The Oncoming Storm

(Version One)

Christopher Nuttall

These probably require some explanation.

I intend to rewrite this series under the working title of Angel in the Whirlwind, in the hopes of taking advantage of a chance to show it to a mainstream publisher.  The revised version will follow the basic plot of The Oncoming Storm/Dauntless, but it will be (I hope) much more polished and improved.  Any comments would be welcome, but please don’t send spelling errors and suchlike.

These books are free, but if you want to tip me, please use the cookie jar on my site.

Chris

The Oncoming Storm Blurb

“War is inevitable.  Everyone knows it.  Apart from the Admiral in command.”

All Kat Falcone had ever wanted to do was make her own way in the world.  She left her life of wealth and luxury behind to enlist in the Royal Avalon Navy, slowly climbing her way up the ladder to command.  But her father, the wealthiest man in the Commonwealth, intervened.  Thanks to his influence, Kat is now the youngest – and least experienced – Captain in the Navy.

She has no choice, but to accept the command – and the deployment to Cadiz, out on the border with the Theocracy.  The Theocracy – an empire based around religion – is brushing up against the Commonwealth and war is inevitable.  As Kat comes to grips with her new position, she finds herself standing right in the path of the oncoming storm.  

And if she falls, the Commonwealth will fall with her.

Foreword

Looking back from our point in time, there is a certain perception of inevitability around historical events.  Napoleon’s bid for world dominance was bound to fail; the twin demons of Fascism and Communism were defeated by their inherent shortcomings; the UN’s attempt to exercise effective control over the colonies settled ever since humanity gained access to hyperspace represented a failure to truly grasp the nature of interstellar logistics.  Hundreds of smug little treatises have been written on how a given event was inevitable, with the authors citing cases from history; hundreds more have been written which claim to prove that certain political ideas failed because of the personalities involved, rather than because of inherent failings in the specific political concept.

What the writers of both kinds of documents generally ignore is that the people involved in specific historical events do not have the benefit of hindsight, nor do they have access to the sheer volume of material that modern-day historians generally gather for their research; they certainly do not have the time to deliberate and pontificate before making their decisions.  The historical figures, for good or ill, can only make their decisions based upon what they know at the time, which is always far less than any historical researcher.  Thus we are left with the perplexing ‘fact’ that historical figures made insane decisions – a fact that ignores the simple point that the decisions seemed logical and reasonable at the time to the person charged with making them.  Hitler’s decision to start the Holocaust – a mass slaughter that brought no benefit to Germany, yet drained German resources and ensured that Germany’s defeat would be terrible – can only be understood by comprehending that the elimination of World Jewry was a core aim of the Nazi Regime.  It was an aim so central to their purpose that they failed to even delay the slaughter until after the war had been securely won.

It is tempting to talk in terms of historical inevitability, of immovable technological, physical and economic factors that determine the course of history, but such temptation must be resisted.  History is little, but human action; human decisions shape the course of history for good or ill.  A person who finds themselves at the eye of the historical storm – the right place at the right time – can change the entire universe.

When it comes to considering the career of Katherine Falcone, ninth child of Lucas Falcone, we are forced to recognise that her mere presence had a staggering influence on the direction of events as the Commonwealth of Avalon found itself confronted by the Theocracy.  Born to wealth and privilege beyond the imagination of most humans, she could have been forgiven for choosing to vanish into obscurity, or for becoming nothing more than a pawn in her family’s political and economic games.  Instead, she chose to seek a career in the Royal Avalon Navy, with her early years showing remarkable promise.

And yet, her father’s influence exerted an uncomfortable effect on her life.  His unseen presence ensured that she was promoted rapidly, to the point where she became the youngest (by seven years) RAN officer to command a starship.  Historical researchers have been denied access to the Falcone Family’s sealed records that would reveal what was said when Katherine confronted her father, a day after receiving her new command.  Nor do we know what she thought when she discovered that she was truly at the eye of the storm.  She left no personal logs behind her when she departed this mortal life; her family has been quick to secure other records before they could be dissected by historians.  For someone so historically important, we know very little about her.

All we know is that she changed the fate of the entire Human Sphere.

Admiral Joseph Marshall
Director; Piker’s Peak Military History Department

Chapter One

It was a truism of human society that if one had enough money, one could do almost anything without fear of repercussions.  Money – or whatever medium of exchange might be developed by a society – could affect a person’s judgment, corrupt the law or even buy the loyalties of armed men.  Or, as a cruder mind might have put it; them that has, gets.

The Majestic Hotel was a testament to that truth, a gaudy building constructed near the centre of Camelot City, only a few hundred meters from Camelot Palace, the residence of His Majesty the King.  Charm, good taste and elegance were notable by their absence; the designer had been wealthy enough to purchase the land at vastly inflated prices – and wealthy enough not to have to listen to honest critiques of his work.  In the sixty years since the Hotel had opened its doors, a combination of exclusivity and proximity to the centre of government had ensured a roaring trade, even if the corridors seemed overloaded with golden paint and expensive artworks.  A prospective guest had to have at least a million pounds in his bank account before the manager would even consider letting them through the front door.  The guards had strict orders to keep all members of the media off the premises, giving the hotel a reputation for privacy that was the envy of half the city.  Rumour had it that half of the most important decisions in Camelot – or the Commonwealth of Avalon – were taken at the Majestic Hotel.

Captain Katherine Falcone gritted her teeth as the aircar slowly sank to rest on the hotel’s landing pad.  She disliked the hotel intensely, even though she’d only visited twice before, once as a small child.  It was a monument to wealth and power; not the kind of wealth and power achieved by the men and women who had settled Avalon and turned it into their private paradise, but inherited wealth and the folly it brought with it.  And, she knew, most of her comrades in the Royal Avalon Navy would never be allowed to even look at the front doors.  Even an Admiral’s salary wouldn’t be enough to convince the hotel to allow her to visit, even for a brief meal in the hugely-expensive restaurant.

She stepped out of the aircar and nodded politely to the waitress as she came forward, bowing in greeting.  The hotel’s staff had always got on her nerves, although as an adult Kat was more tolerant than she’d been as a small child.  They would literally do almost anything for the hotel’s guests – and, in return, some of them had been given enough money to ensure that they would never have to work again.  They’d all signed horrendously strict non-disclosure contracts as well, ensuring that nothing they saw within the ugly building was ever broadcast to the media, or transmitted on the planetary datanet.  And they would have identified her before her aircar even set down on the pad, or she would have been greeted by armed guards.

“Welcome to the Majestic Hotel,” the waitress said.  She had been perfectly chosen for the job, with a mop of short curly brown hair, an infectious smile and a little black dress that revealed her long perfect legs and shapely breasts.  Just looking at her made Kat feel dowdy, but then the waitress hadn't dressed up for her.  Kat wasn't paying her salary tonight.  “Your father is waiting for you in the Independence Suite.”

Kat allowed her to lead the way into the elevator and take her down into the building.  A quick ping from her implants revealed that there were no localised net processors in the building – or at least none that were willing to respond to her.  Even a paying guest was forced to restrict his movements within the hotel, ensuring the privacy of all.  Kat supposed that it was worth it, at least to her.  She was in enough trouble with her fellow officers without making a public visit to the Majestic Hotel.

Almost reflexively, she studied her own reflection in the mirror.  The black uniform she wore was new; it had been shipped to her two days ago, following her promotion to Captain.  A black tunic, a white shirt and a black pair of trousers, marked only with a single golden star on her collar; it was a uniform worn only by a starship commander.  Her golden curls had been cut short and hidden under her black cap, her perfect heart-shaped face was unmarked by any form of cosmetic powder or makeup.  Before Kat had been born, her mother had engineered her for beauty rather than trust to her natural genetic pattern.  She was alarmingly aware that she would look like a teenager, permanently poised on the edge of adulthood, for at least two decades to come.

The elevator chimed to a stop and the door opened, revealing a single dining room.  Unlike the outside of the building, it was surprisingly tasteful and very elegant, with excellent views of the Palace.  It should have housed fifty guests – Kat had heard that there was a waiting list for tables longer than the list of officers hoping to be entrusted with a command of their own – but it was almost empty, save for one table.  Her father had used his money – and the political clout his family had amassed ever since Avalon had been founded – to book the entire suite.  Kat didn’t even want to think about how much that must have cost him, or the fact that even a million pounds or two would have been nothing more than pocket change.  Her father’s economic resources were staggering, so enormous that a hundred heirs could not spend them all...

He rose from his chair to greet her as Kat approached, the waitress stepping back into the elevator and vanishing from sight.  Lucas Falcone was tall, but there the resemblance with his ninth daughter ended.  He was darkened skin, hair so black that it was darker than outer space and eyes that had been specially wired for direct neural access to the corporation’s computer processors.  There were laws governing just how much augmentation any non-military person was allowed to insert into their bodies, but Lucas Falcone was above the law.  No policeman would dare issue him a parking ticket when he possessed enough clout to end the career of anyone who got in his way.

Kat took his hand reluctantly, feeling the unnatural strength hiding behind his grip.  He’d never been much of a father either.  As the ninth child of his blood, Kat hadn’t been expected to take up a position in the family-owned corporation, or to serve as one of her father’s political placemen in the Assembly.  Her upbringing had been supervised by the family’s endless supply of servants, her education had been provided by privately-hired tutors and she saw her father, if she was lucky, once or twice a month.  She could have sunk into the social whirlwind that consumed the lives of those born to wealth so immense that they never had to worry about a thing, but instead she’d run off to the Navy.  If only she had been able to change her name...

Her implant pinged, reporting that a local network processor had just downloaded a copy of the hotel’s menu into her secure storage database.  She didn't bother to look at it, merely ordering the decidedly-plebeian choice of fish and chips, with an extra helping of chips.  It would irritate her father, but it was the kind of irritation he could never hope to scratch.  The old man had interfered too much in her life already, as far as she was concerned – and the latest piece of interference had been the worst.

“You’ll be pleased to hear that Peter is shaping up well,” Lucas said calmly.  He smiled one of his trademark smiles, a smile the young Kat had once compared to a shark’s grin as it swam towards a helpless swimmer in the ocean.  “I was in two minds about trusting him with the Macron Platform, but the lad managed to turn the effort around and boost profitability by a considerable amount.  I am sure that the family will see their way towards electing him my successor when I finally step off this mortal coil.”

Kat scowled.  She’d never had the patience to fake being interested when she couldn’t care less.  Peter might have been her brother, but he’d been an adult when Kat had been born and he’d never showed any interest in his baby sister.  From what Kat had heard over the years, Peter was constantly overshadowed by his father, to the point where he was slowly developing into a carbon copy of the old man.  

Lucas talked about nothing for several minutes, either trying to put her at her ease or get on her nerves.  Kat listened patiently, making the occasional remark, as he told her about her sister’s latest husband – Dolly Falcone went through men as if they were going out of season – and her mother’s latest enthusiasm, a charity for dispossessed orphans on Cadiz.  As the reason there were so many orphans on Cadiz had a great deal to do with her father’s predecessor as CEO of Consolidated Industries Incorporated, Kat rather expected that the charity wouldn't fare very well.  Her mother hadn’t been that good a mother, either.  

The food arrived and she was treated to a single raised eyebrow from her father as the waiter put down a steaming plate of fish, surrounded by chips.  Naval cadets were allowed to spend a couple of hours fishing in the waters surrounding Piker’s Peak, the Royal Avalon Navy’s Officer Training Centre, and those who managed to catch a fish or two were permitted to have them fried in the canteen and served up with golden chips.  Kat hadn’t really had the patience to fish – she preferred action to waiting for a fish to bite – but she had developed a taste for the meal.  The hotel hadn't lowered itself far enough to produce the mushy peas.  There were definitely some limits...

“I need to as you a question,” Kat said, as her father tucked into his game pie.  According to the menu in Kat’s implant, it had seven different kinds of meat and cost enough to feed an average family for just under a month.  The animals were hunted in the nearby Royal Reserve, shipped to the hotel and placed in stasis until they were needed.  There was a good chance that her father was eating meat from an animal that had been killed by the King himself, or one of his family.  Kat rolled her eyes at the thought.  Some people would do anything to convince themselves that they were superior to others.

Her father gave her another of his smiles.  “And what might that be?”

Kat scowled at him, suddenly unsure.  Her father hadn't gained the post of CEO just because he’d been born into the Falcone Family; he’d spent years building up the experience and career that had convinced the seniors to permit him to become CEO.  He knew – she was certain – why she’d requested this meeting.  And if he knew that, what else did he know?  What else did he want?

“I have been appointed to take command of HMS Lightning,” she said.  She’d been proud, until she accessed the specs on her new command.  Kat was twenty-nine, at least six years too young for the post.  It hadn't taken her long to realise that her father’s name – and perhaps his meddling – had seen her promoted over hundreds of officers with longer, and more distinguished, service records.  “I am far too young for the position.”

With her father, attack was always better than defence.  “Did you use your...influence to ensure that I won the promotion?”

Her father smiled at her, dryly.  “And do you feel that you are unable to handle the post?”

Kat scowled at him, a reaction that left him apparently unmoved.  Any naval officer who turned down a promotion would be rewarded – by never being offered a promotion again.  If she felt that she could not, in good conscience, accept command of Lightning and made that clear to the promotion board, she would never have another chance at command.  That fact, and that fact alone, had kept her from trying to decline the command.  She did want command – her experience as a destroyer XO had convinced her that she could command – but not yet.  How could she jump from XO of a vessel that had only 50 crewmembers to commander of a heavy cruiser that had over 2000?

“My reputation has been ruined,” Kat said, flatly.  “Every officer in the Navy will know that I didn't win the promotion honestly.  They won’t place any faith in me, nor should they...”

Her father tapped the table, impatiently.  “I think you’re forgetting something,” he said.  His voice was calm, but with a chilly undertone that matched any of her instructors at Piker’s Peak.  “The family brings you benefits and expects you to work in its interests, providing you and your siblings with the tools you need to serve the family.  This promotion is merely giving you some of the tools...”

“I wanted to be out of the family,” Kat snapped.  “I tried to enlist under a false name...”

“You should have tried to enlist in a mercenary company,” her father countered.  “They wouldn't have bothered to check your DNA against their records.  And besides...calling yourself Constance Chance...  What were you thinking?”

Kat flushed.  She’d been sixteen years old at the time, the youngest age she could apply to Piker’s Peak, and had been unduly influenced by watching Stellar Star, queen of the stars, a childish entertainment that had charmed her younger self.  Her father’s influence had saved her from the consequences of that little untruth on her application form, something she hadn't really understood at the time.  But then, she hadn't been a very mature sixteen years old.

Her father put down his fork and focused on her.  “You’re right,” he said.  “I did have a few words with the Grand Admiral, and with a handful of men on the Military Oversight Committee, and with the King himself.  His Majesty takes a strong interest in the RAN – but you’ll know that for yourself.  And yes, they did ensure that you received the promotion.”

He held up a hand before she could say anything.  “I didn't insist that you were promoted merely to show off my influence,” he continued.  “I think that I want a pair of trustworthy eyes out near Cadiz.  I don’t entirely trust the reports we’ve been receiving from Admiral Williams.  My contacts in the Theocracy are turning too damned silent for my tastes.”

That, Kat knew, was her father all over.  Throw in a few names, and a few places, and see if the recipient sank or swam.  Her father’s corporation had offices inside and outside the Commonwealth, even in the Theocracy, despite repeated protests from the more militaristic or suspicious members of the Assembly.  It provided a window into the theocratic state that offered information that was not always available to the Office of Naval Intelligence.  

Her implant tossed up a star chart, but she’d already committed the map to memory.  The Theocracy was a cluster of red stars to the galactic south of the Commonwealth of Avalon, an expanding state seemingly intent on overwhelming all other states in its path.  After the previous Caliph – who’d been as bloody-minded and murderous as any tyrant throughout history – had been assassinated, his son had taken the throne – and rapidly turned out to be just as bad as his dad.  The RAN had been picking up refugees for years.  Everyone knew – at least everyone who didn't have their heads buried firmly in the sand – that war was coming, and the Commonwealth was preparing desperately.  The crash program that had produced Lightning was merely one weapons program of many.

And if the war began, everyone expected that it would begin at Cadiz.  The world – and naval base – was in an excellent position for launching strikes into the Theocracy, which naturally made it a target for the Caliph’s warships.  And if the base was overrun, it would be damn hard to recover it before the Theocracy stabbed deep into the Commonwealth’s vitals.

“Admiral Williams has been...rather sedentary of late,” her father said, breaking into her thoughts.  “His reports to the Privy Council have all suggested that peace is breaking out all over.  The private reports suggest something different.  I require someone out there with the...independence of mind to contradict her superior, if necessary.  Your reports can be forwarded through the StarCom and addressed to me personally.”

Kat narrowed her eyes.  “And if I refuse the promotion?”

Lucas snorted.  “And lose your chance at command, girl?  You were born to command, it runs in the blood.  And if you refuse your promotion, they will never give you another one.”

“True,” Kat agreed.  Anger was flaring through her mind, but she kept it under tight control.  It was a good servant and a very poor master, or so the drill instructors had told her, while pushing the cadets right to the limits of their abilities.  “I will take the command.”

“That’s my girl,” her father said.  He smiled at her, before summoning the waitress to remove the empty dishes.  Kat eyed her plate guiltily.  It might have been common food, but it had been extremely good.  “This could be the most important event in your lifetime.”

He waited until the waitress had gone before continuing.  “The King wants us to mobilise, perhaps even to consider striking first,” he added.  “Factions on the Assembly don’t want to go along with that, for all kinds of reasons.  Your reports could mean the difference between us striking first, and us waiting helplessly, just like a naked virgin, for them to strike at us.  And if they should happen to kill us with the first stroke...”

“Why do you care?”  Kat demanded, suddenly.  Her father was a born survivor; it ran in the blood.  The Falcone Family had had its origins in Old Europe, back on Old Earth, and had prospered though the bloodshed of the Wreaker War and the Breakaway Wars to establish a permanent home – and power base – on Avalon.  “You’ll always come out ahead.”

“If the Theocracy wins, it will mean the end of our family,” her father reminded her, dryly.  “Defeat means the end of everything we have created over the years; defeat means the end of the world.”

He leaned forward.  “I will not let that happen,” he said.  There was no mistaking the icy determination in his voice.  “Whatever it takes, I will ensure that that will not happen.”

Chapter Two

“Captain?”

Kat looked up from her seat.  The shuttle pilot looked anxious – and barely old enough to shave.  She’d been rather brusque to him, she recalled with a hint of shame, even though she’d been fuming when she’d boarded the shuttle for the flight to Merlin Base.  The young man was probably convinced that his career was already over before it had even begun.

“Yes, Ensign?”  She asked, finally.  Her voice was calm, at least.  The last thing she wanted to do was panic the young man still further.  “What can I do for you?”

“We are approaching the Merlin Shipyards, Captain,” the Ensign said.  “System Command would like to know if you wish to board your ship or proceed to Main Base for briefing.”

Kat scowled inwardly.  In truth, she’d put off boarding her ship formally for too young.  The RAN tradition had it that the newly-promoted Captain had to board before the end of the day, or bad luck would surely follow the ship for the first year of service.  Kat didn't believe such rubbish, but tradition was impossible to dismiss outright.  In any case, an officer who didn't take up command as soon as practicable wouldn't make a good impression on the subordinates.

“Proceed to the Lightning,” she ordered, finally.  “I’ll visit Main Base once I have inspected my ship.”

Avalon had two moons, Genevieve and Merlin.  Genevieve was only slightly smaller than Luna, the legendary moon orbiting Old Earth, but Merlin was tiny, really little more than a massive asteroid.  It had served as the base for the first starships that served the Royal Avalon Navy, before having its facilities expanded massively as the Commonwealth grew in size and power.  Now, two hundred and thirty-nine years after the Navy had been created, it was a massive complex of free-floating slips for new construction and industrial nodes for producing the components that were worked into the latest starships.  Kat had heard that the complex actually produced far more components than the Navy actually required, allowing the base to build up a surplus – and sell certain systems to commercial interests.  The Navy made a tidy profit, one that was bitterly begrudged by the smaller industrial concerns in the Commonwealth.  Kat didn't have much time for such concerns; after all, the King and Assembly had funded the construction of the base and now they were reaping the rewards.

Every slip, according to the small display in front of her, was full, with dozens of starships in varying stages of construction.  An entire wing of starfighters was on permanent patrol, complementing the weapons platforms scattered around the edge of the free-floating complex, ready to intercept any unwanted guests.  The Navy had jurisdiction over the entire region and any civilian pilot who strayed into the area could expect – at the very least – to spend an uncomfortable night in a Navy brig before being fined and possibly stripped of his licence.  With the Royal Navy desperately preparing for hostilities, no one wanted to play fast and loose with the base’s security.  If there had been anything wrong with the shuttle’s IFF codes, the starfighters would have intercepted them and either forced the shuttle to halt or destroyed it, along with its passengers.  No one took chances.

“We’re cleared to approach Slip #45,” the pilot said.  He seemed to have recovered from his earlier panic, although Kat suspected that it was partly relief from knowing that the trip would soon be over.  “The Lightning will be coming into view shortly.”

Kat leaned forward, almost pressing her face against the cockpit, as a mass of lights in the distance slowly resolved themselves into a network covering – and shielding – an angular shape, glowing white under spotlights.  The starship seemed solid compared to the slip and construction facilities that had been assembled around it, but Kat wasn't fooled.  In space, there was little need for fixed facilities.  Zero-gravity had transformed the human race’s industrial base, even after the disasters that had overwhelmed Earth during the Breakaway Wars.  It had probably helped that Earth had tried to prevent the colonies from industrialising and accidentally ensured that the colonies would stop at nothing to build up the industry that would allow them to dictate their own terms to Earth.

Lightning was six hundred metres long from bow to stern, an arrowhead shape flattened down and studded with weapons and sensor blisters.  Kat forgot her irritation with her father as she studied the starship, noting the position of the main drives and the nodes that allowed Lightning to generate her own hyperspace vortex rather than rely on the gateways that provided access for most civilian-grade starships.  It was hardly an uncommon element of starship design, but it would provide her with a degree of freedom in travelling from star to star.  Her hull was painted brilliant white, with the Commonwealth’s flag emblazoned on her underside and her name displayed prominently along her hull.  Up close, the sleek perfection of her lines were spoilt by the point defence weapons and heavy missile launchers that provided her offensive punch, but Kat forgave her designers.  Lightning was perfect.

She was the culmination of nearly five hundred years of starship design.  Heavy cruisers were designed to serve as the Navy’s workhorses, serving with equal competence as escort vessels for the battleships and individual patrol ships for independent operations.  She might have lacked the speed and flexibility of light cruisers and destroyers, or the heavy broadsides of the battleships, but she did have a robust nature and an ability to absorb punishment that would have blown a light cruiser into a ball of expanding plasma.  And anything heavy enough to kill her would have to catch her first.  

Kat barely noticed as her pilot took the shuttle in a slow spiral around her ship, as tradition dictated.  The Captain of any newly-constructed starship would be the first to command her, yet the Captain would not even set eyes on his ship until she was ready to be launched.  Her first inspection would allow her to see the ship in her virgin form, and set the tone for the rest of her career.  Lightning would only be young once.  She drank in the lines of her ship, almost grateful to her father.  The crew might be worried about her age and general lack of experience, but she was confident of her own success.  With a ship like Lightning, how could she fail?

***
“Damn it!”

Commander Jeremy Damiani squeezed the datapad in his hand in the hopes that it would burst, scattering its solid-state components over the deck.  It didn't, of course; he placed his thumb against the biometric reader and allowed it to read his thumbprint, granting the Ensign with the datapad temporary authority to requisition supplies from Main Base.  The Captain would have had the authority to claim everything allocated to her ship, but of course she wasn't onboard yet.  Rumour had it that she’d spent the days since she’d been allocated command of the heavy cruiser partying down on Avalon with he – a man nearly twice the age of his CO – was left doing all the work.  And without the authority to actually do it either!  If he hadn't had some clandestine support from an old friend in Admiral Bainbridge’s office, Lightning would have missed her completion date and would have been forced to wait in free orbit around Merlin until she had finished fitting out.

He passed the datapad back to the Ensign and stalked off down the corridor.  A hundred days, his mind told him; a hundred days since he’d been appointed as XO.  Lightning had a good crew, but she was a new ship and all new ships had their problems.  He’d dealt with them, calling on his fifty years of experience to smooth out problems, requisition supplies not normally included on the manifest – and kicking ass and taking names where necessary.  He should have been Captain, not some slip of a girl barely old enough to go to the toilet without being escorted by her mommy.  Had his fifty years in the service weighed less against a healthy campaign contribution to some political asshole on the planet below?

The thought galled him, even as he strode into the shuttlebay and barked orders to the officers gathering at the hatch.  By custom, a new Captain had to be greeted by her senior officers – and that included little girls who should still be playing with dolls, not assuming command of a ship with enough firepower to wreak planets.  The other officers kept well-schooled blank faces as they formed a line, but Jeremy knew how to read faces and knew that at least two of them were just as affronted as he was, although neither of them would ever say it out loud.  The Lightning was a King’s ship, by all that was holy, and none of them would ever have dared break that sacred trust.  They’d serve their girlish Captain and pray that she had at least a vague idea of what she was doing.  Or, if not, she would have the sense to let him take the lead.  The horror stories about other high-born brats who assumed positions of power had never seemed more real to him.

He came to a rigid posture of attention as the shuttle slowly lowered itself onto the deck.  The heat stung at his face as it radiated away from the shuttle, but he refused to allow it to alter his position one iota.  His Captain would see them all at the hatch, as tradition demanded; the first notes of the whistle were already echoing through the air.  The hatch opened and his Captain stepped into view.  It took all of his fifty years of service to keep his face calm and composed.

She was beautiful.  Her blonde curls leaking out from under her cap, the subtle hints that she had a body that lived up to her face’s promise; if he'd seen her without the uniform, he might have tried to pick her up.  The young Ensigns and Lieutenants wouldn't have hesitated before trying to climb into her panties.  And by all the gods, she was a girl!  She barely looked old enough to wear any uniform, let alone the black design that belonged solely to Captains.  How could she hope to command men and women who had served the Navy from before she was even a glint in her father’s eye?

The Captain stepped forward, eyes fixed on the flag painted against one bulkhead.  She stood to attention and snapped a perfect salute, so perfect that the cynical part of Jeremy’s mind wondered if she’d been practicing in front of a mirror.  Or maybe not; as a mustang, he’d never been to Piker’s Peak, but he’d heard that the instructors were very keen on decorum.  It was a pity that so many of the Lieutenants they produced were often unsuited for their positions and had to learn on the job.  Not all of them survived long enough to learn from their mistakes.

“Lightning, arriving,” the Senior Chief snapped.  His voice echoed out in the massive shuttlebay.  Senior Chief Alex Houghton might have been just as shocked at the youth of their commander as Jeremy, but he wouldn't let it affect his professionalism.  He was surrogate father to the young crewmen and, technically against regulations, the advisor and mentor to many junior officers who were on their own for the first time.  “Stand...to...Attention!”

Jeremy snapped to attention as the Captain pivoted until she was facing him.  Her eyes were green, sparkling with life...he had to force himself not to let his eyes drop from her face.  Slowly, he brought his hand up to salute, knowing that the other officers would be following him.  There was a long pause as they saluted, followed by the Captain returning their salute.

Her voice was calm, and very precise.  “Permission to come aboard, Mr. XO?”

“Permission granted,” Jeremy said.  Until the Captain formally assumed command, he was still in command of the ship.  It was another tradition, one that planet-bound bureaucrats    rarely understood.  A ship always had to have a commander – and that commander had to be known to the crew at all times.  “Welcome onboard, Captain.”

The Captain’s lips twitched.  Perhaps she was aware of just how much he resented her – or perhaps she believed that the traditional welcome to a Captain was overblown.  There was no way to know.  Jeremy had served under Captains who had been his friends, despite regulations, and Captains who had been rule-bound martinets.  Who knew what this new Captain would be?  If she was still a young officer, like the baby-faced Lieutenants who’d come aboard earlier, she might well be unformed...

“Thank you, Mr. XO,” she said.

Jeremy nodded.  “Please allow me to introduce you to your crew,” he said.  He wanted – needed – the ceremony to be finished as soon as possible.  Lightning wasn't entirely ready for deployment and he’d pulled the various section heads off their stations to welcome the new commanding officer.  God alone knew how many potential disasters were on the verge of exploding.  “Lieutenant-Commander Christopher John Roach, Tactical Officer; Lieutenant Samuel Weiberg, Helmsman; Lieutenant Nicola Robertson, Navigator; Chief Engineer Zack Lynn; Doctor Katy Braham; Senior Chief Alex Houghton and Cap...ah, Major Gregory Bone of the Marines...”

***
Kat fought to keep the surprise off her face.  The perfunctory introductions had been made as tradition demanded, but she’d read their files and she knew that she would have time to meet them all a little more intimately later, yet the files hadn't told her who would be commanding the company of Marines attached to her ship.  Major – he would have been granted a courtesy promotion, in line with the regulations that specified that there could only be one Captain on a starship - Gregory Bone was hardly a stranger.  They’d been lovers on the Amelia Pond, where she’d served as an XO; they’d parted on fairly good terms.  He’d been due for a promotion, according to her previous Captain; it struck her that her father might have warped her former lover’s career just to ensure that she had at least one ally on the Lightning.  And if he resented her for that...

Like all Marines, he was bald, having long since used tailored nanites to destroy his follicles and inhibit growth.  Short and stocky, he was a great deal stronger than he looked, even without the combat training that all Marines endured before they were permitted to seek specialist positions.  His face had been badly scarred during a close-quarters fight on a pirate ship and, despite her occasional teasing, he’d never bothered to have it repaired.  It was useful, he’d claimed, for intimidating the young recruits.  

She pushed the thought out of her mind and considered the XO.  He appeared older than she’d expected, as if he’d been reluctant to use any of the cosmetic regeneration treatments that were made available to starship officers as a matter of course.  His white hair was slowly fading away, leaving him bald on top, but his eyes were clear and fixed on her.  She’d read his file and wondered why he hadn't been offered his own command.  He had more experience than anyone else Kat had met in her career.

“Thank you,” she said, once the XO had finished introducing the senior crew.  The Senior Chief looked as calm and composed as any other, reminding her of the jokes back at Piker’s Peak, where they’d claimed that all NCOs were secretly cloned and mass-produced by the Navy.  The Helmsman and Navigator were both young, but highly-qualified; the Tactical Officer seemed older, yet focused on his job.  His file suggested that he’d been marked down for early promotion if his service on her ship lived up to his promise.  She wondered absently if he knew that, or if it would have mattered if he had.

“This is a new ship,” she continued, “but the name Lightning has endured in the Navy for seventy years.  Our launch date is identical to that of the light cruiser HMS Lightning, which served for twenty years before retirement, and that of her successor, which was destroyed in the border confrontation five years ago.  Both of those ships had long and eventful careers and many of the officers we are taught to emulate served on them.  I trust that this crew will more than live up to the torch that has been passed down to us.”

She allowed her gaze to sweep over them once more, desperately wondering if her words had been the right words – and knowing that she could never ask.  “Dismissed,” she said, calmly.  “Mr. XO; please walk with me.”

The XO nodded and led her towards the bridge.  His face didn't betray anything of his inner thoughts, but his stance suggested that Jeremy Damiani was a man who kept himself under careful control.  He might have approved of her little speech, or he might have thought that she’d overdone it.  The thought was worrying.  On the Amelia Pond, she’d tried to be her Captain’s strong right arm, but he’d been so experienced that he hadn't needed her.  She, on the other hand, desperately needed her XO.  How could she break through to him and gain his trust?

She found herself smiling as the bridge hatch – guarded by a pair of unsmiling Marines, requiring implant verification to confirm that they were permitted entry – opened with a hiss, revealing the nerve centre of her ship.  Her legs moved forward as if she were in a dream, taking in the consoles, the massive holographic display at the centre of the bridge – and the single command chair, right behind the display.  Calmly, still half-dazed, she sat down and keyed the intercom.  There was no need to check her implant for the words.  Anyone with any ambitions to rise to command learned them by heart.

“From Grand Admiral Constance Cinnabar, Peer of the Realm, to Captain Katherine Falcone, on this date of 2500AD; three hundred and thirty-nine years after the formation of the Royal Avalon Navy.  Captain; you are hereby directed to proceed aboard His Majesty’s Starship Lightning, there to take upon yourself the duties and responsibilities of commanding officer in the service of the Commonwealth.  By order of His Most Imperial Majesty Thomas V, King of Avalon, Prince-Elect of the Commonwealth, Lord of Cadiz and Defender of the Realm.”

There was a long pause, pregnant with possibility.   

She turned to her new XO.  “Mr. XO,” she said, “I assume command.”

“I stand relieved,” Damiani said, formally.  “A note will be entered in the ship’s log.”

Kat nodded.  It was official now.  She was in command.

“I’ll see you in my office,” she said, with equal formality.  “We have a great deal of work to do.”

Chapter Three

“Paperwork,” Kat said, in an tone of deep disgust.

“Paperwork,” Damiani agreed.  “The entire Navy runs on paperwork.”

Kat scowled, looking down at the list of documents she was required to read and then thumbprint.  She’d been an XO and she’d handled a great deal of the paperwork for her commander, but the Captain had still had to spend several hours a week working on his paperwork.  There were times when she thought that if the Theocracy ever invaded, they could be buried in the vast amount of paperwork generated by the Navy alone.  The bureaucracy  that ran the Navy didn't seem to think that the officers needed to spend time eating, sleeping and actually fighting to defend the Commonwealth.

The designers, in their wisdom, had given her an office larger than her entire cabin on her last posting.  It was even decorated in a surprisingly tasteful manner, with a painting of Lightning on one bulkhead, a drinks producer on another and a comfortable sofa if she needed to sleep next to the bridge.  There were people in her family who would have regarded it with horror, but it was more than suitable for her, once she’d personalised it for herself.  She had a small number of decorations she wanted to hang on the wall.

The datapad glowed, politely insisting that she start signing off on the documents before they could be uploaded into the Navy’s command network.  She sighed, unwilling to meet Damiani’s eyes, and started to read.  Each document requisitioned a set of supplies or components for the starship, all supplies they should have had automatic access to, but with so many starships being fitted out at Merlin the supplies were being stretched to the limit.  She wanted to explore her new command, to inspect Engineering and the tactical sections – even the Sickbay – but the paperwork had to be completed.  Kat cursed all bureaucrats under her breath and started to skim through the documents.  Nothing struck her as unusual, apart from a request for additional hyperdrive generator components.  The beancounters had queried that request and insisted that the Captain sign off on it before they uploaded it into the network.

“The hyperdrives have a habit of failing on new starships,” Damiani said.  “We can’t actually test them without actually running them and if something goes wrong...”

He didn't have to spell it out.  Kat had heard the horror stories of starships that remained trapped in hyperspace forever, or had had the hyperspace gateway collapsing around them as they tried to enter and leave hyperspace.  The results had not been pretty.  Indeed, only five years ago a RAN starship had encountered a derelict exploration starship from the first era of expansion, drifting in hyperspace.  The crew had long since run out of supplies and died of starvation.  It had been the sensation of the week, at least until one of the more famous celebrities had given birth to a new child.  

Kat wasn't an expert in hyperdrive mechanics – that field was a lifetime’s study – but she did know that huge amounts of energy were required to open a gateway into hyperspace.  A single failure in the wrong place could be disastrous.  The ship’s engineer could replace damaged components if there were spare parts onboard, but they couldn't be replaced if there were no spare parts.  She signed off on the request with a single thumbprint, knowing that she’d probably be asked to confirm it before the spare parts were shipped to her crew.  Some people didn’t seem to know that they were desperately preparing for war.

“Thank you, Captain,” Damiani said, once she’d finished skimming through the paperwork.  It occurred to her that she would have to start trusting Damiani to handle at least some of the paperwork, if only because handling it would leave her with no time for anything else.  And then she realised that she’d kept him in her office for over an hour, without thinking.  God alone knew what might have gone wrong without his supervision.  “Would you like a tour of your command once I upload these documents?”

There was something in his tone Kat didn't like, but she knew that she needed a guided tour.  The XO would be familiar with all the quirks on a new-built ship, where components so fresh that they’d only been fabricated a few weeks ago were still being tested.  She knew of ships that had left the shipyard, only to suffer embarrassing failures that left them limping back to Merlin with their tails between their legs.  A handful of Captains had been replaced when the Board of Inquiry decided that they’d been negligent in their duties.

“Yes, Mr. XO,” she said.  “I would like that very much.”

***
Lightning might have been crewed for over three months, once the shipyard’s inspectors had signed off on her hull, power plants and life support systems, but she still had the indefinable smell of a new-built ship.  Jeremy had served on starships that had smelled peculiar, before he’d gotten so used to the smell that it no longer registered.  It wouldn't be long before the starship smelled normal, but for the moment his ship was definitely new.  And any new-built ship tended to have surprises for her first crew.

The Captain had definitely studied the ship’s plans, he noted with some relief.  Anyone could have a detailed plan downloaded into their implants, but it took actual study to be familiar with it and the Captain showed no sign of hesitation in following him.  She received a handful of salutes from crewmen as they passed, keeping out of the way of men and women shepherding trolleys through the starship and working on open bulkheads.  A civilian would have wondered if the ship wouldn't be ready to launch for another year, but Jeremy knew that most of the remaining work was hardly urgent.  If the war had begun, they would have carried out the work while travelling to their first deployment.  They took a wide berth around a compartment that the engineers were using to run power tests and reached Main Engineering without incident.  The entire compartment was buzzing with life.

Main Engineering dominated an entire third of the starship’s hull.  Four powerful fusion reactions, each one capable of providing enough power to open a hyperspace gateway or keep Lightning flying for years, nestled within heavy shielding and armour.  Lightning was designed with multiple redundancies to allow her to take damage and keep fighting, but Jeremy knew that if they suffered a direct hit to Main Engineering they were likely to have serious problems.  Simulations were all very well, but no one had any direct experience of what would happen if a Fireball-class heavy cruiser found itself losing two or more of its fusion plants, let alone the network of conduits that channelled power through the vast ship and fed the weapons, sensors and helm.  The power cells that provided emergency power wouldn't last long if they had to keep operating at full military power.

“Captain,” Chief Engineer Zack Lynn said.  He was a short man with a perpetually harassed expression, one of the officers who doubted the competence of their new Captain.  Lynn was an excellent engineer – he wouldn't have been assigned to a new-built starship if there had been any doubts about his abilities – but he wasn’t known for social graces.  “Welcome to engineering.”

“Thank you, Mr. Lynn,” the Captain said, returning his salute.  “Do you have time to brief me on the ship’s status?”

Jeremy had to admit that it was a point in her favour.  He’d served under Captains who had insisted on being briefed immediately, even though his officers were desperately scrambling to deal with a problem before it got out of hand.  Lynn seemed to respect it as well; he passed a datapad to one of his subordinates and invited the Captain over to the engineering display, which was glowing with red, yellow and green lights.  Even with additional technicians from Merlin Base, there was still far too much work to do.

“We’ve completed power tests on all four reactors,” Lynn said.  Jeremy listened, hoping that the Captain would understand.  “Three of them check out perfectly; Fusion Two required some parts switched around before it operated at full military power.  Merlin Base was careful enough to allow us to run the tests before the reactors were sealed, which ensured that we could test and replace without cutting through the armour plate.  The power distribution network is fully operational; we’re just running tests now to ensure that if we lose part of the network we can switch around and continue operations.”

He grinned, clearly delighted that he had a Captain who was prepared to listen.  “Overall, the ship is in excellent state,” he continued.  “A handful of components have been replaced to ensure overall functioning; we have ordered enough spare parts to allow us to repair the ship away from Merlin Base.  Once we do full-power trials outside the Base, we should be able to sign off on everything.”

The Captain nodded.  “And do you foresee any problems with meeting our departure date?”

Lynn considered.  “I do not expect major problems when we start carrying out our full-power tests,” he said, finally.  “On the other hand, neither did the crew of the Swan when she was launched.”

Jeremy had to smile.  The Swan had been a new-built battlecruiser, constructed and launched two years ago.  When she’d brought her drives to full power, she’d suffered a massive and catastrophic power failure that had left her dead in space.  It had taken weeks of investigation before they discovered that the failure had been caused by a rat gnawing through the wrong component.  The only bright side to the disaster was that it had revealed a point failure source that had been corrected before the RAN had to go into battle.

There were smaller problems.  One technician from Merlin Base had started to use a ship’s computer to store his collection of pornographic material.  It wouldn't have been a problem – although it was strictly against regulations – if he hadn't placed it in the wrong section and overwritten some of the starship’s guidance coding.  At least that had been detected before the ship had been launched.  Tools left in the wrong place could cause damage when the ship went to full military power...the list went on and on.  There were times when Jeremy wondered that humanity had ever managed to get into space at all.

“One week to launch,” the Captain said, finally.  “I would like to hold a dinner for my senior staff tomorrow, if that is convenient...?”

Jeremy had to smile.  It would be a rare officer who found it inconvenient.

***
Two hours later, Kat stood in the observation blister and stared out at Merlin Base.  The activity around her starship – and the other ships in their slips – hadn't slowed at all, but then Merlin Base never slept.  Her technicians worked for six hours and then spent the rest of the day sleeping and eating, refreshing themselves for the next shift while their replacements ensured that the level of activity remained consistent.  Kat had been offered a post at the base, but she’d declined it, knowing that it would mean the end of any chance of command.  The RAN rarely allowed an officer who had proven herself at Merlin Base to risk her life in combat.

“Captain?”

Kat turned, and broke into a smile when she saw Major Bone standing there.  She hadn't been to visit Marine Country while touring the ship, even though the Marines were under her personal command.  By long tradition, the Marine CO enjoyed autonomy within Marine Country, one of the many compromises that allowed the different services to at least tolerate one another’s existence.  Besides, the Marines might disparage the ship’s crew as pansies too frail to fight and the ship’s crew might consider the Marines to be dumb jarheads too stupid to tie their bootlaces together, but they had to depend upon each other to survive.  There were a surprising number of cross-service friendships, and even relationships.

She felt an odd stab of guilt.  Marines were not in the ship’s standard chain of command.  On her last ship, where she’d served as XO, she could not legally give orders to the Marines.  They weren't in her chain of command, which meant that she could have a relationship with then-Lieutenant Bone without bending regulations that forbade her from having sexual relationships with anyone above or below her in the chain of command.  And they might have parted on good terms, but what if her father’s influence had cost him his chance at promotion?

“Greg,” she said.  She wanted to hold out her arms and welcome him, but she was a Captain now – and he was her subordinate.  “I’m sorry we didn't have a chance to chat either.”

Marines tended to be blunter than starship crewmen.  “You cost me a promotion to Major and a position at Carmichael Island,” he said.  Kay lowered her eyes, feeling the guilt growing worse.  Her father’s influence had ruined his career, just as she had feared.  “I came to thank you.”

Kat looked up, sharply.  Bone was grinning at her – and she realised that she’d been a fool.  No one joined the Marines, let alone served in them for years, without a taste for excitement and a burning hatred of boredom – and paperwork.  Bone had complained often enough about the requirement for senior Marines to spend a year or two at one of the training and operations centres, a requirement that officers who’d actually served on active duty handled the paperwork and passed on their experience to new recruits, a requirement that Kat thought the Navy should adopt.  Anyone who had served successfully on active duty would know what was actually important.

“You’re welcome,” she said, with an overpowering sense of relief.  At least she’d have one friend on the ship.  “I didn’t expect it to happen.”

Bone stepped forward and joined her, staring out of the blister towards the massive shipyards in the distance.  A shuttle flew by, carrying – she hoped – some of the spare parts she’d ordered for her ship.  Others serviced the other slips, while a flight of starfighters flashed past, clearly showing off.  Kat rolled her eyes.  Anyone who thought the Marines were full of their own importance had never met a starfighter pilot.

“Report; all one hundred Marines are boarded and ready for active duty,” Bone informed her, in a rather droll tone.  “Combat armour, weapons and medical supplies have been loaded onboard and stowed in Marine Country.  Standard ration packs have been placed into storage for unexpected requirements.  All Marines are in good health and ready for deployment.  We hope that you will find us something interesting to do.”

Kat snorted.  “I’ll do my best,” she promised.  She looked up at him.  “Have I blown it?”

Bone shrugged.  “That isn't my place to say,” he said, “but I can give you the same piece of advice I got at OCS if you want.”  Kat nodded.  “The Captain has to know what he’s doing at all times, or at least fake it – because the people under him have to have confidence in him.”

“That isn't much help,” Kat commented, sourly.  “I’m here, giving orders to people with more years of experience than I’ve been alive...”

“You’re the Captain,” Bone said, curtly.  “That makes you the people ultimately responsible for this ship, her crew, and the Marines.  If you have doubts about what you are doing, I suggest that you keep them to yourself.”

“And shut up and soldier?”  Kat asked.  He nodded.  “I just feel inadequate.”

“Everyone feels that way,” Bone told her.  “The day I was promoted to Lieutenant and put in command of my own platoon, I felt as if I couldn't do anything right.  The week I spent in command of the entire company while the CO was in sickbay was dreadful.  I was so sure that the universe was going to explode while I was in command.  The CO had always known what to do; I was a cocksure boy who knew nothing.”

He smiled.  “And I bet anything you care to put forward that your father felt the same way when he was pushed into the CEO slot,” he added.  “Captain...”

“Call me Kat, please,” Kat said.  “We’re alone.”

“...Kat, only a complete idiot would feel absolutely confident when placed in command,” he continued, “and some doubting of your own abilities would make perfect sense.  But you're the one in command and you have to appear confident.  Learn to trust your officers – listen to them – but make your own decisions.  The buck stops with you.”

Kat nodded, slowly.  “Thank you, Greg,” she said.  “I think I needed that advice.”

“Everyone does,” Bone said.  He drew himself up into a salute and saluted her, firmly.  “Now...how long until we can expect action?”

Kat had to laugh.  “We’re being deployed out to Cadiz,” she said.  “There may be some action there, or we may encounter pirates, or...”

She turned back to look at the stars.  Above the atmosphere, they burned steadily, each one a tiny white light that was, in truth, a massive star dozens of light years away.  They seemed to safe and tranquil, as if they could never harm the puny human race that dared to consider itself a master of space.  And yet, some of the stars harboured civilisations that were implacably hostile to the Commonwealth and all it stood for.  War was coming.

“One week to get ready for departure,” she said, more to herself than to Major Bone.  The last thing she wanted to do was take the ship into hostilities without being ready, even though she knew that emergency procedures would allow her to depart without checking and rechecking everything.  “Will that be enough time?”

“I have faith in you,” Bone assured her.  “You’ll be ready on time.”

Chapter Four

“Disconnect completed, Captain,” Lieutenant Samuel Weiberg reported.  For the first time in her existence, Lightning was completely disconnected from the small complex of industrial modules and power cells that had birthed her.  “System Command has authorised us to begin power-up tests.”

Kat braced herself.  The entire ship had never been tested, even though they’d tested everything that could be tested prior to departure.  If some unforeseen combination of circumstances was going to cause a disaster, it would happen now.

She keyed the intercom and linked to Engineering.  “This is the Captain,” she said, banishing her doubts.  “You are cleared to begin power-up sequence; I say again, you are cleared to begin power-up sequence.”

“Understood, Captain,” Lynn said.  “Power-up sequence beginning...now.”

A dull thrumming sound began to echo through the ship as the four fusion reactors came online.  Civilians would have found the noise maddening, but to any born spacer it was a sign that the starship was in good health.  A ship without the omnipresent thrumming was either linked to an outside umbilical cord or derelict.  Kat watched the system displays through narrowed eyes, trying to maintain a veneer of confidence.  If something was about to go wrong...

“Fusion One online; no faults,” Lynn reported.  “Fusion Two online; no faults.  Fusion Three online; no faults.  Fusion Four online; no faults.  Power cycles are nominal.”

Kat nodded, carefully keeping her relief from her face.  “Begin drive power-up sequence,” she ordered.  “Navigation; recalibrate the helm computers, calculate a course to the testing area and upload it to the helm.”

The dull thrumming grew louder, and then faded away as the starship came to life around her.  Each of the displays came online, showing her the ship’s status and – more importantly – what was going on around her.  The tactical display flashed red as it detected the presence of unknown starships and starfighters, only to start tagging them as friendly when the sensors started picking up IFF signals and updates from the command datanet.  System Command acknowledged Lightning’s berth and assigned her to one of the reserve squadrons of starships, positioned to respond to any emergency within the Avalon System itself.  No one had ever dared attack Avalon, and the system had never even been threatened during the Breakaway Wars, but the Commonwealth was alive to the danger.  The destruction of the shipyards, industrial stations and space habitations would be catastrophic, even if Home Fleet chased the attackers back into deep space.

“Course calculated,” Lieutenant Nicola Robertson reported.  She would be unlikely to ever see command, unless she managed to gain command of one of the survey vessels that constantly probed and monitored hyperspace.  Navigation in normal space was simple – the human race had known how to do it long before launching its first starship – but navigating in hyperspace was just as much an art as a science.  Nicola’s talent ensured that she would never have a chance to cross-train, or see service on the fixed installations that guarded the habitable worlds of the Commonwealth.

“Good,” Kat said.  Out of habit, she checked it briefly and found it to be good.  Her old CO had insisted on checking everything, even in normal space.  It was a habit Kat intended to develop herself, at least until she was confident in her new crew.  Nicola’s service record had warned that Lightning was her first posting as Senior Navigator.  “Engineering?”

“Drive power-up sequence complete,” Lynn’s voice said.  “Drive at quarter-power; no detected problems.”

Kat settled back in her command chair.  “Helm,” she ordered, feeling a thrill of excitement as she gave her first proper command, “take us out.”

Scientists swore blind that spacers were imagining the lurch that shook every starship as it slipped into motion for the first time.  If the compensators failed that badly, they said, the entire crew would be smashed to paste against the bulkheads.  And yet...Kat felt the ship shiver as her drive came online and she glided out of the slip for the first time.  A flight of starfighters zoomed past in salute, close enough to almost reach out and touch the hull.  Kat rolled her eyes inwardly and ignored them.  The tactical computer projected an automatic tracking run, allowing the tactical staff to check and recheck the tracking algorithms.  If the targeting systems went offline or developed glitches at the wrong moment, Lightning would be crippled and effectively helpless.  Everything had to be tested before the ship sailed into interstellar space alone.

Slowly, Lightning headed out of the Merlin complex, aiming for interplanetary space.  Her officers were busy now, checking and rechecking everything from power curves to the ship’s emergency sensors.  The bridge lights blinked as control passed briefly to the secondary bridge, before being returned to her command.  Kat privately suspected that the secondary bridge was a waste of government resources – a direct hit that took out the main bridge was likely to vaporise the entire ship – but at least it would ensure that the crew would remain in control if something went badly wrong.  The big holographic display continued to update itself, tracking every starship within sensor range.  Kat reminded herself firmly that sensors in normal space were restricted, with data on anything more than a few light-minutes away already out of date.  The display showed projected courses for asteroid miners and patrol ships, watching for any pirate ships that dared to sneak into the system – at least officially.  Unofficially, the Theocracy might well be keeping the Avalon System under covert observation.  A surprising amount of data could be collected by a passive sensor array mounted on a supposedly civilian craft.

“Bring the drive up to full power,” she ordered, once they passed the automated weapons platforms that guarded the edge of the shipyards.  “Now!”

Lightning shivered again as the drive powered up, sending the ship leaping forwards at a speed that would have been unimaginable to pre-spaceflight humanity.  Kat felt acceleration pressing her back into her chair, even though she knew that it was purely psychometric.  The sense of space flowing around her ship, as if they were riding a boat on the ocean, couldn’t be denied.  Ahead of them, there was nothing, but deep space.  She could go anywhere she willed – her lips curved in amusement – as long as her will coincided with her orders from the Grand Admiral.  Onboard, she might have been the supreme commander, but she still answered to her superiors at Naval HQ.

An hour passed like the blink of an eye as everything was checked and rechecked, followed by weapons tests.  A handful of harmless asteroids marked with targeting beacons were blown to rocky dust by Lightning’s missiles and energy weapons, followed by more precise drills against starfighters and incoming missiles.  Everyone knew that a single starfighter was nothing more than a gnat compared to a starship, but a horde of starfighters could overwhelm almost any defence grid and slam missiles into the ship’s hull.  And enough hits could disable or destroy even a battleship.  Lightning died twice in simulations before the tactical section pronounced themselves satisfied.  If she operated with a task force, all point defence systems would be linked together to turn the squadron into a single entity, but her first mission would be independent.  Kat still felt a thrill when she thought that word – independent command – even though she knew the truth.  If she failed, it would be her failure alone.

“All systems check out, Captain,” Lynn finally reported.  Damiani’s report, a moment later, concurred.  Their careful work prior to launch had been reported; only a handful of components had failed when the ship powered up and they’d all been quickly replaced.  She had a very good crew.  “I recommend that we test the hyperspace gateway drive, and then continue drilling.”

Kat nodded.  “Prepare to test the drive,” she ordered.  They’d have to continue out further from Avalon – the automated defences would engage anything emerging from a gateway too close to the planet – but that wouldn't be a problem.  Besides, she wanted to test the drive herself.  “Helm, take us out.”

***
“I must say that I’m very pleased,” Admiral Steven Willis said, once Kat had been ushered into his office and they exchanged salutes.  The CO of Merlin Base had given up his office for the meeting, something that rather puzzled and alarmed Kat.  Normally, a new commanding officer would get her orders from Naval HQ through the datanet, not be summoned to meet her superiors in person.  Any break with tradition was worrying these days.  “Lightning has performed to expectations and then some.”

“Thank you, sir,” Kat said, carefully.  She still didn't understand why the Admiral had chosen to speak with her in person.  Her father’s influence...or something else?  There were days, back before she’d left High Society, that she’d felt that she’d needed a scorecard to track who was on what side, knowing that it would be out of date before it was completed.  “I am very proud of my ship.”

The Admiral nodded.  “As you are no doubt aware, you and your command are being posted to Cadiz,” he said.  “You were originally expected to travel alone, but there is an urgent requirement for additional trained staff and technicians at Cadiz and several thousand have been ordered to prepare for redeployment.”

Kat considered it, quickly.  A posting to Avalon’s orbital industries – or to any of the other twenty-four worlds that had willingly joined the Commonwealth – was very far from a hardship post.  Free shuttle flights down to the planet, generous pay and bonuses and a handful of other benefits ensured that there was no shortage of applicants for almost any post, even with the potential dangers of work in the most unforgiving environment known to exist.  Her father’s corporation could pick and choose from the applicants, as could the other corporations – and the Navy.  The constant expansion ensured that there would always be a demand for more and more manpower.

But Cadiz was very different.  The Commonwealth had annexed the world for strategic reasons, rather than any economic benefits it might bring – and the locals had never formed a pro-annexation party that might have smoothed the transition between independence and Commonwealth membership.  They’d resented losing their independence and revolted, several times – and there was still an increasingly determined insurrectionary war being fought down on the surface of the planet.  The results had been inevitable; the big corporations, even her father’s, had been reluctant to invest and the system continued to lag behind the rest of the Commonwealth.  Hell, most of the space-based industries that had been constructed in the Cadiz System were owned and operated by out-system personnel, brought in because local manpower was unreliable.  

All of which meant, Kat reflected, that most of the technicians who were about to be deployed to Cadiz were going to resent it.  Cadiz was hardly a safe place for unwary visitors – off-worlders had been robbed, kidnapped or killed by insurgents or criminal gangs – and there would be little for even the braver visitors to do outside the strictly-controlled safe zones on the planet’s surface.  And that didn't include the possibility of finding themselves on the front lines if the Theocracy did intend to invade.  Cadiz, as her father had said, would almost certainly be the first target.  It was why the world had been annexed in the first place.

“You will be escorting a convoy of ten freighters,” the Admiral continued.  “Five of them will be personal transports, carrying the technicians and their families – or at least those that have volunteered to join their husbands.  The remaining five will be transporting certain components that cannot be produced in the Cadiz System” – he meant military supplies, Kat knew – “and have been urgently requested by the local naval base.  I shouldn't have to remind you that losing them would be a...black mark on your record.”

Kat scowled inwardly, accepting the warning.  He was right, of course; the supplies would be hugely expensive, which would make them very welcome on the black market networks that slipped in and out of the borders declared by the multi-system political units that had replaced Earth’s hegemony after the Breakaway Wars.  No one in their right minds would build a factory capable of producing them at Cadiz, which meant that all supplies had to be transported in from the Commonwealth.  It would be a serious problem if any supplies were to be lost to pirates...but then, no pirates in their right mind would tangle with a heavy cruiser, not when the Royal Avalon Navy had permission to shoot all captured pirates on sight.

Or would they?  She hadn't had much time to read anything that wasn't connected to her new command, but she had heard that there’d been an upswing in piracy along the border over the past two years.  Pirates...or disguised agents of the Theocracy?  Anything that allowed them to wear out the RAN, or to allow them to gain information on how and when the Commonwealth reacted to certain kinds of provocation...if she was in command of the Theocracy’s military, it was what she would have done.  Standard procedure was to convoy all civilian ships, but not all civilian craft were willing to wait for an escort, not when time was money.  The larger shipping combines armed their ships and dared pirates to do their worst, yet the smaller operators simply couldn't afford the cost.

“Yes, sir,” she said, finally.  At least she had orders – and, as tradition dictated, a free hand in carrying them out.  The UN had lost the Breakaway Wars because it had dictated impossible orders to its commanders, rather than allowing them to use their own judgement, even though the situation would change and change again before new orders arrived from Earth.  Any navy with any plans to remain in being trusted its commanding officers, even though the StarCom network allowed headquarters to issue new orders almost instantly.  Besides, if something happened to the StarCom network, entire star systems would drop out and find themselves facing the same problems as had bedevilled the UN.

“Once you have seen the convoy to Cadiz, you will place yourself under the command of Admiral Williams,” the Admiral continued.  “Your ship will not be attached formally to any squadron, but I dare say that the Admiral may choose to assign you to replace a ship that requires servicing – at least on a temporary basis.”

Kat nodded, unsurprised.  The orders were vague, but Admiral Williams would have a great deal of latitude in deciding how to handle the 6th Fleet.  It was the most powerful naval force that the Commonwealth had ever assembled, one capable of defeating all the fleets that had fought in the Breakaway Wars without even having a single hull scratched – and yet it was held at Cadiz.  If the Theocracy refused to be intimidated – and it was very hard to intimidate a person who believed that God was on his side – they’d know just where to find the fleet.

A handful of ships would be deployed on patrol and antipiracy missions.  Judging from what her father had said, the Admiral would be strongly encouraged to deploy Lightning on such missions, although the final decision would rest with him.  Naval HQ would not override him without a very good reason, at least not without relieving him of command.  Kat had never met Admiral Williams and she made a mental note to download his service record – at least the sections available to a Captain – and study it before they arrived at Cadiz.  How would he react to her?

“On an entirely different note, I was asked to give you this,” the Admiral added.  He reached into his jacket and produced an encryption chip.  “The codes included in this chip will give any message you choose to send priority – and no one at Cadiz will be granted access.  I advise you to keep it to yourself and only use it if you feel that the situation warrants it.”

Kat took the chip, feeling oddly surreal.  Encryption and decryption procedures had continued to evolve from the day a caveman had used codewords to hide a secret from another caveman.  The StarCom network was hardly secure and everyone from the Theocracy’s agents to her father’s commercial competitors and the media would be trying to access, download and decrypt every message that passed through the network.  By law, no civilian or military officer was permitted to possess coding algorithms that couldn't be decrypted by the intelligence services, at least without permission from ONI.  Her father, of course, was an exception to the laws – which didn't mean that his codes were secure.  Every intelligence service in the galaxy tried to crack the codes, and often succeeded.  There were times when it was suggested, quite seriously, that the great powers should make an agreement to send messages in the clear and have done with it.

