Imperative - eARC

by Steve White

  “But beside that, I suspect that Amunsit—who is not at the head of the Kaituni, it seems—wished to prove and overtly claim that all the recent calamities caused by the near-relativistic debris from the colony ships of fourteen Dispersates is not, as some have wanted to believe, unintentional or a matter of coincidence. And by releasing the story of what she has done to Xanadu and its people, she is sending a message to all non-Kaituni races, everywhere: ‘this is what we shall do to you. It is just a matter of time, and there is nothing you can do to stop us.’”

  “But this is where I am still puzzled myself, Councilor Ankaht,” Kiiraathra’ostakjo mused through a chesty rumble. “While such a message will no doubt terrify many civilians, it will inflame others, incite them to take up arms or do whatever they may to destroy their would-be exterminators. And insofar as our militaries are concerned, it could not logically have an effect other than to galvanize the will and resolve of our general staffs. It shall lead them to commit just that many more of our largest ships to the great battle that seems to be imminent at or near Pesthouse, from all reports. In all ways, Amunsit’s actions remain a mystery.”

  Ossian leaned forward. “I think I may have an answer to that mystery. Two answers, actually.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Least Fang Kiiraathra’ostakjo leaned toward Ossian attentively. “Today, I have no heart to taunt you, my friend. What do you suspect lies behind Amunsit’s actions?”

  “Well, as I said, I have two suspicions. The first is, I think, pretty obvious. Since Amunsit knows that we use Arduan sensitives on many of our capital ships, I believe she’s trying to reignite the bigotry toward all Arduans—Kaituni or not. The more horrific she is, and the more widely her forces’ xenocidal resolve is known, the more it will rekindle racial hatreds and lingering suspicions. And if that comes to pass, it could spark a civil war in the Bellerophon arm and result in having our fleets’ Arduan specialists removed—which would mean a severe disadvantage in terms of the speed of our communications and sensor readings.”

  As most of the heads in the room nodded at the likelihood of that suspicion, Wethermere noticed that Ankaht was still, but staring at him. “And what is the less obvious of your two suspicions, Ossian?”

  Wethermere resisted the urge to rub his hair briskly. “The hell of it is, it’s not a specific suspicion, just a general one.” Seeing quizzical looks on the other humans’ faces, he amplified: “Let’s go back to what the Least Fang was pointing out—and rightly so, I think: Amunsit had to know that letting this kind of information get to our populations was tantamount to whacking a hornet’s nest with a club. It only stands to reason that we would all be hopping mad to get at her—and not merely to defeat her, but annihilate every trace of the rabid xenocidal campaign she’s espousing. So if she expects that result, it stands to reason she wants that result, that it is somehow key to the Kaituni plans.”

  Kiiraathra’ostakjo nodded slowly. “This is logical, Ossian Wethermere, but how could our vigor help the Kaituni? Increased ferocity and urgency is our ally, not our enemy.”

  “I know,” Wethermere grumbled, “and that’s what bothers me. We’re missing something. It feels like—well, like we’re being set up for a judo throw.”

  “I am sorry,” Mretlak intruded, “but what is ‘judo’?”

  “A human martial art,” murmured Alessandro, his eyes fixed on Wethermere. “The core principle is that you use your opponent’s strength or momentum against them; you find a way to make their own attacks turn into their undoing.”

  Wethermere nodded. “And that’s just what this feels like. The only way I can even imagine that our resolve and rage might work against us is this: that we may be rushing in too quickly, that we may be committing too many of our forces in the effort to score a quick and absolute victory. We’ve already heard rumors that there’s a huge PSU fleet gathering in the vicinity of Pesthouse. Judging from the last deployment rosters, that would logically be Second Fleet, Admiral Waldeck’s immense multiracial armada. And he’s got a lot of our best hardware at his disposal.

