This Day All Gods Die Read Online Free PDF

Taverner as a control for our Joshua? Did you foresee it? Is it what you hoped to gain?
    "Two hours ago," Warden continued, "I received a message from Min Donner by gap courier drone from Valdor Industrial. More precisely, the message is from VI Security, but she ordered them to send it. She reports that an Amnion 'de-fensive' has entered the Massif-5 system. A Behemoth-class Amnion warship.
    "At that distance from forbidden space, I think we can dismiss the idea that she's there by mistake. According to VI Security, Punisher has engaged the defensive, but the fight isn't going well. Punisher is damaged, not at full capacity. The defensive's shields and sinks are holding. On top of that"—
    he
    paused darkly—
    "she's armed with super-light proton cannon."
    Mandich swore under his breath. Hashi would have done the same if he hadn't been armored against betraying his emotions. Warden's tone conveyed images of bloodshed and destruction. They constricted the air in his small office, making it hard to breathe. A super-light proton cannon was especially fearsome because it could wreak havoc through a planetary atmosphere. Matter cannon were useless for that: air protected the surface better than any particle sink. And lasers were too precise to unleash wholesale ruin. In addition, they tended to lose coherence across large distances. A super-light proton cannon, however—
    Warden didn't stop.
    "VI is scrambling support for Punisher," he went on.

    "Unfortunately those ships aren't in range yet. For some reason the defensive isn't anywhere near the main shipping lanes
    —
    or the Station itself, for that matter. And our cruiser Vehemence is too far away to be involved in the action."
    How entirely typical, Hashi thought. His attention was fixed on Warden; nailed there. Nevertheless his mind ran off on several oblique angles simultaneously. Vehemence's record was far from illustrious. No matter who commanded her, or how her crew was composed and trained, she seemed inherently luckless or incompetent. To all appearances Nathan Alt's months as her captain had put a curse on her.
    "What are your orders, Director?" Chief Mandich put in abruptly. Tension strained his voice to a croak. "Director Donner isn't here. I have to—
    "
    He may have been as honest as an iron bar, but Hashi considered him inadequate to take Min Donner's place.
    Koina had better sense than the Security Chief: she waited her turn.
    Warden stopped the Chief with a rough gesture. The movement of his single eye was sharp as a slap.
    "Since then," he pronounced trenchantly, "I've been making preliminary preparations for our defense. Our shipyards have gone to emergency work shifts. We need to get every ship we can into space. UMCPHQ is on alert. I've ordered Sledgehammer back. And I've sent out drones to recall Valor and Adventurous."
    Sledgehammer was a full battlewagon, the biggest and most powerful warship the UMCP had ever built. Currently she was executing shakedown maneuvers out between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn; training her crew to handle a vessel that massive. Too near to return to Earth by crossing the gap: too far to arrive at space-normal speeds in less than days.
    As for the other vessels Warden named, the destroyer Valor was on patrol around Terminus, the station in human space farthest from the Amnion. The obsolete cruiser Adventurous had been assigned to supervise exercises for the cadets of Aleph Green.
    Other ships were available, of course. Hashi could think of half a dozen gunboats and pocket cruisers within Earth's control space. They were paltry, however, for a task the size of defending a planet.
    UMCPHQ itself couldn't do that job. The Station had scarcely been designed to defend itself. It possessed shields and sinks; cannon of various kinds; but nothing that would be effective on such a scale. Any war which came close enough to Earth to threaten UMCPHQ was presumed to be already lost.
    "But," Warden pursued, "I don't want to leave us