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As Harkka descended the ramp, Brokken stepped forward with only the slight stiffness that still remained in her walk. She saluted with great formality, but her words went far beyond any military punctilio in their very simplicity.

"Welcome home, Wingmaster."

Afterwards, Harkka's staff followed the wingmaster out of the shuttle. Fujiko Murakuma was with them.

She spotted Mario Kincaid among Brokken's staffers, and hurried over. What she saw as she neared the Marine took her aback. He seemed far more than a month older.

"Well," she cracked, "you got your wish. Even picked up a wound!"

"So I did," he said shortly, and she cocked her head.

"What's with you? No adolescent attempt at a pass? I should probably feel insulted! Besides, I should think you'd be jumping for joy under the circumstances."

A wraith of Kincaid's old impudent grin awakened.

"Yeah, I suppose I should. In fact, I definitely should be happy for the Telikans, and I am. It's just . . . well, we took casualties. A lot of casualties."

"Yes, I know." Fujiko bit her lip, and her brow furrowed. "I know, and I shouldn't have been flippant. But . . ." All at once, she could no longer contain her excitement. "Mario, don't you understand the implications of what's happened here?"

"Uh . . . you mean the way the Bugs became less combat effective toward the end? Yeah, that's news the Alliance is going to want to hear," he agreed.

It turned out that the Shiva Option effect didn't actually require the instantaneous annihilation of massive Bug populations. The effect appeared to be cumulative, and began to snowball once a certain threshold was reached, although there was still some question about how many millions of deaths that threshold required.

"Oh, yes," Fujiko replied. "That's certainly new data. But don't you see? The important thing is that KISS performed as advertised! The Crucians and Telikans have found the answer to the moral quandary we've been in ever since Admiral Antonov discovered Harnah!"

Enlightenment came, and Kincaid's private darkness began to lift.

"You mean the question of what to do about Bug planets with surviving indigenous sentients?"

"Yes! We no longer have to choose between nuking a planet till it glows or suffering unacceptable losses on the ground. The Bugs can't hide behind populations of hostages any longer!" Fujiko could no longer contain herself. Face shining with a fierce joy, she grasped him by the shoulders and spoke with an intensity that-he forced himself to remember-was a product of her need to share what she'd just realized with someone of her own species. "Oh, Mario, for the first time I know-not just hope or even believe, but really know-that we're going to win this war, and win it without having to damage our souls!"

"Our souls," the Marine said slowly, the clouds closing over his sunny smile once again, "may already be more damaged than we know."

She looked at him sharply. This wasn't like him. Not at all, but she forbore from trying to jolly him. What do I know about it? How can I know the things he's seen down here?

She gazed at him a moment longer, and then-somehow-the right words were given to her, and she flung out an arm and swept it around a half-circle that took in all of Telik.

"It's over here, Mario," she told him softly. "That's the point. Soon, it's going to be over everywhere. This war is finally coming to an end. The Telikans, and their children-and all our children-are going to live in a universe cleansed of the Bugs!"

Kincaid's private clouds parted again. This time they stayed parted.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: Cushion Shot

To Vanessa Murakuma, the 4.8 light-hour-distant dot of white brilliance that was Home Hive Two A as viewed on emergence from Warp Point One was getting to be an old . . . not "friend," certainly, but perhaps the word "acquaintance" was permissible.

In one respect, though, this transit from Orpheus 1 was different from her previous two. It was almost unopposed.

Not altogether, of course. As her probes had indicated, the Bugs had abandoned any hope of mounting a full-dress crustal defense after the losses they'd taken in starships and orbital fortresses. But they'd continued to patrol the warp point with planet-based gunboats-lots of them, many equipped with jammer packs.

But Murakuma had anticipated that. She'd employed SBMHAWKs with devastating prodigality, then sent her own gunboats from Force Leader Maahnaahrd's Task Force 62 through to deal with the survivors before allowing her starships to commence transit.

So Sixth Fleet stood in these now-familiar spaces undepleted in its starship strength: eleven monitors, seventy-one superdreadnoughts, eighteen battleships, thirty-four assault carriers, twenty-four fleet carriers, and seventy-six battlecruisers in the three primary task forces. Small Fang Meearnow's Mohrdenhau-class light carriers provided additional fighter support, and were escorted in turn by ten battlecruisers, thirty light cruisers and twenty destroyers. Also under Meearnow's command was Commodore Paul Taliaferro's Task Group 64.1: eleven Guerriere-C-class command battlecruisers, thirty-one combat tugs of the Turbine-B and Wolf 424 classes (built on battlecruiser and battleship hulls respectively), and twenty-four massive freighters, including nine of the Krupp-A-class mobile shipyards.

Murakuma smiled as she contemplated Taliaferro's command. The Bugs might well wonder what such an oddly constituted formation-all those command ships in a task group that didn't even include any other combatants-was doing amid a battle fleet. They'd have a while yet to wonder, but it would become clear in the end. Essentially, the rest of Sixth Fleet was here to protect TG 64.1 as it set up what Murakuma had had in mind when she'd quipped to her staffers-human, so most of them had understood-that "it's time for a cushion shot."

Her smile deepened as she recalled the hardcopy that rustled against her rib cage where it lay inside her tunic. Indeed, it was all she could do to avoid chuckling at Fujiko's references to a certain Marine captain-references whose disdain was exceeded only by their frequency. The message's Terran Standard date was December 9, 2369, for Fujiko had sent it from Telik just after the liberation of that tragic world. Now that the Star Union was hooked into the local interstellar communications network at the Telik-Franos warp point, that message had taken less than one full standard day-twenty-three hours and twenty-two minutes, to be precise-to reach her across the real-space light-minutes between the light-year-distant stars. It was more wonderful than Murakuma could have expressed to have her daughter so close, figuratively speaking, at last, but she didn't allow herself to dwell upon it at this particular moment. She had other things to think about, for it was now late December and Sixth Fleet was here in Home Hive Two again, for what they confidently hoped would be the last time, awaiting Third Great Fang Koraaza's Third Fleet and wondering-

"Where is Third Fleet?"

Murakuma sighed at Leroy McKenna's irritable ejaculation. This wasn't the first time she'd heard it, from the chief of staff and others as well, and she set her persona on "soothing" mode.

"Remember the time lag, Leroy. We're thirty-six light-minutes away from Warp Point Two."

"I haven't forgotten, Sir. But we've been here long enough-especially with our recon fighters deployed in the direction of Warp Point Two-to have picked up Lord Khiniak's signal, if he were here to send it."