The Oncoming Storm

by Christopher Nuttall

But they thought they had all the time in the world, she thought. They didn’t know we would take the offensive so rapidly.

  “Captain,” Roach said, “the Marines have identified a number of POW camps.”

  “Mark them down for attention from the shuttles,” Kat ordered. She looked up and noted their positions on the display. Thankfully, most of them were well away from the cities. “And tell the Marines they can proceed with deployment . . .”

  “Captain,” Ross said, “the jamming is gone!”

  Kat let out a sigh of relief. They must have taken out the generators when they’d bombarded the enemy bases on the ground. There was no longer any need to rely on the PDC.

  “Transmit the prerecorded message,” she ordered. Davidson would be down there, somewhere. She refused to believe he could be dead. “And ready the second flight of shuttles for immediate departure.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Ross said.

  The XO grinned at her. “All bases on the planet, apart from POW camps, have been destroyed,” he said. “Their forces are in disarray.”

  Kat grinned back. Even if they had to beat an immediate retreat, they’d given the Theocracy a bloody nose as hoped. Its occupation force had been smashed. The Theocracy would have to put together another force for Cadiz, one designed to hold down a civilian population that had learned just how nasty occupation by the Theocracy could be. And the Theocracy couldn’t afford to look weak, not now. The war had barely begun.

  “The insurgents will take most of them out, I hope,” Kat ordered. “Do we have any of our own forces reporting in?”

  “Several,” Ross said. “They’re requesting immediate pickup.”

  “Detail shuttles to recover them,” Kat ordered. “And warn the pilots to watch for ground-based fire. We can’t assume the bombardment took out all of their SAMs.”

  The XO opened a private channel. “The Marines know their job, Captain,” he said. “Trust them.”

  Kat flushed. She’d been micromanaging. “Understood,” she sent back. “And thank you.”

  She forced herself to sit calmly in her chair, thinking hard. Assuming there wasn’t a prowling starship watching her squadron, and none had been detected, it would take forty-five minutes for a signal to reach Cadiz VII from Cadiz. They would have that long before the enemy commander realized the planet was under attack. And then . . . what?

  They’d war-gamed the battle as best as they could, but they’d already been surprised at least once. Would the enemy commander turn and engage Kat’s squadron or would he persist in trying to engage Admiral Christian? Given the Theocracy’s advantage in firepower, Admiral Christian had planned a long-range duel rather than closing to energy range. But plans could go wrong . . .

  “Shuttles are on their way, Captain,” the XO reported. “The POW camp has been targeted for careful attention.”

  Kat winced. If the Theocracy had time, they might blow up the camp rather than allow the prisoners to be recovered. They knew better than to expect mercy from the planet’s population, not now. She’d offered to uplift any of them who wanted to go, hoping to encourage a few defectors, but no one had replied so far. It was quite possible they wouldn’t believe her message. The refugees had said that enemy soldiers were warned to expect nothing but suffering from the Commonwealth.

  “Good,” she said.

  And now all she could do was wait.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Davidson jerked awake when his implants started to bleep.

  “Wake up,” he hissed as he sat upright. “They’re here!”

  Jess rolled over and stared at him. “So quickly?”

  Davidson accessed the data download and blinked in surprise. “They’re recovering personnel from the PDC and detention camps,” he said. “This isn’t a full-scale invasion.”

  Jess sat upright. It crossed Davidson’s mind to wonder, briefly, how she posed as a man in such close contact with men, but he decided he didn’t want to know. She got to her feet and looked upwards, peering through the canopy of leaves high overhead. Once again, pieces of debris were falling through the atmosphere, leaving trails of fire in their wake.

  “So,” she said, “are you going to leave?”

  Davidson considered it briefly. Part of him wanted to stay and help prepare the locals to fight for their freedom. But he knew his duty. His orders were to call for pickup, then return to the Commonwealth to join the war. One marine wouldn’t make much difference, he tried to tell himself, but Kat would need him.

