Aeacus sat in the forward command center of the Geryon. He stared intently ahead. "Is there any reply to our demands?" he said, not really as a question.
"Yes," said his Second. "The first part is, `Nuts.' That appears to be from Ajax. The rest is in Hellene. That seems to be from Meliboia."
The Chieftain sighed. "They have made their choice, then," he said. Ahead was the Isle of Midgard. "Prepare to fire."
"Honorable Aeacus, that may not be needed," his Second said. "We have incoming ships."
The Halcyon Dawn flew at the head of a strange flotilla, with guns ready and traversing for danger. Its main battery was manned by the two Hectors, while the Mirror Meliboia operated the lower turret and Joe and John worked the side guns. Xaja's saucer flew alongside it, like a bear trying to hide behind a sapling. The Pegasus bobbed and weaved around and between them. And moored to the underbelly of the Halcyon Dawn, at the midsection between the fuselage and engines directly beneath an ovoid sensor dish,was the Hippomenes, flown by the two Daffodils.
"I think of the weapons as having different sounds," Daffy said. "The little ones in the ball go pew pew pew, the ones to the sides go zap zap zap, and the big ones go pow, pow, pow… Say, when did you find out you were part Lindorm?"
"I had my first transformation when Kabango kidnapped me," the Mirror Daffy said. "I beat up his guards and waited for Xaja to come and get me out. He just blew a hole in the ship. I tried to look pretty for him. He went along with it as long as I stoked his ego, but as soon as I tried to get him to put a ring on it, he pawned me off on his brother."
"Oh, I never felt like that about my Ajax," Daffy said. "Well… Of course, for a while, I was… confused. I had hardly been around any boys, and he was so brave, and handsome… I just didn't understand that there's different kinds of feelings. Once he and Pruna set me up with Hector, I saw that I never really felt that way about Ajax."
"Well, I suppose my Hector isn't that bad," the other Daffy said. "He was always insecure when Xaja was around. He's still trying to prove he's good enough. I keep telling him, just be a good husband. Remember my birthday and our anniversary, get the kids' names right, and for love of the One, clean the damn litterbox…"
"Yeah, I had to get mine into shape," Daffy said. "My sister told me, get that sorted out before you get married…"
"You're right; we got hitched when I was still in school, and after that, he acted like he owned me, just because he did all right on the Night."
"Really?" Daffy said to her double. "I mean, your Hector is… good? Look, here's something I never told anybody…" She began a brief but quite detailed account of her own wedding night. As she finished, she paused and said, "Wait. Did I leave the microphone on?"
"Yes," her Hector said through gritted teeth.
And on the bridge of the Geryon, Aeacus raised his head from his hands. He turned to his open-mouthed Second. "Get them," he said.
A full squadron of raptorial Trident fighters swept forward. The first held their fire, analyzing any threat. Kiv's voice came over the channels. "There are two squadrons of Tridents," he said. "The sensors show at least 12 more mixed signatures, probably Orions and Geminis. There might be a few strike craft."
"We can keep them busy," Mel said. "Close on the Geryon. We can keep their fire off you for a while..."
"Yeah," Kiv said, "like we had another choice…" He opened a channel to the other Meliboia in the lower turret. "Say, do I know you in the other place?"
"Sure," the Mirror Meliboia said. "We've been together."
"Well, I hope the breakup wasn't too hard," Kiv said. "Say, whose side were you on?"
"We came in as advisors to Cerasa, the head of the planetary government," the dark Meliboia answered.
"So how did she lose?"
"Easy, everyone else bailed when she wouldn't listen to our advice!"
"Figures… Speaking of, here they come!"
"My Captain," said the Chief's Second, "we have another possible signature… It may be screening other targets…"
"Possible?" the Chief said irritably. "How did you miss the largest target?"
"It is… a very, very large signal…" The Second swallowed audibly. "It appears that our initial scans flagged it as too large to be of artificial origin…"
"No," said Aeacus, "the Ostrakoi may have survived, but they could not have…" Yet even as he spoke, a visual scan showed something like the head of a mace, complete with spikes that were translucent against the light of the sun it blotted out.
