CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
* * *
UNCHARTED STAR SYSTEM
“Admiral,” the tactical officer said, “the enemy missiles are getting through our defenses!”
“I can see that, idiot,” Admiral Zaskar snarled.
He gritted his teeth. The Royal Navy’s missiles had always been good—far too good. And their missile technology had clearly advanced over the last year. He’d done everything in his power to improve his point defense systems, particularly when he’d started integrating new technology into his ships, but it hadn’t been very successful. Too many enemy missiles were breaking through the screen and flying towards his hulls. His ships were about to take a battering.
They could have fired more missiles, he thought as his ship fired a barrage of her own. It made no sense. They’re holding back.
His blood ran cold. The Royal Navy wanted to capture his ships. Of course they did! They’d even tried to convince him to surrender, despite the political firestorm it would unleash back home. No, they wanted to take his ships reasonably intact. They’d aimed to cripple his ships, not destroy them. And . . .
A series of rumbles ran through the hull. “Direct hits,” someone snapped. Red lights washed across the status display. “Major damage, decks . . .”
Admiral Zaskar tuned him out. Righteous Revenge could still fight, he assumed, but she wouldn’t be able to fight for long. The damage was mounting up rapidly. Captain Geris had already dispatched the damage control teams, according to the stream of updates scrolling up in front of him, but they wouldn’t be able to do enough to save the ship. The fleet was doomed. He doubted he could get even a single ship out of the trap before it was too late.
And they probably wouldn’t accept surrender, he thought. Not now.
He sucked in his breath. They couldn’t win a missile duel. He barely had enough missiles left for one final salvo. No, he needed to close the range and try to punch through the enemy formation. It wasn’t much of a plan, and the odds were against them managing to survive long enough to open a vortex, but at least it would give him a chance to hurt the enemy. Who knew? Maybe they’d kill Kat Falcone after all.
“Captain Geris, ramp up the drives as much as possible,” he ordered. “Take us into energy range.”
“Aye, Admiral.”
Admiral Zaskar glanced at Askew. “Sorry you came?”
The foreigner looked unconcerned. “I knew the job was dangerous when I took it.”
“No doubt,” Admiral Zaskar agreed. There was no way Askew could get off the ship, let alone transfer himself to his courier boat. The Royal Navy wouldn’t shoot at lifepods deliberately, but the pods could still be mistaken for a weapon and blown out of space in passing. “Thank you for trying, at least.”
He glanced at Moses, who was still raving into the microphone. Admiral Zaskar had no idea who Moses thought was listening, but it hardly mattered. They were on a death ride now, hoping to survive just long enough to get into energy range and give the enemy as hard a time as possible before inevitable destruction. It was hard to believe that a last-minute miracle would save them. Oddly, the thought calmed him. If there was nothing he could do to avoid death, he might as well accept it.
“Energy range in seven minutes,” the tactical officer said. Another series of impacts ran through the hull. “Captain Geris is devoting all power to weapons, shields, and drives.”
“Good thinking,” Admiral Zaskar said. Turning off the life support was always chancy, but it wasn’t as if they were going to need the resource for much longer. “Order all weapons to go to rapid fire as soon as we enter range.”
“Aye, Admiral.”
“They’re picking up speed,” Kitty reported. “Admiral, they’re heading right towards us!”
Kat had expected as much. The Theocracy had no qualms about using suicide tactics when necessary, even though they knew as well as she did that this was their last fleet. But then, they had no hope of getting out of the trap anyway. Ramming her ships was their only hope of taking a few of them with her. None of their missiles had broken through the point defense network.
“Order missile tubes to go to sprint mode,” she said. “They are not to be allowed to enter energy range.”
“Aye, Admiral.”
Kat leaned back in her chair, projecting an air of calm as the enemy ships advanced on her position. Normally, they’d be spitting missiles at a terrifying rate; this time, their fire was slacking off rapidly. They were either running out of missiles or trying to conserve them against some hypothetical future contingency. She shook her head. That was unlikely. Their only hope of hurting her ships involved firing so many missiles that her point defense couldn’t swat them all out of space. But their tubes were falling silent.
