In Death Ground Part 15

Murak.u.ma nodded and looked back up at Waldeck's com screen.

"Pull the SDs back. We'll have to let Husac handle them."

"Agreed." Waldeck's voice was as bitter as her own thoughts.

"Can what's left of John's command get free?"

"I think so. They don't have much firepower left anyway."

"Then pull them out. We might as well save somebody," she said harshly.

"Sir, it's not your fault," Waldeck said quietly. "No one could have-"

"Just pull them out, Admiral," Vanessa Murak.u.ma said flatly, and turned away.

The battle raged on. The Fleet's missile ships were gone, but the enemy had suffered heavily. All his missile superdreadnoughts and five of his battlecruisers had been driven out of action or destroyed. Neither side now possessed an extended-range missile capability, but the Fleet retained a solid core of forty-eight superdreadnoughts, screened by twelve battlecruisers... and if the enemy wanted to engage them, he would have to come into their range.

Murak.u.ma paced savagely about her briefing room. The Bugs had been reduced to a bare third of their initial strength over the last seventy-nine hours, but that third was still coming. Her fighters had hunted down all but four of the cutters, and those four had been easily picked off by her starships' defenses, but the huge fireb.a.l.l.s as they died confirmed Marcus' suspicion. Only heavy loads of antimatter could account for them, yet knowing she'd been right to divert her fighters made her feel no less a murderer. She'd left her missile-armed battle-line to fight unsupported, and it had been battered into uselessness, and the fact that it had done the same to the Bugs' missile ships was scant comfort, given how d.a.m.ned many other SDs they had left.

She took another turn around the compartment, like an exhausted, goaded animal. She'd battered the Bugs viciously, slashing in with coordinated fighter strikes and pounces by her short-ranged missile ships, but they were still coming, and- The admittance chime sounded, and she whirled towards the hatch. For one moment, her lips drew back in a snarl, but then she closed her eyes and drew a deep, shuddering breath.

"Enter," she said flatly, and Marcus LeBlanc stepped into the briefing room.

The intelligence officer looked worn and worried, but unlike her, he'd actually managed a few hours' sleep, and she wanted to curse him for the concern in his eyes. Concern for her.

"Well?" she said sharply.

"I-" LeBlanc shrugged. "Tear my head off if you want, but someone has to say it. You need rest."

Murak.u.ma opened her mouth to flay him, but then she made herself stop and turned her back, fists clenching as she stared at the holo display above the conference table.

The planet Sarasota hung there, and her exhausted, bloodshot eyes clung to the huge Fleet Base in orbit around it. That base was as heavily armed as twenty superdreadnoughts. Against any rational foe, she would have backed it to handle every battered capital ship still headed for it, but if even a single Bug superdreadnought managed to penetrate its defenses and ram, it would die.

"I don't need rest," she grated. "The stims are holding."

"Like h.e.l.l," LeBlanc said. "d.a.m.n it, Vanessa, you're killing yourself!"

"Why not?" Hysteria edged her jagged laugh. "That's what I'm best at, killing people."

"It's not your fault! d.a.m.n it to h.e.l.l, you're not G.o.d!"

"This discussion is closed." She wheeled back to him, and he recoiled from her raw fury.

"No it isn't." He tried to keep his voice calm and rational. "Someone has to say it, and none of the rest of your staff will-"

"I said it's closed! Or do you need a little brig time to remind you what a direct order is?!"

He opened his mouth again, then closed it. She truly meant it, he realized shakenly.

"All right," he said finally, his tone leached of all emotion. "But whether you're willing to rest or not, you have to make a decision. You've done a h.e.l.l of a job, but they're still coming, and for all we know, there's a hundred more SDs right behind them."

"There aren't," she said flatly. "If there were, they'd already have called them forward."

"Why?" he shot back. "Because we would?" He barked a laugh. "The one thing I can tell you for absolute certain is that these things sure as h.e.l.l don't think like we do! Maybe they're expending this entire force just to grind us up so they can send in a reserve for the kill!"

"No." She shook her head so violently she had to catch herself on a chair as her exhausted body staggered. "No, this is it. All they have. And they're not taking this system away from me."

"It's over, Vanessa," he said softly. "No one could have done more, but it's over."

"No it isn't." She shoved herself back upright and glared at him.

