Conqueror

by Richard Tongue

  Perhaps it would all be over soon enough. If all went well, as well as Commodore Tyler and the other senior officers seemed to expect, then this would be nothing more than a brief interlude in her career, a moment they’d spend the next few months talking about, remembering their first glimpse of action. If not, then perhaps her career would be over far sooner than she’d expected, and with more finality. They were fighting an enemy they knew nothing about, except that they had already demonstrated both technological superiority and an outstanding intelligence network.

  She stepped into the corridor, close by the docking port, and Lieutenant Drake nodded at her arrival, a beaming smile on his face and a pair of soldiers behind him, both wielding toolkits.

  “Cadet, I don’t think we’ve been formally introduced. Lieutenant Theodore Drake.”

  “Victoria Bradley, sir,” she replied.

  He frowned for a moment, shook his head, and said, “Not used to that. I’ve only been back in uniform for a few weeks, and they only commissioned me after I switched to the reserves. I still half expect to be everyone’s dogsbody. Mind you, at the moment, I guess I am.” He turned to the airlock, and said, “Lieutenant Bishop gave me a brief rundown on what you’ve got in mind. It’s a moderately crazy idea, but no crazier than anything else I’ve seen since I got out here. It hasn’t been quite what I expected for a first command posting.”

  The two of them walked along the corridor to the cargo bay, a guard standing to attention as they approached, and she said, “You aren’t taking any chances, are you?”

  “We already had to storm this room once. I don’t intend to do that again.” He paused, turned to her, and said, “Nobody told you? There was a terrorist attack here, just before the battle, while we were trying to get the fighters onto the line. Your father was with the assault group.” He shrugged his shoulders, then added, “To be fair, pretty much everyone was. We’re not exactly over-burdened with personnel at the moment. How good are you with a pistol?”

  “Top of my class at induction. I’ve only fired it a few times in anger, though, and I don’t think I hit anything much when I did.”

  “Don’t worry, almost nobody actually aims to hit anyone when they shoot until they’ve had proper training. Turns out most people simply aren’t born killers, a state of affairs I’m not that unhappy about.” He paused, then added, “I suppose I might be arranged to give you a little psych training at some point if you want, assuming you’re stuck on this station for a while, but I figure you’ll be leaving as soon as the battle is over, one way or another.”

  “What does that mean?” she replied, defensively.

  “Only that this isn’t liable to be a front-line station for long. If we win, the fighting here is over, and the Double-Deuce ends up stationed somewhere where their headquarters isn’t a steak bar, or we lose, and…well, let’s go ahead and assume we’re going to win. I’m just glad that I’m getting to do something useful, rather than being stuck in barracks looking at the paint drying. Not much else to do as a garrison, unless our Terran friends decide that they’re going to try some sort of assault.” They walked into the cargo bay, dozens of technicians bustling around under the frantic supervision of Nguyen and Haynes, the latter making her way over to them when she saw Bradley enter.

  “Have you come to help, Cadet?” she replied. “I thought you were still over on Ariadne?” Looking at Drake, she added, “I can use you and your friends over on…”

  “No, ma’am, I’m here for some fighters.”

  Raising an eyebrow, Haynes repeated, “Some fighters.”

  “Two, or three if you can spare them. We need to link them into Ariadne’s data network and communications system if we’re going to coordinate fighter operations during the battle. You’ve got a few spares, and I thought…”

  “Thinking, Cadet, is something that is best left for those with the experience and training to do so in a cogent and realistic manner. I cannot simply hand over three fighters without proper approval and authorization, and certainly not to someone who is barely an officer at all and an advertising executive.” She shook her head, and said, “Come back with the proper paperwork filled in, and I will give your request the due consideration that I feel it deserves.”

  The frustrations, the adrenaline, the exhaustion and stress of the last twenty-four hours raged through Bradley, and she took a step forward, her eyes wide, burning into Haynes as something within the young cadet snapped.

  “Ma’am, there isn’t time for that. We’re supposed to be ready in less than four hours, and we haven’t got the personnel to really do the job in twelve, so we’re already going to be operating with a time deficit. There’s no time to go through channels.” Her face reddened, and she added, “And there’s no time for me to satisfy the demands of your ego, ma’am. You have six spare fighters here. We don’t need intact ships, as long as one of them has a working communications array and the others have functional data networks. Hangar queens are fine. But I’m not leaving without them, unless you can find a military policeman around here to throw me out! We’re at war, damn it.”

  “Are you quite finished?” Haynes said, glaring at her.

  “Just about, ma’am,” Bradley replied.

  “Nine, Thirteen and Seventeen,” Haynes said. “Take them and get out of my sight. I assure you that I will be speaking to your commanding officer in some detail about your performance here today, as well as your actions prior to the outbreak of hostilities. This isn’t over, Cadet. I assure you of that.” She turned and stalked away, Drake shaking his head as she left.

  “That might not have been the smartest idea, but I can probably find you an opening with the company I work for after this is over.”

