For just a moment, the universe freezes in place.
Then, through the white-hot bloom of the impact, the Lanky reappears.
“Goddammit,” I shout, and pound the dashboard of the Dragonfly with my bandaged hand, an action I instantly regret.
“Lanky ship now at forty-eight thousand, three-five-two by positive zero-zero-one,” Regulus’s tactical officer sends, and it sounds like he’s reading the names off a headstone.
“Aspect change, aspect change on the Lanky,” someone else says. “He’s ejecting something. Second contact, same bearing.”
Something breaks loose from the Lanky ship and gets flung aside into its own trajectory at hundreds of meters per second. Then another object follows, and then it’s a constant stream, things of irregular shapes and sizes leaving the ship and forming a trail behind the approaching ship.
“He’s damaged. Holy shit, the Lanky is damaged. Indy took a piece out of him.”
The hull of the approaching ship is no longer the smooth, organic-looking solid thing I’m used to seeing. Instead, the front end of the Lanky ship has a huge chunk missing from it, a scar that extends from the bow of the thing halfway down one side. As I train the camera on it at maximum magnification, I can see matter tearing loose from the wound and tumbling off into space. The hole in the Lanky ship has a strange, fibrous appearance.
“All units, weapons free. Aim for the hole in that hull. Whatever you have left, let the son of a bitch have it.”
A dozen ships open up with their rail guns. The barrage fire peppers the undamaged portion of the Lanky’s hull without effect, but the hole in the hull seems to absorb the cannon fire instead of deflecting it. Some of the ships have missiles left, and they add them to the shooting-range frenzy that has seized the gunnery officers on every task force vessel.
“Nuclear fire mission,” Regulus announces. “Firing tubes one through eight. All units, prepare for impact effects.”
Eight more missile trails streak toward the Lanky, now forty thousand kilometers out and closing rapidly.
“Get clear! All units, evasive action. Get out of his way!”
There’s a mad scramble as a dozen ships go in a dozen different directions to avoid colliding with the kilometers-long behemoth hurtling toward the battle group. The first of Regulus’s nukes goes wide and streaks past the Lanky. The second shatters against the undamaged front section and expends itself in a short-lived fission bloom. Then the rest arrive and seemingly hit the hull all at once. At least three of Regulus’s nukes disappear into the wound on the side of the Lanky ship.
The side of the Lanky seed ship bows out like the gills of a breathing shark. Then a much bigger section of the hull blows off the Lanky and disintegrates, and this time there is blindingly bright nuclear fire behind it. The seed ship shudders from bow to stern.
“Multiple direct hits! Multiple hits with secondaries!”
“Got you, you son of a bitch,” Halley shouts next to me.
The Lanky ship’s flight path becomes unstable. The long cigar shape from hell starts to wobble on its trajectory, like an oscillating tuning fork. The stern starts swinging out of line, and the Lanky careens sideways, still on the same bearing but with the bow pointing forty-five degrees off course. The battle group’s rail guns and ship-to-ship missiles keep raking the massive hull. Much of the ordnance bounces off the undamaged hull the way it always has, but almost as much is pouring into the open flank of the seed ship.
Our formation is in disarray, each ship evading the Lanky and firing its weapons as fast as it can bring them to bear. It’s a brutal short-ranged exchange, and even though the seed ship is clearly mortally wounded, it’s not dead yet. From the undamaged side of the hull, penetrator rods spray into space, blindly but in large numbers. We are not in the line of fire, but two of the task force ships are less lucky. Tripoli takes a broadside that tears her up all the way from bow to stern, and she starts spinning out of control, bleeding frozen air and shrapnel. One of the smaller corvettes that joined us at the last minute simply blows apart under the hits, shattered alloy and steel hurtling in all directions. Then the Lanky is past the task force, hurtling toward Earth sideways and shedding enormous pieces of itself.
“He’s going to hit atmo,” someone sends. “My God, what if he doesn’t break up?”
“Multiple separations on the Lanky ship,” Minsk announces.
The camera feed shows smaller objects ejecting from the undamaged side of the hull. They come out in spurts, like the arterial blood of a wounded animal.
“Oh, God,” I say. “He’s tossing out his seedpods. There’s a dozen or more of those bastards in each of those.”
“All units, move in and track the debris,” Regulus orders. “Fire at will.”
Avenger still has air/space defense missiles in her magazines. She starts launching salvos of them, fast and angry fireflies that race out to intercept the seedpods before they can make it into the atmosphere and release their cargo onto Earth. But it’s too little, too late. Some of the missiles smash into the seedpods, but each of them is the size of a destroyer and seemingly just as hard-shelled as its mother ship. Most missiles fail to track or don’t catch up with the seedpods as they hurtle into the upper layer of Earth’s atmosphere, trailing bright plasma flares.
“Multiple incursions. Tracking twenty-plus pods in the atmosphere,” says Regulus.
I don’t need a camera to see what’s happening right outside our cockpit windows. We are in high orbit above the North American continent, and right now there are hundreds of twenty-meter-tall and hard-to-kill Lankies falling down to Earth in their resilient settlement pods.
“All drop ships, this is Regulus. Initiate drop sequence and follow the seedpods down, wherever they fall. Follow them down and kill those sons of bitches. All drop ships, initiate drop sequence,” says the Regulus tactical officer.
“You don’t have to tell me twice,” Halley says. She seizes her throttle lever and puts her thumb on the launch button.
“Whisky and Delta wings, follow me,” she says. “We’ll assign targets on the way down. Dropping in three, two, one. Drop.”
She punches the launch button, and the Dragonfly drops away from the Regulus. Halley opens up the throttles and brings the nose around and down with a satisfied little shout.
“Tallyho. Lock and load back there, folks. You’ll be in the dirt and killing shit in fifteen.”
CHAPTER 25