And possessing the chip would place her in a very difficult position if Admiral Williams happened to find out about it.

The Admiral stood up and held out a hand.  “Good luck, Captain,” he said, as Kat took his hand and shook it firmly.  “I’ll have your official orders uploaded within the hour.”

Kat allowed the hatch to the Admiral’s office to hiss closed behind her before she took the chip out of her pocket and stared at it.  Her father’s influence, of course...he’d said that he wanted an independent pair of eyes out at Cadiz.  And if the Admiral was involved – she didn't think that he was one of her father’s clients – who else was involved?  Only one name suggested itself, but that was impossible...wasn’t it?  She considered, quite seriously, dropping the chip in the trash compactor before returning to her ship, but she knew that she would need it.  If something was badly wrong at Cadiz...

...But Admiral Williams would not take it kindly if he thought that she had been sent to spy on him.

Cursing her father under her breath, Kat headed back to her shuttle.  Departure was only twelve hours away, and the work was never ending.  She would worry about her father later.

Chapter Five

Tradition insisted that just prior to the convoy’s departure the skippers of the freighters would come aboard the escort’s flagship for drinks and the final briefing.  It was a tradition bitterly resented by merchant commanders, who felt – not entirely unreasonably – that they were losing time and money while they waited for the Navy to get off its collective butt and assign a ship or two to escort them.  Jeremy had seen them move from grumbling at the spit-and-polish naval types to shouting their outrage at the delays caused to their schedules.  There were insurance policies that should have covered them for their losses, but the smaller companies and single-ship outfits couldn't afford the premiums.

That wouldn’t be a problem on this cruise, he assured himself, as he escorted the skippers into the ship’s lounge.  The Navy had commandeered their ships – something else that they bitterly resented – but they would be paid well and insurance had been organised by the Navy’s legal department.  That wouldn't stop them complaining about how they’d been hijacked by the Navy, of course; the rivalries between merchant spacers and military officers probably dated all the way back to Old Earth.

He examined the freighter skippers thoughtfully, remembering the days when he’d thought that a life as a free trader was the freest life in the Commonwealth.  They wore a disparate collection of outfits – he would not go so far as to call them uniforms – that ranged from a snappy uniform with more gilt than a Navy Admiral to a tight body-hugging uniform that showed off an alarming amount of cleavage.  No matter what they looked like, they would be smart and tough if they’d made it to an independent command.  The smaller outfits and single-ship owners competed against the massive shipping lines, which detested them because they kept the shipping rates low.  They retaliated by trying to create monopolies that locked the smaller outfits out, forcing many of them to turn to smuggling in order to keep themselves in the black.  There was a good chance that at least two of the freighter skippers had bootleg copies of the latest Alex Midgard album which they intended to sell to a distributor at Cadiz.  The thought made him smile.  Anyone on Cadiz who listened to Avalon music – if one could call it music – was likely to be strung up from the nearest lamppost by his outraged neighbours.

The lounge had been carefully prepared for the merchant skippers, with a small tray of drinks set up by the Captain’s Steward, Lucy Yangtze.  If the Captain looked as if she was barely out of school, Lucy looked as if she had barely entered it, the result of expensive genetic modification that pushed the limits of what was legal at the time.  Her almond eyes, porcelain features and slim, almost boyish body had attracted a great deal of attention from the younger males on the crew – and probably some of the females as well.  Jeremy suspected that there would be trouble, soon enough.  Crewmen knew little of restraint or common sense, even with the Senior Chief breathing down their necks.  He invited the merchants to take a drink, knowing that they’d complain no matter what they were served, and then keyed his wristcom.

“Captain on deck,” he said, as the Captain entered the compartment.  God, she still looked so young!  At least she’d had the sense not to wear her dress uniform, as some of the more stuffy officers had been known to wear while briefing the merchant skippers.  Her record said that she’d served on a destroyer, so the chances were that she’d done escort work herself, even though she’d been the XO rather than the Captain.

“Gentlemen, please be seated,” the Captain said.  Jeremy kept his amusement at their reactions to himself.  The Navy tended not to leave physical scars on younger crewmen and most commercial officers looked older than their naval counterparts.  Captain Falcone looked like a child to their gaze, and she was their commanding officer.  The Navy always had precedence when they were escorting a convoy.  “I won’t keep you from your ships for long.”

She nodded to Jeremy as she took her place at the head of the table.  “As you will all know, we are departing for Cadiz within two hours,” she continued.  She betrayed no hint of the exasperation most naval officers would have felt at escorting slower freighters, even though it was all too likely that the commercial ships would cause further delays.  Centuries of interstellar travel had taught the human race the folly of fixed schedules, yet a sufficiently irate Admiral could reprimand a Captain for unnecessary delay.  “There may be a further escort for the Nicotine and the Jon Manhattan, but that will depend on local conditions at Cadiz.”

There were some nods.  The Deep Space Shipping Combine actually traded with the Theocracy and their two freighters would be heading into Theocratic-dominated space.  They probably wouldn't be harassed by the Theocracy’s border patrol ships, but there had been a whole string of unexplained accidents in the region over the last two years and no one would have disputed the need for a military escort.  But that, of course, would draw protests from the Theocracy that the Commonwealth was carefully moving its military into position to strike…

Jeremy shrugged as the Captain continued, covering the basic details for convoy procedure.  The merchant skippers probably knew it as well as she did, but the details had to be repeated time and time again, just to satisfy regulations.  They already knew to keep to their positions in the formation, to scatter on command from the flagship and a hundred other details that anyone with experience travelling in space should know.  The two Deep Space Shipping starships were going to be searched as well, although that might be deferred until they reached Cadiz.  There were no formal embargos on the Theocracy, but the Navy objected strongly to anyone selling the religious fundamentalists any technology with possible military applications.  That, unfortunately for the smaller operations, was almost anything worth shipping across interstellar distances.  The larger corporations, such as the one operated by the Captain’s father, could simply pay the fines out of pocket change.

Not that any of the smaller operators would want to go near the Theocracy, Jeremy knew.  The Theocracy’s leadership might understand the benefits of trading with the rest of the Human Sphere – it would allow them to gain access to technology and military concepts that they couldn’t develop on their own – but their enforcers were more concerned with preventing the spread of any dangerous ideas into their territory.  They harassed the independent starships, levelling fines and punishments as they saw fit; indeed, one horror story had seen the entire crew of a commercial starship publicly whipped before they were allowed to leave the Theocracy, purely for possessing a private collection of pornography.  Ironically, any smuggler brave enough to smuggle in porn was assured of a good price, although cynics pointed out that their clients could hardly afford to have their kinks exposed to the scrutiny of the religious police.

“Thank you for your time,” the Captain finished.  It was a carefully-measured gesture of politeness, a more respectful tone than they would expect from the Navy.  “Are there any questions?”

“Only two,” one of the older Captains said.  He was a grizzled veteran at least a decade older than Jeremy himself, who showed the unmistakable signs of having been born in space, probably to one of the trader families that moved from world to world as permanent nomads.  “The first question is simple; who felt that only one heavy cruiser was sufficient escort for nine ships?”

The honest answer to that was Admiral Willis, but the Captain probably wouldn't want to call the Admiral’s name into the discussion.  It would lead to official complaints and the Admiral would have a great many angry things to say about it.  Jeremy wondered absently what she was going to say, even as he felt for her.  Leave it to someone from the civilian side to come up with the most embarrassing question possible.  Of course one ship, no matter how powerful, was insufficient to guard nine commercial ships.

“There are no scheduled departures for Cadiz for another two weeks,” the Captain said, calmly.  If the question bothered her, it didn’t appear on her face.  “If you wish to be escorted by additional ships, you may wait for the next departure – which may be cancelled or rescheduled depending upon events.”

Jeremy nodded.  It was as good an answer as anyone could give, although there was a chance that the rescheduled departure would be moved forward instead of backwards.  But every day they spent in orbit around Avalon meant lost profits, and too many lost profits would mean the banks taking their starships off them when their debts were finally called in.  For anyone born in space, loving the free life of a trader, it would be a fate worse than death.  It was why so many ships risked travelling alone, even though there was a danger of pirate activity.

“Second question,” the merchant skipper said.  “Are we going to stop anywhere along the way?”

Now that was a loaded question, Jeremy knew.  As innocent as it sounded, a trip by way of another star system would allow them the chance to recoup some of their losses.  The Captain seemed unaware of the implications, merely concentrating on what had been said openly.

“We will not be stopping,” she said, flatly.  “Our estimated time of transit is fifty-one days.  Please inform me if your drives develop problems…”

The remaining part of the briefing went surprisingly well.  Jeremy listened as the Captain answered two more questions, and then escorted the merchant skippers back to their shuttles, which had landed neatly in the main shuttlebay.  The Captain could talk the talk; she hadn’t come across as weak-willed or unduly officious, both traits that merchant officers learned to detest very quickly.  All she’d have to do now was escort them safely to Cadiz and they would be very happy, except perhaps for the two skippers who were going to have their ships searched.  They’d be lodging complaints as soon as they reached Cadiz.

He smiled to himself as the last shuttle departed from the bay, before turning to walk back to the bridge.  Departure time was in two hours and there was still much work to be done.

***
Kat felt Lightning thrumming around her as the drives powered up, as if the starship was delighted at the chance to finally slip away from Avalon and into deep space.  A flicker of excitement ran through her as she settled back into her command chair, feeling the joy of independent command even as the responsibility settled on her shoulders.  She was the mistress of her ship now that they had separated completely from Merlin Base; she had the sole right of command – and complete responsibility for her crew.  The thought almost held her spellbound as the crew prepared for departure, Kat watching calmly as they went through the familiar proceedings.  A week of heavy drilling, and constant tactical exercises, had started the work of welding her crew together into a single unit.

She smiled to herself as two of her officers worked at a console, remembering her own days as a young officer.  Some of her superiors had micromanaged their subordinates, yet she remembered just how irritating and distracting that had been from her duty – and she had resolved not to micromanage herself.  And yet, with the weight of responsibility pressing down on her, the temptation to micromanage was almost overpowering.  If something went wrong, it would be her responsibility.  Captains had been cashiered and dismissed for mistakes made by their subordinates before, a lesson forgotten by no one who aspired to command.  

“Captain,” Lieutenant-Commander Christopher John Roach said, “all of the freighters have signalled that they’re ready to enter hyperspace on our command.”

Kat nodded.  She hadn’t had enough time to spend more than a few moments with Lieutenant-Commander Roach, but he had an air of brisk confidence and a solid record of achievement that reassured her.  Major Bone spoke well of him, citing a brief period when they’d served together on a Marine Transport Ship.  As Tactical Officer, Roach handled communications as well as weapons and internal security, something that bothered Kat from her own stint as a Tactical Officer.  The bigger ships had a dedicated Communications Officer, but heavy cruisers were just too small to warrant one.

“Inform them that we will be entering hyperspace in” – she glanced at her display – “ten minutes and counting,” she ordered.  The display updated rapidly as every department checked in and reported that they were ready for departure.  As always, at least according to her XO, the last hours before departure had been frantic, with last-minute changes and requests making it difficult to depart on schedule.  She keyed her console and opened a private link.  “Engineering?”

“Aye, Captain,” Lynn said.  He sounded pleased; his engines had performed almost flawlessly in the tests and drills, and all of the exercises they’d run had demonstrated that he’d built a good team out of the mixture of raw recruits newly graduated and older veterans who’d served for years.  “All systems are ready for departure.”

Kat couldn’t help a grin forming on her face.  “All hands,” she sad, keying the console again and opening a channel to the entire ship, “prepare for hyperspace entry; I say again, prepare for hyperspace entry.”

She closed the channel and looked up at the timer.  The remaining seconds were ticking away – had it really been ten minutes since she’d given the order to the merchant freighters?  It felt as if it had gone by in a flash.  A new tension started to gnaw inside her, mocking her; if something went wrong now, it would blight her service record forever.  She’d checked everything, and she had competent officers to man and operate her ship’s various departments, yet the responsibility was hers.  Just for a moment, she understood her father a little better.  He too was a commander, charged with maintaining the family’s position…

“Lieutenant Weiberg,” she said, formally.  “You may open the gateway at your leisure.”

Lieutenant Weiberg keyed a command into his console and the humming pervading the entire starship grew louder.  Power flashed from the four fusion reactors into the jump nodes built throughout the entire ship, channelling a stream of power out into the vacuum, warping the very fabric of space itself.  A spilling vortex of power appeared in front of their position, rapidly swelling until it was large enough to swallow an entire fleet.  Kat had seen gateways before, including one from a position on her last ship’s hull during a daring rescue mission, but they were always spectacular.  It was a testament to humanity’s mastery of space that most starships, even the smallest destroyers, could generate a hyperspace gateway at will.

The vortex grew stronger, and then stabilised.  “Commander Roach, you may give the order for the freighters to advance,” Kat ordered.  One by one, the freighters soared forward and entered the vortex, vanishing in a flash of bright light and reappearing in hyperspace.  Lightning had to go last; the hyperspace gateway would close behind them, sealing the tear in time and space.  “Helm; take us forward and into the vortex.”

There were some humans, civilians mostly, who couldn’t face a vortex.  Kat had never suffered from their phobia, but even she would admit to a slight sense of apprehension as the vortex grew closer, a spinning mass of colour and light that threatened to devour the entire ship.  Her chest heaved as they entered the vortex – the same psychometric feeling that affected her when the main drives were initiated – and she swallowed hard.  There was a brief sensation of falling, as if they were plunging down into an endless abyss, followed by a queasy feeling.  It reminded her of bobbling about on a boat, a vague sense that something was not quite right.  Humans weren't meant to live in hyperspace.  Its very existence was an affront to the very concept of a solid universe.

“Transit complete, Captain,” Weiberg reported.  “The gateway has closed behind us.”

Kat nodded.  If they lost their hyperdrive now, and failed to find a fixed gateway, they’d be doomed to wander in hyperspace forever.  “Link up with the freighters,” she ordered, calmly.  Hyperspace’s unusual energy fields would disrupt communications over relatively short distances, ensuring that if they lost one of the freighters they might never see her again.  “And then set course for Cadiz.”

“Course prepared, Captain,” Lieutenant Nicola Robertson reported.  Hyperspace’s energy storms and sudden waves of distortion meant that it was tricky to navigate in hyperspace.  The general theory suggested that gravity distortions in hyperspace corresponded to stars and planets in normal space and that theory generally held true, but sometimes spacers reported seeing gravity shadows in hyperspace that didn’t seem to correspond to anything known to mankind.  There were even stories of alien life forms and strange dark bat-like ships sighted in hyperspace, although few believed them.  Hyperspace was simply too unwelcoming to unprotected life forms.

“Confirmed,” Weiberg reported.  “Freighter navigational computers have been slaved to our main system.”

They won’t be happy about that, Kat thought, grimly.  No Captain would be happy about having his ship slaved to another, even if it was the only way to ensure that the convoy stayed together.  A simple navigational error could leave the small formation scattered over a dozen light years.  She pushed the thought aside.  There was no point in worrying about it.

“Take us out,” she ordered, calmly.  

The unpleasant sensations in her stomach started to recede as the ship’s drives started to build up power.  In hyperspace, they could reach speeds that would be flatly impossible in normal space, exceeding the speed of light.  Cadiz, over a hundred light years from Avalon, would only take fifty days to reach, unless one of hyperspace’s weirder storms forced them to alter course to avoid destruction…

She couldn’t help smiling.  They were on their way, at last!

Chapter Six

Kat feinted left, and then right, before coming forward.  The female Marine stepped backwards, and then came up fighting.  Kat saw the threat, too late to react and grunted as a solid fist slammed into her mouth-guard.  The referee blew a whistle, acknowledging the hit, as she tried to push the Marine back.  She realised her mistake a second later; she might have exercised according to Navy regulations, but all of the Marines were tested in a much harsher crucible.  Kat felt her arms being caught and then she was pushed back, hard.  She stumbled over the yellow line and the referee blew the whistle again.  The match was over and she had lost.

“Been neglecting your exercise a bit?”  Major Bone commented, as she pulled off her mask and rubbed her jaw.  Without it, she would probably have had a broken jaw, if she hadn’t been knocked out.  “I’m sure you did better the last time you entered the circle.”

Kat scowled.  In truth, she’d never taken the physical combat training the Navy insisted on giving all of its recruits very seriously.  She had only scraped through the unarmed combat tests at Piker’s Peak, while she had only found time to exercise properly before she’d been promoted to commander.  Tactical exercises were more her field; place either of the Marines in command of another starship and see how well they fared against her.  Of course, as Bone had pointed out on several occasions, naval officers sometimes did have to face an enemy without a million tons of starship wrapped around them.  And besides, unarmed combat skills were a hell of a confidence booster.  

“Probably,” she said, finally.  The dull ache receded slowly; she declined the offer of a quick-acting painkiller.  The pain, she told herself firmly, would remind her of her failure.  “How many falls is that now?”

“Seven to two,” Bone reminded her, as if he truly believed that she had forgotten.  Part of Kat wanted to rail against the unfairness of facing a fully-trained and experienced Marine, but the universe was never fair.  It was her job to make sure that it was unfair in her favour.  “I think you can safely say that you lost.”

Kat nodded as the female Marine – whose name she had deliberately avoided learning – tossed her a towel, which she used to wipe the sweat off her face as she disrobed.  Circle, oddly enough, had been invented by starfighter pilots as a training exercise, although they would have been horrified by the level of violence the Marines and Army soldiers brought to the game.  It involved a circle, two meters in diameter, drawn on the deck.  Two contestants entered; the loser was the one who crossed out of the circle first.  It taught awareness of one’s location as well as unarmed combat skills; the contestant who jumped back and accidentally crossed the line would lose as surely as the contestant who was picked up and thrown bodily across the line.  Quite a few promising matches had been cut short by one contestant forgetting where he was standing.

“Yeah,” she said.  She shook her head and ran her hands through her curly hair.  It was growing longer again, reminding her that she would have to cut it before too long.  The Marines shaved their heads right to the skin and there had been times when she had been tempted to follow their example, but she rather liked having curly hair instead of the long flowing locks her mother had bequeathed to her.  “It does look that way.”

She allowed Bone to point her into the showers, pinging the local processor to check that there were no alarms that required her immediate attention.  Marine Country was not, technically, off-limits to crewmen and junior officers, but it was unusual for any of them to enter without permission, even on orders from superior officers.  It was the only place on the ship, except perhaps in her cabin, where she could let her hair down a little.  The Marines were a separate little subculture on her ship.

The water washed down from high overhead and she closed her eyes gratefully as it sluiced her body clean of sweat.  Showering with men – baths would have been considered dreadfully decadent at Piker’s Peak – had taken her some time to grow used to, and she still had nightmares where she was the only naked person in the shower.  Now, male nudity didn't interest her at all, at least not in the semi-public Marine showers.  She caught sight of her opponent’s muscles rippling under her arms and legs and decided, reluctantly, that she’d been allowed to win twice.  Not that Marines were known for ass-kissing and brown-nosing.  The usual form of recreation in a Marine combat unit was composing rude and often unprintable songs about the commanding officers, a ritual they’d stolen from the Roman Legions.  It didn't seem to do anything bad to their discipline and most superior officers ignored it.

She saw Bone entering the shower from the other end and looked away quickly.  It didn’t seem fair that she couldn’t touch him, let alone take him to her bed as she’d done back on her last posting.  Her body flushed as it remembered his touch, his hands and his tongue exploring her most secret of places, before she forced herself to complete her shower and step out into the changing area.  She was the Captain and he was her direct subordinate, the only one of the Marines under her direct command.  It might have been her father’s little joke, or he might have known about the regulations and assumed that his daughter would ignore any regulation she found inconvenient.  He’d sent her to spy on a superior officer, after all, and that was a grave breach of military etiquette.

Once she’d pulled on her uniform and checked her wristcom for non-urgent messages – there were four, each claiming to require her immediate attention – she headed out of Marine Country and down to the observation blister.  Her XO had the bridge for another forty minutes before she was due to relieve him and there was little point in going early.  Besides, apart from the sensors and navigation crews, they were running a skeleton watch.  Hyperspace’s strange currents would make it difficult for another ship to approach without being detected.

The observation blister had a young pair of Ensigns in, who blushed bright red as the Captain entered and somehow managed to salute despite their unkempt uniforms and obvious embarrassment.  Kat did them the favour of pretending to ignore them until they’d fled the blister, clearly cursing their decision not to use one of the privacy tubes in the starship’s lower regions.  They were of the same rank and clearly not under any higher responsibilities, so they could enjoy themselves as much as they liked.  Kat fought down a grin, suddenly realising how she had to appear to her senior crew.  Had she been as careless a youth as those two Ensigns?

She shrugged and stared out into hyperspace.  It was an eerie mass of red, purple and green light, with flickering bursts of blue-white light in the distance.  Just looking upon it made a small percentage of the human race queasy, as if the strange nature of hyperspace was affecting them directly.  A number of civilians had to be placed in stasis while travelling through hyperspace, although none of her officers and crew would be affected.  Those who were rarely sought out naval careers.

Down below Lightning, as if the term had any meaning in hyperspace, she could see one of the freighters.  It would have looked alarmingly close to a civilian eye, but Kat knew that its helm was slaved to her ship.  There was no chance of it altering course and trying to ram Lightning, or so she hoped.  She’d had a chance to read some of the intelligence updates from the border region since they’d entered hyperspace and some of them made alarming reading.  So far, no warship had been reported lost, but a number of civilian craft had been reported overdue.  There was always a delay in receiving reports – the StarCom network had its limitations – yet it was starting to look as if some very well armed pirates were operating in the region.  Suspiciously well-armed pirates.  There might be any number of ships and millions of tons of war material left over after the Breakaway Wars, but most of it was badly outdated.  And she could only think of one logical suspect for arming pirate ships.  

She was still staring out into hyperspace, alone with her thoughts, when her wristcom buzzed.  “Captain to the bridge,” her XO said.  “I say again; Captain to the bridge.”

Kat was on her way before he managed to repeat the summons.  She’d had two weeks to explore her ship from top to bottom and now she knew all of the shortcuts, including ones that were not included on the official diagrams.  The bridge was never more than a few minutes away from anywhere on the ship and she made it through the hatch in less than five minutes.  Her XO saluted as she entered, acknowledging the arrival of a senior officer.

“Captain on the bridge,” he said, transferring command – and responsibility - to her.  “We picked up something unusual on the sensors.”

“At first I thought it was a sensor ghost,” Roach said.  The Tactical Officer sounded troubled, peering down at his sensors as if he expected them to resolve the faint returns by force of will alone.  “It was just following us, keeping its distance...and then it started to inch closer.”

Kat nodded, studying the display.  “Do you think that it’s a ship?”

“I can't see how it can be anything else,” Roach admitted, reluctantly.  Hyperspace played merry hell with sensor readings, sometimes throwing up alarmingly realistic ghosts that were little more than shadows of a starship.  And, sometimes, hyperspace made objects hundreds of thousands of kilometres away look much closer than they were.  The destroyer Hanson had been forced to make an emergency return to normal space when their sensors started insisting that they were about to ram a battleship amidships.  “It isn't behaving like a sensor ghost or a mirage.  It is definitely altering course without any movement on our part.”

Kat frowned.  If she was reading the display correctly – and always assuming that hyperspace didn’t throw up one of its manifold surprises – the unknown ship was slowly scuttling into position to attack the rear of the convoy.  She ran through their formation in her head, considering possible options; the unknown ship might not know that it had been detected, but if she had been in command, she would at least have allowed for the possibility.  Which meant...?

She thought rapidly.  If they didn't know that they’d been detected, she would be able to get in the first blow before they could react – always assuming that they weren’t a Commonwealth starship trying to make contact.  She dismissed that possibility a second later; any friendly starship would have signalled the Lightning with a signal laser before entering weapons range, just to be sure of a friendly reception.  They’d have to know that they could be taken for pirates...

And if they did assume that they’d been detected, any hint on her part that she was laying a trap would blow up in her face.

“Launch a decoy drone ahead of us, but do not bring it online,” she ordered, thinking as she spoke.  A plan was slowly coming together in her head.  Decoy drones were expensive and the beancounters were always complaining about the cost every time one was deployed, but she doubted they’d give her much grief over this one.  A destroyed convoy – or even a single destroyed ship – could much more than a recoverable drone.  “Program it to pretend to be us; slave it’s course to the freighters and keep updating it with our IFF.”

She looked over at the XO.  His scarred face was as inscrutable as ever.  No matter, she told herself; she would settle for obedience now and he could tell her how she’d coped afterwards, if there was an afterwards.  She told that part of her mind to shut up, firmly.  One pirate ship was unlikely to be a match for a heavy cruiser.

“Prepare to mask our emissions,” she ordered.  It was impossible to cloak in hyperspace, at least without a betraying silence that would be just as indicative as turbulence in normal space, but a masking field would allow them to pretend to be a freighter.  Unless the enemy ship – and she was already thinking of it as the enemy, she noted – had sensors significantly better than the Commonwealth’s systems, they’d be having problems separating the nine freighters into individual readings.  “Bring up the drone’s ECM on my mark, and then allow us to glide backwards, through the convoy.”

“Aye, Captain,” the Helmsman said.  “You want us to appear like a harmless merchantman who’s falling behind?”

“Precisely,” Kat said.  Moving too blatantly might alert their unknown foe, but she didn't have to be blatant to get into attack position.  The convoy’s motion would carry it past her position soon enough, as if her ship had simply lost one or more of its drive nodes.  That wasn't too unusual – merchant ships tended to run their units right to the limit – although the timing would look suspicious.  As much as Kat would have liked to rid the universe of a few dozen pirates, she would settle for scaring one off.  “On my mark...”

“Captain,” Roach said, quickly.  “There’s a second ship out there.”

Kat bit down a curse that would have shocked her mother.  She was the Captain; she couldn't allow herself a loss of composure, not when everyone was depending on her.  Besides, two pirate ships were still no match for her ship...but if one of them got past her, it might be able to take out one or more of the freighters before she caught up with it.  Or maybe not; pirates didn't like wanton destruction, if only because they couldn't sell the ship’s cargo on the black market and the crew into slavery.  Rumour, she remembered suddenly, claimed that the Theocracy bought slaves from pirates, with beautiful girls and experienced spacers bringing the highest price.  The thought made her feel sick and she swore to herself that she would bring both pirates down and execute them personally.

“Track it,” she ordered.  The course appeared on the display.  It looked to her as if the pirates had formed a wolf pack formation, with one ship vectoring the others onto the convoy.  That was surprisingly sophisticated for the pirates, but if they’d picked up some heavy-duty backing from the Theocracy – or one of the other powers – they might be feeling particularly greedy.  “Are there any others out there?”

“Unknown,” Roach admitted.  It wasn't a fair question, Kat knew, and she reproached herself for it.  “There is a major energy storm around nine hundred thousand kilometres from our position.  They may be attempting to use it to shield themselves.”

Kat nodded.  Two ships, on the same vector...her plan could still work.  At the very least, they’d blow one of the pirate ships completely out of space; if the second had time to escape, they wouldn't have the nerve to risk approaching another convoy for a few months, whatever their backers claimed.

“Prepare to activate the drone,” she ordered.  “And mask us...now!”

The lights dimmed, a reminder that the ship was now operating under masking protocols.  Masking rarely worked in normal space, where its only real use was to conceal a ship’s status from active and passive sensors, if only because observers tended to notice an entire starship going dead.  In hyperspace, however, it should be much harder to pick the heavy cruiser out from among the behemoth freighters – and the drone, faithfully impersonating the heavy cruiser, should ensure that her trick wasn't noticed.  Her tactical instructors had told her that a smart commander turned the terrain to her advantage.  That was tricky in normal space, but in hyperspace...

She settled down into her command chair as the freighters slowly lumbered past Lightning and continued onwards through hyperspace.  Their commanders would be worrying now, testing weapons systems and praying that their escort dealt with the pirates before they got into range.  It was impossible to transform the average civilian ship into a warship and even the largest of freighters could only soak up a handful of hits before coming apart.  Even if the pirates had the earliest interstellar warship under their command, a modern freighter would still find itself in trouble.

“I’m picking up a message from Captain Pickering,” Roach informed her.  “He’s demanding to know if the convoy should scatter.”

“Tell him no,” Kat ordered, sharply.  If the situation turned sharply against her, she would order them to scatter, but that would reveal her ship’s true position – and true nature.  It might be worth considering later, if there were other pirate ships, yet it would be dangerous.  She would lose track of her charges and the pirates would have a clear shot at them.  “All ships are to remain in position.”

There was a pause.  “He’s threatening to file a complaint against you,” Roach said, with an expression of studied innocence.  Captain Pickering worked, through a number of subordinate levels, for her father.  Kat fought down an urge to giggle, silently thanking God that Captain Pickering wasn't heading into the Theocracy.  That would have been embarrassing.  “His superiors, he says, will take a dim view of your actions.”

Kat scowled.  “Inform him that if he attempts to break formation without my permission, I will put a team of armed Marines on his ship to enforce compliance,” she said, sharply.  She didn't have time to handle him gently – and besides, his threat was worse than worthless.  There hadn't been such a bloody-minded merchantman in any convoy she’d escorted in the past, back when she’d been the XO.  “And then break contact.”

“Aye, Captain,” Roach said.

Kat looked up at the display.  The two ships were closing in rapidly, clearly angling their course towards Lightning...and, just as clearly, unaware of her true nature.

“Prepare to fire,” she ordered.

Chapter Seven

“Prepare to fire a warning shot,” Captain Jafspear ordered.

His crew, knowing what was good for them, hastened to obey.  They’d been recruited in drips and drabs, from the illegal settlements along the borders to a handful recruited from various navies, but they all followed him now, as long as he was successful.  A successful pirate commander could treat his crew like the feral dogs they were and they’d love him for it; an unsuccessful pirate commander was liable to be killed by his own men.  They knew nothing of loyalty, or the self-respect and honour that bound a military force together.  And besides, every interstellar power executed pirates on sight.  The Theocracy had plenty of ways to turn a pirate’s death into an example for their own people, worthless religious nuts that they were.

He spat and watched as the display updated.  The Commonwealth convoy appeared to have missed their approach, which wasn't too surprising.  Sensor crews tended to be more focused on what was ahead of them and his two ships had been building up speed from the rear.  Indeed, they’d had some help in locating the convoy in the first place; their noble benefactors had been kind enough to forward them details of starships leaving the Avalon System.  And if they succeeded in taking out at least two of the ships, they would be rewarded beyond the dreams of the crew and their families.

The thought was a bitter one.  A destroyed ship was no use to anyone, not when its cargo could be sold and the crew could be used for his amusement before being escorted out an airlock or passed on for sale into slavery.  The pirate crew had been muttering resentfully when they thought he couldn't hear, grumbling about the shortage of female company on the two ships; a few captured women would keep them quiet, at least until they got back to base.  His benefactors might have wanted the ships destroyed, but he was the one whose ass was on the line and he wasn't going to risk a mutiny.  A few more successful missions and he would be able to afford a body-change operation and retire to enjoy his ill-gotten gains.

“Fire,” he ordered.  The ship jerked as a single missile leapt from the prow tube and raced through hyperspace towards its target.  They’d been careful to strip down the warhead first, just in case hyperspace was playing tricks on their sensors and the missile actually managed to strike the targeted ship.  It should have been impossible – and it would have been in normal space – but hyperspace had its own rules.  The missile lanced cleanly past its target and vanished into hyperspace, leaving behind a very clear message.  It was time to reinforce it.  “Open a channel.”

“Channel open, sir,” one of the officers said.  He was a newcomer, a man selected by their noble benefactors, and therefore untrustworthy by definition.  Or, in another sense, he was probably the most trustworthy man on the ship.  His masters would be less than happy with him if the raiders failed to return…

“This is the Bloodstained Knife,” Captain Jafspear said.  The convoy would scatter, of course; they’d know that they couldn’t escape unless they ran fast and found cover in hyperspace.  But they’d catch at least two ships before they could escape – and more, if they were lucky.  “Cut your drives and prepare to be boarded.  Your crew will not be hurt and will be ransomed if you surrender now.”

That was a lie, of course.  Ransoming crewmen back to the big corporations on Avalon worked, sometimes, but it also opened up opportunities for corporate-hired mercenaries to extract a little revenge.  The big corporations didn’t really care how much they had to spend to ensure that any would-be kidnappers ended up dead, a ruthlessness that he tended to admire, even though it spited his hopes of collecting a big ransom.  Besides, the chances were that the ship they were targeting, which was already slipping out of formation, was a family-owned vessel…and that meant women.  The thought of a ship they'd captured during his first raid made him smile, hungrily. Perhaps he would claim Captain’s rights and go first.

“No response, sir,” the communications officer said.  “They are not responding to our hail.”

Captain Jafspear snorted.  Just like a civilian, he told himself; they were closing their eyes and pretending that they couldn’t be seen.  They’d regret that soon enough; he’d tell them that the suffering they were about to undergo was punishment for not obeying quickly enough.  And if their cargo wasn’t worth at least a few million pounds, he’d see to it that they paid in blood.  How dare they present such a tempting target without anything for him to sell?

“Prepare to launch a second missile,” he ordered.  “I want this one to detonate right on top of their hull.”

One of the crew laughed horribly.  The civilian ship might not be harmed, but the shockwaves would propagate through hyperspace and make their ship ring like a bell.  It was a terrifying experience, akin to depth charges from an earlier era, one that would convince them of the error of their ways.  And they’d been foolish enough to leave without an escort too!  Didn’t they think that there was a remote chance that the Avalon System was under observation?

“Fire,” he ordered.

***
Kat watched dispassionately as the second missile launched from the pirate ship and headed towards Lightning.  It didn’t look as if they intended to actually hit her ship, but they might get very unlucky.  The pirate demand for their immediate surrender had made her smile; they clearly didn’t have the slightest idea that they were bearing down on a heavy cruiser.  Indeed, despite the drone she’d launched, she was starting to wonder if they thought the convoy was unescorted.  Their tactics only made sense if they believed themselves to be wolves among a herd of helpless sheep.

“The second ship is holding back,” Roach reported.  “Their sensors are sweeping the rest of the convoy.”

“Choosing its target,” Kat said.  She’d kept the convoy from scattering – would that alert the pirates that they were flying into a trap?  It hardly mattered anyway; the second pirate ship wouldn't have a chance to attack a freighter before she killed or captured it and its crew.  “Lock weapons on Target One and prepare to fire.”

“Weapons locked, Captain,” Roach said.  Hyperspace made targeting tricky, but at such close range it would be fairly simple to compensate for the distortions.  “Ready to fire.”

The communications channels crackled again.  “This is your final warning,” an imperious voice said, sharply.  “Cut your drives now or be destroyed.”

“Cut the masking,” Kat ordered.  “Mr Roach; you may fire at will.”

Lightning shuddered as she unleashed her first barrage in anger.  It was a remarkably restrained barrage – she could have fired a full salvo of missiles and obliterated the pirate ship – but it hardly mattered.  At such close range, no known ECM or countermeasures could shield the pirate ship from her weapons – and their point defence was puny, almost completely ineffectual.  They did manage to pop off a salvo of missiles themselves, but the weapons were outdated and easy for her systems to target and destroy.  Lightning’s point defence wiped the missiles out before they got within range of her hull.

“Three direct hits,” Roach said.  The pirate ship was bleeding now, streams of plasma flaring away from the hull as it rolled over, out of control.  “Target disabled; crew status unknown.”

Probably dead, Kat thought, coldly.  She keyed her console anyway.  “Pirate ship, you are under the guns of a warship and escape is impossible,” she said.  “Any resistance will result in the immediate destruction of both of your vessels.  Surrender now or die.”

She released the console and tapped the link to the Marine shuttles.  “Go,” she ordered.  Major Bone and his Marines had manned two shuttles, ready for immediate launch.  The display updated rapidly as the shuttles zoomed away from her ship, heading directly towards the stricken ship.  If they had any weapons left, they might try to pick off the shuttles as they approached, even though it would be suicide.  Or perhaps they would attempt to trigger the self-destruct, knowing that they were very likely to be thrown out of the nearest airlock once they were interrogated.  “Good luck.”

Kat pushed her concerns about Bone aside and focused on Pirate Two.  The ship was working desperately to break off and escape, but they hadn’t bothered to give any thought to escape when they were closing in on the convoy.  They didn’t even have time to open a hyperspace gateway and escape, although it wouldn't have saved them.  In the time it would take them to open the gateway, Kat would have blown their ship to bits.  They weren't even trying to fire on the heavy cruiser, knowing that it would have been futile.  Kat was risking enough lives trying to take prisoners from Pirate One.  Pirate Two could surrender or be blown into atoms and left scattered through hyperspace.

“Pirate ship, you are ordered to surrender,” she said, in the coldest tone she could muster.  They had to know that there was no way out of the trap.  And many of them would be wondering what they could offer to share with their captors in exchange for their lives.  A life in a penal colony was no bed of roses, but it was better than being executed on the spot.  “Failure to surrender now will result in your immediate destruction.”

***
The harmless freighter had become a warship too swiftly for anyone to react.  Captain Jafspear had had no time to order evasive manoeuvres or even a hasty salvo before the heavy cruiser opened fire – and seconds later, his ship was smashed by the hand of God.  He was vaguely aware of his ship tumbling through space, the screaming their panic into the air as the gravity failed, knowing that if the compensators failed the entire crew would be dead before they knew what had hit them.  The ship had been originally designed as a warship, but over the years the pirates had stripped out some of the more expensive safety equipment and transferred it to other starships, or tried to make jury-rigged repairs without the right components from a proper shipyard.  The lights failed and the bridge was plunged into near darkness, illuminated only by the glow of several consoles, before the emergency power came on and restored the light.  He took one look at his ship’s status displays and wished he hadn’t.  Almost everything had been knocked out by the savage blow.

Alarms shrilled as emergency systems struggled to cope with the chaos.  Every deck was reporting massive casualties, even with the enhanced crew he’d been forced to recruit to help crew both ships.  His crew was dead or dying.  And if that was a warship out there – and it had to be, unless one of the big corporations was playing games with a Q-Ship – the rest of them would soon follow.  A quick check revealed that the communications systems were down, leaving them blind and defenceless.  All it would take would be a single hit and his ship would be destroyed.  Even the self-destruct had been knocked off-line.  They were effectively dead in space, doomed to wander forever through hyperspace until the life support failed…  It was every spacer’s nightmare.

The thought made him smile, bitterly.  They wouldn't live long enough to be lost.

He rounded on the communications officer, the emissary from the benefactors who had told them that the convoy was unescorted.  The young man was looking back at him, pointing one long finger directly at his head.  There was a moment of realisation, a sudden awareness that they’d been deliberately set up for failure, and then there was a burst of pain…and then nothing, nothing at all.

***
“Pirate Two is not responding,” Roach said.  Kat nodded.  The second pirate ship was still trying to escape.  “They’re locking weapons on us.”

Kat blinked in surprise.  Unless the pirates had developed some kind of super-weapon, they couldn’t possibly harm her starship unless she chose to allow them to hit the hull.  It was suicide to fire on Lightning, and yet her console confirmed it.  The pirate ship locked on and started to spit missiles towards her ship.  Enough was enough.

“Fire,” she ordered, quietly.

The pirate ship was an elderly warship, one dating back to the chaos that had followed the Breakaway Wars.  It would have been formidable back in its day, but that was long ago and its missiles were fired too slowly to overwhelm Kat’s defences.  The pirate point defence struggled valiantly, yet it had been designed for commercial-grade weapons, not modern missiles.  Her missiles slipped through the hapless defences and slammed into the pirate hull, blowing the entire vessel apart into a colossal fireball that rapidly faded into hyperspace.  

“No lifepods detected,” Roach reported.  He sounded just as puzzled as Kat.  The pirates could have bargained for their lives, instead of committing suicide.  It didn’t make sense, unless they’d had captives they knew they didn’t dare allow to report to Kat and her superiors.  A handful of pirate vessels had been captured with prisoners onboard – and none of their crews had ever seen a penal world.  “They’re gone, Captain.”

Kat nodded, wishing that she had someone to advise her.  There was no one.

“Order the convoy to hold position,” she ordered.  The merchant skippers would have bitched about that before, but after the pirates they might be almost reasonable about it.  The thought almost made her smile, before she remembered the Marines.  Greg Bone might be going into horrific danger and there was nothing she could do to help him.  “And prepare a second Marine assault team for launch.”

***
Major – now Captain, as they were no longer on the Lightning - Gregory Bone watched as the pirate ship came into view.  It hadn’t been particularly well-maintained before Kat had slammed a handful of missiles into it, almost blowing it into two separate pieces.  He called up internal diagrams from his combat suit’s database and chose a point of entry, just below where the pirate bridge ought to be.  It was quite possible that someone had reconfigured the ship – it was over a hundred years old, after all – but pirates tended to be lazy.  And they rarely picked on anyone who could fight back.

He smiled as the Marine shuttles opened their hatches and the Marines launched themselves into space.  Unlike the luxurious shuttles enjoyed by Navy crewmen, the Marine shuttles had no atmosphere, allowing the Marines to wear their combat armour and hit their targets without bothering to go through an airlock.  The pirate ship swelled up in front of him, his armour automatically compensating for the sudden shifts in perspective as he clamped onto the hull and then dived through a nearby hull breach, launching a spread of miniature sensor drones ahead of him.  His combat suit’s internal computer network linked into the other combat suits and started to integrate the data from the drones, building up a picture of the ship’s internal conditions.  It wasn't a pretty sight.  At least half of the hull was decompressed, with the crew either hiding in life support bubbles or dead.  

There was no time to hesitate.  The pirates might be preparing to blow up their ship, taking him and his Marines with them.  He led the way towards a sealed hatch and blew it open with a burst of concentrated fire from the suit’s heavy plasma cannon, a weapon so heavy that it couldn’t be carried without a combat suit.  The hatchway blew open and air rushed out, spilling a handful of pirates into space.  They’d either been waiting in ambush or had simply been very unlucky, Greg decided.  It hardly mattered in any case.  If he could take them alive, he would, but he wasn't going to risk lives to capture pirate scrum.  

Two of the Marines remained behind to seal the compartment, allowing the rest of the platoon to make their way towards the bridge.  A handful of pirates saw them and stared, two drawing personal weapons…only to be shot down before they could fire a single shot.  The rest surrendered at once and were herded into an isolated cabin to wait until they could be dealt with properly.  Greg put them out of his mind as he targeted the bridge with his plasma cannon and opened fire.  The hatchway was stronger than the previous hatch, an element that almost all warship designs had in common, but it couldn’t stand up to his fire for long.  It exploded inwards and he started forward, into a slaughterhouse.  A handful of bodies were floating in the air, all dead.  Several more live ones were cowering at the other side of the bridge, clearly traumatised.  Greg didn’t waste time with sympathy.  They would have happily looted the convoy, raped the crews and then expelled the survivors into space, if they’d won.  A little trauma was the least they deserved.

And yet…what had happened on the bridge?

***
“They’re all dead?”

“Yes, Captain,” Bone said.  He was all business over the communications link.  “The ship’s commander and two others were apparently killed by one of their other officers, before he was gunned down himself.  And then his body exploded.”

Kat frowned.  What the hell did that mean?  A desperate attempt to take down someone else with him, or a desperate attempt to hide his identity, or…what?  

“Bring the prisoners back onboard,” she ordered.  “We’ll see if any of them have anything to say to buy their worthless lives.”

She closed the communications channel and, just for a moment, met her XO’s eyes before he looked away.  It might have been her imagination, but was there a flash of…approval in his eyes?  Oddly cheered, she keyed her console and updated the merchant skippers.  Once they’d examined the pirate ship and brought the prisoners onboard, they could be on their way again.  Cadiz was still two weeks away and they were anxious to arrive…and so was she.  If nothing else, she wanted to know just what was going on in the sector and if the Theocracy was involved…

Because if it was, she knew, it meant war. 

Chapter Eight

The pirates were a sorry bedraggled lot.

Commander Jeremy Damiani stood in the shuttlebay and watched as the Marines shepherded them out of the shuttle and into the ship.  They’d thought of themselves as the ruthless wolves of space, but now there was no fight left in them.  Just in case, the Marines had stripped them of everything they'd been wearing and secured their hands with plastic ties.  Any resistance would be ended quickly, brutally and decisively.

He doubted that any of the pirates would offer any resistance.  From the brief reports the Marines had filed as they searched the Bloodstained Knife – a typical pirate name – the pirates had originally had a crew of over four hundred, mostly wannabe soldier types with a handful of enhancements and augmentations that they thought made them the toughest thugs in space.  And now they had suddenly and violently been taught the error of their ways.  They’d all be looking desperately for the one thing they might know that would convince their captors to spare their lives.  

“We separated the two surviving members of their senior crew,” Bone informed him, as the captives were escorted down to the holding cell.  They’d be held there until the Captain decided their fate.  “Both of them were very willing to cooperate – they were loudly declaring their willingness to help us in any way they could.”

His mouth curved in disgust, a sentiment Jeremy fully shared.  If the pirates had had the slightest shred of honour and decency, they would have joined the Navy or worked to make their backwater colonies a success, rather than praying on helpless commercial starships.  The liberals back home might talk of sensitivity and understanding for those who had lost their way, but Jeremy had no truck with their agreements – or with the economists who believed that the pirates had no other choice, but to raid starships to survive.  If they’d walked through what the pirates left behind, or spoke to one of their victims, they might have a better understanding of what drove them.  They were scrum, pure and simple, and Jeremy wouldn't object in the slightest if they were all executed by the Navy.  The decent souls among them would have been weeded out long ago.

“Put them in the interrogation cubes,” he ordered.  It was a nasty job, but it was one he intended to spare the Captain, while she was busy reassuring the merchant skippers that they hadn't been in any real danger.  Jeremy felt his lips twitch into a smile.   The Captain was clearly unsure of herself, but she’d shown tactical flair and a certain level of nerve.  He’d known starship commanders who would have ordered a charge, which would probably have scared off the pirates, yet it wouldn't have allowed them a chance to take prisoners.  Who knew?  They might get the coordinates of a pirate base and then the Navy could send a squadron to blow it to hell.  “I’ll see them in...twenty minutes.”

The Marine nodded and walked off, competence and determination radiating from his form.  Jeremy concealed an amused smile behind his hand.  The Captain and the Marine tried to be professional, but it was clear that they’d once been very close, probably lovers.  They were actually doing a reasonable job of concealing it, yet he could tell – and he was sure that others had formed the same opinion.  He shook his head and dismissed the thought.  The regulations were winked at more than they should have been and besides, they were being professional.  All it meant was that the Marine would have to serve under his former lover – and in any case, the Marines were something of a special case.

Twenty minutes later, he strode into the interrogation cube and studied the prisoner with a calculated lack of interest.  The Marines had secured him to a chair and, clearly anticipated any number of tortures, the prisoner had already soiled himself.  Jeremy wrinkled his nose at the stench, reminding himself that many pirate ships stank because the crews had a nasty habit of pissing where they pleased.  It was beyond him how anyone could live in such conditions, but the psychologists claimed that it was something to do with their withdrawal from human decency and – for once – Jeremy was inclined to agree.  He would have had any crewman caught soiling his ship forced to clean every inch of it with a toothbrush, and that would only have been the beginning.

The prisoner shrank away from his gaze.  Like the junior pirates, the gangsters who thought that they were tough, his nerve had been broken by the sudden and shattering defeat.  And he knew that he was about to die, unless he found something he could offer in trade for his life.  Jeremy met his eyes and allowed his gaze to penetrate the man’s soul.  Pirates had no rights.  Everyone knew that, not least the pirates themselves.

“You were captured in the act of privacy,” Jeremy said.  He’d taken the time to read the forensic report from the Marine team that had searched the drifting hulk and he’d been appalled.  A number of women had been executed by the pirates before the Marines had arrived, the wounds on their bodies consistent with repeated rape and sexual abuse.  The Theocracy had odd and barbaric views on the correct position of women – in subordination to men – but even they wouldn't go so far.  Not that they needed to break their women in such brutal ways.  Some of the reports leaking out of the Theocracy suggested that disobedient women were given a series of drug treatments that made further disobedience impossible.  “My Captain has already signed your death warrants.”

The prisoner shuddered, trying to scramble backwards.  It was impossible, of course; the Marines had secured him to the chair before they’d left him alone.  They’d also scanned his body and reported a complete lack of augmentation and symptoms that suggested that the prisoner was about to feel the pangs of withdrawal from whatever drug he was addicted to taking.  The chances were good that it was one of the handful banned even in the most liberal parts of the Commonwealth, guaranteeing him an unpleasant few months on a penal world – if he survived that long, of course.

Jeremy didn't allow himself any guilt.  The pirate deserved far worse.

“You know something you can tell us,” he said, allowing his eyes to narrow.  It was an expression that had unnerved uppity junior lieutenants, and they had more sense of self-respect than the pirate.  “If you tell us everything you know, we will spare your life...”

He waited.  It wasn't long in coming.  “They’ll kill me,” the pirate protested, desperately.  Sweat was running down his brow, suggesting that the first pangs of withdrawal had already begun to hit.  “Don’t you understand?  They’ll kill me!”

“Your...boss is dead,” Jeremy told him.  “What happened on the bridge of your ship?”

The pirate looked pleadingly at him, and then lowered his eyes.  “They told us that your ship was unarmed,” he said, finally.  “They told us that the convoy was unescorted, that it would be easy pickings.  And they gave us money and equipment and sent us out to destroy your ships.”

Jeremy frowned.  A pirate wouldn't want to destroy ships, but a commerce raider would...and if someone was using the pirates to attack the Commonwealth, he had a good idea who might be behind it.  He leaned forwards, his eyes glaring down into the cowering pirate’s helpless cringe.

“Someone told you to attack us,” he said, slowly.  “Who told you to attack us?”

The pirate looked terrified.  “I don’t know,” he admitted.  “The Captain made the deal; he was their only contact.  We didn't ask questions.  He brought us the money and told us that our benefactors would reward us, even compensate us for the lost ships, the ones we couldn't sell.  And then the new boy killed the Captain!”

Jeremy nodded slowly.  The pirate ship’s communications officer had clearly been a newcomer to the crew, and augmented, given how his body had exploded.  And that suggested that his orders had been to make sure that the pirate commander never got a chance to trade knowledge for his life.  And that meant...what?  He had an idea and he knew that the Captain shared it, but it wasn’t proof.  He’d be surprised if they actually found proof if they continued combing through the pirate ship.  The proof had died with the two officers.

“They lied to us,” the pirate said, in a desperate attempt at self-justification.  Of course he hadn't meant to take part in an attack on a heavy cruiser; no pirate wanted to tangle with a warship, even if they outmassed it.  There was no profit and a great deal of risk in it.  “They told us that you were unarmed.”

“Little shit,” Jeremy swore at him.  The temptation to take a swing at him was almost overpowering, but he held himself in check.  “A pair of my officers will ask you more questions and you will answer them, understand?  And if you answer them to their satisfaction, we will consider sparing your miserable life.”

He stalked out of the interrogation cube and nodded to two of the Marines, who would see to the pirate’s next interrogation.  They wouldn't take chances.  The pirate would be hooked up to a lie detector and forced to answer, and then drugged if it seemed that he had forgotten important details.  Not that Jeremy believed that they’d learn much more, sadly.  The smarter pirate commanders kept details of their contacts – the fences who farmed out their ill-gotten gains to anyone who would pay for them – to themselves.  If it was the Theocracy, they’d covered their tracks well.

And yet...there was something very odd about the whole affair.

He wanted a shower to wash the stain of sharing a room with the pirate off his skin, but instead he headed up to the bridge to report to the Captain.  She would be the one making the final decision about their fates.  For once, it wasn't a decision that Jeremy envied her.  Whatever call she made, someone would be upset.

***
Kat closed the communications link and, as soon as it was closed, allowed herself a grimace.  She was sure that when she’d been the XO, none of the merchant skippers she'd sailed with had been quite so irritating.  But then, she’d only been the XO and the Captain had probably received a great deal of the heat, without passing it down to her.  Or maybe it was her youth.  They probably resented taking orders from someone who looked as if she should be tucked up in bed with a teddy bear.  She sipped the coffee Lucy had provided her gratefully, knowing that what she really needed was sleep.  And that would probably come in a week or so.

“Come,” she said, as the office hatch chimed.  It hissed open, revealing a slightly-bedraggled Damiani.  The XO looked tired, but still extruded the same sense of rock-steady competence that she’d come to know over the last two weeks.  “I take it the interrogations went well?”

“As well as could be expected,” the XO said, and outlined briefly what had happened.  Kat was silently grateful that he’d taken that chore on himself, even though it was really her duty.  Interrogating pirates wasn't a pleasant task and besides, it was hard for her to intimidate them when she looked so young.  “Someone deliberately pointed them at us.”

“The Theocracy,” Kat said.

“Perhaps,” Damiani agreed.  He shook his head.  “The Theocrats are certainly ruthless enough, but even they tend to suppress piracy whenever they can.  I wonder if it could be the Confederacy.  The Frogs have sometimes shown an interest in palming some of their problems off on us.”

Kat considered it, briefly.  The Marseilles Confederacy occupied a handful of stars towards Earth from the Commonwealth – indeed, in some respects it was more of an economic giant than the Commonwealth, much to her father’s irritation – but the Confederacy had never sought to build up a powerful military force.  They’d been on the sidelines during the Breakaway Wars, playing both sides of the field, and since then had preferred to invest in their economy.  It was just possible that they were bribing pirates to head into the Commonwealth instead of raiding the Marseilles Confederacy, but it would mean a direct confrontation with the Royal Avalon Navy if they were caught in the act.  And that would be suicide.  Besides, the Marseilles Confederacy was probably very relieved that the Commonwealth existed between it and the Theocracy.

And yet...the Confederacy was hemmed in, by the Commonwealth and three of the other galactic powers.  Their expansion had limits, unlike the powers along the edge of the Human Sphere.  Might they be considering a scheme to weaken the Commonwealth...no, that was too complicated, and too dangerous.  Occam’s Razor suggested the Theocracy, or one of the handful of independent colonies along the Rim.

“Maybe they wanted us to know that we were being raided,” she said, slowly.  Logically, the Theocracy – assuming it was the Theocracy – had set their pirate allies up for a nasty surprise.  It would alert the Commonwealth...and force the RAN to start running heavier convoy escorts, drawing lighter units away from the border.  The idea made a certain kind of sense, although Piker’s Peak had often reminded cadets that over-complicated plans had a tendency to go badly wrong.  And yet, how could this one go wrong?  The Theocracy could simply deny everything.

She shook her head.  She’d make her report to Admiral Williams, and pass along an update to Naval HQ, and leave it to her superiors to decide what to do about it.

“The Marines finished with the pirate ship,” she said, thoughtfully.  “I don’t see any particular value in keeping it.”

Damiani nodded in agreement.  “It’s utterly out of date,” he said, dryly.  “Anyone who saw it would know that it had been in a fight.  I think that we’d better destroy it and leave the debris in hyperspace.”

Kat nodded.  The pirates had bungled the self-destruct – or their mysterious masters had carefully rigged it so it wouldn't explode – but their remaining security measures had worked perfectly.  Small charges had atomised their computer cores, destroying every trace of information ONI could use to track down their base, while all the pirates who had access to actual navigational data were dead.  It was an admirably through piece of work.  She knew naval officers who would be less through in destroying their records.

The remainder of the ship wasn't much better.  Her Marines had catalogued an long series of atrocities the prisoners had been subjected to, before they’d finally been killed before they could be rescued.  Kat felt a trace of guilt at how they’d died, but she told herself firmly that at least their suffering was at an end.  It didn't help.  The pirates had had an impressive stash of porn, seventy different kinds of illegal drug and a treasure trove of currency from across the galaxy.  She guessed that they’d been gambling with it while waiting for their targets to appear.  And there had been rats, cockroaches and lice, breeding in the squalid conditions.  It was a poor way for a ship to suffer before she died.

She keyed her wristcom and connected with the bridge.  “Commander Roach, this is the Captain,” she said.  “You are cleared to recall the Marines from the pirate ship.”

“Aye, Captain,” Roach said.  He would pass on the message; Bone and his Marines would do the rest.  “The merchantmen are demanding to know when we will resume our course.”

Kat and Damiani exchanged glances, and then chuckled, sharing the same thought.  Merchantmen!  She was tempted to ask him how she’d done, compared to others in similar circumstances, but it was the one thing she couldn't ask.  The Captain would always be in sole charge of the ship – and the one shouldering the responsibility.

And there was another responsibility, one she couldn't shirk.

“The pirate officers are to be kept alive,” she said.  She’d killed before, when she’d fired the weapons at her Captain’s command, but never so directly.  It was her responsibility to give the order.   She felt sick and she swallowed hard, disgusted at her own weakness.  “The remainder are to be taken to the airlock and shoved out into space.”

Damiani nodded, his eyes – just for a moment – sympathetic and understanding.  Hyperspace and normal space were equally intolerant of human life.  The pirates would die, slowly and quite painfully, and their bodies would be torn apart by the energy storms.  And they would all die at her command.

“Aye, Captain,” he said.  “I will see to it personally.”

***
Twenty minutes later, Kat watched as the pirate ship disintegrated into a ball of flame, and then sat down in her command chair.  “Contact the convoy,” she ordered.  “We will resume course for Cadiz at once.”

She settled back as the drive hummed to life.  It would be just over another two weeks before they reached Cadiz, long enough to make her consider diverting the convoy to reach the nearest StarCom.  But they’d wasted enough time already.  For all she knew, other pirate ships were being vectored towards them, or perhaps even a raiding squadron of Theocracy battlecruisers.  In hyperspace, no one would ever find a trace of Lightning and her crew if they were intercepted by a superior force.

“Aye, Captain,” the Helmsman said.  “Course underway.”

Kat smiled to herself.  They’d won their first engagement, even if it was against pitiful opposition.  It would help to bring her crew together into a single unit and do wonders for their moral.  And who knew?  There might even be some prize money if the pirates had had a bounty on their heads.  The big corporations had long memories and a surprising amount of reach.  But she'd known that ever since she was a child.  It was why she had abandoned her family and run away into space.

“We did good today,” she told them.  And now she had to write her report for the Admiral.  Even in hyperspace, the paperwork never ended.  “Mr. XO; you have the bridge.”

Chapter Nine

Space; the final frontier.

Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Cindy Rollins rolled her eyes.  The recruiters had been fond of that hackneyed – it dated all the way back to pre-space Old Earth – phase.  They’d told her that she would find excitement and adventure in space, serving the Commonwealth of Avalon.  And then she’d shown a remarkable gift for sensor systems and traffic manipulation and she’d found herself posted to Avalon Fortress Command, in the Cadiz System.  Someone in the upper echelons of the military hated her, she was sure.   A hundred requests for a posting to a survey ship and they’d sent her to the planet of the hotheads.  

She ran her hand through her short black hair – her ex-boyfriend had called her elfin – and turned her attention back to her display, shaking her head to conceal her irritation.  The Admiral was due to inspect Fortress Command’s network of orbital defences in four days and her superiors – of course – had ordered a massive series of preparations to be made for his visit.  They’d ordered the decks washed, the painting touched up and every piece of balky equipment to be replaced, before running through protocol drills.  They didn’t seem to be so concerned about System Command’s main responsibility – supervising shipping within the inner system – but Cadiz had no representation in the Assembly to demand reform.  The planet of the hotheads had never managed to put forward a single elected representative.

