CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
“So how do we handle this?” O’Hanraghty asked.
The scale of the installations had grown even more incredible as they drove nearer. The range was down to barely a half light-hour, more than close enough for the optical systems to begin picking out detail, and those details were…sobering. Not only was the mammoth building complex enormously larger than they’d believed possible, it was also far more heavily automated than any of Naval Intelligence’s estimates of League capability. League construction techniques had always been more labor intensive than the Federation’s, but this installation appeared to rely even more heavily on robotics than most of the Federation’s Heart World yards did.
Yet what truly shocked them were the number of FTLCs floating in their building areas, apparently complete but for their Fasset drives. There were over forty of them, surpassing their worst-case estimates based on the manifolds lost in Alramal. If they’d gotten loose in Concordia, just appeared in the Heart Worlds’ rear…
The total carrier strength of the Federation’s strategic reserve was only twenty-five, none of which were as large and powerful as a Fúxī-class ship. And there wasn’t a single non-capital parasite in the entire system. The lightest unit was a battlecruiser.
“I don’t really know,” Murphy murmured, standing beside him at the plot. “I know I promised Than, but…”
He shook his head, then inhaled deeply.
“All right, the first thing is to see how many of those FTLCs have their environmental systems up and running. We can pack a lot of people—maybe as many as ten thousand—aboard one of those if she doesn’t have any parasites on the racks.”
“But those are the strategic gold standard,” O’Hanraghty pointed out.
“True. But as Callum pointed out in Alramal, Fasset drives, more than hulls or armor, are the most expensive component in terms of both time and resources. We use demo charges to take out the Fasset housing and boom, and all they really are is a cylinder. Carriers don’t even have fusion drives, aside from their attitude thrusters. We’ll get a lot more people into each of them, and then we can blow the rest—and the sublight units—without breaking my promise to Than.”
O’Hanraghty grunted, half skeptically and half in agreement. Logically, he could find no fault with Murphy’s analysis. He suspected, however, that their superiors wouldn’t be using a lot of logic when they complained about the “carriers” Murphy had left “intact” behind him.
“Well, we can try it,” he said dubiously, “but unless—”
“New Fasset drive contacts!” Raleigh Mirwani called out. Murphy and O’Hanraghty wheeled from the visual display to the tactical plot, and two new, bright red icons flashed on it. They were 20.2 LM from the primary and 31 LM from Ishtar, and their original vector and Ishtar’s folded together at a thirty-four-degree angle.
“Ah, Second Admiral Xing!” Murphy said.
“It would appear they’ve spotted us, too,” O’Hanraghty replied, gesturing at the icons of Nüwa and Pangu. They had stopped decelerating and begun accelerating once more, albeit at only eight hundred and fifty gravities.
“There aren’t going anywhere,” Murphy said with a cold smile. “We’ve got a closing velocity of almost twenty thousand KPS, our acceleration rate’s better than twice theirs, and we know they don’t have anything on the racks, because we captured all of them in New Dublin. I think we’ll let Granger and Tremblay secure the primary yard complex while we have a…serious conversation with our friends. Just Ishtar and Gilgamesh, I think.” His smile turned even colder. “Let’s finish this the way we began it, shall we?”
“Works for me,” O’Hanraghty agreed.
Murphy nodded and turned to the flag deck comm display.
“Commodore Granger, I’d like you and Commodore Tremblay to proceed to the construction area. I don’t think we need to worry about sorting out who goes where before we blow hell out of the installations—not yet. Ishtar and Gilgamesh will sort these two out,” he gestured at Nüwa’s and Pangu’s icons, “and then return to join you. For now, just stay alert and keep an eye on things. Let’s not shoot anybody as long as they behave themselves, but your own ships and your own personnel come first.”
“Understood, Admiral,” Granger replied, and Tremblay nodded. The last of his reservations had clearly evaporated as he, too, saw the incredible armada lying quiescent in the building slips…and imagined what would have happened if it had been loosed upon the Heart Worlds.
“I don’t imagine this will take too long,” Murphy continued. “We’ll check back with you shortly. If anything comes up, feel free to call!”
“I believe I have your screen combination, Sir,” Granger replied with a chuckle, and the display blanked.
“I take it you heard all of that, Captain?” Murphy said, looking at his link to Ishtar’s command deck.
“I did, indeed, Sir. Going to eighteen hundred gravities on an intercept heading in thirty seconds.”
“Excellent,” Murphy said, and turned back to O’Hanraghty.
“You know,” the chief of staff said, “I’m actually a little more antsy about this one than I am about any of the Leaguies.”
He indicated an icon strobing a transponder labeled Bǐshǒu.
“Yeah, there was something…peculiar about what Than had to say about that one, wasn’t there?” Murphy rubbed his chin, gazing at the icon’s alphanumeric tag. “Says here she’s Hell Hearth flagged, too. That could get dicey.”
O’Hanraghty chuckled in mirthless agreement. Hell Hearth was the third most powerful human polity. That didn’t necessarily mean a lot, since outside the Federation and the League the vast majority of human political units consisted of single-system colonies with no more than a few hundred or, at the most, a couple of million citizens. A few of the feral worlds had banded together in mutual defense associations, but even they consisted of no more than three or four systems apiece.
