Dirge - Alan Dean Foster [121]
Interstellar space is unimaginably vast. Even between planets there is room enough to lose a thousand ships. But the physics that can follow the tracks of tiny comets and minuscule asteroids are also adept at locating the operational drives designed to push vessels through space-plus. And a vessel that is propelled by anything less takes months to journey from one planetary body to another.
So while humans and Pitar swam in inky nothingness, their respective machines utilized far more sensitive instruments than eyes and ears to plot each other’s courses. Every time a ship of the armada attempted to pass within the orbits of the intersecting asteroid belts it found itself confronted by two or more Pitarian warcraft. Each human vessel was parsecs from home while support for the defending ships was, astronomically speaking, an eye blink away.
And the Pitar were capable. Avoiding confrontation wherever possible, they concentrated exclusively on countering any approach to the Twin Worlds. Initially, fear of active counterattack dominated much of the general staff’s strategic thinking. As the days became weeks and the weeks months it became clear that Pitarian tactics included such thrusts only insofar as they related to their defense. No attempt was made, even by a single suicidal ship, to threaten Earth or any of the colony worlds. Everything the Pitar had, every armed vessel they could throw into the conflict, remained close to home. Not one ventured beyond the Pitarian heliosphere.
The attacking humans tried everything. When a deliberate concentration of forces in one place was met by an energetic and equivalent Pitarian response, the battle planners went to the opposite extreme by suggesting an attempted englobement of one of the Twin Worlds. Reacting aggressively and quickly, the Pitar promptly dispersed their forces in precisely the most opportune fashion to counter the widespread assault. Probes of sectors presumed weak were beaten back by Pitarian forces of unexpected strength.
Missiles launched at the fifth world were detected, tracked, intercepted and destroyed. The residents of the Dominion suffered no casualties as a result of the invasion of their system. Requests to parley were met with strident animosity. It became clear that while humans had originally taken an immediate liking to the Pitar, the humanoid aliens felt very differently about their smaller mammalian counterparts. This did not take the form of outright loathing: The Pitar were too courtly for that. It was more on the order of a general contempt for the human species as a whole. The Pitar would not talk, would not discuss any sort of armistice with the lowly humans, until every last ship of the armada had left the sacred system of the Twin Worlds.
It didn’t matter, since they refused to apologize for what they had done on Treetrunk or discuss handing over those responsible. One Pitar spoke for all, and all Pitar spoke for one. Admitting no guilt, they therefore dispersed it among themselves and repeatedly commanded the disgusting, detestable invading beings to depart, as their very presence constituted a corruption in the sight of the hallowed Dominion.
Their attitude helped Levi and his colleagues to unravel the rationale behind many prior enigmas: why no embassy had been allowed to open on either of the Twin Worlds, for example, and why visits to the Dominion had been prohibited. It had nothing to do with racial shyness or reticence. The Pitar were not coy—they were overbearing. Nasty, uncouth humans could not be allowed to defile the purity of the homeworlds.
To what end their plundering force had removed the reproductive organs of thousands of human females from Treetrunk continued to remain a mystery. Here it was left to an admixture of Levi’s people and researching biologists to speculate on possible reasons. Many were put forth, some fantastic, not a few revolting. Among the facts that were assembled in