That was the opening move of the fighter assault as more tin cans attacked. These launched their missiles from directly ahead of the advancing Juggernauts.

  Powerful lasers struck again, demolishing the warheads with furious heat. This time, the androids burned several fold-fighters before the fragile vessels escaped.

  Finally, Anson’s people got the measure of the androids, managing to detonate four antimatter warheads in the Juggernauts’ line of advance. These explosions were farther away than the previous attempts.

  At that point, Cook gave the word. The advancing-to-contact ad hoc fleet made a hard turning maneuver. They were going to attempt a flank attack—to get on the Android Fleet’s right flank and strike with surprise.

  Would it matter? No one knew yet. The idea was to use the antimatter explosions to create whiteouts on the sphere of battle, using them like smoke on a regular battlefield on Earth.

  Fighter Commander Anson now gave his hardest order. It likely meant the death of many of his pilots. Sometimes in war, warriors had to make the supreme sacrifice so others had a chance at defeating an invincible enemy.

  Fold-fighters popped into normal space a mere fifteen thousand kilometers in front of the Juggernauts and in the middle of the Android Fleet.

  Like before, enemy lasers flashed, destroying one tin can after another. Worse, no antimatter explosions occurred. It appeared the enemy had learned their lesson from Keith’s original fold-attack.

  Then a fold-fighter got lucky, if dying in an antimatter fireball was luck. The flash incinerated the pilot and his vessel, and then struck Juggernaut shields.

  That was the break, likely scrambling Juggernaut sensors. More appearing tin cans managed to detonate their missiles. The blasts hammered the incredibly tough shields with direct antimatter fury. Even supermetal-enhanced generators couldn’t produce a shield that could take repeated antimatter blows.

  That, it turned out, was the answer about how to knock down such a powerful shield. Use many antimatter blasts in a row to do it.

  “Sir,” Fighter Commander Anson said. “I have a report. A Juggernaut shield just went down.”

  “Keep hammering,” Cook told him.

  On the Kaiser Wilhelm’s main screen, it looked as if Anson’s eyes filmed up as he reported from his HQ. “The attack is killing my men, Lord High Admiral. I can knock down more shields, and maybe penetrate hull armor, but that could kill everyone in my command.”

  Cook swallowed uneasily, feeling as if his chest was hollowing out. This was the worst and dirtiest moment to be the supreme commander. Yet, this was his responsibility, his job and no one else’s. The old warhorse steeled himself as he said, “This is it, Commander. Earth dies if we fail to hit the androids with everything we have.”

  On the screen, Anson nodded curtly. “I’ll give the order, sir. Just give me the word to do it.”

  Despite everything, Cook wanted to complain, but then he silently berated himself. He was in charge. He would give the order that caused many good men to die.

  “Send in your fighters, Commander, and have them launch the missiles at pointblank range. That is an order.”

  Anson saluted and turned away.

  Cook slumped back in the command chair. He felt old, damned old, and he understood a little more why Admiral Fletcher had resigned after the butcher’s battle at the Forbidden Planet. Was he getting too feeble for high command?

  Get a grip, old-timer, Cook told himself. Do your job or give it to someone who can.

  The Lord High Admiral swiveled his chair. “Get me a close-up of the attack. This could be the moment.”

  As the Android Fleet headed for the Destroyer, as whiteouts hid the human-crewed warships from the enemy, the fold-fighters made their final run amidst the Juggernauts. Most of the pilots had already dropped one missile. Some of them had launched two. This was brutal and terrifying, popping into existence among behemoths with impenetrable shields and some of the toughest hull armor around. One after another, in assigned patterns, the tin cans appeared, jinked, released big antimatter missiles and tried to fold away before it was too late.

  This time, no fold-fighter came back. Worse, antimatter explosions annihilated half the pilots before they could release their missiles. Those missiles and warheads burned up in overpowering fury. Yet, Juggernaut shields went down, and antimatter blasts washed against iridium-Z hull armor. Iridium-Z was good, but it wasn’t anything like the Destroyer’s neutroium hull armor. The blasts boiled away heavy metal and interior bulkheads, burning through the Juggernauts.

