CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“You can’t fire all of them, Ma’am,” Than said. He stood before Xing’s desk aboard Nüwa with his vac helmet in the crook of his arm.
Xing cracked open the shoulder of her own combat-rated vac suit and sat down.
“You’re telling me what I can and can’t do, Than? Is there some confusion as to who’s in charge here?”
“This was our first full-scale exercise with the ready ships,” Than replied. “A degree of friction was to be expected.”
“Sunwar had squadron command before they let him resign his commission for ‘compassionate cause,’ but he still fouled up his missile salvo.” Xing laid her palms on her desk and looked at Than. “Unacceptable.”
The older admiral frowned.
“Sunwar lost two daughters and a brother to a munitions malfunction. That’s what he resigned his commission to deal with, and he’s still working through issues. I understand why the Office of Personnel sent him here…but that doesn’t mean he really is the best choice for his command.”
“Then why are we still talking? Shitcan him and put Jin in the captain’s seat.” Xing raised her hands, palms uppermost.
“It’s the other four you want me to shitcan along with him,” Than said. “There’re no replacements for them, and I believe their issues can be corrected with training. Our officer cadre are older men and women—they’re rusty, but experienced—and Personnel won’t send us more people, even for the parasites, until more of the carriers are ready to commission. Even when they do, the next tranche won’t be any better. Which means we need to deal with that rust problem here, in Diyu.”
“This is why you were in charge of Project Astra for so long…” Xing muttered.
She drummed her fingers on her desktop for a moment.
“All right. Sunwar, gone. We’ll kill that chicken to send a message to the rest of the monkeys.”
“I’ll see that it’s done,” Than said.
Xing leaned back and tapped her chair arm’s keypad. A holo of the just-completed exercise in which her forces had closed with and overwhelmed the ersatz Federation fleet commanded by Than came up.
“You managed a one-to-ten tonnage loss against me,” she said with a frown. “I expected better performance from my fleet.”
“With respect, your approach was too aggressive, Ma’am,” Than said. “You attacked assuming I’d try to make it supralight and escape rather than stand and fight, but not every system will fold as easily as Scotia did. When the Dragon Fleet appears in-system, some Federation commanders will know the battle’s hopeless but still try to inflict as much attritional damage as they can.”
“The Feds are cowards.” Xing wave a dismissive hand. “They’ll run if I give them a route out. Sun Tzu knew what he was talking about.”
Than bit his lip. Xing was fond of citing Sun Tzu; she was less careful about citing in context.
“The only fleet engagement we’ll have,” she continued, “will come when they scrape together enough ships to manage a fight they think they can win. That’s the fight I need to win.”
“This is why we have exercises,” Than said. “To be prepared for what we don’t expect.”
“Five hours for crew rest, then we reset. And I want you to turn and run, this time. Let me see which of my squadron commanders are hungry for glory.”
Than drew breath to protest, then saluted. He was almost to the door when a message chimed on Xing’s desk. She glanced down at it, then raised a hand.
“Hold on,” she said. “Naytash wants to see us. She says it’s urgent.”
* * *
Naytash paced furiously around the control room, tracing a circle with Xing and Than at its center. Her cranial frills were erect and engorged, and a thick musk wafted from her as she spoke to herself in her own language. A small pack of males huddled against the wall.
“All of the manifolds were lost?”
The hovering sphere translated Than’s question into the twittering snarls of Rishathan.
“All!” The translator reproduced Naytash’s rage perfectly as she stamped a claw into the flexible deck sole hard enough to leave a puncture. “The human agent in the system reports the Federation commander claimed they were searching for slaves taken from Scotia. Lies! There was a containment failure somewhere. Now I must destroy the entire network we had established through the feral worlds.”
“When can the Sphere deliver more manifolds?” Xing asked.
Naytash swung toward the second admiral. Her massive head shot forward and her jaws clashed the air ten centimeters from the human’s face.
Xing didn’t flinch.
“You think that producing that equipment is simple?” the alien snarled. “That the Sphere is your own personal foundry? We deliver you this gift, and you complain it isn’t enough?”
“No, High War Mother,” Xing said. “It is enough. But we must consider the effects of this…incident. Did the Federation discover the manifolds?”
“The cargo was programmed to self-destruct if anyone without the proper codes inspected it,” Naytash growled. “They found nothing but blasted metal.”
