Ashen Stars

by Glynn Stewart

  It was a more than sufficient shield against most people prodding, given that he suspected FranzLieb’s ownership was supremely convoluted—and anyone who went poking would get an unpleasant visit from Confederacy Security—but a useless one against Adrienne Gallant’s own son.

  And he was no longer willing to assume his mother wouldn’t use ConSec for her own purposes.

  “Has the evacuation begun?” he asked his officers calmly. He didn’t turn to face them. He wasn’t sure he could manage to fake calm if they could see his face.

  “The transports are loading,” Harris replied. “The first half dozen are away: twelve thousand people or so.”

  “Has the Coalition force responded at all?”

  “Not that we can see. They’re continuing on a direct course for the station.” Harris paused. “They also have to be aware of our presence. Our arrival was not covert.

  “They haven’t responded to that, either.”

  “Ballsy bastards,” Giannovi snapped. “They may have us outgunned, but you’d think they’d have noticed the CSF dropping a cruiser in their path.”

  “I wonder if they have simply done the math and know the odds of their victory, or if they cling to the courage of their convictions,” Isaac murmured. “I’d almost prefer the latter—the former suggests far too much competence for my taste.”

  He watched the second wave of transports blast free of Auburn Station, then inhaled deeply and turned to face his officers again.

  “What do we know about this ‘Free Worlds Coalition’?” he asked. “Have they crossed ConSec’s radar before this?”

  “Not that’s in our records,” his XO admitted. “Which makes me wonder—how in Fates did someone manage to steal three destroyers without Security noticing?”

  “Conestoga wasn’t one of our problem children,” Isaac pointed out. “There were systems where we made sure to account for every ship at every stage of the process. Conestoga wasn’t one of them: they scrapped the newest flight of ships to make a point, but they gave the CSF half of the older ships.

  “Since they were playing mostly nice, I doubt ConSec did more than validate that the final mass out of the smelter was correct,” he continued. “I can think of at least six different ways to sneak a ship or three out of that.”

  “That’s not good, sir,” Harris said. “If they went to that effort, wouldn’t it make sense that they preserved the most modern ships?”

  “Yes,” Isaac agreed. “We need to assume these are Flight Eight Archons, with all of the upgrades that entails. Where would that put them compared to Scorpion?”

  “No missiles. Seventy percent of our pulse-gun armament each,” Harris responded instantly. “ECM would be out of date. Software updates won’t be enough; their emitter hardware isn’t flexible enough to beat our current penetrator systems on the missiles.

  “That said, they’ve got enough defensive lasers with three ships to make short work of our best salvos. Their pulse guns are older but still a perfectly effective design. We haven’t switched them out on our own Archons.”

  “They’re physically bigger but have about the same power levels,” Giannovi added. “Range is…functionally identical. We have a slight edge, but it’s on the order of kilometers.”

  “We won’t have that precise a control of the approach distance,” Isaac agreed. “So, we know their ships. We’ll assume they’re Flight Eight—that will make any surprises pleasant ones.

  “But we know nothing about this Coalition. Nothing about their captains, their commander, anything.”

  He smiled thinly. His faith might be shaken, but this was his job. He could make this work.

  “I want you two to keep brainstorming,” he told them. “What weaknesses are we missing? What options haven’t we considered?”

  “What are you going to do, sir?” Harris asked carefully.

  “I think it’s time I saw the face of my enemy,” Isaac replied. “I’m going to hail them and see what they do.”

  The big display on the main screen continued to show the position of all the ships involved in this mess. The task group from Battle Group Enterprise was still over twenty hours away. A new set of flashing green icons denoted an update from the Conestoga Wormhole Station in the last few moments.

  “Who do we have?” Isaac asked as he crossed the bridge.

  “Tarantula, Mosquito and Termite,” the junior lieutenant holding down tactical reported. “Arriving from Tau Ceti, Sol and Procyon, respectively. All three have begun recharging their warp drives, and Conestoga Station reports they will arrive to reinforce us in just over six hours.”

