Morgan considered the message from Coraniss with one eye as she kept another on the space around Bellerophon. There were a lot of starships around them now, and while no one was supposed to be moving much, it didn’t take much of a mistake to cause trouble.
She and Victoria Antonova were sharing the midnight watch, at this point a silent vigil waiting for the news from Alstroda. Coraniss, it seemed, was also awake and was asking questions.
Morgan wasn’t sure if the Mesharom was as young as they occasionally felt, or was simply inexperienced in dealing with other races. To be an Interpreter, Coraniss had to have some experience…but it quite possibly wasn’t very much at all.
Yes, she finally replied. We don’t trust each other and there are definitely people on both sides who hate each other, but these Taljzi are worse. We know the Kanzi. All we know about these Taljzi is that they keep blowing up planets.
She realized Antonova was watching her, and flashed the other blonde woman a smile.
“Coraniss is asking questions,” she told the com officer. “As they do. I think they may be starting to feel lonely.”
“I didn’t think Mesharom could do that,” Antonova said.
“Oh, they can,” Morgan disagreed. “It’s a very different thing for them than for us, but it’s good for Coraniss to have someone to talk to. They don’t really want to have anyone around, but they want someone to talk to.
“Sometimes.” She smirked, checking for a new response from the Mesharom.
“How is Coraniss handling being aboard? They’re basically imprisoned in their pod.”
“That’s their choice and preference,” Morgan explained. “Coraniss doesn’t want to be aboard Bellerophon any other way. That pod has everything they need. So long as we keep sending over water, power and Universal Protein, they’re fine.”
A new message had appeared on her screen, and the young woman sighed as she read it.
So much death. So many potentialities ended. Can we stop them?
“Well, I guess ‘we’ is promising when we’re talking to a Core Power,” Morgan said. “I’m pretty sure that Core Fleet detachment they have heading our way is a sufficient answer to the Taljzi. Before that…”
“Us and the Kanzi,” Antonova agreed. “No update from Leeare yet. Last word had Oska pre-placing missiles under the command of her defensive platforms.”
“I guess she’s studied the Fleet Lord’s file.” Morgan chuckled. “That was one of her tricks at Centauri.”
She turned her attention back to the messaging program.
If anyone can stop them out here with this fleet, it’s Tanaka.
This time, the response was almost instant.
Can I help?
Morgan shook her head with a sigh.
Unless you have a superweapon hidden in that pod, you’re already doing all you can, she told the alien. Your people are coming. Everything we do right now is buying time for our reinforcements, including your Core Fleet.
Coraniss didn’t respond. Morgan enjoyed her conversations with the alien, but this time, she was glad for it to end.
There was, after all, only one currency available to Fleet Lord Tanaka to buy time with.
Time seemed to tick by like molasses. They were now in the window where they might get an update informing them the Taljzi had arrived—twenty hours before—but they weren’t in the most likely time frame.
Captain Vong and Commander Masters were planning to be on duty for that time frame. Right now, Morgan had orders to buzz them immediately if word arrived. Otherwise, it was her watch, and the bridge was empty except for her and Antonova.
“So, I heard a certain Marine got himself shot down in flames,” the com officer mentioned as the silence stretched on. “I’m surprised.”
Morgan snorted. She’d long since learned that warships and high schools had a great degree of resemblance when it came to relationship drama and rumors.
“Hardly in flames,” she pointed out. “More shut down than shot down. Rumor, as always, exaggerates things.”
“But still! You said you thought he was pretty.”
Morgan shook her head, somewhat repressively, at the other woman.
“I think a lot of people are pretty without leaping into bed with them, Victoria,” she pointed out. “I also got dumped by videomail when we shipped out from Earth.”
“Ouch.” Antonova winced sympathetically. “That sucks. He wasn’t okay with a service tour of unknown length?”
“She’d probably have been okay with it with a heads-up,” Morgan admitted. “Or if it had been the first time I’d told her I was going to be unavailable for an extended period with twelve hours’ notice.”
