“Looking for a connection to the mythical first settlers again? His space barnacles and star leviathans and the like?”
“The ghouls aren’t that old, but they’ve been around for a while. They’ve been a star-faring race for thousands of years.”
“So they’ve no doubt moved on from wherever they started. Fair enough. All we know is that they’ve got a base in those closed-off systems. They got in there some time ago and used it to smash open the human civilizations leading back to Earth.”
“Like you said, we’ll be kicking the hornet’s nest.”
Drake gestured at the pieces of plastic in the middle of the table. “Time to pick your team.”
Tolvern gave a final scowl at the fifteen blue pieces in front of him, each one representing a corvette, then turned her attention to the other ships of various colors, shapes, and sizes that were left.
When she’d studied at the Academy, Tolvern’s war college instructors frequently used the miniature, game-sized models of ships for demonstration purposes, positioning them on a three-dimensional wire lattice to show everything from actual battles to battle formations like the infamous Hroom Claw.
You could do the same thing on a screen, of course, and get a better simulation, but an actual three-dimensional representation was useful for an officer in training to show how a battle played out in real space.
Drake told her he’d discovered three full sets of the figures in one of Lucy Pearson’s cupboards. Vigilant’s former captain had apparently been studying up to remedy her deficiencies. Hadn’t worked. And now there were two other naval officers in her former quarters, haggling about fleet strength.
The models contained every type of ship, including a big black piece for Dreadnought itself—this one set aside, as it didn’t pertain to the current discussion—and five red pieces that represented battle cruisers. Optimistic. The navy only had three, with a fourth in the yards, months from completion.
At the moment, only a single red piece sat in front of her. Blackbeard. She considered how she’d form her fleet. Drake told her it would be lean and built for speed; otherwise, she’d be tempted to grab most of the pieces and let the frontier be defended by whatever could escape from Persia. But it had to be strong enough to win a fight, too.
She reached for the other two battle cruisers.
“You get one of them,” he said. “And you might only have her until Lenin.”
“What happens in Lenin?”
“I have some thoughts. We’ll get to that.” He picked out several burnt orange pieces with spreading, beetle-like wings. “There aren’t enough war junks in this set. Each of these will represent two ships.” He counted a few for himself and pushed the others to her side. “And your battle cruiser?”
Tolvern’s eyes widened at the sight of all those war junks. He must have something specific and important in mind, especially as he was currently using them to search for the missing jump point.
She picked up one of the two big red pieces and studied it. Not a bad representation, considering. Which would be a better choice, Citadel or Void Queen? Fox or Vargus? Fox had an eliminon battery on his ship, but she knew Vargus well, and there were few commanders of her caliber.
“I’ll take Void Queen.” She dropped the piece next to Blackbeard.
“I thought you would.” He smiled. “You’re a naval officer who dabbles in piracy, and Catarina Vargus is a pirate who dabbles in the navy.”
“Ha!”
Next, she scraped across a greedy number of star wolves. Drake clawed most of them back.
“You get the First and the Fourth,” he told her. “One pack will stay with Void Queen, and the other continue with Blackbeard. You can decide which later.”
She already knew her decision on that score. Both Tolvern and Vargus had fought beside—and against—Lars Olafsen, but Tolvern also knew Ulfgar Svensen well by now, and the other commanders of the Fourth Wolves. She felt comfortable with the one-handed Scandian raider, and thought she could trust him.
After that, she picked out three missile frigates, which brought a raised eyebrow from Drake. Too slow in the acceleration. Tolvern was charging in, charging out, and she needed more speed than frigates could give her. She pushed them back.
That also left out Hroom sloops and torpedo boats. What was left? She took twenty destroyers. He left her with twelve. She took four of the available light cruisers. He shook his head.
Tolvern gave him a sharp look. “This seems pointless. Are we playing a game, or what?”
“It’s not a game, I want you to come to the same conclusions I did in case you can spot flaws in my logic.”
