And just what would you do about it if you were on the same ship? he asked himself. You know what you’d like to do, but you also know what Article One Nineteen would have to say about it, don’t you? Of course, Megan’s probably smart enough to not transgress the sacred Articles of War—one of you should be, anyway—so it’d probably actually be worse, in the end.
At least they were assigned to the same task group. It might be a pretty thin silver lining, since they probably wouldn’t have been if he’d gotten his ship, but the Yawata Strike had changed that, too. He’d been designated to command the new Roland-class HMS Laozi almost five T-months before Megan had been ordered to Arngrim, and she’d twitted him mercilessly in the letters she’d recorded, crowing over the fact that she’d have her new ship a month and a half before he got his despite his “head start.”
Neither of them had seen the Yawata Strike coming.
Arngrim had been two T-months ahead of Laozi in the building queue…which meant she’d been away from HMSS Vulcan, where both of them had been built, on a builders’ trial of her impeller nodes when Vulcan was blown apart. And that was how Megan came to command her first destroyer while her fiancé remained an executive officer.
Jayson was scarcely the only Queen’s officer whose career had been scrambled by the Yawata Strike, and he tried to keep his disappointment in perspective. It was harder sometimes than others, but he supposed that was human nature. And he was enormously relieved Megan had been spared at least that much. There were times he envied her magnificent new ship, but the nightmares she’d experienced during the brief leave they’d snatched together before this deployment killed any sense of resentment stone cold.
He could see the ashes of those nightmares behind her eyes even now as they spoke over the low-powered whisker lasers connecting the squadron’s ships in a network no one could have detected from more than a very few thousand kilometers away.
“I know you’ve seen it, sweetheart,” he said now. “We all have, but you had a ringside seat. I’m just as glad I didn’t. That may be cowardly of me, but it’s true. And I wish to hell there were some way to tell you it’s not going to happen again here and make that be the truth, but I can’t. Nobody can.”
“I know. I know!” She shook her head, then kissed the fingers of her right hand and laid them gently against her display. His eyes brightened, and she smiled as he returned the long-distance caress.
“I know,” she repeated. “And I guess what I’m really doing is just talking to someone who can listen to me carry on without its being prejudicial to discipline!”
“You’re entitled, whenever I’m available,” he pointed out. “One of the things I’m here for, now that I think about it.” He lifted his nose. “Feel free to lay all of your concerns in my capable hands, my daughter.”
“What I’m going to feel free to do is kick you in the ass the next time I see you,” she replied with a chuckle, and he shook his head mournfully.
“Such a violent person,” he sighed. “I don’t really understand how I came to find myself in such an abusive relationship.”
“You’re an idiot,” she told him. “My idiot, but an idiot.”
“At your service.”
He grinned, delighted by her gurgle of laughter. He didn’t expect it to last, but for the moment, at least…
“I think what you need,” she began, “is for someone to—”
She broke off as a chime sounded and the icon of an urgent message flashed beside the name “Thirunavu” in one corner of her display.
“Just a sec, Jayson,” she said. “Rolf’s pinging me.”
She put the ship-to-ship link on hold and hit the message icon. A blue-eyed, dark-haired, dark-skinned face with a hawklike profile appeared in Jayson’s place.
“Yes, Rolf?”
“Skipper, we’ve got an update from Phantom,” her executive officer said without preamble. “President Vangelis just got formal notice from Hajdu.” Lieutenant Commander Thirunavu shook his head, his eyes grim. “There won’t be any more extensions. Anybody who can’t get off before he opens fire is just out of luck.”
Megan Petersen felt herself go cold. Until that very moment, she realized, some part of her had hoped Hajdu’s threat to destroy the Hypatian orbital infrastructure before it could be completely evacuated was only some sick bluff. Maybe she’d been able to do that because what he proposed to do instead violated so many laws of interstellar warfare. In fact, it was a violation of the fourth clause of the Eridani Edict, part of the League’s very Constitution.
