Martial Law 1: Patriotic Treason (50 page)

“All ships, fire at will,” I ordered, sharply. Carolyn’s hand fell on her console and we fired our first spread of missiles. Between all of the ships, we could fire over a hundred missiles per salvo. Roger would face his ship’s worst nightmare; repeated volley fire from multiple launch platforms. “Evade as required.”

Roger wasn’t playing games himself. He’d fired fifty missiles in his opening salvo and all, but ten were targeted on us. The missiles would be basic UN-standard, I suspected, instead of Heinlein-designed surprises, but that wouldn’t stop them being lethal if they touched home. We had a surprise ourselves; I had enough starships with me to produce a genuine point defence network, rather than merely each ship for itself. I watched as the missiles roared closer and smiled when they started to vanish, one by one.

“The Kofi Annan is picking up speed,” Sally reported, grimly. “Estimated ETA Earth orbit is twenty minutes.”

“Understood,” I said, shortly. The missiles were still falling to our lasers, but Roger had fired a second salvo and then a third. I ran through the calculations in my head. His point defence was just as good as ours – maybe better in some ways – and he had the power to back it up. We had to give him a ore complex problem to deal with, yet we couldn’t do that without risking our own point defence network breaking up. “Keep firing…”

I tapped my console, issuing orders to the other starships. At my command, four of them opened wormholes and jumped around the Kofi Annan, emerging dangerously close to the battleship. Before Roger could react – and I was sure that he would have his gunners on hair triggers, after Heinlein – they fired their missiles and reopened the wormholes, slipping away. Roger’s point defence found itself struggling to cope with newer targets coming in from different vectors and I smiled as one missile detonated against the drive field. My election vanished as I realised that the Kofi Annan was almost undamaged by the blast and was still firing.

Get into Earth orbit and regain control, I thought. That’s what they will have told him to do. Get back into Earth orbit and reclaim the orbital defences. How can I use that against him?

“Incoming missiles,” Carolyn snapped. “I doubt we can take all these down.”

“Pilot, jump us out,” I snapped. A wormhole enfolded us and we vanished, emerging far too close to the battleship for comfort. Carolyn fired another spread of missiles before we vanished again. I had a mental image of a powerful beast being tormented by coyotes or hyenas. Every time it turned to deal with one problem another jumped in and attacked the creature’s back. “Carolyn, continue firing!”

The position was untenable, I realised. We couldn’t coordinate our fire, so we could only harass the battleship, not destroy it. Roger knew that as well as we did, so all he had to do was keep moving towards Earth. We’d either have to stand and fight, or pull back and admit defeat. We scored two more hits on the battleship, but they weren’t coordinated and the battleship seemed undamaged. The dance was going to end in Roger’s victory by default.

I found myself grasping for possibilities. Could we recall Kitty in time to make a difference? She’d have come the moment she repaired her weapons systems, but she wasn't here, which suggested that they still weren’t repaired. Without her battleship to counter the Kofi Annan, we couldn’t stand and fight. Would we have any choice? If we let them enter Earth orbit and drive us away, all of this would have been for nothing.

“Damn you, Roger,” I hissed. “I’m not going to let you end it all.”

“Captain,” Carolyn snapped. “A new wormhole is opening!”

I allowed myself a moment of hope. It might have been Kitty, but instead Devastator emerged from the wormhole. I stared in stark disbelief. Devastator was a monitor. She wasn't designed for the line of battle. Captain Shalenko had had to have lost his mind. He couldn’t be planning to intervene, could he?

“Receiving a transmission,” Samantha said. “He says he’s sorry.”

Before my eyes, Devastator plunged towards Kofi Annan and crashed right into her. The media suggested that starships collided on a regular basis, but the truth was that even the most insanely incompetent pilot would have struggled to make two ships crash, unless it was deliberate. Even then, it would be hard, but Roger had unintentionally aided Devastator on her final cruise. The two starships exploded and vanished inside a massive fireball.

