Kendric wrestled with the thought a moment. There was still time to break off, to accelerate in a hyperbolic away from the moon and the KessRith fleet instead of around the moon and into the enemy fleet's expected position.
No. It was better to face them, to make the bold pass. There were advantages in doing the unexpected, as well as risks. "Proceed as planned."
"Communications, sir. All ships in the squadron report in position, ready for final program phase."
"Very well. Keep all lines clear." If orders had to be changed at the last moment, it was imperative that every ship in the squadron be able to hear his commands. Things would be happening quickly—probably too quickly for elaborate changes of plan or anything more than an order that the squadron scatter and evade. He shuddered. Pray it didn't come to that...
A computer voice began repeating an alert throughout the ship. "All hands, prepare for maneuver, thirty seconds. All hands, prepare for maneuver, twenty-five seconds. All hands, prepare..."
"Helm here, Captain. Twenty seconds to engine firing." In the corner of the bridge screen, numbers were flickering down toward zero. This was his last chance to change his orders. His fingers closed on the edges of the chair armrests. Kendric forced himself to remain still, his eyes on the screen ahead.
At the last possible instant, the vast crescent of silver 1 ight, now too large by far to fit within the viewing angle of the screen, swept up and out, transforming into a broad, flat horizon of light. The horizon lost its crisp, sharp-edged look and became ragged. Mountains appeared, black shadows against sunlight, rimmed by daylight. Dark craters yawned beneath the Gael Warrior's belly.
"Maneuver program engaged!" Helm shouted into the bridge circuit, making Kendric wince. The whine of the battleship's generators trembled into a deep-throated thunder as grav and I-K drives fired into life, stabbing fire toward the moon's horizon. Internal compensator fields fluxed momentarily. Kendric felt a surge of acceleration that evened out an instant later into a steady and comfortable 1 G, but that left him feeling light-headed. Trothas's small, intense white sun rose above the horizon with frightening swiftness as the squadron hurtled across the sharp-edged terminator between night and day.
The battleship, with the rest of the squadron close behind, swung low across the surface of the moon, preceded by the fire trails of their drives. The Gael Warrior's altitude at periapse—the lowest point in its sweep across the rugged, airless surface—was a bare twenty kilometers. There were plenty of mountains on the worldlet taller than that, but Kendric and his men had consulted the Imperial charts for this system in the Warrior's computer and incorporated the planetography of this moon into the plans for this pass. Mountains, smooth-sided and steep, seemed to reach for the battleship from below, at one point rising above the battleship to port and starboard as the ship flashed across a broad basalt sea between the sheer cliffs of volcanic uplands.
"Drives off!" Helm announced. "Maneuvering for battle!"
"Captain, this is Ops!" another voice broke in. "Enemy in sight, in position!"
They'd done it! The KessRith ships had not changed course, had remained in orbit as Kendric had expected.. .had hoped!
Each ship in the squadron rotated now on its center of mass, realigning their prows to face the enemy. The range closed swiftly as the Gael Squadron rose from the surface of the moon, whose dayside glare created a brilliant, masking wall of light behind them. The KessRith fleet was in an ideal target position, illuminated by the sun from one quarter and by the moon from below. It was entirely possible that they had not even seen the TOG ships' approach.
"Communications, this is the Captain. Put me on the general tac frequency. Link it to ship-to-ship." That would transmit his orders to every other ship in the squadron, as well as throughout his own vessel.
"All weapons batteries, stand by," Kendric said. He studied the position of the three largest blips carefully."Warrior will pass between the carrier and the command ship, engaging both simultaneously. Reannruadh, hold your position and follow us through. All other vessels, engage targets of opportunity at will. We are seeking to create maximum confusion among those people.. .to scatter them if we can." The blips on the screen resolved themselves rapidly into three ships, showing the familiar yet alien sweeps and curves of KessRith design. The M iko Class carrier drifted to starboard, the sharp-pro wed, blistered wedge of the KessRith CC vessel to port.
Morganen came on Kendric's private circuit. "A splendid maneuver, Captain. You caught them looking the other way."
