"Somehow I don't see you as overly burdened by tradition, Hanat."

 

 

"I suppose not." Hanat laughed again, sadly, at Cai-trin's wry tone. "But he hasn'twritten on purpose. that's why I can't write him."

 

 

"Why not? If I'd waited for Angus to say something, we'd've died of old age! Of course, he's not exactly the verbal type, but the principle's the same."

 

 

"No, it isn't." Hanat's voice was so soft Caitrin had to strain to hear her. "Lantu loves me - I know he does, and he knows I know - but he won't admit it. Because - " she looked up, and tears spilled slowly down her cheeks " - he doesn't think he's coming back to me, Caitrin. He thinks he's going to die. Perhaps he even wants to. That's why I envy you and Angus so."

 

 

Caitrin bit her lip, staring into that tear-streaked alien face. Then she opened her arms. and Hanat burrowed into them and wept convulsively.

 

 

". outrage, Madam Speaker! This wanton bloodshed - this slaughter wreaked against helpless civilians - sets the Thebans beyond the pale! Fanaticism must not be allowed to cloak butchery with any semblance of excuse."

 

 

Yevgeny Owens paused, and a soft rumble of agreement filled in the space. It was strongest from the LibProgs, Anderson noted - not surprisingly, since Owens was Wai-deck's handpicked hatchet man - but a disturbing amount of it came from Erika Van Smitt's Liberal Democrats. And, he admitted unhappily, from his own Conservatives. He made himself sit still, folded hands resting on the head of his cane, and waited.

 

 

"Madam Speaker," Owens resumed more quietly, "this isn't the first time humanity has met racial insanity, nor the first time we've paid a price for meeting it. I remind this Assembly that few political leaders of the time could believe the truth about the Rigelians, either. We are told the Thebans have committed these unspeakable atrocities - have resorted to torture, to the murder of parents in order to steal and `convert' their children, to the coldblooded execution of entire towns and villages as'reprisals' against men and women fighting only to protect their world and people - in the name of religion. Of a religion, Madam Speaker, which deifies the very planet upon which we stand. And, we are told, that religion was concocted by humans in direct violation of the Edict of 2097.

 

 

"Perhaps it was, but what rational species could have accepted such a preposterous proposition? What rational species capable of interstellar travel, with all the knowledge of the universe that irriplies, could truly believe such arrant nonsense?"

 

 

Owens paused again, and this time there was only silence.

 

 

"I do not accept humanity's responsibility for this insanity," he finally continued, very softly. "We cannot hold ourselves accountable for the madness of another species, and only a species which is mad could wage `holy war' against the race which first gave them the blessings of technology in the name of some half-baked agglomeration of pseudo-religious maunderings. But even if humanity is responsible for the unintentional creation of this menace, for providing a race of interstellar sociopaths with the weapons of modern warfare and mass destruction, that does not change the situation we now face. Indeed, if such is the case, are we not confronted by an added dimension of obligation? If our species has, in any way, however unintentionally, helped create the crisis we face, it becomes our responsibility to face and accept whatever its final resolution demands of us.

 

 

"Madam Speaker, Ladies and Gentlemen of the Assembly, this matter cannot be settled on the basis of what we would like to be true. It can be resolved only on the basis of what is true, and the Thebans have proven their irrationality. Events on New New Hebrides and New Boston have proven their murderousness. The most recent Battle of Lorelei has proven their fanaticism. And when a murderous fanatic actively seeks martyrdom, when he is not merely willing but eager to die for his cause, then the only defense is to help him find the death he seeks."

 

 

The silence was icy as Owens paused a final time, and his eyes swept the Assembly's members from the huge screen behind the Speaker's podiun%

 

 

"And, Madam Speaker," he finished quietly, "what is true of an individual is a hundred times more true of an entire race of fanatics armed with starships and nuclear weapons. Not merely our own safety but that of the Galaxy itself requires that we override the Prohibition of 2249, and I now move that we so do."

 

 

He sat, and Anderson ground his teeth. Owens believed what he'd said; that was what made him so damnably convincing. and why Waldeck had chosen him to lead the LibProgs on this issue.

 

 

Anderson drew a deep breath and pressed his call key.

 

 

"The Chair recognizes President Emeritus Howard Anderson," Chantal Duval said, and he started to rise as his image replaced Owens', then changed his mind. His legs' aching unsteadiness was growing worse, and it made him look feeble at a time when he must show no sign of weakness, allow no suggestion that he spoke from senility rather than clear-minded logic.

 

 

"Madam Speaker, Ladies and Gentlemen of the Assembly." He was pleased his voice still sounded strong, at least. "Mister Owens argues that the Thebans are mad.

 

 

He argues, in effect, that humanity simply provided a vehicle through which that madness might express itself - that if it were not for'the Faith of Holy Terra' they would have found some other madness to spur their actions. And he argues most cogently that we cannot make decisions on the basis of what we wish were true but only on the basis of what is true."

 

 

He paused for just a moment, then shook his head.

 

 

"He is, of course, correct." A shiver of surprise ran through the Assembly at his admission. "The worst mistake any governing body can possibly make is to allow hopes ana expectations to twist its perception of reality. But, ladies and gentlemen, I must tell you that I have already seen this governing body do precisely that. Not simply once, but many times."

 

 

Feet shifted in a soft susurration of sound, and he smiled thinly.

 

 

"Oh, yes, ladies and gentlemen. I am an old man - a very old man, whom some of you call'senile' - who has watched the Terran Federation grow and change for over a century. Over a century, ladies and gentlemen. I've served it as a naval officer, as president, and now as a member of this Assembly, and I have seen it prove the heights to which all the best in humanity may aspire. I have seen the Federation resist aggression. Ive seen it suffer terrible losses and fight through to victory. I have seen it extend the values we hold dear to its member worlds and forge the community of Man across the stars.

 

 

"But I have also seen terrible, terrible mistakes. Mistakes made in this very chamber, with the highest of purposes and the most noble of intentions. Mistakes made by good and compassionate people as often as by those less good and more unscrupulous." Across the chamber from him, Pericles Waldeck stiffened angrily, but his face was expressionless.

 

 

"Ladies and gentlemen, in 2246 this Assembly made one of those terrible mistakes. It made it for the highest of moral reasons - and for the most base. It elected to endorse the decision embodied in Grand Fleet Head quarters Directive Eighteen, authorizing genocidal attacks on the civilian populations of the Rigelian Protectorate."

 

 

The silence was absolute as his wise old eyes swept the chamber.

 

 

"We had no choice," Anderson said softly. "That was what we told ourselves. The Rigelians were insane, we said. There were too many worlds of them, and they fought too fanatically. Every Rigelian regarded himself or herself as an expendable asset, and no more honorable end existed for him or her than to die attempting to destroy any being who challenged the supremacy of the Rigelian race. Conquest was virtually impossible; occupation forces would of necessity have been insupportably huge. The casualties we'd already suffered - casualties thousands of times greater than those we have suffered in this war - would have been multiplied a thousand-fold again had we sought to invade thpse worlds. and in the end, we would have had to kill them all anyway.

 

 

"And so, ladies and gentlemen, the Terran Federation elected not to spend the lives of millions of humans and millions of our Orion and Ophiuchi and Gormish allies. The Federation elected instead to murder entire worlds with massive bombardments - bombardments very like that of New Boston - " spines stiffened at his quiet words " - because our only other option was to kill them one by one on the surfaces of those planets at the cost of too many of our own."

 

 

He paused once more, letting what he'd said sink in, then leaned closer to the pickup.

 

 

"All of those arguments were valid, but I was here - here in this very chamber, in the midst of the debate - and there was another argument, as well. One that was voiced only in whispers, only by implication, just as it , is today. And that argument, ladies and gentlemen, was vengeance."

 

 

He hissed the last word, eyes locked on Owens' face across the floor, and saw the other man bite his lip.

 

 

"I do not say we could have avoided Directive Eighteen. I do not say that we should have avoided it. But I do say, as one who was there, that even if we could have avoided it we would. not. have. done. so." The slow, spaced words were cut from crystal shards of ice, and the old, blue eyes on the master display screen were colder yet.

 

 

"We had too many dead. Half a million Terrans at Medial Station. Eight and a half million at Tannerman. One and a third billion on Lassa's World, a billion more in Codalus. A billion Orions on Tol, another ninety million on Gozal'hira, eight hundred fifty thousand in Chilli-wait. Our military deaths alone were over two million, the Orions' were far worse, and we weren't gods, ladies and gentlemen. We wanted more than an end to the fighting and dying. We wanted vengeance. and we got it.

 

 

"Perhaps it was also justice, or at least inevitable. I would like to believe that. I try to believe that. But it was more than justice. Our Ophiuchi allies knew that even before we did it. They refused to participate in the bombardments, and for that refusal some of us called them `moral cowards'. until the smoke cleared, and we knew it too.

 

 

"And so the same Assembly which authorized Directive Eighteen drafted the Anti-Genocide Prohibition of 2249. Not because it knew it had murdered an entire species when it need not have, but because it was afraid it had. Because it had acted in haste and hatred, and it could never know whether or not it might have acted differently. The Prohibition doesn't forbid genocidal attacks, ladies and gentlemen. It simply stipulates that any such future act must be authorized by a two-thirds majority of this Assembly. In a very real sense, the blood debt for our own actions is that the Legislative Assembly must forever more assume - specifically, unequivocally, and inescapably - the responsibility for acting in the same way yet again.

 

 

"I had hoped," he said very quietly, "to be dead before a second such decision faced this Assembly. Most of my

 

 

We know wfiat tnose wno caff for vengeance feef ancf think, for we have felt and thought those same things.

 

 

"But Thebans, ladies and gentlemen, are not Rigelians. They now hold but a single habitable system. We are not speaking of billions of casualties from assaults on planet after planet. And whether they are mad or not, whether their madness would have found a vehicle without the interference of Alois Saint-Just and his fellow survivors or not, the'religion' which drives them did come from humanity. Perhaps they are mad, but have humans not shown sufficient religious `madness' of their own? How many millions have we killed for `God' in our time? Have we learned from our own bloody past? And if we have, may not the `mad' Theban race also be capable of learning with time?

 

 

`I don't know. But remember this, ladies and gentlemen - on New New Hebrides their Inquisition did not, to the best of our knowledge, kill a single child. Certainly children died in the invasion bombardments, and certainly children died on New Boston, but even when entire New New Hebridan villages were exterminated, the children were first removed. We may call this'stealing children' if we will. We may call preserving children who know their parents have been slaughtered cruelty, or argue that they did it only to `brainwash' them. But they spared their lives. and Rigelians would not have."

 

 

He paused yet again, then shook his head slowly.

 

 

"Ladies ana gentlemen, I can't tell you we can safely spare the Theban race. I can't tell you that, because until we reach Thebes, we simply cannot know. But that, ladies and gentlemen, is the purpose of the Prohibition of 2249 - to force us to wait, to compel us to discover the truth before we act. And so, with all due respect to Mister Owens, I must ask you to withhold your decision. Wait, ladies and gentlemen. Wait until Admiral Antonov secures control of the Theban System. Wait until we are not acting out of vengeance and

 

 

`Tarn an ofrfman," he repeated softly, "but most of you. are not. 1 `t'tvave paid my price vn gui't'tt and nightmares; you haven't. yet. Perhaps, as I, you will have no choice, but don't, I beg you, rush to pay it. Wait. Wait just a little longer - if not for the Thebans, then for yourselves."

 

 

He cut the circuit and bowed his head over his folded hands, and utter silence hovered in the vast chamber. Then an attention bell chimed.

 

 

"The Chair," Chantal Duval said softly, "recognizes the Honorable Assemblyman for Fisk."

 

 

Yevgeny Owens stood. Anger still burned in his face and determination still stiffened his spine, but there were shadows of ghosts in his eyes, and his voice was very quiet when he spoke.

