The Ajax Incursion

by Marc DeSantis

  He could not help his sense of satisfaction, even though his present position had come about as a result of a sucker punch to the Domain Navy. He thought of Heddrik’s toe-tagged corpse, lying frozen in its cryotomb in the bowels of the destroyer. He could feel no sorrow for his loss.

  With the captain dead, Stahl had assumed command and quickly restored a semblance of order to the wounded ship. Fortunately, the damage done to Arrogant had been confined primarily to the bridge area, and the expedient field repair was simple. Few lives had been lost and, Stahl concluded gratefully, one of them had been Heddrik’s. A more comprehensive fix would have to wait until the destroyer could return to Ajax.

  The Cawnpore had disappeared into the displacement bubble opened by the fleeing RHN destroyer and had not been heard from in three days. Stahl shuddered as he thought of the rank stupidity that had caused Admiral Ronner to try that trick to catch the impudent ship. He had allowed his desire for revenge to overwhelm the cold logic that a naval officer needed to employ to be an effective commander. For that error, Ronner had paid with his life, the lives of his crew, and most terribly, with the loss of a first-rate battleship of the Domain Navy.

  With the admiral gone and Heddrik dead, Stahl, while not the ranking DN officer left in the system, had shown the most drive. The other officers had been unwilling to act, until Stahl had shown them the way. He had roused them out of their torpor, and set them to the task of repairing their ships and readying them for the strike on Arles. They were only too happy to have someone to lead them. Not every officer was suited for independent command, but most made good followers. He had taken them by the hand, and organized them into a coherent strike force.

  Now they were here at Arles, following the plan that Stahl had originally devised. He had not charged in as Heddrik would have done, but had stood off with his twenty-seven ships, those that had survived the polar attack or had been drawn from the other flotillas in orbit around Pessac. Not one of them was a proper match for any of the Halifaxian warships, but that didn’t matter. He outnumbered them nine to one.

  The Halifaxians were shepherding the civilian populace off of the orbital by any civilian freighter they could call in. Stahl had no interest in the civilians, but they did make for good targets for his guns and missiles. To protect the civilians, time and again the RHN ships had been forced to interpose themselves between lumbering cargo ships and passenger liners and the weapons of Stahl’s flotilla. Most were being intercepted with no damage done, but on occasion, one would score a hit on a Halifaxian craft. Stahl was better positioned to win a war of attrition. In time, the three ships defending Arles would be so badly damaged that they would be presented with a stark choice. Either fight to the death or leave the orbital to Stahl.

  He much preferred the latter. Capturing Arles intact would win him rare honors. Not merely a captaincy, but command of one of the prestigious heavy units that were all too rare in the modern DN.

  Return fire from the Halifaxians was lighter than he had feared. Evidently they had not been resupplied for some time, and had to be more judicious in the expenditure of the munitions they had left.

  Stahl smiled. His strategy was working. In just over twenty-four hours he had inflicted considerable damage on each of the three RHN warships and smashed six civilian ships. In another twenty-four hours, the enemy would either have to come to him, something he was ready for, or abandon the station altogether. Then he would claim it in the emperor’s name.

  *****

  Aboard RHS Steadfast, Arles Station, Aquitaine system

  Heyward, Carey, and Yao conferred via holograms on the bridge of the Steadfast. “He’s still alive and kicking,” Heyward said with unconcealed delight. “He’s on his way.”

  “Until he reboots his DP drive he’ll be running for his life from Cawnpore,” said Yao.

  “We can’t help him,” Carey said. “The Jaxers would grab the station for themselves if one of us left to help him. The two staying behind would be overwhelmed.”

  “We have to stay put,” Heyward agreed. “Our orders were to evacuate the station. Now that’s almost done.” The Steadfast’s captain scanned the passenger lists of the evacuating spacecraft. There were still some civilians left aboard Arles. They needed more time.

  “We could destroy it afterward ourselves to deny it to them,” suggested Carey.

