Desperate Fire (Angel in the Whirlwind Book 4)

by Christopher Nuttall

  “Signal from the flag,” Wheeler said. “Task Force Alpha is to proceed to primary target. All ships attached to Task Force Beta are to proceed to their waypoint, then scatter as planned.”

  “Acknowledge,” Kat ordered. Queen Elizabeth and her squadron were attached to Task Force Alpha. In some ways, she wished she’d been allowed to take command of one of the Beta squadrons instead. “And then pass the word. We’ll move out with the rest of the fleet.”

  “Aye, Commodore,” Wheeler said.

  Kat forced herself to relax as the fleet moved away from the Gap, deliberately selecting a course that would take it straight towards its target. It was a race now, if the enemy had been watching the Gap. Her vessels had to get to Ahura Mazda before any guardships could signal home. The tactical headache bothered her more than she cared to admit. Their desperate race to their final destination, following the shortest possible course, might alert the enemy to their presence. And yet, there was no choice.

  “All sensor systems online,” Wheeler reported. “No enemy ships detected.”

  We’ll have to blow any freighters out of space, if we encounter them, Kat thought. And run down any warships before they can blow the whistle.

  She rose. “Continue running combat simulations,” she ordered. Admiral Junayd might as well make himself useful by playing the opposite side. No one was more qualified to say what the Theocracy would and wouldn’t do when it saw a massive fleet bearing down on its homeworld. “I’ll be in my office.”

  “Aye, Commodore,” Wheeler said.

  Kat strode through the hatch and into her office, silently noting the steaming coffeepot on the side table. Her steward seemed to have a form of ESP, somehow knowing whenever Kat needed a cup of coffee. She poured herself a mug, then sat down and keyed her terminal. A hundred messages sat in her inbox, all marked urgent. A quick glance at the headers told her that most of them were nothing of the sort.

  And this will change, she thought as she studied the fleet display. The fleet train hung behind the warships, surrounded by a flotilla of flanking units. Mobile StarComs will change everything.

  She made a face at the thought. The Royal Navy put out thousands of updates every day, most of which were completely irrelevant to her. Everyone knew that most of the updates would be discarded unread, even though someone had gone to all the trouble of sending them. It wasn’t as if she could have replied instantly to each and every message. But now, with a mobile StarCom escorting the fleet, escape was impossible. Paperwork and micromanaging would follow her for the rest of her life.

  And if I am micromanaged from home, she asked herself, how much freedom will I have?

  She sighed as she tapped her terminal, deleting the messages. She’d liked the idea of being a captain because it would have given her an independent command, a command separated from her father and the rest of the family. But if mobile StarComs entered regular use, a captain might wind up with very little authority of her own. She’d have to call home for the slightest change in circumstances, rather than being allowed to use her own judgment. God alone knew what would happen if the StarCom was destroyed. An officer who wasn’t used to thinking for herself wouldn’t suddenly develop that skill when the shit hit the fan.

  And the enemy will target the StarCom, once they realize what it is, she thought. That’s what I would do.

  She rose and started to pace the room, carrying her coffee in one hand. Her adult life had been defined by the war, first by the desperate bid to build up the navy before the shooting started, and then by the fight to survive long enough to take the offensive. She wasn’t sure what she’d do afterwards, if she survived the coming battle. The Royal Navy was likely to start shedding officers left and right. She might manage to stay in, but if she didn’t . . .

  I don’t know what I’ll do, she thought. She finished her coffee and put the mug down on the table, resuming her pacing. The end of the war won’t bring an end to all our problems.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “I haven’t seen anything of you for a week,” Kat teased as Pat stepped into her suite. “What have you been doing?”

  “Readying the landing force,” Pat said. He gave her a tight hug, then kissed her. “Yourself?”

  “Planning the engagement,” Kat said. She’d spent most of the trip working with Admiral Christian and the rest of the planning cell, trying to game out everything the Theocracy could and would do. “I think we’re going to be surprised when we finally reach our target.”

  Pat nodded. “Is there any sign we’ve been detected?”

