Assistant Servant of Thunders Brashieel snarled as his first salvo smote the nest-killers. Half a twelve of missiles burst through all their defenses, ignoring their infernally effective decoys, and the Furnace roared. Matter and anti-matter merged, gouging at the nest-killers’ shield, and Brashieel’s inner eyelids narrowed at its incredible resistance. But his thunder was too much for it. It crumbled, and Tarhish’s Breath swept the ship into death.

Captain Robbins cursed as Bolivia burned. Those fucking warheads were incredible! Their emission signatures said they were anti-matter, and great, big, nasty ones. At least as big as anything Earth’s defenders had.

Bolivia was the first to go, but Canada followed, then Shirhan and Poland. Please, Jesus, she prayed. Slow them down!

But the huge Achuultani ships were still dying faster than TF One. Which was only because they were getting in each other’s way, perhaps, but true nonetheless, and Adrienne Robbins felt a fierce exultation as yet another fell to Nergal’s missiles.

“Close the range,” Admiral Hawter said grimly, and Adrienne acknowledged. Nergal drove into the teeth of the Achuultani fire.

“Stand by energy weapons,” she said coldly.

They were not fleeing. Whatever else these nest-killers might be, they had courage. More of them perished, blazing like splinters of resinous mowap wood, but the others advanced. And their defenses were improving. The efficiency of their jammers had gone up thirty percent while he watched.

Captain Robbins smiled thinly. Her EW crews were getting good, hard data on the Achuultani targeting systems, and they knew what to do with it. Another three ships were gone, but the others were really knocking down the incoming missiles now.

Whatever happened, that data would be priceless to the rest of the Fleet and to Earth herself. Not that Adrienne had any intention of dying out here, but it was nice to know.

Aha! Energy range.

Brashieel gaped as those preposterous warships opened a heavy energy fire. Tiny things like that couldn’t pack in batteries that heavy!

But they did, and quarter-twelves of them synchronized their fire to the microsecond, slashing at their Aku’Ultan victims. Overload signals snarled, and frantic engineers threw more and more power to their shields, but there simply was not enough. Not to stop missiles and beams alike.

He watched in horror as Avenger’s forward quadrant shields went down. A single nest-killer beam pierced the chink in his armor and ripped his forward twelfth apart. Hard as it was for any Protector to admit another race could match the Aku’Ultan, Brashieel knew the chilling truth. He had never heard of weapons which could do what that one was doing.

He groaned as Avenger’s hull split like a rotten istham, and then another impossible, Tarhish-spawned warhead crumpled the wreckage into a mangled ball. Avenger’s power plants let go, and Vindicator’s brother was no more.

But Brashieel bared his teeth as his display changed. Now the nest-killers would learn, for his hyper launchers had been given time to charge at last!

“Hyper missiles!” Tactical shouted, and Adrienne threw Nergal into evasive action. Ireland and Izhmit were less fortunate. Ireland’s shield stopped the first three; the next four—or five, or possibly six—got through. Izhmit went with the first shot. How the hell had they popped her shield that way?

It didn’t matter. TF One was losing too many ships, but the Achuultani were dying at a three-to-one ratio even now. A hyper missile burst into n-space, exploding just outside the shield, shaking Nergal as a terrier shook a rat, but the shield held, and she and her ship were one. They closed in, energy weapons raving, and her own sublight missiles were going out now.

Lord of Order Furtag was gone with his flagship, and command devolved upon Lord Chirdan. Chirdan was a fighter, but not blind. They were destroying the nest-killers, but his nestlings were dying in unreasonable numbers, for they had no weapon to equal those deadly beams. He could smash these defenders even at this low range, but only at the cost of too many of his own. He gave the order, and the scouts of the Aku’Ultan micro-jumped away.

The enemy vanished.

They shouldn’t be able to do that, Adrienne Robbins thought. Not to just disappear that way. We should have detected the hyper field charging up on something that size, even for an itty-bitty micro-jump. But we didn’t. Well, that’s worth knowing. Won’t help the bastards much when they get too far in-system to micro-jump, but it’s going to be a bitch out here.

And the buggers can fight, she thought grimly, shaken by her read-outs. Task Force One had gone in with forty-eight ships; it came out with twenty-one. The enemy had lost ten times that many, possibly more … but the enemy had more than ten times as many starships as Earth had battleships.

Admiral Hawter turned in-system. Magazines were down to sixty percent, thirty percent for hyper missiles, and half his survivors were damaged. If the enemy was willing to run, then so was he. He’d gotten the information Earth needed for analysis; now it was time to get his surviving people home.

The first clash was over, and humanity had won—if fifty-six percent losses could be called a victory. And both sides knew it could. The Aku’Ultan had lost a vastly lower percentage of their total force, but there came a point at which terms like “favorable rate of exchange” were meaningless.

Yet it was only the first clash, and both sides had learned much. It remained to be seen which would profit most from the lessons they had purchased with so much blood.

The great ringed planet of this accursed system floated far below him, but Lord of Order Chirdan had no eyes for its beauty as he watched his engineers prepare their final system tests.

The asteroids they had already hurled against the nest-killers’ planetary shield had shown Battle Comp that small weapons would not penetrate, while those of sufficient mass were destroyed by the nest-killers’ weapons before impact. They would continue to hurl asteroids against it, but only to force it back so that they might smite the fortresses with other thunders.

But this, Chirdan thought, was another matter. It would move slowly, at first, but only at first, and it was large enough to mount shields which could stop even the nest-killers’ weapons. His nestlings would protect it with their lives, and it would end these demon-spawned nest-killers for all time. Battle Comp had promised him that, and Battle Comp never lied.

“I don’t like it,” Horus said. “I don’t like it, and I want a way around it. Do any of you have one?”

His chiefs of staff looked back from his com screen, weary faces strained. Gerald Hatcher’s temples were almost completely white, but Isaiah Hawter’s eyes were haunted, for he’d seen seventy percent of his warships blown out of existence in the last four months.

One face was missing. General Singhman had been aboard ODC Seven when the Achuultani warhead broke through her shield.

There were other gaps in Earth’s defenses, and the enemy ruled the outer system. They were slow and clumsy in normal space, but their ability to dart into hyper with absolutely no warning more than compensated as long as they stayed at least twenty light-minutes out.