Opening Moves (41 page)

Corr'tane suspected that even a disciplined fleet surrounded like that would have had a hard time escaping. Not that it mattered now. Tuathaan resistance in this sector was gone. Today's victory had cost them probably twenty-five percent of their active fleet, perhaps even more. And soon his moment of revenge would be at hand. He would make sure to savor it.

The central plot noted smaller ships darting back and forth to rescue disabled
Swiftpaw
pilots and offer aid to damaged vessels. Well trained pilots and crew members were a valuable commodity to be preserved at great cost – if possible – and to be expended when necessary. It was a balancing act between ruthlessness and sentimentality. Leaning too much towards one or the other would make him a poor leader. However,  his aim, and the thing which set him above most other strategoi of the Dominion, was to look after his forces but not be so attached that he wouldn't risk them if the goal was worth it.

“
Our sensors show the Tuathaan used nuclear munitions against our landing zones,” Pryatan reported. “It's unlikely that 8
th
Corps survived as a fighting unit.”

“
Any communication?” Corr'tane asked.

“
None, Strategos. Given the weapons that have been used and the resistance the unit faced on the ground...”

He nodded, not showing any sign of emotions. He had known there would be sacrifices to be made if his plan was to succeed. This one, while painful, had not been in vain. He had thrown a  hundred thousand soldiers to the wolves, but their persistence and later loss had enabled him to annihilate a thousand enemy warships and close to a million enemy sailors and officers and technicians, all of whom were valuable assets now denied to the enemy. The Ashani people had been hurt, but not nearly so much as the Tuathaan. And with no friendly signals from the surface, there was no call for a rescue operation. He would proceed straight on with the attack.

“Order the bombardment wings to commence the standard attack pattern: neutron charges against the population centers first, then we drop the bioagents. Let's wipe this planet clean of the Tuathaan taint.”

For long years Corr'tane had been tasked with developing biological weapons of mass destruction. It was a solitary, clinical experience during which he had invented weapons of nightmarish potential: adaptive genetic creations and bio-mechanical nanomachines which proved utterly deadly; compounds designed to melt through and dissolve clothing before releasing toxins to defeat respirators and chemical warfare suits; plagues which remained undetected unless exposed to certain radiation, allowing them to be spread widely before activation; and an array of other creations, each more lethal than the last.

CLAWBLADE and her escorts began the bombardment, a constant rain of strategic missiles falling on major population centers and food and water supplies. It was a tactic he had formulated himself, born from his clinical tests and simulations. Anyone not directly infected in the first strikes would be infected by eating contaminated food or drinking tainted water. It was a way to wipe out entire planets of life –- and given the sophistication of his creations,
specific
forms of life – quickly and cleanly.

Given the Dominion's predicament, that was only one half of the Ashani strategy. For every plague he invented he also created a cure, an immunization through artificial antibodies that could be given to the Ashani colonists and soldiers who would be expected to land and settle on these worlds after the conquest. Distant as he was from the full-scale impacts of his decisions and creations, to him it was an intellectual challenge and a perfectly acceptable way to help his people.

Half an hour later it was all over.

“
Bombardment pattern complete,” Pryatan said.

“
Understood, Captain. Good, very good. That was faster than expected,” Corr'tane complimented her. “Order the fleet to refuel and restock their magazines. War Captain Tallthresher's units will remain as a covering force. We'll leave the recovery ships here, too, to continue the rescue and repair missions and to monitor the progress of the planetary cleansing. The remainder of 3
rd
Fleet will immediately deploy to the Báine system before Strategos Tear'al can gather his forces and go back there himself,” he smiled mischievously. “And then we welcome him with open arms, making sure the galaxy knows
which
fleet earned the victory.”

“
And which commander,” Pryatan said earnestly. “This day will make your name.”

It was a name written in blood.

STRATEGOS, [strætigɑs]

A military rank within the Ashani Dominion. Often mistaken as a mere equivalent for an admiral within human navies, an individual bearing the title of Strategos is in fact endowed with vast military and –-
de facto
– political powers. In peacetime the
Council of Strategoi
is both High Command and shadow cabinet. During times of war their decisions effectively supersede those of civilian authorities. Prototypically, a strategos is in equal parts field marshal, admiral of the fleet, and politician. In reality, Ashani strategoi largely concentrate on one of the first two tasks while leaving the latter one to the High Strategos who chairs the Dominion's high command and directly interacts with the Dominion's civilian government.

In their war fighting capabilities Ashani strategoi commonly command theaters of a front, following broad objectives at their own discretion. This approach has led some to draw parallels to the approach of
Auftragstaktik
(mission command) spearheaded in the 20
th
century on Earth by the nation of Germany.

Auftragstaktik
can be seen as a doctrine within which formal rules can be selectively suspended in order to overcome 'friction'. Carl von Clausewitz stated that “
Everything in war is very simple but the simplest thing is difficult
”. Problems will occur with misplaced communications, troops going to the wrong location, delays caused by weather, etc., and it is the duty of the commander to do his best to overcome them.
Auftragstaktik
encourages commanders to exhibit initiative, flexibility and improvisation while in command. In what may be seen as surprising to some,
Auftragstaktik
empowers commanders to disobey orders and revise their effect as long as the intent of the commander is maintained.

