"Zulu Leader to Zulu Squadron," their leader said, his voice ugly with hate and despair. "Must be someone pretty important-let's go get him!"
"Zulu Three, roger."
"Zulu Six, roger."
His two remaining wingmen dropped back to cover him, and the Rim squadron leader stooped on the cutter like a hawk.
Lieutenant Anna Holbeck shook her head in disbelief. Find a cutter and escort it through this?! Someone had obviously had a shock or two too many, she thought. But hers was not to reason why.
"Basilisk Leader to Basilisk Squadron," she said resignedly. "Let's go find the admiral, boys and girls."
Five agile little strikefighters slashed through vacuum, closing on Han's cutter. Death crashed about them, but so vast are the battlefields of space that even in that cauldron of beams and missiles, no weapon came close to the deadly little quintet.
"Basilisk Leader, Basilisk Two. I've got her on instruments, Skip-but she's got trouble."
"I see it. Green Section, close on the cutter. Red Section, follow me."
The three Rim pilots were so intent on their prey they never even saw the Republican ships that killed them.
"Sir! One of the rebel superdreadnoughts is closing rapidly!"
"What about it?" Vice Admiral Frederick Shespar grunted, tightening his shock frame as TFNS Suffren's evasive action grew more violent.
"Sir, she's on a collision course-at maximum speed!"
"What?" Shespar stabbed one glance at his flag plot and blanched in horror. The ship coming at him could hardly be called a ship. She was a battered, broken wreck, streaming atmosphere and shedding bits of plating and escape pods as she came, but there was clearly nothing wrong with her drive. It took him barely a second to realize her grim purpose-but a second is a long, long time at such speeds.
"Gunnery! New battlegroup target! Burn that ship d-" He never finished the sentence. Tsing Chang's flagship hurled herself headlong at Suffren. Neither supermonitors nor superdreadnoughts are very fast, by Fleet standards-but these were on virtually reciprocal courses. Two-thirds of a million tonnes of mass collided at a closing speed of just under fifty thousand kilometers per second.
It was too intense to call an explosion.
Some events are so cataclysmic the mind cannot comprehend them. The weapons in play in the Zapata System had killed far more people than died with Arrarat and Suffren-but not so spectacularly, so . . . deliberately. The devastating boil of light and vaporized alloy and flesh hung before the eyes of the survivors like the mouth of hell, and they shrank from it.
As two fighting animals will separate momentarily to draw breath, the battle fleets pulled slightly apart. It wasn't really a lull, for weapons still fired, but a reduction of the unprecedented, unendurable intensity of close combat. As a conscious, ashen-faced Li Han turned from the cutter's viewport, something very like a respite closed in on the warring ships.
The Republic needed it. Scores of fighters were rearming aboard Windrider's and Magda's surviving carriers as Han stepped from her cutter aboard Saburo Yato and raced for the intraship car. Her brain was like ice over a furnace. The anguish of Tsing's death warred with a sort of horrified pride in the manner of his dying, but she couldn't let herself think of that. Not yet. There were things to do, a battle to win. She would allow herself grief and pride later. Later, when she had time to mourn as Chang deserved.
She stepped onto Yato's flag bridge, and Admiral Stephen Butesky leapt aside to offer her his command chair. She nodded briefly and dropped into it while a shaken Tomanaga quietly displaced Butesky's chief of staff.
"Status report!" she snapped.
She didn't really want to know. She didn't want to consider her hideous losses, or even those of her enemies. But she had a job to do. Thank God for this lull! Perhaps she could-
"Admiral Li?" A strange com rating looked up at her, eyes puzzled, and Han choked back a sob of grief for the people aboard Arrarat.
"Yes?" Her voice showed no sign of her sorrow.
"I've just picked up a parley signal-from Vice Admiral Sonja Desai."
Han blinked, then smoothed an incipient scowl from her face and gestured acceptance, her mind racing. Who the devil was Vice Admiral Desai? It was unheard of! An officer didn't simply send a signal to her opponent while missiles and beams were still flying! Why-
She didn't recognize the dark, sharp-featured woman who appeared on the screen. Her vac suit was drenched with blood-not her own, obviously, for she sat upright in a command chair, clearly in complete command of herself.
"Where is Admiral Trevayne?" Han demanded without preamble.
"Admiral Trevayne is in sickbay. I have assumed command." Desai's habitual expressionlessness did not alter, and she resumed after the briefest of pauses. "The position is this, Admiral Li: we can continue this battle and fight it out to a conclusion, and I believe I can win. Quite probably you disagree. But whichever of us is right, 'winning' in this context means being left with the last one or two ships, or at least with a surviving force too weak to follow up its 'victory.' As an alternative to this profitless slaughter, I propose a cease-fire in place, of indefinite duration, while we apprise our respective governments of the situation." The immobile face took on a slightly rueful expression. "We may have to ask you to transport our messenger to the Innerworlds, but we have with us a high-ranking Federation official who will be able to represent our status to the Prime Minister."
Han's face was like a sculpture as she thought furiously. Could she win if the battle resumed? Yes. With her fighters rearmed and the range too short for the Rim's HBMs to be decisive . . . yes, she could win. She felt certain of it-and she suspected this Desai knew it, too. Yet Desai was also right. Her own battle-line had been savaged, the relentless attacks of the Rim screen had hurt Magda far worse than had been allowed for, and Jason's force was devastated. And she had little idea just how much fight those looming supermonitors still had in them-three were gone, others badly damaged. One hadn't fired in minutes. Was it any more than a hulk? She knew she could take them, avenge Second Zephrain's blot on the Fleet's honor . . . and yet . . . and yet there was that edge of uncertainty and her ignorance of how matters stood with the Rump pincer. And there was the terrible knowledge that even victory would leave her on her knees, without the strength to follow through against Zephrain. . . .
But still . . .
Damn it, where was Trevayne? Was he really dead? They'd hardly admit it, would they? And, her dogged honesty demanded, why did she care?
Aloud she temporized. "Such an agreement might exceed my authority. At the least, you're asking me to assume a heavy responsibility."
"No heavier than I'm assuming myself."
"On the contrary; you're occupying four planetary systems of the Terran Republic which I'm under orders to recover-"
"And I am under orders to reopen contact between the Innerworlds and the Rim Feder . . . the loyalist systems of the Rim." Desai's stiffness relaxed just a trifle. "Now that we've each recited our position papers, let's turn to reality. You and I are in command on the scene. We both know our orders can't be carried out-not without a degree of slaughter which passes the limits of sanity and decency. Shall we make our governments aware of that reality? Or shall we continue to carry out our orders in spite of it?" Her eyes bored into Han's. "In the end, I suppose it comes down to a question of where our duty really lies. That's a question many of us have had to face over the last few years, isn't it?"
Two pairs of dark eyes locked. I can win, Han told herself. I can win the decisive battle of this entire civil war! Or do I think that because I want to win so badly? And if I do, why? Out of duty . . . or hatred? Shame that a man who may not even be alive over there once beat me? Or for the glory? And what "glory" is there in being the woman responsible for such slaughter?