The Commonwealth forces began to move forward. Hayes appeared on the screen, flanked by Admiral Frank. "You have your promise, General. Win or lose, utterly, and the population goes free."
Utterly.
Itjes bit his lip till it bled, ordered his forces to attack.
*
The main battle went much the same as the skirmish which had preceded it. The Coalition's flyers were, on the whole more experienced, more disciplined, in some ways better trained; and for a time they did fairly well. They kept their forces together, found cracks in the fences of their enemies, and were able to weed out and destroy the greener of the American combatants.
But soon the blows were raining hard and heavy upon them, and coming from every direction at once. Squadrons and formations were broken up, strategies broken down. And after a time, good and lesser soldiers alike, veterans and younger men, husbands, heroes and cowards, were killed by shots that did not discriminate. No magical God-force protected the just and perseverant; no hand of Providence reached down. Men and women died, adding their silent numbers to the ancient mass of corpses piled in an endless grave in the name of War, because men had not yet learned that name was foul.
The Coalition forces kept fighting for five hours, fighting and dying, waiting for an order to retreat that never came, fighting and dying and waiting for an order to retreat that never came, then a surrender that never came, fighting and dying and waiting for an order to retreat and then a surrender, and an end to the carnage that never came, fighting and dying and waiting for an order to retreat and then a surrender and an end to the carnage, and some kind of sanity that never came, fighting and dying and waiting for an order to retreat and then a surrender and some kind of sanity, then simple deliverance, that never came—-except in death.
The Commonwealth lost eighty ships, mostly fighters and destroyers, in annihilating the entire Coalition Fleet. Ten hours later the last evacuation vessels left the planet, though many inhabitants remained behind of their own volition. The four Battleships took up their equidistant points about the equator of the Friedrich Schiller, firing a long and continuous heat and shock laser burst into its core. The planet's surface writhed and convulsed with earthquakes and eruptions for perhaps two hours, till the outer crust was broken into crumbling islands in a molten sea, and what was left of the face fell apart. The Battleships ceased their barrage, leaving it to die its final death of fire, lava and smoke. The Secretary chose to leave it thus, rather than blow it apart, to further anger the Soviets and goad them into reprisals. That such a decision might have other consequences he knew, but at that moment his mind was driven by a single impulse only. He wanted, with all his soul, a full-scale World War.
Several hours later in prearranged rendezvous, the Third Fleet's engineering vessels followed the earlier course of the Dreadnought through the star gate. Immediately upon arrival (and finding that things had gone their way), they turned about and began to construct a second entrance, leading back the way they had come. Since the corridor itself was already in existence, needing only a return inlet, this took less than forty-eight hours. Then, all Commonwealth vessels tucked up safe inside the mother, the Third Fleet returned to the limits of the Athena system, destroying the further gate, dismantling the nearer, behind them. The Dreadnought then proceeded, at just above tracking speed, to a new and untraceable location.
Hayes had won again.