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# CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN:
"And then there were two."

"It was well that you held back a reserve of SBMHAWKs, First Fang," Robalii Rikka said.

"It is still more fortunate, Warmaster, that you suggested sending a wave of gunboats into this system ahead of our ships."

Ynaathar's courtesy was equal to the Crucian's. It was even sincere, and Rikka's image in the com screen inclined its head in acknowledgment. Ynaathar's gaze wandered across Hiarnow'kharnak's flag bridge to the big screen, currently set to simulate the naked-eye outside view. This lifeless system's primary—a red dwarf three and a half light-hours distant, and lying aft in any case—wasn't visible, of course. Neither was the wreckage their initial SBMHAWK bombardment had left of the warp point defenses.

Their estimate of the fixed warp point defenses had proven accurate, and the SBMHAWKs they'd allocated had been sufficient. However, they'd had no current information on mobile units, and the ninety-six heavy cruisers and twenty suicide-rider light cruisers might have proven troublesome for the first wave. But, at Rikka's suggestion, Ynaathar had let gunboats lead the advance, and they'd provided the information that had enabled Ynaathar to target his reserve SBMHAWKs. In addition to the gunboat losses, it had required the expenditure of more of his total SBMHAWK inventory than he'd planned on. But it was a basically unscathed Eighth Fleet that was now proceeding toward the system's other warp point, a mere forty-eight light-minutes outward from the primary, and no Bug mobile forces barred its way.

Though he lacked any hard data to back up his opinion, Ynaathar was convinced Home Hive Four lay on the other side of that warp point. He doubted very seriously that he would continue to advance unopposed.

* * *

This had come at the worst possible time.

This System Which Must Be Defended, true to its accustomed role of concentrating on the Old Enemies, had feared that the closed warp point in the system through which those enemies had passed had been located. The Fleet's cloaked scouts had skirmished with the Old Enemies' pickets there, and there was no guarantee that one of the scouts hadn't been tracked. So the Deep Space Force, its battle damage only just repaired, had been dispatched two systems in that direction, to guard against any incursions. And now the attack had come from the opposite direction—the Old and New Enemies in league, now only one warp transit away from the System Which Must Be Defended.

The Fleet was doing what it could, of course. The Deep Space Force had been summoned back with maximum urgency, and the available mobile forces in the system the enemy had entered—thirty-seven battlecruisers and thirty suicide-rider light cruisers—were now shadowing the enemy's advance, cloaked against detection.

They wouldn't be alone for long. Even now, with the enemy still too remote to observe its emergence from warp, the massed small-craft strength of the System Which Must Be Defended was transiting to attack.

* * *

It had been a long time since Ynaathar had left the flag bridge. But he sternly ordered fatigue to heel and remained where he was, for he was awaiting a certain report.

The incoming kamikazes had dispelled his last doubts that Home Hive Four lay immediately ahead—nothing less could have dispatched those massed formations. He'd ordered Eighth Fleet's entire fighter strength, barring a small reserve, sent out against them, overruling the caution of Admiral Haathaahn, his carrier commander. He'd soon had second thoughts, for the Bug battlecruisers shadowing him had seized their opportunity, dropping out of cloak and leaping to the attack behind the wavefront of their own gunboats and suicide-riders. None of them had gotten past Eighth Fleet's screen of battlecruisers and Crucian heavy cruisers, but in the absence of fighter support that screen's losses had made Ynaathar give the flattened ear flick that answered to a human wince.

Nevertheless, he didn't regret his decision to commit practically all his fighters against the waves of kamikazes from Home Hive Four. Those kamikazes had been burned out of the continuum before reaching the screen. And better still, their vector had been plotted and analyzed, and it narrowed the search for their warp point of entry to a very small volume as interplanetary spaces went. Now Ynaathar awaited word from the Hun-class scout cruisers of Survey Squadron 234, which had been attached to Eighth Fleet for this very purpose.

It didn't take long. Even as Kevin Sanders approached with the dispatch, Ynaathar saw the warp-point icon flash into being in the holo sphere, and its precise coordinates appeared on the board. He gave orders to prepare the RD2s.

* * *

"As you can all see," he said later to a hastily assembled meeting of his core staff, with the task force commanders attending via com screen, "while only a few RD2s returned, their findings leave no room for doubt. This is Home Hive Four."

He didn't speak in crowing tones—it was foreign to his nature, and at any rate these officers had all agreed with him from the first. The system display the task force commanders could all see in the master plots on their respective flag bridges merely confirmed what they'd believed.

The two innermost planets of the yellow star the RD2s had found were inhabited, and to the drones' esoteric senses they'd blazed with starlike intensity, for theirs was the electro-neutrino output of worlds industrialized the way only Bugs industrialized them, and they nestled amid a firefly-swarm of lesser emission-sources: the fleets of freighters that were a Home Hive's circulatory system. Detecting those planets had been no great problem, for the drones had emerged from a warp point in the inner system, only one light-hour from the G-class primary.

