The Oncoming Storm

by Christopher Nuttall

  “Not as badly as I thought,” Roach said. “We did manage to organize a tactical withdrawal under fire . . .”

  “Call it a retreat,” William said. It was a tricky maneuver to pull off under fire, he knew, but fancy words didn’t change the fact they’d lost and left the enemy in possession of their target. “Or would you like to come up with a suitably stupid term for surrender?”

  He felt a moment of pain for the captain. William was far from blind and it was alarmingly clear, at least to him, that the captain and her Marine CO had been lovers, once upon a time. They’d certainly served together on an earlier ship. But they had been professional, at least in public, and she hadn’t hesitated to send him to Cadiz . . . where he was missing, presumed dead. They didn’t even know if he’d managed to land at the spaceport before it had been overrun and destroyed.

  She’s too young, he thought. The captain didn’t have the seasoning to handle losing someone so close to her, not in a situation where she could blame herself for his death. And she certainly would. Unlike far too many aristocrats, she was aware of crewmen and officers as people, not things to be moved round on her own personal chess board. He stared down at his console, trying to decide what to do. But he knew there was nothing he could say.

  Roach coughed. “Commander?”

  William scowled. Roach had been speaking and he hadn’t heard a word.

  “Say that again,” he said. “I was hundreds of light years away.”

  “Yes, sir,” Roach said. “The other piece of tactical information we picked up is that their datanet leaks.”

  William leaned forward. “It leaks?”

  “Yes, sir,” Roach said. “They seem to use tight-beam radio as well as lasers to maintain the datanet. I don’t think they entirely trust their laser links.”

  “Odd,” William said. There were several reasons why maintaining laser links over a vast distance was difficult, but none of them should have applied to a fleet operating in formation. “Do you have any idea why?”

  “No, sir,” Roach said. “But it does give us an opportunity to ID the command ship. There will always be some backwash from the radio transmissions.”

  “Difficult to spot in a firefight,” William pointed out. He shrugged. “See if you can devise a program for identifying their command structure, then run it through simulations and see how it might work in practice. If it works, we would know which ships to target in a major fleet engagement.”

  “Assuming they don’t use a staggered command structure,” Roach said. “We certainly do.”

  “It’s a possibility,” William agreed. There had been no shortage of experimental programs intended to track and decode enemy signals during a battle, but none of them had ever worked in practice. Or, at least, they hadn’t provided actionable intelligence. “See what you can pull out of the records.”

  He watched Roach go, then turned back to his console. Maybe it would work, in practice; certainly, there had been odder theories that had actually produced workable hardware. But he knew better than to count on any silver bullet to win the war. It would be won by superdreadnoughts and battle cruisers, missiles, bullets, and beams. And the Theocracy had already scored a significant victory.

  Shaking his head, he went back to work.

  Four days passed slowly, slowly enough for Kat to tour several of the superdreadnoughts and meet the men and women under her command. None of them looked anything other than tired; they were working double shifts, just trying to get the ships back into service before the Theocracy caught up with them. Kat did what she could to help, even to the point of cannibalizing components from the yard-bound vessels, but it wasn’t enough. She was feeling the stress again by the time the fleet finally opened a series of vortexes and returned to real space in the Gamma System, well away from the naval base.

  “Send an IFF signal,” Kat ordered once she was satisfied there was no one waiting in ambush. The thought of the Theocracy striking so far behind the lines had kept her awake at nights. “And then link into the local StarCom. Send a copy of our report to Tyre.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Ross said.

  “I’m picking up multiple capital ships,” Roach reported. “Several are definitely superdreadnoughts.”

  Kat felt her blood run cold. Had they been outraced by the enemy ships?

  “IFF signals are Commonwealth; I say again, IFF signals are Commonwealth,” Ross said. “They’re the 6th Fleet!”

  “Thank God,” the XO said.

