If the target was a small ship, the small ship died. A capital ship might absorb more than one hit but not even the most heavily shielded and armored ship could survive more than a very few.
Admiral Kellerman was not a man to panic, and he did not panic now. At such ranges, a high degree of accuracy was impossible, and nine of the first salvo were clean misses. His point defense ignored them, concentrating on the other thirteen, and his seasoned crews stopped ten of them short of his ships' shields. But three got throogh, and the assault carrier Hector vanished in a brilliant flare of light. He winced inwardly at the prodigious power of the new weapons and ordered his fighters launched to clear the suddenly threatened "safety" of their bays. And then Anton Kellerman got his final surprise.
"Admiral!" A scanner rating stiffened at his console as the second wave of HBM'S came in.
He was a veteran, but his voice wavered on the edge of hysteria. "Admiral! Those misses from the first salvo are coming back!" Kellerman was still turning towards him in disbelief when he, the rating, and the rest of Unicorn's 180,000-tonne hull ceased to be.
A ripple of shock ran through the rebel fleet as it realized what had happened. Unlike normal missiles, these new monsters didn't simply self-destruct when they overran their targets and lost their vectors. Instead, they turned, and on-board seeking systems of unheard of power quested with insensate malevolence to reacquire the targets they'd missed and bring the HBM'S slashing back around in repeated attack runs.
The Republican Navy's appetite for surprise died with its commander. Too many links in the chain of command had already been ground to powder by Skywatch's savage defiance. No one above the rank of rear admiral survived, and the terror of the Rim's new weapons was upon them. The attack force began shedding battlegroups as carriers and battle-cruisers, destroyers and heavy cruisers -comthe ships with the speed to run--turned and fled. It didn't happen instanfiy, but the first desertion was like a tiny hole in a straining dike, and the ugly stench of fear was contagious. It swept the Republican command bridges like pestilence, proving that even the most courageous could be panicked by the unexpected.
The Gehenrm-bound flotilla had already turned back, and would make it through the Back Door. So would the fastest ships of the main force--those with skippers ruthless enough to abandon their fellows. But for the battleships and the handful of monitors and surviving super-dreadnoughts there was no escape.
Trevayne's force accelerated outwards from Xanadu, and something resembling an orthodox space battle began. Ortega moved ponderously with BG 32's monitors, advancing beyond Nelson's datalink range; but it no longer mattered. The one thing Trevayne had feared most-- sustained stand-off fighter strikes from beyond even HBM range--had evaporated with the flight of the carriers.
Only two of them stood to die with the rebel battle line, and their fighters were hideously outnumbered by the fighter strength Trevayne could bring to bear.
Stripped of their supporting elements, the rebel capital ships stood no chance against the firepower he commanded--especially since his every ship had been refitted with an improved force beam armament.
More salvos of HBM'S were launched, targeted with cold to logic on the lighter battleships and superdreadnoughts. If any ship was to be retaken for the Federation, it would be those monitorson that Trevayne was savagely determined. The range fell, and space was ugly with the butchery of ships and humans as whoever was in command over there fought to close to SBM range, matching futile gallantry against the deadly technical superiority slaughtering his ships with machinelike precision.
But Fourth Fleet smelled victory in the blood, and Trevayne slewed his ships away, holding the range five light-seconds beyond SBM range while his deadly salvos went out again and again.
Yet another was readying when the surrender signal finally arrived, Yoshinaka's face lit and he turned to Trevayne... who sat in the admiral's chair and said nothing.
In default of a cease-fire order, the gray drivers flung the waiting [email protected] outward.
The surrender signal was repeated frantically.
The rebels launched deep-space flares which dazzled visual observers and stabbed the com links with screeching static from radioactive components; there could be no mistake.
His staff officers stared at Trevayne. His face was a mask of dark iron set in an indescribable expression none of them had ever seen as he sat absorbed by the tale his battle plot told, saying nothing.
The HBM'S continued to home on the monitor da Silva, now the rebel flagship. What, Yoshinaka wondered, must those poor bastards be feeling?
Trevayne continued to stare fixedly at the impending final carnage. And on the other side of his eyes, a little girl with chestnut hair played on a beach beside a sunlit sea, and the world was young.
Yoshinaka felt the almost physical force with which everyone else on the bridge pled silently with him to intercede.
He sighed and reached out towards his admiral, turning over in his mind the appeal he wanted to make.. disIan, right now you're the hero of the age.
Don't ruin it. And don't ruin the Rim Federation, which will always be your lengthened shadow.
But, of course, that wasn't the thing to say.
Instead, he touched his friend's shoulder and said, very firmly: "Admiral, they have surrendered." Trevayne looked up, and his eyes were suddenly clear. "Quite," he said conversationally. "Cease firing.
Reassume control of the missiles and maneuver them to cover the surviving rebel ships. And have communications raise the rebel commander." So vast was the range at which the engagement had been fought that there was almost a full minute's delay before the big corn screen lit. The face upon it belonged to an officer he had known a lifetime ago, in another era.
"qhis is Fleet Admiral Ian Trevaeavne, Provisional Governor-General of the Rim Systems. Am I addressing the rebel commander?" Fifty long, endless seconds trickled past between question and reply.
