by Jo Zebedee
Sabre Horn was clearly a ferry. She had delivered her passengers to Tanabria Station and then withdrawn to a safe mooring. There was certainly a puzzle here. An Imperial Navy frigate? It argued the Admiral’s enemy had the legitimacy of the authorities. Until now, that had not been true. Yes, his agents had suborned elements of the Imperial apparatus—that much she had witnessed time and again.
But an Imperial Navy frigate?
Did her enemy have that much power he could command Imperial Navy warships to do his bidding?
The Admiral came to a decision. “Ask Mr Mubariz to attend me,” she instructed one of the two runners standing at ease against the gallery’s aft bulkhead.
Her executive officer appeared five minutes later, rising up the well on the starboard lift-platform. He stepped onto the Captain’s Gallery, nodded at the runner stationed behind the Captain’s Bridge as he passed, and came to a halt beside the battle-consultant. He waited for the Admiral to speak. She said:
“We will leave Sabre Horn to fight another day, Mr Mubariz.”
Commander Abad mar Mubariz, Baron Mateen, nodded. He was a large dark-skinned man, as big as Major Skaria’s most fearsome marine. His neatly-trimmed goatee and expensively-tailored uniform, however, gave him an appearance too well-groomed to seem fierce.
“We will use the cover of commercial traffic to depart the system; and leave Sabre Horn none the wiser of our presence,” the Admiral continued.
“Ma’am,” acknowledged Mubariz. He pivoted smoothly to face the Admiral’s communications-console. A turn of a switch and the navigator lieutenant’s face appeared in one of the six circular glasses. Mubariz said, “Calculate our nearest approach to the frigate, if you will, Mr Garuni.” Another turn of the switch, and to a registrations lieutenant in another glass, he said, “I want to know what vessels are currently in our vicinity. A sutler barge would be… most useful.”
The answers came within minutes. Vengeful would need to pass by the frigate at 150,000 miles distance. There was a barge four hours journey from Maradagaz.
“We could use the gas giant to shield our departure,” Mubariz pointed out.
The Admiral shook her head. “No. Sabre Horn’s sensors would register our transfer to the toposphere, and they might choose to investigate any unscheduled departures. A naked topologic footprint would identify us.”
Mubariz was not convinced. “Ma’am, why should a frigate’s captain be privy to the manoeuvres of battlecruisers?”
“And if they should mention they detected a battlecruiser in the Darrus system in dispatches? No, Mr Mubariz, we cannot afford to gamble on the complacency of Navy officers.”
The registrations lieutenant identified the sutler barge as Mellow Fruitfulness. Like all vessels of her type, she was an immense block of a starship and she would provide excellent cover. She powered towards her plotted departure point in the Maradagaz gravity-well. Mellow Fruitfulness was little more than a vast hold fitted with drive-tubes and control systems. The crew of Sutler officers and menials lived—as they did on all voyages—in a temporary encampment of bubble-tents opportunistically erected in an interstice between cargo modules. They inhabited a small haven of warmth and light in the vastness of the dark, cavernous hold. The barge’s “bridge” was merely a portable container-like cabin, connected via data-hoses and umbilicals to the ship’s inner hull. Mellow Fruitfulness was a crude but highly-efficient vessel.
The barge approached the orbit of Maradgaz’s outermost moon, and Vengeful moved alongside her. It was too dangerous in her wake—the efflux thrown out by the barge’s drive-tubes could rip the battlecruiser apart. The Admiral intended to hide Vengeful’s topologic transfer within that of Mellow Fruitfulness. For that reason, she ordered her helmsmen to hold position five miles to starboard of the sutler vessel.
The Admiral waited patiently. The battlecruiser was hidden from Sabre Horn, but it was likely the crew of Mellow Fruitfulness would detect the ship shadowing her. The Admiral felt it a risk worth taking. The barge’s captain might well report the fact to his or her supervisors in the Order of Replenishers. This did not worry the Admiral. The sutlers held themselves aloof from all others and the news would never reach the Imperial Navy.