My God, she thought. That’s what this is, really, isn’t it? This “Operation Buccaneer” was conceived from the beginning specifically as an Eridani violation. It’s a terror campaign, and all Hajdu’s really doing is coming out of the shadows to underline that for all its future victims!
How had they gotten here? How had they reached a point where the Solarian League was willing to openly violate its own Eridani Edict? The edict specifically designed to prevent this sort of atrocity? Which required any military commander to take every possible precaution to limit collateral damage and preclude any avoidable civilian deaths? The League had executed more than one officer—military commander or brigand; it hadn’t mattered—over the last eight hundred T-years for violating the fourth clause, and now it was prepared to violate it itself.
It has to go. The realization went through her like an icicle. The League has to go. It’s not enough to just negotiate peace with it again. Not anymore. Anything so corrupt it could embrace something like this has to go.
“Understood, Rolf,” she said. “I’ll be on the bridge in ten.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Thirunavu said formally, and she nodded, then punched back to her link to Cinqueda.
“We just heard from Phantom, and—”
“I got the word while you were talking to Rolf,” Jayson interrupted her. “They need me in AuxCon.”
“Understood.” She stared at the display for a long, still moment, drinking up the sight of him, storing him away in her heart. Then she inhaled.
“Be safe, love,” she said. “I’ll see you later.”
SLNS Troubadour
Hypatia System
“How are we doing, Ellen?” Commander Madison Echols inquired as he stepped on to the ridiculously spacious bridge of SLNS Troubadour.
The commander knew an officer with as little seniority as he had was fortunate to have a command at all in the Solarian League Navy. Despite its huge size, the SLN was rank-heavy—to put it kindly—and the decision against mobilizing the Reserve had only emphasized that. An awful lot of officers who should have been commanding squadrons, or at least divisions, during any shoting war had been forced to settle for individual ship commands. For that matter, some of those officers were on the beach, which made Madison Echols profoundly grateful to be in space.
Despite that, and given the human ability to infallibly recognize how much greener the grass was somewhere else, Echols would have preferred to command a warship. That was not to be, however, and so he’d been assigned to the TUFT fleet and given the 7,000,000-ton Troubadour. His new command was old and long overdue for a general overhaul. She was also slow, unmaneuverable, and totally unarmed. She was, however, all his, which made up for a lot. Despite which, he had yet to grow accustomed to the sheer size—and the sparse instrumentation—of her civilian-designed command deck. He could have played basketball in here!
“Captain Abshire’s just finishing the pod deployment, Sir,” Lieutenant Commander Ellen Riba, Troubadour’s executive officer, replied.
Riba was seated in the rather worn captain’s chair at the center of the bridge, and she unwrapped herself from it and saluted—sort of—still cradling her cup of coffee in her off hand. Not very shipshape and Navy style, Echols admitted as he acknowledged the salute with a nod, but Troubadour had that effect on people. Besides, anyone who hadn’t made at least captain was a pretty junior tadpole by Solarian standards. They tended to adopt a sort
of “what the hell, we’re all in this together” attitude.
“I’ll bet she’s delighted about that,” he said as he stepped past Riba and settled into the chair she’d just vacated.
Like himself, Florence Abshire was a mere commander, although both of them were entitled to the title of “captain” as starships’ commanding officers. He’d known her a long time, though, and he had a pretty fair notion of how she must feel about this entire “Buccaneer” crap. He knew how he felt, at any rate. The term “buccaneer” had all sorts of glamorous connotations, the notion of a swashbuckler with the audacity to back his wit against the entire galaxy, take his chances against any foe. The operation to which it had been appended was anything but glamorous, and they certainly weren’t taking any chances when they executed it.
He understood the logic behind it, and his sympathy for so-called neutral star nations who’d shown their hostility by embracing the Manties and their friends was limited. But he also knew the Solarian League Navy—his Navy—was deliberately picking victims specifically on the basis of who could—and couldn’t—fight back. That his Navy had embarked on a systematic campaign of vandalism because it dared not face its enemies in combat. And so, what he felt whenever he thought about Buccaneer was shame.
