“We can’t distract Walkingstick if we’re dead.”
14
Aswiri System
12:00 September 7, 2737 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
Alliance Forty-First Fleet
EMERGENCE BUBBLES GLITTERED in the darkness, the blue flare of Cherenkov radiation bursts lighting up the void around the star Aswiri. Starship after starship emerged from the nothingness, ten capital ships forming a protective dome around three logistics ships.
The first ship out had, of course, been Elysium, and Vice Commodore Michelle Williams-Alvarez’s starfighter had been in space before half of Forty-First Fleet’s capital ships had entered the star system. Her starfighters and bombers mirrored the formation of the fleet, the single wing of Vultures guarded by a moving shield of Falcons.
Her starfighters were out in front, but Avalon’s group was only a few thousand kilometers behind her, and the rest of the Fleet’s fighters joined up rapidly, the lead wings keeping their acceleration down until the entire massed fist of Alliance ships had assembled.
“Are we seeing any reaction from the locals yet?” Michelle asked her gunner, an aggressively average-appearing man named Ferdi Eklund.
“Our Q-probes are barely a dozen light-seconds ahead of us,” he pointed out. “We’re still seeing what they were doing two minutes ago.”
“And we arrived ten minutes ago now, so…”
Eklund coughed.
“And if they had seen us two minutes ago, they hadn’t done anything to suggest it,” he told her. “Nobody is doing anything in orbit.”
She shook her head and dipped into the long-range sensor feed. She wasn’t surprised to confirm what Eklund had said, but she’d needed to see it herself.
Six Commonwealth Scythe-class gunships, half-million ton mobile missile platforms with…few saving graces. Two Zion-class starfighter platforms, each rated for five ten-ship squadrons. A single one of those squadrons flying a standard high guard patrol above the planet Indus.
The Aswiri System definitely had potential. A good-sized asteroid belt. A pair of midsized gas giants. An inhabitable planet. The colonists had been sensible and kept most industry in orbit while slowly expanding the population on the surface.
It wasn’t a rich system, but it was clearly self-sustaining and had been carefully laying the groundwork for staying self-sustaining while becoming rich.
Michelle felt a twinge of guilt. Much of that groundwork was in the orbital infrastructure they were here to destroy.
It wasn’t much of a twinge of guilt. Spacers and resources from this world fueled the war machine that was grinding down her own people and had smashed half a dozen systems’ key orbital infrastructure.
It was war—and turnabout was fair play.
“All right, people, we’ve got three sets of targets on the board and only one is armed,” Vice-Commodore Robert Lakatos’s voice echoed over the tactical net. Avalon’s CAG was the senior starfighter officer in the fleet, which made him Fleet CAG. Thankfully, he was usually willing to listen to advice from his juniors.
“SFG-306, SFG-059,” he reeled off, naming the fighter groups from Carolus Rex and Genghis Khan. Those groups were purely starfighters with no bombers.
“Each of you gets a gas giant’s infrastructure,” Lakatos told them. “You know the drill: they have forty-eight hours to evacuate all non-residential platforms, then you blow them to hell. They probably have starfighters in place to guard them, but you’ll have them outnumbered by far.
“Play it safe. I’d rather none of us were writing letters home when this is over, clear?”
Over a hundred and forty starfighters split off from the main group, two groups of seventy-two heading towards each gas giant and its orbiting cloudscoops.
“Everyone else,” he continued. “Form on SFG-012. Williams, you launched first; you get to go first.”
She grinned.
“Bombers lead the way, sir,” she told him crisply.
“Exactly. The Admiral wants to make this a show. Let’s give them one—and get everyone home!”
“STILL NO RESPONSE FROM THE LOCALS?” Kyle asked.
“Nothing,” Sterling confirmed.
That was…weird. Intelligence records suggested that Aswiri saw maybe three interstellar transports in a month. Thirteen starships showing up on their sensors should have earned some reaction.
But he could see the same thing his chief of staff could. Forty-First Fleet was accelerating toward the planet at two hundred and ten gravities, and their starfighter strikes were zipping along at just over five hundred gravities.
The energy flare from over a thousand antimatter drives was probably visible from the ground, but no one was reacting at all. The gunships remained in orbit. The fighter platforms remained quiet.
“We’re in bloody missile range,” Sterling complained. “What would they do if we started launching?”
“Take a nap and decide what to do with the missiles in half an hour or so?” Kyle suggested with a chuckle. “Even our missiles have a forty-two-minute flight time; they’ve got a lot of time to respond to us, but…”
“If I had a hundred starfighters and six twenty-year-old gunships to defend a system, I’d be freaking out at even one warship, let alone ten,” Captain Novak interjected. “What’s the plan, sir?”
“Well, I was expecting them to give me a call by now,” he replied. “But someone has to get the ball rolling. We don’t really have the time to be subtle, so get me an omnidirectional broadcast.”
“On it,” Sterling confirmed. “Recording linked to your implant; you have the call.”
Kyle smiled broadly, looked into the pickup, and activated the recorder.
“Residents and defenders of the Aswiri System,” he greeted them. “I am Vice Admiral Kyle Roberts of the Alliance of Free Stars.
