The Barbarian Bride (The Decline and Fall of the Galactic Empire Book 3)

by Christopher Nuttall

  “Show me,” Roman ordered. “And then reshuffle our damaged ships to the rear.”

  The display updated rapidly, showing him the remains of Fifth Fleet. It was an impressive collection of firepower — thanks to modern technology, it was more powerful than the mighty fleet that had been sent off on Operation Retribution — but it had taken a beating, thanks to the Emperor. Only five battle squadrons could claim to be at full readiness, the remainder no longer capable of flank speed or raising shields. Repair crews were already swarming over their hulls, but it would take weeks — at least — to get them ready to go back into the fire.

  I don’t want to leave them here, with the Outsiders, he thought. He knew he didn’t dare trust the Outsiders completely, not when they were allied with aliens. We just have to hope we can move them back to Boston... and that we aren’t greeted with a hail of missiles.

  “Captain Hammond and Captain Tromie both claim their ships are still capable of combat operations,” Lieutenant Thompson informed him. “However, their engineers disagree.”

  “Tell them they’re assigned to protect the cripples,” Roman said, curtly. He didn’t want to send a damaged ship through a potentially-hostile Asimov Point, no matter what the commanding officer thought. “And make sure they can establish a combat datanet with the remaining ships. We need to maximize our advantages.”

  “Aye, sir,” Lieutenant Thompson said.

  Roman sat back, thinking hard. He didn’t blame the captains for wanting to remain in the fight, even against ships that had been friendly a few hours ago. Far too many decent officers had been cashiered, or had their careers frozen, for not being aggressive enough in the eyes of their superiors. But there was aggression and then there was a foolhardy desire to take a crippled ship into the maelstrom of modern war. It could not be allowed.

  He pushed the thought aside as he tapped his console. “Order nineteen courier boats readied for dispatch,” he said. “I’ll be recording a message for them personally, which they are to upload into what remains of the ICN as they pass through the sector.”

  “Aye, sir,” Lieutenant Thompson said.

  “And make sure their commanders are aware of the importance of avoiding contact with Emperor Marius and his ships,” Roman added. “The last thing they want — or need — is to be caught by the Emperor.”

  “Aye, sir,” Thompson said, again.

  Roman bent over his console, trying to think how best to compose a message to the other fleet admirals scattered around the Federation. It was unlikely, to say the least, that any of them would declare war on Emperor Marius — he’d put most of them in command personally — but he had to try. Fifth Fleet was the most powerful formation in the Federation Navy — in raw tonnage, she was more powerful than Home Fleet — yet she was grossly outgunned. He hated to think of what it would cost him as he fought his way through one defended Asimov Point after another, bleeding his fleet white as he advanced slowly towards Earth. By the time he reached the Gateway, the Asimov Point that led to Earth, he’d have hardly any ships left.

  And some of them may see value in attempting to revolt, he thought, grimly. They may even see what I’m doing as just another revolt.

  He scowled at the thought. How trustworthy were the other fleet admirals? He’d only met a couple of them personally... Emperor Marius might have chosen them for loyalty, rather than competence. But then, Marius would have known the dangers of putting incompetents in command positions. He’d been the one who’d had to save the Retribution Fleet after Fleet Admiral Cuthbert Parkinson had led it into a trap. There was a war on, after all. He wouldn’t have repeated the Grand Senate’s mistake.

  The Federation is at stake, he told himself. I have to try to make contact, even if it fails.

  He tapped out a message on his console, reread it twice, then attached sensor records up to the moment Emperor Marius had swung his ships around and fled the system. There was nothing there, he was sure, that the Emperor wouldn’t already have, once his analysts went to work sifting through the vast fields of data collected by his starships during the battle. He briefly considered attaching a note of his intentions, then dismissed the thought. The courier boats might well be captured en route...

  And yet he’ll know what you have in mind, he thought. The laws of interstellar combat leave me with few options and he knows it.

