Desperate Glory (Morningstar, #4), page 34
Francis shot him a sharp look. He did have a fairly complete military education, and he knew the rebels couldn’t put together a major counterattack, certainly not in a hurry. They’d have to be very lucky to have a squadron holding position near Yalta, one in a place to intervene before it was too late, and ... it was unlikely. Leo kept his thoughts to himself. He was not going to slaughter millions of innocent civilians whose only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time. If someone wanted those poor bastards dead, they could do it themselves.
“Sir,” Anderson said. “I have been unable to open a link to the planetary government.”
“They’re shitting themselves,” Francis muttered.
Leo shrugged. “Open a wide-beam transmission,” he ordered. He waited for the nod before proceeding. “Attention, high orbitals. This is Commander Leo Morningstar of the Daybreak Navy. Your planet has been declared in revolt against the Daybreak Republic. I intend to destroy the orbital defences and industrial nodes in response. You have” – he checked his display – “thirty minutes to evacuate the nodes before I open fire. Any resistance will result in a complete sweep of the high orbitals. There will be no further warnings.”
He tapped his console, closing the channel. “Tactical, prepare a ballistic KEW bombardment pattern,” he ordered. “I don’t want to get too close to those orbital defences.”
“Aye, sir.”
Leo leaned back in his chair, praying the defenders would do as they were told. The high orbitals were crammed with installations, asteroid habitats and space colonies as well as defences and industrial nodes. If he took them all out, he’d be sentencing tens of thousands of helpless people to death. A handful of freighters were already departing, jumping out without even bothering to get well clear of the planet; he swallowed, hard, as he saw lifepods departing the industrial nodes, dropping out of orbit as quickly as possible. They were supposed to have enough lifepods for everyone – it was a legal requirement – but did they? Leo had no way to know. The requirements were often ignored, this far from the core. There wasn’t anyone charged with inspecting the local installations ...
You missed a trick there, a voice whispered at the back of his head. You could have handled it while you were in sole command of the sector.
He shook his head. Waterhen had been alone. She couldn’t be everywhere at once, and enforcing shipping laws had seemed more important, to him, than checking up on safety regulations. A corporation that ignored basic safety would pay a price, when the cold equations of interplanetary realities came to bite, and smarter corporations and planetary governments would handle the matter themselves. Not that it mattered here, he reminded himself. The industrial nodes were about to be wrecked.
“Sir, their patrol ships are jumping clear,” Anderson reported.
“Keep an eye out for them trying to be clever,” Leo ordered. The patrol ships alone couldn’t stop his squadron, but he wouldn’t put it past the enemy to try. He was about to blow away billions of dollars of investment, none of which would be rebuilt in a hurry. “Otherwise ...”
“The government must be cowering,” Francis said. “Why don’t they call and beg?”
“They know we can’t stay,” Leo guessed. He would have preferred to occupy the system and make use of the industrial nodes himself, but that would have tied down his ships and given the rebels a perfect shot at him. “They’re hoping they can outlast us.”
He glanced at the timer. Daybreak’s reputation for ruthlessness was working in his favour, for once. No one doubted he would carry out his threat to destroy the orbital nodes, and so they were abandoning their positions, even against the orders of their government. Leo hoped to hell the government didn’t punish them for running, once they were safely on the ground and the engagement was over. Weak men often took their weakness out on those weaker than them, and the runaways would make an excellent target, if the government needed someone to blame for the disaster. They were trained engineers, true, but would that be enough to protect them?
And what is the difference between what they might do, a little voice whispered at the back of his head, and what we’re doing here?
He ignored the voice as the timer reached zero. If the nodes hadn’t been evacuated ... they’d had more than enough time, if they’d kept up with their emergency procedures. If not ... he had given them fair warning. More than he should, according to regulations. The admiral would have excellent grounds to reprimand him, if he wished ... perhaps even court-martial him. He needed a scapegoat for the disaster, and Leo would make an excellent target, if the politics were lined up properly. It might not save the admiral, but it would give him the chance to take Leo’s career down with him.
“Fire,” Leo ordered, quietly.
Gypsy shuddered as she unleashed her first spread of ballistic projectiles. The rest of the squadron followed suit, targeting the defence platforms. The enemy’s active sensors came online, their automated systems trying to take out as many of the projectiles as possible before it was too late ... Leo bit down hard on the urge to widen his targeting selection, to lash out at the rest of the high orbitals for daring to resist. It was already too late, really ... he leaned forward, gritting his teeth, as the orbital defences were smashed one by one. The industrial nodes followed a moment later.
“All targets damaged or destroyed,” Anderson reported.
“Cease fire,” Leo ordered. There was nothing to be gained by smashing the facilities any further. They’d need to be rebuilt from scratch, unless the enemy had gotten absurdly lucky. “Signal the fleet. All units are to jump to Point Omega on my signal.”
“Aye, sir,” Anderson said.
Leo took one last look at Yalta, feeling a twinge of guilt. The world had just lost thousands upon thousands of hours of work, even though the industrial nodes had been devoted to serving the rebels before they’d been destroyed. Perhaps it would have been better to occupy the world instead ... no. It was impossible. He’d been as merciful as he could, but there were limits. The admiral would never forgive him if he’d let the planet get away with switching sides. Yalta would suffer, true, but it wouldn’t be destroyed.
