A Question of Faith: A Castle Federation Novella

by Glynn Stewart

“But there’s an Imperial embassy on Castle with a q-com to their switchboard. I wouldn’t want to bounce tactical coms through that many relays, but you can at least talk to the woman and tell her that we didn’t blow up Iceni.

  “Let’s put the question of faith to the test before the only failure state is fire and death!”

  8

  “The situation in the Boudicca System is—”

  “Far too complicated for us to play diplomatic games, ambassador,” Darius snapped, cutting off the man in the insignia-less black uniform in his head. Ambassador Reto von Argent was a classic member of the Imperium’s Elector class. There were strong expectations of military and civil service that came along with the “von” in the middle of the man’s name, and Reto von Argent had met them all.

  “Insufficient data is making it back to either of our home systems for a final decision to be made. Only the people here and now have enough information to decide the fate of a star system that could change everything.”

  The Federation had strict policies over how much intervention the Senate would take in an active engagement. By making contact with the home system, Darius was putting his entire plan—all of his decisions and actions—at risk of being countermanded.

  Only tradition was protecting him now—tradition and the fact that his potential delusion was the only chance to avoid a war.

  “I cannot provide you with a q-com link to a military officer in an operational zone, Admiral,” von Argent finally said. “Your request is beyond unreasonable. I’m surprised your government even put you in contact with me.”

  “They didn’t,” Darius told the other man. “I’m linked to you thanks to a personal favor. I am risking everything, Ambassador, in a grand gamble. On faith.”

  “Then I really don’t think I can help you,” the ambassador replied, but his tone had shifted. The tragic hero, sacrificing everything for the greater good…that was an image with weight in Imperial culture.

  “My faith is in your Imperator’s honor, Ambassador von Argent. If you share that faith, you have to realize that the best chance for peace is for von Santiago and me to speak directly and avoid a conflict.

  “Or do you know that your Imperium has set us all on a course for war?” he asked gently.

  Von Argent had clearly been about to disconnect but he stopped now, leaning back in his chair and studying Darius Moonblood’s image.

  “We have fought your Federation before,” he said quietly. Like Darius, von Argent had served in at least one of those battles. “We know your blood, your iron.”

  “You’ve fought me, Ambassador,” Darius pointed out. “Trust my honor, if nothing else. I have faith in the honor of Coraline. I don’t believe your people killed tens of millions that they were sworn to protect. Do you for one void-cursed second believe we did?”

  “The conversation you suggest could easily be read as treason by all three of us,” von Argent told him, his voice still soft and quiet.

  “Von Santiago doesn’t have to take my call,” Darius replied. “You’re the ambassador. Desperate grasps for peace are your job.”

  He smiled.

  “And I am very old. If my career, my freedom—even my life are the price my Federation demands for a desperate attempt at peace, so be it. I have given my life to the Federation. Why should I stop now?”

  Von Argent was silent for a good minute.

  “How long until you’re in weapons range, Admiral?” he asked.

  “You know I can’t answer that question,” Darius replied.

  “No time, then, to ask others or get permission,” the ambassador concluded. “What’s the Montrose quote, Admiral? Your people have always been fond of it.”

  “‘He either fears his fate too much, / Or his deserts are small, / That puts it not unto the touch, / To gain or lose it all,’” Darius quoted. “You’ll connect me?”

  “I might well still hang for this, Darius Moonblood. But I know Jacob von Coral—and you are right. I have faith in his honor.

  “I will connect you to Admiral von Santiago.

  The connection took less time than Darius was expecting. Despite von Argent’s recognition of the time constraints, he’d still expected the ambassador to run the effort by someone.

  Instead, he found himself looking at the rotating seal of the Coraline Imperial Navy battleship Resolution while the computers connected them.

  A moment later, a stunning pale-skinned woman with raven-black hair appeared in front of him. Like his own image, it was separated from her surroundings to conceal the flag deck she was sitting on, but he recognized her from file footage.

