the nebula of debris covered a volume of space much wider than that. It was actually becoming difficult to see what was going on at the cloud’s center. The radiation there was intense enough to scramble most sensors, though the ring-emplaced sensors were still doing a good job of spotting most of the stuff coming through.
The Xul warships continued to emerge, visible only as large shapes half-glimpsed through the debris cloud. They were coming through at low speed—at eighty to ninety kilometers per hour—and colliding with the drifting wreckage. While they weren’t moving fast enough to cause significant damage to their outer hulls with the collisions, they appeared to be disoriented, as though they weren’t expecting space to be so crowded with wreckage and debris.
Fire continued to rain down upon each in turn, tearing great gashes in ceramic-metal hull material that glowed red and orange with the intensity of the bombardment. The space in front of the stargate pulsed and strobed with the silent flashes of detonating antimatter warheads, and the debris haze was thick enough that plasma bolts and laser beams had become visible to the unaided eye, illuminated by the trails of vaporizing particles of dust and ice.
Those Xul warships that worked their way clear of the man-made nebula found themselves at the focus of long-range bombardment from nearly one hundred Commonwealth warships, and by the short-range jab and sting of Marine aerospace fighters.
Over the past twenty minutes, the battle had slowly transformed into a slaughter. From his vantage point, he could watch the Xul craft emerge from the gate, struggle to orient themselves, and come under that highly focused, devastating fire.
And, under that assault, one by one, the Xul hunterships died.
But the plan called for saving one of the monsters, a big one, if possible. …
Penetrator Team Savage
UCS Hermes
Stargate
Carson Space
0804 hrs, GMT
First Lieutenant Charel Ramsey brought the palm of his hand down on the link contact, and, with a heady surge of energy pulsing through his conscious mind, he became a god.
Ramsey was newly arrived on board the MIEF’s flagship. He’d joined her after a passage through from Earth on the heavy cruiser San Diego only four weeks ago, part of the reinforcement and resupply convoy operation designated Starlight III. As a new graduate of the Navy and Marine Corps Intelligence Training Center at Sinus Medii, on Luna, he’d been assigned to the expeditionary force’s N-2 division, answering to General Alexander’s command constellation directly and based here on board the Hermes. As an N-2 intelligence officer, he’d been assigned to a penetrator team.
And he was going in hot.
Integration complete, a voice—partially his own—said over the Intel net. Ramsey-Thoth now ready for launch.
Ramsey’s body was lying on one of the link couches inside Hermes’ Combat Ops Center, or COC, but his mind was … elsewhere. Linked by his neural implant system into Hermes’ computer network, with all other input signals blanked by his software, his mind’s eye was now residing within a narrow, tightly bounded virtual space representing a K-794 Spymaster probe.
Ramsey’s thoughts were integrated now with a powerful artificial intelligence given the name “Thoth,” an apt enough name, since the original Thoth had been the ancient Egyptian god of science, writing, knowledge … and magic. Designed to operate in this curious blend of human and artificial intelligence, Thoth provided Ramsey’s viewpoint with the speed, power, precision, and data acquisition functions of an AI. Ramsey provided purely human talents of flexibility, creativity, and intuition not yet possible for even the most powerful AIs.
The subjective effect was to give Ramsey a thrilling, deep-centered sense of truly godlike power and control, a feeling utterly unlike any other. It felt … wonderful. Addictively so.
“Probe Ramsey-Thoth is clear for launch,” the voice of Lieutenant Karen Hodges said in his mind. She would be his link with COC Control. “At your discretion, Gunny.”
“Copy that,” Ramsey replied.
“Be advised that a Type III is now transiting the gate,” Hodges added. Images built themselves up in an open window in Ramsey’s mind. He could see the two-kilometer Nightmare slowly emerging from the gate, its hull beginning to sparkle with the impacts of incoming fire. “Could be a good target of opportunity.”
“Copy that, COC Control. See you all back at the farm.”
With a thought-click, a powerful magnetic field hurled the probe clear of Hermes and into empty space. The probe’s N’mah-derived space drive switched on, and the Spymaster, with Ramsey’s viewpoint on board, hurtled toward the fizzy, nebular haze gathered in front of the stargate.
Targeting the emerging Type III, Ramsey locked onto the huge vessel and accelerated. …
Nine years ago, Ramsey had been a Marine gunnery sergeant, an enlisted grunt with twelve years of active duty behind him. He’d been part of the assault team that had gone into a planetoid hollowed out by the alien Eulers, and been the first human to establish direct mind-to-mind contact with them.
For another year, he’d served with the MIEF Contact Team, helping to establish the protocols and translation software that let humans communicate freely with the deeply alien, benthic species known as the Eulers, and worked as well on the design of Euler triggerships, adapting them for human use. At the end of that year, he’d been approached by the Office of Naval Intelligence and given the opportunity to come on board full-time as an e-spook. His experience with the Eulers, he’d been told, had demonstrated the levels of flexibility and mental adaptability the intelligence services were looking for.
Over all, it had been an interesting tour. The only downside was that as part of his training, he’d been sent to OCS and emerged as an officer.
As a former non-commissioned officer, Gunny Ramsey had been absolutely convinced that the true backbone of any military service was its NCO corps, a statement that likely had been a truism in the army of Nimrod. Becoming an officer had been a little like defecting to the other side. He still carried the nickname “Gunny,” and endured the good-natured teasing of his fellow commissioned officers.
Part of the problem was that he was now in his mid-forties, and literally twice the age of most of his associates. His other nickname, though not one usually used to his face, was “Grandpap.”
Damned kids …
The Spymaster probe, one of some hundreds loosed by the MIEF capital ships, dropped through the man-made nebula, homing now on the emerging Nightmare. The probe’s outer shell was growing hot now in two ways, from friction with dust particles and from the sea of radiation bathing the kill zone. He felt Thoth increasing the probe’s magnetic shielding, and begin jinking the two-meter-long dart in order to avoid Xul antimissile fire.
At the last possible moment, the Spymaster decelerated sharply, hitting nearly two hundred gravities. Ramsey didn’t feel that, of course, since he wasn’t physically on board the probe. Artfully arranged patterns of electrons, fortunately, were not subject to such inconveniences as gravity or high
