The Long-Range War

by Christopher Nuttall

  “If we need you to,” Martin said, as the small troop hurried away from the aliens. “But, for the moment, concentrate on remaining quiet.”

  The sound of crashing debris and alien shouts echoed all around them, but there was no sign of any immediate pursuit. He allowed himself a moment of relief. The aliens must have put the plan together on the fly, as soon as they’d realised how the humans planned to escape, without substantial forces in reserve. It was a grim reminder that the aliens were better soldiers than he cared to admit. They might have been killed if the aliens had had more time to set the trap.

  He glanced at Harper’s leg as he started to feel they’d broken contact successfully. It wouldn't be hard to repair the damage normally, not in a regular medical centre. Harper had broken bones during training - they’d all broken bones during training - and he’d been up on his feet again within the hour. But now, with most of their medical facilities with the fleet?

  Hopefully, the medics can fix it themselves, he thought, as they turned down another corridor and out of the area the Tokomak had occupied. And if they can't ...

  He shook his head. He was sure it wasn’t going to come to that. And if it did ...

  We knew the job was dangerous when we took it, he told himself. Harper might just have to sit on the sidelines for a few weeks.

  It was nearly an hour before they reached the base camp, hidden deep within the maintenance tunnels between levels. Major Griffin had set it up carefully, then used his AI to erase all mention of the tunnels from the ring’s command network. It wasn’t perfect, Martin thought, but even if the aliens realised the tunnels were there ... they’d still have literally thousands of miles of tunnel to search if they wanted to find the base. He nodded politely to the soldiers on guard, then helped Rowe to carry Harper over to the medics.

  “He’ll be fine,” the medic assured him. “It just might take a little longer to get him ready to go back to the fight.”

  Harper coughed, weakly. “How much longer?”

  “A few days,” the medic said. “You can lie on your backside until then, surely.”

  “Definitely not,” Harper said. He looked at Martin. “Sir, I ...”

  “Do as you’re told,” Martin said. “And that’s an order.”

  A young infantryman hurried over to him. “Sir, Major Griffin wants to see you.”

  Martin nodded, spoke briefly to Sergeant Howe, then hurried after the infantryman. Major Griffin had set up his office in what Martin privately thought had once been a janitor’s closet, although there was no way to know what the empty room had been intended for before it had been pressed into service. Perhaps it had been a prison cell. It was certainly bland enough to serve as a jail.

  “Martin,” Major Griffin said. “I hear you ran into a little trouble?”

  “Just a little,” Martin said. He ran through the full story. “Sir, these guys are fucking good.”

  “They must have gotten lucky,” Major Griffin mused. “It was dangerous letting you have a free shot at their workers. Still ...”

  He shrugged. “We’ll just keep sniping at them,” he said. “And when the fleet returns, we can take the offensive back to them.”

  “Yes, sir,” Martin said. “And what if the fleet does not return?”

  “The bastards need this ring,” Major Griffin said. “And I intend to keep it from them as long as possible.”

  ***

  General Wooleen had one great advantage, as far as Neola was concerned. He was young, a mere two hundred years old. Old enough to have some real experience, young enough to be a little more flexible than the deadwood that had infested the army’s high command ... and, she admitted privately, attractive enough that she would consider taking him as a consort after the war was over. And yet, he wasn’t telling her what she wanted to hear.

  Which is his job, she reminded herself, sharply. I need to know the truth, not what they think I want to hear.

  “The ring is simply vast,” Wooleen said, flatly. “Your Excellency, it will take years to secure it with the present level of force.”

  “We need that ring,” Neola told him. “Is there any way to speed up the process?”

  “Not unless you want to negotiate with them,” Wooleen said. “Your Excellency, we are fighting a war on ... well, what is effectively an interstellar scale. We simply don’t have the manpower to drive them out of the ring, or even to keep them from hitting us and then running away.”

  “Vent the ring,” Neola suggested. Kumar would complain, but Kumar wouldn't be a factor ever again. He was waiting for his free trip to the retirement home. “Blow the atmosphere into space.”

  “That’s not technically possible,” Wooleen said. “The ring was designed to make it impossible for someone to vent the atmosphere. And most of the safety systems are automatic. We’d have to tear open hundreds of compartments ourselves to vent the atmosphere. It would take longer than we have.”

  Neola cursed. In theory, she had all the time in the universe. In practice, she was racing against a clock ... a clock she couldn't even see. How long would it take the humans to come up with something new? Something that would turn her entire fleet into scrap metal? Or ... something that would let them win the war in a single blow? She knew there was room for technological development and improvement. They were locked in a race, a race she didn’t dare lose. She wanted to press on to Earth - and leave the human invaders and their fleet to wither on the vine - but she needed to keep her supply lines open. There was no way she could sustain an offensive without them.

  “Then concentrate on securing the outer layers of the ring,” Neola said. They could bring in extra troops as the new conscripts were trained. Perhaps they could even turn the ring into a training base. “But hurry, General. Time is not on our side.”

