Flagship Victory (Galactic Liberation Book 3)

by B. V. Larson

  His sister Mara stood staring at him with her arms crossed. “Take a chill pill, Derek. The chrono’s counting down. She’ll be done when she’s done.”

  “Like baking a cake, huh?”

  “I told you to show up at 1300 hours. You’re fifteen minutes early.”

  “Why doesn’t this thing have a clear canopy like an autodoc?”

  “Because the patient is never awake and there’s no need to see in or out. Dammit, Derek, go take a walk or something.”

  “Okay.” Straker glanced at the chrono again—seven minutes—and stalked out. He breathed deeply and walked fast through empty passageways. Fortunately there were no extra crew. Trinity didn’t really need them, and the warships did. Besides, Trinity was docked—embedded, really—into Victory, filling the mostly healed wound like a patch. The weird groupmind liked to stay in close proximity.

  Mara was still mad at him. He couldn’t blame her. He’d be pissed off too if someone had slugged him and dragged him away from what he cared about. He’d felt that way when Gorben had knocked him into the river.

  The fact that her other patients had been absorbed into the Vic-Trinity amalgamation brought on by the Mindspark Device didn’t help either. She blamed him for not getting them out like he’d done for Carla. That would have taken hours, but she didn’t want to hear his reasons.

  Anyway, Trinity said the brains were happy where they were, and anyone that wanted could eventually be regenerated just like Carla, but still… it was creepy as hell to think of all those bodiless heads, some aware and some zombies, now part of the AI. Mara seemed more horrified than he was, probably because she was closer to the subject and understood it more.

  He arrived back in the infirmary with seconds to spare. Mara glared at him again. It didn’t seem to matter what he did. She’d decided to be mad at him, so he tried not to care.

  Carla had been the only woman in his life ever since Academy. No matter how much he loved his sister, adding in Mara complicated things. There wasn’t yet a comfortable place for her in his heart and his mind. No doubt Mara felt the same.

  All the doubting fled when the tank opened. He leaned into it, his hands clamped on the sides hard enough to make the carbon plastic creak.

  Inside, Carla lay nude and still damp, with just a fuzz of hair on her head. Her skin was as smooth and unmarked as a baby’s, rebuilt at the cellular level. Mara had raised the possibility of cosmetic changes, but other than removing the last vestiges of the Hok parasite’s mottling, everything else was the same.

  Carla’s eyes opened. “Is this real?”

  “It’s real,” Derek said, leaning over to kiss her lips. “Hi.”

  “Hi.”

  He leaned back and held her hand. “You okay?”

  “Hell, no, but I’m better now.” She seemed distant, angry, her eyes looking past him.

  He wondered.

  “Out of the way, lover boy,” Mara said, helping Carla pull on a medical gown. “We’ve got tests to run. Shoo. Three hours and she’ll walk out of here on her own two feet, as long as everything’s normal.”

  “Okay, okay.” Derek hugged his sister from behind. “Thanks, pest. You’re the best.”

  She poked his ribs with a sharp finger. “You’re welcome, neuro-typical simpleton. Now get out of the doctor’s way. Girl-talk impending.”

  “Creator save me!” He got out.

  * * *

  Finally done with Mara’s tests, Engels made sure to don her working khakis before the battle meeting. Derek had wanted her to take a couple hours off in their quarters, but she wasn’t in the mood for sex or even companionship. Two things consumed her thoughts right now.

  The coming battle.

  Her child.

  The first was more urgent. The second, more important. Why did the life of one baby loom larger than all the people soon to be dying at Atlantis?

  It wasn’t rational. It was motherhood. It was biology. Carla was thankful nobody had tried to tweak that physiology to make her feel less… less…

  Outraged?

  Obsessed?

  Hell, yes.

  But Trinity had promised her child was safe in cryo on Sparta, and Engels had decided to leave her be. Bringing her along on this expedition would be stupid, and the only other option—sending her tiny frozen body on a courier back to the Republic—seemed pointlessly risky.

  So, Engels had left her there, and Derek had agreed. They’d had plenty of time in VR to discuss it.

