by Steve White
And now the asymmetric warfare had been taken to a new level…
“Intelligence information?” Waldeck echoed. “How?”
Trevayne and Magda exchanged a look, and she took up the narrative. “As we know by now, there’s obviously a closed warp point somewhere in the outer reaches of this system, the existence of which they managed to wipe from all their nav databases we captured, through which they’ve been mounting their raids. But they’ve gotten bolder.” She paused, then resumed as though unwillingly. “You’ve been off with your task force, Cyrus, and don’t know about this yet. You see, we’ve been keeping a very tight lid on it.” She gestured to indicate the flag quarters’ outside viewscreen; the planet Li Han was orbiting showed as a cloud-marbled blue curve. (Not as blue as Earth, for this was a drier world, with steppes as its predominant landscape, not unlike the Tangri homeworld. The Darogas must have considered it quite a prize.) “They mounted a raid on the surface of this planet.”
“What?” Waldeck surged halfway to his feet before subsiding. “How…?”
“It was a very small raid, Cyrus, on a remote outlying area in the opposite hemisphere to this one,” Trevayne explained. “It only got in because of its complete unexpectedness. And the raiders fled before we could react. So at least they didn’t have time to wreak widespread horror on the local Zemlixi population. Although,” he added grimly, “any time would have been too much.” His eyes were still haunted by the things he had seen, for which obscenity was too weak a word.
Magda looked at least equally grim. “It was nothing but sheer terrorism, designed to make the Zemlixis think we can’t protect them from punishment for collaborating with us.”
Waldeck shook his head slowly. “I can see why you’ve been trying to keep this under extremely tight security. But how successful…?”
“More than you might think. Their choice of an out-of-the-way target enabled them to get in undetected and delayed our reaction, but it also makes it easier for us to clamp a security blackout over the area.”
Waldeck scowled. “Also, our wonderful free press isn’t here yet, to play their traditional role of publicity agents for terrorists, who in turn provide them with great copy.” He dismissed the subject with an impatient gesture. “But do I gather that this information came from Zemlixi survivors?”
“Right. The leader of the raid apparently wants to establish himself as the scourge of disloyal Zemlixis and the instrument of the Hordes’ vengeance. So he announced his name, apparently hoping to make it a word of terror. It’s Huraclycx. We crosschecked it against our intelligence databases. We believe he’s a Daroga fighter pilot—or at least used to be one, as recently as a year ago. Now he’s evidently risen in the ranks. We have no way of knowing how high he’s risen.” Trevayne looked thoughtful. “Only paranoids deny the existence of coincidence, but it shouldn’t be overused as an explanation. I can’t rid myself of the feeling that he may be behind some of the tactical innovations that have been making our lives miserable lately.”
“That’s just intuition, Ian,” Magda began. But before she could continue, the communicator buzzed. When the screen came to life, it showed Adrian M’Zangwe’s face…but some fraction of a second passed before Trevayne recognized him, for his normally ebon face was a dark ash-gray, filmed with sweat, and he was clearly exerting every ounce of his immense self-discipline to hold his features steady.
“Adrian—?” Trevayne began, alarmed.
Unthinkably, M’Zangwe interrupted him—and not with the conventional regret for having to disturb him. “Admiral, please come to the flag bridge at once!”
“What is this about, Adrian?”
“Admiral, I…” M’Zangwe seemed to pull himself at least partially together. “Admiral, I’d rather not talk about it over the comm network. We’re trying to keep it under wraps. In fact, for now we’re not letting anyone off the flag bridge, and…Admiral, please come!”
Trevayne and Magda looked at each other, unable to imagine what had brought a man like M’Zangwe to this pass, but obliged to take it seriously. “Very well, Adrian. Admiral Li-Trevayne and I will be there directly.”
“Thank you, sir. And…” M’Zangwe swallowed hard. “You’d better bring Admiral Waldeck as well.”
*
The psychic stench on the flag bridge couldn’t have been any more palpable if Trevayne had possessed selnarm. It hit him as soon as he entered. All the personnel at their various consoles were staring fixedly ahead in almost a caricature of strained self-control.
