Storm Force: Book Three of the Last Legion Series

by Chris Bunch

  Stiofan saluted smartly, and Angara returned it.

  “If we still had a band,” he said, far less formally, “it should be playing. And this ceremony should be done on the parade ground, with the entire Force as witness. But these are parlous times. Perhaps later …” His voice trailed away.

  “Thank you, sir,” Maev said.

  Angara studied her carefully, then nodded.

  “Dismissed.”

  He and Hedley about-faced, and left the briefing room.

  “You may kiss the Aspirant,” Jaansma said.

  Njangu obeyed.

  Maev pulled back after a minute or so.

  “I’m not committing any breach of etiquette or regulations, am I, by kissing this officer? I mean, nobody told me just what I’m going to be doing, where I’ll fall in the Table of Organization, and I’m not sure — ”

  “You’re not in any sort of violation,” Njangu said, grinning. “And I’ve saved your new job for last. You’re going to be one of Caud Angara’s personal bodyguards.”

  “Allah’s claws,” Maev said, astonished. “No wonder he gave me that weird look, me being one of the Protector’s Own, once. How’s he know I’m not under some kind of deep conditioning to rip his throat out the first chance I got?”

  “He knows,” Garvin said. “Where do you think the last Second-Day went?”

  Maev thought, blinked, realized she really was missing a day.

  “You were colder than a flash-frozen fish,” Garvin went on. “Every security tech in II Section was up to his elbows in your soul, making sure you weren’t anything other than what you say you are.”

  “Oh,” Stiofan said in a small voice. “I’m not sure I like that.”

  “I don’t either,” Njangu said. “I remember when … never mind.”

  “At least,” Garvin said, “it’ll never happen again. And whatever the techs came up with was destroyed, after they analyzed it.”

  “Did you scan it?” Maev asked Njangu.

  “Only the dirty parts.”

  “You’d better be lying,” she said, just a touch grimly. “Or there won’t be any more dirty parts for you, buster, not ever.”

  Njangu looked at Garvin.

  “You see why I love her?”

  Maev looked very surprised, as did Garvin. He was the only one who’d caught the momentary hesitation before Yoshitaro said “love.”

  • • •

  The wolfpacks went out again, and again, savaging the convoys from Kura. Then pickings grew leaner, as the Larissan convoys assembled just out of Kura’s atmosphere, then jumped to new, unknown nav points.

  Sometimes, but not often, the packs could follow them and attack. Once again, the Larissans learned from loss. The question now was which side would come up with a new tactic?

  • • •

  “The problem, Doctor,” Ho Kang said earnestly, “isn’t with the wolfpacks themselves. We seem to have that system working very well, and improving it with every mission.

  “It’s finding the convoys, once they make that first jump. We can’t track them too closely or with too big a starship on initial takeoff, because if we’re detected, they abort and return to Kura.

  “When we use a smaller ship, an aksai, it gets ambushed a lot of the time.”

  “Let me show you,” Danfin Froude said smugly, “Stage Two of the wolfpack/convoy situation, to solve your problem, which I was already well aware of. That is why I asked you to drop by.”

  He slid open the door. Two identical globes, each about two meters in diameter, were on stands in the otherwise bare conference room.

  “Call this one … oh, Ohnce, and this other one Bohnce,” he said. “Those were, by the way, two stuffed animals I had when I was a boy. I suppose I wasn’t very imaginative.

  “Ohnce and Bohnce both have small hyperdrives. Essentially, they’re small, fairly sophisticated robot trackers. They can be planted in either normal or hyperspace. Initially, we’ll most likely use normal space deployments. When an unfamiliar — i.e., Kuran — convoy is detected, the drives on both robots are activated. When those Kurans enter hyperspace, the first will jump with them. After a moment, the second sphere does the same. The first sphere exits hyperspace when the convoy does, signaling to the second. Thus, we have established the second nav point the Kurans are using. Hopefully they use no more than two or three, for these have just enough power to do their little tricks twice.

