The oregon trail, p.16
Shield of Terra (Duchy of Terra Book 5), page 16
“They were capable of shooting down Taljzi missiles, but that was all. The Taljzi didn’t lose a single ship and obliterated the interceptors before carrying out their bombardment.”
The accelerated time frame didn’t really help. The events taking place in her hologram could easily have been Earth’s fate if the A!Tol had been genocidal instead of colonizers who desperately needed humanity’s people.
High-tech civilizations had population growth problems. The A!Tol solved that by uplifting and integrating new sentient races. The Kanzi solved it by enslaving other races.
The Taljzi cloned themselves and killed everyone they encountered.
“Once the bombardment was complete…” she said, then swallowed against a suddenly dry throat. She took a long drink of water, then resumed.
“Once the bombardment was complete, they left a squadron of destroyers to sweep the system for stations and colonies they’d missed. The telescope platforms were among the first destroyed in that sweep, so we have no further information on this system.
“We do know that the super-battleships set out for their colony system,” she said quietly, then took another sip of water. “We can presume that despite having colonized a second star system, the Sedetch have been exterminated.”
“We know where they went,” Sun said grimly. “That doesn’t really help us.”
“I know,” Morgan conceded. “What does help us is that two of the telescope platforms had rudimentary hyperspace anomaly scanners. The Sedetch completely disregarded the data from them, which leads me to conclude they were experimental at best.”
“If they had anomaly scanners…” Sun raised an eyebrow at her questioningly.
“We know what vector they arrived on, sir,” Morgan told him. “There is a star along that route, about fifteen light-years away. It’s one of the systems the Precursors had marked in gold—PG-Three.”
“It appears that the copper stars were local sentient races,” Sun concluded. “It seems time to find out what they meant by gold. Well done, Commander Casimir.”
The Admiral looked around at everyone else.
“Set your courses, people,” he told them. “Unless someone needs more time, we leave for PG-Three in twelve hours.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“Unknown hyper portal!”
As Councilor for the Militia, Jean Villeneuve really had no place on the bridge of Orbit One. This was the primary command center for the defense of the entire Sol System, with hundreds of officers and NCOs in the main space, and a dozen subordinate spaces like it.
Of course, no one in the Duchy of Terra Militia would have dreamed of telling Jean that, so he’d happily traded on his old rank to get into the command center as he waited for word from Ki!Tana.
“How can we have an unknown hyper portal?” Rear Admiral Malina Gabrielli demanded. The black Italian woman currently holding down the center seat did not look pleased to have that announcement made while Jean was on the bridge.
“We’re supposed to have anomaly scanners in hyperspace to see things coming from ten light-years away,” she continued sharply. “Are they unscheduled? Unidentified? Tell me what we know!”
“Um. Nothing, sir,” the Commander running the sensor team admitted. “There was no ship on the other side, according to our sensor stations. There’s…nothing on this side, sir. Just a hyper portal.”
“That’s impossible, Commander Vasylyk,” Gabrielli pointed out. “Start an immediate processing run for the anomalies of a stealth screen.” She turned away and gestured for a communications officer to approach her.
“Get Commodore Jardine on the line,” she ordered. “She’s the closest cruiser force to the emergence locus. Get them moving to investigate the portal ASAP. If someone thinks they can sneak into this system and not get spotted, they have a surprise coming.”
The Rear Admiral paused and glanced over at Jean.
“Councilor Villeneuve,” she said formally, “we appear to have a security breach in the Sol System.”
He smiled thinly.
“I noticed, Admiral,” he said quietly. “There is a high likelihood that I’m expecting them…but we know that the Taljzi have stealth fields of their own. Carry on.”
Gabrielli was clearly taken aback by Jean’s expecting a stealth-fielded ship, but she nodded firmly in response to his orders.
“I’ll make certain Commodore Jardine knows to talk before shooting,” she replied. “If they’re likely to be friendly, that is.”
