First Strike

by Christopher Nuttall

  “I’ll speak to him in my office,” he said, tiredly. His body wanted sleep, but he had no time to rest. Too much needed to be done in too little time. At least Admiral Sampson was in position. They’d certainly give the Funks a bloody nose when they attacked. “Has there been any update from the IDG team?”

  “Nothing since the last update,” his aide said, patiently. “They merely reported that they were in position and running test cycles on the generator.”

  Sun nodded, slowly. He’d named the generator personally, pointing out that the Galactics probably weren't interested in the teachings of a military theorist from a society that hadn’t possessed gunpowder at the time. And besides, the name was fitting.

  “Inform me at once if there are any changes,” he ordered.

  He’d go talk to the politician. Maybe that would distract him from the endless waiting.

  * * *

  “Layabouts,” Ward thundered. “Look at them down there, screaming for help. Why didn't they think about the dangers before it was too late?”

  Betty, his secretary, shrugged. She was an elderly woman, appointed to the post at the insistence of Ward’s wife, even though he would have preferred a young and charming girl just out of college. Not that he would have touched her, of course; he could hardly have afforded the scandal after years of making political enemies. It had been bad enough when the IRS had insisted on auditing their accounts, twice in a row.

  “Young people these days have no sense of history,” Ward continued. “A whole universe of opportunity awaits them and they don’t even care.”

  He’d been a grown man when the human race had been contacted by Mentor. The world had seemed to be entering a decline that might have resulted in anarchy, or so he’d feared. There were no longer any hopes and dreams for the young, no clear crusades against evil and politicians who were little more than crooks. An angry man had gone into journalism, fully expecting to spend his last days reporting on another seeming constant that had just turned upside down. And instead the Galactics had arrived and offered humanity the keys to the stars.

  Terra Nova had seemed a blessing when it had first been settled. A new world, one that could be shaped by its first settlers...if they ever got the chance. Every nation on Earth had insisted on contributing colonists, creating ethnic and racial tensions that might have torn the planet’s fragile society apart. The Funks might have proved a blessing in disguise, at least according to some of the reporters on the ground. Uniting against a common foe had forced humanity to put its own conflicts on the backburner. And it helped that the Funks had managed to convince Earth to throw all the money it could at the Federation Navy.

  But now the Funks were on their way to Earth.

  He looked down at the screaming mob and snorted unpleasantly. Fifteen years of warning and yet relatively few people had done the smart thing and prepared an emergency plan to leave the cities and find shelter. Ward had purchased a ranch in Texas with his brother and made plans to move there as soon as necessary, once the shit really hit the fan. But he’d been reluctant to leave until it was clear that there was nothing more he could do to keep reporting the news. Maybe he’d already left it too late. The roads out of every city in America were jammed with terrified civilians trying to get out of Dodge before it was too late. Constant broadcasts from the President appealing for calm were having almost no effect at all. Everyone knew that the President and his family were going to be in a bunker when the Funks arrived, safe from everything apart from planet-crackers. But what about their family?

  The police – what remained of them after nearly half of the NYPD had deserted – finally moved in to try to contain the riot. Ward watched emotionlessly as some rioters scattered, while others tried to fight – or carry on looting under cover of the riot. Some of the reports from the inner cities, where the police were too overstretched to go, were horrifying. He caught sight of a young man, blood streaming from a blow to the forehead, being carted away by a pair of police officers, just before the first gas canisters started to burst. God alone knew what would happen to the poor bastard. The police were generally good at taking care of injured civilians, even would-be rioters, but Ward had heard that the hospitals were overwhelmed and short-staffed. A blow to the head that would have been easy to handle in hospital might prove fatal if he didn’t receive medical treatment in time.

  “They should get their heads out of their asses,” he muttered, as a line of rioters charged the police. Someone had been distributing weapons, probably one of the professional troublemakers who kept getting involved with peaceful protests and turning them into violent riots. “What the hell sort of good do they think that this is going to cause?”

  The building rocked, slightly. “And what the hell was that?”

  Betty checked her Ipad. “Security reports that some of the rioters just slammed against our doors,” she said. Ward had ordered them closed with the emergency shutters as soon as the riot had started to take shape. There was a fine line between reporting the news and becoming part of it. “They’re recommending that we evacuate the building, just in case.”

  “Tell the crew that anyone who wants to go can go, if they use the tunnels,” Ward said, shortly. He hired brave journalists, men and women ready to put themselves into danger just for a scoop, but the editors and other supporting staff weren’t chosen for their bravery. “At least we moved operations to our country site.”

  He looked down again and shook his head. The police had counterattacked, knocking the rioters down and securing their hands with plastic cuffs, pushing male and female protestors against the walls and forcing them to wait until they could be taken away. Most of the dangerous rioters scattered, intent on taking the fighting elsewhere. The police would normally have thrown up a cordon to catch them, but Ward had no idea if they had enough manpower to do it now that the entire city was on the verge of collapse. He caught sight of a pair of bodies wearing NYPD uniforms and shuddered. The young might talk of living without rules, but Ward was old enough to know that anarchy was never a good thing.

