Because they will certainly smell a rat, he thought. Two squadrons of superdreadnoughts, fifty-odd possible targets . . . even if they assume I sent out both squadrons on patrol duties, the odds of them being caught are alarmingly low. They’d be fools not to suspect the truth.
“I will organize prayers for our victory,” Cleric Peter said. “I am sure that God will not snatch the victory from us, when our people’s lives are at stake.”
“A sensible use of your time,” Admiral Junayd said, smoothly. It was; the longer the clerics spent at prayer, the less time they could spend harassing his crew. “Dismissed.”
He watched everyone leave, then looked down at his hands. God had granted them an opportunity, he knew, but it was no more than an opportunity. They would have to capitalize on it themselves if they wanted a victory. And if it failed . . .
I’ll just have to make sure it doesn’t fail, he thought grimly. And do everything I can to make sure it’s a success.
“The freighters are on their way to the Reach,” the XO reported. “The entire population of Ringer, save for the handful of holdouts, are heading to their new homes.”
“Good,” Kat said. She didn’t know what had happened to the holdouts after the Theocracy had discovered that the system’s industries had been smashed, but she doubted it was anything good. Their relatives would have a chance to forge new lives in the Commonwealth and, eventually, go back home. “And the squadron itself?”
“Ready to depart for Aswan,” the XO said. “We’ll link up with Mermaid at the RV point near the system.”
“Even better,” Kat said. Attacking an enemy fleet base, even as a feint, was risky . . . but part of her looked forward to the challenge. If nothing else, there would be no risk of harming innocent civilians in the crossfire. “Inform the bridge. We will depart at once.”
“Aye, Captain,” the XO said.
Kat nodded. Two days . . . two days to reach the RV point and check with Mermaid, then they could feint at Aswan. And then . . . Morningside. And then . . . maybe they could go deeper into enemy space. The Theocracy might already have redeployed units from the front lines to help hunt her squadron down, but if they hadn’t . . . raids closer in towards their homeworld would be bound to draw attention. Who knew what sort of problems the Theocracy would have if she raided one of their older conquests?
“Take us out,” she ordered quietly. “By the time we reach the RV point, I want to be ready to go on the offensive.”
“The courier boats have returned from Morningside,” Captain Haran said ten minutes after the fleet reached the waypoint outside the system. “There’s no sign of an enemy attack.”
“Good,” Admiral Junayd said. They’d beaten the enemy to the target system. There would be time to plot his ambush properly. “Maintain two courier boats on watchdog duties at all times. I want to be notified the moment the enemy arrives.”
“Aye, sir,” Captain Haran said. “We also received a new set of updates from Aswan.”
“Download them to my console,” Admiral Junayd said. “I’ll review them now.”
He watched the younger man go, then keyed his console. The first set of messages consisted of orders to hunt down the enemy ships and destroy them, without mercy; the second set, clearly written by someone with more understanding of the tactical realities, told him to guard the industries and forsake the rest of the sector if necessary. It seemed unlikely the writer had known that both Verdean and Ringer had come under attack. The third set of messages promised a handful of reinforcements, but warned that very little could be spared from either the war front or the home guard. If the Commonwealth managed to attack the shipyards near the core, the war would be within shouting distance of being lost.
So they want me to catch the enemy, but they don’t want to give me any reinforcements, he thought sourly. How am I supposed to cover every possible target without breaking up my superdreadnought squadrons?
It was a tempting idea, in many ways. Nothing he’d seen from the enemy had suggested they were able to take on a single superdreadnought, let alone an entire squadron. He could leave three superdreadnoughts at Aswan, as a reserve, and parcel out the remaining fifteen ships to fifteen out of fifty possible targets. The enemy would be deterred, he was sure, from attacking a world covered by a superdreadnought. But it would make it impossible to concentrate his units in a hurry if he needed to send a squadron forward to the front lines. He’d be damned whatever he did.
And they’re sending me a new set of StarComs, he thought as he read the next set of messages. It wouldn’t have been a bad idea, if he’d been sent reinforcements as well, but now . . . all he had was the chance to watch an enemy raid in real time. Hadn’t they read his report? The basic problem hadn’t changed at all! He simply didn’t have the ships to cover every prospective target without spreading his forces too thin. Do they want me to fail?
The thought sent ice shivering down his spine. There were failures, petty minor failures, and disasters that could easily cost them any remaining chance at victory. Surely, no one would risk the war effort just for a puny political advantage? He’d already been disgraced; it was unlikely, incredibly unlikely, that he would be allowed to return to the front lines. But if someone hated him enough to sabotage his career still further . . .
He shook his head. It didn’t matter. All that mattered, here and now, was ambushing the enemy and destroying their ships before it was too late.
“Gateway opening,” Weiberg said. “Returning to realspace . . . now!”
Kat braced herself. Aswan was the most heavily defended system they’d visited, even if she had no intention of going within range of any of the fixed defenses. The display rapidly started to fill with red icons: a squadron of superdreadnoughts, a handful of smaller ships, a dozen industrial nodes, and repair yards . . . Aswan might be tiny, compared to Tyre, but it was clearly a formidable part of the enemy’s war machine.
