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# CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE:
Ghosts of Kliean

"I am sorry to disturb you, Sir, but I think you should see this report."

Third Great Fang of the Khan Koraaza'khiniak, Lord Khiniak, sat up on his bed pad as Claw of the Khan Thaariahn'reethnau entered the cramped sleeping cabin. The small, spartan compartment was located immediately off Kinaasha'defarnoo's CIC, and the great fang had discovered that it was entirely too conveniently placed. The monitor's designers had intended it for the emergency use of a flag officer during sustained maneuvering and combat, not as someplace for a fleet commander to spend every night. He supposed some might argue that his decision to essentially move himself permanently into the cabin for the immediate future might be less than fully reassuring to some of his personnel, and he was certain that the proximity to CIC, Flag Bridge, and Plotting wasn't doing a good things for his own regular and undisturbed sleep patterns.

Despite that, he had no intention of changing his routine. From the moment Lord Talphon's official permission to proceed with his long-planned offensive had arrived in Shanak, he'd been an impatient zeget on a fraying leash, and he didn't particularly care that his behavior meant his officers and crews had to be fully aware of that fact. In fact, he wanted them to be aware. Wanted them to share his own focused, almost feverish sense of exalted anticipation.

And they did. Lord Khiniak doubted that anyone outside Third Fleet, with the exceptions of Raymond Prescott and Zhaarnak'telmasa, had anything like a true grasp of what his command had become over the seven dreary standard years of waiting in this accursed star system. It was the ambition of any officer of the Zheeerlikou'valkhannaiee to train his warriors as farshatok—that term the Humans translated, accurately but incompletely, as the "fingers of a fist." Of course, Human fists were blunt, clawless instruments, but the sense came through. But Third Fleet had gone beyond that. His personnel were not simply farshatok, not simply a band of warriors who fought with perfect unity, teamwork, and ferocity, but vilka'farshatok, warriors of a single clan—of one blood, whatever their birth or clan affiliation. Even the Gormish units of his command had been touched by Third Fleet's eagerness to avenge Kliean, and so Lord Khiniak had no fear they would misinterpret his eagerness as anxiety or uncertainty.

Unfortunately, despite the permission he'd been given to mount his longed-for attack, he wasn't free to proceed with operations the way he truly wished to. Given a more perfect universe, he would have restricted himself to a single recon drone probe of the closed warp point. Just enough to secure the data he required to program his SBMHAWKs before he launched his entire fleet at the Bugs' throats. In the long run, any risks involved in that approach would almost certainly have been offset by the fact that it would have allowed him to retain the element of surprise.

But there were other factors to consider—the same factors, in many ways, which had driven Zhaarnak'telmasa to fall back from Kliean before the Bugs' initial onslaught. Although Lord Khiniak and his crews regarded themselves as an offensive weapon, they could never forget that their true function for seven endless Human years—almost fourteen of their own—had been to stand as a barrier between any additional Bug attacks and the heavily populated star systems which lay beyond Kliean and Telmasa. Certainly, the Strategy Board hadn't forgotten, and Fang Kthaara's permission to proceed hadn't arrived completely free of strings.

Koraaza'khiniak suspected that Kthaara had been forced to attach those strings largely for political considerations, but to his own sensitive nostrils some of them carried the definite scent of Fleet Speaker Noraku's caution, as well. In fairness, few beings in the explored universe were less politically motivated than Noraku, and while Koraaza often found the Gorm representative's deliberate, phlegmatic approach to problems even more maddening than he found most Humans, the Third Fleet commander was forced to concede that this particular set of strings wasn't entirely senseless.

Given the fact that the Bugs clearly had been forced more and more heavily onto the defensive, it was impossible even for him to argue that an attack from Shanak was essential. Valuable and extremely useful, yes; essential, no. Koraaza believed fervently that his proposed offensive would help shorten the war, but he wasn't blind to the fact that his thirst to engage the enemy was as much the product of his people's code of honor as of cold, strategic analysis. The one didn't invalidate the conclusions of the other, yet the Zheeerlikou'valkhannaiee had learned the hard way (which—he conceded in the privacy of his own thoughts—was the way in which they seemed to learn all of their lessons) that the pragmatism of their Gorm allies and their one-time Human foes was just as important as honor when it came to planning military operations. And, pragmatically speaking, it was far more important to the Alliance that Third Fleet prevent any possibility of a last-ditch Bug offensive out of Shanak than it was for that same fleet to launch an offensive of its own.

If that was true, then it only made sense—however much he resented it—to be certain before any offensive was launched that it was in a position to succeed without risking the destruction of Third Fleet's protective barrier. Which explained both the substantial reinforcements GFGHQ had somehow managed to pry loose from the rear area pickets and also the very specific orders from Centauri which had required him to conduct a thorough reconnaissance of the warp point defenses—if any—awaiting him on the far side of the warp point in the system which the Alliance's astrographers had designated Bug-06.

Bug-06, his probes had quickly revealed, was a largely useless binary system with a K-4 class primary and a dim ember of a red dwarf secondary component. The two-star system boasted a total of ten planets, one of them inhabited, and a single massive asteroid belt, but it was obvious that it could have been only a staging point for the massive forces which had streamed forward to murder Kliean and to threaten Alowan and Hairnow with matching destruction seven years earlier. The relatively small (by Bug standards, at least) population of the K-4 star's innermost planet was far too tiny to have supported such an attack . . . or the massive Bug fleet which hovered now within two light-minutes of the closed warp point's far terminus.

The drone probe data had to be taken with a grain of salt, as a Human might have put it, given the Bugs demonstrated ability to use deception mode ECM effectively. Even allowing for that, however, it was clear to Koraaza that his earlier suspicion that the Bugs realized perfectly well that the Alliance had determined the warp point's location had been accurate. At least seventy massive Type Six OWPs hovered within missile and beam range of the warp point through which any attack must come, supported by forty-plus heavy and light cruisers, at least ten thousand patterns of mines, and thousands of laser buoys, all liberally seeded with jammer and deception-mode ECM buoys. Which didn't even include any of the hundred-plus superdreadnoughts, their supporting battlecruisers and cruisers, and the hordes of gunboats and suicide small craft which undoubtedly stood ready to assist them in repelling any attack.

