The Oncoming Storm

by Christopher Nuttall

  She turned and caught Davidson’s hand, then led him back into the darkening forest. Davidson had to admit to the sharpness of her skills as she walked through the woods; even with his implants, it was growing increasingly difficult to see in the dark. He glanced up and saw flickers of fire high overhead as pieces of debris continued to fall out of orbit and burn up in the planet’s atmosphere. The Theocracy, it seemed, hadn’t bothered to sweep the orbitals after winning the battle.

  “We had someone in a village that got visited by the new occupation,” Jess said very softly. “He said they’d been told that any resistance would result in the destruction of their village—and that any sightings of resistance fighters had to be reported at once. And if they weren’t, the village would be destroyed, after the hostages had been brutally murdered right in front of them.”

  Davidson winced. It wasn’t fair to expect parents to keep their mouths shut when their children were at risk—and no one would take the chance the Theocracy was bluffing when it threatened to hurt the children. The villagers would be caught between two fires; they could serve the insurgency and risk losing everything when the Theocracy caught them, or serve the Theocracy and risk losing everything when they were punished for collaboration.

  Jess caught his arm, then spun him round to face her. In the darkness, her face seemed surprisingly pale. “Tell me,” she said. Her voice was very low, as if she was afraid of being overheard. “Do we have a chance?”

  “Not on your own,” Davidson admitted. There was no avoiding that conclusion. “The Commonwealth never wanted to rip your society apart, let alone take hostages and hold others accountable for what their brothers did. But the Theocracy has the tools to do just that, Jess. Given time, they will have your entire planet locked down tighter than Earth.”

  He shuddered. It was hard to know how many of the horror stories about UN-ruled Earth were actually true, but it was well known that no one had had any privacy, and freedom of speech was largely a joke. No one could do anything on Earth without leaving a trace behind, one that could be followed by the police and used as evidence against them. The entire planetary society had been falling apart even before the Breakaway Wars.

  “Shit,” Jess said. She let go of his arm, then started to pace frantically. “Should we just surrender, then? Walk up to them and offer the bastards our throats, so they can cut them as efficiently as possible?”

  “Hell, no,” Davidson said. “The Commonwealth is still out there, Jess. They will organize a rescue mission, given time, or simply win the war outright. And when the system is attacked for the second time, you and your people can strike against the bastards on the ground. You can bide your time until then.”

  “And how many horrors,” Jess asked, “will go unchallenged until then?”

  “Far too many,” Davidson said. He paused, weighing his words carefully. He could understand how despair might be working its way through the insurgency, now that they saw their new enemy far too clearly. Somehow he had to try to encourage her. “And we will be staying to help.”

  Jess snorted. “How much can a handful of marines like you do for us?”

  “Train you,” Davidson said. It was true. Marines had a great deal of training in insurgent warfare, although they’d generally been trying to defeat insurgencies rather than actually encourage them. “And coordinate with the relief force, when it finally arrives.”

  He took a breath. “But we need to know if the PDC is still active,” he added. A thought had occurred to him. There had been heavy armaments stockpiled in the PDC as well as shield generators and planetary defense weapons. “If so, we might have other options.”

  “Oh,” Jess said. “To die bravely?”

  “Maybe,” Davidson said. He gave her a sharp look. Part of him wanted to ask her story: why she’d become an insurgent. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know, though. She was a girl doing a job most of the planet would have said was a man’s job. But she’d survived when others, more trusting, had gone like lambs to the slaughter. “We will see.”

  Jess eyed him for a long moment, then turned and led the way into the darkening forest.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  “The PDC is still holding out,” the cleric observed. “Why is it still holding out?”

  “Because the Janissaries have failed to capture it?” Admiral Junayd asked smoothly. “Or because the Inquisition has made it clear that prisoners of war cannot expect good treatment?”