"The promptness with which we located the warp point," Ynaathar continued, "has given us a priceless advantage. We need not spend as much time surveying as we normally would. We can press on and, perhaps, catch them off balance."

"Yes, by Valkha!" Shiiaarnaow'maazhaak exploded. The Task Force 82 commander, must, Ynaathar thought, imagine himself back in the good old freewheeling days before the Khanate had encountered the Terrans—one of whom, Francis Macomb, now gave a growl of agreement.

Robalii Rikka shifted his folded wings back and forth.

"I understand the force of this argument," the warmaster said. "And yet . . . we expended more SBMHAWKs than anticipated in breaking into this system. It's a pity we have no replacements for them."

Shiiaarnaow looked about to burst, but to Ynaathar's relief he kept his response more or less within diplomatic bounds.

"We cannot wait for more SBMHAWKs to be brought up! We must sink our fangs into these chofaki while they are still stunned by the rapidity of our advance."

"Otherwise," Macomb declared, "we piss away the very advantage the First Fang just mentioned."

"Agreed," Rikka conceded.

"Ideally," Force Leader Haaldaarn, commanding Task Force 83, put in, "I would like to have more complete reconnaissance of that system. The RD2s revealed no Bug capital ships. Perhaps they're waiting in cloak."

"They also might not be there," Shiiaarnaow shot back.

"A risky supposition," Haaldaarn rumbled.

"Nevertheless," Rikka said, "if true, it offers us a golden opportunity. Despite my earlier reservations, I am inclined to seize that opportunity." The Crucian's eyes shifted to something outside the com pickup. They all knew he was looking at the holo display of what was, to him, the very home of the Demons. When he turned back to the pickup, he wore a new expression . . . and by now they were all familiar enough with his species to be chilled. "I would like very much to enter that particular system—especially inasmuch as the 'Shiva Option' can be applied there without compunction."

Ynaathar looked at the screens and saw no inclination for further discussion.

"Very well. Lord Talphon directed us to 'take them at a run.' That is precisely what we are going to do."

* * *

The small-craft attack had proven ill-advised. In addition to expending a goodly proportion of the available strength in such vessels—strength which was sorely needed now—for no result, it had evidently enabled the Enemy to locate the warp point and commence his attack in less time than had been allowed for.

True, in his haste the Enemy had attacked with fewer of his warp-capable missile pods than usual, and the defensive cruisers had survived to inflict significant losses on the starships that had followed—almost annihilating the first two waves, in fact. But there was no disguising the fact that the Enemy fleet—a very substantial one by any standard, even with its losses—was now loose in the System Which Must Be Defended. And the Deep Space Force, although it had returned at maximum speed as per its orders, had only just begun entering the system at the time the attack began.

The real problem, of course, was the location of the warp points. The one through which the Deep Space Force had returned lay about as far from the system primary as such phenomena normally occurred, while the enemy was emerging directly into the inner system—closer to the primary than either of the life-bearing planets, in fact. The Deep Space Force was hastening sunward, but the enemy could force engagement with it before it reached the inner system. Datalinked with the innermost planet's massive space station and its attendant orbital fortresses, the Deep Space Force might have been in a good position against an enemy bereft of those troublesome missile pods. As it was, however, the situation was . . . unsatisfactory.

* * *

Once again, Ynaathar could only visualize the drifting debris that his fighters had left of the three monitors, fifty-four superdreadnoughts, twenty-six battlecruisers and ninety light cruisers that had finally straggled in from a warp point six light-hours distant from the local sun. Not one of them had even made it into weapons range of his battle-line, and neither had any of the depleted stock of gunboats and small craft the planets had sent out to support them.

And, at any rate, that was history. His attention was focused on the little blue disc in the big screen that was Home Hive Four I.

He glanced at the holo sphere, where the planet appeared as a scarlet icon seven light-minutes from the primary, as did its sister planet, not quite in opposition to it and orbiting at ten light-minutes. He focused on the tiny cluster of green icons approaching that latter red beacon.

"Warmaster Rikka should be almost in range of Planet II, Sir," a voice said from behind him, echoing his thoughts in Standard English, and Ynaathar smiled as usual at the Human tendency toward unnecessary verbalization. They'd been social animals longer than the Zheeerlikou'valkhannaiee, who'd become pack hunters at a fairly late stage of their development towards tool-using.

"So I see, Cub Saaanderzz," he acknowledged to the young Terran intelligence officer, still present in the same ill-defined staff capacity.

