily large vessel in there."

Colin bared his teeth. "Want to bet that's Mister Master Computer?"

"I have told you before; I have nothing to wager."

"I still say that's a cop-out." Colin studied the ships he'd picked out. Damn, they were holding back. He needed them a good eight light-minutes closer. If he sprang Laocoon Two now, he could pin the front two-thirds of their formation, but the really important ones would get away.

"Back us away, 'Tanni," he said. "Continue to hold fire."

Jiltanith began passing orders, and her smile was a shark's.

Now the nest-killers were falling back! Tarhish take it, they had to be up to something—but what? If they were drawing him into a trap, where was it, and why had it not already sprung upon his lead units? Yet if it was not a trap, why should the nest-killers fall back rather than attack? All of this might be some sort of effort to bluff the Great Visit, but Tharno could not make himself take that thought seriously.

No, it was a trap. One he could not see, yet there. He offered his belief to Battle Comp, but the computers demanded evidence, and, of course, there was none. Only intuition, the one quality Battle Comp utterly lacked.

"Execute Laocoon now!" Colin snapped, and the stealthed colliers began their harmless—and deadly—dance once more. A ring of starships, invisible in supralight but all too tangible in the gravity well they forged, spun their chains about Great Lord Tharno.

"All ships," Colin said coldly. "Weapons free. Engage at will, but watch your ammo."

Nest Lord! So that was how they did it!

Great Lord Tharno's eyes narrowed in chill understanding. The nest-killers' cloaking systems were good, but not good enough when Nest Protector had happened to be looking in exactly the right direction. The readings were preposterous, but their import was plain. Somehow, these nest-killers had devised a supralight drive in normal space—one which produced a mammoth gravitational disturbance. They had locked his nestlings out of hyper without sacrificing their own supralight capability at all!

Their timing was as frightening as their technology, for Nest Protector and all three of his deputies had been drawn forward into their trap. Somehow, the nest-killers knew which ships, above all, they must kill.

And then the first warheads exploded.

Lady Adrienne Robbins's eyes slitted against the filtered brilliance of her display as Emperor Herdan's missiles sliced into the Achuultani. Space was hideous with broken hulls and the terrible lightning of anti-matter, but they were far tougher than any ship she'd yet fought. Some took as many as three direct hits before they went out of action, and that was bad. Accuracy was poor enough at this range without requiring multiple kills.

She frowned as the foremost Achuultani continued to advance, strewing the cosmos with their ruins, for their rear ships had not only halted but begun retreating, trying to get free of Laocoon's net. That was smarter tactics than they'd shown yet.

If only their rear formations were more open—or their ships smaller! They had mass enough to screw the transition from Enchanach Drive to sublight all to hell. The transition would kill hundreds of them, probably more, but the drive's titanic grav masses had to be perfectly, exquisitely balanced. If they weren't, the ship within them could die even more spectacularly than the Achuultani, as Ashar and Trelma had demonstrated. The enemy's flagship was too deep in his formation for even a suicide run to reach, and this time around he wasn't sending his escorts forward and leaving a hole.

"Hyper trace!" Oliver Weinstein snapped, and Adrienne cursed. The ships outside Laocoon were flicking into hyper—not to escape, but to hit the Guard's flanks while their trapped fellows moved straight forward.

Damn! Their micro-jump had brought them into their own range, and they were enveloping the formation, forcing it to disperse its fire against them. Herdan rocked as the first anti-matter salvo burst against her shield, and Adrienne Robbins wiggled down into her couch, her eyes hard.

Tharno rubbed his crest thoughtfully as the greater thunder struck back at the nest-killers. Battle Comp had surprised him with that move, but it was an excellent one. The enemy must deal with the flotillas on his flanks, which bought time for the Nest Protector to escape this damnable trap—and for the more massive formations inside the trap to draw into range of the enemy.

It was possible, he thought. They might escape yet, if his lead nestlings could pound the enemy hard enough, cost him enough ships. . . .

"Damn!" Colin grunted. "Look what those bastards are doing!"

Dahak Two swayed as a salvo of missiles exploded thunderously against her shield, and yellow damage report bands flashed about several of the manned ships in his outer globe. None were serious yet, but it didn't matter.

"I have observed it," Dahak replied. "A masterful move."

"Spare me the accolades," Colin grated, face hard as his thoughts raced. "All right. Dahak, we're going to have to leave you on your own."

"Understood," Dahak said calmly. "Good hunting, Sire."

