First Strike!

Chris, you're killing me. pooooooost, please.

 

This may be your best yet. Great story!

 

The Funks have Chris

 

We will have top go and get him back can someone show me how to work the armor?

 

Thanks for the rescue guys!


Chapter Forty-Two<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />



“Status report?”



“Voyager transitedback into quantum space,” Sooraya said. “Sofar, the Funks have not arrived in the solar system. Admiral Sun has uploaded a tactical sit-repfor you.”



Tobias nodded. Lurking in quantum space was an old tactic, well known to the Galactics,but assuming the Funks didn't know that he’d abandoned Hammerfall, they wouldn'tbe expecting it. By keeping his fleethidden, it was just possible that he could induce the Funks to commit themselvesto attacking Earth before realising that they were about to put themselves intoa meatgrinder. If the Funks had realisedjust how many ships were waiting for them, they might have thought better oftheir plans.



But perhaps it wouldn't make any difference, he realisedas he scrolled through the report. Thestrike on Hegemony Prime had succeeded beyond his wildest expectations, leavingthe Funks tumbling down into civil war. None of their intelligence sources had even seen their Empress for the last three days. She might be dead, or in hiding, or attemptingto rally her supporters for a counterattack...if she had any supportersleft. Even the worst human dictators hadbeen able to call upon considerable support when their positions werethreatened, but the Funks seemed to do it differently. Some of their traditions even included theconcept of honourable betrayal, abandoning a leader whose position had become untenablebefore civil war could devastate the entire system.



The Hegemony was going down; according to one report,units of the Hegemony Navy had even started firing at each other. They’d be too busy for the foreseeable futureto worry about humanity, assuming that humanity survived the comingbattle. But in its death agonies theHegemony might just take Earth down with it. Perhaps that was why they’d launched a mighty fleet at Earth. Maybe they’d learned the concept of total warfrom the human race.



“Hold our position here,” Tobias ordered. He’d reorganised his squadrons as best as hecould, although the losses from recent fighting had forced him to combine unitsthat had never served together before the flight to Earth. They’d been training hard ever since, yetthere were limits to how well simulations could teach lessons. But there was no time for proper exercises. “Admiral Sun will update us when the enemyfleet arrives.”



If it does arrive,he added, in the privacy of his own thoughts. Knowing the Funks, it was quite possible that the enemy commander,realising that she was in command of the largest surviving segment of theHegemony Navy, might make her own bid to become Empress. Or he might have been completely wrong andthe Funks merely intended to hit Gaston or even Terra Nova...although threeentire squadrons of superdreadnaughts were massive overkill for any target, butEarth.



He shrugged. Coordinating operations between normal space and quantum space wasn't easy,but it was easier than trying to coordinate across interstellar distances. One lesson humanity had learned quickly – and so had the Funks – was that the simplerthe plan, the better. He’d just have tohope that he wasn't being too clever for his own good. But the opportunity to deliver a final blowto the Hegemony was too good to allow to slip by without at least trying to takeadvantage of it.



“Back to training,” he said. There was nothing he could do now, butwait. “But tell the Alpha crews that Iwant them to get some rest. God knowshow long it will be before the **** hits the fan.”

***​

Admiral Sun knew himself to be more of an administratorthan a fighter. His career in the People’sLiberation Army Navy had been devoted to building up a force that couldchallenge American dominance of the seas near China, a task that had forced himto concentrate on fighting paper wars with Communist Party planners rather thanactually training and preparing for the actual fighting. He’d been rather amused to discover that his Americancounterparts envied his budget and access to the resources of China, apparentlybecause they believed that a Communist state could simply order whateverresources it needed devoted to the military. Anyone who believed that hadclearly never tried to operate within a Communist economy.



The Federation Navy had faced hundreds of very reallimitations in building up a fleet that could challenge the Hegemony. Earth had had a pathetic space program beforeMentor had arrived and gave the human race the technology it needed to burstout into the solar system. There was astaggering shortage of trained manpower, even after fifteen years of development,and dozens of production bottlenecks. And the Federation Navy hadn’t had first call on all of humanity’s resources. Earth’s growing space-based industry had needed manpower and spacecrafttoo.



He studied the fleet taking shape in orbit and scowled. It looked formidable, all right, but he knewits limitations. Five Admiral-class cruisers, the mostadvanced ships in the galaxy, had taken point, but they were tied to theircomrades. A hundred military starships,all bought or begged from the Galactics, and fifty-seven modifiedfreighters. He knew, better than anyoneelse on Earth, precisely what would happen if the older ships came to gripswith Hegemony superdreadnaughts. They’dbe slaughtered by the Funks.



Fifty years, hethought, sourly. Americans seemed toplace more faith in planners than the Chinese, an irony that would have amusedhim under other circumstances, but he had no doubt about those figures. Fifty years of uninterrupted developmentwould have made Earth invincible, at least until the Galactics duplicated Earth’sadvances and installed them in their fleets. The Hegemony wouldn't have been able to even stay in the running. Perhaps that explained why they had broughtso much pressure to bear on Earth. They’dunderstood, dimly, that human advancement was a deadly threat and acted tosquash it before it was too late. But ifthey had really understood...



...They might have attacked Earth without warning.



He turned and looked at the viewscreen, which showedEarth rotating slowly under his fleet. The planet was panicking, law and order steadily breaking down; a mockingreminder of the pre-Contact days when most of human civilisation had beenreasonably safe and secure. Fewcivilians really comprehended the crushing power of the Galactics, but thosewho could read fleet lists would probably be able to work out that humanity wasbadly outnumbered. The results of thecoming confrontation might be disastrous. Hundreds of thousands were fleeing for shelter; millions were scramblingto find a safe place to hide. A handfulof politicians who had opposed building shelters for the population had beenthreatened with lynching as people sought someone to blame. The fact that the politicians had been right –antimatter weapons could crack the entire planet in half – would be meaninglessto them. It was far better to spend thatmoney on the Federation Navy.



“Admiral,” Commander Gustav Wallenberg said, “I have thelatest update from the OWPs.”



Sun nodded, careful to keep his face immobile. “I presume that they have finished their work?”



“The engineers report that three of the five platformsare now operational,” Wallenberg said, “but I’m afraid that the other two needtheir components switched out before they can be activated. The dealers who sold them to us didn't takevery good care of them.”



“Which explains why they were on the market in the firstplace,” Sun said. Galactic technologywas tough, robust in a way that few human products could match, but even itwore down. And most military suppliesamong the Galactics were not entirely trustworthy. ONI had speculated that the more powerful Galacticsrigged the market to ensure that the weaker powers didn't get anystronger. “Make a note of thedealer. Maybe we can hunt him up fordamages later.”



Back in China, the PLAN had had real problems withquality control. Sun had worried –endlessly – over state-sponsored factories that produced shoddy goods, evenwith everything they’d learned from the West. Even when they’d tracked down the source of the useless technology, they’doften found it difficult to punish the people responsible. Their political connections were alwaysfirst-rate. But supersonic missilesintended to be fired at American aircraft carriers were more complex thanAK-47s. At least the Federation Navy hadhad the clout to challenge defective factories. Maybe the real reason why he’dbeen denied the post of CNO was that he’d put too many noses out of joint whileserving under Admiral Sampson.



“Yes, sir,” his aide said. “I’m afraid that Alan Beresford has been incontact again, demanding to speak with you personally.”



Sun wanted to order his aide to tell the British MP thathe was busy, perhaps on a week-lone EVA inspection trip, but he knewbetter. The politicians always wantedtheir hands held, even the ones who had the experience or insight to realisethat it was a waste of time. Beresfordhad been a thorn in his flesh since Clarke had been occupied by the Hegemony,largely because he had vast investments on the planet which stood to make himvery rich – assuming that the human race survived the war. He’d been demanding that the Federation Navyliberate Clarke yesterday, if possible. Sun, who agreed with his superior that Clarke was probably a feint todraw the Federation Navy away from Earth, had declined.



“I’ll speak to him in my office,” he said, tiredly. His body wanted sleep, but he had no time torest. Too much needed to be done in toolittle time. At least Admiral Sampsonwas in position. They’d certainly givethe Funks a bloody nose when they attacked. “Has there been any update from the IDG team?”



“Nothing since the last update,” his aide said,patiently. “They merely reported thatthey were in position and running test cycles on the generator.”



Sun nodded, slowly. He’d named the generator personally, pointing out that the Galactics probablyweren't interested in the teachings of a military theorist from a society thathadn’t possessed gunpowder at the time. And besides, the name was fitting.



“Inform me at once if there are any changes,” he ordered.



He’d go talk to the politician. Maybe that would distract him from theendless waiting.

***​

“Layabouts,” Wardthundered. “Look at them down there,screaming for help. Why didn't theythink about the dangers before it was too late?”



Betty, his secretary, shrugged. She was an elderly woman, appointed to thepost at the insistence of Ward’s wife, even though he would have preferred a young and charming girl just out ofcollege. Not that he would have touchedher, of course; he could hardly have afforded the scandal after years of makingpolitical enemies. It had been badenough when the IRS had insisted on auditing their accounts, twice in a row.



“Young people these days have no sense of history,” Wardcontinued. “A whole universe of opportunityawaits them and they don’t even care.”



He’d been a grown man when the human race had beencontacted by Mentor. The world hadseemed to be entering a decline that might have resulted in anarchy, or so he’dfeared. There were no longer any hopesand dreams for the young, no clear crusades against evil and politicians whowere little more than crooks. An angryman had gone into journalism, fully expecting to spend his last days reportingon another seeming constant that had just turned upside down. And instead the Galactics had arrived andoffered humanity the keys to the stars.



