Equilibrium, page 12
part #3 of Scattered Stars: Conviction Series
Sitz had been K79-L’s Captain, the woman with her finger on the self-destruct button when Bueller had disabled the system and shot her.
“I think if we distribute this little recording, it will remind people of where our Brisingr hands stand,” Zoric suggested. “Though…seriously, Konrad? Your people can’t go home?”
“Nooo.” Bueller shook his head and swallowed a probably overlarge mouthful of the cocktail. “Definitely more me than the rest, but treason is the word you’re looking for. That’s the description of handing a Brisingr capital ship over to a mercenary squadron working for a ninth-rate power on the edge of the Rim.
“That’s excluding the fact that all of us were entirely open with the RRF shipyard people as we went through the ship. The RRF now knows almost as much about the K70 class as anyone in the Brisingr Kaiserreich Navy.
“Even the most junior of the crew who stayed is guilty of at least two types of treason—and then we factor in that all of the spacers were still active-duty BKN personnel, seconded to the exploration company. So, add desertion to the list.
“Desertion in time of peace, but all we’d get back home is a jail cell,” he reminded them. “That’s how pissed the people who are left are at the Equilibrium Institute, Kavitha, Kira. They made us murderers and we will never forgive them for that.”
The dining room was silent, and Kira took a long drink from her beer bottle.
“Distribute the speech if you think it will help,” she told Zoric. “For now, though…I believe this was a dinner invite?”
“Yeah. Let me call David,” Zoric told them. “I figured we’d get this out of the way first. The tension between my old mercs, Bueller's ex-BKN hands and the new Redward recruits… It’s a pain in my ass.”
“If we’ve only had one fistfight, I think we’re doing just fine,” Kira replied. “That’s what I’d expect from an actual professional military…which we are most definitely not.”
20
“I read the database entries on that planet and looked at pictures, and I still think it’s uglier in person.”
Davidović’s observation summed up Kira’s feelings on Wilhelm. The planet was on the small side, with barely sixty percent of Earth’s gravity, with a barely breathable atmosphere, no potable water, and an average temperature that would turn any potable water to ice.
Somehow, it still had plant and animal life. None of said life was edible to humans, but it did provide the barely breathable atmosphere.
“About a third of the population of the Costar Clans lives on Wilhelm,” Zoric replied. “Twelve million people, with another four million stretched across the system. The asteroids here are worth mining, and I think every inhabited system in the Cluster has made a go at colonizing Wilhelm.”
“And ran out of resources to ship food,” Davidović said. “I’m familiar with the history.”
“More importantly,” Kira cut in, “what are we seeing for threats?”
She was in her Hoplite, but the Coalition Fleet hadn’t launched their fighters yet. She wasn’t seeing anything in terms of mobile threats on her own feeds, which made her nervous.
“There are fixed orbital defenses above Wilhelm, but they’re trash,” Davidović told her. “We had a plan to actually use missiles against them.”
Kira blinked.
“They can’t be that bad,” she argued. The stations would have multiphasic jammers aboard, even if they hadn’t come online yet.
“Orbital dynamics are orbital dynamics,” Davidović said. “They don’t have the Harrington coils to maneuver much, so smart missiles can nail down their positions with a decent degree of accuracy before they enter the jamming zone.”
“They still have plasma guns,” Kira pointed out. “I’m not sure the missiles are that cheap.”
Even if the stations were completely unable to move themselves from their fixed orbits, they’d be able to shoot down missiles by the dozen in the final light-second, where the artificial stupids would have to basically fly straight.
“Cheaper than dead ships,” Zoric said. “Scans are clear of ships, Basketball. Looks like even the freighters have left the system. It’s creepy as hell and worrying.”
Kira’s headware pinged on the fleet command channel and she switched over.
“Basketball.
“Demirci, it’s Admiral Kim. Are your people seeing what we’re seeing?”
