Desperate Fire (Angel in the Whirlwind Book 4)

by Christopher Nuttall

  “You never know,” she said. “But clear title to a star system with an inhabitable planet would be worth a mint.”

  “If we start expanding again,” Pat warned.

  “There’s always someone ready to set out for a new world,” Kat said. She sobered. “We might find a new home for William’s people.”

  “Not in time,” Pat said. “Was there any decision at all?”

  “None,” Kat said. “It isn’t good.”

  They finished their dinner and walked through into the stateroom, leaving the plates and glasses behind for Lucy to clear up. Kat took Pat’s hand and held it, gently, as she studied the star chart. The thought of going beyond the edges of explored space was tempting, very tempting. And exploring wasn’t something she was going to be able to do if she stayed in the navy.

  The UN Survey Service was disbanded when Earth was destroyed, she mused. And no one was particularly interested in poking back out past the known borders.

  She looked up at Pat. Would he come with her if she did purchase a survey ship? Could they crew it on their own, between them, or would she need to hire others? And if he did, would their relationship survive? She loved him, but she was also a realist. Long-term relationships were relatively rare on Tyre. Might what they have endure past the pressures of war?

  He won’t want to leave the Marine Corps, she thought. Any more than I want to leave the Royal Navy.

  “Two weeks,” Pat mused. He nodded towards the star chart. Tiny units were moving on a course that led straight to Ahura Mazda. Others were heading off in all directions, their locations nothing more than best guesses. “We’ll be ready.”

  Kat nodded, feeling suddenly downcast. Pat would have to transfer to one of the troop transports shortly before they reached Ahura Mazda. After that, she wouldn’t see him again until the war was over. She knew him too well to think he would leave his station before he was no longer needed. He could die, down on the surface. She could die, in the omnipresent cold of space.

  She pulled him to her and held him tightly. Candy had predicted, none too pleasantly, that she and Pat wouldn’t last for long, if at all. They were just too different, she’d said; Pat was a commoner, from what was practically a whole new world. And yet, Kat thought he was talented enough to be brought into the family, wasn’t he?

  And you’re being a soppy idiot, she told herself sternly. Candy was the boy-crazy one, not her. She’d long since given up trying to keep track of her sister’s lovers. Kat preferred a single, steady relationship. Worry about the future after the war is over.

  She slipped her hands into his waistband and pushed his trousers to his knees. His mouth found hers, his tongue flicking along the edge of her lips. She drew back, just for a brief second as he removed his trousers, to see him smile. Pat might not be classically handsome, but she found him attractive nonetheless.

  “I took some care to make sure we had a few hours off duty,” she said as he picked her up effortlessly and carried her towards the bed. “Let’s not waste it, shall we?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “This report is genuine?”

  “It comes straight from Agent Joshua,” Inquisitor Samuilu said. “His position gives him access to a great deal of enemy data.”

  Speaker Nehemiah studied the report for a long moment. Agent Joshua had never steered the Theocracy wrong before, although there were odd gaps in what he sent that worried his handlers back on Ahura Mazda. And yet, an all-out attack on Ahura Mazda itself? Such a venture seemed a little unlikely.

  “I ordered a patrol ship from Croydon to check the minefield,” Samuilu said. “A vast number of mines are missing, blown out of space in a pattern that suggests a large fleet passed through the Gap and into our territory. Assuming a least-time course between the Gap and Ahura Mazda, they could be here within two days at the most.”

  “And Joshua didn’t tell us until now,” Nehemiah mused.

  “His sources are not always available,” Samuilu reminded him. “But everything he’s sent us has proven reliable.”

  Nehemiah looked up at the star chart, resisting the urge to say something blasphemous. The Battle of Hebrides had been a one-sided slaughter, suggesting worrying things about the next generation of enemy weapons, but the destruction of the entire planet had brought the Commonwealth’s counteroffensive to a halt. Movement had frozen, giving him time to bombard the Commonwealth with messages promising peace, an end to war, as long as the enemy accepted the prewar status quo. And while the Commonwealth hadn’t seemed receptive, they had stopped their offensive.