Terra Nova had seemed a blessing when it had first beensettled. A new world, one that could beshaped by its first settlers...if they ever got the chance. Every nation on Earth had insisted on contributingcolonists, creating ethnic and racial tensions that might have torn the planet’sfragile society apart. The Funks mighthave proved a blessing in disguise, at least according to some of the reporterson the ground. Uniting against a commonfoe had forced humanity to put its own conflicts on the backburner. And it helped that the Funks had managed toconvince Earth to throw all the money it could at the Federation Navy.



But now the Funks were on their way to Earth.



He looked down at the screaming mob and snorted, unpleasantly. Fifteen years of warning and yet relativelyfew people had done the smart thing and prepared an emergency plan to leave thecities and find shelter. Ward had purchased a ranch in Texas withhis brother and made plans to move there as soon as necessary, once the **** reallyhit the fan. But he’d been reluctant toleave until it was clear that there was nothing more he could do to keepreporting the news. Maybe he’d alreadyleft it too late. The roads out of everycity in America were jammed with terrified civilians trying to get out of dodgebefore it was too late. Constantbroadcasts from the President appealing for calm were having almost no effectat all. Everyone knew that the Presidentand his family were going to be in abunker when the Funks arrived, safe from everything apart fromplanet-crackers. But what about their family?



The Police – what remained of them after nearly half ofthe NYPD had deserted – finally moved in to try to contain the riot. Ward watched emotionlessly as some riotersscattered, while others tried to fight – or carry on looting under cover ofrioting. Some of the reports from theinner cities, where the police were too overstretched to go, werehorrifying. He caught sight of a youngman, blood streaming from a blow to the forehead, being carted away by a pairof police officers, just before the first gas canisters started to burst. God alone knew what would happen to the poorbastard. The police were generally goodat taking care of injured civilians, even would-be rioters, but Ward had heardthat the hospitals were overwhelmed and short-staffed. A blow to the head that would have been easyto handle in hospital might prove fatal if he didn’t receive medical treatmentin time.



“They should get their heads out of their asses,” hemuttered, as a line of rioters charged the police. Someone had been distributing weapons,probably one of the professional troublemakers who kept getting involved withpeaceful protests and turning them into violent riots. “What the hell sort of good do they thinkthat this is going to cause?”



The building rocked, slightly. “And what the hell was that?”



Betty checked her Ipad. “Security reports that some of the rioters just slammed against ourdoors,” she said. Ward had ordered themclosed with the emergency shutters as soon as the riot had started to takeshape. There was a fine line betweenreporting the news and becoming part of it. “They’re recommending that we evacuate the building, just in case.”



“Tell the crew that anyone who wants to go can go, ifthey use the tunnels,” Ward said, shortly. He hired brave journalists, men and women ready to put themselves intodanger just for a scoop, but the editors and other supporting staff weren’tchosen for their bravery. “At least wemoved operations to our country site.”



He looked down again and shook his head. The police had counterattacked, knocking therioters down and securing their hands with plastic cuffs, pushing male andfemale protestors against the walls and forcing them to wait until they couldbe taken away. Most of the dangerousrioters scattered, intent on taking the fighting elsewhere. The police would normally have thrown up acordon to catch them, but Ward had no idea if they had enough manpower to do itnow that the entire city was on the verge of collapse. He caught sight of a pair of bodies wearingNYPD uniforms and shuddered. The youngmight talk of living without rules, but Ward was old enough to know thatanarchy was never a good thing.



“Who needs the blasted Funks?” He demanded. “We’re perfectly capable of wrecking our own planet without them””



The television switched from a CNN update to anotherspeech from the President. Ward rolledhis eyes and changed the channel. ThePresident wasn't the solution, not when he was part of the problem. People were scared and no amount of empty reassurancefrom politicians would change that. Andno one had the moral statue to stand up and ask for calm, with the possibleexception of Admiral Sampson. He couldhave run for President based purely upon his war record and probably win.



Assuming we have anext election campaign, he thought. Even if the Funks didn't destroy the world, who knew what would happenafter this week of anarchy?



And all the human race could do was wait for judgementday.

***​

“We are approaching Earth, My Lady.”



Lady Dalsha opened her eyes and clambered out of thewater bath in her quarters. Sleeping inwater had once been an unimaginable luxury; even now, when they had access tothe boundless resources of space, it was still regarded with awe. At one time, she would have considered itnothing more than her due. Now...sheknew it was perhaps her last chance to experience luxury.



“Proceed as planned,” she ordered, as a force fieldflicked the water off her scales. “Iwill be on the bridge directly.”



Oddly, she found herself thinking of her hatchlings. All females were expected to contribute atleast two clutches of eggs to her clan before going into danger, a traditionthat dated back to the days where they’d struggled for water andresources. She'd never seen them sincethey’d been taken by the clan mothers, not knowingly. It was tradition. The clan came first, beyond any maternal instincts. And yet they would carry on her genes even ifshe lost the coming battle.



But what sort of universe would they inherit?



She put the thought aside as she donned her uniform andwalked to the bridge. Everything hadjust become simple again. Either shewould win, or she would die.



If the Hegemony had to fall, at least it would take thehuman race down with it.

 

Chris, glad to see you back, yesterday was almost painful without my daily update

Great job so far, looking forward to reading more of your works

 

ChapterForty-Three<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />



“Admiral?”



Admiral Sun looked up from his desk, fighting back theurgent desire to yawn. He’d caught acouple of brief naps in-between reading reports and monitoring trainingsimulations, but not enough to keep him from feeling sleepy. The doctors had given him a booster, addingstrict warnings that he was not to even consider using it until the enemyactually arrived.



“Yes,” he said, “what is it?”



“Long-range sensors have detected quantum gates openingnear Mars,” Wallenberg said. “CIC callsthem Hegemony superdreadnaught gates.”



“Understood,” Sun said. He pressed the tap against his bare arm and grimaced as it pumped the boosterinto his bloodstream. Users got nearly aday before they had to go to bed to sleep it off. A second dose was out of the question. “I'm on my way. Alert the fleet and dispatch a courier boatto Admiral Sampson.”



He glanced around his office, taking a final look at thewall he’d covered with medals and decorations from his career in both the PLANand the Federation Navy, and then headed to the CIC. The booster was starting to work, leaving himfeeling supercharged, as if he had eaten enough sugar to turn him into ahyperactive child. It was a shame thathe couldn't feel so good permanently, but the doctors had made it quite clear;boosters were more addictive than even Joy Juice and breaking the addition wasalmost impossible. Even an Admiral couldn'torder boosters without facing hard questions from the medical staff. He strode into the CIC, waving aside theMarine who was about to announce his presence, and took one look at thedisplay. A handful of red iconsclustered near Mars.



“Curious,” he said, aloud. CIC’s tactical staff had already startedattempting to project the enemy’s intentions, yet their tactics made littlesense. Even if the Funks intended toslip back into quantum space and reach Earth that way, the Federation Navy hadalready been alerted. Standard doctrine orderedstarships to emerge as close to their target as possible, to minimise the timetheir enemies had to prepare their defences. “Tactical analysis?”



“Maybe they intend to blow up the Marine facilities at OlympusMons,” Wallenberg suggested. “Or perhapsthey intend to destroy Scarlet Base.”



“Or Robinson City,” Sun agreed. And yet that didn’t quite make senseeither. None of humanity’s facilities onMars were in any way vital, certainlynot compared to the Luna Yards or Island One. There might have been a few million humans on Mars slowly turning theplanet into a decent place to live, but why bother to target them...



...Unless the Funks aimed at total extermination. The thought made him shiver, despite what thesociologists had claimed time and time again. They pointed to Funk history andasserted that the Funks didn't destroy their enemies; they merely assimilatedthem into the victorious clan. But that hadn'tworked out too well for the Gobbles, or anyone else unlucky enough to fall intotheir claws. Multiracial breeding wasjust as impossible for the Funks as for any other race, limiting how faroutsiders could blend into the victorious Hegemony.



Not for the first time, he found himself cursing thelimitations of active and passive sensors. Opening a quantum gate generated a pulse that travelled faster thanlight, but all other sensors were restricted to light-speed. The Funks could be bombarding Mars now andEarth wouldn't know about it for several minutes. Mars would send an update as soon aspossible, yet even if Mars was underattack the Federation Navy couldn't move out of position to cover the redplanet, not when Earth was threatened. The separatists on Mars would make vast amounts of political capital outof it.



“Earth has issued a warning,” Wallenberg said, a minutelater. “All emergency procedures aregoing into effect.”



“Keep the Federation Council informed, but don’t givethem an open channel,” Sun ordered. There was no point in the Council issuing orders, not now, yet few politicianswould realise that. Maybe it would costhim his career...if, of course, enough humans remained alive afterwards for himto be put in front of a court-martial board. “Inform me if anything on Earth requires my attention.”



It shouldn't, he knew. All civilian aircraft would have been ordered to the nearest airport,regardless of who they were or where they were going. The shelters, such as they were, would betaking people in, while others headed for basements or homes in thecountryside. Everyone had been advisedto prepare for several days without food or drink, causing a rush onsupermarkets and drugstores. The results were chaotic, but assuming Earthsurvived, they should be tolerable. He’dhad plenty of time to ensure that the Federation Navy’s entire complement ofpersonnel – including reserves – were called up for duty. Down on Earth, national formations would betaking up their own defensive positions, or hiding in the countryside to launchan insurgency against alien occupiers. Sun knew he wouldn't live to see the insurgency. One way or another, he had no intention ofsurrendering his command to the Funks.



“Update,” the sensor officer snapped. “Enemy fleet is moving towards Earth.”



Sun frowned as the display updated. The Funks seemed to have chosen to ignoreMars completely, yet why had they decided to come out so far from Earth? Unless...they wanted the human defenders concentrated? Didthey have some new superweapon? TheFunks might have been very bad at basic research – ONI estimated that they hadonly a handful of really competent scientists – but they might have boughtsomething from one of the other Galactics. There were some societies that were far better at keeping secrets fromthe human race than the Funks.



