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put himself between the Marine landers and the oncoming enemy fighters. He loosedanother burst of depleted uranium at the lead craft . . . then another . . . and then he ran dry. Cordell was now flat-outempty on all of his weapons.

He did still have one weapon at his disposal, however, and that was the Starblade itself.

He’d heard of using this tactic. Was it Admiral Sandy Gray who’d tried it first, back in his fighter-driver days? He thoughtso, but he wasn’t sure. It took phenomenal skill and a fair measure of stark insanity to do it, but he boosted straight forone of the spheres, letting his AI set the course, and skimmed past the thing so close that his grav field scraped along thesurface.

The grav field was called a singularity, but it wasn’t quite. It was larger than the equivalent mass for a true black holewould have been, but it was a softball-sized sphere of intensely powerful gravity projected and focused out in front of thefighter.

It sliced through the alien sphere as if that silvery shell weren’t even there, opening the ball up and spilling its contents in a dazzling spray of fast-freezing wet atmosphere.

Cordell had just a glimpse of one of the Nungiirtok, curled into a fetus position inside before tumbling out into hard vacuum.

Then something slammed against the underside of his Starblade, something hard . . . and he went into an uncontrollable tumble. His power was out, his grav drive dead, his instruments down, and more alarmingstill, the part of his in-head hardware linked to his fighter’s onboard AI had winked out. He could no longer see outsidehis craft, but the inertial forces tugging at his body told him he was in a tumble.

If somebody didn’t spot him and pick him up in a day or two at the most, he was dead . . . assuming the Nungies didn’t shoothim out of the sky.

He wondered if the Marines had made it clear of the planetoid and would return to the Yorktown.

 

Nungiirtok Fleet

Approaching Earth

Sol System

1658 hours, FST

Ashtongtok Tah and her consorts approached the Earth cautiously. The Iads of the fleet were in agreement that humans should not be trusted.There was too much about their thinking, about the way they fought and the way they reacted to Tok pressure that was, to befrank, alien. None of the Nungiirtok quite knew what to make of them.

The Tok did understand the concept of surrender. Yet, when the humans broadcast an order to cease fire to their fleet and requested negotiations with the Nungiirtok lords,4236 Xavix and the other Iads had agreed to stop using gravitic cannon against the planet.

It was disappointing, actually. Forcing the humans to capitulate had been far too easy. At the same time, the humans had come dangerously close to destroying the Ashtongtok Tah—damaging the vessel seriously and perhaps even threatening its destruction by dropping dozens of nuclear warheads down thethroat of the ship’s main weapon. That had been a near thing, and 4236 Xavix hoped the humans never found out just how closethey’d been.

The message from Earth had arrived at the height of the battle and was translated by software provided by the Sh’daar, a pleato stop the bombardment. Xavix had agreed, if all human ships disengaged at once.

And for the most part, they had, though a few of the fighters had continued fighting; there was always someone who didn’t get the word. The Ashtongtok Tah had swept those few holdouts aside, and then, after a careful long-range scan of the opposing fleet, begun moving in towardEarth.

Xavix was not entirely certain what he was going to do with the human homeworld now that it had been offered to him. The Tokattack had been initiated in response to the demands of nesheguu. The return of the Tok prisoners momentarily glimpsed by the Tok long-range scouts was, of course, primary. After that, however . . .

The Tok Iad was tempted to annihilate the human world once and for all, to reduce its surface to a planet-girdling ocean ofmolten rock. These humans had proven to be far too much trouble, were far too dangerous to be permitted out into the galaxyat large. With this planet destroyed, their various outworld outposts and colonies could be eliminated at the Tok’s leisure.

First things first.

The eight mobile planetoids decelerated into orbit just outside the ring of stations and bases in synchronous orbit, brushingaside bits of debris and wreckage.

Human vessels in the area pulled back, giving the Tok vessels plenty of berth.

And they began to talk.

 

Command Bunker

New White House

Washington, D.C., USNA

1945 hours, EST

President Walker sat behind the briefing table, glowering at the viewall opposite. At the moment, it showed the presidentialseal, but in a few more moments . . .

“How much longer?” he demanded.

“We think five minutes, Mr. President,” Hal Matloff said. “It kind of depends on them.”

“I don’t like being kept waiting.”

Don Phillips exchanged a sharp glance with General Daystrom, the Secretary of Defense, then shrugged. “If it’s us asking them to negotiate, Mr. President, we kind of have to wait on them.”

“There have been some minor technical problems in getting their systems synched up with ours, sir,” Matloff added. “Only tobe expected, right?”

“What are they doing now?”

“They’re still in orbit, Mr. President,” Daystrom said. “Just outside of geosynch, so they’re moving east to west from ourperspective, instead of normal. There have been no more hostile acts.”

Walker nodded. They’d all been terrified that the aliens would continue bombarding Earth. Three projectiles had come down—thefirst off the coast of Ecuador, the next in the mid-Atlantic, and the last one out in the Pacific, south of Hawaii. The casualties,the property damage, were astronomical. The tsunami from the Atlantic strike had come up the Potomac and inundated Washingtonless than an hour ago, and the damage aboveground was horrific.

Walker and his staff were safe in the underground command bunker for now, but another such strike might well wipe the city off the map. Hawaii was in worse shape, hit by two tsunamis in rapid succession; much of the USNA East Coast had been flooded, but at least the local governments were in communication with