The thunder slowly died away. Daniel forced himself to stand and make his way towards the shack. As he’d expected, the roof had collapsed. His meager possessions and the room he’d hoped to one day share with a wife had been crushed. He recovered a handful of items, then walked towards the tractor. There was barely enough fuel in its tank to get to town, but it would have to do. If there was one rule on Dorland that everyone followed, it was that people who needed help had to be helped. No one could be a loner on a world where everyone had to fight to survive. A person who helped another on Monday might wind up needing help himself on Tuesday.
It took him longer than he’d expected to steer his way down the dusty track and set course for town. The attackers, whoever they were, had dropped a bomb right in the middle of the road, smashing it beyond repair. Daniel couldn’t imagine what had been going through their minds. There was literally nothing to be gained by making life harder for rescuers. And besides, all he’d had to do to get around the crater was steer the tractor off the road. The move would burn up more of his fuel, which he doubted he’d be able to reclaim from the government, but it didn’t matter. People needed help.
He saw the plume of smoke rising in the distance long before the town itself came into view at the end of the road. It had been built within a valley, the better to hide from the sun, but he knew, the moment he laid eyes on it, that the town was doomed. The bombs, whatever they were, had smashed the valley walls. It wouldn’t be long before the townspeople had to move elsewhere. But where could they go?
Parking the tractor at one end of the valley, he jumped off and hurried down towards the collapsing buildings. A number had already turned into piles of rubble, even though they’d been designed to stand up to the elements. Adults were working desperately to get the kids out of the valley, then dig through the wreckage to recover trapped or dead townspeople. It was so bad that Daniel honestly wasn’t sure where to begin.
They didn’t have to do this to us, he thought as he ran towards the nearest building. We were harmless.
He shuddered as the full implications struck him. Dorland was doomed. He hated the government, but he also understood that the government had to force its people to turn the land into a place humans could live and grow. The planet had always been on the margins; he knew that to be true, as much as he might resent it. Survival trumped everything else. But now . . . if the attackers had ruined a small town, what had they done to the rest of the planet?
And there’s no way to leave, he realized. We’re all going to die.
“Those lousy murdering fucking . . .”
“That will do,” Captain Ian Hales said. “Concentrate on your duties.”
The helmsman subsided. Ian sighed, inwardly. He didn’t blame the younger man for wanting to throw their cover to the winds and attack the Theocratic ship, but they had a mission to carry out. It had been sheer luck that HMS Peacock arrived on station in time to see the enemy cruiser enter the system and begin its murderous attack. He had no intention of wasting the opportunity to deal a decisive blow to the enemy fleet, even if it meant letting a crew of murderers get away. They’d get theirs, he promised himself. He’d see to it personally.
“Keep us near their position,” he added. “And don’t let them see us.”
“Aye, sir.”
Ian scowled as the enemy ship completed its bombardment. She was a modified light cruiser, according to the warbook; Peacock couldn’t have taken her unless she’d already been worked over by something nastier than a destroyer. He’d seriously considered ramming the enemy ship, taking her out at the price of losing his own vessel, but he had his orders. The navy had to trace the enemy ships back to their base.
“She’s moving away from the planet,” the tactical officer said. Her voice was grim. She’d served in the navy for four years, but most of it had been spent on the border. She hadn’t seen much of the war. “I think she’s preparing to leave.”
“Get ready to take us into hyperspace immediately after her,” Ian ordered. The enemy cruiser could not be allowed to detect their presence. She’d either turn on her shadow or lead her on a merry dance. She might even fly too close to an energy storm to keep Peacock from keeping a solid lock on her hull. “Stand by weapons and shields.”
He felt a pang of guilt. The people on the planet below weren’t citizens, not of the Commonwealth, but it didn’t matter. They’d done nothing to deserve having their planet bombarded, certainly not in a manner that would render their civilization unsustainable.
