The lone ship must be a courier, although Kerensky couldn’t see what there was to talk about.
“Target the contact, but hold fire until its intentions are clear.”
Five hours went by. Kerensky set his questions aside and concentrated on ensuring his forces were ready for the upcoming fight. He had three hundred warp fighters at his disposal, the only weapon platforms with any hope to destroy the enemy’s capital ships before Seventh Fleet was hammered into scrap. After a brief consultation with the Carrier Strike Group commanders, he issued orders instructing all fighters to engage in the technique known as ‘ghosting.’ The risk – no, the certainty – that the maneuver would slowly but surely kill all the pilots involved, and very likely cause something similar to what destroyed the Exeter, was of no concern now.
Have your say, Gimps, but no matter what happens today, you will provide us with an ample honor guard in Valhalla.
* * *
“Fleet Admiral Kerensky has transmitted the Alliance’s ultimatum to Earth,” Lord of Tactics Relentless Determination said. “A response is expected before the grace period expires, sixteen hours from now.”
Grace-Under-Pressure’s court was once again divided. Many of her vassals thought humanity would do well to accept the enemy offer, surrender being a better fate than outright destruction. She and many others disagreed.
It is death in either case, foolish pups, she thought bitterly. Accepting their ultimatum merely delays the inevitable. Humans are smart enough to know it.
The price to spare humanity from the fire domes was simple: they must give up the stars.
The terms were terse and to the point. The US and all other human polities – the Pan-Asians, in effect, since Great Columbia had no military fleet or colonies of its own – must surrender and demilitarize its space forces, scraping all starships and retaining only slower-than-light defensive forces. And that was just merely the precondition for a cease-fire. The formal peace demanded much harsher measures.
To begin with, all humans in the galaxy must return to one of seven assigned ‘reservation systems.’ All other colonies were to be surrendered to the Alliance. Over a hundred planets would have to be abandoned. A century of achievement – worlds colonized and terraformed, towns and cities rising from the wilderness, asteroid belts mined and inhabited by generations of spacers – would be erased with the signing of the peace accords. Even worse, those seven ‘reservation systems’ would be hideously vulnerable to any invader that decided to finish off the troublesome species once and for all.
There were millions of human spacers serving outside the US or Pan-Asia, employed by other Starfarers: all of them would repatriated, or their hosts would face the wrath of the Alliance. Some would no doubt escape, but they’d be a small, scattered remnant, hunted and despised.
That was not the end of it. All warp-capable humans – slightly over half of them – must undergo permanent sterilization. Even though warp tolerance wasn’t a wholly-genetic trait, that measure would, over multiple generations, reduce their numbers drastically. Enforcing the process would require constant inspection by outside agencies, of course. A ‘neutral’ civilization – a list of possible candidates had been attached to the ultimatum: they included the Vipers and the few Snakes left in the galaxy – was to provide observers to ensure the orders were carried out. To monitor something as basic as reproduction demanded a degree of control that essentially would mean total loss of autonomy. Humans would no longer be able to police themselves or otherwise arrange their affairs.
The ultimatum’s lesser points – surrendering the recently-conquered Xanadu System to the Alliance; war reparations that would beggar the US; public oaths by all humans who reached adulthood to never engage in FTL travel – only added insult to injury. The amount of time allotted for Earth’s leaders to make a decision made it blatantly clear that the Alliance didn’t expect their ‘generous offer’ would be accepted.
The entire farce was an empty gesture meant to allay the conscience of other Starfarers. Grace was sure the attempt to ‘peacefully’ conclude the war had been a major factor in convincing several polities to add their ships to the fleet poised to invade New Texas. The other one was the growing fear that humanity might one day dominate – or destroy – the rest of the galaxy. If humans surrendered, then the matter would have been handled in a civilized manner. And if the uppity barbarians refused those terms, then the problem would be solved more harshly, but be solved nonetheless.
What hasn’t occurred to those nations is a third possibility – that humans will prevail, and remember who turned on them during their darkest hour.
