Gathering Stars
by the standard dating of Old Terra, it was the year 2364,
and the month was May. But that had nothing to do with the
revolution of the Nova Terra/Eden double-planet system
around Alpha Centauri A, and wan winter light slanted
through the lofty windows, making the air of the spacious
conference room-well heated and crowded with human and
other warm-blooded bodies though it was-seem chilly.
Which, thought Marcus LeBlanc, was altogether too damned
appropriate. How could it be anything else, when every
being sitting in that room was only too well aware of the
catastrophic events which had swirled about them since
Ivan Antonov had launched Operation Pesthouse?
They'd had such hopes. Even LeBlanc, whose job it was to
remind them all of how little they truly knew-even now-
about the Arachnids, had been unable to believe that any
race could sacrifice so many ships, entire fleets of
superdreadnoughts, even planets inhabited by its own kind,
just to set a massive trap. Yet that was precisely what
the Bugs had done, and Operation Pesthouse had turned into
the most overwhelming disaster in the history of the
Terran Federation Navy. The Arachnids had lured Antonov's
Second Fleet on and on with sacrifice gambits beyond the
bounds of sanity ... then they'd closed in through
undiscovered warp points in the systems through which he'd
passed. They'd sprung a trap from which Antonov, with the
help of a hastily organized relief force headed by Sky
Marshal Hannah Avram herself, had only just managed to
extricate less than half his force-not including himself,
and not including Avram.
It was hard to say which had been the more paralyzing body
blow to the TFN: the deaths of two living legends, or the
loss of ships-more than a quarter of the fleet's total
prewar ship count, and more than half its total prewar
tonnage destroyed outright. And that didn't even count the
crippling damage to many of the survivors. Nor did it
count the two survey flotillas that had been probing
beyond the warp points through which the Bugs had come ...
and which must have been like puppies under the wheels of
a ground car against the massive armadas into whose paths
they had strayed.
The losses were so horrifying that the survey flotillas
scarcely constituted a material addition to the sum of
destruction. But, the more LeBlanc thought about it, the
loss that really couldn't be afforded was Antonov. His
reputation had been that of a ruthless, unstoppable,
unfeeling force of nature-in short, humankind's answer to
the Bugs. If he could be overwhelmed, what hope had
everyone else?
Ellen MacGregor and Raymond Prescott-whose brilliant
execution of Antonov's escape plan had enabled some of
Second Fleet to survive-had halted the tumble of Terran
morale when they smashed the Bug counteroffensive that had
followed the fleeing survivors of Operation Pesthouse into
the Alpha Centauri System. The "Black Hole of Centauri,"
as it had come to be called after MacGregor's savage
prediction of what the Bug invaders were going to fall
into, had been only a defensive victory, but it had been
one the Grand Alliance had needed badly. And it evidently
had left the Bugs incapable of any further offensives for
the time being, as there had been no such offensive since.
So a lull had settled over the war as the TFN began to
rebuild itself.
Yet even beginning that rebuilding had been an agonizingly
painful process, and the dispersive demands of frightened
politicians, terrified for the safety of other star
systems whose population levels approached that of Alpha
Centauri, hadn't helped. So, yes, he understood why a room
which should have been warm felt anything but.
He was seated among the staffers who lined the room's
periphery, well back from the oval table in its center. As
a rear admiral, he had about as much chance of getting a
seat at that table as did the young lieutenant beside him.
That worthy seemed to share his mood. Kevin Sanders looked
as foxlike as always, with his reddish sandy hair and
sharp features. But the usual twinkle was absent from his
blue eyes as he turned to LeBlanc, and his whisper was
subdued, even though it held the customary informality
that obtained between them.
"Quite a change since the last time I was here," he said.
After a moment's blankness, LeBlanc gave a nod of
understanding. Sanders, then an ensign, had been in this
very room three and a half years before, when the Grand
Allied Joint Chiefs of Staff had first convened. That had
been before he'd joined LeBlanc's intelligence shop of Bug
specialists-before it had existed, even-and he'd been
present as a subordinate of Captain Midori Kozlov. She
hadn't been a captain then, when Ivan Antonov had been
named the joint chiefs' chairman, and she'd served as his
staff intelligence officer.
And now Kozlov, like Antonov himself and so many others-
too many others, hundreds of thousands of others-existed
only as cosmic detritus in the lonely, lonely depths of
space where Second Fleet had gone to find its doom.
