“Contact the fleet,” I ordered. “Order them to form up on us, apart from the Gabriele. She is to fly directly to the asteroids and inform them of what’s happening here.”
“Aye, sir,” Samantha said. “They’re acknowledging.”
The Kofi Annan’s icon seemed to dominate the display. I considered hailing him and trying to talk sense into him, but I needed the time to form up my small fleet. It looked as if our first battle was going to be our last, unless Roger decided to switch sides as well. I’d welcome him. He might be related to some of the most corrupt and vernal men in existence, but there was no doubting his competence. He wouldn’t have been able to keep command of the battleship without it.
I watched the fleet forming up on my flag. We were hopelessly ill-prepared, I realised. We hadn’t had a chance to practice operating as a fleet yet, let alone anything else. Some of the ships still had crewmembers who didn’t know what was going on, perhaps even people preparing to retake the bridges. I thought of Muna and Deborah and scowled. At least I had my dissidents in the brig. Muna had deserved better, somehow. I hadn’t realised just how loyal she was to the UN.
“Link us into the fleet communications system,” I ordered, quietly. The downloads from the other starships wouldn’t tell me what I needed to know. No one had bothered to set up a system to monitor the process of a mutiny and coup, a serious oversight. If we won the coming fight, we’d have to update the systems…hell, we’d have a lot to do. I knew hundreds of sections that needed improvements. I could build a real fleet without having to worry about pleasing the UN any longer.
And if Roger won? I’d die a free man, at least.
“Aye, sir,” Samantha said. I skimmed through the downloads quickly, trying to read between the lines. It was hard to be sure, but most of the starships seemed to be under firm control. I saw one data line and smiled. Luna Base had declared for us and there seemed to be fighting in some of the settlements. I just hoped that Luna City survived. The crewmen would never forgive me if it were destroyed in the fighting and all the women were sucked out into space. “They’re standing by.”
She broke off. “Captain, the Kofi Annan is hailing us,” she said. “They want to talk.”
“On screen,” I ordered. Roger’s image appeared in front of me. He looked older than I remembered – it had been three years since I’d seen him on Heinlein – but he also looked surprisingly competent. He wore dress uniform on his own bridge and carried a pistol at his belt. “Roger.”
“John,” he replied. He sounded tired and wan. “I don’t know what you have in mind, but it won’t work.”
“It will,” I said, pretending a confidence I didn’t feel. The battleship might have been an expensive waste of resources under normal circumstances, but the unique battle we were about to fight would play to its strengths. We couldn’t let it break the siege of Earth or the UN would be able to regain control of the orbiting stations. It would still trigger a civil war within the war, but that wouldn’t be much of an improvement. “Do you know how close Earth came to destruction three days ago?”
“No,” Roger said, flatly. “John, what you’re doing is treason against the human race itself. You’re turning your guns on the hands that created you and turned you into an officer in the Peace Force. What will happen to Earth if the Colonies manage to break free while we’re fighting a civil war?”
Wars are never civil, part of my mind whispered. “Roger,” I said, “three days ago, a Heinlein starship took out Asteroid One, after we took out – murdered – an entire city on their planet.” I thought about how many of the Political Class had been killed in the attack and shivered. If they’d remained alive, they would have been good hostages. “What happens next time? Will they sneak something through the defences that will kill the entire planet? It’s technically possible. You and I both know that this war is beyond being won, but it can be lost. What happens if no one says stop and makes it stick? How many people do you want to die?”
I leaned forward. “Do you remember,” I asked, “when we were both Lieutenants on Heinlein? I asked you if the war was worthwhile and you said that it was. You were wrong and the war has now reached the point where they can slaughter civilians in vast quantities as well. The war will keep stretching our system until it breaks completely. Why not join us instead?”
“Because…what you’re doing may not create something better,” Roger said. It dawned on me that our debate was public. The entire system would be listening to us arguing. “You might create something worse. Even if you don’t want to be Emperor yourself, someone else will take what you have created and try to build an empire on a pile of skulls. You might even be right and the Colonies will take advantage of the pause to hit back at us. John, please, give up. I can plead for leniency.”
“No,” I said. “I won’t betray everyone who died.”
Roger’s image vanished from the display. “I’m picking up targeting sweeps from the battleship and one of the cruisers,” Lieutenant Carolyn Lauderdale reported. She’d taken the tactical console after Muna had been…indisposed. “They’re powering up their weapons and making it very obvious.”
“Perhaps hoping that we would surrender,” I said, darkly. What was the other cruiser doing? Was it in the midst of an internal power struggle, or was something else going on? “Load missile bays and lock weapons on target. Prepare to engage the enemy.”
I looked over at Samantha. “The primary target is the Kofi Annan,” I added. There was little point in trying to coordinate the battle. We’d have to wing it and hope. Luckily, there was only one battleship in Roger’s force. He’d have to be lucky and we’d have to be unlucky. How much did he know? If he knew about the asteroids, what would he do? “Inform all ships. When we open fire, they are to engage and fire at will.”