She sighed.
“Or the second. Or the third,” she confessed. “I’m not a great girlfriend. It wasn’t always my fault, I’m a Militia officer and my parents’ daughter, but…that many short-notice screw-ups was definitely my fault.”
Antonova, she noted, perked up slightly at the mention of “she” with regards to Morgan’s ex, though her enthusiasm dimmed a bit with Morgan’s description of why she’d been dumped.
That was something that Morgan needed to very specifically not notice, she was sure. They weren’t in each other’s direct chain of commands, but, unlike Major Phelps, she did work with Antonova.
“Not many people handle dating military people well,” the other woman finally said. “My dad left my mom over it, way back. It wasn’t a pretty scene.”
“Pretty sure dad knew exactly what he was getting into when he married the Duchess of Terra,” Morgan said with a chuckle. “Mom pretty much beat him over the head with it a few times.”
“What did you think?” Antonova asked.
“I was…four? Maybe five, when they got together? I thought it was the best thing ever. I loved my ‘Auntie Annette.’” Morgan smiled. “Loved her more as my mom, for all of the usual teenage BS along the way.”
“My mom never asked my opinion,” the Russian admitted. “Just…decided not to remarry in case I hated them.”
Morgan’s response was cut off as a light flashed up on Antonova’s console.
“Victoria?” she asked quickly.
“Wake the Captain,” her friend replied. “The Taljzi are arriving at Alstroda.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
It was easy to forget that the relay from Underwater Shining wasn’t live. The level of detail wasn’t perfect, but the destroyer had scattered hyperfold-equipped drones throughout the Alstroda System.
Harriet had a low-resolution view, but everything Shining had seen had been in real time.
Then, of course, Captain Leeare had transmitted it via hyperfold to a relay station nine light-years away, which had taken nine hours. That relay station had transmitted to another relay station eight light-years from it, which had taken eight hours, which had then transmitted to Harriet’s fleet three light-years away.
If they could have sent the message directly, they would have saved six hours. But the hyperfold communicator had a maximum range, and they had to work with it.
“One of Peeah’s ships dropped out of hyperspace to advise Leeare the Taljzi were coming approximately an hour before what we’re seeing now,” Sier told her. “It was a large anomaly signature, too close together and too powerful for Division Lord Peeah’s people to be able to identify individual ships.”
Harriet nodded, her gaze riveted to the holographic display of the Alstroda System. She and the Kanzi with her would know the system’s fate before anyone else outside Alstroda. Like Asimov for the Imperium, the Kanzi’s forward fleet base in this area was slated to receive a starcom. Eventually.
What Alstroda had received was the infrastructure to maintain five squadrons of capital ships and a defensive constellation to make some racial homeworlds green with envy.
Fleet Master Oska was keeping her fleet tight in to the planet, Clan auxiliaries and Theocracy Navy alike. She was risking the asteroid miners and cloudscoops and much of the
system’s spaceborne industry—but there were eighty million people on the planet behind her and only four in the part of the system she’d abandoned.
Harriet couldn’t disagree with the Kanzi officer’s judgment. She’d have made the same call, terrible as it was.
“Hyper portal,” Sier murmured next to her. They studied the metrics the nearby drone fed them, and Harriet shivered.
Fleet hyper portals were always mind-boggling. Even a destroyer would normally generate a portal a few kilometers across; the energy investment in doing so was minuscule compared to the risk of half-missing your portal.
The Taljzi portal was over a thousand kilometers across, and their entire fleet entered the system in a single mass, fifteen super-battleships wide.
The portal slowly flickered closed behind them, but Harriet’s attention was on the Taljzi fleet.
“I make it fifteen super-battleships, ten battleships and thirty destroyers,” she said aloud. “I see they’re still using the same squadron size as the Kanzi.”
“Interesting breakdown, that,” her chief of staff replied. “No cruisers and heavily overweight at the top end. Matches up with what we’ve seen, though, assuming they found some more super-battleships somewhere.”
