B009NFP2OW EBOK (23 page)

Now the Confederation fighters left behind were coming in. They’d been scattered all over the inner system, some of them badly damaged. SAR tugs were going after the streakers and junkers now; the ones that could still maneuver under their own power were being herded in by flights of fighters off the
America
.

Trust, Gregory thought, was in damned short supply at the moment, not only for the Confederation pilots, but for the Slan as well. If the aliens decided to attack
now
, there wasn’t a lot the human forces could do to defend themselves.

America drifted in low orbit up ahead. Even from out here, she looked a mess. A third of her forward shield cap was gone, and there were savage scars along the spine structure aft. The hab mods were still rotating, providing artificial gravity, but a Slan beam had slashed through the bridge tower forward. Temporary scaffolding had been attached to the tower, partially enclosing it. Repair robots were swarming among the crossbeams and struts, restoring the carrier’s nanomatrix hull.

Some of that damage was so severe that
America
was going to have to be sent home. At least her drives hadn’t been damaged, and she should be able to accelerate enough to ’cube. The worrisome part, Gregory knew, was that the hull had been significantly weakened, and that the stresses of dropping into and out of metaspace might cause a catastrophic failure.

If the Slan were going to renew the battle, this would be the perfect time.

So far, though, the Slan ships had been keeping their distance. There’d been speculation within the squadron that they were awaiting reinforcements. After all, 70 Ophiuchi was a mere ten light years distant, and there was supposed to be a fair-sized Sh’daar client fleet there—Turusch and H’rulka fleet elements, plus Nungiirtok ground forces, and possibly Slan as well.

Two fighters of Gregory’s squadron, Mackey and Benning, slipped in beneath
America
’s long spine, closely flanking the first of the Pan-European Todtadlers, following the fighter in along the landing approach path from just a little astern. If the Confederation pilot did try anything aggressive, the two Black Demons behind him would have him nailed in an instant.

That first fighter trapped in Bay Two without incident. Next, it was time for Gregory and his wingman, Lieutenant Vaughn to move in astern and to either side of the second Confederation fighter, escorting it in toward the rotating flight deck, timing their approach so that the opening slid into perfect alignment just as the Confederation fighter reached it. Vaughn and Gregory broke left and right, flashing past the hab modules and the open framework of the savaged shield cap. Throwing out drive singularities to the side, they whipped around in a tight turn and circled aft once more. They would escort each Confederation fighter in before docking with the carrier themselves.

“VFA Ninety-six, CIC,” a voice said in Gregory’s head. “New orders.”

“Now what?” Lieutenant Pevensy asked.

“Probably more CAP,” Gomez said. “We’ve been on freaking CAP since we got here.”

“Anything’s better than baby-sitting these damned Ewwws,” Kemper said. The term was a bit of recently invented slang drawn from “EU,” the Confederation’s European Union. It was quite a versatile word, actually, one that could be expressed as an exclamation of disgust, or without the emphasis, could refer to a female sheep.

“Quiet down,” Mackey said. “CIC, this is Ninety-six. Standing by for orders.”

“We’re launching a spybot,” the voice of CIC replied. “We need to give it an escort to the Slan Onager.”

Onager
was the newly minted class name for the Slan headquarters ship. The word meant “mule,” but was the name of another ancient projectile-throwing machine like ballista and trebuchet. The spooks on board
America
must have come up with a new spy-eye, and they wanted to send it in for a close look at the alien command vessel.

The squadron wheeled through space. What looked like another Starhawk dropped from one of the hab-module launch tubes, drifted toward them, and joined the formation. The fighter in fact was an HVK-724, a high-velocity scout-courier modified to look like a fighter. It was uncrewed, save for a powerful AI modified to serve both as pilot and as a so-called AI/Spy-I. The squadron would need to get it close enough to the Slan headquarters vessel that it could link in with the intelligence AIs already on board the alien vessel . . . and do so undetected.

“I thought the Slan were supposed to be cooperating with us,” Gregory said as they accelerated toward the distant Onager. It was orbiting Arianrhod, but much farther out—nearly a million kilometers distant.

