Shiva Option

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR: The Vengeance of Kthaara'zarthan

The end could not be long-delayed.

The Fleet stood at bay in defense of the final System Which Must Be Defended, and the massive waves of robotic probes the Enemy had sent through the warp point again and again and again promised that its wait would not be much longer.

Introspection was not something to which the beings who crewed the Fleet were given, nor-in any sense humans or any of their allies would have understood-were hope, or happiness, or despair. Yet those units of the vast, corporate hunger which had spawned the Fleet who were responsible for analysis and strategic planning understood what had happened . . . and what was about to happen.

Not fully, of course. Those analysts had no equivalent of the emotions, the terror and hate, which drove their Enemies. They didn't understand love, or the ferocity broken love and loss-born vengeance could spawn. They served colder imperatives, ones in which the things which made their Enemies what they were-individuals-could have no place, for theirs was not a society of individuals, it was . . . an appetite. An omnivoracity, whose every facet and aspect rested upon a single, all-consuming compulsion: survival.

Survival at all costs. At any cost. Survival which had no other objective beyond the mere act of surviving. Survival which would inspire nothing but survival: not art, not epic poetry, not music or literature or philosophy. Not ethics. And certainly never anything so ephemeral and yet so central to all their Enemies were as honor.

And because that single imperative was all the Fleet's analysts truly understood, they could never grasp the entirety of what drove their enemies. Not that they would have cared if they had been able to grasp it. What mattered motivation, in the end? Their own imperative would have demanded the same action, although they would never have been so wasteful as simply to exterminate potential food sources if there was any way to avoid it. But emotionless, uncaring survival was a harsh and demanding god, and the analysts who had preceded those who now served the Fleet had given dozens of other species to it as its sacrifices. In the end, those sacrifices had been in vain. Indeed, although the analysts were far too alien to their Enemies to ever visualize the concept that any other course of action might even have been possible, those sacrifices were what had made the present disaster inevitable. The complete impossibility of coexistence-the all or nothing appetite which had driven something which could never truly be called a "civilization" to the very stars-left no other option, no other possible outcome, than this one.

That much, in their own way, the analysts grasped. The greater must overwhelm and devour the lesser. That was the law of the universe, the only path of survival, and their kind had enforced that law against every other species it had ever encountered, with a cold, uncaring efficiency which couldn't even be called ruthlessness, for the existence of "ruthlessness" implied the existence of an antitheses, and the analysts' kind could imagine nothing of the sort. Yet they'd always understood that he who could not eat his Enemies must, in turn, be eaten by them, and so they'd always known this moment must come if they failed to conquer.

And they had failed.

It was easy-now-to look back and trace the course of their failure, yet even now, on the brink of their final defeat, it was impossible for those analysts even to consider having followed any different course of action. Oh, yes-there were minor changes they might have made, a swifter response to overcoming the technological advantages of their Enemies, perhaps. Or possibly a less profligate expenditure of the Reserve in the early, all-out offensives of the war. Perhaps they might have diverted the resources of more than a single System Which Must Be Defended to the destruction of the Old Enemies . . . or perhaps they might have diverted less, in order to concentrate more fully against the New Enemies. Or-

There were many such possibilities, yet in the end, all were meaningless beside the one possibility which had never existed for a moment: the possibility of never beginning the war at all. Even now, the recognition that their automatic, instinctive response to the discovery of yet another sentient race might have been in error was impossible for the analysts to grasp or even consider.

They were what they were, and they'd done what they had done because what they were had been incapable of any other action, any other response. And so, in the final analysis, they weren't even "evil" as those who'd gathered to destroy them understood the term, for "evil" implied a choice, a decision between more than one possible course of action. And because the analysts had never been able to envision the possibility of choice-because they couldn't do so even now-they felt no guilt as they awaited the destruction of the final System Which Must Be Defended. Not for what they'd done to other species, and not even for what they had brought down upon their own. It would have been like expecting a whirlwind to feel a sense of blame, or a forest fire to feel remorse.

And yet, for all the monstrous gulf which separated them from their Enemies, the analysts shared, however tenuously, two emotions with those Enemies. In their own cold, dispassionate way, they knew despair. The despair which had swept over the citizens of Justin, of Kliean . . . of Telik. The despair which knew there was no escape, that no last-second miracle would reprieve the Worlds Which Must Be Defended or turn aside the fiery doom their species' own actions had laid up for it.

And even in their despair, they knew one other fragile emotion: hope. Not for themselves, or for the System Which Must Be Defended, but rather for the System Which Must Be Concealed. For the single star system of which the very last courier drones to reach them from a murdered System Which Must Be Defended had whispered, and which might someday attain once more the status of a System Which Must Be Defended.

In time, perhaps, the System Which Must Be Concealed would wax powerful once more. Indeed, it must do so, if it survived at all. And perhaps, in some far distant day, the analysts which served the System Which Must Be Defended would return to this area of space-wiser, better prepared, knowing what they faced-and secure the survival of the new System Which Must Be Defended and its daughter Systems Which Must Be Defended in the only way that was certain: by destroying all possible competitor species, root and branch. And perhaps those future analysts would not return here. Perhaps they would seal off the warp point behind themselves and avoid these Enemies-forever, if that were possible, and for as long as possible, if it were not.

The present analysts couldn't know the answers to those questions. Nor, to be honest, did they much concern themselves with them, for they weren't questions these analysts would ever have to answer.

The questions they faced would be answered shortly . . . and forever.

The first scene of the last act commenced with an eruption of SBMHAWK carrier pods into Home Hive Five in the now-familiar pattern. First came the HARM-armed wave to take out the decoying ECM-equipped deep space buoys. Then came a truly massive wave armed with SBMs and CAM2s, targeted on the Bug gunboats, fortresses, and defensive cruisers.

That far, all went according to well-established doctrine. But what came next was something else altogether.

The Gorm were stereotypically a stolid, imperturbable race. As often happens, stereotype held a grain of truth.

Gunboat Squadron Leader Mansaduk, for example, had never been affected by the disorienting sense of wrongness that seemed to overtake his Orion comrades-in-arms and Terran allies at the instant of passing through a warp point-at least not to the same extent. Oh, he felt it, of course; no brain, organic or cybernetic, was immune. He just didn't let it upset him. So normally, he approached transit with serene equanimity.

