“Ruptors, fire at will,” said Juvaszt. “First target ships closest to Deathstorm.” On the screens, Panarchist corvettes and cutters began to disintegrate.
He glanced at the main tactical screen again to reassure himself. Yes, the last remaining Panarchist battlecruiser—finally identified as Grozniy—was still locked in battle with Satansclaw, Hellmouth, and Bloodknife.
The ID had been a shock. He had to kill that ship. After what Margot Ng had done against the Avatar at Acheront, Eusabian would not forgive the man who let her escape death. He’d kill the rescue ships and trap the Marines on Deathstorm, then join the battle against Grozniy and...
The main tactical screen jerked and froze. Multiple screens smeared into unintelligibility. The hyperwave discriminators had finally overloaded.
“Communications!” Juvaszt shouted even as Terresk-jhi stabbed frantically at her console, and sat back as an image appeared on the main screen.
Juvaszt’s jaw dropped. The entire bridge crew stared.
Anaris blinked, but the image on the main viewscreen was still there. Incredibly still there: two naked women, one small and spare, one tall and spectacular, writhed on the deck of a ship in a tangle of limbs, their tongues following streaks of some viscous dark liquid across each other’s body, while a one-eyed man looked on, clutching his bulging crotch and whimpering. In Dol’jharian terms it was unspeakably depraved.
Static crackled. “Whip me, beat me, make me speak Dol’jharian,” a voice said lasciviously, while others moaned and panted in the background.
“Hey, Juvaszt, send that to the Panarchists! They’ll be so busy flipping their nackers you can blow ‘em away easy,” shouted another.
Anaris understood now: the Rifters throughout the Thousand Suns were all watching the battle in total safety, adding to the entertainment by baiting their Dol’jharian masters.
After a heartbeat of frozen astonishment Juvaszt leaped from his pod and strode over to the communications console, knocking Terresk-jhi to the deck. He stood over her, his mouth working, but he couldn’t find words.
The unknown Rifter onlookers, however, could.
“Jump her, Juvaszt!”
“Ooh, Dol’jharian sex! I love it! Hurt me, you beast!”
“Juvaszt kim Karusch-na bo-synarrach, gri tusz ni-synarrh perro-ti! “
Anaris bit his lip against a fierce desire to laugh. The unknown Rifter had an excellent command of Dol’jharian, and had concocted perhaps the worst insult imaginable, equating Juvaszt’s performance in the conquest-rituals of mating with solitary sex.
Juvaszt raised his fists as if to slam them down on the console.
o0o
“Target identified, nine light-seconds, 62 mark 19, coming about.”
“Skipmissile charged.”
“Fire on acquisition,” said Ng.
The Fist of Dol’jhar hung near the ruined Rifter destroyer, dwarfing the little corvettes swarming around it. As she watched, several of them puffed into dust and glares of light.
“A little bit of target practice, the chatzer,” said Krajno, his teeth gritted.
“That’s odd,” Ng commented. “You’d almost think he’d lost track of us.”
“Target acquired, skipmissile away.” With all the dust and debris from the battle its impact would be severely diminished. But then, so will that of the enemy’s skipmissiles.
“Navigation, new heading, 30 mark 10, skip ten light-seconds, tac-level five. Weapons, fire all bearing ruptors on emergence.”
The Grozniy came about, the fiveskip snarled, ceased. The ruptors pulsed even as the viewscreen revealed the target’s shields still flaring from the skipmissile impact. “Ruptor hits on Fist of Dol’jhar. Target coming about... ” The fiveskip snarled again as the edge of a ruptor pulse shuddered through the ship.
They’d bought the rescue ships a little more time. Ng issued new orders to continue the attack.
o0o
A soundless blow jolted the ship. The gravitors hiccupped, and Anaris’s stomach lurched as the lights flickered.
“Skipmissile impact, forward first segment, forward first ruptor turret not responding, fiveskip destabilized, estimate ten seconds to skip... ”
“Ruptors fire on heading 135 mark 16, wide barrage, now!” Juvaszt shouted as he leapt back into his pod.
“Communications, give me clean channels to Satansclaw and Hellmouth... ”
The shuddering squeal of a ruptor pulse shook his voice into silence. A gravitational eddy ripped open a bulkhead at the front of the bridge, spinning a crewman away in a tangle of broken limbs as a console exploded.
“Multiple ruptor hits, engine two destabilized, fiveskip still stabilizing... ”
‘Tactical skip when able,” Juvaszt snapped. “Fifteen light-seconds. He motioned to the luckless communications officer’s second, who took over on his console, and then to the Tarkans posted by the second aft hatch. They ran over and hauled the dazed woman away.
The fiveskip pulsed. “Tactical skip executed.”
Anaris glanced at Morrighon, who made a note. If Terresk-jhi was still alive after the battle, he would intercede for her—another ally would be useful, especially in communications.
Juvaszt glared around the frozen bridge.
“Communications reestablished with Satansclaw and Hellmouth,” reported the second communications officer in the flattest possible voice.
Juvaszt began issuing orders again. Anaris watched, thoughtful, then noted his own reaction of relief as Damage Control reported that the section of the ship housing the Panarch and the other prisoners had escaped injury.
Anaris would consider the implications later. He looked up at the tactical plot; the Panarchists were taking tremendous losses.
He smiled. On more than one level, the Battle of Arthelion was going very well.
o0o
Dyarch Bengiat pushed her burden ahead of her into the lock of the corvette, easing it to the deck as gravity grabbed at it. She looked thoughtfully at the unconscious woman within.