  “It’s also true that Admiral Trevayne has a massive fleet under his command, mostly comprised of Terran Republic formations. Until a few months ago, he was hunting down the Tangri raiders—genocidalists in their own right—but who knows if he hasn’t started moving to follow in behind his old friend Cyrus? And frankly, he’d be right to do so, from a purely practical standpoint. He’d never say so himself—Ian is a gentleman—but he knows, as does everyone else, that whereas Cyrus is a solid strategist and tactician, Ian Trevayne’s battlefield skills are the stuff of legend. And, thanks to the information leak that Amunsit ensured, that same legendary admiral has probably learned that Miriam Ortega was butchered like a piece of livestock amidst the ruins of the city where the two of them fell in love.” Ossian shook his head. “Every time I look at this situation, I come away with the same impression: Amunsit is trying to provoke us, trying to goad us to bring every spare ship we’ve got to annihilate the Kaituni. And that—well, that makes me wary of doing so.”

  “But the decision is not ours to make, unfortunately,” Ankaht soothed. “We must determine what we may do to help, from where we are, with the assets we have.”

  Harry kicked back from the table. “Well, couldn’t we at least send a message? I mean, we have our own selnarm telegrapher now, ma’am: you. Couldn’t you pass our warnings along to Tefunt ha sheri back in Bellerophon, who could then send it by selnarmic courier to Borden and then on to the Terran—?”

  Ankaht raised a drooping cluster: a gesture of forlorn futility. “It is not so simple, Lieutenant Li. Firstly, the tortuous selnarmic courier route linking Bellerophon to the Terran Republic and thence to Earth itself has been disrupted. According to what I have learned from Tefnut ha sheri, the Tangri raiders have compromised several systems along that path of warp points, so there is no way to know that such a message would ever reach its intended recipients. Furthermore, if Captain Wethermere’s conjecture about allied fleet movements are correct—and they are consistent with all the inferential data we have gathered these past weeks—it is almost certain that the persons to whom you would send that message are beyond timely reach. Admiral Trevayne will already be in motion if he is going to come join the effort to meet and defeat the Kaituni along the path leading from Pesthouse to Earth. Admiral Waldeck is almost certainly already in position at Pesthouse. Of course, two such seasoned commanders are almost certain to reflect upon Amunsit’s information manipulation and be especially wary. Which is fortunate, because no message from Bellerophon could possibly reach such distant fleets in time to matter.”

  She paused, and her almost nonexistent shoulders seemed to sag wearily. “Besides, we must now reserve this on-off selnarm process to coordinate something much more urgent, much more likely to influence the outcome of this conflict.”

  “Which would be—what?” asked Jennifer, who clearly heard the pregnant, hanging tone with which Ankaht had concluded her statement.

  Ossian folded his hands. “Collectively—meaning the Least Fang, the Councilor and I—have determined that our best use of Ankaht’s ability to communicate with Tefnut ha sheri is to coordinate a means of bringing the Bellerophon Fleet through to us.”

  Magee’s eyebrows jumped high. He leaned back. “Sir, with all due respect, I would expect that you’d need to coordinate that with deity. Even if we assumed that we could somehow either sneak or fight our way through the Zephrain system, the path to Bellerophon is blocked. The New India system will be impassable for at least another month, possibly two. And that’s for fast, small, individual ships. A whole fleet would—”

  Ossian smiled. “Captain, you are absolutely right that what you are projecting would be a suicide mission—in any number of ways. And besides, it doesn’t furnish us with the element of surprise—which may be the only decisive advantage to be gained by carrying out the operation we intend.”

  “Well, sir,” Li said, his tone respec
tful if incredulous, “you certainly have me surprised—or at least fully perplexed about how you plan on bringing the Bellerophon fleet here to us.”

  Ossian rubbed his hair, caught himself doing so, decided not to stop. “Over the weeks, we’ve had dozens of conversations about how our little flotilla could move faster and hide more easily if we just abandoned the big, cumbersome freighter that the Least Fang was escorting. But we never did get rid of it. Because, every time we had one of those conversations, I thought to myself, ‘You never know when it might be handy to have a warp point generator in your back pocket’”

  Everyone but Ankaht and Kiiraathra’ostakjo stared at him as if he had gone mad. He even saw the Orion glance at him quickly; Kiiraathra had agreed with Ossian’s plan, but had yet to become comfortable with it.