  “If the Kurans are being very clever, and making several jumps, it should be a simple matter to plant another set of these — call them spy-spheres if you wish — in normal space at the second nav point. Then that set will follow the Larissans to the third, and so forth.

  “Of course, each satellite can be keyed to report to you, as well as to its brother.”

  “That is clever,” Ho Kang said.

  “I rather thought so,” Froude said. “We’ll have the first production units ready for issue in the next few weeks. And there are further nasties yet to come.”

  “So we have reason to celebrate,” Ho said. “At least for the moment.”

  “Uh,” and the scientist looked slightly nervous, “yes. We do. Uh, would you care to help me celebrate our cleverness over dinner?”

  Kang took off her old-fashioned glasses, looked at Froude in surprise, then smiled.

  “Why … yes. I think I would.”

  Kura/Off Kura Three

  The convoy was only five merchant ships, with three destroyers as escort. The wolfpack had been waiting in real space, waiting, its control officer having studied the situation and realized the Larissans used the old nav points one convoy in three.

  There were one Kane, four velv, two Kellys in the pack.

  “Charner One, Two, Six, point three, Y-two-three-four-eight-nine-eight, Three, Four, Five, remain in normal space, attack inward flank.”

  The ships attacked, and the controller watched as first one, then a second Larissan destroyer was destroyed. She was about to give the order to savage the merchant ships when a technician below her hit an emergency sensor, and the controller saw a new blip on-screen.

  She cut to the tech’s frequency.

  “Unknown ship, no details, no Jane’s, entered real space three-point-nine-nine seconds ago,” the tech droned. “Dopplering … estimate speed and dimensions to you. Two escorts accompanying unknown ship.”

  The controller’s eyes widened as she saw the size of the new ship as it arced toward the battle. It was unbelievably huge, twice the size of any Larissan ship her Jane’s held, almost the size of some of the old Confederation warships she’d read about.

  “We have five missile launches from this unknown ship,” an electronics officer said. “All aimed at this ship. Five spoofers launched, no effect. Making counterlaunch.”

  The Kane’s antimissile battery tracked the incoming missiles, blew up four of them. The fifth exploded close in, and circuits in the war room flashed into black, then secondaries recovered.

  “All Charner elements,” the controller began, realizing the battle was lost, then a pulse swept all frequencies, and she lost contact with her ships.

  The ECM was enough to alert the attacking Cumbrians, though, and they broke contact with the Larissans and went for hyperspace, even as missiles from the great ship exploded around them.

  The two Kellys and one velv, against all orders, stayed in normal space, and counterlaunched. Their first strike was destroyed, and a second made as the lighter ships attacked the huge Larissan vessel.

  One missile blew up close to the monstrous new ship, and very suddenly it, and its two escorts, disappeared.

  “Son of a bitch,” a Kelly’s CO marveled into his com, realizing he was still alive. “He ran out on us.”

  “Must’ve been a mistake, Charner Five,” the CO of the velv said. “His, not ours. You want to give me a hand with these freighters and that other destroyer? It’s just lying there, leaking.”

  “Backing you, Two. I guess we’re living right.”
/>   The three Cumbrian ships went after the scattering Larissans.

  The first of the kilometer-long Naarohn-class battle cruisers that Redruth had dreamed of was a reality.

  But no one with the Force could understand why the cruiser had retreated, with victory clear in its sights.

  Cumbre/D-Cumbre

  “Thank you for dinner,” Ho Kang said. She and Danfin Froude were outside her quarters, a small apartment in a BOQ block.

  “Certainly my pleasure,” Froude said. “It was nice to not have to talk just about science, which is what usually happens when I dine with my colleagues. An old widower like myself loses his social graces fairly easily.”

  “You could have talked more,” Ho said. “Better that than the usual barracks chat. I just realized I haven’t said anything obscene since we went out.”

  “Yes, well …” Danfin Froude looked around. “It’s a very nice night, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “If I weren’t three times your age,” he said wistfully, “I’d feel like kissing you.”

  “You’re only two-point-seven-four times that,” Ho said. “And I wouldn’t mind at all.”

