by John Carr
Navigation did begin counting down the last seconds to the Alderson Point, pausing at ten seconds with, “Engage Alderson Drives,” and finishing at “zero” with “Jump.”
The Fomoria winked out of normal space. The Damaris followed behind.
Nine
The result of the last Imperial reinforcements to arrive at Tanith station was summed up by the Fleet commander in one word - “Murder.”
Imperial Navy Command had received word from the surviving Chinthe of the original Tanith patrol, dispatched by Adderly on their suicidal run for help. For once, the Naval Staff had acted boldly and seized the opportunity, stripping ships from every available operation and redeploying them to Tanith with one goal in mind - the destruction of the Sauron Second Fleet.
Upon finding the Sauron First Fleet waiting for them as well, the battle became, as Diettinger had anticipated, one of extermination.
Ship after ship of the Saurons died, their commanders unable or unwilling to believe that the losses the Imperials were suffering would not eventually force them to break-off.
None did. By the end of the fifth day, casualty rates were equivalent to a meat grinder, including actions in such close quarters as to be comparable to ramming. By the end of the third week, the Imperials controlled Tanith’s orbital space.
Not to say the Imperials didn’t suffer horrendous losses - they did. More than half the ships of the flotilla were either destroyed outright or so badly maimed as to not be worth salvaging. But, the Imperials had always had more ships, and now they were throwing them into the fray with abandon. A tactic the outnumbered Saurons would not emulate, even if they could.
The Saurons occupying Tanith spaceport were dealt with in summary fashion; the spaceport was obliterated. A nearby city complex which the Saurons had captured after landing was officially designated “unsalvageable” and likewise erased from the face of the planet. No demands for or offers of surrender were issued by either side.
Adderly watched all of this, participated in some of it, understood little and could justify less.
By the end of the twentieth day, the remnants of a mighty Unified Fleet, reduced to less than thirty ships, broke for the nearest Alderson Point to escape. Less than a handful made it.
Adderly had been part of that, too, as he had stood on the bridge of the King George V, engines at last reduced to a merciful one-point-five-Gs of thrust. They had tried to go to standard gravity, only to find the crew overcompensating and bumping into things. More tools were broken, and more bones, at one-G than during the last week of living between three-and four-Gs. Adderly had watched the ruined hulks fight their way to the Alderson Point, some making it, most not.
Adderly had canceled the final attack, seconds before the last Sauron had Jumped, but he could not say why, only that he had been unable to give the order to shoot.
And therein lies a tale, he thought, waiting outside the offices of the Board of Inquiry. He’d been waiting an hour when a young officer came out to collect him, accompanied by two Imperial Marines. The officer looked as if he had eaten something bad. The Marines just looked like Marines.
“Captain Adderly, I’m Commander Jackson Harold. It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir.”
Adderly shook his head.”You might regret saying that.”
Harold shook his head. “I doubt that, Captain.” He looked over his shoulder, back toward the doors of the office where the Board sat. “I always enjoy meeting a fine officer as opposed to a scoundrel in uniform. And if I was ever confused as to the difference, today it was clarified.”
Adderly looked at Harold for a moment. “Commander Harold, you look like a man with something unpleasant to say. I wonder if we should be heading somewhere while you say it.”
Harold attempted a smile of his own; it almost worked. “Let’s cross the grounds, shall we? Marines.”
The sky of Tanith was characteristically orange, overcast, sullen and hot. Their tunics clung to their backs within ten paces, but it was air, by God, and Adderly allowed that he had never tasted anything so sweet.
Commander Harold walked slowly.”It’s all falling apart, you know.”
“Yes,” Adderly said.”The Sauron Fleets are wrecked; the next move will be against their home world. No more battles at the fringes. This one will be for the war. And after that...” He shrugged.”The Coalition of Secession can’t hold up without the Saurons for backbone. Their Unified State, their Trade Bloc, none of it will last...” Harold was staring at him. “What’s wrong?”
“I was speaking of the Empire, Captain Adderly. Ours.”