“Order Commodore Yu to prepare to engage,” Sunordered. The Hegemony force bearing downon Earth was too powerful for him to stop if he played by the rules, at leastas the Galactics understood them. But hehad other ideas. Humanity had had plentyof time to think of nasty tricks, some of them coming from science-fictionwriters who had been thinking about space warfare long before Earth had startedto build a fleet to defend the planet. “Andsend in the gunboats as soon as Yu deploys. We need to keep him covered as long as possible.”

***​

The planet the humans called Mars was worthless, at leastto the Hegemony. Apart from establishinga tiny observation post on the planet hundreds of years ago, the Associationhad largely agreed. There were plenty ofhabitable worlds without intelligent races in the galaxy to settle, so whybother colonising Mars? The humanterraforming project had been seen as a sign of weakness by the Hegemony, anadmission that humanity didn't have the nerve or the strength to establishitself as a galactic power. Lady Dalshawondered, instead, if it was a sign of something else, a grasping nature that rivalledthe Hegemony. How many worlds could thehumans have claimed by now if the galaxy had been largely unpopulated?



She pushed the thought aside as her fleet shook down intobattle formation. Two of hersubordinates had revealed their nervousness by questioning her orders. Thankfully, they’d had the sense to do itprivately, saving her the need to assert herself by having them bothkilled. The humans seemed to promotetheir officers based on merit rather than political connections; indeed, theyseemed to disapprove ofnepotism. Lady Dalsha found it difficultto grasp why human clans weren't expected to boost their members wherepossible, but she had to admit that it worked out for them. Squashing potential rivals from other clansmight not have been the best strategy since they’d been invited into thestars. But that was something they hadn’tbeen able to change.



It was tempting to send a message back to the Empress andlearn what was happening on Hegemony Prime, but she’d forbidden allcommunications. The civil war wasprobably underway by now, with the Navy fragmenting along clan lines andHousehold Troops fighting for dominance. It was quite possible that the Empress was dead. Not knowing was agony, yet if she hadknown...what could she do about it? Nothing, save ensuring that the human race was in no condition to takeadvantage of the coming power vacuum. Revenge was all they had left right now.



“Take us towards Earth,” she ordered, flatly. Coming out near Mars flew in the face oftactical doctrine, but it made it harder for the humans to surprise her. And perhaps her tactics would confuse andworry them. Humans had more imagination than most of her kind, so maybe they’dimagine all kinds of superweapons she didn’t possess. Another lesson from the clan wars prior tothe First Empress was that care, deliberation and an unflinching refusal to allowherself to be bullied into making mistakes could keep even a weaker force frombeing trapped and forced into surrender. “Launch recon probes on a constant transmission loop.”



No one questioned the order, even though it too flew inthe face of tactical doctrine. Recondrones were stealthy, but not stealthy enough to escape sensors. Some reports suggested that human sensorswere considerably better than Galactic designs, probably allowing them to trackthe drones easily. There was nothing tobe gained by ordering the drones to remain silent if they could be detected andpicked off before they could transmit.



Slowly, as the fleet crawled the distance between Marsand Earth, data started to flow into the tactical network. The human fleet didn't seem to be anythinglike as powerful as the fleet that had struck fear into the heart of the Hegemony,although she had to caution herself not to take anything for granted. A freighter armed with the cursed human phasecannons could probably inflict some damage on a superdreadnaught before it wasdestroyed. Five cruisers, a design shehad learned to hate, led the human fleet, but the remainder were all old modelships from the Association. The largestof them was a battlecruiser that looked to be over five hundred years old. It didn't seem as if its drive had ever beenreplaced, let alone updated.



“Tactical analysis suggests that the older ships areoperating on minimal crews,” one of the tactical officers said. He was unusually imaginative for a male, channellingthe natural competitive instincts of the male mind into his struggles tounderstand what the humans had created. “Theymust not have the manpower to crew them properly.”



Lady Dalsha hadn’t put any faith in what Hegemony Intelligencehad been reporting about human development since they’d smashed her squadron atTerra Nova, but even they had to have limits. Training up personnel for their crews took time, perhaps longer thanthey had had before kicking off the war. Galactic starships might be largely standardized, thanks to the Cats,yet each ship had its differences. TheHegemony had had its own problems when it had been restricted to purchasingstarships from others powers.



“So it would seem,” she agreed. A battlecruiser required upwards of a thousandhumanoids to crew it properly. The Cats,for reasons no one understood, had placed limits on the development ofautomated systems for starships, even though they would have saved manpowerconsiderably. Not that it really mattered. Fifteen superdreadnaughts could crush eventhe human fleet waiting for them.



“Incoming ships,” the tactical officer said,suddenly. “I’m picking up...seven freighters,Type-56 medium transports.”



The human squadron seemed to be racing directly towardsthem, which was nothing more than suicide. Or so it seemed. The humans hadtaken out an entire command fortress with a starship crammed withantimatter. Why wouldn't they try torepeat their feat against a fleet of superdreadnaughts? But the freighters didn't seem to mount military-gradeshielding. They’d be blown to dust longbefore they got into ramming position. Unless the humans had invented a way to compress even more antimatterinto a freighter...



“Order the destroyer screen to intercept,” sheordered. Splitting her fleet was yetanother tactical innovation, but nine destroyers didn't represent a significantpart of her combat power. And if the freighterswere loaded with antimatter, sacrificingthe destroyers would be an acceptable trade. “And then slow the main body of the fleet. Force them to come to us.”



The minutes ticked away until the display changed rapidlyas the human formation separated into two groups. Thirty gunboats appeared, as if from nowhere,and lanced forwards towards the destroyers, while the freighters they were coveringturned and ran back towards Earth, trying to hide from the wrath of hersuperdreadnaughts. They’d taken thegunboats into battle intending to launch them close to her fleet! The freighters had to be another form ofgunboat carrier, just like the one that had hammered Gaston and sneaked up to HegemonyPrime. Of course the humans would havemore than one design suitable for carrying the accursed little craft.



But without their carriers, the gunboats would rapidlyrun out of life support and their pilots would expire.



“Increase speed,” she ordered. The freighters didn't seem to havemilitary-grade drives either. Hersuperdreadnaughts could run them down before they reached the shelter of Earthand the Federation Navy. “I want those freightersdestroyed the moment we enter range.”



The gunboats were savaging her destroyers, despite thebest efforts of their crews. Destroyers carriedplenty of point defence weapons, but their hulls couldn't take a constantbombardment from implosion bolts without imploding rapidly. Her fleet closed into range, firing on thegunboats in the hopes of picking them off, yet the gunboats merely turned andfled back towards Earth. Hegemony Intelligenceclaimed that one of their best sources on Earth had said that there were overfive hundred gunboats assigned to thedefence of Earth, but she knew that they were wrong. So many gunboats could have destroyed theentire Hegemony Navy.



And the range between her and the freighters was droppingrapidly. Soon they would be able toopen fire...and then they would see.

***​

“Commodore Yu reports that Operation Squash is underway,”the communications officer said, “but he feels that his squadron cannot getaway from the Hegemony ships in time.”



Sun nodded. He’dknown the likely cost of Operation Squash almost as soon as it had beenproposed. But trading a handful of freightersfor a superdreadnaught or two was a net gain by Galactic standards. At least losing Yu’s ships wouldn't decreasehis combat power any, nor would the Martyr Brigades donated by Iran. No one had been quite sure if the IranianGovernment was sincere about wanting to rejoin the world’s community or merelytrying to get rid of a vast number of potential terrorists, but at least theirdeaths would achieve more than butchering harmless civilians.



He started to issue orders, and then stopped. There was no point in micromanaging CommodoreYu from the safety of his cruiser. Yuknew what he had to do to escape and no orders from his superior would changethat. All it would do was irritate him.



The distance between Yu’s squadron and the Hegemony fleetclosed with staggering speed. Someone onthe other side clearly intended to wipe Yu out before he could make it home,precisely the conclusion the tactical planners had hoped that he woulddraw. Offering them a chance to destroyEarth’s merger carrier force was something they couldn't pass up; their veryeagerness proved that they’d drawn the wrong conclusion. Gunboats didn't need to be inside the freighters to hitch a ride.



He settled back in his command chair and waited. It wouldn't be long now before the Funksrealised that they’d been conned.



And if they kept going for another two minutes, they wereabout to be savaged.

***​

The core difference between males and females from theHegemony was that males were excitable, emotional creatures while females werecold, calculating and capable of working together with other females to keepthe males under control. Or so they weretaught at birth, with enough discipline hammered into their scales to make surethat they rarely lost control. No femalewould lose control unless shockedbeyond all recognition.



Lady Dalsha’s head snapped up as one of the female tacticalofficers yelped in alarm. “Mines,” sheshouted, as new icons flashed into existence on the displays. “Mines ahead!”



“All stop,” Lady Dalsha ordered, keeping a firm grip onher own emotions. There was no time forpanic, whatever the tactical officer thought. “Evasive action!”



The humans had tricked her, despite all of her careful preparation. Those freighters hadn't been carriers at all,but minelayers. Everyone had known that mining interplanetary space wasn'tcost-effect, not when a potential attacker could approach from almost anyangle. The mines the humans had used atHammerfall had floated into a relatively small area of space...



Here, they’d lured her right onto the minefield. No...they’d laid it right in front of herfleet and she hadn't even noticed. She’dbeen so captivated by the opportunity to take out the carriers for no returnthat she hadn't considered the possibility of a trap.



The first mine detonated against a cruiser’s shields,exploding with staggering force. Otherstargeted destroyers or superdreadnaughts, activating tiny one-use drives thatsent them hurtling towards their targets before they could escape. The superdreadnaughts opened fire, sweepingthe remaining mines from space, yet it wasn't enough. Three superdreadnaughts were badly damaged,including one that wasn't fit to continue the offensive. Just like that, the humans had evened theodds.



