McGowan rose stiffly to his feet. “All right, Tolvern. You’ve had your moment. It’s a plan for defending this system. Not a great plan, but I can’t exactly offer a better one. Now let me tell you what we’re up against. What these two,” he said, hooking his thumb at Kelly and Svensen, “simply do not understand.”
“What you were hiding from us a few days ago, you mean?” Svensen asked. “All that muttering about whether or not you should pull out of here.”
“You see,” McGowan said. “This is the kind of insubordination I’ve dealt with. The Vikings are your problem now, Tolvern.”
“If you have something to say, then let’s hear it,” Tolvern said.
“I do have something to say. Then you’ll understand the whole desperate situation. But you might want to take a seat before I get started. It’s too ugly to hear standing up.”
Chapter Seventeen
Enms prtct prsia
That was Blackbeard’s warning from far across the inner frontier. Sixteen characters, the extent of her capabilities at that distance.
Enemies. Protect Persia.
McGowan was in the Persia System when the message came, serving as military governor. He sent it back toward Albion, and found General Mose Dryz with a mixed fleet of human and Hroom ships only two systems away. Using naval relay, they made contact with Fox and Vargus, who agreed that the message was legitimate, that some massive force must be bearing down on Persia, and that they should protect the system.
After that, disagreement arose. The general wanted to extend the defenses to include the systems now known as Castillo and Fortaleza, which meant patrolling the intervening systems and extending their supply lines. His argument was that Fortaleza controlled multiple jump points, whereas Castillo was known to have human settlements, and it was presumed that they could pay off or coerce the locals into aiding them in Persia’s defense.
McGowan thought the wiser course of action would be to withdraw to Persia itself and bring forward as many warships as possible. No need to extend their lines. Instead, defend Persia and be prepared to fall back to Scandian territory if it fell.
The Hroom general and the Albion captain compromised. They would base the bulk of the fleet in Persia as per the subspace, and establish more limited bases on the frontier. If Persia held, they could reinforce Castillo and Fortaleza little by little.
It turned out to be a disastrous decision.
Two things happened in quick succession. First, the Persia jump point collapsed and left a third of the fleet stranded and unable to fight. Three days later, Adjudicator fleets penetrated Nebuchadnezzar, Damascus, and Euphrates with star fortresses and dragoons. They ravaged bases and supply lines, then began to fall back.
McGowan had left Persia, thank God, returning to Odense to take command of his old cruiser and gather a fleet to reinforce Blackbeard. When the Persia jump point collapsed and Adjudicators swept across the frontier, he scraped together a dozen ships and rushed out to confront them. He gathered other ships as he went, the broken remnants of patrols hit by the enemy fleet, until he had some serious firepower.
McGowan’s fleet confronted a powerful alien force of nearly thirty dragoons and star fortresses in Nebuchadnezzar. It was a hard fight. McGowan destroyed a star fortress and several dragoons. But his fleet was nearly wiped out in the battle, and he fled for his life.
He couldn’t fall back, couldn’t reach Blackbeard in Fortaleza, and thought to take refuge in Castillo and hope that new fleet elements coming up from Albion and Scandian systems arrived in relief.
It was then that McGowan got a video transmission from the alien fleet. To his surprise, the speaker was a woman, not an alien. She delivered her message in a version of Old English.
A slave or a captive, apparently, but the woman sounded eager, believing. Not doubtful.
The human race has been judged. Your cities, your industry, your religion, and your culture are an affront. Ugly in the sight of the universe. Your civilization will be destroyed, your people reduced. This, the universe has decreed. How it occurs is in your hands.
Dock your ships, lay down your arms. Surrender your planets and bases. Our decimators will land, and you will not resist in any way. The greater part of you shall be led away to atone for your crimes. A remnant will remain to warn your offspring so that this judgment never again falls on your people.
If you do not obey, the same will be accomplished, but with much slaughter and misery.
