“Brindle, damn you — keep shooting! That’s an order. Admiral Willis is a mutineer. This is our chance to destroy them along with the Klikiss.”

The other man’s answer was calm and cool. “I will not fire on them, sir. Our enemy is the Klikiss. In this battle, Admiral Willis is our ally.”

Lanyan pounded his fist on theThunder Child ’s command console as Willis and her Confederation battle group beat a hasty and indignant retreat. The General attempted to pursue, but most of the jazer blasts went wild. His weapons officers must be either unskilled or insufficiently motivated.

“General, this is insanity!” Once again, Brindle’s Manta crossed in front of the lead cruiser, blocking Lanyan’s clear line of fire and buying the rebel ships just enough time to get away. A jazer burst scorched the Manta’s lower hull. On the comm, Brindle’s face was filled with disgust. “General, cease fire immediately, or I will relieve you of command on the grounds that you are unfit to lead.”

The soldiers on theThunder Child ’s bridge deck were clearly uneasy.

Before Lanyan could respond, the supposedly neutralized Klikiss vessels began to open fire again, and this time his ships were the only targets in the vicinity. “What the hell?”

Even after the total devastation down below, which should have killed the Klikiss hive mind ten times over, the giant swarmships had begun to move again. Apparently, they’d been stunned, but now the component craft buzzed around, seeking new targets. He had underestimated how swiftly the remaining components could coalesce into new alien conglomerate ships.

Below, on the bubbling, seared landscape, craters opened up to reveal access holes to incredibly deep tunnels. Another wave of component craft emerged from undamaged hive complexes far underground.

His gunners independently retargeted their weapons and began to shoot at the Klikiss that closed in on them. An explosion rocked theThunder Child, sending it reeling off course. The scattered alien vessels had now managed to reconstitute two complete swarmships, each of which molded its geometry into a gigantic cannon-barrel weapon. A crackling bolt spewed out of the nearest cluster and vaporized another of Lanyan’s Mantas. More than a thousand crewmen dead in an instant, one more EDF capital ship obliterated.

This wasn’t good. Not at all.

An announcement came across the command channel, a priority signal that preempted all other transmissions. “Attention EDF ships! This is Admiral Conrad Brindle. I have assumed command of this battle group. General Lanyan is hereby relieved of duty. We are leaving Pym. Return to Earth.”

“You will not retreat!” Lanyan roared.

Another explosion struck his Juggernaut, a bad one, ripping out two of his engines. His navigation officer struggled against a shower of sparks on her console to keep the gigantic ship from spiraling down to the planet.

Hundreds of Klikiss component vessels continued pecking away at theThunder Child. On the screen, Lanyan saw Brindle’s cruiser and two others pulling away. Only one other Manta survived, and he was relieved to see that it remained at his side. But the cruiser looked hopelessly crippled, with smoke pouring from prominent breaches in its hull.

Sensing easy prey, the Klikiss closed in.

He had expected Chairman Wenceslas to applaud his foresight for not only striking the bugs, but also wiping out the human traitors. Now, instead of a double victory, he had botched the whole mission. He could already imagine the scorn the Chairman would heap upon him as soon as they got back to Earth.Not one of the high points in my illustrious career. If there was any chance of salvaging the situation, he needed to arrive back at Earth before Brindle made his report. He needed to tell his side of the story first.

“Get us out of here,” he snapped. “Maximum speed.”

The navigator turned to him with an astonished, sickened look on her long face. “General, I can barely keep us in a stable orbit! Two engines damaged, all control linkages fried — we’re not going anywhere.”

“Then activate our stardrives. I don’t care where we are. Get us away from this planet.”

She frowned at him as if he were a mentally deficient child. “Too late for that, sir.”

His Juggernaut was rapidly falling apart, and space was thick with Klikiss component ships still slashing and slicing. He hesitated only a second before opening up the comm channel again. He had to act before the retreating EDF ships could get out of range.

“Admiral Brindle, we are declaring an emergency. I order you to return and assist us.” He swallowed hard. “We’re abandoning ship.”

TheThunder Child ’s bridge crew didn’t need to be told twice. They scrambled to escape pods. Loud Klaxons echoed up and down the metal-walled corridors. Entire decks were on fire, and hundreds of his crew were already dead from the numerous hull breaches.

Lanyan continued to shout into the comm system, “Admiral Brindle, it is your obligation to retrieve our escape pods.” At any other time, the man would have obeyed without a second thought. He would have done his duty. But on the static-filled screen, Brindle and the surviving Mantas continued their retreat.

The Klikiss kept pummeling theThunder Child. When the deck started to split beneath him, Lanyan had no choice but to dash to the small escape pod built into his ready room. Everyone else had shot themselves away in the larger lifeboats, though with so many Klikiss ships in the vicinity, he doubted anyone would get away for long.

On a viewscreen behind his desk he saw Admiral Brindle turning his Manta around to retrieve whatever pods he could, even though he put himself and his ships at great risk to do so. At least the man had a tiny bit of honor left.

Lanyan jumped feetfirst into the round hatch and pulled the lid shut. He hammered the activation buttons that locked down the airtight seal, blasted free the retention bolts, and disengaged the pod. As the small chamber spun, Lanyan grew dizzy watching through the single observation port.

In orbit above, theThunder Child was little more than a skeletal structure held together by a few hull plates and connective girders. He saw other escape pods flying into space like the spores of a swollen mushroom, heading out to safety, but he was falling in the other direction, toward the planet’s surface, nowhere close to Brindle’s retrieval operations.

As the pod decelerated through Pym’s atmosphere, the white expanse of desert and brackish lakes looked uninviting. The automated systems could manage an intact landing, but he didn’t know how he was going to arrange a pickup and rescue from down there. At least he was on the other side of the continent from where the repeated bombardment had annihilated the hive city.

Slowed by its landing thrusters, the pod struck the ground and tumbled, scraping up a rooster tail of glittering gypsum powder and alkaline dust. His small window was completely covered, and Lanyan bounced around like a man going over a waterfall in a barrel. Stupid, not to have strapped himself in.