But it wouldn't be enough to save them.



“Sweep space for further minefields,” she ordered.



They wouldn't catch her that way twice, she vowed. She was prepared to run the risk of burningout her active sensors in exchange for avoiding any further traps. At least these mines weren't as dangerous asthe ones they’d used at Hammerfall.



“And then resume course,” she added. “Take us to Earth.”

 

ChapterForty-Three<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />



“Admiral?”



Admiral Sun looked up from his desk, fighting back theurgent desire to yawn. He’d caught acouple of brief naps in-between reading reports and monitoring trainingsimulations, but not enough to keep him from feeling sleepy. The doctors had given him a booster, addingstrict warnings that he was not to even consider using it until the enemyactually arrived.



“Yes,” he said, “what is it?”



“Long-range sensors have detected quantum gates openingnear Mars,” Wallenberg said. “CIC callsthem Hegemony superdreadnaught gates.”



“Understood,” Sun said. He pressed the tap against his bare arm and grimaced as it pumped the boosterinto his bloodstream. Users got nearly aday before they had to go to bed to sleep it off. A second dose was out of the question. “I'm on my way. Alert the fleet and dispatch a courier boatto Admiral Sampson.”



He glanced around his office, taking a final look at thewall he’d covered with medals and decorations from his career in both the PLANand the Federation Navy, and then headed to the CIC. The booster was starting to work, leaving himfeeling supercharged, as if he had eaten enough sugar to turn him into ahyperactive child. It was a shame thathe couldn't feel so good permanently, but the doctors had made it quite clear;boosters were more addictive than even Joy Juice and breaking the addition wasalmost impossible. Even an Admiral couldn'torder boosters without facing hard questions from the medical staff. He strode into the CIC, waving aside theMarine who was about to announce his presence, and took one look at thedisplay. A handful of red iconsclustered near Mars.



“Curious,” he said, aloud. CIC’s tactical staff had already startedattempting to project the enemy’s intentions, yet their tactics made littlesense. Even if the Funks intended toslip back into quantum space and reach Earth that way, the Federation Navy hadalready been alerted. Standard doctrine orderedstarships to emerge as close to their target as possible, to minimise the timetheir enemies had to prepare their defences. “Tactical analysis?”



“Maybe they intend to blow up the Marine facilities at OlympusMons,” Wallenberg suggested. “Or perhapsthey intend to destroy Scarlet Base.”



“Or Robinson City,” Sun agreed. And yet that didn’t quite make senseeither. None of humanity’s facilities onMars were in any way vital, certainlynot compared to the Luna Yards or Island One. There might have been a few million humans on Mars slowly turning theplanet into a decent place to live, but why bother to target them...



...Unless the Funks aimed at total extermination. The thought made him shiver, despite what thesociologists had claimed time and time again. They pointed to Funk history andasserted that the Funks didn't destroy their enemies; they merely assimilatedthem into the victorious clan. But that hadn'tworked out too well for the Gobbles, or anyone else unlucky enough to fall intotheir claws. Multiracial breeding wasjust as impossible for the Funks as for any other race, limiting how faroutsiders could blend into the victorious Hegemony.



Not for the first time, he found himself cursing thelimitations of active and passive sensors. Opening a quantum gate generated a pulse that travelled faster thanlight, but all other sensors were restricted to light-speed. The Funks could be bombarding Mars now andEarth wouldn't know about it for several minutes. Mars would send an update as soon aspossible, yet even if Mars was underattack the Federation Navy couldn't move out of position to cover the redplanet, not when Earth was threatened. The separatists on Mars would make vast amounts of political capital outof it.



“Earth has issued a warning,” Wallenberg said, a minutelater. “All emergency procedures aregoing into effect.”



“Keep the Federation Council informed, but don’t givethem an open channel,” Sun ordered. There was no point in the Council issuing orders, not now, yet few politicianswould realise that. Maybe it would costhim his career...if, of course, enough humans remained alive afterwards for himto be put in front of a court-martial board. “Inform me if anything on Earth requires my attention.”



It shouldn't, he knew. All civilian aircraft would have been ordered to the nearest airport,regardless of who they were or where they were going. The shelters, such as they were, would betaking people in, while others headed for basements or homes in thecountryside. Everyone had been advisedto prepare for several days without food or drink, causing a rush onsupermarkets and drugstores. The results were chaotic, but assuming Earthsurvived, they should be tolerable. He’dhad plenty of time to ensure that the Federation Navy’s entire complement ofpersonnel – including reserves – were called up for duty. Down on Earth, national formations would betaking up their own defensive positions, or hiding in the countryside to launchan insurgency against alien occupiers. Sun knew he wouldn't live to see the insurgency. One way or another, he had no intention ofsurrendering his command to the Funks.



“Update,” the sensor officer snapped. “Enemy fleet is moving towards Earth.”



Sun frowned as the display updated. The Funks seemed to have chosen to ignoreMars completely, yet why had they decided to come out so far from Earth? Unless...they wanted the human defenders concentrated? Didthey have some new superweapon? TheFunks might have been very bad at basic research – ONI estimated that they hadonly a handful of really competent scientists – but they might have boughtsomething from one of the other Galactics. There were some societies that were far better at keeping secrets fromthe human race than the Funks.



“Order Commodore Yu to prepare to engage,” Sunordered. The Hegemony force bearing downon Earth was too powerful for him to stop if he played by the rules, at leastas the Galactics understood them. But hehad other ideas. Humanity had had plentyof time to think of nasty tricks, some of them coming from science-fictionwriters who had been thinking about space warfare long before Earth had startedto build a fleet to defend the planet. “Andsend in the gunboats as soon as Yu deploys. We need to keep him covered as long as possible.”

***​

The planet the humans called Mars was worthless, at leastto the Hegemony. Apart from establishinga tiny observation post on the planet hundreds of years ago, the Associationhad largely agreed. There were plenty ofhabitable worlds without intelligent races in the galaxy to settle, so whybother colonising Mars? The humanterraforming project had been seen as a sign of weakness by the Hegemony, anadmission that humanity didn't have the nerve or the strength to establishitself as a galactic power. Lady Dalshawondered, instead, if it was a sign of something else, a grasping nature that rivalledthe Hegemony. How many worlds could thehumans have claimed by now if the galaxy had been largely unpopulated?



She pushed the thought aside as her fleet shook down intobattle formation. Two of hersubordinates had revealed their nervousness by questioning her orders. Thankfully, they’d had the sense to do itprivately, saving her the need to assert herself by having them bothkilled. The humans seemed to promotetheir officers based on merit rather than political connections; indeed, theyseemed to disapprove ofnepotism. Lady Dalsha found it difficultto grasp why human clans weren't expected to boost their members wherepossible, but she had to admit that it worked out for them. Squashing potential rivals from other clansmight not have been the best strategy since they’d been invited into thestars. But that was something they hadn’tbeen able to change.



It was tempting to send a message back to the Empress andlearn what was happening on Hegemony Prime, but she’d forbidden allcommunications. The civil war wasprobably underway by now, with the Navy fragmenting along clan lines andHousehold Troops fighting for dominance. It was quite possible that the Empress was dead. Not knowing was agony, yet if she hadknown...what could she do about it? Nothing, save ensuring that the human race was in no condition to takeadvantage of the coming power vacuum. Revenge was all they had left right now.



“Take us towards Earth,” she ordered, flatly. Coming out near Mars flew in the face oftactical doctrine, but it made it harder for the humans to surprise her. And perhaps her tactics would confuse andworry them. Humans had more imagination than most of her kind, so maybe they’dimagine all kinds of superweapons she didn’t possess. Another lesson from the clan wars prior tothe First Empress was that care, deliberation and an unflinching refusal to allowherself to be bullied into making mistakes could keep even a weaker force frombeing trapped and forced into surrender. “Launch recon probes on a constant transmission loop.”



No one questioned the order, even though it too flew inthe face of tactical doctrine. Recondrones were stealthy, but not stealthy enough to escape sensors. Some reports suggested that human sensorswere considerably better than Galactic designs, probably allowing them to trackthe drones easily. There was nothing tobe gained by ordering the drones to remain silent if they could be detected andpicked off before they could transmit.



Slowly, as the fleet crawled the distance between Marsand Earth, data started to flow into the tactical network. The human fleet didn't seem to be anythinglike as powerful as the fleet that had struck fear into the heart of the Hegemony,although she had to caution herself not to take anything for granted. A freighter armed with the cursed human phasecannons could probably inflict some damage on a superdreadnaught before it wasdestroyed. Five cruisers, a design shehad learned to hate, led the human fleet, but the remainder were all old modelships from the Association. The largestof them was a battlecruiser that looked to be over five hundred years old. It didn't seem as if its drive had ever beenreplaced, let alone updated.



“Tactical analysis suggests that the older ships areoperating on minimal crews,” one of the tactical officers said. He was unusually imaginative for a male, channellingthe natural competitive instincts of the male mind into his struggles tounderstand what the humans had created. “Theymust not have the manpower to crew them properly.”



Lady Dalsha hadn’t put any faith in what Hegemony Intelligencehad been reporting about human development since they’d smashed her squadron atTerra Nova, but even they had to have limits. Training up personnel for their crews took time, perhaps longer thanthey had had before kicking off the war. Galactic starships might be largely standardized, thanks to the Cats,yet each ship had its differences. TheHegemony had had its own problems when it had been restricted to purchasingstarships from others powers.



“So it would seem,” she agreed. A battlecruiser required upwards of a thousandhumanoids to crew it properly. The Cats,for reasons no one understood, had placed limits on the development ofautomated systems for starships, even though they would have saved manpowerconsiderably. Not that it really mattered. Fifteen superdreadnaughts could crush eventhe human fleet waiting for them.



“Incoming ships,” the tactical officer said,suddenly. “I’m picking up...seven freighters,Type-56 medium transports.”