“They’re scanning us,” Roach warned. “They know we’re here.”
“I would have been disappointed in them if they didn’t,” Kat said dryly. The squadron wasn’t even trying to hide. “Launch drones, then hold position.”
“Aye, Captain,” Roach said.
Kat smiled, then watched the display, feeling her heart starting to race in her chest. The enemy would do . . . what? They’d worked their way through a dozen simulations, but experience had told her time and time again that the enemy would come up with something new and unexpected. She rather suspected the enemy commander would try to send his superdreadnoughts up after her, if they were in working order, but he had to know they wouldn’t catch her. It would only make him look good to his superiors.
“The superdreadnoughts are being surprisingly slow at bringing up their drives,” the XO said through their private link. “They may be in worse condition than we assumed.”
“Probably better to give them a wide berth anyway,” Kat sent back. “They might still have all their launchers armed, ready to fire.”
“Enemy cruisers are altering course,” Roach reported. “They’re coming up after us.”
“Plan Beta,” Kat said. “Launch external missiles as planned, then prepare to jump back into hyperspace.”
“Aye, Captain,” Roach said. He worked his console for a long moment. “Missiles away; I say again, missiles away.”
Kat nodded, never taking her eyes off the display. Missiles were normally impossible to hide; they blazed brightly as they roared towards their targets. But missiles launched on unpowered vectors, as if they were nothing more than meteors, were a different matter. It was quite possible that even active sensors would miss their presence if they had something brighter to track.
“Drive powering up now, Captain,” Weiberg said. “We can jump back into hyperspace on your mark.”
“Hold it,” Kat ordered. It would put a great deal of wear and tear on the vor
tex generator, but she wanted to see the results of her plan for herself. As long as the enemy didn’t get into firing range, it was perfectly safe. “Stand by . . .”
The missiles went active. Half of them lanced towards the cruisers, locked onto their targets and angling towards them with deadly force. The other half went after the orbital facilities—Kat had targeted everything apart from the StarCom—with the intention of wreaking as much havoc as possible. Enemy point defense units went active at terrifying speed, targeting the missiles and trying to kill as many of them as possible before time ran out. Kat smirked to herself, coldly, as three missiles made it through the defenses and slammed into the industrial nodes. The cruisers might have survived unscathed—she couldn’t help a flicker of reluctant admiration for the enemy’s point defense—but at least she’d left a mark on the base itself.
“The cruisers are accelerating, Captain,” Roach reported.
“Helm, take us out of here,” Kat ordered. The Theocracy would have to stomach the damage she’d inflicted—and the fact they hadn’t managed to even target her ships, let alone destroy them. “Best possible speed.”
“Aye, Captain,” Weiberg said. “Gateway opening . . . now.”
Kat smiled coldly as they slipped into the welcoming lights of hyperspace, then high-tailed it away from the enemy base. It was just possible the enemy had managed to coordinate an ambush, but hyperspace was clear. The squadron picked up speed, altering course so sharply that the enemy would find it hard to track them even if a ship had followed them through the gateway. By the time the enemy recovered, they would be well on their way to the next target.
“Good work, all of you,” she said. They’d hurt the enemy—and they’d collected valuable new pieces of data on enemy sensor networks. It would be easier, next time, to program missiles to slip through the defenses and strike their targets. “Adjust course for Morningside.”
“Aye, Captain,” Weiberg said.
Kat rose to her feet. “Mr. XO, you have the bridge,” she said. “I’ll be in my office.”
“Yes, Captain,” the XO said.
“We need to redeploy our ships to Aswan at once,” Commodore Isaac said. “Admiral, the enemy took out two small industrial nodes . . .”
“Through using a trick that won’t work twice,” Admiral Junayd said coolly. The report from Aswan hadn’t made comfortable reading, but it had confirmed his belief that the enemy fleet didn’t have the firepower to take on a heavily defended world. There was no way they would have passed up the chance to destroy Aswan and an entire squadron of superdreadnoughts if they’d had the arms. “This is not the time to lose our nerve.”
“Lose our nerve?” Isaac repeated. “Admiral, with all due respect . . .”
“They want us to panic,” Admiral Junayd said. He keyed the star chart, highlighting the distance between Aswan and Morningside. “They want us to concentrate our forces at Aswan, defending a world that is already armed to the teeth. In the meantime, they pick another target for themselves and attack, relying on the confusion of their first assault to leave us unable to stop them. No, this is no time to lose our nerve.”
“Unless the spy was a plant all along,” Isaac said. “They might have used him against us . . .”
“The attack on Aswan was annoying and embarrassing, but it was not a significant victory for them,” Admiral Junayd said. He found it hard to keep his voice under control. None of his subordinates had dared to question him before, had they? “We can easily replace the nodes they hit, nor will a second such attack do any more damage. More to the point, if that spy is actually a plant, they could have used him to manipulate us to move everything back to Aswan. We have good reason to believe he is working for us.”
“Unless it’s an elaborate trap,” Isaac said.
