“Seems a hell of a coincidence that the Tek-to-thi was on its way to Heuron carrying the heir to Lord Kharghesh’s empire,” Erik mused. “But now that I think about it, it’s probably not a coincidence at all. If Tek-to-thi was in kuhsi space, it needed an excuse to come through human space. Homeworld celebrations did that, and now there’s big command meetings at Heuron. If they want to hand Skah off to chah'nas command in person, that’s the excuse to do it. Us going renegade at Argitori just gave them an excuse to leave Homeworld earlier. Only their commander over-reached, got over-excited in the hunt as chah'nas will, got too close to Phoenix… which can be fatal. Tif’s just damn lucky her ship got boarded, and by marines as good as ours.
“It just confirms that the chah'nas are up to things, politically. The kuhsi are our allies, human allies, but now the chah'nas are playing games and trying to win them over. It means hitting Tek-to-thi was worth it, because Tif and our chah'nas prisoner just confirm we’re on the right track. The chah'nas alliance is the key in this, and whatever the hell they’re up to trying to get their old empire back.
“Which leads us to Merakis, the spiritual centre of that old empire. If we’re going to drop in on Heuron unexpected, we’ll need all the information we can get first. The Captain pointed us at Merakis, where all the Spiral’s stories begin and end. First things first.”
19
Erik blinked hard at the screens as they resolved before him. Merakis, dead ahead. Nav seemed certain they were right in the slot, and for a pleasant change there were no red lights flashing on the Engineering screen. All posts reported green, and for the first time in a while, this jump arrival did not seem particularly terrifying.
Merakis was an odd system, and one of the few in settled space where the entire system was known by the name of its most famous world to avoid confusion. The system was centred by a pleasant F-class star, but had a paired red-dwarf binary in deep orbit — three stars total with the two little dwarves doing a twirling dance about the rest. Merakis was the third and largest of five major moons about a huge gas giant in the star’s habitable zone. The giant had kept Merakis in steady orbit despite several billion years of interference from that deep-orbiting binary, a property that led to two thirds of the settled worlds in the known galaxy being technically catagorised as moons.
Merakis itself was barely habitable, with thin atmosphere and mild gravity, though it had been alive once with a benign and undramatic ecosystem. But for reasons unknown to anyone, it had found the favour of the Ancients, a fact that had in turn made it a magnet for every spacefaring species to rise to prominence in this part of the Spiral.
“I’m getting chatter,” said Shilu, tuning through the multiple spectrums that Phoenix could receive. In a three star and two gas giant system like this, there was a lot of clutter from multiple radiation sources, squealing up and down the frequencies. “Nothing human.”
“Fix on those beacons,” Geish added. “All where they should be.”
“We’re right in the slot,” Kaspowitz confirmed, as the incoming feeds from Scan and Coms gave him the data he required to conclude that. “Zero-point-six hours out at this velocity.”
That made this a combat jump. Zero-point-six hours would scare the crap out of anyone at Merakis. Which was precisely the point, as this was the tactical equivalent of high ground. They were forty degrees above system-elliptical, matching trajectories with Merakis’s orbit in a way that suggested Kaspowitz had nailed the entry window. But recently conquered systems were usually jumpy, and had defensive pickets placed out along the known and likely entry angles to prevent incoming sweeps exactly like this one.
“Nothing on near scan,” Geish said tersely. “Looks undefended.”
“Might not have responded yet,” Erik replied. Hands off the control grips for now, there was no point at this velocity, and the autos kept them steady. If someone was lying dark, they could fire up at any moment. “Anything from the beacons?”
“Nothing,” said Shilu. “They’re not talking.” Which meant they had no idea who’d been in or out of this system in the past days and weeks.
“Told you not to trust those things,” Kaspowitz growled.
“Got planet chatter now,” Shilu added. “Orbital, I think. Chah'nas, five immediate sources. No make that ten. Ten plus. All in combat encryption, I’m running it now.”
“Could be a squadron,” Shahaim suggested, watching the Engineering systems in case anything had broken loose again. “Looks like a squadron.”
“What the hell are they doing here?” Karle wondered. “We conquered this system, this is human space.”
