Aneka Jansen 5: The Greatest Heights of Honour (27 page)

‘Probable deployments of an attacking fleet based on known characteristics of the Herosian ships, our deployment, and what they are likely expecting us to be doing.’

Hunt was silent for a while as she watched the display. Points appeared around the simulated planet, arcing through imaginary space toward other dots already in place.

‘That would appear to be a very conservative opening gambit,’ she said.

‘They don’t know our strengths and weaknesses. If it were only the Jenlay, they could afford a more forceful beginning, but they have us, an unknown, to deal with. Unfortunately, details on their fleet are incomplete, so my simulations are… too approximate for my taste.’

Without warning the simulated tracks vanished and new dots appeared in the hologram tank. At the same instant both of them saw streams of data appearing in their vision fields.

‘Warp exit signatures,’ Hunt said.

Norden allowed himself to look at the Captain. Things could go very well or very badly in the next few hours. If it was the former, he intended to persuade Hunt that her body could be used for something other than fighting when they were done, and he wanted to know what he was fighting for. If it was the latter… Well, he deserved something nice to think about as he tried to breathe vacuum.

‘You’d better get to the bridge,’ he said. ‘Good luck, Janis.’

She looked a little surprised at his use of her first name, but she nodded. ‘Same to you. Let’s hope the Jenlay know what they’re doing.’

New Earth Naval Command, The Islands.

Farmer sat in his command position, his eyes on the displays arrayed in front of him. They showed around sixty vector tracks, each of them a Herosian vessel which had appeared in the system less than a minute ago. As he moved his head to scan over them, detailed information was displayed in the heads-up mount positioned over his right eye. Three battleships, one of them of an unknown design, each accompanied by three destroyers. Twenty cruisers were out there, moving in toward New Earth, at least twenty frigates, though there seemed to be some of the stealth models as well and the system was having trouble with those. They had brought heavy gunships, vessels designed for planetary bombardment.

‘Orders, sir.’

Farmer glanced at the Commander who had made the request, a slight woman he could not remember the name of. He looked back at the screens and the three-dimensional mapping they were displaying and gritted his teeth. The bastards were not going to get away with invading his system.

‘We attack,’ Farmer growled.

FNf Delta Brigantia.

Anderson did not exactly sit in her command chair; the Captain’s position was more like a vertical bench into which the senior officer was strapped, supported by something like a bicycle saddle and surrounded by a globe of visual display equipment. A lot of male officers found it a rather uncomfortable arrangement, but none could deny that it gave an excellent overview of the space surrounding your ship.

Right now Anderson’s display was showing empty space and some data points indicating distant enemy vessels. There was also a panel which had recently appeared containing the orders Admiral Farmer wanted carried out and they were exactly what she had expected to see coming out of her fleet Commander. She reached out, fingers shifting over a virtual keypad.

‘Prentice,’ she said, her voice calm but authoritative, ‘give me a course matching that attack vector. Hughes, weapons systems to full power. Baron, I’ve transferred our assigned targets; I want a weapons lock on our primary as soon as possible.’

Around her, her A-Shift crew began to move immediately. They were among the best in the fleet, maybe
the
best frigate crew, but this was the first time they were ever going to see a battle on this scale. She hit the interior broadcast button on her comms display.

‘All hands, this is Anderson. Secure vessel for battle, gunners to turret positions. This is it, people, the war has come to New Earth. We’ve trained for this, we know what we’re doing and how to do it. We’ve always said that we’re the best crew in the fleet, well this is our chance to prove it.’

She cut the broadcast and checked their status. They were already accelerating toward a squadron of gunships which was moving in toward the planet. Telemetry data on the one Command had designated as their primary target was already starting to come in on part of her screen.

‘Time to intercept,’ Baron said, ‘nine hundred and thirty-two seconds.’

FNb Admiral Banfry.

‘All stations report ready, Captain,’ Leeforth reported. ‘Turret controls are manned.’

‘Thank you, Commander,’ Ape responded. The screens on either side of him had reported the same, but there were formalities to the art of war aboard a ship the size of the Banfry. ‘Time to target?’

