“You must not blame Gina,” Bertingas said wearily. “She was working totally under my orders. Simply a technician. You cannot prove she even knew what she was preparing, or why.”
“Very brave of you,” Praise sneered. “Very gallant. And very much after the fact.”
“What—?”
“The creature barricaded herself against our lawful arrest procedures and then, in captivity, resisted our questions. I’m pleased to say she did not survive her injuries.”
“You killed her.”
“She did it to herself.” Smugly.
Under other circumstances, in his earlier life, Tad would have collapsed under this onslaught. A tongue-lashing from his direct superior would have brought tears to his eyes. The news of a colleague—a friend—done to death in a cell, beaten, drugged, dying to protect Bertingas himself, once would have driven him nearly insane with remorse. Now he was a different person. He had been abandoned naked in the woods, been hunted and shot at, and had killed men of his own volition, with his own hands. Now he just looked at the grinning face of Selwin Praise.
He could push it in.
The butt of his rifle would move so fast—up from the hip, across his body, into bone and cartilage, and then back again to parade rest. One flicking motion that even Halan Follard, who was standing right next to Bertingas, couldn’t be sure he’d seen. Tad would then call for corpsmen, the roving Satyrs with white circles and red crosses on their jackets who had come in with the fire teams. He would tell them the D.ofC. had suffered “a stroke”—which was the perfect truth. They would link Praise’s hands across his stomach and lug his body, perhaps still twitching, perhaps limp, away by the shoulders and heels.
But wouldn’t there be repercussions? Praise might not die from the blow. He would certainly use it to expand his complaints against Bertingas. The blow itself might be construed as proof of Tad’s guilt in the conspiracy with Gina. (What the hell! He was guilty.) The blow might be used as a pretext for holding him in irons, in a cell, under torture—at a time when the governor, Halan, Patty, all of them, needed him. Hovering in the back of Bertingas’ mind were the breathless words “You’re dangerous!”
So his rifle remained at his side.
Selwin Praise kept looking at him with that triumphant grin. Tad shook his head and walked around the man at last. At that moment, the group of men and women around the governor broke and came toward the party from the docking center.
“My dear Follard!” Deirdre Sallee said, taking the lead and extending her hand to the inspector general. Halan took the hand and kissed it. “And Counselor Bertingas! Still alive!”
“Yes, Ma’am.” He took her hand and copied Follard’s courtesy.
“Despite the worst they can throw at you,” the governor said, “you seem to float over it all.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
Bertingas could feel Praise gathering himself, rounding on this knot of dignitaries, ready to renew his charges and call loudly for Tad’s arrest.
“This latest misunderstanding is a perfect case in point,” Sallee went on. “Why, I was actually furious with you. Furious I say! To think that you had contrived to falsify the formal address which precipitated this action on Batavia. I was on the point of ordering your arrest and immediate execution—would you believe? But then I called in my science advisor, Doctor Craxi, to see if there might be some other explanation, other than treasonously criminal actions by one of our most loyal counselors. That is when he explained to me the temporal nature of the Hyperwave Network. I’m sure I don’t have to explain it to a technical expert like you—I’m not sure I fully understand it myself, even now—how a message in the network can sometimes travel through time as well as through space . . .”
Bertingas was on the point of demurring, of explaining that, while everything she said was true, the falsified address had been broadcast on Freevid, not Hyperwave. He kept his mouth shut a moment too long.
“Dr. Craxi explained to me that, because the attack here took place in conformance with the message, it was proof that message came from a—a ‘rogue temporal wave’ was how he put it. Sometime in the future, or in an alternate now, I did make that address to the people of Aurora Cluster. And you, Halan Follard, and your brave crew, acting independently—if a trifle prematurely—fulfilled the commission I had set—or will have set. So the circle is not broken. Time, as the doctor says, has healed itself.”
Two or three of her courtiers, standing on the edge of the crowd, raised a small applause. The governor beamed and nodded in their direction.
