Extremis (72 page)

And everywhere the
zemlixi
functionaries stood in the background, diffident as always…but there was something different about them.

Now he sat in the great hexagonal chamber at the architectural mountain’s heart and listened to reports that all added up to one thing: the attack on Tisiphone had been a fiasco redeemed only by the fact that they would no longer have to endure Atylycx’s incompetence. But what had followed was far worse.

“The appearance of the new human ships of unprecedented size and power at BR-07 was, of course, an unanticipated factor,” the intelligence analyst droned on. “Our offensive there could make no headway against them, and the local commander withdrew as losses reached unacceptable levels. Equally unanticipated was the promptness with which the humans followed him. And now—”

Ultraz cut him off with an impatient gesture. “Is there any explanation yet of the even more unanticipated factor of these immense human forces’ presence in the Bellerophon Arm, which the Baldies’ conquest of Bellerophon was supposed to have isolated?”

Heruvycx answered that himself, for the CFC high command. “No, Dominant One. It remains a deep mystery.”

“The resolution of mysteries is supposed to be the function of your intelligence branch,” said Scyryx acidly.

“It was totally unforeseeable!” Heruvycx glared at the hated Korvak, then appealed directly to Ultraz. “We speculate that the humans have achieved some heretofore unknown capability to manipulate the physics of the warp network, but this is no more than speculation. What is beyond speculation is that their counteroffensive from BR-07 has now taken six of our systems.” He pointed to the holographic warp line diagram that floated above the center of the table.

“Without even slowing down, it would appear,” said Scyryx. There was a quaver in his voice that Ultraz had heard more and more lately, as the news of disaster had grown from a trickle to a freshet to a flood. “Why has our defense been so ineffectual?”

Heruvycx’s reply was scrupulously correct, but his look of hatred now held an element of contempt. “The human reaction was so unexpectedly swift that we had no time to organize one. Remember, we have never emphasized fixed warp-point defenses.”

No
, brooded Ultraz.
Of course not. We always relied on subterfuges, ploys…and the fact that our enemies were, in the end, nothing more than prey animals.

“Furthermore,” the intelligence analyst resumed at a gesture from Heruvycx, “it appears that the humans are proceeding in accordance with a preexisting plan once they enter our systems. They are distributing weapons to the
zemlixi
in those systems and inciting them to rise in rebellion. And not just the
zemlixi
but also the conquered populations of inferior animals.”

“I have received reports,” said Ultraz with deceptive mildness, “that the rebelling
zemlixi
have, in several cases, made common cause with those populations.”

An unvoiced shudder of revulsion ran around the table.

“What more can be expected of
zemlixi
?” someone muttered disgustedly.

“Finally,” the intelligence analyst concluded, “our routine recon drones show disturbing indications of force buildups in all the human polities along our borders. This, combined with input from our political intelligence sources, leads us to believe that a general offensive is in the offing.”

“While our forces are concentrated in the approaches to the Bellerophon Arm,” Ultraz added. It was the corollary no one wanted to hear.

“And inadequate even there,” added Scyryx. The instability was unmistakable now. His voice nearly broke with it.

Ultraz looked around the table, and no one met his eyes. “So, the question becomes: What do we do now?”

With a suddenness that shocked almost everyone into immobility, Scyryx cracked. He leaped to his feet and stared wildly around the table.

“Do? Do? If we want to have any hope at all of surviving, there’s only one thing we can do—surrender!”

Every Tangri officer of the CFC or the Horde fleets carried, hanging from a part of his harnesslike
anharichu
just behind the base of the torso (a human would have thought of it as the “withers”), the traditional weapon called the
kyeex
—a short curved blade attached to a three-foot staff that gave a greater torque for sweeping blows delivered at a gallop. The fancy modern-dress versions weren’t as heavy as the ones that had spread slaughter across the plains centuries before, but they were still functional.

With a flesh-tingling cry, Heruvycx reached behind him, swept his
kyeex
out and around in a single motion, and brought it down in a diagonal slash across the front of Scyryx’s torso, slicing on down through the chest muscles below that protected the vital organs and cutting open the heart. A gout of blood shot out and spattered in a long line across the table. While there was still blood in the already-dead Scyryx to taste, Heruvycx reached out barehanded and tore out his throat. Then, breathing heavily, he turned to Ultraz with a level gaze.

