A Call to Arms Page 6

  “The area is secure, isn’t it, Lieutenant?” Dawson asked Svetlanov pointedly.

  “I’ve managed to compensate for some of the radiation interference, Captain,” the lithe woman said, still not turning her attention away from her console. “That cruiser we passed was the Horatio, and I’ve got the remains of the Kirov and the Cook on scanners.” She paused slightly. “I’ve now also isolated three distinct derelicts that are of N’xin origin, all of them frigates.”

  “That’s only a fraction of the force that was here,” Dawson said, trying to keep an ear out on the progress Hawthorne was making.

  “I’ll keep looking,” Svetlanov said, rather redundantly. “There’s a huge radiation band where we entered normal space, suggesting further debris behind us, but we’ll need to adjust our line-of-sight to get a better read on it.”

  “Noted,” Dawson said, but making no effort to move the Yorktown just yet. They still had unaccounted for bogies, and missing allied vessels. They could be in the radiation belt Svetlanov had mentioned… or they could be out there, hiding, lying in wait. “What’s the status of the colony?”

  There was a few moments of silence. “Emissions quiet, Captain,” Lieutenant Yi said finally said from his console.

  “Scan the colony,” Dawson snapped at Svetlanov, but she was already ahead of him.

  “It’s gone,” the woman said, her thickly-accented voice breaking as she bought the scan results up on the viewscreen. Where a colony of thousands had once stood was a series of blackened craters – all of varying sizes, indicating a myriad use of ordinance – starting at its northern quadrant and winding its way to the southern harbour region. Brush fires were still burning, and the scanners were having to compensate for the smoke obscuring the aerial view.

  Dawson silently cursed.

  “Let’s not hang around people,” he said, taking a controlling breath and letting it out slowly as he collected his panicked thoughts. “Let’s save who we can and get out of here.” As he returned to his command chair, feeling far heavier than the ships artificial gravity ever could, he made eye contact with his First Officer. “I guess they win this round.”

  *

  “Still no word?”

  Patrick Hunter hadn’t moved from his standing position in his office for a couple of hours now, and his back and legs were starting to ache – a curious sensation, since his genetic enhancements should have precluded such sensations until a great deal more time had gone past. A sign of getting old.

  The sun was starting its afternoon descent, the high cliffs that surrounded the estate Hunter had made his home decades ago shielding it, its warm rays giving way to a slight chill as night time approached slowly. It had been a long day as it was – corporate takeovers always had that effect on him – and the night was set to be even longer.

  Located on a mountainous island half the size of Tasmania, and barely an hour’s flight from the outer suburbans of the Citadel, it was home to a sprawling palace, three storeys high, containing nearly fifty fully equipped bedrooms – most of which were used by staff or minor guests – twenty bathrooms, a ballroom, and a separate banquet hall that could house a hundred people easily, with three full-sized conference rooms, a lecture theatre, and a gym and swimming pool area. The bedroom suites were divided evenly across two wings, east and west, and each wing was adorned by small office towers that rose like a barbican on an ancient castle.

  As if that wasn’t enough – and with Patrick, who had tripled the record fortune he’d inherited, and felt a need to show-off, there was no such thing as enough – nine self-sufficient cottages formed a perimeter around the mansion – this was where VIPs stayed, if Patrick had any over, and, as someone who was always forming business or political alliances, he always did.

  “No,” Patrick grumbled. “The politicians, for once, seemed to have managed to keep this tightly under wraps – my sources can’t confirm anything, and I’m not game trying to weasel my way into the Government Information Net.”

  “That’ll be a first for you,” Michael chuckled weakly.

  “I haven’t tried it in years, thank you,” Patrick replied archly, though he was secretly amused. “It became more trouble than it was worth… like Bridgette…” he said the name like a curse, grateful to be done with that meddling woman… though not grateful that she’d taken a hundred million of his well-earned money.

  In the reflection in the window, he saw Michael nod slowly in understanding. “But your sources can’t deny anything, either, can they?”

