Starship Tomahawk (The Hive Invasion Book 2) (3 page)

A klaxon woke Hammett from a deep sleep, and he sat upright, banging his head on the low ceiling of his sleeping shelf. Muttering a curse, he waved a hand to bring up the lights as he swung his feet to the floor. It was a drill, he knew – he'd scheduled it, after all – but it wouldn't do for the crew to see the captain not taking the drill seriously. And besides, there was always the tiny chance the ship had encountered real trouble.

So he pulled his uniform on quickly, jammed his feet into his shoes, and stepped into the corridor. Hurrying sailors rushed past in both directions. He was on the same deck as the bridge, no more than twenty running paces away, one of the advantages of serving on a small ship. He didn’t run. Good captains
never
ran. But he didn't dawdle, either.

Kaur looked up as Hammett stepped onto the bridge. The two of them were standing opposite watches, and hardly saw each other except at shift change. "What's our status?"

"Attack drill," Kaur reported. "The computer shows a dozen enemy ships lying in ambush where we came out of the wormhole." She rose from the captain's seat and took the Tactical station, displacing a sailor named Touhami who moved to Navigation.

There were no simulations of Hive vessels. No one had quite found the time to program any in the week since the battle for Earth. Instead, Hammett's screen showed a fleet of wireframe corvettes, glowing blue to show they were simulated, and a wireframe destroyer.

The three corvettes were already in combat formation, he saw, grouped close together with their noses toward the enemy fleet. All three fighters launched as he watched, and he tilted his head, trying to check the time on his implants. It hadn't worked in a couple of months, but the habit was still with him.

"All departments report ready," Kaur announced, sounding pleased. "Total time, less than two minutes."

"That's good," Hammett admitted. "Simulate an EMP hit, please."

Every single person on the bridge except Hammett reacted the same way, a tiny head tilt as their implants went dead. Every screen went blank.

"We're making an attack run on the last known position of that destroyer," Hammett announced. "Signal the fleet."

Ramirez was at Communications, and he said, "Aye aye, Sir." His fingers moved on his console, pressing buttons that would illuminate signal lights on several places on the
Tomahawk's
hull. A buzzer sounded, and he snatched up a telephone handset. "Both ships acknowledge," he said.

We need a more efficient system. Like a few colored lights that the spotters can illuminate from their stations. Then Ramirez won't need to grab a handset.
He made a mental note to suggest the idea to Spacecom.

Benson spoke into a handset and the stars shifted as the
Tomahawk
moved forward. Hammett caught a glimpse of the nose of the
Bayonet
through the starboard window, keeping pace.

"Tell Hansen to prepare for missile launch." Each of the corvettes carried a solitary nuke, nearly the entire nuclear arsenal of Spacecom. In a few months the fleet would be bristling with brand-new nuclear weapons. For now they had a tiny handful of dusty relics, taken from storage and hastily refurbished for this mission.

"Hansen reports ready," Sanjari announced from the Operations console.

"Good. Tell her to stand down." There was no practical way to drill missile launches. Corvettes didn't have missile bays, a gross oversight in Hammett's opinion. The solitary nuke in its cradle under the hull was the only missile each ship had, and he sure wasn't going to fire one for practice. "Turn the computer back on, and pass the word to the fleet."

Screens came to life all around the bridge, and he saw shoulders slump in relief as implants started working again.

"Have fighters One and Two pay the role of bogeys. Fighter Three can play defense."

"Aye aye," Kaur said, and murmured into her implants.

Hammett swivelled his chair and watched a fighter streak past the window. A stream of rail gun rounds sparkled behind the ship, a good five seconds too late to score a hit. The rail guns would be firing empty canisters, too light to cause damage, and the laser turrets would be on low power. The computers on all three corvettes would keep track of hits, but they wouldn't aid in targeting or maneuvers.

For five minutes the mock battle raged. Hammett winced as a barrage from the rail gun on the
Achilles
rattled against the window in front of him, then winced again as a laser from Fighter Two painted a red bar across the roof of the bridge. That was one significant disadvantage to windows, he realized. It made the ship terribly vulnerable to laser fire. The Hive hadn't used lasers so far, but the risk of a friendly-fire incident, especially without computer targeting, was high.

