“We think they may be trying to blind us against another force moving in.”
“From where? There’s nothing here except us and the planet.”
The intel chief straightened. “Sir, there could be a force hiding behind the planet. We wouldn’t be able to see them there.”
Pinoy pivoted to the holotable. “Planetary scale view.”
The operator projected the fleet and Corwynt into the air over the table.
“That would explain the fighter ambush,” said Admiral Pinoy. “It’s too weak to stop us. But as preparation for a long-range missile engagement . . . it makes sense.”
“How many ships could they hide there?” asked Yeager worriedly.
“More than they could possibly have,” answered Pinoy. “But they don’t need that many. If our sensors are crippled, we could be defeated by a force a quarter our size. If they can intercept our missiles and we can’t see theirs . . . it might take less than a quarter.”
“Can we spare some ships for a probe of the blind zone?” asked Ruslov.
“Possibly. What’s the level of thruster damage in our fleet?”
An aide produced a tablet listing ships reduced to half or three-quarter acceleration. Pinoy studied it, then nodded. “That’s what they were up to in the first part of the attack. We’d have to let them control the range or leave dozens of ships behind to be picked off.”
The officers around the table fell silent.
The admiral thought a moment. “We’ll need to retreat now. Make sure we have enough of a head start that they can’t catch up to us in hyperspace.”
“Retreat?” burst out Yeager. “While we’re winning?”
The staffers close enough to hear the argument froze solid.
“Your excellency,” said Admiral Pinoy, “the fighters are bait.”
He pointed at the holographic Corwynt. “That is the trap. The more bait we eat, the more the trap will hurt us.”
“No!” Yeager slammed a fist down on the holotable. Its smooth surface cracked. All the floating images turned blue.
“I!” His fist slammed the table again.
“Need!” Slam.
“A!” Slam.
“Victory!” The surface shattered under his fist. All the holograms vanished.
The flag bridge was silent. The officers around the ruined table locked their eyes on the blood dripping from Yeager’s hand.
Admiral Pinoy licked his dry lips. “Bridge. I’m sorry. We tried to be clever. The barbarians were more clever. I can’t give you a victory here. Let me join up with Force Cape. We’ll pound the barbarians out in empty space. No tricks, no maneuvers, just hitting our heads together until their skull breaks. It’ll be ugly and expensive, but I can bring you a victory.”
The only sounds on the flag bridge were Yeager’s panting and the sizzle of blood drops meeting live wires.
The governor slumped. “Do it.”
Admiral Pinoy pivoted toward Operations. “All ships transition to hyperspace at once! Rendezvous at Point Azure!”
***
Marcus closed on the enemy fighter. This one was a sleek dart, optimized for hyperspace. It wiggled back and forth as he approached, trying to evade. He burst into laughter.
“What’s funny, boss?” asked the gunner.
“It has fins waving around. It’s trying to turn by pushing on aether.”
Jack chuckled. “Not doing it much good here, is it.”
“Nope. Could probably turn rings around us in hyperspace. But here, it should’ve stayed on the carrier.”
One close range shot blew it away.
Marcus looked around for targets. Lots of warships. Another hyperspace fighter. Damn few friendlies. He picked a cruiser leaking air and started toward it.
A shimmer, and there were just stars where the cruiser had been. The Censorial fleet was gone. There were two cripples left, attracting vengeful Corwyntis. And the hyperspace fighter.
The Censy fighter didn’t even try to evade as they dispatched it. Maybe the pilot was in shock at being abandoned in the midst of his enemies.
Marcus wondered if it would be worth trying to take the two crippled warships prisoner. They were both expanding debris before he thought of a way to do it.
“Bethan, start the chain of command running. We need to know how many birds have enough juice left to make it home. Also, who’s low on air or other problems.”
“Aye-aye.”
He decelerated Winning Wynny to stationary relative to the rest of the fighter wings. They were dispersing, evading battle debris and then evading each other’s evasions.
