Citadel: Troy Rising II

by John Ringo

  "This used to be called Los Angeles," Gularte said. "You should be fairly comfortable here for your . . . ​visit. The climate is mild with relatively rare rains. There is more than sufficient materials to make shelters, obviously. There will be some hand tools coming along in time. We'll drop off food as we have it. Since terrestrial foods are not edible to you, any of you can feel free to run if you wish. In which case, you'll die of starvation. Oh, and there's not much water. We'll pump some in. We will also do our level best to keep the local population away. They have a hard time distinguishing between types of aliens. The Horvath did this but . . . ​squids, lizards? All the same to them."

  "I am beginning to understand the human approach to kindness," the Rangora said, looking around.

  "I would suggest you and your staff get ready to get to work," Gularte said, walking back to the shuttle. "We're going to be dropping off all your personnel in very short order. Some of them seem a little . . . ​perturbed by the outcome of the battle. What happens after that is entirely up to you."

  "You okay, Dana?" Hartman asked as the shuttle started to climb back to orbit.

  "I am five by five, EM," Dana said. "Five by five."

  "Okay," Hartman said. "If you're sure."

  "Looks pretty much the same as the last time I was here," Dana said. "Cept it's not on fire."

  "Missile ready?"

  "Yes, sir," Captain Sharp said.

  "Launch."

  "Gate activation," the sensor technician said. "Inbound from Earth."

  "At last!" Commander Jesij said. "I was wondering how long it was going to take them to send back a report."

  "Longer than they were supposed to take," Captain Mexur said. The commander of the Cofubof class cruiser Thomud had been getting nervous. It had been over sixteen hours since the task force had entered the Terran system.

  "Missile!" the tech said. "Unknown class."

  "Defensive systems," the captain ordered.

  "The missile is not tracking," the defense officer said. "Say again, not tracking. It is broadcasting."

  "Put it on."

  "Message to Rangora High Command. Repeat Message to Rangora High Command. Please send supplies for ninety thousand prisoners. Oh, and please keep sending us ships. It's easier than making them. Message to Rangora High Command . . ."

  "This is one message I do not want to deliver," Captain Mexur said.

  ✺ ✺ ✺

  "Congratulations, Colonel To'Jopeviq," Star Marshall Lhi'Kasishaj said as the officer entered his office.

  "Colonel?" To'Jopeviq said. He had already noticed the new novas on Lhi'Kasishaj's epaulets. He sat down at a gesture from the Sky Marshall.

  "It was the best I could do," Lhi'Kasishaj said, rippling his scales. "High Command balked at General. But we are back in business!"

  "Yes, sir," To'Jopeviq said, totally confused.

  "Ah, you have not heard the news," Lhi'Kasishaj said. "The humans sent a request through the gate for supplies for ninety thousand prisoners."

  "The task force was defeated," To'Jopeviq said, bobbing his head in frustration.

  "Of course," Lhi'Kasishaj said. "As you predicted. And while, as I noted, being right is often a very bad thing, when played right it can be a very good thing. And this was, I must admit, well played on my part. I have been given, again, authority for bringing the Terran system into submission. Sorry, liberating it from its oppressive governments and bring unification for the good of all Terrans."

  "I see," To'Jopeviq said, thoughtfully. "Ninety thousand. Ten thousand per Aggressor . . ."

  "The number is clearly false," Lhi'Kasishaj said. "Don't let it trouble you."

  "Are we sending supplies?" To'Jopeviq asked.

  "Of course," Lhi'Kasishaj said. "Of course. Not your concern, of course. So, we must now prepare proper plans for the subjugation of the humans. I want updated intelligence. Everything you have."

  "I will get right on it," To'Jopeviq said.

  "It has been a very good day," Lhi'Kasishaj said as he left the office.

  "Yes, sir."

  "I told you!" Toer said, waving his hands and rippling his scales in frustration. "Didn't I tell you?!"

  "And I told the Gen . . . ​ Sky Marshall," To'Jopeviq said. "And he told High Command. Who ignored us. They are now asking for an updated intelligence profile."

