The Horde ships tended to burn brightly after taking critical levels of damage; their preferred atmospheric mix was high in oxygen, and they carried huge containers of high-pressure volatiles in their holds. When their shields and armor were pierced, each colorfully-painted vessel became a fireball in short order.
The remaining pirates tried to fight, shooting back at their tormentors with a wild variety of weapons and unleashing several hundred ship-killing missiles. Most of the incoming fire was swallowed by the Americans’ warp shields without achieving anything; the few leakers or lucky hits didn’t inflict even cosmetic damage on the cruisers. The missile barrage was as badly coordinated as everything else, and the cruisers’ point-defense batteries destroyed them all long before they covered half the distance between the two formations.
After the utterly uneven exchange resulted in another dozen kills, a few of the more foolish or desperate warlords tried to jump into warp, which only hastened their demise. Engaging FTL engines took time and energy; an undamaged ship with a well-trained crew could perform the maneuver in under five minutes, if one diverted most of its power to that purpose, leaving it all but defenseless. In the Horde’s case, weakening their shields only provided the Navy gunners with easier targets. The last two volleys from the squadron immolated every last pirate vessel in the system. The final score was Navy 34, Horde 0.
“Maintain course. We will scan the debris for survivors, then clear potential navigational hazards.”
In the unlikely event that any Horde raiders still lived in those blazing hulls, they would be shot on sight. For untold millennia, the space nomads had murdered and enslaved billions of Starfarers, and every civilization in the known galaxy had only one method of dealing with them. The Horde didn’t negotiate and never surrendered. For once, Kerensky was glad of the simplicity of choices facing him. He wasn’t feeling particularly merciful. What little mercy had been in his soul was left behind at Heinlein-Five, along with his honor.
He found it highly doubtful that he would ever regain them.
* * *
Kerensky was going over the after-action report when the courier ship arrived.
The actual AAR had been easy enough to generate, of course. The operation had been carried off flawlessly, thanks to an incompetent enemy force and well-drilled crews. He couldn’t help adding his own thoughts about the strategic import of the event, however. The Horde probe was worrisome, not in itself but because of what the pirates’ appearance meant.
McCormick System was an American backwater, an island of civilization in a largely unexplored frontier. The raiders had come from the only Starfarer-occupied warp line in the system, one belonging to the Botari, colloquially known as the Blue Men for reasons obvious to anyone who saw them. That meant the Blues had let the Horde flotilla travel through their space unmolested, in violation of the non-aggression pact they’d signed with the US almost a century ago. Another friendly neutral had turned against the US.
Botari and humans had never been at war; they’d worked together during the Gremlin Conflict, and been peaceful trade partners ever since the two polities had come into direct contact, shortly after humanity defeated the Risshah and took over their ley line network. They’d had as good a relationship as any other species other than the Puppies.
And none of that mattered worth a damn, he thought bitterly.
Granted, the Blue Men were loosely organized, more of a confederation than an actual nation-state, and the local satraps had a reputation as mavericks if not outright rogues. The kind of robber baron types that might have sold the Horde the hulls used in their flagship, say. But letting pirates stage a raid through a warp gateway under their control was an indisputably unfriendly act, and something that the Greater Botari Council would have to punish forcefully – provided it hadn’t allowed it to happen. There would be excuses and pretexts aplenty, but the reality was that a raiding party of that size couldn’t have forced its way to McCormick without massive neglect or outright complicity.
In either case, Kerensky’s conclusion was that this sector could no longer be considered safe. A cruiser squadron wasn’t enough to guarantee the safety of the one million inhabitants of McCormick System, let alone the other three million colonists scattered across six stars further down its second warp chain. The nearest openly hostile polity, the Lhan Arkh Congress, was twelve warp transits away, too far to push through a substantial force, but if the Blue Men let even a few enemy squadrons through…
Images of devastated Heinlein-Five flashed through his mind. 14,873,097. That number, never to be forgotten or forgiven.
