Original Work The Fires of Freedom

Chapter Thirty-Three

Sarah came back to herself slowly.

Her memories snapped back into place a moment later, prompted by her implants. She’d been captured … clearly, the enemy hadn’t tried to hack her implants or access her mind directly or she’d be dead. She kept her eyes closed, relying on her enhancements to keep her captors from realising she was awake, and reached out with her other senses as best she could. She was lying on her back, her rear pressed against a hard metal surface … her skin crawled unpleasantly, as if her body was being groped by a hundred tiny men. A suppressor field, she noted grimly. She would have preferred the men. The field would be harder to escape.

She activated her implants, hoping to locate an enemy datanode. It was risky, but well within the capabilities of a standard civilian implant … the real trick came after the link was established, allowing her to hack the datanode itself. There was no response. She wasn’t surprised. She was clearly in a prison cell, or something akin to one, and any security systems would either be completely sealed and isolated – the only way to keep out a hacker – or so primitive there was no point in trying to hit them. It was unusual for the Galactics to set up any kind of ‘rock beats laser’ system, but the Tichck definitely knew what had happened to the Tokomak and they might reason themselves into relying on something a little more primitive than even a basic datacore. It wasn’t unknown. The black cells Solar Intelligence used for high-value prisoners were controlled by a system that made Windows 95 look advanced. It was just too dumb to hack.

“I can’t raise anyone,” a voice said. Male, probably in his thirties … very definitely human. The words were Solarian English, not any of the Galactic tongues. “The datanet appears to have gone down completely.”

“Impossible,” another voice said. Younger, also male. “You can’t take down a modern datanet.”

“You can reprogram it to refuse any connections without the right codes,” a third voice said, calmly. Female … she sounded young, but there was something in her tone that suggested she was a great deal older. Rejuvenation could work wonders, yet there were limits. “If they did that …”

“The private net is down too,” the first voice said. “What is happening?”

“Our superiors will be in touch,” a fourth voice said. Thin, sibilant … a Tichck. Probably a male, although it was hard to be sure. “All we have to do is wait.”

Sarah refused to show any change in her expression, despite the sudden flash of exultation. The uprising had begun, a series of coordinated strikes to take control of the fortress and decapitate as much of the enemy leadership as possible. She was too experienced to believe all the strikes would succeed, even if the Tichck regarded the Subdo as utterly harmless, but even a handful of successes would leave the enemy running in circles, unsure of what was happening and unable to coordinate a response. It was the kind of chaos the Firelighters enjoyed, shattering enemy command and control networks and isolating their enforcers, leaving each and every enemy official facing his own private hell while the commando teams slipped in and stole their systems out from under them. She felt a stab of sympathy for the patrolling guards, no doubt frantically trying to raise their superiors as centuries of pent-up hate erupted around them, and told herself she had to be getting old. She hadn’t felt any sympathy for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. It had been almost pleasant to watch them die, after decades of oppressing their own people. Bastards.

Someone poked her, hard. Sarah opened her eyes. The faint shimmer of the suppressor field was clearly visible to her enhanced eyesight, something seemingly insubstantial and yet strong enough to pin her against the metal table if she tried to resist. They’d removed the shackles at some point, probably a little too confident in their field to keep her under control. Another good sign, she noted coldly. If they’d had the slightest idea what she was, they would have put her in a stasis tube or simply executed her on the spot. The suppressor field was strong, but given time she could undermine it and escape.

“Who are you?”

She tilted her head. Two young men, one seemingly just out of his teens. It was impossible to be sure, but unless his rejuvenation had been remarkably advanced he really was as young as he looked. The woman could have passed for someone in her early twenties, but she held herself like a much older and far more experienced operator. Sarah ran their faces through her implant’s files, half-hoping they were listed as possible contacts. They weren’t. Their names were completely unknown.

And, behind them, there was a Tichck. A security officer. Damn.

The young man looked nervous. “What the bloody hell is going on?”

Sarah tried not to roll his eyes. What was he thinking, taking up service with the Tichck? What were they all thinking? There was no shortage of human mercenaries – God knew, they’d used it as cover themselves time and time again – but still … if he’d wanted excitement, he could have joined the Solar Navy. Or the Solar Marines. Or even the Orbital Guard.

She briefly considered telling them the truth, then dismissed the thought. She had no idea which attacks had succeeded, although if they’d taken control of the communications network – or at least shut it down – the attacks on the datanet nodes had definitely been pulled off. There was no way to know if the enemy were truly in disarray, on the verge of being wiped out, or if someone had managed to secure enough breathing space to put together a counterattack. The longer the Tichck in the room remained unsure of himself, the better.

“We can make you talk,” the man said. “If you don’t …”

The ground rumbled below their feet. Sarah laughed, despite herself. It was too late.

***

Chaos, Riley thought to himself, is a ladder.

His lips twitched in dark amusement. Littlefinger had been right about that, although Riley’s experience had left him wondering just what Littlefinger would do when the wheels finally came off. None of the reboots of Game of Thrones had answered that question very well. Chaos was great for smashing the established order, yet unless you managed to restore order and establish yourself as the boss as quickly as possible someone else would do it instead, and that someone might be an irredeemable enemy. He’d seen it played out before, in Iraq and Afghanistan and even Iran. Some lessons had been learnt too late. Others had never been learnt at all.

He checked his datanet terminal, breathing a sigh of relief. Most of the attacks had succeeded, either capturing vital locations or rendering them effectively useless. The command codes had been used to take control of the automated weapons systems, targeting them on every orbiting warship before they’d realised all hell had broken loose. A handful had escaped, jumping into FTL, but nowhere near enough to get organised and mount a proper counterattack. They might run straight for the gravity point and try to blow through … they might succeed. Riley shrugged dismissively. The idea they could keep the uprising secret was just absurd. Sakrknda was just too tightly tied into the interstellar trading network to be allowed to go quiet, certainly not for very long. He’d planned accordingly.

Charles glanced at him. “You ready?”

“Yeah,” Riley said. “You got a read on who’s inside?”

“Your standard secret police office and torture chamber,” Charles said. His tone was light, but Riley could hear the tension. Sarah’s implants would kill her a long time before she broke. “The scouts say there’s never any more than ten or twenty officers on duty at any given time, but …”

He shrugged, expressively. The security forces didn’t allow non-Tichck into their offices, unless they were prisoners. Riley supposed that explained why they were always in a bad mood: their comrades in the navy and bureaucracy were allowed to have servants doing the grunt work, but they had to clean their own toilets and mop the blood from the floors after cutting a suspect to pieces. Secret policemen were universally despised, with reason; the job tended to attract precisely the kind of people who gave them a bad reputation. Killing them would be a pleasure.

“Let’s move,” he said.

The secret police office was unmarked, something that was – in its own way – a mark. The main doors were protected by a pair of grim-looking security guards, both Tichck, who were fumbling with their communicators as he approached. They had to have some idea of what was going on, unless the attacks had succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, but so far this part of the Ring hadn’t seen any real trouble. The office was surrounded by corporate headquarters and expensive housing, inhabited by Tichck and other Galactics who were unlikely to join the uprising. Riley knew the area would be targeted sooner or later, as the Subdo secured control of the Ring, but for the moment it was largely safe.

Or not, he thought, as he shot the first guard. We’re here.

They didn’t break step as they stepped over the two bodies – Charles had shot the second guard – and threw a stun grenade into the lobby. Blue-white light flashed, his implants flashing up warnings cautioning him he was dangerously close to the jangling fields. He pushed inside the moment the light faded, eyes flickering around the chamber. If he hadn’t known what it was, it could have easily passed for any office lobby. The secretary was stumbled over his desk, twitching helplessly. A gun lay by his right hand. Riley scooped it up – it wasn't easy to predict precisely when someone would recover from a stun blast, not when it was hard to be sure just how much of the blast they’d actually taken – and beckoned for the assault team to join them.

“See if you can get into the local network,” he ordered. Neither of them had Sarah’s skill, but their implants were designed to hack GalTech. “Lock down their communications and download their files.”

Charles nodded, then shook his head as Riley directed the Subdo to search the office. “No luck. The system’s already fucked.”

“We did a good job,” Riley said, ruefully. They’d denied the system to the enemy at the cost of denying it to themselves. “Come on.”

He broke into a run. He had no idea what sort of emergency procedures the Tichck had laid down for their security forces, but he knew how secret policemen back home were trained to react if their prisoners were on the verge of being liberated. Sarah might be being murdered in cold blood, if she wasn’t already dead. He took the risk of trying to ping her implants – if the enemy hadn’t realised they were under attack, they deserved everything they got – yet there was no response. Was she already dead?

“Hurry,” he said. The uprising was well underway, and they were needed. “We have to move fast.”

***

“Kill her,” the Tichck said.

“She’s a prisoner,” the woman protested. “And …”

“Kill her,” the Tichck repeated. Sarah thought she heard a hint of panic in the alien’s sibilant tone. The internal alarms were bleeping loudly, suggesting the complex was under attack. “She must not be allowed to escape and report back to her masters.”

The woman hesitated, visibly. Sarah understood. She might be a mercenary, and it was hardly illegal under Solar Law, but killing another human in cold blood would be a good way to get arrested and dropped on a penal colony if she ever got home. The Solar Union protected its citizens – and nearly every human who didn’t live on Earth was a Solarian. And yet, if she didn’t follow her paymaster’s orders …

Sarah didn’t give her time to make up her mind. She triggered her implants, generating a field that weakened the suppressor, allowing her to boost her body up and off the table. Combat routines went live in her mind, battle stimulants blaring through her bloodstream as she landed neatly beside the young man and punched him out. She chuckled, the drugs getting to her, at the surprise on his face. The average man might be stronger than the average woman, but that meant nothing when genetic modifications and technical engagements could more than even the odds. Her blow had been precisely calculated to put him down long enough to deal with the rest of his comrades. The older man charged her, a light in his eyes suggesting he was using battle drugs himself. Her combat routines steered her movements, sending her flying into the air and using her weight to slam him to the floor, the impact knocking him out. She barely noticed as the woman darted backwards, one hand grabbing for the pistol at her belt. Too late. She should have started the moment the Tichck gave the lethal order.

“Get down,” Sarah growled. She slammed her hand into the woman’s throat. Her gun went flying as her neck broke. “You …”

She caught herself and cursed. The drugs were getting to her. She hadn’t meant to kill the woman … the Tichck was running, his jerky movements painfully slow to her enhanced awareness. Of course he was running. Secret policemen were always cowards, unwilling to put their lives in any real danger, fearful the horrible tortures they’d meted out would be – one day – returned in spades. He didn’t even have the nerve to draw his weapon, the cowardly little shit, as he tried to get out the door. But then, what would he expect? He had no reason to expect to be taken alive.

Sarah slammed into his back, throwing him to the ground. The alien was surprisingly strong, for his size, or he had military-grade implants worked into his scrawny arms and legs. She didn’t care. She pushed him down, pressing her fingers into precisely the right place to limit his breathing. He struggled, then went limp. Sarah kept pushing him down. If he was faking …

“I knew you’d be fine,” a voice said. Sarah looked up to see Riley. “How are you?”

“Drugged,” Sarah said. Her blood felt as though it were on fire. “You watch this asshole?”

Riley nodded, stepping forward as Sarah hastily ran a blood-purge. It was going to cost her later, implants or no implants, but there was no choice. She’d launched a near-lethal cocktail into her bloodstream and it could easily have gotten her killed, directly or indirectly. She could have been overwhelmed so completely she attacked her own teammates. It had happened before, when the drugs had been used in combat …

“Fuck,” she muttered. If she hadn’t already been on the floor, she would have collapsed. Her body was drenched in sweat … “Fuck.”

“Maybe later,” Riley said.

Sarah snorted, rudely. “Not unless you want me throwing up.”

Riley laughed, and helped her to her feet.

***

“The first stage of the operation appears to have worked,” Ash said, as the three humans joined him in the command centre. “Most of the fortresses are now in our hands, or disabled. The security forces and mercenaries have been overwhelmed or locked down. The estates on the planet are under our control and …”

“Be sure you keep the hostages alive,” Riley warned. It went against the grain to take hostages, let alone use them as shields, but the situation was still incredibly fluid. The enemy might counterattack at any moment. “Don’t let them be murdered when they can still be useful.”

He saw a flicker of irritation cross the alien face. He understood, better than he cared to admit, the desire for revenge burning through the Subdo. They wanted to hurt the Tichck badly, to feel their hands crushing their necks … oh yes, he understood. But it would be dangerously pointless at best, and counterproductive at worst, to slaughter the hostages. They would be far more useful alive.

Ash controlled himself. “We don’t know about the gravity point fortresses yet. Anything could have happened out there.”

“The fleet is on the way,” Riley assured him. It was true. The fleet had been close enough to rush in, the moment it received the message. There was no way to be entirely sure, of course, but unless someone had gone spectacularly wrong … he shook his head. There was no point in dwelling on something he couldn’t control, not now and not ever. “Once we get control of the gravity point, we can finish the job here.”

“Of course,” Ash said. “What about the mercenaries?”

Riley said nothing for a long moment. They’d been fortunate the Tichck had refused to allow the mercenaries to carry any heavy weapons, at least as long as they stayed on the Ring, but the mercenaries were still armed, capable, and desperate. And they didn’t have the slightest idea of what was really going on. They probably thought the system had been attacked by the Vesparians …

“Offer them a chance to surrender,” he said. There was no all-encompassing mercenary guild – that was a fantasy trope, not real life – but mercenaries did talk and if the Subdo slaughtered their fellows without very good reason they’d find it impossible to hire any themselves in the future. “If they accept, they can be held on the planet until the end of the war.”