“We could pretend that your handful of defenders were going to make a difference here, but that would be a waste of everyone’s time. I am now in possession of your star system. The destruction of the Commonwealth forces here is inevitable, and I strongly recommend their surrender.
“Regardless of whether they choose to fight an impossible battle, my clock starts now. You have forty-eight hours to evacuate all spaceborne industrial platforms, after which they will be destroyed by long-range lance and missile fire.
“Designated residential stations will be spared, but that designation will be validated by close-range inspection by my starfighter wings. You will provide me with that list of designated stations within twenty-four hours or we will make our own list.”
He suspected—he hoped—that his broad, cheerful grin was unnerving to the civilians watching him.
“I have no desire to inflict unnecessary casualties, but the war has come to this star system, and I will not be leaving this system with your orbital industry intact.
“I will have your list of designated residential stations in twenty-four hours and you will have evacuated all industrial stations in forty-eight,” he concluded. “If these instructions are not followed, those stations will still be destroyed at that time.
“I request the surrender of your military forces and a clear communication of your intention to cooperate from the system government. Failures of communication at this point will only result in unnecessary death.”
He cut the recorder.
“Send it,” he ordered. “Let’s see if they’re going to be sensible or stupid.”
“If they don’t evacuate the stations…” Sterling half-whispered.
“That’s why it was an omnidirectional transmission,” Kyle told the junior officer. “Even if the government decides to be stupid, most of the civilians will evacuate themselves.”
“And those that don’t?”
Kyle grimaced.
“Will haunt my conscience for a very long time,” he replied.
“OH, hey, look, someone finally stopped hitting snooze.”
Vice Commodore Lakatos probably shouldn’t have made
his comment on the all-ships channel, but Michelle couldn’t blame him. They’d been closing with the planet for over thirty minutes, rapidly approaching the point where they’d start decelerating to make sure they didn’t blow past the rock at seven or eight percent of lightspeed, and the locals hadn’t even launched the other nine squadrons in the Zions.
“What have we got, Eklund?” she asked, running the data herself.
“I make it six squadrons, all Scimitars,” her gunner replied. “One Zion launched three squadrons, the other two. They’re forming up with the squadron that was already in orbit and the gunships.”
Six squadrons. They were Commonwealth squadrons, not Federation, so that was sixty ships, but still…the approaching attack force had more than twice as many bombers as the defenders had starfighters in total.
“Any sign they’re hiding a Sunday punch somewhere?” she asked. “That’s pretty sparse, even for what we were expecting.”
“I’d guess the extra squadrons are at the cloudscoops,” Eklund told her. “So, the battlecruiser wings will hit them, but…”
“Four squadrons of Scimitars versus seventy Falcons is not a battle I need to watch to know how it will end,” Michelle said grimly. Unless the older fighters had been issued new missiles, the Alliance force even had a range advantage on them.
She pinged Lakatos.
“Boss, do we ask them to surrender?” she asked quietly. “Hell, permission to beg them to surrender?”
“I’m going to ask,” Lakatos replied, but his voice was grim. “But would we, in their place?”
Michelle sighed.
“No. It’s a damned waste, though.”
“It is,” he agreed. “Watch your vectors, Williams. You’re in first and I want them gone before they can threaten you. If they surrender, fine. Otherwise…” The sensation of a pained shrug came over the link.
“We’ll launch torpedoes at maximum range and blow them to hell,” he concluded. “I’ll give them the chance to surrender or abandon ship, but I am not losing people today. Not against this opposition.”
“Understood.”
Michelle turned her attention back to her people, tracing all of their vectors and adjusting them, sending the new courses out to her people on the fly. She had almost two hundred Falcons forming the lead wave of the strike, and if every bomber behind them launched, that was going to be a lot of torpedoes for her people to stay out of the way of.
“Fleet CAG is on,” Eklund murmured, and Michelle picked up the Vice Commodore’s broadcast.
“Gunships and starfighters of the Terran Commonwealth, that you are even coming out to meet me suggests that you are either brave or suicidal,” he said gently. “You are outgunned, outranged, outnumbered and outmatched.
“Bravery is not enough. Your deaths will change nothing. Surrender or be destroyed.”
Seconds ticked by. Minutes. The range was dropping by thousands of kilometers every second, even as the Alliance strike hit turnover and began to deaccelerate.
Michelle checked the numbers. No choices left, but she didn’t blame Lakatos for hesitating.
“All bomber squadrons,” his voice sounded on the tactical channel heavily. “Select your targets and launch torpedoes. I want a full sweep, people. Every gunship, every starfighter, both defense stations.
“These poor bastards have decided to die for their country. Let’s make it happen.”
THE CONTINUING SILENCE from the planet and defenders was nerve-wracking. The only good news, such as it was, was that many of the civilian platforms clearly had received his message and were starting to evacuate under their own authority.
Even an only moderately prosperous system like Aswiri, however, had hundreds of civilian ships and platforms. With the best intentions and hope, it would take someone coordinating affairs to empty them all inside two days.
