“That’s fair. If they know everything, though… Plowshare? Weyland?”
Damien winced.
“Part of the reason Plowshare exists is to help hide Weyland,” he admitted.
Project Plowshare had been the black construction program, funded under the table by loyal Core Worlds, to build a new fleet for Mars. Unfortunately, the only ships Plowshare had been going to complete soon were destroyers…and Damien himself had signed off on the recommendation that no new Lancer-class destroyers be completed.
Weyland, though…
“We buried Weyland deep. Not even all of the Hands were cleared for Project Weyland,” he told LaMonte. “Though, to be honest, I didn’t think you were cleared for Weyland.”
She grinned at him and he swallowed a curse.
“I’m not. But I am cleared for Plowshare and had heard the name bandied about in that context. So, when high muckety-muck people are talking about reinforcements, they’re talking about Weyland, huh?”
“Captain LaMonte, you of all people should know better than to ask questions I cannot answer,” Damien told her, letting his voice drop into the cold register of “Angry Hand.”
The effect was probably somewhat undermined by the small black cat purring on his shoulder, but from the way LaMonte recoiled, it was still effective.
The room was silent for several long seconds before he sighed.
“I am privy to some of the greatest secrets of our Protectorate,” he reminded her quietly. “Weyland may be our only hope of winning this damn war. I know Alexander has a plan to destabilize the Republic war effort, but it’s a long shot at best.
“I can’t tell you what Weyland is, beyond hope.”
“Fair enough,” she conceded, recovering from the shock of seeing Damien in full Hand mode with surprising aplomb.
“Leaving the war to Her Highness, what do we do now?” she asked.
“We answer the damn question we came here for,” he replied. “Can you get a shuttle into Sucre orbit?”
“Not directly, but there’s enough in-system traffic floating around, I think I can get you on a course to the planet that no one will question,” she said after a moment’s thought. “Still need some answers from the planet, huh?”
“A ship entered this system with two hundred teenaged Mages aboard,” he confirmed. “Someone on Sucre knows where those kids went. We’re going to find out.”
“What happens when we find those kids, Damien?” LaMonte asked. “I’m not a Mage, but…more people died at Ardennes than that. Two hundred kids…is a drop in the grand scheme of things already.”
“I know. And yet…if the Republic shot two hundred kids and left them in a mass grave, that’s an atrocity that can’t be forgotten in silence.” He shook his head. “But worst of all, Kelly, I can’t see Bryan Ricket having turned on the Republic for merely the mass murder of children.
“I think we’re following the right thread, but I am terrified of what we’re going to find at the end,” he admitted. “I don’t think we’re going to find mass graves…and having stood on the slopes of Olympus Mons and looked out on the nameless graves of the children sacrificed to create the human Mage, I have to wonder—I have to fear—how far short of the reality my imagination has fallen.”
27
“Stand by for jump.”
The calm words from Righteous Shield of Valor’s bridge echoed across the battleship’s flag deck.
Roslyn’s seat was barely a meter from Alexander’s, putting the Flag Lieutenant in a position to watch over the Admiral’s shoulder as Alexander controlled the main display. Like everyone else on the battleship’s bridge, Roslyn was strapped in—but she was ready to unstrap and leap into action to get anything Alexander needed.
Her role in battle was…limited. This was the part of the job where she shut up and learned, more than anything else.
“Remember, Chambers, if you see something strange, tell me,” Alexander told her quietly, overriding her assumptions even as she thought them. “Everyone else in the fleet has spent years in the structure and training of the RMN. You have that training, but you’re not trapped in it the way I know I can be.”
The Admiral reached out and squeezed Roslyn’s shoulder. She was barely able to reach, but the gesture sent a surge of confidence and determination through the young woman.
“You know this enemy, Mage-Lieutenant. Don’t hesitate to tell me if you think they’re playing games with us.”
“They did that when they moved their ships and hoped we wouldn’t notice,” Roslyn replied.
“They tried damn hard and almost killed a few people to pull that off,” Alexander agreed. “You made sure we knew about it.”
Roslyn didn’t challenge the Mage-Admiral out loud—one didn’t argue with Admirals, let alone Princesses of Mars—but she was well aware that she’d only found the attempt to neutralize their intelligence because Alexander had sent her to check in on Menendez.
The intelligence officer was still unconscious, the aftereffects of a multi-day round of the drugs she’d been on still ravaging her body. The security she’d put on her console and her intelligence had prevented the Augment assassin—who’d apparently been working as a missile tech, requiring Engineering to go over every missile the man had touched—from simply deleting the intelligence.
That same security had almost caused them to lose that same intelligence. Roslyn suspected, though she hadn’t asked, that most Admirals didn’t have the override codes that Alexander had given her. Her suspicion was that those were a Royal prerogative.
“All ships report at battle stations and ready for jump.”
“Chambers, get me a channel to the ship captains,” the Admiral ordered.
Roslyn had the channel waiting to turn on at Alexander’s command, and nodded swiftly to the Admiral.
“Everyone,” Alexander greeted her COs. “You know the plan. You know the orders. Battleships, lead the way. Engage!”