“All right, Adrian,” he demanded as soon as he and his two companions reached the comm station, where M’Zangwe and Andreas Hagen stood over a junior communications officer who was trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. “What is this?”
M’Zangwe had by now recovered enough of his poise to speak normally. “Admiral, we’ve received a coded top secret report via selnarmic relay from the nearest PSU base. At first we rejected it out of hand as some kind of insane hoax, despite the code. But there’s no possible doubt…” His voice was starting to fray again. He drew himself up into a position of attention, as though to physically stiffen his resolve. “Admiral, the PSU’s human worlds are under attack.”
For a heartbeat, his three listeners simply stared, as though what he had said made no sense. Then Trevayne and Magda and Waldeck all spoke almost simultaneously:
“Who…?”
“How…?”
“Where…?”
M’Zangwe gestured to Hagen, who wore a haunted look. The Intelligence officer shook his head to clear it of ghosts and tried to answer the queries in order.
“As regards ‘who,’ Admiral Trevayne, we have no idea, although some notion may begin to emerge from the pattern of the strikes. As for ‘How,’ Admiral Li-Trevayne, the report gives us some data. The attack has taken the form of kinetic strikes on planets and, in some cases, stars.”
“Did the report include damage assessments?”
Hagen looked even more miserable. “You must understand that, while the projectiles varied greatly in size, some were fairly massive—tons, in fact. Surviving observers were able to transmit sufficient data to calculate their rest masses, and—”
“Did you say rest masses?” Trevayne snapped with a perplexed scowl.
“Yes, Admiral. You see, the objects’ observed velocities ranged from 0.66 cee to 0.81 cee. Relativistic effects therefore…” Hagen trailed off, for the horror-stricken looks on his listeners’ faces reflected their dawning realization of the monstrous implications of what he was saying. Magda, in particular, clearly saw that “damage assessments” would be a practically meaningless term.
Waldeck was the first to find his voice. “Where?” he repeated in a voice under iron control.
Hagen could not meet the old admiral’s eyes. “The data from the report has been fed into the computer, sir. If you’ll come this way…” He led the way to the holo tank and summoned up a display of the warp network covering the human portions of the PSU. It was a familiar sight for all of them…except for one thing. Certain systems blinked red, while others shone a steady scarlet.
“The systems with blinking red lights are known to have been hit, but the extent of strikes’ effect isn’t known. The steady red lights indicate that…that the destruction of the planet in question was…well, total.” Hagen swallowed, mastered his voice, and resumed speaking into the silence. “As you can see, the Heart Worlds were badly hit, the Corporate worlds even worse.”
They stared into the tank, locked in something beyond horror, for they were now in an unimaginable nightmare from which there would be no waking up.
“Christophon…?” Waldeck croaked, staring at one unblinking red light.
Hagen continued to avert his eyes. “We know what occurred there because a few ships that happened to be in the outer system at the time were able to observe it and make warp transit before the effects caught up with them. You see, a particularly large, fast-moving projectile slammed into the
local sun—literally right through the core and out the other side. The energy release evidently destabilized the self-perpetuating stellar equilibrium, and…” Hagen stopped talking, for Waldeck wasn’t listening. He was gazing fixedly at the little red light that was the funeral pyre of his family, his tradition, his society. For a moment, his mouth worked, but no words came. Then he clamped his face into a mask of iron.
In a very quiet voice, Trevayne spoke succinctly. “Real-space display.” Wordlessly, Hagen obeyed, and the stars in the tank rearranged themselves into their true spatial configuration. The red lights now assumed more of a pattern. And they all knew that pattern was oriented in the direction of the long-doomed sun of Ardu.
“I think we can stop wondering about ‘who,’” said Trevayne in the same quiet voice. “Ankhat has warned us about the Destoshaz-as-sulhaji, and what may have happened to the later Dispersates, hasn’t she?”