  “Those aren’t part of my orders, and I’m not sure that it could be done. We don’t have the firepower and civilian space stations don’t come with self-destruct options, for good reason.”

  “This long-range fight is getting us nowhere,” Carey countered. “We’re dying by a thousand cuts. Kestrel is functional but hurt in a half-dozen places.”

  “We’ve all taken damage,” Heyward admitted. “It’s not standard practice for three ships to stay in one place and fight over such an extended period.”

  “We attack then?”

  Heyward shook his head as he traced his finger around the DN flotilla. “Not worth it. See how tightly grouped their ships are? It’s a defensive box. Each ship can cover the ones in close proximity. If we got close we’d be shot up badly.”

  “We’re running low on everything,” Yao said. “I’m down to ten antiship missiles. Fusion shell stocks are below fifteen percent full load.”

  “Same here,” said Carey.

  Heyward exhaled slowly. “We’ll do what we can. Wait as long as we dare for Andrew to make it back. Even he would say there is a limit to how long we should stay. Arles Station is important, but we can’t sacrifice our ships to defend it. If it gets to it, we’ll have to let it go.”

  Heyward grimaced. He knew this didn’t sit well with either Tommasina or Inigo, but his hands were tied. Force protection, meaning the survival of RHN assets, came ahead of the safeguarding of any allied asset. “Heyward out.”

  *****

  More was resting in his cabin, reviewing reports from Arles. Captain Pran, now safely back aboard Savor the Moment on the other side of the system, reported that he was having trouble convincing a handful of elderly inhabitants to evacuate the station. They were old, they complained, and Arles was the only home they’d ever known. They refused to budge, even when warned that the only fate that awaited them if and when the Ajaxians took the station was death. They still refused. This was where they would die.

  Pran said that there were thirty-seven such people. Twenty-five men and twelve women. More wondered why they were so stubborn. Who am I to judge such things? If I were old, and close to the end of my life, would I abandon my home?

  More shook his head. He could not allow them to fall into the gorestained hands of the Ajaxians. He began to compose a message for transmission to Pran to use all means necessary, including physical force, to get them the hell off of Arles.

  Ally chimed, interrupting his train of thought. “Courier capsule displacement,” she announced in the same dispassionate voice she used whether reporting astronomical observations or crew fatalities. “Message received. Your eyes only,” she added.

  More was happy to have Ally as a backup for the minimal human crew onboard. Albacore had been purposely crewed shorthanded, since trained officers and enlisted were in such limited supply. She handled many of the tasks that would ordinarily have been overseen by a human crewmember. This was in itself not a drawback, since the shipbrains employed on RHN vessels were capable AI’s, though very limited compared to fully sentient intelligences. Ally, and others of her kind were, more accurately, extremely precocious expert systems, able to perform a wide range of tasks and react to varied circumstances, but not capable of the originality, intuition, and deep reasoning ability that AI’s such as Cordelia and Lady of the Lake manifested.

  More was not sure that was a bad thing, after what he had seen of Morrigan. He had begun to believe that, no matter how maniacal the Sphinx was, he was right about the threat that unbridled artificial intelligences posed to humanity. AI warships had continued to fight wars long past the point of rationality,
and had taken galactic civilization down with them.

  AI’s ought to help humanity, not help end it, More fervently believed. Seen in this light, Ally’s inherent limitations were thus not defects to be remedied, but assurances that she and others of her ilk would not bring human civilization to the brink of collapse again.

  Again. That was the point More could not escape. The one that he could not ignore. Civilization had been wrecked on more than one occasion. Morrigan had revealed some portion of the history of the civil war that had brought down the Second Empire. Legends and other historical remnants suggested that internal strife had spelled the dooms of the Third and Fourth Empires too.

