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“Shipyards are technically
civilian targets,” Yorro pointed out.

“I’m sure there are civilians
working in them,” Park nodded, “but they are military if those yards are
building ships that can attack us. Warn them we’re about to bombard those
targets. Give them a fair chance to get non-combatants out of the area. Hell,
let them move out anything that breathes if they want. Just disable their
ability to fight back. Meanwhile establish a base on their moon.”

“Trohavn has three moons,” Yorro
pointed out.

“A planet for lovers then,” Park
shrugged. “Take over the big one then. It should have some symbolic
significance. If they already have a base there, so much the better. Treat any
prisoners well, especially civilians unless they behave badly after surrender
and then still treat them well. The Premm priests are not likely to ever surrender,
but there’s no need to get the populace on their side if we can avoid it. From
what I hear the people of Premm are not as fond of their priests as they might
be. They believe their religion, but not the men who preach it.”

“You sound like you’re not coming
back here, McArrgh,” Yorro commented.

“I plan to be right back,” Park
told him, “but you never know what will happen in a battle. So your standing
orders are to set up the siege then work at taking the planet. Figure out just
how many ships we need here then send on the rest to pacify the remaining Premm
Holy Empire.”

“That is beyond our original
orders from the Diet,” Yorro argued.

“Really?” Park asked. “That’s not
the way I read them. The Premm declared war on the Alliance and we were charged
with bringing that war to a speedy and least costly conclusion if possible.
Hanging around and counting the stars in Trohavn’s skies isn’t going to do that.
In any case, I should be back before you can even take position in orbit around
Trohavn.”

Of all the Earth ships,
Tawatir
was the slowest. At full speed
she could not keep up with the rest of the squadron and speed, Park knew, was
of the essence. So he watched his ships draw slowly away from him as they
chased the surviving Dark Ships to the Stierdach limit. Everyone knew that if
these Dark Ships were headed to Sol System with their planet-melting weapon, it
would be best to stop them before they got there.

Slowly, all too slowly, the other
Earth ships gradually lessened the distance between them and the fleeing Dark
ships.
Tawatir
was well behind the
rest when the Dark Ships suddenly winked out. “Where did they go?” Park
demanded.

“Calculating,” Garro told him.
Five seconds later he had an answer. “The system doesn’t have a name on our
charts, just a numeric designation.”

“Not inhabited then,” Park
commented. “Where?”

“Thirty-one light years to
galactic west,” Garro replied. “Not toward Sol.”

“No guarantees,” Park told him.
“The next jump could be directly into Saturn’s rings.” Just then the other
Earth ships winked out as well. “How long before we can follow?”

“Three hours, sir,” Garro
replied.

Park swallowed back his
frustration and shook his head. “Carry on, Mister Tinns.” He was about to get
out of his chair and start pacing the decks when Cousin suddenly jumped up into
his lap, craving attention.
I should stay
out of everyone’s way,
he reminded himself as he started to stroke her soft
brown fur.

After a while Cousin had enough
personal attention and started stroking Park’s hair in return.
Grooming behavior
, Park recalled from
anthropology classes and the spent the half hour tolerating Cousin;s notion of
grooming until she indicated it was her turn again. After that she went to
sleep on his lap, pinning him in place until it was time to follow the rest of
the ships.

The universe turned inside out
again and the odd coloration effect abruptly winked out. “Status?” Park asked
of his bridge officers.

“Successful translation to the
target system, Admiral,” Trag replied first.

“Scanning,” Iris replied immediately
after. “No enemy ships anywhere.”

“They got away?” Park asked.

“None of them did,” Marisea
replied. “At least that’s the chatter I’m picking up from two light minutes
ahead. Tina apparently led the squadron to a new perfect victory. All Dark
Ships accounted for and only minor damage to any of ours. Tina’s calling.” She
flipped a switch and Tina appeared from the waist up in the middle of the
bridge.

“You missed all the fun, Park,”
Tina Linea told him exultantly. “We caught the Dark Ships with their pants
down. They hardly fought back at all.”

