She turned to the giant portholes and looked out over her domain. The orbiting station was surrounded by industrial nodes in various states of disrepair, as well as chunks of debris and the remains of an enemy battle fleet. The locals had been slowly taking them apart for spare parts, cannibalizing the ruined ships to rebuild their infrastructure. Elizabeth had to admire their determination, even though she feared the worst. Falladine was big enough to make a tempting target, but too small to justify a larger naval presence. The handful of ships on guard duty were nowhere near enough to stand off a squadron of superdreadnoughts.
And we might be losing some of them, she thought as she turned back to the display. If rumors from home are true, half the fleet is going to be recalled.
“The freighter is approaching the docking strut now,” Randy reported. “They’re handling themselves well.”
“I suppose,” Elizabeth said. The freighter was maneuvering like a wallowing pig. She’d seen superdreadnoughts handled with more grace and elegance. She couldn’t tell if the crew were unsure of themselves or unsure of the station itself. Anything built by the Theocracy couldn’t be wholly trusted. “I should ask her captain to dinner this evening.”
“I’m sure he’d appreciate a change from shipboard rations,” Randy agreed. “Even station-board rations would be an improvement.”
Elizabeth nodded. Her crew had been eating ration bars for the first two months of their deployment, although, as the planet managed to repair the damage to its farms, their diet had been supplemented with meat and veg. It was a shame they couldn’t spend more time on the surface, she’d often thought, but she was short-staffed as it was. The Royal Navy had refused to assign more than a handful of officers and crew to the station. Falladine simply wasn’t as important as a dozen other worlds.
The freighter docked, gingerly. Elizabeth glanced at the manifest again, wondering if the ship was also carrying fine china. But anything truly fragile would be in a stasis field . . . wouldn’t it? Perhaps the freighter couldn’t afford stasis pods. It was possible, but she doubted that they’d risk carrying anything fragile and expensive without them.
“They’re opening the hatches,” Randy said. He tapped a switch, putting the live feed from the security monitors on the display. A pair of customs inspectors were already waiting by the inner airlock. They’d check the crew’s certificates before allowing them farther into the station. “I . . .”
He broke off as the inner airlock exploded into a hail of flying debris. Elizabeth stared in horror as a team of black-clad men stormed out of the freighter, weapons at the ready. The two inspectors, already injured, were stunned before they could react. Dozens of men flowed into her station, spreading out in all directions.
The ship had been a Trojan horse, and she’d let it dock!
“Seal the hatches,” she snapped, shaking off her paralysis. The intruders would presumably have more shaped charges or even cutting tools with them, but they would need some time to cut through every hatch. “And get everyone on alert . . .”
Her mind raced. There were no marines on her station. Her staff weren’t even armed; they didn’t need to be armed to do their jobs. And they were probably already badly outnumbered as well as scattered. She couldn’t imagine her team delaying the intruders for long, let alone long enough for the marines on the naval ships to get over to the station. The display was insisting that the intruders were already cutting their way through the next set of hatches.
She had a feeling she was going to lose her station before help could arrive.
“Tell everyone in the lower sections to make their way to the escape pods,” she ordered grimly. “They’re to blast free as soon as they’re aboard . . .”
New alerts sounded. The near-space display filled with red icons. Elizabeth stared in horror as three superdreadnoughts materialized from cloak, launching missiles with terrifying abandon. The naval patrol—four cruisers and a destroyer—had gone to battlestations as soon as she’d sounded the alert, but there was no way they could stop so many missiles from tearing their ships to atoms. She hoped . . . she prayed . . . that one or more of them would have the sense to open vortexes and run, even with missiles heading directly towards the planet itself. There was no way they could stand against such firepower.
“The planetary defenses are coming online,” Randy reported.
