All for All, page 12
part #3 of Cast Adrift Series
He scowled as he studied the display. They'd replaced the original datacores with human-designed computers, then searched the ship for hidden surprises, but it was impossible to be sure they'd found everything. There were just too many ways for the ship to signal its former owners, from distress beacons responding to outside probes to calculated fluctuations in the drive field, and if he'd been designing the ships he'd have made sure to include something that would raise the alarm. The Pashtali didn't sell their warships, which meant they'd assume one of their ships was friendly until proven otherwise, but they'd be wise to be careful if a ship arrived unannounced. It would cost nothing and save much.
"Take us through as planned," he ordered. Sweat prickled on his back. The IFF code was real, they thought, but it might be outdated. Or worse. It might belong to the wrong class of ship, or even the right ship in the wrong place. The Pashtali knew humans had a knack for refurbishing old warships and putting them back into service. Would they assume their ships couldn't be repaired? Or would they change their protocols anyway, just to be sure? "And then transmit as planned."
His stomach lurched as they passed through the crossroads. The Pashtali didn't seem to bother fine-tuning their drives, suggesting they were immune to transit shock or they simply didn't care. Roger suspected the former. The Pashtali were cold and cruel, but they were also calculating enough to know there was nothing to be gained by leaving their crew vulnerable. It might slow their reactions at the worst possible time. The display blanked, then rebooted. His eyes narrowed as a cluster of red icons, weirdly skewed, flickered into life. They'd fiddled with the translation software time and time again, but - no matter what they did - it had problems converting the sensor input into something humans could watch without a banging headache. The Pashtali saw the world very differently from their human enemies. It made him wonder if they got headaches from trying to access human databases.
They have clients who can do the dirty work, if they can't do it themselves, he reflected, grimly. There's no reason to assume our databases are safe just because they might cause problems for whoever captured them.
He scowled. It was impossible to be sure how much the Pashtali knew about their human enemies. Hell, the Pashtali had never seemed particularly interested in learning about any other intelligent race, save perhaps their handful of clients. And yet, they'd played to galactic opinion pretty damn well. Perhaps they'd gotten advice from a galactic PR firm. His lips twisted at the thought of a bunch of so-called influencers lecturing the spider-like aliens on how best to appeal to the rest of the known universe, then flattened as it dawned on him the thought wasn't funny. There were people out there who would cheerfully sell their enemies the rope the bastards needed to hang them.
"The IFF signal appears to have been accepted," Marquez said, slowly. "They're not making any threatening moves."
"Take us closer," Roger ordered. "And keep feeding them comforting lies."
A shiver ran down his spine as the range started to close. How close could they get before the battlestation ordered them to back off or simply opened fire? Galactic Law allowed someone to open fire without warning, if it looked like the unknown starship was closing to ram. In theory, the shooter had to be very sure the intruder could have nothing else in mind; in practice, the Pashtali could probably get away with almost anything, as long as they didn't bombard an entire planet into a lifeless chunk of rock. But he was flying one of their ships ... he knew he'd hesitate if a human ship came at him like a bat out of hell and he assumed they'd do the same. Perhaps. The Pashtali weren't human. Their reactions were nowhere near as easy to predict.
And we need to be a lot closer for best effect, he thought. The battlestation was a pretty tough customer. She was larger than a battleship, with most of her extra mass devoted to armour and weapons. If they order us to break off, we may have to open fire and hope for the best.
He glanced at the timer. They'd been in-system for four minutes. If the plan went off without a hitch, the remainder of the fleet was six minutes behind. The enemy couldn't miss the first formations making transit, at which point they'd start wondering why Trojan One hadn't raised the alarm. And then ... perhaps it was gross incompetence, rather than malice, but Roger didn't know any commanding officer who'd let it pass. The battlestation CO would probably order the cruiser to halt, then open fire if she refused to stop. It was what he'd do.
"Captain," Marquez said. "They're signalling us, demanding a code."
Roger sucked in his breath. They didn't have a second code. There might have been others in the datacores, but they'd been destroyed long ago. And that meant ... the display flared red as the battlestation's targeting sensors locked onto the cruiser, a clear warning to stop or be fired upon. There were some races that might have ignored such a blatant threat, trusting in their reputations to protect them, but humanity wasn't one of them. Ironically, neither were the Pashtali.
He cursed under his breath. Three minutes to go ... he wracked his brain for a way to stall, to slow the enemy long enough to get closer, but nothing came to mind. The patrol ships were already altering course, bringing their weapons to bear on the cruiser. It would be laughable, if the ship had been fully armed and manned, but Trojan One was neither. Her automated point defence would probably take out the patrol ships, and the battlestation's first salvo, yet she couldn't take a long engagement. The enemy might not be sure of what was going on, but they were playing it smart. They'd blow the cruiser away a long time before she could ram the battlestation.
"Open the hatches," he ordered. "Fire the missiles, then reverse course."
"Aye, sir," Marquez said.
