Metal Swarm - Kevin J. Anderson [62]
The large-scale attack had not caused enough damage to satisfy Yazra'h. When the Adar finally felt that the robots had been pummelled enough to pose a minimal risk, he turned his sister loose. 'Go and clean up the rest. Be careful - and be victorious.'
She flashed her bright teeth in a feral grin. 'We will eliminate every last one of those traitorous robots. And our rememberers will tell you the story when we get back, Adar!' As soldier kithmen rushed to the cutters, Yazra'h bounded along, with the two uneasy rememberers in tow.
'Are you certain you should bring that pair along?' Zan'nh called after her. 'They are not warriors.'
'We are observers.' Vao'sh's words sounded forced, but sincere. And we must be there to observe.'
The Adar admired Yazra'h's enthusiasm. In his younger years, he had trained against fierce soldier kithmen and skilled jousters. He could defend himself with a mirrored shield, and he could kill with a crystal katana, with hand lasers, or with his bare hands. However, Zan'nh could also command large engagements of ships and grasp tactics across a sweeping stellar battlefield. He was required to both strategize and lead, while his sister had the freedom to fight on a more personal level. Part of him envied Yazra'h for the mayhem of combat, but each Ildiran was born to his or her own place, knowing their duty and their destiny.
He remained in his command nucleus, observing high-resolution images of the battleground. As the cutters landed on Maratha, Ildiran fighters spilled out, weapons ready. Transmission mists indicated that the soldier kithmen immediately encountered furious fighting. The initial bombardment had left many shattered exoskeletons, other robots had been entirely melted into black polymer pools. But an unexpected number of still-undamaged robots swarmed up from underground tunnels that had not yet collapsed. What had they been doing here? And why on Maratha?
'Klikiss robots mounting resistance,' Yazra'h transmitted. 'But our weapons are more than adequate.' Explosions, high-pitched insectile squeals, and images of the aggressive machines filled the command nucleus screens.
'Adar!' the sensor operator cried, startling him. 'I have just received an alert from long-distance sensors. Incoming ships. Unknown configuration.'
Zan'nh looked away from the pictures of mayhem on the ground. 'Incoming ships? Expand the screen.' He feared that the robots had summoned reinforcements. At Earth, he had seen a large battle group of EDF battleships hijacked by the black machines. Prepare to engage with all weaponry.'
But he saw soon enough that these were not human-built Mantas or Juggernauts. Nor were they more robots.
As the unknown vessels hurtled toward Maratha, they grew so large they would surely overwhelm the Solar Navy septa. The strange ships were actually enormous clusters of countless smaller vessels, interlocked geometric shapes. The communications bands filled with clicking and chirping signals, and Zan'nh's officer was wise enough to run them through ancient translation protocols when he found recognizable points of reference.
'It is a Klikiss signal, Adar!' Ages ago, the black robots had shown Ildirans how to interpret the language of their creators. Those translation routines had not been used in thousands of years.
'But the Klikiss are extinct.'
As if to disprove Zan'nh's assertion, a huge creature with a spiny carapace and many segmented legs spoke via a blurred communications link, apparently assuming that the Ildirans would understand it. 'We detect our robots here. We come to destroy them.'
Zan'nh recovered quickly, standing firm and replying to the Klikiss. Then we share the same purpose. We have already devastated their new hive. We thwarted their defences and destroyed the fleet of ships they were building.' He struggled to remember any history he knew about the ancient insect race. If only Vao'sh were up here instead of on the ground! The