In Death Ground Part 44

But the cheer faded almost instantly, for still the enemy came on, and he was no longer sending in Archers. He was sending through primary-armed Augers, force beam-armed Avalanches, and deadly, short-ranged Acids with their ma.s.sive plasma gun batteries. TF 41's missiles tore at the new targets, Least Fang Harniaar's TF 42 sent ma.s.sed fighter strikes screaming down their throats, and Chamhandar's surviving energy-armed fortresses rained fire on them. Yet not even that concentrated torrent of destruction could keep those Bug capital ships from firing back as they died, and Ellen MacGregor's face went white as twenty-one more fortresses - and over a hundred thousand men and women - were wiped out of existence.

"Permission to release the Beta Group platforms?" Chamhandar asked hoa.r.s.ely, his own expression tight with anguish as he watched his people die, but MacGregor shook her head.

"Denied," she grated, and anger flashed in Chamhandar's eyes. He started to say something more, then clamped his jaw, nodded curtly and turned back to his own staff, and MacGregor understood his rage. But she had no choice, for the Bugs had not yet committed a single monitor. It was possible they wouldn't, that they were saving them, or that they had fewer of them than MacGregor had feared, but she dared not count on that. Any navy which would sacrifice entire fleets and surrender an entire world inhabited by its own species just to bait a trap was entirely capable of sacrificing scores of superdreadnoughts just to wear down the defenses before it launched its decisive blow. And if that was what the Bugs were doing here, she would need every Beta Group platform she had.

The superdreadnoughts' losses continued to mount, and those losses spelled the probable defeat of the master plan, for without them, it was unlikely the Fleet would be able to carry through against the defenses which must have been erected around the target system's inhabited worlds. But failure to achieve all of the plan's objectives did not preclude attaining some of them, and the Fleet appeared to retain the capacity to at least cripple the forces defending the warp point. The fragmentary reports from its lead elements indicated that the enemy's fortress sh.e.l.l had taken severe losses, and the mines and energy buoys which covered those fortresses had been sufficiently depleted to offer a zone in which only the enemy's attack craft and starships could effectively engage.

It was time to send in the true attack.

"Oh, s.h.i.t!" Prescott's head snapped around as Bichet spat the vicious obscenity, and his ops officer looked up to meet his eyes.

"Here come the monitors, Sir," he said grimly.

"The enemy have committed their monitors, Least Fang," Harniaar'kolaas' flag captain said in a flat voice, and the least fang flicked his ears in acknowledgment.

"Understood, Least Claw," he said, and looked at his operations officer. "What is our fighter status?"

"We retain roughly four hundred of our own and two hundred Human fighters still aboard ship but tasked for antishipping strikes," the ops officer replied. "Another two hundred are returning to rearm, and a strike of approximately three hundred is about to enter attack range. And we have -" he paused to check a display "- one hundred and two Ophiuchi fighters armed for gunboat suppression holding just outside the outer minefield sh.e.l.l."

"Hold the present strike and launch the reserve," Harniaar ordered. "We will send them in together, with the Ophiuchi for cover."

"That will delay our attack, Sir," the flag captain pointed out quietly, and Harniaar flicked his ears once more.

"Truth. Yet these are not superdreadnoughts. We will require ma.s.sed strikes to penetrate their defenses, and I prefer a meaningful blow, even if I must delay its delivery."

"And in the meantime, Sir?"

"And in the meantime, Least Claw, it will be up to Ahhhdmiraal Chaaamhaaandaaar," Harniaar replied softly.

"Activate the Beta Group but do not fire!" Ira Chamhandar snapped. He didn't have to ask MacGregor again, for this was the threat against which Fourth Fleet's CO had reserved those energy platforms. The fact that she'd been right to hold them this long didn't make him feel any better about the people he'd lost to the superdreadnoughts, yet his teeth skinned back from his lips as he watched the Bug giants flowing into existence on the warp point. They floated in a hole among the mines - a hole their superdreadnoughts had carved with their own deaths - and their ma.s.sive batteries began to smash fortresses and Allied capital ships methodically, but still Chamhandar held back. He could only do this once, and he made himself wait... and wait... and wait until no less than two dozen of those mammoth vessels had emerged. Then, and only then, he gave the order, and four hundred more independently deployed energy platforms fired. Not laser buoys, this time, but primary and particle beams that smashed implacably through even monitors' shields and armor. Of the twenty-four monitors on the warp point when they fired, only five survived, and Fourth Fleet closed for the kill.