Not this time, though. He looked left and right beyond the outer corners of his curving viewscreen and watched the wall of gunboats of which his was a part. They were clearly visible to the naked eye, for this was an exceptionally tight formation on the standards of space warfare. It had to be for what it was about to do.

"Approaching transit," Sensor Operator Chenghat reported in a voice which, like his minisorchi, was a little too tightly controlled, and Mansaduk turned his gaze straight ahead. The warp point was, of course, invisible.

Well, he told himself, if it happens, it should be the quickest possible form of death.

Before he'd even finished the thought, the universe seemed to turn itself inside out, and they were in Home Hive Five. The largest simultaneous warp transit the Allies had ever performed-every one of Grand Fleet's gunboats, in fact-was over.

Stroboscopic flashes to Mansaduk's left and right marked the deaths of gunboats that had interpenetrated. There were a great many of them.

The Squadron Leader took dispassionate note of the fact that he was still alive. A quick glance at his display showed him that one of his squadron's gunboats wasn't, but there was no time to feel anything. No time to do anything but give the orders which sent his surviving gunboats to their places in the wave rushing toward the Bug kamikazes.

The gunboats' ordnance loads were configured for killing small craft. The CAM2s had cleared away all of the opposing gunboats of the Bug CSP. All that were left were the assault shuttles and pinnaces, which were enormously more vulnerable missile targets. Fighter missiles would have been highly effective against such vulnerable targets; the all-up, shipboard AFHAWKs a gunboat could carry were even deadlier, and the intolerable glare of nuclear and antimatter warheads ripped at the guts of the kamikaze cloud.

At first, the kamikazes simply tried to avoid the gunboats which were killing them. Their purpose was to kill transiting starships, and to do that they must survive, not waste themselves in combat against mere gunboats. But they must also somehow remain within attack range of the warp point, and they couldn't do that if they were dead. And so, as the gunboats' kill totals climbed and climbed, the massed kamikazes had no choice but to turn upon them. Exchanging one of their own number for a gunboat was hardly cost-effective, but the Bugs had no choice but to expend some of their number if the rest were to survive to perform their real function.

A vicious fight snarled around the warp point as the better-armed pinnaces of the kamikaze cloud flung themselves upon the gunboats. Mansaduk watched the suicide shuttle that had been his gunboat's latest target flare into a momentary sun, then took advantage of a brief lull to study the readouts. The kill ratio was very much in the Allies' favor, for a gunboat was a small, nimble target, difficult for a kamikaze to catch. But against the numbers the Bugs had to waste no kill ratio could truly be considered "favorable," and Mansaduk began to feel an anxiety that would have surprised his non-Gorm acquaintances. His eyes strayed towards the view-aft. Isn't it time yet. . . ?

Then, with no warning, as was the nature of such things, it happened . . . and once again the warp point was marked by the firefly-flashes of simultaneously-transiting vessels materializing in the same volume of space. There were fewer fireflies this time, but bigger ones, because now starships were making transit.

The first wave consisted of Zarkolyan Kel'puraka-B and Kel'junar-B-class battlecruisers, crewed by beings whose fiery hatred for the Bugs was an elemental force, untempered by any tradition of dispassionate military professionalism. The original Kel'puraka and Kel'junar classes had been extraordinarily well-defended against missiles and kamikazes, with four advanced capital point defense installations each, which made them better adapted to warp point assaults than most battlecruisers. But the "B" refits, while retaining the original designs' defensive power, incorporated a truly radical offensive departure: the elimination of all normal missile launchers in favor of massed batteries of the new "box launcher" systems, effectively converting what had been conventional BCRs into highly unconventional specialized kamikaze killers.

The entire design concept was a calculated risk; the box launchers were slow and awkward to reload, for they lacked the sophisticated ammunition-handling equipment that made up so much of the mass and volume of conventional launchers. Because of that, the box launchers had to be loaded one round at a time, from outside the ship, with its drive field down. But the advantage of the "box launcher" was that multiple missiles could be simultaneously loaded into each box . . . and fired in one, massive salvo. And the very absence of the reloading equipment of other launchers meant that three times as many box launchers could be mounted in the same internal volume. Which meant that a single battlegroup of five Kel'puraka-Bsand one Kel'junar-B command ship could belch forth four hundred and thirty-five anti-fighter AFHAWKs in a single coordinated salvo.

They did, and as they fired, each battlegroup became the center of a spreading cloud of fiery death. Their missiles raced outward, like the blast wave of some stupendous explosion, and its crest was a solid, curving wall of kamikazes vanishing into the plasma-cloud death of their own massive loads of antimatter.

The Zarkolyans blasted enormous swathes through the ranks of suicide shuttles before the Bugs understood what they were dealing with. Then the kamikazes, as though in response to a single will, turned on the new attackers. Six of the battlecruisers who'd survived transit died, but most of the pressure was removed from the gunboats, which proceeded to torment and distract the kamikazes. Those gunboats had expended their own AFHAWKs, but they retained their internal weapons, and they took vicious advantage of the kamikazes' distraction. And while they did, the surviving battlecruisers withdrew through the warp point to reload their box launchers in the safety of Anderson Three.

As they withdrew, the main body of Grand Fleet began to transit-one at a time, led by more Zarkolyans. This time they were Shyl'narid-A, Shyl'tembra, and Shyl'prandar-class superdreadnoughts, the larger cousins of the Kel'purakas which had preceded them. They embraced precisely the same design philosophy, but with five times as many launchers each, and the defenders of Home Hive Five had never seen anything like them. The kamikazes turned once more, swinging back from the gunboats to leap upon these bigger, clumsier, more vulnerable targets . . . and the superdreadnoughts belched death into their faces like the blasts of some war god's titanic shotgun.

Mansaduk's squadron was down to only two gunboats by the time they broke through into the clear and saw those advancing behemoths. A quick glance at his HUD showed the surviving kamikazes regrouping for an attack on the new threat-the one they'd been intended to face. He had no need to look at his crew. Unlike his inanimate instruments, their minisorchi was woven with his; he knew what they felt.

