The Barbarian Bride (The Decline and Fall of the Galactic Empire Book 3)

by Christopher Nuttall

  And the other three held men in absolute contempt, she recalled, as she wrapped her arms around Marius. I don’t know why they spent so much time chasing men when they hated them.

  It was nearly four hours later when Marius finally stirred, sitting upright so sharply he nearly dislocated Tiffany’s arm. She jerked awake, yanking her arms back, then forced herself to relax as Marius started hunting around for his watch before remembering how to turn the display back on. Tiffany had taken the precaution of deactivating it before she’d slipped into his office and started to seduce him.

  “It’s late,” he protested. “I need to be at the briefing...”

  “Yes, but you need to bathe first,” Tiffany said. One of the few advantages of living in the Presidential House was a bath large enough to pass for a small swimming pool. They could share a bath, if they wanted. “And then you can get dressed properly.”

  She watched, warily, as Marius picked up his jacket and belt, then hurried into the bathroom for a shower. Clearly, he didn’t think he had the time to bathe with her. She would have been offended if she hadn’t been so nervous, but Marius didn’t seem to notice that one of his pills was missing. Instead, he changed into a new uniform, donned the belt and jacket and headed for the door.

  “I’ll have dinner sent to you,” Tiffany said. “And the stewards will have strict orders to make sure you eat.”

  “Very well,” Marius said. “But I may not have time to eat everything.”

  He left the room. Tiffany waited ten minutes, then slipped on a dressing gown and headed through the connecting door to her suite. Operative Oslo and his men were based there, waiting patiently for something to do now that Emperor Marius had returned home. Tiffany hoped Operative Oslo was right, when he said her rooms weren’t bugged. If he was wrong — and Ginny’s warnings hung in her mind — she was about to get into deep shit.

  “Lady Tiffany,” Operative Oslo said, when she called him into the room. “What can we do for you?”

  Tiffany held out the pill. “I want you to find out what this is and give me a full report,” she said. “You have to be completely discreet about it. No one, and I mean no one, is to know what you’re doing.”

  Operative Oslo gave her a sharp look, then nodded. “It may take some time, My Lady,” he warned. “A discreet check always takes longer.”

  “That’s fine,” Tiffany said. She’d hoped for an immediate answer, but she knew one was unlikely to come. “Please try and keep it between us.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  When an officer, like Marius Drake, could call on reserves of loyal subordinates, it ensured that the final spat of civil wars would be indefinitely prolonged.

  —The Federation Navy in Retrospect, 4199

  Alexis, 4101

  “This is a daring offensive,” General Stuart noted. “I would never have considered it.”

  “I don’t think you ever attacked an Asimov Point that was defended on both sides,” Roman said. He had come to like General Stuart, but he had the sense that the older man didn’t return his regard. Perhaps it was simple annoyance — Roman was half his age, yet he’d soundly beaten him at Boston — or perhaps it was the awareness that the Outsiders had lost a superdreadnaught in the earlier battle. “This one poses a rather odd tactical problem.”

  “One you will face again and again,” General Stuart said, “as you hammer your way towards Earth.”

  Roman nodded. Ruthven was heavily defended, but her defenses were miniscule compared to the towering fortifications defending Earth. The Gateway was fortified on both sides, despite arguments — put forward by penny-pinching politicians — that there was no need to worry. And the thought of tackling those fortresses, even in a straight missile duel, was enough to make Roman shudder. The fleet was going to be crippled if they didn’t find another way to punch through the defenses and break into Sol.

  Admiral Justinian must have been planning his offensive for years, he thought, as he turned back to the display. And we can’t repeat his feat without adding several months to our voyage.

  He closed his eyes as he contemplated the tactical picture. In theory, a combination of long-range sniping and constant jamming should have made it impossible for the defenders to know what was coming at them, but there was no way to be absolutely certain they’d eliminated all of the stealthed platforms within the system. The more Roman contemplated the problem, the more he knew they were embarking on a desperate gamble. Only the awareness that the crews before him had volunteered for the mission, had literally begged to be allowed to go, kept his conscience from pestering him.

