Repercussions
Page 36
“Third, looking at these orders, the Guard are going to treat us as expendable shock troops to spare their fleet the brunt of the battle, and I don’t trust this General Garza not to turn on us if he manages to capture New Canaan.”
“Turn on us? You really think so?” Jerra repeated skeptically.
Sini shrugged. “It’s what I would do. ‘Always assume the enemy is at least as smart as you are’; you taught me that. And even if they aren’t, when we’ve thrown half our ships down the drain, I don’t trust the Scips, Hydies, or even the Niets not to take advantage.”
Jerra pursed her lips for a moment. “I find it interesting that you’re so convinced it’s a ‘when’. You know why I want you on this mission: you’ve fought Tanis Richards before, you’ve got a better chance than any of these other yahoos High Terra would rather send.”
“Having fought Tanis Richards is exactly why I know we can’t beat her, even if the Orions do hold up their end.”
CHAPTER TWO
STELLAR DATE: 10.30.8927 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: HWS Imperatrix, dark layer
REGION: Bollam’s World System, Bollam’s World Federation
Twenty years earlier…
TO: Laaksonen, Sinikka Tarja, ADM, Commander, ASTSF 5th Fleet
FROM: Jerra, FADM, C-in-C Eridanus Border Command
SUBJECT: Operation: Cold Harbor - CLASSIFIED EAGLE LEPRECHAUN BYPASS
5th Fleet to proceed posthaste to 58 Eridani “Bollam’s World” System for combat action.
Primary objective to capture or destroy vessel ISS Intrepid (see Hegemony Interservice Intelligence Bureau estimate, attachment A) by any means deemed necessary by the Commander, ASTSF 5th Fleet, and return target vessel to High Terra. Last known location: orbit of 58 Eridani VI “Kithari”. WARNING: Target likely heavily armed and may be equipped with disassembler warheads.
Secondary objective to demolish fuel planet 58 Eridani VII “Aurora” by any means deemed necessary by the Commander, ASTSF 5th Fleet.
Expected opposition:
- Bollam’s World Space Force (see H.I.I.B. estimate, attachment B)
- Pirate vessels (see H.I.I.B. estimate, attachment C)
- Intrepid Space Force (conjectural, see attachment A)
5th Fleet to be joined by 171st Battle Squadron, RADM. Chan commanding. Estimated arrival 67 hours ahead.
Orders issued by Commander-in-Chief, Eridanus Border Command, 9 September 8927 AY.
* * * * *
Thea always had the worst timing: Sini was in the middle of a lovely dream involving fraternal triplet zero-g gymnasts. Ah well…. Grumbling slightly, she levered herself up off the bed, unmuting her Link. One advantage of a long dark layer transit: on a properly maintained ship, your sleep was rarely interrupted.
Sini would have killed for an uninterrupted nine hours in her special ops days.
* * * * *
“Admiral on deck!” the officer of the deck barked as she entered the dreadnought’s CIC.
“Carry on,” Sini acknowledged, then greeted her flag captain, Jaumet, over the Link to the ship’s physical bridge.
“Well, no point waiting around in the cold, then,” Senator Ceres remarked.
Sini suppressed the urge to cringe. The senator from Wentworth in Delta Eridani had wangled a ‘space available’ back when they were just moving bases to another system. When the courier boat came in with the orders, he’d insisted on coming along to ‘represent his constituents’.
Sini sighed, buckling herself into her console.
The ship juddered slightly, as it always did. AST dreadnoughts weren’t the largest starships ever built, just the largest ever to successfully travel the dark layer. Even then, it wasn’t completely unheard-of to incur some slight structural warping or frame-racking during a jump.
Sensors that were all but useless in the dark began to feed onto the monitors and into Sini’s Link as transition completed. And what they showed…
Admiral Senya, her counterpart in the Bollam’s World Space Force, was a known quantity: arrogant, capricious, and well-connected in the system, she wouldn’t have risen much past lieutenant commander in her fleet. But as some wag on Old Earth had said, “You have your known knowns, the things you know, and your known unknowns, the things you know you don’t know, but you really have to watch for the unknown unknowns.”
The ‘known unknown’ here was in the center of a firefight that had clearly been raging for some minutes by Kithari—which of course meant it had in fact happened several hours before, given the distance.
The ISS Intrepid, the giant from the past that had blasted its way out of Sol four thousand years earlier, had built Victoria and obliterated a Sirian fleet fifty capital ships strong, and then vanished into the mists of time to never be heard from again. Though it was now fuzzily visible on Imperatrix’s optical telescopes, just over twelve light hours ahead.
The ships of Admiral Chan’s battlegroup, which had been punching through the lines of the Bollam’s World fleet, suddenly went dark one by one.
