by John F. Carr
The Sauron Fleet had invested Tanith with saturation bombardment for the past seventy-two hours. The spaceport’s Field could not hold out indefinitely, nor could her troops hold against the planetside forces the Saurons had deployed.
With a deep sigh, Adderly turned his gaze back to the holo. As he watched, two of the lights representing the Sauron Fleet detached themselves, heading for the nearest Alderson Point.
“Jimmy, can you give me an ID on those ships?”
“One’s the Damaris, sir. Sauron heavy battleship. Huge drives, their IR signature alone is enough to give her away.” The First Officer’s face screwed up in concentration, then, eerily smoothed out to match the lack of emotion in his voice. “The other ship is the Fomoria, Captain.” He said quietly.
Why were they leaving? Could it be that Diettinger’s cock-and-bull story about the borloi had been true all along? Adderly realized suddenly that he didn’t care. He felt a weight drop from his shoulders, and at that moment he knew what had happened.
Relieved, he thought. Diettinger’s been relieved. And despite the irrationality of the thought, despite the fact that he knew it was irrational, he found himself feeling like a man who dreamed he’d died, only to awaken safe in his own bed.
Vessel First Rank Diettinger, the only Sauron who had never lost a naval engagement which he commanded, was leaving. At that moment, Adderly didn’t know if he’d gone crazy or not—nor did he care. The idea bubbled up in him like a suppressed laugh in a graveyard, shocking, liquid, bright. It was past his lips before he knew it.
“We can’t lose!”
The First Mate blinked reddened eyes. “Sir?”
Adderly passed a hand over his face, stubble and all. Small wonder, he had been living on the bridge for the past two days. He laughed.
The First Mate, now the Fleet Operations Officer, relayed the commands to Adderly’s new subordinates.
“Captain Adderly, they want to know the battle plan for the intercept.”
“Plan? No plan, Jimmy. No plan at all.”
“First Rank, I show multiple drives activation in the asteroid belt, bearing zero-niner-zero our heading.”
“Good. Fleet First Rank Morgenthau knows where to find the Imperials. Accelerate to seven-Gs and plot the Jump.”
Navigation looked up in horror. The Alderson Points that began and ended tramlines between stars were by no means large: standard procedure called for them to be entered at less than a tenth of a G, since finding them was hardly an exact science. Diettinger’s order could just as easily carry them so far past the Point that there would be days wasted in realigning for the Jump. Still, Navigation did the best he could.
“We’ll never catch them, Captain Adderly.”
Adderly watched the combat holo. Fully half the Sauron combined Fleet had left Tanith orbit and was bearing down on Adderly’s force. “I don’t care if we do, Jimmy. The Fomoria and Damaris are heading for the closet Alderson Point. At their speed, they’ll likely miss it. We, however, will not.”
“Sir? We’re leaving?”
Adderly’s look would have dropped snow on Tanith. “You haven’t heard me order a general retreat, have you? Now get back to your post, mister.”
IV
“Status on mines at the Point?”
Second Rank checked her screen a second time before answering. “Unchanged, First Rank.”
“Unchanged? The First Fleet didn’t renew the seeding left by the Second?”
“First Rank, the Second Fleet evidently left no new minefield.”
Diettinger was losing his temper, as rare an event as one could hope for. “Get me the monitor at the Alderson Point. Navigation, status on the Jump plot?”
“Complete, First Rank. Comment.”
“Speak.”
“At seven-Gs acceleration, we and the Damaris have less than a fifteen percent chance of accurately entering the Alderson Point when activating our Jump Drives.”
“Thank you, Navigation.”
“Enemy ships, First Rank,” Second cut in, stumbling over the words. “First Rank, I have massive readings of enemy ships at the Alderson Point; there are…” Her voice faded.
Diettinger turned his acceleration couch enough to see numerous figures marching up her console screen.
“Estimate, Second Rank.”
“Approximately two hundred and fifty to three hundred enemy ships, First Rank.”