  “Sir,” Mretlak said carefully, deferentially, “I am at pains to point out that it takes two generators to create a warp point. And we only have one.”

  “That’s not strictly true,” Ossian replied with a grin.

  Again, he found himself looking at a row of shocked stares. But before he could expand upon his statement, Ankaht intervened. “We do not have another one here with us, of course. But the other end is available to us—and happily, is located just where it will do us the most good: in Bellerophon.”

  “Wait a minute,” snapped Harry Li, finally forgetting himself and allowing impatience into his tone. “The warp point generator with us was the one being moved to Bellerophon. The other half is back in Sigma Draconis.”

  “That is true,” responded Amunsit. To Ossian, it sounded like there was a small, coy smile behind the vocoder’s rendition of her voice.

  Harry threw his hands up. “Look, I give up, okay? Solve the mystery for me. Here in this flotilla, we have one half of a warp point generator pair, the half that was bound for Bellerophon. The other half is in Sigma Draconis. But now you’re telling me that, no, the other half of the generator is actually in Bellerophon now. But that’s also where our warp point generator was heading. I don’t get it.”

  “Actually, you do get it, Harry,” Ossian assured him. “It’s not as contradictory as it sounds, if you consider that you might not have all the facts.”

  Mretlak’s largest, central eye narrowed. “Your engineers built another generator on site in the Rim.”

  “Well, yes and no. Another warp generator was built in the Rim, but not by our engineers, Mretlak.” Ossian smiled. “It was built by yours.”

  All three of Mretlak’s eyes blinked so sharply that it looked downright painful. “Our—Arduan—engineers built the other warp generator?”

  Ankaht touched two opposed tendrils together lightly. “Just so. It is a precise copy of the one we are carrying, and of the one that is still in Sigma Draconis.”

  Mretlak rose to a formal sitting position. “If this is true—that we were constructing a warp point generator—then why was I not informed? This is a matter of utmost intelligence sensitivity and importance for our people. It was in my purview to—”

  “Mretlak,” Ossian interjected congenially, “I’m sorry, but this was out of our hands. It was a policy decision that was taken at the highest level. The very highest level. Frankly, the three of us”—he gestured at Ankaht and Kiiraathra’ostakjo—“were all informed about the creation of the Arduan-built generator, but not one of us knew that the other two also knew.”

  “That’s—that’s crazy,” pronounced Jen with a sudden folding of her arms.

  “Actually, Jen, it’s not. Frankly, I suspected that Ankaht knew. She’s the living repository of the most confidential facts and activities concerning her people, and this was at the very top of that confidentiality pyramid. I suspect Amunherh’peshef knew, and I know that Narrok does. Of course the construction team knows, but they’ve been sequestered for two years, and were bound for frontier resettlement on Marathon. And the Least Fang knew because it was necessary for him to understand what was—and what was not—at stake when he was escorting our half of the warp point generator. Which was, by the way, the one that was slated for use, had it arrived in Bellerophon.”

  “So who told you, Captain?” Jennifer, who had long ago declared her low tolerance for the bad faith that she believed motivated all examples of compartmentalization, did not quite sound accusatory. Not quite.

  “I had to be in on it from the start, Ms. Pietchkov, for a variety of intelligence and counterintelligence reasons. The entire process was a cooperative effort between engineers of ours who had already built one, and Arduan engineers that had been, at the close of the last war, trying to duplicate our work. Furthermore, the success of this project—on every level—had profound strategic implications for Arduan-PSU relations.”

  Magee scratched his ear. “Okay, but then why move the one we have with us now all the way from Centauri?”

  “To keep anyone from realizing that the Arduans now can build a warp point generator.”

