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                                CHAPTER NINETEEN

   Brashieel, who had been a servant of thunders, curled in his new nest
   place and pondered. It had never occurred to him-nor to anyone else, so
   far as he knew-to consider the possibility of capture. Protectors did not
   capture nest-killers; they slew them. So, he had always assumed, did
   nest-killers deal with Protectors, yet these had not.

   He had attempted to fight to the death, but he had failed, and, strangely,
   he no longer wished to die. No one had ever told him he must; had they
   simply failed, as he, to consider that he might not? Yet he felt a vague
   suspicion a true thinker in honor would have ended slaying yet another
   nest-killer.

   Only Brashieel wished to live. He needed to consider the new things
   happening to and about him. These strange bipeds had destroyed Lord
   Chirdan's force with scarcely five twelves of ships. Admittedly, they were
   huge, yet it had taken but five twelves, when Lord Chirdan had been within
   day-twelfths of destroying this world. That was power. Such nest-killers
   could purge the galaxy of the Aku'Ultan, and the thought filled him with
   terror.

   But why had they waited so long? He had seen this world's nest-killers
   now, and they were the same species as those who crewed those stupendous
   ships. Whether they were also the nest-killers who had built those sensor
   arrays he did not know. It seemed likely, yet if it were so those arrays
   must have told them long ago that the Great Visit was upon them, so why
   conceal their capability until this world had suffered such losses? And
   why had they not killed him? Because they sought information from him?
   That was possible, though it would not have occurred to a Protector. Which
   might, Brashieel admitted grudgingly, be yet another way in which his
   captors out-classed the Nest. But stranger even than that, they did not
   mistreat him. They were impossibly strong for such small beings. He had
   thought it was but the nest-killer's powered armor which had made him a
   fledgling in his hands . . . until he saw a slight, slender one with long
   hair lift one of their elevated sleeping pads and carry it away to clear
   his nest place. That was sobering proof of what they might have done to
   him had they chosen to.

   Instead, they had tended his wounds, fed him food from Vindicator's wreck,
   provided air which was pleasant to breathe, not thin like their own-all
   that, when they should have struck him down. Was he not a nest-killer to
   their Protectors? Had he and his nestmates not come within a segment of
   destroying their very world? Were they so stupid they did not realize that
   they were-must be, forever-enemies to the death?

   Or was it simply that they did not fear him? Beside those monster ships,
   the greatest ships of the Nest were fledglings with toy bows of mowap
   wood. Were they so powerful, so confident, that they did not fear the
   nest-killers of another people, another place?

   That was the most terrifying thought of all, one which reeked of treason
   to the Nest, for there was-must always be-the fear, the Great Fear which
   only courage and the Way could quench. Yet if that was not so for these
   nest-killers, if they did not fear on sight, then was it possible they
   might not be nest-killers?

   Brashieel curled in his new nest place, eyes closed, and whimpered in his
   sleep, wondering in his dreams which was truly the greater nightmare: to
   fear the nest-killers, or to fear that they did not fear him. 

   Colin and Jiltanith rose to welcome Earth's senior officers and their new
   starship captains. There were but fourteen captains. If they took every
   trained, bio-enhanced man and woman Earth's defenses could spare, they
   could have provided minimal crews for seventeen of the Imperial Guard's
   warships; they had chosen to crew only fifteen, fourteen Asgerds and one
   Vespa.

   The Empire had gone in for more specialized designs than the Imperium, and
   the Asgerds were closest in concept to Dahak, well-rounded and equipped to
   fight at all ranges, while the Trosans were optimized for close combat
   with heavy beam armaments and the Vespas were optimized for planetary
   assaults. But the reason for manning only fifteen warships was simple; the
   other personnel would crew the three Enchanach-class transports, each vast
   as Dahak himself, for Operation Dunkirk.