  And yet, if Agent Joshua was correct, they’d merely picked a new target.

  Two days, he thought.

  But was it two days? Agent Joshua claimed the fleet had departed three weeks ago, but was he telling the truth? His contacts might have lied to him, even if he wasn’t deliberately lying himself. By God, it was possible he’d been turned by the Commonwealth’s counter-intelligence services. Too many other spies and sources had been eliminated in the first months of the war for Nehemiah to trust anyone completely. Feeding the Theocracy false intelligence would be worth almost anything to its enemies.

  “A fleet definitely passed through the minefield,” he mused.

  “Correct,” Samuilu said. “They could have triggered an energy storm if they’d merely wished to clear the mines.”

  Nehemiah thought fast. On one hand, Ahura Mazda was the most heavily defended world in the Theocracy. The planet had enough firepower in orbit to deal with almost any realistic threat. But on the other hand, an extended engagement in the system would almost certainly take out the shipyards and industrial nodes—even the cloudscoops would be targeted and destroyed. The Theocracy might win the engagement but lose the war as its fleets slowly became nonfunctional.

  “This is our chance,” Samuilu said. “Their morale is already sinking, sinking fast. We can mass our forces and deal them a crushing blow, one from which they will never recover. One final catastrophic battle would give the impetus to their peacemongers.”

  Nehemiah turned to look at him. “Are you sure?”

  “The unbelievers are cowards,” Samuilu insisted. His eyes were burning with fanatical determination. “And God has finally delivered them into our hands!”

  He leaned forward. “Recall the fleets, Your Holiness,” he said. “And ready them for one final battle.”

  Nehemiah studied Samuilu for a long moment, then turned and strode over to the window, peering down at the darkened city below. There were almost no visible lights, not outside the governing compound. Energy had always been carefully rationed, particularly to the lower classes, but now there were too many demands on the fraying infrastructure to keep the city alight. He knew just how many people were suffering in the darkness, unable to run an air conditioner in the sweltering heat. Their sacrifice was necessary, but reports from spies suggested that discontent was spreading rapidly. Public feeling was unfocused, so far, yet he knew that would change sooner or later.

  And what will happen, he asked himself, when the enemy finally lands?

  Samuilu believed that God had delivered the unbelievers into their hands. Nehemiah couldn’t allow himself that luxury. God helped those who helped themselves, after all. Whatever happened, the engagement would be final in more ways than one. Either they would win decisively enough to convince the Commonwealth to back off or they would lose completely. There was no middle ground.

  He straightened up as he gazed into the darkness. Hundreds of thousands of souls were trapped in the city below, struggling to survive another day as their homeworld fell apart. What would happen, Nehemiah asked himself grimly, when the water supplies failed? Or when contaminated food was accidentally delivered to the slums? The poor should learn to bear their burdens with pride, but would they see it that way?

  Of course not, he thought. If they snap, they’ll lash out in all directions.

  “First Speaker,” Samuilu said, “we have to start preparations.”


  Nehemiah closed his eyes for a long moment. Surrender wasn’t an option. Even if he’d wanted to surrender, even if he’d thought he would survive the purges that would inevitably follow defeat, it wasn’t an option. Samuilu and his fellow fanatics would take control of the government and order a fight to the finish, convinced that God was on their side. He considered options for purging the fanatics first, before they could purge him, but he knew such tactics would be tricky. Samuilu controlled too many loyalists for anyone to be certain of the final outcome.

  And we would lose if we were having a civil war when the enemy arrived, he thought morbidly.

  “Start preparing the defenses on the ground,” Nehemiah ordered. “And recall the fleets. We need to mass our striking power before launching a counteroffensive.”

  “As you command,” Samuilu said, bowing low. “And should we burn the occupied worlds?”

  “No,” Nehemiah said. He wasn’t fooled by the sycophantic tone. Samuilu would obey orders as long as they were the orders he wanted to obey. “God will be angry with us. And we need His help for the coming battle.”