Robalii Rikka was someone else whose status was ambiguous. He was the representative of a remote but powerful ally as well as being one of Ynaathar's task force commanders. Besides, he commanded a very large task force—so large it was subdivided into two task groups, one of which accounted for roughly a third of Eighth Fleet's fighter strength. When Ynaathar had detached Rikka's Task Force 86 and the main carrier force, Task Force 84, and sent them against Planet II, he'd placed the Crucian in overall command. Admiral Haathaahn of TF 84 had made no protest, and Ynaathar was convinced he'd done the right thing. But, he admitted to himself, he missed Rikka's counsel now that the carrier force was sixteen light-minutes away on the far side of the local sun.

He turned to the com screens holding the faces of those task force commanders with whom he could converse via lightspeed radio waves.

"Warmaster Rikka is, as far as we know, nearly in position," he stated. Neither he nor any of his listeners voiced the platitude that no one could be sure, when the latest signal from Rikka's command was over sixteen minutes old. "We will therefore proceed to the outer envelope of Planet I's defenses as planned."

There was no discussion to speak of. Eighth Fleet's main battle-line moved into position and began to probe Planet I's defenses with long-range missile fire that those defenses were quite capable of shrugging off. Ynaathar had expected nothing else. His purpose was not to seriously harm the planet or its orbital works, but merely to be in position to take advantage of what he expected to happen when Rikka's fighters struck Planet II.

* * *

Robalii Rikka was equally unable to be certain of where Ynaathar was—and equally confident that he was where he was supposed to be—as he watched his fighters streak away towards Planet II.

Planet II shone a brighter but paler blue than Planet I, as it was a relatively chilly world and the arrangement of its continents allowed much of its water to be locked into polar caps. Actually, they'd determined that Planet I was no prize either—a hot, humid world rather like pre-space Humans had sometimes visualized their neighbor Venus. Not that conditions on either had stopped the Bugs from filling both with populations of fairly respectable size even on their standards, meaning of obscene size on anyone else's.

Aileen Sommers moved to his side. There'd been a time when he'd felt uncomfortable about Humans standing too close to him. They were so big—even Sommers, who was of only average height for a female though exceptionally sturdy. It no longer bothered him, especially in her case.

"That space station and those fortresses may have expended their gunboats, but they can still put out a lot of beams and anti-fighter missiles," she muttered.

"True," Rikka agreed. "But our entire ordnance mix has the sole purpose of allowing enough of the fighters to get through the defensive envelopes."

Sommers nodded reluctantly. An unprecedented percentage of the fighters carried ECM packs, and the use of decoy missiles was equally lavish.

"It should be enough," she admitted, still sounding less than happy.

"And," Rikka continued, "if your people's experience in other home hive systems is any guide, getting a sufficient number of the fighters through to the planet itself should be enough."

Sommers met his eyes—large, dark, altogether unhuman. She'd thought she knew him. But something in him had changed—or, perhaps, only intensified—since he'd learned of the "Shiva Option." And at this moment, with that planet's Bug-choked surface beckoning, he was clearly uninterested in casualties . . . uninterested to a degree that made her wonder if she'd ever really known him at all.

* * *

Fourth Nestmate Rozatii Navva flexed his feet convulsively as he wrenched his fighter away from yet another missile. It was a habitual Crucian reaction to danger. Their feet, with opposable "thumbs" like their hands, were capable of manipulation but were really better adapted for crushing. The race had been using those feet as weapons for its entire evolutionary lifetime, and Navva instinctively sought to grasp the Demons who'd already claimed the lives of two of his squadron's pilots.

But he suppressed his instincts, consciously relaxing his feet. His orders were clear. The titanic space station—clearly visible, especially to the remarkably acute Crucian eyesight which counterbalanced a sense of smell even worse than that of Humans—was not the target. Neither were the twenty-seven more-than-monitor-sized fortresses that wove a tracery of orbits mathematically calculated to cover all approaches to Planet II with overlapping fields of fire.

No, his was one of the FRAM-armed squadrons whose role was simply to dash between those fortresses, trusting to the ECM-bearing escorts and the decoy missiles to keep them alive long enough to get within range of the planet. It hadn't worked for the leading elements of the fighter strike, few of which still flew. But the escorts had soaked up more and more of the defensive fire, and now the planet was looming up ahead in Navva's view-forward, close enough for its icy, arid bleakness to be visible.

It was, Navva thought, about to get even bleaker.

He didn't devote much of his mind to the thought, of course. He was a thoroughgoing professional and a seasoned veteran, one of the first to train with the fighter technology the Humans had brought to the Star Union . . . and one of the few of those first to still remain alive. As such, he kept his consciousness focused on checklists, instrument readouts, threat indicators, and the disposition of the other three fighters that remained under his command. But he was still a Crucian, and the planet ahead meant something more to him than it did to his Human and Orion and Ophiuchi comrades. It was as much a place of dark myth as of dry astrophysics, the very Hell from which Iierschtga, evil twin of Kkrullott the god of light, had sent his Demons to torment his brother's children.

