"That suggests it ought to trigger mine attacks as well," LeBlanc put in. "Actually, there's another piece of good news, as well. Analysis of the observational data confirms the supposition that, being larger than other small craft, gunboats can't use internal bays. Instead, they seem to be carried externally on ships. So rearming them must be an EVA operation, and it doesn't take much imagination to see how awkward that must be."

 

 

"For openers," Sanders piped up, the other two's exalted ranks momentarily forgotten, "it means the mothership's drive field has to be deactivated while they're doing it. The radiation would deep-fry somebody in a vac suit!"

 

 

He seemed about to say more, but Trevayne raised a hand. In the ensuing silence, she looked from one of them to the other and then back again.

 

 

"I'm afraid you're missing the point, gentlemen. You see, all the points of 'good news' you've adduced are outweighed by the one very large item of bad news." She met their eyes again, even more gravely than before. "The one, single advantage we've had up to now has been our somewhat superior technology. And we've assumed that that state of affairs will continue, that their tactical inflexibility must be accompanied by a lack of inventiveness. We can no longer make any such assumption. Since encountering our fighters, they've developed, produced and deployed a countervailing system. I'm not certain we could do so well in so short a period."

 

 

In the dead silence that followed, LeBlanc's quiet voice seemed almost raucous. "Uh, Sir, Admiral Murakuma speculated that the gunboats could perhaps be the end result of some R&D program they already had underway before the war."

 

 

"That, Admiral LeBlanc, is a classic example of whistling in the dark. It would be sheer folly for us to rely on it. Instead, we must assume there are more surprises in store. You and your people here must try and foretell what those surprises are going to be. You must try to deduce, on the basis of past experience, what they find most threatening in our technological tool kit and how they'll seek to counter it." All at once, her trademark crispness wavered, and she held a hand over her eyes as though to shield them, even though the office was only dimly illuminated against the twilight. "It's all we can do," she said, addressing someone other than LeBlanc and Sanders. "We really have no way of knowing what lies in wait."

 

 

Outside the window, the slow rotation of the twin-planet system sent the last light of Alpha Centauri A vanishing behind Eden. The sister planet shaded abruptly from sky blue to ultramarine, and the heavens grew dark.

 

 

Chapter Twenty-four

 

 

Broken Claws

 

 

Fourteenth Great Claw of the Khan Zhaarnak'diaano glowered into the small holo tank of his repeater plot. The worthless planets of the uninhabited Telmasa System orbited their K4 primary with a bland uselessness which mirrored his own mood all too accurately. Clan Diaano had once been famed for the warriors it produced in the Khan's service, but that had been before the Wars of Shame. It was not his clan's fault no chance had arisen to win back the honor lost in those disastrous wars, yet every one of his ancestors seemed to prowl the back of his mind, muttering balefully over their descendant's failure to seize glory by the throat in this war. For more than a full human year - almost two Orion years - it had raged, and still he sat tethered as a "rear area security umbrella" designed only to reassure civilians!

 

 

He growled and kneaded his claws in and out of his chair's padded armrests. Of course, very few of the Khan's warriors had so far been given the chance to measure themselves against these new foes - these "Bugs." Fang Anaasa and his pilots had won enormous renown for their rescue of the Human Fifth Fleet in the Third Battle of Justin, but no more of the KON's units had been rushed forward... for reasons which were one more ember in Zhaarnak's seething disgust.

 

 

Technology. Technology and experience. The Humans' R&D had - once more - outpaced the Zheeerlikou'valkhannaieee's, and so they were better equipped than the Khan's Navy. They had begun the war with better shields, better armor... better weapons. Even now their technical missions were busy throughout the Khanate, working to upgrade the KON's technology as if the Zheeerlikou'valkhannaieee were cubs who must be led by the hand. And though the Federation's last major war was an Orion century old, it remained more recent than anything the Khanate could claim. Antipiracy operations, the suppression of a slaving outbreak in the Khithaar Sector, the short confrontation when District Governor Maashaar defied the present Khan's sire... those were all the "wars" the KON had fought since the Third Interstellar War, and so the Grand Alliance had agreed the Humans should lead the battle in the Romulus Cluster.

 

 

The great claw bared the tips of his fangs. Deep inside, a part of him acknowledged that it was the Humans who had first been attacked. Their warriors' blood had been the first shed, their civilians the ones butchered, and so it was right that they be given the honor of facing the foe. Yet another, deeper part of him could not accept that. Humans were chofaki. They had no honor. They were clever, yes, and skilled in the cold blooded execution of maneuvers, yet they lacked the warrior's fire. He had heard the arguments - Valkha, but he had heard them! - since the Theban War. Minisharhuaak! Of course they had shouldered their obligations in that war, but they had done so out of fear, Zhaarnak thought. It was they who had given the crazed Thebans technology in the first place, and they'd feared Liharnow the Great would loose the Navy upon them if they did not "step forward." And they had shown themselves chofak yet again in this war. What true warrior would have fallen back again and again, abandoning millions of his own civilians to certain death - to being eaten like so many marhangi?

 

 

He made his claws retract, and his mind replayed the official briefings like some endless, meaningless chant. The Humans had had no choice but to fall back. They had fought again and again, and not even Zhaarnak could deny the damage they had inflicted - assuming the reports were accurate. Yet that was the point. If the reports were accurate, then why had they been forced back? Almost four hundred superdreadnoughts - that was how many capital ships the Humans' Fifth Fleet claimed to have destroyed. Four hundred! The entire Orion Navy contained only four hundred and six starships, including even destroyers! Was he to believe the Humans had destroyed thirty times the KON's total tonnage without even slowing their enemies?

 

 

Ridiculous! Such inflated claims were the proof they were chofaki, dirt-eaters, beings so lost to honor they could not even recognize it as a concept! According to those same intelligence packets the Humans' ships were faster, their weapons longer ranged, their defensive technologies and datalink superior, and they had fighters! If they had destroyed so many ships, if they held such a tremendous tactical advantage, then why were they on the defensive? Oh, true, they had retaken Justin - finally, with Fang Anaasa's help - yet did they truly expect Zhaarnak to believe any opponent could absorb such losses and continue to attack?

 

 

He shook himself and rose. Softly, Zhaarnak, he told himself. Softly. Whatever you may think, it is your duty not to show your officers your disgust. And be truthful. Would you be so ready to believe them chofak had they not brought such dishonor upon your clan?

 

 

He twitched his ears brusquely, angry with that last thought, yet he could not quite reject it. His clan fathers had charged into battle in the Orion way in the Wars of Shame... and the Humans had slaughtered their commands in the chofak Human way. Perhaps the Terran Navy had taught the KON how wars were won, but what of honor? What of the battle sagas chanted when warriors were laid to rest? The Wars of Shame took those things from his clan, and even the meager redemption Clan Diaano had won in the Third Interstellar War had come on Human terms. It was the Humans who shared the strikefighter technology with the Khanate even before the Rigelians turned on the Zheeerlikou'valkhannaieee. It was the Humans whose industrial might had built entire starships for the Khan. Even Varnik'sheerino, the greatest fang of the last three centuries, had been forced to dance to Human terms, coordinate his plans with theirs!

 

 

Be honest. Be honest, Zhaarnak. Chofak Humans may be, yet what you truly hate is that they never let your clan regain honor from them - only with them. There is no Human blood upon your claws, and you hate them for it.

 

 

Well, perhaps that was truth, but truth was a bitter herb, and whatever cause he had to hate them, their showing in this war was cause enough for contempt.

 

 

He snorted and stepped into the intraship car. If he could not take his battlegroup to war, at least he would not sit here on his flag bridge like some clawless cub and watch an empty plot!

 

 

***

 

 

Least Claw of the Khan Shaiaasu'aaithnau sighed in relief as his six Lahstyn-class light cruisers headed for the warp point. Under other circumstances, he would have enjoyed exercising his first squadron command, but the Shanak System was and always had been as useful as a screen door on an airlock. It was lifeless, a cul-de-sac accessible only via a single closed warp point, whose sole claim to importance was that it lay adjacent to the extremely useful Kliean System. Unlike Shanak, Kliean boasted two habitable planets and an immensely rich asteroid belt. It was one of the Khanate's oldest and wealthiest inhabited systems... and the only reason Shaiaasu and his ships had just spent a thoroughly boring month resurveying Shanak.

 

 

He let himself relax as his lead ship entered the warp point, and lazy thoughts chased about his brain. He understood the panic behind his orders. If the rumors from the Human's Justin System were true, even the potential for a similar threat to a system like Kliean must be terrifying to the Khan's administrators. And, he admitted, the survey data on Shanak had been over four Orion centuries old. Improved instrumentation might have discovered a second warp point - it had not, but it might have - yet that had made the mission no less boring, and he felt abandoned so far from the front. Not that Lahstyn-class cruisers would have been much use in combat.

 

 

He purred a chuckle at the thought of his little survey ships leading a life-or-death attack. He had seen one of Humans' Hun-class cruisers. Now there was a survey ship! But the Federation was wealthy enough to build such vessels for survey work, and the Zheeerlikou'valkhannaieee were not. Indeed, he took a sort of perverse pride in his command's austerity. Humans might need big, comfortable ships; Orions did not. Not, he admitted, that he would refuse one!

 

 

He chuckled again, then braced himself as his own ship entered the warp point. Acutar seemed to twitch around him in the familiar stress of transit, and he carefully did not grunt in relief as the brief nausea eased. He gazed longingly into his plot at the blue dot of the planet Masiahn. He had relatives down there - and he wished he had time to visit them. Masiahn was one of the jewels in the Khan's crown, a beautiful world of mountains, forests, and swift, white-foaming rivers. The planet had an enormous tourist trade, and Shaiaasu would have loved to spend a few weeks there. The jahar hunting was excellent, and not many could mount one of the needle-tipped antler racks on his wall or claim he'd taken the beast with no weapon but his own claws.

 

 

But it was not to be. His squadron had completed this component of its mission, and he knew Great Claw Zhaarnak's reputation. The 109th Survey Squadron was an independent command, but the great claw was responsible for covering its operations, and Zhaarnak must be like a zeget with a thorn in its paw. Any mere least claw who wasted a single hour longer than necessary would regret giving him a target for his ire!

 

 

***

 

 

The cloaked cruiser watched the last enemy vessel disappear. It had been astounded when the enemy first appeared, for this system had always been useless. Reachable only via a closed warp point and with no outbound warp points, it had never attracted any attention. Yet doctrine was inflexible: any star system, however useless, must be picketed, and so this one had.

 

 

Now the cruiser waited, making absolutely certain of the coordinates of the second closed warp point through which the enemy vessels had vanished before it fired its courier drone home.

 

 

***

 

 

Zhaarnak looked up from his paperwork as his com buzzed. He activated it, and Least Claw Daarsaahl'haairnaahn, his battlecruiser flagship's CO, looked out of it at him.

 

 

"Yes, Daarsaahl?"

 

 

"Least Claw Shaiaasu has reported, Sir," his flag captain - a term the KON had borrowed from the Humans, Zhaarnak thought sourly - twitched her ears derisively. "Having found nothing in Shanak, he is en route to Thraidaar. He will pass through Telmasa within the next two days."

 

 

"So he found nothing. Why am I not surprised?" Zhaarnak's ears mirrored the flag captain's sour humor. If Shanak had been cleared, the battlegroup would shortly be moved from Telmasa to Sak to cover the choke point there, and would that not be exciting?

 

 

He cocked his head in thought. Shaiaasu's message was for his information only, for the least claw was not technically under his command, but Zhaarnak was a great claw... and bored.

 

 

"Very well, Daarsaahl. Let me know when he arrives. We may as well run a tracking exercise on him. In fact, set up a few days of maneuvers. He can delay his Thraidaar survey that long, and we have been too long idle. Whether they let us fight it or not, there is a war on!"

 

 

"Of course, Great Claw."

 

 

"Good. In the meantime -" Zhaarnak surprised himself with a chuckle of true amusement "- I have more than sufficient paperwork to keep me occupied for the next several hours. Invite Theerah to join both of us for supper, and we can discuss the exercise plans over a haunch of zeget."

 

 

***

 

 

The freighter Sellykha was no swift thirahk. In fact, she was big, ugly, ungainly, and about as maneuverable as an overaged asteroid, but her captain loved her. The resource extraction ship had never been out of Kliean. She made her routine trips between the asteroid belt and the orbital smelters, earning her owners a steady if unspectacular profit, and if it was a boring berth, well, Shipmaster Faarsaahl'ynaara had earned a bit of boredom in the autumn of his life.

 

 

Still, it was a welcome diversion to be ferrying the small prospecting team to Shaylka's single moon. The outermost planet of the system was a typical ball of ice, but its moon was much more interesting. Its eccentric orbit had been noted during the original system survey, yet only in the last few years had anyone gotten around to taking a closer look at it. No one was prepared to suggest where it had come from or how Shaylka had captured it, but it appeared to be rich in transuranic elements, and Sellykha's owners had gotten in the first claim on its mineral rights.

 

 

Faarsaahl padded down the bridge access tunnel - no intraship cars for work-a-day Sellykha! - while he wondered how much his employers would earn from those rights. It might all come to nothing, but there was at least the chance of a fat bonus, and his son-in-law and daughter had just presented him with his seventh, eighth and ninth grandcubs. Their home on Masiahn would need additional rooms, and he planned to give them a new wing for Jaathnaa's birthday.

 

 

He stepped onto the bridge, crossed to his command chair, and paused to check the engineering readouts. Number Two engine room had reported the recurrence of that irritating harmonic, and he wanted a detailed record for the yard techs. "Engineer's imagination" indeed! This time he would make those thaarkoni admit there was a problem and do something about it.

 

 

"Shipmaster?" He looked up at his fourth officers call. The youngster's ears were half-flattened, and he waved at his display. "Could you look at this, Sir?"

 

 

Faarsaahl crossed the bridge, wondering what fresh totally prosaic discovery Huaath had made. You were young once yourself, he chided himself, but the cub was so shiny and new Faarsaahl kept looking for milk on his lips.

 

 

"What is it?"

 

 

"I am not certain, Sir." Huaath peered intently into his display as his claws ticked gently over his panel. "I seem to be picking up some sort of drive field."

 

 

"A drive field? Out here?" Faarsaahl tried to keep the incredulity out of his voice.

 

 

"Yes, Sir. Its frequency matches nothing in our database, however." Huaath waved at his display. "Look for yourself."

 

 

Faarsaahl peered over the youngster's shoulder, and his spine stiffened, for there was a drive field out there. Sellykha's sensors fell far short of Navy standards, but the signature burned clear and sharp, and Faarsaahl felt his claws slip from their sheaths in sudden, terrible suspicion.

 

 

"Its vector?" he asked quietly.

 

 

"It appears to be inbound from Shanak," Huaath said, and Faarsaahl's belly knotted. He stared at the display for one more moment, then turned sharply to his communications officer.

 

 

"Get your transmitter on line!" The com officer blinked in surprise, and Faarsaahl bared his fangs. "Quickly! Alert Masiahn and Zhardak that unknown starships have entered the system!"

 

 

The com officer stiffened, whiskers aquiver in sudden understanding, and bent over his panel with frantic haste. Faarsaahl watched him, then turned back to his fourth officer and laid a clawed hand on the confused youngsters shoulder.

 

 

"Inform them that Fourth Officer Huaath'raamahl spotted them," he told the com officer quietly. "See to it that they know it was only his alertness which let us get the warning off."

 

 

"Aye, Shipmaster," the com officer said equally quietly, and Faarsaahl squeezed Huaath's shoulder. The cub still hadn't realized, he thought sadly. Sellykha had only a freighter's speed, but at least he could insure that Clan Raamahl knew it had a new father-in-honor.

 

 

***

 

 

Zhaarnak'diaano stared at his flag captain.

 

 

"What strength?" he demanded.

