Caines mutiny, p.75
Caine's Mutiny, page 75
part #4 of Caine Riordan Series
“But you’re not there anymore. Even the best-intentioned state will drain us dry, if we let it. There comes a time when you have to say ‘no more,’ and do your best not for the many, but for the few: the few people in your life who are bound to you by love, for whom you would and should do anything. That’s what Elena deserves from me. But if I’m not there to do it, it’s what she deserves from you. Now: promise me.”
An even longer pause. “I will not rest until I bring her home. Downing out.”
Riordan leaned back, became suddenly—and uncomfortably—aware of the carefully averted eyes of the bridge crew. Well, time to get back to business—which will make all of us more comfortable, anyhow. “Dr. Sleeman, what’s the countdown clock on the bogeys?”
Her look told him that, just over the course of his conversation with Downing, it had gotten worse.
Much worse.
Chapter Sixty-Six
OUTER SYSTEM, SIGMA DRACONIS
Well, Riordan thought, if the fight goes against us, at least we’re all going to die better rested and better fed. Since arriving in Sigma Draconis a day and a half ago, there’d been little to do except watch the symbols of ships and drones creep toward each other in the holoplot: a deceptive depiction of events, since many of those craft were pulling maximum gees.
The notable exception was Shore-of-Stars itself. Her best plan was to conserve power and not overcommit to any given vector, a tactic that had taken almost thirty minutes to explain to those officers among the Lost Soldiers who had wanted an update on what was occurring. In particular, it was counterintuitive to them that superior speed did not always translate into the surety of escape. Instead, constant application of maximum acceleration along a given vector made a craft’s future movement infinitely more predictable, more plottable, and consequently, more susceptible to intercept—particulary when three comparable ships were closing from entirely different directions.
Riordan reflected that the Lost Soldiers, and particularly the pilots among them, had not really been slow to understand the concepts; they had been unwilling to accept them. There was a species of fatalism to the unfolding of deep-space maneuver that unsettled them, that ran counter to their expectations of dogfights in which quick wits and clever piloting could enable rapid reversals in position and outcome. Not so in deep space. There, the cold equations of vector, thrust, and enemy applications of the same created what was essentially a predestined outcome. It was not so much a matter of what was going to happen, but when.
And that certainty, combined with the past thirty-six hours of waiting for the inevitable, was what the Lost Soldiers had found the hardest to cope with. There had been plenty of waiting in their experience of war; hence one of the Americans’ favorite rueful colloquialisms for explaining the tempo of military life: “Hurry up and wait.” But at least that waiting was often leavened by glimmers of hope, of the possibility that some unexpected event might occur and the outcome would be better than anticipated. That was not the predominant mindscape of deep-space warfare; everything was in sight and everything had plotted motion. Unless one or more units were called away or had mechanical failures, the time and place of meeting, of combat, were fundamentally preordained.
And now, that preordained moment was nearly upon them. “Dora, crew to their posts.”
“You calling for battle stations?”
“Not yet. But I want people awake and ready: no one in bunks or in the galley. Dr. Sleeman, what’s the latest estimated time to engagement?”
“About three hours, sir, depending upon how much advance fire they want to commit to with their railguns.”
“And what’s the ETA on the remote assets that Downing sent our way?”
“Varies from twenty-seven minutes to four hours, assuming they match vector and velocity with us before we commit them to engagement.”
“Let’s assume that the platforms arriving more than three hours from now are not tasked to match our vector and velocity. How does that change their ETA?”
“All of them would be on hand for the battle, sir. But the later ones will be passing through quickly, since getting them here on time means little or no counterboost before the engagement.”
I doubt they’ll survive long enough for that to be an issue. “Very well. Mr. Solsohn, start sending the control codes to the remote platforms. We’re going to want to have the earlier ones forming up on us.”
“You mean on Shore-of-Stars, sir?”
“No, I mean Puller. We’ll be detaching in a few minutes.” He tapped his collarcom. “Ambassador Yiithrii’ah’aash?”