“If you mean nothing, yeah,” Kira agreed, reviewing the data in the virtual display in front of her. “We’re making seven fortresses and about two hundred defensive satellites in orbit of Wilhelm. One of the asteroid habitat clusters has two fortresses and thirty or so satellites. Everything that can nova appears to be gone.”
“That’s exactly what I’m seeing,” Kim said. “We fabricated around a thousand smart missiles to use against the Wilhelm fortresses. Analysis says we’ll lose ninety percent of them, but it doesn’t take many big nukes to mission-kill fortresses that small.”
“That wasn’t in the plan dockets I went over,” Kira said. “When did that happen?”
“This was somewhere around Plan N, Demirci,” the Admiral replied. “We were expecting to have to clear gunships and corvettes. What’s making me think twice is that they haven’t raised their jammers. They’re waiting to see what we do.”
“They might be thinking about surrender,” Kira said slowly. “That would fit. We shredded their fixed defenses without losses at Arti, and enough ships left Arti that they know what we did.”
“Agreed.” The Coalition Fleet commander was silent for a few seconds. “I trust your judgment, Kira. Most of the rest of our subcommanders have blood going back years with the Clans. What do you think?”
Kira hadn’t even considered that, but Kim was right. The Costar Clans had been the primary opponent of any significant military force in the Cluster for a century—and the honors, by and large, had been pretty even.
Every senior officer in the Coalition Fleet had killed Costar Clans raiders and lost crews to them in turn. Even Kim, who was bending over backward to follow her King’s orders.
“I think it costs you nothing to talk and could save lives on both sides,” she finally said. “If we can get the Kaiser Clans to surrender without a fight, that’s half the population of the Costar Clans under Redward protection. Half their systems.”
“Only about a third of their industry and their raider construction,” Kim countered. “The Kiln is the biggest source of their actual ships. But you’re right. A chance for a bloodless victory.
“Thank you.”
“You’re the one who has to talk them down,” Kira said. “Good luck.”
For the second time in a week, Kira watched as Admiral Ylva Kim sent a mass transmission to the Costar Clans. This time, an entire planet was getting the transmission—a planet that had been settled and abandoned at least fourteen times. Each colony had left behind a small cluster of determined homesteaders who wouldn’t give up their new farms.
Those farms and the assorted abandoned miners had built a series of hardscrabble communities across the planet. Twelve million people sounded like a lot, but it was nothing versus a planet. The largest settlement any of the Coalition Fleet could detect was maybe half a million people.
“Kaiser Clans, I am Admiral Ylva Kim,” Kim introduced herself. “From the absence of nova-capable shipping in the Kaiser System, I assume you are aware of the existence and mission of the Coalition Fleet.
“It is my task, as mandated by the monarchs of the Redward System and by the leadership of the systems of the Syntactic Cluster Free Trade Zone, to bring an end to the threat of the Costar Clans’ raiders.
“When the dust settles here today, the Kaiser System will be a protectorate of the Kingdom of Redward,” she said firmly. “Ulli Novak is already preparing their divisions for an assault landing on Wilhelm and hostile boarding operations on the stations and habitats throughout this system.
“We have a plan in place to neutralize your orbital defenses. You lack the industry and technology of a major inhabited system and so you lack the traditional invulnerability of a home system.
“We are aware of the situations and problems that you have faced here in Kaiser. We of Redward are as guilty as anyone else of failing to provide the support you needed to survive. That changes today. As a protectorate of the Redward crown, King Larry and Queen Sonia will take direct responsibility for your situation.
“Tomorrow will be a better day for us all,” Kim told them. “But today you must decide if that tomorrow is one you will accept peacefully. Stand down your defensive stations and turn over control of your armories to Major General’s Novak’s people, and this transition can happen with a minimum of bloodshed—hopefully none.
“Fight me and I will break your defenses with fire and steel. I have fought the Costar Clans for my entire professional career. I will not weep to send more of your raiders to hell—but that is the past that we must all put behind us if the Syntactic Cluster is to rise above what we have been.
