Falcone Strike

by Christopher Nuttall

  It wasn’t a pleasant thought, but it was one that had to be faced. Someone always had to take the blame. God granted victory to the deserving, the Theocracy preached, and if victory was not granted the loser had to be undeserving. Admiral Junayd knew he’d been lucky to escape the first defeat—if Princess Drusilla hadn’t committed a staggering act of treason, he might well have been brutally executed for failure— and a second failure would kill him. Never mind that he didn’t have half the ships and crew he needed to protect the sector, never mind that the enemy could choose her targets with impunity . . . never mind that the locals had every reason to hate the Theocracy. It would be his fault.

  He considered, briefly, defecting. If a lowly woman could do it, why couldn’t a man with thirty years of naval experience under his belt? It wouldn’t be that hard to come up with an excuse for boarding a courier boat and taking control, once he was deep in hyperspace. He could steer the boat to the Commonwealth and then his family would be executed.

  The Commonwealth had tightened up its security considerably since the war had begun, according to intelligence reports, but it still leaked. Admiral Junayd had no illusions; sooner or later, someone would figure out that he’d defected and take it out on his family. No, nothing short of walking to his execution with the proper attitude—the supplicant willing to pay with his life for his sins—would save everyone related to him. He was trapped, a helpless prisoner of his own society . . . a society he was starting to loathe.

  And you hate it now, his own thoughts mocked him. Did you hate it when you were feted as the great naval hero who would carry the flag to Tyre and beyond? He was too honest to deny it. He’d had a good career, right up until the moment planning met reality in the skies of Cadiz. His family connections had ensured he made it into the naval academy; his gift for memory had ensured he wasn’t held back for failing to recite his prayers perfectly . . . and, since his graduation, he’d risen steadily in the ranks. He’d even learned to handle religious functionaries who knew nothing about military matters, yet held the power of life and death over every officer and crewman on his ships. But he’d been blamed for Cadiz and only sheer luck had saved him from becoming the scapegoat for a simple failure of imagination. War was a democracy, after all, and the enemy got a vote. If the plans couldn’t handle a surprise like Princess Drusilla’s defection, what good were they? And we did manage to hammer 7th Fleet, he reminded himself firmly. We jumped ahead of schedule, because we knew they couldn’t ignore a war fleet so close to their borders, but we nearly won. And we did batter the fleet into near uselessness. If they hadn’t had a fleet of reinforcements nearby . . .

  He shook his head. The latest news from Tyre mocked him—and the entire Theocracy. It was impossible to fault Admiral Christian . . . but if he’d served the Theocracy, he would have been executed for his failure to destroy the enemy fleet. Charging right at the enemy formation, even if one was hideously outgunned, was regarded as a good thing, no matter if it was pointless and stupid. The idea of a tactical withdrawal was beyond the imagination of most of his officers . . . and if they did have the wit to conceive of the concept, they immediately buried it before they could be accused of defeatism. How could anyone win a war by retreating? And yet, preserving one’s ships instead of fighting a hopeless battle might lead to overall victory.

  His terminal buzzed. “Admiral, the courier boats have been dispatched,” Captain Haran informed him. “Cleric Peter wishes to speak with you at your earliest convenience.”

  Admiral Junayd had to bite down a sneer. What was he supposed to tell the cleric? The truth? He wasn’t a child, indoctrinated to believe that clerics had a direct line to God . . . and that they would keep anything they were told to themselves, respecting the privacy of the confessional booth. No one with any wit believed that clerics kept secrets. A person who had doubts about God, about the Theocracy, about anything, would take his life in his hands if he dared speak to a cleric. There was no one Junayd could confide in who would not betray him.

  “Inform the cleric that he can meet me in my cabin in ten minutes,” he said, standing. There was no point in hiding in the cabin, not when there was work to do. “Have the ships earmarked for Ringer been dispatched?”

  “They’re being prepared now,” Captain Haran said. “Commodore Isaac insisted on choosing the squadron personally.”

