Barbarians at the Gates

by Nuttall, Christopher

  He chuckled. “Speaking of the Senate, they’re still trying to find a bride for you. No, I don’t think that you or she will have much choice in the matter. It isn’t common for someone like yourself to marry into the political elite, but I think that some elements are determined to bind you strongly to them. It’s odd, though; I’ve been telling every cadet who will listen that the political elite is barely a tiny fraction of a percentage of the trillions of human beings, yet they still haven’t managed to find you a bride. If I had to guess, I’d say that they are either squabbling over who won’t have to marry you, or they are stalling. Probably the latter—but seriously, I suspect that it won’t be long before they produce someone and tell you to marry her. I’ve attached a list of possible brides, but there are no guarantees. Luckily, you don’t have to love the woman. You don’t even need to have sex with her, not to produce a kid or two. Pretty much all of High Society use artificial wombs these days.

  “But back to the matter at hand. I’m afraid that there have been more...incidents at various construction yards than made it into the official reports. I wouldn’t have heard anything if I’d just been dependent on the standard chains of communication. Going from what I heard, there have been everything from dangerous accidents caused by poor workers to strikes and perhaps even outright sabotage. I don’t think that any of them are actually linked to the warlords, but it hasn’t helped the Senate’s sense of security. The last I heard, they were talking about sending in a military regiment and using force to impose order. I’m not convinced that that is going to work very well. If the workers are drawn from the same labor pool as the trainee crewmen, they’re just going to be fearful as well as ignorant.”

  He stared down at his hands for a long moment. “I have heard through one of our mutual friends that Senator Chang Li has absconded from Earth. I had the pleasure of meeting her at one of the Academy’s inspection tours and she struck me as impressive, perhaps the smartest political figure I have ever met. Quite ineffectual, of course, and I suspect that her departure is linked to the current series of...problems. The last I heard, just before she left, the Senate was talking about conscripting workers from the out-worlds and putting them to work on the construction yards, perhaps even recruiting them for the fleet. You know how nervous they’ve been about colonials in the Navy since the Inheritance Wars. It will be a disaster if they try to conscript unwilling recruits in large numbers. The last thing we need is a second round of colonial wars. At least they’re not thinking about recruiting aliens.”

  “Or perhaps they are,” he added, brow furrowing. “They’re working on recruiting a specialised unit, and the security is quite phenomenal. The unit may be composed of specially-trained people from Earth, or maybe aliens. It isn’t as if the Federation is short of aliens who would be interested in cracking human skulls for a living.”

  The Professor looked up. “I promised myself that I’d send you some cheerful news, but we have a slight shortage of it,” he concluded. “There are rumors that at least three of the warlords are organizing themselves into a single unit—luckily, not an overwhelmingly powerful unit, but enough to be dangerous. And the Senate feels that it cannot rely on any senior officer, except you, perhaps. I’d be surprised if they trusted you completely. Watch your back.”

  He grinned, adding: “And a military victory would be good, too. Good luck.”

  His image vanished. Marius put the chip and his private terminal away, making sure to secure the drawer properly, then sat down again and thought about what he had been told. He’d rerun the message later, of course—it would run three times before it was automatically wiped from the chip—and read through the files the Professor had included, too, later at night when he’d not be disturbed. He wasn’t too interested in any prospective bride; he’d never married, and had never intended to marry. And yet, the Senate was tempting him with the ultimate prize. His descendants would be part of the political elite that ruled the Federation.

  And yet...who was really running the show? It wasn’t hard to guess who Kratman worked for, besides the Federation Navy. His position was ideal for selecting and investigating prospective recruits. And he had access to information that a lowly professor, no matter how well-connected, should never have been able to access.

  He keyed his intercom, unlocking the privacy shields. “Gary,” he said when he was linked to the CIC. “I want you to find Commodore Arunika, wherever she is. When you find her, tell her to report to me in my cabin. I need to see her as soon as possible.”

  “Aye, sir,” Lieutenant Owen said. “Fleet Com shows her on the fleet carrier Helena Cain. She should be with you within an hour.”

  “Thank you,” Marius said. “I’ll wait.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The Marine contingent on a Federation Navy starship reports directly to the ship’s captain or acting captain. Junior officers are not entitled to issue commands to Marines, regardless of rank. This ensures that, if worst comes to worst, the captain has a loyal force at his disposal. However, friendly relationships between Marines and Navy crewmen are not unknown and there is a considerable amount of fraternisation.

  -Observations on Federation Navy Regulations, 4056

  FNS Midway, In Transit, 4095

  “I noticed that you can’t sleep,” Elf said in the half-darkness of the captain’s cabin. The artificial starfield thrown over the bed shone upon her, lending her features an otherworldly air. “The responsibilities of command pressing down on you?”

  Roman nodded without moving the rest of his body. The captain’s cabin onboard Midway was huge, far larger than anything he felt that he had a right to expect—or needed. Three years of service since graduating from Luna Academy hadn’t left him with much in the way of possessions, although one wall was covered with some old-style printed books he’d picked up on shore leave. Admiral Drake, he’d been informed, was a keen book collector and so Roman had attempted to follow in his mentor’s footsteps in that regard. He’d soon discovered that books were an overpowering habit and, somehow, they bred on his shelves.

