The Stars at War

by David Weber

  * * *

  Fifty-Sixth Fang of the Khan Anaasa'zolaath raged about his flag deck like a wounded zeget, and officers flinched aside as he swept down upon them, claws flicking in and out, in and out of their sheaths in a combat instinct he could not overcome. Sixty thousand years of instinct screamed to rush to his human commander's aid, but her own orders held him here, waiting. He understood her reasoning, and even in his fury a part of him felt enormous respect for her cool calculation, but every dragging minute tore at him like white-hot pincers.

  "Sir, the pods—"

  He wheeled with such a furious snarl Claw Renassaa recoiled. The fang's ears flattened with shame at his ops officer's response, and he fought himself back under control.

  "Yes, Renassaa?" He made the words come out calmly, and the claw straightened.

  "The pods have been programmed, Sir," he said, and Anaasa gave an approving ear flick.

  "Good, Renassaa. Good." He rested a clawed hand lightly on the other's shoulder for a moment, then forced himself to walk slowly to his command chair. He settled himself in it and leaned back, for there was nothing else he could do.

  * * *

  The three worst damaged of Teller's surviving CVs were also closest to the warp point. They managed to turn and run, trailing atmosphere like blood. More missiles screamed in on them, but they vanished back to Sarasota before the warheads struck. TFNS Lexington was less fortunate, and the helplessly crippled light carrier vanished in another eye-tearing boil of fury.

  The rest of TF 52's survivors were too far from the warp point; they could only run towards TF 51 at the best speed they could still manage. Sorcerer had died, but at least the rest of their command ships had escaped, and the nets were still up. As long as any member of any net could track the incoming fire, they could defend against it, and Admiral Ellen Rendova's Orca led them as they ran desperately for the doubtful cover of the trapped battle-line.

  Damage reports flooded Orca's command deck, and Rendova winced at the litany of disaster. Two-thirds of her fighters had been destroyed in their bays or were trapped aboard ships too damaged to launch them, and the Bugs had SBMs. Fifth Fleet's range advantage had been stripped away, and without her fighters to redress it—

  "Got 'em, Sir!" She whirled to her ops officer. Commander Houston stared into a display tied to the recon fighters sweeping back along the incoming missiles' tracks for the enemy turn. She saw his shoulders tighten, and then he looked up at her. "Seventy of them, Sir," he said. "Twenty-four battle-cruisers and forty-six superdreadnoughts. Looks like only twelve are Archers; most of that first wave must have come from the others' XO racks."

  "Position?" Rendova snapped.

  "They'll reach the warp point in six minutes," Houston said flatly.

  * * *

  The force TF 51 had been pursuing had turned. It was sweeping back, and already its first SBMs crossed with Murakuma's. At least we've still got better point defense, she thought bitterly, but that was her only remaining advantage, and it wasn't going to be enough against so many launchers. She could still take the first group of Bugs, but they'd beat Waldeck's battle-line to scrap in the process, and then that second force would sweep up the pieces.

  But only if I let them! she told herself fiercely, and looked up at Waldeck's com screen.

  "Ready, Demosthenes?"

  "Yes, Sir." The burly Corporate Worlder managed a grim smile. "I sure hope this works."

  "It'll work—I just don't know how well." Murakuma made herself draw a deep breath, buttressing herself against guilt and despair while her flashing brain rechecked her desperate plan for flaws. She found none—but, then, the situation was too grim for complicated maneuvers.

  "Very well, Demosthenes. It's up to you. Bring us about."

  * * *

  The enemy's battle-line reversed course, rushing back to succor its wounded companions, and that was the stupidest thing he had done yet. He was faster than the Fleet. He should have run for it, drawn out of range, tried to maneuver his way around the defenders, instead.

  His new course was headed directly for the warp point, as if he thought he could blast his way through the waiting superdreadnoughts and battle-cruisers, but he was wrong. Com lasers whispered across the gulf between the Fleet's separated battle-lines, and the second component slowed. It would move just past the warp point, maneuvering to stay between the enemy and his only way home, and wait until its fellows drove him into its tentacles.

  * * *

  Anson Olivera gathered his battered strikegroups astern of the carriers. He didn't know exactly what Admiral Murakuma planned, and the thought of leading his pilots into that much firepower turned his belly to lead, but he knew she had no choice, and his earlier thoughts about expendability jeered at him. If the destruction of every surviving fighter got even a single division of superdreadnoughts out of the trap, the exchange would be completely worthwhile . . . which wasn't much comfort for the human and Ophiuchi pilots about to sacrifice themselves.