  She put the thoughts of her daughter aside and focused on the upcoming battle. Sex and its weighty consequence—procreation, potentially starting a new life again—would only distract her from what she had to do.

  And what she had to do was smash the evil bastards who’d caused her child to be taken from her in the first place. The ones who’d created Vic and used him to cheat and beat her when she’d had them, she’d had them on the ropes. She’d have won. She’d have defeated Niedern, that careerist prick, and all his arrogant shiny ships, and she’d have done it with a plan, her plan, her mind, her skill and the skills of the valiant team she’d built.

  Now she had less then twenty-four hours to hammer out a new plan, with only a few experienced ship captains rescued from captivity, no warships bigger than a battlecruiser, and every crew short by more than half. She wished Hoyt hadn’t crashed the carriers, but that was water under the bridge. Fortunately, Victory was itself a carrier with its fighters, a ship that finally fulfilled the promise of the mothership concept now that fragile organics didn’t need to be in the cockpits and the lightspeed control lag was banished.

  Engels had argued for going home, taking the prizes, joining with her surviving fleet, refitting and coming back in overwhelming force, but no. Derek vetoed her advice. It would take too long, he said, and the enemy was finishing up a new Victory-class ship at Faslane. Captured intelligence also showed the enemy was pulling back its strength from the front. If they waited, there might never be another chance to strike the Hundred Worlds capital and topple it in one blow.

  In the end, she’d agreed, if grudgingly. The chance to win once and for all was too good, and if they failed, they could probably retreat with most of the Republic forces intact—except perhaps Indomitable. The big ship was too slow to easily run.

  So here she was again, placing a big bet on the roulette wheel of battle at Straker’s direction. He couldn’t do it without her, and she didn’t want to do it without him, but gods and monsters, she was getting tired of war. Maybe it was the prospect of starting a family, maybe she was just sick of losing people, or maybe it was a side effect of having to be regrown like a plant cutting.

  She rounded the final corner to see Redwolf standing in light armor, apparently guarding the door to the conference room.

  “Red!” she said, seizing his hand. “I’m so glad to see you survived. How’s your leg?” She felt unexpected tears threaten.

  The big man tapped his right shin with the butt of his weapon. “Okay for now. Trinity made me a pretty good bionic. Says I’ll have my turn in a regen tank, but there’s a lot of people worse off.” He pointed at her. “Like you, ma’am. Good to see you back to kick the Huns’ asses.”

  “Knockout in Round Two, Red. Everybody inside?”

  Redwolf shrugged. “Nobody inside that ain’t supposed to be inside, ma’am. That’s as far as my orders take me.”

  “Thanks.” She slapped his shoulder. “Stay badass, Sergeant.”

  “Master Sergeant, now.” He pointed at his new chevrons.

  “Good for you. We’ll catch up later.”

  Surprisingly cheered by the encounter, Engels felt less like ripping heads off as she entered the conference room. It was packed with people, both real and holo-projections. Derek, Loco, Heiser and Zaxby were here in person, while the rest—her field-promoted ship captains and a few other key personnel such as Chief Quade—attended via VR or vidlink.

  “Admiral on deck!” Heiser bellowed, and everyone snapped to attention, ev
en Straker.

  He winked at her as she scowled, and she couldn’t help breaking into a smile. “Okay, at ease you bunch of smartasses. We’ve got about twenty hours until we arrive at Atlantis. Let’s talk about how we do to the Huns what we did to the Mutuality.”

  Chapter 38

  Sidespace, approaching Atlantis System

  Victory’s bridge is a pure marvel, Engels thought as she took her place in the flag officer’s chair. The stations and consoles stood empty except for Zaxby, who seemed to like fiddling with the Sensors board, Straker, who paced behind her as usual, and Loco, who sat dozing in an empty chair.

  There was no captain’s position at all. Vic—part of Trinity, but with his own voice—could run the ship itself, even better with the Mindspark Device improvements. The AI would also handle all communications and datalinks, and could direct the courses of all the ships in the fleet if necessary.