This, we have already visited on other planets. On humans, on other corrupt and wicked races. The universe has thus decreed, and we are its adjudicators of justice.
#
“You should have seen her expression,” McGowan said. “There were tears in her eyes—crazy religious tears, if you know the kind I mean. Her face was practically glowing. This woman—slave, captive, whatever—truly believed what she was saying. The demands were hers as much as they were the aliens.”
It was a creepy detail, and Tolvern didn’t know what to make of it, but it didn’t seem like the most relevant part of his report.
“Making a demand is one thing,” she said. “Enforcing it, another.”
“Sounds like they’ve enforced it plenty already,” Lieutenant Kelly said.
“So they’ve claimed. But thus far we have evidence that they’ve destroyed a couple of planets, none of them with a fraction of our population, reach, or power.” Tolvern forced a dismissive shrug. “They’ve fought humans before—they know we’re not going to roll over to their demands.”
“The locals were still fighting on Castillo when we landed,” Svensen said. “Whole lot of guts to shoot it out against mech units, you’ve got to give them that.”
“Bravery and stupidity were never mutually exclusive,” McGowan said.
His voice had grown tight and worried as he relayed his story, but he sounded calmer now. Not given to panic. Good.
“The warning message is a bluff,” Tolvern said. “They know we won’t accept. Maybe they want to send us retreating toward Albion in a panic while they organize a full invasion. But who knows if they can even manage it?”
McGowan let his breath out slowly. “They certainly think they can.”
“What’s your evidence for that?” she asked.
“Bring up the sector map, and I’ll show you.”
Tolvern tapped the controls on the table and showed a map of the systems between Castillo and the core Albion worlds that abutted Ladino, New Dutch, and Hroom territory. In between, the Scandian worlds, and a whole cluster of lesser systems without inhabitable worlds, all connected in a web of jump points. Some formed a bright nexus of jumps, while others could only be connected by two or three, or even one, like Castillo.
Persia was a gray spot on the leftmost side of the map. Cut off, marooned.
McGowan highlighted a swath of the map. “We have listening posts in all these systems. Very quiet Singaporean tech. I don’t think the aliens can spot them. Adjudicator fleets have already passed from the old Persian territory into Great Bear, Hillerød, Roskilde, Dead Roskilde, Vest-Agder, and Jutland. Maybe Odense and Viborg, too. I don’t know. But essentially all of the systems brought under navy control during the last war. Everything Scandian.”
Svensen muttered something in Scandian at this. Kelly hushed him.
“But no attacks in any of those systems?” Tolvern asked.
“Not yet, no. And we’re not sure exactly how they’re getting there or where they’ve gone since then. Their cloaking ability isn’t up to Singaporean standards, but it’s better than what the Royal Navy can manage. It’s possible that they’ve surveyed as far as Albion and beyond.”
She turned the knowledge about and tried to look at it from a different angle. “How many different enemy fleets are there?”
“We don’t know that, either,” McGowan said. “They generally travel with a pair of carriers and about a dozen rider ships, but they’ll amass a greater force when they need to. We faced three star fortres
ses in Nebuchadnezzar. Based on where and when these reports came in, they have somewhere between four and ten different fleets active in Alliance controlled space. And who knows what else is lurking out there in the enemy’s home system?”
Tolvern caught her breath. Taking the worst-case scenario, ten fleets might be twenty star fortresses and a hundred or more dragoons. If that force descended upon Albion, it could batter its way past the orbital fortresses and land mech units on the surface. A surgical strike to decapitate the Alliance.
“You see why I wanted to pull back,” McGowan said. “At least to the Scandian systems, but maybe all the way to Albion.”
“So much for your Alliance,” Svensen said. “I always knew you types would throw us to the enemy first, if it came to that. You’ll use our wolves until the last minute, then leave us to defend ourselves alone.”
“Nobody in the Alliance is going to fend for themselves,” Tolvern said. “Although if the Hroom have ever wished to be free of us, now is their chance. Humans have been judged. Hroom apparently not.” She smiled at her pilot. “Maybe the Hroom can slink out the back door while there is still time.”