 

 

"The Governor had little data when he transmitted the alert," Daarsaahl replied flatly. "Sellykha was destroyed within minutes of sending her warning. Shipmaster Faarsaahl continued sending updates to the last, but he had seen only twenty or thirty light cruisers at that time."

 

 

"Valkha," Zhaarnak whispered. At least the message had reached him quickly via the interstellar communication network comsats that relayed light-speed transmissions between warp points, but his thoughts seemed frozen. Shanak. They had come from Shanak, but how-?

 

 

"They tracked Shaiaasu," he said softly. "They must have. But how did they get there?"

 

 

"There must be a second closed warp point." Daarsaahl's ears went flat as she spoke. "Minisharhuaak! Our own survey showed them the way!"

 

 

Zhaarnak shook off his paralysis and spun to his com section.

 

 

"Emergency priority, Juaahr! All units are to form on Dashyr for transit to Kliean. Then set up a conference link with the carrier commanders. Request an immediate update on squadron readiness states from farshathkhanaak Derikaal. Then send our own alert up the ICN. Request any available support - utmost priority." The com officer nodded, and Zhaarnak wheeled to his operations officer. "If this is only a probe, we may be able to stop it, Theerah. Configure Derikaal's squadrons for an antishipping strike. If we can destroy them or drive them back on Shanak, we have a chance to delay them long enough for someone else to get here."

 

 

"Who, Sir?" Son of the Khan Theerah'jihaal asked quietly.

 

 

"Anyone!" Zhaarnak snapped, then flicked his ears in apology. His fear and anger were not the ops officer's fault. Oh, no. It was the four billion civilians in Kliean who woke the terror at his heart, and he turned back to his console as the first carrier commander appeared on his com.

 

 

***

 

 

The Fleet continued its advance. Two more freighters had been destroyed. Both appeared to have been moving towards the Fleet, perhaps in an effort to acquire more data. If so, that was a good sign - an indication there were no enemy warships to oppose the attack.

 

 

Sensors continued to report. Both targeted planets blazed with the emissions of densely populated, high-tech worlds, and those same sensors had already detected the system's massive asteroid-based industry. That, too, was good. It indicated the wealth of resources waiting for the taking. Once its planets had been cleansed, this system would be a valuable prize.

 

 

***

 

 

Great Claw Zhaarnak's battlegroup raced through the warp point. Least Claw Shaiaasu's light cruisers screened the main force: six battlecruisers and an equal number of Mohrdenhau light carriers. That was it. All Zhaarnak had. Twelve starships and one hundred and seventy-six fighters, and the great claw felt the agony of his own inadequacy as Zhardak and Masiahn glowed in his plot. Four billion. The number repeated again and again, tolling through his brain, and his eyes dropped to the icon of Shaiaasu's ship. He wanted to hate the least claw for letting this happen, yet Shaiaasu had only followed orders. He should have been more careful, but he had obeyed procedures. And perhaps he, as you, saw his mission only as a distraction from his true duty. From his chance to win honor. And if he did, what does that say of you, Zhaarnak'diaano?

 

 

"Transmission from Zhardak, Sir!" The com officer listened for a moment, and his ears went flat. Zhaarnak glared at him, part of him wishing Juaahr would suddenly be struck mute, yet he had to know. "Zhardak reports at least nine battlecruisers and an unknown number of superdreadnoughts," the com officer said in a dead voice.

 

 

"Shiaaahk!" Daarsaahl whispered the savage oath, and Zhaarnak's claws drove deep into his armrests. This was no probe... and his battlegroup could never stop it. The light dots of the inhabited worlds drew his eyes like a black hole, and the same black hole sucked his soul into its maw as his earlier thoughts about warriors who abandoned civilians mocked him.

 

 

"Very well," he said after a moment, and the calmness of his own voice astonished him. "Update your force appreciation, Theerah." He looked down at the com link to his senior pilot. "Inform your squadrons, Derikaal," he said quietly. "Tell them-" He paused, searching for the words. "Tell them we are warriors. What we can do, we must, as the Khan expects of us."

 

 

"Yes, Sir," the farshathkhanaak said softly, and Zhaarnak looked at his flag captain.

 

 

"Take us to meet them, Daarsaahl."

 

 

***

 

 

The Fleet's sensors picked up the attack craft first, then the ships which had launched them, and the light cruisers fell back on the main force. There were no gunboats to cover them, for this was a rapid reaction force, with none of the new units. But the enemy was still weaker, with less than two hundred attack craft and nothing heavier than a battlecruiser to support them.

 

 

***

 

 

Eighty-Third Small Claw of the Khan Derikaal'zohkiir's fighters neared the enemy, and the farshathkhanaak's blood ran cold as he saw their true strength at last. Twenty-seven superdreadnoughts - a small force beside the ones waging such titanic combat on the Justin front, yet impossible odds for a single light battlegroup - were screened by nine battlecruisers and thirty-three light cruisers, including a dozen of those the Humans had codenamed Cataphract. His fighter squadrons were a cub's toy against such power, but they were all Kliean had, and he forced his voice to remain calm as he designated targets.

 

 

"Ignore the cruisers," he told his pilots, knowing even as he did how many of them those cruisers would kill. "Mass on the lead superdreadnought division."

 

 

Acknowledgments came back, and he took his place at their head - the post of greatest honor and danger - as they shook out behind him. His two-man command fighter was more austere than its Human counterparts, without a separate pilot. He remembered the arguments in which he had maintained the superiority of the Human arrangement, the times he had stressed how the extra position eased a strike commander's load, but today he was glad the controls were in his own claws... and it was not as if it would have mattered.

 

 

His pilots streaked into the Bugs' engagement envelope, and fireballs pocked their ranks. Fighter after fighter blew apart, but they held their course, howling down their enemies' throat in an attack they knew could only be futile. Yet it was an attack they had to make. They were Orions, and four billion civilians lay behind them.

 

 

***

 

 

A quarter of the enemy attack craft were destroyed short of the Fleet, but the survivors shrieked in on the leading superdreadnoughts, closing through everything the Fleet could throw at them, and salvoed their deadly FRAMs. Four SDs blew apart, and the attack craft tore through the formation, strafing with their onboard lasers, ripping at the Fleet in desperate fury.

 

 

Of the hundred and seventy-five who had attacked, eighty-one broke free to rearm, and the Fleet rumbled onward. Losses were higher than projected, but over half the attack craft had been destroyed. Their next attack would be weaker... and the one after that weaker still.

 

 

***

 

 

Zhaarnak sat bitterly in his command chair as the remnants of his third strike broke off. Derikaal had lived to lead the second, but the last had been led by a mere cub of the Khan, for no more senior officer had survived. Now his remaining fighters - all sixteen of them - fell back to their carriers... and the enemy continued remorselessly onward. Ten of his pilots had ignored orders and rammed capital ships, but it was useless. Useless. Their suicide runs had not even dented their targets. Only seven superdreadnoughts had been destroyed, and his battlegroup was hopelessly inadequate to stop the survivors.

 

 

"The fighters are rearming, Sir," Son of the Khan Theerah said, and Zhaarnak fought the need to scream curses at him. The fighters were rearming. What did Theerah think less than three squadrons could do against such firepower?

 

 

Every instinct shrieked to attack. That was the Farshalah'kiah, the Warriors Way, which required him to die before he let these creatures murder his people's worlds, yet reason knew his battlegroup's death could not save Kliean. The system was doomed, unless reinforcements could somehow take it back, and there were no reinforcements. Kliean was too far from what all had assumed was the front. The bulk of the Fleet was busy deploying towards the known fighting or refitting for future deployment; only light forces like his were available, and if the enemy had massed so heavy a fleet this quickly, at least one of his main bases must lie in close proximity.

 

 

It should not be so, he thought bleakly. We are caught like the Humans themselves, struck where we never expected it and naked under the enemy's claws. Yet there is one difference. The Humans had only colony worlds to defend... we have the entire Idnahk Sector.

 

 

His blood was frozen. Four billion in Kliean, yes, but another billion and a half in Hairnow, yet another in Alowan, and over thirty billion within six transits of Sak. He looked upon the greatest disaster in the Zheeerlikou'valkhannaieee's history, and he could not stop it. Gods above, he could not stop it!

 

 

"Fall back, Theerah," he said.

 

 

"Sir?" The ops office stared at him, and Zhaarnak closed his fists, extended claws sinking a centimeter deep into his palms.

 

 

"Fall back," he repeated. His ops officer continued to stare at him, and Zhaarnak made himself meet that stare. "We cannot stop them," he said, wondering how he could speak so flatly while his soul died, "but we are the only force available. We must fall back to Telmasa. We cannot sacrifice ourselves here when our ships may make the difference in a warp point defense there."

 

 

"But, Sir, the planetary defense centers! If we fell back, joined with the PDCs-"

 

 

"The PDCs are antiques," Zhaarnak said, and his voice was no longer flat. It was harsh and ugly with despair and self-hate. "They lack even datalink! What they can do, they must, but our support would add nothing to their capabilities. We must fall back on Telmasa, where we may make a difference, not sacrifice ourselves where we know we cannot."

 

 

Theerah stared at him, still unable to believe what he was hearing, and Zhaarnak slammed a clawed, bleeding fist on the arm of his chair.

 

 

"Minisharhuaak! Must I repeat myself yet again? Fall back, Son of the Khan! We have an entire sector to consider!"

 

 

"I-" Theerah closed his mouth, then nodded curtly. "As you command, Great Claw." His voice was ugly, but the ugliness was directed less at Zhaarnak than at the knowledge that the great claw was correct, and Zhaarnak let it pass. Who was he to task another for the dishonor of insubordination when he had just abandoned four billion people to death?

 

 

***

 

 

Least Claw Shaiaasu listened in shock. Fall back? Abandon the system? No!

 

 

He stared into his own plot, seeing what Great Claw Zhaarnak saw, and knew what the great claw knew. The system was doomed - doomed because of you, Shaiaasu'aaithnau - and all the battlegroup could hope for now was to hold the Telmasa warp point until relief forces arrived.

 

 

But it couldn't. There were enough fighters in Hairnow and Alowan to replace the carriers' losses, but even with full hangar bays, they could never stop the Bugs - not in Telmasa, not in Alowan, not in Sak...

 

 

Humans had a word for what he had unleashed upon his people; they called it Juggernaut.

 

 

"Sir?" His exec's eyes met his, as sick as his own, and he looked past her, looked about him at his bridge officers, pictured all the other officers and ratings of Acutar's company and the dishonor he had brought upon them all.

 

 

***

 

 

"No!"

 

 

Zhaarnak lunged upright as KONS Acutar changed course. She darted straight for the enemy, and as he watched, Kilokharn and Kurv wheeled to follow her, then Faulhi, Nabahstahr and Zairoh, until Shaiaasu's entire squadron streaked for the Bugs behind its flagship.

 

 

"Raise Least Claw Shaiaasu!" Zhaarnak roared, and his com officer punched keys. The great claw waited, watching in fury as his entire light cruiser element charged to its own destruction, and then Juaahr looked up.

 

 

"Acutar does not respond, Sir," he said.

 

 

Zhaarnak sank back into his chair, and to his watching officers, it was as if he aged a century before their eyes. He gazed into his plot, watching the first missiles streak towards the light cruisers - light cruisers which lacked even command datalink - and his ears were flat. Curse you, Shaiaasu, he thought numbly. Curse you for doing what I long to do!

 

 

Acutar staggered as the first missile slammed into her shields. Another followed, and a third. Her shields went down, and vaporized hull plating streamed astern, yet she never slowed, never hesitated. Her own launchers fired back as she entered their range, but they were pinpricks. The Bug leviathans shrugged them aside and poured a butchery of fire into Shaiaasu's squadron.

 

 

Kilokharn blew up, then Zairoh, but their sisters held their course, and Zhaarnak raised his open, blood-streaked hand. He thrust it towards the display, then closed it once more, digging his claws into his lacerated palm in salute even as his soul railed at the officers who had defied his orders. Kurv vanished, and beams began to fire, as well. Nabahstahr exploded, but Acutar and Faulhi continued their mad charge. They were broken wrecks, yet their drives survived, and they hurled themselves upon the enemy. A Bug light cruiser accelerated to meet Faulhi, and the two ships were blotted from the universe as they struck. Another light cruiser lunged at Acutar, but somehow Shaiaasu's ship evaded it. One ship - a single ship, out of an entire squadron - charged the massive target of its foes, and Zhaarnak looked up, watching the visual display, as Acutar struck her target and an enemy superdreadnought blew apart in a shroud of flame.

 

 

My claws are broken, Zhaarnak thought. My honor is no more. I have failed my Clan Fathers and those who will follow me. I have failed my Khan. But in my dishonor, I may yet shield my farshatok.

 

 

"Claw Daarsaahl."

 

 

"Yes, Great Claw?" his flag captain's voice was quiet, and Zhaarnak kept his eyes on the visual display's fading ball of fire.

 

 

"Make an entry in the log, Claw Daarsaahl. The decision to withdraw is mine and mine alone. I did not discuss it. I did not seek the concurrence of any other officer."

 

 

"But, Sir-" Daarsaahl began, only to stop as Zhaarnak raised a forestalling hand.

 

 

"Make the entry," he said softly.

 

 

Chapter Twenty-five

 

 

"May our claws strike deep."

 

 

"All right." Rear Admiral Raymond Porter Prescott looked at his subordinates with grim hazel eyes. "We reach Alowan in eighteen hours, and the Tabbies still hold it. Our job is to make sure they continue to hold until Great Fang Koraaza gets here."

 

 

Commodore Diego Jackson, commanding Task Force 23's light carriers, shook his head. "That's a tall order, Sir," he said quietly.

 

 

"Maybe, but that's the mission," Prescott said, and looked at his intelligence officer. "Bring us up to speed, Eloise."

 

 

"Yes, Sir." Commander Eloise Kmak had her notes on her terminal, but she didn't look at them. No doubt, Prescott thought bitterly, they were indelibly graven into her mind.

 

 

"The real surprise," she began, "is that there're any KON units left in Alowan. Given the Orion honor code - and, especially, his own record - I'm amazed Great Claw Zhaarnak fell back at all. The fact that he's managed to preserve his battlegroup essentially intact is even more astounding.

 

 

"As far as we can tell, he bled the Bugs badly in Telmasa, but they punched a simultaneous transit into his face. He got a little too close - that's how he lost the ships he did - but for the most part he used only his fighters. That was smart, Admiral. Very smart. They're his most replenishable resource; he was able to make good his losses in Kliean from Hairnow, and the Alowan Fleet Base was able to replace those he lost in Telmasa. According to our latest reports, he has six Orion and three Gorm BCs, six CVLs, and eight Gharbahg-class CLs. That's not a lot, but the Tabbies did well to scrape up even that much after being surprised this way. GHQ and Idnahk Sector Command are trying to keep us updated on what else they may be able to find, but the situation's so confused no one's certain what is or isn't available. Essentially, we've sent out an 'all ships' signal. We'll take what we can get, but for now, we - and Zhaarnak - are it."

 

 

Prescott nodded slowly, for Kmak was right. It also meant his ten battleships, nine light carriers, nine battlecruisers, five light cruisers and five destroyers represented a far heavier force than Zhaarnak's. Not that it's heavy enough, he thought, and his mouth twisted as he remembered the two battleships he didn't have. TFNS Mars and Triomphant had both lost too many engine rooms to keep up on the desperate, high-speed voyage from New Bristol, and he had no idea how the battlecruisers Ranseur and Pikeaxe had managed to keep their drives on-line.

 

 

Maybe these bastards have a point using commercial engines. They may suck wind in a tactical sense, but-

 

 

"Given the larger strike groups Tabby carriers carry and the partial squadrons they put aboard their capital ships, he actually has about sixty more fighters than we do," Kmak went on. "Our combined force will be able to put over three hundred into space, but we're very weak in capital launchers and, of course, we have no SD element. If we have to fall back on the Pairsag twin planets, we'll pick up another hundred and twenty fighters plus the Fleet Base's and PDCs' capital launchers, but that will also mean letting the Bugs range on the planets."

