Drifter's Folly (Peacekeepers of Sol Book 4)

by Glynn Stewart

  Henry wasn’t sure what the dying race would do with those stars, but the Remnant could still cause a lot of bloodshed and horror if they chose to.

  Hopefully, the Eerdish and their Enteni allies saw things the same way.

  “Hold position at the skip line,” he ordered as the three ships’ networks resynced. “Omnidirectional transmission, please, Chan.”

  “You’re on,” his coms officer told him.

  “Eerdish, Enteni and allied forces in the Seppen System,” Henry said in Kem. “This is Commodore Henry Wong of the United Planets Space Force. We are here on a diplomatic mission to make contact with the Eerdish-Enteni Alliance, hopefully to gain permission to pursue hostiles into your space.”

  He paused.

  “I understand that you are at war with the Kozun Hierarchy and that word has likely reached you of our own alliance with them. While further details will need to be formally discussed in person, I must assure you that our treaty with the Hierarchy is purely defensive and does not extend to any involvement in your conflict with them.

  “My ships will remain at the Moti-Seppen skip line until granted permission to enter farther into the system,” he promised. “Our passage through Moti resulted in a discovery that I believe will be of critical strategic import to the Eerdish and their allies, and I intend to provide that information and proof of our claims freely once we have established a secure channel.

  “It is in all of our interests that I do so,” he finished.

  He cut off the recording and nodded to Chan to send it.

  “What are we seeing, Eowyn?” he asked, switching back to English with long-practiced ease.

  “Geography is about what we expected,” she told him. “The UPSF has been to Ra-Ninety-Two before. One massive red giant star and a single super-Jovian gas giant planet. Some scattered asteroids, but pretty much nothing of importance outside of the Leppen planetary system.”

  Leppen was the super-Jovian gas giant, Henry’s internal network calmly informed him. Its planetary system had several rings and moons, a solid source of raw materials and supplies.

  “The Kenmiri maintained a logistics base in Leppen’s rings, using the gas giant for fuel. We’re still reading active signatures from there, so it looks like the Eerdish either have it back online or built their own.”

  “I’m assuming there’s a nodal defense force around here somewhere?” Henry asked. Looking at the map, he noted that Leppen was currently close to the Eerdish skip line. It would be reasonably so for about forty years of a hundred-and-fifty-year orbit, he realized as the screens and his network updated with the data on the system.

  “We’re still processing data to that level of resolution,” Eowyn admitted. “There are definitely ships at Leppen and at what appear to be at least two more positions elsewhere in the system. The other spots are… There we go.”

  “Commander?” Henry asked.

  “They’re engaged in training exercises, ser,” she told him. “That’s my guess, at least. I see two five-ship battle groups positioned about a light-minute apart several light-minutes from Leppen. And…yep. Fighter wings in the space between them.”

  “Building up their fleet to stand off the Kozun,” Henry murmured. “Makes sense. I’m not going to poke too hard at our hopefully-friends, but what have they got?”

  “Feeding the visual to the main screen now,” Eowyn told him. “It’s limited, but I’ll update the data as we process it.”

  New images appeared on the display, and Henry gave a mental command to zoom in on the closer of the two training groups. As Commander Eowyn had said, each of them was five ships.

  Two of the ships were what he’d expected. Standard half-megaton Kenmiri-design escorts, though it was likely they were post-war builds. The design had a lot of weaknesses, but it also had significantly more firepower per ton than Henry’s own destroyers.

  Two of the ships were bigger, roughly the same size as his own nine-hundred-thousand-ton destroyers. They were simple ships, straightforward triangular prisms of metal with clear protrusions for heat radiators and weapons systems.

  The fifth ship was fascinating, though. It was the same triangular prism as the larger escorts but almost three times the size—with a familiar style of large hatch at the end Henry was studying it from.

  “That’s a carrier,” Henry murmured.

