Barbarians at the Gates

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Marx System, 4095

“Commodore?”

Commodore Joseph Truing turned to face the young officer and—barely—refrained from rolling his eyes. Joseph was over a hundred years old, thanks to anti-aging treatments he’d accepted when he’d joined the Federation Navy, and Lieutenant Harwich looked as if he’d barely started to shave. He was eager enough, anyway, even if he did have a habit of reporting every random flicker on the detectors as an incoming enemy attack. It was hard to believe, Joseph thought to himself from time to time, that he had ever been that young.

“Yes, lieutenant? What have you detected this time?”

Admiral Justinian’s military machine was, somewhat to his regret, less formal than the Federation Navy. Proper military discipline would come in time, Joseph was sure, but until then he’d just have to suffer. He didn’t regret signing up with the admiral when his recruiters had found him on the colony he’d chosen as a retirement home, yet there were times when he wondered if Justinian’s grand plan to reshape the Federation would succeed. The news from the war front, heavily censored through it was, was not good. The war had stalemated.

The youngster managed to look offended, even though he was also keen to show off. “We picked up a signal from a starship that just entered the system…ah, entered the system some hours ago,” he reported. “The Governor-General is requesting a meeting between his ships and our squadron for transfer of classified material. There is also an ID header from Secretary Festal directing us to comply with the request.”

“Interesting,” Joseph said thoughtfully. A month ago, the Secretary and his staff—and the admiral’s daughter—had entered the Marx System through the Asimov Point and headed off towards The Hive and the Asimov Point that would take them deeper into Hartkopf’s territory. Joseph had strongly recommended an escort, but Hartkopf’s ambassadors had warned that their superior would not accept armed ships in his territory before the treaty was signed. “Do they say why, I wonder?”

“No, sir,” Harwich said. “They’re just repeating the same message.”

Joseph nodded. Admiral Justinian preferred to rely on military men in his government, but he’d had to accept a number of civilian experts, including the Secretary of Foreign Affairs. The title was something of a joke, Joseph had privately concluded, yet it might have had a point. An alliance with Hartkopf might be just what Justinian needed to turn the tide of the war. And that meant that anything Joseph did wrong might imperil the alliance.

He looked down at the display. The admiral hadn’t been able to spare any more units, leaving Joseph with nothing more than a squadron of heavy cruisers and a handful of gunboats, but the fortresses defending the Asimov Point were modern and powerful. They could hold it against anything less than a couple of squadrons of superdreadnaughts, backed up by assault carriers and starfighters. Even if his entire force was destroyed, the Asimov Point would be safe, and so would the inhabited planets through the distortion in time and space.

They might as well honor the request. Governor-General Hartkopf had to be coddled, for now at least.

“Order the helm to set us on an intercept course,” he ordered. “We may as well take the opportunity to run a few tracking exercises while we’re away from the fortresses.”

“Yes, sir,” the youngster said, turning back to his console.

“Thank you, lieutenant,” he said. “Put it on the main display. I’ll command from the flag bridge.”

“They’ve taken the bait, sir.”

“It looks like it,” Roman said. “Keep monitoring them with passive sensors only.”

The sick feeling in his chest was growing stronger. He hadn’t planned a fleet operation—technically, a squadron operation—before, and all nine ships in the fleet were under his command. Part of him wished that Admiral Mason had chosen to place a more experienced officer in command, but Mason had reminded him—not without a thoroughly sardonic smile—that the Federation Navy’s tradition was very clear. The man who dreamed up the plan would be charged with actually turning it into reality.

He settled back in his command chair and tried to relax. It wasn’t easy. Marx’s Asimov Point was unusually close to the system’s primary. They were actually deeper in the mass limit than they’d been in any of their prior engagements—even Jefferson—and if something went wrong, escape might prove to be tricky. The Marx System might not be as dead as The Hive, as there were small colonies scattered throughout the system and a gas giant operation orbiting the larger of the system’s twin gas giants, and there might be enemy starships lurking elsewhere.

Centuries ago, before the dawn of spaceflight, a philosopher-prophet named Karl Marx had come up with what he called the ultimate destination of humanity: pure and perfect communism. His discovery had led to the creation of some of the darkest regimes in human history, despite which far too many people had continued to hold a faith in communism that was almost religious. The attempts to found communist planets had failed, but the settlers of Marx believed they had a solution. If communism was too perfect for humanity, they would create a new breed of humanity that would be capable of accepting and following their tenets. They’d eventually started breeding modified humans—in defiance of Federation-wide law—with altered brains.

At first, it had seemed like the whole project was succeeding, until some of the older altered humans started to show an incredible number of instabilities. Even in the Fortieth century, tampering with human brains was difficult and very dangerous. It hadn’t been long before the entire planet was torn apart by war and most of the population exterminated. Their brains had simply been too warped to live.

