Barbarians at the Gates

Chapter Four

Near-Earth Orbit, Sol System, 4092

The last time Marius Drake had set foot in an Earth-class battlestation had been ten years ago. In the interim, he’d forgotten just how depressing they were. It was obvious the former commander of the battlestation—now dead—had made an attempt to decorate the command center in a green and white style as opposed to the usual institutional gray, but it hadn’t helped. It was still depressing, and worse, it contained a number of people who, if they were anything like the hapless Commander Fallon, were completely unready to defend Earth.

That had to change, and fast.

“No, I don’t want a formal greeting party,” Marius said in response to Fallon’s question as he strode off the shuttle into the battlestation. If they weren’t at war, Fallon would have had a point; now it was a waste of time. “Give me a status report, and right now!”

He glared up at the holographic near-orbit display as he took the command chair at the heart of the command center. The command center was massive, large enough to make it difficult for anyone to make himself heard from one end of the compartment to the other, and packed with consoles and officers. At least Fallon had managed to get the crew up and running, but no one seemed to know what they were doing. That did not bode well for Earth unless Marius was able to make them listen.

“The Marines are boarding the silent battlestations now,” Fallon said. “They’re reporting that their command software was contaminated by enemy computer viruses and that the stations are physically intact—and loyal.”

Marius nodded, keeping his face under tight control. In person, Fallon wasn’t remotely impressive; weak chin, weak eyes and a countenance that suggested sheer terror. He would have been handsome—perhaps because he was the product of bioengineering, the nasty part of Marius’s mind suggested—if he had shown the moral character of the average dog. And like a dog, Fallon would undoubtedly have preferred to hide under the bed while others fought the battle for him.

He had managed to get through the report all right, but there was something still off about the man, something that suggested a simple inability to comprehend what was actually happening. He would have to shape up, Marius decided, and quickly, or else he would be relieved of command. No admiral could have a commander who didn’t know what he was doing at the helm of the defense forces; if he’d been in this position earlier in his career, he would have made damn sure that anyone standing in the line of command knew what the hell they were supposed to do in an emergency.

“And the freighters?” Marius asked.

“The fighters are moving to intercept now,” Fallon’s operations officer confirmed. His nametag read CAFFERY. “The gunboats are moving up in pursuit. So far, there’s been no response from the freighters, but the enemy starfighters are moving away into deep space.”

“Right,” Marius said, thinking hard. Were they heading towards cloaked carriers, or were they trying to mislead the defenders and planning to dog-leg around towards the bulk freighters once they were out of sensor range? If the latter, they were going to be disappointed. Earth’s sensor network was second to none and the fighters would burn through their life support before they could escape its grasp. “And the StarCom?”

Fallon cleared his throat. “It was destroyed with EDS1,” he said carefully. Marius concealed a smile with an effort. Fallon clearly thought his superior had forgotten that little detail. “We don’t have any other link to Titan Base.”

The Inheritance Wars had traumatized the Senate, what with the mutinies that had broken out on many Federation Navy starships, including the ships assigned to Home Fleet. The Senate had responded by forbidding the deployment of Federation Navy starships to the Earth-Luna Sphere—the area of space surrounding Earth and Luna—and insisted that Home Fleet be based at Titan Base, which had been Federation Navy territory since the Last King of Titan had led his people to the stars. It allowed Home Fleet to exercise without public oversight, but it also ensured that there was a time delay before reinforcements could arrive at Earth. And there would be even more of a time delay because the defenders would—in theory—be limited to radio waves or laser beams, both of which travelled at merely the speed of light.

But there was a way around that.

“Use Case Omega and get in touch with Federation Intelligence,” Drake said. “You’ll find a contact code in the database. They should have their own StarCom.”

Fallon blinked. Marius understood his surprise. StarCom units cost upwards of twice the price of a new superdreadnaught, while they were limited in range and—once operational—alarmingly easy to target. The scientists kept promising they would find a way to reduce the price one day, but so far nothing had materialized. The fact that Federation Intelligence used StarCom units of their own was a closely-guarded secret. Marius had only found out about it because he’d needed to know.

He hoped that whoever had planned the attack on Earth didn’t know, or his ace in the hole would be no such thing.

“But sir—” Fallon started.

“Trust me,” Marius told him. “Oh, and don’t take no for an answer. Once they admit they have it, tell them that I want to link to Titan Base and open contact with Home Fleet. I want them to prepare to move on my command.”

He swung his chair around and tapped a control, resetting the display until it showed the entire Solar System. The grey sphere of the mass limit surrounding Sol, within which no stardrive could be used, shimmered into view, expanding out from the sun to a line just beyond Jupiter. The planets had their own mass limits, of course, yet Home Fleet could leave Titan Base and enter stardrive far quicker than if they had to depart from Earth. The planners had concluded it would speed up reaction times if there was an incident at any of the stars nearest Sol. Marius suspected they were being overly optimistic. The Blue Star War should have taught them the dangers of trying to coordinate operations over interstellar distances.

