Dirge - Alan Dean Foster [120]
Fouad looked at him closely. “Is that what you think is going to happen?”
“No, but at this point the possibility cannot be entirely discounted.”
She turned away from him, back to the glowing, in-depth representation. “That’s not my department. I’ll do what the general staff tells me to do. They in turn have their orders from the world council. All I know is that there’s a predetermined sequence of actions whose degree of reaction is calibrated according to how the Pitar respond.” Her jawline firmed. “To one extent or another, they are to be punished for what they did on Treetrunk.”
“You asked me what I thought was going to happen.” Levi watched her expectantly.
The captain’s interest was piqued. “You have an idea?”
“I think so. You know, among the original Twelve Tribes the Levites were the scholars. I do not feel like I belong here, on a warship, preparing to engage in mass destruction.”
“Your unhappiness is noted,” she replied curtly. “Tell me what you think.”
“I’ve studied the Pitar ever since they first arrived on Earth aboard the Chagos.”
“I know that.” Her tone was impatient. “Get to the point, old man. In case you haven’t noticed, there’s an invasion in progress.”
“Sorry. There are a number of ways I could put it scientifically, but I see no need to couch an opinion in complex systematic jargon. Suffice to say that the Pitar are homebodies.”
“They don’t colonize. They told us that from the first.” Fouad tried to divide her attention between the clustered general staff, the view tridee before her and its accompanying heads-up displays, and the lugubrious sage standing next to her seat. “It was one of the reasons their complicity in the massacre was so hard for so many to accept.”
“They’re not just homebodies. They’re fanatical about the Twin Worlds. Except for occasional excursions to places like Earth and Hivehom, and deviate adventures such as Treetrunk, they do not leave their home system. Not only are they not colonizers, they are not big on straightforward exploration. They simply do not like to leave home.”
“Which means what? You do have a point, don’t you?”
“I think so. What I am trying to say is that all the energy, and effort, and advanced technological development we have put into spreading ourselves outward, they have focused inward.”
She frowned and idly adjusted the neural jack above her left ear that allowed her direct communication with the rest of the armada, her own staff, and the Wellington’s intelligence center. “So you’re saying that…?”
A little anxious himself now, Levi interrupted her in order to state the thought. “Everything we have put into offense, they may have concentrated on defense.”
It was not long thereafter that the Wellington was rocked by explosion and near catastrophe, and the armada found itself fully and desperately engaged.
Extending in their respective orbits outward from Pitar’s star were three worlds of various mien, none suitable for permanent habitation. Then the closely aligned planets numbered four and five, the Twin Worlds of the Pitarian Dominion. Between the fifth planet and the sixth, which happened also to be the first of four gas giants, was not one but two asteroid belts. While one lay in the normal plane of the ecliptic, the second occupied an orbit almost perpendicular to the first. Among this mass of planetary debris were a good many planetoidal objects of considerable size.
Every one of which had been transformed by the Pitar into an armed and shielded attack-and-support station.
In those first lunatic moments frantic commands ricocheted between ships at the speed of light. Humans and their machines slipped instantly into battle mode, each functioning efficiently and effectively. In this it was difficult to say who had the greater advantage. Machines offered speed and reliability, humans the ability to improvise in response to the unexpected. Organic and inorganic had spent several hundred years evolving in tandem to perfect the art of combat.
On the other hand, in spite of the unprecedented ferocity of the human