Harriet nodded. The force was lighter than they’d feared, if still more powerful than they might have hoped. She had, in fact, been hoping that the five super-battleships that had escaped the Mesharom and Bellerophon were the only ships of that size this Return had possessed.
Leeare was relaying his data to the Kanzi via a carefully positioned drone—one refitted with an even more-hair-trigger-than-usual self-destruct—and Oska had seen the enemy with as much detail as Harriet was seeing.
“The catch to all of this,” Harriet murmured, “is that we know they have stealthed battleships and cruisers. It’s not a perfect system, though… Could Leeare’s sensor drones pick them up?”
Sier pulled the data from the stealth ship Bellerophon had encountered and looked it over thoughtfully.
“Potentially, if we’d calibrated them very carefully,” he said slowly. “As it is…the drone would need to stumble over the ship. Underwater Shining could pick them up at about a light-minute, further if she was coordinating with other ships.”
“And we wouldn’t dream of giving that much access to the Kanzi—or vice versa,” the Fleet Lord concluded. “If I wasn’t thinking about stealth ships, though, I’d see…”
The Kanzi fleet was moving. The Taljzi had five more super-battleships than Oska did, but her thirty battleships should even the odds. It wouldn’t have been an easy fight, but Oska could take on the Taljzi fleet—and in doing so, save an extra four million people.
Even half-expecting a trap, Harriet wasn’t sure she’d have chosen differently.
At the speeds available to ships with modern interface drives, it took barely twenty minutes for the two fleets to come together and reach weapons range of each other. The Taljzi missiles were clearly superior, with longer flight times and higher velocities.
The Kanzi missiles, however, were better than Harriet had been expecting. Point eight cee weapons with two-minute flight times, they were equal to the modern missiles in her own magazines.
She was expecting the active missile defenses the Kanzi fleet deployed, though their effectiveness was a surprise again. Without hyperfold communications, their decoys and missile defense platforms had to be kept in close to the hull, like the original Buckler drones.
They still made a mess of the Taljzi salvos, superior missiles or not. Neither side did noticeable damage with their long-range bombardment, but the Taljzi turned to keep the range open.
“Still no communication?” Harriet asked.
“Nothing. Leeare had drones close enough that we’d have picked up anything they sent to Oska. Not a word from these bastards since the first system they entered.”
Cawl was right, she reflected. There was no way that ship had escaped Kanda on her own. They’d let her go to make sure the Kanzi heard the one thing they had to say.
“The Taljzi have about a point oh five cee edge over the Kanzi for shipboard drives as well,” Sier noted. “They’re in control of the range.” The Yin clacked his beak. “They can’t hurt Oska’s ships at that range, though; they have to close into her range to actually get missiles through her defenses.”
“They learned from some of the best,” Harriet said with a sad smile. “No, Sier, they’re not going to close the range. Whoever is in charge of the Taljzi is playing with her.”
“Fleet Lord?”
The Taljzi answered before Harriet could. Their stealth fields might suck compared to Mesharom or Laian technology, but they were far beyond anything the Kanzi or the Imperium possessed. Oska had seen what she’d been shown, a powerful force but one she could defeat in open combat to save the system.
She hadn’t seen the other fifty battleships and hundred cruisers that had approached under stealth.
There was a limit to even the Taljzi tech. They didn’t get close enough to fire their godawful energy guns from stealth. The Kanzi picked them up at ten light-seconds, dodging away from the fresh icons and opening fire with everything they had.
That point oh five cee advantage Sier had noticed made all of the difference there. The Taljzi lunged into the teeth of Fleet Master’s Oska’s fire. They didn’t have active missile defenses, and shields went down across their fleet.
Proton beams from the Kanzi ships tried to take advantage of the openings, only to dissipate into nothingness well short of the Taljzi hulls. Missiles made it through but hammered into compressed-matter armor.
