Shiva Option s-3

by David Weber

  "As you will recall, ladies and gentlemen," he began, "Warmaster Rikka's forces encountered stiff fighting here, in Bug-25, on their way to Alpha Centauri. The Bugs withdrew essentially intact, however, proving that the system has a closed warp point-which, unfortunately, wasn't located." He touched the controls, and Bug-25 sprouted another of the dashed string-lights, pointing downward.

  "A dissssturrrrbing datummmm," Admiral Thaarzhaan fluted.

  "Indubitably," Rikka admitted. "However, I left a force there to watch for any Demon incursions and, hopefully, follow them to the closed warp point. Lieutenant Sanders, please continue."

  "Yes, Warmaster. Our analysis of the data on the Bug ships involved in that fight confirms, to no one's surprise, that they came from Home Hive Four." Sanders gestured vaguely at the blank area of the display, toward which the two broken lines pointed from different directions. Here there be dragons, he thought, recalling the unexplored areas of Old Terra's ancient maps. "But, more to the point, certain individual Bug ships that fought Warmaster Rikka in Bug-25 turned up later in Anderson Four."

  "Can you be certain of that?" rumbled Noraku.

  "Yes, Fleet Speaker. Comparison of Warmaster Rikka's data with First Fang Ynaathar's leaves no room for doubt. They were the same ships. And the elapsed time between their two appearances was short enough to suggest that the warp chain they followed from Bug-25 through Home Hive Four to Bug-21 can't be a very long one."

  "In other words," Ynaathar took up the thread, "there cannot be many warp transits between Anderson Four and Home Hive Four. It is my personal belief that there are only two, that Home Hive Four lies just beyond Bug-21."

  "You're asking us to stake a great deal on your 'personal belief,' First Fang." Noraku's tone wasn't truculent, but it held profound skepticism. "Even assuming you're correct, we have no up-to-date intelligence concerning what you would have to face in Bug-21. After all, you haven't been probing it with RD2s recently."

  "Truth, Fleet Speaker. We have refrained from doing so in order to lull the Bahgs into a false sense of security. However, we did some probing in the immediate aftermath of the fighting in Aaahnnderrssson Four, so we can speak with some confidence on the warp point defenses. These consist of eighty heavy cruisers of the Danger and Derringer classes, twenty Estoc-class suicide-rider light cruisers, thirty-two thousand patterns of mines, and slightly over eleven thousand deep-space buoys of various configurations."

  Thaarzhaan stirred, with a rustle of feathers, on the framework that served his species as a chair. To anyone familiar with the Ophiuchi, as Sanders was, his ambivalence was blatantly obvious.

  "Butttt you havvvve no conccccception whhhhhhhatever of the deffffffenses of Hhhhome Hhhhhive Ffffour itsssselffff!"

  "That is not precisely the case," Kthaara put in. "No direct observational data, true. But I believe our intelligence analysts have been able to draw some inferences. Is that correct, Sky Marshal MaaacGregggorr?"

  Ellen MacGregor looked as torn as Thaarzhaan, and she spoke with uncharacteristic hesitancy.

  "Vice Admiral Trevayne, the Director of Naval Intelligence, is here, and she's had time to consult with the specialists on New Atlantis Island. Admiral, would you elaborate?"

  "Certainly, Sky Marshal." Winnifred Trevayne had a way of tilting her head back and peering down her long, straight nose that not everyone found endearing. "Thanks to Warmaster Rikka, we now have access to the Star Union's data on the Bug losses on that front-specifically, Home Hive Four's losses, as we now know them to be. Coupling those with the observed Bug losses in the Anderson Four fighting, and assuming resources of the same order of magnitude as those of the home hive systems we've been able to observe, the analysts have concluded that Home Hive Four must have expended virtually its entire starship strength."

  A Gorm laugh sounded rather like a short blast from a foghorn. Noraku produced one, then turned to Kthaara.

  "That, Lord Talphon, is the kind of thinking that almost lost us Admiral Murakuma and Sixth Fleet at Home Hive Two! What if Home Hive Four has also produced tens of thousands of gunboats and small craft? Eighth Fleet could likewise find itself facing more than it could handle. No, I say we should wait until Seventh Fleet is in a position to support the attack, in accordance with the original plan."

