by David Weber
The Fifteenth Fang turned away from the screen on which the carnage was tallied. He activated an intercom speaker near the intelligence station and spoke to his chief of staff, still at the auxiliary control station he'd occupied since general quarters had been sounded.
"Rearm the fighters," he ordered without preamble. "The standard mix of FRAMs and ECM packages for planetary assault."
" 'Planetary assault,' Fang?" Uaaria ventured after he'd received acknowledgment and turned back to the intelligence displays. She indicated the tactical one, in which the icons of the orbital fortresses still glowed inviolate. "What about those?"
"They can wait, Small Claw. The fighters will bypass them, covered by ECM, and blanket the planet's surface with antimatter warheads."
To Sanders, Zhaarnak's tone, mild though it was, suggested that he didn't particularly desire further discussion. Uaaria, however, was an Orion, and Federation naval officers had been astonished many times since their first experiences with the Tabbies, by the-to humans-extreme freedom junior officers enjoyed in speaking their minds to their superiors. Some Terran observers were astonished that the prickly, honor-conscious, duel-fighting Orions could possibly tolerate such a situation.
Sanders, who'd seen more of Tabby interaction on this voyage than most humans saw in a lifetime, thought he'd figured out how it worked. In the end, it all went back to the honor concepts which were so central to all Orion life and to that unique bond whose manifold facets the Tabbies subsumed under the word farshatok. The chain of command and the deference patterns of a society which was hierarchical-indeed, feudal, in human turns-were as inflexible as iron, yet they enshrined a complex, interlocking weave of responsibilities, rights, and obligations between commander and commanded. To the Orion mind, an officer's subordinates could no more be denied the right to offer their own viewpoints for his consideration than a hand could survive without its fingers.
And so Uaaria faced the second in command of Seventh Fleet and said, "Fang, I understand your intention. But I can offer no assurance that the Bahg population here is large enough for its destruction to produce the effect you desire."
"You have not been asked to, Small Claw. We will determine the answer experimentally. We need to know whether that which the Humans have dubbed the 'Shiiivaaa Option' is, in fact, an option at all in systems less heavily populated than the home hives. That is one reason I am proceeding as I am-the other being that I would rather deal with those fortresses after their crews have been reduced to a state of psychic shock, if it is possible to do so."
This time, Zhaarnak's tone made it clear that the subject was closed. And just as the farshotak relationship gave Uaaria both the right and the responsibility to caution her commander even when he didn't wish to be cautioned, so that same relationship required her to submit and hold her tongue once the caution had been issued and Zhaarnak had made his decision anyway.
The intelligence officer flicked her ears in a graceful gesture which combined continuing reservations on her part with an acknowledgment of Zhaarnak's right of command and her acceptance of what he'd ordered.
Lord Telmasa gave her an approving glance, as much for having said her say as for having accepted his decision, and returned his attention to the display as the experiment in slaughter began.
The answer wasn't long in coming. The fighters took a certain percentage of losses from the fortresses' fire, despite their ECM cover. But then the FRAMs plunged downward through the planet's atmosphere, and the wavefront of fireballs began to advance across the continents like a forest conflagration, leaving nothing but charred lifelessness . . . and the fortresses' fire slackened, and grew sporadic and wild.
Murmured comments buzzed around the flag bridge. Zhaarnak made no response, letting his body language say he'd known it would work all along and not letting his relief show. Instead, he gave a curt series of orders, and his battle-line began to close in on the fortresses, behind a wall of SBMHAWK4s.
After it was over, Sanders pointed at the icon of the space station, now attended only by drifting wreckage.
"Fang," he said in tones of uncharacteristically diffident inquiry, "do you intend for the capital ships to proceed and deal with that? Or will you order the fighters rearmed?"
"Neither, Cub Saaanderzzz. I do not believe it will be necessary to engage the space station at this time." The young Human's reaction to this stereotype-shattering lack of bloodthirstiness was obvious, and brought a smile to Zhaarnak's face.
"The station has no capacity to project force into deep space," he condescended to explain. "And its shipyards are useless with no planetary population or industrial infrastructure left to furnish raw materials. So I see no reason to risk further losses-especially among our fighters-in reducing it. It can be left to . . . die on the vine, as I believe the Human expression goes."
Abruptly, his mood changed to grimness.
"No-we will wait here only long enough to send our carriers back to AP-4 in relays, to replenish our strikegroups from the stockpiles we have established there, and send a report to Raaymmonnd'presssssscott-telmasa. As soon as he indicates that the time is right to do so, we will proceed towards this system's other warp point."
"Through which," Uaaria put in quietly, "the last of their starships departed shortly before our planetary strikes began to go in."
"Naturally. They had no other exit from the system. That warp point must lead further along this warp chain. The word of what has happened here will reach the Bahgs at its other end, in Home Hive One, quite possibly before our report gets there. It will be interesting to observe the result."
* * *
The last elements of the Mobile Force had completed transit into the Franos system, and the courier drones were off, bearing the news to the other Mobile Force, three systems away.
It wasn't hard to predict the action that would be taken on the basis of that news. It was unavoidable, even if it courted potential disaster.
