Extremis (52 page)

But then, for the second time, something was wrong. The launch tunnel shuddered slightly, and behind him was the glow of an explosion.

Still the catapult continued to fling his fighter forward—just ahead of the flames that burgeoned astern, seeming to pursue him.

The fighter cleared the tunnel and was abruptly in space. Ordinarily, at that moment, Rytaz would spend an instant of
sacaharrax
-enhanced exaltation among the stars. But for a split second, his gaze went to the view aft…only to see the carrier breaking up in a holocaust of secondary explosions. And before that split second was over, a jet of superheated flame shot out of the launch tunnel’s mouth, consuming Rytaz and his fighter like a moth caught in the flare of a blowtorch.

Rytaz would never know it, but his was the only Tangri fighter to get clear of its carrier that day.

Tangri SD
Styr’car’hsux
, Raiding Fleet of the Dagora Horde, Treadway Orbit

Atylycx tasted blood as his teeth gashed the inside of his mouth in his impotent rage.

He had watched as the last of the burgundy icons of his carriers and cruisers flickered out, caught between the totally unexpected cloaked rearguard of SDHs and the units—roughly a third of the enemy’s main force—that had turned back to form an anvil for the rearguard’s hammer. As he had watched, the other two-thirds of that main force had inflicted significant losses on his fleet. And now, both hammer and anvil were turning about and coalescing into a single weapon that could have but one purpose.

At least, he reflected, forcing his paralyzing rage to ebb, he must have the advantage of speed. Those SDHs putting out such devastating missile salvos were larger than anything he had, and Tangri ships were built for fleetness.

He needed it now.

He spoke over his shoulder to the flag captain without looking at him. “Set a course for the Tisiphone warp point. Get us out of here.”

Arduan SDH
Shem’pter’ai
, Main Van, Expeditionary Fleet of the
Anaht’doh Kainat
, Tisiphone Orbit

Five days after chasing the last of the Tangri out of Tisiphone’s orbit—and system—Narrok stared down through a half meter of glassteel at the blue-white world and reflected that the humans had misnamed it. The planet should simply have been called “Typhoon.” The observation deck of Narrok’s orbiting flagship
Shem’pter’ai
afforded him an excellent vantage point from which to watch no less than five hurricanes bluster around and against one another like five enraged and overstimulated
yihrts
in rutting season. And, as with
yihrts
, the gargantuan tempests of Tisiphone were only interesting when observed from a great distance: he had lost three shuttles to a brace of thrashing monsoons, 200 kph winds, intermittent waterspouts, two immense tornadoes, and ferocious near-ground windshear.

But, he reflected, those three losses had been arguably the most productive of the campaign thus far. Because those shuttles had all been lost on a mission of mercy. Scattered among the most remote archipelago of this ninety-two-percent-water world, a number of small human communities had been compelled to seek higher ground at the approach of this multi-celled storm front. Their homes and goods washed away by a sequence of cyclones that were severe even by Tisiphone’s standards, the locals had called the main continent for help. However, Tisiphone’s civilian air assets had already been crippled by Tangri strikes, since the Tisiphonian Air Militia had operated its fighters out of the co-located—and pulverized—spaceport. The haggard remains of Tisiphone’s air services were both scattered and grounded by their own meteorological challenges.

At which point Narrok had offered to intercede on behalf of the endangered humans: he would provide air transport for the necessary humanitarian aid. He had sent ten shuttles planetside to carry survival shelters and comestibles to the stricken pelagic communities. The human freight handlers and relief coordinators, waiting at the edge of the airfield’s main tarmac, had gazed, silent and suspicious, at the “inscrutable” Arduans who landed at their savaged spaceport, loaded the rescue shipments into their bays, and flew off into the growing thunderheads.

Three of the shuttles ended their journey as debris at the bottom of Tisiphone’s endlessly roiling seas. But the other seven got through and delivered enough needed supplies to allow the stricken communities to weather what was left of the storm that had isolated them from the rest of the world.