In light of the way in which Operation Retribution and Operation Ivan had obviously stretched the Bugs' available strength to and beyond the breaking point, even Koraaza had been surprised by the numbers of starships detailed to defend what clearly was at best a secondary system. On the other hand, the presence of so many mobile units might well serve as further support of his theory that one of the "home hive" systems stood in relatively close proximity to Shanak. If there were only one or two stars between Shanak and one of the Bugs' core population concentrations, then this "secondary" star system would be of crucial importance despite its unprepossessing appearances. Not only that, but the Bugs had discovered by now, if they hadn't already known, what happened when the "Shiva Option" was applied in a heavily populated system. They must realize as well as the Alliance that they simply could not allow a bombarding fleet into range of a major population center without effectively writing off every military unit in the same star system. Which meant the pressure to defend such perimeter systems as Bug-06 must be even greater than ever.

None of which had made the forces arrayed against Third Fleet any more palatable. Despite the firepower massed to cover the warp point, Koraaza was confident he and his vilka'farshatok could fight their way into the system with acceptable losses. The problem was that there was no way to predict what additional forces the Bugs might hold in reserve. Losses which would be acceptable under other circumstances would become intolerable if the Bugs turned out to have had the resources and cunning to bring up an even more powerful fleet and hide it in cloak somewhere beyond the units the recon drones could see. It was extremely unlikely, given how hard-pressed they were on other fronts, but the shattering experience of Operation Pesthouse continued to loom in the back of every Allied strategist's thoughts. If the Bugs were able and willing to sacrifice the OWPs and their immediate supporting warships as bait, inflicting attritional losses on an attacker in a "losing" battle that lured the attacker into position to be crushed by an even more powerful fleet waiting in ambush, then a quick riposte through Shanak and Kliean could win them enormous prizes.

It was that same thinking, in no small part, which had inspired GFGHQ to come up with the reinforcements headed towards Shanak. Although Koraaza was far too good an officer to turn up his nose at the offer of additional forces, he had to admit that he was of two minds in this instance. On the one hand, such a substantial increase in his order of battle would be highly welcome. On the other, any newcomers, however well-trained and motivated, would be just that—newcomers.

Few civilians, and, unfortunately, not all flag officers, truly understood the extent to which any effective fleet was a single living, breathing organism. Oh, if a Navy had fundamentally sound doctrine, uniform training standards, and officers who made it their business to see that both of them were firmly adhered to, then there was no reason—in theory—why a fleet or task force organization couldn't simply be made up of randomly selected units and committed to battle. But theory, as always, had a distressing tendency to come up short when confronted with reality.

There had been altogether too many occasions in history, Human as well as that of the Zheeerlikou'valkhannaiee, when there'd been no option but to assemble such scratch forces, commit them to action, and pray for the best. On occasion, they'd actually produced victory, but that virtually never happened when they faced competent opposition, and the reasons were simple. In battle, it was absolutely essential that cohesion and the unity of purpose be maintained, and that an entire fleet act in unison with a clearly understood objective. That was true from the very highest level of strategic planning down to—and perhaps even more especially at—the tactical level of individual squadrons and starships. Teamwork, training, mutual confidence, and the knowledge that when an order was given both he who gave it and he who received it understood it to mean exactly the same thing. . . .

Those were fundamental keys to success, and to commit a fleet which lacked them to battle, was to send it against the foe with its claws broken and one hand tied behind its back. That was the very reason that Zhaarnak'telmasa and Raymond Prescott had been forced to hold so long and so desperately in Alowan and Telmasa seven years earlier before Koraaza brought Third Fleet to their relief. His ships had come from every conceivable source, piled together in whatever order they had arrived, and he'd had no choice but to hold them at the sector capital while he drilled them mercilessly until they could at least all get underway, on the same course, on the same day.

And that was the reason his current reinforcements were, to some extent, what the Humans called a "double-edged sword." Their firepower would be most welcome, but unlike his vilka'farshatok, they wouldn't be completely familiar with his plans and his thoughts or the procedures of his existing fleet. Nor would it be possible to truly integrate them into Third Fleet's structure in the time available, and so they would bring weaknesses as well as strengths.

But whatever impact the reinforcements' arrival might have, they weren't here yet. Koraaza wasn't categorically forbidden to begin his attack without them if the Bugs' dispositions in Bug-06 offered him an opportunity. At the same time, he was well aware that he was expected to defer any offensive until they joined him. Any great fang was also expected to exercise his own judgment, but if he began operations before his entire assigned force had assembled and things went poorly, more than enough critics would emerge to explain to him precisely how he'd failed his Khan and his people.

It had seemed any such quandary was unlikely to arise, however. Koraaza was confident his analysts would eventually be able to determine what the Bugs were actually up to with a reasonable degree of certainty. Thanks to the Humans, there was no shortage of recon drones, and since his orders had already cost him the chance for strategic surprise, he was prepared to expend the drones in any required numbers before he committed his warriors to an attack. And he remained confident that the analysts' final conclusion would support his own theory. But until that happened, he was bound by the letter of his orders to proceed with all deliberate caution. Which meant Third Fleet would sit here, sending massive waves of drones through at staggered intervals while its covering fighters pounced upon and annihilated any Bug gunboat that dared to show itself in Shanak space, until Koraaza's honor permitted him to conclude in good faith that he could launch his own attack without jeopardizing the security of the populated systems behind him.

It appeared that it would require weeks to reach that point, during which time the Bugs would be given every opportunity to prepare for his obviously impending offensive. The fact that it would also give time for the arrival of his own reinforcements had struck him as no more than partial compensation for alerting the Bugs to the incipient threat, but there'd been nothing he could do about that except prowl around CIC and Flag Bridge like an irritated zeget to "encourage" his tactical officers' efforts.

