He couldn’t help feeling a flicker of relief as she walked into the briefing room, looking composed. Maybe she’d stopped off in her cabin long enough to wash her face if she’d shed private tears, or maybe she’d lost the habit of crying years ago, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she looked presentable and determined to carry on the mission. Anything less would have undermined crew morale and threatened their future successes.
“Be seated,” she ordered flatly. She tossed an ironic look at the holograms floating at the rear of the compartment, then took her seat at the end of the table. “Commander?”
William cleared his throat. “We have successfully transferred the prisoners, liberated workers, and others to the freighters,” he said. “They will be departing to the Reach within the hour, taking with them a copy of our findings so far. Admiral Christian and his intelligence analysts will be happy, no doubt, with the chance to finally start putting details into our charts of enemy space.”
The captain nodded. “If any of you have messages you wish to send, bearing in mind that they will be read by the censors first, feel free to add them to the datacores being transferred to the freighters,” she added. “Make sure your crews have the same opportunity. It will be several months, at least, before we return home.”
If we ever do , William thought. He’d heard enough, during his detachment from Lightning, to know just how bloody-minded and vindictive the Theocracy could be. Commonwealth forces had singed the enemy’s beard and the enemy would want revenge, something horrific and ghastly enough to make anyone else think twice about trying to raid behind the lines. The plan was to force them to send ships after us, rather than press the offensive against Admiral Christian, and now they have all the incentive they need to do just that.
His lips quirked. Being chased by half the ships in the enemy’s fleet had sounded like a good idea when they’d thought of it . . .
He glanced at the captain, then pressed on. “We have also reloaded our missile tubes, having expended a considerable number in the recent battle,” he continued. “So far, we don’t have a serious shortage, but we should probably be careful when it comes to expending more missiles than strictly necessary. We may be able to capture enemy weapons, but firing them from our tubes is simply impossible.”
“Not that easy to do, in combat,” Commander Kent pointed out tartly. “Weapons usage has always been well over prewar predictions and that’s something we have to bear in mind.”
“True,” the captain agreed. “However, I would prefer not to enter energy range if it could be avoided. The enemy ships will quite likely have better armor than most of our squadron.”
William nodded in agreement. “The engineering crews are considering ways to alter enemy missiles so we can use them, but it comes with a great many risks,” he said. “For the moment, be careful.”
The captain smiled thinly, then leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table. “The enemy knows we’re here now,” she said. “They may know we hit the convoy, they may know we hit the penal world . . . but they definitely know we hit Verdean. Right now, warnings are probably echoing across the sector, telling their planetary defenses to beware of an enemy fleet.”
“If they’re willing to admit that something’s gone wrong,” Commander Jackson offered. “It would make them look very bad to have us running around in their rear.”
“They’d have to be idiots to just let us get on with it,” William said sharply. “And while they may be ruthless bastards, they’re not idiots. We have to assume the worst.”
The captain nodded. “Which means we don’t have time for elaborate raids any longer,” she added. “Get in, smash the targets, and get out again. They will attempt to position their ships to catch us; statistically, the odds are in our favor, but they only have to get lucky once. I don’t think I need to remind you that a single enemy superdreadnought is more than capable of reducing this entire squadron to dust and ash.”
She took a breath, then pushed on. “I intend to hit Ringer, as planned,” she said. “The industrial base there is smaller, but it’s a vital part of the sector’s economy. However, it’s quite likely that they’d put it right on the top of suspected targets, which is why we need to move fast.”
William nodded, then watched as she keyed the star chart and focused it on Ringer.
“Three days from here to Ringer . . . we can get there, if we’re lucky, before word reaches them. That said”—she brushed her hand through her hair—“we will scout the system, as always, and if the defenses have been augmented we will fall back, hopefully without revealing our presence. Mermaid will, as always, serve as our spy.”
Commander Yale leaned forward. “Commodore,” he said, “attacking Ringer will cause a considerable amount of hardship for the locals.”
“That’s not our concern,” Captain Bannister snapped. Her hologram glowered around the compartment. “The locals are working for the Theocracy; willing or unwilling, we cannot allow it to continue. If we offer to take them with us and they accept, that’s fine; if not, we cannot allow our concern for them to hamper our operations. We are at war.”
“They’re not Theocratic civilians,” Commander Yale pointed out. “They are, at best, citizens of an occupied state.”
“Then they’re either working at gunpoint, in which case they should be relieved to have us liberate them, or willing collaborators,” Captain Bannister said firmly. “I don’t think I need to remind you that the penalty for collaboration is death. There is a reason for that beyond the simple desire to punish them for their crimes.”
“No, you don’t,” the captain said. She tapped her fingers on the table, then leaned forward decisively. “We take them alive, if we can, and if not . . . we won’t allow sentimentality to stand in our way.”
She paused. “After that . . . we will need to consider our next target carefully,” she added. “I want you all to study the data, then pick a target that is unlikely to be defended—and, at the same time, somewhere worth hitting.” She smiled rather sardonically. “If, of course, such a place actually exists.”