“I am sure it is only a matter of time until we, too, are judged,” Nyb Pim said. He whistled through his nose. “We also have cities, religions, and industry. Why would they not be judged? And how would we slink away? There are several dozen systems where Hroom live and settle. The empire is not a good place to hide.”
“You’re taking things literally again,” Tolvern said.
“Oh. Yes, I see.” He made an embarrassed sounding hum.
“There are Hroom living on Castillo,” Svensen said. “They didn’t get a pass from judgment.”
“You’re right about one thing,” Tolvern told the Scandian captain. “Odense is at risk before Albion. But not yet. First, they’ll take this system, reduce us from the outside in.”
“That’s a pure guess,” McGowan said. “If I were the Adjudicator commander, I’d go straight to Albion and overthrow it first.”
“That doesn’t seem to be their style,” Tolvern said. “It’s more methodical than that. A rush of violence, then waiting. Like Joneson’s people.”
“The man you took from the derelict?”
“They wrecked his home world, and then it was another nine years before they took the secondary colony in Castillo.”
“Probably fighting other enemies,” McGowan said. “There are a lot of worlds between here and Earth. Some other system was giving them trouble, and they took it out first.”
“Could be. Seems like a decent guess.” Tolvern shrugged. “But more likely they’re starting from the outside and working their way in. Methodical, following the same pattern. They show their strength, they make their demands. Then they invade, reduce a world, and move on to the next.”
McGowan threw up his hands. “Again with the guesses.”
“Nobody has infinite resources. If they’ve been at war for decades, then they’ve absorbed losses, and those losses need to be replenished. Probably, that’s why they take captives. Pushing their expansion through forced labor.”
“We Hroom know about that,” Nyb Pim said.
“Right, something like that,” Tolvern said. “Lord Malthorne and his type used commerce to justify their behavior. The Scandians raided and traded slaves for glory and adventure. The Adjudicators judge other civilizations based on some unknown criterion, then wreck their worlds and relocate the population to reduce rivals.
“If they were all-powerful,” she continued, “why didn’t they storm Persia and annihilate the fleet? Do that, then make demands. Back it up with firepower. They didn’t. Why not?”
None of them answered.
“I’ll tell you why,” Tolvern said. “Because they were scared. Scared of Dreadnought, scared of all the cruisers and other ships in the system. So they collapsed the jump point rather than face the fleet.”
“It’s still collapsed,” Kelly said in a near murmur. “We still can’t get to them.”
“But Castillo’s isn’t collapsed,” Tolvern said. “Why not? That’s what Joneson said. They crush your planet, then they destroy your jump points so you can never escape. But they wiped out Castillo without collapsing the jump point. Either they didn’t for some unknown reason, or they couldn’t.”
“You put your science officer on it, right?” McGowan said. “Does he have any theories?”
“I had to pull Brockett for other things,” she admitted. “Thawing Joneson, outfitting Bilbao with the plasma ejector. Now I’ve got him on the team bringing the admiral out of stasis. I’ll give him more resources and put him back on the problem.”
“You’ve got two different theories,” Svensen said. “You said the aliens work from the outside in. Then you said maybe they’re afraid of our warships. Which is it?”
“Maybe both,” Tolvern said. “The Adjudicators aren’t invincible. McGowan destroyed one of their star fortresses, and I did damage to two others. If I’d had Peerless, Triumph, and Boghammer—never mind the other ships in this fleet—I’d have won that battle.”
It was flattery, and it seemed to work, based on their expressions. Even McGowan was more compliant than she’d expected. She could work with the man . . . provided he was serving under her command, and not vice versa. Tolvern wondered what Vargus, McGowan’s old rival, would say about that.
“If I’m right, they’ll come here next,” she continued. “They know about Castillo, they’ve fought here before. They’ll see us building an untidy little base and want to obliterate it before it takes hold.”