  Vic didn’t control the other warships’ weapons and other systems, though. Even the totality of Trinity couldn’t keep track of so many variables—and if they could, the FTL datalinks couldn’t handle the throughput. Ships still needed people to crew them.

  Engels was glad of that, but knew the new age of AI would change everything eventually. Crew sizes would shrink as each ship got her own AI, assuming more good ones could be created. Somewhere in the future loomed a time when organics might be banished from warships entirely.

  But not yet.

  “Transit in ten seconds,” Zaxby said.

  When those digits fled, the three holotanks—left, right, and center from Engels—updated.

  The center tank showed a ship-tactical view out to extreme weapons range. The left was for vidlinks, ship systems and whatever else Vic wanted to display. If more was needed, the walls were covered with holoplates and screens.

  The right tank showed the Atlantis system out to flatspace. Its seven planets were widely separated now, billiard balls scattered across a curtain of sparkling black. Its primary world of Atlantis-3, often simply called Atlantis, pulsed redly with defenses.

  Indomitable’s icon hovered out near Gadeiros, the seventh planet, a small, cold, rocky world. Her sixteen sections had arrived first to give the great ship time to assemble and work out any bugs the recent battle had caused. Chief Quade would be working overtime. Engels wished she were aboard and commanding, but if she was to command, she had to be on the flagship, not the fleet’s heaviest hitter, so she’d given the battleship to Indomitable’s operations officer, Lieutenant Tevens, and told him to listen closely to Quade.

  Zaxby turned an eye toward her. “Admiral, message from Indomitable. She’s under attack.”

  Engels sat bolt upright. “Show me.”

  Before she’d finished speaking the words, the center holotank displayed a blurry view of a battle. Indomitable was in two pieces, fore and aft, as if two stacked food cans had been pulled apart. Surrounding the sections was a cloud of gnats.

  “What the hell are those?” she asked.

  “Opter drones.”

  Engels stood and put her face nearly into the holotank. “Here? What the hell are they doing here?”

  “Hell if I know,” Zaxby said.

  “I’ll give you hell if you don’t give me some fast answers.”

  “We’re collating. Also, we’re bringing the drive module in for joining as fast as we can and will accelerate to maximum toward Indomitable immediately, so there will be no delay due to your inevitable discussions.”

  “Says the guy who never shuts up.” Engels glared. “Where’s their Nest Ship?”

  “Unknown. We haven’t found it.”

  “How far away are we?” Straker asked from behind her.

  “More than an hour to weapons range,” Zaxby replied.

  “Hell,” said Engels. “This is not starting well.”

  Loco, awake now, said, “No battle plan…”

  Engels turned on him in exasperation. “If you’ve got something to say, make it useful, will you?”

  Straker sent Loco a warning look, and then stepped close to Engels and spoke quietly. “Keep cool, Fleet Admiral Engels.”

  Engels felt uncharacteristically on edge. “Who cares how cool I keep? There’s no staff or watchstanders here except you, Loco and Trinity’s… parts, whatever they are.”

  “Will venting help you think more clearly? Because the shit just hit the fan and we need you at your best right now. I can’t do your job.”

  “No, but Trinity can,” she said, letting uncharacteristic bitterness leak through.

  “Is that what’s bothering you? Maybe someday Trinity will surpass you as a fleet commander, but that’s not today. We need you today, Carla. Win today. Worry about tomorrow, tomorrow.”

  Engels took a deep breath, let it out, and resisted an urge to embrace Straker. It would look unprofessional right now. “Right. Okay. I’m good. Thanks, Derek. I’m glad you’re back.” She turned back to the displays and set her mind to the problem before her.

  Unfortunately, Victory’s two pieces had arrived at rest relative to the battleship, and so would have to join, accelerate, and then decelerate, to engage the Opters. Equally upsetting, none of the rest of the fleet had arrived yet, though they would begin transiting at any moment. All of this preparation would take time, and they didn’t have much left.

  Vic’s voice came from the speakers. “I believe I know where the Nest Ship is. I’m picking up signals from Gadeiros itself.”

  “You said it was uninhabited,” Straker said.

  “According to my data, it was. Obviously I was misinformed.”

