Shiva Option s-3

by David Weber

  He watched as Brokken, in a spontaneous gesture, reached down and gave Voroddon's shoulder a hard, steadying squeeze.

  The moment passed.

  "Well," Brokken said, "let's proceed with the briefing I'm sure your staff has prepared for me."

  "Of course, Talnikah. My headquarters bunker is this way."

  As they walked across the newly cleared area, Kincaid hastened ahead of the gaggle of staffers-no great feat for a human, since Telikans' legs were short even in proportion to their stature-and drew abreast of the two flag officers.

  "I presume there are no new reports from other landing zones?" he overheard Brokken ask.

  "No. The situation's essentially unchanged since you departed from orbit. As you know, our initial landings enjoyed complete tactical surprise. That, and our fighter cover, enabled us to secure all our initial objectives."

  "Yes, you did well. But what about the Demons?"

  "We've been able to interdict everything they've thrown at us from long range. As of now, their behavior is as expected from the records we've all seen of the Terrans' experience in the Justin System. They're moving toward all the landing zones in massive columns, concentrating for what we anticipate will be coordinated planetwide counterattacks."

  Kincaid spoke up, his privileged status as liaison officer empowering his natural chutzpah.

  "One thing I don't understand, Talonmaster. Knowing those columns' location from orbital surveillance, why haven't you called in KISS strikes on them?"

  He gestured upward toward low orbit, where a dozen Buurtahn-class ships-minelayers built on battlecruiser hulls-traced a pattern calculated to maintain coverage of the landing zones. One of the KISS system's virtues was that, like mines, the projectiles could be deployed from simple cargo holds, each of which could accommodate five thousand of them. And each Buurtahn had fifteen such holds.

  "If we strike them too soon," Voroddon explained, "they'll disperse so as to present less tempting targets. No, we want them to complete the concentration of their forces." An odd, dreamy look came over the talonmaster. "Oh, yes, indeed we do."

  * * *

  They were in the command bunker when the attack rolled in-and the prepared fire zone beyond the perimeter quite simply exploded.

  The outside view polarized automatically before Kincaid's eyes could be more than temporarily dazzled, as opposed to permanently blinded. At perceptibly the same instant, the concussion almost threw him and the bunker's other occupants off their feet. Steadying himself, he turned to peer through the dust that suddenly hovered in two bands-one just beneath the bunker's ceiling, the other at floor level-at one of the visual displays that showed what was happening at another of the LZs, on Telikan's nightside, as viewed from low orbit.

  Ever since the hypervelocity missile had first been introduced, people had been remarking that it looked the way pre-space Terrans had assumed a "death ray" would look. Actual lasers didn't; they left a crackling trail of ionized air that was visible, at least at night, but the effect was pretty unspectacular-those old science-fiction fans would have been sadly disappointed. An HVM, though, tearing through atmosphere at c-fractional velocity, was to all appearances a solid (if momentary) bar of lightning, dazzling in the dark.

  As Kincaid watched, the trail of KISS projectiles a Buurtahn had left as it orbited were activated, going instantly to just under ten percent of light-speed. Such velocity was, of course, not perceptible as motion. Instead, as the hundreds of drive coils entered atmosphere, a dazzling curtain of fire seemed to appear. Where that curtain's hem touched the nighted planetary surface, that surface erupted in a line of terrible white light, far too intense to be called mere "flame."

  Kincaid turned back to the outside view, where the aftereffects of the same kind of bombardment were dying down sufficiently to permit damage assessment. Each KISS strike released the kinetic energy of a tactical nuke-but precisely targeted, and without the radioactive contamination that made wholesale use of nuclear and antimatter weapons out of the question on worlds like Telik. The areas around the Ground Wing's lodgements had been seared as clean of the local ecology as they had been of Bug attackers-but that ecology would grow back, unmutated.

  The Bugs wouldn't.

  Brokken looked out at the swirling tonnes of dust that hid the devastation beyond the perimeter. The abruptly released thermal pulse had birthed almost cyclonic winds, which continued to howl outside the bunker, drowning out the terrified wailing of the thousands of rescued Telikans in the shelters into which they'd been herded.

