The Oncoming Storm

by Christopher Nuttall

  The hatch hissed closed behind him.

  “I’ll write the reports,” the XO said. He looked as though he was on the verge of saying something himself, then thought better of it. “Please make sure you get some sleep.”

  “I will,” Kat promised. She watched him leave the room, then sighed. “But I don’t know if I’ll have time to sleep.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  The dull red star had no name, only a catalogue number. It had been visited once, according to the files, by a UN survey team that hadn’t spent any longer than necessary in the system, then simply left alone until an RV point had been required for transhipment between the Commonwealth and the Theocracy. The otherwise useless star system had seemed a perfect place for ships from both sides to meet with nothing at stake.

  Kat studied the system display, feeling more than a little boredom. There was nothing in the system, not even a comet or a handful of asteroids. And the Theocratic ships were late. She settled back in her command chair, reaching for her private terminal, then paused as an alarm sounded. Moments later, a blue-green icon flashed up on the display.

  “One vortex detected, Captain,” Roach said. “I’m picking up seven freighters and one starship of unknown design. Mass readings suggest a light cruiser.”

  Kat leaned forward, interested, as the Theocratic ships spilled out of the vortex. The freighters looked practically identical to other designs used all over the galaxy, but the light cruiser looked as though it only carried energy weapons instead of a mixture of energy weapons and missile tubes. She could see some advantages in the design, yet she knew the enemy ship would be vulnerable to a missile-armed attacker engaging from outside her own range.

  She might have been designed to serve as a point defense cruiser, Kat mused, thoughtfully. It would make a certain kind of sense.

  “We’re being scanned,” Roach warned. The display washed red as the enemy sensors caught sight of Lightning and her convoy. “They have a solid lock on our hull.”

  “Yellow alert,” Kat ordered. The Theocratic ships would have to come a great deal closer if they wanted to catch her by surprise. “Send them our IFF codes.”

  There was a long pause. “They’re requesting an open channel,” Ross reported as the enemy ships came closer. “Captain?”

  “Open channel,” Kat ordered. She cleared her throat. “This is Captain Falcone of HMS Lightning.”

  Twenty seconds passed before the reply arrived. A grim-faced man appeared in front of her, wearing a green uniform covered in gold braid and unfamiliar writing. He wore a green skullcap on his head, his beard trimmed into a neat goatee. A beard meant something among the Theocracy, Kat recalled, although she couldn’t remember what. Was it devotion or something else?

  “I am Captain Zaid of the Faithful Companion,” he grated. He sounded coldly furious, although there was no way to tell why he was annoyed. “Transmit your manifests now.”

  Kat kept her face impassive with an effort. “Transmit the manifests,” she ordered, then turned her attention back to the Theocratic officer. “Transmit your own manifests.”

  There was a long pause as both sides analyzed the manifests against what they’d been promised. “Everything appears to be in order,” Captain Zaid said, reluctantly. “We will transfer our freighters to your command.”

  “Picking up data packets from the freighters,” Ross injected. “Everything seems to be in order.”

  “We will transfer ours to you,” Kat said, feeling a moment of sympathy for the merchantmen. They would be going into Theocratic space, where they would be at the mercy of the Theocrats and their clerics. “And thank you for your time.”

  Captain Zaid’s face twitched, then his image vanished from the display. Kat watched, feeling an odd tingle of unease as the Theocratic starship opened a vortex, then ordered the Commonwealth freighters through the tear in space-time. As soon as the last of the freighters were through, the warship followed, departing without even a final message. It was oddly rude, Kat noted, as if Captain Zaid hadn’t wanted to talk to her any more than strictly necessary.

  “He probably had someone looking over his shoulder,” the XO muttered, so quietly that only Kat could hear. “They wouldn’t risk allowing him to be friendly.”

  Kat nodded, sourly. “Open a vortex into hyperspace,” she ordered. “Order the freighters to proceed into hyperspace, then take us in after them.”