And the fact many are human will give us an excuse to step in afterwards, he added. If we survive the next few days …

Ash smiled, the expression fading as he looked at the display. “If we can take and keep the gravity point …”

“We win,” Riley said. The whole affair was out of his hands. They were too far from the gravity point to have any impact on the outcome. “All we can do, right now, is wait. And start working on contingency plans.”

 

Chapter Thirty-Four

“Commodore,” Patel said. “We will drop out of FTL in five minutes.”

Elton nodded curtly, silently relieved he’d kept the fleet on alert. The warning had come too early for his peace of mind, when his crews had been running through a handful of simulations to work out possible contingency plans for the actual battle, but it hadn’t taken long to bring the fleet to alert, check the tow cables and order his ships to get moving. The handful of captured freighters and warships were just enough to pull his fleet through FTL, hopefully catching the gravity point fortresses by surprise. There was no way to be sure – the enemy would know there was no scheduled convoy, although interstellar schedules were often little more than vague aspirations that bore about as much resemblance to reality as the average politician’s speech – but it didn’t matter. If the plan had worked, the enemy would have other things to worry about; if it hadn’t …

I’ll have other problems, he thought, schooling his face into a blank mask. The prospect of jumping into a war zone was one thing, but it would be tricky to differentiate friend from foe in the middle of a violent uprising. Some fortresses would be friendly, others would be facing internal as well as external threats; some might even be torn apart from within, their datacores destroyed or disabled to the point of uselessness. We have to take control of the gravity point before it’s too late.

He cursed the timing under his breath. If things had gone according to plan – not that they ever did – the Subdo would have enough people on the fortresses to be fairly sure of taking them intact. Elton wasn’t sure how the Tichck had managed to fuck up so badly, but he had to admit that if a bunch of Solarian lower decks crewmen had decided to stage a mutiny there would be a very real chance they could pull it off. Elton had once met an officer who planned mutinies for fun and he’d said that it was easy to take control, as long as you had the advantage of surprise and insider knowledge; Elton wasn’t so sure, despite himself, that the Subdo had the latter. They were cleaners and other grunt workers, not trained soldiers and technicians. But as long as they disabled the fortresses …

“Sweep the gravity point as soon as we arrive,” he ordered. The plan called for all transits to be halted immediately, but unless they’d been very lucky someone would have popped through the gravity point the moment the shooting started, carrying the warning further up the chain to Tichck Prime. How quickly could they react to a whole new threat? Elton didn’t know. The simulations had ranged from mindless optimism to equally mindless pessimism, depending on just what assumptions one fed into the matrix, and there was no way to be sure which was closest to reality. “Tag the friendly fortresses, then move to cover them.”

And hope to hell they are friendly, he thought. If the Tichck counterattacked and regained control of a fortress, they could blast his fleet in the back. Perhaps literally. If we get this wrong …

The display blinked, then updated rapidly as the fleet dropped out of FTL. Elton leaned forward, sucking in his breath as the gravity point – and a cloud of starships, fortresses, and automated weapons platforms – appeared in front of him. Most starships appeared to be running, jumping into FTL themselves or racing away at sublight speeds … he suspected the latter were trying to gather intelligence, hoping to find a buyer when they reached their final destination. The Tichck would pay through the nose for accurate sensor records, if they didn’t just take them. The fortresses were shooting at each other, the damage mounting rapidly. Elton gritted his teeth. They needed as many fortresses intact as possible, not …

“I’m picking up the pre-planned IFF codes,” Patel reported. On the display, five fortress icons turned yellow. Friendly, but not too friendly. Their ultimate loyalty couldn’t be assumed. “Two fortresses appear to have lost power and are drifting, the remainder are hostile and engaging friendlies.”

Elton cursed under his breath. The mutinies had either failed or were still underway. If he targeted those fortresses, he’d be targeting and killing allies … there was no choice. The gravity point had to be taken as quickly as possible, so they could start fortifying the position before the Tichck counterattacked. How many ships did they have in the next system over? How many more could they muster in a few short hours? The spooks had done their best, but the Tichck were moving so many fleets around that it was hard to keep track, certainly not in real time. If they had a few hundred ships on the far side …

“Target the hostile fortresses,” he ordered. “Send a surrender demand, then prepare to engage.”

“Aye, sir,” Patel said. There was a long chilling pause. “No response.”

Elton wasn’t surprised. It was hard to tell what was happening on the planet itself, but the sheer number of starships fleeing the gravity well and running into interstellar space told a grim story. The uprising had succeeded … or, at least, it hadn’t been brutally quashed at once. The Tichck had to feel they were fighting for their lives, all too aware the Subdo would brutally hack them apart or their own superiors would execute them for gross dereliction of duty. His lips twisted, humourlessly. His superiors were quite reasonable, as superiors went, but if he’d fucked up so badly he’d be lucky if he wasn’t put in front of a court martial and dishonourably discharged. His counterparts would be wise to surrender. At least they’d get to keep their lives.”

“Open fire,” he ordered, quietly. “And steer the freighters towards their targets.”

The battlecruiser launched her first salvo, the remaining ships firing a second later. Elton watched coldly as the missiles rocketed towards the enemy fortresses, their point defence hastily realigning itself to deal with the oncoming threat. There was something odd about their firing patterns … he frowned, inwardly, as he realised they were relying solely on their electronic servants, without any input from biological officers. That was curious, particularly given the limitations the Galactics had engineered into their computer datanets. He told himself it was a good sign. If they were relying on systems they knew to be inferior, the odds were good the command crew had sealed themselves into the central core and praying desperately for relief before the Subdo broke through and butchered them. They would be disappointed. Relief would not come.

“Their automated weapons platforms have been badly degraded,” Patel noted. “Their command datanet has been shattered.”

“Good.” Elton grinned, humourlessly, as the missiles neared their targets. The Solar Navy designed its datanets to be flexible, to ensure its squadrons could remain linked together and keep fighting even if the overall fleet-wide network was knocked down, but the Galactics preferred a top-down approach. He was surprised the Tichck hadn’t learnt the dangers of that from the Tokomak War. The Tokomak had had the numbers, but numbers weren’t decisive when each of those starships was fighting alone, against an enemy that could concentrate its fire to best advantage. “If the first strike fails, send in the freighters.”

“Aye, sir.”

The gravity point hazed as the missiles slipped through the defences and slammed into their targets. The fortresses were tough, no doubt about it, but each hit weakened their superstructures and damaged their weapons mounts, making it harder for them to maintain their shields and keep firing. Two fortresses were vaporised, a third went dead … Elton had no way to be sure if the fortress had really lost main power, or if it had was playing dead, yet it didn’t matter. As long as it wasn’t shooting … he snapped orders, directing the kamikaze freighters into position. The fortresses were big enough to survive being rammed, in theory, but no shields could stand up to freighters crammed with antimatter. They were wiped from existence so brutally there was almost nothing left, beyond a handful of free-floating atoms. The torrent of raw energy swept across the gravity point, wiping out what remained of the automated weapons platforms and sensor buoys. Elton hoped to hell the devastation was as complete as it looked. They didn’t have time for minesweeping.

“Deploy the Marines,” he ordered. There were four friendly fortresses – and two that appeared to have lost power completely – and they needed to be secured as quickly as possible, ideally before the Tichck regained control or the Subdo started slaughtering indiscriminately. He’d heard the reports from the Ring. The Tichck had sowed an incredible field of hatred, far more than any purely human despot, and now they were going to reap the whirlwind. Even if they put the revolt down, their society would never be the same. “Order the minelayers to start securing the gravity point.”

“Aye, sir.”

Elton allowed himself a moment of relief, although he knew the affair was far from over. The minefield would slow down any enemy fleet, but the simple realities of interstellar combat meant the minefield could be cleared very easily if the enemy was prepared to expend the resources it needed to do it. Elton dared not assume the Tichck wouldn’t copy his trick with the antimatter freighters, then launch them through the gravity point on suicide missions. The Galactics regarded antimatter with the same kind of fear humanity’s luddites had once held for nuclear power, but it could be handled safely by crews that knew what they were doing. There was no reason to think the Tichck couldn’t do it. They’d been spacefaring for thousands of years.

“Fortresses Five and Six are disabled beyond the point of easy repair,” Patel reported. “Five vented completely, and the entire crew is dead; Six remains intact, but her datacores were destroyed and her power conduits fused. The Marines are offloading the remaining crew now.”

“Check to see if their datacores can be recovered, and if not have them rigged out with deception ECM,” Elton ordered. The deception wouldn’t last long – the enemy would be bound to notice the two fortresses weren’t firing – but they might soak up a handful of missiles before their time ran out. If they had time, the repair crews would bolt some missile pods to the hull in hopes of prolonging the deception a little longer. “What about the others?”

“We have them secured, sir, but their innards took a great deal of damage,” Patel reported. “The damage control teams are on their way.”

“We’re going to need more fortresses,” Elton mused. Four wouldn’t be enough to hold the gravity point, no matter how many starships and weapons platforms he deployed. The Tichck had already deployed missile pods of their own, which meant they could be sure of inflicting horrendous damage from a safe distance. “Detach a courier boat, send it back to the Ring. If the planet’s fortresses have been secured, start towing as many as possible to the gravity point.”

He tapped his console, silently running through the vectors in his head. The Solar Navy had started producing prefabricated fortresses, with the intention of rushing them forward to secure newly-captured gravity points, but the nearest stockpile was hundreds of light years away and it was unlikely he’d be allowed to draw on it. The other gravity points had their own networks of fortresses, yet … the seemingly-random placement of the gravity points meant it would be quicker to cannibalise the planet’s fortresses. They’d be in some trouble if the Tichck launched a fleet through interstellar space … no. It would take far too long for the enemy to get organised and they’d know it. Their only hope of reversing the situation was to attack through Point One as quickly as possible. They’d know that too.

A red icon appeared on the display, blinking to green seconds later. Elton breathed a sigh of relief – they didn’t know how many enemy warships were left in the system, nor what would happen if they managed to link up and coordinate a counterattack – and accessed the download as soon as it arrived. The planet was relatively secure, all fortresses and vital locations under friendly control or destroyed. There would be large sections of the Ring that wouldn’t be under control, not yet, but as long as the Subdo controlled the high orbitals the enemy could be safely isolated and left to wither on the vine. Reading between the lines, it sounded as if a great many revenge attacks were already under way … Elton winced, hoping to hell the Firelighters could keep the Subdo from committing too many atrocities. They had been through hell, and he understood the urge to take revenge, but …

“We just picked up a message from Point Four,” Patel said. “The fortresses are in friendly hands.”

Elton keyed his console. There were three transits between Sakrknda and Parnassus, all heavily defended. The Tichck fortresses were isolated now, but as long as they remained in place it would be difficult – if not impossible – to get messages from his current location to Belos without going the long way around. They’d have to do something about that quickly, but he dared not redeploy his fleet until Point One was secure. The enemy would counterattack as quickly as possible.

“The report states we’ve captured most of their stockpiles and industrial fabbers,” he said, looking up. “Get the stockpiles opened and deployed out here, then have the fabbers start churning out missiles and missile pods. See what else they have, that we can put to use. Time isn’t on our side.”

“Aye, sir,” Patel said.

Elton forced himself to watch and wait as time ticked on. Nothing tried to make transit through the gravity point, not even a lone scout. The enemy would probably assume his fleet would destroy a scout before it could complete its scans and jump back – it was why standard procedure called for a small fleet of scouts, to ensure at least one made it home – but they should be doing something, anything, instead of sitting on the far side of the point and waiting for orders. Had they really been caught with their pants down, or were they hastily preparing a counterattack? They clearly hadn’t expected to lose Sakrknda. The system should have been safe.

He sucked in his breath. He’d studied the early centuries of warfare, before gravimetric sensors had been perfected and the stardrive changed the face of war, and every spacefaring race’s worst nightmare had been an undiscovered gravity point in a core system, one the enemy could use to mount a sneak attack. They’d had to keep heavy forces in reserve, preparing for a contingency that rarely materialised; the stardrive, of course, had turned the entire sky into a gravity point, ensuring an attack could come from any direction. Right now, the Tichck had to be feeling like their long-dead ancestors. They’d been caught by surprise, and they had only a short window of opportunity to save themselves.

“The courier boat has returned,” Patel said. “The tug crews are getting to work now, but it’ll be at least a week before the fortresses reach the gravity point.”

Elton caught himself before he ordered the crews to work harder, an impossible order. The fortresses were immense, too large to be towed through FTL. They would have to make the transit in realspace, and doing it at anything greater than a crawl would be immensely difficult. A week? It might wind up being two or more. There was nothing that could be done about it, but still …

“We’ll have to cope,” he said. He downloaded the latest report and scanned it rapidly. The stockpiles weren’t as big as he’d hoped, the Tichck having crammed as much as they could into freighters and dispatched them to the war. The other war. It was a good sign in a way, he told himself, if only because it was more proof they hadn’t expected to be attacked so deep in their rear. “Have the stockpiled automated weapons platforms transferred here and positioned.”

“Aye, sir.”

Elton raised his eyes and studied the gravity point. His enemy would be doing the same, on the other side. What was he thinking? Was he contemplating an immediate attack or was he desperately scrambling to rustle up as many ships as possible, perhaps convinced Elton intended to attack himself and then take the offensive to Tichck Prime. That would be ironic … not, Elton reflected, that he had the resources to launch such an offensive, let alone carry it all the way to the enemy homeworld. The Tichck would order their ships back from the border … he frowned, checking the latest reports from the Tichck-Vesperian border. The Tichck insisted they were pushing further into Vesperian space …

And those reports are probably nonsense, Elton told himself. An offensive he could buy, but one that had destroyed hundreds of enemy ships without taking a single loss itself? No. It didn’t happen unless the balance of power was staggeringly one-sided. We have no way to know what’s really going on.