They need to get into energy range, she thought. The damage was mounting up rapidly, but the enemy ships were still coming. She would have been impressed if the situation hadn’t been so dangerous. And I can’t let them get into energy range.
An icon—an enemy cruiser—vanished from the display, followed by a pair of destroyers and an armed freighter. Their superdreadnoughts kept advancing, even though their tubes had stopped firing. They really were determined to just come to grips with her. She watched, coldly, as one of the superdreadnoughts staggered, bleeding atmosphere and debris into the icy vacuum of space. It fell out of formation, then exploded into a ball of superheated plasma. Kat grinned, savagely. Of the four enemy superdreadnoughts confirmed to have survived the battle over Ahura Mazda, two had been destroyed and a third was a powerless hulk. The final superdreadnought wouldn’t last long.
“Concentrate missile fire on the superdreadnought,” she ordered. “The smaller ships are to be engaged once they enter energy range.”
“Aye, Admiral.”
“Admiral . . .”
“I saw,” Zaskar said stiffly. He had one superdreadnought left. Deep in his heart, he knew his ship was about to die too. “Keep us heading straight towards the enemy and . . .”
His ship shook, violently. The lights dimmed, just for a second, before the emergency power came online. He felt lightheaded as the gravity field weakened, suggesting that he might find himself floating at any moment. A number of consoles went dark and refused to boot up again, no matter how many times their operators kicked and swore at them.
Admiral Zaskar found his voice. “Report!”
“The drive section has been destroyed,” the tactical officer said, after a moment. “Power is down throughout most of the ship. Shields are gone, weapons are offline . . . we’re drifting out of formation!”
And doomed, Admiral Zaskar thought numbly. He could feel the ship dying. The constant thrumming of the drives was gone. There’s no hope any longer.
“Get me a link to the rest of the fleet,” he ordered. “Now!”
The communications officer paled. “Admiral . . . communications are down too.”
“I see,” Admiral Zaskar said. The unfortunate officer looked surprised that he hadn’t been summarily shot. “What do we have?”
“Nothing, sir,” the tactical officer said. “The internal datanet is barely functional, external sensors are offline, and . . .”
Admiral Zaskar held up a hand to cut off the list of failed or failing systems. The ship was definitely doomed. That much was true. And they no longer had even the faintest hope of taking an enemy ship with them. It was a minor miracle they’d survived the impact that had taken out the drives. A powerless ship was a sitting duck. Soon the enemy would either blow them to dust or land marines on the hull. And then . . . it would be the end.
My crew will survive if I surrender, Admiral Zaskar thought. Or if they get into the lifepods in time . . .
“Order the crew to head for the lifepods,” he said. “This ship has to be abandoned.”
The tactical officer’s head exploded. Admiral Zaskar stared at the headless corpse in shock, then spun around. Askew was holding a gun in his hand, sweeping it around to target ev
eryone in the CIC. Zaskar reached for the pistol at his belt, but it was already too late. Askew was pointing his gun directly at Admiral Zaskar’s head.
“What . . . ?”
“It hasn’t been a pleasure,” Askew said. The foreign agent’s face looked different. “And we don’t want any of you taken alive.”
“You’ll die too,” Admiral Zaskar managed. He’d expected that Askew would eventually find it convenient to betray them, but not like this. “You’ll . . .”
A dull rumble ran through the ship. The gravity reversed itself a second later, sending them both flying upwards. Askew fired, but the sudden change in perspective caused him to miss before he crashed into the ceiling. Zaskar heard a dull thud as his head cracked open, the gravity reversing itself back again seconds later. He fell back to the floor, landing badly. His leg shattered under the force of the impact.
He’s dead, Admiral Zaskar thought through the pain. His vision was already blurring. He’s dead and . . .
