The old immigrants - her grandfather’s generation - had never quite gotten used to teleporting, she recalled, as she felt her body dissolve into light. Her grandfather had agonised for years over just what teleporting did to the human soul, as if every time he stepped into a teleporter he committed suicide and was then replaced by a copy so perfect that it literally didn't know it was a copy. Hoshiko and her generation - and the Tokomak, for that matter - had far fewer doubts. The teleporter simply couldn't produce a copy, because duplicating something as complex as a human mind was impossible. There was no way she was anything other than herself, even if she had been teleported more times than she cared to count. She smiled to herself, again, as the courier boat materialised around her and the sensation of being light and energy faded away. The tiny bridge held one other occupant.
“Captain,” Ensign Howard said. He sounded nervous, even though he'd done well on the simulations. “Welcome onboard.”
“Thank you, Ensign,” Hoshiko said. She took her chair in front of the sensor console and examined it, briefly. The poor ensign had to be terrified. He was trapped in a confined space with his senior officer. On the other hand, assuming they survived, the whole stunt would look very good when the promotions board came calling. “Are we ready to depart?”
“Yes, Captain,” Ensign Howard said. The freighter had been heavily automated before the human engineers had gone to work. Now, it was completely automated, slaved to the courier boat, as long as nothing went wrong. There was no way they could carry out repairs while they were in flight. “FTL drive is online, ready to jump; sensors and jammers are online, ready to pulse.”
“Very good,” Hoshiko said. She wanted to say something reassuring, but she had a feeling the ensign might faint. “Inform Jackie Fisher that we will be departing on schedule.”
She clicked the display back and studied the fleet for a long moment. A handful of ships had dropped out along the way - the order of battle stated that several freighters had left the formation - but none of their allies had deserted as a body. The flurry of updates exchanged between ships indicated, more than anything else, that the Grand Alliance was still a going concern, although that might be about to change. If they were defeated ... she pushed the thought aside, irritated. They were not about to be defeated.
But retreating in the face of superior firepower would also be bad, she thought, as the ensign ran down the departure checklist. She’d picked what she thought would be an easy target, just to make sure the alliance got a morale boost, but if she was wrong and called the attack off ... they’d wonder just how committed she truly was. We have to prove to them that we can win battles.
“Captain,” Ensign Howard said, formally. “We are ready to depart.”
“Then take us out,” Hoshiko ordered.
She sat back in her chair as the display blanked out, the darkness of FTL enveloping the freighter like a shroud. It was hard to avoid doubts, now they were on their way; it was a great deal easier to be brave when one was standing on the bridge of an Admiral-class heavy cruiser, one of the finest ships in the galaxy. She had no illusions about how much firepower the freighter could soak up before it was blown to atoms, if the Druavroks realised they were being probed. They’d have to cut themselves loose from the hulk and flee into FTL, cutting their losses. And that would be far too revealing.
They’ll know we’re coming, she reminded herself. But they won’t see us as anything other than a freighter.
“Five minutes to emergence point,” Ensign Howard said. His voice was starting to rise, nervously. “The faked drive failure pattern is uploaded and ready for transmission.”
“Very good, Ensign,” Hoshiko said. “Just take us out of FTL as planned and everything should be fine.”
She sighed, inwardly. It would have been preferable, infinitely preferable, to have a more experienced officer accompanying her, but none could be spared. The handful of other officers she had who knew how to handle a courier boat were needed elsewhere, while there wasn't time to train up someone new. Indeed, if the Solar Navy hadn't been desperately keen to recruit more couriers, she wouldn't even have Ensign Howard. Courier boat crews were simply weird.
The thought made her smile. She wouldn't have cared to spend more than a day or two on the courier boat ... and couriers spent their entire careers on the tiny ships. There was barely room on the bridge to swing a cat, while there were only two tiny cabins and a single washroom at the rear. She’d heard that most courier crews wrote novels, played games or spent their time seeking sexual release ... assuming, of course, they could stand each other after being cooped up for several weeks in the same ship. She couldn't help feeling sorry for the crews taking her messages from Amstar to Sol. They’d be trapped in the ships for nearly seven months.
It’s what they signed up for, she thought. And it isn't as though they’re not compensated for their role.
She pushed the thought out of her head as the timer ticked down to zero. The freighter shuddered violently as the drive failed, creating a flare of energy that would be visible halfway across the system. Very few freighter crews would willingly put so much wear and tear on their FTL drives; even the military, knowing that FTL drives were expensive, would hesitate. The Druavroks would be unlikely to suspect trouble if the approaching freighter had clearly had a major drive failure.
“Give it two minutes, then send the planned distress call,” she ordered, as the display began to fill with icons. The system had been industrialised for centuries, unlike Sol, and it showed; there were mining ships everywhere, a giant cloudscoop orbiting the gas giant and a number of fabbers near the planet itself. “We don’t want them to think our arrival was planned.”