  Aileen Sommers leaned forward. Her status here was ambivalent. A mere rear admiral, she wasn't even one of Ynaathar's task force commanders-Rikka's official reason for being present. But her self-bestowed, never-ratified position as "ambassador" gave her a unique standing which had made it out of the question to exclude her from this conference.

  "In point of fact, Fleet Speaker, Sixth Fleet's experience in Home Hive Two is the very reason we're advocating prompt action against Home Hive Four. Remember, Seventh Fleet is still undergoing major repairs and reinforcement. At one point, I believe, there was serious discussion of disbanding it altogether and incorporating its remanents into Eighth Fleet. If we're to strike quickly, Eighth Fleet must do it unaided. And consider: Home Hive Two had been under a threat a single warp transit away ever since Admiral Murakuma completed Operation Orpheus. Presumably, it began at that moment to concentrate on gunboat production, with the results we all know. Home Hive Four, on the other hand, has been facing the threat of a direct attack for a considerably shorter period-even assuming, as I and everyone in Eighth Fleet does, that it lies just beyond Bug-21. So the longer we wait, the more time it has to mass-produce kamikazes."

  A silence settled over the room. Sanders used it to unobtrusively retreat to his position in the rearmost row of seats.

  "Lord Talphon," MacGregor finally said, "we're admittedly dealing with a long chain of inferences here. But in my opinion, we face much the same situation here, although for different reasons, that Lord Khiniak faces in Shanak. Assuming First Fang and Warmaster Rikka are correct about the length of the warp lines in question-and I think they probably are-then the possibility of giving Home Hive Four more time to build up the kind of defenses Admiral Murakuma faced is decisive. We can't wait for Seventh Fleet. We must go in now."

  "I agrrrrrree," said Thaarzhaan, his indecision hardening into quiet resolution.

  Noraku watched the defection of the waverers without expression, then turned to Ynaathar.

  "In the end, First Fang, it comes down to this. Are you confident of Eighth Fleet's ability to fight its way through Bug-21's defenses and on to Home Hive Four without pausing? Are you that confident of the intelligence estimates and of your own conviction that you will have only one more warp point to get through?"

  "I am."

  "Very well. Lord Talphon, I withdraw my objections."

  "So be it." Kthaara gave his carnivore's smile. "We are agreed, then. We shall, in the Human phrase, 'take them at a run.' "

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: "And then there were two."

  "It was well that you held back a reserve of SBMHAWKs, First Fang," Robalii Rikka said.

  "It is still more fortunate, Warmaster, that you suggested sending a wave of gunboats into this system ahead of our ships."

  Ynaathar's courtesy was equal to the Crucian's. It was even sincere, and Rikka's image in the com screen inclined its head in acknowledgment. Ynaathar's gaze wandered across Hiarnow'kharnak's flag bridge to the big screen, currently set to simulate the naked-eye outside view. This lifeless system's primary-a red dwarf three and a half light-hours distant, and lying aft in any case-wasn't visible, of course. Neither was the wreckage their initial SBMHAWK bombardment had left of the warp point defenses.

  Their estimate of the fixed warp point defenses had proven accurate, and the SBMHAWKs they'd allocated had been sufficient. However, they'd had no current information on mobile units, and the ninety-six heavy cruisers and twenty suicide-rider light cruisers might have proven troublesome for the first wave. But, at Rikka's suggestion, Ynaathar had let gunboats lead the advance, and they'd provided the information that had enabled Ynaathar to target his reserve SBMHAWKs. In addition to the gunboat losses, it had
required the expenditure of more of his total SBMHAWK inventory than he'd planned on. But it was a basically unscathed Eighth Fleet that was now proceeding toward the system's other warp point, a mere forty-eight light-minutes outward from the primary, and no Bug mobile forces barred its way.

  Though he lacked any hard data to back up his opinion, Ynaathar was convinced Home Hive Four lay on the other side of that warp point. He doubted very seriously that he would continue to advance unopposed.

  * * *

  This had come at the worst possible time.

