Ruler of Naught (74 page)

o0o

Anaris watched Juvaszt issue orders to the Rifter destroyer
and frigates that had been defending Arthelion against the lance attacks.
Despite the hammer-blows the man’s assurance had taken in the last few minutes,
his actions were precise and accurate.

It helped that the reports from Engineering were fairly
hopeful. One engine was down for at least forty-eight hours, but even so, the
Fist
of Dol’jhar
was still a formidable engine of war with the Urian-enhanced
skipmissiles. Now that they knew there was no threat to the Avatar, events
would turn rapidly against the Panarchists in the middle system.

As for his own campaign, Anaris was fairly sure that he had
the edge with Juvaszt. He hoped so. It would be a shame to have to purge him.

Well, that was still in the future. There was much to do in
the meantime. He motioned to Morrighon, then held up his hand and stayed him as
he heard the next orders.

“Navigation, as soon as Engineering reports ready, take us
in to ten light-minutes out from
Deathstorm’s
position. Weapons, charge
skipmissile.”

He means to deny the hyperwave to the Panarchists by
destroying the ship.

Anaris stepped forward. Juvaszt turned to him, his air of
deference deeply satisfying.

“Kyvernat,” said Anaris, pitching his voice for Juvaszt
alone, “perhaps this delay is for the best.”

Juvaszt seemed puzzled “Well, the Panarchist forces will be
concentrated around
Deathstorm
longer, so our auxiliaries will have
more time to find and kill them.”

Anaris was chagrined at having revealed his tactical ignorance—in
hindsight it seemed obvious that using the Rifter destroyer as bait would make
the enemy easier to find. But he didn’t miss a beat. “I leave that to you. I
was merely concerned that our Rifter allies not lose heart.” He smiled,
inviting Juvaszt to share his joke. “They are not, after all, Dol’jharians.”

A short bark of laughter escaped Juvaszt. Anaris sensed his
appreciation—never to be expressed in words—at the lack of gloating on his
part. “No more than I am a Panarchist, it seems.”

Anaris felt a wave of triumph. That was the equivalent of
surrender in a proud Dol’jharian noble like Juvaszt. He gestured dismissal.
“I’d be a fool if I lived on Arthelion as long as I did and learned nothing of
their ways.” He paused for effect. “And even more a fool if I learned too
much.”

Juvaszt laughed again. “A fool, or dead,” he agreed. “Among
the Children of Dol it’s usually the same thing, which is our strength.”

He turned back to his console. Anaris could see the
real-time feed changing as he queried various Rifter ships fighting around the
Deathstorm
and called more to the engagement. After more reports from Engineering and
Weapons, Juvaszt issued new orders and the
Fist of Dol’jhar
finally skipped
out of Arthelion orbit to join the battle.

o0o

Dyarch Ehyana Bengiat watched as the
Flammarion
fell
away behind her lance and then vanished in a pulse of reddish light. She
switched the viewscreen to the forward view. Ahead a dim spark of light marked
their target, the Rifter destroyer
Deathstorm
, dead in space.

There was no other sign of the struggle all around them.
Space was too large, and human ships, even battlecruisers, far too small. She
couldn’t even see the other lances. Had she known where to look, their stealthed
hulls would have defeated her eyes, just as their other countermeasures
defeated the far keener senses of enemy ships. In silence, against
diamond-sprinkled velvet, the
Eisenkuss
lunged toward its prey.

It would be several minutes before they reached the sprint
point, where the engines would trigger into overload to take them through the
destroyer’s shields, past any weapons that might be brought to bear.
And
they must know we’re coming for them.
As Meliarch Abrams had pointed out in
the briefing, the fact that Captain Armenhaut hadn’t used the ruptors was a
dead giveaway.

Well, there was no use worrying about that. She stretched
against the dead weight of her battle armor, not yet energized, and then
triggered the diagnostic sequence.

“Again?” came a dramatic groan over the general access channel.

“You’d look pretty funny wallowing around in half a ton of
inert dyplast and battle alloy, Jheng-li,” she replied. “Yeah, again.”