It was all nonsense, of course. “Rogue temporal waves” and “alternate nows” did not work that way. They could not precipitate actions in some offstream past that blended with the present. Bertingas knew this. He suspected that Deirdre Sallee and Dr. Craxi knew it, too. However, the governor’s nonsensical story would become the official version. It would also save Bertingas’ skin.
Even if it was too late to save Gina’s.
“Some people,” and here the governor glanced significantly at Selwin Praise, who fumed on the other edge of the group, “have said that this action ‘limits our options.’ That now we will come under the Arachnid hammer and must beg for mercy. Ladies and gentlemen”—her voice rose dramatically—“Aurora shall not submit. We shall stand loyal to the Pact, as we always have. Our best course of action, now, is to make sure there are no ‘bloody rags’ at Gemini with which to begin an invasion here.”
Deirdre Sallee turned to Mora and laid a consoling hand on her forearm.
“My dear, we shall turn this base to our own uses. We shall launch these ships”—the hand went up to sweep across the rows of converted merchantmen in cradle—“captured here in brave battle, to assist your father.”
“I’ll find the crews for them, Deirdre,” snapped Amelia Ceil, the matriarch of Greengallow Holding, “if I have to strip the land to do it.”
“Very well said. I thank you. General Dindyma?” The governor’s eye sought out her Cluster Commander, another of the dignitaries in her party.
“Yes, Ma’am?”
“Will you contact your planetary monitor, Charlotten Broch, and determine her status?”
“Ma’am, I already have,” said Patty Firkin, who had come to them from across the landing strip. “Captain Thwaite and Colonel Bernoit report her grounded in shoal waters little more than five klicks from here. The hull is breached, but reparable. Most of her gun batteries and missiles are operable. Her reaction drives are largely undamaged . . . but of course they will never lift her to space. Not from a planetary surface.”
“She could lift,” Follard put in, “if her defective mass inverter were made operable. Just punch her into deep space and then use the drives to accelerate into whatever orbit you need.”
“Do you suppose,” Dindyma asked, “that this facility has the resources . . . ?”
“I begin to suspect,” Firkin said, “what the Haiken Maru have created here is a complete forward base for Governor Spile. Inverter technology would be a standard—”
“Gentlemen,” the governor interrupted. “And Colonel,” with a nod to Patty Firkin. “The Broch will be my flagship in this venture. I will leave you to work out the details—after you give me a tour of inspection of this facility.”
“Of course, Ma’am,” they chorused.
“And then we shall take a council of war.”
Chapter 22
Hildred Samwels: GADFLY PATROL
The grid of diamond pinpricks around Gemini Base had become as familiar to Hilred Samwels as the pattern of constellations that shaped the night sky around Kali system. The pinpricks, sunlight reflecting off the hulls of blockading ships, seemed to regulate and tame those unnamed star clusters. They threw a measuring square across the glowing gas tube that spanned Castor and Pollux. Gemini Base had acquired, by an act of war, its own celestial sphere, with latitude and longitude, azimuth and declination to any point in the sky.
Samwels let his at
tention wander from the Captains’ Council long enough to glance out the room’s undamped port and make this comparison.
Where the base had been able, once, to fight off an englobement by an Arachnid advance force backed with Haiken Maru and Bovari auxiliaries, it was now stalemated in blockade. And these blockading ships were no cut-and-fit merchant hulls made over into sometime warriors. This was the foil battle fleet of the Arachnid Cluster Command, supported by units captured from at least four other clusters. More than three hundred ships patrolled in delicately intersecting orbits around the focus of Gemini Base.
“They won’t be drawn, Admiral,” said Niorn, one of the destroyer captains. He and Captain Sudelich had taken their ships out on gadfly patrol, testing the defenses and willingness of the Arachnid fleet.
It had been a dangerous maneuver, when the entire base complement included only six destroyers and three cruisers capable of navigating hyperspace and eight more destroyers that could only move and fight in realspace.