The memory of one of her two field trips down to the planet reminded her of why they’d never been able to claim the representation they should have been entitled to claim.  A sullen and bitterly divided population, fighting and loathing each other as much as the occupation force and an economy that seemed designed to turn silk purses into sow’s ears.  They spent most of their time grumbling, or doing nothing, rather than taking advantage of the opportunities the Commonwealth offered them.  There were uninhabited mining systems that had more space-based industry and activity than Cadiz!

Not that the system was entirely deserted, of course.  The ships of the 6th fleet orbited the planet, or patrolled the outer edges of the star system.  A handful of freighters worked the asteroids, serving the network of colonies that the various corporations had funded that would – if they ever got the chance – kick-stark Cadiz into a new age of economic growth and prosperity.  Or, as scuttlebutt claimed, they might end up declaring their independence from Cadiz and leaving the planet of the hotheads to stew in its own juice…

She glanced up as the sensors started to sound an alert.  A hyperspace gateway was forming, only forty thousand kilometres from the edge of the defence grid.  She allowed herself a moment to relax before keying the commands into the consoles that would focus sensors on the vortex; it was unlikely that the new arrivals posed any threat.  It was, in theory, possible to form a hyperspace vortex within the atmosphere of a planet, but so far no one who had tried it had survived the experience.  Besides, the automated defences would open fire on anyone who opened a gateway within the defence grid.  Anyone who came out that close to the planet’s orbital stations almost certainly had bad intentions.  

The gateway took on shape and form rapidly, and then the first starship emerged from hyperspace.  There was a long moment of tension – it could have been anyone – before the IFF transmissions were detected and matched against the updated database on the fortress’s main computer.  The new arrival was a freighter, followed rapidly by eight more and a heavy cruiser, which had remained behind to hold the vortex open for the smaller craft.  Someone was wasting energy, Cindy noted; there was no reason why the freighters couldn’t have come out of hyperspace through the fixed gate.  Or maybe they were just glad to be out of hyperspace.  She knew that piracy levels had been soaring recently and shipping insurance was at an all-time high.

“IFF confirmed,” she said, as her superior ambled over to see what was going on.  He’d been worrying about the Admiral’s visit with the best of them, ordering her and the other operations to make sure that their consoles were clean and polished.  Cindy didn’t see the point of a ‘surprise’ inspection which had been announced two weeks beforehand, unless the Admiral intended to make his subordinates clean up their act.  She shook her head, dismissing the thought.  The Admiral wasn't known for being clever, or devious – or sadistic.  “One heavy cruiser; Fireball-class, reading out as Lightning.  Database says she’s new-build from Merlin, Captain Falcone in command.”

She didn’t relax completely, even though the IFF matched the download from Avalon.  Anyone could transmit an IFF with the correct information and until Fortress Command eyeballed the cruiser there would be no way to know for sure that it actually was the Lightning.  On the other hand, the freighters were already requesting instructions for slots on the orbital receiving facilities and – for two of them – an escort to the Theocracy.  Cindy had heard enough stories from the refugees who had arrived on Cadiz to wonder why anyone would want to go to the Theocracy, but money – as a pre-space wag had once remarked – had no smell.

“Update the Admiral’s office,” her superior ordered.  “And then run a tracking exercise.  We have to look good for the inspection.”

Cindy didn’t – quite – roll her eyes.  Looking good was one thing; being good was quite another – and she was uncomfortably aware that Cadiz’s defenders were growing fat and lazy.  They didn’t seem to know that there was a potentially-hostile empire only a few light years away from their position, or that pirate ships were clearly keeping Cadiz under observation.  And they didn’t seem to care either.

“Aye, sir,” she said.  One day, she would have his job…unless she managed to wangle a transfer to the survey service.  Now that would be real work.  “Signal sent.”

***
Kat watched as the freighters split up, receiving their new vectors from System Command and heading down towards low orbit.  Some of them would unload at Cadiz, and then head out to the asteroids to pick up what little local produce was carried back to the Commonwealth; the remainder would wait until they received a new escort.  Lightning herself was slotted into an orbital slot by System Command and linked into the System’s defence grid.  If the balloon went up while they were orbiting Cadiz, Lightning would serve as part of the defence force trying to hold the system.  She looked up at the display, slowly plotting out the starships orbiting the blue-green world below, and smiled.  It seemed impossible that anyone would dare to challenge such might.

The 6th Fleet was the largest formation assembled in the Commonwealth, a force powerful enough to conquer some of the lesser interstellar political units without reinforcements or resupply.  Three squadrons of battleships, each one powerful enough to blow Lightning to atoms with a single broadside, were massed in high orbit, dominating the system.  Nine fleet carriers, each one carrying over five hundred starfighters, orbited below them, the tiny starfighters flying patrols and recon missions through near-orbital space, watching for intruders and – more importantly – keeping the starfighter pilots sharp.  A hundred smaller ships, from heavy cruisers to destroyers, were scattered in orbit around the planet, keeping a watchful eye on civilian traffic.  Kat frowned, stroking her chin in puzzlement.  She had no experience in manoeuvring an entire fleet – at least not outside simulations – but it struck her that assembling the 6th Fleet’s smaller units would take time, and doing it under fire would be tricky.  And below the starships, there was an entire network of orbital fortresses and automated weapons platforms, providing fixed defences to back up the mobile elements.  It was nowhere near as powerful as the defences around Avalon, but it should give any would-be attacker pause.

“We have received an update from System Command,” Roach reported.  The Tactical Officer sounded perplexed, and not a little worried.  For the last two days before they reached Cadiz, he’d been tracking a contact in hyperspace that he’d sworn was another starship.  Kat had tried a handful of tricks to lure the unknown ship – if it was a ship – into coming close enough for a proper scan, but it had refused the bait.  It was easy to believe that it was a false contact, or a reflection of Lightning herself, yet after the pirate attack Kat didn’t feel like taking chances.  “The Admiral presents his compliments and invites you down to the planet to consult with him at your earliest convenience.”

Which means right now, Kat thought, with droll amusement.  There were times when she envied the bluntness of the Marine Corps.  A RAN officer who read the Admiral’s command literally would rapidly find herself in very hot water.  Besides, she was growing increasingly uneasy about the 6th Fleet.  They were right on the border with the Theocracy, a force that the Theocracy would have to destroy before they advanced into the Commonwealth, and yet they didn’t look to be very alert.  The fleet could deter pirates and raiders, but an entire battle fleet from the Theocracy?  No one knew for sure just how advanced the Theocracy’s sensors and weapons were, or what other surprises they had up their sleeves.  It had been too long since the human race had fought a major interstellar war.  The Breakaway Wars offered few lessons for military planners.

“Please acknowledge the signal and inform the Admiral that I will be with him as soon as possible,” Kat said.  She keyed her console.  “Shuttlebay One, this is the Captain.  Prepare a shuttle for immediate launch.”

“Aye, Captain,” the shuttlebay officer said.

She considered – briefly – flying the shuttle herself, rather than having a pilot take her across to the Admiral’s command station.  It would have been a fun diversion from the worries that were beginning to gnaw at her, but not one she could allow herself.  Besides, it would give her time to think – and prepare for the Admiral – if someone else flew the shuttle.  The Captain had to make a good impression…

“They’re ordering you to land at Landing City,” Roach said, in some surprise.  It broke through his veneer of calm detachment.  “The Admiral is based down on the surface of the planet?”

“As you were,” the XO growled.

Kat was equally surprised.  Regulations clearly stated that the Port Admiral in command of the orbital defences had to be based in orbit, if only to deter any potential enemy from bombarding the planet below and slaughtering large chunks of the population.  She’d certainly been intending to take the shuttle to the station – and it wouldn’t have made a good impression on the Admiral if she arrived late because she went to the wrong place.  If the Admiral was spending his time on the surface of the planet…it wasn't a good sign at all.

“You have the bridge,” she told the XO.  “I’ll contact you from the surface and let you know when I will be returning.”

The XO nodded.  “Aye, Captain,” he said.  “Good luck.”

Kat was still mulling over his final words as the shuttle flew out of the shuttlebay and headed down towards the brave new world.  From high above, Cadiz didn’t look very different from any other world, with three green continents set in seas of deepest blue.  There was no hint of the endless struggle marring the surface of the beautiful world, at least none visible from the shuttle.  Only the string of security updates transmitted from the planet’s surface – warning of brief encounters with rebels and insurgents – broke through the appearance of tranquillity.  Cadiz’s inhabitants had been fighting each other since before the Commonwealth arrived and, even with a powerful common foe, hadn’t even united against the Commonwealth.  They were still fighting each other, with the Commonwealth caught in the middle and despised by all.

Cadiz was a world that should have worked – and indeed its early origins, while not as encouraging as Avalon, had not been any harder than what other worlds had overcome to return to space as masters of their own destiny.  The original settlers had hailed from a region of Spain, a nation-state on Old Earth, during the height of the ethnic, religious and racial strife that had bedevilled the UN during its rise to supreme power.  They’d made such a nuisance of themselves that when a handful of them had applied to found a colony, the UN and their neighbours had been quite happy to transport the most irritating ones to Cadiz, where they could turn their unrest against the planet itself.  Reading between the lines on the briefing notes, Kat had the impression that their neighbours had been glad to see the back of them, so much so that the traditional methods of deporting anyone even remotely suspected of social deviancy – the UN’s term for anyone who wanted to live their own lives the way they wanted to live – and making the lives of those who stayed at home so miserable that they clamoured to be allowed to emigrate.  And it still should have worked.

Disaster had struck a few years later, when an enterprising UN bureaucrat had noted that there were hundreds of thousands of other ‘social deviants’ in Spain – to say nothing of Spanish-speaking nation-states in Latin America – and Cadiz would serve as a convenient place to expel them, where they wouldn't be able to cause any more trouble on Earth.  The original colonists had protested, only to discover that the small print of their settlement contract allowed the UN to take over if they hadn’t paid back the original loan – and they hadn’t even been able to begin to pay.  Hundreds of thousands of unwilling immigrants had been dumped on Cadiz, ranging from Spaniards who might have been able to fit in to Mexicans and other Latin Americans who couldn’t.  Social unrest began almost at once – Cadiz’s fragile government lacked the resources to take care of the immigrants – and turned to outright civil war within five years.  And the UN kept dumping new immigrants into the caldron, blithely ignoring the civil war.  Kat couldn’t decide if that had been genuine malice, or the signal lack of concern for reality shown by the UN’s planners in the years before the Breakaway Wars.  Cadiz had become independent, but no one had noticed.  The civil war was still raging on…

And it had kept raging on until King Thomas IV of Avalon had realised that Cadiz was likely to be annexed by the Theocracy within five years.  The Theocracy hadn’t been powerful enough at the time to send in a battle squadron and bombard the planet into submission, but they had been working with some of the insurgency forces down on the planet’s surface, arming them to the point where they would be able to take over and appeal to the Theocracy for help.  The King had pushed the Commonwealth into annexing Cadiz first, knowing that its position made it a priceless strategic location for any future war with the Theocracy.  And the big corporations had supported the move, believing that they would be able to rebuild Cadiz and profit heavily from their anticipated economic boom.  Instead, the locals had continued their civil war, while attacking the Commonwealth’s ground forces whenever they showed themselves.  Cadiz should have had its own space-based industry by now and an independent gas giant mining program that would have attracted further investment to the developing world.  Instead, all of what little industry and mining programs there were was owned by off-world corporations – and mostly run by expatriates.  The locals seemed unwilling to try to better themselves.

The shuttle dropped through the planet’s atmosphere, heading down over the ocean and towards land.  Kat leaned forward as the continent slowly came into view, and then started as two jet fighters soared past her.  The Commonwealth had provided a large garrison for Cadiz in the hopes of keeping the peace, yet even with nearly a million soldiers and Marines on the surface the civil war kept raging.  She glanced down at the update and winced.  Orbital weapons had been ordered to fire down on the planet’s surface nearly once every day for the past two years.  How could the locals live like this?

She frowned as the city came into view.  It should have been almost completely rebuilt from the prefabricated housing units the UN’s first colonisation teams had dropped from orbit.  Instead, parts of the city seemed to be made up entirely of such estates, while the remainder looked rather unsteady – and blackened by war.  Her implant’s library informed her that there were almost ten million humans crammed into New Barcelona; ten million when the city barely looked large enough for one!  They would be practically living in one another’s pockets; hell, breeding had to be one of the main occupations down on the surface.

“They picked up a report of some nut with a hypersonic SAM,” the pilot said.  He didn’t seem too worried, but then he’d served with the Marines before transferring to the Navy to fly shuttles.  His service record had placed him in the pilot’s chair during several daring Marine operations against ground targets.  “I’m just spinning around the spaceport and we’ll approach from the other side.”

Kat nodded, keeping the tension off her face by force of will.  She no longer had an entire heavy cruiser wrapped around her, just a very fragile shuttle.  A direct hit from a hypersonic SAM would blow the shuttle into a fireball before they had any time to eject.  The spaceport was coming into view, a handful of prefabricated buildings and a landing field…surrounded by ground-based weapons and defence systems.  She guessed that the reports of Cadiz she’d read had been very optimistic, and most of them had concluded that the only thing that might save the planet from itself was to separate all the warring factions by force and let them mature on different continents.  

The ground came up rapidly and she braced herself, just before the shuttle touched down surprisingly gently.  She caught sight of a flash of light as a laser defence system engaged an incoming mortar shell, followed by a rotating gun firing a pair of shells back towards the insurgent mortar.  No, she told herself.  Cadiz was very far from secure.

“Captain Falcone?”  A voice called.  Kat turned to see an incredibly beautiful woman, wearing an army uniform that had been tailed specially for her.  It had to have been, for it hugged her contours remarkably well – and in a manner Kat knew to be against regulations.  “I’m Commander Jade.  Welcome to Cadiz.”

Kat almost laughed as another mortar shell exploded in midair.  “Thank you,” she said.  The smell of burning flesh started to drift across the field as the wind changed.  “Is it always this welcoming?”

Chapter Ten

“They call this place the Planet of the Hotheads,” Commander Jade explained, as they walked towards one of the spaceport buildings.  She giggled, in a manner that would have been charming in a child, but very annoying in a grown woman.  “The factions keep fighting each other and us.  Buck says that they will learn their lesson soon enough, but I think they’ll just keep fighting.  They’re too stupid, you see.”

Kat felt a growing sense of dismay.  ‘Buck’ had to be Admiral Buck Williams, the CO of the 6th Fleet and effective Governor of Cadiz.  And Jade, who had introduced herself as the Admiral’s personal aide…Kat had no doubt in what capacity she served the Admiral.  It made a mockery of her personal determination not to allow her feelings for Major Bone to get in the way of her professionalism – and even for an Admiral, it was completely against regulations.  Either the Admiral had deviously managed to twist regulations to the point where Jade was not technically under his command – which would at least have suggested a devious mind – or he simply didn’t care.  Kat would have preferred the former, but feared the latter.

It was obvious that Jade was no soldier.  Her body had been sculptured into one that would draw the attention of every man and woman in the room, regardless of their sexual orientation.  Long auburn hair reached down towards her rear, braided into a single long pony tail that swung in the air, drawing attention to her perfect ass.  Kat felt a hint of jealousy, before she reminded herself that her father’s money could have turned her into a goddess, if she had been so insecure in herself to have her features tailored to design.  But then her mother had tailored her features, and Kat had little to complain about in her mother’s choice.  If only she hadn’t looked so young!

The Admiral’s transport said more about the true conditions on Cadiz than any of his reports.  It was a massive black vehicle, studded with armour that would have stood up to a heavy plasma cannon long enough for the occupants to bail out and run for their lives.  An escort of armed soldiers, checking and rechecking their weapons as they prepared for the ride through New Barcelona to the Admiral’s residence, completed the picture.  It was a surprising amount of firepower to escort one lowly Captain and the Admiral’s personal assistant.  Kat saw the glances some of the soldiers gave Jade and winced inwardly.  They knew that she wasn't one of them, all right.  

Jade helped her up into the passenger compartment and went forward to speak to the driver, motioning for Kat to help herself to the onboard bar.  Instead, Kat found a seat at the window and peered out as the vehicle lurched into life and started to head through a set of increasingly tough security checkpoints.  There were hundreds of soldiers dedicated to keeping the spaceport safe, she realised in numb disbelief; what moron had designed it so close to the city, anyway?  Or had the UN’s original settlers built the spaceport at a safe distance from the city and the city simply grown out to meet it?  She pushed the thought out of her mind as Jade returned and refused a selection of expensive alcohol, all imported from Avalon.  The vehicle was turning into the city streets.

It was a nightmare.  Many of the buildings were damaged, or were boarded up to protect them against attack.  Massive piles of litter dominated the pavements, creating a public heath hazard worse than anything Kat had ever seen, even in the reports from the Theocracy.  Hell, the religious policemen who kept the population in line would never have tolerated such squalor.  There were rats and feral dogs feeding in the piles, for god’s sake!

The population didn’t look much better.  A handful of them, mainly young men, watched the convoy with defiant eyes.  Women scurried along the streets, often escorted by other men carrying weapons, daring anyone to pick a fight with them.  There were children and older women, Kat realised, but there seemed to be no women between thirteen and thirty.  Jade told her, when she asked, that their mothers kept the girls locked up when they started their menses, knowing that a bride who wasn't a virgin wouldn't command a huge dowry.  It shocked Kat when she realised that a handful of prostitutes had probably been respectable girls before they’d been seduced into losing their virginity – or raped – and had then been tossed out onto the streets by their families.  And it was clear where the social lines diverged.  Kat saw several different groups of young men staring at each other, neither willing to back down and lose face in front of their peers.

“I don’t believe it,” she said.  All of a sudden, the reports that expatriates were needed to run the orbital facilities seemed believable.  The liberals back home claimed that the big corporations were deliberately stunting the planet’s economic growth, but it didn’t look to her as if they needed to bother.  Besides, a well-trained local workforce would be worth its weight in gold.  “How can they bear to live like this?”

“Buck used to fund projects to improve the area,” Jade said.  It didn’t look to Kat as if he’d tried very hard.  “Every time one group of locals got on the bandwagon, the others would oppose it tooth and nail.  They were more interested in blocking advancement than advancing themselves.  And they don’t help.”

Kat followed her pointing finger.  A man wearing a priest’s vestments was walking down the street, shadowed by a group of ancient women wearing black robes.  “The old religious order,” Jade explained.  “The women will support the priest in everything he does, and make sure the hatred stays alive in the younger ones.  If anyone tries to change the world, those old crones will drown them out and see that they’re excluded from their family.  And without family they are nothing here.”

She giggled.  “Blood is much thicker than water here…”

The attack came out of nowhere.  A single missile slammed against the armoured vehicle and detonated harmlessly against the black armour.  The soldiers opened fire at once, pouring a volley of bullets into the tenement building that shielded the attackers, while the Admiral’s transport picked up speed and headed out of the ambush zone.  An explosion ahead of them marked an IED detonating under the influence of a command signal from the vehicle’s ECM, preventing it from detonating too close to them.  A shudder that ran through the vehicle suggested that not all the IEDs had been forced to detonate earlier.

It was over before Kat had fully registered that it had begun.  The soldiers on the outside stayed alert as the vehicle turned the corner and headed down towards a large prefabricated wall, blocking the roadway.  Kat realised that the building beyond the wall was the Governor’s Mansion, which had been built before Cadiz had become a dumping ground for human refuse.  The contrast between the mansion and the squalor outside was unbelievable.  For the first time, she understood the insurgents; if she'd lived in such conditions, she would be angry too.

The vehicle drove through the barricade and stopped.  “I’m sorry about this bit,” Jade said, as the hatch opened and they were escorted down by armed soldiers.  “We can’t take precautions with Buck’s life, not after they tried to sneak an entire team of terrorists into the mansion.”

Thirty minutes later, Kat ached from every orifice.  The female security officers had been polite, but very firm; they’d carried out a full strip-search and checked everywhere that she might have hidden a weapon, before scanning her body with a sensor that picked up her naval implant and a handful of augmented surprises from her father’s security staff.  There had been a long delay while she’d waited, naked, until they could confirm that she had the proper permits to have such augmentation.  Kat had been fuming at the end of the search – not even the intrusive medical and physical checks she'd undergone when she’d enlisted at Piker’s Peak had been so unpleasant – but orders were apparently orders.  Jade admitted, once they’d been allowed into the compound itself, that the insurgents had managed to bribe or suborn expatriates from time to time, forcing the security staff to search everyone who entered or returned to the compound.  Strict, tight security was the order of the day.

Or at least it was on the walls.  Inside, it was another world.  Kat looked around, ruefully aware that she had to be gaping like a schoolgirl.  Uniformed officers rubbed shoulders with officials sent out by the Commonwealth to govern the ungovernable planet, chatting away happily about nothing while the Theocracy gathered on the borders and rebellion brewed outside the walls.  She saw a line of ladies wearing dresses that would have shamed even her mother, being escorted into one of the mansion’s wings by a number of men wearing formal evening wear.  It struck her that the Admiral and his allies had transplanted a slice of courtly life from Camelot City to Cadiz, seemingly unaware that outside humans lived in squalor that would have been unimaginable anywhere else in the Commonwealth.  She couldn't believe her eyes.

Commander Jade grabbed her arm, with as little respect for Kat’s rank as she had shown to anything else.  “Come on,” she said.  “The good food will be gone before we get there.”

Kat stared at her.  “I thought I was supposed to report to the Admiral,” she said, too stunned to really care that she was revealing her surprise to the Admiral’s aide.  “I didn't come here to attend a party.”

“But the Admiral did,” Jade said, with a brilliant smile.  “He’ll see you somewhere inside the building, you may be sure.  Come along, my dear.”

She led Kat towards one of the massive doors leading into the mansion and past a bored-looking waiter wearing a uniform that make him appear impossibly stiff and formal.  Inside, the music struck her at once, the tune of one of the courtly dances that had  somehow refused to go out of fashion for nearly a hundred years.  Kat looked around in disbelief.  The hall was ornate, decorated with enough rare paintings and artworks to pay for a entire squadron of battleships, artworks she had the sickening feeling had been looted from Cadiz during the early years of the occupation.  One of the waitresses, wearing a shirt so short that the merest hint of a bow would show off everything she had, offered Kat a glass of wine.  She sniffed it and realised that it cost more than her annual salary for a single bottle.  Her father could hardly have put on a better show for his guests, although most of them would have come because of who and what he was.

“If you just want to wait here,” Jade said, “I’ll find the Admiral.”

Kat opened her mouth to object, but it was already too late.  Jade’s shapely rear was heading away from her, into the crowd.  Kat stared after her, realised that she was gaping and pulled her public persona around her.  She’d endured enough worthless parties before she’d worked up the nerve to abandon her family and enlist at Piker’s Peak.  A few moments watching the crowd, she told herself firmly, wouldn't kill her.

It took nearly thirty minutes for Jade to return.  In that time, Kat turned down four invitations to dance from three young men and one woman, realised that there was enough food on the buffet tables to feed some of the starving masses outside and overhead a handful of conversations between a number of serving officers.  There were  at least nineteen Captains and seven Commodores at the feast, yet none of them were talking about their ships, or even the need to prepare for war.

“I’ll let you have Crewman Briggs,” one said.  “He’s a great striker...”

“Excellent,” a second said.  “You won’t regret it.  We’ll take the Cadiz Cup for sure if we get a good striker and some luck.  Bandar’s team are lacking in defence and...”

“I had to discipline one of my tactical officers,” a third said, in tones of regret, even of shame.  “He overshot our training missile allotment by forty percent.  I don't know what I’ll do when the inspectorate comes calling and discovers that my training magazines are empty...”

Jade returned before Kat could find the words to express her horror.  “The Admiral will see you now,” she said.  “I managed to convince him that you’d come all the way from Avalon and he agreed to meet with you before the party really started.”

Fighting down the urge to ask what was going to happen if the party hadn’t really started, Kat followed her through a mass of pressed bodies and into a smaller set of chambers.  A group of young men stared at the two women greedily, their eyes leaving trails of slime over Kat’s breasts.  Jade ignored them and Kat followed her lead, fighting down the urge to activate one of her augmentations and ensure that at least one of them never felt any interest in women again.  Who were the lads, she wondered, and what were they doing in the heart of government on Cadiz?

“The Admiral’s family,” Jade explained, when Kat asked.  “I’m afraid that Buck had to bring them with him.  There was something about a scandal at Court, but you’ll know all about that, I’m sure.”

Kat thought about pointing out that she’d spent as little time as possible at Court since she’d enlisted, but Jade probably wouldn't care.  She pressed one delicate hand against a scanner, which opened a hidden doorway in the wall, revealing an office that was twice as impressive – and gaudy – as her father’s office on Avalon.  Or maybe not; her father, whatever else could be said about him, had been secure in his position.  Admiral Williams, it seemed, wanted to show off desperately, as if he feared losing everything.  A single visit from a competent inspectorate team would have seen him heading home, facing court-martial for gross incompetence and misuse of naval funds.

She took one look at Admiral Buck Williams and knew that he was a disaster in the making.  The Admiral was stunningly handsome, the very picture of a Navy Admiral, with a tailored uniform that showed off his expensive body-sculpting to best advantage.  Like his aide, who gave the Admiral a simpering smile that made Kat feel sick, he had spared no expense on his own appearance.  He looked calm, confident and utterly reliable.  His handshake was perfect.  And he was clearly far too good to be true.

“Captain Falcone,” the Admiral said.  His voice was a rich baritone.  If Kat hadn’t been able to see him, and the luxury surrounding him, she might have felt weak at the knees.  Even his voice was perfect.  “Welcome to Cadiz.”

“Thank you, sir,” Kat said.  She pulled her folder from under her arm – convincing the security officers to allow her to take it into the secure zone had been difficult – and presented it to the Admiral.  He would have received a download of her report from when Lightning entered the system, but tradition dictated she presented him with a paper copy.  “My report of the trip.”

“Thank you,” the Admiral said.  He should have opened the folder and at least skimmed through the first page.  Instead, he put it on a table and looked up at her.  “I'm sure it’s fine.”

Kat was stung, despite herself.  Every other report she’d made in her short career had been scrutinised by her superiors, who hadn't hesitated to rake her over the coals for any mistakes.  She knew she’d done well with the pirates, but there were issues that any senior officer could have raised, if only to make sure she didn't get overconfident.  And the Admiral hadn't even bothered to read either copy of her report!

“I’m looking forward to what you can tell us about Court,” the Admiral continued.  “My wife and I have been on this world for the last four years and we’ve quite lost touch with the fashions back home.  I’m sure you can tell us all the latest fads and fashions and is it true that the King intends to marry Lady Buckingham...?”

Kat stared at him, and then composed herself quickly.  It wasn't easy.  “I’m afraid that I haven’t had time to keep up with the latest fashions,” she said, truthfully.  “I had to fit out my ship for operations and then...”

“Oh, come now,” the Admiral said.  “I'm sure your XO handled most of the work.  Why, your mother is a known butterfly at Court and your father...”

“My father and I don’t speak,” Kat said, more sharply than she intended.  And it was almost true.  All she wanted to do now was take her leave and return to her ship, back to a world that made sense.  “And my mother barely remembers that I exist.”

“I’m sure you know more than you think,” the Admiral said.  She was surprised that she hadn't been rebuked for being impolite to a senior officer – and then everything clicked.  The Admiral was trying to kiss up to her!  No, not her; he was trying to kiss up to the daughter of Lucas Falcone.  “And I hope that you enjoy your time on Cadiz Station.  Why, we have some great parties here, the very life of the system.  And I am always willing to allow young officers to hunt in the nearby forests, or enjoy themselves at the resorts...”

Part of Kat wanted to argue, to ask why the Admiral wasn't preparing for war.  The rest of her realised that it would be useless.  And yet she had to try.

“Admiral,” she said, carefully, “while we were in transit, we were attacked by pirate ships backed by a foreign power, almost certainly the Theocracy.  Someone has been raiding our shipping, weakening our hold on this sector – and preparing a war.”

“Nonsense,” the Admiral said, jovially.  “I have it on excellent authority that the Theocrats have no designs on our space.”  He clapped Kat on the shoulder and it took all of her willpower not to shrink away from his touch.  “A well-bred girl like yourself shouldn't be worrying about such issues.  Or non-issues, as I like to call them.”

He smiled.  “Go forth and enjoy the party,” he added.  Kat would have sworn if she dared.  The Admiral wasn't making preparations for war because he didn't take the threat seriously, damn him.  They could probably take the system from under his nose while he was gorging himself at a feast.  The Theocracy probably hadn't tried to assassinate him because his replacement could hardly be less competent.  “Your XO will have everything in hand.  Eat, drink and be merry!”

Sure, Kat thought, as Jade escorted her from the room.  Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we may die. 

Chapter Eleven

The party proved to be as bad as Kat had feared.

She’d hoped that there would be a quiet place to escape, or a way to get an escort back to the spaceport and a shuttle back to Lightning, but Jade clearly had orders to ensure that Kat made her social rounds.  Her escort paraded her from room to room, introducing her to what she called the ‘movers and shakers’ of the Cadiz Government.  Kat wasn't impressed with any of them, particularly after the word of whose daughter she was ran through the mansion.  They seemed more intent on either kissing up for her or being publicly disdainful of her father, probably in an attempt to win political prestige.  After the first few minutes, Kat found herself entertaining fantasies of donning a Marine combat suit and shooting her way out of the mansion, leaving thousands of dead political parasites behind.  It could only have improved the government.

Jade had explained, when Kat asked, that there were few local politicians and none of them had been invited to the ball.  They weren’t regarded as part of the government by most of the expatriates from the Commonwealth, particularly not those who appealed to the people of Cadiz.  It seemed that few politicians who were prepared to work openly with the Commonwealth lasted long before being assassinated – and those who were prepared to work with the Commonwealth with the ultimate goal of achieving the internal autonomy enjoyed by all other Commonwealth worlds found themselves rejected by the Governor.  If nothing else, the ball was an eye-opening experience, allowing her to learn the difference between the rosy picture painted by the official reports and reality.  Cadiz was in a state of near-permanent insurrection against the Commonwealth – and almost certainly had agents from the Theocracy pouring gasoline on the fire.  

The other starship commanders might have offered her a chance to talk shop, rather than hours of icily polite socialising or favour-trading that marked the civilian expatriates, but few of them showed any interest in actually preparing for war.  They spent most of their time polishing the decks than running exercises, while enjoying the relaxed life down on the surface.  Kat didn’t need to visit their ships to guess that morale was way down, apart from those crewmen lucky enough to play football, basketball or any of the other games the Navy used to build teamwork and crew unity.  The ships fielded their own teams, which competed against other teams and teams raised from the expatriates on the surface of the planet.  She didn’t need to ask to know that there were no teams formed from the locals.  They were barely considered civilised enough to play rugby, a game that the Navy had banned on the grounds of intense brutality.  

And all of it bored her to tears.  Her mother would have been right at home, her father would have taken a handful of other businessmen and political figures into a private room for plotting and favour-trading; Kat was simply bored, and not a little depressed.  How could the Admiral have allowed things to slide so badly?  Even the most optimistic reports had claimed that Cadiz would need at least thirty years of peace before it could be considered for self-government, but it was a national disgrace.  Listening to some of the conversations without making her interest apparent, a skill she’d learned at her mother’s incessant balls and parties, she started to realise that many of the expatriates had managed to turn their posts into opportunities to profit, opportunities that would be lost if Cadiz claimed autonomy.  They might have claimed to be helping the locals, but the truth was that they were retarding the planet’s political development, just to keep profiting.  It sickened her.

For a long moment, she remembered the chip she’d been given, the direct line to her father.  His influence hadn’t worked in her favour before, but she could push him into using his influence against the Admiral.  She could have him relieved of command and a competent officer sent out to clean house and bring the 6th Fleet into something reassembling battle-readiness.  And yet the thought sickened her.  It would be an abuse of power, precisely the kind of abuse she was supposed to have condoned to gain command of Lightning.  The Admiral’s supporters would know what she’d done and it would be an end to her career in the Navy.  No one would ever trust her again.

She shook her head, considering other options.  The Inspectorate General on Cadiz was clearly implicated in the Admiral’s abuses of power, or the Admiral would have been relieved and sent back home to face a Captain’s Board at Navy HQ.  No one would have stood for his conduct; he’d be lucky merely to be dishonourably discharged and sentenced to remain on Avalon for the rest of his life.  She could pass on a tip to Navy HQ, except they would only pay attention to it if she told them her name, and then her involvement would come out at the court-martial.  Assuming the Admiral’s friends in high places didn’t block it…

The thought struck her like a hammer.  The only people who really benefited from the Admiral’s actions – or inactions – were the Theocrats.  They were just across the border, only four days from Cadiz…and the 6th Fleet was hardly ready to withstand a heavy offensive that caught it by surprise.  Could the Admiral have made a deal with the Theocrats?  Kat couldn’t imagine why anyone with the Admiral’s connections would have needed to form a relationship with the Commonwealth’s enemies, but it would have explained a great deal.  With Cadiz permanently on the verge of an explosion and the 6th Fleet ill-prepared to fight when the enemy fleet stormed over the borders, they wouldn't have too much trouble in securing Cadiz before they carried on into the Commonwealth.  For all she knew, the Theocrats had already secured many of their objectives on the planet and were preparing their final offensive.

She looked over at Jade, who was chatting away about nothing.  The Admiral’s aide and obvious sexual partner…could she know anything about his plans?  And was she really as dumb as she seemed?  Kat had met hundreds of empty-headed socialites in her life, and Jade seemed to be just another socialite in a Navy uniform, but there had been moments when something more complex seemed to be going on in her head.  It was the one question she could never ask.

“Ah, there you are,” an imperious female voice announced.  It was strident, reminding her alarmingly of her mother’s booming voice when she wanted to honour a new friend or cut someone dead, leaving them to wither away in social obscurity.  “I thought that you had left us.”

Kat swallowed the response that came to mind as a tall and remarkably handsome woman of a certain age marched towards her.  She was old enough that even the most expensive rejuvenation treatments couldn’t restore her lost youth, but her face had been sculptured until her every inch suggested character, refinement and a certain confidence that everything would go her way.  Kat had met enough society dames to know how they thought, a multitude of mothers, grandmothers and aunts who watched over the younger socialites and steered them in amusing directions.  They allowed themselves a certain cruelty that would have shamed younger women; having lost their youth and beauty, they chose to express their disdain for those who still looked young by manipulating them.  A single poisonous word from one of them in the right ears, under a vow of confidence that everyone knew would be broken a second later, could destroy a life.  Kat’s instincts recognised a genuine threat when she saw one, even though it was pathetic.  A single blow to the woman’s throat would have snapped it and killed her, even with the best medical treatment.

“You mustn’t leave without meeting my sons,” she said, taking Kat’s arm without permission.  The urge to break free and run was overpowering.  “They are very interested to meet you, a girl so young and glamorous and attractive…”

And very well-connected, Kat said.  She had finally placed the overbearing lady as Annette Williams, the wife of the Admiral.  Her mother would have been able to recite everything about Annette Williams, although she would have definitely have been in the lower half of High Society on Avalon.  That might have explained the Admiral’s willingness to exile himself to Cadiz, where his wife could be a social queen.  

“I fear that Valentine and Claude have been unsuccessful in their search for wives,” the Admiral’s wife continued.  Kat saw a flicker of sympathy in Jade’s eyes as she was escorted through two rooms, each filled with socialites eating and drinking their fill, before the door closed between them.  “They are really quite picky, my boys.  They want to be sure that they have the right person before they commit themselves.”

Kat had no difficulty in reading between the lines.  As little more than a contemptible social climber, the Admiral’s wife would have vetoed any potential daughter-in-law who didn’t meet her requirements, which included opening doors to the upper levels of High Society. Kat’s mother had married very well, as had two of her sisters.  And Annette Williams was very low on the social ladder compared to them.  If Kat were to marry one of her sons, the Admiral’s wife would be the true beneficiary.

The private room was guarded by an armed guard wearing a uniform that made him look alarmingly conspicuous.  Kat couldn’t tell if he was there to keep uninvited guests out or to keep the Admiral’s sons inside the room.  Annette marched her through with a nod to the guard – a lack of security that puzzled Kat, given what she’d had to go through to enter the secure zone – and into the room.  Two indolent boys, one a year older than Kat, according to the Admiral’s file, looked up at her.  One had used cosmetic surgery to transform his face and physique into that of a Greek God; the other had a flabby lazy face, with eyes that seemed to suggest infinitive malice.  He reminded Kat of a snake hiding in the grass, waiting to strike at an unwary victim.

“My sons, Valentine and Claude,” Annette announced.  Valentine, the handsome boy, gave her a smile that would have charmed her, if they’d met unannounced.  The other boy gave her a long slow look, and then dismissed her as unworthy of his attention.  Kat wasn't sure if it was an act, or if he’d been taking something that was mildly frowned upon back on Avalon.  “They really are such good boys.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Valentine said.  He had the grace to look mildly embarrassed by his mother’s praise, suggesting that he knew precisely what was going on.  “Do you enjoy hunting?”

Kat scowled.  The truth was that she’d never hunted, even when the pastime had come into fashion again back on Avalon.  Hunting defenceless animals had never been her idea of fun, although there were a few animals native to Avalon that were far from defenceless.  The hunters who set off after the wild Spinet often came back with savage injuries, or never came back at all.  A few wags had joked that the animals had sent messengers to Court, asking the King to send them more hunters.  Kat hadn’t thought the joke very funny.  Besides, she’d hunted pirates while serving on the Pond.

“She’s hunted humans,” Claude said.  His voice was dry, almost emotionless.  “That isn’t a fake uniform she’s wearing.”

Valentine gave his younger brother a look that warned him to keep his mouth shut.  “You should come hunting tomorrow,” he said, with a wink that suggested that he knew where she could spend the night.  “We fly to the resort, away from the spics on the surface, and ride out after the lions and tigers in the safari park.  And if we have time after that we will go to the beach and party as the sun goes down.”

Kat shook her head, firmly.  “I have to return to my ship,” she said.  She was damned if she was going to stay much longer at the party.  Right now, she would have been grateful for an insurgent attack…although if the Theocracy chose this moment to attack Cadiz, the 6th Fleet would have most of its commanding officers down on the surface.  If the ones she’d overhead were typical, the unit efficiency would probably double without them.  The confusion alone would allow the Theocracy ships to get within firing range before anyone reacted.  “I won’t have any time for hunting.”

“My father will be happy to grant you all the time in the world to hunt,” Valentine said, with another wink.  He didn’t mind abusing his father’s position, clearly.  “You have staff that can take care of the ship, don’t you?  I’m sure they won’t notice that you’ve gone…”

Somehow, Kat held the red rage in check.  One good punch in the right place and, for all his oversized physique, Valentine would fall like a house of cards.  He didn’t know anything of responsibility, let alone the concept that power brought responsibility.  Her father had raised Peter, her elder brother, far better than that, but then all it would really take was one bad or incompetent CEO and Consolidated Industries Incorporated would collapse and take most of the Commonwealth’s economy with it.  And the Admiral’s wife believed that she would happily marry such an indolent child…!  Kat would have gleefully thrown him onto the streets of Cadiz and see how well he survived without his father’s money and protection.

“I have my duty,” she said, icily.  Annette looked as if she was going to say something, but Kat cut her off with a glare.  If she really wanted Kat’s presence at any of her future parties, she wouldn't be able to give Kat a sharp lecture on behaving herself.  Besides, Kat doubted that even the reigning social queen would be able to muster the kind of lethal verbal blast so beloved of her instructors at the Academy.  Some of them had been able to make cadets shiver with a single gimlet eye.  “And I have left my ship for quite long enough.”

She turned and strode up to the door, daring Annette to stop her.  The Admiral’s wife did nothing as Kat opened the door and walked past the guard, who nodded politely to her retreating back.  Behind her, there was the sound of a slap.  Kat’s lips twitched as she shook her head at one of the more enthusiastic young men and headed out into the gardens.  The Admiral’s wife was clearly already expecting to feel the wrath of Kat’s mother…and, scenting weakness, all the other ladies of High Society would join in.  Not that Kat had any intentions of mentioning her troubles to her mother.  She preferred to talk to her mother as little as possible.

It was dark outside, with the bright lights of the city in the distance and the stars high overhead, twinkling down at her.  They were joined by other lights, space installations orbiting the planet, protecting a world that didn’t want to be protected.  Kat suspected that even the Theocracy would have problems imposing its will on Cadiz, although it wouldn't be long before they achieved an uneasy peace, even if they did have to kill half of the population to pacify the rest.  They’d done worse, according to the refugees, but few of the reports had ever been verified.

The garden was lit up by little balls of light, revealing a layout that contrasted sharply with the interior of the mansion.  There were patches of grass and plants, laid out in a pattern that allowed the guests to wander through them and down towards the lake – and into coppices that would provide cover for young lovers, if they wanted some privacy.  Kat felt oddly calm as she strode down towards the dim lake, noticing the presence of ducks in the water, calling to their mates as they headed towards their nest.  It all seemed so safe and tranquil.

In the distance, she could hear the sound of gunfire, echoing out from the city.  New Barcelona was dim, unlike Camelot or almost any other city in the rest of the Commonwealth.  There were few lights brightening the sky and hiding the stars in their glow, just a handful of lights and a pair of fires.  A helicopter swooped overhead, hunting for insurgents.  God alone knew what they thought they would find.

“Hey,” a voice said.  “You don’t have to walk away from me.”

Kat turned around to see Valentine running towards her.  His face was flushed, but unmarked, suggesting that it had been Claude who’d been slapped.  That was odd, unless Annette doted on her eldest son and used the younger one as a whipping boy.  She’d seen worse from the parents of society children in the past.

“I could show you around,” Valentine continued, as he stopped in front of her.  “I’ve been slipping outside and meeting people, real people.  I could show you wonders and glories, or introduce you to new pleasures…”

“I’m not interested,” Kat said, sharply.  And to think she’d been worrying about her former relationship with Bone!  Did Valentine think that she was her sister Candy, who’d been known to have no less than four boyfriends at any one time, or Rosemary, who had a habit of getting engaged and then breaking the engagement before tying the knot?  “I don’t have the time…”

“You don’t walk away from me,” Valentine said.  He reached out to grab her arm.  “I am trying to talk to you…”

That did it.  Kat knocked his hand away and rammed her fist into his stomach.  He folded over and staggered to the side, slipping and falling into the lake.  There was a splash as he hit the water, and then a series of undignified struggles that suggested that the lake wasn't deep enough to drown him.  Kat watched long enough to ensure that he wasn't going to drown and then walked away, back towards the guardpost.  They could get her an escort back to the shuttle.

She didn’t look back.

Chapter Twelve

“It’s been quite a while, Jeremy,” Fran said.  “I was thinking that you’d forgotten me.”

Commander Jeremy Damiani smiled, uncomfortably.  Commander Fran Higgins had been a Lieutenant on the battleship Pegasus, serving under then-Lieutenant Commander Jeremy Damiani as part of the tactical staff.  They’d stayed in touch over the years, exchanging letters through the StarCom network, but they’d never served together again.  Jeremy had intended to ask for her as his XO when he gained his first command.  He thought highly of her; in some ways, the young Lieutenant she’d been reminded him of Captain Falcone.

“Life’s been busy,” he said.  Fran had been a good friend, but one of the prices paid for naval service was rarely seeing friends, no matter how close they were.  “I was pleased to hear about your promotion.  You deserved it.”

Fran ran her hand through her brown hair.  As a lieutenant, she’d cut it short, but she’d allowed it to grow out since her promotion.  Her elegant face was solely her own, without cosmetic sculpting; part of his mind noted that she’d grown up a great deal from the young woman who’d served under him.

“Matter of opinion,” she said, finally.  Jeremy frowned.  He’d yet to meet any newly-promoted officer who questioned their fitness for promotion, although many of them had worried that they wouldn't be able to carry out their new duties.  “I think I’d have preferred to serve with you, or even Captain Christian.”

“You’re an XO,” he said.  Captain Christian had been a martinet, a commanding officer who ran a very tight ship and God help the officer who screwed up while on duty.  His crews had respected him, but none of them had loved him.  “It’s not exactly a dishonourable position.”

“I’m Captain in all, but name,” Fran said.  She took a sip of her glass and checked the privacy shield.  It had taken hours of careful planning before they’d been able to meet, because they were both very busy on their ships.  Captain Falcone had returned from the surface looking angry enough to wilt young officers with her glare and immediately ordered a series of drills and exercises to keep the crew on their toes.  “I do pretty much all of the work on the Defiant.”

She spoke sharply, in short choppy sentences, and Jeremy listened carefully.  The Defiant was one of the older battleships, a vessel that had been heavily refitted over the years to allow it to keep up with the latest construction.  There were enough problems in operating a refitted starship to merit additional engineering and tactical staff, if only because the ship required constant maintenance.  And yet, with the Cadiz Naval Base only a few dozen kilometres away, keeping the ship operational should have been easy.  The crew would probably get afflicted with the creeping crud that drove bored young men and women to act up, but a stiff program of drills – and leave on the nearby planet – should have helped with that problem.

But the ship’s commander was one of the Admiral’s confidents and spent most of his time down on the planet’s surface, enjoying himself, while his crew slowly went to pieces.  Fran was tougher than she looked, and she had the support of four companies of Marines, but it was growing increasingly hard to maintain discipline.  It didn’t help that shore leave on Cadiz was officially forbidden after a number of junior officers had been kidnapped and ransomed back to the RAN by one set of insurgents or another.  The only recreational facilities that were deemed safe were on one of the lunar bases, but they were run by a consortium more interested in skimming every last penny from the crewmen rather than ensuring a relaxing shore leave for the young officers and crew.  Besides, a number of prostitutes imported from the planet below had turned out to be carrying diseases that had been unaccountably missed during their recruitment.  The Navy had been forced to divert medics from the starships to cope with a sudden epidemic that had crippled hundreds of crewmen.

“Give us a few more months and we won’t be even remotely fit for duty,” Fran concluded.  “Right now, I have written orders not to run any live-fire exercises since the Captain discovered that I had requisitioned expensive drones to use as targets, and you know there’s only so far you can go with simulations.  I’ve had to brig a couple of dozen men for building illicit stills or importing drugs from the planet – God alone knows how they slipped them through the Shore Patrol and up into the ship.  Hell, I’m not even sure how they got the drugs in the first place!”

Jeremy could guess.  There was no reason why one of the officers who went down to the surface couldn’t serve as a witting or unwitting drugs mule for the conspirators.  He could pick up the drugs, transport them to one of the orbital stations and then tranship them to the battleship, despite regulations that ordered dire penalties for any form of drug use onboard ship.  The RAN didn’t really worry about what its personnel did while on shore leave, as long as they were still fit for duty when they returned, but drug and alcohol abuse onboard ship was a different matter.  It could have the most unpleasant consequences.

“The Captain needs to deal with them personally, but he won’t come up from the surface to pass judgement and he won’t devolve the authority on me,” Fran added.  It wasn't likely that the Captain would devolve his authority to judge his crew, not when it was tied into the Captain’s immense authority on his own ship.  Regulations might actively forbid it, even if he tried.  “The longer I keep them there, the longer the whole problem is going to fester.”

She shook her head.  “I’m sorry for unloading all this on you,” she admitted.  The XO wasn't quite as isolated as the Captain, but it seemed as though Fran was taking all the work on her shoulders.  “I don’t know what’s been happening here.”

“It’s all right,” Jeremy said, awkwardly.  He’d never been good with people who unloaded their problems on his shoulders - particularly ones that they believed couldn’t be solved.  Technically, Fran’s duty was probably to inform the Inspectorate General that her Captain was unsuitable for command, but that was something that would be frowned upon in the Navy.  And besides, given a rather incompetent IG, there was a good chance that it could be considered mutiny, a capital offence.  “Is your ship the only one to have problems?”

“No,” Fran admitted.  “I think that most of the battleships have similar problems; I heard a rumour that the Hood suffered an actual mutiny which had to be quashed by the ship’s Marines.  The smaller units are in better shape because they actually do patrols and escort duties, but even they are being slowly ground down by this place.  We need a new broom to sweep the entire naval base clean, and we’re not going to get it.  Morale is rock-bottom, Jeremy.  If the Theocracy decides to attack…”

Jeremy nodded.  He knew exactly what she meant.

***
Kat had spent the first day after the disastrous party expecting a summons to attend her own court-martial.  The Admiral would be hardly likely to overlook his own son being knocked into a lake and almost drowned, even if his son was a boor who was probably far too used to getting his own way.  She’d actually spent part of her time fretting over which piece of the Navy’s extensive regulations would be used to court-martial her; striking a superior officer was a very grave offense, but she couldn't remember if striking a superior officer’s son was covered by the regulations.  If nothing else, the Admiral could probably charge her with disrespecting a superior officer’s authority, convene a Captain’s Board composed of his tame Captains and throw the book at her.  The board members were supposed to be chosen randomly, but the Admiral had most of the Captains stationed at Cadiz eating out of the palm of his hand.  They’d be bound to convict her.

She’d ordered new drills and exercises for the crew, ignored the handful of department heads who wanted to raise the issue of shore leave and gone to bed in her cabin expecting that it would be the last night she spent in command of a ship.  In the morning, she checked her console and discovered to her surprise that no thunderbolt had materialised.  Indeed, the list of spare parts requisitioned by her subordinates had been approved by the Admiral’s office and were already being shipped out to Lightning.  Puzzled, she’d mulled it over while eating a hasty breakfast and finally realised the truth.  The Admiral was still determined to use her father’s name to his advantage – and if that meant overlooking his son taking an unexpected swim, then that was what he was going to do.  Kat could almost imagine the scene as the son had stormed to his father, demanding retribution, only to be overridden by his father and mother.  God knew she’d heard enough such scenes between her mother and her older sisters.  Kat almost smiled as she pulled on her uniform, before realising that it was yet another sign that all was not well on Cadiz Station.  The Admiral hadn't even bothered to call her with the express intention of tearing her a new asshole.

There was no need to maintain a standing watch on the bridge while station-keeping, but Kat – following the example of her previous commander – had insisted that the senior crew continue to stand regular watches.  When she went onto the bridge herself, she ordered the three officers with her to continue running drills – apart from the secondary tactical officer, who was charged with keeping an eye on near-orbit space – and started to read the downloads from Cadiz Station.  She didn’t have the access to request copies of the reports the various ship commanders should have filed, but she’d been an XO and she knew how to read between the lines.  The 6th Fleet was nowhere near ready for a battle.

“We’ve completed the installation of the new components,” Lynn informed her, two hours after she started reading the downloads.  The Engineer had been working to replace one of the drive nodes, which had blown only two days from Cadiz.  It wasn't a serious problem in itself, but losing more than three or four nodes would have forced them to use the fixed gateway to leave hyperspace, rather than opening the gateway themselves.  “Everything is up and running again.”

“Good,” Kat said, absently.  “My compliments to your crew.”

“Thank you, Captain,” Lynn said.  There was a slight pause, just long enough to tell her that he was going to raise an awkward subject.  “Captain, about shore leave...”

Kat scowled.  Traditionally, if a starship spent more than a week in hyperspace, the crew were entitled to at least a few days shore leave when they arrived on station.  She couldn't blame any of her crew for wanting to rest – and indulge themselves with the pleasures of Cadiz, such as they were – but she wasn't sure that she dared let any of them go.  There were few pleasures on the surface of the planet for junior officers and crew, while any attempt to leave the secure zones meant that they ran a risk of being kidnapped, or simply assassinated by one or more of the factions.  Her instincts said to refuse any request for shore leave, yet that would damage the morale of the crew.  

“I’ll discuss the matter with the XO and then post a shore leave schedule,” Kat said, finally.  The XO should be on his way back to Lightning by now; he’d requested permission to meet a friend on the nearby space station and Kat had authorised it with only a momentary pang of concern.  “Is there any other business?”

Lynn disconnected, leaving Kat to keep scrolling through the reports, reading between the lines as best as she could.  It was beyond her how the IG had missed the effective collapse of an entire fleet, let alone the almost regal court the Admiral had created down on the surface.  Had they been bribed, or were they merely incompetent – or was there treason at work?  The impulse to use the encryption chip and send a message to her father was almost overwhelming.  Didn’t she owe it to the RAN to bring the situation to the attention of superior authority?

She was still mulling it over – procrastinating, she recognised – when the tactical officer coughed for her attention.  “Captain, we have a shuttle on approach vector,” he reported.  “It’s pilot claims that he’s carrying a personal message from the Admiral to you.”

Kat frowned.  “Allow him to dock,” she said.  Why would the Admiral send her a personal message?  Perhaps she’d been wrong and he was merely awaiting the right moment to come down on her like a ton of reinforced concrete.  She decided, after a moment’s thought, that she would meet the messenger in her cabin.  “You have the bridge.”  

The messenger turned out to be a very young Ensign, so young that he barely looked old enough to enlist.  Kat had heard that some promising officers were offered positions working as gofers for various senior officers, but none had ever offered to employ her in any capacity.  He bowed, rather than saluted, presented her with a creamy white envelope sealed with the Admiral’s signature and snapped to attention, waiting for her reply.  Kat, perplexed, opened the envelope and read the message quickly, ignoring the fine penmanship the writer had shown to the world.  It was a set of operational orders for her ship.

To Captain Falcone, HMS Lightning.  You are ordered to attach your ship to Convoy Theta-36253 and provide escort to UNAS-3523, where you will hand over escort duties to starships of the Theocratic Navy and receive into your care seven freighters which you will escort to Cadiz, at which point you will make yourself available for further orders.  God save the King.  Signed; Admiral Williams, 6th Fleet, Cadiz Station.

The Ensign leaned forward.  “Will there be any reply, Captain?”

Kat almost giggled.  This was the Admiral’s revenge?

“No, thank you,” she said, already considering the possibilities.  The Admiral probably thought that he was punishing her by sending her away from Cadiz and its endless round of parties, at least for senior officers.  Kat couldn't hide her amusement, not completely.  Independent command was every competent officer’s dream and he thought he was punishing her?  “Please inform the Admiral that his orders have been acknowledged and I will comply.”

She half-expected to be told that she had to write out a reply, but the young puppy – and he was young, even compared to her – merely saluted, braced himself and marched out of the cabin, every inch a young officer charged with an important mission.  Kat lost control and collapsed into giggles as soon as the hatch had hissed closed behind him, feeling the first burst of real amusement since she’d assumed command shaking her body helplessly.  The Admiral’s punishment...and she got to keep her crew away from Cadiz!  He couldn't have rewarded her any better than this so-called punishment.

Still smiling, she keyed her wristcom.  “Mr. XO, please report to my cabin,” she ordered.  “We have a mission to plan.”

***
Jeremy hadn't realised just how much he intended to tell the Captain until he entered her cabin and started outlining everything Fran had told him.  Over the last month, after the pirate attack, he’d started to feel more than a little competence in his commanding officer.  She was still young, and more than a little naive in some respects, yet there was definite promise there.  Jeremy had been turning young officers into competent personnel ever since he’d been promoted to Commander and, in some ways, the Captain was no different.  Not that he ever intended to tell her that, of course.  Hell hath no fury like a newly-promoted officer who thought that his subordinates were undermining his authority.

“My God,” the Captain said, when he’d finished.  Her own story wasn't much better than Fran’s, although thankfully Fran had never been invited down to the surface.  “What kind of madhouse have they sent us to?”

“There’s no such thing as bad personal,” Jeremy quoted, “merely bad commanding officers.  The Admiral doesn't care and his attitude has slipped down to the lower ranks as surely as shit rolls downhill.  They stopped caring because their superiors didn't keep their noses to the grindstone...”

He recalled Captain Christian, the tyrant.  Whatever else could be said about him, he’d run a tight ship and he was always the first one into danger.  And if he’d seen Cadiz Station, he’d have had a heart attack on the spot.  He’d been promoted to Commodore, if Jeremy recalled correctly, but he had no idea where the Navy had seen fit to send him afterwards.

“Never mind that for the moment,” the Captain said, finally.  “The Admiral has given us our marching orders.”  She passed him a datapad and allowed him to view the convoy schedule.  “We leave in two days, barely long enough to get ready to depart.  And then there’s the issue of shore leave...”

Jeremy nodded.  “The crew can rotate through the lunar facilities,” he said.  “A chance to blow their pay on some fresh food, wine, women and song – mainly the women, I think – will do most of them some good.  They’ll accept that you had no choice, but to cut their leave short.”  He shrugged.  “Although you may want to think hard before allowing anyone to go down to the planet’s surface.  Something tells me that the military on the ground won’t be very good at recovering kidnapped spacers.”

The Captain stared at him.  “But they’ve had plenty of experience...”

“They only control the planet because we hold the high orbitals,” Jeremy pointed out.  Major Bone could have made the same point, but he was working with his Marines and hadn’t been invited to the cabin.  “They can't hold the entire planetary surface with only a million soldiers – and I’d bet you anything you care to put forward that there are entire regions that are completely out of control.  There are five billion locals down there and all of them hate us.”

He allowed his voice to darken.  “And just think what could happen if the Theocracy took out the fleet and the orbital stations,” he added.  “There would be a very bloody slaughter and that would be the end of the Commonwealth’s rule over Cadiz.”

The Captain didn't disagree.

Chapter Thirteen

“Approaching Boring, Captain.”

Kat leaned forward in her chair as the eerie lights of hyperspace twisted into a black vortex and Lightning – along with seven freighters – roared out of hyperspace and into a tiny solar system, dominated by a small red dwarf.   The star’s official designation was UNAS-3523 – it had been charted by the UN’s survey ships during the first expansion era – but the 6th Fleet’s personnel had rapidly renamed it Boring.  Kat had to admit that the informal name was perfectly accurate; the system possessed nothing more interesting than a handful of asteroids and icy comets.  Situated almost perfectly along the border between the Commonwealth and the Theocracy, it was so worthless that neither side had thought it was worth annexing formally and it had come to serve as a neutral zone, of sorts.

“Launch drones,” she ordered.  The agreement, negotiated by the Admiral’s staff, had specified that both escorting forces would arrive in the system at the same time, but the Theocracy was known for playing fast and loose with the terms of any agreement.  Any data they picked up on her ship’s capabilities – sensors as much as weapons – would be of great value to their planners.  They’d risk war just to tease out a final piece of data.  “Signal the convoy to come to all stop and wait for orders.”

Convoy Theta-36253 consisted of nine ships, all – with a single exception – of older designs, ones that there was little point in seizing for study.  The Admiral’s staff had cleared them for transit into the Theocracy, but Kat – not inclined to accept the Admiral’s assurances at face value – had ordered them searched while the convoy had been in transit.  They’d found nothing suspicious – and little that could be used for military purposes – but Kat had the alarming sense that they’d missed something.  She couldn’t understand why anyone, including her father, would wish to trade with the Theocracy.  The theorists who claimed that free trade would help the leopard change its spots weren't the ones on the front line if the Theocracy’s forces did come over the border.

“Aye, Captain,” Roach said.  The display updated rapidly as the drones spread out from Lightning, although Kat knew not to rely completely on the remote sensor platforms.  A single ship, with its drive and active sensors shut down, could easily hide in the vastness of space, tracking her ship through its passive sensors.  It was unlikely that any skipper would risk bringing his ship within weapons range without identifying himself first, but the handful of reported engagements between Commonwealth and Theocracy starships before the border had been hammered out claimed that the Theocracy’s commanders were bold and daring, fearing their superiors more than they feared their military opponents.  