The human squadron seemed to be racing directly towardsthem, which was nothing more than suicide. Or so it seemed. The humans hadtaken out an entire command fortress with a starship crammed withantimatter. Why wouldn't they try torepeat their feat against a fleet of superdreadnaughts? But the freighters didn't seem to mount military-gradeshielding. They’d be blown to dust longbefore they got into ramming position. Unless the humans had invented a way to compress even more antimatterinto a freighter...



“Order the destroyer screen to intercept,” sheordered. Splitting her fleet was yetanother tactical innovation, but nine destroyers didn't represent a significantpart of her combat power. And if the freighterswere loaded with antimatter, sacrificingthe destroyers would be an acceptable trade. “And then slow the main body of the fleet. Force them to come to us.”



The minutes ticked away until the display changed rapidlyas the human formation separated into two groups. Thirty gunboats appeared, as if from nowhere,and lanced forwards towards the destroyers, while the freighters they were coveringturned and ran back towards Earth, trying to hide from the wrath of hersuperdreadnaughts. They’d taken thegunboats into battle intending to launch them close to her fleet! The freighters had to be another form ofgunboat carrier, just like the one that had hammered Gaston and sneaked up to HegemonyPrime. Of course the humans would havemore than one design suitable for carrying the accursed little craft.



But without their carriers, the gunboats would rapidlyrun out of life support and their pilots would expire.



“Increase speed,” she ordered. The freighters didn't seem to havemilitary-grade drives either. Hersuperdreadnaughts could run them down before they reached the shelter of Earthand the Federation Navy. “I want those freightersdestroyed the moment we enter range.”



The gunboats were savaging her destroyers, despite thebest efforts of their crews. Destroyers carriedplenty of point defence weapons, but their hulls couldn't take a constantbombardment from implosion bolts without imploding rapidly. Her fleet closed into range, firing on thegunboats in the hopes of picking them off, yet the gunboats merely turned andfled back towards Earth. Hegemony Intelligenceclaimed that one of their best sources on Earth had said that there were overfive hundred gunboats assigned to thedefence of Earth, but she knew that they were wrong. So many gunboats could have destroyed theentire Hegemony Navy.



And the range between her and the freighters was droppingrapidly. Soon they would be able toopen fire...and then they would see.

***​

“Commodore Yu reports that Operation Squash is underway,”the communications officer said, “but he feels that his squadron cannot getaway from the Hegemony ships in time.”



Sun nodded. He’dknown the likely cost of Operation Squash almost as soon as it had beenproposed. But trading a handful of freightersfor a superdreadnaught or two was a net gain by Galactic standards. At least losing Yu’s ships wouldn't decreasehis combat power any, nor would the Martyr Brigades donated by Iran. No one had been quite sure if the IranianGovernment was sincere about wanting to rejoin the world’s community or merelytrying to get rid of a vast number of potential terrorists, but at least theirdeaths would achieve more than butchering harmless civilians.



He started to issue orders, and then stopped. There was no point in micromanaging CommodoreYu from the safety of his cruiser. Yuknew what he had to do to escape and no orders from his superior would changethat. All it would do was irritate him.



The distance between Yu’s squadron and the Hegemony fleetclosed with staggering speed. Someone onthe other side clearly intended to wipe Yu out before he could make it home,precisely the conclusion the tactical planners had hoped that he woulddraw. Offering them a chance to destroyEarth’s merger carrier force was something they couldn't pass up; their veryeagerness proved that they’d drawn the wrong conclusion. Gunboats didn't need to be inside the freighters to hitch a ride.



He settled back in his command chair and waited. It wouldn't be long now before the Funksrealised that they’d been conned.



And if they kept going for another two minutes, they wereabout to be savaged.

***​

The core difference between males and females from theHegemony was that males were excitable, emotional creatures while females werecold, calculating and capable of working together with other females to keepthe males under control. Or so they weretaught at birth, with enough discipline hammered into their scales to make surethat they rarely lost control. No femalewould lose control unless shockedbeyond all recognition.



Lady Dalsha’s head snapped up as one of the female tacticalofficers yelped in alarm. “Mines,” sheshouted, as new icons flashed into existence on the displays. “Mines ahead!”



“All stop,” Lady Dalsha ordered, keeping a firm grip onher own emotions. There was no time forpanic, whatever the tactical officer thought. “Evasive action!”



The humans had tricked her, despite all of her careful preparation. Those freighters hadn't been carriers at all,but minelayers. Everyone had known that mining interplanetary space wasn'tcost-effect, not when a potential attacker could approach from almost anyangle. The mines the humans had used atHammerfall had floated into a relatively small area of space...



Here, they’d lured her right onto the minefield. No...they’d laid it right in front of herfleet and she hadn't even noticed. She’dbeen so captivated by the opportunity to take out the carriers for no returnthat she hadn't considered the possibility of a trap.



The first mine detonated against a cruiser’s shields,exploding with staggering force. Otherstargeted destroyers or superdreadnaughts, activating tiny one-use drives thatsent them hurtling towards their targets before they could escape. The superdreadnaughts opened fire, sweepingthe remaining mines from space, yet it wasn't enough. Three superdreadnaughts were badly damaged,including one that wasn't fit to continue the offensive. Just like that, the humans had evened theodds.



But it wouldn't be enough to save them.



“Sweep space for further minefields,” she ordered.



They wouldn't catch her that way twice, she vowed. She was prepared to run the risk of burningout her active sensors in exchange for avoiding any further traps. At least these mines weren't as dangerous asthe ones they’d used at Hammerfall.



“And then resume course,” she added. “Take us to Earth.”

 

Chapter Forty-Four<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />



“Well, we didn't expect that to stop them, did we?”



The mode in the CIC had darkened as the Funks resumed theircourse for Earth. A handful of destroyedships weren't enough to convince the Funks to think better of their plans, eventhough at least two superdreadnaughts were badly damaged. They were still in formation, however, which suggestedthat the damage wasn't that serious. It was difficult to tell at long range, butthe techs who had swarmed over the captured superdreadnaughts had reported thatthey could take a hell of a lot of punishment before being crippled ordestroyed. The Cats had designed themvery well.



“This is definitely the Battle of the Line,” one of thesensor operators muttered, just loud enough to be heard. “We’re going to get our asses kicked.”



“That will do,” Sun said, mildly. “General orders to the fleet; the battle linewill prepare to advance against the enemy.”



The Funks were playing it carefully, very carefully. Their speed had slowed to the point where itwould take them upwards of an hour to range in on Earth and – according to thestealth recon drones – they were probing every atom in space with intensesuspicion. If Commodore Yu had had thetime and supplies to lay more mines, they’d probably have seen them before themines entered attack range. They’dprobably learned a great deal from their attempts to sweep the skies overHammerfall.



Sun could feel the tension rising on Pompey’s bridge as the crew braced themselves for the coming onslaught. The Italians had insisted on naming her –they’d contributed enough money to the Federation to pay for one of thecruisers – but there had been a shortage of famous Admirals from Italy thatpassed through the Navy’s approval process. Eventually, they’d named her after the son of Pompey the Great, the manwho had bedevilled Caesar Augustus. Thethought of the political strife over the naming of a handful of cruisers neverfailed to amuse him, and distract him from the coming battle.



The seconds ticked down relentlessly. “Admiral,” a sensor tech reported, “the enemyfleet is approaching Point Custer.”



“The battle line will advance,” Sun said. He tapped his console. “Formation Alpha-Three; I say again,Formation Alpha-Three.”



Pompey shiveredas her drives pushed her out of orbit, heading right towards the enemyfleet. The cruisers could easily haveoutraced the other ships, but Sun had ordered them to keep pace so they couldattack in a body. Most of the converted freighterswere really little more than missile platforms, or suicide vessels ready to tryto ram the enemy ships. The remainingwarships were no more advanced than anything belonging to the Hegemony. Buying warships from the Galactics had itsdisadvantages.



And the Funks were almost at Point Custer.



The tactical display updated itself, displaying projectedtrajectories and the likely point of contact between the two fleets. Each projection varied from time to time, asthe Funks altered course slightly or slowed to continue scanning for mineslying in wait for their ships. Sun hadto smile, even though he knew that their efforts were wasted. There were no other mines waiting for them tomake a mistake.



And if their timing failed, he’d be committed to closeaction against an enemy fleet that outgunned him by at least ten to one.



Sun was one of the very few people on Earth who knewabout Bolthole. Admiral Sampson hadordered it done in complete secrecy, choosing not to inform the FederationCouncil. The Council would have debated endlesslyover who should be allowed to go, wasting time the human race needed to prepareits last ditch strategy. A small crew, afew hundred colonists...and a complete genetic bank for humanity had beenprepared and launched into space, along with a pair of destroyers forescort. If Earth died today, and theNine Stars were wiped out sooner afterwards, the human race would live on. And with a complete technological base attheir disposal, the new colony would develop far faster than anyone wouldexpect. By the time they encountered theGalactics again, they would be more advanced than anyone else.



The thought was reassuring, even though he could neverhave shared it with his crew. Bolthole’sbest defence was secrecy...and if that meant leaving the vast majority ofpeople convinced that humanity was about to become extinct, it was a worthwhileprice to pay.



He smiled as the two fleets converged. One way or another, the Battle of Earth wasgoing to go down in the history books. And those books would be written by humans.

***​

Lady Dalsha watched calmly as the human fleet slowlydeployed in front of her. The humanswere good at using their gunboats to destroy the recon probes, but she’dalready managed to get a fairly complete picture of their fleet. Apart from the five cruisers, there wasnothing in the fleet to concern her – even if they were suicide ships. They’dprogrammed their datanets to compensate for human tricks; any starship thatcame within ramming range would instantly be targeted by every superdreadnaughtwithin range.