  Kat nodded. The 6th Fleet had an admiral of its own. She wouldn’t be fleet commander any longer. It was odd, but she couldn’t help feeling relieved.

  “Transmit a full copy of our report,” Kat said. The destroyer would already have alerted 6th Fleet, but they hadn’t had an up-to-date report. “And then request a status report from their CO. If they have a fleet train handy, hit them with our shopping list. I want every ship in the fleet to draw on the facilities until they are combat capable again.”

  There was a long pause. “Captain,” Ross said, “you are ordered to report to Admiral Christian on the Thunderchild.”

  Kat sucked in her breath. “Understood,” she said. It was unfortunate that there would be no time to freshen up before she reported to the admiral. “Inform him that I am on my way.”

  She keyed her console, ordering her shuttle to be powered up, then rose. “Mr. XO, you have the bridge.”

  “Aye, Captain,” the XO said. His eyes were worried. Worried for her. “I have the bridge.”

  Kat glanced from console to console, wondering if it was the last time she would set eyes on it, then picked up her terminal and walked through the hatch, refusing to look back. If the admiral relieved her of command . . .

  You got the fleet out, she told herself firmly. And that’s all that matters.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  The walk from the shuttle airlock to Admiral Christian’s private compartment felt hundreds of miles long, as though Kat was heading to her own execution. It was a terrifyingly clear that Thunderchild was a happy ship, with a capable commander and crew that worked hard for their officers. Compared to the remains of 7th Fleet, she was magnificent. Kat couldn’t help feeling a twinge of envy as she stopped in front of a hatch, then knocked. It opened a moment later, inviting her inside.

  “Captain Falcone,” Admiral Gareth Christian said. “Thank you for coming.”

  “Admiral,” Kat said tersely.

  He motioned for her to take a seat. Kat sat, studying him carefully. Compared to Admiral Morrison, he looked ugly as hell. His face resembled nothing so much as a bulldog, complete with an expression that suggested he was damned if he was letting go of anything in his mouth. Kat found it oddly reassuring. The admiral didn’t seem to feel the urge to use cosmetic surgery to beautify himself. It suggested he had few doubts about his own performance.

  “I read the report you sent ahead,” Christian said without preamble. “Is there anything you wish to add to your report?”

  “No, sir,” Kat said. She’d written as cold and impersonal an account as she could. The only moment she’d allowed her feelings to show through had been when she took full responsibility for going behind Admiral Morrison’s back. Commander Higgins and her fellows didn’t have the political clout to escape charges of mutiny. “It is complete.”

  “And it seems that 7th Fleet would not have survived, were it not for you,” Christian added. “You pulled two squadrons of superdreadnoughts out of a fire that could easily have consumed them.”

  “Yes, sir,” Kat said.

  “It is my considered opinion that Cadiz was beyond saving,” Christian said calmly. “Do you agree with this judgment?”

  “I do,” Kat said simply.

  “I have informed Tyre that you did the best you could, under the circumstances,” Christian said. “You were not to blame for the lack of preparation, the incompetence of a number of superior officers, and the general condition of the fleet. I do not believe that anyone will seek
to hold you to account for disaster.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Kat said. She let out a long breath. Logically, she’d known she couldn’t be blamed; emotionally, she knew she would always wonder if there had been something else she could have done. “I . . .”

  “Self-doubt is understandable under such circumstances,” Christian said, cutting her off. “I do not feel it is justified, though. You did better than anyone had any right to expect.”

  He straightened up, resting his hands on his lap. “And with that out the way,” he said, “I need a full rundown on 7th Fleet.”

  Kat took a breath. “We have roughly one squadron of superdreadnoughts that can fly and fight,” she said. “The remainder need heavy time in the yards before they can be recommitted to battle. Thankfully, the smaller ships took less of a beating, but several of them also require yard time.”

  She produced a datachip from her pocket. “This is the full report, sir,” she added. “But a number of the ships used creative editing . . .”

  “As always,” Christian observed.

