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# CHAPTER FIFTEEN:
". . . and I'll take the low road."

Zhaarnak'telmasa exploded out of AP-5 behind a storm front of SBMHAWKs and SRHAWKs.

His most recent flights of RD2s had confirmed his vilkshatha brother's inference: one of the two mobile forces in the system had departed and now confronted TF 71 in Home Hive One. So TF 72 faced only (!) the second one—twenty monitors, sixty-seven superdreadnoughts, thirty-six battlecruisers, and seventy-five light cruisers—and by now the Bugs had learned to keep their starships well back from warp points that could suddenly belch forth torrents of SBMHAWKs. But the fixed warp point defenses were still very much in place: twenty-four massive orbital fortresses covered by two thousand laser-armed deep space buoys, shielded by four thousand patterns of mines and hiding amid six hundred ECM buoys. Zhaarnak intended to scorch the warp point's surrounding space clean of those defenses as though with a giant blow torch.

He had a new tool for the scorching. This was to be the debut of the new HARM2—an SBMHAWK-carried homing antiradiation missile. In addition to its SBMHAWK capability, it was able to home in on the later generation deception-mode ECM emissions as well as fire confusion ones. Everyone hoped it would be the answer to the clouds of ECM buoys the Bugs loved to deploy around warp points.

As Hia'khan emerged from the warp point into the maelstrom, a flood of data began to pour in from the ships of the initial waves that had preceded the flagship—mostly assault carriers and Gorm Toragon-class gunboat-bearing monitors. Kevin Sanders took a moment to glance across the flag bridge at Zhaarnak, who was stroking his whiskers with a smooth, almost caressing motion.

"Unless I'm mistaken, that's a look of great satisfaction," he murmured to Uaaria.

"So it is," the female Orion spook agreed. "He is observing the success rate of the HARM2 against the third-generation ECM buoys. He has a keen personal interest in the matter."

All at once, Sanders remembered the "April Fool" offensive Zhaarnak had led out of Zephrain. He also remembered that Orions did not enjoy embarrassment.

"Yes, I can see how those buoys might be rather a sore subject with him."

Uaaria gave him a quelling, slit-pupiled glare, and he hastily resumed his study of the data. Zhaarnak had assumed that the Bug capital ships wouldn't be sitting atop the warp point. Hence the composition of his first waves, which were now advancing sunward through the rapidly dissipating debris of the fortresses. Those monitors and CVAs, with their gunboats and fighters, were intended to counter the kamikaze gunboats and small craft that could be expected, sooner rather than later. So far, the Fifteenth Fang's predictions were proving out.

Sanders turned his attention to the system display.

Their warp point of entry lay five light-hours from the yellow Sol-like primary. The RD2s had detected only one other fortress-cluster of the precise composition that the Bugs—consistent to a fault—assigned to warp point defense. That consistency, Sanders reflected, certainly simplified the choice of where to go next. Unfortunately, that warp point was even further from the local sun than this one . . . and on a diametrically opposite bearing.

Between the two warp points, the inner planets warmed themselves around the hearth of the primary. One of them, Planet III, was life-bearing. From its energy emissions as reported by the RD2s, Uaaria and her subordinates had inferred a medium-sized population of no more than a few hundred million. This, clearly, was no home hive system. A colony, no doubt. Maybe a relatively new one, given the Bugs' propensity for multiplying up to the kind of ugly limits once prophesied by Malthus, who'd underestimated humankind's blessed disinclination to carry anything to its ultimate logical conclusion.

At any rate, even if there weren't tens of billions of Bugs here, there were Bugs. Acting on General Directive Eighteen and his own inclinations alike, Zhaarnak ordered the task force to shape a course for the inhabited planet.

Waves of gunboats and small craft began their suicidal attacks—if a word like "suicidal" was really applicable to a race with no sense of individual self preservation. Losses began to mount.

And yet . . .

Sanders had begun to notice it himself just before Zhaarnak stalked over to the intelligence station.

"Their capital ships are refusing battle," the Orion stated, leaving implicit his demand for an explanation.

"Yes, Sir," Uaaria acknowledged. "They are drawing back, keeping out of range, sending in their suicide craft." She gestured at the tactical display, from whose outer margin yet another swarm of tiny hostile icons was sweeping inward. "From the numbers of gunboats and small craft we are encountering, I gather that few such have been withdrawn from the system. Perhaps they think they do not need to commit their battle-line."