Patel cleared his throat. “The ECM buoys are in place, sir,” he reported. “If the enemy risks a sweep …”

“The enemy will suspect most of the fortresses don’t exist,” Elton said, dryly. The latest ECM was very good, but the lies they were telling were so blatant the enemy wouldn’t need hyper-advanced sensors to see through the deception. “Hopefully, they’ll soak up a few missiles when they finally launch their counterattack. It’ll give the real fortresses time to get ready.”

“Yes, sir.”

Elton put the thought aside. “And signal Major Richardson,” he added. They knew what was happening in-system now. The first phase of the operation had succeeded. They could move on to the next. “It’s time to work on our contingency plans.”

“Aye, sir.”

 

Chapter Thirty-Five

It was hard to be sure of anything, thanks to the never-to-be-sufficiently-damned time delay between something happening and the report reaching the homeworld, but Harpeth had been having a very good war. The first shocks had been absorbed and the fleet had counter-attacked, taking possession of the Ta-Conk System and opening gravity point chains deep into the heart of enemy space. The Vesparians had taken a number of systems themselves, of course, but none particularly vital … and all belonging to his rivals, in the endless struggle for power. The longer they held them, tying up their own resources while weakening his rivals, the better. Harpeth rather hoped they’d hold them until the end of the war. And best of all, the neighbouring powers seemed unwilling to do anything more than shake their fists and make threatening statements, rather than going on the offensive themselves. A combination of threats and bribes had ensured they would remain, to all intents and purposes, neutral.

It would not save them, of course. He had already drawn up his plans. The Tichck would defeat the Vesparians, then recapture Belos – the Vesparians would be ordered to betray their puppets as part of the peace agreement – and then punch out all their neighbours, ensuring their dominance over the surrounding sectors would be more than just commercial. Their fleets would be supreme, keeping the smaller spacefaring races under full control; their corporations, shielded by the fleet, would make constant inroads, weakening the neighbouring races until they were reduced to nothing but vassals. It wasn’t what they’d planned to do, when they’d laid the groundwork to replace the Tokomak as masters of the known universe, but it would suffice. They would absorb their new conquests, then reach out for more and more, until the entire galaxy was under their control.

Harpeth knew he wouldn’t live to see it. But his children would.

The pleasant fantasy shattered, two days after he gave orders to dispatch reinforcements to the war front. His servant woke him in the middle of the night, something they had strict orders not to do unless it was urgent. Harpeth rolled up and out of the nest, reaching for the terminal and staring down at the report. It was so unexpected he had to read it twice to get the gist of it. The Vesparians had attacked Sakrknda? It was absurd and yet …

Horror washed through him. The gravity point chain linking the homeworld to Belos was heavily defended, but they’d pulled most of the starships out for redeployment to the war front. There had been no reason to believe the Belosi could punch their way to Sakrknda, and if they tried they’d be tied up in minefields and automatic weapons platforms for weeks. Perhaps months. He had thought they’d be plenty of time to deal with the primitives, if they attacked … his head spun as he considered the earlier reports. There had been no suggestion the Belosi had managed to break out of Parnassus, and there was no way they could do it without reports reaching the homeworld within days. And that meant … the Vesparians had come in through FTL. Or he’d been wrong and it was the smaller powers that had launched the offensive.

He’d thought they were winning. He wasn’t so sure now.

“Alert the council,” he ordered, curtly. The stimulant was burning through his bloodstream, flushing the last traces of sleep from his mind. “Inform them we have a problem.”

He scowled as the Subdo hurried away. The councillors would already know, if he was any judge. They were cleared for everything, and besides … anyone who thought they were someone would have spies and clients of their own, scattered through the military, bureaucracy and damn near everywhere else. The war had been going so well … he told himself, sharply, that they’d been wrong. They’d missed the signs of a new offensive, if indeed there had been any signs, and it was going to cost them. He felt the universe shifting around him as he walked to his desk and sat down, scanning the torrent of reports. It was hard to know which ones to take seriously. Some made a certain degree of sense, others were utter nonsense. The idea of the Tokomak leading the offensive was just absurd.

Or was it?

Harpeth stared down at the reports. The Tokomak had the resources and they were certainly arrogant enough to think they could get away with it. Harpeth had never had a clear answer as to what they’d been doing on Belos, fifty years ago, and that bothered him. The humans had clipped their wings hard, and they’d formally conceded defeat, but giving up completely wasn’t in their nature. Harpeth would have been surprised if they hadn’t started plotting to regain their formal prominence bare seconds after their defeat. And that meant … they couldn’t replace the starships and crews they’d lost in a hurry, but it wouldn’t matter if they could weaken everyone else and take control of the gravity point nexuses while they were distracted. Or was he overthinking it? The Vesparians were just as likely suspects, and they were at war.

But they would have had to send their fleet so far from their core worlds that they’d be out of contact for weeks, if not months, he thought, grimly. The only way to get a message from Sakrknda to Ta-Conk, let alone Vesperian Prime, in anything like a reasonable timeframe was to use gravity points the Tichck controlled. They could lose both their fleet and the defences blocking our path to their homeworld, because we defeated one and then the other, just because they were trying to be clever.

He frowned. The Tokomak were the only race that thought on such a scale. The humans had done their best, but … no, the Tokomak were the only ones who’d think they could get away with it. Except … his mind spun in circles, trying to come to terms with the sudden shift in the balance of power. Their neighbours were hostile, and if they took control of Sakrknda they could use it as a base to attack the homeworld, or force him to expend his ships trying to take it back. And that meant …

His attendant returned. “Sir, the council has been notified,” he said. “The holoconference has been set up, and will commence in twenty minutes.”

Harpeth flicked his hand in approval. The holochannels were as secure as their ingenuity could make them, and besides it would probably be best to keep some distance between the councillors as the reality of the situation sank in. They had gone to bed certain they were winning, only to be woken with the worst news they could imagine. Perhaps it wasn’t quite as bad as a victorious Vesperian fleet taking control of the high orbitals of Tichck Prime, but it was still disastrous beyond words. Hundreds of trading networks ran through Sakrknda. If the Vesparians and their allies – or whoever – took and kept control, they’d gain control of dozens of gravity points without a fight. He ran through a brief set of calculations and cursed under his breath. The loss of transit fees alone was a relatively minor matter, but it would hurt. The loss of everything else …

“Ask Admiral Veetacore to join the conversation,” he said, as the holograms started appearing around him. The bedroom faded behind an illusion of a pleasant, and neutral, conference chamber. “We may need her advice.”

“Yes, sir.”

***

Admiral Veetacore had been less than pleased to be summoned to the homeworld along with her fleet, although the fact she hadn’t been immediately arrested and scapegoated for the defeat at Belos had done wonders for her self-confidence. She had spent the last week reviewing the reports from the war front and refitting her ships, ensuring the crews had a chance to take some leave before the fleet departed to face the Vesparians; she’d even managed to establish a handful of links with up and coming politicians who might be able to help rebuild her career, in exchange for future favours. Her pleasant dreams of military victory had shattered when she’d been yanked from a deep sleep and informed that someone was attacking Sakrknda. She knew it couldn’t be the Belosi – her opinion of the officers holding the gravity points was low, but not that low – yet who could it be?

She read the report hastily as the holoconference took shape around her. Being invited to such a gathering was very much a two-edged sword for an officer such as herself. It could be a sign of favour, a way of saying she was no longer in disgrace, or it could be a sign she was being set up to take the blame. Or both. She was too junior to have a clear view of the endless struggle for power that drove the councillors, and their endless manoeuvrings that sometimes ended with real or metaphorical assassinations, and she had no doubt she’d be sacrificed in a heartbeat if it suited the council to do so. And yet … surely even they wouldn’t risk the existence of the entire Consortium? The enemy was far too close to the gates for anyone’s peace of mind.

The councillors babbled like idiots, arguing over everything from just why their intelligence services hadn’t worked out what was going to happen to why the planet had been overrun so quickly. Veetacore said nothing as they talked, working her way through the rest of the reports and then studying starcharts to determine how quickly they could get additional forces to Sakrknda. She had placed her fleet on alert, the moment she’d read the message, but … did she have enough ships? She didn’t know. If the enemy took control of every last fortress in the system – and she dared not assume they hadn’t – they could make the gravity point impregnable to anything less than a major fleet deployment. And her fleet was the only major formation that could be redeployed in a hurry.

She frowned as she reads through the final report. Some were crazy, others were deeply worrying. It was hard to tell what to take seriously, but … the reports of Subdo rising in revolt were alarmingly plausible. They weren’t as dumb as the Belosi, two or three steps above animals as opposed to just one, yet … the Belosi had fought a very effective war. Sure, they’d had help, but that help would have been useless if they hadn’t had a certain level of intelligence of their own. The Subdo could do the same, couldn’t they? Her blood ran cold as she considered the implications. The Belosi had been restricted to a single world. The Subdo were spread across thousands. And not just Tichck worlds either.

Chairperson Harpeth made a sharp noise, drawing her attention. “The war situation has changed in a manner that is not advantageous,” he said, with commendable understatement. It would be out of character for a councillor to suggest they might be losing the war, but he – thankfully – understood how serious the situation had become. “The enemy now holds Sakrknda. The system must be recovered as quickly as possible.”

He looked at Veetacore. “Can your fleet recover the system?”

Veetacore hesitated. Making a promise she couldn’t keep would be the end of her career, if she survived long enough to face the music. She had a nasty feeling it didn’t matter. The Sakrknda System had to be recovered, or the entire war would likely be lost with it. The council was desperate. If she said no, she’d likely be relieved and her second ordered to take the fleet to Sakrknda anyway.

“It can, but we must move quickly,” she said. “The enemy may well have secured control of the remaining stockpiles and fortresses within the system. They have more than enough resources to turn the system into a death trap, if we give them time.”

She cursed under her breath. Her orders had been to concentrate most starships stationed between Parnassus and the homeworld under her flag, for redeployment to the war front. There weren’t many ships left to hold the line, or launch a counterattack before it was too late to recover the system without massive bloodshed. The Vesparians had pulled off a real coup, she acknowledged sourly. The Tichck would have to let the system go, or pay a huge price in blood and treasure, and either way they would come out ahead. Even the speculation that it wasn’t the Vesparians worked out in their favour … she wondered, suddenly, if it was time to seek an end to hostilities, but it wasn’t something she could say out loud. The council would never try to make peace from a position of weakness. They would take their enemies for all they could get, if they held the upper hand, and they’d expect the same if they were the weaker party.

“I can get the fleet moving in an hour,” she said. “We can be at the gravity point in three days, ready to launch an offensive. We should have enough missile pods to clear the gravity point and break into the system, but afterwards … we may have to secure the planet and then wait for reinforcements before we reopen the other gravity points. It depends on precisely how badly we get hurt breaking into the system.”

Councillor Domoh looked wary. “And if we wait for reinforcements?”

Veetacore silently congratulated herself on reading the reports while the councillors argued. “There were fifty-seven fortresses within the system,” she said. “Nine have been confirmed destroyed, if the analysts are correct, but the remainder must be assumed to be intact and in enemy hands. Given two or three weeks, they can concentrate those fortresses at Point One and make it impossible for anything less than two or three battle fleets to break into the system. We must act now, Councillor, or not at all.”

Harpeth’s eyes flickered around the holographic chamber, reading the consensus. “Deploy your fleet, Admiral,” he ordered. “Liberate the system.”

“Yes, sir,” Veetacore said. If there was one advantage to the whole disaster, it was that she would have near-complete authority to deal with anyone who caused trouble. “There is another issue.”

She paused, knowing they didn’t want to hear it. “The reports state that Subdo were involved in the invasion,” she said, carefully. “If that is so, we must assume that all Subdo are potentially disloyal.”

Councillor Tomah snorted. “Like all servitors, they can be lured into sin by their superiors,” he said, darkly. “They would not be disloyal without incitement.”

“And they would pose no threat in any case,” Domoh added.

“That’s what they said about the Belosi,” Veetacore reminded them. “And the Belosi have proved effective fighters.”

“They were used as puppets,” Tomah disagreed. “Their ships run on automatics, their weapons aimed and fired by their masters.”

“There are millions of Subdo on this world alone,” Veetacore pointed out. The more she thought about it, the colder she felt. There were Subdo everywhere, doing the labour the Tichck wouldn’t do. They were taught their place right from the start, but … they weren’t stupid. They had thoughts and feelings of their own. “If even a small fraction turn feral …”

“We will deal with them,” Domoh assured her. “I suggest you tend to your own affairs.”

Veetacore nodded. “Yes, sir,” she said. “The fleet will depart as soon as possible.”

After I make sure the Subdo are disembarked, she added, silently. They could cause a great deal of trouble, even if she had armed guards on every deck and kept the ships locked down as much as possible. If they chose to strike when the fleet was making transit, it would be utterly disastrous. If I’m wrong, it will be a waste of time. But if I’m right …

***

“She should be relieved,” Tomah said. “The mere idea …”

His words lacked conviction, Harpeth noted. It was strange, almost unthinkable, to imagine the Subdo posing a threat. They were little more than barbarians, fit only to serve their masters … and yet, they were far more technically adapt than the Belosi. They knew how the galaxy really worked, they knew how to live in the shadows, either in giant warrens or out amongst the stars as a scavenger race. He shivered as he recalled just how many Subdo served their masters in their homes, or in the corporate offices, or … if the admiral was right, the sheer scale of the threat was mindboggling. It was too much.