"Looks like it, Number One, but they've seen us now. Look there, beyond the leaders!"
The sudden maneuvering of the aliens was plainly visible on the screen. The smaller vessels of the KessRith squadron were scattering, their drives flaring with arc-brilliant intensity against the blackness of space. Whether they were accelerating to maneuver into combat formation or to escape could not be determined as yet. All that was certain was that the KessRith were moving too late to escape from the Gael Squadron's attack.
"Ready for deceleration, Helm," Kendric said. "I want to match orbits with those two."This would be no hit-and-run attack, but a close-range slugfest. What would happen when the battleship took up position between the KessRith carrier and the CC vessel was anyone's guess. If the rebels stayed to fight, they would be outgunned by the Gael Warrior and the Reannruadh fighting in tandem. If they ran, the initiative of the battle would definitely shift to the TOG fleet's favor, might even open the way for a TOG victory.
Then the Gael Warrior was in the midst of the KessRith squadron, penetrating an outer, scattering shell of destroyers and frigates and drifting to a halt relative to the carrier and CC vessel. Lasers flared, stabbing.
GathGhan t'Chak, Clan Senior and Marshal of the Warrior's Flame, stared into the battle screen and let his tongue protrude several centimeters beyond his saw-edged front teeth in the KessRith equivalent of a sigh. His red eyes gleamed with a particular brilliance in the cool green light of the Garden of Martial Contemplation. The screen at his feet rippled as though disturbed by a pebble cast into its depths, then centered on the TOG battleship drawing between the Miko carrier and this, his command vessel, the Djaqui K'klatdth.
T'Chak's massive, plate-armored hands made silent gestures above the lights set within the boulders surrounding him, though he knew the battle was already lost. Too many fighters had been destroyed, too many capital ships trapped and destroyed elsewhere in the system. The mission that had called his squadron here across the void had failed. There was little to do now but withdraw, if such withdrawal could be accomplished according to the precepts of honor.
Assuming it were possible to escape at all. Elsewhere, the TOG Imperial fleet commanders had been committing their forces with their usual conservative distaste for close combat, had been withholding large numbers of ships as reserves, had been withdrawing in the face of firepower even approximately equal to their own.
In response to his nonverbal command, laser light lanced out across the gulf between Djaqui K'klatdth and the enemy battleship. The TOG warship had been damaged already, the savage scar across its bridge tower proof that it had been hurt badly earlier in the fight. If that battleship could be crippled, there was a chance—a faint chance—that the TOG squadron could be scattered now, before the rest of the TOG fleet could gather for a final kill. It would not win the battle, but it would give the KessRith capital ships time to escape.
It was the only hope GathGhan t'Chak could see for his fleet, for his people, or for himself.
What troubled him was gh't'vaghark, the First Precept of Honor, as it applied to allies. KessRith concepts of honor were complex by Human standards, with elaborate multiple levels and special cases more precisely and clearly defined in the KessRith tongues than in any language of Man. In his own tongue of Ro'thad alone, there were 221 separate and distinct words for honorable conduct in war.
The Humans of Trothas had contacted his people through the farflung net of the rebel underground,
that extended everywhere throughout the TOG Imperium. Through that net had come the Trothan rebels' proposal: Send us a battlefleet. Help us to throw off the Imperial yoke, and we will give you a system rich in resources, deep within TOG territory, where you can establish a base to disrupt TOG in its continuing war against the KessRith.
The clan of Sovi KessRith—the Homeworld of Warriors—that united and loosely governed the KessRith Empire had rejected the offer, but KessRith politics were never as dogmatic nor as absolute as among Humans. Individual KessRith name families were always free to act on their own, so long as their actions did not threaten the interests of Clan and Race.
T'Chak had brought his clan and his clan's fleet to Trothas in answer to the Humans' call. It was true that most of the clan leaders had come for the glory of the fight, rather than for the possibility of a base in TOG space that the Human rebels had offered. Still, the benefits of such long-range planning would be better tasted after Trothas's independence had been won.