  “Not as far as we know,” Kat said. “But we don’t have any way to be sure.”

  She sighed as they walked into the admiral’s mess and sat down. They wouldn’t know if they’d been detected until they entered the Ahura Mazda system and began the operation. And even if they hadn’t been detected in transit, enemy spies might have picked up a hint of what was in store or simply noted the disappearance of large numbers of starships from the front. If they had, the Theocracy might try to attack one of the naval bases or even raid Tyre itself.

  “Then relax,” Pat urged. “You won’t know until you get there.”

  Kat nodded slowly. “Have you managed to refine your simulations?”

  “Admiral Junayd has been making himself useful, but there are too many question marks,” Pat said. “Hell, we don’t even know where we’re going to land.”

  “I dare say we’ll find out when we try to take the high orbitals,” Kat observed. “You’ll have to make up your plan on the fly.”

  Pat grinned. “Best sort of plan.”

  Kat wasn’t so sure. She understood the value of improvising, but she preferred having plenty of supplies to improvise with. Marines believed in “muddling through” and making the best of what they had, yet Kat knew just how easy it was to run short of something she desperately needed. Pat would have learned that lesson in boot camp.

  “I’ve been working up the ladder,” Pat added. “We’ve completed the first run of squad-level exercises. Now we’re moving on to battalion and division-level simulations. It’s a right pain, even in the machines.”

  “Pity we don’t have a ship large enough for you to practice in,” Kat said dryly. She was relieved to see Pat so enthusiastic again. “How is it going?”

  “I wish I was back in the squad,” Pat said. He laughed, ruefully. “We’re going to be resting our hopes on the captains and lieutenants, I think. The campaign is likely to move too fast for orders from on high to be very effective.”

  “You’ve trained your people to deal with that,” Kat reminded him. “Or have I missed something?”

  “We have,” Pat confirmed. “But you know how difficult it can be when one’s subordinates go too far.”

  Kat nodded. “What do you make of Junayd?”

  Pat met her eyes. “Should I be asking what you make of Junayd?”

  “I asked first,” Kat said.

  “True,” Pat agreed. He considered the problem as Lucy appeared, wheeling in the first course on a tray. “He’s an interesting man, I think. He’s clearly grown up in a very different culture from ours. Very odd set of reactions. He seems determined to treat you like a man.”

  Kat felt her cheeks heat. “Is that a good thing?”

  “I don’t think he was raised to respect women very much,” Pat said. “I’ve tried to talk to him about his wives and family—that’s wives plural—but he says very little. I had the odd impression that he wasn’t that concerned about them.”

  “How nice,” Kat said sarcastically.

  “But he’s also very practiced at keeping his emotions well hidden,” Pat added. “He might be desperately worried for their safety, but not allowing us to see it.”

  Kat stroked her chin. “Why?”

  “I suspect he feels helpless,” Pat said after a moment. “He’s here, surrounded by people who have plenty of reason to hate him. A command from you or Admiral Christian would be enough to get him shot. He has
to make himself useful to us because it’s the only way to get us to help him, but he’s a proud man and he hates abasing himself in front of us.”

  “He spent enough time abasing himself in front of his bosses,” Kat said tersely.

  “I imagine the war would have gone differently if he’d had a completely free hand,” Pat said flatly. “What do you think of him?”

  “I wish I knew,” Kat said reluctantly. “I don’t like him. I don’t think I will ever like him. I think he’s planning something.”

  Pat lifted his eyebrows. “Like what?”

  “I wish I knew,” Kat said. She scowled down at her hands. There was something about Junayd that definitely rubbed her the wrong way. “He betrayed his people.”

  “I know,” Pat said. “But do you blame him?”

  “If I had been born on his homeworld,” Kat pointed out, “I wouldn’t be in a position to betray the Theocracy.”

  She gritted her teeth in frustration. She’d been profoundly shocked when she’d found out about Joel Gibson and his mutineers. Mutiny had been completely unknown in the Royal Navy before Gibson had smashed the taboo into thousands of little pieces. A military couldn’t hope to survive if its officers and enlisted men couldn’t trust one another. And yet, the Theocracy’s leadership had often made it clear that they didn’t give a damn about the men under their command.

