by Steve White
Fuming tracks of flame led from the highest reaches of the atmosphere all the way to the ground, widening as they went. Blue white explosions, bright as white dwarf stars, dotted the intervening space to the ground, shock waves shredding clouds, lower ones generating tidal waves from the downward atmospheric compression of the airbursts. But the ground, the green expanses of New Valkha, the capitol and adopted homeworld of all Orions, seemed to be in motion, rippling like the surface of some stiff, chunky, resistant liquid under the impact of the bright attacking shafts that had somehow burned all the way through the atmosphere to reach it.
Many exploded on the surface—and Showaath’s practiced eye told her that she had never seen detonations so large, many easily measuring in the gigaton range. But many more apparently bore into the planet itself before unleashing their titanic forces, throwing up gouts of earth in which each discernible chunk had dimensions best measured in dozens of kilometers. Coronae of bright white energy came up through the great rents in the planet’s surface, shading into yellow and orange as mundane matter was vaporized or sent soaring upward—
A shard of bedrock the size of a small mountain shot past the shuttle, higher up into the atmosphere. Showaath was the first to recover her voice. “There’s no time to evade. Luck is our only hope. Straight up, pilot; we have to—”
The hinge of an EVA manipulator arm, once affixed to an Arduan colony ship over ten kilometers long, struck the shuttle amidships at a velocity of 0.66 cee. To an outside observer, the craft would have appeared to, perversely, both fly apart and fold in upon itself. The wings and further components of the airframe spun spastically away from the explosive force of the impact, whereas the center of the fuselage disintegrated. However, some of the debris was actually sucked downward by the powerful vacuum the hinge left in its blinding wake—and was then vaporized a microsecond later as the ferocious energy of its passage caused that down-reaching column of air to spontaneously combust.
*
Destoshaz’at Zum’ref looked upon his work and saw that it was good.
“This wasn’t their original homeworld, was it, Admiral?” asked Inzrep’fel deferentially, gesturing at the viewscreen.
“No,” Zum’ref answered his Intendant. From the vast volume of information supplied by Amunsit, he had gleaned some knowledge of the histories of the aliens they must extirpate, including the furry ones the humans called the Orions. “No, they originated on a planet called Valkha, Khanae III. Then, about five hundred years ago, they moved the capital of their interstellar empire here, to Valkha’zeeranda or ‘New Valkha.’”
(Mild curiosity.) “Why did they do that? Was the homeworld threatened with destruction by a supernova, as ours was?”
“No—they did it themselves. It seems that about eighty years before that, they had wrecked Old Valkha in a series of internecine wars. Whatever wasn’t obliterated by nuclear weapons was contaminated by chemical and biological agents. The survivors naturally wanted to find worlds that weren’t ruined, so they made space flight an urgent priority. Luckily for them, they soon discovered warp points.”
(Revulsion.) “Animals! We would never have…But then, what did it matter if they jeopardized the existence of their species, given the fundamental meaninglessness of their lives?”
Zum’ref said nothing. He continued to gaze into the viewscreen, at the day side of a planet that no longer had the distinctive look of a life-bearing world. They may have thought Old Valka was devastated, he thought. They had no idea.
He had commanded that special attention be given to the targeting of this system, and there had been no trouble finding volunteers to guide the mammoth generation ships to the point where the hit ratio was optimum before setting off the explosives that would discarnate them and reduce the ships to clouds of debris. He had also ordained a higher than usual quantity of relativistic rubble for this system, maximizing the chance of planetary strikes by large fragments. He had not been disappointed. Multiple such impacts had blown much of the atmosphere out into space, and choked what was left with dust. And even through those dense dust-clouds, great rents could be glimpsed, like obscene fissures in the world, still glowing with the magma that had welled up when the planetary crust had been smashed open, glowing a shade somewhere between orange and murn.
Now the auxiliary craft, such as the superdreadnought-sized one he rode, had arrived and were sweeping through the system, hunting down and annihilating the demoralized surviving Orion mobile forces. Not all of them, of course. Some had escaped through the system’s warp points.
