“Archon, we are detecting pestilence installations between us and the eight spaceborne nests.” On Yort’s screen he could see a river of objects – thousands of asteroids and millions of tiny living creatures all orbiting the star, though only a small fraction of them barred his path, so vast was the orbit.
Yort briefly considered angling his forces and mothership up and over the plane of the ecliptic, but that would use valuable time and fuel already being prodigiously expended by the mothership’s evasive maneuvers. What had he to fear from a few defenses? Even with half his forces on their way to the still-unseen superfortress above the star’s pole, he had over fifty thousand Claws, an equal number of Lances, and a half-million Mandibles filled with a billion larva and adolescents. His only challenge would be chasing down the fat nests, consuming them, and returning to the infested world soon enough to claim his share.
Abruptly, several of his Claws vanished in first one fusion explosion, then another. Within seconds, blasts flared along the line of his advancing craft, annihilating them in small groups. “The pestilence has deployed orbital mines. Why did the Claws not see them?”
“I do not know,” said his underling officer. “The surveillance technicians are searching for an answer.”
“Spread our forces out to ensure no more than one is killed at a time,” Yort ordered. “The damage is bothersome, but negligible.” Soon, the frequency of explosions waned, still striking here and there, but killing barely one in a thousand of his Claws, Lances and Mandibles.
“The Claws approach the asteroids,” Yort’s underling reported. “They exhibit minimal signs of infestation.”
“Tell the Claws to begin firing plasma torpedoes at extreme range to provoke a response.”
Minutes passed before Yort received the first reports from his staff. “The asteroids are returning fire with beam weapons. They have killed several Claws.”
Yort took a long look at his display, noting how few the armed asteroids were, and how they approached along the solar orbit with significant spacing between. “Order the Mandibles to continue toward the enemy nests. For the good of the greater Hive, swarm the asteroids with Claws and Lances. They can overtake the Mandibles later.”
Soon, thousands of Claws and Lances englobed the leading pestilence, stabbing it to death with direct fire. In short order the asteroid exploded, taking a few more Claws with it before it died. “Maintain maximum range,” Yort ordered. “They have suicide charges aboard.” Clever, this infestation and its pestilence, but not so clever as all that. “Continue to swarm each enemy in turn.”
By the death of the fourth armed asteroid his tens of thousands of Claws and Lances became densely packed, often getting in each others’ way and even colliding. “Order them to spread out again,” Yort said.
Abruptly and without warning, his viewer blazed with a hundred fusion explosions distributed randomly within his swarm. The Archon watched with growing annoyance as he saw the total casualty count top one in ten. “Fools,” he flashed. “Must I do all the thinking for you?”
Control was becoming more difficult as communications lag lengthened due to the growing distance between swarm and Archon. “Continue evading, but angle us downward to avoid the plane of the ecliptic,” Yort ordered after all. “I do not want my mothership to pass through the zone of hidden mines. Then resume course toward the target nests.”
For his swarm, fusion mines held little fear. Each blast would only kill one of millions, as long as the small craft stayed well away from each other. However, one well-placed detonation could cripple or kill his mothership.
“Expand the external structure,” Yort ordered. This would unfold the latticework of girders into a globe of enormous size, deploying gossamer netting into all empty spaces. That way, if a hidden explosive touched the outside of the mothership, it would destroy nothing but material of little worth, and his nest would remain safe deep within. In other words, the extended skin would serve to detonate unseen weapons.
Soon, the mothership’s outer circumference had grown tenfold, leaving vast pockets of space around the comparably tiny central body.
“Archon, something new approaches.” One of his underlings marked a cluster of enemy pestilence on the screen. “It accompanies this group of armed asteroids and is made of the small biomass units.”
Yort strained his eyes. “Magnify.”
“Magnification is maximum, Archon. We are far from the target cluster because of our evasive course.”
Blasting a frustrated glare in all directions, Yort said, “Those resemble the speedy suicide swarmers of the Jellies. Tell the Claws to attack them vigorously with coherent light while the Lances pummel the asteroids with plasma torpedoes. Alert the Mandibles to activate point defenses while pressing toward the enemy nests.”
Even as he issued the orders, the cluster in question burst outward with the flaring of fusion drives. Thousands of tiny enemy swarmers leaped toward his Claws with acceleration impossible to match. Yort watched as some fell to his energy weapons, but several hundred damaged or destroyed more Claws, while the rest missed their targets. The weapons passed through the Claw screen, disregarded his Lances and aimed themselves at the Mandibles.
While loss of more Claws annoyed him, Yort was pleased by the enemy’s choice of secondary targeting. With more than a thousand defensive beams for every attacking swarmer, he expected very little damage to his many Mandibles.
Yort turned out to be correct. A mere two of his more than half a million Mandibles were lost, the puny thousand or so attackers burned down by even the inept gunnery of the adolescent pilots.
And then the dangers were past, as his swarm and his mothership departed from the pestilence zone orbiting the star. Yort saw he had lost only twelve percent of this half of his swarm, while the other half accelerated toward the origin point of the mothership-killing blasts. Relief flooded him as he realized that his underlings had not detected any sign of the unknown weapon firing at him – no vaporized dust from a near miss, no reflections or ionizations.
Perhaps the threat had abated, but he maintained his mothership’s evasive corkscrew despite its cost in fuel. Yort had always considered himself a bit wiser than the average Archon, and so he congratulated himself on his care. “Focus a sensor suite on the target location above the pole.”
“I have done so for some time, Archon, but have detected nothing.”
“Nothing? Show me.” Yort heaved himself upward on his weak, seldom-used legs to crane all four eyes toward the screens overhead. “I don’t see anything.”
His underlings remained silent, only waiting. Finally, the bravest of them spoke. “Perhaps whatever fired has departed.”
“Departed? Impossible. Something must be there, or nearby. Nothing large enough to fire such weapons could have moved far. Perhaps your sensors are malfunctioning or being jammed?”
“Unlikely, Archon, or we would detect something, even if we did not understand what it was. But we can see the distant stars through the empty space of the location.”
Yort turned his eyes to take in secondary displays. “Where are our three remaining motherships?” he asked.
“We have lost contact with them, Archon. Spy drone reports show their swarms heading for the infested world, but no motherships. It is possible they have retreated too close to the sun to see, or have re-entered null space.”
“They have not had time to recharge their null space drives.” Yort racked his mind for any reason the other motherships would hide or stay near this system’s yellow sun, but could think of nothing. His thoughts shied from the possibility that they had all been destroyed by the mysterious ship-killer weapon. He knew he was smarter than other Archons of his rank, but surely at least some of his brother-sisters would have thought to evade continuously.
Perhaps he should have suggested it to them.
And their three swarms and portions of the others still existed, a superswarm totaling over eight million craft and seven billion larvae, easily enough to overrun the planet, destroy the pestilence, consume the infestation, establish nests, and then move on to secure the rest of the star system.
On the other limb...if the worst had happened and the other motherships had been destroyed, command would fall to him. His dream of achieving Archon First, of taking this system for himself, might be no fantasy after all.
Perhaps this was not such a disaster as he had thought.
“Recall the half-swarm heading toward the polar location. Ensure our evasion pattern continues,” Yort said.
“Fuel is being depleted at twice the normal rate, Archon. One-eleventh is already expended.”
Yort did not respond. The underling had spoken an important truth, though. Eventually he would have to stop the evasion that spun and shifted the mothership ponderously from direction to direction. It should not matter. When his swarm seized the mobile nests, he would have all the fuel he needed.