  It was all he could do to smile rather than scream in rage. The battle had gone well, but the war was not yet won! There was absolutely nothing to be gained from mistreating prisoners, even if they were infidels who would never be allowed to return home, let alone imposing Theocratic rule on the locals. There would be time to convert the infidels after the war was over. But the Inquisitors had refused to delay their work. They needed a success to bolster their position when the Speaker died and the next power struggle began.

  “You should flatten the base from orbit,” the cleric said. “Stamp on it with a hammer.”

  “Anything we use powerful enough to crack the base’s force field will devastate the local environment,” Junayd pointed out, for what felt like the thousandth time. “An antimatter bomb would depopulate all of Cadiz. I hardly think the Speaker will thank you for exterminating an entire planet of potential converts.”

  He took a breath. “And the Commonwealth would certainly retaliate in kind,” he added sharply. “We would see the entire Theocracy turned into nothing more than dead worlds.”

  The cleric snorted, but said nothing. Junayd turned his attention back to the latest update, cursing Princess Drusilla under his breath. Her father should have beaten her into submission or had her brain rewired from the moment it had become clear she was far from the ideal wife for a Theocratic officer. But he’d been merciful and this was the result. The Commonwealth had detected his fleet, the attack had been launched ahead of schedule, and a carefully prepared plan lay in tatters. Half of the attack fleets that should have swept into Commonwealth space were still on their way, while there was no way to know—yet—just what had happened to the fleets that had already reached their targets. And his goddamned fleet train was overdue.

  Junayd cursed the planners under his breath. Surely they could have assigned more freighters to his fleet before he assembled it, but no; they’d insisted the fleet train would be assembled later and forwarded to him. As he should have expected, he was fifty light years from his base, waiting for the freighters to catch up with him. There was no way he could go on the offensive again until he had reloaded his ships.

  At least we captured a few thousand workers, he thought. The Inquisitors had wanted to round up the space workers along with everyone else, but he’d managed to snatch the infidel engineers for himself and put them to work. But converting their weapons to launch from our ships is impossible.

  “The infidels are still out there,” Junayd observed. “They’re watching and waiting.”

  He scowled. At least five starships were watching the system, sneaking in until they were detected and then escaping at high speed rather than sticking round to fight. It was hard to blame them—they were only destroyers, after all—but it was a constant headache. As it was, he didn’t dare draw down the forces defending Cadiz or Cadiz VII. It left the other inhabited worlds in the system largely uncovered.

  The cleric turned to face him. “Admiral,” he said, “are you having doubts about the ultimate success of our operation?”

  And if you knew more, Junayd thought, you’d be having doubts too.

  “God never promised us an easy victory,” he said instead. “But we cannot go back on the offensive until our fleet train arrives.”

  He triggered the display, then studied the star chart thoughtfully. Where would the infidel fleet go? It was tempting to believe they’d flee all the way to Tyre, but he knew better than to believe it, no matter what he told the cleric and the Inquisitors. The infidels had been caught by surpris
e, crippled by their own leaders, yet they’d managed to escape under heavy fire. They were no cowards, he told himself firmly, nor were they incompetent. And if they weren’t caught by surprise, they would be a dangerous foe.

  Ten days, he asked himself. Where could they have gone in ten days?

  “Then we will wait until it arrives,” the cleric said. “By then, we will know about the other assaults, will we not?”

  “Perhaps,” Junayd said. He hoped the attacking fleets could capture StarCom units, but he knew better than to count on it. The infidels would definitely destroy them if they had the chance, just to make it harder for the Theocracy to coordinate its offensive. “But we will still know nothing about how the infidels are reacting.”

  “That extra squadron of superdreadnoughts is doing nothing,” Lieutenant Lindsey Harrison reported. “They’re just sitting in orbit.”

  Commander Pete Hellman frowned. HMS Primrose had been playing catch-as-catch-can with the Theocracy’s patrols ever since she had returned to Cadiz with the remainder of her squadron. To be fair, apart from the odd patrol through the asteroids, the Theocracy seemed to be focusing their attention on Cadiz itself and Cadiz VII. But it made no sense. The asteroid miners had had plenty of time to rig their facilities to blow, then hide in uncharted asteroid habitats. Logically, the Theocracy should have swept them up in the first few hours of the occupation.