The new attack represented a more immediate threat to Franos than the sparring match at the other end of the warp chain. So the second Mobile Force would pull back one warp transit closer to Franos, even though it would mean giving up the Fleet's presence in the lifeless remains of what had been a System Which Must Be Defended-and the system which was this entire warp chain's only link with the rest of the Fleet. The two Mobile Forces would then be truly on their own.
The isolation would not necessarily be permanent, of course. The remaining Systems Which Must Be Defended would undoubtedly organize a counteroffensive as soon as possible, to reopen contact.
Still, it was far from an ideal option.
But options were becoming more and more limited.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Keeping Up the Pressure
"That's the last of them, Admiral."
"Thank you, Jacques," Raymond Prescott acknowledged the ops officer's report courteously, although it hadn't really been necessary. The admiral had watched in his plot as the last of the scarlet icons representing the Bug capital ships he'd expected to have to fight had merged into that of Home Hive One's Warp Point Five, and vanished.
The battle with the belatedly combined flotilla of gunboats and kamikazes could have been worse, though they'd taken the monitors Amos Huss and Torvulk with them and damaged a number of other ships before the combination of Allied fighters, gunboats, anti-fighter missiles, and CAM2s had blown the last of them to plasma. But then, shortly thereafter, their motherships had begun to exit the system.
"What you think it means, Sir?" Mandagalla asked.
"I think, pending confirmation via the ICN, that Fang Zhaarnak's assault has succeeded. They're pulling this force back so it can be closer to the front he's just opened up-shortening their defensive lines, as it were." Prescott glanced at Chung, and the intelligence officer nodded in agreement.
"Well, Admiral," Bichet ventured, I suppose this leaves us free to finish what we started."
"Eh?" Prescott looked up from the plot. His attention had been
focused on Warp Point Five.
"Wiping out the rest of the system's warp point defenses, Sir," Bichet amplified.
"Oh, that." Prescott straightened up. "Yes, I suppose we might as well. We have to remain in the system anyway, while we replenish our fighters. Steve, I want you and Vice Admiral Raathaarn to organize relays of carriers to go back to AP-4 for replacements."
"Aye, aye, Sir."
"And, yes, Jacques, while that's progressing, we can finish sanitizing the system. But . . ." Prescott paused for a meaningful eye contact with each of the staffers in turn. "I want one thing clearly understood. The destruction of the warp point fortresses was never anything but a means to the end of drawing part of the Bugs' mobile forces here. In that, it's succeeded. But we must persist with the same strategy of whipsawing the Bugs between this task force and Zhaarnak's, which means it's necessary for us to keep up the pressure on them." He turned to the chief of staff. "Anna, we'll start sending RD2s through Warp Point Five immediately. As soon as our fighter losses have been made good, we'll advance through that warp point."
Mandagalla swallowed.
"Sir, I must point out that we have a number of damaged units-"
"We'll perform as much repair work as possible in the time we have. But to repeat, we cannot let up. We must advance without pausing any longer than absolutely necessary. Zhaarnak's relying on it, and he's held up his end of this operation. We have to hold up ours. Do I make myself clear?"
A mumble of assent ran through the staff.
* * *
The system beyond Warp Point Five proved to be a distant binary, a K-type orange star and a red dwarf, each with its own small planetary family. The viewscreen in Riva y Silva's flag briefing room was set to show the outside view, and now the light of the primary component flooded the room at second hand.
It was a subdued staff that met in that sullen light.
The battle had been a grim one. It might have had a very different conclusion, but for the way the Bug mobile force had depleted its gunboat and small craft strength in Home Hive One, leaving the capital ships to face Task Force 71 unsupported. But those capital ships, unlike the ones Zhaarnak had faced, had stood and fought. Chung was still setting up and knocking down theories to account for the difference. It was, Prescott suspected, a matter of small import to the crews of the eight capital ships and five carriers who had died in the course of the savage fighting that had snarled across the system for several days.
Fortunately, this system, like the one Zhaarnak had broken into, had held a medium-sized Bug population. So the task force had fought its way grimly in-system from the warp point through which it had come, crossing 5.4 light-hours to the innermost planet. There, while still fending off desperate attacks, Prescott had managed to get a fighter strike through to the planet's surface-with the now dreadfully familiar results. The afterglow of the last antimatter fireballs had still hung in the planet's dead air as the task force turned savagely on the disoriented Bug starships.
Few of those starships had escaped. Those who had, had fled even further sunward to a nearby inner-system warp point, obvious as such from its defenses, an array of fortresses identical to that which the task force's SBMHAWKs had reduced on its way into the system. There they'd vanished into warp transit, leaving Task Force 71 to nurse its wounds and contemplate its next move.
"The message to Fang Zhaarnak has been dispatched, Admiral," Mandagalla reported. "And our emergency repairs are proceeding."
"Good." Prescott turned to Chung. "Amos, have you had a chance to study the probe returns from Warp Point Three?"