Righteous Shield of Valor was only one of the six battleships in Second Fleet, and those six ships represented the greatest concentration of force at Admiral Alexander’s command. She’d augmented them with her ten Honorific-class battlecruisers, the next-heaviest units of her fleet, and then that entire sixteen-ship-strong task force was the spearhead of the strike.
Taking a course that strained the Mages jumping the ships to their limits, that task force appeared forty light-seconds, twelve million kilometers, from the planet of Legatus itself.
They were launching missiles already. The Martian ships were inside their active missile range of the defenses—and orbital platforms couldn’t dodge.
When a carrier battle group centered on two heavy carriers had been positioned in Legatus orbit, engaging the defenses would have been dangerous at best and suicide at worst for Second Fleet. But the RIN had shifted those ships to Centurion, and the replacement battle group was much lighter.
Two heavy carriers remained in orbit along with sixteen cruisers, but there were no battleships to support them now…and those carriers weren’t moving right now either.
“RIN has picked us up. Missiles are on their radar,” Kulkarni reported grimly. Forty light-seconds meant they’d had forty seconds to act before the Republican ships detected them. Now it was a test of how rapidly the RIN crews could get to their stations.
They still had six minutes, and Roslyn would have been shocked if the crews weren’t at their positions by the time the missiles reached them.
There was a difference, though, between at their stations and ready, Roslyn suspected. Righteous Shield trembled underneath her as a third salvo of missiles blasted out.
“Third salvo away, fourth is loading,” Kulkarni reported. “No gunships deployed, no return fire.”
“Maintain the plan,” Alexander said calmly. “No changes.”
Protectorate warship design was predicated on pursuit. The vast majority of the battleships’ and battlecruisers’ weapons pointed forward, which meant that they
couldn’t engage and withdraw at the same time.
None of the RMN ships were accelerating. They hung in space as their launchers spoke again and again.
Seven salvos were in space by the time the RIN finally returned fire.
“Three minutes, thirty-two seconds,” Kulkarni reported. “That’s after they saw us.” She shook her head. “That’s not bad. Not at all.”
The defenses might have been reduced to augment Centurion and attempt to surprise Second Fleet, but there were still twenty fortresses, sixteen cruisers and two carriers in orbit. Only the first handfuls of gunships were getting into space, but the capital ships and fortresses alone mustered almost five thousand missile launchers.
“Still almost seven minutes to impact,” Alexander said calmly. “Adjust the plan, Mage-Captain Kulkarni. Let’s give ourselves ninety seconds, just to be sure.”
“Yes, sir.”
More salvos lit up space as the defenders got more and more gunships into play. Thousands of missiles might be coming out at the battleship formation, but the RMN had already flung thousands of their own.
The first round of Martian missiles landed as Roslyn watched. The Republic crews were as ready as they could be to deal with the surprise attack, but there were almost three thousand missiles in the salvo, and they targeted only two of the defensive platforms.
More than enough missiles made it through to vaporize the two twenty-megaton fortresses. The next salvo went for a new pair, which shared the same fate. One of the stations targeted by the third salvo survived, but the scan codes suggested it was crippled.
More salvos crashed home as the Martian ships continued to fling fire into space and the defenders returned fire in overwhelming numbers.
“Enemy salvos at one hundred twenty seconds.”
“Ship’s Mages are ready?” Alexander asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Damage assessment?”
“We’ve destroyed six platforms and badly damaged two more,” Kulkarni said. “The remaining salvos will be less effective.”
“We shall see,” Alexander replied. “We’re done here, Mage-Captain. Pass the order. All ships to jump to Rendezvous Point Alpha.”
Seconds later, sixteen Royal Martian Navy warships vanished. Tens of thousands of missiles would find only empty space and memories when they arrived.
Second Fleet had brutalized Legatus’s defenses without taking a single loss of their own.
It was a solid beginning, but Roslyn was looking at the records of what had survived the strike too. Despite the damage they’d inflicted, there were still enough ships and fortification in Legatus orbit to stand off the entire fleet.
They wouldn’t manage this kind of hit-and-run again…but the Siege of Legatus had begun.
28
Rendezvous Point Alpha was closer to Centurion than to Legatus—and it was where the rest of Second Fleet had jumped to when the strike force had gone for the homeworld. Their mission had been less dangerous, if no less important.
Roslyn started cataloging their successes and mission reports as soon as Righteous Shield emerged from jump. A dozen in-system freighters had already been corralled into place under the guns of the destroyers, their vectors converging on a zero point a long way from anything.
Shuttles flickered between the civilian ships as Marines took control of them and concentrated crews onto the vessels picked as prison ships. Most of the ships would be destroyed, but the Royal Martian Navy wasn’t going to kill civilians.
The mission reports were brute-force at this point, computer-generated summaries of less than an hour of rapid movement and engagement. The cruisers had held down the fort at Alpha while the destroyers had dashed out at fifteen gravities.
Quite sensibly, the Republic had been guarding the transfer orbit between Centurion and Legatus. Unfortunately, they’d done so with squadrons of ten gunships apiece—enough to take down a single raiding destroyer, but not enough to deal with the entire fleet.
