StarFight 1: Battlestar Read Online Free Page A

precaution against sudden air pressure loss.
    As he did so, he wondered what the leader of the wasp-like aliens was thinking. Surely the alien ships had detected the radar scan of the meeting site. Those ships had put out their own spysats before the fleet arrived. Those sats would soon report the Lepanto’s launch of a Cloud Skimmer. What would the alien captain or leader or whatever passed for someone in charge now do?

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER TWO
     
    Hunter One perched tensely on his control bench as his five eyes took in the behaviors of his Servants and Worker Leaders. Their Flight Chamber was large enough for a cohort of twenty Swarm members. Fewer than that worked at the instrument panels and watched the perception imagers that emitted pheromone signals for all to sense. Outside his Colony Nest was empty void, a cold, scent-less space that hated all life, even the lives of lowly Workers. At least his fellow flying nests were safe and warm and filled with life that yearned to occupy the inviting world below. The eleven Support Hunters who controlled the other mobile nests had been surprised by the arrival of other life in strangely shaped flying nests. Their world of Nest knew only the Swarm, a myriad of smaller, senseless hard-shelled life and the strange soft-skinned occupants of their world’s skies, forests and oceans.
    But three rest cycles ago the new flying nests had appeared at the edge of the local sky light’s magnetic field. Their sudden appearance gave scent of movement by way of the alternate dimension the Swarm itself used to send Colony Nests to new worlds that winged about other sky lights. Clearly the ten new flying nests had come from elsewhere. Most seriously, the new nests had ignored the warnings against entry emitted by the Swarm’s boundary globe. What kind of creatures could ignore the scents of repellent and territorial pheromones? One scent claimed this system for the Swarm. The other scent provided a noxious reminder to stay away. That was how other Swarm cohorts spoke to each other. And how the members of his ship cohort spoke among themselves. Even the Soft Skins on their world sensed the warning pheromones and stayed away from buried Swarm nests. But the flying nest intruders had ignored the globe’s warning. They had moved close to the local sky light’s warmth, aiming for the outermost fourth nest world that the Swarm had already claimed. Clearly they aimed to take the warm world for themselves.
    His Servant who specialized in aberrant social behaviors had urged him to meet with the intruders before attacking their flying nests. Attack was the traditional means of defending one’s territory. But as their world of Nest had grown more complex, as the castes of Swarmers had learned new scents and new results from studying the world about them, there had risen a need for Servants with specialized knowledge. Some Servants focused on mechanical devices. Some focused on invisible scent signals coming from the home sky light and other distant sky lights. And some Servants discovered ways for a cohort of Swarmers to fly further than their wings would normally convey them. Across the oceans. Out to the large moon of their world. Thence to other, colder sky nests that winged far beyond the warmth of their sky light’s white-yellow glow. Then had come knowledge of alternate dimensions, and ways to travel to distant sky lights. His generation was the sixth to have control of such wondrous devices.
    Now, it seemed other life had learned the same hard lessons. And it chose to invade their clearly marked territory. So he had proposed the meeting down on the world of Warmth. Defense of his home cohorts on Nest had taught him the wisdom of entrapping the Hunter leaders of opposing cohorts. The trap allowed the trap-maker to render the invading cohort members without leadership, without a Hunter, or useful Servants, or strong Fighters, maybe they