  She slid her glasses into her uniform pocket, then leaned forward. After a time, her arms went around his, and the kiss went on.

  When it finished, Kang found herself breathing a little hard.

  “Would you,” and her voice was a little throaty, “like to come in?”

  Danfin Froude smiled. “I would, Ho. I would very much.”

  • • •

  The huge cruiser appeared again as Cumbre attacked another convoy. This time, it appeared bolder, and drove the raiders off, with a loss of one Kelly, one velv.

  A week later, another convoy attack was broken, and this time there were two of the great ships.

  • • •

  Perhaps there was something in the air.

  Haut Jon Hedley sat, nursing a drink in the Shelburne’s main lounge, watching the dancers in a not unpleasant melancholy and tapping a foot to the band.

  A woman approached him. He admired her, graceful in a sleek, simple gown that iridesced slightly from purple to black at irregular intervals, with an occasional star-flash here and there. A Rentier’s wife … no, not old enough, not hard-looking enough, more likely his daughter. Or mistress. Now why don’t I ever get lucky and …

  The woman stopped at his table, and he recognized her, stood hastily.

  “Dr. Heiser!”

  “Haut Hedley,” the physicist, cohead of the Force’s Scientific Analysis Section, said. “May I join you?”

  “Of course, of course. What are you drinking?”

  “I’m not,” she said. “I came here to dance.”

  “Oh,” Hedley said.

  “Which is why I came over. It’s difficult when you’re as tall as I am, finding someone the proper height to trip the light whatever with.”

  “Actually,” Hedley said, “I suppose being tall … at an early age … is why I never learned to dance. My coordination took a few years to catch up to my body.”

  “You don’t know how to dance … Jon?”

  Hedley shook his head.

  “Then,” Heiser said firmly, “it’s time you learned.”

  Hedley blinked, then a slow smile came as he stood and held out a hand.

  “Maybe it is, Ann. Maybe it is.”

  • • •

  “When I was a wee tot,” Njangu said thoughtfully, “my mother gave me a present. That didn’t happen very much. Like never. Very expensive it was, and now I don’t want to think about where she got the credits to pay for it.”

  Garvin listened carefully. It was very seldom Yoshitaro said anything about his family.

  “It was a little spaceship, and when you touched little sensors, it would make a drive whine, and landing lights would go on, and a little voice would say ‘preparing for takeoff,’ or landing, or whatever.

  “I loved it a lot,” he said. “Which is why I was afraid to take it outside and let the other kids play with it, or even show it to them, for fear somebody bigger’d take it away from me.”

  He stared out the window, across the parade ground on Chance Island at Leggett.

  “So?”

  “Protector Redruth’s got a brand-new couple of toys, doesn’t he?” Yoshitaro said.

  “Oh. That’s why he’s so damned cautious with those cruisers. Afraid to use them, for fear they’ll get blown apart.”

  “Maybe.”

  “That’s worth developing a scenario, isn’t it, to maybe confirm our buddy Redruth in his caution?”

  “Maybe.”

  “By the way,” Garvin said. “Whatever happened to your little spaceship?”

  “My father came home drunk and stepped on it.”

  Njangu’s voice was flat, as if it didn’t matter.

  Larix/Off Larix Prime

  Now this is real remote control, Ben Dill thought. He hung, in an aksai anodized and given special fittings and ECM capabilities not to reflect much of anything, from normal light to radar to any other detection device — or so the Force scientists thought — about one AU off Larix Prime.

  Farther off the planet was his controlling velv, which hopefully wouldn’t be found out by Larissan detectors.

  Puppet strings from Cumbre to the velv, from the velv to me, from me to …

  Dill’s normal control helmet was in a niche beside him. He wore a larger, fatter headpiece that completely covered his eyes, and held a small box, with a single control stick with a small wheel atop it. And he wasn’t seeing the space around him, but rather the surface of Larix Prime, rushing toward him.

  Far below, a tiny reconnaissance drone dived into the planet’s atmosphere, over one of its small seas.

