Democracy's Light

Chapter Forty-Six

“All Reds, this is Red Leader,” Captain Edward Stalker said, as the fighters roared towards their targets. They couldn’t see the superdreadnaughts ahead of them, but the live feed coming directly into their heads from the computers and sensors showed them everything. The superdreadnaughts looked like an impregnable wall of sheer force, glaring around them with implacable sensors, but they were puzzled. The starfighters had been crossed several times by sensor scans. “Mark your men and prepare to dance.”

He concentrated, designating superdreadnaught targets for each of the starfighters. Individually, no starfighter could inflict much damage, even with the shield-buster missiles, unless they loaded antimatter warheads and they weren’t desperate enough to break that taboo, but as a mass, they were almost unstoppable. They also had weaknesses. Like every manned ship, they were limited to speeds that the compensators could compensate for, or their pilots would be killed long before they reached firing range. The enemy, once they had a chance to adapt and see what they were up against, would sweep starfighters out of space with ease.

A voice crackled away in his helmet. “Missiles launched, now,” it said, as the orbital fortresses opened fire. A spread of missiles, seemingly targeted on the superdreadnaughts, but in fact targeted on their smaller escorts, would provide a distraction. One threat wouldn’t be lethal, but combined, they could be horrifyingly dangerous, at least according to the simulations. Stalker and his men would be the first to try their ships and tactics out for rear. “Impact, twenty-seven seconds and counting.”

“You heard the man,” Stalker said, linking back into the command network. His own target, a massive Admiral-class superdreadnaught, blinked on and off in his mental vision, permanently marked as a target for the two missiles carried under his wings. There was little point in designing the craft to fly through atmospheres, but the Geeks had insisted… and, besides, they did look awesome. “Prepare to kick in the drives and move.”

The missiles roared down on their targets, forcing the smaller escorts to concentrate on defending themselves, and the starfighters kicked in their drives, taking advantage of the pattern. Like so much of the Imperial Navy’s established formations, the starfighter formation looked like organised chaos, as if the pilots were all going their own way and ignoring orders. Unlike missiles, which had to travel in fairly straight lines towards their targets, the starfighters could move and twist at will. They were incredibly hard to hit even without the missiles and decoys distracting attention, forcing the escorts to shoot almost randomly. Seven starfighters were lost to the desperate attacks from the escorts, but the remainder survived, racing onwards towards the superdreadnaughts, which were beginning to spit out their own point defence.

“Evasive manoeuvres, boys and girls,” Stalker said, as the command network reconfigured itself around the squadrons. There was no longer any point in trying to coordinate the whole battle, not when the targets had been selected and squadrons assigned to focus on their own targets. The bull sessions on the carrier had concluded that, sooner or later, the starfighters would face other starfighters piloted by Empire loyalists or warlords like Admiral Wilhelm, but until then the skies were clear. “Lock and load.”

The closing speed was terrifyingly fast, bringing the starfighters close enough to the superdreadnaught to see it with the naked eye, if the starfighters had had open canopies. It was even more terrifying seeing it though the sensors, watching the power curves fluctuating over the superdreadnaught as it concentrated on trying to blaze the starfighters out of space, knowing that even flying too close to those beams of destructive energy would be fatal. The starfighters only protection was speed and their tiny size. There were standard capital missiles that were larger than the fighters.

“Targets designated now,” he said, as they swept down on the superdreadnaught’s shields. This was the most dangerous part of the mission, according to the simulations. If the superdreadnaught had time to divert power to the shields and extend them outwards, they might succeed in swatting the starfighters like flies. He had a third of his sensor capability watching for any telltale power flares, but they would have bare seconds to react. “Acknowledge target designations… and fire!”

There was a second reason why it was the most dangerous part of the mission. While launching the missiles, the fighters had to fly in as nearly a straight line as possible, long enough for any point defence computer to lock onto them and burn them out of space. Stalker held himself in a straight line as long as he dared — about three seconds — and as soon as the missiles were away, yanked the fighter into a tight turn, barely avoiding a flash of green light that would have killed his craft if it had been a few meters closer. Nine of the starfighters survived the experience; two of the remaining twelve were swatted by point defence systems just after they launched their missiles. The final craft, it seemed, had crashed into the shields, although no one knew for sure. There was no way to know until the battle was analysed later, if there was a later.

“Back to Point One, guys,” he carolled, as the missiles flashed towards their targets. The superdreadnaught, suddenly aware of the danger, had devoted everything it had to vaporising the missiles, but it was too late to make any real difference. The shield-busters reached the shields, passed through the shields, and impacted against the hull. He saw, through the sensors, a tearing series of explosions that crippled the superdreadnaught, knocking it out of the line of battle and causing its drive field to collapse. Stranded, whoever won the battle would salvage it, if it could be repaired. “Status report; all ships, check in.”

He listened, quickly, to the updates. A third of the starfighter force had been lost, but they’d killed or crippled nearly half the enemy force. Under more normal circumstances, it was a very favourable rate of exchange, but with the Shadow Fleet still badly crippled, the issue was still far from decided.

