He looked back at the display, then shrugged. They’d find out soon enough.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“It looks as though Aswan is far too dangerous for us,” the XO said.
Kat nodded in agreement. Two superdreadnought squadrons were overkill, as far as her puny flotilla was concerned; the smaller ships alone would be a major headache. Perversely, it was the smaller ships that posed the greatest threat; even a relatively low number could cost her dearly if she ran into them at her next target. They could be moved from star to star quickly, if necessary, spreading out to blanket all possible targets.
She sucked in her breath. The intelligence staff might believe the superdreadnoughts were in poor condition, but a single superdreadnought with half its missile tubes out of commission would still be able to smash her entire flotilla. She wouldn’t care to visit Aswan without a superdreadnought squadron of her own—and, as the enemy could be trying to lure her into close combat by pretending to be weak, she would have preferred at least three superdreadnought squadrons, if not four. Having a two-to-one advantage practically guaranteed success.
“Yeah,” she said. There was no point in plotting an attack, not with the firepower at her command. “We’ll have to send the data back to Admiral Christian, if he feels like cutting loose enough firepower to raid behind enemy lines.”
“He won’t,” the XO predicted. “The situation along the front lines is too insecure for him to risk anything of the sort.”
“I suppose,” Kat agreed. “Still, the chance to smash two enemy superdreadnought squadrons should not be missed.”
“If it didn’t cost us the war,” the XO said.
Kat nodded, reluctantly. Sending a fleet—any fleet—away from the front lines risked the enemy making major gains, while the dispatched fleet had absolutely no idea what was happening behind it. The fleet might return to discover that its base had been destroyed, or that the enemy had punched through the weakened border defenses and started a drive towards Tyre itself. No, the XO was right. No matter how tempting the target—and the target might have been designed to look tempting—it couldn’t be risked. It was why the Commonwealth had sent only a handful of older ships—and Lightning—to raid behind enemy lines.
“Never mind,” she said, closing the display. “Are we ready to move to Verdean?”
“Yes, Captain,” the XO assured her. “The prisoners who are in no state to join the resistance, or unwilling to do so, have been transferred to one of the freighters, which is currently holding station at the RV point. Everyone else is being given enemy weapons and taught how to use them, along with ammunition and enemy supplies. Apparently, their ration packs are even worse than ours.”
Kat had to smile. Complaining about rations was an old tradition, but the Royal Navy’s ration packs weren’t actually that bad. The Theocracy, on the other hand, seemed to think that even eating rations should be a test of one’s endurance. She wouldn’t have been surprised to discover their captains were allowed to flog crewmen, or that devout believers engaged in self-flagellation every Thursday at nine. It made no sense to her—life in space was hard enough without making it worse deliberately—but she wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. Anything that weakened the enemy worked in her favor.
“As long as they’re edible,” she said.
“Oh, no; they don’t serve those kinds of meals,” the XO said. “Perish the thought!”
Kat laughed—it was a punch line from a sitcom she’d detested as a young girl—then tapped the console, bringing up the star chart. Verdean glowed red in front of her; the prisoners had been able to tell her a great deal about the system itself, but next to nothing about the Theocracy’s deployments. There would be an automated weapons platform—perhaps more than one—guarding the planet itself, but what else? Normally, a spacefaring society would have started mining the gas giants and asteroid belts, yet the Theocracy seemed unwilling to risk moving any form of industry into occupied systems. It was quite possible the local industrial base had been completely destroyed.
It’s inefficient, she thought crossly. Are they so determined to keep control that they’re willing to swallow the extra cost of shipping everything from their heartlands to the edge of their territory?
She shook her head in disbelief. Maybe she hadn’t paid as much attention to her lessons as she should, but she understood the problems involved in shipping thousands of tons of goods across space. The Commonwealth had invested billions of crowns in building up local industries purely to boost the economy and keep prices down—and, just incidentally, convince the newcomers that the Commonwealth didn’t intend to exploit them. But the Theocracy seemed determined to keep its worlds firmly in bondage.
The XO coughed. “Crown for your thoughts, Captain?”
“They’re inefficient,” Kat said, and explained her reasoning. “No wonder they’re having supply problems.”
“But they consider the trade-off worthwhile,” the XO pointed out. “If the locals had control over an industrial base, even a small one, they’d have a disproportionate amount of influence over the Theocracy itself. They might be able to leverage that into better treatment from their masters, if they didn’t manage to gain outright independence. Keeping everyone crawling on the ground, after the invasion, suits the Theocracy better. And it works in our favor too.”
“Because they need to ship their supplies over a much longer distance,” Kat mused. She shrugged. “They’ll probably start expanding Aswan sooner or later.”
“It’ll take them years,” the XO predicted. “Years they’re not going to have.”
“I hope you’re right,” Kat said. She looked back at the star chart for a long moment. “It’s a three-day trip to Verdean from here, so we’ll leave in an hour and use the time to prepare for the offensive. Mermaid can repeat her feat of slipping into the system when we arrive, with Juno and Max Mercury backing her up. Unless there’s something there too large for us to tackle, we’ll attack at once.”