Lieutenant-Commander Voyna’s face appeared on a communication-console glass: “Admiral? We’ve lost contact with Sabre Horn. The barge is occluding our sensors.”
The Admiral turned to the battle-consultant. The red arrowhead of the frigate had not deviated from her plotted orbit. Yet, as the Admiral regarded the real-time image, the tree of possible vectors stretching forth from Sabre Horn faded as lack of data made their likelihood less determinable. In the absence of data, chance ruled. The frigate could continue blithely in her orbit about Maradagaz. She might be recalled and immediately boost towards Tanabria Station. She could decide to investigate the approaching barge from a closer distance, for whatever reason.
There was no way of knowing.
Slowly, the battlecruiser drifted abaft of Mellow Fruitfulness, vectoring above the barge. The battle-consultant switched to real-time as the warship’s passive sensors once more detected Sabre Horn. The red arrowhead shifted position slightly in the display, but the frigate clearly had not deviated from its orbit.
“Oblivious,” muttered the Admiral.
Mubariz grunted. “Why look for danger, ma’am, where none is likely to exist?”
The Admiral raised an eyebrow. “A Navy officer is always alert.”
The commander was insistent. “Ma’am, we’ve already established that Sabre Horn is on ferry duty. She has nothing to fear in the Darrus system, and no cause to look for trouble.”
Surprisingly, the Admiral let out a musical peal of laughter. “Sabre Horn is here for a reason, Mr Mubariz, and that reason is us. At the very least, she must suspect we’re still in the area.”
Still smiling, the Admiral turned from the battle-consultant. She had seen all she needed. “Take us back,” she ordered the coxswain. As the helmsmen’s acknowledgements rang out, she crossed to the edge of the Captain’s Bridge. Gripping the hand-rail, she leant forward and called down to the lieutenant of battle order: “Mr Voyna, how long until the barge makes its jump?”
Lieutenant-Commander Voyna jerked in surprise and looked up. “We’ve detected them spooling up their topologic drive already, ma’am. So, about ten minutes.”
“Then be at your most alert, Mr Voyna.” The Admiral slowly surveyed the conning tower decks within her view. “All of you: be at your most alert. There is no room for failure aboard this vessel.”
With a curt gesture, she signalled for her commander to approach her side. “Mr Mubariz,” she said, her voice low and forbidding, “the presence of an Imperial Navy frigate in this system—a frigate that has just delivered passengers to Tanabria Station—tells me something I would rather never have known. In the absence of Lieutenant-Commander Rinharte perhaps you will investigate this for me.”
“Admiral, the target has arrived in-system.”
The Admiral turned from the battle-consultant. “Do we have an intercept solution?” she demanded.
Lieutenant-Commander Voyna’s image nodded. “If the target maintains her current vector… yes, Admiral, we can catch her.”
The Admiral clasped her hands behind her back and lifted her chin. A small smile played about her lips. “Mr Garuni—” The navigation lieutenant’s likeness in another glass nodded— “Pass your course to the Pilothouse and Engineering,” she commanded abruptly. “They will not escape me.”
Vengeful’s extraction from the Darrus system had been as skilfully executed as the Admiral demanded. Mellow Fruitfulness had spun up its topologic drive. The battlecruiser’s sensors detected the change. Vengeful’s own topologic drive was rapidly spooled up to full-readiness. When the sutler vessel vanished in a burst of actinic light, Vengeful too left the Darrus system. Mere microseconds separated the two departures. To Sabre Horn’s sensors, they could only appear as
one.
A tiny icon blinked in the circular glass of the battle-consultant. The target… It was the reason Vengeful had travelled to the Ralat system. The Admiral had known her target would visit this planetary system. Weeks of intelligence-gathering had led to this moment.
The most innocuous of civilian craft, she reflected, made up this formless conspiracy she fought. The underhandedness of the upcoming engagement dismayed her. But it was not she who chose her targets, or their nature. Her enemy did that for her. His agents tried to disguise their machinations, but that could not hide the legitimacy of the blows she struck, or the effectiveness of her blows. Vengeful’s Intelligence Office had been adamant: this was the one. Yes, there were those aboard the target vessel who played no role in this conflict, unknowing dupes of her enemy. And yes, they would die, never learning why. But the Admiral was at war, and she would not count the cost. Not while she held the moral high-ground. She was fighting a foe who could not be allowed to succeed, not for the sake of the Empire, nor for the sake of her own survival.