  She looked up at the XO. “You’ll have to search their ships, one by one,” she said. “Good luck.”

  “Thank you, Captain,” the XO said. “I’ll let you know what I find.”

  The first two freighters were normal, William was surprised to discover, insofar as anything was normal on a Theocratic starship. There was a captain and crew, but there was also a cleric whose job seemed to be keeping an eye on the crewmen for impure thoughts. He insisted on staying with the crew at all times, refusing to allow them to be interviewed in private by the Marines—and the crew themselves seemed reluctant to be interviewed without him. They’d need his testimony, William suspected, to prove they hadn’t said anything they shouldn’t to the infidels.

  But it was the third freighter that set alarm bells ringing at the back of his head. It was simply too good. He was used to freighter ships pushing the margins, not freighter ships where everything was shipshape and Bristol fashion. The crew looked far too good to be merchantmen, while the captain didn’t even seem outraged at having outsiders tramping through his ship. And that was far from normal.

  “Search this ship thoroughly,” he ordered, finally. “And check every last item against the manifest.”

  Captain Junayd looked . . . placid. His cleric looked absolutely furious, but the captain looked completely unconcerned. The alarm bells grew louder. William had never met a freighter commander who hadn’t resented having Marines boarding his ship and poking through his hold. And yet this commander didn’t seem to care. Spitefully, William ordered the vessel’s cabins searched too. But that didn’t provoke any reaction either.

  “As you can see, we have nothing to hide,” Junayd said an hour later. He seemed far too amused at William’s discomposure. “The ship is clean.”

  “So it would seem,” William agreed. “But we are far from finished.”

  He looked down as the engineering crew inspected the freighter’s control systems and—finally—found something out of place. The vessel’s drives and shields were civilian grade, no more capable than anything from the Commonwealth, but her sensors were top-of-the-line military gear. Her passive sensors were on a par with Lightning’s, the engineers reported, while her active sensors might actually be better. Now that they had a clue, the engineers pushed harder and reported that there was a whole secondary computer network concealed within the hull.

  The ship looked like a harmless merchantman, William concluded, but she was a spy.

  At his command, five armored marines came onto the bridge. “I’m afraid we will be taking you and your ship into custody,” William said. “I would ask you not to do anything stupid.”

  Captain Junayd, for the first time, showed a hint of something other than amusement. “We have been cleared to deliver our cargo to Cadiz,” he said, his voice darkening. “To hold us is a breach of the trade agreement between the Theocracy and the Commonwealth. It will have the most unpleasant repercussions for your career.”

  “I’ll take that chance,” William said. He checked the crew manifest, quickly. There were seventy men on the ship, thirty more than any halfway competent crew needed to operate the vessel. What were they doing on the ship? “You and your crew can be held in reasonable comfort onboard my vessel or you can be held in stasis.”

  The cleric swore vilely in a language William didn’t recognize. There were few samples of the language the Theocracy used, mainly because their personnel always used English when talking to outsiders, but it didn’t sound pleasant. Captain Junayd gave him a sharp look, somehow shutting the cleric up instantly. That was interesting
. None of the other freighter commanders had shown anything like that degree of control over their watchdogs.

  “We will file a formal protest, of course,” Junayd said. “But as long as you’re bringing my vessel to Cadiz anyway, we will be happy to accept quarters of reasonable comfort.”

  “Of course,” William agreed. He looked round the bridge for a long moment, then back at the Theocratic officer. He was sure he was looking at a naval officer, not a civilian merchantman. “I suggest you order your crew to behave themselves. They are under our jurisdiction now.”

  “I took the ship’s sensor system apart, piece by piece,” Lynn reported four hours later. He sounded tired but grimly amused. “She doesn’t have a lick of justification for such an elaborate sensor suite, Captain.”