But that was all right. In fact, it was highly desirable that the news of what had happened here should spread. Essential, in fact…
On some subliminal level of the selnarm that they used less and less in ordinary intercourse, he detected a certain uneasiness in Inzep’fel. “What is it?” he demanded.
“Ah…Destoshaz’at, forgive me, but I cannot help wondering if this level of destruction is altogether wise. After all, life-bearing planets are not particularly common, and our race can make good use of them—unlike…” The Intendant gestured at the viewscreen.
“Yes,” ventured one of the staff officers near them on the balcony that overlooked the control center. “And we could reap even more economic benefit from such worlds with the aid of a slave labor force of the indigenous—” He halted abruptly as Zum’ref rounded on him and sent (AUTHORITY).
In his study of the in-depth intelligence information Amunsit had provided on the humans, Zum’ref had read that those patchy-furred mistakes of Illudor had always been at a loss to explain the quality they called charisma. None of them seemed to doubt its existence—there were too many historical examples for that—but they had never really succeeded in defining or explaining it. And it had proven equally elusive for Arduans, for no direct linkage to any manifestation of selnarm had ever been proven…and its existence among humans seemed to clinch the case for the nonexistence of such a linkage. But whenever an Arduan did possess it, selnarm amplified it.
And he, Zum’ref, had it. He had always known he had it, and it had enabled him to emerge as the unquestioned leader of a dozen Dispersates. And now he exercised it to the full.
“Do not speak to me of ‘economic benefit’! We cannot let such crass considerations deflect us from our great mission. Remember what we are! We are the purified form of our race, cleansed of all the false civilization of the shaxzhu that had weakened and corrupted it. We are the true Children of Illudor. And we are not merely Arduans, or even merely Destoshaz.” He drew a breath, and let the thunder of his voice ride outward on a wave of selnarm. “We are the KAITUNI!”
It had the effect it always did, igniting the fires of fanaticism in his listeners’ central eyes, and even in the smaller and normally less expressive flanking ones.
The coining of that term had been his masterstroke, marking the culmination of his rise to absolute power. It could not have been precisely translated into any human language, but to their race it conveyed “promised/sworn to the quest.” Any race, he had declared, could simply name itself after its homeworld, as the inhabitants of Ardu had done. But they themselves had risen above that. Their identity was no longer linked to a single ball of dirt—least of all a ball of dirt they had left behind them, and which probably no longer existed, having been consumed by the fires of the Sekahmant supernova. No, they had transcended that. Now they belonged to all of Illudor’s creation. And they were destined to rid that creation of defective life-forms that failed to measure up to the ideal toward which Illudor’s plan strove—and of the weak-willed First Dispersate, who had allowed themselves to be seduced into acceptance of, and even alliance with, aliens that were as misshapen spiritually as they were physically. And Zum’ref had fashioned a new name to consecrate themselves in—and become one with—their new quest; they had put aside the label of Arduans and became the Kaituni.
“But Admiral,” the staffer asked timidly after a moment, “I still do not understand why we ta
rgeted the Orions with the heaviest kinetic strikes. Why not the humans? Surely they are the greatest danger. After all, it was they who dealt the First Diaspora its worst defeats. And their industrial capacity is unrivaled, even after the devastation our strikes have dealt them.”
“You forget,” Zum’ref reminded him, “that in the long run the Orions may well be the greater threat because they favor smaller craft.”
(Understanding.) “Ah, yes, of course, Admiral. Forgive my stupidity.”
(Indulgence.) “No, it is easy to forget that, unknown to our enemies, the day of the smaller warship is about to return. After all, the weapon that shall impel its return is such a recent, and radical, development.”
Some would have said that it was only natural that they of the Dispersates would have been the first to discover that weapon, for it had been ongoing research into the “pinhole” basis of their generation ships’ photon drives, that had led them into the more esoteric regions of quantum physics—including the “teleportation” effect that was inherent to quantum entanglement. He, Zum’ref, knew better. It had been the will of Illudor.
