He settled tensely upon his duty pad as they emerged from hyper and headed for the blue-white world they had come so far to slay.

“Seventy-two hostiles, inbound,” Plotting reported. “Approximately two hundred forty additional hostiles following at eight light-minutes. Evaluate this as a major probe.”

Isaiah Hawter winced. Over three hundred of them. He could go out to meet them and kick hell out of them, but it would leave him with next to nothing. Those bastards lying back to cover their fellows with hyper missiles made the difference. He’d lose half his ships before his energy weapons even engaged the advanced force.

No, this time he was going to have to let them in.

“All task forces, withdraw behind the primary shield,” he said. “Instruct Fighter Command to stand by. Bring all ODC weaponry to readiness.”

Adrienne Robbins swore softly as she retreated behind the shield. She knew going out to meet that much firepower would be a quick form of suicide, but Nergal had twenty-seven confirmed kills and nine probables, more than any other unit among Earth’s tattered survivors, and letting these vermin close without a fight galled her. More, it frightened her, because whether anyone chose to admit it or not, she knew what it meant.

They were losing.

Vassily Chernikov made a minute adjustment through his neural feed, nursing his core tap like an old cat with a single kitten. He’d been right to insist on building it, but all he felt now was hatred for the demon he had chained. It was breaking its bonds, slowly but surely, under the strain of continuous overload operation in a planetary atmosphere; when they snapped, it would be the end.

Lieutenant Samson’s belly tightened as he watched the developing attack pattern. They were coming in from the south this time—had they spotted the core tap? Realized how vital to Earth it was?

Either way, it made little difference to Samson’s probable fate. The Iron Bitch was right in their path, floating with five other ODCs to help her bar the way … and the planetary shield was drawn in behind them.

“Red Warning! Prepare for launch! Prepare for Launch! Red Warning!”

The fighter crews, Terra-born and Imperials distinguishable now only by their names, charged up the ladders to their cockpits. General Ki Tran Thich settled into the pilot’s couch of his command fighter and flashed the commit signal over his neural feed. Drives hummed to life, EW officers tuned their defensive systems and weaponry, and the destruction-laden little craft howled up from their PDC homes on the man-made thunder of their sonic booms.

Brashieel blinked inner and outer lids alike as his display blossomed with sudden threat sources. Great Nest! Sublight missiles at this range?

But his consternation eased slightly as he saw the power readings. No, not missiles. They were something else, some sort of very small warships. He had never heard of anything like them, but, then, he had never heard of most of the Tarhish-spawned surprises these demon nest-killers had produced.

“Missile batteries, stand by,” Gerald Hatcher ordered softly. This was going to be tricky. He and Tao-ling had trained to coordinate their southern-hemisphere PDCs, but this was the first time the bastards had come really close.

He spared a moment to be thankful Sharon and the girls were safely under the protection of Horus’s Shepard Center HQ. It was just possible something was coming through this time.

Andrew Samson swallowed as the interceptors drilled through the shield’s polar portal and it closed behind them. They were such tiny things to pit themselves against those kilometers-long Leviathans. It didn’t seem—

“Stand by missile crews.” Captain M’wange’s voice was cold. “Shield generators to max. Deploy first hyper salvo.”

The hyper missiles floated out of their bays, moored to the Bitch by chains of invisible force, and the Achuultani swept closer.

“All ODCs engage—now!” Isaiah Hawter snapped.

Nest Lord! Those were missiles!

Slayer and War Hoof vanished from his scanners, and Brashieel winced. The nest-killers no longer used the greater thunder; they had come to rely almost entirely on those terrible warheads which did not explode … and for which the Nest had no counter. Slayer crumpled in on himself as a missile breached his shields; War Hoof simply disappeared, and the range was far too long for his own hyper missiles. What devil among the nest-killers had thought of putting hyper drives inside their missiles that way?

More missiles dropped out of hyper, and Vindicator lurched as his shields trembled under a near-miss. And another. But Small Lord Hantorg had nerves of steel. He held his course, and Brashieel’s own weapons would range soon.

He made his fingers and thumbs relax within the control gloves. Soon, he promised himself. Soon, my brothers!

The small warships darted closer, and he wondered what they meant to do.

Andrew Samson whooped as the huge ship died. That had been one of the Bitch’s missiles! Maybe even one of his!

“All fighters—execute Bravo-Three!” General Ki barked, and Earth’s interceptors slashed into the Achuultani formation, darting down to swoop up from “below” at the last moment. They bucked and twisted, riding the surges from the heavy gravitonic warheads Terra hurled to meet her attackers, and their targeting systems reached out.

Brashieel twitched in astonishment as the tiny warships wheeled, evading the close-in energy defenses. Only a few twelves perished; the others opened fire at pointblank range, and a hurricane of missiles lashed the Aku’Ultan ships. They lacked the brute power of the nest-killers’ heavy missiles, but there were many of them. A great many of them.

Half a twelve of Vindicator’s brothers perished, like mighty qwelloq pulled down by tiny, stinging sulq. Clearly the nest-killers’ lords of thought had briefed them well. They fought in teams, many units striking as one, concentrating their fire on single quadrants of their victims’ shields, and when those isolated shields died under the tornadoes of flame blazing upon them, the ships they had been meant to save died with them.

In desperation, Brashieel armed his own launchers without orders. Such a breach of procedure might mean his own death in dishonor, yet he could not simply crouch upon his duty pad and do nothing! His fingers twitched and sent forth a salvo of normal-space missiles, missiles of the greater thunder. They converged on a quarter-twelve of attacking sulq, and when their thunder merged, it washed over the nest-killers and gave them to the Furnace.

“Good, Brashieel!” It was Small Lord Hantorg. “Very good!”

Brashieel’s crest rose with pride as he heard Vindicator’s lord ordering other missile crews to copy his example.

General Ki Tran Thich watched the tremendous Achuultani warship rip apart under his fire. He and Hideoshi had drawn lots for the right to lead the first interception, and he smiled wolfishly as he wheeled his fighter. The full power of the Seventy-First Fighter Group rode at his back as he searched for another target. There. That one would do nicely.

He never saw the ten-thousand-megaton missile coming directly at him.