Scattered Suns - Kevin J. Anderson [104]
Lanyan maintained his unbreakable gruffness. “Thank you, Captain Kett. I will call all grid admirals in the vicinity to discuss the matter immediately. We will mount an urgent rescue operation.”
The large woman stared at him on the screen, then she actually laughed. “Take another look at those images, General. You’d better bring brushes and little envelopes to pick up what’s left of the people on Relleker. You won’t be doing any rescue operation.”
Lanyan bristled. “As I said, my admirals and I will review the matter right away. You may proceed to Earth and unload your passengers. Davlin Lotze has arranged temporary holding facilities near the Palace District, where they’ll be well taken care of. You may leave the rest of the matter to me.”
Admirals Tabeguache and Antero were in the solar system preparing their battle groups for additional expeditions against the Roamers. Grid 7’s Admiral Sheila Willis had just been dispatched from the asteroid belt shipyards and was easily recalled. Admiral Kostas Eolus entered the Mars base’s conference room at the last moment, breathless from having rushed back in a small ship; for the sake of speed, he had left the rest of his Grid 5 fleet on its assigned maneuvers.
Lanyan expected no one else to attend. “Better get started. As Grid 0 liaison, Admiral Stromo should be here, but he’s currently on his way back from Yreka, and I don’t anticipate his arrival until tomorrow. We’ll have to have this meeting without him.”
Admiral Peter Tabeguache made a quiet comment under his breath, then coughed as if to cover it. “Not that old Stay-at-Home would be much help anyway.”
“I’ll have no insubordination in this meeting!” Lanyan said.
“Of course not, sir.”
Deeply unsettled, Lanyan paced around the room, studying his uniformed officers. The wall of windows looked out upon cracked red terrain and an olive-green sky.
“What’s this I hear about the drogues kicking ass on another Hansa colony, General?” Sheila Willis said.
“Not just kicking ass. They ground us flat.” Lanyan played the images from the Voracious Curiosity, showing enemy warglobes mercilessly obliterating Relleker. He had considered muting Governor Pekar’s desperate and pitiful transmissions, but decided to let his grid admirals experience the full magnitude of the crisis. As they sat in stunned silence, he said, “Upon review, I have concluded that there is nothing we can do for Relleker at this time.”
“Shouldn’t we at least send an analytical team to comb through the ruins?” suggested Haki Antero. “We could learn something.”
“I doubt it, but I suppose we ought to go through the motions anyway. The Chairman would insist on it.”
“Any idea why the drogues struck Relleker in particular? Because it was close to Crenna?” Antero asked. “Were they just hitting any human colony? What set them off?”
“What set them off, Haki? Now, let’s see,” Willis drawled. “In the past several months, we’ve stuffed five more Klikiss Torches down the gullets of hydrogue planets. Can you imagine a reason why those deep-core aliens might want to retaliate against us?”
“We don’t know their motivation, Admiral,” Lanyan cautioned.
“General, just because the drogues are aliens, that doesn’t mean they’re stupid.”
With the news of Crenna and Relleker coming so close together, Lanyan felt more impotent than he had in years. Recently, after striking Theroc, the drogues had been preoccupied with their battles against the faeros, but Relleker was something else entirely, a specifically human target, an indisputable extermination.
“Excuse me, sir, but somebody needs to say this,” Tabeguache began. “We had a bit of a respite for a while, but now that the drogues have started hitting us hard again, perhaps we should pull back all of the battleships currently on search-and-destroy missions against the Roamer clans? Seems we should concentrate on the primary enemy. We can always get the Roamers later.”
Lanyan’s nostrils flared. “Getting the Roamers to knuckle under is likely the only part of this mess that we can win in a reasonable