“And I can’t take the cruisers because . . . ?”
“I’m keeping them for the same reason I can’t give you the corvettes. I’m going to use them in the same way.”
“Flashing in and out of battle? Isn’t that a waste of their capabilities?”
“They’ll be like corvettes in the initial stages, and then when it comes time for the slugging it out part, they’ll turn back into heavier warships.”
That was a thought. The Punisher-class cruisers like Vigilant and Peerless were nearly as quick out of the blocks as a corvette, and while not as maneuverable, still had the dragoons beat on that score. It hadn’t even occurred to her to use them in that way—Tolvern’s natural inclination was to treat them like capital ships and concentrate their firepower—but under the present circumstances, cruisers were more useful reversing their usual role and supporting the corvettes.
She wasn’t ready to give up on the cruisers.
“I don’t have to reveal the new tactics,” she said. “I’ll use the cruisers the way we did at Castillo.”
“Which saw Triumph destroyed and Peerless mauled.”
“Then held in reserve.” When he still didn’t budge, she rested a finger on one of the ship pieces. “Give me one, at least.”
Drake’s eyes widened in mock surprise. “You can’t do without McGowan’s ship?”
“Ha. Funny. You know what I mean.”
“You want Vigilant.”
“I want you, James. And if you’re on Vigilant, then that’s the ship I want.”
“Jess . . .”
“We had a mission. Old Earth. And we were halfway there. Don’t tell me you’re abandoning that now. Abandoning me.”
He looked pained. “We crossed the frontier at peace, and now we’re at war—I’m the ranking officer of the Alliance. I have to stay here, marshal our forces, and stay with the main battle fleet.”
“You’re going to take command of all these ships in a wimpy little cruiser?”
“I’ll take command in HMS Dreadnought, as soon as I get my hands on her. I’m only on Vigilant to whip her into shape. And,” he added with a sigh, “to see if I can rehabilitate Captain Pearson back into command.”
Pearson’s court-martial had been a short, private affair. A quick review, a harsh proclamation from Tolvern, Drake, and McGowan that stripped Pearson of rank and command. The woman had accepted her culpability, had seemed first relieved that she wouldn’t return to Albion in chains, then almost embarrassingly grateful when she learned she would remain on duty as first mate of her old ship.
Pearson had taken it with considerably less pride and defensiveness than expected—better than Tolvern could have managed under similar circumstances, she was sure—and it occurred to her that the trial had been, in part, an audition. To see if the woman could be brought back into the action.
Tolvern gestured at the little plastic pieces. “In that case, you’d better keep these around. For further training, and all of that.”
“It’s not Pearson’s knowledge of tactics that let her down.”
“No, I suppose not.” She looked down at the plastic pieces in front of her and sighed.
“More than enough to defeat a carrier or two,” Drake said.
“Until I ditch Void Queen in Lenin and continue with only half the forces.” Tolvern chewed her li
p. “So you’ve given me a task force of two battle cruisers, twelve destroyers, and twelve star wolves.”
“Don’t forget your war junks,” Drake said.
“I’m not forgetting them, you are.”
He smiled. “You figured that part out, did you?”
“There are twelve jumps between here and the system where we took a beating. I’m going out to find the ghouls while you gather the fleet and wait for word. But how will you know when I’ve found them? It can’t be a sixteen-character subspace again. And you don’t want to wait until I come back with news, either.”
“Go on.”
“So I’ll drop war junks along the way, is that right? One at a time. They’ll go dark, wait by the jump point, and carry the news back by naval relay. You’ll be out only as much time as it takes to do a series of short jumps.”
Drake nodded. “Plus however long for the data to cross twelve systems at light speed. But I want my news even faster than that. We’ll get Mose Dryz out of Persia, use his fleet, minus Dreadnought, to hold Fortaleza, Nebuchadnezzar, and Castillo, and send the rest of us across the inner frontier. We reach Vargus and hold there only long enough for you to find the enemy. Then we’re a jump or two away from the big fight.”