“Only a fool would come up with a plan that depends on the enemy doing precisely the right thing,” Admiral Junayd snarled. “We could have moved the entire fleet to Ringer”—and he knew people on the homeworld would be asking precisely why he hadn’t—“and trapped them there. Instead, we waited . . . but they could not have known we would wait.”
He tapped the table, sharply. “We will wait here,” he added shortly. “When the enemy arrives, we will engage their ships and destroy them. Do you understand me?”
Isaac held himself steady. “Yes, sir.”
And you will ready the knife for my back if the enemy is delayed, Admiral Junayd thought coldly. Do Commonwealth commanders have someone ready to stick a knife in their backs too?
“Good,” Admiral Junayd said. “Now prepare your squadron for battle. We would not like to be unready for the enemy now, would we?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“Mermaid has returned, Captain.”
Kat nodded, shortly. “Has there been any major change?”
“No, Captain,” the XO said. “The only problematic issue is unusual distortions of hyperspace surrounding the double star.”
“As expected,” Kat said. “Do they pose any danger?”
“Probably not, unless we do something stupid,” the XO said. “There don’t seem to be any actual surprises . . .”
“Good,” Kat said. “I’ll be on the bridge in a moment. We’ll move in immediately afterwards.”
She closed her terminal and then rose to her feet. Morningside was odd; a binary star system that had managed to produce a habitable world. The primary star was G2, like Sol; the secondary star was a red dwarf. Kat had a feeling, judging from the amount of debris that had gathered at the barycenter between the two stars, that the reason the first colony had failed had been because the combined gravity wells of two stars and several large planets pulled showers of asteroids in towards the larger worlds. A spacefaring colony wouldn’t have any problems deflecting or destroying a rain of death, but a colony without any orbital defenses would be in deep trouble.
And it makes it harder to reach the system through hyperspace, she thought grimly. It may not stop anyone from getting here, but it does make it more difficult to see what might be waiting for us.
She gathered herself, then walked through the hatch and onto the bridge. The XO, sitting in the command chair, rose as she entered, then nodded towards the display. Mermaid’s report was waiting for her, focused on Morningside itself. There was little else in the system save for a handful of tiny facilities at the barycenter. Below the report, lines of text from the intelligence analysts warned that the planet seemed to be producing five or six times as much food as the population needed, even assuming each person ate more than the average citizen on Tyre or another Commonwealth world. Judging from the presence of no less than three orbital stations, it was quite likely that Morningside sold food to the rest of the sector.
Odd, she thought as she sat down. It’s rarely economical to ship food outside a single star system.
“Mr. XO,” she said, putting the question aside for later consideration. “Is the squadron ready to move?”
“Yes, Captain,” the XO said. “The squadron is fully at your command.”
“Then take us in,” Kat ordered.
Lightning quivered gently as she passed through the eddies in hyperspace caused by the binary star, just enough to make Kat nervous, then advanced towards the planet at high speed, her crew watching carefully for unexpected threats. It didn’t look as though there was anything in hyperspace save for random flickers of energy that might mark the birth of later energy storms. Kat watched the countdown rapidly tick down to zero, then braced herself as the starship plunged through the gateway. They had arrived.
“Enemy defenses are scanning us,” Roach reported. “Their planetary defense network is going online.”
Such as it is, Kat thought. She would have considered Morningside an ideal location for a cloudscoop and a small industrial base, but the Theocracy seemingly disagreed. What more did they want? They had a loyal population, a gas
giant just waiting to be mined, and a large cluster of asteroids for raw materials. Her father would have considered it to be a sure thing and happily invested in the system for a small share of the return. They didn’t seem to care about building up either the industry or the defenses.
“Engage the automated weapons platforms,” she ordered. “Target long-range missiles on the stations, then transmit a warning. The stations will be fired on within ten minutes.”
“Aye, Captain,” Roach said.
Kat nodded as her squadron opened fire, targeting the weapons platforms. It was unlikely the Theocracy’s servants would abandon their posts, but she owed it to her conscience to at least try to avoid killing them. Morningside simply didn’t have the firepower to stop her and they both knew it.
Her terminal bleeped. “Captain, this is Parkinson in Tactical,” a voice said. “We believe we have located a handful of spaceports and space-related facilities on the planet’s surface.”
“Mark them for destruction,” Kat ordered after a brief glance at the display. None of the spaceports seemed to be located near the cities, which was odd, but if the Theocracy was more concerned about control than economics, it did make a certain kind of sense. “Upload the targeting coordinates to tactical, then have them taken out once we’re in orbit.”
And there’s little chance of hitting a civilian base, she thought. Everyone we kill will be working directly for the enemy.
“I’m picking up a response from the stations,” Linda said. “It isn’t polite.”
Kat smiled, unsurprised. “Tactical, take out the stations when the deadline runs out,” she ordered. “Smash them into as many pieces as possible.”
“Aye, Captain,” Roach said.
“Admiral,” Captain Haran reported, “the enemy is attacking Morningside!”
Falcone Strike (Angel in the Whirlwind Book 2) Page 26