Para Bellum

by Christopher Nuttall

  Except we don’t have an infinite supply of money, he reminded himself, dryly. The economy was already in pretty bad shape before this war came along.

  “Order the CSP to cover us as long as possible,” he said. The missiles alone weren’t a serious threat - Invincible would be able to pick most of them off before they entered their engagement range - but combined with the starfighters they would be able to do a considerable amount of damage. “And warn the damage control teams to focus on the point defence.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Newcomb said. “The damage control teams are being briefed now.”

  His voice betrayed none of the doubts Stephen knew his XO had to be feeling. There was no way they could rebuild the point defence network, if it took a major beating, in time to save themselves from more missiles. The third strike - and he was beyond being shocked at the possibility of a third strike - would be effectively unopposed as it closed to engagement range. And then his armour would be ripped away by nuclear strikes and bomb-pumped lasers.

  “Very good,” Stephen said. The aliens seemed to be holding their lighter units back, now they’d established that Invincible was effectively alone. It made little sense, although he supposed the virus might prefer to expend missiles rather than starships and host-bodies when it had a war on its hands. Even a destroyer took upwards of six months to build ... and that assumed that the builders cut as many corners as possible. “We’re still putting some distance between ourselves and their capital ships.”

  The display changed, rapidly. “Captain, the enemy shipyard has exploded,” Alison said, as more reports flowed into the datanet. “The marines did it!”

  Hah, Stephen thought. He had no idea - yet - if the marines had survived, or if they’d been forced to detonate their tactical nukes to avoid capture and infection, but they’d done a great deal of damage. It doesn’t matter if the virus kills us now. There’s no way it can inflict enough damage to make up for the lost shipyard.

  He forced himself to calm down. The shipyard was poorly designed, by human standard, but it was still a vast and heavily-armoured structure. They knew precisely nothing about its interior design, yet the analysts had pointed out that the virus would probably have built a great deal of internal armour into its design. It would be embarrassing if an accident caused a chain reaction that blew the entire structure apart. A nuke detonating inside Invincible’s hull would do a great deal of damage, but it might not be fatal. The shipyard might have been designed along the same lines.

  “Check with the long-range probes,” he ordered, stiffly. “How much damage did they do?”

  “Unclear as yet, but pretty bad,” Alison said. “I think they took out most of the shipyard slips, sir, but at this range we have no way to be sure. We’ll have to wait for the updates.”

  And hope we didn’t just inflict a great deal of cosmetic damage, Stephen said. He told himself, sharply, not to believe what he wanted to believe. He’d studied war throughout the ages. It hadn’t been uncommon for advanced missiles and warheads to be expended on fake airfields and decoy ships. Hell, he’d used the drones to lure the enemy fleet out of place and then force the virus to waste hundreds of missiles on expendable targets. And too many people believed the strike reports because they wanted to believe them.

  “Enemy missiles entering engagement range,” Arthur warned. “Point defence going active ... now.”

  Stephen put the enemy shipyard out of his mind as he concentrated on bare survival. The virus had updated its targeting packages, damn it. It must have launched a handful of drones with the first strike, relying on their sensors to pick holes in the illusions and isolate them from the real ships. It wasn’t a tactic he’d seen before, if only because it was rare for so many long-range missiles to be launched in a single salvo, but he had to admit that it had paid off for the virus. Only seventeen missiles were tricked into expending themselves harmlessly on the drones.

  “The ghost fleet is gone,” Alison reported. “We lost too many drones to maintain the illusion.”

  “Switch them back into standard decoy mode,” Stephen ordered. “Try to convince them that we’re altering course.”

  He shook his head, grimly, as the missiles closed in on his ship. The virus seemed to be hesitating - its starships were actually reducing speed - but it was far too late to recall the missiles, even if it had wanted to do anything of the sort. Dozens of missiles died, blinking out of existence as they were struck by plasma fire or railguns; a handful made it through the defences, slamming into his armour or firing bomb-pumped laser beams into his hull. Stephen kept his face impassive, even as his ship writhed in pain and the damage started to mount. The bastards were aiming for his drive sections ...

  They must have got a very good look at us, he thought. The alien sensor probes might be better than he’d thought. Or the virus had managed to interrogate one of the infected personal on Alien-1 before they’d been recaptured. Or the missing Russians had been forced to talk. They had a very good idea where to aim their strikes.

  “Drive Nodes Four and Five are down,” Sonia reported. “Drive Node Seven is badly damaged and needs to be replaced, urgently. Its power curves could collapse at any moment. We’ll have to reduce speed to make repairs.”

  “Continue on our current course and speed,” Stephen ordered. Sonia wasn’t wrong - they would have to reduce speed to make repairs - but if they tried to slow down now they’d be dead before they could complete the work and accelerate again. “Commander Newcomb, have engineering rig up the secondary drive nodes.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  Stephen braced himself as the alien starfighters threw themselves into the attack, ignoring the steadily weakening CSP as they pressed the offensive as hard as possible. A handful of starfighters rammed - one of them missed Drive Node Seven by bare meters - but the others concentrated on weakening his point defence as much as possible. Stephen gave thanks to God that the range was steadily increasing, even though Drive Node Nine was also starting to show signs of problems. A third salvo of missiles, even at such extreme range, might have smashed through his remaining armour and blown his ship to atoms.

