The resistance didn’t seem to agree. He had trouble reading their body language, but it looked like one of the leaders wanted to wait for Admiral Teller before committing themselves to an uprising and two others were wavering. Martin struggled to think of how they might be talked into moving earlier, but drew a blank. They had every reason to hope for a human victory, yet ... no reason to think there might be a human victory. The Tokomak were gathering their strength. They’d soon have enough power to crush the entire human fleet and move on to turn Earth into a blackened wasteland.
“The fact remains that, if you don’t act now, you will not be able to act at all.” Piece sounded frustrated, although Martin wasn’t sure the aliens knew it. Human body language was alien to them too. “If they destroy Earth, they will move rapidly to eradicate you once and for all.”
The debate raged on, each resistance leader insisting on having his say. Martin was tempted to request a time out, or a pause long enough to let everyone catch their breath. Some of the leaders seemed torn between the prospect of finally doing something and the certainty of utter destruction if the uprising failed. Martin didn’t blame them - he’d studied enough uprisings that had been left to die by their foreign supporters - but it was still frustrating as hell. And if the rebels decided to move against the humans, instead? Martin had few illusions. The handful of marines could be destroyed in an instant if the alien rebels decided they were a liability.
“The problem remains Tokomak One,” an alien said. “As long as they control the fortress, they can dominate the system.”
Martin wasn’t so sure. A lone fortress, no matter how powerful, couldn’t dominate the entire system. But he saw their point. Tokomak One floated over the ring, its weapons threatening any uprising on the planetary surface. And it was almost completely crewed by Tokomak, isolated from the rest of the system. It couldn’t be taken by stealth and yet, if it wasn’t taken, it could put the entire uprising in jeopardy. The hell of it was that most of the remaining fortresses had already been towed to the gravity points ...
He leaned forward. “We can take out the fortress,” he said. The station was heavily defended, but there were options. There were always options. “And then you can secure the remainder of the system in peace.”
“Until they bring their fleet to bear on us,” another alien said. “You’d have to take Tokomak One first, before we jumped.”
And we’d be exposed if they didn’t jump, Martin thought. But, at the very least, we would have given them a chance.
Piece shot him a sharp look. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.” Martin did his best to project utter confidence, although he knew Piece was probably the only one who’d pick up on it. “We can take the fortress and then secure it.”
“Or destroy it,” an alien said. The others made what looked to be affirmative gestures. “We don’t want to see it falling back into enemy hands.”
“No.” Martin nodded. “We can ensure they never see it again.”
“And if we do take out the fortress,” Piece said, “will you rise?”
He sounded earnest, very earnest. “There won’t be another chance. Either we win the war, and you liberate yourselves, or the Tokomak kill us all. They’re desperate. They’re panicking. And panicky people do stupid things. They have already announced pogroms on human settlers and clones. It’s only a matter of time before they do the same to you. What price the industry here if they don’t need it, after all of us are dead?”
The aliens spoke amongst themselves for a few minutes. Martin listened, but they weren’t using any of the known Galactic tongues. They had to be using a native language, a language that had been declared forbidden long ago. He was astonished they’d managed to keep speaking even one native tongue. The Tokomak had worked hard to stamp out all memory of the days when their worlds had been small, when they’d been the only intelligent life form in existence. Entire swathes of history had been lost beyond all hope of recovery. Martin had heard stories about civilisations that had never existed, on Earth; he knew more about them than the aliens knew of their own worlds, before they’d been invaded and assimilated. It chilled him to realise just how much had been lost, over the centuries. The Tokomak hadn’t even kept records.
They could have done a lot of good, he mused, as the discussion came to an end. But instead they chose to grind everyone else in the mud.
“We agree,” the octopus alien said, finally. His voice was flat, almost atonal. The faint accent was gone. “But Tokomak One must be taken first. You must make good on your boast.”
“And we will,” Piece said, grandly. “It will be done.”
“It will,” Martin echoed. “We won’t let you down.”
And now we really have to make good on our boast, Martin thought. He kept his face expressionless as they were shown the door. Or that will be a promise we won’t be able to keep.
Chapter Eighteen
Hameeda wasn’t sure, in all honesty, if Admiral Teller had given her the mission because he didn’t know how best to use the LinkShip or if he merely wanted to delay the next thrust into enemy territory. She could understand the need to secure their rear, and do everything they could to encourage the formation of a planetary government that would be reasonably friendly to the human race, but time was short. The only way to pose a major threat to the Tokomak was to keep going, to keep smashing through their defences as if they were made of paper. They wouldn’t be alarmed if the human force got bogged down only a couple of transits from N-Gann.
And the only problem with that is that their defences are not made of paper, she thought, as she kept her wary eye on the convoy. Admiral Teller had fired off a lot of assault pods when he’d blasted his way into the system, slowing his advance until he could get replacements shipped from N-Gann. If we can’t replace our assault pods, we’ll have to mount conventional assaults and that will cost us.