Two of those squadrons were gone. Five more were still within the fleet’s operating radius, and the destroyers were heading their way. One destroyer against ten gunships was an even fight until the gunships ran out of missiles.
Four destroyers against ten gunships was a massacre.
“Reports show twenty gunships destroyed, fourteen vessels captured and six military freighters destroyed after refusing to surrender,” Kulkarni reported, her numbers matching Roslyn’s.
“There are fifty more gunships in escort position along the main traffic route between Centurion and Legatus,” Roslyn added. “They will be engaged over the next three hours.”
She continued to run through the data in front of her, then grinned coldly as she picked out the holy grail.
“I also have six twenty-megaton hulls heading toward Legatus, still seventy hours from their destination,” she pointed out, highlighting them on the screen. “Intel says they’re probably already fitted out with jump drives but that their guns will be installed at Legatus.”
“Three days out, huh?” Alexander replied. “Kulkarni—pass that information to Mage-Admiral Medici. He’s to take his cruisers and wreck those hulls. If he believes he can safely capture them, he is to do so, but the priority is that those hulls do not reach the fitting-out yards at Legatus.”
“Yes, sir.”
A minute or so later, eight cruisers disappeared as Admiral Medici set off to demonstrate just how this siege was going to work.
“What about Centurion?” Alexander finally asked. “We know they moved the battle group over there. How heavily reinforced are they?”
Kulkarni shrugged.
“Fixed defenses haven’t changed. Four major nodes, each with ten fortresses. Eight high-orbit fortresses for missile defense. It looks like their mobile forces are primarily at the antimatter harvesting center.
“Two heavy carriers, nine battleships, twenty cruisers.” She shook her head. “Almost a quarter-billion tons of warships. We could probably take them, but…”
“But they’ve another few hundred million tons of fortresses,” Alexander agreed. “We’ll clean up the traffic lanes and watch for new activity. For now, we hold position.”
“They’ll try to dislodge us, sir,” the operations officer pointed out.
“That’s the plan,” Alexander agreed as Roslyn smiled coldly. “We can fight their forces in detail—and if they’re willing to feed them to us like that, I will happily tear them to pieces.
“So, let’s see just how clever our friends actually are.”
Two hours later, it was clear that the RIN understood the problem. The mobile forces had moved out toward Second Fleet, but when they flipped to decelerate, it became clear they weren’t trying to challenge the RMN fleet.
“Looks like they’re settling in around the nearest of the cardinal forts,” Kulkarni reported. “Not even going to try and save the ships Medici is jumping.”
“They’ll blow the hulls before we can take them,” Roslyn said quietly. “That’s what they’ve done every time. They really don’t want us getting a look at the jump drive.”
“Would you?” the ops officer asked. “Right now, we have a magical solution and they have a technological solution. They’re not going to be able to acquire any Mages to jump their ships, but there’s nothing stopping us from installing their jump drive on ours.
“We already have better strategic and tactical mobility than they do. Adding their drive on top of our Jump Mages would only make that worse.”
“If they didn’t have FTL coms, they’d be screwed,” Alexander agreed. “No, you’re right, Chambers. They’ll destroy anything with a jump drive before we can take it. They’ve proven willing to kill their own people to make sure of that.”
“Fanatics,” Kulkarni said, half under her breath.
“Yes. We always knew Legatus had them. It seems the Republic is drawing them from all across its territory.”
“We have gunship launches,” Roslyn reported, not q
uite interrupting the Admiral as new icons speckled her screens. “Looks like the cardinal stations farthest from us are launching half of their parasite craft.”
“Interesting,” Mage-Admiral Alexander said softly. “Two thousand ships?”
“Yes, sir.”
“The yard stations are doing a partial launch as well,” Kulkarni noted. “Looks like another thousand ships from there. Vector has them all arriving at the station closest to us around the same time.”
“Let me know if the other cardinals launch gunships,” the Admiral ordered. “What do you think they’re doing?”
“I see a few possibilities,” the ops officer replied. “Most likely, they’re reinforcing the forces closest to us. An extra three or four thousand gunships would stiffen their missile defenses a lot.”
Roslyn shook her head as she studied the vectors. That made sense, yes, but it didn’t feel right.
“Chambers?”
Admiral Alexander had clearly seen her gesture.
“They’re keeping their velocities low and coming in at an angle where gunships from all of the fortresses will be able to converge,” Roslyn said slowly. “That convergence point isn’t a zero-velocity rendezvous with the nearest cardinal. The convergence point is about a million kilometers past the cardinal station at almost three hundred KPS.
“A million kilometers closer to us on an attack vector,” she clarified. “They’re far more willing to deploy their gunships independently and expendably than we keep expecting. My guess is that they’ll hold the carrier gunships back and send half of the fortress gunships right at us.
“They’re hoping to get most of them back, but they’re testing to see how much damage they can do with a pure gunship strike.” She shook her head. “They’re also testing if we’re actually willing to take a punch. We jumped away from the missiles at Legatus and they know that.
“They also know that this siege is meaningless if they can just chase us away anytime they want to send ships out.”
Sword of Mars Page 17