“We must recover the Sakrknda System as soon as possible,” Harpeth said. It was unlikely a general revolt was planned, not here. The security services wouldn’t have missed that … he hoped. They’d clearly missed something on Sakrknda. “We’ll lock down the entire planet, once the fleet is underway, and cut communications between the surface and interplanetary space. It will give us time to nip any plots in the bud, if they are plotting anything.”

The councillors didn’t seem happy, but they accepted his words. Harpeth kept them talking, discussing all the possible variables, as the fleet left orbit and raced for the nearest gravity point. The ships were travelling in FTL and yet, they almost seemed to be crawling … they had very little time, so very little. And if they lost the coming engagement …

Harpeth ended the conference and sat back in his chair, barely noticing the attendant walking into the chamber. He was a Subdo … Harpeth felt a sudden flash of alarm. The attendant was trustworthy, and yet … who could be truly trusted, right now? The alien was holding something behind his back … Harpeth realised, too late, it was a kitchen knife, something so simple the guards would have overlooked it. If they’d even bothered to check.

He opened his mouth to scream for the guards, but it was far too late.

 

Chapter Thirty-Six

“If the files we’ve sliced from their datacores are accurate,” Sarah said, “there should be no immediate risk of attack.”

Elton shook his head. The files were outdated, naturally, and there was no way to be sure the data had been accurate when it had been filed away. The Tichck might have dispatched their last major formation to the war front, or they might have held it back as a mobile reserve ... a precaution that would have paid off in spades. Elton was fairly certain the enemy had done just that, if only because reloading starships always took longer than projected, and if that was correct they probably had the fleet heading to Sakrknda right now. He’d been told the resistance had agents on Tichck Prime, including some embedded in the planet’s government, but all contact had been lost. The Tichck had sealed the far side of the gravity point. It didn’t bode well for the future.

“We have to assume the worst,” he said. The display showed fourteen fortresses crawling across the system, inching towards the gravity point. They were moving as fast as possible, but it wasn’t fast enough. They wouldn’t be in position for at least another week and that was, at best, incredibly frustrating. At worst, they wouldn’t be able to defend either the gravity point or the planet. “We don’t know just what they’re doing.”

He frowned. The four active fortresses had been repaired as much as possible, and the two hulks outfitted with missile pods and ECM, but the remainder of the fortresses were nothing more than ECM shadows, incapable of doing anything more than absorbing a handful of missiles. He’d deployed weapons platforms to give the illusions some punch, yet he knew better than to think they’d deceive the enemy for long. The sheer lack of repeated heavy missile salvos would be all too revealing. He’d get one punch and that was it.

His mood darkened. They had fortresses coming from the other gravity points, and a constant resupply of mines and missiles, but would it be enough? The enemy hadn’t tried to probe his positions, nor had they sniped missile pods in hopes of inflicting some damage on his defences before the main attack began. He didn’t have enough missile pods to do the same himself, not yet, and he felt their lack keenly. If the enemy gave him a week or two, he was fairly certain he’d be able to defeat any reasonable counterattack. His most optimistic assessment suggested they’d be attacked in three days, and that was stretching optimism about as far as it would go.

“I think …”

Ping. A red icon appeared on the display, dozens more popping into existence a second later. Alarms howled, the defences jumping to full alert as a handful of missile pods interpenetrated, vanishing in flashes of electromagnetic distortion. They’d launched the pods in too close a formation, Elton noted coldly, although the gravity tides that made up the twist in space-time made it different to be sure two or more pods wouldn’t try to materialise in the same place. A handful of explosions took out a cluster of other pods, although more than enough remained to be dangerous. They opened fire so quickly he was fairly sure they hadn’t waited to find targets, their missiles roaring towards the surviving fortresses … no, to where they’d been. His point defence crews rushed to their stations, hacking down the missiles as they neared their targets. There weren’t enough to do real damage, even if they’d all been targeted properly …

“Deploy the assault shuttles,” he ordered, coolly. The attack was a division. A second wave of missile pods materialised on top of the gravity point, followed by a series of tiny scouts. They were the real threat. While his crews were dealing with the missiles, the scouts could do their sensor sweeps and jump back before they were targeted and destroyed. “They are to ignore the missiles and engage the scouts, and the scouts alone.”

“Aye, sir,” Patel said.

Elton gritted his teeth. The shuttles had been outfitted with a handful of missile each, but would they be enough? The techs kept promising actual starfighters, yet … so far, the technology to create actual one-man craft that posed a genuine threat to starships simply didn’t exist. There was no way to keep the enemy point defence from tracking the craft and blowing them away, no matter how many times their pilot went into random evasive manoeuvres. The shuttles would have to do – they could carry shipkillers, at least – but their time was already running out. Five scouts died under their fire, the remainder jumping out before it was too late. Elton wanted to believe they’d interpenetrated on their return, dying before they could make their reports, but he knew better. If a single scout survived, the enemy would know all they needed to. And his fleet was about to take a hammering.

The last of the enemy missiles died, or flashed onwards into interplanetary space and was lost without trace. They’d inflicted almost no damage, thanks to the poor targeting and his point defence, but he doubted the enemy had expected otherwise. They really had been a diversion …

And the real attack was about to begin.

***

“Four scouts returned, Admiral,” her assistant said. “Their reports are uploading now.”

“Transfer the targeting data to the next wave of missile pods, then launch them as soon as the upload is completed,” Veetacore ordered. “And prepare to deploy the second wave of scouts.”

Her eyes narrowed as she studied the display. There was no time to wait for a proper analysis, no time to even give her crews some rest after the desperate rush from the homeworld to the gravity point. She’d barely had enough time to exchange messages with a handful of planets and the news wasn’t good. The Subdo weren’t the only third-rate race with delusions of grandeur, nor were they the only ones causing trouble. A handful of minor riots had already taken place. She feared they wouldn’t be the last.

The display updated rapidly. Veetacore heard gasps running around the giant CIC as the crew saw the network of enemy fortresses sitting on the gravity point, fortresses she was fairly certain simply didn’t exist. No one, not even the Tokomak, could have dragged every last fortress across the system so quickly. The handful of enemy ships sitting beyond the gravity point, positioned to support the fortresses but also to run if the attackers proved too strong, suggested the deployment really was an illusion. Veetacore allowed herself a cold smile. Some of those fortresses would be real, but most weren’t. She wouldn’t allow herself to be cowed.

She leaned forward as the third wave of missile pods made transit. The beancounters back home would whine about expending so many missile pods, and thankfully she’d obtained stockpiles from the nearest worlds as she’d passed through, but she didn’t care. Her fleet was the only sizable formation they had, so close to the homeworld. She dared not take heavy losses, even if she won. The fleet could win the battle and yet her people lose the war. The scouts vanished a moment later, their crews bracing themselves for victory or death. They would be richly rewarded, if they returned. Their bravery might make the difference between life and death for the entire Consortium.

A handful of scouts returned, two crashing into each other as they made transit. Veetacore ignored the explosion as the survivors transmitted their reports, her experienced eyes running down the raw data and turning it into something she could understand. The enemy had lost a number of fortresses, so completely there was nothing – not even atoms – remaining. Veetacore felt herself smile. The fortresses had been nothing more than illusions, the sensor ghosts popped like bubbles. No doubt the beancounters would whine about losing so many missiles on sensor ghosts too. She didn’t care.

“The enemy have started to launch missile pods themselves,” an operator warned, as enemy icons sparkled into life on the display. “Their targeting systems are quite good.”

“Not good enough,” Veetacore said. She’d pushed the fortresses as close as she dared, relying on them to shoot down missile pods and soak up enemy fire. Losing the fortresses would be painful, but if she won the battle her superiors would overlook it. Probably. “Deploy the next wave of missile pods, then another.”

“Aye, Admiral.”

Veetacore nodded to herself as she checked the reports. The enemy would assume she’d send in more scouts, hopefully giving her a chance to catch them by surprise. A handful of missiles had been programmed to go after the shuttles they were using to attack the scouts … the techs weren’t sure if the missiles would lock onto the tiny craft, let alone hit them, but as long as the warheads detonated close to the shuttles they’d be caught in the blasts. It would hopefully distract them from their duty …

And even if they didn’t, she had enough firepower to wipe out the enemy once and for all.#

***

Elton watched, grimly, as the damage started to mount.

The Tichck didn’t seem to be very good at isolating and identifying the real fortresses, although that would change the moment they started to send starships through the gravity point, but they were launching so many missiles that they were certain to hit something. Targeting some missiles on the shuttles seemed wasteful, but he had to admit it was working. The more the pilots had to worry about their own safety, the harder it was to target the scouts before they jumped back through the gravity point and reported home. No matter what he did, the damage was definitely growing worse …

A new cluster of missile pods materialised and fired, hurling hundreds of missiles towards a single – real – fortress. Elton cursed under his breath, watching numbly as the warheads started to strike him, hammering the fortress’s shields so badly they started to collapse. A couple of missiles slipped through the gaps in the shields and exploded against the hull, inflicting horrendous damage. There had been barely any time to train damage control specialists, or hire them, and the lack was starting to hurt. Badly. The damage might have been survivable if the cracks in the fortress’s armour had been fixed quickly, or at least patched up, but instead … he shuddered as a third warhead slammed through the gash in the hull and detonated inside the fortress, the blast setting off a chain reaction that destroyed the interior beyond all hope of repair.

“Fortress Three is gone,” Patel reported. “No survivors.”

Elton winced, inwardly. The fortress had had a skeleton crew … all gone. They hadn’t had time to practice evacuation procedures either, although he doubted there’d been time for even a trained crew to get out before it was too late. There was no guarantee the Tichck wouldn’t shoot at lifepods either, not when they were fighting for their survival. The laws of war were vague about just what the Galactics could do to rebels, and few would care if the Tichck blasted Sakrknda into a lifeless wreck. Or if they blasted lifepods into atoms without even trying to rescue the crews.

“Switch the automated pods to cover the gap,” he ordered, softly. He was starting to have a sense of déjà vu. The last time he’d faced such an enemy, it had been when the Tichck had attacked Belos from an unexpected direction. Now … it was starting to look as through the enemy was winning the first stage of the engagement. “And then order the shuttle crews to pull back.”

The enemy launched yet another wave of missile pods, the largest one yet. Elton grimaced as they fired on four targets, two real. The other two were dead hulks … the enemy would be complaining loudly, when they realised they’d just wasted a few hundred missiles on a target that couldn’t shoot back, but better safe than sorry. The real fortresses fought desperately, but the damage continued to mount until it proved lethal. This time, thankfully, some of the crews managed to get off before they blew.

“Order a shuttle to tow the lifepods out of the combat zone,” Elton said. He had one fortress left and it wouldn’t be long before the enemy targeted it, if they weren’t getting their missile pods into position even now. “Put the final fortress on automatic and evacuate her crew too.”

“Aye, sir.”

The display sparked with red icons. Again.

Elton gritted his teeth. It wouldn’t be long now.

***

“Admiral,” an analyst said. He spoke with an earnestness that betrayed a hint of fear. Getting it wrong would be disastrous for more than just his career. “Judging from our sensor records, the last real enemy fortress has been destroyed.”

Veetacore studied the report carefully, keeping her face under tight control. The analyst appeared to be right, although it was impossible to be sure. The enemy could have fortresses pretending to be sensor ghosts, in hopes of catching her ships as they made transit, although it struck her as a high-risk low-reward tactic. The simple fact the weight of enemy point defence had slackened so sharply was clear proof, at least to her, that they had killed all the fortresses. But if she was wrong …

“Deploy the first attack wave,” she ordered. The odds were good the enemy had mined the gravity point – and her missiles wouldn’t have done any real damage to those. She had something else up her sleeve to deal with the mines, and any remaining ECM decoys. “And ready the second to make transit on my command.”

“Aye, Admiral.”

***

The gravity point seemed to explode with energy.

Elton cursed under his breath as a tsunami of emergency reports flashed up on the main display. Antimatter. The enemy had stolen his tactic, cramming antimatter into tramp freighters and hurling them through the gravity point. It didn’t matter if they’d hit a mine or an automatic system had simply switched off the containment fields, once they’d made transit. The boiling wave of raw energy had not only wiped out most of his minefield, but blinded most of his stealthed sensor platforms. They hadn’t been designed to cope with such a high-intensity energy flux. The sheer power had just been too great for them to handle.

“Send the codes, trigger their self-destructs,” he ordered. The sensor platforms weren’t exclusively human technology, but only a handful of races used them and they were all connected to the Galactic Alliance. Letting a platform fall into enemy hands was asking for trouble. He dared not assume the stealth coating would hold up, not after the platforms had been sleeted in a wave of radiation. Nor was there any time to repair the devices. “And then deploy a handful of standard drones.”

“Aye, sir,” Patel said.

Elton nodded, watching the gravity point. The enemy knew they’d cleared it now, which meant … he heard an intake of breath from behind him as the first enemy starship materialised on the gravity point, two more following in quick succession. Brave or desperate, it hardly mattered. The minefield was gone, ensuring the enemy had time enough to secure the gravity point and launch probes of their own. And he dared not risk a close-range engagement. The enemy could – and would – spit missile pods into his face. He’d done it himself.

“Establish laser links with the remaining missile pods,” he ordered. “Are their targeting sensors online?”

“No, sir,” Patel reported. His hand darted over the console. “The enemy blinded them. The hardware is still online, as far as I can tell, but the sensors themselves are down.”

