Imperative - eARC

by Steve White

  “Well, ma’am, I was originally with the PSU Fortress Command, but I transferred to the Battle Fleet after…well, my homeworld of Orphicon, which my fortress was orbiting, was hit by one of the Kaituni kinetic projectiles.”

  Magda stopped short and actually looked at him for the first time. He was slender, of medium height, with a light complexion and features that seemed to hold a suggestion of Slavic origin. She spoke to him in a voice of sincere compassion. “So you had to watch your homeworld die?”

  “Not altogether die, ma’am. It got off rather lightly compared to some: an ocean strike by a fist-sized object. But at two-thirds lightspeed…”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “But I did watch a tsunami consume the coast where my old family home stood,” he continued, his eyes growing haunted. “The home where my maternal great-grandmother lived. Irma Sanchez,” he added, as though she should recognize the name. And, indeed, it had a certain familiarity. “She was a hero of the Bug War—”

  “Oh yes, I remember now! I’ve read the story. She saved the life of Admiral Prescott.”

  “Yes, sir, and was awarded the Wounded Lion of Terra. My grandmother, her adopted daughter, always remembered that her mother had promised her that Bugs were never going to come…” He could go no further.

  “As far as she knew at the time, that was true,” Magda told him gently.

  Their eyes met across the yawning gulf of rank that separated them, and the young man’s voice steadied. “Yes, ma’am. But now I suppose we have to do it all over again. I don’t know if we’re as good as they were then, in my great-grandmother’s day. But we have your hus…that is, Grand Admiral Trevayne. Thank God for that. We need him.” He stopped abruptly, as though feeling he had said too much. But she only smiled a distant smile.

  “Yes, we do, don’t we?” Suddenly, her features hardened into mask of irrevocable decision. “Lieutenant…uh, what’s your first name?”

  “Victor, ma’am.”

  “Victor, I have a special—and highly confidential—job for you. I want you to personally find the following officers in the temporary quarters they’ve been assigned on this ship.” She reeled off the names of the task group commanders who had volunteered for the rear guard and been selected, and he repeated them into his wrist computer. “I want you, without speaking to anyone else about it, to ask them to meet with me at…oh, twenty-two hundred, to give them an hour.” She recalled the name of Miyoshi Santana, a particular friend of hers. “And ask Rear Admiral Santana if we can use her quarters for the meeting.”

  Victor frowned with puzzlement, for it all seemed just a bit irregular. But he hastened to obey.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  For a few moments, the silence in Miyoshi Santana’s quarters wasn’t even a stunned silence, because what Magda had said had not fully registered on her half-circle of listeners. Then it did, and the silence somehow deepened, descending into the realms of shock.

  Commodore Nathan Harding, RFN, was the first to find his voice. “Do you have any idea what you’re asking of us?”

  “I do. I should, since I’m asking the same thing of myself.” Magda smiled grimly. “Only more so. Unlike the rest of you, I’ll also be betraying—and I suppose there’s no other word—my husband as well as my commanding officer.”

  “Betraying more than that!” Santana’s voice quavered. “What you’re proposing is…is…” She swallowed hard, and with a physical effort released the word into the air of the compartment. “Mutiny!”

  Silence fell again, and this time it held a psychic undercurrent of horror. All three of the space navies represented in the group prided themselves on the fact that they had never experienced a single mutiny in their histories. Nor had the old Terran Federation Navy that was ancestral to them all…except, of course, for the mass mutinies at the beginning of the Fringe Revolution that had given birth to the Terran Republic. (But that was history, and the passage of time had caused it to take on the more respectable, if not glorious, patina of revolution.)

  “Maybe we could call it ‘defection’ or something, instead,” Magda suggested.

  “Is that supposed to make me feel better?” muttered Harding.

  “I’ve got a pretty good idea what a court martial would call it,” growled Commodore Lavrenti Trofimovitch Korypatkin of Novaya Rodina.