“How could they have aimed these rocks, or whatever they are, with such precision from across interstellar distances?” Magda wondered aloud, because she needed to banish the silence but could not bring herself to speak of what they all knew to be billions of dead. “I mean, planets are so infinitesimally tiny on the astronomical scale, and they’re moving in their orbits.”
“I don’t think these things were precisely aimed. Remember the size of the generation ships? And remember also the Arduans’ indifference to death, or ‘discarnation.’ If they decided they could dispense with one of those monsters, they could guide it up to a certain point, without decelerating, and then blow it up into a multitude of fragments that would continue on the same course—a titanic shotgun blast. The vast majority of them wouldn’t hit anything…but they wouldn’t need to. Only a few would suffice to…” He couldn’t continue. The leaden silence descended again. This time M’Zangwe broke it.
“Admiral, what are we going to do? We’ve got to go back—”
“We’ve received no such orders, Adrian,” Trevayne reminded him. “Of course, I think I have a certain latitude to act on my own initiative, under…these circumstances. But you’re forgetting one thing.”
“Sir?”
“In the course of this campaign, we’ve liberated a number of Tangri worlds, most recently this one, and started the Zemlixis on the road to self-government. What’s going to happen to them if we go away and leave them to the tender mercies of the Hordes? If there was ever any doubt about that, there can’t be any longer—not after what just happened on this planet.”
“But Ian,” said Magda, “we’ve got to do something!”
“And we assuredly will. Cyrus…Cyrus!”
“What?” Waldeck, who hadn’t heard his name at first, straightened up abruptly. “Uh…yes, sir?”
“I want you to take your task force back at once. You will proceed to the base at Pesthouse and, on my authority, assume command of the reserve we’ve been keeping there in case any trouble comes out of Zarzuela. There you will take whatever action seems indicated against the incursions that I’m quite certain are following hard on the heels of…what has occurred.” Like all of them, Trevayne found himself taking refuge behind circumlocutions.
“Yes, sir,” Waldeck repeated in a mechanical voice.
“And Cyrus…I want you to remember something.” Trevayne held Waldeck’s eyes until he was fairly sure he had the man’s full attention. “If there’s any truth to what Ankhat has told us, the Destoshaz-as-sulhaji have become horribly alien to the Arduans we know—including the Arduans in your task force. Do not confuse the two.”
“I won’t, Admiral.” Waldeck was clearly operating as a machine, but at least the machine seemed functional. “And you…?”
“TF 14.1 will remain here. We won’t advance any further into Tangri space. Instead, we will concentrate on securing this system and, by extension the liberated warp chains behind it. In particular, I want that closed warp point in this system found! I want screens of fast light units thrown around the inner system, to locate and follow any raiders who escape through it. When we depart, I want us to be in a position where it will suffice to leave only some of our lighter units here. I’ve given the Zemlixis my word that I won’t permit them to be slaughtered and brutalized. And I keep my promises.”
Waldeck drew himself up. “With your permission, Admiral, I’ll return to my flagship and set in motion preparations for departure.”
“Right, Cyrus. And for now, don’t reveal what has happened to anyone who doesn’t need to know. I—or, rather, we,” Trevayne amended, glancing at Magda, “will compose a message to the entire fleet. Our personnel will have to be told, before Rumor Central makes it even worse than it is.” If possible, he silently added.
“Of course, Admiral.” And Waldeck was gone.
Trevayne turned a brooding look at the tank, where the malevolent red lights still shone. “Andreas, this isn’t necessarily complete, is it?”
“No, Admiral. It’s just the systems we know about from the report. But,” Hagen added hurriedly, “the report assured us that Earth is all right.”
“Good.” But Trevayne continued to contemplate the display. “I wonder what the situation is in the Orion parts of the PSU?”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Least Claw Showaath’sekakhu-jahr (or Showaath as she was known to her littermates and a few select friends) quickly scanned the five pickups that comprised the portable holostudio she had installed upon the rented shuttle. Her lead technician followed her gaze pensively: while Showaath was not a prima donna when it came to interviews, she was particular and exacting.
