A Rising Thunder

Chapter Twenty-Six

“Are you sure about this, Commodore?”

The man on Commodore Sean Magellan’s display wore the gray and black uniform of Agueda Astro Control and a profoundly worried expression. Magellan didn’t blame him; he was more than a little unhappy about his assignment himself.

But unhappy wasn’t the same thing as hesitant, and he felt the eagerness simmering in his blood as the moment approached.

“Yes, Captain Forstchen,” the commodore replied far more calmly than he felt. “I’m quite sure.”

Captain Lewis Forstchen’s gray-blue eyes looked even more worried at Magellan’s response. He clearly didn’t like where this was going, but there wasn’t a lot he could do about it.

“My government’s not going to like this,” he pointed out.

“I’m afraid there’s a lot of that going around these days, Captain,” Magellan said. “And the good news is that we don’t really need your help for this transit. So you can just sit back and watch, and your own sensor records will prove that’s all you did.”

Forstchen started to say something else, but he stopped himself in time. As Magellan had just pointed out, electronic records of his and the Agueda System in general’s innocence might come in very handy in the not-too-distant future. Personally, Magellan expected that “not too distant” day to be considerably more distant than Forstchen apparently did.

On the other hand, it could turn out Forstchen had a point.

“For the record, Captain,” he said, “your objection and your government’s protests are formally noted. And on behalf of my government, I extend the sincere regrets of the Star Empire of Manticore for the potentially invidious position in which the Agueda System’s been placed. Unfortunately, the current…unpleasantness between the Star Empire and the Solarian League leaves us little choice. I regret that, but I’m afraid I’ll have to be moving on now.” He inclined his head courteously at the com. “Magellan, clear.”

The display blanked, and he turned to the compact, squarely built captain on the far smaller display linking him to HMS Otter’s command deck.

“Are we ready, Art?” he asked.

“Just about, Sir,” Captain Arthur Talmadge replied. “Mind you, I’d really have preferred not to dispense with Astro Control’s services quite so cavalierly.” He smiled. “I know our charts were updated just before we left, but I find myself longing for a local guide.”

“And if we could’ve found a local guide for this terminus anywhere in the home system, he’d be right there on the bridge with you,” Magellan pointed out with a half-smile of his own. “Since we couldn’t, he isn’t. So let’s not spend our time dwelling on things we wish we had and don’t.”

“Point taken, Sir,” Talmadge agreed, and the glanced at his own executive officer. “Ready, Colleen?”

“Yes, Sir.” Commander Colleen Salvatore nodded.

“David?” Magellan asked, looking at Commander David Wilson, his own chief of staff.

“Yes, Sir. Jordan just receipted Malcolm Taylor’s and Selkie’s readiness readiness signals.”

“Thank you.” Magellan looked back at Talmadge. “The Squadron’s ready to proceed when you are, Captain Talmadge,” he said in a much more formal tone.

“Very good, Sir,” Talmadge responded with matching formality.

“In that case, let’s move them out.”

“Aye, aye, Sir.” Talmadge turned his command chair to face Senior Chief Cindy Powell. “Helm, take us in.”

“Aye, aye, Sir.”

Otter ghosted forward at a bare twenty gravities, moving into the invisible flaw of the Agueda Terminus. Under normal circumstances, she would have been aligned for transit and cleared by Agueda Astro Control, which would have monitored her approach vector, double and triple checking her entry into the terminus. Under the circumstances which currently obtained, she and the rest of the Thirty First Cruiser Squadron were on their own, dependent on their own charts of the terminus and its tidal stresses. The good news was that they’d been provided with the very latest charts for the terminus before they ever set out; the bad news was that none of the squadron’s ships had ever transited this particular terminus before. And the potentially really bad news was that they had absolutely no idea what they’d be sailing into on the far side.

Oh, stop that! Magellan told himself irritably. You do know what’s on the far side…more or less, anyway. And it’s not like you’re about to poke your nose into the Junction Forts, now is it?

