Eye of the Storm

by John Ringo

  Schultz looked at the Posleen, who pointed hurriedly to one end of the machine.

  Boyd watched as the scrap was loaded into the machine. It slid into the recesses and the device began to hum.

  "How long?" Schultz asked as there was a clatter from the far end.

  The threesome walked to the front of the machine and looked at the assault rifle sitting on the concrete.

  "That was . . . a few seconds," Schultz said, shaking his head. "And my fratrie just bought a new forge that is now completely useless. Computer, do you have materials to make ammunition for the M-146?"

  "No," the device responded. "I will need more nitrates and sulfur. I am also lacking in copper and zinc. I can substitute a modified plastic cartridge if you would prefer but it is disrecommended according to the manual. If I am required to make more of the rifles I will need a supply of vanadium and molybdenum. There was sufficient in the materials provided for only one and a half rifles."

  "One of the shuttles is packed with trace metals," Boyd said. "We'll see about nitrates. And such. How are you fixed for copper and zinc?"

  "Can this thing produce, well, anything?" Schultz asked, clearly stunned.

  "More or less," Boyd replied. "Anything that will fit coming out the other end and larger devices can be assembled from components. On uniforms I've gotten a provider in the U.S. to make them. They'll be coming in starting next week. They're Himmit chameleon suits so the Hedren won't have any more advantage than you do. But you're on your own with electronics, weapons and other supplies. I've got too many other fish to fry to supply those at the moment. The big problem is heavy weapons systems."

  "We've got no Tigers," Schultz said, nodding. "I was informed."

  "We're restarting the SheVa production line," Boyd said. "The first production will be Tiger IIIs, B models, for your forces. They're probably what we'll go with across the board. But for right now, we're going to have to refit the surplus weapons left over from the Posleen War. In your case, well . . . General Mühlenkampf is looking those over."

  "These will never run again," the general said, shaking his head.

  The field was packed with weapons systems. A valley in Austria, the region was the dumping ground for European war materials left over after the Posleen War. There were French, Austrian, German and even Russian artillery pieces, tanks, armored personnel carriers and "light-skin" vehicles ranging from Mercedes trucks down to some U.S. military jeeps and GAZs, the Russian equivalent. Mühlenkampf had even spotted a Kuebbelwagen and other material dating to World War II. Thousands and thousands of weapons and tons of equipment. Enough to supply multiple divisions much less the, at most, one he could field from his people.

  However, systems had been parked there, their oil drained, and then left. The people doing the dumping hadn't even bothered with tarps. Most of them were too far gone when they were dumped to be worth more than scrap. And with the reduced world population and the amount of scrap left over from the war, they weren't even useful for that. So they had been left to slowly rust.

  "Many are recoverable, General," Indowy Keleel replied nervously. He had brought a large detachment of Indowy with him who were pouring into the valley, climbing onto vehicles and beginning an inventory. "Forges are being brought here to create replacement parts. We have many abilities that may help. We will know in a week, no more, what we can salvage from this. And when your men are given these vehicles, they will work. Better than new. I guarantee it."

  "Time, Indowy, time," the general said. "The Hedren will not give us forever to prepare. And while many of my veterans have experience in some of these systems . . . Time cloaks the memory. The old skills are rusty. They must have the weapons to train on before they can be ready to go to war."

  "We will hurry, General," the Indowy said. "You can trust us on that."

  "Can I?" the German asked. "Can I, Kobold?"

  "My clan is based on Gratoola, General," Keleel replied. "If Gratoola falls, so will most of my clan and my clan leader. We will hurry, General. But put our work to good use, yes?"

  "The admiral sure about this?"

  Out from Saturn, beyond the most distant watch-post in the system, was the Graveyard. It was here that the majority of the ships from the Reconnaissance in Force had been dragged. The task force that raised the Siege of Earth was a fraction of the total Fleet at the end of the War but it was still more metal than the Federation could field to fight the Hedren.

  It was a sad and yet stirring sight. Drifting in their nearly eternal orbits, their compartments opened to vacuum as had so often been the case in battle, here were the destroyers, cruisers, battlecruisers, dreadnoughts and superdreadnoughts that had destroyed the Posleen invasion and ensured that humanity had a chance to scratch their way to freedom once again.

  It was a roll-call of history. Kaga V. Lexington IV. Atlanta. Tokyo. Novobirsk. Nagasaki. Ark Royal III. Prinz Eugen. Each had been in multiple battles during the Posleen War, all had battle honors to dwarf any wet-navy ship save, perhaps, the Victory.

  At the end of the war it was almost all of the ships that remained under the command of the original Fleet officers. Which was why they were chosen to break the Darhel imposed orders requiring the Fleet to remain on guard over "retaken" systems and let Earth fall to the Posleen. They had been gathered in secret from multiple systems, all of them given lone orders to "return to Sol system on reconnaissance duties." The date of arrival just happened to match. And, wow, since there's not much to stop us maybe we should save Earth? What do you think?

  In honor of that final battle, in honor of saving humanity, they had been left to rot. Nearly pristine ships, because there had not been much to stop them in Sol system, were dumped into the Graveyard.

