“We understand the limitations,” Barrington said.
He used to be a smuggler, William reminded himself. He probably understands the limitations of our technology better than the groundpounders.
“Second, we cannot send away a destroyer, even for a short period of time, without being unable to recall her if there are . . . developments back here,” he added. “We don’t have a StarCom node here, let alone access to the interstellar communications network. A destroyer on escort duties will be out of reach until she returns. Nor will we know what happened to her if she just . . . vanishes.
“Third, training crewmen to operate the destroyers will take time. We did purchase simulators and suchlike, and they’re on their way, but there are things that can only be learned by doing. The newbie crew may take years to learn their role, particularly if you want them to be more than . . . well, more than Theocratic crewmen. Training them to repair damaged components in the machine shop is not something that can be done quickly.”
“But it can be done,” Gellman said quietly.
“Yes,” William said. “However, there’s also a problem with employing the trainees once they have gained their certifications. There may be no positions for them to use their newfound skills.”
“I plan to bring my remaining freighters here,” Barrington said. “Given time, we may be able to turn this system into an interstellar shipping hub. There will be no shortage of work for the graduates.”
William frowned. “What do you intend to ship?”
“There’s quite a growing market for all sorts of mass-produced items,” Barrington assured him. “And we can get in on the ground floor.”
“I have a different question,” Ford said suddenly. “We were promised that the Commonwealth would provide support to rebuild our economy, but the funds have . . . unaccountably failed to materialize. Do you believe the Commonwealth will keep their promise?”
William hesitated. “I am not in a position to speak for anyone on Tyre,” he said after a moment. “But my impression is that the king overpromised. The Commonwealth was having problems even before the war, problems it was ill-equipped to handle. I think that Parliament put the brakes on the first payments before they could be made.”
“Bah,” Ford said. “And so we are on our own.”
“You are not badly off, compared to some of the other planets in this sector,” William pointed out.
“What do you think of him?” Gellman leaned forward. “The king, I mean?”
“I only met him once,” William temporized. He would have shared his opinions with someone he knew well, but not a man he’d only just met. “I wasn’t privy to any of his innermost thoughts.”
Barrington cleared his throat. “We’d be happy to give you accommodation on the surface for the night,” he said. “Or you can go back to your ship . . . ?”
“I’ll go back,” William said, glancing at his wristcom. “I have a lot of work to do.”
“Your crews are more than welcome to visit the surface,” Barrington said. “I’ll catch up with you later.”
“I’ll show you back to the shuttle,” Tanya said.
She didn’t say anything else until they were back on the streets. “It feels strange to be back,” she said quietly. “This is my home, yet I barely remember it.”
“That will change,” William told her. “I was a grown adult when I left my homeworld.”
He looked up at the darkening sky. “You won’t ever feel like you fit in here,” he added, recalling his one visit to Hebrides during the war. “But you may carve out a role for yourself anyway.”
“Part of me wants to go back home,” Tanya said. She let out an odd little chuckle. “Tyre feels like home.”
“Choose, but choose wisely,” William said. “You can’t live in two places at once.”
“Are you talking about me,” Tanya asked, “or yourself?”
William said nothing. He could see her point. Tanya was a trained and certified lawyer, but her degree was worthless on Asher Dales. Her father might find a role for her, or he might not. It would look bad to put his daughter in a position of undeserved power, even if she was the best-qualified person he had. Perhaps Tanya would be happier going back to Tyre.
“I don’t know,” he said finally. He’d come to realize, long ago, that there was nothing to be gained by living in the past. “I used to tell myself that I would go home, one day. And I kept telling myself that until I couldn’t go home. But living here doesn’t look too bad.”
“Maybe not for you,” Tanya said. “But for me . . .”
CHAPTER TWELVE
* * *
JUDD
“We will enter realspace in five minutes, Admiral,” Commander Chanson Barrie reported, grimly. “We have not yet picked up any traces of enemy vessels.”
Kat nodded, unsurprised. HMS Violence and her sisters had pushed their drives to the limits, cutting down the transit time between Ahura Mazda and Judd to three days, but she was fairly certain the enemy would have departed long ago. She’d had plenty of time to second-guess herself as she’d sat in her cabin, reading and rereading the tactical staff’s assessments of the recordings from Judd. She had to see what had happened but, at the same time, she’d arguably abandoned her post.
“Bring the squadron to battlestations,” she ordered. The superdreadnought commanders had allowed their training to slip. A mere year after the war and they’d have a very hard time coping with a Theocratic squadron. She silently kicked herself for not keeping their noses to the grindstone. “And prepare to engage the enemy.”
She settled back in her command chair as the timer counted down the last few seconds. She’d be astonished if they actually did encounter the enemy—anyone with half a brain would have fled the system before reinforcements could arrive—but it was well to be careful. Whoever was in command of the remnants of the Theocracy’s fleet could have decided to stake everything on one roll of the dice . . . or been replaced by someone with more fanaticism than common sense. ONI’s estimates for how long the Theocrats could keep their fleet operating had been badly wrong. Kat wondered, sourly, if they’d missed a major enemy base somewhere. The Theocracy’s record keeping had been poor even before they’d started to deliberately destroy their files. It was easy to imagine an enemy fleet base just vanishing from the paperwork.
