In Death Ground Part 16

"Yes, Sir." The captain activated a holo unit, and the image of a charging Bug warrior, captured on a Marine's zoot scanners and firing on the run, appeared above the table. Murak.u.ma felt Anaasa tense beside her and heard a faint hiss as he bared his fangs in instant, instinctive challenge. Interesting. He seems to react to it exactly the way humans do. And so did Saakhaanaa, the first time he saw the imagery. I wonder how much of that stems from what they know about the Bugs' actions and how much of it is just plain instinct?

"This, ladies and gentlemen, is an Arachnid," LeBlanc began in his most clinical tones, and Murak.u.ma leaned back in her chair to listen.

"I still think you're pressing too hard." LeBlanc's voice was carefully professional, and Murak.u.ma felt the effort with which he strained all personal feeling from it. It was hard on both of them, and she wondered if she'd been right to request him in the first place. He was undoubtedly the best man to have at the sharp end of this particular intelligence stick, but was he the right intelligence officer for her? They meant too much to one another for either to listen to the other with total, detached professionalism, and it was a source of tension which wore upon them both.

"I realize that," she said, and looked at the others she'd invited to this small, private meeting. LeBlanc and Mackenna were the only staffers present, but Waldeck, Teller and Anaasa, as her task force commanders, and Saakhaanaa, as Fifth Fleet's senior Ophiuchi, sat in chairs designed for their respective species. Saakhaanaa nibbled on a sharkii stick, crunching the dried, jerky-like delicacy quietly, and Anaasa nursed a flagon of chermaak, the spicy, slightly alcoholic beverage his race used instead of coffee and beer alike, while Demosthenes - in what was undoubtedly the most bizarre habit of all - puffed on a black briar pipe. At least he'd been careful to place himself directly under a ventilator and as far from Anaasa's sensitive nose as possible!

"I realize that," she repeated, keeping her own voice neutral, "but perhaps we need a little pressing. So far, they've lost almost two hundred SDs, and even they have to run out of capital ships eventually. But how can we know if they have unless we at least probe for information?"

Saakhaanaa c.o.c.ked his head in an Ophiuchi gesture of agreement, but his eyes narrowed. That indication of curiosity was one of the few expressions his race and humanity shared, and she wondered if he wondered why she was arguing with a mere intelligence officer. The TFN didn't usually do that, and he knew it. Anaasa, on the other hand, seemed completely at ease. Well, it wasn't unheard of for even a junior member of an Orion commander's staff to argue violently with him. It must make staff meetings lively, but the Khanate's size was proof it worked.

"I agree their losses are catastrophic by the standard of any other race we've ever met," LeBlanc conceded. "At the same time, they appear almost totally insensitive to casualties. The way they didn't even attempt to break off here in Sarasota is the clearest possible indication of that. And because they are, I must stress again my belief that they must have an enormous reserve strength. We, on the other hand, while substantially reinforced, also suffered heavy losses, and we're unlikely to see any additional large reinforcements for another two or three months. If we lose still more ships and the enemy isn't running out of superdreadnoughts-"

He shrugged, and Murak.u.ma nodded, hiding her wince at the words "heavy losses." Leonidas had stopped the Bugs, but the cost had been as dreadful as she'd feared. By the end, Fifth Fleet had lost seven hundred fighters, three out of five OWPs (with the others so shattered Fortress Command had written them off rather than rebuild them), eight superdreadnoughts, twelve battlecruisers, and over thirty percent of its screen. Demosthenes' surviving battle-line had been battered into near impotence, and only Teller's carriers - with a bare hundred fighters embarked - had escaped undamaged.

She'd known, as she surveyed her shattered command, that Marcus had been right. If the Bugs had put in a second attack - even a weak one - they would have rolled right over what was left of Fifth Fleet. But they didn't, and that's the point. If they'd had them to put in, they would have.

"Captain LeBlanc has a point," Mackenna said diffidently. "With the new mines and energy buoys - not to mention the OWPs - we've got a mighty strong stopper in the bottle. If we move into Justin, we expose ourselves to heavy starship losses we can't really afford, but if we wait another sixty days, enough additional heavy stuff will arrive to mean we can accept losses."

"And while we wait," Murak.u.ma said very quietly, "anyone left in Justin is being eaten."