“Feed them targeting data from our sensors,” Elton ordered. The data would be slightly out of date, but as long as the enemy remained on the gravity point there was a very good chance the missiles would hit something. “And then deploy the remaining captured ECM drones.”

“Aye, sir.”

Sarah spoke, from behind him. “Do you think they won’t recognise their own drones?”

Elton shrugged, recalling an old joke about the World War Two Germans being unwilling to shoot at their own matches … unfortunately, the equally trigger-happy British were more than happy to make up for it. He pushed the thought out of his mind a moment later. The drones wouldn’t be that easy to identify, at least not quickly enough to matter. The enemy would see a fleet of starships advancing towards them, intent on sealing the gravity point before it was too late.

“Not unless they have some quirk of design they can see from a distance,” he said, finally. It was unlikely, the sort of concept that worked better in the lab than in the field. He wouldn’t have cared to take the risk. Even if they did … they had to know, now, that he’d captured some of their drones. The last of the batch were being expended now. “But we’ll see.”

He watched, coldly, as the final wave of missiles roared towards the enemy ships. A ship vanished, the remainder taking up position to ward off the incoming attack. He was surprised they hadn’t all jumped out. Perhaps he’d been wrong … no, the display sparkled a moment later as a wave of missile pods made transit. His lips quirked as they opened fire. At such close range, friendly fire was inevitable. He hoped – prayed – it would royally fuck up their morale once they realised what had happened.

“They killed at least nine of their advance units,” Patel reported. His tone was heavy with satisfaction. “Our missiles killed seven … perhaps nine.”

“Good,” Elton said. Last time, he hadn’t had a plan. This time, he did. They had to move quickly, though. The enemy wouldn’t remain blind for long. “Activate the Omega platforms, then signal the fleet. Fall back to Point Heinlein. Best possible speed.”

“Aye, sir.”

 

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Veetacore’s battleship entered Sakrknda in a haze of gravimetric energy.

“Report,” she ordered. The display had blanked, of course, but it should be back up and running already. “What have they done?”

“They’re broadcasting high-power gravimetric pulses,” an operator said. There was a hint of outrage in her tone. “That’s against the laws of war.”

“No doubt,” Veetacore said, dryly. Gravity pulses shouldn’t blind her realspace sensors. Only her gravimetric sensors should be affected. Why had the enemy done it? Were they sending reinforcements to the gravity point, using the pulses to cover their approach, or were they running out of tricks, desperately doing whatever it took to delay her. “Launch a shell of recon drones, then deploy the remainder of the formation to shield us.”

She keyed her console, watching grimly as her starships made transit in a tight stream. Her light units had taken more of a battering than she’d hoped, although she had enough that she could write off the losses and keep going. Her battleships and heavy cruisers hadn’t been touched. They were already spreading out, their sensors sweeping space for minefields so they could be blown away before they could pose a threat. She frowned, stroking her chin. The longer the enemy gave her to assemble and deploy her forces, the heavier the odds against them. They knew it too. So what were they doing?

The display finally started to clear, long-range sensors noting brief flickers of energy as enemy sensor jammers completed their task and self-destructed. The enemy fleet appeared to have vanished completely, with no trace of its presence within sensor range. A rustle of glee ran around the compartment, quelled at a sharp glance from their commander. The enemy fleet couldn’t have dropped into FTL and fled out of the system, not when her sensors would have no trouble tracking its departure. They had either pulled back to the planet itself, hoping to make a stand beside the orbiting fortresses, or they were lurking under cloak, somewhere near the gravity point. Veetacore didn’t much care, now they’d cleared the point of its heavy defences. The enemy couldn’t match her fleet, ship for ship, or they would have made their stand on the gravity point itself. Instead, they’d merely bled her as she made transit.

She leaned forward, studying the display as her sensors pulled in more and more data. The starships and interplanetary ships she’d seen the last time she’d passed through the system were gone, either fleeing into interstellar space like so many others or falling into enemy hands. The planetary economy was going to take a downturn … she shrugged, dismissing it as someone else’s problem. If the Subdo really were in revolt … she would take the high orbitals, give them one chance to surrender, and if they refused she’d vent the Ring. Perhaps her superiors would order her to slaughter them all anyway. It wasn’t as if it would be cost effective to do anything else with them.

“Deploy a second ring of sensor drones,” she ordered. The first wave was speeding out of the gravity point, making no attempt to hide themselves as their active sensors hunted for enemy targets. The further they flew, the greater the chance they’d miss something. “Inform me when the remainder of the fleet is ready to advance.”

She cursed the time delay under her breath, wondering just what was happening at the other gravity points. There was no way to be sure, save for flying there herself, and she didn’t have time. Sakrknda was an industrial hub, the Ring crammed with fabbers and raw material stockpiles and everything else one needed to run a modern economy. Given time, the Subdo could make the planet practically impregnable. Veetacore wanted to believe the datacores had been wiped, that the fabbers were now nothing more than useless hunks of metal, but it was unlikely. The Subdo had had access to nearly all levels, unseen and unremarked by their rightful masters. They could seize the fabbers before it was too late.

We never considered the possibility of this system being attacked, she thought, coldly. The Belosi were several transits away, and the Vesparians further still. Any offensive would be noted well before it reached its target, or so they’d thought. The enemy had caught them by surprise and reaped the rewards. Once the war is over, we will have to rethink our priorities.

Ice ran down her spine. The fleet hadn’t heard anything from the homeworld. She wasn’t upset she wasn’t being micromanaged, but … it was odd the council hadn’t sent her a stream of impractical or downright impossible orders. She wanted to be grateful, yet she feared the implications. What was happening, behind her? Was the homeworld safe? Or …

“Admiral,” an operator said. “I beg leave to report the battleships have completed their transit.”

Veetacore nodded, her eyes never leaving the display. Two hundred battleships, a force that couldn’t be stopped by anything lesser … a force, a decade ago, that would make the entire galaxy quake and bow their heads in submission. Now … she didn’t know. The humans had proven technology hadn’t reached its natural limits after all, and she was painfully aware that every last major power was pouring resources into research and development, all hoping to develop something that would change the face of warfare once and for all. The Subdo were clearly more capable than she’d thought, and the Vesparians had been planning their war for a very long time … did they have a weapons system that would render her entire fleet obsolete? Or was she just being paranoid? It would be perfectly in character for the Vesparians to send the Subdo to their deaths, letting them soak up incoming missiles and clearing the way for the Vesparians to take the system afterwards. The last thing they’d want would be the Subdo thinking the system was actually theirs.

“Signal all ships,” she ordered. “Form up on the flag. The advance will begin in five minutes.”

“Aye, Admiral.”

Veetacore ran through it, mentally. There was nothing between her fleet and Sakrknda. She could reach the planet in thirty minutes, dropping out of FTL well clear of the orbital fortresses and using her missiles to blast them to atoms if they refused to surrender. There was a risk to the Ring, she supposed, but she found it hard to care. She had no intention of giving the enemy a chance. They could surrender or die.

We recover the planet, we can recover the gravity points too, she thought. The fortresses alone weren’t a major problem, at least in the short term. She could leave them to die on the vine or deal with them later, once the time came to reopen the chain to Parnassus. And then we can put an end to the war.

***

“The enemy drove you off the gravity point,” Ash said. “If they come here …”

“They will,” Riley said. They’d worked through a dozen different possibilities, wargaming everything the enemy could do, and they’d concluded they would fly straight to the planet. They had little choice. “Are your people ready?”

It was hard to reach the alien’s expression, but Ash seemed torn between a grim determination to get stuck in and a fear for the future. They were committed now, and peaceful coexistence was no longer an option. Not that it had ever been, to be fair. The Tichck wouldn’t accept surrender, even if it was offered. They wouldn’t let the virus of independent thinking spread. Riley hoped – prayed – the final desperate plan worked, or else millions of people were going to die. The Tichck would sooner commit genocide, repeatedly, than give up even a tiny fraction of their power.

“Yes,” Ash said. He was one of the more rational thinkers. The younger Subdo, their fires not yet quenched by growing up in a world where any open resistance meant instant death, were far more intent on fighting, even if it meant their deaths. Riley didn’t blame them. If he’d grown up in a hellhole like the Ring, he would have happily accepted his own death if he got to take one of his tormentors with him. “The ships are prepared, as are the weapons.”

Riley nodded, stiffly. The Belosi had had fifty years to build their exile fleet. The Subdo had had far less time, but they’d started out from a far better position. They’d rounded up hundreds of freighters and small craft, fitted them with missile pods and sensor jammers, and declared them a fleet. They wouldn’t last long against modern warships, but Riley thought they would last just long enough. Their deaths would provide cover for the real threat. And who knew? Maybe the sheer sight of the fleet would force the Tichck to change their minds.

We have more data now, but it is still outdated, he told himself. If the analysts were correct, the fleet bearing down on them was the last in the sector. The Tichck were probably recalling ships from the other war front, yet the messages wouldn’t have reached their commanders yet … if they ever did. The Vesparians would have rallied and counterattacked by now, he thought. It was hard to be certain, of course, but he wouldn’t have cared to bet against it. If we manage to win this engagement …

He pushed the thought aside. One way or the other, it would all be over soon.

***

“Report,” Elton snapped.

“The fleet is in position, sir,” Patel informed him. “The Subdo are moving into rearguard formation. The fortresses are in place. The gravity net is ready to engage on your command.”

“Which leads to the obvious question,” Elton mused. “Did they see us drop out of FTL?”

Patel hesitated, visibly. “Unknown, sir.”

Elton leaned back in his chair. There was a very real danger in trying to be clever, no matter how many times they worked through the variables and told themselves the bad guys had to do what the plan expected them to do. The enemy CO was clearly capable, and that meant eyebrows might be raised if they’d seen his fleet drop out of FTL well clear of the planet itself. He wasn’t even sure the gravity pulses had worked, not when the enemy might have managed to get scouts into the system or make contact with any ships that had remained behind, under cloak, when the uprising had begun. The plan might fail spectacularly, or the enemy might do something that would render the whole concept worse than useless.

At least we forced them to react to us, he mused. No matter the outcome, the Tichck Consortium would never be the same again. If they lose that fleet, their neighbours will jump on them.

His eyes lingered on the gravity point, a short distance away on an interstellar scale but still well outside his realspace sensor range. The sensor platforms he’d left behind, orbiting the gravity point at a safe distance, wouldn’t be able to keep him informed, not unless the enemy decided make transit in realspace first. It stuck him as unlikely, but there was no way to be sure. The enemy could be trying to play it safe, instead of taking the offensive as quickly as possible. If they chose otherwise …

They have to recover the planet as quickly as possible, Elton told himself. They know it as well as we do.

The display bleeped. “Sir,” Patel said. “The enemy has dropped into FTL.”

Elton breathed a sigh of relief. The enemy fleet was racing towards the planet, travelling at a speed most humans found unimaginable, following a straight-line course that was perfectly predictable. They had to be desperate to put an end to the uprising as quickly as possible, before it weakened them to the point their neighbours could overwhelm them. Elton felt a twinge of guilt – there was no escaping the fact they’d put millions of lives at risk, in a manner that would justify planetary bombardment – and rapidly suppressed it. The war had to be won.

“Deploy the gravity net,” he ordered. “And alert all units. They are to fire as soon as the enemy drops out of FTL.”

“Aye, Admiral.”

Elton leaned back in his chair, watching the seconds ticking down to zero. The enemy couldn’t know what was waiting for them, or they’d be a little more careful. The defenders would get one solid punch in, and then … he wondered, grimly, just how prepared the enemy were for knife-edge combat. The Tichck Navy had learnt a number of hard lessons, in the last few months. Had they had enough time to study the engagements, determine how their tactics should be adjusted and retrain their commanders and crews? Or were they still sticking to doctrines that had been proven outdated during the last war? Who knew?

They say admirals always prepare for the last war, he reflected. And it is true, because where else can they learn their lessons?

He shook his head. It would all be over soon.

***

Sarah felt an odd twinge of déjà vu as she clambered into her armour, checking and rechecking her implants before she pulled her helmet firmly into place. She hadn’t worn a proper battlesuit in decades, not since she’d been seconded to the exile fleet to help the Belosi prepare for the liberation of their homeworld. Riley checked her suit himself, then turned to allow her to do the same for him and Charles. It felt awkward to have two eyes checking each and every suit, but she understood the reasoning all too well. The more pairs of eyes, the better. Something that was nothing more than a minor nuisance in a planetary biosphere could get her killed in deep space.

“The more things change, the more they stay the same,” Charles said. He pulled the helmet over his head, hiding his features behind a blank mask. His words echoed through the local communications net. “You remember the old days?”

Sarah nodded, recalling their last mission before Belos. They’d dropped in on a terrorist state, rescuing hostages and snatching the terrorist leadership, teaching them that terror didn’t pay by putting them on trial and then, once they were proven guilty, executing them by putting a bullet in the back of their heads. It was astonishing how many autocrats stopped tormenting their own people, harassing their citizens who wanted to flee to the Solar Union, when they realised they would pay the price for being assholes, rather than some poor conscript who hadn’t been given any training before his leaders put a gun in his hand and pointed him at the enemy. She wondered, darkly, if the Tichck were just the same. They might change their tune when they realised they were going to be held accountable for their misdeeds.

“Yeah,” she said. “I’m getting too old for this shit.”

“Rubbish,” Riley said, cheerfully. “You don’t look a decade over ninety.”

Sarah made a rude gesture, her armoured gauntlet flexing oddly as she moved. “You know what I mean,” she said. “After this … you want to go on holiday somewhere?”

