Back | Next
Contents

Slocum System

June 27, 1907 PD


“there they go, Skipper.”

Lieutenant Commander Chen sounded a bit disgusted, but not surprised, and Alistair McKeon grunted in acknowledgment. He didn’t blame the Peep destroyers one bit. They would have been hopelessly outclassed just by TG 16.3’s own destroyers. Against Steigert’s dreadnoughts, they might have lasted five minutes. On a good day.

“Smartest thing they could’ve done,” he said, gazing at the large-scale plot, where the icons of the destroyers’ impeller wedges had just crossed the hyper limit. Five of them had disappeared into hyper as soon as they could, but one remained behind.

“There wasn’t a damned thing they could have done to stop us,” he continued. “So they leave one tin can to keep an eye on us and the others haul ass to spread the word.”

“Think they’re likely to bring back friends, Sir?” Chen asked.

“I doubt it.” McKeon shrugged. “It’s unlikely they have anyone close enough to get back here before we finish up and head for home. That was one of the reasons we got Slocum and the rest of Sixth Fleet got Gualt. And if they did have someone close enough, the smart move would’ve been to send a single courier to call them in while the rest of the picket hung around and kept an eye on us.” He shook his head. “No, I’m not going to make any ironclad assumptions that there isn’t somebody close enough, but this looks more like spreading the word as broadly as possible.”

“At least that’s how they’ll write it up for their reports,” Lev Carson observed dryly from McKeon’s com. The XO was once again in AuxCon with the backup bridge group. “Given the new management’s ‘collective responsibility’ crap, I’d make damned sure I covered my ass against any hint of cowardice or ‘defeatism.’”

“So would I,” McKeon acknowledged. “But the truth is, it’s the best thing they could do, anyway. And—”

“Excuse me, Skipper,” Lieutenant McCloskey said.

“Yes?” McKeon looked at him.

“Admiral Steigert’s on the com for you, Sir.”

“Thank you.”

McKeon touched the acceptance key and Rear Admiral Jožefa Steigert replaced Commander Carson on his display.

“Ma’am,” he said.

“They’ve surrendered.” Steigert snorted. “Surprise, surprise!”

“Actually, I am a little surprised they didn’t blow the tank farm first, Ma’am.”

“So am I,” Steigert acknowledged. “Especially given how fond of shooting people the ‘Committee of Public Safety’ seems to be. Of course, that could cut both ways. If you don’t blow the tanks to keep them from falling into the hands of those nasty Manties, you’re likely to get hammered—or shot—for lack of revolutionary zeal. But if you blow them in time to prevent that, you’re probably just as likely to get hammered—or shot—for defeatism.”

“I can see that, Ma’am. But if it was me, I’d have pushed the button.”

“Well, Citizen Captain Rummo apparently doesn’t see it that way.”

“Citizen Captain?” McKeon repeated. “Not ‘People’s Commissioner’?”

“Regular Navy officer.” Steigert shrugged. “Maybe they just hadn’t gotten around to assigning a ‘commissioner’ way out here yet.”

“Maybe.” McKeon nodded, but he also frowned. Admittedly, the Slocum System was scarcely a critically important installation, but the Committee of Public Safety had made a point of assigning their ‘people’s commissioners’ to every single hyper-capable unit of the People’s Navy. And there’d been commissioners in every other system Sixth Fleet had hit after the formal declaration.

“It seems odd to me, too,” Steigert said. “And just between you and me, Alister, I’m not a big fan of ‘odd.’ Tell your people to watch their asses when they go aboard the main platform.”

“Oh, I will, Ma’am. I will.”

* * *

“Marine One is docking now, Ma’am. We’re number two, behind Major Hendren.”

“Thank you, Scotty,” Brandy said. Lieutenant Tremaine was technically too senior for a mere shuttle pilot, but she hadn’t been surprised to find him when she boarded the shuttle. After all, as Prince Adrian’s flight operations officer, he got to make the cockpit assignments.

That no doubt also explained why SCPO Harkness was Shuttle One’s current flight engineer, as well.

She smiled at the thought and leaned forward in her seat, craning her neck to watch Marine One settle into the docking buffers in the orbital platform’s Boat Bay One.

Like most industrial platforms, Sigismund Alpha’s design was bare-bones, practical, and as devoid of aesthetic value as it was possible to be. The main platform was an untidy aggregation of habitat modules, hydroponics sections, and cargo platforms, gleaming in the reflected light of Sigismund, otherwise known as Slocum III.

Slocum was unusual for an F8 star in its possession of three exceptionally massive gas giants. Sigismund, the largest of the trio (and the only one which had actually been named), was about ten times as massive as the Sol System’s Jupiter, just short of “brown dwarf” territory. It wasn’t significantly larger than Jupiter, only denser and more massive, but it supported two separate refinery platforms—Sigismund Beta and Gamma—and a bountiful flotilla of atmospheric mining ships.

The refineries and storage tanks were well separated from Sigismund Alpha, probably as a safety precaution in case of industrial accidents. They were actually a bit larger than Brandy had anticipated, too. It looked like at least two or three times the storage capacity she’d expected. If those tanks were full, TG 16.3 should have brought more tankers.

Her lips twitched at the thought as she watched the boarding tube run out to Marine One and pictured Hendren and his Marines swinging through it to the Sigismund Alpha boat bay gallery. Over the last few months, she and Hendren had even gotten as far as using one another’s first names, occasionally. She suspected he still cherished a few reservations about Harkness, but given Harkness’ record, she couldn’t fault that. If she’d been a Marine, she would have had reservations about him! And whatever the Marine’s other faults might be, at least he had a lively sense of humor. Brandy could forgive a lot in someone who knew how to laugh at himself.

His obvious competence was another mark in his favor. In Brandy’s experience, Marines in general had something of a fetish about training, but Clint Hendren took it to an even higher level than most. His people spent a lot of time in small craft and EVA exercises. And in fully geared-up shipboard exercises, tasked both to defend and to seize the ship. In fact, the time they spent practicing boarding and SAR exercises put enough wear on “his” pinnaces to eat up a disproportionate amount of Brandy’s severely overtaxed service and maintenance time. On the other hand, once he’d become aware—one might have said painfully aware, given their initial contact—of how overworked her people were, he’d assigned six of his Marines to help with the load. It wasn’t the same as having additional trained Navy ratings, but all six of them had extensive experience with Engineering as damage control team leaders, and they’d proven extremely useful.

She wasn’t about to let him completely off the hook for the way he’d put his foot into his mouth that first time. Or, at least, she wasn’t about to admit it to him, anyway. But he’d made some long strides toward rehabilitating himself in her eyes. And he—and the rest of his Marines, of course—were a very reassuring presence when she found herself going aboard a platform inhabited by the next best thing to two thousand Peeps.

“Bay secure, Ma’am,” Tremaine announced, and the shuttle quivered as its thrusters engaged. “Initiating docking sequence now.”

* * *

Brandy followed Major Hendren down the final passage to Sigismund Alpha’s command deck. As the senior officer present, she was technically in command, and where engineering issues and her party of ratings were concerned, she was just fine with that. But she didn’t know a damned thing about boarding a hostile orbital platform, and she was delighted to leave the details of securing that platform up to the Marine.

Like the rest of her Navy personnel, she wore a standard-issue skinsuit, but Hendren’s Marines—aside from his single platoon in battle armor—wore Marine-issue armored skinnies. At the moment, the major was watching the system schematic displayed on his helmet’s HUD as he and Brandy moved at the center of a five-Marine diamond formation, and all of the Marines in question carried un-slung M32 pulse rifles. At least no one in her immediate vicinity had unlimbered a tribarrel or a plasma rifle, she thought dryly.

Oh, stop that! she told herself. They’re doing their jobs, and they’re doing them damned well, and you know it.

She did. In fact, what she felt most at the moment was impressed . . . and reassured. She was an engineer, not a tac officer, and sure as hell not a Marine! She carried the mandatory sidearm, and she’d qualified with it, as required. She was fairly certain she could at least not shoot her own foot off. Anything more was . . . problematical. So it was a good thing people who understood such things were along to keep her out of trouble.

And the fact that this is so far outside your comfort zone is one reason you’re feeling nervous enough to make snitty remarks, if only to yourself, she thought. And I hadn’t realized how damned big this place was, either!

In fact, compared to something like Hephaestus or Vulcan back home, Sigismund Alpha was tiny. Compared to Prince Adrian, it was huge, as was probably only to be expected of an orbital platform which housed a workforce closing in on three thousand. In addition to the environmental sections, there were engineering and maintenance spaces, docking racks for workboats and remote repair and maintenance drones, and God only knew what else, all located with the sprawling contempt for concentration microgravity made possible.

In addition to the boat bay, designed to allow the transfer of personnel in a shirtsleeve environment, which was located in its own module and covered now by one squad of Lieutenant Dimitrieas’ First Platoon, there were five docking platforms arranged to service Sigismund Alpha’s extensive cargo modules.

First was the only battle-armored platoon of the short company of Prince Adrian’s Marine detachment, and its second squad was distributed covering those cargo docks. The modules they served were much larger than Brandy had anticipated, but their size had made sense when she discovered that all of the system’s spare parts and support equipment were warehoused aboard Sigismund Alpha, rather than distributed to the refineries and tank farm. In addition, the Peeps had been building a second refinery—and additional tank farms—in orbit around Slocum IV. Most of the materials support for that was passing through Sigismund Alpha, as well, and its cargo space had been expanded accordingly. All of those docking platforms had to be covered, though, which had sucked away more of Hendren’s battle armor than Brandy might have preferred. On the other hand, battle armor was bulky, and most of Sigismund Alpha’s internal passages were too narrow for it to pass through readily.

Dimitrieas’ third and final squad had been broken up into four two-person fire teams, rather than the standard three-person sections, and detailed to cover the platform’s central lift shafts. The shaft access compartments were much wider than the connecting passages, which made them a more comfortable fit for battle-armored Marines. And a Marine in battle armor was a very untempting target if anyone felt fractious. If Hendren had to hang somebody out on his or her own—and he did, given the number of points that had to be covered—it made sense to use his best-protected, best-armed personnel.

Lieutenant Gillespie’s Second Platoon had been tasked for internal security. He and his first squad had headed for Power One, located in Sigismund Alpha’s central engineering section, along with Oliver O’Brien and Felicia O’Toole, to secure the platform’s reactors. His second squad had already accompanied Scotty Tremaine and Horace Harkness to secure Life Support Central, and third squad was on its way to the command deck along with Hendren, Anderson McCloskey, and, of course, Brandy herself.

