Scattered Suns - Kevin J. Anderson [199]
“Hey, could I have a heads-up, please?”
Then she saw. The six Ildiran warliners were a spectacular but unexpected sight. The colorful alien ships hovered above the clouds, their feathery solar sails extended in all directions. “Why are they here?”
“Unknown,” one of the Soldier compies answered. “They have no weapons powered up.” Nearby, EA offered no comment, but she seemed to be observing with keen interest.
“Should we take preemptive action, Commander?” Erin Eld called over the communication link. “Fire a few rounds before they—”
“They’re probably trying to find survivors from their own cloud-harvesting complex.” She turned to the nearest Soldier compy. “Open a channel on a standard Solar Navy frequency. I want to talk to their septar.”
When the compy had done so, Tasia put on a welcoming smile. “This is Commander Tamblyn of the Earth Defense Forces, responding to an emergency signal from our skymine. We’ve come to get even with the hydrogues. You’re welcome to join in the brawl with us, if you like.”
The Ildiran response was a long time in coming, as if they were debating the matter. The Solar Navy septar answered only briefly: “Not at this time.” Then, without further explanation, the gaudy battleships lifted away from Qronha 3, retreated from orbit, and left the system.
“What was that all about?” Tasia asked.
“Some allies,” Odenwald said.
“Doesn’t matter. We didn’t expect their help anyway. Let’s get closer to those clouds and start hunting.” Tasia decided it was time to roll up her sleeves and get to work. “Smoke them out.”
The six commanders transmitted taunting demands and rude ultimatums into the clouds. Since the hydrogues wouldn’t understand the nuances of human language, she let the other five have free rein with their curses and insults, calling the deep-core aliens by the foulest names. If their mere presence and their verbal goads didn’t work, the rammers carried several high-yield atomic warheads to help flush out the drogues, like teasing a vicious guard dog.
Everything was ready. The rammer ships’ hot engines were dancing on the edges of the red lines; overloads would come easily after a short sprint of acceleration. None of the Soldier compies seemed bothered by their impending fate. Neither was EA, though Tasia was determined to take the Listener compy with her in the evacuation pod.
Far more quickly than they had dared to hope, the provocation worked. Numerous spiked spheres climbed out of the cloudy depths, as if they had lain in ambush all along. When she saw the speed of the coordinated response, a strange thought crossed Tasia’s mind. It’s as if they knew we were coming. What if the drogues attacked the Hansa skymine just to lure us here?
One after another, like bubbles in a pot coming to a boil, the hydrogue spheres kept appearing. The sheer number of them made her dizzy. “Count ’em! Let me know how many there are.”
“Seventy-eight hydrogue warglobes detected so far,” announced one of the Soldier compies.
“By the Guiding Star, we don’t have enough—” Then she stopped. “We’ll do what we can. Make ’em hurt.”
From the bridge of his rammer, Tom Christensen shouted out, brash and foolish, “Pick on this, bastards!”
The Soldier compies remained diligent at their stations. EA stared fixedly ahead. Tasia guessed it would take about ten seconds to get inside the evac pod and launch herself away from the free-for-all.
The Ildiran Solar Navy’s commander had perished along with forty-nine warliners in a similar attack that had deeply wounded the hydrogues. Now that the deep-core aliens had come back to Qronha 3, Tasia’s rammer fleet would deal another serious blow to the enemy.
At least she hoped so.
Warglobes continued to rise around them, an overwhelming number. Tasia cast one final glance at EA, then set her jaw.
“It’s not everybody who gets a chance to have their names misspelled in the history books,” she said. “Prime the engines and prepare for ramming speed!”
Chapter 101—OSIRA’H
Inside her protective