  “We are His chosen people,” Samuilu protested. “Of course, He’ll help us.”

  “And if we choose to defy His edicts,” Nehemiah asked, “what does that make us?”

  Samuilu looked unamused. Nehemiah didn’t really blame him. Like most Inquisitors, Samuilu had risen to the top through a combination of zeal, fanaticism, sadism, and outright bullying. Anything he did, in his mind, was God’s will. And nothing in his upbringing had taught him any better. The idea that he might lose God’s blessing was alien to him.

  “We will recover the occupied worlds soon,” Nehemiah told him. “And then we will take the Theocracy to heights beyond imagining.”

  Nehemiah watched as Samuilu prostrated himself before backing out of the room, then the Speaker turned to stare out the window. Darkness hung over the city like a shroud, mocking him. The lights that would have turned his homeworld into a glittering jewel were gone. And yet, he knew what he would see in broad daylight: ramshackle apartment blocks, ugly barracks. The only truly spectacular buildings were the churches. But their presence wasn’t enough to keep the city from falling apart.

  It might be time to start considering other options, he thought. The Theocracy had always hung on a knife-edge between the different factions; now, with an enemy invasion on the way, that delicate balancing act was about to collapse. And perhaps I should plan to flee the city for safer places.

  He shook his head reluctantly. There wouldn’t be any safer places, not for him. If Samuilu and his ilk won the battle, if they won peace, they would hunt for Nehemiah relentlessly. But if the Commonwealth invaders won, they’d hunt for him too, intent on making him pay for the Theocracy’s crimes. They wouldn’t accept any excuses, not from him. They’d merely march him out into the broad sunlight, then hang him in front of the local populace. And most of the city’s inhabitants would cheer.

  “Bastards,” he muttered.

  He turned, striding towards the door. There was no escape, not now. He’d been riding a tiger most of his life. Getting off was impossible without being eaten alive. Samuilu might be right, damn him. A final decisive battle might just end the war. And even if it didn’t, they’d go out in fire, a fate better than being hanged by the Commonwealth or tortured to death by the Inquisition.

  Everything comes with a price, he thought as he walked down the corridor. His wives were waiting for him in the female quarters, waiting for him to favor one of them with his attentions. And I have to pay the price too.

  Ahura Mazda was the source of all evil, as far as the Commonwealth was concerned, but her primary star looked like any other star. Kat used her implants to pick it out of the star field, then studied the sun for a long, thoughtful moment. A dot of light, burning against the inky darkness of space. Nothing more. There was no sense of all-pervading evil, of the shadow that had reached out to draw dozens of worlds and millions of souls into its thrall.

  She told herself, firmly, that she was being silly, yet she still felt a little disappointed. The distant star, five light-years away, was depressingly mundane.

  “Our target,” Pat said. They stood together in the observation blister. “It won’t be long now.”

  Kat touched his hand. The fleet had dropped out of hyperspace once it had reached the final waypoint, allowing Admiral Christian and his command staff to check and recheck the entire command datanet before the fleet launched its offensive. Kat thought they were being paranoid, but she had to admit Admiral Christian had good reason to be careful. A single mistake in the wrong place would be disastrous.

  She turned to look at Pat. “You’re transferring to Chesty Puller this afternoon?”

  “I’ll be leading the first assault force,” Pat said. “It’s the challenge of a lifetime.”

  “And a very good way to get killed,” Kat said. “You will be careful?”

  Pat nodded, wordlessly. Kat knew what he was thinking. There was no way to guarantee survival, anyone’s survival. A lone man, armor or no armor, could be swatted out of existence by a ground-based weapon, wiped out so completely that no one on the planetary surface would know they’d scored a hit. And even if he made it down safely, the enemy would throw everything they could at the spacehead, trying to obliterate it before reinforcements could be landed and brought into the battle. If something went badly wrong, Pat and his men would be trapped, unable to retreat the way they’d come.

  And a single nuclear warhead would be enough to wipe out the entire landing force, she thought as she wrapped an arm around him. They won’t have any qualms about using nukes on their own homeworld.