  Kat felt her cheeks heat. She’d made the mistake of taking the original set of reports at face value. It had been her XO who’d pointed out that several of the officers had written the reports very carefully, suggesting their ships were ready to return to the fight even though they needed several weeks in the hands of repair crews. At least, he’d pointed out afterwards, it suggested the crews were ready to fight. The 7th Fleet couldn’t allow itself to fall into despair.

  “Yes, sir,” she said.

  “There were a number of attacks inside the Commonwealth itself,” Christian continued, grimly. “Most of them were terrorist attacks, but a handful were considerably more serious, involving pre-positioned warships. Right now, we have a declaration of war and a public ready to burn the Theocracy’s worlds to ash and sow the ground with salt, but the political and military leadership has yet to determine a strategy. Our morale will plummet when news of Cadiz leaks out—and it will.”

  He took a breath. “We cannot allow morale to fall too far,” he explained. “I therefore intend to give the public a victory.”

  Kat hesitated. Admiral Christian’s fleet was the sole intact formation for fifty light years. It would take time to move reinforcements to the front lines, which would give the Theocracy a decisive advantage if they managed to take out 6th Fleet and the remains of 7th Fleet. And the politicians would probably hesitate to ship reinforcements forward, knowing there would be public protest at the thought of being left undefended. Only a few Commonwealth worlds could hope to stave off a Theocratic offensive without support from the Royal Navy.

  “A victory,” she repeated. “You expect them to attack here?”

  “I’m not sure they know we’re here,” Admiral Christian observed. “The 7th Fleet was meant to avoid provocations, after all, and reinforcing the border would definitely count as a provocation.”

  He snorted rudely. “But it does give us a limited advantage,” he added. “We can take the offensive and give them a bloody nose.”

  Christian tapped a switch. A holographic image of the Cadiz System appeared in front of them. It split in two a moment later, one showing Cadiz, the other showing the unnamed star the Theocracy had used as a staging base. The admiral’s analysts had been hard at work, Kat saw, as new icons and notes flashed up on the display. It was clear that the fleet she’d seen preparing for the assault had been the one that had attacked Cadiz.

  She shook her head. As if there had been any doubt.

  “This is the enemy attack fleet,” Christian said. “It is powerful, no doubt about that, and it is well trained. But there’s something missing.”

  Kat studied the display for a long moment. She’d hoped the Theocracy would be inferior to the Commonwealth, but no great deficiencies had shown themselves when the two sides had finally come to blows. And somehow she doubted the three squadrons of enemy superdreadnoughts were all they possessed. The Royal Navy deployed over a hundred superdreadnoughts.

  And then she saw it. “A fleet train,” she said. “They don’t have any supply ships.”

  “Precisely,” Admiral Christian said.

  “But they could have remained powered down,” Kat objected, playing devil’s advocate. “Or they might have been hidden in hyperspace.”

  “By any reasonable standard,” Admiral Christian observed, “the Theocracy should have begun its attacks earlier. The curiously staggered timing of the attacks deeper within the Commonwealth suggests that they were caught on the hop.”

  “Because of us,” Kat said bitterly.

  Admiral Christian pointed a long finger at her. “It was not your fault,” he said. “But you probably encouraged them to launch the attack ahead of schedule. And that begs the question of precisely why they didn’t launch the attack earlier. Could it be they don’t have the fleet train to support their advance?”

  Kat considered it thoughtfully. The XO’s brother had been pretty clear that the smugglers were being hired to ship goods inside the Theocracy, rather than just sneaking forbidden goods past the guardships. And everything they knew about the Theocracy suggested it had a command economy. Someone in charge of shaping industrial and military growth might well have concentrated on superdreadnoughts and other warships instead of freighters, even though support craft would be vitally important if the Theocracy went on the offensive.