Unless, of course, Thaariahn's diffident interruption of his sleep meant something important had changed.

"What is it you wish me to see?" he asked his operations officer as he brushed the sleep from his eyes.

"We have just recovered the latest probe volley, Sir," Thaariahn replied, and held out an electronic message board. Koraaza took it, but he never lowered his eyes from the claw's face, and one ear cocked in question.

"The Bahgs' ECM continues to generate hundreds of false sensor images," Thaariahn said, answering the unasked question, "but this data—" he gestured at the pad Koraaza now held "—appears to indicate that their entire mobile force is withdrawing."

"Withdrawing?" Koraaza repeated sharply, and Thaariahn flicked both ears in agreement.

"The sensor readings are unambiguous, Sir. It is, of course, possible that this represents some sort of ruse or deceptive maneuver on their part, but CIC's confidence is high. A follow-up probe volley has already been dispatched on my authority to confirm the original readings, but I do not expect its findings to alter CIC's present evaluation."

The effort the claw made to restrain his own enthusiasm was obvious, despite his deliberately measured tone, but he was far too professional to allow overconfidence—his own, or anyone else's—to lead Third Fleet into a Pesthouse-style ambush. Koraaza approved heartily, and he concentrated on matching his ops officer's restraint as he keyed the message board alive and studied its contents.

There was no way to know what had caused the sudden change in the enemy's long-standing defensive deployments, but as Thaariahn had said, the readings themselves were certainly clear enough. Whatever the Bugs were up to, they didn't appear to be wasting any effort on subtlety. They hadn't even attempted to conceal their departure. Indeed, the suddenness with which they'd brought up their drives and the engine-straining speed at which they'd sped off across the star system, had all the earmarks of an emergency departure.

"It would appear that you and CIC are correct, Thaariahn—at least as far as the fact of the Bahgs' starships' departure is concerned," Koraaza said after a moment. "As you say, however, the question of precisely why they have been so obliging as to suddenly withdraw by far the more effective portion of their defensive force is quite another consideration."

"Truth, Sir," the ops officer agreed. "But whatever their motive, it seems they have presented us with the opportunity we have sought. Assuming, that is, that this is not an elaborate effort to bait some sort of trap for us."

"A possibility no one is likely to overlook after what happened to the Humans' Second Fleet," Koraaza acknowledged. "And one which assumes added weight given the fact that our own reinforcements have not yet arrived. By the same token, however, we cannot allow ourselves to worry our way into ineffectiveness. Nothing is ever truly certain in battle . . . except that he who attempts to avoid all risk will never attain decisive victory."

He switched off the pad, laid it aside, reached for his uniform harness, and stood.

"You have done well," he told his ops officer. "I will join the duty watch in CIC until your fresh probe volley returns and its data can be processed. But you, I fear, will have other duties while I await that information."

"Other duties?" Thaariahn cocked both ears, and Koraaza gave a purring chuckle as he buckled his harness.

"Indeed, Claw Thaariahn. I realize it will require some hours of frenzied effort on your part, but I want the Fleet brought to immediate readiness and a complete SBMHAWK bombardment plan ready for implementation the instant I give the command!"

* * *

The timing couldn't have been worse.

The Fleet had feared all along that the Enemy would eventually launch an attack through the closed warp point which had allowed the Fleet to destroy two of the Enemy's World's Which Must Be Defended. The Fleet certainly would have done so in his place . . . once it discovered the location of the warp point, and it had long seemed likely the Enemy had done just that. There'd been no way to be certain, but careful analysis had suggested that the one battlecruiser which was known with certainty to have been in position to detect the transit of one of the Fleet's scout cruisers had probably done so . . . and gotten its courier drones off before it could be destroyed.

That possibility had not eased the Fleet's strategic constraints. According to prewar doctrine, the Fleet ought to have assembled a massive shell of orbital fortresses and minefields to cover the open end of the warp line the instant the presence of an enemy beyond it became known. That was especially true for a warp point which simultaneously lay in such close proximity to a System Which Must Be Defended and offered a potential route by which the Enemy might be attacked in turn. The only way to ensure that a closed warp point was never detected was never to use it, but the rich prizes which the Fleet had already gained through its use strongly suggested that still richer ones remained to be gained as soon as the Fleet could revert to offensive operations. Yet there was no way to know when such operations might become feasible without maintaining a scouting presence beyond the warp point, and that meant scout ships had no choice but to make transit on a semi-regular basis.

Under prewar doctrine, the risk of revealing the warp point's location had been more than justified by the opportunity, yet the proximity of a System Which Must Be Defended absolutely mandated that the strongest possible defenses be emplaced. Unfortunately, the massive losses which all components of the Fleet had suffered in its unrelenting battles against the most unpleasantly resilient New Enemies and Old Enemies had forced some compromise decisions. The New Enemies' passive stance in the system beyond the closed warp point had suggested at least a possibility that they would remain passive—that the losses their Worlds Which Must Be Defended had already suffered had driven them completely onto the defensive here, as had been the case on the front on which the New Enemies had initially been contacted at the war's beginning. Moreover, the fact that it was a closed warp point whose location the Fleet was reasonably certain was unknown to the Enemy automatically reduced its place in the hierarchy of threats the Fleet had suddenly found itself forced to confront. But most significantly of all, the Fleet simply could not fortify every threatened point on the lavish scale prewar doctrine had required. There hadn't been sufficient resources for that—not if combat losses were to be replaced and the new starship types and the new gunboats were to be constructed in sufficient numbers—even before the Enemy had successfully destroyed the first World Which Must Be Defended.

The huge Reserve which had been built up between the last contact with the Old Enemies and the first contact with the New had been gone even before the New Enemies finally determined the location of the closed warp point. Now almost all the new construction starships were also gone. Sixty percent of the shipyards which had built both the Reserve and the new Fleet were gone, as well, and so were the workers, and the foundries, and the asteroid mining ships which had supported them. And so, even with the total resources of the System Which Must Be Defended this Fleet component was assigned to protect, there was no real possibility of erecting the proper fixed defenses. Yet there was also no option but to mount the strongest possible defense here, where the attackers couldn't possibly strike the Worlds Which Must Be Defended and so cripple the starships and fortresses attempting to protect them.

