Valor's Stand

by Kal Spriggs

  Garina Argun was the number two for the slot. She was the leader of the HIPPIEs, the Harmony Initiative People's Party for Independence and Equality, and from what everyone knew, she had strong ties to the terrorist organization known as Guard Free Now.

  Somewhere in a very distant third place was Mavras Dinkar, the head of the pro-Guard political groups. Dinkar had some weird sort of grouping of pro-Guard political talking points and support from surviving members of the corrupt families that had once run the Protectorate. He wasn't favored to win, not even by his most optimistic supporters. They were just hoping to score some political points and maybe get some concessions from the new government.

  The whole situation was a mess. I didn't know if Admiral Rao was some kind of murderous psychopath or the good guy, but as long as no one succeeded in killing him, he was likely to be the next President of the Harmony Protectorate.

  Seeing as the Guard had already tried to kill him once and I was going to be leading his protective detail, I sort of had a vested interest in him not ending up dead, especially since they'd already employed a combat skimmer to attempt just that.

  The flip side of things was that while Rao had tried and executed all the senior military and government opponents that he'd been able to arrest... he hadn't got all of them. Admiral Mizra, a half-brother of the late, unlamented President Mombara, who'd died in the coup itself, had managed to escape during the chaos of the coup. He'd escaped with two dreadnoughts and their escorts, a total of twenty-four ships. While Admiral Rao's forces could have countered that, the Guard Peacekeepers had stood those forces down on their arrival, not trusting the Harmony Protectorate's Defense Forces to stay neutral after the coup.

  The only thing guarding the system in the meantime was the Centurions, Commodore Creed's Hammer Squadron, and a few dozen or so other mercenary ships, plus a small squadron of Guard Fleet vessels on 'special duty' and unlikely to remain in the system.

  The nearest Guard Task Force was in the Vagyr System. That was forty-five light years away, seven and a half days travel one way with no stops.

  The official Guard Fleet evaluation was that Admiral Mizra had taken his forces to Vagyr to resupply on food and consumables. At the time, the Guard had been neutral about the whole matter, so Vagyr's government had allowed him to come and go. As things had settled out in the Protectorate, the Drakkus Empire had offered Mizra and his people sanctuary and word was that he'd accepted and that he and his ships had left for Drakkus Prime.

  Who knew if that was true, though. It would be almost two months travel from Vagyr to Drakkus Prime. He wouldn't have arrived yet, not if that was his destination, even if he didn't stop for supplies along the way. It would be another two or three months before anyone could note his arrival and get a message back here to the Protectorate.

  In my opinion, that gave him almost five months to prepare some kind of counterattack, while everyone expected him to withdraw. And seeing as the Admiral had sent us all that information, I had to wonder if she was of the same opinion. Most of the mercenaries were deployed around the planet in a defensive formation, rather than spread out throughout the system or even to the other worlds of the Protectorate. She wasn't in charge, but she and Commodore Creed seemed to be pretty close, maybe the two of them expected Admiral Mizra to make some kind of move.

  Somehow, I had the feeling that if he did, then it wouldn't be a simple matter. Two dreadnoughts were a terrifying prospect even by themselves. Dreadnoughts were massively powerful ships, with some of the deepest and most powerful drive fields of any ship. They were fast, almost as fast as fighters, capable of moving sixty percent of light speed. They could chase down destroyers and corvettes with ease, and they carried an armament designed to smash entire fleets.

  Part of me wondered at the stood-down Defense Force ships just setting there. There were three more dreadnoughts, four battleships, and dozens of cruisers and destroyers. They had to be worth billions. Leaving them without maintenance and proper shutdown would mean they'd need a lot of attention when they stood them back up. They'd need to train up new crews, too, probably, since the entire Protectorate Defense Forces had been stood down. Trying to assemble the former crews would be a nightmare, especially since most of them would have had to find new jobs to make ends meet.

