by Rick Shelley
“Only thing left would be to ambush a patrol,” Gil Howard said. “That’s going to be chancier than blowing up their shuttles. Those didn’t shoot back.”
“Hell, we didn’t think we’d be able to shred their shuttles, but we did,” Albert said. “We manage to pick up a few Federations weapons and it’ll make everything else go a little easier.”
“Unless we can mobilize the entire population, we’re never going to be able to do more than make the odd raid,” Gil cautioned them. “I’m not saying we shouldn’t do it, but maybe we let our hopes get too high.”
Doug sighed. “The entire idea was to make the cost of occupying Buchanan higher than the Federation is willing to pay. We’ve made a damn good start, wiping out three shuttles, putting them to the bother of a constant air patrol. And the troops on the ground have to be more nervous than before.”
‘ ‘It would be nice if we could pick up a few more people before we move,” Ash Benez said. “And news out of the settlements.”
“Nice but not necessary,” Doug said firmly. “The Federation is probably keeping close watch on folks in Sam and Max now. They can’t know that we”re on the outside. As far as the enemy knows, that attack might have come from one of the settlements.” Then it was time to stop the conversation before it went on to the next logical area of supposition: conditions in Sam and Max. The talk had gone that far a few times before, and the results had been discouraging.
“We need to get a hippobary tonight,” Doug said. “Dump what’s left of the last one. It’s getting a little too gamy.”
“Hard to tell what’s ripe anymore, with us all in here together,” Albert said, sniffing theatrically. It got a few restrained laughs.
Better than thinking about what the Federation troops might be doing to our families, Doug thought. Maybe I shouldn’t have started all this. He looked around the cave at the anxious, drawn faces. Have I done more harm than good?
Something’s changed! At first, that was all that penetrated Doug’s mind. He had dozed off, sitting against the side of the cave, close to the entranceway. His morose thoughts had lulled him into a fitful half sleep. Then…
“The shuttle,” he said. He looked around quickly. Most of the others had already noticed. A couple of them were on their feet. The rest looked more alert, leaning forward, ready to get to their feet in a hurry if they had to.
The shuttle had been coming back in the direction of the caves, at its usual slow speed. Then it had suddenly gone to high power. An instant later, there was another change in the sound.
Doug crawled out to the mouth of the cave, pulled the hippobary hide over his head, and looked out through the eye holes. The shuttle had increased power and turned away.
“I can’t see anything like this.” Doug pulled the cover away and slid it back into the cave. He got up and completely out of the cave entrance, his body pressed against the hill as he looked into the sky.
Albert crawled out into the mouth of the cave. “Can you see anything?” he asked.
Doug pointed at the visible plume of flame and smoke in the sky. “It’s burning for orbit.”
“Nobody runs that fast for good news,” Albert suggested.
For a moment, Doug’s mind couldn’t work out the implications of that. Albert repeated it. Doug nodded absently, his eyes still locked on the rocket trail, already getting faint and distant.
“You don’t think…” Doug started after a moment. “The Commonwealth? It can’t be, not this soon.”
“You’re the one who sent off the message rocket,” Albert said. “You got another explanation for that shuttle scatting that way?”
Ash Benez pushed through the entrance and stood out in the open. By the time he located the shuttle’s trail, it was almost gone. “We’ve won?” he asked uncertainly.
That was enough to restart Doug’s mind. “We don’t know that. We don’t know anything. It could be Federation reinforcements coming in. It’s been long enough for that. Come on, let’s get back inside. It may even be a trick to make us expose ourselves.”
But before he followed Albert and Ash inside, Doug took another long look into the sky, his eyes following the fading contrail. It made a difference. No matter what the reason for this, they would have to expose themselves soon. They had to know what was going on.
But not before tomorrow night, Doug decided. We 11 see what tomorrow brings.
