First Strike

by Christopher Nuttall

  She led the way out of the hangar bay and up through a network of corridors, crammed with crewmen working desperately on tasks Adrienne couldn't understand. “I should remind you,” Barbie added, “that anywhere outside your quarters is restricted unless you have me with you. The crew doesn't have time to nursemaid you around the ship. I also need to review any recordings you take before they are transmitted back to Earth.”

  So I can't talk to anyone who would give me an unofficial line, Adrienne thought, without rancour. She’d expected as much. It would take some time to build up her own network of informants, people who would talk to her even without a minder. The trick would be in figuring out what was true and what was crap put forward by someone who resented not being promoted.

  “You can have some time to freshen up and then there’s a video briefing with Brigadier Jones, the CO of 1 Federation Marine Brigade,” Barbie continued, after a moment. “I understand that you have already met the Brigadier...?”

  “Only a brief meeting while I was on Luna,” Adrienne confirmed. “He congratulated me on my reports from Saudi and said that he hoped I’d do as well here. But what are we going to do?”

  “Exercise, of course,” Barbie said. She grinned, again. Several crewmen took more than casual notice of her chest, despite her uniform. “This is the most complex exercise the Federation Navy has ever carried out. It is important that the Galactics understand that humanity isn't a small power, barely capable of hanging onto its own homeworld, but a formidable race capable of making its will felt in the sector. Your reports will help shape their impressions of our power.”

  “I see,” Adrienne said. It seemed like a great deal of effort for a very small return, but the Federation Navy presumably knew what it was doing. Another passing crewman checked her out, and then had the grace to blush when she looked back at him. “Aren't there many women on this ship?”

  “The Marines are all men,” Barbie said. “The Federation Navy gives women equal opportunities, but there is no guarantee that there will be equal outcomes. Men outnumber the women twelve to one.” She shrugged. “Not everyone in the Navy comes from a culture that accepts women as equals in the military. A Russian Captain was relieved of duty and discharged for harassing one of his female subordinates, which was one of the nastier incidents.

  “And there are strict rules on fraternising between the sexes while the ship is away from home,” she added. “You’re forbidden to sleep with anyone in your chain of command, or someone senior or junior to yourself. The Navy generally ignores sex between equals, but the commanders come down like a hammer on anyone who violates the regulations. For an officer, it can ruin their career; for a crewman, it can mean discharge or time in the brig.”

  They stopped outside a cabin door. “These are your quarters for the next few months,” Barbie said, changing the subject. “Like I said, stay inside when you’re not with me. In the unlikely event of the Captain requiring my services in another position, I’ll see to it that someone brings you food from the mess.”

  “I feel like a prisoner already,” Adrienne commented.

  “I’ll tell you the same thing that officers have been telling their grumblers for years,” Barbie said, more seriously. “You volunteered for this. If you didn't want to be under harsh discipline and work like a mad bastard for the next five years, you shouldn't have joined the military. Or embedded yourself in the military, for that matter.”

  “I suppose,” Adrienne said. She stepped into the cabin. “And thanks for showing me around.”

  “You’re welcome,” Barbie said. “I live to serve.”

  * * *

  Joshua looked down at the control panel and then tapped a key, activating the quantum gate generator. It came to life quickly, ready to hurl the starship into quantum space. Each of the Clunkers had a surprisingly modern quantum drive, but perhaps that should have been expected when the ships had been refurbished so often. Besides, it would be harder to operate if they had to wait ten minutes between opening gates and slipping into quantum space. Civilian drives left their ships unable to return to quantum space until the drive had repowered, leaving them vulnerable to pirates and hostile powers.

  “Drive online,” he said. He’d decided to pilot the ship himself, at least for the first voyage. The ship might have been reliable – the Association built to last – but he needed to get a feel for how she operated. Some ships could perform amazing manoeuvres and others had problems making even a tiny course change. “All other ships confirm ready?”

  “Everyone says they’re ready,” Karla informed him. He’d had to switch around some of the crews until he found combinations that actually worked, in terms of interpersonal chemistries and styles. He hadn’t told them exactly what they would be doing, but enough had leaked out to give them a good idea. The more greedy of them were already speculating on how wealthy some carefully-targeted piracy could make them – if, of course, they lived long enough to spend it. “Captain?”

  Joshua triggered the quantum drive. Space seemed to blur in front of Blackbeard, shimmering into the eerie lights of quantum space. The higher-energy dimension – at least according to the scientists who’d studied what little the Association had told them about quantum space – allowed starships to move at speeds that, in normal space, were many times that of the speed of light. And with their own drives, the Clunker Fleet wouldn't even need its own quantum gates. They could operate completely independently.

  “Well,” he said, finally. “Only a month to go until we reach our operations area. And then the fun really begins.”

  Chapter Six

  It was time.

  Admiral Tobias Sampson stood on the bridge of Nimitz and watched as the First Strike Fleet prepared to enter quantum space. Fifteen cruisers, each one more technologically advanced than anything the Hegemony had ever seen, escorted by fifty destroyers, three assault carriers and a small fleet of freighters with military-grade drives. Apart from a handful of officers, no one on the fleet knew where they were really going – or what they were going to do – but they’d responded splendidly. The fleet was ready for war.