The US was running out of friends. The Hrauwah still hadn’t committed to a formal alliance, although after the US had seized Xanadu System their supplies were flowing into human space at an increased rate. That helped, but having the Royal Fleet join in the fun would help a lot more. Through the few contacts Kerensky still had in the Navy, he’d heard that other Starfarer civilizations had stepped up the pressure on the Puppies, pressure that included threats of war if they intervened directly in the conflict. Plenty of polities who weren’t willing to join the crusade against humanity were still happy to give aid and comfort to it.
We are not a numerous people, and nobody loves us.
The first time Kerensky had heard that phrase had been during a speech by Vice-President Olsen some eighty years ago, but he was sure the VP had been quoting somebody else. The statement’s truth remained self-evident, no matter who’d said it. There were eight billion humans in the universe, and only two billion or so lived under the American flag. The actual belligerents in the conflict outnumbered humanity fifty to one. If all major civilizations turned against it, the odds would become over five hundred to one.
Kerensky shook his head. Worrying about the overall strategic picture might have been part of his job when he was CINC-Five, but that part of his life was over. He’d all but begged for a command, even if that meant becoming the skipper of a logistics vessel in some galactic backwater. Getting a squadron to call his own was more than he deserved. They even let him keep his rank, but he was a five-star admiral in name only.
He went back and deleted most of his insights into the political situation from the report. There were plenty other people with that job, men and women untainted by the decimation of a Sector Fleet and the loss of 14,873,097 civilians. Instead, Kerensky dutifully listed the officers and spacers he wanted to nominate for commendation and promotion. He could do that much, at least.
The FLASH priority message interrupted his work. A courier frigate had arrived in-system, bearing what were almost certainly bad news.
“Commander Grayson from Naval Operations wishes to meet with you.” The report from the bridge arrived seconds behind the eyes-only transmission saying the same thing.
“Have him escorted to my office as soon as he arrives on board.”
He closed his eyes, but he could still see that damned number.
* * *
Kerensky had met Commander Alfred Grayson before. The Navy troubleshooter normally could have stepped out of a recruiting video. Tall, blonde and fit, with a dimpled chin and an aura of almost insolent self-confidence about him, the man usually looked completely unflappable. His salute was crisp and his posture perfect, but something in his eyes betrayed the officer’s frayed nerves. He was the bearer of very bad news indeed. Something had happened, and it was dire enough to require a face-to-face meeting instead of even a highly-encrypted ship transmission.
“If I may, Admiral?” Grayson said after both men had exchanged the usual military pleasantries and sat down. “I have a classified communique to upload.”
“Go ahead.”
The sealed orders were sent via direct laser-comm and uploaded into his imp in a couple of seconds, mostly spent in validation and de-encryption procedures. They were short and to the point, and as stunning as a blow to the head.
“Congratulations, Admiral,” the commander said when Kerensky regained his composur
e and looked up.
“I’m to leave CRURON 23 and report back to Earth to assume command of…” he said, trying to ascertain if what he’d just read was true and not some implant-generated fantasy.
“Of Seventh Fleet, sir. I am to escort you there and assist you in any way you require until you assemble your personal staff.”
“Why?” Kerensky blurted out.
“It’s all in the attached report, sir. But to summarize, the Navy was targeted by a series of covert decapitation strikes. The assigned commander of Seventh Fleet, Admiral Henderson, was killed. Admirals DuPont, Conway, Finnegan and Herrera are also dead.”
“I see,” Kerensky said as he mentally scanned the reams of attached information he’d been too stunned to review.
He was glad to be sitting down.
The assassins claimed to belong to the Galactic Justice Army, a terrorist organization comprised mainly of human renegades. They were the kind of nutjobs that believed humanity was a cancer on Earth and the universe at large, and thus deserved to be exterminated. They’d never amounted to much, being about as popular as leprosy-inducing herpes among the general public, not to mention ruthlessly hunted by Homeland Security, so this was most likely a false-flag operation.