  Kat nodded, slowly. Taking a Theocratic ship, even a freighter, into custody would raise eyebrows right across the Commonwealth. There would be questions asked, both by Admiral Morrison and in Parliament. The evidence had to be gathered completely by the book, she knew, or someone would move to dismiss it as tainted. Luckily everything seemed to be in place.

  “If she entered the Cadiz System,” she mused, “she would be able to determine much about 7th Fleet purely from her passive sensors.”

  “Yes, Captain,” Lynn agreed. “The suite is really quite elaborate. They’d be able to intercept radio traffic and monitor the situation on the ground, as well as record the fleet’s emissions. And the only way to find it was to carry out a full search and examination of the ship.”

  “Which you did,” Kat said, nodding to the XO. “What tipped you off?”

  “The crew was just too good,” the XO said. “Most freighter crews are . . . well, not sloppy, but lax. They cut corners, don’t update records, wear their uniforms poorly if they wear them at all, all bad habits we try to keep out of the military. This crew was far too good to be true.”

  “Better than you might think,” Davidson put in. His voice was very cold. “You noticed there were more crewmen than strictly necessary?”

  The XO nodded, impatiently.

  “I watched some of them through sensors as they filed into the holding cell,” Davidson said grimly. “I’d bet good money they’re special forces, not regular crewmen. There’s something about their cocky attitude that is familiar.”

  “Theocracy marines?” Lynn asked. “Are they better than you?”

  “Of course not,” Davidson huffed. He looked at Kat, his eyes worried. “Those guys are definitely trained soldiers, Captain. Give them weapons and armor and they’d be able to cause one hell of a mess on Cadiz.”

  “Or onboard ship,” the XO said. “We do have them under close guard?”

  “Yes,” Davidson said. “But they have to be watched carefully at all times.”

  Kat rubbed her forehead. “And the other freighters?”

  “We’ve searched two additional freighters,” the XO said. “They seemed normal, as far as we could tell, but we have four more to go.”

  “It’s unlikely there will be more than one spy ship,” Davidson commented. “They wouldn’t want to heighten the chances of detection.”

  The XO leaned forward. “And what do we do with our new prisoners?”

  Kat had given the matter some thought. “We have to take them to Cadiz, along with their ship,” she said. Regulations admitted of no ambiguity in such matters. “Admiral Morrison will have to decide their fate. In any case . . .”

  She took a breath. “We have legal authority to hold them for questioning,” she added. “And we have precedent on our side. The Theocracy has held some of our crews for quite intensive questioning in the past.”

  “They’re not going to like that,” Davidson rumbled.

  “Tough,” Kat said. “If they want to hold our crews, we can hold theirs.”

  “Yes, Captain,” the XO said.

  “But it could cause a diplomatic incident,” Davidson cautioned. “We could have made a fuss over them holding our crews, but we didn’t.”

  Kat muttered a curse under her breath. The bigger shipping lines had been interested—very interested—in opening links to the Theocracy. They’d had visions of a colossal new market opening up in front of them, which had pushed them to ignore any reports of crews being mistreated or threatened with prosecution under Theocratic law. She sighed, inwardly. Her father, at least, should have known better. Trading was always unstable when one party felt free to ignore civilized convention at its leisure.

  Evict the crews if you like, she thought. But holding them for crimes that aren’t crimes where they come from opens a dangerous set of precedents.

  She pushed the thought to one side and forced herself to smile. “Search the rest of the freighters, then report back to me when you’re done,” she ordered. “I’ll be writing my own report.”

  “Aye, Captain,” the XO said.

  Kat watched him go, then keyed her console, accessing the live feed from the makeshift cells. She’d spent enough time with Davidson to recognize soldiers as well and she had to admit he had a point. The Theocracy crewmen didn’t look like crewmen. They had the finely honed confidence of men who knew they were the best of the best, just like Davidson and the other marines she’d met. And there were definitely too many of them to man the freighter.