  This System Which Must Be Defended, true to its accustomed role of concentrating on the Old Enemies, had feared that the closed warp point in the system through which those enemies had passed had been located. The Fleet's cloaked scouts had skirmished with the Old Enemies' pickets there, and there was no guarantee that one of the scouts hadn't been tracked. So the Deep Space Force, its battle damage only just repaired, had been dispatched two systems in that direction, to guard against any incursions. And now the attack had come from the opposite direction-the Old and New Enemies in league, now only one warp transit away from the System Which Must Be Defended.

  The Fleet was doing what it could, of course. The Deep Space Force had been summoned back with maximum urgency, and the available mobile forces in the system the enemy had entered-thirty-seven battlecruisers and thirty suicide-rider light cruisers-were now shadowing the enemy's advance, cloaked against detection.

  They wouldn't be alone for long. Even now, with the enemy still too remote to observe its emergence from warp, the massed small-craft strength of the System Which Must Be Defended was transiting to attack.

  * * *

  It had been a long time since Ynaathar had left the flag bridge. But he sternly ordered fatigue to heel and remained where he was, for he was awaiting a certain report.

  The incoming kamikazes had dispelled his last doubts that Home Hive Four lay immediately ahead-nothing less could have dispatched those massed formations. He'd ordered Eighth Fleet's entire fighter strength, barring a small reserve, sent out against them, overruling the caution of Admiral Haathaahn, his carrier commander. He'd soon had second thoughts, for the Bug battlecruisers shadowing him had seized their opportunity, dropping out of cloak and leaping to the attack behind the wavefront of their own gunboats and suicide-riders. None of them had gotten past Eighth Fleet's screen of battlecruisers and Crucian heavy cruisers, but in the absence of fighter support that screen's losses had made Ynaathar give the flattened ear flick that answered to a human wince.

  Nevertheless, he didn't regret his decision to commit practically all his fighters against the waves of kamikazes from Home Hive Four. Those kamikazes had been burned out of the continuum before reaching the screen. And better still, their vector had been plotted and analyzed, and it narrowed the search for their warp point of entry to a very small volume as interplanetary spaces went. Now Ynaathar awaited word from the Hun-class scout cruisers of Survey Squadron 234, which had been attached to Eighth Fleet for this very purpose.

  It didn't take long. Even as Kevin Sanders approached with the dispatch, Ynaathar saw the warp-point icon flash into being in the holo sphere, and its precise coordinates appeared on the board. He gave orders to prepare the RD2s.

  * * *

  "As you can all see," he said later to a hastily assembled meeting of his core staff, with the task force commanders attending via com screen, "while only a few RD2s returned, their findings leave no room for doubt. This is Home Hive Four."

  He didn't speak in crowing tones-it was foreign to his nature, and at any rate these officers had all agreed with him from the first. The system display the task force commanders could all see in the master plots on their respective flag bridges merely confirmed what they'd believed.

  The two innermost planets of the yellow star the RD2s had found were inhabited, and to the drones' esoteric senses they'd blazed with starlike intensity, for theirs was the electro-neutrino output of worlds industrialized the way only Bugs industrialized them, and they nestled amid a firefly-swarm of lesser emission-sources: the fleets of freighters that were a Home Hive's circulatory system. Detecting those planets had been no great problem, for the drones had emerged from a warp point in the inner system, only one light-hour from the G-class primary.

  "The promptness with which we located the warp point," Ynaathar continued, "has given us a priceless advantage. We need not spend as much time surveying as we normally would. We can press on and, perhaps, catch them off balance."

  "Yes, by Valkha!" Shiiaarnaow'maazhaak exploded. The Task Force 82 commander, must, Ynaathar thought, imagine himself back in the good old freewheeling days before the Khanate had encountered the Terrans-one of whom, Francis Macomb, now gave a growl of agreement.

  Robalii Rikka shifted his folded wings back and forth.

  "I understand the force of this argument," the warmaster said. "And yet . . . we expended more SBMHAWKs than anticipated in breaking into this system. It's a pity we have no replacements for them."

  Shiiaarnaow looked about to burst, but to Ynaathar's relief he kept his response more or less within diplomatic bounds.

  "We cannot wait for more SBMHAWKs to be brought up! We must sink our fangs into these chofaki while they are still stunned by the rapidity of our advance."

  "Otherwise," Macomb declared, "we piss away the very advantage the First Fang just mentioned."

