The icon’s ID icon read UNKNOWN, though they were obviously EarthFleet vessels. Absen slipped back into the control room and asked Scoggins, “What do you have on those?” as he highlighted the marker with his cursor.
“We have no data. We’re just watching what the sensors have soaked up, and we’re lucky to get that. They’re actually stealthed pretty well, but once I figured out they were there, I adjusted my systems enough to see more clearly.”
“Good job.” As he watched, the squadron came to life and launched a spread of five hundred missiles.
“That’s odd,” Absen mustered. “The weapons aren’t guiding.” Now he wished he had brought Ford back in time for the battle, and then reminded himself of the way they watched. “Freeze it.”
Once Scoggins did, to an audible groan from the crew outside, he continued, “Someone get Ford back up here, pronto.”
A long two minutes later, the chastened weapons officer hurried in, still buttoning his tunic. “Sir?”
“Have you been watching?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why aren’t those missiles guiding?”
Ford stepped over to the plate crystal window and stared at the massed displays, and then down at the control boards. “At a guess, sir, they are aimed for a spot in space where the antimatter warheads will do the most damage. The enemy will fly into them, they’re going so fast.”
“Of course,” Absen breathed. “Sit down, Ford. You’re not out of the doghouse yet.”
The man quickly took a seat and kept his mouth shut, watching expectantly.
“Roll it forward now, half speed.”
Scoggins signaled her team, and all watched as the cloud of missiles closed on the five enemy ships. Those had arranged themselves in a ring about a thousand kilometers across. “There’s no way any one antimatter warhead can take out more than a single ship,” Absen said.
“True, sir. It looks to me like the flight of missiles is staying together to try to mask which are the heavy ones.”
“How many Exploders do you think there are?”
“No idea, sir. No way to tell.”
“If I am right, and Huen reserved half his warheads, there may be as many as seven,” Absen said.
Ford shrugged, still staring at the screens. Absen let it pass.
“There!” the weapons officer said, standing and stabbing a hand at the display. On the screen, the flight of five hundred missiles divided itself up into groups of one hundred and altered course to directly intercept the modified Destroyers, burning their drives furiously. As they closed, fusors came to life and plasma fire blossomed, trying to pluck the human weapons from space, but seemed desultorily aimed, confirming the suspicion that the vessels had no Meme guiding the defenses.
As with each engagement before, this ended in less than one second as surviving missiles detonated nearby or slammed into the enemy.
Three titanic blasts wiped an equal number of Meme ships from space.
Two flew onward, now less than thirty seconds from Earth.
“What happened?” Absen asked, turning to Ford, but he already knew, and answered his own question, overriding his subordinate. “There must have been one or two antimatter bombs per Destroyer, and against these two, our luck ran out. They must have been picked off by fusors.” He cleared his throat, realizing Scoggins had slowed the view to a crawl at one-tenth speed. “Is there any chance now?”
Ford shook his head in misery, his voice a whisper. “No, sir.”
“Then roll it, Scoggins,” Absen husked, his throat a desert. “Just roll it.”
Turning slowly back to her board, the commander ran her finger up the slider that controlled the speed of display advance, until it reached one to one.
“Five…four…three…” Absen murmured.
“Two…one,” the rest joined him.
Widely separated, the two fireships crashed into Earth, exploding to sunlike brightness as they struck atmosphere. Compressed solid as steel, nitrogen and oxygen fused into the higher elements of the speeding vessels. Pinpoint light swelled and shock propagated through the filmy air of the planet. The crew of Conquest watched as, at fifteen thousand miles an hour, incomprehensible energies scoured humanity’s homeworld in two expanding rings, like annihilating ripples in a pond.
Except this pond held the thin sheath of life covering the verdant planet – air, water, topsoil, crust.
People.
Absen could hear screams, cries and weeping through the door to the flight deck, echoed from within the control room. He walked out onto the catwalk and shed tears for his race, watching them drop ten meters to the textured deck below. Then he sank to his knees, overwhelmed, still clutching the rail, until he had collapsed onto the metal mesh of the walking surface.
Vision graying, great gasping breaths, almost sobs, tore from his chest as he contemplated the death of billions. Worse, he knew that EarthFleet had just lost its battle. Humanity’s best efforts had not been enough.
After long moments Absen felt a hand on his shoulder, and he turned to see COB Timmons, his oldest friend, sink down to sit next to him on the catwalk. “Shit,” the chief said without heat. “That’s one hell of a setback.”
This simple steadiness, this prosaic practicality common to chiefs everywhere, brought him back, and he realized he could not afford to mourn right now. Leadership is about rising above disasters, he told himself.
“Yeah,” he said. “One hell of a setback. But you know what? It’s not over yet.”
“It’s not me you need to tell, Skipper.” Timmons pointed out over the flight deck, where his people staggered or lay on the deck, or sat in chairs, holding each other in grief. On one side two women scratched at each other in rage until a Marine broke it up. Another couple looked like they were about to have sex in a corner behind one of the parked weapons lifts.
Insanity and breakdown lurks. They can’t lose hope.
“Right. Thanks.” Absen pulled himself to his feet, took three deep breaths, and then began speaking loudly.
