Of Fire and Night - Kevin J. Anderson [226]
"It's not exactly my world anymore," Denn muttered. "But we'll help them out anyway."
A rough voice he recognized as General Kurt Lanyan's elbowed its way through the comm system. "Roamers! What the bloody hell are you doing here? If you get in the way, I'll shoot you down myself."
"Why, General, we've just come to demonstrate a bit of Roamer ingenuity, not to mention generosity."
Denn's Dogged Persistence and the eleven cargo escorts dumped their packages. Each craft carried thousands of tightly stacked resonance membranes, which spread apart as soon as they were released, separated by quick electrostatic charges. Kotto's doorbells created a blizzard in empty space, flakes drifting onto the enemy craft.
Most of them missed, but enough clung in place. Once fastened, the doorbells began to thrum through a frequency cycle until they stumbled upon the correct resonance tone--with dramatic results. The warglobes' enormous hatches split open. Windows and access ports burst to vent the superdense atmosphere into space.
At first, Kotto and Denn cheered in triumph, then yelled in panic as they scrambled to avoid the out-of-control drogue ships. Roamer vessels tried to get out of the shooting gallery. Ricocheting warglobes collided with each other and barely missed the cargo escorts. Spherical battleships crashed into each other, haring off in random directions, completely out of control. The diamond globes had no defense against this kind of attack.
It was a massacre.
The hundreds of Solar Navy warliners that had been pulled from suicide runs circled about. Denn imagined the Ildirans must be pleased, or at the very least relieved.
Even with the warglobes destroyed, however, the battle wasn't over. The EDF Juggernauts and Mantas were still firing on their robot-controlled counterparts. On a whim, Denn transmitted to the Ildirans. "Adar, if you have any spare ships, I think General Lanyan could use some assistance."
Tal Lorie'nh's cohort, still spoiling for a fight, happily joined the fray. Ildiran ships tracked down the hijacked craft and opened fire. Eavesdropping on EDF channels, Denn heard loud cheering among the human soldiers.
General Lanyan sent a loud call across the comm line, sounding stunned. "Roamers, identify yourselves. Who are you?"
Denn couldn't resist. "We're the people who just saved your butts. Don't ever forget that. We're Roamers, and proud of it."
"I can't believe you'd do this for the EDF," the General said.
Denn heard several of the clan pilots laughing out loud on the channel. "We didn't do it for you, General. In fact, we did it in spite of the EDF. We did this for King Peter." He smiled. That would certainly put egg on the Chairman's face! He leaned back in his pilot's chair. "We'll be taking our leave now. No sense overstaying our welcome."
Lanyan sounded embarrassed. "Wait around for the mop-up operations. Get yourself a pat on the back from the Hansa."
"Oh, I don't think so, General," Denn said. "Roamers just don't seem to be safe in your clutches." On a private channel, he called Kotto and the pilots of the other cargo escorts. "We'll just let them chew on that for a while."
Without a further word to the Hansa or the EDF, the Roamers departed from the Earth system.
133
SIRIX
Aboard his stolen EDF Juggernaut, the Klikiss robot assessed what remained of his military force. Actual events were greatly at variance with what he had anticipated.
Knowing the hydrogue scheme, Sirix and his fellow robots had made a perfect plan to participate in the annihilation of the human homeworld. Flown by reprogrammed Soldier compies and independent Klikiss robots, these military ships should have been unstoppable against the disorganized remnants of the Earth Defense Forces.
He had committed serious errors. Sirix had never anticipated that enormous treeships would join the conflict. He had never believed humans could mount an effective