  The drills that Lieutenant Commander Woods ran us through included plenty of scenarios against a variety of formations and just about every one of them included a mix of ships matching Admiral Mizra's ships.

  I got the feeling as we trained that the Drakes and Gorgons were the central role of that defense.

  The cool thing about the Drakes was that since they were much more modern ships and they were purpose built for the Centurions, they were all equipped with neural interfaces so that we could control them through our implants. For most of the other pilots, that meant they could direct the craft through their implants without relying on tapping out commands on their terminals. For Ashiri and I, it meant we could control the ships as extensions of our own bodies. Flying them was unnaturally easy. Once we were synched with the neural interfaces, it took almost no time at all until we were matching the flight parameters, sometimes exceeding them, of the pilots who'd been flying them since they'd first come out of the yards. Most of the training had been internal, but by the end of our first week, we had a joint exercise with Commodore Creed's Hammer Squadron.

  We got a special briefing before it even started, about how we were going to step down our capabilities and not even use our disruptor cannons on the Drakes. It was a security thing, Lieutenant Commander Woods explained.

  I wondered how long they planned to keep the Drake's capabilities secret. Sooner or later they'd use them where someone would see them. Then again, who would expect a unit from out in the middle of nowhere to have such capabilities?

  In the scenario, Hammer Squadron and the Centurions were the primary defenders and other mercenary ships were in a support role. I wondered at that, especially since that cost us the Tenacity, our best chance at taking on a dreadnought toe to toe, since the battlecruiser was bigger and tougher than anything else in orbit.

  Well, other than the Harmony Protectorate ships that are stood down. I thought to myself.

  Ashiri and I formed up in our part of the squadron, under Lieutenant Stroud. I remembered him from the Academy, his younger brother had been in our section before taking a setback. I'd been his Coxswain for grav-shell racing, too, but he hadn't said much to either of us beyond a relatively reserved greeting and asking about a few of the other former cadet candidates from our time as plebes. It was kind of disappointing, given how much time we'd spent together, but it wasn't like he was hostile, he just didn't seem to see much reason to talk with me beyond the professional. It's fine, he probably doesn't want someone to think he's fraternizing.

  Commodore Creed's Hammer Squadron was a formation of three cruisers and six destroyers, a half and full squadron of each. The destroyers were marked down as Defenders, and their icons showed similar armament to our Halo-class destroyers, except they mounted even heavier main weapons with upgraded fighter and missile defense systems. The cruisers were an odd group, though. I was having a hard time making sense of them, right up until twenty-four warp envelope ships launched, one after the other, from each of them. Not cruisers, I realized, carriers. The icons on them updated to Challenger-class light carriers.

  Seventy-two fighters was pretty respectable, by any measure. At this point, with our two squadrons of Drakes, our force put out ninety-six fighter craft. The fighters coming off the Challengers were Skysliders, one generation newer than Firebolts. They were still old, but they had a small edge in speed and maneuverability.

  The Skysliders had never been in use by the Guard. They'd been built and sold mostly for militia use throughout Guard Space. Century actually had a few, though from what I understood, they'd been captured during the Three Day War from Dalite. They were similar in performance to Firebolts, but they were newer craft, built to
be cheap, rugged fighters, capable of using parts and equipment from other craft.

  We'd formed up on a defensive perimeter a half-circle in front of Harmony. It was kind of impressive to see all the fighters and ships launched, even in a simulation.

  Of course, that was right up until the enemy force emerged from strategic warp at fifty thousand kilometers.

  One moment they weren't even on our screens, and the next, they were firing on us from outside our range. Lieutenant Commander Woods barked out orders and we went to full speed, but on my sensors, I could see our larger ships taking hits from the two dreadnoughts.

  The Pentacane went down first, but the three Challengers went down seconds later, hit dozens of times by the enemy dreadnoughts.

  We had an attack plan, but the enemy force's smaller ships deployed in a broad, defensive mass. The dreadnoughts fired through gaps in that formation, hitting our destroyers, now, while we accelerated into the fire of the smaller ships.