  Roman scowled as another thought occurred to him. If they were lucky, the courier boats would beat the Emperor to Boston, even though the Emperor had a head start. And if that happened... he could warn his second, inform Commodore Sonia Yu that the Emperor’s ships had to be stopped. They could win in an instant, if they trapped or killed the Emperor himself. And yet, he knew it would cause a great deal of confusion. Sonia was a skilled logistics officer, but she was no fighter.

  “Record,” he ordered. “Sonia, things have changed.”

  He ran through a brief explanation of what had happened, then uploaded it to the courier boats before they made it out of communications range. It was a gamble — Sonia might side with the Emperor, or waffle long enough for the Emperor to take control of the defenses — but it had to be tried. He just had a nasty feeling the courier boat wouldn’t reach Boston in time to make a difference. The pilot wouldn’t be able to take a least time course if he or she encountered the Emperor’s fleet.

  “Message sent, sir,” Lieutenant Thompson said.

  Roman nodded, then forced himself to relax. There were no emergency alerts, nothing to suggest that his crews were on the verge of mutiny... perhaps, just perhaps, he’d managed to sway most of them to his side. Or, perhaps, they were waiting until the fleet was at Boston before deserting him. What would he do, he asked himself silently, if the fleet lost most of its crewmen? The war would come to an end before it had even fairly begun.

  He shrugged, looking up at Nova Athena. The planet’s population knew just how close they’d come to total destruction, but would the rest of the Outsiders? How far could he trust them, too? They had to know he was their only hope for winning the war...

  We just have to push on and hope, he told himself, firmly. Because if we stop, the Emperor will have his chance to secure his position and win the war.

  Chapter Four

  This was not, to be fair, a problem faced by the Outsiders. They handled the vast majority of their promotions purely on merit. Accordingly, their starship crews tended to be more efficient than their Federation counterparts.

  —The Federation Navy in Retrospect, 4199

  Nova Athena, 4101

  “I think I hate you,” Chang Li said.

  She glared at General Stuart, who seemed unimpressed as she stepped into his stateroom, the hatch hissing closed behind her. Maybe it was a minor matter, given how sure they’d been that they were about to die, but she was still annoyed. He had defied her direct orders and, even though he’d been trying to save her life, there still had to be a reckoning.

  “You had me kidnapped,” she snapped. “And then the shuttle’s power failed, midway through the flight. If the battle had gone differently...”

  “I believed you would have died if you’d remained on Nova Athena,” General Stuart said, calmly. “Your death would certainly have upset the fragile coalition —”

  “The Outsider Federation is bigger than one woman,” Li insisted. “My death would not have made a difference.”

  Carefully, she placed firm controls on her temper. She didn’t like the thought of dying, even in a good cause, but she’d accepted it. Running from danger was bad enough; leaving hundreds of millions of others trapped on the planet’s surface was worse. She might have been the sole survivor of her homeworld, if the Federation had bombarded the planet’s surface. She’d certainly have been the only person to escape the battle.

  “I believe your death would have been catastrophic,” General Stuart said. His voice gentled, slightly. “We lack the long history of the Federation, Li. Our defeat at Boston was bad enough to rattle everyone’s cage. We could e
asily have fragmented after losing you and your homeworld.”

  Li scowled. He had a point, but she didn’t want to admit it. She certainly didn’t want to admit that the only reason she would have survived was because her orders had been disobeyed. And yet, she had to admit it had worked out in their favor. She’d been in space, close enough to link up with General Stuart and travel with him to Valiant. They now had hope when, only a few hours ago, they’d had none.

  And yet, they also had one hell of a mess.

  But at least we have hope, she reminded herself. I should cling to that.

  She sighed inwardly, forcing herself to think. She’d been stunned throughout her stay on the shuttle, but she’d reviewed the files once she’d been awakened. The Federation Navy, on the direct command of their Emperor, had been poised to fire antimatter warheads at her homeworld. She’d have lost her entire family in a handful of seconds. And the only thing that had saved her homeworld from complete destruction had been a mutiny in the enemy’s ranks. Or something.