  “Task Force 5.1 reports that it is ready to depart,” General Stuart said. “With your permission, Admiral, I’ll return to my flagship.”

  “Granted,” Roman said. Keeping the fleet’s two most senior officers on the same ship was just asking for trouble. “I’ll see you on the far side.”

  He sat back in his command chair, his eyes searching out the icons representing Task Force 5.1. If nothing else, he was sure the defenders were about to get one hell of a fright. It was impossible to build an actual warship much larger than a superdreadnaught, but their displays would show them five stupendous warships cruising towards them. He wondered, absently, just how long it would take them to realize that he’d pulled all of the captured fortresses off the other Asimov Points and turned them into makeshift assault vessels. The tugs, hidden behind their mighty armor, would keep them moving forward until they hit their targets or fell into the Asimov Point.

  Which would be interesting to watch, from a safe distance, he thought. Can something so large transit safely?

  “Admiral, the General’s shuttle has undocked,” Lieutenant Thompson said.

  “Good,” Roman said. “Signal the fleet. We commence operations in twenty minutes.”

  * * *

  Commodore Tracy Rosslyn paced her fortress’s command deck, trying not to show her tension to the crew. Marius Drake himself had put her in command of Ruthven’s defenses, telling her that he needed a loyal and competent officer to control the sector capital. And, after Admiral Drake had saved her from the unwanted attentions of another senior officer with more money and connections than sense, there was very little Tracy wouldn’t do for him.

  She scowled at her display, cursing the rebels in the privacy of her own head. Their ECM was good, alarmingly good, and their persistent jamming made it hard to be sure what lurked more than ten light-seconds from the Asimov Point. She’d assigned a handful of destroyers and patrol boats to sweep the outer edge of detection range, but after losing two starships to enemy ambushes she’d been forced to rethink that policy. Ruthven didn’t have a large mobile force covering it and she simply couldn’t afford to waste her ships.

  Shouldn’t have sent so many ships forward, she thought, darkly. Admiral Garibaldi, back when he’d been a loyalist, had called many of her ships to Boston to stem the Outsider advance. And it had worked, at a terrifying cost. If they break through the Asimov Point, we will have no end of trouble stopping them.

  “Commodore,” the tactical officer said. “I’m picking up something approaching from the direction of the planet.”

  Tracy nodded as she strode over to his console. Perhaps it was just another probe, another long-range missile attack to keep her people off balance, but her instincts were suggesting otherwise. Federation Navy doctrine called for pressing the offensive as hard as possible and the Outsiders evidently agreed, knowing that allowing the enemy time to prepare their defenses was a deadly mistake. She’d been expecting an attack ever since the system had fallen to the rebels. Indeed, she was surprised it had taken so long.

  “I see,” she said. There was a great deal of jamming, but not enough to cover the turbulence produced by dozens of starships. It looked almost as if the rebels weren’t trying to hide, merely to minimize the time between detection and weapons range. And yet, there was something very odd about the pattern. “Order all fortresses to red alert.”

 
; “Aye, Commodore,” the officer said.

  “And bring active sensors online,” Tracy added. There was no point in trying to hide the fortresses, not when the enemy had had ample time to draw a bead on them. It did run the risk of degrading her sensors, if she kept them active for more than a few days, but she had a feeling it wasn’t going to matter. “Let’s see what’s out there.”

  The sensor officer swore. Tracy turned, opening her mouth to rebuke him, and froze as she saw the icons on the display. For a long moment, her mind simply refused to accept what she was seeing. There might be a handful of gigantic bulk freighters that were over ten kilometres long, but no one could produce a warship that size... and no one would build a warship with such a pathetic acceleration curve. Why, she could be outrun by a battleship from the First Interstellar War...