“No death flags,” Charles said, quickly. “And don’t you dare ask him to marry you.”

Riley laughed. “We know what we’re doing,” he said. “And so do they.”

Sarah sighed inwardly. They’d spent the last week laying the groundwork for one plan, only to switch hastily to another. The Subdo knew how to handle themselves in space, and they had thousands of freighters they could hurl at the enemy, but their lack of military experience had already taken a toll. If it was up to her, they would have had far more training before taking flight. But there was no time.

“We’ll see,” she said. The timer was steadily ticking down the seconds. “It won’t be long now.”

She shook her head, glad the two men couldn’t see her face. She’d written her farewell letters long ago, making certain she had a will on file before departing for the war front. She didn’t have much, to be honest. An apartment she hadn’t visited for decades, a bank account that hadn’t been touched for almost as long … most of her possessions were in long-term storage, what little she had. Her sister would make good use of them, Sarah thought, or see to it they were passed on to someone who needed them. She’d asked as much, in her will. It wasn’t much, for a life lived in the covert operations community. Her exploits would remain classified for decades to come, if they were ever declassified at all. If the Tichck remained powerful, after the war, the Solar Union might keep the secret for the rest of time.

“No,” Riley agreed. “It won’t.”

***

Veetacore sat on her command deck, watching the display as time ticked onwards. They were making transit at a fast pace, trying to outrun any messages the enemy might have sent from the gravity point before it was too late. There was no hiding her advance, of course, but if the watchers had collected any useful data it wouldn’t reach anyone who could make use of it. If they had noted weaknesses in her formation …

She pushed the thought out of her head as she waited. They’d be at the planet soon enough and then they would see. She wouldn’t take any chances, even if it meant she had to risk striking the Ring. The Subdo would be defeated, battered so hard they would never raise a hand to a superior race ever again. They would be put firmly back in their place.

“Admiral,” an operator said. “We’ll reach the planet in twenty minutes.”

“Good,” Veetacore said. The crews were hastily readying themselves for the next engagement. “I want …”

Her ship shook, violently. Alarms howled. The gravity field flickered, weakening and then strengthening … horror ran through her as she realised her mistake, too late. They’d flown right into a trap! And she had almost no time left before …

The display sparkled with red lights. Her time had just run out.

 

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Elton breathed a sigh of relief, although he knew the engagement was far from over.

The enemy hadn’t realised, thankfully, that he’d been moving fortresses from the planet to the gravity point, or that those fortresses were travelling in realspace. The fleet had fallen back on the fortresses when the enemy had driven them off the gravity point, then set up a gravity net and waited for the enemy to ram their ships straight into it. He felt a flicker of sympathy for the alien crews – being yanked out of FTL was incredibly shocking, often inflicting immense damage on the starship – which he rapidly suppressed. There were over a hundred enemy battleships facing him, each one a weapon of unimaginable devastation. He dared not give them any time to recover.

“Fire,” he ordered.

The battlecruiser shuddered as she unleashed her first salvo. The fortresses and modified freighters fired too, launching an immense wave of missiles at targets that were completely unprepared for them. He could almost see the enemy ships finch as they realised they had flown right into a trap, caught in realspace and facing a tidal wave of missiles fired at point-blank range. They should have known it was possible, they’d done much the same to him, but they clearly hadn’t expected it. Perhaps the enemy CO hadn’t seen the records from the last engagement or … who knew? He shrugged. The enemy were about to take one hell of a beating.

“Activate the ECM drones,” he ordered. “Pattern Theta. I say again, Pattern Theta.”

“Aye, sir,” Patel said.

Elton allowed himself a cold smile. The enemy were pinned down. They didn’t have time to coordinate a response, and if they returned fire without hesitation their missiles would have very real problems hitting a target. A real target. The ECM drones would make it worse, combined with the sheer volume of missiles he’d hurled at the enemy formation. They’d be seeing an impossibly large fleet of battleships and fortresses, and the sheer weight of fire would suggest most of those units were real. If he’d timed it right, they shouldn’t have anything like enough time to work out which units were real and which were nothing more than sensor ghosts.

His eyes narrowed as the enemy retaliated, their fire sporadic. The shock of being yanked out of FTL had to have ruined their datanet, making it impossible for them to coordinate their fire, and they simply didn’t have time to put it back together again. They didn’t seem to have isolated the real starships from the ghosts, although they were throwing most of their missiles at the fortresses. Good thinking, he noted, if they were thinking at all. Fortresses didn’t have realspace drives, let alone stardrives, and that meant they could cram far more missiles into their hulls than even the largest warship. The enemy were wise to try to destroy them first. But it was already too late.

His missiles streaked into the enemy formation, their point defence weak and ineffectual. They had kept their weapons systems online, he thought, but their datanet was still down, throwing each ship back on its own resources. His salvo had been carefully targeted to take out the battleships first, rather than trying to wipe out the smaller vessels that protected their larger comrades. It was a gamble, but given the sheer weight of fire he was unleashing it wasn’t – he felt – a poor one. The odds were good most of his targets would be disabled or destroyed. And that meant …

On the display, enemy warships started to die.

***

“Recycle the drives,” Veetacore snapped. It was hard to think clearly, not when her fleet had been hit so badly … not when she should have seen it coming. The Tokomak had been yanked out of FTL, during the Battle of Earth, and her own people had copied the trick and used it against the Vesparians. “Get us out of here!”

“The enemy gravity field is too strong,” an operator reported, her tone suggesting she was on the verge of panic. “We can’t escape!”

Veetacore bit her lip hard, using the pain to focus. The display was a wall of red light, so many missiles roaring towards her fleet that no amount of point defence would be enough to stop them. There were hundreds of fortresses and millions of starships … cold logic suggested that most of her sensor contacts simply had to be illusions, if only because the enemy would have attacked her homeworld if they’d had so many ships under their command, but it was impossible to sort the ghosts from the real ships. The enemy had fired so many missiles … they had to have emptied the stockpiles, transported the missiles to the ambush zone and left them to drift in interplanetary space, waiting for the command to engage. She cursed her own navy’s procedures under her breath. The datanet was down and she had no time to get it back up.

“Get the command datalinks up and running,” she ordered. In hindsight, she should have crafted procedures for rebuilding the datanets from scratch. The need for top-down control paled in comparison to the disaster facing her. “Link as many starships as possible into the net, and …”

Her eyes narrowed as the enemy missiles came closer. “Target the fortresses,” she ordered. The enemy might have made one mistake. The range was so short her ships could control their missiles in realtime. The enemy fortresses were tough, but they couldn’t run into FTL. “Fire!”

“Aye, Admiral.”

“And reverse the drives,” Veetacore added. “Get us out of the gravity field …”

The enemy missiles roared into her point defence engagement envelope. Her weapons fired frantically, sweeping hundreds of missiles out of the sky, but there were hundreds more, slamming through her defences and falling on her ships like birds of prey. She cursed again as the losses started to mount, the battleships under her command dying one by one as the enemy missiles struck home. The bastards were targeting their drive sections, she noted, trying to disable her ships rather than destroying them outright. It didn’t seem as though they were having much success – they’d fired rather too many missiles for the plan to work perfectly, blowing her ships to atoms rather than disabling them – but it was partly working …

A dull rumble ran through her ship, followed by several more. Alarms howled as the damage control teams hurried to work, patching up the damage as best they could … her eyes narrowed as she realised there was one advantage to the lost datanet. They hadn’t been picked out as the command ship, or they’d have been amongst the very first targets. She hadn’t put her ship in the exact centre of the formation – she’d learnt that lesson from the last war – and it had paid off. Slightly. They were still in deep trouble.

“The gravity field is too extensive,” the operator snapped. The datanet was coming back online, the point defence getting better as more and more ships were added to the network, but the damage was already significant. Fifty-seven battleships were already gone, destroyed or damaged beyond easy repair, and the enemy was adjusting its fire to compensate. “We can’t reverse course and get out!”

Veetacore shuddered. They couldn’t retreat and they couldn’t stay where they were … not unless they wanted to be shot to pieces. The enemy was already launching another salvo. They were holding the range open, something that puzzled her … no, it wasn’t really a mystery. The enemy had her bang to rights, trapped in a position she couldn’t escape. They didn’t need to close the range. They just had to keep firing until all of her ships were destroyed. And as the damage continued to mount, and she lost more point defence weapons, it was growing increasingly likely she wouldn’t be able to extract any ships.

Surrender wasn’t an option. That left precisely one move she could try.

“Bring the drives to full power, and take us forward,” she ordered. Closing the range was very close to suicide, but it would give them a chance to take out the gravity generators and escape into FTL. Or charge the planet and force it to surrender. Her career was dead, but she could take the rebels down with her. “And open fire with energy weapons as soon as we get into range.”

“Aye, Admiral.”

***

“Commodore,” Patel said. “The enemy fleet is starting to advance.”

Elton nodded. He hadn’t been sure just how much of the enemy datanet would survive the crash into realspace, or how quickly the enemy could get the network back up and running, but it was clear they’d lost most – if not all – ability to manoeuvre their fleet as a single unit. They hadn’t even allowed their squadrons some degree of freedom, he noted coldly; they hadn’t let them have command datanets of their own. It might have saved a few of their ships, as his first salvo punched through their defences and slammed into their hulls. But they hadn’t realised the danger until it was too late.

“Switch to rapid fire,” he ordered, calmly. “Fire at will.”

“Aye, sir.”

Elton leaned forward, watching the enemy battleships lumber into action. The design was outdated now, but the heavy vessels had been queens of the stars for a reason. The Tokomak had designed them to be unstoppable killers, pushing their technology to the limits, and even now their sheer weight of missile fire made up for their limitations. They were heavily armoured, their hulls covered with point defence; he shuddered to think what sort of damage they’d do to the fortresses, when they closed to energy range. It was rare for a battleship to steer itself so close to the target, but the enemy CO had little choice. There was no other way out of the trap.

They don’t even have time to turn and run, he thought, coldly. The battleships were lumbering brutes. By the time they reversed course, Elton would have hit them with multiple salvos and have his own ships moving in hot pursuit. They have to close the range.

His lips quirked. Everyone knew deep-space engagements were short, if only because the losing side could always drop into FTL and run. Most tactical manuals talked about picking a target the enemy would be forced to defend, such as a gravity point or an industrialised world. But now the enemy fleet was trapped, unable to retreat. Their only hope was to take out his gravity generators and that would be difficult, if not impossible.

“Deploy the third wave of ECM decoys,” he ordered. Rigging a bunch of enemy devices to look like gravity generators hadn’t been easy, but in the confusion and sensor distortion it might cost the enemy some time. He wouldn’t object if it only bought him a few moments. The more time he had to hammer them, the better. “And send in the assault wave.”

“Aye, sir.”

Elton nodded. The enemy fleet was lumbering forward, trying to pick up speed. The ships simply weren’t designed for a running engagement, unsurprising when their designers had never considered the possibility. Their commander was trying desperately to pull them into a proper formation, one that might looked ragged but was far more effective than any fancy display. He had to admire the enemy’s nerve, even though it was about to make life harder for him. The enemy hadn’t even tried to surrender.

He leaned forward. The Subdo were taking their shot.

***

Veetacore didn’t bother to hide her desperation as she barked orders, getting her fleet moving towards the enemy. A number of damaged vessels would have to be abandoned, left behind to provide what cover they could as the rest of the fleet made its escape; a couple, she hoped, would be able to run the moment her ships took out the gravity well generators. The remainder … she gritted her teeth. There was no time for half-measures. She had to get as many ships as she could out of the trap before it was too late.

If it isn’t already, she thought. The damage was immense … and still mounting. It was only a matter of time before the enemy located the command ship and marked her for destruction, taking out the rest of the datanet and probably taking down the entire fleet. If we don’t get out in time …

“Incoming contacts!” The sensor operator sounded grim. “Admiral …”

“I see them,” Veetacore said. Freighters? The enemy were hurling freighters at them? It was absurd and yet … part of her feared she knew what was happening. If just one of those ships was crammed with antimatter, the blast would take down her datanet and cripple her fleet. It would not end very well at all. “Target the incoming vessels with missiles, take them down.”

Her batteries went to rapid fire as the freighters closed, pushing their drives to the limit. They were slow, compared to her warships, but there were a lot of them. Someone had bolted missile pods and basic point defence weapons to their hulls, giving them a surprising amount of punch. A number died before getting into range, but the remainder closed rapidly. She gritted her teeth as a heavy freighter crashed into a battleship, the resulting explosion wiping both ships from the universe. The enemy ship wasn’t carrying antimatter, but it hadn’t needed to. There was no way the warship could survive such an impact.

“Keep us moving,” she ordered. The fortresses were growing larger on the display, their weapons shifting to rapid fire. There was something odd about their firing patterns, something that suggested the crews weren’t properly trained … she noted, coldly, which fortresses weren’t firing as many missiles as they should. They had to be sensor ghosts, backed up by very real starships and missile pods. “Prepare to engage with energy weapons.”

“Aye, Admiral.”

Another shudder ran through the battleship as a missile slammed into the shields, too more following in quick succession. Veetacore’s fingers danced over her panel, unlocking the datanets and ordering her subordinate officers to prepare to take control of the sub-nets, if anything happened to her ship. It was a gross breach of procedure, and it went against everything she’d been taught about fleet command, but it might make the difference between some elements of the fleet getting out and complete annihilation. Her eyes narrowed as she realised how many gaps there were in the chain of command, how many officers had already died in the line of duty. The damage was almost beyond belief.

“Admiral,” the operator said. His voice was cool, professional.“We are entering energy weapons range.”

