Grashkul kept outwardly impassive as he received the report—delivered without inflection by Kaathgor—of the seven newly arrived hostiles from Seivra. They had flashed past the damaged ships he had left to watch a displacement point that had seemed no longer so important, exchanging missiles in a brief spasm of violence, but had not paused. Instead, they had continued accelerating, adding onto a velocity that should have brought them to grief in the obstructed zone. And now they were on a course which would bring them into the battle that was about to begin with the nine mysterious intruders that had savaged his fleet and now approached this system's asteroid belt on their sunward course.
Inwardly, his guts seethed. Kaathgor could, of course, not remind him that his own impatience had prevented the chief of staff from reporting the heading of those missiles of the second salvo, which would have mandated the incredible conclusion that these raiders, already here in the Tareil system, were somehow connected with the conquerors of Seivra. No, Kaathgor couldn't
openly
bring it up—but his entire attitude fairly screamed it.
"It appears," the chief of staff was concluding, "that our cripples were unable to inflict appreciable damage on the newcomers in the brief time available to them."
"Of course not," Grashkul replied testily. "They were unprepared, and most of them have damaged targeting systems . . . ." He let the futile line of thought die a natural death. "It is clear that these two groups of inferior beings are acting in concert," he resumed, watching Kaathgor closely for anything that even resembled smugness. "So we must defeat them in detail. We will overwhelm the ones who attacked us before those from Seivra can overhaul us."
"There is another possibility, Effectuator," Kaathgor said diffidently. "We could break off the engagement. The dynamics of our present astronomical situation would permit us to retire on Raehan if we commence the course change within . . ."
"Preposterous!" Grashkul's eye bulged with astonished fury. "What are you suggesting? We could still defeat
both
these pathetic forces together in a straightforward battle, if we had to! Open fire on the ships we are pursuing as soon as we enter missile range!"
"As you command, Effectuator."
Grashkul turned away without even formally dismissing Kaathgor and studied the tactical display. Of course they would win. Of course. If he had still had his full strength of battleships, there would have been no doubt; he would have smothered those ships ahead of him in an avalanche of long-range missiles. But unfortunately, his losses had been heaviest in the missile-armed behemoths—the raiders must have specifically targeted them. So the brunt of the first battle would fall on the battlecruisers, which had been pulling steadily ahead and would come into energy-weapon range of the enemy only minutes after the missile engagement began. Of course, it would take them longer to close to the short ranges where energy weaponry was really effective.
His eye glowered at those nine blips. Who
were
they? Their design was pure Raehaniv, and he had been going on the working assumption that they belonged to the
Free
(of necessity, he used the Raehaniv word for the untranslatable concept) Raehaniv Fleet. But their order of battle for that fleet included no such ships. And how could they have gotten away from the carefully monitored asteroid region to launch an attack that had clearly originated in the outer reaches of the system, far from the ecliptic? (He would have words for the Obtainer of Foreknowledge after this was over!) And how could they be coordinating their actions with the mysterious occupiers of Seivra?
If Grashkul had been human he would have shaken his head ruefully. This newly incorporated region had yielded one surprise after another of late. Through all the centuries in which the Unity had expanded in precisely the manner predicted by the Acceptable Knowledge, nothing had ever surprised the Korvaasha.
Then the deck vibrated under him and he heard the rumble of the first missile salvo. Soon it would all be academic.
Liberator
's control room seemed to lurch as they absorbed another hit. Aelanni rapped out a series of orders, then studied the status readout.
They had given far better than they had gotten. Their defensive lasers had been able to cope with the big missiles from the depleted ranks of the Korvaash battleships. And their own missiles had taken toll of the advancing Korvaash battlecruisers until they had given out. But then the battlecruisers had drawn into energy-weapon range, and their massed laser batteries (specialized armaments were a feature of Korvaash ship designs) had begun to stab at her ships. They had fought back, with weapons enjoying the advantages of Raehaniv engineering. But the battlecruisers, in their ungainly massiveness, could absorb a lot of punishment. And they could mount a lot of weaponry—even crude, inefficient Korvaash weaponry. The brute mathematics of tonnage and firepower, which did not recognize gallantry as a factor, were inexorably wearing her force down.
