But we’re already ramping up our production levels, she thought. The intelligence analysts had already calculated that the enemy couldn’t have more than a hundred superdreadnoughts at most, despite the terrifying scale of their military buildup. Give us a couple of years and we’ll have them outnumbered three to one.
“There’s something else of considerable interest in the Aswan System, something we missed earlier because none of our sources were in the know,” the XO said. “This place here.”
Kat’s eyes narrowed. The naval base orbited a Mars-type world that was slowly being terraformed, and there was a gas giant, but none of the other worlds in the system seemed anything other than utterly unremarkable. She’d glanced at the old files, dating back to the UN, yet nothing had stood out. But the XO was pointing to the fifth planet from the star . . .
“This planet is called Redemption,” the XO said very quietly. “Apparently, there’s a POW camp there.”
“Mermaid will need to take a look at the planet,” Kat said. It could be a trap . . . but Aswan was in a good location to serve as a clearinghouse for POWs: far enough from the front to make it unlikely a rescue mission could be launched, close enough to allow the enemy to sort through their prisoners and pick out anyone who might be useful. “If there’s a POW camp there . . .”
“If,” the XO said. “There’s at least one squadron of superdreadnoughts on guard at all times, Captain. Getting in would be a major headache if we had a battle squadron of our own.”
“Which we don’t,” Kat said slowly. She briefly considered attempting to get word to Admiral Christian, then realized he probably couldn’t spare the ships to mount an offensive so far behind enemy lines. Her ships were expendable; his superdreadnoughts were not. “If we could lure those superdreadnoughts away, somehow . . .”
“It might not be possible,” the XO said. “They’d be fools to leave Aswan uncovered.”
“True,” Kat agreed. She looked at the star chart, thinking hard. Could she use the spy’s communications codes, now that the enemy knew they could trust him? But unless he told them that she’d picked up reinforcements from somewhere, they wouldn’t deploy both squadrons of superdreadnoughts. “We could sneak a team of Marines down to the surface.”
“But then we wouldn’t be able to get the prisoners out without bringing in the squadron,” the XO countered. “They’d have ample time to intercept us.”
Kat nodded slowly. The enemy superdreadnoughts they’d sighted at Aswan might not be fully combat-capable, but they could lumber to Redemption and intercept her ships before they managed to pick up the POWs and retreat. She ran through a handful of possibilities in her head, yet nothing seemed to work. There was no way they could do more than attack the POW camp’s defenses before they were forced to run for their lives.
And that would tell them we knew about the camp, she thought. They’d either improve the defenses or move the prisoners to a different location.
“We will need to take a careful look at that planet, under stealth,” she said. Redemption didn’t appear to be as heavily defended as Aswan—that would have tipped off her scouts that there was something there worth guarding—but it would certainly be surrounded by a handful of passive sensors. “Have Mermaid prepared for a deployment there.”
“Aye, Captain,” the XO said. He keyed his wristcom briefly, then smiled. “We do also have the convoy schedules. There’s a large convoy passing through Aswan in four days and another one, apparently an important convoy, passing through UNAS-G2-6585 in two weeks. I don’t think we’ve any hope of capturing the first convoy, but we could certainly have a go at destroying it.”
Kat accessed the file, then frowned. “It might easily be a trap.”
“In that case, our defector friend is a liar,” the XO pointed out. “But . . . if that’s the case, we’d know about it by now. The Marines were careful to make sure he was given a full-spectrum interrogation. If he was conditioned to resist interrogation, Captain, we’d know about it by now.”
“Because his brains would be leaking out of his skull,” Kat said. “We could slip into Aswan with Mermaid, then lurk in ambush while Mermaid prowls around Redemption, hunting for the POWs. If the convoy arrives as expected, we can launch a full spread of missiles and then drop back into hyperspace. There would be no time to engage the defenders . . .”
“Just a smash-and-run mission,” the XO said. He studied the convoy timetable, thinking it through. “It should be doable. And it will knock the enemy back over, after their success earlier.”
Kat nodded. The enemy’s morale had to have skyrocketed after their successful ambush, even if they hadn’t managed to destroy her entire squadron. She’d hoped her string of attacks had started to demoralize the Theocracy’s forces, even if it hadn’t convinced them to redeploy ships to hunt her down, but their victory would have reversed all that. Pulling off another ambush, right in the heart of their naval base, would hopefully send their morale back into a downward spin. Who knew? It might even lead to the death of the commanding officer who’d plotted the successful ambush in the first place.
There’s something unpleasant about hoping the enemy will off one of their own officers, she acknowledged in the privacy of her own thoughts. But if it gets rid of a dangerously competent enemy officer, it might be worth it.
“We’ll depart in two hours, if Mermaid is ready,” she said. An idea crossed her mind and she smiled. “I want you to speak to our spy and put together a message for the enemy. Tell them . . . tell them that we’re getting reinforcements and we intend to resume full-scale offenses as soon as possible.”
“I’m sure that will worry them,” the XO said after a moment. He didn’t sound convinced. “Do you have something in mind?”