Mackenna winced, and LeBlanc shut his mouth firmly as he heard the echo of her desperate guilt, but Anaasa looked up from his chermaak.

"You raise an important point, Ahhhdmiraahl," he said while her earbug translated. "We are warriors. It is our function to protect and defend civilians, whatever race those civilians may belong to, against such menaces as the Baahgs."

"Exactly!" Murak.u.ma looked at Waldeck and raised an eyebrow. "Demosthenes?"

"Of course it is," the Corporate Worlder said simply. "Captain LeBlanc and Commander Mackenna have both raised valid arguments, but the bottom line is that if we have the firepower to take the battle to the Bugs, we clearly have to do just that. If we have the firepower."

"And do we?" Murak.u.ma challenged.

"I don't know," Waldeck said frankly. "Captain LeBlanc's right about the implications of their willingness to take losses, but you have an equally valid point in their failure to try Sarasota a second time when they have to know how close they came the first time. Certainly no Terran - or Orion or Ophiuchi -" he added with a courteous nod to the two aliens "would give an opponent any longer to fort up than he had to when he knew he'd had him on the ropes before. Under the circ.u.mstances," he tilted his head back for a moment, then shrugged, "I'd have to come down on your side of the a.n.a.lysis. But, as you say, the only way to know is to go look."

"Admiral Saakhaanaa?" Murak.u.ma asked.

"I am forrrced to agree withhh Admiral Waldeckk," the Ophiuchi said. "Ifff we can take the warrr to the Buggsss, we mussst do ssso."

It was odd, Murak.u.ma thought, that different as all their vocal apparatuses were, all of them could manage a form of "Bug" that was at least recognizable.

"In that case, I think we can consider the decision made," she said, and met LeBlanc's eyes with a hint of challenge. "Leroy, please inform Tian that Operation Salamis is a go. Gentlemen, we're going back to Justin!"

Chapter Seventeen.

"I saw what I wanted to."

Captain Anson Olivera frowned at the reports on his terminal. His new promotion should have taken him out of a c.o.c.kpit. Normally, a fighter jock had to move onto something more "important" than squadron or even strike group command to advance beyond commander, but the Navy had decided to take a page from the Tabbies' book. The Orions - arguably the best (and certainly the most enthusiastic) strikefighter pract.i.tioners - were far less rigid in their personnel career tracks, and it wasn't uncommon for an Orion pilot to reach the rank of small claw or even claw - roughly equivalent to a TFN commodore - while still drawing flight pay. Indeed, the present Lord Talphon had made it all the way to small fang before they pried him out of a c.o.c.kpit, though that was a special case.

Olivera grimaced. It irked him to admit it, but the Tabbies were better than Terrans at fighter ops. For that matter, they were better even than the Ophiuchi. Their equipment wasn't - in fact, it wasn't as good - and their individual pilots were less capable than Ophiuchi. But unlike the TFN, the KON was uncompromisingly carrier oriented. The Federation Navy was a "balanced" fleet in which the battle-line and carrier forces were coequals. That had proved a lifesaver on occasions when carriers accidentally strayed into range of enemy capital ships, and carriers were ill-suited to things like warp point a.s.saults. They were meant to stay away from hostile starships while their fighter "main batteries" went out and killed the enemy, not to mix it up with capital ships, minefields, or energy buoys. That sort of silly operation was the purview of the battle-line.

The Tabbies didn't see things that way. For them, the only truly honorable form of combat was between individuals, which had made the fighter a gift from the G.o.ds for them. Unlike the TFN, the KON relegated the battle-line to a purely supporting function except in warp point a.s.saults. The fighter was the decisive weapon for the Khan's fangs, one they'd learned to wield with more elan and skill than any other navy in s.p.a.ce, and Olivera suspected the seniority their active-duty pilots could attain was a major part of the reason.

Admiral Murak.u.ma seemed to agree. She and Admiral Teller had reorganized their carriers on a distinctly Orion pattern, and that was why Olivera and what was left of SG 47 had moved to the carrier Orca, flagship of Carrier Division 503. Admiral Teller had opted to retain the battlecruiser Sorcerer as his flagship, but Admiral Rendova, his second-in-command, flew her lights in Orca, and she'd wanted Olivera where he was handy, because Ms. Olivera's little boy Anson had just become the TFN's first farshathkhanaak. The Orion term translated roughly as "lord of the war fist" - a somewhat poetic way to describe an entire task force's or fleet's senior pilot. Except in purely administrative matters, Olivera's group and squadron COs reported to him, not the skippers of whatever carrier they happened to fly from. He would not only lead them in combat but represent them at the highest levels, and unnatural as it seemed, he had almost as much clout on the ops end as Admiral Teller did.

