“I am not incompetent,” the commodore protested.
“This system reminds me of Cadiz,” Admiral Junayd said coolly. “It is important to learn from our mistakes, but learning from the enemy’s is a great deal cheaper. Explain.”
The commodore took a long breath. “Admiral,” he said, “I was ordered to keep my forces concentrated here.”
“You were?” Admiral Junayd asked. “Ordered by whom?”
“The War Council,” Commodore Malian said. “They believed that my ships would serve as a reserve force, to be deployed to the front if necessary. I couldn’t deploy them at a moment’s notice if I had them spread out over the sector.”
“I imagine not,” Admiral Junayd sneered. “But why did you allow the superdreadnoughts to fall into such disrepair?”
“Most of my repair crews were sent forward,” the commodore said defiantly. “I am forbidden to train new ones, while all my requests for replacements have fallen on deaf ears.”
“I see,” Admiral Junayd said coldly.
He took a long moment to study the older man. Malian had had a decent record until recently; indeed, no one had realized there were problems at Aswan until now. But if Malian hadn’t had the tools to fix the problems, he couldn’t really be blamed for them. How could Junayd himself resent his own treatment at the hands of the War Council and blame Malian for his failures at the same time? “Then we will have to work on your problems,” he said. “Give me a breakdown of your smaller ships. I intend to use them to patrol the sector.”
Malian blinked. “But they might be called forward at any moment!”
“Only an idiot”—or a cleric, he added silently—“would expect them to be ready to depart at once,” Admiral Junayd said firmly. “We do have a network of courier boats here, do we not? I can use them to recall the smaller ships if necessary. In the meantime, we will begin repair work on the superdreadnoughts. I do have the authority to conscript repair crews and to train others.”
“There are regulations against it,” Malian pointed out.
“This is war,” Admiral Junayd countered. The repair crews wouldn’t be left alive, not after the war was over, but for the moment they were needed. “Get a training program sorted out, then start looking for recruits. I’ll send a request back for other repair crews on the StarCom.”
“But they’ll know there’s a problem,” Malian whined.
“They will also know that your repair crews were summoned to the front,” Admiral Junayd pointed out with heavy patience. “I dare say they will be understanding of any requests you made for replacements—and, also, why I made a request as soon as I took command of the station.”
“Yes, sir,” Malian said.
“Good,” Admiral Junayd said. He sat down behind the desk, silently resolving to have the chair replaced with a properly uncomfortable design as soon as possible. “Now, I am willing to let your previous conduct go unpunished, provided you give me your all. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, sir,” Malian said. It was better than he could reasonably have expected and they both knew it. “I won’t let you down.”
“Glad to hear it,” Admiral Junayd murmured. He cleared his throat loudly. “Now, I want you to draw up a schedule for a series of patrols through threatened systems—and for courier boats, in the event of us needing to recall the ships at short notice. Let me see it before you issue any actual orders.”
“Yes, sir,” Malian said.
“It would be much easier with a set of StarComs,” Admiral Junayd mused. “We could send messages from system to system practically instantly, not rely on courier boats away from communications nodes.”
He sighed. If he’d needed proof the Commonwealth was considerably richer than the Theocracy, he didn’t really need to look very far. They’d managed to give just about every inhabited system, even Cadiz, a StarCom, even though they were staggeringly expensive. The Theocracy hadn’t managed to do nearly as well; there were only three StarComs in the entire sector, despite the fact it was on the front lines. He would have traded one of his superdreadnought squadrons for a dozen StarComs and the freedom to choose their locations for himself.
Given time, they will outproduce and overwhelm us, he thought. We have to win the war within the next two years, or . . .
It was called defeatism, he knew, to even suggest there was a possibility of anything but triumph. No one would spare him, this time, if he openly discussed the prospect of losing the war. Everyone knew that God favored them, that He granted the Theocracy the help it needed to win the war . . . if they remained faithful and devout, praying every day for victory. And yet . . . while the Inquisition preached that God was on the side of the faithful, Admiral Junayd had long since come to realize that He was on the side of the big guns. The only real question was who had the bigger guns.