"No, Chenghat," he said, his eyes still on his HUD. "Not just yet. We have work to do here before we can follow the battlecruisers back. We must give the superdreadnoughts our support. They won't have the option of retiring to rearm."

The Fleet tallied the losses of the warp point defenders with profound dissatisfaction.

Ultimately, there'd never been any realistic hope of preventing the Enemy from gaining entry to the System Which Must Be Defended, of course. The introduction of those extremely irritating warp-capable missiles had seen to that. Still, the Fleet had hoped to exact a far higher price of the invaders as they made their assault transits. Unfortunately, this Fleet component hadn't known of the new battlecruiser and superdreadnoughts classes. Sensor data shared with all of the Systems Which Must Be Defended by the System Which Must Be Defended which had been charged with the war against the Old Enemy suggested that the new classes came from the Old Enemy's fleet components, but no report had indicated that they would be capable of such massive salvos of AFHAWKs, and their appearance in simultaneous transits-coupled with the Enemy gunboats' earlier transits-had wiped out far more of the combat space patrol and kamikazes than projections had allowed for.

Still, total gunboat losses had been barely eighteen hundred, less than seven percent of the Fleet's total gunboat strength in this system, and thousands upon thousands of planet-based kamikazes remained to replace those lost on the warp point. The Fleet's Deep Space Force's starships were outnumbered by more than three-to-one by the Enemy units now in the System Which Must Be Defended, and the balance of firepower was even worse than those numbers suggested, for over half of the Deep Space Force's total starships were mere light cruisers. But even now, those ships could call upon the support of the planet-based kamikazes and almost twenty-four thousand more gunboats, and some of those gunboats carried the new, second-generation jammer packs. Clearly, the Enemy's total combined attack craft strength was less than half that-indeed, current estimates suggested it was less than ten thousand-and they were supported by little more than a thousand gunboats after their losses during the initial assault.

The odds against the Fleet were thus formidable, yet not truly impossible. The Fleet's greatest weakness lay in the disparity in the speeds of its component units and the tactical constraints that disparity imposed, but its numerical advantage in gunboats, properly applied, offered an opportunity to offset that weakness. Coupled with the new jammer technology, the Fleet estimated that it actually had one chance in three of inflicting sufficient damage to induce the casualty-conscious Enemy to break off short of the Worlds Which Must Be Defended.

This time.

Kthaara'zarthan and Vanessa Murakuma stood side by side on Li Chien-lu's flag bridge, watching Grand Fleet take form in the plot.

It was, inevitably, a somewhat diminished array. As usual, the destabilizing effects of warp transit had degraded the accuracy of the defensive fire that had met the kamikazes. Ten monitors and a dozen superdreadnoughts of the leading waves had either been destroyed or sent limping back to Anderson Three. But they'd absorbed all the damage the Bugs had been able to inflict. The carriers, coming afterwards, had entered unmolested and were now deploying a fighter cover of unprecedented strength. Behind that shield, the remainder of Grand Fleet was streaming in and coalescing into its prearranged formation with practiced ease.

As well it should, Murakuma thought. This operation was unprecedented in numbers and tonnage, but in nothing else. It was the kind of offensive which nearly a decade's experience had rendered almost-not quite-routine. From any prewar viewpoint, Grand Fleet's experience level would have been as awe inspiring as its size.

"Do you suppose the Bugs will have any technological surprises waiting for us?" she asked Kthaara.

"Surprises, by definition, are unpredictable," the Orion said philosophically. "The possibility cannot be denied. We have learned to our cost that the Bahgs are capable of inventiveness, and in their present straits they must be innovating under the lash of desperation-if, indeed, they are capable of feeling such a thing as desperation. Nevertheless, our precautions should suffice against any plausible threat."

Gazing at the solid phalanxes of green lights forming up on the plot, Murakuma couldn't disagree. For all of Kthaara's eagerness to end the war in one grand, sweeping act of vengeance, the canny Orion refused to neglect the Allies' hard-learned tactical doctrines. The massive battle-line would advance in-system behind a cruiser screen, its flanks covered by clouds of fighters. That advance, toward the teeming planets whose destruction would cripple any further resistance, would force engagement upon what must be a badly outnumbered deep space fleet. True, the DSF would surely be preceded by a lot of planet-based kamikazes. But, again, the Allies were used to that, she reflected, then looked up as Leroy McKenna walked across to her and Kthaara.

"Lord Talphon, Admiral, the last units have transited successfully."

"Excellent." Kthaara straightened up. "Please let me know the instant all commands have reported readiness to proceed. It is time to finish this."

Lieutenant Commander Irma Sanchez had thought she was prepared for the oncoming wavefront of death.

VF-94 had launched from TFNS Hephaestus, the assault carrier on which the squadron was now embarked, and taken its place in Grand Fleet's fighter cover. To minimize pilot fatigue, that cover was maintained by squadrons in rotation, and this was VF-94's shift. It was almost over, and Irma was allowing a certain blue-eyed face to peek into her consciousness. She'd managed to get leave a couple of months earlier, but hadn't been able to stay for-was it possible?-Lydia's twelfth birthday. That was a few standard days from now. . . .

"Sssssskipperrrrr-"

The voice in her helmet was that of the recently promoted Lieutenant Eilonwwa. Irma was still amazed by her good fortune at having kept him. The multispecies fighter squadrons Seventh Fleet had cobbled together amid the retaking of Anderson Three had been emergency expedients only, as Commander Nicot had told her at the time, and by now none were left . . . except VF-94. Commander Conroy, Hephaestus' CSG, subscribed to the if-it-ain't-broke-don't-fix-itphilosophy.

Eilonwwa was currently on the squadron's outermost flank, and he'd picked up the downloaded readings from the recon fighters first. But now Irma's fighter was displaying them for her. She managed to acknowledge Eilonwwa's transmission as she gaped at the readings. That can't be right! Can it?

"Heads up!" Commander Conroy's voice was crisp yet completely calm, almost conversational, on the command circuit, but Irma knew he, too, had read the tale of those tens of thousands of kamikazes roaring down on Grand Fleet in formations whose density was without precedent in space warfare-even in this war. He fired off a series of orders, and Hephaestus' component joined the wave of fighters that curved inward to support the cruiser screen and, it was hoped, envelop its attackers.