A pause, then: “Commodore. Have you reconsidered my suggestion?”
“I must continue to decline, Ambassador.”
“If you wait ten more minutes, your ship’s new engines will help you escape the imminent battle. The enemy will be at pains to intercept your ship, having committed to courses predicated on Shore-of-Stars’s thrust limitations.”
“Yes, Ambassador, that is true. But we will not turn our backs upon you or our personnel aboard the wedges.” Even if Riordan had wanted to, there simply wasn’t enough room on Puller to evacuate even a quarter of the Cold Guard or Lost Soldiers. “Besides, our fleet’s first wave is only eight hours away. They’ll start counterboosting as soon as they’re in range and will throw out a lot of firepower before they pass us. After them, smaller squadrons will join us, decelerating so as to match our trajectory and stand in the battle. And if Puller detaches now, and we have the fleet’s remote assets form up on us, that will complicate the Ktorans’ tactical picture, should cause them to slow down somewhat.”
“Yes, it will slow them. But not enough. We have run those scenarios through our computers several times now. The outcome is always the same: your destruction.”
“There are variables, such as when the Ktor decide to commence firing—”
“Which could be happening very soon, sir,” Sleeman interrupted. “Ferocious Monolith has launched independent platforms. They appear to be PDF, sensor, and attack drones. They have been deployed with railgun on a reverse vector.”
Which meant that although they were moving away from Ferocious Monolith now, they would ultimately begin to overtake her as she continued to counterboost. “I presume they will arrive concurrent with Ferocious Monolith, Doctor?”
“About ten minutes ahead of her, sir. Just in time for all their weapons to achieve effective range simultaneously.”
But of course. “Very well. Ambassador, you need to de-spin Puller’s berthing arm so we can detach and take up station alongsid—”
“New contact!” Sleeman shouted as the automated emergency klaxon began to wail its call to battle stations.
What the—? Riordan glanced at the holoplot: a white delta—an unidentified craft—had appeared approximately two light-seconds away. It was directly between them and the approaching Ktor shift-cruiser. “Dr. Sleeman, where the hell did that come from? And what the hell is—?”
“It came out of nowhere, sir. Getting transponder and cross-sectional scans now, sir.”
“On the main screen.”
Sleeman complied; a slightly drooping delta shape appeared, similar to, but much smaller than, the shift cruisers of the Arat Kur, or even the Ktor. Which meant—
“Contact identified as Custodial shift-cruiser Olsloov, Commodore.” Sleeman sounded distracted as she reported it, was leaning even more intently over her sensors.
Dora scowled. “Senior Mentor Alnduul hailing on secure one, sir. And the bastard already seems to have our encryption.”
Big surprise, there. “Put Alnduul through, Dora.”
“He’s on line, sir.”
Riordan raised his voice enough so the general mic would catch it. “Alnduul, this is Caine Riordan. We are always glad to see you, but this time we’re a little happier than usual.”
“We are gratified to see you as well, Caine Riordan. I apologize for our rather sudden appearance—”
—Yeah, “sudden,” as in, “out of thin air.” Or vacuum, I guess. Wonder how long you were lurking near us?—
“—but the deployment of remote weapons by the Ktoran cruiser made it essential that we make our presence known immediately.”
“And you’ve remained in this system since we started on the diplomatic mission to the Slaasriithi homeworld?”
“We have. With ongoing interactions between all the Accord states and protected races focused on this system, and affecting several nearby, it was the most central location. I trust we did not startle you too much when we disengaged our hull’s active energy-absorption matrix.”
“Well, frankly, we’ve never been so happy to be startled—”
“Commodore,” Sleeman muttered, “a word. Please.”
Riordan glanced at her: she was staring at him. Hard. “Alnduul, your appearance has made it necessary to discontinue a few of our prebattle procedures. I will return to this channel in less than a minute.”
“I understand. I shall wait.”
“Thank you.” Caine turned toward Sleeman. “Doctor, you have sixty seconds.”