Roger keyed his console, watching as the oversized missiles rocketed away from his ship and raced towards the battlestation. They looked almost laughable, compared to Galactic weapons, but the planners thought that would work in their favour. The enemy point defences would have no trouble targeting the missiles, then blowing them away well before they reached their target. If they were lucky ... his lips curved into a cold smile as the patrol ships picked up speed, sweeping around the missiles and heading straight for the cruiser. It made sense, from their point of view, but it was still a terrible mistake.
If they'd fired on the missiles, he thought as he brought his own point defence online, the mission might have failed completely.
"Sir," Marquez said. "The missiles are lumbering into point defence range."
"Key them to detonate the moment the enemy opens fire," Roger said. The missiles were slow as well as oversized, but that would work in their favour too. The Pashtali would take their time, laying down every shot rather than trying to fill space with plasma bolts and railgun shells. "We don't want them to take the missiles out."
"No, sir," Marquez said.
Roger glanced at the timer - one minute - then triggered the point defence. Two patrol ships vanished from the display, the remainder spinning into a complicated evasive pattern that sent them corkscrewing towards their target. The battlestation opened fire a moment later, aiming missiles at Trojan One and point defence at the incoming missiles. Marquez whooped as the missiles seemed to triple in power, an instant before the burners sent ravenous steams of energy into the enemy amour. The battlestation seemed to shudder as the missiles twisted, the beams chopping through the outer hull and wreaking havoc on the interior. Roger almost felt sorry for the enemy crew. Anyone unlucky enough to be too close to the beams, as they sliced through the armour, would be fried before they knew what had hit them. The sheer power was staggering. The battlestation was designed to take heavy damage and keep fighting, but ... he found it hard to believe anything could survive that. The normal precautions - hatches closed and sealed, crews in protective suits - would be practically useless.
If we did this to a ship, he thought as the first formations started to make transit, she'd be atoms by now.
The burners winked out. For a heartbeat, everything seemed to freeze. The battlestation was a twisted hulk, heat radiating into the cold of interstellar space. The remaining patrol vessels appeared unsure what to do, uncertain if they should try to close and ram Trojan One or reverse course and flee to one of the other battlestations. There was no trace of the enemy fleet - and the more distant battlestations - on the display, but Roger knew they were still there ... and very aware of what had happened. It was the sort of trick that would only work once. The battlestation had been careless, allowing the decoy ship to get too close without checking its IFF and then declining to shoot down the missiles before it was too late. The remaining battlestations would be far tougher targets.
"Captain," Marquez said. "Admiral Yagami is requesting a status update."
Roger resisted the urge to point out they'd effectively killed the battlestation. It was possible - vaguely -there were survivors, but the battlestation itself was nothing more than a twisted hulk. There were no suggestions it could do anything to affect the battle, save perhaps soaking up a handful of missiles. He hoped the survivors had the sense to run up the white flag and surrender, before it was too late. If the human fleet didn't know the survivors were there, they wouldn't try to probe the wreck until after the battle.
If we bother at all, he thought. The datacores will have self-destructed, if they weren't ruined by the burners, and the rest of the station is just a melted nightmare. We might just push it into the sun instead.
"Inform her our first operation was a success, then request orders," he said. "And request resupply as quickly as possible."
"Aye, Captain," Marquez said. "We are ordered to remain in place, behind the crossroads, then return to the RV point once the remainder of the fleet has made transit."
Roger nodded. "Good," he said. "We've done our bit. Let's hope the admiral can do hers."
***
"They fell for it," Olson said. "The battlestation let the burner missiles get too close before it tried to shoot them down."
Naomi nodded. The human race had yet to duplicate the real burners, the energy weapons that made Alphan warcruisers the most feared warships in the galaxy. Human-designed burners had a tendency to either burn out or explode if they were pushed too hard, the latter threatening to set off a chain reaction that would blow the entire starship to atoms. It was costly to mount burners on missiles, and she'd doubted their value in open combat, but they'd proved their worth. The battlestation had been a formidable opponent, yet it had been taken out without firing more than a handful of shots.
"Transmit the signals, as planned," she ordered. "We will advance as soon as the remainder of the fleet has made transit."
She allowed herself a cold smile. Her counterpart on the other side had to be raging. If he'd had time to concentrate his ships, he could have advanced to the crossroads and sat on it, blowing away her ships as they made transit. The casualty rates would have been staggeringly high even if she'd carried the crossroads, bleeding her fleet white for very little reward. Instead, she had all the time she needed to mass her fleet and then advance further into the system. What would the enemy do? Try to slow her down? Or withdraw as quickly as possible?
Which would make life difficult for them, she thought. They'd have to slip off the threadlines or risk being interned or destroyed. Either way, they won't be a problem for us any longer.
Her console bleeped. "Admiral, this is Dennison in Comms," a voice said. "The FTL Transmitter is signalling urgently, using Pashtali encryption codes. We're currently trying to decrypt the signals, but we don't think we'll be able to read them for quite some time."
"If ever," Naomi said. She wasn't expecting anything beyond the awareness the enemy CO had managed to signal home. The Pashtali, if the spooks were to be believed, had repeatedly updated their encryption codes. It wouldn't be easy to break them and, given how alien the senders were, there was no guarantee the messages would be understandable even if they'd been sent in the clear. "Inform me when they stop signalling."
