First Strike (27 page)

“Launch sequence underway, Captain,” Thompson reported. They might have been long-term lovers – people on small ships either got close or started hating each other – but on the bridge he was already professional. “We should have them all out within twenty minutes.”

“Twenty minutes too late,” Verity said. If the Funks rushed the freighters, they were likely to wipe them out before the Navy could cover their escape. “Speed the process up if you can.”

* * *

“They’re just waiting, doing nothing,” the sensor officer reported. “I cannot understand it.”

Lady Dalsha nodded, slowly. No one, not even the humans, would simply position freighters above the gravity well and wait. It was possible that they hoped to lure the remainder of the fleet away from the forts, but if that was the case she had no intention of taking the bait. Her fleet was still too badly damaged to risk a fight with other starships, even if they’d been technological equals. Some of her ships couldn't even generate shields. The humans would cut them apart with ease.

The human freighters started to slip back, heading for the quantum gate. It was proof that they hadn't built a quantum drive into their hulls, which at least suggested that the humans would have logistics problems in deploying further forward from their bases. But there was still no explanation of their actions. Why had they just waited? What had they done? Hours passed slowly and there was still no answer.

It was possible, she knew, to produce a phase cannon that fired invisible bursts of energy, but they’d still be detectable by active sensors. Maybe the humans had been trying to lure them out, or…

“I have something,” the sensor officer snapped. “It just appeared…”

* * *

“Active-1 has been triggered,” Sooraya reported. “They’ll see her for sure now.”

Tobias nodded. A handful of the mines had been directed right at the fortresses, instead of being pushed into relatively stable orbits around the planet. Active-1 had even carried a beacon that would allow the Funks to get a good look at it, just before the antimatter containment field collapsed and the mine vaporised. The Funks would now know that countless stealth mines were floating in high orbit around Hammerfall, mines that would render the entire planet virtually useless until they were swept and removed. And yet...they’d never be able to be
 
sure
 
that they’d destroyed them all. It was quite possible that any starship that tried to leave the planet’s orbit would hit a mine and be crippled. Hammerfall had effectively been neutralised.

And how long would it be, he asked himself silently, before the Funks found themselves forced to sweep
 
every
 
star system, just to be sure that there were no mines waiting for unwary ships? Mining quantum space was technically illegal – it would certainly interfere with free navigation – but there was no law against mining normal space. But then, the logistics of mining open space were daunting. The only way to make it work was to mine orbital space above a planet.

“Send a signal to the fleet,” he ordered. “We’ve done what we came here to do. It’s time to leave.”

A handful of ships had been dispatched to obliterate the Funk mining and industrial complexes outside Hammerfall itself. Destroying a cloudscoop would not win Galactic approval, but the Marines had rigged the scoop to blow unless the correct codes were entered, denying it to the Funks. They’d been careful to advertise what they’d done, ensuring that the Funks wouldn't be able to blame the scoop’s destruction on Earth...

“All ships have reported in, Admiral,” Sooraya confirmed. “They’re ready to depart.”

Tobias smiled. Hammerfall had been crippled, effectively put out of action for years, and all it had cost him was a handful of gunboats and thousands of missiles. They wouldn't be able to do it again in a hurry, at least not until missile stockpiles had been replenished, but the Funks wouldn't know that. The disinformation they’d receive from Earth would suggest that there were millions of missiles, just waiting to be deployed. Maybe they wouldn't believe it, but would they be able to take the chance that humanity was bluffing?

“Take us out of here,” he ordered. There was no point in pressing against the enemy starships, even though they would continue to pose a threat. Without shipyards and industrial nodes, their ability to pose a long-term threat would be limited. “It’s time to take our leave.”
 

“Why me?”

Barbie smiled, a smile that didn't quite touch her eyes. “The Admiral feels that your reports have been most impressive,” she said. Adrienne suspected that that wasn’t quite truthful. Ever since wars had started being fought with PR as well as guns, the military had had to develop its own PR departments – and a blacklist of journalists who simply couldn't be trusted to respect military security. “And besides, GNN has acquired quite a following on Earth – and among the Galactics.”

Adrienne had to smile. The Galactics had their own news networks, most of which operated on similar lines to GNN. Some of them had simply copied reports sent home by human reporters and rebroadcast them across the Association, while others hadn’t hesitated to exaggerate the news from the war front. Adrienne hadn’t heard that a thousand Hegemony superdreadnoughts had been destroyed until she’d seen it in a Galactic news report. The Hegemony didn’t even
 
have
 
a thousand superdreadnoughts. A lie made up out of whole cloth, or a simple translation error? Even the Cats hadn’t been able to establish perfect communications between alien races.

“Thank you,” she said. “I understand that recordings are not permitted?”

“I’m afraid not,” Barbie confirmed. “There are security issues involved, you see. You never know what might prove useful to enemy intelligence officers.”

“Oh,” Adrienne said, dryly. “Those bastards are always one step ahead.”

