Fleet Action (32 page)

He deliberately chose the Kilrathi word used to describe the lowest caste member of Kilrah society, the cleaners of privy pits for fertilizer, one considered so untouchable that it was a defilement if his shadow even touched the shadow of anyone of a higher class.

He could see that the word caused Jukaga to bristle.

"I'm surprised the Emperor even allowed one such as you to live. I've heard that assassination is all but unknown in your society. It seems you learned it from us. You know nothing of us. You learned but the worst and learned none of the best. You are beneath the contempt of both my race and yours.

He noticed a change in Jukaga's demeanor and his image disappeared.

"Communications, what's going on?"

"Signal shifted, sir, coming back in, on a fleet scramble line."

Jukaga's image reappeared on the screen

"I feel more comfortable now, Admiral, talking without anyone able to listen in on my side for the next several minutes. May I have your agreement that this conversation will be kept strictly between us?"

"I can't promise that," Geoff replied.

"Then at least do not let it be shared with my own people. I've managed to have the signal scrambled from here but soon it might be compromised."

"I agree then, it will not get back to your side."

"We don't have much time to talk, Admiral. I want to give you a warning. I was supposed to do this anyhow but I want you to understand that my concern in this is genuine."

"Go on then."

"If you do not surrender your fleet, Prince Thrakhath has declared that this shall be a war of gatagak'vu. How do you say, a war of total eradication."

Geoff felt a cold chill.

"Has it not always been thus?" he finally ventured.

"No. This is different. He will not only slaughter everyone — man, woman and child, but he will also slaughter the very worlds you live on through the use of high radiation doses. Nothing will be left, nothing. Your home, your Earth, with all its long history, will be dead, uninhabitable, lifeless."

His words trailed off and Geoff was startled to realize that Jukaga's voice was filled with remorse.

"You wanted us destroyed, enslaved, why your concern now?" Geoff asked.

Jukaga smiled and shook his head.

"That is not your concern, Admiral Tolwyn, only my own. I therefore implore you. Surrender. If you do, I will ensure that you and your warriors are treated with honor, that your Earth will continue to live."

"Better to die as free men then live as slaves," Geoff replied coldly.

Jukaga nodded, a smile lighting his features.

"As any true warrior would reply, he said quietly, "as I knew you would reply."

"Then there's nothing more to be said."

"I have been told to advise you that you have twenty four of your standard minutes to reply. If not, the planet you call Warsaw will cease to live.

"Go ahead and do it now," Geoff replied coldly, "but by God, Baron, tell Thrakhath that if he does, there'll come a day when we'll come back. If it takes a hundred years, we'll come back and we'll watch Kilrah as it's burned to ashes."

"Good-bye, Admiral," Jukaga said quietly and he started to reach over to switch off his screen. He paused and looked back up.

"I'm sorry," and then his image disappeared.

Shaken, Geoff sat back in his chair. He had just condemned more than twenty million to death

"God help me," he whispered and he lowered his head for a moment, offering a silent prayer for forgiveness and strength.

He stood back up finally and went back out on the bridge.

"Warsaw, now five million clicks astern sir," the helm officer announced.

"Make course back towards Sirius, order destroyer squadron three." He paused. "No, make that squadron two, to form rear guard using maneuver delta for delaying action."

He settled into his command chair, watching the tactical. The enemy carriers, masked by more than a hundred escorts, continued their relentless move forward, while one of the older carriers, escorted by a cruiser squadron, broke away, turning towards Warsaw.

"Get me Mike Polowski on laser link," Geoff said quietly.

Seconds later the commander of squadron three appeared on the holo screen. Geoff felt as if the commodore were in the room with him. His features were pale, jaw quivering.

"I've got bad news for you, Mike."

"I can see it, Geoff."

"I'm sorry. They demanded the surrender of the fleet. If we didn't they said they'd hit your home world."

