Desperate Fire (Angel in the Whirlwind Book 4)

by Christopher Nuttall

  “Scrapyard,” William said. He sounded unhappy. Kat didn’t blame him. Thunderchild could be repaired, if the navy was prepared to make the investment. “The crew is already being broken up.”

  “They may be needed elsewhere,” Kat said. She understood his concerns, but there was no choice. “You’re being assigned to my tactical staff until further notice.”

  William nodded, seemingly drained. “Thank you,” he said. “Do I get a chance to shower first?”

  “Yeah,” Kat said. She felt . . . tired. Tired and worn. But she had her duty. “Unless the enemy shows up in the next few minutes, that is.”

  She tapped the display, switching to the ground map. Pat’s last message had been terse, but General Winters had briefed her that the invasion force was ready to begin the final offensive against the Tabernacle. The operation was going to be nightmarish, he’d warned, even though thousands of enemy soldiers and civilians had deserted. The fanatics would dig in and fight to the last, sacrificing hundreds of men just to slow down the offensive. And recon probes had shown children being prepped to fight. There would be nothing of Ahura Mazda left by the time the fighting was over.

  “They’ll almost certainly launch their attack when we move,” she said. “Unless they’ve snuck off somewhere, I suppose.”

  “Don’t count on it,” William warned. “A lone officer couldn’t organize a retreat without permission from Ahura Mazda.”

  “Junayd made that clear,” Kat muttered. “But even a fanatic can see the writing on the wall, sometimes.”

  She scowled as she altered the display, studying the operational plans. The reports from the surface concerning Admiral Junayd were a mixed bag. On one hand, he was putting together the framework of a postwar government; on the other hand, his wives and daughters had been kept in a terrible state. And they’d been the lucky ones. Some of the women who’d stumbled into the camps had been fantastically lucky just to be alive.

  “Perhaps,” William said, “but if they were rational, they would have surrendered long ago.”

  “True,” Kat agreed. The enemy government remained intact, despite the invasion and the bombardment. It would collapse soon, she thought, but the entire planet was likely to follow the government into hell, unless Junayd actually did manage to patch together a working government. “And they haven’t responded to any of our offers to discuss surrender.”

  She ground her teeth together in frustration. The personal message she’d received from the king had warned her that the news channels had been carrying reports from Ahura Mazda ever since they’d been released from the buffers. Public opinion was swinging against the mere suggestion of offering better terms than unconditional surrender, even though members of the former government wouldn’t be offered anything more than their lives. The public wanted to see the bastards swinging on ropes, not dropped onto a hellish penal world. And the king had ended his message by warning her that offering decent terms might end her career too.

  “They’re going to lose their fleet,” William pointed out. “And even if they try to hold out indefinitely, it isn’t going to work.”

  “I know,” Kat said. Sooner or later, the PDC fusion cores would run out of power. If the Theocrats refused to surrender, the PDCs would be smashed from orbit. “But what are they going to come up with first?”

  “I don’t know,” William said. “They killed everyone in the POW camp.”

  Kat shook her head in frustration. That hadn’t been made public, not yet. But the news blackout wouldn’t last. The Theocrats had murdered detainees in a POW camp just to keep them from being rescued. Thousands of men and women, almost all of them from the Commonwealth, lying dead. The public would go wild. Kat was privately surprised she hadn’t received orders to withdraw her forces and toast the entire planet. Three-quarters of the Commonwealth would cheer.

  But we would have to live in such a universe afterwards, she thought. And then?

  Her intercom bleeped. “Commodore, this is Wheeler,” it said. “General Winters requests an urgent conference.”

  Kat exchanged glances with William. “Put him through,” she ordered. “And inform him that Commodore McElney is with me.”

  General Winters appeared in front of her. “Commodore,” he said, “I’m afraid we have a problem.”

  Kat felt her heart sink. “What now?”

  “We had a rather unusual walk-in,” General Winters said. “She has a worrying story.”