  “Ambassador, this is not the time for…” She trailed off as she processed his image. His uniform was probably the most immediate thing she recognized, but Darius doubted that Admiral von Santiago didn’t know who he was.

  “This is the only time for talking, Admiral von Santiago,” Darius told her. “Before one or both of us makes a mistake that cannot be undone and sets our nations on a course that we cannot retreat from without bloodshed.”

  “This is a diplomatic override channel,” von Santiago snapped. “What the fuck are you doing on it? This is treason!”

  “It’s treason if I’m wrong, maybe,” Darius replied. “But then, if I’m wrong, I have misjudged your Imperator, your nation and you—and blasting your fleet to debris would be my moral duty.

  “So, I must ask, Admiral von Santiago. Is the wreckage behind me an Imperial covert operation?”

  She stared at him.

  “I arrive in this system to a bombed ally and Federation troops landing in the wreckage, and you have the gall, the audacity, to ask if I am responsible for your atrocities?” she snarled. “You will pay for the blood you have shed, Moonblood. I will burn you down and dance in your ashes.”

  If von Santiago was lying, she was one of the better actors he’d ever met. With the diplomatic override channel, Darius was getting a level of emotional sideband that would never be shared with a potential enemy—and as he realized that, he consciously activated it on his side.

  Because if she wasn’t his enemy, he needed to make her see that. The fact that the channel was still open suggested there was a chance.

  “I didn’t do this, von Santiago,” he said, his words soft and urgent. “Someone hijacked and sabotaged the Boudiccans’ orbital defenses. I’m here for the same reason you are: to investigate the destruction of Defiant and honor our promises to protect this system.

  “My people are convinced you did this, that all of this is a false-flag operation to justify you attacking us. Since they know we didn’t do it, they only see one player.”

  “I only see one enemy on my screens, one man who burned a city and lies to cover—”

  The neural implant recorded everything. There was no line between Darius’s organic memory and his molecular circuitry chips that augmented it. Pulling everything he’d seen while the platforms fired on Iceni from his memories was the work of moments—the moments he was using to convince von Santiago he wasn’t a villain.

  A military channel wouldn’t have let him dump that recording through it. But this was still a diplomatic channel, and von Santiago’s voice cut off as she processed what he’d sent.

  It wasn’t just what he’d seen and heard. It was what he’d felt. A recording could be faked, even the emotional channels…but she was in a channel with those same emotional sidebands talking to him at that moment.

  Either she would believe him or she wouldn’t. He had nothing else he could provide, not without more time.

  “My god in heaven,” she finally whispered. “This was not us, Admiral Moonblood. But if I accept that it was not you, I am left with more questions than answers…and still with a shattered city that cries out for vengeance.

  “I want to believe you, Admiral Moonblood,” she told him. “But there is no one else. These lies are…”

  “You know I’m not lying,” he said. “Someone else did this. Someone who destroyed Defiant.
Someone who wants a war between the Imperium and the Federation. I believe that your people didn’t do this. I know mine didn’t.

  “Someone else is here.”

  “We need to prove that.”

  “I know. I have a plan.”

  9

  At the speeds the two fleets were closing, it would take over twenty minutes to cross missile range and less than a minute to cross mass-driver range.

  While Darius wished for a missile that could survive the multi-million-gravity of a capital-ship mass drive for long enough to be fired from his main guns, right now they were secondary to the calculation at play. Not a single missile dotted the display as the two fleets, fourteen battleships in total, lunged toward each other.

  “Have I mentioned this is an incredibly stupid idea, sir?” Barre said calmly, watching the range numbers tick down.

  “You have,” Darius confirmed, his tone equally calm.

  “Then may I reiterate that this is the most Voids-told awful, potentially insane plan I have ever heard anyone come up with?”

  “We have the positron lances. They don’t,” he pointed out. “Are the targeting parameters laid in?”