She scowled, wishing she wasn’t tied to the convoy. The small fleet had passed through the first gravity point without incident, then set course in realspace towards the second gravity point. It screamed TRAP to her, even though she knew the convoy consisted of alien designed and crewed freighters that had been pressed into service. There was no technical reason why they couldn’t go into FTL, except that would make interception impossible. She wondered, darkly, if the Tokomak really knew how many rules they’d made that had been taken for natural laws. If they ever thought better of it, if they ever took a good hard look at their guiding assumptions, they might realise just how thoroughly they’d screwed themselves. And then take steps to correct it.
Time passed, slowly. Hameeda fought boredom by running a series of increasingly complex simulations, exploring the limits of the possible. She fought and refought the war time and time again, trying to deduce what might happen if the Tokomak made one choice and their human enemies made a different choice. It was frustrating, even though she knew something had to be left to chance. The aliens were alien. Their reasoning might be too alien for her to comprehend. They might do something she wouldn’t expect, simply because she couldn’t understand their reasoning. And ...
She shook her head. They didn’t have time to worry about it. The sooner they resumed their advance, the better. But Admiral Teller had too many problems to deal with before he could order the fleet to continue punching its way to Tokomak Prime. The provisional government had to be convinced to start putting assault pods - and everything else - into mass production, even though it would cause unrest ... more unrest. And the prisoners had to be protected ... there were just too many problems. It was easy to believe they’d been better off before they’d formed alliances outside the human race.
But then we’d be fighting alone, she reminded herself. Allies. Can’t fight with them and can’t fight without them.
Her sensors twitched. She was instantly alert, passive sensors sweeping for cloaked ships. There was something up ahead, an energy fluctuation that could be nothing more than a random flicker o
f cosmic energy or a cloaked ship. The Tokomak cloaking devices were good, even if they weren’t up to human standards. And they could have stepped down their drives and sensors, lowering the risk of detection still further. The convoy was making no attempt to hide. The Tokomak shouldn’t have had any trouble projecting its course and steering a path to put themselves in its way.
Unless they scented a trap, she thought. They know they have to be careful.
She gritted her teeth, wishing she dared run an active sensor sweep. It would blow away all ambiguity in a moment, at the price of revealing her presence. The Tokomak - if there were Tokomak - would slip into FTL, escaping on a random vector. It was too soon to spring the trap. She tested her systems quickly, knowing the enemy fleet had to be given time to get cocky. They wanted - they needed - a crushing victory they could use to prove they hadn’t been defeated. Not yet. Smashing twenty freighters wasn’t much, in the grand scheme of things, but it would be a start. And Admiral Teller would wind up looking like an idiot.
And the provisional government will start edging away from us if they think we’re going to lose, she reminded herself. We cannot afford even a single defeat.
The faint flickers of energy grew stronger. There was a pattern to them ... Hameeda bared her teeth as the pattern grew more visible, a clear sign there were a handful of ships lurking ahead of them. Random cosmic fluctuations would be ... well, random. She reminded herself not to focus on them too much. There might be other ships lurking nearby. The Tokomak had had time to call for reinforcements ... long-range sensors hadn’t picked up any trace of warships entering the system, but that was meaningless. The Tokomak had used freighters to tow their warships before.
They stole that trick off us, she thought, as she silently placed a bet with herself when the enemy would uncloak and open fire. Too soon and the human ships would have time to react, too late and the human ships would get a clear shot at their hulls. And they used it well.
She braced herself. It wouldn’t be long now.
***
Governor-Admiral Pentode felt nothing but bitter hatred as he sat on his command deck and watched the human freighters and their escorts approach. A week. A week ... it had only taken a week for the entire system to not only fall to its human attackers, but to devote itself to serving its attackers. The provisional government, flush with victory, had started unlocking fabricators and switching over to mass production of everything from assault pods to antimatter mines. Pentode couldn’t believe it. He’d spent years trying to increase production, yet - a mere week after the humans had seized the system - production had gone through the roof. It was almost as if his servants - his former servants - had been unwilling to work for him.
He cursed under his breath as the range closed, knowing he’d already lost. The engagement didn’t matter. He’d done his level best to harass shipping and asteroid settlements, but ... either he died or he was summarily executed when the Empress heard about his failure. His brave stand had cost the enemy, of that he was sure, but ... he shook his head, angrily. The war was going to get worse before it got better, if it ever did. What would happen if the humans managed to seize a handful of other systems and make them all more productive?
The balance of power could shift very quickly, he thought. The vast stockpile of warships, arms and ammunition the Tokomak had built up, over the centuries, might be less of a war-winner than he’d thought. He’d run the projections in private, unwilling to risk sharing them with his analysts. If they start churning out modern warships here, with human weapons, the balance of power could shift against us.
