No one enjoyed duty at warp points that boasted no star. If you spent your whole watch staring at instruments, that at least was better than looking out at the dark. Humans have always peopled the dark outside the ring of light with monsters, whether that light is a campfire or a star, and the Bug War had given the unknown enormous fangs. The things out there were monsters and it was best to have the biggest, sharpest stick in the pile to fight them off.
When mankind found the stepping-stones from star to star, casual travelers became accustomed to the idea that there would always be a light close by to aim for and a few light-minutes or hours were manageable. Many who spent enough time in space, either merchant or military, tended to refer to these occasional deep-space travelers as "moths." The truth was that warp points exist in an interstellar void and physicists had yet to come up with an appropriate and generally accepted gravitational theory to explain why. BR-01 was just such a point, usually not commented on because people's thoughts blanked over it on their way through from Bellerophon to Misty much the same way that ancient travelers would close the blind on a train window and not see a whistle-stop.
The merchants who had fled the invasion had brought garbled reports of it with them, but what was clear was that they were cut off. Vice Admiral Erica Krishmahnta was bringing up every unit she had from downstream, but the RFN had never planned for this, expecting to reinforce through the warp system, and they had frighteningly few resources to hold the Arm.
One of the merchant captains, a Captain Hustapyzuk, had been pressed into service and dropped a couple of drones before she pulled back, but neither of them had managed to make warp transit with any intelligence on the invaders and Krishmahnta was doing the best with what she had.
She was well aware of her peoples' morale, and it was harder still waiting in the dark for an attack that everyone knew had to be coming. Even though you knew where the attack was coming from, one could never know exactly when. You could sit your watch or you could stare at the dark, knowing that there wasn't a star in light-years and the weight of the dark outside the picket ships accumulated as softly as falling snow. Drills could only keep people on the knife-edge so long before they succumbed to various ailments that the doctors and medics couldn't address with an injection, pill, or patch.
It was also a hard choice to place her flagship here at BR-01 rather than at Pegasus, for morale's sake as much as any tactical consideration.
In the privacy of her duty cabin aboard her flagship, Gallipoli, Erica bit her lip, a mannerism that she disliked in herself that still manifested when she was stressed. Her green eyes were worried as her light pen moved from star to star. All units that had been down the Arm had been called in and over the months what strength they had had built up slowly, but any unit that hadn't gotten here by now probably wasn't going to do them much good. The whole Arm was mostly agrarian, with specialty foods and goods, but the only heavy manufacturing capability at all was Tilghman, and that only in a very limited way. And both that worthy system's capacity and the raw materials of Odysseus were months away.
She looked at the tank showing the ships of the picket. As of 1300 today, she had twelve supermonitors when Passhendale and Temuchin showed up from Raiden. Twenty-two monitors, thirty-six SDs, and a mixed bag of CVAs and CVs all with their associated fighters.
The aliens Behemoths were far too large to ever make warp transit but the numbers of SDs they'd had was astonishing. And she had to assume that they could be modified to make warp. No way are we going to stop them once they decide to come down the line. Not here. But if I can draw them away from Bellerophon then that will split their forces and let us counterattack from the other side. We need to spread them too thin.
An assault was coming and every captain on every ship in the picket was aware of it. The only thing that they could do was to send recon probes through, hoping that one would give them more information. The fact that nothing came back was information of a sort but only in the negative.
She tapped the pen on her desk thoughtfully before leaning forward and keying her comm. "Liam, would you call Yoshi once he's finished his meeting with Ms. Obriko and get him to come up to see me?" It was time that she and her flag captain shook things up again; everything they could think of out of the simulators.
There had been a rumor going around that the aliens had come to BR-01 straight, and she had to show the crews how unlikely it was that the aliens could get any kind of ship through Einsteinian space to here. It was a problem even making the computers work that way. She couldn't even call up a schematic that showed BR-01 on the same image as Bellerophon; they were that far apart.
Captain Yoshi Watanabe was brilliant at setting up scenarios that illustrated what they wanted and people would, more often than not, make their own correct conclusions.
"Certainly, Admiral."
She was certain that the attack, when it came, would come through the warp point. Meanwhile, she had crews to keep on track while the knowledge of a looming attack bulked larger and larger in the darkness.