“That’s odd,” Park commented.
There was a long pause as Tina just looked around as though waiting for
something. “Oh right, two minute light lag, Trag do what you can to shorten it,
please.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Trag click-clacked
at him.

“It was odd, yes,” Tina admitted.
“I was wondering if maybe the Dark Ship aliens did not react well to travelling
by star drive.”

“Maybe, but we haven’t notice
that before,” Park told her then waited for her next reply.

“True,” she eventually agreed,
“But how often have we encountered them less than a minute after a jump via
star drive?”

Park thought about that. “The
closest we’ve come to that was the very first time we met them and that must
have been at least ten to fifteen minutes. In any case this delayed chat is
tiring, stand by for star drive coordinates. We’ll jump back to Trohavn.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Tina nodded after
a long pause. “Be nice to finish a conversation before your hair finishes
turning gray.”

“My hair?” Park asked. “Oh, belay
that. See you on the other side.”

It took another twenty minutes to
confirm the transition coordinates for each of the ships and then, after the
usual inside-out Technicolor voyage, they were back in Trohavn system and
headed in toward the world of Trohavn itself.

“Call coming in from Admiral
Yorro,” Marisea informed Park. She played with the controls and added as
Yorro’s image began to form, “He’s fifteen light minutes inward from here.”

“Right,” Park
 
nodded.

“You lot didn’t take long,” Yorro
commented. “We’re still one day out from the planet, but the Premm Council is
defiant. They are demanding we leave their holy space and will sue for damages
from the Diet.”

“Oh yeah?” Park replied,
forgetting Yorro could not hear him “after declaring war on us?”

“I know what you’re thinking,”
Admiral Yorro smirked, “But they are also denying they ever declared war on the
entire Alliance.”

“Just Earth,” Marisea muttered.

“Just Earth,” Yorro seemed to
echo. “Well, I know what you are going to say, but since you are back, I have
to ask. Do you still plan to demand the surrender of Trohavn?”

“Admiral Yorro,” Park responded,
“The one thing I learned while a member of the Diet is that an attack on one
Alliance world is an attack on all. If the Premm wanted to pick a fight with
Earth specifically, they should have remained an Alliance member and leveled
charges within the Diet. Of course, that would hardly have allowed them to drop
the Bomb on us and that has always been their goal.

“So the Premm claim they were not
declaring war on the Alliance?” Park went on. “They were member worlds for over
a millennium. It is disingenuous for them to claim now that they didn’t realize
the entire Alliance would respond to their declaration.” He paused a moment
realizing Yorro had said something important; something he might not have
realize how important it was when he said it. “Admiral, did you say the Premm
Council made that statement? The entire council? Are they on Trohavn right now?
I’ll wait for your response.”

Park went on to order
Tawatir
ahead at full speed. “Emergency
speed, sir?” Trag asked, “or maximum speed that our artificial gravity can
compensate for?”

“Let’s try for a happy medium,
Pilot,” Park replied. “Navigator, work out an optimum time rendezvous course
with the fleet.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Garro responded.

“Park?” Iris asked. “What do you
have in mind?”

“I just don’t want to be late for
the party,” Park told her.

“You’re worried about more than
that,” she said incisively. “What?”

“Nothing I haven’t already said,”
Park admitted. “The Premm believe they have to destroy the Earth. It is a part
of their religion. I won’t feel truly safe until I know we’ve pulled all their
claws.”

“Even if you have to bathe their
planet in atomic fire?” Iris asked pointedly.

“That is a fate I would reserve
only for the men and women in charge,” Park replied. “Even then only if they
deserve it. So long as Earth is safe, so are they, from me at least.”

“Are there women in charge among
the Premm?” Marisea wondered. “It occurs to me that we don’t really know
anything about them.”

“There were women among their
delegation in the Diet,” Park replied, “though Lord Rebbert told me they rarely
spoke to the assembly. If the entire Premm Council is on Trohavn, however, it
seems to me that if we can force a surrender out of them, we will not have to
refight this battle on each of the other Premm worlds. It might also nullify
the Dark Ship threat as well, although until they talk to us, we will not know
for certain.”

