Stephen nodded in agreement. “That’s one possibility,” he said. There was no point in suggesting they remained in the unexplored and unnamed system, poised to threaten the virus’s lines of communication. It might work, but only if they let the virus know they were there. “The other is to go on the offensive ourselves.”
There was a pause. “The unexplored tramline chain leads up to Alien-One. If we sneak in through the backdoor, we might just be able to lay waste to the system - and its shipyards and supply bases - before the virus can recall its fleets to deal with us.”
“I seem to recall that the system is heavily defended,” a Russian pointed out. “And the full might of Home Fleet might not be enough to break through the fortifications.”
“There are ways to get around the defences,” Stephen countered. “If nothing else, we can hurl ballistic projectiles at the planet’s facilities.”
“Or hit the planet itself,” Captain Nicolson said.
Stephen winced. It was rare, vanishingly rare, to deploy weapons of mass destruction against planetary targets. Theodore Smith had set the precedent of not hitting alien population centres, particularly ones that posed no threat to an orbiting fleet. Wholesale slaughter of civilians, even alien civilians, could not be condoned. And yet, would the virus notice the restraint? Would the virus even care? Was there any such thing as an infected civilian on an alien world?
Another officer leaned forward. “You would have us exterminate an entire planetary population?”
“The entire population is infected,” Captain Nicolson said. He held up a holographic hand. “I understand - I do understand - the reluctance to bombard a planet back into the Stone Age. I know just how many billions we would be condemning to death. But they are all infected, they’re all part of the virus now. They couldn’t recover even if we purged the virus from their system!”
His voice rose. “Wouldn’t you rather die than live as a mindless slave? I know I would.”
“Which is the point,” Stephen mused. “They were never anything but mindless slaves.”
“Exactly,” Nicolson said. “And they unleashed biological weapons on Earth.”
Stephen made a face. Retaliation - an eye for an eye - had been common, back during the Troubles. It was the only way to make it clear that use of WMDs would not be tolerated, even if it meant slaughtering innocents. But ... he liked to think they were more civilised now ... he shook his head. There was no point. Nicolson was right. There were no innocent civilians in this war. The virus’s host-bodies had to be destroyed if the virus itself was to be wiped out.
“We have authorisation to target enemy population centres, if necessary,” he said, flatly. “We’ll plan precisely how we will move on the way.”
He paused. “Do any of you have any objections to moving against Alien-One?”
“One,” Captain Hans said. “Assuming we get in and out as planned, we’d still be out of contact with Earth for ... at least a month. Perhaps two. A lot can happen in a month.”
“Yes,” Stephen agreed. “But what else can we do?”
Captain Hans stepped forward. “I propose that we sneak back through Zheng He and return to Earth.”
“That would take weeks, at best,” Captain Nicolson objected.
This isn't a democracy, Stephen thought, coldly. He dismissed the thought a second later. On paper, the fleet wasn’t a democracy. In practice, he wasn’t an admiral and he needed their cooperation. And while he was sure they would follow orders when the shit hit the fan - he was morbidly sure that it would - they might not be so willing to do as they were told when there wasn’t a battle going on. They have to be convinced that they’re doing the right thing.
“The best-case scenario is that we will need at least six weeks to get home, just to make sure that we evade the prowling fleet,” he said. “We can shave some time off that estimate” - he held up his hand to forestall the objections he knew were coming - “but the tighter the course, the greater the chance of being detected. One or two ships might sneak through, given the chance. The entire fleet?”
“Probably not,” Captain Nicolson said.
“But Earth has to be warned about the Catapult,” Hans insisted. “None of us expected it, did we?”
Stephen conceded the point. Catapults were expensive - and, as far as anyone could tell, one-shot wonders. The Catapult that had practically won the Second Interstellar War had melted down, when used for the first and last time. The boffins swore blind they would solve that problem, one day, but ... the beancounters hadn’t been enthusiastic about letting the navy buy more. The human race was still dependent on the tramlines for interstellar travel.
“We did send a warning back up the chain,” he said. How many Catapults did the virus have? There was no way to know. Its screwed-up economy made sure of that. “Earth knows about the threat.”
“For what good it will do them,” Captain Jove muttered. The Belter crossed his arms over his ample chest. “It strikes me that we have a rare opportunity to hit the bastards where it hurts.”
“Perhaps,” Hans said. “We don’t know how strong the virus is, or how badly it will be hurt if we incinerate Alien-One. And if we lose, we lose everything.”
“The fleet is expendable, if it buys Earth more time,” Nicolson countered. “I think we all knew the job was dangerous when we took it.”
Hans reddened. “I don’t fear death. I fear that we might lose ships that are desperately needed elsewhere.”
“Ships we can’t get elsewhere,” another officer pointed out. “We’re here, not there. We would have to get through an occupied system to go almost anywhere else, unless we gamble everything on finding a tramline that gets us home.”