“And there’s the mine I hit when I entered,” Svensen said. “Close to the jump point. If it was the Adjudicators, it means they swung through here not long before we arrived.”
“That was a signal,” Tolvern said. “Lets them know we’ve arrived. They’ve been preparing for this war.”
“So where are they?” McGowan asked. “Why haven’t they come back yet?”
“We’ll worry about that later. Meanwhile, show me how you planned to defend this base. We’ll see how Blackbeard’s arrival gives us more options.”
Captain McGowan took control of her war room display again. He explained where he was installing the batteries and how he’d planned to array the ships, and he identified potential sites for minefields now that they could count on the supplies Blackbeard was carrying. He was explaining how they might beef up patrols with Peerless back in action and Blackbeard on hand, when Capp called from the bridge.
“Eh, Cap’n. Sorry to disturb and all, but we got an incoming message.”
There was gravel in her tone. Tolvern guessed she was still resentful that she hadn’t been called into the war room council. It was resentment that had kept her out in the first place. She was likely to say something rude and aggravate McGowan. Tolvern had enough of a problem managing her own tongue without trying to rein in her first mate’s.
“A subspace?”
“Aye. Smythe said to wait until you got out, but I figured you’d want to hear it. It’s from them Chinese we left behind.”
Tolvern’s stomach gave a lurch. Anna Wang was alive, thank God. And she must have earned herself some breathing room, because she couldn’t have sent a subspace from within the gas giant’s gravity well, and she wouldn’t have come out of the planet’s atmosphere unless the enemy had given up the search.
“Send it through to my priority account.”
Tolvern ignored the stares from the others in the war room and glanced at her hand computer to be sure it was something she wanted public knowledge. When she was satisfied, she put it on the viewscreen for McGowan, Nyb Pim, Kelly, and Svensen to read.
Enemy gathering. Preparing move on Cast. Estimate jump in 16-33 days. Will watch, then follow if safe. Expect no further reinfor. AW.
“Good for that,” McGowan said. “I thought you’d left her to die, Tolvern. I really did.”
“I was the one who sent her to Fortaleza,” Kelly said. “Under your orders,
sir.”
McGowan puffed out his chest. “Yes, well. I had no idea she’d be abandoned once she got there.”
Tolvern tried not to bristle, a reaction born of guilt. She had abandoned Wang’s war junks in order to save her own ship.
“She’s alive,” Tolvern said, “and that’s more than can be said for some.”
“So now we know,” Svensen said. Matter-of-fact, no accusing tone from the Scandian. “And I’d say there’s more good news than bad.”
“How do you figure?” McGowan said. “The enemy is assembling a fleet, and we’re getting no more reinforcements. Where’s the good in that?”
“But the aliens aren’t here yet,” the Scandian said. “And we’ve got an eye on them from behind. We’ll get advance warning.”
“Between sixteen and thirty-three days,” Tolvern said. “A big difference between the top and bottom end of that estimate, but we’ve got time to patch up our fleet. Working around the clock, we should get everyone battle-worthy in time.”
“What about Castillo?” Kelly asked.
Tolvern nodded. “Time for that too. We’ll make some runs to the planet to pick up locals. We can train them and put them to work.”
“I wish I knew what we were facing,” McGowan said. “Two star fortresses? Three? The whole blasted Adjudicator fleet?’
“Whatever it is,” she said, “I like my odds here a lot more than at Fortaleza. I wasn’t even hoping for a stalemate, I was fighting to survive.”
“And now?” McGowan asked.
“This time I fight to win.”
Chapter Eighteen
The man in the chair was the saddest looking specimen Svensen had ever seen. He hadn’t glanced up when they’d wheeled him into the engineering bay, had stared at his lap the entire time, and when Svensen, Kelly, and a young ensign by the name of Ping Hao began discussing him, had shown no interest whatsoever.
The Alliance Trilogy Page 18