“Target the confirmed fortresses, and open fire,” Veetacore ordered.

The battleships opened fire, unleashing a destructive force that hadn’t been used in combat for hundreds of years. It had never been needed. The Tokomak had designed the battleships for long-range engagements and they were very good at it, and if the range narrowed so completely energy weapons could actually be used one side would either surrender or run. Now … she smiled, coldly, as her remaining battleships opened fire, blasting the fortresses with beams of raw power. Their shields flickered and collapsed, the energy raging on to tear into the armoured hulls and burn through into the vulnerable interiors beyond. She felt no pity as she envisaged the holocaust blazing through the fortresses, the lucky enemy vaporised before they realised it was far too late. The unlucky ones would have time to know they were doomed, that they didn’t have time to get to the lifepods and run. Her fire ripped through the heavy armour protecting the missile stockpiles and fusion core, setting off a series of explosions that wiped out the entire fortresses.

“Switch to the next target,” she ordered, feeling a rush of hope. They might just get out of the trap before it was too late. The enemy fire was already slacking, suggesting they were running out of missiles. The stockpiles weren’t infinite and they hadn’t had anything like enough time to churn out more than a few thousand missiles at most. “Keep firing!”

The next target vanished with nary a flicker of energy. A sensor ghost … she saw a report flicker up on her display, noting that the enemy had managed to build a set of very impressive ECM drones. There hadn’t been many clues, even in hindsight, that the fortress hadn’t been real … she put the matter aside for later consideration, then leaned forward as another fortress was torn to pieces. The structure was real, as heavily armoured as any. It wasn’t enough to save it. Under the sheer weight of her fire, it melted like a snowflake in a hot white star.

Her lips twisted. Her career was doomed, but if she could get her surviving ships out … perhaps it would save her people. She could fall back on the gravity point and hold it long enough for the rest of the fleet to be redeployed. It would cost her everything, but …

Another fortress exploded. Veetacore smiled.

***

“We’re down to four fortresses,” Patel reported. “They’re getting better at picking out the real ones.”

Elton nodded. He was surprised the deception had lasted as long as it had. The enemy sensors must have taken more damage than he’d thought, or they’d been too busy trying to fend off the first missile strike that they hadn’t had time to worry about anything else. He had to admire their nerve, even though it was likely to cost him dear. The enemy ships could not be allowed to break out of the trap.

“Raise Colonel Richardson,” he ordered. He’d hoped to avoid taking one final step, but there was no alternative. Not now. “Inform him that he is cleared to deploy his troops.”

“Aye, sir.”

 

Chapter Thirty-Nine

The pilot muttered something as the shuttle jerked to life, her drives coming online as she rocketed towards her target. Riley gritted his teeth, cursing himself for coming up with the idea. Deep-space boarding actions were always dangerous, all the more so when the enemy was caught in a trap and had to choose between surrendering or hitting the self-destruct. They had trained as best they could, but there simply hadn’t been anything like enough time to get the Subdo ready for the operation. The skills needed to keep primitive aliens in line – uniformed thuggery, by any reasonable definition of the word – didn’t translate well to combat against properly-trained soldiers. Riley was certain his squad could have bested an entire army of Subdo security guards, something he would have been happier about if those guards hadn’t been on his side. The enemy had soldiers of their own.

And we have no idea what sort of counter-boarding contingency plans they have, he mused, grimly. Most boarding parties were dispatched after the enemy surrendered, with clear warnings that any sort of resistance would result in the destruction of their vessel. They might have troops stationed on every deck, or they might have already offloaded their soldiers and now only have sidearms …

He linked into the shuttle’s sensor net as the small fleet roared towards the enemy ships. The battleships were closing the range to the fortresses, ravening beams of energy tearing through the massive structures and burning them up as it they were made of paper. There was so much energy distortion pulsing through space that there was a good chance their approach was going unnoticed, although that wasn’t keeping the pilot from hurling the shuttle around randomly, just in case. No one had any illusions about what would happen if the enemy took a shot at them. One direct hit would turn the shuttle into free-floating atoms, killing them before they knew they were in danger.

“That’s our target,” Sarah said. An enemy battleship loomed up in front of them, a towering juggernaut that dominated the sky. She was two kilometres long, bristling with weapons … it might be outdated now, thanks to human ingenuity, but she was still very dangerous. “You ready?”

Riley glanced back. “If anyone wants to back out, you’re fucked,” he said. “Sorry.”

A handful of chuckles ran through the datanet. Commodore Yasser had reluctantly agreed to allow his shipboard Marines to join the operation, focusing their efforts on the handful of identified enemy command vessels. It felt wrong to be pleased about that, after spending the last fifty years working closely with the Belosi and now the Subdo, but he couldn’t help himself. A simple communications error or misunderstanding that could be easily corrected on the ground might prove fatal in space, and when multiple species were involved errors and misunderstandings were disturbingly common. Besides, the assault force had far better communications and hacking gear than their alien allies. If they could take down the entire enemy command net from within …

“Here we go,” the pilot said.

Riley braced himself as the shuttle accelerated, plunging right towards the alien ship. It’s dark hull sparkled with energy, a handful of plasma blasts darted through space as its masters finally – belatedly – realised the threat. Too late. Riley felt the gravity field twist, scooping up the assault force and launching them out the airlock, aiming them towards the alien ship below. He closed his eyes for a long moment as his perspective twisted and spun – the alien ship was below him; no, it was beside him – his suit’s automatics taking care of the landing. A point defence weapon was blazing merrily into space, pulses of superhot plasma flickering and flaring as they screamed towards the incoming shuttles; he melted it with a shot from his plasma rifle, then snapped orders as the assault force found a gash in the alien hull. His perspective twisted, again, as they plunged into the enemy ship, the local gravity field suddenly pulling them down to the deck. He ignored the discomfort as best as he could. They didn’t have time to worry about it.

“Found the hatch,” Sarah reported.

Riley snapped orders as she opened the hatch, the internal atmosphere venting rapidly. Anyone lying in wait on the far side would have worse problems than a boarding party to worry about, although he doubted their surprise would last very long. Standard procedure was to have all crewmen in suits if they were going into combat, and all the enemy would have to do when the air started to vent was to put their masks and helmets on, then resume their duties. He hoped, for their sake, that they’d followed standard procedure. Anyone who hadn’t, and didn’t have life support gear within easy reach, would die if the crack in the hull wasn’t sealed in time.

“Get the hatch patched up,” he ordered. “And arm the nuke.”

Sarah sounded calm. “Aye, sir.”

***

“We’re being boarded?”

Veetacore stared at the report, unable to believe her eyes. The enemy had launched shuttles and boarding parties … some had been blown out of space, of course, but the majority had managed to land on her ships and started storming their hulls. It was impossible … an alert flashed up in front of her, an alert battleship’s security team sealing off the breach and trapping the enemy, only to have the entire ship destroyed as a nuke detonated inside the hull. The armoured hull was designed to shrug off multiple nuclear strikes … her heart skipped a beat as she realised the armour had actually made things worse, trapping the blast inside the hull and directing it to ravage the interior. And it wasn’t the only one.

She forced herself to think. They had nearly made their escape, damn it. They’d blasted their way through the remaining fortresses and were nearing the enemy gravity wells, targeting all possible sources of gravimetric energy rather than wasting time trying to figure out which ones were real. The enemy fleet was moving backwards, trying to keep her trapped – and the range open – as they sniped her with missiles, but they were running out of time. She ran through a handful of calculations and concluded the enemy ships had to be running out of missiles. Even if they were nothing more than missile carriers, they had to be running short by now.

“Admiral, the enemy is demanding our surrender,” an operator said. “Your orders?”

Veetacore gritted her teeth. They were the last surviving formation this side of the homeworld. If she surrendered, no matter the terms, the war would be within shouting distance of being lost. She had to get her remaining ships out of the trap, fall back on the gravity point and hope for the best. There was no other option.

“Keep firing,” she ordered, harshly. “Redeploy troops to isolate the enemy troops” – her mind raced, searching for options – “and move teleport fixers into the compromised compartments. The moment they detect the nuke, teleport it out.”

The operator hesitated, then nodded. Veetacore understood. It was rare for a teleporter to be used in the middle of a battle, if only because the high-energy fluxes pervading the battlefield could easily disrupt or degrade the teleport signal. There were too many horror stories about what happened if the signal was scrambled, although most were little more than exaggerations. It was vanishingly rare for two people to be merged into one, if it had happened at all. She didn’t care. All that mattered was getting the nukes out of her ships before they could be detonated. It was no skin off her nose if they didn’t materialise at the far end.

A shame the safety protocols won’t let us use the teleporter as a weapon, she thought. If only we had time to bypass them.

She shrugged. The enemy would have teleport blockers woven into their combat suits, unless they were complete idiots. There was no way they could be beamed into space, their atoms dispersed across hundreds of kilometres. But if they were denied the chance to detonate their nuke …

***

Sarah stayed at the rear as the assault force opened a hatch, charging right into an enemy barricade. The Tichck hadn’t had much time to set up a blockade – she guessed they’d expected the hatch to slow the assault force down for long – and they didn’t have any time to recover from their mistakes. A handful of grenades tore their position to shreds, the survivors shot down before they could get up and run. Sarah grimaced as she looked around, hunting for the datanet node. If there was one advantage to storming a common or garden battleship, it was that they all shared the same basic design. She doubted the Tichck had had time to redesign the interior from scratch.

An alarm echoed through the makeshift datanet as she lost her link to the nuke. They’d concealed it in a storage locker and rigged up a system to ensure it couldn’t be destroyed by the alien crew … clearly, they’d underestimated the enemy. She cursed under her breath as her sensors reported a handful of teleport pulses … the enemy CO, she realised coldly, had managed to think outside the box. She altered her own teleport baffles, widening the denial field as much as possible. The enemy probably couldn’t beam the boarding party back into space, but she didn’t want to find out she was wrong the hard way. They were already too deep in the enemy ship to back out in a hurry.

She tore back the bulkhead and discovered the datacore underneath, breathing a sigh of relief as she realised it was a standard design. The Galactics had been experimenting with variant designs, now the Tokomak monopoly was gone, and her hacking skills might not be enough if she had to figure out how to crack a whole new system on the fly. Even so, it wasn’t going to be easy. A military system was far tougher than any civilian design, lacking the backdoors the Galactics worked into their datacores as a matter of course, and the enemy might have a team of white hat hackers of their own. It was rare for someone to be directly linked to the ship’s datacore if they were under fire, for fear of complete brain death, but the Tichck had never struck her as being worried about such things. Bending the rules might pay off for them …

She pushed the thought aside as she ruthlessly sliced her way into the datanet. The ship didn’t have any hard-wired flags, as far as she could tell, something that struck her as a little odd. The Galactics had spent thousands of years believing their tech was the best in the known universe, but they knew that wasn’t true now. She supposed it made a certain kind of sense – the odds of a successful boarding operation were very low – yet … she shrugged and sent her mind racing ahead, rapidly erasing all the alerts the system tried to send to its masters. The command datacore lay open in front of her ... she darted her mind into the system, trying to determine how best to take it down. It was tougher than she thought, she realised numbly. The security systems might not be hard-wired, but the internal command net was. It wouldn’t even let her open all the hatches, so the assault team could reach its targets.

And I can’t even trigger the datacore purge, she thought. That system was completely isolated from the rest of the network, so completely so she couldn’t even find it. The only reason she knew it was there was that she knew it had to be. I can damage the system but not take it down.

“I’m going to ransack the datacores now,” she said, pulling her mind back far enough to speak to her comrades. “Get ready.”

Bracing herself, she went to work.

***

Veetacore barely had a second to realise what was going wrong before the alarms started to howl, large sections of the command datanet dropping out completely. The gravity failed a moment later, her crew bobbling into the air as they tapped their consoles. The main display blanked, rebooted, and then blanked again … slowly, very slowly, coming back online. She cursed savagely, throwing decorum out of the airlock, as she realised what had happened. The enemy had hacked the datanet … it should have been impossible, unless …

She tapped the onboard biological monitor. It blinked up an alert. Tokomak. There were Tokomak on her ship. It was impossible, and yet … what else could explain it? The Tokomak had designed the datacores, crafting devices that shared the same base code and thus the same weaknesses. There was no reason to think they’d intervene in the struggle, unless … she felt cold. Had they provoked the war to weaken potential enemies? Or buy themselves time to regroup?

“We’ve lost the main command datanet,” an operator said. “The laser links are down too.”

A low shudder ran through the battleship. Veetacore stared down at the display, her mind whirling as she sought a way out … a way that refused to materialise. She couldn’t coordinate the fleet, or even her ship’s internal security, and the enemy boarding parties were raging towards the bridge, the CIC, main engineering and all the other vital targets. The internal sensors had been badly degraded, where they hadn’t been taken down completely. It wasn’t just her ship. Only a handful of ships in her fleet had escaped being boarded. And that meant …

Her heart clenched. The battle was lost.

“Signal the enemy, inform them we will surrender,” she said. It hurt to even say the words. She had flown her fleet into a trap, and suffered the greatest naval defeat in her people’s long history. It didn’t matter that only a few hundred ships were involved, compared to the vast forces waging titanic conflict on the Vesperian Front, not when her defeat would leave the road to the homeworld open. “Transmit a final update to the gravity point” – she hoped the signal would get through – “then purge the datacores.”

A low rustle ran around the compartment. Veetacore understood. Surrender was never a good thing, and it would certainly mean the end of her career. Her crew would be blamed too, if they ever made it home. There were rules about treating POWs well, but if the Tokomak wanted to hide their involvement they might arrange a little accident. Or simply see to it the prisoners never returned home.

