The Fires of Coventry

by Rick Shelley

  ADVANCE INTO AN AMBUSH?

  “Come on lads. It’s time to play hero. Fire and Maneuver.” David had identified two concentrations of enemy electronics two hundred yards behind the company and a hundred yards apart. The idea was for H&S to move close enough that the Feddies wouldn’t be able to link up, without getting so close that the company would be put in a crossfire.

  One platoon stayed put. The others started to move, one squad from each platoon rushing to the next cover while the rest laid down covering fire. After that first move, the rest was crawling. David moved with his clerks. For some of them, it was the first time that they had been at serious risk. But they gave it everything they had. And once they were in position, the volume of fire they put out—if not their accuracy—would have done credit to any line platoon.

  “We just need to keep them pinned,” Spencer told his men. “If we can hold these, Alpha and Delta can do the real work.”

  The Federation soldiers showed no inclination to move forward, or to try to link up, merely holding position. Nor were they putting any great volume of fire at H&S Company. David frowned. What’s the point? It’s as if they ‘re just trying to hold us in position too.

  Books by Rick Shelley

  The Dirigent Mercenary Corps

  OFFICER-CADET

  LIEUTENANT

  CAPTAIN

  MAJOR

  LIEUTENANT COLONEL

  COLONEL

  The Spec Ops Squad

  HOLDING THE LINE

  DEEP STRIKE

  SUCKER PUNCH

  The Federation War

  THE BUCHANAN CAMPAIGN

  THE FIRES OF COVENTRY

  RETURN TO CAMEREIN

  The Varayan Memoir

  SON OF THE HERO

  THE HERO OF VARAY

  THE HERO KING

  The Wizard

  THE WIZARD AT HOME

  THE WIZARD AT MECQ

  The Fires of Coventry

  Book Two in the Federation War trilogy

  First published by Ace in November 1996. Published as an ebook by Jabberwocky Literary Agency, Inc. in December 2011.

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1996 by Rick Shelley.

  Cover art by Dirk Berger.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  To Stan Schmidt

  For starting it all

  and

  To Chloie Airoldi

  and the whole gang at

  The Knoxville Area Science Fiction Association

  For keeping the fires stoked

  COURT NEWS TODAY

  The following exchange is reliably reported to have taken place during a Commonwealth Day reception at St. James Palace in Westminster. The earl of Bath, one of our most noted military strategists until his retirement before the start of the current war, was speaking prior to the arrival of His Majesty.

  “There is only one thing wrong with war,” the earl said.

  “There is everything wrong with war,” Prince William, duke of Haven, said, interrupting. “The difficulty is that sometimes every conceivable alternative is even worse. Anyone who thinks otherwise has no business being involved in decisions relating to war or the conduct of it.”

  From The Westminster Court Intelligencer

  DISASTER ON REUNION

  The Seventh and Ninth Territorial Armies, with attached units of Fifth Army Corps, Thirty-first Armored Brigade, Second Home Guard Regiment of Lorenzo, and Sixth Pioneer Regiment (Provisional) under the overall command of Field Marshal Sir Edmund Raleigh Manchester, have been virtually wiped out on the new colony world of Reunion.

  No precise casualty count has been released yet, but unconfirmed reports state that no more than 1200 survivors have been located. The total manpower of the army group was estimated at 250,000 prior to the unexpected Federation attack. There were also substantial civilian casualties, althoughthe full extent of those has not yet been determined.

  The raid, apparently by two frigates from the Confederation of Human Worlds, introduced a new and very disturbing weapon into their ongoing war against the Second Commonwealth. A series of large and extremely powerful incendiary devices ignited a firestorm which literally consumed the entire area where the Commonwealth Army was staging training maneuvers.

  Reunion, far removed from any Federation world and from any area where hostilities have taken place, was considered to be an exceptionally safe site for training purposes. The world had been colonized only within the past thirty years. The fact that military exercises were being conducted there was thought to be secret. The Federation raid came without warning.

  A spokesperson for the Ministry of War states that preparations are already under way for an official Board of Inquiry into the tragedy.

  From The Times of Westminster

  April 19, FY 562

  The Chancellor of the Exchequer today presented me with rather dismal figures concerning the cost of defending ourselves against the Confederation of Human Worlds. The complete report is quite extensive and detailed, but the summary in the introduction is depressing enough. The first forty-two months of warfare, dating from the Federation’s declaration of war, have not only entirely consumed the surplus revenue of His Majesty’s Government, but they have taxed to the limit our ability to raise funds. Even with the higher tax rates approved by Parliament for Buckingham, and the additional funds subscribed by other member worlds of the Commonwealth, we are not keeping pace with the costs of this war. In fact, the Chancellor estimates that each year that hostilities continue will require seventeen years of peacetime prosperity to retire the debt. And that, he notes, is making the most generous estimates of future revenues, and the quickest conceivable end to the war. The longer that hostilities continue, the longer the payback ratio will become, entailing higher interest rates and so forth. The Chancellor’s most startling conclusion is that if this war should—God forbid—last another six years, the debt will be so huge as to be self-perpetuating, an eternal drain on the finances of His Majesty’s Government unless substantial changes are made to the Constitution of the Second Commonwealth, which is politically unthinkable.

