Desperate Fire (Angel in the Whirlwind Book 4)

by Christopher Nuttall

  “But I will do my duty, because that’s all I have left. Do you understand me?”

  Sonja leaned back, as if he was looming over her. William allowed himself a tight smile at her reaction. She might have been born on Tyre, one of the most cosmopolitan worlds in the galaxy, but she hadn’t had much experience dealing with people from other cultures. It wasn’t easy sometimes to understand, truly understand, that some people just thought differently than others. He wondered absently how she would handle herself on Ahura Mazda. She’d need protection at all times just to keep her safe from the crowds.

  “Yes, Captain,” she said. “I think I do.”

  “Good,” William said. He yawned suddenly. “I’d suggest you take a nap. Nothing is going to happen for several hours at least.”

  Sonja lifted her eyebrows. “And if it does?”

  “The crew has standing orders to hop into hyperspace at the merest hint we’ve been detected,” William said, “then deploy jammers to hide our retreat. Any excitement won’t last very long.”

  He yawned again. “I’m taking a nap too,” he added. “It will be fine.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Sonja said. She didn’t sound convinced. Perhaps she thought he was meant to be on the bridge, striking dramatic poses, until they were well away from Ahura Mazda. “And I hope we will have the chance to talk again.”

  She rose and headed for the hatch, her hips flowing in a natural rhythm. William caught himself staring at her backside, very clearly outlined by her shipsuit, and looked away, cursing himself under his breath. He was too tired to talk to a reporter, or anyone really. And yet, the sight of this woman reminded him just how much he’d put aside since he’d joined the Royal Navy. Save for a few sessions with spaceport sex workers, he’d never found a woman. He’d always put marriage off, assuming he would one day return home and find a wife. Now it was too late.

  Maybe I should have taken Morag up on her offer, he thought as he lay down on the sofa and closed his eyes. But I couldn’t have lived with myself afterwards.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Admiral Christian said. “The face of the enemy.”

  Kat sucked in her breath as Ahura Mazda appeared in front of her, ringed by row after row of defenses. Superdreadnoughts, orbital battlestations, so many automated weapons platforms that the analysts had practically lost count. Their best guesses about gunboats, armed shuttles, and other surprises were flowing up at the bottom of the display, warning that Ahura Mazda could potentially be defended by over a hundred thousand gunboats. Kat rather suspected that was a gross exaggeration, but she had no way of being sure. The Theocracy might have decided to plow vast resources into producing gunboats as the war swung against them.

  “Our principal target remains Ahura Mazda,” Admiral Christian continued. “Should we lose the engagement, for whatever reason, our flanking units will obliterate the cloudscoops as we retreat. Starving the system of HE3 will certainly do a great deal of harm to their economy, whatever else happens. We will, of course, attempt to ravage their system as thoroughly as possible.”

  He paused, his holographic image moving around the display. “We will aim to drop out of hyperspace here,” he added, tapping a location near the planet. “Ideally, we will have plenty of room to deploy the fleet before they have a chance to muster a counterattack. We will, however, proceed on the assumption that they will throw everything they have at us before we reach orbital engagement range. They’ll be very edgy about warheads flying around near their shipyards.”

  Kat nodded. It made sense. Any rational defender would prefer to keep the engagement as far from his shipyards as possible. But the Theocracy might not have that option. Their orbital space was so crammed that any detonation would probably damage something. Who could tell for sure?

  “Once we clear orbital space, we will continue with the plan and attempt to land the marines,” Admiral Christian said. “Should we be unable to isolate a suitable landing site, we will clear space to make them a landing site and establish a spacehead. At the same time, we will destroy the remainder of the system’s infrastructure. One way or another, the Theocracy will lose the war today.”

  He paused. “Any questions?”

  Captain Rogers loomed into view. “Shouldn’t we attempt to capture their facilities?”