She grinned privately. Solarch Jones Jheng-li affected an
aversion to any effort that went beyond the usual Marine avoidance of scut
work, but his squad was consistently near the top of the ratings in simulations
and exercises. A few mocking comments followed, but quickly subsided. A
Marine’s battle armor was serious business: the thirty men and women on
board—five squads—busied themselves confirming the status of the servo-armor
that made them the deadliest fighters in human history.

A web of colored lines swept across her faceplate, followed
by a flux of alphanumerics as the eyes-on display cycled.
All AyKay there.

The diagnostic sequence completed as the navcomp warned of
the approaching sprint point, just as she’d intended. Now the
Deathstorm
had a shape, long and angular, slightly blurred by the gas and debris leaking
from its wounds.

Bengiat tapped the big go-pad with one gauntleted hand, the
only part of her yet powered up, and that at only five percent. Her faceplate
sealed. She felt the clamps engage around her armor.

‘Time to shut your face or suck vacuum, Mary,” she said,
observing the ancient tradition. “Prepare for gees.”

“Will you respect me in the morning?” yelled Jheng-li, his
voice near manic in one of the many traditional responses, provoking a flurry
of similar cracks as her five squads pumped themselves up for attack.

Then the heart-lifting cascades of the Phoenix Fanfare’s
trumpet chords filled the com channel. The navcomp triggered the engines, and
no one had any breath left for talking. Everything in a lance was aimed at one
goal: taking it safely through the space-time distortion of a fully driven tesla
field behind the fierce jet of a shaped nuclear charge. Only the bare minimum
of energy was spared to cushion the Marines from gee-forces. It was a ten-gee
ride all the way in.

On the screen the destroyer swelled alarmingly, filled the
view, and vanished in a flare of light that blanked the viewscreen as a
shattering roar rattled her bones. The lance’s hull rang like a vast bell
struck by an avalanche as the engines were triggered into destructive overload,
carrying them through the savage deceleration of an impact that would otherwise
have reduced them all to blobs of jelly in their armored boots.

After a pause of ringing silence, another roar as the front
of the lance exploded outward. The interior filled with smoke, which whipped
into madly rushing streamers of gray that were pulled around the edges of the
opening into the destroyer, escaping toward the vacuum of space. They slowed
into random eddies as white sealant pumped out.

“Was it good for you?” yelled Jheng-li, provoking a wave of
laughter and bawdy comments.

Bengiat’s faceplate flashed, the clamps on her limbs
disengaged with a rattle, and her suit came to life. The gee-tank elevated and
she stepped out.

“Let’s go,” she yelled, waving the five other Marines in her
squad forward.

o0o

“The starboard hangar bay’s pretty much done for, but we’re
still fit, otherwise.” Bea Doial grimaced. “We got off lightly, considering.”

Hayashi nodded. Captain Doial and her crew had learned
something that often killed the student: that no simulator could duplicate the
real impact of a ruptor. But he saw only eagerness in her face now, and in
Galt’s, too, in the other window. They were at the fifth staging point,
preparing for the fifth attack on Arthelion.

“Courier report incoming,” said Ensign Mellieur. Her console
twittered. She looked up, startled.

“From Captain Ng. The
Fist of Dol’jhar
has joined the
battle around
Deathstorm
. The Marines are on board.”

“Damn,” said Hayashi.

“We knew they’d tip to it eventually,” said Galt.

On the screen a tactical plot windowed up with correlated
transponder and courier data; he saw Doial’s and Gait’s expressions tighten as
Mellieur echoed it to them.

“Even though it’s just what Juvaszt wants, we’ve got to attack
the
Fist
every time it approaches
Deathstorm
until the Marines
get clear with the FTL comm. Give him no rest, free up the battleblimps to
smash Rifters.”

“While he and said Rifters get lots of shots at the fleet.”
Doial’s tone was matter of fact.

“And we at them.” Hayashi started sketching on his
plot-pane, the screen echoing his movements with bold lines of color.

“Here’s how we’ll start...”

o0o

Bengiat’s squad spilled out the front of the lance in
drill-perfect form, covering each other, but as was almost always the case,
there was no one waiting for them. It was impossible to predict just where a
lance would impact. Her squad deployed, positioning themselves to defend the
other four squads as they emerged.