“I have a vague idea,” Kat said. It wasn’t something she wanted to discuss, not until it had jelled into something useful, but she might as well start laying the groundwork. “They had a good idea of our strength from Verdean, saw the same number of ships at Ringer, and then they kicked our asses at Morningside. They know they inflicted enough damage to put some of our ships out of commission permanently.”
She smiled. “Let them think we’re getting reinforcements,” she concluded. “They’ll stop being reluctant to send ships away from Aswan if they think we have a serious chance at ripping away the defenses of another planet.”
The XO frowned. “You plan to lure them away?”
“It’s something to consider,” Kat said. No matter how she looked at it, there was no way her squadron could beat eighteen superdreadnoughts. It would be a minor miracle if she managed to scratch their paint, let alone inflict any real damage. “They won’t lower the defenses of Aswan enough for us to attack the naval base, but we might be able to do something to the POW camp.”
“Understood,” the XO said. “But they’ll be doing their best not to dance to our tune.”
“I know,” Kat said. She met his eyes. “Prepare the message. Let them think we have reinforcements. And then we can see what we can do with it.”
“We do have a handful of decoy drones left,” the XO said. “But will they be enough to fool the enemy?”
Kat shrugged. “We’ll find out,” she said. It was quite possible that the enemy would refuse to allow her to lead them by the nose. Or perhaps they would be too convinced by the drones and decline the opportunity to do real harm. “I’ll see you on the bridge just before we depart.”
She watched him go, then looked up at the star chart. POWs! That changed everything. She knew she couldn’t leave POWs in enemy custody, not after the horror stories from Cadiz and the other occupied worlds. Leaving them in enemy hands would be a betrayal of everything the oath she’d sworn stood for. But the enemy would have their own plans for the POWs . . . and they would probably have taken precautions to ensure that escape was impossible. If there were prisons on Tyre where prisoners were implanted wi
th a device just to knock them out if they ever left, why couldn’t the Theocracy do the same? Or worse? Give the prisoners explosive collars to make sure they couldn’t leave without permission?
And if we try to take them by force, she thought, they might kill the prisoners.
She shook her head as she rose and headed for the hatch. There was no way she could talk herself into abandoning the POWs, not as long as there was a slight chance they could be rescued. Mermaid would sweep around Redemption; Davidson and his men would take a look at the records and determine if there was any way to pull off a rescue. And if it was possible, Kat would move heaven and earth to carry it out.
“Set course for Aswan,” she ordered as she stepped onto the bridge. They were only a couple of days from Aswan, although the remainder of the squadron would have to reposition again. They’d meet up once they’d completed the raid on Aswan and slipped away from any pursuit. “Mr. XO?”
“Mermaid has her orders, Captain,” the XO said. “She’s ready to depart with us. The remainder of the squadron will move to the next RV point, after we depart.”
“Good,” Kat said. She looked at the status display, then cleared her throat. “Helm, take us to Aswan.”
“Aye, Captain,” Weiberg said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
“I have the report for you here, Admiral.”
“Thank you, Captain,” Admiral Junayd said. “Rather odd, don’t you think, that a base such as Aswan would suffer a malfunction that destroyed an entire shuttle in transit?”
Captain Haran frowned. “I wouldn’t know, sir.”
“Did they have a maintenance issue that finally caught up with them,” Admiral Junayd asked, “or was it something more sinister?”
He smiled to himself, then took the datapad and scanned the report. It wasn’t very informative, but the investigative team—if only to escape the charge of being lax when a valuable shuttle had been lost—had managed to write fifty pages that boiled down to a simple observation that they didn’t know how the shuttle had been lost. Seventeen people were dead and, while most of them had been civilians, it was still inconvenient. The best maintenance crews had all been forwarded to the front.
“Have the remaining shuttles examined, just in case,” he ordered finally. An explosion when the shuttle was entering atmosphere smacked of a maintenance error, suggesting the crews were lazy or incompetent or both. “I wouldn’t want this to be held against me.”
“No, sir,” Captain Haran said. “I’ll get right on it.”
He saluted and then walked out of the hatch. Admiral Junayd smiled thinly, then turned his attention to the star chart. The victory against the raiding squadron had been a success—and the propagandists back home had turned it into a truly staggering victory against overwhelming force—but he knew, all too well, that it wasn’t perfect. A number of ships had escaped and some of them, he was sure, would be repaired quickly. And then the raiders would start raiding again.
And my superiors were already talking about cancelling the planned supplies, he thought sourly.
It was a galling thought. The higher authorities had been forwarding everything but reinforcements to him, yet now they were talking about cutting back. There was no shortage of demand, after all, and only a limited supply. Maybe Admiral Junayd no longer needed resupply now that he’d given the enemy a bloody nose. But he knew the enemy hadn’t been beaten, certainly not completely. It was frustrating, incredibly so, to realize that the victory had safeguarded his personal position—even Commodore Isaac had been quiet since the enemy had been forced to flee—but not secured the sector. He needed to capitalize on his victory, to prepare defenses for the time the enemy showed themselves again, yet he lacked even the bare bones of war material to do it. And when the enemy struck, they would undermine his position, even if their offensive did nothing more than annoy him.