Part 4
12
The space in front of Admiral Truscott on the flag bridge of Sheffield contained a holographic projection of the battle developing in the lower orbit of the Federation troopship. The frigates raced toward the Federation ship. At the scale permitted by the flag bridge holo, the movement was painfully slow, and slowed even more as the computer constantly adjusted the scale to increase resolution. It was easy to tell the Federation ship from any Commonwealth vessel. Unlike the Commonwealth’s traditional sheafoftubes approach to starship construction, the Federation held to even older designs, independent modules—spheres and lozenges—linked by beams and connecting tubes.
Repulse was north of the Federation ship. Lancer was south. Both frigates were in a slightly higher orbit, so their weapons wouldn’t endanger each other. Even though it was a stern chase, they closed quickly.
The Federation ship had been keeping station over the settlements on Buchanan. Within minutes of sighting the Commonwealth frigates, the Federation ship went to maximum acceleration, reaching for additional altitude, trying to escape. The remaining Commonwealth ships stood in the way of that escape.
“It’s almost as if they don’t see us,” Prince William whispered.
“They see us,” Ian replied, unable to take his eyes from the display. “But as long as we’re farther off, we’re the lesser evil.”
“They’re looking for time to reach transit speed,” William said.
“If they can.” Ian glanced at a data screen. “If they use anything like our standards—our old standards—they’ve got a long way to go, and Lancer and Repulse should be launching their first strike any second now.”
Six new objects appeared in the display as each Commonwealth frigate launched three missiles. The missiles spread out as they crossed the gap.
“It’s a sevenminute run for the missiles,” a technician announced.
Beams of light reached out from the troopship toward the missiles as laser defenses locked on.
Antimissile missiles followed. Repulse and Lancer launched a second spread of missiles as the first reached the midpoint of their run. The troopship’s lasers had no effect on the hardened shells of the Commonwealth weapons, but five of the six were destroyed by the interceptor rockets, and the sixth was knocked too far off course to correct.
When the Federation ship launched intercepts toward the second flight of missiles, Repulse and Lancer launched another six missiles, than six more right behind them. The frigates’ particle beam cannons fired up to knock out interceptor missiles before they could do their job.
“The range is too extreme,” Truscott muttered to himself. “None of the beamers will do any good till you get closer.”
The frigates started launching attack missiles as quickly as they could fill the tubes, attempting to overload the enemy’s defenses.
“Damn waste of munitions,” Truscott muttered, louder than before. He reached for a complink, but it was only Sheffield’s captain he called.
“Mort, how long until our Spacehawks are in intercept range?”
“Won’t do us any good to launch for another thirty minutes, sir,” Hardesty replied. “Just a waste of fuel.
And if that Cutter class transits to Qspace, the birds will be a lot safer aboard.”
“One way or another, it looks like the Federation troops on Buchanan are going to have to fend for themselves,” Ian whispered to the prince. ‘ ‘Either we destroy their ship or it jumps out of the system.”
“I doubt the admiral views it so simply,” William replied.
For the n
ext half hour, they all watched the battle. Several times, Truscott recorded notes. The captains of Lancer and Repulse wouldn’t enjoy the admiral’s afteraction critique. The longer the engagement continued, the hotter Truscott became. The two frigates had fired a total of thirtythree missiles at the lone Federation ship before they scored their first hit, and that wasn’t nearly enough to disable it. The troopship was firing back at Lancer and Repulse by then. The confusion of offensive and defensive missiles, particle and light beams, became so thick that it was difficult to make sense of the battle simply by watching the holo display on Sheffield.
Then the Federation troopship made good its escape. There were no spectacular visual effects, the ship merely disappearing as it jumped to Qspace. Lancer and Repulse started maneuvering to give the site of the jump as wide a berth as possible, to minimize any effects of turbulence as normal spacetime flooded back into the volume displaced by the transit.
“Lost ‘em, damn it!” Truscott swore. “Let them get away.” He switched off the holo display with an impatient swipe of his hand. He turned away to stare at a bulkhead until he could control his emotions.