"As the senior surviving officer of this force, I can nego--was The face of the small woman in the screen was shocked, her voice dull, but she paused suddenly, realizing exactly how he had addressed her, and a flicker of pride reignited in the olive-dark, almond eyes. "I am Rear Admiral Li Hah, of the Terran Republican Navy, sir!" she said sharply.
Trevayne's voice did not rise appreciably in volume, but it left no room for any other sound. "Spare me your comic-opera political pretensions, Captain. There will be no negotiations. Your ships will lower their shields and heave to for boarding by officers who will take command of them in the name of the legitimate Federation government.
Any resistance to our boarding parties on any ship will be construed as a hostile act, terminating the present cease-fire. Is that understood?" He stood rigidly, watching the screen, waiting as his words winged across to that other bridge, and when they reached it, it was as ff he had slapped the rebel commander across the face. Fury flashed in her eyes as she remembered another time and another commander who had faced her with the same option. Yet far more than a single battle-cruiser's fate hung on her decision this day, and the factors she'd gambled on then weren't present now. Thousands of Republican personnel had died already; the death of her remaining ships would achieve nothing. 'Btt Trevayne read her rage and leaned forward with a tight, merciless smile.
"I wish you would, Captain," he said, and his voice was a soft, hungry whisper.
It is not pleasant to see the beaten face of a human who accepts defeat neither easily nor often. Most on Ortega's bridge looked away in something akin to embarrassment as his words burned across the light-seconds. They stared at their consoles, waiting, as Li Han faced their admiral and saved the lives of her crews by forcing herself to say: "Understood." Trevayne broke the connection and spoke in a drained, almost inaudible voice. "Commodore Yoshinaka, please take charge of the surrender arrangements. I'll be in my quarters." He turned on his heel and strode away.
He had barely stepped off the flag bridge when the cheering Ifegan, and spread, and grew
until the mobile fortress rang with its echoes. He never heard it.
De facto wasn't mu the larg have trtti best effor It mig right-brace Governm city's pop and more chaos as signals cl der. To t! approaehi in the jigs GovelTI been the, most iml traffic of were' air when ings surrc Fourth In adu. Con nated by t bronze eo for centre to be. Fo BOND capital of the Rim Worlds or no, Prescott City child of a city by Innerworld standards.
But it was bement one on Xanadu, and it was large enough to c problems. Ground traffic was bad enough, but traffic patterns were even worse, despite the conness of overtaxed controllers, human and robotic. it not have been so bad had the Provisional ,nt not established itself here. Not only had the ulation risen by almost fifty percent, but more military skimmers reduced its traffic patterns to they cut across them, their shrill transponder raring a path through the carefully-nurtured ore air traffic authorities, the Peaceforce skimmer ng Government House was only one more flaw beaw puzzle of their job. ment House, loated on a hilltop in what had outskirts of town two years earlier, was the city's sing edifice. Silhouetted against the bustling kbu'sd Field, it took on an even more imposing the Fleet was in port. Unlike the newer buildeaunding it, Government House dated back to the terstellar War and the initial settlement of Xan- structed of natural materials, its facade domi-he addition of Commodore Prescott's monumental ,lumn, Government House had been built to last 'ies--and on a far larger scale than it had needed it had been more than a mere headquarters for a new planetary government. It had been a grand gesture of defiance, thrown in the faces of the Arachnids, one warp transit away.
Ian Trevayne had once told Miriam Ortega that Govern- ment House reminded him of a certain Peter the Great, who'd constructed a new capital city on the territory of a country he was then fighting for possession of that very land. Miriam, to his delight, had responded with a pithy phrase from her late mother's lexicon: Government House, she'd said, had chutzpah.
The Peaceforcer skimmer slid down onto the Govern- ment House roof just at sunset. (at least, Zephrain A was setting. Zephrain B remained high in the sky, glowing as a very tiny sun or a very bright star, depending on how one chose to view it.) A Marine major in undress dark-green trousers and black tunic stepped onto the roof to meet the brown-uniformed Peaceforcers who emerged from the skimmer. With punctilious formality--the two services wasted little love on one another he took custody of their prisoner, addressing her with a noncommittal "ma'am." Whether Li Han was a captain or an admiral--comor, in fact, whether an admitted rebel and mutineer was entitled to a military rank at all--cominvolved political questions the major preferred to leave to older, wiser, and better-paid heads.
Li Hah looked even smaller than usual between her to guards. They towered above her, and their combined body weight outmassed her by a factor of almost five. Her cheeks were slightly sunken (the food at the prison compound was adequate, but not always appetizing), emphasizing her clean facial structure, and she moved with her habitual grace, thanks to a rigidly self-imposed exercise schedule, but she looked like a child in an adult's pajamas in her standard-sized gray prison garb.
The major eyed the unprepossessing little figure with a measure of curiosity mingled with contempt-- anything less like a Navy flag officer was hard to imagine.
Until she opened her mouth.
