The Zarzuela System had an unusual amount of cometary material in its Oort cloud and Thirty-Fifth Great Claw Howaarmaiis'jothar'kriana loved having his drills out there, especially now that there were new aliens attacking the Rim Federation. He was young for his rank, with two honor names to live up to, and while he was levelheaded for his species—he wouldn't have gotten so far if he were not—he prowled his dreams hunting honor. He told himself it was good that this minor arm of the Pan-Sentient Union was alerted to the possibility of another alien incursion, but some part of him yearned for a fight. Zarzuela was on the list, but the system was only on a low amber alert.
"A minor target," Howaarmaiis growled to himself, his thick cream-colored pelt faintly marked with slightly darker cream and gray spots, like the cloudy coat of a snow leopard. He stroked his impressive mustaches. "And I'm supposed to be glad that a handful of other stars are more likely to be attacked."
He leaned forward flexing his claws as he watched Commander Simmons's red squadron in the holo tank. If Least Claw Thraaiewlahk'gahrnak didn't watch his tail he was going to stalk straight into Simmons' reverse ambush. The command view gave him the overview of the scenario unfolding—Thraaiewlahk had taken the part of an enemy, a straightforward smash and grab, with the human scanning to find the potential ambushers.
The least claw had sprung the trap neatly, but Simmons had seen it coming and his ships leapt to full speed an instant before Thraaiewlahk fired, fleeing, some scattering to draw fire, some bunching to support each other. The dust and space junk was thick in the exercise area and Simmons was taking full advantage of that.
Thraaiewlahk had lost track of Red Squadron when pursuing Simmons into the heavy dust and Howaarmaiis could see that Blue and Green Squadrons were laying down a confusing, shuffling pattern to hide that fact. Actually, it looked like Simmons's fighters were not only mimicking inert rocks; one or two gave off signals imitating the random tumble of icy planetoids. If this works, I will certainly ask which genius came up with this idea so fast. Typical human sneakiness, but ambush and pounce are now seen as part of a warrior's way.
Simmons was ruthlessly taking advantage of the least claw's tendency to see only what he thought could be there, and the human's strategy profited from the amount of debris in the drill area. One minute twenty-two seconds and Commander Simmons will . . . what was the human expression? Ah, yes, clean his clock. The least claw will certainly snarl at me later. Howaarmaiis bared his teeth. It wasn't easy keeping the coordinated defenses working smoothly and it was time for Thraaiewlahk to bow to the claw again. Simmons was the being to do it, too.
Thraaiewlahk's squadrons, Gold, White, and Brown, swept straight up Simmons's wake, not even peeling off flankers, believing that he needn't. Thirty seconds before he'd be the one englobed. Twenty seconds. There.
Red Squadron announced its presence with a salvo that ripped up Thraaiewlahk's fighters from behind as Blue and Green swept up and back into the teeth of their pursuers. Fifteen seconds later 82 percent of Thraaiewlhk's group were "killed," the howls from the fighter jocks—of victory or frustration—were similar whether they were human or Orion. White Squadron did manage to take 20 percent of Simmons's with them, which was to their honor.
He tapped one claw on the screen and twitched an ear at the slightly annoying click the translator had developed as it kicked in and hoped the engineers would see to it soon. "Debriefing in one hour, here on the Heavyside, my claws. Flag, out."
"Acknowledged. Yes, Great Claw." Even the flattening effect of translation couldn't disguise the satisfaction in Simmons's voice and the swallowed snarl from Thraaiewlahk.
The briefing room aboard the supermonitor Heavyside Layer, a carrier/main combatant, was the compromise the Orion engineers had come up with, too bright and harsh for one species, somewhat dim and fuzzy for the other. The whole ship was an experiment in many ways, with accommodations for both races, and so far it had worked well enough, with translator networks seeded through the wall coatings and woven into clothing, so everything worked as though the two races could actually had a common language. And as for the brightness an ancient form of amber-colored eye protection had become the norm for humans; some wag had dredged up an ancient name for them—"aviator shades."
"Great Claw," Commander Simmons spoke up almost the moment Howaarmaiis entered the room. Unfortunately to Orion eyes, his hair was thin and beard almost nonexistent, his narrow face tight with a concern that was surprising. Howaarrmaiis would have thought he read human faces a bit better than that.
"Yes, Commander Simmons." He settled down into his chair. "Something's wrong?" He wondered if Thraaiewlahk had taken his failure harder than he should have and his ears began to flatten, even though the least claw looked confused.
"Nothing to do with the exercise, Great Claw."
"Go on."
Simmons tapped a finger on the table to bring up a small file, grainy, heavily filtered, obviously downloaded from the small sensory suite onboard a fighter. "Mai Shi Hui was one of my ambush and while she was powered down, her passive sensors picked this up. She didn't just put it down to a glitch and reported it. We got a similar reading . . ." He called up another image, even fuzzier. "This was from Shu Han's red box and even though no one else recorded it, it's not a glitch."
