Barbarians at the Gates

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Jefferson System/The Hive System/Tranter System, 4095

The benefit to having access to an Asimov Point nexus, Captain Caitlin Bowery reminded herself as armoured Marines escorted her through the drop tube into Admiral Justinian’s private habitat, was that it gave the defenders the advantage of interior lines. Admiral Justinian could shift his forces to intercept any Federation thrust into his territory, even if the Federation managed to discover a previously undetected Asimov Point along the Rim that led into civilized space. It had allowed him to pull back most of his fighting units into Jefferson and prepare them for the grand offensive that would take him into the heart of the Federation, once the new units were built, crewed and worked up to fighting trim.

She allowed herself a smile as she passed through a series of airlocks, each one reinforced with a force field capable of standing off a nuclear warhead at point-blank range. All over the Harmony Sector, Admiral Justinian’s recruiters were enlisting young men and women into the armed force that would eventually break through to Earth. There was no longer any need for the artificial restrictions of Luna Academy, nor was there any need to discourage mustangs from rising to commissioned ranks, not when the entire social order was being turned upside down. Admiral Justinian—soon to be Emperor Justinian—had made the colonies certain promises. Once he was Emperor, the economic rape of their worlds by the Core Worlds would come to an end. The restructured Senate would recognize the out-worlds, like Harmony and Jefferson, as equal to Earth or Terra Nova. And the colonists had responded to his words.

“Captain Bowery, here to see the admiral,” one of her escorts said as they reached the final airlock. Admiral Justinian had become more than a little paranoid after the failure of his first and second attempts to break through into Federation-held space. He’d moved his headquarters to Jefferson—leaving his wife and daughters on Harmony, apart from the poor bitch who was being married off to seal a treaty between the admiral and another warlord—and started insisting on strict security. Caitlin had been strip-searched before she’d been allowed through the security cordon—and she was his most trusted associate. Very few people were allowed to see the admiral in person. “She’s clean, sir.”

There was a long pause. Caitlin had a moment to wonder if the security teams would insist on searching her again, or sending her in to visit the admiral minus her clothes and personal terminal, before the hatch hissed open and allowed her access. The Marines inside the hatch waved her in and pointed her to a more standard airlock at the end of a metal corridor. The entire complex was silent, so silent that she could hear her footsteps as she walked down the hallway and keyed the entry coder. There was a brief pause, then the airlock clicked open, allowing her into the admiral’s presence.

“Captain Bowery reporting as ordered, sir,” she said.

The admiral looked dreadful, his face pale and tired. She had only a moment to realize that something was wrong before he picked up a bottle and offered her a swig. He actually meant for her to drink straight out of the bottle.

“Sir…?” Caitlin had no idea what he was thinking, or even if he was thinking at all. It felt as if she were about to be called on the carpet for some imagined offense, yet if he’d doubted her loyalty she would never have been allowed to meet with him in person.

“Sit down,” Admiral Justinian said. His voice was bleak, yet coldly determined and fixed on something. “The forces in the Marx System were attacked.”

Only the ease of long practice kept Caitlin’s face blank. The Marx System should have been effectively impregnable, if only because of the long distance between the Federation loyalists and Admiral Justinian’s flank. A starship under stardrive from the nearest Federation-held star system would take—she checked her implants to be sure that the answer was right—over two years to reach Marx. The implications were not encouraging. No pirate or mercenary company would dare tangle with warships if it could be avoided. There was no profit in having one’s ships blown out of space.

The conclusion was inescapable.

“Governor Hartkopf has turned on us.”

“So it would appear,” Justinian agreed. He took a long swig from the bottle and sat back in his chair. Caitlin scowled at the display, wondering when her commander had turned to drink. He’d never shown any desire to drink himself senseless before. “And Henrietta is missing.”

Caitlin listened to the remainder of the story silently. The ships that had attacked the cruisers at Marx had used Admiral Justinian’s codes—the ones issued to his Foreign Secretary—to lure the cruisers away from the covering fire of the Asimov Point fortresses. That in itself had disturbing implications. The Foreign Secretary had either been taken prisoner and interrogated, or he’d turned his coat. Either way, the admiral’s daughter was in enemy hands, and all hell was about to break loose.

It had taken weeks of persuasion for his wife—Millicent Beauregard-Justinian, a woman whose ambition far outstripped her husband’s—to convince him to allow his daughter to be used to seal the treaty. And now it looked as if he’d sent her into enemy hands. The young girl didn’t know anything that could be used against her father, but her mere presence would be used against him. Caitlin forced herself to think coldly and rationally.

“Hartkopf isn’t insane,” she pointed out. “He may have convinced himself that we will let it pass, but his subordinates have to know better. I think he might have come to an agreement with the Federation to safeguard his life, in exchange for using his territory as a base. They could have moved a fleet up into his sector and pushed him into launching an attack on us.”