“It’s always a good idea to know something about the other guy that they don’t
know
you know,” Mackey replied.

The bulky Slan Onager grew swiftly larger. Stiletto fighters spilled from the vessel’s flanks, swarming, protective, but appeared to be simply . . . watching.

In another moment, the Starhawks had swept past, maintaining a straight-line vector deeper into space.

“Mission accomplished,” the robot spy told them. “RTB.”

Return to base.

Gregory wondered what the AI had learned in so brief a pass.

TC/USNA CVS
America

Low Orbit, 36 Ophiuchi AIII

1035 hours, TFT

“Captain Gray,”
America
’s AI whispered in his head. “We have learned something that may be of serious import.”

“What is it?”

“A new data reserve in the Slan network picked up by the HVK-724 we just launched. We may now have a motive for the Sh’daar attack.”

“Show me.”

And
America
spread the information out visually within Gray’s in-head.

“The Sh’daar appear to have become quite agitated in recent weeks,”
America
’s AI explained. “New orders, lots of them, and reports of warships gathering at a staging area referred to as
Hu-vah-scha’n
.”

In Gray’s mind, sonar images from Slan records were stroked by human AIs until they coalesced into visual imagery. Gray saw ships—Turusch, H’rulka, and Slan—in orbit over a world of blue-green seas and orange land. The scene was dominated by large ships—the H’rulka giants were a kilometer or more across—but there were clouds of minnows drifting in the shadows of their larger consorts.

“We count forty-three capital warships,” the AI went on, “including planetary bombardment vessels and fighter carriers. They appear to be readying for departure.”

“Where?”

“Earth.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“Affirmative.”

“Where is this ‘Hoo-vuh’ . . . whatever it’s called? The staging area?”

More sonic images coalesced into an animated graphic—a star system, a double star—was shown surrounded by several planetary orbits, four around a type K0 sun, three around the slightly cooler K4. A scattering of targets was clustered around the second planet of the brighter sun. Gray recognized the image immediately. The star was 70 Ophiuchi, the second planet the world Osiris.

“So the attack here at Arianrhod
was
ordered by the Sh’daar,” Gray said. “It’s not a random strike by an out-of-control client race.”

“Affirmative.”

“And now they’re getting set to attack Earth again.”

“Affirmative.”

“Why?”

“Interpretation of Slan communication records is difficult,” the AI told him. “But we do have a visual recording that was transmitted as sonar data to the Slan Onager several weeks ago. We’ve been able to reconstitute the visual data. . . .”

A window opened within Gray’s in-head perception. A ring of blurred night, swirling against a blue-white haze hanging in empty space. The blur, he realized, consisted of a number of bodies orbiting a common center of gravity, but moving so swiftly it was almost impossible to distinguish them.

He recognized the scene immediately from recent briefings, however—the Black Rosette, sixteen thousand light years from Earth. Six black holes, each the size of a small planet, whirling about one another at 26,000 kilometers per second, ripped and tore at the fabric of space within the plane they defined. The space between the black holes showed a stately procession of . . . other places. Other universes, perhaps, if theory was correct, revealed in blue light and a fierce haze of ultraviolet and X-ray radiation.

Three ships—the USNA research vessel
Endeavor
and two military escorts,
Herrera
and
Miller
, drifted across the artifact’s face, silhouetted against that eerie glow. Something moved deep within the weirdly twisted space among the fast-rotating black holes . . . and then, suddenly, savagely, all three ships were torn apart.

“The Sh’daar used a word to describe something emerging from the Black Rosette,” the AI said. “We have the translations in both Agletsch and in Slan, but it is difficult to translate concisely into English. We can, however, get a sense of the meaning.”

“And what is that?” Gray asked. He stared into the depths of the Rosette, as if to somehow penetrate that swirling light show.

“The Agletsch word is
g’rev’netchjak
,” the AI replied, “and refers to something so horrifying as to defy description. The Slan word is identical to the phrase we’ve now translated as ‘sin,’ meaning something that offends all rational sensibility, something that breaks all the rules.”

“My God. What is it?”