Bethany Clark and Third Platoon were still aboard Prince Adrian, skinsuited and ready to go in the second pinnace in case they were needed.

“Marine One, Marine Two-One,” Gillespie’s voice came over Brandy’s earbug.

“One,” Hendren acknowledged. “Go, Two.”

“We’re in Power Central, Sir,” Gillespie reported. “The Peep power crew chief is walking Lieutenant O’Brien through the control panels now. From the Lieutenant’s expression, I think he’s getting the straight skinny.”

“Copy your arrival,” Hendren said. “Any sign of security types?”

“No, Sir.” Gillespie didn’t sound entirely happy about that, Brandy noticed. “Haven’t seen hide nor hair of them.”

“Understood. Stay on your toes, Isaiah.”

“Wilco that, Sir! Two-One, clear.”

Brandy couldn’t see the captain’s expression, but from the set of his shoulders, she was willing to bet he was frowning. She picked up her own pace until she was walking beside him, and he glanced down at her.

He was frowning, she saw. It wasn’t all that much of a frown, but still . . . 

“Yes?” he cocked his helmeted head.

“I hadn’t really thought about the fact that we haven’t seen any of their security personnel,” she said quietly. “That seems . . . a little strange to me.”

“Only a little?” Hendren snorted. “Everything we’ve seen about the Peeps since the Harris assassination says they’ve been beefing up their security forces, not just aboard warships but for every other imaginable base and outpost. Given this place’s size, they ought to have at least a couple of platoons of StateSec goons to ride herd on everybody’s political reliability.”

“Apparently, Rummo doesn’t have one,” Brandy said.

“He doesn’t?” the Marine sounded surprised.

“Nope. Surprised me, too, Clint. I would have expected their ‘commissioner’ to be hovering in the background when Citizen Captain Rummo surrendered, but there was no sign of one.”

“There wasn’t?” Hendren frowned. “I didn’t see any of the com traffic,” he added. “I should have figured something was odd when Captain McKeon told me Rummo would be the one surrendering the platform to us.” His frown deepened.

“Do you think they’re planning something?” Brandy was pleased her voice sounded so level, but she felt her eyes flit around the passage, and their escort no longer seemed quite so ostentatious.

“I think they’d be incredibly stupid if they were,” Hendren replied grimly. “Unfortunately, nobody issues any guarantees that the people on the other side won’t be incredibly stupid. So far the platform maps they’ve provided seem to be a hundred percent accurate, and Rummo’s boat bay people and now Engineering seem to be cooperating exactly the way he promised they would. So he sure looks like someone who’s minding his manners, but I don’t know . . .” He shook his head. “It’s just like I’ve got this itch I can’t scratch.”

“Lieutenant Bolgeo?” another voice said in her earbug, and she raised one hand at Hendren, index finger extended in a “hold that thought” gesture.

“Yes, Scotty?”

“The Senior Chief and I are in Life Support Central, Ma’am.”

“Any problems?”

“No, Ma’am, but it’s a little weird. Life Support was unmanned when we got here. Not a soul in sight.”

“Really?” She glanced back up at Hendren. “Scotty says Life Support was unmanned when he got there.”

The Marine nodded.

“We’re a little concerned over the fact that we haven’t seen any of the base’s security personnel yet,” she told Tremaine. “May be nothing, but keep your eyes open.”

“Gunny Babcock’s already watching our backs, Ma’am. But we’ll keep our own eyes on things, too.”

“Good. Back to you later.”

“How unusual would it be for that station to be unmanned?” Hendren asked after a brief, thoughtful pause.

“That’s hard to say. It would depend on a lot of factors, including how sophisticated the control links from Command Central are and how short on personnel they are.” Brandy shrugged. “On a Manticoran platform this size, everything—Power, Environmental, all of it—would be controlled from the command deck, so there wouldn’t have to be any operators physically on station. Not for routine ops, at least. But we’d have at least someone physically monitoring on-site, just in case. Even today, the human eye and brain are still about the best safety and servicing system around. And the Peeps tend to be more manpower intensive than we are, because their system reliability’s lower.”

“So there ought to have been someone on Life Support?”

“I’d say yes. Probably.” She grimaced. “I have no idea how their purges have affected personnel here in Slocum, though. A lot of their people in Mathias weren’t what anyone might have called the sharpest styluses in the box, and Slocum’s a much lower priority system than Mathias was. And given how much poorer than ours their serviceability is, I’d expect an experienced command crew to have duty watches on all the critical stations, if only for redundancy.”

“An experienced command crew,” Hendren repeated.

“Yes. But whatever they’ve done to their officer corps, they have hung onto the bulk of their long-term noncommissioned,” she said. “As I understand it, their career noncoms have always been the real backbone of their maintenance and operational personnel. So I’m pretty sure if it was left up to them, they’d have had a Life Support duty watch up and running. If they don’t, then presumably it’s because their officers told them not to.”

“Which indicates either sloppiness . . . or maybe that that itch of mine has a certain justification.”

“I’d prefer sloppiness,” Brandy said.

“So would I, Brandy.”

They turned the final corner and found themselves outside the open hatch of Command Central. The first Peep Marine they’d seen stood outside the hatch. His sleeve bore the chevrons of a sergeant, and the pistol holster at his hip was conspicuously empty.

He came to attention as they saw him, although he didn’t salute.

“Sergeant—I mean, Citizen Sergeant Lloyd Bigby,” he said.

Hendren looked him over.

“First one of those uniforms I’ve seen since we came aboard, Citizen Sergeant,” he said, after a moment.

“Aren’t many of them around, Major. I’ve only got twenty-seven people, all told.” Bigby shook his head. “We’re basically just traffic cops.”

“And there’s none of those—what? State Security types—around?”

“You see any?” Bigby shook his head again.

Hendren frowned, but then he shrugged and stepped past the citizen sergeant major onto the spacious command deck.

A tall, brown haired officer in PRN uniform awaited them.

“Citizen Captain Rummo?”

“I am.”

“Major Clint Hendren, Royal Marines. And this”—he indicated Brandy—“is Lieutenant Bolgeo. She’s now in command of Sigismund Able.”

“I understand.” Rummo gestured around the command deck. Only a third or so of its stations were manned by the obviously skeleton bridge watch. “My people will show your people anything you need them to, Lieutenant.”

“I appreciate that, Citizen Captain,” Brandy replied.

“Before you do that, Citizen Captain,” Hendren said, “I’m a little puzzled. You seem pretty lightly staffed, and we’re getting similar reports from Life Support and Fusion One.”

“And you’re surprised?” Rummo shook his head. “Major, everybody aboard this platform—hell, everybody in Havenite uniform—is doing his damnedest to keep his head down. And to be brutally honest, no one wants to be accused of collaborating with your people after you finish your business here and withdraw.”

“Including you, Citizen Captain?”

Especially me, Major. Unfortunately, this comes with my job description, under the circumstances. Although”—he showed his teeth in something that certainly wasn’t a smile—“you can bet I’m not going to ‘collaborate’ with you one damned bit more than I have to. My people will show you the basic hardware, but that’s it. All you get.” He looked Hendren in the eye. “I have family back in Nouveau Paris. Almost all of us do.”

“Understood.” Hendren nodded, then stepped back, positioning himself at Brandy’s shoulder, and she nodded to Rummo.

“And now, Citizen Captain,” she said, “please be good enough to walk me and my people through your command-and-control systems.”

“Of course, Lieutenant.”

* * *

“I don’t think Hendren’s a happy camper right now, Skipper,” Lev Carson said.

“And I don’t think I blame him.” McKeon’s tone was a bit absent, but his eyes were sharp as he gazed into the main navigation display. “He’s right that they seem awful light on security personnel over there. Twenty-eight Marines? None of them State Security, and the senior’s a sergeant? With the next best thing to three thousand people to ride herd on?”

He shook his head.

“Should we put some more people onto the platform to back him up?”

“Who?” McKeon snorted and waved at the display. “All we’ve got is Clark’s platoon, and nobody else is close enough to peel off any more Marines.” He shook his head again, and Carson nodded.

The Slocum System housed a significantly larger Havenite presence than ONI had allowed for. The People’s Republic had begun ramping up for its attack on the Manticoran Alliance well before Hancock Station or Third Grayson, and it looked like Slocum’s expansion had been part of that ramping-up process.

The system’s current refining capacity was at least three times the intelligence types’ projection. Sigismund Alpha was twenty percent bigger than their prewar data had suggested, and in addition to the two refineries riding Sigismund’s orbit with it, an entire secondary complex—including two more dedicated refinery platforms and their own fuel-holding tanks—had been built in Slocum IV’s orbit, eight and a half light-minutes farther from the primary. It wasn’t complete yet—it seemed likely the intent had been to build a complete clone of Sigismund Alpha—but the first few modules of an additional personnel habitat had been parked around Slocum IV. For the moment, only construction workers and a skeleton force, barely large enough to operate the refineries, actually lived aboard them, and the bare-bones habitat was obviously regarded as a hardship post. The prewar planners had clearly concentrated on increasing the system’s refinery capacity first, with comfortable housing for its increased workforce second on their priorities list. Or even third.

Given all of that, the refinery workers cycled between Slocum IV and Sigismund on a monthly basis. The construction workers didn’t have the same opportunity, but they at least got to visit Sigismund Alpha’s “bright lights” occasionally.

The system’s increased infrastructure made StateSec’s curious absence even more puzzling, since it was clear Slocum had been more important to the People’s Navy than ONI had assumed. It also meant Rear Admiral Steigert’s task group had a broader volume to cover.

At the moment, Slocum IV lay almost sixteen light-minutes from Sigismund. Unlike Sigismund, it was also outside the system primary’s hyper limit, but both superjovians were large enough to generate hyper limits of their own that were nearly five light-minutes deep. Steigert had opted to move her abbreviated wall-of-battle—all three dreadnoughts of it—to a solar orbit just outside the stellar hyper limit and about midway between Sigismund and Slocum IV. From that position, she could move to either of them in the unlikely event that the People’s Navy should put in an appearance. Her destroyers were deployed to scouting positions, scattered around the system periphery, and she’d retained CruDiv 33.2, HMS Magician and HMS Bellator, with her dreadnoughts. HMS Princess Stephanie, Prince Adrian’s sister ship and partner in CruDiv 33.1, had been assigned to ride herd on the Slocum IV facilities.

That left Prince Adrian all alone, keeping an eye on Sigismund Alpha. And that, in turn, meant that only Major Hendren’s Marine detachment was available. Two of his three platoons were already deployed aboard the platform. Lieutenant Clark’s forty-four Marines were the only reserve Hendren—and McKeon—had.

