by John F. Carr
“Dictator, my calculations indicate impact energy in excess of hundreds of billions of megajoules; nearly one hundred million megatons per impacting vessel…”
“Yes,” Diettinger said quietly. “Status, TF Keegan.”
“Still heavily engaged with remaining elements of Intruder Two, Dictator. Break-off not feasible.” Whatever effect the revelation of Intruder Three’s intent was having on the Fomoria’s bridge crew, it did not extend to the erosion of Sauron discipline.
“TF Damaris.”
“Intruder One at eighty-seven percent casualties, Dictator, still no attempts by Imperials to disengage. Evidence of Imperial ram attempts.”
“Signal Damaris: All speed to support Coalition interception of Intruder Three. Send planetary defense stations. Bring all fire to bear incoming units of Intruder Three. And Communications; impress upon them the extreme un-likelihood of any Imperial break-off due to infliction of casualties.”
“Dictator,” it was Second Rank.
“Yes.”
“Imperial elements Intruder Three now at seven gravities acceleration and still maintaining maximum burn.”
Diettinger nodded. The G-forces will be unbearable in a few hours, he thought. Doubtless they have only skeleton crews aboard, likely volunteers for what would undeniably be a suicide mission.
He wondered if they had made any provision whatsoever for evacuating the vessels before impact. That seemed unlikely, given the need to maintain course, an increasingly difficult proposition at the speeds they would soon reach.
“They must be unmanned, Dictator,” Second Rank assessed the threat. “On-board computers, perhaps a skeleton crew of human norm volunteers.”
Diettinger answered, “Remote piloting would render Intruder Three vulnerable to destruction of the controllers aboard Intruders One and Two.” Computer control had not been feasible for the mission profiles of the Dragons of Hourglasses North and South. Intruder Three, of course, had no need for course change capability; its maneuvering requirements were far more brutally simple. That explained the flurry of communications between the elements of Intruder Three; the effort would require the utmost precision in coordination, up to the last second.
He checked the helm readouts: Falkenberg would make intercept in four more hours; Banshee and Ire of Eire two hours after that, about the same time as TF Damaris, delayed only by the lag time of the communications lasers carrying Diettinger’s orders. The dagger thrust that was Imperial Intruder Three would still be ten hours from initial impact when they caught up to it, and even the slightest success against it might be enough to nudge its course away from the Homeworld.
“Dictator,” a soft, somehow gray voice at his elbow; Diettinger turned to see Cyborg Rank Köln standing beside him, an acceleration couch being unnecessary for the mere seven gravities the Cyborg was standing against.
“Speak,” Diettinger answered; not a tone one usually took with the Super Soldiers, but that was the point of being Dictator, after all, wasn’t it?
“The Homeworld must be protected.”
“That is my earnest intent, Cyborg Rank Köln. Return to your station.”
Köln ignored the order, as Diettinger expected him to. “You have not ordered Task Force Keegan to join in the intercept of Intruder Three.”
“It cannot arrive in time,” Diettinger answered quietly. He was aware that they were attracting the attention of increasing numbers of the Fomoria’s bridge crew.
“Your assessment of TF Keegan’s intercept ability assumes a sustained thrust rate of eleven gravities.”
“It does.”
“This is the maximum safe sustainable acceleration only for Sauron norms; I remind you that every ship in TF Keegan carries reinforced EVA Commando squadrons—by your command—and that these squads, composed solely of Cyborgs, are capable of sustaining accelerations greatly in excess of twice that amount. They can assume command of the ships of TF Keegan and engage maximum acceleration to rendezvous with—”
Diettinger cut him off. “And what of the Sauron norms aboard those ships? They will not survive such extended periods of maximum thrust.”
Köln hardly paused. “I anticipated your concern on this point. Those personnel with genetic preference ratings of A-4 and above could use the EVA Commando modules as escape pods for recovery after the battle is won; the rest may naturally be considered expendable.”
“Naturally,” Diettinger agreed dryly.
“I do not propose this action lightly. In balance against the mass of population on the Homeworld, it is simply a foregone conclusion.”
