Falcone Strike

by Christopher Nuttall

  “Communications,” she said. “Contact Shipyard Command and request permission to depart.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Lieutenant Linda Ross said. There was a pause as she worked her console. “We are cleared to depart, Captain. Shipyard Command wishes us luck.”

  “Send a copy of our final status report to the Admiralty,” Kat ordered. She felt another flicker of excitement, which she ruthlessly suppressed. “Helm, take us to the jump point.”

  She sat back in her command chair as she felt a dull thrumming running through the ship, slowly increasing in power as Lightning moved out of position. The rest of the squadron fell in behind her, keeping their formation spread out to minimize any chance of an accident. Kat had never heard of one starship ramming another by mistake, but their early exercises had made it clear that the older ships were far from reliable. It was better, she reasoned, to avoid taking chances while her crews were still getting used to them. Even with the latest weapons and drives crammed into their hulls, some of them still maneuvered like wallowing pigs.

  “All systems check out, Captain,” Lynn said.

  “The squadron seems to be operating at acceptable levels,” the XO added from his console. “They should have no trouble navigating hyperspace.”

  Until we try to slip through the border, Kat thought. She’d seen the star charts the XO had bought from his brother. The route into enemy space might not be quite as bad as flying through the Seven Sisters, but it was going to be bad enough. We might lose a ship or two there.

  She sucked in her breath. It wasn’t going to be easy, not with ships that hadn’t been designed to brush up against energy storms. The men who’d started to chart hyperspace, back in 2109, had been brave. They’d gone out willingly, knowing the odds of a safe return were poor. She couldn’t help admiring them, even as she appreciated the advancements in modern technology. As long as Lightning didn’t try to fly right through a storm, she was safe in hyperspace.

  “Good,” she said, glancing at the display. “Transmit details of the first waypoint to them.”

  “Yes, Captain,” Linda Ross said.

  “Captain,” Weiberg said. “We have reached the first jump point.”

  Kat nodded. Trying to open a gateway so close to Hyperion would be asking for trouble, if not outright disaster. No one had managed to completely account for the relationship between hyperspace and realspace, but everyone agreed that trying to jump out close to a planet was akin to diving right into an energy storm. She might have risked it, if she’d been desperate, yet the price would have been high. There was no need to take the risk now, not in a secure star system.

  “Open the gateway,” she ordered. “Take us into hyperspace.”

  The gateway opened, revealing the shimmering lights of hyperspace. Kat’s stomach clenched as the ship dived into the vortex, a reflex she’d never been able to suppress even though she knew it was purely psychometric. Others, natural-born groundhogs, weren’t able to cope, seeing the vortex as a gaping maw or a mouth filled with sharp teeth and hyperspace itself as a profoundly unnatural realm. She felt a dull shiver run through the ship, a sensation that it was no longer flying through empty space; she pushed it aside, irritated. It wasn’t as if it was her first time in hyperspace.

  “Mr. XO,” she said, formally. “Squadron status?”

  “All eighteen ships made it through the gateway, Captain,” the XO reported. “They’re reporting no problems; I say again, no problems.”

  “Inform their commanding officers that they are invited to join me for dinner at 1700,” Kat said, glancing at her chronometer. It was 1400, plenty of time for any problems to crop up before the officers left their ships. “I expect their responses shortly.”

  She leaned back in her command chair and studied the readouts. Everything seemed to be fine, save for odd fluctuations in the drive nodes. The engineers were already on it, checking and rechecking something that looked like a case of faulty tuning. Kat hoped they were right. Losing one drive node would be irritating, losing three would cripple Lightning if she had to take the ship into battle. It was probable that the tuning hadn’t been quite perfect—it was hard to tune a node without actually running it—but if it was something worse . . .

  We might have to halt long enough to actually cut the node out and replace it, she thought sourly. Doing such an operation in deep space would be an absolute nightmare, but it would have to be endured. We don’t dare drop into a fleet base as it would betray our true vector.