The half-dozen Arduan experimental probes, each with its individual pilots and gunners, held station in amongst the minefields surrounding the twisted places in space that the griarfeksh called "warp points." One needed magnification to see the minute destructive seeds scattered around the warps, tiny only in relation to the dark immensity of space that they guarded, and the warp itself showed nothing visually. The five fortresses shone vrelish, gleaming against the darkness; nothing like what had been there before, stately, beautiful, and deadly as they swam in the dark
The Arduans hadn't been able to use the scuttled fortifications that had been left behind, but the raw materials had been an excellent shortcut for building their own. Rather than a solid shape with missile mounts and energy emplacements, these defenses were constructed like an Arduan hand. While scanning, the long tendriled fingers waved at maximum spread. The central core contained the missile launchers while the ten projecting tentacles were packed with scanners and energy mounts. The only difference to a real hand was that normal ones only had two claws, while these had ten. Each claw end had a limited range of movement while attached, but was entirely capable of functioning independently for a short time if severed from the central command unit.
While scanning, the strands moved constantly, slowly like an anemone in shallow water, wafting back and forth, constantly changing the volume of space being scanned so the stations writhed and danced in slow motion. Whenever a hostile object was spotted the tendrils contracted, pulling in quite close but never bunched together in a closed fist; that would have ruined the effectiveness that the spread of tentacle provided in the first place.
Admiral Narrok had been present the last time the griarfeksh had launched a pair of machines from the other side of the warp and had been very pleased with the response. Three of the fortresses had targeted the things and the resulting explosions had made the filters in the recording devices shut down and restart. Some of the people on the planet had even reported seeing the greenish herrm flares in the sky, even in daylight.
The afterimages had shown the moments of destruction, silhouetting Rin station gratifyingly stark against the blast.
The warps in the New Ardu system were far enough out that the planets of the system were only differently colored stars, but many of the Last Generation found it comforting to know that they, and the new colonies on them, were close enough to be only hours away.
The people knew that hostile griarfeksh had retreated through all three of the warp points in this system and assumed that there probably more on the other side. But the idea of a warp, the idea of being able to move from star to star in less than multiple generations was stunning to the Anaht'doh Kainat and the number of volunteers to man the probes was enormous.
If the linguists were correct, the griarfeksh were scattered across a huge volume of space, tens or hundreds of planets. If Arduans could only master this technology, then Illudor's perpetual existence was assured and all limits of space were a thing of the past. The possibilities were enough to enthrall not only the theologians and strategists but everyone else as well, because the population could expand to numbers that would render the interlife less of an interminable, tedious wait. Narrok, given charge of the gathering of information about these warps, had to winnow down the volunteers to the six best for each warp—pilot and gunner for each ship— the first wave of inquiry into unknown territory.
He was also concerned as to their attitude about the nature of their missions. It was one thing to command and expect to be obeyed but the researchers were so eager to explore that he repeatedly had to rein them back, because they were so ready to fling themselves into possibly fatal situations. He was very concerned that these nonmilitary researchers would pursue their own shotan rather than endeavor to get back with every scrap of information that they could.
Dying would be too easy. In this case, "Destolfi rahk montu shilkiene"—or "Death is not a tiny thing!" (Emphasis.) He and his immediate cluster commanders had to keep reiterating this since the information that could be gained from a successful transit and return was of supreme importance and that living for the race was far more valuable than dying for it.
Humans would have sent unmanned probes to protect human lives, but the Arduans considered this excessive concern. If one died in pursuit of knowledge then one's holodah was increased, and since the landing—when the birth restrictions came off—there would be many, many more to be born anew into, so what did it matter?
The probes were actually very large armed fighters, since they could not expect anything but hostility on the other side of the warps. They were not thin, sleek, sharklike griarfeksh ships but more bulbous, to accommodate the energy mounts that the Arduans found so effective, but the shape of an orca is no less dangerous than that of a shark, both deadly killers when they chose to be.
The control pod where Admiral Narrok sat was at half gravity, and he leaned back comfortably, drawing his gaze away from the images of the research vessels and cast his eyes around the space with approval. He, like everyone involved, was enthralled with the possibilities and kept that at the forefront of his selnarm rather than his minor concerns and tensions. That was the idea for Destoshaz, of course, and he would never judge another on his mastery of emotional flow, least of all his colleague Admiral Lankha.
The brand new System Defense ship Neferhurukor was actually the after third of the Generation Ship Ahknemakeht and as such was a blocky and unlovely creation, but she worked and Narrok was sure she would work well.
It appeared that the ships would have to remain in this star system but the rebuilt docks that, at a certain distance, gave New Ardu the appearance of having glittering rings, were turning out superdreadnoughts in not only their tens, but as soon as it could be managed, in their hundreds. The people were at war and the number of the enemy was vast.
There was a ripple through selnarm as the last of the research vessels drifted into place and Admiral Narrok wordlessly sent them his approval to proceed even as he nodded at his communications tech. "Go."
"Acknowledgement from all, sir."
"Good. Now we will see if we understand this way of traveling." (Amused anticipation.) (Tension.)
"Yessir." (Willingness to fight.)
