Desperate Fire (Angel in the Whirlwind Book 4)

by Christopher Nuttall

  Any woman smart enough to realize what will happen to her if she opens her mouth, he thought coldly, is smart enough to keep her mouth shut.

  Janice looked at him. “Your society disgusts me.”

  “Yes,” Junayd agreed. “And that is why it has to change.”

  “Signal from the flag,” Wheeler said as Kat stepped back onto the flag bridge. “We’re to exit hyperspace in thirty minutes.”

  Kat nodded as she took her chair. Queen Elizabeth was preparing for war, the low drumbeat of action stations echoing through the ship as her crew rushed to their duty posts. Captain Higgins had been running plenty of drills over the last week, everything from missile replenishment to damage control; soon, Kat knew, they’d have a chance to see just how well they would perform under fire.

  “Check and recheck all combat systems,” she ordered. Admiral Christian was doing the same, testing the combat datanet as the fleet bunched up again. “Did we pick up any enemy traffic?”

  “Negative, Commodore,” Wheeler said.

  Kat pursed her lips, suspicious. The Theocracy was having shipping troubles, yet if they couldn’t move supplies from place to place, they didn’t have a Theocracy. Sixth Fleet wasn’t flying through the middle of nowhere, well off the shipping lanes; they were approaching a capital world, the heart of a major interstellar power. The fleet should have picked up something heading towards Ahura Mazda, save for themselves.

  Her unease grew as the timer ticked down remorselessly. The fleet was ready, its missile launchers and point defense systems primed to engage targets as soon as Admiral Christian gave the order. And yet, she was sure something was wrong. But no matter how she tried, she couldn’t put her finger on it.

  “Commodore,” Wheeler said, “five minutes to emergence.”

  Kat braced herself. “Bring the squadron to red alert,” she ordered. “Stand by for combat maneuvers.”

  “Aye, Commodore,” Wheeler said. Sirens howled through the massive ship. “Three minutes to emergence.”

  Here we go, Kat thought. Her eyes sought out and found Chesty Puller, shadowing the superdreadnoughts, then Thunderchild, holding position with the rest of the flankers. Ten seconds . . .

  “Gateways opening now,” Wheeler said. Kat leaned forward as the display rapidly began to update itself. “We are entering the Ahura Mazda system.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Admiral Zaskar was not a very happy man.

  To be told that a major enemy fleet was bearing down on Ahura Mazda, a world he was charged to defend, was quite bad enough. He’d drawn up a number of contingency plans for enemy attack, but none of them had actually been tested. And yet, to be given some very specific orders from the council was worse. He didn’t want to carry out his orders, not given the likely danger to his homeworld, but he had no choice. The Inquisition had already taken his wives and children into protective custody. He had no doubt that one of his own crew would stick a knife in him if he disobeyed orders while his family would bear the brunt of the Inquisition’s displeasure.

  He paced his command deck, taking bitter satisfaction in watching the operators do their level best to avoid his notice. They might bow and scrape in front of him, but they knew as well as Zaskar did that he wasn’t the ultimate authority on his flagship. That rested in the hands of a dozen red-robed Inquisitors and a company of elite soldiers, armed to the teeth and occupying strategic positions throughout the giant superdreadnought. Zaskar could issue orders, but if the Inquisitors saw fit to overrule him, they would.

  He ground his teeth in frustration. Zaskar was convinced that ultimate victory would soon be theirs, but even he had to admit that the war was going badly. The demands of home defense prevented him from cutting loose a few squadrons of escort ships, ensuring that the freighters orbiting Ahura Mazda couldn’t be sent out to resupply the fleets. Ahura Mazda had plenty of supplies, but getting them to where they were needed was impossible. And the infidel crews who had been hired at such high costs were growing restive, even though the camps where they were being held were practically luxury resorts. They would have to be purged soon, just for asking one too many questions.

  And now the enemy fleet is closing in on us, he thought. He’d run the calculations a dozen times, but he didn’t have the data to make more than educated guesses about the transit time between the Gap and Ahura Mazda. When will they arrive?

