Extremis (26 page)

“Yes, Admiral,” the chief of staff acknowledged.

“Then let’s go to the observation deck while the techs are finalizing their preparations, shall we, Sonja?”

As the two admirals, with M’Zangwe and Cardones in attendance, proceeded through the station, Li Han briefly reviewed current availability and projected construction rates for the Terran Republic’s growing fleet of devastators. “So, as you can see,” she concluded as they entered the observation deck, “series production is well underway, and on schedule. Our force levels should be as planned when the time comes for the operation to actually commence—even assuming that there are no delays in the
Goethals
’
s
departure.”

“There shouldn’t be,” Desai assured her. “The Desai prime drive has passed all its tests, up to and including the ones we performed in the course of our passage here. The shielding problem is the greatest single obstacle, but the team assigned to it has concluded that they’ve worked out the best solutions we’re likely to get within the limits of current technology, and that therefore any further redesign studies would result only in pointless delay.”

“Do you concur, Captain Cardones?”

“I do, Admiral. We should be ready to depart by three standard weeks from now—four at the outside.” Cardones kept his expression blank, but Li Han could sense his frustration. She had already pegged him as an officer of the rather stiff, formal school, and he had a crew consisting mainly of civilian technicians. “I believe any unanticipated delay at this point would have a negative morale effect. Especially—” He caught himself and stopped so abruptly his teeth clicked together. He also exchanged a quick glance with Sonja Desai.

Li Han leaned forward. “Do you have something more to tell me, Sonja?”

“Just this—and it’s not really news, because it’s what we’ve feared and expected from the outset. Simply put,
Goethals’s
Desai prime drive has only one voyage of this length in it. If they arrive at Borden and the Kasugawa generators, despite our theoretical predictions, prove incapable of establishing a warp connection across interstellar distances—”

“Yes, I think I catch your drift.” Li Han turned to Cardones. “Your crew are, I presume, aware of this possibility?”
This possibility of being permanently marooned
, she did not add.

“They are, Admiral.”

“I see. My respect for them has just gone up another notch, Captain.”

M’Zangwe took on the look of someone who had gotten beeped on his implanted battlephone. He subvocalized his reply, then turned to Li Han. “Excuse me, Admiral, but the technical staffs say they’re ready to commence the extended countdown for the test.”

Cardones stood up. “With your permission, Admiral, I should return to my ship.”

“Of course.” Li Han also stood up and extended her hand. “Let me repeat that it has been a pleasure to meet you, Captain Cardones—and an honor. Oh, and…I’ll see you in about two point six standard years, in the Borden system.”

* * *

It was actually as much a demonstration as a test. It was already pretty well established that a single Kasugawa generator could enhance existing warp points to accommodate greater ship tonnages, up to the tonnage of a devastator. (“Dredge” them, in a bit of historical wet-navy terminology that had become common currency and whose origins, Li Han suspected, could be traced back to Ian Trevayne.) She and Sonja Desai sat on the station’s observation deck and watched a screen that displayed an effect which Isadore Kasugawa had tossed off as an afterthought. It took the readings from a whole suite of gravitic and other sensors and interpreted them in the form of an entirely specious visual overlay, as though one could see the invisible phenomenon of a warp point.

“Coming up on activation,” she heard a voice say. Her eyes strayed to the visual pickup that showed the wheel-like Kasugawa generator and the
Goethals
poised before it. A similar generator was threaded into her round “handguard” that was located well aft on the ship’s narrow, épée-like keel. In just over two and a half years, that embedded generator would be one half of the pair that would—hopefully—make history by forging the first artificial warp point.

As this day’s countdown went to zero, Li Han’s eyes strayed back to the warp-point display…but not quite fast enough. She missed the instant of transition, missed the sudden flux and burgeoning of the pattern—but the golden whirlpool she saw was perceptibly larger. And the data were pouring in.

Sonja Desai was watching those data readouts expressionlessly. “Hmm…Odd. The warp point’s capacity is almost twelve percent larger than the theoretical predictions. And the curve of the gravitic gradient…I wonder.…”

“Sonja!” Li Han interrupted her firmly. “Please don’t tell me that you’re suggesting, at this late date, that it might be possible to produce warp points that could accommodate ships
larger
than the figures we’ve already factored into the Devastator design!”