The uproar in the Council chamber on New Ardu sent if not shock waves then at least ripples through the selnarm of the settlers, Destoshaz or not, on planet or in space. The fact that the elder shaxzhu stood up to both the senior admiral and the holodah'kri was the topic of gossip and speculation even as the work of settling and rebuilding continued.
Narrok was very well aware of that and was not certain exactly how he felt on the whole subject. There was the selnarm of the senior admiral, for one, and his coadmiral Lankha. She was cut from the same cloth as Torhok, both of them like the many who, once presented with an enemy, considered themselves somehow like Destoshaz of old, the war leaders who earned their titles "Great" and "Terrible." Their selnarm was something unseen for more than fifteen hundred years and it was seductive, especially when there was an obvious enemy.
For himself, everything had been simple and straightforward when they were in the long deep, the quiet space between stars, and now there was confusion and destruction and just plain noise. Now everything was changed; he was inclined to wait and see rather than leap to any definitive conclusion. He was uncomfortable with simplistic responses. Across the light-hours at the other warp point, Admiral Lankha would be sending her ships through, if all coordination held true. The flow of selnarm from that task force was hard to pick out of the wave of feelings from the bulk of the people but the anticipation was clear.
At every warp point the first ship of the research pair made its approach and Narrok found himself holding his breath as they blinked out of existence. (Anticipation, wonder.)
Lieutenant Thomas rubbed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. It was late third watch and even the most keyed-up watchers couldn't stop the dull, foggy feeling in the brain and scratchy, tired eyes. As he opened his eyes and fixed them back on the display he caught the first flicker of motion, the energetic shock wave of transit cascading into visible light from the warp point. Even as foggy as he was, his hesitation was only a moment and his finger descended on the alert pad, his voice cracking out, "Incoming! We have incoming!" even as the computers concurred and brought the ship to full alert.
People tumbled out of bunks, stuffing limbs into suddenly awkward clothing as they ran to duty stations, the quivering shock of computer launched missiles trembling even through the largest ship.
The first alien ship didn't have time to recover from transit and even as it crabbed sideways in space, missiles from Gallipoli and Gallaway both locked on. In the fraction of a second that the alien survived something got off one, perhaps two shots. Energy weapons are light-speed, faster than any missile, and a handful of mines died before the alien ship was reduced to glowing elemental remnants, sparkling as they expanded against the dark.
Lesser Cluster Captain Eraphis swallowed hard a number of times as his sight cleared, reeling from the shock that had run through him as they traversed the warp, compounded by the dying selnarm from the lead ship as they burst into a different space, full of dispersing wreckage and radiation. Even as he fought to settle his stomach he flung the ship—in the privacy of his own mind he'd named her Lahatas, even though the survey ships had been deemed too expendable to name—into evasive maneuvers, her recorders faithfully, calmly, taking in the information the People needed to survive. The third ship was through now and Eraphis fought off the other ship's disorienting selnarm as they came through the warp. In the turbulent chaff expanding all around them he wheeled his ship in a wild, erratic, mad course, dancing with Illudor's shadow, as the human picket ships swung their clubs at the gnat buzzing around them.
The third ship tucked in below him until its pilot recovered, before it peeled off in as wild a course as he. It darted in a widely divergent course, as planned, and they were aware of the excitement, tension, and fear from their fellows, but couldn't let it influence them. In a small part of Eraphis's mind, he could only faintly wonder that he and his gunner, Sehtsurankh, were still alive. What kept them alive was his piloting. He couldn't afford a millisecond's distraction. Seht blew them a path as they corkscrewed crazily around the mines and floating debris.
Missiles locked on them, and as Eraphis forced them to lose lock he could hear and feel Seht cursing as his course flung them against their harnesses and gel cushioning. "Hold on, my friend. We may even make it back." The two of them had been getting into trouble together even in their nursing cluster and though neither of them were shaxzhu and could confirm it, were convinced that they'd know each other in many lives before. "Shut up and fly," was Sehtsurankh's grunted reply in the ear-speaker, the flow of his selnarm undisturbed, even as his body tried to brace itself.
They had to stay in this new space a certain amount of time before trying to make it back. Had the timer been damaged? What if —
A clicking in Eraphis's ear hole–speaker let him know that it was time to run—if he could. It was now his duty to get them home safe. "Do you know that you hum if we are in deep shit?" Seht grumbled. They'd never been in true combat before, so he hadn't known. Eraphis grinned to himself.
