War of Alien Aggression 5 Cozen's War (8 page)

"It’s over." Bergano had been defeated just by the sight of it. "Once that thing gets here," he said, "we’ve lost this battle."
 

Chapter Ten

Arbitrage
kept station at the rear, waiting to play her role at just the right moment. Matilda Witt drank while she watched that bloody battle and didn’t walk so much as slowly waltz herself through the projections of the burning ships over the deck.
 

Ram said, "
I presume you’ve got all the clearzine you need to clean the alcohol from your system…"
 

"
My dear, Mr. Devlin, if you would send me to my death sober, you’re a far crueler man than I took you for."
 

The battle had taken a turn for the worse, as Cozen had planned. After the alien reinforcements from the 5th planet arrived with their dreadnought, the Squidies’ line recovered from the disruption. It wrapped itself all the way around the flying wedge at the front of the invasion fleet’s formation.

To the Squidies, it appeared that Cozen had gambled to break the stalemate and was now overextended in the face of a superior force.

It appeared that way to most of the invasion fleet, too. Even UN Admiral Ming didn’t know what Harry Cozen knew. He and so many others would die not knowing it. Ram and Matilda Witt heard their calls on command comms from the UN ships. Ming said there was still time to maneuver out of the engagement under cover of the fighters and junks. They could run for home if they gave up the battle. It was bad, but it was better than losing everything.

Harry Cozen had the last word. This was his fleet. His voice spoke over theirs with the gravel and weight of a millstone. "It’s too late to run. We are committed. There’s only one way we can go now, and it’s forward, through the bloody heart of our enemy. We succeed today or we perish."

The fleet was overextended and under fire from three sides. Even when the ships were only projections over the deck, meter high at the largest, it was hard to watch. Each of the detonations that flashed across the little ships here meant the deaths of hundreds and thousands.

Ram could only wonder what the Commanders and Captains of those ships would have said if they’d known this disaster, perhaps the greatest apparent blunder in human military history, was a rouse and the deaths of the crews and ships they'd sworn oaths to protect were all part of it. He liked to think the Captains of those ships were good men and they’d never have gone along with Cozen's plan in a million years.

Tamerlane
died ramming three alien warships with her armored bulk during a last, desperate attempt to relieve the withering fire that pounded her battleship escorts. She fell after the alien dreadnought and its escorts stabbed her with so many particle streams that she looked frozen on the shafts. Alien bombs filled her decks with firestorms until her reactors cooked off and threw one, burning half of her spinning into the Squidy fleet while the other half of her broke up and sparkled with internal detonations between two dying cruisers.
 

Ram could feel his face pale.

"This is the plan," Witt reminded him.

"
All of those men and women who are out there dying today... They don’t know this is the plan. They don’t know this is the way it’s supposed to go."
 

"Do you
really
think it would help if they knew?" Disdain soured her voice, but it wasn't for them. "Knowing you're going to die doesn't help. Let me tell you. I know. I’m going to die today. It’s part of the plan. It’s in the bloody script. Trust me, Mr. Devlin. Knowing doesn’t make it any easier."
 

There was, at least theoretically, a chance that Ram Devlin might survive the events of the next hours. But Matilda Witt, he admitted, didn’t have that to cling to.

"
Don’t think me too much the narcissist," she said. "I agree it’s
all
quite tragic." She stood in the middle of the projections of mighty warships, scaled like some Olympian god. "But remember, these aren’t the first to die in this war. And on the push inward, we gave up a lot of advantages and opportunities to keep the secrets we had to keep. For example, we knew that skull-painted, alien bastard of a ship was keeping a shadow orbit around the 5th planet and we had to let other info from the same spysat mission go unaddressed so as not to tip our hand. We let three convoys get massacred to hide what we knew. Don’t think me cold. I just don’t have tears left for all the people we have to kill today. And even you, the high-minded Ram Devlin, agreed that this has to look like a
real
blunder Harry’s made or the Squidies won’t believe what comes next. And they have to believe it or we really are done for."
 

Ram’s mouth tasted like iron. He wasn’t sure when in the last few minutes he’d bitten his tongue.

A spread of a dozen warspite torpedoes blossomed across the alien dreadnought’s hull leaving nothing but faint pockmarks and blast streaks. She said, "They won’t get through that way. I know what that ship's armor is made of, you know. It took them centuries to grow that armor. The magnetite is deposited in melded layers by microorganisms. The Squidies live much longer than we do, of course. At least solar 200 years..."

"
I’ve never heard that before," Ram said, "How do you know that?"
 

"I’ve had the pleasure of knowing endless fascinating things. So many things that will be lost. I know, for example, why we’ve taken no prisoners in this war since day one, seen no lifeboats launched, and recovered no escape pods from any Squidy ship."
 

"Because they're more afraid of us than death."

"No, Mr. Devlin. That's what I thought at first. Until I met them. Irrational as it may seem, the Squidies believe in an afterlife. In fact, they believe that once all their comrades have gone there, the afterlife is
preferable
to this existence. Do you think there’s an afterlife dimension, Mr. Devlin?"
 

Matilda Witt's death would come in just a few hours if all went according to plan, so Ram gave her question the dignity of an answer. "I don’t know."