  William frowned. “She?”

  Kat shared his confusion. A number of women had been taken into the refugee camps, but almost all of them had been swept up in the advance. A woman rarely crossed the lines, as if none of them could bring themselves to leave their homes. Given how brutally the Theocracy enforced the rules of gender segregation, she found it hard to blame them. She would have hesitated to go outside if she’d known the decision meant savage punishment if she was caught.

  “Yes,” General Winters said, “a young woman who claims to be the daughter of Speaker Nehemiah, Princess Drusilla’s half sister. We checked her DNA against the records and it matches. Both women clearly share a father.”

  “Her sister also had the nerve to flee,” Kat mused. She’d never quite grasped how hard it must have been for Drusilla to leave, at least until her forces had come face to face with the realities of Ahura Mazda. “What did she say?”

  “It’s not good news,” General Winters said. “Apparently, there’s a stockpile of antimatter somewhere on the world’s surface. If it looks like they are going to lose, they’ll get their leadership out and then blow up the entire planet.”

  Kat blanched. “Is she telling the truth?”

  “She certainly thinks she’s telling the truth,” General Winters said. “But she could easily be repeating a lie she was told.”

  “Shit,” William breathed. “Enough antimatter to crack an entire planet—”

  “It wouldn’t have to be that much,” Kat said. Her mind started to race. Where was the antimatter? If they dropped a KEW in the wrong place, they could detonate it by accident and destroy the entirety of Ahura Mazda. Pat was down there. So were billions of innocent civilians, many of whom were already suffering. “What do they want?”

  “Princess Aeliana insists that they merely intend to blow up the planet when it becomes clear that they’ve lost,” General Winters said. “Her father told her that they didn’t have the antimatter at the Tabernacle, but they’ll send a signal to the storage depot when the time comes. And that will be that.”

  Kat sagged, fighting the urge to bury her head in her hands. There was no way she could recover the landing force before the Theocrats blew up their own planet. The bastards would probably be watching for signs of an evacuation. And even if she could, she couldn’t recover more than a handful of civilians. The entire planet’s population was being held hostage by their masters. What the hell could she do about it?

  “They plan to send the signal from the Tabernacle, right?” William asked. “If we were to nuke the Tabernacle ourselves—”

  “That would kill millions of innocents,” Kat pointed out.

  “But save billions,” William countered.

  He was right, Kat knew. A penetrator warhead would do a great deal of damage to the city, but it would utterly destroy the Tabernacle. Or would it? Admiral Junayd had told them that there were bunkers deep below the city, bunkers that might be untouched by a nuclear blast. They could still get their message out if they remained connected to the planetary datanet.

  She took a long breath. What could she do? Try to negotiate? But the fanatics wouldn’t negotiate. Or try to win the battle before the signal could be sent? She could blanket the airwaves with jamming, if necessary. And yet, would that tactic be enough to keep the signal from going through? What if there was a landline to the antimatter depot? She could go mad trying to figure out all the possibilities.

  “We can’t get to the bunker,” she mused. “Or could we? Could we dig a tunnel ourselves?”<
br />
  “I don’t think we could without being detected,” General Winters said. “We do have some Moles with us, but getting that far down would be tricky. Even a complete idiot would know to listen for drilling sounds.”

  Kat nodded ruefully. She’d gone through a stage of being interested in building while her family’s mansion had been undergoing repairs. Building a bunker deep under the surface was a remarkable engineering challenge. The Theocracy wouldn’t have stinted on the defenses, either. Getting down to the bunker without being detected would be almost impossible.

  Father would say to pick the least dangerous option and cope with it, she thought. But what is the least dangerous option here?

  “General,” she said, “do you have a recommendation?”

  “Not as yet,” General Winters admitted. “I have teams interrogating Junayd and the other high-level defectors, hoping one of them knows something we can use. Otherwise, we may have to throw in an offensive and hope we can break through to the bunker before it’s too late.”