“Target the cruisers first,” she ordered. The warships the humans had somehow obtainedfrom the Galactics, using the funds from Gaston, wouldn't be a serious problemunless they did manage to ram the superdreadnaughts. They just couldn’t put out enough firepowerto deter her fleet from advancing. Besides, she had a surprise of her own up in her claws. “Open fire as soon as they come into range.”



She felt her mouth drop open in a cold smile ofanticipation. “And launch the specialmissiles as soon as we engage the enemy,” she added. “Your target is Earth.”

***​

“Enemy fleet is targeting us,” a tactical officersaid. “Request permission to bringjammers online.”



“Power them up, but do not activate until they are aboutto open fire,” Sun ordered. The jammersshould work, according to the experts on Galactic technology, but they’d neverbeen tested outside of simulations. One wordof warning leaking out and the technology might become useless veryquickly. At least humanity had a slightrange advantage. “All ships are to open fireas soon as we come into range. Thetargets are the superdreadnaughts.”



The Funk formation was shifting rapidly, showing a well-drilledprecision that would have been admirable if they hadn't been enemies. Their smaller craft hung back, while thesuperdreadnaughts slipped into the lead, ready to turn their awesome firepoweron his ships. Someone on the other sidehad more imagination than he would have liked, he realised; they knew thattheir smaller ships would get chopped apart by human phase cannons, so they weren'texposing them as doctrine suggested. Instead,the superdreadnaughts would hammer his ships while their smaller comradescovered their flanks and made attack runs difficult.



Coming to think ofit, he thought, they can probablyenhance their point defence from those positions. Someone on that side has been thinking aboutwhat we can do and how to counter it.



The seconds ticked down...and then...



Pompey openedfire. Her consorts followed a secondlater, bright beams of energy flaring from their hulls and lancing out tostrike the Hegemony superdreadnaughts. The beams rotated their modulation rapidly, but to no avail; the Funkshad reinforced their shields until they entered firing range of their ownweapons. It was clever, Sun admitted inthe privacy of his own head, effectively defusing the human rangeadvantage. And their smaller ships couldstill target the gunboats if they lunged into the attack.



“Enemy ships are preparing to fire,” the tactical officersaid. “Jammers online and ready...”



“Evasive action,” Sun ordered. They’d simulated the results of the jammersendlessly until they’d worked out most of the possible moves and countermoves availableto the combatants once the jammers were deployed. One possible tactic for the Funks was simplyfiring using the last firing solution they’d worked out before the jammers wereactivated and praying for a direct hit. “Continuefiring!”

***​

“We’ve lost our targeting locks!”



Lady Dalsha swallowed a curse. Targeting locks were needed to concentratefire against a target and the humans had somehow disrupted her systems. At least they could fire at where the humanshad been, but they wouldn't remain there for long. And with the Hegemony ships opening fire,they were suddenly vulnerable to human fire. The humans had timed their latest surprise perfectly.



“Adjust targeting computers,” she ordered, as hersuperdreadnaught lurched. A human beamhad sliced into her hull before the shields automatically adjusted tocompensate. “Track their weapons andfire back based on the origin of their shots.”



It was complicated, more complicated than the standardmethod, but it seemed to work. And onlythe human cruisers were firing. The restof their ships seemed to be hanging back, almost as if they were trying toavoid attracting her attention. Or ifthey wanted her to forget about them while the fiendishly capable humancruisers tore into her fleet. But onceshe had forgotten about them, they probably intended to ram her ships.



But they’d underestimated the sheer level of firepowershe’d brought to the battle.



“Battlecruisers are to shift fire to the Galactic ships,”she said. It was unlikely in the extremethat any actual Galactics would be onboard. Even if there were, the Hegemony wouldn't beblamed for their deaths. “Superdreadnaughtsand heavy cruisers are to continue targeting the human cruisers.”

***​

“Admiral,” Wallenberg said, “some of these Funk missilesare behaving oddly.”



Sun tapped his console and zoomed in on the data from therecon drones. Wallenberg was right; the ArtificialStupid in charge of flagging potentially interesting pieces of data had notedit right away. The Funks might havecopied all of their technology from the Association, but they’d been goodstudents...and the Association’s technology was a byword for reliability. They shouldn't be burning out mere momentsafter they were launched from a squadron of heavy cruisers.



He ignored the brief lurch as Pompey manoeuvred violently to avoid a Funk superdreadnaught’s determinedattempt to kill her. Some of thetactical planners had questioned the wisdom of the fleet’s commanding officerflying his flag on one of the ships intended for close assaults on the enemyfleet, but Admiral Sampson had set the trend for commanding officers leadingtheir people from the front and Sun had no intention of disgracing him. Besides, if they lost this battle, Earth wouldn'tlast much longer than the Federation Navy...



The wry thought connected the dots for him. “Hammerfall! “They learned from Hammerfall!”



Galactics only put a single one-shot drive in theirmissiles, mainly because long-range missiles were easy targets for point defence. Humans had used a modified missile to attackHammerfall; the Funks, it seemed, had copied the idea remarkably quickly. Too quickly...had someone helped them, or hadthey simply managed to reprogram the missile drives to allow them to reactivateinstead of burning out.



And those missiles were racing towards Earth.



“General alert to the defences and the gunboats,” hesnapped. It was already nearly too late,but they had to try. “Those missiles arethe first priority. Take them out now!”



If he was wrong...but he knew with a terrible sinking certaintythat he was right. Everyone knew that mass planetary bombardmentwould bring down the wrath of the Galactics on their heads, but the Funks werefighting a civil war. They no longer hadmuch to lose.

***​

Earth’s defences were puny compared to those surroundingHegemony Prime. The Federation Navy hadconcentrated on starships, leaving only a small amount of resources for fortifyingEarth. A handful of purchasedfortresses, a number of automated OWPs and a squadron of gunboats were barelyenough firepower to slow a battlecruiser, let alone a squadron ofsuperdreadnaughts. But they were backedup by the best sensor network in the galaxy. Targeting priorities were assigned as the defences opened fire, reactingwith a speed that was quite literally inhuman. Of the two hundred missiles fired by the Funks, seventeen survived tohit Earth.



One of them came down in Greenland, another in the SaharaDesert, but the remaining fifteen maintained their systems long enough to lockin on cities. Moscow was the first todie in a colossal explosion, but it was followed rapidly by Washington, Paris,London, Bonn, Tokyo, Delhi, Tehran, Mecca, Istanbul, Beijing and five othercities. The targeting priorities confused thedefending computers – nine of the targeted cities were national capitals, butthe remainder seemed to have been picked at random – but it hardlymattered. Straight fusion warheads leftalmost no radioactivity behind them.



For the population of the targeted cities, it was nomercy.

***​

Admiral Sun’s family lived in Beijing. The thought tore at his mind for a coldsecond and then he pushed it away, firmly. At least the Funks hadn't used antimatter warheads in theirstrikes. They would have depopulated theentire planet if they had.



The Funk fleet was slowly wearing down his own, eventhough three superdreadnaughts had been destroyed outright and a further fourbadly damaged. They’d been quick torealise the advantage they had over the ships humanity had bought from the Galactics,targeting them before Sun could realise that they were refusing to be temptedby his cruisers. Two of the would-besuicide ships had gone up in staggering explosions; a third had managed to rama battlecruiser, vaporising both ships in a spectacular blast. Most of the modified freighters were gone,while humanity’s sole battlecruiser had been targeted and blown apart by a pairof Funk superdreadnaughts. The EarthDefence Force was slowly being worn down.



Pompey twitchedas she unleashed a spread of antimatter torpedoes. The enhanced torpedoes were about the onlyweapon the Funks couldn't counter directly and the human cruisers were firingthem without worrying about ammunition stockpiles. There would be no time to return to Earth andrearm before the Funks managed to get into weapons range of Earth, althoughthat hadn't stopped them from bombarding the planet already. A Funk superdreadnaught staggered out of lineas the torpedoes impacted directly on its shields, overloading and burning outthe generators. One of his survivingcruisers took the opportunity to launch its own spread and vaporise the superdreadnaughtbefore it could escape, just before its two comrades bracketed the cruiser withtheir phase cannons. She twisted andturned, but she was unable to escape before her shields failed and the phasecannons ripped into her hull.



“Drake has beendestroyed,” Wallenberg reported. By now,they were inured to losses. He couldfeel it in his crew, the cold awareness that they would not leave thebattlefield alive twinned with the determination to kill as many Funks as theycould before their ship was destroyed. AFunk heavy cruiser tried to intercept Pompey, only to be savaged by the cruiser’sphase cannons and left drifting out of formation. The smaller ships couldn't take anything likethe punishment of the larger ones, but there was no time to complete itsdestruction. All that mattered waskilling the superdreadnaughts.



The Funks kept firing, ignoring their losses and forcinghim to stand and fight. His fleet wasbeing torn apart, the last of the converted ships meeting a fiery end as ittried to ram a heavy cruiser. Another human-designed cruiser crashed into asuperdreadnaught and both ships blew apart in a sheet of fire; it wasimpossible to tell if one of the ships had rammed the other intentionally or ifit had merely been an accident. Twocruisers left...



And his family were dead.



“Take us in to point-blank range,” he ordered,savagely. No one demurred. “Right down their ****ing throats.”

***​

She was winning.



She had to bewinning, even though it was shaping up to be the most costly victory in theHegemony’s long history. No clan wouldhave continued a war knowing that the only outcome was certain defeat and annihilation. Any of the lesser races would have despaired ofvictory and lost themselves in defeatism, but the humans kept fighting. Ships that shouldn't have had any place inthe line of battle were lashing out, hacking away at her forces and weakeningthem piece by piece. Already, hersuperdreadnaught losses had exceeded what she’d thought were her mostpessimistic estimates. At this rate,only a handful of ships would be left when she finally managed to range in onEarth itself.