Since the gunboats and suicide craft must be retained in the System Which Must Be Defended, the only real alternative had been to build up the strongest fixed defenses possible—largely by dismantling existing OWPs in the System Which Must Be Defended and transporting them here to be reassembled—and to station the Fleet's main remaining starship strength here to support them while relying upon massive numbers of lighter units to protect the System Which Must Be Defended from the other direction.

Ultimately, there was no way to hold this system against the numbers the Enemy could bring to bear upon it, and the Fleet knew it. Yet what other option did the Fleet have but to try? The actions of the Enemies, Old and New alike, clearly demonstrated that their fleet had adopted precisely the same logic the Fleet had, which at least simplified the Fleet's menu of strategic choices. When the only possible alternative to victory was extinction, surrender and strategic withdrawal were no longer options worthy of consideration.

At least the Fleet had known it enjoyed one enormous advantage, for there was no way for the Enemy to know that the System Which Must Be Defended was simultaneously threatened from two separate directions. Or so the Fleet had believed.

Now that no longer seemed so certain. The sudden introduction of the tiny robotic spies through the warp point had finally resolved any ambiguity over whether or not the Enemy knew its location. It still seemed impossible for there to be any way in which the Enemy could have extrapolated the warp lines which converged in the System Which Must Be Defended, yet the Fleet had been . . . anxious in the wake of the first attack on the System Which Must Be Defended. The original deployment plan hadn't been altered, since no better alternative offered itself, yet the Enemy's habit of launching widespread offensives, now here, now there, had accustomed the Fleet to thinking in terms of attacks carefully timed to strike the Fleet at the most inopportune possible moments. Whether or not the Enemy realized that he had two possible avenues by which to approach the System Which Must Be Defended, the possibility that he might launch separate, near-simultaneous attacks upon it—even by accident—had deepened the Fleet's anxiety.

And now this. The frantic messages from the System Which Must Be Defended left the mobile units no choice. There was no point in maintaining a grip on this unimportant star system if the System Which Must Be Defended was lost, and only the mobile forces here could possibly provide an unshaken force with which to defend the remaining Worlds Which Must Be Defended. And so the starships and their attendant gunboats had begun their high-speed run back to the System Which Must Be Defended . . . just as yet another flight of the Enemy's drones transited the warp point.

The Fleet hesitated almost imperceptibly, torn between the reflex to return to the defense of the warp point and its imperative orders to race to the rescue of the Worlds Which Must Be Defended. But that hesitation was brief, meaningless. The only reason for the Fleet's existence was to protect the Worlds Which Must Be Defended. That was not its primary task; that was its only task, and so the withdrawal continued despite the opportunity the retreat offered to the Enemy beyond the closed warp point.

It was all a matter of timing.

* * *

Koraaza'khiniak gazed at the icons in his master plot and felt the eyes of his task force commanders upon him. They weren't physically present in Kinaasha'defarnoo's CIC, yet he knew their attention was intensely focused upon their own duplicate plots and the displays of the com links which joined them to his flag bridge. And as he felt those eyes, he sensed the matching eagerness which blazed behind them.

It is still too early, he made himself think. Lord Talphon's reinforcements are still en route. Their arrival will increase my nominal combat power by at least twenty-five percent, and suddenly that no longer seems such a "minor" consideration! And yet . . . and yet . . .

He very carefully didn't look over his shoulder at the com screens which would have shown him his commanders' faces and expressions. This was his decision, and his alone, and so he would make it alone. And truth to tell, even as he conscientiously considered all of the reasons against attacking, he already knew what that decision would be.

"Your pardon, Great Fang," Thaariahn said quietly, appearing suddenly at his elbow. "The SBMHAWK bombardment plan you requested has been completed."

"It has?" Koraaza never looked away from his plot, but he sensed Thaariahn's ear flick of agreement.

"It has, Sir. Small Fang Kraiisahka has worked out the details and is prepared to deploy the pods at your command."

"I see." Koraaza hid a small smile at Thaariahn's studiously uninflected statement. Kraiisahka'khiniak-ahn was both his most junior and perhaps his most promising task force commander. She was also his daughter-in-law, of whom he was inordinately fond. The Khanate had none of the Federation's official disapproval of nepotism (which, Koraaza had long since concluded, was far more a matter of appearances than substance, even among the inexplicable Humans), yet Kraiisahka had made it respectfully but firmly clear that she intended to win any commands or advancement on her own merits. In general terms, Koraaza agreed with her. Senior command slots were too important to be handed to anyone who hadn't proved his—or her—ability, whoever he or she might happen to be related to. On the other hand, such matters of principle could be taken too far, and so he'd made it quietly clear to Thaariahn that he expected his operations officer to keep a distantly protective eye on her. Since she was senior to the ops officer and possessed a temper even the most charitable would have described as fiery, Thaariahn's assignment had not been an enviable one.

"Show me the details," the great fang said after a moment, and the claw tapped a series of commands into the master plot.

Koraaza watched the icons flash through the projected deployment and launch and grunted in satisfaction. Given the heavy ECM environment into which the SBMHAWKs would be emerging, Kraiisahka had opted for what would almost certainly be proven a massive case of overkill where the orbital fortresses and relatively immobile heavy cruisers were concerned. It would cut deeply into Third Fleet's store of the warp-capable missiles, but he'd amassed huge numbers of them and he heartily approved of her logic. Better to use more than were strictly necessary than to use too few and suffer avoidable losses during the break-in. That was a lesson he'd learned the hard way—and at the cost of far too many lives—when he first retook this system so many years before. Zhaarnak'telmasa had made that point to him at the time he'd planned his original assault, but Koraaza had still been too accustomed to thinking in terms of the Khanate's tight prewar fiscal constraints. The cornucopia of the Human Federation's production capabilities had long since loosened them . . . and the lives he'd paid would have driven him to break them even if they hadn't loosened.

