The Long-Range War

by Christopher Nuttall

  He looked back down as his head started to spin. The tower was just too large. And the ring was unimaginable. It was easy to believe that the sky was falling, that the tower was on the verge of collapse ... he pushed the thought aside angrily, reminding himself that he’d fought battles on the hulls of giant space stations. But none of them had been so large. He looked ahead and saw a fence, blocking the road. On the other side, there was a horde of silent aliens, all from the servile races. They were staring into the gated community ... and waiting.

  They could take down the fence at any moment, Martin thought, as the squad slowly altered course to follow the fence around the compound. It wouldn't be that hard to simply push it down.

  He tensed as he felt the watching eyes tracking him. Crowds were always dangerously unpredictable. It would only take one person throwing a rock to start a riot - or worse - and they weren't wearing their battlesuits. He cursed the idiot who’d insisted on going in BDUs - they might as well have gone naked - and keyed his communicator, reporting back to Major Griffin. The QRF on standby near the Command Post would have battlesuits. They could tear their way through a thousand unarmoured aliens without having to worry about their safety.

  The crowd made no move, but it was still a relief when the patrol route turned away from the fence and back into the estate. Here, the houses were smaller and darker, although with more signs of life. Servant homes? Or ... or what? He couldn’t imagine the Tokomak - or any of the Galactics - choosing to live in such tiny homes. There were some Galactics who would have seen them as cruel and unusual punishment. And yet ... he’d known people who’d been prepared to live in shoeboxes, as long as it put them in the right catchment area or simply kept them away from the ghettos. He hadn't understood what had driven them until it was too late.

  A scream split the air. He hit the communicator, tapping out an emergency signal, then led his men around the corner. A young alien - a child, he thought - was running from a mob of older aliens. It was hard to be sure, but he thought the child was a Galactic ... and the others were from the servile races. They were carrying knives and a handful of other makeshift weapons, waving them around threateningly. And they didn't stop when they saw the marines.

  Martin levelled his rifle. “Stop,” he snapped. “Stop or I shoot!”

  The child kept running, right into the marines, but the others skidded to a halt. They were aliens, their faces weird and wonderful, yet Martin could read them. They were torn between charging the marines, trying to drag them down before they could be shot, or turning and running for their lives. If they’d been human, Martin would have said they’d been hyped up on something. He’d seen enough human insurgents using drugs to boost their stamina - and reduce their intelligence - to know it made it impossible to reason with them.

  He cursed under his breath. The last thing he wanted - that his superiors wanted - was an incident. He didn’t blame the servile races for wanting to kill their masters, and it was clear they weren't drawing lines between adults and children, but he couldn't allow them to run wild. The gated community was under human protection. And yet, he didn't want to kill the rioters. There had to be another way to stop them.

  “Return to your homes,” he ordered. “Or I will use deadly force.”

  The aliens stood there for a moment, glaring at him. They were a mixed group, with no less than four different species represented. Unless they were from a race with profound sexual dimorphism ... He’d heard there were Galactics who thought that all humans looked alike and couldn't even tell the difference between male and female, simply because their males looked very different from their females. But he didn't recall meeting any of these aliens before. They’d been left out of the briefing notes.

  A flicker of motion caught his attention, a half-second before the alien threw a chopping knife at him. Martin cursed as it stabbed into his shoulder, the pain unbearable for an endless moment in time before the nerve-blockers went to work. His left arm was no longer working; cursing, he dropped the rifle and scrabbled for the pistol on his belt. His men were already firing, putting the remaining aliens down. They were dead before Martin had managed to draw his pistol.

  “Fuck,” he muttered. He’d been hurt before, and it wouldn't take the medics long to fix him up, but being hit with a chopping knife was a new low. “Ouch. Damn it!”

  A crashing sound echoed from behind him. The fence had been taken down. Martin exchanged looks with Sergeant Howe, then snapped out a command to run. They were far too exposed in the open air. The alien child was right behind them, his eyes fearful. Martin put his gun back in the holster, scooped the alien up and followed his men. Behind him, he heard the sound of aliens shouting for blood.

  His communicator bleeped. “Help is on the way,” Major Griffin said. “Hold on.”

  Martin nodded, although the sound of pursuit was growing louder. He glanced back and saw flames rising in the distance. It looked as though the houses were getting torched, one by one. He hoped their inhabitants had the sense to flee. They wouldn't have a hope of escape if they stayed in their homes. The flames were already spreading. Someone had probably splashed inflammatory liquid on the buildings before they lit the match or threw the makeshift bomb or whatever. The rebels had had plenty of time to plan their uprising before the human fleet had arrived and thrown all their plans out of alignment.

