I suppose enough neurotic self-interest can blind a man to the most obvious of truths, he growled under his breath. How could Runciman not see that together they had a chance, while apart they would fall.
Then Mbele Rhodes shook back her mane of curly black hair.
She always does that when she’s got something contentious to say, noted Cordez, taking a sharper interest in the meeting.
Then he saw that Regent Rhodes had sprung to her feet, her eyes blazing with fury.
“If you can’t work with us, Mr Runciman,” she hammered out, deliberately dropping his title of Regent, “then go back to your people and send us someone who can.
“There is too much at stake here to waste time grandstanding, and I for one have had enough of your pirating these meetings for your own purposes.”
She fixed him with a stare that should have reduced him to ashes.
Runciman began to laugh, unable to believe the representative of the small African trading block would dare to confront the giant North Am federation.
Then he did a double take, unsure of what to do now his years of bluff and bullying had been called out. He recovered his composure and stood from the table to face the African Regent.
“You don’t have the numbers to force a representative off the Board, Ms Rhodes,” he said sweetly, “and I think we need to get back to more important business than personalities.”
Victor Emens cleared his throat carefully. Runciman froze.
“I think it might be best, Hoover,” said the Euro-Russian chairman quietly. “I think we need new blood for new problems, and all that. You understand, I’m sure.”
Runciman looked from the two Regents with him in Emens’ office to the holographic images of the other three Regents. Asura Ming looked at him stonily. He knew he would get no help there. The Pacific Regent represented too small a federation to make much difference, and he glanced past him to Cordez. Desperation was beginning to show on his face. The unspoken question hung in the air.
“Go while you’ve still got some dignity, Hoover,” said Cordez quietly. He was well aware this had to be handled carefully. The damage to the Board had to be limited. There were too many crises facing Earth to have the trading blocks fighting among themselves.
For a moment it looked like the North Am Regent was going to go out fighting, though his situation was hopeless, but then the look of anger passed from his face.
He had run the numbers, and come up with a solution. If he could re-write this to make it look like it wasn’t his fault, and if he could get his job back as a Senator in the North American federation, the political body, he could rise again in the future.
“Since I have no choice,” he said icily, and collected his data interface equipment before sweeping from the room. Once he was gone the others relaxed.
“We don’t want his replacement to be just as bad,” said Mbele as she sat down, flushed with her success. Cordez could see how proud she was that her initiative had been successful.
“I think I can manage that,” said Victor Emens.
“I have a replacement in mind, though I’ll probably need support from you, Manoba,” he said, turning to look at the image of the South Am regent. “As neighbouring federation and closest trading partner, friendly interest, etc.”
Cordez nodded. He was pleased Victor had stepped in. That meant a new appointment would go through quickly. Emens turned back to look at the board generally.
“Now that the struggle for Uruk has finally arrived,” he said, “EarthGov has begun to see the reality of the Invardii threat. As leaders of Earth’s industrial might, we’ll be able to dictate what we want.” He drummed his fingers together, and turned back to the African Regent.
“Regent Rhodes,” he said mildly, “if you want to move major policy, or make personnel changes at a Board meeting, you clear it with me first, all right? You make sure you have the numbers, and you sound out the pros and cons with the others before you act. Things can backfire badly if we don’t follow protocol.”
Mbele looked down, and clasped her hands together contritely.
“This time round you started something we were happy to back, but next time you might not be so lucky, do you understood?”
She nodded.
The board didn’t have time to wait for a replacement Regent. Emens declared that unanimous decisions by a partial Board in the present circumstances would be a legitimate action, and they turned once again to the threat of the armada approaching Uruk.
Cordez became aware of Asura looking at him. She lifted one eyebrow slightly. He understood immediately what she meant. The same thought had been forming in the back of his mind.
Now would be a good time to come clean about the Prometheus project, and about the Javelin squadrons the base had been producing. If Earth was going to help the Sumerians, then the peacekeeping Tetrarchs EarthGov had commissioned and the Prometheus forces had best go to Uruk together.
Cordez smiled to himself. If they had been at a dinner party, Asura would have nudged him under the table. He was still getting used to having someone around who, right or wrong, had his best interests at heart. But for now there was vital work to be done, and time was short.
Initially there was shock at Cordez’ revelations about the South Am Prometheus project on one of Neptune’s moons, compounded by his stretching of the EarthGov “liaison” provisions about Alamos to include full-scale cooperation. Then the Board came together, led strongly by Asura, and made some vital decisions.
They would send all available forces to Uruk to assist in the fight against the Invardii armada, and those forces would leave immediately. Cordez assured the board his Javelin squadrons would join the Earth Tetrarchs on their way to the Sumerian home planet.
It would still take more than a day for these ships to reach Uruk, and the Invardii invasion fleet would be there in less than 20 hours. Cordez could imagine the ferment of activity that must be occurring right now among the Sumerians on their home planet.
CHAPTER 23
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Two of the new Sumerian motherships lay in orbit above Uruk. The ships were huge, their lower halves crammed with cooling towers, with a vast dish built into one side.