  "We don't have any new intelligence!" Toer said.

  "We have the intelligence that the task force was defeated," Avama said, pensively.

  "That's negative intelligence!"

  "Calm yourself, Toer," To'Jopeviq said. "It's useful, though. What does that tell us?"

  "That they probably found a way to get power and fuel," Toer said. "Many possibilities. Long shot, they found another polity that is in support through one of their other connections. Most likely, they have their fuel plant in operation."

  "What does that tell us of their current combat ability?" To'Jopeviq said.

  "They have probably been proceeding with their work on Troy," Toer said. "I'm not sure about their construction rates . . ."

  "They cannot be high," Avama said. "The Horvath attacks seriously damaged them. They must barely be able to feed themselves."

  "That was not the indication we had prior to communications being cut off," To'Jopeviq said. "And it certainly doesn't appear to be the case from the results of this battle. Ninety thousand prisoners. What does that tell us?"

  "Probably disinformation," Toer said. "To get that many, they had to have had total dominance of the task force. That would require enormous power and very capable missiles."

  "Follow that to a logical conclusion," To'Jopeviq said.

  "It's disinformation," Toer argued. "There is no way that that many Rangora survived unless our ships were easy for them to defeat. That's practically half the crews!"

  "Still," To'Jopeviq said.

  "Well . . ." Toer said. "They would have had to have both capable missiles, our penetrators or Glatun, as well as a lot of them. Or, they would have had to push enough power from their SAPL to overcome the shields and physical defenses of the ships with ease. Or both."

  "What does that tell us?" To'Jopeviq said.

  "The only way that that could happen is if they are either enormously capable engineers or the Glatun opened up their military tech base," Toer said, pensively. "Maybe, if there was a mil-tech database in the fabber they got they could hack it. But that's well outside their known tech ability. My professional input is that this is disinformation."

  "Assume total dominance," To'Jopeviq said. "What else does that tell us? Not about their tech or the crews?"

  "They captured many of the ships," Beor said, after a moment's quiet.

  "Anything else?" To'Jopeviq asked.

  "Seventy petawatts would not have done it," Toer said, musingly. "And they would have needed a lot of penetrators no matter what."

  "What does a lot of penetrators and an increase in power tell us?" To'Jopeviq said.

  "Big tech base," Toer said, quietly. "Bigger than they should have, unless . . ."

  "Unless?" To'Jopeviq said.

  "If they have full Glatun databases," Toer said, slowly. "And if the ship fabber in that Wolf system has more or less unlimited resources, and if their ground based production was more distributed than we thought . . ." He paused and blinked.

  "Yes?" To'Jopeviq said.

  "I . . . ​need to think," Toer said. "I need to do some calculations. If we assume that they have all that . . . ​ To'Jopeviq?"

  "Yes?"

  "I don't think twenty Assault Vectors are going to be enough."

  TWENTY-SIX

  " ‘They came at us in the same old way . . . ​' " Tyler said, taking a sip of Coke. He'd begun to notice a bit too much blood in his alcohol system lately.

  " ‘And we defeated them in the same old way,' " Admiral Kinyon continued. " ‘What a terrible business.' "

  The Starfire was watching the recovery process which was going slowly. Ther
e was just too much to do. The Myrmidons were on their sixth day of picking up life pods. The Troy had stopped jamming and was now reassuring the survivors that they were going to be picked up as soon as someone could get to them.

  The previous attack had included more ships. The newer Rangora battleships, though, were almost a third larger than the Devastators. They had also been hit with more missiles which tended to scatter the debris.

  The gate area was, once again, a minefield of drifting debris. Cleanup was going to take forever.

  "We could just leave a bunch of this in the way," Tyler said. "That way, when the next attack comes through, they'll run into it."

  "Their shields will push it off," the Admiral said. "But it will hole a freighter."

  "Just a thought," Tyler said. "The next time, though, could you be a bit more careful of the drive systems? Grav plates are expensive."

