by John Carr
“The Stonewall Jackson is shifting to bring the rest of her batteries to bear,” Cooper announced. Hawksley watched as the immersion display depicted the massive egg-shaped Field containing the white bulk of the Imperial battle cruiser pivoting gracefully; he could almost reach out and touch the image.. .which suddenly flared brilliant orange, burn-throughs scattered across its Field surface.
“It’s the Damaris!” Chief Cooper’s cheer substituted enthusiasm for hope.”And she’s pouring it on!”
Hawksley was galvanized.”Helm, what have we got left?”
“Six-Gs, for about ten minutes, skipper.”
“Give it all to me, and put us down the Jackson’s throat.” It broke his Burgess heart to be attacking a ship named for a cultural icon of his Homeworld, but now was hardly the time for sentiment. Falkenberg’s engines flared, the privateer’s nose came about, and she began to close with the Imperial battle cruiser, the remainder of her turrets firing into the wounded enemy’s Field.
Hawksley’s acceleration couch lurched suddenly, its magnetic grapples the only thing holding it to the floor.”What the hell was that?”
“Primary thruster burn-out, number three engine, Captain; she blew, and bad,” Chief Cooper shouted.”Just too many hits...”
The Chiefs voice was drowned out by klaxons filling the bridge with alarms which could not be acted upon. The Helmsman looked desperate.
“Helm, tell me something not bad.”
“Can’t, sir; control linkages went with the blast; we’re rudderless.”
Falkenberg began a lazy, slow spin that took her bearing batteries off the Stonewall Jackson. The Jackson, reprieved from one attacker, shifted her Field capacitors into protecting her starboard aspect from the Damaris’ onslaught. Then, together with the Morgans, the battle cruiser rained fire onto the Falkenberg.
A privateer, Falkenberg had been designed to survive uneven battles until she could make good her escape; but no naval architect could have prepared for the killing volume of fire she now received. Stonewall Jackson discharged fourteen missiles and thirty laser turrets into the Burgess ship; Falkenberg’s Field bubbled, gold-rimmed white-outs of burn-throughs spreading across its surface in blinding lesions. Beams passed through these gaps, tearing into the hull, rending compartments open to the space within the collapsing Field’s volume, filled now not with the trace hydrogen of space’s near-vacuum, but the roiling plasma of the Field’s stored energy, released from confinement and tearing into the ship’s hull.
Falkenberg, toughly designed and strongly built, died in pieces; her aft compartments shimmered, converted to energy, vaporized; the amidships Field capacitors discharged catastrophically, breaking her spine; aft of the forward bridge, the weapon bays crackled with misfiring lasers, the energy blasting their own mounts off the hull braces which then flew apart; the bridge went last, Falkenberg’s bow snapped from the fore end of the hull and was tumbling, streaming atmosphere, into the converging beams of three Morgans, whose fire sliced it into ragged chunks of glowing debris.
The Stonewall Jackson then turned its attention to the Damaris; but here, wounded though the Sauron ship was, the Imperial was greatly outclassed, and hopelessly outgunned. The Damaris was no mere privateer, nor even an Imperial battle cruiser, but a full-size Sauron battleship, and the Saurons built their ships oversized, making Damaris twenty percent larger than its Imperial counterparts, nearly twice the mass of the Stonewall Jackson.
Damaris began by destroying all but one squadron of the Morgans with contemptuous ease. Still firing, her lasers swiveled about, turned inward, and converged on the Stonewall Jackson. The Imperial’s turrets were firing back, but more and more of them were going dark every second, as Damaris’ unrelenting salvo drove the Imperial’s Field up through the spectrum into violet and the inevitable burn-throughs beyond. Damaris was continuing to close, and by the time the Stonewall Jackson’s Field collapsed, converting the battle cruiser to expanding plasma, the massive Sauron battleship simply plowed through the glowing cloud and continued on.
