by J. L. Doty
The two destroyers leading the first wave down-transited as planned, but to their surprise they detected no activity at the point of first engagement, though they did detect a coalition force of eight cruisers and six destroyers about one light-year farther in. They uplinked the unconventional positions of the coalition warships, and with first engagement apparently already clear, the commodore of the first wave decided to drive right through first engagement and down-transit just short of the waiting coalition forces.
It was just beyond first engagement that the silent and unseen hunter-killers hit them, slamming torpedoes at their transition wakes as fast as they could launch them. In the first seconds of the engagement eight of the attacking ships, including four of the cruisers, took direct hits and blossomed into thermonuclear fireballs. The entire wave down-transited in a confused mess, right in the midst of the nearly invisible, but deadly, hunter-killers, who took advantage of the chaos. They had the advantage that once the shooting started, the incandescent flares of nearby warheads masked their already shielded emission signatures. In the next few minutes they completely destroyed six more enemy warships and heavily damaged seven.
As the mauled remnants of the first wave retreated, desperately trying to signal the following three waves that first engagement had been a rout, the line of coalition cruisers one light-year away up-transited at maximum drive heading straight for the incoming Syndonese. The hunter-killers rigged for silent running and disappeared from everyone’s screens.
Roacka and Darmczek’s plan had been to completely take out the first wave, then have the line of coalition warships move forward and be waiting at first engagement when the second wave came in, expecting the area to be clear. But the remaining ships of the first wave apparently got their signals through, and five hours later the second wave down-transited early and unscathed, just out of range of first engagement where the coalition warships waited.
To the commodore of the second wave, who was clearly still unaware of the hunter-killers, it must have appeared that he had the advantage of numbers. But after the mauling the first wave had taken he moved cautiously. There then commenced a running battle between the coalition ships and the combined forces of the second wave and the remnants of the first. It turned into an unconventional free-for-all in which most of the lessons of the war colleges were of little use, and each captain had to make up his own tactics on the run. Nadama’s and Goutain’s ships tried to stall until the third wave could arrive, though the conventional coalition ships found it rather easy to lure them within range of the undetected hunter-killers, all lying in wait as the battle raged about them.
The coalition lost four ships to conventional isolation and englobement tactics, and Nadama lost three. The hunter-killers didn’t take just any target, but waited until they could target one of the larger ships. In that way, they managed to torpedo eight big enemy warships before one of Nadama’s captains caught on and took out one of the hunter-killers. Then everyone disengaged, and since the hunter-killers were defenseless, and therefore useless without the element of surprise, Roacka withdrew them completely. It was at that point that Charlie and his twelve warships down-transited into Borreggan nearspace.
A fucking war! What incredible luck, Thraka thought as he nodded at the guard stationed outside Delilah’s apartments. The entire station was in a state of absolute chaos. Anyone with any means of getting out-system was doing so, and many of those who couldn’t, and who didn’t have a vested interest in the station’s defense, had taken to the public corridors, driven by the classic madness of fear and panic. Thraka could get away with almost anything now.
He’d had to seriously up his bribe to the tramp freighter he’d hired. Her captain wanted to pull out immediately, but Dieter had given him the wherewithal to provide an enticing sum to a greedy man who was used to taking chances. The usual arrangement: half now, half when the fellow delivered Delilah safely to Thraka’s employer.
The guard took a casual glance beneath the linen towel on the small tray that Thraka carried. It contained refreshments, exactly the kind of thing the princess would request. And besides, Thraka was trusted. The guard hadn’t bothered to search him for some days now, so of course he didn’t find the plast knife concealed in his tunic. Thraka had no doubt they’d set up detectors on the threshold, so he dared not attempt to conceal any powered weapons. The guard admitted him to Delilah’s sitting room, and he found Delilah pacing nervously back and forth, Carristan sitting in a nearby chair.
“Thraka,” Delilah demanded. “What news? Do you know how the battle’s going?”
She paid no thought to the fact that he was bringing refreshments she hadn’t asked for. He smiled. “They’ve repelled the first two waves, apparently inflicted serious damage on several enemy warships. And the Duke de Lunis has just down-transited into the system with a sizable force of warships.”
She stopped pacing, closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Oh, thank goodness. But did he bring enough?” She finally noticed the tray he carried and pointed to a small table next to Carristan’s seat. “You can put that there.”
As he put it down and lifted the linen towel off the tray, Carristan glanced at it carefully, smiled, and said to Delilah, “Thoughtful of you to order lunch, dear.”
Delilah frowned. “I didn’t order anything. I thought you did.”
As Carristan stood to examine the tray’s contents, Thraka improvised. “Lord Arthur ordered it for you both, thought that with all the excitement you might be forgotten by the rest of the staff.”
Delilah approached them, the hint of a frown forming on her face. She and Carristan looked at the tray carefully and Carristan’s frown grew more pronounced. Standing behind them, Thraka casually pulled the palm patch from his pocket. He broke the seal and placed it in his left hand, careful not to expose his skin to the active side. Then, with his right hand, he retrieved the plast knife from another pocket and kept it hidden behind his back.