  Chrome-colored androids perished in their thousands, as the Juggernaut contained incredible numbers of them. Not only was this a fighting fleet, it was also going to be a colony fleet later as the androids left smoldering and hopefully dying human worlds behind.

  A second Juggernaut crumpled under the furious antimatter blasts. Then, a third and fourth Juggernaut blew apart.

  The fold-fighters with their antimatter missiles and kamikaze tactics had done the impossible: destroying four of the heavy vessels. To finish the job, high command needed more pilots, tin cans and antimatter missiles. The problem was:

  “Sir,” Fighter Commander Anson said, “I’m sorry to report that all my men are dead. They took out four Juggernauts,” Anson continued bitterly, as tears streamed down his leathery face. “All my friends are gone, sir. I hope to Hell the rest of you can do as good a job as my men did.”

  Cook nodded somberly. “Yes, Commander, I hope that, too.”

  -81-

  Five remaining, supermetal-improved Juggernauts continued at high velocity for the slowly warming-up Destroyer.

  At that point, the ad hoc fleet of destroyers followed by battleships, attack cruisers, monitors, a carrier and Victory began firing fusion and disruptor cannons. The destroyers launched smaller missiles with conventional thermonuclear warheads. They all came from the upper right flank of the Android Fleet.

  In return, the Juggernauts beamed hellishly hot lasers. Ordinary lasers dissipated faster than fusion or disruptor beams. That meant lasers were strongest at short range and much, much weaker at longer ranges. The old Wahhabi Caliphate had used special focusing mirrors with their Scimitar-class warships. The Rull androids might have used something similar, just many times more effective. Furiously hot, wide beams struck the front-wave destroyers.

  The Star Watch vessels exploded like popcorn kernels. The lasers knocked down relatively weak shields and heated destroyer hulls, shattering metal, water vapor, people, coils, nuclear fuel pods, pieces of bulkheads—everything that had once made up the various ships.

  The real contest started then. As massed lasers burned against the battleships, Victory, monitors, cruisers and the carrier, the combined Star Watch vessels focused all their beams on a single Juggernaut. The focused fire wasn’t as good or as efficient as the New Men had done with their battle formation, but it still meant heavy, combined firepower directed at one vessel.

  Incredibly—or maybe the Juggernaut shield was still weak from the former antimatter blasts—the targeted shield went black faster than anyone would have expected. Then the enemy shield collapsed.

  There were cheers on Victory’s bridge. Maddox sat forward, his stare laser-like as he willed the wounded Juggernaut to explode.

  “I feel like a hyena trying to bring down a bull elephant,” Maddox muttered.

  One thing was sure: the Juggernaut’s hull armor, as good as it was, wasn’t as great as the supermetal-augmented electromagnetic shield had been. The combined fusion and disrupter beams drilled against the iridium-Z armor. The beams soon broke in and began devouring with deadly result.

  The Juggernaut tried to evade, zigging and zagging. But the beams kept pouring into it, creating havoc, killing androids and ripping through more and more interior ship systems. Finally, in a titanic blast, the Juggernaut exploded like a giant bomb, pieces hurled in every direction.

  More than half the Android Fleet had died to the fold-fighters and ad hoc fleet.

  But the enemy lasers had not been idle during all this. As the fifth Juggernaut detonated, laser cannons sliced and diced three battleships, two attack cruisers and the carrier. For one dead Juggernaut, the androids destroyed half the human fleet trying its fancy flank attack.

  Zon Ten in his flagship absorbed the information in silence. The humans had done far better than the synthetics had predicted. Five destroyed Juggernauts were galling indeed. The humans had courage. The fold-fighters with their kamikaze tactics had been critical to the awful destruction.

  “The Destroyer is within extreme range, Zon Ten,” the Juggernaut’s targeting expert reported.

  The chrome-colored android, the same color as everyone else on the bridge, did not respond at first.

  “What is your wish, Zon Ten?” the targeting expert asked.

  “Is the Destroyer—?”

  “Sir,” a sensor expert interrupted. “The Destroyer has begun to move. That would indicate the crew has completed its warm up. I estimate that the primary beam will soon prepare for firing.”