The lead wave's monitors had been devastated. It was clear now that the system could not be taken, but it was equally clear that the enemy was closing on the warp point. He was approaching with every starship he still possessed, and he would undoubtedly commit his full remaining attack craft strength, as well. The opportunity thus remained to inflict heavy loss upon him, and the Fleet changed its deployment. The second-wave monitors refitted with the new datalink systems were pulled from the a.s.sault queue, but the fifteen more expendable monitors still equipped with the old-style datalink moved to the front, accompanied by seventy-six, battlecruisers, eighteen light cruisers, and all of the new ramming ships.

"Holy shi-!"

The fighter pilot's exclamation was chopped off by the explosion of his fighter, and Raymond Prescott flinched as his plot changed abruptly. And insanely. Even after Pesthouse, he couldn't believe - not on any deep, emotional level - that anyone would do something like that!

But the Bugs had done it. One moment s.p.a.ce about the warp point was all but empty as the fighters and Prescott's own missiles finished off he last Bug cripples. The next moment, over a hundred warships flashed into existence in a stupendous simultaneous transit. Not light cruisers, but battlecruisers and even monitors! Perhaps a dozen of them interpenetrated and perished, but the others survived, and even with their systems impaired by transit, they belched a hurricane of missiles and beams into Chamhandar's bleeding fortresses.

"Take us in, Jacques!" Prescott heard someone else say with his own voice. "Missile platforms stay back; everything else closes now!"

"Fang Pressscott is closing, Sir!" Harniaar's flag captain snapped, and Harniaar bared his fangs. Of course Fang Prescott was closing! His farshatok aboard the fortresses were dying, and no holder of the Ithyrra'doi'khanhaku would let them die alone. Nor could any officer of the Zheeerlikou'valkhannaieee fail to follow where such a one led.

"Send in the fighters, Least Claw," Harniaar said. "Then release our escorts."

Ellen MacGregor sealed her helmet and double checked her shock frame as Xingu joined Raymond Prescott's charge. Fleet commander or no, that was all she could do now... unless she chose to order Prescott off, and that was unthinkable. A part of her was actually content, for her battle plan had worked. Even for Bugs, this simultaneous transit had to be a last gasp by an a.s.sault which had failed, yet the carnage had been so vast - and was about to become so much more terrible still - that she could feel no sense of triumph. Later, perhaps, if she lived, she might feel such things. For now, there was only hatred and the need to kill.

She stabbed one last look at her display, saw the faster battlecruisers and Athabasca-cla.s.s superdreadnoughts pulling ahead of their consorts. Bug battlecruisers came to meet them, and a corner of her brain cringed as yet more Bug ships raced straight for Chamhandar's closest surviving forts. Most died in the intervening minefields, but the staggering power of the explosions which killed them came from something far more potent than mines or even the fury of their own antimatter warheads. Only four reached their targets, but for each which did, a Terran fortress died.

Sweet Jesus, MacGregor wondered almost numbly. What are those things? The b.a.s.t.a.r.ds must've packed them to the deckhead with antimatter!

But it was only a pa.s.sing thought, for Xingu had caught up with the madness on the warp point, Harniaar'kolaas' fighters on her heels, and there was no more time. No time for anything but killing.

Pause in the Storm.

Kthaara'zarthan rose from the Terran-style chair behind his desk as Ellen MacGregor and Raymond Prescott walked into his office. A week had pa.s.sed since the Battle of Alpha Centauri, and the RD2s had confirmed what was happening in Anderson One.

The Bugs were digging in. Their minelayers were emplacing their own mines - and, undoubtedly, energy buoys - on their side of the warp point. Powerful mobile forces, including still more of their monitors, hovered watchfully behind the minelayers, but they remained carefully beyond SBMHAWK range of the warp point. No one was prepared to predict that they would stay on the defensive forever, but the implications were clear, and Kthaara bowed to the two officers who had been most responsible for stopping the enemy dead.

"Ahhhdmiraal MaaacGregggorr, Fang Pressscott. Be seated, please," he invited. His guests obeyed the polite command, and he resumed his own seat and regarded them levelly across the desk. "You have done well, both of you," he said quietly. "The Grand Alliance owes you and your farshatok more than it can ever hope to repay, and I -" he paused to look directly into Prescott's eyes "- owe a deeply personal debt, for I cannot doubt that among the chofaki you and your warriors slew were those responsible for my vilkshatha brother's death. There will be more blood balance before this war is over, yet you have exacted the first vilknarma, and for that I will be always in your debt."

MacGregor looked a little embarra.s.sed, but Prescott only nodded soberly, and Kthaara flicked his ears twice, then c.o.c.ked his chair back.

"You have also," he went on in a less emotionally charged voice, "bought the Alliance some additional time. Had the enemy succeeded in taking Centauri, he might well have carried through against Sol. Even if he had not, we would have been forced to retake Centauri at any price, and the losses his monitors might have inflicted against warp point a.s.saults or in deep s.p.a.ce could have been devastating. As it is, and despite the losses Fourth Fleet suffered, he has clearly abandoned attacks on this system for the immediate future. By the time he feels secure enough to attempt them once more, we will have three or four times your strength waiting on the warp point for him. I do not think -" he bared his fangs in a lazy, hunter's grin "- that he will enjoy any future attacks on this system even as much as he did his last."