  “We need to call a shuttle,” he said. “Come with us.”

  Jess glared at him. “Are you suggesting I just abandon my homeworld?”

  “No,” Davidson said. “I’m suggesting you come with us now, help build up a force to recover your world, and then return when the Royal Navy retakes the system for good.”

  He took a breath. “They’re going to be mad when they return,” he added. Flashes of light in the distance suggested that nearby enemy bases were under attack. “They’ll sweep the countryside for anyone who might have helped the resistance. Come with us and you can survive . . .”

  “I am going to stay,” Jess said. She turned and addressed the marines. “Any of you who wish to stay too will be welcome. If not, we wish you the very best of luck.”

  Davidson winced. He understood, all too well. If his homeworld had been occupied, he would have wanted to stay and fight too, even though he knew it would be futile. He was damned if he was surrendering to the Theocrats. But he also knew that he had his duty.

  “If any of you wish to stay,” he said, “I’ll put you on detached duty. But it may be years before Cadiz is liberated.”

  He looked at Jess, deliberately not looking at his men. “Go underground, stay out of sight, and build up your forces,” he said. “Keep our radios—we’ve already shown you how to use them. When we return to the system, we will contact you and coordinate our activities with your forces. But don’t engage the enemy too openly.”

  “It depends on what they do,” Jess said. “Call your shuttle, Patrick.”

  “Captain,” Corporal Loomis said, “I’d like to stay.”

  Davidson sighed. Loomis had been talking to the farm girl . . . perhaps he should have had a word with him before he became too attached. But there had seemed no point in interfering with something that might have helped, if they had remained stuck on Cadiz. Marrying into local families was a common insurgent trick, creating ties that made it harder for their new relatives to betray them.

  “Then make sure you do not fall into their hands,” Davidson ordered. He wanted to scream at his subordinate, to point out that their duty lay elsewhere, but it would do no good. Instead, he nodded shortly at the younger man. “And watch yourself on this planet.”

  Turning, he led the way towards the nearest suitable landing zone, using his implants to signal for pickup. Moments later, he had a reply. The shuttle was on the way.

  “The enemy are holding the range open,” Admiral Junayd observed. He couldn’t fault the Commonwealth warships for their tactics, but it was irritating as hell. Both sides were launching missiles, yet only a handful of hits—none of them fatal—had been scored. “And our gunboats are equally matched.”

  “So it would seem,” the cleric agreed.

  Junayd kept his face blank. They’d managed to prevent the enemy superdreadnoughts from recovering their workers or destroying the facilities, but the enemy commander was clearly settling in for a long, stern chase. It was a losing game, Junayd knew; he had far fewer missiles to expend than his opponent. Judging by his opponent’s decisions, it was clear his enemy was well aware of his weaknesses.

  I should break contact, he thought bitterly. But it will make me seem a coward.

  “Admiral,” the communications officer snapped, “the planet is under attack!”

  Junayd whirled. “They attacked the planet too?”

  “The destroyers got off a message,” the communications officer said. “It cut off before it could
be completed.”

  Destroyed, Junayd thought.

  Losing the destroyers was annoying—and losing the planet would make him enemies among the Inquisition. But it would be far from fatal. There was no shortage of ill-educated young men willing to serve as the hammers of the True Faith, not when the rewards were so great and oversight almost nonexistent. And yet . . . he took a breath. It might just work in his favor if he used the report as an excuse to break contact. They couldn’t accuse him of fleeing in the face of the enemy if he was attempting to save the occupation force.

  “Prepare to reverse course and enter hyperspace,” he ordered. “Take us back to the planet, best possible speed.”

  “Captain, POW Camp One has been liberated,” the XO said. “We’re loading the former POWs onto the shuttles now.”

  “Have the medics standing by,” Kat ordered. They’d located every medic on Gamma Base and transferred almost all of them to the troop transports, but she was bracing herself for a humanitarian disaster. No one believed the Theocracy would take good care of its prisoners, not when they had shown a frightening lack of concern for their own lives. “And the remainder of the shuttles?”

