His knees began to crumble, but his voice cracked like a whip.
"Ladies and Gentlemen of the Assembly, Pericles Wai-deck would have you stain your hands with the blood of an entire species. He may drape his despicable deed in the cloak of justice and the mantle of necessity, but that makes it no less vile." His vision began to blur, but he peered through the strange mist, watching fury crawl across Waldeck's strong, hating features, and hurled his own hate to meet it.
"Ladies and gentlemen, one man, more than any other, wrought this disaster. One man led his party into dispatching the Peace Fleet to Lorelei. One man crafted the secret orders which placed Victor Aurelli - not Admiral Li - in command of that fleet's dispositions!"
The fury on Waldeck's face became something beyond fury, deeper than hatred, as a chorus of astonished snouts went up. The younger man rose, glaring madly across the floor, and the lictor pressed the emergency button on his harness. He tried to force Anderson Back into his seat, and a white-coated medic was running across the floor, but the wasted old man clung to the edge of his console and his voice thundered across the tumult.
"One man, ladies and gentlemen! And now that same one man calls on you to cover his stupidity! He calls upon you to destroy a planet not to save the Galaxy, not to preserve the lives of Second Fleet's personnel, but out ofambitionl Out of his need to silence criticism for political gain! He - "
The thundering words stopped suddenly, and the fiery blue eyes widened. A trembling old hana rose, gripping the lictor's shoulder, and Howard Anderson swayed. A thousand delegates were on their feet, staring in horror at the Federation's greatest living hero, and his voice was a dving thread.
`Please," he gasped. "Please. Don't let him. Stop him." The old man sagged as the racing medic vaulted another delegate's console, scrabbling in his belt-pouch medkit as he came.
"I beg you," Howard Anderson whispered. "You're better than the Prophet - better than him. Don't let him make us murderers again!"
And he crumpled like a broken toy.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE The Final Option
"Good Lord!" Winnifred Trevayne blinked at the technical read-outs on the screen. "What in heaven's name is that?"
Admiral Lantu was silent - he'd said very little for days - but Colonel Fraymak snorted at her other elbow. The colonel had read Starwalker's records for himself, and the stance he'd taken largely out of respect for Lantu had been transformed by an outrage all his own as he threw himself wholeheartedly into collaboration with his "captors."
`That, Commander," he said now, "is an Archangel-class strategic armored unit."
"The hell you say," General Shahinian grunted. "That's a modification of an old Mark Seven CBU." Trevayne looked blank. "Continental bombardment unit," Shahinian amplified, then frowned. "Wonder where they got the specs? Unless." He grunted again and nodded. "Probably from Ericsson. I think I remember reading something about BuCol giving colonial industrial units military downloads after ISW-1 broke out." He made a rude sound. "Can you see some bunch of farmers wasting time and resources on something that size?" He shook his head. "Just the sort of useless hardware some fat-headed bureaucrat would've forgotten to delete."
"I've never seen anything like it," Trevayne said.
"You wouldn't, outside a museum, and it'stoo damned big for a museum. That's why we scrapped the last one back in - oh, 2230, I think. Takes over a dozen shuttles to transport one, then you've got to assemble the thing inside a spacehead. If you need that kind of firepower, it's quicker and simpler to supply it from space."
"When you can, sir," Colonel Fraymak pointed out respectfully.
`When you can't, Colonel," Shahinian said frostily, "you've got no damned business poking your nose in in the first place!"
Trevayne nodded absently, keying notes into her memo pad. That monstrosity would laugh at a mega-tonne-range warhead, and that made it a sort of ultimate area denial system, assuming you planned to use the real estate it was guarding.
She sighed as she finished her notes and punched for the next display. The data they'd pirated from Starwalker was invaluable - the Synod had stored its most sensitive defense information in the old ship's computers - but the more of it she saw, the more hopeless she felt.
Thebes was the best textbook example she'd ever seen of the sort of target Marines should never be used against. The planet was one vast military base, garrisoned by over forty million troops with the heaviest weapons she'd ever seen. And while those weapons might be technical antiques, Marines were essentially assault troops. The armored units they could transport to the surface, however modern, were pygmies beside monsters like that CBU. Even worse, their assault shuttles would take thirty to forty percent casualties. Fleet and Marine doctrine stressed punching a hole in the defenses first, but not even Orions had ever fortified an inhabited planet this heavily. There was a fifty percent overlap in the PDCs' coverage zones. The suppressive fire to cover an assault into that kind of defense would sterilize a continent.
She glanced guiltily at the sealed hatch to the admiral's private briefing room. In all the years she'd known and served Ivan Antonov, she had never seen him so. elementally enraged. It had gone beyond thunder and lightning to a cold, deadly silence, and her inability to find the answer he needed flayed her soul. But, damn it - she turned back to the display in despair - there wasn't an answer this time!
Antonov swiveled his chair slowly to face his staff, and his eyes were glacial. The doctors said Howard Anderson would live. probably. for a few more years, but the massive stroke had left half his body paralyzed. His century and more of service to the Federation was over, and the thought of that dauntless spirit chained in a broken, crippled body -
He chopped the thought off like an amputated limb. There was no time to think of the price his oldest friend had paid. No time to contemplate getting his own massive hands on that svolochy, that scum, Waldeck for just a few, brief moments. No time even to take bleak comfort in the ruin of Waldeck's political career and the rampant disorder of the LibProgs as the truth about the Peace Fleet massacre came out.
It was not, Antonov reminded himself bitterly, the first time fighting men and women had been betrayed to their deaths by the political swine they served. Nor would it be the last time the vlasti responsible escaped the firing squad they so amply deserved. That wouldn'tbe civilized, after all. For one moment he let himself dwell on the fate the Zheeerlikou'valkhannaieee reserved for such chofaki, then snorted bitterly. No wonder he liked Orionsl
But in the meantime.
"I have received final clarification from Admiral Brandenburg," he rumbled. "The Assembly has opted to seek `expert guidance' in determining policy towards Thebes."
Those bleak, cold eyes swept his advisors. "Before voting to override the Prohibition of 2249, they wish my recommendation. I have been informed that they will act in whatever fashion I deem most prudent."
Winnifred Trevayne inhaled sharply; the others were silent, but he saw it in their faces. Especially in Kthaara's. The Orion had been unwontedly diplomatic over the Peace Fleet revelations and the Assembly's confusion, but now his contempt bared ivory fangs. And with good reason, Antonov thought. Whatever his decision, the po-liticos had managed in time-honored fashion to clear their own skirts with a pious appeal to "expert military opinion." What a shame they so seldom bothered to seek it before they created such a bitched-up shitball!
"With that in mind," he continued, `I need whatever insight any of you may offer. Commodore Tsuchevsky?"
"Sir," the chief of staff said somberly, "I don't have any. We're still examining the data - we know more about the enemy's defenses than any other staff in military history - but the only solution we can see is a massive application of firepower. There are no blind spots to exploit, no gaps. We can blow a hole in them from beyond their own range, but doing so will have essentially the same effect as applying Directive Eighteen. And - ' he paused, visibly steeling himself " - much as I hate to admit it, Waldeck had a point. It's only a matter of time before the Thebans' planet-side industry produces their own SBMs and we lose even that advantage."
"I will not accept that." Antonov's voice was quietly fierce, the verbal pyrotechnics planed away by steely determination, and ne turned his gaze upon Lantu. The first admiral looked shrunken and old in his over-large chair. The fire had leached out of his amber eyes, and his hands trembled visibly as he looked back up at Antonov from a pit of despair.