Thank Iludor these tiny ships had the drive that let them start and stop on half a heartbeat. The whole ship jolted sideways and "rang" somehow. He couldn't see what caused it. It couldn't have been a hit or he'd be on to his next life. Damage indicators flared into vision on his board. His tentacles locked tight around the control sticks, bracing himself against his gel he wrenched them around and hurtled through the shrieking remnants of the last ship that had just been vaporized, clenched his grinders against the emotional surge of the two deaths, riding the shock wave these ships were supposed to be immune to, before hauling what felt like the whole ship up through the mess and down, back into the warp point.
Admiral Torhok clenched his tentacles into fisted knots on his knees and closed his eyes to cut off his (Rage.) uncharacteristically mobile for a Destoshaz. I could take them. I could take every griarfeksh on its own ground and make Illudor safe. I could make my name, my holodah, and these chattering flixits want me to stay here as opposed to leading this fight! He forced himself still and blinked slowly, refusing to look at the eldest speaker. (Consensus 18, Dissent 1.) He turned sideways in his seat to regard the new piece of artwork to the left. A rough granite lump the size of his torso, with random planes of various textures polished into its surface standing on a vrel-colored glass plinth. He surged to his feet and heard old Tefnut-ta-sheri startle back at his abrupt movement.
There was a polite rustle all down the curved table as the others in the Council also chose to appreciate an artwork. It was Illudor's blessing that they again had a whole planet's worth of space to spread out in. Torhok ran his hands up into the slots in the stone, appreciating the subtle texture under his tentacles. The selnarm roil in the room calmed.
When he turned back toward the low table he refused to look at Shaxzhu Ankaht. It would only enrage him and make his argument less effective; any rage made him less effective.
Even though Ankaht hadn't said much, he knew she had to be behind it. She'd been blocking him at every turn, from the moment they'd known of the aliens. He turned his gaze to the holodah'kri who was still apparently contemplating a feathered tapestry though everyone knew his attention was focused on the room behind him. The man was becoming a liability instead of an ally, since you couldn't count on him to back you to do the sensible thing. Torhok shrugged mentally. If it had to do with the preservation of his thislife, an odd perversion to be sure, the priest would always take that course. (Consensus.)
"I'll bow to the consensus, of course. (Dutiful agreement.) I am sure the honorable admirals will bring about the victories we need." My admirals will have to be my holodah-ra-nekt—his honor carriers.
"And all glory will accrue to your name as senior commander," Ankaht said quietly. (Compassionate understanding.) She couldn't understand his need for conquest and victory, but she could honor it.
Torhok was rigid with anger and disgust but put it aside with (Water Flowing Down the Mountain) a mental discipline he was resorting to more and more in her presence. How dare she sympathize! She was arguing more for griarfeksh and less for the People as he saw it and anything that endangered the People disgusted him. The solution was to fight and to win over these aliens.
"I bow to the elder speaker's word." (Irony. Anger.) The fine edge on his selnarm making it clear that it was the last thing he wished to do. "I am needed here in this star system." He acknowledged their demand and left the council chamber more abruptly than was politic. They held him here, at New Ardu, but they couldn't make him like it, these cluster-nursing builders and suppliers, rather than doing what he found he did best—fighting. Narrok and Lankha would need all the help he could give them now that he wouldn't be leading either assault. It changed all his plans and everyone would have to scramble to adjust.
Now that the People knew they could use these warps it made him feel enclosed in a way that he had never noticed before. We have a way to travel from star to star and the closed-clamshell minds back there want to keep me confined to merely one? They talk of battle, of defense of the race as "rash," "over-ambitious," and even "vain." Illudor's claws and tentacles, if the shaxzhu have their way the Race will become dull, defenseless herbivores that the next predator along will finish off—and then Illudor dies. Do they want the universe to vanish in a popped bubble of ennui?
Lankha would take the warp their young pilot had returned from. All the others hadn't come back, but that actually had been expected. The second wave of research ships had been ready if the first wave had brought no information back at all.
If Eraphis hadn't made it back they wouldn't have known that it wasn't the act of transferring through the warp that had killed them in the first place. They couldn't assume that it would all just function as predicted and that the griarfeksh had immolated them. But one ship had made it back and even if the two aboard were more than tired of being examined for possible ill effects and questioned about the experience, they were still gamely answering researchers questions.
Narrok would take the other. The mild rivalry that Lankha maintained—though he knew that Narrok saw such games as just that, games—would give them both incentive to take the war to the griarfeksh. If they held one or two star systems or more then the actual physical distance provided stronger walls than mere ships.
He stormed into his ground-side office, his selnarm rage boiling before him, sending lesser support staff scattering long before he actually appeared. This nonsense was at least picking out his more timid staff. The ones who did all their work and more—with clear consciences—stayed serene, confident that they were not the focus of disgusted anger.
"Call Narrok and Lankha, conference communication in a hand of minutes." (Endurance.)
"Yes, Sir! (Obedience. Awe.)