Timothy Zahn - Conquerors' Legacy

"Fourth wave!" Cho Ming barked. "Cutting in behind the third. I'm getting missile-arming signals... there they go."

Aric squinted out the canopy. The drive trails themselves were almost lost in the sputtering flashes; but he could occasionally catch glimpses of faint secondary trails as the Deathknell missiles shot outward from the Yycroman defenders. The lasers shifted direction toward this new threat, and smaller flashes began to appear where they found their targets. Aric gripped his restraints....

And suddenly a flash of acrid blue-white light blossomed on the side of one of the Conqueror ships.

"Got one!" Aric blurted, slamming his fist down on the edge of the control board, the recoil bouncing him up against his restraints.

"Steady," Daschka advised him. "Let's see if it did any damage before you break out the champagne. Cho Ming?"

"Can't tell yet," the other said. "Too much after-scintillation. It's sure as hell gotten them riled up, though."

Aric nodded silently, his elation of a few seconds earlier crushed back down to reality. The Conqueror ships were blazing with laser fire now, the Yycroman defenders flashing to plasma and shrapnel all around them. In the midst of the slaughter two more of the Deathknells got through, and two more blue-white fireballs briefly silhouetted the sharp hexagonal edges of the Conqueror ships. But if the blasts caused any damage, it wasn't obvious from where Aric sat.

Or even from where Cho Ming sat. "I don't read any damage from the Deathknell blasts," the Intelligence man reported with a sigh. "If there is any, it must be negligible."

"So much for the missiles," Daschka said. "So much for the Yycromae, too. You got any more good news?"

"Plenty," Cho Ming said. "Those five ships we thought might be hanging back? They've kicked into gear and are on their way."

Aric shook his head in horrified disbelief. "How many ships do they think they need to take this place?"

"Maybe they're not planning to take it," Daschka suggested darkly. "Maybe Phormbi's going to be a special sort of object lesson."

Aric gazed out at the laser flashes, a cold chill running through him. That other incoming ship, with a wake-trail like nothing Cho Ming had ever seen... "You suppose that's what that unidentified ship is for?" he asked. "Something to—I don't know—burn off the planet, maybe?"

"I still say it's Yycroman," Daschka insisted. But the stubbornness had an edge of uncertainty to it now.

"We'll find out soon enough," Cho Ming said grimly. "ETA's something around fifteen minutes."

"About the same time those other five warships will get here?" Daschka asked.

"Just about."

And at the rate these first six ships were going, Aric knew, fifteen minutes would be all they would need to eliminate the rest of the Yycroman defenders, leaving the planet wide-open before them. "Are we still going to stay?" he asked, though he knew what the answer would be.

"As long as we can." Daschka threw him a gruffly sympathetic glance. "There's no reason you have to watch this, though. If it gets too bad, you can go back to your cabin. Cho Ming, what's this going on now?"

With an effort Aric focused his attention back on the carnage of the battle zone. Amid the flashing lasers the current wave of Yycroman ships was rapidly dwindling, but now another fifty or so drive trails had appeared behind them. Again he could half imagine he saw missile trails lancing out ahead of them—

"Cho Ming?" Daschka repeated.

"You got me," the other said, sounding puzzled. "They're firing something, all right, but I can't get anything on it. Almost reads like some kind of stealthed missiles—"

"There!" Aric snapped, pointing out the canopy. On one of the Conqueror ships a splash of white light had appeared.

He paused, frowning, finger still pointed. The white flash wasn't expanding as an explosion ought to. Or fading away, either, for that matter. "What is that?"

"Whatever it is, they've landed six more of them," Daschka said, frowning. "Four more on the port hexagon of that ship, and one each on the two ships to starboard. Come on, Cho Ming, look alive."

"I'm working on it, I'm working on it," Cho Ming growled. "The albedo's incredibly high—maybe they're some kind of targeting markers. Let me try this..."

His voice trailed off into the soft clicking of keys. Aric gazed out the canopy, catching sight of three more white explosions as they appeared against the lead ship and froze in place. If they were targeting markers, there ought to be missiles firing in right behind them. But so far, nothing.

And then, from behind him, came a sound that sounded suspiciously like a strangled-off laugh. "I don't believe it," Cho Ming said. "Daschka, get this: it's paint."

"It's what?"

"Good old-fashioned white paint," Cho Ming said. "Well, not that old-fashioned—it's pretty high-tech stuff, really. Quick-dry, adhesion coefficient right off the scale, and an albedo of just a hair below one. And every one of those paintballs is dead center on top of a Conqueror laser port."

Daschka turned back around, shaking his head slowly. "I'll be damned."

"I don't get it," Aric said. "Are they trying to seal over the laser ports?"

"Basically," Cho Ming said. "But they've added a nice touch. Albedo measures reflectivity, on a scale of zero to one, which means that paint is a nearly perfect light reflector. If the Zhirrzh fire that particular laser—you see?"

"Got it," Aric nodded, finally understanding. "The beam reflects straight back into the mechanism."

"Which probably won't hurt it any," Cho Ming said. "But it should keep it out of the fight for a while."

Another blue-white flash erupted against one of the Conqueror ships, followed immediately by two more. "More Deathknells?" Daschka asked.

"Some of them are," Cho Ming said. "Others are more of those stealthed missiles—pretty potent warhead on those things. Looks like they're concentrating on the connecting edge between the first two hexagons."

"Any damage?" Daschka asked.

"Hard to tell," Cho Ming said. "And getting harder. There's a lot of debris between us and them."

The remnants of the Yycroman ships, and of the Yycromae who had flown them. "Have you seen any escape pods or suits?" Aric asked.

"I haven't noticed anything," Cho Ming said. "Doesn't mean they're not out there. Okay, I'm starting to get something from that last salvo of Deathknells... looks like we've got a few pieces of Zhirrzh hull floating around. They're small, but they're there."

"Which may not mean anything," Daschka grunted. "The ships that took out the Jutland had a few pieces cracked off of them too without—"

"He's pulling back," Aric interrupted excitedly, pointing at one of the Conqueror ships. "Look—he's pulling back."

"He's pulling around, anyway," Daschka agreed cautiously. "Whether he's actually pulling out, we'll have to—"

He broke off as the ship, with a flicker from its aft surfaces, abruptly meshed out.

"One down," Cho Ming announced, a note of grim satisfaction in his voice.

Aric looked out at the five remaining Conqueror ships, their lasers still methodically blasting the Yycroman freighters into fiery dust. In the distance behind them he could see the faint drive trails of the other five enemy ships as they hurried to join the battle. "It's not going to work," he murmured. "They just don't have the firepower."

"No, they don't," Daschka said quietly. "Strange, isn't it? I've spent really my entire career working to make sure the Yycromae never became a military threat to the Commonwealth. Almost wish now we hadn't done such a good job."

Aric grimaced. The Klyveress ci Yyatoor and her people had worked so hard in this crash-defense program of theirs. Aric had seen that effort up close; had met and actually started to get to know a few of them. It had been an eye-opening experience, severely eroding the unflattering stereotype of Yycromae that he'd grown up believing.