Woman? She’s barely more than a girl. The girl’s short curly hair was matted down, her olive skin smudged; Bengiat could see a vein throbbing in the translucent skin of her temple. How’d a child like that end up with a ship full of blungebags?
Then she shook her head as the inner lock door cycled open.
For all she knew this Aziza could have grown up with the likes of Qvidyom.
She pushed through the hatch into the corvette and triggered her comm.
“Sound off, Marys, I need a head count.” Anyway, she had more important things to worry about now. She looked at Jheng-li, who cradled the alien machine in his arms. They had what they came for. All that remained was to get the hell out of the system alive.
o0o
“But, Kyvernat,” Anderic stammered. “There might be a chance they can get their repairs done... ”
“Do not argue with me, unless you want to be left powerless to face that Panarchist battlecruiser,” Juvaszt cut in. “Destroy the Deathstorm immediately and stand by for further orders. Juvaszt out.” The image disappeared, leaving stars in its place.
Anderic looked around the bridge, sensing the pressure of the crew’s attention, even though none of them looked directly at him. Don’t they realize I have no choice?
But it made no difference. It wasn’t a matter of logic. Even as allies of Dol’jhar, Rifters still thought in terms of us versus them, and the Dol’jharians were more ferociously them than even the highest Douloi.
He remembered the Panarch standing on the bridge of his enemy’s flagship. He had every reason to hate the nicks, but somehow the Panarch had looked like someone you could actually talk to, who would actually listen.
Anderic snorted. He’d talked to Eusabian instead, who would never hear anything but what he wanted to from the fearful scuttlers around him.
“Navigation,” he said. “You heard him. Take us in to three light-seconds. Fire Control, status?”
“Skipmissile charged,” came the answer. Anderic could hear resentment in the man’s tones.
“Course laid in,” said sho-Imbris.
“Do it.”
The fiveskip hummed. The screen cleared, and stars swung across it. The screen flickered to a close-up. The Deathstorm was a wreck, great holes punched in its hull where the lances had penetrated, its missile tube bent and torn, plasma leaking from a rent near the engine room. Several small ships hovered nearby. Before Anderic could issue an order to determine if they were rescue ships for their damaged Rifter ally, they began to vanish, leaving behind the spherical pulses of the fiveskip.
A targeting cursor bracketed the dying ship.
“Target acquired.”
“Fire,” said Anderic.
Nothing happened.
Anderic looked hopelessly around the bridge, seeing no friendliness anywhere. He realized that the only thing that would keep him alive from this point on was the logos, which he hated. With a snarl of self-hatred he brought his hand down on the firing tab. Three seconds later the Deathstorm blew up, fragments spinning away through a scintillant cloud of dust and glowing gas.
A short time later, Juvaszt appeared on the viewscreen, demanding a report.
“The Deathstorm is destroyed,” Anderic reported.
Juvaszt said, “Were there any remaining Panarchist ships?”
No ‘good job,’ no acknowledgement of loyalty. Anderic stared at the scowling captain, realizing that he hated the Dol’jharians even more than he did the logos.
He’d seen Panarchist ships leaving before he killed Deathstorm. What would happen if the Dol’jharians thought the hyperwave had been destroyed, but it hadn’t?
He smiled, knowing Juvaszt would misinterpret it. “They were all destroyed in the explosion,” he said.
Juvaszt issued new orders, then cut the com. Anderic looked around the bridge; the atmosphere had changed again. It would be too much to say that he’d regained his crew’s respect, and certainly not any liking. But he saw in their grim faces that every one of them agreed with what he’d just done.
o0o
Captain Ng watched again the replay from the courier. As the remains of the Deathstorm faded she tapped her console. The image vanished.
“That’s it, then. Ammant, any news?”
“Nothing, sir.”
She sighed. The battle was evaporating now. The Navy had taken too many losses to continue. Flammarion, Barahyrn, and Lady of Taligar destroyed, Babur Khan missing... Her throat tightened. Falcomare missing...
And they didn’t know if they had the FTL comm or not. They could only wait, staying out of the way of the victorious enemy while the slow pulse of relativistic communications spread through the tacponder net, invisible to their opponents.
“Emergence pulse,” said Siglnt. The fiveskip burped in an automatic tactical skip of 2.5 light-seconds. “Corvette, the Bereitte.”
“Message incoming.” Ammant put it on the screen before Ng could respond.
The viewscreen cleared to an image of a very small, very cramped bridge. A Marine, a dyarch from the insignia on her rumpled jumpsuit, stood beside a small olive-skinned woman with a bloody nose. But Ng’s gaze shifted past to the Marine next to them, standing with his hand possessively on the weirdest piece of—what? Her heart slammed.
The naval lieutenant in the foreground saluted. “Lieutenant Gristrom reporting, sir, attached Flammarion.” He smiled, weary and proud. “We got it.” And he added grimly, “Paid in full.”
The bridge erupted in cheers, a release of emotion greater than anything Ng had ever experienced. And rightly so. They’d paid a terrible price for that red-glowing lump of metal, but now they had the key to the greatest of the enemy’s two advantages.
They now had a chance.
After a time she became aware of Ammant trying to shout above the tumult.
“Tacponder update incoming. We’ve found the Babur Khan, it’s in bad shape.”
The noise died away abruptly as people leaped back into their pods.
“Get on board, Lieutenant,” she said. “We’ve got more to do.”