“Eh?” Desai came out of her reverie. “Well, I’m just thinking out loud, you understand. Still…if we doubled the capacity of the nodes in the rho quadrant…just maybe…” Her eyes glazed over again.

Li Han turned away, visions of the trillions of credits invested in the Kasugawa generators and devastators already under construction dancing in her head.

Typical!

9

The Greatest Violence

Opinions founded on prejudice are always sustained with the greatest violence.
—Jeffrey

Arduan SDH
Shem’pter’ai
, Expeditionary Fleet of the
Anaht’doh Kainat
, Achilles System

Narrok felt the door-boosted
selnarm
pulse that announced a visitor to his quarters. He willed the door open and sent, “Hello, Mretlak. Are you ready for the briefing?”

Mretlak entered slowly, thoughtfully. “I am, Admiral.”

“Then why do I
shotan
that your
selnarm
is disturbed and uncertain? This is not the fashion in which you typically radiate readiness, Fleet Second.”

(Rue.) “That is so, Admiral. I admit (discomfiture).”

(Reassurance.) “Over what, Mretlak?”

“Over the agenda of this meeting with
Holodah’kri
Urkhot and Senior Admiral Torhok.”

“What bothers you about it, in particular?”

“What bothers me is the
lack
of particulars, Admiral. I have read the agenda. It seems like an outline for a—a conversation. I expected there to be more—pressing—reasons for them to have traveled all the way out here for this meeting.”

“Oh, there is most assuredly a more pressing reason. They wish to press me—and Second Admiral Sarhan—to move with greater alacrity.”

“Perhaps they will facilitate that by summoning fifty new dockyards into existence, so that we will have a sufficient advantage in numbers to break through the human defenses in Ajax.”

“Yes—that would be helpful. But I am becoming just as concerned with the casualties among our brothers and sisters.”

“So, is that what
you
are hoping to achieve in this discussion with the Councilors, Admiral? Increased operational sensitivity to the casualties we sustain?”

(Resignation.) “No, Mretlak. Not yet. For now, I just want to have the permission to use all the weapons at our disposal—including those of human origin.”

“The humans left behind—weapons—that we can use against them, Admiral?”

(Bemusement.) “No, Mretlak. I speak of information, human information, which we must start using immediately.”

Mretlak spent a moment (reconsidering, reassessing). “So this ‘briefing’ isn’t really a briefing at all. It is a political
maatkah
match.”

“The briefing itself is what Torhok and Urkhot told the Council of Twenty they were coming to hear
.
But in reality, they are here to pressure us to attack sooner than we should, as well as to assess how dangerous I have become to their plans, and what role, if any, you might also play in their grand game.”

“Me?” (Surprise.) “Grand game?”

“Mretlak, Urkhot and Torhok fight against the Pre-Dispersal traditions of our culture at least as much as they fight against the humans. They distrust, and therefore have been attempting to diminish the role and presence of, the
shaxzhu
. They have also almost eliminated the importance of the other castes, and they attempt to argue that as
Destoshaz
, we have little need of
shaxzhutok
—the memories of our prior lives—thereby making the
shaxzhu
increasingly extraneous.”

“But Admiral, you and I…as
Destoshaz
ourselves, should we not presume that there is some value and wisdom in their opinions?”

“Some, Mretlak, but there is much intentional misrepresentation, as well.”

“So you feel, then, that they are simply liars?”

“Firstly, there is nothing simple about either Urkhot or Torhok. Secondly, I suspect they earnestly believe the majority of what I hold to be their misperceptions. But in their attempt to serve what they believe is the unvarnished Truth of Illudor, they have reasoned that deceit may often be necessary. It is often the way of the overly zealous—their zeal greases the slide downward into greater exaggerations, greater misrepresentations, greater lies…all undertaken to promote the Truth and the Greater Good.”

“And so they unmake what they seek to preserve by adopting methods which are its antithesis.”