  She leaned against him, wishing she could keep him safe. He’d accepted her putting herself at risk, if reluctantly; why did she find it harder to let him go into danger? But then, it was always easier to risk one’s own life than send others to fight and perhaps die. She knew she couldn’t have lived with herself if she’d sent someone else into the pirate lair.

  “I’ll come back,” Pat promised. “You won’t get rid of me this easily.”

  Kat elbowed him. “Prat.”

  Pat turned to face her, his face suddenly serious. “Kat . . . when the war is over . . . will you marry me?”

  Kat stared, unable to speak as he reached into his jacket and produced a small black box, opening it to reveal an engagement ring. It was strikingly simple compared to some of the flamboyant rings she’d seen passed around high society, but that didn’t matter to her. The starship etched into the gold fitted her better than diamonds, better than any gemstones.

  Marriage would change her life, she knew. The navy might draw the line at allowing them to serve together. She was surprised no one had ever had a quiet word with her about their relationship, although her reputation had probably given them some protection. And Pat would have to grow used to being in high society. Her heartbeat was suddenly so loud she half suspected he could hear it. She loved him.

  “I will,” she said. It would work. They would make it work. “Yes, I will marry you.”

  She felt dazed, almost as if she was watching herself from a distance as Pat carefully removed the ring from the box and placed it on her finger. It fit perfectly, of course. Kat didn’t wear rings, not on starships, but he wouldn’t have had any trouble downloading her measurements from the ship’s database. She studied the ring for a long moment, her eyes picking out a globe and anchor below the starship. He’d melted his commissioning coin to make the ring.

  Standing on tiptoes, she kissed him. “Pat, I—”

  “We’ll have plenty of time during the voyage home,” Pat said.

  Kat groaned. Her family would want a big wedding. Her mother and sisters would want to make sure she walked down the aisle under the watching eyes of the entire planet. Their wedding would become the event of the century, everyone who was anyone invited to intrude on a private moment. She wondered, suddenly, if she could ask Admiral Christian to marry them. I
t would be perfectly legal.

  “We’ll have to endure a big wedding,” she warned. They couldn’t elope. She couldn’t do that to her mother, even though she’d never wanted a big wedding. “And then we can go hide somewhere the media won’t follow.”

  Pat lifted his eyebrows. “Ahura Mazda?”

  Kat giggled. “Maybe,” she said. “Pat—”

  “I understand,” Pat said. “I’ve stood in parades for hours. I can endure a big wedding.”

  “Just you wait,” Kat said. She’d attended her eldest brother’s wedding. Even as a guest, with no formal role in the ceremony, she’d found it tiring. And she still teased her brother about the excesses of his stag night. He’d probably want to take Pat out for a night, just to extract a little revenge. “You’re going to hate it.”

  “I’ll be with you,” Pat said. “It’s for a decent cause.”

  Kat stuck out her tongue. “Do you have any more banal romantic clichés?”

  Pat grinned. “That’s what I get for studying romantic movies to learn how to propose.”

  He met her eyes. “I love you,” he said simply. “And I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”

  “I love you too,” Kat said. She kissed him again, feeling her eyes beginning to water. “Be careful down there, all right?”

  “I’m always careful,” Pat said. He struck a dramatic pose, resting his hands on his hips. “I fight for the right so you may live.”

  Kat rolled her eyes. “And there I was thinking you watched that show for the girls.”

  “It’s bad propaganda,” Pat said. “The girls are the only things worth watching.”

  “True,” Kat agreed.

  She rolled her eyes. I Fight for The Right was an entertainment drama, produced and distributed shortly after the war had begun. The series followed the lives of five men and five women, the men going off to war while the women coped with life without them. Kat had thought the show stupid the first time she’d watched an episode. Endless sex scenes couldn’t conceal the fact that Pat was right, it was poorly written propaganda. But she had to admit the series had a certain appeal too. What sort of man wouldn’t put his life on the line to defend his home?