   In hyper, the round-trip to Bia would take barely six months, and each
   stupendous ship could squeeze in upward of ten million people. With luck,
   they had time to return for a second load even if the Imperial Guard
   failed to halt the Achuultani, which meant they could evacuate over sixty
   million humans to the almost impregnable defenses of the old Imperial
   capital and the housing Mother's remotes were already building to receive
   them. General Chiang was selecting those refugees now; they were Colin's
   insurance policy.

   The Achuultani's best speed, even in hyper, seemed to be just under fifty
   times light-speed. At absolute minimum, they would take seventeen years to
   reach Bia. Seventeen years in which Mother and Tsien Tao-ling could
   activate defensive systems, collect and build additional warships, and man
   them. If the Achuultani ever reached Bia, they would not enjoy the visit.

   Colin looked down the table at Tsien. The marshal was as impassive as
   ever, but Colin had seen the hurt in his eyes when he lost the coin toss
   to Hatcher. Yet, in a way, Colin was pleased it was Tsien who was going.
   He hadn't learned to know the huge man well, but he liked what he knew.
   Tsien was a man of iron, and Colin trusted him with his life. With far
   more than his life, for his children would be returning to Birhat.

   Without 'Tanni. She was the commander of Dahak Two, the reserve flagship,
   and that was as far from Colin as she was going. Because she loved him,
   yes, but also because he would be going to meet the Achuultani, and the
   killer in her could not resist that battle.

   Had their roles been reversed, Colin thought he might have made himself go
   out of a sense of duty, but 'Tanni couldn't. He might have tried ordering
   her to . . . if he hadn't understood and loved her.

   The last officer-Senior Fleet Captain Lady Adrienne Robbins, Baroness
   Nergal, Companion of the Golden Nova and CO of the planetoid Emperor
   Herdan-found her place, and Colin glanced around the conference room,
   satisfied that this was the best Earth could boast, committed to her final
   defense. Then he stood and rapped gently on the table, and the quiet side
   conversations ended.

   "Ladies and gentlemen, Dahak has broken into the Achuultani data base. We
   finally know what we're up against, and it isn't good. In fact, it may be
   bad enough to make Operation Dunkirk a necessity, not just an insurance
   policy."

   Horus watched Colin as he spoke. His son-in-law looked grim, but far from
   defeated. He remembered the Colin MacIntyre he'd first met, a homely,
   sandy-haired young man who'd strayed into an unthinkably ancient war,
   determined to do what he must, yet terrified that he was unequal to his
   task.

   That homely young man was gone. By whatever chain of luck or destiny
   history moved, he had met his moment. Preposterous as it seemed, he had
   become in truth what accident had made him: Colin I, Emperor and Warlord
   of Humanity-Mankind's champion in this dark hour. If they survived, Horus
   mused, Herdan the Great would have a worthy rival as the greatest emperor
   in human history.

   "-not going to count ourselves out yet, though," Colin was saying, and
   Horus shook himself back into the moment. "We've got better intelligence
   than anyone's ever had on an incursion, and I intend to use it. Before I
   tell you what I hope to accomplish, however, it's only fair that you know
   what we're really up against. 'Tanni?" He nodded to his wife and sat as
   she stood.

   "My Lords and Ladies," she said quietly, "we face a foe greater than any
   who have come before us. 'Twould seem the Achuultani do call this arm of
   our galaxy common 'the Demon Sector' for that they have suffered so in
   their voyages hither. So have they mustered up a strength full double any
   e'er dispatched in times gone by, and this force we face with scarce four
   score ships.

   "Our Dahak hath beagled out their numbers. As thou dost know, Achuultani
   calculations rest upon the base-twelve system, and 'tis a great twelve
   cubed-near to three million, as we would say-of warships which come upon
   us."

   There was a sound. Not a gasp, but a deep-drawn breath. Most of the faces
   around the table tightened, but no one spoke.

   "Yet that telleth but a part," Jiltanith went on evenly. "The scouts which
   did war 'pon Terra these months past were but light units. Those which
   come behind are vaster far, the least near twice the size of those which
   have been vanquished here. We scarce could smite them all did our every
   missile speed straightway to its mark, and so, in sober fact, we durst not
   meet them all in open battle."