"But-"

"It isn't over!" He stepped back involuntarily as she shouted at him, and then she stormed past him onto the flag deck. He followed quickly, mind racing for some argument, any argument, that might get through to whatever rationality remained under her exhausted desperation.

"Get me Admiral Teller," she told her com officer, and turned to the screen as Teller's face appeared. "How many fighters do we have left?" she asked without preamble.

"About two hundred, plus the Fleet Base's group. Call it three hundred."

"Call the base's fighters forward. We'll stage them through your bays."

"That will leave the planet without any fighter cover," Teller began, "and-"

"I know that. Just do it - now."

Teller's eyes widened. She saw them dart over her shoulder, as if seeking someone else, and deliberately stepped between him and LeBlanc. The movement wasn't lost on the other admiral, and after a moment, he nodded.

"Yes, Sir," he said quietly. "May I ask what I'll do with them once they arrive."

"You may." Murak.u.ma punched a stud, bringing Demosthenes Waldeck's worn face up on another screen, and faced them both. "Demosthenes, we're calling in the base's fighters. Once they've arrived and our own groups have had time to reorganize, activate Leonidas."

Waldeck's face stiffened, and, for just an instant, she felt the protest hovering behind his eyes. Leonidas was the last-ditch option, a headlong attack into the enemy. It had been devised as a contingency plan, one to be activated only after the Bugs had been decisively weakened, and she recognized his desperate concern for his battered battle-line. His remaining ships were heavily outma.s.sed by the surviving Bug superdreadnoughts, and Leonidas would commit them to a fight to the death within the enemy's weapons envelope.

"Sir, are you certain about this?" he asked quietly.

"I am. I know they outma.s.s us, but they're hurting, too. And they don't have any fighters. You'll coordinate with Jackson and we'll go in together, fighters in tight. We'll hold them there till we're into energy range, then throw them in the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds' faces."

It was a council of desperation, and she knew her subordinates knew it, but Waldeck said nothing for a moment. And then, to her exhausted astonishment, he nodded slowly.

"It might just work," he said, and Leroy Mackenna looked up from his console in disbelief as the Corporate Worlder nodded again.

"It better," Teller said grimly. "We won't have anything left to try again if it doesn't."

"Sir, have you considered waiting just a little longer?" Ling Tian asked hesitantly. "We're still wearing them down, and-"

"And they're wearing us down," Murak.u.ma cut her off. "The odds aren't going to get any better, and we can't let things that use starships for projectiles get close enough to ram the base."

"We won't be in any shape to stop a follow-up attack, Sir," Waldeck cautioned, but his tone was that of a man considering all options, not a protest.

"We'll worry about that then," Murak.u.ma said flatly. "Now let's get moving."

"... and that's the plan," Anson Olivera told Fifth Fleet's three surviving strikegroup COs. Given the plan he'd just briefed them on, he didn't expect to survive much longer... and neither did they. It was against the fighter jock's code to ever sound less than breezily confident, however tough the mission profile, but all four of them were having trouble pulling it off this time.

"That's it?" Lieutenant Commander Beachman asked. "We just go right down their throats with the battle-line and shoot anything that moves?"

"That's it," Olivera confirmed, and managed a thin smile as the other three stared at him. "The battle-line will be shooting the whole way in, so how can we predict which targets'll be left for us? There's no way to set this one up neatly. We'll be tied into the Flag for the approach, and Admiral Murak.u.ma's staff will try to give us targeting updates, but no one can guarantee that."

"Jesus," Beachman muttered, shaking her head. "'Go shoot a superdreadnought - any superdreadnought.' They never put that one in the Brisbane syllabus! We're going to have all kinds of targeting conflicts. What if we screw up and mob three or four of them and let the others by us? We're going to lose command and control the instant we mix it up with these b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. What are our squadrons supposed to do if we can't even tell them who to go after?"

"I asked Admiral Murak.u.ma more or less the same question," Olivera agreed.

"And she said?" Commander Liracelli asked.

"She paraphrased an ancient wet-navy order." The others looked at him blankly, and he actually felt himself smile. "She said, 'Something must be left to chance. No pilot can do very wrong if he fires on the enemy.'"

"Sounds like the prelude to the biggest cl.u.s.ter-f.u.c.k in history," Beachman grumbled. "Who the h.e.l.l ever gave an idiot order like that?"

