then pivoted sharply, its nose swinging to align with the swift-growing mass of the Turusch asteroid command vessel. Moving sideways now, continuing to pivot to keep the enemy ship directly off the fighter’s nose and continuing to fire, the Starhawk slid past the Turusch monster’s shields scarcely a kilometer away, passing the target with a relative velocity of less than two kilometers per second.
The close passage was far too fast-moving for merely human reflexes. Allyn’s fighter AI controlled the target acquisition, lock, and firing, but she was riding the software through her internal link, providing a measure of human control behind the lightning-swift reflexes of the AI computer. Through that link, she could feel the flow of quantum-based fuzzy logic, the sparkle of equations and angle-of-attack, the bright clarity of computer-enhanced sensory input.
For a brief instant, the asteroid filled her forward field of view, a vast, dark blur rendered almost invisible by its tightly closed gravitic shielding. Her AI continued, with superhuman speed, to focus on a single, thread-thin line of a target. Gatling projectiles slammed across the enemy’s shields to either side … and then, with startling suddenness, the shield collapsed, revealing a backup shield just beyond. The AI shifted aim slightly and began hammering at a second, reserve wave guide … and then at a third when the second shield collapsed as well.
How many reserves were there? Something the size of an asteroid could carry a lot of layered wave guides, with only the outer two functioning at any given instant. So little was known about Turusch combat doctrine and the engineering details of their warships. All the Dragonfires could do was continue to hammer at any targets that presented themselves to the fast-shifting perspective of the passing fighters.
The actual close passage lasted perhaps two and a half seconds; it felt like much longer. Subjective time slowed for a pilot linked in with her tactical computer in a way that had nothing to do with the time dilation of relativistic travel, and everything to do with the sheer volume of information flooding through her neural pathways.
Her Starhawk had just passed the Turusch ship, was traveling tail-forward now as its nose continued to pivot on the enemy, when a final wave guide vaporized and a last-rank gravitic shield failed.
“Soft target!” she yelled over the comm link, as she triggered the last two of her Krait missiles. For the briefest of instants, she could see a gray and powdery landscape pocked by immense craters, the towers of communications and sensor arrays, the dull-silver domes of weapons turrets and gun positions.
Blue Five was too close to the enemy shields.
“Blue Five!” she yelled over the comm. “Change vector!”
Then white light engulfed her forward sensory inputs, filling her universe with raw, star-hot fury. The blast wave—a shell of hot plasma racing out from the surface of the Turusch asteroid ship at tens of kilometers per second—struck her vessel hard, smashing her to one side and putting her into a helplessly out-of-control tumble.
More blast waves followed, a succession of them as the other Dragonfires hammered at the opening with nuke-tipped missiles, and then as incoming warheads from the fleet found the suddenly revealed weakness.
But Allyn had lost consciousness with the first savage impact.
Chapter Eight
26 September 2404
Tactician Emphatic Blossom at Dawn
Enforcer Radiant Severing
0032 hours, TFT
Tactician Blossom felt the rumble of successive nuclear strikes pulsing against the rock shell of the Radiant Severing. Turusch physiology was extremely sensitive to both air- and ground-borne vibrations and the shudders were painful—the equivalent of blasting a shrill noise into a human’s ear.
The gravitic shields were failing, the enemy’s nuclear munitions getting through.
In point of fact, the Radiant Severing’s command centers were buried deep within the mass of nickel-iron that formed the huge vessel’s body. The enemy fleet could pound them for g’nyuu’m on end and not reach the ship’s deepest recesses.
But the shields would begin to fall one after another now, as each failure uncovered another line of shield wave guides exposed on the planetoid’s surface. Eventually, all surface structures would be reduced to radioactive debris; the Severing would be blind and deaf with its sensor arrays vaporized, helpless with its weapons destroyed, trapped immobile with its drive projectors inoperative.
“Kill!” its higher self screamed, but the middle self overrode the instinct-laden surge of raw emotion.
“Swing to new heading,” it ordered the Severing’s helm control, adding a string of coordinates. “Accelerate to deepest reach. Pass orders for the rest of the fleet to fall back and cover.”
“The enemy may pursue,” Blossom’s tactical coordinator, its second-in-command, told it. “Our power reserves are low, the damage to our shields severe.”
“They will not pursue,” Blossom replied, the statement arising jointly from both its low and middle minds. “The enemy is focused on protecting, perhaps recovering its colony on the planet surface. When we return with reinforcements, we will find the enemy long gone.”
The system would soon be within Turusch tentacle-grasp, of that Emphatic Blossom was certain. The tragedy was that they’d not been able to cripple the enemy fleet as planned … most particularly that their fighters had not been able to win through to the enemy fighter carrier and destroy it. Such a blow might well have wrecked the enemy’s offensive capabilities in this sector for g’nyi’nyeh to come.
But if the enemy force was still more or less intact, so too was the Turusch battlefleet. The Radiant Severing was not in contact with the other ships. One of the shields had collapsed. The nuclear fury unleashed within the next few seconds against the planetoid’s surface had vaporized lasercom projectors and radio antennae. But as the command vessel withdrew, the other Turusch ships would fall back to protect it.
“Accelerating,” the tactical coordinator announced.
Blossom’s higher self writhed in an agony of angry frustration.
Marine Sick Bay
Eta Boötis IV
0056 hours, TFT
Gray came fully awake with a rush of panic. Get them off me!…
But the “they” were gone. He was floating in air, face up, staring up at the glow panels overhead, heart pounding as fragments of memory clawed at his mind. The scream rising in his throat choked off short. He tried to sit up, and failed.
His eyes opened and he looked up into a metallic nightmare. A robot had emerged from a cabinet in the wall and was hovering above him, all metal and plastic and huge, cold lenses for eyes. The remaining panic induced by the local fauna transferred itself to something more immediate—the looming presence of the medical robot. He screamed, tried to lash out against the thing, but his hands were trapped.
“Whoa. Take it easy there, zorchie,” a voice said.
Blinking,