She watched the display grimly, silently calculating the odds in her head. If a freighter had crashed out of FTL in the Sol System, the Solar Navy would have instantly dispatched a couple of ships to investigate. Who knew what sort of trouble it portended? And even if it was a genuine accident, assisting the crew and finding out what had happened might come in handy. A decent reputation might convince other races to assist humanity, when the Tokomak finally launched a second major offensive against Sol.
But what would the Druavroks do? There was no way to know.
“Send the signal,” she ordered, after two minutes had passed. “Inform me the moment we get any response.”
“Aye, Captain,” Howard said. “The signal has been sent.”
“Keep us limping towards the planet,” Hoshiko ordered. “We don’t want them to think we’re completely crippled.”
She smiled, inwardly. Her engineering crews had worked overtime to come up with a plausible disaster that would leave them locked out of FTL, but allow them to make their way towards the planet without help. The message they’d recorded would acknowledge the problem, yet make it clear the freighter didn't need immediate help. There should be no need for the Druavroks to dispatch a welcoming committee ... but if they were suspicious or merely paranoid, they probably would. She’d just have to wait and see.
“Launch the long-range recon probes,” she ordered, after a moment. “Send them out as planned.”
“Aye, Captain,” Howard said.
Hoshiko watched as he worked his console, then turned her attention back to the ever-swelling display. It struck her, once again, just how long the Galactics had been in space ... and just how rapidly humanity had jumped ahead, once it had stolen technology from a race that didn't know how it worked, let alone how to use it. Sol had considerably more industrial activity than the system before her and humanity had only really been in space for the last fifty years.
She shook her head in amused disbelief. Malachi had, according to the records, only been settled for three hundred years. There was little to like about the world, either; the Tokomak had considered it barely suitable for settlement and dropped a terraforming package on the surface before passing the job of turning the world into a habitable place to live. The Druavroks were the majority population,
so vastly outnumbering the other races that taking control of the surface couldn't have been particularly hard. And yet, with three hundred years of settlement, she would have expected something more.
The Tokomak screwed the economy deliberately, she reminded herself. They really didn't want their subjects taking control of their lives.
Her eyes narrowed as new icons popped up on the display. The system had three massive battlestations orbiting the planet, as well as a number of remote weapons platforms and automated defences, but there didn't seem to be many starships in residence. She would have preferred at least a single squadron of heavy cruisers to give the defenders some mobile firepower, yet the largest ship her sensors could detect was a light cruiser that might only have been passing through. There certainly didn't seem to be anything attached to the system bigger than a single squadron of destroyers.
They may well be concentrating their efforts on expanding their space as quickly as possible, she thought. They may know it won’t take long before the other races start to unite against them.
“Picking up a signal,” Ensign Howard said. “They’re ordering us to hold position at the edge of the planetary defence sphere until they can get an inspection crew up to us. And they want our manifest.”
“Send it to them,” Hoshiko ordered. The freighter manifest was nothing more than a tissue of lies, but she’d composed it with malice aforethought. If the Druavroks believed the freighter was carrying spare parts for starships, they’d be less willing to blow her out of space. Given the speed of their advance, she’d bet money their logistics were barely superior to hers. “And let me know what they say.”
They’ll want to seize the cargo, she told herself. The Galactics had some very strict rules on how freighter in distress were to be treated, but she doubted the Druavroks would honour them. At best, they’d insist the freighter’s cargo would be forfeit in exchange for repairs and whatever other charges they could cram onto the bill; at worst, they’d simply take the cargo, the ship and enslave the crews. That should help them decide to keep us alive.
She allowed herself a tight smile as the probes slipped closer to their target. The Druavroks presumably didn’t have any better sensors than the ones their former masters had invented and passed on to them, because they didn't seem to have any inkling the probes were slowly slipping into engagement range. Given thirty years or so, she told herself, and humanity’s warships would be able to tear through a Galactic fleet with no losses at all, unless the Galactics themselves started innovating. And if they did, the status quo the Tokomak had created would be destroyed.
Enough data to target our attack precisely, she thought. And enough to program the missiles to overwhelm their targets by sheer weight of fire.
“There doesn't seem to be anything on the planet worth having,” she muttered to herself, darkly. “And hitting their settlements would be bad.”
Hoshiko sighed, inwardly. She doubted many of the races that had joined up with the Grand Alliance would feel the same way.
Ensign Howard glanced at her, very briefly. “Captain?”
“Never mind,” Hoshiko said. “Has there been any response?”
“None as yet,” Ensign Howard said. “They haven’t sent anything to us ...”
He paused. “Captain, two of their destroyers are breaking orbit and heading towards our position,” he warned. “Estimated ETA, nineteen minutes unless they go FTL.”
“I see,” Hoshiko said. The last thing she wanted was to abandon the freighter with two destroyers in firing range. “Watch carefully for a Picard Manoeuvre.”