Askew’s body exploded.
“The enemy superdreadnought has lost power completely,” Kitty reported. “She’s streaming atmosphere and lifepods.”
“Order the marines to board,” Kat snapped. It was risky—the enemy might be waiting for her marines to come within range before they triggered the self-destruct—but she needed whatever information could be drawn from the superdreadnought. They had to take the chance. “And mop up the remaining enemy ships!”
She gritted her teeth as the final starships plunged into her point defense like lemmings running over a cliff. They didn’t have a hope of getting close enough to do any damage, let alone actually damaging her ships, but they kept coming anyway. She would have accepted a surrender, she told herself, time and time again. She would have let them live. But the enemy were too proud or too desperate to let themselves be taken alive. One by one, they died.
And the Theocracy is dying with them, Kat told herself. This is the end.
“Admiral, the majority of the freighters are offering to surrender,” Kitty said. “But they want ironclad guarantees of their personal survival.”
Kat frowned. That didn’t sound like the Theocracy. Pirates? Smugglers? Or simply the unreliable officers the enemy CO would normally have had executed if he hadn’t been so desperately short of manpower. ONI had concluded that the superdreadnoughts hadn’t had full crews, and Kat was inclined to agree with the intelligence. The Theocracy had been running short of experienced officers and crew long before the end of the war.
“Agree,” she said. If the enemy crews had conducted atrocities, they’d spend the rest of their lives on a penal colony. “But they are to cooperate.”
She glanced down at her display. “And send marines to secure the asteroid base as well as the freighters,” she added. “I want to know everything they’ve been doing.”
“Aye, Admiral.”
Kat allowed herself a thin smile. They’d won. There might be a handful of smaller ships out there, destroyers or frigates that had been hunting for targets while their base had been attacked, but they wouldn’t pose a long-term threat. Asher Dales and the other liberated worlds would be safe enough with a couple of destroyers each. The compromise King Hadrian and the Opposition had worked out wouldn’t please everyone, particularly the fire-eaters on either side, but the agreement would calm down the entire sector. Pirates, freebooters, and would-be empire-builders couldn’t take root when the planets were defended and spacelanes were regularly patrolled.
And many of the liberated worlds will become our allies, in time, she told herself. And new markets for our goods too.
“Order the communications ship to power up the StarCom,” she said. “I’ll need to send a message home as soon as possible.”
“Aye, Admiral.”
“And invite Sir William to join me,” Kat added. “We have a lot to discuss.”
She returned her attention to the display. The marines were going through the ships now, steadily arresting their crews and powering the vessels down until they could be searched from top to bottom. A number of crewmen were claiming to have been kidnapped and forced into servitude, but they’d still be kept under arrest and separated from the other prisoners until the truth could be established. Hopefully, Kat told herself, they wouldn’t have been forced to commit atrocities. They didn’t need that sort of stain on their record.
She studied the display, her eyes tracking the damaged ships. The Theocratic Navy was dead now, dead and gone. There would be people on Ahura Mazda who’d refuse to believe it, of course, and do their best to make sure that others didn’t believe it . . . It didn’t matter now. A handful of destroyers would be more than enough to keep control of the high orbitals and back up the provisional government. Who knew? Perhaps this final crushing defeat would be enough to convince the bitter-enders to give up.
Sure, she told herself. And pigs will fly.
Lieutenant Chas Potter tried hard not to feel nervous as he glided through the gash in the superdreadnought’s hull and dropped down to the deck. His combat suit flashed up a series of warnings, reminding him that there was neither atmosphere nor gravity. He wondered, wryly, if whoever had programmed the suit’s systems thought that marines were idiots. The gash in the hull was pretty clear proof, as far as he was concerned, that there was no atmosphere. The only real question was just how much of the ship had vented. There was a very good chance that there were compartments, deeper within the hull, that had remained pressurized.