  “Zero in on the Destroyer,” Zon Ten said. “Use tertiary cannons on the human warships. We must annihilate the Destroyer if our future worlds would know safety.”

  The other androids did not complain, did not cheer, did not do anything but carry out Zon Ten’s new orders as they bored in for the attack.

  -82-

  The four fast-moving Juggernauts continued to pick off the Star Watch vessels one by one. Soon, the Kaiser Wilhelm and another Bismarck-class battleship, a monitor, three destroyers, nine carrier-bombers and Victory were all that was left of the ad hoc fleet.

  “We’re just dying now,” Stokes said. “To continue attacking like this is senseless.”

  “We’re not going to have much more opportunity to attack,” Maddox said. “The Juggernauts have passed us. Soon, they’ll be out of beam range.”

  As Maddox spoke, the Juggernauts quit targeting any of the Star Watch vessels. As the enemy super-ships closed with the Destroyer, their secondary and tertiary beams could now reach the mighty behemoth. Until this moment, the Juggernauts had been using their heavy lasers to chew into the Destroyer’s neutroium hull armor. Now, every Android Fleet beam struck the ancient hull armor.

  “Look,” Stokes said on Victory’s bridge. The lieutenant colonel stood, pointing at the main screen.

  The colossal Destroyer slowly began to turn to face the enemy.

  Maddox and the others glanced at each other.

  “The crew must have finished their system’s check in record time,” Valerie said.

  “Or enough so the vessel has some power,” Stokes said.

  “The Lord High Admiral is hailing us,” Valerie said, looking at her board.

  “Put it on the main screen,” Maddox said.

  Cook appeared there. The old man was hunched forward, staring at them with haunted eyes. He had aged this past hour. It was awful to witness.

  “Listen,” the old man said, wheezing as he spoke. “The Destroyer is activated, but the Juggernauts are going to tear it apart before the ship is ready.” Cook used the back of his left hand to wipe his lips. He opened his mouth, but no sounds issued. He tried again, and this time, his voice came out hoarsely. “Use your jump drives. Appear directly in front of the Juggernauts. Sell yourself dearly to give the Destroyer a few more precious seconds to fully activate.”

  The admiral vanished from the screen, and the space scene reappeared. For several seconds, no one spoke on Victory’s bridge.

  “You heard the man,” Maddox finally said with unnatural calm. “Lieutenant, make the calculations.”

  White-faced, Valerie turned to her board, her fingers tapping. She and everyone else knew that this was a death sentence. The longer she tapped, the more her shoulders hunched.

  In time, she said in a dull voice, “The coordinates are set, sir.”

  “Mr. Maker,” Maddox said.

  “Yes,” Keith said, his former zip no longer in evidence. “We’re beginning the jump sequence.”

  The antimatter engine labored, and twelve seconds later, the ancient Adok starship jumped, heading for a sacrificial death in front of the Juggernauts.

  From his chair, Maddox raised his head, groggy from the jump lag. “Lieutenant, I don’t have visual yet.”

  “I’m working on it, sir,” Valerie said, slurring her words. “There’s something odd at work.”

  More people began to shrug off jump lag as ship systems came back online.

  “Sir,” Galyan said, with only part of his holoimage visible. “I am detecting the effects of a deflection field.”

  Maddox blinked at him. “I don’t understand.”

  “I believe a deflection field was used against us,” Galyan said.

  Maddox scowled. “Do you mean like the Glorious Kent’s deflection field?”

  “That is an interesting deduction,” Galyan said. “I am not sure of the mechanism’s nature…but I cannot find another explanation for what has happened.”

  “Did we jump?” asked Maddox.

  “We did,” Galyan said. “Only—”

  “I have visual,” Valerie said, interrupting. “Look! We’re badly out of position.”

  Maddox saw the Juggernauts. They looked much smaller than before instead of huge and barreling down on them. That meant Victory was farther away. Yes. The Destroyer was even tinier than before.

  “We jumped in the opposite direction,” Galyan said. “Instead of jumping ahead of the Juggernauts, we went farther behind them the same distance. And we are not alone, Captain.”