“Signal Lancer and Repulse to boost for a standard covering orbit above the rest of the fleet,” Truscott said a moment later. ” Khyber to a polar orbit for reconnaissance above and below.”
While the flag signals officer, Lieutenant Commander Estmann, relayed that order, Truscott keyed his link to Captain Hardesty. “Mort, take us down to where that troopship was, stationkeeping directly over the colony.” After Hardesty acknowledged, Truscott turned to Estmann again.
“Signal Victoria and Thames to take their positions from us, in line, east to west. Put Thames in the middle.”
Truscott stood and looked around the compartment. His face remained flushed. ‘ ‘We might as well stand down for now.” His voice was audibly cycling down from the tension of combat, and the frustration of seeing their quarry escape. “It’ll be hours before anything else happens. Get a meal and some sleep. Duty watches only. Ian, I’ll be in my cabin once I’ve had a word with Captain Hardesty.”
Ian scarcely had time to acknowledge before the admiral was off to his bridge.
“And that’s that,” Ian said, mostly to himself.
“That is not a happy admiral,” Prince William said, almost directly into Ian’s ear.
“It’s a good time to be out of his line of fire,” Ian agreed. “If Lancer and Repulse hadn’t wasted so many missiles, he’d probably have them running drills before supper.”
“I think I’ll kip out for a while,” William said, cutting off a yawn with a hand against his mouth. “You’ll give me a shout if anything interesting happens?”
“Anything interesting happens,” Ian replied drily, “and you’ll hear the horns the same time I do.”
“Quite,” William said, chuckling as he turned to leave. • • •
Ian stripped to his underwear before stretching out on his bunk. A fresh uniform was hanging on the rack over the foot of his bed. He lay on his back and folded his arms under his head. Several deep breaths helped to relax him and clear his mind. As soon as he closed his eyes, he was asleep. That was unusual.
And within minutes, his sleeping eyes were twitching. The inconclusive battle he had witnessed replayed itself in his dreams.
With differences.
The Cutter class troopship first destroyed Lancer and Repulse, needing only a single missile for each of the frigates. Then it accelerated directly toward Sheffield, unconcerned with the swarm of Spacehawks that danced around it and the subsequent fusillade of missiles and energy weapons from the battlecruiser.
When Sheffield exploded, Ian woke.
He felt his body shaking, felt sweat welling up all over. He sat up and swung his legs off of the bunk. For a moment, he sat there staring at nothing. Then he looked at the clock. Barely an hour had passed since he left the flag bridge. He turned and looked at his pillow. Sleep no longer seemed so urgent.
Ian got up and went into the bathroom for a shower, spending longer than usual under the pulsing water.
The heat and force of the spray relaxed him more than the short, disturbed sleep. By the time he turned off the water and dried himself, the nightmare had started to fade, as nightmares do. But he wasn’t ready to lie down and risk its return. Instead, he dressed and walked up to the flag wardroom.
More than half of the people who had been on the flag bridge during the battle were already in the wardroom, drinking coffee or tea, or just sitting there staring at whatever happened to be in front of them.
“Welcome to the club,” Prince William said. He raised a cup in toast, then took a sip. “I do hope this doesn’t become a habit.”
Admiral Truscott sat alone in the larger room of his day cabin, at the side of the flatscreen chart table.
Stasys had made himself comfortable hours earlier, after he chased Ian and the rest of his staff off to get some sleep. He had kicked off his shoes and donned old, comfortable slippers, taken off his uniform shirt and pulled on a threadbare robe that he had worn for twenty years—a favorite that he had refused to retire. His orderlies always learned quickly to make sure that the robe was cleaned regularly, and with some care.
A tea cart was close at hand. Stasys had a fresh, steaming cup of tea within easy reach. He hadn’t bothered to count how many cups he had drunk over the past eight or nine hours. The drinking was an almost autonomous reflex. His mind was elsewhere—twohundred miles below, on the surface of Buchanan, mostly, but ranging at need all of the way out to the boundaries of the solar system.
