Democracy's Light

Chapter Forty-Three

“It doesn’t look like much, does it?”

Admiral Wilhelm gazed into the stars ahead of the superdreadnaught. One of them was marginally closer and brighter than the rest, but there was little else to mark it out as The Sun, the star that shone on the world that gave humanity birth. The romantic part of his mind had wondered if he would know it when he saw it, but without the electronic tracking system, he wouldn’t have been able to pick it out from the thousands of other stars, glaring out endlessly against the darkness of space. It was just another star.

“No, sir,” Captain Keene agreed. The fleet was assembling around the starship in good order, despite Admiral Wilhelm’s decision to shift his flag again, to a whole new superdreadnaught. It was a security decision, or so he had claimed, but the truth was that he wanted to keep his people on their toes. An alert crew was one that wouldn’t be surprised when the enemy forces emerged from flicker-space, intent on killing every last one of them before they could react. “It should look bigger, somehow.”

The starships were falling into formation now. It was easy to loose track of starships, even entire fleets, in the gulf between the stars; it wouldn’t have been possible to hop directly from Wakanda to Earth, or at least arrive in fighting shape. The fleet was gathering slowly at the designated waypoint, exchanging brief confirmations of their status as they powered up their weapons and sensors, preparing for war. One way or the other, it would all be over soon.

He allowed his gaze to sweep across the superdreadnaughts. “Look at it,” he said, watching as the display updated yet again as a squadron of light cruisers were slotted into their appointed positions. “Eighty-one superdreadnaughts, ninety battlecruisers and over two hundred other starships, working together as a perfect force, the largest force that anyone has ever assembled since the Fall of Earth. Doesn’t it seem irresistible?”

“Yes, sir,” Captain Keene agreed. His voice softened slightly. “We drilled them until they were performing manoeuvres in their sleep. They’re ready.”

Admiral Wilhelm smiled. “And Earth is not,” he said. “Even if they have anticipated our arrival, how could they have prepared for such strength? We wrecked enough of their deployable forces at Cottbus to make defending Earth and all the other vital targets difficult, if not impossible.” He shook his head. “I love it when a plan comes together.”

He looked up again towards the sun. It had worked almost exactly as he had planned it, although the loss of the supply dump had tipped his hand. He had known — even if he hadn’t told the two silly bitches from the Thousand Families — that the Provisional Government would send out a fleet to extract retribution for the destruction of the cruisers, a fleet that expected to encounter only one Sector Fleet. It’s near-destruction had forced them to concentrate on defending Earth, but they couldn’t mass enough firepower to stop him, he hoped. The Nerds had assured him of that. They would be unable to stop his fleet. He almost pitied them.

A chime sounded as the final ships linked into the command network. “We’re ready,” sir,” Captain Keene said. “The final starships have arrived.”

“I see no reason to delay,” Admiral Wilhelm said, calmly. He looked down at the display, watching his fleet settling into a formation a civilian would have thought of as untidy. It was, in a sense, but rigid fleet formations were only useable in displays or propaganda videos intended to impress the largely ignorant masses. “Signal the fleet. Inform them… that it is time to advance.”

He glanced at his timepiece. “Launch marks, five minutes,” he ordered. “Select coordinates; Plan Three. Upload them into the fleet network and prepare to flicker.”

“Aye, sir,” the tactical officer said, as he took his seat. He always felt nervous before flickering into combat, but this time, at least, they could be fairly certain that they wouldn’t be jumping straight into a combat zone. Earth presented almost-unique defence problems for anyone holding the system. The defenders would be concentrated around Earth. He had no intention of going there, yet. “Plan Three uploaded.”

The final seconds ticked down quickly. “Flicker,” he ordered. “Take us into battle.”

He winced as his stomach twisted. The shock was worse than normal, but he could tolerate it, although it wasn’t as if he had a choice. There were those that claimed that the flicker-shock was purely psychometric, but they were people who’d never experienced it. The flicker-shock was real. He knew it in his bones.

The starships burst back into normal space. “Emergence, sir,” the tactical officer said. “We are within predicted range of the planet Mars.”

“Excellent,” Admiral Wilhelm said. It was excellent, well within his expected arrival range and, with the flicker-drive being what it was, lucky as well. “Confirm that there are no starships within engagement range and bring the fleet to battle stations. They’ll know we’re here by now.”

Admiral Arun Prabhu found himself jerking awake as the alarm screamed a warning. No military force could remain on alert constantly, despite the delusions of politicians and civilians who thought of military men and women as barely a grade above robots, and he’d been trying to sleep when the alarm had woken him. The superdreadnaught General Grant, Colin’s former flagship and the Shadow Fleet’s current command ship, had been waiting for the attack everyone knew was coming, but the crew still had to rest, even their Admiral.

He hit the intercom as he dressed rapidly. One advantage of orbiting deep within the gravity shadow was that the enemy couldn’t appear out of nowhere, not unless they were very lucky. Earth’s defence system was the most advanced and sensitive in the entire Empire, with the possible exception of whatever the Geeks and Nerds had defending their secret bases, and he would have sworn blind that no one could have slipped a cloaked ship through without being detected. Even the best cloaking devices could only compensate for so much before they overloaded and started missing details that alert watchers could use to track the ship.