The Amphion and the Alexander circled the vessel of the Ostrakoi as it hurtled toward the Geryon. From his wraparound forward cockpit, Ajax stared at the mindboggling object that he had uneasily designated Wormwood, otherwise known only as Nest Moon. It had clearly begun as an asteroid or minor moon, but whatever nucleus it had been built from was as unrecognizable as a block of marble carved by Michelangelo. What had taken shape was a near-globe at least 400 Stadia in diameter, not counting the towering needle-like spires regularly spaced on its surface, pockmarked with the openings of a labyrinth of enormous tunnels. It was the spires that defied any effort to comprehend size or scale, especially the tallest ones at the poles and equator, which rose to an appreciable fraction of the diameter of the main mass. As they swept past a spire, there was a crackle of static as a gout of bioplasma erupted into space.
"It is how they migrate from star to star," Mel said. From below, a stream of vessels that served as fighters passed by. They looked like fragments of coral, convoluted and asymmetrical yet made from a perfectly organized latticework of crystals. "At the height of the Incursion, there were swarms of thousands of them. This is probably the last one. And one antimatter bomb from the Geryon could crack it like a cheap jawbreaker."
As the first wave of Ostrakoi craft hit the Geryon's defenses, the Halcyon Dawn pulled beneath it, all guns blazing. The Hippomenes, still moored at the midsection, added the fire of its ball mount when a fighter tried to strike from directly below. The Pegasus fell back from a direct attack, venting plasma from its remaining nacelle. Its saucer-shaped forward section separated from the rear, which broke apart as it tumbled downward. In the main turret, Hector marked targets while his Mirror double fired the guns. Their shots destroyed a minor battery. "Hit! Another hit! Miss! Dammit!" griped the double.
"I don't get it," Hector said. "If you were High King, why go to war?"
"Because, I only had it because Xaja gave it to me," his double said. There was a flash as Joe blasted another unwary interceptor. "Nothing would truly be mine unless I took it by force. And Daffodil…"
"What about her?" Hector said, close to anger. He checked their fire for a passing Ostrakoi craft, then blasted an interceptor that trailed it. "She's always proud of everything I do. Sometimes, it gets embarrassing…"
"Oh, that's exactly what I mean," the double said. He started getting off his shots faster as he spoke. "`Oh, Hector, great job defeating the rebels;' after they inflict 4 casualties to one. `Oh, Hector, what a great anniversary present;' after I give it to her a week late. `Oh, Hector, thanks for cleaning the litter box;' after I accidentally step in the overflow. I wish she would just stop being sarcastic about it."
"Well, she's never sarcastic with me…" Hector felt the incredulous glare.
And from beneath them, Ultra's saucer roared upward, aimed directly at the Geryon's forward hangar bay. At the rear, the dark Meliboia scrambled into an open hatch.
The Amphion and Alexander weaved their way among the spires of the Nest Moon, the interceptors close behind and sometimes ahead. On the surface below, the orifices either irised shut against attack or opened to disgorge fighters and swarms of elite drones, armored against the vacuum and propelled by plasma jets. Some of the drones joined the battle, while others set about performing repairs. Here and there, a tower toppled under fire from the fighters and the distant guns of the Geryon, but many more continued to launch blue fire into space.
Ajax fired on a craft identical to his own, closing behind Amphion. His first volley damaged it. He activated a cannon in the nose of the cockpit. That burned off a wing and ignited a fuel tank. "That ship wasn't alone," he said.
"I know," Mel answered. "Time to go under cover." Suddenly, a vast cavity opened beneath them. "Go! Go go go!" Ajax piloted his ship inside. The Amphion followed. Behind them, two pursuers pulled into the open. One was a double-hulled Gemini, the other was a triangular Orion. The larger craft accelerated, diving through the contracting iris. Its companion pulled up belatedly, but still crashed, leaving a hole in the iris fabric that slowly repaired itself.
Ultra's saucer split into three pre-determined sections just outside the mouth of the hangar bay, just before the pieces broke apart of their own accord. The semidome cockpit in the center sprouted two legs, revealing a mech with stubby arm pods that had been the main guns of the Pegasus. The mech sailed into the bay, with the dark Meliboia hanging from the back.