“My King, my Queen, they see a future where we stand together. I will work toward that vision until my dying breath. Your children will benefit from that vision no matter what you do today…but if you stand down, so will you.”
The transmission ended and Kira studied her scanners. The orbital forts’ jammers were still down. Everything looked very quiet.
“Helmet,” she hailed Sagairt. “Get your interceptors into space for assault-shuttle escort duty. Hold back the fighter-bombers for now but have them prep for mass launch.”
“What are you thinking, Commodore?” Sagairt said.
“I think the Admiral’s little speech might have an effect. I’m also thinking that I trust the Clans and the Institute as I far as I can throw that planet over there. So, let’s be very, very paranoid.”
“I can live with that. Interceptors launching. Standing by for updates from the Admiral.”
Kira cut the channel and turned her attention to the gray and ill-looking world ahead of them.
“Well?” she murmured. “Are we playing games?”
“Commodore, we have a signal from the surface,” Davidović reported. “The orbital stations have deactivated their sensors and appear to be commencing an evacuation.”
“Signal is for the Admiral?” Kira asked.
“It’s broad enough that we’re getting it too,” the tactical officer reported. “There’s a lot of hedging around the fact that nobody actually runs all of Wilhelm, but they’re ordering the stations to stand down.”
“Everyone who wants to fight loaded up and ran,” Kira guessed. “Those forts aren’t worth anything, so they’re concentrating forces for an old-fashioned slugging match with the Coalition Fleet somewhere.”
“My guess, too,” Davidović agreed. “And given everything I know about the Clans…it’s going to be at the Kiln.”
“Wonderful,” Kira said. “That’s our next stop.”
21
The Redward Army was going to have a busy few years, Kira suspected. The initial landings and boardings had gone unopposed so far, but the people left in Kaiser had been abandoned by their supposed champions.
Taking the Costar Clans Systems was proving easier than she’d feared so far, but holding them was going to be another problem. Given time, she had faith in Queen Sonia’s ability to keep Redward’s promises, but…she didn’t necessarily think the Clans were going to give their occupiers that time.
That was the army’s problem, though. Her attention was locked on an RRF fast courier making a rapid approach to Perseus. She had just poured herself a cup of coffee—some of the Royal Reserve Sonia had given her—when the ship had novaed into Kaiser, and now she was waiting to hear what the news was.
She had work to do, but she suspected the courier’s cargo was more important than going through the engineers’ assessment of whether Wilhelm’s orbital forts could support a squadron of Sinister fighter-bombers.
The ping on her headware wasn’t really a surprise. A ship-to-ship coms request from Perseus.
“Commodore Demirci,” she answered it, her gaze still locked on the tactical display. The courier was now physically docked to the carrier, which meant she was well inside the defensive perimeter of the Coalition Fleet.
“Demirci, you can imagine how much crap is on one of our fast couriers right now,” Admiral Kim greeted her gruffly. “But there’s a My Eyes Only message from the Queen as head of the Office of Integration, and she’s requested that I bring you in as well.”
“Don’t you have senior subordinates of your own?” Kira said with a chuckle. “I’m not objecting to the Queen’s trust—or yours, Admiral—but I’m not RRF.”
“That’s part of why I’m leaning on you, Demirci,” Kim told her. “Plus, you have an outside perspective that’s valuable. Regardless of whether I trust you, Her Majesty clearly does. Shall we see her message?”
“I am at your and Her Majesty’s service until the transfers start bouncing,” Kira replied. “Link me in.”
She flicked the channel to her desk, replacing the tactical display with the image of the blonde admiral. A moment later, the image split, moving Kim into the background as the image of Queen Sonia appeared.
The slim Queen sat behind a massive desk, half-covered in data chips. Her hands were laid flat on the aged wooden surface and her eyes were level…and tired.
“Ylva, Kira, we received your reports from the Arti System,” she told them. “It sounds like things went as well as we could hope, though I’ve bad news for your mission: I need you to accelerate your operations.