"Bogey Two destroyed by laser fire," Kaur reported. A moment later she said, "Bogey One destroyed as well. A combination of rail gun rounds and lasers."

"Good," said Hammett. "Bring them in. How's the formation looking?"

Kaur waggled her hand in a so-so gesture. "
Achilles
is a bit wide. She went after Bogey One pretty aggressively. Tagged it pretty good, though."

"That’s fine," said Hammett. "I don't mind a bit of chaos so long as it's deliberate." It was five days since they'd left Port Kodiak, and the crews of all three ships were getting competent at maneuvering with manual thrusters and spotters on telephones. "How's the jump clock?"

"We can jump as soon as the fighters dock."

"Do it," said Hammett. "I'm going back to bed."

The crowd outside the Parliament Building in Nova Roma was loud and boisterous. The building itself was sober and imposing, a faux-marble edifice with all the grave dignity appropriate to the seat of the United Worlds government. The gardens around the building stood nearly empty. Just outside the wrought-iron fence, though, thousands of people thronged in a raucous mob, some chanting slogans, some waving placards. A few people had brought holo projectors, and stylized images of Acton and his opponent, Charlene Saretsky, loomed above the crowd.

Janice Ling stood on the edge of the crowd, a trio of camera bots hovering around her. The little robots, each the size of her two fists, took vid footage of the crowd. If Janice moved or began to speak, two of the bots would switch their cameras to her. For now she was content to watch, however.

Other reporters moved around the fringe of the crowd, along with amateur historians and vid enthusiasts. The election results would be announced any minute now. Janice, contracted to a wire service called Pan Galactic, was here to put a dramatic scene in the background while she gave a talking-head recap of the breaking election results.

Closing her eyes, she used her implants to instruct a bot to swoop into position in front of her. She turned her back on the Parliament Building, then checked the framing of the shot. She nudged the bot up and over until she filled most of the projection, with the crowd and the gleaming golden dome of the Rotunda in the background.

She didn't try to include the holo projections in the shot. They were dramatic, but the angle was all wrong. Besides, she didn't want her viewers distracted.

Satisfied with her camera setup, she turned back to the crowd, careful not to stray from her spot on the grass. She surveyed the seething mass of people, then looked up at the giant politicians floating above.

Acton looked magnificent in the projection, broad-shouldered and heroic, and Janice felt her lip curl. The man was a fear-monger of the worst sort, the kind who needed a massive crisis to have any chance of power. While Saretsky, the freshly-deposed Statsminister, was pleading with the population to set aside their differences and unite, Acton was doing his best to whip his followers into a frenzy of hate.

He seemed less concerned with the Hive than with assigning blame here on Earth. The heart of his message seemed to be that he was angry, and his anger would somehow make everyone safe. He was promising to strike at the aliens, and to strike with equal zeal at anyone who failed to rally behind the flag. He spoke of taking back control of Earth's colonies so all of humanity's wealth and resources could be united against the alien threat. He talked of putting troops in major industrial centers all over the Earth, to make sure everyone really was doing their share. The aliens were his excuse to seize humanity in an iron fist, and billions of voters were eating it up.

Janice had started out amused by his bombast, his ridiculous rages, his diatribes against colonists and United World nations he said weren't pulling their weight. It was thinly-veiled racism and xenophobia, and it struck an unfortunate chord with terrified people who just wanted someone to do something – anything – about this terrible alien threat.

Some Saretsky supporter was using a holo projector to paint the word "FASCIST" just under Acton's face. A mix of cheers and angry yells greeted this witticism, and Janice saw a ripple in the crowd as Acton supporters tried to reach the offending projector. She felt her pulse quicken, but the crowd was simply too dense to allow the angry Acton supporters to push through. The person controlling Acton's holo projector jerked the man's image sharply to one side, leaving the offending word hanging in empty air. This made Acton's image lean absurdly to one side, which triggered a round of ironic applause from Saretsky supporters.

