by Kal Spriggs
Time: 1730 Zulu, 23 June 291 G.D.
Location: Triad Gateway Station, Triad System
“You’re sure about this,” Colonel Frost asked.
Rawn nodded. He’d lost weight in the past week. A tight military haircut and a change of clothing altered his appearance enough that they’d had no trouble slipping through customs on Triad.
The customs at Vagyr hadn’t batted an eyelash when they landed in an obsolete bomber drone and climbed out of the bomb bay.
“Until I know how much Roush told Guard Intelligence about my accounts, we’ll operate off cash reserves,” Colonel Frost said.
Rawn nodded; he found it satisfying that Agent Mueller’s bribe money would fund Guard Free Now’s future attacks.
He clenched his fists when he remembered the destruction of the Fenris. It was obvious to him now that Mel had somehow taken the ship back from the AI. That Guard Fleet had killed her to save a worthless hive like Vagyr enraged him.
A part of him hated Frost for not letting him go back. Another part of him hated himself for the fact that he had not remained behind.
All of him hated the Guard, Guard Intelligence in particular. They’d set up the situation. They’d manipulated the events.
And they had issued the statement.
It was a simple announcement. A group of GFN terrorists had seized a ‘relic’ warship and tried to attack Vagyr. A Guard Fleet task force in the area had stopped them.
It filled him with rage that his sister’s eulogy didn’t even bear her name. That her actions had stopped the destruction of Vagyr, and the UNC’s precious Guard Fleet, made his anger all the worse.
Rawn looked down at the small duffel that carried explosives and guns. He didn’t see weapons there, not anymore. All he saw was the chance to make amends for his sister’s death.
“I’m ready,” he said to Frost. “What’s our first target?”
The End
Also from Henchman Press, by bestselling military science fiction author Christopher Nuttall:
First Strike
The best defense…
Starting a war with an enemy a hundred times stronger is insane. It’s desperate. And it’s Earth’s only hope.
A massive alien power looms over humanity, claiming Earth as its territory and humanity as its slaves. The Hegemony has already taken over one colony, yoking hundreds of thousands under their brutal rule. Every tactical exercise, every wargame and every simulation gives humanity zero chance in a defensive campaign.
Earth’s only chance to win the coming war - is by striking first.
Chapter Seven
Terra Nova had everything a spacefaring society could want, except a gas giant that could be mined for fuel. The Association had surveyed it while humanity was still mastering basic metalworking and deemed the system largely useless, not even bothering to plant a small colony on Terra Nova’s surface. They hadn't even established a quantum gate in the system; the gate that served Terra Nova had been built by the Federation, the third quantum gate produced by human engineers. Gates were, by long convention, open to all, but the galactic powers that felt confident in their strength charged access fees. The Hegemony, with a major battle fleet in the system, were quite willing to tax human shipping heading to Terra Nova.
Pelican lumbered though the quantum gate and emerged into the Terra Nova system. Like most commercial shipping, the massive HE3 tanker possessed no quantum drive of her own and was completely dependent upon the quantum gates for FTL travel. Producing commercial ships was surprisingly cheap once someone had built the ship yards; after all, they really needed little more than life support and hull volume. Pelican looked crude, like a set of oil drums bolted together, but Captain William Zeller loved her. She was his ticket to see the universe.
Earth had established a cloudscoop over Jupiter shortly after Mentor had contacted the human race, providing vast quantities of HE3 to power the switch to fusion power and fuel Earth’s growing fleet of starships. The Hegemony had demanded that Earth continue to supply Terra Nova with HE3, even though Earth no longer controlled the planet and there were gas giants nearer to the system than Sol. The Federation had made nothing more than a muted protest, after ONI pointed out that sending the freighters into the system would allow them to take a careful look at the Hegemony’s fleet dispositions. One day, Earth would have the firepower to teach the Hegemony a lesson. Good intelligence would be needed on that day. Pelican’s sensor suite was military-grade, far more sophisticated than any commercial ship would need for its routine activities. William would have expected the Hegemony to insist on searching his ship and demanding explanations for the advanced sensors, but they’d never bothered. He was unable to tell if that was arrogance or simple carelessness. What could tiny Earth’s puny fleet do against five superdreadnoughts and their support ships?
“I’m picking up a challenge now,” his pilot said. No separate disciplines on Pelican, even if she was a Federation Navy ship in all, but name. The crew officially worked for the Jupiter Consortium; unofficially, they were Federation Intelligence and ONI. “They’re demanding that we pay our access fees or get back into quantum space.”
“Charming,” William said. A quick glance at the sensor take showed that the Hegemony’s fleet was already coming into view, surrounding Orbit Station. Humans had built the station, back when Terra Nova had first been colonised, only to lose it to the Hegemony. These days, a tiny human staff maintained the station for their masters. They were one of the best sources of intelligence that humanity had. “Ship them some credits and request an orbital slot.”
He waited patiently for the reply. The Association’s currency was still in widespread use across the galaxy. Some of the younger races had their own currencies as well, but the Association credit was interchangeable throughout the entire known galaxy. Some economists had predicted that that would change rapidly once the Association collapsed completely, perhaps reducing interstellar economics to barter unless a successor power with the same clout as the Association arose rapidly. William hadn't bothered to try to follow their arguments. It was enough that Earth’s small stockpile of credits was still good.
