by David Weber
"Thank you," Colin said. It was scarcely a detailed report, but he hadn't asked for that, and he turned to Hector MacMahan.
"Ground Forces?"
"The ground forces are better organized than we could reasonably expect," the hawk-faced Marine replied, "if not yet quite as well as I'd like.
"We have four separate nationalities in our major formations, and we'll need a few more months to really shake down properly. For the moment, we've adopted Imperial organization and ranks but confined them to our original unit structures. Our USFC and SAS people are our recon/special forces component; the Second Marines have been designated as our assault component; the German First Armored will operate our ground combat vehicles; and the Sendai Division and the Nineteenth Guards Parachute Division are our main ground force.
"There's been a bit of rivalry over who got the choicest assignment, but it hasn't gotten physical... not very often, anyway." He shrugged. "These are all elite formations, and until we can integrate them fully, a continued sense of identity is inevitable, but they've settled in and mastered their new weapons quite well. I'm confident we can handle anything we have to handle."
"Thank you," Colin said again. He turned to General Georgi Treshnikov, late of the Russian Air Force and now commander of the three hundred Imperial fighters Dahak had retained for self-defense. "Parasite Command?"
"As Hector, we are ready," Treshnikov said. "We have even more nationalities, but less difficulty in integration, for we did not embark complete national formations to crew our fighters."
"Thank you. Intelligence, Commander Ninhursag?"
"We've done all we can with the non-data Dahak has been able to give us, Captain. You've all seen our reports." The stocky, pleasantly plain Imperial who had been Nergal's spy within Anu's camp shrugged. "Until we have some hard facts to plug into our analyses, we're only marking time."
"I understand. Biosciences?"
"Bioscience is weary but ready, Captain," Fleet Captain (B) Cohanna replied. Fifty thousand years in stasis hadn't blunted her confidence... or her sense of humor. "We finished the last enhancement procedures last month, and we're a little short on biotechnic hardware at the moment-" that won a fresh mutter of laughter "-but other than that, we're in excellent shape."
"Thank you. Maintenance?"
"We're looking good, Captain." Fleet Captain (M) Geran was another of Nergal's "children," but, aside from his eyes, he looked more like a Terran, with dark auburn hair, unusually light skin for an Imperial, and a mobile mouth that smiled easily. "Dahak's repair systems did a bang-up job, and he slapped anything he wasn't using into stasis. I'd like more practice on damage control, but-" He raised his right hand, palm upward, and Colin nodded.
"Understood. Hopefully you'll have lots of time to go on practicing. We'll try to keep it that way. Tactical?"
"We're in good shape, sir," Tamman said. "Battle Comp's doing well with simulators and training problems. Our Terra-born aren't as comfortable with their neural feeds as I'd like yet, but that's only a matter of practice."
"Logistics?"
"Buttoned up, sir," Fleet Commander (L) Caitrin O'Rourke said confidently. "We've got facilities for three times the people we've actually got aboard, and all park and hydroponic areas have been fully reactivated, so provisions and life support are no sweat. Magazines are at better than ninety-eight percent-closer to ninety-nine-and we're in excellent shape for spares."
"Engineering?"
"Engineering looks good, sir," Chernikov replied. "Our Imperials and Terra-born have shaken down extremely well together. I am confident."
"Good. Very good." Colin leaned back and smiled at his officers, glad none of them had tried to gloss over any small concerns they still had. Not that he'd expected them to.
"In that case, I think we can conclude, unless there are any questions?" As he'd expected, there were none. In a very real sense, this meeting had been almost ceremonial, a chance for them to show their confidence to one another.
"Very well." He rose and nodded to them all. "We shall adjourn." He started for the door, and a mellow voice spoke again.
"Attention on deck," it repeated, and Colin swallowed a resigned sigh as his solemn-faced officers stood once more.
"Carry on, ladies and gentlemen," he said, and stepped out the hatch.
"Supralight shutdown in two minutes," Dahak remarked calmly.
Colin took great pains to project a matching calm, but his own relaxation was all too artificial, and he saw the same strain, hidden with greater or lesser success, in all of his bridge officers. Dahak was at battle stations, and a matching team under Jiltanith manned Command Two on the far side of the core hull. The holographic images of Command Two's counterparts sat beside each of his officers, which made his bridge seem a bit more crowded but meant everyone knew exactly what was happening... and that he got to sit beside Jiltanith's image on duty.
A score of officers were physically present at their consoles on the starlit command deck. In an emergency, Colin could have run the ship without any of them, something which would have been impossible with the semi-aware Comp Cent of yore. But even though Dahak was now capable of assessing intent and exercising discretion, there were limits to the details Colin's human brain could handle. Each of his highly-trained officers took his or her own portion of the burden off of him, and he was devoutly thankful for their presence.
"Sublight in one minute," Dahak intoned, and Colin felt the beginnings of shutdown flowing through his interface with Chernikov's engineering computers. The measured sequence of commands moved like clockwork, and a tiny, almost imperceptible vibration shook Dahak's gargantuan bulk.