  "Agreed," Rikka conceded.

  "Ideally," Force Leader Haaldaarn, commanding Task Force 83, put in, "I would like to have more complete reconnaissance of that system. The RD2s revealed no Bug capital ships. Perhaps they're waiting in cloak."

  "They also might not be there," Shiiaarnaow shot back.

  "A risky supposition," Haaldaarn rumbled.

  "Nevertheless," Rikka said, "if true, it offers us a golden opportunity. Despite my earlier reservations, I am inclined to seize that opportunity." The Crucian's eyes shifted to something outside the com pickup. They all knew he was looking at the holo display of what was, to him, the very home of the Demons. When he turned back to the pickup, he wore a new expression . . . and by now they were all familiar enough with his species to be chilled. "I would like very much to enter that particular system-especially inasmuch as the 'Shiva Option' can be applied there without compunction."

  Ynaathar looked at the screens and saw no inclination for further discussion.

  "Very well. Lord Talphon directed us to 'take them at a run.' That is precisely what we are going to do."

  * * *

  The small-craft attack had proven ill-advised. In addition to expending a goodly proportion of the available strength in such vessels-strength which was sorely needed now-for no result, it had evidently enabled the Enemy to locate the warp point and commence his attack in less time than had been allowed for.

  True, in his haste the Enemy had attacked with fewer of his warp-capable missile pods than usual, and the defensive cruisers had survived to inflict significant losses on the starships that had followed-almost annihilating the first two waves, in fact. But there was no disguising the fact that the Enemy fleet-a very substantial one by any standard, even with its losses-was now loose in the System Which Must Be Defended. And the Deep Space Force, although it had returned at maximum speed as per its orders, had only just begun entering the system at the time the attack began.

  The real problem, of course, was the location of the warp points. The one through which the Deep Space Force had returned lay about as far from the system primary as such phenomena normally occurred, while the enemy was emerging directly into the inner system-closer to the primary than either of the life-bearing planets, in fact. The Deep Space Force was hastening sunward, but the enemy could force engagement with it before it reached the inner system. Datalinked with the innermost planet's massive space station and its attendant orbital fortresses, the Deep Space Force might have been in a good position against an enemy bereft of those troublesome missile pods. As it was, however, the situation wa
s . . . unsatisfactory.

  * * *

  Once again, Ynaathar could only visualize the drifting debris that his fighters had left of the three monitors, fifty-four superdreadnoughts, twenty-six battlecruisers and ninety light cruisers that had finally straggled in from a warp point six light-hours distant from the local sun. Not one of them had even made it into weapons range of his battle-line, and neither had any of the depleted stock of gunboats and small craft the planets had sent out to support them.

  And, at any rate, that was history. His attention was focused on the little blue disc in the big screen that was Home Hive Four I.

  He glanced at the holo sphere, where the planet appeared as a scarlet icon seven light-minutes from the primary, as did its sister planet, not quite in opposition to it and orbiting at ten light-minutes. He focused on the tiny cluster of green icons approaching that latter red beacon.

  "Warmaster Rikka should be almost in range of Planet II, Sir," a voice said from behind him, echoing his thoughts in Standard English, and Ynaathar smiled as usual at the Human tendency toward unnecessary verbalization. They'd been social animals longer than the Zheeerlikou'valkhannaiee, who'd become pack hunters at a fairly late stage of their development towards tool-using.

  "So I see, Cub Saaanderzz," he acknowledged to the young Terran intelligence officer, still present in the same ill-defined staff capacity.

  Robalii Rikka was someone else whose status was ambiguous. He was the representative of a remote but powerful ally as well as being one of Ynaathar's task force commanders. Besides, he commanded a very large task force-so large it was subdivided into two task groups, one of which accounted for roughly a third of Eighth Fleet's fighter strength. When Ynaathar had detached Rikka's Task Force 86 and the main carrier force, Task Force 84, and sent them against Planet II, he'd placed the Crucian in overall command. Admiral Haathaahn of TF 84 had made no protest, and Ynaathar was convinced he'd done the right thing. But, he admitted to himself, he missed Rikka's counsel now that the carrier force was sixteen light-minutes away on the far side of the local sun.