by David Weber
Marcus LeBlanc stepped forward after they were all seated and focused on the display.
"Despite the heavy losses our RD2s have suffered," he said rather heavily, "we now feel that we're in a position to report on everything in Home Hive Five within sensor range of the warp point."
He manipulated controls, and the sphere changed. The violet circle remained, but the soul-lifting array of green vanished, leaving a blackness into which a scarlet rash spread rapidly as he spoke.
"First of all, the warp point is englobed by a hundred and sixty-eight orbital fortresses of the Demon Gamma, Devastation Gamma and Devil Gamma classes. All of them are of roughly the same tonnage: about a quarter again that of our largest monitor. We've also detected a hundred and forty-four of their defensive heavy cruisers, of the usual mix of classes, and ninety Epee-class suicide-rider light cruisers. In addition, the warp point is surrounded by thirty-two thousand patterns of mines, presumably antimatter-armed."
The compartment was one great hiss of indrawn breath, a sound that was surprisingly similar in all of the Grand Alliance's constituent races, and LeBlanc pressed on hurriedly.
"The warp point is also covered by something in excess of eleven hundred deep-space buoys, armed with a characteristic Bug mix of independently deployed energy weapons. Indications are that the majority of them are bomb-pumped lasers, but we can't say that with certainty."
"Is that all?" Force Leader Noraku asked with what, in any race but the Gorm, would have been suspected of being sarcasm.
"Er . . . not quite, Force Leader. The Bugs have also mounted a combat space patrol of several hundred gunboats on the warp point. Since they must know by now that our SBMHAWK4s can wipe out any CSP they can mount, we assume that they've done so for the purpose of forcing us to use up enough SBMHAWKs to do precisely that. They've supported the gunboats with a dense deployment of kamikaze small craft."
LeBlanc indicated the force readouts, and the silence deepened until Raymond Prescott finally broke it.
"What about their deep space force?"
"Unknown, Admiral. They're evidently holding their capital ships well back from the warp point, and our RD2s have been unable to obtain any definitive readings. The same, of course, applies to the planetary defenses. However . . ."
LeBlanc adjusted more controls, and the warp point became a violet dot at the very limits of the holo sphere as the scale expanded to include the entire inner system. It was a layout which had become only too familiar to them all since the ill-fated day when TFNS Argive had entered Home Hive Five and lifted the veil of Hell. But LeBlanc thought it worth refreshing everyone's memory, and he sent a cursor flashing over the innermost three orbital shells.
"When assessing the possible force levels of this system," he said quietly, "it should be remembered that Planet II contains a population and industrial base unthinkable for anyone but Bugs. It is, quite simply, the most heavily industrialized single planet that any member of the Grand Alliance-including the Star Union-has ever encountered, with a minimum population of something over thirty-five billion. None of the other planets in this system are quite up to Planet I's standards, but Planet III is actually a binary, both of whose worlds are very heavily developed on any normal standards, and Planet I is just as heavily industrialized in its own right. Think of Sol plus Alpha Centauri. Then add Galloway's Star. Then double it. That's the industrial muscle at the heart of this single star system. Given that, we must assume that the deep space force is a formidable one, and that the close-in defenses of these planets have been built to whatever scale the Bugs deemed desirable. Ladies and gentlemen, there is no practical limit to what could be waiting in the inner system."
He looked up from the sphere, meeting the collective weight of all those eyes. And then, with startling abruptness, he sat down.
Kthaara leaned forward, silhouetted against the blazing starfields beyond the viewport.
"Now," he said, as quietly as LeBlanc had spoken, "you all know what we are facing. You also know that it is essentially what we expected-and that our plans have been laid with precisely such a contingency in mind." He turned to Admiral Dar'sahlahk. "All members of the Alliance appreciate the role the fleet of the Zarkolyan Empire has agreed to play in those plans," he said.
It was difficult to read the facial expression of a being who, in the usual sense, had no face. Nor could the translator convey much in the way of emotion. Still, the software was fairly sensitive to emphasis, and it was clear that the Zarkolyan admiral was speaking in no casual tone.
"We are honored to be given that role, Lord Talphon. It was with just such an eventuality as this in mind that we designed our Kel'puraka-class battlecruisers, and the personnel who crew them are fully aware of the implications of that design philosophy."
"Very well, then. As this is our last conference before commencing the operation, I will now open the floor for discussion."
There was surprisingly little. Everyone knew the plan, and all that remained was the usual tug of war over resource allocation. Even that was soon concluded, and the participants filed out, leaving Kthaara seated in the starlight.
He stood up slowly and turned to face the viewport. For a time, he gazed out in silence. Then he became aware that he wasn't entirely alone. He turned back to the room, still dimly lit, and his dark-adapted eyes made out the figure standing in the shadows.
"Ahhdmiraaaal Muhrakhuuuuma?"
The fragile looking, slender Human female-Kthaara knew the race well enough to know how far she deviated from the physical norm-stepped forward into the starlight.
