The Right of the Line

by Christopher Nuttall

  We’ll do our best to keep the colony safe, he told himself. But our best might not be good enough.

  “Signal from the flag, sir,” Morse said. “We’re to rendezvous with the MNF as quickly as possible.”

  Stephen nodded. “Helm, plot a least-time course.”

  “Aye, sir,” Lieutenant Sonia Michelle said. Her fingers danced over her console. “We will link up with the MNF in five hours.”

  Newcomb glanced at his commander. “Quickly enough to prevent them from throwing an offensive through the tramline?”

  Stephen shrugged. There were now two major human formations in the system. The virus could mount an immediate offensive, in hopes of smashing one formation before the two fleets could combine into one, but the timing would be tricky. There were few human commanders who would bet everything on such a risky gamble, if only because the attacking fleet might be unable to disengage in time to escape the second fleet. But would the virus take the risk? He mulled it over for a long moment, then shrugged again. There was nothing they could do to minimise the risk. If the virus attacked, it attacked.

  He sat back in his command chair and contemplated the tactical situation. The MNF wasn’t in close orbit around Zheng He itself, somewhat to his surprise. Instead, it was positioned to block any offensive that might come through the tramline and either head towards the planet or drive onwards to Earth. The handful of orbital industrial nodes orbiting Zheng He might well be important to the colony’s continued growth, but - compared to the warships - completely expendable. Judging from their reduced energy emissions, Stephen rather suspected they were being shut down. The MNF would have orders to retreat, if faced with overwhelming force, rather than dying bravely in defence of Zheng He. There was no point in trying to keep the nodes active when they - like the asteroid miners - could be preserved for the post-war world.

  Or used to support a resistance, if we lose, Stephen thought. It was possible to conceal an entire civilisation in an asteroid belt, with a little effort. The Chinese government might be reluctant to try - the more repressive governments had discovered that giving so much autonomy to the asteroid Belters could be dangerous - but the colonists might have other ideas. Something of humanity might survive in space if the virus overwhelms the planets.

  He put the thought aside as the hours ticked away, the MNF slowly growing larger on the display. It had once been the most powerful formation the human race had deployed, but now ... he felt the bridge go quiet as the realities of war sank in once again. Thirty powerful ships - cruisers, battleships, fleet carriers - were gone, wiped from existence. Others were badly damaged, their power emissions so low that - under other circumstances - they would have been scrapped. Worker bees and drones buzzed around them, doing everything they could to patch up armour, emplace new weapons and repair the damage before the enemy ran them down again. Stephen knew, with a certainty that no longer surprised him, that they were running out of time. The virus wanted - needed - to take Zheng He as quickly as possible.

  And we still don’t know where the other tramlines lead, Stephen thought. The Chinese hadn’t surveyed the new tramline chains, not yet. It might be too late now. The attack could come at us from anywhere.

  “Their starfighter formations are a mess,” Newcomb commented, quietly. “They’re not deploying anything like enough fighters to cover themselves.”

  “They were shot to pieces in the brief engagement,” Stephen said. He could imagine the chaos that had gripped the fleet. The carefully-ordered formations would have been shattered, forced to reconstitute themselves at a moment’s notice. Lines between national squadrons would have been erased, putting pilots from a dozen different nations into scratch formations that were completely unprepared for battle. “And they probably couldn’t have drawn more from Zheng He.”

  “A shame the Chinese didn’t build a bigger naval base,” Newcomb said. He made an odd little sound. “We would have objected, wouldn’t we?”

  “Score one for Amalgamation,” Stephen said.

  He didn’t relax - not completely - until the two fleets finally combined into one. The two datanets linked together, following an extensive exchange of security codes to ensure that neither fleet had been infected and compromised. Stephen wasn’t entirely sure he trusted the protocols - he was grimly aware that the virus could make a mockery out of security protocols, simply by infecting people who knew how to bypass them - but there was no alternative. They couldn’t board the MNF and check everyone for the virus, not now.

  They knew the dangers, Stephen reminded himself. They won’t have let themselves be infected.

  “Signal from the flag, sir,” Morse said. “Admiral Zadornov requests that you join her for a conference call.”

  “Understood.” Stephen stood. “Mr. XO, you have the bridge.”

  “Aye, sir,” Newcomb said. “I have the bridge.”

  Stephen nodded, then strode through the hatch into his ready room. Admiral Zadornov’s staff were already setting up the holoconference, hazy figures blurring in and out of existence as security handshakes were exchanged and secure laser links established. He took his seat, silently accepted a cup of tea from his steward and waited. It seemed like forever before a handful of blurry figures finally snapped into existence. Stephen sucked in his breath as Admiral Weisskopf appeared in front of him. The dark-skinned American looked as if he’d been through hell. His fleet had been shot to pieces and forced to retreat, leaving uncounted thousands of civilian colonists to their fate.