And any survivors will become refugees, he thought. As if there weren’t already millions of people looking for a safe place to live.
“The enemy ship is opening a vortex,” the sensor officer said.
“Take us into hyperspace,” Ian snapped. For a handful of seconds, the enemy sensors would be blinded by their own vortex. Even the most advanced systems would have trouble picking up Peacock’s presence. “Now!”
He braced himself as his starship opened a vortex and slipped into hyperspace. If they were wrong, if they’d made a mistake, they were about to be attacked. He had no doubt of it. The Theocrats would have to be utterly insane to let him get so close to one of their ships. But, as the seconds slowly ticked away, he allowed himself to relax. Their target was already setting course away from the system she’d devastated.
“Shadow her,” he ordered. “But hold the range open as much as possible.”
“Aye, Captain,” the helmsman said.
The sensor officer looked worried. “Captain,” she said, “if we hold the range open, we may lose her in a sensor distortion.”
Ian nodded. Tracking starships through hyperspace was an art, not a science . . . and one that was frighteningly easy to get wrong. Hyperspace had been playing tricks on sensors ever since humanity had first figured out how to open vortexes and use the dimension to circumvent the light barrier. It wasn’t uncommon for starships to pick up sensor ghosts, or for hyperspace distortions to make it look as though a ship hundreds of light-years away was actually right on top of the sensor. He’d been on enough deployments to know that nothing could be taken for granted in hyperspace.
But they didn’t want to be detected either.
“Do your best, Betty,” he said as reassuringly as he could. “We need to know where they’re going.”
“Aye, sir.”
He settled back into his command chair, trying not to think about the dead and dying they were leaving behind. Dorland had never attracted much attention—the locals seemed to be happier that way—but his ship had received copies of files captured on Ahura Mazda. The planet was permanently close to the edge. He honestly didn’t understand why the locals hadn’t abandoned their arid homeworld long ago.
They don’t have a choice now, he thought. And if we don’t manage to get them some help, they won’t survive the year.
Elizabeth felt . . . unwell.
She wasn’t sure how long it had been since the attack, or since she’d even had something to eat or drink. Her throat was parched, while her stomach kept rumbling ominously. She’d looked around the tiny cell, but there was nothing to eat even if her hands hadn’t remained bound behind her back.
The hatch clicked, then opened slowly. Elizabeth rolled over and looked up. A man stood in the hatchway, silhouetted by the light. He tapped his lips once as he stepped into the cell, warning her to be quiet. She wasn’t sure if she should do as he wanted or make as much noise as she could. The guards would hear, wouldn’t they?
She studied him for a moment, feeling an odd shiver of . . . something. The man looked like a Theocrat, right down to the hawk-nosed face, skin, and neatly trimmed beard, but there was something about him that caused her to doubt it. He looked more like an actor playing a part than anything else. She’d once met Cyril Worthington-Gore, star of seven Space Marine Extraordinaire productions, and there had been something false about him. He’d simply been too good to be true. His scriptwriter had probably helped.
�
�Keep your voice down,” the man hissed. He spoke perfect Standard. There wasn’t even a hint of an accent. That was odd, wasn’t it? The Theocrats rarely spoke anything other than their own language. She’d heard that, once. It kept them from being corrupted by outside influences or something. “Here.”
He pressed a glass to her lips. Elizabeth drank gladly, even though she knew the water might be drugged. But they hardly needed to resort to tricks to force her to drink. The water tasted faintly odd and left her tongue feeling numb. She opened her mouth to protest, but it was already too late. The sensation was spreading rapidly. She couldn’t even move.
“This is the only mercy I can grant you,” the man said quietly. She thought, as her vision started to blur, that he genuinely meant it. “If things were different, I would have tried to get you out. But the mission comes first.”
Elizabeth wanted to ask him what he meant by that, but the words refused to form. Killing her was a mercy? A Theocrat being merciful. It struck her, in her last seconds of life, that her killer wasn’t a Theocrat. Who was he?