  That cut the time period he needed to keep the Coalition occupied by sixteen hours. He had no way to speak to those Captains in real time—any wormhole station that knew where he was could transmit to him, but he had no way to transmit back other than regular lightspeed radio.

  “All right,” he confirmed, taking his seat. “Coms, get me a recording for transmission. I want to ping these ‘Coalition’ ships hard enough to make sure they’re listening.”

  “Whenever you’re ready.”

  A flashing button lit up on his command repeaters, and Isaac restored the cold smile he’d given Administrator Paraten to his face before hitting it.

  “Approaching vessels, this is Captain Isaac Gallant of the Confederacy Space Fleet Vessel Scorpion,” he greeted them. “Your actions and the transmissions sent to Auburn Station already arguably constitute treason. Your possession of three unauthorized destroyers is a violation of the Confederacy Senate’s Disarmament Act.

  “We have identified your ships as Archon-class destroyers, built in this system prior to the Act. That they still exist suggests a conspiracy in the Conestoga System Defense Force, a conspiracy that I am certain Confederacy Security will root out now its existence is proven.”

  And if Isaac was a little sickened by what that might entail, that was a problem for another time.

  “Simply by appearing, you have failed,” Isaac told them. “Whatever plans you have cannot succeed. You have three destroyers—but a dozen warships of the Confederacy are already in motion. You may think you outgun me at the point of contact, but I have the entire Confederacy Fleet at my back.

  “The moment you fire a single projectile at Scorpion or Auburn Station, your lives are forfeit,” he warned them. “Surrender and turn state’s evidence, and I swear your lives will be spared. Continue on your course and this can only end one way.”

  He cut off the recording, sending the transmission as he studied the situation and wondered what he was missing.

  Auburn Station was in the local space equivalent of nowhere. In the Sol System, it would have been orbiting on the outer edge of the Oort Cloud—that was, in fact, where the equivalent platform in Sol was. The reason there’d been enough time for anyone to intervene was because the destroyers had only been able to hide so much of their approach before they’d been in empty space.

  And while you could hide in space if you were good, you needed something to hide behind.

  Three destroyers could take out Scorpion. They certainly could take out Auburn Station, but destroying the platform would be pure vandalism with no long-term benefits for anyone. The only logical target on the board was Auburn Station’s holding towers.

  But to steal those, this Free Worlds Coalition needed an exit plan. And Isaac couldn’t see one.

  “Sir, we have a return transmission from one of the destroyers…in fact, it’s being bounced from all three destroyers,” his coms officer reported. “We’re close enough that we can get a live channel, though there’ll be time delays.”

  “Do it,” Isaac ordered. “Let me see them.” He paused, then grinned. “And see if you can pick out which ship is actually transmitting.”

  Bouncing the signal from all three destroyers kept him from identifying the flagship. A sensible precaution, as there was no question that at least one of those ships wasn’t going to survive the coming clash. If Isaac knew which on
e carried the commander, that would give him more options.

  A video feed appeared on the main screen, showing an unusually tall man with no visible hair and pale brown skin. He focused ice-blue eyes on his own camera.

  “I’m not going to give you my name, Gallant,” he spat. “You can call me Justice, for that is what I intend to bring to this galaxy—and to the First Admiral.

  “Your threats do not intimidate me, and I am pleased to think that the head bitch’s son is in my targeting sights. There will be blood for blood, Gallant, and I will end you.”

  Isaac checked to be certain the link was now two-way and live, then turned his coldest glare on ‘Justice.’

  “Whatever you claim to be, ‘Justice,’ your actions are those of a two-bit pirate,” he told the rebel. “You come here to threaten the innocent and steal the resources forged by the sweat of others.

  “You might end me,” he allowed, “but then the Confederacy Fleet will pursue you to the ends of the universe. The Fleet will not forgive the loss of a cruiser—and do you really think my mother will forgive my death?”