  I’m sure he did, Admiral Junayd thought nastily. He probably thinks he will be my replacement if the Speaker relieves me of command.

  “Then have them dispatched as soon as they’re finally ready,” he ordered. There would be a chance to push the blame onto Isaac, if he wished . . . but the last thing the fleet needed, really, was a struggle over command authority. Besides, he had a feeling the light cruisers would discover nothing more than drifting wreckage and dead bodies. “Was there any message from the surface?”

  “No, sir,” Captain Haran said.

  “Good,” Admiral Junayd said. “I’ll see the cleric in ten minutes.”

  He closed the channel, then pasted a cold expression on his face. There was no point in showing weakness, not when the wolves were already gathering. Commodore Isaac might be the first to take a step, to try to push himself forward as a potential replacement for his superior officer, but he wouldn’t be the last. A failure had no friends or loyal subordinates for fear it would rub off. It was just another thing he found himself envying in his nation’s enemies.

  Gathering himself, he stepped through the hatch and walked down the corridor. The cleric was no doubt already inside his cabin, perhaps checking to see if there was anything incriminating hidden under the bed. Admiral Junayd wondered, absently, if Commonwealth officers had to put up with a glowering political watchdog, then shrugged, dismissing the thought. He had to make do with the system that had birthed him, no matter how much he envied his opponents.

  He opened the hatch. The cleric was seated in a hard-backed chair, his fingers pressed together in prayer. He looked up as Admiral Junayd entered, then waved him to a chair . . . as if it were his own cabin, rather than the admiral’s. Admiral Junayd sighed inwardly, recognizing the power play, then took his chair. There was no point in irritating a cleric for nothing.

  “I must say I’m quite concerned,” Peter said shortly. “This is the second major system to come under attack.”

  “The enemy can choose targets at random,” Admiral Junayd said smoothly. It sounded as though he was making excuses, but it was the literal truth. “They can concentrate their forces against one world; we have to spread ours out to cover two dozen worlds.”

  “That would appear to be true,” Peter agreed. “However, it is not particularly reassuring.”

  Then we should have built better defenses instead of lavishing resources on the fleet, Admiral Junayd thought. But I can’t tell you that, can I? Pushing the thought aside, he leaned forward and began to explain his plan.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  “The locals claim they can provide transport for all ten thousand civilians,” William said as he stepped into the captain’s office. “However, with only a handful of freighters, it’s going to be a very tight squeeze.”

  “Almost certainly,” the captain agreed. “Can we bring in the captured freighters to give us some extra capacity?”

  “If we have the time,” William said. “We might be better off taking them in the freighters, then transferring them into the other ships once we reach the RV point.”

  The captain didn’t hesitate. “Do it,” she ordered. “Are the inhabitants willing to go?”

  “They don’t expect the Theocracy to be merciful once they return,” William said. “I think they were hoping for a way out before we arrived. They’ve actually got quite a few ideas on how to expand life support capability so we can take them all.”

  He looked at the near-space display and frowned. A handful of asteroids with very limited living space and a sealed environment. The locals, it seemed, had strict rules on breeding; each couple could only h
ave two children, unless they were lucky enough to win the breeding lottery and have a chance to get a third child. He’d been told that the population had remained remarkably stable for seventy years, even after the Theocracy had annexed the system. But then, the Theocracy had been more interested in using the locals than converting them. It had still been a hair-raising existence.

  There was very little overt horror, he thought. But there were a great many implied threats.

  “That cruiser is still out there,” the captain said, thoughtfully. “They’re watching us.”

  “They probably want to try and track our exit vector,” William said. It was unlikely the Theocracy’s sensors were good enough to make any real headway, but they’d set off on a diversionary vector, just in case intelligence was wrong. “Do you want to try and chase them down?”

  “It would probably be a waste of time,” the captain said. “Did you manage to pull anything useful from the remains of the other cruiser?”

