by Jay Allan
“Shall I pour your tea, Your Supremacy?”
“No, Poscuta, that will not be necessary. I will see to it.”
The servant paused for an instant, almost as though the idea of letting her pour her own tea was some sort of failure on his part. Finally, he said, “Very well, Your Supremacy. Is there anything else I can do for you?”
“No, I believe I have everything I need. You may retire for the even…”
Her head snapped around suddenly, those combat instincts at work again. There was noise, coming from outside, much louder and more concerning than her valet bringing tea this time.
Airships…
She felt an urge to disregard it. There was always air traffic around the capital. But there was something wrong. There were too many, especially for this hour, and from the sound, they were heavy units. And they were coming from more than one direction.
Those are military, and far more than a standard patrol. I’d know if there were any maneuvers scheduled for right now…
She stepped toward the door again, peering out into the night. There were definitely ships moving. She could see the lights zipping by against the inky night sky. She couldn’t understand. There was no way the capital could be under attack. There was no enemy within five jumps of Palatia.
Then she heard the first explosions.
Chapter Seven
Mechcorp Orbital Shipyards
Above Thralia, Chyrus III
310 AC
“I must say, Director Carstairs, your progress has been nothing short of astounding. Mechcorp is months ahead of any of the other shipbuilding concerns. The people of the Confederation owe you and your workers a debt of gratitude. I thank you, and bid you accept my gratitude for your patriotism.” Van Striker stood in the center of the room, looking out at the three immense ships enmeshed in a spidery web of structural supports and umbilicals.
“I am humbled by your words, Admiral Striker, and I cannot state emphatically enough the honor you do us by visiting our yards.” There was a haughty tone to the man’s words, and a bit of the accent Striker had come to realize over the past few days was typical of the Thralian upper classes. Of course, Philodor Carstairs was about as upper class as it got, though Striker knew it had been the man’s grandfather and father who had created that reality. If he’d been compelled to guess, he’d have bet Philodor—actually, Philodor III—would prove to be the generation that coasted on the work of his descendants…before his own children began to whittle away the family fortune.
Though Carstairs has certainly held up the family tradition better than might have been expected, even if his brain is a poor copy of his father’s…or his grandfather’s, the real robber baron who built an empire on the backs of a few million Thralians. He’s beat more effort out of his bonded workers than any of the other Iron World moguls. Something to be proud of, I suppose.
Striker scolded himself for feeling morally superior. There had been very little—nothing?—he himself hadn’t sacrificed to the demands of the war effort, and the oppressed laborers of Thralia were no different. He disapproved of Carstairs’s brutal methods, but he was thrilled to have three new battleships so close to commissioning. They were no more than three months from joining his battered fleet, and perhaps beginning the long process of turning the tide of war.
“May I rely on that three-month estimate, Director? I cannot emphasize strongly enough how badly these ships are needed at the front.”
“Yes, Admiral, of course. I will even try to shave some time from that, perhaps delivering in ten weeks, or even nine.”
Striker felt a pang of guilt at the feral tone in Carstairs’s voice. He had some idea of the hell to which his urgency had just consigned Mechcorp’s workers. But the pity vanished quickly. The workers would survive their ordeals, at least. It was more than he could say for the spacers who had died—who would die—under his command in battle.
Most of them will, at least. Mechcorp’s got a pretty ugly safety record.
“You have your nation’s thanks, Director. And mine.” He turned and looked back out over the massive shipyard. It stretched kilometers into the distance, its massive frame continuing out as far as Striker could see. The immensity of the complex made the ships appear to be smaller than they were. The new Repulse-class battleships were a huge step up in power from most of the Confederation’s pre-existing warships. Named for the fleet’s martyred flagship, destroyed earlier in the war, the vessels outmassed the old Repulse by nearly 500,000 tons. Each mounted a quad particle accelerator as a primary emplacement, replacing the old dual systems, and the rows of secondary batteries lining its sides were more numerous, and half again as powerful to boot. The ships carried ninety fighters, launched from three separate bays, and the whole thing was powered by four massive fusion reactors. The ships would be the most powerful things in space, and they would make a huge difference when they reached the front, even just these first three.
“I would like to invite you to dinner this evening, Admiral, at my estate on the White Coast Archipelago.”
Striker felt like he’d been punched in the stomach. Another dinner, more speeches. He almost longed for an alert, some kind of emergency pulling him away. But there was no escape. None at all. “I would be delighted, Director. You have my thanks yet again.” How did you become such a good liar? You were an honest man when you had less metal on your collar…
“Splendid. My shuttle will leave in half an hour, Admiral. We can enjoy a drink on the trip to the surface—I have a wonderful Megaran Pinot Noir—and share stories. No doubt, yours are far more interesting than mine, though I fancy I can tell an amusing take or two of our efforts in building these ships.”