The thought made her smile.  Once, back on Old Earth, a General had made a snide remark about his own troops.  I don’t know if they frighten the enemy, but by God they frighten me, he’d said.  Kat knew how he must have felt every time she contemplated the 6th Fleet.  Not all of the commanding officers on the ships were beholden to the Admiral, content to spend their days partying down on the planet’s surface, but her very youth and inexperience prevented her from seeking out those who might have agreed with her.  She knew none of the other commanders personally, apart from one who she’d met at one of her mother’s parties – and he was clearly inclined to support the Admiral.  It was beyond her why he’d been allowed to remain in command, although the Admiral’s presence probably had something to do with it.  He was the only person at Cadiz with authority to relieve one of his commanders, and that would have drawn attention to his own shortcomings.

Her musings were interrupted by a chime from the sensor board.  “Vortex forming, five hundred thousand kilometres away,” Roach reported.  Kat and her XO exchanged glances.  They were alone, effectively – and if the Theocracy planned to bag a heavy cruiser, they’d have brought more to the party than the single heavy cruiser they’d agreed to send to match Lightning.  “Seven starships emerging; IFF signals mark them as Theocracy.”

Kat braced herself as the new icons flared to life on the display.  The Theocracy’s ships weren’t trying to hide, or mask themselves; something she told herself firmly was a good sign.  Her sensors rapidly identified the first six starships as freighters of a common design, one that dated all the way back to the era before the Breakaway Wars.  Earth’s shipyards had been stamping them out like coins, selling them to everyone who wanted to set up a colony under UN auspices.  There was a fair chance that the ships confronting her now were the ones that had delivered the original settlers to Abdullah, before it had been renamed by its new masters.  

A seventh ship appeared and the vortex closed behind it.  The display flared red for a second as the Theocratic warship brought up its sensors and scanned for possible targets, locating Kat’s ship alarmingly quickly.  It wouldn't have been too hard, Kat knew, but it was worrying.  The Theocracy’s own design of heavy cruiser seemed to give more weight to a heavier missile broadside than any form of point defence, something that fitted in with their mentality – return victorious, or not at all.  Her own sensors returned the favour, building up an image of the ship’s hull.  The Commonwealth’s analysts would study it carefully once she returned to Cadiz and uploaded it into the StarCom network, hopefully deducing any weaknesses in the starship class before they started exchanging blows.  There were limits to what they could deduce at a distance, however; she wasn't unduly surprised to discover that the ship was masking its hull.  Any internal data would have to wait until a sample was captured in action.

“They’re picking up speed,” Roach reported.  The tension rose on the bridge as the starship started to glide towards Kat’s position, followed by a flock of freighters.  At least that boded well for the meeting, although if the freighters turned out to be Q-Ships Kat knew she’d rapidly find herself in a very difficult position.  “They’re locking tactical sensors onto our hull.”

“Return the favour,” Kat ordered.  She’d taken the time to skim through the reports filed by other commanders who escorted ships to Boring and they'd all agreed that the Theocracy had a nasty habit of playing chicken with armed starships.  Or, part of her mind fretted, they were trying to lure the Commonwealth into thinking that they were only trying to unnerve them, in hopes of catching Lightning unprepared when they actually opened fire.  Kat’s ship was already at red alert and would remain so until they were well away from the dim red star.  “Order the freighters to hold their positions and wait.”

The seconds ticked away as the Theocracy warship converged on her position, the tension rising ever higher on the bridge.  It was rare for one starship to ram another, unless the second starship was crippled or the first had come too close to escape.  Kat could have ordered an evasive manoeuvre at any moment, except she knew that that would concede too much to her opponent.  The RAN would have court-martialled anyone who played chicken with an entire starship, but the Theocracy took a different view of the issue.  A Theocratic Captain who showed daring would probably be promoted and given even more important commands.  

Every Captain’s worst nightmare was an enemy ship so close to his hull that it could fire its missiles at practically point-blank range.  The most powerful energy weapons in existence would take minutes to burn through the armoured hull metal – the toughest substance known to mankind – but missiles could punch through…and at point-blank range, there would be no hope of bringing point defence up in time to swat the missiles before they stuck home.  Q-Ships liked luring their targets in close, but Q-Ships were built on freighter hulls and couldn’t endure a battering match with a warship.  Kat’s unknown opponent was playing with fire; after all, if he entered point-blank range, she could blow him away as surely as he could blow her away.  And as they both had their missiles on automated launch, the result would likely be mutual destruction.

“They’re slowing,” Roach reported.  Kat let out a breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding.  The Theocracy wasn’t going to start the war, at least not today.  If the Admiral had been prudent, he would have sent a second warship with the convoy, one that could hang back and escape to Cadiz if the meeting turned violent.  If something had gone wrong, Kat and her crew would have become another ship lost to ‘unknown causes,’ rather than the first deaths in a war the Commonwealth had been dreading for years.  “They’ve halted, at rest relative to us.”

“Good,” Kat said.  “Transmit our prepared greeting.”

There was a long pause.  The Theocracy was known for raising a diplomatic storm at the slightest hint of irregularity, an attitude that Kat found rather amusing given that the Theocracy hadn’t been above negotiating with some of its other victims while preparing the hammer blow that would crush all opposition and force yet another world into the Theocracy on its own terms.  It was something she wished the Admiral would remember.  Any negotiations with the Theocracy – any treaties with the Theocracy – would last as long as the Theocracy chose to abide by them.  And then there would be war.

“We are being hailed,” Roach said.  “One signal; tight-beamed to us.”

Kat frowned.  A tight-beam meant that they didn’t want anyone else, even the freighters, to listen to the conversation.  “Put them on,” she ordered, and forced herself to relax.  At least she hadn’t had to wear her dress uniform for the meeting.  “Keep our own signal tight as well.”

The holographic display reformatted itself into an image of an older man.  Kat took one look at him and knew that they weren't going to get on.  He had dark skin and darker eyes, a neat well-trimmed beard and a face that suggested that he ate lemon each morning, just to ensure that he developed the proper attitude for his post.  For all Kat knew, that was exactly what the Theocracy’s military personnel did.  Some of the horror stories they’d heard from refugees were alarming – and there had been no defectors from the Theocracy.  Kat had no idea if that meant that their military personnel were completely committed to the regime or if their secret policemen were very good at rooting out dissent before it had a chance to mature into mutiny.

Her counterpart’s eyes narrowed as he took in her face.  The Theocracy didn’t allow women to serve on starships; even the original female settlers had made the trip in stasis, only to be unloaded once they’d landed on the planet’s surface.  The reports contradicted themselves on what role the Theocracy allowed women in their society, but they tended to agree that the first duty of a woman was to have as many strapping young sons as possible, causing a permanent population boom.  It explained why the Theocracy was so intent on expansion, according to some of the analysts, although Kat wasn't so sure.  Even at the height of its power, the UN had been unable to make a significant dent in Earth’s teeming billions by shipping them off-world as willing or unwilling settlers.  The Theocracy would still have billions of people on Abdullah, no matter how many worlds it absorbed.

“This is Captain Falcone of HMS Lightning,” Kat said.  Did she detect a second narrowing of her counterpart’s eyes when he heard her name?  She couldn’t tell.  “To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?”

“I am Captain Zaid of the Faithful Companion,” the Theocracy Captain grated.  He didn’t seem pleased at all to be speaking to a woman – and an infidel woman at that.  “I understand that you have brought the freighters as agreed.”

Kat refused to show any reaction to his rude tone.  “I have,” she confirmed.  It sounded as if the Commonwealth was paying tribute to the Theocracy.  The Theocracy might well choose to see it that way.  “And I understand that you have brought your freighters?”

“I have,” Captain Zaid said.  “I will be searching your ships before they are permitted to cross the border.”

“Of course,” Kat agreed.  The Theocracy was paranoid to the point of obsession, concealing as much as they could from outsiders.  There was no way they could hide stars from the Commonwealth’s survey officers, but the picture of their naval deployments and bases was very incomplete.  Compared to them, the Commonwealth was an open book.  The Theocracy’s spies could pick up much of the data they needed just through reading what was in the public domain.  “I will alert their commanders to prepare for your inspection teams.”

“I will also be registering a formal complaint,” Zaid continued, as if she hadn’t spoken.  “The Commonwealth has failed to recognise and respect our cultural values by sending such a young and inexperienced Captain when the terms of the agreement were that equal units would be deployed by both sides.”

Kat had read the reports from previous missions carefully enough to note a common theme.  The Theocracy’s representatives always found something to complain about, something that could be used to harass and intimidate a Captain with less self-confidence than they should have in themselves.  They’d have complained if the Commonwealth had sent a male officer in her place.  The complaints were mostly ignored, although they could be a black mark in an officer’s file if they were taking out of context.

“You may do so if it pleases you,” she said, in the voice that infuriated her father and irritated her mother.  It was a tone of complete unconcern, just perfect for getting under a stuck-up person’s skin.  “How long do you intend to make the inspections take this time?”

The Theocracy Captain showed little reaction to her own dig.  “As long as they take,” he said, flatly.  Most interstellar powers would have exchanged invitations to dinner during diplomatic meetings.  The Theocracy rarely did anything of the sort.  “I shall inform you when the searches are complete.”

His image vanished without any warning.  Kat sank back into her chair, trying to conceal her amusement – and worry.  The Theocracy was going to search the ships she’d escorted – and if they found anything suspicious, they’d arrest the crew, putting her in the position of having to choose between allowing them to be taken into the Theocracy for trial or firing on the Faithful Companion.  They had a long list of forbidden items, ranging from history datachips to pornographic and religious materials that might corrupt the minds of the believers.  And while her people had searched the freighters to make sure that nothing was being smuggled across the border, they weren't inclined to confiscate anything not illegal under Commonwealth law.  She hoped the freighter skippers and their crews had chosen to behave themselves.  They knew the rules for doing business with the Theocracy.

She’d taken the opportunity to read her father’s business reports from the Theocracy and most of them had noted that the Theocracy was a poor place to invest.  They had an insatiable appetite for technology of any kind – particularly anything with military applications – but very little else, apart from a handful of luxuries that she suspected went to the Caliph and his personal staff.  There was no point in establishing local factories or industrial nodes in the Theocracy, and the quality of local workers could be variable.  They had an excellent space-based industry, her father’s representatives had noted, but so much of it was wrapped up in military construction that the planets were suffering.  The planets were forced to rely on planet-side industries and most of them had unpleasant effects on the local environment.

Three hours passed very slowly.  Kat spent them studying the sensor readings on the Faithful Companion and speculating with Roach and the XO about the ship’s armament.  Optical observations suggested that the heavy cruiser would definitely be able to launch more missiles in a single broadside than Lightning, but she was reasonably sure that her point defence would be able to compensate for the heavier broadside.  It was much harder to tell what kind of point defence the Faithful Companion mounted, yet she was sure that it carried enough to allow it to survive an encounter with a hostile ship.  Even the most fanatical servants of the Theocracy would have preferred a shield as well as a sword, even if their doctrines were based around attack, attack, and attack.  If she mounted no point defence at all, Lightning would blow her out of space before she managed to punch through Lightning’s defences and inflict significant harm.

“We are being signalled, text only,” Roach informed her.  Kat exchanged another glance with the XO.  The text message was another hint of rudeness, particularly when two ships were close enough to chat without a delay between sending and receiving messages.  “They are informing us that the ships were barely acceptable and they are turning over their freighters to us, now.”

Kat nodded.  Based on past experience, the Theocracy’s crews would be minimal – and kept inside their ships, even when in orbit around Cadiz.  It wouldn't do for the believers to be contaminated by exposure to alien viewpoints that might seduce them from the path of the righteous.  And yet a handful of crew managed to escape every once or twice in a while.

“Inform them that we will escort their ships to Cadiz,” she ordered.  “And then cut the channel.”

If the Theocracy’s Captain noticed her rudeness, he didn’t bother to complain to her face.  Instead, his ship opened a vortex and led the Commonwealth freighters into hyperspace, the vortex closing behind them with a flash of light.  Kat watched them do, said a silent prayer for the crew on those freighters, and then looked over at the helmsman.

“Open a vortex for us,” she ordered.  “It’s time to go home.”

Chapter Fourteen

“I wish to protest this intrusion,” an officious voice snapped.  Commander Jeremy Damiani would have rolled his eyes, if he hadn’t been in a shuttle surrounded by armed Marines.  “My ship was inspected prior to departure and I have nothing to hide.”

“Then you won’t mind us searching your ship,” Jeremy countered, patiently.  “We will be docking with your forward airlock in five minutes.”

“This inspection was not part of the agreement,” the voice thundered.  “To board my ship without my permission is an illegal act and I will make a formal complaint to your superior officer.”

“Your people were allowed to inspect our freighters,” Jeremy said.  “Under the Albion Conventions we have a right to inspect your freighters in return.”

“My government did not sign the Conventions,” the voice insisted.  He sounded alarmingly well-briefed for a simple freighter commander, although the Theocracy wouldn’t have sent a simple commander to Cadiz.  “They are not binding on us.”

Jeremy shrugged, tired of the game.  “You will allow my shuttle to dock or we will fire into your hull,” he informed the Theocracy skipper.  “The choice is yours.”

There was a long pause.  He could almost imagine what was going through the skipper’s mind.  Even if Jeremy was bluffing about opening fire, the ship wouldn't be allowed to dock at Cadiz and would probably be turned around and deported back to the Theocracy, leaving her skipper to explain his failure to his superiors.  And his superiors would be very unsympathetic indeed.

“I am opening my airlock,” the voice said, reluctantly.  “Be aware that your actions onboard my ship will be monitored and a formal complaint will be dispatched to your government…”

Jeremy tuned him out as he checked the pistol on his belt.  Normally, inspecting a freighter would be a task for a junior Lieutenant, or even an Ensign, but the Theocracy’s commanders had a nasty habit of intimidating a younger officer who might be less sure of his ground than an older XO.  The Marines made a convincing argument in favour of behaving oneself, but that wouldn't stop a verbal barrage of abuse from the enemy skipper.  He reminded himself firmly that the Theocracy wasn't the enemy, at least not yet.  It was well to be careful though.  God alone knew what might be waiting for them on the freighter.

The Lotus Blossom was a huge ship, a blocky mass that might be able to sink down to a planetary surface, but would never be able to get back into orbit.  She was composed of modules, each one storing a different kind of produce from the Theocracy, linked into the central hull by a network of connecting tubes and cables.  The ship moved like a wallowing elephant at the best of times, utterly unable to escape if even a handful of starfighters came after her with blood in their eyes.  Jeremy had considered transferring to one of the interstellar shipping lines before, but it wasn't something he'd taken entirely seriously.  A starship that could nether run nor fight wasn't his ideal place to work.

A dull clang echoed through the shuttle’s hull as the pilot brought her into dock with the freighter.  The two airlocks melded together, allowing the atmospheres to match and sensors to determine if it was safe to exit.  Jeremy had heard of a handful of nasty tricks played by resentful freighter crews on Orbital Guard inspection teams, but no red lights flashed up on the display.  Lotus Blossom was as safe as Lightning, which didn’t convince Jeremy to leave the body armour and pistol in the shuttle.  Two of the Marines wore full suits of combat armour; the remainder were wearing standing uniforms, but with armour under their shirts.  They were ready for a hostile reception.

The airlock hissed open and Jeremy stepped through.  As he had expected, Captain Junayd was waiting for him, a short dark man with a formidable beard and an even more formidable sneer.  There was something about him that set alarm bells ringing in Jeremy’s head, although he couldn’t place it at first.  This man was the commander of a freighter, and yet he looked as if he was used to serious command.  Merchant commanders from the Theocracy had to wear the same ugly uniforms as their military personnel, but this one wore it with an ease that surprised Jeremy.  He was used to wearing it.

“Although I cannot prevent you from boarding my ship,” Junayd began, “I wish to inform you that I will issue a formal protest to your commanding officer and…”

“My commanding officer ordered this inspection,” Jeremy said, shortly.  The Lotus Blossom was the fourth ship he’d inspected and the unchanging routine was beginning to get to him.  So far, they’d found nothing, not even samples of an intoxicating drug that was quasi-legal in the Theocracy and banned everywhere else.  A clean ship was suspicious in and of itself, even without anything else.  He’d never seen a freighter crew without a collection of illegal porn or alcoholic drinks before.  “Please gather your crew on the bridge while my people check their papers.”

The freighter’s bridge was larger than necessary, although that might not have been as suspicious as it looked.  Back when the freighters had first been designed, starship automaton was in its infancy and the Theocracy had evidently refitted the ship several times since it had entered service with their government.  It had only twenty-one crewmen, but a quick check of the manifest revealed that there were twenty other men onboard the ship, all sleeping within the auxiliary cargo hold.  The freighter was hardly rated for passenger transport.

“They are here to learn the ropes, as you say,” Junayd informed him.  Jeremy didn’t believe him and insisted that the trainees join the rest of the crew on the bridge.  As they entered the bridge Jeremy studied them carefully and didn’t like what he saw.  It was natural for merchant crewmen to resent being boarded and searched by the Orbital Guard, let alone the military, but these crewmen hated him and his Marines.  And there was an ease and confidence in the way they moved that suggested military training – and not too long ago, either.  He checked their fingerprints, retina scans and DNA against the files and was unsurprised to discover that none of the newcomers were listed in the database.  There was no master list of the Theocracy’s population.

“I want you and your crew to remain on the bridge,” Jeremy ordered, shortly.  He'd been in combat situations where he’d felt less threatened.  Not that the crew would try anything, of course; the Marines wore body armour and there was a direct link to Lightning.  Even if they killed him and the Marines, the Captain would blow their freighter into dust before it could hope to escape.  “We will be inspecting the rest of the ship.”

Normally, an inspection could be carried out within thirty minutes.  This time, Jeremy gave the order for a full inspection, one that could take up to five hours.  Ignoring the increasingly annoyed protests from the ship’s commander, his Marines went through the hull carefully, checking everything.  The cargo matched what was on the manifest exactly – too exactly.  There were plenty of products that could be sneaked through and sold for a small profit – and a small profit would go a long way in the right place.  And yet, the ship was clean.  On a hunch, he ordered one of the Marines to inspect the ship’s sensors and struck gold.  The starship’s sensor suite was far superior to any commercial-grade model available in the Commonwealth and utterly illegal in the Theocracy, at least in their restricted commercial sphere.  Only the military would be allowed free access to such systems.  

He had to admire their nerve.  The Lotus Blossom wouldn't have done anything to arouse suspicions; they’d simply orbit Cadiz, unload their cargo like a good little merchant and then head home, taking with them detailed sensor recordings of Cadiz Station and the 6th Fleet.  In fact, there was no way of knowing just how long they’d been slipping spy ships through the border.  They could be just making sure that they had their figures right before charging across the border and attacking Cadiz.

“Devious,” he commented, and keyed for a private channel to the Captain.  “Captain, we found something you need to know about.”

He ran through a full explanation of the sensor suite and the other suspicious elements.  The young men who claimed to be trainees were soldiers or he was a ground-pounding soldier himself.  In fact, a quick consultation with the Marines yielded the suggestion that they were specially-trained soldiers.  And if their presence had gone completely unnoticed, they could have slipped down to Cadiz and vanished into the teeming cities, ready to help the insurgents launch a new series of assaults on the Commonwealth-appointed government.  

The Captain didn’t waste time questioning his findings.  “We can’t simply seize the ship,” she said, grimly.  They could, Jeremy knew, but it would cause a major diplomatic incident.  With the 6th Fleet in no state for war, he doubted that the Captain would be willing to risk a war over the freighter.  “Here’s what I want you to do.”

Jeremy listened carefully, made a few suggestions of his own, and then closed the channel.  Signalling to the Marines, he ordered them to head back to the shuttle and change into their combat suits, while the two who were already wearing combat suits were ordered to make their way to the bridge.  Spotting a handful of other odd details – the ship’s internal surveillance systems were more advanced and intrusive than a battleship’s – only confirmed his suspicions.  Once the Marines were ready, he ordered them to escort Captain Junayd to one of the lower decks.  He needed a careful word with the ship’s commander, if he really was a lowly Captain.

“You, infidel,” Junayd snapped, as soon as he was pushed into the compartment.  “What is the meaning of this?”

“You and your crew will be supervised for the duration of your stay at Cadiz,” Jeremy told him, flatly.  “Your ship’s computer records will be wiped before you leave, of course.  Should you wish to lodge a complaint my commander will be pleased to read it…”

“This is outrageous,” Junayd thundered.  “My crew are good and loyal.  What cause do you have to imprison us on our own ship?”

Jeremy leaned forward.  Someone on the ship would be a cleric, a man with the twin tasks of making sure that the crew remained devout – and watching their commander for failure.  He wouldn't wield command authority himself, but a negative report to his superiors could break even the proudest Captain.

“Your ship is a spy ship and your crew is a pack of spies,” he said, simply.  “Don’t bother to deny it; I’m sure you could come up with a very convincing tale if you tried, but I won’t believe it.”

Junayd said nothing, merely glanced upwards towards where the surveillance bug had been before one of the Marines had smashed it and bashed a hole in the bulkhead for good measure.

“Your sensors are alarmingly good, your crew is clearly military and far too clean to be believable,” Jeremy continued.  “You and your crew are spies, plain and simple.  In wartime, we would be quite within our rights to interrogate you and then execute you on the spot.  Seeing as we’re at peace, we’re going to hold you at Cadiz and then deport you back across the border.  I advise you to behave yourself until then.”

He smiled.  “Unless you want to come over to our side...?”

The only response was a snort.

“Suit yourself,” Jeremy said.  “And mind what I said about behaving yourself.”

He turned and marched out of the compartment, leaving the Theocracy’s commanding officer behind.  “I want two armed Marines on the bridge, a second pair of Marines in the sensor compartment and five more on the shuttle,” he ordered, keying his communicator.  “The ship is to be locked down completely; any weapons are to be confiscated and the crew held under close observation.”

“Understood,” the Marine said.  Even if the Theocracy soldiers were their version of the Force Recon Marines or Special Army Service, they wouldn't be foolish enough to go up against Marines wearing powered combat armour.  The cargo modules on the ship had been carefully searched and revealed no heavy weapons, let alone armour, leaving only a handful of pistols in the crew’s hands.  Jeremy found that suspicious on general principles – merchant crew in the Commonwealth were known to arm themselves to the teeth – but it wasn't something he could point to in a report.  

He strode back to the bridge and examined it one final time, uneasily aware of dark eyes boring holes in the back of his head.  Their mission had failed before it had even begun, leaving them disgraced in the eyes of their superiors.  And if their commander had refused to defect, the chances were that none of the others would dare to ask for asylum, even if they wanted it.  Special Forces soldiers of almost any interstellar power were a proud breed, the elite.  They hated losing, but they hated the thought of disgrace even more.  He hoped, despite himself, that the young men wouldn't end up crucified or whatever the Theocracy did to failures.  

After making one final check on the Marine dispositions – and ensuring that anything that could be used to easily destroy the ship was removed – he headed back to the shuttle to report to the Captain.  She’d want to hear everything from the horse’s mouth.

***
“They’re spies,” Kat said, flatly.

“Yes,” her XO said, with equal flatness.  “That ship is unique.  The others don’t have perfect crews, military grades of cleanness – or, for that matter, military-grade sensors.  They wanted to sneak into Cadiz, take a series of passive observations, and then bug out with us none the wiser.  And it would have worked if we hadn’t decided to search their ships with a fine-toothed comb.  A cursory inspection would have found nothing.”

Kat rubbed her tired eyes.  “Is there no way we can learn if that’s the first ship they sent?”

“Not unless you’re willing to authorise...rigorous interrogation procedures,” the XO said.  “They will have been treated to immunise them against truth drugs – hell, I’d bet that they have augmentations that prevent them from being interrogated at all, even with old fashioned torture.  We might get answers out of them, but it’s more likely that we’re wind up with a number of dead enemy spacers and little else.”

“Apart from a court-martial for abusing prisoners,” Kat said.  She scowled, darkly.  The Navy – which was bound by the laws of war authorised by the King and Assembly – was legally allowed to interrogate pirates and then execute them afterwards, but the regulations on the proper treatment of POWs were severe.  There were some provisions for interrogating captured enemy personnel rigorously if the CO believed that there was a desperate requirement for the information, but any officer who risked such an act had better be prepared to justify it to a board of her peers.  And besides, they weren't formally at war.  The worst they could do was deport the prisoners and bar them from returning to the Commonwealth.

“They’re probably laughing at us right now,” she added, crossly.  On the display, the Lotus Blossom was being escorted by a pair of shuttles, a blunt reminder of the consequences if the crew attempted to regain control of their ship.  The frustration was galling.  “They know we can't do anything to them.”

“Their superiors will take a very dim view of their failure,” the XO pointed out.  “We’ll wipe their sensors of everything they picked up since they joined the convoy and take their computers apart to be sure we didn't miss anything.  The chances are that their superiors will send them to garrison a hell-world or find them a suicide mission to accomplish before they’re allowed to return to the fold.”

“Hope springs eternal,” Kat agreed, doubtfully.  “And what happens if they decide to deny everything and dare us to prove it?”

“We’ll have the records and sensor readings we took from their ship,” the XO reminded her.  “No competent analyst will doubt our conclusions.”

Kat nodded.  “And the Admiral will have to take notice of our findings,” she added.  It was the one promising sign in an episode that suggested that war was looming on the horizon – as if she’d doubted that!  “He can take measures to prepare the fleet for war.”

The XO said nothing, but Kat could read his scepticism.  He might be right, even though she hoped that he was wrong.  If he was right, she promised herself, she would use the datachip and send an encoded message to her father and his political allies.  Avalon had to know what was going on with the 6th Fleet – the only reason she could think of that Admiral Williams hadn't been removed was that Avalon didn't know how bad things were at Cadiz – and something would happen.  It could hardly be worse than an Admiral who spent his time partying while his fleet fell apart and a hostile force gathered on the borders.

“Keep rotating the Marines through the spy-ship,” she ordered, finally.  “And run a set of secondary inspections on the other ships before we reach Cadiz.  There may be a second spy ship among the freighters.”

“Yes, Captain,” the XO said.  “If I may make a suggestion?”

Kat nodded, surprised.

“Make sure you speak to the Admiral directly,” the XO said.  “He won’t refuse to see you if you claim Captain’s Rights.  If you don't, someone on his staff may decide to summarise the salient points for him and the impact of the report will be lost.”

“Understood,” Kat said.  It was good advice, even though the last thing she wanted was to meet the Admiral – and his sons – again.  Unless on a duelling field...duelling was technically banned within the Commonwealth, but there were ways around the law for someone with sufficient determination.  “I’ll deliver it personally.”

Chapter Fifteen

“You did what?”

Kat was so astonished that she forgot any semblance of respect for her superior officer.  The Admiral, luckily for her career, affected not to notice.  He regarded her with the same indolent smile from the last time they’d met, as if she were a young niece and he a tolerant uncle.  Whatever his wife’s designs on using Kat to reach the very highest levels of High Society, clearly nothing was going to stir him from his stupor.

“I removed your Marines from the Lotus Blossom and permitted them to begin unloading their cargo,” the Admiral said.  “There’s no proof at all that they were up to something naughty.”

“Admiral,” Kat said, so calmly that she surprised herself, “they have military-grade sensors, a crew that is not only military, but larger than they need and an internal surveillance system more advanced than anything we have on our warships.  That ship is a disguised military vessel, a spy ship.  Are you at least going to wipe their computers before they depart?”

“Of course not,” the Admiral said, surprised.  “That would render it impossible for them to return home.”

Kat wouldn't have shed a tear if the Lotus Blossom had been lost in space forever, but the Admiral was wrong.  “Admiral, my ship could have fed them navigational data to allow them to reach Boring without letting them pick up any more useful intelligence,” she said, sharply.  “Instead, they will have accurate intelligence on your deployments which will allow them to plot an assault on Cadiz...”

“Now listen to me,” the Admiral said, with a sudden burst of irritation.  Something she’d said had gotten under his skin.  “I have it on the very best of authority that the Theocracy has no hostile designs on the Commonwealth.  My contacts in the Foreign Office have assured me that the Theocracy is merely maintaining a front for internal consumption – besides, the new Caliph’s position is far from secure and he won’t want to risk a disastrous war with the Commonwealth.  We’re powerful enough that even if they win, they’re going to be badly hurt – badly enough to tempt other powers into raiding their territory.  They are not going to risk a war...”

Kat’s eyes narrowed.  “And then why would they launch a series of provocations along our borders?”  She demanded.  “And then why would they bother to send a spy ship with an obvious crew of military officers into our space?  And then why would they fund the pirates...?”

“There is no proof that the Theocracy is behind the pirates,” the Admiral said, firmly.  He lowered his voice slightly, as if he intended to give his young daughter some counselling.  “Our position here is delicate and there are factions back home who wish to push us into an unnecessary war for their own reasons.  My priority here is to ensure that we do not push the Theocracy into doing something that will encourage that faction to start a war.”

He smiled, benevolently.  “You don’t need to worry about the Theocracy,” he added.  “As long as we avoid provoking them, the peace will endure.  I’ll have a chinwag with their Ambassador and get the whole problem sorted out.  You don’t need to worry about it.”

“Admiral,” Kat said, carefully.  “What proof do you have that the Theocracy means no harm?  What assurances have you been offered...?”

“Simple common sense,” the Admiral said.  “If the Theocracy wanted to launch a war against us, they would have done it back when we annexed Cadiz.  Instead, they have accepted the border and even traded with us from time to time – trade that your own father helped to encourage.  A war between our two great powers would be utterly devastating to both – how could that serve their God?”

Kat scowled.  The stories coming out of the Theocracy’s refugees hadn't been encouraging.  Their religion pushed them to conquer, with peace negotiations merely a delaying tactic while they prepared the hammer that would end the war in one fell swoop.  And while the true believers were invariably honest with each other, they were permitted to lie to unbelievers and infidels.  Nothing they said could be taken for granted and the life span of any treaty would be as long as the other party could enforce it.  And the Foreign Office believed otherwise?  She doubted that that was their sole belief – or they would have opposed the 6th Fleet’s deployment for fear of provoking the Theocracy – but the politics back home were murky.  Not everything believed that there was a threat...and others feared the consequences of an unbridled military build-up, even if it averted war.

“Admiral,” she said, “a victorious war would allow the new Caliph to secure his position.”

“There would be no guarantee of victory,” the Admiral reminded her, dryly.  “The 6th Fleet is powerful enough to stand off any attack on Cadiz – or strike deep into their territory if they choose to bypass this world.  They will not risk a war.  They are dangerous and their outcomes are never certain.”

Kat swallowed several angry responses that came to mind.  The 6th Fleet was in no condition to show the flag, let alone launch an invasion of the Theocracy’s space.  Even if they chose to bypass Cadiz, it would be months before the fleet was ready for operations – and that would give the Theocracy time to secure an unassailable position.  The Admiral’s words were borderline treason...just for a moment, she wondered if her father could or would protect her if she lunged across the desk and strangled the Admiral with her bare hands.  His replacement could hardly be so incompetent...and unheeding of the danger.  

“Now, I wish to talk to you about other matters,” the Admiral continued.  “It has come to my attention that your ship has requisitioned several thousand pounds worth of equipment and...”

An hour later, Jade escorted Kat out of the Admiral’s mansion, down through the security screen and back into a convoy of armoured vehicles for the drive back to the spaceport.  Kat was furious, so angry that she would have welcomed an insurgent attack just so she could have shot back at someone.  The Admiral had dressed her down, not for raiding and arresting an apparently innocent freighter, but for requisitioning too many spare parts, regardless of what her ship actually needed.  Only a beancounter could have reasoned that ships would have a steady level of consumption, no matter what the ship was actually doing.  She wouldn't have been too surprised to discover that someone on Cadiz Station was quietly diverting some of the supplies from the orbital stations and selling them onwards.  Civilians loved Navy-designed components – they were often more robust than civilian designs – and would pay handsomely for them.  Or pirates, who needed naval equipment to operate, would be happy to find someone who could be bribed into supplying them.  

The shuttle flight back to Lightning was a bumpy one.  Somehow – and Kat could guess how – the insurgents had acquired a handful of ancient heavy weapons, which they used to try to shoot down the shuttles.  Kat held herself under tight control as the shuttle fought for height, while jet fighters and helicopters launched an assault on the insurgent positions.  She didn't want to think about how many civilians would have been caught in the bombardment, knowing that the insurgents would use their deaths to recruit more fighters.  The shuttle reached orbit without further delay and Kat glanced down at the planet below, hating it in that moment.  It looked so safe and tranquil.  

As soon as she was back onboard her ship, she summoned the XO and Bone to her cabin and briefed them in short choppy sentences.  She wanted to strangle the Admiral with her bare hands – and she didn't even hide that from them.  Bone had been a friend and lover from long ago, but it was a mark of how she'd come to respect and depend upon the XO that she admitted that to him.  Besides, he’d been the one who’d uncovered the spy ship in the first place.  The Admiral might not dare to write a black mark into her file, but the XO had no powerful patrons to protect him from blame.  Kat privately doubted that the Theocracy would bother to file a complaint – not when the records from the search would prove to any competent authority that the Lotus Blossom had been far from innocent – yet the Admiral might not see it that way.  

“I don’t believe it,” she ended, angrily.  “The fleet is on the verge of being attacked – and it’s commanded by a moron who can use the word chinwag without shame!  Is he on their payroll or what?”

“Politics,” Bone said.  The Marine sounded calm, as always.  Right now, Kat wanted to hold him until the anger drained away, or drag him into bed and fuck his brains out.  Neither one was an option, not any longer.  “The Admiral was carefully picked for his position by the peace-mongers back home.”

Kat scowled at him.  “And how do you know that?”

“I had a chat with the Marine CO here,” Bone said.  He grinned at her, reminding her that the Marine Corps was, in its own way, more of a family than the RAN.  “General Oliver Eastside is just as pissed at the Admiral as you are, Captain.  He shouldn't actually be in command of the garrison at all, but the Army’s CO was assassinated and the Admiral has so far neglected to produce a replacement.  From what he was saying, the Admiral has interfered so much in the operations on the ground that morale is shattered, even in the Marines.”

He scowled.  “As best as I understand it, there are factions back home that believe that the Theocracy doesn't want a war,” he said.  Kat nodded.  The Admiral had said much the same to her.  “They used their influence to ensure that Admiral Williams, who had some reason for wanting to leave Avalon, was posted out here as CO of Cadiz Station – and effective Governor of Cadiz.”

“Ever since the last one got assassinated,” the XO said.

“There seems to have been a shortage of volunteers for the post,” Bone agreed.  “For what it’s worth, no one seems to believe that the Admiral has been...compromised by the Theocracy, but he’s been sent out here to ensure that we don’t do anything they could object to and if that means bending over backwards and sticking his head up his own ass to make sure he doesn't see anything that would contradict their position, that’s what he’s going to do.”

He shrugged.  “Besides, why would the Admiral want to rock the boat?  He has a great position here, a chance to collect kickbacks and bribes – hell, good Ambassadors and Governors find ways to profit from their positions all the time.  You must admit that he’s been damn good at carrying out his mandate...”

“No he fucking hasn’t,” Kat snapped.  She thumped the table angrily, wishing that she’d picked up a taste for drinking, or quasi-legal drugs.  A few hours out of her mind sounded very attractive right now.  “His mandate is to defend the Commonwealth and he’s completely fucking failing at that, isn’t he?  How highly would you rate the fleet’s chances if the Theocracy came over the border today?”

“Poorly,” the XO said.  He hesitated, and then took the plunge.  “I’ve been talking to a few other friends in the fleet.  The picture doesn't look much better on any of the battleships, or the carriers.  Training has been cut back sharply, starfighter pilots aren’t getting their mandatory forty hours minimum of flight time per week and the Admiral’s lackeys insist on having all paperwork filled out in triplicate before they lower themselves to dispatching consignments of spare parts.  Some of the people I know have identified others who are clearly on the take, but the IG here appears to be moribund.  No one else has the authority to question the Admiral, let alone suspend him from duty for gross incompetence.”

Kat nodded, sourly.  There were certain circumstances where a senior officer could be relieved of duty, but none of them seemed to apply.  The Admiral hadn't ordered her to abuse prisoners, bombard population centres for no tactical reason or any of the handful of other reasons regulations considered acceptable.  And unless her reasons were utterly ironclad, her career wouldn't survive the fallout either.  And that would mean...

She pushed the thought aside.  “Mr. XO, I want you to speak to your friends,” she said.  “Tell them about the Lotus Blossom and warn them that the Theocracy may be considering an attack within the next two standard weeks.  Whatever training and preparation they can make before then may make the difference between victory or defeat.”

“Maybe,” the XO said.  “And what if the Admiral forbids additional training outright?”

Kat grinned.  “And then there would be grounds to file a report with Avalon,” she said.  She doubted it would come to that.  The Admiral’s style didn’t seem to be direct orders, more a sort of quiet erosion of everything that made the RAN an effective fighting force.  Kat had no illusions about how much could be done in two weeks – a figure she’d effectively pulled out of her ass – but it would make things interesting.  Besides, any supply officers who were selling off naval supplies in the certain knowledge that they wouldn't be needed at Cadiz would be in for a very unpleasant surprise.  “Greg, can you pass on a similar warning to the Marines?”

“Yes,” Bone said.  “Are you sure...?”

“Yes,” Kat said.  Her family could be made to work for her for once.  The Admiral wouldn't dare to relieve her of command, knowing that it would shine a spotlight on his own failings, if not outright corruption.  But that wasn't the real danger.  The real danger was him finding someone to serve as a whipping boy, someone like her XO.  “Do it.”

Once they were both gone, Kat sat down in front of her terminal and carefully disconnected it from the ship’s datanet.  It was technically against regulations, but officers and crew in search of a little privacy did it all the time.  From her time as an XO, Kat knew that it mostly happened when a crewman wanted to look at his pornographic stash or write love letters to his wife or girlfriend, hardly a major problem.  Once it was separate, she opened her safe and produced the datachip she’d been given and slotted it into the terminal.  It insisted on checking her fingerprints, implanted ID and retinas before it unlocked and allowed her access to the encryption program.  Knowing her father, if anyone else had tried to use it the results would have been disastrous for their terminal.

She hesitated, knowing that she was about to cross her own personal Rubicon.  Ever since she’d enlisted, she’d tried to avoid using her family’s influence to promote her career.  And her father, caring nothing for her own personal preferences, had ensured that she received a fine command sooner than she should have been offered command.  It had damaged her standing in the eyes of her comrades, but what she was about to do was worse.  If it became public, the RAN would know her to be a whistle-blower, a sneak, a tattletale...and no one would ever trust her again.  It wouldn't matter that the Admiral was risking the security of the entire Commonwealth, or that there was no other way to bring matters to Avalon’s attention, not when so many emotions were involved.  Her career might survive, but her chances of being accepted by her peers would be lost forever.

“Father,” she said, finally.  “Everything is not well on Cadiz Station.”

***
“It was a miracle,” the Cleric said.  “God has truly blinded and deafened the infidels.”

Captain Junayd allowed the Cleric his glee, even though he wouldn't celebrate himself until the Lotus Blossom had crossed the border and was safely back in Theocratic space.  It was quite possible that the infidel Admiral was playing a cunning game, allowing the spy ship to make its observations before intercepting and destroying it in hyperspace, where no trace of the vessel would ever be found.  Junayd knew the reasoning back home; better to list the crew of the ship as martyrs than risk the infidels stirring from their slumber.  He knew exactly what he would have done if he’d been confronted with a spy ship from the Commonwealth and he couldn't believe his luck.  The Theocracy’s motto echoed through his mind – God helps those who help themselves – and he scowled.  A gift from God could be a two-edged sword.

“So it would seem,” he said.  Their active sensors remained offline – the infidels could hardly fail to notice them – but their passive sensors were drinking in everything around them, as well as using tightbeam lasers to signal operatives already on the surface.  Data was flowing into the ship’s secure databases for analysis back home, allowing him to refine his attack plans.

“I will lead the crew in offering thanks tonight,” the Cleric said.  He wasn't a bad sort, really, not compared to the fire and brimstone Clerics assigned to the battleships.  At least he had the sense to let the Captain do his job, rather than insist that he – as the senior representative of the Theocracy onboard – had the final say.  “The infidels have no idea what we are.”

“They do,” Junayd contradicted.  At least they had been allowed liberty on the orbital stations, although in their place he would have had his crew carefully watched.  A copy of their data would be passed to another operative on one of the civilian craft, just in case Lotus Blossom never made it home.  “And don’t forget that infidels can be tough fighters.”

His ultimate superior had worried, but accepted his decision.  Coming so far from the Theocracy had been an act of bravado more than  anything else, but it had allowed him to get a feel for the infidel fleet.  It was weak, commanded by an idiot who couldn't recognise a spy ship when it was right in front of him.  Perhaps the Cleric was right and God had blinded the infidels to the looming danger...

And Captain Junayd, who was really Admiral Junayd of the Theocratic Navy, smiled.

Chapter Sixteen

The founders of Avalon had not intended the monarchy to be anything more than a constitutional arrangement to gain the UN’s approval for their founding charter.  As such things tended to do, the monarchy had grown in power over the following century as Avalon started preparing a defence force out of fear that the UN would invade and turn the planet into yet another dumping ground for Earth’s unwanted population.  By the time of the Breakaway Wars, the Monarchy and the Assembly had managed to sideline the big corporations, although they still maintained a considerable level of influence over the government.  It was an uneasy balancing act that had worked for over a century, one that allowed each faction to prosper without crushing the other two.  And it had prevented civil war.

Aware that their monarchy was not intended to be anything other than pomp and circumstance, the designers of Camelot Palace had reached into the past and copied a palace from Old Earth.  The original had been moved brick-by-brick to Albion as the UN started to assume control of Earth, but the designers of Camelot Palace had been able to study it and improve upon the design with modern materials.  Their palace was more than just the residence of the monarch and his family.  It was the centre of government for Avalon and even though the Commonwealth had offices scattered over twenty-four planets, remained the public seat of government.  Some cynics had claimed that the true purpose of the monarch was to take the blame when things went wrong, but they were missing the point.  There were times when a single authority was required and then, when the crisis was already out of control, was when the monarchy came into its own.

Prime Minster Bruno Lombardi, Leader of the Conservative Party, strode through the side doors of Camelot Palace and allowed a uniformed usher to escort him down a flight of stairs that were never included in any of the public tours.  An unsmiling pair of guards ran sensors over him before relieving him of his pistol and wristcom, despite his pro forma objections.  Government buildings were the one set of places on Avalon where there was no right to bear arms, even for the Prime Minister.  Political debates tended to get exciting enough without the addition of loaded weapons to the discussion, or at least that was the official reasoning presented to the public.  The truth was, as always, more mundane.  No one wanted to see a second monarch assassinated while on the throne.

Scowling, he checked his appearance in the mirror and rearranged his clothes.  The guards had been through, as always, and it took several minutes to straighten out his stiffly formal suit and shirt before he brushed his gray hair back into a ponytail.  It was the one show of elegance he permitted himself; the Conservatives stood for stability and opposed change and innovation on principle.  Bruno allowed himself a tight smile as he stepped back and allowed his guide to escort him to the elevator.  The Conservatives were conservatives because the current balance of power suited them very well and change might have put an end to their comfortable lives.  Bruno had been in politics for most of his adult life and he intended to remain in the Assembly for decades to come.  And that meant that he had to satisfy his constituents.

Few outside the Government knew that there was a set of underground bunkers five miles below Camelot, or that a network of underground passageways and elevators allowed the government class to move underground and continue their work even if Camelot itself were to be destroyed.  Bruno knew, as a matter of course, that anything could happen to Avalon and if something did happen, the government would need to survive.  Other governments might hesitate before slaughtering civilians in large numbers – if only because of the certainty of retaliation – but terrorists wouldn't hesitate to detonate nuclear weapons on the planet’s surface.  It had happened on Earth, during the Wreaker War, the war had had paved the way for the UN’s global dictatorship.  And, far from incidentally, provided the stimulus for massive expansion into space.

The elevator came to a halt and a blast of cold air caught him in the face as the doors opened, revealing a featureless corridor without any of the paintings or artworks that adorned the Palace aboveground.  His implants reported a single network processor downloading information into his skull, but he ignored them.  He knew the way to the Privy Council’s private chamber.  To be summoned to the Privy Council was a great honour and, to his silent pride, Bruno had been a member long before becoming Prime Minister.  It proved that he was someone the King felt that he could work with, even if they were often in disagreement.

An armoured door hissed open ahead of him, revealing a conference room that wouldn't have been out of place in any medium-sized office block.  It was dominated by a single wooden table, with a slightly raised seat at one end, and a set of military-grade holographic projectors.  A drinks cabinet sat against one gray wall; the remaining walls were unadorned, save only for a portrait of King Thomas I glaring down at his successors.  He’d been a placeholder for the colony’s original founders and hadn't lived long enough to see his title become more than a meaningless formality.  

Bruno strode into the room and nodded to the handful who had reached the bunker ahead of him.  The Privy Council’s membership was determined by the King and it tended to vary, although once one was a member it was not done under the unwritten parts of the constitution to exclude one from meetings.  Privy Councillors who were no longer wanted were generally invited to leave, with the invitation made a great deal firmer if they refused to leave gracefully.  The best that could be said about the system was that it worked, mostly.

He nodded politely to Lucas Falcone as the magnate took his position.  The CEO of one of the big corporations wielded more political clout than almost all of his fellow councillors; luckily, he was a natural supporter of the Conservative Party, along with most of his fellows.  There was no rule restricting Privy Council membership to the Assembly, after all, and it included the Grand Admiral as well as anyone else the King saw fit to invite.  A handful of councillors even dated back to the previous monarch, their positions unchallenged by the new King.

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” a voice announced, “His Majesty The King.”

Bruno rose to his feet as the second pair of doors hissed open, revealing King Thomas V of Avalon.  The King was almost as young as he looked, with short dark hair, an elegant rather than handsome face and a pose that spoke of true confidence.  It wasn't misplaced either; tradition dictated that the monarch’s children went to the military and Thomas had served in the Royal Avalon Marine Corps with distinction.  He hadn't been able to turn it into a career – the Heir had too many duties on Avalon to remain in the service – but it had made him a man, one who would have had a fine career as Prince of Avalon if his father hadn't died early.  And now he was the King, to whom all swore allegiance.

“Gentlemen and ladies, be seated,” the King said, as he sat in the raised chair.  It was the one concession to his position.  “Thank you all for coming at such short notice.”

Bruno nodded, graciously.  Inside, he was fuming – and he knew that others would be feeling the same way.  There had been no indication as to the reason for the meeting, and yet he knew that the King, young as he was, wouldn't have irritated so many powerful people by summoning them on a lark.  Something was up and yet none of his sources had been able to give him any clue as to why the King felt that summoning the council was necessary.  There would have to be a house-cleaning, he told himself firmly.  He hadn't invested so much time, money and political patronage in his sources to have them go silent when he needed them.

“We have received a disturbing report from Cadiz,” the King said, once they were all settled.  He never wasted time with small talk, something that Bruno largely appreciated.  The Privy Council was no place to chat about whose son was going to marry whose daughter, or about the latest scandal from the lower levels of High Society.  “In a way, we have received two disturbing reports from Cadiz.  The second report was only implied.”

He tapped the embedded console in front of his position and the holographic display came to life.  “Admiral?”

Grand Admiral Constance Cinnabar, a tall striking woman with long brown hair and an expression of grim determination nodded.  As the uniformed head of the Royal Avalon Navy – subordinate only to their Commander-in-Chief, the King – she bore the ultimate responsibility for both the RAN and Cadiz itself.  Bruno scowled at the memory.  The Conservatives had opposed annexing the planet, noting that they had few friends on the planet’s surface and would find themselves mired in a quagmire.  They’d been proved right; Cadiz had been worthless to the Commonwealth, with the most optimistic predictions suggesting that it would be at least another twenty years before it broke even.

“A week ago, the heavy cruiser Lightning exchanged convoys with a Theocracy vessel,” Constance said.  “This is standard procedure.  The Theocracy patrols its borders heavily and uninvited ships are generally intercepted and arrested.  As you may have heard, we have been often unsuccessful in convincing the Theocracy to release captured spacers.  The Lightning’s Captain ordered the Theocracy’s cargo ships searched while they were returning to Cadiz.  What they found was rather alarming.”

She tapped a key on her own console and Bruno’s implant reported that the report had been downloaded into his secure memory store.  “The short version is that one of the ships, the Lotus Blossom, was outfitted as a spy ship.  A cursory search would not have identified it, but the Lightning’s Captain insisted on a careful examination of all the ships and discovered its true nature.  Worse, the ship’s crew was obviously military – and some of them were almost certainly intending to sneak down onto Cadiz and join up with other operatives on the surface.”

There was a long pause.  Bruno considered, rapidly.  The King had inherited his father’s fears about the Theocracy, to the point where he had put all of his considerable power and resources behind military preparations for war.  It was testing the limits of Avalon’s written and unwritten constitutions to the limit, with some elements of the Conservative Party fearing the consequences of an unbridled military expansion and other political parties convinced that there was no threat from the Theocracy.  Bruno himself was less sanguine.  The reports from the refugees were alarming – and there was no denying that the Theocracy simply wasn't acting like a friendly power.  It had refused joint patrols along the border, treaties of mutual assistance in case of disaster; it hadn't even joined the hyperspace monitoring watch that charted storms within hyperspace.  

“That isn't the worst of it,” the Admiral added, after a moment.  “This report came to us through...an unexpected source.  Admiral Williams declined to recognise the spy ship for what it really was and ordered it released.  We would have had no idea of what had happened without this report.”

Bruno felt his eyes narrow.  “Who forwarded us this report?”

“Classified,” the King said, flatly.  His tone made it clear that it was not up for debate.  “Suffice it to say that we have every confidence that the report’s writer is not attempting to exaggerate the scale of the problem.”

“It would appear that 6th Fleet is far from ready for war,” Constance said.  Her voice was tightly controlled, but Bruno could hear the simmering anger underlying her tone.  She was the one with ultimate responsibility for the RAN and any problems reflected badly on her and her administration.  There were no shortage of political leaders who wouldn't hesitate to point the finger at her, if only to cover their own mistakes.  “The full report is in your implants, but the summery is that the fleet is not prepared, morale is low, the Admiral is not showing any true leadership and in fact is spending most of his time partying.”

Bruno winced.  Admiral Buck Williams had been a fairly competent administrator during his stint at Merlin Base, while his wife had been little more than a contemptible social climber, desperately trying to push her way into social strata high above her station.  Her sons had been marriage chips for her climb, but they’d been spoiled and never taught the discipline they would need as adults.  There had been a nasty incident, Bruno knew, and while it had been hushed up afterwards, it had been expedient for the Admiral and his family to leave Avalon for a few years.  High Society had a very short collective memory.

The King, in theory, had sole control over the appointment of senior military officers.  In practice, the Assembly paid half of the bills for the military – the RAN alone was a black hole sucking up billions of pounds every year – and had a large say over who got promoted to what and who got stationed to where.  Several factions at Court and Assembly had found themselves in alliance, with Admiral Williams suddenly branded the perfect man to take command at Cadiz.  The King had agreed with bad grace, hoping that the Army CO would be able to compensate for Admiral William’s languor.  And then he’d had the colossal stroke of bad luck that the Army CO had been assassinated and the Assembly was stalling on naming a replacement.  The Marine who had taken over while waiting for a new General didn't have the seniority to force through change and reform, even though it was desperately needed.

“We are left with a serious problem,” the King said, flatly.  Only his gaze revealed his anger.  “The Theocracy is planning to attack.  And we are not ready.”

“ONI is divided on the question,” Constance admitted.  “One school of thought says that the Theocracy is still laying the groundwork for an invasion; the second says that we can expect an invasion at any time up to a month from now.  Even the most optimistic believe that we will be at war within five years – and frankly that seems unrealistically optimistic to me.  I suspect that we will be at war within the year.”

One of the other Assemblymen snorted.  “But wouldn't you detect their preparations for war?”

“All they would have to do is stage their forces some distance from the border,” the Admiral said, patiently.  Bruno admired her restraint.  The urge to lecture a civilian on the nature of naval combat must have been overwhelming.  “We will not receive any warning of their advance until they cross the border, and then only if we’re very lucky.  With some care, they could ensure that the first warning we get is when they open hyperspace vortexes within the Cadiz System itself.  And by then it will be too late.”

Her gaze moved across the room.  “We need to remove Admiral Williams, now,” she said, coldly.  “Whatever political justifications existed for allowing him to remain in command can no longer apply.”

Bruno hadn't served in the Assembly for decades without developing an ability to read the political winds.  “That won’t be possible,” he admitted.  “The moment we push to relieve the Admiral, the Admiral’s supporters in the Assembly will move to oppose it.  We would end up with a political catfight at the worst possible moment.  Nothing would be done because the factions would be scrabbling over a little Admiral.”

The King frowned.  “Even if we brief them personally?”

“It would leak,” Bruno said, flatly.  Whoever had sent the report had risked their career – and perhaps their freedom, depending on where the pieces fell at the end of the political struggle.  “Right now, his supporters are convinced that he’s doing exactly what they want him to do.  They won’t let him be relieved without a fight.”

“Then send in a team from the IG,” someone else proposed.  “What the hell have they been doing out there anyway?  They’ve been known to rap officers on the knuckles merely for ordering more goddamned paperwork than they needed, so why haven’t they revealed this moron’s actions?”

“Politics,” Constance said, shortly.

The King leaned forward.  “Send a team of IG inspectors from Avalon under some cover story,” he ordered.  “Tell the Admiral that there’s been a report of some corruption in the gas giant mines or something, anything that won’t make him cut and run home to his protectors.  They can come up with a proper report we can use as leverage at the right time...”

He hesitated.  “I wish I could send you out there,” he added.  Bruno had to admit that it would have worked.  The Grand Admiral was senior to Williams, damn the bastard’s eyes.  She’d be in command merely by being there...or would she?  The Navy’s formalities often puzzled him.  “Have...Commodore Christian and his squadron moved to somewhere near the blasted System – run him a promotion to Vice Admiral now, before the shit hits the fan.  God knows he deserves it.”

Constance nodded.  “If they do come over the border...”

“Christian will have specific orders to relieve Williams, if we can't lay the political groundwork for getting rid of him,” the King said.  “There will be something we can use as political leverage against his supporters, something to make them cut him loose.  We just have to find it.”

He paused.  “And pass a classified update to all the other station chiefs,” he added.  “Let them know that we could be at war within the week.”

Chapter Seventeen

“Captain, the Admiral’s messenger boy has arrived.”

Kat scowled as she checked the console.  The Admiral had kept them idling in orbit over the last week, leaving Kat to wonder if someone in the StarCom network had alerted him to the fact she’d sent a heavily-encrypted message to Avalon.  Her father’s programmers would have made it tricky to identify either the source or the destination, but ONI had immense levels of computer processor power at its disposal and an understandable interest in any encrypted message from Cadiz.  And now the Admiral had sent his young Ensign to deliver a message.  It didn't bode well.

“Have him report to my office,” Kat ordered, standing up.  She’d kept the crew running exercises and drills, on the theory that if the Admiral relieved her of command her successor would have a tight ship.  Shore leave was still a major problem, but the XO had dealt with it by organising a handful of trips down to the secure zones on the surface of Cadiz.  It was a poor reward for good service, but the last thing she wanted was to have some of her crew kidnapped by the insurgents.  Not all of their victims survived the experience.  “You have the bridge.”

The Ensign was the same overly-keen young man she’d met before, holding the same kind of envelope.  Kat opened it slowly, hoping that it would be orders to chase pirates, escort a convoy or even patrol the border.  Instead, it was a formal invitation to a party on the surface of Cadiz, several miles from New Barcelona.  The Admiral, it seemed, owned a summer house on the shores of the ocean and was holding a party there in two days, a chance for Kat to meet the movers and shakers in the makeshift government.  Kat’s first response was to refuse the invitation, but then she thought better of it.  Perhaps there would be people there she could raise the issue of the Lotus Blossom with, before it returned to the Theocracy.  The spy ship was scheduled to leave in two days and, despite placing an official request, the Admiral had refused to allow Lightning to escort her back home.  

“Please inform the Admiral that I will attend,” she said, reluctantly.  Had the poor boy thought that his naval career would become nothing more than serving as the Admiral’s messenger boy?  It was silly; a single message could be beamed from ship to ship far quicker than even a starfighter, let alone a shuttle.  Like any others she knew on Avalon, the Admiral was underlining his own importance by using human servants, a touch that annoyed Kat far more than impressed her.  At least her crew had volunteered to serve in the RAN.  “I’ll be down on the surface soon enough.”

The Admiral had only given her several hours to prepare, something that struck her as odd.  After all, her mother would have announced any party of hers a month in advance, just to make sure that her guests had time to clear their engagement books, buy new clothes, have their hair done and still be fashionably late.  Kat recalled one of the few parties she'd actually enjoyed, where two of the guests had worn the same dress from a supposedly exclusive fashion house.  They’d ended up fighting each other while the rest of the guests looked on and laughed.  Her mother had been rather less amused.  

She grinned.  If he thought he was making her panic by forcing her to rush to get organised, he didn't know her very well.  She might not be able to wear her uniform to the party – she had a feeling that that would have been a bad move – but she was hardly going to waste time getting dressed.  The thought of cadets spending hours getting ready at Piker’s Peak was amusing; besides, she only had one dress with her, a long black outfit that set off her hair and figure.  It wasn't something she could wear on the ship – her authority would be destroyed – but she could wear it down on the planet’s surface.  Her hair, thanks to her mother’s genetic engineering, didn't need much in the way of preparation.  All she really needed was a shower and a quick meal.  The last time she’d been dragged to a party, the host had been trying to slim down by eating less and there had been almost nothing to eat.  Quite why she hadn't been in for body sculpting was beyond Kat, but she hadn’t asked.  By then, all she’d wanted to do was leave as soon as possible.

After a brief check with the XO to ensure that Lightning would be in safe hands, she walked down to the shuttlebay and ordered a flight down to the planet’s surface, carrying her bag in one hand.  The shuttle pilot saluted as soon as he saw her and powered up the engines, taking them out of Lightning and down towards the blue-green world below them.  Kat saw, on the orbital monitor, one of the civilian stations where the Lotus Blossom was docked and ground her teeth in silent rage.  The Admiral had probably refused Kat permission to escort the ship back to its home out of fear that she would take the opportunity to ensure that the spy ship suffered an accident on its way home.  As if that would be possible without disappearing the entire convoy, she thought sourly.  She could only ensure that the ship’s computers were wiped, after copying the data they’d collected for the Admiral’s court-martial.

This time, the ride down to the planet’s surface was surprisingly peaceful.  The spaceport was still surrounded by armed soldiers, ready to repel any offensive, but the insurgents had clearly decided not to come out and play as night was falling.  Kat had heard that the occupying soldiers had a clear advantage in operations at night – their visors and combat suits allowed them to see in the dark, like cats – and that the insurgents tended to limit their activities after night fell, apart from a handful of mortar rounds from automated mortars.  They wouldn't want the occupying forces to get overconfident, after all.

Jade met her at the spaceport and invited her to the Admiral’s vehicle, still heavily armoured against attack.  Chatting about nothing, she closed the vehcile’s doors and nodded to the driver to take them out of the city, up to the summer house.  Kat watched as the armed and armoured soldiers gathered around the vehicle just before it lurched into life and headed out of the spaceport, into the city.  New Barcelona looked weird as night fell; unlike any other city Kat had seen, it was dim and barely illuminated after dark.  There were few powered lights of any kind, apart from a handful set up by the Commonwealth’s occupation forces.

“Bucky had to punish them for supporting the insurgents,” Jade explained, when Kat asked about the shortage of power.  It wasn't as if setting up a fusion reactor was a complicated task.  They could simply have pulled one out of a freighter if they had had no other choice, but they should have been able to order one from Avalon if the local industry wasn't up to producing a reactor.  “So they have no power from dusk till dawn until they produce the bastards and stop supporting them.”