Carefully, she considered the possibilities. The Federation possessed vast industrial strength, even in its diminished state. And then there was the Naval Reserve…given enough time, the Federation could out-build all of the warlords and crush them to powder, although no one knew if they had the determination to risk economic collapse by carrying on the war. Even if they won, they wouldn’t recoup what they’d lost, even if they declared all of the various territories of the warlords as war prizes, as they’d done after the Inheritance Wars. And yet, she knew just how deeply the Senate depended upon its ability to ravage the colonies at will. If they gave it up, the rump Federation would suffer an economic shockwave. The entire system might collapse into flaming debris.

And with that in mind, the Federation might well agree to make a deal with Governor Hartkopf. Allowing the treacherous bastard to keep his head on his shoulders—perhaps by sending him into a comfortable exile somewhere out along the Rim—would be a small price to pay for the easy recovery of his sector. And once they had their fleet there, they could move through Marx and into Justinian’s soft underbelly. The war might be within shouting distance of being won outright.

“Perhaps,” Admiral Justinian agreed, when she outlined her thoughts. He smiled humorlessly. “We did offer him more, didn’t we?”

“I think he decided that we were the losing side,” she said with a shrug. “A guarantee that he won’t be executed would look better than the promise of an entire sector—if the Federation took it off him regardless.”

“No doubt,” Admiral Justinian agreed. He looked up at the star chart floating over his desk. “We have to make it clear that the attack on Marx will not go unpunished…”

“But we don’t know if Hartkopf or the loyalists launched the attack,” she objected. “Who do we target?”

“Hartkopf allowed them to move through his territory,” Admiral Justinian said firmly. “You will take direct command of a squadron of battlecruisers and take them through The Hive into the Tranter System. You will destroy his defenses in that system and then withdraw, once you broadcast a message from me. The message will make it clear that I will not tolerate treachery, and that any further attacks on my forces will be seen as a declaration of war.”

“Yes, sir,” Caitlin said. She didn’t want to object and risk a sudden mood swing, but it had to be said. “If we do get into an all-out war with Hartkopf, sir, what is to stop the Federation taking advantage of it to stab us in the back?”

“If the Federation is already working with him, or controlling his sector, we’re at war anyway,” Justinian pointed out mildly. “If he’s prodding us to find out what kind of reaction he’ll get from us, we’ll give him a bloody nose to convince him to look elsewhere for his prey. Do you know what he demanded as part of Henrietta’s dowry? Four entire star systems!”

“Yes, sir,” Caitlin said. Privately, she was shocked. If someone could demand such a dowry, it suggested that that person’s grip on reality wasn’t particularly strong. “And what do we do about her?”

“You will recover her if possible,” Admiral Justinian said. “My note will include a demand for her immediate return. And if she can’t be returned—if they’ve killed her—he will pay for it. Personally.”

Two weeks later, Caitlin stood on the bridge of Avenger as she dropped out of stardrive on the edge of The Hive’s mass limit. The nine battlecruisers, four fast freighters and two of the converted starfighter-carriers that she’d brought with her held their position for a long moment, and then started to advance into the system towards the Asimov Point.

Caitlin had never visited The Hive System before, and she felt a shiver crawling down her back as the battlecruisers drove deeper into the system, although she knew that it was purely psychosomatic. Certainly, none of the more exotic stories about The Hive having converted itself to a creature of pure energy—or even hidden colonies within the system, undetected by the vengeful Federation Navy—had any basis in reality.

“The system appears to be clear, Commodore,” Captain Lachlan said. “If Hartkopf has any forces present within the system, they are lying doggo.”

Lachlan gave her the courtesy promotion out of habit, for there was only one captain on a vessel. Besides, although Caitlin wasn’t a real squadron commander, she spoke for the admiral himself and, as such, she had wide authority.

“Good,” Caitlin said. “Take us to the Asimov Point and prepare to launch recon drones. I want to know what we’re facing on the other side before we jump in and open fire.”

She’d had time to think, during the frantic struggle to prepare the battlecruiser squadron and launch the mission before the Federation launched a second attack, and she’d started to wonder what was really going on. The attack on Marx had been…odd. Why would Governor Hartkopf do something to declare his enmity in a way no one could ignore?

Further, if he’d actually concluded a deal with the Federation loyalists, why not string Admiral Justinian along while the Federation prepared a counterattack of its own? Even now, the undefended flank was being strengthened, with starships and fortresses being dispatched from Harmony to slow down any would-be invader. An offensive would rapidly become much harder. So who really benefited from attacking Marx?