  And Junayd betrayed his own people, she thought. How long will it be until he betrays us?

  “But imagine you were,” Pat said seriously. Kat had to force herself to remember what he’d been saying. “What would you do?”

  Kat sighed. If she’d been born in the Theocracy, she wouldn’t have had any respect for its leaders. She wouldn’t have had any compunctions about betraying them. But if she’d been born in the Theocracy, she probably would have been beaten or drugged into submission merely for being born a woman. She wouldn’t even know that there could be anything else.

  “He betrayed his crew,” she said decisively. “I don’t like him because he betrayed the men under his command.”

  She sipped her soup, her thoughts dark. She’d been raised to understand that her power and place came with obligations, obligations she could not put aside whenever the whim suited her. There were servants in the mansion she had to treat kindly because she was their employer, because they were bound together. Her mother had made that clear more than once. The servants might be subordinate, but they were still people. And Piker’s Peak had drummed the lesson in, time and time again. Enlisted men were not puppets, any more than starships were toys. She owed it to her crews to treat them well.

  And Junayd, damn the man, had deliberately sacrificed over a thousand lives to cover his escape.

  Still, he had a point, she admitted freely. That superdreadnought would have returned to the war front, sooner or later. The ship would have killed Commonwealth spacers before being destroyed herself. Having the enemy superdreadnought destroyed by her own commander was far better, from the Commonwealth’s point of view, than having to blow her out of space in honest battle. And yet, the whole affair rankled. Junayd had betrayed his own men to save his ass.

  “That’s a better answer,” Pat said.

  “If he’d said that he wanted to lead a resistance against the Theocrats, I would have understood that,” Kat admitted. “But instead . . .”

  She ran her hand through her hair. “He’s just out to save himself.”

  “I doubt they gave him much of a choice,” Pat said. “Our system doesn’t kill people for making mistakes.”

  “He said as much,” Kat agreed.

  She glared down at the table. She’d studied men and women who felt they had been driven to treason, from Sulla and Julius Caesar to Benedict Arnold and Draco Trent . . . she hadn’t really felt much sympathy for them, even though they’d thought they had good reason to turn against their former friends. Caesar, at least, had been at risk of his life; the others, perhaps, could have just withdrawn from public life if they found it unbearable. Whatever the rightness of their cause, they’d lost any claim to the moral high ground when they’d committed treason.

  And does it make a difference, she asked herself, if the treason is in our favor?

  “I don’t think you have to like him,” Pat said. “You just have to work with him if, of course, he can be useful.”

  Kat let out a breath. “I don’t know,” she said. “There are just too many unknowns.”

  She looked down at the table as Lucy removed the soup bowls and produced the next course, a steaming dish of curry, rice, and yogurt. If Kat had turned against the Commonwealth, for whatever reason, would she be comfortable plotting an attack on Tyre? She wouldn’t be, she knew; she’d hate the thought of raining hell on her homeworld. And yet Junayd didn’t seem to agree. He’d been happy to assist the planning cell before the fleet set out on its mission.

  And he might have been programmed to do us harm when he has a chance, she reminded herself. Or he might just have a crisis of conscience.

  “He is under close supervision,” Pat reminded her. “There’s no way he can damage the ship.”

  “He destroyed an entire superdreadnought,” Kat commented.

  “Only through careful planning,” Pat said. “And even if he did take out this ship, Kat, it wouldn’t disrupt the entire fleet.”

  Kat nodded reluctantly. She might be second-in-command of 6th Fleet, but there was a chain of command that ran all the way down to the lowliest midshipman in the fleet. If she died, Commodore Harper would assume command; if he died, Commodore Baker would take his place. There was no way Junayd could inflict enough damage to do more than annoy 6th Fleet. Hell, she couldn’t imagine any way he could take out Admiral Christian himself.