The forward squadrons began to salvo their FM3s, and Irma wondered if they were even bothering to pick targets. There was no real need, after all. Anything fired into that mass of small craft was almost bound to hit something, and the missiles' short-ranged seekers would probably do as good a job of finding something to kill as the overloaded tactical computer of whatever fighter launched them.

Fireballs began to glare all along the cliff face of that moving mountain of suicidal death. It was incredible. They were actually so close together that an exploding kamikaze's antimatter load could take out two-even three-additional small craft by simple proximity. It was worse than shooting fish in a barrel; it was like dynamiting them in a fish bowl!

And yet, if you could accept the sacrificial logic of massed kamikaze attacks in the first place, then that hideous hurricane of exploding small craft made perfectly good sense. Yes, the fighters could kill anything they could see, but the Bug formation was so dense, so compact, that the strikegroups could see only a tiny fraction of them at a time, and while they were killing the ones they could see, the others were sweeping closer and closer to the Fleet at over twelve percent of light-speed.

That was why the protective fighters had to envelop them, had to capture them in a net of coordinated crossfires and finely sequenced squadron-level pounces.

But there were too many attackers to envelop, and no time to work around the perimeter. There was time only for each squadron to salvo its missiles head-on . . . and then follow them straight into that maw of destruction. It was sheer, howling chaos, with absolutely no possibility of centralized direction. Strikegroups came apart, shredding into individual squadrons-sometimes individual fighters-as they fought for their own lives and the life of the battle-line.

But they were used to that, had been ever since the Bugs introduced their gunboat-mounted jammer packs. Nor did it matter much; there were plenty of kamikazes for everyone to kill. Enough, and more than enough.

"All right, people," Irma said as she finished her formal orders and VF-94's spot in line flashed closer at a combined closing speed of over .25 c. "Try to keep some kind of formation and watch each others' backs. But mostly . . . kill the bastards!"

And then they were in among the vastest dogfight in history, and there was plenty of killing for everyone.

Even for veterans of the war against the Bugs, there was something horrible about the way the seemingly illimitable ranks and columns and phalanxes of gunboats and small craft advanced. There was absolutely no tactical finesse. This was an elemental force that existed for the sole purpose of reaching the screen, and passing through it to the capital ships and carriers.

They know-in whatever weird way they "know" things-that this is their last stand, Irma thought in some sheltered recess of her mind, even as she blew two kamikazes out of the plenum, so close together and in such rapid succession that the fireballs merged. And we know this is the last real battle we'll have to fight. That's why there's a kind of madness about this carnage . . . from both sides.

Then the tatters of the Bugs' first waves came into contact with the screen, and it became clear that there was going to be something else about this battle that was unique.

"Report! I want answers!" Leroy McKenna's strain broke through his usually rock-steady surface as he snapped at the staff intelligence officer. Murakuma decided that this wasn't the time to reprove him. Instead, she concentrated on trying to match the studied imperturbablility that Kthaara'zarthan radiated as he stood beside her.

Marina Abernathy glanced up, then exchanged a few more hurried words with a knot of specialists before she turned to face the chief of staff.

"It's clear enough, Sir-we just never anticipated it. The Bugs have developed and deployed a system analogous to the jammer packs they've been using against our fighters. But this version disrupts the datalink systems of starships."

"But . . . but there's nothing bigger than gunboats out there!" McKenna waved at the master plot showing the oncoming torrent of tiny red lights that was coming up against the cruiser screen . . . and suffering far fewer losses from its fire than it should have. "They can't carry second-generation ECM on something that small!"

"They're not. It's a much weaker system than that, with what seems to be a maximum range of not more than two light-seconds-probably closer to one and a half. But within that range, it has the same effect."

Murakuma decided it was time to step in.

"Does it radiate an easily detected emissions signature, like the earlier generation jammer packs?"

"According to the preliminary reports, it does, Admiral."

"Very well, then." She turned to Ernesto Cruciero and pointed to the teeming plot, where the swarms of emerald fighters were still snapping at the heels of the masses of kamikazes. "Ernesto, get with Anson. Our fighters must understand clearly that their first priority is detecting and killing the jamming gunboats."

"Aye, aye, Sir. We'll pass the word-and it looks like several of our strikegroups are already doing just that, on their own initiative."

Murakuma nodded. She would have expected no less.

"I agree we need to kill the jammers," Abernathy put in, "but the destruction of the jamming system does not imply instantaneous restoration of the datalink it was jamming. It's going to take at least a little time to put the net back up, so no matter what our fighters can do. . . ."

The spook left the thought unfinished.

"Both points are well taken," Murakuma acknowledged formally. "But however well it works-or doesn't-it's still the only game in town. Send the orders, Ernesto."

"Also, Ahhdmiraaaal Muhrakhuuuuma," Kthaara said, speaking up for the first time, "it would be well to alert all fleet commands to what the battle-line can expect. They are already at General Quarters, of course. But . . ."

He indicated the plot, where the scarlet ocean was beating against the dam of the cruiser screen. The dam was already starting to spring leaks.

"The battle-line," the old Orion resumed, "including, needless to say this ship, should prepare for heavier kamikaze attacks than we had anticipated."

The battle rose, if possible, to an even higher pitch of insanity. The cruisers of the screen, many of them now fighting individually rather than as elements in the precision fire control of datagroups-poured out fire in a frenzy of desperation. Fighters corkscrewed madly through the dense clouds of kamikazes in grim efforts to seek out and destroy the jamming gunboats.

There weren't as many of those last as might have been expected from earlier experiences with the first-generation jammer packs. Probably, it was a new system the Bugs hadn't had time to put into true mass production. But great as that mercy might have been, there were still enough of them to make a difference. For all the frantic efforts of the fighters and the cruisers of the screen, more and more kamikazes broke through and hungrily sought out the massed formations of monitors and superdreadnoughts, and the carriers sheltering behind them.

Most especially, they hunted the command ships-like Seventh Fleet's Irena Riva y Silva, a ship by now almost as legendary as the admiral whose lights she flew.

