He looked at the in-system display and frowned. A cluster of icons hovered around each of the gravity points, seemingly motionless. Starships were moving in and out of the system, the newcomers utterly unaware of what had happened. They were in for a shock, when they arrived. And the gravity point defences would know what had happened, now. They’d be planning something, even if it was just keeping the points secure until their reinforcements arrived.
We’ll have to get busy preparing our defences, Martin told himself. He tried to think of a way to take the gravity points and failed. The defences were too strong. They’d have to wait for relief, hoping that Admiral Teller got there first. If he didn’t ... Martin tried not to think about it, but the thought refused to fade. If Admiral Teller doesn’t get here first, this entire system is going to get trashed.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Most Illustrious Empress,” Neola read. “Long may you reign. Long may you lead us to the path of righteousness ...”
She fought down the urge to say something cutting, or to order harsh punishments, as she skimmed through nearly ten thousand words of insane flattery. The humans spoke of ass-kissing, a metaphor Neola found delightfully crude, but the Harmonies had elevated it to an art form. They were practically performing sexual acts on her ... her stomach churned in disgust as she finally reached the meat of the message, a simple statement that the allied fleet was ready to fight beside the Tokomak for the good of the galaxy. Even that was coached in flowery terms that meant absolutely nothing. She resisted the urge to hurl the datapad across the cabin as she paged through another five thousand words of nonsense to make sure there was no sting in the tail. There didn’t seem to be one.
“Bah,” she said. She’d hoped to have the fleet underway by now, but a combination of manpower shortages and foot-dragging had made it impossible. She was lucky she’d managed to start assembling the fleet two jumps from Tokomak Prime, on the assumption it would be easier for her allies to join her there. Thankfully, her ‘advisors’ were too far away to look over her shoulder and offer her useless advice. “Don’t they have anything useful to say?”
She summoned an aide and passed the datapad to him. “Read this and boil it down to a single paragraph for me,” she ordered. “Not the flattery, just the content.”
The aide bowed, not quickly enough to hide his fear. “Yes, Your Eminence.”
Neola smiled coldly, then turned her attention back to the display. Thousands of starships hung near the gravity point, a formidable fleet nearly as big as the one she’d hurled against Apsidal a few short months ago. It looked unstoppable, to the untrained eye; it looked big enough to pour through the gravity point and crush any opposition by sheer weight of numbers. But Neola knew better. A good third of the fleet was composed of ships begged and borrowed from her allies, from Galactics who might already be thinking about the advantages of a universe without the Tokomak. She was grimly aware that the only thing that had made them send their ships to the fleet was the certain knowledge she’d take an awful revenge if they’d didn’t ... if she won the war. And if she lost the coming battle ...
She rubbed her forehead in frustration. She didn’t need foot-dragging allies. The fleet had never trained together, let alone gone into battle together. The idea of regular drills had been quashed long ago, well before Neola had been born. There had been no reason to believe the Tokomak would ever need help, no reason to think they should keep their allies close ... she cursed the former governors savagely as she eyed the display. Right now, she knew she’d be lucky if she managed to get every ship moving in the same direction when she gave the order. Training was a mess, practically non-existent ... she promised herself that, when the war was over, that was going to change. The only upside, she supposed, was that her allies hadn’t been quietly planning to overthrow the Tokomak. They’d have kept their fleets in better shape if they’d seriously expected a war.
The aide cleared his throat, nervously. “They say they are with us ‘til the bitter end, Your Majesty.”
“How reassuring,” Neola commented, dryly. “Put together a response. Tell them we’re glad to see them” - that wasn’t true, even though she knew it should be - “and that we look forward to fighting beside them.”
The aide bowed, again. Neola snorted as she dismissed him, telling herself she should be grateful. The Harmonies might be hidebound, even by Tokomak standards, and snooty enough to put her nose out of joint, but at least they weren’t plotting trouble. They’d even put their planets at risk to help her with an intelligence operation, one that had come surprisingly close to success. She glared at the other icons, wondering which of the Galactics were plotting trouble. She would be surprised if they weren’t. The prospect of being in control of their lives again, after millennia of submission, had to be very attractive. And if they managed to jump ship in time ...
She gritted her teeth in bitter frustration. She would have been happier, a great deal happier, if she’d been able to complete her mobilisation plans as she’d intended. Let the humans exhaust themselves taking system after system, while she readied her fleet to kick them back out of the inner worlds, reclaim control of the galaxy and turn their homeworld into a pile of ash. It would be good to be rid of them, once and for all. And then she could hurl the other servitor races into the fire too. They were just too dangerous to keep around. Let them all die. Let her people learn to fend for themselves again. It wasn’t as if they were short of people to do the scutwork. They just had to be convinced to do it.