Suddenly Marcus realized he was very thirsty. A bottle of juice was clipped under his console, more refreshing than the stale water in his pressure suit. He emptied it in one pull.
“Reports are coming in, sir,” said Bethan. “I’m still trying to find who’s in command of Seventh Wing.”
“Thank you.” Marcus hurt. Not just the gash on his cheek. All his muscles ached. And his back. This was as bad as after the battle in Bundoran, even without running up three hundred feet of stairs.
Jeuan was trying to say a prayer of thanks. Jac interrupted with dirty jokes. Bethan made them both hush so she could work. None of it required an officer.
Marcus roused enough to do some calculations. Winning Wynny could make it back to Corwynt, if they didn’t mind taking three days and coasting most of the way. The leak had only cost them half their reserve air. They’d be drinking recycled piss. That wasn’t new.
“Sir, I have a status report.”
“Yes?”
“We have just over four hundred operational fighters. Search and rescue operations are in progress. The wing and group leaders have divided volumes for SAR. And, um, I haven’t found anyone from Seventh Wing.”
“No leaders?” asked Marcus.
“No anyone, sir.” Bethan’s voice had been calmly professional. It cracked as she said that.
“God damn,” said Marcus. “Not one left?”
Jac said, “I believe it. No practice with evasive maneuvers. No fighter versus fighter exercises. They weren’t ready for this knife fight.”
“I should have left them on Corwynt.”
“Would we have lived if you had?” asked Jeuan. “They fired five hundred missiles at the start of the fight. That may have been the difference between this and the Censies running over us on the way to home.”
“That’s a point. I suppose the simulator teams will let us know,” said Marcus. “Bethan, transfer long range comms to my console. I’m going to see if someone in Corwynt orbit can give us a lift home.”
He remembered seeing a few destroyers and many freighters as he’d left Corwynt. They should be able to tow some fighters, or give them a boost, or in the worst case take the crews aboard before they ran out of air.
***
Landing on the militia base on top of Bundoran should have been easier than usual. There was plenty of open space. But people were running all over to meet the returning fighters. If they’d let civilians in, Marcus would have words with the security team.
No, they were all in vests. Staff troops and back-up crewmen.
He hovered low enough that anyone underneath would feel the fringes of his thruster field. Then he set down with a thump that tore the grass. Not a good landing. But he had plenty of excuses for it.
“Everybody get some rest. Fixing the bird can wait.” He aimed the last at Jeuan.
“I’ll get a good night’s sleep, sir,” promised the mechanic.
It would have to do. He started walking toward the comm shack. If there were any secure messages in response to his terse initial report, he’d have to deal with them before he went home.
A two-striper intercepted him halfway there. “Sir, have you seen Osian Iwan’s fighter?”
“I’m sorry, you’ll have to check the roster to see—wait. Aren’t you Osian’s mechanic? What are you doing here?”
If Osian had been lost because his m
echanic didn’t report for duty, the militia was going to have its first capital court martial.
The kid looked ready to cry. “Sir, they bumped me. Osian made me get out so Uncle Cai could fly.”
“Cai Iwan was on that fighter?”
The mechanic flinched. “Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir.”
Marcus pulled out his secure tablet. Bethan sent him every update on the casualties. He was afraid he knew the fate of Clan Iwan’s fighter, but it had just been one of hundreds lost, he hadn’t checked for sure.
In the list of fighters, Osian’s was marked ‘DESTROYED, NO SURVIVORS.’
He didn’t have words. He turned the tablet around and let the kid read it.
“Oh, Harold. How will I tell Grandmother?”
“You won’t. I’ll tell her. Give me a moment to check my mail.”
***
The gulf outside Corwynt’s shoals had moderate visibility, a purple haze which let ships be seen shortly after they were detected on radar. The long shoals forming the sides of the gulf couldn’t be seen from here. The Censorate fleet was hovering in emptiness.
“Sir, we’ve detected a ship,” said one of the sensor techs.