Starfarers abhorred decapitation strikes, since retaliation in kind would ensure anybody espousing such tactics would come to their own untimely end. As a war-winning move, the tactic wasn’t all that effective, either. That made it pointless, not to mention nekulturny. A polity whose survival depended on an individual or a few people was doomed without resorting to such unsavory methods. Assassinations just weren’t done. Except the enemy had just crossed that line, and in this case it might accomplish something substantial.
The initial attack had taken place during a meeting at the Hexagon in New Washington. How the GJA had managed to smuggle a bomb powerful enough to level a huge section of the highly-secure building remained a mystery. Within the ensuing seventy-two-hours, several assassin teams had struck across American space. The commanders of Second and Third Fleet had been murdered; other attempts on similar targets had been thwarted, although casualties and collateral damage had been heavy. Bombs, snipers and poison had all been used liberally. Admiral Sondra Givens of Sixth Fleet, a close friend of Kerensky’s, had barely escaped with her life.
No civilian leader had been targeted. This made sense if the attacks’ objective was purely military. While politicians were a dime a dozen, the experience and skills of those dead admirals wouldn’t be so easily replaced.
“The Lampreys,” he said. That sort of underhanded move just smacked of the treacherous bastards.
“That is everyone’s assumption, sir,” Commander Grayson said. “Although the Galactic Imperium cannot be discounted as a suspect. Just because the Gimps would never normally do this doesn’t mean much, sir. They consider this conflict a holy war of sorts after all.”
Kerensky nodded. “And when the enemy is the Devil, any and all measures can be contemplated.” The Imperium wasn’t given to religious mania, but humans had inspired them beyond logic or reason.
“The ETs won’t get a second chance,” Commander Grayson continued. “The War Powers Act passed Congress a few days before the attacks, and all likely alien sympathizers have been rounded up. A few assassins were captured alive, and interrogation uncovered some of their support network. Between that and improved security measures, the likelihood of another attack is near-zero, sir.”
Kerensky knew the reality behind the bloodless words: humans and aliens seized by grim-faced Homeland Security agents and dragged off into the night. Invariably, some of them would be innocent of anything beyond voicing the wrong ideas on social media. Collateral damage wasn’t limited to the front lines.
“In any case, the damage is already done,” he said out loud. “The bench is empty and they’ll give even a disgraced admiral a chance.”
“Sir, with all due respect, you are doing yourself a disservice. I studied the Heinlein campaign in detail at Naval Ops. Nobody blames you for what happened to Fifth Fleet.”
I do.
He didn’t voice that thought, however. Kerensky knew that he’d been broken by that defeat, and was no good for anything for several months after that. When he’d gotten over that funk, he had been happy to accept any sort of posting. The Hewer Administration – or Hewer Regime, as it was informally known – couldn’t afford the political capital needed to give a defeated admiral a major fleet command. Until now.
“Admiral Carruthers survived the attack on the Hexagon. He ordered me to ask you one question personally. Off the record.”
Kerensky nodded, turning off his imp’s recorders. Carruthers had been his mentor, and most likely the man who’d engineered this reassignment.
“Go ahead.”
“His words were: ‘Are you ready?’”
A simple question, deserving of a simple answer. The job was his for the taking. Assume control of Seventh Fleet, the force that would interpose itself between the vast Gal-Imp armada pushing implacably through Wyrm space towards its ultimate target: Sol System, the cradle of humanity, its largest population center and the fulcrum upon which his nation and species rested.
Could he handle a fleet command, one bigger than the last one, a command where the stakes were orders of magnitude greater? If he lost, it wouldn’t be fifteen million civilians who paid the price. It’d be six billion on Sol System alone, and a billion among all the systems in between. Seven warp transits between the edge of Wyrm space and Earth. Seven chances to stop the invaders cold, terminating at humanity’s doorstep.
