Extremis (84 page)

The locustlike swarms of kamikazes came on—now including actual fighters—as though actuated by a new will and armored in the Baldies’ usual inexplicable indifference to individual survival.

But as Trevayne soon saw very clearly, their very singlemindedness gave his human and Orion pilots an advantage. As long as they were fixated on self-immolation, the Baldy fighters could not deal with the slashing attacks of pilots equally fixated on killing them: the Alliance fighters swept through the dense formations of their opponents, mowing them down in windrows.

Not even the Baldy fighter pilots could endure this: they could not complete their suicide attacks if their craft didn’t live to reach their intended targets. So they turned aside to fight off their tormentors. And whatever it was that had granted them their newly enhanced capabilities allowed them to put up a better fight than they once would have.

But once they did, another problem presented itself.…

Arduan SDH
Shem’pter’ai
, Main Van, Consolidated Fleet of the
Anaht’doh Kainat
, BR-02 Warp Nexus

Narrok watched the plot and saw the fighters—his and the humans’—wheel slowly: in this battle, fought at the speeds enabled by the Desai drives of the larger ships, the small attack craft were functioning almost like mobile minefields, more effective at denying areas than they were at delivering killing blows to enemy hulls.

At last his fighters had enough qualitative parity so that now, along with his advantage in numbers, he was able to contest the human flights for dominance. Of course, the price of doing so was reduced numbers still available for suicide attacks. And there was a new variable which further undermined his fighters’ conventional combat improvements: the unceasing torrent of human energy torpedoes. Whenever Narrok’s craft managed to wrest a positional advantage from the human fighters, they would retreat back behind the incandescent protective skirts of that inexhaustible base of fire—and shortly after reemerge, reformed and largely recovered.

“Sir, the humans have breached the defensive ring in sectors X 9 and W 13. Devastators in the lead, superdevastators right behind them.”

So, containment had failed—despite the terrible losses the humans had suffered thus far. And now, Narrok knew, the tables were about to turn. “Signal Sarhan,” he sent. “Tell my old friend to lead us in.”

Narrok watched as Sarhan’s command, the SDSs of the Fleet, began moving forward to commence their final death-duel with the leviathans of the human armada.

TRNS
Li Han
, Allied Fleet, BR-02 Warp Nexus

As the slaughter progressed, Ian Trevayne could be little better than a spectator. His task-force vice-admirals, his squadron leaders, his ship captains all knew what they had to do. It had all been discussed before, and reduced to tactical doctrine and training routine. His work was done.

“Ironic, isn’t it, sir?”

Trevayne shot a sharp glance at Andreas Hagen. “Would you care to explain that remark, Commander?”

“I think you know what I mean, sir. You know why you’re here. When you were, so to speak, restored to life at a time when the Rim Federation faced a new threat, it tapped into some very deep mythic roots.”

“Yes. Madam Chief Justice Ortega said something of the sort to me,” said Trevayne, his eyes focused on something far away and long ago.

“Well, sir, you’ve done it—you’ve emerged from the magic mountain, or the Isle of Avalon, when your people needed you. And now—”

“And now the very code names we’ve assigned to this operation seem to underscore that, don’t they?” Trevayne finished for him. “ ‘Excalibur,’ indeed! Well, Admiral Krishmahnta has enabled me to draw the sword from the stone.” He closed his eyes at the unwelcome recollection and sternly reminded himself that there was still no word as to Krishmahnta’s fate, which left room for hope. “But now that I’ve drawn it—”

“Other hands have to wield it.” Hagen stopped, swallowed, resumed. “Sir, it is a privilege given to very few men to be part—however menial—of a legend.”

Li Han
shuddered from a near miss. They both grabbed stanchions. Trevayne grinned at Hagen. “It is given to all too many men to die today, Commander. If that should befall us, I want you to know that the privilege has been mine.”

Then he could only watch, sending out occasional general grand-tactical directives, while with mind-shattering, space-wrenching discharges of elemental energies of destruction his devastators and superdevastators did what they had been created to do.

The Brobdingnagian system-defense ships did not die easily. But die they did.