  Dill flew the drone through the control box, and saw what it saw, through a realtime camera in the drone’s nose.

  Alarm lights bloomed, faded on either side of his vision as the drone closed on land.

  Dill was muttering mightily: “No, you don’t see me, right, keep on sweeping, you moron goddamned early-warning point, prob’ly thinking about somebody you want to boff, right, maybe there’s something up there in the sky way over the next continent, go look for it, and forget about me … awright, now we’re closing, bring this puppy back level, come on you, don’t tumble on me, there we go, now down, down, don’t eat a tree, Dill, they aren’t good for you … over the beach now …”

  The drone shot inland, on a semiprogrammed course. Ahead was a large military complex which might have interesting things to tell the Force. If the drone succeeded in transmitting data, unlike the last five that’d been tried on other parts of Larix Prime.

  The Force still lacked an enormous amount of intel on Larix Prime, but Larissan antiaircraft crews were entirely too proficient and alert.

  Dill swore the problem was that the drones were piloted by technicians sitting comfortably on a velv, and a real pilot ought to be given a chance, from as close as he dared get, to make sure he had the proper feel.

  He was given that chance, as were Alikhan and Jacqueline Boursier. The three were attempting simultaneous penetrations, on the theory if one was spotted, the ensuing hue and cry might make life easier for the other two. Or, Dill thought cynically, a great deal harder if all the goddamned skywatchers quit daydreaming and started paying attention to business.

  He slowed the drone to just above stall speed, saw treetops reel past just below him, saw a housing district and banked to avoid it, as other alarm lights flashed.

  “So far, so good … and Mama’s favorite Benjamin is under their goddamned screen … ho-ho, and here we come up on that thingie what we hope’s a base, and punt it up a few meters so we get good coverage and start the recorders and make Big Daddy happy …”

  The drone went to full power, and images flashed … open land … perimeter fence … a swept, bare death zone … another fence … guard tower … rows of barracks … a landing field over there … maybe a parade ground … goddam
ned construction equipment, almost bagged that crane … high-stacked steel plate … industrial building … a rolling mill? … hell if I know … high, closed hangars.

  “Now we have it, now we have it … look at that, hangar door wide-open, and look at that goddamned prime mover with a frigging cruiser on its back, how many frigging rows of tracks … biggest goddamned thing I’ve ever seen on ground … whup, almost ate that hangar, two, four other building ways, no ships on them, camo cover, easy to see from down here, and holy kee-ripes!”

  Smoke blossomed close to the drone, and Dill banked hard, went even lower.

  “Shoot at me now, you silly bastards, bet your goddamned launchers don’t depress that far, and we’re coming on to another shipyard, or maybe finishing yard and …”

  And the screen flashed to black. Ben had only a millisecond to see something very big loom as the drone smashed into something … another crane, a ship, who the hell knew, hope it was expensive.

  “Aw crap,” Dill moaned. “Everybody’s gonna break my balls because Ben went and rammed something instead of paying attention like he should’ve been doing.”

  But no one did. Alikhan’s drone had been shot out of the sky on entry. Boursier’s had returned, but the industrial area she’d investigated had nothing at all happening of interest.

  “Think we could get away with that again?” Dill wondered.

  “Why not?” Boursier said. She was a very thin, very intense brunette who, as far as anyone knew, had no life beyond the cockpit.

  “We certainly should try again,” Alikhan agreed. “There are another six drones in the hold of this velv.”

  The watch officer came in, holding a com printout.

  “You glory hounds can sack out if you want. We’ve been recalled.”

  “Why?”

  The officer shrugged.

  “You three are required for some sort of special mission. They don’t tell us common flyboys anything, you know that.”

  Cumbre/D-Cumbre

  Garvin finished briefing the I&R troops who’d volunteered to beef up the crews on the half dozen destroyers in his plan’s forward element. There’d been some debate as to how much anyone beyond command staff should be told. Hedley’d argued that, if things went wrong, as they could quite easily, everyone should know “everything about our flipping cleverness while they’re turning into vacuum-packed corpses.”