“Perhaps defeating the Premm will
give them a reason to talk to us,” Iris suggested, but she did not sound as
though she thought the odds were good.

Eventually, Admiral Yorro’s
answer arrived. “So far as we know, it sounds as though the entire Premm
Council is here. Maybe not, but everything we hear is spoken as though it is
the Council making a statement. I will forward you the recordings. When should
we expect you to join us?”

Park told him and then settled
back for an uncomfortable high-acceleration trip inward. It took two days
before they were close enough for a comfortable conversation and by then the
rest of the Alliance ships were in orbit around Trohavn or else in place on Trohavn’s
lunar base. “We have identified their military bases and shipyards,” Admiral
Yorro reported.

“Good, I want to avoid as many
civilian casualties as we can,” Park nodded. “And have you demanded their
surrender?”

“In your name, by the power of
the Diet, I have,” Yorro replied.

“It wouldn’t have bothered me if
you took the credit,” Park shrugged.

“You’re the one they fear the
most, McArrgh,” Yorro pointed out. “It seemed to make threats all the more
creditable.”

“Yeah, I’m the bogieman,” Park
grumbled. “Premm mothers use my name to scare their kids into behaving. Yeah, I
get it. ‘Big, bad McArrgh will get you if you don’t watch out.”

“That should make you happy,
McArrgh,” Yorro told him.

“It doesn’t,” Park shook his
head. “I’m really a nice guy. Ask anyone who knows me. What I want most of all
is to explore the world I was born on and what I want least is to command a space
navy in the middle of a war. I don’t suppose threatening them with me did any
good?”

“I never thought it would,” Yorro
admitted. “The Premm Council is both arrogant and stupid. They are also all too
wrapped up in their airs of piety.”

“Perhaps we can use their
religious beliefs in our favor,” Park suggested. “Point out how capitulation is
in keeping with their doctrine in some way?”

“The only thing any of us know
about their doctrine is that they think your home world needs cleaning,” Yorro
pointed out.

“Yeah, and they won’t be pleased
if all I do is vacuum out the corners,” Park replied. “I was hoping that maybe
after a millennium of associating with the Premm someone in the Alliance might
know more about them than that.”

“They have told us very little about
themselves,” Yorro explained, “and have allowed very few outsiders on their
worlds. Absolutely no anthropologists allowed.”

“Do they even have a religion?”
Park wondered. “This whole burn-Earth-to-the-core thing has to have come from
somewhere. Seems to me that someone at some time might have questioned them on
that. I mean, it’s all well and good to be tolerant of another person’s
religion, but when it involves an unthinking holy crusade involving nuclear
devices I don’t think it is disrespectful to inquire as to the reasons they
believe that is necessary.”

“Someone probably did just that,”
Yorro countered, “one thousand years ago. No doubt the answers are recorded
deep in some dusty old memory bank. But you have to understand, the Premm were
not the most respected members of the Alliance. Until you came along we all
thought of them as a sort of joke, or maybe as that disreputable relative you
hope no one will realize is your cousin. We did not take them seriously and
since they never attempted to act on their belief that Earth should be
destroyed, we just shrugged it off.”

“And Earth was hardly anyone’s
favorite planet either,” Park commented sternly. “Between the gene-locked Mer
and the barbarian Atackack, no one wanted anything to do with Earth either.”

“We would hardly have condoned
your world’s destruction,” Yorro explained. “The Covenant that enforced Earth’s
quarantine was enacted to protect the people living there.”

“Every time I hear about the
Covenant I get another reason why it was enforced,” Park replied. “Well, let
that alone. We have a list of military targets? Good, I’m going to give the
Premm Council two hours to surrender. If they do not, and I don’t expect they
will, I’ll want every one of those targets eliminated.”

“The Holy Premm Empire will never
surrender to the Men of Darkness,” the speaker replied defiantly. He was not
only responding to the Alliance demands but broadcasting live across Pemmat
just minutes before the deadline of Park’s ultimatum. “We will never tolerate
the Abomination. The Premm are strong and can never be defeated. We shall
destroy all our enemies. Land on the Holy World and every man woman and child
will rise up destroy you in our pious wrath!”