Which was all very well, but didn't change how expensive those ops were proving. Fighter jocks always had lower combat life expectancies than battle-line personnel, but the glitz and glamor of the deadly little strikefighters kept attracting the hot dogs - like, Olivera admitted, himself - anyway. And from a cold-blooded viewpoint, it made sense. A fighter squadron consisted of only thirty or forty people, including alternate flight crews, and fighters were cheap compared to starships. Any group CO sweated blood to bring all his people back every time, but fighters were fragile, ultimately expendable weapons, and the people who flew them knew it.

Oh, yeah, we know it, Olivera thought grimly, but we've taken at least eighty percent losses in every battle to date except Redemption, and sooner or later these b.a.s.t.a.r.ds are going to come up with their own AFHAWK. n.o.body who's ever tried to penetrate their close-in defenses is dumb enough to think they're stupid, whatever their SOP looks like. They know how badly they need a long-ranged fighter killer, and once they develop it, we're going to get hurt even worse.

He shook his head irritably. Of course they were getting hurt, but that was largely because of the odds they faced! Doctrine called for using numbers to saturate the enemy's defenses, and they hadn't been able to do that... yet. But Fifth Fleet now boasted the most powerful carrier component a.s.sembled in sixty years - since the First Battle of Thebes - and there were enough long-ranged heavy hitters in the battle-line to take a lot of pressure off them. He wasn't going to indulge in any foolish optimism, but- He inhaled deeply, shook himself, and returned to his paperwork. One way or another, they'd learn how effective those changes were in about forty-seven more hours.

Vanessa Murak.u.ma stood on Cobra's flag bridge, hands clasped behind her, and watched the master plot. Demosthenes and Jackson were exasperated with her for retaining her battleship flagship now that sufficient superdreadnoughts were available, and she understood their frustration. A battleship was a fragile place for a fleet commander to fly her lights, but Cobra had been her flagship for over two years. Her tactical and plotting departments were a smoothly functioning extension of her own staff, and she wasn't about to spend the time breaking in a new flagship in the midst of a campaign this furious.

Besides, we've taken less damage than any other capital ship in the fleet. Who was it who said, "I'd rather be lucky than good?" Her mouth flickered in a small smile at the thought, but then the smile vanished and her eyes narrowed. It was time.

The Justin warp point's environs had changed drastically in the last two months. The huge Fleet Base had labored - was still laboring - to repair her damaged units, though the worst hurt ones had been sent further up the line. But while the Base's yard modules dealt with her warships, hordes of construction ships were busy a.s.sembling powerful, prefabricated OWPs drawn from Fortress Command's peacetime stockpiles. They'd put them together well away from the warp point and any pounce the Bugs might engineer, but now a solid sh.e.l.l of twenty had been towed into position. Another ten were almost ready, and still more were being thrown together at top speed. Coupled with the dense minefields and energy buoys which were finally available, they had the firepower to handle even one of the Bugs' simultaneous transits. Even if she couldn't retake Justin, it would no longer be necessary for her to concede the warp point.

But at this moment, her attention wasn't on the forts or minefields. It was on thirty-six tiny icons, each representing a single pinnace. A lot of the volunteers crewing those small craft were about to die, but she had to have some idea of the Bugs' deployment, and until the R&D types got off their a.s.ses and put the promised warp-capable recon drones into production, those pinnaces were the only way to get it. If she threw enough through in a single transit, the odds said at least one or two would get back with the data she needed.

She brooded over the plot, watching the clock tick down, and bit her lip, hating herself for what she had no option but to do. She and her staff had a.s.sembled ten different ops plans, each predicated on a different Bug deployment. Ten minutes after the surviving pinnaces returned and uploaded their data, one of those plans would go into effect.

Forty-eight heavy cruisers floated amid the minefields. There might have been more, but the enemy's last attack had proved he could destroy them any time he chose, and the Fleet had decided not to expose additional units. But that had not deprived the cruisers of a mission, and they waited to perform it.