“Captain Yamamoto would like to surrender,” Samantha said. I barely heard her. I was still staring at the remains of a man I’d once called a friend, and a commanding officer who’d prevented me from throwing away my own career. What had gone through his mind in the final few minutes? Had Shalenko intended to kill himself, or had he realised that he had committed vast crimes and sought a means of redeeming himself. “Sir?”

“Accept the surrender,” I said, softly. “Check around with the other ships and find one that has an intact platoon of Marines and send them onboard to secure the ship. What about the other cruiser?”

“They’re apparently under the control of mutineers themselves,” Samantha said. I didn’t smile. We were mutineers as well, unless we won outright. Winners got to write the history books. “They’re asking to join us.”

“Find out who’s in charge and see if they’re one of us,” I said. “If not, find a second platoon of Marines and send them onboard, just in case.”

I looked down at the display. “And prepare to return to Earth,” I added. “This isn’t quite finished yet.”

A moment later, another wormhole materialised and Kitty’s starship appeared. I couldn’t stop myself from laughing. Five minutes sooner and Captain Shalenko wouldn’t have had to commit suicide to stop Roger and his battleship. I doubted we’d be building any more such ships ourselves. They were just resource hogs.

“It’s good to see you,” I said, once we’d filled her in on what had happened in her absence. She had been as surprised as we were to discover that Roger had returned to the system; had they known something, or had it just been a hideous coincidence? “What’s happening at the asteroids?”

“They’ve all declared for us,” Kitty said, seriously. I thought that she’d never looked more beautiful in her life. “There were some problems with some of the overseers, but the prisoners took care of them and threw most of the bastards into space. I think that most of them will want to go home, but they’ve agreed to support us as long as we need them.”

“That might be a long time,” I said. Even if we started training up proper engineers again, it would still take years to replace all the conscripted workers…but I owed them a debt of honour. I’d helped put some of them in the work camps and now I’d get them back home, even if it made my operations difficult. I relaxed slightly as it dawned on me that I’d won. We held the Peace Force – and I was going to rename it something else once everything else had been done – and Earth’s high orbitals. Yesterday, the UN had controlled hundreds of star systems and billions of people. Today, it only controlled one planet. They couldn’t get at us any longer. Given time, I was sure that each of the garrisons would be wiped out, even as we were clearing their baleful influence from the fleet. “Still…we can maintain the fleet now.”

I paused. “Sally,” I ordered, “stand to attention.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, standing up.

“By the power vested in me, I hereby promote you to Lieutenant,” I said, clearly. I’d wanted to do it ever since I’d become Captain, but now…who was going to disagree? Everyone knew that Sally had been badly treated by the UN and no one doubted her competence. It was a shame I couldn’t grant her seniority as well, but that would have pushed matters too far. It wouldn’t be long before she was assigned to a new starship where she would either rise or fall according to her merits.

I sat back down in the command chair. “Pilot, take us back to Earth,” I ordered. I couldn’t keep the smile off my face. It was easy to be dramatic in the flush of victory. “It’s time to dictate terms to the United Nations and end the war for good.”

Interlude Four

From: The End of the Nightmare. Standard Press, New Washington, 2567.

The end, when it came, came swiftly.

The UNPF coup in orbit above Earth broke the power of the UN completely. As then-Captain Walker sent messengers to the occupied planets, the remainder of the UNPF and the UN Infantry swung to his side. Walker’s message was clear. The occupations were going to come to an end, provided that the Infantry were allowed to withdraw in peace. Planets such as Heinlein respected the ceasefire and generally permitted the UN Infantry to withdraw to bases out in the countryside, while they waited for transport to be organised back to Earth. Others, such as Terra Nova or New Kabul, resumed their civil wars at once without waiting for the UN to withdraw, forcing the Infantry to establish safe zones for their forces. There was a certain irony that General LePic, whose hands had been tied by UN Regulations, was able to impose peace on Terra Nova without those regulations. Indeed, many disbanded Infantrymen chose to make their way to Terra Nova to join him.