Two Pisces transports were berthed in the bay, one suspended from the roof above, the other resting with its wings folded on the upper deck where the mech touched down. Both their guns were immediately turned on the mech as it rushed forward. The Myrmidoness fired to the flanks and behind. When the rear loading doors of the transport above opened, she turned her pods backwards on the Hoplites gathering to counterattack. They fell back, to part for a pair with a missile launcher. She pivoted and fired a 1.3cm single-shot pistol. The round hit the missile dead center as it launched. The bullet did not detonate the warhead, but it destroyed the guidance circuitry, sending the missile on an unpredictable course around the bay that scattered the Hoplites. Meanwhile, a personnel carrier and a grounded parasite craft poured fire on the mech. Still, Ultra raced onward, spraying his weapons to either side until the right pod exploded. An insectoid reconnaissance mech stepped directly into his path, firing a steady stream from two heavy machine guns and a grenade launcher. The Mirror Meliboia added her fire. A terrific blast gutted the enemy machine and burned out Ultra's left pod in the process.
The dark Meliboia tumbled and rolled to one side, into the path of an advancing mech-trooper a third again her height. Grenades only dented the armored exoskeleton. Two bursts of 7.5mm fire cracked the glass of the visor. It was just enough to keep his attention on her. He took aim with arm cannons of the same caliber as the transport's main turret, tracking low as she rolled again. She snapped off a shot with her sidearm. Its single rocket-assisted round went straight into the visor, and through it. As the trooper toppled, Ultra's mech reached the rear of the bay and crashed through. The robot leaped out of the machine, just ahead of a sizeable explosion. In the bay, the Hoplites stepped forward, their hands raised in surrender.
The damage to the Halcyon Dawn had accumulated steadily. The full effects came quite quickly. One engine, two and then a whole bank went dead or burned out, sending the craft yawing to one side and then the other. The primary sensor dish seized up and then overloaded, leaving the ship blind. The main battery jammed in any case, twitching in vain. Xaja's saucer pulled into the fray, firing weapons in every direction as it spun. But even as it drew fire away from the hulk, a Gemini struck from below. Its doubled fire hit the ship just behind the main fuselage and sheared it into two unequal parts. The Hectors dived into the escape pod. By what luck they had, the ship rolled over, allowing the pod to launch straight up, still blasting away. From under the craft, the Hippomenes emerged, with Infra clinging to the rear airlock. As the Gemini shifted its aim toward the pod, a volley from the parasite craft's heaviest guns sheared it in half. "Pow," Daffy said.
And at Aeacus' side, Nopalina shed a single tear.
"We still aren't losing this guy," Mel said as they turned down yet another tunnel. "You need to turn off or you're next."
"I'm not leaving," Ajax said.
Mel fired the turret half-heartedly by remote control. "I might get him, but a Gemini takes a lot of killing," she said. "If he closes, we're gone."
She sighed. "All right," she said. "Time for something different…" She turned on the comm channel. "Shoot or talk."
A single word came in reply: "Mel." The voice was Amyclas.
Xaja's saucer turned sideways like a deadly pinwheel, concentrating its beams where the Geryon's midsection met its front. Both the guns and the fighters of the Myrmidons quickly focused on the axis of the craft. It tumbled, shedding debris and escape pods. The triangular bridge detached, quickly orienting its axis toward the foe, just as an Orion fighter blasted its portside engine from behind. Xaja turned to the two Cerasas as the craft coasted downward. "Ah, my Ladies," he said, "we may have some time alone. Perhaps we might patch a few things up…"
The two women looked at each other and smiled. "Actually," the red Cerasa said, "we've been getting along just fine."
Ultra cycled through one weapon after another from the pod on his arm, firing missiles, beams of energy, balls of fire and bombs that tore through bulkheads. Alarms sounded as he burst into engineering, where he was met not by troops but by crew desperately trying to wave him back. They finally fled as he reached a railing that looked down on a luminous sphere fed by enclosed energy tubes. He raised his arm pod. At the muzzle, a blue-white ball of energy appeared and grew.
The rear half of the Geryon shook and shuddered as gases were desperately vented into space. At the same time, Daffy stared in grief through the Hippomenes' air lock porthole as Infra writhed in self-evident pain. The Queen pressed her hand to the window. Infra raised her head in recognition, and did the same. "Hurry," the feminoid said. "Get me to the ship, and I can save your son…"