But she knew, as the last of her awareness drifted away, that she’d never know.
“The bitch is dead,” Moses said.
Admiral Zaskar looked up. “What bitch?”
“The unnatural woman,” Moses said. “The one who claimed to be in command.”
“Oh,” Admiral Zaskar said. The clerics might rant and rave about women who overstepped their bounds, but he found it hard to care. He doubted the poor woman’s captors had bothered to feed or water her. Maybe she’d just starved to death. Or maybe she’d had a suicide implant. “Put the body out the airlock and forget about her.”
Moses didn’t look very happy—he’d been looking forward to teaching the woman the error of her ways—but Admiral Zaskar ignored him. He had a worse problem. The destroyer he’d sent to Asher Dales had not returned. And that meant . . . The files claimed that Asher Dales was defenseless, but the files were out of date. The Commonwealth could easily have stationed a ship or two in the system in the hopes of catching one of his ships by surprise. They might just have succeeded.
And if I send a ship back to find out what happened to the lost ship, he thought, I might lose that ship too.
He shook his head, then keyed his terminal. “Take us back to base,” he ordered. “We’ll sort through the captured supplies there.”
“Aye, sir.”
Ian had taken Peacock out of hyperspace as soon as it became clear that the enemy ship was leaving hyperspace herself. He’d expected to encounter another ship, but instead the entire enemy fleet was spread out in front of him. Thankfully, they didn’t appear to be very alert, yet the shock was enough to make him rethink his tactics. If they’d come out of hyperspace a little closer, they might have been detected and blown away before they realized what they’d found. As it was, they were dangerously close to the enemy fleet.
“Hold us here,” he ordered. He had to fight to keep his voice under control. The urge to whisper was overwhelmingly powerful, even though he knew the enemy couldn’t hear him. “And monitor the enemy position.”
“They’re preparing to return to hyperspace,” the sensor officer said. “Their vortexes are opening . . . now.”
“Take us back into hyperspace with them,” Ian ordered. His heart sank. Tracking a fleet was harder than tracking a single ship. Hyperspace would make life interesting for the enemy fleet, but harder for him. “And don’t let them slip away.”
“Aye, sir.”
Ian braced himself as the enemy fleet returned to hyperspace. “Keep us at a distance,” he ordered, quietly. Hyperspace was already being churned up by the presence of so many starships in close formation. “And try to keep a solid lock on them.”
“They’re deploying energy mines,” the sensor officer said. He worked his console for a long moment. “Captain, we’re losing them!”
“Clever of them,” Ian said as the last of the enemy ships vanished from the display. The energy mines would disrupt hyperspace long enough for the departing fleet to make a clean break. He wasn’t sure if they’d spotted his ship or not, but it didn’t matter. The energy storms would make it harder to get relief ships into the sector. “Helm, set course for the nearest StarCom.”
“Aye, sir.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
* * *
ASHER DALES
“Admiral, we’re being pinged,” the communications officer said as the squadron glided into the Asher Dales System. “They sound a little alarmed.”
Kat lifted her eyebrows. If William was in command, over there, he’d recognize a squadron of Royal Navy superdreadnoughts when he saw one. A man like William McElney didn’t lose his competence so quickly. And even if it wasn’t William in command, their warbook should have identified the superdreadnoughts as soon as they arrived. She wasn’t playing games with her squadron’s drive signatures or IFF transmissions.
“And there’s a Theocratic destroyer in orbit,” the tactical officer added. “She’s completely powered down.”
“Resend our IFF, then transmit a standard greeting,” Kat ordered. “And order the Morse to start preparations to deploy the StarCom.”
“Aye, Admiral,” the communications officer said. She paused. “We’re being hailed.”
“Put them through,” Kat said.