 

 

"Madam Chairman, I withdraw my motion pending the outcome of Admiral Antonov's attack on Thebes."

 

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN At All Costs

 

 

Ivan Antonov walked through the outer reaches of the Thebes System with light-second strides, and occasional asteroids whirled past nim like insects. Not many - the Thebans had had generations to clear away a horizontal segment of the belt, as if it had been sliced across by a war-god's sword, and Antonov walked on a "floor" of artificially-arranged space rubble, while over his head there streamed a like "ceiling." Both held asteroids in a far higher density than anything in nature, but they were principally defined by the regularly spaced giant planetoids that had been forged into fortresses of unthinkable strength. Considerations of weapons' ranges and fields of fire had created that pattern, and the precision of its geometry was almost beautiful, like a decorative tracery worked in the dull silver of dim, reflected sunlight that would have been lovely. save for the mass death it held.

 

 

He turned his two-hundred-thousand-kilometer body on its heel and started back toward the warp point, deep in thought. He reached it in a few steps, and the universe wavered, then dissolved, returning nim to the human scale of things, facing the small groujp of people standing against the outer wall of Gosainthan'smain nolo tank.

 

 

Amazing how good these computer-enhanced simulations have gotten. Of course, this one was Winnie's pride and joy, painstakingly constructed with Lantu's help. He sometimes worried about the day when simulacra this good became commercially available - the sensation could become addictive.

 

 

He shook off the thought and addressed his staff. "I have reviewed all aspects of our operational plan and can find no fault with it - except, of course, that it requires a force level that we don't have entirely in place as yet. Still, the build-up is On schedule, and that will soon change."

 

 

"True, Admiral." Lantu crossed his arms behind him as he studied the holo display Antonov had just left and gave the softly buzzing hum of a Theban sigh. "Yet I remain somewhat concerned over the one completely uncertain variable. I wish I knew what the Ministry of Production's done about strikefighter development in light of Redwing. I suspect recent events have lent the project rather more urgency than my own earlier recommendations."

 

 

He paused, and his yellow eyes met Antonov's with an almost-twinkle, half-apologetic and half-rueful. The human admiral looked back impassively, but there might have been the ghost of an answering twinkle, the commiseration of one professional with a fellow hamstrung by inept, short-sighted superiors. Lantu turned back to the holo with a tiny shrug.

 

 

"Of course," he continued wryly, "I haven't exactly been privy to the Synod's decisions since Redwing, so I can only offer the truism that knowing a thing can be done is often half the battle in matters of R and D."

 

 

Winnifred Trevayne gave the somewhat annoying sniff that, in her, accompanied absolute certitude about her own conclusions. "I don't entirely share First Admiral Lantu's worries, sir. Permit me to reiterate my earlier line of reasoning.

 

 

"I don't think there can be any doubt that the Thebans have become well aware of the disadvantages imposed by their lack of fighters, but Lorelei's defenders obviously anticipated a desperate defensive action, as proved by their crustal defense and clearly pre-plannea ramming attacks. This was natural, given Lorelei's crucial nature and the fact that the best they can possibly hope for against the Federation's mobilized industrial potential is a defensive war. Anyone prepared to expend starships in Kamikaze attacks would certainly have committed fighters to the defense of Lorelei if they'd had them." She glanced at Berenson, who nodded; the intelligence officer had stated simple military sanity.

 

 

"We can therefore conclude,' she resumed, all didacticism, "that three months ago, when we took Lorelei, the Thebans did not possess fighters - not, at least, in useful numbers. Given this fact, they cannot possibly have built enough of them, or produced sufficient pilots and launch platforms, to make a difference when our attack goes in next month."

 

 

She stopped and looked around triumphantly, as if challenging anyone to find a flaw in her argument.

 

 

"Your logic is impeccable, Commander," Lantu admitted, "But permit me to remind you of the great limitation of logic: your conclusion can be no better than your premises. And one of your premises disturbs me: the assumption that the Church does, indeed, consider itself on the defensive. or, at least, that it did at the time of the Battle of Lorelei."

 

 

They all stared at him, speechlessly wondering how the Synod could not so regard itself in the face of its disastrous strategic position. All but Antonov, who looked troubled.

 

 

Hannah Avram's feet rested inelegantly on the edge of the conference table as she watched the tactical simulation in the tank. It ended, and she grimaced. Dick had gotten her escort carriers up to sixteen units, and according to the tank, she'd just lost thirteen of them.

 

 

She rose to prowl Haruna's briefing room, fists jammed into her tunic pockets. The problem was, it all depended on the assumptions she fed the computer. If the Thebans followed their own tactical doctrine, and if they didn't know about her tiny carriers, then Antonov'sdevious ploy should get her into Thebes unscathed. And if she got in unscathed and got beyond shipboard weapon range, her fighters should sting the Shellheads to death, since nothing they had could reach her. If she ran the problem with those assumptions, the computer usually killed no more than three snips. If she changed any one of them, losses climbed steeply. If she changed any two of them, her command was virtually annihilated.

 

 

She came to a stop, frowning down into the tank. Her ships were so small, so fragile, without the shields and armor of fleet carriers. In a way, that ought to help protect them - they shouldn't look like worthwhile targets until they launched - but if anyone did shoot at them, they would certainly die.

 

 

Yet she'd gone over Antonov's ops plan again and again, and she couldn't argue with any of its underlying assumptions. Based on what they knew and had observed, it was brilliant. The only thing that could really screw it up was for the Shellheads to surprise them with fighters of their own, and she had to agree with the logic of Commander Trevayne's analysis.

 

 

But some deeply-hidden uncertainty nagged at her. Worse, she knew it nagged at Antonov, whether he chose to acknowledge it or not.

 

 

"Za vashe zdorovye!"

 

 

Kthaara responded with a phonetic approximation of the Russian toast of which he was extremely proud, but Tsuchevsky mumbled his response, clearly preoccupied.

 

 

"What is the matter, Paaavaaaal Saairgaaiaavychhh?" the Orion asked expansively. As always, his spirits had risen with the approach of decisive action. "Are you still worried by that Theban's misgivings?" He gave the chok-ed-off snarl that answered to a human's snort of impatience, tossed off his drink, reached for a refill, then offered the bottle to Tsuchevsky. "Come, Paasssha. Why are you fucking a mairkazh?"

 

 

It was the first time he'd essayed that particular transliteration, and Tsuchevsky sputtered into nis vodka, spilling half of it to Kthaara's loud cry of anguish. But Antonov only allowed himself a brief smile. He hadn't shared the contents of Howard Anderson's latest message with the other two. There was no reason why they should have to share his own frustration at acting under politically-imposed time pressure. Besides, Kthaara wouldn't understand. To him, preparation for battle was an annoying necessity; he would never really be able to sympathize with a desire for more of it.

 

 

The admiral's slight smile vanished and he brooded down into his glass as he contemplated the machinations of that most loathsome of all human sub-species, the politico. There were, he conceded, occasional true statesmen in human history. Unfortunately, their rare appearances only made the lower orders of political life even more disgusting by contrast. Yevgeny Owens might have withdrawn his motion, but Pericles Waldeck haa refused to accept defeat. He'd simply shifted to other, less-principled front men to keep the issue alive, and he was taking gradual toll of the anti-override mood (and, Antonov could tell, of Anderson's health). The attack could be postponed no longer. It would, as he'd just announced to nis staff, commence in ninety-six hours.

 

 

Damn all politicians to hell! Antonov shook himself and tossed off his vodka. Cheer up, Vanya! Things could be worse.

 

 

The stupendous asteroid fortresses waited, three and a quarter light-hours from the binary star system's GO component. The distance-dimmed light of Thebes A woke spectral gleams from occasional surface domes and sensor arrays, out the fortresses' teeth were hidden at their iron hearts. It had been the work of decades to clear the cosmic rubble of the star's outermost asteroid belt away from the closed warp point, but the largest lumps of debris had been carefully saved when the rest went to the orbital smelters. The huge chunks of rock and metal, most as large or larger than Sol's Ceres or Epsilon Eridani's Mjolnir, had been bored and hollowed to receive their weapons and station-keeping drives, then towed by fleets of tugs to their new positions.

 

 

They floated within their own immense minefields, sullen NN't't't'tV't't power, shielded and armored, fit to laugh at armadas. The Sword of Terra's final mobile units - destroyers and light cruisers, supported by a pitiful handful of superdreadnoughts and battle-cruisers, a scattering of captured infidel carriers, and the converted freighter "barges" the Ministry of Production had cobbled up - hovered behind them, beyond the projected range of the infidels' new weapons, but it was the fortresses which mattered. The smallest of those titans was seven times as powerful as the largest superdreadnought ever built; the biggest was beyond comprehension, its strength graspable only through abstract statistics. Once there'd been no doubt of their ability to smash any attack, but that was before the infidels revealed their warp-capable missiles.

 

 

Now construction ships labored furiously, modifying and refitting frantically in light of Lorelei. They couldn'tpossibly finish all they had to do, and too many of the new systems - the massed batteries of point defense stations and hastily constructed hangar bays - were surface installations, for there was no time to bury them deep, but the engineers and fortress crews had attacked their duties with desperate energy, for the People stood at bay.

 

 

The last bastion of the Faith lay behind those forts, and the Holy Messenger's own degenerate race hovered one bare transit away, poised to break through in this dark hour and crush the Faith it had abandoned. Beside such horror as that, clean death in Holy Terra's cause was to be embraced, not feared, for death meant less than nothing when the fate of God Herself rested in their merely mortal hands.

 

 

Ivan Antonov's eyes watched the first-wave SBM-HAWKs' cloud of tiny lights reach the warp point, waver slightly on the display, and vanish. Then they turned to the other precise clusters of matching lights, each indicating yet another wave that waited, quiescent.

 

 

It was different this time. Each of those waves had not a class of targets, but a single one.

 

 

He glanced across the flag bridge at Lantu, standing with Angus MacRory. It hadn't been easy to retrieve the data to permit such precise targeting. No conscious mind - least of all one whose primary concerns had lain in the realms of grand strategy - could hold such a mass of technical minutiae, and adapting the techniques of hypnotic retrieval to a hitherto-unknown race had been a heartbreaking labor. And, of course, however willing he might be, Lantu's subconscious couldn't yield up what it had never known - such as any last-minute refitting the forts might have undergone. But what they now knew should be enough.

 

 

Lantu watched a smaller version of the same display through the cloudy veil of his inner eyelids. He forced his face to remain impassive, and he was glad so few humans had yet learned to read Theban body language.

 

 

The last of the first wave of lights vanished, and he closed his outer lids, as well, wishing he'd been able to stay away. Like Fraymak. The colonel had never questioned Lantu's decision, yet he hadn't been able to bring himself to watch the working out of its consequences. But Lantu couldn't not watch. He knew too much about what waited beyond that warp point, knew too many of the officers and men those missiles were about to kill. He had reached an agonizing point of balance, an acceptance of what he must do that had given him the strength to do it. but it was no armor against the nightmares. So now he watched the weapons he had forged for the death of the People's defenders, for to do otherwise would have been one betrayal more than he could make. Angus MacRory never said much; now he said nothing at all, but his hand squeezed Lantu's shoulder. He felt it through his shoulder carapace, but he didn't open his eyes. He only inhaled deeply and reached up to cover it with one four-fingered hand.

 

 

A wave of almost eager horror greeted the first infidel missile packs. Nerves tightened as the hell weapons blinked into existence and the defenders realized the climactic battle of the People's life was upon them, but at least it had come. At least there was no more waiting.

 

 

Captain Ithanad had the watch in Central Missile Defense aboard the command fortress Saint Elmo when the alarms began to shriek. His teams were already plotting the emerging weapons, and he swallowed sour fear as he saw the blossoming threat sources.

 

 

"All units, engage!" he barked through the alarms' howl.

