First Strike

by Christopher Nuttall

  He boarded the ship through a secured airlock and stepped into the bridge. It looked remarkably small for such a large ship, but a glance at the status panel revealed that it was completely separate from the rest of the ship. Layers of hull metal, tough enough to require phase cannon or molecular disintegrators to penetrate, protected the crew from the prisoners, who were expected to fend for themselves while they were being transported from world to world. They didn't need to worry about restraints. There was no way the prisoners could do more than kill each other.

  “Odd,” he said. “Why were they being transported in the first place? They can't be that short of trained labour, can they?”

  Kang nodded towards one of the screens. “That's the live feed from the hold,” he said. “Those aren't Funks, boss.”

  Joshua narrowed his eyes. He hadn't seen even a fraction of the hundreds of races in the Association, or hidden out beyond the borderlands, but he’d studied extensively and he recognised the race. The Gobbles – the closest any human could come to pronouncing their name – had been even more primitive than Earth when they’d been discovered by the Association, and then they’d been unlucky enough to be overrun by the Hegemony before they even knew that there was an entire civilization living among the stars. Their resistance had been pitiful – Alexander the Great wouldn't have had a prayer against modern technology, no matter his military genius – and the Funks had rapidly turned them into a slave race.

  Aliens were rarely ‘cute,’ but the Gobbles came surprisingly close. They reassembled teddy bears as much as anything else, although teddy bears with sharp teeth and humanoid hands that gave them a remarkable talent for industrial machinery. Primitive didn't equal stupid and the Gobbles had managed to carve out a niche for themselves among the Funks, although never as anything other than slaves. Their treatment was a chilling reminder of the best that humanity could hope for if they lost the war.

  “Curious,” Joshua said, slowly. “Why would they bother to transport them anywhere?”

  One of the other former criminals – a computer tech with a habit of exploring outside permitted areas of military datanets – looked up from one of the consoles. “Security on this thing is rubbish,” he said, by way of explanation. “Those teddies have been convicted of treason against the Hegemony and were being taken to the Empress. I don’t think that she’s going to give them a big hug.”

  “Assuming any of them survive the trip,” Kang put in. “They’ve been left to rot in their own filth. I’d bet good money that they were intended to die along the way.”

  “But if they wanted them to die,” the computer tech said, “why didn't they simply shoot them?”

  “Plausible deniability,” Kang said. He leered. “When I was in the teams, there were all sorts of silly tricks meant to give political weaklings the ability to swear blind that they never gave explicit orders to the operatives. Need answers out of a suspect quickly? Give a verbal order to torture him and then send a memo – too late – forbidding torture. Want to blow up a village where you know a terrorist leader is hiding? Use the wrong equipment to create the impression that the village is empty and there are no civilians to be hurt…”

  “I don’t think the Funks have that much subtlety in them,” Joshua said. He shrugged. “Find the most senior of the prisoners, give him a chance to clean up, and then bring him to me on Blackbeard. I’ll talk to him in the secure hold, so he doesn't see the rest of the ship until we have decided what to do with him.”

  He shrugged. “You never know,” he added. “We might just have met our first ally.”

  * * *

  In person, there was little that was cute about the Gobble. The sharp teeth, more intimidating in person than in the video feed, and the burn marks on his fur created the impression of a battered teddy bear, but there was an iron look in his eye that suggested that it wouldn't go down without a fight. Joshua was wearing full powered armor, concealing his face, and yet it was impossible not to feel his skin crawling when he looked at the Gobble’s teeth. Part of his racial memory remembered the days when humans had had to fear bears.

  “I thank you for the rescue,” the Gobble said. He spoke Galactic Three, without a trace of the hiss the Funks produced from their oddly-shaped mouths. “I fear that the” – he spoke a word that didn't translate, even though the suit’s database – “will be very unhappy to lose me.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Joshua said. Poking a stick in bright red eyes was why they were out here, so far from Earth. “Would you like to tell me why they were transporting you to their world?”

  “My people have sought our freedom for countless years,” the Gobble said. “I, Xinchub, was the leader of the Tausennigan Ob'enn, the resistance to those who have occupied our world. They left us our religion and so we used it as the only tool we had to build a resistance network, but they stumbled across us and arrested and executed many. I was scheduled to be executed in front of the Empress herself.”

  Joshua smiled. “And the rest of the prisoners?”

  “Some known to me, who tried to fight,” Xinchub said. “Others picked up at random, or through false information. Many will now fight if given the chance to return to our homeworld. Tauscher will be liberated if we have to all lay down our lives in the struggle.”

  “I see,” Joshua said, slowly. Inside, he was thinking rapidly. No revolt could succeed as long as the Funks maintained their control over the planet’s orbitals. They could simply bombard any rebel-held territory into submission, no matter how discontented the Gobbles were with their lot. And yet… intelligence on Tauscher was limited, but it did suggest that a major nexus of manufacturing had grown around the planet. The Gobbles did have talents and the Funks were happy to exploit them. “Do you wish to carry on the fight?”

  “Of course,” Xinchub said. “We swore solemn oaths before our gods that we would be victorious or die. I will not betray those oaths.”