  Those had been the largest and most famous of human interstellar polities. There had been many smaller states and pocket empires that had met their ends over the long span since humankind had departed Lost Earth. Perhaps not all of their demises could be attributed to AI’s, but some percentage probably could be. The past was all so murky. The history texts were very detailed for the handful of centuries during which Cordelia and Lady of the Lake had been in the service of their original masters. Even they could provide only limited illumination for the dark ages that had preceded the separate reconstructions of galactic civilization. The Second Empire was a haze even for Cordelia, and the First Empire existed in the realm of almost pure myth.

  The history of the Great Sphere itself was fragmentary. Matters became relatively firm only with the foundation of the Republic of Halifax, but that had not been the first state to hold sway over the cluster. The remnants and detritus of their cultures were easy enough to find. They had not all come to their ends through AI-fueled self-immolations. Some came apart due to more mundane causes, such as an inability to maintain control over the space lanes that linked their worlds or systems. Piracy and interplanetary brigandage had sunk stellar governments just as surely as all-out wars had.

  The lords of the Ajax Domain reminded him much of those brigands. Their vicious history had made this fight in Aquitaine especially personal for More. Tartarus was much more dangerous, to be sure, but the Sphinx was, whatever criticism could be leveled at him, a cultured despot, enlightened in most ways, and not likely to want to bring the Great Sphere crashing down around him for the sake of conquest.

  The Ajaxians, in contrast, would wreck everything if not stopped. Their imperialism was predatory and heedless. They left nothing behind on the worlds they conquered that could be said to be a benefit to the conquered inhabitants. Their caustic reign over this system had produced in the Aquitainians a people who would make whatever sacrifice was necessary to prevent their reconquest. The people of Arles had not complained when his little squadron had made their station its base of operations, though it had painted an even bigger target on their home. When he had ordered its evacuation, there had been a few grumbles, but almost all had complied. They were willing to obey his orders, pay a huge price, and suffer terribly, all to strike a blow against the hated Ajaxians. If only Halifax could give to them the same commitment that their sacrifices deserved.

  More stopped to take another drink. Disconcertingly, the bottle of whiskey was nearly empty, he saw. When did that happen?

  He knew when. He’d been hitting it often enough. This was the second bottle in just this week. His drinking had started after Victory Base. It had gotten worse once he’d come to Aquitaine.

  It wasn’t a problem.

  More rose from his bunk. “I’ll take it now, Ally.”

  “Decrypting. . . ready for examination.”

  “Go ahead.”

  Admiral Sven Mallory glowered as his holo flickered, and then the recorded image spoke.

  “The war is draining our resources very rapidly,” the admiral said. “The Armada has committed the bulk of its fleet to several systems along the Memnon-Vert axis. Raids across the Gulf have increased by three hundred percent in the last month, and that has tied down Third Warfleet. What’s left is involved in suppression operations in several border systems. Four worlds are experiencing civil insurrections in Dora, and that has tied down the 41st Strike Squadron. Our remaining reserves have been earmarked for the Eighth and Eleventh Warfleets. We will be engaged in holding actions in all secondary theaters for the foreseeable future. We therefore must refuse your request for reinforcements. Until the prime minister sees fit to put the economy on a war footing we will not have enough hulls to meet every need, and Aquitaine is not critical to the war effort.”

  “I understand that this will come as a disappointment to you. I’ve seen the excellent results you’ve had in Aquitaine. We are all impressed. You’ve done a lot with very little.”

  “As for the attempted use of radioactives against Arles Station by the enemy, it's just your word against theirs. They deny it, and say that any evidence we muster is a hoax. We will never be able to persuade the other nations of the Sphere to intervene unless we have incontrovertible evidence of a breach of the Accords.”

  “Resupply will also be problematic. Production bottlenecks have prevented us from ramping up output of Sledgehammer missiles. You’ve likely spent many of them taking out enemy ships, but unfortunately, the ones we have on hand are going to the forces in direct contact with the Armada. They have supply priority. Do what you can. You’ve already exceeded what High Command wished for. Mallory out.”