 

 

Second Fleet's SBMHAWKs darted through the minefields virtually unscathed while the fortress crews rushed to battle stations and the first defensive fire reached out. Three squadrons of Theban fighters on standing combat patrol swooped into the mines after them, firing desperately, and a few - a very few - of the wildly dodging packs were killed. But not enough to make a difference. Targeting systems stabilized and locked, and hundreds of missiles leapt from their launchers.

 

 

Captain Ithanad paled.

 

 

The missile pods weren't spreading their fire. The infidels must have captured detailed data on Thebes, for every one of those missiles had selected the same target: Saint Elmo, the very heart and brain of the defenses!

 

 

Hundreds of SBMs streaked towards his fortress in a single, massive salvo, and Ithanad's lips moved in silent prayer. Many of them were going to miss; more than four hundred of them weren't.

 

 

This time the SBMHAWK wasn't a total surprise, and Saint Elmo was no mere OWP. Her already powerful anti-missile defenses had been radically overhauled in the four-month delay Jahanak's stand had imposed upon Second Fleet, and not even that colossal salvo was enough to saturate her tracking ability. But it was enough to saturate her firepower.

 

 

Space burned with the glare of counter missiles. Laser clusters fired desperately. Multi-barreled auto-cannon spewed thousands upon thousands of shells, hurling solid clouds of metal into the paths of incoming weapons. Over two hundred SBMHAWKs died, enough to stop any previously conceivable missile attack cold. but almost two hundred got through.

 

 

Captain Ithanad clung to his command chair as the universe went mad. Safety straps - straps he'd never expected to need on a fortress Saint Elmo's size - bruised his flesh savagely, and the thunder went on and on and on.

 

 

Antimatter warheads wrapped Saint Elmo in a fiery shroud, and her surface boiled as her gargantuan shields went down. Fireballs crawled across her like demented suns, gouging, ripping, destroying. Her titanic mass resisted stubbornly, out nothing material could defy such fury.

 

 

The long, rolling concussion came for Captain Ithanad and his ratings and swept them into death.

 

 

The Sword of Holy Terra stared in horror at the sputtering, incandescent ruin. Saint Elmo wasn't - quite - dead. Perhaps five percent of her weapons remained. Which was a remarkable testimonial to the engineers who'd designed and built her, but not enough to make her an effective fighting unit.

 

 

And Saint Elmo had been their most powerful - and best protected - installation.

 

 

Tracking crews aboard the other fortresses bent over their displays, tight-faced and grim, waiting for the next hellish wave of pods.

 

 

"Second wave SBMHAWKs spotted for transit, Admiral," Tsuchevsky reported.

 

 

"Very well, Commodore." Antonov glanced at the chronometer. "You will launch in three hours fifty minutes."

 

 

"Aye, aye, sir." The chief of staff shivered as he turned back to his own displays, wondering what it must feel like to sit and wait Tor it on the far side of that warp point. He pictured the exquisite agony of tight-stretched nerves, the nausea and fear gnawing at the defenders' bellies, and decided he didn't really want to know.

 

 

He glanced at Admiral Lantu, hunched over the repeater display beside a tight-faced Angus MacRory, and turned quickly back to his instruments.

 

 

The alarms shrieked yet again, dragging Fifth Admiral Panhanal up out of his exhausted doze as the holo sphere filled with familiar horror. He didn't have to move to see it. He sat on the bridge of the superdreadnought Charles P. Steadman, just as he'd sat for almost a week now. He would have killed for a single night's undisturbed sleep or died for a bath, yet such luxuries had become dreams from another life. He stank, and his skin crawled under his vac suit, but he thrust the thought aside - again - and fought back curses as the fresh wave of missile pods spewed from the warp point.

 

 

He rubbed his eyes, trying to make himself think, for he was the Sword's senior officer since Fourth Admiral Wantar had died with Fleet Chaplain Urlad aboard Ma-sada. That had been. yesterday? The day before?

 

 

It didn't matter. The devils in Lorelei had pounded his defenses for days, sending wave after wave of hell-spawned missiles through the warp point. They could have sent them all through at once, but they'd chosen to prolong their Terra-damned bombardment, staggering the waves, taunting the Sword with their technical superiority. Each attack was targeted upon a single, specific fortress, mocking the People with the totality of the data they must have captured. The shortest interval between waves had been less than fifteen minutes, the longest over nine hours, stretching the Sword's crews upon a rack of anticipation between the deadly precision of their blows.

 

 

He watched his units do their best to kill the pods. and fail. He'd brought his precious carriers to within forty light-seconds to maintain heavier fighter patrols, for the fortresses' exposed hangar decks had been ripped away by the crushing, endless bombardment. The fighters had gotten better at killing the pods. for a time. But their pilots were too green and fatigued to keep it up, and keeping them on standing patrol this way exhausted them further, yet even as their edge and reflexes eroded they remained his best defense.

 

 

The latest attack wave paused suddenly. He shut his eyes as the cloud of missiles slashed towards Verdun, the last of his fortresses, and behind his closed lids he saw the storm of defensive fire pouring forth to meet them. A soft sound - not really a moan, out dark with pain - rose from his bridge officers.

 

 

Panhanal opened his eyes and turned to the visual display as the terrible flashes died. Then he relaxed with a sigh. Verdun had been built into one of the smaller asteroids, and there was nothing left of her. Just nothing at all.

 

 

He leaned back, checking the status boards. Half a dozen of the once invincible forts remained, but all were broken and crippled, little more dangerous than as many superdreadnoughts. Indeed, Vicksburg and Rorke's Drift were less heavily armed than battle-cruisers. Forty yean of labor had been wiped away in six hideous days, and Terra only knew how many thousands of his warriors had perished with them. Panhanal didn't know, and he never wanted to.

 

 

The infidels would come now that they'd killed the forts. But at least the minefields remained. He tried to cheer himself with that, for he knew what those mines would have done to any assault the People might have made. Yet the infidels had to know about the mines - the precision of their attacks proved they'd known exactly what they faced. And if they knew about them and still meant to attack, then they must think they knew a way to defeat them.

 

 

The thought ground at his battered morale, and he prayed his personnel felt less hopeless than he. Of course, the rest of the Sword didn't know Fleet Chaplain Sanak had excused himself briefly from Steadman's flag bridge last night. Not for long. Just long enough to go to his cabin, put the muzzle of his machine-pistol in his mouth, and squeeze the trigger. Panhanal made himself look away from the empty chair beside his own.

 

 

"Stana by all units," ne rasped.

 

 

"Aye, sir. Standing by," his flag captain replied in a hoarse, weary voice.

 

 

The neat files of light dots moving slowly toward the warp point in Antonov's display belied the motley nature of the ships they represented.

 

 

Against all reasonable expectation, the tramp freighter had reappeared in the interstellar age. The reactionless drive represented a healthy initial investment, but its operating expenses were small, as it required no reaction mass. Ana the nature of the warp lines meant any vessel that could get into deep space could travel between the stars, so there was a vast number of hulls to be commandeered. The real problem - and the cause of much of the delay - had been the need to equip them with minimal deception-mode ECM so that they could fill the role Lantu had in mind for them. And if they did that, then they were worth every millicredit of the compensation that had been paid to their owners. Tsuchevsky cleared his throat softly, and Antonov saw the time had arrived. The chief of staff - and, even more so, Kthaara - had been fidgeting for hours, but Antonov had been adamant. The Tnebans must have time to feel their exhaustion and despair, just enough for their tense readiness in the wake of the final SBMHAWK salvo to ease a bit.

 

 

Now he nodded, and Tsuchevsky began transmitting orders.

 

 

Admiral Panhanal's crews had relaxed. Or, no, they hadn't "relaxed" so much as sagged in dull-minded weariness when no immediate attack followed Verdun's destruction. Panhanal knew they had, and even as he tried to goad and torment them into vigilance, his heart wept for them. Yet it was his job, and -

 

 

Two hundred superdreadnoughts erupted into the system of Thebes.

 

 

The admiral stared at his read-outs in stark, horrified disbelief as entire flotillas of capital ships warped into the teeth of his mines in a deadly, endless stream of insanely tight transits. Not possible! It wasn't possible! Not the Satan-Khan himself could have conjured such an armada!

 

 

"Launch all fighters!" he barked, and then the visual display exploded.

 

 

Despite himself Panhanal cringed away from its flaming fury. He peered at it through his inner eyelids, outer lids slitted against the incandescence, and a tiny part of his weary mind realized something was amiss. Wave after wave of ships appeared, dying in their dozens as the mines blew them apart, but they were dying too quickly. Too easily.

 

 

And then he understood. Those weren't superdreadnoughts - they were dronesl They had to be. Fitted with ECM to suck the mines in if they were under manual control, perhaps, but not real superdreadnoughts, and his blood ran cold as he realized what he was seeing. The infidels weren't "sweeping" the mines; they were absorbing them!

 

 

He cursed aloud, pounding the padded arm of his chair. His mines were hurling themselves at worthless hulks, expending themselves, ripping the heart from his defenses, and there was nothing he could do about it!

 

 

The last freighter vanished into the nothingness of the warp point, and the lead group of the real assault's first wave - five superdreadnoughts converted for mine-sweeping - moved ponderously up. Antonov watched their lights advance, followed by those of the second group - three unconverted superdreadnoughts and three of Hannah Avram's escort carriers.

 

 

The lead group reached the warp point, and their lights wavered and went out.

 

 

The superdreadnought Finsteraarhorn blinked into reality, ana the surviving Theban mines hurtled to meet her, but the tramp freighters' "assault" had done its job. Only a fraction of them remained, and Finsteraarhorn's heavy point defense handled the attacking satellites with ease. More ships appeared behind her, and their external ordnance lashed out at the air-bleeding wrecks of the surviving fortresses.

 

 

Return fire spat back, x-ray lasers and sprint missiles hammering at pointblank range. The last mines expended themselves uselessly, lasers lacerated armor and hulls, shields went down under the hammer blows of missiles that got through the mine-sweepers' point defense, yet they survived.

 

 

Rear Admiral Hannah Avram exhaled in relief as TFNS Mosquito made transit behind the superdreadnought Pike's Peak. Mosquito had survived - and that meant the anti-mine plan had worked.

 

 

Her eyes narrowed as her stabilizing plot flickered back to life. The lead group of mine-sweepers streamed atmosphere from their wounded flanks, yet they were all still there, and TFNS Rainier followed on Mosquito's heels. The light codes of Theban capital ships blazed, but they were hanging back, obviously afraid Antonov had reserved a "mousetrap" wave of SBMHAWKs as he had in LoreleL-A half-dozen forts were still in action - no, only five, she corrected herself as the avalanche of Pike's Peak's external missiles struck home - and the Shellheads were following their doctrine. They'd never seen her escort carriers, and they weren't wasting so much as a missile on lowly "destroyers" while superdreadnoughts floated on their targeting screens. Now to get the hell out of range before they changed their minds.

 

 

"All right, Danny. Course is one-one-seven by two-eight-three. Let's move it!"

 

 

"Aye, aye, sir!" MaGuire acknowledged, and she heard him snapping maneuvering orders as the next group of superdreadnoughts and escort carriers made transit behind them. It looked like the dreaded battle was going to be far less terrible than anyone had predicted, especially if -

 

 

Her heart almost stopped as the first fighter missile exploded against Rainier's shields.

 

 

Admiral Panhanal bared his teeth, bloodshot eyes flaring. The ready squadrons had clearly taken the infidels unaware - there hadn't even been any defensive fire as they closed! - and now all of his fighters were launching.

 

 

TFNS Rainier shuddered as her shields went down and fighter missiles spalled her drive field, and her fighter/missile defense officer stared at his read-outs in shock. Fighters! The Shellheads had fightersl

 

 

His fingers stabbed his console, reprogramming his defenses to engage fighters instead of missiles, but there was no time. More and more missiles pounded his ship, and the fighters closed on their heels with lasers. He fought to readjust to the end, panic suppressed by professionalism, and then he and his ship died.