  Magda gave him a tight little smile. “Frankly, Lavrenti, at this particular moment in time I think a court martial is the very least of our worries. In fact, the possibility is all too likely to become academic.” Korypatkin subsided uncomfortably and didn’t reply, for this was inarguable.

  “But Magda,” Santana pleaded, “you can’t ask us to do this. This isn’t just mutiny. It would be Admiral Trevayne we’d be disobeying and even deceiving!” There was a general rumble of agreement.

  Madga leaned forward, and her eyes were black fire. “The fact that you’re all reacting this way is precisely why we have to do this! Can’t you see? He’s special, and not just—or even mainly—because he’s an acknowledged tactical genius. It runs far deeper than that. His…his legend, as I have to call it, taps into the very wellsprings of human myth. Nathan, you’re from the Rim—you know what he means to the people there. Their great defender and lawgiver when he was cut off there during the Fringe Revolution.” Harding nodded, remembering the statue of Trevayne that had stood before Government House on Xanadu before the Kaituni had come. Magda pressed her advantage. “And afterwards, the way he slept in cryo suspension, as if healing his wounds, and came back at exactly the time when his people were threatened…it’s simply mythic. And by now the PSU and the Terran Republic share in the myth as well.” She allowed them a moment to assimilate the truth of her words, then resumed with even greater intensity. “We can’t conceal the facts from ourselves. Combined Fleet may very well find itself with its back to the wall at Alpha Centauri, or even Sol itself. When that happens, the mythic aura that surrounds him may be one of the few things Earth has left to believe in. He cannot be allowed to throw away his life here, even though his nature requires him to do it.” She looked each of them in the eyes in turn. “I said earlier I’d be betraying him. And I will, even though it will be harder for me than it could be for any of you—to save him from himself. Are you with me?”

  Slowly, one by one, heads began to nod.

  *

  People got out of Ian Trevayne’s way as he strode onto the flag bridge.

  “All right,” he demanded of Elaine De Mornay. “What is this nonsense?”

  She spoke in tones of perplexity. “Well, Admiral, as you know, we’ve been gradually pulling back and keeping the fleet together, except for—”

  “—Commodore Allende’s command. Yes, yes, I know.” The devastators and superdevastators were already on the way across the Bug 17 system to the Bug 16 warp point. “And we’re waiting to detach the covering force, to swing back and take up a close defensive position at the Bug 05 warp point. But if I understood your rather disjointed call correctly, they’re already deploying at that warp point! Who the bloody hell gave that order?”

  “No one, sir.”

  “Well, have comm raise them!”

  “We’ve tried, sir. No one acknowledges. And sir…” If possible, De Mornay’s misery deepened. “Ark Royal is also deploying with them.”

  Magda’s flagship, shot through Trevayne’s mind. He sought for some rational explanation of all this, but found nothing. “Well, keep trying to raise someone in the covering force!”

  “Admiral,” the communications officer called out, “we’re being hailed.”

  “About time!”

  “Uh…it’s not from the covering force, sir. It’s from Ark Royal.”

  Trevayne swung around and faced the comm screen, on which Magda’s carefully controlled face appeared. Everyone nearby made it a point to look somewhere else.

  “Admiral,” she said in a voice that matched her features, “I would like to report that the covering force is coming into pos
ition as planned.”

  “Magda…Magda, for God’s sake, what is this all about? What are you trying to do, upset the plan?”

  “No, the plan for Combined Fleet’s withdrawal will be carried out to the letter—with you in command of the main body. I have assumed command of the covering force.” Her face softened a bit. “Don’t blame the task group commanders, Ian. I talked them into it…more or less bullied them into it.”

  Trevayne had to try several times before the word would come. “Mutiny,” he croaked.

  “You’re not the first one I’ve heard that word from lately.” Suddenly, she smiled. “I’ve been waiting for years to be able to pull a quote on you. ‘If this be mutiny, make the most of it.’”

  “That is not a quote! At most it’s a paraphrase!”

