"No need," Thrr-mezaz said. The Elders wouldn't have had a detailed list of what the Human-Conquerors had carried in, anyway. "Looks like they've aborted their mission. Whatever it was."
"There's still plenty of time to hit them before they get to the mountains," Klnn-vavgi pointed out. "With the Stingbirds or either of the two teams of ground warriors we've got on their flanks. Shall I give the orders?"
Gently, Thrr-mezaz rubbed his tongue against the inside of his mouth. Tactically, of course, the Second Commander's suggestion was certainly the thing to do. Every enemy warrior destroyed was one less warrior to threaten their beachhead. Plus the intangible but inevitable damage it would inflict on Human-Conqueror morale.
And if they hit the ground team now, before they got another half thoustride away, the Zhirrzh warriors would have the advantage of instant targeting and tactical information from the Elders anchored at the north pyramid. It would be a chance to prove to the skeptics, from Supreme Ship Commander Dkll-kumvit all the way up to Warrior Command, that using Elders as sentries this way was a sound and practical military tactic. A way finally to silence the rumblings of criticism and contempt that had been circling his head ever since the theft of Prr't-zevisti's fsss cutting.
Yes, he could easily destroy them. But if he did, they might never try this again. Whatever it was they were trying...
"No," he told Klnn-vavgi. "Let them go."
The low buzz of conversation around them vanished into silence. "Excuse me?" Klnn-vavgi asked carefully.
"We're letting them go," Thrr-mezaz repeated, turning away from the monitor. "We'll have the Elders watch them, of course, and I'll want both the ground warriors and the Stingbirds standing ready. But as long as they continue to head away from the village and the pyramids, we don't attack."
Klnn-vavgi cleared his throat. "With the Commander's permission—"
"They were up to something out there, Second," Thrr-mezaz said. "Something important. I want to make sure they feel secure enough to try it again."
"Understood," Klnn-vavgi said, his tone making it clear that he didn't understand at all. "What are you all sitting around for?" he added, throwing a quick glare around the room at the warriors watching them. "We have damage assessments to make, Stingbirds to service, and warriors to redeploy. And the Human-Conquerors might still decide to fight over the wreckage of those fighter warcraft. Get busy."
The warriors turned back to their monitors. Klnn-vavgi glared at them another couple of beats, then stepped to Thrr-mezaz's side. "This is risky, Thrr-mezaz," he said quietly. "And I don't mean just from a tactical standpoint. I hope you know what you're doing."
"So do I," Thrr-mezaz agreed. "History will have to pass the final judgment."
"That won't stop a thousand clan Speakers from writing their own versions of it."
"They'll be doing that whatever decisions I make at this point," Thrr-mezaz said. "The Thrr family is in political trouble, and there are going to be a lot of Zhirrzh scrambling to capitalize on that. That's the nature of politics."
"I suppose so," Klnn-vavgi said reluctantly. "It really shouldn't be allowed in wartime, though. I just hope Warrior Command has enough stiffening not to cave in to the whims of the Overclan Seating."
"I think they do," Thrr-mezaz said, sliding his tongue thoughtfully across the roof of his mouth. "There's been something different about Warrior Command these past few fullarcs. They've become more serious than I've ever heard them before."
"You know, I've been thinking the same thing," Klnn-vavgi said slowly. "The first few fullarcs after the survey ships were attacked, everything coming out of Warrior Command was all bright and brisk and businesslike. Cheerful, even, as if they were really looking forward to taking on this new challenge. And then suddenly it all changed."
Thrr-mezaz nodded. The messages and orders had suddenly become terse and grim, and Warrior Command had begun scrambling together new expeditionary forces to throw at the new enemy.
And so there they sat, underequipped, overvulnerable, trying to hold on to a barely tenable beachhead on a clearly minor Human-Conqueror world, while similarly underequipped and overvulnerable expeditionary forces did the same on other Human-Conqueror worlds.
Why?
"They know something, Klnn-vavgi," Thrr-mezaz said quietly. "Something they've learned about the Human-Conquerors that's got them scared. Something they can't or won't tell us."
"Could be." Klnn-vavgi snorted under his breath. "Then again, maybe some genius there has only just gotten around to counting and realized we're eighteen worlds against the Human-Conquerors' twenty-four."
"Maybe," Thrr-mezaz said. "If the data in that Human-Conqueror recorder can be believed, anyway. Personally, I'm not convinced the thing wasn't a deliberate deception. Planting a recorder loaded with disinformation would be just the sort of thing a devious conqueror race might do. Maybe this mission to the Mrachanis isn't so premature after all."
"The Mrach—? Oh, right. Those new aliens. That mission's confirmed to fly, then?"
"That's what I hear," Thrr-mezaz said. "I want you to keep close track of the Stingbirds heading out to the warcraft wreckage. It's still possible the ground warriors were nothing but an attempt to distract us."
"Maybe." Klnn-vavgi looked back at the overview monitor. "What do you think they were really up to?"
"I don't know," Thrr-mezaz said. "But I can't help noticing that that's the same general area they were in when they took Prr't-zevisti's cutting."
"Interesting point," Klnn-vavgi said slowly. "I'd assumed they were there that time to get a look at the pyramid. You think there's something hidden out there that they want?"
"Or else they're trying to plant some non-line-of-sight weapon in position," Thrr-mezaz said. "Or trying to gain access to an underground supply or tunnel system. All we know for sure is that it's important to them." He flicked his tongue. "And I don't want them waiting until they've gathered so much strength that we won't have a hope of stopping them."
Klnn-vavgi snorted. "Under the circumstances, I hardly think that's likely."
"Unfortunately, circumstances seldom stay constant for long," Thrr-mezaz countered dryly.
"Point," Klnn-vavgi conceded. "All right, I'll go watch the Stingbirds. What about you?"
5
It had seemed like a good idea at the time, or at least no worse than everything that had gone before it. The first mistake had been a group one, with enough blame for everyone to get his fair share: no one had noticed that group of Human ground warriors until they were practically on top of the northern pyramid. The Zhirrzh warriors had done their best, but without a timely warning from the Elders their response had been unfocused and far too late. The Humans had reached the pyramid; but instead of destroying it, they'd simply poked around, broken into Prr't-zevisti's niche and taken his fsss cutting, and moved on.
His cutting. Hovering at the edge of the lightworld, Prr't-zevisti gazed down at the thin slice of tissue sitting there in its tiny sealed box. It had been taken from his fsss organ a little over seventeen cyclics ago, but he still remembered that event as vividly as if it had just been last fullarc. The procedure had been brand-new at the time, only a couple of cyclics old, and most of Prr't-zevisti's friends had sworn up and down that they'd never let a technic take a blade to their fsss organs. But Prr't-zevisti had always had a reckless streak to him, and the prospect of getting to flit between two different areas instead of being stuck in just one had been highly intriguing. A little thought, a little boredom—a little goading from his friends—and he'd had his name put on the list.