 

 

"We're not supposed to tie ourselves down, Sir," Commander Kenneth "Zulu" Sosa, Prescott's chief of staff, said.

 

 

"I'm aware of my orders, Zulu." Prescott didn't raise his voice, but most of his staff found someplace else to look. Every one of them knew it would be at least two months before Fang Koraaza'khiniak could reach Alowan. They also knew Zhaarnak and Prescott were under direct orders to continue falling back until he did. What they didn't know was whether or not Prescott intended to obey those orders, and he let the silence linger, then waved for Kmak to resume.

 

 

"My best appreciation is that things are going to get rougher, Sir. Bug doctrine is clearly to keep pouring it on until they hit something so hard they have to stop, and the Kliean population size has to've told them they're into the Tabbies' core systems. Claw Zhaarnak's been lucky so far in not facing any gunboats, but it's unlikely they won't bring them along for an attack on Alowan.

 

 

"The only good news is that they may not yet realize the Hairnow System is there. The connecting warp point's a Type Two, so it won't be too hard to find, but it's over five light-hours out, and they've only had a couple of weeks to look for it. More importantly, Zhaarnak managed to destroy the ICN link to the system, so there're no comsat 'bread crumbs' to lead them to it. Additionally, they know where he went - he deliberately let them track him to the Alowan warp point - so we can at least hope they've concentrated on following him up."

 

 

"That was gutsy," Jason Pitnarau observed. Prescott's flag captain was short and stocky, and his almond eyes narrowed. "There's what - a billion people in Alowan?"

 

 

"Yes, Sir. But at least Alowan has some fixed defenses." Kmak's shrug was bitter. "Sak and Alowan are supposed to be the only way into the Kliean Chain; that's why both of them were fortified in the first place. But Hairnow was supposed to be covered by Alowan, so it has no local defenses, and there are a billion and a half civilians in that system."

 

 

"I didn't say it was wrong, Eloise, only that it took guts. He could've waffled and broken contact - left it to the luck of the draw. And if he loses Alowan, someone will damned sure blame him for 'leading the Bugs to it.'"

 

 

"He wouldn't still have a battlegroup if he were the waffling sort," Prescott said. "Eloise is right - it's amazing he managed to hold his command together at all."

 

 

"Yes, Sir." Kmak paused for a moment, then cleared her throat. "Ah, there are a couple of points to consider about the command structure, Sir," she said carefully.

 

 

"Such as?"

 

 

"Well, you're senior to Zhaarnak, and, well..." The intelligence officer drew a breath. "Sir, according to ONI, Zhaarnak hates Terrans. He may not react well when you supersede him."

 

 

"I'm aware of Zhaarnak's attitude, Commander." Prescott's tenor voice was toneless, but it was unlike him to use formal rank titles in staff meetings, and Kmak shut her mouth.

 

 

Prescott let his eyes circle the table, then spoke very slowly and deliberately.

 

 

"We're not going to tell him I'm senior." Several people stiffened, whether in surprise or from a desire to protest he didn't know, nor did it matter. "This officer has been, and remains, under tremendous strain. He's compromised his own honor to do the right thing - the smart thing. Fang Koraaza's approved his actions, and no doubt GHQ will, too, but he's a Tabby. An Orion from a clan whose honor has already taken a beating and who left four billion of his people on their own rather than dying in their defense, and you can bet your pensions there are other Orions who'll spit on his shadow for that. All right, he doesn't like Terrans. Well, some Terrans don't like Orions. I don't happen to be one of them, but I understand their attitude, and it's up to us to understand his. The smooth functioning of this task force in the defense of Alowan - which, I remind you, is also an Orion system - is our sole priority. If I can make it function more smoothly by letting him retain command, I'll do it... and given Orion traditions, I can't do it if he knows I'm senior. So understand me. Who's senior to whom stays right here in this compartment. It will not be discussed, even in casual conversation, with any other persons. Is that clear?"

 

 

Heads nodded soberly, and he waved a hand at Commander Alexander LaFroye.

 

 

"In that case, Alec, let's get to the nuts and bolts. I want contingency plans based on Zhaarnak's probable tactics so we can slot into his plans with the minimum of confusion."

 

 

"Yes, Sir." The ops officer brought blocks of information scrolling up his terminal. "In that case, Sir, the first thing to look at is the compatibility of our carrier elements, and-"

 

 

***

 

 

Great Claw Zhaarnak stalked out of the flag bridge intraship car into dead silence. He crossed to his command chair, hands folded behind his back, and stood beside it, glaring down into the repeater tank at the light dots of his reinforcements.

 

 

Humans, he thought almost despairingly. What more can the gods do to me? Not enough to take my honor, not enough to fill me with nightmares of slaughter. No. Now they send the very chofaki who first destroyed my clan's honor as my "reinforcements."

 

 

The thought burned like acid, and his stubborn self-honesty's insistence that he should be burning incense sticks for any reinforcement only made the it worse. It was the sheerest fluke that this Human great claw - this Prescott - had been close enough to respond. The Idnahk Sector had been colonized centuries ago, yet the Humans had found a closed warp point within it twenty of their years before. The protocols between the two imperiums had ceded it to the Khanate, since it lay in Zheeerlikou'valkhannaieee space, yet it linked the sector to Human space. Given the warp lines' crazed ingeodesics, the Human base at New Bristol was actually closer than any Orion base to Alowan, and this was the result. The KON was scrambling frantically to scrape up anything it could, but this task force - this Human task force - was the only organized unit available.

 

 

Zhaarnak watched it sweep closer and tried to feel some spark of hope, some belief that, with its aid, he might hold Alowan. But there was no spark. There was only the cold, drear sense of failure which had filled him since Kliean.

 

 

He shuddered, mind filled with the ugly imagery the Kliean comsats had delivered to Telmasa before the Bugs drove him from it. The horrifying images of feeding Bugs, proving that the Zheeerlikou'valkhannaieee, too, were food for them. He closed his eyes, soul twisting in the icy wind at his center, and the stillness behind him made that wind even colder.

 

 

Do they hate me, my officers? Do they feel contempt for the coward who fell back rather than die? Do they understand why I did it? Or do they even care why? My dishonor covers them, shields their names and their clans' names, but do they fear the taint which clings to mine?

 

 

He turned away from his plot. The Human commander would arrive aboard Dashyr within the hour, and he must be in the boat bay to greet him.

 

 

Zhaarnak walked from Flag Bridge, and Son of the Khan Theerah watched him go. The great claw's spine was ramrod straight, yet Theerah sensed his despair and wished he knew how to fight it. He had been shocked by the order to abandon Kliean, and he understood the horror which haunted his commander, but the great claw had been correct. Theerah knew that now. Yet the way of the Zheeerlikou'valkhannaieee offered no way to tell Zhaarnak that, and so he watched the great claw in silence even as his heart burned to speak.

 

 

***

 

 

Raymond Prescott stood as his cutter's hatch cycled. He and his staff had changed into summer-weight uniforms in anticipation of the Tabbies' shipboard temperatures, and he flicked imaginary lint from his perfectly tailored cuff. A faint, fond smile curled his lips as the mannerism woke memories of his kid brother. Andy was twenty years younger... and totally unable to pass up any chance to tease him for the personal vanity he'd never quite overcome. And ever since Andy had attained captain's rank he'd taken to teasing Raymond over his "stalled career," too. Of course, promotion always slowed once an officer reached flag rank. Actually, Raymond had made captain earlier in his career than Andy had, and he was on the short list for vice admiral, but Andy had always been the feisty one, and teasing or no, Raymond wished he were here now.

 

 

No you don't - you want him to live. He felt his smile vanish into a grim, hard line, then inhaled deeply and stepped forward with Commodore Jackson and Zulu Sosa at his heels.

 

 

The Tabby side party snapped to formal salute, and a wild, swirling keen washed over him in place of the TFN's bosun's pipes. It was inevitable, Prescott thought, that a race whose language was often described as "a catfight set to bagpipes" would develop real bagpipes as the favored instrument for its martial music. Oh, well. At least it makes a change!

 

 

He saluted the russet-furred great claw, and Zhaarnak returned his human-style courtesy with a stiff, formal Orion salute. It was always hard to read alien facial expressions, especially when the face in question featured a blunt muzzle, shoulder-wide whiskers, and a covering of soft, plushy fur, but Prescott sensed the exhausted belligerence behind that salute.

 

 

"Permission to come aboard, Sir?" he asked - and saw Zhaarnak's whiskers twitch as the request came out in High Orion. He knew he hadn't gotten it quite right, for human vocal cords simply couldn't hit the language's higher notes, but Prescott had the rare combination of perfect pitch and the ability to imitate almost any sound, and he waited while Zhaarnak grappled with the sheer shock of hearing a human speak the Tongue of Tongues.

 

 

"Permission granted, Ahhhdmiraal," he replied after a moment, and Prescott lowered his hand from the salute and gestured to his subordinates.

 

 

"Allow me to present Commodore Diego Jackson, my senior carrier division CO, and Commander Sosa, my chief of staff," he said in Orion. Zhaarnak bowed to each of them in turn, then rested one hand on the shoulder of the slender female officer beside him.

 

 

"Ninety-Sixth Least Claw Daarsaahl'haairnaahn, my flag captain," he said, and waited while Sosa translated for Jackson, whose grasp of Orion was poor, to say the least. The flag captain returned Prescott's bow, and he reminded himself that a KON flag officer's flag captain was also his chief of staff. He was unfamiliar with Clan Haairna - no non-Orion could keep their sprawling clan structures straight - but Daarsaahl's pelt was the sable of the oldest Orion nobility, and she also wore the starburst of the Valkhaanair'zegaair, the equivalent of the Solar Cross, along with several lesser decorations. Not just an aristocrat, but a good one, he thought. The Orion patriarchal culture had persisted well into its interstellar stage, and even today, female Orion officers, regardless of birth rank, had to be a cut better than their male peers if they expected to advance. Daarsaahl, it appeared, was no exception to the rule.

 

 

"If you would accompany us," Zhaarnak said, "my staff is waiting to brief you." He paused, then continued more stiffly. "I regret that there is insufficient time to greet you with a proper meal, Ahhhdmiraal, but-" He broke off with an ear-flick shrug, and Prescott nodded.

 

 

"I understand, Sir," he said, and followed Zhaarnak and Daarsaahl to the intraship car.

 

 

***

 

 

"- so while we are not positive of the enemy's strength or plans," Theerah'jihaal finished his brief, "the addition of your carriers will let us mount a much stronger combat space patrol on the warp point. We do not know if we will be able actually to hold this system. Certainly we intend to try. The Sak fortresses rely upon the Pairsag Twins for support and maintenance; if we lose Alowan, we lose that support. More to the point, there are a billion civilians on the Twins. And, of course, every system we lose is one more we must retake before we can relieve Kliean."

 

 

Zhaarnak kept his expression impassive as he watched his new allies' flat, naked faces. For the first time in his life, he wished he had made a serious study of them. He suspected this Admiral Prescott was skilled at evaluating Orion expressions, and that irked him. Human faces were far more mobile than he had previously appreciated, yet he was unable to interpret their mobility.

 

 

He watched Commodore Jackson as Sosa murmured a translation of Theerah's remarks into his flat, round ear and felt another flicker of resentment as the commander's translation reemphasized Prescott's ability to speak the Tongue of Tongues. It was convenient, but what business had a chofak learning the tongue of warriors? And why had he bothered? It could not have been easy, given the differences in their vocal apparatuses, so why take the trouble?

 

 

Now Prescott glanced at Jackson and raised an eyebrow. The commodore nodded, confirming his understanding of Theerah's presentation, and the admiral looked at Zhaarnak.

 

 

"I believe I understand your intentions, Sir," he said - still in the Tongue of Tongues, curse it, "and we can adjust our operations to conform with them. Commander Sosa has brought along chips detailing our current readiness states and com procedures. We will, of course, adapt our own protocols to yours, and, with your permission, I will send Commander LaFroye, my own operations officer, to Dashyr for more detailed conversations with Son of the Khan Theerah."

 

 

Zhaarnak flicked his ears in approval, but then his eyes narrowed as Prescott leaned back. Familiar with Human body language or not, the great claw recognized the look of someone about to suggest changes, and something inside him bristled in instant resentment. But he made himself wait. Chofak or no, this Human's task force was more powerful than his own. If Prescott wished to make suggestions, Zhaarnak had no option but to listen, however stupid they might be.

 

 

"One point which has not been discussed," Prescott said, "is that of equipment compatibility. As you know, our datalink is unable to mate with your own. This is unfortunate, and I understand your R&D people are working with our own to correct the problem, though it will not help us here. The point I would like to offer for your consideration, however, Sir, are the differences in our munitions and, particularly, our fighter ordnance."

 

 

Zhaarnak felt a fresh prickle of surprise at the Human's calm, respectful tone and raised one hand, palm uppermost and claws retracted, to invite him to continue.

 

 

"A support echelon from New Bristol will join us here as soon as possible, but the yard ships and freighters are slower than our warships and left later. They will not arrive for three more of our weeks, and the ordnance currently on hand is all we will have for that time. We were aware this would be true, so we have filled our own cargo holds with additional missiles which I would like to tranship to your Fleet Base. That would get them out of harm's way, and we can reammunition from the space stations following any engagement."

 

 

He paused, and Zhaarnak flicked an ear in agreement. That much, at least, was simple enough, but the Human was not yet done.

 

 

"Turning to the matter of fighter ordnance, our carriers can recover and launch one another's fighters. We cannot rearm your fighters, however, nor you ours. What I would suggest is that we redistribute our ordnance and life-support modules. If we were to transfer, say, half of our missiles, FRAMs, and life-support pods to your carriers and replace them with your hardware, it would be possible for any carrier to support any fighter squadron. Not only would this increase our tactical flexibility, but it would give us greater platform survivability through redundancy."

 

 

It was all Zhaarnak could do to keep his jaw from dropping. The Human's Orion was not perfect - he seemed incapable of reaching the proper notes for full emphasis, and his grammar was overly formal - yet that meant nothing beside what he had just suggested. The great claw glanced at Daarsaahl, seeing his flag captain's surprise - and approval - at the offer, and wondered why it had not occurred to him to make the same suggestion.

 

 

Perhaps it was because you let hatred blind you, he thought unwillingly. Yet the offer has merit - great merit. He gathered himself to speak, but before he could, Commodore Jackson leaned forward. His speech was incomprehensible to the great claw - I must learn to understand them after all; chofaki or not, they are our allies, and it seems they may have something worthwhile to say after all - and he waited while his own earbug translated.

 

 

"There's one other point I'd like to mention, Sir," the commodore said. "The Pairsag Fleet Base has a powerful fighter component, and it occurred to us during our discussions en route to Alowan that it might be worthwhile to consider staging those fighters through our carriers. With tenders and full life-support loads, they could make the flight to us well outside their theoretical range, and we could arm them once they arrive."

 

 

Zhaarnak looked at Theerah. His ops officer and he had discussed the same possibility but without a decision. Their carriers would have been badly overextended trying to support so many fighters, but if they adopted Prescott's suggestion about ordnance loads, it would be possible. It would also strip the Pairsag Twins of local fighter defenses, yet it would increase his own fighter strength - and hence his chance of actually holding the system - by almost fifty percent.

 

 

Theerah looked back, then flicked his ears, and Zhaarnak returned his gaze to Prescott.

 

 

"I believe these suggestions have merit, Ahhhdmiraal." It irked him that he still sounded faintly begrudging, and he made himself add, "It is a generous offer, and I thank you for it."

 

 

"'If my claws guard not your back, then whose claws shall guard mine?'" the admiral said softly, and Zhaarnak experienced yet another flicker of surprise at this Human's command of the Tongue of Tongues. How many years must he have studied the Zheeerlikou'valkhannaieee to have attained such insight into them? And, again, why had he bothered?