He shook his head, dismissing the thought. “I will review the rest of your records,” he added flatly. “You will report back to me in two hours. By then, I’m sure we will have a great deal more to discuss.”
Commodore Malian bowed low, then retreated from the room. Admiral Junayd sighed, then glanced at the latest set of reports. All seemed well in the sector, but that proved nothing. A dozen worlds were permanently on the verge of exploding into hopeless rebellion against the Theocracy, draining troops and ships from the war front. If he’d been in command of the enemy’s forces, he would have taken a leaf from the Theocracy’s plans for war and supplied weapons to the insurgents on worlds that had yet to bow the knee to God. It was unlikely any of them would actually be able to win, but they would provide a distraction at a crucial moment.
The sooner we start regular patrols, the better, he thought. We need to keep our finger on the pulse of the sector.
The intercom chimed. “Ah . . . Admiral?”
“Yes,” Admiral Junayd said. The voice sounded young and nervous, unsurprisingly. No doubt the speaker was on his first posting. “Report.”
“The courier boat for Convoy CAD-362 is overdue,” the speaker said. “It’s probably nothing, but . . .”
“Nothing is ever nothing,” Admiral Junayd said. It was something he’d been taught in training, back when he’d spent his days memorizing tactical formulations and his nights reciting religious texts from memory to please the clerics. “When was it due to arrive?”
“Two days ago,” the speaker said. “Ah, there was a period of leeway before it could be declared overdue.”
“I know the procedure,” Admiral Junayd said patiently. CAD-362 . . . it would have headed directly to Cadiz, once it met up with the courier boat. It was possible, he had to admit, that the courier boat might have had an accident somewhere along the way, but he disliked the thought. A convoy heading into a war zone would be a very tempting target. “Did we receive confirmation that it had departed?”
“Yes, Admiral. We were sent a message via StarCom from Cadiz, confirming the courier boat’s departure.”
We might have outsmarted ourselves, a little, Admiral Junayd thought. He hadn’t devised that procedure, thankfully, but that might not be taken into account when the investigation began. Someone was always at fault. And if something has happened to the courier boat, what hap pened to the convoy? “Send a signal to Cadiz, asking them to inform us the moment the convoy arrives,” he ordered. It didn’t seem likely that the convoy would arrive, but he had to hope for the best while preparing for the worst. “And detach a pair of destroyers. They are to fly directly to the convoy’s RV point and investigate; no, one of them is to investigate, the other is to hang back.”
“Yes, Admiral,” the speaker said.
“Good,” Admiral Junayd said. “Inform me the moment the destroyers are on their way.”
He sat back in his chair, then closed the channel and brought up the star chart. As he’d suspected, CAD-362 had been due to meet the courier boat at UNAS-RD-46785 before proceeding to Cadiz, while the courier boat headed onwards to Aswan. But the courier boat hadn’t arrived, which su
ggested . . . what? Accident? Or deliberate attack? And if the latter, what had happened to the convoy? At least it happened before I took formal command, he told himself. The sooner we start reestablishing patrols, the better.
* * * * *
Lieutenant Lars Rasmussen hadn’t expected to earn command after five years in the Royal Navy, certainly not of anything larger than a gunboat. Indeed, when he’d been told that there might—might—be a prospect of command if he transferred to a secret mission rather than being posted to a battle cruiser, he’d been half inclined to believe his CO was playing a complicated joke on him. And when he’d laid eyes on his new command, he hadn’t been able to keep himself from wondering if someone had deliberately set him up.
No , he told himself firmly, as HMS Mermaid drifted through the Aswan System. That isn’t fair at all.