“They’re telling us to dock at the fuel dump and start the transfer,” the pilot said, after a moment. “Should I take us in?”
“The alternative is hanging around here,” William pointed out, dryly. “Take us in.”
Terra Nova grew rapidly on the viewscreen as they approached the planet. Like Earth, Terra Nova was a blue-green world, although there were only two main continents. No one was quite sure why some worlds evolved intelligent life and others didn't produce anything more interesting than versions of sheep and wolves; Terra Nova had produced few creatures larger than lizards or rodents. Crops and animals brought by humans from Earth had swiftly spread across the first continent, competing with the local fauna. Unlike Clarke, which was dominated by savage plant and animal life, Terra Nova’s local wildlife hadn't been able to cope. Humanity had effectively terraformed the planet far quicker than either Mars or Venus.
The Hegemony battle squadron was orbiting the planet, sensors and weapons stepped down to prevent wear and tear. Each of the five superdreadnoughts possessed enough firepower to blast a planet into atoms, or dominate the skies so thoroughly that resistance would be impossible. They were hulking brutes, their hulls designed so that all who saw them would know just what they’d been designed to do. There was little of the elegance the Association had built into its explorer or cruise starships, none of the fancifulness that they worked into pleasure craft that didn't have to obey Newton’s laws. The ships were intimidating, even from a distance. All of Earth had seen footage of similar ships in action, in the brushfire wars that had started to appear along the edge of Association space. Everyone knew that they were the most powerful and capable warships in existence. Nothing could stand up to them.
He tore his gaze away from the sensor feed as the tanker approached the fuel dump, a separate station in
orbit around Terra Nova. It too was human technology, allowing vast quantities of HE3 to be stored well away from the planet’s surface – and the civilians who had colonised the new world. The planners hadn't realised that having the fuel dump would make it far easier for a hostile force to dominate the planet – or perhaps they had, intending that they would be the hostile force. William had heard a hundred conspiracy theories about what the Federation intended to do with Terra Nova in the long term. Doling out fuel to power the colony’s fusion reactors was such an easy way to control the planet that he’d be surprised if it had never occurred to the planners.
The tanker shuddered gently as she made contact with the platform and started to transfer the fuel. William left the automated systems to get on with it while he reviewed more of the sensor take from the system – and the planet below. The Hegemony military base, established right on top of Gagarin City, seemed to have grown larger in the months since he’d last surveyed the planet. They kept the human population under strict control, forbidding any further expansion, although many humans had managed to slip out of the city and into the undeveloped regions of the planet. Some reports suggested that there was even a small insurgency underway on Terra Nova. It couldn't come close to evicting the Hegemony from humanity’s planet.
There were no new orbital fortifications beyond a small network of orbital weapons platforms. The Association, which had produced much of the Galactic military doctrine, had believed that starships were a better investment than orbital fortresses, pointing out that starships were mobile and could be moved from one system to another. Some of the most important worlds had heavy fixed defences – the Hegemony homeworld was supposed to be heavily fortified – but most colony worlds were barely defended. The OWPs could stand off a pirate ship, yet a small squadron could blast its way through them in minutes. Privately, William suspected that the Association needed to rethink its doctrine. It had been so long since the Cats had fought a proper war that they’d lost the habit of continually questioning and rewriting their contingency plans. If human military forces had lost that habit in a few years of peace, and had to redevelop it in a hurry when war appeared out of nowhere, how much harder would it be for a race that hadn't fought for thousands of years?
But maybe it wasn't entirely a bad thing, from humanity’s point of view. Most of the Galactics had learned from the Association, concentrating on starships instead of orbital defences. There would be flaws in their doctrine, weaknesses that could be exploited by a human naval force with the willingness to fight back against the Hegemony and the other galactic bullies. They’d learn, of course – some of them had probably been learning in the brushfire wars – but could they learn as fast as humanity?
The Association claimed that most races shared the same basic level of intelligence. Some races had traits that bent them towards one kind of thinking or another, or lacked the emotions that drove humanity, yet there were no races that thought significantly faster than anyone else. The cultural stasis that had gripped most of the galaxy came from the Association, from its stagnation and slow decline, not from anything intrinsic to the Galactics. As the established order continued to disintegrate, war would break out again and again until a new order was established, one dominated by a race that had managed to adapt quicker to the change in the galactic balance of power. It was hard to imagine the Funks having such imagination, yet they’d come to terms with the existence of other forms of intelligent life quicker than humanity. And they’d been in the Iron Age when they’d been contacted by the Association.
He glanced up as the console bleeped, warning him of a flight of shuttles heading towards the tanker. They flashed past at full speed, lighting the ship up with their weapons systems as they made their approach before vanishing into the darkness of space. Such crude intimidation was typical of the Hegemony, an unsubtle reminder of their power. But then, Pelican was not only unarmed – she was defenceless. A single burst from a phase cannon would cut right through her hull and destroy the ship.