  “Wishful thinking,” William said.

  Kat nodded in stoic agreement. She knew how stealthy Pat could be, but there was no way he could get a platoon through the enemy defenses, into the Tabernacle, and down to the bunker before the enemy pushed the button. And yet, there might be no other choice. Everyone she’d landed on the surface had just become a hostage. They would die when the enemy leadership decided to kill everyone, including themselves.

  “See what you can find out,” she said finally. She paused as a thought struck her. “They want to get their leadership out?”

  “That’s what she said,” General Winters reminded her.

  Kat studied the display, her mind racing. If Aeliana was right about there being enough antimatter to shatter the entire planet, there was literally nowhere for the enemy leadership to go . . . unless they planned to link up with the remains of their fleet. The enemy might be skulking around the system, but they’d never manage to get a cloaked ship close enough to the planet to pick up a shuttle. No, they’d have to evacuate their leadership during a major offensive. And that meant she might just be able to bar the way.

  “They’ll send in their fleet to cover the escape,” she said. “And as long as we can fend off the fleet, they won’t detonate the bombs.”

  “Unless they think they’re trapped,” General Winters commented.

  “True,” Kat agreed. “But if they’re willing to try to preserve themselves, perhaps they’ll accept the next offer of surrender.”

  “Perhaps,” William mused.

  Kat sighed. “I’ll discuss the issue with my fleet commanders,” she said. “General, send Aeliana up to the fleet, then draw up a plan to assault the Tabernacle. We may have no other option.”

  “Understood,” General Winters said.

  His image vanished. “Shit,” William breathed. “Why didn’t we anticipate this?”

  “Because we didn’t realize just how mad they have become,” Kat said. The Theocracy seemed to delight in finding worse and worse ways to commit atrocities. “And we didn’t realize just how far they were prepared to go.”

  She had no doubt the Theocrats would detonate the antimatter stockpile. The threat could be an elaborate bluff, but for that to be true, it would have relied on too many things going right. They couldn’t have predicted Aeliana, could they? Drusilla herself had admitted she probably wouldn’t have gotten away with escape if her family hadn’t thought of her as a mere woman, too silly to tie her own shoelaces without help. No, the antimatter depot was real.

  If we could find it first, Kat thought, we could capture the antimatter.

  “Go get a shower and some rest,” she ordered. The clock was ticking. Who knew when the enemy fleet would arrive? Soon, she suspected. The enemy wouldn’t want to try to fly a shuttle out through a war zone. The craft might be picked off in the confusion. “I don’t think we have long before the final engagement.”

  William nodded. “Aye, Commodore.”

  Kat watched him go, then looked back at the map. An entire world, billions of people, all held hostage by madmen. And no matter what she did, there was just too great a chance of the enemy detonating their makeshift bomb. Some parts of the Commonwealth would cheer the bloodbath, others would blame her for the nightmare. They’d be sure, from the comfort of their armchairs, that there was something she could have done to prevent the disaster. But what?

  Pat was down there, she knew. Pat and General Winters and countless men and women she didn’t know, men and women she would never know if the bomb detonated. The fear of losing them was so strong it almost held her paralyzed. What did it say about her, she wondered, that she feared more for her own people than the enemy civilians? But then, the enemy civilians were just faceless masses, their deaths nothing more than an incomprehensible number. She knew they had lives and loves, hopes and fears, but she didn’t quite believe it.

  And yet, she knew her duty. She had to do everything within her power to stop the bomb from being detonated, even at the cost of thousands of lives. William was right. If she destroyed the Tabernacle, if she took out the surrounding city, that might just save the rest of Ahura Mazda. And yet, she would have to live with mass slaughter on her conscience for a long time. Telling herself that millions had died to save billions would be cold comfort, and she knew her reputation would not survive.

  And if it did, she thought, would I want it?