HMS Mermaid was an odd duck, a strange cross between a militarygrade warship and a cutter intended for nothing more than customs duty. He’d actually checked her file and discovered she was the sole representative of her class, a design that was neither fish nor fowl and had never worked well in practice. But as a spy ship, once some of her older equipment had been replaced, he had to admit she was matchless. The Theocrats didn’t have the slightest idea she was there.
“That’s definitely a second superdreadnought squadron,” Midshipwoman Grace Hawthorne reported from her console. Her voice was very quiet, as if she thought the enemy could hear her words. “Either they’re keeping the drives stepped down for some reason or they’re in desperate need of repairs.”
“Not that we want to tangle with them anyway,” Lars said, peering over her shoulder. “A single superdreadnought could swat the entire squadron, minus Lightning, without breaking a sweat.”
“Lightning wouldn’t last much longer,” Grace agreed. She frowned as more data poured into the starship’s sensors. “I’m thinking this place is definitely the center of operations in this sector.”
“It looks that way,” Lars said. The POWs had said as much, yet it never hurt to check. “But it also looks like they’re preparing to deploy forward.”
He paused. “Do we know those superdreadnoughts?”
“Not as far as I can tell,” Grace said. Her brow furrowed as she bent over the console, comparing the sensor readings with her records. “Their drive fields aren’t recorded in our database, but they might have retuned the drives. It wouldn’t be too hard for them to change the drives enough to give them a completely new profile.”
Lars nodded, slowly. According to the files, which he had only been allowed to read after they crossed the border, the Commonwealth had recorded the unique characteristics of nine enemy superdreadnought squadrons. Assuming that no one had messed with the drive signatures, he was looking at two more . . . and no one had any idea of just how many other superdreadnoughts there were, waiting for their chance to attack the Commonwealth.
Unless they have been modified, he thought. Or is that wishful thinking? “Keep us on course,” he ordered. Mermaid would slip through the system, then jump back into hyperspace once they were well outside sensor range. “Captain—Commodore—Falcone will be delighted to have this information.”
“If only to know this system shouldn’t be attacked,” Grace said. Her face twisted with grim amusement. “I wouldn’t care to attack those defenses without a superdreadnought squadron of my own. And they have a StarCom, worse luck. They could call for help.”
“That does raise a different question,” Lars said. If Aswan was the local Sector HQ, where else would the enemy base ships? “From where?”
He looked back at the display, then shrugged. They’d find out soon enough.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“It looks as though Aswan is far too dangerous for us,” the XO said. Kat nodded in agreement. Two superdreadnought squadrons were overkill, as far as her puny flotilla was concerned; the smaller ships alone would be a major headache. Perversely, it was the smaller ships that posed the greatest threat; even a relatively low number could cost her dearly if she ran into them at her next target. They could be moved from star to star quickly, if necessary, spreading out to blanket all possible targets.
She sucked in her breath. The intelligence staff might believe the superdreadnoughts were in poor condition, but a single superdreadnought with half its missile tubes out of commission would still be able to smash her entire flotilla. She wouldn’t care to visit Aswan without a superdreadnought squadron of her own—and, as the enemy could be trying to lure her into close combat by pretending to be weak, she would have preferred at least three superdreadnought squadrons, if not four. Having a two-to-one advantage practically guaranteed success.
“Yeah,” she said. There was no point in plotting an attack, not with the firepower at her command. “We’ll have to send the data back to Admiral Christian, if he feels like cutting loose enough firepower to raid behind enemy lines.”
“He won’t,” the XO predicted. “The situation along the front lines is too insecure for him to risk anything of the sort.”
“I suppose,” Kat agreed. “Still, the chance to smash two enemy superdreadnought squadrons should not be missed.”
“If it didn’t cost us the war,” the XO said.