The tanker shivered again as the final drop of HE3 was extracted into the fuel dump, which disconnected itself rapidly from Pelican. There was no point in asking for shore leave on Terra Nova, even if his orders hadn’t specified that he was to return to quantum space as soon as possible. The Hegemony mostly refused to grant permission, and even when they did Gagarin City was a depressing place these days. William was old enough to remember the hope felt by the colonists that they would build a new world, a new melting pot that would take the best from humanity’s disparate cultures and create something newer and stronger than Earth. Their dreams had come to an end the moment the Hegemony had bullied Earth into surrendering the planet. He looked down at the blue-green globe and shivered, despite himself. The humans on the planet below were living in bondage, slaves to an alien race. They would never be anything other than a client race, if they were allowed to live at all.
“Take us back to the gate,” he ordered quietly.
His orders had stated that he was to attempt to determine if the Hegemony had placed any watching starships in the outer system, if possible. Humanity had established a small asteroid mining station before the Hegemony had taken over, but the Funks had shown no interest in either forcing the miners to work for them or shipping in their own labour to take their place. It was so much easier to bully Earth out of raw materials – and efficient, if they weren't actually paying for it themselves. A handful of commercial drive fields could be detected near a couple of the mining asteroids, but nothing else. It didn't really mean anything and only a politician would think otherwise. Space was vast and a starship that stepped its drives down to the bare minimum – or cloaked – would be almost impossible to detect with passive sensors. The entire Hegemony Navy could be hiding there and they’d never know about it.
The viewscreen shifted as Pelican continued to lumber towards the gate. To human eyes, the gate didn't look very impressive. It seemed to be nothing more than a ring of metal over twenty kilometres in diameter. To advanced sensors, it was far more complex, existing simultaneously in normal space and quantum space. William didn't pretend to know how they worked. Few did, outside the research laboratories – and the Association itself. The Cats were normally obsessive record keepers, with a mania for paperwork that made even the worst of humanity’s bureaucrats look like a piker, but they were curiously silent on how they first discovered how to open a permanent gateway into quantum space. Some of humanity’s historical researchers, mining the records of a society thousands of years older than humanity, speculated that the breakthrough had happened by accident. Others, the more controversial researchers, claimed that someone else had given the Cats the technology. William privately believed the former. Apart from rumours, there was no proof that there was any spacefaring race older than the Cats – and they had built the Association.
“Transmit our ID and request that they open the gate,” he ordered. The Funks would probably hit them with another service charge, just to rub their superiority into the puny humans one more time. Or maybe they’d just be glad to see the human ship leaving the system. A starship, even a freighter, could make one hell of a mess if it deliberately rammed the planet. “Pay them if necessary.”
“Another fifty credits,” the pilot reported. He shook his head. “They do make a good thing of it, don’t they?”
“Bastards,” William agreed. Ahead of them, a shimmer of light appeared inside the gate ring, a chink in the normal universe leading directly to quantum space. As always, it fascinated and repelled him in equal measure. There was something profoundly unnatural about quantum space. It wasn't a realm for humanity, or any other race. “Take us out of here, and then set course for the RV point.”
They’d been given very specific orders before they’d undocked from Jupiter Station. Pelican and her crew was to depart the normal shipping line to Earth once they’d cleared the ring and head instead to a point roughly a light-year from Terra Nova. Quantum space didn't quite map onto
normal space perfectly, one of the reasons why early explorers had tended to get lost and never return home. The navigation beacons were all that made interstellar commerce possible. Once they reached the RV point, they were to wait. The orders puzzled him because they made little sense. Maybe the higher-ups knew what they were doing, but he wouldn't have put money on it.
He took the helm himself, allowing the pilot a chance to get a cup of coffee and a snack before returning to duty. Quantum space could shift from placid to dangerous very quickly, forcing any starship travelling within the dimension to be ready to change course at any moment. Even the merest energy storm could wipe out an entire unwary fleet. He’d been a young cadet when Earth had heard that seventeen starships built by an alien race had been caught up in a storm and vaporised. If even the Galactics couldn't master quantum space, what hope did humanity have of taming the alternate dimension?
It was rare to see another starship in quantum space away from the shipping lanes. Indeed, even on the shipping lanes commercial ships rarely saw other starships unless it was a deliberate interception. Pirates had been known to hover around the gates and engage unwary freighters, forcing them to surrender and looting their holds before casting them loose to be destroyed by quantum space’s energy storms. Some pirates were true sadists, torturing their victims before killing them; others took hostages and extracted ransoms from their relatives before returning them alive, if they bothered to keep their word.
He blinked in surprise as a handful of starships appeared on the display. They were human starships, small teardrop-shaped cruisers and bulky assault carriers, waiting for his ship. He stared, unable to quite believe his eyes, until he realised that they had to be planning a war. Or perhaps the war had already started and no one had bothered to inform him...no, that couldn't be right. The Hegemony would never have let him close to Terra Nova if they’d been at war with the human race. Maybe it was just the fleet exercise the media had been waffling about for the last month before he’d left Jupiter. But so close to Terra Nova...?