And in the days that followed, there were two sea changes. One involved the weather: the storms became squalls, which died down to calm and bright skies. Almost as though they were announcing, and an omen of, the second sea change: that which involved the human attitudes toward the Arduans who had come to Tisiphone. Although invaders, they had also shown compassion, and Narrok had been determined to shape his actions to meet the crudely phrased assurances he had given the humans during their surrender proceedings. However, the change in human attitude had not ultimately been effected by the seven shuttles that had pushed through the storms to bring succor to the human survivors. Rather, it was the three shuttles that the Arduans had lost in the attempt which had clearly purchased the changed opinion of their unwilling hosts.

Narrok stared down into the southern hemisphere of Tisiphone, the spawning ground and creche for the planet’s worst storms: a new one—a tight, angry white spiral—was being born as he watched. Against this turbulent backdrop, the strange social calm of this one planetary occupation, secured by the death of six Arduan pilots striving to help humans, only further underscored and proved Ankaht’s mounting evidence (which Narrok received through Mretlak’s surreptitious updates) that humans feared death so intensely because, for them, it
was
final. When they discarnated, they did indeed tumble, dwindle, into the oblivion that was
xenzhet-narmat’ai
. So when three Arduan shuttle crews tumbled down to their own temporary deaths in an attempt to save a few thousand horrifically finite human lives, many of the inhabitants of Tisiphone became less overtly hateful and began to consider the few Arduans who passed among them with stares that were more curious than hostile.

And that curiosity had now led, it seemed, to a tentative attempt at contact. A human cargo handler, who had assisted one of the doomed Arduan shuttles before it had lifted from the tarmac to begin its fateful mercy flight, had passed a handwritten note to one of the surviving shuttle pilots just a day ago.
Once submitted to the analysis of the newly arrived vocoder, it simply said:

“Even mortal enemies can respect each others’ courage. Thank you for your sacrifice.”

Narrok closed all three eyes slowly, composing himself.
And these, these are the “creatures” that Torhok would have us liken to
griarfeksh
, as mere beasts to be exterminated?

Extermination. Thanks to the Tangri, Narrok had now seen what that policy looked like when put into practice. His gaze slipped sideways to where his fleet’s auxiliaries were hard at work repairing battle damage to an early-mark SDH. If only Torhok had been present for the battles with the Tangri, he might not be so quick to call the humans “beasts.” Where humans died bravely for the love of their duty, their ideals, their homes, and each other, the Tangri seemed to be creatures wholly driven by self-interest. They fought well enough when the odds of success seemed promising, but as the tide turned—as it always had—one could watch how their flanks began holding back, how their reserves started dropping farther behind, how the formation of their van started changing—albeit only subtly—as each captain began to angle toward a trajectory that gave him a slightly better escape route. They were opportunists, cowards—and Narrok had taken a carefully hidden but savage pride in driving them back from the human systems they had occupied. The systems that they had, for all intents and purposes, brutally raped.

The Tangri were every bit as faithless and brutal as the human reports claimed them to be. Whereas the humans themselves were…were…

They were people.

And, having at last admitted this to himself so frankly, Narrok discovered the emotions that had been hiding behind his growing hatred of Torhok, behind his resentment at having to send so many of the Children of Illudor into premature discarnations.

He also grieved for the brave humans he had killed and felt remorse for the ones whom he would yet have to send to
xenzhet-narmat’ai
.

For, he admitted as he folded the hand-scrawled message reverently, there would be many, many thousands of human lives that he would still have to consign to that terrible fate.

17

Comrades

We need the comrade heart that understands,
And the warmth, the living warmth of human hands.
—Clark

TRNS
Taconic
, Warp Nexus ZQ-147, Deep Space

No one had ever been able to fully account for the warp network that enabled space travelers to get around the lightspeed barrier and, as Li Han’s ancestors would have put it, fool the gods into thinking their laws were being obeyed. The fundamental force of gravity was somehow involved, all admitted. The fact that most warp points occurred in proximity to the gravity wells of stars reinforced this view, in addition to being highly convenient in practical terms. But some warp points didn’t, and every attempt to formulate a general theory accounting for the phenomenon had come to grief on that irritating fact. It was a source of endless frustration to physicists, who devoutly wished that starless warp nexi didn’t exist.

