"The Consu can wipe out most of the races in this area of space," I said. "Why don't you?"
"Because we love you," the ambassador said.
"Excuse me?" I said. Technically, this could have qualified as a fifth question, one the Consu was not required to answer. But it did anyway.
"We cherish all life that has the potential for Ungkat"—that last part was pronounced like a fender scraping a brick wall—"which is participation in the great cycle of rebirth," the ambassador said. "We tend to you, to all you lesser races, consecrating your planets so that all who dwell there may be reborn into the cycle. We sense our duty to participate in your growth. The Rraey believe we provided them with the technology you question after because they offered up one of their planets to us, but that is not so. We saw the chance to move both of your races closer to perfection, and joyfully we have done so."
The ambassador opened its slashing arms, and we saw its secondary arms, hands open, almost imploring. "The time in which your people will be worthy to join us will be that much closer now. Today you are unclean and must be reviled even as you are loved. But content yourself in the knowledge that deliverance will one day be at hand. I myself go now to my death, unclean in that I have spoken to you in your tongue, but assured again a place in the cycle because I have moved your people toward their place in the great wheel. I despise you and I love you, you who are my damnation and salvation both. Leave now, so that we may destroy this place, and celebrate your progression. Go."
"I don't like it," Lieutenant Tagore said at our next briefing, after the others and I recounted our experiences. "I don't like it at all. The Consu gave the Rraey that technology specifically so they could fuck with us. That damn bug said so itself. They've got us dancing like puppets on strings. They could be telling the Rraey right now that we're on our way."
"That would be redundant," Captain Jung said, "considering the skip drive detection technology."
"You know what I mean," Tagore shot back. "The Consu aren't going to do us any favors, since they clearly want us and the Rraey to fight, in order to 'progress' to another cosmic level, whatever the fuck that means."
"The Consu weren't going to do us any favors anyway, so enough about them," Major Crick said. "We may be moving according to their plans, but remember that their plans happen to coincide with our own up to a point. And I don't think the Consu give a shit whether we or the Rraey come out on top. So let's concentrate on what we're doing instead of what the Consu are doing."
My BrainPal clicked on; Crick sent a graphic of Coral, and another planet, the Rraey homeworld. "The fact that the Rraey are using borrowed technology means we have a chance to act, to hit them fast and hard, both on Coral and at their homeworld," he said. "While we have been chatting up the Consu, the CDF has been moving ships to skip distance. We have six hundred ships—nearly a third of our forces—in position and ready to skip. Upon hearing from us, the CDF will start the clock on simultaneous attacks on Coral and the Rraey homeworld. The idea is both to take back Coral and to pin down potential Rraey reinforcements. Hitting their homeworld will incapacitate the ships there and force Rraey ships in other parts of space to prioritize between assisting Coral or the Rraey homeworld.
"Both attacks are contingent on one thing: knocking out their ability to know we're coming in. That means taking their tracking station and knocking it offline—but not destroying it. The technology in that tracking station is technology the CDF can use. Maybe the Rraey can't figure it out, but we're farther along the technological curve. We blow the station only if there's absolutely no other choice. We're going to take the station and hold it until we can get reinforcements down to the surface."
"How long is that going to take?" asked Jung.
"The simultaneous assaults will be coordinated to begin four hours after we enter Coral space," Crick said. "Depending on the intensity of the ship-to-ship battles, we can expect additional troops to reinforce us sometime after the first couple of hours."
"Four hours after we enter Coral space?" Jung asked. "Not after we've taken the tracking station?"
"That's right," Crick said. "So we damn well better take the station, people."
"Excuse me," I said. "I'm troubled by a small detail."
"Yes, Lieutenant Perry," Crick said.
"The success of the offensive attack is predicated on our taking out the tracking station that keeps tabs on our ships coming in," I said.
"Right," said Crick.
"This would be the same tracking station that's going to be tracking us when we skip to Coral space," I said.
"Right," said Crick.
"I was on a ship that was tracked as it entered Coral space, if you'll recall," I said. "It was ripped apart and every single person who was on it but me died. Aren't you a little concerned that something very similar will happen to this ship?"
"We slid into Coral space undetected before," Tagore said.
"I'm aware of that, since the Sparrowhawk was the ship that rescued me," I said. "And believe me, I am grateful. However, that strikes me as the sort of trick you get away with once. And even if we skip into the Coral system far enough away from the planet to avoid detection, it would take us several hours to reach Coral. The timing is way off for that. If this is going to work, the Sparrowhawk has to skip in close to the planet. So I want to know how we're going to do that and still expect the ship to stay in one piece."
"The answer to that is really quite simple," Major Crick said. "We don't expect the ship to stay in one piece. We expect it to be blasted right out of the sky. In fact, we're counting on it."
"Pardon me?" I said. I looked around the table, expecting to see looks of confusion similar to the one I was wearing. Instead, everyone was looking somewhat thoughtful. I found this entirely too disturbing.
"High-orbit insertion, then, is it?" asked Lieutenant Dalton.
"Yes," Crick said. "Modified, obviously."
I gaped. "You've done this before?" I said.
"Not this exactly, Lieutenant Perry," Jane said, drawing my attention to her. "But yes, on occasion we've inserted Special Forces directly from spacecraft—usually when the use of shuttles is not an option, as it would be here. We have special dropsuits to insulate ourselves from the heat of entering the atmosphere; beyond that it's like any normal airdrop."
"Except that in this case, your ship is being shot out from under you," I said.
"That is the new wrinkle here," Jane admitted.
"You people are absolutely insane," I said.
"It makes for an excellent tactic," Major Crick said. "If the ship is torn apart, bodies are an expected part of the debris. The CDF just dropped a skip drone to us with fresh information on the tracking station's location, so we can skip above the planet in a good position to drop our people. The Rraey will think they've destroyed our assault before it happened. They won't even know we're there until we hit them. And then it will be too late."
"Assuming any of you survive the initial strike," I said.
Crick looked over to Jane and nodded. "The CDF has bought us a little wiggle room," Jane said to the group. "They've begun placing skip drives onto shielded missile clusters and tossing them into Coral space. When their shields are struck they launch the missiles, which are very hard for the Rraey to hit. We've gotten several Rraey ships over the last two days this way—now they're waiting a few seconds before they fire in order to accurately track anything that's been thrown at them. We should have anywhere from ten to thirty seconds before the Sparrowhawk is hit. That's not enough time for a ship that's not expecting the hits to do anything, but for us it's enough time to get our people off the ship. It's also maybe enough time for the bridge crew to launch a distracting offensive attack as well."