 

 

The great claw felt a nagging suspicion he would not like the answer to that question if he knew it. Not because Prescott had done so with sinister intent, but because... because...

 

 

He shook the thought aside. There would be time to consider it later - assuming any of them survived - and he pushed his chair back on its powered track and stood.

 

 

"Very well, Ahhhdmiraal," he said. "I approve your suggestions. Son of the Khan Theerah and Least Claw Daarsaahl will hold themselves in readiness to discuss the details with your Commaaaander LaaaFroyyye. In the meantime -" he hesitated, then made himself extend his hand in the Human manner "- welcome to Alowan. May our claws strike deep."

 

 

"May our claws strike deep," the Human agreed, and gripped his hand firmly.

 

 

Chapter Twenty-six

 

 

"There are no chofaki here."

 

 

Zhaarnak looked up as his intelligence officer entered the briefing room. Nineteenth Least Claw Uaaria'saalathahn was young for her rank, especially as a female, but Zhaarnak had specifically requested her. She was a bit of a maverick, which scarcely endeared her to some superiors, yet she was also brilliant and the daughter of an old friend. And, he admitted with what he knew was old-fashioned sexism, she was most pleasant to look upon, as well. But now her expression caused him to put his display on hold, halting the play of the latest tactical plan Theerah and the Human LaFroye had worked out.

 

 

"Yes, Uaaria?"

 

 

"I have just learned something which should be drawn to your attention, Great Claw," she said with rather more than normal formality, and his ears pricked. "As you know, I requested background files on Ahhhdmiraal Pressscott and his senior officers from the Eyes of the Khan."

 

 

"I remember. Not that they told us much."

 

 

"No, Sir. But my request was bucked up to GHQ in Centauri, and the Humans provided the information we lacked."

 

 

"They did?" Zhaarnak was surprised. It remained difficult not to think automatically of Humans as chofaki, though he was being forced - to some extent - to modify his opinion as Prescott's task force shook down as TG 37.2 of the Grand Alliance's newly designated Task Force 37. Even so, he would not have expected their navy to provide such data.

 

 

"Yes, Sir." Uaaria almost seemed to squirm, then sighed. "Great Claw, he is senior to you."

 

 

"He-?" Zhaarnak sat as if struck to stone. Senior to him? The Human was senior to him? Impossible! Surely he would have said something! But Uaaria did not make such mistakes.

 

 

"Are you positive?" he asked finally.

 

 

Uaaria's ears flicked, and Zhaarnak's thoughts floundered. If Prescott was senior, why had he not said so? Why had he always addressed Zhaarnak as "Sir" and accepted Zhaarnak's plans?

 

 

He looked back up at Uaaria. Young or no, she was a shrewd judge of character, and, unlike Zhaarnak, she had studied Humans as part of her intelligence training.

 

 

"Have you any theory as to why he has not told us so? Could he be unaware of the fact?"

 

 

"I doubt his ignorance, Sir," Uaaria said carefully. "Ahhhdmiraal Pressscott is clearly a student of our people. I feel certain he requested your dossier before reporting to Alowan."

 

 

"Then why?" Zhaarnak asked, and his eyes narrowed as the least claw hesitated. "Speak your thoughts, Least Claw," he said firmly, and she sighed once more.

 

 

"Great Claw, I think he knows your feeling for his people," she said softly. "I believe he chose to accept your authority because of it."

 

 

Zhaarnak leaned back in a welter of chaotic emotions. Astonishment. Confusion... and shame. If Uaaria was right, Prescott had deliberately renounced a command authority to which he was entitled. One of the Zheeerlikou'valkhannaieee might do such a thing, but only under very special circumstances which did not apply here. Part of the great claw longed to put it down to cowardice, to a chofak's desire to avoid responsibility, yet he had been forced to work too closely with Prescott over the last ten days to believe that.

 

 

No, he knew what the truth had to be: Prescott had done what he himself could not. The Human had sacrificed honor to the prejudices of another, accepting a lesser role, obedient to one he had the right to command, because he knew his legal subordinate hated his race. And he had not done so openly lest it underscore the great claw's prejudice and so dishonor Zhaarnak.

 

 

"I am sorry, Great Claw," Uaaria said, "yet I thought you should know. I-"

 

 

"No, Uaaria," Zhaarnak said quietly. "You did well in this. It is I who have done poorly."

 

 

"You have much on your mind and spirit," the least claw protested in his defense.

 

 

"Not enough to excuse insult to an ally," Zhaarnak replied, and fresh surprise filled him as he realized he meant it. That it was not simply the mouthing of a formality.

 

 

"There is no insult, Sir," Uaaria argued. "There would be insult only had you known."

 

 

"Which I now do," Zhaarnak pointed out. He looked back down at the frozen display and sighed. "Very well, Uaaria. Thank you. I shall com Ahhhdmiraal Pressscott and-"

 

 

He never finished the sentence, for even as he spoke the alarms began to scream.

 

 

***

 

 

"They're coming through, Sir!" Sosa reported as Prescott charged onto Flag Bridge. "Simultaneous transit - forty-plus CLs, but they seem weak in Cataphracts."

 

 

"Thank God for small favors, Zulu," Prescott muttered, and his mouth tightened as his plot confirmed Sosa's estimate. It also showed him something else, and his mouth tightened further as the first gunboat icons began to appear.

 

 

"Claw Zhaarnak's activated Alpha-Three," LaFroye said. That wasn't what the Tabbies called it, of course, but it was a designation humans could pronounce, and Prescott nodded.

 

 

"Acknowledge." He punched a stud and Diego Jackson's face appeared on his screen. "Alpha-Three, Diego," he said without preamble, wishing yet again that it had been possible to integrate TF 37's com net more fully. "Roll 'em out."

 

 

***

 

 

The Assault Fleet made transit with the leading gunboats. There were no energy buoys to flail them this time - a fringe benefit of pressing the enemy so hard - but there were sufficient mines to delay the light cruisers which survived transit. The enemy attack craft came slashing in, intent on killing the CLE's before their systems stabilized, and the gunboats went to meet them.

 

 

The gunboats were bigger, more vulnerable targets, but this time there were no jammer buoys to break their datanets, and while the attack craft were more heavily armed, their internal energy weapons could bear only directly ahead of them. The gunboats' internal lasers, however, had a command of over 270ø, and their point defense systems had even more coverage. A dozen of them died in the first pass, but four-ship squadrons fired back at the attack craft driving in on them. Coupled with the cruisers' weapons, they killed at least as many enemy units for the loss of only seven CLEs, and that was a worthwhile exchange. The enemy had more carriers this time, yet none of his larger ones. He could not have many attack craft to expend.

 

 

***

 

 

"Their gunboats are more effective than expected, Great Claw," Theerah reported tersely. "Our CSP has lost heavily, but we have accounted for all but two Cataphracts."

 

 

"Here come the Humans, Sir," Daarsaahl said. Zhaarnak's eyes flicked back to his plot. Jackson's squadrons swooped past the survivors of his CSP, armed with missiles, not FRAMs. They opened fire from beyond the Bugs' range, and Zhaarnak snarled as fireballs glared. The gunboats' point defense might make them resistant to missile fire, but not resistant enough!

 

 

"The cruisers are moving into the mines," Theerah said, and then the ops officer's ears went flat. "Here come the superdreadnoughts."

 

 

***

 

 

The superdreadnoughts made transit in a tight chain. There were but thirty-eight, for the Fleet was still redeploying to exploit this axis, yet there were no enemy superdreadnoughts. Once his attack craft were gone, the battle-line would roll forward unstoppably.

 

 

***

 

 

Prescott watched Jackson's squadrons tear into the gunboats, but the cruisers were clearing the mines. There simply hadn't been time to emplace enough of them, and it looked like at least some light units would survive to screen the main force.

 

 

"The Tabbies are launching their reserve strike," LaFroye reported.

 

 

"Has Zhaarnak alerted the Fleet Base, Zulu?"

 

 

"Yes, Sir. The message went out -" Sosa checked a time display "- eight minutes ago."

 

 

Prescott grunted in approval, not that any of the Fleet Base fighters could reach them in time to stop the enemy from making transit. The Pairsag Twins were currently on the far side of Alowan from the warp point. It would take the alert message four hours to reach the Fleet Base, and the fighters would have needed a full day to make the flight out. That was beyond their range even with full life-support loads, but Theerah and LaFroye had arranged a resupply point with the orbital base's tenders. All they could do was replenish the fighters' life support, but that doubled their range. By the time TF 37 fell back to them, they'd be ready to stage through the carriers.

 

 

And we're going to have plenty of spare hangar space, the admiral thought grimly as the Tabbies hurtled in to attack the leading superdreadnoughts and the flashes of dying fighters speckled the visual display. The Orions broke through to salvo their FRAMs and five Archers blew up, yet their consorts caught the Tabbies in a crossfire between their own weapons and the gunboats, and Zhaarnak's pilots paid heavily for their success.

 

 

"They've cleared a lane, Sir," LaFroye said flatly. "They're breaking out."

 

 

***

 

 

The Fleet uncoiled directly towards the enemy starships, and those ships gave ground. They retreated steadily, remaining beyond missile range and sending in their attack craft again and again, but the battle-line forged remorselessly ahead. Battlecruisers and the remaining light cruisers screened the superdreadnoughts against the attackers, and the enemy shifted targeting. He had no choice, for he must blow a gap through the screen just to reach the battle-line.

 

 

***

 

 

"They are no longer sending gunboats to meet our fighters, Great Claw."

 

 

Theerah sounded concerned, and Zhaarnak understood. The Bugs were saving their gunboats until his fighter strength was blunted. His pilots were his best defense against them; only after his strike groups had been whittled away would the enemy commit them against his starships.

 

 

"Fighter losses?" he asked sharply.

 

 

"Forty-two percent for our own carriers. The Human loss rate is somewhat lower. I estimate they have lost perhaps thirty percent."

 

 

Zhaarnak flicked his ears in acknowledgment. The Human losses might be lower, but not because they were avoiding action. Their squadrons had not been harrowed by his own earlier losses in Kliean and Telmasa, and their experience showed. Even his carrier commanders admitted they were as good as any KON strike groups, and they were spending themselves more wisely than his own farshatok, yet they fought as furiously as if it were Human worlds they defended.

 

 

If only the Bugs had fewer screening units! His strikes were costing their escorts dear, yet aside from that initial pass, only three superdreadnoughts had been destroyed.

 

 

"Inform farshathkhanaak Liaahk that he is to maintain a reserve of at least twenty percent. We dare not reduce our CSP below that."

 

 

"Yes, Great Claw," Theerah replied, and Zhaarnak looked at his com officer.

 

 

***

 

 

"Message from the Flag, Sir." Prescott turned his command chair at the com officer's announcement and waited. "Tango-Three-Delta, Sir."

 

 

"Acknowledge." Prescott looked at LaFroye. "Pass the order, Alec."

 

 

***

 

 

Fourteen battlecruisers - three Orion, three Gorm, eight Terran - advanced against the enemy. The Gorm and Orion BCs were TF 37's only true capital missile ships, for the Terran Broadswords were configured primarily for closer action. They were attached solely to support and protect their longer-ranged allies, and as they closed, a fresh fighter strike went past them. Massed squadrons, half Terran and half Orion, tore down on the surviving Bug screen, and this time a heavy fire of SBMs came with them from the Allied battlecruisers' external racks. The Bugs could use their point defense to stop missiles or fighters, not both, and ship after ship blew apart, yet the success came with a price. Another forty fighters were blasted out of space, and the battlecruisers' attack had brought them in reach of the surviving Archers.

 

 

Missile salvos roared back and forth, matching superdreadnought shields and armor against the frailer battlecruisers' superior point defense, and then a fresh wave of fighters slashed in. This time some of the gunboats came out once more, but not to engage fighters. Instead, they hurled themselves straight at the battlecruisers, and cursing Orion and Terran squadron commanders diverted from their antishipping strike to claw around in pursuit.

 

 

They caught a dozen, but the rest got by. The battlecruisers went to evasive action, firing furiously, and the Terran ships maneuvered between the gunboats and their allies, for the missile ships were weak in energy weapons. Two-thirds of the Bugs were blown apart; the other third got through, and they brought a surprise with them. They didn't have FRAMs, but their R&D had produced the cruder nuclear-armed FR, and a gunboat carried three times as many as a fighter.

 

 

TFNS Arrow, Ranseur and Partisan died as the gunboats poured fire into them. Scimitar and the command ship Constitution took heavy damage of their own, and despite all they could do, GSN Bahlziak fell astern, crippled and lamed.

 

 

***

 

 

Great Claw Zhaarnak watched the icons vanish. Once he would have felt only vengeful satisfaction at Human deaths; now he watched them dying like farshatok, deliberately drawing the enemy onto themselves to protect Orion ships. Dying under the orders of an Orion who was not even truly the senior officer of TF 37.

 

 

What now, Zhaarnak? The question seared through him. Who knows the truth of honor? Those who die to defend their people... or those who die to protect another's?

 

 

***

 

 

The Fleet ground onward. The enemy's battlecruisers had suffered heavily. They had finished off the Fleet's battlecruisers and two more superdreadnoughts, as well, yet three missile superdreadnoughts survived, and nothing the enemy had left could engage them. The rest of the Fleet formed around them, continuing its remorseless advance, and the enemy's attack craft came in in ever weaker waves. Soon it would be time to commit the gunboats once more.

 

 

***

 

 

Raymond Prescott scrubbed a hand across exhaustion-sore eyes. The battle had raged for almost two days, and losses were heavy on both sides. Heavier for the Bugs, but losses were always heavier for the Bugs... and never seemed to stop them. So far, TF 37 had destroyed sixty-three cruisers and battlecruisers and eleven superdreadnoughts - but that left twenty-seven superdreadnoughts, including those damned Archers. TF 37's fighters had been too weakened to get through to them, and even if they hadn't, killing them at this point would do little good. The whole point in killing Archers was to clear the way for Allied capital missiles and SBMs, and of TF 37's missile ships, only two Gorm Bolzuchas were still combat capable. Their strike groups had suffered too heavily to take more losses trying for the Archers now, anyway, for their original three hundred and forty fighters had been reduced to eighty-eight, only fifty of them Terran.

 

 

He checked the time display again. Eleven more hours. The Fleet Base's fighters were already en route, and in about eleven hours, the Bugs were going to get a surprise when a hundred and fifty fresh fighters exploded into their faces.

 

 

***

 

 

It was time. The enemy's attack craft strikes had all but ceased. His strength must be nearly exhausted, and the order went out.

 

 

***

 

 

For just a moment, the exhausted plotting officers didn't believe their own instruments. But they had to, and frantic orders crackled as two hundred and thirty Bug gunboats and small craft screamed towards the Allied starships. Scratch-built squadrons, assembled out of the remnants of TF 37's original strike groups, launched to meet them, but the attack roared in, and only Zhaarnak's order to maintain a reserve gave TF 37 a chance. The strength of his carefully husbanded fighters took the Bugs by surprise, and gunboats and kamikazes which had been targeted on battleships were diverted to the carriers lest still more fighters launch from them.

 

 

The Allied pilots were exhausted, their original squadron organizations long since wrecked. Pilots flew with whatever wingmen they could find, and Terrans and Orions streaked into the enemy together, flushing missiles into the gunboats, then closed with their lasers. They carved a river of fire through their enemies, but the Bugs outnumbered them more than three-to-one. Half died in the first pass, and even as they looped back, the remaining gunboats abandoned the slower antimatter-loaded cutters to streak ahead under maximum power.

 

 

***

 

 

Zhaarnak saw it coming, and there was nothing he could do. The Human carriers were better protected, for their smaller fighter groups and more advanced shields let them build in twice the defensive firepower of an Orion CVL, and Prescott's task group included a dozen CLEs and DDEs. But those escorts could not datalink with the Orion carriers. They did their best to protect their allies, yet good as it was, their best was not enough.