“In the meantime, however,” he continued, “we must not lose sight of our strategy of luring our enemies’ heaviest units to us.”
“But Admiral,” Inzrep’fel demurred, “remember the humans’ industrial power. Even after being defeated, they will rebuild more quickly than the Orions.”
“We will not give them the time. With the Orions eliminated as useful allies for now, the human response is going to be predictable: defend the Heart Worlds, and especially Earth. And this impulse will not be limited to the human elements of the PSU. Amunsit has made it clear: the Rim Federation has a strong emotional attachment to the homeworld—‘More Terran than the Terrans’ is a phrase she of theirs she quoted. And even the breakaway Terran Republic won’t be able to stand by and watch the birthworld of their race go into the flames. Thus we will draw their most powerful ships—the devastators and superdevastators—to us.” (Serene self-satisfaction.) “And when we do, those ships will be no more.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“It is strange to think that lacking aptitude for a foreign tongue would save, rather than forfeit, one’s life,” Least Fang Kiiraathra’ostakjo observed, his lips carefully concealing his formidable teeth as he smiled. “Yet, that is just what saved you.”
“And I’ll bet you’ve been just dying to be in the same room to share that quip with me and others,” Captain Ossian Wethermere replied through a small grin of his own.
Ankaht stared at the two of them, marveling at the jocularity with which the two alien commanders touched on the topic of how close that moment had brought them all to death—but particularly for the non-Arduans in their ramshackle flotilla. Because for the humans and Orions, death was zhet—complete annihilation, no hope of reincarnation. And yet both those alien races had evolved strangely analogous rituals of joking about death’s proximity. Perhaps it was the only way they could endure the stress of such a horrific fate. Ankaht had wondered that before, but had not been in so terribly opportune a vantage point to observe how it operated day in and day out when all their lives were in constant jeopardy.
The flight from Mvaarmv’t had been harrowing. None of Kiiraathra’ostakjo’s Honor Guard flotilla had any Arduans aboard—indeed, they had even been relieved of their human crew components—so communication had been restricted to line of sight compressed lascom messages. All other active arrays were left dark to minimize the possibility of Amunsit’s forces detecting them at range. Which was indeed a crucial precaution, since two of the Least Fang’s ships had never been retrofitted with Desai drives. Consequently, the flotilla was traveling at half the speed of their potential pursuers, leading the Orion Least Fang and the human captain to agree that they would be unlikely to make it to the Ahaggar warp point if they were discovered.
And so they traveled with minimum communication, using stealth and maintaining maximum distance from the immense Arduan fleet that simply swept the 92nd Reserve out of the way in less than half a day. Ankaht had monitored the attackers’ distant selnarm carefully, noting that there was a discernible measure of circumspection in their sends. She suspected that reports had reached Amunsit that the humans had integrated Arduans into their fleet communication structures and so, she had taken appropriate precautions.
The Orion ships of Kiiraathra’ostakjo’s Honor Guard were, as it turned out, storied craft from one conflict or another. Of all of them, only the heavy cruiser Hsar’sheao and the Celmithyr’theaanouw itself could be called modern ships in any meaningful sense of that term. The majority were pushing half a century of service; no small number had been in vacuum for twice that duration. There was one battleship, one battlecruiser, three light cruisers, two destroyers, and one frigate, mostly running with skeleton crews. There was also a destroyer-sized “raiding carrier” that had apparently been laid down in response to the need for a class of ship capable of carrying out commerce raiding while also being small, fast, and easily hidden. And there were a good number of auxiliaries and civvies who had stuck with them during the long, slow journey to the Ahaggar warp point.
