Except it did, somehow. He’d stuck to his guns and refused to turn an entire planet to his allies. The Warplings coveted the lives of sophonts, or perhaps something attached to those lives: data or some form of energy, perhaps in the form of the so-called tachyon waves that were scientists’ weak attempt to explain something beyond their knowledge. Regardless of why they desired those things, he’d understood that give in to them invited disaster. Psychovores coveted power, and if he gave them too much, they might no longer need him or his ships. At that point, humanity’s only value would be only as yet another meal to devour.
Beneath the practical considerations, there was something else, however. A part of him suspected that what happened to the aliens on that city had been worse than the fate of those caught in the unyielding force fields of his genocide weapons. The suffering of the latter was over; Kerensky feared that the Warplings’ victims hadn’t been so lucky.
Dead is dead. He didn’t believe in such things as immortal souls. He wouldn’t have hesitated to burn down that city like all the others on the planet. His attempts at reassuring himself didn’t work. He knew whatever had happened to those aliens had been worse than death.
Have we dammed ourselves?
If so, at least they’d gotten a good deal for their souls, he half-joked to himself. This attack would send the Imperium reeling. The Gimps would spend time and energy trying to find the warp connection the Black Ships had used to attack Bizzik. They would be wasting their time, since the ley line would collapse as soon as the Warplings stopped supporting its existence. The actual mechanism remained a mystery to Kerensky, and to the team of FTL engineers aboard the Odin. He’d put his techies to work trying to glean as much useful information as possible, but all they had been able to learn was that their benefactors could create temporary fractures in spacetime that worked like normal ley lines except for some important limitations. Distance was a factor. While ley lines could connect two points thousands of light years apart Warplings could only ‘tunnel’ for relatively short distances. The only world they had been able to reach from Sokolov had been Bizzik, a mere three hundred light years away in Einsteinian terms. That meant the Black Fleet couldn’t simply sail on to Primus System and besiege the capital. Not yet, at least. Not for a price Kerensky was willing to pay. He suspected his benefactors might have an alternative proposal. At some point, they would make him an offer he might not be able to refuse.
He didn’t have to wait long. It was impossible to tell time while in warp, but in what felt like a short time he found himself facing the entity wearing the face of his grandmother.
“You did well, Nikolai,” the fake babushka said, the pride in her voice making him feel better despite his knowing better than to trust a Psychovore.
“I did my duty.” He still believed that, despite having betrayed his oath.
“That is good. Much works remains to be done, by you and those who follow you. They should hear what I have to say, and perhaps contribute their opinions.”
A crowd emerged from the darkness, surrounding Kerensky and the Warpling. Everybody in the fleet was there, except for the warp navigators keeping the ships on course. This time, his bargaining would not happen in private. He was trapped. If what he did or said next did not meet with their approval… Well, they had mutinied before, hadn’t they?
There is no spoon long enough to sup with the devil.
The monster behind his grandmother’s face laughed.
Six
Starbase Malta, Xanadu System, 169 AFC
Happy New Year to None.
The halls of Malta – the tiny fraction of Malta that had pressure, life support and people to appreciate both – were alive with celebration, but Heather McClintock was deliberately avoiding the festivities. Watching the public channels, she thought she detected a patina of tension and forced merriment among the crowds commemorating the hundred and sixty-ninth year since First Contact. The ‘New’ New Year’s Eve had started as a day of remembrance, one very different from January 1st on pre-Contact’s calendars. The date marked the day almost five billion people had died. It was observed as an affirmation: humanity lived on. Over time, it had grown into a time to party and have a good time, but in a time of war the true meaning of the date made itself felt.
This would be the sixth year of the war, one of the longest since humanity’s rise to Starfarer status. A lot of people were wondering about their chances to see 170 AFC.
We will, she told herself, taking a brief break from work and fortifying herself with a fresh cup of coffee. Worst case, Malta will be around next year, and for years afterwards.
She’d helped accomplish that much, at least. Not even the massed fleets of every civilization in known space could take Xanadu System, not unless those polities devoted decades of work and enormous expenses to bury its defenders under sheer weight of numbers. She only wished she could say the same for the rest of American space. They had won some time, but if the trends she’d been following didn’t change significantly, all the hard-won victories had merely delayed the inevitable.
Heather placed the steaming cup on her desk and went back to work.
The attack on Bizzik System hadn’t made the news yet; Heather had only learned of it from neutral ships traveling through Xanadu some two weeks after the battle. The reports would be made public sometime after New Year. The government had no choice in the matter: trying to keep Kerensky’s deeds a secret would be impossible, not to mention counterproductive. Most people would view the blow against the Imperium as nothing but excellent news; alien mass media had referred to humans as ‘Warp Demons’ for so long that everyone automatically filtered out the slur. Opinion polls showed that the mutineers still commanded a sixty percent approval rating, higher than both the President and the military. The fact that the renegades had somehow discovered yet another unknown ley line would be dismissed as a combination of luck and good American know-how.
Except the whole thing smacks of good Marauder know-how.