"Aye, Admiral."
"A curious decision," Observer Salix said. He'd kept his mouth shut during the first stage of the offensive, something that Naomi found a little surprising, but he was making up for it now. "Do you not want to silence the transmitter?"
"How?" Naomi grinned at her console. "There's nothing we can do, short of launching a kinetic strike, to shut the transmitter down. Not now. We'll deal with it later, if the locals don't switch sides."
Her grin grew wider. "And besides, we need the transmitter ourselves," she added. "Commander Olson, transmit the second set of messages and request they be relayed to their destination."
Observer Salix cocked his head. "You expect the transmitter to do as you ask?"
"They are meant to be neutral," Naomi pointed out. The Pashtali had made no attempt to seize or destroy the local FTL transmitter. It would have alienated nearly everyone in the known galaxy, maybe even turned them into the common foe. "And we are on the verge of taking the entire system. I don't think they'll refuse."
She sighed inwardly. The Pashtali were strong enough to get away with bullying the local staff. Humanity couldn't afford to do the same. If the Pashtali decided to accidentally launch a missile at the transmitter, risking mass slaughter and perhaps even genocide, the Galactics would do everything in their power to look away, while penalising humanity for the slightest misstep. There were times when she wondered why they should bother paying anything more than lip service to the rules, when everyone who could get away with ignoring them did. In the long run, Admiral Glass had always said, it would work out for the best. But in the short run ...
No, she told herself. We have to show we uphold the rules even when our enemies refuse to do the same.
"Signals sent, Admiral," Olson said. "It'll be at least ten minutes before our messages reach the transmitter."
"Understood." Naomi had been a spacer long enough to know to account for the speed of light delay. Once the message reached the transmitter, it would be sent without further delay. "We'll see who's interested in helping now."
She glanced at the starchart, her thoughts racing. The lesser powers were on alert, she'd been told, readying themselves to take the offensive. Would they move, now she'd punched her way into the system? Or would they sit on their asses and let humanity do the dirty work? She didn't know. The planners had veered back and forth when the matter had been discussed, some arguing the lesser powers would act at once and others insisting they'd try to stay out of the fighting as long as possible. Naomi understood how they felt. She would have preferred to avoid a clash with a major power, if she'd been given the choice. The Pashtali were still overwhelmingly powerful. They'd been hurt, no doubt about it, but they might win the war.
But they're no longer overwhelmingly powerful here, she told herself. Her long-range sensors were tracking the enemy ships as their commander concentrated his forces. And there'll never be a better time to drive them out of the system for good.
"Admiral, there's been no response to our surrender demand," Olson reported. "They are still massing their forces."
"But not coming for us," Naomi said. She recalled some of the early simulations and frowned. The enemy CO might be wise to lure her away from the crossroads, then try to sneak around her to break through the crossroads and into multispace. "Plot an intercept course. We'll leave two squadrons on the crossroads, in case they try to sneak through, but take the remainder of the fleet to deal with their remaining ships."
"Aye, Admiral."
Chapter Thirteen
Terminus
Observer Salix had been cautioned, in no uncertain terms, to keep his background a secret from his human hosts. The fact he'd served in both the Lupine Wars, as well as having spent time as a commanding officers in the EDF, had been carefully unmentioned. There were no humans who recognised him from the old days - he'd had a little cosmetic surgery, just to be sure - and if anyone had put the pieces together they'd kept it to themselves. It was important the humans didn't realise just how much he understood, ensuring they'd always take the time to explain their thinking to him. And yet, it struck him as futile. They'd been a client race before being given their independence. The Alphans had never had to understand their human clients. The humans had no choice but to try to understand their masters.
And they did a better job of it too, he thought. They know us much better than we know them.
He kept his face under tight control. He'd read Captain Nobunaga's report on his former XO, now-Admiral Yagami. Captain Nobunaga had been a fool - that was clear, just by skimming his report - who'd failed to note much, if anything, about his subordinate. There was nothing positive or negative, nothing to suggest they'd spent years working together; nothing, even, to hint Captain Nobunaga had copied a handful of other reports or simply made his out of whole cloth. The report had been bland and completely useless. It was a shame the original EDF personnel had been withdrawn to fight in the wars before Admiral Yagami had been promoted to Commander. She might have gotten on much better with one of them.
"Contact in thirty minutes," Olson reported. "The enemy doesn't appear to have a plan."
"Which means they're up to something," Admiral Yagami said. "What?"
Salix had no answer. His orders had been vague on precisely how much help and advice he was to offer his hosts, but it didn't matter. The Pashtali had only a handful of options and yet they seemed to have decided to take the worst of them. They could be retreating into deep space to wait for relief, or jumping through one of the other crossroads, or even just trying to split up and evade the human ships long enough to break through the first crossroads. Instead, they were trying to make a stand ... why? Did they think they could wear down the human fleet? It might be possible - it was the only explanation that made sense - but it struck him as a little pointless. But then, the Pashtali didn't have much regard for their own lives.
"Deploy additional probes," Admiral Yagami ordered. "And watch for cloaked ships."