  The pursuing Bugs swept past the warp point and slowed. They came to a halt, backs to the warp point, targeting systems tracking his fighters, and he swallowed. He sat tense and still, waiting for the order, and a corner of his brain noted the courier drones flashing past him.

  * * *

  "Fang Anaasa!" Anaasa looked up at his com officer's shout. "The drones!" the officer said sharply, and Anaasa bared his fangs.

  * * *

  "Go!" Olivera's command crackled over the net, and two hundred fighters streaked straight down the Bugs' throat. Every one of those pilots knew—didn't think; knew—he or she was going to die. But they were doomed anyway, and they rammed their power through the emergency gate, for if they had to die, at least they could kill a few more enemies first.

  Olivera's vision grayed as Malachi took them in at a velocity so far beyond design limits he couldn't believe the bird was holding together, and he bared his teeth—then jerked in surprise, despite the crushing power of the drive, at Carl Hathaway's shriek of delight.

  "Beautiful! Oh, beautiful!" the tac officer screamed. "Look at 'em, Skip! Look at those fucking Tabbies go!"

  * * *

  One moment, the second Arachnid force had the situation completely under control; the next, an insane explosion of violence ripped into it as TF 53—the Orion task force the Bugs had never seen, never suspected had been held back—flashed through the warp point into its rear. No one in the galaxy was better at fighter ops than the KON, and Fang Anaasa's deck crews set a new all-Navy record for launch speeds. Two hundred and ten fresh fighters charged straight up the Bugs' blind spots as their missiles had charged up TF 52's, and they weren't alone, for the SBMHAWKs Murakuma hadn't used in her initial bombardment came with them. There'd been no need to use them to kill a mere fifty cruisers; now seventy fresh pods belched missiles into the astonished Bugs, and the fighters screamed in behind them, ripple-salvoing their FRAMs.

  It was the most devastating fighter strike in history. Twenty Bug superdreadnoughts were blown apart in sixty shrieking seconds, and eighteen battle-cruisers went with them. Almost every surviving ship was damaged, many badly, and the Tabby pilots closed in, accepting brutal losses from the survivors' point defense to strafe with their onboard lasers. Less than forty seconds later, Anson Olivera's fighters came howling in from dead ahead, taking their own losses but slamming a fresh wave of FRAMs down the Bugs' throats.

  The twin strike couldn't kill them all, but it hurt them, and the ships which had lured Murakuma into pursuing them had fallen too far astern of TF 51 to help them. Demosthenes Waldeck's battle-line flashed past TF 52's wounded carriers, and Rendova's ships reefed around in the hairpin turns of inertia-canceling drives to follow in their wake. But it was up to the heavies to clear the way, and Waldeck and Vanessa Murakuma took them straight into the Bugs' teeth as though superdreadnoughts were so many more fighters.

  It was insane, a violation of every manual ever written . . . and the only path to salvation. Every one of An
aasa's carriers and battle-cruisers was within the Bugs' weapons envelope; if TF 51 didn't close, they would be annihilated, despite the shocking damage they'd inflicted, and Murakuma had to break through before the Bugs pursuing her could overhaul. The enemy knew it, too, and detached his faster cruisers in a desperate bid to assist their fellows on the warp point. But the cruisers had to get past TF 52, and Rendova launched her surviving escorts into them in a savage, short-ranged hammering match that kept them off Waldeck's back . . . at a price.

  Yet furious as that fight was, it was a sideshow, and Murakuma sealed her helmet as TF 51 slammed into the Bugs. Launchers went to sprint-mode, spitting standard missiles and the heavier, far more destructive, CM-sized close assault missiles. Answering fire smashed back, and Cobra heaved as fists of flame hammered her shields flat. Force beams, primaries, plasma guns, hetlasers, and Ophiuchi particle beams snarled at ranges as low as eight hundred kilometers, and armor ripped like tissue. Damage alarms screamed, two of her superdreadnoughts blew apart, a Bug battle-cruiser rammed a Terran battleship head-on, two more battleships vanished in massive fireballs, and then something smashed into Cobra like the hammer of Thor. She felt her flagship heave, heard the scream of escaping air, saw Ling Tian torn in half by a flying axe that was once a bulkhead. And then something exploded into the side of her own command chair, and her universe vanished in an instant of agony too terrible to endure.