“That would be fine, Director.” Striker had seen too many of his people killed in battle to tolerate feeling sorry for himself when the greatest danger he faced was being bored to death, but he still couldn’t purge the image from his head of shoving a gun in his mouth. A coward’s escape, perhaps, but seductive nevertheless in its own way. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to check in with my staff before we depart.” And if I don’t get two minutes to myself…
“Of course, Admiral. Shall we say docking bay two in twenty minutes?”
“Yes, Director…I will be there.” Unless I can figure a way to escape…
He turned and walked away, sucking in a deep breath as he did. The front had been quiet since the last big Union offensive. Both sides had been too badly hurt to sustain any real action, and a stalemate had taken hold, one Striker suspected would last until one fleet was able to get enough repaired and new ships in the line to launch an attack. Meanwhile, both the Confederation and Union forces were digging in, building bases and fortifying moons and asteroids. When heavy combat did resume, he knew it would be hell. Even if the Confederation was able to get its new ships in the line in greater numbers than the enemy, the clear advantage would be a defensive one, security against another enemy assault. To launch its own offensive, and push to force the war to a conclusion, the fleet would be compelled to drive through a hornet’s nest of defensive installations. He didn’t even want to think about the cost, or how many more of his people would be killed before this cursed war was over.
He looked around the room, pausing for a few seconds and watching as a group of workers began to pull down the chairs and the makeshift grandstand where he had given his speech and handed Carstairs a medal. He didn’t wish for active hostilities to resume, not exactly, but the extended quiet period had made him a sitting duck for duties like this one. He’d been to more than a dozen worlds since the last big battle, and the only weapon he’d wielded was his mouth. Most of those trips had been to receive honors, or to give them out, mostly pointless accolades to those receiving praise more for political influence than any real heroism. It was an open question which of the two he hated most.
“Admiral Striker, sir?” He turned and saw one of his aides walking across the room. He didn’t know what the officer wanted…probably s
omeone needed an urgent signoff on fuel consumption reports or something equally vital. Still, it would be cover, at least. He didn’t care if one of his aides needed to know how much sugar he wanted in his tea, he was going to make sure it took him the full twenty minutes to consider it.
He felt his stomach tighten as he turned and got a good look at the officer’s expression. Whatever it was, it was serious. “I have a communique for you.” There was a slight pause, then: “It is Priority Status One, sir.” The captain reached out, extending a small tablet. Striker’s insides tensed. An enemy offensive? It was impossible, wasn’t it? Every intelligence and scouting report had confirmed the Union forces were no more able to advance right now than his own fleet.
The admiral took the device, and he looked around the room, his eyes searching for a quiet place. He turned and walked toward a corridor off to the side, waving for the aide to follow. He pressed his thumb down on the verification sensor, and a few seconds later, the screen filed with text.
It was from Gary Holsten. As soon as Striker saw the name of the Confederation’s intelligence head, he knew for sure something important was happening. His eyes moved quickly down the page, hungry for details. But there were none, just notice that Holsten was approaching the planet, and a request that Striker meet him when he docked in a few hours.
Striker felt an immediate edginess. Holsten hadn’t come all the way to Thralia to meet him just to shoot the shit. He was coming for a reason, and whatever that was, good or bad, it was damned sure important.
Who are you kidding? It’s almost certainly bad too…
Striker ran his finger across the screen, deleting the message. It hadn’t contained anything terribly useful, save for word that the chief of Confederation Intelligence was on his way, but “read and delete” was standard procedure for Priority One messages.
He took a deep breath, his mind racing, wondering what news Holsten was bringing. He had no idea what it could be, but there was one thought pushing forward, a celebratory one pushing its way through, amid all the stress and worry.
This was the perfect excuse to get him out of dinner.
* * *
“You look good, Gary. Much better than you did at Grimaldi.” Striker smiled as the Confederation’s top spy approached, and he extended his hand. He and Holsten had communicated frequently, but he hadn’t been in the same room with his friend since just after the fateful battle that had seen both sides’ fleet virtually destroyed. “I think the wine, women, and song of Megara agrees with you.”
“The song, maybe, though with the war on, there’s little but martial music and marches these days. Patriotism has become quite fashionable in the capital.” Holsten stepped up and clasped Striker’s hand firmly. “The wine and the women are less helpful, at least to my health and stamina. They seem locked in a death match to see which can finish me first.”
The two shared a laugh. Striker would have once considered the high-ranking spy an unlikely friend, but as he’d come to know Holsten better, the two had grown close. Holsten’s reputation as the pleasure-loving and dissipated scion of one of the Confederation’s wealthiest families had, surprisingly, turned out to be far more fiction than reality, a carefully-crafted cover for his more important work. He might be seen frequently with models and actresses on his arm, stumbling around seemingly under the influence of alcohol or more potent substances, but Striker had come to realize that the real Holsten was something entirely different—serious, dedicated…and smart as hell. It was Holsten who had engineered the plan that put Striker into the top command position, replacing the well-meaning but incompetent Arthur Winston, something the spymaster had done at great risk of personal ruin.