Mike lowered his head

"You did what you had to do, Geoff. God help me, I would have done the same. Anything else, sir?"

"It's going to be bad, Mike. They're going to radiation-bombard it as well, killing the planet and everything on it.

Mike's jaw started to tremble and he turned away from the screen for a moment and then finally looked back, his eyes filled with anguish.

"Why? It's not even a military target."

"To make an example of what's to come."

Mike stood silently, unable to speak.

"I'm sorry, Mike."

Polowski nodded silently and then his image winked off.

"Give me full optical power on Warsaw, patch in to their planetary defense."

The orbital base commander appeared on the side screen, while optical locked on the planet. It still looked peaceful, an illusion since with visual scan it now took more than two minutes for the image to reach him.

"White Wolf, this is Warsaw defense. We are under attack. As per your orders, primary station has been abandoned. Civilian population are in shelters. All ground to space missiles have been expended.

"White Wolf, this is Warsaw defense. We have high speed incoming! We have . . ."

The image snapped off.

Geoff watched the optical scan in silence, and then the first blossom of light snapped across the northern continent's surface. Seconds later hundreds of snaps of light erupted, blanketing the continent. the snake-like chain of islands in the southern hemisphere erupting as well.

"We are picking up thermonuclear air bursts in the five hundred megaton range. The nukes are emitting strontium ninety," the tactical officer announced, her voice hard-edged with rage.

"The bastards," Geoff whispered, "the damn bastards."

It had gone even beyond genocide. The planet was seeded with enough strontium 90 to wipe out the entire biosphere. The Kilrathi were destroying an entire planet simply as a demonstration of what was to come.

"I know why you're here, Captain, excuse me, I think I made you a Commodore. Anyhow, Commodore, you're wasting your time."

Without even waiting for an invitation Jason went over to the refridge in Kruger's wardroom, pulled out a container of beer and popped it open.

"Help yourself," Kruger said quietly and then paused, "you deserve it."

"You did well out there," Jason replied.

"Not good enough," and Kruger motioned to a flat screen projecting an image from a drone probe that was circling above the main airfield and town on the Hell Hole, at least what was left of it.

"Four antimatter warheads and one thermonuclear airburst loaded with strontium ninety. The world's a write-off."

"The bastards," Jason hissed, looking at the radiation read-outs. There had been an unwritten and unspoken agreement between the two sides since the start of the war, that no matter how grim the conflict was, the deliberate destruction of life-bearing capability of a planet was beyond the limits. It had been in part a self-serving rule for both sides, for both sides hoped for ultimate victory and with it the worlds inhabited by their foes.

"We just got this burst signal from the Confeds," and he switched the screen.

It was an official government news service report on the opening action in the Warsaw system and Jason watched, seething with rage as an optical scan showed the annihilation of Warsaw. The report finished with a demand from Baron Jukaga, delivered in the most sincere of voices, as if he were on the human side of the conflict, calling for an end to hostilities through the surrender of the Third Fleet. The closing comment came from President Quinson, a wonderfully crude response, delivered before a packed Senate meeting, and as he said the words the Senate came to its feet, roaring their support.

"I actually rather like Quinson," Kruger said, turning the screen off. "Too bad he's going to get his ass kicked."

"At least he'll go down fighting."

"A gallant gesture but useless in the end," Kruger said quietly.

Jason spared a look over at the holo tactical display.

"The Cats have pulled back?"

"Into the next system already. I've got a squadron of destroyers in pursuit. They're circled around the crippled carrier like a wolf pack defending its pups. Just what I wanted, they're shaken and are afraid of losing a second carrier.

"Now what?"

"Ah, what you came to hear."

Jason nodded.

"Stay here. The bastards will be back. We know where seven of their old carriers are now, rather six, thanks to the kill your pilots helped put in. That still leaves at least ten unaccounted for. They might hit us from another direction at any moment."

Kruger paused and looked up at Jason.