Arduan SDH
Shem’pter’ai
, Main Van, Consolidated Fleet of the
Anaht’doh Kainat
, BR-02 Warp Nexus

The fleet second’s
selnarm
was riddled by (disbelief, shock, horror). “Senior Admiral, the system-defense ships—the last of them is gone, sir. And Admiral Sarhan is—”

“Thank you, Second. I felt his
selnarm
terminate a few seconds ago.”

“What do we do now, Admiral?”

Narrok looked at the plot. He had lost the battle. The question was, how much more of his force should he spend before he conceded the field? He still had seventy percent of his SDHs left, and they represented a credible threat to the humans. He had preserved his mobile assets not merely by choice, but because he could protect them, whereas the SDSs could not flee, and thus their fates were tied to the system’s. The humans would still take damage from the remaining small forts and mines—and would take more if he kept his SDHs at the very edge of extreme range, harrying them. Naturally, the humans would then temporarily weaken their forces arrayed against the small forts in order to chase his SDHs out of the system. During which interval, the small forts would not be so outnumbered and could inflict greater damage on anything that came into range—which, given their proximity to the warp point, meant just about all the inbound human traffic. It was a small victory—to help the pseudo-forts sell themselves more dearly—but at least it wasn’t very expensive, either.

Narrok sat in his pod and sent the order that meant eventual retreat. “All SDHs fall back on our lead. We will harry the enemy for as long as we can.”

TRNS
Li Han
, Allied Fleet, BR-02 Warp Nexus

Li-Trevayne Magda’s shuttle had barely docked in
Li Han
’s boat bay before she hurried off to the flag bridge, moving through a scene of regimented damage-control chaos.

She found Ian Trevayne in consultation with staffers. Seeing her, they hurriedly concluded their business and went away. When he turned to meet her eyes, he looked every hour of his actual age.

“Eighty percent of Task Force Vishnu Code Omega,” he began without preamble. “
Eighty percent.
And all the survivors are almost too badly damaged to tell the difference. And…Admiral Krishmahnta didn’t make it. At least Admiral Yoshikuni survived.” A fleeting smile. “So did Wethermere.”

It was like a blow to the forehead for Mags. “I’d heard that Admiral Krishmahnta was badly wounded but got off
Gallipoli
in time.”

“She did. But it seems she had a tourniquet that couldn’t endure the gee-forces of the escape pod. So she died of good old low-technology exsanguination.” Trevayne paused, seemed to search for words. “I didn’t have the chance to know her for very long,” he finished simply.

“No. Neither did I. I wish I had.” Mags’s lips quirked upward as far as exhaustion and grief would permit. “After all, she was a fellow member in good standing of the ‘monstrous regiment of women.’ ”

“So she was.” Trevayne gave a momentary grimace, as though in pain, then lowered his head and spoke in a voice that could barely be heard. “I will have my little quotes, won’t I?”

She laid a gentle hand on his arm. “If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be you.”

Through the contact of her hand, strength seemed to flow into him—enough strength to raise his head and speak in his customary tone of brisk authority. “The toll of ships actually destroyed is bad enough, but they’re almost all SMTs and smaller. What’s actually more serious is the number of DTs and even SDTs that have taken damage too severe for routine damage control to cope with it. We both wanted so badly to follow this victory up without delay. But we can’t risk it. We have to bring ourselves back up to strength in the heaviest ship classes—the ones that do the business.”

“That’s what Erica Krishmahnta would have wanted,” she agreed “A job done right.”

“And that’s just what we owe her.” Trevayne looked at the omega icons littering his holotank. “And to ensure that the next offensive is the last.”

38

Striking True

Power is not revealed by striking hard or often, but by striking true.
—Balzac

Icarus Continent, Bellerophon/New Ardu

As Iakkut’s Security sled lifted from one of Punt airfield’s thirty landing pads, he gazed briefly out the cockpit window. Beyond the nose-racks—which were, like the rest of the vehicle, bristling with conventional munitions—he saw the bodies of those brothers and sisters who had not elected to join him and the rest of the Martyrs’ Movement in this strike against the human Resistance bases. The tragedy was that they had not been race-traitors: he could feel the sympathy in them, but greater than that had been their misguided sense of duty, of obedience to the Council. Unfortunately, there had been no time for a debate: Iakkut hoped they would reincarnate soon, and into a world purified of the trouble and stench of
griarfeksh
.