  "Talonmaster Voroddon," she said in a voice of flint, "as soon as outside conditions permit, we will advance as planned. Please ask your communications officer to put me in contact with Wingmaster Harkka."

  * * *

  Brokken's entire ten divisions were now dirtside, and without waiting for the reinforcements beginning to arrive in the system-a multiracial ground force that would eventually number over a million-she went on the offensive behind a rolling barrage of KISS strikes that obliterated the Bug population centers and smashed any troop concentration that stood in the way.

  Still the Bugs came on in their silently suicidal way, which not even years of familiarity could fully rob of its power to horrify. The warriors came intermingled with millions of workers, a mass of mute, uncaring flesh in which much of the Ground Wing's firepower was uselessly absorbed. They poured in nuclear warheads in attempts to swamp the defensive energy-weapon fire by sheer numbers, for even one nuke could do horrible damage if it got through. And any time their ground forces managed to come to grips with the Telikans, the latter had to fight them in the old-fashioned way, for under such circumstances not even KISS could be targeted precisely enough. The Ground Wing was prepared to accept a certain number of casualties from friendly fire, but however determined they might be to achieve victory at any cost, they weren't Arachnids.

  So Brokken's forces advanced in open order to avoid offering tightly bunched targets for nukes, under air cover from combat skimmers and assault shuttles with HVM pods. The powered-armor troops led the advance, backed by armored fighting vehicles. The light infantry, in regular battle dress and unpowered body armor, followed; they had no business in the front lines against massed Bugs, as the TFMC had learned at Justin.

  Brokken herself rode in Voroddon's divisional command vehicle, comparable to the TFMC's Cobra. Kincaid was there, too, studying a planetary holo display in which the green of the secured areas was steadily expanding as the offensive rolled on, and would keep expanding until Telik was a globe of emerald. But the expansion was uneven, for fighting was still heavy.

  All at once, that heavy fighting left the realm of the abstract as the forward units reported contact with a fresh Bug force, better concealed than most. KISS support was called for, and blast shields clanked into place around the viewports barely in time to shut out of the glare as the Bugs' rear elements died. But the leading waves came on, already far too close to be targeted with something as . . . energetic as KISS, and a phalanx of the heavily armed and armored helicopters the Bugs favored rose from camouflaged sites in the subtropical forest to support them.

  Orders went out as the command vehicle ground to a halt behind the ground fighting that erupted ahead. Assault shuttles screamed in, cutting swathes through the helicopters with HVMs. But that kept them from the work of lacerating the oncoming waves of Bugs on the ground with anti-personnel cluster-bombs. Likewise, the special-weapons units were kept busy interdicting the tactical missiles that sleeted overhead with their cargoes of nuclear death. It was left to the Telikan grunts to bear the brunt of the ground assault, and a tidal wave of Bugs crashed into them.

  No, Kincaid corrected his thought, not Bugs. Demons. That's how they see them.

  And who's to say they're not right?

  His mental paralysis shattered into a million shards of panic as the cry came: "Incoming!"

  One of the Bug helicopters had gotten through, only to take a glancing hit from one of the
nearby fire support teams. Now it was visible above the trees, trailing smoke and losing altitude . . . and getting larger, for it was headed straight for the command vehicle.

  "Get out!" someone shouted.

  Kincaid scrambled to obey, but staggered back as he banged his helmet on the overhead-always easy to do in this Telikan-designed jalopy. He shook his head to clear it, and flung himself through the hatch. He emerged into the hellish noise and rotor-wash of the descending chopper, which smashed into the command vehicle just as he hit the ground a mere few meters away. He landed with a numbing force but managed a clumsy, sliding roll and staggered shakenly to his feet.

  Bugs poured forth from the broken chopper as though in some obscene childbirth.

  Aliens were nothing new to Kincaid, and he'd spent the last few years getting acquainted with whole new species he'd never imagined. But now, seeing the Bugs firsthand, he felt something even the optopoid Zarkolyans had never aroused in him: a dizzying, gut-wrenching sense of wrongness, as though he were looking at something that had no business existing in any sane universe.