  “Yeah,” he said after a long beat. “I don’t want to fuck this up...”

  Elf was now his best friend and his lover. But no one knew about it outside his cabin. Whenever she was on duty, most particularly when she was surrounded by others, she was all Marine. Their relationship didn’t quite break any regulations, but if it became known, people would talk.

  And he didn’t want that for Elf. She was a damned good Marine. She’d earned every promotion she’d ever gotten.

  So he kept it quiet. And hoped no one would figure it out, because there were times that Roman thought that the Federation Navy ran on chatter and rumors.

  Elf snorted and poked one of her fingers into his stomach. “And when was the last time you fucked something up?”

  “I wasn’t in command then,” Roman said. “I mean...I didn’t know I was going to wind up in command of the Enterprise, so when I did, I hadn’t had any time to think or plan. Here...the buck stops with me.”

  “And you know what you are doing, you know that it needs to be done, and you know that the Admiralty has faith in you,” Elf said dryly. She poked him again, harder. “And if they didn’t have faith in you, they wouldn’t have given you the Midway. How many of your graduation class have their own newly-constructed assault cruiser to play with?”

  “True,” Roman agreed. He reached out and touched the bulkhead, marvelling at the faint vibration he felt as the ship’s stardrive drove her on into the endless night. Only three of his fellow year-mates from Luna Academy had been promoted to captain—two of them, like Roman himself, originally had been forced into a dead man’s shoes. Several others had been killed in the incessant wars tearing the Federation apart. “Of course, we are also the test-bed for the whole concept. We fuck up, and the whole construction program goes to hell.”

  Midway was the latest design of assault cruiser, a cross between a heavy cruiser and a battlecruiser. She
was fast enough to catch almost anything in known space—apart from a starfighter or gunboat—and armed to the teeth. He couldn’t take her into battle against a battlecruiser or anything heavier, but Midway would have no difficulty evading anything powerful enough to punch her out. The designers had talked about using her as a fast scout, but the Admiralty had marked her and her sisters down for commerce raiders as soon as the potentials had percolated through their collective heads. And then there were the prospects for covert insertion missions and other interesting tasks.

  Roman’s appointment to command her was a sign that some very powerful and well-connected people had a great deal of faith in him.

  And yet, although he hadn’t wanted to admit it to Admiral Drake, he had his doubts about the mission. Not the part about sowing dissent between the two warlords—that clearly served the Federation’s purposes, although that alone suggested the enemy would know who was to blame—but raiding commercial and industrial starships like simple pirates. His parents had been killed by pirates, long ago, and he’d hoped to be assigned to hunt pirates. The Donna Noble had spent the six months before the Battle of Terra Nova escorting convoys and chasing pirates, and he’d enjoyed every last moment of it. It felt as if he were avenging his parents every time he killed a pirate’s ship.

  But then, Federation Navy was tearing itself apart and, scenting an opportunity, the pirates had begun to press their efforts closer and closer to the Core Worlds. Roman hadn’t been allowed—officially—to see accurate figures, but the ones he’d obtained from an old friend suggested that pirate activity had increased tenfold over the last three years. It didn’t take much mental effort to deduce that their depredations were actually damaging the Federation’s economy quite badly, particularly when the Federation Navy couldn’t spare the ships to escort convoys and patrol the more vulnerable systems. How many more ships would be taken, their crews tortured and killed, before the civil wars ended and the Federation Navy resumed normal patrols?

  “The sooner we win, the better,” Elf said when he put his fears into words. “If what we’re doing in this sector helps win the war, we need to do it. Besides, how many people legally visit The Hive anyway? The last I heard, the Senate had quarantined the entire system and banned all entry without special permission.”

  “The pirates don’t pay attention to the Senate’s orders,” Roman pointed out. He threw back the covers and climbed out of bed, standing naked against the artificial starlight. Outside the hull, there was nothing more than the madness-inducing continuous displacement space. “I just wish I felt more comfortable with our orders.”

  “I shouldn’t worry about it,” Elf advised. She picked up a pillow and threw it at him with devastating accuracy. “We do have a few more hours before we are required to return to duty...unless you intend to whine some more?”

  “Fuck you,” Roman said without heat.

  “You just did,” Elf reminded him. “If you want my advice, you ought to keep a closer eye on the Delta Commandos and not worry so much about the pirates—or acting like a pirate. They may have orders that you won’t like...”

  Roman frowned. The Delta Commandos—Uzi and the nine enhanced soldiers along with him—had come on board just before Midway had departed the Boskone System. They’d been given a suite of cabins and kept to themselves, refusing to interact with the Marines or any of the other crewmen. If they were training behind closed bulkheads, Roman didn’t know about it—or anything else they might be doing. The file he’d been given on them had been surprisingly thin, merely a brief outline of some of their capabilities and an order to take their requests and suggestions into account, if any were offered. Roman suspected that was actually a way of saying to treat any suggestions from Uzi as orders.