“Yes, I am.”
Honor and compassion might be beyond him, but he might be able to achieve a measure of redemption.
USN Fighter Strike Tactics Instructor Program, Lahiri System, AFC 167
Emergence.
It was chaos and old night out there. The looming shape of a Lamprey dreadnought, all three kilometers of it, flashed like a Christmas tree: each burst of light marked a weapon hardpoint spitting death downrange. Not a welcoming sight when you pop out of warp close enough to see the target with the naked eye. Sort of like starting a knife fight with a grizzly bear.
Eat shit and die.
Lieutenant Gus ‘Bingo’ Chandler cut loose with two shots from his main gun while he thought his evil thoughts, cycling the weapon as fast as it could go, three seconds from the first shot to the next. The Lamprey’s force fields and composite armor buckled and burst open, spewing flames and sheer radiance; Gus vanished from the universe just as a dozen point-defense laser beams descended upon him like the angry glare of some pagan god.
Transition.
Blessed silence for a change. The smart guys at Medical had finally worked out Gus’ Melange dosage, and he could enjoy warp space once again. Somewhere not too far away, four of the other five pilots in his flight were there as well, all fine and dandy, cool as so many cucumbers. Problem was, the fifth one wasn’t cool at all.
It’s coming for meeee!
The thought came out as an endless scream, a psychic sound like nails on a chalkboard. Sounded like Martin ‘SOL’ Soledad was getting tagged by a Foo. Not good.
“Beta Flight, continue transit.” The steady voice of Lieutenant Commander Deborah ‘Grinner’ Genovisi cut through the screaming and the growing panic among the other pilots. “I got this.”
Gus had seen the spooky flight leader pull plenty of rabbits out of her proverbial hat; he didn’t even try to argue with her orders and concentrated on arriving at his preset destination. Grinner would get SOL out, or neither of them would come out of warp. There was nothing the rest of the flight could do to change that outcome, except by adding their name to the casualty list.
Emergence.
Another massive object filled his screen, but it was a welcome sight this time: the USS Schwarzenegger, a converted Governor-class cruiser deemed too fragile for actual combat and relegated to the role of training carrier vessel. He’d made it home yet again.
Five other fighters arrived within one second of his, including Grinner and SOL. The warp witch had pulled it off again. She might be spooky as hell, but she’d saved the lives of everyone on Flight B at least once, which made her a damn good witch. She’d also kept many of them from a medical discharge, followed by some time in sick bay while the docs put their brains back together. You didn’t just risk your life when you signed up for TOPGUN: your mind and possibly your soul also ended up on the table.
The training sortie had been successful, at least. The simulated Lamprey ship was dead in space, a confirmed ‘kill.’ If this had been for real, everyone on Flight B could paint the silhouette of the dreadnought on their War Eagles’ fuselage. Too bad it was all for show. Especially since they’d almost lost a guy – KIA or MIA in warp, you were just as gone as if this had been actual combat.
“Sorry guys,” SOL sent out through their t-wave link. “Kinda lost it there for a second.”
Training or not, the fact they were making actual warp jumps – no way to simulate those – made those sorties almost as dangerous as actual combat missions. No flak meant you couldn’t die on this side of the universe, but the other side remained ‘dark and full of terrors,’ in the words of some pre-Contact writer one of their instructors was fond of quoting.
“Shit happens,” Grinner said. The flight leader’s mental voice was as cool and collected as her real-life one. In the six months since she’d assumed command of Flight B, Fourth Squadron, Fourth Carrier Space Wing, she’d put her hard-earned experience to good use, whipping everyone into shape. Most of them had gotten their flight wings a fairly recently. The TOPGUN program was brand-new; CSW-4’s aviators came from the first graduating class of the SFTI program, and they needed all the training they could get before they went into actual combat.
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