"Pardon me, Lord Talphon. I was just recalling the last time I offered you the hospitality of a flagship of mine. You, and Ivan Antonov."
Kthaara felt the years roll away, and he gave a long, rustling Orion sigh as the memory flowed over him.
"So long ago," he said, and gave a deliberately Human nod. "I, too, remember it well. And I also seem to recall hearing that Sky Maaarshaaal Avraaam . . . discussed that invitation with you. My impression was that she felt that Eeevaan and I were old enough to know better than to transform an inspection trip into one final ride together on the war-trail." A purring Orion chuckle escaped him. "In fact, I believe that Eeevaan told me that after she finished explaining that to him at some considerable length, she intended to explain the same thing to you."
"That's one way to put it!" Murakuma said, with her own species' chuckle. "She must have rehearsed all the way from Alpha Centauri to Justin, because once she got there, she tore an extremely painful and well-thought-out strip off of my hide for letting the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and a relative of the Khan endanger themselves like that."
She grinned, but then, abruptly, a dead emptiness opened in her heart. Her eyes strayed to the viewport and the spaces of the Anderson Chain, where Hannah Avram had died along with so many thousands of others. Her grin vanished, and Kthaara's slit-pupiled eyes softened as he read her change of mood.
"But, after reprimanding you, she presented you with your race's highest decoration for valor, did she not?" he asked gently.
"Yes," Murakuma's hand strayed unconsciously to her breast, and the ribbon of the Lion of Terra. "Yes, she did," she said in a voice almost too small to be heard, and Kthaara smiled.
"We all have our dead to mourn, Ahhdmiraaaal. My own recollections go back much further than that: to the Theban War, when I was young enough to be truly foolish. Ah, what a blood-mad zeget I was then, burning to avenge my cousin's treacherous death! Ahhdmiraaaal Antaanaaav gave me the chance to seek that vengeance, even permitted me to fly a fighter in one of his strikegroups. And he and I became vilkshatha brothers."
"And now you're seeking vengeance again." It was a statement, not a question, and Murakuma held the old Orion's eyes with hers. "I'm curious about something, Lord Talphon. In all the planning for this operation, I notice you've never once considered the possibility of using 'dinosaur killers' in Home Hive Five, like Lord Khiniak and I did in Home Hive Two."
"Of course." Murakuma nodded. "I understand. And yes, we will finish it for you."
She stood straighter, gave a respectful nod, and left him. Kthaara watched her go, and then turned back to the viewport, now alone. Only he wasn't truly alone, for the Anderson Chain held other ghosts besides that of Hannah Avram.
I did not tell her the full truth, Eeevaan'zarthan. She would not have understood. She might even have thought that I was impugning her honor. In that, she would have been quite mistaken. What she did in Home Hive Two was not dishonorable. It merely would be wrong at this moment. It would be vermin extermination, not vengeance.
Admittedly, there can be no true vilknarma, no blood-balance, for all the Bugs in the universe would not balance you.
Nevertheless . . .
Kthaara's eyes went to LeBlanc's holo display of Home Hive Five. The four inhabited planets still glowed redly.
Nevertheless, brother, I can at least provide you with an impressive, if belated, funeral pyre.
All was in readiness. In the master plot on Li Chien-lu's flag bridge, the swarming green icons seemed to coil as Grand Fleet poised to strike.
"Lord Talphon . . . ?" Leroy McKenna diffidently indicated the countdown that was crawling through the last few minutes.
"Yes, I see," Kthaara acknowledged with a small nod to the chief of staff. His eyes met Vanessa Murakuma's in a moment of shared knowledge. Then he turned to the com pickup that was hooked into the flagship of every fleet, every task force, and every task group.
Anyone expecting a bloodthirsty oration is going to be disappointed, Kthaara thought. The way of the Zheeerlikou'valkhannaiee was to use few words, but heartfelt ones, at the important moments in their lives. The more important the moment, the fewer words with which it should be diminished. And so Kthaara'zarthan, Khanhaku Talphon, fourth cousin of the Khan'a'khanaaeee, Chairman of the Combined Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Grand Alliance, and Commanding Officer of the Alliance's Grand Fleet, gave the order which launched that fleet against the final home hive system in existence after the fashion of his people.
"Proceed," he said quietly.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR: The Vengeance of Kthaara'zarthan
The end could not be long-delayed.
The Fleet stood at bay in defense of the final System Which Must Be Defended, and the massive waves of robotic probes the Enemy had sent through the warp point again and again and again promised that its wait would not be much longer.
Introspection was not something to which the beings who crewed the Fleet were given, nor-in any sense humans or any of their allies would have understood-were hope, or happiness, or despair. Yet those units of the vast, corporate hunger which had spawned the Fleet who were responsible for analysis and strategic planning understood what had happened . . . and what was about to happen.
Not fully, of course. Those analysts had no equivalent of the emotions, the terror and hate, which drove their Enemies. They didn't understand love, or the ferocity broken love and loss-born vengeance could spawn. They served colder imperatives, ones in which the things which made their Enemies what they were-individuals-could have no place, for theirs was not a society of individuals, it was . . . an appetite. An omnivoracity, whose every facet and aspect rested upon a single, all-consuming compulsion: survival.
