Desperate Fire (Angel in the Whirlwind Book 4)

by Christopher Nuttall

  “A pretty speech,” Commodore Daniel Hawkins said. His image floated in front of Kat, surrounded by the other commodores. The captains hadn’t been invited to the high-level command meeting. “But is it going to be enough?”

  “Preliminary reports suggest that a number of enemy units have mutinied,” General Winters said. His image looked stern. He’d been reluctant to take part in the conference, pointing out that the situation on the ground needed to be closely monitored. “However, the enemy will soon start claiming that Junayd is dead and his voice a fake. It’s the logical countermove.”

  “But that would convince their people that other news could be faked too,” Commodore Nathan Romanov pointed out. “Like their claims to be driving on Tyre.”

  Kat nodded. She’d seen some of the propaganda broadcasts, although they’d cut out shortly after the marines had landed on Ahura Mazda. The Theocracy was driving on Tyre . . . the Theocracy had been driving on Tyre for the last eighteen months. Surely someone would have thought to question why the fleets hadn’t reached Tyre. And the reports of hundreds of superdreadnoughts destroyed were pure fiction. The entire Royal Navy would have been wiped out several times over if they were true.

  “Everything that hurts the enemy helps us,” Commodore Stuart snapped. “An uprising on the far side of Ahura Mazda will hurt them, even if the rebels have no ties to us.”

  “There will be a brutal slaughter,” Commodore Romanov countered. “We’ve already seen countless reports of men crucified for deserting their posts—”

  “Which doesn’t hurt us,” Stuart said. “The well-being of the planet’s population is secondary to ending the war. Our priority is ending the war.”

  He looked at Kat. “And that means selecting a new admiral.”

  Kat kept her face impassive. She’d expected a challenge to her authority sooner or later. She did have a great deal of military experience, but not in fleet or squadron command. Admiral Christian had chosen her, she suspected, because of the fear her name inspired among the Theocracy, not because of her experience. Now that the first engagement had come to an end, her position could be challenged.

  General Winters cleared his throat, loudly. “The issue is not up for debate,” he said. He stared at Stuart, daring him to object. “Admiral Christian selected Commodore Falcone as his second. Barring countermanding orders from Tyre, she is the legitimate commanding officer of the fleet.”

  “Her fleet command experience is quite limited,” Stuart protested.

  “A fact that Admiral Christian no doubt took into consideration,” General Winters said coldly. “If you wish to register a protest, you may send one home via the StarCom. But until Tyre sees fit to overrule Admiral Christian’s instructions, you will accept her position.”

  Kat winced inwardly. General Winters and Admiral Christian had been old friends, working together for decades. He’d want to honor his friend’s final orders, even if they caused problems for his successor. And they would, Kat knew. She could be judged by time in grade or experience, but either way she’d lose. There were other officers in the fleet with more of both.

  “The StarCom is being set up now,” she stated bluntly. “Tyre may see fit to remove me from command. Until then . . .” She tapped her console, displaying a star chart. “As far as can be determined, the operations against the Theocracy’s StarComs were successful,” she said. “We won’t know for sure, of course, until the various squadrons return to the RV point, but it certainly looks as though the Theocracy’s command and control network has fragmented. Any orders from Ahura Mazda will have to be sent via courier boat, rather than StarCom. We are in a good position to block any such transmissions.

  “However,” she added, “there is good reason to believe that the enemy intends to mount a counterattack with its remaining ships.”

  “They shouldn’t be able to crush us,” Romanov said. “Most of their ships are in very poor condition.”

  “We practically shot ourselves dry,” Stuart commented. “Reloading the missile tubes is still underway. And we are putting significant wear and tear on our equipment.”

  Kat nodded. “We will hold position here and stand them off when they arrive,” she said, adjusting the star chart. “I’ve already deployed pickets in hopes of getting some early warning, but unfortunately we cannot count on them being so obliging. We must assume that the attack will come at any moment.”

  “They’ll have to mass their ships first,” Hawkins said. “Even if they got the orders out before we destroyed their StarCom, it will still take them weeks—at best.”