“Order all crews to stand down, then comport themselves in line with the laws of war,” she added. “No further resistance.”

She turned and pulled herself out of the compartment, cursing the lack of gravity as she floated back to her cabin. The chamber was empty, of course; the terminals and displays going blank as the datacores were purged and destroyed, the whole process completed before the enemy could stipulate the cores had to be left intact. She wasn’t sure why they hadn’t already made that demand, but it hardly mattered. They probably knew everything in the datacores already. If the Subdo really were their allies …

It didn’t matter. The war was over. Her people had lost.

Quite calmly, she removed her pistol from her drawer, pressed the weapon to her head, and pulled the trigger.

***

“The enemy ships are surrendering,” Patel reported. “Their datacores have largely been destroyed.”

Elton breathed a sigh of relief. They’d lost all their fortresses, a number of starships and nearly five hundred shuttles. He didn’t want to think how many boarding parties had been vaporised before they even reached their targets, or how many had been forced to detonate their own nukes to keep the enemy from driving them back into vacuum. The enemy ships themselves would be largely useless, at least until their datacores were replaced, but at least they were no longer dangerous.

“Detach a squadron to secure the gravity point,” he ordered. It was probably too late to keep the enemy from sending a message up the chain, but it was worth a try. “And then start transferring the prisoners to the POW camps.”

“Aye, sir.”

Elton sat back in his chair. “And get the rest of the fortresses moving,” he added. They had to reseal the gravity point before the enemy attacked again, assuming they could. “Once that is done, we can reopen the chain to Belos and establish contact with the rest of the galaxy.”

“Aye, sir.”

Elton smiled, tiredly. The fleet had pushed itself to the limit, but it had won. They had shattered the Tichck’s power, ensuring their neighbours would turn on them, and ensured the independence of both Belos and Sakrknda. He mentally prepared himself to play the diplomat, to take advantage of the Tichck’s weakness to arrange for the Belosi to join the Galactic Alliance. It would require some tricky negotiation, he was sure, but he was quite looking forward to it. It would certainly be more honest than the war they’d been forced to fight.

They are caught between two fires now, he told himself. But will it be enough to convince them to concede defeat?

He shrugged. The Tichck were in deep trouble. It was a shame they had a nasty habit of mistaking forbearance for weakness, or he might have been tempted to offer them a very good deal. Not that they’d see it that way, he supposed. After everything that had happened, nothing less than unconditional surrender and submission would please them. And that wasn’t going to happen. One way or the other, the war was over. The only question was how much more they’d lose before they gave up.

A few months of diplomacy, and then we can go home, he told himself. For us, the war is over.

 

Chapter Forty

“Officially, the Belosi were helped by a rogue Tokomak faction,” Elton said. “The Tokomak in question intended to take control of the gravity point nexus, first for the good of their own people and later for themselves, after the war. The Belosi were ordered to kick them out, as the price for their admission to the Galactic Alliance, and have done so.”

The words felt so simple, as he sat in Admiral Mongo Stuart’s office with Riley and Sarah, but they masked a grim reality. The cover story was plausible, and they’d planted a great deal of evidence to support it, yet there was no way to be sure the secret would last indefinitely. The Tokomak would know there hadn’t been a rogue operation – he assumed; it was very out of character for them – and they might raise questions, or the Tichck might demand answers no one could give without risking the secret. He had told himself, time and time again, that it only had to last long enough to secure the gravity points, but it was hard to convince himself. Government secrets had a nasty habit of coming out at the very worst times.

He sighed, feeling numb. It had been five months since the Battle of Sakrknda, four months spent putting together a diplomatic solution to the chaos sweeping through the sector and a fifth spent heading home, once a couple of Solar Navy squadrons had arrived to keep the peace and welcome both Sakrknda and Belos into the Alliance. He had enjoyed the diplomacy more than he wanted to admit, but it had still been incredibly difficult and draining. And he feared the peace wouldn’t last long.

“The Belosi have undisputed title to their homeworld and its gravity points,” he continued, calmly. “Their neighbours were offered lower transit fees and tariffs, in exchange for recognising their independence, and most have agreed. The systems between Belos and Sakrknda have been granted their own independence, although I don’t know how long that will last. Sakrknda itself has been recognised as a Subdo world, with the non-Subdo granted citizenship or offered a ticket to leave the system. I don’t know how long that will last either.”

He grimaced. The reports from Tichck Prime had been horrifying. They had sown the wind and now they were reaping the whirlwind, a storm of ethnic and racial hatred that was threatening to tear their entire world to shreds. Humanity had a long history of internal conflict over race and religion, but the nightmare sweeping over Tichck Prime was an order of magnitude worse than anything humanity had ever seen. The slaves were revolting, in every sense of the road. Servants had turned on their masters, nannies had murdered children in their cribs, support troops and bureaucrats had stabbed their commanders in the back … it didn’t help, he reflected grimly, that they’d tried to crack down at once, triggering off other riots and uprisings in the process. It was hard not to feel sick, when he contemplated the sheer scale of the disaster. It was not going to calm down in a hurry. If it ever did.

“The Vesparians took a beating in the early weeks of the war,” he continued. “They have since rallied, recovered a number of worlds they lost to the Tichck, and laid claim to several worlds on the Tichck side of the border. Our projections indicate they will be unable to advance further for several months, despite the crisis facing the Tichck, and there is a reasonable chance they’ll accept a peace based on the status quo. The Tichck will not be happy about losing those worlds, but …”

He shrugged. “What price the jewel in the crown, if the crown itself might be lost?”

“Very good,” Admiral Stuart said. “You handled the matter well.”

“Did I?” Elton didn’t bother to hide the bitterness in his tone. “We started a war. We launched false flag attacks, provoking two interstellar giants into mortal combat; we are directly responsible, no matter how we try to deny it, for the deaths of countless millions. Tichck, Vesparians, Subdo, Belosi … their blood is on our hands.”

“The Tichck had already sentenced the Belosi to death,” Riley said, bluntly. “You’ve seen the projections. Even now, even with our help, there is still a very good chance their homeworld will become uninhabitable. To them, at least. They did it on purpose, to create a world for themselves free of its native species. They intended to commit a slow genocide, to wipe out every last Belosi. We stopped them.”

He paused. “And the Belosi weren’t their only victims. The Subdo were slaves, in all but name, and they weren’t the only ones. The Tichck were reaching out to take control of the entire sector, forcing the rest of their neighbours into line. We stopped them.”

Elton felt a hot flash of anger. “And how many Vesparians died because of us?”

“They weren’t any better,” Riley pointed out. “How many races are under their thumb?”

“I’m glad you can sleep at night,” Elton said, sharply. “I can’t.”

He looked at Admiral Stuart. “Now the fleet has returned to Sol, and the crews dispersed, I am tendering my resignation. I do understand the reasoning behind the operation, and the measures we had to take to save our allies, but it does not sit well with me. As I am not currently on active duty, my resignation will be effective from now.”

Admiral Stuart said nothing for a long moment, then leaned forward. “I understand your feelings,” he said, finally. “And I don’t blame you for them.”

“Oh, goody,” Elton said, with heavy sarcasm.

“You also did very well, both militarily and diplomatically,” Admiral Stuart continued. “It is certainly possible the government will want you to go back out, as a diplomat if not a naval officer …”

“No, sir,” Elton said. “I need a break.”

“Then I will reluctantly accept your resignation,” Admiral Stuart said. “I must remind you, of course, to keep the whole affair out of any memoirs you happen to write.”

“Of course,” Elton said.

He stood and saluted, then turned and strode out of the chamber. He would miss the military life, and part of him felt as if he was already at a loose end, but there was little choice. He was painfully aware of his failings, and how close the entire operation had come to disaster, and no matter how many times he told himself it was for the greater good it was hard to convince himself he’d done the right thing. In truth, he feared he hadn’t. It was easy to say the nightmare they’d unleashed had been inevitable, that it would have happened even without their interference, but he couldn’t convince himself of that either. Riley might be able to accept what they'd done as the cost of protecting their allies, and securing the future of the Galactic Alliance; Elton knew he could never let it go.

He had done his duty. And now it was time to rest.

***

Riley wasn’t too surprised the outcome of the war weighed heavily on Commodore Yasser. The Firelighters were covert operation specialists, with few qualms about being sneaky or underhanded in pursuit of their goals; they didn’t allow morality, particularly a morality preached by someone a long way from the combat zone, to interfere with their mission. Yasser, by contrast, was a regular navy officer and a diplomat, a thoroughly decent man who wouldn’t – couldn’t – accept there was little room for doubt or scruple in the service of one’s nation. It was easy to be open and honest when one was safe, and held all the cards, but a great deal harder when one was weak and in constant danger. The Solar Union had only been a galactic superpower for the last decade. Riley had grown up in an era where a couple of battleships could smash the Solar Navy in an hour, then gone on to turn Earth into their master’s personal fiefdom.

And there’s a new wave of filibusters doing just that, now the Tokomak are gone, he thought, coldly. We had little choice, but to weaken both the Tichck and the Vesparians as much as possible.

“Years ago, we triggered off a gang war between two groups of terrorist fundamentalist fuckers,” he said, flatly. “The war got most of the bastards killed, but it also gave us an opportunity to wipe out the remainder and liberate the entire region. The same is true here.”

He scowled. The Tichck had come very close to wiping out the Belosi. The hell of it was that it hadn’t been an intentional genocide so much as sheer cold-blooded practicality. They didn’t hate the Belosi, they just wanted to get rid of them. Perhaps not even that. They’d set out to kill an entire intelligence race with the same dispassion humans might eradicate an anthill or termites or even a wasp’s nest. The sheer horror they’d created still haunted his dreams. There could be no peace with such a nightmare, no scruples when it came to tearing it down.

“The Tichck have been gravely weakened,” he continued. “The Vesparians aren’t much better off. The Belosi have been welcomed into our alliance, as have the Subdo on a number of liberated worlds; there’s at least a reasonable chance the other systems near the Tichck will take advantage of their weakness to join us too. We did the right thing for the greater good.”

Sarah chuckled. “Shut it.”

Riley nodded, conceding her point. “We think we did the right thing, Admiral,” he said. “What now?”

“Now?” Admiral Stuart studied his fingertips. “You two – and the rest of your team – get some leave. Then you can decide if you want to keep working with the Belosi, now we have a proper alliance with them, or if you want to be reassigned elsewhere. It’s up to you.”

Riley exchanged glances with Sarah. “We’ll take that leave, and then think about it,” he said, finally. He would miss the Belosi, although he had a feeling the navy would prefer them to stay away. The risk of accidentally poking a hole in the cover story was too high. It would come out eventually, of course, but the longer the gap between the affair and the reveal the better. “We’ll see what we want.”

“Of course,” Admiral Stuart said. “And for what it’s worth, I think you did the right thing.”

“So do I,” Sarah said. “But that doesn’t mean we won’t have to pay a price for what we did.”

***

Mongo kept his thoughts to himself as Riley and Sarah left his office, orientating on each other in a manner that suggested they were closer than regulations permitted. It wasn’t a problem – they were both old enough to approach the manner with common sense, rather than hormonal foolishness – but it might cause minor problems in the future, if the whole affair was blown wide open. His lips twisted in dark amusement. If the truth came out too soon, the fact two of the three agents were having an affair with each other would be a very minor problem indeed.

He leaned back in his chair, studying the final report. The mission had been far more successful than he’d dreamed, although there was a very real case to be made that both Commodore Yasser and the Firelighters had overstepped their orders. He had planned it that way, coldly intending to ensure the whole mission could be dismissed as a rogue operation if it had gone spectacularly wrong … it didn’t sit well with him, and it felt like a planned betrayal, but if the whole affair had been blown open too early he would have sacrificed the team to save the human race. As it was …

The Tichck had deserved their fate, he told himself. Their leadership, at least. He wanted to believe the rest of their society deserved the nightmare they’d unleashed, the nightmare the Tichck had done so much to create, and yet … he shook his head. The Solar Union had honoured its debt to the Belosi, and the Belosi themselves were safe. And they even had new allies.

And the cover story is firmly in place, he thought. The one advantage of the war, and the attendant devastation of a hundred worlds, was that most evidence had been destroyed or warped in the chaos. Any discrepancies could be easily explained away, even if someone took the time to dig into what little remained. Hell, we still don’t know what Fly-By-Night was really doing. They left traces we can use to bolster the cover story.

He signed inwardly, knowing what was really bothering him. He wasn’t naive, not like the poor fools who had tried to shut down the CIA or thought gentlemen didn’t read each other’s mail. He knew there were times when they had to make use of covert operatives, to bend the rules – even break them – in the name of a greater good. And yet, every time the rules were beat or broken, it made it easier for them to be bent or broken again. It was all too easy to convince yourself you were doing the right thing, to rationalise your way into doing something you knew you really shouldn’t, if you refused to carry out any kind of sanity checks. But how could you do that if you needed your secret operations to remain secret?

It was wrong. It was against everything the Solar Union stood for. And yet, he saw no choice.

“We did the right thing,” he told himself. He had run the projections. The odds were good they’d accomplished the best possible outcome: two potential enemies were weakened, a new cluster of allies … quite a few other resolutions that favoured both the Solar Union and the Galactic Alliance. “But how long will it be before we come to terms with it?

He shook his head, tapping the console to seal the files. Time would tell, he supposed. A great many brilliant operations had led to poor outcomes, a surprising number of failures had had surprisingly beneficial resolutions. Who knew what would happen, in the future? He had to take care of the here and now.

And the future could take care of itself.

The End