He signaled for his squad to follow him, then headed down the corridor. The enemy ship was dark and creepy, illuminated only by his helmet’s lights. Bodies drifted through the shadows, some mutilated so badly that there was little hope of identifying them. Not, he supposed, that it mattered. The bodies would probably be sent plunging into the nearest star after they’d been logged, unless they happened to have living relatives on Ahura Mazda. He couldn’t help wondering just how many of those relatives would be keen to claim any connection to the dead men.
Probably none of them, since they were on the wrong side all along, he thought. He’d seen enough of enemy society to know that a connection to a defeated military unit wouldn’t be taken lightly. They’d be happier if they had a chance to claim the men died long before the end of the war.
“The CIC should be through here,” he said as the marines made their way deeper into the ship. The ship’s internal systems had apparently failed completely. Hatches that should have slammed closed at the merest hint of a hull breach had remained open, allowing the entire vessel to vent. He suspected deliberate sabotage. A failure on such a scale was largely unprecedented on a warship. The only compartment that had remained sealed was the CIC. “We’ll have to break through the hatch.”
His squad set the charges, then took cover as they detonated. The hatch exploded inwards, revealing a blackened compartment. Chas frowned, wondering, for an insane moment, if the ship’s consoles had actually exploded. That only happened in bad movies, where the scriptwriters thought that starship designers concealed explosive packs under consoles to make sure they exploded at the right moment. But the CIC had been completely destroyed.
“The blast went off inside the compartment,” Sergeant Smyth said. He was the squad’s explosives expert as well as Chas’s second-in-command. “And it was largely contained by the bulkheads.”
“Thus ensuring the complete destruction of everyone in the room,” Chas finished. The briefing notes had claimed that a superdreadnought normally had around nine or ten people in the CIC. If they’d been there when the blast had gone off, they’d been vaporized. It didn’t look as if any DNA or anything would be recovered. A suicide attempt? Or something much more dangerous? “Why didn’t they just trigger the self-destruct?”
“Perhaps they’d lost all connection to the rest of the ship, sir,” Smyth speculated. “Or something along those lines . . .”
“Then we continue to search the ship,” Chas said. “Maybe someone survived.”
“I d
oubt it, sir,” Smyth said. “I’m starting to think that they intended to make sure that none of their crew survived.”
“Yeah,” Chas said. “I’m starting to think so too.”
His radio bleeped. “Lieutenant, get your squad down to the weapons bay,” Captain Loomis said. “I’m going to need your help to secure the section.”
Chas blinked. “On our way, sir,” he said. Had Loomis discovered a handful of survivors? Or . . . or what? He didn’t know. “What have you found?”
“Bad news,” Loomis said. The captain sounded shaken. “Get down here at once. I think . . . I think this is political.”
“Understood, sir,” Chas said. He’d heard all the rumors. None of them had been very reassuring. Anything that could shake Loomis, a man who’d been in combat since before the war, couldn’t be good. He’d seen the elephant long before Chas had gone to boot camp, let alone passed through OCS. “We’re on our way.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
* * *
UNCHARTED STAR SYSTEM
It felt, William decided as he followed Kat into the secure conference room, a little like old times. They were both older and wiser now, and they’d grown apart over the last year, but at the same time, he couldn’t help feeling a camaraderie with her that went well beyond anything he’d felt for any of his other commanding officers. She’d treated him better, he thought, than any of the others. And, in some ways, she’d acknowledged her weaknesses in a way that none of his previous COs had. It was a lot easier to respect someone who was honest than someone who tried to hide her insecurities behind a brash or bullish exterior.
But this wasn’t old times, he reminded himself sharply. Someone could object to his presence, on the undeniable grounds that he was a foreign naval officer, which would put Kat in an awkward position. William silently promised himself that he’d go, if someone complained. Kat’s enemies wouldn’t hesitate to use him against her if they saw an opportunity to strike. They’d be able to create enough of a stink to make her life difficult indeed.
Debt of Honor (The Embers of War) Page 35