  And now one, at least, was going to be the subject of target practice.

  "There it is," Tactical said. "The Algerie-class cruiser Bristol, hull number 39628."

  The space cruiser was about the size of the Des Moines before her "upgrade" and massed about the same. Beyond that, they were very different ships. The Bristol was a long cylinder bristling with plasma cannon and mass-drivers.

  "Man, you get some parts, you get some crew . . ." the TACO said. "I hate like hell to blow this thing up. It seems . . . dishonorable."

  "They blew the Nebraska up with a nuke," Captain McNair said. "We need to see what this thing does to a ship. That is the designated ship. Gunnery, Lock QT One and Two and fire on lock."

  "Lock QT One and Two, aye," the gunnery NCO said. "Fire on lock, aye. Locking."

  Again the blue beams flashed out then—

  "Locked on Target Sierra One. Firing."

  The 53,000 ton cruiser flashed white for a moment, then was revealed as a wasted hulk.

  "Wow," the TACO said. "Loss of ten percent of mass. On the basis of visual . . ."

  "We just stripped off about half the hull and most of the guns," McNair said. "A couple more hits and she'd be beyond dead in space. I'd hate to be onboard when this thing hit. And the range, especially since once you get a lock it tracks, is frightening. Right. Send a message to the nearest com-sat that we have suspended exercise and are returning to Luna. No data about this weapon is to go on the net without my approval."

  "I need to thank those mentats," Daisy Mae said. "They gave me one hell of a main battery." She suddenly winced and wiped at her eyes. "I felt that. Oh, the poor thing; it didn't want to die without fighting back."

  "I still say there ought to be some way to get these ships back in action," the TACO said grumpily.

  "There is no way we can get these ships back in action!" Chief Isemann said, shaking her head.

  Chief Isemann had been selected as the lead NCO for the working party surveying the Indra Graveyard.

  Indra had been a bad one. All three battles. Well, the last wasn't horrible. It had just been a fucking maelstrom.

  The Posleen drive could exit warp within a couple of planetary diameters of a planet. Generally, they didn't, though. If they got too
close they tended to blow up on exit. But they were just so damned chaotic. Sometimes they'd come out practically in fucking atmosphere and then promptly blow up. Sometimes they'd come out of warp by the Jovians then start jumping in, cautiously. Defending against them was hell. You never knew when one of the bastards was going to come out off your port or starboard or up or down or, hell, right in front of you!

  They mostly traveled in big fucking battleglobes. A globe would be made up of thousands of ships, all locked together with tractor beams. Traveling that way was, apparently, a bit less wasteful of energy. And since their warp drive was very energy intensive that was good.

  When one of the globes appeared in their ripple of blue and purple ionization, a ship was suddenly looking at a fleet of really nasty space cruisers, all in one big chunk. If you fired normal guns at it, all you did was strip away a layer of ships. The inner ships would blow the scraps off and keep firing.

  You could do that all day and not kill any significant mass of the globe. Which was where the superdreadnoughts came in.

  If there was a superdreadnought near enough they'd shoot the planetoid with their big-ass mass driver. Which had its good and bad parts. The good part was that the destroyer-sized chunk of metal would go most of the way through the globe and then let loose enough antimatter to make the local area a slice of hell.

  The bad news was that those damned Posleen ships were tough. So about a half to a third of them would survive. And then it was like kicking a fucking wasp nest. They'd come swarming out of that blast of antimatter, which by rights should have blown them to smithereens, and swarm over the superdreadnought like hornets.

  That was how they lost the Lex in Indra One. And the Tokyo in Two. Indra One had especially sucked. They'd lost the Lex, their sole superdreadnought at the time, and just about every fucking cruiser and dreadnought. Ronnette had been on a picket destroyer on the back side of the system. By the time they got there all that was left were some damned Lampreys and gas and rubble. There were some survivors; there always were. But she never thought the ships would fly again.

  But the Indowy had rebuilt them. Well, the superdreadnoughts and some of the battleships. Most of the cruisers and destroyers had only been good for scrap. So they'd used the scrap to build more cruisers and destroyers.

  After the last battles, when it was apparent that the Posleen were finished as a technological race, the majority of the Fleet had been parked and left. Some of the ships had been harvested for scrap but the Indowy were so efficient with material it wasn't really necessary. And the armor of the superdreadnoughts and other battlewagons was so tough they were just hard to scrap.

  They were all here, over a thousand ships in this system alone. Hiryu and Enterprise, Constellation and Junyo, Defiance, Indefatigable, Resolute, Alabama, Yorktown. The list went on and on. There were over forty supercarriers and superdreadnoughts alone.

  She had to admit that most of these ships had been captained and crewed by Indis. But it had taken three times the metal weight to get the same results. It had taken forty superdreadnoughts and supercarriers to hold the last battle-line. They'd stopped them, then, though. Stopped them butt-cold and with light casualties. But they'd done that in Second Indra with a bare ten superdreadnoughts and five supercarriers. All right, they were wrecks when they finished the battle, but they'd stopped them.