“We don’t yet know, Captain,” the AI told him, “but whatever it is, the Sh’daar appear to be terrified of it.

“Intelligence conjectures that they are so afraid of whatever has emerged from the Rosette that they decided to attack Earth, to settle with us before they have to face this . . . this unnamable thing.”

The image in Gray’s mind faded out, and he wondered just what could so frighten a species as old and as powerful as the Sh’daar.

And that in itself was an extraordinarily disquieting thought.

Chapter Twenty

14 November 2424

TC/USNA CVS
America

36 Ophiuchi AIII

0925 hours, TFT

Sandy Gray leaned back in his chair at the ops planning table, listening to the reports being delivered by various of the ship’s section and departmental heads. The command staffs of the various other ships of the squadron were virtually present, listening in over their in-heads. Since the news of an impending attack on Earth had come through hours before, there was a new sense of urgency in the staff deliberations.

Urgency and, just possibly, a note of fear.

Twenty ships of the USNA contingent’s initial force of twenty-four had survived the battle, but four of those remaining were badly damaged—
America
, the heavy cruisers
North Carolina
and
California
, and the destroyer
Cumberland
. In addition, all of the ships were low on expendables—missiles of various types, and massive kinetic-kill rounds for the railguns. They would need to put the provisioning tender
Shenandoah
to work before they fought another major battle.

The repairs to
America
continued. The flag bridge had been sealed off, and communications links had been grown through to the ship’s bridge, allowing Gray to command both the ship and the entire squadron. The worst damage was to the vessel’s forward shield cap, a disk-shaped reservoir 500 meters across and 150 deep that served both as radiation shielding at relativistic speeds and as holding tank for maneuvering reaction mass, about 27 billion liters of water when it was full. Both the Alcubierre and normal-space drives were on-line again, as were the ship’s weapons systems. All that remained were some final structural repairs to the ship’s spine, buttressing weakened areas enough that they would survive high-G maneuvering.

Unlike fighters, which were small enough to make use of grav singularities for precise maneuvering, a capital ship the size of the
America
needed to use more traditional means for turning, orienting, and station-keeping—specifically the thrust provided by plasma jets firing super-heated water drawn from the main reserve. Much of that water had bled off into space when the shield cap was shattered during yesterday’s battle, however, and
America
wasn’t going to be traveling much of anywhere until her water supplies were replenished.

Getting that water was the responsibility of Lieutenant Commander Richard Halverson, of the ship’s Engineering Department.

“The Nav Department has identified a good water source for us,” Halverson was telling the group. “Planet IV in this system is a small ice giant, about the size of Neptune back home. It has a ring system—almost-pure-water ice. We won’t even have to shuttle it up out of a gravity well.”

“Fred?” Gray asked. “Can we make it that far without thrusters?”

“If we boost when we’re at the proper alignment,” Commander Fred Jones, the ship’s senior helm officer, told them, “we can do a straight-line approach at, say, fifty Gs. We won’t need to rattle the cage at all.”

The singularity drive allowed them to travel in free fall; even at a high-G boost, the ship would not feel the stresses of acceleration or deceleration. Maneuvering thrusters, however, subjected the entire ship to the forces of acceleration—“rattling the cage”—and Gray wanted to avoid that if at all possible. He was worried about the damage to
America
’s spine. Free fall was one thing. Subjecting the spine to the twists and shocks of lateral acceleration or centrifugal force was something else entirely.

“Very well,” Gray replied. “You’ll need to do some mighty precise work to line the ship up properly.”

“We’ve already been running simulations through the primary AI, Captain. I think we’re good to go.”

“Outstanding. Now, the big question . . .”

“What the Slan are going to think when we move out-system,” Commander Gutierrez suggested.

“Actually, Sara,” Gray said slowly, “that shouldn’t be a big problem. I’ve had a number of discussions
in virtuo
with Clear Chiming Bell. He seems to believe that further conflict would be pointless. My impression is that they’re pulling out.”

“What?” the CO of the destroyer
Atkinson
said, startled. “Are we sure of that?”

