Medusa: A Tiger by the Tail (42 page)

“There has been no reconsideration on this end,” Krega told him. “In fact, it’s been difficult just to restrain some of our people, particularly the military, to this limited engagement. However, it’s going to be awfully bloody. We have monitored some traffic not on our control system at various random points around the civilized worlds. They duck in and out of light before we can get to them, but some of them are pretty big. They haven’t budged on your side?”

“Not a bit. I talked to Morah and to the Altavar and they’re both firm—you might say even
eager,
on Morah’s part. However, that unauthorized traffic gives me bad feelings. There’s been no sign of any fleet massing here—I still haven’t seen an Altavar ship, not even one to take off the party on Medusa. I don’t think they’re going to take on the task force head-to-head.”

“We have a computer projection on their potential, even assuming a tenth of our firepower, and it’s scary,” Krega admitted. “Security and Military Systems Command have used the week to shift to remote backup positions. Unless this is more bluff, we think they have dispersed rather than massed their forces for hit-and-run. If we had ten war stations we could destroy hundreds of planets. We have to hit them in one spot—yours, I’m sorry to say, but it’s the ‘only one we have. They can hit us wherever we’re not. Come in, destroy a weakly defended planet someplace, then get out fast. Choose another equally vulnerable. We can’t guard them all. We’d need eighteen hundred cruisers to do a strong defense of all the worlds and we have less than three hundred. Sounded like a lot when we built them.”

And that was that “They’re willing to accept the possibility of a protracted bloodbath of those proportions?”

Krega chuckled dryly. “Son, maybe you’re still naive. The Council, the Congress, all the top people are in the best, most well-protected rear areas. They’ll die of old age before
they’re ‘an
jeopardy. Face facts—they’ve got to win no matter
what
the cost.”

No matter what the cost.,. Yes, he reflected sourly, that was the bottom line. Fallen had been right. Korman had been right. They’d
all
been right. The Warden Diamond wasn’t the opposite of the Confederacy, nor were the Four Lords of the Diamond the opposites of the Council. No, they were merely reflections of the Confederacy, allowing for local conditions. That was it—the break ‘Was now complete, total, and irrevocable.

“Good-bye, Papa,” he said, meaning it.

“Good-bye, Control,” Krega responded and broke the contact.

He threw the security transceiver as hard as he could at the nearest wall. It bounced off and clattered and rolled back to his feet.

The task force was already alerted. There was only an hour to go.

8

Morah turned and nodded to him as he entered the cramped meeting room. “Welcome, Mr. Carroll,” he said calmly, sounding in a good mood. “Have a seat. Some of my staff are here and we thought we would make use of the transmission facilities and these-screens to watch what happens now. Unfortunately, Altavar ships are simply not built for such as us, and the command center itself bears little resemblance to anything we could make use of. I have arranged to couple in our own devices to theirs so that we can, shall we say, watch the show.”

Morah’s manner irritated him. He could not really figure out the man, who moved so rapidly from tired philosopher to master agent to an almost Ypsir-like disregard for suffering and destruction. Still, until this was resolved, he was more or less along for the ride and would have to make the best of it.

A half-dozen others were seated around the table, some with small terminals, others with primitive pads and paper, but all looked more interested than worried by what might well take place. Most, but not all, were Charonese. Medu-sans were conspicuously absent, though.

One screen displayed the familiar computer plot showing the tactical disposition of the task force, the Diamond worlds, and representations of moving traffic and satellites. The plot extended to Momrath, but not beyond.

The task force had split into three sections. Two battle groups with their attendant cruiser protection had moved well away from the main force and were station keeping at right angles to the task force and the sun. The main battle group, with two war stations, was rapidly beginning to close on the target, its obvious move designed to draw out an enemy fleet and to draw and test interplanetary defenses, since all operations could have been carried out from any distance within a light-year of the target.

He frowned. “From the looks of it the Altavar are putting up no resistance at all,” he noted aloud.

Morah sat back in his chair and watched the screen. “There will be no resistance to the objective except from fixed planetary defenses, which will become increasingly costly to the task force the more they close,” he told the agent. “However, the subsidiary battle groups will be engaged at the proper time.”

“Then there are forces in the area! Where?”

“You’ll see them when the time comes, Mr. Carroll. Be patient. We are about to bear witness to a sight no humans and few living Altavar have ever seen. We have remote cameras stationed in-system and will be able to see things firsthand on the other screen. All of this, of course, is contingent on the Confederacy task force doing exactly what it said it would. If they try to double-cross us with a mass attack on all four worlds or any one other than Medusa, or if they come at us here, the script may change drastically. I
do
expect some attempt at the moons here, but as long as the main attack is centered on Medusa I believe we are in no danger.”

As the standard clock hit 2400, there was a sharp, anticipatory taking in of breath by all concerned, but nothing happened immediately. The task force continued to close, now well within the orbit of Orpheus, the farthest out planet in the Warden system.

At 2403 the task force slowed, then came to a complete stop between Orpheus and Oedipus, next in of the planets, as shown in the total system insert, and the cruisers deployed in protective formations around the two main war stations. Suddenly buzzers sounded, and they could see a great number of tiny pinpricks of white light emerge from the war stations in a steady stream that lasted several seconds, then halted. The field, resembling an onrushing meteor storm, was on the big in-system board in a matter of seconds.

Streamers of blue light appeared in great numbers, lashing out from the moons of Momrath at the onrushing storm of modules. About a third of the modules broke from the main stream and headed toward the source of the fire, but the defenders were taking a tremendous toll. “The fools clustered them too closely together,” Morah sneered.

And it was true. Bright flashes occurred all through the field and its breakaway segment, followed by tiny white lights winking out all over the place. The blue streams were moving so fast the eye could hardly follow them, but they were well directed and found their targets.