A sudden shoal of small craft sped out of the warp point. A few interpenetrated, but most survived, and they swept outward while augmented sensor suites probed the warp point's environs. The mines ignored such small, agile targets, as did the laser buoys seeded among them, but the ready-duty cruisers opened fire instantly. Another half dozen pinnaces died, but the range was long, they were difficult targets, and the heavy cruisers were far too slow to pursue them. They could only engage any foolish enough to enter their envelope, and over half the pinnaces survived to dash back through the warp point to safety.

The cruisers watched them go. They had done their duty... and the trap was set.

Ling Tian waited patiently. She knew Cobra's Combat Information Center would upload the information as soon as all the pinnaces' reports had been collated, and she forced her face to remain serene while she waited.

Ah! Her display blinked, and a forest of light codes appeared. Her trained eyes skimmed them quickly, and she allowed a small smile to flaw her serenity.

"We've got the first run, Sir," she called. Admiral Murak.u.ma walked towards her, and she went on speaking. "We make it forty-five to fifty of those OWP cruisers right on the warp point, with another, larger force just over one light-minute out. They seem to be in standby mode."

"Numbers?" Murak.u.ma rested a hand on Ling's shoulder and bent over her display.

"Even with their sensors augmented, that's long range for pinnaces, but we've got a tentative count. It looks -" Ling punched a b.u.t.ton and watched the sidebar change "- like forty-two SDs and forty-five to fifty CLs. We can't pick the Cataphracts out at this range."

"Any breakdown on the superdreadnoughts?"

"Negative. We can't tell an Archer from an Avalanche until they bring up their systems."

"True." Murak.u.ma rubbed her lip, but her green eyes flamed. She'd been right - they had hurt the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds badly. Only forty-two superdreadnoughts and no battlecruisers... no wonder they hadn't put in a second attack on Sarasota! Fifth Fleet had only twenty-five SDs of its own, but she had eight battleships and almost fifty battlecruisers to support them. Even without any fighters at all, she finally had the force advantage.

And I do have fighters, she thought viciously. Over a thousand of them!

She nodded sharply and turned to the screens linking her to her task force and battlegroup commanders. "It looks like their dispositions are tailor made for Salamis Four," she said crisply. "Demosthenes, we're transmitting the target profiles now. Update your birds; we'll go through on their heels, and I want to hit them before they can redeploy!"

The heavy cruisers which had been at standby brought their systems to full readiness. It would do no good in the long run, but if the enemy were cunning enough to send through more pinnaces as observers, he might wonder why they didn't even attempt to defend themselves.

Eighty SBMHAWKs flashed into Justin. The defenders poured fire into them, and killed nineteen before they could launch, but sixty-one did launch, and three hundred-plus SBMs roared down on the cruisers. Point defense stopped almost a quarter of them; the other two hundred and thirty reduced forty-three heavy cruisers to glowing wreckage.

The five Bug survivors were drifting, toothless hulks when the first Terran starships came through, but they hadn't been the warp points only defenders. Laser buoys attacked instantly, and the first three ships were ripped and torn. Ma.s.sive armor blew apart, atmosphere fumed into s.p.a.ce, and men and women died, but superdreadnoughts were tough. They survived, and they'd drawn all the buoys' onto themselves. Undamaged consorts moved past, already firing AMBAMs into the mines, and TFNS Antifola, Erciyas and Hsinkao turned to limp back into Sarasota while damage control and rescue teams fought to save trapped and wounded crewmates.

Their battle had lasted all of ninety seconds.

Murak.u.ma set her teeth against the nausea of transit, then waited impatiently for her plot to steady. There!

She peered into it, and her eyes burned hotter. The Bug battle-line was only beginning to move in on the warp point, and all of Waldeck's TF 51 had already made transit. They were still bunched within the confines of the mine-free zone, but the AMBAMs were doing their job, and Demosthenes' lead battlecruisers were already probing forward through the lanes. Battleships and superdreadnoughts moved in their wakes, and she bared her teeth as the Bugs suddenly stopped advancing. They hung there for a moment, and then they began to fall back. They fell back. They were retreating! For the first time in eight months, the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds were retreating.

"We've got them," she whispered. "By G.o.d, this time we've got them!"