  “Yes,” Kat said. “But some of their squadrons were stationed a great deal closer to Ahura Mazda.”

  She pushed the star chart aside, calling up an image of the local system. “Our smaller squadrons will be deployed to seize or destroy all remaining infrastructure within the system,” she continued. “This may lure any enemy stay-behind units out of hiding, giving us a chance to pick them off before the main body of their fleet returns. Regardless of the final outcome, Ahura Mazda’s industrial base will be largely destroyed. The war will end, one way or the other.”

  “At a horrendous cost,” Romanov said.

  General Winters snorted rudely. “Any sane government would be looking for ways to surrender by now,” he said. “I shudder to imagine just how many millions of their own people have died in the last week alone, either through human wave attacks or merely being used as shields by their so-called defenders. The locals are just too scared of us to come over in large numbers.”

  “That may change,” Kat said.

  “Yeah,” General Winters said. “But right now, the important thing is readying ourselves for the march on the Tabernacle.”

  “Which will take your forces under the PDC’s shield,” Romanov observed.

  “And they know it,” General Winters said. “We’ve picked up plenty of evidence of them digging in and preparing to fight to the last. Hovertanks, armored soldiers, unarmored infantry units . . . probably millions of drugged-up civilians too.”

  “Bastards,” Kat said. Pat was down there. She’d seen a couple of his reports. “They’re mad.”

  “Oh, there’s a method to their bastardry,” General Winters said. “I’ve had to withdraw a number of soldiers from the battlefield after they cracked under the strain of dealing with the fuckers. Mainly militiamen, I will admit, but even marines are affected. We’re going to be dealing with the aftereffects for a very long time to come.”

  “They have to be stopped,” Stuart said. “Can’t you threaten their leaders or something?”

  “I think they don’t give much of a damn about their own lives,” General Winters said. “If our friend is to be believed, half of them are fanatics and the other half see no way out. And the fanatics are firmly in control. Oh, we could offer concessions, but people like these would see any concessions as an admission of weakness. They wouldn’t hesitate to grind our faces in the mud if they won. They can’t see how we would be any different.”

  “Fuck,” Kat said.

  She closed her eyes for a long moment. Hebrides had been horrific, but the vast majority of the victims had been locals. Enemies, as far as the Theocracy was concerned. She could never condone the extermination of millions of helpless civilians, yet she could understand why the Theocracy considered them expendable. But the people on Ahura Mazda were the Theocracy’s own civilians, their chosen people. How could the rulers slaughter their own citizens, or arrange for them to be slaughtered, just to gain a minute tactical advantage?

  The coming engagement was going to be bad, she knew. General Winters couldn’t delay the offensive indefinitely, even if he’d wanted to. They had to take the Tabernacle and destroy the enemy government before its fleet returned. Ideally, the Commonwealth had to force the government to surrender so it could tell the fleet to stand down. Pat and his men would have to fight their way through a fanatical enemy, wading through blood, just to get to their target. And taking it would be a
n utter nightmare. Stealth drones had told her things she didn’t want to know about the Tabernacle’s defenses.

  “We could fake surrender orders,” she mused. “Put out a signal purporting to be from their government, ordering a surrender?”

  “I doubt it,” General Winters said. “Their civilian broadcasting stations might be primitive as fuck, but they’ve got some pretty sophisticated mil-grade communications gear. The techs have had a look at it. They think it may have come from Kennedy or perhaps Clarke, rather than something homegrown. It’s certainly a few light-years ahead of anything else we’ve seen the Theocracy use. Getting false orders onto that network will be tricky.”

  “Did they steal it,” Stuart asked, “or did they buy it?”

  “We don’t know,” General Winters said. “They might have stolen the designs and then built their own.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t think there’s any way to avoid launching a major offensive, once everything is in place. Oh, it’s possible that some kindly soul will blow up the Tabernacle and try to surrender, but we’re not counting on it.”

