And none of us can discuss our doubts with the clerics, or anyone, he reminded himself. We all learn, as soon as we are old enough to talk, to be careful what we say when we go to confession.
“We don’t have many targets,” he said slowly. “We can keep hitting undefended worlds, but . . . we’re not really hurting the real enemy.”
“That’s why we should hit the convoy,” Moses said. “That would hurt them!”
“Yes, if it isn’t a trap,” Admiral Zaskar said. “But we have women and supplies now. We could take the fleet and set off into unexplored space. It wouldn’t be hard to find a planet and set up a new homeworld. Given time, we would wax powerful again.”
And evolve, perhaps, he added silently. He knew just how little stood between his crews and total anarchy. His people were slowly coming to realize that the surveillance they’d taken for granted since birth was starting to develop holes. Who knows what will happen when we’re on a planetary surface?
“But they would still be powerful,” Moses pointed out. “What would happen when they stumbled across us, again?”
“We built a spacefaring society once before,” Admiral Zaskar said. “We can do it again.”
He kept his face expressionless, waiting to see what the cleric would say. Zaskar knew that the Theocracy’s official story was full of holes—he’d known enough to pick out the lies and misrepresentations a long time before anyone had given him access to the sealed files—but did Moses? A group of religious exiles, dumped on a harsh world with nothing more than the clothes on their backs, could not have hoped to build a spacefaring civilization, certainly not in less than five hundred years. No, the Theocracy’s emigration to Ahura Mazda had been a carefully planned endeavor, with a sizable technological base being established right from the start. Admiral Zaskar didn’t know all the details—most of the files had remained resolutely sealed, even to him—but he was sure it had been an amazing feat. And one he knew his fleet couldn’t hope to repeat.
We can raid worlds for farming and colonization supplies, he told himself, but there’s no way we can capture everything we need to set up a spacefaring civilization.
“We have a duty to our brethren, groaning under oppression,” Moses said. “What will happen to them if we abandon the war?”
“We wouldn’t be abandoning it,” Admiral Zaskar assured him. “We’d just be taking time out to regroup.”
“And how much damage would be done in the meantime?” Moses stood and started to pace the cabin. “How many believers would be seduced from the path of righteousness?”
Admiral Zaskar kept his face under tight control, even though he knew he’d lost the argument. “How many believers would be seduced if we were destroyed?”
“We are already winning,” Moses snapped. He turned around to face Admiral Zaskar. “You saw the reports. They are already on the verge of giving up!”
“Maybe,” Admiral Zaskar said.
He wasn’t so sure. The Commonwealth’s free press was a constant puzzle to him. He simply didn’t understand why their governments allowed the media to be so openly critical of their rulers. Nor, for that matter, why the media was allowed to slander and belittle public figures without challenge. One particularly amusing attack on Kat Falcone had been easily proven inaccurate by counting the years and noting that she wouldn’t even have been a glint in her father’s eye at the time. Kat Falcone was ingenious—Admiral Zaskar admitted that, in the privacy of his own head—but even she couldn’t do something scandalous before she was born. Unless the Commonwealth had secretly invented a time machine . . .
Nonsense, he told himself firmly. The media is lying about her. And they might be lying about everything else too.
“One final push, and they will crumble like a house of cards,” Moses said.
“And if they don’t?” Admiral Zaskar asked. “What then?”
He met the cleric’s eyes. “Are we going to keep hitting targets until our luck finally runs out? Or are we going to head away from settled space and set up a whole new colony of our own?”
“We have a duty to keep fighting the war,” Moses said.
“And what happens,” Admiral Zaskar asked, “when our mystery backers decide they no longer need us?”
He leaned back in his chair. “We don’t know who they are,” he said. “We don’t know what they really want. We know nothing about them, save that they’re rich and powerful enough to take the risk of doing something that could easily be construed as an act of war. Askew and his superiors have their own agenda, Your Holiness, and it may not coincide completely with ours. What happens to us when they decide we’re a liability?
“We captured enough supplies to settle a whole new world. We can do that now and, many years from now, our descendants will resume the war. And then . . .”
“But it would mean abandoning the believers,” Moses said.
He sat down with a thump. “Let us hit the convoy,” he said. “Let that be enough to drive the unbelievers out of our sector. And, if it isn’t enough, we can find a colony world and regroup there. Will that be acceptable?”
“As you wish,” Admiral Zaskar said. He knew he wouldn’t get a better offer. The cleric couldn’t be pushed too far. “But we have to be careful. The enemy could be using the convoy as bait in a trap.”
“They started planning the convoy months ago,” Moses pointed out. “Back then, they didn’t even know that we’d survived.”
“So we were told, Your Holiness,” Admiral Zaskar countered. “Even if that happens to be true, and we have no independent verification, there’s no reason they couldn’t have attached a superdreadnought squadron to the convoy as an afterthought. And it would be easy to have that squadron link up with the convoy in deep space, well away from prying eyes. I . . . I have to be careful. We cannot afford to lose any more ships.”
“They may feel the same way too,” Moses said. The confidence in his voice was striking. “The unbelievers fear to die.”