  She took a moment to compose herself, then bottled up her feelings as she rose to her feet and headed for the hatch. The enemy ships might be on top of the fleet at any moment. Hell, she knew it was all too likely they might slip out of hyperspace at the edge of the system and try to sneak up on her. Why not? She didn’t have vast sensor arrays covering the entire system.

  “Mr. Wheeler,” she said, as she stepped onto the Combat Information Centre. Bobby Wheeler looked up at her, expectantly. “Call a fleet conference. Immediately.”

  “Aye, Commodore,” Wheeler said. “Is the enemy coming?”

  “It looks that way,” Kat said. The near-space display was clear, but that proved nothing. “And we have very little time to prepare.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  “Transit completed, Admiral,” the operator said. “No enemy ships within detection range.”

  Zaskar nodded, although he knew the absence of visible ships was largely meaningless. The Commonwealth’s cloaking devices were very good. If there was a prowling enemy ship within sensor range, word of his arrival was already winging its way to Ahura Mazda. But the odds were staggeringly against early detection. He’d brought the fleet out of hyperspace so far from the planet—and on the other side of the star—to minimize the odds of being detected.

  They haven’t had a chance to set up long-range sensor arrays, he thought as his fleet settled down into combat formation. And if they didn’t need them, they would have tracked down our spies long ago.

  He kept his face impassive despite the growing tension on the bridge. The clerics had been busy preaching to members of the crew, promising them that this would be the final battle, promising them that God was on their side. And yet, even the clerics had been unable to keep rumors from spreading, rumors that suggested that Ahura Mazda had already fallen, that God had turned His face from His chosen people. The fleet’s spacers had expected to die in defense of their homeworld, not flee as freighter crews fought and lost the battle for the high orbitals. It was hard to believe, deep inside, that victory was truly assured.

  We should be able to catch them by surprise, Zaskar told himself. And if we can push them against the planetary defenses, the firepower advantage will be on our side.

  “Admiral,” the operator said, “the fleet is ready to advance.”

  “Make sure the cloaking devices are fully operational,” Zaskar ordered. “If a ship is at risk of a glitch, they are to cut power and fall out of formation.”

  The cleric glanced at him. “Is that wise?”

  “We dare not a
lert the enemy to our presence,” Zaskar said bluntly. He was sick of clerics questioning his judgment. “They could easily break orbit and escape if they have advance warning of our arrival.”

  Or head out to challenge us in interplanetary space, he added silently. It was normally fairly straightforward for a fleet to refuse battle. But now, with almost every last warship in the Theocracy bearing down on them, the Commonwealth vessels had ample incentive to accept the challenge. Even if they lost, they’d still tear his fleet to ribbons. We’re gambling everything on a single battle.

  He glanced down at the stream of updates from his ships. His crews had worked frantically over the last few weeks, but they couldn’t come to grips with the shortage of supplies and spare parts. He knew, all too well, that his missile loads were very low and his point defense datanet badly flawed. He’d given orders to reroute the datanet through a dozen ships, even though doctrine argued against devolving the system. But he had no choice. Breaking the datanet into subnets might make the difference between survival and certain death.

  “They will not escape us,” the cleric snapped.

  “I don’t intend to give them the chance, Your Holiness,” Zaskar said. He cleared his throat. “Order the fleet to advance as planned.”

  “Aye, Admiral,” the operator said.

  “And order the Alpha and Beta crews to get some sleep,” Zaskar added. “They are to report back to their stations one hour before estimated arrival time, unless summoned.”

  Unless we are detected earlier, he thought. The Commonwealth would have scattered hundreds of remote sensor platforms around Ahura Mazda. They’d have a fair chance of picking up his fleet, even if the odds did favor him. At that point, all of our tactical planning goes out the airlock.

  “The crew should spend the next few hours in prayer,” the cleric insisted. “God needs to be beseeched for his help.”

  “They need to be rested when we engage the enemy,” Zaskar said, quietly. He’d spent hours in prayer himself. He knew the time spent wasn’t particularly restful. “God will know His own.”