 

 

Defensive fire killed dozens of gunboats, but others tore through the formation, ignoring its battleships. More than half went after the Terran Shokakus, but only a handful of those got through. Four of the TFN carriers were damaged, yet none were hurt critically.

 

 

Not so the KON. The Bugs broke through their lighter defenses in strength, salvoing their close-attack weapons and following their missiles in to ram. Bhutnothin, Burkhan and Falkyrk were destroyed outright, and Bathyr and Firmiak took heavy damage. Every Orion carrier was hit, most badly, and engine rooms became infernos as kamikazes sent power surges ripping through abused drive fields. They fell out of formation while frantic engineers fought their damage, and Zhaarnak stared at the ruin of his carriers. His own task group had been gutted. Only its light cruisers and three battlecruisers remained combat capable, and that was far too little to stave off the Juggernaut rolling down on his lamed carriers. The surviving fighters - all thirty of them - finished off the kamikazes before they completed the CVLs' destruction, yet he knew what he must do. He fought against it, but he had no choice, and he opened his mouth to order Prescott to abandon the doomed carriers and take his own command to meet the Fleet Base's fighters.

 

 

***

 

 

"The Tabby carriers are hurt bad, Sir." Alec LaFroye's fingers pressed his earbug as if to screw it bodily inside his head, and he grimaced. "Damage control's on it, but they need at least twenty minutes to get back enough drive rooms to stay away from the Bugs."

 

 

Prescott stared into his plot, eyes hard as the mind behind them whirred. Only eighteen Terran fighters survived, and his carriers hadn't gotten off unscathed. They had about eighty bays left, but over a hundred and fifty fighters were coming in from the Fleet Base. More to the point, those fighters were Orion, and, despite the transfers, his carriers were desperately short of Tabby ordnance after two exhausting days of battle. If they lost the surviving Orion fighter platforms, they wouldn't have the weapons to arm the Fleet Base's fighters once they got here.

 

 

"We've got to buy those ships some time," he said flatly.

 

 

"Sir, we don't have any orders from the Flag," Sosa pointed out. Prescott glanced at him, and the chief of staff looked back. The ex-fighter jock didn't like saying that, but it was his job to serve as his admiral's tactical conscience.

 

 

"I realize that, Zulu," Prescott said softly.

 

 

***

 

 

"Sir! Great Claw! The Humans!"

 

 

Zhaarnak's head snapped around at the semi-coherent shout, and his jaw dropped in disbelief. TG 37.2 was moving - not to break off as he had intended to order, but to interpose between the Bugs and his carriers!

 

 

It was insane! Prescott's battleships mounted only a single capital missile launcher each, and that only to deploy defensive missiles. He could engage the enemy only from within the Bugs' own weapons envelope, and he had battleships, not superdreadnoughts!

 

 

Even as he watched, the first missiles roared out, and capital force beams began to fire. The Humans' datalinked point defense blunted the missile salvos, but it could do nothing about energy weapons, and shields flashed and died as the suicidal pounding match began.

 

 

"Juaahr! Order Pressscott to break off!"

 

 

"Yes, Great Claw!" The com officer spoke urgently into his pickup, then stiffened. "Sir, Ahhhdmiraal Pressscott refuses!"

 

 

"Give me a direct link!" Prescott's face appeared on Zhaarnak's com screen instantly, and the great claw forced his voice to come out flat and level. "Break off, Ahhhdmiraal."

 

 

"I must respectfully decline, Sir," Prescott replied, and actually smiled as Zhaarnak's ears flattened in consternation. The image flickered as missiles and beams pounded the admiral's flagship, and Prescott shook his head in the Human gesture of negation. "You need those carriers. My own have too few weapons to support the Fleet Base's fighters."

 

 

"This is madness! You sacrifice your ships for nothing!"

 

 

"'My claws are yours, and your cause is just,'" the Human said softly. "There is no dishonor in death - and no honor in flight."

 

 

Zhaarnak could not hide his shock as Prescott quoted the Warrior's Way. They were the final words of Shaasaal'hirtalkin, he who first formalized the Farshalah'kiah, second only to Craana'tolnatha among the fathers in honor of the Zheeerlikou'valkhannaieee, and even as Zhaarnak stared at him, the Human cut the circuit.

 

 

The great claw dropped his eyes to the plot, and his fists clenched as the outnumbered, outgunned Humans engaged their foes. Shields flashed and died, warheads and beams ripped at hull plating. Prescott's battle-line was trapped in the heart of a furnace, and still it held its ground, drawing the enemy's fury down upon itself while the carrier crews fought to repair their drives.

 

 

A battleship died, then another. A battlecruiser followed them, and Prescott's flagship shuddered as her own shields went down. Armor shattered under the pounding beams, yet no Human ship turned away. They stood and died at their admiral's side, thundering back at their massive enemies for five minutes, eight, ten.... For twelve endless, terrible minutes they held alone, until the surviving Orion carriers were able to get back underway.

 

 

Then, and only then, they, too, began to pull away from the enemy once more, but four battleships and three more battlecruisers of the Terran Federation Navy had died. Every surviving ship was damaged, some critically, yet Raymond Prescott had done what he set out to do... and Zhaarnak'diaano would never think of Humans in the same way again.

 

 

***

 

 

The Fleet continued its pursuit until a sudden infusion of fresh attack craft assailed it. The enemy battleships had inflicted damage out of all proportion to their relatively small size, and the fresh attack craft struck at the worst possible moment. There were few gunboats left, and the Fleet - busy reorganizing its crippled data-groups - was caught unprepared. Six already damaged superdreadnoughts succumbed to a blizzard of FRAMs, several of those which survived were badly wounded, and the Fleet called off the pursuit. It knew where the enemy was headed, after all... and it also knew reinforcements were en route.

 

 

***

 

 

"The scanner buoys confirm it, Great Claw," Least Claw Daarsaahl said wearily. "Twenty-four additional superdreadnoughts have joined the enemy. At present rate or advance, they will enter range of the Twins in seventy-one hours."

 

 

"Escorts?" Zhaarnak'diaano asked.

 

 

"Thirty battlecruisers and approximately fifty light cruisers," Daarsaahl said flatly. "They appear to be accompanied by many additional gunboats, as well."

 

 

"I see." Zhaarnak drew a deep breath, and closed his eyes. Five days had passed since the first attack withdrew, and he'd let himself hope. Now that hope died.

 

 

"Has Ahhhdmiraal Pressscott been informed?"

 

 

"They were his sensor buoys, Sir," Daarsaahl said with a flicker of weary humor, and Zhaarnak's own ears twitched in bittersweet amusement. Human technology, he thought. Must they always be better than we?

 

 

"Your orders, Great Claw?" his flag captain asked, and Zhaarnak shrugged.

 

 

"There will be no retreat this time," he said. "Lord Khiniak will not arrive for another month. If Great Claw Eaarnaah's fortresses can hold Sak until he arrives, his force should be powerful enough to retake Alowan. But if the Bugs can take Sak first, or even mount a warp point defense of Alowan in strength, he will pay heavily to break in. I know only one way to weaken them for him, and I doubt the enemy realizes how powerful the fixed defenses are. Between us, the bases and our ships can cripple this force before we are destroyed - perhaps even inflict sufficient delay to prevent an invasion of the Twins before Lord Khiniak relieves them."

 

 

"And the Humans?" Daarsaahl pressed in a gentle voice.

 

 

"I will not insult their honor," Zhaarnak said softly. The flag captain gazed at him a moment longer, then nodded, saluted, and withdrew without another word.

 

 

Zhaarnak returned to his terminal, staring sightlessly at the reports which had just become so meaningless, then cleared the screen and brought up a visual of TF 37's battered remnants.

 

 

Eleven wounded light carriers, only three of them Orion, hung in orbit about the twin planets, supported by six damaged battleships - all Human - and eleven battlecruisers - three of them Human. With the missile batteries of the Fleet Base and the PDCs, they would give a good account of themselves, yet they were doomed. Zhaarnak knew it, and he knew Prescott knew it, but the Human had not even suggested the withdrawal of his units. Horned Viper had been hit hard in her stand against the enemy battle-line. Commander Sosa was dead, Commander Kmak was badly wounded, and Prescott himself had suffered minor wounds to the head and leg. Many of his other ships had been damaged, as well, and unlike Zhaarnak's ships, none of them could tie into the massive point defense nets provided by the PDCs.

 

 

It did not matter. The Human support ships had not yet arrived, yet Prescott's exhausted crews had torn into their repairs with what limited help the Fleet Base technicians could provide. Most of their shields had been restored, many of their weapons had been put back online, and the munitions Prescott had off-loaded earlier had sufficed to refill their surviving magazines. Yet their armor was riddled, and their repairs were fragile. It would take little fresh pounding to put them back out of action, but Raymond Prescott would not abandon the Pairsag Twins. As Zhaarnak, he knew relief could not arrive in time... but that every enemy ship destroyed killing his own vessels would be one less to bombard the Twins or contest Lord Khiniak's entry into Alowan.

 

 

And, like me, he cannot abandon still more civilians. A warrior could do worse than die with such "chofaki," the great claw thought wearily. And as Prescott himself said, "There is no dishonor in death - and no honor in flight."

 

 

***

 

 

"Here they come, Sir," Jason Pitnarau said softly, and Prescott nodded. His flag bridge was a shambles, but his only other command battleship had been destroyed outright, so he'd moved himself and Alec LaFroye onto Horned Viper's command deck.

 

 

Now he rubbed the bandage on the shaved half of his skull, watching the master plot's ominous icons, and pictured the civil defense plans springing into purposeful - and ultimately futile - action on the Pairsag Twins. He doubted the Bugs even began to suspect how powerful the local defenses were, but when they found out, it was going to be ugly.

 

 

No doubt the PDCs would draw a heavy bombardment, which was why the Federation seldom mounted offensive weapons on inhabited worlds, and once the Bugs realized what they faced, they would abandon any plan to come in piecemeal and throw everything they had straight at the huge, heavily armed Fleet Base... and what was left of TF 37.

 

 

Glad you weren't here after all, Andy, he thought, then smiled crookedly at Dashyr's icon. For a bigot, you're not too shabby, Zhaarnak'diaano. I suppose a man could do worse.

 

 

"How long, Alec?" he asked.

 

 

"Seven hours," LaFroye replied, and Prescott astonished himself with a chuckle.

 

 

"Right on our original projection," he observed. "Remind me to congratulate CIC."

 

 

"Of course, Sir," Pitnarau said with a small smile of his own, and they returned their attention to the plot as the minutes leaked away. The Bugs slid closer and closer, inching towards engagement range - and then, suddenly, they stopped.

 

 

Prescott straightened in his chair. He hissed as his wounded leg protested the movement, but it was a distant pain. There was no reason for them to stop. They'd advanced across the system for days, and the one thing Bugs didn't do was hesitate about committing to action!

 

 

But they were hesitating. And then, as abruptly as they'd stopped advancing, they turned away! All of them turned away - gunboats, cruisers, superdreadnoughts, the entire fleet!

 

 

"What the hell?" Pitnarau was staring into the plot in disbelief, and Prescott shook his head. A part of him was actually angry at the Bugs for stopping when he'd made up his mind to die. Get in here and get it over with, you bastards! Isn't it enough for you to kill us without screwing around this way?!

 

 

But they were still moving away - moving away at maximum speed. They-

 

 

"Sir! The buoys are picking up - My God, Sir!"

 

 

"What?" Prescott snarled, taking out some of his confusion on the hapless lieutenant who'd just spoken. The young woman shook herself and punched commands into her console.

 

 

"Look at your repeater, Sir," she said, and Prescott dropped his gaze to the display.

 

 

"Holy Mother of God!" he whispered.

 

 

Thirty-four fresh Orion ships were headed in from the Sak warp point. And not just ships. Over a hundred fighters led the way, a combat space patrol sweeping the way for twenty fleet carriers and fourteen superdreadnoughts!

 

 

"It can't be," he said softly. "Koraaza's still over a month out, and he doesn't have anywhere near that much firepower to begin with! Those people can't be there!"

 

 

"Well, for people who don't exist, they look mighty good to me!" Pitnarau said jubilantly

 

 

***

 

 

In fact, Prescott was right. That huge relief fleet not only couldn't be there, it wasn't. Or, rather, it wasn't what it looked like. The massive task force was actually only three battleships, five CVs - not twenty - and five CVLs, and twenty-one battlecruisers and heavy cruisers. They weren't part of Lord Khiniak's force. Indeed, many weren't even combat ready. They were simply everything the Tabbies could scrape up - convoy escorts, training ships, vessels snatched out of the Bureau of Repair's hands, anything. None of the CVLs had any fighters, the battlecruisers' magazines were less than two-thirds filled, and two battleships still had repair techs aboard, but they all mounted third-generation ECM, and the Tabbies had it on-line in deception mode.

 

 

A bluff, Prescott thought two days later as he stood in Horned Viper's boat bay. The whole thing was a colossal bluff! I don't think I'll ever play poker with a Tabby.

 

 

He smiled at the thought, then straightened, leaning heavily on his cane, as the Orion cutter settled into its cradle and the side party came to attention.

 

 

Great Claw Zhaarnak'diaano stepped out into the twitter of bosun's pipes. He saluted sharply, and Prescott ignored the pain in his leg as he came to attention and returned the courtesy.

 

 

"Permission to come aboard, Sir?" the Tabby yowled to Captain Pitnarau.

 

 

"Granted, Sir," Pitnarau replied, and Zhaarnak stepped over the line on the deck.

 

 

The pipes fell silent, and deafening quiet filled the bay as Zhaarnak crossed to Prescott. He stopped and gazed into the admiral's eyes for a moment, then drew his defargo, the honor dirk of an Orion warrior. The wickedly keen blade gleamed in his hand, and he spoke quietly.

 

 

"When I was told Human ships had arrived to support me, Ahhhdmiraal Pressscott, I accepted them only because I had no choice, for such aid was an insult to my honor and that of my clan. Any allies were better than none, yet I swore to my clan fathers that the day I no longer needed your assistance I would spit upon your shadow. I would not challenge you as I would one of the Zheeerlikou'valkhannaieee, for I knew you would not accept challenge if I offered it, and it would only insult my honor further if you had."

 

 

Prescott's mouth tightened, but he said nothing. He simply stared into Zhaarnak's slit-pupilled eyes, waiting, and the Orion moved his ears slowly back and forth.

 

 

"Humans are cowards and chofaki, Fang Pressscott. I did not think they are; I knew they are, as surely as I know my own name... but what I knew to be true was a lie, and black dishonor to your people." He flipped the defargo to extend its hilt to the Terran, the formal gesture of a liege man to his lord, and his eyes met Prescott's unflinchingly. "There are no chofaki here, Clan Brother. There are only farshatok. Your honor is our honor, and if ever Clan Diaano can serve you or yours with treasure or blood, we are yours to command."

 

 

Chapter Twenty-seven

 

 

"It is about honor."

 

 

The command balcony of the great orbital station looked out over an expanse of control consoles and computer terminals. Beyond them was a great, curving transparency showing the sun of Idnahk, its glare suitably stepped down. It was by the reflected light of that sun that Tenth Great Fang of the Khan Koraaza'khiniak, Khanhaku Khiniak, could see with naked eyes the ships of his command - that which was to be the Grand Alliance's Third Fleet.

 

 

Those ships had been straggling in since shortly after the ships of the enemy the Humans called Bugs had entered the Kliean System with their cargo of nightmare. The Navy had begun assembling all available ships here at the sector capital immediately after Zhaarnak'diaano sent forth the alarm. Then, with the delay built into all interstellar communications, had come the response of the Grand Allied Joint Chiefs of Staff. They'd recognized at once that the war had acquired a second front even more squarely within the domain of the Zheeerlikou'valkhannaieee than the original one was within Human space. So a new Fleet - a fleet of the Khanate, just as Admiral Murakuma's was a fleet of the Federation - had been added to the Alliance's organizational structure, and the Khan had honored Koraaza by entrusting him with its command.