  She looked at the near-space display and frowned. Tyre was the busiest system in the Commonwealth, with thousands of ships coming and going every day, and it was quite likely that some of those ships were actually spies. Kat would have established spying bases, if she’d been planning a war; it wouldn’t have been hard for the Theocracy to set up spy rings as well as insert commandos into enemy territory. Hell, she knew they’d inserted commandos; they’d caused a great deal of disruption during the opening hours of the war.

  And now, she thought, are unfriendly eyes tracking our departure? There was no way to be sure, she knew. Sensors were unreliable in hyperspace; an enemy ship could be right on top of them before she saw it coming, or watching her from a safe distance, effectively invisible. It was no consolation to know that the Theocracy would have similar problems, that their sensors couldn’t be that much better than anything possessed by the Commonwealth. All she could do was fly an evasive course and hope that hyperspace allowed them to avoid their opponents before it was too late.

  “The commanding officers have responded, Captain,” the XO said. “They will be attending your dinner.”

  Kat smiled. As if there had been any doubt . . .

  There might have been, she had to admit. Her subordinates were commanding ships that hadn’t seen real service for decades, if they were lucky. Something might have cropped up that would have forced a CO to remain with his ship, even if he had been invited—ordered—to attend a dinner. She wouldn’t have penalized a CO for that either. It wouldn’t have been a deliberate snub, but a reasonable response to a serious problem.

  Not that Candy would have understood, she thought as she rose to her feet. If she invites someone to her parties, that person had better go. And if they’re on their deathbed, they should bring their deathbed with them.

  “You have the bridge,” she said, addressing the XO. “I’ll be in my office.”

  She stepped through the door, ordered coffee from her steward, and sat down with the latest set of intelligence reports. There was actually a considerable amount of data, but she lacked any context . . . and the intelligence officers, suffering from the same problem, had spent hours crafting complex reports that managed to hide their basic ignorance under a mountain of bullshit. She rubbed her forehead; it was useful to know that the CIS had identified fifty-seven separate enemy superdreadnoughts, but there was no way to know just how many superdreadnoughts the enemy actually had. Had they sent all of their mobile firepower forward or had they kept half of it in reserve? Her steward appeared from the side door, carrying a large mug of coffee. Kat took it, nodded her thanks, and looked back at her datapads. It took her a moment to realize that Emily Hawking, instead of withdrawing as silently as she’d arrived, was waiting patiently to be acknowledged. Kat sighed inwardly, then looked up.

  “Captain,” Emily said, “the observer has requested permission to attend the dinner.”

  Kat frowned. Her first inclination was to refuse, but it would be undiplomatic. Rose MacDonald presumably had no way to know that they weren’t heading away from the war, yet it wouldn’t be long before she found out the truth. It would probably be better, all things considered, for her to attend the dinner. If nothing else, half of the officers Kat had recruited to command the older ships were newcomers to the Navy. Some of them had more relevant experience than anyone from Tyre.

  “Tell her she would be welcome,” Kat said. It was a half-truth, at best. “Have the cooks include her in their calculations.”


  “Aye, Captain,” Emily said.

  She saluted, then withdrew. Kat looked back at her paperwork and then opened the report from the XO’s brother. Unlike the intelligence analysts, it was clear and remarkably concise, although there were very definite gaps in what the smugglers knew about the Theocracy. It seemed they rarely went anywhere near the core worlds, fearing certain death if they were caught. Given how badly the Theocracy treated innocent spacers who had been invited into their space, Kat wasn’t remotely surprised. At least the smugglers didn’t bother to play games; they either knew something or admitted it when they didn’t.

  Her terminal bleeped, alerting her to the time. Kat sighed, then stood and hurried down the corridor to her cabin, where she showered and changed her uniform. There was no point in getting into her dress uniform, she decided; it wasn’t as if she was hosting an admiral. She glanced at herself in the mirror, tied her hair back into a bun, and then walked down to the officers’ mess. The other commanding officers had already assembled, looking torn between eagerness and fear. Very few of them had any real command experience before they’d been offered the chance to command a set of expendable vessels.