Stephen leaned back in his chair and listened as the argument went round and round, trying to gauge how many officers supported him. It was difficult to tell. Councils of War were rare ... not, he ruefully conceded, without reason. A supportive officer from a foreign navy might be outranked by an officer who thought the plan was about as stupid as flying the entire fleet into the nearest star. Which way would that officer jump, if push came to shove?
“We’ve considered all the angles,” he said, once the argument had gone on long enough. “I propose attacking Alien-One. Does anyone want to formally propose an alternative?”
He waited, curious to see what would happen. A formal challenge to his authority might get the officer in trouble, when the fleet returned home, or it might not ... particularly if the challenge led to the fleet getting home. But ... it was never easy to guess which way a Board of Inquiry might jump. Someone might argue for caution, while someone else might throw caution out the airlock and insist that the attack should have gone ahead after all.
“Very good,” he said, when there was no challenge. “My engineers believe that the fleet will be ready to depart in three days. We won’t be perfect, of course, but ... they’ll do the best they can without a shipyard. We’ll do the remaining repairs along the way.”
He paused. “I intend to take the remainder of the freighters and their supplies along with us, at least as far as Alien-One. It should keep us going long enough to carry out the attack and give the bastards a bloody nose.”
“And poke the hornet’s nest,” Hans said, pessimistically. “They’ll come after us with everything they can muster.”
“Good,” Stephen said. It wasn’t a pleasant thought, but it did have its advantages. “The more they’re throwing at us, the less they’ll be throwing at Earth.”
He allowed himself a tight smile. They had orders to buy time. Very well, he’d buy time by attacking the alien base. And if it won them enough time to get the next generation of ships and crew online, it might just be the turning point of the war. He’d sell his life and the lives of his crew if their deaths won humanity enough time to win the war.
“After that, we’ll either double back down the tramline or head up the chain to Falkirk,” he added. There was no point in planning those steps of t
he mission in anything but the most general terms. He had no way to know how many ships would survive the coming engagements. “And then we’ll sneak back to Earth.”
“If we survive,” Hans said. “We might not last long enough to escape.”
Stephen nodded. “If.”
He tapped the terminal, bringing up a starchart. What would the virus do? It knew that Invincible and her fleet had escaped. Sooner or later, it would realise that the fleet hadn’t stayed in Zheng He. What then? Would it assume that the fleet had managed to escape through Tramline One? Or would it deduce that Stephen had slipped through Tramline Four instead? If so ... what? The files the virus had captured wouldn’t show the tramline chain running up to Alien-One. It might just assume that Stephen intended to return to Zheng He - either punching his way into the system or simply sneaking through to the next system - or that Stephen was trying to convince it to waste time trying to run the fleet to ground. Or ... did it know enough about the tramlines to guess that Stephen hadn’t flown his fleet into a dead end?
There isn’t a direct link from this system to Alien-One, Stephen mused. That would have been discovered long ago, probably before the First Interstellar War. The virus would have to guess at the existence of multiple tramlines ...
He shook his head. There was no point in worrying about it. They’d just have to hurry to get into position before the virus started surveying the unexplored tramlines. Maybe it wouldn’t be in any hurry. If it thought that humanity hadn’t explored the tramlines either, it wouldn't realise that Stephen did have somewhere to go.
“We’ll do everything in our power to give the virus a very bloody nose,” he said, putting his thoughts to one side. They’d know the answer to that when - if -the virus started surveying the tramline chain. “And I expect each and every one of you to give me your all.”
“Of course, sir,” Nicolson said.
Stephen nodded. “We’ll speak again, before we depart. Until then ... dismissed.”
The conference ended. Stephen let out a long breath as the holoimages vanished, then stood. There was work to do. He’d already passed command of the ship to Newcomb - he couldn’t command both the ship and the fleet - but there were matters he had to attend to personally. And ... he needed to arrange some kind of ceremony for the dead. The dead might not care, but the living sure as hell did. They needed to remember the dead before it was too late, before - perhaps - they went to join them. Stephen had no illusions. Alien-One was heavily defended. They were going to be pitting a damaged fleet against one of the toughest targets in known space.
And we’re going to scorch a planet clean of life, Stephen reminded himself. What is this war going to do to us?
But, try as he might, he found no answer.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Alice had been too busy to notice when the fleet had started to move. The marines hadn’t been involved in the battle, save for readying themselves to repel boarders who had never materialised, but they’d found themselves working hard during the aftermath. Invincible hadn’t been badly hit, compared to the other ships, yet the marines had still had to clear corridors, assist damage control parties and generally make themselves useful. She helped the injured to Sickbay, carried bodies to the hold for storage until they could be launched into space or frozen for shipment back to Earth and a multitude of other tasks, brooding all the time. It was easy to busy herself, but hard to forget everything her father had said.