The sun shone brightly off the burnished hull, the great cavity of the dish remaining in shadow, and light and shade playing among the cooling towers. Around the two motherships a swarm of Sumerian warships glinted a smokey white as they took up position.
ParSanni and Parapsanni were on their way back to the planet after an inspection tour of the now fully functional motherships. ParSanni still felt the glow of that success, but other things troubled him.
It had taken so many steps from his first tentative ideas on how to build a better warship to get to this result. Motherships that were really 108 normal ships in one. An enormous sphere that had 108 cooling towers crammed onto its lower half.
They wouldn’t have been built at all without ParapSanni’s Reform Party pushing so hard inside the Sumerian government, but ParapSanni had at last prevailed. Parsanni regretted that in essence there was little new technology in the giant motherships. They were only existing technology ramped up in scale and size. On the other hand, the facilities to make existing warships had been easily converted to make the motherships.
Two Barauks of warships stood at readiness around the Sumerian home planet, each fielding ten wings of eight warships. These were the barauks, or “teeth” that enforced Imperial Sumerian law. BaraukAng, teeth of the most feared predator to ever swim in the planet’s seas, and BaraukHarken, the Imperial guard.
Three more Barauks were on their way from Rokar, the Sumerian industrial planet, and they would create a second tier of defence, plus a layer of reserves.
ParapSanni had encouraged the Sumerian government to evacuate as many of the Sumerians to other planets as possible, but SergoParBrahmad, first among the Eight, had over-ruled any such idea. Sumerians did not run from invaders!
Cordez had
buried his head in his hands when he heard this. Battles can be lost, but the war still goes on. He wanted as many Sumerian personnel and resources to survive as possible. It would be a long time until they were ready to take the fight to the Invardii, if ever, but the first priority was to survive as an effective fighting force until then.
A call came through on the sub-space radio Cordez had given ParapSanni. Once the Reform Party leader had checked that the cabin only contained SarSanni and himself, ParapSanni took the call.
The two leaders discussed the rapidly approaching Invardii fleet, and Cordez pledged Earth’s support. If the Sumerians could hang on for a few hours, Earth’s forces would be there. Then Cordez thanked the leader of the Par’Sanni revolutionary Reform Party for his efforts, and closed the call.
Parapsanni had been the first to know about the instantaneous communicators, and be given one, outside of the Prometheus project. From the beginning he had shown a grasp of the situation far beyond immediate events, and far beyond his own political interests. Cordez had felt from the first that he could trust the forward-looking Sumerian.
Word that all fourteen squadrons of Javelins from Prometheus had departed came through to Cordez on the sub-space radio. He acknowledged the message. There would be 140 Prometheus Javelins joining the one and a half Tetrarchs EarthGov had amassed. Though in private Cordez thought the Tetrarchs would be of little use.
The battle for the Sumerian home planet had come upon them before Cordez had been able to convince EarthGov how serious the Invardii threat was. He would have liked to convert their warships into something more effective. At the most the Tetrarchs would simply be a distraction for the Invardii, and many would be lost.
Cordez added the figures in his head. The allied forces had a little more than 700 warships, against an Invardii fleet of bigger and infinitely better ships that totalled more than a thousand.
A cold gloominess settled around Cordez’ heart. How many of the crews would come back from this heroic but futile resistance? What sort of force would be left to carry on the fight against the Invardii?
But thinking like that was a defeat in itself! He shook his head. While there was hope there was a reason to carry on, whatever the “facts” of the situation might be. Those “facts” often turned out to be wrong, or to be right at the time but not telling the whole story.
What did he really believe, in his heart of hearts? He knew that in the end it was better to die fighting for a hopeless cause that you believed in, than to know yourself a coward, and scurry around in the shadows trying to delay the inevitable.
The Earth forces would go to Uruk and fight the Invardii. They would lose. And then the long years of hit and run, of resistance when resistance seemed futile, would begin. If his people never thought of victory, but thought instead of how they might survive for one more day, they might just make it. That was Cordez’ take on it.
The Prometheus Javelins were already deep in the grainy, grey nothingness of star drive. Neuman Cagill knew that his entire force lay spread out behind him, even thought he couldn’t see them. There were 14 squadrons and 140 ships of war.
Cagill had defected to the Prometheus project when the short-sightedness and arrogance of EarthGov had become too much for him. Cordez’ Javelins had saved him and numerous others when their ships had been sent up against a superior Invardii force for no possible military advantage, but some political gain to his masters. That was when he realised the future lay with Cordez and Prometheus.
Cagill had brought enough pilots with him, and junior officers that had been subsequently trained and commissioned as pilots, to fill the lead positions in almost half of these ships.
The rest were commanded by a mixture of Cordez’ original pilots and the best of the new crews coming through from the training programs on Earth. On this run he would be acting in his new position as Air Marshall, and his Javelin would be run by a squadron leader who would pilot the ship for him, and give him time to direct the campaign as it unfolded.