“Signal Morgenthau aboard the Sauron.”
The return was agonizingly slow in coming. “What is it, Diettinger?”
“A massive enemy reinforcement flotilla has—”
“We are aware, First Rank. And will deal with the threat. All the required information is being coordinated now.”
“Morgenthau, there are almost three hundred Imperials coming in and you’d didn’t even mine the Jump Point!”
Incredibly, Morgenthau smiled. “Our combined Fleet is statistically capable of inflicting breakoff losses on twice that number, Vessel First Rank. Mining the Alderson Point would only have left the Imperials more prepared.”
“Statistics? You inbred fool, don’t you understand? Didn’t the destruction of the Leviathan teach you anything? There won’t be a breakoff! It took sacrificing the prize ship Canada to win the last one, and it will be the last one. The Imperials will press the attack beyond all rational military considerations; they will destroy themselves to destroy the Combined Fleet. And you’ve just divided your forces!”
Diettinger’s rage had him leaning out of his acceleration couch against seven gravities, cords stood out on his neck and the wound beneath his bandages had opened. Blood soaked the dressing, streaking down his jaw in the artificial gravity to splash audibly against the floor.
Fleet First Rank Morgenthau’s face went blank. “You have your orders, Diettinger. Evade the enemy fleet and return to Sauron with the Damaris. Sauron out.”
Diettinger didn’t ask Second Rank for an update on the enemy fleet; the look on her face told him all he needed to know.
“Alderson Point in two minutes, First Rank.” Navigation usually gave the warning time in seconds, but at seven-Gs, minutes seemed more prudent.
“Evasive action, First Rank?”
“None. We’ll be at the Point before they recover from Jump Lag. Status on Damaris.”
“Matching velocity and heading with us.”
“Jump coordinates coinciding?”
“Affirmative.”
Diettinger sat back. One minute and forty-five seconds to go. “Weapons. Set wide pattern mine release at thirty seconds to Jump. Disable seek and maneuver programs on mines and set fuses for simple proximity. Signal Damaris to match deployment.” It was all he could do.
The Fomoria streaked between the Imperial Fleet ships still recovering from Jump. Her lethal shadow, Damaris, narrowly missed colliding with an Imperial dreadnaught, but passed through without other incident. Helpless as the enemy was, the Saurons could do nothing; they were simply going too fast.
With any luck, we’ll miss the Jump Point and have to rejoin the battle, Diettinger thought.
He had not reckoned with the quality of his navigation officer and engineering crew.
Navigation did begin counting down the last seconds to the Alderson Point, pausing at ten seconds with, “Engage Alderson Drives,” and finishing at “zero” with “Jump.”
The Fomoria winked out of normal space; the Damaris followed behind.
Chapter Nine
The result of the last Imperial reinforcements to arrive at Tanith station was summed up by the Fleet commander in one word—“Murder.”
Imperial Navy Command had received word from the surviving Chinthes of the original Tanith patrol, dispatched by Adderly on their suicidal run for help. For once the Naval Staff had acted boldly and seized the opportunity, stripping ships from every available operation and redeploying them to Tanith with one goal in mind—the destruction of the Sauron Second Fleet.
Upon finding the Sauron First Fleet w
aiting for them as well, the battle became, as Diettinger had anticipated, one of extermination.
Ship after ship of the Saurons died, their commanders unable or unwilling to believe that the losses the Imperials were suffering would not eventually force them to break off.
None did. By the end of the fifth day of continuous battle, ramming was not uncommon. By the end of the third week, the Imperials controlled Tanith’s orbital space.
Not to say the Imperials didn’t suffer horrendous losses—they did. More than half the ships of the flotilla were either destroyed outright or badly damaged enough so as to not be worth salvaging. But the Imperials had always had more ships, and now they were throwing them into the fray with abandon. A tactic the outnumbered Saurons would not emulate, even if they could.