It nagged at her mind, no matter how hard she pushed herself. She knew, as much as she hated to admit it, that she and her father had a great deal in common. She knew, all too well, that she might have snapped if she’d been confronted with evidence of her partner’s infidelity. She knew ... she shook her head as the thought echoed through her head, time and time again. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that a woman was dead and her two children had been deprived of both parents. All that mattered was that Alice and her sister had been through hell because of their father.
And he has no goddamned right to demand anything from me, now, she thought, as she carried a piece of debris down to the inspection site. The alien torpedoes had done more damage than they’d realised, she’d been told, although thankfully none of it had been bad enough to threaten the ship. Does he really think I can forgive him for everything he did?
She dismissed the thought with a shrug as a lowly crewwoman came into view, carrying a tray of drinks. The sarcastic part of Alice’s mind wondered who she’d pissed off to get that duty, but the rest of her was merely glad of the break. She was aching, tired and sweaty. She took the mug of sweet tea, nodded her thanks and allowed herself a sip. It was hot, threatening to burn her throat. She shrugged and drank it anyway. There wasn’t much time before they had to get back to work.
Hammersmith stopped beside her. “I heard a rumour that there was an unexploded torpedo on the upper decks.”
Alice shook her head. “They’d have kicked it into space by now,” she said, dryly. The preliminary damage control assessment party could hardly have missed an unexploded alien projectile. It was rare, vanishingly rare, for a torpedo not to detonate when it hit its target. “Someone was just trying to put the wind up you.”
“Looks like it,” Hammersmith said. “They would have told you, wouldn’t they?”
Alice shrugged. There were times when an unexploded bomb - or an emplaced IED - would be carefully disarmed and dismantled, but not in space. It was far safer to get the weapon as far from the ship as possible before its electronic brain realised that it had actually hit the target and detonated. The preliminary teams might not even have bothered to notify the crew before removing the torpedo. Unless someone had decided that the chance to dismantle an alien torpedo was worth the risk ...
“Probably,” she said. It was a stupid thought. She hadn’t heard anything to suggest that there was any point in capturing an alien torpedo. They weren’t any better, if scuttlebutt was to be believed, than humanity’s own designs. “Just watch out for pieces of debris falling from high above.”
“Or exploding consoles,” Hammersmith joked. “That could really ruin someone’s day.”
They passed their mugs back to the crewwoman, then hurried back down the corridor. The entire section was starting to empty, now the bodies had been removed and the damage control teams had patched up the hull. There was no time to carry out a proper series of repairs, she’d been told. The crewmen who’d lived in the section, when they weren’t on duty, had been sent elsewhere. They probably weren’t very happy, Alice thought. They were competing for scarce bunkspace with crews who’d had to abandon their ships because they couldn’t be repaired in a hurry. She would have been more sympathetic if she hadn’t spent most of her career hotbunking in Marine Country.
And they should consider themselves lucky that they’re alive, she thought. She’d checked, out of morbid curiosity. Her father’s ship had survived the battle. Whatever else one could say about the Belters, they did good work. Too many ships were lost before their crews could be evacuated.
Anders met them as they reached the hatch. “The Major wants me stationed on the lower decks,” he said. “There’s been some grumbling amongst the guests.”
“Joy,” Alice said. The marines were - technically - the police force, onboard ship, but it wasn’t their preferred role. “What happened?”
Anders shrugged. “Some dispute got out of hand, turned into a punch-up before anyone could do anything. Major wants to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Got too many other problems to worry about it now.”
“Understood,” Alice said.
“You’re taking over here, but keep yourself in readiness,” Anders warned. “The last thing we need is a bid to take the ship.”
“That’s not likely to happen,” Alice said. There was no reason to believe that the guests would turn mutinous. They were fleeing an overpowering alien threat. They knew they had to work together to survive. “Just ... give them time to get used to their new circum
stances.”
“If we had the time.” Anders shrugged, then tossed a jaunty salute. “Good luck, Alice.”
“Same to you,” Alice said. “You never know. They might send us somewhere exciting in the next few days.”
“They might,” Hammersmith agreed. “We’re going to Alien-One, aren’t we?”
“So they say.” Alice shivered, despite herself. She’d been infected at Alien-One. The thought of returning bothered her more than she cared to admit. “And this time we’re loaded for bear.”
She kept her face expressionless as Anders headed down the corridor. The fleet - or what remained of the fleet - was powerful, but she’d seen the defences at Alien-One. The virus had no intention of allowing anything bad to happen to its core system ... if, indeed, it was one of the virus’s core systems. No one really knew just how much territory the virus controlled, let alone how many starships, shipyards and industrial nodes it possessed. A strike at Alien-One might be a war-winner ...
The Right of the Line Page 29