  He had no choice, Stephen thought. He’d seen the contingency plans, the ones that had been devised before humanity understood the full power and horror of the virus. Admiral Weisskopf had had strict orders to preserve his fleet, even if it meant abandoning colonists to a fate worse than death. But it couldn’t have sat well with him. And even if he comes to terms with what he did, someone will say it could have been different.

  “Admiral,” Weisskopf said. He sounded tired and worn. “And Captain ... Stephen. Good to see you again.”

  “Likewise,” Stephen said.

  “We need a status update,” Admiral Zadornov said. “How many of your ships can fly or fight?”

  Admiral Weisskopf looked pained. “Right now, roughly a third of my ships are in no condition to fight anything more dangerous than an unarmed freighter. They could be repaired, with a proper shipyard, but” - he shrugged, elaborately - “we have to send them home. The remainder are better off, particularly if you can cover us long enough to make some essential repairs, yet ... we’re short on starfighters and quite a few other things. The base here simply doesn’t have the facilities to support us.”

  “We brought emergency supplies,” Svetlana said, briskly. “My staff will be in touch. We can start distributing them as soon as we work out a proper schedule.”

  “We have one,” Admiral Weisskopf said. “We worked it out once we knew you were coming.”

  Svetlana nodded in approval. “Then we can start distribution at once,” she said. “Right now, however, I need to know your intentions.”

  “Intentions?” Admiral Weisskopf chuckled, humourlessly. “My current intention is to repair my fleet, hopefully before the bastards launch another attack. Before you arrived, we knew - I knew - that we were screwed. I’m surprised they didn’t finish us before you got here.”

  He took a moment to centre himself. “The administrators wish to evacuate as many colonists as possible. I intend to detach my damaged ships, cram them to the gunwales with refugees and send them back up the chain. It won’t be a very comfortable voyage, but at least they’ll be out of the firing line.”

  “Unless they run into alien raiders,” Stephen said. “We were briefly attacked on the way here.”

  “It can’t be helped,” Admiral Weisskopf said. “The colony was ... ah, a planned colony. It cannot go underground easily, not without condemning a sizable chunk of the population to starve. They never anticipated needing to face such a threat.”

  “No o
ne did,” Stephen said.

  Svetlana nodded. “In that case, we’ll begin evacuation at once.”

  “The majority of the evacuees are already ready,” Admiral Weisskopf confirmed. “They just need shuttles and marine escorts. Conditions downstairs ... are not good. The administrators fear they might lose control.”

  “Unsurprising.” Svetlana’s face was completely unreadable. “I suppose the real question - now - is which of us is really in command?”

  “I haven’t been given any specific orders,” Admiral Weisskopf said.

  And you might be recalled to Earth at any moment, Stephen added, silently. There will be people looking for scapegoats ...

  He kept his face under tight control. Technically, Admiral Weisskopf was senior to Svetlana; practically, Admiral Weisskopf had lost a major battle. It was hard enough to convince major governments to put their forces under someone else’s command at the best of times, let alone after the prospective commanding officer had failed to cover himself with glory. The only officer to transcend national interests had been Theodore Smith, and he’d died in the First Interstellar War. And he’d only ever commanded a small task force.

  “Very well,” Svetlana said. “Once the evacuees are packed away, I intend to start a policy of aggressive raiding up towards Alien-One. We need time. The more we can delay their next offensive, the better. Do you have any objection?”

  “No.” Admiral Weisskopf smiled, slightly. “Anything that can buy us time is welcome.”

  Stephen leaned forward. “Did you attempt to monitor their operations?”

  “They’ve been moving forward slowly, establishing positions on the far side of the tramline,” Admiral Weisskopf said. “So far, they haven’t mounted any major raids on this system. We think - we think - that they’ve outrun their logistics chain, but we don’t know for sure. I simply didn’t have the numbers to test the theory.”

  “The timing is unfortunate,” Svetlana agreed. “If we’d been here earlier” - she shook her head - “it doesn’t matter. Hopefully, we can put some stress on their logistics and hold them at bay long enough for reinforcements to arrive. And then we can start thinking about taking the offensive ourselves.”

  “Making them react to us for a change.” Admiral Weisskopf bared his teeth. “That would be very satisfactory.”

  “Yes, sir,” Stephen said.

  “But, right now, our priority is to hold Zheng He,” Svetlana added. “Our raids will be designed to minimise our exposure.”

  She smiled at Stephen. “Invincible will take the lead, of course.”

  “Yes, Admiral,” Stephen said. “We will be honoured.”

  “We will also draw up contingency plans for when they attack the system,” Admiral Weisskopf stated. “They will give us a very hard time, given half the chance. We cannot afford another long-range missile engagement.”

  “No,” Svetlana agreed. “However, we do have very good point defence. We can - we will - make it very difficult for them to slam a missile into our ships.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Admiral Weisskopf said, flatly. “And they fired so many missiles that they managed to get a handful through the defences and hit their targets. If they manage to combine decoy drones and ECM with their missiles ...”