  “Fortresses,” she said, as it dawned on her. No wonder the drive signature had been so odd. The rebels had taken all five surviving fortresses, assigned a dozen tugs to provide motive power and pointed them at the Asimov Point. “They’ve assigned fortresses to clear our defenses.”

  She cursed under her breath. Two of the fortresses had been badly damaged — and, she hoped, shot themselves dry — in the first battle, but the other three hadn’t seen any action. She had four fortresses of her own, yet however she looked at it she was definitely outgunned. And even if she blew the fortresses apart, it would weaken her for the rest of the rebel fleet. She silently tipped her hat to Admiral Garibaldi, then turned to the tactical officer.

  “Target the fortresses as soon as they enter engagement range,” she ordered. The fortresses would take a lot of killing... and she didn’t want them any closer to her fortresses than strictly necessary. “Launch the reserve starfighters, then order the CSP to engage the tugs. They are to try to slow the fortresses.”

  “Aye, Commodore,” the tactical officer said.

  Clever bastard, Tracy thought, with an unwilling flicker of admiration. She’d only met Admiral Garibaldi once, but he wouldn’t have been Emperor Marius’s protégé if he hadn’t been very good at his job. Unless she missed her guess, the intact fortresses would have their own starfighters... and the rebel carriers could be following close behind, ready to jump her starfighters when they ventured out to strike at the tugs. But what else could she do? Very clever bastard.

  “The reserve starfighters are launching now,” the CAG reported.

  “Good,” Tracy said. She glanced at the communications officer. “Send the drones through the Asimov Point. Inform Commodore Houseman that he is to prepare to defend his position — and that, if I don’t return, he is to assume command of the system defenses.”

  “Aye, Commodore,” the communications officer said. She worked her console for a long moment. “Drones away.”

  Tracy walked back to her command chair, bracing herself. She had rejected the first surrender demand, simply because she was loyal to Marius Drake. He was her patron, after all. And even if he hadn’t been, she refused to accept that rebellion against the Federation was the only answer. For all its flaws, and she knew it had many, the Federation was all that stood between humanity and threats from beyond the Rim. Alien-lovers were too dangerously naive to be allowed to dictate policy, not when the human race itself was at stake. If aliens refused to submit, they needed to be destroyed. Better them than all of humanity.

  She sighed, inwardly, as the starfighters raced towards their targets. The enemy fortresses, as she’d expected, were already launching their own starfighters as they inched forward, slipping into missile range. It wouldn’t be long before they opened fire, weakening her position quite badly. No matter what she did, she had a nasty feeling her existence had narrowed down to killing as many rebels and traitors as she could before they killed her.

  “Missiles locked on target, Commodore,” the tactical officer reported. “They are slipping into missile range.”

  “Fire,” Tracy ordered.

  She knew he didn’t approve of her tactics, even as he keyed the switch that launched the first salvo of missiles. They were wasteful. The flight time was nearly five minutes, more than long enough for the enemy point defense to work out a targeting solution and pick the missiles off before they reached their targets. Indeed, standard tactical doctrine called for her to hold fire until the enemy targets moved closer. But there was no choice. The enemy couldn’t be allowed to get their fortresses any closer to their targets than strictly necessary.

  “Enemy starfighters are moving into attack position,” the CAG noted. “Our pilots are requesting reinforcements.”

  “Denied,” Tracy said. She didn’t dare strip her fighter cover any further. “Tell them... tell them to do the best they can.”

  * * *

  “The enemy starfighters are moving in on attack vector,” Lieutenant Thompson said. “I think they’re targeting the fortresses.”

  “They’re more likely to be targeting the tugs,” Roman said. Unless the defenders had some kind of weapon he’d never heard of, firing their plasma guns at the fortresses would be about as much use as shouting insults through a megaphone. “Order our starfighters to cover them.”

  “Aye, sir,” Lieutenant Thompson said. She paused. “The enemy fortresses have opened fire.”