He looked at the timetables, then sighed. One convoy due to arrive within hours, several more, including two sent to Aswan itself, due over the next few weeks. Perhaps the enemy would wait long enough for him to do something, but what? The best idea he’d had, so far, was stripping Aswan of its fixed defenses to give the rest of the sector additional protection, yet he knew he’d be executed if he tried. Aswan could not be left undefended.
But it will have a squadron of superdreadnoughts to protect it, unless they get called to the front, he thought savagely. There were already reports that the front might well start demanding his mobile units, even though he desperately needed them himself. He’d heard rumors, whispered from officer to officer, that the officers in command were plotting a major offensive against the Commonwealth. But if they take my superdreadnoughts, I won’t have a hope of stopping even a minor attack on a weakly defended world.
“I’ll just have to pray,” he said to himself. God could help him, if He would, but no one else could. “And see just what happens.”
Kat couldn’t help feeling cold as Lightning slipped towards Aswan, protected by her cloaking device and distance from the enemy defenses. It didn’t look as though the enemy had expanded their fixed defenses, although the presence of two squadrons of superdreadnoughts was a powerful argument against attacking the planet directly. The swarming activity around one of the squadrons—and the repair yard—worried her more than she cared to admit. If the defector had been telling the truth, if the Theocracy truly had too few repair yards, it was possible the enemy was seeking to expand its facilities. And that would only make them more dangerous, in the future.
From a practical point of view, the Theocracy’s internal structure seemed absurd. Kat had been half inclined to dismiss some of what she’d heard because it was unbelievable, before she’d recalled some of the lessons from her youth. There had been no shortage of business models that had called for massive expansion, concentrating on a single core competency and trying to snatch as much of the market share as possible before their debts and overextension caught up with them. Sometimes it worked; often, far more often, the business collapsed into chaos and failure, the best of its facilities and staff snatched up by other businesses or its creditors. The Theocracy had, quite literally, mortgaged its future to establish itself as a serious galactic power.
But they don’t have the staying power for a long war, she thought grimly. If we can hold on long enough to get our industrial might into play, we can kick their ass from here to the other side of the universe.
It was a tempting thought. Wait a year, then launch another series of raids into enemy territory, using modern ships and improved weapons. The Theocracy’s industrial base, already tiny, could be hammered down to nothing, cutting off their lines of supply. Their fleets would grind to a halt for lack of supplies, allowing them to be picked off at will; their occupied worlds, already seething with unrest, would overthrow their tormentors and declare independence. And the Commonwealth, powered by a mighty industrial base, would sweep through the enemy systems and invade their homeworld itself.
Sure, her own thoughts mocked her. And what will we do with the spoils of victory?
“Captain,” Weiberg said. “We have reached our destination.”
“Hold us here,” Kat ordered. Like most worlds, Aswan had a dedicated emergence zone for starships, although, unusually, it was some distance from the planet itself. She wasn’t sure if it was a sign of paranoia—Tyre’s emergence zone had been put back after the first attacks on the planet’s surface—or a simple acknowledgment that the Theocracy’s navigation was far from perfect. “Passive sensors only. I don’t want anything that might betray our presence to the enemy.”
She settled back in her command chair and forced herself to wait. Assuming the convoy hadn’t been delayed, there would be no more than an hour before they dropped out of hyperspace, but even a rigid structure like the Theocracy had to know that convoys could easily be late. There was no point in killing someone for a harmless mistake, was there? But if s
ome of the stories from the defector were accurate, it was quite common for the Theocracy’s officers to kill their subordinates if they needed a scapegoat. The prospect of being executed to cover his superior’s dealings had prompted the defector to plan a successful escape.
And now he’s going to lose his wives and children, Kat thought. It was hard to feel any guilt, even though she knew it would be a problem. She’d prepared adoption papers for the girls, just in case, but she had a feeling the matter would be settled out of court. I would feel sorry for him if he hadn’t arranged for his wife to be stripped of her free will.
She’d rarely had nightmares after Piker’s Peak, even after the first time she’d been at true risk of losing her life. But she’d had nightmares after looking into the poor woman’s eyes, nightmares in which she too was a slave, trapped by her own mind . . . nightmares in which she was shattered by her friends and family. Whatever happened, Kat promised herself, the story would not be lost. The entire galaxy would hear about what had happened, about what the Theocracy was prepared to do to an innocent girl. Maybe then the morons who thought it was possible to make a just peace would shut up . . .
Calm down, she told herself, firmly. Calm down and prepare yourself for the coming battle.
The tension slowly rose on the bridge as the timer ticked down the final minutes before the convoy was due to arrive. Kat forced her breathing to slow to a steady pace as she concentrated her mind, keeping herself as calm as possible. The timer reached zero and began to count up again, reminding her that the convoy was late. She smiled inwardly as Weiberg let out a frustrated sound, as if he’d built up as much anticipation as she had, then shook her head. It wasn’t as though she’d pegged everything on the enemy arriving on time.
Falcone Strike (Angel in the Whirlwind Book 2) Page 32