The Imperium was keeping the details of the Bizzik incident under wraps, but the official reports and unofficial gossip that had made it through the galactic news network were troublesome enough. The now-depopulated system was many transits inside Imperium territory. The attack was only possible if some unknown warp technology was in play. Just the kind of thing the Demons from the Endless Void would pull: humans, in other words.
Starfarer polities were falling into two camps: those who were so scared of humans that they favored accommodation for at least the short term, and the ones who were so scared of humans that they wanted to join up the effort to stamp them out once and for all. The O-Vehel Commonwealth had joined the first group; their peace initiatives were beginning to sound almost like pleas for mercy. There was no pro-human camp anywhere. Even the Puppies could no longer be considered friends but rather terrified acquaintances.
Let them hate, so long as they fear. Caligula had said that. Not exactly Heather’s idea of a role model.
She sighed and went back to her latest intelligence briefing. This one was from a Lutarri (a.k.a. Lizard) tramp freighter who’d happily uploaded all its logs, newsfeed archives, and every bit of data stored in its crewmembers’ implants, all for a mere ten percent discount on Xanadu’s hefty transit fees. Sorting through the mostly useless files took some work even with her implants’ expert systems doing most of the heavy lifting. A few useful tidbits showed up: the Lutarri Assembly had made a resolution not to enter into any binding military pacts with other galactic powers. Although the resolution was generic, it was obviously aimed at the Imperium. The Lizards had joined the ‘too scared to attack’ camp.
The relief she felt at the news made her realize that Caligula might have had a point after all.
On the other hand, if Kerensky’s renegades were doing what she suspected, the consequences would be beyond the worst nightmares of a mad Roman emperor. Opinion polls notwithstanding, the renegades had to be stopped. It wouldn’t happen un
til sometime in 169 AFC, however; the only force with a chance to stopping the Black Ships was spending New Year’s Eve in Lamprey space, fighting on an unimportant front instead of focusing on the greater danger.
She wished Third Fleet luck and a speedy return.
Lhan Arkh Fifth Congressional District, AFC 168
Third Fleet emerged from warp space ready to fight.
It normally took several minutes to shake off the effects of a trip of that length; the new drugs reduced warp disorientation by over ninety percent. Sondra Givens had reluctantly allowed their use; she still had misgivings about them, but winning this fight and heading home would require every trick in the book, old and new.
The American force had arrived six light hours away from the inhabited worlds in the system. By the time their emergence was detected the battle would be well underway, if not already over. Sondra waited for the last hallucinations to vanish from her mind. She had already forgotten many of them, although she knew her grandson Omar had been there, taunting her. It took a little longer to shake off a feeling of impending doom. By the time she did, everybody in the Combat Information Center was hard at work.
The initial sensor readings matched what the scouting force had observed three days ago, when a frigate squadron had emerged even further away from the system’s star, made long-range passive observations, and warped away before their initial emergence was detected. The enemy fleet hadn’t moved or altered its dispositions; it was still arrayed around the fifth planet of the system and its formidable array of orbital fortresses. The static defenses around DC-5-5 provided as much firepower as a dozen superdreadnoughts. And the mobile forces were just as impressive.
“We have positively identified sixty-three contacts,” the Tactical Officer announced; blinking icons in the central holotank changed into the shapes of Lamprey military vessels, their specs available to anyone with a cybernetic implant.
No surprises there, Sondra thought. Three dreadnoughts, one of them an antiquated Communal Property-class, the other two far more dangerous People’s Choice-ships like the captured hull now making up one fourth of the capital vessels in Third Fleet. Three Proletarian-class battleships, missile platforms that could volley-fire thousands of ship-killers apiece. Some thirty battlecruisers with nearly as much firepower but lower defenses completed the array of ships of the line; the rest were light vessels meant primarily to shoot down missiles or, lately, enemy fighters.
That still left thirty-seven unidentified ships. Visual sensors examined them – or rather, six-hour-old light reflected off their hulls – and displayed their images on the holotank.
“What the hell are they?”
The closeup video showed something like… a cloud? A six-hundred-meter wide cloud with a vague spherical shape. It didn’t look like anything any navy Sondra knew of had ever deployed.
“Passive graviton sensors are picking a mass two million metric tons for each of the contacts.”
That was about the same displacement as a heavy battlecruiser, give or take, which gave her a ballpark idea of what kind of defenses and firepower she could expect from the unknown ships.
“The gas surrounding them is obscuring their power signatures. They are not broadcasting any graviton signals on any frequencies, now narrow-beam laser communications, either. They seem to be running silent, ma’am.”
Ships that didn’t communicate with each other? Unlikely. This was the sort of First Contact everyone dreaded: a Starfaring civilization with unknown technologies. They might be lagging behind in some fields but be far more advanced in others, and the only way to find out would be to come into range and trade shots with them. The Lampreys thought these strangers made a worthy addition to their battle line, which made them dangerous.
“How about t-waves?” she asked.
“Uh, that’s a possibility, ma’am. Our communications department isn’t set up to detect them, however. We’ll have to consult with Intelligence and Navigation.” The two departments with t-capable personnel for the time being. Well, two of three.
“Get the Death Head Squadron in on this,” she ordered.