The Clan's coming had, by the bindings of gh't' vaghark, linked the Clan to the fate of the Trothan rebels. If t'Chak ordered a withdrawal now, if he abandoned his Troth allies, the Clan of Gath would be dishonored—klaxt't'tch—for eternity.
Even that did not yet seal the KessRith's doom. By KessRithian thinking, when the actions that defined honorable conduct changed, so too did the definition of honor. Cowardly behavior on the part of their Human allies, for example, would completely redefine the contract of honor and free the Clan to to pursue more productive strategies.
T'Chak pondered. Thus far in the battle, the Humans had behaved honorably, by any definition. Not spectacularly by any means, but acceptable in KessRith eyes. His tongue protruded again. There was no shame, certainly, in dying side by side with aliens, so long as they behaved as honorable allies. Still, the Gath Clan might have accomplished so much more. It grieved t'Chak to see the Clan extinguished, so far from home and the Death-of-Glory-Songs of the females of his race.
A pity. His blunt fingers passed over another colored light within the boulder garden. Moments later, a chime announced visitors within the garden, a Human escorted by a massively armored KessRith proctor.
"Well, Ambassador Adamski," t'Chak rumbled. "It seems our mission here has failed."
The Human was trembling. T'Chak was unsure what that the motion indicated, but the sick-sour scent that he had come to associate with fear in the Humans was unpleasantly sharp in his nostrils. The knowledge of the Human's fear made t'Chak stir within. Fear, of itself,
bore no dishonor. Still, to show that fear outwardly...
"Do you fear death so much, Hu-man?"
"I...I fear for my people, Marshal." The Human's eyes widened as he stared into the KessRith's broad, heavy-browed face. "Those people are monsters! You have no idea what they'll do..."
"I know all too well what they will do," t'Chak said. "Your people will be lucky if your world survives. Many of your people will die."
"You could have prevented that."
"Eh?Dal'thakgundar.. .How, Hu-man?"The Human's accusation strayed far beyond the propriety of gh't'vaghark and kindled an alien hope. Perhaps it was not too late after all! "My clan has suffered grave losses this day. My fourth partner's son died when his Na'Ctka Moquka was destroyed attacking yonder Hu-man battleship. Shall I grieve more for your people than for my own son?"
"Marshal, Trothas has a population of over 500 million people! Their deaths will be on your head! You are condemning them to death, to slavery, to..."
Violation! Battle's joy burst within the KessRith's massive, armored frame. By attributing combat deaths to t'Chak rather than to those who would rightfully claim them, the Human had offered a vile and acid insult! Whether the Human realized it or not, the agreement between them was broken, the requirements of gh't' vaghark satisfied!
"No, Ambassador!" t'Chak thundered in reply. "By my own death, no! I condemn them to nothing! But you will share in their blood-debt! It was you who invited us here, you who planned this revolt, you who promised that the Imperials would not have reason to learn of our base here. Your clan can glory in its well-fought death!"
Adamski blinked and shook his head. These were signs, so t'Chak had learned, of confusion. "What...what will you do, then?" the Human asked.
"What I can to save my people. I have already dispatched our communications ship, ordering them to seek safety elsewhere. My remaining ships will attempt to hold the enemy here. Should we fail..." The massive frame shrugged in a remarkably Human gesture. The thick grey tongue slipped briefly past jagged teeth. "Should we fail, we will die with honor."
As if to punctuate the statement, the KessRith command ship lurched heavily, the internal compensators and grav fields pulsing and throbbing between uncomfortably high and low settings. On the battlescreen, the TOG warship could be seen drawing quite close. Laser fire probed toward its damaged bridge, but the return fire was heavy, spirited, and accurate. Missiles lanced from tubes along the big ship's side. With those flashes came a distant rumble that transmitted through the hull, dimming and flickering the green lighting in the garden.
Off beyond the TOG battleship, the Miko Class carrier was in trouble. Lasers drilled at her hull armor, as missiles punched and flashed, sending huge chunks of armor spinning laziiy across the black void. Fires burned and shimmered at several points where, explosive gases and oxygen had ignited and were spilling into the vacuum of space. The carrier's last fighters had been dispatched long before, and her weaponry was light, considering the size and mass of her design. The Marshal's experienced eye told him that the great KessRith carrier was already doomed, though it might be hours yet before a fatal blow was delivered.