They wouldn’t have been able to afford it, Kat thought. The more she looked at the figures, the more she wondered how the Theocracy had managed to survive for so long. But then, they’d never faced a peer before. The single greatest challenge they’d faced before Cadiz had been a lone system with a tiny defensive fleet. They’d smashed them flat in an afternoon. They simply weren’t prepared for modern war.
The superdreadnought shuddered as she sliced her way back into realspace. Kat leaned forward, bracing herself. The odds of being ambushed were very low, but that didn’t mean she could afford to ignore them. War was a democracy, after all. The enemy got a vote. Her lips twitched at the thought—the Theocrats had forgotten that when they’d started the war—then thinned as the display began to fill with data. There were no enemy starships within sensor range, while the planet itself was as cold and silent as the grave.
They didn’t drop an antimatter bomb, she told herself. Judd’s population had been dispersed, first by the settlement planners and then by the war. The Theocrats would have to render the entire planet uninhabitable if they wanted to slaughter everyone. There’s that, at least.
“Raise the planet,” she ordered, trying to suppress her doubts. The Theocrats could have nuked everything bigger than a village and her ships wouldn’t know about it until they got much closer. “Inform them . . . inform them that we are entering orbit.”
Her eyes narrowed as she studied the display. There was no sign of HMS Gibraltar or Edinburgh, not even cooling wreckage slowly falling into the planet’s atmosphere. Kat wasn’t entirely surprised, although she was pissed. Captain Layman had clearly been asleep at the
switch. Kat promised herself that she’d make damn sure that everyone knew that they had to remain on alert, at least until the enemy force was hunted down and destroyed. She suspected she knew what Captain Layman had been thinking, but she didn’t care. Layman should have been in a position to break contact and escape.
“Admiral, I have been unable to establish contact with the planet,” the communications officer said. “However, I am picking up a stealthed recon drone. It responded to our sweep.”
“Download its memory core,” Kat ordered as an icon flickered into existence on the display. Hopefully, the drone had recorded enough of the battle to be useful. “And put the recordings on the main display.”
“Aye, Admiral.”
“And keep trying to raise the planet,” Kat added. She wasn’t sure what she’d do if they couldn’t contact anyone on the surface. Land shuttles at random in hopes of finding someone in authority? Was there even any authority left on the surface? The Theocrats had clearly bombarded the planet heavily. Judd’s unity might have been shattered beyond repair. “Let me know the moment you make contact.”
Her console bleeped. The data download was ready to view. Kat keyed the display and watched the whole engagement from beginning to end. Captain Layman had definitely been caught with her pants down—her mind provided a whole string of cruder metaphors—and two cruisers had been blown out of existence without even managing to scratch the enemy’s paint! Kat felt a sinking feeling as she reran the record, watching the engagement for a second time. The enemy missiles seemed to have extended range, more than she would have thought possible. Captain Layman might well have been caught by surprise . . . No, she had been caught by surprise. There had been no reason to think that the missiles might have been improved until it was too late.
Someone definitely helped them, Kat thought. The Theocrats could barely keep their starships running. Anyone competent enough to modify missiles on the fly wouldn’t have been assigned to the fleet. They’d have stayed in the Ahura Mazda shipyards and probably been killed when the Commonwealth invaded. But who?
She keyed her console. “Tactical, I want a full analysis of the engagement by the end of the day,” she said. “And I particularly want to know how many of those superdreadnoughts are real.”
“Aye, Admiral.”
Kat forced herself to think as she replayed the recording, once again. Only three enemy superdreadnoughts had opened fire, which suggested they were the only real ships in the phantom fleet. Three superdreadnoughts were nothing to laugh at, and they could wreak havoc until the Commonwealth finally hunted the ships down and destroyed them, but they weren’t an unmanageable threat. And yet . . . she knew that there was no way she could be sure. There might have been five superdreadnoughts, with two of them holding their fire. It wasn’t as if they’d needed more than one superdreadnought to take out two cruisers.
They’re lucky they didn’t hit the planet, Kat thought. She didn’t like the implications of the Theocrats firing off so many missiles in a single engagement, not against a vastly inferior force. They clearly thought there was no chance of running out of missiles. Who’s helping them?
“Admiral,” the communications officer said, “I’ve managed to establish a link with a General Fox. He claims to be the current chief executive, as everyone above him in the line of succession is either dead or out of communication.”
Kat tapped her console, bringing up the files on Judd. There was no reference to a General Fox . . . or anyone, really, below the planetary president and his cabinet. The Commonwealth hadn’t bothered to collect any information on the planet . . . In hindsight, she told herself, that might have been a mistake. On one hand, Judd was independent; the locals could sort out their problems for themselves. But, on the other, she had no way of knowing who was the legitimate head of state. General Fox apparently didn’t know either.
