Shield was a mixed-race ship, though, and she wondered if that was part of the reason. Less than one twentieth of the Imperial Navy’s ships were, and she hadn’t realized how many of them were part of Tan!Shallegh’s command.
Part of that, she suspected, was that he chose them. Tan!Shallegh clearly had more faith in those heterogeneous crews than most of the Navy.
She also knew, however, that connected to the Empress or not, he was a male in a species that was much, much less gender-equal than they encouraged their subject races to be. The A!Tol had a degree of gender dimorphism that made the argument for male inferiority far more pervasive than in most species.
It was quite possible that he had been effectively forced to command mixed-race ships and then decided they had advantages.
Harriet Tanaka didn’t expect to ever know. The swarm of different races scurrying through Shield of Innocents’ landing bay was almost comfortingly familiar now, though, after commanding Hunter’s Horn.
She spotted the Yin female with the Captain’s insignia cutting through the crowd toward and saluted crisply. Shield’s Captain towered over her, with dark blue feathers, hard black eyes and beak, and a body that otherwise reminded Harriet of bad anime aliens. Yin females shared certain noticeable features with human ones, after all.
“Captain Lira,” she greeted the flag captain with a crisp salute. “I appreciate the apparent urgency my message is being met with,” she gestured around.
“We were expecting something,” Lira replied calmly. “The Fleet Lord is waiting. I imagine you’d prefer to only brief us once.”
“Of course, Captain.”
#
“Welcome, Captain Tanaka,” Tan!Shallegh greeted Harriet as she was escorted into the briefing room.
The Fleet Lord was spread out on a long couch, his manipulator tentacles busy as he flipped through a series of reports and video screens showing the status of the battle squadron around them.
Even used to aliens as she was by now, Harriet found an A!Tol in full flurry a somewhat uncomfortable sight, but she silenced her lizard hindbrain and took the seat that had been laid out for her.
“Echelon Lord Kal Mak briefed me on your mission via starcom,” the Fleet Lord told her. Starcom transmitters were massive, immobile installations. Starcom receivers, however, were small enough—barely—to be included in capital ships.
“The current of your arrival suggests that you found something.”
“We did,” Harriet said, as calmly as she could manage. “I have a data packet and summary briefing prepared.”
“Show me,” Tan!Shallegh ordered, focusing his attention on her and surrendering control of the briefing room’s systems to her with a flick of his tentacles.
“We encountered the trail of a stealth ship in the San!Ak system,” she told him as she linked her communicator in and brought up her briefing files. “We followed it to Arcturus.”
There was an A!Tol name for the star humanity called Arcturus. It was a collection of symbols, a catalog number, nothing more. At some point before Harriet had even joined the Imperial Navy, humanity’s names for their surrounding stars had been loaded into the A!Tol databases for any system they hadn’t give a full name to.
“At Arcturus, we found a full Theocracy Task Fleet,” she explained quickly, her files loading and showing the seventy warships and their logistics train. “Two full ten-ship squadrons of battleships, with escorts.”
“Arcturus is in the Kovius zone of Sol, correct?” Tan!Shallegh asked.
“Yes, Fleet Lord,” Lira confirmed instantly.
“This is a border violation such as we haven’t seen in tens of long-cycles,” the Fleet Lord noted. “You were entirely correct to call Tsunami, Captain. Did they appear to be preparing to move when you were there?”
“No, Fleet Lord,” Harriet said. “But that could have changed at any point. We left nine cycles ago; they may have begun moving already but could not have reached Sol yet, no matter what.”
Tan!Shallegh’s massive black eyes blinked, his skin flushing in surprise.
“Our charts show Arcturus as being twelve cycles from here,” he pointed out. “I am impressed, Captain.”
“I can’t take any credit, Fleet Lord,” she told him. “We made contact with an unexpected ally in the Arcturus system: a Ki!Tol named Ki!Tana.”
“I know of her,” the Fleet Lord said noncommittally.