“Lakatos has opened fire,” Sterling murmured. “Torpedoes at just under maximum range.” The chief of staff shook his head. “They held some back, but they just threw eight hundred torps at sixty starfighters, six gunships and two defense platforms.”
“I can do the math,” Kyle agreed. “Hopefully, once they’ve made us kill a thousand-odd people, they’ll find the nerve to actually talk to me.”
The result of the torpedo salvo was basically inevitable. The defenders didn’t have the firepower, the numbers, or the skill to survive Forty-First Fleet’s opening salvo, and Kyle stayed iron-faced as the explosions played out.
“Orbit is clear,” Sterling reported when it was over. “There’s more a few escape pods out there, though. Some of them decided not to die for nothing.”
“Good,” Kyle said levelly. “Send out our search-and-rescue craft. Any of them with the brains to ditch before we blew them away deserves a ride to the surface.” He paused, considering.
“Pass a course-change order to the Fleet,” he told Senior Fleet Commander Zartosht Aurangzeb, his operations officer.
“We will adjust our zero-velocity point to be at least one million kilometers clear of the main orbital zone,” he ordered. “We can hit anything we need to from there, and it should help keep them honest.”
“Understood,” Aurangzeb replied briskly, the darkly tanned man pulling up his own systems as he linked to the Captains.
“Do we have any response from the surface?” Kyle asked.
“Negative,” Sterling told him. “What do we do?”
“We know where the capital is?”
“Yes, sir. Gubernatorial mansion, even,” his chief of staff told him.
“Hit it with a directional radio beam. I want to melt their cursed receivers if they don’t listen,” Kyle snapped. “One more recording.”
He activated the recorders and leaned back in his chair, leveling his hardest glare on the pickup as his implant fed him the information he needed on Governor Soslan Terry.
“Governor Terry,” Kyle said grimly into the camera. “Your defenders are dead. My patience is rapidly disintegrating. Every hour—every minute—you play games rather than working to evacuate your orbital industry and providing me with the designated safe-zone stations places your citizens at greater and greater risk.
“Enough people have died today for the honor of the flag, but make no mistake: I will complete my mission.”
Once again, he cut the recording and fired it into space. This time, the radio transmission was a focused pulse, cutting through Indus’s atmosphere to bathe Terry’s mansion in a wash of coherent radiation.
Radio receivers were getting Kyle’s message and burning out. A focused tightbeam from Elysium’s main comms array was only an order of magnitude short of a weapons-grade maser.
Kyle waited.
“Incoming transmission!” Sterling snapped. “Relayed via a q-com-enabled satellite, he’s trying to hide his location.
“Clever boy,” Kyle said. “Play it.”
The image of a squat man with dark hair and broad, frog-like features appeared in the screen, Soslan Terry turning a black gaze on his own cameras.
“I don’t know who you are or what you’re playing at,” he snapped. “But this is a Commonwealth world! Run while you still breathe. You can’t touch us! We are Terran!”
Kyle waited.
“That’s it?” he asked.
“That’s it.”
“Moron.” Kyle considered the frozen image. “How close is that satellite?”
“Not enough for a real-time conversation, but it’ll cut about five seconds off the transmission time,” Aurangzeb reported.
“Target it. A bit more gently than we hit the mansion,” Kyle said. “The governor wants to bluster? Then let’s chat.”
He activated the recording pickup again, letting his anger fuel the broadest grin he could summon.
“Governor Soslan Terry, what a pleasure to actually be speaking to the man in charge,” he greeted Terry. “You seem to be under some misunderstanding of the situation, however.
“The Commonwealth has invaded the
worlds of the Alliance of Free Stars. I know that might seem minor to such an important Terran man as yourself, but it does mean that we are at war with the Commonwealth.” Even as Kyle maintained his cheery grin, he let his voice get cold.
“Under the rules of war, I am expected to give you forty-eight hours to evacuate your civilian industrial infrastructure. I have done so. While, technically, what you do with that notice is up to you, I have no intention of standing by and allowing you to get your people killed.
“If you, Governor, have not begun coordinating the evacuation process in the next twelve hours, I will localize whatever bunker you are hiding in and vaporize it from orbit,” Kyle told Terry. “Hopefully, your successor will be more cognizant of the realities of your situation.”
His flag bridge was silent as he looked around at his people.
“Send it,” he ordered. “And find me the Governor’s hole, people. I don’t want to kill more people than I have to, but it seems Governor Terry might well volunteer for that list!”
THIS TIME, the response was relatively prompt.
“You’re insane,” Terry told them without preamble. “You can’t do this to a Commonwealth world! I am the elected Governor of a quarter-billion Commonwealth citizens; I will not be intimidated by a two-bit colonial thug with delusions of grandeur.
“No one will be evacuating anything. The Navy will be here shortly and you will see the folly of your actions!”
Kyle considered the message for several long minutes, then sighed.
“Senior Fleet Commander Aurangzeb, can we still trace him if we blow up his relay?”
“Yes, sir,” his ops officer said briskly. “Their security sucks. We should have his bunker nailed down in ten, fifteen minutes. Don’t need the relay anymore.”
Operation Medusa (Castle Federation Book 6) Page 10