  He closed his eyes for a long moment, recalling the final meeting between him and the Federation Council. There had been no reason for hope, no reason to believe that the Association would stand up to the Hegemony, no matter what Ambassador Li did on Center. Federation Intelligence had even reported that the Hegemony’s Queens were already dividing up human space between them, ensuring that their clan maintained sole grasp of humanity and the worlds it had developed. There would be war. Two weeks from the moment they entered quantum space, they would reach Terra Nova and start the war.

  The thought was chilling. He’d seen war; humanity’s petty fighting on its own planet and a handful of brief brushfires between the Galactics. Many of the fine men and women under his command would die, their bodies vaporised as fusion plants blew, preventing them from being laid to rest on their homeworld. It was even possible that one of the destroyed ships would be Nimitz, that he himself would never return home. Civilian leaders often talked about war as if it was the easy option, but the cost was always high. Tobias had steeled himself to start and fight a war more desperate than any in humanity’s history, yet now part of him wanted to quail. A lost war would be utterly disastrous for the human race. It might mean the end of humanity itself.

  But there was no choice. Fight now or fight later, under worse conditions.

  He looked over at Captain Kevin Rupert, CO of the teardrop-shaped starship. “Take us into quantum space,” he ordered quietly. Once they were in quantum space, he’d issue the order for the commanding officers to open the sealed orders from the Federation Council, authorising the attack. “It’s time to start moving.”

  Earth vanished from the display, replaced by the flickering lights of quantum space. Tobias felt another pang, knowing that they were leaving Earth critically exposed to the Galactics if they chose this moment to invade. There were two more cruiser squadrons
in the solar system, but both of them were still working up after being released from the shipyards. They couldn’t have put up more than a brief fight if the Hegemony launched a sneak attack of its own. The sociologists claimed that that was unthinkable – they wouldn't bother when they were about to get the territory legally – but Tobias was less sure. Respect for the Association’s law had been falling sharply long before Mentor had arrived at Earth and brought the human race into space.

  Navigating through quantum space was a tricky task. Other races might have figured out how to enter quantum space, but it was the Association that had devised the network of quantum gates and navigation beacons, opening up vast swathes of space for exploration and colonisation. Outside the Association, beyond the Rim, navigation was much harder. Starships had to return to normal space frequently just to check their positions. Even the most advanced quantum drive in existence would have problems jumping in and out of quantum space so often. Operation Bolthole’s ship had the most capable navigation computers mankind had been able to devise and yet they’d still have problems finding a safe world to colonize.

  “Open your sealed orders, Captain,” he ordered quietly. “And then join me for the all-ships conference at 1450.”

  “Yes, sir,” Rupert said, quietly.

  * * *

  The Association Navy had developed traditions over the thirty thousand years the Cats had spent in space that had proved incredibly difficult to dislodge. One of those traditions was a form of consensual decision-making that would have been intolerable to any human commander. Captains of individual starships would participate in democratic debates about their objectives and how they’d achieve them, finally voting to endorse or reject a particular operational plan. Humanity hadn't been able to build ships large enough to hold all of the fleet’s commanding officers, which meant that meetings had to be virtual. It did ensure that discussion remained focused on the objectives at hand. Tobias was determined that while Captains would have ultimate authority over their own ships, the Federation Navy’s Admirals would set overall policy – without allowing junior officers to vote on it. No effective military force could function democratically.

  One by one, the Captains and Brigadiers commanding his ships and Marine units signed into the secure conference system. In theory, it was impossible to intercept transmissions in quantum space except at very close range; in practice, no one knew for sure. The tachyon bursts the navigation beacons used were detectable at long range. Tobias had ordered that all transmissions were to be heavily encrypted, just in case. Paranoia was a survival trait if they really were out to get you.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, by way of greeting. “I assume that you have read your orders?”

  He smiled at the faces looking back at him. Some looked shocked, as if they’d really expected nothing more than an exercise, or that humanity wouldn't set out to start a war. Others looked delighted, seeing it as a chance to avenge the humiliation of Terra Nova and liberate a large human population from the claws of the Hegemony. Several of them had probably checked and rechecked the orders, confirming that they came directly from the Federation Council. The worst nightmare of a thousand states was a rogue officer starting a war.

  “In two weeks, we will arrive at Terra Nova,” Tobias said. The operations plan hadn't been loaded into the fleet’s datanet, not yet. “A tanker with HE3 from Jupiter will be visiting the planet shortly before we arrive. The crew will use military-grade sensors to pinpoint the locations of the Hegemony’s starships and then meet us in quantum space, allowing us to target our exit with pinpoint precision. We will engage the enemy as soon as we leave quantum space.