“Launch a shell of recon drones,” he ordered without taking his eyes off the display. “I want a second shell launched ten minutes after the first shell, and then I want recon fighters moved up in random patrol patterns. Someone’s out there, and I mean to find him before he finds us.”

Marius stroked his chin. Someone a very long time ago—probably as far back as the Roman legions—had said that wars were ninety-nine percent boredom and one percent sheer terror. He’d reached the battlestation and the enemy starfighters had been beaten off, but now he had to wait and see what happened. Unless random terror was the objective, there had to be an enemy fleet out there, heading towards Earth. And if they were expecting Home Fleet to sit on the sidelines until the fighting was over, he might have a chance to give them a nasty surprise.

“Sir,” Fallon announced, “Federation Intelligence has confirmed that they have a StarCom in the Earth-Luna Sphere. I don’t think they’re too happy with you.”

“Fuck them,” Marius said. This was no time for games. “Tell them to hold the unit at readiness once they send the first set of orders. We may not have time to power it up again…”

The display flashed a new icon, and then zeroed in on the escaping freighters. The icons representing intact ships had vanished, to be replaced by four expanding spheres of destruction. Marius swallowed a curse as the starfighters broke off, heading back to their parent fortresses, while gunboats closed in to investigate the remains of the freighters. The enemy, knowing they couldn’t escape, had triggered the self-destruct systems—or someone, hiding under cloak, had sent a destruct command to their ships. There was no way to know for sure.

“The fighters didn’t fire, sir,” Fallon said. He sounded as if he was expecting to be blamed for bringing bad news. “The ships just blew up as soon as the fighters came within engagement range.”

“We have a ruthless enemy,” Marius agreed gravely. “Recall one half of the duty fighters”—he trusted the fighter controllers to issue the correct orders—”and give their pilots a chance to rest and rearm.”

The enemy commander was ruthless, he noted in the privacy of his own thoughts. The enemy starfighters were doomed, unless they reached a cloaked carrier. He watched the shell of recon drones spreading outwards and asked himself again, where would he put a force advancing on Earth? How would he position his ships for best advantage?

He keyed his console and linked into the Marine channel.

“Toby, I need a report on the silent fortresses as soon as possible.”

“They’re crippled by chaos software,” Vaughn said. His old friend sounded reassuringly competent, as always. “My engineers don’t think there’s anything fundamentally wrong with the hardware, but the main codes have to be purged and then rebooted—and if the chaos software remains in place, we’ll have to strip out the cores and replace them.”

“Purge the systems,” Marius ordered tightly. They needed those fortresses. If the purge failed, they wouldn’t be any worse off. “I’ll assemble a scratch crew and have them sent over to replace the prior crewmen. Once the crew is aboard, you can start shipping the old crew down to Earth. We can’t trust them, not until we find out who uploaded the chaos software in the first place.”

“Understood,” Vaughn replied. Marius knew that he would carry out his orders, or die trying. “Good luck, sir.”

The connection broke. Marius leaned back in his command chair and made a show of looking up at the overhead bulkhead, trying to suggest a sense of unconcern about the whole situation.

“Have coffee and snack packs brought in for the duty staff,” he ordered absently. They would have warning of the enemy’s approach, unless the enemy’s cloaking technology was far superior to the Federation’s—and in that case, the war was lost anyway. “The remainder can get some sleep.”

“Yes, sir,” Fallon said. “Sir…shouldn’t you get some rest, too?”

“Not at the moment,” Marius said. It hadn’t been that long since he’d served on the command deck of a battleship, hunting down pirates. And besides, he didn’t know who he could trust to leave on watch. “It will all be over by the time I need rest.”

He grinned while looking down at the communications display. It was surprising that there were only a handful of demands for information from the Senate, but procedures for dealing with such requests dated all the way back to the First Interstellar War—a time when a direct attack on the Solar System seemed alarmingly likely. The Senate would have to sit in a bunker under Federation City, waiting for news of victory or defeat, while the military fought its battle. His lips twisted into a droll sneer. The Senators were probably cowering, wondering which of their sins had returned to haunt them. After all, what else had the Inheritance Wars been about?

Time ticked by slowly as duty officers were replaced, given short breaks to rest and use the head. Others were assigned to emergency deployments and sent to the three damaged stations, two of which were back in the fight once their computers had been purged. Marius wasn’t inclined to take chances, so he ordered additional security on the datanet—if the chaos software broke into the main computer network, the defense of Earth would fall apart—but he was too grateful for the additional firepower to be too paranoid. After the fighting was over, they’d have to pull the chips and go through the network with a fine-toothed comb. Someone with that level of access almost certainly had had the time to set up a few additional surprises for the defenders…

“Contact,” the sensor officer snapped. New red icons blinked into existence on the display. “Sir, I have multiple contacts, bearing…they’re heading towards Earth!”

“Understood, son,” Drake said with a smile. The sensor officer was so young that Marius wondered if he’d even begun to shave. “Give me a list of contacts, calmly if possible.”

