The Ashes of Worlds - Kevin J. Anderson [116]
Sarein was appalled, her face pale. “Basil, how could you? That was murder!”
The Chairman took a long sip of his water. “Quite the contrary. That was the will of God. You heard King Rory.”
* * *
81
Admiral Sheila Willis
Blasting bug vessels with total abandon — now, that was the kind of battle she could really sink her teeth into. But though Admiral Willis had brought Confederation battleships loaded with every weapon they could scrounge, the Pym infestation was a lot more extensive than she had expected.
General Lanyan’s ships had gotten themselves into a pickle, and it made her feel warm and fuzzy to be the knight in shining armor.
The Confederation ships caused an uproar among the bugs. Two swarmships had been destroyed, or at least disassembled. But for every thousand component ships they vaporized, another thousand rose from the hive structures below or detached and attacked from the remaining swarmships. Willis had never seen anything like it.
Over the basic EDF comm channels, Lanyan was telling his ships to continue to fire. The Thunder Child blasted a small intact section of the hive city and attempted to retreat back to the imaginary safety of orbit. So far he hadn’t bothered to express much gratitude to his Confederation rescuers.
Willis wasn’t sure where the General had come up with a new Juggernaut — she didn’t recognize the name — but he wasn’t using it to full advantage. His battle group’s combined surface bombardment had been the right idea, but as usual, Lanyan had overestimated his own competence. He just hadn’t bombed the planet heavily enough.
“General, keep hitting the bug city. If we can squash the hive mind, we’ll be done here.”
“Look for yourself, Willis. We have been bloody well blasting the city!”
“If you want something done right . . .” she said with a sigh. Willis transmitted to Tasia in one of the Mantas flying close beside the Jupiter, “Commodore Tamblyn, if you would do the honors?” She had not only approved of Robb keeping his flag officer rank, but she had insisted that Tasia accept at least the equivalent rank.
“My pleasure, Admiral.”
Her Jupiter cleared a swath through the bugs that were harrying Lanyan’s vessels. The General’s flagship climbed higher in the atmosphere, trying to reach orbit while the surviving EDF ships continued to fire, covering his tail.
Tamblyn grumbled over the comm, “He better not run away before we’re all finished with this job.”
Robb shouted to his father across the comm, “Dad, we’ve got enough firepower to put an end to this. Concentrate your jazers on the center of the hive city below. Do you have any more nukes for surface bombardment?”
The surface of Pym already looked like a moonscape after the flash-melters, nukes, and several rounds of carpet bombing, and now the Confederation ships increased the destruction tenfold. Ignoring individual battles with the broken-apart swarmships, Willis led another Armageddon run over the insect city. “Use all of our penetrators and the full load of strata crumblers. They’ve probably hidden their breedex deep, or we’d have hit it by now.”
They left a holocaust behind them. Every remaining structure was smashed to powder. Shockwaves hammered the entire Pym hive city. The surface itself was halfway molten.
“Damn, that’s got to be enough,” Robb said.
“We’ll know when it’s enough,” Tasia said, “because once we kill the breedex, all those other bugs won’t know which direction to fly.”
Lanyan’s ships kept shooting haphazardly at Klikiss vessels. Though Robb continued to call his father, he received no response. Willis was annoyed that Conrad Brindle wouldn’t reply to his son’s repeated transmissions.
“Let’s give it our biggest, balls-out bombing run.” Willis intentionally