***
There was something raw, almost primal, about the explosions billowing up on the massive station's defensive shields. Colin watched, struggling to keep his face expressionless, as the missiles exploded in wave after wave, knocking down shield sections and burning out shield generators. Bursts of energy were making their way through the shields as they failed, licking and burning their way into the station's armour, further weakening the structure. The station, which was better armoured than even the latest superdreadnaught design, might well have a chance to survive. Its shield network was knocked down, yet it sprang back into place. They had power and shield generators to spare.
The fortress had barely had a chance to spit back a single salvo of missiles before its shields failed completely, allowing Colin’s missiles to pound the fortress’s hull without hindrance. Nuclear explosions flared out in the darkness of space, melting their way into the heart of the fortress, yet still it survived. The interior of the fortress was heavily armoured too, meaning that Colin could blow parts of the fortress into radioactive debris and the remainder would continue to fight on. Other warheads were detonating inside the structure – he wouldn't have given much for the safety of the fortress’s personnel – tearing into its very heart. Entire sections of weapons failed, dying just before their base started to twist and explode. The fortress didn't explode like a starship. It simply fragmented into countless pieces of junk.
A testament to what the Empire can build, Colin thought, impressed despite himself. The Empire had never lost a Capital-class orbital fortress. Coming to think of it, the last time the Empire had lost any kind of fortress had been back during the First Interstellar War. Since then, the Empire had always been doing the attacking. It had rarely been attacked itself. Unlike a starship, with weight penalties for packing too much mass into the hull, the fortress had been able to pack far more armour. The designers had known what they were doing.
“Record a message,” he ordered. The communications officer nodded. “Attention, defenders of Piccadilly. This is Admiral Colin Walker of the Popular Front to Reform the Empire. I intend to destroy this system’s orbital facilities. I will give you ten minutes to abandon them and then I will open fire.”
The superdreadnaught shook as a missile from one of the automated platforms managed to slip through the point defence and explode against the ship’s shields. “There will be no further warnings,” Colin added. “The countdown will begin upon the transmission of this message.”
He looked over towards the communications officer. “Transmit the message on all bands,” he ordered, tartly. “We may as well give them fair warning.”
Colin, Hester and Daria had discussed the issue in some detail. Hester had pointed out that the Roosevelt Family’s workers were certainly compliant in the crimes the Family had committed, but Daria had countered by pointing out that they hadn’t been offered a choice. Colin had settled the argument by reasoning that the orbital facilities could not be rebuilt quickly – certainly without a new Annual Fleet – and destroying them would limit the world’s ability to take part in the war. By the time the facilities were rebuilt, he hoped, they would have won or lost – and if they lost, it didn't really matter what happened on Piccadilly.
Besides, he added in his own mind, unlike Stacy or Percival himself, he felt no rage for the workers. They had never committed crimes against him personally; their sole crime, if it could be called a crime, was being part of the system.
“The message has been transmitted,” the communications officer said. “No response.”
Colin shrugged. He hadn't expected one. “Monitor the orbital facilities closely,” he ordered, as the superdreadnaught shook again. “Let me know if they seem reluctant to evacuate.”
He smiled as he studied the display. Percival would probably not have hesitated to use human shields and would have seen any concern for the workers as a sign of weakness. He doubted that the Roosevelt Family’s representative on the planet’s surface would be that stupid, if only because it would be a good way to lose all of the Family’s clients at once. A trained and experienced workforce wasn't something to just throw away; besides, Colin had no intention of slaughtering helpless workers. If it could be avoided, that was.
The other two stations, as he had expected, weren't firing – but then, there was little point in firing. Colin’s ships were shielded by the planet itself. The remaining warships in the system were attempting to reform into a new formation, although several of them were missing, probably having flickered out to warn other systems of just what had gone wrong. Colin glanced down at his terminal, watching the counter ticking towards zero. His worst-case estimate was that it would take at least thirty minutes for Percival to dispatch reinforcements into the system...and that relied upon him having forces on hand, ready to go.
He ran through a tactical check. His ships had been hit, but none badly – although that would change if they tried to go up against the remaining fortresses. There was no point in trying to take the system; the only thing they could do was wreak havoc and then take their leave. He checked that the tactical staff were handling the running battle and pulled up the sensor records. No matter how he worked it, there seemed to be nothing special about the planet, certainly nothing that explained the trillions of credits the Roosevelt Family had spent on it.
Colin tapped a switch, transferring the records into a secure datachip he could give to Daria – perhaps she could shed some light on it – and turned back to his task. The enemy warships seemed to be heading away from the planet’s gravity well, and then they halted, as if they were waiting for Colin to give chase. He saw no reason to indulge them. His superdreadnaughts couldn't catch the lighter units in normal space and they’d just flicker out if he got too close anyway. It looked...odd.
“Launch an additional flight of probes,” he ordered. “I want to know if they move even a single cloaked ship close to us.”
“Yes, sir,” the tactical officer said. There was no longer any need to use stealthed probes. “Launching probes...now.”