 

 

"Launch all - No!" Hannah chopped off her own instinctive order as Battle Plot's full message registered. Theban fighters speckled the plot, not in tremendous numbers, but scores more were appearing at the edge of detection, and every one of them was the bright green of a friendly unit!

 

 

She swallowed a vicious curse of understanding. The Thebans had duplicated their captured Terran fighters' IFF as well as their power plants and weapons - and that meant there was no way to tell her fighters from theirs!

 

 

"Communications! Courier drone to the Flag - Priority One! `Enemy strikefighters detected. Enemy fighter emission and IFF signatures identical, repeat, identical, to our own. Am withholding launch pending location of enemy launch platforms. Message ends.'"

 

 

"Aye, aye, sir!"

 

 

"Follow it up with an all-ships transmission to the rest of the task group as they make transit. `Do not, repeat, not, launch fighters. Form on me at designated coordinates.''

 

 

"Aye, aye, sir. Drone away."

 

 

"Tracking, back-plot that big strike. Get me a vector and do it now!"

 

 

"We're on it, sir." Commander Braunschweig's voice was tight but confident, and Hannah nodded. More and more Theban fighters crept over the rim of her display, and she looked up at her fighter operations officer.

 

 

"You've got maybe ten minutes to figure out how our people are going to keep things straight, Commodore Mitchell."

 

 

The message from Mosquito's courier drone appeared simultaneously on Antonov's and Lantu's computer screens, and at effectively the same instant, their heads snapped up. Two pairs of eyes - molten yellow and arctic gray - met in shared horror. No words were necessary; it was their first moment of absolute mutual understanding.

 

 

"Commodore Tsuchevsky," Antonov's deep, rock-steady voice revealed how shaken he was only to those whok new him well. "Have communications pass a warning to assault groups that have not yet departed. And give me a priority link to Admiral Berenson.'

 

 

TFNS Mosquito raced away from the besieged super-dreadnoughts, followed by her sisters. It took long, endless minutes for all of them to make transit, and Hannah's face was bloodless as she watched the first massed Theban strike smash home. Only a handful of fighters came after her "destroyers," and she forced herself to fight back only with her point defense. Her own pilots would have been an incomparably better defense. but not enough better.

 

 

Her conscious mind was still catching up with her instinctive response, yet it told her she'd done the right thing. If she d launched immediately, her fighters might have made a difference in the fleet defense role, but their effectiveness would have been badly compromised by the identification problems. Worse, they would have further complicated the capital ships' fighter-defense problems; the superdreadnougnts would have been forced to fire at any fighter, for they could never have sorted out their true enemies. But worst of all, it would have identified her carriers for what they were, and there was no question what the Thebans would have done. Her tiny, fragile ships represented a full third of Second Fleet's fighter strength. Antonov couldn't afford to spend them for no return.

 

 

She winced as another Terran superdreadnought blew apart. And a third. She could feel her crews' fury - fury directed at her as she ran away from their dying fellows - and she understood it perfectly.

 

 

Fifth Admiral Panhanal tasted his bridge crew's excitement. The Wings of Death were proving more effective than they'd dared hope. The infidels had smashed his fortresses and won a space clear of mines in which to deploy, but it wouldn'tsave them. His strikefighters i swarmed about them like enraged hansal, striking sava gely with missiles and then closing with lasers. They were as exhausted as any of his warriors, and their inexperience showed - their percentage of hits was far lower than the infidel pilots usually managed - but there were many of them. Indeed, if they could continue as well as theyd begun, they might yet hold the warp point for Holy Terra!

 

 

He glanced at a corner of his plot, watching the fleeing infidel destroyers, and his nostrils flared with contempt. Only three of his fighter squadrons had even fired at the cowards! If the rest of their cursed fleet proved as gutless.

 

 

"Well, Commodore?" Hannah asked harshly.

 

 

The last of the superdreadnoughts had made transit and the first battleships were coming through. The warp point was a boil of bleeding capital ships and fishtailing strikefighters lit by the flash and glare of fighter missiles, and her own ship was sixteen light-seconds from it. Her rearmost units were less than twelve light-seconds out, but it was far enough. It had to be.

 

 

"Sir, I'm sorry, but we can't guarantee our IDs." Mitchell met her eyes squarely. ` We're resetting our transponders, which should give us at least a few minutes' grace, but they've got exactly the same equipment. There's no way we can keep them from shifting to match us."

 

 

"Understood. But we can differentiate for at least a few minutes?"

 

 

"Yes, sir," Mitchell said confidently.

 

 

"All right. Bobbi, do you have those carriers for me?"

 

 

"I think so, sir," Roberta Braunschweig said. "We've got what looks like three or four Wb//7jo¯nd-dass carriers - prizes, no doubt - and something else. If I had to guess, they're converted freighters like our barges back in Danzig, but the range is too great for positive IDs."

 

 

Hannan turned back to Mitchell. "I know we don't have time to set this up the way you'd like, but I want you to hit those carriers. Retain four strikegroups for task group defense. All the rest go." Her gaze locked with his. Those carriers are `all costs' targets, Commodore," she said softly.

 

 

TFNS Baden reeled under repeated, deafening impacts, and only the bridge crew's crash couches saved them. Most oi them. The deck canted wildly for a mad instant before the artificial gravity reassumed control, and the bridge was filled with the smoke and actinic glare of electrical fires.

 

 

"Damage control to the bridge!" Captain Lars Nielsen's voice sounded strange through the roaring in his head. His stomach churned as he felt his ship'spain, heard her crying out in agony in the scream of damage alarms, and his nand locked on his quivering command chair's arm as if to share it. She was too old for this. Too old. Taken from the Reserve and refitted to face this horror instead of ending her days in the peace she'd earned.

 

 

Another salvo of missiles smashed at her, and drive rooms exploded under their fury. Baden's speed dropped, and Nielsen knew she could never prevent the next squadron of fighters from maneuvering into her blind zone and administering the coup de grace.

 

 

He stared at his one still-functioning tactical display, eyes bitter as he recognized the amateurishness of the Theban pilots. They should have been easy meat for the fighters aboard the escort carriers - the carriers which had fled almost off the display's edge without even trying to launch.

 

 

God damn her. Nielsen was oddly calm as he looked around his ruined bridge and heard, as if from a great distance, the report of more incoming fighters. God damn her to He -

 

 

The universe turned to noise and flame and went out.

 

 

"Admiral Berenson is in position, sir," a haggard Pavel Tsuchevsky reported.

 

 

Antonov nodded. He felt like Tsuchevsky looked, but order had finally been re-established. The plan for an operation of this scale was a document almost the size of the annual Federation budget, and changing it at the last moment was like trying to deflect a planet. But the fleet carriers Berenson now commanded had been pulled out of their position in the very last assault groups, moved to the head of the line, and paired off with battle-cruisers. Antonov didn't really want to send them in at all - they would be in combat before their cloaking ECM could be engaged, possibly before their launch catapults could stabilize. But he had no choice. His vanguara was dying without fighter support. Still he hesitated- - and, as if to remind him, yet another Omega drone sounded TFNS Baden's death cry.

 

 

"Order Admiral Berenson to make transit as soon as possible," he told Tsuchevsky, all indecision gone.

 

 

"Go!"

 

 

Catapults roared with power aboard sixteen tiny ships, and one hundred and ninety-two strikefighters erupted from their hangars. Forty-eight of them formed quickly about their carriers, heavy with external gun packs to supplement their internal lasers. The others streaked away, charging for the Theban carriers just over a light-minute away.

 

 

Hannah Avram felt the whiplash recoil in Mosquito's bones and made herself relax. One way or the other, right or wrong, she was committed.

 

 

It took Panhanal precious seconds to realize what had happened. His exhausted thoughts were slow despite the adrenalin rushing through him, and the escort carriers were far away and his plotting teams were concentrating on the carnage before them.

 

 

Then it registered. Those fleeing "destroyers" weren't destroyers; they were carriers, and they'd just launched against his fighter platforms!

 

 

He barked orders, cursing himself for underestimating the infidels. There had to have been some reason they'd sent such tiny ships through in their earliest assault groups, but he'd been too blind, too weary and bleary-minded, to realize it.

 

 

His own fighters split. Two thirds curved away, racing to engage the anti-carrier strike, and his initial panic eased slightly. They were closer, able to cut inside the attackers and intercept well short of their bases.

 

 

Half his remaining pilots streaked towards the infidel carriers themselves. He could see they'd held back at least some of their own fighters for cover, but they didn't have many, and his strike would vastly outnumber them.

 

 

His remaining fighters continued to assail the infidel capital ships, yet they clearly lacked the strength to stop battle-line units by themselves. On the other hand, his starships had yet to engage. If he could get in close, bottle the attackers up long enough for his own fighters to deal with theirs and then return.

 

 

"Shellhead fighters breaking off attack, sir!"

 

 

The scanner rating was very young, and Captain Lauren Ethridge didn't feel like reprimanding him for his elated outburst - nor the rest of Popocatepetl's bridge crew for the brief cheer that followed it. They'd been engaged since the instant of their emergence, and the enemy fighters had made up in doggedness what they lacked in tactical polish. Then her scanners told her what Admiral Avram was up to.

 

 

"Yes, she thought. IJet them have their elation. It won't last anyway.

 

 

"Sir,' the same scanner rating reported, this time in a quiet voice, "Theban battle-line units approaching at flank speed." He keyed in Plotting's analysis, and it ap-pearea on the tactical screen. There was no doubt: every surviving unit of the Theban battle fleet was coming straight at them.

 

 

Shit. Captain Ethridge began giving orders.

 

 

"On your toes, people." Captain Angela Martens' voice was that of a rider gentling a nervous horse. She watched the untidy horde racing to intercept her strike, and despite the odds, she smiled wolfishly. They were about to set reamed, and she knew it, but that clumsy gaggle told her a lot about the quality of the opposition. Whatever was about to happen to her people, what was going to happen to the Shellies was even worse.

 

 

`Stand by your IFF," she murmured, eyes intent on her display. The lead Thebans were almost upon her, and she felt herself tightening internally. "Stand. by. Now!"

 

 

There was a moment of instant consternation in the Theban ranks as their enemies' transponder codes suddenly changed. It should have helped them just as much as the Terrans, but they hadn't known it was coming. And they weren't prepared for the fact that a full half of the Terran fighters were configured for anti-fighter work, not an anti-shipping strike.

 

 

The Terran escort squadrons whipped up and around, slicing into them, a rapier in Martens' hand against the clumsy broadsword of ner foes.

 

 

Fifty Theban fighters died in the first thirty seconds.

 

 

The dimly perceptible wrongness in space that was a warp point loomed in TFNS Bearhound's main view screen. David Berenson glowered at it as if at an enemy.

 

 

"Ready for transit, Admiral," Bearhound's captain reported. Berenson acknowledged, then swung around to his ops officer.

 

 

"Well, Akira, will it be ready in time? And, if it is, will it work?"

 

 

Commander Akira Mendoza's face was beaded with sweat, but he looked satisfied. "Sir, I think the answers are `Yes' and `Maybe.' The fighters' transponders should be reset by the time we reach the warp point." There was no way for him to know he and Kthaara had, in a few minutes' desperate improvisation, independently duplicated Mitchell's idea. "And it ought to work. I hope." He outlined the same dangers Mitchell had set forth for Hannah Avram, but his professional caution fooled no one. He was a former fighter pilot, with his full share of the breed's irrepressible cockiness. So was Berenson, but he was a little older. He nodded thoughtfully as Mendoza finished, then sighed deeply.

 

 

`It'll have to do, Akira. We're committed.' He leaned back towards his armrest communicator. "Proceed, Captain Kyllonen. And have communications inform -Admiral Antonov we are making transit."

