Emperor Larnahr III heaved again, then bucked and twisted, as all four enemy cruisers slammed perfectly synchronized broadsides into her. It didn't matter that her batteries were heavier and more numerous, that her battle screen was stronger. Not when every weapon the Humans possessed smashed into exactly the same tiny, precisely focused aspect of her screen.

The battle screen failed locally, and lances of plasma stabbed viciously through the gap. Emperor Larnahr III's plating shattered, atmosphere belched from the broken hull, and the enemy fired yet again.

"Yes!"

Indrani Lakshmaniah's falcon shriek of triumph echoed in the silence of Valiant's flag bridge as her ships' fire ripped into the battlecruiser again and again. The overconfident bastards had let her get too close, because they'd known human warships always maneuvered to hold at missile ranges. Perhaps it was because they themselves were so imbued with the need to follow the dictates of their battle-tested doctrine to fully grasp the human ability to improvise and ignore The Book. Perhaps it was because of something else entirely. But what mattered was that this Melconian commander had obviously grossly underestimated what Lakshmaniah's admittedly lighter weapons could do at close range under the command of human/AI fusions.

The battlecruiser's consorts swarmed in on her ships, firing frantically, desperate to draw her fury from their flagship. CNS Mikasa blew up under their vicious pounding. CNS Dagger staggered aside, shedding hull fragments and life pods, broken and dying. Her sister ship Saber poured a deadly broadside into the heavy cruiser which had killed her, and the Melconian ship rolled on her side and vanished in fireball fury. One of the Ever Victorious-class ships turned on Saber, and the destroyer and the Melconian light cruiser embraced one another in a furious exchange which lasted bare seconds ...

and ended in shared death.

More fire poured into Foudroyant, South Dakota, and Valiant. The commodore felt her ships bleeding, her people dying. The sun-bright boil of dying Melconian starships flared on every side, but her command was trapped at the heart of the inferno. Escort Squadron 7013 was dying, but it was not dying alone. Nothing the Melconians could do could save Emperor Larnahr III from Indrani Lakshmaniah's fury. Not even Valiant's AI could tell her how many hits had gone home in that staggering, broken wreck, but finally there was one too many.

bleeding, her people dying. The sun-bright boil of dying Melconian starships flared on every side, but her command was trapped at the heart of the inferno. Escort Squadron 7013 was dying, but it was not dying alone. Nothing the Melconians could do could save Emperor Larnahr III from Indrani Lakshmaniah's fury. Not even Valiant's AI could tell her how many hits had gone home in that staggering, broken wreck, but finally there was one too many.

*

The enemy flagship explodes ... followed 11.623 seconds later by CNS Valiant.

I feel my Commander's grief, and I share it. But under my grief is the respect due such warriors. Foudroyant staggers out of formation, drive crippled, and the two surviving Melconian destroyers alter course to pour fire into her. Their energy weapons smash deep into her hull, but her own Hellbores fire back, and all three ships disappear in a single explosion.

Only South Dakota and three of the destroyers remain, but they do not even attempt to break off. They turn on the surviving Melconians, firing with every weapon.

The entire engagement, from the moment Commodore Lakshmaniah enters Hellbore range of the enemy flagship to its end, lasts only 792.173 seconds.

At its conclusion, there are no survivors from either side.

"Gods of my ancestors," Captain Herath Ka-Sharan whispered, staring at the tactical display from which the icons of so many starships had disappeared so abruptly.

"Sir, I—" Commander Mazar Ha-Yanth, Tactical First of the heavy cruiser Death Stalker, broke off, then shook his head, ears flattened in shock. "I was just about to report that we are almost in the position you wanted, sir," he said, unable to take his own eyes from the horrifyingly blank plot.

"Then this," Ka-Sharan jabbed a sharp-clawed finger at the plot, "will not have been entirely in vain, Mazar." He glared at the empty display for another few moments, then wheeled to face the officer who was both his second-in-command and his tactical officer. "We will commence the attack run as soon as we are fully in position."

"No survivors at all?"

General Theslask Ka-Frahkan, CO of the 3172nd Heavy Assault Brigade, stared in disbelief at the commanding officer of the heavy transport Death Descending.

"None, General," Captain Gizhan Na-Tharla said flatly. "From either side."

Ka-Frahkan looked stunned. Not that Na-Tharla blamed him for that. The captain was equally stunned, if not perhaps for exactly the same reasons. Unlike Ka-Frahkan, he was a naval officer. He had seen—far too often—the hideous toll the Humans' lethal technological edge could exact from the People's defenders. It was the speed with which it had happened, and the tactics the Human commander had adopted, which left him feeling as if someone had just punched him in the belly.

Na-Tharla had served with Admiral Na-Izhaaran before. He knew precisely what Na-Izhaaran had been thinking, and he would probably have made much the same assessment himself in the admiral's place.

But we would both have been wrong, he thought. And we ought to have seen it. This was not a Human fleet attacking one of our worlds. This was an outnumbered Human squadron defending one of its own worlds. Or, rather, the crachtu nut from which another of their worlds will grow, unless we crush it between our fingers and devour its fruit.

"This makes it impossible to continue with our original mission," Ka-Frahkan said, and Na-Tharla flicked his ears in curt agreement with that excruciatingly obvious conclusion. "Well, of course it does," the general said, grimacing almost apologetically as he recognized his own shock-induced statement of the painfully obvious. "What I meant to say was that there is no longer any point in proceeding with the Brigade to our original destination. I see no alternative but to abort the mission and return to base in hopes of obtaining a new Fleet escort. That being the case, should we not consider moving to assist Captain Ka-Sharan?"

"You're the expert, Captain," Ka-Frahkan said after a moment, then chuckled with a slight but genuine edge of amusement. "I don't envy you Navy types, you know! Give me a planet to stand on, one with air I can breathe, and I'm a hero out of the old sagas, but this—!" He waved his hand at the tactical plot. "Having to stand here and watch my battle companions fight while I can do nothing at all to help them?"

He shifted his ears back and forth in a gesture of resigned acceptance.

"It's not quite that bad, General," Na-Tharla said, forcing a lightness he was far from feeling into his voice as an antidote to the lingering shock of the destruction of Admiral Na-Izhaaran's squadron. "And at least we don't get our boots muddy. And we get to sleep in clean bunks every night, for that matter!"

"Something to be said for that, at that," Ka-Frahkan agreed, and the two of them turned back to the tactical plot as Death Descending's sensor section changed scales to show a detailed view of the doomed Human convoy.

"?" the wordless question came from the human half of Maneka/Lazarus. Even as the flesh and blood brain framed the question, however, the fusion of organics and mollycircs was already delving for its answer.

Massive computational capability was brought to bear on the elusive sensor ghost from Lazarus'