He reran the plan twice more, then looked up and turned at last to the com screens and his waiting flag officers.

"I approve Small Fang Kraiisahka's proposed bombardment plan," he said formally. "Small Fang," he looked directly at his daughter-in-law, "you will begin pod deployment immediately. The attack will begin thirty-five minutes from now."

* * *

The grim, massive OWPs waited silently amid the protective embrace of the minefields, energy platforms, and ECM buoys. The light of the system primary was wan here, touching the hulking fortresses with only the feeblest of glows against the eternal dark of the diamond-chip immensity of space. It was a region of cold and dark, well suited to the beings who crewed those ominous defenses.

But then, suddenly, the cold and dark were touched by something else. Only the OWPs' sensors saw the first, invisible flicker of movement as the initial wave of missile pods made transit, but what had been invisible to the organic eye became a wall of sun-bright fury as the wrath of Hiarnow'khanark, the ancient war god of the Zheeerlikou'valkhannaiee, and his death messenger Valkha reached out for the beings who had murdered so many of their people. Dozens of the transiting pods interpenetrated and vanished, building that wall of fire as they immolated themselves in space-wracking spits of dragon venom, but even as dozens perished, hundreds upon hundreds survived.

The Bugs aboard those doomed fortresses and the handful of slow, obsolete warp point defense cruisers which had been left to support them had just long enough to realize that the Ghosts of Kliean had come for them.

And then the surviving pods launched.

* * *

Koraaza'khiniak studied his display with grim, vengeful satisfaction. Kraiisahka's bombardment plan had consumed over half of Third Fleet's total supply of warp-capable munitions. More were available from his stockpiles in Hairnow and the systems further up the warp lines, and although it would take time to bring them forward, Koraaza felt no temptation to complain. The massive wave of SBMHAWKs had blasted every fortress out of existence before the first Allied starship made transit. They and the other specialized missiles had blotted away every cruiser, and virtually all of the waiting gunboats, as well, despite everything the Bugs' ECM could do, and Third Fleet had flowed steadily into Bug-06 without the loss of a single starship.

It had been a very Human-style attack, the great fang thought to himself, but the thought held only profound satisfaction, not complaint. The Zheeerlikou'valkhannaiee had learned to adopt those tactics which worked from enemies and allies alike, and that was good. But even as they adopted the techniques of others, they'd remained themselves, and it was time for Koraaza's vilka'farshatok to demonstrate what that meant.

"We are getting back the first detailed reports on the planet, Sir," Thaariahn informed him. "Our initial assessment appears to have been accurate. The new drone reports indicate that the orbital defenses are minimal—one space station of no more than moderate size, and no more than half a dozen orbital fortresses, the largest considerably smaller than any we confronted here."

"Is there any sign of planet-launched gunboats?" Koraaza asked.

"None at this time," Thaariahn replied. "I suppose it is possible that they are retaining them until we close with the planet, but that would not be consistent with anything we have seen out of them in the past."

"No, it would not," Koraaza said thoughtfully, combing his whiskers with the claws of his right hand while he considered the master plot. He paid particular attention to the projected course of the Bug starships. They had never wavered from their original heading and continued to stream away from Third Fleet at their maximum speed, which raised several interesting questions.

Why had they fallen back from the warp point in the first place? Especially when the steady flow of recon drones from Shanak must have confirmed that an attack was imminent? Surely only some dire emergency somewhere else could account for such a maneuver after so long spent patiently and obviously awaiting that attack. The most logical explanation to suggest itself to him was that some other Allied attack had presented a threat to a more important objective somewhere else. Unfortunately, given his total ignorance of how the warp lines beyond this system related to one another, it was impossible to make any sort of guess as to what that objective might be.

But that left three other intriguing considerations. First, where exactly was the warp point for which they were bound? They'd attempted to go back into cloak, but the long-range recon drones had managed to hold them, and now recon fighters shadowed them cautiously, covered by no less than six strikegroups of escort fighters. Given the energy signatures starship drives radiated at the Bugs' current speed, not even the best ECM in the galaxy would be able to hide them from the exquisitely sensitive sensors of his scout craft. So wherever they were headed, he should be able to track and pursue them.

Which led naturally to the second consideration—how long would it take them to reach their exit warp point? His own entry point lay just over a hundred light-minutes from the system primary in what the Humans would have called the "four o'clock" position. The single habitable world was barely four light-minutes from its cool star in the "seven o'clock" position, which placed it just over two light-hours from Third Fleet's present location, while the Bugs' starships were headed away from his command on a bearing of approximately six o'clock and had already put almost a light-hour between them. That, unfortunately, was the sum total of his knowledge of the system's astrography. He knew how long it would take him to reach and attack the planet, but he had no way of knowing whether he could execute the Shiva Option before the Bugs fled through their destination warp point and thereby avoided the psychic shockwave.

Without that knowledge, the decision between attacking the planet and going in immediate pursuit of his fleeing enemies in hopes of following them through the warp point before they could fully prepare themselves to receive his attack was a difficult one. Worse, the Bug population in this system was relatively small, and that was the third and final consideration, for he was far from certain the Shiva Option could produce sufficient casualties to generate the disorientation which resulted from the destruction of larger populations.

He combed his whiskers for a few more moments, then reached his decision and turned to a communications tech.

"Connect me to Small Fang Kraiisahka."

"At once, Great Fang!"

The tech was as good as his word, and Koraaza smiled as Kraiisahka appeared on his com screen.

"Your bombardment plan succeeded handily, I see," he observed. "Congratulations. You did well." He allowed his pride in her to show in his smile and the set of his ears, but, mindful of her determination not to rely upon connections of blood and family, he was careful to actually say no more than that.

"Thank you, Great Fang," she replied formally. Koraaza fully recognized that she was at least as deadly as any other officer under his command, yet he couldn't set aside the thought—inappropriate though he knew it to be—that she was also as cute as a kitten. Not that he permitted a trace of that thought to color his manner.