  Bugs and Telikans ripped each other apart at point-blank range, where the latter's zoot availed little against armor-piercing rounds, and he fumbled for his side arm. But his desperately grasping hand found only empty air where the holstered pistol should have been. He must have lost it when he hit the ground, and he watched in horror as a Bug bore down on a crumpled figure on the ground he recognized as Bokken. Someone else put a shot into the Bug, but it didn't even seem to notice as it continued to advance on its six flashing legs, charging towards the helpless pinionmaster, and there was nothing Kincaid could do.

  But Voroddon was there, too. The range was too short for weapon fire. Instead, the zooted talonmaster flung himself bodily on the Demon, and, grasping two of the appendages, heaved in opposite directions.

  Any other time or place, Kincaid would have been sick as the Bug's carapace parted, torn open by the myoelectric strength of the zoot's "muscles," and a gush of fluids and internal organs washed over Voroddon.

  But then a second Bug was there, bringing a weapon into line. As Kincaid staggered forward in what seemed slow motion, a burst of fire ripped through Voroddon and his victim alike.

  Without thinking, Kincaid reached for his boot and unsheathed his combat knife. He flung himself across the last few meters, driving the knife into what he remembered from long-ago briefings was a vulnerable point of the body-pod. The Bug writhed, and one of its hard, segmented legs lacerated his left thigh. He gasped in pain, but drove the knife deeper and yanked viciously upward. The nauseating fluids that had drenched Voroddon spurted before he could finish his gasp, and he choked on them. For a time, he could do nothing but be sick, again and again. Luckily, he landed on top of the dying Bug, rather than vice versa.

  By the time he got shakily up, it was over. Zooted Telikans stood among a scattering of dead Bugs, and Brokken was limping over to that which had been Voroddon. She knelt over the crumpled talonmaster, lying half under a Bug carcass that would have crushed him but for his armor. She waved a medical orderly away and sank awkwardly to the ground, where she gazed for a long, silent moment through the male Telikan's blood-spattered faceplate. Very gently, she touched the side of the helmet. Then she finally accepted help in rising to her feet and turned to face Kincaid.

  "I regret placing you in danger, Captain. But I can't be sorry you were present, for I owe you my life."

  "Think nothing of it . . . Talnikah."

  Neither Brokken nor any of the other Telikans made any objection.

  * * *

  A Terran month passed before the surface of Telik was deemed sufficiently secured for Wingmaster Haradda to land there. Not every Bug on the planet was dead-it would probably take a long time indeed to hunt them all down, through every nook and cranny of a planet of the size of Old Terra, and they would live on far longer in the monster stories this world's infants would be told, but the warrior caste's resistance had been broken.

  The shuttle landed on the outskirts of what had once been Telik's planetary capital. Not that there was anything to see-the vegetation had had a century to take over the ruins a nuclear strike had left of the city, and only historical records had enabled them to locate the site from orbit. But the symbolism was there.

  As Harkka descended the ramp, Brokken stepped forward with only the slight stiffness that still remained in her walk. She saluted with great formality, but her words went far beyond any military punctilio in their very simplicity.

  "Welcome home, Wingmaster."

  Afterwards, Harkka's staff followed the wingmaster out of the shuttle. Fujiko Murakuma was with them.

  She spotted Mario Kincaid among Brokken's staffers, and hurried over. What she saw as she neared the Marine took her aback. He seemed far more than a month older.

  "Well," she cracked, "you got your wish. Even picked up a wound!"

  "So I did," he said shortly, and she cocked her head.

  "What's with you? No adolescent attempt at a pass? I should probably feel insulted! Besides, I should think you'd be jumping for joy under the circumstances."

  A wraith of Kincaid's old impudent grin awakened.

  "Yeah, I suppose I should. In fact, I definitely should be happy for the Telikans, and I am. It's just . . . well, we took casualties. A lot of casualties."

  "Yes, I know." Fujiko bit her lip, and her brow furrowed. "I know, and I shouldn't have been flippant. But . . ." All at once, she could no longer contain her excitement. "Mario, don't you understand the implications of what's happened here?"