Kat was appalled.  “Are you saying that they have no power at all?”

“None,” Jade confirmed.  “The lights here are powered by power cells we provided for our own use.”

“What about the hospitals?”  Kat demanded.  The whole concept of collective punishment appalled her, although she might consider applying it to the Admiral’s staff.  “How can they tend to patients without power?”

Jade shrugged.  “That’s not our problem,” she said.  “The only two hospitals in the city are actually on the outskirts and run by the Church.  They’re not bad places, but they have a habit of turning away people they feel are insufficiently religious for their tastes.  No sexual health clinics, no contraception and no abortion.  These people don’t even get the nanites packages that are provided to every citizen back home, free of charge.”

Kat felt genuinely shocked.  Avalon didn't provide free health care for its citizens, but most common problems could be avoided through a simple injection of nanites at birth.  It was common sense; if diseases couldn't set their hooks in bodies, the diseases would have no way to spread.  Most of humanity’s problems no longer existed on Avalon – and the handful of non-Earth diseases that had proved capable of moving from their native biospheres to humanity had been stopped in their tracks.  Even the UN had issued nanites swarms free of charge, at least to those willing to leave Earth and settle elsewhere.  Earth’s teeming billions would have multiplied rapidly if disease had no longer been a factor.

She turned to stare out of the window as the vehicle drove out of the city and headed up into the hills.  Like most planets, Cadiz would have received the full package of Earth-native plants and animals from the survey team when they discovered the planet, forcing the native biosphere into competition with elements from the only known world to develop an intelligent form of life.  There were those – and not just in the Theocracy – that believed that humanity’s unique status was a sign of divine favour, although Kat wasn't so sure.  Cadiz seemed to suggest that humanity did nothing to deserve divine favour.  She looked out upon the fields of corn and wheat that fed the cities and scowled.  It was easy to see where the native plants were still struggling against the immigrants.

There were non-Earth plants and animals that were impossible to eat without becoming sick, or simply gaining no nutritional benefit from eating, but a handful had entered humanity’s collective palate.  Indeed, there was a grape-like crop grown on Abdullah that produced a remarkable wine when cut down, trampled and allowed to ferment.   The Theocracy had no qualms over selling it to infidels, even though the locals weren't allowed to drink it themselves.  So far, all attempts to cultivate it outside the Theocracy had failed.

Shaking her head, Kat changed quickly into the black dress.  Out of habit, she transferred her weapons into the dress, although she doubted that she would be allowed to keep them.  She considered the high heels for a long moment – she hated them at the best of times – before reluctantly placing them on her feet.  Jade whistled as Kat studied herself in the mirror, cursing under her breath.  She looked like just another empty-headed socialite whose life was spend partying all day and night.

“Here we are,” Jade said, as the vehicle turned into a half-hidden driveway that led up to a mansion finer – if that were possible – than the one back in the city.  “The Summer Palace.  It was built by the leader of one of the factions here before the planet collapsed into civil war; Bucky had it renovated as a place for him to relax and forget his cares.”

Kat scowled as she took in the sight.  Unlike the city mansion, the Summer Palace was almost beautiful.  It was made from white stone and illuminated by spotlights, casting a faintly unreal glow over the entire edifice.  Servants – native servants, she realised with some surprise – were everywhere, greeting guests and inviting them through the big double doors into the ballroom.  Kat suspected that most of the great and good of Cadiz would be visiting, although most of them would probably be fashionably late.  The thought made her roll her eyes.  She’d had a chance to skim through Marine counter-insurgency doctrine and most of it focused on living with the people, not sealed away from them.  But if she was right about the identity of some of the Admiral’s backers, they were the ones who believed that annexing Cadiz had been a terrible mistake.  A bloody catastrophe that forced the pro-annexation factions to back down and abandon the planet would work in their favour.

The thought should have shocked her, but it didn’t.  Her mother showed a complete lack of concern for anyone not lucky enough to be born into High Society – and often little for anyone who was too low in High Society.  And she was far from the worst.  Some of the socialites who came from long lines of socialites didn't even see people outside of High Society as human.  The entire garrison on Cadiz could be slaughtered and they wouldn't do more than raise an eyebrow, if that.  For a moment, she understood why they’d selected Admiral Williams to serve as their agent on Cadiz.  They were so insulated from reality that they couldn't even begin to imagine the consequences of defeat if the Theocracy invaded.  Not even the example of every other planetary ruling class defeated by the Theocracy – eliminated, along with their families and friends – could sway their minds.

“Come on,” Jade said, as she jumped out of the vehicle and waited for Kat to jump down beside her.  It was impossible in high heels and she had to climb down carefully, wobbling a little as she stepped down onto the ground.  “Let’s go meet the guests.”

The Admiral, it seemed, was going to be very fashionably late.  Kat didn’t miss him; after sending a letter to her father, she wasn't keen to hear what the Admiral had to say about it.  If, of course, he was even aware she’d sent it.  The Admiral’s wife, two of his children and several of his closest friends greeted her as she entered, while Valentine saw her coming and headed off in the other direction sharply.  Kat almost smiled, realising that she might enjoy herself after all.  The Admiral’s brat had probably never encountered a woman who could and would say ‘no’ to him before.  Dunking him in the lake had probably done him a whole world of good.

Jade introduced her to a number of guests, all important and clearly supporters of the Admiral.  Kat wasn't too impressed.  It struck her as a copy of High Society on Avalon, with Old Money in one corner, Industrialists in another and peers wandering between the two, chatting away about nothing.  The Admiral’s wife, Jade told her, was a patron of the arts on Cadiz and was funding several hundred poets, artists and musicians, some of whom were attending the Summer Palace to show off their talents.  Kat saw one picture – a portrait of the Admiral himself in full dress uniform – and had to fight to conceal her smile.  The artist had definite talent; he’d captured the Admiral perfectly, right down to the indolent smile.  

“Ah, young Lopez,” the Admiral’s wife said.  Kat winced.  Her voice was as penetrating as always, even when she tried to whisper.  “Such a promising young man.  I believe that his works could be displayed even in Camelot Palace itself.”

“You should send that portrait back to Avalon,” Kat said, sincerely.  “It captures your husband perfectly.”

“Of course it does,” Annette agreed.  She seemed unaware of Kat’s quiet amusement.  The portrait might convince a few Assemblymen who were sitting on the fence to swing around and vote to recall the Admiral.  “He’s also painted myself, wearing a white dress, and my sons.  I’m keeping that one for myself so that I can remember them as children when I am in my dotage.”

Kat fought down a grin.  The Admiral’s children were grown adults, yet they’d never been treated as adults – or, for that matter, forced to handle adult obligations.  It was hardly an uncommon problem in High Society, Kat knew; three of her sisters were just as empty-headed as the Admiral’s children, while a fourth was solely concerned with building up an impregnable position in High Society.  Rumour had it that she'd even attempted to bed the King himself, or convince her to marry him.  

Annette marched her around the ballroom, introducing her to some of the more important guests.  Jade had introduced her to some of them already, but Kat couldn't think of a way of pointing that out without being ruder than she wanted to be.  Some of the guests bowed and scraped in front of Annette, others seemed merely amused.  And none of them, Kat realised, were anyone she wanted to know.  She seemed to be the only starship commander invited to the ball.

She took a glass of wine from one of the servants – a native girl with light brown skin, wearing a dress that showed off her chest and legs to best advantage – and sipped it, barely listening to Annette’s chatter about how wonderful some of her relatives were and how much they needed a proper wife.  There were hundreds of native servants at the Summer Palace, Kat realised in surprise, moving from person to person with drinks and snacks.  She wondered absently how they must feel, before realising that they would be grateful for any kind of job.  As long as their fellows never realised that they worked for the occupiers, they would probably be safe – and wealthy, insofar as wealth meant anything on Cadiz.

The hours ticked by slowly and there was still no sign of the Admiral.  Kat, bored, allowed herself to wander through the palace, noting a handful of occupied bedrooms before heading back down into the ballroom.  By long-standing convention, no one could leave until the host had arrived – and the Admiral was taking his time.  She was just debating the pros and cons of a third glass of wine when the entire building shook, sending several of the older guests crashing to the floor.  Kat reached for her pistol instinctively, before realising that drawing it would panic the guests still further.  That had been an explosion...!

Annette was just opening her mouth when the doors burst open and armed men piled into the room.  “Nobody move,” a voice bellowed.  A young man from one of the better families moved and was shot down for his pains, his brains blown out all over the floor.  “You are our prisoners!  Put your hands in the air, right now!”

Kat reluctantly complied.  Mentally, she triggered her implant’s emergency signal.  Help would be on the way...if it could arrive in time.  The chances were that the insurgents intended to kill them all.

No, she told herself firmly.  It isn't going to end like this.

Chapter Eighteen

“All right,” the leader of the insurgents said.  “I want men over here, in the dining room.”

Kat watched as the lords and masters of Cadiz shuffled towards the dining room, keeping their hands in the air.  Several looked pale, others angry...and some as if they didn't quite believe what was happening to them.  Kat could see how it had happened, even if they didn't understand it; they’d allowed native servants to work at the Palace and, at the right time, the servants had allowed the insurgents into the building.  She hadn’t see any soldiers on duty outside, as if the Admiral had expected that no insurgents would risk an attack so far from the city,  

She studied the insurgents with interest, taking care to keep her expression as blank and helpless as possible.  They were all young men, their faces masked beneath black hoods, a wise precaution when the Admiral would hardly let this insult to his position go unanswered or unpunished.  The leader seemed to be a few years older than the rest, although it was impossible to make out his face under the mask.  His eyes darted from woman to woman, although he didn't look to be picking out the prettiest ones for himself.  It was more as if he were checking who he’d bagged and counting up their value as hostages.

Kat had never had to deal with a hostage situation before, but Bone had and he’d told her something of the problems Marines faced in resolving them.  The first few hours were always the most dangerous for both hostage-takers and the hostages themselves.  It was going to be worse here, she realised, because they’d taken hundreds of hostages and they couldn't  hope to get them all into hiding by the time someone outside the building realised that something was badly wrong.  Even if Kat hadn't sent the emergency signal, the shit was still going to hit the fan very soon.  And that meant that the insurgents would be likely to barricade themselves into the Summer Palace and turn the crisis into an opportunity to spread their word far and wide.

None of the insurgents looked as if they had any real military experience, but they held their guns as if they knew how to use them.  That precise design of assault rifle had been in service since before the Breakaway Wars, if Kat recalled correctly, and it was renowned for being almost foolproof.  It might not be as versatile as the latest weapons produced for the Marine Corps, but in the hands of someone with a few hours training it would be a deadly weapon.  And it was so easy to produce that there were probably underground factories on Cadiz stamping them out by the bucket load.  Any nanotech fabricator could assemble them without the need for serious reprogramming.

She watched as the last of the male hostages were escorted into the dining room, where their hands and legs were bound with plastic ties.  That was a standard precaution in any siege, she knew, and it confirmed her earlier thought that the insurgents intended to stage a spectacular for the entire planet, if not the entire Commonwealth.  They might behead the male hostages one by one, or they might simply use their helplessness to convince the rest of the population to rise up against the occupiers.  She suspected that it would be impossible to reason with them; if they’d trapped themselves deliberately, they would have to be prepared to die for their cause.

“Older women, in there,” the leader ordered.  Annette marched forward with icy dignity, as if the insurgents were her servants rather than her captors, and strode into the side room.  It struck Kat, in a blinding flash of inspiration, that they didn't know who she was, let alone her rank.  The black dress made her look younger than her age – and her mother’s engineering had ensured that she would look like a teenager until she was forty, if not older.  They’d mistaken her for one of the kids!  The thought was humiliating, but it also worked in her favour.  They would underestimate children and give her the chance to find a way to hit back.  Her pistol was suddenly a heavy weight against her waist.  If they forced the women to strip down, they would find it and then start asking questions.  

“Younger women, follow me,” the leader finished, and led the way into a smaller banquet hall.  The Summer Palace had no fewer than nine dining halls, some clearly intended for smaller parties than others.  He snatched wristcom units from their wrists as they passed; Kat offered no resistance as he took his, praying that he wouldn’t look at it too closely.  “Sit against the wall and keep your hands on your heads.  You won’t be hurt as long as you obey orders and say nothing.”

Kat could hear sniffling from several of the younger girls – and from one who looked older than Kat’s actual age.  She couldn't blame them, even though she detested what a combination of upbringing and laziness had made them.  They’d probably never been threatened by anything as severe as a telling off before, let alone any of the more imaginative punishments at Piker’s Peak.  She glanced at a girl who was as young as she looked – nine years old, at least two years from puberty – and winced inwardly.  The girl’s long white dress was already streaked with tears.

“Don’t worry,” she said, softly.  The girl looked up at her, hopefully.  Kat couldn't even remember who she was, or why she had been at the party.  She seemed too young to have been invited by the Admiral’s wife, unless her parents were very important indeed.  “Everything is going to be fine.”

The insurgent leader rounded on her, jamming his gun into her mouth.  “And who gave you permission to speak?”

It would have been terrifying if Kat hadn't gone through Piker’s Peak.  “She needed reassurance,” Kat said, lowing her eyes.  Playing the damsel in distress didn't please her, but there was no other choice.  “Please let me comfort the younger ones.  They’ve never been so scared before in their entire lives.”

“And how do you think my children felt when they were gunned down by one of your goddamned soldiers?”  The insurgent demanded.  “How do you think my aunt felt when she was strip-searched in the middle of the street?  How do you think my brother felt when he lost his son to one of your helicopter raids?”

Kat said nothing.  “Fine, comfort the little bitches,” the insurgent snarled.  “But make sure they know that if they cause any trouble, I’ll have them tied to the chairs and gagged!”

He stormed off, leaving Kat to whisper words of comfort to the quivering girls.  She watched, out of the corner of her eye, as the insurgents detailed two of their men to watch the girls, but otherwise left them alone.  Kat didn't understand their dialect of Spanish, but her implant threw up a number of possible translations, suggesting that the two guards had been warned not to amuse themselves with the girls.  That was a relief, at least, even though it suggested that the insurgent group was better organised and disciplined than Kat would have preferred.

An hour passed very slowly.  She listened carefully, but she could hear nothing over the whimpering from some of the girls.  A handful needed the toilet and were escorted there by one of the guards, reporting when they returned that the guards had watched them as they did their business.  Kat wasn’t too surprised.  The insurgents knew that they were heavily outnumbered by their hostages and the only way they could keep control was by watching the prisoners at all times and greeting any defiance with maximum force.  Kat was surprised that they hadn't tied up the girls as well, although it fitted in with the planet’s ethos.  Women were simply not as dangerous as men, at least in their eyes.  And it suited Kat to be underestimated when she was planning an escape.  

Not for the first time, she cursed the limits on augmentation introduced by the Assembly.  A captured Marine would have an implant that allowed her to update her fellows on everything that occurred within the Summer Palace.  Kat could only signal for help – and she had no way of knowing if it had been received, or what was going on outside the Summer Palace.  It struck her that the insurgents had probably intended to bag the Admiral as well and had to be reconsidering their plan without him in their bundle of hostages.  By now, the entire building was probably sealed off by the soldiers, with desperate planners already considering how best to deal with the insurgents without killing the hostages.  It was time to make sure that they had an ally on the inside.

She raised her hand and beckoned one of the insurgents over to her.  “I need the toilet,” she admitted, as if she were ashamed to say it to a man.  Two of the girls had already fouled themselves because they couldn't bear the thought of being watched while they did their business.  “Please will you escort me there?”

The insurgent caught her arm and hauled her to her feet.  “Come along,” he said, maintaining his grip.  “Move.”

He pushed her out of the door and down a long corridor to the toilets.  Someone had thoughtfully dismantled the door, ensuring that no one could do anything without being seen by the guards.  Inside, one of the toilets had been opened to public view; the others had been sealed closed, preventing her from entering.  Her guard pushed her towards the open toilet and motioned for her to get on with it.  She couldn't see his face, but she was sure that there was an expression of faint disgust on him.  He certainly didn't seem eager to watch.  Kat hesitated and it wasn't entirely an act.  One mistake would reveal the pistol and then they’d be sure to keep her tied up.

“I don’t want you to watch me,” she whispered, desperately.  It was easy to pretend to be scared, pulling on her dress so that it revealed the milky-white tops of her breasts.  His eyes focused on them, just for a moment.  “I could make it worth your while...”

He pulled her to him and she slammed a hand into his throat.  His hands constricted on her arms, but it was already too late.  Kat pushed him down and rammed her hands down on his throat, crushing it below her weight.  It was only afterwards that she realised that this was her very first personal kill, rather than killing entire starships through launching missiles from the tactical console.  She drew her pistol and kicked off the high-heels, briefly considering donning the insurgent’s clothes before realising that that was unlikely to fool anyone.  Kat was a tall woman with blonde hair and breasts; her former captor had been short and stocky.  

She stood upright, picked up the dead insurgent’s assault rifle, and slipped to the door.  Sooner or later, her captor’s friend was going to start wondering what had happened to him.  How long did it take to go to the toilet anyway?  It wasn't as if he would have let her put makeup on or anything else that might keep her away from the crowded mass of young girls.  She peered out of the door and saw nothing, but she knew that that might change very quickly.  God alone knew what the insurgents might have in mind for the hostages if they started to break free.

Bracing herself, she walked back down the corridor, assault rifle in hand.  It had a distinctive sound and, if she was lucky, any insurgents who heard her firing would assume that it was one of their fellows putting down a balky hostage.  She slowed as she approached the door to the kitchen and glanced inside.  The cooks and servants had all disappeared.  She slipped inside and picked up a large carving knife before noticing the half-open door to the freezer.  Her curiosity got the better of her and she peeked inside, and then recoiled as she saw the mass of dead bodies.  Not all of the native servants had been insurgents, she realised, and the insurgents had murdered the ones who hadn't been in on the plan.

Holding the knife ahead of her, she slipped back down to the holding area and tapped on the door.  As she had expected, the insurgent guarding the girls opened it and peered out – and she rammed the knife into his head before he could react.  She pushed his body back into the room, slammed it down on the floor and looked over at the girls.  They all looked terrified, both of her and the terrorist she’d killed.  How many of them would ever have seen a dead body, let alone picked their way through a ship overrun by pirates or a battlefield on Cadiz itself?

“Keep quiet or I’ll smack you,” she said, sharply.  The last thing she needed was for them all to start screaming at once.  Her priority was to get them out of the building and to safety, not anything else.  “Follow me and don't say anything.”

The insurgents would have their own people on the grounds by now, Kat reasoned.  Trying to get across the garden to the walls would be difficult and getting over the walls would be impossible for the children.  There was another option, however; if she could get them to the roof, the Marines would be able to pick them up with tractors and get them to safety before the insurgents could react.  If the Marines were waiting...Kat forced her doubts aside.  Right now, all she needed to do was to get the children into position and pray.

***
“They have who hostage?”

“The Captain,” the XO said.  Greg Bone cursed under his breath as he urged the Marines into the shuttle.  “They don’t seem to know that they have her, but they do.”

Maybe they killed her, Greg thought, before he pushed the thought aside, angrily.  His Marines didn't need to hear him worrying over the safety of the woman who had once been his lover – and was now his commanding officer.  He'd packed fifty Marines into two assault shuttles and was preparing to launch down to the surface.

“They sent a list of planetary dignities a mile long and a set of demands,” the XO continued.  Greg grunted as the shuttle’s pilot activated the drive; it felt like a kick in the belly from a very unfriendly horse.  The Marines scorned the compensators used by the Navy types, knowing that they needed to be aware of the shuttle’s motion to judge the right time to disembark.  “They want us to quit Cadiz, basically, and pay them a shitload of compensation for the occupation.  And that isn't all.  They want a set of interstellar observers from nearby galactic powers to ensure that we behave ourselves.”

“And the only nearby galactic power is the Theocracy,” Greg commented.  The insurgents might have hit upon a winning formula, or at least something that would embarrass the Commonwealth badly.  Much of the Theocracy’s evil was hidden, unseen by interstellar opinion, but the Commonwealth had a tradition of a free press and every little incident was broadcast in glorious holographic realism right across the galaxy.  He doubted that any amount of censure from the other interstellar powers would doom the Commonwealth, yet if it did come down to war, the Commonwealth would need allies – and those allies would find it politically difficult to join the war.

“Yes,” the XO agreed.  He sounded harassed.  “The Admiral has said nothing and none of his subordinates are even willing to wipe their own butts without his permission.  Their terms are unacceptable, but he hasn't authorised any attempt to negotiate.  It isn't as if we couldn't offer them some terms, even if they’re far less than what they want.  He hasn't authorised your mission either.”

“Easier to gain forgiveness than permission,” Greg commented.  The XO chuckled.  “We’re crash-diving into the atmosphere in two minutes and we’ll be overhead in five.  Have you heard anything from the Captain?”

“Nothing apart from the emergency beacon,” the XO said.  He sounded worried by the silence, although the Captain’s wristcom would have been confiscated by the terrorists, unless they were completely stupid.  In some ways, that was a good sign – stupidity was hard to predict – but he would have liked to know that she was safe.  “The Admiral hasn't even commented on that, Marine.”

Greg nodded, unsurprised.  Given the Admiral’s general lack of competence, he was probably trying to find a way to get the hostages – including his wife and two of his kids – out without committing himself to a military assault.  He’d be blamed for every single casualty in the crossfire.  The only hope was to agree to some of the demands, but how could he do that without blowing his own position sky high?  His backers would not be amused if they ended up embarrassed by their Admiral.

The shuttle shook violently as it blasted its way into the atmosphere, baffles full on to prevent the sound of their passage being heard on the ground.  He braced himself as he activated the full spread of combat implants, accessing the live feed from the shuttle’s own sensors and the drones the military forces down below had deployed into the combat zone.  The insurgents seemed to have access to some pretty high-tech counter-surveillance systems; the microscopic drones were being eliminated one by one as they moved into the Summer Palace.  And that kind of equipment could not be produced on Cadiz.

“All right, Marines,” he ordered, bluntly.  He pushed everything out of his mind, but the mission.  They had to succeed.  “We jump in two minutes.  Semper Fi!”

Chapter Nineteen

He was first out of the shuttle, as it should be.  The wind buffeted him as he fell down towards the Summer Palace, wrapped in nothing more substantial than a light suit of powered combat armour.  The exterior of the Palace was brightly lit, illuminating the pearly-white building in the darkness, but the roof was dark.  He smiled to himself at this evidence of the enemy’s essentially amateur skills, before reminding himself that the Theocracy’s profession – and fanatical – special forces units had plenty of experience in deceiving the infidels into seeing what they wanted them to see.  There might be an entire network of passive sensors watching for any sign of a counter-attack.

Greg Bone braced himself as the suit rotated so that he would hit the roof feet-first.  The darkened roof was rapidly scanned for heat sources by the swarm of microscopic drones and located two people gazing out into the darkness, both carrying assult rifles under their arms.  He felt a flicker of contempt at how they were blinding themselves by relying on the spotlights – the human eye, being lazy, tended to flow towards what it could see clearly – just before the antigravity unit cut in and his fall slowed, allowing him to land gently on the roof.  Even with the antigravity system, he still made a noise, but it was already too late for the insurgents guarding the roof.  A pair of jangler pulses cut them both down before they could raise the alarm.

“Check them,” he subvocalised as he moved to inspect the two hatches leading down into the palace.  Jangler pulses stunned unprotected humans, sending them crashing down into an uncomfortable stupor and a hangover that rivalled anything enjoyed by someone who drank more than he should, but if the targets wore any protection, the effects could be minimised.  “Team Two; get ready to follow Team One into the building.”

The network of drones seemed to be working better now the Marines were closer.  Each tiny unit was serving as a relay station for the other drones, allowing them to operate – although at a reduced level of efficiency – even within the jamming.  Greg linked into the tactical network established by the troops on the outside of the Summer Palace – at least someone there wasn’t running around like a chicken with its head cut off – and updated them on the team’s status.  The moment he gave the signal, assault units and medics would come running to help save the remaining hostages.  They were anticipating casualties, too many casualties.

“They’re both out,” Corporal Higgins reported.  She was both a Marine commando and a medic, held back from the front-line teams because her training might save one of her comrades from sudden death.  Greg trusted her implicitly.  “I’ll secure them both, just in case.  Blood scan reveals nothing, but a time-release drug or implant could help them to wake up sooner than anticipated.”

Greg nodded and turned his attention back to the hatch.  It had been left unlocked, something that aroused his suspicions.  The network of drones reported that the stairwell below was empty, illuminated only by a set of emergency lighting.  He opened the hatch, watching carefully for a low-tech IED or another surprise that might have slipped past the drones, and then slipped down into the passageway.  Even without the Captain under threat, a possible hostage, he would still have led the way.  Marine Captains had to lead by example.

He found himself in a dimly-lit corridor, abandoned by all.  The remainder of the team followed him down and fanned out, checking out the artworks that lined the walls as possible hiding places for an IED.  They found a safe someone had hidden behind a painting of a woman with a mysterious smile, but little else.  The safe looked old enough to have been installed before the Admiral had taken over Cadiz Station, perhaps old enough to date back to the original settlement of Cadiz.  There was no way to know and he pushed it out of his mind.  Instead, he muttered orders and one team moved down to secure the big stairwells that led up to the higher levels, while the other approached the stairwells and hidden passages used by the servants.  Oddly, he found himself thinking about Kat’s father.  Had he built himself a palace where he wouldn’t have to see any of the servants who actually keep the building functional?  It was the ultimate expression of high-born arrogance.

“Contact,” one of the Marines signalled.  “Multiple contacts; coming up the stairwell.”

Greg snapped orders quickly and decisively.  They might not have chameleon suits to conceal them in plain sight, but they could and did hide behind the artworks, establishing clear fields of fire as the drones struggled to get a look at the newcomers.  There was little light in the stairwell, but they seemed to be very young, a mixture of children and teenagers.  They came into the light, their leader wearing a black dress and carrying an assault rifle as if she was born to shoot…and he found himself laughing.  Kat had busted free…and freed the prisoners!

“Captain,” he said.  Kat looked surprised to see him, although she covered it nicely.  The other hostages – former hostages – looked terrified.  Greg and his team wore black suits that covered everything and allowed them to blend into the shadows.  In some ways, they had to look more terrifying than the insurgents downstairs.  “I’m glad to see you’re alive.”

It was so hard to hold back from enveloping her in a hug, but cool professionalism saved the day.  “There are thirty-seven younger hostages here,” Kat said, flatly.  “I need you to get them lifted off the roof, now.”

“I’ll have the shuttles pick them up with tractors,” Greg agreed.  They’d find it terrifying - even trained Marines had nightmares about flights enveloped in a tractor beam – but at least they’d be safe.  He thought briefly about finding a secure place to hold them while his Marines cleared the building, before realising that the insurgents might have a fallback position that involved blowing up the entire building and declaring it a draw.  They had to get the children and other hostages out of the palace.  “And you have to go with them.”

Kat barely heard him.  “And get on the horn to System Command,” she continued.  “This could be the first shot in the war we dreaded.  If they’d succeeded in taking the Admiral prisoner, they would have decapitated the government…”

“The Admiral isn’t in any fit state to issue orders,” Greg said.  Perhaps an appeal to duty would succeed in convincing her to move before she was caught up in the blast when – if – the terrorists blew the building.  And besides, she was right.  It could well be the opening shot in a war.  “You need to get up into orbit with your ship.  We’ll handle things here.”

His Captain looked as if she wanted to argue, but thought better of it.  Greg understood her feelings – she’d escaped and wanted to take the fight to the enemy – yet he didn’t want her in the crossfire when they hit the insurgents.  She had no armour, only an enemy-designed weapon and no business jumping into the middle of a skirmish.  Her place was on her starship’s bridge.  

“Understood,” she said, curtly.  Greg knew he’d pay for that later, but at least she’d be alive and out of danger.  “Take as many of the bastards prisoner as you can.  The Admiral’s staff will want to interrogate them.”

Once she was gone, along with the rest of the hostages, Greg nodded to his Marines and they advanced carefully down the servant staircase.  It was badly lit and slippery, even to their night-vision gear and enhanced eyeballs, but they made it down to the lower levels without incident.  The plans of the Summer Palace they’d downloaded into their implants and combat suits were matched over the reports from the drones, showing the location of most of the insurgents and hostages.  It was hard to be sure without ID implants, but it appeared that most of the remaining hostages were in the dining hall and the dance hall.  The drones kept trying to slip inside, yet the jamming was so intense that it was impossible to get more than a few fuzzy images relayed back to their combat suits.  Greg ground his teeth as he considered the situation and started to issue orders.  They had to have support from the Theocracy.  The kind of equipment needed to jam military-grade microburst transmissions was well beyond anything that might be available on Cadiz.  Even the original settlers had been limited in what they could produce and the UN, for all kinds of reasons, had never sought to encourage them to develop a tech base of their own.  

They advanced carefully along the corridor, hugging the walls as they slipped down into a staging area.  Most of the insurgents were still gathered in the dining room – lecturing the negotiator outside the building and broadcasting propaganda to the entire planet – but there were a handful wandering the corridors, watching for stray hostages.  Greg knew it wouldn’t be long before they realised that something was badly wrong, perhaps when they tried to call the guards who’d watched the Captain and discovered that they were no longer responding.  The sensors mounted on his suit detected enemy transmissions – low-power gear, but almost certainly not native to Cadiz – and calculated that they could be jammed at a word from Greg.  It would have to wait until they were ready to commit themselves to the final move, if only because jamming would definitely alert the enemy that something was wrong.

He slipped into the kitchen, allowing the drones to lead the way.  Two insurgents were standing in front of the table, helping themselves to the piles of expensive creations produced for the Admiral’s party.  Greg shot them both with a jangler pulse and watched as they fell over the table, squashing cream cakes and perfect little combinations of chocolate and ice cream into a puddle.  The Admiral partied while the occupation forces took casualties from the insurgents and the native population remained mired in poverty and squalor.  It was easy to see why the Admiral – and the Commonwealth – had gained little ground in trying to prepare Cadiz for full membership and participation in the Commonwealth.  Why would any of the locals want to join the Commonwealth when its representative was so corrupt?

The thought made him smile darkly as he checked the two insurgents, searching their bodies before yanking their hands back and tying them with plastic ties.  It was the strongest argument against the Theocracy being involved, at least in this operation.  The Admiral’s replacement could hardly have been less competent than Admiral Williams – and even the most hidebound martinet would have had a fit at the state of the 6th Fleet and the planet’s defences.  A competent officer in command of Cadiz Station had to be one of their worst nightmares.  Why would they want to rock the boat?

One of the insurgents was running the risk of rolling over and suffocating himself in a cream cake.  Greg pulled him free and dumped him on the floor, nodding to the rest of his team.  The second team had already signalled back, noting that they’d stunned four more insurgents, but that one of their victims had been heading to the room that had been used to house the younger hostages.  They’d know that something was badly wrong.

“This way,” he muttered.  The insurgents hadn’t done too badly, but they’d underestimated the nature of their enemies.  It wasn’t too unusual; indeed, terrorists and insurgents tended to believe that the stories about Special Forces units were exaggerations, nothing more than propaganda to discourage resistance.  The insurgents had placed guards on all the doors leading into the dining room and dance room – that wasn’t a bad thought – but they hadn’t considered the fragility of the walls.  A man in powered combat armour – even light powered combat armour – could simply crash through them.

He checked the drones, deploying hundreds of new sensor platforms into the air in the hopes of producing a better picture from inside the jamming.  It wasn’t good enough, but the communications sensors were already picking up increased chatter on the terrorist waveband.  They knew something was up, definitely; they’d even stopped hectoring the negotiator and bombarding him with impossible demands.  Greg checked the walls, braced himself, and sent a single signal to the troops on the outside.

“Go.”

Everything seemed to unfold very slowly, although he knew that it was nothing more than bare seconds.  The snipers on the outside opened fire, taking out the insurgents patrolling the grounds before they realised that there was a threat, let alone take cover.  They hadn’t risked trying to take prisoners this time, not when the terrorists had an unknown level of protection; the snipers had simply shot them through the head and left them to die.  The assault units were already on their way, with the medic unit right behind them.  And then Greg sprang at the wall, his enhanced legs boosted by the armour, and crashed right through plaster that was over a hundred years old.  There was a moment of disorientation and then he was inside the dining room.

The terrorists were spinning around, but they seemed to be moving very slowly.  Greg brought up his jangler and started to fire on wide beam, unconcerned about the risk of hitting hostages.  They’d only be stunned if they caught a pulse by accident.  Most of the insurgents fell to his blasts, but a couple managed to stay on their feet and dive for cover behind tables and chairs, firing back towards the Marines.  He grunted as a bullet slammed into his chest, most of the impact absorbed by his armour, even though he knew it would be sore for several hours.  Switching to lethal ammunition, he blew the tables away and riddled the insurgents with bullets.  

“Team Two reporting,” a Marine said.  Her cold precise voice would have chilled water and frozen it to ice.  “Nine terrorists stunned; four dead.  Nine hostages also stunned, plus one killed by a terrorist bullet.”

Greg hoped she was right.  In the confusion – the investigators would take weeks to put together everything that had happened – it was alarmingly possible that one or more of the hostages would be accidentally killed by one of the Marines.  And if that happened, there would be enquires and recriminations from people who had never served in combat and didn’t understand that accidents happened, particularly when men had to make their decisions at lightning speeds.  His team checked the hostages, most of whom looked to be in shock, apart from two who’d been hit by jangler pulses.  They’d survive, he knew, but they would have the mother of all hangovers.  The cynical part of his mind wondered if they’d try to sue the Marines.

“Get the medics in here,” he ordered, as the Marines hastily separated out the prisoners from the hostages.  Sometimes terrorists tried to hide among their hostages, threatening their lives to keep them from warning the security forces trying to rescue them.  The Admiral’s office had forwarded the Marines a complete set of identification details for the hostages, at least the ones who had been officially invited to the party.  A number seemed to have decided to crash it rather than accept exclusion.  They’d have to be held until their identities were confirmed.

He glanced over at the small pile of terrorists and smiled to himself.  None of them looked very brave now they’d faced armed men just as willing to kill as they were, and far better trained and equipped.  A number were drooling in their stupor or had shat themselves, creating another stink for the soldiers taking them away to one of the detention camps.  The Marines themselves would finish searching the building, rescuing any hostages who’d managed to hide in the confusion, and ensuring that no terrorists managed to escape into the carefully-tailored forest behind the palace.  An update in his HUD warned him that the media had finally been permitted to walk into the palace grounds, although not into the palace itself, and would be seeking people to interview.  His Marines had orders to avoid interviews, but somehow he was sure that there would be plenty of takers among the soldiers and medics.  Who could resist a chance at Commonwealth-wide fame?

Shaking his head, he supervised the search and then ordered the Marines to return to the roof of the building, where they would be picked up by the returning shuttles.  Hundreds of shuttles were landing outside the palace, transporting the hostages to New Barcelona, where they would receive the latest in hospital treatment.  Many of them had been in shock, even the ones who hadn’t caught a jangler pulse and collapsed.  They’d probably need weeks and months of expensive therapy before they recovered.

“Pussies, the lot of them,” he grunted, as he brought up the rear.  The reporters down in the grounds saw the Marines and started to shout questions, some of them as absurd as any he had ever heard from a civilian.  Of course the Marines hadn’t teleported into the Summer Palace! No one had even managed to come up with a workable theory for teleportation, let alone produce working hardware.  The tractor beams caught them and yanked them up towards the shuttles before he could come up with a suitably sarcastic reply.  

He was still smiling to himself as the shuttles climbed up towards orbit.  They’d deployed quicker than anyone on the planet and successfully liberated the hostages, with a little help from the Captain.  Even an IG officer with his head up his ass would be able to see that there was something wrong.  Who knew?  They might even fix all the myriad problems before the Theocracy finished finalising the assault plans and came over the border.

Sure, he thought sardonically, as the shuttle approached Lightning.  None of the fleet’s problems could be fixed quickly.  Hope springs eternal, normally in the minds of the deluded.

Chapter Twenty

“What were they thinking?”

Admiral Junayd would cheerfully have strangled each and every insurgent on Cadiz who took part in the attack on the Summer Palace, if any had survived and escaped detention from one of the penal islands maintained by the occupation authorities.  The Admiral and his Cleric had watched the whole affair in numb disbelief, at least on the Admiral’s part.  The Cleric had been delighted to see the infidels squirm, even after the insurgents were hit by the infidel warriors and crushed with neither warning nor mercy.  After all, the insurgents were also infidels, useful only as tools in the service of the faithful.

“They saw a chance to hurt the infidel forces and succeeded,” the Cleric said, with a certain hint of smugness.  “The infidels will not easily recover from this embarrassment.”

Junayd gritted his teeth with rage.  “Those stupid idiots,” he snapped, angrily.  “They just had to show off, didn’t they?”

He’d studied history, a rarity within the Theocracy.  The common folk didn’t need to know history in order to do their duty to God and Caliph; besides, the true history of the galaxy might have shattered their faith in the Theocracy and its leaders.  Those who rose to senior positions within the military were allowed to study battles and campaigns in the past, but few were historical generalists.  Junayd was, despite whispers in some quarters that his interest in history made him less godly, less able to lead the forces of the Theocracy to victory, and he knew that they were playing with fire.  Insurgent forces were quite happy to accept help from outside powers, but they were less willing to serve as outright servants of outright powers.  The leadership might recognise the need for a certain pragmatic…understanding with their supporters, yet it wasn't a belief shared by their followers.  Most insurgents were spearheaded by young men and young men, by the nature of the beast, rarely cared for inaction or patient preparation, let alone working to benefit others instead of themselves.  And few down on the planet hewed openly to the Theocracy.

It hadn’t mattered as long as there had been no carefully-laid plans to go to war, but with the attack fleet already making final preparations around a dim red star, the last thing the Theocracy needed was an event on Cadiz that might alert the infidels to the weakness of their defences.  Hell, even an officer as lazy as Admiral Williams would be forced to order a full review, which would inevitably reveal that the 6th Fleet was in no condition for a fight and that there were a hundred major security glitches on dozens of ground-side bases.  The insurgents had won a tactical victory, even though they’d been forced back out by the occupying forces, but they had imperilled the overall plan.

The Cleric was unconvinced.  “What do you mean, my son?”

“It was the perfect opportunity to decapitate the infidel government and throw the planet into chaos,” Junayd said, coldly.  “They would have taken hours to establish who was in charge, let alone start the new CO issuing orders.  In that time, we could have brought in the attack fleet and obliterated the defences and the 6th Fleet before they could either get ready to fight us or escape into hyperspace.  And they just wasted the opportunity!”

“The infidels are not yet fully under our control,” the Cleric reminded him.  “They cannot be expected to behave as one of your soldiers or spacers.”

“No, but if they want more supplies, they’d better start acting like they’re going to do as we say,” Junayd hissed.  Moving supplies down to Cadiz was relatively easy, certainly with a local commander who was adamantly opposed to any interference with free trade, let alone anything that could be regarded as harassment.  The ships entering orbit were rarely searched, even though Admiral Williams had the legal authority to search every ship that sent its cargo down to the planet.  But now, after his wife had been taken hostage and nearly killed, even the laziest of men would change their habits.  A search of every freighter entering orbit would make it impossible to send further supplies down to the insurgents.

And that, in turn, would fray the already weak bonds between the Theocracy and the insurgency.  Some of the insurgents were already suspicious of the Theocracy’s true reasons for supplying them with weapons and advisors, although they had grown careful not to say so out loud after some of the loudest critics had been killed or driven out by their fellows.  Without a steady stream of supplies, the insurgency would revert back to striking at whim, without any overall plan for victory.  And that would hamper the Theocracy’s plan.

“Inform the infidels that we would like to depart orbit as soon as possible,” he said, flatly.  If the Admiral became truly alert, he might search a massive freighter called Lotus Blossom.  Even if they released the ship and crew after wiping the databanks, the intelligence they’d gathered would be wasted.  And if they held them prisoner, Junayd would be unable to return to his command.  One of his rivals would assume command and push Junayd out of favour with the Caliph.  “And then send a message down to the planet’s surface.  The advisors are to do all they can to ensure that the insurgents return underground and wait for the inevitable reprisals to be completed.”

“God will favour us,” the Cleric assured him.  “He will not leave us unprotected when the time comes to confront the infidels in their den.”

Junayd said nothing, biting down several replies that came to mind.  The Theocracy had hammered a single lesson into his head time and time again.  God helps those who help themselves.  And if part of the plan had been derailed…

Only an idiot attempted to coordinate multiple prongs of an offensive across interstellar space, but no one had contemplated military operations on this scale before, even during the Breakaway Wars.  They were entering unknown territory, without precedent, and that worried him.  A single mistake at the wrong time might shatter the entire offensive plan.

“Make sure they get the message,” he said, finally.  “Failure will not be tolerated.”

***
Like most worlds, Cadiz was divided between land and water, with a strong preference in favour of water.  Seventy percent of the planet’s surface was covered by water, creating an impassable barrier for any settlements scattered over the different continents.  The UN’s decision to place all of the colonists on the same continent made little sense to Kat, unless it was deliberate malice; the different cultures dumped on the same world would have little elbow room to expand.

The Cadiz Detention Centre (Secure) had been built on a small island, several thousand miles from any settled landmass.  Kat had been told that the planet’s shipping industry was still in its infancy – the industrialists required funding and the banks required stability – and there was little hope of any of the insurgents landing on the island to rescue their compatriots.  There was little actual security on the island either, apart from a number of high-value detainees who could provide information to the interrogators based in the small fortress on the peak of the island’s single mountain.  The detainees couldn't hope to escape and any who tried to swim away or build rafts would fall prey to the planet’s native fish.  She recalled what the Admiral had said about hunting and smiled as the shuttle twisted in the air and banked down towards the island.  Some of the native life of Cadiz was the stuff of nightmares – and it had acquired a taste for human flesh.

“They’ve cleared us to land,” the pilot said, as the shuttle came to a hover and dropped the final few metres to the landing pad.  Kat braced herself as the shuttle hit the ground, hard enough to rock the entire craft.  The island was surrounded by a semi-permanent windstorm that made navigation difficult, even for a Marine landing shuttle.  It was another passive security measure that made approach impossible for the locals, although not for the Theocracy’s most fanatical units.  “The security here is quite impressive.”

Kat had to smile.  Barely two days after she’d been taken hostage – and broken free – the entire planet was still on alert.  She’d hoped that the Admiral would order new security checks on all of the freighters on orbit, but instead he’d settled for a full review of all the garrisons and security measures down on the planet’s surface.  They IG, for once not muzzled by political considerations, had turned up a number of security flaws that needed to be neutralised, even through the political cost would be alarming.  Several junior-grade COs would need to be relieved and sent back to OCS.

The hatch hissed open and a team of armed soldiers greeted her, their weapons not quite pointed at any potential targets.  Kat’s implant reported that secure processors were checking and rechecking their identifications, just in case the insurgents had managed to steal a shuttle and use it to reach the detention centre.  As soon as the checks were completed, she was ushered into the centre itself and into a conference room that wouldn't have been out of place in any of her father’s offices.  It was decorated in a neat style that suggested an ordered mind, but there was a large drinks cabinet and a set of comfortable chairs.  It wasn’t what she would have expected from a prison.

Bone followed her, used one hand to hold her back and produced a sniffer from a pouch on his belt.  Kat waited impatiently as he checked the room – he'd become alarmingly solicitous over the last two days, as if he feared that Kat would walk into another trap – to ensure that there were no hidden surprises waiting for them.  Her implant reported that there were two non-responsive processors hidden in the room, but nothing else.  

“I guess the cakes are rather fattening,” Bone said, waving one hand at a covered tray.  Kat blinked in surprise as she saw the fudge and cream donuts, shipped all the way from Avalon if the label was to be believed.  “The bastards live lives of luxury.”

“I’m afraid not,” a new voice said.  “We merely keep those cakes for important guests.”

He cleared his throat and waved them both to chairs.  “Welcome to Detention Centre Alpha” he said.  He was tall, with short dark hair that was slowly going bald on top.  His handshake was firm, giving the impression that he had already sized Kat up and decided that she was worthy of respect.  “I’m Director Irving; for my sins, I am the Director of this facility.  I understand that you requested a briefing?”

“Yes,” Kat said, with equal formality.  The Admiral hadn't cleared her visiting the centre, something she didn't intend to mention to the Director.  It might have upset him.  Once, she would have agonised over practicing even a minor deceit – and it wasn't as if the Admiral had forbidden her to visit the centre – but now she felt almost unconcerned about her actions.  “We were there when the prisoners were taken.”

Irving gave her a long thoughtful look.  “Ah,” he said.  “Captain Falcone, in person.  The media has turned you into quite a hero.”

Kat flushed.  The Marines hadn't stayed around to be interviewed, so the reporters had focused on the support staff, one of whom had directed them to the Admiral’s PR officer.  That worthy had named Kat as the one who had broken free, brought in the Marines – and killed the terrorist leader in single combat, at least according to the official story.  Kat had pointed out that she’d left the building on the orders of the Marines, but no one wanted to know it.  The heroic story played much better in the media.  She’d even received feelers from movie-makers who wanted to turn it into a live-action holographic drama.  

“Reports of my heroism are greatly exaggerated,” Kat said, shaking her head.  “You’d think that the true heroes would be recognised by all.”

Irving smiled.  “The media has always been a fickle creature,” he agreed.  “You’ll be their darling until someone else comes along and pushes you out of the spotlight, so enjoy it while you can.”

He tapped the table and activated the holographic display.  “All of the insurgents, living or dead, were brought here,” he said.  “The dead bodies were scrutinised for any clue as to their origins.  Unfortunately, we were unable to pin them down more precisely than stating that they were almost certainly native to Cadiz, rather than operatives from elsewhere.”

Kat frowned.  “Can you be sure of that?”

“Not completely, no,” Irving admitted.  “The original settlers of Cadiz had a clearly-defined genotype, but most of the involuntary settlers shared that genotype even if they had nothing else in common with the first settlers.  Unlike some worlds – like the United Stars of America, for example – there aren't that many non-Latin immigrants to Cadiz.  Most of their descendents make up clearly separate ethnic groups, isolated from the majority.”

“Which shares nothing, but a distinct point of origin,” Bone commented, sourly.

Kat had other thoughts.  “So they weren't from the Theocracy,” she said.  “They were native to this planet?”

“They may well have gone to the Theocracy for training,” Irving said.  “There are enough rumours about Theocratic forces being involved in the insurgency, but these people didn't originate on Abdullah.  There are a couple of worlds in the Theocracy that might have birth them, yet I don’t think the Caliph allows them spaceflight.”

He shrugged, and then returned to his lecture.  “We interrogated the survivors at length,” he continued.  “We have some experience in defusing suicide implants at this centre, but it proved to be unnecessary.  They were never given anything more than suicide pills, which would have certainly terminated their lives if they’d managed to swallow them.  The Marines stunned them before they could even consider ending their lives.  Unfortunately, they knew almost nothing.”

Kat swore.  “Nothing?”

“Nothing,” he confirmed.  “They were apparently born in New Barcelona and ran with one of the street gangs from a very early age.  At some point one of the OG...”

“OG?”  Kat asked.

“Old Gangsters,” Irving said.  “The street gangs don’t tend to last very long.  If they don’t find some kind of living, or get sucked into the insurgency, they tend to die before they’re forty, mostly in pointless skirmishes between gangs.  Those that do make it into their forties get a great deal of respect from the younger ones.  We’ve suspected that there is a link between the OG and the insurgents for quite some time.

“Anyway, they got creamed off and sent to a training camp somewhere in the north,” he continued.  “We have analysts tossing questions at them to see if we can locate it, although frankly I’m not hopeful of success.  The insurgents wouldn't have lasted so long if they didn't have the basic tricks down pat – and making damn sure that no one who can locate their base is allowed to fall into enemy hands is one of them.  They got several months of training, and then they were assigned to a handful of ambush missions before they were sent to prepare for the attack on the Summer Palace.”

Bone held up a hand.  “How did they get inside?”

Irving scowled.  “It seems that someone slipped someone else a hefty bribe and a number of security clearances were proffered for a number of assistant Kitchen Porters at the Summer Palace.  It’s a filthy job, only really suited for young men with no other prospects; naturally, they proved to be very good at the job.  On the night of the attack, they produced weapons, took out the guards at the gate and allowed their fellows entry into the Palace.  The rest you know.”

“They took hostages and threatened to execute them in the full view of the entire planet,” Kat said, flatly.  Her sleep had been rough for the last two days, even though the Doctor had prescribed sedatives and plenty of sleep.  At least the Theocracy hadn't taken advantage of the chaos to launch an attack.  Simply logic suggested that the insurgents had operated independently, yet they were clearly working with the Theocracy.  It was a puzzle her tired mind refused to solve.  “I was there.”

She shook her head, trying to banish the cobwebs.  “Did they know anything about outside help to the insurgency?”

“Nothing overt,” Irving said.  “They were told by their leaders that there was an interstellar resistance movement against Commonwealth domination and that they were receiving help from the movement’s centre, but they weren't told any specific details.  We’ve interrogated them quite thoroughly on that matter, Captain, and they know nothing of great use.”

Kat shared a long glance with Bone.  If they’d acquired direct proof of the Theocracy’s involvement...but they hadn't.  She could point to everything that had happened and claim that it meant that the Theocracy was involved, yet anyone who wanted to turn their eyes away from the evidence could do so, easily.  There was no pan-Commonwealth resistance movement – there was little sentiment for independence on any other Commonwealth world – and the whole story sounded like a smokescreen.  Or misinformation to be relayed to the Commonwealth and confuse people.  

“I understand,” she said.  The trip had been wasted.  “What’s going to happen to them?”

“Standard procedure is to find them a work gang and make them sweat off their debt to society,” Irving said.  “I believe in this case the Admiral wants to make a specific example.  I think he was talking about executing them.”

Kat opened her mouth to object, and then remembered the frightened children she’d shepherded to safety.  Whatever justice lay in Cadiz’s fight for independence, it had been lost when they’d targeted children and other innocents.  They deserved everything they got, even at the hands of the Admiral.

“Thank you,” she said.  “We won’t detain you any longer.”

Chapter Twenty-One

The air of New Barcelona stank under the hot sun – a sickening mix of gasoline, animals and the stench of too many people forced to live in too close proximity - but Kat barely noticed the smell.  They were gathered together in the main square, only a few hundred meters from the secure area in the heart of the city, surrounding the Admiral’s mansion.  The soldiers had been busy, Kat knew; they’d established roadblocks for five miles around the secure zone, searched the area house-by-house for weapons and arrested anyone possessing even a small weapon for self-defence.  She doubted that the hundreds of reporters gathered at one end of the square, nervously congratulating each other on their bravery in venturing into the city, realised just how much had been done to ensure their safety.  They still wore their body armour, swelteringly hot in the midday sun.

Her eyes were fixed upon the stand at the other end of the square.  It was a simple wooden stage, dominated by the nine gallows erected on top of the platform.  A single length of rope hung down, ending in a noose.  It had taken her several minutes to understand its purpose – there were no public executions on Avalon – and then she’d felt sick.  The Admiral intended to hang nine of the prisoners in the heart of the city, daring the city’s inhabitants to riot with so many armed soldiers in the vicinity.  It was sickening, against all sense of decency – but not, quite, forbidden by law.  Indeed, there had been public executions on Avalon in the early years of settlement.  Had any of them been as sickening as this?

A loud drumbeat echoed over the square as the Admiral’s personal guard emerged from one of the nearby buildings.  They wore their dress uniforms, swelteringly hot in the heat, and escorted nine of the captives, the youngest and least informative of the prisoners Greg Bone and his Marines had taken.  The prisoners didn’t look very impressive or threatening; they wore orange prison suits and their hands were cuffed behind their back.  Despite their crimes, Kat felt a tinge of sympathy for them, even though they’d threatened her personally.  It wasn’t a sentiment shared by the expatriates, who watched with grim approval as the prisoners were marched up the ramp and onto the platform.  They’d been demanding justice – or revenge – in no uncertain terms since the attack on the Summer Palace and the Admiral’s position depended on keeping his supporters happy.  Not that he would have objected loudly, Kat knew; his wife and two of his children, as worthless as they were, had been among the hostages.  It was sheer luck that had kept them from joining the dead.  The Admiral’s wife had apparently declined to attend the execution, but Kat could see all four of his children in the crowd watching as the guards fitted nooses around the necks of the captives.  

“Sick,” Bone muttered.  Like her, he wore his dress uniform, although in his case the uniform included elements that allowed him to resist the heat, at least to some degree.  He looked over towards the barricades, and the teeming city beyond.  Everyone would be watching the news channel that would display the executions in glorious holographic imagery, creating nine new martyrs for the insurgency’s cause.  She doubted that it would play very well in the Commonwealth either, let alone in some of the interstellar powers that had moralistically banned the death penalty.  Avalon’s executions were carried out in secure compounds and they certainly weren’t broadcast to the entire universe.

The Admiral stepped onto the platform, seemingly unconcerned about the looks of hatred from the prisoners, and cleared his throat.  For once, he looked energetic rather than indolent, something Kat would have welcomed if he had focused on the 6th Fleet and preparing for the war everyone knew was coming.  They might have uncovered no evidence that proved that the Theocracy was involved, but Kat had no doubt of it.  It seemed that the Admiral and his backers, most of who were safely on Avalon, were the only ones who doubted that the Theocracy was backing the insurgents.  The only real surprise was that they hadn’t used the insurgent attack as cover for bringing in their own fleet and invading the System.

She watched as the media reporters focused on the Admiral.  Lucy had rejected over a hundred separate requests for an interview from the media, much to Kat’s private relief.  She disliked and distrusted reporters as a general rule, even though some of the ones who had embedded with the RAN weren’t bad guys.  Her sister’s sexual exploits were regularly splashed across the tabloid front pages, something Kat found disgusting.  It seemed that the reporters spent half their time trying to bathe in reflected glory and the other half of their time trying to drag celebrities down into the common herd.  The Admiral ignored their shouted questions with a thoroughness Kat could only admire, waiting for quiet before he began his speech.  It was a long time coming.

“There are those who choose to reject the gift that we bring Cadiz,” the Admiral said.  His voice echoed out over the square.  “There are those who refuse to accept that the time of separation, of division, of endless conflict between peoples of all castes and creeds, is over.  And there are those who play upon their small resentments, their fear of being left behind, and fan tiny sparks into a burning blaze.  They are taught to believe that any means are acceptable, if only it will return the world around them to a legendary pristine state.  They are taught nothing, but delusions.  No one can halt the march of progress.

“Five days ago, the nine men you see before you took part in a cowardly attack on the Summer Palace, a building constructed by one of the first settlers of Cadiz.  They slaughtered seventy-seven of their fellow residents of Cadiz, whose only crime was trying to earn enough money to put bread on the table, and they held women and children hostage.  I have no doubt that if they had been allowed free reign to act as they pleased, without restriction, they would have slaughtered every one of their hostages before vanishing into the night.  It was a cowardly act, committed by cowards who dare not face those who can fight back.  And they believed that it would force us to question our resolve.”

Kat kept her face expressionless.  While she’d been breaking free and trying to get the children out of the Summer Palace, the Admiral – by all accounts – had lurked in his office, unable or unwilling to make a decision…and his subordinates had followed his lead.  Their frozen panic had allowed Kat’s crew to act ruthlessly and decisively, yet it wasn’t part of their role.  The forces on the ground should have been able to handle the situation without Bone’s Marines.  And they’d spent the hours since the insurgents had struck desperately passing the buck, fearful of being caught with responsibility when their time finally ran out.

The irony didn’t amuse her.  If the insurgents had slaughtered so many hostages, the Admiral’s position would have been untenable even if his supporters on Avalon had tried to keep him in place.  The Assembly, which would have lost friends, relatives and valuable campaign contributors, would have demanded a full and open public enquiry.  Kat suspected that the Admiral would be forced to resign before there was an open investigation of the state of Cadiz’s defences, but it wouldn’t have mattered.  By saving the hostages, Kat and her Marines had shored up the Admiral’s position.

“We have brought them before you now to show that our resolve will not be broken,” the Admiral continued.  “We made a commitment that we would help the forces of progress on Cadiz, a commitment that included massive investment in the system and military support in upholding the rule of law.  We will not be daunted by terrorism, no matter the costs terrorists believe they can impose on us, and we will not give into their demands.  Terrorism will achieve nothing, apart from certain punishment for those too cowardly to fight openly, or those unwilling to take part in the democratic process.  They have prevented us from holding a proper planet-wide election for far too long.  Today, I wish to announce that we will hold the first election in two months.”

A low mutter ran through the crowd.  Kat understood, she suspected, what they were thinking.  Any democratically-elected government on Cadiz would, at the very least, revoke the sweetheart deals the various expatriates had secured with the occupational authorities.  The off-world corporations would no longer hold special commissions from the locals, while they would be forced to honour their commitments to establish schools and training centres on Cadiz, allowing the locals to have a chance to move into the labour market.

And at worst, the new government would thank the Commonwealth for its help and politely invite them to depart the system.  That would open up a whole new can of worms; the corporations would demand returns on their investments, while the space-dwelling colonies, mainly inhabited by people from outside the system, would refuse to join any new government.  The Commonwealth would be caught between a number of choices, none of them good; refuse to honour the election results, support the asteroid colonies against Cadiz, or abandon Commonwealth citizens and investments.  And the Theocracy would definitely have a chance to fish in troubled waters.

The Admiral turned to face the nine captives.  “You took women and children hostage,” he said, flatly.  There was no mistaking the cold disdain in his voice, or the icy determination to push ahead, come what may.  “Your crimes are completely beyond redemption.  You have no place on Cadiz, not the Cadiz of the future or even the imaginary Cadiz you hold up as your goal.  We have judged you guilty; you knew what you were doing, you knew what you would be called upon to do when you joined your fellow terrorists, and you chose to do nothing when you could have saved countless lives.  For your crimes, there can only be one punishment.  The sentence is death.  There is no appeal.”

He nodded to one of his guards, who pushed a button.  Trapdoors opened under their feet and the captives plunged downward, the nooses tightening sharply around their necks.  Seven of them were lucky – their necks broke instantly – but two were unlucky enough to fall with less force.  Kat heard several people in the crowd being violently sick as the two insurgents slowly choked to death, coughing and sputtering as they gasped for breath.  There was no chance of escape; they died slowly, in terrible pain.  

There was dead silence in the square as the last insurgent died.  Kat forced herself to swallow hard, trying to tell herself that she’d seen worse.  And yet she hadn’t, even when she’d picked through the remains of a freighter that had been hit and looted by pirates, before they’d abandoned her on the edge of a star system with her distress beacon blazing merrily away.  They’d never caught up with the pirates, even after a determined search; they’d committed an atrocity and escaped with their lives.  And the Admiral seemed almost as unconcerned as they’d been…

She hadn’t realised just how spiteful the Admiral could be.  His service record had been closed to her, but there had been whispers – and she’d seen how his staff hastened to obey his every command.  He was lazy, more concerned with maintaining his position than doing his job, yet when he was crossed…she was suddenly grateful that he didn’t seem to have realised that she’d gone over his head and appealed to her father.  And yet, nothing had returned from Avalon.  Had the Admiral’s supporters been able to forestall any action against him?

“There are those who deserve recognition for their part in the siege and its resolution,” the Admiral said.  All eyes were fixed on him, if only to avoid looking at the dangling bodies.  “Many people showed true heroism in facing and defeating the terrorists.  Captain Kat Falcone, step forward.”