"Yes, quite a change," LeBlanc murmured in reply as he
studied those positioned at the oval table.
Two members of the original joint chiefs that Sanders
remembered were still there: Admiral Thaarzhaan of Terra's
Ophiuchi allies, and Fleet Speaker Noraku of the Gorm,
whose relationship with the Orions defied precise human
definition. But Sky Marshal Ellen MacGregor now
represented the Terran Federation, and there were others
besides the joint chiefs, crowding the table's capacity.
Admiral Raymond Prescott, who was to have commanded the
Zephrain offensive, was seated beside Ninety-First Small
Fang of the Khan Zhaarnak'telmasa, Lord Telmasa, who was
to have been his carrier commander ... and who, more
importantly, was his vilkshatha brother, for Prescott was
the second human in history to have held that very special
warrior's relationship with an Orion. Across the table
from them was another Orion, Tenth Great Fang of the Khan
Koraaza'khiniak, Lord Khiniak, just in from Shanak, where
he commanded Third Fleet on the stalemated second front of
the Kliean Chain. Fleet Admiral Oscar Pederson of the
Federation's Fortress Command was also there, in his
capacity as the system CO of Alpha Centauri. And, at the
end of the table ...
There, LeBlanc's eyes lingered. Beside him, Sanders
chuckled, once more his usual self.
"I wonder if there's ever been so much rank at one table?"
the lieutenant mused. "You'd think it would reach critical
mass!"
When he got no response from LeBlanc, he glanced sharply
at his chief. Then he followed the rear admiral's gaze to
the woman on whom it rested.
Admiral Vanessa Murakuma had the red hair, green eyes, and
elvish slenderness of Irish genes molded by generations on
a low-gravity planet. The initial impression, to eyes
accustomed to the human norm, was one of ethereal
fragility.
"Yeah, right," Sanders muttered to himself sotto voce.
Murakuma, thrust into command of the frantically
improvised defenses of the Romulus Chain in the early days
of the war, had fought the Bug juggernaut to a standstill
in a nightmare thunder of death and shattered starships.
She'd fallen back from star system to star system, always
desperately outnumbered, always with her back to the
wall ... always aware of the civilians helpless beyond the
fragile shield of her dying ships. Sanders knew that he
would never-ever-be able to truly understand the
desperation and horror which must have filled her as she
faced that implacable avalanche of Bug warships, saw it
grinding remorselessly and unstoppably onward towards all
she was sworn to protect and defend. Yet somehow she'd met
that avalanche and, finally, stopped it dead. She'd nearly
died herself in the process, yet she'd done it, and in the
doing earned the Lion of Terra, an award that entitled her
to take a salute from anyone in the TFN, regardless of
rank. And the intelligence analyst who'd been beside her
throughout the entire hideous ordeal had been then-captain
Marcus LeBlanc, the only intelligence officer the TFN had
thought loose-screwed enough to have a prayer of
understanding the Bugs.
And now, as Sanders watched, she made a brief eye contact
with Rear Admiral LeBlanc, and smiled ever so slightly.
Once again, Sanders looked at LeBlanc, who was also
smiling.
He wondered if the rumors were true.
But it seemed that his boss had heard him, after all.
"Yes," LeBlanc agreed, still smiling. "There are a hell of
a lot of stars, and the various other things nonhumans use
for flag-rank insignia, up there. But there's more to
come."
"Attention on deck!" the master-at-arms at the main
doorway announced, as if on cue.
Everyone rose as Kthaara'zarthan, Lord Talphon, Chairman
of the Grand Allied Joint Chiefs of Staff, entered with
the prowling stride of the Zheeerlikou'valkhannaiee-a name
which humans, for reasons too obvious for discussion,
preferred to render as Orions, after the constellation
which held the heart of their interstellar domain.
Most Orions, including Zhaarnak and Koraaza, came in
various shades of tawny and russet. But there was a
genetic predisposition, which kept popping up in the
Khanate's noblest families, toward fur of midnight-black.
Kthaara epitomized that trait, and even though he was
beginning to show the frosting of age, he still suggested
some arcane feline death-god. It was an impression few
humans, even those used to Orions in general, could avoid
on first seeing him. And it had grown more pronounced
since Operation Pesthouse.
