by David Weber
Zephrain, gateway to the region known as the Rim. Zephrain, the largest naval base humanity had ever built. Zephrain, where--to his relieved surprise--comthe Federation's writ still ran.
The people of Xanadu shared the same political and economic grievances as other Fringe Worlds, and they contemplated the proposed Federation-Khanate amalgamation with equal revulsion. But militant loyalty was bred into them, for their system had borne the brunt of the Fourth Interstellar War. Every man, woman, and child in the Zephrain System had been an expendable frontline soldier against an enemy who saw humans as culinary novelties.
Between them and the Arachnids there had been only one shield: the Federation's ships. The Federation was nearly a religion to these people, and they had not been prepared to entertain a schism.
Isolated by rebellion from the rest of the broken Federation, they'd formed a loyalist provisional government. Since Admiral Ortega, commanding the Frontier Fleet elements at Zephrain, had found himself equally isolated from his superiors, he had placed his forces at the disposal of the provisional government. He was neither brilliant nor imaginative, but his integrity was absolute and he had the seniority.
Trevayne had placed himself under his command.
But once the desperate race was won, what had happened came crowding back like a slow, dreary drumbeat to which the rest of his life was mere counterpoint. The realization that only Colin was left to him. Colin... whom he had last seen as an angrily retreating back.
He remembered the quarrel with merciless clarity.
Colin had declared his sympathy for the Fringers, and Trevayne reacted with fury. And that, he thought, was because his son had blurted out things he himself felt but could not say, so that he'd been reduced to sputtering like an idiot about "Your oath..." "My oath," Colin had shot back, glaring at him with Natalya's blue eyes, "is to the Federation, not a bunch of greasy Corporate World political hacks! Can't you see, Dad? The Federation you and I swore our oaths to died with Fionna MacTaggart?" 'aat's enough!" Trevayne had roared. "D'you think I don't know the Fringe Worlds have grievances?
But neither those grievances nor anything else can justify shattering over four centuries of human tlnity!" So it had gone: the sterile repetition of incompatible positions and the final, angry parting.
Now the only anger Trevayne had left was reserved for the fate which had kept him in deep space as a junior officer for most of Colin's boyhood. Only later, with more time in port, had he found that which is given to a parent but once: to rediscover the universe while first watching a chfid discover it. And he'd found it with Courtenay.
Trevayne made one last try as he and Ortega left the flag bridge.
"Damn it, Sergei, Zoroffs command facilities are far better than Krait's, and incomparably better protected. It doesn't make sense to keep fleet command in something as fragile as a battleship--and you bloody well know it!" Ortega smiled wearily. He followed Trevayne's advice on most things, but on this he had his heels dug in and there was no moving him.
We both ('less-than now the Rim is still pretty volatile and that we'll probably have to proceed under martial ('aw in one form or another." "Now to stou** underestimating these people," Trevane demurred. "They know better than most what war is about, and theg put together the provisional government because they're loyal. So you are important because of your connections with it. Why, your daughter's one of its founders! There's no need to b.vpass it. Let's just give it a chief executive who represents the Federation and has extraordinary powers for the emergency. My legal officer and I have come up with a precedent: a captain who assumed emergency powers as temporary military governor of the Danzig System during the Theban War and was upheld afterward.
We'll declare you--oh, say Governor-General of the Rim for the duration." He held up a hand against the objections that were halfway out of Ortega's mouth.
"If the Assembly doesn't like it, they can say so when contact is reestablished. But for all we know, Sergei, the Rim is all the Federation that's to eft. Old Terra could have fallen into a black hole last month, and we'd have no way of knowing it.
We're on our own out here, and we'd better start acting accordingly. That's why you're so bloody important... because you're one of these people's own, at least by adoption!" Ortega opened his mouth, then closed it. Finally he shook his head.