William frowned. He had his doubts. So, it seemed, did the captain.
“We will depart within the hour and pause at a new waypoint, a light year from Ringer,” the captain concluded. She waved a hand at the star chart, banishing it. “That will give us time to decide on the next target, then plan a coordinated strike. We may need to divert the enemy by attacking several targets at once—it’s a shame they don’t have StarComs—but it can be done.”
She paused. “Dismissed.”
The holograms saluted, then blinked out of existence. One by one, the officers left the compartment until only William and the captain remained.
“There won’t be many targets that fit the bill,” he said softly. “Quite a few of the worlds here are useless, at least as far as the war effort is concerned. Hitting a purely farming world is nothing more than pointless spite.”
“Then we will have to hope that kicking the Theocracy off a planet is a worthwhile goal in itself, as well as forcing them to keep reasserting control,” the captain said. She sighed. “It will be costly, but we have no choice. Aswan is too heavily defended to take out without a battle squadron of our own . . .”
“We do have a number of their freighters,” William said slowly. An idea had occurred to him. “If we were to capture some antimatter or mining nukes, we could turn one of the ships into a suicide craft. Get through the defenses, dock at the central station, and BOOM.”
“They’d have to be insane to let the ship dock,” the captain said. She cocked her head, thoughtfully. “Even Admiral Morrison wasn’t that stupid. They wouldn’t let the ship dock without checking her out thoroughly first. We take such precautions ourselves.”
“Yes, but they don’t know there’s a threat,” William said. “Even a complete failure, with the bombs detonating harmlessly, would force them to spend as long as it took examining every freighter in the sector.
It would be costly as hell.”
“True,” the captain said. She smiled at him. “God knows we had problems after the first raids on Tyre.”
William nodded. The commandos had been down for months, perhaps years, before the wars had begun, but the War Cabinet had been forced to order every freighter entering orbit to be carefully inspected before it was allowed to dock. Nothing had been found—nothing from the Theocracy, at least—yet it had caused everything from minor delays to contract defaults and colossal expenses. If there hadn’t been a war on, there would likely have been a riot by now.
“See what we can find at Ringer,” the captain said. “And until then . . . thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” William said. “It’s what I’m here for, Captain.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“Reminds me of home,” Lieutenant Lars Rasmussen said. “Only my home colony had a giant planet far too close to us.” “And a place where you could get what you needed, if you couldn’t make it for yourself,” Midshipwoman Grace Hawthorne pointed out. “Ringer had no contact with anyone until the Theocracy arrived, the poor bastards.”
Lars nodded. Quite a few of the first asteroid settlements had been founded by people seeking political or religious freedom, a tradition that had continued ever since the first scoutships had ventured into hyperspace in search of new places to live. Ringer, according to the scant details in the files, had been settled by a group that had wanted to completely isolate itself from the rest of humanity and, to make sure it was left alone, had carefully picked a system that was of little interest to anyone else. A handful of asteroids, a couple of comets, and little else; it was a closed system in more ways than one. No one had visited the system, as far as anyone knew, until the Theocracy had arrived.
And the locals must have been horrified , he thought, when they real ized just who had found them.
He pushed the thought aside, then examined the sensor readings. Ringer was a combination of old and new technology, some dating all the way back to the pre-space era, others clearly produced within the last decade. It wasn’t uncommon for asteroid settlements to go back to the basics, which were easier to repair, but Ringer had to have received help from outside to keep up with the times. He couldn’t keep himself from wondering if the locals had experienced some contact with the rest of the sector before the Theocracy arrived, even though the files suggested otherwise. Asteroid settlers tended to be technically proficient—they had to be, just to keep their settlements alive—and Ringer’s settlers probably had skills the sector needed. The Theocracy certainly wanted them.
“Two cruisers,” he muttered. The bright red icons were impossible to miss; it looked, very much, as if the enemy starships were making it clear they were there. “And a handful of defense platforms.”
“They may have weapons mounted on the asteroids themselves,” Grace reminded him. “I think they’d definitely have point defense, even if they didn’t have any long-range missile tubes.”
“True,” Lars agreed. Asteroid dwellers tended to be of two minds about mounting weapons on settled asteroids. On one hand, they needed point defense; on the other, it drew fire from enemy starships. A single nuclear-tipped missile could shatter an asteroid and kill everyone inside. “I make ten freighters in the system, either docked with the asteroid or waiting in a holding pattern. Do you concur?”
“Confirmed,” Grace said. “They may be forming up a convoy.”
Lars nodded, slowly. The Commonwealth’s shipping lines hated to see freighters docked when they could be moving between star systems and making money, but the Theocracy had always taken a different view of it. They preferred to keep their freighters under control, which, he had to admit, made a great deal of sense if they knew there were prowling raiders in the sector. The two cruisers might be the convoy escort, waiting patiently for all ten freighters to be loaded so they could be on their way. If the squadron could arrive before it was too late, they’d have a chance to capture or destroy a number of freighters and a pair of cruisers.