Everyone had heard the stories of Kthaara's reaction on
learning of the fate of Ivan Antonov ... or Ivan'zarthan,
as he was also entitled to be known, as the very first
human to be admitted to vilkshatha brotherhood. It had
been Kthaara who'd admitted him, at the height of the
Theban War, when Antonov had allowed the Orion to serve
under him because he'd understood the blood debt Kthaara
had owed to the killers of his cousin, Khardanizh'zarthan.
As he'd listened to the reports that Antonov's flagship
had not been among the battered survivors that had limped
back from Operation Pesthouse, the Orion hadn't emitted
the howl a human, misled by the catlike countenance
evolutionary coincidence had put atop a body not unlike
that of a disproportionately long-legged man, might have
expected. Nor had he made any sound of all. Nor any
movement. Instead, like black lava freezing into
adamantine hardness, he'd seemed to silently congeal into
an ebon essence of death and vengeance.
Since then, his trademark cosmopolitan urbanity, the
product of six decades of close association with humans,
had returned somewhat. It was in evidence now as he sat
down at the place at the head of the table he'd inherited
from his vilkshatha brother and addressed the meeting.
"As you were, ladies and gentlemen," he said in the Tongue
of Tongues. Orion vocal apparatus was incapable of
pronouncing Standard English, and that of humans was
almost as ill-adapted to the universal Orion language. No
Orion had ever been able to speak Standard English, and
only a tiny handful of gifted mimics-like Raymond Prescott-
had ever been able to reproduce the sounds of the Tongue
of Tongues. But the two races could learn to understand
each other's speech, and many of the non-Orions present-
including LeBlanc and Sanders-could follow the Tongue of
Tongues. Those who couldn't (like Vanessa Murakuma, who
was Orion-literate but whose tone deafness made it
impossible for her to comprehend the spoken version of the
language) had earplug mikes connected to a translators who
could.
Several new Orion-English translation software packages
were in development, spurred by the absolute necessity the
Grand Alliance had created for human-Orion communication
across the incompatible vocal interface which separated
them, but they still left a lot to be desired. Memory
requirements were very large, which limited their use to
systems-like those on planets, large space stations, and
capital ships-which could spare the space from other
requirements. Worse, however, was the fact that they
tended to be very literal-minded, and Orion was not a
language which lent itself well to literal translation
into English. Which was one reason organic translators
were employed at plenary meetings like this one, where
clarity of understanding was essential. The steady
improvement in the software, especially by the Orions (who
were the known galaxy's best cyberneticists) was bound to
solve all of those problems-probably fairly soon, to judge
by current results-but in the meantime, the software was
reserved for occasions when misunderstandings would be
less critical.
"I wish to welcome Lord Khiniak, Lord Telmasa,
Ahhdmiraaaal Murraaaakuuuuma, and their staffs," Kthaara
continued. "You have been recalled because I consider it
necessary to bring all our principal field commanders up
to date on our current status and future intentions. This
will occupy an extensive series of conferences and
briefings, as you already know from the material you have
received. The purpose of this initial session is twofold.
First of all, I wish to inform you that the last six
months' strategic lull is soon going to come to an end."
That got the undivided attention of everyone who'd been
expecting to sit through lengthy platitudes. Kthaara
smiled a tooth-hidden carnivore's smile.
"The course of events leading up to the lull," he
added, "is, of course, well known to us all."
That, LeBlanc thought with a fresh inner twinge of pain as
he recalled his own earlier thoughts, was one way to put
it.
It's still felt ... odd to hear an Orion say it, though.
Or, rather, to hear an Orion say it as the chairman of the
Joint Chiefs. Not so long ago, that position would have
gone as a matter of course to a representative of the
Terran Federation, the Alliance's technological pacesetter
and industrial powerhouse, as well as its premier military
power. But now the TFN lay prostrate, its proud tradition
of victory tarnished and the sublime self-confidence born
of that tradition badly shaken. True, the awesome
shipbuilding capacity of the Federation's Corporate Worlds
remained intact, and the reconstruction of the Navy had
commenced. Yet for the time being, the Orions would have
to take the lead in any initiatives the Alliance
attempted. So the chairmanship had fallen to Kthaara-the
logical choice anyway, in terms of seniority and prestige
as well as his unique experience in dealing with humans.
And now his voice continued in the Tongue of Tongues
("Cats copulating to bagpipe music," as a human wit had
once described the sound), bringing LeBlanc back to the
matter at hand.
"It is therefore unnecessary to review those events at any
great length.