They didn’t have time to set up a proper government since they were liberated, she reminded herself numbly. And now they’ve been bombed back into the stone age again.
“Put him through,” she ordered.
“Admiral Falcone,” a voice said. There was no image. It took Kat a moment to realize that General Fox, wherever he was, didn’t have access to a camera. She couldn’t believe it. Just how badly had the planet been hit? “I’d like to welcome you to Judd, but as you can see, we’re in no state to receive visitors.”
“I understand,” Kat said quickly. The general’s accent was thick. She thought she heard resentment underlying his words, but it was hard to be sure. “Can you give me a sitrep?”
General Fox laughed humorlessly. “They hammered us,” he said. “Every governmental building and military base has been destroyed, along with dozens of bridges, warehouses, and buildings I think were targeted at random. Oh, and they landed at the POW camps and armed the prisoners. The bastards are now causing havoc wherever they go.”
Kat frowned. There was something about the attack pattern that didn’t quite make sense. The Theocrats hadn’t nuked Judd, but they’d hit the planet hard enough to destroy the government and trigger a refugee crisis. It wouldn’t be as bad as they’d probably hoped, she thought, yet . . . they could have simply nuked the planet. Or dropped bigger KEWs. Had they wanted to set off a crisis?
Perhaps they did, she thought. We’d have to help the locals, which means draining our resources still further.
She glanced at the out-system display. The cloudscoop was gone. She guessed that the HE3 stockpiles on the planet’s surface had also been destroyed. Judd was going to have a power shortage along with everything else, although . . . She shook her head. There was no point in looking for small mercies. Thousands of people were going to die in the next few weeks, and there was nothing she could do about it. Even if she put in an immediate request for assistance, it would take too long for it to arrive.
“I see,” she said, racking her brain. There had to be something they could do. “How may we assist you?”
General Fox laughed again. “If you have shuttles or aircraft, it might be useful,” he said. “But unless you have your ships crammed with ration bars, I’m not sure what else you can do.”
“We’ll do our best,” Kat promised. Her marines had plenty of experience working with desperate refugees. Here, thankfully, there was little chance of being caught up in an insurgent attack. “I’ll start shipping supplies down to you at once.”
“Thank you,” General Fox said. “Admiral . . . how long can your ships remain in orbit?”
Kat grimaced. “I don’t know,” she said slowly. She’d have to dispatch the courier boats to alert the other systems within the sector, but . . . but it wasn’t as if there was anything most of the liberated worlds could do to defend themselves. “We’ll stay as long as we can.”
“Which won’t be long enough,” General Fox told her. “What happens when they come back?”
They won’t, Kat wanted to say. But she knew there was no way she could guarantee that. The Theocrats might return, sooner rather than later, and smash Judd flat once again. And she couldn’t keep her fleet on guard permanently. She’d have to go haring off to the next enemy target. There’s no way we can stay here.
“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “But, for the moment, you’re safe.”
“Hah,” General Fox said.
He closed the channel. Kat took a long breath. She didn’t blame General Fox for being angry, both at the Theocrats and the Commonwealth. He and his former superiors had believed that the navy would protect them. But no one had anticipated a massive enemy force dropping out of hyperspace and blowing two cruisers to atoms. She considered, briefly, splitting up her superdreadnought squadrons and dispatching one or two of them to every threatened world. It was workable, in theory, but it ran the risk of a lone ship being attacked by superior force.
We’d take a bite out of them, she thought. She was fairly sure that one of her superdreadnoughts could take on two enemy ships at once. But we might well lose our superdr
eadnought in the engagement.
She dismissed the thought with an angry grunt as she keyed her console. “Major Harris, you are authorized to land,” she said. “Coordinate your relief efforts with the planetary government”—such as it is—“and . . . and do everything you can for them.”
“Aye, Admiral,” Major Harris said. “Do you have a timescale?”
“Not as yet,” Kat admitted. She gritted her teeth in annoyance. There was no way she could give the marines a definite leaving time. “But we’ll be here for at least two days.”
“Aye, Admiral.”
Kat sighed as she closed the connection. It wasn’t enough to help the planet. It wasn’t anything like enough. They’d barely scratch the surface of what needed to be done. But they had to try.
Unless we pull the marines out in a couple of days, because we have to go elsewhere, Kat thought as she brought up a starchart. The enemy could be hitting another world right now.
She considered the problem for a long moment, silently reflecting on the irony. It was what she’d done, three years ago. And now she was on the receiving end.
Too many possible targets, she told herself. And yet, too many of them are effectively worthless.
Her thoughts ran in circles. But the conclusion was inescapable. There was no way she’d be able to catch the enemy, save by sheer luck. Trying to shadow them back to their base might work, given time, but she knew that idea was a long shot. Unless, of course, she managed to bait a trap. A couple of ideas had already occurred to her.
“Detail one of the courier boats to take a copy of the engagement records back to Ahura Mazda,” she ordered. “And then detail three of the remaining boats to alert everyone within fifty light-years. I want every liberated world to be taking precautions.”
Debt of Honor (The Embers of War) Page 12