  “Why is everyone making me job offers today?” she asked. Turning to the technicians, she said, “You heard the Flight Officer. We’ve got our birds, and we’re light on time. Let’s hustle, people.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Drake replied with a wry smile. “Maybe I ought to reconsider that offer. With your attitude, I reckon you’d be my boss in five years. I’d be shooting myself in the foot.”

  “Don’t worry, Lieutenant. No offense, but if I accepted your offer, I’d be the one shooting myself in the foot.”

  Chapter 13

  Winter sat in his cockpit, trying to meditate, soft music in the background as he waited for the red light that would indicate that it was time for them to leave the station. The squadron had slowly made its way out into free space over the last ten minutes, ensuring they had ample time for their pre-mission checks, and he’d quickly completed the tests on the drone fighters he would be controlling during the mission. Haynes sat ahead of him, periodically glancing back at the rear station, as though weighing up whether to tell him something.

  With a sigh, he said, “Get it out of your system, Flight.”

  “Nothing, sir.”

  “Really?” he replied. “I figured it might have something to do with the run-in you had with a certain Cadet earlier. Let me give you a little free advice, Flight. Don’t press it. We’re in the middle of a war, one that we weren’t exactly expecting, and all of our emotions are running a little higher than any of us would like. I don’t condone what either of you did, and I’ll be honest, I don’t like what I’ve seen of your attitude either.”

  “May I speak freely?”

  “In the cockpit, you’re damned right you can.” He looked up at the countdown clock, and said, “Though make it quick. We light fire in four minutes, and we’re not going to have time for this then.”

  “I would have expected you to support your daughter, sir, but I will be having words with the Commandant’s office over her application to join the Academy. I thought it best to warn you in advance.”

  Cracking a smile, Winter replied, “That’ll go well with the report I had convinced Lieutenant Bishop not to send to the Flight Engineer’s office in Crashdown City. Something about safety violations and the refusal to obey instructions from a senior offic
er during flight? You’re damned lucky Sokolov made it down in one piece, and if he hadn’t, you’d have been nailed to the wall and left there for the rest of what remained of your career. I’ve talked her out of it for the moment because despite your attitude, you’re a damned good pilot, and right now, we need all the pilots we can get. That’s why I picked you to take this fighter into battle.”

  Haynes’ face reddened, and she said, “Under other circumstances, sir, this would be considered blackmail.”

  “Flight, at some point in the near future, should this war progress as I fear it might, you’re going to be in a position of real responsibility, and at the moment, you’re going to fail, and badly, and the odds are it’s going to cost a few good pilots their lives. Lives we can’t easily spare at the best of times, still less when Caledonia itself is under threat. I’ve looked at your service record, and you’re in a hurry. I get it. I had a taste of that myself when I was younger. You’re on the promotion list for next year as it stands, and you’ll get that second stripe of yours, even though quite a few of your senior officers are a little dubious of what you’ll make of it. I’m not the only one with concerns. Your confidential reports make quite fascinating reading.”

  She frowned, and said, “If it’s that bad, then…”

  “Let me tell you the two paths your career is going to take, Flight, because right now, the decision has been made to give you some rope and see just what you decide to do with it. You can shape up, become the officer that I suspect you can be, and you’ll make Squadron Leader in five years, be on your way to a combat command and have the career that you’ve been dreaming of. Maybe even Sky Commodore some day, God help us. The alternative is that you continue on your current course, and be one of a hundred other passed-over Flight Lieutenants shuffled between administrative postings and nowhere assignments where you will take out your frustrations on your subordinates and become the sort of boss people pull strings to avoid, before retiring at thirty-eight to take up a position somewhere in the government bureaucracy where you will occasionally look out of the window and wonder what the hell went wrong.”

  “You don’t pull punches, do you.”

  “Not when someone’s at the crossroads of their life and needs pointing in the right direction.” He paused, then said, “And yes, to answer your next question, someone who became a very good friend of mine gave me a version of this talk when I was an ambitious young Flight Officer.”

  “Did it work?”

  Winter laughed, smiled, and said, “Probably not in quite the way he intended. I finally realized that I’d lost sight of why I joined the Aerospace Force in the first place, and changed my career path to focus on what I was best at and what I actually wanted to do. This isn’t about a career path, fighting your way up the ladder. It’s about defending your people from whatever might be waiting out there in the dark, and preferably having a lot of fun doing it.”

  “That’s not an attitude I’ve ever heard from a commanding officer before.”

  “Ah, but I am far from your typical commanding officer.”

  “With all due respect, sir, you are something of a master of understatement.” She paused, then said, “What would you do in this sort of situation, sir?”

  “Good question. I had a Pilot Officer under my command once who delighted in quoting regulations at me. Nothing better than a rules lawyer to stir the blood. I spent a nice evening going over the regulations and named him both Recreation Officer and Training Officer, as well as naming him as squadron representative on every station administrative committee I could find. I thought it would be a more productive use of his evidently excessive free time. It backfired, though. He actually got to enjoying it. Last I heard he was a Flight Lieutenant in Personnel. Pity, actually. He wasn’t a bad pilot. Something of a waste.”

  She paused, then said, “Then I should find some sort of punishment that doesn’t necessarily look like one?”