“I’d feel better if Brandy had all of Clint’s people over there,” the captain said, looking back down into the display again. “But Lieutenant Clark’s our only mobile response force. I can’t afford to send her over and get her tied down. Besides, all we have right now is Clint’s ‘itchiness.’” He chuckled harshly. “Not the most detailed threat assessment we’ve ever had, is it?”

“No, it isn’t,” Carson said after a moment, and grimaced. “The thing is, he’s not the only one feeling a bit itchy just now, is he, Skip?”

“No. No, Lev, he’s not. Not at all.”

* * *

Danielle Barthet swore softly, but with feeling, as she watched her displays.

She knew Citizen Captain Radeckis had thought she was paranoid, at best, when she insisted on fitting up their current hideaway in Cargo Seven. Actually, he’d probably thought it was her “terrorist” instincts coming to the fore, not that she’d cared about that.

She didn’t trust the regular armed forces. For that matter, she didn’t trust Citizen Sergeant Bigby and his Marines’ loyalty to the Committee. She didn’t really expect any recidivists to try something, but she’d also had no desire to be caught napping if that happened anyway. So she’d created her hidey-hole, with discreet taps into Sigismund Alpha’s internal com and surveillance systems. One of her own techs had established standalone links to the system’s surveillance platforms and communications buoys without mentioning it to Citizen Captain Rummo or his personnel, as well, and all of them were tied into the three enormous crates in Cargo Seven’s lowest tier of containers which had been fitted up as an emergency barracks and armory.

Her foresight had served her well when it came time to disappear, but at the moment, “disappearing” was all she’d been able to do.

“Two of their tankers are heading for the farm, Citizen Commissioner.”

“I see it!” she snapped at the hapless citizen corporal manning the link to the survey platforms. She tightened her jaw for a moment, then turned her glare on Radeckis.

“I should wait till they connect to the tanks, then below the entire fucking farm!” she snarled.

“Ma’am,” Radeckis began in a careful tone, “if you do that when they’re moored to the tanks, it’ll be—”

“A violation of the Deneb Accords. I know that.” Barthet’s hands fisted at her sides. “It’s all a pile of steaming shit.”

“I agree,” Radeckis said, with less than complete honesty. “But that’s the standard the Manties will be operating under.”

“Oh, yeah? They’re going to blow Sigismund Alpha out of space with their own frigging Marines onboard?”

“I don’t know, Ma’am. All I know is that if they did, they’d claim they were justified under interstellar law.” And we’d all still be dead, he very carefully did not say aloud.

“I know. I know!”

Barthet took a quick, angry turn around her cramped command center.

Half the troopers of Radeckis’ StateSec company were concentrated here in Cargo Seven. The other two platoons were distributed between two additional hiding spots. Their concealment wasn’t as good, but she’d managed to edit the schematics in Sigismund Alpha’s computers to delete the compartments in which they were stationed, so the Manties’ electronic maps didn’t show them. The bad news was that if something started the Manties seriously looking for them, they’d be far easier to find than her command center.

The good news was that she had the Manties vastly outnumbered. There were less than a hundred of them onboard, and they were scattered out in vulnerable packets. She was confident she could take them all, especially with the advantage of surprise, but what then?

She growled deep in her throat and her pacing redoubled.

* * *

Porthos Radeckis watched Barthet striding around the compartment, and his eyes were unhappy. He had no choice about taking her orders, since his only alternative would have been a pulser dart, either from her or from a StateSec firing squad when her report reached Nouveau Paris. And, like everyone else in Slocum, he had “hostages to fortune” back home. He might’ve taken a chance for himself, but . . . 

All you can do is say “Yes, Ma’am, yes, Ma’am, three bags full, Ma’am” and try your damnedest to keep her from doing something outstandingly stupid, he told himself, and knew it was true.

But he would have been far happier if she hadn’t been one of the CRU’s terrorists. The kind of terrorist who thought in terms of hostage-taking and “bargaining from a position of strength.” He strongly suspected she’d already have tried something very like that if not for those Manty warships out there. In fact, it was probably what she’d had in mind from the beginning. But at least even she wasn’t stupid enough to think she could face down ships-of-the-wall with pulsers and plasma rifles.

So far, at least.

* * *

“Hyper footprint!”

Alistair McKeon wheeled toward Tactical.

“Multiple footprints,” the sensor tech continued. “Range five-point-five-six light-minutes.”

Brian Chen stood at the petty officer’s shoulder, leaning forward to look at her display, and his eyes narrowed. He watched for another moment, then turned to McKeon.

“Hard to be certain from here, Skip, but it looks like a half-dozen battleships, with escorts.”

“I see.” McKeon folded his hands behind his back and turned to the master display as CIC updated it. It would take a while for anything more than the newcomers’ impeller signatures to reach their light-speed sensors, and the data codes beside the bloodred icons strobed to indicate uncertainty about their classes and tonnages, and he waited as patiently as possible.

Some of them began to steady as CIC’s confidence in its FTL data extrapolation solidified, but it took over five minutes before all of them steadied. They burned in the plot then, and his lips tightened as he looked at the junior-grade lieutenant sitting in for Anderson McCloskey at Communications.

“Get me Lieutenant Bolgeo and Major Hendren, Lieutenant Horne.”

* * *

“It’ll be a few minutes yet before Admiral Steigert can confirm our numbers, given the com lag, but CIC’s confidence is high,” Captain McKeon’s voice said in Brandy’s earbug. She looked across at Clint Hendren as he listened to the same transmission. “We’re looking at six battleships, five cruisers, and six destroyers. They were headed in-system, but they’ve cut their acceleration, at the moment. I suppose”—his tone turned very dry—“they may have spotted Admiral Steigert’s dreadnoughts.”

Brandy snorted. Her pulse might have been beating just a bit faster, and she felt an odd emptiness in her midsection, but she understood why the Peeps might feel a tad cautious. Steigert’s Bellerophon-class dreadnoughts massed just under seven million tons apiece, whereas a Peep Triumphant-class battleship massed only about 4.5 million. That gave the newcomers a six-million-ton advantage, but each of their ships was more lightly armed, more lightly armored, with weaker sidewalls, fewer counter-missiles, less point defense, and weaker electronic countermeasures.

And no missile pods.

“If they have any sense, they’ll admit they got here too late and write the trip off as a bad idea,” Captain McKeon continued. “Unfortunately, we can’t guarantee that’s going to happen. So for right now, you need to sit tight while we find out what they’re going to do. For now, I’m moving Prince Adrian a little farther away from the platform. I don’t expect them to start chucking missiles in this direction, especially from a range like that, but they might, and I don’t have the liveliest possible faith in their missiles’ onboard tracking.”

“Understood, Sir.” Brandy was pleased her voice sounded steadier than it felt.

* * *

“It’s got to be Androcles!” People’s Commissioner Barthet hissed triumphantly, eyes burning as she stared at the repeater display. It was too small to show a great deal of detail, but Radeckis felt unhappily certain she was right.

“Probably, Ma’am,” he said, and she darted a withering look over her shoulder before she returned her attention to the display.

“Plug me into the com buoy,” she said.

* * *

“It’s a pity we were too late, Citizen Commissioner,” Ingunn Androcles said as CIC updated her flagship’s tactical plot.

PNS Splendor and the other five battleships of Androcles’ understrength Battle Squadron 217 coasted ballistically toward the system primary at a mere 1,410 KPS. That was the velocity they’d attained before her light-speed sensors detected the Manticoran dreadnoughts and their escorts at a three-light-minute range, just outside the Slocum hyper limit and almost directly between them and the primary. The Manties’ superior stealth systems had hidden the dreadnoughts low-powered impeller wedges. Fortunately, Androcles had known about their systems superiority, which was why she’d sent a trio of recon drones ahead of her. One of them had spotted the Manties optically and pointed them out to her more powerful shipboard sensors.

It had taken a little longer to detect the pair of heavy cruisers deployed to cover Sigismund and Slocum IV, but she’d known they—or some Manty ships, at least—had to be there.

“What do you mean, ‘too late,’ Citizen Commodore?” People’s Commissioner Andre Simpson’s voice was frosty.

Androcles’ lips tightened. She made herself study the display for another handful of seconds—until she was certain she had her expression under control—and then turned attentively to her political watchdog.

“Citizen Commissioner,” she said in a calm, respectful tone, “I’m afraid it’s obvious the Manties have already secured control of both Sigismund Alpha and Slocum IV.”

“And?” Simpson frowned at her. “Your ships have more Marines than they could possibly have landed from a pair of cruisers. They’ll have no choice but to surrender when you threaten to board.”

“That would be true, Sir, if we could take control of the planetary orbital space.” She chose not to mention that Manty dreadnoughts carried far larger Marine detachments than their cruisers did. It would have been less than tactful and might have sounded “defeatist.” It also didn’t matter, however. “Unfortunately, we can’t do that with three ships-of-the-wall hovering in the background.”

“Then engage them,” Simpson said coldly. “You have twice that many battleships!”

“Each of which has perhaps a third of the combat value of one of their dreadnoughts, Sir.” Androcles folded her hands tightly together behind her back. Had Simpson learned nothing from what had happened in places with names like Samson? “They have heavier broadsides, more active defenses, and much thicker armor than we do, Citizen Commissioner.”

“Those are Bellerophon-class, correct?”

“That’s CIC’s identification, yes, Sir.” Androcles kept her voice level, but her heart sank as she saw the triumphant glitter in Simpson’s eyes.

“Well, I took the time to find them in the Intelligence database,” the people’s commissioner said, tapping his uni-link. “According to that, each of them mounts a broadside of thirty-three missiles. So they have a total of ninety-three in a single salvo, whereas your six battleships, with thirty launchers per broadside, have a salvo strength of a hundred and eighty. That gives us an edge of seventy-five missiles, Citizen Commodore—an advantage in ‘throw weight’ of over eighty percent!”

Androcles bit her tongue, but it was hard not to speak.

Two T-years ago, Citizen Commodore Ingunn Androcles had been Commander Ingunn Androcles, who’d never commanded anything bigger than a destroyer.

It was amazing how much difference two years could make.

Personally, she’d never bought the evidence that Admiral Parnell had had a single thing to do with the coup attempt. Of course, she’d also known that saying anything of the sort would have bought her a one-way ticket to a prison camp . . . or a firing squad. Unfortunately, she was also the daughter of Dolists and a prewar member of the Citizens Rights Party. That had made her one of the handful of “reliable” officers in the Committee of Public Safety’s eyes following the “Parnell Coup.”