  “Our objective is the complete destruction of that Hegemony force and the liberation of Terra Nova,” he continued. “Once the fleet has cleared orbital space of enemy ships, the Marines will be landed to liberate the planet and round up the Hegemony population. Their client races will be permitted to remain under human rule, if they wish, but the Funks themselves will be removed from the planet. However” – his gaze swept around the holographic faces – “I want to make it clear that there are to be no atrocities. The population is to be rounded up with the minimum necessary force consistent with the safety of our troops. We do not need something the Hegemony can use as a propaganda tool against us.

  “Assault Force Two will concentrate on the Hegemony base at Garston. As that base doesn't have any major combatants, the overall objective will be to either capture or destroy the orbital installations, preventing them from being used against us. Depending on the outcome at Terra Nova, we may move cruisers forward to Garston and then strike deeper into the Hegemony’s space. Garston itself is useless to us; we won’t bother invading and occupying the world once we’ve smashed their military bases from orbit.”

  “I figure that we could use a whole new habitable world,” Captain Zeke drawled.

  “It has a population of nearly ten million intelligent beings, mainly Funks,” Brigadier Jones pointed out. “Do you propose to evict them all, or merely keep them as slaves? Or maybe we should push them all into death camps and commit genocide?”

  “They took one of our worlds,” Zeke said, sharply. “Why shouldn’t we...?”

  “Because we are a small power and we don’t want to either force the Hegemony to rally around their Empress and do what it takes to defeat us, or for other powers to start viewing us as a danger and join the war against us,” Tobias said. “Garston will be immaterial to the war once we've taken out the base and occupied the cloudscoop and we will not waste manpower occupying it.”

  He looked over at Jones’s face. “National units on Earth will be called up as soon as they receive a burst transmission reporting our success,” he continued. “They will relieve the Marines for further duties, allowing us to head further into Hegemony space if necessary and land on their military colonies.”

  There was a long pause. “Are there any points that need to be raised before I transmit the operations plan to you?”

  “I must say that I find the idea of starting a war to be distasteful,” Captain Garibaldi said. “Even if we’re not about to bite off more than we can chew, we… we don’t start wars.”

  “The war started the moment they bullied us into giving up Terra Nova,” Zeke said, flatly. “All we've had since then is an uneasy truce, one that could have been terminated at any point they desired. How long will it be before they stop extorting HE3 from us and start demanding political control instead?”

  “Not long,” Tobias said. “You’ll find the background brief included in the operational plan, but the short version of the story is that they’re pretty much on the verge of claiming political control over Earth. War is coming whatever we do – we strike now or we risk being crushed by superior force.”

  “I understand that many of you have doubts,” he added. “Those doubts will also exist on Earth when the population realises that the war is underway. This is a gamble, one that might backfire and cost us everything we’ve worked for over the past fifteen years, ever since we realised that the greater universe was not going to ignore us. But I have faith that each and every one of you will do their utmost to ensure that we win this war. We will claw out our place in galactic society and prove to the predators out there that we are not to be trifled with.”

  He stood up. “I’ll be making a general broadcast to the fleet this evening,” he concluded. “Until then, study the operational plans and consider possible alternatives. We will reconvene tomorrow.”

  One by one, the holographic faces blinked out of existence, leaving Tobias alone with his thoughts – and his worries.

  There was one thing he hadn't told them. They all had orders to destroy the sealed orders once they’d confirmed them to their subordinates. What they didn't know was that the official orders would make it look as if Tobias had launched the attack on his own, without permission from higher authority. If the war went badly wrong, Tobias would be blamed, perhaps giving Earth some protection.
>
  It wasn't much, but it was all he had.

  And his own death was a small price for humanity remaining alive.

  * * *

  It seemed to be a rule that larger ships, with much more internal volume than their smaller cousins, had less room for junior officers, crewmen and Marines. Even Wellington, over two kilometres long, crammed thousands of Marines into tightly-confined spaces. Some of the crew had even been forced to sleep on the hangar deck because additional technicians had been taken onboard before they’d left Earth. To Conrad, it all added up to trouble. There was little need to bring civilian techs onboard unless there was a truly desperate requirement for trained manpower.

  Regulations stated that each Marine had to spend at least two hours per day exercising in the ship’s gym and running laps through internal passageways. Like the rest of the ship, it was crammed with Marines, most performing press-ups on the deck or using muscle-building machines to give themselves a proper workout. Conrad was exchanging places with two other sergeants, allowing him to get in his own workout. No Federation Marine sergeant – or officer – could afford to skip his exercises, particularly in front of the men. Few would trust a sergeant who didn't lead by example, even if he was supposed to be supervising them at the time.

  He looked up as nine chimes rang through the ship’s intercom, calling them to attention. Throughout the gym, Marines stopped exercising and stood up, listening carefully.

  “This is Admiral Sampson,” a voice said. Conrad had met the Admiral once, back when he’d been stationed at Luna as part of the Naval HQ protection detachment. The Admiral sounded older than he remembered, picking his words carefully. “Ever since First Contact, ever since learning that the galaxy is filled with predators, we have known that we would one day have to fight for our freedom. What happened at Terra Nova taught us that nothing, but force would convince the Galactics to leave us in peace. Our time has run out. The Hegemony intends to claim our worlds and enslave the human race.”