  Seconds ticked by and he waited. He could see the moment Justice received his response, the snarl tightening as his words echoed in the rebel’s ears.

  “You’ll never find us,” he told Isaac. “You could tear apart the entire galaxy and you will never find the Coalition. We have grown in the cracks where you have never looked, the shadows where you are blind. You will die, Captain Gallant, and your Confederacy of murderers will die—and they will never see us coming.”

  “If I am going to die, Justice, then I will die between the innocent and those who would do them harm,” Isaac told the other man. “Which of us does that make the murderer?”

  He could tell when Justice got that message, because the channel cut off with one last snarl. Smiling grimly, he turned to his coms officer, noting the excited broad grin on the young woman’s face.

  “Yes?” he asked.

  “Right-hand destroyer, back of their formation,” she replied. “That’s the command ship. And, sir?”

  “Yes?”

  “Their combat systems are locked down tight, but their coms security sucks. I pulled ship IDs while I was tracing the relay. That’s Poseidon, Michael and Uriel. This ‘Justice’ is aboard Uriel.”

  “Ah,” Isaac allowed. “Well done, Lieutenant. Well done indeed.”

  He’d reviewed everything on the Archon-class now. Poseidon, Michael and Uriel were his worst-case scenario. Not merely Flight Eight ships, but the very last Flight Eight ships. Their edge over the earlier units in the flight was minimal, but…it was an edge Justice hadn’t really needed to make this a battle Isaac couldn’t win.

  It was nonetheless a battle Isaac had no choice but to fight.

  “Lieutenant Commander Renaud,” he addressed his navigator. “Do you have an intercept course plotted for the Coalition fleet?”

  “I do, sir,” she reported levelly.

  “Then get us underway. Keep our options open; I want the chance to surprise the bastards, but we need to start moving in their direction.”

  “Understood, sir. Getting us moving.”

  Scorpion trembled around Isaac and he studied the readiness display showing on his tattoo-comp.

  Time to see what the Coalition could do with their destroyers.

  Chapter Five

  “All right, people,” Isaac told Giannovi and Harris as he stepped back into the ready room. From the way they looked up at him, their brainstorming hadn’t been going very well.

  “We are underway. We will reach engagement range of the Coalition task group in just over one hour,” he continued. “Renaud will keep our potential vector options open as long as possible, but there will come a moment at which we need to commit to a strategy.”

  He smiled at their discomfiture.

  “There are three pieces that will impact what we need to do,” Isaac told them. “The first, thanks to our excellent bridge crew, we now have: we know which ship their commanding officer is aboard. We also, though it won’t impact our strategy much, know which ships we’re facing.

  “That piece of data we will pass to ConSec once this is over,” he concluded.

  “The second piece of information we do not have, but we have enough data to infer,” he continued. “Harris, I need you to do a data search on Conestoga System Defence Force Officers, the historical records. If we don’t have them, Auburn Station will.

  “I need to know every space-born officer who held the rank of destroyer commander or above when the Disarmament Act was passed,” he told the tactical officer. “Pull that data for me.”

  “On it,” the Lieutenant Commander said, his confusion clear.

  “Thirdly is the piece of information we don’t have, just the gap where it should be,” Isaac noted. “There are three ships heading toward Auburn Station at high speed. At this distance from the system primary, there is no escape route for them. Nowhere to hide.

  “Any of those destroyers has enough weapon and engine power to sever and haul all of Auburn Station’s holding towers away with them. But it would take them an hour to do so carefully, and it would be a minimum of eight to ten hours before they were anywhere they could hide.

  “Given that either the task group from Battle Group Enterprise or Battle Group Calypso would be on an intercept course, they wouldn’t escape—and that’s without the Fleet gathering a strike group of our fellow warp cruisers.”

  “What are they planning?” Giannovi asked.