  “Whatever.” She turned aside, as though receiving a report, then turned back to him with renewed seriousness. “Ian, we haven’t much time. On my own initiative, I’ve been having probes sent through the warp point, and enough of them got back to make it clear that the swarm is stirring over there. That’s how we timed this move. And now—” She glanced aside again. Behind her, Trevayne could see a flag bridge crackling with tension. “And now it’s out of our hands.”

  “Admiral!” Andreas Hagen called out. “Sensors detect—”

  “I see it,” said Trevayne in a flat voice, as he watched a tactical display of the Bug 05 warp point light up with a typhoon of SBMHAWKs.

  “So you see, Ian,” said Magda gently from the comm screen, “it’s begun—the final Bug attack on this system. You’re always talking about ‘a fleet in being.’ Well, now it’s up to you to preserve one. And to preserve yourself, which may be even more important. Do you finally understand what I’m doing?”

  He did. He just didn’t want to. “Magda…” He hesitated. He couldn’t tell her that he needed her, truth though it was. He began again. “Magda, Han needs you.”

  She gasped, but then recovered herself. “Han and billions of other children need you, Ian. As for Han, she needs both of us. And I don’t intend to die if I can possibly avoid it. This isn’t a suicide charge. We’re going to hold this warp point as long as possible, then begin a fighting retreat to join you. But whatever happens…remember that I love you. And if you love me, as I know you do…go!” She made a quick, savage motion with her hand, and the screen went dead.

  For a long moment Trevayne stood rock-still, staring into the depths of the blackened comm screen, and no one dared disturb him. Finally he turned and spoke in a voice of cold iron. “Captain De Mornay, Combined Fleet will continue on course. The covering force will be following us when the situation at the Bug 05 warp point warrants it.”

  *

  The rear guard held out longer than anyone had anticipated under the Bugs’ characteristically relentless onslaught. Too long, as it turned out.

  The covering force’s composition, plus the fact that it was just coming into position, threw off the SBMHAWKs’ targeting. Thus Magda was able to let the fortresses bear the brunt of dealing with them, and when the Bug monitors began to make their quasi-suicidal multiple transits her energy-torpedo batteries were already in ship-to-ship mode. And she had held her carriers back and ordered them to launch early. An intense blaze of plasma bolts and a hurricane of fighters tore the first Bug waves apart. But they kept coming, and more and more of the defending ships signaled “Code Omega,” the traditional death-cry of space warships.

  The main body of Combined Fleet was sixteen light-minutes from the scene of Magda’s battle, with Bug 17’s Mars-like second planet a ruddy speck four light-minutes to starboard, and the covering force was still holding out, when Andreas Hagen approached Trevayne, who had never left the flag bridge. What he saw in the Intelligence officer’s face caused him to tear his attention from the continuing stream of reports.

  “Admiral…excuse me, but…well, we naturally have been concentrating on the Bug 05 warp point, and…”

  “What is it, Andreas?” Trevayne’s attention was now entirely focused. Hagen’s stammering urgency was utterly unlike him.

  “Admiral…Bug ships are emerging from the Bug 21 warp point!”

  “Show me.”

  The system display told the tale. The ignored, unguarded warp point, fourteen light-minutes from the Bug 05 warp point in a direction almost at a right angle to Combined Fleet’s course, was vomiting forth ships as fast as the Bugs could make transit. And as they emerged, they were shaping a course that would take them around behind the covering force.

  “Admiral,” Trevayne heard Elaine De Mornay’s voice, “what’s happening? Where have they come from?”

  Without immediately answering her, Trevayne turned to a strategic display. He expanded it to cover more of the warp network. His unblinking eyes drilled into it for several heartbeats. Then he spoke without turning.

  “I think it’s pretty obvious. After the Bug armada we’ve been fighting emerged into Home Hive Two, and we withdrew to Pesthouse, a second armada emerged from their hidden home system, unknown to us. And the Kaituni let it come out…but only allowed it one direction in which to go.” He traced the warp lines from Home Hive Two to Bug 06, Sharnak, and the stars beyond. “All that time, this second armada has been rampaging though the Star Union, the Bugs’ old enemies. And now it’s come around this way.” He indicated a route that terminated in Home Hive Four, then Bug 21, and, finally, Bug 17.