“As of my recording this message, our allies supporting the Coalition Fleet are staying in, but I don’t know how much longer that’s going to last,” the Queen said calmly. “I would not count on keeping all of your ships for the full operation. The international situation in the Syntactic Cluster has…clarified but not in a good way.”
That sounded bad to Kira. Sonia’s Office of Integration was the group responsible for bringing all of the data from the various civil and military intelligence services together under one roof and assembling the best possible view of the outside galaxy from them.
“We have received some formal communication from Bengalissimo since the coup,” Sonia told them. “And I have learned that there is apparently a school of thought on Bengalissimo that because the first two monarchs were Queens, Queen Ilaria’s eldest daughter should have inherited the throne instead of her eldest child, her son.
“Since no one challenged King Celestino’s ascension, his daughter’s ascension or her son’s ascension, that has mostly remained a purely theoretical argument for a certain type of historian or royalist.
“King Isidoro was unquestioned in his rightful claim to his mother’s throne,” she noted. “Except now he’s dead and we have no idea what’s happened to his two children. And under that esoteric and forgotten school of thought, the supposedly rightful heir would the eldest daughter of the eldest daughter of the eldest daughter of Queen Ilaria.”
Kira realized where this was going and grimaced.
“Which, as it turns out, is Her Royal Majesty Queen Rossella the First, formerly Admiral Rossella Gaspari,” Sonia said levelly. “We have received formal notification of her ascension to the throne of Bengalissimo.
“We have also received formal notification that Bengalissimo has withdrawn from the Syntactic Cluster Free Trade Zone.” Sonia shook her head and sighed. “That’s all the formal communication we have received, but I do have sources in the Bengalissimo System.”
The whole mess stank of Equilibrium to Kira, but it sounded like Gaspari had kept that inheritance in the back of her mind for a while. Not many people woke up on the wrong side of fifty and suddenly decided that their vague claim to the throne was worth killing a bunch of people for.
“Those sources tell me the tone of Queen Rossella’s story so far,” Sonia said grimly. “She is claiming that the Yprian Federation is a false front for a Redward occupation of the Ypres System, pointing to the Coalition Fleet campaign against the Clans as proof of our sudden aggression and expansionism.
“I’m not sure of exact numbers, but roughly half of the Parlamento members have been executed for treason for cooperating with the FTZ,” the Queen said. “Politicians who strived to make the entire Cluster a better place are now dead, murdered for having not somehow put Bengalissimo above all others.”
Sonia looked at the recorder.
“I am finding it difficult not to be spectacularly angry at Queen Rossella,” she admitted. “But we cannot make decisions that turn the fates of stars and millions of souls based on our personal feelings.
“We will attempt to negotiate with Rossella, but I expect that her anti-FTZ position will make many of the smaller members of both the FTZ and the Coalition Fleet nervous. We will see them withdraw their ships to secure their own systems and nearby trade-route stops.
“While it feels hypocritical, I urge you to move against the next system as quickly as possible. We must secure as many of the Clan Systems as we can while we have the resources. We will not hold those systems and ships to their promises when they are afraid.”
A simplified three-dimensional map of the Cluster appeared in front of Sonia, showing the positions of Redward, Ypres and Bengalissimo. The three stars formed an even-sided triangle, with Redward at the center of the Cluster, Ypres at the inner coreward side, and Bengalissimo sitting north of them at the “top” of the Cluster relative to old Earth.
“Given our general lack of communication from the new Bengalissimo government, we’re mostly guessing on what they’re going to do next,” the Queen reminded them. “That said, most of my analysts are agreed that they’re going to have to move against Ypres, given their propaganda. We expect to see some attempt at blockading the Ypres System in the near future…and with it, the entire Syntactic Cluster.
“Until Bengalissimo moves, the Costar Clans remain the largest known threat in the Cluster. If at all possible, we want them neutralized before we need to move against Rossella. In all honesty…”
