Her signal cuts out. Sensors scream. A hail of unidentified objects moving too fast to be ships or missiles streak toward the north pole. The objects are dark, massive, and too big to be rail slugs. Yet they are. I know they are before the Blues can even analyze the objects.
No student in any astral academy could ever be faulted if, when given an exam to create a hypothetical defense of Mars, they placed their strongest fleet on the north pole. A fleet on the north pole is a trump card. That is, unless the enemy circled the planet, noted your fleet’s velocity as you shadowed them over the course of five hours, and adjusted their own velocity over time to lead your fleet right into the path of rail slugs that were fired a week ago from the largest railgun installation ever built.
A railgun installation that was scuttled before it was lost to the enemy and which many great minds promised me neither the Core nor the Rim had the technology to restore.
I watch in cold fury.
The rail slugs would have to have been fired days ago, so they cannot target individual craft. It hardly matters. Rail slugs as large as corvettes but made of solid durosteel scream in at six times the speed of our fastest warship and detonate to send shrapnel into Victra’s fleet over the north pole. Slugs skip off the planetary shields with the force of thermonuclear bombs and plow through battle stations like tungsten marbles into papier-mâché machete models.
The slugs don’t come in flights, but in a steady, wide stream. We didn’t design the guns to fire like that, like firehoses. Kavax is awestruck. “They didn’t just fix the guns, they made a bigger clip,” he murmurs.
The stream of fire abates. The rail slugs took only four seconds to pass over the planet. The Blues tabulate the amount of metal that just passed over Mars and on into space faster than they can our casualties. They say the number. I blanche. It equates to ten months of Mercury’s iron exports. Where did they get that much metal? I have a guess: Lysander must have used some of the bones of the White Fleet to repair theLightbringer. I think I know what just happened to the rest. They shot us with our own detritus.
At least there will be no second shot. It’s just too expensive.
In the wake of the attack, the Nucleus is stunned. Not simply by the damage reports, but the mathematics involved in such a shot. They would dwarf the complexity of those used when we fired relief pods with our guns to my husband on Mercury.
We feelinferior.
Yet as my Blues search the debris floating over the north pole, they find a stirring sight. A ship signature, Victra’s. She hisses over the coms.“Those bastards. Form on me. Anyone still alive, form on thePandemonia.”
Victra’s ship is damaged, but she is alive. Not just her; at least half her fleet seems to have survived the barrage. But they’ll have no time to recover, because the enemy armada has finally decided to attack. They angle not for the planet, but toward the north pole. I go still. They have no intention of launching an Iron Rain today. Today, they came to kill Victra and eliminate the best ships of our fleet.
“Niobe, Char, this is a decapitation mission. They’re going for Victra and Task Force Spear. Marshal on her. It’ll be a knife fight on the pole. We cannot lose the fleet. Defend it at all costs.”
They copy and their fleets race from Phobos and the south pole tohelp as the battle stations open fire on the onrushing enemy. The firefight glows like a second sun. I let the battle-station commanders do their jobs and stare at theLightbringer.Each minute Phobos’s orbit brings us closer to alignment with Lysander.
“Not a lemon after all,” Kavax says.
“No.”
He frowns at the debris over the pole. “Alas, hoisted by our own—”
I turn on him with such cold fury that Sophocles growls at me from his arms. Kavax feeds Sophocles a jellybean as if we hadn’t just been hit in the teeth. “Calm down,” he says and eyes the dazed members of the Nucleus’s staff. He’s right.
“We knew this would not be bloodless!” I shout. “Now it’s our turn to draw theirs.”
A faint cheer and they return to their jobs.
Oro rushes to my side. “My Sovereign, without fleet coverage Phobos will be vulnerable to attack.”
“Then it’s a good thing we have shields, guns, ripWings, and missiles,” Kavax says. “If Lune’s got the balls, let him try his luck.”
“Sync to your guns, Oro,” I say. “I’ll prep the legions.”
He rushes to his gun command station and dons his neural link circlet. He shivers and his eyes roll back. Oro can literally feel the giant anti-ship guns of Phobos moving in the gloom to train their gaze on Lune’s fleet.
“My Sovereign, does Lune know you’re on Phobos?” Holiday asks me.
“He’s a smart boy,” I say. “And since our intelligence is apparently for shit, I’m guessing the Twins of South Pacifica aren’t the only weapon the enemy’s stolen from us that is now battle ready. Time to alignment with theLightbringer?” I ask.
“Nineteen minutes,” a Blue calls.
The enemy fleet is suffering heavy losses to our battle stations, but they are almost to the dead zone their artillery carved into our defenses over the north pole. In that debris, Victra will be gathering her ships for the fight of her life. I roll out my shoulders, ready for the fight of mine.
22
LYSANDER
