Except this lot seem alarmingly smart, he thought. They might be more careful.
“It should work,” he said. They had nothing to lose by trying. “If nothing else, we might just manage to give them a bloody nose.”
“Then get right on it,” Barrington ordered. “I’ll talk to you two later.”
His image vanished. William looked at Tanya. “He’s taking it remarkably well.”
“Father has always been . . . somewhat phlegmatic,” Tanya said. “The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune are a part of his life, he says.”
William nodded in wry approval. “Primrose will be back soon,” he said. “Once she’s in position, we can start our planning.”
Tanya met his eyes. “Can you really hurt them?”
“We will try,” William said. The firepower disparity was going to hurt his little squadron. “Like I said, we should be able to give them a bloody nose. A little deception, and they might not even push us to the wall.”
And if someone proposed this as a solution to a naval problem, he added in the privacy of his own thoughts, they’d be lucky not to be hauled in front of a court-martial and charged with gross stupidity.
She rose. “I’ll leave you to get on with it,” she said. “Dinner tonight, at the usual time?”
“Perhaps not,” William said. “I’ll have to meet Captain Descartes for dinner. We need to do some advanced planning.”
He looked down at the desk. “Perhaps we should have escorted the freighter directly here after all.”
“We’d still be in transit,” Tanya said. “Wouldn’t we?”
She walked through the hatch, which hissed closed behind her. William smiled ruefully, then keyed his terminal. They’d crammed the destroyers with supplies, but the shortage of internal volume had really limited what they could bring. The local industry could make up some of the shortfall, but other items would need to wait until the other ships arrived. Unless, of course, he requested help from the Royal Navy. Kat would understand the need, he was sure.
But not everyone will, he thought. There had always been a pervasive anti-colonial sentiment in the upper ranks, something that had only been made worse by the mutiny on Uncanny. It was funny how colonial officers and men seemed to be the first selected for involuntary discharges. Some of them will decide we can look after ourselves.
He shook his head as he keyed his terminal. “Communications, ask the courier boat to wait for five more minutes,” he said. It wasn’t something he could order, not anymore. “I have a message I need them to take to Ahura Mazda.”
“Aye, sir.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
* * *
AHURA MAZDA
“Your shuttle is ready, Admiral,” Captain Rosslyn said. “We are cleared to depart.”
Kat barely moved from her chair. The flight back to Ahura Mazda had been uneventful, although she’d hoped in vain that they’d stumble across the enemy fleet. She’d detached two of her superdreadnoughts to cover Judd, all too aware that she was taking a serious risk by breaking up the squadron. It had been easy, during the five days she’d spent in transit, to second-guess herself time and time again. The Theocrats weren’t going to return to Judd . . . were they?
They might, just to make us look like fools, she thought. And if they do, we’ll be ready for them.
She stood, slowly. She’d spent the voyage trying to find a way they could handle the situation without reinforcements, but nothing had come to mind. She just didn’t have enough ships . . . the refrain had echoed through her head, time and time again. There was no way she could cover all the possible targets without spreading her forces too thin. Cold logic told her she should abandon a number of worlds, but the thought was unbearable. The Commonwealth had sworn to protect the liberated planets.
And the horrors the bastards unleashed on Judd will be repeated a millionfold, she told herself glumly. The Theocrats hadn’t aimed at occupation, not this time. They’d set out to make the planet’s inhabitants miserable, and they’d succeeded. How long will it be until another world is hit?
Her mind was elsewhere as she followed her close-protection detail to the nearest airlock. She’d downloaded a tactical update as soon as they’d dropped out of hyperspace, but all it had been able to tell her was that the Theocrats hadn’t shown themselves . . . not in the last few days anyway. The bastards could attack a world on the other side of the sector and she wouldn’t know about it for weeks, if she was lucky. Next time, they might manage to ensure that no word got out until it was far too late.
She kept mulling the situation over and over in her mind, paying no heed to the shuttle’s brief flight through the atmosphere. The pilot was good enough to bring the craft in for a smooth landing, somewhat to her relief. She’d never minded flying through turbulence when she was in command of the shuttle, but being a passenger worried her. She wasn’t in control when someone else was flying the craft. Logic told her there was nothing to fear—the shuttle’s automatics could handle almost anything—but her emotions told her something different. She liked to be in control.
I really shouldn’t have let them promote me off the command deck, she thought again. She shook her head in annoyance. Maybe I can trade my admiral’s rank stars for a post on a starship . . .
It was a nice thought, but she knew it wasn’t going to happen. She would never command a starship again, not really. A squadron or a fleet . . . but not a starship. Unless she bought the ship herself. There was enough money in her trust fund to buy a midsized freighter, if she wanted it, but . . . She sighed as she rose and headed for the hatch. She and Pat had planned a future together, after the war. That future was now as dead as Pat himself. And, somehow, she had to go on.
You have your duty, she reminded herself severely. Both as an admiral in the navy and as a privy councilor.
Lieutenant Kitty Patterson met her outside the shuttle. “Admiral,” she said, saluting. “The remainder of your officers are waiting in the conference room.”