"Horatio Nelson," Olivera told her. "And if it worked at Trafalgar, it might even work here."

Vanessa Murak.u.ma looked up as a shadow fell over her console, and her mouth tightened. Marcus LeBlanc looked at her for a long silent moment, and she hunched an impatient shoulder.

"We're going in in ten minutes," she said. "If something's on your mind, say it quick."

"I was just thinking about the fellow you named this operation after," he said quietly.

"Leonidas? What about him? Or -" her eyes hardened dangerously "- is that a not so subtle reference to what happened to him?"

"I suppose it was," LeBlanc said in that same, quiet voice, "but not the way you're thinking." He saw the surprise in her exhausted eyes, and under it he saw the grim death grip she'd fastened on herself. The absolute, total determination - the fanaticism, for that was the only word which truly fitted now. He looked down at her for a moment longer, and then he squeezed her shoulder gently, oblivious to all the flag bridge's watching eyes.

"'Go, stranger, and to the listening Spartans tell, that here, obedient to their laws, we fell,'" he quoted softly. "Whatever happens, you're in good company." He squeezed her shoulder again. "G.o.d bless, Vanessa."

"And you, Marcus." She smiled, and somehow that gentle smile looked completely right on her exhausted, warrior's face. Then she nodded at his console. 'Take your station, Captain."

"Aye, aye, Sir." LeBlanc slid into his couch, and as he adjusted his shock frame, he heard Vanessa Murak.u.ma's voice - a voice that had somehow shed its exhaustion and uncertainty and fear.

"All units, this is the Flag. The Fleet will advance!"

Chapter Sixteen.

"We're going back."

The Orion cutter drifted through the monopermeable force field into TFNS Cobra's boat bay, and Vanessa Murak.u.ma watched it settle to the deck, then nodded to the lieutenant who headed the side party.

"'Ten-shun!" The side party snapped to attention as the cutter's hatch opened into the squeal of bosun's pipes, and Murak.u.ma offered up a silent prayer that someone had warned her guest, for Orion hearing was far more acute than Terran. She had no idea how a bosun's pipe might sound to a Tabby, but she suspected it didn't sound good.

If it didn't, the tall, tan-furred being who stepped from the cutter gave no sign of it. Fifty-Sixth Fang of the Khan Anaasa'zolaath, Khanate of Orion Navy, was well into his seventh decade, but there was little silver in his pelt. His jeweled metal harness flashed with what seemed barbaric splendor, but the furred Tabbies, who went unclothed in normal environments, invested all the effort humans expended on tailors on their metalsmiths, and by Orion standards, Anaasa's harness was downright modest.

The Orion came to his race's version of attention and touched his right hand first to his defargo honor dirk and then to his chest in salute until the pipes stopped wailing, then spoke. It sounded like an angry, ba.s.so-profundo tomcat to Murak.u.ma, but the translator listening in over the boat bay intercom whispered through her earbug.

"He asks permission to come aboard, Sir."

"Permission granted," Murak.u.ma said clearly, and the big Tabby smiled the polite, teeth-hidden smile of his carnivorous race and yowled something else.

"He says thank you, Sir."

Anaasa stepped forward, extending his right hand in the human gesture of welcome, and she took it. She'd tried for years to acquire at least enough mastery of Orion to understand it - as Anaasa had obviously mastered Standard English, given his lack of any earbug - but her tone deafness had defeated her. But it hadn't kept her from learning all she could about Orion culture, and Anaasa's smile broadened as she squeezed his right hand, then raised her left, fingers clawed, and slapped her nails lightly against the side of his face. His own hand came up, needle-sharp (and still highly functional) claws bared, and brushed her own cheek with equal care. Once that exchange had been quite different, with each warrior slashing his claws in with all the speed he could and stopping at the last possible instant. It had been a tremendous loss of face to draw blood, but an even greater one to flinch from the strike, and the Tabbies had lost more than one high-ranking officer to the duels clumsy greetings had inspired. That was why Liharnow the Great had insisted his warriors adjust to more civilized ways a hundred and fifty Standard Years ago.

"In the name of my government and people, Fang Anaasa," she said clearly, "I welcome you to Sarasota. The speed with which your Khan has met his treaty obligations does honor to him, who sent you, and to you, who have come."

"Honor comes to he who acts with honor," Anaasa yowled back through her translator. "When farshatok call, their war brothers must answer, for if my claws guard not your back, whose claws shall guard mine?"