"Now," he continued, "we must proceed to the next stage. I believe that under the circumstances, it is time to activate Zhardok Three." A shadow of disappointment flickered through Kraiisahka's eyes, but she was clearly unsurprised, and he felt a fresh surge of pride as she waited calmly and without protest for her orders. "You will return to Shanak with your task force," he told her, "and use your carriers to ferry the fighter reserve through to this system. I will detach your organic strikegroups and assign them to Small Fang Huaada. As you transport each wave of the reserve into Bahg-06, you will equip them with life-support packs and send them to join Huaada, as well."

"As you command, Great Fang," Kraiisahka acknowledged levelly.

Eleventh Small Fang Huaada'jokhaara-ahn commanded Task Force 33, the main carrier force of Third Fleet. Her twenty-four fleet carriers and their escorts were only slightly more numerous than Kraiisahka's own Task Force 34, but Kraiisahka's most powerful units were her twenty-eight light carriers, and they carried less than seven hundred strikefighters, compared to the thousand-plus aboard Huaada's big carriers. Perhaps more to the point, Huaada's ships were not only larger, they were much tougher and more survivable, and Kraiisahka knew it. Her own task force, as she'd also known from the beginning, was little more than a ferry command, suitable for the transportation of fighters through warp points but with no business anywhere gunboats and kamikazes could get at them. The fact that Koraaza had permitted her to plan and execute the SBMHAWK bombardment which had blown Third Fleet's way into the star system was already more than she'd realistically expected, and she took her demotion to freight hauler with calm dignity.

"The last two waves of the reserve," Koraaza continued after only the briefest of pauses, "will not be sent on to Huaada, however. Instead, you will retain them here under your own command and proceed against this system's inhabited planet." Her eyes widened, and almost unconsciously, she came to the position of attention. He held her gaze steadily, fully aware of the surprise and pride which filled her in that moment. "You will," he told her quietly, "execute the Shiiivaaa Option against that planet."

"Of course, Great Fang!" she replied, and the acknowledgment was a promise that she would not fail the trust he'd reposed in her.

"Very well, Small Fang," he said. "I will expect a report of your successful completion of your assignment within the next forty standard hours."

"Yes, Sir!"

He flicked his ears at her in a gesture which mingled approval, expectation, and dismissal, and returned his attention to Thaariahn as the com screen went blank.

"You heard?"

"Yes, Sir." Thaariahn seemed somewhat less enthusiastic than Kraiisahka had been, and Koraaza suppressed a small chuckle. His operations officer was a meticulous and methodical soul. He understood the logic of what Koraaza intended, but its improvised nature offended his inherent sense of neatness.

Well, it wasn't precisely the way Koraaza would have preferred to proceed in a more perfect universe, either. Unfortunately, in the universe in which Third Fleet actually lived, he had too few fighter platforms to transport all of the fighters available to him. At the same time, it was likely that he would require every fighter he had when he finally ran the retreating Bug starships to ground. If he'd been able to await the arrival of the remainder of Lord Talphon's reinforcements, his carrier strength would have more than doubled. In the absence of those additional carriers, however, the only way to get the fighter strength he needed far enough forward to be of any use was to use the technique the Humans called "hot bay." By rotating fighters through his available carriers' hanger bays in succession he could effectively triple the number of fighters each of those carriers could support. The downside was that it would place an enormous strain upon his maintenance and service crews, not to mention the pilots themselves, since two-thirds of his total fighter strength would have to be in space at any given moment. And it also meant he would be forced to use a carrier shuttle technique to transport his total strength through the next warp point, which could pose some severe problems, particularly if it proved necessary to retreat quickly.

Still, the ability to send almost six thousand fighters into action was worth a few inconveniences and potential problems, especially if he and his vilka'farshatok encountered what the Humans had dubbed the Bughouse Swarm.

"Very well, Claw," Koraaza'khiniak told his ops officer. "Let us place the remainder of the fleet in motion. I doubt that it will be possible to overtake the enemy before they make transit, but there is at least the possibility that Small Fang Kraiisahka will be able to execute the Shiiivaaa Option before they leave the system. If so, I would very much like to arrive close enough upon their heels to take advantage of their confusion."

"At once, Sir."

Lord Khiniak returned his attention to the master plot while Thaariahn's crisp directives sped outward from his flagship.

The ghosts are not yet satisfied, he told the fleeing light codes of his enemies, recalling a conversation with Zhaarnak'telmasa and his vilkshatha brother. But they will be. Oh, yes. They will be.

* * *

The Fleet raced onward, and if the beings who crewed its ships had been anything remotely like what their enemies called individuals, and if those individuals had believed in anything greater than the omnivoracity of their own species, the passages and compartments of those vessels would have been filled with furious protests against fate or whatever might have served them as a god.

The Enemy who had so savaged the System Which Must Be Defended wasn't following the course which had been predicted for him. True, he was returning from the secondary component of the system, but he wasn't headed directly for the remaining Worlds Which Must Be Defended. Instead, he'd chosen a course which would ensure he could retreat to the warp point by which he'd first entered the system . . . before the Fleet could intercept him. The Fleet could scarcely complain if the Enemy chose not to kill those worlds, but his maneuvers meant the Fleet would be unable to bring him to action.

Worse, the withdrawal of the mobile units from the warp point in this system had greatly facilitated the successful incursion of the second Enemy force. Given the flood of warp-capable missiles which had poured through the warp point, it was certainly possible that the mobile units would have been destroyed along with the fortresses had they not withdrawn, but that didn't alter the fact that the Fleet now had no choice but to flee from a force which it might otherwise have met in deep space battle with at least some prospect of victory. Not when the Enemy was in position to wipe all life from this system's inhabited world and so paralyze and disorganize the Fleet.

No. All the Fleet could do now was to continue to run, hoping it could reach the warp point and make transit to the System Which Must Be Defended before this fresh force of New Enemies was able to carry out the attack which would disrupt and disable the last intact force remaining to defend it. And at least enough time had elapsed for the gunboats and kamikazes in the System Which Must Be Defended to recover from the death shock of the Planets Which Must Be Defended which had already died. So when the Fleet did make transit, it was probable that there would be at least some support for it.