“As sure as we can be, Captain Lang. Remember, we’re still having to feel our way through conversations with the Slan. The xenopsych people tell me that the Slan don’t think in terms of absolute victory or defeat in conflict. For them, a battle is more of a shoving match—a sumo bout—and the side that gets shoved the hardest is expected to leave quietly.”

“That’s a hell of a way to fight a war,” Captain Soltis of the
Washington
observed.

“Maybe by our standards,” Gray said. “Commander Kline? What does X-Dep have to say about that?”

Lieutenant Commander Samantha Kline was the head of
America
’s Xenobiology Department. With
America
frequently coming into contact with nonhuman species—allies, enemies, and unknowns—it was vital to maintain a department that could study those alien sentient races, seeking to understand their biologies, their cultures, and, perhaps most important of all, their psychologies.

“We have a long way to go before we fully understand the Slan,” Kline said. “But we do now know that the Slan evolved in quite a different environment than ours. They never possessed anything like nation-states, mutually alien cultures, or racial differences. In fact, they come damned close to possessing a true hive mentality.”

“You mean it’s like we’re facing one huge, thinking being, instead of a whole race?” Captain Janet Lockhart, of the railgun cruiser
Turner
asked.

“Not quite. Termite mounds and beehives on Earth approach that concept—a hive can be thought of as a single organism—but that’s because the individuals aren’t sentient. For the Slan the distinction appears to be more psychological than anything else. Individuals within the community think for themselves . . . but those thoughts all are shaped by culture and social conditioning toward supporting the community. If you’re a Slan, you don’t do anything that harms the group; if you do, you’re insane.”

“Japanese culture on Earth has parallels to this,” Captain Richard Imahara of the frigate
Ramsey
pointed out. “Traditionally, they have a stronger group ethic than do Westerners. It’s all about the workplace, the school, the city, about pulling for the team because that’s the socially proper thing to do, and
not
about the individual.”

“To a certain extent, possibly,” Kline said. “A lot of that is the effect of population crowding, especially since global sea levels started rising. But the Slan have that group ethic on steroids. You don’t kill other group members, any more than you or I would cut off our own hand. When an individual
does
violate the communal ethic, for whatever reason, it’s such a big deal that that individual is ‘sent to the light.’ As far as we’ve been able to determine, that means it’s exiled to the day side of their homeworld, where it soon dies of radiation exposure.

“Apparently, warfare of a sort
did
appear after new Slan colonies branched off on the planet’s surface, but it seems to have been a highly stylized affair, constrained by the needs of the overall community. Essentially, if two groups disagreed about something, they’d fight until one side or the other was proven to be stronger . . . and the weaker would give in. As the Captain said, a shoving match.
Never
all-out war.”

“The Slan seem never to have developed the idea of total war,” Gray added, “or of hanging on to the bitter end, of fighting to the last man. . . .”

“So . . . we won?” Gutierrez said. The XO sounded amazed. “We proved we were stronger, and we just
won
?”

“Keep in mind, Commander, that we don’t know all the rules, yet,” Gray told her. He’d already gone through Kline’s initial report, and knew just how poorly humans understood the Slan, even yet. “We don’t know what might trigger a change of mind . . . a willingness to start a
new
shoving match.”

“Exactly,” Kline said. “We don’t yet understand their concept of war. They bombard civilian colonies from orbit—like Silverwheel—because they don’t seem to understand the concept of civilian or noncombatant. And yet they seem incapable of totally destroying an enemy by wiping him out. I would imagine that they would be horrified by the very concept of genocide.”

“So . . .” Taggart said, “are we still fighting them or not?”

“Good question,” Kline said. “X-Dep has recommended maintaining a cautious approach. Don’t turn your back, don’t take
any
chances with them until we understand them better.”

“Unfortunately,” Gray added, “we’re going to
have
to take a chance . . . several of them, in fact. It is my intention to take this squadron to 70 Ophiuchi and stage a high-velocity raid. A fly-by stage spoiler.”

The statement triggered a storm of voices, both out loud around the conference table and over the virtual network. “But sir, we can’t take on a fleet that big!” Captain Geary of the
Henderson
exclaimed.