  * * *

  The last Bug superdreadnought blew up under the fire of three Terran superdreadnoughts and sixty fighters, and TF 51's survivors turned at bay. They faced the remaining enemy force, holding it off until the last damaged carrier made transit. Of the five hundred fighters which had actually launched, two hundred and six escaped aboard Anaasa's carriers and the only three unhurt Terran CVs, and then the rearguard retreated to Sarasota, still smashing sullenly at its foes.

  Eight superdreadnoughts, seven battleships, fourteen battle-cruisers, eleven carriers, five heavy cruisers, and eighteen light cruisers remained behind forever.

  * * *

  "M-Marcus?" Vanessa Murakuma didn't recognize her own hoarse whisper, but Marcus LeBlanc bent over her instantly. She lay under crisp sheets, staring up at a pastel overhead, and she could feel nothing from the waist down.

  "Hi," LeBlanc said softly.

  "T-Tian?" she whispered, and he flinched. Then he shook his head gently, and she turned away in agony. Her tears blotted the pillow, but LeBlanc's gentle fingers cupped her chin, making her turn back to him.

  "You got them out, Vanessa," he said quietly.

  "But how many?" Her voice was stark and wounded, her green eyes dark, bottomless wells of pain, and he blinked his own eyes as tears stung.

  "More than anyone else could have," he said. Her mouth twisted, and he bent lower over her. "Damn it, Vanessa, it's true! All right, they suckered you. Well, they suckered me, Waldeck, Teller, Anaasa—even Tian! No one could have seen that coming . . . and no one else could have gotten us out of it. Don't you dare think otherwise, or . . . or—"

  "Or what?" She expected it to come out with savage bitterness, but to her astonishment it came out soft, almost chiding.

  "Or as soon as you're out of that bed, Sir, I'll put you over my knee, peel down those trousers, and whale the living shit out of you!" he told her fiercely, and a soft ghost of a laugh gurgled in her throat. Her eyes softened, and she raised an arm which felt far heavier than even a full standard gravity could account for to touch the side of his face.

  "Oh, Marcus," she whispered. "I should have listened to you, love."

  "Why? You thought I was arguing just because I was worried about you . . . and I was," he admitted. He sank into a chair and caught her hand as it started to fall, cradling it against his cheek. "I guess maybe that's why Regs frown on people who love each other in the same chain of command, isn't it?" he said gently.

  "Maybe. But you were still right."

  "It's my job to be right, and sometimes I manage it. But it's your job to win battles, not take counsel of your fears. Or mine." He smiled and stroked red hair back from her forehead.

  "How bad is it?" she asked after a moment, gesturing at her lower body with her free hand, and he smiled again.

  "It looks terrible," he said frankly, "but the doctors are delighted with themselves, and they say you should be up and around again within six or seven weeks. You'll have to take it easy for quite a while, but you're going to be fine, Vanessa. Really."

  "Well, at least I'll have time to 'take it easy,' " she said with a trace of bitterness, and he raised an eyebrow. "Come on, Marcus! You know they're going to relieve me after this fuck-up!"

  "You have a strange way of describing a battle in which you kicked the bad guys' ass, Admiral Murakuma," LeBlanc said, and she snorted her opinion of his judgment. "No, I mean it. The Bugs lost a hundred and thirty-nine ships. That's a better than two-to-one ratio in hulls, and the tonnage balance was even more decisive. Sky Marshal Avram is very pleased with you—and she's going to be even more pleased when she hears what happened yesterday."

  "Yesterday?" Murakuma repeated blankly, and he nodded.

  "The Bugs tried to bounce Sarasota. I guess they figured they'd hurt us badly enough to make it easy, and they brought up reinforcements. But Demosthenes and Leroy—and, Lord, how I wish you'd seen that pair working together!—got reorganized with Anaasa and put Leonidas Two into operation exactly as you'd planned it. They lost every cruiser and the first twenty-five SDs that tried to follow." His eyes blazed, and he stroked more hair from her forehead. "They broke off, Vanessa! You finally stopped the bastards so cold they knew they were licked!"