Then they were through, and Navva's reduced squadron took its place in the comber of death that began to roll across the surface of Planet II.

The rationalistic high-tech warrior who was Rozatii Navva was now functioning like an automaton, leading his squadron across the terminator into darkness as it swooped toward the planetary defense center that was its target. His innermost self stood apart, and watched with a kind of dreamy exaltation as the uninterceptable FRAMs flashed planetward to burn a reeking foulness out of the universe.

He had time for an instant's fiery elation when the warheads released their tiny specks of antimatter on the surface and the darkness erupted in blue-white hellfire. Then his two selves came crashing together and fell into oblivion as a point-defense missile already launched from the surface found his fighter.

He never knew that missile was one of the last effective defensive actions taken by the Bugs in Home Hive Four.

* * *

"Yes! It's happened!"

First Fang Ynaathar ignored Kevin Sanders' youthful enthusiasm as he calmly studied the computer analysis of the Bugs' reaction to his long-range probing of Planet I's defenses. It told him what he wouldn't learn from Robalii Rikka's report for another sixteen minutes: that the fighter strike on Planet II had gone in as scheduled, and that billions of Bugs had abruptly died.

"So it appears," he acknowledged quietly. He turned to his assembled core staff. "The observations of Fangs Presssssscottt and Zhaarnak in two other home hives stand confirmed. The same kind of stunned confusion has clearly overtaken the Bugs here, and done so simultaneously throughout at least the inner system. We will not allow it time to wear off. We will proceed with our primary contingency plan and move our battle-line into Planet I's defensive envelope for close-range bombardment in a single firing pass."

"Ignoring the orbital works, First Fang?" someone queried.

"That is the plan," Ynaathar stated firmly. "Our primary targets are the planetary defense centers."

His orders were carried out. Eighth Fleet's "firing pass," employing strategic bombardment missiles, capital missiles and standard missiles in succession as it approached closer and closer, eventually brought Ynaathar's battle-line within CAM2 range before it broke free of the planet's gravity and receded outward.

By the time Ynaathar received Rikka's report that only a few million Bugs remained alive on Planet II, none of them at all were alive on Planet I.

* * *

Kevin Sanders was seriously behind on his sleep.

The wildly varying rotational periods of planets tended to have that effect on interstellar voyagers, far beyond the "jet lag" Terrans had begun to experience in the late twentieth century. And Ynaathar had exercised the worst possible timing in dispatching him to Alpha Centauri with a personal report to the Grand Allied Joint Chiefs of Staff.

But he forced himself to remain alert as he stood in the light of Alpha Centauri A, streaming through the wide window of Kthaara'zarthan's office at a time every weary fiber of his body said—no, screamed—was three in the morning after a couple of sleepless nights. It wouldn't do to fall on one's face in this company.

"So," Fleet Speaker Noraku rumbled, "the First Fang took no further action against the orbital constructs?"

"No, Fleet Speaker. He felt they weren't worth the expenditure of any additional ordnance, orbiting depopulated planets incapable of supplying them."

"It's possible that the space stations have fully self-sustaining lifesystems which will keep their personnel fed," MacGregor objected.

"True, Sky Marshal . . . though it's highly unlikely that the fortresses do. But in both cases, lack of basic maintenance will eventually render them incapable of even what the Bugs consider minimal life support."

"That could take some time," Kthaara commented.

"First Fang Ynaathar's position," Sanders said in measured tones, "was that the same lack of maintenance will reduce their defensive capabilities to total impotence before it results in their starvation. So if we grow impatient, we can simply wait until that eventuality and eliminate them with great economy. Either way . . . Well, Admiral Macomb quoted an old Terran proverb and said they can be left to die on the vine."

Kthaara's tooth-hidden smile showed his Standard English was up to that one.

"So be it. I agree with the First Fang." He shifted his body—stiffly, Sanders, noted; when old age caught up with Tabbies, it tended to catch up abruptly—and turned to look at the holo display that now filled a full end of the spacious office.

It was no wonder the display had grown like ivy, for it depicted all the war fronts, incorporating all the new astrographic information that Prescott, Zhaarnak, and Murakuma—the "Three Musketeers" of the Grand Alliance, as wits had begun calling them—had won. In all that labyrinthine complexity, Sanders instantly recognized one particular icon: the dull reddish-black one, like a burnt ember, that represented a now-lifeless home hive. There were two of them.

Kthaara spoke a command to the computer, and a third one appeared.

Ellen MacGregor spoke grimly into the silence. "And then there were two. . . ."

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