Ankaht had noticed that, among the civilians on board Woolly Imposter and Fet’merah, this impressive-sounding roster of military ships boosted confidence and a sense of hope that they might all survive to escape to some port of safety. However, given her involvement with military matters in the war with the humans, and her access to the military assessments that were swapped by brief lascom bursts between the Least Fang and the captain, she was painfully aware that, confronted by two of Amunsit’s super-heavy dreadnoughts, the entire flotilla would have been reduced to plasma and junk within fifteen minutes time—less, if the old ships were actually foolish enough to try to stand and fight.
Now in the Sreaor system, near the border of Rim Federation space, they had managed to find what amounted to a largely ignored trace of less-traveled systems that allowed them to veer out of the evident path of Amunsit’s fleet while still remaining roughly parallel to it. In Sreaor, a backwater system where human and Orion populations were both present and increasingly mixed, they found enough time and space to refit, give the overtaxed crews adequate rest, and to compile a roster of the various ships they’d picked up along the way.
That ragged array of vessels was the still-functional remains of both the commercial and official local traffic that had been shattered and scattered by the onrushing leviathan that was the Zarzuelan fleet. One or two were modern warships. A PSU light cruiser of recent mark and mixed crew had been scooped up after fleeing from a head-on encounter with Amunsit’s forces: it had been journeying to replace a now-vaporized ship in the 9th Fleet. The others were smaller hulls, mostly frigates and a few destroyers that had been decommissioned from fleet rosters and transferred to local defense forces. Custom cutters were among the most common of the other official craft, although navigational survey ships, buoy tenders, missile tenders, repair and recovery ships, and minesweeper/-layer dual function hulls were also present in the group. The civilian craft were, in terms of both size and role, as polyglot a mix as could be imagined.
But as Kiiraathra’ostakjo and Wethermere labored, in their first face-to-face meeting, to both compile a comprehensive roster and assign duties and formation slots for all their new charges, the Orion seemed somewhat evasive about reconsidering the placement for the unusually large cargo ship with which his Honor Guard flotilla had been traveling. Or rather, Ankaht and Wethermere had speculated, which he had been escorting.
When Kiiraathra’ostakjo additionally waved off a routine inquiry into the manifest of that large ship, Wethermere dropped his datapad on the table, leaned back, laced his fingers behind his head and asked, “Okay, Kiiraathra, so what are you hiding in the freighter?”
The Orion feigned uncertainty. “We have several freighters…”
“You know which one I mean. The one that you keep trying to avoid talking about. The one that is a massiv
e unipiece cargo hull, not a modular bulk hauler. Not a lot of call for vessels that have such a huge, contiguous volume of space available.” He smiled faintly. “So tell me, Kiiraathra’ostakjo: what’s in the box?” His smile became a wide grin, his lips stretched taut over his teeth so as not to give offense. “Or are you under orders not to let that cat out of the bag—to coin a phrase.”
“Ha and ha. Very amusing, my mostly furless friend. But I am not at liberty to answer your question.”
“No? Not even if I guess what’s in the box? Using just one guess?”
“This is not a game, Captain.”
Wethermere shook his head. “No, you’re right, Least Fang, which is why the special orders you were given when you started escorting that ship cannot be allowed to remain as impediments to our planning now. That, too, would just be playing a game: following orders that have ceased to have any relevance to our current situation. And worse, doing so might put a dangerous strategic asset right in our enemies’ hands—er, tendrils—if we’re not careful.”
Kiiraathra’ostakjo had reared back. “You know what it is. Already. How?”
Ankaht started at Wethermere. “Yes: how?”
Wethermere waved away her surprise and possibly incipient indignation. “No, I didn’t have any back channel access to classified information. But all the pieces fit,” he concluded, glancing at the Orion. “That’s why you were able to agree so quickly to our request that you accompany us during the closing phase of our investigation in the old Bug systems. Who would guess that you were helping one covert operation to conduct another: making sure there weren’t any undetected pirate collectives that could have ruined your journey to Bellerophon. Because it was imperative that the freighter’s cargo remain absolutely safe—since it’s one of the most expensive and important payloads in all of known space.”