Bagpipes wailed and the side party snapped to attention as the vilkshatha brothers whose presence he'd specifically requested emerged from the cutter and saluted the boatbay officer. This was a ship of the Zheeerlikou'valkhannaiee, and so Zhaarnak requested permission to come aboard for both of them, and Koraaza stepped forward to greet them in person as permission was granted.
"Welcome, Fang Zhaarnak, Fang Presssssscottt," he said, and offered each in turn the flashing claw slap of an Orion's warrior greeting. "We are all most happy to see you, and I am especially happy to see you looking so much better than when last we met in Telmasa, Fang Presssssscottt."
"Thank you, Great Fang," Prescott replied. "It is hard to believe, sometimes, that it has been over seven standard years."
"If it is hard for you," Koraaza said, "it is even harder for me and for my farshatok. It seems at times that everyone has forgotten we even exist!"
"That seems to be the nature of war, and especially of this one," the Human said. "The only options seem to be boredom or sheer terror."
"Truth," Koraaza agreed. There were not many, even of the Zheeerlikou'valkhannaiee, to whom he would have admitted he could ever feel terror, but Raymond'prescott-telmasa was one of them. He considered that thought for a moment, then brushed it aside and gave his guests a fang-hidden Orion smile.
"In this case, however," he told them, "I hope you will forgive me if I admit that my invitation to you was made at least partly in hopes of transforming my fleet's boredom into something more lively."
"The possibility had crossed our minds, Great Fang," Zhaarnak said dryly. "Neither of us is quite so . . . inexperienced in the machinations of fleet commanders who must deal with the inertia of Fleet Headquarters as we were when last all three of us met."
"Good!" Lord Khiniak gave a grunting chuckle-purr. "I would not have you think I do not value your presence for many reasons, but I am glad both of you understand all of my motives. It would never do to have lured you here under false pretenses!"
"There is little fear of that, Great Fang," Prescott assured him.
"I am relieved to hear it, Fang Presssssscottt. But there will be time enough to deal with my ulterior motives later. For now, Third Fleet is prepared to pass in review to commemorate this anniversary of our reconquest of this system. You and Fang Zhaarnak would do me great honor if you would join me on Flag Deck for that evolution, and afterward, I would value your impressions of the maneuvers my staff has laid on."
"The honor," Prescott said sincerely, "will be ours."
"In that case," Koraaza said, "let us go. The Fleet awaits us."
The word for Third Fleet, Raymond Prescott decided, was "impressive." He'd known all along that Lord Khiniak's fleet area had held a lower priority for the new construction which had flowed with ever increasing force towards his own and Zhaarnak's commands. The fact that the Tabbies simply didn't have the industrial plant to build as many monitors as the Federation and that Third Fleet was effectively a pure Orion and Gorm command meant that Koraaza's task groups were heavily biased towards lighter ship types. Third Fleet's official order of battle-which wasn't entirely present even now-listed a total of two hundred and sixty-seven ships of all classes, but only six were monitors. Over a quarter of Koraaza's strength lay in his sixty-eight superdreadnoughts, which-along with eighty-nine battlecruisers-constituted fifty-eight percent of his total hulls. Of course, it was a Tabby fleet organization, so it boasted far more total fighters than its twenty-four carriers and twenty-eight light carriers would have suggested . . . particularly since five of Koraaza's monitors were the big, monitor-hulled Shernaku-class carriers, each of which embarked no less than a hundred and thirty-two strikefighters. In fact, its mobile units alone carried almost three thousand fighters and almost four hundred Gorm-crewed gunboats, and the orbital bases covering the Shanak-Kliean warp link provided a reserve of over five thousand more fighters from which losses might be replaced.
Even with the oversized fighter components typical of Orion fleet mixes, Third Fleet was weaker than Seventh Fleet had been before Operation Ivan, especially in the sluggers of its battle-line. Yet as he and Zhaarnak had watched Koraaza and his staff put the fleet through its paces in a complex series of week-long maneuvers, Prescott had realized that Third Fleet's fighting power should not be assessed in terms of tonnages and weight of broadside alone.
The Orion naval tradition, dating as far back as there'd been an Orion Navy, had seen a warship not so much as a platform for weapons as as a single weapon in its own right. It was an ideal better suited to light warships, and best of all to fighters, which helped explain why the Tabbies had never truly been happy with superdreadnoughts and battleships. But it was also an ideal which had never been abandoned for those heavier ship types, either. It was far more difficult to infuse a crew the size of a capital ship's with the sort of elan and sense of unity which could be created aboard smaller ships, and the Orions recognized that, but that recognition didn't prevent them from trying to achieve it anyway.
As Third Fleet had come very, very close to doing.
Prescott knew, as only one could whose forces had survived Operation Retribution and Operation Ivan, what that meant in terms of its fighting power. His and Zhaarnak's own Seventh Fleet and Vanessa Murakuma's Sixth Fleet were the most superbly drilled and battle-hardened naval forces he'd ever hoped to see. They were certainly more efficient and effective on a ship-for-ship and task force-for-task force basis than Eighth Fleet . . . or had been, at least, before the brutal casualties of Operation Ivan. To admit that was not to in any way denigrate Eighth Fleet or the part it had played in Ivan, either. Murakuma had been given literally years to put together her command team and staff before their transfer to the already superbly drilled fighting machine he and Zhaarnak had created in Zephrain before her arrival. Since taking over, she and her staff had turned Sixth Fleet's subordinate commanders and crews into virtual extensions of her own central nervous system.
He and Zhaarnak had been given less time to build Seventh Fleet, but they'd also possessed the huge "advantage" of forging their command teams in the very furnace of battle. Eighth Fleet had been allowed neither the years of training time which Sixth-and Fifth-Fleet had been granted, nor honed and polished in the unforgiving crucible of combat, and so it had been inevitable that First Fang Ynaathar's command should lack the incomparable temper those fleets had attained.
But Great Fang Koraaza had also been given years to train and drill his forces, and the grim and silent charnel houses of Zhardok and Masiahn had provided all the motivation any fleet commander could have desired. Even the Gorm-or perhaps especially the Gorm-of Koraaza's command were filled with a white-hot flame of determination to repay the Bugs in full and bitter measure for the atrocity of Kliean, and the fact that Third Fleet consisted solely of Orions and Gorm had prevented any tiniest dilution of that incandescent purpose. That single ambition unified them all, from the Great Fang to the lowliest rating aboard his lightest vessel, and it showed. Third Fleet was a rapier in the hand of a fencing master, and in some ways its lack of monitors might actually make it more effective. It was faster, unfettered by the slow and ponderous might of a heavier battle-line, and its maneuverability and flexibility were perfectly suited to the fighter-oriented Tabbies and the fast capital ships which had always been the hallmark of the Gorm.