The Oncoming Storm

by Christopher Nuttall

  She rose to her feet, silently cursing the uniform designers. They’d gone for style—on the theory that every girl loved a spacer—and ignored some of the practicalities. Her shirt simply wasn’t absorbing sweat. She wanted a shower, a change, and a nap before they reached the enemy star system. There would be time, at least, to get them.

  “Mr. XO, you have the bridge,” she said. She leaned close so no one else could hear. “Make sure you get some rest too.”

  “Aye, Captain,” the XO said.

  Kat walked out of the bridge and headed for her cabin, then changed her mind and went on a walking tour around the ship. Most of her crew, she was gratified to see, looked to have survived their close brush with a hyperspace storm without ill effects, although some looked paler than normal and a handful had made their way to Sickbay for a sedative. Kat was silently relieved the princess and her handmaidens had been off-loaded—they would have been terrified by the storm—then made mental notes to try to ensure her crew got a proper shore leave period as quickly as possible. But she knew it wasn’t likely to happen. If the princess had been telling the truth, the war might start alarmingly soon.

  She finally made her way back to her cabin, then hesitated as she stepped through the hatch and heard it close behind her. It would be easy to call Davidson to her cabin, to invite him to sleep with her . . . and she knew she needed something to work the tension out of her body. It wasn’t like the aftermath of the insurgent attack, when she’d been shaking so badly she wanted someone to hold her, to hell with regulations. She could call him . . .

  Angrily, she pushed her feelings aside, undressed, and walked right into the washroom. It felt absurdly luxurious, given Lightning’s size compared to a superdreadnought or even a battle cruiser, but for once she was grateful. She showered, dried herself, and then stumbled into bed. It felt as though she hadn’t slept at all when the alarm rang, but when she checked her wristcom it was clear she’d slept for nearly eighteen hours. The whole experience had drained her in a way she hadn’t expected.

  But you should have expected it, she told herself as she checked the ship’s status. They’d only had to change course twice to avoid a potential contact, something that both pleased and worried her. What if they’d missed something?

  She had to admit the Theocracy kept a careful watch on its side of the border, preventing civilian craft from passing without a license and a convoy escort. They wouldn’t want to encourage free trade between star systems when that could undermine their position. Or, for that matter, allow refugees to escape.

  She dressed, then walked back to the bridge. The ship’s logs showed that the XO had taken a break, much to her relief, but he’d still managed to be back on the bridge before her. She took her command chair, nodded to him, and concentrated on reviewing the reports from various departments. Thankfully, the storms definitely hadn’t left any lingering problems in their wake.

  “Captain,” Weiberg said, “we are forty minutes away from our destination.”

  Kat looked down at her display, thinking hard. The star Princess Drusilla had identified was a red dwarf, largely useless for anything other than secret meetings and hidden colonies—assuming, of course, that it had any planets, asteroids, or comets at all. It was unlikely the Theocracy would go to the expense of mounting dedicated sensor platforms to watch for intruders popping out of hyperspace, not if they had nothing permanent in the system to defend. But a fleet of starships would certainly have their own long-range sensors . . .

  “Take us out at the planned location,” she said, finally. They’d have to crawl into the system, just to pick up anything useful, but it would make it harder for any watching passive sensors to detect their arrival. “And then cloak us immediately.”

  She forced herself to relax as the minutes became seconds and then ticked down to zero. Hyperspace roared and seethed, then opened up to allow Lightning to slip back into real space, the gateway closing a second later. Kat tensed, despite herself, as the cloaking device hastily shielded their arrival. It was quite possible that, if there happened to be a guardship on duty nearby, their arrival would have been detected, no matter what precautions they took. No one had managed to find a way to cloak a starship’s arrival from hyperspace . . .

  “Passive sensors are clear,” Roach reported. “If there’s anything active within engagement range, I can’t see it.”

  Which proves nothing, Kat thought. Guardships rarely announced their presence. One of them could be lurking in space, drives and shield deactivated, watching through passive sensors for any uninvited guests. Or they could be hiding under cloak, watching and waiting for us.

  She shivered, very slightly, as the ship-mounted passive sensors sucked in data from the nearby system. It seemed almost as barren as the last red dwarf she’d visited, although this time there was a small asteroid field and a handful of comets orbiting the dying star. Someone might have established a hidden colony here, she thought, in the days before the Breakaway Wars, but there was no way to know. Either they were hiding from the Theocrats or the Theocrats had occupied their colony years ago. Or they’d thought themselves far enough from the UN not to need to hide and had headed for a G2 star instead. There were three nearby.

  “Captain,” Roach said, “request permission to deploy the passive sensor arrays.”

  Kat hesitated. Admiral Morrison had hemmed and hawed about allowing her to take them—and if she hadn’t had her overriding orders from Tyre, she had a feeling he would have refused to allow her to even think about removing the systems from Cadiz. They were not only staggeringly expensive, but highly classified. Using them in an enemy-held star system ran the risk of having to destroy the arrays rather than bring them back onboard her ship.