Saretsky had put up a spirited defense over the past two weeks, pointing out the impossibility of predicting an alien invasion and presenting the public with a solid plan for refitting the fleet and launching a new line of cruisers. Janice could only pray it was enough.

The word "FASCIST" began to creep through the air, edging closer and closer to the image of Acton, who leaned away like a housewife terrified of a spider. The text became stretched and distorted by the angle, until it was barely readable as it finally reached Acton's image. A moment later, though, Acton's image vanished.

A fresh image appeared, a woman in a business suit. Janice recognized the Parliamentary spokesperson, Shannon Gallant. The whole attitude of the crowd changed as thousands of people activated their implants, searching for the feed.

"Hello, citizens of Earth and citizens of the united colonies." Gallant's voice, muffled by the crowd, boomed from speakers set in a holo projector somewhere in the press of bodies. "Votes are still being tallied, but enough delegates have reported in that I can make a definitive statement about the results of this historic election."

Janice held her breath, and a strange silence fell as thousands of people stopped chanting, shouting, arguing, and talking.

"Jeff Acton now has 50.4% of the delegate votes in the United Worlds Parliament."

Gallant kept talking, but Janice didn't hear a word of it. No one did. Pandemonium swept the crowd, cheers and jeers, angry shouts, whoops of delight. Janice shook her head, then took a deep breath and activated the camera.

"This is Janice Ling, reporting live from Moot Point, where Jeff Acton has just claimed a majority of delegate votes in today's Statsminister election." She suppressed the urge to add,
And may God help us all.
"The crowd behind me is equal parts jubilant and outraged. Emotions are running high here, as they are across the world and throughout United Worlds space. However you may feel personally about the election results, I hope you can find the strength to set aside any frustration and resentment and join the rest of humanity as we present a united front in the face of the Hive threat."

She let a bit of a gallows grin touch her features. She knew her viewers, and they didn't want a strictly impartial report. They appreciated a bit of a human touch, and it simply wasn't in her nature to pull her punches. "Unity," she said, "may be the very last thing Jeff Acton wants from the electorate. Let's give it to him anyway, shall we?" She smoothed her features into a professional mask and said, "This is Janice Ling with Pan Galactic News. Watch this feed for more updates."

A red light on the nearest bot went dim, telling her she was no longer broadcasting to Pan Galactic. She let her shoulders slump and turned to survey the crowd one more time.

By the sound of things a riot might break out at any moment. Well, if it did, there was plenty of press on hand to cover it. The whole world was a powder keg. If she wanted anything remotely exclusive, she would have to get away from her fellow reporters.

She moved down the hill, passing knots of people chattering excitedly about the announcement. Some wore blue to show they were Saretsky supporters. They tended to be either angry or quietly worried. Acton's supporters wore red, and they gathered in jubilant clusters, clapping each other on the back. It was difficult to make generalizations about such a mix of people, but she had the impression that Acton's supporters were older, more conservative, less thoughtful. Saretsky had always appealed to intellectuals and professionals. Acton was presenting himself as the voice of the common man.

"Voice of the common thug is more like it," she muttered, and one of her bot cameras came to life. She turned it off with an impatient flap of her hand.

The sound of distant singing caught her attention, and she turned in that direction. The ground levelled out as she left the hill known as Moot Point behind her. The dome of the Rotunda disappeared from sight as she moved behind a row of buildings. The sound of singing grew louder, until at last she could make out the words. She felt her eyebrows climb her forehead in disbelief.

All we are saying is give peace a chance.

She rounded a corner and saw a procession coming toward her, a dozen or so men and women all in a line, each one holding a candle and singing. In their free hands most of them held placards with slogans like "Talk First, Shoot Later", "Enemies Are Friends We Don't Know Yet", or "We Are The Monsters".

"Unbelievable," she murmured. She'd heard of these groups, people who believed humanity should somehow be trying to make peace with the Hive. The peace protesters believed people like Hammett – and Janice herself – were lying about what had happened when humanity first met the aliens. They accused Spacecom of starting the war, and claimed the poor misunderstood aliens were only defending themselves.