Zhaarnak made a dismissive gesture.

"Nevertheless, there is a Bahg-inhabited planet in this system. It is unheard of for them to restrict themselves to standoff suicide attacks when such a world is threatened."

Uaaria and Sanders exchanged glances. Neither had any answer.

* * *

It was true. There was no possible doubt.

The system that had dispatched the Mobile Force—the most powerful of all the Systems Which Must Be Defended—had flatly refused to send any additional units to reinforce it.

It was unprecedented. It was an affront to the natural order of things. But it was also true.

No explanation had been offered, of course. But none had been needed. The entire Fleet knew that the long-accumulated Reserve had become dangerously depleted. This war had dragged on far longer than the Planners had ever contemplated, and the expense of sustaining it now had to be borne by only three Systems Which Must Be Defended, rather than the original five. Under these circumstances, the losses during the course of the present campaign had stretched to the limit even the massive Fleet which had been built up against the inevitable future meeting with the Old Enemies—the Old Enemies who had now reappeared (fortunately unbeknownst to these New Enemies) and placed yet another burden on the already overextended resources of the Systems Which Must Be Defended.

It was easy to recall the Old Enemies here in Franos, for one of this system's four warp points led to Telik, where the Fleet's advance against those Enemies had halted so long ago. It had halted for want of anywhere else to go. A closed warp point, of course. The Old Enemies had managed to conceal its location as they pulled out of Telik, and that had been the end of the Fleet's first war with them. And that potential avenue of attack had, so far, remained quiescent in the present war.

But these recollections were irrelevant to the present problem: the stark reality that the Mobile Force was on its own, and could expect no help in defending this warp chain, with its five systems and three inhabited worlds.

Nor was that the worst of it. The Enemy was advancing inexorably towards this system's colonized planet. Even if the Mobile Force drew back into the envelope of that planet's orbital and surface-based defenses, it might not be able to stop the attackers before they seared the surface with antimatter fire, especially if they made that their primary objective. And then . . . This was no World Which Must Be Defended, but there was no guarantee that the sudden annihilation of its population or a large percentage thereof would not have the kind of effects that had now been observed repeatedly. Precisely where the numerical threshold lay was, as yet, unknown.

The Mobile Force dared not run the risk of being left in a helpless state of stunned disorientation, to be disposed of at the Enemy's leisure. Then there would be nothing left to defend Franos, for the other Mobile Force was tied down in what had once been a System Which Must Be Defended, securing the other end of this warp chain.

No. From every standpoint, the indicated course of action was to withdraw, leaving the local defenses to take as high a toll as possible and preserving the Mobile Force to protect Franos. This system's population was smaller than either of the two inhabited worlds further along the chain. And it was, of course, expendable.

* * *

It would have been hard to say whether Kevin Sanders or Uaaria'salath-ahn looked more exhausted after the endless, running battle that had snarled its way across the system.

Aboard a Terran warship, Sanders would have been in a vacsuit, but the Tabbies were a bit less compulsive about such things. Hia'khan's flag deck was at the very center of her stupendous hull, and any damage which got through to it—particularly in the absence of any primary beam-threat—would have to virtually dismantle the entire ship first. Under the circumstances, the officers on that flag deck had decided, the efficiency-enhancing advantages of working in a "shirt sleeve" environment outweighed the risk of being killed by sudden depressurization.

The lieutenant harbored a few doubts about that particular line of logic, but he had to admit that it did have a tendency to reduce crew fatigue under normal circumstances. Of course, these circumstances were scarcely "normal," and his usual spruceness had disappeared into a discarded uniform tunic, a loosened blouse collar, shoulders that sagged, knees that had lost their spring, and hair that had taken on an undeniably oily look. None of the Orions on the flag deck seemed to have noticed when he shed his tunic—not surprising, perhaps, given the fact that none of them wore clothing at all, except in hostile environment conditions.

