Tactics of Conquest (Stellar Conquest) (22 page)

Afterward, as they lay covered in sweat in the ventilation’s breeze, Rick wondered again whether he had made the right decision. Maybe if he’d dug his heels in and insisted, he could have kept Jill at home with him and the children. His mind knew that was fantasy, but his heart ached for the lost years of children they would never see.

In another compartment, Trissk and Klis lounged together on their sleeping platform. Trissk bit Klis playfully on the back of her neck, his teeth gnawing but not breaking the skin, the Ryss equivalent of a nibble on the ear.

“Frisky tonight, are you?” Klis purred.

“You are still the most beautiful female in the universe.”

“If only I was in season, you would be doing and not talking.”

Trissk snorted. “Sometimes I envy the apes, mating whenever the urge takes them.”

“They only have one or two in a litter. If we mated all the time, we’d overrun every planet we settled on.”

“We could alter our biology.”

Klis drew back to look at her mate. “The thought does not disgust you?”

He reached with his paw, hooking his claws into the ruff around her neck, like a man might lightly seize a woman’s hair, and drew her muzzle to his. They rubbed faces, marking each other with their scent glands. “No. Our race almost died because of its taboos and inflexible traditions. We already have accepted contraceptive implants. Using drugs or medical techniques to further control our reproduction is not life code tinkering – but what if it were? The Humans do it with caution, and the Sekoi embrace it with abandon.”

Klis laughed. “You just want to mate more often, without dealing with a litter afterward.”

“So your yowls as we mated were not of pleasure? I suppose I must have been mistaken. Forgive me.”

Her raspy tongue began to groom Trissk’s face, a most intimate gesture of assent. Once Klis had finished, she said, “I relished every minute of it. My body remembers it. I want to do it again.”

Trissk sighed. “It is madness to conceive a litter here, on a warship.”

“I know. What if there were a way?””

“A way to what?”

“A way to have me, to take me in season, and yet have no fear of kits?”

Trissk rolled up on an elbow and held her at arm’s length. “That is impossible. The implants stop the season and fertility both.”

“Idiot male. What have we just been talking about?” Klis reached into a drawer beneath the sleeping platform and drew out two spray tubes, one black, one white.

“That is forbidden!” Trissk gasped.

Klis yawned. “Taking one mate for life was forbidden just a few short years ago. And who is there to forbid anything here? The apes don’t care about our reproductive taboos. All they care about is whether we perform our duties. You are in charge of the Ryss here. We are many light-years from any of our people. When we next see them, who knows how their customs will be changed?” She stroked his flank. “You were wise to only allow mated pairs to join us. Will you now forbid us glorification if it is within our grasp?”

Slowly Trissk reached out to pick up the black spray, but Klis stopped him, substituting the white. “That’s yours. White for a warrior’s honor. Black for the hearts of females.”

“You made that up.”

“Of course. The Sekoi biochemist that brews it said that each race sees color differently, so this was simple and foolproof. I didn’t ask her the rationale.”

“So what do we do?”

Klis did not answer, but merely sprayed a tiny burst into each nostril, set the vial aside, and then closed her eyes.

Trissk did the same, and within moments, lust for his mate grew within him, starting in his belly and moving outward along his limbs. Strangely, his loins responded last, but when the urge came, it rolled him under like the wave of a sea.

Bogrin pushed a knight forward to take a position covering one of his center pawns.

“Surprise, surprise,” Ezekiel Denham said as he moved a pawn of his own, uncovering a line from his bishop to attack the knight. “You still play a conventional game.”

“I prefer to think of it as conservative, and deep. And I do win more often than you.”

“But when you lose, it’s spectacular. You fall apart like a building of mortarless bricks.”

“Games like these reveal our minds,” Bogrin replied. “The Meme I was and the Sekoi Blend I am both do not like uncertainties. That’s why I like Human chess. No dice, no cards, no random elements.”

“I thought your Meme ancestor blended with a mindless drone.”

“He did, but the stolid Sekoi propensities remained. And yet…I ended up a radical, and a rebel.” He studied the board.

“The admiral believes strategy and tactics will beat the Empire.”

“The
captain
,” Bogrin emphasized the word, “is a clever man but limited in vision. Technology has fallen into his lap to allow him his revenge upon the Empire, but all such advantages are limited. Assuming the Meme have not been overrun by some other unknown race, they are undoubtedly working on a stardrive. Once they have that, their own TacDrive will not be far behind.”

“Politics,” Ezekiel replied, “always trumps strategy, as strategy overrides tactics.”

Bogrin grunted, and finally moved a pawn to block Ezekiel’s bishop’s attack. “Any Meme knows that by his first century. You humans, and the Ryss, are far too young yet to play the deep game.”

“Thanks for teaching me. And yet…I’ve seen you angry.”

Bogrin smiled a mouthful of peg teeth, instantly resembling the hippopotamus of his human nickname. “Who is to say even anger cannot be a strategy?” Then his expression reverted to its usual serenity. “Why are you so calm after seeing your homeworld trampled underfoot?”

Ezekiel sat back and crossed his arms, staring at the board but not really seeing it. “I slaked my physical responses already. There’s this Marine…well, let’s just say she’s finds me exotic, and she’s persistent. Hard to say no when the woman could break me in half…and even with her cyberware shut down, she wears me out. I guess I’m calm now because I’m tired, and I know in my heart it all happened decades ago. There’s nothing I can do.”

“Until we arrive.”

“Yes.” The human made a quick move, advancing another pawn in a sacrifice.

“Once we do…”

“I won’t forget, my friend. You’ll be a part of it.”

“Captain on deck!” COB Timmons roared, and the room snapped to attention – all but the civilians, who at least stopped talking to face the front.

