arm

dull-minded weariness when no immediate attack followed Verdun's destruction. Panhanal knew they had, and even as he tried to goad and torment them into vigilance, his heart wept for them. Yet it was his job, and—
Two hundred superdreadnoughts erupted into the system of Thebes.
The admiral stared at his read-outs in stark, horrified disbelief as entire flotillas of capital ships warped into the teeth of his mines in a deadly, endless stream of insanely tight transits. Not possible! It wasn't possible! Not the Satan-Khan himself could have conjured such an armada!
"Launch all fighters!" he barked, and then the visual display exploded.
Despite himself Panhanal cringed away from its flaming fury. He peered at it through his inner eyelids, outer lids slitted against the incandescence, and a tiny part of his weary mind realized something was amiss. Wave after wave of ships appeared, dying in their dozens as the mines blew them apart, but they were dying too quickly. Too easily.
And then he understood. Those weren't superdreadnoughts—they were drones! They had to be. Fitted with ECM to suck the mines in if they were under manual control, perhaps, but not real superdreadnoughts, and his blood ran cold as he realized what he was seeing. The infidels weren't "sweeping" the mines; they were absorbing them!
He cursed aloud, pounding the padded arm of his chair. His mines were hurling themselves at worthless hulks, expending themselves, ripping the heart from his defenses, and there was nothing he could do about it!
* * *
The last freighter vanished into the nothingness of the warp point, and the lead group of the real assault's first