  “CIC confirms,” Eowyn replied. “I was focusing on the fighters, but we’ve got some scans and metrics on all three classes.”

  “Lay them out,” he ordered.

  “Escorts are standard Kenmiri. The destroyers are obviously not. Estimate one hundred eighty meters in length, thirty-meters on each side. Slightly less dense than us, just over one megaton based off their thrust signatures.

  “Carrier is three hundred meters long, forty meters on a side. Three million tons. Based off what’s in space between the two groups, carries ninety starfighters.”

  “That’s less than a Crichton, but on three-quarters of the mass, it’s not bad,” Henry said. “On the other hand, even if they’re TIEs…well, the Kozun are still going to get a shock.”

  “The Kozun can fight these guys, but with their cruisers out of the game, they’re going to need more of a numbers edge than they think,” Eowyn concluded. “Wait…”

  “Commander?” Henry prodded.

  “Oh, you are not clever enough,” she murmured.

  “Commander Eowyn?” Henry said again.

  “I think they believe we’re too far to see the fighters,” she told him. “Our wartime scanners wouldn’t have had the resolution. They hesitated once they saw us, then started pulling the fighters back to the carriers…but they didn’t hide the trump card, at least, fast enough.”

  “And what’s the trump card?” Henry asked, looking back at the screen—and then realized it himself as the data fed onto the main display. A new icon appeared next to the E-Two starfighters; an icon he’d never seen on anything smaller than the Kozun’s cruisers.

  “That’s not possible,” he said grimly. “The Kenmiri never mounted energy screens on anything smaller than a dreadnought for a reason.”

  Only their automated weapons platforms had managed to fit the systems in—at the price of having no space for a crew.

  “It looks like the E-Two broke that miniaturization problem, ser,” his Ops officer told them. “Because we are definitely picking up the signature of an energy screen on half of those fighters—with probables on a good chunk of the rest.”

  “How powerful?” Henry asked. The screens mounted on a Kenmiri dreadnought—or the Kozun cruisers—could stand off multiple heavy laser hits or conversion-warhead plasma blasts. “If they can put a shield on a starfighter…”

  “Then they’re at least on those new-build destroyers and quite possibly retrofitted into the escorts, depending on how much shielding they want,” Eowyn confirmed. “It’s not possible to get a perfect assessment at this range, but the signatures suggest a one-and-done deal. The shield will take a hit—and might well not be able to regenerate from it.

  “But that’s a massive increase in survivability versus anybody else’s starfighters,” she said. “Add energy screens to those destroyers and escorts…”

  She shook her head.

  “The Kozun are fucked,” Henry said grimly. “Those carriers, even the destroyers, look like they’re unarmored hulls. Just giant sheets of steel welded together to protect their systems. The interiors can’t be that simple, but I’d guess they’ve shaved off every complexity they can to get something big, powerful and cheap.”

  “If there’s two carrier groups here in Seppen…either that’s all of them, exercising in one place, or the E-Two have at least twice that,” Eowyn guessed. “That does change the situation, doesn’t it, ser?”

  “It doesn’t change our mission,” Henry replied. “Twelfth Fleet still outmatches those carriers—though it does add some extra impetus to Ambassador Todorovich’s desire to make peace between the Kozun and the E-Two. T
hat said…” He considered. “Make sure all of the Tactical teams know the data on those shields is classified,” he ordered.

  Both the UPA and Henry, personally, would be perfectly fine with the Kozun needing to sue for peace after getting their asses handed to them. He still remembered the gallows his GroundDiv troopers had photographed and then burnt on La-Tar.

  “Looks like everybody has seen us and received our message,” Eowyn reported. “The training groups are heading back to Leppen at one KPS-squared.”

  “All right,” Henry murmured. “Chan, do we have a response yet?”

  “Not yet. How long do we wait, ser?”

  “At least twenty-four hours,” he told them. “And even then…we’re not starting a fight here, people. We’re looking for friends, not new enemies.”

