by M. D. Cooper
Terrance said.
Tanis shot him a cold look. She knew he didn’t like the military buildup—neither did she—the trip to New Eden was supposed to be her way out of that life. But he was the one who built a colony ship with the sole purpose of secreting away the most valuable technology known to humanity.
Tanis took her advice and responded to Jessica.
Tanis banged on the hull behind her and called to the pilots. “Get us back up to the Intrepid now!”
The last few Marines pounded aboard and the transport’s boosters came to life pulling it off the surface with a speed she would not have expected the bulky vessel to possess.
“How did the sensor net not pick them up?” Brandt asked. “It caught their last incursion.”
Tanis was mentally narrowing down a suspect pool. The presence of the Sirius ships meant that Myrrdan knew about the incursion a decade ago. It also meant he had the means and the ability to tamper with the sensor net.
It was further confirmation that whoever he was, or whoever he was masquerading as, had to be high in the ISF command structure.
Tanis used her link through the Intrepid to reach out to the Victorian President’s office.
It only took a moment for Tom’s face to appear in her mind. His phony look of concern made Tanis wish she could punch him through the Link.
The President’s face drained of blood and he turned, looking outside of his virtual projection,
The Link was severed a moment later.
Tanis looked at the faces around her. “I believe the Victorian President has just been killed. I also think he was conspiring with someone and they saw the end of his usefulness. I saw him look at another person several times.”
“You know who it must be,” Jessica said to Tanis.
“Maybe. It could be another agent.”
Jessica shook her head. “No, it’s him. Drop me off at the spaceport with the Marines and we’ll hit the parliament. It’s time to run him down once and for all.”
“What makes you so sure?” Andrews asked.
“After all this time I think he has finally come out into the open. It all makes sense. He learned about the picotech, and ensured that our layover would be longer here than we wanted, so that he could effect a plan. Sirius gave him the perfect opportunity. The timing is too pat; he is in league with them.”
“I’ll admit it fits,” Terrance nodded.
“We’re going to have one hell of a fight up there, we’re likely not going to be able to give you any support,” Andrews said to Jessica.
“What do you think I am?” Brandt asked.
“We need you upstairs,” Tanis said.
Brandt signed. “Then I’m going to send another platoon down to the spaceport. Two squads can’t take on two million civilians. For that we’ll need six.”
She rose to discuss tactics with Lieutenant Smith and Jessica followed.
“I’m going with them,” Katrina said, giving a deferential nod to Tanis and Andrews as she rose. “Keep us safe…again.”
Tanis signaled the pilot to divert and put down at the spaceport while pouring over the scant data about the incoming fleet. It was a force intended to be overwhelming and Tanis felt real fear that there may be no easy way out of this situation.
The shuttle rocked as it touched down at the spaceport and all but two Marines too wounded to fight followed Jessica, Trist, and Katrina out of the bay.
Moments later they boosted into space.
BATTLE FOR VICTORIA
STELLAR DATE: 3288931 / 09.08.4292 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Landfall, Victoria
REGION: Victorian Space Federation, Kapteyn’s Star System
“The rail platforms are coming online,” Admiral Sanderson reported. “We are also launching picket fighters and planting RM’s in strategic locations. We don’t have a lot of them though—we never really expected to be in a fight this big.”
“It looks like we can never have enough relativistic missiles,” Andrews shook his head.
“The plant is pumping them out as fast as it can,” Tanis said. “Just not fast enough it would seem—thank the stars at least some of the rail platforms got done.”
A decade earlier, Tanis had ordered the building of a dozen automated railgun platforms to provide additional protection for the colony. To date only seven had been installed. Four were in synchronous orbits with Victoria around the Kap. The other three orbited Tara.
Though few railgun platforms protected capital world, each was capable of firing half-ton slugs at 0.2c. When the slugs impacted they would deliver forty-five exajoules of energy—a force equivalent to an eleven-giga-ton nuclear weapon.
They were just shy of world-killers.
Tanis took the XO’s bridge station; Terrance sat near her, a look of deep concern on his face. Officers representing various ship sections filed in to coordinate with their departments and several ensigns sat at weapons and helm stations.
Priscilla winked at Tanis. “Glad you made it off the dirtball.”
“You and me both,” Tanis said with a smile.
“Bring us up to Anne’s orbit, we need to establish a more easily defensible position,” Andrews gave the order to helm, his voice calm; not a tremor of concern present.
Tanis brought up a display of all ship placements within 3AU on the main holo and rose to examine it.
The Intrepid Fleet was spread across the system on a combination of maneuvers, colonization assistance missions, and patrols.
Several were headed back to Victoria, already having been recalled by Ouri, a few would make it on time, most would be too late.
“The Dresden and Orkney are on station, holding at nine hundred kilometers starboard and port,” one of the ensigns reported.
Tanis nodded pensively. “Have them switch places. The Dresden needs to keep that hole in its port side protected.”
“Aye Ma’am.”
Tanis replied with a virtual wink.
Sue replied.
Sanderson stepped to her side. “The Yosemite will be here within the hour, but the Terra is too far out.”
“We should keep it there. If they know of the Gamma site, they’ll make an attempt to hit it. I think we should bring the Peters and Starflyer in from their patrol to bolster it. With the combined fighter compliment they should be able to hold off all but the most determined assault.”
“I agree,” Sanderson said.
Tanis nodded to Priscilla who relayed the order across the system.
Of the forty-seven capital ships in the Intrepid Fleet only eighteen would arrive before the Sirian ships were within firing range.
She organized the ships into three battlegroups, each with one of the new thousand-meter Claymore class cruisers as its anchor.
Each battlegroup had a seven hundred and twenty meter Trenton class cruiser and several of the fleet’s new Pacific class destroyers.
