Chapter 13

"All right, Djai," Colin said, "thanks for the assessment, and for taking the initiative to gather the necessary information. I think you're right about not being able to do this with the Gorz combat fleet, but the support fleet is not as disciplined. I'll work that into our plans. General Meeflt, how is the integration of your people going?"

"As you know, we have a phobia about tight spaces, particularly when we are alone," the military leader of the Bandlar volunteers answered. "The only reason we could tolerate the shuttle flights from our planet was that there were so many of us in each shuttle. Because of this, however, we are not well suited to Space-based billets, so Infantry seems to be the best way for us to contribute to your efforts. Without the modifications the MIs have made to the sleep teachers, however, even that would not have been possible. The new open design is much more comfortable for us."

"I'm glad they were able to come up with a design better suited to your needs," Colin replied. "If what the MIs tell me is correct, however, your people will be invaluable as guerilla fighters, especially in forest and jungle areas."

"Yes," Meeflt nodded awkwardly in a stiff imitation of the human gesture for affirmation. Even if his tail hadn't been hidden within his armor, he doubted if the humans would understand its twitching. "It seems that we are not as far removed from our tree-dwelling ancestors as you are from yours. This means that we can fight from the treetops and jungle canopy as easily as you fight on the ground."

"That's good news," Colin answered, thinking of the tropical regions of the planet where he expected to face the Gorz. "How are the changes the MIs made to the weapons working out for you?"

"They are most frighteningly easy to use now, Commodore," the Bandlar General answered. "Who could have imagined being able to kill other beings so easily?"

"Is that a problem for your people, General?"

"No," Meeflt studiedly shook his head; another unfamiliar gesture. "We are carnivorous and have no moral objection to killing other beings, but it should not be so easy. To kill from a distance seems too ... mechanical."

"I understand your objection," Colin replied, wishing he had a tail with which to convey sympathy in the way of the Bandlar. Meeflt almost certainly would not be able to read his facial expressions. "And have no objection to your people continuing to hunt for food in the time-tested fashion of the Bandlar, but rest assured, General, our common enemy will have no qualms whatever about killing Bandlars or Humans from a great distance if the opportunity presents itself. For this reason, I do hope that your people will be able to overcome their distaste for the practice and kill Gorz before they themselves are killed. You have lost much already, and I would hate to see your warriors throw away their lives in the attempt to fight the Gorz up close."

"We have been through the sims, Commodore," Meeflt growled. "When the time comes, we will do what must be done."

"I have no doubt that you will do as you say, General."

"What are you doing on the bridge, Weelock?" Admiral Fadnooth snarled as the armored blast door closed behind his second in command. "Your watch is not due to start for three more centicycles!"

"My watch starts now, Fadnooth," Weelock snarled back.

The Fleet Admiral's blaster was in his hand as he turned, but Fadnooth knew it was too late. Weelock's weapon was already aimed and its charge meter glowed bright purple.

"So you think to command the fleet now, Pup?" Fadnooth let the muzzle of his weapon fall. Even if he could bring it to bear in time, its accumulator would take several microcycles to build enough charge to fire - more than enough time for Weelock to press the firing stud on his weapon.

"We gained nothing by taking the detour to that last planet," Weelock said, "except some raw materials that we would not have needed had we not turned aside from our goal. You knew you would not live to see the conquest of the target race, and wanted only to make a name for yourself as a war admiral instead of just another transit leader. Instead, the Gorz will remember only your folly. You have brought disgrace upon your clan and wasted at least fourteen cycles. Furthermore, you allowed the race that inhabited that planet to escape. By the time we reach the target systems they will probably have been warned."

"How was I to know they had such capability?" Fadnooth shrugged. "The electromagnetic signature gave no indication. You would have done the same thing I did, as would any Gorz commander! Now put that blaster away and get back to your post!"

Both of them knew that to back down now would be suicide for Weelock. Fadnooth would not let him live another cycle if Weelock failed to kill his superior now, but it cost Fadnooth nothing to try.

"It does not matter what I might have done," Weelock gave the whole body shudder that passed for a shrug among the Gorz. "What matters is what you did, Admiral."

With that, Weelock pressed the firing stud on his blaster and assumed command of the Gorz Fleet.

"Get this out of here," Weelock said, stripping the Fleet Admiral's insignia and blaster off the body. He hefted the Admiral's blaster then his own. Shudder-shrugging, he slipped the Admiral's blaster into his own holster and removed the charge pack from his old one, before dropping it on top of the body and then attaching the insignia to his own uniform.

"Uh, Fleet Admiral?" the bridge messenger addressed by Weelock's command asked, taking hold of the corpse's feet. "Will there be a memorial, Sir? He was, technically, a planetfall Admiral."

Weelock thought only briefly before answering, "No. He will serve us better as fertilizer in hydroponics than he did as a planetfall Admiral."

Weelock was not concerned about the reactions of the other officers or bridge personnel. This was how promotions had been accomplished at the top levels of Fleet hierarchy as far back as the history cubes recorded. Fadnooth should have been expecting it. Weelock had put him off guard by professing loyalty and sympathy with the Admiral's bad luck, but only a fool would have let his guard down after a failure such as Fadnooth's...

No, the message would already have gone out that the Fleet had a new Admiral. Weelock's big worry had more to do with the beings on that last planet. How had they known that the Fleet was coming and that they were a threat to the planet? Was their technology that good? Since most of it had been destroyed before the Fleet landed, he had no way of knowing. If the technology had been that good, why had they not fought? Were they a race of pacifists?