No, it wasn’t. On the other hand, if Lacoön Two was going according to plan and no one else had managed to jump the gun, he was about to become the first naval commander in history to seize a Solarian wormhole terminus by force.

And isn’t that going to make the Sollies happy? he thought dryly.

Magellan’s slightly understrength squadron of Saganami-C-class cruisers was a long way from home: four hundred and forty-five light-years from the Manticore Binary System through hyperspace, and three hundred and twenty-seven from Beowulf. Of course, he hadn’t had to make the trip the long way. Instead, he’d moved transited from the Manticoran Junction to Beowulf, then crossed sixty-three light-years from Beowulf to the Roulette System, then transited the Roulette-Limbo hyper bridge and crossed another forty-nine light-years of hyperspace from Limbo to Agueda.

Spreading sunshine and light the entire way, he reflected. Amazing how unpopular we are.

Amazing, perhaps, but scarcely surprising. Roulette, Limbo, and Agueda were all independent (or at least nominally so) star systems. Actually, Limbo was an OFS client state, with a particularly unpleasant fellow sitting in the system’s executive mansion. President for Life Ronald Stroheim had been most unhappy to see a Royal Manticoran Navy task group suddenly appear through the wormhole terminus which he regarded as his personal cash cow. As a good, loyal OFS henchman, he got to keep somewhere around three percent of the terminus’ total revenues for himself, which made him an incredibly wealthy man. Apparently he hadn’t heard that the Star Empire had decided to start collecting termini, however, and CruRon 31’s unannounced arrival had come as a distinct shock. He seemed to feel very ill used that his neighbors in Roulette hadn’t warned him his guests were en route.

In fairness, the Roulette System’s government hadn’t been enthralled by the Manticorans’ arrival in its system, either. Although Roulette normally enjoyed cordial relations with both Beowulf and the Star Empire, it had been deliberately distancing itself from Manticore ever since news of the New Tuscany Incident hit the Solarian ’faxes. Given that Roulette was little more than a hundred light-years from the Sol System itself, it was difficult to blame President Matsuo or the rest of his government for not wanting to irritate the League. Unfortunately for them however, the Roulette Terminus was on Lacoön Two’s list, and Magellan had swooped in across the alpha wall and secured control of the terminus before anyone could make transit through it to alert Limbo of what was coming.

He’d detached one of his escorting destroyer squadrons and the CLAC Ozymandias to sit on the Roulette Terminus, then headed through to Limbo, where his ships’ emergence from the terminus associated with that star system had taken the locals completely by surprise. Unlike the Manticoran Junction, the Limbo Terminus was unfortified, and the “Limbo Space Navy” consisted of two elderly destroyers — only one of which seemed to be actively in commission at the moment — and eight LACs which had to be at least fifty T-years old. Despite their no doubt undying loyalty to President for Life Stroheim, the commanding officers of those antiquated deathtraps had declined to match broadsides with seven Saganami-C-class heavy cruisers.

Magellan couldn’t imagine why.

He’d detached his second destroyer squadron and the CLAC Midas to cover the Limbo Terminus, and then moved briskly on to Agueda.

Agueda had been just as surprised as Limbo, and not much happier to see him, although he suspected that quite a bit of President Loretta Twain’s fiery denunciation of Manticore’s “high-handed and flagrant disregard for the rights and sovereignty of independent star nations” had been more for the official record than from the heart. Unlike Roulette, Agueda was almost three hundred and fifty light years from Sol, and the citizens of Agueda didn’t much care for the repressive government of Limbo and its…affiliation with the Office of Frontier Security. Still, there were appearances to be observed, and Magellan had rigorously respected the Agueda System’s twelve-light-minute territorial limit and restricted his activities to the terminus itself. He’d been scrupulously polite, as well, and assured Captain Forstchen and President Twain that he had no intention of forcibly seizing control of Agueda Astro Control’s platforms.

Of course, he also had absolutely no intention of allowing a single Solarian-registry ship to pass through the Agueda Terminus, either, but that was quite another matter.

One nice thing about moving along the hyper bridges, he thought. Unless you call ahead, no one knows you’re coming until you arrive. He smiled thinly. Pity about that.