Adderly took a deep breath. “Ah, yes. I guess I knew that, too.” But he wondered. Had he known? Or, more to the point, wouldn’t he have been far happier not knowing?
“You’re right about the Saurons, of course,” Harold went on. “But it won’t end with them. The Out-Rim raiders have been pushing, any place we’ve ignored or stripped of troops or ships to deal with the Saurons.”
“The Coalition of Secession is doomed, Captain, but the damage is done. Now there’s another crop of Claimants. Did you know that we have three nobles who can prove - prove, mind you - the legitimacy of their claim to the purple?”
“To listen to them,” Harold continued, “you’d think everybody and his brother were qualified to be Emperor. Right now they’re screaming in the Senate for a ‘Council of Emperors’ based on their contributions to the war. Can you imagine what kind of hydra that would be?”
Could he? Adderly didn’t know. In truth, he didn’t care. The sky of Tanith was beautiful, in its way. This frontier world - that some called a hellhole - that he’d fought for and lived on and given everything to save, was at this moment the most glorious place he’d ever seen.
“Anyway, Captain Adderly - ”
“Call me WILL. I’ll call you Jack, or do you prefer Jackson?”
Commander Harold’s expression went from uncomfortable to downright miserable. “No, sir. Jack is fine. All right; WILL. The loss of Canada was bad enough, to say nothing of the part it played in the destruction of the Aleksandr Nevsky. Still, few of us have ever run into that EVA Marine tactic of Diettinger’s; the same might have happened to anyone. It’s the borloi that’s got to them. That and the fact that the Saurons had you captive and let you go. That’s never happened before, WILL. Never. And your suggestion as to why it should have happened to you did not go over well with the Board.”
“I stand by it. First Rank Diettinger conducted himself like an officer and a gentlemen.” And I returned the compliment by trying to kill him, mutilating him instead. But he hadn’t told them that. They wouldn’t have believed him, anyway.
“Yes, well, be that as it may, there is still the matter of the borloi drug. The Board will simply not accept that the Commander of an Imperial Planetary Patrol Task Force, who lost a battle to a single Sauron heavy cruiser, should be entertained for a time aboard the enemy ship and then released unharmed.”
Adderly had to choke back a laugh.
“They thought it particularly odd that you yourself claimed the Saurons wanted nothing more than the location of the planetside stores of the Empire’s most profitable illegal drug.”
Now Adderly did began to laugh, then shook his head in disbelief.
“That’s their reasoning, anyway. The Tanith spaceport was nuked a dozen times over, so there’s no telling if the Saurons ever got the borloi out of it or not. But the Board has had so many dealings with Outies and smugglers, to say nothing of traitors in - ”The Commander’s voice died before he could say “the Navy.”
“The worst part, Captain Adderly, are their motives. Those bastards want to hang you - not because you lost, but because you won. A Planetary Patrol Commander holds off two Sauron Fleets for a fortnight. That’s bloody magnificent work! There’s a duchy in that sort of thing these days. Now, those fools will fall to squabbling for the glory amongst themselves when you’re gone.”
Harold continued on past the officers’ quarters
and led Adderly and the Marines to the left-hand path that cut across the compound and past the gallows. “The Empire is dying,” he added in a low voice. “And the jackals are killing each other over the bones.”
Adderly shook his head and smiled.
So, in the end, Diettinger’s triumph is total. Kellogg got his board, after all the obvious, most convenient conclusion was drawn, and that is the end of William Daniel Adderly, Imperial Navy.
His guilt or innocence hardly mattered, nor did the avarice of the men who judged him. At this stage of the war, treason was a charge whose bare whisper would kill a man, if not physically, then certainly professionally.
The Empire’s attitude toward the Saurons had changed irrevocably. They were no longer the enemy; they were evil incarnate. Adderly had seen it growing in his men; he had seen it in himself, the day he met Diettinger. He had seen it again in Kellogg’s single-minded attacks, and finally in the Fleet’s pursuit of the remaining Sauron ships to the Alderson Point.