The Saurons occupying Tanith spaceport were dealt with in summary fashion; the spaceport was obliterated. A nearby city complex which the Saurons had captured after landing was officially designated “unsalvageable” and likewise erased from the face of the planet. No demands for or offers of surrender were issued by either side.
Adderly watched all of this, participated in some of it, understood little and could justify less.
By the end of the twentieth day, the remnants of a mighty Unified Fleet, reduced to less than thirty ships, broke for the nearest Alderson Point to escape. Less than a handful made it.
Adderly had been part of that, too, as he had stood on the bridge of the King George V, engines at last reduced to a merciful one-point-five-Gs of thrust. They had tried to go to standard gravity, only to find the crew over-compensating and bumping into things. More tools were broken, and more bones, at one-G than during the last week of living between three- and four-Gs. Adderly had watched the ruined hulks fight their way to the Alderson Point, some making it, most not.
Adderly had canceled the final attack, seconds before the last Sauron had Jumped, but he could not say why, only that he had been unable to give the order to shoot.
And therein lies a tale, he thought, waiting outside the offices of the Board of Inquiry. He’d been waiting an hour when a young officer, accompanied by two Imperial Marines, came out to collect him. The officer looked as if he had eaten something bad. The Marines just looked like Marines.
“Captain Adderly, I’m Commander Jackson Harold. It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir.”
Adderly shook his head. “You might regret saying that.”
Harold shook his head. “I doubt that, Captain.” He looked over his shoulder, back toward the doors of the office where the Board sat. “I always enjoy meeting a fine officer as opposed to a scoundrel in uniform. And if I was ever confused as to the difference, today it was clarified.”
Adderly looked at Harold for a moment. “Commander Harold, you look like a man with something unpleasant to say. I wonder if we should be heading somewhere while you say it.”
Harold attempted a smile; it almost worked. “Let’s cross the grounds, shall we? Marines.”
The sky of Tanith was characteristically orange, overcast, sullen and hot. Their tunics clung to their backs within ten paces, but it was air, by God, and Adderly allowed that he had never tasted anything so sweet.
Lieutenant Harold walked slowly. “It’s all falling apart, you know.”
“Yes,” Adderly said. “The Sauron Fleets are wrecked; the next move will be against their home world. No more battles at the fringes. This one will be for the war. And after that…” He shrugged. “The Coalition of Secession can’t hold up without the Saurons for backbone. Their Unified State, their Trade Block, none of it will last…” Harold was staring at him. “What’s wrong?”
“I was speaking of the Empire, Captain Adderly. Ours.”
Adderly took a deep breath. “Ah, yes. I guess I knew that, too.” But he wondered. Had he known? Or, more to the point, wouldn’t he have been far happier not knowing?
“You’re right about the Saurons, of course,” Harold went on. “But it won’t end with them. The Outie raiders have been pushing everywhere, any place we’ve ignored or stripped of military forces to deal with the Saurons.”
“I know.” Adderly thought of Haven, now lost to the Empire. The last time he’d tried to send a message ball to his Uncle, the Imperial Registrar of Post declared the planetary address “UNKNOWN.” In his last talk with General Cummings, the General had said this would happen, not only to Haven, but other far-reaching worlds, those lost in the maze of Alderson Points, like Haven was.
“The Coalition of Secession is doomed, Captain, but the damage is done. Now there’s another crop of Claimants. Did you know that we have three nobles who can prove—prove, mind you—the legitimacy of their claim to the purple?”
Adderly nodded. He’d always loved history, in large part fostered by his Uncle, a self-proclaimed amateur historian. He remembered a battered leather bound copy of the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire the family scion had reputedly brought with him from Earth. It told the tales of ancient Rome back on Earth, and the fall of empire. Soon the claimants will be the generals—or admirals. After this war, the Fleet will be the only power left.
“To listen to them,” Harold continued, “you’d think everybody and his brother were qualified to be Emperor. Right now they’re screaming in the Senate for a ‘Council of Emperors” based on their contributions to the war. Can you imagine what kind of hydra that would be?”