“Are you positive?” Xing pressed.
“Do you question my word?” Naytash demanded.
“No, High War Mother. But if the Feds recovered anything, even the ship’s logs, they will piece things together.”
“They recovered nothing,” Naytash said. “The human agent is competent. She used the override code to destroy the entire ship.”
“What conclusions could they draw, Second Admiral?” Than asked. “A single smuggler. As the High War Mother says, the consignment was scan shielded and equipped to self-destruct, and if—”
“There weren’t any slavers in Scotia,” Xing said flatly. “So there’s no reason they should have been looking for slaves from Inverness anywhere, far less someplace like Alramal. It’s an obvious false flag, a cover. And if they were there to intercept the shipment, then they must know about Project Astra—must know it was en route to us. They may not know its full extent, and they can’t know where our anchorage is, because they would have attacked sooner—and here—if they did. But something led them to that shipment.”
“Too many variables,” Naytash said. “This was not the plan.”
“Indeed,” Xing said. “And it means we must accelerate our timetable.”
Naytash stopped pacing and canted her head to one side.
“Replacing those manifolds will take…time, Fleet Mother,” she said.
“I realize that.” Xing rubbed her chin. “Do we know who the Fed commander was?”
“Val Idrak’s comm traffic was repeated to the human agent. She reports that the FTLC was the Ishtar and that the senior officer identified himself as Admiral Murphy.”
“Never heard of him.” Xing frowned and raised an eyebrow at Than.
“Terrence Murphy, probably, Ma’am,” Than said. “He’s part of the Murphy dynasty and he married into the very top tier of the Five Hundred, but until recently he was detailed to Survey. He’s the one who won that skirmish at Steelman’s Star. They announced they were going to promote him to flag rank and send him out as New Dublin’s governor.”
All of which he very carefully did not say out loud. Xing would have known for herself if she’d been paying proper attention to her intelligence briefs.
“New Dublin?” Xing pounced on the information. “Then that’s our target. It’s their only real yard facility this side of Jalal, so we can be sure it’ll get their damned attention! And we have eight carriers and their strike groups ready to hit it with. Twelve, counting Cai Shen, Li Shiji, Sun Bin, and Chen Qingzhi. I’m launching my punitive expedition now.”
“We’ve only just begun integration training, Second Admiral.” Than raised a hand level with his shoulder. “If we launch now—”
“—we have a chance of success!” Xing snapped. “Who the hell is this Murphy, anyway? He may have a famous family name, but he was a survey officer, Than! He stumbled into a victory at Steelman’s Star, and they gave him a governorship to play with as a reward, but he’s nobody to the Oval, name or not, or they wouldn’t waste him out here.”
Her expression was eloquently scornful.
“He’s a second-stringer, and he hasn’t even had time to return to New Dublin yet. But he will. And whatever led him to Alramal, he has to know something about Project Astra, or he wouldn’t have been there. He’s going to pass that on to the Oval, but New Dublin’s two hundred light-years from Sol, so it’ll take eleven weeks for his report to get there. That’s how long we have until the Oval will know whatever he knows. If we wait for a new shipment of manifolds, make sure every button’s polished aboard the fleet, the Feds will have months—months—to get ready for us!”
“That’s assuming they believe Murphy and react immediately, and that’s far from a given unless he did find evidence—conclusive evidence,” Than said. “The Federation is ponderous, fractious. There’s too much we don’t know, and if we—”
“Why are you so scared, Than?” Xing asked. “The reason we have the fleet is to punish the Feds, isn’t it? Well, we can eviscerate the entire Concordia Sector, even cut as deep as Gouden, before they manage a response!”
Her eyes blazed at the thought of reaching a Heart World sector like Gouden.
“We probably can,” Than agreed. “But will it be enough? Astra—the Dragon Fleet—is supposed to be our final blow. Building it, manning it, has taken everything we have, and it has to be decisive. Anything less is a waste.”
Naytash grasped at the air and a local map of the galaxy appeared.
“The timetable is disrupted,” she said. “The Great Council will need time to reassess, recalibrate—”
“There is no time,” Xing said. “We’ll depart for New Dublin as soon as my ships can take on munitions and supplies. We’ll visit this Murphy first and teach him a lesson.” She flashed her teeth. “The death of a name so important to the Federation Navy will play well with Dragon Fleet’s first appearance, don’t you agree, Than?”
