"Close acquaintance with the Bugs tends to have that effect on people," MacGregor remarked drily.
"Too true, Sir. The Telikans are an even better example."
A brief, uncomfortable silence fell. By now they all knew of that race's tragedy. Sommers, however, had had far longer than they had to become accustomed to it, and she didn't allow the silence to linger.
"The Telikans' original homeworld was almost uniquely pacifistic and nonviolent," she said. "But now . . . well, let's put it this way: if I were the Bugs and had to be at the mercy of somebody, I'd rather have it be anyone in this room than a Telikan!"
"Quite a transformation," Noraku observed.
"Indeed, Fleet Speaker. The tiny Telikan minority of the Star Union's total population now accounts for over eighty percent of their fleet's ground-assault troops. The racial Crucians are unsuited to that kind of thing." Sommers smiled reminiscently. "The Telikan social pattern is matriarchal-the females are at least half again as large and strong as the males-and any Telikan field commander is addressed as the talnikah, or 'battle mother.' But our xenologist who first translated the term was Ophiuchi, and in Standard English his translation got garbled into something our Marines-having seen them in action-decided was actually better: 'combat mama.' "
The nonhumans-even Kthaara-looked blank. But MacGregor had to choke back a guffaw.
"I'll bet your grunts even use that in official paperwork by now," she chortled. Then she remembered herself and forcibly banished her huge grin. "Ah, continue, Sommers."
"Uh, yes, Sir. After retaking the Menkasahr warp nexus and rolling up the Giizwahn System, we reestablished contact with the Zarkolyans and learned they hadn't just been hiding behind their closed warp points. They'd been raiding through Jzotayar, disrupting the Bugs' supply lines to their forward base at Rabahl-which, by then, had become what you might call the Bugs' Zephrain. Our next objective, in conjunction with the Zarkolyans, was the warp chain from Reymiirnagar to Pajzomo."
"The system where you had initially encountered the Crucians," Noraku put in.
"Yes, Fleet Speaker. At Skriischnagar, Warmaster Rikka opened the way to Pajzomo . . . at considerable cost." Sommers' eyes momentarily clouded over with dark memories, for she'd been at Skriischnagar and knew what lay behind those dry words considerable cost. "In fact, we had to slow the operational tempo down a bit afterwards due to the Star Union's losses. But a coordinated offensive by us from Skriischnagar and the Zarkolyans through Jzotayar finally took Pajzomo. That accomplished the first objective of our offensive: to cut Rabahl off from Bug space completely. It's still there, tremendously strong but now isolated. We'll take it eventually."
"And the other objective of the offensive?" Kthaara asked mildly, and Sommers swallowed, knowing she could procrastinate no longer.
"After Pajzomo was secured, Warmaster Rikka and First Grand Wing-accompanied by me and Captain Hafezi, my chief of staff, with the remainder of my people remaining behind to serve as cadres-advanced from that system, following Survey Flotilla 19's old route in reverse. The objective, of course, was to break through to Alpha Centauri so that we could . . . uh, formalize the Star Union's membership in the Grand Alliance."
"Ah, yes." Kthaara exuded an air of finally coming to the point. "The membership that you had already taken it upon yourself to offer them."
Sommers had always heard that the actual arrival of a moment one has dreaded for years is never truly as bad as one has feared. The hell it isn't, she thought as the leaden lump reappeared in the pit of her stomach.
"That's correct, Sir. In my capacity as commander of a Survey Flotilla temporarily out of communication with higher authority, I exercised the broad discretionary powers granted by Article Twenty-Seven, Section-"
"I'm aware of that regulation" MacGregor leaned forward again in the same alarming way. "I'm not aware of any regulation that empowers Survey commanders to call themselves 'ambassadors'-or to treat a newly contacted polity as an ally, with all that implies regarding security of classified information. Are you aware of one, Admiral?"
Sommers knew how unflattering the sheen of sweat on her face must be in the room's lighting. It really ought, she reflected, to be the least of her worries.
"Ah, no I'm not, Sir. But-well, the Star Union is a sovereign power, and they treated me as the Grand Alliance's representative for purposes of diplomatic protocol. It was a practical necessity if the alliance was to go forward."
"And," Kthaara said mildly, "you made the decision-on behalf of the Khan'a'khanaaeee, among others-that this alliance was worth whatever irregularities were necessary to bring it about?"
The force of absolute conviction stiffened Sommers' resolve and steadied her voice.
"Yes, Sir, I did. I was among beings who'd saved my life and the lives of my entire command-absolute strangers to them at the time. Beings who were fighting for their existence against the Bugs . . . and even then I had some inkling of what that meant, having heard rumors about what Admiral Antonov had found on Harnah."
Since returning, she'd learned those rumors had been true. It was a bit of knowledge she had not shared with Rikka. Still less had she shared it with Warmaster Garadden, Rikka's second in command. . . and a racial Telikan. They continued to believe that the Telikan homeworld's agony had at least been quick. She knew better now, and her voice wavered momentarily as she looked inward on the vistas of nightmare. Terrible as they were for her, she knew they would be infinitely worse for the beings she'd come to know as friends, not just allies in a war, and it was an agony she simply could not inflict upon them. But then she blinked those nightmares away and met the row of eyes across the table.
"Now we all know what the Bugs are. That's why we have a Grand Alliance. Not just to defend our own particular races from the Bugs but to destroy them before they eat the universe hollow of everything individual consciousness has brought into it. The capacity to love-and, yes, to hate, because some things ought to be hated. The capacity to recognize beauty and sometimes even create it. Most of all, the capacity to make moral choices-including the ultimate choice of sacrificing that very individual consciousness in the name of what all of us recognize, in one form or another, for what it is: honor. All of our races, however different, have those things in common. And so do the Crucians! They're part of what the Grand Alliance exists to keep alive in the universe. I did what I did because I couldn't do otherwise. What else would any of you have done?"
Abruptly, Sommers stopped. In the ringing silence, the realization of what she'd said caught up to her.
Well, she thought in the midst of a strangely relieved calm, I can always do something else for a living.
The rustling purr of an Orion sigh finally dispelled the silence, and Kthaara'zarthan flattened his ears in his race's gesture of resigned melancholy.
"Well, let me make certain I am clear on the facts as they seem to stand. On your own initiative, without any authority whatever, you released the Alliance's latest classified military technology to a hitherto unknown interstellar polity and committed the Alliance to support that polity against the Bahgs-"
"Yes, Sir," Sommers murmured.
"-all for no better reason than to save the lives of the personnel under your command, force the Bahgs to fight on a second front, split the enemy's attention and spread his resources thinner, and add another industrial base almost as large as the Khanate to the Alliance's support structure?"