   Officers exchanged stunned glances, and Colin didn't blame them. His own
   first reaction would have done his reputation for coolness no good at all.

   "Yet I counsel not despair!" Jiltanith's clear voice cut through the
   almost-fear. "Nay, good My Lords and Ladies, our Warlord hath a plan most
   shrewd which still may tumble them to dust. Yet now will I ask our General
   MacMahan to speak that thou mayst know thine enemies."

   She sat, and Horus applauded silently. Colin's human officers spoke, not
   Dahak. Everyone here knew how much they relied upon Dahak, yet he could
   see them drawing a subtle strength from hearing their own kind brief them.
   It wasn't that they distrusted Dahak-how could they, when their very
   survival to this point resulted only from the ancient starship's
   fidelity?-but they needed to hear a human voice expressing confidence. A
   human who was merely mortal, like themselves, and so could understand what
   he or she asked of them.

   "Ladies and gentlemen," Hector MacMahan said, "Fleet Captain Ninhursag and
   I have spent several days examining the data with Dahak. Ninhursag's also
   spent time with our prisoner and, with Dahak's offices as translator,
   she's been able to communicate with him after a fashion. Oddly enough,
   from our perspective, though he hasn't volunteered data, he's made no
   attempt to lie or mislead us.

   "We've learned a great deal as a result, and, though there are still huge
   holes in our knowledge, I'll attempt to summarize our findings. Please
   bear with me if I seem to wander a bit afield. I assure you, it's
   pertinent.

   "The Achuultani, or the People of the Nest of Aku'Ultan, are-exclusively,
   so far as we can determine-a warrior race. Judging from some of
   Brashieel's counter-questions, they know absolutely nothing about any
   other sentient race. They've spent millions of years hunting them down and
   destroying them, yet they've learned nothing-literally nothing-about any
   of them. It's almost as if they fear communicating might somehow corrupt
   their great purpose. And that purpose is neither less nor more than the
   defense of the Nest of Aku'Ultan."

   A few eyebrows rose, and Hector shook his head.

   "I found it hard to believe at first myself, but that's precisely how they
   see it, because at some point in their past they encountered another race,
   one their records call 'the Great Nest-Killers.' How they met, why war
   broke out, what weapons were used, even where the war was fought, we do
   not know. What we do know is that there were once many 'nests.' These
   might be thought of as clans or tribes, but they consisted of millions and
   even billions of Achuultani. Of all those nests, only the Aku'Ultan
   survived, and only because they fled. From what we've learned, we're
   inclined to believe they fled to an entirely different galaxy-our own-to
   find safety.

   "After their flight, the Achuultani organized to defend themselves against
   pursuit, just as the Imperium organized to fight the Achuultani
   themselves. And just as the Imperium sent out probes searching for the
   Achuultani, the Achuultani searched for the Great Nest-Killers. Like our
   ancestors, they never found their enemy. Unlike our ancestors, they did
   find other sentient life forms. And because they regarded all other life
   forms as threats to their very existence, they destroyed them."

   He paused, and there was a deep silence.

   "That's what we're up against: a race which offers no quarter because it
   knows it will receive none. I don't say it's a situation which can never
   be changed, but clearly it's one we cannot hope will change in time to
   save us.

   "On another level, there are things about the Aku'Ultan we don't pretend
   to understand.

   "First, there are no female Achuultani." Several people looked at him in
   open disbelief, and he shrugged. "It sounds bizarre, but so far as we can
   tell, there isn't even a feminine gender in their language, which is all
   the more baffling in light of the fact that our prisoner is a fully
   functional male. Not a hermaphrodite, but a male. Fleet Captain Cohanna
   suggests this may indicate they reproduce by artificial means, which might
   explain why we see so little variation among them and, perhaps, their
   apparent lack of evolutionary change. It does not explain why any race,
   especially one as driven to survive as this one, should make the
   extraordinary decision to abandon all possibility of natural procreation.
   We asked Brashieel about this and got a totally baffled response. He
   simply didn't understand the question. It hadn't even occurred to him that
   we have two sexes, and he has no idea at all what that means to our
   psychology or our civilization.