  “They’re redeploying, sir,” Alison said, quietly. “I think they’re trying to fan out and protect the shipyard.”

  Or what’s left of it, Stephen thought. A human commander might keep up the chase, in hopes of destroying Invincible before she could break contact and flee, but the virus presumably had different ideas. It would need to recover all it could from the remains of the shipyard before it was too late. It would also have a chance to take out the marines before they could link up with the Russians and escape, but there was nothing he could do about it now. The marines were on their own. We have to concentrate on our own escape.

  A dull rumble ran through his ship as another starfighter rammed into the hull. Alarms sounded, a second later. The bastard had targeted his ship perfectly, Stephen noted. It hadn’t done any significant damage, not compared to the missile strikes, but it had weakened part of Invincible’s armour plating. The next set of strikes would find it easier to inflict major damage to the hull. But, as the enemy steadily redeployed their forces, it was starting to be clear that there wouldn’t be a major strike. It looked as though the virus wanted to wear Invincible down rather than destroy her in a single blow.

  They need to know what we know, Stephen thought. It would be true of humans, at least; he was fairly sure that the virus, too, understood the importance of gathering and collating intelligence. And that means capturing and infecting the entire crew.

  “Redeploy the drones,” he ordered, as the alien starfighters started to draw away from his hull. They had an opportunity, a very brief opportunity, to break contact and escape. “I want them programmed to scatter our sensor images as much as possible so we can slip into cloak without being detected.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Alison said.

  “Activate them on my command,” Stephen added. “Tactical, take us straight into cloak as s
oon as the drones go active.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Arthur said.

  Stephen nodded. It was a gamble, but he was running out of ideas. “Commander Newcomb, recall the starfighters. They are to be rearmed and prepared for immediate launch if we fail to give them the slip.”

  “Aye, sir,” Newcomb said. “They will also have to reorganise their squadrons. They’re down to half-strength.”

  I should have noticed, Stephen thought, glumly. He’d known that starfighters were inherently expendable, certainly when compared to Invincible herself, but it still hurt to know he’d lost so many people. They’d died under his command and he didn’t even know their names. And he didn’t have time to look them up, not now. He’d have to write letters to their families, afterwards, and he knew nothing about them. The survivors won’t even get a personalised letter.

  “Captain, the drones are in place,” Alison reported. “We’re ready to decoy them away.”

  “Activate the drones,” Stephen ordered. “Tactical, take us into cloak.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  “Are we glad to see you,” Alice said, as she removed her helmet. “We thought we’d missed the RV point.”

  Captain Pavel Kaminov inclined his head, politely. “We had problems getting to the RV point ourselves,” he said. “You threw a stone into the hornet’s nest ... that is how you say it, isn’t it? They deployed nearly a hundred starships to look for us.”

  Alice nodded. A British citizen would probably talk about throwing rocks into a wasp’s nest, but the principle was the same. She’d done that as a little girl before her grandmother had reproved her for bullying creatures that were much - much - smaller than herself. The wasps had looked nasty, she’d thought at the time, but she’d taken the point. There was nothing honourable about throwing rocks at their nest.

  “I’m glad you made it,” she said. Her uniform was sweaty - and smelly enough to embarrass her, even though she was used to bedding down with the men. “What now?”

  “Now we get out of here,” the man behind the captain said. He hadn’t bothered to give a name, which was a pretty clear indication that he was the local political officer. The zampolit, if she recalled correctly. Her Russian wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t perfect either. The man certainly looked like a zampolit. He had the indefinable aura of a sneak, combined with a prissiness that made her want to slap him. She rather doubted he knew the meaning of the word fun. “We risked our ship to pluck you out of space.”

  “We’re already sneaking sun-wards,” Captain Kaminov said, calmly. “There’s no reason to think we will be detected in the next few hundred hours.”

  He smiled at Alice, who smiled back. She had to admit he looked good, although her sister would probably have thrown up her hands in horror. Captain Kaminov might not be classically handsome, but he had an aura of command - and a great deal of nerve - that she found impossible not to admire. He’d certainly taken a considerable risk in bringing his ship to the RV point. Alice’s suit had tracked enough alien starships to be fairly sure that the Russians wouldn’t have a hope of escape, if they were detected. It was sheer luck the aliens hadn’t located the marines.

  They might not have realised just how small we actually were, Alice thought. A missile - or a sensor probe - would be considerably larger than a marine, even a marine in an oversized battlesuit. And they probably didn’t recalibrate their sensors to find us.

  “You’d better get a wash,” Captain Kaminov said. “And then you are welcome to join me and my officers for a celebration.”

  “If we get out alive,” the zampolit grumbled.