  "Uh . . . you mean the way the Bugs became less combat effective toward the end? Yeah, that's news the Alliance is going to want to hear," he agreed.

  It turned out that the Shiva Option effect didn't actually require the instantaneous annihilation of massive Bug populations. The effect appeared to be cumulative, and began to snowball once a certain threshold was reached, although there was still some question about how many millions of deaths that threshold required.

  "Oh, yes," Fujiko replied. "That's certainly new data. But don't you see? The important thing is that KISS performed as advertised! The Crucians and Telikans have found the answer to the moral quandary we've been in ever since Admiral Antonov discovered Harnah!"

  Enlightenment came, and Kincaid's private darkness began to lift.

  "You mean the question of what to do about Bug planets with surviving indigenous sentients?"

  "Yes! We no longer have to choose between nuking a planet till it glows or suffering unacceptable losses on the ground. The Bugs can't hide behind populations of hostages any longer!" Fujiko could no longer contain herself. Face shining with a fierce joy, she grasped him by the shoulders and spoke with an intensity that-he forced himself to remember-was a product of her need to share what she'd just realized with someone of her own species. "Oh, Mario, for the first time I know-not just hope or even believe, but really know-that we're going to win this war, and win it without having to damage our souls!"

  "Our souls," the Marine said slowly, the clouds closing over his sunny smile once again, "may already be more damaged than we know."

  She looked at him sharply. This wasn't like him. Not at all, but she forbore from trying to jolly him. What do I know about it? How can I know the things he's seen down here?

  She gazed at him a moment longer, and then-somehow-the right words were given to her, and she flung out an arm and swept it around a half-circle that took in all of Telik.

  "It's over here, Mario," she told him softly. "That's the point. Soon, it's going to be over everywhere. This war is finally coming to an end. The Telikans, and their children-and all our children-are going to live in a universe cleansed of the Bugs!"

  Kincaid's private clouds parted again. This time they stayed parted.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: Cushion Shot

  To Vanessa Murakuma, the 4.8 light-hour-distant dot of white brilliance that was Home Hive Two A as viewed on emergence from Warp Point One
was getting to be an old . . . not "friend," certainly, but perhaps the word "acquaintance" was permissible.

  In one respect, though, this transit from Orpheus 1 was different from her previous two. It was almost unopposed.

  Not altogether, of course. As her probes had indicated, the Bugs had abandoned any hope of mounting a full-dress crustal defense after the losses they'd taken in starships and orbital fortresses. But they'd continued to patrol the warp point with planet-based gunboats-lots of them, many equipped with jammer packs.

  But Murakuma had anticipated that. She'd employed SBMHAWKs with devastating prodigality, then sent her own gunboats from Force Leader Maahnaahrd's Task Force 62 through to deal with the survivors before allowing her starships to commence transit.

  So Sixth Fleet stood in these now-familiar spaces undepleted in its starship strength: eleven monitors, seventy-one superdreadnoughts, eighteen battleships, thirty-four assault carriers, twenty-four fleet carriers, and seventy-six battlecruisers in the three primary task forces. Small Fang Meearnow's Mohrdenhau-class light carriers provided additional fighter support, and were escorted in turn by ten battlecruisers, thirty light cruisers and twenty destroyers. Also under Meearnow's command was Commodore Paul Taliaferro's Task Group 64.1: eleven Guerriere-C-class command battlecruisers, thirty-one combat tugs of the Turbine-B and Wolf 424 classes (built on battlecruiser and battleship hulls respectively), and twenty-four massive freighters, including nine of the Krupp-A-class mobile shipyards.

  Murakuma smiled as she contemplated Taliaferro's command. The Bugs might well wonder what such an oddly constituted formation-all those command ships in a task group that didn't even include any other combatants-was doing amid a battle fleet. They'd have a while yet to wonder, but it would become clear in the end. Essentially, the rest of Sixth Fleet was here to protect TG 64.1 as it set up what Murakuma had had in mind when she'd quipped to her staffers-human, so most of them had understood-that "it's time for a cushion shot."