Hidden Empire - Kevin J. Anderson [203]
Twenty escorts, overcrowded with panicked Ildiran escapees, docked inside the warliners and disgorged their passengers into holding areas. Hundreds of cloud miners had been saved so far, but the total was barely a third of the splinter colony's population. The Qronha 3 floating factory was now completely in flames, its habitation spheres broken, its industrial facilities, condensation towers, and distillers smoking, bent, and tangled.
Kori'nh demanded an update from all the maniple's subcommanders. Five more escorts had lifted off from the doomed ekti-processing facility. More than fifty small private ships had already escaped above Qronha 3's atmosphere and requested to be picked up by the warliners.
Ignoring the furious resistance of the Ildiran Solar Navy, the three alien warglobes closed in on the smoking factory. Maliciously, with a concerted blast of jagged blue lightning, they demolished the entire sky city, blasting it into a dispersing cloud of debris that dropped like meteors down into the planet's milky storm systems.
Everyone onboard was dead.
Kori'nh summoned all the surviving ships in his maniple. "Gather up all the refugees you can. Escorts, return to your warliners immediately." His voice caught in his throat. Never in his life had he read of such an ignominious defeat, not in the long glorious history of the Ildiran Empire! This debacle would be recorded in the Saga of Seven Suns for all later generations. "We must retreat. We must fly to safety."
"But Adar!" Qul Aro'nh said over the communications system. "The Solar Navy does not flee. The shame of it—"
"K'llar bekh! We have just rescued as many survivors as possible from the complex and we are bringing them aboard our warliners. I will not see them all murdered now because of our bravado or pride. Our first duty is to bring the civilians back to Ildira and deliver our report to the Mage-Imperator."
Without comment, Qul Aro'nh ordered six of the seven warliners in his foremost septa to return to the maniple's main grouping. But the old subcommander's own battleship continued to drive forward.
Sitting in his command nucleus, the Adar saw from his sensor readings that the conservative old Qul had set the power of his stardrive reactors high enough to trigger a cascade overload. The lone warliner plunged toward the three diamond warglobes that still hovered over the smoldering wreckage of the mining facility.
Kori'nh spoke sharply. "Qul Aro'nh, what is your intention?"
"As you instructed during our training exercises, Adar, I am attempting to employ nontraditional tactics. Perhaps this maneuver will eventually become a standard routine in desperate situations such as this."
Then the old subcommander cut off communication entirely. He had made up his mind and seen his path. Kori'nh could only watch helplessly as the warliner's rear ports glowed cherry red. The reactors would go supercritical within a few seconds.
All the people aboard, the Ildiran crew, the soldiers, the engineers...Kori'nh sensed their brooding terror, their determination, their grim acceptance as the battleship headed toward oblivion. The Adar stood inside his command nucleus, knowing he was responsible for the Qul's actions. He had disgraced the man, yanked away his solid reason for existence, pushed him to this extreme solution.
If only it works...
Qul Aro'nh drove his battleship toward the first warglobe. As he approached, the ship launched all of its remaining kinetic projectiles and planet-splitters, while continuing a relentless bombardment with high-energy weapons. Already, Kori'nh could see damage being inflicted. The other two warglobes rose up, blue lightning intensifying.
But before the alien weapons could lance out, Aro'nh's ship collided head-on with the warglobe. Simultaneously, the stardrive reactors reached their overload point, and the impact created a brief, intense new sun above the Qronha 3 clouds.
Kori'nh felt the blow like a dagger to his heart. But after all the casualties the enemy aliens had inflicted, at least the brave martyrs aboard that warliner