And then the human race would understand the true natureof power. Her superdreadnaughts couldblow the entire planet into fragments – and they would, followed rapidly by therest of the inhabited planets in this star system. And then they would attend to the remaining humancolonies. The Tarn had started to invitehumans to settle in their systems – no doubt hoping to tap human inventivenessfor themselves – but they’d surrender the refugees once they realised they werefacing a rogue fleet that no longer cared about the consequences of its actions. There were tales from the homeworld aboutwarriors who had fought hopeless wars, terrifying their victims and even theirown clans. They hadn't cared about thesurvival of their own people, only about how much damage they could do beforethey died.



The two remaining human ships were forming up for a finalattack run. They would damage her fleet,perhaps even take two more superdreadnaughts into death with them, but that wasacceptable. They’d be burned out ofspace before they could escape again. And then Earth’s defences couldn't stop missiles hurled into a planetarygravity well...



She watched, flexing her claws, as the human ships closedin. One staggered under a fusillade ofphase cannon bursts, but kept going until it finally blew into a sheet offlame. The other held out for longer,closing in on a superdreadnaught that had been barely scratched by the fightinguntil it rammed straight into its target. No ship could survive such an impact.



But the way to Earth was clear.


“Advance,” she ordered. No more humantricks would stop her. “Prepare to...”



“Quantum gates,” the sensor officer snapped. “Opening up right on top of us!”

 

Chapter Forty-Four<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />



“Well, we didn't expect that to stop them, did we?”



The mode in the CIC had darkened as the Funks resumed theircourse for Earth. A handful of destroyedships weren't enough to convince the Funks to think better of their plans, eventhough at least two superdreadnaughts were badly damaged. They were still in formation, however, which suggestedthat the damage wasn't that serious. It was difficult to tell at long range, butthe techs who had swarmed over the captured superdreadnaughts had reported thatthey could take a hell of a lot of punishment before being crippled ordestroyed. The Cats had designed themvery well.



“This is definitely the Battle of the Line,” one of thesensor operators muttered, just loud enough to be heard. “We’re going to get our asses kicked.”



“That will do,” Sun said, mildly. “General orders to the fleet; the battle linewill prepare to advance against the enemy.”



The Funks were playing it carefully, very carefully. Their speed had slowed to the point where itwould take them upwards of an hour to range in on Earth and – according to thestealth recon drones – they were probing every atom in space with intensesuspicion. If Commodore Yu had had thetime and supplies to lay more mines, they’d probably have seen them before themines entered attack range. They’dprobably learned a great deal from their attempts to sweep the skies overHammerfall.



Sun could feel the tension rising on Pompey’s bridge as the crew braced themselves for the coming onslaught. The Italians had insisted on naming her –they’d contributed enough money to the Federation to pay for one of thecruisers – but there had been a shortage of famous Admirals from Italy thatpassed through the Navy’s approval process. Eventually, they’d named her after the son of Pompey the Great, the manwho had bedevilled Caesar Augustus. Thethought of the political strife over the naming of a handful of cruisers neverfailed to amuse him, and distract him from the coming battle.



The seconds ticked down relentlessly. “Admiral,” a sensor tech reported, “the enemyfleet is approaching Point Custer.”



“The battle line will advance,” Sun said. He tapped his console. “Formation Alpha-Three; I say again,Formation Alpha-Three.”



Pompey shiveredas her drives pushed her out of orbit, heading right towards the enemyfleet. The cruisers could easily haveoutraced the other ships, but Sun had ordered them to keep pace so they couldattack in a body. Most of the converted freighterswere really little more than missile platforms, or suicide vessels ready to tryto ram the enemy ships. The remainingwarships were no more advanced than anything belonging to the Hegemony. Buying warships from the Galactics had itsdisadvantages.



And the Funks were almost at Point Custer.



The tactical display updated itself, displaying projectedtrajectories and the likely point of contact between the two fleets. Each projection varied from time to time, asthe Funks altered course slightly or slowed to continue scanning for mineslying in wait for their ships. Sun hadto smile, even though he knew that their efforts were wasted. There were no other mines waiting for them tomake a mistake.



And if their timing failed, he’d be committed to closeaction against an enemy fleet that outgunned him by at least ten to one.



Sun was one of the very few people on Earth who knewabout Bolthole. Admiral Sampson hadordered it done in complete secrecy, choosing not to inform the FederationCouncil. The Council would have debated endlesslyover who should be allowed to go, wasting time the human race needed to prepareits last ditch strategy. A small crew, afew hundred colonists...and a complete genetic bank for humanity had beenprepared and launched into space, along with a pair of destroyers forescort. If Earth died today, and theNine Stars were wiped out sooner afterwards, the human race would live on. And with a complete technological base attheir disposal, the new colony would develop far faster than anyone wouldexpect. By the time they encountered theGalactics again, they would be more advanced than anyone else.



The thought was reassuring, even though he could neverhave shared it with his crew. Bolthole’sbest defence was secrecy...and if that meant leaving the vast majority ofpeople convinced that humanity was about to become extinct, it was a worthwhileprice to pay.



He smiled as the two fleets converged. One way or another, the Battle of Earth wasgoing to go down in the history books. And those books would be written by humans.

***​

Lady Dalsha watched calmly as the human fleet slowlydeployed in front of her. The humanswere good at using their gunboats to destroy the recon probes, but she’dalready managed to get a fairly complete picture of their fleet. Apart from the five cruisers, there wasnothing in the fleet to concern her – even if they were suicide ships. They’dprogrammed their datanets to compensate for human tricks; any starship thatcame within ramming range would instantly be targeted by every superdreadnaughtwithin range.



“Target the cruisers first,” she ordered. The warships the humans had somehow obtainedfrom the Galactics, using the funds from Gaston, wouldn't be a serious problemunless they did manage to ram the superdreadnaughts. They just couldn’t put out enough firepowerto deter her fleet from advancing. Besides, she had a surprise of her own up in her claws. “Open fire as soon as they come into range.”



She felt her mouth drop open in a cold smile ofanticipation. “And launch the specialmissiles as soon as we engage the enemy,” she added. “Your target is Earth.”

***​

“Enemy fleet is targeting us,” a tactical officersaid. “Request permission to bringjammers online.”



“Power them up, but do not activate until they are aboutto open fire,” Sun ordered. The jammersshould work, according to the experts on Galactic technology, but they’d neverbeen tested outside of simulations. One wordof warning leaking out and the technology might become useless veryquickly. At least humanity had a slightrange advantage. “All ships are to open fireas soon as we come into range. Thetargets are the superdreadnaughts.”



The Funk formation was shifting rapidly, showing a well-drilledprecision that would have been admirable if they hadn't been enemies. Their smaller craft hung back, while thesuperdreadnaughts slipped into the lead, ready to turn their awesome firepoweron his ships. Someone on the other sidehad more imagination than he would have liked, he realised; they knew thattheir smaller ships would get chopped apart by human phase cannons, so they weren'texposing them as doctrine suggested. Instead,the superdreadnaughts would hammer his ships while their smaller comradescovered their flanks and made attack runs difficult.



Coming to think ofit, he thought, they can probablyenhance their point defence from those positions. Someone on that side has been thinking aboutwhat we can do and how to counter it.



The seconds ticked down...and then...



Pompey openedfire. Her consorts followed a secondlater, bright beams of energy flaring from their hulls and lancing out tostrike the Hegemony superdreadnaughts. The beams rotated their modulation rapidly, but to no avail; the Funkshad reinforced their shields until they entered firing range of their ownweapons. It was clever, Sun admitted inthe privacy of his own head, effectively defusing the human rangeadvantage. And their smaller ships couldstill target the gunboats if they lunged into the attack.



“Enemy ships are preparing to fire,” the tactical officersaid. “Jammers online and ready...”



“Evasive action,” Sun ordered. They’d simulated the results of the jammersendlessly until they’d worked out most of the possible moves and countermoves availableto the combatants once the jammers were deployed. One possible tactic for the Funks was simplyfiring using the last firing solution they’d worked out before the jammers wereactivated and praying for a direct hit. “Continuefiring!”

***​

“We’ve lost our targeting locks!”



Lady Dalsha swallowed a curse. Targeting locks were needed to concentratefire against a target and the humans had somehow disrupted her systems. At least they could fire at where the humanshad been, but they wouldn't remain there for long. And with the Hegemony ships opening fire,they were suddenly vulnerable to human fire. The humans had timed their latest surprise perfectly.



“Adjust targeting computers,” she ordered, as hersuperdreadnaught lurched. A human beamhad sliced into her hull before the shields automatically adjusted tocompensate. “Track their weapons andfire back based on the origin of their shots.”



It was complicated, more complicated than the standardmethod, but it seemed to work. And onlythe human cruisers were firing. The restof their ships seemed to be hanging back, almost as if they were trying toavoid attracting her attention. Or ifthey wanted her to forget about them while the fiendishly capable humancruisers tore into her fleet. But onceshe had forgotten about them, they probably intended to ram her ships.



But they’d underestimated the sheer level of firepowershe’d brought to the battle.



“Battlecruisers are to shift fire to the Galactic ships,”she said. It was unlikely in the extremethat any actual Galactics would be onboard. Even if there were, the Hegemony wouldn't beblamed for their deaths. “Superdreadnaughtsand heavy cruisers are to continue targeting the human cruisers.”

***​

“Admiral,” Wallenberg said, “some of these Funk missilesare behaving oddly.”



Sun tapped his console and zoomed in on the data from therecon drones. Wallenberg was right; the ArtificialStupid in charge of flagging potentially interesting pieces of data had notedit right away. The Funks might havecopied all of their technology from the Association, but they’d been goodstudents...and the Association’s technology was a byword for reliability. They shouldn't be burning out mere momentsafter they were launched from a squadron of heavy cruisers.