A thunder god's hammer smashed home, and the entire world rang like one enormous bell. Even in the shelter of his armored, padded command chair and its restraining crash frame, Raymond Prescott momentarily lost consciousness as the latest kamikaze impacted.

That was the wrong word, of course. It wasn't the direct physical collision that not even a monitor could have survived. The last-ditch point defense fire had prevented that, and it very seldom happened in space war anyway. But what had happened as the searing ball of plasma reached out and slammed into the flagship's drive field was bad enough.

Prescott dragged himself back to awareness, shaking his head inside his sealed vac helmet. The reverberations of the kamikaze's death throes echoed through his brain, making it impossible to think quickly or clearly, but his eyes sought out the plot and the data sidebars that detailed his command's wounds out of sheer spinal reflex. But then his attention was pulled back away from them as his private com screen awoke with the call he'd ordered be automatically patched into it if it came.

"Raaymmonnd!" Zhaarnak'telmasa's voice was as torn by static as his image was shredded by interference. "You must abandon ship immediately! The Bahgs have realized you can barely defend yourself now. They are closing in from all sides!"

Intellectually, Prescott knew his vilkshatha brother was right. But there was a difference between what intellect recognized and what the wellsprings which made a man what he truly was demanded.

"All right. But first I want Admiral Meyers and his staff to get off." Riva y Silva was doubling as Allen Meyers' flagship for Task Force 71. "After that-"

Amos Chung had always been bad about delaying the moment he helmeted up. That probably explained the blood streaming down from his lacerated scalp . . . and it certainly explained how he overheard the vilkshatha brothers' hurried conversation.

"Admiral Meyers is dead, Sir!" He shouted over the whooping of the emergency klaxons, the screams of the wounded, and the creaking groans that arose from the ship's savaged vitals. "Direct hit on secondary Flag Plot! And the same hit buckled the escape pod tubes from Flag Bridge! We'll have to use the elevators!"

"All right," Prescott said to Zhaarnak as he unlocked his crash frame and sat up, then turned to Chung. "Amos, tell Anna-"

"She's dead, too, Sir," the spook said harshly.

For a moment, Prescott sat amid pandemonium, head bowed, unable to move.

"Raaymmonnd!" The voice from the com unit was the yowl of a wounded panther.

"Incoming!" someone shouted from what was left of Plotting.

"Come on, Sir!" Chung pleaded. Jacques Bichet joined him. Together, they dragged the admiral physically to his feet and started him towards the hatch. After a few steps, he started moving under his own power. Soon, he and Bichet were helping Chung.

They'd just gotten into the elevator and started toward the boatbay when the next titanic sledgehammer smashed into the wounded ship.

Irma Sanchez blinked away the blinding dazzle of the fireball. Well, the Ninety-Fourth was the only multispecies squadron, she thought, seeking with bitter irony to hold her grief back out of arm's reach where it couldn't hurt her.

But there was no time to mourn Eilonwwa. She'd broken free momentarily of the battle pattern, where she could at least take stock. They'd stayed with the kamikazes as the latter passed through the collapsing cruiser screen, and on towards the battle-line. Now some of those gargantuan ships were close enough to be naked-eye objects.

She managed to study her HUD through muffling layers of fatigue. The nearest one-a Howard Anderson-class command monitor-was an atmosphere-haloed wreck, shedding life pods, shuttles, and pinnaces as it signaled its distress. Then she noticed the ship ID: it was Riva y Silva, flagship of her own Seventh Fleet. With the years of experience that made the fighter an extension of her own body, she wrenched the little craft into the kind of tight turn that only inertia-canceling drives made possible.

The Code Omega arrived just as her viewscreen automatically darkened.

Not even the shuttle's drive field saved it from the shock wave that rushed out from the bloated fireball astern where Riva y Silva had been, and small craft carried only the most rudimentary inertial compensators. It was hard to see-the secondary explosion inside the elevator shaft had damaged his helmet visor badly, and the HUD projected on the inside of the scorched, discolored armorplast showed strobing yellow caution icons for at least a quarter of his suit's systems. But Raymond Prescott could see as well as he needed to when the brutal buffeting was over and he knelt beside the motionless form of Amos Chung. The intelligence officer's shattered visor showed the ruin inside only too clearly.

He heard a voice over his own helmet com. The com seemed to be damaged, like everything else about his vacsuit, and it took him a second or two to recognize it as the young voice of the shuttle's pilot.

"Admiral . . . everyone . . . our drive's gone, and there's a gunboat coming in fast! Stand by for ejection!"

Prescott obeyed like everyone else, out of the sheer auto-response of decades of training. But even as he sat, his eyes were locked once more upon that uncaring, damnable HUD and the blazing scarlet icon of his suit's location transponder. Even with a working transponder, the chance that an individual drifting survivor would be detected by search and rescue teams-assuming there was anyone left to worry about SAR-were considerably less than even. Without one, there was no chance at all.

Raymond Prescott stared at the blood-red death sentence, and a strange, terrible calm flowed through him. The death that every spacer feared more than any other, if he were truly honest. The fear of falling forever down the infinite well of the universe, alone and suffocating. . . .

He began to reach for a certain valve on his vacsuit.

It was only because she was following the gunboat that Irma Sanchez detected the crippled shuttle. She pressed on after the Bug, crushed back into her flight couch by the brutal power of the F-4's drive. Grayness hovered at the corners of her vision, but it wasn't acceleration alone that bared her teeth in a savage grin.

There was no time for a careful, by-The-Book attack run. The only way she was going to be able to get any kind of targeting solution was by coming insanely close.

The damage the shuttle had already taken must have affected the circuitry. The pilot's first attempt to eject his passengers and himself failed.

Surprise at that stayed Prescott's hand.

Someone screamed. The gunboat was lining up on them. Prescott prepared for a quick death instead of a slow one.

Then the pilot yelled something about a fighter.

The F-4's computer screamed audible and visual warning as a Bug targeting radar locked the fighter up. Irma knew where it was coming from. There was no more time-no time for a proper target lock from her own fighter. She laid the shot in visually, the way every instructor at Brisbane had told her no one could do, and her internal hetlasers stabbed out with speed-of-light death.