  It took over thirty minutes for the locals to make any response, by which point the training ships hadn’t even made it one percent of the way back to the Leppen fleet base. The base and the carrier groups were both about five light-minutes from DesRon 27.

  Henry figured whoever was transmitting from the fleet base had also contacted the commanders of the carrier groups before making the call.

  “Message is definitely from the base at Leppen,” Chan told him. “Basic Vesheron encryption, so not exactly a secure channel.”

  “Understood. Put them on screen.”

  A ten-minute back-and-forth was going to make this a long conversation, but that was life in an age without subspace coms. The dismantled transmitter aboard Henry’s ships was the first thing to give him hope for instant communications since the Great Gathering.

  The image that appeared on the screen was of an Eerdish man with skin so pale green as to be translucent, even the veins on his face visible in a disturbing mask. He wore a stark-white tunic with three blood-red stripes painted on the right breast.

  “Commodore Wong, I am Defender-Lord Deetell of the Eerdish Security Forces,” he said in slow Kem. “Your presence here is a surprise and not a welcome one.

  “We are aware of your alliance with our enemies, and the presence of armed vessels of your United Planets Alliance in our systems is undesirable.” He paused, looking down—potentially confirming his translation.

  “However, we recognize the critical contributions of your forces to our current liberty from the Kenmiri, and I appreciate your willingness to remain at a safe distance. Since this distance will make communication difficult, I am prepared to permit one of your vessels to approach the Leppen Security Facility.

  “This vessel will keep all active sensors and weapons disabled and follow all directions from Leppen Security Facility control. Any deviation from these instructions will result in the immediate destruction of your ship.”

  The message ended, freezing on Deetell’s vein-marked green face.

  “Do we have any data on what the Eerdish are using for a rank structure?” Henry asked. “Is Defender-Lord an Admiral? A Commodore? Is he the system commander or…”

  “Based on the people we have interacted with, I think Defender-Lord would be about O-nine, ser,” Eowyn told him. “He’s the system commander. Scans from here suggest the LSF has another twelve ships—four of them destroyers, the rest escorts—plus at least some fighter hangars on the facility itself.”

  “So, once we’re close enough, he can almost certainly follow through on his threat,” Henry concluded. “He’s asking us to offer up one of our ships as a hostage. Which, frankly, seems entirely reasonable.”

  “We’re going to take him up on that, ser?” Eowyn asked.

  “My inclination is yes, but I’m going to talk to the Ambassador first,” Henry replied. “I’ll be in my office. Let me know if we have any further updates from our soon-to-be friends.”

  Sylvia accepted his call the moment he pinged her.

  “I presume Chan forwarded you Deetell’s message?” he asked. He hadn’t ordered it—if he’d needed to tell his communications officer to forward the communications to the on-board diplomat, he’d need to have a conversation with them.

  “They did,” Sylvia confirmed. “They’re not exactly being welcoming.”

  “We are formally allied to people they’re fighting, and now have a pile of sensor data on their new fleet that they’d really like us not to give the Kozun,” Henry pointed out. “They can’t catch us, but they don’t know that.”

  Henry had no doubt that his Cataphracts could out-accelerate everything in the system except maybe the Eerdish’s new fighters—and those couldn’t follow his ships through a skip line.

  “They have every reason to be suspicious, but I’m hesitant to give them this much leeway to start with,” Sylvia told him. “If they get the idea that we’re going to be that accommodating…”

  “On the other hand, they will also know that I have two ships they can’t catch that now know everything about their new fleet,” Henry noted. “That’s a hell of a weight we’re holding over them.”

  His partner blinked.

  “What am I missing, Henry?” she asked. “I see that they’ve built big new ships, but everything I’ve seen says the Kozun have outbuilt them in tonnage and numbers.”

  “Their ships have shields,” Henry said simply. “Not gravity shields, but they’ve miniaturized a Kenmiri-style energy screen down far enough to fit it on a fighter. For the first time since we met the Empire, we’re looking at someone else’s starfighters my people can’t call TIEs.”

