Conqueror

by Richard Tongue

  “We can’t bring back the dead, Danny. Have you seen the casualty reports? Six hundred and nine dead, about half that many injured. And we were lucky. That’s the curse of it. We were luckier than we had any right to be. The death toll should easily have been double, maybe treble that. Sam Baker’s gone, Prentice, Simons, April. A lot of good people.”

  Turning back to the fighters, he said, “I know. I haven’t looked at the list yet. Figured I’d save that up when I had time for some tears. Right now, neither of us do.”

  “And the talk down on the surface,” Winter continued, as though he hadn’t heard his friend. “That’s even worse, if that’s possible. The Secretary of Space was interviewed an hour ago, outlining her plans for the liberation of Tartarus. That means the conquest, I guess. Tighter controls on the local population, restrictions on their citizens.” Grimacing, he said, “Damn it, this is how democracies collapse, Danny. We’ve seen it happen often enough. Beat these Terrans, and we’ll spend the rest of our careers on counter-insurgency operations. I had a taste of that once. I didn’t like it.”

  “If that’s what has to be,” Nguyen replied. “Then I guess that’s what has to be. It’s a damn sight better than the alternative. You weren’t on the Hermes expedition.” His face darkened, and he said, “It’s still classified, but not for any military reason. More for a moral reason. Though maybe that was a mistake. Maybe we should have broadcast it far and wide for everyone to see, everyone to hear. It might have done some good if we had.”

  “What happened?” Winter asked.

  “Ten years back, when the late, great President Bailey started talking about opening up trade networks, we were sent out to Kruger 60. Back before the Civil War, it was a major commercial hub, an access to a lot of key systems. Most of them had been knocked out by the fighting, reverted to primitive, as far as we knew, but the last reports suggested that the Krugerians were doing well enough, though it had been a long time since one of their ships had visited Caledonia. When we entered the system, we found out why.”

  “War? Had they been attacked?”

  “That’s what we thought at first, some sort of invasion. Our records showed that there were four inhabited moons around a gas giant, a network of space stations and outposts scattered throughout the entire system, but no inhabitable world. Nothing like ours.” He turned to the viewport, looking out at Caledonia, a mix of green, blue and white, a world such as Earth had been before the rise of humanity. I think that’s what finished them off. Every colony was dead, most of them destroyed, the same with the bulk of the space stations. Nothing alive in the entire system.”

  “Christ. How did the happen?”

  “There weren’t any operational defenses. No satellites functioning at all. The destruction had been extremely thorough. None of us wanted to stay any longer than we had to, but we couldn’t leave without completing a full investigation either. Finally we caught a break, found a small outpost on the edge of the system that seemed to have escaped the worst of the destruction, though it had still gone dark. That’s when we learned the truth. Nobody had attacked them. They’d done it to themselves.”

  “Civil war?” Winter asked. “But…”

  “A revolution. Apparently, the government had begun to trend autocratic, the usual nonsense about the need for strong leadership in a crisis. We’ve both heard it often enough in the past. There was an uprising, and while the rebels won, they found out the hard way that forming a government is a hell of a lot harder than bringing one down. They fell apart, each world declaring independence, some of the colonies, and that’s when the fighting really began.”

  “And it never stopped, did it.”

  “Oh, it stopped. Eventually. But only after nine-tenths of the population were dead, the bulk of them by collateral damage in one raid or another. Anyone who could, fled the system with any of the starships that had managed to survive, though we’ve got no record of where they ended up. One more shipload of refugees in the Lost Decades weren’t going to attract that much attention, assuming they even made it to wherever they were going.”

  “The rest? Surely, they must have had enough to work with to keep themselves alive, even after everything.”

  “They still couldn’t work together, though. Even after all the killing, all the destruction, they still found it impossible to simply live with each other. The fighting only ended because none of them really had the means to fight any more. That didn’t end the hatreds engendered by years of conflict, even if nobody truly cared why the wars had started by that point. There were some records of people who attempted to make peace, but they were all shouted down by those who simply considered it a temporary ceasefire, not the end of the war.”

  “I have a horrible feeling I know what’s coming. They couldn’t get it together. They were reliant on a network of interplanetary trade that had been destroyed by the war, and nobody could put it back together again.”

  “That’s about it. The whole process took the better part of a decade, but one by one, the colonies, the worlds, went dark, the whole population of the system wiped out. The last survivors attempted to hold out in the base we found, but as far as we could work out, the last of them died about thirty years before we arrived. He’d lived on his own for ten years, according to his personal logs. I suppose it’s possible that a few others managed to survive in out of the way spots, hidden away, but we spent more than a month looking, and we didn’t find anyone.”

