Dirge

by Foster, Alan Dean;

  Couvinpasdar was aware of all the eyes on him, compound and single-lensed alike. He could not interpret many of the multitudinous human facial expressions but would not have been wrong in supposing that they were the fleshy equivalent of the progressive gestures of skepticism being propounded by his fellow thranx. While humans and hive members chatted in the increasingly convenient and maturing language of Symbospeech, the young physicist set up the small image generator he had brought with him. When he was ready, he was forced to gesture and call for attention, so indifferent to his proposed presentation were the members of his audience.

  "I extend gratefulness to all who have taken time from their busy schedules to grant me a few moments worthy of their contemplation, especially our visiting human friends, whom I know find the controlled climate here in the inner levels of the hive less than homelike." Perspiration pouring down their bodies, the watching, slightly impatient bipeds could only agree.

  Activating the projector that was attuned to his voice patterns, Couvinpasdar walked around and occasionally through the images it generated as he spoke, pointing out specific details and occasionally using a truhand to manipulate them. Some of his audience granted him their full attention, while that of others wandered. Around them, unaware that an important demonstration of combat physics was being presented in their midst, thranx strolled and clicked and whistled in pairs or small groups. To one of the humans who also happened to be something of a historian, reflecting later on the demonstration, it was as if Robert Oppenheimer had exposed the design and schematics of the first atomic bomb on a busy day in New York's Central Park. Few of the busy, preoccupied thranx gave the unusual gathering more than a passing glance. Those who did look ignored the shifting, shimmering projection in favor of scrutinizing the loose-limbed, gangly bipeds.

  "We have found that your kind are very good at conceptualizing basic scientific breakthroughs," Couvinpasdar was saying. One of the attendant humans murmured something, and a couple of her companions responded with soft coughing noises - human laughter, the young physicist knew. He did not let it distract him. "Thranx are very good at finding improvements in existing engineering and other practical applications that humans often overlook." No laughter this time.

  "My research group has been studying the problem of how it might be possible to break the defenses that surround the Pitar. Very early in our discussions we came to the conclusion that this could not be done with existing weapons, not as long as the Pitar match ship for ship. Furthermore, any vessel mounting a radical and potentially advantageous new weapon would immediately be set upon by the Pitar in all their strength. Therefore it was decided that any new weapon must also incorporate into its scheme and make use of a corresponding shift in strategy." The projection mutated.

  Floating before the assembled audience was one of the smallest ships any of them had ever seen. It was, in fact, smaller than the lifeboats that were carried about most ships. But it was neither lifeboat nor repair vessel nor intership shuttle. There was the KK-drive field projection fan, severely shrunken and modified, and behind it - absurdly close behind it - the main body of the vessel. A single tiny weapons blister on a standard body-girdling belt ran around the median of the ship. Its diminutive size rendered it virtually inoffensive. Atop the craft was a structure that at first glance resembled a lifeboat launcher. In the context of the ship's ridiculously small size it struck several of the onlookers as a structural extravagance.

  Speaking in a mixture of Low Thranx, Terranglo, and Symbospeech, Couvinpasdar elaborated on the design. "We call this a stingship. As you can see, it is quite an unpretentious design. It is designed to carry a crew of two: one human and one thranx." He indicated the locations on the schematic. "One here, and the other here, on opposite sides of the vessel. They are intended to complement, not back up, one another. To carry out its intended mission with maximum efficiency, the stingship is designed to be flown by two pilots operating in tandem."

  "Doing what, currukk?" a thranx member of the audience inquired. "The vessel is too small to do any real damage. Even a small Pitarian or AAnn warship would easily blast it out of the sky." The questioner gestured at the center of the model. "It is not even large enough to generate its own defensive screen."

  "The stingship relies on agility for its defense," Couvinpasdar replied.

  "With a drive attenuated to that size," one of the humans pointed out, "the vessel is not capable of interstellar travel."

  "It is not intended to be," the physicist explained. "Sting-ships are meant to be carried, in sizable numbers, in the holds of larger craft. Dreadnought-class ships, or preferably, a new class of vessels specially built for the purpose."

  "How did you work out the physics of a KK-drive that size?" another of the humans wanted to know.

  "Engineering on the subatomic level is an art among my colleagues," Couvinpasdar informed her. "However, the proposed stingship propulsion system is still not the smallest drive we have contemplated. This is."

  So saying he ran his fingers through the projection. The stingship model gave way to something appreciably smaller. If it was another diminutive ship, several members of the audience felt, it would function well only as a joke.

  "By the Final Tunnel," the senior thranx scientist in the gathering clicked, "what is that supposed to be?"

  "Maybe it's a KK-drive powered coffin," one of the humans commented drily, "for commending bodies to space who want to say their final farewells to their surviving comrades in a great big hurry." This time the laughter, both human and thranx, was more general.

  Couvinpasdar gestured polite acknowledgment of the amusement, but his tone did not change. "The KK-drive unit you see here is only theoretically possible. Something of this reduced size has never been brooded before, much less built." His blue-green, hard-shelled fingers shuffled within the projection. "This is not a ship. Fitted behind the miniature drive is a sizable thermonuclear device. As you can see, the drive-driven explosive fits into the launcher on top of the stingship. Because of size considerations, and to preserve the exceptional maneuverability of the two-person vessel, only one such device is carried by each craft."

