Lady Adrienne Robbins snarled like a hungry tiger and moved her ship slowly closer, a craftsman of death wreaking slaughter, as fresh suns glared deep in the enemy's force.

The manned ships of the Imperial Guard closed, firing desperately to cover their charging sisters as Dahak surged into the heart of his enemies.

Colin had to back out of the maelstrom. His mind could no longer endure the furious tempo of Dahak's perceptions and commands. From here on, he was a passenger on a charge into Hell.

Deep, glowing wounds pocked Dahak's flanks. Clouds of atmosphere and vaporized steel trailed the mighty planetoid, and the rear of the sphere thinned dangerously as more and more ships moved forward to replace losses. God, these Achuultani had guts! They weren't even trying to run. They stood and fought, dying, seeking to ram, and they were killing his ships. Fifteen were gone, another ten savagely wounded, but the others drove on, carving a river of fire deeper into the Achuultani.

Somewhere ahead of them were the command ships. The enemy's brain. The organizing force which bound them together.

Hothan blinked in consternation. Battle Comp was never wrong, but surely that could not be correct?! Drones? Unmanned ships? Preposterous!

But the data codes blinked, no longer informing but commanding. Somewhere inside that sphere of enemies was a single ship, its emission signature different from all the others, from which the directions flowed. How Battle Comp had deduced that from the stutter of incomprehensible alien com signals Hothan could not imagine, but if it was true—

Dahak staggered, and Command One's lights flickered.

Colin went white as damage reports suddenly flooded his neural feed. The enemy had shifted his targeting pattern. He was no longer firing at the frontal arc of their formation; his missiles were bursting inside the globe! All of his missiles!

Their formation had become a sphere of fire, and Dahak writhed at its core. The Achuultani couldn't see him, couldn't count on direct hits, but with so many missiles in such a relatively small area, not all could miss. Prominences of plasma gouged at his hull, stabbing deeper and deeper into his battle steel body, but he held his course. He couldn't dodge. He could only attack or flee, and too many enemies remained to flee.

Jiltanith gasped. How had the Achuultani guessed?!

But they had guessed. Their new attack patterns showed it. They raked the inner globe with fire, and Dahak could not evade it. But their rear ranks were thinning... and their command ship was somewhere among them... .

Dahak Two abandoned stealth and plunged into the space-annihilating gravity well of her Enchanach Drive—the gravity well lethal even to her sisters if they chanced too close as she dropped sublight. Not even Imperial computers could control the exact point at which Enchanach ships went sublight or guarantee they wouldn't kill one another when they did. All of Jiltanith's captains instantly recognized the insane risk she ran... .

They charged on her heels.

Colin gritted his teeth. They weren't going to make it.

Then his eyes flew wide. No! They couldn't! They mustn't!

But it was too late. His people swept in at many times the speed of light, riding an impossible line between life and mutual destruction in an effort to save him. He dared not distract them now... and there was no time.

A whiplash of fresh shock slammed through Great Lord of Order Hothan. Where had they come from? What were they?!

Fifteen ravening spheres of gravitonic fury erupted amid his ships. Two blossomed too near to one another, ripping themselves apart, but they took a high twelve of his ships with them. And then the gravity storm ended, and a twelve of fresh enemies were upon him. Upon him? They were within him! They appeared like monsters of wizardry, deep in the heart of his nestlings, and their beams began to kill.

Twelve thousand humans died as Ashar and Trelma destroyed themselves, and another six thousand as massed fire tore Thrym apart, but the Achuultani had given all they had and more for their Nest.

They had stood Dahak's remorseless charge, endured the megadeaths he had inflicted upon them, but this was too much. They couldn't flee into hyper, but these new monsters had dashed in at supralight speeds—and they were fresh, fresh and unwounded, enraged titans within their flotillas, laying waste battle squadrons with a single flick of their terrible beams.

One such beam lashed out, and Deathdealer's forward half exploded.

Too many links in the chain had snapped. There were no great lords, no Battle Comp. Lesser lords did their best, but without coordination flotillas fought as flotillas, squadrons as squadrons. Their fine-meshed killing machine became knots of uncoordinated resistance, and the planetoids of the Empire swept through them like Death incarnate.

Adrienne Robbins hurled Emperor Herdan into the rear of those still attacking Dahak's crumbling globe. Royal Birhat rode one flank and Dahak Two the other, crashing through the fraying Achuultani formation like boulders, killing as they came, and the Achuultani fled.

They fled at their highest sublight speed, seeking the edges of Operation Laocoon's gravity net. And as they fled, they fell out of mutual support range. The ancient starships of the Imperial Guard, crewed and deadly—individuals, not a single battering ram—slashed through them, bobbing and weaving impossibly, each equal to them all when they fought alone.

Colin sagged in his couch, soaked in sweat, as Dahak Two broke into his battered globe. The display came back up, and he bit his lip at the molten craters blown deep into Jiltanith's command. Then her holo-image appeared before him, eyes fiery with battle in a strained face.

"Idiot! How could you take a chance like that?!"

" 'Twas my decision, not thine!"

"When I get my hands on you—!

"Then will I yield unto thee, sin thou hast hands to seize me!" she shot back, her strained expression easing as the fact of his survival penetrated.

"Thanks to you, you lunatic," Colin said more softly, swallowing a lump.

"Nay, my love, thanks to us all. 'Tis victory, Colin! They flee before our fire, and they die. Thou'st broken them, my Colin! Some few thousand may escape—no more!"

"I know, 'Tanni," he sighed. "I know." He tried not to think about the cost—not yet—and drew a breath. "Tell them to cripple as many as they can without destroying them," he said. "And get Hector and Sevrid up here."