“That’s their launch doors out of action,” the gunnery officer announced happily.
“We have a signal intercept,” the sensor officer advised urgently. “They’re calling for help from all stations.”
Julia nodded. “Out here, all stations pretty much means Sintel. That satisfies our criteria for phase two, I believe.”
“It does indeed,” Hale agreed. “Fredrickson, take out their transmitter.”
The gunnery officer nodded. “Destroy the transmitter, aye, sir.”
The fire shifted and the massive, boiling cloud of dust and debris kicked up around the transmitter array. It settled very slowly in the low-gravity environment, making damage assessment slightly problematic.
“Reading some small secondaries under the crust.” The sensor officer turned a grin at the gunnery officer. “They must have been in the process of sending a long-distance burst when you hit ‘em and a surge burnt them out.”
“Why the hell’s everybody looking at me with surprise?” the gunnery officer demanded good-naturedly. “I planned that all along.”
“Hit ‘em with a salvo from the mains, Fredsy,” Hale ordered, “and we’ll get back to the RV point.” He turned to the helm. “Robin, stand by.”
The now-familiar rumble shook the bridge and he nodded to Robin. “Let’s go.”
“Lining us up for a clear jump,” Robin announced as the moon started swinging out of sight to port.
Just before it disappeared, the first main round impacted and massive chunks of the surface leapt away from the epicenter. The dust cloud this time was more dissipated as it spread far wider and much more quickly from the impact. The second round was less symmetrical. The hole from the first hit changed the distribution of force through the crust, resulting in a more lopsided display of chaos.
It wasn’t a massive effect, relative to the moon as a whole, but it was devastating for Chitari Outpost.
The view blurred, stretched and then went black as they slipped into a bubble of distorted space. Julia stayed on the bridge, wanting to be ready when they dropped back out in less than half a centi-day.
N’Zim approached Julia, one claw held out low and to the side indicating he wanted to speak to her.
“What can I do for you, Brother?”
He waved a claw around to indicate the main holo. “May I?” he asked.
Julia partitioned a section for him to use.
He brought up a holo image of the captured Purist captain. “During our adventure at the Goat’s Head,” he rattled, “I managed to store a good number of data files for assessment and the captain had something very interesting in his personal directory. Inspector Grimm’s suggestion again.”
He poked at the holographic menus with surprising dexterity for a creature with only three hard-jointed digits per claw. The image began talking, with a text translation, presumably inserted by N’Zim for his commodore, scrolling across the bottom.
For too long, the image droned, we have watched while the Quorum allows our scientific and military castes to infect our society through their use of alien races. The time has come to draw attention to their treasonous activities. This is but one demonstration of our resolve and it will not be the last.
The holographic Gray tilted his head back almost imperceptibly. We will escalate our activities if we must. We will no longer tolerate this infection.
Julia chuckled. “Oh, that is just absolutely perfect! We knew we could count on the Grays to assume we were Purists, but this? This is the best possible message to transmit after we hit Sintel.”
N’Zim nodded, a mannerism he’d picked up from his Human crewmates. “We’ll use it, no?”
She grinned. “We’ll use it, yes.”
“Then it would be of much value to me if I could bring the Purist captain up here to witness the attack and see how we’ve put his message to use. It would make him far more malleable if he were to see how thoroughly his ideals are being manipulated by creatures he despises.”
Julia liked the sound of that. “Should be fun. I’ll let you know the moment we’re ready to make the final jump.”
The Mummer’s Message
Though he was only there as a holographic projection, Fall’s amusement was evident. “Seriously,” he pressed, “you didn’t use a computer to make that up?”
They were at the rendezvous point, having a last-minute coordination call before the attack. Julia, Paul, Ava and Hale stood in a ring of nine holographic captains. Ava stood with her hands bound and she had a crewman standing behind her.
Julia shook her head. “You can’t really make this kind of thing up,” she insisted. “We would have thought it was over the top, but now…”
“Yeah.” Paul chuckled. “Now it’s just funny as hell and kind of plausible, when you think about it. The Purists are very much about their message, so it would stand to reason they’d want to clarify exactly what their position is when they make their harmless little raids.”
“Harmless no more,” Ava growled. “I say we use it. Anyone opposed?”
Unsurprisingly, none of the assembled leaders expressed any opposition. From the looks on their faces, it was abundantly clear they also saw the humor in it. It was going to make for a hell of a story.
And that simply added to the nagging problem Julia had been putting off until after the fight.
First, they had to give everyone something to talk about. “We’re agreed, then?” she asked. “The attack goes in immediately, before any relief forces at Chitari can return to Sintel and we all broadcast the Purist manifesto from the moment we hit atmo?”
There was no protest raised.
Julia hit a holographic control icon and a timer appeared throughout the combined fleet. The projected Humans shimmered out of sight.
“Pass the word for Brother N’Zim,” Hale ordered. He turned to Julia and Paul, flashing them a smile. “I’m going to record the prisoner’s reactions,” he told them. “Don’t want to miss it while the fight is going on.”