“I do not consider it so. Even leaving that aside, however, your battle plan is flawed.”
“In what detail?”
Diettinger shifted against the G-forces as much from anger as to square his view of Köln’s impassive features. “You fail to understand the importance of continued denial of Ostia to the Imperials as a refueling station. Intruder Two remains sufficiently strong to secure Ostia for refueling should Keegan and her elements disengage.”
“Secure,” Köln admitted, “but not retain. Insufficient numbers remain of Intruder Two to warrant classifying it as any threat once the danger to the Homeworld is removed.”
“And what if the Imperials receive reinforcements?”
Diettinger was astonished at what happened next; for the first time in his life, he was actually sure he saw a perceptible emotional reaction cross a Cyborg’s features—contempt.
“The bulk of the remaining Imperial Navy is comprised of a field of debris now scattered across Tanith and Sauron space. Your appointment as Dictator assumed your competency to deal with the tactical acumen of these cattle.” Köln’s voice dropped. “Was this assumption in error?”
Diettinger did not break Köln’s gaze as he answered quietly. “I will not know if I can defeat their plans until I have apprehended the whole of them.”
“You will not release TF Keegan to Cyborg command?”
“Correct.”
“You endanger the survival of the Homeworld by your fear of an enemy that is already, by any definition, defeated.”
Under different circumstances, it might have been Diettinger’s turn to be contemptuous, but he could not bring himself to do it. Instead, his tone was almost gentle. The Cyborgs were the personification of power; which, he suddenly realized, was exactly what made them so irredeemably naive.
“Don’t underestimate these people, Köln. Don’t make the mistake of equating “inferior” with “stupid.” The human norms have enough experience fighting us to have learned to seek every advantage when doing so. Inferior they may be, but they are well aware of that inferiority and they take great pains to minimize its impact at every opportunity. That is why they avoided engaging us in ground combat whenever possible. In space, our only marked advantage over them has been our higher-G tolerance. A factor which is more than compensated by their much longer naval tradition and commensurately superior expertise in the space combat environment. You have evidently forgotten that this ‘defeated enemy’ is invading our Homeworld’s system, not the other way around.”
Diettinger shook his head. “The Imperials know that they operate against us at distinct disadvantages in every field, and so they base their entire strategy on compensating for that fact.” He favored Köln with a grim smile. “In effect, the Imperials have been playing into the hands of our own Breedmasters. By consciously adapting to oppose us, they, too, are taking human evolution into their own hands, bettering their own segment of the species day by day. And it is that determination to oppose us at every step that has made them sufficiently dangerous so as to be winning this war. They are, after all, as human as we are.”
Köln’s control was absolute once more, but he could not refrain from rejecting Diettinger’s assessment of the enemy. “The Imperials are weak, mercantile, disorganized, venal and petty.”
Diettinger nodded in agreement. “All true. However, they are not fools. I conclude by pointing out
that these defects of character, in and of themselves, have never in human history prevented any one state afflicted with them from crushing another—even if it destroyed itself in doing so.”
Köln stood motionless as only a Cyborg could. Finally, he lowered his eyes and returned to his station. He looked briefly at Second Rank before strapping himself into the acceleration couch.
Second Rank let out a long breath; behind her, the bridge security troopers continued watching Köln—as they lay flattened against their own acceleration couches, hardly able to move against the eleven gravities generated by the Fomoria’s thrust.
They would have been as helpless as the rest of us, she finally admitted to herself. She looked back to the display. Let us be in time…
The Barlowe/Freas stations could prove to be of some help; they would have to wait until Intruder Three was very close to Sauron, and hopefully was much reduced by then from the predations of Task Forces Damaris, Fomoria and the three ships of the ad hoc TF Falkenberg. Still, the meson streams might yet help to turn the tide. The problem was that any one of Intruder Three’s vessels would, on impact, reduce a large portion of the heavily-populated Homeworld to ruin; the percentage which could be expected to get through could render Sauron uninhabitable for decades, perhaps centuries.