  “I’m surprised the system was left intact. Even after a war like that, there must have been all sorts of salvage just lying around, waiting to be collected. The Technocrats…”

  “Why do you think we kept it secret? Intelligence ended up leaking that we’d found all sorts of space-based defenses still active, that we’d almost been destroyed. Hopefully that will keep the wolves away for a while, and hopefully when someone else does go out that way at some point in the future, they’ll learn the same lessons we did.” Shaking his head, he added, “We’ve been spacefarers for so long that sometimes we forget just what a cursed, hostile environment it is to live in. One mistake, one slip, and we die. It’s happened often enough. Space is dangerous enough in peacetime.” He smiled, then added, “You were partly right. I joined the service to play with the cool toys. I stayed because of what I saw at Kruger 60, and my determination not to let anything like that ever happen again. Tartarus is in the same situation. No habitable world, reliant on artificial systems. They can’t afford a civil war, an uprising.”

  Frowning, Winter replied, “The status quo isn’t exactly perfect. Even I’ve got to admit that there’s something to their demands for independence. We’re running their world with a damned light touch, but we’re still running it.”

  “And we stopped ten years of civil unrest, repaired their infrastructure and rebuilt their industry,” Nguyen replied. “At a time when we were in enough trouble ourselves. I don’t think it’s too much to ask that we make sure all of our work and sacrifices weren’t in vain, do you?”

  “Way above my pay grade,” Winter said. “At least you know what you’re fighting for.”

  “What about you, old friend?” the engineer asked. “What are you fighting for?”

  “That’s easy,” he said. “My daughter.” He paused, then added, “And that I’ve got to put her on the firing line hurts like hell.”

  “She made her choice.”

  “Damn it all, she’s eighteen. She’s not old enough to know what she’s choosing.”

  “We were both that age when we signed up, and we weren’t much older when we fought the League at Ross 128. The only difference is that this time she’s fighting for her planet, for the freedom of her people, rather than at the whim of some politician. I’d say she’s got the better end of the deal.”

  “If she lives through it, I’ll agree with you.”

  “She’s smart, Jack. Smart and quick, and she’s already handled herself well in battle. That counts for something.”

  �
�I hope so,” Winter replied. “I damned well hope so. But as soon as this is over, she’s on the first shuttle home.”

  “You think she’ll go along with that?”

  Cracking a smile, he added, “She might be able to get away with disobeying her father, but not her commanding officer. Rank does occasionally have its privileges. Though given the cost, it’d damn well better.”

  Chapter 12

  “Come on, come on,” Bradley said, looking at the monitor as the sensors struggled to come back online, one after another. A piece at a time, the network was coming operational, but just as the last cluster flickered on, the systems crashed once again, the screen briefly going dark before a series of error messages flashed into life.

  Shaking his head, Gordon said, “It’s not going to work.”

  “Not with that attitude,” she replied. “If we’re going to get a half-decent Flight Ops set up over here, we’re going to need all the sensor and communication inputs working at least. We’re not asking for that much. See if you can find another way to bypass. It was that forward cluster that did it.”

  “Maybe we don’t need all of them, just a sequence,” Gordon mused. “Or perhaps we could tie into the systems on the station, use their sensor network, their long-range communications system.”

  “That won’t work, Cadet,” Farrell said, walking into the room. “The station’s sensors are mostly short-range, primarily used for traffic control. They don’t have anything like the resolution needed for the work we need them to do, and the communications system doesn’t have the requisite encryption systems built in. We’ve got to get this ship working again, at least after a fashion. Keep at it.”

  “With half a dozen engineers to cover the entire ship? Doctor, some things just aren’t possible,” Gordon protested.

  “That’s not true at all, Cadet,” Farrell replied. “Lieutenant Drake just came on board with a couple of dozen engineers. They might be essentially civilian, but all of them have experience with spaceship hardware. That’s why I came. You’re to head down to Airlock Three and show Sergeant Douglass’ party where to go. Have them concentrate on the data network. That’s the priority at the moment. We’ll handle things up here. On your way.”

  “Yes, sir,” Gordon replied, walking out of the room with a salute. Farrell watched him go, then turned to Bradley, a frown on his face.

  “I’m not a trained psychiatrist, but there’s someone regretting a decision he made.”

  “Not to come with us into the lower levels, after the saboteur?”

  Nodding, he replied, “That’s my guess. There’s a time when we all have to find out just what sort of person we are, a test we all have to face, especially those of us in uniform. He learned a few hard truths about himself last night. The true test, though, will be just what he chooses to do about it.” With a smile, he added, “I’d say you passed well enough.”

  “I didn’t have time to think, just to act.”

  “That only means that your instincts are good. I take it you are second-guessing yourself now? I’d love to say that you’ll grow out of it, but I haven’t. You never do, not really. Just remember that what matters is what you do, not what you wish you’d done. You saved a lot of lives. That’s what matters.” Shaking his head, he said, “Though we’ve still got one hell of a mess to clean up if we’re going to be ready on time.” He reached for a control, then said, “I’ve just been out on the hull looking at the primary antenna. It’s history, but we might be able to get the comm lasers working instead. We’d want to use them for most of our communications anyway.”

  “We wouldn’t be able to use them during an attack run,” Bradley said, then added, “though given that they’re attacking the far side and we don’t have any operational relay satellites back there, I don’t suppose it matters overmuch. That might solve the communications problem, as long as we can get the targeting systems aligned. They were fried along with everything else.” She paused, smiled, then said, “And I think we can fix that, as well.”