They were going to lend the Purists a hand, or make a mockery of their ideals. It all depended on perspective.
Sintel
Julia forced herself to look away from the tactical holo. She couldn’t just stare at the course projection until they dropped out of distortion. It would make the crew think she was nervous, and she didn’t want them distracted from their duties.
She turned to Ava, nodding at her guard to move back out of earshot. “I’m concerned about what happens after the raid,” she admitted.
Ava nodded. “This can backfire in a spectacular way if word gets out.” “Exactly.” Julia nodded. “We need to…” She trailed off as she saw Paul and N’Zim entering with the Purist captain. It could wait until the Gray was out of earshot.
“We’re not too late, I see.” Paul nodded to Rodrigues at the back of the bridge, indicating the Gray prisoner. The Marine moved forward to tower over the captive.
“Should be passing through the outer atmosphere of the gas giant right now,” she told him. “We’re very close to drop-out.”
By skimming through the gas giant, the bow wave of compressed space ahead of the ship could be loaded with an easily controlled amount of matter. On drop-out, that matter would be released at an incredibly high energy level.
“Swinging wide,” Robin announced.
Without any conscious thought, Julia’s eyes swung back to the tactical holo, not caring in the least whether it was good for the crew’s state of mind. The course was turning away from the direct line to Sintel. A ship in distortion could be maneuvered, but there were limits.
They would have to give themselves enough room to turn back in on a vector that gave them a straight shot at their target.
“Bearing back in,” Robin announced. “Returning to normal space in five, four, three, two, one… transition complete.”
The bridge windows were useless in an action like this. The high-energy discharge had been released within the planet’s atmosphere and the
re was simply no way for Human eyes to see through the resultant hell-storm.
All eyes turned to the central holo. A three-dimensional image of the Gray city showed in grainy detail due to the extreme atmospheric disturbance. Erratic skeins of electrical discharge danced all over the cruiser’s hull, flashing past the windows and wreaking general havoc with the external sensor suites.
Still, there was more than enough data to assess the impact of their assault. A scar stretched out in front of the Ava Klum for roughly six kilometers. Nothing remained of the carbon composite towers in the fifteen-hundred-meter-wide path of devastation.
Several towers on the fringes had taken structural damage and were leaning in toward the gap. As they watched, one of them tilted in a few more degrees, halted for a brief moment as if it might yet remain standing, and then lurched down as several of the lower levels were crushed by those above. The remaining three hundred levels of tower then resumed the rotation, smashing themselves to fragments on the rubble below.
The air was filled with carbon dust and it would likely spread throughout the planet’s atmosphere. Even now, the other eight ships were conducting similar drop-out attacks against major population centers around Sintel. Given the high potential for lung damage, it was probable the Gray Quorum would order the planet be abandoned.
Julia turned to face the Gray prisoner.
He was the darkest shade of gray she’d ever seen.
“You have killed yourselves,” the Purist insisted tonelessly. “The Quorum will have no choice but to order an all-out war against your kind.”
She smiled pleasantly. “They will certainly be inclined to take revenge against the perpetrators of this abhorrent act. Send the message if you please.” This last was to Hale.
Julia gestured to the central holo where the holographic image of the Purist captain appeared.
For too long we have watched while the Quorum allows our scientific and military castes to infect our society through their use of alien races…
The Gray captain stared at the image and, to Julia’s surprise, the color drained from his face almost entirely. She’d never seen them with nearly white skin before but, then, she’d never seen a Gray caught in the grips of horror.
“Message sent,” the communications officer announced.
“Very good.” Hale looked to Julia, received a confirmatory nod and turned to Robin. “Helm, take us to the rendezvous.”
The hologram of the devastated city stretched and was gone, leaving only a small ocean of visual static.
She turned to the Gray. “Until we find a way to deprogram all of the Humans you’ve turned into weapons, your Purist movement will become increasingly violent and dangerous. Millions of your people will die.” She looked at him for a moment, showing no emotion whatsoever. “I would suggest that you cooperate with our efforts.”
She turned back to the tactical display as if the Gray prisoner no longer existed.
Much of his color returned at the insult, but he was led away before he could form an appropriately bland response.
The Way Forward
“Look, Captain Fall,” Julia answered calmly, “I don’t think any of us likes this, but it’s absolutely necessary.” She looked around at the ring of holographic captains. “If we return to Roanoke, even if we try to keep our crews and officers aboard, the word will get out about what we just did.”
“She’s right,” Paul amplified. “Assaulting a Gray planet posing as Gray dissenters is a juicy story. There’s no way in hell that would stay a secret for even a half day.”
“And then,” Julia picked up the thread, “the Grays would hear of it.”
Fall nodded in surrender, though he still looked angry. “And then there’d be no civil war. I understand, it’s just that…”
“It’s worse than that, Fall,” Julia insisted. “We didn’t send the knockout signal from Cerberus because it would have brought the Grays down around our ears. Just imagine what they’d do if they learned we tried to maneuver them into a full-blown civil war?”
“We did all this to ensure we stay low on their threat meter,” Ava added. “If they find out we were behind this, it puts us much higher on their shit list. Higher than the Imperium, even.”