At first, the prospect of accelerated promotion had been seductive. But that had been before she found herself pushed up first to battleship command, and then to command of an entire battleship division. No one in the entire galaxy could be more aware than she of how completely unqualified she was to command a single capital ship, even one as small as a battleship, but saying “no” to promotion just wasn’t possible in the current People’s Republic. Things hadn’t gotten any better when they assigned Simpson as her people’s commissioner. His fervor for the Committee of Public Safety was matched only by his utter and complete lack of naval experience. He was probably the only person in BatRon 217’s senior command even less qualified than she was, but he didn’t seem to realize that. As far as she could tell, he honestly believed that looking up ship data in an electronic file qualified him to make tactical decisions. That was bad enough. The fact that his position as her official keeper put him in a position to dictate tactical decisions was far, far worse.

And then she’d found herself senior officer in command—under Simpson’s beady, distrustful eye, of course—of a barely understrength battleship squadron . . . and escorts. But at least they’d only ordered her to picket a backwater star system, guarding a strictly secondary base. She’d actually been looking forward to having time—hopefully weeks, or even months of it—to spend exercising her command, her command staff, and herself. Maybe they’d actually have long enough to become reasonably proficient at their jobs.

And now this.

“It’s true we have a large numerical advantage, Sir. In shipboard launchers, at least,” she made herself acknowledge. “They also have fifty percent more—and substantially more powerful—energy weapons than Splendor.”

Simpson’s eyes narrowed, but she continued in the same measured, reasonable tone.

“Admittedly, the difference in energy armament wouldn’t be a factor in a missile engagement, and we’d have the maneuver advantage. We wouldn’t have to enter energy range, unless we chose to. But their missiles are also larger than ours, with more powerful laserheads. That means each hit will do more damage, which offsets some of our numerical advantage in launchers. If you’ll recall, NavInt also estimates that their missiles are more accurate than ours, which means they’ll score a higher percentage of hits, as well.” She kept her expression gravely respectful. “The fact that their armored protection is substantially superior to ours, and that they have much stronger active defenses, further degrades our numerical advantage. And I must also point out that we don’t know if they’ve deployed missile pods.”

She watched his eyes, saw them flicker ever so slightly, and allowed herself a cautious glimmer of hope.

“Pods may be good for only a single salvo, Citizen Commissioner,” she said, “but each of them mounts ten box launchers. That means three of them would equal a Triumphant’s entire broadside. And the missiles they fire are even heavier and more powerful than the Manties’ standard capital ship missiles.”

Simpson looked unhappy, but he also nodded slowly, and she let that glimmer burn a little brighter.

“Those are, unfortunately, reasonable points, Citizen Commodore,” he said. “I still think that we should—”

“Excuse me, Citizen Commissioner. Citizen Commodore.”

Androcles turned her head and raised one eyebrow at Citizen Lieutenant Hatcher, her communications officer.

“Yes, Ed?”

“I apologize for interrupting, but we’ve just received a message. It’s a burst transmission from Citizen Commissioner Barthet.”

* * *

“The Peeps are actually maneuvering to engage, Skipper,” Lieutenant Commander Chen said.

“You’re kidding.” Alistair McKeon held up one hand, pausing his com conversation with Commander Carson.

“No, Sir. They’ve just started accelerating toward Admiral Steigert. Five-Three-Zero gravities.”

McKeon looked at the master plot, and his frown deepened as he realized Chen was right. The Havenite battleships were accelerating toward Battle Division 17.2. That was either remarkably gutsy or remarkably stupid.

Or both.

At the moment, they were still three light-minutes from Rear Admiral Steigert. Effective missile range against a maneuvering target was only about 6.8 million kilometers, so they’d have to close the gap by at least two light-minutes before they could engage, which would take thirty-four minutes at their current acceleration.

The question was why they were doing something so . . . unwise.

Of course, if the Peeps could close to missile range and launch at half-power settings, they’d be inside Steigert’s reaction cycle when they did. Flight time would be only three minutes, a minute and a half less than her minimum time to hyper out. But only their first salvo could reach Steigert’s ships before they vanished into hyper, and initial salvos were notoriously less accurate than follow-up launches. So unless she chose to stand and fight, they were unlikely to inflict any significant damage. And if she did choose to stand and fight, a missile duel between six battleships and three dreadnoughts, each with eight missile pods on tow, would be a very unpleasant experience for the Peeps. Unless . . . 

“You know,” he said slowly, “there may just be a method to their madness. They may hope that if they close to the very edge of the missile envelope, they’ll get inside the Admiral’s hyper cycle. They might be figuring on launching and then immediately translating out themselves, on the theory that even blind fire would score some damage. And if they could entice her into flushing the pods before they hypered out . . .”

“Not going to happen, Skip,” Chen objected. “The Admiral’s too smart for that.”

“Yeah.” McKeon nodded. “But they can’t know that unless they try, now can they? And if she doesn’t bite, all they really lose is a little time and, maybe, the missiles they flung at her hoping to draw a response.” He shrugged. “Makes sense to at least see if they can convince her to do something dumb, doesn’t it?”

* * *

“We sure about this, Citizen Lieutenant?”

Citizen Sergeant Jean-Luc Demaret’s voice was very, very quiet, almost inaudible in Citizen Lieutenant Désiré Fresnel’s ear. He and the citizen lieutenant crouched side-by-side, just inside the innocuous panel that concealed access to what had once been a storage compartment for maintenance spares.

“I thought the Citizen Captain was pretty clear, Citizen Sergeant,” Fresnel replied in an equally low voice, turning her head to look at him. “Was there some part of it you didn’t understand?”

Demaret looked back at her levelly, and her nostrils flared.

They wore armored skinsuits, like everyone else in the compartment, but their helmet visors were raised so they could speak to each other without using their coms. There were several reasons for that, including the fact that they’d been ordered to keep transmissions to a minimum as a security measure. The chance of the Manties detecting such low-powered, short-range transmissions from inside a shielded compartment was essentially nonexistent, but Citizen Commissioner Barthet had decided her Omega contingency posts had to be linked for wired communications anyway. Demaret thought that was a bit excessive, but neither he nor his citizen lieutenant had objected to avoiding their coms just in case. Especially since all com traffic was automatically recorded. It would be unwise to say anything for the record that might suggest a lack of fervor, especially in the face of imminent combat operations.

And neither of them wanted to involve the platoon’s forty other troopers in the conversation.

“I’m just thinking it might be better to wait a little longer, Citizen Lieutenant,” the citizen sergeant said after a moment. “Once we pop the hatch, it’s gonna be kinda hard to disappear again, if we need to.”

“I understand that.” Fresnel’s voice was still low, but her tone was much sharper. “But if we’re going to be in position when the ball drops, we need to start moving before it does.”

“That’s assuming the ball does drop, Citizen Lieutenant. If it doesn’t, then—”

Demaret shrugged and Fresnel half-glared at him. Mostly, he suspected, because she agreed with what he was saying.

Unfortunately, their hide was inconveniently placed relative to their assigned objective. They knew where the Manties were; the problem was that they had to cover over thirty meters just to reach the lift shaft, which they would then have to take one deck down to reach their target. And when they got there, the Manties would have a clear field of fire down an arrow-straight twenty-five-meter approach corridor. Trying to cover that distance against the fire of modern weapons in the hands of Royal Manticoran Marines would be a losing proposition.

Conversely, they could head forty meters in the opposite direction, crack the hatch on a service access shaft, and come directly at Life Support Central through the shaft. The problem there was the shaft’s dimensions. They’d have to stack on the ladder between decks, and they’d be able to come at the Manties only one at a time through the hatch at its other end.

Neither proposition was attractive, but Demaret understood Fresnel’s thinking. If the order to execute the attack came through—and Citizen Captain Radeckis had made it pretty clear Citizen Commissioner Barthet was going to give it—the less distance they had to cover before the Manties could react, the better. Especially since they would be only one of multiple attacks, any one of which could jump the gun and alert the Manties before the other attacks rolled in.

But, of course, the same thing could happen if one of the attack forces—like, say, their own—was spotted moving into position early.

The whole plan was way too complex, Demaret thought in disgust. Especially for something that was basically an improvisation. And even more especially given the presence of Manty ships-of-the-wall. Citizen Captain Radeckis had been just a little vague for his taste on exactly how those capital ships would be neutralized.

“Look, Jean-Luc,” Fresnel said, “I don’t think this is a great idea, either. I think it’s just the best of the crappy ones available to us. And because you’re the citizen sergeant and I’m the citizen lieutenant, I’m the one who has to make the call on how we do it.”

“Yes, Citizen Lieutenant.” Demaret nodded. One thing about Fresnel, she never waffled. That made up for a lot.

* * *

“Marine Four, Marine Two-One. Coms check.”

“Marine Two-One, Marine Four,” Iris Babcock replied. “Read you five-by-five, Lieutenant Gillespie.”

“Good to know, Gunny,” Isaiah Gillespie said dryly. “Your voice is always such a comfort to me.”

“What I’m here for, LT,” Sergeant Major Babcock replied with a grin. Gillespie was one of her favorite junior officers, although she would never have admitted it, even under torture.

“Marine Four, Marine One-One,” another voice said in her earbug as Jeremiah Dimitrieas checked in. “Coms check.”

“One-One, Marine Four reads five-by-five.”

“Five-by-five this end, too, Gunny. One-One, clear.”

“Still good, Gunny?”

Babcock looked over her shoulder and smiled at Lieutenant Tremaine. He, too, had always been one of her favorite junior officers, even if he was Navy, and despite the fact that he’d come equipped with Horace Harkness. That had definitely not been an entry in the plus column the first time they met.

“Yes, Sir.” She shrugged slightly. “Everything on the green, as far as I can tell. What about the Navy’s end?”

“Well, that’s an interesting question,” Tremaine said. He and Horace Harkness sat in comfortable chairs at Life Support Central’s primary board, watching the displays, but the lieutenant had plugged a smaller display into the station-to-ship net Prince Adrian had established so he could watch a tiny version of the cruiser’s main plot. “Off the top of my head, though, this looks like a losing proposition for the Peeps.”

The Peep battleships had been accelerating for just under an hour. They’d traveled almost 3.85 million kilometers, and their velocity relative to Battle Division 17.2 was up to 5,329 KPS. That was still less than halfway to any possible launch point, but they certainly looked like they meant business.

“I’m just fine with idiots running the show on the other side, Sir,” Babcock said. She moved up to stand between him and Harkness, where she could see the same display. “Matter of fact, I prefer it.”

“Me, too,” Harkness said, but there was something a little odd about his tone, and she looked down at him with a raised eyebrow.

“Few months ago, I’d’a been assuming they were idiots,” the senior chief said. “After Nightingale, not so much. I mean, maybe this guy is gonna screw the pooch, but maybe he’s not, too. Maybe there’s something going on we just don’t know about. Yet.”