  Laughter had given way to contemplative quiet. "So the stingship, hypothetically avoiding the attention of an enemy's weapons systems, penetrates its defenses as far as possible before releasing or firing this drive-driven missile. What's to prevent the enemy from simply blowing it out of the void?"

  "This is not a normal missile," the young thranx physicist reminded his questioner. "It is powered not by conventional propulsion systems, but by a KK drive. Furthermore, it is being launched from a craft that is itself KK-drive driven. Some shells may indeed be intercepted and destroyed." Subdued light glinted off enthusiastic compound eyes. "But imagine the effect of several thousand such weapons deployed simultaneously across a wide sphere of conflict. It would be impossible for an enemy to detect, far less predict and intercept, the course of every single incoming munition.

  One of the thranx who had not yet spoken now ventured a question. "The defense screens generated by Pitarian ships are very good. At distance, they can disperse even the energy released by a fusion explosion."

  Couvinpasdar efficiently adjusted the projection. Ship models vanished, to be replaced by more intimate schematics decorated with fancies of mathematics. "That is so, but the thermonuclear device that rides behind the drive is only part of the effectiveness of the system. Once the SCCAM shell detects a target, at a safe distance from its launching stingship so as not to compromise that vessel's drive field, its own field warps into deliberate and irrevocable overdrive. This means it will be attracted to the nearest gravity well of size. In this instance, that would be the corresponding drive field of the target vessel." His eyes roved his now very solemn and attentive audience from which all suggestion of humor had fled.

  "The computations have been crunched many times, and the consequences are inescapable. No defensive screen known can resist the effect of a KK d
rive on overload. Impacting on the active field of an enemy vessel, the resultant sudden and excessive gravitational distortion would rend both asunder. At the very least its drive would be permanently disabled, rendering the ship unable to move and effectively helpless."

  One of the humans had an objection. "Then all an enemy vessel has to do to avoid such a hazardous interaction is shut down its drive whenever closing stingships or these SCCAM shells are detected. Without a substantial gravity well to attract it, at combat distances the shells are likely to speed right on past."

  Couvinpasdar gestured to indicate that this objection too had been anticipated. "Except that the shell's sensors have already locked in on the coordinates and course of the target. A ship's defensive screens are powered by its KK drive. Turn off the drive to eliminate the attracting gravity well, and you also lose your screens. With screens down, a ship is then open and vulnerable to the effects of the thermonuclear device carried by the SCCAM shell." He watched his audience for reaction. "By either means or both, the enemy is completely destroyed or is rendered incapable of further maneuvering."

  A long, thoughtful pause followed before another of the thranx spoke up. "The system is not perfect. Their proposed exceptional maneuverability notwithstanding, some of these unscreened stingships will still encounter enemy fire that they cannot evade. Ships and pilots will be hit."

  "Two crew per ship. A far more acceptable ratio than if even a single cruiser is lost."

  The human woman who had first spoken had set aside her sarcasm. "Why one human and one thranx pilot? Why not two humans or two thranx?"

  "Because research has shown that our minds and bodies work in different ways. Because under the duress of combat, studies prove that humans do certain things well and thranx other things better. Because we complement one another."

  The assembled scientists fell to arguing. Some debated with quiet intensity while others clustered around Couvinpasdar, bombarding him with questions that arrived as fast as if they were propelled by downsized KK drives of their own. The discussion consumed the remainder of the day and ran on into and through the night, the majority of the group forgetting or disdaining to eat. By morning everyone was exhausted. But out of acrimony and skepticism and doubt had come hope.

  Following the designs and delimitations of Couvinpasdar's research group, a single stingship was fabricated. Out at the testing station beyond a moon of Hivehom's largest gas giant, it was activated. It did not succumb to the peculiar distortions of space-plus, nor did it tear itself to pieces and kill its two pilots. Others were built, the inaugural design tightened and refined in the process.

  The first symbiotically cached concussive armed missile was built. True to the predictions of Couvinpasdar and his associates, when its absurdly tiny drive system was sent into deliberate overload, the shell promptly threw itself at a drone target vessel programmed to avoid and escape. The drone did not. When their drive fields intersected, both ship and shell vanished in an entirely satisfactory and supernally bright dissolution of energy-encumbered particles. It was a very gratifying demonstration.

  Couvinpasdar and his colleagues accepted the honors and commendations bestowed upon them by both thranx and human authorities with quiet grace - and in traditional thranx fashion, promptly returned to their work. Though they had earned and were entitled to a rest, they replied with an old thranx metaphor to the effect that "no burrow was ever finished."

  Eight years after humankind had taken pleasure in its first contact with the imposing Pitar and three years following the destruction of the colony of Treetrunk, the commingled human-thranx armada once more threw its combined strength against the defenses surrounding the Twin Worlds of the Pitarian Dominion. But this time the probe by hundreds of capital warships was augmented by a prodigious swarm of tiny stingships each armed with a single self-propelled SCCAM shell.