 

 

Still, he reflected, it would have been nice if Third Fleet had been anything more than an organization chart when he arrived here. The ancient Terran military theorist Sun Tzu - who had finally won acceptance in Koraaza's service despite the seeming contradictions between his precepts and Farshalah'kiah - had observed that numbers alone confer no advantage in war, and the ever-increasing number of ships whose flanks reflected the light of Idnahk's sun had built up to an impressive total - essentially everything in the sector capable of movement - but had never functioned as a fleet before. His hastily assembled staff would have been lucky to get all of them moving in the same direction on the same day, and any sort of coordinated maneuvers would have been impossible without the merciless exercises Koraaza had laid on. But those indispensable exercises had required still more time, and time was precisely what Zhaarnak'diaano - and, to an even greater extent, the civilians of Hairnow and any surviving Telmasans - did not have.

 

 

It was, thought Koraaza, who was something of a military history enthusiast, a lesson the Terrans had taught the Zheeerlikou'valkhannaieee in the Wars of Shame. His people, too long accustomed to expanding at the expense of unworthy opponents and therefore inclined to take the old hero-sagas literally, had thought of ships as individual swords to be wielded by the champions who commanded them. They had forgotten the long-term coordinated training necessary to provide the fleet and squadron organization which was to a navy as tempering was to a blade.

 

 

The thought of Terrans brought a smile to Koraaza's lips. He knew Zhaarnak'diaano, and when he'd heard that the first, crucial reinforcements that could be gotten to the great claw were Terran units, he'd seen disaster looming. Zhaarnak might not be quite so reactionary as his father in most things, but he seemed determined not to excel the old Khanhaku Diaano in unreasoning hatred of Humans - which would have been impossible - but to equal him. Koraaza had known, with a horrible sinking certainty, that Zhaarnak would not only bring about military calamity but also dishonor the Khan by insulting an ally. The latter had worried the great fang almost as much as the former, for however much he consciously rejected the narrow and rigid Farshalah'kiah of his ancestors in favor of modern rationalism, he could no more free himself of it than he could free himself of those ancestors' genetic legacy.

 

 

So it had been with incredulous relief that Koraaza had read Zhaarnak's last few reports, with their steady change in tone. He was looking forward to meeting this Human great claw (or rear admiral as they called it in their unpronounceable tongue) who had brought about that which he would once have unhesitatingly declared impossible, and in little more than three local days, he and Third Fleet would set out to do just that.

 

 

The communications officer broke in on Koraaza'a thoughts. "Your pardon, Great Fang," said the young son of the khan (lieutenant commander, Koraaza thought, his mind continuing to crank out title equivalencies in the outlandish Terran rank structure), "but Governor Kaarsaahn requests a moment of your time."

 

 

Koraaza's whiskers twitched with annoyance. As long as Third Fleet was located within the Idnahk Sector, and most especially while it was assembling at the sectors capital, a degree of jurisdictional friction between the fleet commander and the sector governor was inevitable. In this case, differences in temperament made the situation worse than it had to be. He turned resignedly to face the holo imager, and moved within the pickup, "Put him on," he ordered, and the governor of the Idnahk Sector seemed to flash into existence.

 

 

"Governor Kaarsaahn," Koraaza greeted, touching clenched fist to chest in salute.

 

 

The huge orbital station could accommodate the bulky holo imager for which warships had too little space to spare, but it was in geostationary orbit around Idnahk. About a quarter of a second passed while the message came and went, imposing a delay which was barely noticeable, yet spoiled the illusion that Kaarsaahn was here on the command balcony rather than in his palace on the surface. He responded to Koraaza's salute with a courtesy that verged on unctuousness.

 

 

"Greetings, Great Fang. I have no wish to disrupt your busy schedule, but I have not yet received confirmation that you have dispatched to Great Claw Zhaarnak the orders we agreed on. I'm sure you have done so... as we agreed," he added with pointed repetition. "But I felt obliged to confirm it personally."

 

 

Koraaza sighed inwardly. He had agreed, albeit with a reluctance that had caused him to put off actually keeping his promise. "Your pardon, Governor, but the press of my duties has prevented me from actually sending the dispatch. I have, however, prepared the necessary orders to Great Claw Zhaarnak: stand on the defensive in Alowan, attempting no counteroffensive before I arrive." He drew a breath. "Governor, I will of course send the orders if you insist on holding me to my promise. But perhaps we should reconsider. Remember, every day the enemy is left undisturbed in Telmasa is another opportunity for him to discover the Hairnow warp point. Some aggressive raiding, at Zhaarnak's discretion, might distract the enemy from survey activities."

 

 

Kaarsaahn's habitual blandness was beginning to look a little frayed around the edges. "As I argued at our previous discussion, Great Fang, we have no way of knowing that the enemy has not already discovered the Hairnow System. More to the point, until Third Fleet arrives in Alowan, Great Claw Zhaarnak's force is the sector's only defense. It cannot be hazarded on premature adventures. And, while I have hesitated to raise this point before, I fear Zhaarnak's 'discretion' cannot be relied on in this matter." He hastily raised a clawed hand. "Yes, I know you are honor-bound to defend a fellow officer. It does you credit. But consider: his withdrawal from Kliean and Telmasa flew in the face of his temperament as well as Farshalah'kiah. The fact that he had no choice cannot possibly compensate in his own mind. He is bound to be biased towards reckless displays of courage, seeking to wipe out the stain - however illusory - on his honor. Under the circumstances, the knowledge that your command will soon depart Idnahk may well goad him into such an action - independently - rather than encourage him to hold fast."

 

 

Koraaza opened his mouth to hotly declare that Zhaarnak, like all officers of the Khan, was well aware of his paramount duty to defend the race's inhabited worlds... then snapped it shut. For Kaarsaahn, damn him, had a point. Zhaarnak was aggressive by nature, and any imagined disgrace would make him even more so. He might not do anything culpably stupid, but he might well overestimate his own strength in order to rationalize his need for action. And according to the latest reports, that strength was insufficient for any serious attempt on Telmasa.

 

 

No, Zharnaak's guilt over the worlds he had been forced to leave to their deaths could not be allowed to imperil still more worlds. It was a truth to which the Zheeerlikou'valkhannaieee had never really become reconciled: the higher one climbed on the ladder of rank, the more often honor had to be sacrificed on the altar of duty. Koraaza himself had yet to accept it gracefully.

 

 

"Your points are well taken, Governor," he said leadenly. "I will send the orders."

 

 

***

 

 

Raymond Prescott began to rise, struggling with his wounded leg, as Zhaarnak'diaano entered the briefing room, but the great claw waved him back.

 

 

"Sit, Great Claw." The Orion title came more naturally to Zhaarnak than the Terran one, and he smiled a fang-hidden smile as Prescott sank back. "After all," he added dryly, "it is I who should rise when you enter."

 

 

"Nonsense," Prescott said. "The task force is overwhelmingly Zheeerlikou'valkhannaieee and Gorm - and the fixed defenses are wholly Orion. If only because of communication problems, you must retain command."

 

 

"You are a strange being, Great Claw," Zhaarnak said. "Are all Humans like you?"

 

 

"We humans are a pretty confusing lot," Prescott replied with a smile. "But, yes. I think most of my people are much like me where it matters."

 

 

"Then it is my loss that I have not made myself more familiar with them." Zhaarnak's tone was serious, not a polite formula, and Prescott bobbed a small Orion-style bow. Then Zhaarnak inhaled sharply and lowered himself into a chair.

 

 

"You have seen Least Claw Uaaria's report?"

 

 

"I have."

 

 

"And your opinion?"

 

 

"I believe she may have a point," Prescott said after only the briefest hesitation. "While any rational foe might have avoided action against Claw Daairaah's apparent fighter strength, the Bugs have appeared willing to date to accept total annihilation in order to inflict attritional losses. And even if they believed Daairaah's force was overwhelming, they could have forced us to engage on their terms - or abandon the Twins and the Fleet Base - before he intervened."

 

 

"True." Zhaarnak tipped his chair back, claws kneading its armrests gently. "So why decline to attack? Unless, of course, Uaaria is correct."

 

 

Prescott nodded, wishing fervently that Eloise Kmak were still available. But while she was expected to recover fully, she would be out of action for months. He'd borrowed Lieutenant Commander Cruikshank from Diego Jackson to replace her, but Cruikshank was less comfortable with the Orion language. He also lacked Kmak's unorthodox imagination, and Prescott had always preferred intelligence officers who thought outside the boxes of conventional wisdom. He missed Eloise badly... but it seemed Least Claw Uaaria had the same ability.

 

 

He cocked his own chair back in thought. As Zhaarnak said, the Bugs had to have known they could carry through against the Twins. Based on every other battle they'd fought, that was precisely what they ought to have done, and Uaaria had been the first to ask why they hadn't.

 

 

The only answer she'd been able to come up with was that, for some reason, this time they were unwilling to risk crippling losses. That was very unlike them, yet they couldn't have expected to contact the Alliance in Shanak, which suggested one possible explanation. If this contact had been as unexpected for them as for the Alliance, then they must have attacked with whatever was available. And if it was all an opportunistic response to an unanticipated opening, they might well have broken off because there were no - or very few - additional mobile units behind them. And if that were so...

 

 

"I think we must assume, tentatively, at least, that Uaaria is correct," he said finally. "If she is, it might also explain why they have not reinforced and attempted Alowan a second time."

 

 

Zhaarnak flicked his ears in agreement. Over a Terran month had passed since the enemy had pulled back, and during his inactivity Lord Khiniak's forces had completed assembling. They would reach Alowan within two weeks, and more reinforcements had arrived in the meantime than Zhaarnak had believed possible. Orion, Gorm - even a few additional Human starships had come in, and some, like the Gorm superdreadnoughts Clerdyng and Dathum, had been totally unexpected. They had been beyond New Bristol, in Human space, when the call went out, and communications had been so chaotic no one had realized they were responding. Which was probably as well. If anyone had realized, they would no doubt have been diverted to Idnahk.

 

 

The Human support ships had also arrived and labored mightily. Zhaarnak was deeply impressed by how rapidly they had put the wounded Human ships back into action, yet the other thing they had achieved was almost more important. The joint Human-Orion R&D teams had finally determined how to make TFN and KON command datalink interface, and the Humans' mobile shipyards had worked out jury-rigged field modifications. No doubt the "official" version would be much neater, but the Human techs' crude version worked. The ships under Zhaarnak's command could now be formed into battlegroups on a tactical basis rather than being forced to operate as separate national units, and the value of that would be difficult to exaggerate.

 

 

He was not certain he could have stopped a full-scale warp point assault, but Idnahk and New Bristol had sent up sufficient fighters to refill every hangar in Alowan. With that much fighter strength, backed by his hybrid battle-line and, if necessary, the fixed defenses, he felt confident he could hold the system, even if he were forced to concede the warp point.

 

 

And that is why Uaaria's theory is so convincing. The Bugs must realize we are straining every sinew to reinforce, and they would not have given us time to do so unless they had to.

 

 

"If," Zhaarnak said very carefully, "the enemy is, indeed, too weak to attack us, is it not possible he might be weak enough for us to attack him?"

 

 

He watched Prescott's face. He was learning, gradually, to interpret Human expressions, but nothing he had so far learned was of much help at the moment, and he wondered how Prescott would have fared across the eschaai table. Probably quite well. I doubt even another Human could tell his thoughts just now.

 

 

"I suppose," Prescott said after a moment, "that the possibility must exist. Of course, if we suggested as much, our superiors would no doubt find the evidence insufficient... particularly with such heavy reinforcements en route. I suspect they would order us to hold our position until relieved rather than risk our ships on any such hypothetical speculation by a mere least claw."

 

 

"Your command of the Tongue of Tongues is most impressive, Great Claw Pressscott," Zhaarnak remarked, "and your assessment of Sector Command's probable reaction is astute. We are, of course, merely discussing possibilities, and I feel sure Lord Khiniak would be more, ah, adventurous than Governor Kaarsaahn. Unfortunately, it is Kaarsaahn who holds final authority."

 

 

"I see." Prescott pursed his lips. "My people are not unfamiliar with such situations," he observed, "and we have a saying we sometimes use. "What your superiors do not know about, they cannot countermand.' The translation is not exact, but I believe the meaning comes through."

 

 

"Indeed?" Zhaarnak gave a purring chuckle. "Interesting. There is a similar saying among the Zheeerlikou'valkhannaieee: 'Actions taken without orders are not taken against them.'"

 

 

"Perhaps our peoples are more alike than most think," Prescott replied, then met Zhaarnak's eyes levelly. "But however that may be, what we are considering constitutes a grave risk. Not simply to our commands, but to Alowan. If we attempt Telmasa -" Zhaarnak's ears twitched at the confirmation that they were, in fact, thinking the same thing "- and take heavy losses, we may expose this system to a Bug counterattack."

 

 

"Truth," Zhaarnak said seriously. "And I cannot and will not order you to support me in this. Not only are you my superior, despite your willingness to allow me to retain command, but the risk to your ships and personnel would be great - as would the risk to your career." Prescott made a dismissive gesture, but Zhaarnak continued in the same earnest tone. "Do not make light of it, Great Claw Pressscott. I think Human and Zheeerlikou'valkhannaieee admiralty boards are alike in that much. Success justifies all, yet failure blots out even past accomplishments."

 

 

"There is a time to consider careers," Prescott said, "and one to consider duty."

 

 

"You speak truly," Zhaarnak said. "And you are also correct about the risk to Alowan. Yet I cannot forget Kliean... or Hairnow. We do not know if the enemy has discovered Hairnow exists. Even if he has, he may not yet have had time to wreak much damage there, but he has been in possession of Kliean for over three of your months, and there are four billion of my people in that system. If we could retake Telmasa before Lord Khiniak arrives here, he would begin his own operations only one warp point assault from Kliean, not two. And if the enemy has not, in fact, learned of Hairnow's existence, we would protect another billion and a half of my people. Those are the prizes against which we would hazard our commands."

 

 

Prescott leaned back, eyes hooded, and considered the Tabby's quietly impassioned plea. And plea it was, he thought. The Alowan Fleet Base had produced a few dozen SBMHAWKs, but it was only now getting into full production. Yet New Bristol had stripped its own magazines bare and rushed the weapons forward. Over two hundred TFN pods had reached Alowan, and only the lavish use of those pods could possibly get them into Telmasa intact. Without Prescott's support, Zhaarnak couldn't possibly attack; even with it, the odds against success would be high.

 

 

Yet Zhaarnak was also right about Kliean and Hairnow. Every day that passed could be the literal difference between life and death for millions of Orion civilians, and he suddenly realized there was one argument Zhaarnak hadn't made.

 

 

Honor. Zhaarnak'diaano had pulled out of Kliean and Telmasa rather than fight to the death. His successful defense of Alowan might have vindicated his decision, yet honor and vindication weren't necessarily the same thing - particularly to a Tabby. But if he fought his way back into Telmasa, that, coupled with the Battle of Alowan, would cleanse his honor.

 

 

Yet he hadn't made that argument, and, as he looked into Zhaarnak's eyes, Prescott realized he wouldn't make it. Not because he felt it would have no impact on a Terran, for by now he knew how intimately Prescott had studied Orion culture and the Farshalah'kiah. He knew Prescott would understand the centrality of honor - his clan's, even more than his own - to any Orion, but his concern was with lives, billions of them. Orion or no, Zhaarnak'diaano had set his honor aside. Indeed, he was risking even greater dishonor, for if he made the attempt and failed, all too many of his fellows would consider him a total, feckless bungler. Very few Terrans would have understood the immensity of the self-sacrifice he was prepared to embrace... but Raymond Porter Prescott was one of them.

 

 

"'Death is lighter than a flower, but duty is heavier than a mountain,'" he said softly. Zhaarnak's ears cocked questioningly, and Prescott smiled. "A saying from Old Terra, Great Claw, from some of my people I think you would have understood."