In the fragment of an instant before it erupted into a ball of flame, the gunboat birthed its own, slower-than-light death darts.

The second time, it worked. With a g-force that almost induced blackout (and finished off his suit com once and for all), Raymond Prescott was out into the starry void, just in time to be dazzled by the gunboat's death.

His rank meant his was the first seat in the sequenced ejection queue, and the old-fashioned explosive charge hurled him outwards. But even it was damaged; it fired erratically, its thrust off-axis, and the starscape swooped and whirled crazily . . . and then the shuttle blew up behind him.

A fresh stab of grief ripped through him. So much grief. Grief for all the men and women who'd never gotten off of Riva y Silva at all. Grief for Amos Chung . . . and for Jacques Bichet and the other shuttle passengers he knew were still sitting in their seats, still waiting for their turn in the queue. Still waiting, when the dead man without a transponder had already been launched because he was so "important" to the war effort.

The charge stopped firing, and his hands moved mechanically, without any direction from his brain as he unstrapped from the seat. He thrust it away from him almost viciously and watched it go pinwheeling slowly off across the cosmos. There was a huge, ringing, silent nothingness within him-one that matched the infinite silence about him perfectly-as he watched, as well as he could through his damaged visor, while the seat vanished into the Long Dark that waited for him, as well.

Strange. Strange that it should come to him like this, in the quiet and the dark. Somehow, he'd always assumed it would come for him as it had for Andy, in the flash and thunder and the instantaneous immolation of matter meeting antimatter. In the fury of battle, with the men and women of his farshatok about him. Not like this. Not drifting forever, one with the legendary Dutchman, the very last of the farshatok who'd planned, and fought, and hoped beside him for so many years.

His vacsuit had never been intended for extensive EVA. Its emergency thrusters' power and endurance were strictly limited . . . and they showed another yellow caution light in his HUD. It made no difference, of course-not for a single, drifting human in a vacsuit with no transponder-but he reached for the thruster controls, anyway. The life support of his damaged suit was undoubtedly going to run out soon enough, yet it was important, somehow, that he exercise one last bit of self-determination before the end.

He tapped the control panel lightly, gently, almost caressingly, and the thrusters answered, slowing his own spinning tumble.

When the end came, he would choose a single star he could see through his damaged visor, fix his gaze upon it, and watch as the darkness came down at last.

Somehow, Irma had managed to punch out in time.

She had no idea how. Nor did she have any true memory of the death of the faithful little fighter which had served her so long and so well as it ate the Bug missile. Now, as she tumbled through space, amid the horror of vertigo, she clung for her sanity's sake to the thought of the extremely powerful transponder every fighter pilot's vacsuit contained.

Actually, a pilot's suit had a number of goodies that went beyond the standard models that everyone aboard a warship wore in combat-and not just its greater capacity to absorb body wastes before overloading with results best not thought about. For one thing, it had a considerably more powerful thruster system than a standard suit.

That thought drove through her brain at last, and she forced control on herself and used the thrusters to stop the tumbling. Then she shut them off. No need to waste the compressed gas. She had nowhere in particular to go. If anything was going to save her bacon, she told herself philosophically, it was the transponder, not the thrusters. Not that it was likely to. She'd probably survive for the short run, for the battle had receded, turning into a distant swarm of fireflies. But that had a downside: no one was close enough for her half-assed helmet com to communicate with, and the odds of anyone coming close enough to pick up even her transponder signal were slim, to say the very best.

So she simply drifted. There was nothing else to do. She drifted for a long time. Eventually, she stopped looking at her helmet chrono. Periodically, she took sips of the nutrient concentrate the suit's life support system dispensed, with no great enthusiasm-the stuff would keep you alive, but it tasted like puke. Mostly, she let her mind wander listlessly through the landscape of memories.

Then, after some fraction of eternity, she spotted another vacsuit.

Somebody from the shuttle, maybe? she wondered. If so, he's probably dead already.

But if he isn't . . . That's a standard vacsuit, but from this close, I ought to be able to pick up even its dip-shit transponder code. Assuming it was transmitting. So it must not be. And with no transponder, he's got no chance.

Without further thought, she maneuvered herself into the right alignment and activated her thruster pack.

The gas was nearly gone when Irma was still about fifty meters short of the other suited figure. She cut the thrusters and let herself coast onward. She managed to snag the other suit en passant, and they tumbled on together in a clumsy embrace for a few seconds before she was able to use the last of the gas to halt the sickening motion.

Well, that's just dandy! No more thruster.

Irma brought her helmet into contact with the other's for direct voice communication with a certain resentful emphasis. She gazed through the helmet visor, but whatever this poor bozo had been through, his suit hadn't gotten off unscathed. It was so badly scorched she couldn't even make out the rank insignia, much less the name which had once been stenciled across the right breast, and there were spatters of what had to be blood daubed across it. The enviro pack didn't look any too good, either, although at least the external tell-tales were still flashing yellow, not burning the steady red of someone who would no longer need life support at all. Even the visor's tough, almost indestructible armorplast was heat-darkened. She could barely see into it at all, but she caught the impression of open eyes, looking back at her, so at least the guy was alive and conscious.

"You all right?" she demanded.

"Yes, more or less." The answering voice was badly distorted by the transmitting medium of their helmets, but it sounded a little old for regular space crew. Not weak, or shaky. Just . . . like it ought to be accompanied by gray hair.

"Thank you-I think," it went on. "You must be a fighter pilot, from the looks of your suit."

"Yeah-Lieutenant Commander Irma Sanchez, commanding VF-94. If," she added bitterly, "there's any VF-94 left to command."

"So you have a chance of being found, by someone tracking your transponder. And now I have that chance, too. Yes, I definitely thank you, Commander. By the way, I'm-"

"Can the thanks, Pops," Irma cut him off rudely. "I just pissed away my ability to maneuver-not that it was doing me much good. And before that, I'd gotten my fighter blasted out from under my ass to save that shuttle you were on. So don't thank me, all right? I wasn't doing you a favor. I was just being stupid-as usual!"

The old-timer didn't seem to take offense. Instead, the poorly transmitted voice only sounded thoughtful.

"VF-94 . . . yes, I seem to recall. On Hephaestus, right? And aren't you the last of the human squadrons to have non-human pilots?"