“Vittujen kevät ja kyrpien takatalvi,” Sini breathed.
“I saw it,” she confirmed aloud and over the Link. “Look, the Intrepid’s changing course, starting an orbital exit burn. Plot an intercept and get after her.”
“I don’t understand, Admiral,” Ceres said. “What just happened?”
“That didn’t ‘just’ happen, Mister Senator, it happened long before we entered this system.” She pointed a shaking finger at the Intrepid’s icon on the holomap. “Twelve hours ago, that colony ship annihilated eleven Impervious-class dreadnoughts with all hands.”
CHAPTER THREE
STELLAR DATE: 10.31.8927 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: HWS Imperatrix, on course to Aurora
REGION: Bollam’s World System, Bollam’s World Federation
Sini and Thea surfaced from their exploration of the Zhukov’s logs that had been sent on the emergency channel. The initial shock had mostly worn off ten hours in, to be replaced with… It wasn’t anger, at least not completely. But Sini Laaksonen wasn’t taken by surprise very often these days.
She allowed herself a chuckle, recalling Chan’s attempt to play repo man of all things to Intrepid’s Captain Jason Andrews.
Fleet Captain Jaumet’s thoughts were on a completely different track: “He may be the first person I’ve seen who still uses a surname. Besides you, anyway, sir.”
“My ancestors were very stubborn people,” she replied. “Still are.”
“I thought I trained him better, too, Thea.”
The man from New Saigon had been her XO on her first capital ship command. Easily twenty years younger, objective time, and a career naval officer instead of a retreaded Ranger.
She remembered him cheerfully turning regulations into a pretzel with a word or two in the right ear and a bribe of engine room hooch in the right pocket. Snarling orders from the battle direction center as their cruiser, Warspite, traded blows with a Hyadean pocket carrier. The smell of his hair as he lay in the crook of her shoulder—
And technically, they shouldn’t have been together together—even if they hadn’t both been married at the time, she was his direct superior—but the heart wants what the heart wants. Just as well she’d been promoted off the ship soon after that, though: Kaoru might have understood, if not forgiven, since she was military herself, but Chan’s wife definitely wouldn’t have.
The way he tasted—
Sini mentally flipped the bird at the AI’s avatar.
“We know where the Intrepid’s going. Her course is a dead match for Target Two.”
Sini nodded. “A refueling stop. But then what? They’re going to try to sub-light out of the system?”
“Even if they did, we can catch them.” He pointed to the Hegemony Intelligence workup on the ship. “If they’re going flat-out, they might be able to make point-three. Imperatrix has greater delta-v, and our grav shields mean we can take high-speed impacts better than….” Jaumet trailed off, eyeing his superior’s face across the wardroom table. “You’re thinking there’s more to it,” he surmised.
“I’m thinking I won’t know for certain until I’ve delved more into the logs, but yes.” She brought up the ship’s encyclopedia files on the projector. “Second Battle of Victoria, natives and Intrepid Space Force versus Sirian Hegemony, what became a founder of the AST.”
“You mean the stories that the Intrepid had weaponized picotech?”
“Stories deemed credible enough that the spooks put it in our briefing material. Then there’s this.” She brought up another file on the monitor. “Earnest Redding, physicist by trade, but a polymath genius, according to surviving accounts.”
“What do you think he’s done?”
“I have no idea. What I do know? The colonists aren’t stupid; they’ll know they can’t get out of the system in one piece unless they can transition.”
“And nobody’s ever dumped into the DL on a ship that size and lived to tell about it.”
Sini shook her head. “Thea, you tell me, is there any physical reason it can’t be done?”
There was a long, pregnant pause. Finally, the AI spoke through the speakers. “None that I’m aware of, Admiral. To my knowledge, it’s a practical engineering issue.”
“Then we assume that’s their plan. Captain, what’s our time to intercept?”
“Four days.”
Sini nodded. “The rest of the fleet should be here by then.”
They could have easily overtaken the Intrepid sooner, but without more information, and more ships, it wasn't safe.
She stood. “Dismissed.”
CHAPTER FOUR
STELLAR DATE: 10.31.8927 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: HWS Imperatrix, on course to Aurora
REGION: Bollam’s World System, Bollam’s World Federation
Again, Sini looked at the world through the eyes of a dead man. It wasn’t new to her: one of the AST’s favorite training techniques was to have officer cadets view the experiences of their forebearers through their own eyes. To be in the mind of a woman or man this way was to know them, to know firsthand why they made the decisions they had, for good or ill.
Sini/Chan watched in silence as the standoff between the Intrepid, the BWSF, and two pirate fleets continued. Any one of the five fleets could seriously wound the others and none wanted the others to get the colony ship’s technology. Chan had the greatest firepower but the fewest ships, and was biding his time, waiting for the other four to exhaust each other.