She nodded. “Alnduul’s lying, sir. Or at least, I think he’s not telling us the full truth.”
“In what way?”
“Commodore, there was an anomalous sensor return when the Olsloov appeared.”
Riordan nodded. “The first time we encountered a Dornaani ship, the one that picked us up for Convocation, the sensors got a strange froth back when they encountered its energy-absorbing hull.”
Sleeman shook her head. “No, sir. It’s not that anomaly. But my return does match an earlier one you detected on that same occasion. Specifically, when that first Dornaani ship shifted in, it had an atypical shift signature: fewer photons and heat, more cosmic rays, and something that looked like mesons forming out of subquantal junk. And it all arrived a moment after the shift was completed, like a stern wash.” She nodded at the image of Olsloov. “That’s what I saw just now, too.”
Riordan stared at the Dornaani ship. “So are you telling us that the Olsloov hasn’t been tagging along with us unseen, but shifted in? Right beside us?”
“It looks that way, sir. I don’t see any particle trails that match its current vector.”
Dora scowled. “So the bastardos lied to us. They weren’t in this system the whole time we were gone.”
Riordan could feel his frown deepening. “Actually, they might have been.”
Solsohn’s question was slow, almost cautious. “What are you getting at?”
Riordan gestured in the direction of the holoplot. “If they just in-shifted from another system, then how the hell did they know exactly where we were? Either they have invisible sensors which can instantaneously communicate their readings across any distance—”
“—or they can shift within a system.” Karam finished. “So maybe they aren’t limited to making single large shifts. Maybe they can—well, perform microshifts.”
Caine nodded, remembered the strange sensation he’d experienced the last time he’d been on a Dornaani ship while it was shifting. It had been the sixteen-light-year hop—unprecedented, in itself—that had carried him from the disastrous Convocation at EV Lacertae to Barnard’s star. Conducted without preacceleration, it had taken Caine by surprise, but not so much so that he didn’t recall that the sensation was different from the sharp, occasionally profound disorientation that persisted for a moment or two after a typical shift. On the Dornaani ship, it had felt more like his mind was shuddering, teetering at the edge of unconsciousness without ever slipping all the way into it. And then they were at Barnard’s Star, and far closer to their destination than any human navigation system could have achieved.
Dora was clearly more interested in deeds than she was in physics. “So did they lie to us or not?”
Riordan shrugged. “We can’t be sure. But I’ve never known Alnduul to tell an outright lie. However, I have seen his role as a Custodian force him into situations where he tells partial truths, leaves out details he’s not at liberty to share. That could be what’s happening here. Dora, let’s talk to Alnduul again.”
“As you wish,” she muttered. “Mic is live.”
“Alnduul, my apologies for the delay.”
“Apologies are unneeded, Caine Riordan. During the elapsed time, I have been in contact with Ferocious Monolith. They assure me that they meant only to defend Arbitrage, which signaled that they were in imminent danger of destruction from a pursuing Slaasriithi shift-carrier.”
“Hmm. And did Ferocious Monolith happen to explain why Arbitrage was brought here by a Ktoran tug? Or why that tug isn’t running a transponder?”
“No. They also failed to explain how or why a ship of the Slaasriithi Great Ring—statistically and inherently the most peaceful of all the species of the Accord—was pursuing a human craft with intent to destroy it. I think we may safely conclude that the Ktoran ambassador Tlerek Srin Shethkador is not being entirely forthcoming in all his communiqués.” Riordan could easily picture Alnduul’s characteristically Dornaani expression of irony: a half-twist of his everted lamprey mouth.
Sleeman announced the practical consequences of Alnduul’s communication with the Ktor. “Both Ferocious Monolith and the destroyer are sheering off, sir: they are no longer closing to engagement. They are recalling their independent platforms.”
Riordan nodded his acknowledgment. “So what now, Alnduul? I expect the Custodians should be apprised of what we found on Turkh’saar.”