  “We will,” Alice said. She saw the zampolit’s eyes go wide as she spoke in Russian. It was enough to make her roll her eyes in a manner that would have gotten her in trouble at boarding school. Hadn’t the man read her file? She’d been encouraged to learn Russian, as well as French and Chinese. It was useful for combined operations not to have to worry about language barriers. “We have drinking to do.”

  The zampolit’s eyes narrowed, but he said nothing as the marines were escorted back to their sleeping quarters. Alice had to smile at his back. Every Russian she’d met had been a heavy drinker, despite frequent anti-drunkenness campaigns by the Russian government. She vaguely recalled one of her briefers speculating that none of the campaigns were ever intended to actually work - a drunken population wouldn’t be in a fit state to ask questions about who was really responsible for running the state - but she rather doubted the Russian government was that efficient. The Russian military was terrifyingly good - she gave them that much credit - yet the bureaucracy made the British Civil Service look like a paragon of efficiency. She’d heard her grandfather grumbling often enough about the National Farming Program to feel nothing, but contempt for the bureaucrats in Whitehall.

  She stripped off the rest of her uniform and stepped into the shower, ignoring her nakedness. Her body felt unpleasantly dirty, as if she’d spent days - rather than hours - in the suit. How long had it been? She closed her eyes as the warm water cascaded over her body, running through the calculations in her head. The hypnotic state made it hard to be sure, but she was fairly certain that they’d been in the suits for nearly thirty hours. They were going to have problems with hypnotic lag for the next few days. She had no doubt that Major Parkinson would force them to overcome it as quickly as possible.

  Assuming he’s still alive, she thought. She’d seen hundreds of ships heading towards the incoming fleet, the incoming fleet that didn’t exist. The virus might have overrun and destroyed Invincible by now, with no one on Yuriy Ivanov aware of it. I might be the senior surviving officer in the system by now.

  She finished washing herself quickly, reluctant to spend too long in the shower when her men needed to wash too, and headed back into the next room. Hammersmith was bending over his carryall, his face grim. Alice had no trouble guessing what he’d seen. They’d done a good job of placing the bags against the wall in a manner that suggested they’d just been dumped there, but they’d been careful to note precisely where the bags had been. It looked as though someone had taken the opportunity to search the bags while the marines had been on deployment, someone who knew precisely how to minimise the odds of being detected. The zampolit? Or one of his men?

  Not that it matters, she thought, as she opened her carryall and removed her spare uniform and underwear. They’d been ordered to be careful what they took with them, even though the Russian ship was not hostile territory. What did they find? Nothing, but Royal Marine-issue underwear and clothes.

  Her lips quirked at the thought as she dressed rapidly. The Russians would have learnt nothing from the carryalls, unless someone had been careless. Very careless. She found it hard to believe that any of her people would be so careless. They knew, better than anyone else, the dangers of leaving something behind that an enemy might be able to turn into actionable intelligence. They’d even had their eReaders searched before they’d been permitted to upload them into the suits. Somehow, Alice doubted the zampolit had learnt anything useful from his poking and prying. Perhaps he’d be in trouble for wasting his time.

  There was a tap on the hatch. Alice glanced around to make sure her team were either relatively decent or out of sight, then opened the compartment. A young officer, barely out of his teens, stood there, his eyes dropping towards her chest before he brought them up rapidly. Alice snorted, inwardly. He had to have been disappointed. Stellar Star might have an impressive chest size that owed more to cosmetic surgery and computer manipulation than an accident of birth, but her breasts had shrunk during basic training. She’d certainly never bothered to have them expanded once she qualified. It was easier to be taken seriously as a woman in the military if one didn’t look like someone from an absurd porn movie. The Russian might have mistaken her for a man.

  “Ah ... um ... Captain Kaminov would like to see you in the conference room,” the Russian stammered, finally. His English was oddly
-accented. He didn’t seem to know what rank he should give her. She couldn’t be called captain, but she could neither be promoted nor demoted either. “And as many of your men as wish to join you.”

  “We’ll be along in a minute,” Alice assured him. She looked back. A handful of her men had lain down to sleep, without even bothering to change out of their clothes, but the remainder looked willing to follow her. As long as she was leading them to the nearest pub, of course. “Just give us a moment.”

  She gathered her men, those who weren’t trying to sleep, and led them down the corridor and up a ladder. Yuriy Ivanov didn’t seem to have intraship cars, something that surprised her even though she knew the Russian starship was an order of magnitude smaller than Invincible. She hadn’t seen anything like it since she’d served on a destroyer. But the Russians presumably had their reasons. An intership car could turn into a death trap if the ship was heavily damaged. She smiled as she was shown into the conference room, which appeared to have been turned into a drinking parlour. The tables were covered with bottles of clear liquid. Alice guessed, from the smell alone, that it was vodka. A Russian officer was sitting beside the table, strumming an instrument Alice didn’t recognise. He was humming a song she’d heard before, in Central Asia. She’d been told it was officially banned.