“Point.” Babcock nodded. “But you don’t think that’s what’s happening here, right?”

“I dunno.” Harkness grimaced. “Sure doesn’t look like it, but I think that might be part of my problem. This is so goddamned dumb part of me keeps thinking there has to be a trick. Something we’re just not seeing. And if there is, it’s really gonna suck if we walk in all fat, dumb, and happy.”

“Actually, it’s not completely pointless,” Tremaine said. “I’ve run the generator cycle times. If they start their translation clock and launch their first salvo the instant they enter powered-missile range of the Admiral, they can get off nine broadsides before they hyper out. That’d be a total of two hundred and seventy birds per battleship, and she’s got five of ’em, so call it thirteen hundred total. That’s a lot of missiles.”

“Yes, sir.” Harkness nodded. “But in that same window, Admiral Steigert could get off ten salvos. That’s three hundred per ship just from her internal launchers, so call it nine hundred there, plus whatever pods she’s got deployed. And her point defense and ECM’s a hell of a lot better than anything the Peeps have!”

“Yes, they are. But if the Peeps time it just right, they’ll translate out about seventeen seconds before their fire reaches BatDiv Three-Oh-Three . . . or Admiral Steigert’s fire reaches them. And it’ll take the Bellerophons a minute and a half longer to translate.” Tremaine shook his head. “Even if Admiral Steigert starts her translation clock the instant they enter range, she’ll have to take four of their salvos and they won’t have to take any of hers. They’ll lose the control links to even the first salvo early, so their accuracy will suck vacuum, but even blind fire’s likely to score some hits, and they wouldn’t take any from us.”

Harkness and Babcock looked at him.

“Gee, thanks, Lieutenant,” the Marine said after a moment. “And here I thought this vacuum head”—she twitched a sideways nod at Harkness—“knew what he was talking about. For once.”

“Yeah, thanks for making me look so bad in front of the Gunny, Sir,” Harkness added with a grin.

“Well,” Tremaine said in a rallying sort of tone, “all of that assumes the Peeps are as smart as me, and we all know how unlikely that is!” He smiled as both noncoms chuckled. “And it also assumes Admiral Steigert wasn’t smart enough to work out the same math I just did. And frankly”—his smile turned into something much colder and harder—“that’s one hell of a lot less likely.”

* * *

Citizen Commodore Androcles tipped back in her command chair, elbows on the armrests, her raised hands folded while she tapped her chin with her index fingers.

God, this is stupid, she thought. Oh, I suppose it might work, if that Manty over there is as stupid as my own damned “people’s commissioners.” What are the odds of having three people that stupid in a single star system, though?

She didn’t know, but they had to be pretty low.

It wouldn’t be the first time since the Parnell Coup that she’d seen lives thrown away by incompetent amateurs so utterly clueless they thought they were brilliant. It was just the first time she’d been cast for a starring role in the debacle.

At least the ops plan she’d sold to Simpson, coupled with her battleships’ higher acceleration rate and lower generator cycle times, meant it wasn’t outright suicidal on her part.

She just didn’t like to think about how many people were likely to die aboard Sigismund Alpha in the next hour or so.

The tankers which had been in company with the Manty dreadnoughts had disappeared into hyper, which was wise of them. Manty fleet train units carried at least rudimentary point defense and ECM, but no one would ever mistake them for regular warships. They had no business anywhere missiles might be flying, and they could always come back once the dust settled.

She watched the plot while the kilometers fell astern and wondered what the Manty admiral thought she and her ships were doing.

She hid a frown of disgust behind a carefully attentive expression. The burst transmission from Barthet had come at the worst possible moment. She’d had Simpson almost convinced, and then Barthet had chimed in.

The entire idea was ludicrous. Even assuming Barthet’s StateSec goons could take Sigismund Alpha away from what sounded like at least two complete platoons of Royal Manticoran Marines, it would accomplish exactly nothing unless Androcles’ own command was able to at least drive off those Manty dreadnoughts. First, there was no way in hell she would have backed StateSec against Manty Marines. StateSec was a bunch of head-bashing goons, and Manticoran Marines would eat them for breakfast. Second, there was equally no way in hell her battleships were going to defeat three Bellerophon-class dreadnoughts. She knew that; Citizen Captain Taylor, Splendor’s CO, knew that; and she was pretty sure that if Citizen Captain Rummo had known what was going on, he would have known that. Unfortunately, none of them could tell Barthet and Simpson to shove it up their asses.

They’d received three more burst transmissions from Barthet. Obviously, they couldn’t reply without the Manties wondering just who her ships were talking to. That only made things worse, since she couldn’t ask any questions whose answers might have convinced Simpson Barthet was a frigging lunatic. She’d wanted to point out that there was no reason the Manty admiral couldn’t simply blow away the system’s infrastructure and leave, if Androcles made herself too annoying. It wouldn’t take a lot of missiles. In fact, it would take about one per orbital platform, since they couldn’t dodge and had exactly zero in the way of point defense. The range wouldn’t matter under those circumstances, either. Unfortunately, the other people’s commissioner had actually convinced him her people could retake Sigismund Alpha, which would turn the Manty boarders into human shields—hostages—against that sort of parting shot. The three tankers which had already moored to the tank farm would do the same thing for the refineries. The Manties couldn’t take the platforms out with missiles without destroying their own ships . . . and if the tankers tried to disengage, Barthet would blow the tanks and destroy them before they could.

I wonder how much of it is that Simpson’s afraid of being made an example for “defeatism” if he doesn’t go along with her?

The thought made Androcles feel a trace—a very, very tiny trace—of sympathy for her StateSec keeper. Technically, he was senior to Danielle Barthet, but that wouldn’t save him if somebody back in Nouveau Paris decided he’d shown too little élan in the People’s service.

* * *

Citizen Corporal Gwen Lawrence eased her way cautiously along the maintenance access trunk. It was a tight fit with the plasma carbine slung from her shoulder, and she wished she’d been able to armor-up properly. But Havenite battle armor was bulky. In fact, it was slightly bulkier than the Manty equivalent. There was no way she and the five troopers behind her could have squeezed their armor into a space this small. And those same constricted quarters were why she had a plasma carbine instead of a plasma rifle.

That made her just a bit nervous about what she was supposed to do when the balloon went up, because the Manty she was supposed to take out was in battle armor.

Won’t matter if you surprise the bastard, she told herself firmly.

By this time, the Manties had to be convinced they had the situation under control. If any of Sigismund Alpha’s personnel had dared to cross the people’s commissioner, the Manties would have torn Sigismund Alpha apart until they found the State Security hideouts. So unless something went wrong in a big way, she should have surprise, and not even Manticoran battle armor could handle a direct hit from a plasma carbine.

Probably.

* * *

“Whoa,” Corporal Montoya murmured. “What do we have here?”

“What’cha got, Timmy?” Corporal Handley, his teammate, asked over the com from her position on the far side of the central lift core.

“Don’t know,” Montoya replied. “Probably nothing, but the Gamma block motion sensors say there’s movement.”

“What kind of movement?” Handley’s voice was sharper in Montoya’s earbug.

Movement movement,” Montoya said. “That’s all I’ve got so far. Hold one while I check.”

“Roger.”

* * *

Lawrence swore under her breath. She’d meant to ease the access hatch no more than a centimeter or so, just enough to slip the camera snake through and take a look, but poor maintenance had caught up with her. Instead of swinging smoothly, one of the hinges had stuck and refused to move. She’d been forced to apply more muscle than she’d wanted to, and when the hinge finally gave, she’d lost her grip.

She’d just leaned out into the corridor, reaching to recapture it and pull it shut once more when something made her glance up.

She never had a chance to figure out what that “something” might have been.

* * *

“All Marines this net, Marine One-Delta-Three. Bandit. Repeat, Bandit!”

Clint Hendren twitched as Corporal Montoya’s voice came over his earbug. A sudden strobing icon on his display showed him Montoya’s position, three decks down from Command Central.

“One-Delta-Three has engaged,” Montoya continued. “Bandit down. Repeat, one Bandit down. In armored skinny with plasma rifle. StateSec—I repeat, State Security—insignia!”

The high, shrill whine of a tribarrel on full auto came over the com. Montoya’s visor must be up for him to hear that, a corner of Hendren’s brain thought.

Multiple bandits!” Montoya said. “I have multiple bandits! Looks like they’re using a service conduit!”

“All Marines this net, Marine One,” Hendren cut in. “Case Hotel. Repeat, Hotel. The ball is in play!”

* * *

“Oh, shit!” Citizen Captain Radeckis snarled as Citizen Corporal Lawrence’s icon turned crimson on his master display. An instant later, three other icons from her six-trooper squad did the same thing.

That display showed the central portion of Sigismund Alpha, all of its corridors and access routes, plus lift shafts, blast doors, and emergency airlocks. He didn’t know what had gone wrong, but it was way too early.

“What is it? What happened?!” Barthet demanded.

“I don’t know. I just lost four of my people.”

“To the Manties?”

“I don’t know what else could’ve happened.” Radeckis glared at the display. “But the bastards know we’re here now!”

“Tell your people to attack!” Barthet snapped.

“They’re not in position!” Radeckis protested, but it was pure reflex. At least two teams from Citizen Lieutenant Castaneda’s platoon were already moving on their own. “Half my people just began moving two minutes ago,” he said. “They’re still at least ten minutes from their jump-off points!”

“We don’t have ten minutes! Tell them—now.” Barthet glared at him, then turned to the com tech. “Burst transmission to Citizen Commodore Androcles and People’s Commissioner Simpson!”

* * *

“Oh, shit, Ma’am—I mean Citizen Lieutenant!” Citizen Sergeant Demaret looked up at Citizen Lieutenant Fresnel. “It’s a go—now!”

“What?!” Fresnel stared at him. “Why? What happened?”

“No idea.” Demaret unslung his pulse rifle with one hand while he closed his visor with the other. “But whatever it is, it’s not good.”

Fresnel barked a harsh laugh of agreement and reached for her own rifle.

“All right, people! Let’s hit these bastards!”

Demaret kicked the concealing panel aside. It clattered across the passage floor, and the citizen sergeant vaulted over it. The rest of Fresnel’s platoon, minus the six troopers she’d sent off to the access shaft, followed him, and boots pounded the deck as they charged for the lift shaft.

* * *

“All Marines this net, Marine One. Case Hotel. Repeat, H—”

That was all Private Callie Owens, Manticoran Marine Corps, had time to hear before the plasma charge struck her squarely in the back. Not even her battle armor could take that kind of damage. She was dead before she hit the deck.

