But all that theoretical knowledge didn't help you one iota if you had a pack of starfighters on your tail and lacked the means to deal with them.
“I'm intercepting a message from the planetary authorities,” Llyr intoned as the ship shuddered under the strain of acceleration. “They're asking the Ashani if they are lost! They want to know why they are here!”
Alexej scoffed from the pilot's chair. “Unbe-fucking-lievable.”
“Have they activated the planetary defense grid?” Tarek asked. With so many ships heading their way it should have been plainly obvious they weren't on a sightseeing trip.
“Doesn't look like it,” Rául read the sensors with a frown. “A lot of ships are milling around but they haven't actually done anything yet.”
“What the hell? Didn't they see the convoy get wasted?” Annie shouted angrily. “Why don't they do something?”
“Just watch those fighters!” Tarek urged. “Llyr, open a channel to Senfina Control.”
Tarek had to hold on to his seat for a few moments as Alexej put the ship into a roll. Seconds later there was a series of violent shudders as the Ashani fighters made another pass, peppering the hull with fire. He gritted his teeth and suppressed his anger. The local defense fleet should be out here engaging by now, not leaving them swinging in the breeze. There were cries of panic from the passenger compartment but he couldn't worry about calming them down yet. He just had to keep the ship moving and get them all to safety.
“Control, come in Control, this is independent freighter IRON MAIDEN. Do you receive?”
Tarek held his breath waiting for a response. He was aware of sweat under his arms and on his back but the lower gravity conditions made it crawl down his body rather than run. The MAIDEN's captain listened to the faint static on the radio and the muffled whine of the railgun cannons' accelerators farther down the ship as they targeted the strafing Dominion fighters.
“Senfina Control here,” a dispassionate female voice replied. “This is a military frequency. Please clear it for official communication traffic.”
“This is a military emergency,” Tarek responded in a stressed voice. This was no time for bureaucracy! “In case you hadn't noticed there are a thousand Ashani warships on our tail trying to kill us!”
“We have seen the vessels and are formulating a response,” the voice replied.
“Let me save you some thinking time,” Tarek glowered. “Your response should be to frickin' open fire on them!”
“We will formulate our own response, thank you,” the disinterested voice stated coldly.
Tarek could feel his frustration and impending doom rapidly overpower his restraint with the officious operator on the other end of the connection. “Listen lady, just where the hell do you think these ships are heading? At their current acceleration levels you've got maybe twenty-five minutes before they hit the colony so I suggest you get off your ass and do something, like scramble the damn cavalry!”
“Without orders from the home world we cannot send ships into action,” the voice said with what sounded like resignation. “Until the threat is classified we must…”
“Look, your superiors aren't here and about to get their asses shot off,” Tarek emphasized, the freighter bucking under another barrage of fighters' weapons. “Thousands are already dead! The Ashani slaughtered our convoy without mercy or hesitation, and now they're coming for us! I've got two thousand refugees crammed in here. Most of them are your own bloody people, so why don't you just issue the damn orders yourself and do something before you have a disaster on your hands!”
There was a long and expectant pause. Tarek leaned forward in his seat, his nose almost touching the comm unit. Annie and Alexej were busy trying to keep the ship together, but both Llyr and Rául were hooked on the conversation, its repercussions weighing heavily on them. If orbital control ignored them they were as good as dead.
“Standby freighter, help is on its way,” the controller finally replied in an equally flat tone. While the Érenni garrison may not have sounded enthused the IRON MAIDEN crew did. A loud, relieved shout came from Rául and Tarek.
“Roger that control, we're coming in!” the Captain replied with a wide grin. “Okay people, let's just stay alive for a few more minutes!”
That was easier said than done. With the way cleared more of the Dominion's ships were advancing on the colony itself. Swarms of fighters were already very close to the first line of orbital defenses and the system was still not activated. There was a narrow passage between the fighter wings which led to the Senfina orbital minefield. It was the only path not currently full of Ashani hardware so Alexej put the ship on a dead straight course and dumped raw fuel into the engines. The ignition bolted the freighter forward, slamming the passengers and crew back into their seats and raising louder cries of alarm from the terrified cargo of refugees. The IRON MAIDEN was burning days-worth of fuel in seconds, a massive jet of blue fire hundreds of meters long stabbing out from each engine, propelling the ship towards the gap. The attacking fighters were caught flat footed by the ship's sudden acceleration and had to put more power into their own thrusters to follow it.
Despite the shuddering, Tarek could still feel the jolt of weapons impacting. The enemy fighters were still with them. Persistent buggers.
“Look, ahead!” Rául managed to say through the crushing weight pressing on his chest from the acceleration not compensated by their Malenkov-Okuda drives.
Tarek tried to focus his eyes and could plainly see small bright spots outside the window, though whether they were real or a hallucination being brought on by blood being forced from his brain he couldn't quite tell. “What are they?” he grunted.
“Érenni gunships, friendlies!” Rául said through clenched teeth. “It's the cavalry!”
