"That's one way to put it!" Murakuma said, with her own species' chuckle. "She must have rehearsed all the way from Alpha Centauri to Justin, because once she got there, she tore an extremely painful and well-thought-out strip off of my hide for letting the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and a relative of the Khan endanger themselves like that."
She grinned, but then, abruptly, a dead emptiness opened in her heart. Her eyes strayed to the viewport and the spaces of the Anderson Chain, where Hannah Avram had died along with so many thousands of others. Her grin vanished, and Kthaara's slit-pupiled eyes softened as he read her change of mood.
"But, after reprimanding you, she presented you with your race's highest decoration for valor, did she not?" he asked gently.
"Yes," Murakuma's hand strayed unconsciously to her breast, and the ribbon of the Lion of Terra. "Yes, she did," she said in a voice almost too small to be heard, and Kthaara smiled.
"We all have our dead to mourn, Ahhdmiraaaal. My own recollections go back much further than that: to the Theban War, when I was young enough to be truly foolish. Ah, what a blood-mad zeget I was then, burning to avenge my cousin's treacherous death! Ahhdmiraaaal Antaanaaav gave me the chance to seek that vengeance, even permitted me to fly a fighter in one of his strikegroups. And he and I became vilkshatha brothers."
"And now you're seeking vengeance again." It was a statement, not a question, and Murakuma held the old Orion's eyes with hers. "I'm curious about something, Lord Talphon. In all the planning for this operation, I notice you've never once considered the possibility of using 'dinosaur killers' in Home Hive Five, like Lord Khiniak and I did in Home Hive Two."
"No, I have not, have I?" Kthaara maintained a blandly inscrutable silence for a heartbeat or two, then relented. "There is really no mystery. I do not devalue that approach, and I am sure your Small Claw Tahlivver would be more than willing to repeat his exploit. But, as you discovered in Home Hive Two, even your 'cushion shot' option is subject to interception by a defending fleet. In the end, we would have to confront their mobile forces and their gunboats and kamikazes whatever we did, and unlike Home Hive Two, Home Hive Five has not been stripped of its fleet by previous incursions. And, as you know better than most of us, it takes a great deal of time. I want to finish this war, and finish it quickly. I believe the force we have assembled here can do that."
"Of course." Murakuma nodded. "I understand. And yes, we will finish it for you."
She stood straighter, gave a respectful nod, and left him. Kthaara watched her go, and then turned back to the viewport, now alone. Only he wasn't truly alone, for the Anderson Chain held other ghosts besides that of Hannah Avram.
I did not tell her the full truth, Eeevaan'zarthan. She would not have understood. She might even have thought that I was impugning her honor. In that, she would have been quite mistaken. What she did in Home Hive Two was not dishonorable. It merely would be wrong at this moment. It would be vermin extermination, not vengeance.
Admittedly, there can be no true vilknarma, no blood-balance, for all the Bugs in the universe would not balance you.
Nevertheless . . .
Kthaara's eyes went to LeBlanc's holo display of Home Hive Five. The four inhabited planets still glowed redly.
Nevertheless, brother, I can at least provide you with an impressive, if belated, funeral pyre.
All was in readiness. In the master plot on Li Chien-lu's flag bridge, the swarming green icons seemed to coil as Grand Fleet poised to strike.
"Lord Talphon . . . ?" Leroy McKenna diffidently indicated the countdown that was crawling through the last few minutes.
"Yes, I see," Kthaara acknowledged with a small nod to the chief of staff. His eyes met Vanessa Murakuma's in a moment of shared knowledge. Then he turned to the com pickup that was hooked into the flagship of every fleet, every task force, and every task group.
Anyone expecting a bloodthirsty oration is going to be disappointed, Kthaara thought. The way of the Zheeerlikou'valkhannaiee was to use few words, but heartfelt ones, at the important moments in their lives. The more important the moment, the fewer words with which it should be diminished. And so Kthaara'zarthan, Khanhaku Talphon, fourth cousin of the Khan'a'khanaaeee, Chairman of the Combined Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Grand Alliance, and Commanding Officer of the Alliance's Grand Fleet, gave the order which launched that fleet against the final home hive system in existence after the fashion of his people.
"Proceed," he said quietly.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR: The Vengeance of Kthaara'zarthan
The end could not be long-delayed.
The Fleet stood at bay in defense of the final System Which Must Be Defended, and the massive waves of robotic probes the Enemy had sent through the warp point again and again and again promised that its wait would not be much longer.
Introspection was not something to which the beings who crewed the Fleet were given, nor-in any sense humans or any of their allies would have understood-were hope, or happiness, or despair. Yet those units of the vast, corporate hunger which had spawned the Fleet who were responsible for analysis and strategic planning understood what had happened . . . and what was about to happen.
Not fully, of course. Those analysts had no equivalent of the emotions, the terror and hate, which drove their Enemies. They didn't understand love, or the ferocity broken love and loss-born vengeance could spawn. They served colder imperatives, ones in which the things which made their Enemies what they were-individuals-could have no place, for theirs was not a society of individuals, it was . . . an appetite. An omnivoracity, whose every facet and aspect rested upon a single, all-consuming compulsion: survival.
Survival at all costs. At any cost. Survival which had no other objective beyond the mere act of surviving. Survival which would inspire nothing but survivaclass="underline" not art, not epic poetry, not music or literature or philosophy. Not ethics. And certainly never anything so ephemeral and yet so central to all their Enemies were as honor.
And because that single imperative was all the Fleet's analysts truly understood, they could never grasp the entirety of what drove their enemies. Not that they would have cared if they had been able to grasp it. What mattered motivation, in the end? Their own imperative would have demanded the same action, although they would never have been so wasteful as simply to exterminate potential food sources if there was any way to avoid it. But emotionless, uncaring survival was a harsh and demanding god, and the analysts who had preceded those who now served the Fleet had given dozens of other species to it as its sacrifices. In the end, those sacrifices had been in vain. Indeed, although the analysts were far too alien to their Enemies to ever visualize the concept that any other course of action might even have been possible, those sacrifices were what had made the present disaster inevitable. The complete impossibility of coexistence-the all or nothing appetite which had driven something which could never truly be called a "civilization" to the very stars-left no other option, no other possible outcome, than this one.