"We were. We had an Ophiuchi pilot-a damned good one. But he's dead now."

For no particular reason, the reminder of Eilonwwa knocked open a petcock which had been holding back a reservoir of hurt, and now it poured out in a gush of rage.

"He got killed just like everybody gets killed who deserves to live! Like my lover-we were in the Golan System, when the Bugs came, do you know that? He stayed. So did the parents of a little girl I took with me in the evacuation. And now they're Bug shit! Do you understand that? And now I'm in the goddamned fucking military so I can kill Bugs. I've killed them and killed them and killed them, and there's just no fucking end to them, and I'm fucking sick to death of it!"

She jarred to a sudden halt and sucked in a deep, shuddering breath as she realized she'd been screaming into this inoffensive middle-aged guy's helmet.

"Sorry, Pops," she said uncomfortably. "Didn't mean to blast your eardrums."

"Oh, that's all right. And yes, I think I do understand. I've lost friends myself. I just lost a lot of them, when Riva y Silva went. And before that . . . I lost my brother."

"Shit. I shouldn't have dumped that load on you."

"That's all right," the man repeated. "But tell me: what about that little girl? What happened to her?"

"I adopted her. It was all I could do, especially after . . . after losing the child I was carrying."

"I'm sorry."

"Anyway," Irma went on, "she's going to be twelve in a few days. I haven't been able to see all that much of her, just whenever I can get leave. And every time I do, it's been so long that . . . well, it's as if . . . Hell, there I go again. Why am I telling you all this?"

"Possibly because I'm the only other human being available," the man said, and she could have sworn she heard something almost like a smile in the distorted voice. "Anyway, I'm glad you have. It reminds me of why we're doing what we're doing."

"Huh?"

"You see, you're wrong about one thing. There is an end to the Bugs. It's right here, in this system."

"So? It's not like it'll make any difference to you and me. Face it: transponder or no transponder, the odds are about a million to one against our being rescued. Nobody's going to come looking for survivors out here in the middle of all these cubic light-minutes of nothing."

"It's possible that you're being too pessimistic," the old-timer suggested in an odd tone, almost as if he were chuckling over some private joke. Which was just a bit much out of somebody in a suit that was about to crap out in the middle-literally-of nowhere at all.

Something scornful was halfway out of Irma's mouth when her communicator suddenly pinged with a deafening attention signal.

The shuttle's crew was made up of Tabbies, but there was a human lieutenant aboard. He was already speaking to the middle-aged man as they cycled Irma through the inner hatch of the lock. Her fellow castaway had his helmet off and his back to her as the lieutenant finished what he was saying.

"-and he's waiting for you now, Sir."

Hmmm . . . Irma reflected. That "Sir" sounded awfully respectful. Pops must outrank me. Maybe I shouldn't have lipped off quite so much.

"Thank you," the man said to the lieutenant and bent over the cabin com screen, which displayed the image of an Orion. Incredibly, he began speaking in what sounded awfully like the howls and snarls the Tabbies called a language.

I always thought humans couldn't do that, she thought.

"What's been happening?" she demanded of the lieutenant. "I've been out here a long time."

"The kamikazes hurt us, Sir," the youngster said, "but not enough to even the odds when the Bug deep space force arrived. That was what they must've hoped for, but they crapped out. Our battle-line was still fast enough to hold the range open, and we blasted them out of space without ever closing to energy range."

"But what about their suicide-riders?"

"Yeah, they had the speed to close with us. And we took some losses from them. But only a few of them managed to break through without fire support from their capital ships." He shrugged. "Like I say, we got hurt-but every single one of their ships is either dead, or so much drifting junk nobody's ever going to have to worry about it again."

Irma sagged against a bulkhead with relief. Then, with the important questions taken care of, another one occurred to her.

"But if the Fleet's still headed in-system, how the hell did you find us? What were you doing back here?"

"You've got to be kidding!" The lieutenant stared at her with a stunned incredulity that made him forget her rank. "D'you think Fang Zhaarnak was about to let us call this search off?"

"Fang Zhaarnak?" Irma stared back in confusion. "What does he have to-?"

But then the older man wrapped up his alley-cat-like conversation with the Orion in the com screen-who, Irma now noticed, wore the very heavily jeweled harness of exalted rank-and turned to say something to her. And as he did, she finally saw his face clearly-the face she'd seen in more news broadcasts then she could count. The face she'd seen before the First Battle of Home Hive Three when the admiral commanding Sixth Fleet in Zephrain had announced to his personnel, including a young fighter pilot consumed with rage and the need for vengeance, that they were going to kill the very first home hive system to die.

"Oh, shit," she said in a tiny voice, and Raymond Prescott smiled at her. There were ghosts behind those hazel eyes, she thought numbly, yet that smile held a curious warmth. One that didn't fit well with the stories she'd heard about him since his brother's death.

"I just asked Fang Zhaarnak to inquire into the status of VF-94, Commander. You'll be glad to know that three of your pilots made it back to Hephaestus."

"Thank you, Sir. Uh, Admiral, I apologize for-"

"For heaven's sake, don't apologize! As you pointed out-rather forcefully, as I recall-you saved my life. And that wasn't all you did for me."

"Sir?"

"You reminded me of something I'd lost sight of, in the world of large-scale abstractions I inhabit, and in . . . becoming what I became after my brother was killed. You reminded me of why we're fighting this war-the real reason. And it's very basic and very, very simple. We're fighting it for that little girl of yours."

After a moment in which the background noises of the shuttle seemed unnaturally loud, Prescott grew businesslike.

"We're on our way to rendezvous with Fang Zhaarnak's flagship. Grand Fleet's regrouping for the final advance in-system. In the meantime, our carriers are going to go back to Anderson Three to pick up replacement fighters from the reserves there. We still have some work to do."

Irma straightened up.

"Sir, if possible I request to be returned to Hephaestus."

"After what you've been through? No one will expect you back immediately, and Fang Zhaarnak's people are already informing Hephaestus that you survived. At least take time to get checked out physically."

"I'm fine, Admiral. And . . . if we're going to get a couple of replacement pilots, I'll need all the time I can get to integrate them into the squadron before we tackle the planets."