  “Or they sneaked in and hid on the surface, EMCON.”

  “There is a range of possibilities,” Vic said. “The current situation is what matters. I estimate over eight thousand drones are attacking Indomitable.”

  “And we know each Nest Ship can deploy more than ten thousand.” Engels smacked her palm with her fist. “They must have killed some. They’re fighting. Will we make it there in time?”

  “I’ll deploy my fighters at the earliest possible moment, Admiral Engels,” Vic said. “However, by my calculations we’ll be too late. My long-range sensors indicate the enemy has deployed ground elements onto Indomitable’s hull and are in the process of assaulting through the exposed unarmored areas.”

  “Dammit. If they’d only gotten her assembled…”

  Straker said, “They almost did. The Opters must’ve launched from Gadeiros when they saw the pieces transit in. It was just bad luck.”

  “No,” Engels said. “It was a mistake—my mistake. I selected the transit point near Gadeiros in order to obscure her signature and to use the planet’s gravity as a slingshot. I figured Indomitable needed every edge she could get. I screwed up.”

  “Nobody screwed up,” Straker said. “Fortunes of war. Nobody could predict a Nest Ship was lurking out here.”

  Loco cleared his throat. “Hey, you guys are missing the obvious question.”

  “What’s that?” Straker asked.

  “Why would a Nest Ship even attack Indomitable here in the Huns’ capital system?”

  Straker snapped his fingers. “For the same reason they destroyed Kraznyvol. They’re doing what Opters always do. The Sarmok, anyway. They’re taking sides against us because we have the upper hand, attacking when they have a big advantage and can affect things in a big way. Also, Benota is clearing out their agents back on New Earth, and they don’t want to have the same thing happen here.”

  “So the gloves come off,” Engels said. “I didn’t believe Myrmidon when he claimed the Murmorsk attack was made up of rogue Sarmok elements, and this proves I was right.”

  Straker cleared his throat. “He did say those rogue Queens had tacit approval from the Sarmok. Plausible deniability.”

  “Who gives a shit why?” Loco said, coming to his feet. “Like Carla said, the gloves just came off and the bugs screwed us royally. Even if Indomitable survives, she’ll be useless for this battle. Can we take Atlantis with
out her?”

  Vic replied, “My estimates indicate a forty-seven percent probability, with a margin of error of sixteen percent.”

  “So it’s a coin flip,” Straker said. “We’re still in business.”

  “Do we want to gamble on a coin flip?” Loco asked.

  “For the whole prize? Yes we do—especially as we should be able to withdraw in good order if we fail. Pascal’s wager, Loco.”

  Loco gave Straker a thumbs-up. “Pascal’s wager, boss.”

  For Engels, the hour passed slowly, an agony as she watched Indomitable gutted from the inside. Her point defenses fell silent and all attempts at comlink failed. The fleet transited in and converged on Indomitable’s position, but not nearly soon enough. When Victory’s fighters attacked, all that was left for Engels was vengeance, rescue of survivors—and the gathering of information on how Victory’s fighters stacked up against the enemy drones.

  The 512 fighters deployed in a precisely layered disc, four deep and face-on to the enemy, maintaining high speed. Vic’s calculations and Engels’ instinct was that the Republic fighters would fight best at higher speeds and in a mutually supporting formation rather than dogfighting. This allowed Vic to concentrate on gunnery rather than maneuvering each individually.

  As the fighter disc approached, the Opter drone swarm spread out. Like a flock of birds, it morphed and flowed incessantly even as it attacked together.

  “I’ve deciphered their movement algorithm,” Vic said. “Like birds or fish, they instinctively maintain individual positions relative to each other, keying off between five to nine neighbors—in this case, seven.”

  “Will that help you win?”

  “Marginally. Even I cannot process all the data fast enough to predict individual positions, but I will be able to use it for limited anticipation of zones of density.”

  “Fascinating,” Engels said. This was a new kind of warfare, but space tactics had always fascinated her, and the fact that no humans—no friendly organics—would die inside the fighters allowed her to enjoy the engagement more dispassionately.