 

 

Hannah sat uselessly on Mosquito's bridge. It was all in Mitchell's hands now - his and his handful of defending pilots. She watched the AFHAWKs going out as the lightly-armed escort carriers fired, and then her own fighters swept out and up to engage the enemy.

 

 

The Theban pilots were tired, inexperienced, and armed for shipping strikes. Fighter missiles were useless against other fighters, and the few without missiles were armed with external laser packs - longer ranged than the Terrans" gun armament and ideal for repeated runs on starships but less effective in knife-range fighter combat. The defensive squadrons closed through the laser envelope without losing a single unit, and their superior skill began to tell. Both sides' craft were identical, but the Terrans knew far more about their capabilities.

 

 

Theban squadrons shattered as fighter after fighter blew apart, but there were scores of Theban fighters. Terran pilots began to die, and Hannah bit her lip as the roiling maelstrom of combat reached out to engulf her carriers. At least they haven't managed to shift their transponders uet.

 

 

It was her last clear thought before the madness was upon her.

 

 

Admiral Panhanal fought to keep track of the far-flung holocaust. It was too much for a single flag officer to coordinate, yet he had no choice but to try.

 

 

Charles P. Steadman lurched as she flushed her external racks and blew a wounded infidel battleship apart. Steadman had only three surviving sisters, but they were unhurt as they entered the fray, and Panhanal snarled as their heavy initial blows went home. Yet infidel ships were still emerging from the warp point, the forts were gone, and his remaining warp point fighters had exhausted their missiles. They were paying with their lives as they closed to strafe with their lasers, but they were warriors of Holy Terra; the dwindling survivors bored in again and again and again.

 

 

Panhanal stole a glance at the repeater display tied into his carriers and blanched in disbelief. The escorting infidel fighters had cut their way clear through his interceptors and looped back, and space was littered with their victims. But his own squadrons had ignored their killers to close on the missile-armed infidels, and fireballs blazed in the enemy formation.

 

 

They were better than his pilots - more skilled, more deadly - but there weren't enough of them. A handful might break through to the carriers; no more would survive.

 

 

And the infidel carriers were dying. He bared his teeth, aware even through the fire of battle that he was drunk with fatigue, reduced to the level of some primeval, red-fanged ancestor. It didn't matter. He watched the first two carriers explode, and a roar from Tracking echoed his own exultation.

 

 

He turned back to the main engagement as Steadman closed to laser-range.

 

 

Mosquito staggered as missiles pounded her light shields flat. More missiles streaked in, and damage signals screamed as fighter lasers added their fury to the destruction.

 

 

Hannah's plot went out, and she looked up at a visual display just like the holo tank. Like the holo tank with a wrong assumption. Six of her ships were gone and more were going, but the Theban strike had shot its bolt.

 

 

And then she saw the trio of kamikazes screaming straight into the display's main pickup. A lone Terran fighter was on their tails, firing desperately, and one of the Thebans exploded. Then a second.

 

 

They weren't going to stop the third, Hannah thought distantly.

 

 

The range fell, and the last battle-line of the Sword of Terra engaged the infidels toe-to-toe. The Theban battleship Lao-tze blew up, and the Terran superdreadnought Foraker followed. Charles P. Steadman shouldered through the melee, rocking under the fire raining upon her and smashing back savagely.

 

 

Angela Martens whipped her fighter up, wrenching it around in a full-power turn, then cut power. The Theban on her tail charged past before he could react, and her fire tore him apart. She red-lined the drive, vision graying despite her heroic life support, and nailed yet another on what amounted to blind, trained instinct. Her number two cartwheeled away in wreckage, and Lieutenant Haynes closed on her wing to replace him. They dropped into a two-element formation, trying to find the rest of the squadron in the madness and killing as they went.

 

 

The bleeding remnants of Hannah Avram's strike lined up on the Theban carriers, and if more were left than Admiral Panhanal would have believed possible, there still weren't enough. Lieutenant Commander Saboski was strike leader now - the fourth since they'd launched - and he made a snap decision. They couldn't nail them all, but the barges were too slow and weak to escape Admiral Berenson's strikegroups if the big carriers got in.

 

 

"Designate the Wolftioundsi he snapped, and the command fighter's tactical officer punched buttons and brought the single-seat fighters sweeping around behind it. The strike exploded into a dozen smaller tormations, converging on their targets from every possible direction.

 

 

Bearhound emerged from the disorientation of warp transit, and the humans aboard her could do little but sweat while her catapults stabilized and her scanners fought to sort out the chaos that was the Battle of Thebes.

 

 

Almost simultaneously, Primary Flight Control announced launch readiness and Plotting reported the location and vector of Hannah Avram's escort carriers. Berenson's orders crackled, and Bearhound lurched to the recoil of a full deck launch even as she turned directly away from the escort carriers with her escort, TFNS Parang. He stared at his plot, watching Bear-hound's sister ships fight around in her wake as they made transit, following their flagship through the insanity.

 

 

"ECM coming up!" Mendoza snapped, and the admiral grunted. They couldn't get into cloak this close to the enemy, but deception-mode ECM might help. He stared into his display and prayed it would.

 

 

"Fighters, Fifth Admiral!"

 

 

Pannanal looked up at the cry, and his heart was ice as fresh infidel fighters raced vengefully up the tails of his shattered squadrons and the stroboscopic viciousness of the nightmare visual display redoubled.

 

 

The infidel carriers vanished as the data codes of battle-cruisers replaced them. There was a moment of consternation in nis tracking sections - only an instant, but long enough for the leading infidels to turn and run while the computers grappled with the deception. Yet warp transit's destabilizing effect on their ECM systems had had its way, and the electronic brains had kept track of them. The data codes flickered back, and the admiral bared his teeth.

 

 

"Ignore the battle-cruisers - go for the carriers!"

 

 

"Aye, Fifth Admiral!"

 

 

Captain Rene Dejardin had heard Winnifred Tre-vayne'sbriefings, yet he hadn't really believed it. It wasn't that he doubted her professional competence, but rather that he simply couldn't accept the notion that a race could travel in space, control thermonuclear fusion, and still be religious fanatics of the sort one read about in history books. It was too great an affront to his sense of the lightness of things.

 

 

Now, as he tried desperately to fight his carrier clear of the warp point after launching his fighters, he believed.

 

 

The Theban superdreadnought bearing down on Bulldog showed on visual - without magnification. The latest range read-out was something else Dejardin couldn't really believe. Five hundred kilometers wasn't even knife-range - it was the range of claws and teeth. At such a range, Bulldog's speed and maneuverability advantage meant nothing. There was no evading the colossus on the view screen. And there was no righting it - a fleet carrier was armed for self-defense against missiles and fighters; her ship-to-ship armament was little more than a sop to tradition. And the superdreadnought's indifference to the frantic attacks of Bulldog's escorting battle-cruiser removed his last doubts as to the zealotry of the beings that crewed her.

 

 

Steadman's massed batteries of x-ray lasers fired as one, knifing through Bulldog's shields at a range which allowed for no attenuation, and mere metal meant nothing in that storm of invisible energy.

 

 

But even as Bulldog died, her sisters Rottweiler, Dire-hound, and Malamute emerged and began to launch their broods.

 

 

The wreckage of the anti-carrier strike fell back, fighting to reform, and Captain Martens cut her way through to them. The Thebans broke off, desperate to kill their attackers yet forced to retreat to rearm. They had to use the barges; none of the carriers remained.

 

 

Thirty-one of the one hundred forty-four attacking fighters escaped.

 

 

Hannah Avram dragged herself back to awareness and pain, to the sliminess of blood flowing from her nostrils and lungs filled with slivered glass, and knew someone had sealed her helmet barely in time.

 

 

She pawed at her shockframe. Her eyes weren't working very well - they, too, were full of blood - and she couldn't seem to find the release, and her foggy brain reported that her left arm wasn't working, either. In fact, nothing on her left side was. Someone loomed beside her, and she blinked, fighting to see. The vac suit bore a captain's insignia. Danny, she thought muzzily. It must be Danny.

 

 

A hand urged her back. Another found the med panel on her suit pack, and anesthetic washed her back into the darkness.

 

 

TFNS Gosainthan emerged into reality at the head of Second Fleet's last five superdreadnoughts. Ivan Antonov remained expressionless as he waited for communications to establish contact with Berenson. Preliminary reports allowed him to breathe again as he studied the plot while Tsuchevsky collated the flood of data. The Theoan fighters still on the warp point were a broken, bewildered force, he saw grimly, vanishing with inexorable certainty as Berenson's pilots pursued them to destruction.

 

 

Gosainthan's heading suddenly altered, and he glanced at his tactical read-outs as Captain Chen took his ship and her squadron to meet the surviving Theban super-dreadnoughts. The admiral nodded absently. Yes. things could, indeed, be worse.

 

 

"The Wings are rearming, sir. They'll begin launching again in seven minutes."

 

 

Admiral Panhanal grunted approval, but deep inside he knew it was too late. Those cursed small carriers had diverted him, sucking his fighters off the warp point just in time for the fleet carriers to erupt into his face. Five of the newcomers had been destroyed, others damaged, but they'd gotten most of their fighters off first. And enough survived to rearm every infidel fighter in the system.

 

 

He'd lost. He'd failed Holy Terra, and he stared with burning, hate-filled eyes at the fleeing fleet carriers and the battle-cruisers guarding their flanks. He was so focused on them he never saw the trio of emerging infidel superdreadnoughts that locked their targeting systems on Charles P. Steadman's broken hull.

 

 

For the first time in far too many hours, David Beren-son had little enough to do - acknowledge the occasional report of another Theban straggler destroyed, keep Anto-nov apprised of the pursuit's progress - that he could sit on Bearhound's flag bridge and look about him at the system that had been their goal for so long.

 

 

Astern lay the asteroid belt, with its awesomely regular cleared zone, where Antonov had wiped out the last of the Theban battle-line. Must tell Commander Trevayne how accurate her holo simulation turned out to be, he thought with a wry smile. Ahead gleamed the system's primary stellar component, a GO star slightly brighter and hotter than Sol, whose fourth planet had been dubbed Thebes by that extraordinary son-of-a-bitch Alois Saint-Just. The red-dwarf stellar companion, nearing per-iastron but still over nine hundred light-minutes away, was visible only as a dim, ruddy star.

 

 

"Another report, Admiral." Mendoza was going on adrenalin and stim pills, but Berenson hadn't the neart to order him to get some rest. "A confirmed kill on the last fighter barge.

 

 

Berenson nodded, and a small sigh escaped him. The destruction of the remaining Theban mobile forces had been total. The TFN now owned Theban space. The beings who ran the planet that lay ahead now had no hope at all and would surely surrender. Wouldn't they?

 

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT A World at Bay

 

 

Fire wracked the skies of Thebes as the planet's orbital fortresses died.

 

 

Ivan Antonov had no intention of allowing those fortresses to figure in whatever action he finally took - or was required by his `t't>oh't'tica't't xnastexs, to teSse - NN't't't't't'tY respect to the planet. Nor did he have any intention of bringing his surviving capital ships within range of the weapons mounted by those forts and the planet they circled. Even assuming that the planetary defenses had not been strengthened since Lantu's fall from grace (and Antonov cherished no such fatuous assumption), Thebes was best thought of as a fortress itself - a world-sized fortress with gigatonnes of rock to armor it and oceans to cool the excess neat produced by its titanic batteries of weapons. So Second Fleet stood off and smashed at the orbital forts with SBMs. Fighters also swooped in, their salvos of smaller missiles coordinated with the SBMs to saturate the Theban defenses. They took some losses from AFHAWKs, but the forts had no fighters with which to the battle-cruisers guarding their flanks. He was so focused on them he never saw the trio of emerging infidel superdreadnoughts that locked their targeting systems on Charles P. Steadman's broken hull.

 

 

For the first time in far too many hours, David Beren-son had little enough to do - acknowledge the occasional report of another Theban straggler destroyed, keep Anto-nov apprised of the pursuit's progress - that he could sit on Bearhound's flag bridge and look about him at the system that had been their goal for so long.