   "Second, the Nest is an extremely rigid, caste-oriented society dominated
   by the High Lords of the Nest and headed by the Nest Lord, the highest of
   the high, absolute ruler of all Achuultani. Exactly how High Lords and
   Nest Lords are chosen was none of Brashieel's business. As nearly as we
   can tell, he was never even curious. It was simply the way things were.

   "Third, the Aku'Ultan inhabit relatively few worlds; most of them are
   always away aboard the fleets of their 'Great Visits,' sweeping the galaxy
   for 'nest-killers' and destroying them. The few planets they inhabit seem
   to be much further away than the Imperium ever suspected, which is
   probably why they were never found, and the Achuultani appear to be
   migratory, abandoning star systems as they deplete them to construct their
   warships. We don't know exactly where they are; that information wasn't in
   Vindicator's computers or, if it was, was destroyed before we took them.
   From what we've been able to determine, however, they appear to be moving
   to the galactic east. This would mean they're constantly moving away from
   us, which may also help to explain the irregular frequency of their
   incursions in our direction.

   "Fourth, the Nest's social and military actions follow patterns which, as
   far as we can tell, have never altered in their racial memory. Frankly,
   this is the most hopeful point we've discovered. We now know how their
   'great visits' work and how to derail the process for quite some time."

   "We do?" Gerald Hatcher scratched his nose thoughtfully. "And just how do
   we do that, Hector?"

   "We stop this incursion," MacMahan said simply. There was a mutter of
   uneasy laughter, and he smiled very slightly. "No, I mean it.

   "The Achuultani possess no means of interstellar FTL communication other
   than by ship. How they could've been around this long and not developed
   one is beyond me, but they haven't, which means that once a 'great visit'
   is launched, they don't expect to hear anything from it until it gets
   back."

   "That's good news, anyway," Hatcher agreed.

   "Yes, it is. Especially in light of some of their other limitations. Their
   best n-space speed is twenty-eight percent of light-speed, and they use
   only the lower, slower hyper bands-again, we don't understand why, but
   let's be grateful-which limits their best supralight speed to forty-eight
   lights; seven percent of what Dahak can turn out, six percent of what the
   Guard can turn out under Enchanach Drive, and two percent of what it can
   turn out in hyper. That means they take a long time to complete an
   incursion. Of course, unlike Enchanach Drive, there's a time dilation
   effect in hyper, and the lower your band, the greater the dilation, which
   means their voyages take a lot less time subjectively, but Brashieel's
   ship had already come something like fourteen thousand light-years to
   reach Sol. So if the incursion sent a courier home tomorrow, he'd take
   just under three centuries to get there. Which means, ladies and
   gentlemen, that if we stop them, we've got almost six hundred years before
   a new 'great visit' can get back here. And that we know where to go
   looking for them in the meantime."

   A soft growl came from the assembled officers as they visualized what they
   could do with five or six centuries to work with.

   "I'm glad to hear that, Hector," Hatcher said carefully, "but it leaves us
   with the little matter of three million or so ships coming at us right
   now."

   "True," Colin said, waving MacMahan back down. "But we've learned a
   little-less than we'd like, but a little-about their strategic doctrine.

   "First, we have a bit more time than we'd thought. The incursion is
   divided into three major groups: two main formations and a host of
   sub-formations of scouts which do most of the killing. The larger
   formations are mainly to back up the scout forces, each of which operates
   on a different axis of advance. Aside from the one which already hit us,
   they're unlikely to hit anything but dead planets as far as we're
   concerned, and a half-dozen crewed Asgerds could deal with any of them. If
   we can stop the main incursion, we'll have plenty of time to hunt them
   down and pick them off.