  “Deploy them,” she ordered. She wanted to know as much as she could about the enemy star system before she crept closer. “But be ready to recover them at all times.”

  Long minutes passed as the systems were deployed, then activated. They were far more capable than starship sensors, she’d been told, although there were limits. Like all passive sensors, they were dependent on their target emitting something that could be tracked. And, unlike Lightning’s sensors, they could be blinded if something too powerful appeared far too close to them.

  “I’m picking up limited drive emissions,” Roach said. “They’re clustered round the asteroids, Captain. It could be a staging base.”

  “They’d have to be powerful if we can pick them up from this distance,” the XO commented. “Superdreadnoughts, perhaps.”

  Kat nodded. “Can you draw more data from the passive arrays?”

  “I don’t think so,” Roach said. He paused, his hands flying over his console. “There are a handful of other drive sources in the system, but most of them are concentrated round the asteroids.”

  Kat studied the display, then nodded. “Recall the passive arrays,” she ordered. “We’ll have to go deeper into the system.”

  We should have brought two ships, she thought, although she knew two ships might not have made it through the passageway. One to sneak close, one to watch from a distance—and run if the shit hits the fan.

  “Launch probes on ballistic trajectories,” she added. “Then launch a relay platform to link their laser communicators to us.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Roach said.

  Kat forced herself to watch as the probes moved into the system, feeling the tension rise as the hours ticked by. The drive sources slowly took on shape and form in the display as Lightning followed, her passive sensors watching carefully for anything that might betray the size or capabilities of the enemy starships.

  Kat swore under her breath as three of them suddenly snapped into view, marked clearly as superdreadnoughts. The UN had never built superdreadnoughts, let alone sold them to the Theocracy. Any doubts she’d had about the Theocracy having its own starship construction program had vanished.

  “They look larger than ours,” the XO commented. He didn’t sound impressed. �
�But their drive systems are actually sloppy compared to our ships. And their datanets don’t seem to be as capable.”

  He paused. “But they might have stood them down here,” he added. “They won’t be expecting this system to come under attack, even if we launched a preemptive strike.”

  Kat knew he had a point, but she hoped the enemy datanet was flawed. Superdreadnoughts carried more missile tubes than a whole squadron of heavy cruisers, giving them a formidable long-range punch, while their energy weapons could rip Lightning apart at close range. The thought of facing just one of them was worrying. An entire squadron would be frighteningly powerful. And the sensors seemed to indicate that there were at least three entire squadrons of superdreadnoughts holding position near the asteroids. Anything that evened the odds would be more than welcome.

  “I think they have escort ships too,” Roach said. New contacts flashed up on the display as Lightning moved closer. “A handful of cruisers, several destroyers . . . and there are definitely some gunboats—I think they’re carrying out limited exercises.”

  “Odd,” the XO said. “You’d think they’d be interested in exercising as much as possible if they were expecting to go to war. And have more escort ships attached to the fleet.”

  Kat couldn’t disagree. “Perhaps they’re standing down in preparation for the attack,” she said. But then exercises tended to be more regular than genuine military operations. It was quite possible the enemy CO was giving his crews a rest. “Or . . .”

  An alarm sounded. “Captain,” Roach snapped, “they just swept one of the drones!”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “We should be launching the offensive by now,” the cleric said. “Do you not have authority to launch the attack at the best possible moment?”

  Admiral Junayd sighed. The cleric had not coped well with his brief imprisonment on the Commonwealth cruiser, even if the authorities on Cadiz had been very apologetic when they’d released the freighter and her crew. Junayd had merely been relieved that he’d been able to leave the system without being interrogated by the Commonwealth, but the cleric had spent most of the return journey performing rituals to cleanse himself after setting foot on an infidel world. At least it had kept the man out of Junayd’s beard for a few glorious days.

  “We do not have the fleet train assembled yet,” Junayd said firmly. It was infuriating. He’d gathered his attack fleet to start the invasion, yet the attack would fail if he wasn’t guaranteed resupplies. Commonwealth weapons, assuming any were captured, were not designed to be fired from his ships. “Once the freighters are here, we will take the offensive.”

  “But the infidels caught us,” the cleric insisted. “They could be preparing their defenses right now.”

  He was right, Junayd knew, which didn’t make him any less irritating. The Commonwealth had caught the spy ship, after all. But they hadn’t had any proof . . . at least, not enough to satisfy their legalistic-minded admiral. And yet . . . he recalled the private message from the Speaker with a tinge of horror. Who knew what would happen if Princess Drusilla actually made it to Commonwealth space?

  Shaking his head, he turned back to the display. His spacers and troops hadn’t been allowed to grow rusty, even though they’d spent the better part of three months orbiting a worthless star. He’d worked them like dogs, forcing them to undergo exercise after exercise, training simulation after training simulation. The crews had responded splendidly, particularly when he’d started offering rewards for best performances. They knew far more about their enemy than the Commonwealth knew about them.