  She checked the manifest again. The crew manifest had only been submitted upon request, a slip that would probably have gone unnoticed under other circumstances. Who would have thought anything of a sloppy civilian crew? But if the Theocracy had been lucky, the soldiers could have been landed on Cadiz without anything counting them in and then counting them out again. Even now, they could walk off ship and make their way to the local guild house, then vanish after their mothership had left the system. It wasn’t as if anyone would be surprised to see a Theocracy freighter shedding crewmen.

  Spies, she thought darkly. But she knew it had been a risky trick for the Theocracy to try to pull. They took a blatant risk in sending a spy ship into our space.

  The thought didn’t bring her any comfort. There was no way to know how many other ships might have been slipped through as part of the regular convoys. Or, for that matter, if there were spy ships that weren’t part of the convoys. Perhaps the captain and her crew had been meant to find this one, just to convince them that they had caught all of the spies. But they might be wrong.

  And if they’re sending spy ships now, they must be preparing their attack, she concluded. It might be too late to save 7th Fleet. Checking their figures before they launch a final assault.

  She shuddered. How long would it take her father to arrange for the IG to make a visit to Cadiz? Weeks, perhaps months. Admiral Morrison had some damn good political cover. It might well be too late. And if that was the case . . .

  She shuddered again. Cadiz wasn’t vital, but 7th Fleet was largely irreplaceable in less than a year. And the war might be lost along with it.

  “That filthy unbelieving infidel,” the cleric thundered. “How dare he lay his hands on . . . ?”

  “Enough,” Admiral Junayd said. There were times when he felt that clerics had their brains—or at least their common sense—removed before they were permitted to grow the unkempt beards that marked them as keepers of religious orthodoxy. “You never know who might be listening.”

  The cleric shut up, at once. Junayd allowed himself a tight smile and then lay back on the bunk. As prison cells went, it was remarkably comfortable. The infidels hadn’t even broken out truth drugs or torture instruments, both of which would have been used by the Inquisition back home. It wouldn’t have helped—his crew all had suicide implants to prevent them from talking—but it did suggest the infidels weren’t taking the threat very seriously. In their place, Junayd would have destroyed his own ship to make sure there was no chance of any intelligence getting back home and sworn blind it had been a terrible accident.

  He thought rapidly. Flying into enemy space himself had been a risk, he knew, but it had been necessary. It was difficult, if
not impossible, to trust reports from spies, no matter how well the agents had covered their tracks. There was just too much temptation for the spies to send the reports they thought their superiors wanted to hear. But who would have thought the Commonwealth had finally decided to start giving freighters more than a cursory inspection before clearing them to dock at Cadiz? Really, it was quite surprising they’d worked up the nerve.

  The cleric mumbled prayers to himself, clearly unsure what was about to happen. Junayd kept his thoughts to himself. It was unlikely the Commonwealth would detain them for long, unless they somehow figured out just who he was. And if they had . . . he thought briefly of the suicide implants, then sighed. He didn’t want to die, but he didn’t fear death. God was waiting for him in His Heaven.

  He knew what would happen to a spy ship captured within Theocratic space. The crew would be interrogated, the technicians trying to beat the suicide implants, while the ship itself would be carefully dismantled. Did the Commonwealth have the nerve to kill him and his crew? It was possible, but the trade links the Theocracy had dangled in front of their greedy corporations would mediate against it. They wouldn’t want to give up the chance to make money, even if it meant accepting humiliation after humiliation. Really! It was unbelievable just how much the Commonwealth’s government was prepared to swallow in exchange for trade links and a few other concessions.

  But he knew how they thought. Money talked; common sense walked. Everything had a price, even religious fervor. It was insulting to think that someone—anyone—believed the Theocracy would surrender its principles for money. But as long as the infidels believed they could manage the Theocracy, the Theocracy would have all the time in the universe to prepare. Even if Junayd didn’t return home, he knew, the attack would still go ahead.

  And the Commonwealth’s rich worlds and industrial base would be theirs for the taking.