“What do you think, Your Highness? Will America surrender?”
Grace turned towards her Lord of Guns; her stony gaze made him lower both head and tail.
“I believe that the humans will surprise us all. Not necessarily in a pleasant way, mind you. But no, I do not expect they will surrender. Not while their blood runs through their veins and their jaws remain hinged and able to rend and tear.”
She looked upon her court, very likely for the last time.
“No. Today we fight.”
* * *
The Imperium courier made transit, bearing President Hewer’s and Premier Cho’s answer. At the end of his declaration, Hewer had appended the word ‘NUTS!’ over his signature. It’d taken a Woogle search for Kerensky to understand its meaning. When he did, he couldn’t help but to smile.
If humans had to go into the night, they would do it on their feet, not their knees.
“We are at DEFCON-One. To all Seventh Fleet personnel: it is my greatest pride to serve with you on this day. The enemy will arrive soon, and it is up to us to give him a warm welcome. Today we stand on New Texas, and like the heroes of Old Texas’ El Alamo, we will not run. But unlike them, we will prevail and turn the enemy back. Once we break his fleet, he will have nothing left to give. And then will come a time of retribution.”
Kerensky closed his eyes, visions of Heinlein-Five burning in his mind. Retribution would be sweet indeed, but first they must hold here and now.
“Remember your training, and rely on it, your comrades in arms, and the Grace of the Almighty. God Bless America. That is all.”
* * *
Lieutenant Gus Chandler jogged towards his War Eagle while the General Quarters signal blared in his ears.
No boring deep space patrols this time, mostly because they hadn’t been possible. There was no way Seventh Fleet could spread out its carrier elements in the allotted time, and it’d been hard enough to do it with nearly five hundred fighters. Two thirds of that number just couldn’t cover enough space to find the enemy initial emergence point in time to do any good. So they were going to fight this the old-fashioned way: sit next to the inner planets and wait for Echo Tango to show up.
He’d been in the pilot’s lounge when the surrender demands were announced. Everybody had known the ETs’ terms would be rejected out of hand. Any remfie who tried to take that deal would be lucky to be set on fire after his lifeless body had been hung from the nearest utility post, rather than before. People used to think the Gimps weren’t so bad, not when compared to the Lampreys or Vipers, but as it turned out they were worse than the damn Snakes. At least the Risshah had been honest about being genocidal maniacs; the Gal-Imps wanted to act virtuous and self-righteous before they started burning down human cities.
Retribution. Admiral Kerensky’s word had a nice ring to it. And if the pilots could work some arrangement with the Foos, they might live long enough to get some payback from every enemy of the country. The kind of payback they wouldn’t recover from.
Gus’ smile would have scared the flight crew, but his face was hidden under his pilot’s helmet. His buddies could pick up on his mood, but most of them felt the same way. Most.
“You do not know what you are doing,” Grinner Genovisi sent out, her thoughts touching every mind she could reach, which in her case was every fighter pilot in Seventh Fle
et. “Do not talk to the Warplings! They will deceive you, betray you!”
Not being anywhere near Grinner’s level when it came to FM, Gus couldn’t hear the responses of the others, except in a diffuse way, like trying to separate ‘Yeas’ from ‘Nays’ with everyone shouting at the same time. His feel was that the ‘Yeas’ had it by a mile, though. Most pilots were too angry – and scared, not that any of them would admit it – to go with half measures. They were going to be flying missions until they dropped or every carrier was destroyed and they ran out of gas and bullets. And they’d been ordered to ghost from the get-go. Admiral Kerensky knew that move provided the only chance of victory. Gus was no tac officer, but he knew Seventh Fleet wouldn’t last long in a standard exchange of broadsides. The fighters needed to do the heavy lifting, and the only way to live long enough to do so was by ghosting.
And the only way to survive ghosting was to follow Beak Dhukai’s lead.