“And we’re not just talking about the kind of war we’ve been fighting against the Spirians.” Julia swept her gaze around the ghostly group again to make sure she had their attention.
“We’re talking about a race that has planet-killers and they’d sure as hell bring them against us. They might still worry about the Imperium finding out they’re killing Humans, but they’d kill us all the same.”
“Their risk assessment would have changed,” Paul told them. “A small chance of open war with the Imperial Navy and Marines would be an acceptable risk to eradicate a population that was meddling – effectively, I might add – in their internal affairs.”
“But where are we going to go?” Pyatov, one of Ava’s captains, demanded.
“That mining colony we found might work for us,” Paul mused. “It has miles of tunnels with good ventilation, lots of room for crew accommodation and storage, and there’s one of those freakishly dense nebulas not far away where we can hide our ships.”
There was a more-or-less general air of receptiveness to the suggestion.
“My purser tells me there was a fair amount of edibles living down there,” Hale offered helpfully. “We certainly wouldn’t starve.”
“But how long are we expected to hide underground?” Captain Stalenhag asked. “Our crews didn’t sign on for this.”
“We need to lay low until the Grays can get themselves a good civil war going.” Julia replied. “And we won’t just be hiding down there. We’ll be looking for opportunities to build our strength. There’s bound to be chances for us to seize more Gray warships.”
She took a deep breath. “Look, folks, this is no longer the war we thought we were fighting but it’s a war that needs to be fought. We’re committed. The only way home now is to keep the Grays busy killing themselves and then, when they’re weak enough, reveal what they’ve been doing to us and try to end the war with the Spirians.
“We’ll need to reunite the colonies if we’re going to have any chance of beating the Grays.” She looked at Ava.
“It’s all or nothing, now.”
Ava nodded, her face grim. “All or nothing.”
Return to Cold Stone
“… five, four, three, two, one.” Robin checked her position readout. “Ship has returned to normal space.”
“Very well.” Hale turned to the sensor officer. “What have we…”
“Contact,” the sensor officer announced, cutting off his captain. “Contact is a lightly armed privateer bearing forty-three point eight by fifty-seven point nine by three hundred sixty-six.” He turned to Hale. “She’s holding position over the mine.”
“We can’t let them get away, Captain.” Julia stepped closer to the central holo. “Put the fleet right on top of them, if you please.”
“Aye, ma’am,” Hale acknowledged. “Comms, signal the fleet. All vessels will switch to backup capacitors and micro-jump in a standard ring formation on my mark.”
“Aye, sir,” the officer responded. “All vessels will switch to backup capacitors and micro-jump in ring formation. Tactical template is ready to send with specific ship placement. Shall I include it?”
“You shall indeed.” Hale gave both comms and tactical an approving nod. This was a very new fleet and it had been in a near-constant state of change during its brief existence. It was good to see initiative and cooperation among the bridge officers. A specific coordinate spread based on a target’s position would save precious time in executing a micro-jump.
“All ships confirm ready, sir.”
“Very well, initiate the jump.”
“Jumping in five, four, three, two, one.” Robin kept her eyes on the display and a heartbeat later… “We’re clear again.”
“Contact is
on our starboard beam,” the sensor officer announced.
“Jam all signals and turn the fleet into that ship’s escape envelope,” Hale ordered.
If the enemy tried to open a distortion wave, the fleet would ensure several hundred kilos of ordinance would go with them. Their ship would be smashed by multiple heavy weapons at close range and what was left of it would drop back out of distortion before it even managed to leave the system.
“They’re hailing us.” The comms officer turned to look back at Hale and Julia, eyebrows raised.
“I’ll take it,” she told them.
The comms officer nodded and a middle-aged man shimmered into view in their midst.
“You certainly seem to have the drop on us,” he grumbled. He squinted at Julia. “You must be that Marine we’ve been hearing so much about. I knew you’d taken a cruiser from the Grays, but…”
“You will strike your colors and prepare to be boarded, Captain.” Julia didn’t much feel like fencing with the man. She steeled herself, dreading what might come next, but the man had some sense.
He tilted his head, indulging in a pragmatic nod. “I don’t suppose our little Sarah Heidiger would have much chance against an entire fleet.” He turned and gave a curt order to someone on his bridge.
“He’s struck colors, ma’am,” the communications officer advised. “We have their lock codes.” It was one of the oddities of military tradition that the phrase ‘to strike colors’ was still in use. Warships no longer had a flag or ensign to pull down. Now it simply meant to signal surrender.
Julia’s shoulders relaxed a fraction and she gave a nod to Hale.
He pressed a button on a nearby holo screen. “Boarding teams away.”
She turned back to the enemy captain. “What was your business here, Captain…?”
“Sheridan,” the man supplied. “We were passing a habitable planet with a signal-neutral atmosphere.” He shrugged. “Perfect place to hide any number of profitable resource operations, since you can’t scan a sig-neutral world from orbit. Figured it was worth a look.”
Beyond the Rim (Rebels and Patriots Book 2) Page 26