Barbie did have a point, even though she would have preferred to believe otherwise. She’d travelled on a dozen starships, including three military warships from Earth, yet she didn't really understand how they worked. The tours she’d been given on
 
Wellington
 
had been sanitized, enough to let her gain a sense of her surroundings, but no direct access to anything remotely sensitive. Some of the other reporters had been too ignorant to realise it, others had demanded access, as if the military was keeping them from the classified equipment out of spite. They didn't realise that humanity’s only edge was its tech superiority and if that happened to be defeated, the Hegemony would simply roll over human space.

The interior of
 
Nimitz
 
didn't look much different to
 
Wellington
, but there was a sense that the cruiser was far less
 
solid
 
than the assault carrier. She didn’t have anything like the same number of crewmen or Marines as
 
Wellington
; indeed, the Federation Navy had built a high degree of automaton into their ships, pushing the Association’s limits on developing AI right to the line. From what she’d picked up from a few of her sources on Terra Nova, the small crews were sometimes a handicap for the cruisers. They couldn’t put together boarding parties without running their manpower dangerously thin. War was teaching lessons that no amount of exercises could teach. No one could simply declare victory and expect it to be taken seriously.

Barbie paused outside a hatch and pressed her hand against a scanner. There was a brief pause, followed by the hatch slowly opening to reveal a cabin not much bigger than the one Adrienne had been assigned onboard
 
Wellington
. The holographic display covering the rear bulkhead was deactivated, leaving the compartment appearing small enough to be claustrophobic. Admiral Sampson was seated behind a small desk, reading through a set of documents on his datapad. He rose to his feet and held out a hand, which Adrienne took and shook firmly. For someone who had become Earth’s darling, with near-global approval, he looked reassuringly unconcerned about publicity. Adrienne had heard – from Ward – that some political parties back on Earth were already considering drafting Sampson to run for President. Did he even
 
have
 
ambitions to sit in the White House? Running a country was not the same as running a military.

“Admiral,” she said, as she took the other seat. Some of the other reporters had complained about their tiny cabins, but Adrienne knew better. Space was at a premium on starships and even admirals didn't get very much more than anyone else. On
 
Wellington
, ten junior officers – or crewmen – shared the same bunking space. “Thank you for agreeing to meet with me.”

“You're welcome,” Sampson said, gruffly. He didn't seem intimidated by her reputation, or inclined to be more talkative than necessary. “Recent events have provoked much speculation on Earth, among the armchair generals.”

Adrienne nodded. Hammerfall might have been a crushing victory, certainly compared to any of the brushfire wars between the Galactics, but in the end the human fleet had retreated from the system, leaving it in the Hegemony’s claws. No matter how much tonnage had been destroyed, or how badly crippled the Hegemony’s installations on the planet, there had been some alarm on Earth. The public had expected the conquest of another Funk world and found it difficult to understand why the Federation Navy had retreated. There were already political leaders who were turning it into a major issue, asking questions their governments found difficult to answer.

“Which leads to the first question,” she said. “Why did we retreat from Hammerfall?”

Sampson smiled, rather dryly. “The battle was won,” he said. “We didn't need to occupy the planet to render it useless to the Hegemony. I chose not to push the offensive against fortresses that could no longer help our foes.”

“But the system remains in their hands,” Adrienne protested. “Their propaganda has been claiming that they beat us, that they forced us away from Hammerfall.”

“All the propaganda in the universe cannot disguise the fact that we smashed their fleet,” Sampson said, firmly. “Fortresses cannot leave planetary orbit, let alone start raiding our space. Hammerfall is largely useless to the Hegemony now – it would take them years to repair or replace all the installations we destroyed, even if we gave them the time. And by crushing their fleet, we have made it impossible for them to launch a counteroffensive against Garston, or even Terra Nova. It gives us time to prepare for the next offensive.”

Adrienne nodded. “And where is the next target?”

“I’m afraid that would be telling,” Sampson said. His face suddenly twisted into a grin. “But you’ll be among the first to hear of it.”

“Thank you,” Adrienne said. Armchair generals had been speculating on the course of the war ever since they’d first realised that the Federation Navy had attacked Terra Nova. Some of them believed that humanity’s tech advantage was enough to allow the Federation Navy to carve its way to the Funk homeworld, others – more pessimistic – suspected that the Funks were already adapting their tactics to counter humanity’s tricks. “Do you feel that you can continue to press the offensive until the war comes to an end?”

“I feel certain that we can carry on the war as long as necessary,” Sampson said, blandly. “It is my deepest wish that the Hegemony will understand that we have no intention of destroying them, that our goal is merely to convince them to treat us as equals. We do not wish to occupy all of their territory.”

“Which leads neatly to the next question,” Adrienne said. “What are the long-term plans for Garston?”

Sampson shrugged. “Such matters are political issues,” he said. “You would be better off directing that question to the Federation Council.”