  Patrick smiled grimly. “Naturally.” He finally turned away from the window and approached his desk. “I assume you gave James the documents?”

  “Naturally,” Michael echoed, offering a mirthless smile of his own. He had wanted to go home some time ago, but Patrick had insisted he stayed with him until they had a definite conclusion as to what had happened over New Haven. “He said he’d get them back to me soon.”

  “Good.”

  “James did register his surprise at our expanding our influence in the shipyard business, though.” The way Michael phrased it, and his trailing off at the end, suggested to Patrick that James wasn’t the only one who was stymied by the change in business priorities of HB&S.

  “War is good for business, Michael,” Patrick said, clutching the back of his chair as he straightened up behind it. He ordered the food dispenser in the wall to the left of his desk to prepare him a cup of coffee; a steaming mug appeared seconds later – black, one sugar.

  “Isn’t peace good for business, too?”

  “Of course it is,” Patrick said, smiling as he ran a hand over his face tiredly as he leaned over and took the mug. He took a sniff, savouring its bitter aroma. “But we’ve been at peace for too long, we’ve tapped out in those markets, Michael. We haven’t had a decent windfall in over two decades. If we expand more into the right industries, though…”

  “We’ll make a killing,” Michael finished, arching an eyebrow in surprise. “I thought we were reasonably positioned in those markets.”

  “Many thing so… but I don’t,” Patrick said firmly. It was difficult for him to admit, after all: he, along with the other executives of HB&S, had spent the past decade doing their best to pretend that the trouble along the frontier was trivial, was contained and wouldn’t affect their business model. We were too slow to act, he chided himself – if he’d been able, he’d have kicked his ass over such complacency. “If we don’t position ourselves now, we may get left behind.” He narrowed his eyes menacingly. “We do have a position to maintain, Mikey.”

  Michael instinctively wrinkled his nose at the used of his shortened name – something he had in common with most of his siblings. “Position isn’t everything, father,” Michael said. “There’s only so much money the family can spend, after all.”

  Patrick waved him off – it had been quite a number of years since he and Michael – the heir-apparent – had broached on this topic… and Michael still didn’t seem to understand his father. Or I don’t understand him.

  “Like James, you completely misunderstand my motivations,” Patrick said. He wasn’t bitter – far from it, he appreciated the fact that each one of his children were very different from both him and each other. “I don’t care if we’re the richest, or the second-richest, or so on… I care more about our standing in the Commonwealth community; I care about the amount of influence we can wield.” He pulled the chair out and promptly sat down. “Do you think we’d command the same level of respect if we weren’t the number-one family in the Commonwealth?”

  Michael looked sceptical. “If you’re only interested in the power, father, why haven’t you entered politics? In politics, power can flow through the barrel of a gun.”

  Patrick rolled his eyes – that was a question he got asked so often, he refused to entertain even answering the question. He had his reasons for not entering politics – at any level. Chief among them, I can’t stand most politicians. This was especially true of politici
ans from Elysium, who all seemed to think that the answer to any problem had to include the government.

  “Is there anything else, Michael?” Patrick asked sourly. If Michael was annoyed that his father hadn’t answered the question, he didn’t show it, instead opting to shake his head.

  “Just waiting, like you, on word from New Haven… then I’ll be heading home to put the kids to bed.”

  Patrick nodded slowly, and as he did so, his VA flared to life with a stream of communication links assailing him.

  “Won’t be waiting very long then,” he murmured as Michael’s eyes flashed – obviously his son was receiving the same type of messages he was. “Not very long at all.”

  *

  Dawson squinted in the harsh light of the hangar deck as he looked out over the tattered and bruised masses, and shivered. The mag-con field at the end of the bay retained atmosphere well enough, but it didn’t just bleed heat out into space – it haemorrhaged it. But it wasn’t just the lack of heat in the bay that was sending a winter chill over him, it was the lack of life around him.