Could he? Adderly didn’t know. In truth, he didn’t care. The sky of Tanith was beautiful, in its way. This frontier world—that some called a hellhole—that he’d fought for and lived on and given everything to save, was at this moment the most glorious place he’d ever seen.
“Anyway, Captain Adderly—”
“Call me Will. I’ll call you Jack, or do you prefer Jackson?”
Commander Harold’s expression went from uncomfortable to downright miserable. “No, sir. Jack is fine. All right; Will. The loss of Canada was bad enough, to say nothing of the part it played in the destruction of the Aleksandr Nevsky. Still, few of us have ever run into that EVA Marine tactic of Diettinger’s; the same might have happened to anyone. It’s the borloi that’s got to them. That and the fact that the Saurons had you captive and let you go. That’s never happened before, Will. Never. And your suggestion as to why it should have happened to you did not go over well with the Board.”
“I stand by it. First Rank Diettinger conducted himself like an officer and a gentleman.” And I returned the compliment by trying to kill him—mutilating him instead. But he hadn’t told them that. They wouldn’t have believed him, anyway.
“Yes, well, be that as it may, there is still the matter of the borloi drug. The Board will simply not accept that the Commander of an Imperial Planetary Patrol Task Force, who lost a battle to a single Sauron heavy cruiser, should be entertained for a time aboard the enemy ship and then released unharmed.”
Adderly had to choke back a laugh.
“They thought it particularly odd that you yourself claimed the Saurons wanted nothing more than the location of the planetside stores of the Empire’s most profitable illegal drug.”
Adderly began to laugh, then shook his head in disbelief.
“That’s their reasoning, anyway. The Tanith spaceport was nuked a dozen times over, so there’s no telling if the Saurons ever got the borloi out of it or not. But the Board has had so many dealings with Outies and smugglers, to say nothing of traitors in—” The Commander’s voice died before he could say “the Navy.”
“The worst part, Captain Adderly, is their motives. Those bastards want to hang you—not because you lost, but because you won. A Planetary Patrol Commander holds off two Sauron Fleets for a fortnight. That’s bloody magnificent work! There’s a duchy in that sort of thing these days. Now, those fools will fall to squabbling for the glory amongst themselves when you’re gone.”
Harold continued on past the officers’ quarters and led Adderly and the Marines to the left-hand path that cut across the compound and past the gallows.
“The Empire is dying,” he added in a low voice. “And the jackals are killing each other over the bones.”
Adderly shook his head and smiled.
So, in the end, Diettinger’s triumph is total. Kellogg got his board; the obvious, most convenient conclusion was drawn, and that is the end of William Daniel Adderly, Imperial Navy.
His guilt or innocence hardly mattered, nor did the avarice of the men who judged him. At this stage of the war, treason was a charge whose bare whisper would kill a man, if not physically, then certainly professionally.
The Empire’s attitude toward the Saurons had changed irrevocably. They were no longer the enemy; they were evil incarnate. Adderly had seen it growing in his men; he had seen it in himself, the day he met Diettinger. He had seen it again in Kellogg’s single-minded attacks, and finally in the Fleet’s pursuit of the remaining Sauron ships to the Alderson Point.
That attitude would consume more than the Saurons, he knew… but they would be the first to go.
They had reached the stockade.
“I’m sorry, Captain Adderly, Will, I mean. But under the circumstances I think it’s obvious what the verdict will be if you receive a court martial.”
He nodded. Harold stumbled over the word, but Adderly had caught it—“if.”
Adderly looked at this improbably young man. Not too young to know that the Navy would take care of one of its own. The brotherhood among Naval officers might not be able to save him, but it could send a young volunteer—it was always a volunteer—like Commander Harold to show it had not abandoned him.
“If there’s anything I can do…”
“As a matter of fact, there is. My wife Alysha. She’s living on Gaea. Our address is in the records. Tell her all this, if you would. The real story, not the official one.”