  She supposed if the Indowy could build them in the first place, and rebuild them over and over, they could get these hulks going again. But as the shuttle cruised along the long lines of ships she couldn't see it really happening.

  "We can do it," Indowy Mirinau said. "With time. The more hands, the less time and we have been promised many hands. And, of course, we will be using the Posleen manufactories. That will speed the process."

  "Constitution," Ronnette said, breathing out. It had been her ship in Indra Two and Three, a superdreadnought that could walk into a globe's fire and survive it. No more "one funnel bastards" for her. She'd worked her way up to Chief of Boat on the Constitution. She hadn't understood the sudden transfer out after Indra Three until the Lex had entered Earth space. But she'd been ready for it. Working with the Indis, as a female senior NCO, had been a special kind of hell. The Lex CO had managed, somehow, to build an Original Fleet crew. But he needed an experienced Gunnery NCO.

  "Not our first ship to be worked on," Mirinau said, catching the nuance of the human's words. "First we must fix the ships which will carry the crews to the ships. But we will get to your ship, Chief. I promise that."

  "Give me back my lady, Indowy, and I'll be your friend forever," Ronnette said. "Give me back my girl."

  "Where have you been?" Mike asked when Michelle walked into his office.

  "In meditation," the mentat said, taking a seat without asking.

  It took Mike a moment to adjust to Michelle's appearance. She was always pale but never quite this waxy looking.

  "Are you okay?" he asked.

  "I will be," Michelle replied. "What was it that you needed to ask me? You've been calling for a week so I assume it's urgent."

  "I was going to ask you for some clearer answers," Mike said, leaning back. "But I think I've got them."

  "If four masters can create an entire dreadnought in a few hours, why can't you have a fleet?" Michelle said, grimacing.

  "More or less," Mike said. "Or at least some ACS. The more I look at these reports on the Hedren the more I realize that if the corps was still around we could go through them like shit through a goose."

  "Eloquent as always, Father," Michelle replied. "And here before you sits the reason."

  "How bad?" Mike asked.

  "Each of us will be effectively useless for about six weeks," Michelle said, wincing and holding her head. "I'm sorry, the analgesic is wearing off. I will continue. Six weeks. Using the sort of power we expended on the Des Moines depletes certain neurotransmitters. It is possible to replenish them with nannites, of course. But doing so . . . disrupts neural pathways. Doing so too many times destroys them."

  "You get burned out," Mike said.

  "Exactly," Michelle said. "As to ACS . . . I would be more than loath to contemplate making even one suit. The materials of the armor exceed most theory of how strong materials can be. It exceeds the strength of neutronium while being, of course, much lighter. But making it requires the sort of output you saw us do with the Des Moines for months. Days and days of creating it, layer by layer, atom by battling atom. I was an apprentice to a master who was working on a suit of ACS. I saw him age years in the six months he worked to create it. Only to have it thrown away in war."

  "The Des Moines doesn't have that level of armor," Mike said.

  "Nowhere close," Michelle admitted. "Or we would have been years creating it. Supermonitors had a thin layer in their armor. So, Father, while there are about a thousand masters of Sohon, creating a fleet from nothing, or a corps of ACS for that matter, is not a viable action. Some of them are creating ACS, others are making parts for the future quantum tanglers, which do require rather high-level Sohon to create. But do not look to us to make you a fleet overnight. You would burn every master in the galaxy. And there would be no one to defend against Sohon attacks."

  "And do you have much on those?" Mike asked. "Last question, I swear. Then I'll let you go."

  "We can only sense their abilities lightly at this range," Michelle admitted. "There are Indowy masters who are specialists at detecting and analyzing Sohon who are investigating the phenomenon. To say they are puzzled is an understatement. All the effort and research the Indowy have poured into manufacture and creation, these seem to have poured into violence and pain. It pains them to even contemplate the Hedren."

  "Are the Indowy going to help?" Mike asked. "Or is it going to be up to you seven?"

  "That is the subject of a very large meeting," Michelle said. "It will take place when we are recovered. I truly do not know where they stand at present."

  "Go get some rest," Mike said. "I'll leave you al
one. But get back with me as soon as you're healed or whatever."

  "Very well, Father," Michelle said, getting up. "I don't suppose you've heard from my wandering sister?"

  "She's supposed to be in soon," Mike said. "I'll tell her you asked about her."

  "Give her my love," Michelle said, nodding as she left.

  "I have got to get access to a slab soon," Cally said, shaking her head. "That guy nearly got me because of these damned tits."

  "So you've said the whole way home," Bryce said, trying not to sigh.

  The trip out had been quick, much quicker than either believed possible. The Himmit had clearly been holding back on how fast their ships could cross interstellar distances since the trip to Chauldria had taken less than half the time it normally would.

  However, they'd had to travel commercial on the way back. Since Cally had just technically murdered a Darhel clan leader and there had to be some sort of investigation going on, it had been a tad harrowing. But nobody seemed to care. The official story was that he'd died of old age. Well, gone into lintatai. What with two clan leaders dropping in the last decade, after being in place since before the Posleen War, there had been some rumors going around. But so far nobody had pinned it anywhere near Cally O'Neal.