  “Ideally, yes,” Admiral Christian said. “We don’t know how many of their industrial workers are volunteers and how many are slaves. We do know that the Theocracy has been rounding up anyone with industrial skills and shipping them to their homeworld. But we have to face the fact that they’re unlikely to just let us take the shipyards. They might try to destroy them first.”

  “The crews might have a plan to rebel,” Kat mused.

  “We can’t count on it,” Admiral Christian said. “And mutiny isn’t easy when your enemies hold all the cards.”

  He went on. “We leave our current position and advance in two hours,” he said. “If there are any problems, I want to know about them before we leave.”

  “Just one,” Captain Dawlish said. “Do they know we’re coming?”

  “Unknown,” Admiral Christian said. “The analysts think they haven’t been overloading their sensor systems, but they have enough sensors that they might be able to cycle them regularly, keeping up a basic maintenance routine while scouring space for any sign of threats. Or they may have discovered our passage through the minefield and drawn the right conclusions.”

  “Or they might have blown up the other worlds already,” Dawlish pointed out.

  “Mind on the job, Captain,” Admiral Christian said tartly. “Right now, we have one task—get in there, blow the hell out of the defenses, and capture that damned world. They don’t have enough firepower to stop us, and that, my friends, is all that matters.”

  And if we’re wrong about that, Kat thought, we can still devastate their system as we leave.

  “Assemble your formations,” Admiral Christian ordered. “We leave in two hours.”

  His image flickered out of existence. Kat took a long breath, studying the planet’s image thoughtfully. She’d commanded the attack on Hebrides, but Hebrides’s defenses had been flimsy compared to the solid wall of firepower surrounding Ahura Mazda. The Theocracy had pushed everything it could into securing its homeworld, wasting resources she hadn’t thought the government had. And yet, the gamble might have paid off for them. The Commonwealth was going to take significant losses even if it won.

  We will win, she told herself firmly. Even if they know we’re coming, we will still win.

  She took a moment to gather herself, then rose and strode onto the flag bridge. Her squadron was already assembled, ready to open a gateway and slip into hyperspace at a moment’s notice. Five light-years. It wouldn’t take more than a few hours to reach their target, even if they were careful not to charge straight at Ahura Mazda. But they would. The longer they took to get there, the greater the chance of being detected. A handful of antimatter warheads would scatter the fleet and buy the Theocracy time to mount a defense.

  “Commodore,” Wheeler said, “fleet-level datanet engaged, repeaters on. Squadron-level datanet engaged, repeaters on. Tactical-combat datanet engaged, repeaters on.”

  He paused. “Squadron is currently at yellow alert,” he added. “Should we go to red alert?”

  “Negative,” Kat said.

  She sank into her command chair, her eyes flickering down the readiness reports. Commanding officers had been known to do a little fiddling, to suggest that their ships were in a better state than they were, but it didn’t look as though any of her officers had decided to be dishonest. She couldn’t blame them for wanting to stand up and fight, yet a damaged superdreadnought might be more trouble than it was worth. But it didn’t matter.

  “We depart in two hours,” she said, glancing at the fleet-wide datanet. The fleet would spread out for the remainder of the journey, then bunch up again before emerging at Ahura Mazda. “Let the cr
ews have their rest. They’ll need it.”

  Kat closed her eyes for a long moment, feeling the superdreadnought’s drives thrumming around her. She and Captain Higgins knew what was going on, but the ship’s crew knew almost nothing. They were trapped inside an immense metal hull, rattling around inside her like peas in a pod, utterly unaware of their surroundings. They’d never see the warhead that punched through the shields and destroyed the ship, killing them before they had a chance to escape.

  For some of them, she knew, the coming engagement would be their first taste of combat. Fran had argued against it, but they’d had to take on new crewmen during their layover at McCaughey. Some of the newcomers would be nervous, wondering how they would perform under fire; others would be waiting impatiently, relishing the challenge. She had no doubt that some of them were silently relieved that the war wasn’t over yet, that their training hadn’t gone to waste, that they’d have a chance to win glory. But glory came with a steep price. Kat knew all too well just how many men and women had died under her command. How many others would join them before the end of the war?

