by Steve White
Modelo-Vo nodded. “So that’s why the Kaituni were able to herd the Bugs past their favorite feeding grounds: they had a whole Dispersate’s worth of persuasion with which to enforce their will. But damn it,” he said almost as though he were arguing with himself, “the Bugs may be pretty direct, but they’re not stupid. They have to realize that they are being shepherded forward to work as eventual cannon-fodder for their Kaituni drivers.”
“I am sure they understand, Commander,” Narrok offered quietly. “But I suspect they are willing to trade the risk for the implicit opportunities. It seems a certainty that had the Kaituni wanted to prevent all of the Bug armada from entering the cul-de-sac, they could have done so. But instead, they allowed a sufficient formation to enter at each of the two access points. From the Kaituni perspective, that is sufficient to ensure the demise of the Star Union as a credible strategic threat. However, from the perspective of the Omnivoracity, it is an opportunity: free time in which to start converting all the worlds in the Star Union into new Home Hives with all possible speed. I suspect that the Arachnids will be shuttling more forces into the Star Union from what they call ‘The System Which Must Be Concealed’ to achieve just that end. It is only five warp points from there to Franos, and their Kaituni herders have abandoned the area. The Omnivoracity will not fail to seize all those opportunities for reexpansion, any more than they shall obligingly commit suicide for their Kaituni shepherds.
“However, the Omnivoracity and the Kaituni have one—and probably only one—thing in common: they are absolutely xenocidal. Which means that even though they may be affecting a rough symbiotic cooperation presently, they both know that, when all is said and done, each will relentlessly work to extirpate the other.”
Jennifer was perplexed. “And the Kaituni don’t care about all this activity behind them?”
Narrok rippled his tendrils. “Why should they care? The systems that are arrayed between the points of Pesthouse, Allowan, and Franos are not particularly attractive to our people. Furthermore, the Kaituni seem to be consolidating along the warp line between Zarzuela and Zephrain, which boasts far more green worlds. But with all the Dispersates at their disposal, these strategic nuances will hardly matter, particularly if the PSU and Omnivoracity fleets reduce each other to tatters, first. The Kaituni have created what your military analysts call a multiple overkill situation: they have arrayed such a superiority of forces in such superior positions, that they can suffer numerous setbacks and reversals, and still they will prevail.”
Yoshikuni leaned forward. “So, that’s where we stand. The squadron that we thought was herding the Bugs was just rear area security for the Kaituni fleet that touched down here in the Star Union to work as the real herders. It also means that, because we took some of their pieces off the game board today, the Kaituni are going to become suspicious sooner rather than later. Not too soon, because like the picket we nabbed that was left guarding the Unity warp point between Mymzher and Franos, the two ships we hit today were assigned to the warp point as an almost permanent force.” She smiled ruefully. “We’re not the only ones concerned that the Bugs currently in the Star Union cul-de-sac could come raging out again—right on our tails.”
“Which works to our advantage, somewhat,” Kiiraathra’ostakjo observed. “The Kaituni are most likely to ascribe the disappearance of the two ships in Bug 29 to Bug activity—very possibly by a small unit that exited the cul-de-sac on a scouting mission.”
“Exactly,” Yoshikuni agreed, “which is why we have a little time to ready ourselves for what has to come next: engaging the Kaituni fleet. But that’s only step one. We have to push on through them, through the Bugs, and either destroy or get ahead of them, now. Because if we don’t get to Bug 15 first or wipe them all out trying, Admiral Trevayne is going to be cut off. And the warpline to Earth will be wide open. We can’t let that happen. And not just because of the size of these enemy fleets, but because of what some of the Kaituni monitors are carrying.” She glanced at Ossian, nodded: on this occasion, there was no twinkle in her eye.
Wethermere surveyed the room. “I have the dubious honor of presenting the worst news last. The Kaituni have a new weapon that they employed at the Battle of Home Hive Two, a weapon which absolutely decimated our devastator and superdevastator formations. Here’s some footage of the battle.” The room became very still as he narrated over scenes which gruesomely depicted how the strategic and naval assumptions of the past century had been dashed in a few short hours. “We found references to the weapon in the dispatches carried by the Kaituni destroyer. Its technical name is the Relativistic Acceleration Weapon, although the Kaituni leadership prefers the label ‘The Hand of God.’ In brief, it directionally energizes subatomic particles to the point where, leveraging quantum entanglement and the uncertainty principle, they essentially teleport to a space inside a sufficiently large and slow target. The result is essentially a matter-energy conversion, with the results that you have now witnessed.” Wethermere discontinued the stupefying montage of one supposedly impregnable ship after another being turning into wreckage-streaming stars of blue-white energy. “The possible use of such weapons against forts further complicates our overall strategic picture. With the devastators and super devastators either destroyed or withdrawn from the line of battle, that places increased importance on forts as means of holding a warp point. However, while forts are not as large as devastators, they are much, much slower. So forts, too, could be at considerable risk. And if we presume that most of Earth’s ready naval elements were rushed forward to join Admiral Trevayne’s fleet, then all the Heart Worlds will have put themselves in a position where they are relying disproportionately upon forts for their local security. If they have done so, they may have put themselves in grave danger indeed.”