  “They’re picking up stragglers now,” the XO reported. “But there are fewer than we might have hoped.”

  They might think it’s a trick, Kat thought grimly. There were interstellar agreements against broadcasting certain kinds of false signals, but the Theocracy hadn’t signed any of them, any more than it had signed navigational or POW conventions. It was quite possible that thousands of Commonwealth personnel would keep their heads down until Cadiz was liberated, once and for all. There was nothing she could do about it.

  “Have them returned to the ships as quickly as possible,” Kat ordered. She wanted to ask if Davidson had been among the people recovered, but she didn’t dare say it out loud, not even through a private channel. It would probably take weeks to sort out everyone who had been in an enemy camp. Many of them would probably be locals snatched up along with Commonwealth personnel. “And the PDC?”

  “General Eastside has expressed an interest in remaining with a volunteer skeleton crew,” the XO reported. “The remainder are being loaded onto the shuttles now.”

  Kat wondered just what the General was thinking. The PDC was tough, but it would be stormed eventually, particularly if some of the ground troops were withdrawn. Did he think he could force the Theocracy to tie up its troops or was he just reluctant to return to Tyre with such a disgrace hanging over his career? Admiral Morrison hadn’t been the only senior officer in the system, after all.

  There was nothing she could do about that either.

  “Wish him luck,” she said as the shuttles started to rise off the planet’s surface and begin the climb back to the troop transports. “And get me a head count as soon as possible.”

  “Captain,” Roach snapped, “I’m picking up a vortex—multiple vortexes!”

  Kat swung round and stared at the display. Fifty-five minutes. Fifty-five minutes since the attack had begun. By her most optimistic calculation, it had taken the enemy commander little more than five minutes to swing his fleet round and return to Cadiz. She would have been impressed if four squadrons of superdreadnoughts weren’t bearing down on her tiny squadron. There was no way her seven remaining warships would be able to slow down a single superdreadnought, let alone four entire squadrons . . .

  “Order the remaining shuttles to lift off now,” Kat ordered. At least they had a contingency plan for this, although not one she’d ever wanted to use. “If there are any POWs left on the ground, they’ll have to take their chances.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Ross said.

  “Order the transports to start Operation Breakaway,” Kat ordered. She ran through the situation in her head, but saw nothing apart from certain disaster. The sheer weight of firepower bearing down on her made any tricks utterly immaterial. There was no way she could just stand and fight. “And they are to prepare to open vortexes.”

  She shook her head, cursing the enemy’s timing. If they’d come ten minutes later, she would have been able to get most of her people out. As it was, she had to pull off another tactical withdrawal under fire, only worse. They wouldn’t let her open vortexes for the shuttles . . . or would they? She considered trying to open one close to the planet, but she knew what the enemy would do. A few antimatter explosions would force her ships to close the portal before more than a handful of shuttles could make it into hyperspace.

  “Aye, Captain,” the XO said.

  “Move us to cover the transports,” Kat ordered. “We’ll cover them as long as possible.”

  “Captain,” Roach said, “there are additional vortexes forming!”

  The 6th Fleet, Kat realized. But they were too late.

  “Stand by point defense,” she ordered. A thought struck her. “Can you ID the enemy flagship?”

  “Not without probes,” Roach said. “Request permission to deploy probes.”

  The bean counters will hate it, Kat thought with a flicker of dark amusement. It really didn’t matter. They’d lose the probes along with Lightning herself if the ship was destroyed.

  “Launch probes,” she ordered. “And pass the information to 6th Fleet.”

  Admiral Junayd bit down a curse as he saw the tiny squadron that had devastated his occupation force. Seven warships, a number clearly damaged, had hammered the forces on the ground so badly that even his most urgent calls couldn’t provoke a response. Beyond them, their transports were already on the move, followed by streams of fleeing shuttles.