“Good,” Kat said, striding past her. She didn’t relish the thought of going straight into a meeting, but there was no choice. “Have food and drink sent in, if you please. It’s going to be a long day.”
She felt a flicker of grim concern as she walked into the conference room. A giant holographic starchart hung over the table, bright spheres showing the ever-growing volume of space hiding the enemy ships. Civilians might think that the sphere could be searched, but military officers knew better. The sphere was so unimaginably vast that a billion superdreadnoughts would go unnoticed. Kat had no doubt the Theocrats had taken every precaution to escape detection.
And they won’t have attacked the closest world to their base anyway, she thought. They’ll have done everything in their power to escape being detected.
“Be seated,” she ordered stiffly. The stewards rolled in a trolley of food, then withdrew as silently as they came. “I assume you’ve seen the reports from Judd?”
“Yes, Admiral,” General Winters said. “It doesn’t look good.”
“There is no way we can provide the level of support they require,” Major Shawna Callable said. Her voice was very cold. “They’re going to be thrown back on their own resources.”
“They need help,” Kat said.
“We don’t have the equipment or manpower,” Shawna informed her. “The vast majority of our supplies are already earmarked for one world or another. Even if we switched them all to Judd, just getting them there would be a problem. We’d have to gather the transport and then provide an escort . . .”
“And we might simply be giving the enemy more targets to shoot at,” Winters added. “They will be watching for any chance to weaken us.”
“Or to make us look like idiots,” Kat snapped. She glowered at Janice. “What’s ONI’s take on the recordings?”
“Five enemy superdreadnoughts, at most,” Captain Janice Wilson said. “Long-range scans were disrupted by their ECM, which appears to have been significantly
upgraded, but I think we can be fairly sure there were no more than five superdreadnoughts present at the engagement. The vast majority of enemy contacts simply didn’t produce any drive turbulence or rogue energy signatures. A handful of analysts actually believe there were no more than three, but not everyone finds their case convincing.”
It’s what we’d want to believe, Kat told herself.
She took a breath. “And the smaller ships?”
“About half of them were real, if the scans were accurate,” Janice said. “But they were bunched up.”
“They’re also immaterial,” Commodore Fran Higgins said. “They won’t pose a threat without the superdreadnoughts.”
“Someone is supplying them,” Winters rumbled. “Who?”
“We don’t know,” Janice admitted. She leaned back in her chair, looking tired. “On one hand, they seem to have indigenous weapons and sensors . . . simply heavily modified. The handful of nonindigenous systems are devices they could probably buy on the black market. We were never as effective as we might have wished in cutting off supplies from outside the Theocracy.”
Because the other Great Powers wanted to test their weapons on the battlefield, Kat thought cynically. If the war had done anything, apart from killing millions of people, it had taught the spacefaring powers that their imaginations had been somewhat inadequate. And they didn’t want to ship the weapons to us, because we’d simply copy them.
“Then we have to find their purchasing agent,” Winters said. “Assuming they actually have one.”
“That’s something to follow up on later,” Kat said. She tapped the table. “I will, of course, be requesting reinforcements from home. However, until they arrive, we need to handle the situation with what we have on hand. That will not be easy.”
“No,” Winters agreed. “They can pick and choose their targets at will.”
Kat nodded. “Maxwell’s Haven can look after itself,” she said. The planet had practically been annexed after the war, although the inhabitants hadn’t offered a word of protest. “The fixed defenses can handle the enemy fleet, if it risks an attack so close to the Gap. We will withdraw the superdreadnoughts covering the planet and add them to our deployable forces, along with one of the two superdreadnought squadrons here. That gives us four squadrons to deploy.”
“Minus the two superdreadnoughts you left at Judd,” Fran said quietly.
“Yes,” Kat said. She wondered, sourly, if there was anything to gain by trying to protect Ahura Mazda. The whole planet was a mess. There were times when she’d simply considered advising the king to cut his losses and abandon the wretched planet. Anyone who wanted to come with the departing fleet would be welcome. “That can’t be helped.”
She nodded to the starchart. “We will parcel out the superdreadnoughts in squadrons of four and five ships, positioning them in places where they will be able to speed to the rescue of any attacked world. Ideally, they will be able to intercept and destroy the enemy fleet. Even if they don’t, they’ll make the enemy think twice about attacking if they think there’s a reasonable chance of being caught.”
“Risky,” Fran observed. “It will be tricky to reconcentrate our forces if there is an emergency.”
“No one is going to invade the Theocratic Sector,” Janice said.
“No one would want to invade the Theocratic Sector,” Shawna commented. “Is there anything here anyone actually wants?”
Kat shrugged. The Commonwealth was the closest interstellar power, and Tyre had no stomach for further expansion. It was difficult enough absorbing the worlds that had joined the Commonwealth before the war. Anyone else . . . She supposed that Marseilles or a couple of others might be interested in setting up trading posts, just to give themselves some influence, but they’d hardly want to annex the sector. The locals, on the other hand, might want to be annexed.
“We’ll be setting up an emergency StarCom network,” she said. “We have the prefabricated units in storage. It’s time we put them to use.”