 

 

"This is not about honor," Zhaarnak said quietly, but Prescott shook his head.

 

 

"No, Great Claw. It is about honor... and duty. One may sometimes clash with the other in the eyes of others, but it is our eyes we must consider here."

 

 

He held the Tabby's slit-pupilled eyes for a moment, then punched a code into his com without looking down. A moment passed, and then a voice spoke from the terminal.

 

 

"Yes, Sir?"

 

 

"Great Claw Zhaarnak and I are in Briefing Room A, Alec," Prescott said. "Please collect Cruikshank and join us. We have an operation to plan."

 

 

Chapter Twenty-eight

 

 

A Good Day for It

 

 

The Fleet waited far behind its heavy cruiser screen, for it was uneasily aware of its exposure. Pre-war doctrine would have moved its entire strength into range of the warp point; as it was, the decision to defend the system at all had come hard. The Fleet was too weak to risk a conventional deployment against missile pods, and the temptation to fall back to the first system it had seized was great. Yet the advantages of holding here - if it could - were also great. At best, it would win time for its reinforcements to arrive; at worst, the enemy still had no idea where the second closed warp point in the contact system was... and if the Fleet had not yet received the warships it needed, it had received the new missiles to support its gunboats.

 

 

***

 

 

This time it was an Orion show, and Raymond Prescott leaned on his cane on Horned Viper's patched up flag bridge as Task Force 37 headed for the Telmasa warp point.

 

 

He and Zhaarnak had agonized over their timing, for if they failed and Uaaria's theory was wrong, Alowan would certainly be counterattacked. The Fleet Base's fighter strength had been tripled, and tenders were prepared to ferry fighters from Sak to Alowan to replace losses, which should give the base a chance against whatever the Bugs had left after destroying TF 37, yet neither Prescott nor Zhaarnak could free themselves of concern for the system. That was why they'd waited almost another week. Lord Khiniak must be en route now, and despite their burning need to relieve Hairnow, they'd delayed to buy a little more time for him to arrive. They were still cutting it close, but if, in fact, the Bugs hadn't yet discovered Hairnow, the risk was worth it.

 

 

And whatever happened, he thought grimly, TF 37 - and especially its Tabbies - would take a lot of killing before it went down. Of the eighty-plus ships in his display, sixty-two percent were Orion. It had taken the assistance of his mobile shipyards to get them all ready in time, but thirteen of TF 37's twenty-one carriers and fourteen of its twenty-one battlecruisers were Orion. Combining their battle-line units' light fighter components with their carrier strike groups, the Tabbies also accounted for eighty-three of the task force's hundred and ten fighter squadrons, and they'd managed to scare up four battleships, as well. Of course, KONS Ambrych had repair techs onboard even now, but the battleship's captain insisted she was ready to fight, just as the COs of the CVLs Rohrdenhau and Vohlghar insisted their ships were. Neither carrier had had a single fighter embarked when she arrived, and two of Vohlghar's catapults were iffy, but no Tabby was going to sit this one out. They'd seen the imagery from Kliean. They knew what was happening there - and might be happening in Hairnow, as well - and the Devil himself wouldn't stop them.

 

 

Prescott understood that, and he was glad he'd insisted Zhaarnak retain command. The Battle of Alowan had earned his personnel enormous respect from their Orion allies, but as he'd told the great claw, TF 37's composition made it unthinkable for him to demand command authority. Not only was it a predominately Orion force, but he himself was the only one of his officers who could actually speak Orion, and he'd been hard pressed to find enough Orion-cognizant personnel just to fill the critical communication slots aboard his ships.

 

 

But Zhaarnak had done a little reshuffling of his own personnel when he reorganized his task groups. Prescott's TG 37.2 had given up its CVLs, its surviving battlecruisers, and two of its DDEs, to Zhaarnak's TG 37.1. It made sense to combine all the carriers in one force, and the Broadswords' energy weapons and short-ranged missile batteries would be more useful covering the fighter platforms against gunboats than going toe-to-toe with Archers. And Prescott couldn't complain about what he'd gotten in return: two GSN superdreadnoughts - Gormus-class ships with heavy energy batteries and no capital missiles, perhaps, but still formidable units; four Orion battleships; seven Orion and Gorm battlecruisers (all missile ships); and seventeen Orion heavy and light cruisers to supplement the four Swiftsure-class CAs New Bristol had scared up. Despite the pounding his original command had taken, his new task group was far more powerful, and every one of its allied ships had at least one com officer who understood Standard English.

 

 

Even so, I'm glad I reminded my tac officers to stay away from contractions, he mused. Contractions and homonyms, neither of which the Tongue of Tongues used, could give English-cognizant Orions enormous trouble, and with their emotions running as high as they were-

 

 

Of course, our emotions are pretty high, too. I probably should have looked closer at Meccano's readiness report - I'm pretty sure Captain Trayn did a little creative editing to get in on this one - but a battleship's a battleship, and we need everything we've got.

 

 

He limped from the plot to his command chair, and settled back with a sigh of relief. A yeoman hung his cane on the shock frame for him, and he brought up his link to CIC. The senior plotting officer looked up as it came on-line, but Prescott only nodded to him. Commander Huyler nodded back and returned his attention to his own console, and Prescott checked the time.

 

 

Thirty-two minutes.

 

 

***

 

 

"Very well, Great Claw Pressscott," Zhaarnak said formally. "Engage."

 

 

"Yes, Sir." Prescott looked at Alec LaFroye, his acting chief of staff as well as his ops officer, and nodded. "Launch your birds, Alec."

 

 

"Aye, aye, Sir!"

 

 

LaFroye punched a stud, and one hundred and twenty Terran SBMHAWK pods carried six hundred AAM-warhead SBMs into Telmasa in a single mighty wave.

 

 

None of the Orion pinnaces which had probed Telmasa had survived, which suggested a massive gunboat CSP beyond it, and Least Claw Theerah had suggested programming at least some pods to go after those gunboats, but LaFroye had countered that they didn't know for certain that the pods would track on them. Even if they would, it would have required at least one full pod to insure the destruction of each gunboat, which could easily spread them too thin.

 

 

The TFN pod techs swore their birds would home on gunboats, but they had to admit they couldn't prove it, and LaFroye was right about the dispersion effect. More, he and Theerah agreed the Bugs would have used their heavy cruiser "OWPs" to cover the warp point, and the Terran had successfully argued in favor of targeting the pods on them. In return, Zhaarnak had decreed that only half their total SBMHAWKs would be used in the first strike. Six hundred missiles should account for the cruisers, especially when surprise was (hopefully) complete; the remaining pods would be held back to cover a retreat at need.

 

 

Now the SBMHAWKs vanished, and TG 37.2, Grand Alliance, accelerated towards the warp point on their heels.

 

 

***

 

 

The sudden eruption of missile pods caught the Fleet unaware, for the enemy had ceased expending reconnaissance pinnaces six days ago, and the Fleet had taken his inactivity to indicate he had no thought of an attack.

 

 

The gunboat CSP was only thirty units strong, and many were out of position to intercept before the pods stabilized. Less than a dozen pods were picked off before the survivors fired, and most of the cruisers were still rushing to general quarters when the missiles came in.

 

 

***

 

 

In direct contravention of normal tactics, Zhaarnak and Prescott had chosen to send TG 37.2's lighter ships through first. They had no choice, for they had too few capital ships to expose them to the first, terrible embrace.

 

 

Only eleven of the Bug cruisers Allied intelligence had codenamed Danger survived the opening bombardment, and all were damaged. Four had not yet brought their offensive weapons on-line when the first Allied cruiser appeared, but the other seven opened fire instantly, and each mounted no less than sixteen of the short-ranged plasma guns. TFNS Ammiraglio di St. Bon and Peder Skram died without getting a shot off, and TFNS Eidsvold and KONS Debniha fired only a single broadside apiece before following them into destruction. But each of those broadsides finished off an active Bug CA, and their consorts flooded forward, firing savagely. Within ninety seconds, every Bug starship on the warp point was dead.

 

 

Yet that left the gunboats Theerah had wanted to target. They came slashing in with heavy loads of close-attack missiles, driving in through the thunder of the Allied missile launchers to launch at point-blank range, then closed to ram. Only a few got through, but a few were too many. KONS Athnak, Noizuwha, Vhertygho and Pilko were destroyed outright, and the air-bleeding wreck of TFNS Voltaire, the only Terran CA to survive, turned to limp back to Alowan.

 

 

***

 

 

"The cruisers have cleared the warp point, Sir," LaFroye reported, and Prescott nodded grimly. Returning courier drones tallied the dreadful price his lead waves had paid, but they'd done their job, and their sensors confirmed that the nearest superdreadnought was over two light-minutes out. That was good, because he needed all the time he could get to clear lanes through the mines. Only the TFN's ships could fire the internally launched AMBAM, yet each of his battleships mounted only a single capital missile launcher. Designed to deploy decoy enhanced-drive missiles as a defensive measure, those seven launchers were all he had to fire AMBAMs, and if the Bugs had been close enough to hammer his battle-line while it was still pinned down on the warp point, the entire operation would have had to be scrubbed.

 

 

But they weren't, and he nodded to Captain Pitnarau's com image.

 

 

"Take us through, Jason."

 

 

***

 

 

It was disturbing that the enemy had finally realized it made more sense to lead attacks with expendable units, for that indicated he was evolving better tactics, but the battleships which followed suggested he had no superdreadnought element of his own. In turn, that suggested he had not been strongly reinforced. If that was true, the new missiles should make it relatively easy to hold this system after all, and the Fleet launched its ready-duty gunboats in a solid wave.

 

 

***

 

 

"They're moving in on us, Sir. Looks like they're sending in the gunboats first."

 

 

"Understood." Prescott acknowledged LaFroye's report almost absently. It was the ops officer's job to make it, but there was nothing Prescott could do about it. The Belleisles were clearing mines as fast as they could, but they were taking much longer than Matterhorn-class superdreadnoughts would have. "Have all the cripples cleared back to Alowan?"

 

 

"Yes, Sir. Doushai and Juzavahn didn't want to go, but they're clear."

 

 

"Good." Prescott watched his escorts form up to screen the battle-line and shook his head. Tabbies! Neither of those ships had more than two launchers left, and they still wanted to stay!

 

 

"Three more salvos and Alpha Lane will be through the field, Sir," Pitnarau reported.

 

 

"Beta and Charlie?"

 

 

"They're badly behind," Pitnarau admitted, and Prescott frowned.

 

 

"Forget them, then. We need maneuvering room. Move us out through Alpha now."

 

 

***

 

 

The enemy's units - including a mere two SDs - streamed through the minefield gap before the gunboats could attack. Some of his ships launched attack craft, but there were no more than thirty of them, and eighty gunboats streaked to meet them.

 

 

***

 

 

"Here they come," LaFroye said, and Horned Viper twitched as TG 37.2 belched missiles. The understrength fighter squadrons from the Tabby battleships and battlecruisers raced towards the gunboats as well, and fireballs pocked the Bug formation. But the kill numbers were lower than they should have been against such fragile targets, and the strike came on grimly.

 

 

That damned point defense of theirs, Prescott thought bitterly, and looked at Pitnarau. "Zulu Four, Jason."

 

 

"Aye, aye, Sir. Executing Zulu Four."

 

 

TG 37.2 turned away from the gunboats, maneuvering to hold the range open while missiles and Tabby fighters tore into them. The vector shift seemed to surprise the Bugs; they lost precious seconds correcting, and the defenders used those seconds well. Only twenty-one attackers broke through, and they flung themselves upon the two Gorm leviathans which dominated Prescott's formation. But a Gormus-class was a dangerous opponent for anyone, especially something the size of a gunboat. Heavy energy batteries and shoals of missiles exploded into the Bugs' faces, backed by the point defense of the entire battle-line. GSNS Dathum lost most of her shields and took some armor damage, but she and her sister, supported by the four Orion battleships datalinked to them, blew the gunboats into vapor before they could ram.

 

 

"All right!" someone shouted from CIC, but Prescott's face was carved iron, for another wave was coming in, and this one was three times as strong.

 

 

"Looks like we find out if the techs were right, Alec," he said quietly, then raised his voice. "Zulu Five, Captain Pitnarau!"

 

 

***

 

 

The first mass strike was a disappointment, but it seemed to have confused the enemy. He recoiled, turning still further away, foolishly circling around behind the warp point. If he meant to retreat, he should have reversed course down his cleared lane and escaped the system entirely. Surely he did not expect the Fleet's own mines to deter its gunboats!

 

 

Apparently he did. He was trying to use the mines as a shield, and no doubt they would kill a few gunboats. At their speed, IFF gear was not fully reliable, and some mines were likely to attack them. But not enough to make any difference, and once they reached the warp point, they could block the enemy's retreat and swamp any additional enemy starships if they tried to make transit to support the units already in the system.

 

 

***

 

 

"Launch!" Prescott said, and a dozen courier drones flicked through to Alowan just as the gunboats hit the minefield. Six or seven were blown apart by their own mines, but the others screamed across the field to attack TG 37.2, and this time more got through. Most of the Tabby fighters were destroyed in a wild melee amid the mines, but they took out another forty gunboats first, and the Allied battle-line's missiles and energy weapons met the survivors furiously.

 

 

The Bugs slashed in, ignoring the screen to go after battleships, and once more, the two superdreadnoughts acted as magnets for their fury. But before they could reach their targets, a fresh wave of SBMHAWKs erupted from the warp point behind them.

 

 

The timing wasn't perfect. The pods were supposed to have caught the Bugs before they penetrated TG 37.2's perimeter, and they launched late. But the techs had been right. They could target gunboats, and the delayed launch actually increased their effectiveness, for gunboats, too, had blind spots, and the missiles drove straight up them.

 

 

One entire flank of Prescott's formation was a solid wall of glaring detonations as SBMs chased the Bugs in among his starships. Two of his battlecruisers got in the way of their own SBMs and took hits that shook them to their keels, but their shields held, and their tactical officers went right on pouring fire into the Bugs.

 

 

Dathum's last shield went down, and two gunboats got through with ramming attacks, as well, damaging her drive and ripping at her hull. Her armor buckled, but she shook off the damage, holding her station. KONS Fikhar was less fortunate. A tornado of missiles battered the Tabby battleship's shields flat, smashed her armor, and tore deep into her hull. She staggered in extremis, and her agony drew the attention of other gunboats. They howled in, ramming again and again, and suddenly one of them reached her magazines. Every antimatter warhead detonated at once, and the fireball licked away another half dozen Bugs as she died.

 

 

Fikhar was gone, and three of Prescott's battlecruisers were mangled wrecks, but the combination of TG 37.2's defensive fire and the unexpected SBMHAWKs proved decisive. The remnants of the Bug strike broke off, fleeing back to its own battle-line, and Prescott drew a deep, shuddering breath. He'd been hurt, but the core of his task group was intact and that had to have been the bulk of the Bugs' gunboats.

 

 

Of course, he thought as the enemy superdreadnoughts started forward, that leaves the rest of their damned fleet!

 

 

"Damage report from Dathum?" he demanded.

 

 

"She's lost an engine room, but she's still as fast as we are," LaFroye replied. "Damage control is bringing her shields back up now. Her armor's a sieve, but most of her weapons are in one piece, and Captain Haarmak says he's still combat capable."

 

 

"Good. We're going to need him. Com, send the second-flight drones."

 

 

***

 

 

The gunboats had proved less effective than anticipated, and the proof that the missile pods could target them had grim implications for future actions. But the enemy remained too weak to meet the Fleet's battle-line head on, and thirty-eight superdreadnoughts and three battlecruisers started forward, screened by their light cruisers.

 

 

***

 

 

"Great Claw Pressscott has done well," Zhaarnak purred, studying the drone readouts. He and his Human ally had structured TG 37.2 as a mace to smash through the shell of the defenses, but TG 37.1 was a rapier, and it was time to bring it into play. "We will advance, Theerah."

