All for All, page 36
part #3 of Cast Adrift Series
His heart sank as the crossroads deepened, a gateway opening into multispace. They'd planned it well. The crossroads was too close to the human fleet for the humans to run before the enemy fleet arrived, too far for the human ships to take up position and fire on anything coming out of the crossroads. It looked more like a vortex than a natural crossroads, allowing the enemy ships to come screaming out of multispace, firing as they came. He scowled as he saw communications beacons coming online, broadcasting messages towards the new crossroads. He didn't need to decrypt the signals to know they were providing targeting data to the newcomers. What else would they be?
"They still think the bad guys have won," he said, after a moment. The pundits were growing even more excited, damn them. He felt a surge of hatred. This was war, not a sporting event. There'd be no handshakes after the match, no showers in the changing room and no nights on the town, just destroyed starships and vaporised lives. He wanted to pick up the pundits and shake them, one by one. They were gambling on his people's future. "We might need to run."
Sarah glanced at him. "That bad?"
Thomas nodded. The Pashtali looked weak - had looked weak - but that might be about to change. The Galactics who'd been hovering like vultures, swarming around vulnerable star systems as if they were starving animals on the verge of becoming carrion, would back off hastily if they thought snatching the systems would lead to a real war. They'd sooner kiss the enemy rear than get into a war that could end badly, even if they won. He scowled, bitterly. The realities of interstellar power politics were a fact of life, but that didn't make them any easier to take.
"Yeah," he said. They might have pushed their luck too far. "Get ready to run."
"Aye, sir."
***
"Gravity generator online," Marquez said. "We are ready to begin."
Roger nodded, gritting his teeth. He hadn't expected the transfer to Crossroads after they'd abandoned their old ship, although he supposed it made a certain kind of sense. The techs who'd manned the giant ship, doing what they could to repair the generators after the last battle, were too important to be simply thrown away. They were not expendable, by any reasonable definition of the word. Marquez and the rest of his team were much easier to replace.
And besides, one way or the other, this ship isn't going to be heading home again, he thought. She'll be for the scrapyard even if we win the battle.
"Activate the gravity generators," he ordered. It was time. Everything rested on them now. "And shut that crossroads down!"
He braced himself as a low hum echoed through the ship, the sound disconcerting in a manner he couldn't put into words. The admiral wanted the enemy fleet caught in the gravity flux and crushed, but Roger wasn't sure it was possible. They'd be lucky if they trapped and destroyed more than a handful of ships, although the gravity waves boiling through multispace would give the Pashtali a very hard time indeed. His imagination hinted at enemy starships picked up and thrown right across the galaxy - there were stories of starships being caught in storms and finding themselves so far from explored space it took years to get home - but he had to admit it was unlikely. The majority of the stories had grown in the telling.
The display lit up as the focused gravity waves crashed into the crossroads. He leaned forward, his heart starting to race. No one had ever tried to shut down a crossroads before and no one was sure what would happen if they did. The simulations were little more than guesswork. Some insisted the crossroads would simply come apart, unable to abide even a hint of interference; others, more practically, thought the outcome would be determined by a tug of war between the two generators. Roger himself wasn't sure. It was a great deal easier to disrupt a crossroads, rather than open it up and then keep it open, but the gradient of multispace would assist the intruder in slipping through into realspace. Multispace didn't like material objects passing through its realm, he'd been told, and it tried to kick them out. The very first crossroads had been discovered when something had been thrown out of multispace in a shower of radiation ...
Which begs the question of just who was flying through multispace before the Alphans, he thought, with a flicker of irrelevant humour. They always insisted they were the very first race to discover how to use the crossroads to travel faster than light.
Crossroads shivered, a low whine growing stronger as her generators struggled for supremacy. Roger kept his expression calm, even as he saw the first enemy ships start to glide through the crossroads. There was nothing he could do now, but watch. He was just a spectator on his own bridge ...
"Generator Two is threatening to destabilise," Marquez reported. Her display flickered, showing power curves rapidly climbing to infinity. "Generator Three is losing power."
"Divert everything to the generators and the command network," Roger ordered. How long did they have to keep going? Alerts flashed up in front of him, power surges threatening to overload the conduits and trigger explosions. His lips twitched. Exploding consoles were the stuff of holovision shows, not reality, but here ... it might happen. He'd thought Crossroads had been over-designed to the point of absurdity, yet now he was starting to think the designers hadn't gone far enough. "We have to keep up the pressure."
Crossroads shook, as though the ship had been slapped by an angry god. Roger gritted his teeth, watching as gravity waves crashed across the system and slammed into the watching starships. They rocked under the blow, a handful hastily coming around and fleeing for their lives. The gravity pulses were growing stronger ... Roger wondered, suddenly, if they'd do long-term damage to the system itself. How many orbiting stations would start to drift out of orbit? How many wandering comets and meteors would have their trajectories subtly altered? How many of them would strike planets or plunge into the star? How many ... he shook his head. There was no point in worrying about it now. The battle was still in the balance.
"We're going to lose Generator Two," Marquez said. "I think ..."
The ship rocked, violently. "She exploded," Marquez added. She bit off a curse as the ship rocked again. "Generator Three is on the verge of going too."