Li Han had moments when she felt the same way, albeit for different reasons. This was one of those times, as her flagship TRNS
Taconic
emerged into the starless warp nexus ZQ-147 and, for the first time in decades, she found herself in true interstellar space, without the comforting hearthlike glow of a local sun to serve as a reference point.

She reminded herself that the all-volunteer crew of TRNS
Goethals
had been in the gulf between the stars for over two and a half standard years.
No
, she automatically corrected herself,
about a year and a third as they themselves have experienced time, traveling at relativistic velocities.
The psychological and physical dangers of the voyage had been explained to them. So had the mandatory oath to blow up the defenseless
Goethals
if, contrary to expectations, they encountered Baldy forces in the planetless red-dwarf system of Borden that was their destination.

Still, they had volunteered. They had brought their ungainly vessel here to ZQ-147 and plunged on into the void at .85 c, thanks to the Desai prime drive, thereby leaving the warp network behind and becoming the first human beings ever to attempt an interstellar voyage through the normal space of Newton and Einstein.

The 2.6-year length of that voyage had been no particular disadvantage in terms of the Alliance’s war plans, for it had taken almost that long to construct the fleet of devastators Li Han now commanded. But within three months of
Goethals’
estimated time of arrival at Borden, she had begun moving that fleet toward ZQ-147. It would not do to miss the prearranged instant…and besides, she had a rendezvous to keep.

“Pardon me, Admiral,” said Captain Adrian M’Zangwe, her chief of staff, interrupting her thoughts. (She had forbidden the use of any form of address more exalted and pompous than “Admiral.”) “
Kazin
has just transited, and the first of the Kasugawa generators should be appearing directly.”

“They will not be an improvement to the scenery,” Li Han muttered. Her fleet had departed from Novaya Rodina with thirteen of the ungainly things. Three pairs had been left behind along the way, for they had been used to make possible the passage of the devastators through warp points that could not have otherwise accommodated their monstrous masses. The varying tonnage capacities of warp points was something else that wasn’t fully understood about them, but the Kasugawa generators could widen, or
dredge
, them.

“They may be hideous and slow,” M’Zangwe agreed, “but they enabled us to get our devastators this far. Eventually, they’ll be able to cross-connect the entire alliance.”

Li Han cut him off with an impatient gesture. “I know. But for now we only have seven of them left.”

“They ought to be enough, Admiral,” M’Zangwe reassured her, not for the first time.

“Yes, yes. It’s one more than we need. Assuming that all goes well. Which it almost never does.” She turned
away from the viewscreen. “Well, present my compliments to Captain Estrada and ask him to get the recon drones deployed and headed toward the other local warp point. It wouldn’t do for us to be late in detecting the arrival of Admiral Trevayne…and Admiral Li.”

* * *

From the earliest stages of the planning process, it had been evident that they would need a force of capital ships lighter than the devastators once they were in the Bellerophon Arm. The BR-06-Mercury and Demeter-Charlotte warp lines could not be dredged for the devastators until Kasugawa generators were in place at both ends, and by that stage of the operation the Baldies would surely be aware of the Allied Fleet’s presence in the Arm.

Wherefore it had been decided that a powerful Rim Federation/Pan-Sentient Union Force, accompanied by Li Magda’s TRN task force (but with nothing larger than a monitor; the warp line between BR-06 and Mercury was impassable to anything more massive), would proceed from Astria and rendezvous with Li Han here in ZQ-147. However, whereas this combined armada’s date of arrival had been relatively predictable, the outcome of the initial meeting with its overall commander had been somewhat less so. But the lingering trepidations that Li-Han had harbored turned out to be groundless.

“Well, I could hardly be expected to pass this up,” said Ian Trevayne after the initial greeting ceremonies were behind them.

“Your behavior,” said Li Han primly, “is more commensurate with your apparent age than your actual one. For the supreme commander of the Rim Federation to appoint himself to—”