Five faces watched her from the communications-console: her department heads, each located on a deck of the conning tower; and the acquisitions officer currently on duty in the Spotting Top. One glass remained dark. In the normal course of events, Lieutenant-Commander Rinharte, lieutenant of intelligence, would have peered from that small circular window.
“When the signal-lag drops below five seconds, fire at will,” she commanded Lieutenant Falconet, her captain of gunnery.
That would be many minutes yet. The target was some thirty million miles away. Sensor data was over six minutes out-of-date by the time it appeared on the battle-consultant. Vengeful had deployed sensor booms on all six axes, greatly increasing the sensors’ range and sensitivity. All the same, during those six minutes the target could have changed her vector sufficiently to render any targeting solution useless.
But the target was only a data-freighter, unarmed and relatively slow, her vector predictable.
At a distance of just under four hundred thousand miles, and still undetected by the data-freighter, the warship fired her main gun. The armoured door on the bow flowered open, revealing the cannon’s six-foot maw. The plotting officer and convergence officer, using data provided by the port and starboard rangefinder controllers, had determined the best attitude and direction of Vengeful for a firing solution. The battlecruiser herself was the weapon’s mount.
The lighting within the conning tower flickered and dimmed. For one brief moment, the stars stippling the mullioned-glass roof of the Pilothouse seemed to blink and brighten. The view for’ard was occluded as a white-hot lance of energy speared through the vacuum. The decking thrummed.
The Admiral gave a feral grin.
She counted off the seconds: one, for the directed-energy to reach its target; two, for the results of any damage to be picked up by Vengeful’s sensors…
Moments later: “I have static on all bands,” reported Lieutenant-Commander Voyna.
From the Spotting Top: “Light burst in the direction of the target.”
The Admiral turned to the battle-consultant. It was unlikely Vengeful had merely winged the data-freighter. Both reports suggested complete destruction. The sensors, however, would tell her for certain… The glass swam briefly with colour before her eyes. When the picture returned, the target’s single predicted vector had split into many, each a firm red indicating known data. And each labelled as smaller in mass and volume than the data-freighter had been.
Debris.
She tried to picture its destruction: the directed-energy impacting the hull, punching through hull metal, heating the air-space behind to incandescence. Blue-white flame jetting through the rent. A wall of heat speeding fore and aft, fast enough to cause a sonic boom. Internal partitions crumpling in an instant. Interior bulkheads ripping open. A wall of devastation smashing into the control cupola and instantly killing the crew at their consoles…
Not a pretty image. She had seen it before, seen warships at distances of no more than 500 miles suffer the same fate. With friends and colleagues aboard.
The crew of the data-freighter she did not know. She had not wanted to know. Even when presented with a report on the vessel, she had chosen not to read it. Let her concentrate on the righteousness of her battles, not on the deaths she caused.
If she could not believe the war she fought was legitimate, then she was no better than her enemy.
CHAPTER NINE
Two spectral figures flitted amongst the tombs and graves. “This,” said Rinharte mournfully, “is not the accommodation I had in mind.” She pushed between two bushes and found herself in a small clearing dominated by a stone table. No, not a table. A sarcophagus. In the night-time darkness, it was difficult to identify. Age had rubbed all detail from the stone work, rendering the reclining figure on the tomb’s lid little more than a suggestion of sinuous curves. Rinharte turned and perched her rear on one corner.
Kordelasz stopped at the bushes, and turned to gaze back at the deserted street. He spoke over his shoulder: “We couldn’t wander the streets until we found somewhere more… salubrious.”
“Salubrious? In Amwadina?” scoffed Rinharte.
This overgrown patch of ground, with its time-worn tombs and mausoleums, had not been used in centuries, perhaps longer. Any bodies the graves might contain had long since settled into dust. Yet an air of reverence still lay over the cemetery like a priest’s surplice, and Rinharte shuddered at the thought of disturbing the graves’ ancient sleep.