“Ships with missiles, reform on Singh,” Stalker ordered tightly. “Everyone else, return to the barn.”

The starfighters fell away from the superdreadnaughts, racing back towards the carrier. There was no longer any point in trying to hide; they had to reload and get back out before the Empress located the carrier and attempted to kill it. The carrier was almost defenceless… and if it were killed, the starfighters would be worse than useless.

“Interesting,” Joshua said, as the tiny impossible craft vanished back into the darkness of space. “We saw something like that at Second Harmony, but they had to use gunboats and they got picked off with ease once we were alert to the threat. They seem to have learned to combine the different systems into a whole new fighting machine.”

Penny stared at him. “Admiral, those craft have wrecked about half the fleet,” she said, knowing that Joshua would listen to her. Admiral Percival would have quite happily ridden the plan down in flames, although hadn’t actually commanded in battle until the very end of First Harmony. It hadn’t been his life at stake. “What happens if they come back?”

“They wouldn’t have broken off unless they ran out of missiles,” Joshua said, logically. “The best place for them would have been to remain amidst our ships, where we had to be careful what kind of weapons we deployed to shoot them out of space, but they broke off to rearm.”

“Most of them,” Penny said. The remaining fighters were swooping down on another hapless superdreadnaught. Now fully alert to the threat, the point defence networks were pouring a staggering amount of fire towards the starfighters, but the tiny craft always seemed to be able to dodge, whatever firepower was deployed. Hitting even one of them probably counted as a major victory, if it had been an intentional hit. It was rather more likely that one craft would swerve into the path of one bolt while avoiding a second. “Admiral, can we still win this battle?”

“Perhaps,” Joshua said. He looked down at the display, showing the orbiting point defences. “Tactical, lock onto the fortresses… and open fire.”

The superdreadnaught shuddered as it launched a spread of missiles from its internal tubes, joined by the remainder of the superdreadnaughts a moment later. It was a weaker attack than it should have been, Penny realised; two of the superdreadnaughts might not have been crippled by the fighters, but they had lost some of their internal tubes. It had been sheer luck and excessive over-design that had prevented some of the loaded missiles from detonating within the superdreadnaught and starting a chain reaction that would have destroyed the ship.

“Missiles away,” the tactical officer reported. There was a long pause. “Incoming fire from the fortresses, targeted mainly on the superdreadnaughts, but enough targeted on the escorts to destroy them.”

“Understood,” Joshua said. He scowled. “Pull the escorts back towards the superdreadnaughts. Rotate starships through the formation so that fresh units are facing the attack.”

“Admiral, we have located the base ship,” the sensor officer injected. A new starship, barely more than a bulk freighter, blinked up on the display. It had originally been classed as an arsenal ship, but tactical had downgraded the threat because it hadn’t moved up into firing position. “One of the drones caught a shot of the fighters returning to the ship.”

Joshua smiled coldly. “Order a battlecruiser squadron to attend to that ship,” he ordered, flatly. “Take it out before the fighters can rearm and return to the attack.”

A new alarm blared. “Incoming ships,” the tactical officer said. Joshua whirled to face the main display as new red icons flickered into existence. Their commander hadn’t run the insane risk of flickering in so close to the gravity shadow, but they were still close enough to block his fleet from retreat. “Source… sir, they’re the first-rank ships!”

Jason Cordova hadn’t told Colin what he had in mind. It would only have upset him.

He’d taken command of the Random Numbers again, after the massacre and his own official clearing of all charges relating to the attempted murder of Colin, but he knew better than Colin that there would be no peace. If — when, as Tiberius would have told Daria the truth — the truth about the Dathi came out, he would still be the most hated man in the entire Empire. Colin might believe that he could ensure that there would be no official punishment for Cordova, but Cordova knew that that wasn’t the issue at hand. The court of public opinion, the same court that had opposed any relaxation on the rules surrounding aliens, would condemn him and anyone associated with him. He couldn’t — he wouldn’t — allow that to happen to Kathy. She deserved much better than him.

“That’s the main body of the Empress’s fleet,” his tactical officer said. Cordova had stripped the Random Numbers of anything other than a skeleton and volunteer crew, not least because he didn’t expect to be coming back and he’d dragged his crew into enough tight spots. Colin and the others desperately preparing for the attack hadn’t noticed. They hadn’t had enough experienced personnel to question while some personnel were available, even if they had had time to wonder. “I still cannot identify which ship is hers.”

Cordova smiled. The Empress — he refused to think of her as Daria any longer — might have been smart enough to assemble an entire secret fleet, but she had a weakness. Like him, she had been brought up as an Imperial Navy officer. Like him, she had a soft spot for any ship she had personally commanded… and the General Cromwell, a superdreadnaught holding position towards the rear of the Empress’s formation, had once been under her commander. He’d known the moment he’d studied a list of the four superdreadnaught squadrons that had vanished during the Battle of Earth. Her ship, her crew… maybe even a commanding officer who’d served on the ship during her era. It wasn’t impossible for an officer, with the right connections, to serve on the same ship for his or her entire career… and Daria had had links right into the heart of the Thousand Families. It would have passed unnoticed in the Imperial Navy. Everyone did it.