“I think we’d all prefer that, Rear Admiral,” Jean agreed. No one would be happy if the Militia accidentally killed Ki!Tana and Coraniss. On the other hand, he really didn’t want a Taljzi scout ship in Sol—not while the Grand Fleet was orbiting near Venus without upgrades!
“Councilor, Commodore Jardine is requesting a private channel.”
Jean looked up from his communicator, the scroll-like pocket computer currently wide open to allow him to work through the functionally infinite paperwork of a planetary Councilor, to see one of Orbit One’s many junior officers standing next to him politely.
“Do you have a secured space available?” he asked calmly.
“Yes, Councilor. If you’ll follow me?”
Jean followed the young woman into a small office space attached to the command center. The officer closed the door behind him, leaving Jean to take a moment to double check the security of the room.
His communicator might look identical to the ones used by the Duchy of Terra Militia, but it had a few extra pieces. His bodyguards would be furious if he took a secured call without double checking the room!
That took only a few extra seconds, seconds in which his bodyguard commander sent him a message noting that they were now securing the physical access to the room.
The message was surprisingly lacking in passive-aggressive commentary over the fact that the Councilor hadn’t told his escorts he was moving. Jean was apparently wearing down his bodyguards.
It had only taken two decades, he supposed.
He tapped a command on the console in the room and opened the com channel Jardine had sent him.
The room in the video feed that answered him, however, was definitely not aboard any ship of Jean’s Militia. Mesharom vessels went in for a stark shade of white, where the Militia left many interior spaces as bare metal. The smooth plasticized metal of the room was a clear sign that he was looking at the Mesharom scout ship Ki!Tana had taken out.
The feed was a split screen, with Ki!Tana’s squid-like form in one half and Coraniss’s massive fuzzy bulk in the other. The Mesharom resembled nothing so much as a three-meter-long orange-and-blue caterpillar.
They’d learned to be better with others during their accidental exile among humanity, but Coraniss was still a Mesharom. They almost certainly had their own half of the ship that Ki!Tana wouldn’t enter without permission.
“I was told I was connecting to Commodore Jardine,” he said. “Bonjour, Ki!Tana, Interpreter Coraniss. It’s good to see you.”
“The good Commodore agreed to help us keep this under wraps,” Ki!Tana told him. “It’s possible that the Kanzi are watching your communications. Almost certainly, in fact.”
Jean straightened, facing the camera head-on as the humor drained from him.
“You found them.”
“Two starkillers, ten super-battleships, thirty escorts,” Coraniss reeled off. “Logically, the second starkiller is a redundancy. Your system is well defended, by Arm Power standards.”
Jean hadn’t really disbelieved what his Duchess had sent him, but it was a large gap from knowing that the Kanzi might be deploying starkillers against the Imperium to hearing the Mesharom tell him that the Kanzi had brought two weapons of mass destruction.
“Mutually assured destruction,” he said quietly. “The theory that if they can destroy us, we won’t attack them. But we weren’t going to anyway.”
“Clearly, the Kanzi do not believe this,” Coraniss told him. “They did not detect us. We have attached the exact coordinates of their staging zone to this transmission. I am not familiar with the terms of the treaty negotiated between your imperiums, but in the Core, this would be an act of war.”
“It is here, too,” Jean replied. “A war we can’t afford to fight, not until we understand the Taljzi’s plan.”
“I am not permitted to get more involved than I have,” the Mesharom said. “My actions will likely be questioned once the Frontier Fleet lead elements arrive, but I owed your people this much.”
“Your intervention is appreciated, Interpreter-Lieutenant Coraniss,” he told them. “Neither the Duchy nor the A!Tol Imperium will forget this.”
“I suggest you deal with this as quietly as you can,” Ki!Tana said. “I will accompany you, if you wish, but I would strongly recommend that you do not involve Imperial forces.”
“We already have a plan,” Jean admitted. “Tan!Shallegh is not enthused with it, but he understands. If you can transfer to Commodore Jardine’s flagship, Third Squadron will be commencing an FTL exercise shortly.”