Kat almost missed her cue out of surprise.  The Admiral hadn’t told her that he was going to call on her!  It was an open secret that all ‘surprise’ public ceremonies were carefully rehearsed first, just to ensure that nothing went wrong.  Bone nudged her gently and she started forward, schooling her face into an inscrutable mask.  The sense that thousands of cameras were watching her, broadcasting her every step to the entire Commonwealth, chilled her to the bone.  Kat’s mother took it for granted that the entire Commonwealth was interested in everything she did, particularly the leaks she authorised ahead of time, but Kat had never wanted the limelight.  The only consolation was that she’d earned the award, rather than obtaining it because of her name.

“Captain Falcone,” the Admiral said, when she stopped in front of him.  “At great personal risk, you escaped the terrorists and signalled for help.  Your actions saved hundreds of lives, including the lives of my wife and sons.  You were decisive enough to order the Marines into the Summer Palace, clearing the way for them to land.  For this bravery, this conspicuous display of heroism, you must be rewarded.”

Kat kept her face expressionless, somehow.  It had been her XO who’d ordered the Marines into the Summer Palace and Captain Bone who’d led them in eliminating the insurgents and freeing the hostages.  Why was she getting all the credit?  Was the Admiral buttering her up in the hopes of reviving his wife’s marriage plans, or was he deliberately slighting her crew?  Or was it a particularly subtle form of revenge?

“The Cadiz Medallion was first devised by the original settlers of Cadiz, as a reward for those who helped tame the planet and constructed the first cities,” the Admiral said.  He opened a small box to reveal a golden coin, dotted with silver engravings.  It glittered far brighter than the Medal of Honour, or the Order of the Commonwealth of Avalon, both awards that were the exclusive province of the King.  “We adopted it as a reward for conspicuous gallantry while in action on the planet’s surface.  It is my pleasure to present you with the Medallion as a reward for your bravery.”

He picked up the medal and held it out.  Kat reluctantly bowed her head and allowed him to hang it around her neck, as the ceremony dictated.  Later, she would have it attached to her dress uniform permanently, displaying the award to all comers.  She had a nasty feeling that the medal was effectively worthless, but she’d have to check.  And she would have to apologise to those who had been slighted by the Admiral.  Her crew deserved better than to languish in obscurity.  

The reporters went crazy as word spread about Kat’s father.  They all knew his name, knew that he was one of the wealthiest men in the Commonwealth…and they knew that his older daughters provided endless fodder for the tabloids.  They’d have Kat turned into a genuine heroine by the time word reached Avalon, ensuring that only a garbled version of the story was ever allowed into the datanet.  The Marines – and her XO – would be forgotten by the time the story reached the public.  And the Admiral’s blunders would be lost in the files.  

It struck her, for a moment, that she could use the platform the Admiral had given her to challenge him openly.  She could raise the question of Theocratic activities on Cadiz, or the question of just how poorly the occupation was being handled…and, of course, the condition of the 6th Fleet.  And yet she dreaded the possibility of even speaking to the press.  The media outlets her father controlled would be sympathetic – they would have no choice – but the others would be savage, either backing her to the hilt or pouring scorn on her.  Her career would hit a solid steel wall, whatever happened to the Admiral.  And it might just encourage the Theocracy to launch their attack before the 6th Fleet could be readied for combat.

The Admiral dismissed her and she returned to the crowd, watching absently as the Admiral issued a handful of other commendations and ensured that his face was plastered all over the media for the next few days, at least until his face was pushed off the screens by the death or marriage of a celebrity.  Kat rolled her eyes as the ceremony began to break up, already hearing the sounds of gunfire in the distance.  The Admiral’s speech had touched a few nerves among the local population.  At a guess, the expatriates would be less safe than ever before.

It wasn’t entirely a surprise when she was called into the Admiral’s mansion an hour later, while waiting for the armoured convoy back to the spaceport.  A group of locals had tried to rush the palace gates, only to be shot down by jangler pulses.  At least there would be no loss of life, although they’d have terrible headaches when they awoke.  Kat knew just how they felt.

“Your command will be detached to patrol the border line between us and the Theocracy,” the Admiral said, once they’d exchanged insincere greetings.  “You will watch for intruders, pirates and other possible sources of concern.”

Kat had no difficulty in reading between the lines.  The Admiral was trying to get rid of her and, as much as it galled her to admit it, the plan was going to succeed.  A border patrol could last up to two months before they returned to Cadiz, plenty of time for the media to forget about her.  The devious bastard had spent years at Court.  Of course he would understand the dangers of turning her into a media heroine.

“Yes, Admiral,” she said, reluctantly.  At least she would be away from Cadiz.  “We will depart as soon as possible.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

“The navigation gets a little wonky here, Captain,” Lieutenant Nicola Robertson admitted.  Hyperspace seemed to be churning around Lightning, as if she was an old-style wet navy ship ploughing through the oceans.  It wasn’t a bad analogy, Kat knew; hyperspace was a teeming ocean of energy storms.  “There are four gravity masses in corresponding normal space and they’re throwing out a great deal of interference.”

Kat nodded, reluctantly.  No one had ever been able to work out precisely how hyperspace interacted with normal space, but the vast majority of hyperspace physicists believed that gravity twisted normal space into a pattern, given enough gravity, warped into hyperspace.  It sent waves of chaotic energy storms flaring into hyperspace, rendering large sections of the alternate dimension difficult to navigate, even for the most capable starships.  The other theory, which involved quantum interaction between hyper-tense quantum strings linked to objects within normal space, gave her a headache whenever she tried to understand it.

The Four Sisters were four stars with very heavy gravitational pull, orbiting so close to each other that there were several cults within the Commonwealth that claimed that they had been created by an advanced elder race, or God Himself.  Kat wasn’t inclined to believe any of the more exotic theories, but like reefs to the ancient civilisations of Earth, they provided a natural barrier along part of the borderline between the Commonwealth and the Theocracy.  There was no reason why a particularly daring Captain couldn’t thread his way through the energy storms that reflected the presence of the stars in hyperspace, but only a complete lunatic would take an entire fleet through the Four Sisters.  The most fanatic Theocrat would turn back in horror.  A single miscalculation could wipe out the fleet without the Commonwealth knowing that it had ever been threatened with invasion.

She glanced down at the chart of hyperspace.  Two weeks on patrol and they’d seen nothing, but then there was really nothing to see.  The idea of patrolling the border was laughable, even to the civilians.  Any halfway competent smuggler, pirate or Theocracy raiding fleet could slip past the patrolling starships and raid deep into Commonwealth space without ever sounding the alarm.  The patrols were nothing more than an attempt to calm public opinion on several worlds alarmingly close to the border, although they rarely succeeded even as a public relations exercise.  An entire fleet could reach Cadiz and be reasonably sure of evading detection until they were mere hours from the system, if the defenders were lucky.

“We’ll give them a wide berth,” she ordered.  Lightning wasn’t on alert; there was little point while in hyperspace, although she was running regular drills to ensure that the crew didn’t lose their edge.  “Plot us a course around them and upload it to the helm, then you and Lieutenant Weiberg can steer us clear of those storms.  I don’t like the look of them.”

“Aye, Captain,” Nicola said.  She gave Kat a faint smile, almost as if she was on the verge of bursting with excitement.  It was the closest she would get to commanding a starship, at least until she reached Commander – if she ever did.  The demand for trained and experienced navigators was high and the RAN rarely allowed them to leave the field, once they had established themselves as competent.  “I don’t think the storms will pose a threat, but we’ll stay well clear of them, just in case.”

In olden days, sailors had had to worry about storms.  Hyperspace travel was as safe as several centuries of human ingenuity could make it, but it could still be immensely dangerous.  Storms could appear without warning and blaze across hundreds of light years, before fading back into the shimmering energies of hyperspace.  Any starship caught in their path would be lucky if it could return to normal space before the storm overwhelmed their drives and tore them apart.  All of the major powers – apart from the Theocracy – collaborated in monitoring hyperspace, but so far no one had been able to establish a pattern, still less a defence, against violent storms.  The best theory was that hyperspace energy fields grew excited in response to random quantum events, which had always struck Kat as a complicated way of admitting that they didn't know what happened and wouldn't find out anytime soon.

Kat nodded to the young Lieutenant and walked off the bridge, passing command to the Tactical Officer.  The XO and the Chief Engineer were busy monitoring a disturbing flutter within Fusion Three, one that the Chief Engineer had assured her didn't pose a serious threat, at least as long as they didn't have to rely on that reactor alone to power the ship.  Kat wasn't particularly reassured, but short of cutting short the patrol and returning to a shipyard to have Fusion Three replaced, there was little they could do about it.  Starship fusion plants were designed to be solid, with multiple redundancies for every system, but if they failed they failed completely.  It didn't help that the only way to remove the fusion plant was to cut through the armour covering the hull, a time-consuming task that rendered the ship effectively defenceless until it was repaired.  

She shook her head, cursing the Admiral in the privacy of her own thoughts.  He’d certainly neglected any impact she might have had by talking to the press – and ensured that she would be permanently out of date with events at Cadiz.  She wouldn't know what was happening back on Cadiz until she returned, and by then the system might have been occupied by the Theocracy and a fleet of heavy battleships would be waiting for her.  It was unlikely that the Theocracy would target her personally, unless her fame had truly spread into the rest of the Commonwealth.  The Theocracy had a habit of targeting enemy heroes for pointed object lessons, just one other detail that had slipped past the pacifist factions back home.  They saw no reason to moderate their approach to war, or post-conquest pacification or mass conversion.  The insurgents on Cadiz would be horrified when they realised what the Theocracy did to the planets it occupied, but by then it would be far too late.  Indeed, by working with the insurgents, the Theocracy had probably been able to compile a list of people to round up and eliminate once the high orbitals were safely in their hands.

Kat banished the thought as she stepped into the observation blister and stared out into the shimmering lights of hyperspace.  The theorists claimed that hyperspace was a squashed version of normal space, a two-dimensional universe that allowed rapid transit from point to point without having to break the speed of light, the speed limit of normal space.  Kat wasn't so sure, but every time she tried to wrap her head around the problem, her head started to hurt.  What she saw might not even be real, nothing more than her mind’s desperate attempt to comprehend something utterly unlike the normal universe that had given birth to mankind.  The theorists even claimed that one day it might be possible to manipulate hyperspace to access vast new sources of power or even create permanent wormholes binding the galaxy together, but Kat wasn't about to hold her breath.  Every attempt to tap the forces of hyperspace had resulted in a colossal explosion and a great many dead scientists.

Her wristcom bleeped, reminding her of her dinner date.  The thought made her smile; it wasn't a real date, certainly nothing like the intimate dinners she’d been able to have back on the Amelia Pond with then-Lieutenant Greg Bone.  Her former Captain had believed that he and his XO should share at least one meal a week, if only to discuss matters away from the official surroundings of the bridge or the Captain’s office, and Kat had continued the tradition.  Besides, it was the only time she could socialise while onboard – and she disliked socialising with civilians when Lightning was orbiting Cadiz.  The thought made her scowl.  Before Lightning had opened a hyperspace vortex and vanished into hyperspace, the public opinion polls among the expatriates had been running seven-to-one in favour of the public executions.  No one had bothered to ask the locals what they thought.  Kat hoped that the expatriates had enough sense to see the writing on the wall and get off Cadiz before the Theocracy arrived.  The local insurgents would string them all up from lampposts if the occupation force ever lost control of the high orbitals.

She hadn't spent much time in her cabin since Lightning had departed Cadiz Station.  Even when she wasn’t on the bridge, there was always something to do and she’d found herself spending most of her time moving from department to department, learning more about her ship and crew every time.  Lucy had prepared her a meal each night that she’d often found she barely had time to eat, let alone notice what she was eating.  The Steward had clicked her tongue, as if Kat was a small girl refusing to eat her greens.  Stewards were meant to take care of their superior officers – a Steward might spend her entire career with a single officer – but Kat had never cared for the practice.  It reminded her far too much of the armies of servants her mother had raised to ensure that she was always top of the social scene.

Lucy had excelled herself this time, as always.  The table was neatly set, with a single heated basin of curry and rice and a pair of wine glasses.  Kat had been amused to discover that Lucy, who came from humble parentage, was a bit of a wine snob, a habit Kat had never acquired despite her lofty birth.  She would have been happy with an interior vintage from one of the orbital vineyards, as long as it tasted good.  The XO’s only comment on the question was a droll observation that he preferred beer and would be sure to get rolling drunk on his next period of shore leave.  Kat had decided, after a moment, that he was joking.

The chime on the hatch came right on time.  Lucy opened the hatch, beckoned the XO in, and then vanished into her own cabin.  Kat had finally managed to talk her out of waiting at the table – she’d been horrified at the suggestion that she might join her superior officers at dinner – and she knew that Lucy would only reappear when the time came to serve desert.  The XO, who had been quietly amused the first time they’d shared a meal, had said little on the subject.

“Captain,” the XO said, as he took his seat.  “Fusion Three shouldn’t be a problem for a while, but we may have to get it replaced within the next four months.”

Kat nodded.  The Admiral’s beancounters would complain about the cost – fusion units for starships didn't come cheap – but there really was no other alternative.  Military gear was durable, designed for intensive use, yet even it had its limits.  She didn't even want to think about what might happen when – if – the 6th Fleet ever went to full military power.  The maintenance logs – those she’d been able to access – suggested that the crews had been skimping on maintenance, if the logs were even remotely accurate.  If they weren’t...

She shuddered at the thought.  The maintenance logs had to be kept up to date, or repair crews would have no idea what parts had been replaced and what had been left to slowly wear themselves out.  The RAN had even written regulations allowing for the public flogging of any crewman caught writing lies into the maintenance logs, although Kat had never heard of anyone actually being flogged.  It hardly mattered, anyway; skimping on maintenance was one thing, but not updating the logs was grounds for immediate dismissal from the Navy.  

“Let me know the details and I’ll forward the request to Cadiz Station,” she said, as she started to serve the curry.  “Does he anticipate any problems?”

“Probably not, unless we cannot get access to a full-class shipyard,” the XO said.  He took his plate with evident enthusiasm.  One thing a heavy cruiser had that a destroyer lacked was a separate kitchen for officers, allowing them a chance at better rations than the crewmen.  Kat wasn't entirely in favour of the concept, but she had to admit that the excellent food was a powerful argument for having a separate mess.  “The Admiral may balk at the cost.”

Kat shrugged.  “That would play well in the media,” she said.  “Admiral Refuses Heroic Captain Ship Repairs.”

“The beancounters are very good at coming up with justifications for doing nothing,” the XO said.  His face, for a moment, showed the strain of dealing with supply departments for most of his career.  “They’d claim that the Mark VI Naval Fusion Reactor is rated for far more stress before it suffers a catastrophic failure sequence.”

“I’ll ram it through,” Kat promised.  She hesitated.  There was a question she wanted to ask, but did she dare ask it?  The XO was meant to be her tactical alter ego, supporter and general disciplinarian, the man who translated her orders into reality, yet there were limits.  And he had far greater experience than her, even if he’d never been offered his own ship.  It was one injustice that Kat intended to correct.  “Mr. XO – Jeremy – how am I doing?”

The XO didn't look surprised at the question.  “You won a great deal of respect from the crew during the raid on the Summer Palace,” he said.  There was no trace of his own opinion in his voice.  “The Captain has to maintain a certain distance from her crew, but she also has to demonstrate personal bravery and a willingness to lead from the front.  You certainly did both.”

Kat frowned.  In at least one respect, she was the equal of the most junior crewman on the ship; if Lightning exploded, she would die as surely as the crewman, probably without knowing what had hit her.  If the ship took crippling damage and the fusion cores blew, Lightning would be vaporised instantly.

“And you’ve also managed to gain a little personal authority, as opposed to positional authority,” the XO added, after a moment.  “Positional authority is when people do as you say because you’ve been appointed as their superior officer; personal authority is when people do as you say because you are you, because they trust you to know what you’re doing.  You haven’t blundered too badly.”

He grinned.  “And the bonus for capturing the pirate ship and destroying the other one didn’t hurt your reputation either,” he added.  “The crew were very grateful.”

Kat snorted.  The major interstellar insurers had been offering bounties for captured or destroyed pirate ships ever since it had become clear that piracy in space wasn't going to go away in a hurry.  Lightning’s crew had collected the bonus at Cadiz and it had been shared out among the crew, according to tradition.  Kat was entitled to a tenth of it, but her trust fund already held more money than she could hope to spend in a long and exciting life.

“No one is particularly keen to be so close to the border and the hyperspace storms, but that’s hardly your fault,” he concluded.  “It’s time to start breaking out the old stories from the early probes into hyperspace.”

“Spacers have been scaring each other with them for years,” Kat said.  She’d heard them herself when she’d graduated from Piker’s Peak and found herself assigned to work under the most fearsome Senior Chief she’d encountered, then or ever.  “Strange black ships in hyperspace, alien monsters that fly through hyperspace without ships, giant bats that flap their wings and the entire universe changes around them...”

The intercom chimed before the XO could say anything.  “Captain, we’re picking up a distress call,” Roach said.  The tactical officer sounded worried.  A distress signal in hyperspace required a hell of a lot of power to push it through the interference that could be expected.  “They’re on our side of the boarder, but close to the borderline itself.”

Kat and the XO exchanged glances.  “It could be a trap,” he murmured.  “The God-Bothers have never signed any of the conventions on hyperspace navigation and mutual assistance to stricken ships.”

“We have to go,” Kat said.  She wasn't about to abandon a ship in trouble, even if there was a danger that they could be being lured into a trap.  “Mr. Roach; bring the ship to red alert and change course towards the source of the distress signal.”

“Aye, Captain,” Roach said.  The howling of the red alert siren downed out his next few words.  “...On our way now.”

Kat took a regretful glance at the remainder of the curry, and then led the way up towards the bridge.  Behind her, she knew, Lucy would scoop it up and preserve it for when they had dealt with the distress signal.  The XO followed her as she slipped through the two hatches, nodded to the Marines on duty at the main hatch and then entered the bridge.

“Captain on the bridge,” the XO barked.  There was a brief straightening of shoulders – no other gestures of respect were allowed when the ship was at battle stations – and then the crew looked back down at their consoles.  “Mr. Roach; report!”

“Captain, we are picking up an unidentified freighter,” Roach reported.  “It’s heading right towards us, deeper into the Commonwealth.”  He hesitated, as if he knew that what he was about to say wouldn't be believed.  “And it’s being pursued.”

Kat took her seat and looked up at the display.  An orange icon was being followed by a red icon, far too close for comfort.  Easy weapons range; hell, it should have blown the freighter apart by now.  “Pursued?”

“Yes, Captain,” Roach said.  “The ship is being hunted down by a Theocracy destroyer.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Kat felt her blood run cold.

“A Theocracy destroyer,” the XO said.  “Are you sure?”

“Yes, sir,” Roach said.  “It’s one of their most modern designs; the entry in Jane’s Starship Database lists it as Omar-class.  One hundred meters long, packed with firepower at the expense of life support – at least according to the reports.”

Kat shook her head.  It hardly mattered what the Theocracy ship was packing, not compared to the mystery of what it was doing in Commonwealth space – and just why it was hunting down an apparently harmless freighter.  It shouldn’t be on the Commonwealth side of the border at all, even though it was almost impossible to monitor the border closely enough to prevent any intrusions.  

“Intercept course,” she ordered.  The destroyer’s presence didn’t bode well, even without the mysterious freighter.  They had to be trying to take the freighter intact, or they would have destroyed it by now.  “Open a channel to the Theocracy vessel.”

“Aye, Captain,” Roach said.  There was a roar of static from her console.  Radio waves – and even pin-point communications lasers – behaved oddly in hyperspace.  All messages would have to be repeated several times to ensure that the recipient picked up the complete message.  “Channel open.”

“Theocracy vessel, this is Captain Kat Falcone of the Royal Avalon Navy starship Lightning,” Kat said.  “You are engaged in hostile acts within our territory.  Stand down your weapons and prepare for inspection.”

There was a long pause.  “No response, Captain,” Roach said.  The freighter seemed to be at the end of its tether, the drives shutting down slowly, leaving the craft spinning out of control.  “They’re still closing on the freighter.”

Kat exchanged a long glance with the XO.  The Theocracy ship was on the Commonwealth’s side of the border, whatever the reason for its mission.  They had to respond – at the very least, they had to drive the enemy vessel back across the border – and yet firing on her could result in the war they’d dreaded for so long.  Kat knew the state of Cadiz’s defences, and the condition of the 6th Fleet; there could hardly be a worse time to start a war.  And yet they couldn’t allow the intrusion to go unanswered.  She felt herself struggling with indecision, feeling the full weight of command crashing down on her shoulders.  There was no one else to take the decision.  It had to be her.

“Repeat the message,” she ordered, tightly.  The seconds ticked by with no response; Kat stared down at her console, wondering if the Theocracy destroyer was truly on its own.  Unlike many other powers, the Theocracy didn’t share much open source information on its navy – and an entire fleet could be hiding only a few million kilometres away in hyperspace and they’d never be able to see it until it was far too late.

She braced herself.  “Mr Roach; lock weapons on the Theocracy destroyer.”

“Aye, Captain,” Roach said.  The enemy ship would be able to detect the targeting sensors; they’d know that she was preparing to fire.  Would they open communications, break off…or try to get the first shot in before Kat could open fire?  “Weapons locked…we’re picking up a hail, standard interstellar open channel.”

“Put them through,” Kat ordered.  If they could end the situation through diplomacy, it might forstall the war.  “Put it on the main display.”

An image appeared in front of her, a dark-skinned man wearing the flamboyant naval uniform designed by the Theocracy.  His dark eyes seemed to blaze with anger, and barely hidden desperation.  A second man stood behind him, wearing a flowing white robe rather than a naval uniform, without any badge of rank.  It was enough to allow Kat to identify him as the Cleric overseeing the operation, with the power to relieve the ship’s Captain for anything from insufficient zeal to refusing to show any respect to the religious establishment.  She couldn’t understand why the Theocracy’s officers tolerated their presence, but then absolute monarchies – and the Theocracy was governed by an absolute monarch – were never very good at coping with dissent.  Anyone who raised their voice or questioned official government policy rapidly found themselves exiled to a penal world, if they were lucky.  The unlucky ones made object lessons for everyone else.

The officer’s dark eyes seemed to narrow as he took in her face and form.  He might never have seen a woman on the bridge of a starship before, let alone in command of more firepower than a single destroyer.  Even the merchants who braved the Theocracy tended to keep female crew off the ships, or consigned them to hiding places while the Theocrats were inspecting the ship.  The few recorded encounters had caused angry diplomatic protests from both sides.  Kat knew that she had to look young enough to be his daughter – the Theocracy wasn’t fond of allowing anti-aging treatments to be used by the general population – and she doubted that he would be willing to respect her.  Besides, the Cleric would be the true master, whatever the Captain might say.  And he was scowling at Kat’s face.

“I am Captain Zaid of the Faithful Companion,” the Theocrat said.  His Standard – the UN’s efforts to ensure that everyone spoke at least one shared language had been the one positive fruit of their period of absolute rule – was oddly accented, but understandable.  The Faithful Companion might not have been seen before, but ONI had noted that it was a honoured name in the Theocracy, although they never seemed to attach it to anything larger than a light cruiser.  And four of the current ship’s predecessors had been destroyed during the first expansion phase, before the Theocracy had run into someone strong enough to make them pause and prepare for further expansion through conquest.

It wasn’t good news.  Spacers, even in the Theocracy, believed that a ship’s name carried the deeds and legacy of the previous ships.  The Captain would feel an urge to live up to that legacy, even if it meant counting a confrontation with a far more powerful ship.  And besides, Kat couldn’t be sure that the Faithful Companion was truly alone.  There might be an entire battle fleet rushing up in support.

“I am Captain Falcone of the…”

“I know who you are,” Zaid snapped, interrupting her.  It was a breach of interstellar protocol that made Kat narrow her eyes sharply, even though the enemy commander seemed to be distressed, as if something was weighing down on him.  “This is internal Theocracy business.  You have no right to interfere.  Be gone.”

Kat felt her lips thinning as she stared at the Captain and his Cleric.  “This is Commonwealth space,” she said.  The RAN would back her up on that point, even though the Theocracy hadn’t signed any of the interstellar accords defining territorial space.  Setting a dangerous precedent would unravel any number of complicated defence plans and mutual understandings between different powers.  “You are here without permission, conducting military operations in our space.  I must ask you to stand down and explain your presence here.”

There was a long pause.  The holographic image fizzled with static for brief moments, before stabilising and returning to normal.  “The freighter carries criminals from justice,” Zaid said, finally.  He sounded convincing, yet Kat was sure that he was lying.  And besides, the Theocracy had so many laws that it was impossible to live without breaking one or more of them regularly.  The criminals might have been accused of mass murder, or they might have been accused of drinking alcohol, or having premarital sex.  “I have orders to recover the criminals and return them to Abdullah for judgement.”

“If that is the case,” Kat said, “I suggest that you file a complaint with the Commonwealth Judiciary.  I will board the freighter, take the criminals to Cadiz and hold them there until you present your case before the Judiciary. If they are found guilty of recognised crimes, they will be handed over to you.”

“This affair is none of your business,” Zaid thundered.  Kat guessed that there was some reason why they didn’t simply agree to have the Commonwealth take the supposed criminals into custody.  They might not have committed crimes recognised under Commonwealth law, or they might be refugees, fleeing imprisonment or death.  She wasn’t going to return anyone whose only crime had been practicing their own religion peacefully, without joining their fellows in mass conversion to the Theocracy’s state religion.  “You will leave, now.”

“No,” Kat said, firmly.  “We will not allow you to take unknown personages from our territory without our permission.  This affair became our business as soon as you and your quarry crossed the border.  We will know what is going on before we permit you to do anything.”

The Cleric bent down suddenly and whispered in the Captain’s ear.  Kat felt an odd spurt of sympathy for the Captain, even if he did serve the Theocracy.  Having someone who could relieve you – without the slightest idea of how a starship actually worked, or how to conduct a major battle – had to be galling.  And the Cleric might just push the Captain into starting a fight he couldn’t win.

“This is an internal affair,” Zaid informed her.  “I must warn you that this matter is very significant to the highest levels of government.  Your involvement may lead to disastrous consequences.”

Kat felt her heartbeat race.  The highest levels of government, in the Theocracy, meant the Caliph.  And if the Caliph was involved…who was on that freighter?  She wished that it was possible to talk to the freighter’s crew, but laser hails received no response and radio calls would be picked up by the Faithful Companion.  Her heart refused to calm down.  Whatever the legal rights and wrongs of the situation, she was running the risk of firing the first shot in a war that could only result in mutual devastation.  It was within the scope of her authority to defend Commonwealth space, but firing the first shot in an interstellar war…?

“I have no scope for leeway in this situation,” Kat said.  “I will take the freighter into custody.  You may assign an officer to see to the…welfare of the prisoners until they reach Cadiz and a final decision as to their disposition can be made.  I cannot offer anything else.”

“Captain,” Roach said, urgently, “they’ve just locked weapons on the freighter!”

“Stand by point defence,” Kat ordered.  Were they trying to back her into a corner, where the only choice was to fight or back down, allowing the Theocracy to take the freighter’s crew and then escape?  “Helm…”

Captain Zaid turned to look at her.  “This is your final warning,” he said.  “You will allow us to board the freighter and recover the prisoners, or face the consequences.”

Kat met his dark eyes and held them.  “I will not permit you to carry out acts of aggression in Commonwealth space,” she said, as calmly as she could.  Inside, she was frantically reviewing the ROE they’d been given just before they departed Cadiz, trying to fit them to the situation.  She had the legal right to open fire if an unwanted enemy vessel refused to depart, but this situation was unprecedented.  Her neck would be exposed for the Admiral – and her father’s enemies – to take a shot at cutting it off.  And her career might be about to come to a screeching halt.  “I cannot…”

The dark-eyed face vanished.  “Captain, they cut communications,” Roach reported.  “They just flicked us with their targeting sensors.”

“Target them again,” Kat ordered.  The sensors were hardly required to launch missiles; pinging the other ship was a way of underlining her words, and the seriousness of the situation.  “Stand by all weapons…”

A sane Captain would have backed down – a sane Captain, or one without an insane or ignorant Cleric.  The Faithful Companion launched a spread of missiles, targeted directly on the rogue freighter.  Whatever ambitions they’d had to recover the freighter and her crew intact and alive no longer applied, which meant that whoever was onboard had to be frighteningly important to the Theocracy.  A defector…or someone who could help the Commonwealth prepare for the coming war.  And the missiles might eradicate any hope before the Commonwealth knew what it had been offered.

“Point defence, take out those missiles,” Kat snapped.  Lightning could stand up to a nuclear-tipped missile strike, but a freighter had almost no ability to take a blow and survive.  They’d vaporise the entire ship.  She keyed her console, sharply.  “Captain Zaid, this is your final warning.  Leave Commonwealth space now or I’ll open fire.”

The Faithful Companion was moving, heading right towards the freighter.  Kat realised – with a reluctant tinge of admiration – just what Zaid had in mind.  If he reached point-blank range, she would have to either fire on his ship or lose the freighter.  A flicker of anger passed through her mind; Avalon had conquered the evil of sex discrimination long ago, but the Theocracy was a throwback to a far darker age.  They didn’t take her seriously.  And if he thought that she would be timid, it was no wonder that he was prepared to risk everything.

“No response, Captain,” Roach reported.

“Target their drives,” Kat ordered.  The weight of command crashed down around her shoulder again.  Did she dare open fire, knowing that it might start the war?  There was no choice…  “Fire!”

Lightning spat a stream of missiles towards the destroyer’s drive section.  Assuming the Theocracy built as many safety precautions into their ships as the RAN, the destroyer would lose her drives, but most of her crew would be able to survive.  The starship twisted as she watched, bringing its point defence to bear on the incoming missiles, before turning and heading back across the border.  It was too late.  Two missiles survived the point defence’s best efforts and slammed into the target’s rear section.  

“Two direct hits,” Roach reported.  “That’s a tough little ship, Captain.  They still have at least one drive section.”

“Prepare to fire a second barrage,” Kat ordered.  The Faithful Companion was limping back towards the border.  It crossed her mind that perhaps it would be wise if the destroyer never returned home, allowing the Commonwealth to bury the evidence of what had happened out along the border, but it would feel too much like murder.  Besides, the Theocracy would assume the worst even if they never received any direct proof of the brief and savage encounter.  “Keep a sensor lock on them until they cross the border.”

She turned her attention back to the freighter.  Captain Zaid’s crew were alarmingly competent; their hits had taken out the freighter’s drive, without either vaporising the ship or flooding her with lethal radiation.  The freighter was an ugly design, a massive blocky ship that could never hope to land on a planetary surface, yet someone had been able to use it to escape the Theocracy.  Kat shook her head slowly, before keying her console.

“Unidentified freighter, prepare to be boarded,” she said.  She switched links quickly.  “Major Bone; I want you and your team to secure the freighter and report on its condition.”

“We may have to tow her back to Cadiz,” the XO said.  Kat nodded.  The Faithful Companion might have a few faithful companions waiting for her on the other side of the border, including a heavy cruiser or two.  A single battlecruiser or battleship would be able to brush Lightning aside and destroy the freighter.  It would be wise not to be around when they arrived – if they arrived.  “I don’t think that ship can be repaired any time soon.”

“It looks that way,” Kat agreed.

“Picking up a low-power signal,” Roach said.  “They want to talk.”

It was a weak voice, but unmistakably male.  “Commonwealth ship, we need to talk,” it said.  “We are formally requesting political asylum.”

Kat had expected that, after the Faithful Companion had risked everything in trying to destroy the freighter.  “I understand,” she said.  “My Marines are going to board your ship and conduct a search.  We need to know what we’re dealing with before we make any final decisions.  Once we have secured your ship, we will tow you to the nearest naval base” – and that, unfortunately, was Cadiz – “and my superiors will decide if you should be granted asylum or not.”

There was a long pause.  “You don’t understand,” the voice said.  “We cannot be returned to Abdullah.  We would sooner kill ourselves.”

Kat felt a sudden flicker of sympathy.  “If you have committed no crimes under Commonwealth Law, you will not be returned to the Theocracy,” she said, firmly.  “However, I cannot allow you to proceed without searching your ship.  My Marines are on their way.  Please allow them to dock without resistance.”

“Understood, Captain,” the voice said.  “Please hurry.  They will be after us again soon.”

The XO leaned forward.  “I have a bad feeling about this, Captain,” he warned.  

Kat didn’t disagree.  Her own instincts were tingling.  The Theocracy had never shown any particular concern about preventing refugees from fleeing, even the spacers who might be of service in the Theocratic Navy or Merchant Marine.  And now a Captain of a mere destroyer had risked destruction to prevent a single freighter from escaping.  Something was very wrong.

She followed the Marines as they boarded and swarmed into the freighter.  There was no resistance.  The skeleton crew looked half-starved and desperate, even though the freighter itself was richly appointed.  Some of them chatted to the Marines, others just watched through blank helpless eyes.  They no longer had hope.

“Captain,” Bone said, “I believe that you should see this.”

Kat accessed the live feed from his combat suit.  Bone had walked into a cabin, occupied by a single woman.  That alone was surprising – the Theocracy didn’t allow women in space, at least outside stasis tubes – but her face caught Kat’s attention at once.  The political implications were going to be devastating…

“I urgently request political asylum,” she said, in a husky voice that was both charming and seductive at the same time.  “I am the Princess Jasmine, Sister to the Caliph.  And I know what he has in mind for you.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

The Princess Jasmine managed to make Kat feel dowdy and inferior at the same time, even as the Marines were showing her into Kat’s cabin.  She was tall, with long flowing black hair, brown skin with soft brown eyes and a perfect face, carrying herself as if she were walking into her throne room.  Her body was partly concealed behind a long shapeless dress, but her every movement drew the eye towards the contours of her body.  Kat knew that Jasmine had probably grown up in a world where her sexuality was her only weapon, but it didn't stop her feeling a certain resentment – even dislike – of the perfect princess.  She was magnificent.

“Welcome onboard,” Kat said, as the hatch closed behind the Marines.  A female Marine had searched the Princess before allowing her to board Lightning, confirming that she carried nothing dangerous – apart from her very presence.  Her flight into Commonwealth space was a political disaster in the making.  Everyone from the Admiral to the talking heads trotted out by the news agencies would be second-guessing her, presuming to say what they would have done if they had found themselves in her place.  The media made heroes – and it could destroy them with chilling ease.  “I’m sorry that we cannot offer you quarters appropriate to your station.”

“That’s all right,” Jasmine said.  She smiled a charming smile that made Kat want to grind her teeth.  Kat had saved her pretty face from death – or worse – and she still acted as if Kat was the supplicant.  “I didn't come here on a diplomatic mission.”

“No,” Kat agreed.  She looked up into Jasmine’s eyes, scowling inwardly.  Her brown eyes were so soft and innocent, manipulating Kat as easily as they would have manipulated an older and wiser man.  “I’m afraid you may have caused a diplomatic crisis between two interstellar powers.  Why did you come here?”

Jasmine leaned backwards in her seat, her movement suggesting – just for a second – the shape of her breasts under her robe.  “I fled here because I knew that my brother was going to have me killed, or married off to his Grand Vizier,” she said, frankly.  Her voice was perfect, a combination of fear and determination that would have affected any male within shouting range.  “I did not wish to marry his oldest friend.”

Kat frowned.  “And you would have had to marry him?”

“I was told that women are never allowed to choose their own partners,” Jasmine said.  There was an odd hint of...longing in her voice.  “My brother told me that I was going to marry his friend and that would be that.  I decided that I would sooner flee to safer harbours.”

“Maybe a great deal less safe because of your actions,” Kat said.  She straightened up.  “You told me that you know what the Theocracy has in mind for us.  I need you to tell me, now, so I know what to do with you.”

Jasmine met her eyes with calm resolve.  “I need a guarantee about my future first,” she said.  “Do you know what they will do to me if I go back?”

Kat hesitated.  The thought of being forced into an unwanted marriage was horrifying, even though marriages in Avalon’s High Society were often nothing more than ceremonies that bound two families together, organised by the parents.  But then, adultery was a fact of life and as long as the couple presented a show of unity in public, hardly anyone would care.  She had the distant feeling that an adulater in the Theocracy would suffer a far more serious fate.

“No,” she said, finally.  “What will they do to you?”

“They will take me into a little white room and rewrite me,” Jasmine said.  “I will be gone, replaced by an obedient housewife who will do her husband’s bidding and little else.  My personality will be destroyed – I will be dead, to all intents and purposes.  It will be the end of me.”

Kat felt bile rising in her throat.  There were some societies that practiced brain-wiping and rewriting as a punishment for convicted criminals – creating a new personality that lacked criminal tendencies – but she’d never heard of it being used to create an obedient wife.  And yet it fitted in quite neatly with the Theocracy’s attitude to high-class women; the changes wouldn't be genetic, affecting the next generation of children, and the women would become perfect for their husbands.  The thought was sickening.

“That’s what they did to one of my Aunts,” Jasmine continued.  Real tears were glistening at the corner of her eye.  “She was always demanding more and more from my father, until he had her taken away.  When she returned, she was just...a statue, a helpless shadow of herself.  A stranger had returned, wearing her body.  She’d do whatever she was told and nothing else.  When she wasn't needed, she just sat and waited for orders.  I don’t want that to happen to me!”

“I can understand that,” Kat said.  Her mind was still grappling with the concept.  If word got out, the Commonwealth public would unite behind Jasmine – and the pro-war faction – and present a united front to the Theocracy.  Or perhaps they wouldn't care; after all, Jasmine had been raised in a gilded cage for her entire life.  She had lived her life hundreds of light years from Avalon and there were always problems closer to home.  “How did you escape?”

“My bodyguard, Mu’Tamid,” Jasmine said.  She winked.  “My father had him fixed, of course, before he would allow poor Mu’Tamid to be alone with me.  But he’s loyal to me and when I asked him to help plot an escape, he was more than willing.  No one questions orders from my brother, even orders that appear to be from my brother.”

Kat frowned.  “Fixed?”

“They took away his testicles,” Jasmine said.  Kat blanched.  “They gave him some kind of chemical treatment that reconciled him to losing his manhood, and then gave him to me.  I have to be virgin when I am presented to my husband, or the family will be shamed...”

Her voice broke off.  “And if I go back, my mind will be wiped,” she repeated.  Kat heard her choke back a sob.  “There will be nothing left of me.”

Kat thought furiously.  She was shocked at the thought of rewriting a girl’s personality to make her more obedient, but she was also shocked at how casually Jasmine treated her bodyguard’s castration.  A modern medical facility could probably reverse the treatment and force-grow him a new pair of testicles, yet somehow she doubted that such treatments would ever be permitted in the Theocracy.  Poor Mu’Tamid would probably wind up executed once his usefulness had come to an end, unless the Theocracy had a retirement program for old Eunuchs.

“I am not without sympathy for you,” she said, finally.  “However, I need to make a decision regarding your...future and I need you to tell me what you know before I can make any decision.  What do you know about the Theocracy’s plans?”

Jasmine hesitated, her head tilting forward in silent pleading.  Kat wasn't unmoved, but she kept her face grave and expressionless.  It helped that she’d never been particularly interested in women, instead of men; Jasmine’s unspoken seduction, however she chose to describe it, couldn't really affect her.  

“My brother is ambitious,” Jasmine said, finally.  “He’s my full brother, you see; that’s why he’s giving me away to his best friend, rather that offer me to one of the powerful men on Abdullah.”  She laughed, rather shakily.  “Anyone who marries me who happens to have noble blood will have a shot at becoming the next Caliph.  His friend doesn't have a single drop of noble blood in him.  Can’t beat one of the blood royal, after all.”

She stroked her long dark hair.  “His father was content to build up and wait for a clear moment to attack and invade the Commonwealth,” she added.  “My brother thinks that that moment has come.  Ever since he took the throne, he’s been preparing for a sneak attack on the Commonwealth, one that he hopes will crush you in a single opening campaign.”

Kat winced.  “And how do you know about it?”

Jasmine grinned, with a wink that invited Kat to share the joke.  “My brother loves to boast and so he boasts to me,” she said.  “I listened and said little.  Later, I accessed his private computers and learned about the attack plans.  I thought that they would provide enough of a bargaining chip to ensure that I could stay on Avalon, away from the Theocracy.”

“Maybe they will,” Kat said, finally.  “The Faithful Companion was after you personally, wasn't it?”

“Yes,” Jasmine said, seriously.  Her face paled for a second, her eyes widening somehow.  “They would have been punished if they’d killed me, even at the cost of me defecting to the Commonwealth.  Your fire gave them the excuse they needed to break off.”

“Maybe,” Kat said.  She believed Jasmine...but anyone who had grown up in a snakepit like Abdullah, with her sex forcing her into a subordinate position despite her lofty birth, would be a skilled liar and dissembler.  And then there was the possibility that Jasmine was an unknowing part of her brother’s plan.  “I will take you to Cadiz.”

Jasmine paled, again.  “My brother has servants on Cadiz,” she said.  “They’ll take me or kill me or...”

“You will be under armed guard,” Kat reassured her.  “You’ll be on a secure station rather than on the ground – and I think you’ll be transferred into the Commonwealth sooner rather than later.  I need to take you there, however, in order to report to my superiors.”

She held up a hand before Jasmine could say anything.  “For the moment, you will remain on my ship,” she added.  “I’ll arrange for cabin space for you and your companions, but you may have to share a cabin...”

“But I can't,” Jasmine protested.  “I can’t sleep with someone else in the room.”

“Cabin,” Kat corrected, pedantically.  “This ship does not have...quarters sufficient for one of your exulted birth.  I imagine that you will find better lodgings on Cadiz.”

She called the Marines into the room and issued orders.  A female Marine would be assigned to stay with Jasmine, at least until the Princess was settled into the starship and familiar with the low-level computer interfaces provided for visitors.  Jasmine would probably find the starship cramped compared to her palace on Abdullah, but she would have to learn to endure.  Kat felt an odd moment of wry sympathy.  She’d had the same reaction when she’d entered Piker’s Peak for the first time and discovered that the quarters for junior recruits were tiny – and she was expected to share with boys!

As soon as the Princess had departed, with the hatch closed behind her, Kat keyed her intercom.  “All senior staff, report to my cabin,” she ordered.  “Now.”

She’d taken the precaution of turning the pickups in the room on, allowing her to record the entire conversation.  It took only a few minutes to replay it for her senior officers, even the parts that showed her in a bad light.  Kat guessed, from some of their expressions, that it was easier to sympathise with Jasmine before one had actually met her.  Jasmine was young, clearly out of her depth and scared to death, yet she would never admit it, or that she was a supplicant in need of help desperately.

And her mere presence was a horrible ghastly mess.

“Interesting,” Bone said, finally.  Kat wondered, just for a second, if her former lover was attracted to the princess.  How could he not find her attractive?  “The question is simple; is she really who she claims to be?”

Kat blinked.  That had, quite honestly, never occurred to her.

“I can’t tell you if she is the genuine sister of the Caliph,” Doctor Katy Braham said, flatly.  “What I can tell you is that she comes from a very wealthy and powerful family.  She’s been enhanced – improved strength, brain-activity and anti-aging treatments – all banned in the Theocracy and certainly unavailable to anyone without vast amounts of cash and political clout.  Her genetics have actually been improved as well, although most of it is hackwork – which does suggest a Theocratic origin, as the Theocracy forbids research into genetic enhancement.  Her body” – she shrugged – “was encoded into her genes.  She will look as stunning as she does for at least another forty years, barring accidents.  There will be no problem with bearing children and they should all grow up to be healthy.”

She hesitated.  “I ran a DNA scan and compared it to the files we do have on the original UN-backed settlement program,” she said, after a moment.  “There are a hundred other explanations, but there is a distant link between her and the first settlers.  The records at Cadiz or Avalon should be able to shed more light on the issue – or disprove it.”

Bone snorted.  “Assuming she is real, then, there are three possibilities,” he said.  “One; she intends to help us and has brought genuine invasion plans.  Two; she intends to help us, but her brother is using her as a pawn and the invasion plans are faked.  Three; she’s a willing ally of her brother and is actively trying to deceive us.”

“The Theocracy would hardly benefit from placing us on alert,” the XO pointed out.  “That argues that the attack plans are genuine.”

“Ah, but there may be method to their madness,” Bone added.  “Right this moment, most of the interstellar powers view the Theocracy as our problem.  We are between them and the more populated systems towards Old Earth.  The Theocracy cannot realistically expand out past the Rim of the Human Sphere and they cannot go around us without making themselves horrifically vulnerable.  Sooner or later, they have to either come to terms with us or crush us.  They probably favour the latter.

“So they send Jasmine, either as a willing conspirator or as a dupe, to us.  The Faithful Companion may have had orders to make a show of resistance, but ensure that the Princess reaches us safely.  We see the plans, decide that the only option is to strike first, and launch a pre-emptive strike.  Bingo; any potential allies see us as the aggressor, while the Theocracy launches its own invasion of our space.”

“Too complicated,” the XO said.  “Remember when we were worried that the attack on the Summer Palace might be a decapitation strike launched before the main attack fleet appeared in the system?  Even that would be far too complicated for any sane strategist.  Too much could go wrong.  This plan...if we failed to take the bait...”

“Could we afford to ignore it?”  Bone said, seriously.  “If we were told that our only chance at defeating the Theocracy was to strike first, would we take it?”

He shrugged.  “So they come up with a cunning plan and put it into action,” he concluded.  “And if it fails, they just shrug and continue preparing for war.”

“I’ve got a cunning plan,” the Chief Engineer said.  “Words last spoken by Admiral Baldrick just before the UN forces arrived for the Massacre of Tudor.  This plan is just too clever to work.”

Kat tapped the table.  “We cannot afford to dismiss it,” she said.  “How many people did she bring with her?”

“Seventy-five,” Bone said.  “Seventeen of them were the freighter’s crew; apparently they were held at gunpoint and weren’t actually willing to flee to the Commonwealth.  Thirteen others were her bodyguard, all...castrated men with weapon implants, which are – oddly enough – also forbidden in the Theocracy.  The remainder were the Princess’s maids, who were so devoted to her that they agreed to come with her into exile.  You’ll be amused to discover that they are young, beautiful, and all insistent on remaining near their mistress.”

“She’s their only island in this strange new world,” the Doctor said, slowly.  “I suspect that some of them may have been conditioned to be loyal, but it would require a more thorough examination than anything I can perform here to be sure.  The bodyguards are also a more serious problem.  They’re almost as enhanced as the Marines and some of the tech I simply don’t recognise at all.”

“And they may have been conditioned to be loyal to the Caliph,” Bone added.  “Dragon’s Teeth, just waiting for their chance to turn on us.”

“We will head back to Cadiz at once,” Kat said, firmly.  “We’ll tow the freighter to an isolated spot, open a gateway and shove her back into normal space.  The investigating team can come out here and recover her once they have finished questioning the princess.  The Admiral...”

She scowled.  The Admiral would no doubt be delighted to have another high-class visitor to his endless round of parties and self-indulgence – despite nearly losing his wife and two of his sons – but she doubted that he would be quick to rush to the alert, let alone inform Avalon.  It might be time to send a second message to her father...and then it struck her that she didn't have to do anything underhand, not this time.  Regulations would cover her rear end.

“If the Faithful Companion comes back with friends, we will avoid engagement,” she concluded.  “Thank you, all of you.”

The meeting ended as the senior officers filed out of her cabin.  Kat frowned, considering Jasmine’s frozen holographic image, and the effect she had on men.  Her crew had been affected, and there was going to be trouble once the media caught sight of her.  The perfect princess...young, foreign, and dreadfully glamorous.  They’d love her on sight.  And there would be trouble once her crew realised that the princess had brought a swarm of beautiful female servants onboard...

Shaking her head, she headed for the bridge.  It was time to start moving, fast.

God alone knew how much time they had left.

Chapter Twenty-Five

“I must say, Captain, that this is a very...disquieting report.”

Kat stood at attention in the Admiral’s office, on Cadiz.  The flight back to Cadiz had been nightmarish – she’d ordered Lightning to alter course at the first sniff of a possible contact, even in hyperspace – and her first report hadn’t been believed when she’d forwarded it to the Admiral.  He’d demanded confirmation and, when Kat had provided it, ordered her down to the planet’s surface for a private discussion.  For someone who owed Kat the lives of his wife and two of his sons, he wasn’t expressing much gratitude.  The nasty part of Kat’s mind wondered if he’d been hoping to be rid of his wife.  It was a sentiment she could understand, if not condone.

“Yes, Admiral,” she said, flatly.  “I believed that I should bring the Princess back to Cadiz as soon as possible.”

“Of course, of course,” the Admiral agreed.  He looked back down at the report.  Kat had carefully listed everything from the first distress call to the meeting with Jasmine – and the brief and violent confrontation with the Faithful Companion.  Firing on a Theocracy vessel, whatever the provocation, was a serious matter, yet the Admiral seemed to have almost overlooked it in the light of the defector’s identity.  “I cannot fault your judgement.”

He looked up, suddenly.  “And how is the Princess?”

Kat hesitated.  Jasmine had a sense of entitlement that made Kat’s mother look like a piker.  The female Marine Kat had assigned to look after her – and, more covertly, keep an eye on her – had been kept busy running errands, or fielding requests for foods and supplies that were hardly part of the Navy’s standard cuisine.  Her maids had been almost as bad, occupying a handful of cabins and shying away from any male crewmen, while the bodyguards – confined to a sealed hold – had been complaining loudly about not being able to protect their mistress.  Naval regulations forbade armed guests, as a general rule, and Kat had been on solid ground when she’d confined them to the hold.  It hadn’t pleased them that the ultimate fate of their Princess had passed out of their hands.

And yet, under the bluster and haughty disdain, Kat had sensed a very real fear underlying Jasmine’s words.  If half of her claims had been true – and, knowing the Theocracy, Kat was prepared to believe them – she had chosen to flee and ensure that the Theocracy’s next target received sufficient warning to prepare for the coming invasion.  If the Admiral chose to act now, the 6th Fleet could start powering up and preparing for war – or he could hold a grand party for the ship commanders while their subordinates actually did their jobs.  Not all of the 6th fleet commanders were incompetent, but the ones who were good at their jobs were few and far between.  Kat had the uncomfortable feeling that Cadiz was going to be the next day that lived in infamy, along with Albion, Terra Nova, San Francisco, New York and Pearl Harbour, the latest entry in a long history of surprise attacks.  And the Admiral didn’t seem to care about the danger.

“She’s desperate,” Kat said, finally.  She didn’t like Jasmine, damn it.  “She wants safety for herself and her maids and she dragged her bodyguards and the ship’s crew across the border to save herself from a terrible fate.  I think she believes what she’s saying.  The Theocracy is in the final stages of preparing an attack against the Commonwealth and we have to get ready to meet it now, before they crush us in their opening blow.”

“There is no independent confirmation of her report,” the Admiral said, mildly.  “My analysts have been pouring over them ever since you returned and uploaded them to the secure databases.  They look authentic, but how could we be sure?”

“I don’t think that we can take the chance,” Kat countered.  Her heart was sinking.  The Admiral wasn’t going to listen, either to her or to Jasmine.  “What if the plans are real?”

“And what if the Theocracy is trying to provoke us into making the first move?”  The Admiral asked, coldly.  “My analysts are divided on the subject.  Some of them think that the attack plans are genuine, but only theoretical – just like the plans we have for military operations against our neighbours.  Others think that the Princess faked them herself with the intention of convincing us to put her on the Theocracy’s throne, after we won the war.”

“Assuming we did win the war,” Kat said, dryly.  She had to give the Admiral’s theorists credit; she’d never considered that possibility.  But then, the Theocracy’s general population would never allow a woman to rule over them, or they’d assume that there was a man in the background, pulling the woman’s strings.  “Besides, she is a complete innocent when it comes to military matters.  She wouldn’t know how to begin forging attack plans.”

“She could be playing dumb,” the Admiral said.  “Looking like an idiot can be a remarkably effective ploy from time to time.”

Kat bit down the comment that came to mind.  “Admiral, with all due respect, we cannot afford to take the chance of assuming that the attack plans are faked,” she said.  “We need to put the fleet on alert.”

The Admiral quirked one eyebrow at her.  “I was under the impression that I commanded 6th Fleet,” he said, firmly.  “It is my belief that we must avoid desperate measures that may be considered provocative by the Theocracy…”

“Tell me,” Kat said, too angry to show proper respect, “exactly what concern is it of the Theocracy’s if we mobilise within the Cadiz System?  This space is ours and it is light-years away from the borderline.  They have little right to complain if we prepare to resist an attack.”

”A fleet ready for defence is also one ready for attack,” the Admiral said.  He leaned forward, his eyes meeting Kat’s firmly.  “I am not going to allow a war to start on my watch.”

“Admiral…that choice isn’t in your hands,” Kat said.  “It only takes one side to decide to have a war.  The Theocracy could use the brief confrontation with the Faithful Companion as an excuse to launch an invasion, claiming that we are the ones intent on war.”

“A poorly handled action,” the Admiral said, coldly.  “You should have avoided damaging their ship.  A warning shot would have sufficed.”

“A warning shot would have given them more time to target the freighter,” Kat said, as mildly as she could.  It wasn’t very mild at all.  “I needed to act fast.”

“Quite,” the Admiral agreed.  He paused.  “Under the circumstances, I am ordering a general blackout on the news of the Princess’s arrival in our space.  You and your crew are ordered not to inform anyone about her presence until I can make the final decision about her status within the Commonwealth.”

Kat fought to hold back a smile.  “Admiral, I cannot obey that order,” she said.  “Royal Avalon Navy regulations clearly state that any contact with a high-ranking defector is to be reported at once to ONI and Navy HQ on Avalon.  I transmitted a report back as soon as we returned to Cadiz.”

The Admiral stared at her.  “Do you know what you’ve done?”  He demanded.  “You’ve just put the trigger for the war in the hands of the factions that want to start the war!”

“I cannot simply ignore regulations because they may lead to political embarrassment,” Kat said, carefully.  “I had to report her presence on my ship.”

For a moment, she thought that the Admiral would have a heart attack on the spot.  Somehow, he controlled himself and calmed down, probably with the aid of specialised implants.  He was quite wealthy, after all, and could afford the best.  And his wife would have ensured that her meal ticket, her entry into High Society, remained alive.  She was nothing without him.

“You and your crew will remain on your ship,” the Admiral said, finally.  “Transfer the Princess and her escorts to the orbital station – we can at least try and prevent knowledge of her presence spreading here.  After that…”

His eyes narrowed.  “Don’t you ever put me in such a position ever again,” he said, sharply.  “One bad report from me and your career will come to a screeching halt.”

“Yes, sir,” Kat said.  He might have been right, even with her father’s influence in the background trying to save her career.  If he was inclined to help…in one sense, the Admiral was right.  Jasmine’s arrival was going to be a political shit-storm and her father would find himself in the middle of it.  

“Now get out of my sight,” the Admiral snapped.  “Go!”

Kat rose to her feet, saluted, and left, keeping her thoughts to herself.  The Admiral wasn’t going to warn 6th Fleet, even if the rest of the Commonwealth went on alert.  None of the commanders and crews would even know about the threatened attack until it was far too late.  She wondered, angrily, whose side the Admiral was actually on…theirs, or the Theocracy’s?  He could hardly have done a better job of weakening 6th Fleet.

But what could she do about it?

***
No one would have taken Vanessa – she’d long since lost her family name, the better to protect her uninvolved relatives – for an insurgent, let alone an insurgent leader.  She was tall and slim, with long honey-brown hair and a trim figure, mostly hidden behind shapeless overalls of the type worn by a harmless day labourer.  An alert observer might have noticed that she carried herself with a confidence unknown to many other women on Cadiz, without the need for a protector in any shape or form.  The presence of concealed weapons – a gun, a knife and a poison needle – were invisible to anything other than a determined strip search.

Vanessa had grown up in the poorest part of New Barcelona, permanently under her mother’s eye.  She had been twelve, enjoying her last year of freedom before she became a virtual prisoner in her own house, when there had been a demonstration in the nearby park.  It had turned violent and Vanessa’s father, both brothers and her mother had been killed by the occupational forces.  The brief enquiry said that it was an accident; Vanessa, who had seen everything through a haze of horror, knew that it was murder.  Before she became a woman, before her blood had started to flow, Vanessa had become an insurgent.  The nearby cell of resistance fighters had, at first, used her to carry messages, but they’d found other uses for her soon enough.  Vanessa was attractive enough to attract attention from the occupation forces, attention that she rapidly learned how to exploit and use in the name of freedom.  Ten years after her parents had died, she was the cell’s leader, a woman with a fearsome and almost unique reputation…and the effective leader of over a third of the resistance.  

It wasn’t an easy role for anyone, particularly a woman.  She had had to learn on the job, losing men and priceless equipment as the struggle grew worse.  A brief few months in a holding camp – she’d been rounded up in a swoop, without the enemy soldiers knowing who and what she was – had allowed her to learn from true masters.  And, more importantly, she’d made contact with the interstellar resistance to the Commonwealth.  Cadiz was not alone in the struggle, she’d been told; there were people who could and would help her world, in exchange for their help in return.  Vanessa was old enough to know that nothing came for free, and anything that looked too good to be true probably was, but there was no other choice.  The bargain had been rapidly sealed and new weapons and supplies had begun to flow to the insurgent cells.

She scowled as she strode into the darkened building.  The meeting couldn’t be held anywhere outside the city – the occupiers had grown far more paranoid about road traffic over the last few months – but holding it on her own ground was out of the question.  She pushed her way through the semi-darkness, heading towards a patch of light in the distance, right at the other end of a long-empty warehouse.  Even if local businesses had been prepared to invest in renovating the warehouse, they’d never dare invest anywhere so close to the Central Palace, the building where the Admiral parked his fat ass.  She could hear water dripping in the distance as she pushed open the door and stepped into the lighted office.  A blaze of candles greeted her, providing flickering illumination that wouldn’t be detectable by any snooping drone.  It had taken years to learn their capabilities – and a moment’s carelessness could lead to the destruction of an entire cell of insurgents – but it had been worthwhile.  There was a way to avoid almost any kind of surveillance, once it had been identified.

Crisco – probably an assumed name, she knew – rose to his feet as she entered, a gesture of respect that never failed to annoy her.  He wouldn’t have done it for a man.  She’d never been able to place his vaguely-Latin features, or identify him as anything other than a mystery.  It was good, in a way – what she didn’t know, she couldn’t tell – yet it irritated her.  What was Crisco’s own agenda?

“Pleased to meet you again,” Crisco said.  Vanessa doubted it.  The call had come too quickly, too urgently, for this to be anything other than a significant crisis.  What had happened to cause it?  She knew of nothing since the attack on the Summer Palace, an attack that hadn’t involved her and her group.  Her only contribution had been watching the disaster unfold on television.  “My backers insisted that I speak to you at once.”

Vanessa nodded as she took the other seat.  It was a cosy little office, mocking the enemy even as it opened up new dangers for the resistance.  If all of the insurgent leaders gathered in one spot – and they were discovered by the security forces - the results would be disastrous, decapitating the entire resistance.  She had no idea how many other groups were being supported by Crisco and his friends, but she suspected that he had his finger in many pies.

“They were deeply concerned about the attack on the Summer Palace,” Crisco continued, his voice darkening.  “If the attack had succeeded in killing Admiral Williams…well, we could hardly expect his successor to be so incompetent.  The Marine General is a tough bastard, well known to us from different worlds; he would not have screwed up like Williams has been doing for the last few years.”

“My group was not involved in the attack,” Vanessa said, truthfully.  “I would have advised against it, had I known that it was being planned.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Crisco agreed.  “You have the longest record of any insurgent leader on the planet.”  His gaze sharpened for a moment.  “Nonetheless, the attack has forced my backers to consider other possibilities for liberating Cadiz from the Commonwealth.  The new regime of shipping inspections, despite complaints from interstellar corporations and other interstellar powers, has been alarmingly effective in cutting our more…traditional lines of supply.  So far, they have not captured anything significant, but it is only a matter of time before they get lucky.”