  He paced backwards and forwards, glaring at the display. There was a truly staggering amount of firepower surrounding Ahura Mazda, yet it might not be enough to stave off the enemy attack, particularly if he carried out his orders. But he had no choice. As much as it galled him, he knew he had to obey. His life depended on submission.

  An alarm sounded. “Admiral,” one of his operators said, “a gateway is opening . . . correction, multiple gateways opening.”

  “Bring the fleet to full alert,” Zaskar ordered. God, how he’d had to argue just to convince the watchdogs that there was nothing suspicious in not calling a full alert before the enemy actually arrived! Such a move would have just put wear and tear on his equipment and personnel he couldn’t afford. “Ready the planetary defenses and then pass the word to the commanding officers. They are to open their sealed orders now.”

  “Aye, Admiral,” the operator said.

  Zaskar heard a muttered curse from the rear of the compartment as the enemy ships kept streaming out of hyperspace. Fifty superdreadnoughts . . . seventy superdreadnoughts . . . ninety superdreadnoughts . . . a hundred and thirty superdreadnoughts. He wanted to believe that most of them were decoys, sensor drones masquerading as superdreadnoughts, but his memories of the highly classified briefings on the Commonwealth’s building programs suggested otherwise. And nearly a thousand smaller ships. They’d come out of hyperspace farther away from Ahura Mazda than he’d expected, but the deployment made a certain kind of sense. If coordinating four or five squadrons of superdreadnoughts and smaller ships was a headache, coordinating over a thousand ships had to be an absolute nightmare.

  They’ll need time to get into formation and ready their weapons, he thought. And we’re not going to let them have the time.

  “Signal the fleet,” he ordered. Thankfully, the defenders had been given just enough time to prepare. “Task Force One will advance and engage the enemy. Task Force Two will prepare to execute Operation Night.”

  He sat down, grimly anticipating confusion and panic in the ranks. The sealed orders had been handed over with all the verification they could possibly need, but they were so strange compared to the normal run of orders, he knew too many of his men were going to question them. It was quite possible that the various watchdogs would react badly to an attempt to put the orders into practice, though the chief Inquisitors had been briefed on the plan. The enemy commanders just didn’t know how lucky they were. Zaskar would have happily sold his soul for a chance to command without a minder watching over his shoulder.

  A low quiver ran through the superdreadnought as her engineers brought her drives up to full power. Zaskar let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. Ahura Mazda’s defenders had the best of everything, including repair crews, but he was all too aware that maintenance issues were a serious problem. Too many components coming off the production lines had been faulty for him to trust the engineers completely, even though the Inquisition had publicly executed a number of workers for poor work habits. And yet, his fleet appeared to be responding normally.

  “Combat datanet engaged,” an operator said. “Fleet online, missile batteries primed and ready to fire; point defense primed, ready to fire.”

  Zaskar smiled. One way or the other, the enemy was in for a nasty surprise.

  “Deploy combat drones,” he ordered. “And then prepare to fire on my command.”

  “Launch drones,” Kat ordered as Ahura Mazda appeared in front of her on the display, glowing blue against the inky darkness of space. “Ready all point defense systems.”

  “All systems online,”
Wheeler said. “Command datanet verified, point defense datanet and subnets online.”

  Kat nodded as more and more icons flickered into life on the display. She’d seen the raw data, of course, and read the assessments from ONI, but there was something about seeing Ahura Mazda in person that gave her chills. The planet was surrounded with enough icons to make up a small galaxy, ranging from tiny automated weapons platforms to giant asteroid habitats that would have to be watched carefully. Her drones, speeding away from the fleet, provided a constant stream of data, telling her things she hadn’t wanted to know about the sheer level of firepower surrounding the cursed world. It didn’t look as though 6th Fleet could count on the enemy defenses failing at a crucial moment.

  “The enemy fleet is leaving orbit,” Wheeler said. He paused, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. “The entire enemy fleet is leaving orbit.”

  Kat blinked. “The entire fleet?”