The images glittering above the table were mere pinpoints of light magnified. Commander Simmons looked grim. "I believe—and the computer concurs—that those match the parameters for alien drive flares." Through the rising growl from Thraaiewlahk he concluded. "The computer analysis estimates—if these are the same aliens holding Bellerophon—that we have about eighty days before they get here."
The command pod in the generation ship Ptahtoranknefer, Second Diaspora, was dead quiet in the wake of Senior Admiral Amunsit's order, the officers taking on ritual immobility so as not to draw attention. "Illudor's Claws and Tentacles!" (Rage.) "Do I need to repeat every order I give? Do not, and I repeat, do not unfreeze the Sleepers!" (Disgust tempered with determination.)
She tucked herself back into her command niche and glowered at the image of the unfortunate senior physician, down in the ship's revivication space. "Rest assured, senior physician, I am not in need of the attentions of a narmata healer. In my opinion, this discovery of creatures mimicking intelligence is a matter for Destoshaz not shaxzhu. In this emergency situation I must retain control to bring about safety for the Race. I will bring the honored Sleepers back to a peaceful colony world." (Willingness to fight.) The end of that sentence—"or not at all"—she left unsaid. The Sleepers represented a world that no longer existed except as part of an expanding star, and as such just kept getting in the way of people who actually knew what they were doing.
"Understood, Senior Admiral." The senior physician was very precise in his response, recognizing that anything less would trigger a challenge to maatkah duel. "Revivification, out."
Amunsit gazed around at her officer who still had not moved. "The holodah'kri and his can worry about what this all means in the greater scheme of things. Our jobs are to ensure the continuation of the race and we must act as though none of the other Fleets survived." She laced her tentacles together, obviously reducing threat, even though she had no intention of engaging in challenge of any kind. (Willingness to duel.) She didn't need to add overt physical gestures to make her point. "Pass my orders along, Uatchet." (Impatience.)
Her second snapped out of his stiff posture. "Yes, Senior Admiral. Comm, pass the word to the rest of the Fleet. Senior Admiral's orders under the present state of emergency. Do not revive the Sleepers."
The noise in the fighter pilots' ready room was astonishing. Even with sound-dampening baffles, scarred up by countless attempts at surreptitious graffiti by pilots even in the short time since Heavyside had been commissioned, Simmons wished for a moment he could flatten his ears. Over the past few weeks people had been working under need-to-know. But everyone who had two brain cells to rub together figured that things were going to go about as badly as at Bellerophon, and morale was a wild mix of "wanting to go out and shoot things" and numbness. Both of which brought out the worst in fighter jocks, both human and Orion.
"Listen up, people!" His voice snapped out and brought the room to attention that was at least quiet. He looked over the mix, not caring any longer whether the pupils that looked back at him were human round or Orion slitted, in a naked or furred face. They were his people and he hated to lose even one. Other officers would be doing this same briefing, he knew, dealing with the jocks with less spit and polish because they just wouldn't buy that kind of bullshit.
The task force that Great Claw Howaarmaiis—and his brain kept wanting to translate the Orion name into "Howard"—had scraped together from every system who could reach the Zarzuela Arm in time, waited for the aliens to close. With the original picket they now had two dozen supermonitors and forty-two superdreadnoughts, ten assault carriers, fifteen fleet carriers along with eight archaic monitors and sixty-one battlecruisers.
"This is the word from on high. Apparently the reinforcements that were sent to Dogpatch, Pogo, and Amadeus are just too far away to reach us in time. What we had, we have, amen."
"All hail the analysts." That mutter was from Naguya, a jock whose attitude had gotten him busted more times than he cared to recall. It was not meant to be heard, so Simmons ignored it.
"This alien fleet has twenty Behemoths rather than the twenty-six they had at Bellerophon, but they're bigger. They are also moving faster. Which is why I'm here wagging my jaw at you sixty days after we first spotted them rather than the eighty we initially estimated. You fighters aren't going to be let out of your cages until the aliens release their parasites—"
"That's because we're vermicides, Commander."
"—because," he continued resolutely, "we all know you can do the impossible but would like you not to try."
"It would just take us too frikkin' long." There was a low buzz of derision and a bilabial fricative.
"Stuff a sock in it, Naguya," Simmons said, not looking up from his briefing notes.
"Sir, yessir."
"Commander, have we gotten any responses back from our hails?"
"Negative, Guitano." She was a squirrelly little woman from Brazilica in the Parone System, very quiet for a jock. "We've been trying to get a response almost from the beginning."
"Damn, and I was hoping we'd all have a beer together."
"Not a chance." Simmons looked around at them all, flight suits and helmets perfect, with attitudes that any psych would insist needed adjustment, showing their evolutionary roots. Humans deriding what they were about to fight, hurling verbal sticks and rocks like a troupe of baboons. Orions growling an almost steady tigerish rumble and it wasn't a purr. "Get ready for things to get hot."
"Behemoth steaks coming up, Commander." That was Jiilhaarahk'edohan showing all his fangs.
"Just bring the heavy fighters back, okay? Maintenance gets shirty if you scratch the paint."