Corporal Trent Mehta was still turning in her direction when the trio of StateSec troopers—all of them in battle armor, in this case—came up the passage at him.

“Bandits! Marine One-Echo-Two! Engagi—”

His heavy tribarrel whined, and two of the Havenites went down.

The third StateSec trooper’s plasma rifle blew straight through his breastplate.

* * *

“Case Hotel!” Sergeant Major Babcock snapped. “Meadors, Brownback, Tremblay—on the door!”

She and Sergeant Quan had walked Quan’s squad through their contingency plans as soon they arrived in Life Support Central, and First Section knew exactly what it was supposed to do. Private Liam Meadors tossed a pair of remote sensors into the passageway, rolling one of them each direction, then went prone at the base of the open hatch. Privates Brownback and Tremblay knelt on either side of him, covering the access passage in both directions. Lance Corporal Drinkman, First Section’s grenadier, stood to Tremblay’s left, his back against the wall, grenade launcher muzzle raised, waiting for one of the riflemen to call on his support, and Private Stuart, the section’s plasma gunner, cradled his long, heavy weapon to Brownback’s right.

The squad’s second section spread out on either side of the door, ready to reinforce or replace casualties.

“Well, this ain’t good,” Horace Harkness muttered.

“Y’think?” Babcock snarled at him, and both of them looked at Tremaine.

“For now, we just hold what we’ve got,” he told them.

* * *

Two more of Jeremiah Dimitrieas’ teams went off the net as abruptly as Corporal Mehta’s, and access to Sigismund Alpha’s central lift shafts on Decks Five and Seven went with them. The two-Marine team on Deck Six tossed a grenade into the outboard shaft to disable it and settled into its preselected position to cover the inboard shaft. Nobody would be getting off on their floor, which meant no one could come at Power One that way.

The team watching Cargo Dock Two found itself under sudden attack by skinsuited StateSec plasma gunners who’d overridden the automatic alarms on two of the emergency airlocks to come at them from behind. One of the Manticorans died almost instantly. Her teammate bellied down behind a moored cargo sled and returned fire desperately.

The teams on the other cargo docks, alerted in time, were waiting when Citizen Captain Radeckis’ troopers came at them.

As it happened, even Ingunn Androcles’ more pessimistic assessment of the relative lethality of the Office of State Security and the Royal Manticoran Marine Corps had been wildly optimistic.

* * *

Brandy watched Clint Hendren respond to the sudden, unexpected onslaught. His voice was sharp, tense, but if there was anything remotely like panic in it, she couldn’t hear it. And while she was the officer in command, she was far too smart to joggle his elbow at a moment like this. So she stalked across the spacious compartment to Citizen Captain Rummo instead.

The Havenite platform commander and the half dozen of his personnel present in Command Central knelt at one end of the compartment now, hands clasped on their heads under the angry, watchful eyes of two Marines. She stopped in front of Rummo, glaring down at him.

“No StateSec, was it?” She half-spat the words.

“I never said that,” Rummo replied, meeting her furious gaze levelly. “And neither did Citizen Sergeant Bigby.” He twitched his head at the Marine sergeant kneeling beside him. “We just never said there were any State Security people on the platform. And I told you when you came aboard that no one could afford to be accused of collaborating with you people.” He shrugged. “I figure worst thing that happens here is you shoot me. If I’d told you there were StateSec troopers on this platform, they’d have shot my entire family. So you tell me, Lieutenant. What would you have done?”

“How many of them are there?” Brandy demanded.

“You’ve got everything you’re getting from me, Lieutenant.” Rummo’s eyes never wavered. “If that’s not enough, you’d best go ahead and shoot now.”

She glared at him, sorely tempted to do just that, then made herself turn away. Hendren looked up as she stalked back across the deck to him like an angry treecat.

“Well, the good news is Jeremiah’s got the boat bay locked down and they aren’t getting into it,” the Marine said.

“And why do I think that if there’s good news, there has to be bad news, too?” Brandy asked.

“Because he’s not getting back aboard the platform anytime soon.” Hendren grimaced. “They’ve got too much firepower in the access passages. And he’s lost over half his dispersed teams. He’s sending PO Brixton and the pinnace out to do what they can to support his people on the cargo docks, but he can’t afford to send any of his own people along with them. So at least until Beth can get here from the ship, they’re on their own. Those I’ve got left.”

Brandy heard the pain in his voice and laid a hand on his forearm.

“It looks like something went wrong with their timing, though,” the Marine continued in a deliberately brisk tone. “They shouldn’t have hit the boat bay in isolation that way. This whole thing is really, really stupid, but I’m guessing they thought they’d have the advantage of surprise. Except that this”—he waved around the control room—“should have been their priority target, the very first thing they hit.” He shook his head. “It looks to me like they were still getting to their jump-off positions when Montoya spotted them, although I don’t know what kind of tactical genius might’ve thought they could get into position without somebody being spotted. Or what they think Rear Admiral Steigert will do if they manage to pull this off, either. But”—he inhaled sharply—“that’s not our problem. Kicking their asses is.”

“I can get behind that,” Brandy said, and he flashed her a tight smile.

“They haven’t hit Life Support yet, and I don’t think they can get to Power One past Jeremiah’s people on Deck Six. Plus O’Brien has Wright’s squad for cover even if they get that far. But I imagine we’ll be seeing them sometime soon.”

He showed his teeth, then turned to Lance Corporal Fitzhugh and waved at Command Central’s hatch.

“Go, Ezra,” he said, and the lance corporal snatched up a heavy rucksack and headed for the access passage with Private Chornovil. Brandy raised an eyebrow, then stepped to the hatch and leaned out, watching as Fitzhugh dove into the rucksack and tossed Chornovil half a dozen fourteen-centimeter discs. They were about four centimeters thick.

“You’ve got the inboard side,” he said.

“Gotcha,” Chornovil said, and headed toward the central lift shafts.

Fitzhugh watched her go, then turned and trotted in the opposite direction.

* * *

“Movement on sensor one!” Sergeant Major Babcock announced without looking up from the handheld display.

“Got it, Gunny,” Colin Brownback replied, shouldering his pulse rifle as the lift shaft doors slid open. They were slower than usual, their motion uneven. “They’re using the shaft but not the lift cars,” he said. “Looks like they’re opening the shaft doors by hand.”

Some brains on the other side, anyway. Damn it,” Corporal Drinkman muttered.

The doors opened fully, and something—several somethings, actually—sailed through them, obviously thrown by people still below deck level in the shaft.

“Grenades!” Brownback’s voice was sharp, and the Marines pressed themselves more firmly against the bulkheads.

The grenades bounced down the passage. Some of them, at least, were flash-bangs and erupted in blinding bursts of light and concussive shock. The searing flash was disorienting—or would have been if anyone had been looking at them—but the thunderous concussions had little effect on Marines in armored skinsuits. Others were aerosol grenades, and a blinding “smoke,” designed to be opaque to thermal sensors and laser sights, filled the passage.

* * *

Go!” Citizen Lieutenant Fresnel barked, and her first squad flung themselves over the lip of the lift shaft door. They hit the deck prone and rolled toward the passage’s bulkheads before they came up on one knee, rifles and fléchette guns ready.

Fresnel hadn’t liked using obscurants. She was supposed to take the Manties alive, and blind fire with automatic weapons wasn’t conducive to accomplishing her mission objective. On the other hand, charging straight down that passage without covering smoke—and fire—would only get her people killed, which would also prevent her from accomplishing that. If that cost her a few dead Manties on the way in . . . 

Citizen Commissioner Barthet would just have to settle for the best she could do.

“Position!” Citizen Corporal Danacek announced over the com.

“Second Squad!” Fresnel said.

Citizen Corporal Pasteur’s squad rolled over the lift shaft lip, formed into an assault stick, and went forward in a crouching run. They were careful to stay in the exact center of the broad passage, tracking down the lane defined by the red lines projected onto their HUDs, while Danacek’s riflemen sent pulser darts cracking past them to either side.

* * *

“Now!” Iris Babcock said, still never looking up from the display.

The Peeps’ covering smoke had blinded her Marines’ thermal sights, but while the sensor remotes Brownback had deployed utilized the visual spectrum, when they could, they were also equipped with audio sensors. It wasn’t as good as direct vision would have been, because the sound of the Peeps’ boots generated a less than perfectly differentiated moving blob on her display which prevented her from picking out individual targets.

But she didn’t really need to.

Meadors and Brownback swung into firing position while the supersonic darts of the Peeps’ suppressive fire crackled past them. They sent their own darts howling back in reply, firing on full automatic and sweeping their muzzles across the passage. The suppressive fire ebbed abruptly, and Drinkman stepped out into the passage just long enough to send a three-round burst of antipersonnel grenades into the Peeps’ faces.

Three or four darts became screaming ricochets, bouncing from the grenadier’s armored skinny, and he swore unhappily as he ducked back into cover.

“Fuckers winged me!”

There was more indignation than pain in his voice, and he held up his right forearm, examining the ugly rip through the skinsuit’s tough fabric. It had just caught the outside of his arm on its way through, and blood welled through the torn skinny. If it had struck him even half a centimeter to his left, he would probably have lost the arm.

“Well, next time don’t stand in the middle of the fire zone unless the Gunny or I damn well tell you to!” Platoon Sergeant Quan snarled as he grabbed the injured arm and sprayed a bandage over the wound. “Frigging enthusiast.”

“Hey, Sarge, I was only—”

“Shut it, Drinkman!”

* * *

“Movement, Skipper,” Private MacGregor announced. “Got movement on both sensors.”

“Figures.” Clint Hendren glanced at Brandy and shook his head, then returned his attention to the minicomp in his hands. “Told you we’d be high on the list.”

“Wonderful.” Brandy glanced down, checking the power and ammunition readings on her pulser . . . and visually confirming that she’d remembered to switch off the safety. “Sometimes being popular really sucks.”

“One way to look at it.” The Marine actually chuckled. “Don’t know how ‘popular’ we’ll be in the next two minutes or so, though.”

“Suits me just fine,” Brandy said grimly.

“Just do me a favor and don’t shoot any of our people,” he replied, never looking away from the minicomp. “Wouldn’t want to say anything unflattering about Navy marksmanship, but—”

She could actually hear the shrug in his voice.

“You are so going to pay for that one, Major,” she promised.

“I can hardly wait.”

He sounded a bit absent that time, like a man concentrating on something else.

* * *

Citizen Lieutenant Arsenault and Citizen Sergeant Brunel had worked carefully on their timing. The citizen lieutenant had gotten Fourth Platoon’s troopers into position at both ends of the Command Central’s access passageway by using the maintenance crawlways rather than the lift shafts, and he was confident—well, pretty confident—no one had seen them coming.