“Incoming fire,” the deputy tactical officer said. “The stations are firing on us!”
***
“Relay the control signals through the warships,” Bart ordered. It was a far from conventional idea, yet it seemed to be the only way to drive the rebels away from Piccadilly. Their countdown was proceeding, marking the fact that his world had only two minutes before years of investment were destroyed, blown to flaming atoms by rebel starships. “I want them to focus the missiles onto their targets.”
“Do as he says,” General Roosevelt added. He’d come into the command station, relieving Commander Falcon. The fortresses had raised objections when a lowly Specialist had asked them to start routing their commands through the starships. “This isn't the time for a argument over procedure.”
Bart smiled. The starships and orbital fortresses had one thing in common; they both had to control missiles they launched, in order to direct them towards their targets. A rogue missile became a danger to both sides in a battle. A superdreadnaught could control vast numbers of missiles at once – using command missiles to ensure a degree of tactical flexibility – but a cruiser or a destroyer had vastly more limited capabilities. Bart had pointed out that the stations might not be able to launch their missiles directly at their targets, but they could send them around the planet, handing over control to the warships in observation positions. It had taken some reprogramming to make it possible – the Empire wasn't keen on making it possible for outside forces to take control of its missiles – yet they’d done it.
The system wasn't as efficient as it would have been if the stations had been in direct control of their weapons. The smaller ships kept losing control of individual missiles, even though they were routing their commands though slaved command missiles and attempting to switch from missile to missile before they lost them permanently. Even so, it had been a nasty surprise for the rebels, all the more so because they were
being fired on from all sides at once. Bart had redeployed the ships to allow them to control multiple missiles, even ones circling around the planet from the other side.
It was risky, he admitted; a shipkiller hitting the planet would be disastrous. There were good reasons why the Empire disliked missile duals anywhere near a planet’s gravity well. Yet, if it worked, it would drive the rebels away and it had been his idea. He was the one who would be rewarded.
“They can probably swat them off indefinitely,” the Commander said. He was pacing, doubtless worried about the effects on his career. “We cannot hope to overwhelm their defences at this range.”
“That’s not an issue,” the General countered. “All that matters is to keep them off balance until reinforcements arrive.”
***
Colin swallowed a curse as the missiles roared into his point defence network and started to die under his fire. At first, he’d thought that the Empire had slipped a pair of battlecruiser squadrons into orbit under cloak and opened fire, but it hadn't taken long to realise what was actually happening. Some clever bastard on the planet’s surface had managed to get the warships working to steer missiles fired from the station!
“Clever,” he said, as the last of the first salvo of missiles died. The attacks were growing in power now as more ships were added to the command network. The attacks were even coming in from odd directions, as if they were fighting in a two-dimensional environment. If he sent his ships after the control ships, they’d simply flicker away, leaving his ships at the mercy of the fortresses. He checked the timer and smiled to himself. The defenders had run out of time. “Did they get everyone off the orbital facilities?”
“I believe so,” the sensor officer said. “They certainly launched a great many shuttles and lifepods, all of which are now heading down into the planet’s atmosphere.”
Colin nodded. Standard procedure was for lifepods to remain in space until they could be recovered, but he didn't blame them for sending them into the atmosphere to land on the ground. In a combat zone, the odds of having them mistaken for weapons or mines and accidentally destroyed were just too high. Besides, it helped prove that the stations were definitely abandoned – unless, of course, they deliberately intended to trick him into carrying out an atrocity. Percival thought like that; he hoped – prayed – that the Roosevelt Family thought differently.
“Target the orbital stations,” he ordered. The tactical officer brought up the firing plan, the one that they had worked out just after Alpha Station had been destroyed. “Destroy them.”
“Aye, sir,” the tactical officer said. “I am launching missiles...now.”
Given enough time, Colin would have preferred to use energy weapons to destroy the orbital facilities, but time was ticking away. Besides, using missiles helped ensure that fewer chunks would survive the fall through the planet’s atmosphere to crash-land on the surface. He watched dispassionately as years of work and trillions of credits burned under his fire, wondering how long it would be before the Roosevelt Family could rebuild. They had probably had the planet’s facilities insured, but if he knew the Thousand Families, there would be caveats built into the agreements. And besides, if they attempted to pay out, it would probably wreck large parts of the economy.
“The targets have been destroyed,” the tactical officer reported, finally. “The enemy fortresses are increasing their fire.”
Colin was mildly impressed. Whoever had thought of that tactic was on the wrong side. He doubted that it was a tactic that would become commonplace, yet perhaps...it would certainly make hitting any planet harder. He shook his head in irritation. It wasn't as if they had a monopoly on tactical innovations. If they were lucky, Admiral Percival would decide that the genius who had thought up the idea had been too clever and dispatch him to a remote mining colony...no, that wouldn't happen. Whoever had thought of it would be working directly for the Roosevelt Family. Percival would only have limited authority over him.
“Take us up,” he ordered. They’d dallied too long already. “Prepare to flicker us out as soon as we reach a safe distance.”
