There were many such possibilities, yet in the end, all were meaningless beside the one possibility which had never existed for a moment: the possibility of never beginning the war at all. Even now, the recognition that their automatic, instinctive response to the discovery of yet another sentient race might have been in error was impossible for the analysts to grasp or even consider.
They were what they were, and they'd done what they had done because what they were had been incapable of any other action, any other response. And so, in the final analysis, they weren't even "evil" as those who'd gathered to destroy them understood the term, for "evil" implied a choice, a decision between more than one possible course of action. And because the analysts had never been able to envision the possibility of choice-because they couldn't do so even now-they felt no guilt as they awaited the destruction of the final System Which Must Be Defended. Not for what they'd done to other species, and not even for what they had brought down upon their own. It would have been like expecting a whirlwind to feel a sense of blame, or a forest fire to feel remorse.
And yet, for all the monstrous gulf which separated them from their Enemies, the analysts shared, however tenuously, two emotions with those Enemies. In their own cold, dispassionate way, they knew despair. The despair which had swept over the citizens of Justin, of Kliean . . . of Telik. The despair which knew there was no escape, that no last-second miracle would reprieve the Worlds Which Must Be Defended or turn aside the fiery doom their species' own actions had laid up for it.
And even in their despair, they knew one other fragile emotion: hope. Not for themselves, or for the System Which Must Be Defended, but rather for the System Which Must Be Concealed. For the single star system of which the very last courier drones to reach them from a murdered System Which Must Be Defended had whispered, and which might someday attain once more the status of a System Which Must Be Defended.
In time, perhaps, the System Which Must Be Concealed would wax powerful once more. Indeed, it must do so, if it survived at all. And perhaps, in some far distant day, the analysts which served the System Which Must Be Defended would return to this area of space-wiser, better prepared, knowing what they faced-and secure the survival of the new System Which Must Be Defended and its daughter Systems Which Must Be Defended in the only way that was certain: by destroying all possible competitor species, root and branch. And perhaps those future analysts would not return here. Perhaps they would seal off the warp point behind themselves and avoid these Enemies-forever, if that were possible, and for as long as possible, if it were not.
The present analysts couldn't know the answers to those questions. Nor, to be honest, did they much concern themselves with them, for they weren't questions these analysts would ever have to answer.
The questions they faced would be answered shortly . . . and forever.
The first scene of the last act commenced with an eruption of SBMHAWK carrier pods into Home Hive Five in the now-familiar pattern. First came the HARM-armed wave to take out the decoying ECM-equipped deep space buoys. Then came a truly massive wave armed with SBMs and CAM2s, targeted on the Bug gunboats, fortresses, and defensive cruisers.
That far, all went according to well-established doctrine. But what came next was something else altogether.
The Gorm were stereotypically a stolid, imperturbable race. As often happens, stereotype held a grain of truth.
Gunboat Squadron Leader Mansaduk, for example, had never been affected by the disorienting sense of wrongness that seemed to overtake his Orion comrades-in-arms and Terran allies at the instant of passing through a warp point-at least not to the same extent. Oh, he felt it, of course; no brain, organic or cybernetic, was immune. He just didn't let it upset him. So normally, he approached transit with serene equanimity.
Not this time, though. He looked left and right beyond the outer corners of his curving viewscreen and watched the wall of gunboats of which his was a part. They were clearly visible to the naked eye, for this was an exceptionally tight formation on the standards of space warfare. It had to be for what it was about to do.
"Approaching transit," Sensor Operator Chenghat reported in a voice which, like his minisorchi, was a little too tightly controlled, and Mansaduk turned his gaze straight ahead. The warp point was, of course, invisible.
Well, he told himself, if it happens, it should be the quickest possible form of death.
Before he'd even finished the thought, the universe seemed to turn itself inside out, and they were in Home Hive Five. The largest simultaneous warp transit the Allies had ever performed-every one of Grand Fleet's gunboats, in fact-was over.
Stroboscopic flashes to Mansaduk's left and right marked the deaths of gunboats that had interpenetrated. There were a great many of them.
The Squadron Leader took dispassionate note of the fact that he was still alive. A quick glance at his display showed him that one of his squadron's gunboats wasn't, but there was no time to feel anything. No time to do anything but give the orders which sent his surviving gunboats to their places in the wave rushing toward the Bug kamikazes.
The gunboats' ordnance loads were configured for killing small craft. The CAM2s had cleared away all of the opposing gunboats of the Bug CSP. All that were left were the assault shuttles and pinnaces, which were enormously more vulnerable missile targets. Fighter missiles would have been highly effective against such vulnerable targets; the all-up, shipboard AFHAWKs a gunboat could carry were even deadlier, and the intolerable glare of nuclear and antimatter warheads ripped at the guts of the kamikaze cloud.
At first, the kamikazes simply tried to avoid the gunboats which were killing them. Their purpose was to kill transiting starships, and to do that they must survive, not waste themselves in combat against mere gunboats. But they must also somehow remain within attack range of the warp point, and they couldn't do that if they were dead. And so, as the gunboats' kill totals climbed and climbed, the massed kamikazes had no choice but to turn upon them. Exchanging one of their own number for a gunboat was hardly cost-effective, but the Bugs had no choice but to expend some of their number if the rest were to survive to perform their real function.
A vicious fight snarled around the warp point as the better-armed pinnaces of the kamikaze cloud flung themselves upon the gunboats. Mansaduk watched the suicide shuttle that had been his gunboat's latest target flare into a momentary sun, then took advantage of a brief lull to study the readouts. The kill ratio was very much in the Allies' favor, for a gunboat was a small, nimble target, difficult for a kamikaze to catch. But against the numbers the Bugs had to waste no kill ratio could truly be considered "favorable," and Mansaduk began to feel an anxiety that would have surprised his non-Gorm acquaintances. His eyes strayed towards the view-aft. Isn't it time yet. . . ?
Then, with no warning, as was the nature of such things, it happened . . . and once again the warp point was marked by the firefly-flashes of simultaneously-transiting vessels materializing in the same volume of space. There were fewer fireflies this time, but bigger ones, because now starships were making transit.