Iakkut’s vehicle followed the last of Punt’s ready Security sleds and half of its more heavily armed Enforcer models, quickly joining the rest of the flight. From that vantage point, he could see the human regions around Punt—and the five-hundred-meter security margin that had been cleared by the Security forces. It encircled the Arduan precincts like a belt of devastation, sweeping in a long semicircle from the abandoned marinas of the
griarfeksh
North Shore District, then paralleling Punt’s western extents, and ultimately curling slowly back to connect to the much-scarred Empty Zone between the occupied West Shore and Heliobarbus districts. The security margin had originally been a filthy
ranarmata
warren of buildings and businesses that the
griarfeksh
labeled “suburbia.” It was now a dead, flat expanse—buildings razed, obstructions leveled—that mutely declared itself a killing ground separating the Children of Illudor from any would-be
griarfeksh
attackers.

Scattered along the edges of this zone was the haphazard and haggard caravansary that had arisen to serve the needs of the native towns ever since the Council had finally seen sense and restricted the
griarfeksh
power-plant operations. No longer able to maintain delivery schedules to their gargantuan multipurpose stores, the
griarfeksh
transport companies had resorted to using the meager output of the reduced power grid to provide energy for only a few score of their largest vehicles. Fully laden, these wheeled argosies then ponderously circulated between the various human communities. At each, they unloaded their diverse cargoes into an immense market that tarried for a week or two, then repacked and moved on.

In Melantho, they usually chose to tarry in the Southern Extents, just below the Heliobarbus District, but a week ago the grimy vehicles and their even grimier wares had debouched in a long arc that followed the northern half of the security zone. The diminished population of the further western suburbs had treated the rough market crescent like a grand promenade, spending their days strolling along the improvised boulevard of tables and truck beds. Iakkut repressed a shudder at the thought of all the milling humans: unwashed, coarse-furred, jabbering, and bickering.

Not that it mattered anymore, he consoled himself with a sudden inward pulse of (satisfaction), because after today, there would be no more human markets, or caravans, or gatherings.

And soon enough,
he thought as the outline of Melantho dropped out of sight through the clouds,
there will be no more humans at all
.

* * *

Alessandro McGee watched the last Baldy sled rise up, bulging and bloated with external ordnance, and followed it with his eyes until it had disappeared up through the low-lying clouds. On the far horizon, the upper rim of Bellerophon’s yellow star had just started sending rays of yellow light across Salamisene Bay like wave-dappling spear-shafts, which were apparently routing the clouds away before them.

Danilenko looked skyward and cleared his throat. “You think we are safe now, Sandro?”

“It’s not us I’m worried about.”

“
Shto
? Who then?” The other members of McGee’s assault team—already wearing their sensor-grid undersuits—stopped to listen.

“I’m worried about our bases. That last flight of sleds was so overloaded with ordnance that they can’t be going too far. Probably no farther than our main base in the Aeolian Lowlands.”

Harry looked off to the west, behind them. “And so you think that smaller flight that took off two hours ago—”

“Is headed for the regional HQ in the Charybdis Islands.”

Kapinski looked at Jen and seemed to grow anxious. “Maybe we should break radio silence, warn them…”

McGee shook his head—and knew full well that the firm “no” was directed as much at himself as at Kapinski. In preparation for the attack, he, Jen, and Zander had relocated to the main base in Icarus’s Aeolian Lowlands. Zander was still there—meaning his safety was now dependent upon Heide. McGee wanted to vomit but resolved not to show his anxiety. If Jen learned that the outgoing Baldy air assets were speeding to put Zander’s playpen at the center of their intended ground zero…

Jonathan leaned forward, kept his voice low. “Are there any landlines left, or wireless?”

McGee shook his head again. “The Baldies terminated all of those services—even here in the cities. We’ve got no way to warn our people.”

Danilenko frowned. “You are not calling off the attack, are you?”

McGee looked between the torsos of his gathered NCOs: just beyond them, Haika was helping Jen into a sensor-grid undersuit that was too big by half. “No,” McGee declared. “We don’t even have a choice now. There might not be any bases left to return to. So we have to drive the spearhead of this attack home and make it stick.”