09- We Lead

by Christopher Nuttall

  But she understood George, better than she cared to admit. Losing a ship was always painful, particularly for a first-time commander. Susan had believed, deep in her soul, that she would lose Vanguard, after her first return to Earth. She’d certainly had no reason to believe she would be returned to her command chair. But even that wouldn't have been as bad as knowing her ship had been destroyed. It wasn't uncommon for captains who survived their ships to be put on suicide watch. Too many had killed themselves after seeing to the safety of their crews.

  She studied George for a long moment. Thankfully, the midshipwoman didn't seem that depressed. Tired, obviously; fearful, certainly ... but probably not at risk of killing herself.

  “The doctor cleared you to return to duty,” she said, glancing down at the datapad on her desk. The doctor had reported bumps and bruises, but no serious injuries. “Do you want to return to the marines?”

  “Yes, Captain,” George said.

  “Get some rest, then rejoin Major Andres,” Susan said. It was an order, phrased as such. She rather suspected George would have gone straight to Marine Country if she hadn't been ordered to rest. She'd known too many girls who’d pushed themselves too hard at school and ended up burning out. “And, for what it's worth, I’m proud of you.”

  George brightened. “Thank you, Captain.”

  Susan frowned, inwardly. Was George that desperate for approval? Somehow, she couldn't imagine a girl growing up on a country estate to be lacking in self-esteem. She’d studied George’s file, back when she’d been XO. The daughter of nobility, the niece of the most famous serving officer in living memory ... George should have lacked for nothing. But it was clear that she’d learnt several lessons in her career, including the importance of genuine praise. Even Hanover Towers would have toadied to her, just a little. She might never have faced real hardship until she’d joined the navy.

  Perhaps that’s why they let her join early, Susan mused. They knew she needed discipline before she turned sour.

  “And the prize money awarded to you and your comrades will stand,” she added, pushing the thought aside. Admiral Naiser had ruled in their favour, although Susan knew the beancounters would whine and moan about it. Black Hunter hadn't been presented to the Admiralty, they’d say; Admiral Naiser had sent an irreplaceable prize into deadly danger and lost her. “I suggest you don’t spend it all at once.”

  “Thank you, Captain,” George said. The prize money was peanuts, compared to her trust fund, but she’d earned it. Susan rather understood. She’d done a paper route as a child, just to earn a little cash. It had always seemed better to earn rather than to receive. “What would I spend it on?”

  Susan had to smile. There was nothing on Vanguard to buy, really. Everything George could reasonably want could be requisitioned from ship’s stores. She could gamble, Susan supposed, although that was largely pointless. Most spacers saved their money for shore leave or put it in one of the Admiralty’s long-term funds. They’d be able to retire early, if they were careful. Susan had heard of a couple of Ark Royal’s officers who’d invested their prize money and retired millionaires.

  Although they did have a vast sum awarded to them, she reminded herself, rather dryly. The Tadpole ship Ark Royal had captured had been a treasure trove of technology. George didn't capture anything like as valuable.

  “There’s always a black market between ships,” she said. It was technically illicit, but wise officers turned a blind eye. “Or you could spend it on tuck.”

  George smiled. “I’d sooner go on shore leave again,” she admitted. “I’ve always wanted to see Jupiter.”

  “You’ll have to capture an enemy battleship single-handedly,” Susan said. Getting to Jupiter was expensive, even though the Great Red Spot was one hell of a tourist attraction. But it was better than wasting the money on gambling. “Get some sleep, George. You need it.”

  “Yes, Captain,” George said. She straightened. “And thank you.”

  She saluted, then turned and marched out of the cabin. Susan watched her go, feeling an odd flicker of affection mixed with amusement. George hadn't done badly at all, really. The Admiral certainly hadn't complained. But she was still fretting over it ... Susan didn't really blame her, in truth. Good officers always wondered if they could have done better.

  And great officers don’t waste time worrying, she told herself firmly. You have far too many reports to read.

  ***

  “This was their homeworld,” Henry said, softly. “Originally ...”

  ES-4 was very similar to Sol, so similar that a casual observer might mistake one for the other. Seven planets, three of them gas giants; one of them smack in the middle of the life-bearing zone ... under other circumstances, ES-4 would have been considered a prize. But long-range probes had made it clear that ES-4-2 was dead. Blackened cities dotted the surface, the entire ecology had been ruined ... if there was any intelligent life left on the planet, it was very well hidden. The sheer level of radioactivity in the atmosphere was terrifying. It was as if all the worst nightmares of the last three hundred years had come out to play.

  Admiral Naiser glanced at him. “And yet, they have practically no presence within the system.”

  Henry nodded. Traces of war were all around them - blasted settlements, wrecked asteroid colonies, even spacecraft from a bygone era - but there were no traces of living beings anywhere within sensor range. It was frightening to think that a spacefaring society could be obliterated so completely. He knew, of course, that one ship had managed to cross the interstellar gulf to keep the race alive, but still ...