“Stand by to reconfigure to Warshawski sail on my command, Rung-wan,” Talmadge said.

“Aye, Sir,” Lieutenant Commander Hwo Rung-wan, Otter’s engineering officer replied. “Standing by to reconfigure.”

Talmadge nodded, watching the maneuvering plot as Senior Chief Powell gently, gently aligned Otter for transit. The ship’s icon flashed green as Powell put her flawlessly into position.

“Rig foresail for transit,” he said.

“Aye, aye, Sir. Rigging foresail — now.”

Otter’s wedge fell abruptly to half-strength as her foreword alpha nodes reconfigured to produce the circular disk of a Warshawski sail instead of contributing to her n-space drive. The sail was over six hundred kilometers in diameter, and completely useless in normal-space, but the forward end of HMS Otter was edging steadily out of n-space.

“Stand by to rig aftersail,” Talmadge said as his ship continued to creep forward under the power of her after impellers alone. A readout flickered to life in the corner of the maneuvering plot, and he watched its numerals climb steadily upward as the foresail moved deeper and deeper into the terminus. Compared to the Manticoran Wormhole Junction, the Agueda Terminus was little more than a ripple in space, but that was still orders of magnitude more powerful than anything a ship’s impeller nodes could have produced. If their charts were as accurate as everyone thought they were, he had almost twenty seconds either way as a safety margin, but if they weren’t, and if Otter strayed out of the safe window before she got her aftersail rigged, they’d never even realize they were dead.

The soaring numbers crossed the threshold. The foresail was now drawing sufficient power from the tortured grav waves twisting through the terminus to provide movement, and Talmadge nodded sharply.

“Rig aftersail now,” he said crisply.

“Rigging aftersail, aye, Sir,” Lieutenant Commander Hwo replied, and Otter twitched as her impeller wedge disappeared entirely and a second Warshawski sail sprang to life at the far end of her hull.

The transition from the impeller to sail was one of the trickier moments any coxswain had to deal with, even with the full support of a terminus’ traffic control staff. If Senior Chief Powell felt any particular anxiety, however, there was no sign of it in her rock-steady hands. They moved with complete confidence, taking Otter through the conversion with scarcely a quiver, holding her dead center as she gathered way forward.

The maneuvering plot blinked again, and — for an instant no one had ever succeeded in measuring—Otter ceased to exist in Agueda and then, equally suddenly, began to exist somewhere else. She reappeared in a dazzling burst of azure brilliance as transit energy radiated from her sails, and Powell nodded in satisfaction.

“Transit complete,” she announced.

“Thank you, Helm. Well done!” Talmadge said, but most of his attention was back on the sail interface readout, watching the numbers twinkle downward even more rapidly than they’d risen. “Engineering, reconfigure to impeller.”

“Aye, aye, Sir. Reconfiguring to impeller now.”

Otter folded her sails back into her impeller wedge and moved forward more rapidly, accelerating steadily out of the Stine Terminus, five and a half light-hours from the G5 primary of the Stine System.

“Five hundred gravities, Senior Chief,” Talmadge said.

“Five hundred gravities, aye, aye, Sir,” Powell acknowledged crisply, and Talmadge’s lips twitched as he waited for Stine Astro Control to react to his ship’s abrupt appearance.

* * *

“Sir, they’ve noticed as,” Lieutenant Jordan Rivera announced, and Commodore Magellan raised an eyebrow at his staff communications officer.

“Put it on the main display, Jordan.”

“Yes, Sir.”

An officer in the uniform of Stine Astro Control with a captain’s insignia appeared on the main com display. He had a dark complexion, a shaved head, a thick mustache, and an irate expression.

“Unknown ship!” he snarled. “Reduce acceleration immediately!”

“My, he does seem a bit unhappy,” Magellan murmured.

“Well, Sir,” Commander Wilson observed, “we are exceeding the terminus acceleration limit by about four hundred and eighty gravities. I imagine that could account for a bit of unhappiness.”

“I suppose you’re right,” the commodore conceded.