The dots twinkled and then with rapid speed resolved into blue toned twenty thousand ton gunships. They rushed past the battered freighter and engaged the following unit of Ashani fighters in clash a of plasma laser beams.
“Keep on the throttle,” Tarek choked out. “Don't slow down!”
Tarek's caution seemed well founded. A glance at the MAIDEN's aft sensors showed the Érenni gunships, though greatly outmassing the pair of Dominion fighters, being taken apart by the smaller yet far more combat-experienced attackers. The lightweight Kotha-class gunships used by the Érenni were totally new, a rapid development of an Aetan design rushed into service to face the expected Ashani attack. Their crews of twenty had trained on these new craft but had never seen battle before, and against the veteran Ashani pilots they stood little chance.
“Coming up on the minefield,” Rául informed them. “I dunno if it's activated yet!” his voice was still muffled by the effort of talking under the massive G-forces.
“We'll soon find out,” Tarek admitted darkly. As the ship careened forwards he suddenly wondered if they could decelerate fast enough to avoid hitting the planet that was by now filling their view.
The ship shot through the minefield, thankfully not setting off any of the silent defenses. Orbital command had left that section offline not just for the human freighter but for the system defense ships retreating behind the planetary defense grid.
The brief fight in the face of the advancing Ashani fleet had been short and decisively beaten. None of the gunship units made it back and only two frigates managed to get back from their system patrols in time, the other three groups offering target practice for the Ashani heavy warships. A sizable force had been stationed in orbit including a handful of cruisers. These vessels now formed up alongside the weapons' platforms to act as additions to the planetary defenses, as facing the Ashani in open battle was suicide. Though Tarek doubted that sitting in orbit with the massive bull's eyes of their emission signatures painted on them was such a much better alternative.
The IRON MAIDEN cut its engines and to everyone's relief the G-forces disappeared. Alexej put the ship into a steady orbit and began firing retro thrusters.
&
nbsp; “Wait,” Tarek interrupted him. “Don't kill too much velocity, just keep us going around in circles over the planet. We might want that speed if all goes badly here.”
“Badly?” Rául shook his head, sounding surprised. “This place is a fortress: mines, guns, fleets, hell, even a battle station! The Ashani would be insane to attack a place like this!”
“I don't think they brought all those ships all this way just to pick off some freighters and then go home,” Annie commented from her chair. It was rather unusual for her to add an opinion to proceedings. Most of the time she simply observed events and followed orders. But then this was somewhat of an unusual situation. “They're going to hit this place.”
“Then they'll get their feline asses kicked.” Rául slapped his hands together. “And they'll deserve it.”
“The Érenni have spent the best part of a year fortifying this place,” Tarek said, gazing wistfully at ships rushing around in the distance. “It's probably better defended than Earth. I can't see how they can break the defenses. Trying would be a slaughter.”
“But they will attack,” Annie said with quiet confidence. “We should be ready to run, just in case.”
Tarek turned to Alexej . “Do we have enough fuel to make it out of the gravity well?”
“Yeah,” the big Eurasian native nodded. “But we won't be able to go all the way back to human space before we'll have to reload. No chance. With current fuel levels I'd give us twenty-five light-years, tops.”
“Okay,” he nodded. “Okay, let's keep the passengers aboard. They wanted to go to their home world and we can still do that. It'll be safer than here. Anyway, it'd take too long to unload them and I don't like giving back money.”
That got an agreement from Rául.
“We wait here until the Dominion retreats, then make for Akvô,” Tarek outlined. “Once we drop off the passengers we run for home, any questions?”
“Just one,” Annie spoke. “What if the Ashani don't go away and instead smash through the defenses?”
Tarek shrugged. “We follow the same plan only a hell of a lot faster. With half the Ashani navy around us I think we can make it out in record time, don't you Alexej?”
“Or die trying,” the pilot growled.
“There we are, we have a plan.” Tarek grinned to show his confidence, a feeling he didn't have but wanted to at least inspire in his crew. “A good plan. We'll run away no matter what, get the hell back to Earth and never speak of this again. Deal?”
“Deal,” the crew said in unison.
Tarek returned his attention to the scene outside as shown on the MAIDEN's sensors. It was shaping up to be a nasty battle and they were in for a ring side seat. The Dominion's forces slowly formed up and arranged themselves into squadrons beyond weapons range, a few million kilometers away from Senfina. The sensors couldn't make out any vessels fitting the mold of troop ships which seemed odd for a planetary attack force. But then, it was a small wonder Winters' ship got any kind of look at the attacking forces at all, given the amount of electronic distortions being thrown around out there. Either way it was more a conundrum for the Érenni military and not them. All Tarek wanted to do was survive, and in that he was no different to anyone else on the ship. Politicians and generals might see war as a means to gain something tangible for themselves, or to live up to some sort of ideal, but for those actually doing the fighting survival was high on their list of priorities. Their own survival, the survival of their friends and comrades, the survival of those they were sworn to protect and fight for. Tarek remembered a quote he had heard his father use. His old man had said that in war there were no winners or losers, just survivors.