“TF Falkenberg engaging lead elements, Dictator,” Signals announced. “TF Damaris arriving fifty minutes.”
Emory’s people would pay dearly for the time they’d gained; TF Damaris couldn’t have gotten so far so quickly at less than eleven-Gs.
In the display, Falkenberg, Banshee and Ire of Eire were concentrating all their fire against the lead ships of Intruder Three; two Fields shot up into orange, but the intercept speed was so great that their ships were soon out of the line of fire. Hawksley evidently decided to leave them for the incoming TF Damaris, hoping the larger, more numerous Sauron ships would finish what the Burgess privateer and its New Ireland cohorts had begun.
Diettinger began extrapolating figures in his head; it was possible, perhaps only barely, but possible that they could stop Intruder Three. They would need every planetary defense battery, every ship of TFs Damaris and Fomoria, all the remaining Dragons—those without missiles or functioning lasers would follow the Imperial lead and be remotely-piloted in for ram attacks—but Sauron could survive this battle. And then…
And then what? he thought abruptly. Then we rebuild; we reinforce, spread out, colonize in secret on a massive scale. Disperse so fast and so quietly that we never again risk extinction at the hands of human norms. Diettinger had no intention of relinquishing the mantle of Dictator before he had undone the damage of decades of statistician rankers’ domination of the High Command Council.
Despite everything, there remained in him a sense of sympathy for the human norms. They certainly showed no sign of reciprocating such sentiment; they despised the Saurons beyond capacity to express, but, he knew, not without good reason. Sauron was, after all, the future of the human race; Diettinger still believed that. He suspected that the human norms must know it at some level. Whether the Sauron people led the way or the rest of humanity stumbled blindly, slowly and painfully along to that destiny, in the end the result would be the same.
But no species willingly surrendered dominance to its heirs, and surely no intelligent species could tolerate the obvious presence of the next step in its own evolution—the one which would replace them. No living creature wanted to be rendered extinct. In fact, he could now understand that better than ever before. Along with such understanding came the certainty that the war would end—could only end when the last human norm gave birth to a Human norm-Sauron equivalent.
And that, he knew, is exactly how it will end. Diettinger’s sympathy remained, but it was tempered by determination. That will be true even if I am forced to fall back on my last resort.
“Dictator, two ships of Intruder Three destroyed; TF Damaris launching missiles from extreme range, maneuvering to match velocities with incoming enemy vessels.”
“It’s taking too much time to eliminate those ships,” Diettinger considered. “Likely they’ve removed on-board crew-support systems to accommodate more capacitors for their Langston Fields.”
The display flared as two more ships of Intruder Three flared and disappeared.
Too long, Diettinger repeated to himself. But it was happening. Intruder Three was being reduced, and every few dozen tons of mass stripped from the approaching Imperial fleet increased Sauron’s chances of survival by millions of megatons. Once TF Fomoria reached the battle to link up with TFs Damaris and Falkenberg, Intruder Three was doomed. It would be the closest battle of his life, but…
“Precedents! Precedents!”
“Enhance!” Diettinger slammed his hand against the immersion display controls so hard a crack raced down the covering; the Sauron System’s other Alderson Points were flashing red. The bridge was filled with the babble of conflicting reports.
“Holcroft Alderson Point, seventy vessels…”
“Franklin Alderson Point, ninety-three Imperial vessels…”
“Bellero Alderson Point, readings in excess of two hundred enemy vessels…”
“Report!” It was the only order of his life he had ever had to shout. “Bellero surveillance, say again.”
“Readings show two hundred and fifty-plus vessels have appeared at the Bellero Alderson Point, Dictator. Telemetry indicates seventy tankers with heavy escort…” the Signals Ranker looked at Diettinger, pale. “Telemetry…” he repeated, but seemed unable to get the rest out.
“Display,” Diettinger ordered, “Enhance sensor readings, Bellero Alderson Point.”