“So, your message was cryptic enough,” Striker said softly, as the two walked off to a secluded corner. “But I’ve learned not to discount the importance of your communiques.”
Holsten laughed. “Perhaps you could have this time. I may be overreacting, worrying about nothing.”
“I doubt that. What is it, Gary?”
“We’ve been getting disturbing reports for months now.”
“From the Union?”
“No…from the Alliance.”
Striker felt his stomach tighten. The Confederation had barely escaped a two-front war, courtesy of Tyler Barron’s success in defeating an Alliance vessel sent to probe for weaknesses. There had been a period of considerable tension after that, as the Confederation command waited to see if the Alliance would indeed join the Union in its attack. But nothing happened, and the Alliance, which had never officially acknowledged the incursion its ship had made into Confederation space, had even opened limited diplomatic relations with the Megara government. If that situation had changed…
“The Alliance? Have they taken any steps toward…”
“No, not as far as we can see, at least. The Alliance doesn’t appear to have made preparations for an invasion.” He paused. “The concern is about Union activity in Alliance space. Intelligence operations and the like. There have been signs of unrest. Apparently, a considerable number of Alliance officers believed they should have attacked us three years ago, and even lobbied hard for just that action at the time. From the intel crossing my desk, my best guess is Sector Nine is trying to use that to their advantage.”
“How? I can’t imagine the Union is looking for trouble with the Alliance, not that they can even get there very easily.”
“No, not that. They still want the Alliance fighting us.”
“Of course, but you said there are no signs of preparations for war.”
“No, none. My sources are confident the Imperatrix is absolutely against any hostilities with the Confederation at this time.”
“Then what could the Union…” Striker’s words petered out. He wasn’t as familiar with the ways of Sector Nine as his friend, but he understood them well enough that Holsten’s concern was becoming clear. “They’re trying to influence the Alliance government somehow? But they couldn’t go to war without the Imperatrix’s approval, and that seems unlikely. From what little I’ve heard, she seems unlikely to yield to persuasion.” He shook his head suddenly. “No, wait…they want to replace the Imperatrix. A coup. That’s what you’re afraid of, isn’t it?”
“Exactly. We overlooked such a possibility because of the uniqueness of Alliance culture, but there’s no way the Union has committed the resources they have—even just what we know about—unless they thought they had a real chance to pull it off. So, I looked at it from a different point of view. No Alliance officer would sympathize with the Union as a polity. They’d be disgusted by all the backstabbing and political infighting. But I could see them feeling shame for backing down on a war with us. That could be exploited…and no organization in human space is better equipped for that kind of operation than Sector Nine.”
“So, you think a coup is a real possibility? That Sector Nine could succeed in installing a government that will join them in the war against us?”
Holsten nodded. “Can you imagine the impact of that? Not only a two-front war, but one against a fresh combatant. What forces would you deploy to meet a massive Alliance invasion? One that came a month from now, or two?”
Striker shook his head. “I don’t even know. It would be a disaster. We’d certainly have to divert every ship coming out of the yards to the Alliance front, and most of the repaired vessels too. That would allow the Union to use its own new construction to gain superiority. We’d likely end up on the defensive on both fronts, hard-pressed everywhere.”
“And that assumes the Alliance doesn’t strike before you have enough new ships to even mount a defense. All intelligence suggests they can move very quickly when they decide to attack. Remember, their entire culture is based on their military strength. Even when they’re at peace, their people are waiting to be called back to war.”
Striker let out a long sigh. “So, what do we do?”
“We have to know what is going on, first. We have to be ready to interv
ene, if the chance arises.”
“But we don’t have any forces on that front, nothing except a few old patrol ships.”
“We’ll have to send something. Immediately. Even if it’s just a show of force, like last time.”
Striker stared down at the floor, silent for a moment. “I can’t think of anything that is available. The three ships here are the first of the new construction, but it will be almost three months before they’re ready. I can’t take anything from the main front. We’ve barely got enough there to hold the line.”
“I realize you can’t put together a fleet, at least not for some time. But we need something on that front, one ship, at least, ready in case we need to take some kind of action. Our ships are faster than theirs, don’t forget, and that might give us options if we have to try to delay an offensive, conduct harrying actions.” He paused. “Or if an opportunity arises to intervene in some way. Obviously, preventing a coup would be far more advantageous than piecing together a way to meet an attack resulting from a successful one.”
“I was under the impression we had a very small intelligence presence in the Alliance.”
“Your impression was correct. We don’t have the agents or the prep work to materially interfere with whatever the Union is doing, at least not in terms of counter-intelligence. But whatever they are planning, there will likely be resistance, Alliance officers in opposition to the plotters. Perhaps we will get a chance to do something, to help them in some way. In any event, I think we need to have someone in position.”