Elizabeth snorted. The planetary defenses might frighten a pirate, but not a trio of superdreadnoughts. They were already smashing every orbital installation within range, save for her station; they didn’t seem to know, or care, if they were hitting genuine targets or merely smashing installations that had been defunct for years. The cruisers were picking up speed, attempting to get away from the planet, but it was too late. Elizabeth watched as, one by one, they died.
“The escape pods are launching now,” Randy said.
“Tell them to go dark,” Elizabeth ordered. Escape pods were designed to start screaming for help the moment they were launched, but in a warzone . . . there was a good chance they’d draw fire. It might not even be deliberate. An automated system might mistake an escape pod for a mine and blow it out of space without ever realizing the error. “And . . .”
The deck shuddered beneath her feet. “They’re in the lower shaft,” Randy said. “They’ll be here in a moment.”
“Purge the datacores,” Elizabeth ordered. She’d lost the station. The only thing she could do was minimize the damage as much as possible. “And then we have to . . .”
She swore as the hatch exploded inwards. A team of men advanced into the room, their weapons sweeping for targets. One of them pointed a stunner at her . . .
. . . and the world went black.
“The boarding party was a success, sir,” the communications officer reported. “They never had a chance to resist.”
“God was truly with us,” Moses agreed.
Admiral Zaskar kept his thoughts to himself. He’d never admit it out loud, but he’d deliberately sent some of the most fanatical of his people on the boarding party. If they’d been killed . . . it would have been annoying, yet it would have worked in his favor too. His fleet didn’t need people who were more interested in dying gloriously than in making the enemy die gloriously.
“They’ve taken twelve prisoners,” the communications officer added. “Five of them are women.”
Poor souls, Admiral Zaskar thought.
He pushed the uncomfortable thought out of his mind. “Order them to transfer the prisoners to the ship, then start looting the station,” he said. “I want everything that can be of use transferred to the freighter as quickly as possible. The enemy reinforcements will already be on their way.”
“Aye, sir.”
Admiral Zaskar turned to the main display. Falladine was surrounded by a small halo of debris, hundreds of pieces already falling out of orbit and burning up in the planet’s atmosphere. A handful of larger chunks would probably survive the fall and strike the surface; he wondered, absently, if they’d do any real damage. The remainder of the debris, in relatively stable orbits, would have to be cleared before the planet could start to rebuild its space-based industries. It was yet another problem the Commonwealth would have to solve if it wanted to keep the sector.
Not that it’ll take them that long, he thought. A lone destroyer could sweep up most of the debris in a few weeks.
“Take us into high orbit,” he said. “Have you locked KEWs on our targets?”
The weapons officer hesitated. “Admiral . . . some of our targets do not appear to exist.”
“Impossible,” Moses snapped.
“They may have been moved,” Askew pointed out smoothly. “Or they may never have existed at all.”
Admiral Zaskar ignored the byplay. “Target the ones we can see from orbit,” he said. “And if you locate any other possible targets, take aim at them too.”
He watched as the targeting list was rapidly updated. Falladine, unlike Judd, had known there was a prospec
t of being attacked. They hadn’t had enough time to upgrade their defenses to the point where they could scratch his paint, but they’d certainly had the time and opportunity to relocate facilities, disperse their planet-side industry, and scatter their population. He would be very surprised if the bombardment killed even one member of the planetary government. In his experience, unbeliever governments did everything in their power to guarantee their safety. They feared to meet God after they died.
“I’ve located a handful of additional targets,” the weapons officer reported. “But sir . . . some of the energy signatures look too good to be true.”
Decoys, then, Admiral Zaskar thought. But we have no way to find out for sure.
“Target them anyway,” he ordered, curtly. KEWs were cheap; it was easy to mine asteroids for rock, and it was easier than explaining to the cleric why he hadn’t bombed an obvious target. “And then you may open fire.”
“Aye, sir,” the weapons officer said.
