Scaevola's Triumph (Gaius Claudius Scaevola trilogy Book 3)

by Ian Miller

  "The enemy commander has offered surrender," the Tin Man announced, "and has ordered his ships to cease fire."

  "Order cease fire. Inform them the surrender is accepted," Gaius told the Tin Man, "provided that they follow orders as of now. Ships with reasonable control are to re-form into a single line, one kilometer between ship, then they will follow a slow flight path designated by us towards the moon, and they will signal other damaged ships to either join the line, or signal their presence if they are too seriously damaged. They will permit themselves to be boarded while on that flight path. They will send one message to their base, stating that they have surrendered, then all communications will cease. When boarded, all troops will become prisoners of war. Any deviation from these orders will lead to their being destroyed." Gaius paused, then added, "Order the transporters to provide sufficient troops to carry out that boarding order, then resume thrust towards the target."

  Gaius stared at the images from outside. One of the strangest things about this form of warfare was that nothing seemed to happen. All he could see was blackness, a number of stars, and tiny little dots enhanced by the ship on his viewer to indicate where ships were. It was so difficult to accept. In the legion, he would give an order, and there would be a flurry of activity, as juniors ran around ensuring that the orders went to wherever they were supposed to go. Then he would hear the horns blaring forth, then he would see his orders being carried out. Here, nothing seemed to happen. The Tin Man continued doing whatever he had been doing, for sending the message was only a trivial load on his processing ability. Nevertheless, he knew the messages had been sent, and after a few minutes the enemy accepted and began to comply. As the line began to form, small shuttles emerged from one of the giant transporters that had reappeared, and Ulsian troops were ferried towards the surrendered ships, where they duly boarded.

  Confusion now followed. As Gaius had suspected, the supreme commander was in the fleet, but he had elected to lead the fleet to the outer planet. The ground defenders, hearing the space fleet had surrendered, at first assumed their supreme commander had surrendered, which would require their surrender as well. But eventually they requested personal confirmation, and that could not be given. The battle was not yet over, but the approaches to the Ligra 2 system was now effectively free of space defences. It was also difficult for the enemy to use their ground-based pulse-cannon because their own ships were at the head of the line returning to their planet. So the defenders did what every bad defender does: they requested orders from their supreme commander. He, however, was proceeding towards Ligra 3.0, and the intervening star prevented communication.

  At this point Gaius formally handed over control of the invasion to General Slaben, retaining only control of the undamaged space vehicles to deal with the other part of the enemy's fleet. Slaben could deal with the fixed planetary weaponry.

  The general plan for invasion was straightforward. The attackers had to assume that the enemy had powered up his pulse cannon. If he had not, with no space ships there would be no means of preventing the ground troops landing. So sufficient of the pulse cannon in some area had to be destroyed for the invading ships to have a reasonable chance of reaching the ground. To knock these ground defences out, droid miniships would be launched at the planet, to search for the cannon through their energy signatures, or their use, and destroy them.

  The droids were small, very manoeuvrable hence hard to hit. They were also suicidal, as they would crash into the cannon sites. They could not destroy the defences, but they could put them temporarily out of action. So the success of the invasion now depended on being able to deploy sufficient of these droids to punch a hole in the defences.

  At some critical point, Slaben had to decide to deploy the invasion proper. At this point the great transporters would launch clouds of assault carriers, together with fresh droids, and a number of decoys. If the plan were successful, the assault carriers would reach the ground and empty their cargo. Once a reasonable force of mechanised infantry and the mobile armoured attack units were deployed on the ground, the lightly damaged space vehicles would prevent the enemy deploying above ground craft. If that point could be reached successfully, the enemy would lose unless, contrary to all intelligence, he had superior undisclosed ground forces.

  Reports of damage now came in from the ships in the fleet. Most damage was sustained by the centre. Eight per cent of the attack group had been lost, another twelve per cent were seriously damaged, and another seven per cent, including Vipsania's ship, had medium damage. Gaius breathed a sigh of relief. He had feared when he left Ulse that that might be the last he saw of her, and he had felt almost sick after the last kiss. Of course he had tried to hide his feelings, but he could not be completely successful. At least now she was as safe as she could be in a war zone, as she would be given escort duties.

  The seriously damaged ships were ordered to shepherd the surrendered ships towards the moon, while the lightly damaged ships patrolled around those of the enemy yet to be boarded, and would support the ground invasion. As Ulsian troops now controlled most of the undamaged or lightly damaged enemy ships, Gaius felt able to take the remaining seventy-three per cent to attack the second enemy fleet.

  The ship's computers had tracked a most probable path for the enemy, based on their last known speed and trajectory, together with the requirement that they arrive at the outer planet at a velocity capable of dealing with a potential landing. The Ulsians could make up most of the time used in this battle if they were prepared to arrive at high velocity, and take something of a risk to the crews. Gaius ordered the risk to be taken.

