It was not a painful conclusion. Jilchuk's stoic, practical personality was well-suited to military command. And mistakes were easily made when dealing with unfamiliar life-forms. The point was not to repeat them. It had been an error-natural but an error-to depend so heavily on his warrior brigade. The first attack should have told him that. But it had so nearly succeeded! Surely the next charge…
Until he'd lost more than half his warriors: killed, missing, and disabled.
I should have used my reserves in the first attacks-let the humans expend their air and armor on them-and then sent my warriors. The humans could never have withstood them then. We'd have chewed them up. Like most two-leggers, the humans had mobility problems. Break them-make them run-and they were doomed. They simply couldn't run fast enough.
Fortunately, they too had lost more of their aircraft and armor than they could afford. They'd fought off that last attack with infantry. Best not to take too much for granted though, he told himself. They had plenty of air strength earlier. It's a good thing you moved most of your armor into caves before their bombards arrived.
In the second phase, the humans' heavy ground-support fighters had almost surely been aerospace craft. While those used later appeared to have been simply aircraft. Had the human space force pulled out already, leaving their ground forces on their own? It seemed unlikely, but… He thumbed the mike on his harness. Intelligence would know if the space force was still in the system.
Vice Admiral Carmen Apraxin-DaCosta didn't have a hilltop, nor at the moment the luxury of solitude. She sat on a chair beside her bottled savant, Melody Boo'tsa, who lay in trance. According to the records, Melody was fifteen years old, with a mental age of four. Just now she was in receiving mode, channeling the deputy chief of space operations, Admiral Kaidu Ghazan. Her vocator provided an excellent copy of Ghazan's strong baritone, his delivery, and the modest accent Apraxin had always supposed came from a childhood in a traditional community.
"Carmen," he was saying, "I appreciate your concern. But you need to leave the Jerrie system no later than Terran 31.08.15, at 2400 hours. That gives you approximately twenty-nine hours. You need to rendezvous with Soong in the fringe of Dinebikeyah at system coordinates 2700/1700/00, no later than Terran 31.11.28. He'll need you."
Apraxin considered. "The Wyzhnyny planetary defense flotilla here still hasn't poked its head out of warpspace to show us what it has in the way of firepower. And it may include remnants of the system defense force. I'd like to leave Ver Hoeven's battle group, just in case."
"What evidence do you have that it's actually needed there? That it would be more than just a source of comfort?" Before she could respond, he went on. "Judging from your brief observations of their original planetary guard force, it looks as if Kereenyaga can handle it without Ver Hoeven's help. So. How many functional remnants of their system defense force do you think might show up?"
She hesitated. "The maximum and the minimum," he added.
"The maximum would be all five of them: two cruisers and three corvettes. The minimum would be none, zero."
It took him four seconds to respond. "You may leave three cruisers and four corvettes of Admiral Ver Hoeven's group."
"Thank you, sir." She pushed on quickly. "What about the marine mother ship? In case the Jerries on the ground need the squadrons. They're short squadrons now, and anyway they'd be of no use to Soong."
This time there was a long pause. When finally Ghazan spoke again, he sounded like someone who'd about reached his limit. "Admiral," he said, "I have checked with Marshal Kulikov. He says you can leave the mother ship on one condition: her squadrons are to be used only if the troops on the ground are faced with extermination. The Jerries' primary purpose is to find out for us how the Wyzhnyny fight on the ground: weapons, tactics, psychology… all of it. And the force size Pak was given is the baseline in the study. It's not to be fooled with. If he scrubs the Wyzhnyny, great. The government may even name a Day for him. But… "
"But his people are expendable," Apraxin said matter-of-factly. "I understand."
Ghazan didn't reply immediately. You needn't have put it so bluntly, she chided herself. Finally he spoke. "That's right, Carmen. That's how it is. That's how it will be at Shakti, too. And at Terra, if it comes to that. Resources can't be wasted. Invested but not wasted."
Old Hard Head Kaidu. But he called you Carmen to soften the message. "Right, Admiral," she said. "I understand."
"Fine. Anything else, Admiral?"
"No, sir. I'll be at Dinebikeyah on time and ready."
"Very well. And I repeat-everyone here is pleased with your results. Yours and Pak's both. Ghazan out."
"Apraxin out."
She nodded at the savant's attendant, then watched while the young woman spoke the brief formula that brought the savant out of her trance. A matted photo, presumably of Melody Boo'tsa, had been neatly taped to her module. The eyes were pink, the broad white face faintly so. An albino, Apraxin thought. Albinism had become avoidable, and extremely rare. Now Melody Boo'tsa no longer had a face of any color. Just a bottled CNS, a soul, and a unique sort of mind. With the unknown energies, and access to strange dimensions, that enabled two human beings to communicate across scores of parsecs, instantaneously.
"Thank you, Melody," she said quietly, then to the savant's attendant, "and thank you, Sofi. You may not fully appreciate it, but without teams like you two, humankind would have no hope in this war. None at all."
She paused. "I have a personal question for you. I presume your briefing on Melody was much more thorough than my own, and there's something in her file that sparked my curiosity. Either she has a long compound middle name, or several middle names. Can you clarify that for me?"
Even as she asked, it seemed to her a pointless question.
"Yes, Admiral, I do know. I'm her cousin."
The comment startled Apraxin. Sofi's complexion was a rich brown. Hmh. And why not? Any racial stock can have albinos.
Sofi had paused, as if waiting for Apraxin's attention again. When she had it, she continued. "She was named Melody when she was born. But our community is quite traditional. It retains many of the old customs, including giving another name later on. One that tells something about the person."
Sofi's gaze had slid aside and downward. After a moment though, it met the admiral's again, briefly.
"It is not customary to tell it outside the community, but I will tell you. You may find it-significant to our needs."
Apraxin's eyebrows rose slightly.
"Melody didn't speak sentences until she was four. Some of her first clear sentences were about things that hadn't happened yet. But later they would. Most of the family thought they were coincidences, but her aunt-my mother-and also her father, thought they were prophecies. Because when she said them, she spoke better than usual. So Melody was given another name: Naan' voh ti' ta ka. Because she has knowledge of the future.
"It is how she came to be here. She has an uncle who teaches mineralogy at the University of Northern Arizona, and he told the chairman of the parapsychology faculty about her. So she was sent there for study, and I was sent to be with her. To take care of her. And then the war started."