"Sublight... now," Dahak reported, and the stars moving across the visual display were abruptly still.
A G3 star floated directly "ahead" of Colin in the projection. It was the brightest single object in view, and it abruptly began to grow as Sarah Meir, his astrogator, engaged the sublight drive.
"Core tap shutdown," Dahak announced.
"Enhance image on the star system, Dahak," Colin requested, and the star swelled while a three-dimensional schematic of the Sheskar System's planetary orbits flicked to life about it. Only the outermost planet was visible even to Dahak at their present range, but tiny circles on each orbit trace indicated the position each planet should hold.
"Any artificial radiation?"
"Negative, Captain," Dahak replied, and Colin bit his lip. Sheskar was-or had been-the Imperium's forward bastion on the traditional Achuultani approach vector. Perimeter Security should have detected and challenged them almost instantly.
"Captain," Dahak broke the silence which had fallen, "I have detected discrepancies in the system."
The visual display altered as he spoke. Oddly clumped necklaces of far smaller dots replaced the circles representing Sheskar's central trio of planets, spreading ominously about the central star, and Colin swallowed.
Dahak had gone sublight at the closest possible safe distance from Sheskar, but that was still eleven light-hours out. Even at his maximum sublight velocity, it would have taken almost twenty-four hours to reach the primary, yet it had become depressingly clear that there was no reason to travel that deep into the system, and Colin had stopped five light-hours out to save time when they left.
At the moment, he, Jiltanith, Hector MacMahan, and Ninhursag sat in Conference One, watching a scaled-down holo of the star system while they tried to decide where to leave to.
"I have completed preliminary scans, Captain," Dahak announced.
"Well? Was it the Achuultani?"
"It is, of course, impossible to be certain, but I would estimate that it was not. Had it been an incursion, it would, of necessity, have followed a path other than that traditionally employed by the Achuultani, else the scanner arrays which reported this incursion had already been destroyed. Since they were not, I conclude that it was not the Achuultani who accomplished this."
"Just what we needed," Hector said quietly. "Somebody el
se who goes around blowing away entire planets."
"Unfortunately, that would appear to be precisely what has happened, General MacMahan. It would not, however, appear to be of immediate concern. My scans indicate that this destruction occurred on the close order of forty-eight thousand years ago."
"How close?" Colin demanded.
"Plus or minus five percent, Captain."
"Shit." Colin looked up apologetically as the expletive escaped him, but no one seemed to have noticed. He drew a deep breath. "All right, Dahak, cut to the chase. What do you think happened?"
"Analysis rules out the employment of kinetic weaponry," Dahak said precisely, "distribution of the planetary rubble is not consistent with impact patterns. Rather, it would appear that the planetary bodies suffered implosive destruction consistent with the use of gravitonic warheads, a weapon, so far as is known to the Imperium's data base, the Achuultani have never employed."
"Gravitonic?" Colin tugged on his prominent nose, and his green eyes narrowed. "I don't like the sound of that."
"Nor I," Jiltanith said quietly. "If 'twas not the Achuultani, then must it have been another, and such weapons lie even now within our magazines."
"Exactly," Colin said. He shuddered at the thought. A heavy gravitonic warhead produced a nice, neat little black hole. Not very long-lived, and not big enough to damage most suns, but big enough, and a hyper-capable missile with the right targeting could put the damned thing almost inside a planet.
"That is true," Dahak observed, then hesitated briefly, as if he faced a conclusion he wanted to reject. "I regret to say, Captain, that the destruction matches that which would be associated with our own Mark Tens. In point of fact, and after making due allowance for the time which has passed, it corresponds almost exactly to the results produced by those weapons."
"Hector? Ninhursag?"
"Dahak's dancing around the point, Colin," MacMahan's face was grim. "There's a very simple and likely explanation."
"I agree," Ninhursag said in a small voice. "I never would have believed it could happen, but it's got all the earmarks of a civil war."
A brief silence followed the words someone had finally said. Then Colin cleared his throat.
"Response, Dahak?"
"I... am forced to concur." Dahak's mellow voice sounded sad. "Sheskar Four, in particular, was very heavily defended. Based upon available data and the fact that no advanced alien race other than the Achuultani had been encountered by the Imperium prior to the mutiny, I must conclude that only the Imperium itself possessed the power to do what has been done."
"What about someone they ran into after the mutiny?"
"Possible, but unlikely, Captain. Due in no small part to previous incursions, there are very few-indeed, effectively no-habitable worlds between Sol and Sheskar. Logic thus suggests that any hostile aliens would have been required to fight their way across a substantial portion of the Imperium even to reach Sheskar. Assuming technical capabilities on a par with those of this ship-a conclusion suggested, though not proven, by my analysis of the weaponry employed-that would require a hostile imperium whose military potential equaled or exceeded that of the Imperium itself. While it is not impossible that such an entity might have been encountered, I would rate the probability as no greater than that of an Achuultani attack."
Colin looked around the table again, then back at the silent holo display. "This isn't good."