“Aye, Captain,” Ensign Howard said.
Hoshiko nodded. It was hard to believe that Jean-Luc Picard was fictional when he’d given his name to a well-known Galactic tactic. Jumping into FTL would allow the destroyers to reach her position before she knew they’d moved, before the emissions from their realspace drives reached her sensors. If they did, she was in deep trouble. She’d have to risk deploying ECM systems to confuse them while the courier boat separated from the freighter.
We're not close enough to the planet for certain success, she thought, darkly. And to think it was going so well too.
Don’t be stupid, her own thoughts answered her. They sounded very much like her uncle in a cranky mood. War is a democracy. The enemy, that dirty dog, gets a vote too.
“Prepare to separate from the freighter,” she ordered. “I ...”
An alarm sounded. “Contact,” Ensign Howard snapped. “They just dropped out of FTL, right on top of us.”
Hoshiko sucked in her breath. The enemy destroyers were closing in, far too quickly. She mentally saluted their commanders - they’d pulled off a perfect Picard Manoeuvre - as she hastily re-evaluated the situation. It was time to cut their losses and leave.
“Rotate the freighter,” she ordered. Thankfully, the enemy hadn't tried to come in on two separate vectors. “Make it look like we’re panicking, but kept the hulk between us and them.”
“Aye, Captain,” Ensign Howard said. He paused. “They’re sending us a message, Captain; they want us to prepare to be boarded.”
“Cut our ties to the freighter,” Hoshiko ordered. There was no longer any time to waste. “As soon as we’re free, send the scuttle code to the ship and bring the FTL drive online.”
“Aye, Captain,” Ensign Howard said. He sounded perfectly in control, now there were only seconds between life and death. A shudder ran through the courier boat as she broke free of the freighter and moved into open space. “We’re free.”
The display turned red. “Enemy ships are targeting us, Captain!”
“Evasive manoeuvres,” Hoshiko ordered, curtly. If they were lucky, the Druavroks would still be reluctant to blow up the freighter, but she dared not count on it. “Send the final code to the freighter, then jump us out.”
“Aye, Captain,” Ensign Howard said. “FTL in three ... two ... one ... now!”
Hoshiko smirked as the Druavroks launched missiles, far too late to be any good. It no longer mattered if they were trying to take out the courier boat or the freighter, not now the former was in FTL. The final device she’d had loaded onto the freighter would not only explode with staggering force - it was just possible the destroyers would be crippled or destroyed if they didn’t back off quickly enough - but blind gravimetric sensors right across the system. If she was very lucky, the Druavroks would have no idea the fleet was on the way until it was far too late.
And even if the plan fails, she thought, we already have the intelligence we need.
“Take us straight back to the fleet,” she ordered. Either the plan had worked or it hadn't; it no longer mattered. “And drop the teleport jammers as soon as we arrive.”
“Aye, Captain,” Howard said.
Chapter Sixteen
Desertion rates in the United States Army have skyrocketed over the past two months, according to a highly-classified report, in the wake of the military coup, fighting along the borders and ethnic cleansing in a number of US cities and states. The current military commander, however, insists that the restoration of order is only a matter of time - and that deserters will receive the death sentence when they are caught.
-Solar News Network, Year 54
If there was one lesson Druavrok history had taught the Druavroks, it was that the universe was divided into two different subsets: predators and prey. Their evolution on a harsh world had shaped them for war, first for bare survival against the other creatures their homeworld had birthed, then against the strange aliens who’d arrived on their world with gifts and demands for submission. The Druavroks had fought, of course, because it wasn't in their nature to submit, but they’d been crushed so badly that the survivors and their descendents were still reeling. Resistance to the Tokomaks had moved, in their heads, from necessary to inconceivable. The idea of lifting a clawed hand to slash at a Tokomak face was beyond them. They had become slaves.
It hadn't taken the surviving Druavroks long to disco
ver that the Tokomaks were masters of far more than merely the half-savage Druavroks. Indeed, they were masters of hundreds of races of prey, each one strange and appalling to Druavrok eyes. None of them had any right to exist, not when they had never imposed themselves on the Druavroks. The Druavroks could not see them as anything other than prey. And, when the Tokomaks had started turning the Druavroks into soldiers and enforcers, the Druavroks had taken to the role like ducks to water. What better role was there, they asked themselves, than serving the only race that had defeated them decisively in battle?
And then the Tokomaks had retreated, abandoning the sector.
The Druavroks hadn't been able to understand it, not at first. A minor defeat that had cost a bare handful of starships was hardly enough to break the Tokomaks. And yet, the Tokomaks had simply abandoned the Martina Sector. The Druavroks puzzled over it for months, trying to determine what their masters wanted them to do. Eventually, one of their leaders had realised the truth. The Tokomak had given the Druavroks the sector as a reward for good service, as a master might pet his slave on the head. And all the prey in the sector was theirs to do with as they willed. Why not build an empire of their own?
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