  “They may feel the whole system is a tomb,” he mused. “Or they may just have decided it isn't worth trying to salvage something from the ruins.”

  It felt odd, to him. If Earth had been wrecked, perhaps during the war, the colonies would have survived and eventually returned. Wouldn't they? There were other colonies within the Sol System. Earth herself could have been saved, given time ... he looked back at the display and shivered. Was there anything that could cleanse such a poisoned atmosphere? In the end, the groundhogs had effectively exterminated themselves. And they’d taken the rest of the system down with them.

  They stood together for a long moment, contemplating eternity. God alone knew just how many races had risen to greatness, then fallen into dust since the universe was born. Henry knew, deep inside, that he couldn't even begin to contemplate the vast gulfs of time between then and now. But if the Foxes hadn't blasted their entire society back into the Stone Age, if they hadn't had to make a risky interstellar crossing at STL speeds ... they might have stumbled across Earth, before humanity was in any state to resist them. Or they might have crushed the Tadpoles instead ...

  We are so tiny on such a scale, Henry thought. And it was sheer luck that we met the Tadpoles and the Foxes when we can face them as equals.

  He shivered. Countless experts had claimed, with wonderful computer models to back up their words, that any intelligent race would have filled the galaxy, a long time before humanity rose out of the primal sludge. They’d used it to prove that humanity was alone in the universe, something that had sounded convincing until humanity ran into another intelligent race. And yet, the Tadpoles hadn't been that advanced. Henry had heard theories that suggested intelligence was relatively new ... or that something had destroyed hundreds of intelligent races so completely that there were no traces, millennia ago. He’d even heard theories suggesting that the laws of space and time were constantly changing, that only now intelligence was possible.

  “There’s nothing to learn here,” he said, finally. “Not now. After the war, perhaps ...”

  “True,” Admiral Naiser agreed. “And that means we push on to ES-1.”

  And to one hell of a battle, Henry thought.

  The Admiral leaned forward. “Do you have anything new to contribute?”

  “We have altered our surrender demands, based on interviews with the POWs,” Henry said, frankly. They’d
learned very little that was actually new, although it was good to have confirmation of some of the odder details. “However, Admiral, I believe we will still have to beat the shit out of them before they concede.”

  “As we planned from the beginning,” Admiral Naiser said, tightly.

  Henry looked at the starchart, floating over the table. They should have time to hit ES-1 before the alien reinforcements could arrive ... he shook his head in frustration. The damned FTL communications system screwed up all their calculations. What if the Foxes had dispatched a fleet to the front just before Vanguard and her consorts had jumped into ES-19 and opened a whole can of worms? Humanity would have had to send a courier boat chasing after them, but the Foxes could merely call them back. There were so many variables that even his best projections were little more than guesses.

  And they may believe they don’t need to recall forces from the front, he thought.

  He shook his head in annoyance. That couldn't be true. If the Foxes had enough mobile firepower to handle both fronts, the war should have been lost last year. They would have been able to punch through to Tadpole Prime, while pinching off Unity and positioning themselves for a drive into human space. No, all the logic - and prisoner interviews - suggested that the Foxes honestly hadn't known they were waging war on two races until the Battle of UXS-469. It still surprised him, given that the Foxes controlled a two-race empire, but perhaps it was understandable. They didn't seem to really comprehend that two nations - or interstellar powers - could actually get along.

  Either they withdraw forces from the front, he told himself again, or they don’t. If the former, the defenders advance and push them all the way back to ES-1; if the latter, we beat the crap out of their homeworld and its industrial base. Either way, we win.

  “We’ll be in ES-2 by tomorrow,” Admiral Naiser said. Perhaps he was telling himself the same thing. “And then we will know.”

  “Yes, Admiral,” Henry said.

  He wished, suddenly, that he'd had a chance to send one final letter to Janelle. He’d been writing to her, of course, and the messages had been copied around the fleet to make sure they weren't lost with the ship, but it wasn't the same. None of those messages would get to Janelle before he did, unless another starship was sent home ahead of time. Janelle had been a naval officer. She knew the cold realities of interstellar travel. And yet ...

  And what will happen, he asked himself, if I die out here?

  Angrily, he told himself not to worry. It was too late - far too late - to worry about the possibility of dying now. He’d known the risks long before he’d boarded Vanguard for the voyage to ES-19. And Janelle would cope, he was sure. He’d made certain - very certain - that she would have unquestioned access to his savings. Making sure he - and his children - weren't dependent on the Civil List had been plain common sense. The purse strings had been used to control far too many of his predecessors.

  I will not die, he promised himself. And if I do, she’ll have a chance to keep the kids out of the public eye.

  But he knew, all too well, that it wasn't going to be easy.