“We could hardly stroll into hostel and ask for a couple of rooms.” Kordelasz clearly refused to regret his choice of hiding-place. “Two ship’s corporals… who talk like yeomen?” He snorted. “News of us would be all over the city in a day.”
There was, Rinharte had to admit, a deal of sense to the marine-lieutenant’s point. Neither of them could pass as proles, despite their stolen uniforms. Clothes alone do not make a man.
In one corner of the graveyard sat the head of an ancient statue, fully a yard across the brow. The full figure must have stood some thirty feet high. Now, however, its crumbling features gazed from ground-level, while a gnarled and twisted tree hung dolorous branches over its crown. Some ancient lord, Rinharte guessed. Perhaps a ruler from one of Darrus’s golden ages thousands of years past.
“What do you suggest we do?” she asked. The glaucous stare of the stone head unnerved her. In the darkness, it seemed almost accusatory, angry at their trespass. A more superstitious person, she reflected, might well be afraid of supernatural revenge.
Glancing back at Rinharte, Kordelasz added, “The building across the road: I have my eye on one of the apartments. We’ll give it until three in the morning, ma’am. And then, ah, break in.”
“It’s unoccupied?”
Kordelasz shook his head. “We need clothes, food, somewhere fit to live while we wait for the Admiral to return.”
“And what about whoever lives there? I hope you’re not planning to… dispose of them.”
“Of course not, ma’am.” Kordelasz appeared almost offended. “We’ll take them into—” He grinned, then raised and lowered his eyebrows comically— “custody.”
Rinharte sat and shivered until the marine-lieutenant was satisfied all of the tenants were asleep in the building across the street from the cemetery. The night had turned cold and the coverall of a ship’s corporal was little protection. She refused to believe the graveyard itself was responsible for the chill. Death was the great ending; life was a gift given only once. The Book of the Sun, the holy book of the Chianist Church, claimed otherwise, of course; but Rinharte considered it little more than a collection of fables.
Kordelasz rose from his squat and the sudden movement startled Rinharte. She jerked forward but, as control reasserted itself, segued this into a smooth motion that took her to her feet. Strangely, once standing, she could no longer feel the chill. Perhaps the inhabitant of the sarcophagus h
ad not appreciated being used as a seat.
She made her way towards the marine-lieutenant. “It’s safe?” she asked.
“I think so.” He grimaced. “There are no lights in any of the apartments.”
He pushed through the bushes and began picking his way to the gate onto the street. Rinharte stumbled after him. The faint whoosh of night-time traffic, none of it in the vicinity, drifted across the city. The river itself could not be heard, slipping silently between its banks.
Kordelasz crossed the street with quick strides and sidled into the entrance archway of the apartment building. His white-clad figure seemed to shrink as he moved deeper into the shadowed recess. Rinharte hurried to catch up. She had yet to be convinced this was the right course of action. Or even a sane thing to do. The marine-lieutenant was under her command, but she found it all too easy to defer to his plans. Ever since that knight stalwart had surprised her on Tanabria Station, events had taken on their own momentum, and she no longer felt in control.
Rinharte climbed stone stairs. Her hearing had gained an unnatural sensitivity: Kordelasz’s low breath, the slither of cloth, the scuff of their boots against the stone, her own heartbeat… She could see a pale shape half a flight above her. There were no lights in the stair-well or on the landings. Light pollution of a faint orange rained down from a skylight at the top of the building, giving Rinharte’s surroundings a dim air of unreality. She was reminded of her conversation with Kordelasz on the viewing-gallery in Tanabria’s boat-bay, but could not think why.
The marine-lieutenant halted, and crept silently towards one of the doors on the third-floor landing. He held up a hand, said, “Ah,” quietly.
Rinharte gripped the banister, felt cold steel tubing beneath her hand—and was briefly appalled at the industrial nature of something as prosaic as a hand-rail in a residential building for proletarians. “What is it?”
“Lock.”