  So that was it. More had dared to hope for better, and he had been turned down. He had never been under any illusions that Aquitaine was minimal importance. He had nevertheless thought that, in time, his little war with the Domain might be expanded from a minor nuisance to a full-blown problem for Ajax. That was not to be.

  The admiral had mentioned putting the economy on a war footing. The Halifaxian government was reluctant - no, ‘reluctant’ was not the right word - ‘loath,’ that was it - the government was loath to put the economy on a war footing and ensure that the armed forces had sufficient ships and supplies. The war with Tartarus was still being treated as a limited war confined to the systems that lay between the rival states. That was a fundamental error. The Sphinx has already shown that he could and would hit Republican systems with the surprise attack on Galicia Base. Aramis might not be the most advanced of Halifaxian systems, but that didn’t make it any less a part of the Republic.

  What the politicians feared most was an angry electorate, and demanding the citizenry make serious sacrifices to fight the war effectively, such as rationing, shifting production away from consumer goods to military articles, and conscription, were not anything that they would consider asking.

  The funeral pyre that was Galicia Base should have caused the politicians to do all those things, but they hadn’t. More saw with unhappy irony that he himself was partially to blame for that. By taking out Victory Base, as well as a big chunk of the Armada with it, he had made the overall threat from Tartarus much less than it would have been without his action. The Armada would not be risking ships on deep penetration raids now that so many of its remaining number had to defend Monarchonate systems.

  The strategy of the politicians was to fight the war on simmer until the Sphinx decided he could not continue any longer. With an economic base that was much smaller than that of the Republic, their thinking went, eventually he’d have to quit.

  More laughed bitterly. There could never be a genuine peace with the Sphinx. He’d already demonstrated how faithless he was. His treachery meant his signature was utterly worthless. Instead, Halifax’s elected government hoped that the enemy’s exhaustion would be a more effective guarantor of peace than outright victory.

  Hope. More had hoped for additional resources and been refused. His civilian masters on Hamilton hoped that the Sphinx would relent. He might, but only temporarily. Then he would be back, after his fleet had licked its wounds and rearmed.

  He’d given his life to the Navy. Done everything he could to keep Halifax safe. The nation’s leaders didn’t seem to be doing the same. What did he have to show for all of his sacrifices? For a lifetime of serv
ice?

  No wife.

  No children.

  No home that wasn’t property of the RHN.

  All he had was his duty.

  He’d come close to messing that up.

  He had this bottle.

  He felt a stab of guilt when he thought of Victory Base.

  He felt profound shame.

  He would have to do something.

  Something drastic.

  But what?

  Several minutes passed as More sat alone on his bed, thinking.

  “Ally?”

  “Yes, Admiral More.”

  “Direct the following message to Captain Pran of the Savor the Moment, for immediate dispatch. He’ll be in the vicinity of Arles.”

  “Yes, admiral. Standing by.”

  “Begin recording.”

  *****

  Aboard Savor the Moment, Aquitaine system

  Pran stood on the bridge of Savor the Moment. The holo of Captain Heyward flickered beside him. “That’s the last of the evacuees,” he said. “We’ll jump as soon as we’re clear of the station.”

  Heyward nodded. “You’ve done well. The Aquitaine fleet will look after you from now on. Good luck on your voyage to the outer planets.”

  Pran saluted, and Heyward’s holo dissolved. Savor the Moment was to make the run away from Arles with the last batch of civilians. The last batch of civilians. . . was this a step too far, even for Admiral More?

  Sooner or later, the Jaxers were going to finish the job they had started over a month before, and root out the RHN warships at the orbital. Their presence made the second attack inevitable. At least with them around, there was someone to protect the station while Pran and his fellow merchant captains rescued the civilians. The Aquitainian fleet, what was left of it, was busy defending the outer system from Jaxer raids. Without the Halifaxians, Arles, and the system at large, would have had no chance. He owed Admiral More the benefit of the doubt. Pran told himself that he was doing the right thing. Yes, the right thing. It has to be this way.