   "The real bad news is coming at us in two parts. The first-what I think of
   as the 'vanguard'-is about one and a quarter million ships, advancing
   fairly slowly from rendezvous to rendezvous in n-space to permit scouts to
   send back couriers to report. We may assume one's already been dispatched
   from Sol, but it can't pass its message until the vanguard drops out of
   hyper at the rendezvous, thirty-six Achuultani light-years from Sol. Given
   the difference in length between our years and theirs, that's about
   forty-six-point-eight of our light-years. The vanguard won't reach their
   rendezvous for another three months; we can be there in about three and a
   half weeks with Dahak, and a hell of a lot less than that for the Guard in
   hyper.

   "And take on a million ships when you get there?" Hatcher said.

   "Tough odds, but I've got a mousetrap planned that should take them out.
   Unfortunately, it'll only work once.

   "That's our problem. Even if we zap the vanguard, that still leaves what I
   think of as the 'main body': almost as numerous and with some really big
   mothers, under their supreme commander, a Great Lord Tharno.

   "Now, the vanguard and main body actually keep changing relative
   position-they 'leapfrog' as they advance-and their rendezvous are much
   more tightly spaced than the scouts' are. Again, this is to allow for
   communication; the scouts can't pass messages laterally, and they only
   send one back to the closest main fleet rendezvous if they hit trouble,
   but the leading main formation sends couriers back to the trailing
   formation at each stop. If there's really bad news, the lead force calls
   the trailer forward to link up, but only after investigating to be sure
   they need help, since it plays hell with their schedules. In any case,
   however, at least one courier is always sent back and there's a minimum
   interval of about five months before the trailer can come up. With me so
   far?"

   There were nods, and he smiled grimly.

   "All right, that's our major strategic advantage: their coordination
   stinks. Because they use hyper drives, their ships have to stay in hyper
   once they go into it until they reach their destination. And because their
   maximum fold-space com range is barely a light-year, the rear components
   of their fleet always jump to the origin point of the last message from
   the lead formation. Even in emergencies, the follow-on echelon has to jump
   to to almost exactly the same point, assuming they mean to coordinate with
   the leaders, because with their miserable communications they can't find
   each other if they don't."

   "Which means," Marshal Tsien said thoughtfully, "that your own ships may
   be able to ambush their formations as they emerge from hyper."

   "Exactly, Marshal. What we hope to do is mousetrap the vanguard and wipe
   it out; I think we'll get away with that, but we don't know where the
   rendezvous point before this one is. That means we can't stop the
   vanguard's couriers from telling Lord Tharno about our trap, meaning that
   the main body will be alerted and ready when it comes out.

   "So we probably will have to fight the main body. That pits seventy-eight
   of us against one-point-two million of them: about fifteen thousand to
   one."

   Someone swallowed audibly, and Colin smiled that grim smile again.

   "I think we can take them. We may lose a lot of ships, but we ought to be
   able to swing it if they pop into n-space where we expect them."

   A long silence dragged out. Marshal Tsien broke it at length.

   "Forgive me, but I do not see how you can do it."

   "I'm not certain we can, Marshal," Colin said frankly. "I am certain that
   we have a chance, and that we can destroy at least half and more probably
   two-thirds of their force. If that's all we accomplish, we may not save
   Earth, but we will save Birhat and the refugees headed there. That,
   Marshal Tsien-" he met the huge man's eyes "-is why I'm so relieved to
   know we're sending one of our best people to take over Bia's defenses."

   "I am honored by your confidence, Your Majesty, yet I fear you have set
   yourself an impossible task. You have only fifteen partially-manned
   warships-sixteen counting Dahak."

   "But Dahak is our ace in the hole. Unlike the rest of us, he can fight all
   of our unmanned ships with full efficiency as long as he's in fold-space
   range of them."

   "And if something happens to him, Your Majesty?" Tsien asked quietly.

   "Then, Marshal Tsien," Colin said just as quietly, "I hope to hell you
   have Bia in shape by the time the incursion gets there." 

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