“Aye, sir,” Samantha said. “They’re acknowledging.”
Sally frowned from her console. “He always had a silver spoon in his mouth,” she hissed, with a bitterness I had come to realise had become part of her personality. “No wonder he won’t see sense and surrender, or even vanish with his battleship and turn renegade.”
I shrugged. The Kofi Annan wasn’t a cruiser. It needed a day in a shipyard for every day it spent on duty and it hadn’t been getting it. I studied the emissions thoughtfully, trying to see if there were any weaknesses we could exploit, but nothing suggested itself. Roger wouldn’t have skimped on the basic maintenance unless he had had no choice. Still, there would be no hope of keeping it running out in the Beyond. He didn’t have much choice. He either fought or surrendered. The Colonies wouldn’t help him.
“Enemy vessel now coming into range,” Carolyn reported. “I have weapons locked on target.”
“Hold fire,” I ordered, tersely. Perhaps we could prevent a fight. “Roger, what are you playing at…?”
“Missile separation,” Carolyn snapped. “They’ve opened fire.”
“All ships, fire at will,” I ordered, sharply. Carolyn’s hand fell on her console and we fired our first spread of missiles. Between all of the ships, we could fire over a hundred missiles per salvo. Roger would face his ship’s worst nightmare; repeated volley fire from multiple launch platforms. “Evade as required.”
Roger wasn’t playing games himself. He’d fired fifty missiles in his opening salvo and all, but ten were targeted on us. The missiles would be basic UN-standard, I suspected, instead of Heinlein-designed surprises, but that wouldn’t stop them being lethal if they touched home. We had a surprise ourselves; I had enough starships with me to produce a genuine point defence network, rather than merely each ship for itself. I watched as the missiles roared closer and smiled when they started to vanish, one by one.
“The Kofi Annan is picking up speed,” Sally reported, grimly. “Estimated ETA Earth orbit is twenty minutes.”
“Understood,” I said, shortly. The missiles were still falling to our lasers, but Roger had fired a second salvo and then a third. I ran through the calculation
s in my head. His point defence was just as good as ours – maybe better in some ways – and he had the power to back it up. We had to give him a ore complex problem to deal with, yet we couldn’t do that without risking our own point defence network breaking up. “Keep firing…”
I tapped my console, issuing orders to the other starships. At my command, four of them opened wormholes and jumped around the Kofi Annan, emerging dangerously close to the battleship. Before Roger could react – and I was sure that he would have his gunners on hair triggers, after Heinlein – they fired their missiles and reopened the wormholes, slipping away. Roger’s point defence found itself struggling to cope with newer targets coming in from different vectors and I smiled as one missile detonated against the drive field. My election vanished as I realised that the Kofi Annan was almost undamaged by the blast and was still firing.
Get into Earth orbit and regain control, I thought. That’s what they will have told him to do. Get back into Earth orbit and reclaim the orbital defences. How can I use that against him?
“Incoming missiles,” Carolyn snapped. “I doubt we can take all these down.”
“Pilot, jump us out,” I snapped. A wormhole enfolded us and we vanished, emerging far too close to the battleship for comfort. Carolyn fired another spread of missiles before we vanished again. I had a mental image of a powerful beast being tormented by coyotes or hyenas. Every time it turned to deal with one problem another jumped in and attacked the creature’s back. “Carolyn, continue firing!”
The position was untenable, I realised. We couldn’t coordinate our fire, so we could only harass the battleship, not destroy it. Roger knew that as well as we did, so all he had to do was keep moving towards Earth. We’d either have to stand and fight, or pull back and admit defeat. We scored two more hits on the battleship, but they weren’t coordinated and the battleship seemed undamaged. The dance was going to end in Roger’s victory by default.
I found myself grasping for possibilities. Could we recall Kitty in time to make a difference? She’d have come the moment she repaired her weapons systems, but she wasn't here, which suggested that they still weren’t repaired. Without her battleship to counter the Kofi Annan, we couldn’t stand and fight. Would we have any choice? If we let them enter Earth orbit and drive us away, all of this would have been for nothing.
“Damn you, Roger,” I hissed. “I’m not going to let you end it all.”
“Captain,” Carolyn snapped. “A new wormhole is opening!”
I allowed myself a moment of hope. It might have been Kitty, but instead Devastator emerged from the wormhole. I stared in stark disbelief. Devastator was a monitor. She wasn't designed for the line of battle. Captain Shalenko had had to have lost his mind. He couldn’t be planning to intervene, could he?
“Receiving a transmission,” Samantha said. “He says he’s sorry.”
Before my eyes, Devastator plunged towards Kofi Annan and crashed right into her. The media suggested that starships collided on a regular basis, but the truth was that even the most insanely incompetent pilot would have struggled to make two ships crash, unless it was deliberate. Even then, it would be hard, but Roger had unintentionally aided Devastator on her final cruise. The two starships exploded and vanished inside a massive fireball.