Admiral Pinoy snapped around. “Is it Force Cape?”
“Not sure, sir. Probably a destroyer. We sent the recognition code, but it just echoed it back.”
Pinoy frowned. “Vector a scout to examine it. Is the ship closing on us?”
The tech checked his readouts. “It’s still on its original course, at reduced speed. We’re closing the distance on our own course.”
“Keep me posted.” Pinoy returned to the main viewscreen, which Governor Yeager hadn’t left.
“Friend or foe?” asked Yeager.
“Incompetent friend or clever foe. Either is equally likely.”
Yeager pointed at the screen. “Is that the stranger?”
“That’s the one we sent out to intercept it.”
“Ah.”
The ship was already blurry to their view.
Another tech exclaimed, “Craters, it’s pinging us.” He followed that with a calmer, “The unidentified ship performed a high-power radar scan of our whole force.”
The first tech reported, “It fired on the intercept ship, two missiles, and is accelerating away.”
Pinoy snapped, “All ships in range, fire at that ship. Send scout squadron in pursuit.”
“Is it a barbarian scout?” asked Yeager.
“Almost certainly, your excellency. We’ll see if we can keep it from reporting back.”
Half an hour later the squadron commander called, his voice tight with tension. “Sir. The barbarian destroyer made contact with a second destroyer. They fired a barrage of missiles which forced us to redeploy into a defensive formation. We avoided damage from the missiles but the barbarian broke contact in the haze.”
Admiral Pinoy paused before replying. “Very well. Coordinate with Captain MacIver. I want a screen out front to keep barbarian scouts from getting that good a look at us again.”
The squadron commander nodded and cut the comm.
Governor Yeager murmured, “I’m surprised you didn’t demote him for his failure.”
“I was tempted. Extremely tempted. If he’d been more aggressive, he could have destroyed the scouts while only losing one or two of his own ships and let us keep strategic surprise. But . . . I’ve been punishing the leaders for poor formation-keeping whenever they lose ships by leaving gaps in their missile defenses. He learned the lesson I’ve taught them. If I punish commanders for that, they’re going to give up and never take any action they weren’t directly ordered to.”
Yeager contemplated that. “We have similar problems on the civilian side. But the stakes are lower. We don’t have to deal with this kind of bad news.”
Pinoy smiled. “It’s not all bad news. This encounter proved the barbarian fleet is between us and Force Cape. Right where we want them to be. Which is very good news.”
***
Admiral Song watched his fleet maneuver from the flag bridge of PKS Yi Sunsin. He hadn’t needed to give an order all day. The Censorate wanted to do a dance. Song’s spacers knew their steps. It was just another ritual except spacers died.
“Admiral, report coming in from Watchdog Nine,” said a signals officer.
Song thanked her and strolled over to the holotank.
A mark in the holo showed where Watchdog Nine had sent a ‘TTT’ signal indicating an enemy sighting. Simple dot-dash messages were all that could penetrate that much aether. Now the scout was close enough to send at a useful data rate.
Intelligence staffers were decoding the message and feeding its contents to the display.
An array of dots appeared on the opposite side of the Fieran fleet from the enemy ships they’d been slowly chasing.
A junior officer laughed. “It looks like a textbook illustration of a hammer and anvil maneuver.”
Then he flushed, giving Song a bashful look.
“It does, Lieutenant,” said the admiral. “Let’s give them a textbook evasion. Discontinue the assault on the bait ship.”
The dance they’d been doing with the Censorate always began with one enemy ship set in a vulnerable position to lure them farther away from Corwynt. Now they knew why the enemy wanted them here.
Purple dotted lines appeared in the holo, showing the best route for the Fieran fleet to redeploy and retreat to the shoals around Corwynt. Song looked up from the holo to meet the eyes of his operations chief. He gave the chief a nod.