The paperwork kept on piling up in front of her as the fleet worked its way through a series of basic training exercises. Neola tried to stay calm, even when a pair of battleships almost rammed each other ... a display of incompetence that would probably have made the humans choke themselves to death laughing. The battleship skippers were too old and doddering to fight a modern war ... she would have relieved them at once, if they’d been under her direct command. But they were allies ... she’d just have to put up with them and hope they could soak up a handful of human missiles before they died. She rather thought that might be a good idea. Weakening the other Galactics might be quite useful.
And we need to get going, she told herself. The humans were pushing corewards ... she wanted to give them time to get closer, but her council was demanding she move as soon as possible. And they thought she was making excuses. She snorted in annoyance. She wished she was making excuses. Maybe, once we’re underway, I can find a way to put the doddering fools out of my misery.
It was a bitter thought, one that mocked her as she sorted through the paperwork. There had been a time, not that long ago, when she could have had an entire fleet of commanding officers shot and no one would have dared say anything. She could have lined the allied commanders up and shot them ... but now it was impossible. Now, she had to be diplomatic to people she knew were plotting to stick a knife in her back, while leading them into battle against the most dangerous enemy they’d ever faced. Maybe she could put them in command of the first assault wave, if she had to force her way into another system. They might be too stupid to realise she was practically guaranteeing their deaths.
She smiled, humourlessly. “They can’t be that stupid.”
Another aide stopped as he passed. “Your Majesty?”
“I’m just planning how to take the offensive,” Neola lied. “Carry on.”
She sat back in her chair and surveyed the CIC. The compartment was thrumming with activity, but she knew she was dangerously undermanned. She’d always been short of good officers, particularly when the longer-serving bureaucrats had become very imaginative when it came to inventing excuses and citing regulations to explain why they couldn’t possibly be assigned away from Tokomak Prime. The bastards ... they knew she couldn’t have them shot, not now. If they’d shown so much imagination a few years ago, she wouldn’t have needed to launch her coup. Her people would have crushed all their enemies and swept over the entire galaxy.
And I’m ri
sking much by taking so many people away from the homeworld, she thought. If they get lost ...
An alarm chimed. “Your Majesty, a courier boat just transited the gravity point. It’s broadcasting a priority-one signal.”
“Get me a full download,” Neola ordered. A priority-one signal meant bad news. She wondered which system had fallen now and why. The human fleet had held position, according to the last update, but it had been several weeks out of date by the time it had reached her. “And put the fleet on notice. We might be departing sooner than planned.”
She leaned forward, feeling her hearts sink as the download appeared in front of her. The Twins had fallen ... not to the humans, but to rebels. She shuddered as the full impact gradually started to sink in. The Twins weren’t just a vital industrial base. There were so many gravity points within the system that losing control was an utter disaster. If the rebels held the system, they’d be able to cut the empire into a number of smaller sections ... each one too weak to stand on its own. It might not be a complete disaster - the reports stated the gravity points were still secure - but she couldn’t take it for granted. The report was already a week out of date.
And it will take us longer than that to get there in force, she mused. A lone starship could get there relatively quickly, but an entire fleet would take considerably longer. If the humans get there first ...
She tapped her console, bringing up a starchart. The humans were four jumps from the Twins, assuming they hadn’t already advanced. They might not know what had happened - Neola had issued orders to seal the gravity points if there was a major uprising - but she didn’t dare take it for granted. If they knew, they’d throw caution to the winds and push forward to the Twins. It would give them their best chance of delivering a mortal blow to the empire. The plan to stop them at Gateway would have to be abandoned. She’d have to risk taking the fleet further, to the Twins. And hope she could stop them there, before word spread further. The humans might lose the coming battle and still win the war.
“Contact the fleet,” she ordered, keeping her voice calm. “The training exercises are terminated. The fleet is to ready itself for an immediate transit to Gateway, then to the Twins. Upload copies of the reports, then inform all senior officers that I expect them to be ready. We depart in four hours.”
She waited, wondering if any of her aides would question her. Four hours ... it wasn’t very long at all. The protests from the fleet commanders would be long and loud. Normally, the fleet would have several days of warning before it began to move. She would be surprised if there weren’t any problems as they crawled towards the gravity point and began to jump. They were going to outrun their logistics pretty quickly. There’d been no time to set up additional supply dumps. They had to reinforce Gateway and recover the Twins before the humans broke into the system. There was no choice ...
And if we get moving quickly, she mused, the commanders won’t have time to start complaining.
She put the thought aside as she keyed her console. She’d have to forward the report to Tokomak Prime, along with an outline of what she intended to do. Thankfully, she had the authority to act without waiting for orders. The humans were probably already on the move, damn them. If she waited, they’d have punched out Gateway and would be breathing down her neck by the time she received orders she probably couldn’t carry out. And yet, some part of her rebelled at sending the fleet so far from Tokomak Prime. Her instincts and training both told her that the homeworld came first.
