Of Fire and Night - Kevin J. Anderson [231]
After the last explosions died away, space became eerily still, a graveyard of drifting wrecks. The remaining ships performed emergency repairs, while EDF scouts searched for survivors.
From the warliner's command nucleus Adar Zan'nh took inventory of what he had left. So much of the Solar Navy was gone! Two full cohorts of ships, every single warliner destroyed. But thanks to the Roamer traders and their ingenious invention, Tal Lorie'nh had not been required to add another cohort and hundreds of thousands more Ildiran lives to the cost.
All together it had just barely been enough. Across the Spiral Arm, the deep-core aliens were suffering defeat after defeat from other unforeseen battles. The hydrogues had not expected to combat so many enemies on so many fronts. Even the Ildirans had not counted on all those unexpected allies.
Even so, Zan'nh could still feel the stinging cries of uncounted dead and injured back on Ildira. He desperately wanted to know what had happened there.
And now he needed to show his strength to get through this. In the quiet after the holocaust, he stared at the starry emptiness around him. His skeleton crew worked with all possible speed to restore the flagship's engines, but when the chief mechanic returned smeared with grimy residue, his face was downcast. "We cannot complete the repairs ourselves, Adar. The damage is too severe."
Zan'nh nodded. "Scavenge the components we need. I will make contact with Tal Lorie'nh's warliners and request their assistance."
Once he expressed his need to Tal Lorie'nh, though, he was surprised when General Lanyan's voice interrupted him. He had forgotten the EDF was also tied into their Ildiran command frequency. "I know you Solar Navy types like to keep to yourselves, but we could help you out in a snap. After all, Ildirans did give us our stardrive technology two centuries ago. We use pretty much the same equipment as you do."
Zan'nh reminded himself that without the Earth Defense Forces, and without the assistance of Sullivan Gold and Tabitha Huck in equipping the automated warliners, the hydrogues would never have been beaten.
"General Lanyan, we would be grateful if your engineers could help us."
"No trouble at all."
Less than an hour later, Lanyan's shuttle entered the warliner's landing bay. Zan'nh and two crewmen went to meet him, while the minimal Ildiran crew continued to work. As the square-jawed General emerged from the shuttle accompanied by a well-equipped EDF technical team, the Adar remained rigid. He remembered all too clearly the curses this man had showered upon him when he believed Zan'nh had betrayed him.
Instead of accusations, the bullish commander grabbed the Adar's hand and pumped it so vigorously that Zan'nh's elbow ached. "It was all a setup, a goddamned setup! You sure fooled me and my soldiers. For a few moments there you made me crap my new uniform, but you put one over on the drogues even more than you did on us!"
"I apologize for not being more forthcoming, General. I had my instructions. We had to keep our plans secret from the hydrogues, but we assumed the green priests had disseminated the details of the plan to you."
"Not a word of it. And we didn't expect the Roamers to come either. Everything turned out all right--can't complain about that--but I still feel completely caught with my pants down."
"As I said, General, we assumed the Hansa knew. Do you not speak with your green priests?"
"Not so much anymore."
Zan'nh explained how his warliners had been automated with help from Hansa engineers, then he gave the General his long-awaited tour of a Solar Navy warliner, while the EDF technical crew met with Ildiran engineers to determine how much of the flagship was salvageable. Lanyan claimed to have experts familiar with "old-fashioned" stardrive designs; over the centuries, the humans had made many modifications--the General called them "improvements"--to the stardrives. "And what we can't fix for you, we'll replace. We've got the largest salvage yard in the Spiral Arm right out there."
A message came from Tal