  “Who needs the blasted Funks?” He demanded. “We’re perfectly capable of wrecking our own planet without them””

  The television switched from a CNN update to another speech from the President. Ward rolled his eyes and changed the channel. The President wasn't the solution, not when he was part of the problem. People were scared and no amount of empty reassurance from politicians would change that. And no one had the moral stature to stand up and ask for calm, with the possible exception of Admiral Sampson. He could run for President based purely upon his war record and probably win in a landslide.

  Assuming we have a next election campaign, he thought. Even if the Funks didn't destroy the world, who knew what would happen after this week of anarchy?

  And all the human race could do was wait for Judgement Day.

  * * *

  “We are approaching Earth, My Lady.”

  Lady Dalsha opened her eyes and clambered out of the water bath in her quarters. Sleeping in water had once been an unimaginable luxury; even now, when they had access to the boundless resources of space, it was still regarded with awe. At one time, she would have considered it nothing more than her due. Now… she knew it was perhaps her last chance to experience luxury.

  “Proceed as planned,” she ordered, as a force field flicked the water off her scales. “I will be on the bridge directly.”

  Oddly, she found herself thinking of her hatchlings. All females were expected to contribute at least two clutches of eggs to her clan before going into danger, a tradition that dated back to the days where they’d struggled for water and resources. She'd never seen them since they’d been taken by the clan mothers, not knowingly. It was tradition. The clan came first, beyond any maternal instincts. And yet they would carry on her genes even if she lost the coming battle.

  But what sort of universe would they inherit?

  She put the thought aside as she donned her uniform and
walked to the bridge. Everything had just become simple again. Either she would win, or she would die.

  If the Hegemony had to fall, at least it would take the human race down with it.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  “Admiral?”

  Admiral Sun looked up from his desk, fighting back the urgent desire to yawn. He’d caught a couple of brief naps in-between reading reports and monitoring training simulations, but not enough to keep him from feeling sleepy. The doctors had given him a booster, adding strict warnings that he was not to even consider using it until the enemy actually arrived.

  “Yes,” he said, “what is it?”

  “Long-range sensors have detected quantum gates opening near Mars,” Wallenberg said. “CIC calls them Hegemony superdreadnought gates.”

  “Understood,” Sun said. He pressed the tap against his bare arm and grimaced as it pumped the booster into his bloodstream. Users got nearly a day before they had to go to bed to sleep it off. A second dose was out of the question. “I'm on my way. Alert the fleet and dispatch a courier boat to Admiral Sampson.”

  He glanced around his office, taking a final look at the wall he’d covered with medals and decorations from his career in both the PLAN and the Federation Navy, and then headed to the CIC. The booster was starting to work, leaving him feeling supercharged, as if he had eaten enough sugar to turn him into a hyperactive child. It was a shame that he couldn't feel so good permanently, but the doctors had made it quite clear; boosters were more addictive than even Joy Juice and breaking the addiction was almost impossible. Even an admiral couldn't order boosters without facing hard questions from the medical staff. He strode into the CIC, waving aside the Marine who was about to announce his presence, and took one look at the display. A handful of red icons clustered near Mars.

  “Curious,” he said, aloud. CIC’s tactical staff had already started attempting to project the enemy’s intentions, yet their tactics made little sense. Even if the Funks intended to slip back into quantum space and reach Earth that way, the Federation Navy had already been alerted. Standard doctrine ordered starships to emerge as close to their target as possible, to minimise the time their enemies had to prepare their defences. “Tactical analysis?”

  “Maybe they intend to blow up the Marine facilities at Olympus Mons,” Wallenberg suggested. “Or perhaps they intend to destroy Scarlet Base.”

  “Or Robinson City,” Sun agreed. And yet that didn’t quite make sense either. None of humanity’s facilities on Mars were in any way vital, certainly not compared to the Luna Yards or Island One. There might have been a few million humans on Mars slowly turning the planet into a decent place to live, but why bother to target them…

  …Unless the Funks aimed at total extermination. The thought made him shiver, despite what the sociologists had claimed time and time again. They pointed to Funk history and asserted that the Funks didn't destroy their enemies; they merely assimilated them into the victorious clan. But that hadn't worked out too well for the Gobbles, or anyone else unlucky enough to fall into their claws. Multiracial breeding was just as impossible for the Funks as for any other race, limiting how far outsiders could blend into the victorious Hegemony.

  Not for the first time, he found himself cursing the limitations of active and passive sensors. Opening a quantum gate generated a pulse that travelled faster than light, but all other sensors were restricted to light-speed. The Funks could be bombarding Mars now and Earth wouldn't know about it for several minutes. Mars would send an update as soon as possible, yet even if Mars was under attack the Federation Navy couldn't move out of position to cover the red planet, not when Earth was threatened. The separatists on Mars would make vast amounts of political capital out of it.

  “Earth has issued a warning,” Wallenberg said, a minute later. “All emergency procedures are going into effect.”