  “Yes, Commodore,” Wheeler said. “Every last starship, military or civilian, is leaving orbit and coming right at us.”

  The display updated, again. Hundreds of warships, ranging from superdreadnoughts to destroyers and corvettes; hundreds of freighters, ranging from tiny shuttles and light freighters to giant bulk freighters and colonist-carriers, all heading directly towards 6th Fleet. She’d expected the enemy to try to engage her forces as far from Ahura Mazda as possible, just to limit the risk to the planet’s orbital installations, but she hadn’t expected them to throw everything at 6th Fleet. And yet, the Theocrats were heavily outgunned. Perhaps they assumed that the freighters would soak up missiles that would otherwise take out superdreadnoughts.

  And wrecking the remainder of their transport capability isn’t exactly going to hurt, Kat thought snidely. Even if we did nothing else, taking it out would practically guarantee that the remainder of their bases would wither on the vine.

  “Signal from the flag,” Wheeler reported. “Admiral Christian is ordering us to reduce speed.”

  Letting them come to us, Kat thought. She doubted the fixed defenses could engage her fleet, not until the range closed sharply, but she saw no point in taking chances. Engaging the mobile units, and then the fixed defenses, would be a great deal easier than trying to tackle both at once. Smart move.

  Kat sucked in her breath as the wall of icons advanced towards her fleet; gunboats and shuttles in the lead, freighters following, warships bringing up the rear. Admiral Christian deployed his own gunboats, ordering them to engage the enemy ships as they closed in with terrifying speed. Surely they couldn’t have armed the freighters, could they? Freighters rarely carried anything more dangerous than point defense weapons, nothing more than popguns compared to military-grade armaments. But even if they had, the freighters wouldn’t make good warships. Their only advantage lay in their size, and that wasn’t enough to save them from antimatter warheads.

  A thought struck her.

  “Signal the flag,” she said sharply. “Those shuttles are suicide runners!”

  She cursed as a gunboat fired on a shuttle, only to be blotted out of existence by a colossal explosion. Kat didn’t need the hasty report from the tactical department to know the shuttle had been crammed with antimatter, more than enough to devastate any target it actually happened to hit. The display fuzzed a second later as enemy ECM came into play, trying to confuse or blind her fleet’s sensors. Theocratic ECM was inferior to Commonwealth technology, but there was an awful lot of it. The shuttles picked up speed, their gunboat escorts concentrating on engaging the Commonwealth’s gunboats. A moment later, a shuttle slammed into a destroyer and both ships vanished in a terrible explosion.

  “HMS Buckley is gone,” Wheeler reported. “Point defense is engaging now.”

  Kat gritted her teeth, then keyed her console. “Get me an analysis,” she ordered the tactical department. “Are those freighters crammed with antimatter too?”

  “The enemy has realized the danger,” Zaskar mused as three more shuttles were blotted from existence. Antimatter was very much a two-edged sword. It couldn’t be taken out before it could be detonated, unlike nuclear warheads, but its explosion could be dangerous to both sides. “They’re concentrating on taking down the shuttles.”

  Taking out the shuttles was a good tactic, he had to admit. Indeed, it was the only workable tactic. A lone shuttle posed no threat to a mighty superdreadnought, but a lone shuttle crammed with antimatter could be catastrophic. And the shuttle crews were fanatics, primed to get their craft to their targets or die trying. Each successive blast, combined with the ECM, weakened the enemy point defense network, making it easier for the next shuttle to get through. Four enemy starships had already been destroyed.

  But he had more cards to play.

  “Signal the freighters,” he ordered. “They are authorized to open fire.”

  “Commodore, the freighters are volley-firing missiles,” Wheeler reported.

  “I see,” Kat said.

  She felt sweat trickling down her back as the new icons appeared on the display. The enemy missiles looked old, lacking the speed and probably the warheads of modern weapons, but that didn’t stop them from being deadly. Her drones reported that the Theocrats had largely bolted missile pods to freighter hulls, turning them into one-shot weapons. And she still didn’t know if the ships were crammed with antimatter or not.