"Go on, I'm expecting to hear it. Even old Richards on that frigate I gave him is mumbling about it."

"Head for Sirius or Earth. Look, I'll admit when I first got here I didn't think much of your Landreich fleet and pilots. But by God I'll admit it now, they're the best I've ever seen. Brave to the point of suicidal."

"Sometimes I even have to ask that," Kruger replied quietly. "A trade-off of a couple of lives for many."

"They might help tip the scale."

"First of all, action will be joined there by then."

Jason nodded.

"But it still might be going on and we could help."

"And while I go running off what about my own people out here? You're proposing that I leave the planets and orbital colonies of my system defenseless and go riding off to help the Confederation? Your Confederation was willing to write us off thirty years back, and they did it again this time. Why the hell should I care?"

"Because the Confederation needs you, needs your leadership and your pilots."

Kruger snorted with disdain.

"Oh, solidarity of race against the Cats, is that your next pitch?"

"I knew that wouldn't work," Jason replied. "But you know damn well that when Earth and the inner worlds fall it's finished. What happened to Warsaw will happen to them. The Kilrathi are on a killing frenzy and they won't stop. They've levered the war up another notch. When they're done in there, they'll come out here and follow you and your people no matter where you flee."

Kruger said nothing, as if having heard the argument too many times before.

"So you won't go?"

"You guessed it."

"Will you release me and my people, give us at least Tarawa to head back?"

"No."

Jason had already calculated the chance of doing a Kruger on Kruger, of hijacking his carrier out of the fleet and knew it was impossible and useless. Nearly all the pilots and over half his crew were Landreich. Kruger had shrewdly made sure that none of the carriers had a majority of Confederation crews on board.

"You just can t forgive, can you?" Jason asked coldly. "Thirty years ago the Confederation made a mistake and I'd admit you made the right move in response. You know enough about me to know I did the same thing. I led a mutiny against an officer who ordered us to murder Kilrathi civilians and it would have destroyed my career if it hadn't been for Admiral Tolwyn.

"I went through hell because of that, but I never blamed the Confederation. I blamed the bastard who forced me to mutiny. For thirty years you ve been carrying a grudge and because of your damned stupid blind pride you'll condemn humanity to death.

"I'm not going to mutiny against you, Kruger, but when the Kilrathi finish with you, if I'm still alive, I'll spit on whatever is left of you."

Without waiting for a reply Jason Bondarevsky stormed out of President Kruger's office.

The two inhabited worlds of Sirius glimmered in the aft screen, showing themselves as two pale green points of light in the middle of the holo display of the system. Geoff jacked up the magnification level of the holo and the further of the two planets disappeared. On the far side of the holo display a nearly solid swarm of red blips were arrayed in five large clusters. Hundreds of smaller red lights, Kilrathi strike fighters and interceptors, were moving ahead, coming straight in at his own thin blue line, behind which were positioned four large blue dots. In the middle region of space between the two groups, two V wedges of small blue dots were aiming straight in at the heart of the enemy fleet.

"Strike forces crossing into Kilrathi controlled space," a voice whispered.

The Combat Information Center, buried in the heart of Concordia was almost like a tomb, encased in a double layering of durasteel, illuminated by soft diffused light and the shimmer of holo displays and flat screens. Outside a battle was raging, in here, where the decisions were being made, the cool professionalism of his staff made it seem almost like an exercise. Yet, as he spared a glance from the holo and looked around the room he could see the grim determination. After retreating through three star systems, and impotently witnessing the annihilation of the worlds he had been forced to abandon, Geoff Tolwyn had finally turned his fleet about. The Battle of Sirius had begun.

"Blue Squadron, this is Lone Wolf. Close it up. Remember, we want the big ones, nothing else, so cover your Broadswords."

"Lone Wolf, this is Round Top, read me?"

Kevin Tolwyn smiled; it was his old comrade from the Tarawa days.