Hell Hearth, though, was a four-system star nation, and one of its systems possessed a pair of Earthlike worlds, both of which supported fairly substantial populations. It was a spatially compact, heavily industrialized unit—not remotely on a par with a Heart World system, perhaps, but more than big enough to provide a degree of local security that neither the Federation nor the League wanted to disturb in a region beyond the blue line. Not only that, Hell Hearth shared one of its star systems with the Quarn in a unique relationship. The heavy-grav, starfishlike Quarn weren’t interested in Earthlike worlds, but Hell Hearth III boasted a supra-Earth they found quite homey…and which was orbited by an oxy-nitrogen world about seventy-five percent of Earth’s mass. As a result, Hell Hearth was the only human polity which had an actual military alliance with the Quarn. And despite their well-deserved reputation as the explored galaxy’s sharpest merchants and traders, Quarn warships were quite capable of looking after themselves.
That added a compelling weight to the Federation’s and League’s…disinclination to pick quarrels with the Hell Hearthians. Their vessels were regarded as neutrals, covered against search or seizure by either belligerent by their registry.
Of course, Bǐshǒu’s presence here in the middle of the League’s top secret shipyard, did tend to call her “neutrality” into question.
“Odd name for a Hell Hearth-registered ship,” the chief of staff observed.
“Why ‘odd’?” Murphy asked, cocking an eyebrow at him.
“Because Hell Hearth’s primary groups are descended from Old Earth’s northern European nations, and Bǐshǒu’s Chinese. Means ‘dagger’ or maybe ‘poniard.’ I’d expect a Hell Hearther to be called something like ‘Dolk.’ And that’s a fairly…militant name for a merchant ship—even a Hell Hearthian.”
“Doesn’t mean a lot,” Murphy replied, although his eyes were thoughtful. “There’s a lot of League influences in Hell Hearth. They’ve got almost as many League immigrants as they do Federation.”
“Granted—granted. And if not for the way Than reacted when you asked him about it, it might not seem especially odd to me, either. But we are going to have to decide what to do about her.”
“So far, she’s just sitting there and strobing her transponder,” Murphy said. “Can’t really blame her, with this many warships swarming around. But as long as she behaves herself, we can take our time about that. And it’s not like she’s going anywhere without our permission.”
“True enough,” O’Hanraghty agreed. No merchant ship could match the acceleration of an FTLC, and Bǐshǒu would be hopelessly disadvantaged if she tried to run from a standing start.
“So for now, let’s just concentrate on our Leaguie friends,” Murphy said. “In fact, I believe it’s time we spoke to them. Lieutenant Mastroianni, are you ready to record for transmission?”
“I am, Sir,” the comm officer said from the command deck.
“Very well.” Murphy inhaled. “Second Admiral Xing, I am Admiral Terrence Murphy, Terran Federation Navy. I call upon you to decelerate to rendezvous with my ships in order to surrender…or be destroyed. And to be completely honest,” he smiled thinly, “I would actually be happier if you chose not to. Murphy, clear.” He paused a moment, considering that last sentence, then shrugged.
“Send it, Lieutenant.”
* * *
The range to Nüwa had fallen to fourteen light-minutes, and Ishtar’s and Gilgamesh’s vectors had bent steadily toward the League carriers’ base course. At their current velocities and assuming Xing’s acceleration rate held steady, Murphy’s ships could have caught up to the fugitives in about forty-four minutes, although they would then have shot past at a relative velocity of 94,000 KPS. Ishtar was decelerating hard, in fact, to match courses and velocities in eighty-nine minutes. There was no way the League FTLCs could escape. The best they could hope to do was prolong the agony, but fourteen light-minutes was still fourteen light-minutes when it came to communication lags.
Of course, the range was falling by around a light-second every three seconds.
“I have a response from the League flagship, Admiral,” Mastroianni said from Murphy’s comm, twenty-six minutes later.
“Play it.”
“Yes, Sir.”
Mastroianni disappeared, replaced by a thin-faced woman with auburn highlights in her black hair.
“Admiral Murphy,” she said in perfect, if accented, Standard English, “I am Commander Xie Kai. I have been instructed to tell you that, regretfully, Second Admiral Xing died of wounds suffered in New Dublin. Captain Ding was also killed in action. Commander Chen has assumed command as senior officer aboard. He has instructed me to tell you that he is prepared to surrender upon terms.”
“There are no ‘terms’ except unconditional surrender,” Murphy said coldly. “I am prepared to treat honorable enemies as such, but you are in no position—and neither is your Commander Chen—to demand any sort of terms from me. And, to be perfectly clear, my sole offer is that I will permit you to surrender rather than blowing you out of space. Those are the only ‘terms’ you will receive from me, and to be completely honest, given Second Admiral Xing’s…track record, you are more fortunate than you deserve that I’m prepared to go that far. I expect you to cut your acceleration immediately upon receipt of this transmission. If you do not, no further opportunity to surrender will be extended. Murphy, clear.”
He cut the recording, sat back in his chair, and folded his arms, and O’Hanraghty shook his head wryly.
“Damn,” he said. “That was hard core, Terrence. I like it!”
“Well, unless Than was lying to us—and I don’t think he was—they are, and I don’t much like that.”
“I notice you didn’t call them on it, though,” O’Hanraghty observed.
“No, I didn’t, did I?” Murphy’s smile was a razor. “No point letting her know that we know she’s still alive.”
Twelve minutes later, RLHS Nüwa and RLHS Pangu cut their acceleration.
“I will take that as a sign that you’ve surrendered, Commander Xie,” Murphy said into the visual pickup. “You will stand by to be boarded by my Marines. Be advised that any resistance to my boarding parties will be met immediately with lethal force and that it will also violate the terms under which you were allowed to surrender. Under those circumstances, I will not hesitate to destroy both of your ships and everyone aboard them. Murphy, clear.”