Free The Chronicles of Riddick by Alan Dean Foster Page B

ship after ship was struck, to curl and spiral its way finally to the ground.
    Behind the Necromonger fighters, the warrior ships were descending. Transports packed with troops and ground vehicles, they rode the first shock wave of success as they dropped toward the devastated city below. It was a scene being played out all across the surface of Helion Prime, as the invaders targeted every major population center simultaneously. To do so required seamless coordination, which the Necromongers possessed in plenty. But it was on the capital, as always, that they focused their efforts. An enemy could always be subdued by repeated stabbings, but victory came far sooner and easier if the head could be cut off first.
    Not all of the Helion fighters were intercepted and dealt with by their Necromonger counterparts. The Helion pilots were too good for that. A number of them got through the screening fighter craft to engage the descending warrior ships. Few did any damage against the massive vessels—but one pair did.
    An enormous explosion blew off the front of one transport. Unbalanced, its command center destroyed, it lurched to one side as emergency navigation systems struggled to correct and maintain a proper angle and rate of descent. They failed as destruction ripped through the rest of the craft. It promptly blew up, and almost as immediately, imploded as its gravity-defying propulsion system collapsed in on itself. The result temporarily lit the sky around it, blinding everything and everyone not equipped with appropriate protection.
    Back out on the increasingly empty streets, a desperate Imam led his family forward on foot. When his daughter, exhausted, slowed to a stop, he picked her up and settled her on his shoulders.
    “Hold on, Ziza. Hold on tight, and don’t let go.” With a nod at Lajjun, he resumed running. He would do so until he, too, dropped. And then, he told himself determinedly, they would crawl.
    Across the city, in areas cleared of defenders, the enormous warrior ships were already setting down, disgorging battalion after regiment of helmeted, armed soldiers. Their motivation was simple, their methodology straightforward. It had already been pursued with great success on many worlds, ever since the Necromongers had made their presence and their determination known to the rest of the developed galaxy. Implacable and humorless, they surged eagerly out of their ships, responding to the directives of their officers as they fanned out across the capital in search of resistance.
    As always, and as was proper, they envied those they intended to kill.
    High above, the Basilica hovered in low orbit. It was well out of range of the majority of independent, ground-based defenses and too well escorted and screened for surface-to-space craft to reach. Not impregnable, but as close to it as Necromonger technology could make it. Those aboard would have felt confident even in the absence of such defenses. When one has been educated and enlightened to have no fear of death, it is easy to go about the business of war.
    The tech officer who had spoke earlier turned once again to the tall, angular figure standing behind him. “Second foot down, Lord Marshal.”
    The leader checked his own personal chronometer. “Already ahead of schedule. It is as our scouts reported. This system has been too wealthy, too content, for too long. Their equipment is good and their training adequate but no match for those who have been through battles for worlds. Nor for those who are properly motivated.”
    Wandering to his left, he paused before a lensing port. Not truly a hole in the floor of the great ship, it perfectly duplicated what one would have seen through a hole in the floor, with the added benefit that one was not exposed to temperature fluctuations or radiation from outside. As the battle for control of the planet below raged on, he was joined by a second figure, one even more at ease, and more richly garbed. The two men