“At ease. Take your seats.” Absen remained standing at the head of the large table. “Everyone is coming out of their funk, and is eager to charge into battle. I know how everyone here feels, because I feel the same. We want to do something, to strike back, to hurt the bastards that killed so many people and conquered our home. We want to charge straight there and free Earth from Meme domination. I get it.”

He took a breath. “But we have to be patient. The facts are not what we
feel
. We
feel
as if we have to hurry – and we won’t waste any time, I assure you – but we must
use
the time wisely. A few more days or weeks, or even
months
of preparation, will not cause much extra harm at our destination, but taking that time to prepare ourselves and
Conquest
may make all the difference.”

Once he saw the nods of assent and the grudging acceptance in their eyes, the captain sat down. “In the last week we’ve proceeded in short, easy hops two light-years toward the solar system. Observations show that Earth is a mess, but we believe several million people survived there, as well as millions more in the Jupiter system. The Meme smashed all organized resistance, but did not engage in further genocide. Yet, ninety-nine percent of the human race was wiped out.

“Further detailed information is very difficult to get, as no one is beaming us intelligence anymore, but it appears that the Empire has brought in or split-grown more Destroyers and has sent a squadron of sixteen our way. We can presume they will take time in Earth system’s Oort cloud to gorge on raw materials, but after that, we believe they will come straight at Gliese 370, and therefore us. With their biological interrogation methods, of course they would have found out where Task Force
Conquest
went, and even though they don’t know that we won, it’s the sensible move to chase after us.”

“We should intercept them, sir!” Ford said hotly, slamming his fist on the table. “We can hit them when they least expect it – in interstellar space.”

“Why?” Absen asked calmly.

“Why? Because…” Ford almost choked.

“I’m not contradicting you, Commander. I just want you to explain what we will accomplish by doing that. Build a case.” Absen had thought this through, of course, but he wanted to see if his officers had.

“Isn’t killing Meme enough, sir?”

“Is it?” Absen looked around. “Okay, let’s hear the pros and cons, pros first. We kill some Meme. Good. Anything else?”

“It’s a live-fire exercise,” Ellis Nightingale said with crossed arms. “We need to see how effective our weapons really are.”

“Actually that applies to the entire tactical system,” Master Helmsman Okuda added. “It would be extremely helpful to practice out in the middle of nowhere before we enter Earth’s solar system, with all its complicating factors.”

“Granted,” Absen acknowledged. “We kill Meme, and we get a top-to-bottom exercise. Anything else?”

Other than some murmured conversations in the background, the room remained quiet.

“All right, cons. Any downsides?”

No one spoke for a moment, and then Spooky Nguyen cleared his throat from where he sat inconspicuously in a chair against the wall. “We may be tipping our hand.”

“Explain,” Absen said.

“The Meme have never witnessed our TacDrive or the tactics that go with it. They will never have seen a human ship that can do what this one does. Surprise can only ever be achieved once,” Spooky said. “They will send reports back to Earth system. We cannot kill sixteen Destroyers quickly enough to prevent that.”

Ford replied in his usual combative tone, “We can arrive right on the heels of that information, before they have much time to adjust. Two days later, if we push.”

“Crew will be in no condition to fight after so much biological disruption,” the Sekoi Bogrin said.

Doctor Egolu raised her hand. “There is one crew member that will not be affected. Michelle.”

“We do not know that,” Commander Ekara objected. “We can’t assume its processors are completely resistant to anomalies. In fact, reason suggests that the more they are miniaturized, the more relativistic effects crop up.”

“She is not an ‘it,’
sir
, and I do not need an
engineer
to tell me my job,” Egolu said through stiffened lips, making Ekara’s vocation into an epithet.

“We
engineers
live in the real world, where things go wrong and kill people.” Ekara’s voice rose.

Absen broke in, his voice a whip. “Simmer down and stick to the point. Pros and cons of engaging the Meme fleet.”

Sergeant Major Repeth nudged Major ben Tauros, who spoke up as if reluctant. “Is there any chance
Desolator
can’t handle sixteen Destroyers, sir? I mean, do we
need
to thin them out?”

Absen glanced around, preferring that others, especially experts, responded to questions, even when he knew the answers. With less than a real month working together, his subordinates still had not developed a tradition of smooth communication among their sections.

Okuda, always mild and professional, took on the job of answering what some might think was a stupid question from a dumbass Marine. “Even if we leave them untouched, it will take them decades to get to Gliese 370.
Desolator
estimated it would take him ten years to replicate himself – to make another superdreadnought, that is. Then those two make two more, and so on. If nothing interrupts, there will be eight to sixteen of them waiting when the Meme fleet arrives. Us taking out a few Destroyers won’t materially affect that equation.”

Murmuring swept the room. It was clear to Absen that not many of them had thought through the implications of
Desolator
’s Von Neumann properties, and how he was in essence spawning a new race of spacegoing mechanical Titans of enormous power.

“The Meme will get squashed,” someone breathed.

“I hope they burn in hell,” another said.

“So we don’t
need
to hit the fleet. Now that that’s settled,” Absen rode down the conversation with his voice, “are there any more pros and cons? Anyone?”

He waited a few more moments, then said, “All right. If anyone thinks of anything more, be sure to bring it up, but for now, I believe the upsides win. We need the weapons test more than we need absolute surprise. We will engage the Meme fleet.”

That broke the tension, and they each took a chair.

“I need some information,” Absen began. “How fast can we be going outside of TacDrive and still fire weapons?”

Ford, always quick to speak, answered. “Anything up to point nine light should be no problem. We did it at Afrana.”

“For the lasers too?”

The weapons officer glanced at Nightingale, who spoke. “There is serious degradation after point five light due to the Doppler effect within the weapon itself – you get an enormous blue-shift fired forward, or red-shift firing backward.”