The intense little bastard had been making the rounds, and he was more convincing than Grinner, whose only advice seemed to boil down to ‘grin and bear it,’ which as a plan was damn suboptimal. Grinning and bearing it would get them all killed and lose the battle. If dealing with the Devil was what it took…
“For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world but lose his whole soul?”
“Nice try, Grinner,” he told her, reaching out with his mind. “Mark 8:36. I’m the Catholic in the squadron, not you. You don’t even believe in the Bible, so don’t be quoting Scripture to us.”
“Dammit, Bingo.” She didn’t sound angry. More like sad and tired.
“Way I see it, my soul isn’t all that much to gamble when there’s another eight billion on the line.”
“If the worst happens, all those souls are at risk.”
“Still better than dead.”
“You’re the Catholic in the squadron, Bingo. How can you say that?”
He wasn’t sure how to respond, but launch prep signals interrupted their mental argument. The enemy fleet had made their second and final in-system launch; and emerged five light seconds away; they would reach New Texas-Six in under an hour and a half. Seventh Fleet would advance and meet them at the halfway point, planning on a running battle as it slowly fell back towards the planet and its orbital and ground defenses.
“All right, kids, it’s time to go play,” Papa Schneider said on the squadron’s imp channel. “Now, there is a lot of discussion about the Foos. All I can say is, do as your conscience dictates. And respect everybody’s choices, even if you don’t agree with them. Life is too short.” He paused. “And it’s likely to be as short as it gets in a little while.”
Everyone laughed at that.
“We’re ghosting. Those are our orders. Concentrate on staying in one piece during transit and hanging on the threshold. The Tango ack-ack is going to be nasty; their battlecruisers are going to be right close to the capital ships to provide close point-defense support; they’ll chance friendly fire if that means they can get us.”
Gus swallowed. Destroyers and light cruisers were bad enough, but most ET battlecruisers mounted big-ass guns even for their secondary batteries. No War Eagle was going to survive a near-miss from a fifteen-inch or larger grav cannon; the beam’s ‘wake’ would spill over the fighter’s warp shields and crush it like a tin can. He’d seen how that song went: twelve little fighters become eleven little fighters on the first sortie, and each verse got a little worse than the last. Even ghosting, some of that firepower might get through to them.
“If we can’t stop the ETs, there’ll be Hell to pay,” Papa continued. “Fleet orders are, if our losses reach a certain level, we have to run. You know doing a general warp jump under fire will likely double those losses. Not to mention there’s about twenty million civvies in-system we’d be leaving behind, plus three other systems wide open to attack with even fewer system defenses.”
There was a chorus of mental growls at that. Leaving civilians to be burned alive was the most shameful thing a Navy officer could do. Gus doubted Admiral Kerensky would obey that directive. Not personally, at least; everyone knew his flagship wasn’t leaving New Texas. Most of the carriers would buy it, too, because they were prime targets for the enemy. Might as well go out with a bang.
“You know the job. Let’s go get some.”
* * *
“Missile launch. It’s…” The Tactical Officer hesitated for a moment. “The Shellhead ships are firing an unknown kind of missile. Much faster and smaller. Only slightly bigger than a crowbar, launched via some sort of magnetic rail system… Those bastards are moving at point-oh-two of c, sir. Twice as fast as regular missiles, with much lower sensor profile, and there are fifty thousand of them.”
“Divert the next fighter sorties onto those contacts,” Admiral Kerensky ordered. A hundred thousand regular missiles were also in flight, but from the looks of it the enemy was going to wait until the Leegor weapons reached their target before they launched a full barrage. This was going to get interesting. The flying crowbars didn’t have warheads, but traveling at two percent the speed of light, they didn’t need them. Those railgun-launched guided missiles represented a wholly-new technological development, something the Leegor had been keeping under wraps until now.
And that’s why wars are chancy affairs. You have a plan, the enemy has a plan, and the Devil’s Grandmother has a plan.