“Report,” he snapped. He was just glad that Colin had agreed, finally, to remain on one of the command fortresses, rather than the starship. Arun had been following events on the ground with mounting concern and Colin’s death would have ruined everything, including Arun’s private motive for joining the rebellion. Hindustan, the world that had given birth to the young Arun, was an offence against humanity, a world where caste was absolute, part of the genetic code. His pale skin and dark eyes marked him as a Brahmin, one of the rulers, free to use the lesser castes as he liked. He hated it. “I need a sit-rep, now!”

“We’re picking up a major emergence signature, looks to be at least two hundred ships, near Mars,” the tactical officer reported. Arun knew relief — they were not about to be attacked at once from cloak — and then fear. The enemy should have gone directly for Earth. The fact that they had attacked Mars instead suggested that they had something else up their sleeve. “The fleet is going to alert now and your presence is requested on the flag bridge.”

Arun forgot his jacket, scooped up his terminal in one hand and his cap in the other, and ran for the door. The flag bridge was only a few meters from his cabin, but he forced himself to walk calmly just before the hatch hissed open, allowing him access to the heart of the defences. The holographic display caught his eye at once. A mass of red light, icons blurring together into one contagious mass, hovered near Mars. It was, he realised numbly, far more than just four superdreadnaught squadrons.

“Why Mars?” He asked, cursing the time delay under his breath as he took his command chair. Mars was far enough from Earth to make intervention almost impossible, unless he took the fleet out of Earth’s gravity shadow and flickered out to engage the enemy. It might be what the enemy wanted. If they intended to lure the Shadow Fleet away from the defences, they’d picked a neat way of doing so. “What’s on Mars that is so important?”

He called up tactical data and swore again. Mars had only limited defences, compared to Earth; a handful of outdated fortresses, some ground-based planetary defence systems and a dozen or so gunboats. The orbiting moons and asteroids that had been converted into industrial centres and habitats were effectively naked. The enemy could send down a pair of superdreadnaught squadrons and Mars’s orbit would be swept clean of life.

“Send a pair of recon destroyers to Mars to obtain an accurate count on those starships,” he ordered, cursing the long-range sensors. Drive fields might send out gravimetric pulses that travelled faster than light, but the enemy fleet was bunched together so tightly that they couldn’t pick out each individual ship at such range. He called up the records from their emergence, but they’d come into the system together, bunched up to make reading out individual ships difficult. He’d seen that trick worked before, mainly at Macore when it had been used to slip a superdreadnaught squadron into engagement range of the Shadow Fleet, but here it was being used to far more effect. The enemy commander, whoever it was, had guts.

“Aye, Admiral,” the communications officer said. The recon destroyers had been orbiting up above the gravity shadow. Arun hoped — prayed, to gods he no longer really believed in — that they would be able to slip in and out unmolested, but if the enemy were alert, they might manage to catch the destroyers before they could flicker out. “They’re on their way.”

Arun nodded grimly as two icons vanished from the display, appearing a moment later near Mars, trying to remain close enough to the enemy fleet to see through the haze of ECM covering them while remaining out of weapons range. It wasn’t going to be easy, but destroyer skippers were used to such risks. If it could be done, they would do it.

We used to use the Freebooters to recon systems, he thought, grimly. He had barely known Daria and couldn’t say that he was affected by her actual identity, but losing the Freebooters was a shock. Who did he use to recon the system… or did he jump in without bothering with recon first?

“Get me a direct link to the command fortress, secure line,” he ordered. He had to confer with Colin. Knowingly or otherwise, whoever was commanding that massive fleet had placed them in a hell of a blind. They had an obligation to defend Mars, but honouring that obligation would leave Earth’s defences dependent on the fixed defences. It might not have been such a danger without the threat of Geek-level technology in enemy hands, including long-range multiple warhead missiles and other unpleasant surprises. “Colin, we need to talk.”

The direct link was secure. No one could hear them. “I know,” Colin said. There was a grim note in his voice as well. He was as capable as Arun at working out the possible consequences of either rushing to Mars’s rescue or abandoning it to its fate. “We don’t have a choice, but to make an attempt to drive them away from Mars.”

“Yes, sir,” Arun echoed. Colin was right. There were over five billion people on Mars, including the terraformed surface and the orbital habitats, and they had a responsibility to protect them. Imperial Navy or Shadow Fleet, they had that shared responsibility… and they would not leave civilians behind if they could help it. “I’ll start the movements now.”

“Good luck,” Colin said. His voice faded slightly. “I wish I was with you.”