But we have already taken too many losses, she told herself. If we lose the Twins, we’ll lose a great deal more.
***
Hameeda felt cold.
She’d argued with herself for hours before she’d crossed Gateway and continued to sneak up the gravity point chain to Tokomak Prime. She’d known she had to return to Admiral Teller, and tell him what Piece and his team were planning, yet ... Admiral Teller needed to know what awaited him corewards of the Twins. She’d told herself, again and again, that it would take longer for her to inform him and then head corewards ... she was torn, now, between wishing she hadn’t done it and being thankful that she had. Admiral Teller would probably not be pleased to know a giant alien fleet was heading towards him, but he had to know anyway.
She tried not to be terrified as the massive fleet slowly shook itself down and headed for the gravity point. It was so large that even her sensors were having trouble picking out individual ships. There were so many drive signatures that they blurred together into a single ominous haze. Her sensors thought there were somewhere between six to seven thousand starships, although it was hard to be sure. She wanted to believe that half of them were just drones, nothing more than sensor ghosts. But she couldn’t convince herself it was true.
And a good third of the fleet aren’t Tokomak, she thought. The technologies were similar, but the drive signatures were alien. They assembled their allies for the fight.
She watched the fleet, torn between an insane urge to laugh and a grim awareness that one didn’t have to be competent with such an immense fleet under their control. It was painfully clear the fleet wasn’t properly trained, not to their usual standards. Their formation was ragged - unless they’d adopted human-style formations, which was possible - and they were broadcasting messages in the clear, rather than using communications lasers and encrypted transmissions. The latter could be broken, she knew, but it took time ... time she might not have. The researchers kept promising a breakthrough, a new kind of computer that could crack enemy codes quickly enough for the information to be tactically useful, yet so far it had yet to materialise. But the Tokomak were broadcasting in the clear ...
To be fair, they have no reason to expect me to be here, she reminded herself. And they don’t have any reason to expect anyone to be listening to them.
She frowned. The system was useless, save for a trio of gravity points. It was the last place she’d expect the Tokomak to assemble a fleet, which might have been why they’d picked it. If they’d stayed away from the gravity point, or used a nearby system, she might have missed them entirely. But the system did have its advantages. The lack of a local population meant there would be no unfriendly eyes following the fleet, no rebels who might pass the word down the chain or relay it via FTL to rebellious star systems. No one would watch and laugh as the rusty crews went through their paces, training for war ...
Her neural net provided a handful of possible scenarios. If the Tokomak decided to take a few risks, they could get the fleet to the Twins within two weeks. It would cost them - they’d probably lose a handful of ships to interpenetration - but once they got there, they could sit on the gravity point and hold it forever. They had so many ships they could probably hold the gravity points even without fortifications. And Admiral Teller would have to bleed his fleet white ... she shook her head. The only option was to get back to the admiral and warn him to pick up speed. He had to get to the Twins first.
And they might even win the war outright if they get there first, she mused. It’s time to go.
She took one last look at the lumbering enemy fleet. She was experienced enough to see the flaws, ranging from ill-coordinated point defence to a shortage of logistic support, but none of them might matter. The Tokomak were supposed to have supply dumps in every major system. If they’d crammed N-Gann with enough missiles to smash a huge fleet - something she was sure they regretted, now the human invaders had used the stockpiles to do just that - they were bound to have stuffed more into Gateway. And they could take a leaf out of humanity’s book and use the missiles as makeshift mines. That would be the end, if they timed it right.
The LinkShip rotated at her command, fleeing the fleet as fast as she could. Hameeda ran through the simulations again and again, telling herself she could be back with Admiral Teller before the alien fleet completed its first transit. Unless it was willing to take any number of risks ... she wondered, grimly, if they would take the risk. Getting there first was important, but so w
as getting there in a fit state to fight. There was no way they could risk stringing their ships out as they raced to Gateway and the Twins ...
But they control the gravity points, she reminded herself. It seemed an unfair advantage, despite the sheer scale of the problem of getting thousands of ships through the gravity points in a timely manner. And they won’t have to fight their way through ...
She shook her head. It didn’t matter. Admiral Teller was the one who’d have to worry about it. All she had to do was get word to him, then urge him to pick up speed. The time for a slow, but steady advance was over. It was time to start running.
Because we’ve just started a race, she thought. And whoever gets there first will win.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The dull red star cast an eerie light over the scene as the human fleet pushed through the gravity point, passing the cooling wreckage of the lone orbital fortress and a dozen converted freighters that had made a brief, but futile stand against the invaders. Admiral Colin Teller stood in the CIC and watched, dispassionately, as the locals fled. The system wasn’t that populated, but it hardly mattered. There were already reports of uprisings right across the system.
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