“She is apparently working with the Mesharom,” Harriet said. “They gave her a ship capable of charting hyperspace, and she provided us with significantly more detailed charts than we previously had for this region of space.
“Those charts identified a current through hyperspace from near Arcturus to roughly halfway between Sol and Alpha Centauri,” she continued. “Our fleet can also follow that current, Fleet Lord.”
“And where is Ki!Tana?”
“She remained behind to watch the Kanzi and warn Sol if they moved,” Harriet answered. “She is apparently…under contract, I believe she said, to the Duchess.”
“A Mesharom ship?” Captain Lira said wonderingly. “And you just let her…wander off?”
“She claimed the ship was defenseless, but it was built by the Mesharom,” Harriet replied. “I may have been able to destroy it, but I am quite certain I would not have been able to capture it. Using her services as an ally is far wiser, Captain Lira.”
“One does not lightly antagonize a Ki!Tol, Captain Lira,” Tan!Shallegh said. “Especially not this one. I take it you tested her charts?”
“We arrived exactly as they said we would,” Harriet confirmed. “The battle squadron should be able to return along the same path without problems.”
“Good.”
The Fleet Lord took back control of his systems, flickering through Harriet’s briefing packet with a speed that almost hurt her eyes.
“You have forwarded all of your scan data to Shield?” he asked.
“We have.”
“Thank you, Captain. Return to your vessel; you will be reinforcing Echelon Lord Ix!iIt’s cruiser squadron as we move out.”
“We are deploying, then?” she asked.
“Of course, Captain,” Tan!Shallegh replied. “A Kanzi Task Fleet inside our borders? This cannot be tolerated.
“Either they will withdraw or they will be destroyed.”
#
Chapter 49
“Signal from the Flag,” Speaker Piditel told Harriet. “The battleships will open the hyper portal into the Arcturus system in fifteen thousandth-cycles.”
“Thank you, Speaker,” Harriet replied. “Any further orders from squadron command?”
Hunter’s Horn may have been attached to Ix!iIt’s squadron, but Harriet wouldn’t have known it from her communication with the Echelon Lord commanding the cruiser squadron. All she’d received from her temporary commander were orders to maintain a specific position in relation to the flagship.
And those orders had come from the Echelon Lord’s communications officer.
“Nothing new,” Piditel replied.
Humming softly to herself, Harriet checked her screens. All that the A!Tol Imperium’s sensors could really detect in hyperspace other than stars was the presence of other ships, but that was enough to make it clear that the space around Hunter’s Horn was crowded.
Sixteen battleships led the way, followed by sixty-five lesser vessels including her own. An astonishing amount of firepower, though Harriet worried about the fact that there were four more Kanzi battleships at Arcturus than Tan!Shallegh was bringing.
The Fleet Lord seemed unconcerned, but it was still worrying. It had been thirty-seven long-cycles—almost twenty years—since even the smallest of engagements between A!Tol and Kanzi capital ships, which Tan!Shallegh had also commanded.
That was more than enough time, in Harriet’s assessment, for the A!Tol’s slim but definite advantage on a per-ton basis to be eroded by tech development.
“Ides, maintain position on the squadron
flag as previously ordered,” she told her navigator with a sigh. “Vaza, make sure the proton capacitors are charged and our missile launchers loaded.”
“The Fleet Lord will have to summon them to surrender or withdraw,” Sier observed. The Yin hadn’t left the bridge yet, though they both knew what was coming.
“And they’ll do neither, because they didn’t come this far to meekly turn back,” Harriet replied. “I’d be more comfortable if we were properly linked into the squadron net, too.”
“It is only designed for sixteen ships,” he pointed out. “But…” The Yin clacked his beak in what she’d learned was a sigh. “It can be extended for extras for just this purpose. Echelon Lord Ix!iIt has chosen not to bother.”
“I’d grown used to being treated as a proper Captain,” Harriet admitted, her voice low so no one else could hear it.