  She honestly wasn’t entirely sure what had happened. And she didn’t really want to look a gift horse in the mouth.

  “Very well,” she said. “Do you think we can trust Admiral Garibaldi?”

  “I’ve never met him before this moment, not face-to-face,” General Stuart said. “I thought you were supposed to be the one who was good at reading people.”

  Li said nothing, merely raising her eyebrows.

  “I think he’s young and earnest,” General Stuart said, after a moment. “And I think he was honestly shocked after the Emperor tried to commit genocide. But he could be very good at masking his thoughts and feelings. Don’t forget, he was a serving officer during the days of the Grand Senate. He wouldn’t have risen in the ranks without the ability to dissemble.”

  “Maybe,” Li said.

  She scowled. There was frustratingly little in the files her intelligence staff had collected on Roman Garibaldi — and almost none of it had been gleaned from any method more complex than reading the Federation’s press releases. Ensign Roman Garibaldi had assumed command of Enterprise during Operation Retribution, suggesting either heavy casualties or very powerful connections. But his name didn’t suggest any strong ties to the Grand Senate; indeed, the only patron he had was Marius Drake.

  Command of a cruiser at a surprisingly young age, she thought, mentally reviewing what she’d read. No doubt patronage had played a role, but Marius Drake wasn’t — hadn’t been — the type of man to value loyalty over competence. And then a commodore, commander of an entire fleet, and then an admiral. And he tricked us at Boston and kicked our asses right across the system.

  “He is competent,” General Stuart said. “But politically... I don’t know what he is.”

  Li shook her head. “Can he win the war?”

  “With our support, perhaps,” General Stuart said. “Without it, probably not. And then... I don’t know what he’d want to do with the Federation.”

  “True,” Li agreed.

  She’d hoped, once upon a time, that the Federation could be reformed, that a modicum of justice and fairness could be restored to the system. But she’d found herself blocked at every turn, even when she’d beaten the Grand Senators at their own game and managed to get herself elected to the Grand Senate. She’d thought she’d won a great prize, yet it hadn’t taken her long to sort out just how badly the entire system was rigged. The collected voting power of the out-worlds was of no consequence, compared to the might of the core. And even the destruction of the Grand Senate hadn’t been enough to save the system.

  The irony was chilling. She might not have met Roman Garibaldi before the Battle of Nova Athena, but she had met Marius Drake. He’d struck her as a grim bulldog, determined to burn his way through everything standing in his path, yet destruction was no way to reform the Federation. If the reports she’d read were correct, Drake — Emperor Marius — had become the monster he’d sought to kill. He’d found himself forced to destroy the Federation in order to save it.

  And after we win the war, she asked herself, what then?

  The Outsider Federation had settled on a federal structure for the post-Federation universe, an attempt to keep both human unity and grant hundreds of thousands of worlds autonomy, preventing them from becoming the victims of the federal government. But she knew, all too well, that not every Outsider supported the plan. They hated and feared Earth; they wanted, deep in their hearts, to burn the entire edifice to the ground. And there were times, far too many times, when she found herself agreeing with them. Earth was so far beyond salvation that destroying it was the only option.

  But now, with the addition of Roman Garibaldi to their ranks, who knew where he would stand?

  “I have a suggestion,” General Stuart said. “We need time — months, at least — to repair our damaged ships and bring the next generation of superdreadnaughts online. Admiral Garibaldi can use that time to secure Boston, hopefully securing his fleet train and the immense stockpile of supplies in the fleet base. It would also get him control of a number of pathways deeper into the Federation.”

  Li nodded impatiently. Boston’s importance was no great surprise to her. They’d discussed the system’s role in the enemy’s defenses, back when she’d authorized the attack on Boston that had ended so badly. If Admiral Garibaldi failed to secure the system, all hope of an offensive deeper into enemy space would be lost.

  “We provide him with what limited support we can, while waiting for the remainder of our fleet to come back online,” General Stuart added. “If his forces get worn down to a nub... that will make it easier, in the aftermath of the war, for us to determine the future of the Federation.”