Prescott nodded, and smiled.

"I believe we can probably arrange that, Commander."

Kthaara'zarthan stood on Li Chien-lu's flag bridge, a motionless silhouette against the viewscreen whose starfields now held two new, pale-blue members: the twin planet system occupying Home Hive Five's third orbit, seemingly almost touching each other at this distance.

Vanessa Murakuma didn't disturb him. Instead, she turned to her chief of staff.

"Are the ship losses in yet, Leroy?"

"Yes, Sir. As expected, they were very light in this latest action. So the earlier figures are essentially unchanged."

She thought of what lay behind McKenna's emotionless words. Twenty-nine monitors, thirty six superdreadnoughts, five assault carriers, twenty-one fleet carriers, forty-one battlecruisers, and thirty-three light cruisers. They'd also very nearly lost Raymond Prescott when his flagship died; would have, if it hadn't been for some fighter jock.

But Leroy was right. Virtually all those ghastly losses had been sustained in the earlier battle with the deep space force and its massive wavefront of kamikazes . . . and the Bugs had shot their bolt in that battle. When Grand Fleet had reached the inner system, it had found relatively few gunboats and small craft remaining. And the Allies' surviving carriers had been able to launch full complements of fighters to meet those kamikazes at extreme range. So few of them had gotten through that the cruiser screen, even after the laceration it had taken earlier, had blown them apart with almost contemptuous ease.

Kthaara turned slowly, as though reluctant to give up his contemplation of those twin bluish lights.

"Have all the fighters recovered?"

"Yes, Sir. Some of the carriers have already finished rearming their groups; all of them should be done within another twenty minutes." There was no need for McKenna to report the nature of that rearming, for it was preplanned: FRAMs, fighter ECM, and decoy missiles.

"Excellent." The old Orion drew a deep breath. "Our fighter losses in the latest action were so light that I believe we can proceed with the first of our operational models. Do you concur, Ahhdmiraaaal Muhrakhuuuuma?"

"I do, Sir," she said formally. The other models had postulated a fighter strength so badly depleted that it could deal with only one of the twin planets at a time.

"Very well." Kthaara turned back to the viewscreen, and spoke in the Orion equivalent of a whisper. "Do it."

There was very little of the Fleet left, but what there was knew it had failed.

The Enemies had been brutally wounded, but they hadn't been broken. Perhaps the Fleet had taught them too well over the years of warfare, for there'd been a time when such losses would have caused them to break off. Or perhaps not. The Enemies must know as well as the Fleet did that this was the last of the Systems Which Must Be Defended, after all.

It didn't truly matter. The long survival the Fleet had guarded for so many centuries was about to end, and there was no longer anything the Fleet could do about it. Not really. All that remained was to kill as many Enemies as possible before the death of the first World Which Must Be Defended destroyed any possibility of organized resistance. It wasn't much. Indeed, there was no logical point in it at all. Yet for a species for which coexistence was not even a concept, for which the possibility of negotiations or surrender did not even exist, it was the only action which remained, however pointless.

There was no subtlety to it.

The fighters screamed down on the twin planets, ignoring the space stations and the almost fifty fortresses in low orbit about each of those doomed worlds. Speed was their only armor as they shot past those orbital defenses.

Nor did they slow down to maneuver into position to attack specific dirtside objectives, which would have given the fortresses time to complete targeting solutions. No, there were enough fighters to render any sort of tactical precision superfluous in a mission whose sole purpose was planetary depopulation. They just came in at full speed in a single pass, allowing the planets' gravity wells to whip them around in the classic slingshot effect, and simply dumped their FRAMs before pulling up and swerving away. It didn't even matter whether the missiles struck land or ocean; tsunami was as good a killer as any.

The spectacle was downloaded to Li Chien-lu's main flag viewscreen. They watched as the faces of both planets erupted obscenely in boils of hellfire. It was the final application of the Shiva Option.

When it was over, Kthaara'zarthan received reports of the losses the fighters had taken. They weren't inconsiderable. But . . .

"Shall we send the carriers back to Anderson Three for more replacements, Sir?" Murakuma asked.

"I think not. Given the well established impact on the Bahgs' mental cohesion of this-" he waved a hand in the general direction of the two dead planets "-I believe that even understrength strikegroups can deal with the remaining planets."

"What about the orbital works here, Sir? They're untouched."

"They have ceased to matter. Leave them to die-we will not sully our claws. Set course for Planet II."

Irma Sanchez had managed to get away from the throng that had greeted her on her return from the dead, and actually caught a little rest as Hephaestus returned to Anderson Three. But then two unbelievably young pilots had arrived in VF-94's ready room, and she'd spent the return trip to Home Hive Five in a frenzy of improvisation that left her wondering if being lost in space had really been so bad after all.

Then had come the attack on the twin planets-shrieking past the orbital fortresses at a velocity that made them look like slingshot pebbles whizzing past, with the target planet zooming up with startling rapidity before she'd released her FRAMs. It had all been too quick.

But then had come Planet II. They'd been able to take that a little slower, because the Bugs in those fortresses had been in the grip of whatever it was that gripped them when billions of their fellows went abruptly into the flames.

And now it was time for Planet I.

The last one, she thought as she saw it growing in the fighter's little viewscreen. The reality hadn't hit her until now. Forty billion Bugs, the spooks say. The last forty billion in the universe. Shouldn't I be feeling something? Is it possible that this has become routine?

But, she realized, so suddenly that it was like some abrupt revelation, she'd emptied her cup of rage long ago. Once, approaching this planet, she would have seen Armand's face, and the sickening fury would have come roaring up like boiling acid. But now she remembered the words of Raymond Prescott, and the face that rose up in her mind's eye was that of a blue-eyed eleven-year-old girl.

No, she corrected herself, glancing at the chrono, with its date in Terran Standard. Not eleven anymore.

Then they were in, past the sluggishly responding fortresses.

Happy birthday, Lydochka, she thought as she sent her FRAMs streaking down. The now familiar fiery wall of antimatter fireballs walked across the planet, cauterizing the universe, burning away something that could not be allowed to blight any more young lives.

Afterwards, there was a long silence.