"For God's sake, Ian, you're moving too fast for me again! Let's at least defer this until the immediate threat is past. His The "immediate threat" was, of course, the rebel attack that must come, sooner rather than later. Hot because of the mammoth building and refitting facilities, blot even because Zephrain held the "Gateway," the warp point which was the Rim's only practicable link with the rest of the Federation. What made Zephrain unique was the RandD Station, where two generations of brilliant minds had happily turned out the blueprints for a whole new order of military technology. They'd been cheerfully oblivious to the fact that none of it was being produced. (who wanted a new arms race with the Khanate of Orion?) But what they'd never seemed to notice was that their quest for a heavier, longer-ranged missile had brought them innocently to the threshold of a gravitic engineering revolution that would transform more than just warfare. The memory banks of Zephrain RDS were a womb wherein a whole new era gestated and Trevayne would unflinchingly perform a thermonuclear abortion ff he saw the station about to fall into rebel hands.
Zephrain RDS was the key to the Rim. If enough of the new weapons could be put into production--and the Zephrain Fleet base was one of the two or three places in the' Federation where it might be done--then the Rim would survive. And, knowing that, Trevayne and Ortega had to assume the rebels also knew it and would act to prevent it.
The intraship car reached Zoroffs boatbay, and the two admirals emerged, a study in physical contrast. Ortega was short and slightly overweight, his stocky frame and broad, high-cheekboned face reflecting his Slavic and Mesoamerican ancestry. Trevayne was tall, lean, and very dark, an Englishman with more than a trace of the "eoloured" genes that the departing empire had bequeathed to the island's population in the late twentieth century. His hair was beginning to thin on top, but unlike some (including Ortega) he'd made a good job of growing the short, neat beard currently in vogue among male TFN officers. The latter caused him more satisfaction (and the former more annoyance) than he eared to admit.
"I'd be delighted," said Trevavne, not sonnding pa'ticu- lady delighted. Ortega noticed (he lack of enthusiasm and smiled again.
"You may as well resign yourself, lan. She's like you-- she tends t get her way. It's ahnost unnatural how much like her mother she is." They proceeded towards Ortega's cutter, and Ortega paused as the Marine honor guard clicked to attention.
"'Governor-General"!" he snorted. Then, with a sudden twinkle, "Well, at least it got your mind off trving to keep me aboard Zorofjq." His His The next day found Trevayne in the small staff briefing room adjacent to Zoroffs flag bridge with his chief of staff, Captain Sonja Desai, while his operations officer, Commander Genii Yoshinaka, described the exercises planned for the next few days. Captain Sean F.
X. Remko, Zoroffs CO, attended via corn screen from his cxunmand bridge. Part of Trevavne's brain listened to the briefing, hut another part eofisidered his three subordinates.
Desai listened to Yoshinaka with her usual thin-lipped lack of expression. Looking at her dark, immobile face, a blend of Europe and India, Trevavne knew she would never he a charismatic leader, but her brilliance was acknowledged even by those--and they were many--whicho disliked her.
Remko's rnddy, brown-bearded face nodded in the corn screen as he followed Yoshinaka's cmments. Trevavne could easilv visualize the workings of the hurlv flag tap-rain's miner. Remko was a battle-cruiser man h), temperament, hut he performed his present duties with'aggressive cxggmpetence. He was a fighter, a man whose sheer guts and ability had carried him from a childhood in the Hell-broth, this worst slum on New Detroita planet noted ibr its slumsto his present rank despite the prejudice bis b
uzz-saw accent engendered.
Yoshinaka was gesturing at the clustered display lights that represented all of Ortega's Frontier Fleet strength, except those units keeping watch over potential trouble spots throughout the Rim, as they floated near the Gateway and its fortresses in preparation for exercises with Zephrain Skywatch. Like Trevayne, the ops officer was that rarity in the TFN, a native Old Terran, and this had always formed a bond between them. It was an unspoken bond-- not much ever had to be spelled out for Yoshinaka. He was a deft, subtle man who stayed in the background. No one but Trevayne fully recognized the unobtrusive ops officer's importance to what Yoshinaka himself called BG 32's wa, a word inadequately translated into Standard English as "group harmony." Remkostsuddenly turned a scowling face to someone outside the screen's pickup. He listened a moment, his scowl fading into tense understanding, then broke in on Yoshinaka.
"Priority signal from Skywatch, Admiral! Missile pods are beginning to transit the Gateway! The minefields are taking some out--but not many!" Trevayne looked quickly at the display unit.
Some of the yellow and orange lights in the tank-- his faster cruisers and destroyers--were already accelerating away from the red lights of his capital ships.