  “They are. I may have received an unexpected lesson in old Czech, German and Lakota profanity along the way,” Barre replied. “I don’t think your Captains are impressed with your plan either.”

  Darius smirked.

  “I did not live to be the Federation’s oldest and most respected admiral to be intimidated by Captains a third of my age, Commander Barre,” he told her. “But I am the Federation’s oldest and most respected Admiral, so they will obey my orders.”

  “Eloquently, but yes.”

  “Good.” The range was now just over a million kilometers and shrinking at over twenty thousand kilometers a second. “Get me the Captains on a channel. Fleet orders.”

  She nodded to him a moment later.

  “Captains, you have most of your orders already,” Darius told them. “We flip once we pass the Imperials and begin emergency deceleration at Tier Three thrust levels to sustain weapons range for as long as possible.”

  “Best case, sir, we’re going to spread out to hell and gone over a couple hundred thousand kilometers,” Captain Jamison pointed out.

  “Stay inside the range of Vagabond’s lances,” Darius ordered. Ten seconds left. “I know you all think this plan is mad, but I assure you of this: Captain Michaud is ready to correct affairs if they go off script.”

  Five seconds. Only silence answered him on the channel.

  “To the right war, Captains. Stars guide our way.”

  Range.

  Even with the powerful mass manipulators playing games with the mass of the projectiles and the gravity around them, a thousand-meter mass driver accelerating a projectile up to a hundred thousand kilometers a second was a loud and obvious event.

  Vagabond vibrated around Darius as her solitary spinal gun opened up. New icons flashed across the big holodisplay on the flag deck and his own virtual displays. None of those icons were certain, not with an inactive projectile, but they could at least estimate impact time.

  Lasers flared across the screen, thin white lines drawn in by computers to represent invisible beams. Some slugs were knocked aside. Others were going to hit their targets, and Darius winced as Vagabond’s armored hull rang like a bell.

  “Eleven-degree deflection hit, no damage, we’re venting deck seven gray-water tanks,” a voice said in his mind from the ship’s tactical network.

  Both his fleet and von Santiago’s were spewing gases and volatiles now, the gouts of superheated steam that could mark critical damage.

  “Denmark is dark. Poland is dark.”

  Barre’s litany of names was a grim reminder. Each name was marked by a grayed out icon on the screen and gouts of further volatiles.

  He didn’t know the names of the ships on von Santiago’s side suffering the same fate, but three of the Imperial battleships were out of the fight as the two fleets slid past each other at just over a hundred thousand kilometers’ separation. Secondary mass drivers were in play now, and several more impacts shook Vagabond.

  “No damage, no damage,” the engineering officer on the tactical net announced. “Venting atmosphere from nine decks.”

  “England is dark,” Barre announced, then exhaled a sigh a moment later. “Out of range. We’re accelerating to reclose the engagement. Von Santiago is down three as well. We made a righteous mess of things, sir.”

  Darius nodded silently, his attention riveted somewhere else. The battle had been a show. Had the right people been watching?

  “Did we learn anything?” he asked.

  “Yeah. You know that assumption that the Imperium doesn’t have positron lances?” his ops officer asked. “Resolution might be a flying egg instead of a proper arrowhead, but she’s only got one main gun. Just like Vagabond.”

  Egg was a rather dismissive description of the elongated ovoid that was the Imperium’s standard ship design, but the point stood. If Resolution only had one mass driver, she’d traded the mass for something.

  But, like Vagabond, she hadn’t fired those guns. The entire engagement had been “fought” with old-style weapons.

  “We’ve got them!”

  Darius’s gaze and mental attention snapped to the speaker, a junior tactical analyst in Barre’s department who probably shouldn’t have shouted so loud.

  “I have twelve battleships moving in the asteroid belt,” the analyst reported. “Q-probes have confirmed power up of Class One mass manipulators, A-S jump imminent.”

