Of Fire and Night - Kevin J. Anderson [213]
Peter looked at Estarra. "Well, at least one of us is safe--even though Daniel will never thank us for it."
"I didn't get the impression Daniel liked much of anything." Estarra wistfully looked at the transportal as OX reset the systems. "Too bad there's no doorway direct to Theroc. That's where we need to go."
The Teacher compy stepped away from the transgate controls. "No, Queen Estarra. For that, I will need to fly this ship."
124
GENERAL KURT LANYAN
Aboard the beleaguered Goliath, Lanyan yelled for his weapons officers to fire indiscriminately. "Plenty of targets to choose from. Just shoot anything that's shooting at us." He wished he knew what the hell was going on.
First, all the Ildiran warliners had turned against the EDF, then they'd turned again, throwing themselves at the warglobes in a suicidal melee such as Lanyan had never seen. Nearly seven hundred ships had sacrificed themselves all in the space of a few minutes--what a monumental massacre!
The drifting wreckage of incinerated warliners and exploded hydrogue spheres had turned the battle zone into a demolition derby. Flaming fuel chambers, heavy engines, and rotating hull plates flew past like a meteor storm. Continuing explosions spangled space, as if the Goliath sat in the middle of a Coronation Day fireworks show. Lanyan's ships had to fly evasive maneuvers and dodge shrapnel while they continued to fire. Any hope of rigid battle formations had gone straight out the airlock.
And then there were the damned Soldier compies and Klikiss robots to contend with. An overwhelming number of hijacked EDF vessels plowed into the fray, looking exactly like Lanyan's own ships. It was hard to know which ones to shoot at.
Tactical officers scrambled to keep track of ID blips, but the hijacked vessels plunged and wove through the disordered fleet until no tracking systems could maintain a lock. "They're swarming around like a cloud of drunken gnats."
"General, each one is transmitting the same IFF signals." Kosevic wiped sweat from his face. "Our targeting computers think all those ships are EDF vessels."
"We know they're not, so start shooting at them. Now! Fraks and carbon-carbon slammers might not work against warglobes, but they'll sure as hell rip the guts out of an EDF ship." His eyebrows knit together, and his cold, pale eyes focused on the screen. "And please try not to take out our own ships while you're at it. We don't have many to spare." Still, he saw no way around it.
Close in among the EDF ships, the robot-controlled infiltrators blasted away. The concentrated jazer volley tore a Thunderhead weapons platform into a mass of broken deck plates and a cloud of venting atmosphere.
Lanyan lurched to his feet. "All right, there's a bloody target for you! Put a marker on every ship that opens fire on one of ours."
The Goliath swiftly destroyed the attacking Manta. Marching back and forth between the Juggernaut's weaponry stations, Kosevic rallied the gunners to shoot at other likely hostiles, but the targeting computers were overwhelmed. "General, now that we've opened fire as well, nobody can tell who's attacking and who's defending."
Lanyan slammed his fist down on the arm of the chair.
On the screen, the images of two grid admirals--Peter Tabeguache and Kostas Eolus--overlapped with frantic signals. "General, why are you firing on us? We recaptured some of our ships, and we're here to help the Hansa!"
Lanyan regarded the images with a gimlet eye. "Oh, really? Then why did you start opening fire?"
"We thought your craft were the ones hijacked by compies," pleaded Eolus.
"We had no way of knowing," Tabeguache said.
Lanyan blanked the comm transmission. "Hit Eolus's signaling tower with an EM burst. I want to rattle that ship." He saw his exec's hesitation. "I was tricked by Admiral Wu-Lin once. I don't trust either of those Juggernauts any farther than I can throw them."
After the weapons officer sent out the precision scrambler burst, the image of the Grid