“God damn it, reduce your accel right now!” the shaven-headed captain shouted. “What the fuck d’you think you’re doing?!”

“I think he’s going to get even more unhappy just about…now,” Lieutenant Commander Sarah Tanner, Magellan’s ops officer, remarked dryly as Malcolm Taylor, his squadron’s second ship burst out of the terminus behind Otter.

Malcolm Taylor peeled off on a sharply divergent vector, accelerating just as hard as Otter, and Magellan nodded in satisfaction. Although even a relatively small terminus was an enormous volume of space, trying something like this into or out of the Manticoran Junction would have been extraordinarily dangerous. Despite the separation between inbound and outbound lanes, there was so much traffic through the Junction that the probability of a wedge-on-wedge collision would have been only too real. In Stine’s case, however, there were only a single inbound and a single outbound lane, and traffic was sparse, to say the least. He saw a single freighter’s icon on the tactical display, swinging wildly away from the terminus, even though Otter was a good forty thousand kilometers clear of her. But that was fine with him.

“Deploy the Ghost Rider platforms, Sarah,” he said. “Let’s get some eyes out there.”

“Yes, Sir. Deploying now.”

The icons of half a dozen Ghost Rider recon platforms arced away from Otter’s larger, stronger light code on the tactical plot, and he saw HMS Tiger Cub, the squadron’s third cruiser emerging from the terminus behind Malcolm Taylor.

“Who the hell are you people?!” the astro control captain on the com demanded furiously.

“Better go ahead and put me through to him, Jordan,” Magellan said.

“Yes, Sir. Live mike in three…two…one. Now.”

Magellan saw the dark-faced captain’s expression change abruptly as his own image appeared on the other man’s display. For a moment, the Solarian looked blank, but then his eyes first widened and then, almost as quickly, narrowed again as he recognized Magellan’s black-and-gold uniform.

“Commodore Sean Magellan, Royal Manticoran Navy,” Magellan said calmly.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?!” the captain challenged. “This is Solarian space!”

“Really?” Magellan replied. “Imagine that.”

The astro control officer’s complexion turned darker than ever and his jaw muscles quivered as he glared incredulously at the commodore. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out of it, as if the sheer power of his fury had paralyzed his vocal cords, and Magellan gave him a thin, cold smile.

“Actually, Captain, I’m quite aware of where I am. And I’m quite aware that the Solarian League claims sovereignty over this terminus. Unfortunately, things like that are subject to change.”

“What the hell do you mean by that?!” the captain managed to get out after another three or four seconds of rage-inspired muteness.

“I mean that jurisdiction over this terminus has just changed hands from the Solarian League to the Star Empire of Manticore,” Magellan told him flatly.

“You’re out of your fucking mind!”

“No,” Magellan responded as the fourth and fifth ships of his squadron emerged from the terminus and shifted their vectors outward to englobe it. “I’m afraid not, Captain.”

“You are if you think you can get away with this kind of crap!”

“Excuse me for asking this, Captain, but why do you think I can’t ‘get away with this kind of crap’?”

“Because—” the captain began furiously, then stopped abruptly.

“That’s what I thought,” Magellan said much more gently. And glanced back at the tactical display as HMS Wolf, the last of his cruisers emerged from the terminus…closely followed by HMS Selkie, his remaining CLAC. He didn’t know what the Solarian captain thought Selkie was, but she sure looked like a ship-of-the-wall.

“Allow me to explain this to you, Captain—?”

Magellan paused, raising both eyebrows, and waited patiently until the Solarian shook himself.

“Pálffi, Captain Cyrus Pálffi,” he grated.

“Thank you, Captain Pálffi.” Magellan nodded courteously. “I’m sure you’re well aware of the tension between the Star Empire and the League. My Empress and her Foreign Ministry have tried from the very beginning to get someone—anyone—in the League’s government to show even a modicum of willingness to find a nonmilitary way to resolve that tension. You may have noticed that we haven’t had a great deal of success in that respect.” He smiled, showing his teeth. “So Her Majesty’s Government has decided that since we can’t seem to get the League’s attention through normal diplomatic channels, it’s time to try another approach. This one.”