Weelock had no answers, and his engineers were not able to help either. It seemed that the inhabitants of the planet had been carnivorous, but in all the history of the Gorz, as told in the old tales, there had never been such a race. Every race that had risen to the level of civilization exhibited by these creatures had been either the only predator on the planet, or the most aggressive and cunning one. In every instance before, the races that inhabited the planets encountered by the Gorz had fought fiercely to save their planet.

These had simply fled, and that was another mystery. How had they gotten so many off the planet so quickly, without being detected? By all indications, there had been millions of beings on the planet mere days before the Gorz arrived. Where had they gone? Had they been merely colonists? Did they have outside help?

He tried not to think of the other anomaly encountered by the pilots of some of the few remaining invisible ships: Another of their kind. The tale of the other invisible ship that performed better than those that remained in the Gorz battle inventory, had rippled like cosmic radiation through both sections of the Fleet. The one that had been seen had been almost identical to those manned by his pilots, but strangely different, too. Was it one ship, or had the two sightings been of two different ships? Why hadn't the shield penetrators worked? Two had been destroyed by laser fire, but the third had chased its prey beyond the range of the sensors on its mother ship and disappeared. Had it been destroyed or captured, or did it, even now, drift aimlessly through the abandoned planetary system?

These thoughts troubled Weelock greatly. He had questioned the Tellers - the keepers of the history of the Gorz - and they had recounted the tale of the race from which the invisible ships had been captured. It had been one of the longest and bloodiest campaigns the Gorz had fought since the fleet had departed frozen Gorzaz - the dying homeworld - countless generations before. That conquest had come very near to being the end of the Gorz. What had puzzled the leaders at the time was the fact that although that race had some form of space travel that seemed to allow them to travel between stars in the blink of a eye, they had never left their homeworld. Perhaps those ancient leaders had been mistaken, Weelock thought. Perhaps that race had left, and now, reinvigorated, they awaited the Gorz fleet somewhere, sometime ahead.

That was the real reason he had decided to take over from Fleet Admiral Fadnooth. When he had expressed these concerns to his predecessor, Fadnooth had scoffed and told him he worried too much. Fadnooth might have been right, but to the new Fleet Admiral's way of thinking, it would be far better to have a leader who worried too much than one who worried not enough.

Grand Admiral and Commodore of the Fleet Colin McClintock stood solemnly among the onlookers feeling out of place in his gaudy dress uniform as the unprepossessing box was lowered symbolically into the hole in the ground. It could not stay there, of course, and residents of Bates' World had taken to using the same hole to fulfill the burial symbolism for all of their departed. When the service was completed, the casket would be removed from the temporary grave and loaded onto a transport bound for its final resting place. It was inconvenient, to say the least, but ultimately, all the members of the family would rest in the same burial ground.

Beside McClintock, in her own dress whites, Commander Sangeeta Olsen looked decades younger than her brother Sandeep. Had it not been for the lines that the years of piloting fighters and other small craft had worn in her face, one might have thought her still a teenager, thanks to the implants and nanomeds that kept fleet personnel from aging as fast as their planet-bound relatives.

Finally, the service was finished, and Colin and Sangeeta turned to Sandeep and his wife Josie, surrounded by a flock of black-clad children from toddlers to teens.

"I'm so sorry for your loss, Sandeep," Colin said, taking his hand and realizing with a mild sense of shock that Sandeep was now well into middle age. "As you know, your mother had a special place in my heart."

"I know, Commodore," Sandeep replied, "right up 'til the day she died, Mother couldn't forget the time you had dinner with us. Whenever we visited anyone or had guests, she would repeat that story, no matter how many times the others had heard it."

"Still, I'm sure she will be missed," Colin replied.

"She will be, Commodore, but not too badly. She lived a long and relatively happy life once she got over our father's death. I don't know how Josie and I will manage all of these kids without her help, but she doted on them, and they loved her."

Sangeeta was deep in conversation with Josie and the oldest of their children when Colin and Sandeep joined them.

"It was so good of you to come for the funeral Commodore," Josie said, taking his offered hand. "Have you met our children?"

Of course, nothing would do but she introduce all twelve of her offspring. Colin was grateful for the indelible memories of the MIs, as he would never have remembered all of those names unaided.

A pang of nostalgia shook him when Sandeep asked, "Won't you join us for dinner, Commodore?"

"I would love to, Sandeep," he answered sincerely, "but I'm afraid duty calls. Don't overstay your leave, Commander. The MIs inform me that they have finished the sims for the support fleet assault, and your wing needs to go through them with the Marines."

"I'll be there, Admiral," Sangeeta replied, coming to attention to fire off a salute worthy of a recruiting vid.

Alone on the shuttle that took him to the fast courier that would, in turn, return him to the fleet, Colin removed his cover and ran tired hands over his face. He looked in the mirror wondering where the lines were that should have creased his face decades ago. It had been almost half a century since he first stumbled, wet and bedraggled, into that cave above the Calaveras reservoir, but except for worry lines around his eyes, and a certain sharpness in his gaze, he looked not a day older. Certainly, the face staring back at him had none of the soft pudginess of that forlorn, long ago Colin, but there were times when he wondered what his life might have been like if he had never climbed that muddy slope.