She saw the Andromeda signal that Joe had arrived onboard and directed the ship into a polar orbit around Victoria. Since the last engagement with the Sirians, its stealth systems had seen further upgrades and the ship would be entirely invisible to the enemy.
The Tromandy, formerly known as the Strident Arc, reported ready as it passed Victoria’s southern pole and Tanis assigned it to close station defense of the Intrepid. She gained a pyrrhic sense of satisfaction knowing that the ship which pursued the Hyperion to The Kap was now in the force arrayed against the Sirians.
Tanis waited impatiently as the NSAI assembled a picture of the system from the thousands of sensors in the stellar array. When it did, true fear gripped her as the holo showed sixty-five Sirian ships.
“Ouri, I could have sworn you said something like twenty-five!”
Ouri’s face was white. “That was the report…and they were way further out.”
Tanis glanced around the bridge, the crew looked as scared as she felt. She had an ace up her sleeve, but it was a card she really did not want to play.
She turned to Captain Andrews and Admiral Sanderson.
Captain Andrews shook his head.
Sanderson nodded.
Tanis said.
Tanis looked to Priscilla, “Give me all fleet.”
The avatar nodded and a second later said, “you’re Linked.”
Tanis paused a moment, a knot of emotion in her throat.
Tanis nodded to Priscilla who cut the link.
The bridge crew erupted in cheers.
“Didn’t know you had that much prose in you,” Ouri said.
“I’ve read a lot of Keats recently.”
Tanis replied.
Her speech was followed by a flurry of virtual meetings. Tanis refined the details of her plan with the fleet captains and when she was done, the holo updated with two countdowns.
One, at just shy of an hour showed the time until the Intrepid Fleet would be ready for combat.
The second, at only fifteen minutes, was the countdown until the Sirians were in range of the railgun platforms.
In front of her, the holo projection contained normalized numbers and a linear timeline, but the reality beneath that was far more complex.
Tanis re-checked all of the calculations herself. Not because she doubted the weapons and scan NSAI, but she preferred to internalize the math to understand the timings better. With distances over a light minute, and, with dozens of ships accelerating and breaking across the battlefield, no distance or time was what it appeared.
Local scan showed Victorian ships moving out of the area, and the platforms adjusting their orbits to be on the far side of Victoria when the battle was joined.
She hoped there would be a world for them to continue building when this was over.
Tanis’s concentration was broken by a voice at her side.
“It’s not going to be easy, is it?” Joe ‘s virtual presence stood beside her, brow furrowed as he studied the holo.
“Given the size of their force, they know everything… except maybe about Gamma—though we have to assume they do know about it. Still, they don’t know where our rails are and when they’ll hit. They have to be anticipating some heavy losses before their weapons get in range,” Tanis said.
Angela commented.
Tanis replied darkly.
“I prefer to think that what happened downworld today does not represent the majority of Victorians. Given that we know Tom was involved—maybe the perception we’ve had of the public has not been entirely true,” Joe appeared to lean against the holo platform. “I certainly would like to think we have been better appreciated.”
“Let’s hope we get the opportunity to find out.”
The time passed slowly and the Andromeda went silent, taking Joe’s virtual presence with it, but not after a kiss that Tanis wished were real.
“General Richards,” one of the lieutenants on weapons called out. “Based on scan we will have firing solutions for the rail platforms in three minutes, what are targeting priorities?”
Tanis’s tactical guide called for the rails to tear the lead ships to shreds, turning them into clouds of deadly shrapnel for any other ships nearby. She examined the trajectories of the enemy ships and picked out the vessels which would do the most damage to their allies when destroyed. Once the four were marked she sent the decision to the weapons console.
The lieutenant nodded and—after Bob re-checked the work—approved the firing solution. Even traveling at one-fifth the speed of light, it would take the slugs over thirty minutes to reach their targets.
With such a large time delay they would only get one long-range shot each. Once the enemy ships realized that they were the targets of such powerful kinetic weapons they would add random shifts, colloquially known as jinks, to their movement, ensuring no further long-range shots could be made.
“I’m surprised they’re not jinking already,” Tanis said as she pulled up additional scan da
ta from other posts.
“They’re still a long way out of laser range. Maybe our friend didn’t tell them about our rails,” Andrews said. “Maybe he wanted us to wear them down.”
“Using evasive maneuvers only after you take losses is how fools lose battles,” Tanis shook her head. “It also means these guys may not behave the way we expect. Their cockiness will make them unpredictable.”
“Let’s hope they’re predictably cocky,” Sanderson scowled at the holo, as though he could will time to speed up and show the shots impacting.
Tanis signaled the platforms to take up new positions. With luck, once the enemy ships closed in, the platforms could make a few more shots.
She returned to her seat and checked the status of the fleet, stations, mining platforms, and the moon’s batteries. The last few ships were nearly in position and the platforms had adjusted their orbits.
Everything that could be done was being done.
Tanis settled back to wait.
Jessica paced on the tarmac, pulling her jacket tight against a cold wind that was steadily picking up.
“Wimp, it’s not that cold,” Trist said from under the awning of a storage shed.
“Yes it is, you just don’t have enough blood anymore to get cold.”
Trist chuckled. “At least I have skin. I’m surprised that plastic stuff you have lets enough perspiration though for you to get cold at all.”
Jessica rubbed her arms vigorously. “It breathes plenty well—as you should know.” A snowflake drifted past and she pointed at it. “See! Snow! It’s cold!”
“Whatever,” Trist said with a grin, clearly enjoying riling her wife up.
“About time,” Jessica groused and turned toward the landing cradle.
Marines pulled up in three equipment haulers and a bus which they had graciously requested from the spaceport staff. For their part, the Victorians they encountered were cautiously helpful.