The laughter was a relief and brought on a barrage of obscene suggestions as to what Maintenance could do.
Curled into her command niche Amunsit waved one of her claws at the screen as the Fleet neared the system. "There, Uatchet! Look at that. They're preparing to attack us! See this? That's an attack formation or I'm a flixit dropping." (Disgust.) She was as angry as if she'd already been attacked.
"Sir." Uatchet kept his selnarm very subdued. Many thought it was because the senior admiral was so volatile.
"The researchers say there are two planets that could be livable, or made livable in this system. Two! And these . . . these babbling vermin are swarming on both of them! Illudor bless, what was He thinking?" (Nausea. Outrage.)
"Sir. Perhaps these creatures truly are intelligent? It looks to me like a defensive formation. Perhaps their incessant signaling has been an attempt to—" (Reason. Calm.)
She was staring at him as if he'd gone crazy. "Stop right there, Fleet Second. (Determination.) You are starting to sound like one of the needlessly cautious, terrified shaxzhu. Should I put you into freeze with them and promote Binthanath?" (Defensive anger.)
"No, Sir. I was pointing out an option." (Logic.) She stared at him a moment longer before dropping it. She turned back to the screen and the cluster of threats to the Race on it.
"Battle stations. We will win this system."
"Sir!"
**********
Howaarmaiis turned his command chair toward the comm. "Any response, Yiraanthu'astahal?" He asked quietly, watching the screen with its interlocking snowflake pattern of enemy ships. Not only was it a crystal pattern but a hollow crystal, with the smallest oncoming ships around the edges. It was an unorthodox formation but certainly allowed the Behemoths, which could not turn, maximum flank support.
Someone had thought this out a long time ago for these ships, moving at such a fraction of light speed, would either have had to start in that formation or taken years to move into position.
These ships were different from the ones at Bellerophon. Rather than cylindrical, they had a pinched waist about two-thirds of the way down their length, but they were similar enough from the images he'd studied. They were the same aliens.
Commander Simmons was onboard the Spyridon coordinating battlecruisers and fighter squadrons, while his Orion counterpart on the SMT Lareina took the left/above flank. Between us, Howaarmiis thought, we'll savage them.
"No, Sir."
"Fire on my signal."
"Aye, Sir."
"Aliens launching SDs! Multiple launches!" Lieutenant Stills, tense over his sensor boards, sang out.
"Fire missiles!" Howaarmiis snapped. "Simmons!"
"Aye, sir, launching!"
The only thing he could do was to use his waves of fighters against the alien parasite ships while his heavies targeted the Behemoths before they could launch more. His HBMs roared out, targeting the obvious drive ends on the generation ships, the heaviest missiles he could throw, even if they had no sprint mode.
"Hits! Sir, multiple hits!" The screen sparkled for a moment as it recorded the multiple hits but it was like smacking boulders with a sledgehammer. He had to keep pounding them and as the aliens fired back the damage codes for his ships began pouring in.
The damage reports were pouring in. Amunsit looked at her second in command. (Bitter satisfaction.) She opened her mouth to speak, just as the screens blanked, completely overloaded, the shockwave from the explosion of Amunsehkanhk and Ma'atptah enough to even rock the vast bulk of the flagship. The selnarm shock was more devastating, but they were Destoshaz and fought through it. The sudden death of almost a million civilians was enough to slow everyone but also ignited a rage that hadn't been felt in hundreds of years. Latent, quiescent, and without the mitigation of shaxzhu and their memories, the group rage locked them into a fighting unit that included every Destoshaz. Showing more physical emotion that any Arduan had for centuries, they recklessly flung themselves on their enemies. (Blinding rage. Survive, survive, survive. Consensus.)
Howaarmaiis ignored the Omega codes lined up like grinning fangs along the edge of his screen. The acrid stench of burnt insulation in his nose was a vileness the scrubbers couldn't quite clear well enough for the Orion sense of smell. His lips pulled back in a soundless snarl.
He couldn't hold. He'd lost 20 percent of his force already and the aliens had lost—another polarizing glare from the screen—they'd lost three of the big ships and half a hundred parasites.
"All ships, all ships," he snarled into the channel. "Pull back to missile range. I repeat. Pull back. Fire plan Alpha, or I will bite your heads off!" The monitors John Ericsson and Zephrain were going in like fighters, raking two Behemoths with capital beams—"Zeerloweer dirguasha!" The obscenity ripping out of his mouth as they both vanished in a blinding boil of light and two more Omega codes flashed onto his screen. "Withdraw." The word bitter in his mouth as he spoke it. "Withdraw. All ships, withdraw."
Even though he hadn't liked it—despised it, even—he'd planned for a route of retreat. He was leaving two planets, even sparsely settled, it was still close to three quarters of a million beings in the hands of the enemy. His claws dug into the arms of the command chair as his battered, bleeding force limped away from the equally savaged Behemoths.
"Withdraw through to Santa Evita." Even the most stalwart warrior had learned the human idea of theernowlus: Live to fight another day.