He watched the display as the enemy ships crawled closer, praying that the ECM worked. Admiral Justinian hadn’t dispatched his modern ships to watch the back door, so the ECM should be successfully mimicking ships known to belong to Hartkopf, but if the developers were wrong they might be heading into a missile duel at knife-range. In such a battle, the person who fired the first shot often fired the last one. If they were really lucky, they would destroy the enemy ships before they managed to get a shot off.

“Captain,” the communications officer said suddenly. “They’re demanding verification of our codes.”

Roman frowned. They’d interrogated Admiral Justinian’s Foreign Secretary and he’d provided them with his authorization codes, but a paranoid mind would insist on having other codes, ones that might have been lost with the Harmonious Repose. The interrogators were convinced that the prisoners knew nothing of any other codes, yet it was quite possible that the liner’s commander had orders to keep his codes apart. And he’d gone down with his ship.

“Repeat the message,” he ordered. They’d created a computer simulation of the Foreign Secretary, but it wouldn’t hold up to more than casual scrutiny. If someone on the other side actually knew the man personally, they’d be able to see through the deception. “Inform them that we have to transfer certain classified components as soon as possible.”

“Aye, sir,” the communications officer said.

Joseph had been a serving naval officer for over sixty years and, unlike some officers he could mention, he hadn’t shied away from the prospect of battle. He’d earned his stripes, unlike the officers who were promoted merely for looking good at inspection time, and every instinct he had was screaming a warning. He couldn’t put it in words, yet something was wrong. Why, exactly, would Hartkopf want to transfer classified components to his ships?

His orders said that he had to be diplomatic when dealing with Hartkopf’s starships, but they didn’t say that he had to obey their every command, even if one of them was carrying the Foreign Secretary. Besides, even if they were perfectly innocent, the exercise would do them good. Admiral Justinian had been a fleet commander himself. He’d understand.

“Inform them that they are to reduce speed, hold position and cut their shields,” he ordered. “I want to board them and inspect their cargo before we allow them any closer to us.”

“Aye, sir,” the lieutenant said.

Joseph barely heard him, considering the tactical situation. Two squadrons of cruisers were racing towards each other, already within missile range. His ships were using their active sensors; the enemy—and he was already thinking of them as enemy ships—weren’t. That proved very little, he knew. They could track his ships through their emissions.

“They’re not responding,” the lieutenant told him.

Joseph scowled. Something was very wrong.

“Send a message to the fortresses,” he ordered. “Give them a full update and warn them that Hartkopf might be trying something…”

He broke off. The unknown starships had just opened fire.

“Fire,” Roman ordered. Midway shuddered as she vented her external racks, and then unleashed a full broadside from her internal tubes. The other cruisers followed suit, slipping to rapid fire as the enemy ships came within range. Firing so many missiles was chancy—an alert operator might notice that his ships had fired more missiles than they were supposed to be able to fire—but there was little choice. Nine heavy cruisers—even outdated ships—were nasty customers. “Shift to rapid fire, and keep firing.”

The display frantically updated as command missiles took control and angled their charges toward their targets. The enemy ships hadn’t been completely fooled—or perhaps someone over on the other side had decided to run all kinds of drills—because their point defense opened fire at once, raking great holes in the formation of missiles. Their return fire was much slower off the mark, suggesting that they hadn’t had their missiles armed and ready to fire.

Roman allowed himself a moment of relief. All they had to do now was survive and destroy the enemy ships. This far from the fortresses, the crews would never be able to tell that it hadn’t been Hartkopf who had attacked the cruisers. The report they’d make to their superiors would be exactly what Roman wanted it to be, as if he’d dictated it to them personally.

“First wave shifting to terminal assault,” the tactical officer reported grimly. They’d fired off enough missiles to destroy the heavy cruisers, but the enemy point defense was taking a heavy toll on the missiles. “Second wave preparing to follow up the first wave; command missiles taking control now.”

Roman nodded as the first missiles started to strike home.

Joseph cursed as the first volley of missiles started to slam into his units. By sheer luck—or the whim of a mad god—Haven was barely targeted by the first wave, suggesting that the enemy hadn’t realized that the cruiser was the flagship. But then, part of his mind whispered, the Planet-class cruisers were virtually impossible to distinguish from the Archer-class cruisers that made up most of his force. The enemy wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference until his ships started spitting missiles back at them, and by then they wouldn’t have been able to retarget the first wave of missiles.

“Spread our fire,” he ordered, ignoring the lieutenant’s shock. Luna Academy—much less the facilities Justinian had set up as training camps since his defection—would have been horrified at the decision, for spreading their fire ensured that no enemy craft would be destroyed.

On the other hand, if they were lucky, they might disable a few starships and prevent them from escaping before reinforcements arrived. The fortresses would have already fired courier drones through the Asimov Point, summoning reinforcements from the terminus.