“Men and women of Conquest! Human, Ryss and Sekoi! Listen to me!”
In ragged clumps, the human officers and ratings turned to look, joined by the Ryss and the Sekoi clustered in their own groups, keeping well away from the apes. “This is a tragedy, a horror none of us truly ever expected to face. I feel as you do. In fact,” he choked back a brittle laugh, “I’m only standing because I have my hands clamped to this railing. But remember – this all happened more than twenty years ago. What’s past is past. We have to pick ourselves up and face the future, no matter how much we don’t want to believe it.”
Several more breaths fortified him as he spoke. “Now as much as I want to charge straight in and rip the guts out of the enemy with our new weapons, we still have over twenty-three light-years of realtime distance to go. By the time we get to the solar system, the enemy will have had at least forty-six years to enslave and rule the remnants of the human race. Rushing there unprepared to save a few days or weeks will not serve anyone.”
Absen ran his fingers through his thin blonde hair, and then waved his hand out over the crowd as if in benediction. “So now, as strange as it may seem, we’re going to just sit here in deep space for a few days, on minimum watch rotation. We’re going to mourn, and grieve, and get drunk and talk and comfort each other. Then we’re going to rest, and evaluate, and study our enemy. Eventually, when we get over the shock, we’re going to sort ourselves out, get back into fighting shape, and as soon as we can, we’re going to stick it to the Meme.” He paused, throat working, and then finished, “We’re going to kill every last of them.”
A cheer began from somewhere, the Marines he thought taking it up first, and soon five hundred throats roared and yelled themselves raw as words coalesced into a chant.
“DEATH TO THE MEME!”
“DEATH TO THE MEME!”
“DEATH TO THE MEME!”
***
That night, Jill and Rick made love with a
passion they had forgotten, knowing full well the urge was just a biological response to witnessing the death and destruction of so many, but far beyond caring. The brain, the nervous system, couldn’t count, but it knew when its genes were threatened, and drove the them together like fiery metal bars hammered on an anvil, sparks flying in all directions.
Afterward, as they lay covered in sweat in the ventilation’s breeze, Rick wondered again whether he had made the right decision. Maybe if he’d dug his heels in and insisted, he could have kept Jill at home with him and the children. His mind knew that was fantasy, but his heart ached for the lost years of children they would never see.
In another compartment, Trissk and Klis lounged together on their sleeping platform. Trissk bit Klis playfully on the back of her neck, his teeth gnawing but not breaking the skin, the Ryss equivalent of a nibble on the ear.
“Frisky tonight, are you?” Klis purred.
“You are still the most beautiful female in the universe.”
“If only I was in season, you would be doing and not talking.”
Trissk snorted. “Sometimes I envy the apes, mating whenever the urge takes them.”
“They only have one or two in a litter. If we mated all the time, we’d overrun every planet we settled on.”
“We could alter our biology.”
Klis drew back to look at her mate. “The thought does not disgust you?”
He reached with his paw, hooking his claws into the ruff around her neck, like a man might lightly seize a woman’s hair, and drew her muzzle to his. They rubbed faces, marking each other with their scent glands. “No. Our race almost died because of its taboos and inflexible traditions. We already have accepted contraceptive implants. Using drugs or medical techniques to further control our reproduction is not life code tinkering – but what if it were? The Humans do it with caution, and the Sekoi embrace it with abandon.”
Klis laughed. “You just want to mate more often, without dealing with a litter afterward.”
“So your yowls as we mated were not of pleasure? I suppose I must have been mistaken. Forgive me.”
Her raspy tongue began to groom Trissk’s face, a most intimate gesture of assent. Once Klis had finished, she said, “I relished every minute of it. My body remembers it. I want to do it again.”
Trissk sighed. “It is madness to conceive a litter here, on a warship.”
“I know. What if there were a way?””
“A way to what?”
“A way to have me, to take me in season, and yet have no fear of kits?”
Trissk rolled up on an elbow and held her at arm’s length. “That is impossible. The implants stop the season and fertility both.”
“Idiot male. What have we just been talking about?” Klis reached into a drawer beneath the sleeping platform and drew out two spray tubes, one black, one white.
“That is forbidden!” Trissk gasped.
Klis yawned. “Taking one mate for life was forbidden just a few short years ago. And who is there to forbid anything here? The apes don’t care about our reproductive taboos. All they care about is whether we perform our duties. You are in charge of the Ryss here. We are many light-years from any of our people. When we next see them, who knows how their customs will be changed?” She stroked his flank. “You were wise to only allow mated pairs to join us. Will you now forbid us glorification if it is within our grasp?”
Slowly Trissk reached out to pick up the black spray, but Klis stopped him, substituting the white. “That’s yours. White for a warrior’s honor. Black for the hearts of females.”
“You made that up.”
“Of course. The Sekoi biochemist that brews it said that each race sees color differently, so this was simple and foolproof. I didn’t ask her the rationale.”
“So what do we do?”
Klis did not answer, but merely sprayed a tiny burst into each nostril, set the vial aside, and then closed her eyes.