  Caught in the annihilation sphere of hundreds of explosive devices, or swept by devastating beams of coherent energy, dozens of stingships and their pilots evanesced out of existence, many before they even had a chance to launch their weapons. Dozens more accomplished their runs and were destroyed before they could escape.

  But Pitarian warships found themselves riven and ruptured from the aftereffects of their own overloaded drives, while others switched off their fields and screens only to be annihilated by precision-targeted thermonuclear devices. On the opposite side of the sun from the Twin Worlds, the hitherto impenetrable defensive sphere protecting the Dominion began to implode under the unexpected new kind of assault. In the end it collapsed like a balloon. Once a single hole had been punctured in the curvature, the rest of the orb simply caved in.

  MacCunn was not there to exhort his troops. The field marshal had died six months before, a victim of his failed digestive system, when the outcome of the conflict was as much in doubt as it had been when the first assault had been launched against the Twin Worlds. His friend and colleague Admiral Hyargas Yirghiz was present at the final Pitarian collapse, however. Standing before the main battle tridee on the bridge of the damaged but still very battle-worthy Tamerlane, he watched in silent satisfaction as the surviving stingships returned to their mothercraft and the main body of the armada advanced to within orbital bombardment range of both worlds.

  After three years of struggle there was no wish among the attackers to annihilate the population. Different degrees of punishment to be applied as circumstances dictated had been worked out by the world council of humankind and the Grand Council of the thranx. All depended on how the Pitar reacted to their defeat.

  They reacted as if they had not been defeated. From the surfaces of both planets, ground-based missiles fired from hardened launchers streaked upward toward the assembled invaders. A few did damage, but most were easily knocked down or brushed aside. One by one, their flight paths were tracked, traced, and the launching facilities destroyed. Small red flowers erupted on the surface of both the Twin Worlds, blossoms of nuclear death.

  And still the Pitar fought on.

  It was finally deemed necessary to land troops, an eventuality the senior officers had hoped to avoid. Unrelenting

  Pitarian hostility left them with no choice. The thranx participated in this exercise only as observers. Their alliance with humankind did not extend to providing support for ground action. Thranx enough had died crewing ships of the armada, as well as aboard the tiny, seemingly insignificant but ultimately lethal stingships that had at last altered the course of battle.

  To dispassionate observers the concluding consequences were inconceivable. The Pitar would not surrender. Every community was armed. Those who capitulated did so only as a convenience of deception, turning on and slaughtering their captors the instant the humans' guard was down. Even Pitarian progeny knew how to pick up and fire a small weapon or rush a pod of human soldiers with explosives strapped to their bodies.

  Scientists wished to preserve at least a remnant of Pitarian civilization in hopes of being able to study and perhaps understand their rabid xenophobia. It proved impossible. Whenever cornered and weaponless, the Pitar always managed to find a way to kill themselves, if not their enemies. Remembering the atrocity of Treetrunk, individual human soldiers were not inclined to go out of their way to ensure the survival of any Pitar.

  Still, through the use of stun guns, soporific gas, and other nonlethal weapons, a small number were captured alive. They refused to be studied. Noncooperative and virulent to the last, they turned on their captors when possible, committed suicide when they could not, or retreated into a kind of voluntary madness until their minds and bodies finally expired of natural causes.

  In the end, three habitable but unpopulated worlds remained as a consequence of the conflict - one human, two Pitarian. They are not often visited.

  The research teams that followed the departure of the armada gleaned what clues they could from the ruins of Pitarian civilization. What they found was not so much that the Pitar had been incontrovertible xenophobes as th
ey had been irredeemable narcissists. Unable to countenance the ongoing existence of any intelligent life-form but their own, they had deliberately set out to steal as much knowledge as they could from humankind before turning on Earth and its colonies. Hivehom and the thranx would have been next, or possibly the inoffensive and blandly expansionist Quillp. But the Pitar had a problem.

  Every other sentient species was capable of outbreeding them. Unlike humans or thranx, Pitarian females ovulated only once a year. It helped to explain why no children were present on any of the ships that visited Earth or its colony worlds, why none participated in any of the infrequent cultural exchange programs. The occasional Pitarian progeny was precious.

  The stolen reproductive organs of the several thousand human females on Treetrunk who had been surgically eviscerated were found - floating in carefully maintained tank batteries, rank upon rank of disembodied uteruses, ovaries, and fallopian tubes. The eggs of human females were removed, their DNA modified; they were then inseminated with Pitarian sperm and were replaced - returned to their natural cavities to follow the "normal" progression of plenteous human pregnancy. Once sufficiently matured, each embryo was then removed and implanted in a suitable Pitarian female for the sole purpose of giving birth.

  Surrogate mothership of Pitarian offspring by living human females, even if it had been proposed to and accepted by qualified women, was a thought no Pitar could countenance. So they attempted to thieve the organs and eggs they needed in hopes of enlarging the population of the Twin Worlds to the point where they could successfully challenge the more prolific species that infested an otherwise unpolluted galaxy. The complete destruction of Treetrunk had been carried out to mask their real intentions.