“Ix!iIt is A!Tol of a stripe they don’t produce often,” Sier said, which was as much as he could say without explicitly criticizing a superior.
“And he is in command of this squadron,” Harriet agreed. “I need you in CIC, First Sword. This isn’t going to end peacefully.”
“I see the same winds,” he replied, bowing slightly. “To battle, then.”
#
With sixteen battleships to lead the way, there was no need for the smaller ships to open their own hyper portals. The Twenty-Fifth Battle Squadron tore a hole in reality fifty thousand kilometers wide and led the fleet through, Shield of Innocents in the lead.
Every scanner in the formation stretched out, computers sorting through the data streaming in from the passive sensors while radar and lidar and more exotic beams swept the Arcturus system.
“What have we got?” Harriet demanded.
“Not being linked into the squadron net is limiting my data,” Vaza complained. “But…I’m reading twenty battleships, twenty cruisers, twenty destroyers. The logistic ships are still in place, but ten of the cruisers have wandered off somewhere.”
Hopefully not Sol. Harriet wasn’t sure just what her home system had for defenses at this point, but she suspected ten cruisers would be enough to cause a lot of havoc though probably not take the system.
“Any sign of Ki!Tana?” she asked.
“The post-processing program is running,” he told her. “But…if she wants to avoid Imperial contact except on her terms, she’ll probably keep her tentacles down and stay out of sight.”
“I’d do the same,” Harriet agreed.
The Arcturus system was filling in on her holotank now, and Tan!Shallegh wasn’t being overly subtle about his approach. Ix!iIt’s cruisers, including Hunter’s Horn, were forming a screen around the battle squadron with the destroyers, but the sixteen battleships were heading straight for the Kanzi.
“We’re being linked in to the Fleet Lord’s transmission,” Piditel reported.
“Show me.”
The A!Tol flag officer appeared in a corner of the holotank, his black eyes focused on the camera and his skin dark green with angry determination.
“Kanzi vessels, this is Fleet Lord Tan!Shallegh of the A!Tol Imperium. Under the terms of the Kovius Treaty to which both your nation and mine are signatories, this system belongs to the humans, a member race of the A!Tol Imperium.
“Your presence here is a violation of Imperial borders. Per both the Kovius Treaty and the treaties between our nations, I am ordering you to withdraw.
“You have one twentieth-cycle to comply or I will be forced to destroy your vessels.”
The transmission ended and Harriet leaned back in her command chair, studying her screens.
“There goes any chance of surprise,” she noted.
“Anything else would have been a violation of the border treaties with the Kanzi,” Sier told her from CIC. “They’ve committed an act of war, but the niceties still have to be observed so we can let them back down.”
“All of this, and they might manage to avoid a war?” Harriet demanded.
“The Imperium doesn’t want a fight,” her executive officer replied, his voice pitched low to avoid being overheard. “We can fight the Kanzi, but we have an entire Rimward border with no hostile powers on it. Slow expansion into those stars is far more to the current government’s taste than a war.”
“Whereas the Kanzi have a religious imperative to annex all bipedals,” she concluded. “Wonderful.”
“They’re moving, Captain,” Vaza reported.
“I don’t suppose they appear to be leaving?”
“No. They’re forming a wall of battle and coming out to meet us.”
“Understood. Thank you, Lesser Commander,” Harriet told him.
“First Sword.” She turned her attention back to Sier. “Is Hunter’s Horn ready for battle?”
“Yes, Captain.”
“Then stand by for orders from the squadron and the fleet,” she told her crew.
#
There were no real tricks to the maneuvers after that. No fancy footwork. The capital ships were capable of a uniform point four five cee. The escorts, point five. Both sides carried missiles rated for point seven five cee.
Any maneuver would be matched. Any evasion intercepted.
Harriet studied the tactical display, hunting for some hint, some idea to reduce the risk of the clash of titans that was about to unfold, and came up blank.
“Targeting orders downloaded from the flagship,” Vaza told her. “We are to open fire at maximum range.”