The myriad of twinkling lights resolved themselves into the green points of friendly vessel indicators, and for one insane moment Diettinger thought some long-hidden Sauron fleet had arrived to save the day. “Enhance,” he repeated, and the images stepped up another notch in clarity.
“Enhance,” Diettinger ordered a last time, his voice laden with the certainty of death.
What was it Connolly and Shannon had called Hawksley? he wondered. Fey; the aspect of a man who has perceived the inevitability of his own doom.
The display showed the Bellero Alderson Point filled with Outworld Coalition vessels. Pirates, raiders, former Sauron Trade Bloc and Secessionist spacecraft. All those interstellar nations which had allied with Sauron to topple the Empire, had been branded traitors by Imperial edict, had plead poverty of vessels to support Sauron against the imminent invasion…and now, just as obviously, had been granted amnesty to switch sides. There was no defect in the display; its program simply had not been updated. It could only differentiate friend from foe if it was told beforehand which was which.
And its Sauron programmers had not known that information.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I
“Pour it on, Mister Willoughby,” Hawksley’s voice was tight to his Exec, now serving as Weapons Officer; Falkenberg had matched velocities with the lead ships of Intruder Three, which meant her crew was dying by inches. Helmsman Plunkett had collapsed and died of a gravity-induced brain aneurysm that morning. He had been twenty-one.
“Captain, Sensors show eight enemy carriers closing on our position; they’re launching fighters.”
Since the Imperials had dropped the other shoe the day before, they had spread to every section of the Sauron System. The first wave of fighters had engaged the Dragons of Hourglasses North and South. The operators of the remotely piloted Dragons couldn’t hope to match the skills of pilots at the scene, engaging the defense boats in real time, with no response lag. The RPVs were wiped from space in a matter of hours.
TF Keegan was being systematically dismembered, despite the fact that Dannevar’s command had obliterated four Imperial battleships; eight more had closed in to take their place.
TF Damaris was a wounded bear set on by hounds; the remaining Imperials and their new allies would slash at her flanks until several elements of the Sau
ron battlegroup turned and engaged, in a fury of fire, TF Damaris would then dash two or more ships to incandescent slag…but always more replaced them.
TF Fomoria, relatively unscathed, maintained a murderous volume of fire into Intruder Three, but the lead elements of the Imperial reinforcements were now engaging Diettinger’s command, drawing more and more firepower away from the crucial attacks on the ships which flew spear-like toward the Homeworld.
At least, Diettinger reflected, we finally know the whereabouts of the Imperial Motherships. There was no need for them to guard outlying areas of the Empire against opportunistic raids by the outworlders. The Saurons had expected the Outworld Coalition of Secession to take advantage of the climactic battle of the war. Now, seeing the hundreds of outworld vessels fighting alongside the Imperial vessels, grinding the Sauron Home Fleet to dust, Diettinger realized that they were, in fact, doing just that. Like any successful parasite, the Outworlders knew when to switch to the host with the best chance of survival.
With the fresh influx of capital ships and their fuel tankers to maintain pressure on the Sauron Fleet, hundreds of Imperial heavy fighters now ranged through the Sauron System almost at will. Evidently warned of the Barlowe/Freas stations by their surviving in-system comrades, the Imperials had launched whole wings of assault fighters which had come up on Freas from the backside of the planet, swept in and destroyed the propagator array on the world’s surface. Barlowe was ignored, for without both projectors operating, no mesons were produced and mere charged particle accelerators were no threat.
Diettinger entered a private code into his command console, activating the program he had hidden deep within Fomoria’s computers weeks before. Its final activation could now occur from any number of events; his own voice command or key code entry, even a damage threshold being reached aboard Fomoria herself. Diettinger had written such fail-safes into his program because, even now, he could not bring himself to activate it until he was certain it was necessary. Not before he saw for himself the fate of the Homeworld. He could tolerate the prospect of his own imprisonment, even his execution for war crimes, if he could only be sure that Sauron would be invested, occupied and ultimately, her citizens reintegrated into Imperial society. That would bespeak of some thread of hope for the survival of Sauron. And its survival, he knew, meant its ultimate victory.