  “They’re not running,” Darius said aloud.

  “Every sensor in this system that can see what happens next is focused on Iceni,” Barre replied. “If we and von Santiago die, they get their war.”

  “They’d have to wipe out a lot of civilian shipping to be sure, but there are no other A-S ships in the system and the only q-coms left are aboard our vessels,” Darius agreed. “If they do this right, both of us would think the other side had reinforcements.”

  “Estimate jump in ten seconds,” the analyst reported. “The asteroids are screwing up vectors, but they’re definitely coming in-system toward us and the Imperials.”

  “What do we do?” Barre asked softly.

  “Order all ships to load missiles and set Imperial IFFs as friendly in our systems,” Fleet Admiral Darius Moonblood ordered, his voice level and calm. “If our real enemy is so kind as to show themselves, let’s teach them why you don’t fuck with our protectorates!”

  Darius didn’t even know for sure who the strangers were. He could guess—the list of people with a reason to send a dozen battleships to try to start a war between the Imperium and the Federation was short. The list of people at least theoretically able to was longer…but the overlap was very, very small.

  At least in his head, it consisted of one name: the Terran Commonwealth. The wonderfully democratic, egalitarian and aggressively expansionist nation at the heart of human space. The people absolutely convinced it was their righteous duty to bring all of humanity into one unified state.

  No matter how many had to die to create their ideal world.

  “Bandits have entered warped space, estimated emergence…now.”

  Barre had it perfectly. So, it appeared, did their presumably Terran opponents. With twelve ships against eight, they’d had enough overwhelming firepower to split their forces. Seven ships appeared a quarter-million kilometers away from von Santiago’s five “survivors.” Five appeared a similar distance from Darius’s fleet.

  There was no call to surrender. No attempt to negotiate. Mass drivers fired the moment they emerged…and Darius didn’t even need to give an order.

  “All ships engaging,” Barre reported. “Missiles launching.” She paused. “System requires validation for positron-lance deployment.”

  “Verified.”

  The single word hung in the flag deck like the Sword of Damocles—and then Vagabond’s true main batt
ery fired in anger at last.

  Each of Vagabond’s four broadsides was equipped with six quarter-megaton-per-second positron lances. Twenty-four beams of pure antimatter flashed across space at the speed of light, and the closest unknown battleship died.

  And Darius’s people didn’t let up. Even as the three “survivors” of the clash with the Imperials unleashed their missiles on the fleet attacking them, the ships that had gone dark brought their systems back online.

  The Terrans had been watching from light-minutes away, unable to move q-probes close enough for certainty without giving away the game. When a dozen-plus ships had vented atmosphere and volatile gases, it had created enough confusion to cover the fact that the ships shutting down their engines hadn’t been disabled or destroyed.

  There hadn’t been a single real hit in the entire “battle” against von Santiago’s fleet, and the six ships that had supposedly died now came back online with a vengeance, flinging mass-driver and missile fire into the teeth of their new enemies.

  “Imperial missiles look equivalent to ours,” Barre reported as gigaton-range explosions pocked the force attacking von Santiago. “Resolution’s positron lances are lighter, if that makes anyone feel better.”

  “Not really,” Darius murmured, watching as von Santiago’s flagship lunged at two Terran battleships, absorbing direct hits from their main guns to line up her positron lances and obliterate both ships.

  Vagabond was doing equally deadly work. The two positron-lance-equipped ships were worth more than the rest of the combined fleets. As Darius watched them cut through the Terrans, he was grimly certain he was watching a revolution in action.

  The missiles were helping…but the lances were carrying the day.

  “Enemy missile launch!” Barre snapped. “Remaining enemy ships are launching AM-drive missiles; I have over sixty new contacts.”

  “Lasers?” Darius asked calmly.

  “Already tracking,” she reported as a third battleship died under Vagabond’s guns. “Last bandits are turning to run. Your orders, sir?”