  William shook his head. “Their surviving datacores were completely wiped and powdered, Captain,” he said. “It looks as though the ship was so badly damaged that it activated automated scuttling codes. They might not have managed to trigger the self-destruct, but it sure as hell wiped out anything useful.”

  “The teams may still find something,” the captain mused. “But it probably won’t be anything particularly useful.”

  She shrugged. “Once they have the freighters loaded, rig the asteroids with nuclear demolition charges,” she added. “Maybe we can arrange for them to explode in their face when they return to the system.”

  “Aye, Captain,” William said. He paused. “It might be better, however, if we left the habitat asteroids alone.”

  The captain raised her eyebrows. “The enemy could still make use of them.”

  “We do have to destroy the industries,” William said. He’d been impressed, then alarmed, by just how much the locals had managed to do with such a limited supply of raw material. If the Theocracy had actually tried to learn from them, it would have been disastrous. “But the habitat asteroids belong to the locals. There’s no profit in destroying them when the destruction serves no useful purpose. And one day, the locals may be able to return.”

  “The Theocracy may destroy them,” the captain said.

  “Then at least the Theocracy will get the blame,” William said. “We’re taking ten thousand people away from the only home they have ever known. The very least we can do is refrain from smashing their homes into dust. They may be able to return after the war.”

  “If their culture survives contact with the rest of the Commonwealth,” the captain said. She looked up at him. “Very well; mine the industrial platforms, but not the habitable asteroids, as long as there is nothing there the enemy can use for war material.”

  “I will see to it personally,” William said. “The locals do have every reason to cooperate.”

  He shuddered. The Theocracy, for whatever reason, had allowed the locals to keep their culture and society, provided they made themselves useful. Indeed, they’d even enjoyed a certain amount of legal protection . . . which hadn’t stopped enemy spacers from harassing their women and occasionally going a great deal further. William made a mental note to ensure that the story was turned into propaganda, aimed at anyone who believed it was possible to coexist with the Theocracy. Even when an entire population surrendered and submitted, it wasn’t enough to keep them safe.

  That must be deliberate policy, he thought. They’re more interested in converts than putting together a multicultural polity.

  “Good,” the captain said. “Of course, the real question is when will they launch a counterattack?”

  “I wish I knew,” William said. They were five days from Aswan. Assuming a courier boat had jumped out the moment they arrived, it would probably have reached the enemy base by now . . . but if the enemy fleet they’d seen at Verdean had remained there, it was a day or two closer. “I’ll start the loading immediately.”

  * * * * *

  Kat watched the XO go, then returned to her contemplations. There had been relatively little on Morningside in the captured datacores, but her intelligence officers had interrogated the locals and discovered that it was a relatively large colony, settled directly from Ahura Mazda itself. Cross-checking with the UN’s files, they’d noted that there had been a previous colony from Earth, but for some reason it had never succeeded. Kat, reading between the lines, suspected it meant that the original settlers had been wiped out by pirates or absorbed by the Theocracy. However, unlike Verdean, it wasn’t regarded as occupied territory, but a loyal settlement.

  Which makes it an obvious target , she thought coldly. And certainly one that would be very embarrassing to the enemy, if we happened to raid it.

  She closed her eyes in silent thought. It was difficult to say which worlds the enemy would consider worth protecting, now that they knew she was in their rear, yet Morningside was definitely high on the list. Maybe Morningside didn’t have much in the way of industry—the planet didn’t even have a cloudscoop—but it did have a fairly large population, one that presumably had strong ties to the Theocracy’s homeworld. And it probably supplied food to the enemy forces, as well as manpower.

  Going there is a gamble, she told herself. But if we feint at Aswan first, we should upset them long enough to leave a space for attacking Morningside.