Admiral Zaskar rather doubted it mattered. The Royal Navy had fought well, even when it had been caught by surprise. And they had won the war. But it wasn’t something he could say to the cleric. The man’s hatred for the enemy was without peer.
“They can afford to replace their losses,” he said, instead. He didn’t pretend to understand how the enemy’s economy worked, but he couldn’t deny its efficiency. “We can kill ten of their superdreadnoughts for every one of ours, and they will still come out ahead. Losing a single superdreadnought, Your Holiness, will cut our fighting power in half.”
“Then we will put our faith in God,” Moses said. “Start planning the attack.”
Admiral Zaskar bowed his head. “Yes, Your Holiness.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
* * *
ASHER DALES
The message was relatively clear but brought no relief.
William scanned it three times, looking for hidden meanings. Scott McElney had always been careful, even before he’d left Hebrides to become a smuggler. His brother had taken an unseemly delight in defying the social norms and conventions of their homeworld, constantly on the verge of being ostracized for challenging the authorities, and he’d learned plenty of ways to get messages across without flagrantly breaking the rules. But none of his tricks were visible here. The message appeared to be nothing more than what it seemed.
And that isn’t good news, William thought. If Scott is to be believed, the smugglers aren’t supplying the Theocrats.
He sat in his cabin and contemplated the message. Scott wouldn’t have lied to him, not directly, and there were none of the tells that suggested he was being deliberately misleading even though nothing he’d said was a lie. Besides, he couldn’t imagine Scott helping the Theocrats. Their mere existence was bad for business, even before they’d turned Hebrides into a radioactive hellhole. And yet . . . Scott wasn’t the sole smuggler chief in the sector. He wasn’t even the largest. Could one of the others be supplying the Theocrats? I
t would be an insane risk for any of them.
His wristcom chimed. “Captain, we’re picking up two ships approaching the planet,” Patti said. “They just dropped any pretense at sneaking in.”
William stood. Pirates? Or Theocrats, intent on finding out what had happened to their missing destroyer. The hulk was currently orbiting the moon, waiting to be turned into a training ship. In hindsight, perhaps he could have rigged a false IFF and lured the enemy into a trap. No, too risky. They simply hadn’t been able to recover enough intelligence from the captured datacores to make the masquerade work.
He walked through the hatch and onto the bridge. “Report,” he said. “What do you have?”
“Two ships, both apparently light cruisers,” the sensor officer said. “One of them appears to be an ex-UN design, the other is of unknown origin. The warbook doesn’t have a record of her design.”
Which means she’s either a completely new model or someone refitted her to the point she’s unrecognizable, William thought. And that means she could be carrying all sorts of surprises.
“Sound battlestations, then alert the planet,” he ordered. “We are about to be attacked.”
He sat down and checked the displays. The enemy ships were heading right towards Dandelion and Petunia without making any attempt to hide their approach. They clearly hadn’t realized that Lily and Primrose were under cloak, unless they’d decided they could take all four destroyers without risking serious damage, let alone defeat. It all depended, he reminded himself, on just how long the new enemy had been watching the system. They might not even know that Lily and Primrose existed.
“All weapons and drives are at full readiness,” Patti reported.
“Very good,” William said. “Use the StarCom to send an alert to Ahura Mazda. Ask them for immediate reinforcement if they have ships on station.”
“Aye, sir.”
William leaned back in his chair and silently assessed the situation. The enemy ships had to be pirates, unless their ships had been captured and pressed into service by the Theocrats. That was both good and bad: good, because pirates would break off if they were given a bloody nose; bad, because pirates could be even more violent and destructive than the Theocrats. He was more than a little dismayed by the appearance of pirate ships, particularly given the political trouble on Tyre. If the Royal Navy was withdrawn, the system would collapse into anarchy sooner rather than later.
And someone with a handful of dated warships could set up his own kingdom, William thought. Whoever is coming at us now might be trying to beat the rush.
“Lily and Primrose are moving into backstop position,” the communications officer reported, calmly. “And the planet-side defenses are requesting orders.”
“Tell them to go dark,” William said. “They’re not to reveal themselves until the planet comes under attack.”
He had to smile at how efficient his crews had become. The raw material had been there right from the start, of course, as many of his crewmen had fought during the war, but they hadn’t gelled properly until they’d won their first victory. Soon they would start absorbing new recruits from Asher Dales, recruits who would learn from men and women who’d actually been on the front lines. And they’d absorb a tradition of victory . . . His lips twitched at the thought. They’d have to be careful not to become overconfident.
The enemy ships came closer, angling straight towards the planet. William wasn’t too surprised. His ships could outrun the light cruisers if they reversed course and fled, ensuring that the enemy would never be able to bring them down. The enemy had countered by forcing him to either stand and fight in defense of Asher Dales or run away and surrender the high orbitals to a bunch of pirates. It was a fairly standard military tactic. He couldn’t help wondering if some of the pirates had been in the Theocratic Navy before deserting.