 

 

Astern lay the asteroid belt, with its awesomely regular cleared zone, where Antonov had wiped out the last of the Theban battle-line. Must tell Commander Trevayne how accurate her holo simulation turned out to be, he thought with a wry smile. Ahead gleamed the system's primary stellar component, a GO star slightly brighter and hotter than Sol, whose fourth, planet had oeen dubbed Thebes by that extraordinary son-of-a-bitch Alois Saint-Just. The red-dwarf stellar companion, nearing per-iastron but still over nine hundred light-minutes away, was visible only as a dim, ruddy star.

 

 

"Another report, Admiral." Mendoza was going on adrenalin and stim pills, but Berenson hadn't the neart to order him to get some rest. "A confirmed kill on the last fighter barge.

 

 

Berenson nodded, and a small sigh escaped him. The destruction of the remaining Theban mobile forces had been total. The TFN now owned Theban space. The beings who ran the planet that lay ahead now had no hope at all and would surely surrender. Wouldn't they?

 

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT A World at Bay

 

 

Fire wracked the skies of Thebes as the planet's orbital fortresses died.

 

 

Ivan Antonov had no intention of allowing those fortresses to figure in whatever action he finally took - or was required by his political masters to take - with respect to the planet. Nor did he have any intention of bringing his surviving capital ships within range of the weapons mounted by those forts and the planet they cir-clecf Even assuming that the planetary defenses had not been strengthened since Lantu's fall from grace (and Antonov cherished no such fatuous assumption), Thebes was best thought of as a fortress itself - a world-sized fortress with gigatonnes of rock to armor it and oceans to cool the excess heat produced by its titanic batteries of weapons.

 

 

So Second Fleet stood off and smashed at the orbital forts with SBMs. Fighters also swooped in, their salvos of smaller missiles coordinated with the SBMs to saturate the Theban defenses. They took some losses from AFHAWKs, but the forts had no fighters with which to oppose them. The drifting wreckage to which Second Fleet had reduced the enormous Theban orbital shipyards would build no more, and all of Thebes' limited number of pilots had been committed to the captured carriers and barges. and died with them.

 

 

Everyone made a great production of stressing that point to Winnifred Trevayne: the Shellheads' fighter strength had been limited after all. It didn't help. She might sometimes fall into anguished indecision when lives were immediately at stake - her well-hidden but painfully intense empathy, Antonov had often reflected, would have made her hopeless as a line officer - but in the ideal realm of logic, with the actual killing still remote enough to admit of abstraction, her conclusions were almost always flawless. It was a weakness, and a strength, of which she was fully cognizant. Yet this time a misas-sessment of a mentality utterly foreign to her own had led her to a conclusion as inaccurate as it was logical. No one blamed her for the lives which had been lost. no one but herself.

 

 

It worried Antonov a little. Irritating as her certainty could sometimes be, she would be no use to him or anyone else if she lost confidence in her professional judgment. So it was with some relief that he granted her uncharacteristically diffident request for a meeting with him, Tsuchevsky, and Lantu.

 

 

"Admiral," she began, still more subdued than usual but with professional enthusiasm gradually gaining the upper hand, "as you may recall, the captured data base that gave us our first insights into Theban motivations contained statements suggesting that the flagship of the old colonization fleet had survived to the present day, and serves as the headquarters and central temple - the `Vatican,' if you will - of the Church of Holy Terra."

 

 

"I seem to remember something of the sort, Commander. But it didn't seem very important at the time."

 

 

"No, sir, it didn't. That was one reason I didn't emphasize it; another was that I wasn't really sure, then, although it seemed a fairly short inference. But now Admiral Lantu has confirmed that that ship, TFS Star-walker, does indeed still rest where it made its emergency landing. It will never move under its own power again, but its computers are still functional.' She paused, and Antonov gestured for her to continue. He wasn't sure where she was going, but she was clearly onto something, and she seemed more alive than she had since the battle.

 

 

"You may also recall that in the course of analyzing that data base, I sent back from QR-107 to Redwing for the records of the original colonization expeditions in this region. What I got was very complete - the old Bureau of Colonization clearly believed in recording everything. Including - " she leaned forward, all primness dissolving in a rush of excitement " - the access codes for Starwalk-er's computers!"

 

 

Suddenly, Antonov understood.

 

 

"Let me be absolutely clear, Commander. Are you telling me it may be possible to access those computers from space?"

 

 

"But, Admiral," Tsuchevsky cut in, "surely the Theb-ans have changed the codes over all these generations. And even if they haven't. is such remote access really possible?"

 

 

"It wouldn't be possible if Starwalker were a warship, or even a modern colony ship, Commodore," Trevayne admitted, answering his second question first, "but BuCol built her class - and their computers - before we ever ran into the Orions, back when humanity believed the Galaxy was a safe place." She made a slight moue at Tsuchevsky's snort, dark eyes twinkling for the first time in much too long.

 

 

"I know. But because they believed that, they were more concerned with efficiency than security, and her computers don't have the security programming imperatives and hardware ours do. In fact, they were designed for remote access by other BuCol ships and base facilities. And as for the Thebans changing the codes. my technical people tell me it would be extremely difficult. We're talking about a combined hardware and software problem, which would require almost total reprograming. Assuming" - her eyes glowed - "that they'd ever even considered the possibility of its being necessary!"

 

 

"Even if it were possible," Lantu said slowly, "the Church won't have done it." He gave a brief Theban smile as they turned to him. "Everything about that ship is sacred; even the damage she suffered before setting down has been preserved unrepaired. The successive prophets have locked all the data pertaining to the Messenger's - to Saint-Just's - lifetime, but if they tried to change it in any way the entire Synod would rise up in revolt."

 

 

"So," Antonov mused in an even deeper voice, "we can steal all that data."

 

 

"Or wipe it," Tsuchevsky stated bluntly.

 

 

Antonov almost smiled at the looks on Trevayne's and Lantu's faces. He was learning to read Theban expressions - and Lantu was clearly still capable of being shocked by sufficiently gross sacrilege against a faith in which he no longer believed. And as for Winnie. Antonov had a shrewd notion of what was going on behind that suddenly stricken face.

 

 

Tsuchevsky saw it, too.

 

 

"Well," he said a bit defensively, "consider what a body blow it would be to Theban morale. Not to mention the confusion caused by the loss of all the information they may've added to those data bases more recently."

 

 

"No," Antonov said quietly. "I will not permit any attempt to wipe the data. Its historical value is simply too great. And the morale effect might be the opposite of what you suppose, Pavel Sergeyevich - sheer outrage might make them fight even harder." He turned to Trev-ayne. "Commander, you will coordinate with Operations and prepare a detailed plan for covertly accessing Star-walker's computers."

 

 

"Aye, aye, sir." Her dark eyes glowed. "Now we'll know - not merely be able to infer - what really happened on Thebes'"

 

 

And confirm that your analysis was right all along. This time Antonov did allow himself a small smile.

 

 

Father Trudan groaned, rubbing his cranial carapace and wishing the lights weren't quite so bright. He hated the late-night shift, and never more than now. Panic hung over Thebes like a vile miasma, creeping even into Starwalker's sacred precincts, yet at this moment the priest was almost too tired to care. His own gnawing worry ate at his reserves of strength, and the Synod's insatiable demands for data searches robbed him of sleep he needed desperately, despite his nightmares.

 

 

He lowered his hands, cracking his knuckles loudly, and his expression was grim. Terra only knew what they hoped to find. They'd been back through every word the First Prophet had ever written, searching frantically for some bit of Holy Writ to answer their need. Indeed, he suspected they'd delved even deeper, into the locked files left by the Messenger himself, but he couldn't be certain. Only Synod members, and not many even of them, had access to those records, and -

 

 

Trudan's thoughts broke off, and he frowned at his panel. He'd never seen that particular prompt before. In fact - he rubbed his muzzle, cudgeling nis weary brain - he didn't even know what it meant. How peculiar!

 

 

The prompt blinked a moment, then burned solid green, and bemusement became alarm. He was one of the Synod's senior computer techs; if he didn't know what it meant, it must be one of the functions restricted to Synod members. But what in Terra's name did it do? And why was it doing it now?

 

 

He checked his board, assuring himself none of the other computer stations were manned, and disquiet turned rapidly to fear. He scrabbled for the phone and punched in Archbishop Kirsal's number.

 

 

"Your Grace? Father Trudan. I realize it's late, but something strange is happening on my board." He listened, then shook his head. "No, Your Grace, I don't know what it is." He listened again and nodded sharply. "Yes, Your Grace. I definitely think you'd better come see it for yourself."

 

 

He hung up, staring at his panel, and the mysterious prompt continued to blaze. He watched it, praying the archbishop would hurry and wondering what "RMT ACC ENG" meant.

 

 

First Admiral Lantu looked physically ill. His eyes were haunted, and his short, strong body hunched as he rested his feet on the stool before his human-size chair. Now he looked into Ivan Antonov's bedrock face as Win-nifred Trevayne stopped speaking, and the pain in his alien expression stirred a matching sympathy in the burly admiral. He knew, as a Russian, too well how "history' could be manipulated to serve the needs of a ruling clique.

 

 

`I must agree with Commander Trevayne," Lantu said quietly. He drew a deep breath. "The First Prophet was either mad. or a tyrant who seized his chance. This"-his four-fingered hand gestured to his own copy of the report - "is no mere `error'; it's a complete and utter fabrication."

 

 

Antonov grunted agreement and looked back down at the matching folder oefore him. Alois Saint-Just's soul must be writhing in Hell over what had been wrought in his name, and in a way, he almost hoped it was. Whatever the man's original intent, he'd contributed directly to the creation of a monster almost beyond belief.

 

 

"So." His deep voice was a soft, sad rumble as he touched the printed hard copy. "You and Commander Trevayne are ooth convinced Saint-Just never mentioned religion at all."

 

 

"Of course he didn't," Lantu said harshly. "His own journal entries show he never claimed Terra was divine. He emphasized the desperation of the Federation's plight again and again, but every word he said made it perfectly clear Terrans were mortal beings, despite the superiority of their science." The Theban gave a short, bitter bark of laughter. "No wonder Sumash's fellow'disciples' were horrified when he proclaimed Terra's divinity! They knew the truth as well as he did - damn his soul to Helll"

 

 

His voice was raw with agony and hate, and more than one set of eyes turned away from his distress. Kthaara'-zarthan's did not. They rested enigmatically on his anguished face, and they were very still.

 

 

"The First Admiral is correct, sir," Trevayne said softly. "We can never know why Sumash did it, but he knowingly set about the construction of an entirely falsified religious edifice only after the last Terran died. There is absolutely no hint of divinity in any of the records predating Saint-Just's death, yet the fusion of so many different elements of Terran history into'the Faith of Holy Terra' couldn't have been accidental. Someone clearly researched the historical sections of Starwalker's data base to concoct it, and that someone could only have been Sumash. He'd eliminated all other access to the records. and anyone who might have disputed his version of what they held."

 

 

"But the Synod must know!" Lantu protested. "They have access to the forbidden sections. They have to know it's all a lie! They - " Angus MacRory's big hand squeezed his shoulder, and he bit off his outburst with visible effort.

 

 

"They do," Trevayne confirmed, "but not all of them. Only the current Prophet and those he designates have access to the original documentation. Those designations are made not on the basis of seniority but on the basis of who he trusts, and there's substantial evidence that on the occasions when his trust has been misplaced, the weak link has been quietly eliminated. I've analyzed the security lists. Eleven prelates have died of unspecified `natural causes' within one week of gaining access."

 

 

Lantu was silent, but his teeth ground as he remembered Manak's death. The old man hadn't known. He must have known the Church edited the information it transmitted to its flock, but there'd been too much integrity in his soul for him to have lived such a lie. And that very integrity - that unshakable faith in the lie - had killed him.