And the rebels have been given a bloody nose, Leo thought. It hadn’t been a complete victory, but he’d proved the rebels couldn’t be relied upon to defend their allies. They’ll look weaker now.
He took a breath. “Jump.”
The universe darkened, again. Leo gritted his teeth as a dull pain shot through his head, coming and going so quickly he wondered if he’d imagined it. The display blanked and rebooted, showing the remainder of the squadron in front of him ... Madeleine was out there, in Porcupine ... he wondered, suddenly, what she made of the whole affair. Nothing good, he was sure. It could have been her homeworld under the gun ...
“Quick change of plans,” Francis said, passing Leo a datachip. “Admiral’s orders. Once the mission is complete, and it is, you are to report here on the double.”
Leo blinked. “You could have mentioned that earlier.”
“Admiral’s orders,” Francis said. He gave Leo an odd little smirk, a reminder he had birth and family connections ... Leo felt a surge of hatred, but caught himself before he could punch Francis once again. The bastard couldn’t fall too far, not with his family ready to catch him, while Leo ... one failure could easily see him plummeting to his doom. “He was very insistent I only tell you after the mission.”
“I see,” Leo said. He could believe as much or as little of that as he pleased. “I guess we’re making a detour on the way home.”
“Yeah,” Francis said. “He wants to speak to you personally.”
Chapter Thirty-Five: Leo/Admiral Blackthrone
Leo kept his thoughts to himself as the shuttle flew towards Pompey.
The battlecruiser was heavily scarred, despite the best efforts of her damage control teams. The rest of the once-proud squadron was in little better shape, the handful of freighters and mobile repair units somehow managing to look more formidable than the actual warships. Leo couldn’t tell just how damaged they truly were, but they looked mournful as they orbited the dull red star – so unimportant it had no name, just a catalogue number – and waited for the enemy to find them. Francis had insisted the fallback position had never been entered into any datacore, and only a handful of officers had known it existed, but Leo wasn’t so sure. If one of those officers breathed a word to the wrong person ...
He put the thought aside as the shuttle docked, the hatch opening to reveal a young midshipwoman waiting for him. Leo tasted a bitter scent in the air as he stepped onto the battlecruiser, the stench of damaged components mingling with sweat, blood, tears and defeat. The battlecruiser had been modern, compared to Waterhen, but now ... her hull would be repaired, her magazines would be reloaded and, given time, her crew’s morale would recover once again. But she would need a victory to wash away the taint of defeat ... he shook his head as he was shown to the admiral’s office, all too aware it would be hard to go on the offensive. There were only a handful of ships left.
Leo sucked in his breath as he stepped into the admiral’s office. Admiral Blackthrone looked to have aged a decade in the space of six months. His handsome face seemed oddly lined, his head was bowed as if it were being pressed down by some great weight. Leo felt a chill run down his spine as he realised the admiral’s spirit might have been broken along with his ships, that the admiral might no longer be capable of commanding his squadron. And yet, relieving him wasn’t something that could be done easily. The fleet was so badly hammered that it was hard to tell who was next in the chain of command.
“Commander,” Admiral Blackthrone said. He stood and came around the desk, motioning for Leo to sit while he took the other chair. “There is much we need to discuss.”
“Yes, sir,” Leo said. A shiver ran down his spine, a shiver of fear that he might be about to be fired ... an awareness he didn’t know what was going on. The admiral’s face was so lined it was hard to believe Leo wasn’t in trouble, despite everything. “My report ...”
The admiral spoke with a grim fatalism that chilled Leo to the bone. “When I get home, if I do, I will be court-martialled,” he said. There was a hint of defeat in his tone, a suggestion he had already given up. “Don’t try to disagree. I have presided over the greatest naval defeat in our long history, and the loss of countless worlds to a rebel force that seems to have come out of nowhere. The Board of Inquiry will tear apart every decision I made over the last few years, taking its time to reach a decision that every member of the board knew was inevitable right from the start. I will not be permitted to resign. The best I can hope for is a dishonourable discharge and exile.
“I do not think I will be that lucky.
“I did not go on the offensive, as a good admiral should. I tied my fleet down; my fallback positions were weak, barely developed by the time I needed them. The one real offensive move involved you and your ships, Commander, and it was nowhere near enough to turn the tide. My critics will attest I should have deduced the existence of the gravity generators, from the capture of the arsenal ship, and they may be right. Certainly, few will argue otherwise. Daybreak will need a scapegoat, and that scapegoat will be me. Too many proud ships and lives have been lost for anyone to argue otherwise.”
His words hung in the air for a long, cold moment. Leo swallowed, hard.
“I have lost control of the sector. Dozens of systems are now in enemy hands, along with their resources. We may lose control of several more sectors before we manage to regain the initiative – and, of course, we still have no idea who is backing the rebels. No commander in our long history has ever lost so badly, Commander, and ...”
He paused. “Better I face the court-martial than the rest of my officers. I will serve Daybreak one final time by accepting the blame. Because, in the end, the responsibility was mine.”