  The child tightened his grip on Martin’s shoulder, a surprisingly tight grip for a child so young. Martin eyed him for a moment, wondering what species he was and what his parents had been doing on Apsidal. There were some aliens who had a very careless attitude to children and barely mourned their deaths, while others wrapped their children in cotton wool and treated them like little dolls. Martin snorted at the thought - it would have been nice to be pampered, but it wouldn’t have prepared him for adulthood - and then glanced behind him as he heard the roar growing louder. The mob had seen them.

  “Run,” he snapped.

  They picked up speed, hightailing it back to the edge of the estate. A pair of skimmers swept overhead, plasma bolts already raining down. Someone had clearly decided to take the gloves off and give the rioters a thumping, even though it wouldn’t do wonders for relationships with the provisional government. Martin didn’t blame whoever had made that call. The provisional government seemed to have very little real power. Hell, the only thing that seemed to bind it together was Admiral Stuart pretending to take them seriously.

  He handed the child over to the Civil Affairs specialists at the Command Post, once they passed through the defence lines, then sat down beside an alien building and took off his helmet. He could hear shooting in the distance, although it sounded as though things were quietening down a little. That wouldn't last for long. Aliens might not be humans, but there were times when he couldn't tell the difference. Certain things were universal and one of them was that certain communities reacted badly to outsiders coming in and poking around.

  A hand fell on his shoulder. “Long day?”

  He looked up at Major Griffin. “Yes, sir.”

  “Things will get easier,” Major Griffin assured him. “And then we’ll be moved to somewhere harder.”

  Martin shrugged. He wouldn't mind a battlefield with clear lines between friends and enemies, even if they were outnumbered ten to one. There was a certain simplicity about battlefields he’d always appreciated, despite the risk of dying horribly. The fighters didn't have to worry about figuring out who was on your side, who could be convinced to be on your side, who wanted to stay out of the fighting and who simply wanted to kill you. An insurgency was always a nightmare because someone could move from category to category at will.

  “Yes, sir,” he said, finally.

  “Good man,” Major Griffin said. His voice hardened, just slightly. “Now, you appear to be wearing an axe in your shoulder. As interesting as this fashion statement is, might I suggest you get it removed?”

  Martin glanced at the knife. “Yes, sir,” he said, unwillin
g to admit that he’d forgotten it was there. Between the drugs and his enhancements, he’d been almost normal. “And the child? The alien I brought in?”

  “You’ll have to check with the CA lot,” Major Griffin said. “But get that knife out first.”

  “Yes, sir,” Martin said.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The really annoying thing about commanding so many starships, Hoshiko had decided before the fleet had even left Sol, was that she was obliged to allow a degree of debate, even democracy, when it came to deciding their next move. She could not simply draw up a plan - more accurately, have her staff draw up a plan - and then put it into action without delay. No, she had to call a holoconference, present her plan and wait for her senior officers to have their say. It had been a great deal simpler, she felt, when she’d only been commanding a single squadron.

  “There is a great deal to be gained by occupying Mokpo, at least the system itself,” Hoshiko told them, for what felt like the tenth time. “We would not only be able to wreck their industrial base, but create a firebreak for when their fleet starts filtering down from N-Gann.”

  She paused to hammer the point home. “We won’t be trying to defend the gravity points with the same forces we’ve stationed here,” she added, sharply. “We’ll just harass them as they make their way towards us. And that will give us more time to prepare.”

  The holographic heads nodded in unison. Hoshiko sighed, inwardly. Her most pessimistic estimates suggested that N-Gann still hadn't heard that Apsidal had fallen - assuming a message had been sent on a least-time course, they wouldn’t hear anything for another week - but there was no way to be sure. The Tokomak had already proven that they could be imaginative ... and they’d had thousands of years to research gravity technology. Hoshiko could easily believe that they’d advanced far beyond the technology they’d supplied to the other Galactics, let alone the younger races. They might have something utterly devastating up their sleeves.

  “The assault force will commence the offensive in one hour,” she said, once the chatter was finally over. “And then I’ll dispatch scouts further up the chain to N-Gann. We might be able to get some warning when they finally start to move.”

  She nodded politely to her officers, then closed the connection. What was it about a large group of senior officers? They were perfectly capable of showing initiative on their own, but as a group they seemed to become risk-averse. It wasn’t as if humanity could sit around and wait to be hit. Hoshiko had watched the simulations, time and time again. The Tokomak juggernaut would smash the Solar Union into rubble if they were given time to get their forces into place.

  Perhaps they’re just scared of being blamed, she thought, as she walked into the CIC. She’d had complete authority in her little squadron - the buck had stopped with her and she knew it - but here there was a degree of shared responsibility. She couldn't wait for the day she could go back to commanding a smaller formation, where everything was clear-cut. Losing four squadrons of cruisers would be embarrassing.