“That is well and concisely formulated, Mretlak. I cannot say how far Torhok has traveled down this slide, but Urkhot has almost vanished from sight into the depths of his own beliefs. In consequence, the more contradictions that arise between those beliefs and the mounting evidence that humans are sentient beings, then the more desperate—and extreme—we must expect Urkhot’s convictions to become.”

“You describe the evolution of a fanatic, Admiral.”

“I enumerate the diagnostic characteristics of obsession, Fleet Second. If they are evinced by Urkhot, and if he frames them in theological terms and concepts, then perhaps fanaticism is an apt term. I, however, am ultimately concerned with how we must interact with him, not with any particular label for his behavior.”

“That is a most politic response, Admiral.”

“That is a most shrewd observation, Fleet Second. Come, let us go to our meeting. I shall explain how it will unfold as we walk together.”

* * *

The door closed behind the exiting Second Admiral Sarhan, and Mretlak reflected that so far the meeting with Urkhot and Torhok had unfolded just as Narrok had predicted. There were the initial niceties, the insincere congratulations from Torhok on advancing all the way through to Achilles, and Narrok’s muted gratitude for that praise. Sarhan had led off with an update: the humans had been completing their withdrawal from Suwa by the time the two Arduan fleets arrived there and were gone by the time Narrok’s and Sarhan’s fleets had linked up. After some desultory harrying and delaying actions in Achilles, the humans had ceded that system as well. But when Sarhan made a few initial attempts to probe Ajax, his forces fetched up short. No probes returned to report, and, given the dozens he sent through the warp point, this was a definitive sign that the humans had elected to make the Ajax system a hardpoint. It certainly looked like a reasonable place to do so, Sarhan concluded, but the logic of such a speculation depended upon a datum that he was not officially allowed to accept: the human star charts of this segment of the warp-point pathways. If the human charts in their possession
were
accurate, however, then Ajax was a choke point that controlled access to both the comparatively industrial Odysseus cluster and a long chain of systems that lay along this arm of what the
griarfeksh
labeled “the Further Rim.”

Urkhot had simply commented that, indeed, the human data could not be trusted, and therefore, speculation that this was a logical place for the humans to establish a stronger defensive line was indeed unwarranted. Sarhan acceded without comment—and then mentioned that he had urgent business back aboard his flagship. Receiving permission to leave, he had departed to attend that urgent business. What he did not add was that this business primarily involved preventing himself from throttling Urkhot with both clusters. Sarhan had little patience for the
holodah’kri
and had asked Narrok to structure the meeting so that he could excuse himself promptly: if not, he feared his true sentiments would bleed into his
selnarm
and thereby create greater problems for the Fleet. Narrok had gladly acceded to Sarhan’s request to make an early departure.

And so now it was just Mretlak and Narrok, sitting across the table from Urkhot and Torhok. And as Urkhot sent forth his
selnarm
toward Mretlak in what was more a probe than an invitation to discourse, the young Fleet Second reflected that this meeting was beginning to resemble a perverse reversal of the duels that were recorded in the annals of Pre-Enlightenment Ardu. There, rival leaders at an impasse often met to decide policy by personal combat; here, although the real combatants were Narrok and Torhok, they were sending their junior proxies into the
maatkah
ring, while they themselves retained a politic distance from the well-concealed war of words and insinuations.

Urkhot’s probe rose and coalesced into a question. “Fleet Second Mretlak, I am told that you have prepared an intelligence report upon the
griarfeksh
?”

“Yes,
Holodah’kri
.”

“Interesting. Why did you and the admiral conclude that the extensive records on Bellerophon have not provided us with a definitive understanding of the background and intents of our foe? This project of yours seems a strange way for a warrior to spend time, Fleet Second—compiling studies on other species. Are you perhaps a
shaxzhu
in disguise Mretlak?”

The jest elicited a ripple of general mirth that was in fact unanimous agreement to ignore the veiled remonstration, and even more veiled threat, of calling a
Destoshaz
a
shaxzhu
. Mretlak elected to pretend he had noticed none of the implications. “Honored
Holodah’kri
, we felt it wise to compare what we have now found on other worlds—and human-fleet wreckage—with the materials found on Bellerophon. There was, after all, some considerable concern that much of what the humans left on Bellerophon was disinformation.”