  Along with Victory was the Kaiser Wilhelm, the Octagon—a half-crippled cruiser—and three destroyers. There was no evidence of the monitor or the other remaining vessels or bombers.

  “Wait,” Valerie said. “Look at the wreckage.”

  “Where?” asked Maddox.

  The Juggernauts are smashing through ship wreckage, sir,” Valerie said. “Some of the other ships must have successfully jumped in front of the androids as ordered. But we didn’t. People will think we’re cowards.”

  “Never mind that,” Maddox snapped. “How did this happen?”

  Valerie hadn’t heard him. She still stared at the main screen. “Their appearance did nothing to halt the Juggernauts’ advance.”

  “That is imprecise,” Stokes said. “The admiral wanted the Juggernauts to concentrate on the appearing vessels so the enemy would stop—for just a moment, anyway—firing at the Destroyer. Look at the Destroyer. Its orifice has aligned with the enemy. The others did buy a few precious seconds, and it might have been enough.”

  The Destroyer no longer used its neutroium hull armor to face the enemy, but its giant opening.

  As the Juggernauts advanced, the four vessels poured massed laser fire straight into the great orifice’s gut. That had to be tearing up the Destroyer’s interior. Then something ominous occurred. As the hellishly hot lasers beamed, the interior of the orifice turned a deadly red color. That red intensified.

  “It’s a race,” someone said.

  Maddox nodded. This was a race between the lasers and the red beam, and he wasn’t sure who would win. Would the interior of the Destroyer’s orifice be able to withstand horrific temperatures if it fired the terrible red beam?

  At that moment, the alien killing machine of the Nameless Ones opened up with its main battery, its only battery. As the android lasers speared into its gullet, the Destroyer fired a ray five kilometers wide.

  “The wattage I am detecting…” Galyan said softly. “It is incredible.”

  The awful wattage of the Destroyer’s beam made the supermetal-improved lasers seem like jokes. The red beam five kilometers wide had been used before to dig into planetary crusts and bring the mantle bubbling to the surface. Sometimes, the beam had cut asteroids and smaller planets in half.

  “The dinosaurs are fighting it out,” Stokes said.

  Maybe. Maybe only one of the super-ships was a true dinosaur.

  The great red beam five kilometers wide rayed the first Juggernaut. That beam boiled away the electromagnetic field in record time. Not only that, but the iridium-Z hull armor shed away, exposing the interior of the vessel. Then the red beam from the days of yore disintegrated the Juggernaut in destructive fury. One moment the great vessel was there—absorbing the pounding—and then it was gone, dissembled atoms no longer in any coherent form.

  Three Juggernauts full of Rull androids continued to beam their lasers down the Destroyer’s gullet. But before much time had passed, there were only two Juggernauts.

  Yet, the last two must have achieved a breakthrough, for as the red beam of destruction obliterated the second-to-last Juggernaut, the alien vessel, the Destroyer built thousands of years ago, blew up in a titanic blast.

  It turned out the terrible lasers had indeed chewed into the Destroyer, and maybe the final destruction should have taken minutes instead of a deadly microsecond of time. But that wasn’t the way it happened. The Destroyer fired at full strength, and something inside it ignited a monstrous blast that dwarfed every blast in nearby space this past hour. The last defender of Earth—the great Destroyer—was gone, utterly and irrecoverably.

  Seconds later, the final Juggernaut detonated, exploding across the metal strewn space-field. The Android Fleet had ceased to exist.

  Unfortunately, the Destroyer was gone, along with almost every ship of the ad hoc fleet. Victory, the Kaiser Wilhelm, the Octagon and several destroyers were all that was left. More non-star-drive jump warships headed toward Earth, but the heart of Star Watch—the Solar System—was practically defenseless. Luckily, it did not seem that the androids had anything left to throw at humanity’s home system.

  “Galyan,” Maddox said, who was the first to regain his bearings. “Start figuring out why we deflected during the last jump, going the wrong way.”

  “Sir?” asked Galyan.

  “We have to figure out if Doctor Meyers is making her play with the Glorious Kent. I don’t see the hauler anywhere, but I have a feeling she had something to do with our jump deflection.”