Ultraz sighed inwardly. It was too bad about Scyryx; he had been a useful advisor, and Ultraz had found him more refreshing than he could publicly admit. But there was no help for it, of course.
He must have gone insane,
Ultrax thought. By advocating surrender to prey animals, he had made legitimate prey of himself, and Heruvycx’s act was irreproachable.

“We will,” Ultraz said, as though nothing had happened, “alert all the Hordes that they are responsible for the defense of their own domains. The CFC will provide as much help as can be spared from the Bellerophon Arm. The objective, of course, is to inflict the maximum possible casualties. We must never forget that we are dealing with what are essentially herd animals—even if they are stampeding at the moment—and they will not be able to equal our ability to endure heavy losses.”

A rumble of agreement—a little too loud—ran around the table.

“It shall be as you command, Dominant One,” said Heruvycx. His voice held the near-dreaminess of satiety.

“Have the corpse removed,” Ultraz added as an afterthought, then stood up and departed, ignoring the submission-gestures.

As he left the chamber, he passed within a meter of one of the
zemlixi
menials. Ordinarily, one didn’t even notice them. But for some reason, he glanced at this one. And for a split second he thought he saw something in that face, instantly smoothed over.

I don’t think I like it
, he thought.

30

Tecum

Tecum vivere amem, tecum obeam libens. (“With you I should love to live, with you be ready to die.”)
—Horace

Resistance Regional Headquarters, Charybdis Islands, Bellerophon/New Ardu

Newly minted Sergeant Jonathan Wismer pushed the agitator through the sewage catch tank one more time. The various gathered discussants either gagged, went pale, or both. But as an untrafficked site in a hermetically sealed base, the sewage backflow tankage room was perfect. This was the group’s seventh meeting in the reeking gray pit, and they had yet to be interrupted by a single unwanted visitor. Hardly a surprise: there had been guffaws and snickers when the well-known (and well-respected) officers and NCOs of this group each drew a short-straw in the—carefully rigged—rank-blind lottery for cleaning the dreaded chamber. That the lottery had been instituted only a week after the showdown with Heide was a subtlety lost amidst the general chortles and enthusiastic hootings.

McGee watched Jon’s long-handled tool move through the viscous swells and wished, at that particular moment, that he didn’t have a nose. “So, it’s not just rumor, Jon?”

“Nope. Toshi Springer and the others at the observatory confirmed it before they got shut down. The Baldies are going into ship-building overdrive. Eyeball astronomy lenses aimed at their geosync industrial-belt show that bigger hulls are starting to show up in the ways, too—or maybe small forts. Kind of hard to tell the difference, with university-grade optical scopes.”

Cap Peters nodded. “But it all makes sense, and goes along with everything else we’re hearing. The Baldies are shutting down a large number of their own facilities. In particular, they’re pulling back from a lot of their recent public-outreach offices that were evidently designed to make them seem more accessible and likable to us.”

“Good luck to them with that project,” muttered Kapinski.

“Yeah, those were not big successes, but the Baldies’ reasons for folding up their tents seem to have less to do with local outcomes than with something else happening outsystem. Our observers are reporting a huge upflux of the same Baldies who used to work in these outreach projects. Most of them are outward-bound, evidently.”

“Casualty replacements?”

“Well, it doesn’t seem like they’re trying to swell the ranks for the victory parade, given the mood.”

Roon Kelakos cocked an eyebrow. “You can tell a Baldy’s mood?”

Next to McGee, Jen took the handkerchief away from her nose long to enough to retch, and then explained, “Actually, you
can
tell an Arduan’s mood. It’s hard to see, for us. The physical signs are very, very subtle. But they’re there. And the observers are right. The intel footage you’ve shown me recently makes it pretty obvious that something awful has happened to them, something that—
gak
!” She slapped the handkerchief over her face and spun away from the sewage tank. McGee put an arm around her spasming shoulders.

Chong—impassive and stoic except for his tightly pinched nostrils—nodded. “Cap is right. It all adds up. The outsized, automated defense blisters they’ve been emplacing around their own cities, the remote missile sites they’re putting deep underground, their withdrawal from our population centers, the shutdown of one power plant after another until they’ve got our civilians rationing electricity…Yes, they’re expecting an attack. Not today, not next week, not even next month—but they’re digging in.”