The eyes around the table looked not merely haggard, but desperate.
“However, as chance would have it, we are arguably in a position to deal the Kaituni a particularly nasty surprise. Indeed, our fleet’s need to accept what started out as a tactical disadvantage, has now, oddly, transformed into an advantage. Specifically, when Admiral Yoshikuni’s Rim Fleet arrived from Bellerophon, there was concern that it had to leave its primary firepower—devastators and superdevastators—at home. So, accordingly, Admiral Yoshikuni took the step of replacing those leviathans with almost every smaller capital ship in the Rim Fleet’s lists. And that is exactly the kind of ship we need to fight the Kaituni. To whatever extent they have assigned RAW-equipped monitors to the fleet just ahead of us, the Kaituni have further weakened their conventional firepower by burdening a sizable portion of their tonnage with a special weapon that is essentially harmless to us.”
Yoshikuni nodded acknowledgment. “Thank you, Commodore.” She turned back to the table, looked at every face before she continued. “That’s our situation. We have some excellent advantages and surprises on our side, but the enemy in front of us has the advantage of both numbers and position. Furthermore, for them, a stalemate is a victory. Whereas, even if we defeat both fleets, we must emerge from those victories strong enough to be decisive in the defense of Earth.
“If we succeed, all our species might have a reasonable hope of surviving long enough to stabilize the strategic situation and turn back the combined Kaituni and Bug tides. If we fail—well, then we will each come to some moment in which we know that our peoples are doomed to extinction.” She stood. “I, for one, don’t want to experience that terrible moment. I’d rather die fighting, uncertain of the outcome, than live long enough to know that my species is being relegated to the dustbin of history, a footnote for conquerors to sneer at. If you revile and reject that outcome as much as I do, then carry your bloody resolve against it back to your command staffs and every last member of every crew. This is a fight for survival—for the survival of everything we have, we knew, or we hope for. Dismissed.”
The table and room emptied silently. Ossian hung back; for the first time, he had not waited to see what s
ubtle signal Miharu would or would not send.
When he looked at her, she was still standing straight, her face strained, her eyes very bright.
Ossian moved toward her slowly. Miharu Yoshikuni was not, in any sense of the word, a tender person. She was, through and through, the Iron Admiral. But she was also human through and through, and he could see the terrible price that uttering those grim words had exacted from her own stores of hope, of courage, of tenacity.
He kept his voice soft. “Miharu.”
She blinked; none of the bright liquid in her eyes escaped them. “I don’t know if we’re going to make it, Ossian.”
“I know,” he said. “None of us do. But as you said, we’re not beaten until the last of us die. And we have some pretty promising tricks up our sleeve.”
She smiled faintly, her eyes finally drifting over to meet his. “Always the optimist, aren’t you, Commodore?”
“At this moment, Admiral, I’d like to think of myself as a realist,” he lied.
She shook her head. “Sometimes I think you may be the tougher of the two of us. I just put on the harder face: the gnarled old oak. But you do a pretty fair impression of the willow.”
Ossian felt his own anxiety trying to fight through the calm he’d learned to cultivate since he was very young. “I’m a pretty tired willow, right now,” he admitted. He looked at her frankly, not giving a damn about her rank or any of the other shibboleths of professional propriety.
She blinked and returned his stare. The smile on her face became less despairing, more tinged by rue and poignancy. “I suspect both of us have had stronger moments, Commodore. I wonder if you’d stay behind a while before returning to your ship. To discuss—well, a change to our rules of engagement.”
Ossian smiled back. “The fleet’s rules of engagement, or our own?”
“Both,” she answered with the suggestion of a laugh at the back of her voice.
He felt renewed by that sound of mirth and hope, and wondered if his eyes looked as desperate and needful as hers did.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
“It’s time, Ian,” said Magda sleepily.
“Is it?” mumbled Trevayne, who knew perfectly well that it was but didn’t want to face that disagreeable fact.
“I’m afraid so. I’ve got to get back to my flagship.”
“Are you sure?” he persisted, reaching for her. “Maybe we could just—”
“No!” She gave his hand a playful slap and swung her legs out of bed. She walked a few steps—Zeven Provinciën’s flag quarters weren’t particularly large—and created a spurious “morning” by activating the viewscreen and admitting the harsh bluish light of Pesthouse’s primary, only nineteen light-minutes from where they lay near the Home Hive One warp point.
“Sadist!” He blinked his eyes repeatedly until he could see clearly. Her form was silhouetted against the light, which didn’t help. He got up and embraced her. She didn’t resist.
“I wish we could prolong this,” she whispered into his ear.
“I know.” It was what they said every time they were able to snatch a little time together, always in connection with some admirals’ conference. But, Trevayne realized, he shouldn’t complain. These opportunities might be all too rare, but they had been nonexistent during the entire campaign in Home Hive Two and the flight from there through Orpheus-1 and Home Hive One. Only here in Pesthouse were they able to occasionally touch each other.