  “Then I think we can help each other,” Joshua said. “We’re going to somewhere safe, where we can think and plan. And then we may be able to save your world.”

  Afterwards, he found himself considering just what he had done. Raiding Funk shipping was one thing, but actually moving in on one of their worlds? His orders hadn't covered that eventuality. But then, no one knew he was out here apart from his crews and the Admiral.

  And the Gobbles, if necessary, were expendable.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  No one knew much about the race that had originally lived on Hammerfall. That there had been a race was beyond dispute, for the Cats had noted the remains of cities created by a race that had barely learned to use steam power before it died out. They’d had the supreme ill-luck to evolve in a binary system that was teeming with debris, where the gravitational surges between the twin stars routinely tipped asteroids in and out of the system. Eventually, their luck had run out and an asteroid had slammed directly into their world. They’d been extinct for hundreds of years when the Cats had stumbled across their world.

  Hammerfall itself still wasn't particularly well developed, but the Hegemony had seen value in turning it into a major naval base. At first, it had seemed like a pointless exercise in pleasing some of the clans, but now it would be worth its weight in whatever precious substance one cared to name. The human advance would have to go through Hammerfall or risk leaving a major fleet in their rear. And this time they would confront a Hegemony force that understood their tricks and was ready for them. Their advance would come to a halt and then the counteroffensive could begin.

  “And so they let you go,” Great Lady Marsha said. Her clan and Lady Dalsha’s had been enemies for hundreds of years, even though no one remembered whatever dispute had originally caused the vendetta. “They must have known that you were no threat. How wise they were.”

  Lady Dalsha managed to contain her temper. A failure had no friends or family, for fear that it might rub off. Her clan had already disowned her, leaving her isolated from the complex net
work of alliances and enmities that made up the heart of the Hegemony. In some ways, it gave her a freedom others would envy; in others, it made her supremely vulnerable, unprotected against assassins or slavers – or anyone who wanted private revenge. Marsha hadn't even agreed to see her in person, exiling her to a fortress on the other side of Hammerfall. It was a very blunt gesture of contempt.

  “Had I faced the entire known human fleet,” she said, patiently, “I would have crushed them all with minimal losses…”

  “But you didn't,” Marsha sneered. “You allowed yourself to be defeated by a puny force with nothing heavier than a cruiser. Three superdreadnoughts destroyed – and two surrendered. No wonder they let you go. You are so much more valuable to them with us than you would be as a prisoner. Did they hope you might be placed in command of the next fleet they encountered?”

  Lady Dalsha cursed inwardly. That wasn't going to happen. Technically, she still had her rank, but every female with an ear for the political realities would know that she had no practical authority. Her rank was worthless in anything more than name. She’d certainly never be allowed to command a starship, let alone an entire fleet. Besides, she’d been disowned. Why would anyone give her a starship when there were hundreds of well-connected females awaiting their chance?

  “A few new tricks and you panicked,” Marsha added. “They should have released your sensor crews instead. The males could at least have told us something useful.”

  “I did what I could,” Lady Dalsha replied, tiring of the endless stream of insults from Marsha. Like her, before Terra Nova, Marsha had every confidence in her fleet – and not without reason. The Hegemony was still straining every sinew to reinforce Hammerfall, but Marsha commanded over a hundred starships, enough to destroy an entire sector if necessary. But just as the First Empress had been badly outmatched by the weapons possessed by the Cats, Hammerfall might be facing human weapons a quantum leap ahead of the superdreadnoughts in orbit. “And you would be well advised to listen to me.”

  She’d seen what the human weapons had done to her squadron, but they’d been careful to deny her any sensor data that would back up her claims. The Hegemony had always been weak in basic research, a weakness that had seemed insignificant when the entire galaxy had restricted itself to weapons developed by the Cats thousands of years ago. But now… the Hegemony’s long list of enemies would be hearing reports of human super-weapons and pushing their own research programmes forward as fast as they could. How long would it be before the Tarn developed their own version of human weapons, giving them a colossal advantage over the Hegemony? Or any one of a dozen races – or all of them? The Hegemony might find itself in the same position as the mounted warriors who had tried to fight the Cats, only to be scythed down by plasma cannon.

  And she knew, all too well, that none of the Hegemony’s neighbours liked them.

  The Empress was firmly in control, for the moment, but no one could stop rumours flying through the Hegemony faster than any quantum drive. Some of the lesser clans were seeing their chance to unseat the Empress and reshape the balance of power, while the client races were considering the odds of their own drive for freedom – or revenge. And there were already rumblings of discontent among the masses.

  “You are a failure,” Marsha informed her. “My fleet will not suffer the same defeat as your own. I will crush the humans, obtain samples of their weapons, and then launch an offensive of my own, directed at Garston and Terra Nova. And you will watch as the better officer wins her war.”

  Lady Dalsha raised one clawed hand in a gesture of submission. There was no point in continuing the argument, not when Marsha was clearly already determined to carry out her plan. At least the Empress’s orders bound her firmly to Hammerfall until the human fleet had been defeated. Their worst nightmare had been the humans slipping in and devastating the base while the fleet was trying to recover Garston. Losing that world had been bad enough, but losing Hammerfall would put the war effort back by at least two years.