  “It could be a set of drones and nothing else,” he suggested. “Do you think they’re solid contacts?”

  “They definitely came out of a vortex,” Lindsey objected. She’d been a sensor officer long enough to gain plenty of experience. “I don’t think they could fake that, sir.”

  Pete nodded, reluctantly. Four squadrons of superdreadnoughts, several battered; fifty-two smaller ships . . . the Theocracy had assigned a surprising amount of firepower to the system. It had made sense when they’d intended to trap and destroy 7th Fleet, but not now. There was little in the system worth taking, let alone tying up so much firepower in holding. He wasn’t sure if it was a reflection of the enemy’s power—they could afford to spare four squadrons of superdreadnoughts for Cadiz—or something else was at play. Were they waiting to hear from other attack forces that had entered Commonwealth space?

  “Keep a sharp eye on the bastards,” he ordered. He turned to face the helmsman. “Alter our course randomly, then take us away from the planet.”

  “Aye, sir,” Lieutenant Shawn Dorsey said. “I don’t think there’s anything in our way.”

  Pete snorted. They were cloaked, and any hunting Theocracy starships would also be cloaked. It was unlikely they’d accidentally collide with an enemy ship, but they might well completely miss one another with their respective invisibility. He settled back in his command chair as Primrose put some distance between herself and Cadiz, then tried not to think about what the enemy might be doing. It was quite possible they’d already started hitting worlds far closer to Tyre than Cadiz.

  They wouldn’t have risked such a disaster, he told himself. An operation of that magnitude would be such a violent breach of the KISS principle that it would almost certainly be guaranteed disaster for anyone stupid enough to try. If their attacks failed, they’d cripple themselves in an afternoon.

  “Captain,” Midshipwoman Han said. “We’re nearing the remote platform.”

  “Query it,” Pete ordered. “Tactical, stand by all weapons.”

  “Aye, sir,” Lieutenant Commander David White said. “Weapons ready . . .”

  Pete braced himself. The platforms were—in theory—undetectable, unless someone literally stumbled over one of them. The spy probes were also meant to be undetectable, though, and the Theocracy had managed to detect one of them. If someone had managed to detect the platform, they might have staked it out rather than simply destroying it, watching and waiting for a Commonwealth starship to come along. And if the ship was engaged completely without warning, there would be no time to escape before it was blown into debris.

  “Captain,” Han said, “the platform is requesting a full data dump. Every last scrap of tactical data we have.”

  “Send it,” Pete ordered. Was someone planning to attack the system? It didn’t seem likely. The 7th Fleet was far too degraded to take the offensive. And yet there was no need for the data unless someone was planning to attack the system. “And then hold us steady.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Davidson said.

  There was a long pause. “The data dump has been sent,” Han then reported. “There’s no saved response.”

  Pete nodded. “Take us away from the platform,” he ordered. By now, the signal would be racing across the system, where . . . someone was waiting for it. “And then sneak back towards the planet.”

  Davidson looked up. “Sir?”

  “Someone needs tactical data,” Pete said. “Let us see what we can provide.”

  Admiral Christian was so much more efficient than Admiral Morrison that it wasn’t even remotely funny, Kat decided as she sipped her tea. Apart from their first private meeting, he’d insisted that all meetings be held electronically, allowing all of his senior officers to attend. Admiral Morrison, she knew, would have insisted on his officers meeting him on the planet. Ironically, that might just have worked in 7th Fleet’s favor.

  “The data collected by the destroyers suggests the enemy are guarding Cadiz extensively,” an analyst said. “One squadron of superdreadnoughts has apparently reinforced the fleet—we must assume those ships have full magazines—but there does not appear to be a fleet train in the system. We dare not take that for granted, of course.”