  “My God!” De Mornay breathed. It was a prayer, not a curse.

  “Admiral,” said Hagen, “a signal from the covering force. They’re commencing their fighting retreat.”

  “If only they’d done it sooner,” De Mornay muttered…then clamped her mouth shut as she saw Trevayne’s features contract as though in pain.

  For they could all see it was too late. The newly arrived Bugs ships continued to pour from the Bug 21 warp point in as steady procession, and they were in a position to approach the covering force from its rear left flank, trapping it between the two hostile armadas.

  Trevayne turned back to the system display. From somewhere deep in his mental turmoil came the vagrant thought that it would have been easier if this had been the centuries-ago age of reaction drives. Those earliest spacefarers had been blessed more than they’d known by their limited options. Without reactionless, inertia-cancelling drives that allowed a course to be reversed, there would have been no decisions to make, no alternatives to choose between: he would have been locked into his present course by the laws of physics. As it was, if he so ordered, Combined Fleet could turn about and join the death-struggle in which Magda was about to find herself. There was nothing to prevent it…except for the fact that it was utterly out of the question. His own words, a fleet in being, came back to mock him. And now it was more vital than ever.

  “It has become clear,” he said in an emotionless voice, speaking to no one in particular, “that the problem of defending Alpha Centauri and the Heart Worlds, including Earth, is even more desperate than we had thought. The reserve fleets are being demothballed and mobilized, and construction is proceeding as expeditiously as possible given the damage to the Corporate Words from the kinetic strikes, but for the present it is still up to us. We must complete our withdrawal to Bug 16 as expeditiously as possible. Having done so, we must immediately dispatch a force back through Harnah to Bug 15, to close off the other route from Star Union space.”

  De Mornay blanched. “Sir, does that mean you think there’s a third Bug armada?”

  “Not necessarily. But this second one could turn back around and come through Bug 24 to Bug 15. Thank God they took the route they did instead of that one—we’d be well and truly trapped. And they’d be one warp transit away from Alpha Centauri.”

  “Then why didn’t they?” De Mornay asked no one in particular.

  “They must have wanted to make rendezvous with the first armada,” Hagen speculated.

  “Perhaps. Also…” Trevayne took on a look of faraway concentration—farther away than
most people were capable of concentrating. “It actually makes strategic sense, if you think about it. After all, they don’t know how strongly or weakly held Sol is. For all they knew, they might have bitten off more than they could chew. Here, on the other hand, they had a chance of cutting us off in this system. We’ve seen the Kaituni try this strategy before, you know: herd a Bug force in behind us that may prevent us from withdrawing in time. As it is, what’s their worst-case scenario? We escape, but this new Bug fleet provides more cannon fodder for the Kaituni push up the warp line to Earth. And the ‘herding’ Kaituni fleet that must be behind this new Bug armada now comes into communication link with the mastermind who must be directing things from behind the first Bug armada.” Trevayne brought his mind back to the immediate tactical situation, and his emotionlessness seemed to waver—but only momentarily. He resumed in the same tone. “At any rate, there is no possibility of our being overtaken in this system on our present course. And now…I’ll be in my quarters for a short time.”

  *

  It was practically the only time Trevayne was absent from the flag bridge for the duration of the withdrawal. With little else to do, he followed the increasingly outdated—eventually almost a light-hour old—reports of the covering force’s desperate attempts to extricate itself from between the two swarms of Bug ships enclosing it.

  Finally the last of Combined Fleet’s major formations completed their transit to Bug 16. Zeven Provinciën was one of the last ships remaining, and was preparing for transit when De Mornay and Hagen approached Trevayne. Their expressions told him all he needed to know.

  “Sir,” De Mornay spoke with desperate steadiness, “we have a Code Omega from Ark Royal.”

  “Thank you, Captain,” Trevayne replied with a nod, after a moment that seemed longer than it was. He stood up and looked at the viewscreen that showed the view aft. The sun of Bug 17 was a small yellow glow across twenty-three light-minutes.