"Keep it up as long as possible," Roger said. The enemy was rushing ships through the crossroads, enough warships to pin Admiral Yagami against the other crossroads and crush her before she could reposition her fleet. "We need to ..."
Crossroads shook, again. The display blanked, then rebooted. Roger sucked in his breath as the energy readings went off the scale. Waves of raw power - the raw stuff of multispace itself - blasted into real space, tongues of lightning sweeping through space and wiping out everything they touched. Roger had seen burners carve ships into pieces, but this ... a bolt of lightning struck a battleship and vaporised the ship effortlessly. Others followed ... he realised, to his horror, that the energy was drawn to starship drive fields. His heart twisted - his ship rang like a gong - as the crossroads started to collapse, folds of space-time falling in on themselves. He thought he saw a starship vanish in the nightmare, either trapped within a multidimensional bubble or crushed to atoms and less than atoms. It was hard not to feel guilty, even though he knew there'd been little choice. The enemy spacers would be lucky if they were just dead ...
"Generator Three is gone," Marquez said, quietly.
"I don't think it matters," Roger said. The display was updating rapidly - it looked as if there had been internal explosions, scattered throughout the ship - but it wasn't a problem any longer. He barely noticed the gravity field flicker and die. "I think we did it."
He leaned forward, drinking in the sight as the enemy crossroads shattered, releasing a final torrent of energy before vanishing. Space boiled like superheated water, then returned to normal. Roger felt sick as he realised only a couple of enemy starships had survived the transit and both were heavily damaged. A third looked almost melted ...
Crossroads shuddered, once again. "That was Generator One," Marquez said, as alarms howled through the ship. "Your orders?"
"We did all we could," Roger said. He keyed his communicator, silently blessing his foresight in insisting his crew carried proper communicators, instead of relying on the ship's datanet. "All hands, head to the shuttles. I say again, head to the shuttles. It's time to abandon ship."
Marquez giggled. "They'll be saying we're jinxes before too long," she said. "This is the second ship we've had to abandon."
Roger shrugged. It might be a problem later - spacers tended to be very superstitious - but right now it didn't matter. The real problem was getting off the oversized vessel before she lost power completely or exploded. The internal power distribution network was still surging, raw power crashing through the net and overloading nodes he'd thought could handle the strain. His lips curved into a cold smile as they hurried to the shuttles. The designers really had underestimated the problem. He was tempted to send a formal complaint.
Better not, he thought, wryly. The Pashtali would be churning out more ships as soon as possible. There was nothing to be gained from helping them. They can find out their mistakes on their own.
***
The CIC was silent.
Observer Salix found himself, for once, at a complete loss for words. The enemy crossroads had been disconcerting enough - it was still hard to wrap his head around the concept of someone else being able to open crossroads - but the humans using their own generator to shut down the crossroads and crush the enemy fleet was terrifying. They'd unleashed so much power ... he shuddered, unable to comprehend what he'd seen. He'd grown up in a universe where nothing could vaporise a warcruiser instantly unless the crew did something insanely stupid like flying straight into a star. Now ...
"Signal the enemy." Admiral Yagami's voice broke the silence. "Inform them that we will accept their surrender."
"Aye, Admiral," the little human said.
Observer Salix said nothing. He couldn't tell - he couldn't even guess - how many ships had been wiped out in a handful of hellish seconds. The display insisted that forty starships had died ... how many more, he asked himself, had been on the wrong side of the crossroads when it collapsed? He had no way to know what had happened to them ... or, for that matter, what had happened to the enemy crossroads generator. Had it been destroyed too? Or was it powering up for another try?
"No response," the little human said.
"There aren't enough ships in realspace to surrender," Observer Salix said. He wasn't meant to offer advice so openly, but he was too stunned to care. Besides, it was obvious. The humans would work it out shortly, if they hadn't already. "They'll have to take your message to the ships in multispace."
"True," Admiral Yagami agreed. She looked at her subordinate. "Have the signal relayed to a drone, then order it through the crossroads."
"Aye, Admiral."
"And then signal the planet, wide beam," Admiral Yagami added. There was an ugly note in her voice. "Inform them we want their surrender."
Observer Salix felt a flicker of admiration, mingled with concern. There were warships from at least fifteen different major powers within the system, none of which would want Antigen to become a human possession. But they'd have bare moments to act ... if they took control of the system now, asserting the Pashtali no longer held it, they'd stave off a shift to human control. And yet, if they did, they'd be effectively declaring war. The act would force them to take more and more territory, triggering off a large-scale feeding frenzy. The Pashtali would be in deep trouble ...
No, he told himself. The war would be over, and they would have lost, before the fighting had a chance to begin.
"Admiral," the little human said. "The planet has been declared a protectorate. Galactic forces are taking possession of the high orbitals now, and readying themselves to land troops on the surface. There's been no comment from the planetary government, not yet, but they don't have the forces to resist a hostile takeover."
"Good," Admiral Yagami said. She turned her attention to the display. "And the enemy fleet?"
"The drone just popped back from multispace," her aide said. "The enemy fleet is retreating. It's over."