Murak.u.ma bowed, then gestured politely for Anaasa to accompany her to the intraship car. The Tabby padded gracefully along at her side, silent in the open-toed sandals his people wore in place of the TFN's boots, and his shoulder-wide whiskers quivered with interest as his bright eyes compared Cobra and her company to his own battlecruiser flagship. The two of them stepped into the car together, and Murak.u.ma felt as if an enormous weight had been partly lifted - not completely, but partly - from her shoulders as she pressed the b.u.t.ton.

The rest of Fifth Fleet's senior officers and their staffs rose as Murak.u.ma and Anaasa entered the briefing room. There were more of them now, and she felt a pang as she looked at the woman beside Demosthenes Waldeck. Rear Admiral Carlotta Segram was a fine officer, but she'd stepped into John Ludendorff's slot, and every time Murak.u.ma looked at her she saw an expanding cloud of gas she should have withdrawn sooner.

She gave herself a savage mental shake, banishing the image, and walked to the head of the table with Anaasa. It was fortunate that the Tabby was junior to Demosthenes Waldeck but senior to every other Allied officer present, for his five fleet carriers, eight battlecruisers, and five heavy cruisers were the largest Allied contingent yet to reach Sarasota. More, the Khanate of Orion was the Federation's only true peer as a Galactic Power, and his rank made him the natural commander for her third task force - which was good, since TF 53 would consist entirely of his ships. In a way, she would have preferred to integrate his units into her other two task forces, but the Tabbies' datalink wouldn't interface with the TFN's.

The same was not true, fortunately, of Rear Admiral Saakhaanaa's Ophiuchi ships, for the Ophiuchi a.s.sociation Defense Command's units were specifically designed to fight in joint TFN-OADC battlegroups, and Murak.u.ma glanced at Saakhaanaa as she and Anaasa seated themselves. The Ophiuchi and his staff were the tallest people in the briefing room, but they probably weighed no more than Ling Tian. Murak.u.ma guessed they did outma.s.s her own low-grav-adapted body, though it couldn't have been by much.

She finished seating herself and smiled as she watched Anaasa and Saakhaanaa project matching airs of physical comfort neither felt. Orions preferred a damper, more humid - and warmer - climate, while Ophiuchi preferred drier worlds. Orion atmospheric pressures also ran well above Terran norms, while the Ophiuchi preferred lower-grav worlds with proportionately lighter pressures. Ophiuchi could survive aboard Orion ships, and vice-versa, but neither could have functioned efficiently there, whereas humans could adapt to either. And, as this widely a.s.sorted gathering demonstrated, both allied races could adapt to Terran conditions. In a way, she mused, that summed up what made her own species so successful. Both Ophiuchi and Orions did some things better than humans, but Man remained the known galaxy's ultimate generalist.

"Thank you all for coming," she said, and knew her alien allies recognized the stark, simple honesty of her grat.i.tude. "With your help and the fortifications being emplaced on the Justin warp point, I now feel confident of holding Sarasota against any fresh offensive. Indeed, we may be in a position to take the battle to the enemy at last."

A small stir ran around the table, and she flicked a sidelong glance at Marcus LeBlanc. Only he, Mackenna and Ling Tian had known she intended to say that, and she knew he retained strong reservations. The tension between them had eased, but he was still unconvinced she truly had herself back together. And, she admitted, he may have a point. But all I can do is the best I can do.

She returned her attention to her a.s.sembled officers.

"Since you've just joined us, Fang Anaasa, I felt we should begin with a complete briefing. I realize you've seen our reports to GHQ, but the Centauri System's far enough back there's bound to be some com lag. More to the point, this will give you a chance to ask any questions which may have occurred to you en route. Please feel free - as should all of you -" she added, eyes sweeping over the other officers "- to stop us at any time for clarification or expansion. It's essential that we develop a firm, shared appreciation of the situation, and I welcome any input from a perspective other than my own."

She paused until Anaasa and Saakhaanaa indicated a.s.sent, then gestured to LeBlanc.

"Captain LeBlanc, my intelligence officer, and Commander Ling, my operations officer, have prepared a brief for us. Captain LeBlanc will begin with what we have so far learned, deduced, and guessed about the enemy, after which Commander Ling will update us on our own strength and deployments. Captain LeBlanc?"