"But that doesn't mean he won't make them, Sir," Prescott pointed out quietly. "And all he has to do is get lucky once."

"Truth, Fang Pressscott," Kthaara acknowledged. "And it will remain true until we are able to take the offensive to them once more. Hopefully," a cold, bleak hatred glowed in the Orion's slit-pupilled eyes, "on our terms this time,"

"You're referring to Zephrain, Sir?" MacGregor asked, and her eyes were troubled when Kthaara nodded. "With all due respect, Sir, I'd think that what happened here - what almost happened here - gives even more point to the fears of what might happen to Rehfrak if we attack through Zephrain and fail."

"Truth," Kthaara agreed once more. "There are many who would agree with you, Ahhhdmiraal, and I share your views in great part, as well. There will be no precipitous attacks. This war has lasted for three and a half of your years, almost seven of my people's, and the ghosts of Kliean will not soon be forgotten by any of us. It will take time to prepare our blow, for we must first build our own monitors. Yet I feel it is particularly important that I, as the Khan'a'khanaaeee's representative to the Joint Chiefs, press for the earliest possible date for such an attack. Above all, we dare not allow these creatures leisure to press their own exploration until they find the equivalent of Zaaia'pharaan and a blow such as the one you have just stopped falls unopposed upon one of our core systems. I recognize the need to prepare carefully, however hard inactivity comes to one of the Zheeerlikou'valkhannaieee in war, yet we must not allow ourselves or our superiors to forget that the breathing s.p.a.ce you and your valiant warriors have bought can be only a pause in the storm... and that it must be allowed to linger no longer than absolutely necessary."

He gazed at the two human admirals, and they nodded back soberly.

"I am glad you agree," he said after moment, "for you both will have major parts to play. From what I have heard from your admiralty, you, Ahhhdmiraal MaaacGregggorr, will soon be confirmed as Sky Marshal and designated as the Federation's permanent representative to the Joint Chiefs." MacGregor hissed in shock, sitting suddenly very straight in her chair, and Kthaara gave another lazy Orion smile. "You have earned it, Ahhhdmiraal," he told her. "Besides, you remind me in many ways of a younger Eevaahn'zarthan... although you still have much to learn of the proper way to describe politicians. Still," he permitted himself a purring chuckle, "your new position will no doubt provide sufficient exposure to them to hone your vocabulary."

"I-" MacGregor started to speak, then closed her mouth and settled for a nod, and Kthaara looked at Prescott.

"For you, Raaymmonnd'telmasa, there will be another task," he said quietly. "As you know, our original plan for the Zaaia'pharaan operation would have placed you in command of its battle-line under Ahhhdmiraal Antaanaav while Zhaarnak'telmasa commanded its carriers. That will not now be possible, but after much discussion with my colleagues of the Joint Chiefs, we have decided that you will command the entire operation in Eevaahn's place. I believe he would have wished it that way... and I can think of no officer whom I would prefer to see in that position. Fang Zhaarnak will, of course, be made available to you as your second in command."

"Thank you, Sir," Prescott replied in the Tongue of Tongues, and Kthaara nodded, then inhaled deeply.

"None of that will be happening any time soon, however," he said more briskly. "In the meantime, I feel confident that we can keep both of you suitably busy right here, overseeing Centauri's defense and helping me kick the droshokol mizoahaarlesh of our various research and shipbuilding commands into action. And, I fear," he bared just the tips of his fangs, "making occasional public appearances with our highly respected political leaders."

Prescott groaned aloud, and Kthaara laughed.

"Come now, Raaymmonnd! I can even promise you a special treat this afternoon, for First Fang Ynaathar's personal representative will be pa.s.sing through Centauri tomorrow, and he has been invited to address your Naval Oversight Committee. I realize how much you dislike interviews and politician's speeches, but I believe you and Ahhhdmiraal MaaacGregggorr will both take particular pleasure from Fang Ulaahkhaa's speech. You see, Fang Ulaahkhaa has served as a member of our equivalent of your Naval Oversight Committee, and I fear he is somewhat of the old school. He is also known to share Eevaahn'zarthan's view of politicians, and he continues to be known for the, ah, blunt, plain-spoken fashion in which he expresses his views. I mention this only because I understand that both Msss. Wisssterr and Mr. Waaaldeccck will be attending his speech, and -" the big Tabby's smile took on an almost seraphic quality "- I will be most interested to hear how the interpreters render his remarks for them."

The End