  Kat nodded in agreement. Cadiz was largely valueless now the war had begun, save for the facilities orbiting Cadiz VII. If those superdreadnoughts had been able to take the offensive, she was sure they would have attacked Gamma Base by now. The base was only meant as a stopgap, but it was the most likely target. Instead, the superdreadnoughts had sat on their butts and done nothing.

  “A smaller formation, composed largely of battle cruisers, is covering Cadiz VII,” the analyst continued. “We must assume that the industrial platforms have been occupied and their crews have been captured. The enemy has clearly decided they are vitally important.”

  She took a breath. “I believe the plan remains sound,” she concluded. “They are more likely to defend Cadiz VII than Cadiz itself.”

  “Good,” Admiral Christian said. “Are there any questions?”

  Kat keyed a switch. “What about ground forces?”

  “As far as we can tell, the PDC is still in our hands,” the analyst said. “Her force field is definitely still active and Theocratic warships seem to be avoiding entering weapons range. However, it has proven impossible to activate a communications link so we have no way of knowing the situation on the ground. Nor do we have any links with anyone else on the surface.”

  Patrick, Kat thought, feeling a twinge of guilt. He wasn’t dead. He couldn’t be dead. And yet part of her was convinced she’d sent him to his death. I’m sorry.

  Admiral Christian waited to see if anyone else had a question, then pressed forward. “There is no need to alter our basic operational plan,” he said. “Force One will jump into the system in thirty minutes, once we are in position near Cadiz VII. Force Two will wait until hearing from Force One”—he glanced at Kat’s image, sharply—“then jump out near Cadiz, sweep orbital space of any unexpected surprises, and then send down shuttles to rescue our personnel.”

  He took a breath. “It is possible the Theocracy won’t take the bait,” he added. “In that case, Force One will destroy the facilities orbiting Cadiz VII and then withdraw.”

  Kat couldn’t imagine the Theocrats not taking the bait. The extra squadron of superdreadnoughts had been a nasty surprise. Combined with what they already knew about enemy superdreadnoughts, the Theocrats would have a pronounced firepower advantage . . . and Admiral Christian would be tempting them with the prospect of catching 6th Fleet in a gravitational well. A fleet co
uldn’t open enough vortexes to escape so close to a gas giant. Even one ship would be pushing her luck if she tried to escape . . .

  And yet they might well have shot their bolt, she thought. If only we knew for certain . . .

  She shook her head. The cadets had been told, often enough, that there were no certainties in war. War was a democracy. The enemy got a vote too. Whatever choices the enemy CO made could be relied upon to screw up or limit the choices available to his opponents.

  “We could always go after their superdreadnoughts,” a captain she didn’t recognize said. Her data console identified him as CAPTAIN YU. “They would be a tempting target.”

  “We may do so,” Admiral Christian said. “But our first priority is destroying the facilities and trying to recover our people.” He looked down at his wristcom, making a show of it. “Are there any final issues to discuss?”

  There were none. Kat was silently relieved. A handful of officers from 6th Fleet had complained about her being given command of Force Two, even though it was composed of starships from 7th Fleet. The admiral had pointed out that Kat was the only commanding officer they knew and there was no time to get the ships and crews used to a newcomer, while 6th Fleet had drilled as a unit. They would be a match, she had told herself after watching one of their exercises, for a superior number of Theocratic superdreadnoughts. And they had the training and discipline to stand off gunboats.

  “Very well,” Admiral Christian said. “Force One will begin the offensive in thirty minutes.”

  He paused, then looked from image to image. “The war began in the most treacherous manner possible,” he said. “They struck directly at Tyre itself and countless other worlds, leaving thousands of dead civilians in their wake. This isn’t a localized border dispute, nor is it a rebellion against tyrannical central authority. This is all-out war aimed at shaping the future of the entire galaxy. If we lose, the worlds we have sworn to defend will fall under the rule of a religious society intent on crushing all its rivals. We dare not lose.