“Second wave, away and dispersing!” an aide at a terminal called, and eyes went back to the insert. The new modular attack appeared to be about the same in number as the first, but it spread into an extremely wide field that was almost impossible for the boards to track properly. They were now coming in from all directions.

“That’s more like it,” Yatek Morah mumbled to himself.

He could only look at Morah and the others in wonder. Quite rightly, some of those modules were aimed directly at them, yet they didn’t seem the least bit concerned. He sighed and gave himself a fatalistic shrug. Either they were safe, or they were not—but, in either case, as much as he’d like to be out there in a ship under his control, he was stuck.

“Open camera screens,” Morah ordered, and on the rear screen a series of views appeared. One was a long shot from a position far enough from Medusa to show it only as a greenish-white disk, the view polarized enough so that the night side of the planet showed dully but completely as well. Then there were six smaller views, some from orbit around Medusa, others apparently on the planet’s surface. One showed a city that might have been Rochande but also might have been any one of a dozen others, while another showed a long shot of the sacred mountain in the far north, a location he recognized well.

“The defensive shields are holding just fine,” Morah commented to nobody in particular. “However, we can’t possibly get all the probes if we’re to save Momrath’s bases as well as give cover to the other three planets.” He turned toward the camera viewscreens and pointed. “There! See the sky near that plains view?”

They all looked, and could see clear streaks in the otherwise blemishless dark blue sky, streaks leaving a reddish-white trail. Now there were more and more of them, almost filling the skies as the attack modules separated after entering the atmosphere and split into a hundred equally deadly weapons each.

Massive explosions showed on each view, with huge domes of crackling energy ballooned up and out. One of the cameras was knocked out, but was quickly replaced by another. Obviously there were enough located all over the planet for them to get at least one good surface view.

The full disk view showed thousands of tiny bursts of light all over the globe, as if it were covered with windows and now suddenly had internal light, each window representing a lethal energy weapon of enormous destructive potential.

He glanced over at the situations board and saw, to his surprise, new formations in a new color, yellow, approaching the system from all directions in a coordinated circle. There was no way to tell their size or design from the board codes, but there were a
hell
of a lot of them, at least a number equal to the total task force. “The Altavar are closing for attack,” he said to the others, all of whom were watching the merciless bombardment of Medusa.

Morah took a glance back at the board. “Yes. They made it very easy on us, giving us the week. It allowed us to plot their probable attack pattern and to position our own forces so that they could emerge from hyperspace at precisely predetermined points. They will engage only the two smaller reserve task forces, however; the main body’s job is to restrict the main enemy force to its original target.”

“But with a force like that they could have defended the whole damned system!” he almost yelled in fury. “They’re
deliberately
throwing Medusa away!”
Why? Why? What have I missed?

The Altavar fleet split into three sections, two of which moved to create a ball-shaped attack formation around each of the reserve task forces, the main body moving steadily on toward a position near Momrath. ‘

From their movements, it appeared that the Altavar had ships that were smaller than the Confederacy’s cruisers, perhaps much smaller, but with far greater speed and maneuverability at sublight speeds. They moved so quickly and precisely into their ball-shaped attack pattern and began closing in what seemed like one motion that the bigger Confederacy ships had no chance to get out of the way or disperse. Instead the cruisers positioned themselves in a classical defense and began counterattacking the Altavar formation immediately. The fury and totality of the engagement was such that the board became a riot of colors, both white and yellow, and it quit making any attempt at showing the actual action.

In a sense it seemed an almost romantic vision of war, the ship-to-ship battle of long ago, but he knew it was not. The board itself showed a vast distance, and those ships probably never would see one another, except on boards like this one that were far more detailed and localized. Nor, probably, were very many lives at stake. This was not really man-to-man or even ship-to-ship, it was computer versus computer, technology versus technology, and it was some .time before it was clear who was going to win. The Altavar’s smaller, speedier, easier-to-turn and harder-to-hit ships, supported by computers whose programs were based not on problem theories but actual combat, had the edge, assuming the forces were basically equal in strength.

The main task force between Orpheus and Oedipus regrouped, studying the side conflicts and learning from them, but made no move to press inward or engage the main Altavar force, which was clearly now not headed for a direct engagement but rather was establishing a large and formidable defensive perimeter inside the Diamond itself. The task force threw a number of lethal modules at the defenders, but they were easily neutralized. The main concentration continued to be upon Medusa for the moment.

But with both reserve battle groups now showing bright yellow circles blinking on and off, meaning that the Altavar had broken the back of that force, the main task-force commander was not about to continue a methodical demonstration of increasing power against a largely deserted planet. He opted to put an end to Medusa and then, if need be, engage the main task force before the victorious remnants of the two main Altavar groups that were mopping up their battles could regroup and join the defenders.

The agent felt a great deal of admiration for the task force commander, whoever he or she was, for having the good sense and guts not to split up that force and aid the reserves, thereby weakening their own double group to Altavar attack. That admiral understood full well that the alien main group was there to defend the other three planets and, possibly, Momrath, and could not afford to leave those targets open to close and join battle with the Confederacy task force. As soon as Medusa was taken care of, then the task force would have to close on the now defending Altavar.

Only two cameras on the surface of Medusa were still working, and one was up in the north, where energy weapons were melting the glacial ice with ease. For the first time in a long while, perhaps since shortly after the surface was created, there was open ocean on most of the planet, and much of it was boiling.

“Salvo seven. This should be it!” somebody called, and at that moment the last surface cameras went.

He could see them at the citadel, those proud and foolish Wild Ones, praying to their god as the searing heat and energy hit them.
At least it had been quick. At least that…