Free Storming Heaven by Christopher Nuttall Page A

them.  Oddly, he found that a hopeful sign; if the human assaults were so useless, why would they bother to try to drive them away?
     
    On the other hand, gnats are just irritating , he thought, grimly.  Humanity had managed to bring flies and cockroaches into space with them, along with a handful of farming animals, even though the rest had died off when Earth had been destroyed.  There was no one, outside the MassMind, who had seen a tiger or a lion, an elephant or a rhino.  There was nothing left of them, but radioactive ashes and memories the MassMind had turned into educational realities for the children, teaching them about what the Killers had stolen from humanity.  Maybe they just want to swat us because we annoy them .
     
    The Killer starship came closer and closer.  It seemed impossible that the starship wasn’t aware of their presence – he was chillingly convinced that it was looking at the attack wing and dismissing any possibility of a threat – but the Killers just ignored the fleet.  The range was closing rapidly – they could have fired at extreme range, but he intended to fire from point blank range – and he prepared himself.  The time was almost right…
     
    “Fire energy torpedoes,” he ordered.  The starship jerked slightly as it unleashed its main weapons onto the Killer starship.  “Helm, begin random evasive manoeuvres!”
     
    The energy torpedoes lanced out of the starship’s weapons blisters, crossed the distance between the two ships at just under the speed of light, and detonated against the hull.  Each shot would have been enough to seriously damage the Lightning , but the Killer starship was barely scratched, if at all.  The explosions lit up the darkness of space, yet there was no trace of any serious damage.  The bombardment from the other starships lit up the entire side of the Killer starship in flickering eerie light as the remainder of the attack wing followed them in…and then the Killer starship vanished.
     
    “They’ve cut their drives,” David reported.  That was another mystery about the Killers.  They seemed to be able to come to a dead stop instantly without suffering any damage or losing their drives.  No one quite understood how the Killers did it.  “Course laid in.”
     
    “Take us back to them, attack pattern alpha-four,” Andrew ordered, tightly.  At such speeds, the distance between the attack wing and their target closed rapidly.  “Gary, open fire as soon as they come into range.”
     
    The Killer starship was already dumping heat from the attack, he saw, but the starship seemed undamaged.  It waited patiently for the human attack ships to come back into range, seemingly ignoring their shots as they crashed against its hull and faded out, watching them.  He had the sense that it was angry now at having been forced to cut its speed, or perhaps at the imprudence of the gnats who dared to launch an attack on it’s monstrous bulk.
     
    “Weapons locked,” Gary said.  “Opening fire…energy spike!”
     
    The Killer starship came alive, launching a ball of white light towards the human starships, which broke into a series of evasive patterns to avoid the incoming shot.  It missed, but the Killers kept firing, launching ball after ball towards their targets.  One of them struck a human starship directly and blew it into flaming debris; another came too close to a second human starship and was somehow attracted to its hull, acting almost like a missile as it blew the starship apart.  Andrew tensed as a ball of white light came too close to the Lightning , but apparently not close enough to be attracted to the human ship.
     
    “Keep dodging,” he ordered, tartly.  Oddly, now that the penny had dropped, he felt more reassured.  The worst was already happening.  “Take us in.  Attack pattern beta-nine.”
     
    The Lightning and four of her consorts swooped down on the Killer starship, firing as they came.  Andrew watched