The least idiotic of the protesters accepted that the Hive had started an unprovoked war, but claimed it wasn't too late to negotiate, communicate, and find common ground. They were damned fools, and she started to turn away. Acton loved to lump the peace protesters together with Saretsky and her supporters and tar them all with the same brush. Janice didn't want to fuel his rhetoric by catching more footage of morons with candles.

The tramp of footsteps stopped her. It was a strangely ominous sound, like an army on the march. It sounded like hundreds of people coming toward her, and she had a vision of faceless cops behind plastic shields heading toward Moot Point to stop a riot.

But it wasn't cops who came down the centre of the street, advancing grimly on the peace protesters. It was men and women, mostly men, all of them dressed in red. They marched in perfect lockstep, booted feet coming down in unison with an ominous thump-thump-thump. They sounded like an army, but there were only about thirty of them, marching three abreast in a perfect column.

It wasn't a uniform they wore. Not quite. They wore dark trousers and red shirts, but none of it quite matched. Each person wore a black armband, though, with "EDF" stenciled on it in stark white letters.

Janice quickly activated her cameras and pointed them toward the marchers. The Earth Defence Force was one of Acton's worst ideas. He had promised to create a militia of sorts, dedicated to protecting the people of Earth. Of course, to Acton, protecting the people meant intimidating and controlling anyone who seemed to lack zeal.

His most rabid supporters had jumped the gun, organizing themselves into local paramilitary groups. Janice had dismissed it as a handful of fanatics playing dress-up, but apparently she'd underestimated the movement.

The gap between the peace protesters and the EDF column closed rapidly. Janice pressed her back against a storefront as the column marched past her. One face after another went by, and she shivered. She saw fanaticism and battle lust in every face.

This was not going to end well.

She followed the column, keeping to one side so she could see past them. She expected the peace protesters to shrink back, but they just kept walking down the sidewalk, fear mixed with determination on their faces.

One man in the front rank of the EDF column wore a black sash across his chest. He seemed to be an officer of some sort, and he raised an arm, gesturing toward the sidewalk. The column changed direction, marching straight toward the peace protesters.

Janice found herself trying to do several things at once. She called the police. That seemed like the best choice for a first priority. Then she sent her cameras forward to capture the action. The sight of a camera bot could have a calming effect on violence, she knew. Breaking the law lost its appeal when you had a camera recording your every move. So she instructed the bots to move in close, and had them dart around a bit, attracting plenty of attention.

She parked one bot in front of the officer at a range of two or three meters. If anyone had the power to stop things before someone got hurt, it was him. The view from that bot appeared in a small window in the corner of her eye, and she saw the officer give the bot a single, snarling glance.

After that he ignored all three cameras, chopping at the air as he directed his followers forward. The EDF column exploded against the line of peace protesters, and Janice screamed. Her voice was drowned out, though, by bellows and shrieks and screams of pain.

She'd expected a confrontation, harsh language, perhaps some pushing and shoving. What she saw was a vicious attack. EDF thugs in red shirts tore into the line of protesters, fists swinging. Candles dropped to the pavement as protesters fell back, hands coming up in a hopeless attempt to protect themselves.

A woman in pale lavender fell before the onslaught, and a plump man bent over her, trying to protect her. EDF goons yanked him back and knocked him sprawling, and boots flashed as the goons started to kick.

"No!" Janice squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, blotting out the horror a dozen paces away. The bots had an emergency setting that would transmits footage of a crime in progress directly to the police, and she activated it. Then she started forward, knowing it was foolish and hopeless, but filled with a desperate need to do something.

Strangely enough, the violence seemed less awful up close. She found herself behind a wall of red-clad backs, unable to see the victims, able to hear only groans and stomach-wrenching sounds of impact as boots met flesh. A very large man loomed in front of her, his back to her. She stretched up until she could reach his shoulder with both hands, and she tugged. "You're on camera. You have to stop. The police are coming!"

He turned, carelessly, and his elbow hit her chest. His upper arm hit her jaw and she staggered backward, then fell to a sitting position.