Unlike their historical counterpart on Earth, Ashani strategoi from the start of the war have displayed a vastly differing range of capabilities, ranging from dangerously incompetent to frightening competence, and ruthlessness. As of the time of this report no data regarding the efficiency of Dominion ground operations exist.

- Intelligence Report for the Pacific Rim Alliance's Inner Council, September 2796 C.E.

C H A P T E R  1 0

Tanith, Independent Star System, Pact of Ten Suns.

July, 2797 C.E.

The mild weather was heralding the coming of summer on Tanith as a dawn mist slowly dissipated in the rising morning sun, revealing a lush scenery of rolling hills covered in lilac grass, trees with long, greenish leaves, and winding rivers stretching far into the distance. Large, two-tailed birds drew their circles in the sky above, and the soft buzz of insects hovered over the grasslands as flowers showed colors that would have looked garish in any other place but amidst the purple grass. The hall itself stood alone, a dome accompanied only by a landing platform for shuttles and air cars and a communication tower. No city, town or village was to be seen for kilometers. It was an idyllic location, alien but beautiful, and whoever had chosen to put the meeting hall of the fractured league of star nations on this world had made an inspired choice.

Tanith itself was a minor power. Its elders were content to control only their own star system and otherwise tacitly accepted the military and economic dominance of their direct larger neighbors, the Komerco Timocracy.

The main advantage it had was its central location at a nexus between the major Pact races. As such it was a natural hub of trade and transport, making it rather wealthy and precluding any needs to expand and search for resources. Tanith simply bought what it needed and kept an otherwise low profile. This aura of political neutrality and its central location had been the reasons that made it a perfect meeting place. Its natural beauty was merely a grand bonus.

Ambassador Serrok Setiawan was the senior Komerco representative to the Pact, a fact he loathed more than his two ex-wives combined which, in and by itself, was quite the accomplishment as he never tired of reminding them. He was a victim of his own success. Back home, voting power and the chance to hold political office were coupled with the possession of property. The more you had, the more say you had. That was the nice flipside of the Komerco's stance of 'With great wealth comes great responsibility' and saved them all from the accusation of being nothing but predatory capitalists. In fact, having your political influence bound directly to your net worth was probably the single most important reason why more or less every renowned economic institute across known space had admitted that tax discipline was nowhere as high as in the Timocracy. You
wanted
the state to know what you earned and had!

And Serrok Setiawan had had it all. He was, as confirmed by every Komerco accounting firm worth its title, the richest man alive in the Timocracy, maybe even the known universe. Shipping firms, consumer appliances, and mining cartels: he had his hands in everything. He even owned good old-fashioned tracts of farmland, though naturally in the colonies and not on Kom itself with its blasted environment. All that had evaded him was the leadership of his people. But years at the top had made him a bit too brash and greedy, and when the day had come to vote for a new head of government what had been supposed to become his greatest triumph had turned into a fiasco. None of the other members of the First Echelon had cast their vote in his favor and, as if this hadn't been bad enough, most of those in the Second Echelon whom he had believed to be in his camp had abstained. Worse, the new government's first act had been to 'honor' him by making him the permanent representative to the Pact. It was an exile in everything but the name.

The move had been meant to make him angry enough to throw it all down, to make him resign his post. But as much as he hated being here he wouldn't give his opponents the satisfaction of having him leave the halls of power in dishonor. He had usually ignored most Pact meetings, either sending a minor clerk to at least take note of what was being discussed or outright ignoring it. However, even he had to admit that things had changed so much during the past three weeks that for once his attendance was necessary.

The emergency meeting had managed to draw delegates from every single member except the Érenni and the
Tuathaan whose ambassadors were understandably indisposed. Still, they would weigh in over a video link via a faster than light connection.

Tachyon Density Emergence
boosters, commonly just called FTL comms, constituted one of the two legs of interstellar commerce and communication, with the other being courier ships. Massively energy-intensive and as large as they were expensive TDE boosters were the literal eye of the needle for priority communications across large distances. Its extraordinary computational needs and energy hunger grew exponentially the more accurate and long-ranged the system got. Bandwidth was limited, as was the number of simultaneous connections to multiple destinations any system could establish. Given the communications needs and immense amounts of data sent and received on a daily basis, a single TDE was almost ridiculously inadequate, as an equivalent to an internet server, for a developed planet involved in the interstellar economy. That, and the vast costs involved with setting up and maintaining such a communications node meant that only a few settled planets between the hundreds of known inhabited star systems could afford such a system, and even these reserved most of the systems' capacity for governmental traffic or high-paying customers. Excess capacities were available to the public. For private citizens the rates varied from planet to planet but were rarely below a hundred credits per minute. The expense earned you the ability to talk to someone or send data packages over a distance of slightly more than five hundred light-years. Even at just a tenth of the range, only the largest military vessels could carry the most basic versions of these systems.

That meant that day to day operations and communications were handled by the modern version of the pony express: courier ships. Most developed planets fielded small fleets of the fast system hoppers, small ships usually weighing only a few thousand tons, consisting only of drives and computers and data storage and oversized comm equipment.

Setiawan pushed the heavy two-winged doors of polished hardwood open with his four arms and two stooped native guards in gaudy uniforms sprang to attention, presenting their feather-crowned ceremonial spears. The inside of the dome reeked of uncertainty and barely hidden fear. The old Komerco politician stopped and drew back his thick lips in a silent snarl as he tried to sift through the buzz of voices.