Leo hesitated. “Sir, I ...”
Admiral Blackthrone held up a hand. “The decision has been made, Commander,” he said. “It is not up for dispute.”
“Yes, sir,” Leo said.
He swallowed, again. The admiral had made mistakes. He had. But he’d also been caught by surprise. Everything he’d done had made perfect sense at the time, from keeping his ships near Yangtze to sending Leo to raid New Dublin; it was only in hindsight his mistakes had turned out to be disasters. Leo had never liked the admiral, and it had taken him some time to come to respect him, but he didn’t deserve to have his career destroyed. His missteps should not have been as disastrous as they turned out to be.
“I owe you an apology,” Admiral Blackthrone added.
Leo blinked. “Sir?”
“I thought you had been promoted far above your level of competence,” Admiral Blackthrone said. “The circumstances that put you in command of Waterhen should never have been allowed to take place. Your missteps during your first cruise could easily have gotten you killed and your ship destroyed, and it was only through luck that you survived. I heard too much about you from Francis, too, and it coloured my opinion. Putting him in command of Waterhen over you was a mistake.”
Leo honestly wasn’t sure what to say. “Sir, I ...”
Admiral Blackthrone met his eyes. “You saved Francis’s life and career, despite his ... missteps,” he added. “And you brought us the intelligence we needed to prepare for war.”
He looked down at his hands. “I wish things had been different. If I’d realised your potential from the start, perhaps they would have been.”
Leo swallowed. The admiral sounded as if he were putting his affairs in order before ...
“Sir,” he said. “What’s done is done. We cannot change the past. We can only learn from it and move on.”
The admiral’s lips twitched. “True, as far as it goes,” he said. “But sometimes the past holds us back.
“We underestimated the rebels. That much is clear. They hit us with one outside context weapon and they may have others. The spooks and engineers veer between assuring me the rebels have nothing new, apart from the gravity generator, and coming up with all sorts of ideas for superweapons that might, or might not, be practical. We have moved from holding the rebels in contempt to considering them supermen, able to construct magical weapons from nowhere and deploy them with terrifying speed. Cold logic says otherwise, of course, but cold logic is meaningless against such a shock as the one they gave us.
“We saw them as just another ragtag fleet. They’re clearly a great deal more.”
“Yes, sir,” Leo said.
“Word will be reaching Daybreak about now,” Admiral Blackthrone said. “Orders for my relief will be heading my way shortly. Hopefully, they’ll be sending some heavy reinforcements too, but they will likely take months to arrive. The rebels will have near-complete freedom to harass the sector, and its neighbours, until then. I intend to knock them back on their heels.”
Leo met his eyes. “You intend to go on the offensive?”
“Yes.” Admiral Blackthrone tapped his terminal. A starchart appeared in front of them. “I have deployed four scouts to keep an eye on Yangtze, following contingency plans I had hoped never to use. The enemy has successfully taken the high orbitals, along with most of our industrial base, but the planetary defences were strong enough to keep the rebels from landing in or near Yangtze City. Governor Brighton remains in Government House and, thankfully, the troops and militia have been able to set up defence lines to protect the region.”
He brought up an image of the capital and continued. “That will not last. Given time, the rebels will either crack the defences on the ground or bring in heavier units to take out the PDCs. The planet will fall. The governor and his staff will have no choice but to surrender or die.”
Leo nodded. Governor Brighton was a thoroughly decent man. He didn’t deserve to be paraded as a prisoner, nor did the locals working for the government deserve to be hanged as collaborators. Leo knew hundreds of people on Yangtze who had sided with Daybreak, who had worked – directly or indirectly – for Leo and his successors ... they didn’t deserve to die because they’d tried to make a better life for themselves. And yet, getting the governor and his staff – and the rest of the refugees – out of the system would be tricky. The rebels had had plenty of time to take control of the high orbitals and deploy defences of their own.
“We have little hope of recovering Yangtze, unless the enemy foolishly abandons her,” Admiral Blackthrone said. “However, we can get in and recover as many of our personnel as possible ... assuming the rebels cooperate. Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to command one prong of our operation. This may very well be one last throw of the die. Mine, certainly.”
“Yes, sir,” Leo said. He’d have to take a look at the operational concept, perhaps modify it ... he grimaced, inwardly, as he realised he’d likely be outranked by the staff officers who’d drawn it up. The admiral might support him or he might not. “How many people can we get off the surface in time?”
“Unclear,” Admiral Blackthrone admitted. “The shuttles on the ground have been reconfigured for heavy-lift, and we should be able to get ten thousand or so souls into orbit on each flight, but it depends on how much time the rebels give us. If we fail to lure them out of place, Commander, those shuttles will be sitting ducks. My most optimistic estimate is that we’ll be able to lift forty thousand, but that might be too optimistic. Twenty thousand might be more accurate.”
Or even less, Leo thought. He hadn’t seen the simulations, but he knew Yangtze. The rebels would see the shuttles the moment they were launched, and if they reacted quickly, they could slam the door closed before it was too late. Getting even one flight of shuttles into orbit will be tricky as hell.