"Good evening, Major" she said crisply. "You may escort me to the Governor-General." The major's hand was halfway into a salute before he caught himself. He managed to maintain his military bearing, but there was a brief pause before he mumbled, "This way, ma'am." comle turned on his heel and led the small, ramrod-straight figure to the elevator, glaring at any of his subordinates who looked like they might even be thinking of smiling.
Prisoners were rare in warfare against alien species--comthe only sort of war the TFN had ever fought.. Not only did ship-to-ship combat generally result in the annihilation of the loser's crew, but what prisonerdds were taken were usually turned over to the xenologists (or their alien equivalents) rather than becoming a charge of the military authorities.
Hence, the Federation's Navy's codes, both for treatment of prisoners and conduct when captured, were badly underdeveloped. As senior prisoner, Han had been forced virtually to reinvent the whole concept of a POW doctrine.
She'd beer-offered parole and freedom of the planet, as befitted her rank, but she'd refused, electing to stay with her fellow prisoners.
The shock of defeat and--far worse--the desertion of their fellows had come hard for them, Morale had deteriorated as their sense of betrayal became resentment, directed almost as much at their own officers for surrendering as at those others who had deserted them. For Hah, even less accustomed than her crews to the notion of defeat and supremely incapable of dishonoring herself by abandoning her comrades, surrender had held a particularly painful poignancy. And the situation was made still worse because her battlegroup's late transfer to Kellerman's command had left her a virtual unknown to most of her fellow POW'S--- an unknown who'd surrendered them all to the Rim.
But she'd attacked her problems and theirs with all the compassion and ruthlessness which made her what she was.
Now, nine months later, the captured Republican personnel were warriors once more.
But once the immediate personnel problems were resolved, Han found herself with nothing to do. The camp was like a well-run ship or squadron, fully capable of humming smoothly along under the direction of her exec as long as she stood aloofly behind him as the distant yet instantly available balance wheel. She'd found that being a hiscommander-in-chief," even of a prison camp, was even more lonely than battlegroup command.
As fall gave way to the short, mild winter of Xanadu's temperate zones, Han realized the irony of her success. She'd given her subordinates purpose and unity while she herself fretted like a captive bird against the maddening inertia and monotony of her captivity. Only once had there been any excitement to vary the soul-crushing boredom of her life.
Han's experience with governments in general, and particularly with those serving the purposes of the Corporate Worlds, had not been happy. So when she was summoned to meet a Ms. Miriam Ortega, Provisional Grand Councilor for Internal SecuriWill of the Rim Systems, she was prepared to confront yet another bored, insensitive bureaucrat.
But Ms. Ortega had begun by gracefully dismissing the camp commandant, effectively placing the entire interview off the record, which was not typical of the red tape-worshiping automatons Han associated with "government" outside the Terran Republic.
It was both a shrewd and a generous gesture, Han had thought, and felt herself warm towards the other woman. She thawed further as they discussed camp conditions and the needs of the prisoners, and it was heaven to talk to someone new after months of the same faces!
Especially to someone like this irreverently intelligent woman wRh her earthy sense of humor. Han had worked hard for the serene devotion to duty which was hers, yet she'd paid a price of loneliness along the way. Now, as she talked with Miriam Ortega, she felt the attraction that opposites often exert, and it was hard to remember they were enemies.
When it was time for her to go, she'd risen with regret. Yet before she left, she'd fumbled to frame an awkward question, despite her fear that it might shatter the precarious rapport she'd found with her "enemy." "Ms. Ortega,; I couldn't help wondering.
.. with your last name.
Miriam Ortega, had stopped her, answering the question before she could complete it.
"Admiral Ortega was my father," she'd said simply. Han had regretted the painful question, under the circumstances, but the woman with the marvelously expressive face had continued.
"He was a man of strong principles and he died acting On theresa pretty good way to go, I think." Then, with another smile, "I hear you've very nearly done so several times!" and the thawing process was complete, the rapport no longer forced.
Han was stunned, later, to learn through the carefully-cultivated guards" grapevine that Miriam Ortega was Ian Tr
evayne's lover.
To be sure, he had been out of contact with his wife for over three standard years. But.
Han had never met Natalya Nikolayevna Trevayne, but the woman's flawless beauty had been the subject of frequent comment by envious male officers and ostentatiously indifferent female ones, and there had never been a whisper of a hint of infidelity in all the Fleet gossip. Surely Miriam Ortega, however striking in her own dark, very individual way, couldn't possibly be Trevayne's type! And yet.., was it her imagination, or had a certain humorous warmth ept into the other's voice whenever she spoke of "the Governor-General'?
Then, with the onset of spring, came the summons which had taken her from the compound for the first time in half a year. Now, walking under guard through the corridors of Government House, she concentrated on looking unconcerned as she wondered why Trevayne had sent for her.
They came to the suite of offices from which Ian Trevayne ruled the Rim Systems. Han and her intelligence officers had spent considerable effort piecing together a schematic of the Provisional Government, and she sometimes thought it might have been designed by the legendary pre-space engineer Goldberg. Most of the day-to-day administration devolved on the departments headed by the members of the Grand Council, who were members of the Rim Legislative Assembly and so responsible to it.
David Weber - Starfire 1 - Insurrection Page 32