He shuddered. In hindsight, he should have blown up the entire system rather than retreating into deep space. He’d assumed the humans couldn’t make use of the system, but he’d been wrong. Catastrophically wrong. They were actually making better use of the system, if only because the wretched provisional government knew it was doomed if the humans didn’t win. Pentode shuddered, embracing a thought most Tokomak would have found utterly unthinkable. The ancients had been wrong. They’d imposed order and stagnation on the universe, at the cost of growth and development. And respect for the Tokomak, the oldest of the old. He’d intercepted enough transmissions, all in the clear these days, to understand just how deeply they were hated. There were people in the system - his system - who would burn Tokomak Prime to the ground and then sow the ashes with radioactive waste, just to make sure the planet never recovered. And that meant ...
“Admiral.” The tactical officer looked composed, too composed. Pentode had spent too long worrying about what his subordinates thought of him now, reminding himself that the Empress had been a mutineer herself. “The human ships are within range.”
Pentode nodded, stiffly. Blowing up a handful of freighters wouldn’t delay the humans for more than a day or two, if that, but it would show the provisional government the war wasn’t over. Not yet. And it would force the humans to make a choice between securing their rear and pressing on, giving him a chance to cut their supply lines. He could buy time for the empire to strike back ...
“Target their escorts,” he ordered. “Open fire on my command.”
He braced himself. The humans probably weren’t crewing those ships. They’d pressed a vast number of freighters into service, freighters configured for races that ranged from near-human to completely alien. Killing them wouldn’t be killing humans ... it would do. It would make life harder for the enemy and that was all that mattered. If they didn’t surrender quickly, he’d blow them away without hesitation.
And maybe even if they do surrender, he thought, darkly. They’re traitors. They deserve nothing more than death.
“Decloak,” he ordered. “And fire!”
The display wavered as the cloaking device powered down, his active sensors going online and sweeping space for potential threats. The human freighters and their escorts, a handful of destroyer-sized ships, appeared to be alone. An entire human fleet could be shadowing them, he knew, but his FTL drives were already spooling up. He’d have time to jump into FTL and vanish if the humans were plotting an ambush. The idea of running from a fight bothered him, but ... it wasn’t the first time. The longer he kept his fleet alive, the better.
He smiled as his ships opened fire, hurling a wave of missiles directly towards the enemy escorts. It was overkill, but he didn’t want to take any risks. He was painfully aware he no longer had access to any shipyards, let alone qualified yard workers. The ungrateful bastards in the local facilities had practically jumped at the chance to turn against their masters. He was more concerned about resupply, something else that hadn’t been a problem until the humans attacked ...
The display flickered, faint edges of gravimetric shadows appearing in front of him. Pentode blinked in disbelief. Gravity shadows surrounded stars, planets and some gravity points - quite why there were gravity points that didn’t project gravity shadows had never been explained - but they didn’t appear in empty space. Unless ... his mind caught up with what he was seeing as the gravity wells grew stronger, expanding waves of gravity overlapping until he could no longer tell which ships were producing the gravity wells. And his missiles were slipping right through their targets.
His hearts skipped a beat as the ships - no, drones - exploded. Antimatter. The drones were crammed with antimatter. The blasts were little threat to a shielded warship, but they were powerful enough to wipe out most of his missiles before they could be retargeted. Pentode cursed, savagely, as he realised he’d been lured into another trap. The humans had pinned him in normal space, cutting off his line of retreat. And yet, there didn’t seem to be any warships waiting for him. They’d baited a trap without teeth? It sounded impossible. The humans weren’t mad. Or stupid. And that meant ...
“Target the freighters,” he snapped. The gravity well projectors had to be taken out, quickly, before their mere activation summoned human ships from right across the system. Gravity didn’t propagate at FTL speeds, but there was no effective differe
nce. They no longer had time to capture and loot the ships. They had to take them out and run. “Fire!”
***
Hameeda allowed herself a moment of surprise as the enemy took the bait, firing hundreds of missiles towards the drones. She’d never been entirely convinced the Tokomak would be fooled by a show of weakness, if only because they weren’t sure what the humans could and could not do. A harmless waif in a darkened street on Old Earth might be packing so many combat implants that she could give a trained marine a very hard time. Indeed, a lot of Earth’s problems might be solved if everyone did carry concealed weapons at all times. But the Tokomak had taken the bait.
She felt a flash of pain as the antimatter warheads detonated, some of her sensors registering their outrage as they were permanently blinded. She detailed her automatics to handle repairs or replacements, then concentrated as the gravity well projectors came online. A low quiver ran through the ship as the gravity waves washed against her hull, a sensation she found surprisingly disturbing. Anything brushing the ship in deep space was probably very bad news indeed. There were stories about astronomers who went out to study interesting stars from point-blank range and never came home, having travelled a little too close to their target star.
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