03 In Death Ground by David Weber

Author:David Weber [Weber, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780671877798
Amazon: 0671877798
Publisher: Baen
Published: 1997-04-30T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-four

Broken Claws

Fourteenth Great Claw of the Khan Zhaarnak’diaano glowered into the small holo tank of his repeater plot. The worthless planets of the uninhabited Telmasa System orbited their K4 primary with a bland uselessness which mirrored his own mood all too accurately. Clan Diaano had once been famed for the warriors it produced in the Khan’s service, but that had been before the Wars of Shame. It was not his clan’s fault no chance had arisen to win back the honor lost in those disastrous wars, yet every one of his ancestors seemed to prowl the back of his mind, muttering balefully over their descendant’s failure to seize glory by the throat in this war. For more than a full human year – almost two Orion years – it had raged, and still he sat tethered as a “rear area security umbrella” designed only to reassure civilians!

He growled and kneaded his claws in and out of his chair’s padded armrests. Of course, very few of the Khan’s warriors had so far been given the chance to measure themselves against these new foes – these “Bugs.” Fang Anaasa and his pilots had won enormous renown for their rescue of the Human Fifth Fleet in the Third Battle of Justin, but no more of the KON’s units had been rushed forward… for reasons which were one more ember in Zhaarnak’s seething disgust.

Technology. Technology and experience. The Humans’ R&D had – once more – outpaced the Zheeerlikou’valkhannaieee’s, and so they were better equipped than the Khan’s Navy. They had begun the war with better shields, better armor… better weapons. Even now their technical missions were busy throughout the Khanate, working to upgrade the KON’s technology as if the Zheeerlikou’valkhannaieee were cubs who must be led by the hand. And though the Federation’s last major war was an Orion century old, it remained more recent than anything the Khanate could claim. Antipiracy operations, the suppression of a slaving outbreak in the Khithaar Sector, the short confrontation when District Governor Maashaar defied the present Khan’s sire… those were all the “wars” the KON had fought since the Third Interstellar War, and so the Grand Alliance had agreed the Humans should lead the battle in the Romulus Cluster.

The great claw bared the tips of his fangs. Deep inside, a part of him acknowledged that it was the Humans who had first been attacked. Their warriors’ blood had been the first shed, their civilians the ones butchered, and so it was right that they be given the honor of facing the foe. Yet another, deeper part of him could not accept that. Humans were chofaki. They had no honor. They were clever, yes, and skilled in the cold blooded execution of maneuvers, yet they lacked the warrior’s fire. He had heard the arguments – Valkha, but he had heard them! – since the Theban War. Minisharhuaak! Of course they had shouldered their obligations in that war, but they had done so out of fear, Zhaarnak thought.

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