“Indeed. It will also be imperative for us to learn why the Slaasriithi broke the Fifth Accord by violating the territory of the Arat Kur and the Hkh’Rkh, and why you accompanied, and possibly assisted, them as they did so. I am assuming it has to do with the human transmissions that were reported to us as emanating from that system.”
“It did. And we received a summons from Advocate of the Unhonored Yaargraukh to assist him in addressing the source of those communications.”
“And were they indeed human communications?”
“They were. And Yaargraukh has returned with us, although his status among his own people is now uncertain.”
“I am sad to hear this. He is a most gifted diplomat and would have been of great value to the Patrijuridicate. I hope he shall be yet. At any rate, we shall all commence a journey back to Homenest.”
“Very well, although Richard Downing has yet to order us to commence travel to that destination.”
“I have also been in contact with Mr. Downing. He agrees that a discussion of the events that transpired on Turkh’saar is prudent.”
“And who proposed that discussion? You?”
“Oddly, no. The Ktoran ambassador. He was most adamant.”
Caine couldn’t help smiling. Damn, but the Ktor had a brass set. “Well, that figures: Shethkador is always looking to tell a few more astute lies.”
“Actually, he said that, in this case, helping the Ktoran Sphere was of second importance. His primary objective was to help you.”
“You mean, the Terran Republic?” Is he trying to set a new record for “most outrageous lie?”
“No. I believe he was talking about the entirety of your species, Caine Riordan. And he may even have meant it.”
Which, in some ways, was an even more disturbing prospect.
* * *
Tlerek Srin Shethkador bestowed upon Olsirkos Shethkador’vah, master of Will Breaker, the supreme courtesy of listening to the entirety of his utterly flawed assessment of how the Ktoran ships might still productively engage their enemies, even with the arrival of the Olsloov. It had been sadly fascinating, hearing how a mind as narrowly gifted as Olreknas’s could brilliantly assess the particulars of each aspect of tactical combat, while remaining mostly blind to the strategic ramifications. Moreover, he was wholly insensate to the greater diplomatic consequences. “Your summary of operational alternatives was most thorough, Olsirkos.”
“The Great Srin’s opinion of my efforts is a source of pride and encouragement for me.”
We’ll see if you still feel that way after I show you how pointless it all is. “However, despite the detailed accuracy of your assessments, it would be counterproductive to proceed as you recommend. Indeed, it would be disastrous.”
There was a prolonged silence on the secure channel. “I regret and apologize that I have wasted the Srin’s time.”
Me, too. But Shethkador said, “It is only a waste if you learn nothing from it. Tell me: why do you project I am refusing to take action against our foes?”
A shorter pause. “Uncertainty of the outcome.”
As an answer on a test, it was passing—barely—but far from astute or even promising. “Let us deal with those uncertainties first, although they are not the reason I elect against combat. Superficially, your contention that their Slaasriithi shift-carrier and Dornaani shift-cruiser would not fare well against the combined power of our cruiser, destroyer, tug and the Arbitrage has some merit. We have the advantage of position and flexibility of multiple assets. And your point is well taken that all four of ours, even the Arbitrage and the tug have decisive weaponry, insofar as their navigational clearance lasers have power and range sufficient to function as the equivalent of military spinal-mounted beam weapons.
“However, this is where your analysis begins to show its flaws. Firstly, the Custodial ship appeared in a position which put it within firing range of the Arbitrage. How long do you expect that engagement would have lasted?”
“Honored Srin, I did offer the caveat that I anticipated it would have been brief.”
“It would have lasted five seconds—if that. While it is true that Ktoran craft have not tried cases with Dornaani for centuries, that is no excuse for lacking familiarity with our enemy’s last-known weapon systems. Which are so powerful and so accurate that the human craft would have been reduced to debris in the first attack. But for the Extirpates’ human shift-carrier to have any value in the coming battle, it had to inflict significant damage against the Olsloov before it was disabled. And what, do you think, were the odds of that outcome?”