Unsurprisingly, the incoming fire doubled as they pulled away from the planet, the fortresses realising that their prey was escaping and trying to cripple or destroy a superdreadnaught before they could escape. Colin didn't bother to return fire. At such extreme range, it was unlikely that they would hit any of the smaller starships, while the fortresses might as well have been invincible. It would just be a waste of missiles.
He pulled up the planetary data again and shook his head. Why was the planet so important?
It made no sense. The survey data didn't suggest that the planet had played host to intelligent life before the Empire had stumbled over it and given the settlement rights to the Roosevelt Family. Studying alien tech made sense, yet an alien race advanced enough to be worth the effort of studying it would be clearly noticeable from orbit, even if it had died out centuries ago. And besides, the survey data would have noticed the alien settlement and an Imperial Navy team would have taken over the planet. Was it a crashed alien ship, perhaps? Also possible, yet why wouldn't they take it into the Empire, to somewhere more secure?
And what else was worth the amount of resources they’d lavished on the world?
“We have reached minimum safe distance, Admiral,” the helmsman said. “The flicker drives are powering up now.”
Colin took one final look at the mysterious planet, vowing to come back one day and ferret out its secrets. If he’d kept Stacy Roosevelt as a prisoner, perhaps he could have asked her...he shook his head, annoyed at himself. There was no point in questioning his own decisions, not now. What was done was done.
“Take us out of here,” he ordered. The other timer had reached zero. Percival’s reinforcements could be expected at any moment. It was tempting to spend time wrecking the cloudscoops and mining facilities, but it wouldn't assist the cause. “It’s time to take our leave.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
“It’s the flicker drive node, My Lady,” Accrington said. “I’m afraid that it has finally given up the ghost.”
Lady Hannelore Ellicott-Chatham scowled. The Misfit was one of three freighters, her own personal property, that she’d assigned to the mining project at Tyler’s Star. Unfortunately, the ship was also older than she was and on its last legs. The only reason it had been so cheap was because the owner had thought he was selling it for scrap.
“So the freighter cannot jump outside the system,” Hannelore said, carefully. She had a fairly comprehensive education in mining technology – her mother and father had taught her never to depend on outsiders to run crucial family businesses – but she couldn’t have put a flicker drive together even if someone had given her the parts and detailed instructions. “Can we still use it inside the system?”
“Oh, sure,” Accrington assured her. “The hull is as sound as it was when we bought it” – Hannelore snorted; that hadn’t been very sound – “and there’s nothing wrong with the life support. It’s just the flicker drive.”
“Very well,” Hannelore said, straightening up. “Put the ship on internal system duties until it finally gives up the ghost or we can scrape up the funds to have the flicker drive repaired.”
“It would probably be cheaper in the long run to buy a whole new ship,” her chief engineer said, as he wiped his hands on a grubby towel. “The older ship isn’t going to last forever.”
Hannelore contemplated the loss of the Misfit as she strode through the freighter’s cramped passageways and out into the asteroid habitat she’d converted into a base of operations. Calling it a habitat was a bit of a stretch, but she didn’t care about rocky walls, dodgy life support and unidentified smells in the atmosphere. It was her home and would remain her home until she returned to Earth in triumph, or finally gave up and joined the Moochers, the army of disinherited heirs who lurked at the edge of the Thousand Families, more than commoners but less than aristocrats. She couldn’t i
magine a worse fate and her natural optimism kept her going, yet it seemed as if the universe itself was conspiring against her. All her hopes and dreams seemed to be on the verge of failure.
Tyler’s Star had been judged worthless when the Imperial Navy’s survey service had passed through the red dwarf system, pausing long enough to catalogue the small handful of asteroids and the single small gas giant before moving on to more prosperous systems. Hannelore – searching for a place to try to build a fortune – had other ideas. The system had two great advantages; it had no local population and a suitable source of power, the star itself. And, if the economic predictions for Sector 117 bore out, a person who just happened to control a cloudscoop and an asteroid mining facility would be in a position to carve out a niche for herself. Hannelore wanted that very much.
She’d been the product of an arranged marriage between two families, both small families who had dreams of merging and becoming a greater one. They’d ordered two of their youngsters to marry and produce a heir, but their dreams had shattered long before Hannelore had reached her majority. Powerful factions within both families, fearing that they would be disinherited in favour of the newcomer, had torn the alliance apart, leaving Hannelore adrift. Her parents might have been divorced, yet they’d always been kind to her, but that kindness had limits. Hannelore was that unfortunate person who could not be denied a place in the family, but was also an embarrassment, a reminder of plans that had simply never come to fruition. She had grown up among the Thousand Families and rapidly learned to hate most of the younger members, both the ones who pretended sympathy for her isolation and the ones who acted as if she was tainted, as if what had happened to her was a deadly disease that could rub off on them. Hannelore had sought an escape and found one, more or less by accident. It had required almost all of her trust fund from her family, but she’d gone ahead with it anyway. A successful mining project would give her the leverage to rejoin her family on her terms, or allow her the independence she had always craved.
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