  He looked over at her and lifted an eyebrow.

  “Are you saying that they can’t be trusted?”

  Elf shrugged, which did interesting things to her breasts.

  “I’m saying that they tend to do the dirty work—wet work—and that they have a very dark reputation among the Special Forces community. You cannot assume they will follow your orders, whatever regulations may say about a captain being the sole authority on his ship. Their superiors in the Senate may have given them specific orders, and told them to keep them from you. They report to the Senate Oversight Committee specifically.”

  She frowned. “The Colonel told me once that a team of Delta Commandos arrived on Luton when the rebellion against the ruling caste was underway. The rulers had begged their allies in the Senate for help and they sent the Delta Commandos, who somehow got into rebel territory and butchered the rebel leadership, along with their families and friends. They then manipulated the rebels into fighting each other with a program of planned assassination and black propaganda. This whole plan—putting the warlords at each other’s throats—smacks of their work. God alone knows what they have in mind.”

  “So they definitely can’t be trusted,” Roman said. “Are they actually good fighters?”

  “Individually, better than most Marines,” Elf admitted. Roman could tell that that admission had cost her. “Their enhancements—each of which cost ten billion credits, by the way—make them formidable in any combat zone. On the other hand, they don’t always play well together. And an enemy who refuses to panic, or assume that she’s automatically beaten, is going to have a fair chance of defeating them.”

  She grinned. “But they’re damn hard to kill. You could toss one of them into vacuum, and it wouldn’t do more than piss him off.

  “Anyway, enough doom and gloom.” She reached for him and pulled him towards the bed, pushing him down and straddling him, her hands running over his chest and up towards his neck. “If you’re not going to sleep, I have something else for you to do...”

  * * *

  “Long night, sir?” Commander Janine Trojanskis, his executive officer, said as she offered him a mug of strong coffee.

  Janine was several years older than Roman, and by all rights should’ve had her own command years ago. Yet a black mark on her record prevented her from being promoted past her current rank. Since her file was sealed, Roman had no idea what Janine might have done to annoy the Admiralty. It couldn’t have been gross incompetence; she was a good officer, he’d seen that already. Roman’s best guess was that she’d insulted an admiral in some way, and that personage must have decided that forcing her to serve under a younger man was sufficient punishment.

  “Of course not,” he said, knowing all the while he was lying. Elf had told him he needed to go see the doctor to get a sleep aid, but he’d declined; the story of Captain Trautman who’d accidentally slept through the Battle of Prince’s Burg due to taking a drug to get to sleep was still well known throughout the Federation. “Ship’s status?”

  “All systems functioning nominally, sir,” Janine assured him as he took the command chair. “The Midway is fully at your command. I stand relieved.”

  “I relieve you,” Roman said, settling down into the command chair. “I suggest that you get some sleep. We’ll be in the Tranter System soon enough, and I’ll need you on the secondary bridge.”

  He settled back into the command chair, took another sip of coffee, and considered the engineering reports. Janine was right—they were all nominal—but he always checked them himself. After two weeks of travel—first through three Asimov Points, and then crossing the inky darkness of space—it paid to be careful. If the stardrive broke down while they were traveling between star systems, they would be stranded in interstellar space. It was a spacer’s worst nightmare, apart from the Slowboaters—and they were just plain weird.

  The hours ticked by slowly until Midway reached the mass limit and dropped down to Slower Than Light speeds. Roman knew the odds were vastly against an enemy picket ship having the sheer dumb luck to be lurking anywhere near their arrival point, but he launched a pair of stealth drones and kept Midway under cloak until he was sure. The Tranter System was effectively enemy territory, and disco
very would force them to retreat into FTL and come at the target from another direction.

  “Take us in,” he ordered. “Tactical, continue to monitor the drones. Inform me if there is the slightest hint that we’re not alone out here.”

  The Tranter System was fairly typical, as star systems went, although it lacked a gas giant that could be mined for He3. It had seven rocky worlds orbiting the system primary, one of them habitable and, like many other worlds, home to an intelligent race. Roman had seen holograms of the inhabitants and it was easy to see why they were called Trolls: they were huge, ugly and given to carrying clubs and swords around wherever they went. The human settlers had used their technology to convince the Trolls that the humans were gods—a few thunderbolts had ensured they would be worshipped with fervor—and started shipping Trolls out as slave labor. It might have been against any number of laws and regulations, but Trolls made good security guards and slaves, although they didn’t possess the brainpower to handle advanced technology.

  Or so the file claimed.

  Personally, Roman wondered if that were actually true. The Trolls might prefer to be taken for dumb animals, only a step or two above cats and dogs. It would certainly be safer.

  “Captain,” the tactical officer said sharply. “I am picking up energy signatures from AP-1!”

  “Go to tactical alert,” Roman ordered calmly. Energy signatures on their own proved nothing—AP-1 was a good place to station a defense force—but if the defenders were on the alert, they might have picketed the entire system. “Can you get me a breakdown at this distance?”