"The enemy appear to be withdrawing at maximum speed, Sir." Ling Tian couldn't have heard Murak.u.ma's whisper, but her confirmation was perfectly timed, and the admiral heard her ops officer's own exultation behind the professionalism of her report.

"They can run, but they aren't fast enough to hide," Murak.u.ma said flatly, and looked at Waldeck's com screen. "Go get them, Demosthenes! Jackson can follow at his best speed. With a little luck, he'll be ready to send in his first strike about the time your SBMs range on them."

"Aye, aye, Sir!" Waldeck's smile was almost as hungry as her own, and Fifth Fleet's battle-line went to maximum power as it thundered after its slower foes.

Jackson Teller prowled TFNS Sorcerer's bridge deck like a caged Old Terran tiger while the rest of Fifth Fleet pursued the Bugs. He had even more reason than Waldeck to even the score. He wanted their a.s.ses, wanted to watch them die, wanted to be there personally when they paid for the civilians they'd butchered. And he would be there. It took time to pa.s.s thirty carriers and light carriers, seventeen battlecruisers, and their escorts through a warp point, but his slowest unit was twice as fast as a Bug superdreadnought, and his fighters were even faster. He'd catch the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, and then he and Demosthenes would kill every f.u.c.king one of them.

His last unit made transit, and he turned to his com section as his task force started through the cleared lanes. Captain Olivera looked tense but eager on the small screen linked to the c.o.c.kpit of his command fighter, and Teller bared his teeth as their eyes met.

"Launch your birds, Captain. Get the recon fighters out to cover the flanks, then take your strike forward. With any luck, we'll finish these things off in a single pa.s.s."

"Sir, that sounds good to me," Olivera agreed, and switched to his command net. "All units, we will launch in succession. Launch order Alpha One. I say again, Alpha One."

Acknowledgments came back, and then Orca's catapult kicked him in the belly.

Teller watched the first fighters appear on his display. Under emergency conditions, he could have flushed full decks and put every fighter into s.p.a.ce in a single launch, but there was always a risk of collision when carriers in close company did that. The congestion of the cleared lane through the mines only made that worse, and he had plenty of time, so- "Incoming fire!" someone screamed. "Missiles in acquisition, bearing one-seven-three, zero-two-seven! Impact in seventeen seconds-mark!"

Teller wheeled to Sorcerer's master plot, and his face went white. Dozens of missiles, scores - hundreds! - of them had just appeared out of nowhere. They must have been launched from cloak, and now they streaked in from dead astern - straight out of his blind spot!

"Expedite launch!" he shouted. "Get them off - get them off!"

His carrier commanders tried to obey, but the missiles were coming in too fast, and Teller's face went even whiter as he realized those were SBMs. The Bugs had SBMs, and that was why they hadn't been spotted. Because they'd been able to hide in cloak further from the warp point than anyone had suspected and still engage.

His Dunedin-cla.s.s CLEs swung wildly to open their broadsides. If they could get around, acquire clear tracking data, his carriers could still engage the incoming fire with datalinked point defense. But there wasn't time for that, either. Just one of his four heavy carrier groups managed to acquire; the other three were defenseless as the missiles shrieked in, and only the accuracy penalties imposed by the extremely long range at which the Bugs had fired saved any of them.

Fireb.a.l.l.s ripped through TF 52's heart. TFNS Airedale and Beagle blew apart, and four thousand men and women - and seventy-two priceless fighters - went with them. More ships staggered as the missiles screamed in, and Coachdog, Dalmatian, and the Ophiuchi carriers Zirk-Bajaamna and Zirk-Kohara died. And then a ma.s.sive salvo roared down on Sorcerer, and she and her entire company - including Vice Admiral Jackson Teller, TFN - vanished in an incandescent cloud of gas.

"Dear G.o.d." Vanessa Murak.u.ma's whisper hung in her own ears as the Bugs ma.s.sacred her carriers. They were seventy light-seconds astern, far beyond any range at which she could intervene, and the frantic crackle of battle chatter washed over her as men and women fought for survival. Three of the Dunedins, still maneuvering hard in an effort to get their point defense into action, strayed into the minefield and were blown apart, but at least some of her ships were managing to defend themselves against the last few salvoes.