Admiral Zaskar nodded and watched as, one by one, the targets blinked out of existence. It was hard to be sure that some of the targets truly were targets, but there were enough real targets included in the list that Falladine would need years to recover. By then . . . either the Theocracy would be reborn, or his fleet would have been wiped out. His eyes narrowed as he saw a freighter dropping back into realspace a few light-seconds from the planet, only to reverse course as soon as her commander saw what was going on. He tapped his console, detailing a pair of destroyers to try to run the freighter down. She’d run straight to the nearest enemy base and scream for help.
“The bombardment is complete, sir,” the weapons officer reported. “All targets were hit twice.”
“Very good,” Admiral Zaskar told him. Falladine would definitely need years to recover. “And the station?”
“They’re sorting through the manifests now,” the communications officer said. “But everything appears to be a little out of place.”
“Tell them to grab everything they can,” Admiral Zaskar ordered. Even farming equipment would be useful, if there came a time when they had to set out for unexplored regions of the galaxy. “But they have to hurry.”
He ran through the vectors in his head, once again. There hadn’t been a strong enemy presence at Falladine, which meant . . . there might well be one close by. How close? He had no way to know. An hour away? A day away? A week away? The countdown had already started. He just didn’t know how long he had until it reached zero. They’d just have to grab everything they could and head out for the RV point. By then, the ships he’d sent to Dorland and Asher Dales would probably be back too.
“They have six hours,” he said, finally. “After that, we’re leaving.”
And we’ll make sure to blow up what remains of the orbital station as we go, he added to himself. They won’t find it easy to rebuild.
Elizabeth awoke slowly, her body fighting her every inch of the way. She honestly wasn’t sure what had happened. She hadn’t felt so vile since her friends had taken her out for a night on the town when she’d won her place at Piker’s Peak, when they’d drunk so much that they’d nearly been arrested by the police. Her head was pounding, her throat was hellishly dry, her arms were stiff and uncomfortable and immobile . . . She started as she remembered what had happened.
The station had been attacked.
I was stunned, she remembered through a haze of pain. Stunners sometimes caused short-term memory loss, or worse. They boarded the station and stunned me and . . .
She forced herself to concentrate. She was lying facedown on a hard metal surface, her hands firmly bound behind her back. It was dark, too dark. She’d been blindfolded. Her hands felt numb; her uniform felt as if someone had searched her roughly, just to make sure she wasn’t carrying any weapons. Elizabeth needed a long moment, in her confused state, to realize that someone had also removed her rank badges. She couldn’t help thinking that was surprisingly petty.
Her blood ran cold as reality hit her. She was a prisoner of the Theocracy. She’d heard all the horror stories, all the tales of atrocities perpetrated on prisoners . . . particularly female prisoners. A handful of women had escaped over the years, particularly Princess Drusilla and her sister, and the stories they’d brought with them had horrified the galaxy. Elizabeth had wondered, privately, if the stories were exaggerated. How could anyone keep such a system going indefinitely? She had a nasty feeling she was about to find out.
I am a naval officer, she told herself as she heard footsteps crossing the deck. It is my duty to survive and escape if I can.
A strong hand grabbed her arm and hauled her to her feet. Elizabeth winced in pain. She knew she should look weak and harmless, at least until the day she could turn her captor’s complacency against him. Her head was pounding like a drum. It wasn’t an act. She just hoped they wouldn’t expect her to get better.
She allowed her captor to half drag her along the corridor, wishing he’d take the blindfold off. She wanted, she needed, to see where she was going. She wasn’t sure where she was now. Was she on the station, or had she been transferred to a starship? She hoped it was the former, even though she was a prisoner. She knew where the weapons and other supplies were kept. A starship, on the other hand, would be unfamiliar territory.
The deck hummed beneath her feet as she passed over a step . . . an airlock, perhaps. She was on a starship. They’d moved her onto the freighter. And that meant . . . She shivered as she heard voices speaking unfamiliar tongues. The language was beyond her comprehension, but the tone was all too clear. They’d rape her if they could. She was sure of it. A hatch opened, followed by another and another. She was being taken farther into their ship.