  I gritted my teeth as fire whipped past. I knew that my Drake could have at least returned fire as we closed the distance, but we weren't supposed to show our full capabilities.

  The Hammer Squadron Skysliders engaged with their lasers. The combined fire flared against the warp drive of an enemy frigate and it's warp drive failed, but dozens of the fighters vanished in reply. Drakes were dying too, and Ashiri's vanished, then Lieutenant Stroud's, both of them hit by fire as we closed.

  Flying through that defensive formation was a special version of hell, trying to evade, trying to follow Lieutenant Woods's snapped commands, trying to stay on course.

  I'd just lined up for the final attack run when a secondary battery snuffed my digital fighter out of existence.

  “That sucked,” I muttered to myself. The past four or five engagements had gone much better. Then again, those had been a more traditional style fight, the enemy ships emerging from strategic warp at the edge of the system. We had time to plot out attack runs and to return and rearm.

  Exercise Terminated. The words floated in front of me, and a moment later the display blanked, and then formed Commodore Creed's face. “Centurions and my fellow Hammer Squadron, before you complain about unfairness, remember, that warfare is unfair. And before anyone complains about realism, that battle was a very similar match to Admiral Mizra's engagement of a pirate outpost near Vagyr, only ten years ago. He emerged close to their base of operations, took down their larger ships with his dreadnoughts at extended range, and then used his secondary forces to engage the smaller ships at close range. Admiral Armstrong and I have worked through this same scenario a dozen or more times in planning. Engaged like that, we stand little chance at victory.”

  I felt my stomach plummet as I considered it. It was similar enough to the tactics that the Drakkus Empire had tried to use against Century. Hit hard, from a position of surprise.

  “As a result, we'll be instituting some changes to our deployments. First off, we will be deploying our forces further out from the planet. We will also be stepping up patrols with our fighters and corvettes. Last off, we will be cycling the position of our ships to different areas, so that they will not be in predictable locations, so that an enemy force will not be able to emerge from strategic warp and immediately engage our forces.”

  I feel like that's only half a solution, though, I bit my lip as I considered it. The dreadnoughts had engaged us with heavy disruptor cannons and antimatter projectors. The heavy disruptor cannons had ranges out to seventy thousand kilometers. The antimatter projectors ranged out to forty thousand kilometers, if I remembered right.

  If we spread out too far, we risked Admiral Mizra being able to engage parts of the defensive force in detail. If we deployed too far from the planet, he could jump in on top of it and then the risk would be damaging the very planet we'd been hired to protect.

  I didn't really see a solution. The dreadnoughts were faster than anything but our fighters. They were better armed and their drive fields were tougher than anything we had.

  “We're going to go through this same scenario, again, this time with the new deployment,” Commodore Creed told us. “And we're going to keep rehearsing this until we have solutions to all the issues.”

  I hope it's that simple, I thought to myself.

  ***

  “Break right, break right!” I snapped. But it was too late, the two MCA pilots who'd been with me on our final attack run on the enemy dreadnought were caught in a crossfire from two escorting frigates and both of them vanished.

  I whipped my Drake through an evasive pattern that I didn't even consciously pick, just a command put together on the fly, drawn from my implant and pushed straight into the control system of my Drake.

  I somehow slipped through their intercepting fire and dropped my bombs, even as the enemy dreadnought tried to dodge away.

  Still, the smart-launch bomb rack ejected sixteen matter-antimatter bombs across the dreadnought's most probable evasion paths, firing them at five hundred meters per second.

  The detonations happened as I accelerated past the dreadnought, and I had time to see the dreadnought's drive field flicker before my screen blanked to show I'd been hit by enemy fire.

  “Hock,” I snarled.

  “Dead again?” Ashiri asked me. Once we were “killed” we could talk freely, at this point. She and I had set up a private net so we could discuss things.

  “Yeah, got a couple hits on their dreadnought, though,” I answered. I sighed, “I can't help but feel we're going at this all wrong.”