Intelligence suggested that the Imperium had a slight advantage, a few seconds at most, in the flight time on their missiles. With the same velocity, that translated into hundreds of thousands of kilometers of extra range.
There were no further demands or communication. The Kanzi weren’t leaving—so the Imperial Navy would make them.
The two fleets crossed an invisible line in space, and Hunter’s Horn trembled as her launchers went to rapid fire.
Harriet leaned back in her chair, humming softly to calm herself as the almost uncountable stream of weapons flashed away from the A!Tol fleet. Eighty ships fired a lot of missiles, even if only sixteen were capital ships.
Despite her expectations, it turned out that intelligence was correct. Five seconds passed and the A!Tol fleet launched their second salvo before the Kanzi returned fire.
The invaders had fewer ships, sixty against the eighty Imperial vessels, but they had twenty capital ships to the A!Tol’s sixteen. The lethal swarm they unleashed was just as dense and terrifying as the one Harriet’s allies had fired.
“For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful,” she whispered, watching the hurricane reach out toward her.
The United Earth Space Force had inherited many traditions from the Royal Navy, some of them sillier than others…but right now, that connection back to her home meant more than she’d expected it to.
“Ides, initiate evasive maneuvers,” she ordered. “Vaza, initialize proton beams in missile-defense mode. Try not to hit any of our friends.”
“We’re going to be the only cruiser doing that,” he warned.
“I don’t care if we look silly, Commander; I care if we’re still here tomorrow,” she snapped.
“Beams online,” Vaza replied, having clearly been obeying her orders anyway. “Missiles entering effective range in one thousandth-cycle.”
“Engage at will.”
Every ship in the fleet was maneuvering now, the formations carefully designed to allow them space to attempt to evade the unimaginably fast and maneuverable missiles now bearing down on them.
Harriet took a moment to be very sure that Vaza had the IFF locks on the beams. They were firing them at low power for this, but in this environment, the slightest pressure on the shields could make the difference between life and death.
The missiles flashed into the interception zone, and Hunter’s Horn opened fire. Her proton beams weren’t designed for this purpose, but Harriet had drilled Vaza hard on the concept—and only a tiny portion
of the immense swarm of missiles heading toward them were targeted on one cruiser.
When the tide crashed over the fleet, not a single missile hit Horn. Harriet ran the analysis herself to be certain—there’d only been a dozen missiles targeted on her ship, and Vaza had taken them all out.
Two salvos had hit the Kanzi and one had hit the A!Tol. It was a testament to the sheer power of both navies’ shields that hundreds of missiles traveling at three quarters of the speed of light had been…shrugged aside.
“Captain, incoming message from squadron command,” Piditel reported.
“Forward to my chair,” Harriet ordered.
For the first time since she’d been assigned to her squadron, Ix!iIt’s image appeared on the screen of her command chair. It took a moment for her to even be sure the A!Tol she was looking at was her temporary squadron commander.
“What in darkest waters are you doing, Tanaka?” Ix!iIt demanded. “Your beams are threatening the rest of the fleet; stand them down!”
“My beams are active in missile defense mode and stopped even a single hit getting through,” Harriet responded. “I can transmit the program to the rest of the squadron; it might keep us all alive!”
It was interesting dealing with A!Tol. You could watch their internal conflict play out on their skin. Ix!iIt had been bright orange in rage when she’d commed Harriet, but the black of fear had been laced through it. At Harriet’s words, flickers of shame’s yellow and curiosity’s blue flashed across the Echelon Lord’s skin.
Blue and black won.
“Send it,” she snapped—then cut the channel.
“Forward the missile defense program to the squadron,” Harriet ordered. “And to the flag… Let’s see if we can live through this.”
The second Kanzi salvo crashed down on the fleet as she spoke, Hunter’s Horn shivering under her as a single missile made it through Vaza’s interception and hammered the cruiser’s shields.
Any edge was going to matter.
Duchess of Terra (Duchy of Terra Book 2) Page 33