But that would come later. The messengers convinced most of the remaining starships to join Captain Walker in rebellion against the UN. Many of the crews had been frustrated, or treated badly by their superiors, or even hadn’t been paid for their services. Around 70% of the UN’s starships and all of their support bases fell into Captain Walker’s hands, while a handful of loyalists either vanished off into the Beyond or attempted to turn pirate. Several other loyalist vessels attempted to attack Earth and break the blockade, but the repaired orbital defences – firmly in rebel hands – were able to beat them away from the planet. The longer the blockade held, the more planets and asteroids that broke away from the UN. Mars declared independence after a brief rebellion and most of the outer systems followed suit. The long war was over.

It was not a neat and tidy process. The issue of reparations for damage inflicted and punishment for war crimes continued to hang over the proceedings. Were the UN soldiers guilty of breaking any laws, or committing war crimes? Would they have been allowed to pass unpunished if they had followed orders? What was a war crime anyway? And that, of course, ignored war crimes committed by insurgents, who had often had little choice. The issues seemed insolvable.

And this still left, of course, the problem of peace. John Walker had never intended to run an empire of any kind, yet was there any other solution? Others feared his ambitions or his control of a fleet strongly loyal to him personally. It was towards this end that Walker summoned representatives from each of the inhabited planets, including Earth, to a grand summit at Unity, where such issues would be decided.

Part V: Generalissimo

Chapter Forty

Unity was unusual in that it was the only UN-settled world that didn’t have a civil war or the prospect of one held in check by the Infantry. Although it did have four different ethnic groups dumped on the planet – Germans, Russians, Mexicans and Indians – they were dumped on separate continents and actually built separate lives, to the point where Unity actually had four nations. The distances between them helped prevent racial/ethnic strife, although the UN-backed planetary government lacked real power.

-Thomas Anderson. An Unbiased Look at the UNPF. Baen Historical Press, 2500.

“This meeting will now come to order,” I said, as calmly as I could. “Please could I have your attention?”

There was little fear of losing it, I reflected, as their eyes followed me. I’d hoped to have a relatively small conference, but I’d forgotten how many different factions there were in the Human Sphere. There were over five hundred actual delegates in the chamber, with an equivalent number of observers, reporters and other representatives. I’d planned to hold it onboard the Percival Harriman – our only battleship – but we’d been forced to move down to Unity. It wasn't an auspicious beginning.

It had taken nearly a year to set up the conference, a year where I’d wondered if I’d lose control as quickly as I’d taken it. My UNPF – I’d decided that we’d simply be ‘Fleet’ in future, rather than any more Peace Force nonsense – faction was larger than all the others, but some elements of the old regime had tried to fight rather than submit, or even accept my offer of future service. We’d had to chase several starships into the Beyond, or catch and destroy others, and that still left the problem of cleaning up the Infantry. Some worlds had allowed the Infantry to disengage gracefully, others had continued the war right up until the conference itself…and God alone knew what we were doing to do about Terra Nova. Was it possible that that mess would ever be sorted out?

In the end, I’d imposed an uneasy peace, but I doubted that it would last forever. The power of the UN had been broken, but there were other factions that would make their own bids for power, now that the oppressor had been defeated. There were resistance forces that saw us as merely the continuation of the UN’s oppression and radical fanatics determined to punish Earth for centuries of oppression. The UN had kept the lid on hundreds of racial and religious conflicts – I remembered Muna with a wave of bitter regret – and now that lid was coming off. Fleet Intelligence – I’d given that to one of the handful of people I trusted completely – was predicting that at least fifty-two worlds would see outbreaks of civil war by the end of the following year. The UN’s baleful legacy would be felt for years to come.