Any other species might have reflected upon the bitter irony which had sent the Fleet racing from one position towards another only to find itself caught between them and unable to intervene at either at the critical moment. But the beings which crewed the Fleet weren't like any other species. They were as immune to irony as they were to the concept of love or pity, and so the Fleet continued its headlong flight from one hopeless battle towards another, and there was only silence in the dark bowels of its ships.

* * *

"Here they come!"

Koraaza could overhear the chatter of combat reports from his fighter pilots to farshathkhanaak Raathnahrn quite clearly. The small claw of the Khan's command station was scarcely ten paces from Koraaza's own, and the great fang listened tautly as the intensity of combat mounted.

The visual display was a chaotic pattern of brilliant, short-lived stars as Third Fleet's fighter strength slashed and tore at the incoming hurricane of gunboats.

"Break left, White Three! Break left! Break—" The squadron commander's frantic warning to one of his pilots ended with the knife-sharp abruptness of thermonuclear death, and Koraaza's grip on the arms of his command chair tightened.

This avalanche onslaught wasn't what he'd anticipated. The mobile units from Bug-06 had continued to flee at their maximum speed even as Kraiisahka and her task force closed in on the inhabited world they'd abandoned. Third Fleet had cut the distance between them almost in half before the first Bug starship disappeared abruptly through the warp point less than one standard hour before Kraiisahka's initial attack went in, but Koraaza's command had been unable to overtake them in time to prevent their successful withdrawl from the system.

He'd known that the enemy's escape from the consequences of the Shiva Option would permit it to mount an effective warp point defense, which meant his own losses would be much, much worse than they might have been, but he hadn't hesitated. This was what Third Fleet had come for—to follow the enemy wherever he fled, to meet him in battle, and to destroy him utterly. And the only way to do that was to pursue through the warp point whose location he had so considerately revealed.

Yet the Bugs hadn't done the expected. Koraaza had paused long enough for a single recon drone volley when he reached the warp point in turn, and the drones' reports had galvanized him back into immediate motion. The Bugs showed no intention of defending the warp point; instead, the starships he'd followed from Bug-06 had continued to flee at their best speed. They were already far enough from the warp point that the recon probes had experienced the utmost difficulty in locating and tracking them. But they hadn't quite managed to slip entirely out of detection range, despite their ECM, and Koraaza had no intention of allowing them to do so.

Once again, Third Fleet achieved the unheard of and made transit through a Bug warp point in the presence of the enemy without losing a single starship. There weren't even any OWPs to protect it, although it was surrounded by extensive minefields which ought to have been seeded with fortresses. The only reason Koraaza could come up with for the absence of those fortresses was that they'd been removed to cover some other, more immediately threatened warp point. If the Bugs were becoming as strapped for major combat units as all of the intelligence reports suggested, then they were probably short of OWPs, as well, and they must be moving those they still possessed to cover their most vital spots.

But Third Fleet's unprecedented immunity hadn't lasted long. The first long-range strike against the fleeing Bug starships had roared out, with murder in its pilots' eyes, but before they could make contact with their targets, the recon fighters covering the flanks of the attack formations had picked up the incredible tidal bore of gunboats thundering in to the attack.

It was the first time Koraaza or any of his personnel had seen the "Bughouse Swarm" with their own eyes, and the sight had been almost more than he could credit. He'd thought he was intellectually prepared for the reality. He'd been wrong. No one could be prepared until they'd actually experienced it, yet the sheer, stunning impact of that onrushing tide of destruction hadn't paralyzed him. Nor had it paralyzed his vilka'farshatok. They'd planned and trained to face precisely this threat ever since Raymond Prescott and Zhaarnak'telmasa first encountered it, and his pilots reacted with the instant precision of drilled, bone-deep response.

No one in Third Fleet had ever seen a dogfight a fraction as intense as the one which erupted as their strikefighters met the gunboats head-on. The Bugs had enjoyed the advantage of knowing they would encounter fighters, and they'd armed their gunboats accordingly, with heavy loads of anti-fighter missiles. The AFHAWKs had taken a grim toll of the Orion fighters, but the pilots of those fighters had sound doctrine of their own and no one in the explored galaxy—with the possible exception of their new Crucian allies—was better than an Orion in this sort of combat environment. The loss rate was entirely in Third Fleet's favor. Indeed, well over a thousand gunboats had been blown out of existence in return for scarcely two hundred fighters, but some of them had still gotten through, and Kinaasha'defarnoo and the Shernaku-class MTVs, as the largest units in Third Fleet's order of battle, had drawn the full brunt of their fury. But that, too, had been anticipated in Koraaza's battle plans and training. Third Fleet had turned its monitors into kamikaze traps, surrounded by escort vessels especially trained to coordinate with the strikegroups specifically tasked for the short range defense of the huge carriers and the fleet flagship.

No Human admiral—with the possible exceptions of Raymond Prescott or Vanessa Murakuma—would have as much as considered such tactics. TFN doctrine was explicit and unyielding on this point: fighters were responsible for long-range interceptions; starships were responsible for the close range defense against fighters or kamikazes. Above all, one kept one's own fighters out of the envelope of one's own AFHAWKs, because the possibility of friendly fire casualties became a virtual certainty if one did not.

But Orions weren't Humans. Neither Koraaza nor any of his staff officers or subordinate commanders had even considered such tactical restrictions, and because they hadn't, they'd done something no Human had ever attempted—they'd actually devised and implemented a tactical doctrine in which their own fighters operated in the very heart of their starships' defensive fire. It wasn't easy, and it didn't come without cost, for the Humans were right. The fanatical emphasis Third Fleet had placed upon training its fighter defense officers for this moment paid enormous dividends, but not even that training could prevent "friendly fire" from claiming over two dozen of the defending fighters.