 

 

Twenty-one carriers and their escorts scorched into the warp point at max.

 

 

***

 

 

The Fleet paused as fresh enemy units suddenly materialized and began launching attack craft. The gunboats were still fleeing back to the twelve battlecruisers detached to rearm them, and the Fleet could not reach the warp point before these new enemies completed transit. It could neither seal the point against them nor afford to be destroyed if the new missiles proved ineffective, so it turned ponderously away, retreating until it saw how well the new technology worked. There would be time to return to the warp point if the missiles fulfilled predictions.

 

 

***

 

 

Raymond Prescott heaved a surreptitious sigh as Zhaarnak made transit, molested only by a handful of gunboats. Stragglers from the last Bug strike tried to penetrate to the carriers, but the old clich‚ about the snowflake in Hell came to mind as the Tabby squadrons pounced on them.

 

 

The task groups made rendezvous, and Prescott scratched the unshaven side of his head as he studied the plot. The Bugs were moving slowly away from the warp point rather than trying to close. They'd never done that before, and something seemed to crawl down the back of his neck as minutes dragged past without a single offensive act out of them. Zhaarnak held his own force on the warp point while his recon fighters swept outward to assure him no cloaked Bugs waited to pounce, but somehow Prescott was sure none did. Yet if not, what were the bastards up to?

 

 

"Great Claw Pressscott?" He turned from the plot to his com as Zhaarnak appeared on it.

 

 

"Yes, Sir?"

 

 

"My pilots have swept a light-minute sphere without contact. Least Claw Theerah and Commmodorrre Jaaackssson agree it is time to launch the next phase. Do you concur?"

 

 

"Of course, Sir. However..." Prescott paused a moment, rubbing his upper lip, then shrugged. "I urge caution," he said. "They are not reacting in usual fashion, and I distrust an enemy who does exactly what I want him to do."

 

 

"Most surprises represent only misinterpretations of known data," Zhaarnak agreed. "Yet if they wish to stand, we can only attack and discover what it is they wish us to misinterpret."

 

 

"Truth, Great Claw. Strike deep."

 

 

***

 

 

The enemy was finally ready, but his delay had been helpful. The gunboat's greatest tactical limitation was its inability to dock internally. To rearm, it must return to its mothership's external rack, and the mothership must shut down her drive to reload its ordnance racks. The enemy probably had not learned that - yet - but his tardiness was still of immense value.

 

 

Though not, it was to be hoped, as much value as the new missiles.

 

 

***

 

 

The Zheeerlikou'valkhannaieee would launch the first strike. It was less a matter of honor than of practicality, for there were far more Orion fighters, and the chance of confusion between pilots who couldn't speak one another's languages had to be minimized. The less numerous Terrans were detailed as the task force's covering CSP for the opening phase. Once the Bugs had been hammered a time or two and their gunboats had been finished off, Commodore Jackson's strike groups could be used to help complete their destruction.

 

 

Besides, there would be more than enough action to go around.

 

 

Raymond Prescott watched three hundred Tabby strike fighters arrow into the attack. Least Claw Theerah and Zhaarnak had studied Fifth Fleet's combat reports intensively. They knew how dangerous the Cataphracts were, and they'd taken a page from Admiral Murakuma's book: their pilots would go for the screen, using longer-ranged FM2s to pick off the Carbines, Cannons, Cleavers first, then go for the Cataphracts with FRAMs.

 

 

It was a good plan - and it came apart the instant the fighters tried to execute it.

 

 

***

 

 

The attack craft flashed closer. Their targets were obvious, and the screen adjusted its formation slightly. There were only eighteen Cataphracts, and two dozen Carbines formed a solid wall between them and the enemy, daring him to waste his fire upon them.

 

 

***

 

 

Farshathkhanaak Iaouusa'hairniak led the attack. Gee forces drew his lips back, baring his fangs, and his eyes glowed as the Bugs shifted formation. The dairshnahki were actually moving his designated targets out where he could get at them!

 

 

Wait! What was th-?

 

 

Iaouusa never finished the question as the very first Bug AFHAWK ever used in action scored a direct hit on his fighter.

 

 

***

 

 

Prescott slammed his fist down on the arm of his command chair. AFHAWKs! The bastards had AFHAWKs! No wonder they hadn't tried to attack! They'd been waiting to spring their ambush when Task Force 37 attacked!

 

 

Surprise was total. It shouldn't have been. He and Zhaarnak should have allowed for the possibility, but so little time had passed since the Battle of Alowan that such a radical shift in the tactical balance hadn't even occurred to them, and Zhaarnak's pilots paid a fearful price. The missile-heavy Carbines, suddenly infinitely more dangerous than the Cataphracts, poured devastating fire into the lead squadrons, and the fighters had known they were beyond threat range. None had even taken evasive action... and seventy-one died in the first, terrible salvo.

 

 

The survivors reacted like the elite pilots they were. They broke instantly, in apparently total confusion, only to drop into the Orion version of the TFN's "Waldeck Weave." They twisted their base vectors together in a tangle of competing target sources to confuse the enemy's fire control, and despite their shock, carried through against their targets. Some managed to break lock, maneuvering hard against the AFHAWKs which had acquired them; others were less fortunate, but none turned aside, and the survivors salvoed their missiles into their briefed targets.

 

 

The Bug screen writhed as the Orion fire struck. Half the Carbines were destroyed outright, and most of the rest were damaged. But none were supposed to have lived, and the kills had cost three times the projected losses. Worse, the cost of killing the rest of their fleet would be still higher, for the entire Bug battle-line was belching AFHAWKs.

 

 

The Orion survivors broke off to rearm - and reorganize around their casualties - and the Bugs waited until they had been recovered for rearming... then sent all two hundred remaining gunboats in to kill the carriers while they were helpless in their bays. But Diego Jackson's CSP charged to meet them. The carriers' escorts and the battle-line raced to interpose between them and the gunboats, raking the incoming strike with fire, but it was Jackson's outnumbered fighters who broke the attack's back.

 

 

They paid for it with sixty-one Terran fighters, and they didn't stop them all. That was perhaps the most terrifying thing about a mass suicide attack. When the attackers were intent on dying anyway, some always got through. The leakers slammed into TG 37.1 like hammers, and the Tabby fleet carriers were their primary targets, Ytarible tore apart under a hurricane of missiles and kamikazes, and Celshakhan and Itumahk were hit hard, especially Itumahk. Half the big carrier's hangar bays were reduced to ruin, taking their fighters with them, yet she was luckier than the CVLs Ghiurdauni and Rymanthhus. Both light carriers disappeared in the terrible glare of nuclear fusion, and the Terran Bonhomme Richard went with them.

 

 

But agonizing as the personnel casualties were, fighters losses were worse. Coupled with the effect of that first, dreadful AFHAWK broadside and the CSP's dogfight, half of TF 37's total fighter strength had been written off in less than twenty minutes... and those fighters had been Zhaarnak's main battery. His entire plan had been based on staying beyond shipboard range and battering the enemy to death with fighter strikes, but if the Bugs had AFHAWKs...

 

 

***

 

 

"I fear we must increase our fighter loss projections by at least a factor of two in light of the enemy's possession of the AFHAWK, Great Claw," Least Claw Theerah said heavily. He sat with his commander before a subdivided com screen which held the faces of Diego Jackson and his ops officer as well as Raymond Prescott and Alexander LaFroye. "Given the losses we have already suffered," he went on somberly, "I cannot guarantee success if we continue the attack."

 

 

"Wait a minute, Theerah." It was a sign of the least claw's concern that he didn't even wince as Jackson's atrocious Terran accent mangled his name. "We're hurt, sure, but we're not out of this yet. Your boys and girls kicked hell out of their Carbines, and my people finished off virtually all their gunboats. We can still take these bastards!"

 

 

Theerah let his earbug translate, then sighed. "I admire your spirit, Commmodorrre, but I am not certain I share your confidence. Our surviving strike groups are badly disorganized. It will take hours to restore their efficiency... during which the enemy will reach the warp point. The prudent course would be to withdraw to Alowan to reorganize, yet I fear that is impractical."

 

 

"Truth, Least Claw," Prescott said. "We have exhausted our SBMHAWKs. Without them, we cannot force a return to the system once we retreat."

 

 

"On the other hand," LaFroye pointed out, "we have knocked hell out of their gunboats. If nothing else, we've insured that they can't take Alowan before Lord Khiniak arrives."

 

 

"I didn't come here to lose, Alec," Prescott harshly. "I came here to relieve Hairnow!"

 

 

Zhaarnak hid a flicker of bitter amusement. How odd. Humans say we do not know how to give ground, yet it is Theerah who counsels caution and Humans who reject his words!

 

 

"Damn right," Jackson growled. "I have had it with these things, and I want their asses!"

 

 

"I realize that, Sir." LaFroye said respectfully, reminding himself Jackson was a fighter jock by training and inclination. "I'm simply pointing out that we've already achieved our minimum objective."

 

 

"You are correct, Commmannderrr LaaaFrrroye," Zhaarnak said, "as are you, Theerah. Yet as Great Claw Pressscott says, I did not come here to lose. So I ask you. Is Commmodorrre Jaaackssson correct? Can we complete the enemy's destruction?"

 

 

The least claw sat silent for several seconds, eyes straying to the plot on which the Bug battle-line advanced towards the warp point. If TF 37 meant to retreat before the enemy's missiles could command the point, it must begin its withdrawal within the next fifteen minutes.

 

 

Theerah disliked being the voice of caution. It felt unnatural and somehow sordid, yet it was also his job, and he closed his eyes and thought furiously. Then he sighed.

 

 

"I do not know, Great Claw," he said finally. "Certainly we can do them great damage, but to destroy them will require our battle-line to accept action. We cannot do it with fighters alone."

 

 

"We can hack that," LaFroye said, "but only if we take their SBMs and capital missiles out of the picture. They only have nine Archers. Can the fighters get in and kill them first?"

 

 

"Commmodorrre?" Theerah asked quietly, and Diego Jackson bared his teeth.

 

 

"We can do it," he said confidently. "It'll cost us, but we can do it."

 

 

"In that case, Great Claw, I think we can do it," LaFroye said. "They don't mount CMs in anything else, and we've got nine capital missile battlecruisers. We send the fighters in to kill the Archers, then empty the battlecruisers' magazines into them from outside their range. Instead of outright kills, we concentrate on knocking down their datalink, then the battle-line pounds them with standard missiles from outside effective energy range and closes with the fighters in tight, like Admiral Murakuma did in Leonidas, and kicks their guts out from the inside."

 

 

"Theerah?" Zhaarnak asked.

 

 

"It should work, Great Claw," the least claw said. "Yet casualties will be very heavy, and for us to attempt it, we must first complete our strike groups' reorganization. That will require us to allow them to reclaim the warp point, so if it does not work, none of our ships will escape."

 

 

"Lord Khiniak will reach Alowan in six days," Zhaarnak murmured as if to himself. "Even if we are destroyed, his strength will hold the system, and if we do sufficient damage to the enemy, he will retake Telmasa with ease." His eyes flicked to the icon of the Hairnow warp point, and his ears flattened. He gazed at it for several seconds, then inhaled sharply.

 

 

"Very well, Commmannderrr LaaaFrrroye, you have convinced me. We shall send our worst damaged ships back to Alowan and attempt your plan with the remainder. And if we fail," he raised one clawed hand, palm uppermost, and closed it slowly into a fist, "then we shall end like farshatok." He smiled thinly. "It is a good day for it, war brothers."

 

 

Chapter Twenty-nine

 

 

The Tips of Our Claws

 

 

Tenth Great Fang of the Khan Koraaza'khiniak, Khanhaku Khiniak, CO Third Fleet, stood behind the side party in KONS Ebymiae's boat bay and watched the cutter dock. It was a Human cutter, and Lord Khiniak found that entirely fitting as he glanced about the cavernous boat bay at the officers and ratings of his new flagship. He had shifted his lights to Ebymiae only six days before, on his arrival in Telmasa, for she was the sole Orion battleship to survive Second Telmasa. She deserved her status, and he felt a pride in her which only the Zheeerlikou'valkhannaieee could fully have understood.

 

 

Or perhaps not, he told himself, thinking of the officer he was about to greet.

 

 

The hatch opened, and the pipes skirled. They did not offer the KON's normal honors; instead they played Suns of Splendor, the anthem of the Terran Federation.

 

 

Two officers walked forward into that music. One was a tall, russet-furred Orion; the other a shorter, battered-looking Human who leaned heavily on a cane. His uniform bore the brand-new insignia of a TFN vice admiral, but one side of his shaven head showed a freshly healed, cruel-looking scar, and his immobilized left arm hung useless. He moved slowly, in obvious pain, and the Orion at his side tried not to hover attentively over him.

 

 

"Task Force Thirty-Seven, arriving!" the intercom announced. That, too, was not usual Orion protocol, and Lord Khiniak saw surprise - and pleasure - in the Human officer's face.

 

 

The newcomers halted, and the Human looked down at his cane, then gave a crooked Human smile and braced painfully erect. He handed the cane to his companion, who took it gingerly, and saluted the son of the khan at the side party's head.

 

 

"Permission to come aboard, Sir?" he said in the Tongue of Tongues, and the son of the khan's salute would have done the Khan himself proud.

 

 

"Permission granted, Fang Pressscott!" he replied loudly, and Lord Khiniak stepped forward as Zhaarnak returned Prescott's cane. Lord Khiniak carefully did not note the Human's relief - or his small sound of pain - as he reclaimed his prop, but the great fang neither saluted Prescott nor offered his hand in the Human greeting his guest could not return while leaning upon it. Instead, he gave a much deeper Orion bow than usual.

 

 

"I am most pleased to meet you, Fang Pressscott," he said. "And to greet you once more, Great Claw." This time he did extend a hand, and Zhaarnak took it. They brought their free hands flashing to one another's faces in a warriors' salute, and Lord Khiniak smiled. "You bring great honor to us all, both of you. In the name of all the Zheeerlikou'valkhannaieee and of my Khan, I thank you."

 

 

Raymond Prescott watched Zhaarnak from the corner of one eye. The Tabby actually looked embarrassed, and Prescott waited for him to speak. But the cat seemed to have Zhaarnak's tongue - despite the pain of his wounds, the cliche made Prescott smile - and so he cleared his own throat.

 

 

"Honor comes to those who act with honor, Great Fang," he said for them both, "and it was our farshatok who brought honor to us all."

 

 

"Well said, Fang Pressscott," Lord Khiniak approved, then looked up. He clicked his claws, and a gorgeously bejeweled least claw stepped forward with a small, gem-crusted casket. Lord Khiniak took it in his own hands, and for all the solid weight of its precious metals and jewels, it seemed far too light for what it held as he turned back to his guests.

 

 

"Fang Pressscott -" no Orion would ever again greet this Human by his TFN rank "- Great Claw Zhaarnak, I bring you these as token of the honor you have earned. I speak in this as hirikolus'ni'hami, with the mouth of my Khan, and my hand is his hand."

 

 

Prescott and Zhaarnak stiffened and squared their shoulders almost in unison. Technically, every member of the Orion military was hirikolus'ni'hami, oath-sworn to the Khan'a'khanaaeee, but Lord Khiniak's formal emphasis carried another, deeper meaning. It was the ancient meaning, that of a liege man and war captain who, in this moment, literally was the Khan, a physical avatar for his distant warlord and hence for every Orion who had ever been or would be born.

 

 

He opened the casket reverently, and Prescott heard air hiss between Zhaarnak's fangs as Lord Khiniak lifted out a ribbon of deepest midnight blue, the imperial color of the Khanate. A magnificent golden starburst hung from it, broad as a Terran coffee cup yet delicate, exquisitely wrought like living, dancing flame, and a huge, blood-red ruby glittered at its heart.

 

 

The great fang returned the casket to his aide, who held it on open palms while his superior turned once more to face the Terran.