“Link our ships into the datanet and coordinate our point defense,” Joseph ordered.

He cursed his own complacency under his breath as ships started to die. The Power vanished in a ball of fire as her shields were knocked down by the tearing force of antimatter detonations; the Pocahontas followed her a moment later, a missile slipping through a brief chink in her shields and detonating against the hull. If he’d had the datanet up and running…but no, that could have been taken as a hostile act. Governor-General Hartkopf—the title was ashes in his thoughts—had sucked his cruisers in, and they were all going to die.

“They’re shifting their fire,” the tactical officer said.

Joseph nodded grimly. The datanet was collapsing almost as quickly as it was being put up, with starships falling out of the network or being destroyed outright.

“Transmit an emergency signal, then drop a stealth beacon,” he ordered. “I want the admiral to know what happened here.”

“Sir…incoming fire.”

The savage missile swarm fell on his remaining starships. Robert Graves exploded in a ball of fire, followed rapidly by Spider Bite and Tunbridge Wells. And then the missiles sought out Haven. There was no time to say anything, no time to react, before the missiles started striking the hull and blew the entire starship and crew to vapor.

Midway rocked violently as a missile—one of the last fired by the enemy cruisers before they died—exploded against her shields. Roman allowed himself a small moment of hope as the cruiser absorbed the blow, before contemplating the damage report from two of his ships. He’d had the great advantage that his datanet, at least, had been ready for instant action when he’d opened fire and he’d used it unmercifully. Only a handful of missiles had broken through his defenses and overall damage was minimal.

“All enemy ships destroyed, sir,” the tactical officer said. “There are a handful of lifepods floating in space…”

“Ignore them,” Roman ordered. Some of the warlords had ordered their starships to fire on unarmed and helpless lifepods, but he wasn’t going to commit such an atrocity. Besides, the survivors could only testify that Governor-General Hartkopf’s ships had opened fire on them, without warning or provocation. It would certainly sour relationships between the two warlords. “Helm, break us away from the Asimov Point and set course for the mass limit, best possible speed.”

“Aye, sir,” the tactical officer said. Midway rolled in space and started to head away from the Asimov Point, followed by her consorts. The starfighters launched by the fortresses—too little, too late—were simply ignored. They could perhaps catch up with the starships, but their life support packs wouldn’t last long enough for them to inflict real damage.

But perhaps the enemy thought differently. A rational foe would have broken off the pursuit, yet the starfighters were still following them.

“New contacts,” the sensor officer reported, his voice rising in alarm. “Twelve starships just transited the Asimov Point!”

Roman scowled. All of a sudden, the enemy seemed a great deal more rational. “Identify them,” he ordered.

If he understood what he was seeing, the enemy fleet would certainly include a carrier that would recover the starfighters before they ran out of life support. They had to have had a reaction force on the other side of the Asimov Point, one that had been alerted as soon as the first missile was launched. The enemy—he acknowledged ruefully—had reacted with astonishing speed.

“Nine battlecruisers, two starships of indeterminate class and one bulk freighter,” the sensor officer said. Roman remembered how Admiral Justinian had turned freighters into carriers and put two and two together. If that ship wasn’t a converted carrier, he’d be astonished. “The unknown ships may be a new design of cruiser. Their power curves are roughly compatible with Darwin-class starships.”

“Launch a stealth probe towards them,” Roman ordered. Obtaining information on a new class of enemy ships was greatly to be desired. It would certainly help avoid surprises when Federation ships encountered the newcomer in formal combat. “Helm, continue to maneuver until we are clear of the starfighters.”

He sat back and watched as the enemy ships started to pick up speed, running through the vectors in his head. Unless the starfighters could delay them, they’d escape without needing to engage the newcomers, even in a long-range missile duel. And yet, there was almost no way to prevent the starfighters from engaging them…was there?

“Launch a spread of antimatter missiles,” he ordered. Shipkillers were never spent on starfighters; everyone knew that. And if they were lucky, the enemy starfighters wouldn’t recognize the threat. “Detonate them at closest approach to the enemy craft.”

“Aye, sir,” the tactical officer said.

Roman watched the results grimly. Only a handful of enemy craft were destroyed in the blasts—antimatter detonations were tiny in the vacuum of space—but the remainder scattered, convinced they were fighting madmen. The tactic wasn’t normally considered to be reliable, if only because it expended too many missiles, weakening the cruiser if she encountered another starship. And as long as starfighters were scattered, the threat they posed was greatly reduced.

“Sir…?”

“Keep us on course,” Roman ordered harshly. They couldn’t fight the enemy ships in a straight battle. “Once we cross the mass limit, take us into FTL and aim us towards the first waypoint.”

“Aye, sir,” the helmsman said.

Two hours later, with the enemy having given up the chase, Midway and her consorts crossed the mass limit and vanished from the Marx System. They left behind nothing but chaos.