  “Technically, in this case, I’ve already had a word with Lieutenant Drake and taken care of that little chore for you. I asked him to put her in charge of his three least-experienced engineers and assign her to getting the laser communications system online. I’ve every confidence that the job will be done to a high standard, but she’s going to have considerably more than the usual level of entertainment getting it ready in time.”

  Haynes nodded, replying, “Thank you, sir. I’ll abide by your decision.” She paused, then added, “I was confident that Pilot Officer Sokolov could have landed his fighter safely, sir. I wouldn’t have put him in danger.”

  “I would tend to agree, but there’s a time to take a risk, and a time to play it safe. The mark of a good officer is to know just which is which, and to respond accordingly.” He looked down at a monitor, and said, “Game face, Flight. Looks like it’s about time to go.” Throwing a control, he continued, “Black Leader to all fighters. Commence attack plan as instructed. I repeat, commence attack plan as instructed. That is all.”

  “Engaging engines, full thrust,” Haynes said, reaching down for the throttle, throwing the engines full open and engaging the automatic navigation. To their rear, the six fighters under automatic control followed, each a slight fraction of a second apart, following the programmed sequence designed by Winter to simulate human response times. They had to fool their enemies at long range. It was too much to hope that they’d be able to contribute in any meaningful way to the impending battles, but at the very least, they’d serve as a distraction, perhaps drawing some enemy forces away from the task force.

  He glanced at the long-range sensors, looking at the task force as it assembled in orbit, ready to strike out towards the moon. Commodore Maddox had done an excellent job with the dispersal, setting each ship up to look as though he was splitting his formation for a defense-in-depth, whilst leaving his forces open for a time-on-target attack on the enemy cruiser. The first elements were already on the move, and a part of him regretted that he wouldn’t be a part of the largest fleet action in the history of Caledonia, larger even than the battles the fledgling forces had fought in the era of the Civil Wars, the last time they engaged Terran forces in battle.

  “Red Leader to Black Leader,” Cohen said, his voice tinny through the speakers. “All systems green, formation looks good.”

  “Roger that, Red Leader. Maintain rear guard.”

  “That shouldn’t be a problem today, sir,” Haynes said.

  “Never assume, Flight, never assume. They’ve already fooled us once. I don’t want to give them a chance to fool us again. Prepare to alter course. We’re breaking formation.”

  “That wasn’t part of the plan, sir,” she replied.

  “It was always part of my plan, Flight, I just decided it was probably a good idea not to put it in writing. You never know who might have cracked into the base computers, but if the enemy have managed to work out a way of reading my thoughts, then we’re in trouble.” He paused, then added, “So are they, for that matter. I keep some crazy stuff buried deep in my cranium.”

  “Where are we going, sir?” Haynes asked, reaching to disable the guidance computer.

  “High over the moon, high enough that we can get a good long-range look at whatever is hiding behind there right now. Our last set of readings didn’t have the resolution to give us a clear idea of just what we’re about to bomb, and I’d like to get a better look at our target in case they’ve put some more defenses down there. More than that, I always like to operate on the belief that my enemy is hyper-competent. They’ll have watched our fleet moving together, and not only is no deception plan immune to a sufficient level of paranoia, but I don’t believe that our security is anywhere near as good as Commodore Tyler seems to think.”

  “Then you’re worried the enemy might know what we’re planning, have prepared some sort of counter?”

  “If you were in their place, Flight, that’s exactly what you would do, right? Me too.”

  She nodded, bringing the fighter out of formation, the s
ix they were controlling remotely following automatically, matching their move. As she punched in the course, she turned back to Winter, a frown on her face.

  “If our sensors weren’t good enough last time, sir, this time we’re at a longer range, and…”

  “This time we’ve got seven fighters working together to give us a better image. We can link the sensors together to get a clear shot, find out just what we’re aiming at. Hell, it’s possible they’re got a nice reception committee waiting for us out there, and if that’s the case, I want to know about it even more. It’s not too late to abort, not yet, but that won’t be the case for long.”

  “Aye, sir. Implementing course change now. We should have a good look at our target within the next ten minutes, maybe less. They’ll be able to see us coming, though.”

  “That’s fine with me, Flight. If we’re going to play decoy, we might as well do a proper job of it.” He glanced at the trajectory plot, and said, “Make it look as though we’re trying something clever, moving into high guard position over the moon. It’s got to look convincing to the bad guys.” He threw a switch, and said, “Black Leader to Flight Ops. Black Leader to Flight Ops. Come in, please.”

  “Flight Ops here. Ariadne Actual on the line,” Bishop replied. “We’ve registered your course change. How long before you get within sensor range of the target site?”

  “Just a few minutes from now,” Winter said. “I hope the enemy doesn’t have your brains, Actual.”

  “Thank Flight Officer Nguyen for that. Apparently this isn’t the first time you’ve tried this sort of trick. He told you to remember Altair III.”

  “Christ, I’d forgotten all about that. Not my finest hour, I guess. Tell him that I’m certain it will work a lot better this time than it did last time. Keep this channel open at all times, and open a link to the flagship of that task force. If I get any surprises, then I want to be able to inform Maddox and Tyler without delay.”