  “No,” the General agreed. “It never was.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Hameeda was feeling ... out of sorts as she flew the LinkShip back to Mokpo.

  She’d grown used to her own company. The LinkShip didn’t need a crew and there was nothing, save perhaps for companionship, that she couldn’t get from the datanet. But Admiral Stuart had attached a pair of observers to her ship when she’d given Hameeda her final orders. It felt ... strange to have company. It felt as if she’d been alone for years. But Admiral Stuart hadn’t given her a choice.

  She scowled to herself. The awareness subroutines were keeping track of her guests and, the moment she thought of them, they snapped into her awareness too. Jeannette O’Neil was sitting in front of a terminal, playing Sonic the Hedgehog; Shaun Conner was sleeping, tossing and turning in his bed. Hameeda reminded herself, stiffly, that she was supposed to grant her guests a certain degree of privacy, although there was no such thing on the LinkShip. The monitors were everywhere. She could hear a whispered comment from the other end of the ship.

  You’re being stupid, she told herself, pulling her thoughts away from her guests. It wasn’t easy. The neural net was designed to provide her whatever information she wanted, as if she was a WebHead browsing the datanet by following random links. It reacted to her merest whim. You don’t need to worry about them.

  She turned her attention to the Mokpo System as she crossed the system limits and headed towards the gravity point. The researchers claimed they’d found a way to peer out of FTL, but - so far - it remained purely theoretical. She could see the gravity shadows cast by the star and its family of planets, yet there was no way to see anything smaller. Even the gravity point was invisible to her. The tight knot of gravimetric forces wouldn't be visible until she was a great deal closer.

  And there’s no way to know what we’ll encounter, she reminded herself. The Tokomak shouldn’t be able to see her coming - there was no sign that they’d figured out that there was a way to travel through FTL without being detected - but she had to be careful. They’ll have put a strong guard on the gravity point.

  She cleared her throat, opening the intercom. “Your attention ple
ase,” she said. Her awareness snapped back to her guests. “We will be dropping out of FTL in thirty minutes. I suggest you prepare for the mission.”

  Conner threw himself out of bed and grabbed for his clothes. Hameeda smirked, despite herself. Conner clearly hadn’t realised that it made no difference if he was dressed or not, not on the LinkShip. But then, there was a human crew now. Getting dressed was common decency. She watched him for a moment, then turned her attention to Jeannette. The woman was already shutting down her terminal and heading for the hatch. It opened as she approached, letting her into the corridor. She entered the command centre moments later.

  “I could get used to this,” Jeanette said. “This ship is like a hotel.”

  Hameeda gritted her teeth. She was good at multitasking - it was one of the skills she’d developed during training - but she still found it hard to deal with having someone in the command centre, sitting right next to her, while her mind was lost in the datanet. It felt as if she was trapped between two worlds, rather than being free to give her attention to just one.

  “Take the consoles in the emergency control room,” she grunted. Her awareness was threatening to split. “I’ll feed the sensor reports to you.”

  “I have orders to stay in the control room during the flight,” Jeanette pointed out. “I ...”

  “That’s an order,” Hameeda said, a little more harshly than she’d intended. “Right now, you’re a distraction. Go.”

  Or I’ll teleport you back into your cabin and lock the door, she added, silently. Internal teleports were tricky, but the LinkShip could handle them. It would be difficult to explain, when she rejoined the fleet ... no, it wouldn't be. She was the ship’s commanding officer. A refusal to obey orders while the ship was underway was a court-martial offense. Technically, she had the legal right to shoot Jeanette for disobeying orders. Although ... has it ever been done?

  She watched Jeanette leave, her body language suggesting she was pissed. Hameeda scowled at her back, then turned her attention to the sensor feed. The seconds were ticking away rapidly now, warning her that she’d be dropping out of FTL in moments. She barely noticed Conner joining Jeanette in the emergency control room, barely heard Jeanette grumbling to her friend about Hameeda. The only concern was leaving FTL without being detected.

  Space lurched around the LinkShip as the FTL drive disengaged. Hameeda braced herself, ready to fight or run. The odds against dropping out of FTL in weapons range of an enemy ship were very low, but improbable things had happened before. She let out a tight breath as her awareness filled with raw data. A handful of ships were making their way from gravity point to gravity point, but apart from them there was little more activity in the once-active system. Mokpo really had taken a beating.

  We smashed their space-based industries, she thought, and then the Tokomak hammered the planet’s surface too.

  She directed her sensors to send a live feed to Jeanette and Conner, then turned her attention to the gravity point. The LinkShip glided forward, hidden behind its cloaking field. She frowned, despite herself, as the sheer scale of the enemy defences came into view. There were no fortresses, not entirely to her surprise, but a hundred heavy ships sat on the gravity point and another hundred, carefully held in reserve, squatted nearby. It looked as if someone was trying to come up with a doctrine to counter assault pods, she decided, although it hardly mattered. There wasn't anyone on the far side who was going to throw an attack through the gravity point. The steady stream of warships making the journey from N-Gann to link up with the enemy fleet was grim proof that they held both sides of the gravity point.