Except that Erik had been suspicious about that since Kaspowitz had first mentioned Merakis to him. He’d checked Fleet orders on Merakis, something he’d had no cause to do until then, and found a ban on movements. That wasn’t uncommon, Fleet had all kinds of reasons it didn’t want its own ships travelling to particular systems, some better than others. But for Merakis it didn’t make much sense. Merakis had arguably greater civilian value than military. It wasn’t a great industrial system, though there was industry here in various worlds and moon-systems… all ex-tavalai, of course.
And then there’d be the academics and scientists clamouring to come here, all now indefinitely delayed. This place had great spiritual value to the tavalai, and by all accounts they’d been quite upset to lose it. Thus the Operation Urchirimala Kaspowitz had mentioned, to gather and store all the scientific and cultural data they could gather before humans came in and ruined it. This was a symbolic prize for Fleet, if nothing else, and possibly even a bargaining chip with the tavalai, in the ongoing surrender negotiations. Possibly tavalai could be allowed continued access, under supervision. Erik thought that a fair concession to the rule-respecting tavalai, who were unlikely to abuse the privilege, if it got humanity a better deal on the shape of colonial rule to come.
But instead of finding the place crawling with human vessels, it seemed now empty of either military or civilian human ships. Instead, there was a squadron of chah'nas military vessels in close orbit about Merakis, apparently unconcerned of any threat. What the hell was Fleet doing, allowing this? Chah'nas hadn’t captured this system, most tavalai space wasn’t anywhere near current chah'nas space, and Merakis in particular was not.
“This was the spiritual centre of the galaxy for chah'nas too,” Kaspowitz reminded them. “If only because they knew everyone else valued it. It became their prize. I’d guess they’ve returned to claim it.”
“Not in our fucking space they haven’t,” Erik said firmly. “Shilu, new IFF broadcast. Identify us as a tavalai warship, combat carrier Ibranakala Class.”
“Aye LC!” Shilu replied as the shock of that rippled up the bridge, little looks and glances amongst the crew. “Tavalai warship, Ibranakala Class, IFF upcoming.”
“Hell yeah,” said Kaspowitz. “Watch ‘em scatter.”
“What if they don’t run?” Geish cautioned.
“They’ll run,” said Erik. “On our current angle of attack they don’t have a choice.”
“If they don’t move soon,” Karle added, “we’ll get about half of them.”
“I can see that,” Erik acknowledged as Armscomp displayed on his screens. The chah'nas were at the bottom of Merakis’s gravity well, while Phoenix came hard and fast from outside. Any ordinance they fired now would accelerate at massive Gs under its own power, self-correcting all the way at targets that carried little V and would have to struggle long and hard out of that well. Armscomp projections showed incoming ordinance adjusting for trajectory shifts far faster than chah'nas vessels could make them, and being so close to planetary mass, they couldn’t pulse to gain V.
“Oh man,” said Shahaim, looking at that same display. “They’re so fucked.”
“They’re so fucking stupid,” Kaspowitz retorted. “Tavalai surrender was just weeks ago, they think they’re that safe here?”
“Arms, lock all weapons,” said Erik.
; “Aye, locking all weapons,” said Karle, fingers dancing on panels, then stick control grips. Preparing to end the lives of several thousand close human allies.
“Sir,” Geish growled, “if we fire under tavalai IFF we could restart the war. If we fire under Fleet IFF we could kill the Triumvirate Alliance.”
“Fleet’s problem when they murdered the Captain,” Erik said coldly. “Not mine. Mr Karle, proximity bursts on all ordinance, I don’t want any strikes.”
“Aye LC, proximity bursts all weapons. Done. Permission to fire?”
“Permission to fire.”
Karle hit the triggers and Phoenix thumped and clanked with rapid outgoing cannon.
“Lightwave arriving in ten seconds,” Kaspowitz advised. “They’ll be seeing us shortly.” And as long for light to travel back, and let them see what the chah'nas were doing in reply. They were sure to fire back, but their ordinance would be climbing the gravity well, and with full freedom of manoeuvre, Phoenix would be very hard to hit. Crippled by their lack of jump pulse, plus gravity burden, the chah'nas would not be.