They’d rejected the possibility of the Federation Navy launching the attack without Hartkopf’s permission because it would have been difficult for the Federation to get an assault force in place. But difficult wasn’t the same as impossible. Hartkopf’s regime was known for being even more corrupt than the Senate—an achievement that Caitlin would have previously considered impossible—and it was quite possible that some devious Federation Navy Admiral had merely applied a large infusion of cash. His ships could then have passed through the Asimov Points without being reported to superior authority, allowing them to launch the attack on Marx in the certain knowledge that Hartkopf would be blamed.

And yet, if they hadn’t had Hartkopf’s assistance, how had they obtained the codes?

She was still mulling the possibilities over in her mind when the small squadron reached the Asimov Point and launched recon drones into the gravimetric distortion directly ahead of them.

“Commodore, the recon drones have just returned,” Captain Lachlan informed her. “There are no hostile fortifications on the other side of the Asimov Point.”

Caitlin studied the results in disbelief. In the days before stardrive, there was little point in defending an Asimov Point everyone knew to be a dead end, but the continuous displacement drive had turned interstellar defense doctrine upside down. Governor Hartkopf had to know that it was easy for ships to cross the light years between Marx and The Hive—he collected money from smuggling ventures—so why had he left the system undefended?

Something was very wrong…she considered, just for a moment, aborting the mission until they received new orders from Admiral Justinian, but they’d been given no leeway at all. They had to launch the raid.

“Cloak us,” she ordered. If there were no defenders, no one would notice as her ships flickered into existence in Tranter. And then they could sneak up on their targets and blow them to hell. “Take us through the Asimov Point.”

“Now that’s interesting,” the sensor officer said slowly. “Captain, I think you should see this.”

Roman tapped his console and brought up the feed from the sensor department. The task force had found a suitable hiding place within The Hive system—a large asteroid that had been mined out and abandoned some time before the apocalypse had destroyed the entire system—and the engineers had been turning it into a base. Midway and her consorts had returned to find themselves briefly assigned to cloaked defense and scouting duties until the base was complete, not something that pleased him. Admiral Mason, it seemed, wanted to keep a close eye on Midway and her young commander.

The nine enemy battlecruisers didn’t seem to be heading for their current location; in fact, they were heading straight towards the Asimov Point. And the report from the passive sensor platforms was showing that their weapons and shields were fully charged. They were looking for trouble.

“I think we must have annoyed someone,” he said. “Alert the flag and prepare to move out of formation.”

The enemy battlecruisers didn’t slow until they reached the Asimov Point, at which point they came to a halt and waited. Roman wished—not for the first time—that the Federation Navy had developed the kind of sensors they saw in entertainment dramas, where it was possible to not only watch targets halfway across the system in real time, but determine what they were carrying and if they were hostile with ease. The enemy ships could be doing anything from sealing the Asimov Point to preparing to transit through with bad intentions; there was no way to tell at such a distance.

Admiral Mason’s face popped into existence on his private display. “Captain,” he said coldly. “I believe that your actions at Marx have sparked a response. I do not wish you to engage the enemy ships or even to scout after them.”

Roman frowned. “Sir, this is an opportunity to…”

“That is an order, captain,” Admiral Mason said. “In fact…”

“Captain, enemy starships are transiting the Asimov Point,” the sensor officer reported, suddenly. “They’re leaving the system.”

“It would appear that you succeeded,” Admiral Mason said. “We will keep our heads down and watch what happens from a distance. Might I remind you, captain, that you have already threatened the secrecy of this mission?”

“Yes, sir,” Roman said. It was frustrating, but Mason was in command. “I understand.”

Caitlin’s sense that something was very wrong only grew stronger as the fleet—still hidden under cloak—crossed the Tranter System, heading right towards the other Asimov Point. The system’s sole inhabited planet was barely defended, but there was a squadron of old-style dreadnaughts on guard at the Asimov Point. They could deter her from carrying through with her offensive—if she meant to take the system permanently—but they couldn’t stop her from launching an attack and then beating feet back home. Governor Hartkopf did not seem to have prepared for an attack.

“Start rolling missile pods,” she ordered as the squadron slowed to barely within engagement range. She wasn’t going to take battlecruisers any closer to the dreadnaughts than necessary, not with the dreadnaughts clearly refitted with the latest in weapons and shields—and sensors. Missile pods were rare in ship-to-ship combat, but attacking from cloak…they were workable. They just couldn’t be towed behind a ship travelling at full combat speed. “Prepare to engage.”

She pushed her misgivings away, knowing that she might well be about to open a two-front war between her superior and Hartkopf. The governor was a weasel, everyone knew that, yet he might just be able to bite Admiral Justinian to death. They didn’t dare pull too much combat power away from the Asimov Points linking Admiral Jefferson’s territory to the Federation. The Federation wouldn’t hesitate to take advantage of such weakness.

One by one, the battlecruisers checked in. “All ships report ready, Commodore,” the squadron coordinator reported. “Weapons hot; I say again, weapons hot.”

“Fire,” Caitlin ordered.