“What do you mean?” Pálffi asked in a tone which was at least marginally closer to normal.

“I mean that this terminus is now closed to all Solarian-registry shipping, except for courier vessels and those registered to recognized interstellar news services. It will remain closed to all Solarian traffic until further notice.”

“This is never going to stand,” Pálffi said, almost conversationally. “You and your pissant cruisers are going to need a hell of a lot more than one waller to stand up to what’s going to be headed your way as soon as Sol finds out about this.”

“By the strangest coincidence, Captain Pálffi, there’s quite a lot more headed this way,” Magellan informed him. “Although, to be honest, I don’t think we’re going to need as much more as you may believe.”

The ammunition ship HMS Bandolier emerged from the terminus, stuffed to the deckheads with missile pods and additional Mark 16 missiles for his cruisers, while he was speaking, and he smiled.

“My pinnaces will be headed your way within the next twenty minutes, Captain Pálffi,” he continued. “My Marines will come aboard your control platforms shortly thereafter. I have no desire for anyone to get hurt, and I trust you’ll feel the same. I warn you, however, that my Marines will be in battle armor and they will be authorized to use lethal force if they’re attacked or forcibly resisted. Is that understood?”

Pálffi glared at him, and Magellan cocked his head.

“I asked if that was understood, Captain,” he said in a considerably cooler voice, and his eyes hardened.

“Understood,” Pálffi got out finally, and Magellan allowed his own expression to ease slightly.

“Good. As I say, I would genuinely prefer for no one to be hurt on either side. I’m not going to pretend I’m not as pissed off as any other Manticoran, but I’m also aware that no one here in the Stine System bears any responsibility for what’s happened in the Talbott Quadrant. I’d just as soon not contribute any more to the bad blood between the Star Empire and the League then I have to under the letter of my orders.”

“Really?” Pálffi looked at him skeptically, then shrugged. “Maybe you do mean that, but it doesn’t matter what you’d ‘just as soon’ happen, Commodore. Not anymore. You’ve stepped across the line this time, and you’re a hell of a long way away from home.”

“Manticorans are accustomed to being a long way away from home, Captain. And we’re accustomed to taking care of ourselves when we are. No doubt a sufficiently strong SLN detachment could push me off this terminus, but I guarantee you that before it does, it’ll lose many times the tonnage of my squadron.”

“Sure it will.” Pálffi snorted contemptuously. “I’m sure Battle Fleet’s wallers will just be scared to death of your cruisers, Commodore!”

“They will be if they’ve bothered to read the reports about what happened at Spindle,” Magellan replied calmly. “These are exactly the same class of cruisers which captured or destroyed Fleet Admiral Crandall’s entire fleet, Captain Pálffi.”

The Solarian’s face went suddenly blank and stiff. For a moment, he only stared at Magellan. Then he inhaled sharply and shook himself.

“Pardon me if I don’t exactly shake in my boots,” he said in a voice which seemed to have lost just a bit of its previous certainty. “But there’s not a whole hell of a lot I can do to stop you. Just exactly what do your Marines plan to do after they board my platforms?”

“Mostly just keep an eye on you until I can contact President Zell and get some transport dispatched out here to take your people off.”

“You’re kicking us off our own platforms?”

“I suppose that’s one way to look at it,” Magellan conceded. “I prefer to think of it as getting your people safely out of the line of fire, however. If the Solarian Navy is rash enough to attempt to retake control of this terminus by force, I don’t want any stray missiles taking out control platforms full of innocent bystanders.”

Pálffi’s eyes examined his expression closely for several seconds. Then the Solarian nodded slowly.

“Appreciate it,” he said grudgingly, with obvious reluctance.

“As I say, Captain Pálffi, I’d really prefer for no one to get hurt. So we’ll just get you and your people out of the way. Because,” Magellan’s expression hardened once again, his eyes bleak, “if the League does try to retake this terminus, a lot of people are going to get hurt.”