“Remaining missiles in TF Damaris’ salvo?” Diettinger asked.
“Eighteen, Dictator.”
Diettinger ordered an enhancement command for the number of vessels remaining in Intruder Three: One hundred one. Ground-based missiles were now rising to meet Intruder Three; asteroid defense platforms, emptied of their ordnance, were being vectored into collision courses with the Imperial formation. But there were too many ships, all moving too fast, and all doing something the Saurons had simply never dreamed any rational opponent would ever do.
Fomoria shuddered as a minor burn-through in her Field transmitted a hit to her armored hull. Diettinger stabbed at the panel before him: “Cyborg Rank Koln.”
“Dictator.”
“We have taken a hit to our primary launch control systems; EVA launch impossible at this time. The situation has first priority for all damage control crews; you will be launched immediately upon effect of repairs.”
“What of the other EVA units in the remainder of the fleet?” Koln asked.
“All fleet systems were routed through Fomoria; until you go, no one can. Stand by. Diettinger out.”
He looked up to see Second Rank staring at him in wonder; not for his blatant lie, he felt sure. Perhaps only for the incongruous look of triumph he wore in the face of disaster everywhere around them.
And why not? he thought. Even a Cyborg can’t escape from an EVA capsule flooded with lock-down gel.
And now that he didn’t have to worry about the self-proclaimed custodians of the Sauron Race’s future, he could try to assure it would have one...
“Enemy vessels engaging task force at all points along the formation, Dictator; Imperial battleship Lermontov closing on our position, within beam range in thirty minutes.”
“Fleet formation status?”
“Half the task force in position now, Dictator; projections indicate minimum of forty-eight minutes for remainder to match headings and velocities and complete the formation.,.”
“And Task Force Damaris?”
“Still not responding to the rendezvous command, Dictator; down to three vessels and engaging the left-wing of the Imperial fleet.”
Imperial Fleet, he thought. Not ‘Intruder Two’, anymore, but ‘Imperial Fleet’. That would be the one we were grinding into dust only a few days ago. And now it seems stronger than ever.
Diettinger looked at his Second Rank; he knew that she and Emory were great friends. He also knew that she would not be the last friend Second Rank would lose today.
He stood against the artificial gravity of Fomoria’s thrust and stepped forward into the immersion display. Sauron System surrounded him, glittering with pockets of debris that had once been ships, many of which had carried men and women he’d known. Still more had borne strangers, men - the Empire did not allow women to serve in its combat ranks - whose most fervent desire was to see him and every other Sauron eradicated from the universe.
By becoming self-proclaimed opponents of Sauron eugenics, the bulk of humanity had dedicated itself to the systematic genocide of a people who were, in the final analysis, not so very different from themselves. Human norm; Sauron norm...the distinctions were purely clinical. Saurons had conquered, to be sure, and their conquests always resulted in the fertilization of many subjugated women with Sauron progeny.
Nine months, Diettinger considered. Longer when the women formed emotional attachments to their children - as they usually did, only a rare mother despises her child.
As often as not, the attachment carried over to their captors. And was it really so terrible? Carrying a Soldier in their womb had meant only that they were guaranteed at least nine months of kindness, care, consideration; for many of them it had been the only decent food, shelter and medical treatment they had seen since the war began.
He caught himself. Ah, yes. That. The war. The war which, in all honesty, we started. Like all humans, Saurons or Imperials, he could be obliviou
s to unpleasant truths when viewing them beneath the blinding light of necessity.
Or rationalization...
He looked back and forth between the roster of Imperial vessels attacking TF Fomoria and those comprising the falling hammer that was Intruder Three.
“Communications,” he said.
“Dictator.”
“Signal the fleet: ‘Stand down from all combat maneuvering; all ships to slave helm operations to Fomoria immediately upon receipt of this message.’ Notify me on seventy-percent confirmation.”