 

 

"But why didn't they just wipe the original evidence?" David Berenson wondered aloud. "No matter how tight their security, they must have known there was a chance it would leak."

 

 

"Human history, Admiral Berenson," Antonov said flintily, "abounds with megalomaniacs who chose to preserve information they suppressed. I see no reason to assume a megalomaniacal Theban should act any more rationally."

 

 

"In a sense, they probably had no choice," Trevayne suggested. "Not after the first generation or so, anyway. This is the seminal holy writ, Admiral Berenson, the most sacred of all their texts. Even if no one's allowed to read it, their programmers know it's there - and they might know if it had been destroyed. If it were, and the news got out, it would do incalculable damage."

 

 

"Which suggests at least one interesting possibility," Tsuchevsky mused.

 

 

"It wouldn't work, Commodore," Lantu rasped. Tsuchevsky raised an eyebrow, and the first admiral shrugged. "I assume you're referring to the possibility of using the truth to discredit the Synod?" Tsuchevsky nodded. "Then I'm afraid you underestimate the problem. All of you are `infidels' in the eyes of the Church and so of the entire Theban race - and I, of course, would be an even more detestable heretic. They know they can't win, yet they're still digging in to fight to the death. If we tell such `faith-filled' people the truth, it will be seen only as clumsy propaganda inspired by the Satan-Khan. The sole effect would be to fill the People with an even greater hatred for us all as defilers of the Faith."

 

 

"Then you see no hope of convincing Thebes to accept the truth and surrender," Antonov said flatly.

 

 

"None," Lantu replied even more flatly. He rubbed his face with both hands, and his hopeless voice was inexpressibly bitter. "My entire race is prepared - almost eager - to die for a lie.'

 

 

The medical shuttle hatch opened. It was summer on New Danzig, a day of dramatic clouds pierced by sunlight, and the moist scent of approaching rain blew over the attendants guiding the litter down the ramp.

 

 

The woman in it stared up at the clouds, brown eyes hazy, lying as still as the dead. As still as the many dead from this planet she had left behind her, she thought through the drugs which filled her system. Tears gleamed, and she tried to brush them away with her right hand. She couldn't use her left hand; she no longer had a left arm.

 

 

Her right arm stirred, clumsy and weak, and one of her attendants pressed it gently back and bent over her to diy them. She tried to thank him, but speech was almost impossible.

 

 

Hannah Avram closed her eyes and told herself she was lucky. She'd been a fool not to seal her helmet when the fighters came in, and she'd paid for it. The agony in her lungs before Danny drugged her unconscious had told her it had been close, but it had been closer than she'd known. She owed MaGuire her life, yet not even his speed had been enough. A fragment of her right lung remained; the left was entirely ruined. Only the respirator unit oxygenating her blood kept her alive.

 

 

A warm grip closed on her remaining hand, and she opened her eyes once more and blinked at Commodore Richard Hazelwood. His face was so drawn and worried she felt a twinge of bittersweet amusement. The medship's staff had gotten her stabilized, but they'd decided to leave the actual lung replacement to a fully-equipped dirtside hospital, and he'd apparently thought she was in even worse shape than she was.

 

 

Her litter moved around the base of the shuttle pad, and she twitched at a sudden roar. She stared up at Hazelwood, lips shaping the question she had too little breath to ask, and he said something to the medics. They hesitated a moment, then shrugged, and one of them bent over the end of the self-propelled unit. She touched a button and the litter rose at an angle, lifting Hannah until she could see.

 

 

She stared in disbelief. Hundreds of cheering people - thousands! - crowded the safety line about the paa, and the thunder of their voices battered her. There were Fleet personnel out there, but most were civilians. Civilians - cheering for the stupid bitch who'd gotten so many of their sons and daughters killed!

 

 

The sea of faces blurred and shimmered, and Dick was beaming like a fool and making it a thousand times worse. She tugged at his hand and forced her remaining fragment of lung to suck in air despite the pain as he bent.

 

 

"Wrong," she gasped. The word came out faint and thready, propelled by far too little breath, and she shook her head savagely. `Wrong. I. lost your. ships!" she panted, but his free hand covered her mouth.

 

 

"Hush, Hannah." His voice was gentle through the cheering that went on and on and on, and her mind twisted in anguish. Didn't he understand"? She'd lost twelve of her carriers - twelve of them! "They know that - but you won the battle. Their people won it. They didn't die for nothing, and you're the one who made that possible."

 

 

She could no longer see through her tears, and her attendants lowered her back to the vertical, moving her toward the waiting ambulance vertol, but she refused to let go of his hand. He walked beside her, and when her lips moved again he bent back over her once more.

 

 

"Something. I never. told you," she got out, "when I. took com - "

 

 

His hand hushed her once more, and she blinked away enough tears to see his face. His own eyes glistened, ana he shook his head.

 

 

"You mean the fact that you were only frocked to commodore?" he asked, and her eyes widened.

 

 

"You. know?"

 

 

He climbed into the vertol beside her, still holding her hand. The hatch closed, cutting off the surf-roar of voices, and he smiled down at her.

 

 

"Hannah, I always knew," he said softly.

 

 

The Legislative Assembly sat in dreadful silence. President Sakanami had come to the floor to make his report in person, and every eye stared at him in horror as he stood at Chantal Duval's podium. Second Fleet's losses had been so terrible even the announcement that Ivan Antonov now controlled Theban space seemed almost meaningless.

 

 

Howard Anderson hunched in his chair, cursing the weakness which had become perpetual, and tried not to weep. Better than any of these politicians, he knew - knew bone-deep, in his very marrow - what Second Fleet had paid. He had commanded in too many battles, seen too many splendid ships die. He closed his eyes, reliving another terrible day in the Lorelei System. The day he'd cut the line of communication of an Orion fleet which had driven deep into Terran space during ISW-2, sealing a third of the Khanate's battle-line in a pocket it could not escape. Ships had died that day, too - including the superdreadnougnt Gorbachev, the flagship of his dearest friend. and nis only son's command.

 

 

Oh, yes, he knew what Second Fleet had paid.

 

 

". and so," Sakanami was saying heavily, "there is no indication of a Theban willingness to yield. Admiral Antonov has summoned the `Prophet' to surrender, and been rebuffed. He has even threatened to disclose the contents of Starwalker's secret records, but the Prophet rejects his threat. Apparently they realized those records had been accessed, for they have already begun a campaign to prepare their people for `falsehoods and lies which may be spread by the Satan-Khan's slaves.'"

 

 

A grim, ominous nimble filled the chamber, and Anderson's hands tightened on his cane. Sakanami was being as noninflammatory as he could, but the hatred Waldeck's LibProgs had stoked for months hung in the air, thick enough to taste. However dispassionately the president might report, his every word only fed its poisonous strength.

 

 

"At present," Sakanarni continued, "Admiral Antonov has invested the planet from beyond capital missile range. The planetary defenses, however, are so powerful that the collateral damage from any bombardment which might destroy them would render Thebes. uninhabitable."

 

 

He drew a deep breath in the silence.

 

 

"That concludes my report, Madam Speaker," he said, and sat.

 

 

An attention bell chimed.

 

 

"The Chair recognizes the Honorable Assemblyman for Christophon," Chantal Duval said quietly, and Pericles Waldeck appeared on the huge screen.

 

 

"Madam Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen of the Assembly," the deep voice was harsh, "our course is plain. We have made every effort to spare the Theban race. We have suffered thousands of casualties in fighting our way into their system. Their position is hopeless, and they know it. Worse, their own leaders know their so-called'religion' is, in fact, a lie! Yet they refuse to surrender, and we cannot - must not - leave madmen such as they have proven themselves to be the power ever to threaten us again."

 

 

He paused, and Anderson heard the Assembly's hatred in its silence.

 

 

"There has been much debate in this chamber over the Prohibition of 2249," he resumed grimly. "Some have striven mightily to spare the Thebans from the consequences oftheir crimes against the civilized Galaxy. They are an immature race, it has been said. Their atrocities stem from a religious fervor they might outgrow with time. Whatever their crimes, they have been sincere in their beliefs. And now, ladies and gentlemen, now we see that it is no such thing. Now we see that their leadership has known from the outset that their jihad' was born in falsehood. Now we know their fanaticism, how ever real, has been forged by a cold and calculating conspiracy into a tool for interstellar conquest - not in the name of a `god' but in the name of ambition.

 

 

"Ladies and Gentlemen of the Assembly, it is time to do what we know in our hearts we must! They themselves have forced our hand, for if their space industry has been destroyed, their planetary industry has not. We know they must now have sensor data on the strategic bombardment missile. With that data, it is only a matter of time before they develop that weapon themselves. Every day we hesitate increases the chance of that dire event, and when it comes to pass, ladies and gentlemen, when those massive defense centers are able to return fire with thousands upon thousands of launchers, the cost of crushing them will be inconceivable."

 

 

He paused again, and his voice went cold and flat.

 

 

"If this mad-dog regime is not destroyed, such battles as Second Fleet has fought may be forced upon us again and again and again. There cannot be - must not be - any compromise with that threat. A landing attempt against such powerful defenses would incur unthinkable casualties, and the bombardment required to cover it would effectively destroy the planet anyway. Invasion and occupation are not tenable options, but at this moment in time Second Fleet can bombard the planet from beyond the range of any weapon they possess. We must act now, while that advantage still exists, for we have no choice.

 

 

"Ladies and Gentlemen of the Assembly, I move for an immediate vote to override the Prohibition of 2249, and to direct Admiral Antonov to execute a saturation bombardment of the Theban surface!"

 

 

The delicate balance for which Anderson had fought, the tenuous restraint he had nursed so long, crumbled in a roar of furious seconds it took ChantaT Duval ten minutes to calm, and Howard Anderson's heart was chill within him.

 

 

"Ladies and Gentlemen of the Assembly," the Speaker said when silence had finally been restored, "it has been moved and seconded that this Assembly override the Prohibition of 2249 and direct Admiral Antonov to bombard the planet of Thebes." She paused for a heartbeat to let the words soak in. "Is there any debate?" she asked softly.

 

 

Anderson prayed someone would speak, but not a single voice protested, and he cursed the fate which had let him live this long. Yet the stubborn will which had driven him for a century and a half drove him still, and he pressed the button.

 

 

"The Chair," Duval said, "recognizes President Emeritus Howard Anderson."

 

 

Anderson tried to rise, but his legs betrayed him, and he heard a soft ripple of dismay as a lictor appeared magically at his elbow to catch his frail body and ease him back into his chair. For once, the "grand old man of the Federation" felt no anger. He was beyond that, and he sat for a moment, gathering his slender store of strength as the same lictor adjusted his pick-up so that he need not stand.

 

 

Silence hovered endlessly until, at last, he began to speak.

 

 

"Ladies and gentlemen." His strong old voice had frayed in the past half year, quivering about the edges as he forced it to serve his will.

 

 

"Ladies and gentlemen, I know what you are feeling at this moment. The Federation has poured out its treasure and the lives of its military protectors to defeat the Thebans. Civilians have died in their millions. The price we have paid is horrible beyond any mortal valuation, and now, as Mister Waldeck says, we have come to the final decision point."

 

 

He paused, hoping the assembly would think it was for emphasis without recognizing his dizziness and fatigue. He was so tired. All he wanted was to rest, to pass this burden to another. But there was no one else. There was only one sick, tired old man who had seen too much killing, too many deaths.

 

 

"Ladies and gentlemen; I can't tell you he's wrong about the current Theban regime, for the truth is that it is every bit as fanatical, every bit as corrupt, as he would have you think. Not all of it, but enough. More than enough, for the portion which is those things controls the Church of Holy Terra and, through it, every Theban on their planet.

