Stephen Berry - Final Assault

Sighing, L'Wrona dropped Toy's speed down to standard.

"Mines!" shouted the computer. "All around!"

Cursing, L'Wrona cut speed, tried to nullify forward thrust, even as an alarm sounded. "Incoming missiles!" warned Dad. "Move and the mines get us, don't move and the missiles get us."

"Missiles from where?" said L'Wrona.

"Two heavily armed commercial vessels." It all came up on the tacscan then: the red of the minefield surrounding the jump point, the incoming red streaks of the shipbusters, the yellow Xs of the two hostiles, and standing well outside the minefield, the small, fragile green of Toy.

"Origin of vessels?" said L'Wrona, seeing only one way out.

"ID'd as Combine T'Lan," said Dad.

The missiles penetrated the minefield and were destroyed-as planned. Noiseless, a spectacular wave of overlapping orange-red explosions licked toward the scout, a chain reaction racing from mine to mine.

"Short jump, backside," snapped L'Wrona.

Toy disappeared as the blast reached her.

"Yes or no?" said the face in the commscreen.

The man wearing the uniform of a Combine merchant captain shrugged. "Maybe yes, maybe no. We think we got him, but the tacscan shows no ship residue. There should be at least some traces of the drive isotopes."

"He may have blind jumped. If so, he's as good as dead," said the other. "Remain on station until you hear from me again, Captain."

"Yes, Goodman T'Lan."

As the Combine captain's image disappeared, T'Lan, neither good nor a man, turned to the other human-adapted AI, one who could and did pass for his son and heir. "That's L'Wrona's home system. He probably jumped, but I doubt it was blind. We'll just have to watch and wait, strike when it shows."

The two stood in the underground command center of one of the Federation's wealthiest industrial combines-a combine created several hundred years ago by beings from another reality, intent on infiltrating and ultimately destroying the Confederation. The big room bustled with activity, coordinating the far-flung merchant fleets and maintaining communications with distant points in this and one other universe.

"One of our units has the humans' only portal device," said the younger T'Lan.

"S'Yatan?" asked T'Lan senior, glancing at the status boards. Everything was on schedule -forward battle units of the Fleet of the One were approaching the Rift, about to penetrate into the K'Ronarins' Quadrant Blue Nine -the Ghost Quadrant.

The other AI nodded.

"He's had it since his ship was assigned to Terra," said T'Lan senior. "His crew's human and loyal. He can kill them but he can't run the ship by himself. And there's always an escort vessel. So…?"

"He's convinced the crew they're fleeing an unlawful order, heading back for K'Ronar. The instant he leaves the Terran system, he can kill his crew, and one of our ships will meet him."

T'Lan senior nodded. "Having that device, we'll use it to bring in a second force, augmenting the one coming through the Rift. Nothing can stop us." A sudden thought gave him pause. "What unlawful order was he fleeing?" he asked, frowning.

The other AI looked at his senior nervously. "You recall Binor's advance force? The one we thought the mindslavers wiped?" "Thought?"

"It seems that R'Gal, Guan-Sharick and some humans actually captured the flagship. It's at Terra now, and has been granted the device by the insystem commander."

The senior AI was absolutely still for a moment, absorbing the data. "No one," he said finally, "has ever taken a battleglobe. Not in all the long years of the Fleet of the One."

"Shall I alert home?" asked T'Lan junior, nodding toward a console manned by an AI wearing a terminal coupler plugged directly into his temples.

T'Lan senior held up a hand. "Not yet. Not until we've some success to report. That battleglobe can hurt us far worse back home than it can here-which is why R'Gal's trying to take it there."

Toy's jump drive was a creation of the High Imperial epoch. Unlike contemporary star-ships, the little scout was capable of low-risk, insystem jumps-and had just made one.

L'Wrona looked down on the rugged highlands of the S'Htil, one of the planet's three continents and its commercial hub.

In the old days, before the war, the tacscan would have picked up hundreds of space- and atmospheric craft, coming and going from U'Triaport or traversing the planet. Now the tacscan was empty.

"Set us down in the old s'hlar grove, across the lake from the Hall," said L'Wrona as the ship plunged into the atmosphere, taking a sharp evasive tack against hypothesized missiles.

"Acknowledged," said the computer.

Unchallenged, seemingly undetected, the little ship sat down at dusk in the wooded hills just outside L'Yan, ancestral home of the Margrave of U'Tria. The sere autumn foliage was just catching the last rays of sunset when L'Wrona clambered down Toy's boarding ladder and stepped onto his home soil for the first time in ten long years.

Breathing deeply of the crisp, fresh air, he bent and picked up some leaves and dirt. Rubbing them slowly between his hands, he let them fall back to the forest floor, brushed his hands gently, then made his way toward the faint ruts of the old vehicle trail and the distant village.

"Here we sit," said L'Guan, sipping his brandy, "two flag officers without a single ship, aware of enemies within and without, and reduced to the status of observers."

"There are the commtorps," said D'Trelna. The two men sat at a small table on the blue-tiled patio overlooking the waterfall, two glasses and a crystal decanter of S'Tanian brandy between them. Below, the mist from the tumbling water prismed the artificial sunlight into a rainbow.

"What, the ones Implacable launched coming in?" asked the admiral.

D'Trelna nodded.

"Line," said L'Guan, "what's the status of those commtorps?"

Ill

"All but one is intact, Admiral," said Line, its voice coming from beside the table. "They can be activated only upon signal from Implacable, though. Absent Implacable, they cannot be utilized."

"Surely the signal could be duped?" said D'Trelna.

"Authentication signals of a L'Aal-class cruiser-indeed, of most Imperial-made battleships-to any of its indiginous equipment is code-based upon the matrix set of jump drive impulses unique to that particular vessel," said Line primly. "The chance of our successfully emulating it during your lifetime, Commodore, is insignificant."

"I had to ask," sighed D'Trelna.

"And what good would it do?" said L'Guan, looking at the Commodore.

D'Trelna's head jerked up, eyes narrowing. "The people would rise," he said, stabbing a thick finger at the admiral. "Fleet would join them, and Combine T'Lan-its bases, its ships, its agents-would disappear overnight. They're large, but they can't hope to stand against an aroused people backed by their military."

"Chaos is what you're describing, Commodore," said the Admiral. "Our ships scattered, our cities burning, fighting in the streets -just as the AI invasion force sweeps in."

"I disagree," said D'Trelna. "But it seems a moot point for now.

The Final Assault "So what do we do?"

"We could wait," said L'Guan, restopping the decanter. "If there is an AI invasion coming, it'll come out of Quadrant Blue Nine. Automatic pickets have been posted at all known jump points leading from there toward the Confederation. When and if they come, we'll know, D'Trelna."

"You know I made a deal with the mindslavers," said the commodore. "They're waiting in Blue Nine, ready to take on the AIs in return for

…"

"In return for dangerous concessions from us," said L'Guan. "I know. If they can stop the AIs-and we and they survive-those concessions will probably be granted. But chances of that are slim to none."