  ***

  ES-2 was something of a disappointment, John noted, as the task force crawled across the system. Three tramlines - five, if one counted the alien-grade lines - but no planets, asteroid or even comets. It was rare to encounter a G2 star without planets, yet ES-2 was completely alone. The Foxes must have wondered if the universe was playing a joke, he thought, when they’d stumbled across the tramlines and headed out to explore. But then, they’d also known that there were other inhabitable worlds out there. Humanity hadn't known that for sure until the first explorers had landed on Terra Nova.

  “Admiral,” Commander Jackson Regal said. “The first set of reports have arrived.”

  The Foxes would have had them by now, John thought, sardonically. The boffins had yet to devise a workable FTL transmitter, even though they had a piece of alien technology to study. And their analysts would have had longer to study the files.

  “Put them on the display,” he ordered. “And make sure they’re forwarded to the fleet.”

  “Aye, Admiral,” Regal said.

  John pushed his annoyance aside as he studied the display. ES-1 was heavily defended, as he’d expected: orbital battlestations, a small fleet of starships and hundreds of automated weapons platforms. And yet ... it wasn't anything like as heavily defended as Earth. His eyes narrowed in contemplation, matching what the scouts had picked up to what they’d been told by alien POWs. The Foxes, it was clear, had focused most of their attention on building a mobile fleet, rather than fixed defences.

  It might not have been a mistake, he mused. He silently revised his estimate of the alien industrial base downwards. Or they may have stripped the defences bare in hopes of punching through to Tadpole Prime.

  “I think we can take them,” he said, out loud. Based on what he could see, he was sure of it. “We’ll move with Plan Gamma, I think.”

  “Yes, Admiral,” Regal said.

  John barely heard him. Plan Gamma was simple enough - all the best plans were - but it needed to be updated, in light of the new information. And it needed to have enough room to cope with unpleasant surprises. The Foxes presumably knew the task force was on the far side of a tramline. They might have decided to hide some of their starships in cloak, just to lure him into a trap. It was what he would have done.

  We never did run down those carriers, he mused. There were three large fleet carriers orbiting ES-1. If they got here first, they’ll have had plenty of time to load new starfighters and crews.

  “We’ll try for a two-prong engagement,” he said, after a moment. He should have enough firepower to win a straight match, although he knew better than to assume he could see everything the aliens had. Half of Earth’s defences were permanently cloaked. “Ideally, we want to trap their forces against the planet and crush them.”

  He leaned back in his chair. There were limits to how far he could plan the operation, he knew from bitter experience. Even a straight slogging match could end badly, if they tried to cling to an outdated operational concept. The Foxes could produce a very nasty surprise that would ruin his plans ... there was no point, he knew, in trying to plan for everything. It was a losing proposition.

  “Forward the operational plan to the ships, then schedule a holographic meeting for 1900,” he ordered. It was a shame they couldn't meet in person, but they were in enemy-controlled space. “We’ll discuss the planning then.”

  “Aye, Admiral,” Regal said.

  And then we will plunge right into their system, John thought. There was no time to try to be clever, no time to try to lure more of their forces out of position. He felt a flicker of anticipation, mixed with worry. And then we win - or we die.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  “All stations report themselves to be at full alert, Captain,” Mason reported. “Vanguard is ready to fight.”

  “Very good,” Susan said. She would have hated to have to call Admiral Naiser and tell him that Vanguard needed to be held back. “Time?”

  “Five minutes to cross the tramline, Captain,” Reed said.

  “No enemy presence detected,” Charlotte added.

  There wouldn't be, Susan thought. They know where we’re going.

  She studied the display, bracing herself as the tramline came closer. Following a least-time course to the tramline was a gamble, all the more so as the Foxes would have a chance to mount an actual ambush as the task force crossed the tramline. For once, it would be possible - even probable - that their ambush would succeed. There were scouts on the far side of the tramline, but they might have missed something. A mistake here could be disastrous.

  But we don’t have much time, she thought. Barely a day or two before their reinforcements can arrive.

  “Two minutes,” Reed said.

  “Signal from the flag,” Parkinson said. “Earth expects that every man will do his duty.”

  “How ... appropriate,” S
usan commented. “Helm, take us across the tramline as soon as we reach it.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Reed said.

  Susan tensed as the last seconds ticked down, then clenched her fists as they crossed the tramline. The display blanked, as always. She felt sweat starting to trickle down her back as the sensors searched for potential threats ... it felt as though it was taking forever ... then relaxed slightly as the display came back up. There weren't any threats, as far as she could tell. Merely a star system that felt ominous, even though she knew she was imagining it.

  “Jump completed, Captain,” Reed said.

  “Tactical scan is clear,” Charlotte added. “Direct datalink established with scouts. No visible threat within sensor range.”

  They know we’re here, Susan thought. They must have been watching us in ES-2.

  “Signal from the flag,” Parkinson injected. “The task force is to shake down, then head directly for Vixen.”