Even if she'd noticed, however, Uaaria wouldn't have commented on his disheveled state, for she shared it to the full. Orions, as a species, were even more fastidious about their personal grooming than the terrestrial cats which they so reminded humans of, and Uaaria was more fastidious than most. But now patches of her plushy fur were plastered with sweat, her whiskers drooped, and the usual natural musky scent which clung to her—and which Sanders normally found rather appealing, in a primal sort of way—had become something much stronger.

But he paid no more attention to her haggardness than she paid to his, for their attention was concentrated solely on the system-scale holo display at the flag bridge's intelligence station as they watched the icon of the Bug battle-line.

"They're really doing it," the human breathed as they watched that icon move past the inhabited planet, not stopping to close ranks with the planet's defenders but proceeding without a pause on a course for the warp point on the far side of the yellow sun.

"They are withdrawing," Uaaria said unnecessarily. "I never believed they would simply leave that planet to its fate."

"But not, unfortunately, defenseless."

The two intelligence officers started at the voice. Zhaarnak was standing behind them, looking over their shoulders at the display. His own matted, disheveled fur would have been shocking to anyone who knew the Orion obsession with staying well groomed—unless that person also knew what he'd been through as his task force had moved inward.

The Bug ships had moved with them, but well ahead, keeping the range open and sending wave after wave of kamikazes back to lash the task force. The need to reverse the vector of the ships that launched them meant little to gunboats and small craft with reactionless drives. And the rapidly widening gulf between them and their motherships meant even less, for theirs were one-way missions. They'd targeted the monitors and assault carriers, Zhaarnak's most valuable ships, but also the ones most capable of defending themselves and absorbing damage. The months of waiting in AP-5 had allowed the Orion fighter pilots and Gorm gunboat crews to assimilate the lessons in anti-kamikaze tactics that Raymond Prescott's task force had paid such a high tuition to learn, and now they put those lessons to use. Still, losses had mounted steadily, and everyone had expected the Bug starships to turn and fight at any time, or at least to stand at bay near Planet III and add their firepower to its fixed defenses.

But now those starships were receding sunward and beyond, on course for the warp point through which they would exit this system. Task Force 72, momentarily without the suicidal swarms that had tormented it so long, approached Planet III.

And Zhaarnak had spoken the truth. That planet's titanic space station loomed amid an array of seventeen monitor-sized orbital fortresses. And on the surface, sensor data indicated the presence of six vast installations, mostly buried but extruding the launch ramps for four hundred gunboats and a hundred pinnaces each through the planet's crust. Already, new waves of kamikazes were on their way to take up where those of the mobile force had left off.

Zhaarnak watched stolidly as his fighters wore those waves down. Even as Hia'khan came under attack, he remained expressionless, watching his ships take the losses that had to be expected from the ones that got through. By the time it was all over, that toll had risen to five monitors, seven superdreadnoughts, and two Gorm assault carriers. Many other ships had taken hits, though in most cases (including the flagship) the damage wasn't serious.

The Fifteenth Fang turned away from the screen on which the carnage was tallied. He activated an intercom speaker near the intelligence station and spoke to his chief of staff, still at the auxiliary control station he'd occupied since general quarters had been sounded.

"Rearm the fighters," he ordered without preamble. "The standard mix of FRAMs and ECM packages for planetary assault."

" 'Planetary assault,' Fang?" Uaaria ventured after he'd received acknowledgment and turned back to the intelligence displays. She indicated the tactical one, in which the icons of the orbital fortresses still glowed inviolate. "What about those?"

"They can wait, Small Claw. The fighters will bypass them, covered by ECM, and blanket the planet's surface with antimatter warheads."

To Sanders, Zhaarnak's tone, mild though it was, suggested that he didn't particularly desire further discussion. Uaaria, however, was an Orion, and Federation naval officers had been astonished many times since their first experiences with the Tabbies, by the—to humans—extreme freedom junior officers enjoyed in speaking their minds to their superiors. Some Terran observers were astonished that the prickly, honor-conscious, duel-fighting Orions could possibly tolerate such a situation.

Sanders, who'd seen more of Tabby interaction on this voyage than most humans saw in a lifetime, thought he'd figured out how it worked. In the end, it all went back to the honor concepts which were so central to all Orion life and to that unique bond whose manifold facets the Tabbies subsumed under the word farshatok. The chain of command and the deference patterns of a society which was hierarchical—indeed, feudal, in human turns—were as inflexible as iron, yet they enshrined a complex, interlocking weave of responsibilities, rights, and obligations between commander and commanded. To the Orion mind, an officer's subordinates could no more be denied the right to offer their own viewpoints for his consideration than a hand could survive without its fingers.