"Captain," Trevayne clipped as he rose from his chair, "sound general quarters, Comm. odore D?sa diswe're leav?ong orbit immediately and proceeding to the ,ateway uniter maximum drive." He strode onto the flag bridge, Desai and *oshinaka on his heels, as a eom rating looked up with a signal from Krait that confirmed the orders he had anticipated.
Beneath his decisiveness, Trevayne was amazed that the rebels (he would not call them "the Terran Republic") had managed to organize their at?ck so soon; Bddut trheaenresa the intelligence center's prefiminary anaJyss ox me l,. emerging from the Gateway even as the surviving pods launched their dusters of homing missiles to seek out the orbital forts. They were in less strength than he would have anticipated, particularly in carriers. Perhaps they were attacking before they were quite ready. And perhaps they didn't realize BG 32 had arrived? His lips curved wolfishly at the thought.
The fortresses were taking a terrible heating, but their batteries of primaries were doing their intended job and pulling a lot of the attackers' teeth. Ortega's battleships were launching long-ranged strategic bombardment missiles and would soon be receiving a reply in kind. A high percentage of those missiles were targeting the respective flagships, for both side's fire control could pick out targets on a "first name" basis. It would disn, Trevavne thought sourly, be a healthy war for the top brass.
BG 32 was still beyond scanner range of the Gateway. In some commands, the fact that the only hostile warp point into the system was beyond scanner range might have led to a certain laxness in the scan ratings: not in BG 32. Trevayne expected maximum scanner capability whenever the ships were at general quarters, and his captains had learned that his standing orders were best taken seriously. Thus it was that Sonja Desai, her usually immobile hatchet, face animated bv excitement, exclaimed: "Adriral, we've picled up a trio of cloaked assault carriers! Now that we've isolated them, we should be able to catch any escorts.... Yes, they'e coming in now: two fleet carriers and a light cruiser. The cruiser must be a scout, since she's carrying third-generation ECM. Distance just over eighteen light-seconds, heading..." She rattled off the figures, then her head jerked up to dart a startled look her admiral. at "Admiral, they're on a course about seventy, degrees from ours, converging rapidly, and they seem to be coming from somewhere around Zephrain But Trevayne's mind had already gone to full emergency overload as he assimilated the data and its implications. There was only one possible answer: a defense planner's worst nightmare--a "closed" warp point. The only way to locate a closed warp point was to come through it from the normal warp point at the far end. Obviously the rebels had done just that, undoubtedly with cloaked survey probes, and now that they had the defenders' attention riveted by their great, noisy frontal attack, they'd sent this lot in through the back door neither he nor Ortega had suspected existed.
Yes, it made sense whether they knew about BG 32 or not. Carriers to get up close undetected and launch a massive fighter attack from the rear, and a scout cruiser's scanners to provide "eyes" without using easily detected recon fighters. And the buggers should have gotten away with it. The chance of long-range scanners picking up a cloaked ship at this distance were minute.
Yet they had been caught... but long-range scanners were passive.., it'd be some seconds before they tumbled to the fact that they had. An unholy glee pushed the dull drumbeat from his con- sciousness. The sods had their ECM set for cloak, and it took time to shift ECM modes. As far as fire confusion was concerned, those ships were mother-naked! Now that they'd been spotted at all, they might as well not even have ECM! But they didn't know that vet! If he attacked now-- before they realized and launchet... to The stream of thoughts and conclusions ripped through his mind in so small a fraction of a second that his stream of orders never even hesitated.
"Implement anti-fighter procedures." BG 32 reoriented itself. The four Brobdingnagian moni- tors lumbered into a tight, diamond-shaped formation with their two escort destroyers positioned to cover their blind zones. The attached recon group (a light carrier with two escort destroyers) took up position astern and launched all three of its fighter squadrons. AFHAWK missiles slid into their shipboard launchers. And before the maneuver was even completed, the monitors twitched and shuddered, expelling a cloud of lethal strategic bombardment missiles from their external racks. The deadly swarm of missiles flashed away, closing on the rebel ships.
"We're getting some individual ID'S, Admiral," Desai reported as her screen flickered with sudden data. "The C-WA'S are Gilgamesh, Leminkanien, and Basilisk, sir. CV'S Mastiff and Whippet, and..." She sucked in her breath sharply and stopped dead.