She smiled, warmly, as William McElney’s face appeared in the display. He looked older and scruffy in a manner that would have given Kat’s mother fits, but she couldn’t help thinking he looked happier. The files hadn’t said much about what William was doing at Asher Dales, but she had no doubt it was something her former XO would find rewarding and challenging. The days when he was kept back by an accident of birth were long over.
“William,” she said. “It’s good to see you again.”
“You too, Kat,” William said. He rubbed his stubble mischievously. “We had a visitor, as you can see.”
Kat nodded towards the display. “An enemy destroyer,” she said. “Where did you get that?”
“We were attacked,” William said. He sounded proud. “Luckily, we saw them coming in ample time to get ready.”
“Ah,” Kat said. A single destroyer was nothing compared to the forces that had waged titanic combat during the war, but Asher Dales had done very well. Given what they’d started out with a year ago, they’d done very well indeed. “I need to . . .”
“I would like to formally request your assistance in examining the hulk,” William said, wryly. “We just want copies of everything you find.”
Kat relaxed, slightly. They needed to examine the hulk . . . even though, technically, the vessel now belonged to Asher Dales. It would have been embarrassing if she’d had to take the captured ship. But William had understood the problem and opened the door for her. She hoped his new superiors wouldn’t take his kindness amiss. The die-hard Theocrats were everyone’s problem.
“I’ll send you copies of the records,” William added. “You may find them of interest.”
“Thank you,” Kat said. It was also the most successful engagement since the crisis had begun. If nothing else, losing a ship would make the enemy more careful about picking on supposedly undefended worlds. “We do need to talk. Your place or mine?”
William smiled. “I’d like to offer you Dandelion’s hospitality,” he said. “And the planetary government would probably like to offer you theirs as well.”
And you want a chance to show off, Kat thought wryly. She didn’t blame him. William had always had something to prove. And we have to talk in private.
“I’d be happy to visit,” she said. “And then I’d like to welcome you to Violence. We have much to talk about.”
“I look forward to it,” William said. He gave her a jaunty salute. “Over and out.”
His image vanished from the display. Kat smiled, again. She’d missed him . . . but she hadn’t realized how much she’d missed him until now. Perhaps she could convince him to come back to the Royal Navy. Or
maybe . . . She shook her head, dismissing the thought. William wouldn’t be happy if he had to abandon Asher Dales. He was a man of honor. And besides, the Royal Navy would never reward him as he deserved.
Particularly now, Kat thought. Too many colonial officers had been thanked for their services and mustered out since the end of the war. And even with his connections, his career might not be safe.
“Admiral, Morse reports that she is ready to deploy the StarCom,” the communications officer said. “They can begin on your command.”
“Consider it given,” Kat said. A StarCom network wouldn’t solve all their problems, but it would make it easier to coordinate her fleet. It would probably also lead to a great deal of micromanagement from home . . . She shrugged. She’d just have to put up with the hassle. “And make sure the locals have access to the network.”
“Aye, Admiral.”
Kat stood. “And inform the captain that I will be visiting Dandelion,” she added. “He’s to take command of the squadron until I return.”
“I thought the navy handed out prize money for captured ships,” Tanya said as they waited by the airlock. “Why are you just giving the ship to her?”
“I’m not giving the ship to anyone,” William said patiently. Tanya hadn’t been happy when she’d heard he’d invited Kat to send people to examine the captured ship. “And there’s no way anyone will pay us any prize money for the ship.”
He kept his face impassive. Kat had been in an unpleasant position from the moment she’d realized they’d captured an enemy ship. On one hand, she needed to examine the ship from top to bottom in the hopes of finding something useful; on the other, the ship was unquestionably someone else’s property. Kat might have no choice but to seize the captured ship . . . riding roughshod over Asher Dales in the process. Her career might suffer if Asher Dales and the Commonwealth protested loudly enough, yet she needed to track down and destroy the raiders before it was too late. William had given her an easy way out of the dilemma. And besides, they did need to destroy the raiders.
Debt of Honor (The Embers of War) Page 20