Very well. The battle was lost, hut he could still win glory for his clan. T'Chak waved his hand and the battlescreen image rippled and vanished, to be replaced by a green-lit scene in the Garden of Decision, elsewhere within the ship. A pair of KessRithian faces looked back at him, red-eyed, their sawtoothed mouths drawn into rigidly neutral and carefully controlled expressions.
T'Chak spoke rapidly in Ro'thad for a moment. The two other KessRith answered him in the same tongue, and then the screen switched back to the ponderous mass of the TOG battleship. It was now scarcely sixty kilometers distant, huge under the KessRith ship's electronic image magnification.
"What did you tell them?" Adamski wanted to know.
Instead of answering immediately, t'Chak studied the heavy and fragrant blossoms of the jungle plants that filled his garden. "You fear death, Hu-man," he said at last.
"Of course. Don't you?"
"No. At least.. .1 don't believe I comprehend it in the same way you do. It would be good if you could understand death from my point of view."
"How can there be more than one-point of view about death?"
"There are as many views of death as there are individuals, Human. He comes to us all. We all must greet him, later...or now."
"W...why are you telling me this?"
The Marshal of the Warrior's Flame considered for a moment. "Hu-man, you are about to die. I tell you that you might meet Death with honor and propriety. We have perhaps five of your minutes before we ram the enemy battleship. You have that long to compose yourself."
Ambassador Adamski had to be restrained by the proctor. T'Chak could get nothing more from him but screams.
Yes, gh't'vaghark had certainly been fulfilled.
What you have to remember, you see, is that non-Humans don't think as we do.. .feel pain as we do.. .act as we do. What might seem cruel to us doesn' t bother them. After all, they have no respect at all for life, at least as we understand the term.
They're different! Alien!
And we may never understand them!
—Excerpt from holovid broadcast, "Our Universe," starring
Richard Satherns and Orvin Glennis, 6829 A.l.
Appreciative murmurs arose from the various officers at the Combat Center consoles. With the battle being handled from the main bridg
e, the reserve bridge crew had little to do but monitor it, standing ready to take over should the main bridge take a crippling hit. They were free to watch the battle as it unfolded, free to point at the computer symbols drifting across the small version of the main viewer mounted on the forward bulkhead, free to discuss the Captain's strategy as it unfolded on the screen and on their console displays.
Morganen did not join in the conversation. He preferred to watch and listen, standing just behind the line of reserve bridge officers along the Combat Center fire control consoles. Despite himself, his admiration for Nav Fraser was growing. Certainly, the members of the reserve bridge crew had nothing but praise for the man!
"My God, the guy's going to carry it off," a junior Lieutenant said, echoing Morganen's thoughts. "The guy is breaking the KessRith
line!"
"Watch him go for that K-R command ship!" another said. "Five gets you ten he lays us alongside and goes for their bridge tower!"
"Shows what you know. K-R CCs don't have bridge towers..."
It was still uncertain just how much firepower the alien command ship carried. The Miko Class carrier was known to be only lightly armed, but the word "lightly" was a distinctly relative tern}. The big fighter carrier still had massed batteries of laser and particle-cannon weaponry.
"No missiles from them yet," the reserve FCO commented.
"The KessRith don't go for missiles as much," another replied. "They like lasers, and lots of 'em."
"Watch..."The FCO reached up to hold his earpiece tight against his head. "Fairfax is ordering a full spread into that carrier! Now we'll see how good their lasers are!"
Morganen found himself reevaluating Fraser as an officer. The Gael Warrior's officers and crew were facing a totally new situation, a sharp and able enemy that they had never met in combat before. Fraser's academy training had evidently prepared him for this battle, and somehow Fraser had been able to pass that skill on to the battleship's crew. It showed in their confidence, in their understanding of what was going on, in their cool, professional attitudes. There was excitement, certainly, but none of the fear or confusion Morganen would have expected in the crew's first engagement against the KessRith.
William Keith Renegades Honor Page 10