And so Uaaria faced the second in command of Seventh Fleet and said, "Fang, I understand your intention. But I can offer no assurance that the Bahg population here is large enough for its destruction to produce the effect you desire."

"You have not been asked to, Small Claw. We will determine the answer experimentally. We need to know whether that which the Humans have dubbed the 'Shiiivaaa Option' is, in fact, an option at all in systems less heavily populated than the home hives. That is one reason I am proceeding as I am—the other being that I would rather deal with those fortresses after their crews have been reduced to a state of psychic shock, if it is possible to do so."

This time, Zhaarnak's tone made it clear that the subject was closed. And just as the farshotak relationship gave Uaaria both the right and the responsibility to caution her commander even when he didn't wish to be cautioned, so that same relationship required her to submit and hold her tongue once the caution had been issued and Zhaarnak had made his decision anyway.

The intelligence officer flicked her ears in a graceful gesture which combined continuing reservations on her part with an acknowledgment of Zhaarnak's right of command and her acceptance of what he'd ordered.

Lord Telmasa gave her an approving glance, as much for having said her say as for having accepted his decision, and returned his attention to the display as the experiment in slaughter began.

The answer wasn't long in coming. The fighters took a certain percentage of losses from the fortresses' fire, despite their ECM cover. But then the FRAMs plunged downward through the planet's atmosphere, and the wavefront of fireballs began to advance across the continents like a forest conflagration, leaving nothing but charred lifelessness . . . and the fortresses' fire slackened, and grew sporadic and wild.

Murmured comments buzzed around the flag bridge. Zhaarnak made no response, letting his body language say he'd known it would work all along and not letting his relief show. Instead, he gave a curt series of orders, and his battle-line began to close in on the fortresses, behind a wall of SBMHAWK4s.

After it was over, Sanders pointed at the icon of the space station, now attended only by drifting wreckage.

"Fang," he said in tones of uncharacteristically diffident inquiry, "do you intend for the capital ships to proceed and deal with that? Or will you order the fighters rearmed?"

"Neither, Cub Saaanderzzz. I do not believe it will be necessary to engage the space station at this time." The young Human's reaction to this stereotype-shattering lack of bloodthirstiness was obvious, and brought a smile to Zhaarnak's face.

"The station has no capacity to project force into deep space," he condescended to explain. "And its shipyards are useless with no planetary population or industrial infrastructure left to furnish raw materials. So I see no reason to risk further losses—especially among our fighters—in reducing it. It can be left to . . . die on the vine, as I believe the Human expression goes."

Abruptly, his mood changed to grimness.

"No—we will wait here only long enough to send our carriers back to AP-4 in relays, to replenish our strikegroups from the stockpiles we have established there, and send a report to Raaymmonnd'presssssscott-telmasa. As soon as he indicates that the time is right to do so, we will proceed towards this system's other warp point."

"Through which," Uaaria put in quietly, "the last of their starships departed shortly before our planetary strikes began to go in."

"Naturally. They had no other exit from the system. That warp point must lead further along this warp chain. The word of what has happened here will reach the Bahgs at its other end, in Home Hive One, quite possibly before our report gets there. It will be interesting to observe the result."

* * *

The last elements of the Mobile Force had completed transit into the Franos system, and the courier drones were off, bearing the news to the other Mobile Force, three systems away.

It wasn't hard to predict the action that would be taken on the basis of that news. It was unavoidable, even if it courted potential disaster.

The new attack represented a more immediate threat to Franos than the sparring match at the other end of the warp chain. So the second Mobile Force would pull back one warp transit closer to Franos, even though it would mean giving up the Fleet's presence in the lifeless remains of what had been a System Which Must Be Defended—and the system which was this entire warp chain's only link with the rest of the Fleet. The two Mobile Forces would then be truly on their own.

The isolation would not necessarily be permanent, of course. The remaining Systems Which Must Be Defended would undoubtedly organize a counteroffensive as soon as possible, to reopen contact.

Still, it was far from an ideal option.

But options were becoming more and more limited.

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