  Wheeler cleared his throat. “Commodore, we have the final deployment orders from Hammerhead,” he said. “We’re ready to go.”

  Kat nodded. “Pass the word,” she said. “We depart when the admiral gives the command.”

  “It looks nasty,” General Winters said.

  “Yes, sir,” Pat agreed. Thunderchild hadn’t managed to get very good images of the potential landing sites, but he’d already spotted several possibilities. “I think our greatest advantage is going with Site Beta.”

  “It’s a little close to a city,” General Winters pointed out. “And far too close to the outer edge of the force shield.”

  “There aren’t many other options unless we can bring down one of the shields,” Pat pointed out. “And there’s no certainty of finding help down there.”

  “Perhaps there’s a tribe of cute and cuddly teddy bears willing to help,” General Winters said mischievously. “No way to pick out any other ground-based defenses, Pat.”

  “Yes, sir,” Pat said. “But that’s likely to be true of almost everywhere.”

  General Winters nodded. “We’ll be launching drones towards the planet as soon as the fleet deploys,” he said. “Hopefully, we’ll get some harder data before it’s too late.”

  “And if we do run into trouble,” Pat added, “we’ll be able to stem the flow of reinforcements.”

  “Yes,” General Winters agreed. He stuck out a hand. “Good luck, Pat.”

  Pat tersely took Winters’s hand. Compared to offering Kat an engagement ring, dropping onto a heavily armed planet was peanuts. But he knew he would soon come to regret that glib analysis. Kat wouldn’t have tried to kill him, whatever happened. The fanatics down on Ahura Mazda certainly would, if they got the chance. And no matter how many wildly optimistic assumptions they’d fed into the simulators, getting cut off from orbit would be absolutely disastrous. He wouldn’t bet a single forced credit note from Jorlem that they’d be taken prisoner and treated well.

  We’ll be killed out of hand, he thought. And we know it.

  He turned and strode into the next compartment. His company, one hundred marines, were sleeping on the racks, resting before being thrown into combat. Marines had all sorts of enhancements, but even the best of them couldn’t keep someone alert indefinitely. Pat had been told that he could remain awake for over five days with a carefully tailored cocktail of stimulants, yet he didn’t believe such exaggerations. His mind had always started to wander badly after four days without sleep.

  Sergeant Bones sat up. She was one of the very few women in the Marine Corps, a native of a high-gravity world. The genetic engineering that had prepared her family for their new world had left her with a powerful form. Her muscles rippled under her shirt as she moved. The Theocracy probably wouldn’t recognize her as a woman at all.

  “Colonel,” she said, “the company is ready to drop.”

  Pat nodded, glancing at his terminal. “We have seven hours, at least, before we drop.”

  “Yeah,” Bones said. “Get some sleep.”

  “I will,” Pat promised. “Is there anything I should be aware of?”

  “Colin and Chad are hooked up with a pair of pretty young midshipwomen,” Bones said stiffly. She was, Pat knew, a traditionalist at heart. Marines were not, in her worldview, supposed to socialize with the crew. “Duke’s currently bonking Lieutenant George or being bonked by him, I don’t know. I’ve told all three of them that they’ll be thumped if they’re not back here by 0900 to get a nap.”

  “A soldier who won’t fuck won’t fight,” Pat pointed out.

  “Yeah, but rest will do them more good than fucking,” Bones said. “We’re going to be depending on those three sluts when we drop.”

  “And we can depend on them,” Pat assured her. In truth, he was surprised that only three marines had sought company for what could easily be their final night. Chesty Puller wasn’t a superdreadnought, but her crew was large enough to include plenty of eligible young men and women. “Let them have their fun.”