  Kiiraathra’ostakjo emitted a cross between a grumble and a snarl. “I mean no offense to our Arduan comrades, Ossian, but I remain uncertain why the PSU and Rim Federation politicians permitted them to construct a warp point generator at all.”

  Ossian turned to his friend. “Kiiraathra, since the Arduans had already figured out most of the engineering by the end of the war, maybe the better question is: what would we have risked by trying to prohibit it?” He gestured toward Ankaht and Mretlak. “We are genuinely trying to integrate the Arduans into the Rim Federation—and the PSU, if they want to establish communities there. But how are we going to do that if we selectively prohibit them from sharing in the same technologies we have, particularly those which they are already on the cusp of building for themselves? The diplomatic fallout over an attempt at prohibiting them from building a warp point generator would have been catastrophic. Besides, it would have been pointless: within a few years, they could simply have built one on the sly—and they’d have rightly come away with the impression that our true interest was in controlling, not including, them.

  “Besides, to answer ’Sandro’s earlier question, we needed a back-up generator in place, just in case something went wrong with the one that the Least Fang was escorting down from Centauri. In the event that one of them failed, then we could have swapped the other one in—they are identical—and no one would have been the wiser, given that the process of activation is a top-secret operation, carried out in deep space.”

  “Very well,” said Mretlak in a somewhat distracted voice, his lesser tentacles slowly switching to and fro, like metronomes measuring the orderliness of his contemplations. “So: we have identical warp generators, one here, one in Bellerophon. And now, through the Elder Sleeper, we have a means of coordinating their activation and thereby, creating a warp point. But why? To escape to Bellerophon and give them the intelligence they need to defeat Amunsit and break through to this region of space?”

  “No,” replied the Least Fang quietly, “we shall use it to bring through Admiral Yoshikuni’s fleet. Here into the very den of our enemy.”

  Again, Ossian and his colleagues found themselves sitting across the table from a rank of stunned stares. “Least Fang,” Magee began carefully, “I am ever an admirer of Orion boldness, but this is—well, very bold indeed.”

  “It is, which is why I like it—although it does, I will admit, border on insanity.” He glanced over at Ossian.

  Harry Li goggled at his captain. “Sir, this is—is your plan?”

  “Why Harry, you sound surprised.”

  “I—I suppose I shouldn’t be, sir.”

  Ankaht extended an imploring tentacle. “On reflection, you may find it is not so outrageous a stratagem as you might first believe. Consider: your own reconnaissance reports, along with the other groups’, all indicate that the only nearby Kaituni forces are those which remain in protective postures around and in the Zarzuela system itself. Beyond them, there is only one immense Kaituni fleet still operating in the Orion Khanate: a composite of three Dispersa
tes which arrived from deep space to strike at New Valkha. And they are now said to be advancing upon the growing Orion defenses at Old Valkha. They are not even leaving token occupation forces behind them; they are practicing the scorched earth policy that they demonstrated at Xanadu. We do not know where they might head after the battle at Old Valkha, but two alternatives are logical: that they will either continue to savage the major Orion systems, or will divert and head toward a Unity Point which was used to link the Khanate with the worlds you call the Star Union.”

  “Which won’t have been able to get to a wartime footing yet. So the Kaituni will wipe out the Star Union before it’s managed to field a combat-ready fleet, before it can become a problem to them. And besides, if you follow along those systems far enough, you can eventually emerge near Earth.” Harry’s expression and voice were suddenly grim rather than incredulous.

  “Precisely,” Ankaht agreed. “So if this immense Kaituni fleet chooses to move upon the Star Union, perhaps we can follow and intercept them, or intervene in some other fashion which will ensure that they cannot exploit that admittedly circuitous route toward Earth—although, with only one fleet at their disposal, it does not seem that they could accomplish very much.

  “If, on the other hand, the Kaituni do not enter the Star Union too soon, it might be opportune for us to do so. We could alert the races there, perhaps gather their forces to swell our own, and send word to Earth that we have blocked that unlikely route of approach.”