The Ichtons didn’t send out further convoys. Instead, they ripped at the defenders with their flux generators. At intervals, the mothership lofted missiles that exploded with the flash and actinics of anti-matter when the Mantrans blew them up. Very rarely, a missile disappeared from Kaehler’s display without being destroyed.
Mantran earthworks grew around the mothership like mosaic virus expanding across a tobacco leaf. The defenders’ weapons bombarded the vessel ceaselessly, but the Ichton armor absorbed even fusion bombs without damage.
“This isn’t where they’ll develop it,” Bailey said abruptly. “We need to check their arsenals, their laboratories.”
Kaehler didn’t react. She continued to move the image in time without changing the spatial point of focus.
“This is where they’ll deploy any weapon,” Dresser snapped. “This is where we need to be for now.”
Bailey was in command of the expedition and the scout’s superior by six grades. Dresser didn’t care. The command had been foolish. One of the reasons Dresser was a scout was his inability to suffer fools in silence, whatever the fools’ rank.
On the display, seasons blurred between snow and baked, barren earth. All life but that armored within the mothership and the defenders’ lines was blasted away by the mutual hellfire. The sky above SB 781 darkened, but the huge hologram lighted the boat and the watching humans.
“Stop playing with the scale, Kaehler,” Captain Bailey ordered. “I’ll tell you if I want a close-up.”
Kaehler looked startled. Her hands were slowly working the temporal controls, but she hadn’t touched the spatial unit since she initially focused on the mothership.
“It’s not the scale that’s changing,” Dresser said. “It’s the ship. It’s expanding the volume covered by its shields, despite anything the Mantrans can do.”
The innermost ring of Mantran defenses crumbled as the blue glare swelled, meter by meter. Seasons washed across the landscape like a dirty river . . .
* * *
Dresser unclenched his hands. He looked at Admiral Horwarth in embarrassment for being so close to the edge. “It was like gangrene, sir,” he said. “Have you seen somebody with gangrene?”
She shook her head tautly. “No,” she said. “I can imagine.”
“You can’t cure it,” the scout said, speaking toward the Ichton again. The creature was huddled in a corner of its cell. “They just keep cutting pieces off and hope they got it all. Which they probably didn’t.”
“But the Mantrans were able to hold?” Horwarth prompted.
The scout shrugged. “For years,” he said, “but it didn’t matter. The fighting was poisoning the whole planet. The atmosphere, the seas . . . The land for hundreds of kilometers from the mothership was as dead as the floor of Hell. The Ichtons didn’t care. The whole Mantran infrastructure was beginning to break down.”
Dresser laced his fingers again. “Then the Ichtons sent out another convoy . . .”
* * *
Dresser looked from Kaehler to Bailey. Both scientists were glassy-eyed with fatigue.
“Ah, Captain Bailey?” Dresser said.
Bailey didn’t reply. He may not even have heard.
The display was a fierce blue glare which sparkled but never significantly changed. It was like watching the play of light across the facets of a diamond, mesmerizing but empty.
“Cap—”
Thousand-meter fireballs rippled suddenly at the north side of the mothership’s shields. Through them, as inexorable as a spear cleaving a rib cage, rocked a column of Ichton vehicles.
The leading tank spewed a stream of flux projectiles that gnawed deep into the Mantran defenses until a white-hot concentration of power focused down on the vehicle. The tank ripped apart in an explosion greater than any of those which destroyed it, widening the gap in the Mantran defensive wall.
The convoy’s second vehicle was also a tank. It continued the work of destruction as it shuddered onward. The defenders’ fire quivered on the Ichton shield, but the Mantrans couldn’t repeat the concentration that had overwhelmed the leader.
“They can’t stop it.” Dresser whispered. “It’s over.”
The image volume went red/orange/white. The dense jewel of the mothership blazed through a fog that warped and almost hid its outlines. The blur of seasons was lost in the greater distortion.
“Kaehler, what have you done, you idiot?” Bailey shouted. He stepped out of his module; hands clenched, face distorted in the light of the hologram. Except for the blue core, the image could almost be that of the display’s stand-by mode—points of light in a random pattern, visual white noise.