“Back us out, very slowly,” he ordered. There was no way to know just how advanced the asteroid’s sensors were, but it was quite possible that the locals were preternaturally attuned to the space surrounding them. They might pick up something, the merest flicker, that would reveal his ship’s presence. “Commodore Falcone will want to hear about this.”
“Aye, sir,” Grace said.
* * * * *
“Two light cruisers, Captain,” the XO said. “It seems like an easy target.”
“And ten freighters,” Kat added. “It seems a very tempting target.” She studied the star chart, silently calculating vectors in her mind.
The enemy could have gotten a warning to Ringer by now, if they regarded the handful of asteroid settlements as a priority target. Or they might have enough courier boats to make sending a warning easy without draining their resources. It was just possible that her opponent might have gambled and stationed a small squadron of its own at Ringer . . .
Two light cruisers , she thought. It was unlikely they could do more than delay Lightning alone, unless the Theocracy had invented a whole new weapons system. And, oddly, seeing them there was reassuring. If someone had planned an ambush, they’d probably prefer to keep the light cruisers under cloak, just to prevent her taking fright. We could take them both out and weaken the enemy.
She nodded slowly. “We’ll advance towards the system and jump in here,” she said, tapping a location on the display. Close enough to the asteroids to allow her a clean shot at the freighters, far enough from the enemy cruisers to allow her to check they weren’t supported by an entire superdreadnought squadron before it was too late. “We’ll hit the cruisers, then the freighters, if they refuse to surrender.”
“Aye, Captain,” the XO said. “And our next target?”
Kat sighed. She’d debated it endlessly during the voyage, first with the XO and then with the other starship commanders. No matter how she looked at it, any reasonable targets were likely to be heavily guarded . . . unless, of course, she attempted to divert the enemy’s attention through a feint. If the enemy had had a StarCom network, she knew, it would have been a great deal easier as the enemy concentrated resources in threatened systems while she struck elsewhere.
And if we could send signals back to the Commonwealth at FTL speeds, she thought ruefully, Admiral Christian and the War Cabinet would be peering over my shoulder all the time.
“Morningside is probably the best target,” she said. “But I want to make a feint at Aswan first, just to keep them confused.”
“Aye, Captain,” the XO said. “I’ll have the tactical staff start looking at options now.”
“Good,” Kat said. She took a breath, studying the final records from Mermaid. Ringer might pose complications, but it should be an easy target. Unless, of course, it was a trap. “We move in twenty minutes.”
* * * * *
Captain Ruthven ground his teeth together in irritation as the janissaries dragged the two offending crewmen into his office. It hadn’t been a good week; first, he and his ship had been assigned to cover a handful of asteroids populated by unbelievers and then, if that hadn’t been enough, he’d been given strict orders to withdraw if confronted by overwhelming force. There was no way he could make that look good on his service record, no matter his orders; he’d be lucky to have a hope of being assigned to the front before the war was won and all chances of glory faded into nothingness.
He scowled at the two crewmen, who cringed under his gaze. His brothers had both written letters from the front, telling him of the infidels running from their missiles and how they’d brought countless worlds under their thumb. To hear them talk, they’d won the battles personally; they’d certainly made it clear that they’d played a major role in the coming victory. It wouldn’t be long before the Theocracy was firmly in control of Tyre and the war came to an end. Ruthven would have no real chance of glory . . . at least until the next war.
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br /> “Well,” he said angrily. “Do you have anything resembling an explanation?”
The two crewmen exchanged glances. “It was just a spot of fun, sir,” one protested. “She was asking for it.”
“Aye, she was,” the second said. “Wearing sluttish clothes and walking down . . .”
Ruthven nodded to the janissaries, who stabbed the two men with shockrods. They screamed in pain, but somehow managed to remain standing. Clearly they knew better than to show weakness when they were in deep trouble. He sighed in irritation—like their commanding officer, his crew deeply resented their posting to the rear—and then leaned forward, allowing his anger to show on his face. It was well within his authority to have them executed out of hand and they both knew it.
“Let me explain something to you,” he said calmly. “The inhabitants of this asteroid cluster bent the knee to us. They submitted to us. We allow them to maintain their beliefs, their way of life, as long as they serve us. And they do serve us. The items they produce are a vital component of this sector’s economy.”
He sighed, again. It was unlikely the two crewmen really understood what he was telling them. They’d probably had nothing more than a basic education; they would have learned to recite the holy words from memory, but not to actually think. He would have been surprised if they could even read more than a few words.
“They submitted to us,” Ruthven repeated. “And, because of that, they are granted protection as long as they obey. We swore we would grant them protection, and safety, in order to keep them working for us. And part of that, as I believe you were informed, is that their women are not to be touched. It would upset them.”
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