I need to find a way to kill myself, she thought, but nothing came to mind. What will I do if they . . .
Survive, her own thoughts answered. Survive and find a way to fight back.
The sound of the drives grew louder as she was shoved through a hatch and pushed to the floor. A strong hand removed the blindfold, revealing a tiny cell. She twisted, just in time to see a pale-faced man retreating out the hatch. His eyes met hers, just for a second; the hatch closed before she could force herself to talk. But what could she have said to him? She was a helpless prisoner and . . .
As long as they see me as helpless, they won’t take me seriously, she told herself. The drives were growing louder. And I will find a way to strike back.
CHAPTER TWENTY
* * *
DORLAND / IN TRANSIT
Become a farmer, they said, Daniel Greenhorn thought, sardonically. Be your own boss, they said.
He turned in a slow circle, surveying his farm. Everyone said it was a farm, at least. He held title to it and everything. But it was really nothing more than a square mile of unbroken ground, which needed to be smashed up and turned into soil before anything would grow. He really should have read his contract more carefully, he told himself sourly. The vast benefits awarded to him and anyone else willing to break hardened ground into soil came with a steep price. He couldn’t walk away from his farm unless he found someone willing to take over.
And no one will, he thought, as he wiped sweat from his brow. Dorland was a poor world, with much of the population struggling to draw sustenance from a land that hated them. The original settlers had chosen to leave technology behind when they’d left Earth in search of a new idyll, and this was the price. Backbreaking labor for men and women, with a government that constantly promised everything and delivered nothing. This farm won’t be viable for years.
He looked south, towards the colony. The original set of colony elders had done a good job of wiping out records from the outside universe, but the Theocracy had blown the gates open wide and the new government knew better than to try to return the population to a state of ignorance. Daniel knew, as did many of the other farmers, that modern-day terraforming equipment would solve Dorland’s problems in a decade or two. They wouldn’t have hesitated to overthrow the gover
nment if there had been a reasonable prospect of obtaining such technology, but no one seemed to want to sell it to them. The Theocracy hadn’t cared about Dorland, and the Commonwealth . . . the Commonwealth didn’t seem to be any better.
And I have to get on with it, he thought as he picked up his shovel. The inspectors would be calling in a week or so, and they’d expect him to have made considerable progress. If they deemed his progress insufficient, they’d cut off his rations or simply send him to the penal camps. It was funny how no one had discussed that with him until after he’d signed the contracts. Anyone would think they wanted me to trap myself . . .
The sky turned white, just for a second. Instinctively, Daniel threw himself to the hard ground, cursing out loud as he landed badly. The thunder hit a second later, a dull rolling sound that echoed off the distant mountains and shook the unbroken ground beneath his chest. He looked up a second later, just in time to see a streak of fire fall from high above and plummet towards the distant town. There was a flash of light when it struck the ground, followed by a colossal fireball and another round of thunder. More followed, the sound shaking the entire colony. He heard a crashing sound from his shack, positioned at the far edge of the field. It hadn’t been designed for earthquakes. Dorland was geologically inert.
That’s not an earthquake, he told himself as yet another rumble of thunder echoed through the sky. The planet is under attack!
He rolled over and peered up at the bright blue sky. Dorland was right on the edge of the habitable zone, close enough to the primary star to be dangerously hot even though, thankfully, there was no greenhouse effect. He couldn’t see anything up there, but streaks of fire were still tumbling towards the ground. Was one of them aimed at him? He couldn’t imagine an unseen man deciding to kill him, but . . . he couldn’t imagine anyone attacking Dorland either. There was literally nothing on the planet worth taking, except perhaps the population itself. And any interstellar slavers would surely not want to kill the people they intended to enslave . . . right?
Debt of Honor (The Embers of War) Page 19