‘Thirteen hundred and thirty-nine seconds to maximum firing solution range.’

Ape’s eyes scanned over his displays. The Banfry and her squadron were being sent out to intercept one of the two ‘conventional’ battleships on the other side. From his position, it was a relatively foolish move, but he did not have the overview of the Herosian forces that Farmer did. It was possible that the Admiral, back in his nigh-impregnable bunker back on the planet’s surface, could see something Ape could not, but it seemed a lot like the old fool had decided to throw his ships into an inadvisable attack when a solid defence would have meant the Herosians coming to them.

‘Re-plot the firing solutions. Hold the missiles until we’re in range for the antimatter canon. Lasers to fire as soon as they can be brought to bear. Give orders for the frigates to go in on harrying raids. Cruisers are to take out anything that breaks away from their main group.’

‘The destroyers, sir?’

‘Point defence. I expect we’ll need it. Targets of opportunity where they can engage.’

‘Aye, sir,’ Leeforth said, turning back to her console.

Ape looked at her slim back, just visible around the structure of her acceleration couch. Leeforth had always reminded him, just a little bit, of Gillian Gilroy, the mother of his son. He told himself that he had not allowed that to affect his judgement when he had asked her to become his executive officer, but right now, before they went into full-scale battle together, he allowed himself to recognise the fact that there had been more than a little partiality in the decision. She was an excellent XO, but she also reminded him that there were things other than warships to think about.

Ten Kilometres Outside Yorkbridge.

Janna looked across at the woman sitting beside her, a tall, scarlet-haired woman with a chest which matched her own. She remembered seeing the same figure, or almost the same, at the party after her partnership registration ceremony. Except that version had been shorter, with less chest.

‘I still can’t believe you came to one of my parties,’ Janna said, mostly for something to say.

Winter looked relaxed, but she was driving, manually, as fast as the car could handle. ‘Sharissa is a friend, and Aneka is…’ She glanced at Janna. ‘She isn’t exactly my daughter, of course, and I’d never try to replace the mother she had, but I put a lot into what she is now. She’s more than a friend, far more than a part of a project I was made responsible for.’

‘It’s odd. I mean, you’re this super-intelligent artificial mind. Somehow I’d have thought that would make you less emotional, but here you are creating attachments to ordinary people.’

‘I can be unemotional if I need to be, but I see no point in denying myself the full range of interaction possible with other beings. My feelings for Aneka have never stopped me sending her into dangerous situations where I thought that was the best course of action.’

‘She’s safe now, though? She and my daughter?’

‘They are a long way away from here, Janna,’ Winter replied, and hoped that the woman would not recognise the evasion. ‘Now we just need to get you somewhere safe.’

‘Why are you protecting me? I’m no one…’

‘Ella would likely dismember me if I let anything happen to you, and while I don’t think she could really do me too much harm herself, Aneka would help. Besides that, Sharissa will do a much better job knowing you are somewhere safe and I can spare an avatar to achieve that.’

‘And Sharissa?’

‘Is a survivor. Elaine has assigned her to a duty which will help our position
and
put her in as safe a place as anywhere else on the planet. Don’t worry, Janna. We’re all going to get through this, or none of us will. If it’s the latter then worrying over it is pointless.’

The Islands.

‘Senator,’ Sharissa said as she walked into Elroy’s lounge, ‘I need you to come with me, now.’

Elroy looked away from his wall screen where several Representatives were chattering at once and frowned. ‘Agent Torrence,’ he acknowledged. ‘I
am
a little busy.’

‘Yes, sir. We have a transport waiting with a full communications rig. You’ll be out of touch for a couple of minutes, but we need you on it.’

Maybe it was the fact that Sharissa was carrying a heavy-looking carbine and dressed in combat armour, maybe it was her tone, but Elroy had the feeling she was not really making a request. He cancelled the mute on his end of the debate. ‘Representatives, I need to go offline for a few minutes. I’ll be back with you soon. Please remember that the Navy is fully ready to fend off this attack. What we need now is calm and the public following their local emergency plans. I suggest you all begin implementing those.’ He cut the connections without further comment and got to his feet. ‘Where are we going?’