They could have had more spacious quarters on the great space station that was the heart of the Pesthouse navy yard. But with the ever-present threat of the inevitable Bug onslaught hanging over them, Trevayne felt obliged to remain aboard his flagship. Also, the space station had a hollow, depressing feel these days, for Trevayne had gradually been evacuating its personnel to Bug 05. By now it was almost deserted, and those remaining tended to talk in hushed tones, as though oppressed by gloom and despair. Over the entire ponderously massive structure hung a heavy air of impending tragedy that had passed beyond the ability of human effort to avert. Trevayne had no desire to breathe that air.
But the same miasma was beginning to seep into the warships as well, and for much the same reasons. A series of Kaituni probing attacks on Bug 05 had forced Trevayne to shift more and more of Combined Fleet’s mobile forces there, and by now no one had any illusions about Pesthouse’s ability to put up more than a delaying action when the Bugs came through from Home Hive One in earnest. Indeed, the only reason Trevayne himself was still in Pesthouse was to lead a fighting retreat.
As far as Magda was concerned, that wasn’t a good enough reason.
“I still wish I could talk you into pulling back into Bug 05,” she said as they dressed. “You should take direct command of the defenses there, and leave me here to—”
“We’ve been over all that. Alistair M’Zangwe is quite capable of directing the defense of Bug 05. My duty is to—”
“I know, I know,” she sighed. “The captain has to go down with the ship.”
“The Royal Navy never had any such idiotic tradition! The captain was merely required to be the last one off the ship. Gave him a bloody good incentive to make certain there were enough lifeboats for everyone, y’see.”
His attempt to jolly her fell flat. “I think,” she said somberly, “that we may be running out of lifeboats.”
“Well,” he replied, meeting her eyes and holding them, “I’m going to make it a point to see there’s always one for you. If there weren’t, there wouldn’t be much point in there being one for me. Who do you think has made it possible for me to keep going through all this?”
“Oh, Ian…!”
They were barely in each other’s arms when the end-table communicator came to life with the nerve-grating screech of the emergency circuit that required no “accept” switch.
“Admiral,” came the tension-tight voice of the flag captain, “one of the few probe drones that lasted long enough to transmit a report—”
“Yes, yes,” said Trevayne impatiently. He had ordered, as a matter of routine, that the drones be dispatched through the warp point, sometimes in clusters. Most of them were promptly vaporized, but the occasional exception had yielded valuable—if discouraging—data on the vast Bug armada they faced.
“Well, sir, it reports a stirring of activity, and a spike in energy output, and…Excuse me, Admiral.” The flag captain paused, and a muttered background colloquy was audible. Then he resumed in a tightly controlled voice. “Sir, AMBAMMs are emerging from the warp point.”
Trevayne and Magda exchanged a split-second’s wordless eye contact, then left at a run.
*
It soon became apparent that Trevayne’s most pessimistic assumptions were—as was all too frequent these days—being triumphantly confirmed.
The previous attack, shortly after Combined Fleet’s arrival in Pesthouse, had been a mere headlong dash by the leading elements of the Bug pursuers, on the chance that they could break in and establish a bridgehead against the tatters of a debacle, a defense that hadn’t had time to organize itself. They had underestimated that defense—and they hadn’t been expecting the devastators and superdevastators that had already been in position, waiting to blanket the warp point with murderous firepower.
So they had learned their lesson. This attack had been so long delayed because they had been bringing up their entire fleet and preparing with great thoroughness. And this time they were not going to stop.
Trevayne, knowing he would not be facing the Kaituni “stick-hives” here, had mined the warp point as densely as his resources permitted. But now antimine ballistic antimatter missiles, spewed forth by the AMBAMM pods—fairly old technology by galactic standards, but not ineffective when employed in these lavish numbers—thinned out those minefields in a stroboscopic wave of explosions. There followed a flood of SBMHAWK missiles, targeting the fortresses, for the Bugs had been doing their own probing. The fortresses fired back desperately with energy torpedoes, and the mobile for
ces added their own rapid-fire plasma bolts. But enough of the missiles got through to rock the fortresses, even before the phalanxes of sullen monitors began to emerge.
And this time there were no devastators and superdevastators here, where they might be cut off by Kaituni invaders as they withdrew across the long stretch between the Bug 05 warp points. In fact, by this time Trevayne had nothing larger than a monitor in this system. His supermonitors had already been dispatched to Bug 05, lest they slow the inevitable evacuation of Pesthouse.
The battle was space-wrackingly intense, and the technologically superior defenders took a heavy toll. But the Bugs had the numbers to waste, and as the sheer tonnage of their ships on the Pesthouse side of the warp point gradually built up it became clear that there would be no miracle. A grim Trevayne ordered his ships to withdraw across the relatively short expanse of space to the Bug 05 warp point, while transports took the remaining shipyard personnel to the same destination. His only consolation in abandoning the warp point fortresses was that very few of their crews were still alive anyway. And they would fight to the death. Capture by the Bugs was something better not thought about.
And the decision, though hard, was one which Trevayne made without hesitation. He was coldly certain that Pesthouse must be evacuated without any further attempts to fight a delaying action, because he had a pretty definite idea of what was going to be happening in Bug 05 all too soon.