  "You mean Demosthenes did," she whispered, but her own eyes glowed, and LeBlanc shook his head.

  "Woman, you aren't allowed any more doubts. After all—" he grinned wickedly "—that's why I'm here, right?"

  She laughed again, softly, and then he bent still closer and kissed her.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  "Welcome along, Sir."

  The powered walker whined softly as Vanessa Murakuma "walked" from the intraship car into the boat bay. The muscle feedback-controlled walker was less responsive than the direct neural-feed prosthetics used to replace lost limbs, which made her progress more than a little clumsy, but she wasn't complaining. She didn't want permanent replacement parts, however efficient, and the surgeons promised her legs would be good as new in time. They were talking about six months, though she intended to make it in four, and this wasn't even the first time she'd had to use a walker, for her home world prepared its people poorly for the planets most humans lived on. She'd spent three years exercising her Truman-bred muscles before reporting to the Academy, but New Annapolis' 1.25 gravities had still been a hideous ordeal. The medical staff had insisted she stick with the walker for her first semester, and the aching cramps protesting a body weight sixty percent greater than the one she'd been bred to had made her perfectly willing to obey.

  Now she maneuvered herself into position in TFNS Euphrates' boat bay and tried to suppress a pang of grief for her last flagship as another cutter docked. Cobra had been luckier than many of Fifth Fleet's ships, but she'd still taken a fearsome pounding. She'd only returned to service last week, and two-thirds of her tactical department were squeaky-new replacements for men and women who'd died in Justin. Murakuma no longer had a logical reason to oppose shifting her lights to one of the better-protected Mekong-class SDs—and, she admitted, she no longer wanted to. Seeing all those new faces in place of the ones she'd come to know so well . . .

  She shook off the thought as a hatch opened and the side party's two separate honor guards—one of Terran Marines, gorgeous in black-and-green dress uniform, and a second of even more gorgeously bejeweled Orion Marines—snapped to attention.

  The first person through the hatch was a human. He was of little more than average height for his race, but despite the snow-white hair and beard, he radiated a sense of purposeful mass which made him seem much bigger. His Orion com
panion's night-black pelt was liberally threaded with silver, yet the Tabby carried himself with a springy predator's grace, only slightly stiffened by age. No one, however, would have described the human as "graceful." He certainly wasn't clumsy, but he moved with a burly, unstoppable momentum which dared any object to intrude into his path . . . and promised no quarter for anything foolish enough to accept the challenge.

  "Grand Fleet, arriving!" the intercom announced through the twitter of the bosun's pipes, and Euphrates' captain nodded to the side party.

  "Preeee-sent, arms!"

  The barked command was in Standard English, since Euphrates was a human ship, but both Marine contingents snapped to their version of present arms with the simultaneous precision of careful practice. A corner of Murakuma's eye noted the perfection of the maneuver, yet her attention was focused on the two visitors as they saluted the Federation banner on the boat bay's forward bulkhead, then turned to salute Captain Decker as well.

  "Permission to come aboard, Sir?"

  "Permission granted, Sir," Jessica Decker said.

  The visitors crossed the line on the deck, formally boarding the ship, and Murakuma's walker whined as she stepped forward and saluted.

  "Admiral Antonov, Fang Kthaara. Welcome to Fifth Fleet."

  "Thank you, Admiral Murakuma." Antonov's deep, bass rumble hadn't gotten any frailer since his retirement. She'd met him several times during her stint as a War College instructor, and she felt a bit odd addressing him as "Admiral," since he'd been Sky Marshal at the time.

  "It's good to see you again," Antonov went on, and waved a hand at the tall Tabby. "I don't believe you've met Lord Talphon?"

  "No, Sir." Murakuma turned to the Orion with a polite, tooth-hidden smile of greeting. Ninth Fang of the Khan Kthaara'zarthan, Lord Talphon and Khanhaku'a'zarthan, had been a pilot's pilot in a service where the fighter reigned supreme. He was also the ninth ranking active-duty officer in the Khan's service and almost as legendary—in TFN service, as well as the KON—as Antonov himself, and Murakuma's small, Orion-style bow of greeting was deeply respectful. "I've certainly heard a great deal about you, however, Sir. I'm honored to meet you at last, and my carrier pilots have asked me to extend their invitation to a small party aboard Orca. I believe they want to offer you an, ah, traditional welcome to the Fleet."