That attitude would consume more than the Saurons, he knew... but they would be the first to go.
They had reached the stockade.
“I’m sorry, Captain Adderly. WILL, I mean. But under the circumstances I think it’s obvious what the verdict will be if you receive a court martial.”
He nodded. Harold had stumbled over the word, but Adderly had caught it.”If.”
Adderly looked at this improbably young man. Not too young to know that the Navy would take its peculiar care of one of its own. The brotherhood among Naval officers might not be able to save him, but it could send a young volunteer - it was always a volunteer - like Commander Harold to show it had not abandoned him.
“If there’s anything I can do...”
“As a matter of fact, there is. My wife Alysha. She’s living on Gaea. Our address is in the records. Tell her all this, if you would. The real story, not the official one.”
“I’ll tell her. I’m sure she’ll be proud.”
“I’m not. But she’ll be . . .justified, I think. That’s very important to Alysha. I suppose it’s important to a lot of people, these days.”
Adderly turned at the top of the steps, where two more Marines opened the door. He looked up at the clouds.
“It’s peculiar, but I can’t stop thinking about them, the Saurons, I mean.”
There being nothing to say, Commander Harold listened.
“They’re dying,” Adderly continued, almost to himself. “And they can’t understand why they’re dying. They think they’ve been outfought, and they have. But they’ll convince themselves it was some flaw in their battle plan.
It will never occur to them that the cold logic of the ultimate Soldier was simply no match for the heart of the Beast.”
He turned and held out his hand. “Goodbye, Jack.”
The two men shook hands and Adderly felt the expected packet pressed into his palm.
“The men of the King George V wanted you to know they appreciated what you did for Captain Lester and the bridge crew.” Harold swallowed. “Goodbye, Captain Adderly.”
Adderly smiled.”WILL,” he corrected him.
Adderly had turned when Harold called him back.”WILL?”
He raised an eyebrow.”Yes? Something?”
“Captain, I’m twenty-two years old and I’m a full commander. It’s not hard to guess why, and knowing why, it’s not likely I’ll see twenty-three. It’s what you said, about how First Rank Diettinger treated you. I’d like to know: What are the Saurons really like? I only know the propaganda ministry stuff; but you’ve seen them up-close, talked to one. What’s it like to actually look into the face of the enemy?”
Adderly turned and looked at the jungle-choked hills in the distance, rife with some of the most dangerous predators in known space. He had hunted there once, on an absurdly dangerous dare. Closer in, on the far side of the compound, was the building that held the Board of Inquiry. He almost laughed aloud, thinking of how much safer that jungle looked to him now.
The beasts have come down from the hills...
A flagpole in front of the Board’s offices bore a tired banner, its faint movement in the sultry Tanith air reminded him of a dying bird. As he drew closer, Adderly saw it was the flag of the Empire of Man.
Dying; already dead? Or is it too much to ask that it might just be asleep?
Adderly said nothing for a very long time. Finally he turned his gaze back to meet Commander Harold’s.
“With enemies like the Saurons, Jack,” he said quietly, “you don’t need friends.”
Then he went back up the stairs and into the stockade, a Marine on either side to escort him to his cell.
Book 2: The Eye Closes
2640 A.D., SAURON
Ten
Voices in the darkness:
“...is Sauron Traffic Control to Intruders. Initiate your recognition transponders or you will be fired on. This is Sauron Traffic Control to Intruders...”
Vessel First Rank Galen Diettinger’s head lolled against the backrest of his acceleration couch, twin lines of tears streaking his face; those running from beneath his eyepatch tinged with blood. The hideous disorientation called Jump Lag made all humans sick, most drool, and some rare few go mad; with Diettinger, his eyes watered like fonts. His ship, the Talon-class heavy cruiser Fomoria drifted from the Alderson Jump Point just beyond the outermost orbital path of the Sauron System’s planets; the Homeworld was still four days away at maximum thrust. Several hundred kilometers off Fomoria’s port bow, the Sauron battleship Damaris drifted on the same heading. Both vessels were returning from the military debacle at the enemy-Imperial world of Tanith.