  “We can’t,” Kat agreed. She glanced from face to face. “The bombardment squadron will remain in position to provide fire support to the groundpounders, while the main body of the fleet will withdraw to open space. I want this entire system seeded with recon platforms and drones. That fleet is not to get anywhere near us without being detected.”

  “They may try to retake the high orbitals,” Stuart warned.

  “I doubt it,” Kat said. “If they’re looking for a final decisive battle, they’ll need to engage us and do it before we have a chance to react. They’ll try to crush us against the planet’s remaining defenses.”

  She shook her head in disbelief. The Theocracy had lost the war, yet it still had a handful of bargaining chips left. It could use them to get a better deal, but it seemed more intent on throwing them away in a desperate bid to hurt the Commonwealth as much as possible. She would have happily agreed to send the Theocracy’s leaders into exile if they surrendered at once. Such a move wouldn’t have won her any plaudits, but it would have ended the war.

  And yet they’re staking everything on a final battle, she thought. Even if she lost, even if every last ship in 6th Fleet was blasted into atoms, the Theocracy would be in no state to continue the war. It’s madness.

  “We’ll start running simulations once we take up our new positions,” she added. “By the time they arrive, I want a contingency plan for everything. Dismissed.”

  She leaned back in her chair as the images vanished, one by one. General Winters, thankfully, had short-circuited any challenge to her authority, although she knew that wasn’t going to last. Tyre would have to rule on it, probably after a long political debate over who should be in command and who should carry the can if everything went south. Her father’s last message had suggested that the politicians had already declared victory and were currently arguing over the division of the spoils. The political coalition that had fought the war was on the verge of breaking up.

  But we haven’t won yet, she thought. And until we do, we cannot count the Theocracy out.

  “It is a trick,” Lord Cleric Eliseus snarled. “Admiral Junayd is dead!”

  “They have faked his voice,” Inquisitor Samuilu agreed. “But how?”

  That, Speaker Nehemiah agreed, was a very good question. Junayd’s voice was very familiar on Ahura Mazda, where he’d often addressed the population on the need to make sacrifices to build up the war fleet, but he doubted any of those broadcasts had ever made it to the Commonwealth. How could they? Surely, if the Commonwealth wanted to produce a believable fake, they would have needed something to copy. Otherwise, they might as well just produce a random speaker and claim he was Admiral Junayd.

  And that meant . . . what?

  Admiral Junayd had died in the line of duty. Disgraced or not, he’d died bravely. He’d been honored by his government, an empty casket buried under the Tabernacle itself. But they’d never found a body. That was no surprise, not when Junayd had been on a superdreadnought in hyperspace when he’d died, yet it was suggestive . . . suggestive of what? Junayd had been ambitious as well as clever and very capable. Could he have faked his death? Or could he have taken an entire superdreadnought over to the Commonwealth?

  Such a feat seemed improbable. No one knew better than Junayd just how many minders were scattered through superdreadnought crews, a good third of them completely unknown to their nominal superiors. Plotting a mutiny without alerting one of them would be impossible; launching a mutiny without a great deal of prior planning and careful preparation would end badly. Junayd was good, but was he that good? Or had he simply faked his death?

  The broadcast continued, scattered with references that subtly confirmed Junayd’s identity beyond dispute. No one, not even the Inquisition, could have put them all together. Junayd was alive! And that meant he’d gone over to the enemy. He’d known he was going to be betrayed, that he was going to be forced to pay for his second set of failures . . . and so he’d chosen to betray his own people first. And that meant—

  “Something has to be done,” Eliseus snapped. “This . . . this fake could convince people to turn away from us.”

  “He’s already had an effect,” Nehemiah pointed out. There was something to be said for no longer being in charge. He might be killed horribly at any moment, but he could troll them mercilessly until they finally snapped. “Our society is breaking down under the impact of the invasion. We cannot deny that it is happening any longer.”