The ops chief announced, “We are executing Romeo Four. All squadrons are to—”
Song stepped back. His work was done. He could let the rest do their part. The smooth competence of the flag staff was something he could bask in. It was a mixed unit, Concord officers salted with spacers from Lombardia, New Luzon, and more nations. But you couldn’t tell by listening. You had to look at the uniforms. Because they all worked as one.
The fear of extermination did wonders for making everyone cooperate. Sure, back on Fiera politicians squabbled over money and power, but out here on the edge everyone focused on the mission.
If there was anyone not focused on the mission, they were dealt with without needing to tell the admiral.
***
On Corwynt, the word ‘bury’ meant ‘drop into the ocean a long way from the city.’ Marcus hadn’t caught on to the difference until he attended funerals for militiamen after the invasion. Some families had invited him along to their equivalent of a graveside service. A boat carrying the family and guests cruised out for two or three hours. The body was dropped into the water, someplace not popular with fishermen, and the clan elders spoke some words.
Today’s funerals had no body to bury.
Marcus stood in the clan hall with the rest, participating in the service as best he could. Each clan had their own oral tradition, but the prayers and hymns didn’t differ that much.
When the ceremony was over guests lined up to give their condolences to the elders and closest relatives. The boy’s mother and father stood before a portrait of him, looking proud and cocky in his militia vest, senior spacer stripes on the shoulders.
Marcus shook the father’s hands with both of his. “Sir, I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you, Wing Leader.” The man’s hands were trembling. “Tell me—is there any way to bring back my boy’s body?”
He’d learned yesterday at the first corpse-less funeral that saying starship weapons wouldn’t leave an identifiable body just made things worse. “I’m sorry. Our fighters just don’t have the sensors to find him. The fighters moved so fast, and the battle was such a big volume, it’s not possible for us. The Concord’s warships might be able to, but . . .”
“But they’re busy right now, of course.” He released Marcus’ hands.
The boy’s mother accepted Marcus’ condolences with a tight-lipped nod.
Most of the family accepted and returned words like the ritual they were
. A younger brother asked, “Sir, are you taking recruits?”
Saying, “For fuck’s sake, learn to shave first,” wasn’t acceptable at a funeral. Marcus managed, “Yes, but that’s up to your elders.”
The elders would have to buy a new fighter for the kid to fly in.
Once through the receiving line, Marcus was free to go. He checked the time. Clan Prosser was mourning four dead in one ceremony—they’d scraped up the cash to buy a fighter by themselves. A Seventh Wing fighter. They were on the other side of second level, but he had enough time to make a pit stop. There was a bar on the way he could get a drink at. He felt he’d earned it.
Down an escalator, across a bridge, around the sidewalk surrounding the ardal, and he reached the bar. It was built into a clanhome. The bar itself was as twenty-yard opening at the bottom of the ardal. The sidewalk across from it widened out into a semicircle. Normally it was filled with tables for people to eat, drink, and chat at.
Now all the tables were pushed to the sides. The middle was an open dance floor, filled with couples and quads. Fast, cheerful music played. A banner proclaiming ‘VICTORY’ stretched over the dancers, flapping in the currents of the ventilation system.
Marcus stopped. This wasn’t a good place for a quiet drink today.
“Hey, it’s Wing Leader Landry!”
It felt like the whole crowd turned and looked at him. A grey-bearded man slammed a beer to the table and surged up to take Marcus’ hands. “Harold be praised! Thank you, Wing Leader. It’s good to see the Censor get a bloody nose again.”
More people crowded around him. Men shook his hands. Women stood tiptoe to kiss his cheeks. Those who couldn’t reach him shouted thanks and cheers.
Marcus’ mind was still full of the proper phrases for funerals. He managed “You’re welcome” and “Yes” and “We did our duty.” Nobody seemed to care if he was making a proper response to what they said. They just wanted an instant of connection.
The hardest part was smiling. Everyone else was smiling. Marcus knew he should match them. But it was hard to smile after being reminded of how many had followed him to their deaths. He managed what felt like a ghastly grimace. Nobody complained.
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