He ignored the brief lurch as Pompey manoeuvred violently to avoid a Funk superdreadnaught’s determinedattempt to kill her. Some of thetactical planners had questioned the wisdom of the fleet’s commanding officerflying his flag on one of the ships intended for close assaults on the enemyfleet, but Admiral Sampson had set the trend for commanding officers leadingtheir people from the front and Sun had no intention of disgracing him. Besides, if they lost this battle, Earth wouldn'tlast much longer than the Federation Navy...



The wry thought connected the dots for him. “Hammerfall! “They learned from Hammerfall!”



Galactics only put a single one-shot drive in theirmissiles, mainly because long-range missiles were easy targets for point defence. Humans had used a modified missile to attackHammerfall; the Funks, it seemed, had copied the idea remarkably quickly. Too quickly...had someone helped them, or hadthey simply managed to reprogram the missile drives to allow them to reactivateinstead of burning out.



And those missiles were racing towards Earth.



“General alert to the defences and the gunboats,” hesnapped. It was already nearly too late,but they had to try. “Those missiles arethe first priority. Take them out now!”



If he was wrong...but he knew with a terrible sinking certaintythat he was right. Everyone knew that mass planetary bombardmentwould bring down the wrath of the Galactics on their heads, but the Funks werefighting a civil war. They no longer hadmuch to lose.

***​

Earth’s defences were puny compared to those surroundingHegemony Prime. The Federation Navy hadconcentrated on starships, leaving only a small amount of resources for fortifyingEarth. A handful of purchasedfortresses, a number of automated OWPs and a squadron of gunboats were barelyenough firepower to slow a battlecruiser, let alone a squadron ofsuperdreadnaughts. But they were backedup by the best sensor network in the galaxy. Targeting priorities were assigned as the defences opened fire, reactingwith a speed that was quite literally inhuman. Of the two hundred missiles fired by the Funks, seventeen survived tohit Earth.



One of them came down in Greenland, another in the SaharaDesert, but the remaining fifteen maintained their systems long enough to lockin on cities. Moscow was the first todie in a colossal explosion, but it was followed rapidly by Washington, Paris,London, Bonn, Tokyo, Delhi, Tehran, Mecca, Istanbul, Beijing and five othercities. The targeting priorities confused thedefending computers – nine of the targeted cities were national capitals, butthe remainder seemed to have been picked at random – but it hardlymattered. Straight fusion warheads leftalmost no radioactivity behind them.



For the population of the targeted cities, it was nomercy.

***​

Admiral Sun’s family lived in Beijing. The thought tore at his mind for a coldsecond and then he pushed it away, firmly. At least the Funks hadn't used antimatter warheads in theirstrikes. They would have depopulated theentire planet if they had.



The Funk fleet was slowly wearing down his own, eventhough three superdreadnaughts had been destroyed outright and a further fourbadly damaged. They’d been quick torealise the advantage they had over the ships humanity had bought from the Galactics,targeting them before Sun could realise that they were refusing to be temptedby his cruisers. Two of the would-besuicide ships had gone up in staggering explosions; a third had managed to rama battlecruiser, vaporising both ships in a spectacular blast. Most of the modified freighters were gone,while humanity’s sole battlecruiser had been targeted and blown apart by a pairof Funk superdreadnaughts. The EarthDefence Force was slowly being worn down.



Pompey twitchedas she unleashed a spread of antimatter torpedoes. The enhanced torpedoes were about the onlyweapon the Funks couldn't counter directly and the human cruisers were firingthem without worrying about ammunition stockpiles. There would be no time to return to Earth andrearm before the Funks managed to get into weapons range of Earth, althoughthat hadn't stopped them from bombarding the planet already. A Funk superdreadnaught staggered out of lineas the torpedoes impacted directly on its shields, overloading and burning outthe generators. One of his survivingcruisers took the opportunity to launch its own spread and vaporise the superdreadnaughtbefore it could escape, just before its two comrades bracketed the cruiser withtheir phase cannons. She twisted andturned, but she was unable to escape before her shields failed and the phasecannons ripped into her hull.



“Drake has beendestroyed,” Wallenberg reported. By now,they were inured to losses. He couldfeel it in his crew, the cold awareness that they would not leave thebattlefield alive twinned with the determination to kill as many Funks as theycould before their ship was destroyed. AFunk heavy cruiser tried to intercept Pompey, only to be savaged by the cruiser’sphase cannons and left drifting out of formation. The smaller ships couldn't take anything likethe punishment of the larger ones, but there was no time to complete itsdestruction. All that mattered waskilling the superdreadnaughts.



The Funks kept firing, ignoring their losses and forcinghim to stand and fight. His fleet wasbeing torn apart, the last of the converted ships meeting a fiery end as ittried to ram a heavy cruiser. Another human-designed cruiser crashed into asuperdreadnaught and both ships blew apart in a sheet of fire; it wasimpossible to tell if one of the ships had rammed the other intentionally or ifit had merely been an accident. Twocruisers left...



And his family were dead.



“Take us in to point-blank range,” he ordered,savagely. No one demurred. “Right down their ****ing throats.”

***​

She was winning.



She had to bewinning, even though it was shaping up to be the most costly victory in theHegemony’s long history. No clan wouldhave continued a war knowing that the only outcome was certain defeat and annihilation. Any of the lesser races would have despaired ofvictory and lost themselves in defeatism, but the humans kept fighting. Ships that shouldn't have had any place inthe line of battle were lashing out, hacking away at her forces and weakeningthem piece by piece. Already, hersuperdreadnaught losses had exceeded what she’d thought were her mostpessimistic estimates. At this rate,only a handful of ships would be left when she finally managed to range in onEarth itself.



And then the human race would understand the true natureof power. Her superdreadnaughts couldblow the entire planet into fragments – and they would, followed rapidly by therest of the inhabited planets in this star system. And then they would attend to the remaining humancolonies. The Tarn had started to invitehumans to settle in their systems – no doubt hoping to tap human inventivenessfor themselves – but they’d surrender the refugees once they realised they werefacing a rogue fleet that no longer cared about the consequences of its actions. There were tales from the homeworld aboutwarriors who had fought hopeless wars, terrifying their victims and even theirown clans. They hadn't cared about thesurvival of their own people, only about how much damage they could do beforethey died.



The two remaining human ships were forming up for a finalattack run. They would damage her fleet,perhaps even take two more superdreadnaughts into death with them, but that wasacceptable. They’d be burned out ofspace before they could escape again. And then Earth’s defences couldn't stop missiles hurled into a planetarygravity well...



She watched, flexing her claws, as the human ships closedin. One staggered under a fusillade ofphase cannon bursts, but kept going until it finally blew into a sheet offlame. The other held out for longer,closing in on a superdreadnaught that had been barely scratched by the fightinguntil it rammed straight into its target. No ship could survive such an impact.



But the way to Earth was clear.


“Advance,” she ordered. No more humantricks would stop her. “Prepare to...”



“Quantum gates,” the sensor officer snapped. “Opening up right on top of us!”

 

And I have a new snippet here - Double-Dealing&ndash;Snippet « The Chrishanger

Comments very welcome!

Chris

 

I hope I don't have to stay up too late this evening.

 

Testing

 

TESTING??

 

The board wouldn't let me update for some reason. I kept getting errors.

Chris

 

The Funks have a new jammer

 

Admiral Sampson is on the way!

 

I've uploaded the files. Grrr.

Chris

 

Epilogue<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />



His age pressed down on him like a leaden weight.



Mentor stood in his quarters and studied the report fromhis agent. It was hard, so hard, toremember why he cared, but he held himself together somehow. He was over five thousand years old, olderthan human civilisation, older than anyone from any of the younger races. And he was heir to a society that traced itsrecorded history back over two million years.



He felt as if he seen everything, done everything. The mental weariness seeping into histhoughts made it hard to think, memories of worlds and peoples long goneblurring into the present day. Therewere machines to store his memories, to save him the task of rememberingeverything, but none of them were perfect. A mind that had once been smarter than any human was decaying under thesheer weight of life experience. Howlong would it be, Mentor wondered, before his mind finally collapsed? Even he didn’t know how many of his kind had fallento the disease affecting his society, tearing them apart from the inside.



The disease was called immortality.



It had been a mistake. He knew that now. There werelimits to flesh and blood that even genetic engineering and nanotech tinkering couldn'tovercome. The birth rate had slowed, andfinally stopped...and then the immortals had begun to die. They’d simply given up and allowed theirminds to decay into nothing, or committed suicide, or died in stupid accidentsthat reflected an unconscious death wish. The entire race had stagnated so long ago that none of them could evenremember the joy of discovering something new. And now...



From a population that had once numbered in thetrillions, only a handful were left.



The Association his people had created didn't know whatwas happening to its founders, but Mentor knew that some of them were beginningto realise that the Association was a hollow shell. How long would it be until the Communecrumbled and the Galactics realised the truth? Not long, he was sure. And then?



His people had made mistakes. Some out of pride, some out of honestintentions – and some out of a desire to keep their position as the supremepower in the galaxy. Those mistakes hadshaped the Association, warping it into something its founders no longer recognised. What would happen when the last of his peoplewere gone? Would the Associationsplinter into war, or would the new leaders establish their own strangleholdover the galaxy?



Mentor didn't know, but he feared for the future. It was why he had gone to Earth. Maybe, just maybe, the human race couldkick-start a process that would reinvigorate the Association. Or maybe they'd just start a series of wars thatwould depopulate most of the galaxy. Even Mentor, with access to a science of psychohistory that was farbeyond anything Earth had even imagined, couldn't say for sure. There were just too many variables.



And he didn't know if he would live long enough to seethe outcome of his final gamble. He didn'tknow if his people’s pride and arrogance – their legacy to the younger races - haddoomed the galaxy. He could just betrying to stop a supernova with nothing more than his furry hands...



But he had to try.



It was all he had left.

The End​

 

Another awesome tale. Great ending too, I like the open ending the story has, leaving room for another story in this universe. Great work!