And especially in this case, he thought grimly, settling himself in the command chair. This isn’t a hostile “neutral.” This is a star system—these are people—that were Solarian just two T-weeks ago. That’s whose infrastructure we’re about to blow to hell…and God only knows how many of them are still aboard it.
His stomach churned, although he was careful about his expression. Had to maintain the Navy’s dignity, after all. And he supposed given the inclusion of an option like Parthian Shot, he shouldn’t be all that surprised by Vice Admiral Hajdu’s timetable.
Have to get our arses out of here before those nasty Manties turn up. Wouldn’t want to have to face them, would we? So instead, we murder a few hundred thousand Solarians—excuse me, ex-Solarians—and get the hell out while the getting’s good.
“I don’t think Captain Abshire was delighted, no, Sir,” Riba said in answer to his question. She shook her head. “For that matter, Sir, I probably shouldn’t say it, but I’m just as glad Merchant Mart drew the assignment. I know it’s got to be done, and I wouldn’t mind smashing up a few Manties, but this…”
She shook her head, and Echols grunted in acknowledgment. He really shouldn’t let her get away with comments like that on duty, but it would have been hypocritical to hand her her head when all she’d done was to say out loud the very things he’d been thinking. Spoken words were probably more prejudicial to discipline than private thoughts, but neither one were something upon which the Regs and the Navy smiled.
“Any word from the Flag?” he asked instead, and Riba shook her head again.
“No, Sir,” and her tone—like his—said more than the simple words had.
“I see,” he replied as he tilted the command chair to a more comfortable angle. So Hajdu wasn’t going to grant any more extensions. Well, there’d never been much chance he would. He’d already given Hypatia an additional twelve hours, after all. How much more generous could an executioner be?
Stop that! he told himself sternly. You’ve got your orders. He’s got his, and he’s your commanding officer. So shut the hell up and do your damned job, Madison!
Easier said than done, he reflected. Easier said than done.
Still, he was guiltily aware that he agreed with Riba about where the actual duty had fallen. He supposed it didn’t really matter whose ship had transported the missile pods about to be employed in such ruthless abandon, but at least he could cling to the illusionary innocence of arguing that they hadn’t come from his cargo holds. And the truth was that Hajdu was being rather parsimonious in his ammunition expenditures. Not that they were going to need that many of them. The improved Cataphracts’ laserheads were designed to take out capital ships; what they’d do to unarmored industrial platforms—and residential habitats; don’t forget those, Madison, he heard his own voice say in the back of his brain—would be beyond devastating.
And what’s going to happen to Hypatia when all that wreckage starts de-orbiting? He’s not even trying to prevent that. I guess that’s not his job when the only people down there are traitors. Bit hard on their kids, maybe, but who was it back on Old Earth said you couldn’t make omelettes without cracking a few eggs? And then there’s that other charming bit of wisdom about nits.
He closed his eyes. He had to stop this shit. Either that, or he had to request relief and resign his commission, and despite everything, he wasn’t quite ready for that just yet. Not yet. But if this continued—
“Sir, I’m picking up something a little weird.”
Echols’s eyes popped open and he turned the chair gratefully towards Lieutenant Fedosei Castello, Troubadour’s electronics officer. “Electronics officer” was a bit of an ambiguous term, especially in Troubadour’s case. She wasn’t armed, so she didn’t have a tactical officer, nor was she equipped with even rudimentary ECM or passive defenses, so she didn’t have an electronic warfare officer, either. If she’d had either of those things, Lieutenant Castello would have been in charge of them. Since she didn’t, he doubled as communications officer and tracking officer, doing his best with Troubadour’s limited sensor suite.
It was a thankless task, but Castello was only twenty-three, young enough to retain a hefty dose of new-puppy enthusiasm for his duties.