But spotted or not, he could be positive the Manties knew he was coming, damn it. When he found out who’d fucked up the timing on this, he’d—

Time enough, Jared. Time enough for that later. For now, get your head in the damned game.

They’d be waiting. That meant he was about to lose people. Probably a lot of them.

He knew that. He’d accepted it. But he was determined to lose as few of them as possible, and that meant getting in as quickly as he could.

Now his assault teams raced down the passage, staying close to the sides, moving as fast as they could behind a rolling, bouncing barrage of smoke and flash-bangs.

* * *

“Fire in the hole!” Hendren announced as the thunder of Arsenault’s covering grenades vibrated the bulkheads.

His fingertip came down, and four of the dozen directional mines Ezra Fitzhugh and Beth Chornovil had planted detonated. They’d been mag-locked to facing bulkheads in pairs, positioned to interlock their fire to maximum effect.

Their lethal cyclones of antipersonnel fléchettes sizzled across the passage in a dispersal pattern six meters wide, and the sensor remotes thoughtfully placed to cover the passage—coupled with Citizen Lieutenant Arsenault’s meticulous coordination and planning—allowed Clint Hendren to time the detonations perfectly.

Twenty-three members of Fourth Platoon, Able Company, 43rd Battalion, Office of State Security, survived the explosions. Citizen Lieutenant Jared Arsenault and Citizen Sergeant Frederica Brunel were not among them.

* * *

Citizen Corporal Harrelson snarled as the plasma bolt hit Citizen Private Jacobs and the incandescent fury amputated the citizen private’s left arm. No one could hear someone scream through his battle armor’s helmet . . . unless they happened to be on the com at the instant they were hit.

Like Jacobs.

Harrelson heard the citizen private’s shriek of agony, and the bubbling wails that followed only too well. In fact, he couldn’t hear anything else, and he wanted to scream at Jacobs to shut the hell up, or at least get off the tac frequencies.

He tried to see where the shot had come from without poking his own helmet up too high. They’d already lost three troopers—Jacobs made four—to the single Manty crouched behind the cargo sled. In fact, the single Manty left from any of the cargo docks guard posts.

There wasn’t much left of that sled now, not after all the plasma fire and grenades Harrelson’s section had poured into it, but there was obviously still enough, and he’d taken down both of Harrelson’s drones before they got a fix on him. Damn it, where was the sorry-assed son of a bitch? He had to be up there somewhere!

Jacobs’ wailing sobs faded into silence, and Harrelson tried not to feel grateful as the com net cleared.

“Tobias,” he said into the silence, “flank left. Try to get around behind—”

HMS Prince Adrian’s Marine One pinnace rose silently over Sigismund Alpha’s curved flank.

Harrelson had a sliver of time to see it before its nose-mounted pulsers ripped him apart.

* * *

“They’re what?” Citizen Commodore Androcles looked at Andre Simpson.

“They’re attacking now,” Simpson repeated. “Something gave them away. They had to go immediately—now!”

“No, Citizen Commissioner,” Androcles said. “They aren’t attacking now; they attacked eight and a half minutes ago.”

Simpson’s jaw tightened, and Androcles managed to not roll her eyes. Even a people’s commissioner should know enough to allow for transmission lag.

“Anything else from them yet?” the citizen commodore asked, turning to Citizen Lieutenant Hatcher.

“No, Citizen Commodore,” the com officer replied, watching Simpson from the corner of one eye. “Not yet.”

“Thank you.”

Androcles looked at the plot. Her battleships were just under eighteen minutes short of her planned launch point. Closing velocity was up to 14,008 KPS and the range to the Manty wallers was down to 28,292,800 KM, but her powered missile range from that geometry was only 9,360,000.

The idiot people’s commissioner—the idiot commissioner aboard Sigismund Alpha, that was, not the one aboard Splendor—had been supposed to hold her attack until Androcles was in position, because both idiot commissioners had expected the “simultaneous” attacks to break the Manties’ morale when Barthet made her demands. The fact that the ships-of-the-wall wouldn’t know anything was happening aboard Sigismund Alpha until eight minutes after it did had obviously escaped their attention.

But it doesn’t really matter, she told herself. Whatever Simpson and Barthet may have thought, nothing you do out here is going to affect what happens in Sigismund orbit. And you’re not planning on hanging around long enough for anything that happens there to affect you, either.

* * *

Shit!

Désiré Fresnel pressed closer to the lift shaft wall as the grenades bounced off the yawning void’s rear bulkhead. They caromed back toward the front of the shaft, hit the wall less than a meter above the outthrust flange under which she sheltered, rebounded, and detonated. Lethal fragments erupted from the explosions, ricocheting from the bulkheads like deadly, sizzling rain, and someone screamed over the com.

“Citizen Lieutenant—Skipper, we have to move!” Citizen Sergeant Demaret said, but she shook her head.

Inside, she knew Demaret was right. Her frontal attack, exactly the sort of frontal attack taught by the instructors responsible for training StateSec just as they had InSec, had been a disaster. She’d lost damned near half her platoon when she obligingly turned the passage into a kill zone.

And that’s the difference between busting terrorists or “subversives” and going up against the fucking Manty Marines, she thought bitterly. They weren’t worried about what we were going to do to them; they were too focused on what they were going to do to us. Do to my people!

The suppressive fire should have kept their heads down. The smoke and flash-bangs should have blinded and disoriented them. Even allowing for the protection of their skinsuits, they should have at least flinched! That was what her terrorist-hunting instructors had told her, anyway. But they hadn’t, and they’d cut her first two squads to pieces. And now that frigging grenadier was dropping his grenades right into the lift shaft, and she couldn’t even get to the doors to close them.

The bastard was firing blind. Fresnel had personally caught—and destroyed—two of the remotes the Manties had tried to roll into the shaft with Fourth Platoon, and Citizen Private Garrett had batted a third back down the passage with the butt of his pulse rifle. But they couldn’t keep that up forever, and when the bastards finally got one of the damned things past them—

“Not yet,” she grated back, staring at the moving icons on her head visor’s HUD. “Ten more seconds, Jean-Luc!”

Another three-round burst of grenades scorched into the lift shaft, and she pressed her helmet against the bulkhead as they plummeted past her people and exploded somewhere below.

* * *

“I need a remote in that shaft, Meadors,” Sergeant Major Babcock said pointedly, never looking away from her handheld.

“I’m working on it, Gunny,” Liam Meadors replied. “I don’t know how the bastards are spotting them. Should’ve brought some Mark Sevens!”

“I’ll make a note of that.” Babcock’s tone was sour, and despite the moment’s tension, Horace Harkness grinned at Lieutenant Tremaine and rolled his eyes.

Tremaine shook his head reprovingly, but not without a smile of his own. The Mark Seven was designed for battlefield deployment in both airfoil and counter-grav modes. It also had a deployed wingspan of over two meters, which made it . . . contraindicated for deployment in close quarters. What they really needed was something between that and the vastly smaller Mark Three remotes Private Meadors was trying to lob into the lift shaft. The Mark Three was actually designed for static deployment. It came without airfoils or counter-grav, and while it was very stealthy once it was deployed, it wasn’t very hard to see if someone tried to toss one past you.

“We’ve only got five more, Gunny,” Sergeant Quan pointed out. “At the rate Liam’s using ’em up—”

“Hey!” Meadors protested.

“Just saying, Liam. Just saying.”

Quan chuckled and moved closer to Babcock to look over her shoulder at the display.

“Point,” Babcock agreed.

* * *

“Position!”

Citizen Corporal Dumont’s voice sounded sharply in Citizen Lieutenant Fresnel’s earbug.

“Go—Go!” Fresnel barked back.

* * *

“Okay, Meadors,” Babcock said. “You can try two more. Then we keep the rest in reserve. Hell”—she scowled—“we’ve got the passage covered, and Drinkman may already have nailed ’em all and we just don’t know it yet. But until I’m sure—”

* * *

Simon Dumont pressed the button, the breaching charge blew, and he rolled through the sudden opening with his pulse rifle already in position.

He’d been nervous about drilling the tiny hole in the service crawlway’s bulkhead, but the Manties hadn’t noticed, and he’d gotten the even tinier camera through it without being spotted. Despite his need for frantic haste, he’d spent several seconds studying the Manties, nailing down their positions in his mind and patching the same feed to the other five troopers of his section. They could make entry only one at a time, and they damned well needed to know where the bad guys were before they did it.

The odds for the first man in the stick sucked. Dumont knew that, but he also knew he was the best man for the job. And the time he’d spent studying Manty rank insignia had paid off.

He knew exactly where the senior Marine was. If he could take the bastard out before they realized what was happening . . . 

* * *

Iris!

Iris Babcock’s head jerked up.

She was never certain later if it was the “CRACK!” of the breaching charge, the fist of overpressure, or the sound of her own name that did it. They all came so close together, in one shattering instant.

The handheld seemed to fall in slow motion, like an accident in microgravity, as she dropped it. Her right hand found the pistol grip of her M32 with the clean precision of almost thirty T-years’ experience, and she spun toward the explosion from behind her, knees flexing into a firing crouch. But she was moving slowly—so slowly.

Too slow, something said in her brain. Too slow this time, Iris!

And then the shoulder slammed into her, smashing her to the deck, and she realized whose voice had shouted her name.

* * *

What the fu—?

It was a damned Navy puke. That was the last person Dumont had worried about!

The sheer surprise of it distracted him. Only for an instant, less than an eyeblink in the heart of eternity, but in that tiny sliver of time, the petty officer launched himself, slammed into Dumont’s target, and knocked the Marine out of the line of fire even as Dumont squeezed the trigger.

The three-round burst missed its intended mark. Dumont started to snarl as he brought the muzzle around, and that was when he discovered the other thing the Navy puke had accomplished.

* * *

No!

Babcock heard herself scream as the darts meant for her ripped through Horace Harkness in a spray of blood.

The pulser in his right hand whined with lethal precision in the same heartbeat, and then he hit the deck with a horrible, limp looseness.

No!” she cried again as she came up on one knee and her M32 rose. She had the opening now, and her fire ripped into it as the second StateSec trooper started through.

It was strange, a corner of her brain noticed as she tracked onto the third Peep in the stick. There was something wrong with her eyes.

* * *

“No good, Citizen Lieutenant.”

The voice in Fresnel’s earbug was faint and fading. She couldn’t even identify it.

“Tried,” it said. “Sorry . . . tried. But we’re all . . . dea—”

It stopped, and she blinked burning eyes.