  Roman blinked in surprise. He’d expected the enemy fortresses to hold their fire until his fortresses got closer. It wasn’t as if the fortresses could dodge. Merely getting five fortresses moving in the right general direction had been quite hard enough. But the enemy CO might want to stop the fortresses as soon as she could, rather than risk letting them get any closer. It did make a certain kind of sense.

  “Order the fortresses to open fire, but continue along their current course,” he said. If nothing else, convincing the enemy fortresses to shoot themselves dry would make taking the Asimov Point a great deal easier. “And prep the rest of the fleet to move up in support.”

  * * *

  “They’re coming for the tugs, boys and girls,” Commander Rogers said. “I want you to keep the bastards busy!”

  Lieutenant Shanna Robertson gritted her teeth. She’d joined up a year before Admiral Justinian had attacked Earth and she was getting tired of civil wars, of never quite knowing which side she was supposed to be on. First, she’d fought Admiral Jackson and his rogue fleet, then she’d been assigned to Fifth Fleet just in time to fight the Outsiders and, now, she was allied with the Outsiders and waging war on the Federation. She’d actually given serious thought to leaving the fleet, back when the Admiral had offered to allow anyone to leave if they wanted, but she couldn’t leave her wingmates to fight alone.

  “Here they come,” Commander Rogers snapped. “Go!”

  Shanna gunned her engine and threw her starfighter forward, opening fire as she flew into the wave of enemy craft. They were flying the exact same starfighters as her squadron, part of her mind noted, but they didn’t have the experience she’d picked up in seven years of near-continuous fighting. Their reflexes were just a hair too slow for the task facing them... she smirked, despite herself, as enemy starfighters began to die. And then the loyalists altered course and started to dogfight. She swung her craft around, avoided a blaze of plasma fire that would have blown her to atoms and reversed course. There was barely a fraction of a second to note that her target had been trained to fight in an atmosphere before she blew him to dust.

  “They’re closing in on the tugs,” Commander Rogers barked. “Intercept them.”

  “On my way,” Shanna said, echoing her other wingmates. The fortresses were effectively indestructible, as far as the starfighters were concerned, but the tugs barely had any protection at all. “We’ll sweep them all clear.”

  * * *

  “We’ve lost one of the tugs,” Lieutenant Thompson reported. “Another tug has taken heavy damage and may have to disengage.”

  “Tell her to stay as long as she can,” Roman said. He didn’t like the idea of sending a human crew to their deaths, but there might be no choice.
“And order the fortresses to keep firing.”

  He allowed himself a moment of relief as the fighting grew hotter. Both sets of fortresses were switching to rapid fire, even though only one missile in ten was getting through the point defense to strike against the target’s shields. Starfighters were buzzing around desperately, often being picked off by the point defense when they flew in a predictable path for more than a few seconds. Roman hoped the IFFs held out long enough to prevent blue-on-blue strikes, when a starfighter was shot down by friendly fire, but there was no way to guarantee it. The loyalists had probably started trying to mimic rebel IFFs by now. It was what he would have done.

  “Two more tugs gone, sir,” Lieutenant Thomas said. “Fortress Three has lost acceleration and is just coasting towards her target.”

  Roman gritted his teeth. The enemy might not have known it, but Fortress Three was one of the intact fortresses. At least she was still in missile range. The remaining fortresses were inching towards their targets, soaking up fire as they forced their way forwards. He checked the sensor records, trying to determine just how close the enemy fortresses were to shooting themselves dry, but it was impossible to be sure. Chances were, the defenders had shipped additional supplies through the Asimov Point while Roman had hastily prepared his fortresses.

  Or they might have done the opposite, he thought, grimly. Stripped the fortresses bare on this side to prepare a stronger defense on the far side.

  He forced himself to watch, grimly, as the enemy starfighters broke off. Two-thirds of them had fallen to his starfighters, but it hadn’t been enough to keep them from picking off another tug. Indeed, if they’d had reinforcements, he suspected their offensive would have been rather more successful. But there was no time to allow them to rethink their operational deployments.