Deathstalker 04 - Deathstalker Honor

across the Empire, not wanting to place all their eggs in one fragile basket again. The Deathstalker’s destruction of Brahmin II had proven them right, and spurred on by the elimination of what should have been their second homeworld, all the Hadenmen Nests opened at once.
    The huge golden ships of feared legend ranged the long night again, bringing death and destruction and worse than death.
    The insect ships were back too. Gliding silently out of the dark like huge, sticky balls of compacted webbing, driven by unknown forces, they passed unaffected through planetary defenses and discharged crawling armies of killer insects, eating whole cities alive and leaving nothing behind save bare, gnawed bones. They made no threats, issued no demands, could not be talked to or warned off. They just descended from the skies in silent horror and fell upon everything that lived. Soon there were whole planets out on the Rim covered by scuttling, seething insects, crawling blindly through the ruins of what had once been human cities.
    The Empire wasted remarkably little time springing to its own defense. Parliament organized Golgotha into one great communications and tactical center, alerted all planets and colonies in the path of danger, and rushed ships, men, and weapons to defend those not yet fallen or attacked. Luckily, though Shub, Hadenmen, and insects shared a common enemy in Humanity, they showed no interest in any form of alliance. They went their own way, chose their own targets, and did not cooperate, even when it was clearly in their best interests to do so. But they didn’t attack each other either, sticking strictly to their own territories, for the moment.
    Planets and colonies fell, one by one, all along the Rim, and the three attacking forces moved steadily inward, heading for the greater concentrations of Humanity and the vulnerable heart of the Empire: Golgotha. Some colonists tried, against all Parliament’s wishes and advice, to strike deals with those attacking them. It did no good.
    General Beckett’s devastated Imperial Fleet did what it could, but its capabilities were limited from the first. The few surviving E-class ships with the new stardrive couldn’t be everywhere at once, and worlds under attack cried out for help all the time. Beckett sent what was left of his Fleet darting all over the Empire, pulling in every last ship with a crew and working guns, even those patrolling the Darkvoid, and
    rushed them from one trouble spot to another, but all too often they got there too late to do any real good. He then tried splitting up the Fleet, dispatching his most powerful starcruisers to defend those planets in most immediate danger. But Imperial starcruisers caught on their own were quickly outnumbered and outgunned, and had no choice but to run for their lives, usually heavily damaged.
    Unnerved by the loss of too many irreplacable ships, Parliament ordered Beckett to regroup his Fleet and pull them back to protect the more densely populated inner worlds of the Empire. Everyone else was left to fend for themselves. Whole populations struggled to evacuate their worlds, cramming themselves into the cargo holds of any ship with a working stardrive. Many never reached their destinations. Many more populations stood their ground and fought, ready to die rather than give up the worlds they had made their own, through generations of hard work and sacrifice. The invasion had actually begun to slow when Shub launched its new wave. Vast armadas of new ships made their appearance, without the new stardrive but built from the harvested metal trees of Unseeli. From these ships issued great armies of Ghost Warriors and Furies and the deadly biomechanical aliens they had looted from the secret Vaults on Grendel. Unstoppable, implacable, they existed only to kill. Dead men with computer implants. Steel machines in the shape of men. Aliens bioengineered by some forgotten race to be perfect killing machines. Horror troops. Terror weapons. Just like the insects, they overran Humanity’s armies, leaving only blood and bone behind. But still Humanity resisted, forgetting old animosities and diversions in the face of a common enemy. There were victories as well as losses, but never enough. The Empire was being invaded on three fronts, by its most deadly enemies, and the fighting was spread across worlds already sickened and weakened by the length and bitter fighting of the rebellion. Some just didn’t have it in them