  They didn’t want to recover the planet, merely their people, he thought, coldly. Maybe they knew about the other attack fleets, maybe they were just playing it cool, but in the end it didn’t matter. They want a cheap victory they can use against us.

  “Open fire,” he ordered.

  “Admiral,” the tactical officer said, “we only have a hundred missiles left.”

  Junayd clenched his teeth. “Then fire them,” he snapped. It was imperative to deny the Commonwealth a propaganda victory. “Target the transports and open fire!”

  “Captain, the enemy fleet has opened fire,” the XO said. “They’ve targeted the transports.”

  Kat nodded, watching as the missile swarm rocketed towards their targets. And yet . . . she looked at the display, silently calculating everything they knew about the enemy superdreadnoughts. They should have been able to fire enough missiles in one salvo to vaporize Kat’s entire force. But they hadn’t. Indeed, she had a suspicion that she would be able to swat almost all of the missiles out of space before they even reached their targets.

  Understanding clicked. “They’ve run out of missiles,” she said. “They’ll have to close to energy range if they want to press the offensive.”

  “So it would seem,” the XO agreed. “There’s nothing to be gained by being subtle.”

  “True,” Kat agreed. The irony was chilling. There wasn’t a ship in her squadron that couldn’t outrun the enemy superdreadnoughts if they hadn’t had to coddle the transports and shield them from incoming fire. And that meant disaster when the superdreadnoughts finally lumbered into energy range. “Order the transports to expedite the recovery of the shuttles.”

  She ran through it again, calculating vectors in her head. The 6th Fleet had come out of hyperspace close enough to batter the enemy fleet, but if the enemy remained fixated on her squadron it wasn’t likely to matter. In their place, Kat would have broken off and ordered a retreat, yet the Theocracy didn’t seem to know the meaning of the word. Instead . . .

  Missiles lanced towards her ships, only to be blown out of space or decoyed aside. But three of them slipped through the defenses and slammed into the rear transport. Kat watched helplessly as the starship died, taking over three thousand men and women with it. The remaining transports altered course slightly, ordering the shuttles that would have docked with the destroyed starship to dock with them instead. But there were just too many limits o
n the loading.

  “Enemy ships launching gunboats,” the XO reported. “The 6th Fleet is launching its own gunboats.”

  “Align the point defense,” Kat ordered. At least they had hard data on gunboat performance from First Cadiz. This time, the enemy gunboats were facing interlinked shield generators, a working datanet, and computers that had a better idea of just how well they could perform. “Engage as soon as they enter range.”

  “Aye, Captain,” the XO said.

  “Captain,” Roach said, “I believe I have identified the enemy flagship.”

  Kat looked at the display. A single red icon was flashing on and off. “Are you sure?”

  “No, Captain,” Roach said. “But she does seem to be serving as the communications hub for a superdreadnought squadron at the very least.”

  “Then target her with everything we have,” Kat ordered. If they did kill the enemy commander, there would be some confusion in the ranks until the next commander took charge of the fleet. Even if they didn’t, at least they’d give their opponent a fright. “And fire at will.”

  She watched as missiles launched from her ships, passing the gunboats as they swooped in to attack. Several gunboats died as point defense picked them off, but a number survived long enough to launch their missiles before falling back. They’d targeted the cripples first, Kat noted, cursing the bastards under her breath. Amherst fell out of formation as her drive nodes failed, leaving her to be overrun by the oncoming superdreadnoughts. She kept firing, her weapons raking at their shields, but it was futile. One of the enemy superdreadnoughts blew the battle cruiser apart with contemptuous ease.

  “Ablative armor is not as effective as we had been led to believe,” Roach noted.

  “At that range, it wouldn’t matter,” the XO countered. “She was just blown to bits.”

  Kat looked down at the display. “Time to finish embarking the men?”

  “Two minutes, if the remaining shuttles parasite on the hulls,” the XO said. “The enemy will enter attack range in one minute.”