  “How?” the doctor asked.

  “We borrow a fighter. The squadron’s only flying with twelve, and that leaves half a dozen spares, not to mention Flight Officer Haynes’ Scimitar. All of them have advanced targeting. We won’t even have to strip one down. I think we’d get away with just integrating the whole thing into the network.”

  “An excellent idea,” Bishop said, standing in the corridor. “Go grab Lieutenant Drake and as many technicians as you’ll think you’ll need. That might be able to help us with the sensor resolution, as well. If we dock a fighter to the forward airlock, we might be able to use it to patch up the hole in the network. Not exactly an orthodox solution, but it ought to do the trick for a while, in any case.”

  “Will do, ma’am,” Bradley replied.

  “Oh, one more thing,” the officer said. “I understand I’m keeping you and Gordon for the time being. I’m going to station him on the hangar deck, with Sergeant Douglass and his team. You’re going to be here in Flight Ops, helping out with the sensor controls again. I figure we owe you the chance for some real on-the-job training.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Bradley said with a smile.

  “My pleasure. After what you did on the outer hull, it’s the least we can do for you. Just remember that the Patrol looks after its own, no matter what uniform they’re wearing. I still haven’t given up hopes of getting you to switch to New Dover. I’m pretty sure I could guarantee you a spot in this year’s class at the Patrol Academy.” Before she could reply, she added, “Don’t answer me now, give it some thought. On your way.”

  With a salute, Bradley left the room, walking down the battered corridor, the handful of technicians laboring with the local power grid, trying to bring at least some of the ship’s systems back online. For as long as she could remember, she’d wanted to join the Aerospace Force, to follow in the footsteps of her father. An alternative hadn’t really occurred to her, not until now. Much to her own surprise, she found herself actually giving Bishop’s offer serious thought.

  She turned a corner, stepping over a piece of debris, and frowned at the condition of the ship. It would take a full engineering detail weeks just to get the guts of Ariadne into some sort of order. Months before it was truly in condition to go to war once more. They had a pair of damage control teams and a handful of reservists, and while their goals were more limited than that, a part of her agreed with Gordon that what they were doing was impossible. In less than five hours, her father would be leading his squadron into battle, and he was going to need all of the help he could get if he was going to pull off his mission and come back in one piece.

  That was a strange thought, as well. She’d known in an academic sense that she might end up working with her father in one way or another. Personnel would never have assigned them to the same squadron or station, but the service was small enough that they’d have run into each other on occasion. The thought that she might have a front-row seat for a battle her father was fighting had never occurred to her. He was old enough that he would shortly have been taken off flying duties in any case, approaching the forty-year mark after which only a precious waiver would have kept him in the cockpit. His promotion would have sped that process as well, but not this time.

  She’d grown up hearing stories of his heroics in deep space, the stories told her by her grandparents, by her aunt. Never from her parents. Her father was either off on the far frontier, or unwilling to talk about the stresses and cares of his life, and she’d known that her mother had wanted to discourage her from joining the military at all. Her stepfather had sent a letter offering to find a way to get her back to Caledonia despite the impending battle, to find a way to get her out of the Academy even at this late stage. She hadn’t even dignified it with a reply.

  It was strange, to think about life back home. Three months ago she’d attended her high school graduation. A long, hard summer spent fighting for one of the precious places in the Academy, tests and preparat
ory courses, zero- and heavy-gravity testing, more medical examinations that she could ever have imagined possible. She’d made it, had passed with flying colors, had been looking forward to her time on an actual posting, a chance to see what life in the service really was like before beginning her four years at the Academy, and a chance for her attitude and performance to be assessed by officers in the field, to confirm for the benefit of the instructors that she truly was made of the right stuff.

  They’d given all of the new cadets a through briefing before leaving on their assignments. Had been told what to do, what not to do, and that their main job was to take some of the lighter administrative load from the officers and men doing the real work. To fetch the coffee, pass out the sandwiches, print out the forms. To watch, and to learn, as best they could with potential perks such as the occasional shuttle ride, tours of restricted areas, the chance to participate in weapons testing, perhaps.

  Not going to war. Nothing had been said about going to war.

  Apparently word of what she had done yesterday was already spreading. As well as the infuriating letter from her stepfather, she’d had a dozen other letters from classmates, people she’d only known for a few months but had expected to spend the next four years serving and learning with. All of them told the same story. Any thought that they’d be going back to the Academy to start their tuition was postponed, all pressed into service in whatever capacity or another that needed filling urgently, no matter what. Shuttle testing, in a couple of cases. One was serving as a Wing Commander’s junior aide, others working with maintenance crews. They were all being pushed beyond anything they had expected, were being forced to grow up four years ahead of schedule.

  This class was never going to be the same. Assuming they didn’t get caught in limbo. The fourth year cadets had already been graduated, eight months ahead of schedule, and rumors were flying around that the third years were about to be granted wartime commissions to match them. None of them would actually be riding fire, not yet, but there were dozens of them with the task force, working to prepare the fighters for launch.