“Does Wang know your plan?”
“The gist of it. You can fill her in once you start stripping her of war junks.”
Tolvern pictured the icy expression on the Singaporean’s face when she heard the news. “Wonderful. I guess I should tell Vargus, too.”
“I already told her.” Drake smiled. “I knew you were going for Void Queen over Citadel.”
“Oh you did, did you? And what did Vargus say about that?”
“She took it well. She’s comfortable enough out in the void. I haven’t told Svensen or anyone else. That tough Viking will be happy enough, too.”
“All right,” she said, finally resigned to the matter, but feeling down. She pushed her collection of ships back into the main pile and rose to her feet. “Here’s where we insert the obligatory back and forth about staying safe, seeing each other in a few weeks, and all that. You know, one of these times we say goodbye to go fight some genocidal enemy, our luck is going to run out.”
He reached for her hand before she could make for the door. “But not this time, Jess. This time we both return alive.”
#
Tolvern was feeling more optimistic by the time her squadron pulled out of the system two days later. It helped to have the comforting presence of Void Queen a few thousand miles off port, her brawler snugged tight against the hull.
A dozen star wolves followed, along with a flotilla of destroyers and a dark constellation of war junks, strung halfway toward the rest of Drake’s fleet, which maintained a defensive posture in the Nebuchadnezzar system while the admiral continued to search for the missing Persia jump point. Strung along with Tolvern’s forces were various freighters and merchant frigates carrying supplies.
The battle cruisers led the jump, one after another, and detached their brawlers while they took up position on the other side. It was a well-executed transition from one system to the other, and within sixteen hours they had reassembled forces and begun their push.
They dropped a war junk. It stopped communicating and went dark as it began its vigil near the jump point, ready to carry back a message shuttled from across the inner frontier.
The Singaporeans knew how to wait. When Tolvern had first come across their sentinel battle station, sitting in silent watch against an Apex attack, it had been dark for years. Turned inward so thoroughly that there’d been a civil war brewing, and dissenting elements had attacked her ship rather than give away their location.
The next system was Fortaleza, entered three days later. Another war junk went dark.
Here Tolvern turned extra wary, remembering her previous fight in the system. They scanned it hard, but an initial search turned up nothing but the wreckage of their previous conflicts, still in orbit around the ugly brown gas giant Capp and Smythe called the Toad. Flotsam from the freighter Bilbao drifted in silent witness to her sacrifice.
Coming back from ambush, her ship crippled, Drake and Nyb Pim in stasis with serious wounds, Tolvern had snared the freighter, forced her crew into service, and stripped out the engines for Blackbeard’s own use. She’d turned the remains into a mobile battery, to fight off another Adjudicator attack, and there it had died, together with twenty-seven crew.
It worked, didn’t it? Got Blackbeard out alive and able to fight another day.
A hard assessment, but a true one.
Tolvern’s forces continued moving in the direction of Earth—or rather, the big red carrot of unknown territory that Drake had shown her on the maps. It was much quicker this time around, with fresh charts and a powerful enough fleet that it would take more than a few dragoons to surprise them. The only problem was the departure of an additional war junk with every jump, until only a handful remained.
They reached the Moscow System. Site of the ghost ship, the surprise attack that had introduced them to the Adjudicators. It seemed to be quiet, but two days into their crossing, Wang called. Her stern face made Tolvern sit up straight.
“Ten Dragon picked up a disturbance in the solar wind, left by the wake of plasma engines.”
“Ten Dragon is Tan’s ship?” Tolvern asked.
“A safe guess—Tan is the most common surname on Singapore.” Was that a hint of a smile at the corner of Wang’s mouth? “But yes, that’s right. Tan. The trail is three or four days old, a ghost echo at this point. Moving toward our target jump point. No way to know who left it.”