“We engaged at two adjacent points, a coordinated attack,” Sudelich elaborated, “but it never rose above ship-to-ship dueling. The others wouldn’t break their formation to fight us. When those we had attacked began to drift off station, they withdrew and moved to fill the grid. I’d say they were extremely disciplined.”
“Is that all it is?” Koskiusko asked.
“All, Sir?”
“Could they be conserving missiles? Or fuel?” the admiral demanded.
“They might, Sir.” Sudelich frowned. “However, with five clusters to resupply ship’s stores, and all of Kali system open to bring them in, I’d say conservation was their last priority.”
“What do they want?” Koskiusko asked, more to himself than to his assembled captains. “They could have mobbed us five days ago. One rush and the base would have been open to them, or destroyed. But no . . . They form their corps de ballet and keep station. What are they waiting for?”
“Perhaps they are afraid of our guns, Sir?” That from Carnot.
“Go on,” the admiral growled.
“I’ve run an analysis on that fleet. Ninety percent destroyers, a couple of cruisers, one fighter mothership that may be their flag carrier. No planetary monitors, nothing big,”
“Monitors,” someone down the table interrupted, “haven’t been a factor in free-fight tactics for thirty years. Too slow. They’re defense only.”
“Exactly!” Carnot exclaimed. “What is a blockade like this, except defense? A monitor is the only single vessel that shoots with batteries big enough—and enough of them—to do us serious structural damage. Those ships out there are keeping out of the range of our plasma streams. That also gives them maneuvering room to dodge or destroy our missiles.”
“Which we are conserving,” the admiral said.
“Of course, Sir.”
“That many ships, though,” Koskiusko observed. “They could still englobe us, combine their firepower, and fight our batteries to a standstill. Why don’t they do it? They would only lose . . . How many, Captain Carnot?”
“Minimax—forty-two percent of engaged. Say 144 ships,”
“Not a bad price for an Alpha Class free-orbiting base, is it?”
“Maybe, Sir, it’s a higher price than Spile is willing to pay,” Samwels put in. “We have to be looking at most of his effectives right now. That’s the fleet he has to take all the way to Central Center, plus what he can capture and convert on the march. He would be shy of losing almost half of it to subdue one base in one fairly out of the way cluster. Even an Alpha base, Sir.”
“Then, if we’re as unimportant as you seem to think,” the admiral growled, “Spile could go around us.
“And leave the Central Fleet—at least as much of it as will remain loyal—a rallying point in his rear? You might take the risk, Sir. I or any other military man in this room might. But Spile is a civilian in braid, Sir. He’s cautious. It has taken him a long time to plan this revolt. The death of the high secretary was merely the trigger, and even that caught Spile by surprise, I’ll wager. Spile is conservative. Doesn’t know when to gamble on a decisive move, backed with confidence in his tactical skills.”
“He’s done pretty well, so far. Brought us to our knees.”
“That was with overwhelming force in a surprise attack. One he must have mapped out and gamed a dozen times. Perhaps over years. See how, when it failed of complete success, he grew suddenly cautious. His whole advance has slowed down to this—containing Gemini Base. We have the man immobilized, Sir.”
“Much good may it do us,” one of the captains muttered.
“We can leave, but we can’t take resupply or accept reinforcements,” Koskiusko said aloud.
He was stating the obvious. The radius of the blockading sphere, which averaged 500 kilometers, was too narrow for any ship to jump into. The standard of navigational accuracy in any hyperdimensional maneuver was to achieve the arrival point within five G-solar diameters. Anything closer than that was pure luck.
Halan Follard’s little jump with his headquarters building—whose fame had already reached Gemini—sent cold shivers down the spine of any experienced shiphandler. The inspector general had been as likely to orbit his pile of bricks anywhere on the near side of Palaccio’s primary as he was to drop it elsewhere on the planet. The luck of fools had held for him.