“I would think,” Carristan said with emphasis, “that Arthur would be far too preoccupied to worry about lunch for two rather spoiled women.”
Damn these paranoid women, Thraka thought as she turned to face him, one eyebrow lifted in question.
Even to the last, neither of them ever truly understood the danger they faced. Thraka had been careful to stay close to them both, and as Carristan turned he thrust the knife up into her diaphragm just below her ribs. A quick thrust and a twist, paralyzing the diaphragm so she couldn’t scream, and slicing through the heart and several major arteries.
With a look of complete surprise she let out a tiny, muffled whimper, looked down at his hand holding the knife in her chest and the blood flowing there. Delilah, slightly behind her, still didn’t understand what had happened, the look on her face questioning the strange, agonized look on Carristan’s. But before she could react Thraka slapped the side of her neck with the palm patch.
The moment ended. Carristan crumpled to the floor without a sound. Delilah had just an instant before the drug took effect and a look of surprise, fear, and pain washed over her face as she took a breath to scream. But before she could do so her eyes glazed over, she touched her forehead confusedly, and spoke haltingly. “Something’s . . . wrong.”
“Sit down,” he said, “and say nothing, do nothing, make no sound.” She staggered back to her seat and did so. The drug thieracin, highly illegal, made her completely obedient to his every command. It occurred to him he could have a little fun, tell her to suck his cock and she’d do so without question. But while she was a pretty little thing, he could buy all the pleasure he wanted after this was over, and Dieter would likely get upset if he found out.
Thraka used the towel from the tray to wipe the blood off his hand and the knife, then turned to the door, beyond which the guard waited. He opened it quickly, spoke in an excited voice. “Come quickly. Something’s happened t
o Lady Carristan. Something terrible.”
The guard rushed past him. Thraka quickly closed the door and followed close behind the man as he dropped to one knee over Carristan’s body. He carefully pulled a piece of her garment aside to look at the blood. That was the last move he ever made as Thraka, standing behind him, stabbed the knife down into the man’s chest, careful to angle the thin blade so it slipped easily between his ribs. A quick turn of the blade, slicing through aorta and heart, then a heel-palm strike to the back of the head, and the man fell forward on top of Carristan without a sound. Thraka prided himself on being a professional, on knowing how to do these things without creating a fuss.
Again Thraka cleaned off the blood, then grabbed the drugged and obedient Delilah by the wrist and pulled her into her dressing room. He sat her down, carefully scrubbed her face to remove her makeup, pulled her hair back, and tied it in an unattractive ponytail behind her head. From his pockets he produced a small, white lace cap and shawl, common attire for servant women, and adjusted them carefully on her. It wouldn’t work if someone looked at her closely, or if she’d been wearing some sort of elaborate gown. But removing the makeup and altering the hairstyle to something unattractive completely changed the woman’s appearance. Then add a few visual cues that made everyone immediately think servant, and she became virtually invisible, especially accompanied by him, another servant.
Of course, the chaos at every turn helped immeasurably. Thraka pulled the compliant young woman through the public corridors without incident, and met up with two of the men from the tramp freighter. They brought a cloak that covered her even more. And when the docking gantry nudged the freighter away from the station, Thraka breathed a long sigh of relief.
CHAPTER 31
OLD DEBTS
The numbers had improved. Nadama and Goutain had lost twenty-five ships, with an additional ten heavily damaged. The coalition had only lost four, plus two heavily damaged, so first engagement had been an unquestioned victory for the coalition. But that still left Nadama and Goutain with more than sixty undamaged fighting ships, while, excluding the hunter-killers, the coalition had a little over forty, including those with Charlie. And considering the fact that three of Charlie’s cruisers weren’t ready for battle, and Nadama and Goutain had a preponderance of big battleships and heavy cruisers, the situation was indeed dire. Nadama and Goutain had come prepared to bombard Andyne-Borregga into radioactive vapor.
“Duke Charles,” Winston said.
Charlie looked up from his screens. “Yes, Winston, what is it?”
“You need to make a speech, Your Grace. Broadcast it to the entire system . . . and to the enemy.”
“I don’t make speeches.”
Winston smiled like a patient father. “You are the supreme commander of the coalition forces. You need to show yourself to the people fighting for you, you need to tell them what they’re fighting for, and you need to tell your enemies why they won’t win.”
Above all, Charlie understood that he was a soldier, and when Winston put it that way, he could not deny the power of the visible presence of command. They quickly scratched out a few words, though they didn’t have time to get elaborate so Charlie would have to fake much of it. And they had to get back into transition so he’d have to keep it short.
They called in a technician, and Winston appeared first on camera to say, “I give you His Grace, Charles, Duke de Lunis, supreme commander of all coalition forces.”
Charlie sat down in front of the camera, took a calming breath, and spoke.