  “At ease,” Kat ordered as she stepped into the officers’ mess. “Take your seats”—she smiled as she realized the cooks had put a chair out for the observer—“and relax. We have a great deal to discuss.”

  She took her seat at the head of the table, then nodded to the XO as he sat at the far end, facing her. It was an odd arrangement, she had to admit, but he was effectively second in command of the entire squadron as well as her XO. She was surprised he’d turned down one of the ships himself, yet she was grateful. It wouldn’t have been so easy to get the squadron organized without him.

  “We will eat first, I think,” she added. “This may be the last decent meal we have for some time.”

  The stewards brought in the first course, then withdrew. Kat watched as her officers drank their soup, all seemingly unwilling to start a conversation. She didn’t really blame them; they were very junior officers and it was unlikely that any of them had taken part in a formal dinner before, at least outside Piker’s Peak. And it wouldn’t be the same, not really. There, someone would correct their mistakes; here, a mistake could blight their careers. Kat recalled just why she detested formal parties, even though she was the daughter of a duke. A single mistake could have High Society sneering at someone for years.

  She waited until they’d finished the dinner and the stewards had poured coffee, then leaned forward, tapping her fork against her glass. “As some of you may have realized,” she said without preamble, “we are not heading to a peaceful border. In fact, our mission is to strike deep into the Theocracy and raid their supply lines.”

  There was a long pause. Several of the officers looked excited or resigned rather than shocked; they’d seen her insistence on stocking up on everything from missiles to spare parts and deduced she expected to see action sooner rather than later. And the Admiralty had raised no objection either. With missiles in such short supply, they would have raised a fuss if she’d tried to take several thousand missiles away from the front. The signs had been there for anyone who cared to look.

  “We are not going to seek open combat,” Kat said after a moment. She might as well head that idea off at the pass. “We’re going to find their weak points and wreak havoc, blowing holes in their system, just to buy time for the main body of the fleet to regroup and prepare to take the offensive. And believe me, we need to buy time.”

  Lieutenant Slater of HMS Checkmate leaned forward. “Are you saying we’re losing the war?”

  “No,” Kat said. Slater, according to his files, was too cynical to be promoted much further, which she suspected meant he had a habit of asking too many questions. It wouldn’t be the first time someone had come up with an excuse for blighting an officer’s career out of personal dislike. “I’m saying we need to buy time to strengthen our defenses and complete the switch to war production.”

  Rose MacDonald coughed. “You mean . . . we’re going to war?”

  “Yes,” Kat said. “We’re going to be operating deep within enemy space.”

  She concealed her amusement at the observer’s sudden discomfort. “There’s a full tactical brief available in the datanet,” she said. “You’ll have a chance to study it over the next month, while we approach enemy space, and then suggest possible targets for our first set of raids. We know little about the Theocracy’s inner structure, so collecting intelligence is one of our first priorities. Ideally, we want to get a complete map of their space.”

  “That won’t be easy,” Commander Millikan said. “Everything I’ve heard about the Theocracy suggests that their people are kept in complete ignorance. Even starship officers never learn anything other than their own specialties.”

  “Which makes you wonder, really, how they maintain their society,” Commander Kent said sarcastically. “We cross-train our people for a reason.”

  “There are limits to how far people can be cross-trained,” the XO pointed out. “And really, would you be able to navigate a starship using only the information in your head?”

  “I’d want to be sure I could repair the navigational systems myself, if necessary,” Kent countered. He turned to look at Kat. “If we could kill or capture their engineering personnel, Captain, it could cripple their economy.”

  “Maybe not that much,” Commander Millikan said. “Their worlds are apparently largely pastoral. It doesn’t take much advanced knowledge to operate a farm.”

  “Unless you happen to want to increase your yield,” the XO said. “Hardscrabble farming is just that—hard.”