She smiled coldly. The bean counters were going to be screaming for her head when they figured out what she’d done, but she found it hard to care. She hadn’t been promoted to admiral just so she could look calm and resolute as the sector fell into anarchy. There was a crisis now. They could set up the network and to hell with the cost.
Winters grinned. “Yes, Admiral.”
“There will be outrage back home,” Colonel Christopher Whitehall warned. “And you may be forced to pay.”
That would wipe out the old trust fund, Kat thought, with a flicker of amusement. Her plan wasn’t much—she was all too aware it wasn’t much—but it might just give them an edge. The Theocracy had built the first portable StarCom, an innovation no one had expected, yet the Commonwealth had improved upon the design. They were still hideously expensive, but at least they didn’t explode when someone looked at them the wrong way. And if I have to pay for them . . .
She shook her head. The StarComs had been produced for emergencies . . . and this, she was sure, was an emergency. She would sooner endure the wrath of the wretched bureaucrats who’d moan and whine about her spending billions of crowns than watch another world die under enemy fire. The only downside was that the portable units wouldn’t last long. They simply lacked the shielding to keep them operational indefinitely. Hopefully, the situation would be resolved quickly. And if it wasn’t . . .
Parliament will need to vote on an emergency spending bill, she thought. That’s not going to go down well.
“I’ll deal with the consequences,” she said firmly. “We will also be distributing courier boats throughout the sector, which will allow us to react faster when there isn’t a StarCom in the system. It isn’t a perfect solution, but it will have to do.”
Her eyes swept the room. “If any of you have better ideas,” she added wryly, “please feel free to offer them.”
“Finding their base is a great idea in principle,” Winters said. “But in practice . . .”
“We’ll step up our survey efforts,” Kat said. The Theocracy had never bothered to survey the farther reaches of their sector. It was an oversight that puzzled her, although she supposed that they’d probably been bent on conquest ever since they’d realized that Earth was nothing more than radioactive rubble. There was nothing to conquer in that direction, save perhaps for a handful of isolated colonies. “We might get lucky.”
“And we’ll focus on isolating their supply lines.” Janice grimaced. “Too much war material got onto the black market after the war.”
“Work on it,” Kat ordered. She remembered William’s brother and scowled. “If worse comes to worst, I expect we can hand out a few pardons if they lead to bigger fish.”
It might be worth trying to get in touch with him, she thought. She hadn’t exactly lost touch with William, but . . . messages had become more and more infrequent as time had gone by. The last she’d heard, he’d gone to his new homeworld. She’d have to check with her family, then send a priority message. William was, technically, a family client. Someone would be keeping an eye on his movements. And his brother might be able to help us.
“They might be glad to get a chance to go legit,” Winters said. “But most smugglers already have that option.”
“We will see,” Kat said. “Commodore, have your staff draw up a plan to deploy StarComs and disperse the fleet. I’ll take command of one of the task forces personally.”
“Aye, Admiral,” Fran said. “Do you want me to remain here?”
“Yes,” Kat said. “They might come calling.”
“I doubt it,” Janice said. “What would be the point?”
“An attack here would make us look weak,” Whitehall pointed out. “And everything we’d done on the surface would be lost.”
Kat couldn’t disagree. The enemy could not be allowed to recapture their former homeworld or even hold the high orbitals for an hour or so. An hour would be more than long enough to smash the Commonwealth garrisons and give th
e insurgents a chance to reclaim the surface and kill the collaborators. By the time her fleet returned, Ahura Mazda would be in ruins. Again.
And we wouldn’t even be able to evacuate the people who worked with us, she thought. The people who placed their lives in our hands.
“We will keep a superdreadnought squadron here, under cloak,” she said. “They might take the bait.”
She rubbed her forehead, feeling a headache starting to blossom beneath her skin. She wanted—she needed—to take action . . . but all she could do was wait. The enemy would determine their next target and then . . .
If we’re lucky, we’ll have a task force close enough to intercept, she told herself. And even if we are not, we might be able to trace them back to their base.
“We’ll meet again this evening,” she said. “And then we’ll start dispersing the fleet. Dismissed.”
She watched them go, then sat back in her chair. She’d taken a gamble—a big one. There were too many things that could go wrong, too many places the enemy might attack . . . The Theocrats, like it or not, would dictate the pace of the conflict. She might get lucky—she certainly hoped she’d get lucky—but the odds weren’t on her side. The Commonwealth could do everything right and still lose.
Which happens, sometimes, she thought, recalling a piece of advice from one of her instructors. The Royal Navy had been preparing for war and the cadets, regardless of their family background, had deliberately been put into a no-win scenario. You do everything in your power, you do everything you can . . . and you lose anyway.
She tapped her terminal, writing out a brief message for the family manager back home. He’d check the records, locate William, and reply. She’d have to contact her older brother, sooner rather than later, but she couldn’t face him right now. Peter hadn’t been happy when she’d accepted a seat on the Privy Council, even though it gave her a voice at the king’s table. He’d pointed out that it conflicted with her duties to the family.
Debt of Honor (The Embers of War) Page 14