  She just hoped that Marsha was right and that she did have enough firepower – and forewarning – to defeat the human fleet. But who knew what other tricks the humans had developed, holding them in reserve until they were needed? She couldn't even begin to imagine what they might have produced...

  …And it was that weakness, more than anything else, that would cripple the Hegemony.

  * * *

  “Seems like a strange set of orders,” Markus commented, as the gunboats raced through quantum space. Ahead of them, a single bulk freighter struggled to escape. “I thought we were meant to be linking up with the others and raiding enemy planets.”

  “Orders are orders,” Carola reminded him. Gunboats could operate in quantum space, but their inability to jump in and out of the dimension was a serious weakness. Energy discharges that might cripple a starship would utterly vaporise a gunboat. “The brass was pretty damn clear that they wanted this done by their best pilots.”

  Markus nodded, sourly. Humanity possessed no more than three gunboat carriers, three more than anyone else, but a deeply limited force when compared to the vast fleets deployed by the Galactics. The other two had been deployed on raiding missions, hammering away at the other worlds in the sector, hoping to create an impression of human invincibility. Apart from Hammerfall itself, most of the other worlds had limited defences, none of which could stand up to a flight of gunboats. The attacks were pinpricks compared to the sheer size of the Hegemony, but it should make the Funks a little concerned about the security of their people – and the territories of clans whose political support the Empress depended upon.

  But Grumble Squadron had been given a set of orders that didn't quite make sense. They were to intercept a bulk freighter and harass her all the way to Hammerfall, but not to press the offensive and destroy her. Formidable was just behind them, ready to pick up the gunboats when the bulk freighter finally escaped, yet he was aware that they were flying right into the teeth of the most heavily defended planet in the sector. Formidable was almost defenceless compared to a heavy cruiser, let alone the superdreadnoughts that were supposed to be guarding Hammerfall. None of the gunboats had challenged a superdreadnought yet and, despite simulations suggesting that they would be just as effective against the biggest ships in the galaxy, the pilots were nervous. The Hegemony had already started adapting its tactics against them.

  An alert sounded as quantum space twisted in front of them. Markus felt his stomach twist – as if he was on a roller coaster – before the blackness of normal space rose up and swallowed them. The gunboat seemed to slide down a long funnel before spinning out into normal space, tossed around by gravimetric fluctuations that barely hindered a modern starship. Behind them, the quantum gate started to shut down. Formidable would have to enter normal space using her own drives.

  “I think they’ve seen us,” Carola said. “I make five light cruisers rushing us – and a goodly swarm of assault shuttles.”

  “Clever,” Markus admitted, grudgingly. The Hegemony, by the most pessimistic estimate, would take at least a year to produce its own gunboats, but pressing assault shuttles into service gave them a chance to even the odds. Assault shuttles weren't designed solely for space – they landed Marines on planetary surfaces – yet they were more manoeuvrable than anything else in the Hegemony Navy. They’d take heavy losses as they tried to dogfight the gunboats, but they’d inflict losses in return. “And the freighter?”

  “Running towards the fortresses as fast as its little legs can carry it, screaming for help,” Carola reported. “I think the Funks are desperate to save her.”

  Markus nodded and threw the gunboat into a tight turn, followed by the rest of the squadron. To the Funks, it would look like an attack vector determined to obliterate the freighter before it could reach safety – and as he watched, the Funks did the one thing they could to salvage the situation. Their assault shuttles went to full power and raced ahead of the light cruisers, roaring towards the human gu
nboats. Markus fired a stream of implosion bolts towards the freighter, taking care to look as if he was panicking, and then led the gunboats right toward the assault shuttles. He’d expected the Funks to have outfitted them with something more dangerous than laser packs or plasma cannon, but it didn't look as if they’d had time to rig up phase cannon or their own implosion bolt launchers. Or maybe they simply hadn’t thought of it. Assault shuttles were armed to support Marines on the ground, not dogfight with enemy craft.

  “Open fire,” he ordered, tightly. Brilliant bursts of plasma shot ahead of his gunboat, firing with a rapidity that the Hegemony couldn't match. Admittedly, the plasma containment fields had to be completely replaced after every mission – and there was a small chance they could explode, destroying the gunboat – but it made it much harder for the assault shuttles to close to effective range. Their pilots kept evading frantically, yet it was clear that they hadn't been given much time to practice operating in vacuum. Several assault shuttles were picked off before they even started to fire back. “All Grumbles, prepare for charge.”

  He swung the gunboat around and gunned the drives. The gunboats leapt forward, charging right at the assault shuttles – and the light cruisers beyond. No human mind could take advantage of the brief opportunities to fire on the assault shuttles, but the computers had authority to take the shots as they opened and a dozen shuttles died as they scattered. There was normally no such thing as a collision risk in open space, yet they’d be passing so close to the shuttles that they’d be able to see them with the naked eye. Markus caught sight of a flash of light as another assault shuttle died, before the gunboats closed in rapidly on the light cruisers.