  There were very few survivors from the battle – about three dozen lifeboats had survived the destruction hailing down around them before the Yorktown had arrived, and many of their occupants hadn’t survived to see rescue, either succumbing to the cold or lack of oxygen, or suffering the indignity of colliding with a piece of debris.

  Nor had anyone survived on the colony below; while the Yorktown had focused its immediate efforts on clean-up duty in orbit, probes sent down to the colony had revealed it to be completely destroyed – whether its destruction happened before or after the destruction of the defending Commonwealth forces was unclear at the moment, but ultimately, it made no difference.

  Tens of thousands – very possibly more – of human lives had died today. And they likely won’t be the last. Already, there were scattered reports of other human settlements being attacked throughout the sector, although they were

  “Captain?” Lieutenant Blake, currently in charge of this circus, approached. Dawson held up a placating hand.

  “I’m not here to get in the way, Henry,” Dawson said, his voice coming out a little strangled. “Just here for an update. A brief one, if that helps.”

  “At this point, all the medical knowledge in the world wouldn’t save most of these sods,” Blake said vexingly. “We’re looking at a seventy percent fatality rate for those in the lifeboats… and so far our rescue teams haven’t found anyone alive on the derelicts.”

  “Hardly surprising,” Dawson murmured as images of the battlefield flashed through his mind. He didn’t think he’d be able to ever shake the visage of seeing bodies – and body parts – floating in the void. “Any other Line officers?”

  “None alive yet, sir, except for Captain Shanthi, in Sickbay. The doctors think she’ll make it… with the help of a few cloned organs, perhaps. We still have a few escape pods to recover… and then there are the derelicts themselves. Some of them are reasonably intact, they could still house survivors.”

  Dawson sighed. All the answers to this mess would have to come from Shanthi, then… not that there was much in the way of a mystery of what had happened. The Commonwealth had clearly been outmanoeuvred at New Haven… and now the war, which had been brewing for a decade, was on. “Carry on, Lieutenant. But we cannot afford to linger for too long. No telling when N’xin reinforcements will arrive.”

  “Of course, Captain.”

  The trip back to the bridge was a lonely one for Dawson, who now had to go and file an updated report on what was going on here – the loss of New Haven had rattled the High Command, and scores of ships were flooding into the sector to help shore up their borders – despite the fact that a Cold War had existed for nearly a decade, not much was known about the strengths and numbers of the N’xin military. So these reinforcements had better be enough.

  Chapter Three

  “I hate zero-g.”

  James clattered into the cramped cockpit of his GM Ranger-class runabout, cursing softly to himself. The runabout was designed to carry up to six people, but its cramped cabin – located directly behind the two-man open cockpit – barely accommodated half that number comfortably. Since he was the only occupant, however, that shouldn’t have been a problem.

  And it isn’t, I just don’t like this feeling of swimming out of water. Until he reached space, he was reasonably comfortable in the 0.68 gravity that Menacor enjoyed, but the zero-g of space – the runabout had no artificial gravity – sent a shiver up his spine.

  He’d been on Menacor for nearly five days – five gruelling days on an uncomfortably cold colony world that had too few people, and too little infrastructure. If he’d had his way, his business would have been handled over the extranet… but alas, Menacor didn’t have the resources, at this stage in its development, to spare that sort of bandwidth for prolonged periods.

  And so, James had to travel to Elysium, then commute to Calder II, before travelling for three days to Menacor, all to depose a potential witness to rape/murder on Bastion just a week after New Year’s, three months ago.

  “You always say that, but this deposition was essential.” Casey Vance – when her reply finally got through the transmission lag imposed by the vast distance between their two planets – sounded amused at his misfortune, her soprano-like voice taking on a sing-song quality. “If it makes you feel any better, the cops are already on their way to arrest Clinton O’Dwyer.”

  “It doesn’t, but I’m glad that prick is going to be off-the-streets.” James said as he lowered himself into the pilot seat, his VA keying the ignition system for the shuttle’s engines, letting out a sigh as the cockpit powered-up. “Ms. Goldmont will be leaving, with her escort, tomorrow.”