  Kat tapped the table sharply. “I intend to make a formal announcement tomorrow,” she said flatly. “We will not, of course, be docking at any fleet base before we cross the border, so there should be no risk of the secret getting out. However, I expect you to inform your subordinates that the Quiet Storm protocols are now solidly in effect. I do not want any unsecured data being stored, let alone transmitted, without clear authorization from me personally. This will cause problems, I know, but they have to be handled. We cannot risk any form of security breach.”

  She paused. “Are there any questions?”

  “It will cause . . . issues,” Commander Millikan warned. “No one knew they were signing up for a dangerous mission.”

  “They joined the Navy,” Kat said flatly. “They knew the job was dangerous when they took it.”

  She kept her expression blank with an effort. The Quiet Storm protocols included everything from personal terminals—frowned upon, but not actually forbidden—to paper diaries. If someone had been earmarked for a secret mission, they would have been told not to bring anything along those lines. Yet she’d known she couldn’t risk letting anyone know the truth before they left. The protocols would cause problems, which would just have to be handled. There was no other choice.

  “I will be holding another dinner once we cross the front lines,” she concluded. “At that point, we will pick our first targets. By then, we should also have a better grasp of our strengths and weaknesses.”

  She finished her coffee, then smiled. “I will withdraw now, in line with protocol, but feel free to stay here as long as you wish,” she added after a moment. Protocol dictated that the senior officer was always the first to leave. “Thank you for coming.”

  Rose followed her as she slipped out of the hatch. “Captain!”

  Kat turned to face the older woman. “Yes?”

  “We’re really going to war,” Rose said. “It’s not a joke, is it?”

  “No joke,” Kat said. It wasn’t nice, but part of her was enjoying Rose’s discomfort. “Once we cross the border, we will start looking for things to kill.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  “Well,” Lieutenant Cecelia Parkinson said as the tactical staff assembled in their compartment, “this is a surprise, isn’t it?”

  The spy cringed inwardly. He’d been t
old that they were going away from the war, not towards it . . . let alone carrying it deep into enemy space. He’d hoped he would have an excuse for doing nothing, for not breaking one set of oaths in hopes of saving his sister’s life, but it seemed he was to be deprived of any excuse at all. The Theocracy would expect him to do his utmost to help them or they would kill his sister . . .

  . . . and he had a priceless opportunity to do just that. We’re going to be unpredictable ghosts , he thought. Moving from star system to star system, picking our targets at random . . . they would have to get very lucky to have a battle squadron in position to catch us when they have too many stars to cover. But I could tell them where to place their ships.

  He fought to keep his expression under control, cursing the Theocracy’s luck. Maybe there was something to their religion after all. Random chance alone couldn’t have accounted for it, unless he’d just been very unlucky. But he would have needed to be unlucky at least three times over: the Theocracy had captured his sister; they’d discovered she was related to someone on active service; and now he was in position to actually do something for them, something that would betray all his oaths. And yet . . . what else could he do?

  “We’ll start new tactical exercises in an hour,” Lieutenant Parkinson said. The spy hated her—she was blonde, bubbly, and too young for her post. But then, she had done well at Cadiz; she’d probably deserved her promotion. If there were any dark secrets in her past, she’d hid them very well. “By then, I expect you all to come up with imaginative ways to use the resources at our disposal.”

  Sending them all into a sun would probably work , the spy thought darkly. But then, no one would ever know what I’d done.

  He looked at the tactical display, wishing he dared trust either side. If the Theocracy gave up his sister, they wouldn’t have anything more to hold over him . . . apart, of course, from the fact he’d committed treason. It was in their interests to keep his sister as long as possible, even if she was unhurt; they had no reason to return her just because he’d had enough of working for them without a clear reward. But the CIS would be worse; they’d take him, use him to feed the enemy false information . . . and if his sister happened to be killed in the process? Well, they’d be regretful, and they’d say all the right things, but it wouldn’t make any difference. The only hope for his sister’s life was to work with the Theocracy . . .