“Captain Yamamoto would like to surrender,” Samantha said. I barely heard her. I was still staring at the remains of a man I’d once called a friend, and a commanding officer who’d prevented me from throwing away my own career. What had gone through his mind in the final few minutes? Had Shalenko intended to kill himself, or had he realised that he had committed vast crimes and sought a means of redeeming himself. “Sir?”
“Accept the surrender,” I said, softly. “Check around with the other ships and find one that has an intact platoon of Marines and send them onboard to secure the ship. What about the other cruiser?”
“They’re apparently under the control of mutineers themselves,” Samantha said. I didn’t smile. We were mutineers as well, unless we won outright. Winners got to write the history books. “They’re asking to join us.”
“Find out who’s in charge and see if they’re one of us,” I said. “If not, find a second platoon of Marines and send them onboard, just in case.”
I looked down at the display. “And prepare to return to Earth,” I added. “This isn’t quite finished yet.”
A moment later, another wormhole materialised and Kitty’s starship appeared. I couldn’t stop myself from laughing. Five minutes sooner and Captain Shalenko wouldn’t have had to commit suicide to stop Roger and his battleship. I doubted we’d be building any more such ships ourselves. They were just resource hogs.
“It’s good to see you,” I said, once we’d filled her in on what had happened in her absence. She had been as surprised as we were to discover that Roger had returned to the system; had they known something, or had it just been a hideous coincidence? “What’s happening at the asteroids?”
“They’ve all declared for us,” Kitty said, seriously. I thought that she’d never looked more beautiful in her life. “There were some problems with some of the overseers, but the prisoners took care of them and threw most of the bastards into space. I think that most of them will want to go home, but they’ve agreed to support us as long as we need them.”
“That might be a long time,” I said. Even if we started training up proper engineers again, it would still take years to replace all the conscripted workers…but I owed them a debt of honour. I’d helped put some of them in the work camps and now I’d get them back home, even if it made my operations difficult. I relaxed slightly as it dawned on me that I’d won. We held the Peace Force – and I was going to rename it something else once everything else had been done – and Earth’s high orbitals. Yesterday, the UN had controlled hundreds of star systems and billions of people. Today, it only controlled one planet. They couldn’t get at us any longer. Given time, I was sure that each of the garrisons would be wiped out, even as we were clearing their baleful influence from the fleet. “Still…we can maintain the fleet now.”
I paused. “Sally,” I ordered, “stand to attention.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, standing up.
“By the power vested in me, I hereby promote you to Lieutenant,” I said, clearly. I’d wanted to do it ever since I’d become Captain, but now…who was going to disagree? Everyone knew that Sally had been badly treated by the UN and no one doubted her competence. It was a shame I couldn’t grant her seniority as well, but that would have pushed matters too far. It wouldn’t be long before she was assigned to a new starship where she would either rise or fall according to her merits.
I sat back down in the command chair. “Pilot, take us back to Earth,” I ordered. I couldn’t keep the smile off my face. It was easy to be dramatic in the flush of victory. “It’s time to dictate terms to the United Nations and end the war for good.”
Interlude Four
From: The End of the Nightmare. Standard Press, New Washington, 2567.
The end, when it came, came swiftly.
The UNPF coup in orbit above Earth broke the power of the UN completely. As then-Captain Walker sent messengers to the occupied planets, the remainder of the UNPF and the UN Infantry swung to his side. Walker’s message was clear. The occupations were going to come to an end, provided that the Infantry were allowed to withdraw in peace. Planets such as Heinlein respected the ceasefire and generally permitted the UN Infantry to withdraw to bases out in the countryside, while they waited for transport to be organised back to Earth. Others, such as Terra Nova or New Kabul, resumed their civil wars at once without waiting for the UN to withdraw, forcing the Infantry to establish safe zones for their forces. There was a certain irony that General LePic, whose hands had been tied by UN Regulations, was able to impose peace on Terra Nova without those regulations. Indeed, many disbanded Infantrymen chose to make their way to Terra Nova to join him.
But that would come later. The messengers co
nvinced most of the remaining starships to join Captain Walker in rebellion against the UN. Many of the crews had been frustrated, or treated badly by their superiors, or even hadn’t been paid for their services. Around 70% of the UN’s starships and all of their support bases fell into Captain Walker’s hands, while a handful of loyalists either vanished off into the Beyond or attempted to turn pirate. Several other loyalist vessels attempted to attack Earth and break the blockade, but the repaired orbital defences – firmly in rebel hands – were able to beat them away from the planet. The longer the blockade held, the more planets and asteroids that broke away from the UN. Mars declared independence after a brief rebellion and most of the outer systems followed suit. The long war was over.
Martial Law 1: Patriotic Treason Page 39