Sending those RD2s through had been Prescott's first order of business after the battle. As in Home Hive One, they'd assigned numbers to the system's warp points. The one through which they'd come was number one; number two was the inner-system warp point through which the tatters of the Bug mobile force had departed. RD2s had ventured through it after them, and reported the usual array of warp point defenses and the neutrino spoor of another medium-sized planetary population. That left number three, even further from the primary than number one and on a bearing ninety degrees away from it. Prescott's eyes had seldom strayed from that icon.
"I have, Sir," the spook responded. "It's a red dwarf, with no evidence of any artificial energy emissions. Nor are there any Bug defenses. It's empty, Sir."
"Thank you." Prescott surveyed the entire staff. They looked uncomfortable. He would have expected nothing else, for Task Force 71 was advancing into the unknown, and for these people that was a situation calculated to conjure up the ghosts of Operation Pesthouse.
"The question now is whether Warp Point Two or Warp Point Three leads further along the chain towards Zhaarnak," he said. "Jacques?"
The ops officer cleared his throat.
"Admiral, I know the RD2s don't have the range to conduct a real warp point survey of the system beyond Warp Point Three. But that system's emptiness suggests that it's a dead end. At the same time, I'd certainly expect the Bug survivors to retreat toward their fellow Bugs-the ones opposing Fang Zhaarnak-by the most direct possible route. And they fled through Warp Point Two. My vote is for that one."
Prescott considered Bichet's argument for a moment, then nodded.
"Thank you. But before we decide, I'd like to ask Amos if he's been able to reach any further conclusions about the length of this warp chain." The admiral turned to the spook. "The important question, of course, is how many more systems lie between us and TF 72?"
Chung spread his hands eloquently.
"Admiral, I don't know. We can lop at least another five light-hours off the total real-space distance, and possibly as much as nine light-hours, depending on whether the warp point we really want is Warp Point Two or Warp Point Three," he pointed out, and Prescott nodded again. "Unfortunately," the intelligence officer continued, "that's all we can say with any certainty. Judging from our analysis of the time their mobile forces and courier drones seem to be taking to shuttle back and forth, the total real-space distance between Home Hive One and AP-5 is about twenty-four light-hours, which means that we're a maximum of nineteen light-hours from AP-5 as we stand right now. My best guess would make that no more than another three warp nexi between here and AP-5, which would mean two, between us and TF 72, assuming Fang Zhaarnak has indeed taken the next system on his list. But that's only a guess."
Bichet pounced.
"That reinforces the case in favor of Warp Point Two," he said firmly. "There isn't anything on the far side of Warp Point Three, much less the starships and fortresses there'd be in a system where they were preparing to make their stand against Fang Zhaarnak."
Chung looked uncomfortable. Intelligence officers were restricted line, ineligible for command in deep space-a caste distinction that lingered on, as real as it was unacknowledged. Worse, Chung's date of rank made him junior to Bichet. But he swallowed only once before speaking up.
"Granted: we know that the system is not the one in which we'll make contact with Fang Zhaarnak. But it would have to be an extraordinarily long distance between warp points for a single nexus to connect our present position to TF 72's. I believe there must be at least one more . . . and that we're looking through Warp Point Three at that additional system.
Bichet began to reply sharply, but Prescott shushed him with a gesture.
"Your reasoning, Amos?"
"First of all, Admiral, as the Bug remnants were retiring toward Warp Point Two, they dispatched courier drones across the system toward Warp Point Three. We detected their drive signatures. Why would they have sent courier drones into an uninhabited dead-end system?"
Bichet looked far from convinced, but his skepticism began to take on an overlay of thoughtfulness.
"Why," he countered stubbornly, "would they bottle themselves up by retreating into a cul-de-sac system?"
"I suggest," Prescott said quietly, before Chung could respond, "that the question supplies its own answer, Jacques. They hoped to draw us after them in a time-wa
sting detour that would allow them to concentrate against Zhaarnak. Failing that, they probably hope to make us hesitate to advance through Warp Point Three by threatening our rear. Fortunately, too few of them escaped to pose a credible threat."
"I gather, Sir," Mandagalla ventured, "that you've decided on Warp Point Three."
"Yes. I want you and Jacques to prepare a detailed operational plan for an advance through it as soon as the emergency repairs are completed."
"And as soon as we've sent carriers back to AP-4 for replacement fighters," Landrum prompted hopefully, but Prescott didn't take the cue. He looked over the entire meeting, but his eyes lingered on Landrum and on the com screen framing Raathaarn's avian face.
"I made my position clear back in Home Hive One," he said levelly. "We must maintain the momentum of our advance, without letup. All other considerations are secondary. Since I said that, we've put one more system between us and AP-4, which measurably increases the time it would take to ferry fighters forward from that system."
Landrum began to look alarmed, for he could see where the admiral was leading. He gestured for leave to speak, but Prescott continued inexorably.
"Furthermore, after our carrier losses here, our surviving fighters can fill the great majority of the hanger bays we have left. Isn't that true, Steve?"
Caught off guard, the farshathkhanaak answered automatically.
"It is, Sir. Eighty-two percent of them, to be exact."
"That's what I thought. And in light of those factors, I've decided to resume our advance without pausing to replenish our fighter strength."