  “Understood.”

  James sighed as his hands moved over the console in front of him. “I hate space-flight, too… did I mention that?”

  “No, you haven’t, and no, you don’t,” Casey replied, cackling. “Or you wouldn’t have gotten your pilots licence… and I happen to know for a fact that you look at yachts in your spare time.” She let out a chuckle, and James rolled his eyes – she was right, as much as he hated zero-g, he almost romanticized the idea of space-flight. “How long until you return?”

  James did a rough calculation. “About twelve days – I’m flying straight to Elysium, this time, not stopping off at Celeste II. Not safe, this close to a potential warzone.”

  “Understood. I assume you’ve told Jennifer your ETA?”

  James smiled. “Of course, and I’m sending you a copy of the deposition as we speak.”

  Casey signed off after an exchange of farewells, and James powered up the anti-gravs and sublight engine. Within minutes, he was surging through the atmosphere towards the cold vacuum of space. His was the only small craft around – the only other spacecraft nearby was an ungainly-looking elderly freighter, the Marignano, currently in a parking orbit and waiting for James’ bug-like shuttle to pass it.

  Even while wearing magnetized boots – to keep him firmly rooted to the floor – the feeling of weightlessness was an unpleasant sensation, as if he’d shed a good portion of his weight while also submerging himself in water. James fervently wished that his brother’s research into artificial gravity would develop a generator small enough to implant on a shuttlecraft.

  A keening wail from one of his auxiliary consoles attracted James attention as the final wisps of atmosphere dissipated from his viewport.

  “What the hell?” he murmured, as if demanding an immediate answer from the computer, even as he studied the readouts, his stomach falling through the floor as it turned ice cold. “Oh, fuck off!”

  Eyes widening in shock – or terror – he looked out the viewport of the cockpit in horror, as a trio of N’xin warships – cruisers, from the looks of them, not that James was an expert – decelerated just a few tens of thousands kilometres in front of him.

  Whatever their class was, they were big, their frame suggesting
a solidness Commonwealth designs appeared to lack, with darkened armour along its flanks and its bow, oversized engines sizzling at the back as they angled in towards the planet.

  They hadn’t even been in real-space five seconds before a furious salvo of energy was unleashed by the right-most vessel, slicing into the descending Marignano, shredding it into millions of tiny flaming pieces like confetti. Additional weapons fire flared from the other two vessels – un-aimed, unguided pulses of plasma energy, fired more to inspire fear and announce their arrival than any serious attempt at destroying anything.

  This far out, they can’t even hit the settlement. Prompted by the advice displayed by his virtual-vision, James juked and dunked his shuttle as randomly as possible as he made a beeline for the sole moon that orbited Menacor. If he could make it there, he reasoned, he could use it as a shield and buy himself time to flee into FTL.

  The N’xin had not come alone, however: just moments after the death of the Marignano, a Commonwealth heavy cruiser – one of the new Ithaca-class ones, from the size of its plasma cannons – and an Atlanta-class destroyer flashed into the space behind the N’xin; they wasted even less time than the N’xin in unleashing their arsenals, and soon the space between both groups was alive with lances of deadly energy.

  Instinctively, James hit goosed the throttle and banked his shuttle sharply to port, his gaze flicking down to the engineering readout, and the status of the FTL capacitor, and cursing at its apparent slowness. I knew I should have brought a bigger shuttle.

  Because of the size of the FTL drive on this shuttle, it would take several minutes for the capacitors to gain enough charge to propel the shuttle into so-called ‘warp space’… but that was time he didn’t have in abundance.

  Luckily for James – and rather insultingly – it seemed his vehicle wasn’t worth the time or energy to destroy; despite his proximity to the interlopers making him an easy target. At this range, a single bolt of plasma would wipe his little shuttle from the face of the galaxy, and his vaporized remains would be swept away by the solar winds.