Metal Swarm - Kevin J. Anderson [54]
Finally, descending under full thrust so that atmospheric friction heated their prows to a scarlet glow, the EDF ships soared down. From high above, jazers like hot blades chopped apart the Klikiss swarm. The insect creatures could not stand against this.
Though many weapons had been depleted during the battle at Earth, the Mantas dropped bombs, then six precision nuclear warheads. The Wollamor colony, all the invading members of the Klikiss subhive, and the transportal itself vanished in a flash. Wollamor was no longer a desirable location. Sirix was already revising and formulating his next step.
His shuttle climbed out of the atmosphere into the emptiness where his fleet offered the safety he needed. Smaller vessels rendezvoused with the remainder of the ships in space. Remoras carrying black robot survivors circled the main group of vessels in planetary orbit. Once again, Sirix found himself needing to reassess his strength, to regroup. More of his robots had been annihilated. What should have been a simple conquest of the Spiral Arm had turned against them.
The return of the Klikiss changed everything, and this could not have been an accidental encounter. The creator race was hunting down their robots.
Taking his fleet out of the Wollamor system, Sirix decided to go immediately to the burgeoning base on Maratha. There, he would gather reinforcements of black robots and powerful war vessels. Then they could stand against the Klikiss and the humans.
Thirty-one
Chairman Basil Wenceslas
The spy flybys returned to the Hansa with a wealth of fascinating information. Lieutenant Commander Conrad Brindle had told him what to expect. Even so, Basil was surprised. Alone in his penthouse office, the Chairman studied the images with all the intensity of a chess master in the middle of a championship match. 'Peter, Peter, Peter - did you learn nothing from what I taught you?'
He switched from one snapshot to the next, analysing the traffic patterns and the spacecraft arrayed around Theroc. The flyby ships had streaked through the system, captured high-res images, and raced away before the Theron perimeter defences could spot them. Basil traced pathways along the screen, running a categorization routine.
A lesser man might have taken time off, relieving the pressure of leadership by retreating for a few hours to talk with friends or play a game, but Chairman Wenceslas did not like games. Games were petty diversions for people who had nothing more interesting to do, killing time rather than accomplishing something. Basil always had something more interesting to do. His 'game' was politics, and his playing board was the Spiral Arm. Now he faced the highest-stakes match in human history: the Hansa Chairman versus the rebel King. A talented politician and well-educated leader with decades of experience against a street kid who had been given new clothes and a bit of training. Unlike the fairytale of David and Goliath, this time Goliath would not lose.
On the spy image, Theroc's forested continents appeared green and amazingly recovered from the hydrogue attacks. Most of the ships he saw were mere cargo carriers, ramshackle trading vessels that looked as if someone had assembled them from a boxed kit missing a few pieces. Roamers, of course. Some vessels still had the gall to carry Hansa markings. He repeated the images from both flybys, but saw nothing that presented any sort of military threat. Yes, only a month had passed, and with much turmoil. Even so…
'Peter, you can't be that stupid.'
General Lanyan had already departed with the Jupiter to consolidate the Colonization Initiative planets as a first step toward reuniting the Hansa. Basil's current goal was to identify the weakest - and potentially most vital - Hansa colonies that had boldly, foolishly, declared their independence.
But Theroc lay so exposed! The Chairman had never expected such an opportunity to present itself. A single concerted strike could decapitate the Confederation.