The surviving recon destroyer flickered back into existence. “Admiral, we’re getting a download now,” the tactical officer said. The display updated rapidly with the destroyer’s sensor readings, finally pasting shape and form on the enemy fleet. It was larger than he had anticipated, with nine squadrons of superdreadnaughts and hundreds of smaller ships. Admiral Wilhelm had finally come calling. “I confirm the presence of several ships that took part in the Battle of Cottbus…”

“It’s Admiral Wilhelm,” Arun said, to Colin. It wasn’t a surprise, but somehow he had a nasty feeling that he knew exactly what Daria had in mind, if she did indeed have a fleet of her own. He knew from experience how hard it was to operate any kind of plan over such a timescale, but her plan had worked out fine so far, even if something had gone badly wrong. It hadn’t proved fatal to her. “Do you still want us to engage?”

Colin nodded tiredly. “Yes, Arun,” he said. “If he comes here, we have a few surprises in store for him.”

Arun nodded and broke the connection. “Helm, take us out of the gravity shadow,” he ordered. They were close enough to Earth for its gravity shadow to impede sensor readings, but Admiral Wilhelm would definitely see them as they rose up and prepared to flicker into engagement range. He had eighty-one superdreadnaughts, while Arun had seventy-two, but half of them were Independence-class ships. The Shadow Fleet also had the latest arsenal ships and several other surprises, even if Colin had insisted on keeping some of them back for a later reveal. It was going to be a far more evenly matched battle than Admiral Wilhelm probably supposed.

“Aye, sir,” the helmsman said. On the display, the Shadow Fleet was rising out of high orbit, leaving the massive defence stations and orbiting asteroids behind as it strove for space. They were in good hands — Colin had had the entire system renovated after the Fall of Earth — but Arun still worried about them. Defending a fixed and effectively stationary target such as a planet was much harder than defending a starship, or even an asteroid. Colin had proven that Earth was far from invulnerable… and Admiral Wilhelm had probably studied the records of the battle with the greatest interest. “We will be out of the gravity shadow in seven minutes.”

Arun took a decision. “Override the safety protocols,” he ordered, tightly. “Get us out of the shadow as quickly as possible.”

The superdreadnaught hummed louder as safety protocols were discarded, allowing the superdreadnaught to speed up, although it wouldn’t be able to reach its maximum speed. The Imperial Navy had speed limits for any starship in orbit around a planet, just to limit the possibility of disaster, although Arun knew that most commercial spacers mocked the precautions. The Imperial Navy didn’t. An object the size of a superdreadnaught crashing down on a planet would have results almost as disastrous as a scorching.

“Revised time estimate,” the helmsman said. “Two minutes to the edge of the gravity shadow.”

“Good,” Arun said. The superdreadnaught couldn’t build up speed rapidly. It was just too massive, even for its prodigious power plant, for a drive field to push it along any faster. They couldn’t afford risking a drive field collapse. “Contact the fleet. I want coordinates for a least-time hop to Mars ready and waiting when we leave the gravity shadow.”

“They’re on their way,” the tactical officer said. Admiral Wilhelm looked up from where he had been admiring the view of Mars, a strange orb with a mixture of red, blue and green colours. Humanity had terraformed Mars long before the flicker drive had been invented and the planet now hosted more people than Earth, or even the remainder of the solar system. They resented, heavily, their permanent subordination to Earth. They might even make allies once he had won the war. “Their fleet is definitely moving out of the gravity shadow and up to a point where they can flicker out to engage us.”

“Exactly as I anticipated,” Admiral Wilhelm said. He looked down at the display for a long moment, running through the vectors in his head. The Imperial Navy ships wouldn’t have risked everything for Mars, but they couldn’t have allowed him to remain where he was indefinitely, not unless they wanted to shut Mars’s industries down permanently. They couldn’t get anything from Jupiter or outside the solar system as long as he held the space just outside the Martian gravity shadow. The presence of two moons, even through they were much smaller than Earth’s moon, had their own effect on the gravity shadow. “How long until they can flicker out?”

“Two minutes,” the tactical officer said. “They’re disregarding the speed limits.”

“Someone’s got an imagination over there,” Captain Keene said. Admiral Wilhelm snorted rudely. The hell of it was that Captain Keene was probably right. The Imperial Navy hadn’t encouraged that sort of initiative from its officers, even when it was clearly necessary. An officer with imagination was an officer who could imagine life without his incompetent superiors… with, ideally, himself in charge. “Do you still want to go with Plan Alpha?”

“Yes,” Admiral Wilhelm said. Plan Alpha was risky as hell, but it offered the greatest chance of winning the battle outright. They couldn’t afford a long drawn-out siege. “Helm, bring up the Plan Alpha flight path and upload it to the fleet.” He paused. “Flicker.”

“Now approaching the gravity edge,” the helmsman said. Arun allowed himself a moment of relief, even though the enemy fleet had remained at Mars, daring him to do anything about them. They hadn’t even bothered to bombard Mars, although it would have been a pointless exercise in brutality. “Flicker drives online and…”

“Emergence,” the tactical officer shouted, as the display filled with red icons. Arun had barely a moment to realise that the entire battle scene had changed before the newcomers opened fire. The entire battle had turned upside down. “Incoming missiles, incoming missiles…!”

Admiral Wilhelm’s arsenal ships spat almost two hundred thousand missiles right into the teeth of the Shadow Fleet.