“But the Council is itself divided,” Adrienne said. “Where do
 
you
 
stand on the issue?”

There was a long pause. Even though humanity had lowered the taxes and tithes collected by the Hegemony on Garston – and the fees for using the quantum gate – Garston still represented a net gain to the Federation’s economy. The Galactics still used the world as a transhipping point along a dozen shipping lines, which meant that humanity’s limited stockpile of Galactic credits was slowly rising, allowing the Federation to purchase weapons, starships and production nodes on the Galactic market. Hammerfall was much less economically important, but that simple fact seemed to have been missed by the armchair generals, who seemed to believe that the more planets humanity held, the more currency they could obtain and use to purchase weapons.

And yet, Garston’s surface was a seething mass of Funks and other aliens, with humanity’s forces caught in the middle. The first national contingents had arrived – Chinese and Russian soldiers, mainly – but there weren't enough of them to pacify more than a handful of alien cities. They’d been forced to start separating the Funks from the rest of the population, which had started the Funks screaming about how they were being punished for the sins of their former superiors. Outright civil war threatened to break out at any moment, with a constant stream of assassinations, bombings and sniper attacks pouring fuel on the fire. Humanity, as the occupying power, was supposed to protect the settlers, but how? Anything they did that supported one side hurt the other.

“If giving up Garston would get us a peace we could live with, a recognition that the Hegemony wasn't going to crush us when it felt that it could, I would recommend surrendering the planet,” he said, carefully. “Unfortunately, the Hegemony deliberately created an environment where they could play different factions off against one another to maintain their control of the planet, a balancing act that collapsed when we took Garston from the Hegemony. All of those issues are bursting out now, forcing us to try to keep the peace when no one actually
 
wants
 
peace.”

“But some of those alien factions have offered to work with us,” Adrienne pointed out. “Wouldn't it be a betrayal to hand them back to the Funks?”

“I wouldn't dispute that for a second,” Sampson agreed. “In the long term, I could see definite advantages to keeping Garston, if only because of its location. But the Federation was never devised as a government, certainly not one that could occupy an alien planet permanently. Ideally, we’d want the planet to govern itself while we provided security, but I doubt that any faction on Garston would be willing to trust its neighbours enough to relax its defences.

“One distant possibility is to separate
 
all
 
of the factions, but that would require massive upheaval and certainly provoke an insurgency directed at us. It may happen with or without our encouragement anyway, given just how deeply the hatreds have sunk into the planet’s population. An alternative is to ask some of the Galactics to contribute peacekeeping troops, but that would certainly come with a political price.”

“A share in the profits from the system,” Adrienne said. Sampson nodded. “Do
 
you
 
feel that the planet is worth the hassle?”

Sampson paused to consider his answer. “The Hegemony didn't have time to destroy most of the industrial stations in orbit around the planet, or butcher the workforce,” he said. “We can use their facilities to produce weapons for the campaign, even if they are primitive compared to our own, and we need a much larger orbital-trained workforce than we have. But using non-humans raises security issues, even if we are not building anything advanced on Garston.”

He shrugged, expressively. “There are plusses and minuses to everything we do,” he added. “Nothing is ever perfect, or certain – even death and taxes.”

Adrienne smiled at the weak joke. Some of the Galactics were governed – if governed was the right word – by political systems that made human anarchists look like fascists. There were no taxes, or any form of government control. Some humans held them up as the perfect governing system, although humans were probably less suited to such governments than the aliens. And the Cats were biologically immortal. They might have been very cagey about their biology, which was odd given that they’d once collected and distributed information on every other alien race in the galaxy, but their immortality was a proven fact. Some of the Galactics, who’d been in space for thousands of years, had been dealing with the same Cat for all that time.

The other Galactics used nanites to extend their lifespans, as did humanity, but none of them had ever managed to create their own version of immortality. Adrienne had heard rumours that wealthy humans were funding massive research projects into life-extension – if the Cats could do it, humanity could surely do it too – and yet they’d produced nothing. Or perhaps they
 
had
 
developed something and kept it to themselves. It was easy to be cynical where the super-rich were concerned. Some of them probably had ties to the Galactics.

“There are only a handful of other questions,” she said. “The first one is simple; how do you feel that the Federation Navy has performed in its first real combat test?”

Sampson smiled. “I feel that the Navy has performed magnificently,” he said. “Ever since we obtained our first warships, fifth-hand from a used starship trader, we have concentrated on training and drilling to the point where our crews can carry out their duties in their sleep. Each new weapon has been tested, integrated into our fleet and then put through its paces until we know exactly how it works and what it can do. The Hegemony didn't have a clue what was going to hit them until it was too late.”

Adrienne nodded. “And crew morale?”

“Very high,” Sampson said. “We knew that we were going to be badly outnumbered by our enemies, but the success of the new weapons and the recovery of Terra Nova sent morale skyrocketing through the fleet. I have every confidence in the men and women under my command and their ability to meet every challenge the Funks throw at them.”