“Sir! Estimates based on the Slan computer records say the Sh’daar have between fifty and sixty capital ships at Osiris,” Lieutenant Commander Villanova added. “We just don’t have the ships to face off with that kind of force!”

“We can disrupt the enemy’s plans,” Gray said simply. “And that may be enough.”

It would
have
to be enough.

The tactic called fly-by spoiling was a direct outgrowth of modern space-military operations. A fleet would emerge from Alcubierre metaspace, accelerate to near the speed of light, then hurtle past the target planet deep in-system, precisely as had Lavallée’s fleet the day before. If the enemy force was in preparation for a deployment somewhere else, it might well be scattered and disorganized, taking on munitions, fuel, and supplies. The problem was the weakened state of the USNA squadron. Twenty ships were left, and 20 percent of those were so badly damaged they might not survive another fight . . . or even the maneuvers necessary to get them to 70 Ophiuchi. And judging by the image translations gleaned from the Slan ship, the Earth squadron would be heavily outnumbered when it got there.

“If I may say so, sir, that’s damned . . . risky,” Captain Garrison of the
Inchon
said. It sounded as though he’d almost said something else other than “risky.”

Like “stupid” or “lame-brained” or perhaps “fucking idiotic.” And Gray would have been forced to agree.

“Yes it is,” he replied. “You and
Inchon
will be facing a different kind of danger, however.”

“Sir?”

“
Inchon
won’t add that much firepower to a near-
c
fly-by of Osiris, and we won’t be hanging around long enough for us to deploy your Marines. You’ll be better employed staying here, and encouraging the Slan to get the hell off Arianrhod.”

“Here.”
Again, Gray heard what might have been a bitten-off protest, but Garrison merely said, “Aye, aye, sir.”

“We will also leave the most badly damaged ships here, and the
Shenandoah
, of course. With luck, the Slan will think we’re leaving behind a major fraction of our fleet.”

Gray would have liked to take Osiris back from the Sh’daar. Their forces had been holding the place for fifteen years, now, and as a staging area it was perfect for future strikes against the Sol System and Earth.

Someday . . .

If there were humans still alive at Osiris, the brutal truth was that they’d survived this long, and they would survive a bit longer. Arianrhod, however, was a different matter. Silverwheel, the main research base on the surface, had been home to twenty thousand people, with hundreds more in orbit at Caer Gwydion. Their fate was unknown, though Lieutenant Connor had reported that the Slan had been firing into both indiscriminately several days before. The Marines off the
Inchon
could secure Silverwheel, and the ship’s Marine fighters would be useful in finding other survivors scattered across the Caer Arianrhod Archipelago.

If
the Slan let them.

“The main issues,” Gray continued, “are getting
America
fit for transition again, and replenishing the squadron’s expendables.”

“America?”
Gutierrez said. “Wouldn’t we do better shifting your flag and leaving the old girl here?”

“No,” Gray replied. “We’re going to need fighter support at Osiris, and we’re leaving the
Inchon
here. If Lavallée hadn’t taken the other star carriers with him, it might be different.”

“Bastards . . .” someone at the table muttered.

By now, it was clear that all of the Confederation ships under Lavallée’s command had transited into Alcubierre Drive and, presumably, were on their way back to Earth. Apparently, they hadn’t even engaged the Slan fleet as they’d whipped past Arianrhod. Most of their fighters launched earlier had managed to catch up with the
Illustrious
, the
Bolivar
, and the
Kali
by pegging a few more decimal places onto their percentage of
c
figures, but five hours and twenty minutes after they’d passed through the Slan fleet, the Confederation contingent had reached the 40-AU limit from 36 Ophiuchi A and winked out into metaspace.

The Pan-European fighters off the disabled
Klemens von Metternich
had stayed behind, of course, along with about a dozen fighters from the other carriers that had gone streaker in the battle, falling helplessly away into the night.
America
’s SAR tugs were still working at rescuing as many of those fighters as possible and hauling them back to Arianrhod orbit.

“That’s okay,” Gray said. “They’re headed back to Sol. If the Sh’daar
do
launch a strike at Earth, Lavallée’s ships will be needed there.”