 

 

"Yet they control them through lies, ladies and gentlemen." Flecks of the old sapphire fire kindled in his eyes, and his wasted frame quivered with his desperate need to make them understand. "The mass of the Theban people do believe in `Holy Terra,' and it is through that belief that the Prophet and his inner clique - a clique which is only a fraction of their entire Synod - drive and manipulate them. The people of Thebes haven't rejected surrender; their religious leader - their dictator - has rejected it in their name!"

 

 

He leaned into the pick-up, braced on his cane, and his lined face was cold. His strength slipped through his fingers, and he no longer sought to husband it. He poured it out like water, spending it like fire.

 

 

"Ladies and Gentlemen of the Assembly," his voice lashed out with the old power, "the human race does not murder people who have been duped and lied to! The Terran Federation does not murder entire worlds because a handful of madmen hold their populations in thrall!"

 

 

He struggled to his feet, shaking off the anxious lictor, glaring not into the pick-up but across the chamber at Pericles Waldeck as he threw all diplomatic fiction to the winds.

 

 

"Whatever the Thebans may be, we are neither mad nor fools, and this Assembly will be no one's dupe! We will remember who we are, and what this Federation stands for! If we do not extend justice to our foes, then we are no better than those foes, and the genocide of an entire race because of the twisted ambition of a handful of insane leaders is not justice. It is a crime more heinous than any the Thebans have committed. It is an abomination, an atrocity on a cosmic scale, and I will not see murder done in the name of my people!"

 

 

His knees began to crumble, but his voice cracked like a whip.

 

 

"Ladies and Gentlemen of the Assembly, Pericles Wai-deck would have you stain your hands with the blood of an entire species. He may drape his despicable deed in the cloak of justice and the mantle of necessity, but that makes it no less vile." His vision began to blur, but he peered through the strange mist, watching fury crawl across Waldeck's strong, hating features, and hurled his own hate to meet it.

 

 

"Ladies and gentlemen, one man, more than any other, wrought this disaster. One man led his party into dispatching the Peace Fleet to Lorelei. One man crafted the secret orders which placed Victor Aurelli - not Admiral Li - in command of that fleet's dispositions!"

 

 

The fury on Waldeck's face became something beyond fury, deeper than hatred, as a chorus of astonished snouts went up. The younger man rose, glaring madly across the floor, and the lictor pressed the emergency button on his harness. He tried to force Anderson Back into his seat, and a white-coated medic was running across the floor, but the wasted old man clung to the edge of his console and his voice thundered across the tumult.

 

 

"One man, ladies and gentlemen! And now that same one man calls on you to cover his stupidity! He calls upon you to destroy a planet not to save the Galaxy, not to preserve the lives of Second Fleet's personnel, but out ofambitionl Out of his need to silence criticism for political gain! He - "

 

 

The thundering words stopped suddenly, and the fiery blue eyes widened. A trembling old hana rose, gripping the lictor's shoulder, and Howard Anderson swayed. A thousand delegates were on their feet, staring in horror at the Federation's greatest living hero, and his voice was a dving thread.

 

 

`Please," he gasped. "Please. Don't let him. Stop him." The old man sagged as the racing medic vaulted another delegate's console, scrabbling in his belt-pouch medkit as he came.

 

 

"I beg you," Howard Anderson whispered. "You're better than the Prophet - better than him. Don't let him make us murderers again!"

 

 

And he crumpled like a broken toy.

 

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE The Final Option

 

 

"Good Lord!" Winnifred Trevayne blinked at the technical read-outs on the screen. "What in heaven's name is that?"

 

 

Admiral Lantu was silent - he'd said very little for days - but Colonel Fraymak snorted at her other elbow. The colonel had read Starwalker's records for himself, and the stance he'd taken largely out of respect for Lantu had been transformed by an outrage all his own as he threw himself wholeheartedly into collaboration with his "captors."

 

 

`That, Commander," he said now, "is an Archangel-class strategic armored unit."

 

 

"The hell you say," General Shahinian grunted. "That's a modification of an old Mark Seven CBU." Trevayne looked blank. "Continental bombardment unit," Shahinian amplified, then frowned. "Wonder where they got the specs? Unless." He grunted again and nodded. "Probably from Ericsson. I think I remember reading something about BuCol giving colonial industrial units military downloads after ISW-1 broke out." He made a rude sound. "Can you see some bunch of farmers wasting time and resources on something that size?" He shook his head. "Just the sort of useless hardware some fat-headed bureaucrat would've forgotten to delete."

 

 

"I've never seen anything like it," Trevayne said.

 

 

"You wouldn't, outside a museum, and it'stoo damned big for a museum. That's why we scrapped the last one back in - oh, 2230, I think. Takes over a dozen shuttles to transport one, then you've got to assemble the thing inside a spacehead. If you need that kind of firepower, it's quicker and simpler to supply it from space."

 

 

"When you can, sir," Colonel Fraymak pointed out respectfully.

 

 

`When you can't, Colonel," Shahinian said frostily, "you've got no damned business poking your nose in in the first place!"

 

 

Trevayne nodded absently, keying notes into her memo pad. That monstrosity would laugh at a mega-tonne-range warhead, and that made it a sort of ultimate area denial system, assuming you planned to use the real estate it was guarding.

 

 

She sighed as she finished her notes and punched for the next display. The data they'd pirated from Starwalker was invaluable - the Synod had stored its most sensitive defense information in the old ship's computers - but the more of it she saw, the more hopeless she felt.

 

 

Thebes was the best textbook example she'd ever seen of the sort of target Marines should never be used against. The planet was one vast military base, garrisoned by over forty million troops with the heaviest weapons she'd ever seen. And while those weapons might be technical antiques, Marines were essentially assault troops. The armored units they could transport to the surface, however modern, were pygmies beside monsters like that CBU. Even worse, their assault shuttles would take thirty to forty percent casualties. Fleet and Marine doctrine stressed punching a hole in the defenses first, but not even Orions had ever fortified an inhabited planet this heavily. There was a fifty percent overlap in the PDCs' coverage zones. The suppressive fire to cover an assault into that kind of defense would sterilize a continent.

 

 

She glanced guiltily at the sealed hatch to the admiral's private briefing room. In all the years she'd known and served Ivan Antonov, she had never seen him so. elementally enraged. It had gone beyond thunder and lightning to a cold, deadly silence, and her inability to find the answer he needed flayed her soul. But, damn it - she turned back to the display in despair - there wasn't an answer this time!

 

 

Antonov swiveled his chair slowly to face his staff, and his eyes were glacial. The doctors said Howard Anderson would live. probably. for a few more years, but the massive stroke had left half his body paralyzed. His century and more of service to the Federation was over, and the thought of that dauntless spirit chained in a broken, crippled body -

 

 

He chopped the thought off like an amputated limb. There was no time to think of the price his oldest friend had paid. No time to contemplate getting his own massive hands on that svolochy, that scum, Waldeck for just a few, brief moments. No time even to take bleak comfort in the ruin of Waldeck's political career and the rampant disorder of the LibProgs as the truth about the Peace Fleet massacre came out.

 

 

It was not, Antonov reminded himself bitterly, the first time fighting men and women had been betrayed to their deaths by the political swine they served. Nor would it be the last time the vlasti responsible escaped the firing squad they so amply deserved. That wouldn'tbe civilized, after all. For one moment he let himself dwell on the fate the Zheeerlikou'valkhannaieee reserved for such chofaki, then snorted bitterly. No wonder he liked Orionsl

 

 

But in the meantime.

 

 

"I have received final clarification from Admiral Brandenburg," he rumbled. "The Assembly has opted to seek `expert guidance' in determining policy towards Thebes."

 

 

Those bleak, cold eyes swept his advisors. "Before voting to override the Prohibition of 2249, they wish my recommendation. I have been informed that they will act in whatever fashion I deem most prudent."

 

 

Winnifred Trevayne inhaled sharply; the others were silent, but he saw it in their faces. Especially in Kthaara's. The Orion had been unwontedly diplomatic over the Peace Fleet revelations and the Assembly's confusion, but now his contempt bared ivory fangs. And with good reason, Antonov thought. Whatever his decision, the po-liticos had managed in time-honored fashion to clear their own skirts with a pious appeal to "expert military opinion." What a shame they so seldom bothered to seek it before they created such a bitched-up shitball!

 

 

"With that in mind," he continued, `I need whatever insight any of you may offer. Commodore Tsuchevsky?"

 

 

"Sir," the chief of staff said somberly, "I don't have any. We're still examining the data - we know more about the enemy's defenses than any other staff in military history - but the only solution we can see is a massive application of firepower. There are no blind spots to exploit, no gaps. We can blow a hole in them from beyond their own range, but doing so will have essentially the same effect as applying Directive Eighteen. And - ' he paused, visibly steeling himself " - much as I hate to admit it, Waldeck had a point. It's only a matter of time before the Thebans' planet-side industry produces their own SBMs and we lose even that advantage."

 

 

"I will not accept that." Antonov's voice was quietly fierce, the verbal pyrotechnics planed away by steely determination, and ne turned his gaze upon Lantu. The first admiral looked shrunken and old in his over-large chair. The fire had leached out of his amber eyes, and his hands trembled visibly as he looked back up at Antonov from a pit of despair.

 

 

"You must." His voice was bitter. "Commodore Tsuchevsky is correct."

 

 

"No," Antonov said flatly. "There is an answer. There is no such thing as a perfect defense - not when the attacker has data this complete and the services of the enemy's best and most senior commander."

 

 

"Best commander?" Lantu repeated dully. He shook his head. "No, Admiral. You have the services of a fool. A pathetic simpleton who was asinine enough to think his people deserved to survive." He stared down at his hands, and his voice fell to a whisper. "I have become the greatest traitor in Theban history, betrayed all I ever believed, sacrificed my honor, conspired to kill thousands of men I trained and once commanded - all for a race so stupid it allowed five generations of charlatans to lead it to its death." His hands twisted in his lap.

 

 

"Do what you must, Admiral Antonov. Perhaps a handful of the People will live to curse me as I deserve."

 

 

The humans in the room were silenced by his agony, but Kthaara'zarthan leaned forward, eyes fixed on Lantu's face, and gestured to his interpreter.

 

 

"I would like to tell you a story, Admiral Laaantu," he said quietly, and Lantu looked up in astonishment sufficient to penetrate even his despair as, for the first time ever, Ktnaara spoke directly to nim

 

 

"Centuries ago, on Old Valkha, there was a khanhar - a war leader. His name was Cranaa'tolnatha, and his clan was sworn to the service of Clan Kirhaar. Cranaa was a great warrior, one who had never known defeat in war or on the square of honor, and his clan was linkar'a id Kirhaar, Shield-Bearer to Clan Kirhaar. Clan Tolnatha stood at Clan Kirhaar's right hand in battle, and Cranaa was Clan Kirhaar's shartok khanhar, first fang of all its warriors, as well as those of Clan Tolnatha.

 

 

"But the Khanhaku'a Kirhaar was without honor, for he betrayed his allies and made himself chofak. None of his warriors knew it, for he hid his treachery, yet he spied on those who thought themselves his farshatok, selling their secrets to their enemies. And when those enemies moved against them, he called Cranaa aside and ordered him to hold back the warriors of Clan Tolnatha while he himself commanded Clan Kirhaar's. Clan Tolnatha was to lie hidden, he told Cranaa, saved until the lastm oment to strike the enemy's rear when their allies - including Clan Kirhaar - feigned flight."

 

 

He paused, and Lantu stared at him, muzzle wrinkled as he tried to understand.

 

 

"Now, Cranaa had no reason to think his khanhaku's orders were a lie, but he was a skilled warrior, and when he considered them they made no sense. His forces would be too far distant to intervene as ordered, for by the time messengers reached him and he advanced, the feigned flight would have carried the battle beyond his reach. Ana as he studied his khanhaku's commands, he realized that a `feigned flight' was no part of their allies' plans. The battle was to be fought in a mountain pass, and if they yielded the pass they would be driven back against a river and destroyed.