  From The Secret Wartime Diaries of

  Prime Minister Sir Wallace Telford

  Part 1

  1

  Reggie Bailey leaned back in his chair at the head of the dining room table and smiled in deep satisfaction. No one noticed. The rest of the family was staring at the birthday display in the center of the table. The centerpiece was magnificent, and his twin girls, Angel and Ariel, were obviously overjoyed. They kept squealing in delight, pointing at each new convolution of the four-foot bubble that had risen from the narrow power base.

  The skin of the bubble shimmered and trembled as if it were no more than the iridescent soap film it appeared to be. Inside, two smaller bubbles orbited each other at increasing speeds. Each of the smaller spheres enclosed a display of eight sparklers that spun and twirled, cycling through a rainbow of colors.

  The birthday girls, now eight years old, sat along one side of the table. Their twelve-year-old brother Al sat across from them, trying not to show that he was as delighted as the girls. Reggie’s wife Ida sat at the far end of the table from her husband. The expression on her face, halfway between a smile and a smirk, resulted from more than the joy of her daughters or the magnificent birthday surprise that Reggie had come up with. She had just that afternoon learned something that none of the oth
ers knew yet, not even Reggie.

  After ten minutes, the show went into its climax. The sparklers in one balloon turned an intense blue and brightened. Those in the other small sphere cycled through to a brilliant red. The lights seemed to expand to completely fill the smaller globes, which in turn grew in size until theypressed into each other and deformed, filling the largest sphere. The intensity of the light grew until it was almost, but not quite, painful to watch. Then the bubbles all burst simultaneously, spreading a shower of very tiny confetti, red and blue, over the table and the people sitting around it. The confetti would evaporate in less than an hour, leaving nothing to clean up.

  Angel and Ariel launched into a storm of excited applause and cheering. Their faces were both red with the force of delight and excitement. Then they were talking, both at once, sometimes in unison but more often at cross purposes.

  “It was the best ever, Daddy,” Ariel managed to get out during a short pause by her sister.

  “Wonderful!” Angel said. “Wonderful, wonderful!”

  “Delightful,” Ida contributed. Her voice remained low, but the word did penetrate the renewed cacophony of the twins.

  “I didn’t know anybody could do anything like that,” Al said. He had taken his time deciding what to say. He didn’t want to sound too impressed for something given to his sisters.

  “I wasn’t sure myself that Eric could pull it off,” Reggie said. Eric Knowles, a close friend and neighbor, had long claimed to be the best specialty nanotech designer on Coventry. Reggie decided that he would no longer contest Eric’s claim, even if the town of Hawthorne was far from being all of the world. Reggie had been prepared to settle for something more modest, but he had talked about the fanciest display he could imagine, and Eric had kept assuring him, “I can do that.” Reggie had taken him at his word. Now he was glad that he had.

  “I’ll get the cake and ice cream,” Ida said, getting up from the table. It would be much later, she decided, after the children were in bed, before she would tell her husband that they were going to have another child.

  The children were all in bed. Ida was in the bathroom of the master suite getting ready. Reggie sat on his side of the bed, turned on the complink, and dialed up the late newssummary, part of his nightly ritual. He started to lean back to listen in comfort, but the first news item stopped his movement instantly.

  “Naval vessels of the Confederation of Human Worlds have emerged from Q-space over Coventry and appear to be launching large numbers of small craft. They have not contacted planetary authorities or replied to queries from local space traffic control in Coventry City. There has been no response to attempts to find out what this enemy fleet is doing here. Home Defense Force units are being alerted.”

  “An invasion?” Reggie asked softly. “How can they be invading us?” His initial reaction was a mild skepticism, and greater curiosity. But that was quickly followed by a tightening in his chest, a constriction that seemed to make it hard to breathe.

  “It can’t be,” he whispered, already not certain that he could believe his denial. He turned up the volume on the complink, but the news recap went on into other items, headlines that had been inserted before the important story had come up. Reggie flipped to the terminal menu and switched to the full-service news link from the capital, Coventry City.

  “We no longer have any video feed from our communications satellites,” the announcer said. “We would be off the air ourselves if not for the ground-based backup systems. In those remote areas where we do not have that backup, I fear that we are already off the air.”

  Reggie noted, with some relief, that there was no sign of panic in the announcer’s voice or face, no gloom-and-doom histrionics. It eased, minimally, his own growing tension, the tightness in his chest, the way that blood appeared to be draining from his face. It must be true, whatever the reason. Incredible, perhaps, but … It couldn’t be true, not on Coventry, not so close to the heart of the Second Commonwealth. It just wasn’t possible.

  “Ida, come out and listen to this!” Reggie glanced toward the bathroom door only briefly. “It looks as if we’re being invaded.” That sounds totally ridiculous, he thought.