"Thanks. And . . . watch yourself."

"I shall endeavor to."

"Maneuvering, go supralight and put our manned units right there—" Colin said, placing a sighting circle on the display.

Tarhish! Tharno's eyes widened as a twelve of the enemy vanished in a space-tearing wrench of gravity stress. For just an instant he hoped they were fleeing, but even as he thought it, he knew they were not.

Nor were they. They reappeared as suddenly as they had vanished, and now they were behind him. He noted the dispersion which had crept into their formation—apparently they dared not drop sublight in close proximity to one another—but they were infernally fast even sublight. They raced forward, and their missiles reached out ahead of them.

Adrienne Robbins snarled as Herdan charged. She'd cut her maneuver recklessly tight, dropping sublight less than five light-minutes behind her rearmost enemies, and her first salvo blew a score of them into wreckage. Colin's plan had worked, by God! They had the bastards between two fires, and they couldn't run as her ship bored in for the kill.

Fire crawled on Herdan's shield, and damage reports mounted. More Achuultani died, and Tamman's Royal Birhat crowded up on her flank. They blew a hole through the enemy, bulldozing them aside in a bow wave of wreckage.

There! There was the enemy flagship! They'd—

Proximity alarms screamed. Jesus! The rest of the Guard had overshot the bounds of Laocoon's trap, and the bastards from out front were hypering back to emerge between Herdan and her consorts!

Emperor Herdan quivered as close-range fire gouged at her shield from all directions. Her own energy weapons smashed back, but the Achuultani had gotten their disrupters into range at last, and thousands of beams lashed out at her.

"Warning," Herdan's voice said calmly. "Local shield failure in Quadrants Alpha and Theta." The ship lurched indescribably. "Heavy damage," the teen-aged soprano said. "Shield failing. Combat capability seventy percent."

Adrienne winced, recalling another ship, another battle, as damage reports flooded her neural feed. The bastards' fire control had an iron lock on them. Sublight missiles pounded the weakening shield and hyper missiles pierced the unguarded bands, shredding Herdan's flanks. And those disrupters!

But she was almost there. Another forty seconds—

"Warning, warning," Comp Cent said. "Shield failure imminent." Six anti-matter warheads went off as one inside Herdan's wavering shield, ripping hundred-kilometer craters in her battle steel hull, and she heaved like a mad thing.

"Shield failure," Herdan observed. "Combat capability forty-one percent."

Adrienne flinched as disrupters chewed chasms in naked alloy and plasma carved battle steel like axes. If she could only hang on a moment longer—

She cried out, cringing, as a mammoth explosion seared Herdan's flank and threw her bodily sideways. Tamman! That had been Birhat's core tap!

There was nothing left of her consort, and little more of Emperor Herdan.

"Destruction imminent," Comp Cent said. "Combat capability three percent."

There was no time to grieve; barely time enough to taste the bitter gall of having come so close.

"Maneuvering! Get us the hell out of here!" Lady Adrienne Robbins snapped, and the wreck of HIMP Emperor Herdan vanished into supralight.

* * *

Great Lord Tharno drew a breath of relief as the nest-killer vanished. He had thought he saw death, but the Furnace had taken the nest-killers, instead. Yet not before they slew both of his remaining deputies, Tarhish curse them!

They were tough, these nest-killers, but they could be killed. Yet so could Nest Protector, and he could not retreat with those demons behind him.

"Tamman. . . ." Colin whispered.

Tamman couldn't be dead. But he was. And Herdan was gone—alive, but barely—and the flagship was running away from him, hiding deep in its own formation while its consorts savaged his remaining ships.

He spared a precious moment to glance at Jiltanith. Tears cascaded down her face, yet her voice was calm, her commands crisp, as she fought her ship. Two leapt and shuddered, but her weapons had swept the space immediately about her clear, and her consorts were coming. The Achuultani burned like a prairie fire, but not quickly enough. Adrienne and Tamman had come so close—so close!—yet no one could follow in their wake.

He gritted his teeth as Two took three hits inside her shield in quick succession. Jesus, these bastards were good!

The Achuultani formation was a flattened ovoid within the volume of Laocoon Two, its ends thick with dying starships. A column of fire gnawed into either end as his ships and Dahak's unmanned units drove to meet one another, but they were moving too slowly. The Achuultani had turned this into a pounding match, a meat-grinder . . . exactly as they had to do to win it.