"Fair enough," she said. "There’s something else about the Squidies. And it's not a matter of conjecture. This is a fact, Mr. Devlin and I need you to understand it." She looked not just into his eyes then, but right
down
them as if she was projecting herself
behind
his eyes to better convince him of the truth she told him next. "The Squidies do not follow their own will," she said. "They do not follow their own course. They are a colonized species, subjugated many centuries ago by an order that now spreads across this arm of the galaxy. They exist to serve that order and maintain the power of their Imperial masters over developing species like us."
 

"Why didn't you tell me this before?
Why are you telling me all this
now
?"
 

"Once the Squidies are well and truly gone, there’s going to be a job opening, I should think."
 

"A job opening?"
 

"Yes. And an interview. With whomever or whatever it was that pulled the Squidies' strings." She raised her eyebrows as understanding of what she meant visibly crossed his face. "Yes, Mr. Devlin...
This
what Harry wanted out of the war.
This
is why he started it.
This
is what he’s been gunning for. A job. For us. For
all
of us. For the
species
... He'd like us to be the new enforcers, the new soldiers of a galactic Imperium. They need a replacement species. Or they will...after we kill all the Squidies." She raised her glass to him. "You’re going to be there for the negotiation that will undoubtedly follow our victory. I’m telling you all this because I don’t want dear Harry to be the
only
one that knows what’s really happening. Perhaps, Mr. Devlin, you might agree that centuries of unbroken war as a soldier or a slave species may not be the optimal future for humanity. It seems I’m not going to be in a position to steer us away from that when the time comes, but if you succeed in your mission and survive, then
you
might just be."
 

Ram said, "
My mission is to make sure the crew of the Boomslang follow their orders and kill 70 billion Squidies."
 

"
That’s my fault, I’m afraid. I expressed a certain disdain for the idea of exterminating an entire species without giving them a chance to surrender. It’s certainly not cricket, but I won’t bore you with a debate. I insisted that before we drop all the bombs, we drop one, just to show them we had a knife to their throats. After that, we’d give them one chance. If they didn’t take it, then so be it."
 

Ram said, "I don't understand.
You’re bloodier-minded than a Borgia."
 

"
Thank you, Mr. Devlin. That’s quite a distinction. Why would I give the Squidies one chance to surrender before exterminating them? Because this is our coming out party. This is Humanity’s introduction to the other species that travel the stars. Will they know us as murderers, Mr. Devlin? Will they know us as assassins that should be feared and hated? Will they understand us to be the kind of species who will exterminate another without mercy? That is how they will know us if this mission should go exactly as Harry plans."
 

"
You got to the crew of the Boomslang, didn’t you," he said. "You got to them somehow. That's why Cozen sent me, too."
 

"
Actually, no," she said. "They’re really quite an incorruptible crew. I tried to turn them my way and failed. Harry never actually caught me, but he suspects. He erroneously decided months ago that I succeeded based mostly on a single, bad guess."
 

"
That’s when he told me I was going along," Ram said.
 

"
That’s right. To make sure it all goes off Harry’s way...to make sure we drop those bombs without even a warning peep and exterminate 70 billion Squidies in one fell swoop. To make sure we demonstrate for any other species watching just what sort of a species Humanity is and
precisely
what we’re capable of."
 

Ram tried to wrap his head around it. He knew there would be more than the Squidies waiting for Humanity out there. He knew that. The universe was too big to be a lonely place, but he’d never imagined the Squidies were part of anyone's Imperium.

Goddamn her and Cozen both, he thought. Damn them and their secrets. "What is the
name
of the empire that subjugated the Squidies? How many other species do they dominate? I need you to tell me everything before I go."

"
You know enough to make the right choice when the time comes."
 

"
Do you expect me to compromise this mission for your...agenda."
 

"
It’s not
my
agenda. I’ll be dead by the time all this happens. Frankly, I don’t know
what
you’ll do. But I know you’re a good man. It’s time for you to go down to the bay and the
Boomslang
. It’s time to end the war, now, so this will have to be our final goodbye, I think." He nodded. "If the Squidies are right, if there’s an afterlife, do you think we’ll be all be friends there?"
 

Ram didn’t have a real answer for her, but he nodded once more anyway. Before he turned and made for the hatch and the launch bay, she raised that crystal of scotch and melting ice in her hand and toasted him. "You’re
nothing
like Harry Cozen and me, you know. You’re a
good
man, Mr. Devlin. You should know I’ve
always
counted on that. We’re
all
counting on it."
 

Chapter Eleven
 

After the call to withdraw the squadrons, the Lancers had to fly through the edges of a debris field that stretched for thousands of Ks. "Lancers, this is 1-1. Stay tight on me.
Do not
blaze your own path."
 

"
Lancer 1-1, this is 1-6," Burn said. "From back here I can see 'em all lined up, about one second apart. Choose that path wisely, 1-1, we got the 38th and the Hellcats falling in, too."
 

"
Roger, 1-6. Steering clear of the rough stuff."
 

The bodies in there didn’t reflect radar like the pieces of bulkhead and hull. That meant they weren’t projected in Lancer 1-1’s flight helmet as wireframes to avoid. He had to spot the bodies from their faint IR fuzz or pick out the cooling exosuits with his own eyes as they tumbled end over end, limbs splayed. One, he saw too late to steer away.