  There were still too many unanswered questions, though, no matter how many simulations they ran. Would Commonwealth superdreadnoughts be better than Theocratic superdreadnoughts? Would the Commonwealth’s greater industrial might prove decisive if the early campaigns were unsuccessful? Would the Commonwealth’s far wider breadth of research and development give them another advantage? Would the Commonwealth’s merchant marines rally behind the flag or flee like frightened children? There were just too many questions nothing but war would be able to answer.

  He had no doubt the Theocracy—or at least the Believers who mattered—would be solidly behind the war. Expansion had brought great rewards, after all, along with millions of new converts. But how well would the system endure in a long war? In hindsight, he suspected, they should have built more freighters as well as warships, but anyone who suggested it would have been hauled off to face the Inquisition. The True Faith would never allow itself to be defenseless, not again. They would never allow someone else to determine their fate.

  The cleric cleared his throat. “Admiral,” he said, “God will not grant us victory if we refuse to take advantage of the opportunities He offers us.”

  “I know,” Junayd said. “But God also expects us not to become too reliant on Him.”

  It was the age-old problem, he recalled, that had spurred the growth of the True Faith. The older faiths—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—had all been too reliant on God’s help and support, rather than doing anything to actually earn that support. Their followers had fallen into disbelief and idolatry, resting on laurels that dated back hundreds of years, while their enemies had steadily undermined their positions and prepared them for the kill. In the end, the core of those faiths had died on Earth. But the True Faith had survived and prospered.

  Of course we did, Junayd thought. We took nothing for granted.

  An alarm sounded.

  “Report,” he snapped.

  “Admiral,” one of his staffers said, “the outer edge of the spiderweb was just brushed.”

  Junayd swore. He’d thought the spiderweb was a boondoggle, a waste of time and resources that had only been put into production because the designer happened to have powerful family connections. But it seemed it had paid off after all . . . unless, of course, it had been brushed by a tiny asteroid—something so small it had escaped the scans the attack fleet had done of the system when they’d arrived.

  “Sensor focus,” he ordered. They could use the contact for yet another drill, even if it was nothing more dangerous than another piece of space debris. “Lock on and track the contact, then bring up active sensors. I want space dissected.”

  “It’s a probe,” the staffer said. On the display, the contact suddenly came into sharp focus. A probe, Commonwealth design. Moments later, its onboard systems decided there was no hope of escape and triggered the self-destruct. “Target destroyed.”

  “Bring the fleet to battle stations,” Junayd ordered. Probes were hardly FTL-capable. If one had brushed the edge of his fleet, so far from enemy territory, there had to be a mothership out there somewhere, watching them.

  His fleet had been located by the enemy.

  “Launch gunboats in a search pattern,” he ordered, “then continue to sweep space with active sensors.”

  He thought it through, rapidly. The enemy commander would keep his distance from the fleet, if only to stay out of weapons range, but he couldn’t be that far away. Maintaining control of the probe would become harder as the light-speed delay between mothership and probe grew longer and longer. It was just possible the gunboats could catch the enemy ship before she made her escape. And even if they didn’t . . .

  “They know we’re here,” the cleric said.

  “Yes,” Junayd agreed. The cleric was actually right! Given how little the bastard knew of military strategy, it was a small miracle in and of itself. “And there’s no other reason to be here, apart from staging an invasion of Commonwealth space.”

  “Then we have to take the offensive now,” the cleric said. “Before they manage to warn the Commonwealth.”

  Junayd nodded. On the display, a red icon representing the enemy ship had just popped into view. The gunboats were already altering course, sweeping towards their new target, but it didn’t take more than a glance to tell him they wouldn’t intercept their target unless the enemy commander decided to wait around for them. It wasn’t likel
y to happen.

  “Inform the fleet that we will be departing in an hour,” he ordered. “And then power up the StarCom. We need to alert our operatives that the war is about to begin.”

  He took a breath. Years of careful planning and preparation were about to face their first true test, as was the Theocracy itself. Every previous conquest had been largely unable to defend itself, not against a pair of destroyers taking the high orbitals. But the Commonwealth was heavily defended, a multistar political system with its own ideology that might well undermine the Theocracy’s control over its population, given time. Even if expansion hadn’t been one of the tenets of the revised True Faith, Junayd suspected, there would have been war. The galaxy simply wasn’t big enough for both of them.

  It wasn’t going to be easy, he knew. There would be a delay in offensive operations, a delay that could prove costly. But there was no alternative. If they let the moment pass, the enemy might have an opportunity to prepare to meet the oncoming storm. And that could prove disastrous.

  We have to win quickly, he told himself. Or we may not win at all.

  He pushed the thought aside. Defeat was unthinkable.

  “They caught the probe,” Roach said. “Their fleet is coming to battle stations now.”

  Kat nodded. Dozens of starships were bringing up their active sensors, revealing their positions to her sensors. The enemy fleet was bigger than they’d thought, although it was still strikingly light in escort ships. Perhaps they’d crammed more point defense into their superdreadnoughts then she’d realized, she wondered, or perhaps they’d simply concentrated on superdreadnoughts to the exclusion of all else.

  The display washed red, just for a second. “They caught us,” Roach added. The display turned red again. This time, the color refused to fade. “I think they have a solid lock on our position.”