Timothy Zahn - Conquerors' Legacy

The voice cut off as the comm laser swept past. "Maestro," Daschka repeated, throwing Aric a frown. "Isn't that your friend Adam Quinn's tag name?"

"Yes," Aric murmured, staring out the canopy and abruptly feeling physically ill. Quinn was here; and if Quinn, then probably Clipper and the rest of the Omicron Four force, too. The men who'd risked their lives and careers to help him rescue his brother from the Conquerors.

And suddenly it was no longer a matter of sitting by and reluctantly watching aliens he respected being slaughtered by the enemy. Now he was watching the slaughter of friends.

"Take it easy, Cavanagh," Daschka said quietly. "Don't get sick on me now. Quinn's good—you know that. He'll make it through."

"I know," Aric said mechanically. Not believing it for a moment.

Another shock wave rippled through the command/monitor room as yet another Human-Conqueror missile slipped in past the Zhirrzh defenses to vent its explosive fury against the outer hull. Another shock wave to rattle the optronics, shatter fluid-main connectors, and throw the warriors and technics around like children's clothwork dolls.

And Supreme Commander Prm-jevev, gripping his couch supports to keep from being shaken off, was no longer smiling. Grimly or otherwise.

"Tell Ship Commander Dkll-kumvit I don't care what else gets through," he snapped to the Elder hovering nervously in front of him. "He and the Imperative are to concentrate on clearing the way for those heavy air-assault craft."

"I obey," the Elder said, and vanished.

Prm-jevev turned his attention back to the monitors, a bitter taste beneath his tongue. Three of the Human-Conqueror warships had already been disabled in the handful of hunbeats since their part of the battle had begun, one of them burned virtually beyond recognition. The small fighter warcraft were being systematically destroyed as they continued to dart in and out of the fight, distracting his warriors, or worse, occasionally managing to knock out one of the Zhirrzh fleet's lasers. His initial reluctance to attack the poorly armed Yycroman civilian spacecraft had long since vanished, and the fleet was busily burning them out of the sky as well. To all outward appearances the Zhirrzh were winning.

But they weren't. Behind their virtually invulnerable hulls the mighty warships were slowly being pounded and shaken and battered into useless hulks. Already the secondary effects of the missile attacks had knocked out more lasers than the fighter warcraft had, and with every lost laser the odds of a given missile getting through rose that much more. It was a race to see which side would disable the other first... and deep within him Prm-jevev suspected the Zhirrzh were going to lose it.

But he couldn't pull back. Not yet. Not while there was still a chance of driving away the defenders and knocking out this center of Human-Conqueror power. And, if extraordinary good luck was with them, perhaps even eliminating the threat of the Human-Conquerors' terrifying CIRCE weapon.

And certainly not while five hundred cyclics of former Supreme Warrior Commanders were watching over his shoulder from the eighteen worlds.

An Elder popped into view. "Message from the Imperative," he said. "Ship Commander Dkll-kumvit reports strong harassment from the Yycroman spacecraft, and that his systems are continuing to fail under Human-Conqueror bombardment. He states he cannot guarantee survival of the assault craft."

Prm-jevev cursed under his breath. Those Yycromae were incredible, the way they threw themselves to their deaths for such little gain. What in the eighteen worlds were they protecting down there, anyway? "Understood," he growled. "Message to the Exonerator: have them move immediately to the Imperatives support. Those heavy air-assault craft have got to get through."

"I obey," the Elder said, and vanished.

"Helm!" Prm-jevev called across the room. "Shift course: twenty angles right, twelve angles beneath. Communicator: order our three air-assault craft to prepare for launch on my command."

"I obey."

Prm-jevev swore again, thoughtfully, as he studied the displays. Somewhere out there, there had to be a hole in the Human-Conqueror and Yycroman defense forces. Not big, certainly, but maybe big enough to slip the assault craft through before they could respond....

And then, suddenly, he heard a muffled gasp from behind him.

He spun around on his couch to find himself looking at an Elder. An Elder who was himself staring to the side in rigid and obvious horror. Prm-jevev opened his mouth to demand an explanation—

"Supreme Commander Prm-jevev!" one of the warriors shouted.

Prm-jevev spun back again. It was one of the warriors at the display console, and he was jabbing his tongue at one of the displays that showed the curve of the planetary horizon ahead of them.

And in the center of that display...

The Supreme Commander cursed again. And this time he meant it.

Another laser pulse flashed past, the beam slashing down toward the Corvine. Quinn twitched away—too late—and there was another burst of vaporized metal from the aft starboard flank. He felt the sudden heat on his thigh; a moment later the smell of freshly cut grass joined in the potpourri of aromas swirling through his head. That one took out the stardrive, Bokamba confirmed. No way for me to fix it.

Which meant that in the increasingly likely event that they were the only two Peacekeepers to survive this battle, there would be no way for them to escape from the system. Understood, Quinn said, trying hard to hide his growing frustration from his tail man. The area around Dreamer and Con Lady was starting to ripple visibly, the sign that their Corvine was getting into dangerously thick air. Even if he and Bokamba could get there without being vaporized, it was going to be problematic whether they could get a tether hooked on to the crippled fighter in time to haul it to safety.

Another laser flashed toward him. Quinn twitched again; but this time the beam didn't make it all the way, instead throwing a brilliant splash of vaporized metal from one of the Yycroman ships still buzzing around. Apparently the Zhirrzh had decided to concentrate on the closer Yycromae instead of on him.

He frowned. Preoccupied with the endangered Copperheads out there and the slow disintegration of his own Corvine beneath him, he hadn't been paying much attention to the Yycroman ships except when one of them happened to enter his immediate strike zone. But with little to do now but fly evasive maneuvers...

He pulled up a vector map first, switching the usual audio/visual cues into an overlay that could be distracting in the heat of combat but that at the moment wouldn't bother him. A high-speed replay of the past five minutes came next, drawing on both the Corvine's and the Trafalgar's recorders. Some of the Yycromae, he could see, were attacking the Zhirrzh ships directly, using shredder-bursts, cannon, missiles, and something that looked like white paint. A few others were hanging back performing long-range spotting duty for the attackers; fewer still were skimming right over the enemy ships' hulls, carrying out the dangerous task of close-in spotting.

But the vast majority of them were being vaporized by the Zhirrzh. And for the first time since the battle had begun, Quinn saw why.

They were running interference for the Peacekeeper forces. Moving in groups between the waves of fighters and the Zhirrzh warships, trying to block or confuse whatever sensors the enemy was using, helping the Corvines and Axeheads to get across the kill zone into combat range. Flying directly in front of missile clusters, diving suicidally straight into the Zhirrzh lasers and taking the blasts that would otherwise detonate the missiles too far from their targets.