“What do you mean, ‘weird,’ Fedosei?” Echols asked, glancing at the master plot.
Merchant Mart and SLNS Stevedore, Vice Admiral Hajdu’s third missile collier, floated in formation, spaced about five thousand kilometers apart, practically on top of one another in space-going terms. The icons of Task Force 1030’s actual warships were almost all between the freighters and the planet, and he saw absolutely nothing in the display that could have qualified for Castello’s chosen adjective.
“I’m not quite sure, Sir. It’s almost like—Oh, my God!”
Echols was still jerking upright in his chair when he discovered that he wouldn’t be working out his feelings about Operation Buccaneer after all. He had one instant to see Merchant Mart’s icon vanish abruptly from the display.
And then, SLNS Troubadour, and every man and woman aboard her, did the same thing.
SLNS Camperdown
Hypatia System
“What the hell just happened?!”
“I don’t know, Sir!” Daphne Koopman admitted, her brown eyes shocked. “Just one second they were—”
“Excuse me, Admiral,” another voice interrupted, and Hajdu Gyôzô wheeled towards Commodore Honoratus Valentini, his staff electronic warfare officer.
“What?” he demanded, in a voice that was almost normal again.
“I think…I think I know what happened, Sir.”
“Well, don’t keep it a secret,” Hajdu said, and realized that whatever his voice might sound like, his own sense of shock was still growing. Not surprisingly. It was less than ten seconds since roughly twenty million tons of his ships had ceased to exist.
“Sir, I think it was a drone. Drones, plural, I mean.”
“Drones?” Commodore Brigman repeated. “Are you serious?”
“I know it sounds crazy,” Valentini told the chief of staff. “But just before Merchant Mart…came apart, we picked up an impeller signature. A small one. It came out of frigging nowhere, and it was awfully hard to localize even after we saw it. We only had about eight seconds to track it. Then it disappeared…along with Merchant Mart. I think it must’ve been a heavily stealthed recon drone, probably coming in ballistic, that brought its wedge back up for a terminal maneuver just before it rammed.”
Hajdu stared at his EWO, and his mind raced. It was ridiculous! Nobody used drones as shipkillers, for God’s sake!
But even as he thought that, he realized there was no reason someone couldn’t. In fact, the majority of modern SAMs
used their own impeller wedges to kill atmospheric targets, like stingships. The problem was that any warship’s missile defense could kill any drone long before it could reach ramming range, and that was the only way a drone could attack something. But even though its maximum acceleration might be only ten or fifteen percent that of an attack missile’s, a drone impeller wedge was thoroughly capable of destroying any starship ever built…if it could get through.
And they weren’t maneuvering—didn’t even have their wedges up. They were frigging sitting ducks, and I was so damned confident I held all the cards that I just let the fucking Hypatians kill a couple of hundred of my people and take out my entire un-deployed supply of missiles.
His teeth clenched so hard his jaw ached, and red-fanged fury pulsed deep inside him, but he forced himself to draw a deep, steadying breath.
He was enraged, but even in his fury, a corner of his mind knew no reasonable person could have faulted the Hypatians for striking back any way they could. Yes, they were traitors, and, yes, he’d fucking well cut them off at the knees for this. But if he’d had the ability to hurt the people about to massacre his own star system’s orbital infrastructure and kill millions of his fellow citizens, he’d damned well have used it, too.
But where the hell did they get the capability? his mind asked him suddenly. We never saw this coming, but we weren’t exactly just sitting here! Our sensor net’s up, so where the hell did Hypatia get something—at least three somethings—that got through our sensors completely undetected? That’s not—
“Incoming!” Koopman barked suddenly. “Missiles incoming—many missiles incoming! Range at launch, fourteen-point-six million kilometers. Initial closing velocity, fifteen-point-one KPS. Estimate three hundred fifty-plus inbound at forty-five thousand five hundred KPS squared. Time-of-flight two hundred twenty-five seconds!”