  It wasn’t a comfortable thought. She couldn’t launch a serious attack on the fleet base without far more starships than she had, while feinting at the system ran the risk of running into superior firepower. On the other hand, raiding the system would force the enemy to concentrate their minds on their defenses and she might have a chance to take a shot or two at an enemy convoy while she was there. It would be worth the risk.

  She brought up the report from Mermaid and skimmed through it again. Aswan was heavily defended, although she was fairly sure she could deal with the system’s defenders if she had a couple of superdreadnought squadrons of her own. Like most fleet bases, it was divided into a naval base, orbiting a rocky world, and a cloudscoop orbiting a gas giant. It would have been more efficient to base everything near the gas giant, but the enemy probably had long-term plans to terraform the rocky world. The Theocracy didn’t appear to care about its personnel—it certainly didn’t seem to waste money supplying entertainment for them—yet it had to understand the value of shore leave unless they genuinely believed that crewmen spent their days working and their nights studying religion.

  Her lips twitched in genuine amusement. There had been a woman—Kat hadn’t bothered to remember her name—at Admiral Morrison’s party. She’d moaned about spacers using the brothels and bars at the spaceport, even nagged the admiral to try to shut them down. It had never crossed her mind that spacers might need somewhere to relax and unwind . . . no doubt the Theocracy’s religious leaders felt the same way too. They’d probably be shocked to discover just what spacers did when they were off duty . . .

  And I wonder what happened to the silly cow , she thought. There had been no time to evacuate Cadiz before the enemy superdreadnoughts had come rolling in, thanks to Admiral Morrison. The woman was probably dead. Or, if she’d been taken alive, wishing she was dead. Some people have no idea of just how the universe works.

  She pushed the thought aside, then kept working. Perhaps if they used decoy drones to pin the enemy against the planetary defenses . . .

  * * * * *

  “Keep moving,” Davidson ordered. “Leave those bags behind; keep moving.” William stood beside him and watched, as dispassionately as he could, as a line of humanity flowed through the asteroid and into the giant freighter, where Marines handed out tranquilizer drinks and stacked the sleepy refugees into the holds. Men, young and old, were trying to look composed as they walked into an unknown future; women were glancing around nervously as if they expected to be attacked at any moment . . . and children, their faces pale and wan, clutched stuffed animals as they hu
rried onto the ship. William felt a stab of bitter guilt for uprooting their lives, even though he knew there was no choice. The Theocracy would take a terrible revenge when it finally reclaimed the system.

  “I need to take this with me,” a man insisted. “It’s everything I’ve done . . .”

  “Leave it here,” Davidson ordered, stepping forward. “There’s no room for anything larger than stuffed toys.”

  “But it’s my work,” the man protested. “I need to keep it!”

  “Put it on the datacore, then upload it to the ship,” Davidson snapped. “Or drop it here, with the rest of the bags. We may have time to pick it up.”

  The man glared at him, then realized he wasn’t going to get anywhere and threw the bag up against the others. William sighed inwardly—there was always someone who seemed to think that the ban on anything more than the clothes on his back didn’t apply to him—and watched as the bag rolled down the pile and landed on the ground. Maybe there would be time to pick up the luggage, although he doubted it. The real problem would be sparing a freighter long enough to return to the colony.

  “Commander,” a voice said, “are you sure you can get everyone out?”

  William turned to see Mayor Gregory Yu, feeling an odd twist of dislike mixed with sympathy. By any reasonable standard, Yu was a collaborator—and yet, as anyone could argue, he really hadn’t had a choice. The Theocracy wouldn’t have hesitated to remove him and put someone else in his place if he’d stood up to them; he’d fought hard to preserve something of his people’s culture, even as he bowed the knee to the enemy. It was easier, a great deal easier, to condemn people who swore allegiance to the enemy before the war was actually lost.

  “I hope so,” he said. Yu wouldn’t be treated with great respect in the Commonwealth, but he’d keep his life. His people too would survive and prosper. And who knew? They might get to return home one day. “Time is not exactly in our favor, but we can probably take everyone before we run out of space.”