  And I wouldn’t be in command, she reminded herself, unless he dies or falls out of touch.

  Pat held up a hand. “Enough about Admiral Junayd,” he said. “Too much of this talk will make me limp for a week.”

  “A disaster of galactic proportions,” Kat said mischievously. “I’m sure they offer drugs for that now.”

  “I don’t need them,” Pat said complacently. He started to ladle curry and rice onto their plates. “Did you ask for extra chili?”

  Kat smiled, remembering the shore leave they’d shared on Hindustan. “Lucy doesn’t go in for the macho curries,” she said. Kat had eaten something so hot on Hindustan that her stomach had rebelled after a single sniff. “She prefers ones that actually taste of something other than molten fire.”

  “It’s a challenge,” Pat said. “Do you know what you can do with a box of spices, sauces, and military rations?”

  “Yes,” Kat said. “And it never stops horrifying me.”

  Pat shrugged. “What else is bothering you?”

  Kat looked back at him. “What do you think we’ll do, after the war?”

  “Good question,” Pat said. “I don’t really want to leave the Marine Corps. But if they don’t want to keep me . . .”

  He allowed his voice to trail off. Kat understood. The Marine Corps had expanded rapidly over the last eighteen months, with hundreds of thousands of new troops finally coming out of the various boot camps. Peace would bring rapid demobilization, sending countless marines back to their homeworlds with military skills and not much else. Pat was a war hero, with a stack of medals to his name, yet he might not be allowed to stay in the corps. God knew, he’d been a marine for over fifteen years.

  “It depends,” he said. “What do you want to do?”

  Kat shrugged. “I don’t want to go into politics,” she said. “And while I could take a management position in the family business, I don’t want it. I’d be bored stiff within a week.”

  “You could go far in politics,” Pat pointed out. “You actually understand the military, which is more than can be said for many other politicians. And you’d know the danger of just sitting still and waiting to be attacked.”

  “I’d hate it,” Kat said. “And besides, I’d never be my own wom
an. My father’s shadow would always be hanging over me.”

  She shuddered at the thought. As her father’s youngest child, she didn’t have a hope of claiming a seat in the House of Lords. Nine other children were ahead of her in the line of succession. But if she resigned her family name and stood for election, she might win, only to find herself trapped in the House of Commons. She wouldn’t find it easy to build coalitions and agree on compromises after being a captain and a commodore, an autocrat with unlimited power over her ship. And she really doubted she had the patience to learn the ropes, let alone the time. She’d fade from the public mind soon enough.

  “If I have to leave the navy,” she said, “I might just go into trading.”

  Pat blinked. “Seriously?”

  “I have a trust fund,” Kat said. She flushed. She never liked talking about money with him. “If I cash it in, I can purchase a modern freighter and start shipping goods from planet to planet.”

  “And then get snatched by pirates,” Pat pointed out. “Unless you want to stay within the Commonwealth.”

  “I’d probably buy a few weapons,” Kat mused. The idea of purchasing a surplus warship was tempting, although most warships made poor transports. “Besides, we’ll have plenty of escort units to sweep pirates out of space after the war.”

  She grinned at the thought. The mission to Jorlem had been a personal disaster, with Lightning blown out of space and Uncanny damaged so badly that she’d been scrapped, but she had to admit it had been a political success. Her early contacts with a dozen worlds had led to new defense treaties centered around joint patrols and sharing intelligence. The Commonwealth might not find many new members in the Jorlem Sector, but it would have a chance to obliterate hundreds of pirate ships.

  “Or I could buy a scout ship and go out surveying,” she said. She looked up at him. “Want to go see what’s beyond the edge of explored space?”

  Pat smiled. “The ruins of an alien civilization? Or a living breathing alien race?”

  Kat laughed. There was no shortage of hoaxes about extraterrestrials, ranging from the blatantly obvious to ones that had fooled some of academia’s finest minds. And yet, none of them had ever led to genuine alien relics, let alone a living alien race. Humanity seemed to be alone, at least in this part of the universe. But was it likely that there was only one intelligent race in all the cosmos?