He couldn’t leave Earth uncovered, even with the Grand Fleet present. Second Squadron was at Asimov with Vice Admiral Rolfson. Fourth Squadron was in Centauri with Vice Admiral Amandine. That left First and Third Squadron, and First was the more powerful formation. If they moved, they’d draw attention.
Third Squadron might only have eight Duchess of Terra–class super-battleships, but Vice Admiral Van der Merwe also had eight Manticore-class battleships—and he’d match Manticores against even Kanzi super-battleships any day.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Vice Admiral Patience Van der Merwe was a tall woman from the slums of Johannesburg, with dark brown skin and powerfully-built broad shoulders. Her flagship, Nelson Mandela, had been the last Duchess of Terra–class ship ever built in the Sol System.
That meant the ship had a thousand places where minor defects identified in the earlier Duchess-class ships—and the Majesty-class ships they’d been based on—had been fixed in construction. Nelson Mandela was a smoothly functioning war machine, if one lacking in the massed hyperfold weapons her newer sisters mounted.
“Welcome aboard, Councilor,” Van der Merwe told Jean as he was escorted onto her flag bridge. “We are already underway for our…unscheduled exercise.”
“Bien, bien,” Jean said. “We’re rendezvousing with Commodore Jardine?”
“Fifteen minutes before we enter hyperspace, yes,” the Admiral confirmed. “Would you care to tell me what this is about, sir?”
“You don’t have to call me sir anymore, Patience,” Jean told her. “I’m not an Admiral anymore.”
“You’re not only an Admiral to the Militia, sir; you are the Admiral,” she told him. “We don’t have many unscheduled exercises, I have to say. They might be useful to think about in the future. It would help, if nothing else, disguise when we’re using one as a cover for something.”
Jean smiled.
“Once we’re in hyperspace, Admiral,” he told her gently. “I have reason to mistrust our information security in Sol.”
“That’s…a dire statement, sir,” Van der Merwe noted. “I didn’t think we were overly concerned about Taljzi intelligence operations.”
“And that, Vice Admiral Van der Merwe, is why this will remain an unscheduled hyperspatial deployment exercise until our portal closes behind us,” he said. “Is that going to be a problem?”
Technically, he had no authority to give Van der Merwe direct orders. He could call Kurzman-Wellesley and get her boss to give her the orders for him—the Militia’s new Admiral wouldn’t hesitate, after all—but she could argue with him.
She chuckled instead.
“That won’t be a problem at all, Councilor. The Militia knows who we trust, if nothing else.”
He nodded his thanks and stepped up to her shoulder, studying the readiness reports on her ships.
“What have we got for FTL weapons?” he asked quietly.
“The Manticores have six dual-portal hyperspace missiles mounted on their hulls apiece. The Duchesses have twelve. Two of our cruisers are Thunderstorm-Ds, so they have a battery of single-portal weapons apiece. The other fourteen cruisers are at least refitted with hyperfold cannons, and everything has hyperfold coms.”
Sixteen battleships, sixteen cruisers, sixteen destroyers. Jardine had four more ships, but they were Thunderstorm-Cs like most of Van der Merwe’s cruisers. Older ships, with hyperfold cannon but no hyperspace missiles.
“What are we facing, sir?” she asked after a moment. “I’m guessing not Taljzi, so…”
“Once we’re in hyper,” he repeated. If the Kanzi had managed to infiltrate a starkiller deployment formation this close to Sol, there was almost certainly someone in Sol with the ability to warn them.
The Kanzi weren’t supposed to have hyperfold communicators, but there were enough of them floating around in Sol to at least send a message, even if the starkiller’s escorts couldn’t reply to it.
Someone was going to pay for this. More immediately, however, Jean Villeneuve intended to blow two starkillers to dust bunnies.
“I see slavers are as good as ever at keeping their word,” Van der Merwe said bitterly as Jean briefed her.
Ki!Tana loomed in the background of the briefing room, the alien having come aboard as soon as they’d entered hyperspace.
“At least according to Duchess Bond, the High Priestess has no idea what her commanders are getting up to,” Jean admitted. “I’m not certain I buy that! Starkillers deployed without her authority?”