“Not one of ours,” Tolvern said. “We can be sure of that. Send me the sensor results.”
“Already done. Check with your tech officers.” Wang checked out without bothering to take her leave.
“Looks like one ship,” Smythe said after studying the data for a few minutes. “But it’s something fairly large. Could be a carrier and her riders.”
“I’ll happily face a single star fortress,” Tolvern said. “With our firepower, we’ll finish it off and have one fewer enemy to deal with down the road.”
“Too bad it’s several days ahead of us,” Smythe said. “It’s already jumped out of Moscow—we’d never catch it before it leaves Lenin, either.”
“Depends on how fast it’s going. If it’s moving at cruising speed, and our cloaking holds up, we might close half the distance before it even knows we’re in the system.”
“It was hauling through here plenty fast, sir. Seven percent light speed, if I’m reading the numbers right.”
“Excuse me, Captain Jess Tolvern,” Nyb Pim said. “But I believe that Moscow and Lenin are binary match systems.”
The pilot’s long fingers tapped at his console, and a side screen on the bridge showed the current map of stars and planets, with four different jump points highlighted. The first was their entry into the system, with a yellow, unknown point nearby. The final two were blue jumps, and the numbers displayed next to them were only fractionally different. They were about two hundred million miles distant from each other, swinging in wide orbit on either side of a gas giant.
“Do we know where they land on the other side?” Tolvern asked.
“No, sir,” Nyb Pim said. “But they will be similarly paired.”
“In other words, close to each other. Relatively speaking.”
Tolvern turned this over in her head. They were weeks across the inner frontier, had abandoned most of their war junks as mobile sentinels, and she had planned to drop Void Queen and the First Wolves in the Lenin System before continuing on her own. Plus all these freighters with their useful cargoes like torpedoes and spare tyrillium plate. Did she really want to provoke a fight that might keep her from continuing in safety?
But she wanted that enemy ship. And was half-convinced it was Star Fortress Bravo, her old nemesis.
“Capp, get me Vargus.”
Now it was Catarina Vargus whose
face filled the screen. “I saw Wang’s scans. My guy Burris thinks it’s a single enemy carrier—tell me you’ve thought up a clever way to run it down.”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I have.”
She explained, and Vargus looked pleased at the results.
Chapter Nine
The first thing Tolvern did when coming out of the jump was take a look at their near surroundings. They appear clear, so she kept Warthog attached while Wang came through on First Dragon.
Only Blackbeard and her rider and the single war junk. The other Alliance ships—Void Queen and the rest—stayed in Moscow on a course toward their original target. Tolvern stayed quiet while she took a closer look at the system.
A Class-M red giant dominated Lenin’s center. A pair of small rocky planets orbited close to the star, hot red things without an atmosphere. There were a couple of brown dwarves orbiting at a much greater distance, although the term “brown dwarf” was a classification of size—big, gassy planets just short of the size necessary to become small stars—not color, which was also reddish.
“I guess we know why they call it the Lenin System,” Tolvern said. “It’s all red in these parts.”
“Ain’t he some bloke from Earth history?” Capp said. “What’s red got to do with it?”
“Tell her, Smythe.”
“He’s a Russian known for starting a red revolution,” Smythe said.
Capp blinked. “Red as in bloody?”
The tech officer shook his head. “Red as in the Soviet Union. The Red Army, Red Square, the red flag with the hammer and sickle, and all of that.”
“Oh, I get it. You know that stuff ’cause of your video game, yeah? This Russian business must be great fun for you.”
“I always play the Romans,” Smythe said stiffly, to laughter from Capp.
While Smythe was jawing with Capp, Lomelí found the other jump point where Nyb Pim had said it would be, roughly two hundred million miles distant. Lomelí’s discovery wounded Smythe’s pride and put him back on task. Moments later, he and Lomelí found the enemy ship, on a trajectory toward an unknown jump point close to the red giant.
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