He had chosen Ayman Case for the new position, a pilot who’d been with him since the early days of the Tetrarchs under EarthGov, and who had supported him unquestioningly in the move to join the Prometheus forces.
Commanding the sophisticated Javelins was a complex affair, and the training was rigorous. There were too few pilots for the increasing numbers of ships the Prometheus project was able to turn out, and that would remain a problem for some time to come.
All Javelins carried lifeboats, rudimentary shuttles that would get the small crew away from the ship, and keep them alive until help arrived. At this stage only the pilots had a personal escape pod with the latest cloaking technology the Human and Mersa scientists at Prometheus had been able to provide. The pilots were just too valuable.
The Javelins were now fully armed and drilled in every possible situation they might meet. They were ready. They were more than ready, they needed to test what they had learned to see if it worked. They needed to see some action and hone their skills.
The Prometheus forces would meet up with the Earth Tetrarchs just short of Uruk, and assess the situation at the front line before they entered the fray. The Reaper ships would be at the Sumerian home planet before them, and it was anybody’s guess what stage the battle would be at.
Back at Prometheus, all of the research and production facilities were quieter than usual. There was the fact that a third of the personnel were on board the Javelins, but it was more than that. People were nervous about the coming engagement, and Finch made a point of dropping in on department heads, and being seen in the workshops and research centres, to put people at ease.
Apprehension was clearly in the air. Normally gregarious people worked quietly by themselves, and everywhere a sombre mood prevailed. There was no doubting the enormity of what they were trying to accomplish – and the danger to colleagues, friends and partners who crewed the Javelins.
Finch had thought of stepping up departmental meetings around Prometheus, but he decided instead to make a general broadcast morning and evening, telling the base everything he knew about the battle over Uruk as it unfolded.
He would make the dining complex available for those who wanted the company of others, but his words would be broadcast around Prometheus for those who felt they needed to hear his words in private.
It was a restless Finch who fielded a call from Cordez at the start of the next day. The Javelins would arrive at Uruk in a matter of minutes, and the first reports of the Reaper ships above Uruk were coming in from ParapSanni, as he received them from the Sumerian government.
Cordez and Finch spent a long time discussing the developing situation.
Warships of the elite BaraukAng group had been waiting for the Reaper ships as they came out of star drive inside the Sumerian planetary system. These warships had adopted SarSanni’s modifications to their star drive and to their weapons.
At first it seemed the Sumerian forces were having some effect, and the faster, more manoeuvrable warships caught the edges of the armada unprepared. Some of the modified missiles found targets, and several of the Invardii ships fell behind or were destroyed. But then the Reaper ships began to jam the missile guidance systems.
A series of sorties by Reaper ships in tetrahedral four-ship formation, laying down dense interlocking arcs of plasma, cut into the Sumerian sorties, destroying a number of their warships.
Pulling back from the new threat, BaraukAng shadowed the Invardii armada as it swept on toward Uruk. Waiting above the sunlit green and white home planet of the Sumerian Empire, three more Barauks of warships waited to defend all that was dear to them.
The first pictures came in from ParapSanni as the Invardii force arrived above Uruk. The opposing forces were too large for conventional tactics, and as they engaged each other the blackness of space above the Sumerian atmosphere became a maze of individual actions.
To Cordez it looked like two great flocks of migrating birds wheeling ponderously about each othe
r. Most of the engagement was taking place in the light from the rising sun, and the battle appeared from the ground like dancing specks of light above a grey dawn, disturbed occasionally by much larger explosions.
CHAPTER 24
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Detailed images of the battle over Uruk would soon be available from the Javelins. They were only minutes from the encounter. The sub-space screens at Prometheus, and Cordez’ South Am headquarters, were a recent development by the combined Human and Mersa comms team at Prometheus. It was overseen, as always, by the dishevelled figure of Matsu Fujimi. He was everywhere, making suggestions and urging them on to greater efforts.
There was now no limit to the amount of information they could send and receive by sub-space, and that was an extraordinary achievement in so few months.
We need every advantage like the sub-space screens, and so many more, worried Finch. The research teams were working every hour they weren’t sleeping, but the gap between Prometheus technology and the capabilities of the Invardii remained a disheartening gulf.
The Druanii had gifted them the sub-space technology – and one other little trick that Finch hoped would save his crews today. The Druanii shields should split anything hurled at the Javelins, material or energy weapons, so it passed harmlessly to either side of the Prometheus ships. It was a kind of technological Judo, moving to be where the hurt wasn’t.
It seemed the Druanii would only help Prometheus with things of a defensive nature, or perhaps it was just things the Invardii wouldn’t trace back to them. Either way, Finch was grateful for the help.
Finch sent a message that brought his departmental heads into the boardroom. There was so much to learn from the way the Javelins responded to what was asked of them today. Weapons and hull integrity were top of the list.
There was a flickering of other-worldly colours on one of the screens, and a sub-space transmission began from the Javelins. Uruk appeared as a green and white disc in the background. Several more screens lit up moments later. The Earth forces would be at the planet in a matter of minutes.
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