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gasped, We got about two minutes warning from the Fishers. They snuck past
them somehow.
Red blips surrounded the Fortress in the tank. Tiny wires of fire lanced
across the globe. Little stars sparkled. Diminutive sub-blips swarmed and
danced like clouds of gnats on a still spring day.
Eighty-two of them, sir, someone said. There were eighty-five to start.
Mostly light stuff. Sangaree.
But . . . He did not understand. It made no sense at all.
They range from singleships to light battle, sir. Computer s still trying to
project their assault plan.
Somewhere else, a computer voice murmured, Kill. Bogey Forty-Six. Five
thousand tons.
Frieda arrived. She had been asleep too. She was groggy and disheveled.
Mouse kept trying to make sense of the ship movements in the display globe.
He could detect no pattern but an inexorable inward pressure.
Just a raid? he asked. Or are they serious?
The senior watchstander gave him a funny look. Damned serious. Suicidally
serious. They said so. He punched up something on his comm screen. A face
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appeared. The man said he was going to do to the Fortress what had been done
to Prefactlas.
Mouse asked Frieda, You think that s him?
Probably. Nobody s ever seen him, as far as I know.
I ve seen him before, Mouse said, suddenly remembering a moment on The
Mountain. He was there when that old man tried to kill us. In the crowd.
Sir, the senior watchstander said, the computer says they re running a
randomed assault pattern. Some sort of command battle computer is controlling
their ships. It looks like the ships commanders have free manueuver any
direction but backward. They ve got to come after us whether they want to or
not.
Then it s a kamikaze attack.
Sir?
A suicide thing.
Definitely. Until whoever controls the battle computer turns them loose.
Mouse glanced at the display. An additional two enemy ships had been
neutralized. Are they going to break through?
The watchstander sighed. I think so. Unless we get a little more efficiency
out of the automatic defenses.
How long before they touch down?
Too early to predict.
Tell the Fishers to contact Ceislak. Tell them to pass the word to Navy.
Then have them get ahold of my father.
He could take only two hours of watching the claws of doom creep closer. The
enemy kept coming and coming, despite one of the most sophisticated and deadly
automatic defense systems ever devised. A third of their number had been
destroyed, and still they came on with a dreadful, almost machinelike
determination. Plainly, a madman was in charge out there.
He walked the silent halls of the office level, in some way making tentative
good-byes to the Legion and everything he had known. He visited his father s
study again, thinking it would be a crime against history to destroy the
collections gathered there. So many beautiful things . . .
He returned to Combat. What s it look like?
Still bad, sir.
We going to hold tillHittite gets here?
Yes, sir. You think they ll commit her by herself?
I couldn t say. There s nothing out there that can stand up to her.
Empire Class could take on any ten, sir. But there re fifty-some still.
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When you get signals from her, you give her everything we know. Especially
about their combat lock. They ll have to break it to engage her, won t they?
Maybe some of the individual ships commanders will make a run for it.
Will do, sir.
An elderly officer, retired from Legion service, said, Some figures, sir.
Mouse scanned them. They predicted that the Sangaree would overwhelm the
outer defenses and land at least fifteen vessels on the planetoid s surface.
Not good. This makesHittite our only hope.
Yes, sir.
Sir, said the senior watchstander. We ve just picked up another group of
them moving in.
What?
Easy, sir. They aren t fighting ships. Here. Five of them. Four big ones
that scan out as transports of some kind, and one medium one that might be the
command ship.
Transports. Of course. So they can send troops inside.
Frieda eased up on the senior watchstander s far side. She studied the data
momentarily, then stalked out of Combat. It was the first she had moved in
hours.
Pass the word to the Armory to stand by to issue small arms, Mouse said.
And tell them to run a check on all internal defense systems. You computation
people. I want some kind of parameters on best and worst times we can expect
them to reach the surface. More to himself than anyone, he added, Father
thought the Fortress could stand up to anything. I guess he never considered
being attacked by a madman.
Uhm. Sir, there never has been a perfect defense against someone who doesn t
care what happens to himself.
Next evening Mouse mustered the entire population of the Fortress in the
gymnasium. He explained the situation. He asked for suggestions and received
none. There was little that could be suggested. They could but try to hang on
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