Avenger
had fallen out of formation early, and had by now ceased to communicate.
Deliverer
had blown up with a spectacular effulgence of light. Other ships had suffered various degrees of damage.
Liberator
had gotten off lightly—but not for long. The Korvaasha had now closed to plasma-weapon range, and the slugging match that was commencing could have but one conclusion.
Her eyes met Naeriy's, and no words were necessary. Eric's ships (
Eric!
) were still not even within missile range of the Korvaash battleships. When they did pull into range, they would face the Korvaasha alone.
Things would be different if we had deflector shields like the Terran ships,
she thought, oddly calm.
But then we wouldn't have had the drive modifications that enabled us to get here. It was a tradeoff we freely accepted.
Her eyes went to the viewport. Yes, the Korvaash battlecruiser that showed in all its hideousness on the screen was now visible, like a child's model toy across a twilit lawn. She turned to Rosen and knew that, in some ways, she mourned him more than anyone else. For all the rest of them were Raehaniv, and could not have done otherwise than be here. She felt she should say something. But then he gave his gently ironic smile, and his voice told her not to worry.
"We gave them a good run, didn't we?"
She smiled back. "Yes we did." Then she reached out and grasped his hand, hard. (It would once have been unthinkable for a Raehaniv. He was right; they had changed.) And she spoke a word he had taught her. "
Shalom
, Yakov."
"
Shalom
, Aelanni."
Suddenly, their faces were bathed with light from the screen. An instant later, the tiny Korvaash battlecruiser in the viewport was replaced by a little bit of sun—a point of light which began to grow, and then was all the sky there was. The armorplast darkened just in time to save them from blindness, but spots continued to dance before their eyes as the glare died away, revealing an expanding halo of glowing plasma that had been a battlecruiser.
After a heartbeat, the dead silence in the control room was shattered as the communicator squawked. "Calling the unknown vessels! Calling the unknown vessels! This is the Free Raehaniv Fleet. Please acknowledge."
In one unbroken motion Aelanni was out of her crash couch, across the control room, and at the comm console, elbowing the communications officer out of the way. "This is Aelanni zho'Morna, daughter of Varien hle'Morna. Please make visual contact."
At this range, neutrino-pulse communications were virtually instantaneous. The comm screen awoke, revealing a man in a highly non-reg version of the wartime Raehaniv fleet uniform.
"Aelanni?" His voice broke in an incredulous squeak. "This is Yarvann hle'Taren. We've been maintaining surveillance of the Seivra displacement point, and we had a quick-response force to react to any developments out here, and . . . and what am I babbling about? Arduin told us your father didn't die as is generally believed, but by now we had become certain that all of you were dead!"
Suddenly, she could barely suppress a giggle as she quoted a saying of Eric's people. "The rumors of our death have been greatly exaggerated." Then she remembered herself, and glanced at the holo tank in which the Free Raehaniv ships were springing into life as the fleets' computers began to talk to each other. "Please continue to match vectors with us and the Korvaasha, Yarvann. We still have a battle to fight. We'll explain everything later. But," she added, beckoning to Rosen, "first of all, there's someone you should meet."
Grashkul stared fixedly at the tactical display and knew the ashen taste of hopelessness.
When the feral humans of the asteroids had set upon his battlecruisers he had ordered the battleships to alter course and attempt to reach Raehan. But the oncoming unknowns had followed, remorselessly continuing to close the range, and a missile duel had erupted that had soon exhausted his depleted magazines. And the victorious Raehaniv ahead had decelerated so as to cross his course, so that now the surviving battleships were about to come into range of their energy weapons. Missiles were still arriving from astern, but he hardly noticed the buffeting of near-misses.
This could not be happening. The Acceptable Knowledge, which had never failed the Unity before, did not allow for it. A universe without the solid and immovable foundation of the Acceptable Knowledge's infallibility was a universe of unimaginable chaos, from which his mind shied away too quickly even to consciously reject it.
