Dirge - Alan Dean Foster [124]
The members of the armada’s commanding general staff were rotated along with enlisted personnel and low-ranking civilian affiliates, but they were united in their frustration. As one admiral put it, the blockade was war conducted entirely under cover of night, where night covered nothing. There could be no surprise attacks launched on an alerted, technologically sophisticated species. Instrumentation that never slept saw to that. Mind could only do so much before it was necessary for machine to take over. For a soldier it was hard to sustain the energy and alertness demanded of a fight with an enemy one could not see. Even the enemy’s worlds were no more than another bright couple of points of light in the galactic sky.
Yet no one thought of giving up. Treetrunk could not be forgotten. Even so, despite the comparative recentness of the outrage, it was already starting to fade a little in the minds of a small but growing segment of the population. The media strove to maintain interest, but a blockade is not like a series of dramatic encounters in space. The battle for control of stasis did not play as well on the evening tridee as an invasion.
Something had to be done. Something had to happen to change the unacceptable status quo, and both military and civilian strategists realized that in that regard sooner would be better than later. By now more than a year had passed since the Wellington and the rest of the armada had entered the system of the Pitarian Dominion to the cheers and vengeful shouts of the majority of humankind. Almost that much time had passed since there had been any perceptible change in that status. In the interim, the cheers had given way to grudging acceptance of the blockade, and the vengeful shouts to orchestrated growlings of support. The military was aware of the threat of germinating discontent, but there was nothing more they could do than what they were already doing.
Others, however, had different ideas.
19
“Why should we help them any more than we already have? Why should the hives, cruk!ck, get involved?”
“Yes,” another member of the circle agreed. “There is no compelling reason for putting thranx lives at risk.” Leaning back, the speaker raised all four hands in order to gesture simultaneously. “These humans do not even like us!”
“I can just see,” still a third sarcastically declared, “these humans risking their own lives to aid us if the situation were reversed. Put them in a tunnel with only us facing danger, and they will turn and run the other way.”
When the dissenters had had their say, the Tri-Eint Debreljinav activated the pickup before her and was respectfully conceded queen’s dominance. Since the advent of hormonal extracts that had enabled any thranx female to lay fertile eggs, the lineage of hereditary queendom had vanished from thranx civilization. Subsequent to the enforced abdication of procreative royalty, many heraldic vestiges of those primitive times had assumed highly formalized places in thranx culture. One such was the rotating speaking position of queen’s dominance.
No member of the Grand Council was more respected than Debreljinav. Not many were older; few were as perceptive. Chosen leader of both the hive Jin and the clan Av, she had advanced to the exalted position of eint at an unusually early age, retaining the post while acquiring honor and prestige over the years. Now she could rise no higher, being one of those the great mass hive of thranx had chosen to govern not only Hivehom but the colony worlds as well.
“It is clear what benefits accrue to us if we remain neutral, like the Quillp. But what might we lose by doing so, and what more might we gain by becoming actively involved?”
An eint seated among the opposition responded without hesitation. “We lose nothing because we have nothing to gain.” Sympathetic stridulation by those of like mind momentarily filled the room with the din of a hundred improperly tuned violas.
“Nothing?” a supporter of intervention argued.