  “They’re deploying gunboats,” Jeanette said. It was easier to deal with her when she wasn’t in the control room. “Can you sneak through the gravity point?”

  “I doubt it,” Hameeda admitted, reluctantly. The enemy had blanketed the gravity point in active sensors. Her subroutines gave her barely even odds of making it through without being detected. And, if she assumed that the other side was equally covered, the odds fell rapidly. Her cloaking device wouldn’t fluctuate on transit, unlike a regular warship, but the slightest electronic leakage would be more than enough to reveal her presence. “The risk of being detected is too high.”

  “Then we have to check out the GS-3532 Point,” Conner said. He sounded marginally more practical than Jeanette, although he’d treated the trip as a chance to catch up with his sleep more than anything else. “Can you take us there?”

  “Already on the way,” Hameeda said. She swung the LinkShip away from the gravity point, carefully keeping her distance from the enemy ships. Admiral Stuart’s fleet could take them, she was sure, but they were only a tripwire for the forces on the far side. A shiver ran down her spine as she realised what that meant. A tripwire consisting of over two hundred ships ... it was incredible. “We’ll be there in a few hours.”

  Jeanette looked up, sharply. “You don’t intend to go into FTL?”

  “We have orders to survey the system,” Hameeda said, as the LinkShip rapidly picked up speed. They were moving incredibly fast, yet compared to a ship in FTL they might as well be crawling. “And we might as well do that while we head to the gravity point.”

  She ignored Jeanette’s complaint and turned her attention to her long-range sensors. There was no hint of any of the observation ships that had been left behind, although that was meaningless. They were designed to avoid detection, even by her. She hoped that meant they were keeping an eye on the enemy, rather than having been hunted down and destroyed by prowling Tokomak warships. A star system was an immense hiding place, but a careless scout might well be located and destroyed ...

  Worry about yourself, she thought, as they made their slow way towards the gravity point. You don’t want to be caught on the hop.

  The gravity point slowly came into view. It was largely undefended, save for a handful of destroyers that prowled the outer edge of the gravity point. Hameeda eyed them suspiciously, wondering why the enemy hadn’t deployed more warships to cover the point, then decided it probably didn’t matter. There was no point in retaking the gravity point unless one could either retake Apsidal or hit N-Gann. No doubt the enemy CINC would be delighted if Admiral Stuart wasted her strength trying to cut the supply lines. There were too many other ways to reach Mokpo for the scheme to have any long-term effect.

  “We can get through,” she said. “It shouldn’t be too hard.”

  Conner frowned. “They’re probing the gravity point pretty hard,” he said. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” Hameeda said, irked. She was a commanding officer, damn it. Her formal rank was captain. And she was a real captain, not some REMF who delighted in the title without ever having set foot on a ship. He didn’t have to doubt her so openly. “Here we go ...”

  She opened her awareness wide, just to be sure there weren’t any surprises waiting for her, then slid forward. The enemy ships didn’t notice her as they circled the gravity point, their sensor sweeps running in predicable patterns. They had to be reservists, she decided, or perhaps they simply hadn't seen any action. Predictability was death. The Tokomak really should have learned that lesson by now.

  The LinkShip glided onto the gravity point and triggered the jump drive. Hameeda braced herself, again, as the universe seemed to sneeze ...and then opened her awareness as soon as they were on the far side. A handful of warships were maintaining formation above the gravity point - her perceptions insisted they were above her, although it was largely meaningless in space - but no other ships were visible near the gravity point. She smiled grimly, then moved the LinkShip into space. The enemy ships showed no sign they knew she was there.

  “That’s a large convoy,” Jeanette said, as new ships flashed into Hameeda’s awareness. “Do you think the holdouts are still here?”

  “I hope so,” Hameeda said. She studied the convoy through her sensors. Two hundred freighters and nearly fifty escort ships, dropping out of FTL with a precision she could only admi
re. She felt a flash of humourless amusement. For a race that was supposed to have largely ignored the concept of a fleet train, the Tokomak were clearly fast learners. But then, those supplies wouldn’t walk to the front under their own power. “They wouldn’t need so much covering fire if they didn't fear attack.”

  “They could be concerned about pirates,” Conner said.

  “Pirates would be deterred by a handful of warships,” Hameeda said. Pirates - and scavenger races - tended to be reluctant to pick fights unless the odds were heavily stacked in their favour. Besides, piracy was rarely a problem this close to the core worlds. “No, they’re concerned about our raiders.”

  She kept moving away from the gravity point, avoiding the newcomers as she spread her awareness as far as it would go. GS-3532 was as empty as she remembered. There was nothing to suggest where the cut-off forces might be lurking, although she had a feeling they might be near the Winglet Point. It would be their best chance to strike a blow before the enemy was ready to repel them. She steered the LinkShip towards the second gravity point, keeping a wary eye on her sensors. There might be a lot of enemy ships lurking near the point.