“There,” he said, confidently. The General Cromwell, Janice’s old command, and unless he’d misread her completely, her current command ship. There was no way to confirm it, short of hacking into the communications network between the enemy ships, but he was sure that he was right. It wasn’t even something Colin would have thought of. He’d always stolen his command ships from the Empire. “Helm, set course for that ship.”

He’d cloaked the Random Numbers as soon as it had left the gravity shadow and circled around to lurk in hiding and it was unlikely in the extreme that they had been detected, although the haze of sensor distortion caused by so many detonating warheads and dying ships was proving a problem for the cloaking device. He’d sneaked up on superdreadnaught before, back while he’d been hiding out along the Rim, but now it was serious. It wasn’t a game anymore.

“Course set,” the helmsman said. “It’s been a pleasure, sir.”

Cordova nodded and settled back into his command chair. “Engage.”

“Those ships aren’t going to be a threat to us,” Daria snapped. Joshua was proving something of a disappointment to her. The arrival of ships from the first-rank worlds changed nothing. They had no superdreadnaughts, no fighters and the largest ship they had was a battleship. They weren’t going to be able to stop her from regaining her throne. She’d come too far and burned too many bridges to turn away now. “Hold your ground and they’ll break over us.”

“They have enough missile launchers to complete our destruction,” Joshua countered, angrily. Daria spotted the blonde girl behind him and knew, with a certainty that transcended rational thought, that it was her who’d tried to talk Joshua out of continuing the engagement. She wouldn’t survive once Daria had returned to her throne. She would make a pile of her enemies skulls and use them for unsightly purposes. “We’re trapped, Your Majesty. We cannot even break off from the engagement. The most we can do is destroy Earth and that would result in our destruction.”

“I will not surrender,” Daria snapped. “This is still hope…”

“Incoming,” the tactical officer screamed. Daria spun around to stare at the tactical display. The hazy icon of a cloaked ship was closing in on the General Cromwell. “They’re going to ram us!”

“Engage it,” Daria snapped. “Take it out!”

“It’s too late,” the tactical officer said. “It’s too close…”

The Random Numbers rammed the General Cromwell amidships. At such speeds, the mass of a light cruiser could be deadly, but Cordova had added a final bitter jest. Having decided to commit suicide and take Daria with him, he had loaded as much antimatter as he could beg, borrow or steal from the Jupiter Shipyards, choosing to ignore the risks of storing it on a starship. Even if Daria did manage to destroy them before they could ram, the explosion would still be lethal to her ship, but as it was it didn’t matter. The resulting explosion blotted both ships out of existence.

“Holy shit,” someone breathed.

Colin couldn’t disagree. The final moments of the Random Numbers had only been seen by a drone, launched by the first-rank starships, but the antimatter blast had been seen everywhere. It was going to cause problems on Earth, he realised, grimly. So much radiation and other effects would harm the entire planet. The Empire’s ban on antimatter outside certain highly secure research labs hadn’t been purely to deprive everyone of a useful, if desperate, weapon.

And the fighting seemed to have paused.

“Raise the enemy flagship,” he ordered, tiredly. After that, he suspected that whoever was in command would be feeling reasonable. The blast would have blown our sensors and fucked up tactical systems all over their remaining fleet. They might have killed the starfighter carrier — Colin hadn’t allowed himself any time to grieve for David Houston and the remains of his crew — but their position was hopeless. They had to know it. “Tell them… that we will accept their surrender.”

Joshua’s face was expressionless as the signal came in. The General Monck hadn’t been badly touched by the antimatter blast, but dozens of other ships had been crippled. The communications network was completely off-line, along with dozens of other vital systems… and they couldn’t be re-established in time.

“Sir?” Penny asked, grimly. Daria’s death in that terrifying moment when matter met antimatter and complete annihilation resulted had left Joshua in undisputed command of the fleet. It had become a poisoned chalice. “Sir, what do we do?”

Joshua pulled himself to his feet. “Anne, signal the fleet,” he ordered, in a tone that could not be challenged or disputed. “Inform them that I am ordering a full and unconditional surrender. They are to accept that and obey all orders from the victors.” He smiled bleakly, as if there was no humour left in his soul. “I dare say that they will treat us under the Moscow Accords if we surrender promptly.”

He looked over at Anne. “Until the Marines arrive, you will command the fleet,” he added. His face twisted for a long moment, as if he wanted to say something profound, but no longer cared. Penny realised, with a chill, just what he had in mind. The crews might be treated under the Accords, but Joshua himself couldn’t be. He’d betrayed the Provisional Government. As the senior survivor, he would be the scapegoat for Daria’s crimes. “It was a honour to serve with you all again.”

Joshua left the bridge, not looking back.

A few minutes later, they heard the single shot.