Shiva Option

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 McKe

"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.

When it was over, Kthaara'zarthan received reports of the losses the fighters had taken. They weren't inconsiderable. But . . .

"Shall we send the carriers back to Anderson Three for more replacements, Sir?" Murakuma asked.

"I think not. Given the well established impact on the Bahgs' mental cohesion of this-" he waved a hand in the general direction of the two dead planets "-I believe that even understrength strikegroups can deal with the remaining planets."

"What about the orbital works here, Sir? They're untouched."

"They have ceased to matter. Leave them to die-we will not sully our claws. Set course for Planet II."

Irma Sanchez had managed to get away from the throng that had greeted her on her return from the dead, and actually caught a little rest as Hephaestus returned to Anderson Three. But then two unbelievably young pilots had arrived in VF-94's ready room, and she'd spent the return trip to Home Hive Five in a frenzy of improvisation that left her wondering if being lost in space had really been so bad after all.

Then had come the attack on the twin planets-shrieking past the orbital fortresses at a velocity that made them look like slingshot pebbles whizzing past, with the target planet zooming up with startling rapidity before she'd released her FRAMs. It had all been too quick.

But then had come Planet II. They'd been able to take that a little slower, because the Bugs in those fortresses had been in the grip of whatever it was that gripped them when billions of their fellows went abruptly into the flames.

And now it was time for Planet I.

The last one, she thought as she saw it growing in the fighter's little viewscreen. The reality hadn't hit her until now. Forty billion Bugs, the spooks say. The last forty billion in the universe. Shouldn't I be feeling something? Is it possible that this has become routine?

But, she realized, so suddenly that it was like some abrupt revelation, she'd emptied her cup of rage long ago. Once, approaching this planet, she would have seen Armand's face, and the sickening fury would have come roaring up like boiling acid. But now she remembered the words of Raymond Prescott, and the face that rose up in her mind's eye was that of a blue-eyed eleven-year-old girl.

No, she corrected herself, glancing at the chrono, with its date in Terran Standard. Not eleven anymore.

Then they were in, past the sluggishly responding fortresses.

Happy birthday, Lydochka, she thought as she sent her FRAMs streaking down. The now familiar fiery wall of antimatter fireballs walked across the planet, cauterizing the universe, burning away something that could not be allowed to blight any more young lives.

Afterwards, there was a long silence.

EPILOGUE

"So," Robalii Rikka said, "I suppose my carefully rehearsed farewell speech must go to waste. I'll be seeing you again before very long, in the Star Union."

"Yes, Warmaster," Aileen Sommers replied. "The Legislative Assembly's confirmation came through today. There's still some paperwork left to unravel in the Foreign Ministry, of course."

"After which you will resume your position as ambassador from the Terran Federation to the Star Union-this time with proper accreditation," Rikka couldn't resist adding. "I must say it was a remarkably intelligent decision-" the Crucian stopped just short of saying on the standards of your human politicians "-given the unique status you hold among us. You are the logical choice. Oh, by the way, congratulations on your promotion."

"Thank you, Warmaster," she said with a grin . . . after a pause of her own just long enough to confirm that she knew perfectly well what Rikka had left unsaid, even though her agreement must remain equally silent. "They did it just minutes before retiring me. The whole business was a matter of hustling me from one office to another on the same floor. I think their idea was that a retired vice admiral would seem more impressive than a retired rear admiral."

"So you'd think the same logic would apply to her military attaché, wouldn't you?" Feridoun Hafezi asked rhetorically. "They ought to have made me at least a rear admiral for the job. But no, the best they could do was commodore!"

"You're still on active duty," Sommers reminded him. "So in your case they have to play by the rules."