Vanessa was well-schooled in controlling her face – ten years as an insurgent had taught her to lie convincingly – but she couldn’t hold back a brief flicker of despair.  The supply of off-world weapons was the only thing keeping the insurgency from falling apart – well, that and the constant stream of atrocities committed by the security forces.  There was no shortage of young men willing to carry a gun and go out and get killed for the liberation of Cadiz, but they needed the heavier weapons and equipment to make an impact.

“That’s bad news,” she said, finally.  It was an understatement.  “We need those supplies.”

“Luckily, there is another possibility,” Crisco continued.  “My backers have been considering your ultimate problem.  You can win battles – you can kill soldiers or take territory – but you can never win the war.  The Commonwealth controls the high orbitals, allowing them to move troops in to retake ground you hold or simply bombard you into submission from high overhead.  You simply don’t have any way of defeating them permanently as long as they remain over your heads.

“We have obtained a fleet,” he added.  “We believe that we can push the Commonwealth out of the system altogether.”

Vanessa blinked.  “A fleet?”

“A fleet,” Crisco said.  “In three months, assuming that all goes to plan, we will attack the Commonwealth forces in orbit and destroy them – or force them to retreat.  And then you and your fellows will have the perfect opportunity to take control of the planet’s surface.”

“That sounds…remarkable,” Vanessa said.  It was far too good to be true.  “And what would you want in return?”

“Only the use of your world as a base for striking against other occupied worlds,” Crisco assured her.  “Frankly, you have little that we want, although we would be keen to recruit from your population – if you have young men who want more fighting in their lives.”

Vanessa considered it.  “And how do you know that the Commonwealth wouldn’t return?”

“Cadiz is an isolated world and there was a huge debate back on Avalon about invading the system in the first place,” Crisco said.  “The general public is sick of watching their young men killed in an endless insurgency.  One big defeat, one bloody nose that cannot be concealed from the media, and their support for the war would crumble.  The public would demand peace and the Assembly would follow their line.”

“And we would be free,” Vanessa said.  

“Just stay quiet for the moment,” Crisco advised.  “Help is on the way.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

It had always struck Ambassador Gavin Hastings as odd that, for a planet of religious fundamentalists, Abdullah was a surprisingly beautiful city.  It had been built along the coast from scratch – rather than being assembled from prefabricated containers like so many other first settlements – and generations of religious and political leaders had spent wisely in building monuments to the greater glory of God.  The rising sun cast its light over domes and minarets, spires and steeples, reflecting light off golden monuments and over the city.  It seemed to blaze with light at times, hiding an ugly reality.  Abdullah’s population was enormous for such a young world, with the young being indoctrinated into the faith and being sent off to conquer and absorb other worlds.  It was impossible to escape the feeling that the Theocracy was a cancer slowly spreading through the galaxy, moving with a slow ponderous inevitability that would not be denied.

He sucked in his breath as the aircar turned and flew towards the Royal Palace, glimmering in the sunlight.  It was larger than Camelot Palace, easily the largest palace in the Human Sphere, serving as both the centre of government and residence of the Caliph of the Theocracy.  The Caliph was an absolute ruler in the truest possible sense and he kept his servants under his thumb, trusting them to support him – as the ultimate guarantee of their own positions – but watching them carefully, in case any had delusions of grandeur.  Behind the palace, there was a blocky building with only one entrance, a direct link to the Palace itself.  It was the harem, serving as the home of the wives of the Caliph – at last count, over two hundred different girls, of all shapes and sizes – and the first home of the royal children.  The Princes would receive training in government, military skills and skulduggery; the Princesses, if they were lucky, would receive a basic education before being parcelled off to a courtier the Caliph wanted to reward, or punish.  The Theocracy might regard women as second-class citizens, but woe betide the man who failed to take good care of a Royal Princess, or fail to meet her expectations.  Gavin had heard that Hindu Princes had once given White Elephants – which were sacred and needed expensive care – to nobles he wished to cripple.  The Caliph’s had learned the trick and modified it to suit themselves.

Life was cheap on Abdullah.  The planet’s citizens had few entertainments and little to do, but pray and breed.  Despite the Theocracy’s size, the average citizen lived on poverty rations, distributed by the Clerics to ensure that they remained dependent – and breeding.  A permanently-expanding population provided the impetus for further expansion, even if they had to start fighting multi-system political entities.  The network of Clerics, religious schools and police forces ensured that the teeming slums didn't become breeding grounds for dissatisfaction, for the Caliphs had mastered a very old and difficult trick.  It was possible for someone to rise from the slums and become a great lord, through the military or the clerical service or even as a religious authority.  The aristocratic attitude that blood was supreme had never been a feature of Abdullah’s religion, at least outside the Caliph and his immediate family.  Indeed, the current Caliph could claim justly to have commoner blood in his veins.

But perhaps that wasn't too surprising, Gavin reflected, as the aircar passed through the security screen and settled on the landing pad.  Abdullah – the original Abdullah – had lived during the Wreaker War, convinced that it was his destiny to transform Islam and integrate it with Christianity and Judaism.  He’d started preaching such radical ideas as tolerance, harmonious multiculturalism and an acceptance of differences between religious sects.  Perversely, the series of catastrophes the Middle East had suffered made it easier for his message to catch on.  By the time he’d been assassinated, he had had millions of followers, a following that rapidly became an all-consuming army.  The UN had eventually offered to ship his followers to a colony world – and, out of ignorance or malice, included a few thousand refugees from sects that had bitterly resisted the reformers.  Abdullah would have cried if he’d lived to see what had become of his dream.  A cosmopolitan vision of people living in harmony had become a monster intent on forcing its religion on the rest of the universe, at gunpoint if necessary.  And as for its treatment of women...

Gavin allowed the guards to pat him down, before escorting him through the golden doors and into the palace itself.  Everything about the Royal Palace was larger than life, leaving him feeling permanently dwarfed, as if the Palace had been constructed for giants.  Inside, the designers had shown surprising taste, combining precious metals from a hundred different worlds into a mosaic of Abdullah himself, long before he’d been assassinated.  Thousands of supplicants, all waiting in the hope that the Caliph would be pleased to receive them for a brief meeting, looked on in envy as he was escorted through a second pair of doors, into the Caliph’s throne room.  Gavin felt his heart twisting inside his chest.  The Caliph had always kept him waiting before, which meant that this meeting had to be urgent.  Was it the dreaded declaration of war...for a culture that proclaimed that any means were acceptable in wartime, the Theocracy was oddly careful to ensure that there was always a legal declaration of war.  It wasn't one of their more endearing traits.

The Caliph himself was surprisingly young, barely twenty-one years of age.  But that too wasn't surprising.  The Theocracy believed that success was a sign of God’s favour – and the reigning Caliph normally took the throne by successfully assassinating his father, and then having his brothers butchered.  As far as Gavin knew, the Princesses were spared...but then they would never have expected to wield power in the Theocracy anyway.  The Caliph, the young man who held the power of life and death over seventeen star systems and over forty billion human beings, looked angry.  His dark face was twisted with rage.

Gavin went down on one knee.  “Most Honoured Caliph,” he said, slowly and clearly, “I thank you for granting me this audience.”

At first, going down on one knee had seemed humiliating.  After two years in the Theocracy, watching as the locals performed more humiliating rituals before lesser lords and commanders, it seemed almost normal.  Besides, the few meetings he’d had with the Caliph had been in private, with only a handful of witnesses, all thoroughly loyal to the young ruler.  There had been no one there to bear witness to his lack of respect and whisper it to those who might see it as a sign of royal weakness.

“You may rise,” the Caliph said, in Standard.  Despite the UN’s best efforts, Abdullah was one of the few places where Standard-speakers were rare.  It wouldn’t do to have the locals being able to listen to the handful of foreigners permitted into the Theocracy every year.  They might have become discontented with their lot.  “There has been an...incident along the border between my realm and the Commonwealth.”

Gavin frowned, feeling cold ice trickling down his spine.  The border was poorly defined, if only because of the random shifts in hyperspace.  It was quite possible for two ships to accuse each other of trespassing, with both commanders being legally in the right.  

“Most Noble Caliph,” he said, carefully, “might I ask you to expound upon this...incident?”

The Caliph frowned.  “My own sister was treacherously seduced into flying from this place and running for the Commonwealth,” he said.  “I sent a ship to rescue her from the vile traitors who seduced her, but the ship was intercepted by a Commonwealth warship, which interfered in the pursuit.  My ship was badly damaged and was forced to withdraw, leaving my sister in your hands.”

Gavin hesitated.  The Theocracy had only one fate for a girl who had disgraced her family’s honour – death.  If the Caliph’s sister had been seduced – and that would be tricky, given how the Princesses were kept secluded until they were married off – it would be a planetary scandal.  Hundreds of lesser lords would be wondering if the young Caliph was beginning to lose his grip on power; after all, if he couldn't control his own sister...

And she would be his sister.  Not a half-sister, like the half-brothers he’d had put to death, but a woman from the same mother as himself.  Someone with such a pedigree would be saved for a remarkably important marriage alliance, not handed out to any random fellow.  Losing her would have to throw a spanner in the works, along with many other problems...

“The traitors who seduced her have long been planning to start a war between my realm and your own,” the Caliph continued.  “By means of faked documents, they intend to drive a wedge into our friendship and send us careening down a path towards war.”

Gavin frowned.  One thing he was sure of was that the Caliph was considering war, sooner rather than later.  He needed military success to ensure that his grip on power wasn't challenged – and the Commonwealth was his only real target.  But how much of his story was true?  Was it a genuine flight from danger, a decoy used to cause confusion, or something worse?

“I must demand that my sister be returned to my realm at once,” the Caliph said.  “If she is not returned, I must warn you that the most severe consequences will be forthcoming.  Go now and inform your government of my demands.  Tell them the choice is theirs, but they must make it soon.”

Gavin bowed and departed, knowing that time would be running out.  He had to warn the Commonwealth before it was too late.  The StarCom network would carry his message instantly, but would it be heeded?  And how much of the Caliph’s tale was actually true?

He looked down at the city as the aircar headed back to the embassy, knowing what lay beneath the glittering buildings.  The Theocracy would never be satisfied.  It would keep expanding until all of humanity lay under its rule.  And the Commonwealth was the next in line.

It might be time to start making peace with himself.

***
“Do you think he believed me?”

Caliph Saladin, formerly Prince Khalid before he had assassinated his father and claimed his throne, smiled as his oldest friend emerged from the secret booth behind the Peacock Throne.  Zulfaqar had been his companion since childhood, a young orphan boy of commoner stock, bought by his father’s servants as a playmate for his latest boy-child.  It was forbidden to touch one of the Blood Royal and Zulfaqar had paid the price for the young Khalid’s pranks, something that had taught his nominal master that others paid the price for his mistakes and misdeeds. Khalid had learned to behave – or at least to keep his scheming well hidden – until the day he’d poisoned his father and assumed the throne.  His first act had been to murder all of his half-brothers, who might have tried to unseat him from the throne.  His second act had been to make his oldest friend Grand Vizier.

It was a neat solution to a problem that had plagued humanity since the dawn of time.  How could one group monopolise the reins of power while keeping the other groups down permanently, knowing that the other groups would eventually rebel against the glass ceiling keeping them from real power?  The Theocracy had solved the problem by allowing talented commoners to join the nobility – after all, success was a sign of God’s favour.  There was no shame in having a commoner in the family tree.

“I think he isn't one of your friends,” Zulfaqar said.  He was the only one permitted to avoid flattery when they were alone.  “I think he may not believe your story.”

The Caliph scowled.  Who would have thought that his sister would have been able to flee?  It should have been impossible.  A dutiful sister would have obeyed her brother and married the man he had selected as a good match for her, binding another family to the Peacock Throne.  Instead, she had run, somehow stealing a freighter and using it to escape...and to the Commonwealth, of all places.  And how in the billions of names of God had she managed to download copies of the attack plans?

It was a complete disaster, all the more so because he'd had to purge the security section just to ensure that word didn't leak out to the lesser lords.  Any hint of weakness could prove fatal, particularly if it threatened the Theocracy itself.  Instead of focusing their energy on overcoming the Confederation, they would consider turning against him instead – and mass purges might result in a general revolt.  There were limits to absolute power, limits Saladin hadn't recognised until he’d assumed the throne.  A Caliph needed to be surrounded by loyalists to keep his power secure.  Purging the loyalists could backfire...Caliphs had been assassinated by those they’d trusted before, often just before or after a purge.

“They may not believe her,” the Caliph said.  “She’s a woman, after all, not one of my most trusted Generals.”

The thought would have made him smile, if he hadn’t been staring at possible disaster.  No one could be completely trusted in the Theocracy, at least while they were living.  There was a black joke floating around that said that promotion to completely trusted was granted only after death.  And he'd never worried about his sister and half-sisters before; after all, they were only women.  The young Prince he’d been had had a small harem of his own – all sterile, and conditioned to be loyal and loving – since he’d matured.  It hadn't left him with a very positive view of female intelligence.

“The Commonwealth prides itself on putting women in important positions,” Zulfaqar reminded him.  “They will not dismiss her words because she is a woman.”

“True,” the Caliph agreed.  There were lesser lords who would execute a man for pointing out unwelcome truths, but he’d already learned that that merely ensured that people were driving to lie out of desperation.  A Caliph couldn't afford to start mistaking wishful thinking for reality, or he might find himself assassinated by a threat his advisors had been too scared to tell him about.  “And that means...do we attack now?”

At his command, a hologram flickered into existence in the chamber.  Admiral Junayd looked as calm and composed as ever, even though he’d ridden a spy ship into Commonwealth territory and escaped with his life.  He was light years from Abdullah, assembling the main strike force in orbit around a dying star; an alarming amount of bandwidth was being diverted to allow even a rudimentary two-way conversation.  It would have been impossible in the Commonwealth – two StarCom units orbiting the same planet tended to interfere with each other, permanently limiting the bandwidth – but in the Theocracy vast resources could be diverted, if the Caliph so willed.

“Admiral,” he said.  “If we attack now, what are the chances of success?”

There was a long pause, an irritating time delay caused by the StarCom as the message raced to the Admiral and his reply came back.

“Limited,” the Admiral said, finally.  “We can take out the Commonwealth 6th Fleet – the sooner the better, as they will soon realise just how far they’ve allowed their defences to erode – but we would be unable to mount any of the follow-up strikes we had planned.  The units that we earmarked for those strikes have not yet arrived at the staging posts, let alone worked up.”

The Caliph nodded, grimly.  “And if we launched the attack now?”

“They would have time to prepare to face us,” the Admiral warned.  “We would certainly liberate Cadiz and maybe two or three of their other core worlds, but after that they would have time and space to mount a counter attack.  The operatives we intended to insert into their space to mount divisionary attacks are not in place, so they would have time to secure their position before it was too late.  We would be looking at years of warfare, with no guarantee of ultimate success.”

“Unfortunate,” the Caliph said.  The worst of all worlds; even if the Commonwealth didn't believe his sister, they would certainly take a careful look at their own defences.  It wouldn’t take long for them to remove Admiral Williams – who appeared to have obtained his post through their incomprehensible political system – and replace him with someone who actually knew to take their trousers down before going for a shit.  And then Cadiz would be a much harder nut to crack.  “How long would it take before we could mount the full offensive?”

“One month at the very least,” the Admiral said.  “Probably two, but once that month is over we should be able to launch the offensive at forty-eight hours notice.  Depending on their reaction to your sister, we can either wait until we are ready to move or launch while they’re still scrambling to defend themselves.”

The Caliph said nothing, thinking hard.  He could command and the Admiral would obey – unless he wanted a bullet in the back of the neck – and yet..failure would ensure that one of his lords would try a coup.  If there was a military disaster...no amount of shifting the blame downwards would save his throne.  And yet, if news leaked out about his sister’s defection...

“Prepare to launch the attack as soon as possible,” he ordered.  “Expedite your preparations as much as possible.  We can leave Cadiz lightly-garrisoned if we need to launch offences further into the Commonwealth – it isn’t as if they have any friends there.”

“Yes, Your Supremacy,” the Admiral said.  “God will grant us victory.”

“God helps those who help themselves,” the Caliph said.  He smiled.  “And may He smile upon our efforts.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

It was very quiet in the underground bunker.

“If we are to believe the Princess Jasmine,” the King said, finally, “we could be at war within the next two months.”

“Or sooner,” Prime Minster Bruno Lombardi pointed out.  “The incident with the Faithful Companion could easily be treated as an act of war.”

One of the other councillors snorted.  “Firing on an enemy vessel engaged in hostile acts within our territory is an act of war?”

“There’s a complicated legal issue here,” Grand Admiral Constance Cinnabar admitted.  “The Theocracy has never accepted the treaties that claim that the areas of hyperspace that correspond to locations within a particular political unit’s space are owned by that political unit.  Hyperspace’s very nature makes it tricky to point to a particular area and say that it, beyond a doubt, belongs to us, or to them.  They’re not alone in claiming that hyperspace is neutral territory either.”

“But they raise a terrible fuss every time an independent freighter wanders a few meters over the borderline,” Lucas Falcone said, sardonically.  “We have hundreds of precedents for a stiff view of the entire issue.  They object – we point to the cases where their ships have enforced the border in hyperspace and tell them to accept it.”

“Except for the minor issue that the freighter in question was, probably, stolen and carried one of their Royal Family,” Bruno said.  He shook his head in disbelief.  The whole episode read like something out of a spy thriller.  “This is a little more serious than a tramp freighter crossing their border.”

“She has asked for asylum,” the King said, mildly.  “Given what fate awaits her if she returns, can we give her back to her brother without condoning her treatment – and that of every other uppity woman in the Theocracy?”

Constance nodded in agreement.  “Legally, I think we would have to return the freighter itself, along with any members of the crew who didn’t want to defect,” she said.  “It’s stolen property, after all.  But there is a wide range of precedents for keeping defectors, no matter how wealthy or powerful.  They go all the way back to Old Earth.”

“The freighter isn't worth more than a few hundred thousand pounds,” Lucas Falcone said.  He could have bought an entire fleet of freighters out of pocket change.  “They’re not angry because of the freighter, they’re angry because the Caliph’s sister has fled and disgraced his family.  If it gets out on their side of the border, the Caliph will become a laughing stock.”

“Which isn't really our problem,” the King pointed out.  “Besides, if there should happen to be a power struggle on Abdullah, it will buy us some time to keep building up the defences and fix all the problems with 6th Fleet...”

“Except for the minor detail that whoever becomes Caliph will want to wash away the humiliation in blood,” Constance said.  “ONI’s social experts weren't very hopeful.  The Caliph maintains his position by being the most bloody-minded bastard on the planet, the most willing to resort to extreme violence to meet his ends.  If the current Caliph stays in control, he will want to revenge himself on us; his successor, if there is a successor, will want to prove that he cannot be humiliated in the same manner.  There will be war.  The only question is when.”

She frowned.  “ONI has been studying the plans the Princess brought with her,” she continued.  “It’s impossible to be one hundred percent certain, but their general feeling is that the plans are genuine – they’re certainly logical extrapolations of what the Theocracy would have to do if it wanted to invade our space.  One thrust will be targeted directly on Cadiz, eliminating 6th Fleet as a powerful fighting unit; a second and third thrust will be targeted on two other worlds, hammering their defences and occupying their high orbitals.  They will be used as springboards for a drive on Avalon itself, a blitzkrieg they hope will end the war before it gets too bloody.  

“For those on the occupied planets, a nightmare will descend.  The entire political and military leadership will be eliminated.  Those who have served in the military will be transferred to detention camps and used as forced labour until they are too weak to stand, at which point they will be eliminated.  They will move in settlers of their own, who will assume control of the planet; the remaining population will be permanently subordinated to them.  Those who embrace the faith will be welcome; the remainder will be ground down until they submit or die.  In short, it will be the end of the world.

“I cannot say how likely it is that they will carry out these plans on Commonwealth worlds,” she concluded.  “What I can say is that it is in line with what they have done on other worlds they have occupied; a complete replacement of the planetary leadership and forced indoctrination into the true faith.  Even if we recover and push them back out, the demographics of the occupied worlds will be forever changed.  We will be forced to engage in mass ethnic cleansing to reclaim the worlds for our own use, something that will not endear us to the rest of the galaxy.”

“In short, we’d better not lose,” the King said, finally.  “And Admiral Williams needs to be replaced, at once.”

“We don’t have a case against him yet,” Constance pointed out, grimly.  “The IG inspection team is still on its way.  His political allies could shield him until then.”

“We could always bring them in on this secret,” Bruno suggested.  “Point it out to them that the Theocracy’s claims of peaceful coexistence are lies.  Ask them to help us prepare for war.”

“They’d say that we were lying,” one of the other councillors pointed out.  “They’ve been so opposed to building up the military and preparing for war that they are unlikely to back down now.  Besides, their constituents would punish them for it at the next election cycle.”

“Assuming there is a next election cycle,” Lucas Falcone said.  “What are the odds on the Theocracy allowing full and fair elections if they win the war?”

“They won’t,” Constance agreed.  

Lucas smiled, humourlessly.  “Can we not promote Admiral Williams and assign him somewhere harmless?”  He asked, seriously.  “It would look like a reward for good service instead of a punishment.  Perhaps his political allies would find it hard to come up with convincing reasons why he should refuse a promotion.”

“He would have to be promoted to Fleet Admiral, which would mean that he would have to remain assigned to one of the fleets,” Constance said, sourly.  “We cannot simply assign him to a mining colony and tell him to go count sheep.”

The King scowled.  “And Commodore Christian?”

“Still on his way, at last report,” Constance said.  “We won’t hear anything from him until after he’s reached his base.”

“And he won’t know what’s happened with the Princess Jasmine,” the King said.  “We could be at war by the time he comes within striking distance of Cadiz.”

He shook his head.  “We have to make some hasty decisions,” he continued.  “We need confirmation of Jasmine’s warnings.  That would swing the independents and allow us to declare an official mobilisation of the RAN.  If her papers are genuine, the Theocracy is assembling its striking force near a dying star, twenty light years inside the border.  I want to send a ship across the border to investigate.”

There was a long pause.  “They would regard it as an act of war,” Bruno said, finally.

“And sending spy ships into our territory isn't an act of war?”  The King demanded, crossly.  “I think that we have to accept, right now, that we cannot appease the Theocracy – that every time we bend over backwards to accommodate them we just make ourselves look weak, ripe for the plucking.  They seem to think that our border should be open while theirs should be sealed up tight – and we’re just supposed to accept it?  It’s time we reacted and took control of events.”

He let out a long breath.  “We send a ship sneaking into their territory to check out the reports,” he said.  “If there’s an attack fleet in a place where there’s no logical reason to have an attack fleet, unless they actually do plan to attack, we have the proof we need to get the fleet mobilised and have Admiral Williams removed from Cadiz.  If there isn't, we will know not to take the Princess too seriously.”

“I think that it might be our only choice,” Constance said, finally.  The Grand Admiral ran one hand through her hair.  “At the same time, the mission will be hellishly risky.  We may be sending a ship and her crew to their deaths.”

The King nodded.  He was the supreme commander of the Royal Avalon Navy and he took a considerable interest in its up-and-coming officers.  Bruno knew that he read their files carefully before approving promotions, trying to steer capable officers into positions where their talents could do the most good.  And yet he didn't have sole control.  If he had, Admiral Williams would have been trapped on a gas giant mine, while someone competent prepared the Cadiz system for war.

“I suggest that we also send a formal war warning to our commanders on station,” Bruno said, finally.  “If we alert them to watch for trouble...”

“They may fire on any supposed threats and start the war,” another of the councillors said, quickly.  “We’d be putting the trigger for the war in the hands of our junior officers.”

“We cannot micromanage events from here,” Constance said.  “I think we need to warn them what might be going on and then rely on their judgement.”

“Agreed,” the King said.  “A formal war warning – and a single spy ship.”

“One final issue,” Bruno said.  “What do we do with the Princess Jasmine?”

The King smiled.  “Bring her here,” he said.  “If she was willing to speak to the Assembly, she might be able to swing a few votes to our side without waiting for the news from the spy ship.”

Bruno hesitated.  The King was unmarried and the Princess Jasmine was stunningly beautiful, to say nothing of exotic and utterly unconnected to the network of marriage alliances that made up High Society.  Had the King made his decision because it was the right thing to do, or had he made it because she was a beautiful girl and part of him wanted her?  Or was he just being paranoid in his old age?  Conservatives didn't like change and wars brought change, too much change.  The balance of power in the Assembly would shift, old alliances would be broken, and he might no longer be Prime Minister when the dust settled.  

“Good idea,” he said, finally.  It was a good idea.  God knew there were plenty of Assemblywomen who might be shocked out of their pacifist leanings once they heard what life was like, being a woman in the Theocracy.  And yet it bothered him.  “We can formally invite her to Avalon.”

Constance chuckled.  “I believe that we should not inform Admiral Williams of the spy ship’s mission,” she said, reluctantly.  It was a serious breach of naval etiquette to not keep a CO informed of what was going on in his sector, let alone keep him purposely ignorant.  “I think that we should send sealed orders through the StarCom network and have them assigned to the right ship without sending them through the Admiral’s office.”

“They wouldn't stay secret,” the King agreed.

“But if Admiral Williams leaked them, it would give us a chance to take a swipe at his neck,” Bruno objected.  “He isn't that stupid.”

“Stupidity isn't the issue,” the King said.  “He’s the tool of a powerful faction on Avalon.  Without their support, he’d be lucky if he was allowed to resign, rather than be dishonourably discharged from the service.  He won’t leave his patrons in the dark.  The orders remain sealed”

On that note, the meeting ended.

***
Lucas Falcone was not unduly surprised when his implant registered a private message, asking him to remain behind as the other Privy Councillors were dismissed.  As one of the wealthiest and powerful men in the Commonwealth, even though he held no formal position, his support would be essential for a successful war against the Theocracy.  Besides, Lucas controlled a number of Assemblymen, a powerful voting bloc that could be used to swing a vote one way or the other.  His support could not be casually abandoned, even by the King.

But it wouldn't have been in any case.  The King’s father had been nervous about the threat from the Theocracy, nervous enough to push through the annexation of Cadiz and nervous enough to start a major military build-up.  His son had inherited his father’s concern, even though there were times when he was more gauche than Lucas would have preferred.  And unmarried, something that always helped to steady a young man.  Lucas’s wife would have dearly loved him to have one of her daughters, even if it meant that the family would come into the limelight.  Lucas himself doubted that the King would choose a wife anytime soon.  It allowed him to hold open the promise of a royal marriage to some of the more ambitious courtiers, giving him undue influence.  How many of them would happily sell their souls for a chance to claim that they were the King’s father-in-law?

“There was an issue I wished to discuss privately with you,” the King said, without preamble.  “Your daughter has served the Commonwealth well, ever since we gave her that command.”

“Of course,” Lucas agreed.  Kat might have been the youngest and strangest of his daughters, but she had the burning desire to succeed that had driven Lucas for most of his adult life.  He’d become the CEO at a remarkably early age and then ensured that profits were doubled, without skimping on long-term planning in favour of short-term profits.  If nothing else, keeping the corporation’s leadership positions in the family helped to ensure a degree of long-term planning that had allowed them to survive major political changes, on Old Earth and Avalon itself.  “I expected nothing less.”

“I believe that she has shown a remarkable independence of mind when confronted by Admiral Williams,” the King continued.  “Alerting us to the true state of the 6th Fleet may have saved countless lives...”

“If we can fix the problems in time,” Lucas said, flatly.  He knew that it could be hard to remove an established person from a high position, no matter how incompetent that person happened to be.  There was always someone who thought that they were the most successful businessman since legends like Henry Ford, Hank Reardon or Bill Gates.  It seemed to be the same in the military.  “How long will it take to bring 6th Fleet to something reassembling battle-readiness?”

“Too long,” the King said, grimly.  “I believe that your daughter’s ship will be ideal for the scouting mission.”

Lucas winced.  He hadn't been a very good father – he was quite prepared to admit that in the privacy of his own head – but he loved his children.  Kat’s decision to run away to Piker’s Peak had shocked him, if only because a naval career meant that she might be killed in action, or through a dreadful accident.  And if she were to be sent behind enemy lines...losing her would be bad enough, but what if she were taken prisoner?  The Theocracy would have a leaver they could use to blackmail him.

But could any other Captain be trusted with the mission?  6th Fleet couldn't be entirely composed of poor commanders, playing and partying with the Admiral while their fleet rotted away in high orbit, but who could they trust to handle it?  The best choice for the mission, according to the records, might be a crony of the Admiral who would happily tell him what he’d been ordered to do, or deliberately blow the mission in order to ensure that his patron remained in place.  

“Yes,” he said, finally.  The King was running a hell of a risk.  If the relationship between Lucas and the King happened to fall apart, the balance of power would shift in unpredictable directions.  And yet...if that happened, Lucas knew that the board would demand a vote of no confidence.  He could lose his position overnight and be relegated to an isolated corporate outpost while his successor struggled to rebuild the relationship.  The founders of the corporation had build in hundreds of checks and balances.  “I am forced to agree.”

“Thank you,” the King said.  “I will pray for your daughter’s success.”

The hell of it, Lucas knew, was that prayer was the only thing he could do.  He was familiar with the problems caused by interstellar distances and how it forced CEOs like himself to rely on the local offices, but it was even worse for the military.  The war might have already begun, yet no one would know until a naval starship got within hailing distance of a StarCom and transmitted an alert,  And if the StarCom network went down, it would be weeks – months – before Avalon realised that it was at war.  The Navy would be carved up into hundreds of individual units, struggling to survive.  It wasn't a pleasant thought.

“Thank you,” Lucas said, finally.  He’d barely seen Kat as a child, even in the days following her birth.  Where had all the time gone?  He’d been busy with his work as CEO, while his children had been brought up by a succession of nannies and tutors, ensuring that they were primed for the corporate life.  And how had he failed to get to know the young woman he’d sired?  And now it might be too late.  “I have faith in my child.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

“Captain, you have a sealed communications packet relayed through the StarCom,” Roach said.  “It's marked eyes-only.”

Kat frowned.  Four days sitting in orbit around Cadiz, jumping every time a hyperspace vortex opened to disgorge another starship; four days completely wasted, knowing that time was running out.  Princess Jasmine’s security might have been passed to the Admiral’s orbital base – and she was glad to have her enhanced bodyguards off the ship – but Kat wasn't sure that she trusted the security on the base.  The Theocracy had plenty of links with the insurgents on the planet and she wasn't prepared to rule out that they might have some way to get up to the orbital base and assassinate the princess.  

“I’ll take it in my office,” she said, standing up.  “You have the bridge.”

Once she was in her office, she activated the privacy shield before sitting down at the terminal and placing her palm against the scanner.  It read her implant, checked her genetic code and finally scanned her right eyeball to ensure that she was who she claimed to be, before reluctantly unlocking the sealed packet and uploading the data for her to view.  The ultra-secure system would automatically wipe the data if anyone else tried to access it, at least before Kat had a chance to view it for herself.  After that, she might be permitted to share it with her officers, or she might have to keep it a secret.  The whole procedure didn't bode well.

A face appeared in front of her, wearing the white uniform of a Grand Admiral.  Kat caught her breath in shock.  Grand Admiral Constance Cinnabar had addressed the graduating class at Piker’s Peak, but apart from that they’d never met – and why would a Grand Admiral want to meet such a lowly junior officer, even if she was related to one of the most powerful men in the Commonwealth?  There was no logical reason for this message, unless it was somehow connected with the princess.

“Captain Falcone,” the Grand Admiral said, crisply.  “This is a sealed message for your eyes only.  As you know, the Princess brought warnings to us of a possible attack, but they are not believed by all back home.  We believe that we need independent verification, which is where you come in.  You are being ordered to cross the border, proceed to the star the Princess claimed was the base for an enemy attack fleet, and discover if there is actually a fleet based there.  If so, you are to return at once to Cadiz and alert us through the StarCom network.  

“In order that your mission not be compromised from the start, you will receive written orders to escort the Belladonna back to Avalon.  The Belladonna will serve as transport for Princess Jasmine and her fellow defectors; once in hyperspace, at least four light years from Cadiz, you will peel off and head to the border.  This packet includes the latest intelligence on the border, along with known and suspected enemy positions.  I must warn you that your mission will be officially denied if exposed; I advise you to make certain that your ship does not fall into enemy hands.  Good luck.”

The message ended.  Kat, who hadn't realised that she’d been leaning forward, slumped back into her chair.  The mission was challenging...and incredibly dangerous.  If the Theocracy did have a war fleet within striking distance of Cadiz, they’d feel a certain determination to ensure that nothing bad happened to it – like a Commonwealth starship poking her nose in, recording their presence and then vanishing back into hyperspace to alert its target.  And in order to keep her operation from being compromised, they were creating an illusionary mission...were they convinced that Admiral Williams would betray the mission?

She took a long breath, feeling her pulse racing.  There was no denying the danger, or the possible reward for success.  If they were caught by the Theocracy’s patrols, they would be destroyed or captured – and somehow she doubted that the Theocracy would honour any of the interstellar conventions on good treatment of prisoners.  They would be conditioned, forced to disgorge everything they knew, and then used as mouthpieces for propaganda.  And yet it was a mission she couldn't refuse.  If she could find proof that there was an attack fleet waiting for the order to advance, even Admiral Williams would be unable to refuse to believe her any longer.

Standing up, she lowered the privacy shield and keyed her wristcom.  “Mr. XO, report to my office,” she ordered.  The XO had been busy ensuring that the new load of missiles they’d received were in good working order, testing each of them separately.  It kept the crew busy; besides, Kat didn't trust 6th Fleet’s supply officers.  “We have a mission to plan.”

***
Two hours later, Belladonna – a converted heavy cruiser that served as the transport for fact-finding Assemblymen from Avalon – was docked at the orbital HQ.  Kat watched as grim-faced Marines escorted the Princess and her escorts onto the converted ship, rolling her eyes at how the Princess complained about the decor.  Belladonna reassembled a floating brothel more than a RAN starship on the front lines; there were rumours that claimed that the Admiral’s guests had used it for pleasure cruises rather than anything officially sanctioned by Navy HQ.  Kat would have questioned the sanity of any Captain who was happy in command of such a starship, although she supposed that it had its compensations.  Part of the crew had been hired away from luxury star-liners and were supposed to know really remarkable ways to exploit zero-gee.

“Captain, Belladonna reports that she is ready for departure,” Roach reported.

“Finally,” Kat said, dryly.  Their scheduled departure time had been pushed back twice while the crew tried to settle the Princess and her maids in the converted heavy cruiser.  It would be the height of irony if they jumped out just as the Theocracy invasion force entered the system...but then, if the Princess’s stolen documents could be relied upon, they were still some time from being ready to attack.  Kat had forwarded copies to ONI – and the Admiral had his own team of analysts still pouring over them – yet neither team had seen fit to inform her of their conclusions.  “Order her to disengage from dock and prepare to enter hyperspace as soon as we reach high orbit.”

She felt an odd weight in her chest as Lightning’s main drive came online, slowly propelling the heavy cruiser up and away from Cadiz.  As far as anyone – apart from her and the XO – knew, it was just a routine milk run, an escort mission for a starship that should be able to take care of itself.  They wouldn't know any differently for another four hours, until the two ships were well away from Cadiz and outside any possible observation – and then Kat would have to tell them the truth.  She’d considered off-loading non-essential crewmen before departing Cadiz, but the XO had pointed out that that would alert careful observers that she expected heavy casualties.  He had looked as solid as always when Kat had briefed him on the mission, for which she was grateful.  She could rely on him to be a rock in the midst of eternal change.

“Signal from Belladonna, Captain,” Roach said.  “They are ready to enter hyperspace on your command.  They’ve apparently finally sorted out who gets what cabin.”

Kat snorted.  “Open a vortex,” she ordered.  “Let’s get out of here.”

“Aye, Captain,” Roach said.

“Vortex generator online,” the helmsman said.  “Vortex opening...now!”

Space rent asunder, revealing a shimmering spiral of energy leading into hyperspace.  There was a brief moment of turbulence as the two starships were pulled through the vortex, and then the familiar eerie lights of hyperspace lit up the display.  Kat allowed herself to relax, a little.  They wouldn't be entering real danger until they crossed the border with the Theocracy.  And then they would be in permanent danger until they escaped.

“Set course for Avalon,” she ordered.  “Mr. XO, you have the bridge.”

The next four hours passed very slowly.  Kat spent them keeping herself occupied by inspecting every section and running spot checks on maintenance and weapons supplies.  The new missiles from Cadiz had all checked out perfectly, apart from one which had appeared to have a glitch in its local control processor.  It had been returned to the orbital manufactory and replaced with one that showed no flaw.  Kat wasn’t inclined to take chances with her ship’s weapons, not when they might be going to war at any moment.  She felt herself grow tense as they approached the breakaway point, even though no one else seemed to feel it.  But then, why would they feel it?  They knew nothing about the real plan.

She returned to the bridge and exchanged a long look with the XO, before keying the intercom.  “Crew of the Lightning, this is your Captain,” she said.  What could she say?  How could she tell them that they were going into harm’s way on a technically illegal mission?  A dozen ideas ran through her head, only to be dismissed one after the other.  They’d signed up knowing that danger was part of the job, but this was different.  “As some of you may have realised, we are not escorting the Belladonna all the way back to Avalon.”

That, at least, would have been obvious.  The Belladonna could look after herself against anything up to and including a light cruiser.  Pirates would have to be insane to pick a fight with a ship that looked like a heavy cruiser travelling alone – and they would never have a chance to regret their mistake, if they tried.  And none of the normal preparations for a return home had been made.

“We have been entrusted with a very secret and very dangerous mission,” she continued.  There was little point in keeping it a secret any longer.  “We have been charged with crossing the border and penetrating Theocratic space to discover if they have a war fleet ready to invade the Commonwealth.  I need not add that if we die, or fall into enemy hands, it may start the war ahead of time.  The stakes could not be higher.

“At this moment, we will go onto full tactical alert – silent running.  There will be nothing to betray our presence to watchful eyes as we slip across the border and into the heart of enemy territory.  They will be watching, fearful that someday someone will slip across the border to bring relief to the billions trapped in a dour religious world.  But they will not see us.  We will get in, get the information we so desperately need, and get out again.

“Over the last few months, I have come to know that this crew is the finest crew in the navy.  I have faith that each and every one of you will do your utmost to ensure that this mission is a success, to live up to the legend of every other ship called Lightning.  One way or another, we will not be forgotten.”

She keyed off the intercom and settled back in her command chair.  The die was about to be cast.  “Helm, break us away from Belladonna,” she ordered.  “Take us towards the badlands.”

Hyperspace seemed to shift around them as Lightning went to full military power, heading away from Avalon and back towards the Four Sisters.  Kat felt an odd spurt of Déjà Vu as they kept moving, remembering that they’d encountered the Faithful Companion  nearby.  If the destroyer was still prowling around, looking for the freighter Kat had abandoned in normal space, there was a good chance that they would detect Lightning before she had a chance to mask her presence by heading towards the Four Sisters.  Kat could only hope that they were alone – besides, they were still on the Commonwealth’s side of the border.  No one could legally object to their presence there.

The hours passed slowly.  Kat felt growing unease as they slipped closer to the Four Sisters, knowing that they were about to start riding the rapids.  Surely people as paranoid as the Theocracy’s leaders would picket the Four Sisters, yet...if they didn't, it was the easiest and quickest way into Theocratic space.  It was only extremely dangerous to starships.  Only someone who seriously wanted to hide would risk traversing the region of hyperspace controlled by the Four Sisters.  

“I think I have a workable course, Captain,” Nicola said.  “It's narrow, but we should be able to slip through the energy storms and enter enemy territory.”

Kat scowled.  Part of her, she hadn't wanted to admit, was half-hoping that Nicola wouldn't have been able to find a course.  Crossing the border away from the Four Sisters would be safer, even though there would be a greater chance of being detected by the enemy patrols.  And if Nicola was wrong, Lightning would be forever lost to ‘causes unknown.’  

“Upload it into the helm,” she ordered, finally.  Her voice sounded steady in her ears, but how did it sound to others?  The Captain couldn't show fear in front of her crew.  “And they rig us for silent running.”

She stared down at the console.  Ahead of her, hyperspace rolled and shimmered with towering storms of energy, enough power to vaporise every starship in existence without ever even noticing that they’d been destroyed.  It seemed an impassive barrier to her eyes, rolling tidal waves of energy that swept through hyperspace and returned to their source, twisting around the dark gravity wells that represented the Four Sisters.  Anyone who tried to fly through a gravity well would be crushed to nothing in less than a second, Kat knew; even their course was incredibly dangerous.  But it still offered the best chance for entering enemy space successfully.  

“Here we go,” Weiberg said.  The helmsman sounded as if he were enjoying himself, much to Kat’s private horror.  “Riding the rapids...”

The hyperspace storms broke over her vessel.  Kat felt a tingle running down her spine as the entire ship shook, or was she merely imagining it?  The sensors started to blur, distorting their results as local space twisted around them, forming into a compressed mass of nothing.  She heard a burst of static – it sounded like someone laughing out loud – over the intercom, before it failed amidst a drumming sound that echoed through the entire ship.  God was outside, knocking on the hull; the drumming grew louder and louder, and then faded away, just before the next shock began.  For a moment, she was convinced that they’d rammed a planet, before logic and reason told her that they weren't dead.  And besides, there were no planets in hyperspace.

Her vision began to blur, creating illusions that there were two helmsmen at the helm, or two XOs sitting next to her.  She brought up one hand to rub her forehead and discovered, to her shock, that she seemed to have three right hands.  It was hard to focus enough to realise which one was the real hand; every time she looked, it seemed to be different.  She heard the sound of someone vomiting in the background and swallowed hard, trying to keep herself from following suit.  The entire ship lurched around her, as if her very form was being torn apart, and then everything seemed to return to normal.  Her head was spinning helplessly, a pounding headache tearing her thoughts apart.  It was a long moment before she could even begin to think of the ship...

“We’re in the eye of the storm,” Weiberg said, in a chillingly hushed voice.  Kat looked up at the display.  They were surrounded by towering whirlpools of energy, spitting death towards Lightning and her crew.  “We need to go through another patch to escape.”

Kat nodded, carefully not looking behind her, where one of the officers was cleaning up the mess.  God alone knew how many people onboard Lightning had been sick while on duty, or worse.  And it wasn't over yet.

“Take us onwards,” she ordered.  There was no way to avoid a second trip through the gravity waves.  “Now.”

This time, it seemed to be worse.  Lightning shook constantly, even as her crew struggled to hand onto some awareness of what was going on around them.  Entire systems failed for no apparent reason, only to come back up seconds later, mocking the best efforts of repair techs.  Kat found herself clinging onto her command chair as the compensators seemed to shimmer, threatening them all with instant transformation into bloody pulps on the bulkheads, just before space seemed to twist and shimmer in front of them.  Lightning was spat back out into normal space through a twisting hyperspace vortex that appeared to have come out of nowhere.  The blackness of interstellar space was a hellish relief after the storms in hyperspace...

“Location check,” Kat ordered.  Her mouth hurt when she tried to speak.  “Where are we?”

Nicola looked up from her console.  “Where we were planning to be, Captain,” she said.  She sounded weak too, they all did.  The trip through the energy storm had left them all drained, even though the reports coming in from all over the ship suggested that no one had been killed.  “Theocratic space.”

“Mask us,” Kat ordered.  They were in very real danger now.  If they were discovered while they were in no state to fight, they were in deep trouble.  “Full passive sensor scan; are we alone?”

There was a long chilling pause.  “We appear to have arrived undetected,” Roach reported.  The display was reassuringly empty of all contacts – and they would all be hostile here, deep in Theocratic space.  “There are no enemy ships within detection range.”

Kat and her XO shared a long glance.  “We’ll wait here until we have checked the entire ship and ensured that everyone is fit and well,” Kat said.  “And then it will be time to go spying.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The star system had no name, only a catalogue number.  Years ago, a UN-funded survey team had visited the system, discovered that there was nothing there apart from a dying red star and a few asteroids, and then returned home to report that the system was useless.  A few years later, a black colony had been established in some of the asteroids, only to be transferred to an Earth-like world when the UN had collapsed and the Theocracy had resurveyed the system.  They’d been grateful enough for the rescue that they’d embraced the faith wholeheartedly.  Their rocky colonies, hidden from all sensor detection, had become a secret forward naval base.

Admiral Junayd stood on the flag bridge of the battleship Aisha’s Glory, studying the holographic images in the display in front of him.  Five squadrons of battleships orbited the dying star, escorted by hundreds of cruisers, destroyers and starfighters.  Behind them, the logistics train waited; two hundred freighters, crewed by naval personal.  They were something of a problem, he reluctantly conceded; the crews weren’t the best and moving so many freighters off the internal shipping routes had caused an entire string of economic problems.  Like all interstellar powers, the Theocracy’s worlds could feed themselves – that had been a UN protocol that, unusually, had been rooted in firm common sense – but the factories, shipyards and industrial nodes were held towards the rear, protected by a formidable array of fixed defences, backed up by powerful fleets.  With their output diverted towards the military, the remainder of the Theocracy was feeling the lack.

It wasn't the only problem.  The crews of Theocracy ships were permanently indoctrinated with the glory of holy war and the vast rewards offered by God to those who died in combat, spreading the faith across the galaxy.  Morale was high onboard the crews of the warships, but the freighter crews were much less enthusiastic about the coming war.  What glory was there to be won onboard a stinky freighter?  Without the freighters, the offensive would splutter to a halt very quickly, yet the freighter crews didn't see it that way.  There was no overt threat of mutiny – freighter crews were held to the same discipline as warship crews and overt grumbling would have been severely punished – but morale was low and the quality of their work, inevitably, had suffered.  The Clerics had been preaching the glory of serving the warriors as carriers of weapons and water, yet it hadn't been convincing.  It didn’t help that warship crews referred to their freighter-crewing comrades as women, too weak to fight, only useful to carry supplies.  There had already been a number of fights, two of which had resulted in deaths.  

And that wasn't the only problem.  The original attack plan had called for ten squadrons of battleships, operating as a single unit, with smaller forces heading behind enemy lines to take out communications nodes and causing havoc in the rear.  Instead, they were launching a much weaker offensive, unless the Caliph decided to hold it back for another month.  Worse, keeping the fleet at permanent readiness to depart within forty-eight hours was placing immense wear and tear on the engines.  Half of his battleships had already reported problems, none serious enough to keep the ship out of the line of battle, but enough to make their ability to make full military power questionable.  He looked up towards the fixed gateway, positioned ten light minutes from the dying star, and scowled.  The gateway would betray their presence – or at least that something was going on in orbit around a dying star – but it was necessary.  They couldn't risk leaving ships behind.  The coming battles might be won or lost because of the presence or absence of a single ship.

“Admiral?”

Admiral Junayd turned to see Captain Qismat, the battleship’s commander, approaching him, one hand forming the salute of submission and respect to a powerful superior.  It was a protocol that Admiral Junayd would sooner have dispersed with altogether – and it would be dispersed once they were on their way – but he couldn't allow cracks in the edifice of power to appear now, not when everyone was so tense.  The hierarchy that held the Theocracy together might be called into question.

“Yes, Captain?”

“We just received an update from Abdullah, Admiral,” the Captain said.  Admiral Junayd wondered if he resented being effectively downgraded to a mere messenger boy.  There was no way that he was going to pass up on the opportunity to command a battleship as well as a fleet, at least for the moment.  Being offered a promotion was always the same; a refusal to accept the promotion meant that you would never be promoted again.  It had amused him to discover that the same rule held true in the RAN.  “The remaining squadrons of cruisers are on their way.  ETA is estimated at three weeks.”

Admiral Junayd nodded.  Once a starship entered hyperspace, there was no way to contact it until it reached a StarCom node and linked into the network.  It meant that interstellar operations were always somewhat cumbersome, a lesson the UN had never learnt until it was far too late.  The squadrons might be needed back at their homeports, but they would never know until they reached their destination, by which point it would be far too late.  It was one of the reasons why the Caliph, for all his faith that God would lead them to victory, had refused to downgrade the Abdullah Fleet.  What was the prospect of success against the Commonwealth if Abdullah itself was lost to the enemy?

“Good,” he said, finally.  It wasn't that good; if it had been up to him, he would have had the entire fleet concentrated and advancing on Cadiz by now.  The Princess Jasmine had stolen enough information to thoroughly alarm anyone who didn't have his head buried up his own ass; surely, even Admiral Williams would be pushed into taking defensive precautions.  6th Fleet would be outgunned by his force, but no one really knew how Theocratic and Commonwealth vessels would compare when push came to shove.  The Commonwealth had a generally higher technological base, although intelligence wasn't sure how well that would transfer to their military potential.  It was one reason why the Theocracy had invested so much energy in convincing scientists and researchers to move to the Theocracy and put their hard-won expertise to work improving the Theocracy’s own tech base.  It was astonishing how many of those scientists had kinks that could be exploited, or tastes that the Commonwealth was unwilling to meet.

There were times when he questioned the very basis of his own society, thoughts he knew would earn him a bullet in the back of the head if any of the Clerics even suspected their existence.  No state based on religion had lasted for long, and they’d always been dead inside long before their final fall from grace.  A handful had evolved to become more tolerant, more welcoming of different points of view, but they were the exceptions.  Sooner or later, the human mind sought to break free of its chains.  The Theocracy would do whatever it needed to do to ensure that it inherited an entire galaxy, yet would it inherit a rotting corpse?  Or would it be dead inside by the time it finally fell apart?

The thought was sickening, yet what could he do about it?  He served at the pleasure of the Caliph.  Admiral Junayd had been surprised that he’d been permitted to keep his life and his rank, but that wouldn't last, not if the Caliph suspected him of vaguely considering rebellion against the Peacock Throne.  Strong Caliphs survived because they kept their strong subjects under firm control.  And besides, he was loyal to the Theocracy.  How could he consider not doing his duty?

“Inform the fleet I wish to perform additional exercises,” he said, finally.  The Captain nodded and hastened to obey.  “Have the intelligence officers assume the worst; each Commonwealth battleship is at least twice as capable as our own.”

“Yes, sir,” Captain Qismat said.  “I hear and obey.”

***
Everyone knew that a sophisticated gravimetric scanner could pick up a hyperspace vortex at forty light-minutes and a StarCom unit at over a dozen light years.  Kat had masked Lightning’s presence as best as she could, altering course every time the sensors even hinted that there might be a patrolling scout ship out there, but returning to normal space risked exposure.  She’d ordered them to open the gateway one hundred light minutes from the dying star Jasmine had named, knowing that their mission might come to an abrupt end.

“Bring all weapons to full readiness,” she ordered.  “Take us out; now!”

Hyperspace twisted around them and gave way to the darkness of normal space.  Lightning roared out of the vortex and instantly cloaked, drawing a veil of invisibility around her presence.  If the Theocracy had scattered sensor platforms around the dying star, they would have noticed the brief flare of a vortex and sent starships to investigate – assuming that they didn’t write it off as a sensor glitch.  She had to assume the worst; they would pick up their arrival and they would send a small fleet to investigate.  The seconds ticked by as they separated themselves from their point of entry, watching carefully for any hunting starships...

“No contacts,” the XO said, finally.  Kat allowed herself a moment of relief, before turning her attention to the dying red star in the distance.  There were no current files on it in the RAN’s database, but the UN files they’d inherited stated that the system was effectively useless – except as a staging post for an invasion force.  It was within easy striking distance of Cadiz, yet so useless that no one would visit the system, unless they were hunting for hidden pirate bases.  “I think we’re clear.”

Kat nodded.  Even the Theocracy couldn't afford a sensor shell of platforms so far from a useless star.  Avalon itself was covered by a relay network that would detect anything up to fifty light minutes from the edge of the system – she assumed that Abdullah had similar coverage – but only a handful of worlds were worth that investment.  And then there were the watchtowers positioned within hyperspace, watching for the first signs of an attacking fleet.  She shook her head.  If she’d been responsible for keeping an entire fleet concealed until the time came to launch it into action, she would have made sure that there was a swarm of destroyers patrolling the edge of the system.  Just because Lightning couldn't see them didn't mean that they weren’t there.  A starship with all of its active systems shut down would be nearly impossible to detect except at very close range.

“Keep us under cloak,” she ordered.  “Launch the sensor platforms and focus them on the dying star.”

Long minutes ticked by as the massive platforms were deployed from the starship and activated.  Each platform was composed of passive sensors, rather than anything that radiate a betraying emission, but they were so sophisticated that they would pick up almost anything, assuming that there was anything to pick up.  Kat – and the RAN – was gambling that the Theocracy wouldn’t have put their entire fleet in silent running, knowing that doing that would compromise their efficiency.  But the Theocracy was run by fanatics.  Who knew what they would consider a reasonable thing to do?

The thought made her smile.  She – and the entire RAN – had to worry about what civilians would order them to do, civilians who knew little of the Navy actually functioned.  The Theocracy’s forces had to worry about the Clerics, and the Clerics had actual authority to override the vessel’s commander if necessary.  Their efficiency would be badly weakened, if some reports were to be believed; the Faithful Companion had certainly challenged a vessel far more powerful than itself because the Cleric had insisted.  Unless it was all a trick...

“Picking up radio chatter from the star,” Lieutenant Roberta Dickson reported.  The sensor tech had been transferred onboard from Cadiz Station, after a brief argument with the beancounters who controlled the naval station.  Kat had finally pointed out that Lightning needed a dedicated sensor tech and invited them to protest to the Admiral.  Roberta’s reassignment had been immediate.  “I can’t pick out individual phases yet, but it's definitely there.”

“We already know that something isn't right there,” the XO growled.  “They’ve got a working StarCom.”

Kat nodded.  StarCom units were expensive.  The Commonwealth had constructed links to all of its major worlds and naval bases, but the cost had been staggering, even for a rich interstellar power.  There was no logical reason why the Theocracy would set up a StarCom in orbit around a dying red star, unless they were operating a secret naval base there.  The StarCom would provide an instant link back to Abdullah, allowing the Caliph the final say on when the attack could be launched.  She wondered, absently, how the Theocracy’s naval officers liked being on the end of a long leash.  In their shoes, she wouldn't have enjoyed it at all.

The hours ticked by slowly as more and more information started to filter into the system.  Roberta never left the bridge, watching her console carefully and running analysis programs on each of the snippets of information.  The radio chatter was definitely Theocratic – they only picked up a handful of words in Standard – but most of it was either humdrum or encrypted.  Kat had the latest downloads on broken Theocratic codes, yet none of them were able to unlock the encrypted transmissions.  Roberta wasn’t too concerned, even though she hadn't trained as a spook.  At such distances, the chances were good that the radio signals had become corrupted, or drowned out by radiation from the star.  

“We’re going to have to go closer,” the XO said, finally.  Kat had already come to the same conclusion.  Even the best of the passive sensors couldn't track individual starships at this range and what they had picked up was far from conclusive.  And yet she didn't want to go any closer.  Just being here, nearly ninety light minutes from the star, was enough to send shivers down her spine.  Cold logic told her that they couldn't be detected – if they had been detected, they would have been jumped by now – but cold logic was no consolation against the irrational fear gripping her mind.  

“Keep the sensor platforms deployed,” she ordered.  The course was already displayed in front of her, a line that would take them in towards the star.  They shouldn't be detected; no one could detect a cloaked starship at such distances.  “Take us in, very slowly.  I don't want to lose the platforms.”

Slowly, more data started to flow into the sensor platforms.  Something was definitely taking place in the star system ahead of them.  The data wasn't conclusive yet, but the information suggested the presence of an entire fleet, chattering away in serene confidence that no one was listening.  Roberta activated the translation programs and managed to unlock a handful of messages, some referring to repair work on the fleet.  The XO pointed out that that level of repair work was consistent with keeping a fleet permanently ready to depart at a moment’s notice.  It was enough information to thoroughly alarm anyone, but it wasn't enough.  They’d never have another opportunity to take a careful look at the Theocracy’s attack fleet.

“We need to go closer,” Roberta said, finally.

“We can’t risk taking the ship any closer,” Kat said.  They’d been tracking a number of Theocratic starships on patrol, roaming the system.  The pattern didn't suggest that they’d caught a sniff of Lightning, but the closer they went to the star, the greater the chance of detection.  “We could launch remote probes...”

Roberta looked up at her.  “I could take a shuttle into the system with the sensor platforms in tow,” she said.  Kat stared at her, openly astonished.  The idea had occurred to her, but she didn't want to think about it.  “I could slip close to their ships and they would never know that I was there, while I read the names off their hulls and count the missile tubes...”

“Are you out of your mind?”  The XO demanded.  “Do you know what will happen to you if they capture you?”

“I know,” Roberta said.  She gulped, something that told Kat just how nervous she was about the whole idea.  And yet...she was right.  They did need the data that only a close sweep could provide, and risking the entire ship on such a mission was foolish.  Lightning was the only way to get the information back to the Commonwealth.  “Captain...someone has to do this.”

Kat wanted to fly the mission herself, if only because she would not have to order someone else to die.  There were other people, more qualified to fly a shuttle...and yet, Roberta was their expert on deployed sensor arrays.  She could fly the shuttle into the system and pull out more data than anyone else.  In some ways, Roberta reminded Kat of herself, willing to risk anything just to succeed in her chosen field.  And she was right.  Risking Roberta’s life was a small price to pay when the entire Commonwealth was threatened.  

“One sweep,” she ordered, finally.  “We’ll dogleg around the system and pick you up on the other side.  Don’t try to navigate once you’re launched; let us do the steering.  Keep relaying everything to us through a secure laser...”

She broke off.  “Good luck,” she added, feeling a lump within her chest.  She couldn't escape the feeling that she was sending Roberta to her death.  Her father had never had to order someone to die.  The weight of command fell around her again, mocking her.  How many others would she have to order to their deaths in her career, assuming she survived the opening days of the war?  “You’re going to need it.”

Chapter Thirty

Roberta was alone.

Lighting was several light minutes behind her, the only link between the unnamed shuttle and the heavy cruiser a thin communications laser, utterly undetectable unless the enemy ships happened to intersect the communications beam itself.  She was the single most isolated human in the system, with no other humans anywhere near her.  It struck her, as the sense of isolation grew stronger, that this was how the early astronauts must have felt, back before the human race had started exploding into space in a big way.  All of a sudden, the whole mission seemed insane, the craziest idea that she’d ever heard – and it had been her idea!

Years ago, she’d allowed herself to be channelled into sensors after a disastrous exercise had resulted in the – simulated – loss of a starship.  Her CO had pointed out that she’d hesitated and frozen at the wrong time, even though she’d known it was a simulation...and a commanding officer could not afford to freeze.  She should have given orders, even if they had been the wrong orders.  There had been no escape from a boring sensor monitoring station at Cadiz until she’d been snatched up by Captain Falcone.  And if she pulled off the spying mission, no one would ever be able to consign her to a boring position ever again.

She ran a hand through her short brown hair as she considered her trajectory.  Without the drive fields that propelled starships through the vastness of space, the shuttle would continue drifting right through the heart of the enemy position and then onwards into the darkness of space.  The gossamer-thin sensor platforms surrounding the shuttle would suck in all the data they could and relay it to Lightning, ensuring that some news would get out even if disaster struck and she was killed – or, worse, captured.  She found herself shaking and cursed her ambition under her breath.  It was definitely a crazy idea.