Trevayne heard the hiss and turned toward her in con- cern. Her face was even more frozen than usual, and her eyes were haunted as she looked up at him over the terminal.
"What is it, Sonja?" "Admiral," she said, very quietly, "the scout cruiser is Ashanti." Every officer on the flag bridge either personally knew or had heard of Trevayne and his family-- and that Lieutenant Commander Colin Trevayne was executive officer of TFNS Ashanti. Heads turned and eyes looked at the admiral.
""rhank you, Commodore," Trevayne said levelly. "Carry on, please." Yoshinaka glanced quickly aUs tle command bridge corn screen, seeing the pain in Remko's dark eyes. Years before, struggling upward through the tight, almost hereditary ranks of the peacetime TFN, the flag captain had encountered Innerworld senior officers who'd barely troubled to conceal their snobbery, and others who'd displayed their enlightened social attitudes with forced, patronizing toleranc And then Lieutenant Commander Sean Remko had found himself serving a flag officer who quite simply didn't give a damn about where Sean Remko had been born or how he talked.
And now, watching Remko stare from the corn screen at that same officer, Yoshinaka understood the inarticulate flag captain's need to offer Trevayne something. "Sir, the carriers are what matters. A scout doesn't have enough armament to hurt us much... and the missiles are still under shipboard control... it ought to be possible to..." Trevayne also understood, but he turned to the screen and calmly cut Remko's stammering short.
"Fight your ship, Captain," he said.
Then he settled back in the comfortable admiral's chair. The drumbeat was back, but he ignored it.
There were decisions to be made in the next few minutes, and there was no time for anything else. No time to examine the new sensation of being utterly alone in the cosmos but for the cold companions Duty and Self-Discipline. No time for grief, or self-hatred, or nausea. Plenty of time for all of that, later. ALLIANCE Xanadu averaged slightly warmer than Old Terra, and its axial tilt was less than fifteen degrees, giving it short and mild seasons.
He spent a moment acclimating himself. (weather of any sort was always a little startling to a man diswho spent most of his working life in artificial enviro
nments, and the 0.93 G gravitation was perceptibly different from the TFN'S statutory one G.) Then he crossed the ceramacrete to greet Genji Yoshinaka. The dapper ops officer saluted and fell in beside him.
"Good afternoon, Admiral. Your schedule's been arranged for the evening. In the meantime, your skimmer is waiting. The pilot is a Prescott City native; he says Ms. Ortega's address is a good kilometer from the nearest public landing platform, so l've laid on a ground ear to take you the rest of the way." Trevayne looked around him. Low clouds scudded "rapidly across a sky of deep blue crystal. For the first time in months, he made a completely impulsive decision. "Cancel the ground ear, Genii. I11 walk." Yoshinaka, struggling to keep pace with his long-legged boss, was startled. In the week since the engagement people were beginning to call the Battle of the Gateway,
Trevaye's days had been regimented almost to the see-ond. It was inevitable, of course, especially given the new responsibilities which had fallen to him when Sergei Ortega had died with his flagship. But Yoshinaka understood why the admiral had attacked his work with such furious energy. There were too many ghosts, and Trevayne sought to hold them at bay in the only way he knew. Knowledge made his impulsiveness, his willingness to waste time, all the more startling. But, then, Yoshinaka reflected, the admiral had never been a predictable man.
Trevayne had visited Xanadu before, but only for brief conferences at the base itself. Now, for the first time, he looked down from the skimmer and saw the planet's chief city not as an abstraction to be defended, but as a bustling urban sprawl. He couldn't recall what Prescott City had been failed when it was founded during the Fourth Interstellar War--probably something else outre from Coleridge. The old name didn't much matter anyway, for it had soon been renamed in honor of Commodore Andrew Prescott, whose statue and column dominated the lawn before Government House. It was a fitting tribute to the survey officer who had provided the Terran/orion alliance with the information it needed to win that war--and who'd died doing it. Trevayne's mouth twisted with the wry. grimace that now served him for a smile. He hoped Winston Churchill had been wrong about the bad luck that attends nations which change the names of their cities.