  “It’s possible,” she said. But her father’s warning rang through her head. There was no lie —or false conclusion—so dangerous as the one you wanted to believe. “But they could have just kept the freighters back, out of danger. We wouldn’t fly a freighter convoy into a battle zone.”

  “No, we wouldn’t,” Admiral Christian agreed. “But did they have any reason to believe we would fly a spy ship into their staging base?”

  “No,” Kat said, slowly. The Theocracy hadn’t had to worry about spy ships. Even if they had, none of them would have visited the unnamed system. They would have concentrated on inhabited worlds. “You’re suggesting they don’t have their fleet train ready to support their advance.”

  It sounded possible, she knew. But was that because she wanted to believe it?

  “There are three reasons to launch a counterattack as quickly as possible,” Admiral Christian said. “First, we need to give them a bloody nose, both to teach them caution and convince our own people that we can and will fight back. Second, we need to recover our personnel on Cadiz itself. And third, we need to destroy the facilities within the system. They cannot be allowed to support the Theocracy’s advance.”

  Kat looked down at the deck. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled, feeling like a schoolgirl who had been called on the carpet. “There was no time to plan their destruction . . .”

  “Admiral fucking Morrison should have planned for the worst,” Admiral Christian snapped. “And once the war is over I will do everything in my power to make sure his backers are rooted out and put on trial for leaving him in command of the system. It wasn’t your responsibility to sabotage the facilities, Captain, and no one will blame you for not realizing it needed to be done in time. But it does leave us with a headache.”

  And another good reason not to discuss his plans openly with the Admiralty, Kat thought sourly. The corporations that built the facilities might object to their destruction.

  “The 6th Fleet—and intact units from 7th Fleet—will advance to the edge of Cadiz,” Admiral Christian said. “We will contact the destroyers you left watching the system—good thinking, by the way—and determine the status of the enemy fleet. If it has been rearmed and repaired, we will engage at long range and do some damage before buggering off. If not . . . we’ll seek a decisive battle.”

  Kat swallowed. The prewar naval planners had considered destroying the enemy’s fleet to be the first objective of any military operation. God knew there was no sign the Theocracy disagreed. By dangling 6th Fleet in front of the enemy commander, Admiral Christian would be offering him a chance to win the war
in a single afternoon—or lose it. And if the enemy won the ensuring battle . . .

  Admiral Christian altered the display, focusing—once again—on Cadiz. “We will advance towards Cadiz VII,” he continued. “The facilities in orbit round the gas giant will be our main target. If possible, we will recover personnel before we blow the facilities, but those facilities will be blown. The enemy will have to decide between trying to stop us from attacking the facilities or leaving them to be destroyed.”

  He grinned at her. “You and your squadron will remain in hyperspace,” he added. “If the enemy fleet advances to engage us, you will come out of hyperspace behind the enemy and attack Cadiz itself. You will destroy enemy facilities on the ground, then attempt to pick up as many of our personnel as possible, then retreat back into hyperspace.”

  Kat worked her way through the details, slowly. “It sounds as if there’s too much that can go wrong,” she said. “What if the enemy fleet doubles back to engage me?”

  “Then you run,” Admiral Christian said bluntly. “But I don’t expect them to pass up the chance of destroying 6th Fleet. Or, for that matter, to allow us to blow the facilities without opposition, not when they need them so badly.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t intend to try to hold Cadiz permanently,” he added. “The Theocracy will already have reinforcements on the way. All I want to do is get in, smash the facilities, and then get out again. If it seems likely we can win a duel with the enemy fleet, we’ll seek battle. But we cannot afford heavy losses.”

  Kat nodded. There was no way to know what percentage of the Theocracy’s total fleet had attacked Cadiz. Twenty-nine superdreadnoughts . . . were they 10 percent of the enemy fleet, 20 percent, or 50 percent? There was no way to know. And it would be weeks, perhaps months, before additional forces were surged forward to reinforce the front lines. She couldn’t argue with his logic. The Royal Navy couldn’t afford catastrophic losses.