Survival at all costs. At any cost. Survival which had no other objective beyond the mere act of surviving. Survival which would inspire nothing but survival: not art, not epic poetry, not music or literature or philosophy. Not ethics. And certainly never anything so ephemeral and yet so central to all their Enemies were as honor.
And because that single imperative was all the Fleet's analysts truly understood, they could never grasp the entirety of what drove their enemies. Not that they would have cared if they had been able to grasp it. What mattered motivation, in the end? Their own imperative would have demanded the same action, although they would never have been so wasteful as simply to exterminate potential food sources if there was any way to avoid it. But emotionless, uncaring survival was a harsh and demanding god, and the analysts who had preceded those who now served the Fleet had given dozens of other species to it as its sacrifices. In the end, those sacrifices had been in vain. Indeed, although the analysts were far too alien to their Enemies to ever visualize the concept that any other course of action might even have been possible, those sacrifices were what had made the present disaster inevitable. The complete impossibility of coexistence-the all or nothing appetite which had driven something which could never truly be called a "civilization" to the very stars-left no other option, no other possible outcome, than this one.
That much, in their own way, the analysts grasped. The greater must overwhelm and devour the lesser. That was the law of the universe, the only path of survival, and their kind had enforced that law against every other species it had ever encountered, with a cold, uncaring efficiency which couldn't even be called ruthlessness, for the existence of "ruthlessness" implied the existence of an antitheses, and the analysts' kind could imagine nothing of the sort. Yet they'd always understood that he who could not eat his Enemies must, in turn, be eaten by them, and so they'd always known this moment must come if they failed to conquer.
And they had failed.
It was easy-now-to look back and trace the course of their failure, yet even now, on the brink of their final defeat, it was impossible for those analysts even to consider having followed any different course of action. Oh, yes-there were minor changes they might have made, a swifter response to overcoming the technological advantages of their Enemies, perhaps. Or possibly a less profligate expenditure of the Reserve in the early, all-out offensives of the war. Perhaps they might have diverted the resources of more than a single System Which Must Be Defended to the destruction of the Old Enemies . . . or perhaps they might have diverted less, in order to concentrate more fully against the New Enemies. Or-
There were many such possibilities, yet in the end, all were meaningless beside the one possibility which had never existed for a moment: the possibility of never beginning the war at all. Even now, the recognition that their automatic, instinctive response to the discovery of yet another sentient race might have been in error was impossible for the analysts to grasp or even consider.
They were what they were, and they'd done what they had done because what they were had been incapable of any other action, any other response. And so, in the final analysis, they weren't even "evil" as those who'd gathered to destroy them understood the term, for "evil" implied a choice, a decision between more than one possible course of action. And because the analysts had never been able to envision the possibility of choice-because they couldn't do so even now-they felt no guilt as they awaited the destruction of the final System Which Must Be Defended. Not for what they'd done to other species, and not even for what they had brought down upon their own. It would have been like expecting a whirlwind to feel a sense of blame, or a forest fire to feel remorse.
And yet, for all the monstrous gulf which separated them from their Enemies, the analysts shared, however tenuously, two emotions with those Enemies. In their own cold, dispassionate way, they knew despair. The despair which had swept over the citizens of Justin, of Kliean . . . of Telik. The despair which knew there was no escape, that no l
ast-second miracle would reprieve the Worlds Which Must Be Defended or turn aside the fiery doom their species' own actions had laid up for it.
And even in their despair, they knew one other fragile emotion: hope. Not for themselves, or for the System Which Must Be Defended, but rather for the System Which Must Be Concealed. For the single star system of which the very last courier drones to reach them from a murdered System Which Must Be Defended had whispered, and which might someday attain once more the status of a System Which Must Be Defended.
In time, perhaps, the System Which Must Be Concealed would wax powerful once more. Indeed, it must do so, if it survived at all. And perhaps, in some far distant day, the analysts which served the System Which Must Be Defended would return to this area of space-wiser, better prepared, knowing what they faced-and secure the survival of the new System Which Must Be Defended and its daughter Systems Which Must Be Defended in the only way that was certain: by destroying all possible competitor species, root and branch. And perhaps those future analysts would not return here. Perhaps they would seal off the warp point behind themselves and avoid these Enemies-forever, if that were possible, and for as long as possible, if it were not.
The present analysts couldn't know the answers to those questions. Nor, to be honest, did they much concern themselves with them, for they weren't questions these analysts would ever have to answer.
The questions they faced would be answered shortly . . . and forever.
* * *
The first scene of the last act commenced with an eruption of SBMHAWK carrier pods into Home Hive Five in the now-familiar pattern. First came the HARM-armed wave to take out the decoying ECM-equipped deep space buoys. Then came a truly massive wave armed with SBMs and CAM2s, targeted on the Bug gunboats, fortresses, and defensive cruisers.