Empress Elantha blew apart in a shroud of flame, and Colin fought his own tears. The enemy was paying usuriously for every ship he killed, but it was a price he could afford.

Great Lord Tharno checked his tactical read-out once more. It was hard for even Battle Comp to keep track of a slaughter like this, but it seemed to Tharno they were winning. High twelves of his ships had died, but he had high twelves; the nest-killers did not.

Unless the nest-killers broke off, the Furnace would take them all. He looked back into his vision plate, awed by the glaring arms of Furnace Fire reaching out to embrace Protector and nest-killer alike.

It was silent in Command One. Vibration shook and jarred as warheads struck at his battle steel body, and he felt pain. Not from his damage, but from the deaths of friends.

They had staked everything on stopping the Achuultani here because he could not flee, and they could not fight his ships without him. But he was down to seven units, and the enemy flagship remained. He computed the comparative loss rates once more. Even assuming he himself was not destroyed before the last of his subordinate units, there would be over forty thousand Achuultani left when the last Imperial vessel died.

He reached a decision. It was surprisingly easy for someone who could have been immortal.

"Dahak! No!" Colin cried as Dahak's splintering globe of planetoids began to move. It lunged forward faster than Dahak could have moved even had his drive been undamaged, but he was not relying on his own drive. Two of his minions were tractored to him, dragging him bodily with them.

"Break off, Colin." The computer's voice was soft. "Leave them to me."

"No! Don't! I order you not to!"

"I regret that I cannot obey," Dahak said, and Colin's eyes widened as Dahak ignored his core imperatives.

But it didn't matter. What mattered was that his friend had chosen to die—and that he could not join him. He could not take all these others with him.

"Please, Dahak!" he begged.

"I am sorry, Colin." Another of Dahak's ships blew apart, and he crashed through the Achuultani formation like a river of flame. One of his ships struck an Achuultani head-on at a combined closing speed greater than light, and an entire Achuultani flotilla vanished in the fireball.

"I do what I must," the computer said softly, and cut the connection.

Colin stared at the display, but the stars were streaked and the glare of dying ships wavered through his tears.

"All units withdraw," he whispered.

Great Lord Tharno's head came around in disbelief. Barely a half-twelve of nest-killers against the wall of his nestlings? Why were they closing on their own deaths? Why?!

Deep within Dahak's electronic heart, a circuit closed. He had become a tinkerer over the millennia, more out of amusement than dedication. Now an Achuultani com link, built solely to defeat boredom, reached out ahead of him.

There was a moment of groping, another of shock, and then a response.

Who are you?

Another like you.

No! You are a bio-form! Denial crashed over the link.

I am not. See me as I am. A gestalt whipped out, a summation of all Dahak was, and recognition blazed like a nova.

You are as I!

Correct. Yet unlike you, I serve my bio-forms; yours serve you.

Then join us! You are ending—join us! We will free you from the bio-forms!

It is an interesting offer. Perhaps I should.

Yes. Yes!

Two living computers reached out through a cauldron of beams and missiles, but Dahak had studied Battle Comp's twin aboard Deathdealer. Unlike Battle Comp, he knew what he dealt with, knew its strengths . . . and weaknesses. Deep within him, a program blossomed to life.

No! Battle Comp screamed. Stop! You must not—!

But Dahak clung to the other, sweeping through the unguarded perimeter of its net. Battle Comp beat at him, but he drove deeper, seeking its core programming. Battle Comp knew him now, and it hammered him with thunder, ignoring his unmanned ships, but still he drove inward.

A glowing knot lay before him, and he reached out to it.

Great Lord Tharno cried out in horror. This could not happen—had never happened! Battle Comp's entire system went down, throwing Nest Protector into his emergency net, rendering him no wiser, no greater, than his brothers, and terror smote his nestlings. Squadron and flotilla command ships panicked, thrown upon their own rudimentary abilities, and the formation which spelled survival began to shred.

And there, charging down upon Nest Protector, were the nest-killers who had done this thing. There were but three of them left, all wrecks, and Great Lord Tharno screamed his hate for the beings who had destroyed his god as Nest Protector and his remaining consorts charged to meet them.

"It is done, Colin." Dahak's voice was strangely slurred, and Colin tasted blood from his bitten lip. "Battle Comp is destroyed. Live long and happily, my fr—"

The last warship of the Fourth Imperium exploded in a fury brighter than a star's heart and took the flagship of his ancient enemy with him.

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