“It may surprise you that I, a soldier, do not condone war, but I despise tyranny more, and if need be I will die to eradicate it. I won’t claim to be without fault, but my greatest sin is the sin of all commanding officers: I will ask others to die as well. Tyranny is a cancer that will grow if not stopped, and the oppressive annexation of Aagerbanne and Finalsa cannot be allowed to continue.”
Charlie and Winston had considered including the oppression of the Syndonese people in that, but doing so might force them into an offensive war against the republic, and they just didn’t have the resources for that. Winston had said, “A good king is always a practical king.”
Charlie continued. “We have an alliance that includes all of Aagerbanne, the independent states, and several of the Ten, so today is the day we will stop this tyranny. We are in the right and we will be victorious, but cutting out a cancer can be painful. I long ago learned victory is never grand or sweet. In my experience we will find only relief when the dying has stopped. But fight on, do not waver, and soon we will end this.”
After the technician shut off the camera, Winston nodded and gave Charlie an uncharacteristic thumbs-up. The old man’s excitement, though, wasn’t echoed by Charlie. He felt like a liar, casually promising victory that way.
At the edge of Borreggan nearspace, Charlie sent his small task force to join the coalition forces amassing near first engagement, while he took The Thirteenth Man, under the command of a Captain Matula, into Andyne-Borregga. As Arthur and Roacka reviewed the situation in the station’s command center, Charlie, still on the destroyer and several AUs out, joined them by way of his implants. Neither Roacka nor Arthur had found time to shave for a couple of days.
As if having a similar thought, Arthur said, “Time. We need time. Your courier ships got the word out, and we’ve got fifteen warships coming in from the independent states, another five from Aagerbanne, and twenty from Kinatha. But they’re all spread out, and will be trickling in one or two at a time for the next four days.”
Roacka shook his head and rolled a cigar from one side of his mouth to the other. Arthur wouldn’t let him smoke the disgusting thing, so he had to content himself with chewing on the stub that remained. “This’ll all be over in four days.”
“Maybe we can buy that time,” Charlie said. “Nadama and Goutain are regrouping at first engagement. Their obvious solution is to take advantage of their superior numbers, come at us in force, and clear the way into heliopause. Where are the hunter-killers?”
“I pulled them out. They’re no good anymore.” Roacka still didn’t fully understand their capabilities, still hadn’t learned to think like a hunter-killer captain. “They’re driving in-system now from first engagement, presently about three light-years out.”
Charlie asked, “And the nine that remain are relatively undamaged, still stocked with torpedoes?”
Roacka’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “That they are, lad.”
Charlie knew they could still play a role, perhaps a significant one. With the numbers against them, they needed every warship at their disposal contributing to the fight. And though some of the enemy captains might understand they were facing something new and unusual, others wouldn’t. Even among those who did realize that the rules had changed, Charlie hoped that few could adopt new tactics in so short a time. He could only hope he wasn’t condemning the hunter-killer crews to a useless death.
“Have them down-transit where they are, randomly spaced directly in the line of attack from first engagement. Tell them to do everything they can to minimize their transition flares, then run silent and wait for the enemy to come their way. Each hunter-killer captain is to operate independently, wait until he has a solid targeting solution, launch a small salvo of torpedoes, then up-transit, run ahead of the enemy as fast as he can, gain some distance, then down-transit and repeat the whole scenario. Those hunter-killers are fast enough to stay ahead of the advancing enemy, so each ship should be able to get in four or five shots before they reach heliopause. Tell them to make Goutain and Nadama pay dearly for every light-year they gain.”
Roacka chewed on the stub of his cigar and carefully rubbed the stubble on his chin. After several silent seconds of consideration he said, “Might work. And let’s get some of our conventional warships in there to engage in the traditional fashion. That’
ll help cover the hunter-killers’ tracks.”
“Good idea.”
Roacka grinned. “I figured I was going to end my days hanging from a gallows, but this just might work.”
Arthur suddenly held up his hand, indicating he was listening to something coming in through his implants. He listened for a few seconds, stood suddenly, and said, “Shit.” He looked at Charlie and said only, “Delilah,” then sprinted out of the room.
Dieter wasn’t happy, though in Thraka’s experience, Dieter was never happy, not with people like Thraka. Thraka knew he’d always fall short of Dieter’s acceptability criteria.
“I told you to bring her to me,” Dieter demanded.
“And I would, Your Lordship,” Thraka said calmly, “if the men on this ship would let me. But you’re on a large warship, in the midst of sixty or seventy other large warships, all of whom’ll do your bidding, and that makes these men quite nervous.” Thraka didn’t add that it made him nervous too. Unlike his father, Dieter was too unpredictable, with a temper that flared too easily, a temper that often led to cruelty.
“You have her, don’t you?”
“Oh most certainly, Your Lordship. Once I removed the thieracin patch and the drug wore off, she was quite angry, was . . . quite a handful actually.”
