Dwyer did not know what to say. Instead of words, therefore, he enfolded the quivering Indowy in a great bear hug, patting the creature’s back to give what comfort it might be worth. As he did so, Dwyer couldn’t help but notice that, despite its small stature, the alien’s body was one big chord of knotted muscle. He had the glimmerings of an idea.
We need to get antipersonnel munitions to the secondary turrets. But the shells are too heavy for one man to carry and a stretcher carried by two has the devil’s own time of it squeezing through the watertight doors. But…
Dwyer stepped back and looked at the alien intently. “Sintarleen, how much weight can you people carry easily?”
The Indowy frowned, puzzled.
“How much weight can you pick up?” the priest demanded urgently.
The Indowy, temporarily distracted from his grief, shrugged and answered, “Maybe five or six hundred of your pounds. A bit more for some of us. Why?”
“Assemble your people, my furry friend. Go to the magazines under the great triple turrets. Get from them rounds of canister, two for each of you. Carry them to the barbettes for the secondary turrets, the singles.
“Maybe you cannot fight, boyo, but — praise the Lord! — you can pass the ammunition!”
Each effective hit of a Posleen HVM or plasma bolt was like a hot knife plunging into Daisy’s vitals. She had grown almost used to the agony, enough so that her avatar barely showed it. Only the occasional wince, and the almost continuous rocking, indicated that the ship knew pain that would have killed a human.
The avatar’s eyes opened up and it seemed to look directly at McNair.
“I have anti-flyer munitions for the four remaining secondaries now,” she said, loudly to make herself heard over McNair’s concussion-induced, and hopefully temporary, partial deafness. “A few anyway. More coming.”
Even as the avatar made this announcement, the Des Moines shuddered under what felt to McNair to be at least three separate impacts amidships.
The captain shook his head for what seemed like the fiftieth time. He was still seeing double from the concussion of the first effective HVM strike. Despite this it was easy to see the smoke pouring upward from Daisy’s sundered deck and bulkheads.
McNair forced himself to think. Holograms or not, the enemy can see we are hurt. They’ll press in. Nothing to do about it. Or…
“Daisy, you can’t hide us anymore, can you?”
The avatar started to shake its head, then realized that with the captain so badly concussed he might not make that out.
“I’m afraid not, sir. The smoke is rising too high, and I have lost some abilities to project false images as well.”
So hard to think. Yet he had to. If we can’t look healthy, maybe we can…
“Daisy, at the next hit… or the one after if it takes you longer to prepare… I want you to drop all the cover… make us look… worse off… helpless. Dead guns… ruined turrets. Fire… smoke. And cease fire until…”
“Until the bastards mass to close in for the kill,” the avatar finished.
“And then you’ll have to pick your own targets, Daisy,” he said. “I can’t see to direct you. But you have authorization to fire.”
Another hit rang throughout the ship.
The price was appalling. Still, Binastarion was certain, it would be worth it if only the damned threshkreen vessel might be sunk.
Smoke was pouring out of the ship now as if from a chain of close set volcanoes, or some single rift in a planet’s skin. Even her main batteries went out of action. As the God King watched a last group of explosive shells detonated in the air, close together, sending a storm of hot jagged metal forward in a series of cones. The agonized cries of his children, faithfully amplified by his AS, shook the Posleen chieftain.
He checked the battle screen on his tenar. There was hardly anything left in front of the enemy ship to bar its path. The ranks had been badly thinned behind it as well, so much so that he doubted the courage of his pursuing sons. Only on the flanks was the People’s attack holding up and making gains. The volcanolike smoke pouring from the gaping holes in the deck and hull told as much.
The defensive fire on the flanks had been mostly to thank for that. Binastarion was not sure why, but guessed that the secondary weapons carried none of the simple, scatterable or explosive munitions that emptied tenar right and left to the ship’s fore and aft.
“Press in, my children, press in! The foe is weak at the center. Close in and pinch it in two with our claws!”
Slipping and sliding on the crimson blood seeping along the smoky corridors’ decks, the grunting, straining Indowy switched anti-tenar ammunition from the main batteries’ magazines to the secondaries’ as fast as they could fight past the wounded, dead and dying crewmen and those carrying them to sickbay.
Sintarleen hurried from barbette to barbette, directing his kinsmen to where the ammunition was most needed. While the ammunition bearers were too busy and far too strained to give much thought to the purpose or morality of their task, Sinbad had just enough freedom of thought to question his basic philosophy.
We are a peaceful folk. We may not use violence. These are our teachings from earliest age. It is only these teachings that have enabled my people to survive, as so many other species have not, the transition from barbarism to true technology and civilization.
Yet my people even now carry the means of violence to those still capable of it. We make the weapons they use.
What is it that keeps us pure? Distance? The humans of this ship fight at a distance and rarely see the violence they do. How am I or my people here more pure than they? Merely because we will not see the violence? That is absurd.
Must it always be so? Must it always be our best and finest who fall? Curse the demons who have condemned us to this, curse them more even than that threshkreen ship which is, after all, only trying to survive as we try to survive.
Binastarion’s heart was heavy within his chest. Momentarily his head hung with grief. So many fine sons lost. So many brave and noble philosophers, bright beings with full lives ahead of them, cut down and sunk even beyond recovery to feed the host.
But doubts in voice or action fed no one. The God King lifted his head, steeled his heart and his voice. A group of tenar sped by to his right, led by a favored son, Riinistarka. Binastarion raised his hand in salute to the young God King, shouting encouragement over the din of battle. The clan leader’s communicator picked up the hearty shout and passed it on to the junior’s.
“We’ll take them, Father. Never fear,” the young philosopher sent back, returning his sire’s salute. “Forward, my brothers. Forward that our clan might live.”
Demons of fire and ice, spare me my son, the father prayed.
“Firing,” Daisy answered coldly. She had come to this fight full of enthusiasm. That enthusiasm was gone, replaced by only cold determination. Now she had felt the fire in her own belly; felt the pain of burning penetration and dismemberment. The avatar had to answer coldly, for every emotion of which she was capable was suppressed to keep the agony at bay.
With two secondary turrets down, and given the specific turrets, Daisy had a choice of adding two to the defense of each side, or three to engage on one side and one on the other. She opted for the latter and six turrets, three of them triples, with a total of eleven guns still working, swiveled to engage on the side from which the nearest Posleen threat came.