“Time to go, Jean-Luc,” she heard herself say. “Pull ’em back. We’re leaving.”

“But, Citizen Lieutenant—”

“No more,” she said harshly. “No fucking more of my people. Not today.”

* * *

“Horace!” Sergeant Major Babcock ripped at Horace Harkness’ skinsuit. “Don’t you die! Don’t you die on me, you miserable goddammed vacuumsucker! Don’t you dare, goddamn you!”

She could hardly see through her tears, but she recognized the second set of hands as Scotty Tremaine went to his knees on the other side of Harkness’ motionless body.

Navy skinsuits were designed to remove in panels in the case of catastrophic wounds, and Tremaine peeled away the chest section while Babcock ripped open the torn and shredded upper arm. It wasn’t a Marine skinny, with armor appliqués, but it was a combat skinsuit, and it had slowed the pulser darts.

Slowed, but not stopped, and Babcock’s jaw tightened as she saw the wreckage in their wake.

The left arm was . . . gone. Just gone. Two of the darts had hit it, and the upper of the two, ten centimeters below the shoulder, had simply destroyed the humerus. Nothing remained but bloody rags of flesh, and only the automatic tourniquet the skinsuit had applied just below the armpit had kept him from bleeding out already.

But the other wound, the one in his chest—

“Missed the heart,” she heard Tremaine say. “Hit the lung, though.”

His hands moved quickly, competently, spraying coagulant into the sucking wound, spraying a bandage to protect it, and his voice was calm. Impossibly calm. Hatefully calm, like an echo of her voice too many times before, kneeling over too many wounded, broken bodies. Keeping her head together. Doing her job. So why—

“I’ve got this, Gunny,” the lieutenant said softly. She looked up, saw his eyes through his visor, realized she wasn’t the only one crying.

“I’ve got this,” he repeated. “See to your people.”

* * *

“Breaching . . . now!” the voice in Clint Hendren’s earbug said, and fresh icons blinked on his display as Bethany Clark’s First Squad blew its way through the platform’s skin and dropped in behind the StateSec troopers besieging Boat Bay One.

Third Platoon had been armed up and Marine One had been spotted for launch, just in case, when all hell broke loose aboard Sigismund Alpha. Unfortunately, Prince Adrian had also been over a quarter million kilometers from the platform. Even at 4.4 KPS², the flight had eaten up eight minutes. But she was here now. Her second and third squads had already made entry through the cargo docks, and Hendren smiled thinly.

“Marine Three-One, Marine One,” he said now. “Secure the boat bay, then take out the bastards on Deck Two. We’re heading for the central lift shafts now. Meet us there.”

“Marine One, Three-One copies. Secure the Bay, meet you at the lifts.”

“And now,” Captain Clint Hendren said coldly, “we have some StateSec ass to kick.”

* * *

“It’s over, Citizen Commissioner,” Citizen Captain Radeckis said quietly.

He stood behind Danielle Barthet, watching the displays.

Fresnel’s brutally truncated platoon had fallen back to its original hide with less than a third of its starting personnel, but at least she was still alive. Fourth Platoon was still at almost half strength, but it had lost both its CO and its platoon sergeant. Its remnants had tried to hold the passage outside Command Central, but they’d been badly shaken and only too aware of how outclassed they were. When the Manties counterattacked out of the control room, a single squad had gone through Fourth like shit through a goose.

Second Platoon was down by a third and falling back from its abortive attempt to break through to Power One through the service access ways. Only Third Platoon, which had been tasked as Omega’s reserve, remained intact, and it couldn’t take the vengeful Manties long to track it down now that they knew it was here.

“No,” Barthet said flatly.

“Citizen Commissioner, they tried,” Radeckis said as gently as he could. “But—”

“It’s not over!” Barthet shouted. She punched her com officer in the shoulder. “Tell Citizen Commodore Androcles we’ve failed to secure complete control of the platform, but that I remain confident of the final outcome.”

The com officer hesitated for just a moment, and she punched him again—harder.

“Send it!” she snapped.

“Yes, Citizen Commissioner!” he said, and she turned back to Radeckis.

“The bastards haven’t won yet,” she said flatly. “We’ve still got the whip hand, as long as Androcles is out there!”

“Citizen Commissioner, she’s got battleships, against dreadnoughts,” Radeckis replied, trying to get through to her. “And for all we know, the Manties have deployed more of those damned pods of theirs. I’m afraid we can’t count on her driving them off.”

“No?”

Barthet’s eyes glittered, and she smiled. It was an odd, frightening, cold-eyed sort of smile, and something tightened inside Porthos Radeckis. She looked at him for a moment, then turned back to the com officer.

“Contact the Manties,” she told him. “Tell them I demand the standdown of all their personnel aboard Sigismund Alpha. And arm the destruct circuit for Tank Farm Two. If they’re not willing to see reason, we’ll just blow one of their tankers to hell and see how they—”

Her head exploded, spraying blood, bone, and tissue across the control panel. The com officer lurched to his feet, retching, as the corpse hit the deck and the blood pooled.

“I don’t think so, Citizen Commissioner,” Radeckis said, and synthetics whispered as he holstered his pulser. He looked down at the sudden corpse for a moment, then back up at the gagging com officer.

“Stop puking, wipe that crap off the com, and contact the Manties. I’ll be damned if I get any more of our people killed for that bitch.”

* * *

“Well, I’m afraid that’s pretty much that, Citizen Commissioner,” Ingunn Androcles said.

Her battle squadron was not quite seven minutes from her planned launch point as she looked across her flag bridge at Andre Simpson.

“Nonsense!” Simpson shot back. “Citizen Commissioner Barthet’s first rush may have failed, but she hasn’t given up yet!”

“With all due respect, Citizen Commissioner, it doesn’t matter.” Androcles shook her head. “The Manties have more than enough Marines to take Sigismund Alpha back. They’d have enough combat strength to do that even if she hadn’t lost a single soul.”

“But if she threatens to—”

“Citizen Commissioner, if the situation was reversed—if you were in the Manties’ position—would you let a threat like that stop you from doing your duty?”

Androcles held the people’s commissioner’s eye until Simpson’s gaze fell. He shook his head.

“Of course you wouldn’t,” she said quietly. “And neither will the Manties. I just pray People’s Commissioner Barthet’s wise enough to not go through with destroying any of their ships. So far, they’ll probably be willing to let her people surrender. But if she kills more of them when it’s obvious she can’t win . . .”

“And if we succeed in defeating the Manty navy?” Simpson asked.

“Well, in that case, the position would be reversed, wouldn’t it?” she said and looked past him to her ops officer.

* * *

“Still coming, Ma’am,” Commander Powell said, and Jožefa Steigert nodded.

“The question, of course, is how long they’ll continue coming.” Her tone was almost whimsical.

“I’m not worried,” Powell replied, and Steigert chuckled. A bottle of thirty-year Glenfiddich rested on the outcome of her bet with the chief of staff.

“A man of confidence, I see. You hang onto that, Adrian. I’m going to enjoy drinking your whiskey.”

She watched the display for another two minutes, lips pursed, then looked at Commander Politidis.

“Send the launch code,” she said.

* * *

Citizen Commodore Androcles settled deeper into her command chair as the time display on PNS Splendor’s flag deck ticked downward.

It hadn’t been easy to sell Simpson on the path of simple tactical sanity, but she’d managed it. Probably because he wasn’t really suicidal.

“Launch point in fifteen seconds, Citizen Commodore,” her tac officer announced.

“Astrogation, start the hyper clock in five seconds,” she said.

“Aye, aye, Citizen Commodore,” her staff astrogator acknowledged. “Five, four, three, two, one, Mark.”

“Coming up on launch point,” the tac officer said.

“Engage as specified,” she said levelly.

* * *

As it happened, Scotty Tremaine’s analysis of Citizen Commodore Androcles’ tactical options had been spot-on. He’d deduced exactly what she intended to do, and Admiral Steigert and Commander Politidis had made the same calculation, which wouldn’t have surprised Androcles. The options were simple enough, just as it was painfully obvious that five battleships didn’t want to engage three dreadnoughts.

The fact that she’d accelerated straight at them for over an hour, building a vector from which it would have been impossible to avoid close action in n-space, was another giveaway that she had no intention of remaining in n-space. But it didn’t really matter that they’d figured it out.

Except for one tiny detail of which she’d been unaware.

The first broadside erupted from her ships, streaming straight for the Manties. She’d have time for eight more launches, but even if the Manties launched right this instant, their birds would still be over a million kilometers short of Splendor when she and her consorts banished into hyper.

“Missile launch!” Tactical barked, and Androcles nodded to herself. Of course they were launching. It was only to be—

“Missile launch at fifteen-point-six light-seconds!”

Androcles jerked upright in her command chair. That had to be wrong!

“Confirm range!” she barked.

“Confirmed, Citizen Commodore,” the tac officer replied. Then swallowed hard. “Second launch detected! Time-of-flight one-zero-two seconds!”

Androcles felt the blood drain out of her face.

Third launch!”

“What is it?!” People’s Commissioner Simpson demanded. “What’s happening, Citizen Commodore?!”

“The Manties have mousetrapped us,” she said, almost absently, never looking away from the plot. Her own broadsides ripped out at twenty-second intervals, but the Manticoran salvos were launching every ten seconds.

“Mousetrapped?!” Simpson repeated.

“Yes. I wondered why they didn’t come out to meet us. I even considered that they might have more of those damned missile pods than they had tractors, so they couldn’t tow them along. But”—she smiled with no humor at all—“it didn’t occur to me that they might have already deployed them half a light-minute between them and the hyper limit. Right where someone like us would sail straight into them.”

“My God,” Simpson whispered, his own face white as he stared at serried waves of crimson icons streaking across the plot. “Do something, Citizen Commodore!”

“There’s nothing we can do,” she said calmly as a fourth massive launch blossomed.

And this is how professionals do it, a corner of her mind thought as the uncaring computers updated the display.

There were a hundred and forty missiles in each of those waves. According to NavInt, the Manties’ new pods had ten box launchers each. So that was fourteen pods per salvo. But if they’d had that many pods deployed, they could have fired even bigger broadsides. So why—?

Control links, she thought. Thirty-three tubes in a Bellerophon’s broadside. And—what? Eight, in a Prince Consort’s. So assume a twenty-percent fire control redundancy and that would be about right. And ten-second intervals.

Ten seconds. Just long enough for them to cut the control links to each salvo and update the targeting for the next one before it hit.

Four salvos, five targets. That’s—what? Hundred and twelve per battleship? I wonder how they allocated them?

Thirty-three seconds later, she found out.


Back | Next
Framed