  “Signal from the flag,” Wheeler said. “All enemy targets are to be engaged.”

  Kat silently saluted the enemy commander as Queen Elizabeth launched her first salvo, emptying her external racks as well as her missile tubes. The freighters would absorb most of her opening barrage, particularly with the enemy superdreadnoughts hanging back just out of missile range. But Admiral Christian had fourteen superdreadnought squadrons to four. The enemy might have scored a tiny win, yet odds like that couldn’t be beaten. Sixth Fleet could shoot off two-thirds of its missiles and still have a decisive advantage.

  She watched, grimly, as the barrage neared its targets. The freighters didn’t seem to have any point defense, let alone modern ECM. Her missiles slammed into their hulls, obliterating the craft one by one. A number exploded violently, confirming her suspicion that they’d been loaded with antimatter; others, larger and bulkier, merely absorbed more of her missiles before they died. And yet their deaths hadn’t been entirely in vain. Theocratic missiles were getting through point defense simply because the gunners were trying to take out the remaining shuttles.

  “Havoc has taken heavy damage,” Wheeler reported. “Rodney is . . .”

  He cursed. “Rodney is gone, Commodore.”

  “Remain focused,” Kat ordered. The stream of enemy ships looked endless, but cold logic told her it was nothing of the sort. The invaders had been surprised, yet they had more than enough firepower to win the engagement. “Let them keep coming to us.”

  She cursed under her breath as a chunk of the fleet datanet dropped out entirely, smaller subnets hastily taking over its duties as the techs fought to reunite the fragmented sections. If the enemy was on the ball, they might just realize the opportunity. She allowed herself a moment of relief as the datanet popped back up again, before the enemy noticed the weakness. The Theocracy might have had a chance to give the isolated superdreadnought squadron a pounding.

  They don’t allow their people enough independence, she thought wryly. Her analysts were already picking apart the enemy formation, trying to isolate the flagship. Orders have to come right from the top.

  “Enemy shuttles entering engagement range,” Wheeler snapped.

  “Order the point defense to open fire,” Kat said. The enemy shuttles were surrounded by a haze of ECM, obscuring their exact positions. But all her point defense crews had to do was fire until they scored a hit. “Deploy an additional shell of sensor drones.”

  “Aye, Commodore,” Wheeler said.

  Kat frowned. Did the enemy know who they were shooting at? She knew, without false modesty, that the Theocracy considered her the most
hated person in the galaxy. Even Admiral Christian didn’t attract quite so much loathing. But she doubted Theocratic sensor crews could have picked Queen Elizabeth out of the squadron, even assuming they knew Queen Elizabeth was her flagship. Did they know? Her name had always been paired with Lightning.

  And they gloated over my death after Lightning was destroyed, she thought. They didn’t stop until it was clear that I’d survived.

  A low rumble ran through the giant ship. “Direct hit,” Wheeler reported. “Shields held.”

  A missile, Kat thought. A shuttle crammed with antimatter would have crippled us.

  “Enemy ships are altering position,” Wheeler added. “They’re drawing back.”

  Kat nodded. The enemy superdreadnoughts presumably wanted to avoid a missile duel, one that could only end in their destruction. Admiral Christian’s ships might have emptied their external racks, but they could still smother the enemy ships via missile tubes. And yet, she doubted Admiral Christian would let them escape so easily.

  “Signal from the flag,” Wheeler reported. “The battle line will advance.”

  “Make it so,” Kat ordered.

  “Admiral,” an operator said. He sounded nervous, as if he expected to be blamed for bringing bad news. “The enemy fleet is advancing.”

  And clearing the remainder of the freighters, Zaskar thought. On the display, the last of the freighters were being systematically wiped out. But I didn’t expect anything else.

  He allowed himself a moment of annoyance. Hundreds of expensive and effectively irreplaceable ships and shuttles had been thrown away, for what? They’d done more damage than he’d expected, if he was honest with himself, yet the ploy hadn’t been enough. The enemy fleet had absorbed the damage and kept moving. Soon they would be in position to engage his ships directly. Operation Night would have to come into play before then.