  “Or if they start using missiles as antistarfighter weapons,” Stephen added. “We may find ourselves at a serious disadvantage.”

  “Then it is all the more important that we take the offensive as quickly as possible,” Svetlana said. “As soon as the colonists are evacuated, we will start raiding their systems. And, when this system is heavily reinforced, we can start punching our way up to Alien-One. It has to be a key system.”

  “Perhaps,” Stephen agreed. Alien-One was heavily defended. The combined might of every human - and allied - navy would find it a very hard target. “It must be. But we don’t know how many key systems the virus has.”

  “Then we will deprive the bastards of at least one,” Svetlana said. “We can win. We just have to hold on long enough to win.”

  “Damn straight,” Admiral Weisskopf said.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “It looks just like any colony world,” Corporal Glen Hammersmith commented, as the shuttle flew towards Zheng He’s spaceport. “I was expecting something a little more ... exotic.”

  “You might have to wait another fifty years,” Alice said. There were a handful of classically Chinese buildings at the heart of the colony, according to the briefing notes, but the vast majority of structures were either prefabricated barracks that had been produced on Earth or simple wood or brick houses that had been built locally. “It takes time for a colony world to develop a style of its own.”

  She keyed the sensors, studying the live feed. The Chinese had designed and built a single large city, rather than hundreds of tiny settlements that would - eventually - be linked into a much larger colony. Zheng He City was surrounded by farms and a handful of factories, giving the colony world every appearance of success, but she couldn’t help thinking that it was actually terrifyingly fragile. A single KEW would be more than enough to shatter the colony beyond easy repair. She wondered, as the shuttle dropped towards the landing pad, if the colony administrators were really prison officers. It wasn’t uncommon for the more repressive governments to keep their colonies under tight control. They feared that the colonists would - eventually - seek independence. But, in keeping the colonists under control, the administrators were ensuring the explosion - when it came - would be considerably worse.

  But if they give the colonists too much independence now, the colonists might be reluctant to repay the mother country later, she reminded herself. The issue of just what to do with colonists who wanted more local control had plagued every country that had established a colony world. They have to find a way to strike the balance ...

  She dismissed the thought as the shuttle touched down, checking her rifle and stunner with the ease of long practice. The briefing had made it clear that the embarking process shouldn’t take that long - the administrators had already prepared the colonists for departure - but she knew better than to take that for granted. People would panic, people would want to leave ahead of schedule ... or they’d want to stay, trusting in their skills to keep them alive when - if - the virus occupied the high orbitals. Personally, Alice would have understood - and perhaps even joined - the latter. It was never easy to give up a life and become dependent on charity, even if she had trusted the government to take care of the refugees. Alice remembered, all too well, the chaos that had followed the bombardment. The government hadn’t meant to starve anyone, or deprive them of medical care - and security - but the damage had been so extensive that untold hundreds of thousands had suffered and died anyway.

  “Here we go,” Corporal Roger Tindal said. “Watch your backs.”

  The hatch slammed open. Alice jumped up and led the way to the hatch, taking her first breath of alien air as she jogged out of the shuttle. The air was warm, with a faint taste of something strange ... she flinched, just for a second, before remembering the virus hadn’t had a chance to establish itself on Zheng He. It wasn’t a threat; it was just the world’s distinctive smell. The wind shifted slightly, blowing a hint of burning hydrocarbons towards the marines. The Chinese had struck oil, she recalled from the briefing notes. It was uncommon to use petrol-fuelled vehicles on a colony world - electric vehicles were much more efficient - but she supposed the settlers had their reasons. It was much easier to produce and repair the more primitive designs, even if they did pollute the atmosphere. No doubt the settlers intended to replace them once the colony was firmly established.

  Alice heard sergeants shouting orders as more shuttles landed, some unloading marines and others readying themselves to receive evacuees. She glanced from side to side, finally spotting the command post hastily being established in a large hangar. A handful of officers were setting up terminals on folding tables, barking orders as if they expected to receive incomi
ng fire at any moment. Her lips twitched with amusement. Major Parkinson had pointed out that it was an excellent opportunity to practice deploying a large number of marines to a planetary surface, without having to deal with incoming fire or the overconfidence that came with knowing it was just an exercise. She couldn’t help wondering what the Chinese made of it.

  They’re probably hopelessly confused, she thought. Everyone looked confused. Junior officers, NCOs and enlisted men were gathering along the edge of the spaceport, while senior officers from a dozen different nations were hastily trying to organise the different contingents into a coherent force. We never planned to have to operate as a joint force, let alone deploy to a planetary surface.

  “Captain Campbell, reporting,” she said, as she spotted Major Parkinson studying a map of the city. “Sir?”

  Major Parkinson looked relieved to see her. “Take your squad to the evacuation camp here” - he tapped the map - “and escort the evacuees to the shuttles. They can go first.”

  “Yes, sir,” Alice said. “Who are they, sir?”