‘We’ve got an FSA submersible stationed off one of the outer islands. It was designed as an emergency command and control vessel should the land-based facilities be compromised. Secure, difficult to detect, capable of hiding in deep water if needed.’

‘Winter thought of everything, didn’t she?’

‘Almost everything.’

‘You think the Herosians will make it to the surface?’

‘They don’t have to, Senator,’ Sharissa replied. ‘My information is that they’re likely to get at least one heavy gunship within striking range, and right now you’re sitting here not far enough from their biggest target.’

Naval Command.

‘How long until first contact?’ A display appeared on Farmer’s personal screens showing a timer counting down. Just over two minutes until the first shots were fired. There were fighters launching already. Farmer could feel his heart rate increasing, knew that adrenalin was pumping through his veins. This was it, the moment when the Navy showed what it could do, and
he
was the one in command of the operation.

‘Sir, we’re getting analysis of the Herosian battle formation through from the Argus.’

Farmer glanced at his unknown Commander. ‘And?’

‘The vectors suggest that they’re planning to push through with their gunships. Fifteen gunships armed with planetary bombardment weapons, each carrying three landing craft.’

‘They won’t get that close.’

‘Yes, sir, but, sir…?’

‘Spit it out, Commander.’

‘It’s not a large enough force. They can’t be meaning to take the city with thirty squads. They’re going to target the spaceport, and us.’

Farmer felt his stomach lurch, but his brain kicked back in quickly. ‘We’re in a bunker designed to stop nuclear weapons and we have orbit-capable defence missiles. Besides, they won’t get that close.’ He turned away, glancing at the timer just as it ticked down to zero. ‘And I have other things to keep me occupied.’

BC-101 Hand of God.

The only sounds on the bridge of the Hand of God came from the instruments and systems. The crew said nothing, they had no need to. Their implants ran software which tied the entire, active crew into a network of synchronised, highly skilled components operating within a highly complex and efficient system which was their warship. Via external link, the ship’s Captain was part of a larger network with the other ships in the fleet, coordinated through the Argus.

Charlene Tasker watched as the Herosian battleship ahead of them, a Xinti design they had repaired and re-commissioned, entered their firing solution. They had been tasked with its destruction because they had technology which matched it, possibly exceeded it. A thought in her mind blossomed into a stream of gamma-rays bursting from their main weapon system. One hundred gigajoules of energy transmitted through space as high-energy photons.

To Charley it almost felt as though she was screaming destruction at the Herosian ship.

FSA Submarine.

‘The Hand of God has engaged with the Herosian Mordra Kai-class,’ Truelove announced.

Pierce, sitting in a small office off the main operations room, nodded. ‘The rest of the fleet?’

‘Engagement in about four minutes.’

‘Those Old Earth ships are fast. They have some quite considerable technology.’

‘Yes, sir. Senator Elroy is on his way. We expect him to arrive in five minutes, then we can submerge.’

‘What about communications?’ Pierce asked. He was used to space and the idea of being in a tin box was fine, but underwater was less of a pleasing concept. Water would crush you…

‘There’s a buoy. It limits our depth to around a hundred metres, but it gives us a far smaller signature than this hull.’

Pierce nodded and Truelove turned back into the operations room. ‘Have we got that network up for the Senator?’ she asked anyone who might have an answer.

‘Second office is configured for it,’ one of the technicians said. Truelove’s implant supplied her with a name: David Gallow.

‘Thank you, David,’ she replied and she got a smile in reply. If there was one thing Winter had taught her it was that knowing people’s names was important. She doubted Pierce knew many of the names on this boat.

‘Nice touch, using his name.’ The voice was in Truelove’s head, transmitted via her implant. She glanced at its owner, but Janine was busy at one of the terminals. ‘Did I teach you that?’ the voice added.

‘The other you, yes. Winter used to know the name of every captain of every ship in the Navy. I think she knew every agent in the Agency.’