The battle lasted barely two minutes after that. The Taljzi lost ships—they were sailing into the teeth of an entire battle fleet—but by the time they reached one light-second of Oska’s fleet, it was already over.
The massed salvo of their hyperspace disruption guns was overkill. Nothing survived of the Kanzi fleet except debris, and Harriet forced herself to be calm as she assessed the Taljzi losses.
“Their super-battleship strength is intact, but I’d say at least a squadron of their battleships are either gone or mission-killed,” she concluded aloud, her voice level. “That still leaves them with sixty-five capital ships.”
“We can take them,” Sier said, his voice equally level, equally forced. “Between us and Cawl? We have them outnumbered and outgunned.”
“And we need to,” Harriet said as she watched the Taljzi battleships turn toward the planet, massive salvos of missiles beginning to spill out toward the badly outranged defenders.
“Because I swear to you, Division Lord Sier, that is the last fucking world I intend to watch die.”
Cawl looked like he’d aged a century in a few hours. The old Kanzi officer was alone in his office when Harriet finally got in touch with him, all of the screens in the room dark and his eyes glazed as he looked at the pickup.
It took Harriet a moment to recognize what the snapped object lying on his desk was. Cawl had broken his cane in half, and the pieces now sat in front of him. Almost hidden amidst the broken pieces of his walking aid was the matte-black shape of a Theocracy Navy service pistol.
“Fleet Lord,” he greeted her. Even through the translator he sounded wooden, broken. There was no tone to what she picked up of his actual voice.
“Fleet Master. Underwater Shining has been forced to withdraw from Alstroda and destroy her drones,” she told him gently. “Our destroyer squadron is maintaining their picket around the system. We will know when they leave.”
“Twenty hours too late to do anything,” he said. “Even if I’d been able to jump my entire fleet there when we got the message, we’d have been twenty hours too late. I failed my oaths.”
And where Harriet was mourning hundreds of thousands of Imperial citizens, Cawl was mourning tens of millions. The Taljzi had come after their old kindred, and everyone else had been incidental.
She was honest enough to admit that if the Taljzi had been able to
bring themselves to bypass the Imperium’s human colonies and only attack the Kanzi, the Imperium wouldn’t be involved yet. They would have regretted the deaths of millions of slaves, but even now, many of her people were somewhat gleeful at the deaths of the Kanzi themselves.
“Does blowing your brains out with that gun un-fail them?” she finally asked harshly. She didn’t know Cawl. Hell, she didn’t even know Kanzi psychology outside of combat interactions.
He stared silently at the weapon for several seconds, then swept all of the debris off his desk with a violent gesture.
“No. His Light consume me, I don’t know what would,” he told her. “Alstroda was supposed to be our bulwark, the fortress from which we secured our Rimward flank. The people there knew they were safe.”
Well, the Kanzi there knew they were safe. The slaves probably thought differently. Harriet shivered. Not that it saved anyone.
The last footage they had from Alstroda was the Taljzi ships spreading out around the planet to launch kinetic bombardments. Their track record suggested their destroyers would already be moving on to take out the cloudscoops and mining stations.
There was nothing Captain Leeare could do to save anyone. There was even less that Harriet or Cawl could do to save anyone.
“We’ll know where the bastards go next,” she told him. “The currents are with us, not them. We can beat them to whichever one of your systems they head to. We will catch them, Fleet Master. This Return will end.”
“Will it?” he asked softly. “Even if we defeat this fleet, I don’t know where our old enemies found the strength for one assault. Who knows what else they may have in reserve?”
If they’d spent the centuries since the civil war cloning workers and building ships, the Taljzi could have a lot in reserve. This Return was likely only the first, but Harriet didn’t have it in her to tell Cawl that.
Not right now. Not when she suspected she’d literally interrupted him about to blow his brains out.
She needed Cawl. She needed his fleet. She could probably stop the Return with just her fleet…but that was what Fleet Master Oska had thought.
Darkness Beyond (Light of Terra: a Duchy of Terra series Book 1) Page 21
