point defenses, were starting to slam home, but they had oncoming Deeper bio-missiles to worry about. “If you try to deal with all three threats, you’ll pull the fleet apart—too far apart to stay in mutual support. That might be exactly what the Deepers want.”
“You think they’ve got another force waiting for us to do just that?” Benzel asked.
“Maybe. I don’t know. But I don’t want to risk it. We lose a third of the fleet, we’re screwed because we won’t be able to replace those losses any time soon.”
“What are you saying here, Dash?” Lomas asked.
“That we can deal with any two of these threats. The two Deeper ships coming at the fleet are going to be one of them, but you’re going to need to pick one of the other two for us to focus on.”
“So we lose either our shipyards or our weapons and science division?”
“Afraid that’s what it comes down to,” Dash said, then decided to make his point. “If we’d known about this place ahead of time, had a chance to help shore up its defenses, get the fleet configured differently—”
“I get it, Dash,” Lomas said, suddenly sounding profoundly weary. “Keeping secrets from you—”
“—is a bad idea, yeah,” he said, dodging another barrage of rail gun shots, while snapping a dark-lance shot that blew apart a bio-missile. “If you want us to help you fight this war, anyway. But this is a conversation we can have later. Right now—”
“The shipyards,” Lomas said. “They orbit Hydaspes itself, and there are almost three billion people down there.”
“Hydaspes it is. Benzel, over to you.”
“On it, boss. Benzel out.”
Bio-missiles began to detonate around Dash and Leira in searing flashes of x-rays. It made Dash shudder a bit to think that there was an actual, seemingly purpose-made Deeper organism flying each of those missiles. Which meant they weren’t really missiles, as much as suicide weapons.
Another blast of x-rays washed over the Archetype, flooding the shield with energy. The system struggled to radiate it back into space, but it was nearing saturation.
“Sentinel, boost power to the shield, give it some more capacity. I want to get in close. Real close.”
“Closing now.”
Dash nodded as the shield firmed back up, then switched his attention back to his target, now looming ahead. X-ray laser and rail gun fire snapped past him as he dodged and wove desperately, trying to get the Archetype in close enough to bring all of its weapons to bear. The Deepers obviously did not like knife fights, which is why he wanted to turn this into one.
A bio missile slammed square into the Swift. The mech raced out of the fireball, trailing plasma and slagged armor. Dash’s heart skipped a beat. “Leira, you okay?”
“Yeah, though my shield’s down. If it’s all the same with you, Dash, I’m going to hang back and give you cover until Tybalt gets it regenerated.”
“You do that. I’ll take the fight to them. Throw rounds from where you are and don’t stop dodging.”
Dash wore a feral grin as the Archetype’s rapid-fire rail gun and plus-light missile launcher locked onto targets at maximum certainty. He deployed the power-sword, too, just in time to use it to slash apart a bio missile, probably only an instant before its detonation. He swung the Archetype to a course more parallel with the Deeper ship’s, then opened up with everything—dark-lance, nova-cannon, arm-mounted rail gun, and missiles.
The raw destructive energy he released impressed even Dash. The whole flank of the big ship erupted with blinding flashes of light, clouds of plasma, streams of glowing slag, and whirling clouds of debris. The Deeper ship gamely fired back, its escorts joining in, but many of the shots simply missed. The enemy rail guns couldn’t track the nimble Archetype fast enough, the x-ray lasers stabbed futile beams into empty space—and then, in rapid succession, the enemy weapons arrays died in cataclysmic blasts.
Dash winced as debris banged against the Archetype’s shield. In response, he slammed the mech through a hard lateral acceleration. One of the smaller consort ships loomed ahead. It managed to land a rail gun hit that finally brought down the shield. Dash countered with a close pass and a slash from the power-sword that bisected the Deeper ship into two, tumbling pieces.
Dash immediately powered the Archetype in closer to the big Deeper ship, or what was left of it. The damage he’d wrought was catastrophic, well beyond the ship’s apparent ability to heal itself—
Which provoked a sudden, icy thrill in Dash. He