Kat nodded, reluctantly. Sending a fleet—any fleet—away from the front lines risked the enemy making major gains, while the dispatched fleet had absolutely no idea what was happening behind it. The fleet might return to discover that its base had been destroyed, or that the enemy had punched through the weakened border defenses and started a drive towards Tyre itself. No, the XO was right. No matter how tempting the target—and the target might have been designed to look tempting—it couldn’t be risked. It was why the Commonwealth had sent only a handful of older ships—and Lightning—to raid behind enemy lines.
“Never mind,” she said, closing the display. “Are we ready to move to Verdean?”
“Yes, Captain,” the XO assured her. “The prisoners who are in no state to join the resistance, or unwilling to do so, have been transferred to one of the freighters, which is currently holding station at the RV point. Everyone else is being given enemy weapons and taught how to use them, along with ammunition and enemy supplies. Apparently, their ration packs are even worse than ours.”
Kat had to smile. Complaining about rations was an old tradition, but the Royal Navy’s ration packs weren’t actually that bad. The Theocracy, on the other hand, seemed to think that even eating rations should be a test of one’s endurance. She wouldn’t have been surprised to discover their captains were allowed to flog crewmen, or that devout believers engaged in self-flagellation every Thursday at nine. It made no sense to her—life in space was hard enough without making it worse deliberately—but she wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. Anything that weakened the enemy worked in her favor.
“As long as they’re edible,” she said.
“Oh, no; they don’t serve those kinds of meals,” the XO said. “Perish the thought!”
Kat laughed—it was a punch line from a sitcom she’d detested as a young girl—then tapped the console, bringing up the star chart. Verdean glowed red in front of her; the prisoners had been able to tell her a great deal about the system itself, but next to nothing about the Theocracy’s deployments. There would be an automated weapons platform—perhaps more than one—guarding the planet itself, but what else? Normally, a spacefaring society would have started mining the gas giants and asteroid belts, yet the Theocracy seemed unwilling to risk moving any form of industry into occupied systems. It was quite possible the local industrial base had been completely destroyed.
It’s inefficient, she thought crossly. Are they so determined to keep con trol that they’re willing to swallow the extra cost of shipping everything from their heartlands to the edge of their territory? She shook her head in disbelief. Maybe she hadn’t paid as much attention to her lessons as she should, but she understood the problems involved in shipping thousands of tons of goods acros
s space. The Commonwealth had invested billions of crowns in building up local industries purely to boost the economy and keep prices down— and, just incidentally, convince the newcomers that the Commonwealth didn’t intend to exploit them. But the Theocracy seemed determined to keep its worlds firmly in bondage.
The XO coughed. “Crown for your thoughts, Captain?”
“They’re inefficient,” Kat said, and explained her reasoning. “No wonder they’re having supply problems.”
“But they consider the trade-off worthwhile,” the XO pointed out. “If the locals had control over an industrial base, even a small one, they’d have a disproportionate amount of influence over the Theocracy itself. They might be able to leverage that into better treatment from their masters, if they didn’t manage to gain outright independence. Keeping everyone crawling on the ground, after the invasion, suits the Theocracy better. And it works in our favor too.”
“Because they need to ship their supplies over a much longer distance,” Kat mused. She shrugged. “They’ll probably start expanding Aswan sooner or later.”
“It’ll take them years,” the XO predicted. “Years they’re not going to have.”
“I hope you’re right,” Kat said. She looked back at the star chart for a long moment. “It’s a three-day trip to Verdean from here, so we’ll leave in an hour and use the time to prepare for the offensive. Mermaid can repeat her feat of slipping into the system when we arrive, with Juno and Max Mercury backing her up. Unless there’s something there too large for us to tackle, we’ll attack at once.”
“Yes, Captain,” the XO said.
Kat smiled, tiredly. “Are there any other issues of note?”
“Some minor disputes amongst the former prisoners,” the XO said. “They were fighting over who did what during the first invasion and its aftermath, then over who should have overall command of the resistance. I don’t think it will be a major problem, at least at the moment, but Verdean will not have a peaceful future after they’re liberated for good.”
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