She scanned the wreckage of the hold they’d penetrated,
looking past the gruesome blotches of shattered flesh decorating the twisted
bulkheads. The hatch to the corridor outside hung by a single hinge; a Marine
grasped it with one gauntlet and wrenched it off, sending it spinning to one
side.

She felt a grinding shock as another lance struck the
destroyer, then another. Her comm crackled to life.

“Bengiat, status,” came the voice of Meliarch Abrams. The
rest of the lance’s contingent spilled out into the hold.

“Secure the corridor,” she commanded, then switched to the
command channel.

“Breach secured, sir. No casualties, all full effective.”

“Good. You’re furthest forward and up. Proceed to the bridge
and secure the FTL device. Extract the comm codes and grab the comtech if you
can.” A tactical map spidered up on her faceplate. “Secure these points on your
way.” Circles bloomed on several corridor junctions and stairs—they couldn’t
use the transtubes. The map shifted, with other points highlighted. “We’ll
secure the port and starboard hangar bays and the ships for evacuation, and
shut down what’s left of the power.”

“AyKay, sir. Understood.”

“You heard the man,” she shouted. “We haven’t got much
time—when the Dol’jharians figure out what we’re after they’ll try to blow up
the ship. Move it!”

They double-timed down the corridor, following the green traces
in their faceplates supplied by their tactical computers. Every Navy ship had
the plans for every type of vessel ever built; thanks to their tac-comps, the
Marines probably knew this destroyer better than most of its crew.

From time to time red targets flashed on the bulkheads or
overhead, answered by bursts of plasma from the jacs of the Marines: imagers
and other sensors identified by the tac-comps.

At the critical points identified by Meliarch Abrams she
deployed small groups of three to hold them—half a squad. A lance contingent,
five squads of six, was an almost infinitely adaptable force. They moved as a
unit, effortlessly coordinated by years of training, and yet as individuals,
immediately responsive to any situation. Nothing could match them, and they
knew it.

As they approached the bridge her suit discriminators picked
up sounds indicative of some sort of defensive effort. She halted the two
squads short of the last corner and popped a Scuttler out of her suit. The
little device shot around the corner, relaying a clear picture of the six
Rifters in half-armor clustered behind two plasma cannons before a flare of
energy from a jac vaporized it.

“Jheng-li, deploy two for splash-n-burn, smoggers at minus
three. Sniller, stun-bombs to follow up. Amasuri, you and I with the wasps.”
She looked around as the other Marines scrambled into position, the two
Jheng-li had assigned for splash-n-burn dialing their jacs to wide aperture.
The rest not called out took up positions to cover their rear. She called up
the wasp setting with her eyes-on, felt the little missiles click into
readiness below her wrists.

“AyKay. Five, four, three...”

o0o

Kyvernat Juvaszt could feel a titanic headache building. The
grainy flickering of the real-time feeds from their Rifter allies in-system
gnawed at his eyes; his irritation was compounded by the ghost images and
jeering voices from other Rifters throughout the Thousand Suns that the
discriminators couldn’t entirely eliminate.

He glanced at Serakhnat Mekhli-chur at the tactical console.
Was he keeping up with the flood of information? The tactical plot was jumpy,
but appeared to be updating properly. It was hard to tell. Juvaszt tried to
shed the fretful question. He had the best officers Dol’jhar had to offer. He
must rely on their competence.

And they all knew the price of failure.

The presence of the conditional heir didn’t help, either.
Anaris had refrained from gloating, and his suggestions had been genuinely
useful, but having him standing behind the command pod was almost as bad as
having the Avatar there.
Except that his understanding runs deeper.

Juvaszt shifted in the command pod, shocked by the dangerous
direction of his thoughts.

His tactical officer leaned toward him. “I suggest these new
coordinates for the
Satansclaw
and
Bloodknife
,” he said. Above, a
screen echoed his comments graphically. Juvaszt nodded. Serakhnat Mekhli-chur
turned away and began issuing the orders.

“Sensors indicate boarding in progress on
Deathstorm
,”
said the sensors officer.