  "I'll think about that," the Admiral said. "Any way we could get another missile fabber? We ran through most of our missiles in this attack. That makes me . . . ​nervous."

  "I'll see what I can do," Tyler said. "Don't want you feeling nervous."

  "How long to get the Aggressors back in action?"

  "We'll quit work on the Devastators," Tyler said. "They're not all that great anyway. We were looking at doing upgrades but it's tough. We might want to think about just scrapping them for materials. We've got both of the fabbers up and running. I'm continuing to devote part of their output to building Fabber Three. But we're also building a space dock. We'll pull the lightly damaged through to Wolf and get to work. Say . . . ​six months?"

  "That long?" the Admiral asked.

  "It's all fiddly bits," Tyler said. "That takes time. Also trained personnel of which there is still a critical shortage. At this rate, though, we might as well not build ships. They're sending us more than we can use."

  "They won't underestimate us the next time," the Admiral pointed out.

  "Bets?"

  To'Jopeviq turned away from the holo of the victory celebration on Glatus as Beor entered his office.

  "Lieutenant?" he said as she shut the door.

  "That would be more along the lines of ‘Yes, agent?' " Beor said, slipping a data crystal into his reader.

  The view was the interior of an interrogation chamber. The Glatun showed no signs of torture, possibly because he was talking freely.

  "Define what you mean by ‘everything'?" the interrogator, whose voice was buzzed out and features were blurred, asked.

  "Granadica had a full database of all our military systems," the Glatun said. "I know that's the case cause I was the one who loaded the database. The order came from high up in corporate. I was told, I can't say it's true, but Como Gaff said that the humans had been given access codes. I don't know who authorized it. It would have had to be someone high in the Glatun military or some of the Benefactors. And they got a bunch of AIs from what I heard."

  "What would be in the database, exactly?"

  "Everything?" the Glatun said, rippling his back mane. "I mean, we were one of the main military contractors. What we didn't have in our own designs, we had access to from our competitors through the military. You know you don't build all of one thing with just one company . . ."

  "Damn," To'Jopeviq muttered. "Toer is right. We will need more than twenty Assault Vectors."

  "This cannot be used for your analysis," Beor said. "Be clear about that. You are authorized access, but it cannot be included in your analysis."

  "That's going to weaken our position," To'Jopeviq said. "With this . . . ​ The humans had to have completed their mine, somehow, to be able to complete enough production to defeat the fleet. They are a serious threat. Not to the Imperium, but to any task force that enters their system."

  "That may or may not be," Beor said. "But this is not authorized to be included in any analysis. It is background only. To support your analysis, based upon this, you will have to find other intelligence. There is one other factoid, though, which can be used."

  "Which is?" To'Jopeviq asked.

  "The humans are allowing the prisoners to send through short messages," Beor said. "Ten words, no more. And they appear to be very solid on censorship. If there is coded information in them, it is not apparent. Whether they are real or not is another question. But if they are not real, they at the very least have the full manifests for several ships. There are prisoners who are sending messages from all the ships but the Vaghusigh. The majority of the crew appears to have survived from eight Aggressors, two Cofubof, two Gufesh and three The'Seshibas."

  "They captured eight Aggressors?" To'Jopeviq said.

  "Or they simply got their manifests," Beor said. "The lowest number of survivors, other than the Vaghusigh are from the Zhiphewich and the Ziyuzhim. But Captain Bacajezh appears to have survived. There was a message from him to his wife, anyway."

  "I take it they are not going to the recipients," To'Jopeviq said.

  "Of course not," Beor said. "And have someone piece together that we lost sixteen Aggressors to a minor system? We are not stupid."

  "What are the humans playing at?" To'Jopeviq said. "This makes no sense! There is still the possibility of our people using it to pass information! And the trouble of keeping so many prisoners? I wish I could understand them."

  "So do I," Beor said. "Try."

  "Are we sending the supplies?" To'Jopeviq said.

  "Yes," Beor said. "There's no point in not doing so. It is a trivial expense. What they will do with them all is the question. It's not as if they can eat it."