  “You mean, use his forces to soak up enemy fire,” Li said, flatly. “And turn him into a martyr, if necessary.”

  “Yes,” General Stuart said. “He may be too dangerous to be allowed to live.”

  Li felt her eyes narrow. She could see the cold-hearted logic of it. The Outsider Navy had been badly weakened after the Battle of Boston and, even with their technical advantages, the Federation Navy would still outgun them rather badly. And even if they won the war, they might just be trading one emperor for another. Worse, a potential Emperor Roman would know the Outsiders far better than Emperor Marius could ever hope to do. He would have had plenty of opportunity to locate every last production node, then send ships out to destroy them. Allowing Garibaldi to weaken himself battering against the enemy’s defenses might work in her favor.

  But it was dishonorable.

  She had no illusions of just how much Garibaldi had sacrificed, just to save her homeworld from genocide. He ran the risk of being knifed in the back by his own crew — or, perhaps, of being hunted down and shot like a dog. It was no favor, to such a man, to abandon him to the whims of his enemies. Or to use him, praise him, and discard him. She couldn’t allow it to stand.

  And he will see what we are doing, too, she thought, bitterly. Nothing could be more certain to harden his heart against us.

  “No,” she said. “We will treat him as a full ally, with all the rights and duties that that implies.”

  General Stuart frowned. “The risks...”

  Li cut him off. “If we lose the war, perhaps because we withheld reinforcements that might have swung the tide of battle in our favor, there will be no point in worrying about the future,” she said, firmly. “And if he believes we are deliberately sending him and his men out to die... well, he might have a very strong incentive to switch sides once again or declare himself an emperor in his own right. I don’t think he’s one of the bad guys.”

  “He took our fleet on and beat it,” General Stuart said.

  He took your fleet on, Li thought. General Stuart had been in command of the forces that had attacked Boston, only to be lured into an ambush and driven away from the system. It had to sting, losing a battle to a younger man... but then, the Outsiders had had almost no experience of full-scale fleet battles before the war,
at least outside simulations. Are you arguing to expend Garibaldi because he’s dangerous or because of your injured pride?

  “That doesn’t make him a bad guy,” she said, instead. “Besides, if we refuse to accept him, don’t we have to throw out all the former Federation Navy personnel who’ve joined our ranks?”

  “That’s different,” General Stuart said.

  Li met his eyes. “How?”

  General Stuart took a long breath. “We recruited hundreds of thousands of former naval personnel — and mercenaries — before the war began,” he said. “In all such cases, the personnel were scattered amongst the fleet and, when they were being offered posts in sensitive locations, tested thoroughly for disloyalty or hidden programming. Their ability to cause problems was minimized. The handful of spies or deep-cover personalities we did find were unable to take any information back to their masters before they were... dealt with.”

  He paused, significantly. “In this case, we have over a hundred thousand naval personnel, spread out over two hundred warships,” he added. “More, in fact, if Admiral Garibaldi convinces Boston to join us without a fight. They are, if you will pardon the expression, an indigestible bulk; they have a fleet, they are loyal to Admiral Garibaldi rather than the cause and, if push comes to shove, I imagine they will follow him, rather than us.

  “In short, Admiral Garibaldi will be in a very good position to betray us and do some very real damage.”

  “You don’t know that will happen,” Li pointed out.

  “No, I don’t,” General Stuart agreed. He met her eyes evenly. “But it is my duty to make you aware of the dangers. There may come a time when you wish you expended his ships rather than have them hurling missiles at you.”

  “Yes, there may,” Li said. “But we will not deliberately set out to betray him.”

  She pressed her fingertips together as she turned to look up at the display. The Federation Navy’s Office of Naval Intelligence — or whatever had replaced it, given how badly ONI had dropped the ball — would have sold its collective soul for a chance to inspect the display, knowing it showed a network of bases and settlements that were unknown to the Federation. If there had been more time, perhaps five or ten years, she was sure the Outsiders would have won the war easily. Their weapons research was easily two or three years ahead of the best the Federation could offer...