“Yes, Captain,” the XO said.
Kat smiled, tiredly. “Are there any other issues of note?”
“Some minor disputes amongst the former prisoners,” the XO said. “They were fighting over who did what during the first invasion and its aftermath, then over who should have overall command of the resistance. I don’t think it will be a major problem, at least at the moment, but Verdean will not have a peaceful future after they’re liberated for good.”
“They can sort that out afterwards,” Kat said firmly. She shook her head. “Are they trained on handling the communicators too?”
“We’re doing that now,” the XO assured her. “They should be able to maintain communications with a stealthed platform even after we leave the system. They’ll be on their own for long periods, but they will still be able to leave messages for us . . . when, of course, we manage to slip a spy ship back into the system.”
Kat nodded. It wasn’t the best way to communicate, but in the absence of a StarCom there was no other choice. The Commonwealth would take the offensive, sooner or later, and when it did they’d need to make contact—again—with the resistance on Verdean. It might make liberating the system for good a far easier task.
“Then make sure you get some rest, once we’re on the way,” she ordered. “It won’t get any easier from now on.”
She keyed the console again. This time, it showed a pair of expanding message spheres: one centered on UNAS-RD-46785, the other on the unnamed penal world. The first sphere had already overlapped Aswan, while the second was only a couple of days from the Theocratic fleet base. It was quite likely the Theocracy had already realized they’d lost a convoy. She’d had the prisoners interrogated until they’d spilled everything they knew, but none of them had been quite sure just how much leeway was built into the system. The Commonwealth would wait at least a week before panicking—ships could be overdue without run
ning into pirates or raiders—yet was that true of the Theocracy? They might start sounding the alarm if the courier boat was even an hour overdue.
But that would be stupid, she told herself. Even without enemy interference, a courier boat could be delayed by any number of problems. A freak storm in hyperspace might even blow her light years off course.
She ran through the problem in her own head. Assuming Aswan realized the courier boat was overdue at the earliest possible moment, without any leeway at all, warning messages could already be on their way to Verdean. She knew she didn’t dare assume otherwise, even though logic told her there would be some leeway. Verdean might well be ready for her when she arrived.
They don’t know what we have, she thought, grimly. Nothing escaped the ambush, unless they had a covert satellite watching for trouble . . .
“We’ll revise departure and leave in two hours,” she said instead. There was no point in worrying too much; she’d assume the worst, probing the system before she committed herself and backing off if it looked like too much of a challenge. “I’ll want to speak to the patrol boat commanders before we go.”
“Aye, Captain,” the XO said.
“And make a note in the logs,” Kat added. “The commander and crew of HMS Mermaid are to be commended for the first sweep of a Theocratic fleet base. They’ll be in line for a medal when we return home.”
The XO nodded, then saluted and left the cabin. Kat looked back at the display, unable to stop a cold hand clenching at her heart. The enemy had to know, now, that something was wrong. Her squadron’s presence would no longer be a secret. Hell, she’d never meant it to remain a secret indefinitely—the idea was to force them to react to her presence—but she couldn’t help feeling nervous. Two squadrons of superdreadnoughts could rip her ships apart with ease, if the enemy got lucky. And they might well manage to get lucky, if she made a single mistake . . .
Then you’d better not make one, she told herself, firmly. As long as you pick your targets with care, they shouldn’t be able to guess your next destination.
She sighed, then brought up the intelligence reports. They now knew more about the sector, enough to pick the next target. And there were several possibilities . . .
“Ringer might be the best bet,” she muttered after a moment. “And it might hurt the enemy quite badly if we struck a handful of blows, then vanished.”
“These weapons are awesome, sir,” Jean-Luc said.
“They’re pieces of crap,” Sergeant Dervish said. He was from a refugee family, he’d explained; Jean-Luc had been disappointed to discover that none of the refugees attached to the squadron had come from Verdean. “This is an assault rifle broken down to the bare basics, designed for illiterate baboons who can’t shoot for toffee. I was playing with one after we captured the convoy and the aiming is appallingly bad.”
Jean-Luc smiled. “At least you’re pumping bullets in the general direction of the enemy . . .”
“The enemy is likely to be the safest person on the field,” Dervish said. He sneered down at the rifle. “Accuracy goes to shit outside a few meters, young man; you’d need to spray and pray just to have a reasonable chance of hitting something. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought they were unloading older pieces of crap onto planetary militia and other local defense forces.”
He shook his head. “There were a handful of sniper rifles,” he added, “but nothing I’d consider satisfactory. I’ve seen better weapons coming off private workbenches or locked away in museums, weapons that might actually hurt the enemy.”
“It’s still better than anything we had before the invasion,” Jean-Luc said.
“Better than anything we had too,” Dervish admitted. “Or so my father says, when he’s in his cups. He spent all of his courage and determination just getting his family off-world before our new masters clamped down on us. If we’d spent money on weapons . . .”
He snorted. “Aragon wasn’t a spacefaring power,” he added after a moment. “If we’d spent money on weapons, we would probably have been crushed anyway.”
Jean-Luc frowned. “What was it like? Going to the Commonwealth, I mean?”