  Bones sniffed in disapproval but said nothing as Pat undressed and clambered into his rack for a quick nap. They’d be woken, if they weren’t already awake, an hour before the fleet zoomed out of hyperspace and encountered . . . what? Pat had seen enough of Ahura Mazda’s defenses to know his marines were going to have a hard fight. He closed his eyes and tried to force himself to relax. He’d never found it easy to rest before an opposed landing.

  She said yes, he thought. It still astonished him. She said yes!

  The thought made him smile. He loved her, he knew he loved her, but he’d been unsure quite how she would react to his proposal. She loved him, he thought, yet . . . she’d said yes. He pushed his doubts aside, firmly. She’d said yes.

  And then sleep reached up and overcame him.

  “It’s a very heavily defended world,” Grivets said. “Can we take it?”

  “There’s no such thing as an invulnerable world,” Junayd said. He felt tense as the fleet rocketed towards its destination. The last time he’d been on a fleet heading for its target, he’d been sitting in the command chair. Now, he was just a helpless spectator. “It will be costly, yes. But it can be taken.”

  Janice frowned as she walked around the giant hologram. “Have the defenses been improved since you left?”

  “There appear to be more automated platforms,” Junayd said. “But they haven’t installed any more battlestations.”

  “That adds weight to your claims about their economic infrastructure,” Janice pointed out. “I don’t think they can afford to build any more battlestations.”

  “Losses during the first phase of the war were higher than predicted,” Junayd reminded her dryly. “Right now, they’re trying to rebuild their superdreadnought fleets before it’s too late.”

  It was too late, he knew. Passive sensors hadn’t been able to pick up enough detail, but he could tell that there were seven superdreadnoughts in the shipyards, in varying stages of construction. Building had been slowing down even before he’d defected as the weaknesses in the Theocracy’s industrial machine began to bite; now, he would be surprised if the Theocracy could produce a new superdreadnought in less than a year. And enemy warheads striking the shipyards would put their building program far behind schedule.

  And their time is up, he thought grimly. Nemesis is approaching.

  He surveyed the display for a long moment. The battlestations might not have been modified in the months since the war began. He’d certainly urged that the most advanced technology in the Theocracy—begged, bought, or stolen from the other interstellar powers—be deployed straight to the war front, where victory or defeat would be decided. And if that was the case, the battlestations would have weak fire-control systems and weaker point defense. The war had taught the Theocracy a number of very hard lessons.

  “The crews might not be ready too,” he m
used.

  Janice looked up. “Say what?”

  “The battlestations are often crewed by relatives of various powerful men,” Junayd explained simply. “It keeps them away from the war front.”

  Grivets laughed humorlessly. “A powerful aristocracy keeping its family out of danger? How very much like home.”

  “That isn’t true,” Janice said sharply. “Lots of aristocrats put their lives in danger.”

  Junayd didn’t bother to dispute it. “The point, young man, is that the battlestations might not be trained and drilled for war,” he added. “Your people will have a chance to strike them before they’re ready to meet you.”

  Janice looked doubtful. “If each of those battlestations has a thousand crewmen,” she commented, “would they all be . . . well, aristocrats?”

  “You might be surprised,” Junayd told her. “I have seven brothers, thirty-seven cousins, and over a hundred nephews.”

  Grivets sneered. “No sisters or nieces?”

  “In the Theocracy,” Junayd reminded him, “only men can wield power.”

  “Yes,” Grivets said. “And you brain-burn any woman smart enough to question why that is so. You’d probably have tried engineering women for dumbness if it wouldn’t come back to bite you.”

  Junayd bowed his head ruefully. He wouldn’t have put it past the more extreme fanatics to try, even though human history suggested that letting that particular genie out of the bottle would be disastrous. Several asteroid habitats had attempted to create a slave race, for all intents and purposes, only to discover that their modified genes spread into the masters too. They’d effectively enslaved themselves. The Theocracy preferred to use the tried and tested methods of poor education, intimidation, violence, and if all else failed, brainwashing.