"Hast a gift for understatement, my Colin." Jiltanith shook her head. "Good Dahak, what likelihood wouldst thou assign to decision by the Imperium 'gainst fortifying Sheskar anew?"
"Slight," Dahak said.
"Why?" Colin asked. "There's nothing left to fortify."
"Inaccurate, Captain. No Earth-like planets remain, but Sheskar was selected for a Fleet base because of its location, not its planets, and it now possesses abundant large asteroids for installation sites. Indeed, the absence of atmosphere would make those installations more defensible, not less."
"In other words," MacMahan murmured, "they would have come back if they were interested in re-establishing their pre-war frontiers."
"Precisely, General."
Another, longer silence fell, and Colin drew a deep breath.
"All right, let's look at it. We have a destroyed base in a vital location. It appears to have been taken out with Imperial weapons, implying a civil war as a probable cause. It wasn't rebuilt. What does that imply?"
"Naught we wish to discover." Jiltanith managed a small smile. "'Twould seem the Imperium hath fallen 'pon hard times."
"True," MacMahan said. "I see two probabilities, Colin." Colin raised an eyebrow, inviting him to continue.
"First, they wiped each other out. That would explain the failure to rebuild, and it would also mean our entire mission is pointless." A shiver ran through his human audience, but he continued unflinchingly.
"On the other hand, I don't believe anything the size of the Imperium wiped itself out completely. The Imperium is-or was, or whatever-huge. Even assuming anyone could have been insane enough to embark on destruction on that scale, I don't see how they could do it. Their infrastructure would erode out from under them as they took out industrialized systems, and it seems unlikely anyone would follow leaders mad enough to try."
"Yet 'twas done to Sheskar," Jiltanith pointed out.
"True, but Sheskar was primarily a military base, 'Tanni, not a civilian system. The decision to attack it would be evaluated purely in terms of military expedience, like nuking a well-armed island base in the middle of an ocean. It's a lot easier to decide to hit a target like that."
"All right," Colin nodded. "But if they didn't wipe themselves out, why didn't they come back?"
"That's probability two," MacMahan said flatly. "They did so much damage they backslid. They could have done a fair job of smashing themselves without actually destroying all their planets. It's hard for me to visualize a high-tech planet which wasn't nuked-or something like it-decivilizing completely, but I can accept that more easily than the idea that all their planets look like this." He gestured at the holo display.
"Besides, they might have damaged themselves in other ways. Suppose they fought their war and found themselves faced with massive reconstruction closer to the heart of the Imperium? Sheskar is-was-a hell of a long way from their next nearest inhabited system, and, as Dahak has pointed out, this area isn't exactly prime real estate. If they had heavily damaged areas closer to home, they could've decided to deal with those first. Afterward, the area on the far side of the Imperium, where damage from the Achuultani hadn't wrecked so many planets to begin with, would have been a natural magnet for future expansion."
"Mayhap, yet that leaveth still a question. Whyfor, if Sheskar was so vital, rebuild it not?"
"I'm afraid I can answer that," Ninhursag said unhappily. "Maybe Anu wasn't as crazy-or quite as unique in his craziness-as we thought." She shrugged as all eyes turned to her. "What I'm trying to say is that if things got so bad the Imperium actually fought a civil war, they weren't Imperials anymore. I'm the only person in this room who was an adult at the time of the mutiny, and I know how I would've reacted to the thought of wiping out a Fleet base. Even those of us who didn't really believe in the Achuultani-even the 'atheists,' I suppose you might call them, who violently rejected their existence-would have hesitated to do that. That's why Anu lied to us about his own intent to attack the Imperium."
She looked unhappily at the holo for a moment, and none of the others intruded upon her silence.
"None of you were ever Imperial citizens, so you may not understand what I'm trying to say, but preparing to fight the Achuultani was something we'd societized into ourselves on an almost instinctual level. Even those who most resented the regimentation, the discipline, wouldn't have destroyed our defenses. It would be like... like Holland blowing up its dikes because of one dry summer, for Maker's sake!"
"You're saying that disbelief in the Achuultani must have become general?" Colin said. "Th
at if it hadn't, the Fleet would never have let itself be caught up in something like a civil war in the first place?"
"Exactly. And if that's true, why rebuild Sheskar as a base against an enemy that doesn't exist?" Ninhursag gave a short, ugly laugh. "Maybe we were the wave of the future instead of just a bunch of murderous traitors!"
"Easy, 'Hursag." MacMahan touched her shoulder, and she inhaled sharply.
"Sorry." Her voice was a bit husky. "It's just that I don't really want to believe what I'm saying-especially not now that I know how wrong we were!"
"Maybe not, but it makes sense," Colin said slowly.
"Agreed, Captain," Dahak said. "Indeed, there is another point. For Fleet vessels to have participated in this action would require massive changes in core programming by at least one faction. Without that, Fleet Central Alpha Priority imperatives would have precluded any warfare which dissipated resources and so weakened Battle Fleet's ability to resist an incursion. This would appear to support Fleet Commander Ninhursag's analysis."