  The ships would travel in small squadrons, with quite some distance between them. In terms of the enemy's path, they would skim around the back of the star, emerge at high speed, and since the standard detectors had to be shielded in the direction of the star they would be undetected unless the enemy had anticipated the manoeuvre and placed specific scanners in the regions near the star.

  As the motors were turned full on, all refrigerated units were also turned fully on. Gaius would have to spend at least ten minutes in a special capsule in the centre of this array, without lights or amenity, other than a small screen that would relay what was going on outside. Gaius nodded, and followed the Tin Man.

  They went through three hatches, each one colder than the previous, and each packed with reserve food, which in turn would act as insulation. Then Gaius saw the cylinder. He nodded as he got in, and noticed that it was lined with thick material.

  "Don't worry!" the Tin Man said in his usual flat tone.

  "Easy for you to say," Gaius muttered.

  "You realize I would not agree to this unless I was reasonably sure of success?"

  "That's good to know," Gaius muttered again.

  "For what it's worth," the Tin Man said in his flat voice, "this is the sort of manoeuvre this ship would do if it wanted to refuel at a star without standard technology. Of course, for additional safety the crew is never on board," and with that he slammed the lid down and sealed it.

  Gaius looked around his cell. He had access to a handle on a timer. Once the timer rang, it would be possible for him to attempt to open the cylinder, although, as the Tin Man said, if the images failed for inside the ship, the ship was dead, and getting out may be nothing more than a slower way of dying. On the other hand, if the Ulsian technology was dead, Gaius might as well try any option he could think of to survive.

  He looked at the wall screen, the only option to the cold grey of his cage. There was a ball of white, turbulent, seething fire. Small dark blotches could be seen, like small whirlpools on a river of fire sucking material down into the bulk below. Small, he reminded himself, was relative; some of these could suck in a planet without suffering enough indigestion to feel the need to burp. But the star could do more than burp. In one place a fireball had been spat out of its birth inferno, millions and millions of tonnes of material hotter than the surface of the star itself, soaring out i
nto space. Then there were dozens of immense streams of fire, wider than a planet, soaring tens of thousands of miles upwards to twist and turn, then plunge back into the star, to form immense arches of plasma, hundreds of thousands of miles across. The arches, he had been told, were held by immense magnetic fields generated by the movement of the fire below.

  The plan was simple. The ship would scan the star, map all the turbulence, calculate what the star would do next, then aim for a region in which the magnetic intensity was low. The ship would generate its own very intense fields to sweep up or deflect the plasma, the outer skin would be made the brightest silver possible, and in principle they would fly through the relatively empty space, and while much of the energy would be absorbed and converted to fuel, some heat had to be absorbed by the ship. Prior to arrival, the ship would pump as much heat as possible to the outside and radiate it to space, cooling it to something approaching absolute zero in places, to make a bigger buffer for the inevitable heat flux. Near the star, the ship would attempt to keep temperatures below the critical temperature where functionality ceased, which was somewhere in the red heat zone.

  The ball became bigger, brighter, more fiery. Larger and larger, by now the flares clearly extended well outside any outer distance. There were huge cavernous dark spots, although he knew that 'dark' was relative; they were dark because the suppressors were eliminating almost all light. There before them was a space between two giant arched flares: their target. The ship was aimed at the centre of the rather dark and hopefully empty spot.

  Bigger and bigger the spot became. Gaius looked towards the stellar surface. This was the tricky bit. In principle, a new flare should not start up aligned with this null spot, but if it did, they were in trouble. Being struck by a few hundred million tonnes of plasma travelling at hundreds of kilometers per second was not survivable. Flares in principle were predictable from the stellar sounds. The Tin Man had told Gaius that the star was ringing like a bell, only with far more complications, and by analysing these sounds, it was quite predictable what would happen. Gaius had to believe him. Especially now! There was a wall of hot stuff rising, but the hole was now huge. Except by now it was not a hole, but filled with something. The Tin Man had warned him about this. Once they got close enough, the light suppressors had less to deal with, so they compensated.

  They seemed to be flying straight at a wall! They were in the wall! At least they were still alive. The image remained a uniform brightness. Perhaps it was dead! Perhaps he had a frozen image! Then, suddenly, black, and the side of another flare. A slight turn, and with a flare on the starboard bow, they were through, and accelerating as fast as they could away from the star.

  Gaius now flicked through the channels. There, in one of the rooms, the Tin Man was doing something. At least he was functional. The rest of the ship seemed more or less in working order, although there were some strange sights. A glass from which he had been drinking had boiled dry, and had a black bottom. He pressed on the lever, but nothing happened. He had to wait.

  Eventually the Tin Man came, and opened the can. As Gaius stepped out, he could not help noticing the strange smell of cooking.

  "Some of the food stores are spoiled," the Tin Man explained, when he noticed Gaius's sniffing.