As the Ashani fleet arrayed for battle, survival was the only objective of the defenders of Senfina.
“War is too serious a matter to entrust to military men.”
Georges Clemenceau, French President During World War One
“I have come to the conclusion that politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.”
General Charles de Gaulle, Leader of the French Resistance During World War II and Post-War President
C H A P T E R 7
Ukhuri Home World, the Ukhuri Regime.
June, 2797 C.E.
“Fellow members of the People's Council,” Merr'Quan Hoth began his announcement to the leaders of the Ukhuri regime. “Today is a day which will go down forever in history.”
The dusty assembly chamber remained mostly quiet. The large round chamber rose up in concentric circles on ever higher tiers, each tier holding slightly more representatives then the previous one. At the very center was a flat circular area from which addresses were made to the People's Council, and surrounding it was the 'First Circle', the tier closest to the floor and home to the greatest and most wily of the Ukhuri leaders. Merr'Quan paced the open floor as he spoke, his words reaching back through the chamber to the very farthest circle.
“Today we see a strike for justice!” he continued. “Our friends in the Ashani Dominion have begun a campaign to drive out the piratical Pact raiders who have for so many years dogged and preyed upon them. They have begun attacking bases in the Pact which have harbored and given shelter to raiders with the knowledge and permission of those same governments.”
There were a few murmurs in the oppressively warm chamber. Its thick concrete walls and armored roof were great for protecting the rather paranoid representatives from attack, but the construction was certainly not designed for air circulation. Up on the Third Circle a relatively new politician watched the great orator speak. He, like the rest of his generation, had done his part to fight the Rasenni. He was a veteran of a dozen raids into Rasenni space and had their blood on his hands and their looks of fear and pleading imprinted on his mind.
More than a hundred years ago the last days of the occupation had been hell for both sides as law and order broke down and a slaughter had erupted. The Ukhuri would never forget the villainy of the Rasenni occupation forces razing entire cities to the ground out of sheer spite as they withdrew. As far as he was concerned, the war was still ongoing, and only when Rasenna Prime was a ball of ash would it be over. Representative Merr'Uht focused his mind and continued to watch and listen.
“We in the Ukhuri Regime know a little about justice,” Merr'Quan smiled to the crowd. “And we do not condemn the Ashani for this attack, no. We support it!”
Again the chamber was slightly quiet, Merr'Uht was straining to hear a conversation in the Second Circle when a delicate breath blew in his ear.
“The poor old fool,” a feminine voice murmured. “Watch closely, Merr'Uht. This is how a political career ends.”
Merr'Uht glanced to the side, recognizing Ta'Kai, a well-known and highly intelligent professor at the home world's most prestigious university. Her gift of intellect had seen her readily elected to the People's Council and she now occupied a position equal to Merr'Uht. He nodded to her and kept watching the rather well staged speech.
“However, even though we cannot provide direct assistance to the Ashani due to our own quarrel with the Rasenni, we will support them and recognize the legitimacy of their war,” the speaker called out, his rather large belly prominent as he raised his arms.
“That's a mistake,” whispered Ta'Kai again. “He is associating us with the Ashani attack which is extremely unwise.”
“How so?” Merr'Uht frowned, irritated at her interruptions. “Merr'Quan has been very careful in his dealing with our neighbors.”
“Very careful, indeed,” she smiled thinly. “But he has also been played by them. They have filled his head with dreams of glory, of wresting worlds from the Pact and the Rasenni, which will never happen.”
Merr'Uht gave her a surprised look. He hadn't heard any of this. “How do you…?”
“I have my means,” her smile grew. “And let us leave it at that.” She returned her calculating gaze to the chamber floor. “Merr'Quan has placed us in a problematic position. We are hur
tling towards a standoff with the Rasenni at the same time as a full scale war erupts on our borders, thanks to the Ashani. This should be a time of caution, not recklessness.”
“The Rasenni are weak,” Merr'Uht growled impatiently. “And their new Emperor seems even weaker than the last one! This is the best time to capitalize on their failings!”
“No, it isn't,” she replied evenly. “It's the worst time because without a strong central authority the Rasenni principalities will act alone, and we've seen in the past the individual houses are far more warlike than the Empire as a whole. If we press on, one or more of the principalities will go to war. Then their intricate system of alliances and loyalties will kick in, and in the end the Emperor will have no choice but to support them. If he doesn't he'll wake up one morning with a knife to his throat. Or he won't wake up at all.”
Merr'Uht did not respond straight away, instead looking down at Merr'Quan. The man's family had been instrumental in the resistance movement and his own exploits had the masses hail him as the greatest living Ukhuri. Surely he would not do something so foolish as to start a full war before his people were ready? “I refuse to believe Merr'Quan would wish to start a war with the Rasenni, no matter how much he desires it. He's no fool and has said time and again that we must build our strength before challenging the Empire. Those are his own words, Ta'kai: Only when victory is certain should we act.”
Opening Moves Page 16