Where the last of the Sauron First Fleet was doubtlessly being torn to pieces at this very moment, Diettinger thought miserably. The warning came again; the Homeworld took no chances these days.
The genetically-engineered superhumans known as the Sauron Race were better than normal humans at everything; they couldn’t help it - they couldn’t even take credit for it. They were, literally, made that way. But Jump Lag was the great equalizer. Its effects passed away completely, but they did so in their own good time, whether the victim was a Sauron or a micro-gravity quadriplegic. Computers fared even worse, and some animals were known to simply fall down and die.
But no crew suffered from Jump Lag forever; the longest timed duration of the effect was twenty-four minutes and seventeen seconds, a record that had stood for seventy-three years. As a result, all ships entering Sauron System were given the benefit of the doubt - an extra five minutes and forty-three seconds. At thirty minutes and one second after entry from the Jump Point, or immediately upon initiating maneuvering engines, questionable ships were intercepted by the Sauron System Defense Network.
Or so went the drill in peacetime.
When at war, as now, the Sauron System Defense Network would begin firing on the Fomoria and the Damaris after twenty-four minutes and thirty seconds. Neither identification markings nor their Sauron configuration would save them at that point; expert military historians, Saurons knew full well the value of the Trojan horse.
So Diettinger turned his remaining eye toward the Jump clock, a simple spring-driven timepiece set into the bulkhead beside the deactivated bridge computer. Artificial brains fared worse from Jump Lag than carbon ones and, so, had to be shut down before Jump or be utterly ruined. The clock was wound and zeroed out by the Jump Watch Officer, then activated simultaneously upon the initiation of the Jump itself; it now read 00:23:58.
The Fomoria was nearing a record for Jump lag: twenty-three minutes and fifty-eight seconds. Not a record Diettinger wanted. In twenty-three seconds, Sauron’s planetary and asteroid-based defense systems would reduce both Fomoria and Damaris to glittering debris. Diettinger’s mind was clearing faster now, the Jump-induced nausea receding into memory. Around him, other members of the bridge crew were still in the thrall of the Jump Lag. The clock now read 00:24:02.
A response pad was beneath Dietting
er’s fingers; a hint of pressure to apply the fingerprints of his living hand and the channel would be opened to the Homeworld. Were he even unable to speak, the Fomoria’s code transmission would instantly identify her as a Sauron vessel, and Sauron’s alerted system defense stations would stand down.
He looked at the pad; his hand above it might have been a waxwork. Experimentally, he tried to flex his fingers; they waggled with the fluid grace unique to Saurons.
00:24:05
Reaching out, Diettinger placed his fingers once more over the pad. Nothing. 00:24:09. He clenched his fist, raised his arm and shook it, returned it to its place above the response pad, and, as before, found that he could not seem to move it.
00:24:14
So much simpler this way, a part of him said. Wait. Another seventeen seconds, and the missiles and beams and fighters and mines and mass drivers of the Homeworld will converge on the Fomoria; they will ignore any attempts at contact made after the cutoff time, of course. Why? Because that is the procedure. That is the way the system works, and the system is a product of the finest military minds in the history of the human race. One might acknowledge such a system’s imperfections, but only to negligible degrees; indeed, those flaws provided justification for such rigid adherence to policy.
00:24:21
Wait, and put all this behind you. The inertia of the High Command; the mindless confidence that had committed the entirety of the Sauron fleet to what now must surely be a slaughter at the hands of the Imperials; the decisions made by committees who had forgotten the vision of Sauron, and were blinded to the inevitable.
00:24:25
Wait, and let it end without your having to see it, his war-weary mind said. Yet he reached for the response pad.
Before his fingers could touch it, the communications panel crackled: “Sauron Traffic Control, this is Vessel First Rank Emory of the Sauron Battleship Damaris. The Sauron Heavy Cruiser Fomoria is riding off our starboard bow. Our transponder code transmissions are incoming to your station now.”