  “Oh?” Ashiri asked.

  “Standing still and defending the system, we're giving them all the advantages, you know?” I asked. “They know where we'll be, they control when they hit us, how they hit us. We spread out too far, they come in as one big formation and pound us to scrap. We clump up, they spread out and hit us from two sides. We go in tight to the planet and they drop right on top of us and blow us out of space before we can even launch.”

  “That was a fun one,” Ashiri sighed.

  “Yeah...” I sighed. That had been embarrassing. We hadn't even loaded the scenario before our terminals had flashed that we'd been killed.

  “My point is, we're a smaller force, we can't stand up to the combined fire of those dreadnoughts at close range. We need to change things up.”

  “How?” Ashiri asked. “I mean, it's not like we can pull out of the system. If they get orbit over the planet, we're basically done here.” That was true enough. Any weapons fire in orbit over a planet was a chancy thing. Our antimatter bombs were pretty nondiscriminatory and all it took was one hundred megaton bomb detonating over a city to make for a really bad day.

  “I don't know,” I admitted. “Maybe we go hunt them down, maybe we trick them into coming in on some other target...” I shook my head, feeling tired and worn down. We'd gone through this scenario a dozen or more times. “I wish I knew an answer.”

  “Me too,” Ashiri told me. “But the Admiral and Commodore Creed are working on it, right? The pair of them should have an answer.”

  “Maybe,” I said, not at all certain about that. I mean, I trusted the Admiral, but this whole situation just had me worn down. If they had a plan, then why hadn't we gone through it, yet?

  ***

  Chapter 16: I Learn A Hard Lesson The Hardest Way

  It was sometime early in the morning when I reported to the Admiral's flag bridge, still rubbing sleep out of my eyes. Ashiri and I had received the call to show up with our weapons and body armor, ready to take a briefing.

  Lieutenant Tony Dutson stood waiting, deep hollows under his eyes. I wondered if he'd got any sleep. We'd been in the simulators all the previous day and he and his platoon had been down on the planet, chasing after a group of Guard Free Now terrorists that had claimed an attack that had killed a dozen civilians at a voting station.

  “There's been another attempt on Admiral Rao's life,” the Admiral looked up from her terminal, her eyes looking bleary. I wondered if she had
any sleep. “We're changing things up a bit. There's going to be a... well, let's call it a shell game. We don't want the enemy to know exactly where he is over the next few days.”

  “Which enemy, ma'am?” I asked, too tired to stop myself.

  The Admiral gave me an arch look, “Any of them, Cadet.”

  “Sorry, ma'am,” I answered.

  “It's an understandable question,” she shook her head. “The only people who don't want him dead is the general population of his planet. Which makes things interesting. He's asked Commodore Creed for permission to attend several political events as the election draws to a close. Hopefully, after it's over and done with, most of these threats will drop off.”

  I had my doubts, but I didn't say anything more. The last thing I wanted was for people to think I was uppity or something, just because the Admiral was my grandmother.

  “In support of that, I'm going to have the pair of you,” she pointed at Ashiri and I, “escorting Rao and his decoy to various events.”

  “Decoy?” We asked at the same time.

  “He has a close family member with more than passing resemblance. We'll be picking him up from a certain location. At various events, he'll stand in for Rao. Sometimes it will be the real Rao, sometimes it won't. Sometimes we'll drop and set up as if he's there, just as bait and then have him pop up somewhere else. The goal is to make them uncertain about where he really is.”

  I frowned, “Too bad that wouldn't work on Admiral Mizra.”

  “Cadet?” The Admiral asked.

  I flushed as I realized I'd spoken aloud. “Uh, sorry, ma'am. I was just thinking that it would be nice to do that with the scenario. To hide our forces, move them around so he didn't know where to expect them, so if he does attack...” I shook my head. “But we'd have to know roughly when he'd attack and something that he'd really want to hit, maybe enough for him to risk coming in at a certain location.” I shrugged, “I guess it wouldn't work.”