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Hermes slashed at it with barrage after barrage of nuke-tipped missiles and
100-terawatt laser blasts.
But Hermes was injured as well. The double rim-to-rim-saucer of the former
Skybase had been repeatedly hit by Xul singularity weapons, and portions of
its dark gray hull showed a thick scattering of puckered craters and had been
blackened by searing temperatures. As he watched, blue lightning played across
the Hermes hull, blasting away a cloud of fragments.
Private Garroway, a voice said in his head. Welcome to Hell. This is
General Alexander.
Yes, sir! Garroway responded, surprised. What the hell was a general doing
talking to him?
We re all counting on you, son, Alexander said. The rest of the fleet s
gone through the Gate, as planned, and most of the Xul with them. We re all of
us counting on you now to carry out your mission.
I won t let you down, sir.
I know you won t. Listen up, now. On the other side, you ll make contact with
Captain Michael Angi.
He s the skipper of the Mars, and he ll be& uh!
The transmission was briefly interrupted, as another Xul barrage struck home.
Hermes? Are you there?
We re here, Garroway. Okay, the skipper of the Mars is coordinating the
operation on that side. If the
Mars has already been destroyed, your contact will be Captain Gerald
Baumgartner, of the Ishtar.
Right, sir.
Better get a move on, son. They re waiting on you, but they won t be able to
hold out for long.
Garroway engaged the craft s gravitic drive, and watched the Gate loom huge
across his view forward.
On my way, General.
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Godspeed, son. And semper fi.
Semper
But before he completed the farewell, the alien starship snapped through the
gate interface.
His view forward blurred sharply, then suddenly sprang back into sharp relief.
The thin, background scattering stars of Aquila Space was gone, replaced by a
wall of mottled night and light.
The panorama was breathtaking, and magnificent. It was like looking at a
towering cliff, hundreds of meters high but instead of rock the cliff face was
made of stars, of millions, of billions of stars massed and piled high and
thronging deep, a wall of blazing stars interlaced through with the snaking
tendrils of black, obscuring dust clouds, and with the shining radiant clouds
and delicately hued sheets of reflective nebulae, their tattered edges gilded
by starlight.
Billions of stars, the majority red or orange in hue, the massed suns of the
central bulge of the spiral galaxy that was the Milky Way.
Private Garroway, Achilles said. We need to adjust course.
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Shaking himself, Garroway tore his gaze away from that incredible starfield
vista, and looked instead for the local star. He knew it should be that way,
since part of his mission download had included data
brought back from Marine recon flights into this space.
And there it was& a mottled, red-orange disk easily three times larger in
apparent size than Sol appeared from Earth, its light stopped down by the
alien vessel s optics or by Achilles to keep his eyeballs
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from frying. Garroway nudged, and the alien trigger ship responded, swinging
to bring the crosshairs over the star.
Jonah, this is Mars, sounded in his mind. Do you copy?
I hear you, sir. He shifted his attention around to the other side, where
brilliant flashes of light were sparkling in the distance, off to one side of
the Gate. The Mars was quite close several kilometers, her scarred hull
clearly visible by the ruddy glow of the local star. The other ships of the
MIEF were scattered across the sky, attempting to avoid the relentless
approach of some twenty Xul hunterships of various shapes and sizes. Twelve
light-seconds away, sunward, his sensors showed a large, stationary complex of
some sort& obviously a large Xul orbital fortress. More Xul ships were emerging
from it as he watched.
Okay, Captain Angi s voice said. We have you on lidar. Your range to the
local sun is now seven point one-three light-minutes. The flight profile calls
for you to go through at five c& so that puts the detonation at one point four
two six minutes, that s one minute, twenty-five point five six seconds. If all
goes well, the star blows and the wave-front reaches us seven minutes and
eight seconds after that& so call it eight and a half minutes after you engage
your drive. We will time our maneuver from that moment.
Right, Captain, Garroway replied. All of this had been downloaded to him
already, but the confirmation being certain that everyone was operating on the
same wavelength was vital.
With luck, you ll pass through the star and emerge on the other side. Just
keep your drive on long enough to clear the radiation front, and you should be
okay.
He could hear the unbelief in Angi s mental voice. The guy was whistling in
the dark. Or he was convinced that Garroway was on a suicide run, and lying to
spare Garroway s feelings.
I was told to hold my speed at five c and to stay in warp for an hour after I
hit the core, Garroway said. That will put me five light-hours from the
star, which should be plenty of space.
There was no reply at first. More Xul Type I s and Type II s were converging
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rapidly on the MIEF
squadron, and the Mars had just taken a savage burst of particle-beam fire.
The battlecruiser lurched, rolling heavily to starboard, already slewing to
port to return fire with her main gun.
You d better get going, Angi told him. Good luck, Marine. God go with you!
You, too, Garroway said. Looks like you may need Him more than me.
He checked his targeting cursor, which was centered perfectly on the
red-orange globe of the local star.
Are we set, Achilles?
All systems on-line, the AI said. Ready at your command& .
He gave the thought-click order, and the universe MIEF fleet, Xul attackers,
red-orange star, and that incredible background vista of star clouds all
blinked out of existence& .
26
1012.1102
Jonah
Cygni Space/Starwall Space
1258 hrs GMT
Garroway took careful note of the time 1258 hours, nine seconds. From the
instant Achilles engaged
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the Alcubierre Drive to the center of the star, the flight time should be one
minute, twenty-five seconds.
An abstract part of his mind wondered about acceleration; did a ship under
this alien version of the
Alcubierre Drive leap instantly to 5c? Or, as with human ships, did it take a
few minutes to build up to speed from a standing start?
Then he realized that the flight profile called for a mean velocity of five
times the speed of light. It might well take seconds or even as much as a
minute to build up to speed, but if so, Achilles would take the
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