“I was four years old,” Dervish said. “We spent a couple of years in a refugee camp, then Dad got his papers and started to work. I went to school when I was five, then joined the cadet force at seven. By the time I went to boot camp, I was pretty much identical to everyone else. I don’t really remember life before the Commonwealth at all.”
“Oh,” Jean-Luc said.
Jean-Luc looked down at the weapon in his hands. He’d been offered—they’d all been offered—the chance to stay with the squadron and eventually return to the Commonwealth, once the starships had completed their mission. He had to admit he’d been tempted—after a year on a penal world, his enthusiasm for continuing the fight had dimmed—but he was damned if he was abandoning his homeworld as long as there was something he could do. Besides, it wasn’t as if he had any useful skills. He hadn’t been training to be a starship pilot or an engineer even before the Theocracy had interrupted his education. There was no way he could justify remaining with the starships to himself, let alone to anyone else.
Dervish had been lucky, he suspected. He’d escaped early enough that he had no emotional tie to his homeworld. The Commonwealth was his home now. But Jean-Luc? To run from his homeworld would be the act of a coward. And besides, Perrier and the others were going back too, ready to try to make contact with what remained of the resistance or set up a new one. The attack on the system would prove to the population that the Theocracy could be beaten . . .
Assuming it comes off as planned, he thought. If the starships have to retreat, we will be unable to land.
The Marine cleared his throat. “Did you read the textbooks?”
“I tried,” Jean-Luc said. “I wish I had more time to practice.”
“Us too,” Dervish said. “Six months of training didn’t feel like enough when I went into combat for the first time.”
Jean-Luc shrugged. He’d barely known which end of a gun to point at the enemy when he’d gone into combat, although—to be fair—it hadn’t been planned that way. The Theocracy had launched a kill-sweep for insurgents and overrun his training base, forcing him and his fellow recruits to fight and run. All things considered, he’d been lucky his career as a daring resistance fighter hadn’t ended there and then. Instead, he’d survived a year before finally being captured.
“I meant to ask,” he said, “why do you have all these manuals?”
“We had a few insurgencies of our own to handle,” Dervish said. “And we knew we were likely to lose worlds to the Theocracy, so we set up stay-behind units and issued training on guerrilla war. It was one of the many compromises that went into effect when the Commonwealth was actually founded. Just about everyone receives some form of firearms training.”
“You said,” Jean-Luc recalled, “that it would have made a difference if everyone was armed?”
“On your homeworld?” Dervish asked. “I think it would have resulted in a great many more dead on both sides, but would it have made a real difference? I don’t know. The Theocracy might have decided that keeping you alive was too much trouble and blasted your world back to bedrock. Or they might have just kept piling on the rocks until you surrendered. As long as they held the high orbitals, you would have been fucked.”
“Then we need to wait for you to return,” Jean-Luc said despondently.
“Yes,” Dervish agreed. “But you will have time to make preparations and wait.”
The spy lay on his bunk, staring up at the ceiling.
There didn’t seem to be any way out of the trap. The longer he delayed, the clearer it would become that he was delaying . . . and then his handlers would kill his sister, perhaps betraying him to the CIS as well. He’d hoped that something would happen that would save him from having
to commit treason, but nothing had materialized. Maybe a missile would strike the ship, killing him and him alone, or he would be reassigned to a department where there was no hope of getting a message out without being detected. Nothing had happened . . . and now he was trapped.
It was easy enough to skim through the ship’s datanet, once one was allowed through the firewall . . . and, as a tactical officer, he was permitted access to almost every part of the ship’s computers. He knew where the captain intended to attack, he knew where she wanted to go next; he even knew where the fleet train was waiting, safely away from the squadron. And getting that information to the Theocracy wouldn’t be difficult . . .
Damned if I do, he thought. It would be the first step into outright treason; no, he’d made that choice the moment he’d decided not to report the contact to the CIS. And damned if I don’t.
He closed his eyes in bitter pain, then opened them and reached for his datapad. Maybe someone would stumble across his work before it was too late . . . but he knew it wasn’t going to happen. He’d erase all evidence of his tampering as soon as his work was done. And then . . .
They find a use for the data, he thought. And hopefully everything will end.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“You know,” Midshipwoman Grace Hawthorne said, “one could say this system has potential.”
“I suppose one could,” Lieutenant Lars Rasmussen said. “But you’d have to get rid of the occupying forces first.”
He nodded to himself coldly. Mermaid had probed the system carefully, very carefully, hunting for signs of enemy activity. Verdean wasn’t exactly Tyre or even Cadiz, but it wasn’t a groundhog system by any definition of the word. A handful of industrial nodes dating back to the UN, he thought, orbited Verdean itself, while an old-style cloudscoop drew HE3 from the gas giant. Judging by the handful of freighters orbiting the structure, Verdean produced much of the HE3 for the sector as well as its own requirements. He was mildly surprised the Theocracy had even left it intact, but maybe it wasn’t too surprising. They’d be able to keep a cloudscoop isolated from the remainder of the system with ease.
Falcone Strike (Angel in the Whirlwind Book 2) Page 17