Communications and his subordinates were so shocked by the order they actually hesitated; only Fifth Ranker Boyle, so eager to please, so determined to measure up to Fomoria standards, executed the signal without delay. Boyle seemed to realize the import of the order only after it had been executed. He looked up at Communications.
“Sir? What are we going to do?” Boyle whispered to his superior.
Diettinger overheard the question; he let the Communications Rank find his own answer.
We could never have won, he thought. The supreme jest; Saurons, who had elevated military history, theory and thought to a life philosophy, whose oldest role model was the ancient Hannibal, had traveled down the very same road as he.
We led a totalitarian state into war against a representative Empire, a republic in all but name. Hannibal’s ironic victory was that his actions forced the Romans to adopt policies that eventually did doom their Republic... and brought about an Empire in its place.
He looked back at the immersion display’s hundreds of Outworlder ship icons; once Sauron’s hope, her erstwhile allies had become her death sentence, these barbarians co-opted by the Imperials to defeat the hated Saurons. Looking closely, he could see that most of the Imperial vessels were at the rear of the formation, driving the Outworlder ships on from behind; which almost brought a smile to his lips.
Now we have forced the human norms to adopt policies which will bring about the doom of their Empire. The end result for the Saurons would be the same as it was for Hannibal’s own Carthaginian people; they would not live to see their revenge on the victors. For in the endless cycles of human political evolution, the state which follows Empire is inevitably...
“Anarchy,” he said aloud. Cold comfort perhaps, he thought. But enough to warm me...
The immersion display showed twenty-seven of his remaining forty vessels had acknowledged his order thus far: Sixty-eight percent.
Diettinger had made his decision some time ago; he had been hoping for the remnants of TF Damaris, but Emory’s vengeance for the death of the Falkenberg had put her ships out of position. Nothing for it, now. He returned to his console and entered the last coded key sequence of his program. When the status screens showed Fomoria to be in contact with the computers of all operational vessels, Galen Diettinger, Dictator of Sauron, spoke his last order, a code word:
“Brennus.”
Thirty-One
I
Something began to happen among the remaining vessels of the Sauron fleet. Maneuvering thrusters turned the wounded warships on their axis, headings changing to match those of the flagship Fomoria. As one, the remaining ships of Sauron began accelerating toward what appeared to be an intercept course with Intruder Three. What none of their crew saw, since it was not being displayed anywhere, was that, in unison, their navigational computers began countdowns to Jump.
At first, the entire Imperial command seemed as stunned into inactivity as Diettinger’s bridge crew; Imperial ships held fire for a moment, apparently attempting to gauge the import of this latest Sauron tactic. The Saurons seemed ready to destroy themselves in a hopeless attempt to prevent the impact of Intruder Three. From the Imperial viewpoint, so much the better. There was still a viable Imperial fleet in-system; if the Saurons continued to engage that fleet, Intruder Three would poison their Homeworld for eternity. If they destroyed themselves to stop Intruder Three, the intact Imperial fleet would reduce that Homeworld to irradiated slag. Either outcome was entirely acceptable to the Imperials.
Then the Sauron fleet began to bank to starboard.
“Time to impact Intruder Three?”
“Forty-one seconds, Dictator.”
“Sensors; concentrate visual recorders on the Homeworld. Maintain lock and record until...” his voice gave out, but he mastered himself quickly, “Until no longer possible.”
“Dictator . . ?” Second Rank asked softly.
He did not take his eyes from the display. “Not now, Second Rank.”
Intruder Three passed below them, the forward ships of the formation beginning to glow with atmospheric entry.
“Realtime,” he ordered.
The immersion display shifted from data-accompanied icons to visual sensor displays. Sauron lay suspended at the center of Fomoria’s bridge, Intruder Three a silvery lance, insignificant against the bulk of the planet below it. Then the tip of the lance flared: once, twice more, then an endless stream of light, pooling in Sauron’s upper atmosphere and spreading, first displacing the fleecy white cloud cover, then adding its own shades to the mass, first grey, then black.