Then something happened. Padre, one of the six major pirate kingpins in this sector and number seven on the AST’s Most Wanted list, caught one of the tiny snub fighters patrolling space around the ISF ships in an apparent malfunction. He moved in. Chan would have, too; so would Sini. ‘Defeat in detail’ was as old a stratagem as humanity.
Padre’s ships fired as the other fighters moved to protect their comrade.
Nothing happened.
“What?” Sini/Chan blurted in surprise.
Then the ISF fighters topped themselves, flitting around the aft of the attacking corvettes and into their engine backwash, inimical to biological life. Beamfire lanced out at the pirates, and the demons chained in their reactors were released, fire hotter than the heart of a star incinerating them from the inside out.
Chan watched in growing astonishment as the short squadron of one-man fighters made short work of their attackers, shrugging off the enemy fire and paying it back with lethally precise upskirt shots. Dozens of ships died in minutes.
“Analysis!” Chan ordered.
“Reads like a gravity shield, but it’s a hell of a lot stronger, sir!” a CPO on the bridge replied over the channel. “I’ll have more in a few minutes.”
If it was a gravity shield, it was one of the strongest ever built. And it had been improvised since the ship’s arrival—the stock gravity generators fitted by the Intrepid’s builders for internal use were far too large to fit aboard a snub fighter.
More pirate corvettes and Padre’s four cruisers vectored in, concentrating fire; the fighters again formed a shield around the disabled one. For a few seconds, the sensor display was simply washed out from the radiation of over two hundred ships’ fire, enough to give even an Impervious-class dreadnought like the Zhukov a serious sunburn.
The radiation cleared.
The ISF fighters were still there. Their cooling vanes were glowing hot, but they were still there, and returning fire.
“Sir, look at the ISF ships in sector two!”
The fleet of corvettes burned past the fighters, this time maneuvering to keep their engines out of their enemies’ reach as they turned for a second attack run… straight into a cloud of railgun kinetics laid down by a pair of ISF cruisers. RMs that had been laid like mines ignited their engines, adding to the chaos.
The pirates on the perimeter of the furball broke and ran, another squadron of fighters vectoring to pursue.
And Sini realized, roughly plotting the vectors in her mind, that General Tanis Richards had made a small mistake. The first squadron was returning to base with a rescue ship, and at that speed, the second would be out of position to cover the Intrepid and her small fleet for tens of minutes: they’d need to gravity-assist around the planet to rejoin their mothership. Those were tens of minutes the ISF didn’t really have; in space combat, milliseconds or microseconds could make the difference between victory or defeat.
But Chan didn’t take the opening: one enemy fleet was now irrelevant, but he still hoped to let the Bollers and the other group of pirates, the Mark, eliminate each other fighting over the colony ship before he made his move.
Chan didn’t bother asking for decryption—military codes were the next best thing to unbreakable, especially fifth millennium codes—but the presence and duration of a message could give clues.
“Look, sir, that small ship launching from the Intrepid.”
The petty officer brought up a wireframe on a secondary screen, and he quickly reviewed it.
It was Sabrina, the c
ourier vessel they had sighted in the New Eden system that had apparently been carrying Tanis Richards to her flagship.
For her part, Admiral Senya didn’t seem interested in the Mark: she was preparing to engage the ISF. Railgun emplacements on several nearby bodies lit up with firing signatures as a shuttle broadcasting a BWF diplomatic ID undocked from the gargantuan colony ship. Minutes later, the ISF took evasive action and returned fire on the Bollam rails.
“Sir, communication between the Intrepid and the Freya.”
The Freya was Senya’s flagship.
“Onscreen.”
The sniffed transmission appeared on a side display.
“You’ve just sentenced thousands of Bollam’s citizens to death,” Senya snarled at a fairly attractive blonde with flag officer’s stars on a green shipsuit.
The history files confirmed it for Sini: this was General Tanis Richards, the so-called ‘Butcher of Toro’ and, so the files from First Victoria said, acting supreme commander of the Intrepid Space Force.
“There will be no more treaties. We will reclaim our new world, take your ship—whole or in pieces—and crush your pathetic little fleet.”
Richards turned to someone off-screen. “At least when we were dealing with the Sirians, they had proper megalomaniacs. This pales in comparison.”
Somewhere outside the simulation, Sini covered her mouth with her hand to stifle a burst of laughter, while Senya turned red and started ranting.
“Our ancestors were from Sirius! They were caught in Kapteyn’s Streamer hundreds of years before you. They earned these worlds.”
“Sirians… that explains a lot.”
“Hey!” Sini/Chan heard from somewhere to the right. Sini remembered that Chan’s flag lieutenant was from Sirius.