“Aye, aye, ma’am.”
Hopefully one of our witch doctors will figure it out, she thought.
Making decisions was why they paid her the big bucks. Her initial plan was to make one more warp jump to a point five light-seconds away from the main target, followed by a leisurely approach at 0.001 of c, which would take some eight hours to reach direct energy weapon range, or half that time if the enemy mobile forces closed in to engage her. Her five gunships would warp in a lot further in and whittle down the enemy during that time; given the immense firepower of those tiny ships, they might destroy the entire Lamprey fleet before the rest of her ships got to fire a single shot. They had done that at CD-97.
The new cloud-shrouded ships were the wild card, however. She decided to add an extra light-second to the fleet’s emergence points. Plenty of time to see what those cloud-ships had to offer, and to do something about them. It was a cautious approach, one that would make retreating a lot easier than warping right into the teeth of the enemy and letting fly with all available weapons. The chance to catch the Lampreys napping was tempting, but the unknown factor those strange ships represented made it too risky.
Maybe I’m turning into a timid granny in my old age, she thought.
“Ma’am, our tachyon-sensitive personnel believe the bogeys are in fact communicating via that method. At least, there appears to be some t-wave activity around those ships.”
Something else to worry about. She couldn’t well turn tail and run just because the Lampreys might have recruited some telepathic species to assist them. She quickly outlined the modified plan, made sure all vessels acknowledged it, and a few minutes later Third Fleet made its second jump in-system.
The transition went off without a hitch; the enemy fleet was expecting trouble and was at a high state of readiness. The sudden appearance of Third Fleet stirred a furious surge in communications followed by maneuvering, which meant their ships’ engines had all been online. No napping Lampreys here.
The mystery ships and the Lhan Arkh heavies surged forward, with escorts arrayed around them like so many sheepdogs. Their formation followed the latest anti-fighter tactics the US had encountered during the last few battles against the Imperium. The Galactic Alliance was sharing information freely among its members, even if the two main players did not like each other one bit.
“Death Head Squadron, commence attack run.”
She didn’t have any fighters, though. She had something a lot deadlier.
* * *
Emergence.
The Death Heads came out shooting. Their target, one of the mystery ships, was struck from two light-seconds away. The squadron reentered warp before the enemy even knew they were there.
We’ve got plenty of our own surprises, Lisbeth Zhang thought once her ships were safely back onto the Starless Path.
“True, Colonel, but we weren’t supposed to let them know our capabilities this early in the game. They’ve accomplished that much, at least,” Commander Genovisi replied to the unspoken comment.
Grinner had a point, of course. Standard fighters had a short attack range: their heavy graviton cannon lost coherence after a mere 100,000 km, slightly over one-third of a light-second. Corpse-Ships, on the other hand, could fire at the same distances the heaviest warship armaments could reach. While their original plan had been to emerge a knife-fighting ranges, the unknown ships had changed that. The ‘gunboats’ had made a short jump, fired a volley at long range, and retreated before the enemy could react.
Unfortunately, that was the kind of trick they could perform with total immunity only once. The enemy would figure out what had happened and extend active sensors far enough to detect their emergence points. Given the time it would take her ships to complete transit, fire and jump back, they would have to endure at least one volley of return fire. Although the Death Heads could take those
hits and survive, it never paid off to show your hand too early.
“Couldn’t be helped,” she told Grinner. “We need to know what’s the deal with those cloud-ships.”
Somewhere in the rainbow river of warp space, she spied an approaching presence. A Warpling, come to play.
“Fire at will,” she ordered. Five graviton blasts struck at the entity and hurtled it back, howling in shocked pain.
Teach you to bother us.
“Yeah,” Grinner agreed. “That was a bad one. I could smell its stench.”
“Think we killed it, Lamia?” Kong asked her.
“We should be so lucky. If the spooky bastard stuck around for long enough, we could probably rip it to shreds, but they aren’t that stupid.”
“I just love hurting them,” Kong said. He hated Warplings with a passion Lisbeth could appreciate. A few of his buddies had bought it during fighter pilot training, and NSSs had been involved in all the incidents.
“Taking pleasure in the pain of others will not lead you closer to Balance, Mister Kong,” Atu broke in.
“Anything you say, Pooh!” all five pilots chorused back. They’d gotten used to having a pet ghost around. Even Kong had warmed up to the three-eyed semi-imaginary alien after deciding it wasn’t really a Warpling or was at worst one of the good ones.
“All right, break time is over,” Lisbeth said, steering them out of warp.
Emergence.
They reappeared inside their – grudgingly designated – tender ship; Admiral Givens had politely but firmly refused Captain Ferrero’s request to reclassify the Laramie as a carrier vessel. The support crews moved forward. They didn’t have much to do at the moment, but it always was a good idea to give the ships a quick inspection before they went back into action.
One thing the Laramie had gotten for its troubles was a full set of tactical communication systems, something which normal supply ships didn’t rate. Lisbeth and the rest of her squadron got the full sensor take from Third Fleet with only a couple of seconds’ delay.
Havoc of War (Warp Marine Corps Book 5) Page 9