  "Any damage?" Gaius asked.

  "Not much, and all ships are through. You will also be pleased to know all energy banks are fully recharged."

  "What does 'not much' mean?" Gaius asked.

  "Some of my circuits and hydraulics are damaged," the Tin Man said. "My mobility is less than it might be. Refrigeration is down, however weapons and motors are fully functional. Life support is adequate, but luxuries are down."

  "The enemy?"

  "I shall show you where they are in due course," the Tin Man said, as he helped Gaius through the last hatch from the refrigerated area, "however, from their actions they have probably sensed there is no attack fleet of any magnitude able to be detected. They are decelerating with respect to the planet, but it is not clear whether that is to attack ships about the planet, or to turn around and come back."

  "Suppose you are correct," Gaius said, "it would not do for us to fly through them at high speed, only to find that they're going back. Our transports would be open to attack."

  "What do you wish to do?"

  "Cut motors!" Gaius ordered. "If we decelerate, they'll see our exhausts, but we can let the star slow us down until we see what they're going to do."

  Chapter 33

  Although seven hundred and fifty years had passed, Ligra 3 remained in part unconquered. From the M'starn point of view, since it had little manufacturing capacity other than for colony maintenance, its only real value was to ensure that they controlled the space around this star. When the M'starn had arrived in this star system, the Ulsian space defences had put up little better than modest resistance at the inner planet and its moon. Since a planet remains a large place and only a limited number of troops could be devoted to this system, despite the lack of spine from the defenders it took many years for the M'starn army to gain control of the inner system. During this time, their fleet denied supplies to the outer planet until it surrendered.

  Almost decades later, the M'starn military landed, to find the Ulsian colonists prepared to surrender, but not their hive. During the period, the reproductive class had fled and had set up their own bases under the ice sheets. Eventually a peace was negotiated, under the terms of which the Ulsians would continue to reproduce, they would supply workers to the factories, these factories would produce a specified amount of output, all androids and weapons would be handed over, the Ulsians would not make weapons, and in return, the M'starn would leave the Ulsians on Ligra 3 alone.

  In one sense it was an ideal solution to the problem. The M'starn did not have the ground forces to fight their way through the illusion-ridden ice-caverns, while the Ulsians had no means of supporting any struggle outside them.

  Over the decades, nothing happened. The Ulsians had originally formed small committees to discuss how they could resist the invaders, and they formed elaborate plans. The M'starn were fully aware of these plans, but chose to ignore them. Since the M'starn realized that there would always be a reaction against the master species, an important aspect was to cultivate the resistance groups they knew they could monitor. After nearly two hundred years, however, both sides began to tire. The M'starn convinced themselves that these Ulsians would never revolt, and the Ulsians became convinced that there was no help coming.

  All but two of the resistance groups closed down, and these two gave no sign whatsoever of ever revolting. Instead, they concentrated on the formal protocols of revolt. Elaborate code words to represent every conceivable situation and revolt status were committed to memory. Meetings were held at which each member would proudly recite what had to be done following the hearing of a randomly selected code word. The M'starn heard about this activity, and chuckled mightily. The commander over-ruled calls to arrest the plotters. As he pointed out, the efforts were so laughable they were certainly not worth punishing. But more importantly, from the M'starn point of view, all the Ulsians really thought these activities were secret. Bizarre though it might seem to the M'starn, the concept that any fact known to every Ulsian could hardly remain a secret from the M'starn did not occur to the Ulsians. Since the plotters had survived so long, all the Ulsians also believed that all ideas of revolt could safely be left to the plotters. The possibility of any revolt occurring that could accidentally do any damage was almost zero.

  If the Ulsians loved meetings, M'starn society was status-ridden. Thus when the M'starn on the inner planet decided to hold a huge party to celebrate the seven hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the capture of this system, every M'starn of note on the outer planet insisted on attending. Since the feelings of hurt would be acute, and since nothing ever happened on Ligra 3, Central Command on Ligra 2 issued invitations to almost every M'starn of rank Captain and above.

  * * *

>   Four Ulsians from the second revolutionary group were walking jauntily down a corridor. Life was good, well, maybe not good, but at least not bad. The lower-ranking M'starn who could not get to the inner planet had decided to celebrate here. They turned on ample food and drink, and in a fit of generosity added some to tempt Ulsians. Most Ulsians drew the line at celebrating their own defeat, but not the revolutionary group. Turning up was mandatory, to show their loyalty.

  Of course the generosity did not run to providing the Ulsians intoxicants. No, the M'starn alone became intoxicated, and began to gloat, calling the Ulsians slaves. The revolutionaries had to bite their tongues. Then came the telling blow! These Ulsians were ordered to clean out the command centre by next morning. For every spot of dirt, an Ulsian would be flayed alive. This was regarded as a great joke. Even the Ulsians had to laugh, or risk having an on-the-spot amputation.