“Impact,” Second Rank read the data aloud.”Multiple impacts, Dictator; several oceanic, mostly land. Scattered data reports indicate much break-up of smaller vessels, but the larger ones seem to be getting through intact. Contact lost with all major equatorial cities on Lebensraum. Northern areas - ”
“Shhh.” Diettinger said. “Just watch, Second Rank. Think about the Spartans.”
She started. Had he gone mad?”Spartans?” She could take no more. Even Diettinger’s legendary imperturbability was not to be suffered in the face of the death of the Homeworld. “Dictator - ” she began, but he cut her off with a savagery that took her back two steps.
“Never address me by that title again! Is that clear?”
She realized she had stopped breathing; she wondered why her heart had not stopped as well.
“But . . .the Spartans - First Rank?”
He had returned his attention to the display, gesturing toward it. “Of course. Thermopylae. The Persians drove their vassal troops into battle with whips, climbing over their own dead to reach the lines of the Spartan king, Leonidas. When the Spartans spears broke, they fought with swords; when the swords broke they fought with daggers. When the daggers broke, they fought with fists, and teeth. And still, the Persians came on. Finally, reduced to a bloody handful of defenders on a small hillock, the Spartans held ranks until brought down by hails of missiles. The Persians could not be made to engage them any longer, though now they were less than a hundred men remaining.”
He turned to look at her, and his remaining eye glistened.”What are we, Second Rank?” He swept a hand across the vista before them. “Here is the answer. This is our heritage; to fight .. .or build, or learn, or live, or love, or die, or kill .. .until the thing we do it all for is finished. And it is not solely a Sauron trait.”
Diettinger turned and stepped up to his acceleration couch platform and took his seat.
“This is what it means to be human.”
Before them, the Homeworld was dying. By the last third of Intruder Three’s Impacts, the surface of Sauron was ablaze across the equator. Sweeping streaks of low saltwater clouds of brown steam underlit a glowing red from oceanic impacts and columns of smoke from land fires of epic scope. In the wake of the onrushing remainder of Intruder Three, Imperial ships had detached from Intruder Two and joined hundreds of Imperial heavy fighters in low-level runs against the surface of Sauron; glittering charges fell from cargo bays, disappearing into the devastation below to reappear as blossoms of nuclear fire.
Fomoria and her charges moved on; the helm systems’ display showed her acceleration climbing past seven gravities of thrust.
Second Rank moved her acceleration couch next to Diettinger’s and addressed him in a low voice. “First Rank, if I understand my readings correctly, they indicate a sub-routine in Fomoria’s computers running a countdown to an Alde
rson Jump.”
Diettinger could not hold back an ironic smile, ”I am glad, Second Rank, that you understand your readings correctly,” he answered.
Turning away from her, he then activated his console’s all-stations address function. “Crew of the Fomoria: The battle for the survival of Sauron is lost. The battle for the survival of the Sauron Race is about to begin. Fomoria, along with all the ships in her task force, is now locked into a random Jump mode. She is being maneuvered by a computer program locked into a series of mechanical Jump initiators, identical to those used on nuclear precedent mines. The program will take Task Force Fomoria to the Dropshot Alderson Point and simultaneously Jump all its ships to that system. At that point, while all crews and ships’ computers are disabled by Jump Lag, the clockworks will run the vessel until the systems recover and Jump us again. Each system Jumped to will contain four or more Jump nexi; each Jump will be chosen randomly. I estimate that the Task Force has sufficient stored energy in its Field capacitors alone to allow for over one hundred such random Jumps.”
Navigation stared at him in horror.”But Dicta - First Rank; that many consecutive Jumps will completely burn-out our drives, even assuming we survive the first twenty!”
“May I assume you would prefer to return to Sauron and take your chances with the tender mercies of the Imperial fleet?” Diettinger asked.
Navigation only turned back to stare at the display of the ruined Home-world.