  There was no response from Ida. Reggie realized that there was water running. She was in the shower.

  “Let me recapitulate what we know to this point,” the news reader said as Reggie stood and took one step toward the bathroom. He stopped, looking back toward the screen, waiting to hear if there was any more than what he had heard on the summary channel—hoping to hear that it was all some dreadful mistake. Thirty seconds of listening convinced him that he had heard everything that was known on Coventry, so he continued across the room and opened the bathroom door.

  “Ida!”

  “What?” She stuck her head out around the shower curtain.

  “Federation ships overhead. It looks like an invasion.” His voice was nowhere near as measured as the words. Reggie felt as if he had lost control over the tone and timbre of his voice.

  Ida’s face went blank. Then she showed a confusion of expressions, as if she could not decide whether Reggie was serious—as impossible as the idea of an invasion sounded—or if he was playing some sort of bizarre joke. “Are you serious?”

  “I’m afraid so. It’s all over the news.”

  “I’ll be out in a minute.”

  By the time Ida joined her husband, still toweling herself dry, the first reports of landings had been received.

  “Apparently,” the news reader said, “none of the Spacehawks of our Home Defense Force have managed to get off of the ground to contest the landings. It does appear that our forces would be hopelessly outmatched in any case. The situation seems very confused. That may be largely due to the difficulties we are having in collecting accurate information.” The news reader’s professionalism started to slip. The comforting monotone broke. His voice started to climb in pitch, and the hand holding his copy trembled a little. He paused for a moment to collect himself, then resumed aftertaking a deep breath and glancing at someone or something off camera.

  “We are still attempting to contact officials from the governor’s office to learn more definitive details, as well as to find out what course of action the citizens of Coventry should take. For the moment, all we can do is suggest a commonsense response, to urge everyone to remain calm and to remain inside your homes. If you are elsewhere, it would most likely be advisable for you to remain where you are until we get clarification of the situation from the government. If you are outside, seek shelter and remain tuned in. We will bring you the news, and any information from the government, as quickly as it becomes available, for as long as we are able to.”

  “This simply cannot be happening,” Ida said, sitting on the edge of the bed. Her eyes were open wide. Her mouth sagged open. She looked from her husband to the complink and back. “This can’t be real.”

  “They wouldn’t dare broadcast this if it weren’t real,” Reggie said with a helpless shrug of his arms.

  “But what can we do?”

  Reggie felt more powerless than he possibly could have looked. “I don’t have the foggiest idea, dear. I’m no soldier. And I don’t think we have enough soldiers to do any good. You heard what he said. None of our Spacehawk fighters have got off the ground even.”

  A soldier? Reggie Bailey was far from that. If asked for his occupation, he might say “architect” or “gentleman farmer” depending on his mood and what he was doing at the moment. He worked at both, but not with any great intensity. Like most people, he did a little farming, and, occasionally, he did design a building on commission, and saw those projects through to completion. It brought in enough money to give his family the extras that normal maintenance did not provide.

  “An invasion?” Ida still could not accept the idea.

  “An invasion,” Reggie repeated. He felt almost numb. The concept was, or had been, unthinkable. Coventry was one of the core worlds of the Second Commonwealth, lessthan ei
ght light-years from Buckingham, the capital world of the Commonwealth, with dozens of planets, and dozens of light-years, separating them from any of the worlds controlled by the Confederation of Human Worlds. It just can’t be, Reggie thought.

  Ida stood, careless of the bath towel that fell to the floor. For a moment, she stood in the middle of the bedroom, naked, undecided what she should do next—put on her nightgown or get fully dressed again.

  “What do we do?” she asked, turning toward her husband, who was still sitting on the bed staring at the monitor.

  He gestured at the complink. “Do what he said, I guess. Stay inside and wait for the government to tell us what to do.” Wait for the government to tell us what to do. They’ll know. They’ll…

  “What if they can’t?”

  “Who can’t what? The net can’t tell us what the government says, or the government can’t tell us what we should do?”

  “Either! Both! What do we do, you and I? What about the children? We have to decide what we’re going to do if we don’t hear from the government soon enough. Or what we’ll do if the government’s advice doesn’t sound … proper.”

  Reggie stood slowly and moved to his wife. His thoughts seemed mired, unable to travel beyond what he heard, looping back through the same data over and over. Absentmindedly, he put his arms around Ida. “The only gun we have is my old shotgun, and I don’t think we’ve got more than a single box of shells for that.”

  Ida pushed away from him. “What the devil are you talking about? What do you think you’re going to do, stand off an entire army? Listen to what you’re saying.”

  “What do you want me to say? I don’t know what to do about this any more than fifty million other people on Coventry.” He stared at her, not even noticing that she was naked. “Who ever thought something like this could happen? I mean, here. I’ll check downstairs, make sure the doors and windows are locked. See if you can get anythinglocal on the link. Maybe they aren’t anywhere near Hawthorne.”