Irma sagged against a bulkhead with relief. Then, with the important questions taken care of, another one occurred to her.
"But if the Fleet's still headed in-system, how the hell did you find us? What were you doing back here?"
"You've got to be kidding!" The lieutenant stared at her with a stunned incredulity that made him forget her rank. "D'you think Fang Zhaarnak was about to let us call this search off?"
"Fang Zhaarnak?" Irma stared back in confusion. "What does he have to-?"
But then the older man wrapped up his alley-cat-like conversation with the Orion in the com screen-who, Irma now noticed, wore the very heavily jeweled harness of exalted rank-and turned to say something to her. And as he did, she finally saw his face clearly-the face she'd seen in more news broadcasts then she could count. The face she'd seen before the First Battle of Home Hive Three when the admiral commanding Sixth Fleet in Zephrain had announced to his personnel, including a young fighter pilot consumed with rage and the need for vengeance, that they were going to kill the very first home hive system to die.
"Oh, shit," she said in a tiny voice, and Raymond Prescott smiled at her. There were ghosts behind those hazel eyes, she thought numbly, yet that smile held a curious warmth. One that didn't fit well with the stories she'd heard about him since his brother's death.
"I just asked Fang Zhaarnak to inquire into the status of VF-94, Commander. You'll be glad to know that three of your pilots made it back to Hephaestus."
"Thank you, Sir. Uh, Admiral, I apologize for-"
"For heaven's sake, don't apologize! As you pointed out-rather forcefully, as I recall-you saved my life. And that wasn't all you did for me."
"Sir?"
"You reminded me of something I'd lost sight of, in the world of large-scale abstractions I inhabit, and in . . . becoming what I became after my brother was killed. You reminded me of why we're fighting this war-the real reason. And it's very basic and very, very simple. We're fighting it for that little girl of yours."
After a moment in which the background noises of the shuttle seemed unnaturally loud, Prescott grew businesslike.
"We're on our way to rendezvous with Fang Zhaarnak's flagship. Grand Fleet's regrouping for the final advance in-system. In the meantime, our carriers are going to go back to Anderson Three to pick up replacement fighters from the reserves there. We still have some work to do."
Irma straightened up.
"Sir, if possible I request to be returned to Hephaestus."
"After what you've been through? No one will expect you back immediately, and Fang Zhaarnak's people are already informing Hephaestus that you survived. At least take time to get checked out physically."
"I'm fine, Admiral. And . . . if we're going to get a couple of replacement pilots, I'll need all the time I can get to integrate them into the squadron before we tackle the planets."
Prescott nodded, and smiled.
"I believe we can probably arrange that, Commander."
Kthaara'zarthan stood on Li Chien-lu's flag bridge, a motionless silhouette against the viewscreen whose starfields now held two new, pale-blue members: the twin planet system occupying Home Hive Five's third orbit, seemingly almost touching each other at this distance.
Vanessa Murakuma didn't disturb him. Instead, she turned to her chief of staff.
"Are the ship losses in yet, Leroy?"
"Yes, Sir. As expected, they were very light in this latest action. So the earlier figures are essentially unchanged."
She thought of what lay behind McKenna's emotionless words. Twenty-nine monitors, thirty six superdreadnoughts, five assault carriers, twenty-one fleet carriers, forty-one battlecruisers, and thirty-three light cruisers. They'd also very nearly lost Raymond Prescott when his flagship died; would have, if it hadn't been for some fighter jock.
But Leroy was right. Virtually all those ghastly losses had been sustained in the earlier battle with the deep space force and its massive wavefront of kamikazes . . . and the Bugs had shot their bolt in that battle. When Grand Fleet had reached the inner system, it had found relatively few gunboats and small craft remaining. And the Allies' surviving carriers had been able to launch full complements of fighters to meet those kamikazes at extreme range. So few of them had gotten through that the cruiser screen, even after the laceration it had taken earlier, had blown them apart with almost contemptuous ease.
Kthaara turned slowly, as though reluctant to give up his contemplation of those twin bluish lights.
"Have all the fighters recovered?"
"Yes, Sir. Some of the carriers have already finished rearming their groups; all of them should be done within another twenty minutes." There was no need for McKenna to report the nature of that rearming, for it was preplanned: FRAMs, fighter ECM, and decoy missiles.
"Excellent." The old Orion drew a deep breath. "Our fighter losses in the latest action were so light that I believe we can proceed with the first of our operational models. Do you concur, Ahhdmiraaaal Muhrakhuuuuma?"
"I do, Sir," she said formally. The other models had postulated a fighter strength so badly depleted that it could deal with only one of the twin planets at a time.
"Very well." Kthaara turned back to the viewscreen, and spoke in the Orion equivalent of a whisper. "Do it."
There was very little of the Fleet left, but what there was knew it had failed.
The Enemies had been brutally wounded, but they hadn't been broken. Perhaps the Fleet had taught them too well over the years of warfare, for there'd been a time when such losses would have caused them to break off. Or perhaps not. The Enemies must know as well as the Fleet did that this was the last of the Systems Which Must Be Defended, after all.
It didn't truly matter. The long survival the Fleet had guarded for so many centuries was about to end, and there was no longer anything the Fleet could do about it. Not really. All that remained was to kill as many Enemies as possible before the death of the first World Which Must Be Defended destroyed any possibility of organized resistance. It wasn't much. Indeed, there was no logical point in it at all. Yet for a species for which coexistence was not even a concept, for which the possibility of negotiations or surrender did not even exist, it was the only action which remained, however pointless.
There was no subtlety to it.
The fighters screamed down on the twin planets, ignoring the space stations and the almost fifty fortresses in low orbit about each of those doomed worlds. Speed was their only armor as they shot past those orbital defenses.
Nor did they slow down to maneuver into position to attack specific dirtside objectives, which would have given the fortresses time to complete targeting solutions. No, there were enough fighters to render any sort of tactical precision superfluous in a mission whose sole purpose was planetary depopulation. They just came in at full speed in a single pass, allowing the planets' gravity wells to whip them around in the classic slingshot effect, and simply dumped their FRAMs before pulling up and swerving away. It didn't even matter whether the missiles struck land or ocean; tsunami was as good a killer as any.
The spectacle was downloaded to Li Chien-lu's main flag viewscreen. They watched as the faces of both planets erupted obscenely in boils of hellfire. It was the final application of the Shiva Option.