  “That’s exactly the piece of data I don’t have, XO,” Isaac admitted. “I know they have an exit plan…but I don’t know what it is. Without knowing that, I don’t know if this Coalition has potential reinforcements in play.”

  She nodded.

  “We were studying their formation,” she told him, nodding towards Harris who was now embedded in the data search Isaac had ordered. “We don’t have much of a range advantage, but combined with the width of their formation, we can make a high-speed pass that keeps us completely out of range of one of the three ships.”

  “If we combine that with prepped missiles, we should be able to punch out one of their ships in a single pass,” Isaac agreed instantly. “We can target Uriel, remove this Justice and break up their chain of command.

  “We’d only be able to make one high-speed pass, though,” he noted. He didn’t even need to run the numbers on a computer. Scorpion was fast and maneuverable, much more so than the old destroyers, but she couldn’t pass them at high speed, turn around and do it again.

  She could catch up to them before they ranged on Auburn Station, though.

  “Sir, I’ve got that list,” Harris reported. “There were four officers who fit your criteria.”

  Isaac nodded. “Are any of them still with the CSDF?”

  “Yes, sir. Two of them.”

  “They won’t be it. Remove them. Are either of the other two in the public eye at all?”

  Harris checked his data.

  “Not currently…but one was mayor of an asteroid settlement for five years after resigning from the CSDF.”

  “Show me the last one,” Isaac ordered. He was unsurprised when the man appeared on the ready room’s big screen. The decades hadn’t been kind to him—space-born rarely aged well when regularly subjected to the higher gravities the planet-born insisted on—but it was definitely the same man as Justice.

  “Who is he?” he asked.

  “He was Senior Commander Daniel Wehr,” Harris replied. “Skipper of the Archon-class destroyer Samael. Born in a belt asteroid mining settlement, but…his cousin was Jessica Wehr.”

  That name Isaac knew.

  “She was killed in the revolution, correct?” he asked.

  Harris winced.

  “Captured, sir,” he admitted. “She was the Commodore of a destroyer flotilla that fought against the Fleet. Her force was battered into submission and she surrendered to then-Vice Admiral Cohen.”

  The tactical officer swa
llowed.

  “First Admiral Gallant promoted Cohen to Seventh Admiral for his victory—and ordered every officer of the flotilla publicly executed.”

  “Including Daniel Wehr’s cousin,” Isaac concluded. “So, he hates the Confederacy and, quite personally, my family. Wonderful.”

  “I don’t see how that’s helpful to us,” Giannovi admitted.

  “Oh, it’s quite helpful,” the Captain told her. “It means he isn’t thinking straight now that he knows I’m here. If we set up a pass that’s targeting him, he will make it easier on us because right now, that man is conflicted.

  “The soldier he was—and probably still thinks of himself as—has a mission he needs to carry out. The man wants to avenge himself on the First Admiral and can’t help but see my presence as an opportunity to do so.”

  Isaac smiled.

  “We can use that. We have the beginnings of a plan, at least.”

  “What about your third data point, sir?” Giannovi asked.

  “I’m missing something, Commander,” he admitted. “Any inspiration either of you have would be appreciated. I have the feeling the answer to that question will be important.”

  The velocities that warships reached relative to the effective ranges of their weapons meant that space combat was even more “long stretches of boredom interrupted by moments of absolute terror” than any other type of war.

  It would take Scorpion an hour to reach missile range of the Coalition ships and ten minutes after that to reach pulse-gun range—and since they were going to skirt the edge of pulse-gun range, they’d be in it for only seconds at most.

  “Keep our course directly at the center ship as long as you can,” Isaac ordered Renaud as he and Harris returned to the bridge. “We’ll want to swing wide at the last possible moment to avoid coming into range of Poseidon while we hammer the crap out of Uriel.

  “Harris,” he turned to his tactical officer as the younger man took his seat and resumed control of his systems. “I want a time-on-target launch of our ready missiles once we’re in range. Sequence them to arrive as we enter pulse-gun range, targeting Uriel.”