“There’s Eve,” said Geish, locking long range scan onto something specific and orbiting Merakis at the higher end of low orbit. “She’s got company, two docked. Looks otherwise fine, no sign of damage.”
Which was just as well, because Eve was an archaeological treasure. Humans called it an O’Neil cylinder, but the Fathers had built it forty five thousand years before Gerard O’Neil was born. That made it the oldest structure of its size in the known galaxy. The Fathers had been nearly as fascinated by Merakis as the tavalai were today, and unable or unwilling to live on its surface, they’d built this huge, rotating cylinder nearby.
“Just be sure you don’t hit that,” Kaspowitz said to Karle. “Or else the whole galaxy will want to kill us.”
Return-light arrived. Ten seconds later, the first chah'nas ships slammed on full burn. “Whoa,” said Geish. “Full burn on one, three… seven marks. They’re going.”
“Bet that broke a few bones,” Shahaim muttered. Probably it had done far worse than that — ten seconds was no time to get everyone secure before a full burn. Some chah'nas crewmen had just died down there, for sure.
“Scan,” said Erik, “any idea what they were doing down there? What do their positions look like?”
“I think ground parties for sure,” said Geish, staring hard at the projected chah'nas trajectories. “It looks like… well the northern settlement is fixed here, point A, latitude 58…” and that point glowed red on Erik’s screen as Geish highlighted it. “And that’s where these first three had sequential orbit… it’s hard to tell precisely, but sure. I think they’ve left some people behind down there.”
Erik called up a Merakis surface map. It was hard for spaceships to launch ground-parties because to launch shuttles to the surface, you had to hold low orbit. And low orbits moved, passing right around the planet, making communication and eventually rendezvous with the ground party upon return difficult. Geo-stationary orbit solved the communication problem, but geo-stationary was a long way up, and took a long, vulnerable age for shuttles to move back and forth from.
These chah'nas ships were a mixed pattern of geo-stationary and low orbit, which looked like they were covering planetary deployment… in three years of war on Phoenix, Erik had seen similar patterns covering entire planetary invasions, maintained by hundreds of ships, not just this rough dozen.
Erik flipped channels. “Major, you reading this?”
“I see it. Looks like the chah'nas left some people behind, you want us to go down and clean it up?”
“It’s a possibility.” He didn’t like the idea of deploying his marines down a gravity well. He’d asked so much of them lately, and if Phoenix got bounced by an incoming sweep, Trace and her guys would be as stuck as the chah'nas were. “Let’s assess the situation when we’re closer.”
“I think you might have a job to do in orbit first,” Geish interrupted, fixing a close scan on Eve. “One of those two docked ships has gone, but the other one’s still there. Looks like we might have caught one.”
* * *
Four hours later, Phoenix was closing into proximity orbit behind Eve, and the chah'nas ship was still there. Erik could see clearly on screen that it was an armed merchanter — large holds, conservative engines and basic weapons. It had no shuttle racks, and beyond the crew cylinder rotation, was unmoving, and unresponsive to hails.
Its hold space made it nearly as large a vessel as Phoenix, but Eve dwarfed it to insignificance. Nestled against the hub docking end of the giant cylinder, the chah'nas vessel looked like a pilot fish beside a whale, an insignificant speck. Holding off at two cautious kilometres, Phoenix looked barely larger. Behind the busy chatter, there was an awed hush on the bridge. None of them had been to Merakis before, nor seen Eve up close. Erik had seen it before in photos, videos and simulations, but in real life, to come here in command of one of humanity’s mightiest starships, and to find oneself so utterly overwhelmed, was a unique experience.
“LC,” said Jokono from the makeshift ‘brig’. “Our chah'nas prisoner claims he has no idea why his fleet is all over Merakis. He makes the astute observation that they must have had permission from someone very high up in human command.”
“Very astute,” Erik agreed. “Thank you Jokono.”
“Polar drone confirming all clear on farside,” said Geish. They’d let that one go on the approach, and it was now doing a wide polar orbit about Merakis to show them any approaches on the planetary farside… on that orbit, it should have minimum obstruction. Phoenix, on the other hand, was now so close to the planet, it could only see half the sky. Like generations of warship captains before him, Erik hated it.