“
Da
, and they are digging in right next to where our families live.” Danilenko spat. In the sewage-backflow room, that unclean habit provided both a hygienic and aesthetic improvement.

Harry Li sighed. “I hate to say it, but maybe this one time Heide is right. Maybe we need to attack sooner rather than later.” He looked around the group. Igor nodded vigorously, Juan a moment behind him. Roon Kelakos and Cap Stevens seemed a little less enthusiastic. McGee noticed that only Chong seemed to share his own reluctance. Jen shook her head in a vigorous negative—a motion that evidently induced a new surge of nausea.

Cap broke the uncomfortable silence with a tone that was the very epitome of reasonableness. “We know how you feel about this, Jen, and some of us are starting to sympathize. But we could be running out of time. The Baldies are getting pretty short-tempered with our civilians again.”

“That’s the
Destoshaz
,” Jen gagged out. “Fanatics.”

Igor—who demonstrated an almost chivalric deference to Jen in all things—nodded gravely. “
Da
, Jennifer. Clearly, not all the Baldies perform atrocities. This you have helped us see. But we cannot fight some of the aliens and not the others. When we strike to save ourselves, they will all fight against us. So we must fight against all of them. It is sad, but it cannot be changed.”

Cap nodded. “Igor is right, and whatever course we take, it’s not going to be pretty. As I see it, we’ve got two choices—cripple the Baldy command echelons or wait until the Fleet shows up. And when the Fleet makes orbit, and if the Baldies are still in uncontested control of the surface of this planet, then the Fleet will have no choice but to follow the pre-invasion SOP.”

Jen coughed out, “What SOP is that?”

Cap Peters frowned and looked away. “Pre-landing bombardment. Neutralization of all enemy infrastructure, including all known or suspected defense installations and force groupments. In the case of Bellerophon, that is going to mean a whole lot of cities will get pretty roughed up. And Melantho will be slagged into trinitite.”

Jonathan Wismer leaned on his long-handled tool. “Couldn’t we try to organize a general evacuation once we knew—?”

Cap shook his head. “A noble idea, Jon, but it won’t work. The Baldies have now shut down all our communications, dismantled all our observatories, confiscated every bit of radio equipment they could find. So,
with no way to receive or send a warning, how do we know it’s time to evacuate before the first missiles start raining in? And by that time, it’s too late.”

Jon nodded, sadly resigned to Cap’s logic. “What’s our move, Cap?”

“Well, given the irregular nature of our command structure”—Cap looked around the
de facto
strategy council and was greeted with sour grins—“I’m open to suggestions and new ideas. But I can’t see many alternatives that don’t start with an assault into Punt itself. It will be costly, but they don’t have any awareness of what a full-readiness, milspec-equipped attack will be like.”

Jen shook her head. “I wouldn’t count on that, Cap. They’ve seen all our documentaries and movies.” Jen held up a pausing hand as a wave of nausea passed; McGee rubbed her back gently. “The Arduans didn’t believe any of our self-representations at first. But when you rescued us, that was already starting to change in a big way. Ankaht and her group were realizing that actual footage of events, as shown in news programs, could be taken at face value. So if any other Arduans are listening to her research group, your equipment won’t come as a complete surprise.”

Cap nodded thoughtfully. “That’s useful intel, Jen, thank you. But did you have any sense of how much milspec equipment they thought we had?”

Jen shrugged. “It never came up.”

Cap kept nodding. “I can see how it wouldn’t. But we’ve also watched how they extend their vehicles and aerial patrols beyond their safe zones without a lot of overwatch. I think if they knew—or even speculated—that we have as many high-tech toys as we have, they’d be a lot more careful once outside their cities and bases.”

Jen tilted her head, then matched Cap’s nod. “Ankaht never thought of it that way, exactly, but there’s something in what you say. The Arduans weren’t concerned about these issues because they didn’t think it possible that you had the numbers of sophisticated weapons that you’ve got in reserve. That would certainly be the radical
Destoshaz
conclusion. Their contempt for humans makes it unthinkable to them that we’d withhold such powerful systems from deployment for so long. They think we are completely ruled and governed by our most violent instincts.”