The sensor officer flushed darkly. “At least forty contacts, sir, some definitely superdreadnaught-sized,” he said. “They’re cloaked, so it is impossible to get a proper reading without launching additional probes…”

“And giving away that we’ve seen them,” Marius concluded thoughtfully. He juggled the tactical situation in his head for a long moment. The enemy wasn’t trying to be particularly subtle. He had aimed himself directly at Earth, with the clear intention of breaking through the remaining defenses and taking the planet. “Commander Fallon?”

“Yes, sir,” Fallon said. He’d managed to get a bite to eat and some coffee before returning to the command center. Marius had thought about relieving him, but there was no one to take Fallon’s place. It wasn’t like serving out on the Rim, where Drake had been able to count on multiple trained and experienced officers to fill holes. The most experienced men in the system—apart from himself—were with Home Fleet. “They’re here, sir.”

“Yes,” Marius said. “You are to contact Home Fleet and order them to follow this vector to Earth.” He keyed his console, bringing up one of the contingency plans he’d considered while waiting for the enemy to show his face. It only required a slight adjustment to fit the actual situation, much to his relief. “They are to remain under cloak until they advance upon the enemy.”

He studied the console for another long moment. “I also want Titan Base to prepare to launch a set of decoy drones heading on this course.” The second course was a direct path to Earth, the kind of course a desperate or inexperienced commanding officer might attempt if he believed there was no other option. “They are to launch the drones at the exact time specified unless I countermand the orders personally. Do you understand?”

“Ah…yes, sir,” Fallon said. “I just…why do you want the drones? They’ll see them…”

Marius grinned at him. “Of course they will,” he said. “They know that Home Fleet is somewhere within the system; they must know that, or else they’re incompetents—and nothing they’ve done so far suggests that. And they think they’ve taken out the StarCom, which means we can’t whistle up Home Fleet to reinforce the defenses…”

“But we have a StarCom,” Fallon objected.

“Precisely,” Marius said. “Without a StarCom, we will have to rely on lasers to warn Titan Base. Home Fleet—or, rather, the drones posing as Home Fleet—will make its appearance right where it would be if we truly were dependent on lasers or radio waves. And that will stop them looking for Home Fleet elsewhere…”

He leaned back in his command chair and smiled. “Send the signal, commander,” he ordered. “And then we will see whose battle plan survives contact with the enemy.”

The cluster of red icons representing the enemy starships moved closer, still trying to hide under cloak. Plotting and analysis specialists studied what returns could be gleaned from the recon drones, and concluded that the enemy fleet was actually larger than it had first appeared, with upwards of one hundred and fifty starships approaching Earth.

Marius ignored the whispered speculation in the background as to who was attacking Earth, but it was becoming an increasingly alarming mystery. Only the Federation Navy, by law, could possess superdreadnaughts, a measure instigated to prevent a system defense force from declaring independence and standing off the massed force of the Navy. That left only three possibilities: Outsiders, an unknown alien species…or a rebellious Federation Navy admiral.

He scowled. The Outsiders weren’t organized, which suggested that they couldn’t build superdreadnaughts, or crew them even if they did. An unknown alien race…that was possible, but they would have to be insane to attack Earth. The entire Federation would go berserk. The Brotherhood wouldn’t need to drum up anti-alien hysteria after an attack on Earth, even one that had been beaten off by the Federation Navy. And how could aliens have obtained the sort of access required to take out EDS1 and Navy HQ? Along the Rim, the joke was that anything could be had on Earth for a large bribe, but somehow he doubted that anyone on Earth would sell out the entire planet, whatever the size of the bribe.

That left a rebellious admiral…

“They’re decloaking,” the sensor officer snapped. The red icons rapidly took on shape and form. Marius counted seventy-nine superdreadnaughts, nineteen carriers and one hundred and seventeen smaller ships, including one that persistently refused to be identified. The superdreadnaughts were all Splendid-class, which proved—beyond a doubt—that aliens were not involved. No alien race would have built an exact duplicate of a Federation Navy superdreadnaught. “Sir, I can’t pull any IFF signals off them…”

“Unsurprising,” Marius commented. Now they’d shed their cover, the enemy starships were picking up speed, boring directly towards Earth. “Hail them, Lieutenant Nicholls.”

“Aye, sir,” Lieutenant Nicholls said. There was a long pause. “They’re not responding…”

On the display, new red icons—starfighters—began to appear.

“I think they just have,” Marius said. If nothing else, the wait was over. “Commander Fallon?”

“Yes, sir?” Fallon leaned forward.

“Launch half of the ready starfighters to enhance the Combat Space Patrol,” Marius ordered calmly. “Reload the other half of the ready starfighters for antishipping strikes and prepare to launch as a formation.”

He studied the display again. “If they’re smart, they’ll come boring in and soak up the damage while getting to energy range. If not…well, it will say interesting things about their ultimate aims, won’t it?”

“Admiral, we’re picking up a signal from the enemy fleet,” Lieutenant Nicholls said. “They’re ordering us to surrender, or die.”

“Melodramatic asshole,” Marius said. He grinned as the blue starfighters moved out and into formation. “Send back: Go to hell.”

He keyed his console. “All units, you are authorized to fire at will. I say again, fire at will.”