“This is a mistake, Second Admiral,” he said. “We’re not ready yet.”
“We’ll hit New Dublin with overwhelming force. Against a Fed single-system defense force?” Xing snorted contemptuously. “It will be a lightning bolt. We’ll crush this Murphy and push as deep as we can before they finally come up with something hard enough to give us a real fight, then cycle back to Diyu. That’ll burn up months, and by the time we get back here, the rest of the fleet will be ready for the final blow. Won’t it, High War Mother?”
Naytash hissed, then swiped her claws through the holo.
“Five of your months,” she said. “At least that long, and the technology installed on the remaining fleet may be…less human. We may have to put engineers of the People aboard and the delivery will be more overt.”
“Which will be acceptable.” Xing smiled. “It will be the end of the war, so what will secrets matter then? Come, Than. It’s time to make the Federation suffer.”
* * *
“But we’re leaving eighty percent of the fleet behind.”
Su Zhihao reached into a holo display to touch the space yards around the gas giant’s moon.
“Thank you, XO,” Than said as he signed off on a batch of orders. “This is the third time you’ve made that point.”
“Sir, I don’t—” Su glanced over his shoulder at the bridge crew making final preparations, then lowered his voice. “I don’t get this. No one outside the system knows about Project Astra.”
Than raised an eyebrow at him.
“High-level members of the Accord, fine,” Su said quickly. “But what’s the rush to wormhole out now? Has the Federation broken through Beta Cygni?”
“Not to my knowledge,” Than said.
“Have they launched a new offensive somewhere else? Put a fleet over Anyang? Because the only explanation short of that I can imagine for why we’re leaving with a quarter-full quiver is that Xing wants an easy victory before the next election. Am I wrong, Sir?”
“The election…” Than pursed his lips. “You know, that slipped my mind.”
“That wasn’t your first idea?” Su pulled back in surprise. “I know you’re a spacer’s admiral, Sir, but even I—”
“Second Admiral Xing has issued her orders. Focus on getting our magazines topped off instead of her motivations, XO.”
Than set his slate aside.
“Yes, Sir. My apologies. We’re really going to hit the Feds that hard?”
“Zhihao, if Xing’s plan goes through, it will be worse than Baiknor.”
“Baiknor? That was almost three hundred million dead.” Su tugged at his goatee. “She’s going for the Heart Worlds, isn’t she?”
“It’s we, XO. We. The good admiral has opted for mass civilian casualties to bring this war to an end. Let’s pray the Federation chooses peace before Xing gets her fill.”
“Sir, direct targeting of cities is…I don’t know if our people will do it. Cai Shen is your flagship, and you’ve handpicked your squadron commanders over the years. None of them are butchers.”
“If we refuse…then Xing has others who won’t even hesitate. This war’s gone on too long. There’s too much blood between us and the Federation.”
“And that’s the answer? More bloodshed? It’s one thing to destroy their warships, kill their spacers. Hell, we’re damn good at that. Maybe a bit of mercy would—”
“Xing left Inverness to die a slow, cold death. You’re expecting mercy from her? Here we are, Zhihao. This is our war, and there’s no escaping it. All we can do is to do what we can to finish the fight with their heads held high.”
“Better to be alive with a dirty conscience than dead with peace of mind? That’s how most of this fleet thinks, isn’t it?” Su said with a curled lip.
“Speculation is useless. But I don’t have to guess about the number of missiles in Magazine Seven, do I?”
“That was supposed to be loaded hours ago.” The chief of staff brought up a directory. “One moment, Sir. This conversation won’t be for delicate ears.”
“I’ll leave you to it.”
Than gave him a slap on the shoulder and crossed to the flag bridge control ring, gazing up at the displayed plot. He watched as more and more FTLCs moved into formation around Nüwa. Twelve of them, he thought. There were empty racks, here and there among them, because they simply had too few people to man that many sublight parasites. But they still had well over a hundred of them, and those empty racks provided redundant hardpoints in the event of battle damage. Even without Dragon’s other forty carriers, he hadn’t seen a fleet of such size and power in one place for over ten years…and what should have been his command had been given to another. One who would wield it far differently from the way he’d intended.
His face was stern, calm, but behind the mask of command, his soul was in turmoil.