Trissk did the same, and within moments, lust for his mate grew within him, starting in his belly and moving outward along his limbs. Strangely, his loins responded last, but when the urge came, it rolled him under like the wave of a sea.
***
Bogrin pushed a knight forward to take a position covering one of his center pawns.
“Surprise, surprise,” Ezekiel Denham said as he moved a pawn of his own, uncovering a line from his bishop to attack the knight. “You still play a conventional game.”
“I prefer to think of it as conservative, and deep. And I do win more often than you.”
“But when you lose, it’s spectacular. You fall apart like a building of mortarless bricks.”
“Games like these reveal our minds,” Bogrin replied. “The Meme I was and the Sekoi Blend I am both do not like uncertainties. That’s why I like Human chess. No dice, no cards, no random elements.”
“I thought your Meme ancestor blended with a mindless drone.”
“He did, but the stolid Sekoi propensities remained. And yet…I ended up a radical, and a rebel.” He studied the board.
“The admiral believes strategy and tactics will beat the Empire.”
“The captain,” Bogrin emphasized the word, “is a clever man but limited in vision. Technology has fallen into his lap to allow him his revenge upon the Empire, but all such advantages are limited. Assuming the Meme have not been overrun by some other unknown race, they are undoubtedly working on a stardrive. Once they have that, their own TacDrive will not be far behind.”
“Politics,” Ezekiel replied, “always trumps strategy, as strategy overrides tactics.”
Bogrin grunted, and finally moved a pawn to block Ezekiel’s bishop’s attack. “Any Meme knows that by his first century. You humans, and the Ryss, are far too young yet to play the deep game.”
“Thanks for teaching me. And yet…I’ve seen you angry.”
Bogrin smiled a mouthful of peg teeth, instantly resembling the hippopotamus of his human nickname. “Who is to say even anger cannot be a strategy?” Then his expression reverted to its usual serenity. “Why are you so calm after seeing your homeworld trampled underfoot?”
Ezekiel sat back and crossed his arms, staring at the board but not really seeing it. “I slaked my physical responses already. There’s this Marine…well, let’s just say she’s finds me exotic, and she’s persistent. Hard to say no when the woman could break me in half…and even with her cyberware shut down, she wears me out. I guess I’m calm now because I’m tired, and I know in my heart it all happened decades ago. There’s nothing I can do.”
“Until we arrive.”
“Yes.” The human made a quick move, advancing another pawn in a sacrifice.
“Once we do…”
“I won’t forget, my friend. You’ll be a part of it.”
Chapter 17
Unlike some senior officers, Captain Absen disliked holding too many meetings, but this time he could not avoid it. All of his key personnel milled there, conversing in low, strained tones or arguing in heated whispers as he entered the boat’s largest conference room. It had been a long week of floundering, discussion, recrimination, grief and eventually acceptance. Absen hoped his people were ready to get back to work.
“Captain on deck!” COB Timmons roared, and the room snapped to attention – all but the civilians, who at least stopped talking to face the front.
“At ease. Take your seats.” Absen remained standing at the head of the large table. “Everyone is coming out of their funk, and is eager to charge into battle. I know how everyone here feels, because I feel the same. We want to do something, to strike back, to hurt the bastards that killed so many people and conquered our home. We want to charge straight there and free Earth from Meme domination. I get it.”
He took a breath. “But we have to be patient. The facts are not what we feel. We feel as if we have to hurry – and we won’t waste any time, I assure you – but we must use the time wisely. A few more days or weeks, or even months of preparatio
n, will not cause much extra harm at our destination, but taking that time to prepare ourselves and Conquest may make all the difference.”
Once he saw the nods of assent and the grudging acceptance in their eyes, the captain sat down. “In the last week we’ve proceeded in short, easy hops two light-years toward the solar system. Observations show that Earth is a mess, but we believe several million people survived there, as well as millions more in the Jupiter system. The Meme smashed all organized resistance, but did not engage in further genocide. Yet, ninety-nine percent of the human race was wiped out.
“Further detailed information is very difficult to get, as no one is beaming us intelligence anymore, but it appears that the Empire has brought in or split-grown more Destroyers and has sent a squadron of sixteen our way. We can presume they will take time in Earth system’s Oort cloud to gorge on raw materials, but after that, we believe they will come straight at Gliese 370, and therefore us. With their biological interrogation methods, of course they would have found out where Task Force Conquest went, and even though they don’t know that we won, it’s the sensible move to chase after us.”
“We should intercept them, sir!” Ford said hotly, slamming his fist on the table. “We can hit them when they least expect it – in interstellar space.”
“Why?” Absen asked calmly.
“Why? Because…” Ford almost choked.
“I’m not contradicting you, Commander. I just want you to explain what we will accomplish by doing that. Build a case.” Absen had thought this through, of course, but he wanted to see if his officers had.
“Isn’t killing Meme enough, sir?”
“Is it?” Absen looked around. “Okay, let’s hear the pros and cons, pros first. We kill some Meme. Good. Anything else?”
“It’s a live-fire exercise,” Ellis Nightingale said with crossed arms. “We need to see how effective our weapons really are.”
Tactics of Conquest (Stellar Conquest) Page 17