  TIE, drawn from an old series of movies, was the shorthand nickname for an unshielded starfighter. UPSF starfighters had gravity shields of their own, making them incredibly hard to kill. TIEs, on the other hand, tended to disappear the moment they were even close to a real weapon.

  “With shielded destroyers and starfighters, they can go toe-to-toe with everything the Kozun have and win,” he explained. “Same firepower but twice the survivability, at least? The Hierarchy has already lost this war and they don’t know it yet.

  “And I’m not going to tell them. That’s your decision.”

  Sylvia snorted.

  “But we have that intelligence on all three ships, so if they turn on us…the Kozun will know what they’re in for and prepare countermeasures,” she concluded.

  “Exactly. Though I’m not sure what countermeasures the Kozun could prepare,” Henry admitted. “We have answers for energy screens—and our grav-shields are just straight-up better overall. I’m not sure what the Kozun would do.”

  Though Henry had to wonder about the power draw and size of the new energy projectors. A Kenmiri escort had twice as many launchers and lasers as one of his destroyers, despite being barely three-quarters of the size. The power and volume demands of the grav-shield generators were a good chunk of the difference.

  “I’d still prefer to negotiate more…fair terms for our approach,” Sylvia noted.

  “That is your prerogative as the ambassador,” Henry told her. “I’m your escort. I can tell you that I’m comfortable taking you in under these terms, but I can’t speak to the diplomatic aspect of the situation.”

  “And that recognition of the difference in our spheres is why we worked well together even before we became an item,” she said with a chuckle. “I assume Chan is ready to send a message back if I record one?”

  “They are,” Henry confirmed.

  “Then I will make a call.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The only real concession that Sylvia managed to negotiate out of the Defender-Lord was that Paladin was allowed to approach with her gravity shields and antimissile defenses up and her laser capacitors charged.

  Sylvia was well aware that Paladin literally couldn’t move with her gravity shield down—and that the shield would prevent the Eerdish ships from checking the status of the destroyer’s weapons. Still, getting Defender-Lord Deetell to formally concede those points set the right tone for the discussions.

  She was entirely willing to work with the E-Two, but she had her own objectives and wasn’t going to let th
e UPA get walked over in these discussions. The Eerdish definitely seemed to be “feeling their oats,” to use a delightfully European expression, but her quick and dirty briefing from Henry suggested they might be putting up something of a façade, too.

  Eight escorts, twelve destroyers and two pocket carriers made for an impressive fleet—but it also easily represented fifty percent of the Eerdish homeworld’s building capacity over the last three years. The E-Two Alliance also had the Enteni homeworld and the Makata Cluster, but the fleet at Seppen was a major portion of their strength.

  Deetell would likely be torn between suggesting the carrier groups were a larger portion of their strength than they were—to have the UPA pass on an underestimate of their strength to the Kozun—or the opposite. It depended on his people’s plans.

  For the moment, Sylvia checked the flags in her office and settled herself behind the desk. The blue flag of the United Planets Alliance with its sharp half-circle of eight gold stars was directly behind her, flanked on the right by the flag of the UPSF—the same curved V on a stylized rocket—and on the left by Paladin’s own commissioning seal—a gleaming silver helmet.

  “Chan, link me through to the Defender-Lord, please,” she told the squadron coms officer. Henry’s holographic image appeared at her right hand, an image of his own office with its matching UPA flag. He’d let her run this meeting, but he needed to be present.

  They’d always had a good working relationship. That respect was part of why she’d fallen for him in the first place, after all.

  After a few seconds, the wall in front of her disappeared behind a holographic representation of an office that had clearly been designed by a Kenmiri Artisan. A baroque gold mural covered the wall behind Deetell. A black curtain covered it, but under the lights of the office, the material clearly wasn’t as opaque as expected.