  She pushed the thought aside as she took her chair. “Yolanda, are the advance forces in position to attack?”

  “Yes, Admiral,” Yolanda said. “They’re ready to jump on your signal.”

  Hoshiko took a moment to survey the gravity point. Nine fortresses, surrounded by a cloud of automated weapons platforms and gunboats; five hundred starships, with the remainder of the fleet sitting in reserve. And layer after layer of mines. Hoshiko had little hope that they would kill more than a handful of enemy ships, but it would buy time for the defenders to go on the alert. It was just a shame there was little point in positioning mines right on top of the gravity point. The first set of interpenetrations would sweep the remainder of the mines out of existence.

  We could lose every ship in the assault force and still hold the gravity point against any rational enemy, she thought, grimly. But the Tokomak have ships to burn.

  She took a long breath. “Begin the assault.”

  The first cluster of assault pods moved onto the gravity point and vanished. Hoshiko’s tactical staff had programmed them with the data from the LinkShip, but they’d warned that the missiles might not be able to lock onto the defenders before it was too late. The enemy gunboats would take out quite a few pods - perhaps all of them - before they were able to open fire. It was frustrating to face an enemy who was alternatively imaginative and unimaginative. There was no way to guess what the bastards would do next.

  The best swordsman in the world doesn’t fear the second-best swordsman, she reminded herself, as the next wave of assault pods vanished. He fears the worst, because he doesn't know what the idiot will do.

  She looked at Yolanda’s back. “Order the first assault waves to make transit.”

  “Aye, Admiral.”

  Hoshiko felt a pang of guilt as the first squadron entered the gravity point in a tight stream, each ship blinking out of existence a second before the next. The stream was carefully coordinated to cut the gap between transits down to a minimum, without running the risk of interpenetration, but she was all too aware that too much could go wrong. She should be on those ships, sharing the risk. But she was the fleet commander. It had been all she could do to wrangle a place on the assault fleet.

  Apparently, there’s no authority attached to this position, she thought, wryly. Who knew?

  She watched the display, silently counting down the seconds. The first assault force had included a pair of courier boats, both under strict orders to take stock of the situation and return through the gravity point, but it was quite possible that the entire force had been annihilated. Who knew what the enemy might have done in the last couple of days? They had enough ships in Mokpo to mount a defence, if they chose to stand and fight ...

  A courier boat blinked into existence on the display. Hoshiko let out a sigh of relief. The attack force hadn't been destroyed, thankfully. She leaned forward to study the live feed from the courier boat as it uploaded its records into the fleet datanet, silently matching what it had seen to the LinkShip’s report. The enemy had positioned additional ships near the gravity point, but fewer than she’d expected. They might not have realised that the LinkShip had come through the gravity point.

  Although they might have reason to suspect something, she thought, crossly. The intelligence staff had given her an earful about the LinkShip being detected, demanding that she chew the pilot out immediately. Hoshiko had told them to let her handle military affairs. The LinkShip had to come through the gravity point or FTL. Either way, she wasn’t detected.

  “Order the second assault wave to make transit,” she said. “And then we will make transit ourselves.”

  “Aye, Admiral,” Yolanda said.

  A dull quiver ran through Defiant as she made her slow way towards the gravity point and vanished. Hoshiko braced herself, expecting to see anything from incoming missiles to an expanding cloud of debris when the display rebooted. A handful of alien ships popped into view, trading missile fire with the first wave as they headed away from the gravity point and into deep space. They’d clearly decided there was nothing to be gained from trying to mount a suicidal defence.

  “The enemy ships are dropping into FTL,” Yolanda said. “They’re heading for the next gravity point.”

  And not the planet, Hoshiko thought. She’d expected the local starships to defend their homeworld. Why don’t they want to link up with the planet’s defences?

  “Detail one squadron of cruisers to watch the gravity point,” she said, finally. It was unlikely that the enemy was planning an ambush - and growing unlikelier by the minute, as her shell of recon drones expanded to cover a greater and greater volume of space - but it was well to be careful. “The remainder of the fleet will advance to the second gravity point.”

  She studied the system carefully as the fleet moved into formation, readying itself for the jump to FTL. Mokpo had a lot to recommend it, under other circumstances; she’d have seriously considered trying to make cont
act with any rebel groups that might be on the planet’s surface if she hadn't known she couldn’t hold the system indefinitely. Even if she had been prepared to make such a commitment, it would have stretched her forces too thin. The whimsical nature of the gravity points would even have allowed the Tokomak to perform an end run around Mokpo and hit Apsidal from another direction. It would have added more time to their transit to Earth, but she doubted it would bother them that much. They’d be preserving vast numbers of ships for the final battle.

  “Take us into FTL,” she ordered, once the fleet was ready. “And take us out at the designated arrival point.”

  “Aye, Admiral.”