Yet while those two dozen fighters and another thirty destroyed by Bug missiles were dying, the massed fire of starships and fighters destroyed another three hundred-plus gunboats. Only nine of the kamikazes actually got through, and the massive size which had marked the monitors as targets to be swarmed out of existence stood them in good stead, for their equally massive shields and armor shrugged off the impacts without significant damage.

But although the exchange rate had been overwhelmingly favorable to the Alliance, the reports of still more gunboats streaming in while the ships Third Fleet had pursued from Bug-06 halted their flight and turned to come back at Third Fleet in company with the fresh gunboat threat promised that that could change.

Koraaza settled himself more firmly in his command chair, watching his plot through slitted eyes as the incredible density of hostile icons swept towards him. He had complete confidence in his vilka'farshatok's ability to defeat even this threat, but even the most confident and courageous warrior could feel wrenching pain at the price his farshatok would pay for their victory.

"Great Fang!"

Koraaza's head snapped around at the sudden shout. In all their years together he'd never heard Thaariahn raise his voice on duty, and sheer surprise held him for just an instant. But then he felt an even greater sense of surprise as he realized it wasn't fear he heard in his ops officer's voice. It was astonishment. Perhaps even . . . delight. And that was insane at a moment like this.

But Thaariahn seemed completely unaware that he'd just taken leave of his senses, and his very whiskers quivered as he waved a clawed hand at his own display.

"Great Fang!" he repeated. "Look at this—look!"

"Look at what, Claw of the Khan?" Koraaza demanded.

"The report from Astrography, Sir!"

"What about it?" Koraaza's attention was fixed upon the incoming threat. He truly didn't have time for the distractions of routine survey findings, although he supposed that Thaariahn's ability to focus on such matters at a time like this said a great deal for the claw's powers of concentration.

"Sir, we know this system," Thaariahn told him fiercely. "We have enough data now to positively identify it."

"We what?"

The operations officer's last statement had been enough to pull Koraaza away from the tactical plot even at a moment like this. Nor was the fleet commander alone in his reaction. At least a dozen officers turned to peer at Thaariahn in momentary astonishment before the reflexes of relentless training snapped their eyes back to where they were supposed to be.

Koraaza, on the other hand, could look anywhere he damned well pleased, and he stared at his ops officer in shock.

"We know this system," Thaariahn repeated. "Sir, it's Home Hive Two!"

"Valkha!" Koraaza breathed softly, and then his wide eyes narrowed. "No wonder they pulled their mobile units out of Bahg-06! Ahhdmiraaaal Muraaaaaaakuma's offensive must have succeeded in breaking through as planned—and she must have inflicted major damage on whatever forces the Bahgs had stationed here to resist her. That is why they required reinforcements—any reinforcements!—even if it meant allowing us into Bahg-06!"

The outriders of the fresh gunboat storm burst upon the perimeter of Third Fleet's combat space patrol and silent vacuum burned afresh with plasma pyres as fighters and gunboats ripped and tore at one another. The urgent tempo of the combat reports rose once more about Koraaza, and he shook himself free of his sense of wonder.

He sat back in his command chair, watching the plot as his warriors and the Bugs slaughtered one another, and his mind raced.

Yes, Murakuma must have succeeded at least partly in her attack on the system. At the same time, she couldn't have succeeded in full, for the gunboats racing in to attack Third Fleet showed little sign of the disorientation inflicted by the Shiva Option. That wasn't to say there'd been no planetary bombardment, of course. It was entirely possible that Murakuma had managed to completely destroy one or more planetary populations and that the defenders had simply had sufficient time to recover from the shock before his own fleet arrived.

But it was also possible Murakuma's fleet had been badly defeated, or even destroyed. That was unlikely, because if the Bugs had managed to do that out of their locally available forces, there would have been no need for them to summon the force he'd followed here from Bug-06. Yet it was obvious that whatever else had happened, Murakuma was no longer operating here in Home Hive Two. If she had been, the Bugs would be continuing on their course to protect their inhabited planets from her, not turning on Third Fleet in full fury.

He wished, suddenly and passionately, that he'd paid more attention to the routine brief on Murakuma's intentions. There'd been no reason he should have, really. After all, no one in the entire Alliance had even suspected that he and Sixth Fleet had been planning to attack exactly the same objective! But even though his recollection of her plans and objectives was much less complete than he might have liked, he knew enough of her reputation and past accomplishments to feel confident that if she'd been forced out of the star system, she'd withdrawn on her own terms and in her own good time.

Which, he decided, was an example he would do well to emulate.

"We will fall back to Bahg-06," he told Thaariahn, and sensed a ripple of shock spreading out from him. He understood it, and he allowed his eyes to sweep the rest of the flag bridge before he returned his attention to the operations officer.

"We will defeat this next wave of gunboats," he said confidently. "I have no doubt whatsoever of that, nor do I doubt that our vilka'farshatok will manage to defeat and destroy the Bahg mobile units if we engage them fully. But we will take losses if we press the battle at this time. At this moment, we have the strength to hold Bahg-06 against anything the Bahgs can throw against us, and I do not choose to take losses among our farshatok by pressing on in ignorance of what Sixth Fleet may already have accomplished here. There is no need for us to encounter whatever forces remain in the star system by ourselves—not when we already know a second way into it. So we will fall back one system, and there we will dig in once more while we report what we have discovered to GFGHQ."

Understanding began to spread about him, replacing the sense of shock which had preceded it, and he bared his fangs in a hungry, predatory smile.

"We have honored our ghosts well this day, clan brothers and sisters," he told the flag bridge personnel. "We have brought them their first vilknarma, and we have already accomplished more than Lord Talphon anticipated we might when he agreed to allow us to attack. But now we know where our attack leads—that our axis of advance provides another route directly into one of the only two home hive systems which still remain to the Bahgs. I do not think the Strategy Board will overlook the importance of Third Fleet a second time! And perhaps even more importantly, we know now that this—this!—is the central system from which the ships who murdered Kliean came.

"We will return, clan brothers and sisters," he said, and his low voice was more than a mere promise and his eyes blazed. "We will return, and on the day we do, our vengeance for Zhardok and Masiahn will be complete."

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