He shook his head.
“I don’t know what kind of government the Theocracy really runs with, but I doubt it’s so free of her grip as to allow that.”
“It depends on how clever they were,” Ki!Tana pointed out. “And the Theocracy Navy Command are past masters at doing what they wish regardless of what the ‘Divine Chosen’ might order. Unless it’s dragged in front of Karal in public, they can do a great many things in the dark.”
“And that is what Her Grace wants to do,” Jean said with a sigh. “She wants us to engage this Kanzi force. Destroy or capture the starkillers. Drive off or capture the warships. We need proof that she can deliver to the High Priestess to show that her warlords have broken her word for her.”
“Politics,” Van der Merwe hissed. “The politics of slavetakers and monsters. I’m not entirely sure why we care.”
“Because we need their fleets,” he told her. “We need their ships. We need their knowledge of the Taljzi. I’m no happier about this than you are, Admiral, but the thought of having Kanzi super-battleships on our side when the Taljzi come warms a lot of hearts.”
“I will take what prisoners I must,” she told him. “But if they have brought starkillers to the borders of our star system, then my mission is clear: none of them escape, Councilor Villeneuve. We must wipe them out.”
“Every ship we destroy today is one that can’t be sent against the Taljzi,” Jean warned, but he wasn’t arguing. Not really. “But you’re right. A message needs to be sent: either the Kanzi will keep the High Priestess’s word or this whole negotiation de merde has been a waste of our time.”
The screens and holograms on Nelson Mandela’s flag bridge flashed brilliantly as the Third Squadron of the Duchy of Terra Militia punched through a hole into real space.
Their prey was already reacting. The information that Ki!Tana had provided was, as Jean had expected, entirely correct.
Ten super-battleships formed a rough sphere around two destroyer-sized vessels. Twenty cruisers and ten destroyers screened the capital ships.
The Kanzi couldn’t have been expecting an attack, not if they were planning on waiting there for months or even years for the order to strike. Jean had been on the other side of the situation before, commanding the United Earth Space Force when the A!Tol had arrived.
If the Kanzi crews had been his, he’d have been pleased. The formation was adjusting to face them within moments, escorts flowing around the capital ships in well-trained synchronicity to put themselves in front of Van der Merwe’s ships.
“All ships, target your hyper missiles on the starkillers,” Van der Merwe ordered. “Wait for my command. We’ll show them the respect the treaty requires, even if they’ve broken it.”
She paused.
“If they try to run, destroy the starkillers.”
She glanced at Jean, but he gave her a “go ahead” gesture. They were both equally positioned to summon the Kanzi to surrender, but this was her squadron. She was still the active duty officer, too.
“Kanzi vessels,” Van der Merwe snapped into her recorder. “Your presence here is a violation of every treaty between your Theocracy and the Imperium. The presence of starkillers this close to any system, let alone a Duchy of the Imperium, is an act of war.
“You will surrender your ships and crew for internment until such time as we negotiate your return with the High Priestess…or you will be destroyed.”
She smiled thinly at the recorder.
“And may I remind you, you damn fools, that everything I see is already transmitted to Sol. Within a day, your High Priestess will know how you have betrayed her word.”
The message winged its way across space as the Terran force closed.
“Vampire!” someone snapped. “We have missile launches across the board; the Kanzi are engaging.”
“That’s a response of a kind, isn’t it?” Van der Merwe said. “All ships: destroy the starkillers. Deploy Bucklers and continue closing.
“We want them in hyperfold cannon range.”
Jean wasn’t sure what the Kanzi had been expecting from the Terran fleet, but he doubted it was the tsunami of hyperspace missiles that descended on the starkillers. The same firepower would have almost certainly taken down one of the super-battleships guarding the weapons, but the starkillers weren’t warships.
They were automated systems, remote-controlled from a nearby vessel. Without any offensive weapons beyond their primary system, they still had powerful shields—and these were apparently a new system, refitted with antimissile lasers.