Any of the Gemini ships could jump out of the Arachnid’s web of ships, of course. Anytime. To return to the base, however, or to bring in reinforcements, they would have to fight their way back through the blockade.
Central Fleet HQ had been informed of their predicament and had promised a relief action—soon. As soon as the Fleet’s “other engagements and commissions” were fulfilled. An open-ended commitment the brass might feel free to extend into the next century.
“Captain Worley,” the admiral began, “what’s our sustain time?”
The new provost captain cleared his throat.
“With our missile fabrication shops working three shifts, we will have exhausted our parts stores within the next ninety-six hours. That will leave our batteries—uhh—” He called up some calculations subvocally from his AID. “Just under 2,100 units to fire. Our stores of deut-trit pellets for the plasma batteries are adequate for—3,600 combined salvos. Or something over 15,500 independently targeted shots. We can stretch that almost indefinitely if we divert deuterium and tritium from the base fusion generators and attempt to fabricate our own pellets. But we’d be using nonstandard techniques, and I can’t vouch that the product will implode accurately enough to fuse.”
“Humph!” from the admiral. “What about the fusion plants themselves?”
“Forty days, Sir, at nominal load. Less if we continue to maintain general quarters around the clock, with all systems at peak.”
“How much less?”
“Eight days, Sir.”
“Eight days less or eight days total?”
“Total, Sir . . . As to food, water, and breathable,” Worley went on, “we have exceeded our 120 days’ supply. Still, that’s no problem. Early on, we brought the waste recyclers up to full production. We’re living almost exclusively off our own, er, by-products.”
“There goes my lunch!” one of the captains whispered.
“Going? Or coming?” someone else sniggered.
“We can survive this way indefinitely, of course,” Worley plowed on against the hecklers.
“No, we can’t,” from down the table.
Admiral Koskiusko rapped for order and glared around at his captains. “Gentlemen, this is serious business.”
“Breathables are a concern, Admiral,” Worley said “because of the hits we’ve been taking from those sapper raids. Every meter-plus-wide breach in the outer skin—allowing for the harassment and lost time the repair crews experience—evacuates, on average, 200 cubic meters of gas at one atmosphere’s pressure. Negligible in itself, against the enclosed volume of this base. If the raids continue at their current frequency, ho
wever, we’ll have to either lower the system pressure or begin closing off decks.”
“You’re maintaining your postings?”
“A full squad of Marines, suited sans helmets, at every second lock. The minute we sight a skimmer, they seal up and lock through. But too many of the raids are blindsiding us.”
“How is that possible, in an englobement?” Koskiusko turned to Samwels.
“The skimmers are invisible to our radar, Admiral,” he said. “Plastic frames and one-shot reaction tanks. These are suicide squads, Sir. Armed only with satchel charges and repulsors. Once they land on the hull, all they can do is fight—or valve to vacuum.”
“They might try surrendering.”
“Not if they think we’re too stripped to accept prisoners, Sir.”
“Spile must be able to command their absolute loyalty,” Koskiusko mused.
“Or threaten something they fear worse than death,” Samwels replied.
“Hmmm.” The admiral paused in thought. “So, Provost Captain, what’s the summation? The maximum on your minimum profile, please.”
“Six days, Sir. Based on current weapons usage.”
“Captain Carnot?”
“Sir?”
“If we took three days’ worth of fuel to the base generators and fused it all at once, what would the blast radius be?”
“I presume you mean, with effects that might disable a medium-sized warship? Say, a destroyer or a cruiser?”
“Yes.”
“Calculating . . . Six hundred klicks. With a shockwave overpressure of seven standard atmospheres at a mean temperature of 5,000 Celsius. Not counting fragmentation effects from this structure. Is that acceptable, Sir?”
“Captain Samwels, you will rig detonator charges around Numbers 2 and 3 reserve tanks. Set to trigger on my command.”
An Honorable Defense Book 1 Crisis of Empire Page 25