"A decoy." She turned her head, green eyes shocked, and saw savage comprehension on LeBlanc's face. "Those f.u.c.king CAs were decoys - Judas goats! They wanted us to blow our way in over them. They deliberately sacrificed fifty cruisers for bait!"

Horror crackled in his voice, and a detached corner of Murak.u.ma's brain realized why. He'd stressed the Bugs' willingness to take losses over and over, like some stuck recording. If anyone in Fifth Fleet had grasped that point, it was he... yet the minds of beings who could condemn fifty starships and their crews to death simply to lure an opponent into ambush were too fundamentally inhuman, in every sense of the word, for even Marcus to have seen this coming.

And I didn't either. I saw what I wanted to see. I saw them running, and I saw a chance to kill them, and I took it, and, oh, dear G.o.d, how many of my own people have I just killed?

"Sir, the first force is turning back. They're coming in to engage!" Ling Tian, alone, seemed unaffected. She wasn't. She was simply doing her duty - burying herself in it to escape her own horror - but Murak.u.ma wanted to spit curses at her. The admiral clenched her fists and shook herself savagely. Somehow she had to get her people out. She was an incompetent, little better than a murderer, but she was still in command, and she reached out to the terrible weight.

"Com, prepare to record for courier drones," Vanessa Murak.u.ma said, and her soprano voice was calm, almost even.

The Fleet achieved only that single, devastating firing pa.s.s before the enemy managed to adjust formation. His lighter escorts swung around, tacking back and forth across his bleeding formation to clear their sensors, and despite his surprise, his point defense knocked down the follow-up salvoes with relative ease. But the fire had concentrated on the ships that carried his attack craft. Most were damaged, one was an immobile hulk, and ten had been destroyed outright. At least half the attack craft had been destroyed in their launch bays, and the Fleet charged forward, still cloaked. It would overrun the warp point and crush the cripples, then cut the rest of the enemy off from retreat.

Fifty-Sixth Fang of the Khan Anaasa'zolaath raged about his flag deck like a wounded zeget, and officers flinched aside as he swept down upon him, claws flicking in and out, in and out of their sheaths in a combat instinct he could not overcome. Sixty thousand years of instinct screamed to rush to his human commander's aid, but her own orders held him here, waiting. He understood her reasoning, and even in his fury a part of him felt enormous respect for her cool calculation, but every dragging minute tore at him like white-hot pincers.

"Sir, the pods-"

He wheeled with such a furious snarl Claw Rena.s.saa recoiled. The fang's ears flattened with shame at his ops officer's response, and he fought himself back under control.

"Yes, Rena.s.saa?" He made the words come out calmly, and the claw straightened.

"The pods have been programmed, Sir," he said, and Anaasa gave an approving ear flick.

"Good, Rena.s.saa. Good." He rested a clawed hand lightly on the other's shoulder for a moment, then forced himself to walk slowly to his command chair. He settled himself in it and leaned back, for there was nothing else he could do.

The three worst damaged of Teller's surviving CVs were also closest to the warp point. They managed to turn and run, trailing atmosphere like blood. More missiles screamed in on them, but they vanished back to Sarasota before the warheads struck. TFNS Lexington was less fortunate, and the helplessly crippled light carrier vanished in another eye-tearing boil of fury.

The rest of TF 52's survivors were too far from the warp point; they could only run towards TF 51 at the best speed they could still manage. Sorcerer had died, but at least the rest of their command ships had escaped, and the nets were still up. As long as any member of any net could track the incoming fire, they could defend against it, and Admiral Ellen Rendova's Orca led them as they ran desperately for the doubtful cover of the trapped battle-line.

Damage reports flooded Orca's command deck, and Rendova winced at the litany of disaster. Two-thirds of her fighters had been destroyed in their bays or were trapped aboard ships too damaged to launch them, and the Bugs had SBMs. Fifth Fleet's range advantage had been stripped away, and without her fighters to redress it- "Got 'em, Sir!" She whirled to her ops officer. Commander Houston stared into a display tied to the recon fighters sweeping back along the incoming missiles' tracks for the enemy turn. She saw his shoulders tighten, and then he looked up at her. "Seventy of them, Sir," he said. "Twenty-four battlecruisers and forty-six superdreadnoughts. Looks like only twelve are Archers; most of that first wave must have come from the others' XO racks."