No, Observer Salix thought. It's only just begun.
***
Naomi studied the display, not daring to speak as the drone downloaded its sensor records into the command network. She knew her forces had taken a beating. She'd feared the Pashtali would try to rush the crossroads, in a final desperate attempt to win the engagement - or at least make sure they took the human race down with them. Instead ... she felt hope blossom in her heart. The battle was over and she'd won, in all senses of the word. It was irritating to be robbed of the fruits of her victory - technically, Antigen was hers now - but the planet would be a poisoned chalice to whoever wound up in charge. And there was no way the new owners could blame her for it.
"Signal Earth," she ordered. "Inform them ..."
She paused, unsure what to say. We have met the enemy and he is ours? We won, so there?
"Inform them we won the battle," she said. They might just have won the war. The Galactics were already starting to occupy enemy territory. The Pashtali weren't insane. They were on the brink of total defeat. They'd know they needed to put an end to the war as quickly as possible, even if it meant conceding human independence and that of their allies. "And now they have to win the peace."
"Aye, Admiral."
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Solar City, Earth
"Welcome," Ambassador Yasuke said. He kept his voice calm and even, although it was the oddest peace conference he'd ever attended, let alone mediated. The Pashtali dominated one side of the chamber - five giant spider-like beings, so implacably hostile Yasuke was sure they were already planning a war of revenge - while the other was split between the humans and their allies. Individually, none of them were a great power; collectively, they could give any major power a run for its money. "We are gathered here to discuss a permanent settlement that will end the war."
He let the words hang in the air for a long, cold moment. It had taken nearly three months to organise the conference, three months during which the galactic balance of power had shifted rapidly. The Pashtali had abandoned large swathes of space, pulling their forces back to defend their homeworlds, but that had led to fighting amongst the gathered vultures. Under the circumstances, Yasuke thought the humans and their allies had behaved with remarkable restraint. They'd secured shipping lanes to ensure they could move goods from one system to another, but otherwise they'd refrained from taking territory for themselves. It spoke well of them, Yasuke thought, and galactic opinion generally agreed. The humans had more friends, now, than they'd expected. It wouldn't last, but - for the moment - they could bask in the warmth and relax.
"The terms have been proposed," he said. Both parties had fired off position papers - the humans surprisingly reasonable, the Pashtali unsurprisingly unreasonable - before the conference had started. "Now, we must discuss how to turn those proposals into something everyone can accept."
He braced himself, then motioned for the Pashtali to speak. They were the senior race ... although, perhaps, not for much longer. They were still powerful, but their ability to project military power had been sharply curtailed. Yasuke had seen intelligence assessments suggesting it would be at least a decade before the Pashtali could start retaking their lost territory, let alone resuming the invasion of human space. They needed peace and yet, if they refused to make concessions, the war might go on. And then ...
We are pushing for a permanent peace, he told himself, as the aliens began. And if we address most of the issues here and now, we can put an end to the fighting for good.
But he knew, as the Pashtali speaker droned on, that that might be insanely optimistic.
***
It was a great honour, Abraham had been told, for the peace talks to be held on Earth. The Pashtali had conceded the point without a fight, something that suggested - to the diplomats - that they wanted the war over as much as their erstwhile enemies. Personally, Abraham suspected they simply didn't care. They'd spent most of a month haggling over minor details, a stalling tactic that won them time to stabilise their lines and rebuild their forces. The hell of it was that they could have stalled even longer. The human race needed time to rebuild, too.
He stood in his office, staring out at the darkening city. The human race had celebrated, when they'd heard the news, but now reality was starting to bite. The Pashtali had lost the battle, and they now had too many other enemies taking bites out of their territory, yet they'd stubbornly refused to concede peace. Abraham had made an offer, shortly after the battle, that would have settled everything, but the Pashtali had said nothing. He feared that portended ill for the future. If they decided to bide their time and wait ...
His heart sank. He wished he'd been able to take part in the discussions himself, but he'd been told - gently, but firmly - that his presence would be unhelpful. The ambassadors would speak for their governments, of course, yet they'd also take the fall if the talks went off the rails or failed completely. It had never struck him as fair to blame an ambassador for following government policy and making the poor bastard the scapegoat if the policy turned out to be a bad idea, but it was part of their jobs. Their government would blame the disaster on the ambassador and everyone else would pretend to believe them. He just hoped the ambassadors were rewarded for their role in the affair.
The intercom bleeped. "Sir," Rachel said. "Ambassador Middleton has arrived."
"Send her in, and bring some coffee and sandwiches," Abraham said. If he was any judge, the ambassador would need refreshment. The Pashtali had declined to allow food to be served during the talks. He had no idea if that was out of a desire to make the talks go quicker or if it was just petty spite. "And then hold all my calls."
"Yes, sir," Rachel said.
Abraham turned as Nancy Middleton was shown into the chamber. She looked as if she'd been in the wars; tired, drained, keeping herself going through sheer force of will. Abraham had no idea if the Pashtali had more endurance than their human counterparts, but it hardly mattered. He reminded himself it had only been a few days since the talks began. By galactic standards, that was unbelievably fast.
