"I have had enough!" exclaimed Athenalras. "Call off this multi-damned, demon-spawned attack."
"My lord, no!" shouted Ro'moloristen, though the carnage along the front sickened him no less than his elder. "We cannot stop now! Think, my lord. The thresh are reeling in the east. And there is barely an obstacle to our brethren's continued progress into the very heart of this 'Deutschland.'"
Ro'moloristen lowered his head and shook his crest. "The line 'Siegfried' is brittle, lord, brittle. Though the People may fall at a rate of twenty to one in chewing through it, fifty to one, one hundred to one—even, as we are in some places, it matters not. For we outnumber the thresh still by a factor of three hundred to one or more on this front.
"And, lord, the bridge the host of Arlingas has captured near the gray thresh town of Mannheim? It is impacting severely on their ability to keep their damnable artillery resupplied. Even in the last few rotations of this planet our losses to this arm along that portion of the front have gone down drastically. Projections are that if we keep up the pressure, the threshkreen must break."
Sadly, the senior laid one hand upon the very much junior's shoulder. "Let all this be true, young one. Still, I am sick of the slaughter. And would that it might end."
"There can be no end, great one. Not until this species is utterly cast down. Come see."
Gently, the junior led his lord to a data screen. "See the projections, lord." Quickly the screen jumped through well calculated close estimates of such things as population growth, technological progress, urbanization, advances in the military art, even psychiatric profiles of humans under stress.
"As you can see, lord, our muzzles are plainly hitched to the breeding post."
Athenalras answered, slowly and deliberately, "We are being well and truly fucked anyway, young one. We have tossed away the flower of the People in futile assaults against this Siegfried line, and have gained nothing by it except to reduce our numbers by one hundred million on this front alone."
"I know, lord," said Ro'moloristen. "I know. But I have been thinking . . ."
"A dangerous pastime."
"Yes, lord, I know that, too. Nonetheless I have been thinking. We . . . the People as a whole . . . make war as we hunt. These threshkreen do not. Or, at least, they do not do so as we do. They have what they call 'Principles of War.' The lists of these principles vary among them but I have discovered twelve that seem to cover everything."
"Twelve?"
"Yes, Lord: they are Mass, Objective, Security, Surprise, Maneuver, Offensive, Unity of Command, Simplicity, Economy of Force, Attrition, Annihilation and Shape. Using these principles I have determined upon a plan that may grant us the victory. Instead of attacking all along the front, we will concentrate our efforts towards the sector nearest to the bridge held by the host of Arlingas. We have no clue how even to use any of the thresh artillery we have captured, let alone build or resupply our own. But we do have ships. From space we will pound—"
"They will butcher our ships in space!"
Ro'moloristen gave the Posleen equivalent of a sigh. "Yes, lord, surely they will, for a while. But before our ships are destroyed they will, in turn, kill. They will beat for us a flat road through a narrow lane in the Siegfried line.
"Lord, if we don't our people are dead!"
Coming to a sudden decision, Athenalras lifted his crest slightly. "Show me the projections of loss," he demanded.
Athenalras looked over Ro'moloristen's figures. Frightful, frightful. And yet the puppy is right. What else can we do, if the People are not to perish? "It will take several revolutions of this planet about its axis for us to prepare. See to it. And prepare a special hunting group of ships to see to this reported super-tenaral. And reduce the level of the current offensive to no more than is needed to keep the thresh's attention."