But then again, if she hadn’t been, she would not have been able to retain the undisputed position as top Orion interviewer and investigative journalist throughout the Khanate—and beyond. She had been the apex predator of her chosen field ever since, six years ago, she had been trapped on Bellerophon and compiled a documentary series of its occupation and liberation that was as comprehensive as it was gripping and defining. Orions at the top of their respective fields certainly exhibited noblesse oblige, but never the (often false) humility evinced by their human colleagues. If you were going to dominate your litter, you had to act the part, which meant, among other things, not suffering fools gladly and not suffering incompetence at all. And you couldn’t do that from behind a desk. Theernowlus—the Orion concept of accruing honor through risk-taking—was not just a martial concept: it applied to all professions to whatever measure it could. And Showaath had discovered that, with the Zarzuela blockade always generating incidents, and the Tangri perpetually launching raids, she was never at a lack for a combat zone to cover.
Today’s combat zone was very different in one regard: there were no guns involved—yet. But in terms of savagery, desperation, and the possibility to expand into a nation-destroying conflagration, it rivaled the most ferocious battlefield she had ever seen. The debate over approving a second set of Unity Warp Points had become a flashpoint that further polarized unionists and isolationists, Great Families and labor collectives, traditionalists and reformers. The cohesion of her species—and so, its future—hung in the balance.
Walking forward into the small lounge nestled atop the bridge, Showaath looked through the reinforced gallery windows that looked out over the craft’s bow: beyond it, and far, far below, the blue oceans of Khanae III seemed to rise toward them slowly.
“The angle of descent will soon become steeper, Least Claw,” the pilot announced. “I recommend you take a seat.”
“Give us a good ride,” was her only reply. She leaned a hand upon a nearby bulkhead, turned to send a question back at her production manager, “We’ll have less than an hour with the four Kimhakaa’Khan’a’khanaaeee. I want to have our recorders ready and the hercheqha luncheon served the moment he comes on board.”
“It is as we have discussed and prepared, Least Claw. We shall make full use of every second that the Khan’s Councilors deign to spend with us.”
“Excellent. I trust it to your claws, then.”
The shuttle banked slowly, but the inertial compensation system kept Showaath from feeling any change in momentum. It was, however, unexpected. “Pilot, were we not in a direct glidepath, as you informed me earlier?”
“We were, Least Claw, but we have been redirected.”
“Redirected? How? Why?”
“I am unsure Least Claw, but there seems to be—”
Far ahead, and up in the midnight-blue reaches where the planet’s atmosphere verged upon space itself, there was a brief, blinding white streak—as though Showaath had inadvertently glanced at an active arc-welder. As she raised a hand that was far too slow to shield her eyes—which now showed her a fading green after-image of the beamlike phenomenon—she asked, “Was that a—a plasma bolt of some kind, pilot?”
“I do not—do not know,” he replied as, visible even from where Showaath stood on the low gallery that peered down into the rear half of the bridge, his communications panel suddenly began flickering wildly. “Mixed reports, Least Claw. From ships in orbit as well as ground stations. It may have been some freak cluster of cosmic rays impacting the—”
Then, the nature of the phenomenon no longer mattered: its effects commanded everyone’s full attention. To the front and to the sides, similar beamlike strikes streaked planetside. Except, they did not really streak, Showaath amended: they were there—fully realized—all at once. “Pilot, get us back up—”
But the shuttle performed a steep nosedive—so steep, that it imparted a lurch that even its inertial compensators could not fully counteract. “Debris—or near-relativistic kinectic kill devices—Least Claw. Scores of them. More coming from—”
The cockpit and passenger windows strobed with a blue-white light so absolute and intense that it seemed to be attempting to gouge out their eyes. In the next instant, the shuttle bucked, veered under the sharp, savage buffeting of a sudden cyclone, then it righted. Still pitched downward at a forty-five-degree angle of attack, that angle revealed a scene so surreal that Showaath—who had seen many, many planetary attacks both from above and below—could not immediately make sense of it.