  Dana worked her fingers nervously for just a second, holding them up in front of the hatch, opening and closing into a fist. She started to turn away then she knocked, twice, hard.

  "Come!"

  Dana opened the hatch, stepped in, closed it and came to attention.

  "Coxswain's Mate Third Class reporting to the Chief," Dana said. "On open door policy."

  "Go?" Chief Barnett said, leaning back. "Not an EEOC complaint, I hope."

  "No, Chief," Dana said. "I . . . ​ I would like to talk to you. It's that or the shrinks."

  "The prisoner detail?" Barnett said, blowing out. "Sit, Dana."

  "Yes, Chief," Dana said, sitting down.

  "I was glad to hear you made Three," Barnett said, interlocking her fingers behind her head. "And when I got the word what our mission was, I almost tried to figure out a way to excuse your boat."

  "No matter which city they dumped them into," Dana said, "there was going to be someone who'd lost someone there. Other people in the Flight lost family in the LA basin."

  "Not many walked out of it when they were three," Barnett said, leaning back up. "So what's the status of your system, Comet?"

  "Fluctuations," Dana said, breathing deeply. "I'm dealing with a lot of anger. It's like it's started the grief cycle all over again. I'm getting really snappish. I nearly lost it with Thermal the other day. Nothing major, just another joke. He was just treating me like one of the guys. Not even . . . ​ Not really over the line. Same sort of thing we normally joke about. And I nearly went off."

  "Going off on your superiors is frowned upon," Chief Barnett pointed out.

  "Aye, aye, Chief," Dana said. "Was one reason I didn't. But the real point is that it wasn't anything to lose it over. I was just ready to."

  "With all the wonders we have of modern medicine," Barnett said, "with all the Glatun technology we have assimilated, there is still no good cure for PTSD. All the shrinks can do is treat the symptoms. Depression, sleep issues . . ."

  "Understood, Chief," Dana said.

  "And if I send you to the shrinks, you're off status," Barnett said. "Which means I'd prefer not to do that. On the other hand, I don't want someone who's going to lose it driving a boat."

  "Which is why I'm here," Dana said.

  "You want to turn in your wheel?"

  The symbol of being a qualified coxswain was a gold badge of an old-fashioned sailing ship tiller-wheel.

>   "I want help deciding," Dana said.

  "You want somebody to talk to about it," the Chief corrected. "Which we're not going to do here and now. You're not on schedule for today so try to hold onto your temper for the rest of the watch. There's an ‘unofficial' bar in the civvie section, Murphy's. You know it?"

  "I can find it," Dana said.

  "Meet me there at nineteen hundred," Barnett said. "Meeting adjourned."

  "Aye, aye, Chief," Dana said, standing up.

  "And, Dana?"

  "Chief?"

  "Seriously, hold on. We need every good sailor we can find."

  "Aye, aye, Chief."

  "We need to get an alien brig or something," Tyler said, watching the arriving cargo containers.

  Communication, of a sort, had been affected between the Rangora and Earth. Each side would send through a missile with a message. The missiles would not be returned. It was expected that the Rangora were tearing the missiles apart to find out anything they could about earth tech. Which was why they were being made groundside by Morton-Thiokol and were chemical rockets. Let them try to figure out something from that.

  But the first part of the exchange was complete. They'd sent through shipping containers, just those, containing food and other supplies for the prisoners. They'd have to be checked and cross-loaded then taken to Earth. Just another damned thing.

  "What, that's not already on the plans?" Nathan asked.

  "Not yet," Tyler said. "So . . . ​ Thermopylae?"

  "Cooled," Nathan said. "We've got it moving in-system. Minimally operational in three months."

  "Good, good," Tyler said. "I want . . ." He paused as the battlestation shuddered. "What the hell?" he asked as alarms started to wail.

  "What in hell just happened?" Admiral Kinyon asked. He was going to have to get new uniforms designed. Tucking in his shirt on the run was getting old.

  "The cargo just exploded," Colonel Helberger said. "It just blew up."

  "Casualties?" Kinyon asked.