And they might just have enough firepower to smother all four destroyers with missiles, he thought. Two light cruisers certainly carried enough missiles to give his ships a very hard time. Even if the missiles were as outdated as the ships that carried them, they would make his life difficult indeed. Time to take a third option.
“On my mark, order the squadron to execute maneuver alpha-three,” he said. “The ships in stealth are to remain in stealth.”
He smiled. They were lucky the enemy had given them plenty of room to maneuver. Perhaps they hadn’t been able to decide if they’d wanted to force an engagement or . . . encourage . . . his ships to turn tail and run. Their attack vector could easily have been a compromise between the two objectives, a compromise that tried to be both and managed to be neither. Yet another piece of proof, he supposed, that he wasn’t facing Theocrats. They would have sought to pin his ships against the planet and blow them away.
“The squadron has acknowledged,” Patti said, checking her console. “Lily and Primrose are still in cloak.”
“Tell them to remain under cloak until I give the order or they are specifically targeted,” William ordered. Even if the pirates knew the cloaked ships were there, they probably didn’t know their exact positions. His officers would have plenty of time to drop their cloaks and raise shields. “Petunia is to stick close to us.”
“Aye, Captain.”
“Then mark,” William ordered.
He watched the display, wondering precisely what the enemy would make of his ships suddenly sliding back towards the planet. Would they see it as incompetence, the sort of maneuver that might be pulled by captains and crews who didn’t know what they were doing and hadn’t had the time to learn better? Or would they suspect a trap? They had to know that Asher Dales’s defense force was so young they didn’t even have ship prefixes or proper uniforms, let alone time to learn the ropes. But they might also know that the crews had been recruited from the Commonwealth . . .
They’ll see what they want to see, William thought. Us blundering ass-backwards into a killing zone. But will they believe what they see?
The enemy ships slowly picked up speed, angling for an interception just short of the high orbitals. William grimaced as the missile spheres—the lines on the display showing presumed missile ranges for the enemy ships—moved closer to the defenders. There was no way to know what they might be carrying, let alone their effective range. William was fairly certain they wouldn’t have any of the enhanced range missiles—they’d barely been rushed into production in time to take part in the Battle of Hebrides—but would they have modern missiles? Or would they have dug up pieces of crap from the UN era, missiles so old and cumbersome that the Theocracy would have sniffed at them? William wouldn’t know until they opened fire.
“Establish a laser link to platforms alpha through gamma,” William ordered as the missile spheres came closer. His ships were starting to run out of room to maneuver. “Order them to prepare to fire.”
“Aye, Captain,” Patti said. “They’re bringing their active sensors online now.”
“Understood,” William said. There was a good chance that the enemy ships would spot the lurking platforms, but . . . they were already too close for their own good. They’d have to break off in the next few seconds if they wished to avoid disaster. “I . . .”
The display sparkled with red light. “Missile separation,” Patti snapped. “They’ve opened fire!”
“Get me a tactical assessment,” William said. God, he’d kill for a proper analysis deck. He hadn’t realized how lucky he’d been until he’d lost it. “And prepare to activate the platforms!”
“The missiles are about thirty years out of date,” Patti said. “They’re not showing any signs of being revamped over the years.”
William allowed himself a moment of relief. The enemy missiles would have been hot stuff when they’d first been produced, but now they were just targets. They lacked the speed and penetrative power of the Theocracy’s missiles, let alone some of the advanced missiles the Commonwealth had developed towards the end of the war. They were still dangerous—he reminded himself, s
harply, not to underestimate the enemy—but his ships could fight the cruisers on better terms. He’d feared far worse.
And they haven’t seen the cloaked ships, he thought. All their missiles are targeted on the visible vessels.
“Point defense is to engage the enemy missiles as soon as they come into range,” he ordered, crisply. The enemy missiles didn’t stand a chance unless they’d been modified at some point. “And give me control of the platforms.”
“Aye, sir,” Patti said. “Transferring control to your console now.”
William smiled, grimly, as the enemy cruiser slid into engagement range. They clearly hadn’t seen the platforms, which was unusually careless of them. They weren’t making any attempt to hide, so why weren’t they watching for mines? Normally, mining space was a waste of time, but he’d deliberately lured the enemy onto the minefield. But would they see the mines in time to either evade or open fire . . .
“Firing . . . now,” he said.
The platforms were, in many ways, strikingly primitive, nothing more than a handful of single-shot bomb-pumped lasers, each one stabbing a ravening burst of energy straight into the enemy shields. One ship lost its shields completely, exploding into a ball of superheated plasma seconds later; the other staggered out of formation, atmosphere leaking from a gash in the hull. William felt his smile grow wider. Pirates, in his experience, rarely bothered to wear shipsuits. There was a very real chance that the enemy crew was already dead.
Just like the Theocracy, he thought. They’re nothing more than pirates.
He keyed his console. “Dispatch a boarding party,” he ordered. Thankfully the crew had time to prepare a proper boarding party. The local militiamen were nowhere near as heavily trained as the Royal Marines, but they knew what they were doing. “Communications, try to raise them. If they surrender, we’ll spare their lives.”
Debt of Honor (The Embers of War) Page 26