  He looked at the map. A number of towns should have been defended, but their commanders had refused to believe that there was an invasion. They hadn’t changed their minds until the enemy troops had actually arrived, by which time it had been too late to mount a defense. He had tried to convince his new masters to be honest with the population, but they’d seen sharing the truth as a very bad idea. But that decision only undermined the people’s faith in them when reality clashed with the news.

  Of course it does, he thought sourly. We tell them the enemy is nowhere near a town, but when the enemy actually arrives the population realizes we lied to them.

  “We will make new broadcasts,” Samuilu said. “And we will prepare our population for a campaign of enemy lies.”

  Nehemiah suspected the horse had firmly bolted on that one. None of the broadcasts over the last eighteen months had suggested that the Theocracy was losing the war, let alone that Ahura Mazda itself might be attacked. The handful of preparations they’d made before the invasion had undermined their lies before the enemy had actually landed. Now, only a complete idiot would believe a word they said. No one had missed seeing the debris falling into the planet’s atmosphere, even if they lived well away from the enemy spacehead.

  “They are offering to talk with us,” he pointed out. “Perhaps we should see what they offer.”

  “Impossible,” Eliseus belted. “It is a trick to weaken us before the final offensive!”

  “God will turn his back on us if we listen to them,” Samuilu agreed.

  Nehemiah nodded, reluctantly. How had it come to this? How had he fallen from planetary leader to court jester? And how many of his people were going to die when the enemy started their final offensive? He wanted to believe that God would save them, yet why did they deserve His help? Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of their own people had died in the last week alone. And they’d all been thrown into the fire by their leaders.

  But they are assured of a place in paradise, he thought. He’d once believed it implicitly, even though he’d been in no hurry to sacrifice himself. Government had been his duty, he’d told himself. But in truth, he hadn’t wanted to die. I just wanted to send others to die in my place.

  He rose, leaving the others to their plotting as he strode through the underground bunker and back to his quarters. He was lucky, he supposed. Mosul and his allies were only alive because Eliseus and Samuilu wanted to give them a show
trial, after the Commonwealth spacehead was crushed and its troops brutally slaughtered. God alone knew where they were sent after they’d been removed from the bunker. There were plenty of secret bolt-holes scattered around the countryside where important prisoners could be kept, if necessary.

  And Junayd is alive, he thought. He wasn’t sure what to make of it. Could Junayd be a potential ally? Or was he too close to the Commonwealth now? What does it mean?

  He walked through his door and sat down on the bed. His quarters were luxurious, but they were nothing more than a gilded cage. He had no way to get a message out, no way to signal his political allies, if any of them were alive. Eliseus and Samuilu could have purged half of them and cowed the rest, if they wished. He didn’t know and probably never would. Maybe he’d be put on trial beside Mosul and his allies. The planet’s new rulers wouldn’t want to keep him around.

  And all he could do, until then, was watch helplessly as his planet died.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  “This,” Sergeant Bones muttered, “is a very weird city.”

  Pat was inclined to agree. He’d landed on dozens of worlds, from Tyre and Jorlem to a couple of Theocratic worlds, but Samarian was easily the strangest city he’d visited. And perhaps the darkest. The streets were dominated by towering apartment blocks, each one built so poorly that a small explosion might be enough to bring it down. Pat had no love for bureaucrats, but he had a feeling that Samarian would come to regret the lack of building inspectors and quality control. Hell, a strong wind might also do real damage to the city.

  And you volunteered to lead a patrol to make sure you had a feel for the local environment, his thoughts whispered. Do you like what you see?

  He shuddered as he saw the piles of rubbish surrounding each of the apartment blocks. The city’s basic services, already primitive, had been cut off entirely in the wake of the invasion, leaving garbage to pile up. A couple of bodies, both wearing red robes, lay on top of one of the piles, Inquisitors or clerics killed by their former parishioners. Surprisingly, the bodies looked intact. The last set of bodies they’d found had been savagely mutilated, their arms and legs hacked off before their throats had been mercifully cut. Pat didn’t blame the locals for hating the Theocrats, but their rage was a problem. No one was transporting rotting corpses out of the city. The more assholes the locals killed, the greater the health problems.