It had been a busy, and productive, workday. The fleet had been repositioned. Lancer and Repulse had been given a chance to dock with Thames to replenish expended stocks of munitions, then set to cover the fleet from likely incursion routes. The appearance of a Federation fleet so soon was unlikely, but the possibility couldn’t be ignored. The scout ship Khyber was also positioned as part of Truscott’s early warning system. Sheffield and Victoria were in low attack orbit, maintaining position under power, close enough to launch fighter and shuttle sorties against the surface. Thames was still in line between the two larger ships.
Truscott knew, almost up to the second, where every functioning battle helmet on the surface of Buchanan was. Although there was no way to intercept and decode the communications transmissions, the orbiting ships could detect those transmissions, locate the sources, and trace any movement. Those locations were plotted on the flatscreen on the admiral’s chart table. Each Federation helmet was a tiny blip of red light. When the helmet moved, the light blinked, the rate depending on the speed of movement. When the movement stopped, the light went back to steady.
The battle orders had been written. Stasys had worked with a light pen on a complink slate, scratching out his drafts and editing the printed versions the complink returned. The final orders were awaiting only the transmit sequence: orders for each of the ship captains, the fighter wing commander, and the commanding officer of the Second Regiment of Royal Marines.
Stasys leaned back and stretched. He was finally tired, but it was a pleasant exhaustion, coming from work he knew was as good as he could make it. He got up and paced around the table, making two complete circuits before he reached for the controls on the table, and pressed the XMIT and CONFIRM buttons at the top of the screen.
“Done.” But only the beginning. Truscott went out to the flag bridge. There were only three people on watch: the duty officer, a communications technician, and an orderly.
“Orders for the day have been posted and transmitted, Lieutenant Halverdi,” Truscott told the duty officer. “I’m going to bed. Leave word to have your replacement wake me at 0430. I’ll be in my day cabin.”
“Aye, sir, 0430 hours,” the lieutenant replied. “Will there be anything else?”
Truscott smiled. “I don’t think so, not tonight. The excitement doesn’t start until morning.”
13
Reveille was at 0300 hours in the
troop holds of HMS Victoria.
David Spencer had lined up all of his gear the night before, gone over every item to make certain that it was serviceable. Waking, he slipped into his field skin and was putting clothing on over that before the field skin had settled itself against his own. A field skin was a living organism, designed in the nanotech labs. It provided insulation, helped to recirculate moisture, and added a small measure of help in case of injury. David put his mind completely into the task at hand. With three other sergeants in the room hurrying to get dressed at the same time, concentration was essential. There was little talking, except for local traffic control as everyone moved through to the head.
Mess call sounded. David was the first in his room ready, but the sergeants’ mess was already crowded when he arrived. In addition to the other sergeants who were coming in, many of the regiment’s officers were present. Sergeant Major Dockery was at the entrance, repeating the same line every time a new batch of noncoms arrived. “Get your food and take your seats. We get our briefing while we eat.”
It wasn’t until he heard that announcement that David realized that the mess call had been different: “All sergeants will report to their mess.” You must have been halfasleep yet, David told himself. You shouldn’t miss clues like that.
The mess hall filled quickly. No more than four minutes after David’s entrance, it appeared that everyone had arrived. Many of the sergeants were still in the serving line when Colonel Laplace stood and started talking.
“Those of us who are going down in the first assault waves will man the landing boats in fifty minutes,” he started. “Second and Third Battalions will be the primary strike force, landing on the flatlands west of the settlements on Buchanan, striking in from northwest and southwest, linking just before you reach the spaceport. At the same time, First Battalion and C Company of Engineering Battalion will land east of the settlements, across the river, to cut off escape routes for the Federation soldiers. The engineers will be on hand in case a bridging operation becomes necessary. The river isn’t particularly deep, but it’s too much for a man in battle kit to walk across with his head above water, and the bottom is too soft for wading, so air tanks are also out. Fourth and Special Weapons Battalions will be held in reserve.