And yet it
was
happening.
Kaathgor approached slowly, dragging a leg that had been injured by a falling structural member, threading his way through the damage-control workers. "Scanning reports another incoming spread of missiles, Effectuator. What are your orders?"
For a moment that stretched and stretched, Grashkul was silent, eye staring unseeingly ahead. Kaathgor was about to repeat the question when the Effectuator of Expansion spoke almost inaudibly, to no one in particular.
"Lies. All lies. Nothing but lies."
Before Kaathgor could ask him what he meant, a war-god's mace smote the flagship, and noise and flame became all the universe that was or could be.
"But are you quite certain that this is the way I should put it?" Varien sounded very dubious.
They stood in the midst of frantic activity as specialists established contact with their opposite numbers in the Free Raehaniv Fleet through specially-installed banks of communicators, coordinating the mop-up of the Korvaash remnants.
But Varien had the main console all to himself as he prepared, before they even rendezvoused with Aelanni, to broadcast a message that would blanket the Tareil system.
They had hastily cobbled the message together, and DiFalco had come into the discussion with the advantage of a man with a clear idea, and so had placed a strong imprint on the sheet of hard copy Varien now held before him, reading over once again with unabated skepticism.
"I suppose, Eric," he continued hesitantly, "if you're quite sure . . ."
"Trust me. I know what I'm doing." DiFalco shot a glance at the chronometer. "You're on!"
Varien cleared his throat and took a breath. "People of Raehan: I have returned . . ."
Daeliuv regarded Yakov Rosen and tried once again to overcome a sense of unreality. It wan't that the man across the table was particularly strange-looking—short and stocky on Raehaniv standards, looking older than Daeliuv now knew he was, features and coloring faintly exotic, but overall nothing alarming. It was his very ordinariness which seemed wrong, even though Daeliuv had known about the Landaeniv for some time.
The Free Raehaniv had rendezvoused with Aelanni first, before Varien and his new allies had arrived. By now they had seen other Landaeniv, in all their surprising variety. But Rosen had been the first one they had set eyes on, and to all of them who had been present for that first visual pickup from Aelanni's control room he remained the quintessential Landaeniv, imprinted on their minds with the strength of first impressions.
No, not "Landaeniv,"
Daeliuv scolded himself.
Terran. Must remember that.
He dragged his mind back to the subject at hand. "So you found this abandoned base just after entering the system you call 'Terranova'?"
"Yes," Rosen replied in his fluent Raehaniv. "It was purely by chance—a wildly improbable chance, as I've often reflected in the years since." He frowned and sipped his wine. (The Free Raehaniv had been able to keep limited supply channels open, and the reception the two of them had gotten away from had been an occasion to warrant the breaking out of long-hoarded stocks.) "I gather it was the same with the asteroid—Turanau?—that you Free Raehaniv discovered."
"Precisely. It was only by sheer chance that we learned of this dead civilization that was operating in our part of the galaxy at the time humans appeared on Raehan." Daeliuv paused, then spoke almost plaintively. "And your scientists are
quite
certain that your ancestors evolved on Earth?"
"Oh, yes. That's been established for a long time. There's no break in our world's evolutionary history as there is in yours." Rosen was silent for a long, thoughtful moment, stroking the beard he had grown on Terranova—it was thicker than any Raehaniv could have managed, Daeliuv noted. "But you spoke of a 'dead civilization,' Daeliuv. Are you
absolutely
certain it's dead?"
"What?! Well . . . there certainly doesn't seem to be any evidence that it's presently active."
"No. Not unless you count the fact that we've both been making these highly unlikely discoveries at the same time—which also happens to be the time at which we're coming into contact with each other. Can you imagine what the odds against that must be?"
Daeliuv gave him a long, hard look. Then he smiled. "Don't tell me you Lan . . . Terrans believe in ghosts, Yakov!"
Rosen's intense expression dissolved into a wry grin. "Oh, no. Not to worry. I can't really believe we're all going through the motions as actors in somebody else's . . ." He stumbled to a halt. The Raehaniv for "psychodrama" was beyond him.