  “Keep the Federation Council informed, but don’t give them an open channel,” Sun ordered. There was no point in the Council issuing orders, not now, but few politicians would realise that. Maybe it would cost him his career… if, of course, enough humans remained alive afterwards for him to be put in front of a court-martial board. “Inform me if anything on Earth requires my attention.”

  It shouldn't, he knew. All civilian aircraft would have been ordered to the nearest airport, regardless of who they were or where they were going. The shelters, such as they were, would be taking people in, while others headed for basements or homes in the countryside. Everyone had been advised to prepare for several days without food or drink, causing a rush on supermarkets and drugstores. The results were chaotic, but assuming Earth survived, they should be tolerable. He’d had plenty of time to ensure that the Federation Navy’s entire complement of personnel – including reserves – were called up for duty. Down on Earth, national formations would be taking up their own defensive positions, or hiding in the countryside to launch an insurgency against alien occupiers. Sun knew he wouldn't live to see the insurgency. One way or another, he had no intention of surrendering his command to the Funks.

  “Update,” the sensor officer snapped. “Enemy fleet is moving towards Earth.”

  Sun frowned as the display updated. The Funks seemed to have chosen to ignore Mars completely, yet why had they decided to come out so far from Earth? Unless...they wanted the human defenders concentrated? Did they have some new superweapon? The Funks might have been very bad at basic research – ONI estimated that they had only a handful of really competent scientists – but they might have bought something from one of the other Galactics. Some societies were far better at keeping secrets from the human race than the Funks.

  “Order Commodore Yu to prepare to engage,” Sun ordered. The Hegemony force bearing down on Earth was too powerful for him to stop if he played by the rules, at least as the Galactics understood them. But he had other ideas. Humanity had had plenty of time to think of nasty tricks, some of them coming from science-fiction writers who had been thinking about space warfare long before Earth had started to build a fleet to defend the planet. “And send in the gunboats as soon as Yu deploys. We need to keep him covered as long as possible.”

  * * *

  The planet the humans called Mars was worthless, at least to the Hegemony. Apart from establishing a tiny observation post on the planet hundreds of years ago, the Association had largely agreed. There were plenty of habitable worlds without intelligent races in the galaxy to settle, so why bother colonising Mars? The human terraforming project had been viewed as a sign of weakness by the Hegemony, an admission that humanity didn't have the nerve or the strength to establish itself as a galactic power. Lady Dalsha wondered, instead, if it was a sign of something else, a grasping nature that rivalled the Hegemony. How many worlds could the humans have claimed by now if the galaxy had been largely unpopulated?

  She pushed the thought aside as her fleet shook down into battle formation. Two of her subordinates had revealed their nervousness by questioning her orders. Thankfully, they’d had the sense to do it privately, saving her the need to assert herself by having them both killed. The humans seemed to promote their officers based on merit rather than political connections; indeed, they seemed to disapprove of nepotism. Lady Dalsha found it difficult to grasp why human clans weren't expected to boost their members where possible, but she had to admit that it worked out for them. Squashing potential rivals from other clans might not have been the best strategy since the Hegemony had been invited into the stars. But that was something they hadn’t been able to change.

  It was tempting to send a message back to the Empress and learn what was happening on Hegemony Prime, but she’d forbidden all communications. The civil war was probably underway by now, with the Navy fragmenting along clan lines and Household troops fighting for dominance. It was quite possible that the Empress was dead. Not knowing was agony, yet if she had known… what could she do about it? Nothing, save ensuring that the human race was in no condition to take advantage of the coming power va
cuum. Revenge was all they had left right now.

  “Take us towards Earth,” she ordered, flatly. Coming out near Mars flew in the face of tactical doctrine, but it made it harder for the humans to surprise her. And perhaps her tactics would confuse and worry them. Humans had more imagination than most of her kind, so maybe they’d imagine all kinds of superweapons she didn’t possess. Another lesson from the clan wars prior to the First Empress was that care, deliberation and an unflinching refusal to allow herself to be bullied into making mistakes could keep even a weaker force from being trapped and forced into surrender. “Launch recon probes on a constant transmission loop.”

  No one questioned the order, even though it too flew in the face of tactical doctrine. Recon drones were stealthy, but not stealthy enough to escape sensors. Some reports suggested that human sensors were considerably better than Galactic designs, probably allowing them to track the drones easily. There was nothing to be gained by ordering the drones to remain silent if they could be detected and picked off before they could transmit.

  Slowly, as the fleet crawled the distance between Mars and Earth, data started to flow into the tactical network. The human fleet didn't seem to be anything like as powerful as the fleet that had struck fear into the heart of the Hegemony, although she had to caution herself not to take anything for granted. A freighter armed with the cursed human phase cannon could probably inflict some damage on a superdreadnought before it was destroyed. Five cruisers, a design she had learned to hate, led the human fleet, but the remainder were all old model ships from the Association. The largest of them was a battlecruiser that looked to be over five hundred years old. It didn't seem as if its drive had ever been replaced, let alone updated.