“They all jumped,” Shahaim reminded him, as though reading his thoughts. “Even if they short-jumped, we’ll still have a few days before they reappear. The only reason anyone’s doing a combat jump to Merakis is if they know something’s wrong, and the only people who know something’s wrong are those chah'nas we just scared off, and us. Or maybe the Fleet ships chasing us, but they don’t know we came here, and even if they guessed, they’d be days behind us.”
“Unless they get another combat carrier on the chase,” Erik murmured. He began gnawing his nail again… only to remember Trace’s reprimand, and cursed her silently. And fought back a smile, because it was kind of funny.
“There wasn’t any combat carrier in Argitori when we left but us,” said Kaspowitz. “If there’s one coming, it’ll still have a long chase to catch up. We should be okay down here for two days at least.”
‘Should’ was a hell of a bet with the ship’s safety, and over six hundred lives. Anyone who did arrive at combat V as Phoenix just had, would not be detonating warheads short on proximity fuses. But then, Erik reminded himself, the Captain had sent them here. They thought. Or Kaspowitz had guessed, rather… only that was unfair on Kaspowitz. He may have had the idea, but Erik was in command, that meant all choice and responsibility was his. This was what they talked about in the Academy when they spoke of the burden of command. Anyone on the ship could have a dumb idea that got everyone killed, but that dumb idea was ultimately the fault of the officer who chose to implement it.
But was there any choice? What would Trace say about doing nasty things about which there was no real choice, only anxious discomfort? She’d say shut up and get on with it. Another faint smile, and he flipped channels.
“Major, this one’s on you, however you want to play it.”
“Copy LC, we will reconnoiter in force. Echo and Bravo platoons on the nearside, we appear to have multiple secondary docking ports outside of the current inclination of that ship’s weapons. Though if you’d do us the favour of blowing him away if he so much as twitches, we’d all appreciate it.”
“Major, I am pleased to inform you that we have every weapon available trained on the chah'nas vessel, with all active targeting engaged, just to let him know it. If one of those guns m
oves, he’ll die before it can fire.”
“That’s what I like to hear. Departure in thirty seconds.”
“Thirty seconds, LC copies. Good hunting Major, and stay safe.” Which were two bits of oddly contradictory advice, but Erik was confident she’d know what he meant. They’d lost too many people lately. This time, he meant, let’s bring everyone back.
“I wish to hell she didn’t lead every damn away mission,” Kaspowitz read Erik’s mind. “Even she needs a break sometime.”
“Problem is,” Erik replied, “as good as all her Lieutenants are, when the shit hits the fan, she’s better than all of them. And they all know it.”
* * *
“Here we go,” said Lieutenant Hausler from up front, and PH-1 broke Phoenix’s grapples with a crash. Then a shove of the mains, a brief burst, then back to weightless. Trace sat locked into one of her rowed seats in main hold, watching scan scrawling across her visor. She’d done assaults on O’Neil cylinders before, but had never imagined she’d be doing one on Eve.
PH-1’s maximum capacity was sixty armoured marines in a tight squeeze. Today she held fifty-two — Trace’s Command Squad of eight, plus Echo Platoon’s forty-four. The irreplaceable First Sergeant Willis had been replaced by Sergeant Kono from Delta Platoon Third Squad, who now received an on-the-spot promotion to Staffie. So now Lieutenant Crozier was unhappy that her Third Squad was without its leader, plus Trace had replacements for Ugail and Rolonde, the second of whom would be temporary. She’d have gone with just five in Command Squad, but none of her Lieutenants would hear of it, not even Crozier.
Again it didn’t feel right not to have Willis here. She glanced around within her helmet visor, saw the visored faces of her marines all about her. Echo was lately casualty free, and eager for action. There was always survivor guilt when some other platoon got hammered, while yours was stuck in the rear. Some sense that the survivors from the engaged platoons were looking at you with accusation — ‘where the hell were you?’ In reality there was nothing of the sort, Alpha and Charlie had just happened to be at the centre of the hacksaw attack by pure chance, and Echo had been fulfilling the strategically vital role of reserve, while defending Phoenix at dock. Every marine in Alpha and Charlie knew that. But every marine in Echo Platoon felt it nonetheless. A commander had to bear it in mind, and guard that they didn’t do anything reckless to make amends.
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