"It has?" Koraaza never looked away from his plot, but he sensed Thaariahn's ear flick of agreement.
"It has, Sir. Small Fang Kraiisahka has worked out the details and is prepared to deploy the pods at your command."
"I see." Koraaza hid a small smile at Thaariahn's studiously uninflected statement. Kraiisahka'khiniak-ahn was both his most junior and perhaps his most promising task force commander. She was also his daughter-in-law, of whom he was inordinately fond. The Khanate had none of the Federation's official disapproval of nepotism (which, Koraaza had long since concluded, was far more a matter of appearances than substance, even among the inexplicable Humans), yet Kraiisahka had made it respectfully but firmly clear that she intended to win any commands or advancement on her own merits. In general terms, Koraaza agreed with her. Senior command slots were too important to be handed to anyone who hadn't proved his-or her-ability, whoever he or she might happen to be related to. On the other hand, such matters of principle could be taken too far, and so he'd made it quietly clear to Thaariahn that he expected his operations officer to keep a distantly protective eye on her. Since she was senior to the ops officer and possessed a temper even the most charitable would have described as fiery, Thaariahn's assignment had not been an enviable one.
"Show me the details," the great fang said after a moment, and the claw tapped a series of commands into the master plot.
Koraaza watched the icons flash through the projected deployment and launch and grunted in satisfaction. Given the heavy ECM environment into which the SBMHAWKs would be emerging, Kraiisahka had opted for what would almost certainly be proven a massive case of overkill where the orbital fortresses and relatively immobile heavy cruisers were concerned. It would cut deeply into Third Fleet's store of the warp-capable missiles, but he'd amassed huge numbers of them and he heartily approved of her logic. Better to use more than were strictly necessary than to use too few and suffer avoidable losses during the break-in. That was a lesson he'd learned the hard way-and at the cost of far too many lives-when he first retook this system so many years before. Zhaarnak'telmasa had made that point to him at the time he'd planned his original assault, but Koraaza had still been too accustomed to thinking in terms of the Khanate's tight prewar fiscal constraints. The cornucopia of the Human Federation's production capabilities had long since loosened them . . . and the lives he'd paid would have driven him to break them even if they hadn't loosened.
He reran the plan twice more, then looked up and turned at last to the com screens and his waiting flag officers.
"I approve Small Fang Kraiisahka's proposed bombardment plan," he said formally. "Small Fang," he looked directly at his daughter-in-law, "you will begin pod deployment immediately. The attack will begin thirty-five minutes from now."
The grim, massive OWPs waited silently amid the protective embrace of the minefields, energy platforms, and ECM buoys. The light of the system primary was wan here, touching the hulking fortresses with only the feeblest of glows against the eternal dark of the diamond-chip immensity of space. It was a region of cold and dark, well suited to the beings who crewed those ominous defenses.
But then, suddenly, the cold and dark were touched by something else. Only the OWPs' sensors saw the first, invisible flicker of movement as the initial wave of missile pods made transit, but what had been invisible to the organic eye became a wall of sun-bright fury as the wrath of Hiarnow'khanark, the ancient war god of the Zheeerlikou'valkhannaiee, and his death messenger Valkha reached out for the beings who had murdered so many of their people. Dozens of the transiting pods interpenetrated and vanished, building that wall of fire as they immolated themselves in space-wracking spits of dragon venom, but even as dozens perished, hundreds upon hundreds survived.
The Bugs aboard those doomed fortresses and the handful of slow, obsolete warp point defense cruisers which had been left to support them had just long enough to realize that the Ghosts of Kliean had come for them.
And then the surviving pods launched.
Koraaza'khiniak studied his display with grim, vengeful satisfaction. Kraiisahka's bombardment plan had consumed over half of Third Fleet's total supply of warp-capable munitions. More were available from his stockpiles in Hairnow and the systems further up the warp lines, and although it would take time to bring them forward, Koraaza felt no temptation to complain. The massive wave of SBMHAWKs had blasted every fortress out of existence before the first Allied starship made transit. They and the other specialized missiles had blotted away every cruiser, and virtually all of the waiting gunboats, as well, despite everything the Bugs' ECM could do, and Third Fleet had flowed steadily into Bug-06 without the loss of a single starship.
It had been a very Human-style attack, the great fang thought to himself, but the thought held only profound satisfaction, not complaint. The Zheeerlikou'valkhannaiee had learned to adopt those tactics which worked from enemies and allies alike, and that was good. But even as they adopted the techniques of others, they'd remained themselves, and it was time for Koraaza's vilka'farshatok to demonstrate what that meant.
"We are getting back the first detailed reports on the planet, Sir," Thaariahn informed him. "Our initial assessment appears to have been accurate. The new drone reports indicate that the orbital defenses are minimal-one space station of no more than moderate size, and no more than half a dozen orbital fortresses, the largest considerably smaller than any we confronted here."
"Is there any sign of planet-launched gunboats?" Koraaza asked.
"None at this time," Thaariahn replied. "I suppose it is possible that they are retaining them until we close with the planet, but that would not be consistent with anything we have seen out of them in the past."
"No, it would not," Koraaza said thoughtfully, combing his whiskers with the claws of his right hand while he considered the master plot. He paid particular attention to the projected course of the Bug starships. They had never wavered from their original heading and continued to stream away from Third Fleet at their maximum speed, which raised several interesting questions.
Why had they fallen back from the warp point in the first place? Especially when the steady flow of recon drones from Shanak must have confirmed that an attack was imminent? Surely only some dire emergency somewhere else could account for such a maneuver after so long spent patiently and obviously awaiting that attack. The most logical explanation to suggest itself to him was that some other Allied attack had presented a threat to a more important objective somewhere else. Unfortunately, given his total ignorance of how the warp lines beyond this system related to one another, it was impossible to make any sort of guess as to what that objective might be.
But that left three other intriguing considerations. First, where exactly was the warp point for which they were bound? They'd attempted to go back into cloak, but the long-range recon drones had managed to hold them, and now recon fighters shadowed them cautiously, covered by no less than six strikegroups of escort fighters. Given the energy signatures starship drives radiated at the Bugs' current speed, not even the best ECM in the galaxy would be able to hide them from the exquisitely sensitive sensors of his scout craft. So wherever they were headed, he should be able to track and pursue them.
Which led naturally to the second consideration-how long would it take them to reach their exit warp point? His own entry point lay just over a hundred light-minutes from the system primary in what the Humans would have called the "four o'clock" position. The single habitable world was barely four light-minutes from its cool star in the "seven o'clock" position, which placed it just over two light-hours from Third Fleet's present location, while the Bugs' starships were headed away from his command on a bearing of approximately six o'clock and had already put almost a light-hour between them. That, unfortunately, was the sum total of his knowledge of the system's astrography. He knew how long it would take him to reach and attack the planet, but he had no way of knowing whether he could execute the Shiva Option before the Bugs fled through their destination warp point and thereby avoided the psychic shockwave.