While this new variation of the Sun-Blotter swarm closed the distance, the advancing fleets traded energy blasts at extreme range, the enemy’s greater throw weight balanced by the Navy’s warp shields. No surprises there. The first fighter strikes hit seconds after the missile launches; Kerensky had hoped to land a few blows before the enemy’s missile volleys were launched, but the ETs had a plan of their own, and it included firing off a salvo earlier than normal, spearheaded by a previously-unknown technology.
“Three enemy superdreadnoughts have taken critical damage.”
“A good start,” the admiral said. The first fighter sortie had gone after the Imperium capital ships; they had the most missiles, and once they were gone the allies’ cohesion and morale would suffer, perhaps to a crippling degree. The need to silence the flying crowbars swarming out of the Leegor ships would require a change in plans, however.
When it came to plans, only the Devil’s Grandmother got her way.
Fourteen
Redoubt-Five, 167 AFC
Keep it together, Lisbeth Zhang told herself.
Easier said than done. Focusing on the here-and-now was getting harder with every passing moment. Lisbeth bit her lower lip hard enough to draw blood. Her combat helmet concealed that from the rest of the crew.
“All right, Captain Fromm,” she began formally. She was nominally in charge, being the senior officer and the only one with any idea of what they were doing. “We need to search this level for a command node. Once we find it, I, with the assistance of Doctor Munson and Lieutenant McClintock, will release the warp entity bound to the Tower. In return, said entity will remove all security measures in the area, giving us full access to all its levels. Which include the hanger containing five Corpse-Ships – two were lost in action at some point – and several stasis-preserved arms depots, filled with Marauder weapons and gear. Plus warp transport devices that will allow us to send all the stuff we want to the surface for pickup, or even directly to the Humboldt’s holds. Does that sound good to you?”
“Can we trust the entity to keep its word?”
“Good question. I don’t know. If it tries to cheat, I’m going to kill it. I mentioned that to it during our conversa….”
Captain Fromm’s armored form, the end of the access tunnel where they were having their briefing, and the entire planet they were on vanished in an eyeblink. She was soaring through space with a school of Pathfinders, their massive forms moving through real space faster than any graviton thruster could go. They were using warp apertures to generate an endless supply of reaction mass, and had accelerated to a quarter
of the speed of light, fast enough for relativistic effects to affect their perceptions. The eleven Pathfinders laughed as they skirted the outer edge of a red dwarf star, unaffected by temperatures in the mega-degrees Kelvin or the occasional impact with atoms or molecules, each striking with enough energy to punch holes both ways through a superdreadnought’s armored hull. Their joy was meant to balance the sadness they felt at the passing of one of their own, an elder sibling who’d chosen to wander into the depths of the Starless Path, never to return…
“Uh, conversation,” Lisbeth finished. From the surface emotions of those around her, she’d frozen for several seconds. Public displays of insanity were the worst. “So, that’s the plan. Any questions?”
“What would a command node look like?”
“Can’t miss it. It’s like an oversized motorcycle seat, built into a wall recess. The Keeper tried to show me the exact location, but it looks like most of the level was, uh, rearranged by the same event that killed all the Kranxans inside the Tower. All it knows is that there is a functional unit somewhere in there. Up to us to find it.”
“Will do.”
“Okay, then I should open the door. I cannot feel the Flayer of Souls anywhere, but be careful in there.”
One mental command later, the door to the interior opened up and the group made its way inside, operating in full tactical entry mode. This section of the Tower had been through the wringer. There was destruction everywhere, and signs that something worse than mere energy weapons had been at work.
Mundane damage was evident from the moment they stepped into the regular hallways of the building. The Kranxans went for wide, curving corridors and internal walls carved with elaborate bass-reliefs in a dizzying variety of geometric designs, some of which was Kranxan writing, the rest merely decorative. Normally, those hallways would be brightly lit, in wavelengths trending towards the red end of the spectrum. At the moment, they were pitch black; the only sources of light were what they had brought along.
In Dread Silence (Warp Marine Corps Book 4) Page 25