Logic told her that she should be undetectable.  The shuttle was tiny, certainly compared to the battleships she was sure were floating in orbit around the dying star.  Only a visual scan would reveal that she wasn't anything other than a very small asteroid, drifting towards the star where she would meet her end.  And logic wasn't any comfort when she could sense the looming presence of an entire battle fleet.  She was sure that they could see her, their sensors tracking her position, just waiting for the right moment to vaporise her and the shuttle.  Her heartbeat was so loud that she could hear it in her ears, even though she’d taken pills to help with the stress.  She wanted to spin the shuttle around and flee for her life.

“No,” she told herself firmly, as she began to study the data flowing into the sensor platforms.  “I will not give into fear.”

The seconds ticked away, each one feeling like an hour, as the enemy facilities slowly came into view.  A handful of asteroids, the only thing in the system worth taking, were surrounded by a small cluster of basic industrial nodes – and hundreds of starships.  It looked as if the Theocracy had decided to make the fleet as self-sufficient as possible, hardly a poor decision when shipping missiles from a central deport could delay planned offensives, or force fleets to withdraw because they’d shot themselves dry and could no longer defend themselves.  The RAN did the same, with orbital fabricators in orbit around every major world, including Cadiz.  She’d had to monitor their construction rates during her time with 6th Fleet.  

Her heartbeat began to echo in her ears again as she picked up a flight of starfighters.  God – there were several entire wings of starfighters in the fleet, enough to give Cadiz’s defenders a severe headache on their own.  Some of the larger capital ships she was detecting had to be carriers, she knew, but it was impossible to pick them out yet from the rest of the flock.  Even the best analysis programs couldn't pull out information that wasn't there.  None of the Theocratic ships were broadcasting IFF signals.  And if the starfighters swooped too close to her position, they might decide to use her for target practice.  She swallowed a curse as a second flight of starfighters lanced towards the first flight, before she realised what was going on.  They were drilling, endlessly; preparing themselves for war.  If Admiral Williams had shown even half as much enthusiasm for military drill as the unknown Theocratic commander, 6th Fleet would have been much more than a ramshackle force protecting a planet that didn't want to be protected.

She refocused the sensors on the starships, trying to make them out.  Most of them were small – destroyers, light cruisers and a handful of types the sensors couldn't identify – but there were at least six squadrons of big boys in the fleet.  Battleships or carriers, she decided, although she couldn't sort them out yet.  Hellfire; that was enough firepower to take on all of 6th Fleet, even if it had been in prime condition.  She cursed the Admiral even as she narrowed the sensors, trying to work out how quickly the enemy could launch for Cadiz.  Luckily, they weren't trying to hide; their betraying emissions were revealing far too much about themselves.  Her best estimate was that they would be able to depart within twenty-four hours of the order being given.

Another flight of starfighters appeared from one of the bigger ships, allowing her to identify it as a fleet carrier.  No one knew for sure how many starfighters a Theocratic carrier could deploy, but judging by size and launch tubes Roberta suspected that it was roughly akin to a Commonwealth design.  On the other hand, all of the starfighters appeared to be space-superiority designs, rather than configured for planetary assault or torpedo missions against capital ships.  Her analysis computers were fairly sure that at least six of the bigger ships were carriers, but it was impossible to be sure.  The last major war had been the Breakaway Wars and starfighters had just been in their infancy then.  It was hard to predict how the Theocracy’s designs would have developed in the absence of any actual war to allow the designers to use actual data in producing their starfighters.  They might have to wait for a real war before they began learning from experience.

But maybe that wasn't too surprising.  Roberta had heard rumours that the Theocracy had been running intelligence operations within Commonwealth space – and there was far too much information available about the RAN in the public domain.  The Theocracy would be able to learn how their enemies solved problems, while keeping their own designs well hidden behind an impenetrable border.  It crossed her mind that she was the first person getting an up-to-date look at their latest designs, a thought that chilled her as well as excited her.  Getting the information back to the Commonwealth might prove tricky.

She sucked in a breath.  The shuttle was drifting closer to the battleships now, each one powerful enough to swat her ship and never even notice the effort.  The mighty ships symbolised doom for 6th Fleet, maybe even the Commonwealth as a whole.  How did their designs compare to the Commonwealth’s designs?  If she was lucky, she was about to find out.

***
Kat paced her bridge, feeling the seconds ticking by slowly.  The constant flow of data from the shuttle was worrying her, even though it represented success in her mission.  If she was reading it correctly, the Theocracy was on the verge of launching its attack.  They might be doomed to watch the fleet departing and end up having to race past it – perhaps through it – to warn Cadiz before the fleet came down on them like the hammer of God.  

The thought was distressing.  For the first time, she found herself wondering if command had really been worth the price she’d paid for it.  Going into danger herself was one thing – she’d done that every since she’d graduated from Piker’s Peak – but sending someone else into danger, while she watched from a safe – well, safer – vantage point was quite another.  Roberta had volunteered for the mission, even suggested it, yet Kat was, in the final analysis, responsible for her crew.  The thought kept echoing through her mind, mocking her.  She had just sent one of her crew to almost certain death.

And they were alarmingly close to a powerful fleet that could destroy them with ease, if it noticed their presence.  Kat knew that they were undetectable at this range, yet the presence of the patrolling destroyers worried her.  A single betraying emission, or a single sweep with active sensors, would expose them – and they would be attacked, perhaps destroyed.  She hadn't felt so exposed in the Summer Palace, where the insurgents had only dumped her in with the younger hostages because they hadn't realised who she was – but there, at least, she’d been able to take control of the situation.  And she’d broken free, helped the children escape and even escaped herself.  Here, in the heart of darkness, she was just a spectator, watching helplessly while a young lieutenant took all the risks.  Was command really worth it?

It was, she told herself; the evidence they were securing might just alert the Commonwealth to the oncoming storm that was about to break over Cadiz.  And yet...and yet...she was only watching as someone else risked her own life to save countless others.  Kat knew that she couldn't have abandoned her ship, let alone flown the mission herself, but it didn't help.  The guilt gnawed away at her – and it would do so until the day she died.

***
The battleships were coming into view now, each one two kilometres of sullen death and destruction to anything that dared to stand in their way.  Roberta swallowed her fear and concentrated on studying what few clues she could discern from passive sensors as the battleships drifted into view.  There appeared to be two separate classes of battleship within the fleet, four squadrons of gigantic starships, each one armed to the teeth.  Her optical sensors picked up missile tubes covering their hulls, suggesting that the larger design possessed a greater throw weight than the comparable Commonwealth design.  She forgot her fear as she squinted at the battleships, trying to deduce what their point defence capabilities might be, before realising that either they were hiding their capabilities or they were significantly inferior to Commonwealth designs.  That might explain the vast numbers of smaller ships keeping station with the battleships.  Assuming equal or superior datanet systems, the smaller ships would keep the enemy missiles away from the battleships, allowing the battleships to mass their fire on their targets.

She frowned, stroking her chin as she contemplated the issue.  There were reasons that the Commonwealth built multiple-purpose starships, rather than have battleships armed only with missiles incapable of looking after themselves.  The Theocracy might discover that their ships had less tactical flexibility in a mobile battle, although they would be rather effective at engaging fixed defences.  Just like the defences in orbit around Cadiz, Sparta, Greenland...and Avalon itself.  It fitted in with the Theocracy’s ‘attack, attack, attack’ philosophy.  And yet, if they had to fall back on the defensive, they would find themselves in a tricky situation.

The shuttle drifted closer and closer.  She stood up from the console and pressed her face against the transparent porthole, wondering if she could see the battleships with her eyes.  There was nothing, apart from drifting lights that could have been stars, rather than enemy battleships.  It wasn't too surprising; the Theocracy wouldn't have allowed a small asteroid anywhere near their ships, even if they didn’t realise that it was actually a shuttle.  The sensor network was almost overloading now, storing more and more data – and convincing her that the Theocracy was definitely on the verge of attacking.  Time was running out for them all.

***
All eyes were watching the main display, as information flowed in from the shuttle and the sensor platforms, but Commander Jeremy Damiani watched the Captain.  Despite himself, he was more than a little worried about her.  She didn't have the experience that would keep her calm when faced with a situation where all she could do was wait.  Someone had once described military life as being ninety-nine parts boredom and one part sheer terror, but sheer terror would be preferable to being bored.  He snorted, inwardly.  Not that he had ever felt that at the time, of course.

He’d never been on a mission behind enemy lines before – there hadn't been any enemies, apart from pirates and they were easy to kill once located – but he had been on stealth missions, and he had had to send people into danger without going himself.  It spoke well of the Captain that she worried about her people, yet there had to be limits.  Everyone who joined the navy, either through enlisting as a crewman or going through Piker’s Peak as a would-be officer, took the same oath, swearing to put their lives between their homeworlds and danger.  Roberta was young and determined to succeed – just like the Captain – and yet she was expendable, compared to the desperate need to get the information home.  He couldn't disagree with Roberta’s conclusion.  Zero hour for the invasion was not far off.  No one would run their ships with such disregard for basic maintenance, let alone wear and tear on the drives, unless they intended to start moving very soon.  How quickly could they get the fleet on the way to Cadiz?  

There was no way to know.  In theory, a properly trained and drilled fleet could be set into motion in a few hours, but there were always glitches.  A planned departure would work much better than one hastily ordered, even in the Theocracy.  There would be crew off-ship, officers trying to get ready for the original mission before being told to drop everything and prepare for departure...even starship components missing because the crew were busy replacing them.  He’d been on the Mountbatten when the 5th Fleet had been ordered to depart to secure Cadiz and the chaos had been unimaginable.  A number of senior officers had been politely thanked for their service and dismissed from the RAN.  

He looked over at the Captain.  She was trying to hide her tension from the crew, but it wasn't enough to fool him – or anyone who had served for a few years in the RAN.  At least she wasn't on the verge of cracking up, unlike some officers he'd known who had been promoted beyond their competency.  It hadn't been that long ago that an wretched coward had been put in front of a firing squad – despite his highly-placed relatives – for fleeing a pirate ship, despite having enough firepower to exterminate the pirate ship without even needing to open fire with his primary armament.

I’m sorry I doubted you, he thought, ruefully.  Kat was command material, all right.  A little more seasoning and she’d be perfect.  And I just hope I have the chance to tell you that.

***
The battleships were even more intimidating as the shuttle drifted closer.  It was impossible to say for sure, but Roberta suspected that they could actually pull a higher speed in normal space than any comparable Commonwealth design.  Or maybe they were just real sticklers about multiple redundancy.  The RAN had the same bug up its ass about having everything double and triple backed up, regardless of the cost.  She’d heard that the Assembly had several Assemblymen who questioned the vast expense time and time again, trying to convince the Navy to lower its requests for more funding.  None of them had ever served in the military.  None of them knew that redundancy might make the difference between victory or defeat, life or death.  

She pushed the thought out of her mind, studying the  remaining details.  She’d been right; fewer point defence weapons than a Commonwealth battleship.  That would be interesting if two battleships ever duelled each other, as if that would happen outside of an entertainment program with a bad plot and worse acting.  And then...

Roberta had switched her gaze to the carriers when disaster struck.  Red lights blinked up on her console as active sensors swept over the shuttle...and locked on.  Roberta keyed a distortion packet into the sensors, hoping to disrupt the enemy sensor lock, but there was no chance of disrupting it permanently.  The enemy starfighters were already closing in on her.  Some bright spark in their tactical sensor compartment must have finally realised that she wasn't behaving like an asteroid, or something like that.  She’d never know for sure.

“I’m sorry, Captain,” she said.  It would be her last transmission.  “Get out of here!”

She keyed a second command into the sensor arrays as the enemy starfighters swooped down on her.  The arrays disintegrated as molecule disintegration fields reduced them to their component atoms, rendering it impossible for the Theocracy to learn anything from the dust.  Or so she hoped; they’d learn a great deal just through her mere presence at their staging base.  A third set of commands wiped the shuttle’s databanks, just before the starfighters zoomed past her, so close that she could see the pilots in their cockpits, staring at her.  She raised her hand and waved back, just before something struck the shuttle and sent her tumbling down into darkness.

***
“Captain, they got the shuttle,” Roach reported.  “She’s gone.”

Kat spun around.  There would be a time-delay; several minutes between the shuttle’s destruction and the loss of the communications laser that had alerted them to her destruction.  The enemy would already have time to react, which meant that they could be on their way already, heading right for her command.  There would be time to mourn Roberta later.

“Get us out of here,” she ordered.  “Best possible speed; now!”

Chapter Thirty-One

“What?”

Admiral Junayd couldn't believe his screens.  Only moments ago, Perimeter Control had started tracking what looked like a rogue asteroid, only to discover that it had been a shuttle – an enemy shuttle!  The secrecy of the attack fleet had been badly compromised; even if they did destroy the shuttle, it wouldn’t stop the mothership from returning to the Commonwealth, warning them of the oncoming storm.

“Get the destroyer screen out there now,” he snapped.  This was disaster, a disaster that might see his head removed from his shoulders.  The Caliph would seek to avert blame from falling on his own head, weakening his position – and if that meant beheading a trusted Admiral, it was a small price to pay for his power and position.  “Send the alert to all ships – I want to be ready to move out now!”

His subordinates leaped to obey, leaving the Admiral alone with his thoughts.  The enemy vessel had to be lurking some distance from the fleet, or they would have detected its presence before it managed to launch a spying shuttle right into the heart of the fleet.  Where would it be?  Keying the console, he plotted the shuttle’s course backwards, out into interstellar space.  The shuttle had come from somewhere along that line, and not too far away either.  A shuttle had only limited life support for its crew.

“Focus the destroyer screen along this line,” he ordered, uploading the instructions into the shared command network.  Hopefully, if God was with them…but He’d been with them before, when the shuttle’s presence had been discovered.  It could have slipped through the entire fleet and escaped back to interstellar space.  “Bring up every active sensor we have and…”

“Admiral, a hyperspace vortex is opening,” the sensor officer reported.  A spinning red vortex had appeared, eight light minutes from the attack fleet.  The Admiral cursed under his breath as the vortex closed, presumably allowing the enemy ship into hyperspace.  Her Captain must have the reactions of a cat, unless he’d been planning to leave already and had just been spooked by the loss of the shuttle.  But no, that wasn’t the enemy way.  The Theocracy would quite happily order a shuttle to its death to gain information; the Commonwealth took a gentler view of events.  They would have sent an unmanned probe if they’d felt that escape was impossible.

“Order the destroyer screen to race into hyperspace and run the intruder down,” the Admiral ordered.  The enemy ship had a head start; enough, perhaps, to outrun or lose the destroyers somewhere in hyperspace’s colossal energy storms.  “And then spin up the StarCom and get me a direct link to Abdullah.”

It crossed his mind that he could refrain from telling the Caliph the exact truth, but he banished that thought with considerable irritation.  He owed his master an accurate report, even if it cost him his head.  And if they could get the fleet ready to advance in time, they might just be able to hit Cadiz before it was too late.

If…

***
The eerie lights of hyperspace surrounded Lightning, but Kat couldn’t relax.  There was no way of avoiding detection now; the second they’d opened the vortex they would have set off alarms all over the system.  The enemy fleet would know that they had been discovered.  Her mind ran over it again and again.  What would the enemy do if they knew that their plans had been uncovered?  The answer was chillingly simple; if they could, they would launch an immediate offensive and try to crush the RAN before it could prepare for battle.  And 6th Fleet would take weeks, at the very least, to work up for combat.  And that assumed…

She pushed the thoughts aside.  The sensors were still scanning hyperspace, looking for possible targets.  If they were very lucky, they’d be able to hide in the hyperspace distortions caused by nearby energy storms before enemy ships broke into hyperspace after them.  If not, it would be a flat-out race for Cadiz with a massive enemy fleet snapping at her heels.  She gritted her teeth as the helmsman poured on the speed, boosting Lightning to a remarkable speed in hyperspace, circumventing the speed limit Einstein had deduced so long ago.  And yet she knew that it might not be enough.

No message could be sent to a starship in transit, or patrolling the borders, but if the Theocracy had established a StarCom unit somewhere near the border, orders could already be flashing out ahead of her to establish a blockade.  Kat had no choice, but to shape her course for Cadiz, a fact that would be just as obvious to the enemy commander.  If she tried to head into the badlands and trust the Four Sisters to conceal her again, she would be giving the enemy a clear shot at Cadiz.  How quickly could they mobilise, she asked herself again and again, comparing what Roberta had seen with what she knew of fleet operating procedures.  They’d had their drives permanently at the ready; Lightning and her crew might just have arrived a day or two before the offensive was scheduled to kick off.  

An alarm sounded and, even though she wasn’t surprised, she felt her blood run cold.  “Captain,” Roach reported, “we have at least five vessels in hyperspace, shaping pursuit courses towards us.”

Kat studied the display, where five red icons had materialised like angry bees.  Most RAN officers cursed the speed limit for radio and laser transmissions within interplanetary space, but Kat was silently delighted.  The enemy might have had a destroyer screen operating a light week from the dying star, or even further away, yet they wouldn’t know what was going on until messages from the command station reached them – and by then Lightning would have more than lived up to her name.  She would have passed them at several times the speed of light before they received the orders to give chase.

“They read out as destroyers,” Roach said, slowly.  “I don’t think that there’s anything heavier that would even begin to be able to catch us, even in hyperspace.”

The XO snorted.  “But if they cripple us, they can wait for one of the battlewagons to arrive and complete the job of exterminating us,” he pointed out.  “They might be hoping that we will turn and fight.”

Kat shook her head.  It galled her to run from an enemy force – bravely taking to her feet, she beat a very brave retreat echoed in her mind for a second – but there was no other choice.  Lightning couldn’t stand up to even one of the battleships and even though she was confident she could take out all of the destroyers, the price might be crippling damage that would strand them behind enemy lines.  They might be doomed to drift through hyperspace until the life support ran out, leaving them suffocated and slowly freezing to death.  She’d heard tales of badly damaged ships that had limped home, or had stumbled across a fixed vortex and escaped back into normal space, but they were only stories.  The truth was that a seriously damaged starship in hyperspace would never be seen again.

“Keep us moving,” she ordered, “and keep an eye on what’s ahead of us.  They may be trying to cut us off from the border.”

She sat back in her chair, trying to project a veneer of confidence.  Inside, she was sweating; they were just too ignorant about Theocratic space.  What might be waiting for them?  Border patrol ships, a secondary unit of the attack fleet, watchtowers like the ones established near Avalon…or something else, something she’d missed.  There were just too many possibilities.  She looked up at the enemy ships on the display, noting that one of the blips was larger than the other four.  Two ships flying close together, a distortion effect caused by hyperspace, or a bigger starship?  There was no way to know until it got into firing range.

Anyone who wanted to be an officer in the RAN had to be able to read a tactical display, even if they didn’t quite master navigation within hyperspace.  If she was right, the enemy ships would have a chance to enter firing range in less than six hours, assuming that they maintained the same level of acceleration.  They might give up the chase…but that would mean returning to the Theocracy and admitting failure.  They’d be signing their own death warrants.  No, she was grimly certain that they would fight to enter firing range and then start pounding away at Lightning as soon as they could.  And then…a single hit to the drive nodes would cripple them, leaving them easy meat for the bigger boys in the attack fleet.

“Make sure the tactical crew gets some rest,” she ordered the XO.  “We will need them fresh and active in six hours.”

***
The Caliph’s image fizzled into view in the private briefing compartment.  He didn’t look pleased.   Admiral Junayd silently bade farewell to his five wives and nine children and then briefly outlined what had happened.  Halfway through the briefing, the Caliph’s face darkened with rage.  Perhaps he was thinking of his treacherous sister – her treachery could hardly be denied, not now – or perhaps he was thinking of beheading a failure or two.  The Admiral silently prayed that if he were to suffer, his wives and children would be spared the penalty for his failure.  But how could anyone have expected the Caliph’s own sister, a mere woman, to turn into a spy and then escape to the Commonwealth?

“I understand,” the Caliph said, finally.  “How long until they reach Cadiz?”

Admiral Junayd considered, briefly.  “Assuming a least-time course – and assuming that we fail to bring them to battle and destroy them before they reach the border – “twenty-nine hours before they reach Cadiz,” he said, flatly.  “Once they reach the system, they can flash an alert to the rest of the Commonwealth.”

The Caliph smiled, darkly.  “Not if we act now,” he said.  “Are your heavy units ready to move out now?”

“Yes, Your Supremacy,” the Admiral said.  “We won’t have the troop levels we intended to deploy to Cadiz, however.  They weren’t scheduled to join us until…”

The Caliph waved a hand dismissively.  “That is of little concern,” he said, firmly.  “Flash a signal to the operatives on Cadiz.  Tell them that the time is now.  They are to put the silencing plan into action immediately, and then start priming the insurgents for action.  Once our fleet arrives, they will serve as our ground forces until the army can be mobilised and landed on Cadiz.”

And the insurgents will be crippled, Admiral Junayd thought, with a certain cold amusement.  The overall plan had always called for the destruction of the local resistance – hopefully after it had served its purpose – and now it looked as if it might be possible without the Theocracy needing to remind the galaxy of its true purpose too soon.  Once the other galactic powers learned what absorption by the Theocracy actually meant, they would all start rearming as fast as possible, leaving the Theocracy facing an alliance of the entire Human Sphere.  That could not be allowed.

“Yes, Your Supremacy,” he said.  He’d checked before the brief and fuzzy communications link had opened.  “I can be moving within nine hours, heading right for Cadiz.  The divisionary operations on other worlds will have to be brought forward as well.”

“See to it,” the Caliph said.  “May God go with you.”

His image vanished.  Admiral Junayd hesitated for a moment, sweat congealing down his back and staining his uniform, and then marched out of the briefing room, heading for the CIC.  There was a war to fight…and, if they were very lucky, they might even take Cadiz before the Commonwealth really comprehended that it was under attack.

***
“Enemy vessels entering firing range,” Roach reported.  “They’re locking onto our hull.”

Kat hesitated.  Firing on Theocracy vessels without being fired on herself was, technically speaking, an act of war.  It was definitely in breach of her orders, even if she was morally certain that the Theocracy was about to invade her homeworld.  A moment later, the entire debate became academic.  The Theocratic vessels had opened fire.

“I count twenty-one tracks,” Roach said, grimly.  Kat nodded.  That matched with the theory that the enemy craft were all destroyers.  “Point defence is online and ready to engage.”

“Return fire,” Kat ordered.  It was a shame that they didn’t have any missile pods, but deploying them in hyperspace would slow the ship down – and besides, it was alarmingly easy for an enemy missile to take out the pods before they could be launched.  Most tactical manuals suggested just punching out all the missiles in one pod before the enemy could wreak them, but it wasn't always that easy.  “Aim to slow our targets down, rather than destroy them.”

The enemy missiles flooded down on Lighting, their exact positions hazy in the distortions of hyperspace.  Point-defence plasma cannons and rail-guns went to work, firing bursts of superhot plasma and tiny bursts of compressed matter into their path, trying to take out as many missiles as possible.  Lightning had one advantage that her pursuers lacked; the enemy missiles had to work to catch up with her, while her own were falling back towards their target.  As if to counteract the advantage, all six enemy destroyers – Roach had finally isolated six targets – had their point defence linked together.  It made them, collectively, a very dangerous threat.  They could survive the far greater rate of fire Lightning could pump out at them.

Seventeen of the enemy missiles were picked off; two more were lost in hyperspace as their drives failed, or they lost their targeting locks and peeled off after a set of decoys.  The final two swooped down on Lightning and detonated just short of the hull, blasting bomb-pumped lasers into the armour.  Kat heard Lightning scream as the bursts burnt through sections of her armour, but her drives survived intact.  She glanced down at the damage report, cursed under her breath, and then gave thanks for small mercies.  The damage was relatively minor.

“Keep firing,” she ordered.  One of the enemy destroyers started to spin helplessly just after it was hit, seconds before a quick-thinking Captain ordered the drive shut down.  She fell behind the chase seconds later, stranded in hyperspace until another ship could rescue them and tow them out of hyperspace.  A second ship had been damaged, but remained in the chase, even though they’d clearly lost some of their point defence weaponry.  “Don’t let them keep picking away at us.”

The battle continued to rage as the enemy ships tried to get closer to Lightning, only to discover that that only exposed them to her missiles at close range.  Another one of the enemy ships died, but managed to spit out another bomb-pumped laser into Lightning’s armour.  Kat silently blessed the geniuses who’d invented the armour, thanking God that they’d managed to come up with something capable of absorbing blows that would have obliterated a starship from the Breakaway Wars.  Roach’s skilful deployment of Lightning’s ECM drones helped, distracting some of the enemy missiles from reaching their targets.  Nuclear fire blossomed out in hyperspace, only to be absorbed seconds later by hyperspace’s own intrinsic energy state, exciting energy storms into existence.  Kat watched the storm forming with a kind of helpless fascination; had they discovered a way to turn hyperspace itself into a weapon?  The thought was terrifying.

“We’ll be crossing the border in seven minutes,” the helmsman reported.

Kat shared a glance with the XO.  After what they’d seen, she seriously doubted that the Theocratic Navy would allow them to escape, even if it meant sending their ships across the border, an act of war.  Her lips twitched; after everything that had happened over the past few weeks, both sides would have causes for war coming out of their asses.  The Commonwealth would have the report that the Theocracy was preparing for war – and arming pirates to attack Commonwealth shipping – and the Theocracy would have this intrusion, and God alone knew what else.

“Captain,” Roach said, suddenly.  “The enemy ships are breaking off!”

Kat blinked in astonishment.  Why had the enemy simply abandoned the pursuit?  Had the Commonwealth been played all along, or had the enemy simply decided that they weren’t going to run Lightning down and chosen to escape just before they ran into the 6th Fleet?

“Good,” she said, fighting to hide her surprise.  Or perhaps the explanation was very simple; the Theocrats probably had orders not to cross the border without permission and had simply broken off when Lightning had managed to cross herself.  “Take us towards Cadiz, best possible speed.”

She looked up at the XO.  “I need a damage report,” she said, grimly.  Nothing vital had been hit, or Lightning would have slowed to a half and been swarmed by the enemy destroyers, but any damage was bad news.  She suspected that there wouldn’t be time to undertake repair work on Cadiz.  

“Aye, Captain,” the XO said.  “And might I suggest that you get some sleep?”

Kat rubbed her eyes.  Her bed sounded very attractive to her right now, but her office had a sofa and it was right next to the bridge.  “I’ll be in my office,” she said, finally.  “Alert me if anything happens, and I mean anything.  We’re at war.”

She handled the bridge over to Roach, who looked as tired as Kat felt, and stumbled into her office.  It seemed impossible to roll the sofa over and turn it into a bed, so she just lay down on the sofa and closed her eyes.  Sleep didn’t come easily and when it did, it was filled with dark dreams.  There was no avoiding the truth.  They were at war.

And even the Admiral would have to believe, wouldn’t he?

Chapter Thirty-Two

Everyone knew that it was impossible to punch a communications beam through hyperspace, at least for any reasonable distance.  The experts had worked out complicated schemes for relay stations that would have allowed them to transmit a signal over several light years, but most of the schemes had fallen apart on grounds of cost.  Hyperspace’s seemingly random energy storms would wipe out the relay stations every so often, shattering part of the communications net.  The only way humanity had found to transmit signals at FTL speeds was through creating an artificial singularity that could be resonated in tune with another singularity on the other side of the galaxy.  Singularities could be very dangerous, so the relay stations were constructed in orbit and heavily defended.  They were secure against an attack from the outside.

Lieutenant Sissy Fletcher shivered inwardly as the shuttle approached the StarCom station in orbit, passing through the network of orbital weapons platforms configured to obliterate any attacker intent on taking out the StarCom.  Her mouth was dry and her entire body was shaking; she couldn’t understand why the guards hadn’t realised that she was terrified and picked her up for interrogation, rather than allowing her into the heart of the system.  If only she hadn’t met her man, if only she hadn’t started to gamble, if only…

It had started fairly innocently, one leave on Cadiz’s moon.  The Hades Bar catered for RAN personnel who couldn’t go down to the planet, allowing them a chance to spend their pay in relative comfort and ease.  Sissy had been young and inexperienced, too naive to realise the age-old truth that all games of chance are invariably rigged by the owners.  They existed to separate young officers from their pay and Sissy, in the course of one leave, had fallen into debt.  Somehow, she hadn’t been able to break the addition, gambling again and again, always convinced that the next one would pay off handsomely and she would be able to clear her debts.  And somehow it had never happened.  Before she knew it, she’d found herself owing over five hundred thousand pounds to a gambling syndicate renowned for its brutal response to non-payment of debts.

Sissy had found herself in the syndicate’s office, facing two stern-looking men – clearly enhanced bodyguards – and the manager, who was looking down at the young officer as if she was a piece of dust he’d scraped off the floor.  She’d had no choice, but to pay – but she had no money.  Her salary couldn't cover her expenses and she knew better than to ask for help.  The RAN took a dim view of officers who got themselves into trouble with gambling and loan sharks, at least officers without powerful connections and patrons back home.  She’d expected to find herself disgraced – if she made it out of the office alive – but the manager had an offer for her.  She could work for him and repay her debts.  He would even through in a gambling allowance to see if she could earn enough to repay without further compromising himself.

The first request had been simple.  StarCom message traffic was heavily restricted, with priority given to military and government communications.  All Sissy had to do was insert a message for the manager, sending an encrypted transmission to Greenland, another planet in the Commonwealth.  A second request had followed, and a third, until Sissy had found herself more compromised than ever.  If she took it to her superiors, she would find herself on a penal colony.  They had her firmly in their grip and escape was impossible.  She’d told herself that she was earning enough to ensure a comfortable life – and plenty of gambling – but she’d known that it would have to come to an end.  And this time, it was the most dangerous request of all.

She had one hand in her pocket, curled around a simple unmarked datachip.  The manager’s flunky had given it to her only two hours ago, before she’d boarded the shuttle back to the StarCom installation.  His instructions had been simple and concise; she had to get the chip into the station, insert it into a console inside the secure zone and then allow it to run within the computers.  If she succeeded, she’d been told, her debts would be forgiven and she could go free.  It was worth the risk, she told herself, even though she doubted they would ever let her go.  Perhaps she could swing a deployment to a different star system, or go home and change her name, escaping into the shadows of Avalon...

The Marines on duty glanced at her, checking out the young and attractive Lieutenant, and then looked away before their Sergeant tore them a new asshole for being distracted on duty.  Sissy almost collapsed with relief, even as part of her wished that the Marines had been a little more observant.  Surely they’d seen her nervous she was...maybe they were inside, waiting to snatch her away from the rest of the operators on the station.  She felt almost as if she was watching her walk from outside her own body, as if events were moving onwards with an inevitability that belayed the struggles of the puny humans who populated the universe.  The final secure hatch slid open, revealing the heart of the StarCom operations system.  A circular chamber, manned by nearly thirty officers, with consoles that tracked and regulated the message packets in the transmission buffers.  She almost cringed as she sensed the charge in the air, the faint sense of being too close to a singularity.  Her console was glowing up at her, invitingly.  No one had moved to stop her from taking her seat.

She barely heard the last shift’s operator as he blathered in her ear, telling her that nothing particularly important had happened during the last shift.  Instead, she pulled up the main transmission queue and scanned the list, looking for anything that should be held back until the main buffers had been empted into the nothingness of singularity-space.  The StarCom could dispatch thousands of messages every second, but there were millions of messages, coming in and out of Cadiz.  It had once awed her to think that she could transmit a message from one end of the Human Sphere to the other.  Now, it was the chain around her neck, holding her down.  If she transferred away, the gambling syndicate would have no reason to keep allowing her to avoid repayment of debts.  She’d seen enough evidence of their ruthlessness over the years, even against RAN personnel, to know that she’d wind up dead in an air corridor, or forced into a brothel once she’d been dishonerably discharged from the RAN.

An hour passed slowly.  Carefully, trying to avoid glancing around, as if the motion was totally natural, she pulled the datachip out of her pocket and inserted it into the console’s slot.  There was a long pause that felt like years, perhaps decades, and then the console bleeped once.  The program within the datachip was already working, without her command.  It would have been impossible to insert a program from outside, but Sissy was inside the firewall that protected the singularity-controlling computers from outside intrusion.  Ten minutes later, the alarms went off as the singularities started to spin out of control.

Sissy stumbled out of the control room with the other operations, heading down towards the emergency escape pods.  Behind them, internal safety systems struggled to push the singularities back out of existence, rather than risk them tearing the station apart before evaporating with a colossal release of energy.  It would make one hell of a weapon, Sissy’s instructors had taught her, if only they could figure out how to generate and perpetuate singularities without losing control and seeing them evaporate into nothingness.  The background whine of the generators rose to a screeching howl, forcing the operators to cover their ears, and then faded away into nothing.  Sissy realised, with growing horror, just what she’d done.  The omnipresent sensation, the sensation that scientists swore was nothing more than imagination, of being close to a singularity was gone.  Cadiz was cut off from the rest of the Commonwealth.

They caught up with Sissy two hours later, but by then it was far too late.

***
Kat half-expected to fly out of a hyperspace vortex right into a battle as Theocracy forces laid siege to Cadiz.  Lightning had been forced to reduce speed after crossing the border, with one of the fusion reactors on the verge of overloading and fusing into a useless hunk of radioactive metal.  They’d limped back through hyperspace, jumping at every sensor reflection as if it was an entire enemy fleet, and emerged some distance from Cadiz itself.  If there was a battle going on, Lightning was in no state for a fight.

“Scan clear, Captain,” Roach reported, as the display started to fill up with icons.  All green and blue, thankfully; no glowering red icons illuminated the display.  “I’m picking up traffic from System Command.”

Kat nodded.  “Send the signal,” she ordered.  Outside of training exercises, no one had ever flashed a Code Red – attack imminent – to their superior officers.  Even using it without extremely good cause was a court-martial offence, but it was the only way to alert the system to the oncoming storm.  “And get me a private link with the Admiral.”

“Captain,” the XO said, grimly, “the StarCom is down.”

Kat swallowed a most unladylike word.  Without the StarCom, getting a message – a warning – back to the rest of the Commonwealth would take several days.  StarCom units had more multiple redundancies built into their design than a battleship, or even a civilian orbital pleasure palace.  For Cadiz’s StarCom to go down now...it could only mean enemy action.  Someone had sabotaged the StarCom to isolate Cadiz, ensuring that it would be days before the Commonwealth received the warning.  The Theocracy would have time to launch its invasion before the alert could be passed back to the Commonwealth.

She keyed her console, bringing up the strategic star chart of the Commonwealth.  The closest StarCom was at Bristol Deep, a system that boasted no habitable worlds, but large asteroid fields and a pair of gas giants that made establishing and operating an excellent industrial base an easy prospect.  Her father’s corporation and several others had invested heavily in the system, the only thing keeping it from being recognised as a Commonwealth member system in its own right being the limited population, just a few million below the number required for autonomy.  The corporations had rigged the game in their favour, although they did treat their workforce relatively well.  They didn't need a mass uprising within the system, one that might threaten their profit margins for the next century.  

“Prepare a course for Bristol Deep,” she ordered, sharply.  Bristol Deep also had a large naval base, if she recalled correctly, although most starships in the sector would have been based at Cadiz.  The corporations had lobbied heavily for establishing a base there, one that had been loudly denounced as pork barrel plundering of the public purse by some of the Assemblymen.  Her lips twitched humourlessly.  It might turn out to the best investment the Commonwealth had ever made.  “Greg?”

“We’re ready,” Bone said.  Kat winced.  Bone and his Marines had volunteered, one and all, to head to Cadiz and help set up defences on the planet’s surface.  Kat had called the idea suicide, but she hadn't been able to bring herself to overrule him on the issue, not when the Marines were determined to fight.  The occupation forces weren't ready for a real fight, Bone had pointed out, and needed as much help as they could get.  Afterwards, Kat hadn't been able to shake the feeling that she was sending the entire company of Marines to their deaths.  She told herself quite firmly that she wouldn't mourn one of them any more than the others.  Her heart said otherwise.  “I think that...”

“Captain,” Roach said.  “The Admiral is requesting a secure line.”

“Launch the Marines, and then put him through to my office,” Kat said, nodding to the XO.  She’d declared a Code Red, for crying out loud!  What had been keeping the Admiral?  A hunting trip?  Another round of endless parties?  Picking his nose?  A wave of bitterness threatened to overwhelm her as she remembered the deadly battleships floating in orbit around a dying red star.  How many people were going to die because the Admiral had neglected his duties?  “Let me know the moment anything changes.”

She stormed into her office and sat down at the desk, placing her fingers against the scanner.  The Admiral’s face appeared in front of her.  For once, he seemed actually alert, although the nasty part of her mind suggested that that had more to do with the fact she’d just given him a chance to chop off her head than anything more useful.

“Captain,” he said.  By now, the entire fleet would have received the Code Red alert.  They’d be rushing to battlestations – and, she hoped, learning how to overcome their deficiencies.  If they were really lucky, the Admiral’s cronies would be stuck down on the planet’s surface, leaving the harassed XOs to fight their ships.  It would improve efficiency enormously.  “What is the meaning of this?”

“The Theocracy is preparing to attack us,” Kat said.  She belatedly remembered that the Admiral hadn't been told anything about her mission, if only to prevent him scorching it or leaking it before the Belladonna had departed for Avalon.  “Their fleet is already on the way.”

“Preposterous,” the Admiral snapped.  “Captain, I am ordering you to report to groundside at once and...”

“Under a system-wide Code Red, a commanding officer who leaves her ship may be liable for court-martial for dereliction of duty,” Kat said, sweetly.  She had had it with the Admiral!  If she had a chance, she promised the ghosts of Roberta Dickson and the five members of her crew who had died when the bomb-pumped lasers had burned through her hull, she would challenge the Admiral to face her on a Court of Honour.  The RAN frowned upon duelling and it would probably mean the end of her career, but it would be worth it.  “Admiral, my sensor department is uploading the records to you now.  There are at least four squadrons of battleships and two squadrons of carriers bearing down on Cadiz, right now.”

She pushed on before the Admiral could speak.  “And you’ve just lost your ability to alert the Commonwealth,” she added.  She’d checked the timing; Cadiz’s StarCom had failed nearly three hours before Lightning had arrived, suggesting that someone in the Theocracy had flashed a ‘go’ signal to agents already in place.  The brief update she’d been able to download from the StarCom operating station had said that the station's computers had been heavily contaminated by perversion viral software and that it would take weeks, if not months, to clean out the system before repowering the station and spinning up the singularities.  Kat rather suspected that they didn't have that long.  “The timing isn't a coincidence, Admiral.  They had someone in place in our StarCom for God knows how long.  And now we know about her – why would they do that, unless keeping their agent a secret was no longer a concern?  There is an entire war fleet bearing down on us, Admiral!”

There was a long pause.  Just for a moment, Kat wondered if the Admiral was on the verge of a heart attack.  His face had paled, as if he had been suddenly forced to confront a reality he would prefer to deny.  Kat knew the expression from her mother’s social circles, when some unfortunate on the edge of High Society had been told that he or she was no longer welcome within the circle of endless parties, receptions and gossipmongers that made up the centre of their world.  If he did have a heart attack...

She glanced down at the display.  The Marine shuttles were halfway to Cadiz, heading down towards the Marine Corps base established on an island, safely away from the insurgency.  It would only take another forty minutes before the Marines were safely on the ground, where they would link up with the Marines deployed to the surface.  She wondered suddenly if the Admiral was trying to countermand the Code Red, even though it would ensure his court-martial when Avalon found out.  A Code Red took priority over everything else, at least in the eyes of the RAN.

“You were sent to provoke them,” the Admiral said, finally.  Kat opened her mouth to deliver a stinging rebuttal, but he spoke over her.  “The warmongers finally got their chance to start a war.”

Kat almost smiled.  The Admiral’s usefulness to his patrons had just come to a screeching halt.  With a Code Red involved, Naval HQ would take a very careful look at Cadiz’s response to the alert and the Admiral would be lucky to escape court-martial.  Maybe they’d accept his resignation, if only to get rid of him as quickly as possible.  All he could do now was accept the Code Red and...

An alarm shrilled.  “Captain, we have multiple hyperspace vortexes opening up nearer the planet,” the XO said.  On the screen, the Admiral’s face had gone pasty white.  A moment later, his image vanished from the display.  “They’re here.”

Kat caught her breath, torn between two absolutes.  Her heart told her to stand and fight – and Greg Bone, her former lover, was still in transit, an easy target if the enemy happened to notice the Marine shuttles.  Cold logic told her that Lightning was in no state to join the fight; the only choice was to alert the Commonwealth as quickly as possible.  And if that meant abandoning her personnel...

“Open a vortex,” she ordered.  She didn't recognise her own voice.  “Take us to Bristol Deep.”

Chapter Thirty-Three

“Code Red,” the loudspeaker blared.  “I say again, Code Red!  This is not a drill.  Code Red; I say again...”

“Someone shut that racket up,” Commander Nicky Seaford snapped.  “Report!”

“Lightning’s CO declared a Code Red,” Lieutenant Cindy Rollins reported.  The sound of the alarm mercifully faded away.  “Attack imminent…”

The Commander swore, just loudly enough for her to hear.  The station’s commander was down on the planet below, enjoying himself while his crew tended to their duties.  She watched as the command datanet came online, yet without the Admiral’s authority ordering automated units to combat stations it wouldn’t be complete.  They’d been caught with their pants down, quite literally.  She cursed the Admiral and his cronies under her breath even as the station’s crew rushed to battle stations; no one in their right mind would declare a Code Red unless it was genuine.

“Commander,” one of the officers reported, “the station is at battle stations.”

“Bring up combat systems and flash-transmit a warning to civilian craft,” the Commander ordered.  They’d taken far too long to come to alert, even though no enemy warships had yet materialised within the system.  “Order them to head away from the planet and into empty space.  The enemy shouldn’t target them if they’re not in the way.”

Unless they’re sadists, or just want to make sure that no word leaks out, Cindy thought, coldly.  She would have liked to believe that it was a drill, or some sadist’s idea of a joke, but the loss of the StarCom was alarming.  Cadiz was cut off from the rest of the Commonwealth…and if they’d taken out the other StarCom units nearby, it would be weeks or months before the Commonwealth knew that it was at war.  She knew from her tactical courses that speed of communications was often decisive in determining the outcome of wars – and the Theocracy had just crippled the Commonwealth’s ability to respond.

She glanced down at her console.  “Civilians are acknowledging,” she said.  “Sir…”

Alarms rang, loudly.  “Commander,” she snapped, as new icons appeared on the display.  “We have at least seventeen hyperspace vortexes opening within twenty thousand kilometres of the planet!”

The displays updated with terrifying swiftness.  Standard interstellar convention forbade opening up vortexes so close to a planetary atmosphere, even though there was no real danger provided that the vortex didn’t intersect the planet’s material body.  Anyone emerging that close was almost certainly hostile; automatically, automated weapons platforms began to lock onto the vortexes and prepared to open fire.  It was already too late; the first ships were already appearing out of hyperspace.

Cindy blinked in surprise.  “Freighters?”

There was no mistake.  The starships were larger than battleships, but with the wallowing signature of cargo freighters, starships so large that they could never set down on a planet’s surface.  Automatically, the automated weapons platforms held their fire, even as System Command started directing angry demands for explanations to the freighters.  And then the display sparked with red lights as the freighters seemed to break apart into thousands of smaller objects.

”Missiles,” she snapped.  The display kept updating as thousands of missiles roared towards the orbital defences, and 6th Fleet.  “They’re missile carriers!”

“And makeshift carriers,” another officer reported, from her console.  Behind the missiles, the darker red icons of starfighters were lancing out into interplanetary space, preparing to follow the missiles into the teeth of Cadiz’s defences.  Cindy cursed as the automated systems overrode her commands and retargeted themselves on the missiles, ignoring the starfighters.  A single missile impacting with the planet at such speeds would wreak havoc on a planetary scale, turning the Planet of the Hotheads into the Planet of the Dead.  It meant that the orbital installations and starships were almost completely on their own.

”Launch all the reserve starfighters,” the Commander ordered.  It was a command that should have been given minutes ago, but the ready fighters had only just been launching from the stations and orbital carriers.  Cindy saw, right in front of her, just how badly 6th Fleet had allowed standards and training to slip.  The ready fighters should have been launched within one minute of the alert, yet the pilots had been lazing about and the deck crews had been scratching their asses.  She wouldn’t have wanted to be in their place when the IG inspected them in the aftermath of the battle…and then she shook her head.  The scale of forces arrayed against Cadiz, as reported by Lightning, would ensure that the battle could only have one ending.

The swarm of missiles roared down on the orbital installations.  Tactical doctrine didn’t call for spending missiles on automated weapons platforms, but it was clear that the Theocracy had decided to rewrite the manual on planetary assaults.  In some ways, they were slipping through a chink in the system, one opened by the overriding priority to save the planet from a single missile impact.  One by one, automated weapons platforms began to die, their software – slaved to the command network – refusing to allow them to defend themselves until it was almost too late.  Other missiles closed in on orbital industrial stations, something that puzzled Cindy; the Theocracy would want to take the installations intact, if possible.  Maybe they’d just misidentified the industrial stations as armed fortresses.

“Missiles incoming,” the tactical defence officer reported.  Cindy felt her chest heave inside of her at the realisation that, for the first time in her life, she was under fire.  The enemy missiles were fanning out, hoping to confuse the automated ECM systems that would attempt to decoy as many of the missiles as possible away from their targets.  They needn’t have bothered.  The command network that should have turned the entire system – automated weapons platforms, orbital command posts and starships – into a single fighting entity was already fragmented.  She didn’t want to admit it, even to herself, but the orbital installations were on their own.  “Point defence online and opening fire.”

She pulled back her display as additional vortexes flickered into existence.  No freighters now, but warships; battleships, heavy cruisers…and carriers.  The Theocracy carriers were already crash-launching their fighters, sending them forward in a brutal wave of death that roared down on the scattered fighters trying to defend Cadiz.  A green icon vanished from her display as a series of missile strikes struck the carrier Harmony and blew her into radioactive plasma, along with all ten thousand of her crew.  Cindy couldn’t recall offhand if Harmony’s Captain had been one of the ones who preferred to remain on his ship rather than enjoy the fleshpots of Cadiz, but if he was down on the planet, he might have seen his ship die.  The IG would not be merciful when the final report of the battle was written, if it was ever written.  For all she knew, the Theocracy was busy stomping Avalon and had only diverted small forces to mop up Cadiz.  After all, it wasn’t as if occupying the planet would require troops to mop up the Commonwealth’s occupation force.  The locals would happily slaughter the entire garrison and dance in their blood.

The lights faded as all power was diverted to the point defence lasers, the last line of defence.  Cindy watched as missile after missile winked out of existence, only to be replaced by an endless stream of missiles that seemed to come out of nowhere.  Dear God in Heaven; they’d packed those freighters to the gunnels with missiles!  They’d be useless in a standard battle, but as the opening shots in a planetary assault, they couldn’t be beaten.  And with so much of the orbital defences firepower already being diverted to protect the planet, they couldn’t even hit the freighters before they shot themselves dry.  

She closed her eyes as the swarm of missiles lanced in towards the station.  The decoys were doing what they could, but the command missiles had a firm lock on the station now and wouldn’t be deterred.  It wasn't as if the station had the heavy armour of a battleship either.  A missile struck the station, slammed through the armour and detonated inside the superstructure.  Cindy had a moment to realise that time had run out…and then the world seemed to explode into a mass of white flame.  And then there was nothing.

***
By long tradition, the CO of a Theocratic Navy fleet rode his battleship into the fires of a planetary assault.  Admiral Junayd had always liked that tradition, even though it meant that there was a passing chance of his own annihilation in the opening moves of the battle.  He’d taken care to ensure that his deputy was on one of the ships in the rear – there was no point in risking both commanders in action – and make sure to update his will.  One of his brother’s wives had just presented him with a new son and the Admiral had sworn to make sure that he was duly remembered – and included in the generous post-mortem grants paid out by the Caliph to the families of any of his soldiers or spacers who died in action.

“Report,” he barked, as the eerie lights of hyperspace gave way to normal space.  The battle was already underway, as he had expected.  It had been chancy slipping past the watch posts the RAN had established at the edge of the system, but somehow they’d made it.  God had clearly smiled on them, not least in the way the missile-armed – and expendable – freighters had managed to unleash their full complement of missiles without being destroyed.  The enemy fleet was already burning below him.

”We have hit the infidels hard,” the Fleet Operations Officer reported.  Admiral Junayd had deduced that he was a spy some months ago and had made sure to keep the young and overly enthusiastic young man under his eye at all times.  The Caliph would see no signs of disloyalty from his most loyal Admiral.  “Their orbital defence network is in tatters and their fleet is still powering up.  We have caught them utterly unprepared for us.”

Admiral Junayd allowed himself a moment of relief.  The infidel spy ship hadn’t made it back, then.  Or maybe it had and Admiral Williams, a fool if ever there was one, had chosen to dismiss the warnings.  Exactly why the infidels had allowed him such power – and so little supervision – was beyond him, but it hardly mattered.  God had smiled on the Theocracy once again.  

“Then take us in, fast,” he ordered.  The enemy fleet was smaller than his own, bitterly outnumbered, but that didn’t mean that they would see the folly of resisting God’s anointed and surrender.  Indeed, if they managed to escape into hyperspace, they’d have a chance to rearm and then come back to face him with blood in their eyes.  The Theocracy would never have a better chance to cripple the RAN.  No other system would allow their defenders to sink so low.  “Open fire as soon as we enter range.”

Aisha’s Glory shivered around him as her drives went to full power, taking her in towards the blue-green world up ahead.  Behind her, four entire squadrons of battleships followed, already meshing together into a single unit far greater than the sum of its parts.  The carriers were already falling back, having released their starfighters to assault the infidels and wear them down before the battleships arrived to finish the job.  Normally, he would have had to spare escorts to ensure that the infidels didn’t think about sending their own ships to pick off largely-defenceless carriers, but here the infidels were in too much confusion to even think about hitting back.  

He smiled.  His tactical instructor had once told him that every defensive move had to be a prelude for taking the offensive.  It was a truism that the Commonwealth’s defenders had forgotten, back when they’d first annexed Cadiz.  They could have built defences that would have deterred the entire Theocratic Navy, but instead they’d been content to fortify the world and little more.  It was a lack of forethought, he told himself, that would cost them dearly.

“And send a signal to the planet,” he added, as an infidel cruiser winked out in a flash of light, her debris drifting down towards the planet below.  “Tell them that its time to rise and take their freedom.”

***
“Have you got through to the Admiral?”

“No, Commander,” the communications officer said.  “The communications network keeps breaking down – I think someone has inserted a virus into the network.  I can’t get a steady communications link to the planet, let alone a secure link…”

Commander Fran Higgins felt her knuckles going white as she squeezed the command chair’s arms with all her strength.  Thirty minutes ago, she’d been working on a routine reload of the battleship’s missile pods, a task that had been delayed too long already, sullenly aware that Defiant’s Captain was down on the planet, sharing tall tales with the Admiral.  And then Lightning had declared a Code Red and the shit had well and truly hit the fan.  Only their good luck had saved them from being targeted in the opening salvo of missiles, for Defiant’s point defence crews had been as fat and slow as the rest of the ship.  The battleship had been spared the destruction that had broken over Michael Dalton and Onslaught, but she suspected that it was only a matter of time.  They’d been so out of practice that they’d still been rushing to battle stations when the enemy missile-carriers had opened fire.

“Purge the network,” she ordered, flatly.  Only the Captain could give that command, but the Captain wasn’t on the bridge – or even on the ship.  Even the thought of the court-martial he’d face – if he survived – didn’t cheer her.  “Get a secondary link established with the remaining ships; plug them into our network.”

“Commander, that…”

“Do it,” Fran snapped.  It might not be technically permissible, under regulations, but there was no other choice.  6th Fleet was taking a pounding and each ship was fighting as an individual unit, rather than a combined entity.  Defiant’s apparent immunity to enemy fire wouldn’t last.  “And for God’s sake find out who’s senior!”

There was a long chilling pause as the network, finally, started to reform on the display.  None of 6th Fleet’s subordinate officers had been trained to use their initiative in any way, Fran recalled bitterly, even with a powerful enemy fleet breathing down their necks.  The fleet was scattered, trying to remain in orbit while deflecting or destroying incoming enemy missiles.  Ironically, it looked as if Commonwealth ECM was a little better than their opponent’s ECM, but that advantage wouldn’t avail them much while they were trapped against the planet.  She bit off another curse as the update finalised, with most of 6th Fleet’s command structure destroyed or trapped down on the planet.  

“Form the fleet up around Defiant,” she ordered.  She would probably end up facing a court-martial herself, assuming she survived the battle.  A mere Commander taking command of an entire fleet?  And yet it looked as if she was the senior surviving officer.  Commodore Hayworth had gone down with Onslaught, while Commodore Breckinridge was missing, location unknown.  “Link our point defence systems together and prepare to withstand incoming attack.”

The enemy fleet was powerful enough, she realised with another curse, to overwhelm 6th Fleet even if it had been in fighting trim.  With the command network so badly fragmented and broken, it was going to be a bloody slaughter.  Defiant shuddered as her main missile batteries opened fire, launching hundreds of missiles towards the oncoming enemy force, but it wouldn’t be enough to deter them.  They’d already blown their way through most of the fixed defences, smashed System Command and, for some reason, blown apart one of the asteroid habitats established around the planet.  Her best guess was that they’d hoped to cripple the orbital defences by forcing them to fire on chunks of rock that would otherwise have impacted the planet and inflicted staggering amounts of damage on a largely innocent population.

She shuddered as she considered the display.  The enemy fleet was opening fire now on her makeshift formation and they weren’t going to survive.  There was only one possible alternative to destruction, but she didn’t even want to think about it.  And yet there was no choice.

“Mr Thomas,” she ordered, formally.  “You will open a hyperspace vortex.”

She sensed the shock that ran around the bridge.  The RAN did not retreat, but then the RAN had never fought a serious opponent before, only pirates and the occasional bloody border skirmish.  If 6th Fleet stayed where it was, it would be destroyed, for nothing.  Her duty was to preserve as much as possible of the RAN’s fighting power for a later return to Cadiz.  If anyone thought that the system was worth recovering…

“Now,” she ordered.  The swarm of enemy missiles was getting closer.  “Take us out of here.”

She tensed as a shimmering whirlpool of energy appeared in front of the fleet.  It was possible that the Theocracy – if they had the ships to spare – had stationed forces in hyperspace to track and destroy any escaping ships.  But doing that properly in hyperspace would require a fleet so much larger than the RAN that their victory was almost certain.  One by one, the remaining ships of 6th Fleet slipped into hyperspace and vanished.

“Set course for Bristol Deep,” she ordered.  She had to report to higher authority – and then probably face a court-martial for retreat in the face of the enemy.  “There’s nothing we can do for Cadiz now.”

Chapter Thirty-Four

“Captain,” Rifleman Jones said, “the fleet’s bugging out.”

Captain Greg Bone nodded.  “And tell me,” he asked, sardonically, “do you blame them?”

“Bunch of pansies,” Rifleman Frost said, from where she was checking and rechecking her SIW-45.  “They keep their fleet all neat and trim and then they run for it when they might get blood on the decks.”

“Stow the chatter,” Greg snapped, although he didn't disagree with Frost.  Admiral Williams had made damn sure that the 6th Fleet couldn't defend itself; it’s surviving ships had no choice, but to fall back and regroup somewhere else.  And they were leaving the Marines trapped in the Cadiz System.  All of a sudden, transhipping Lightning’s Marines to the planetary garrison was starting to sound like an invitation to have their heads kicked in.  The Royal Avalon Marine Corps might be about to discover what their more famous forbearers had felt at a place called Leyte Gulf.  “They can probably hear you yammering away.”

The thought didn't comfort him as the shuttles raced towards the planet.  Cadiz’s upper atmosphere was flaring with light as the remains of countless automated orbital weapons platforms – to say nothing of a massive asteroid habitat – fell to their firey death down below.  The burning embers of a once-proud space-based industry might just shield them as they strove to reach the surface before the Theocracy’s warships took control of the high orbitals.  He knew their capabilities – and demonstrated ruthlessness – too well to doubt that they would pick off the shuttles from orbit, if they were still flying.  In theory, the shuttles could power down and start drifting through space away from the planet, but where would they go?  Marine assault shuttles were designed for hard landings on planetary surfaces, not making intersystem trips to the asteroids.  Their life support would run out pretty quickly.  Besides, the Theocracy would secure the main asteroid bases and the gas giant mines as soon as they had secured the high orbitals looking down on Cadiz.  It would suit them to watch the insurgents tear down the garrison as much as possible before they actually started landing troops.

Some of the asteroid miners would hold out in the asteroids – asteroid-miners were a notoriously independent breed – but there was no way of locating them without using radios, which would invite the Theocracy to come kill them.  No asteroid miner would dare answer an open and unencrypted radio transmission, quite rightly.  No, their only hope for survival, let alone hitting back at the enemy, lay in hitting the ground as soon as possible and escaping into the undergrowth.  

He logged into what remained of the command network and tried to make sense of the transmissions, but nothing seemed to fit together.  The Admiral was silent, either through shock, treachery or one of his staff having cut his throat while he was still trying to make sense of the way his universe had just turned upside down.  In his absence, thousands of contradictory orders were being shouted over the network, half of them in the clear and open to the enemy as much as their intended listeners.  It sounded as if the ground-based forces were panicking as much as anything else, half of the voices seemed to think that they should resist to the last, the remainder seemed to insist that surrender was the only logical choice.  Greg wondered, absently, if the Admiral’s staff, realising that their fancy uniforms were about to get dirty, had decided to surrender, or if the Theocracy was broadcasting fake surrender orders over open channels.  They didn't carry the standard identification codes, so he disregarded them.  

“We’re following that piece of junk down,” the pilot said, grimly.  He sounded tense, even though he’d carried out planetary assaults before, back at the RAMC training ground on Avalon itself.  This time was a little different.  The piece of junk – the remains of one of the massive orbital industrial nodes that should have been spared – was large enough to pose a danger to the planet itself, if it was allowed to reach the surface.  It was quite possible that the remaining defences would blast it, rather than allow it to impact, something that would seriously threaten the shuttle itself.  “Here we go...”

The shuttle began to shake as it dived down into the upper atmosphere.  Greg could feel it protesting at such abuse, even though it was easily rated for hot entry into a combat zone.  They didn't dare use active sensors – with the command net in such disarray, it was easy to imagine themselves being picked off by a friend instead of an enemy – but passive sensors were providing an alarming amount of data, none of it good.  The Theocracy’s fleet was slowly advancing on the planet, carefully picking off anything that might have been able to offer resistance.  They weren’t hurrying, he noted, but why would they have had to hurry?  The entire planet was at their mercy.

His lips twisted into a snarl.  If they’d moved quicker, they might have picked up the shuttles before it was too late.  As it was, Greg and his company  of Marines had a chance to get down to the ground.  He studied the display fed into his combat suit’s HUD, trying to pick out a likely impact point for the shuttle.  Assuming that everything went well, they were probably going to land within ten kilometres of New Barcelona.  They’d planned to land at the spaceport, but at least one of the authenticated transmissions had claimed that the spaceport was under heavy attack – the insurgents, of course.  It would be just like the Theocracy to arrange matters so that the forces most likely to fight them were pitted against each other, leaving the surviving force weaker and ready to be plucked from the vine.

“Aw, shit,” the pilot said.  “Brace, brace, brace...!”

Greg felt his suit tensing around him, just as the piece of space junk they were following down disintegrated ahead of them.  He saw a fiery mass breaking up, chunks of debris spinning away, back towards the shuttle before gravity took hold and pulled them down towards the planet.  The entire shuttle rang like a bell as...something struck the hull, hard enough to leave them all shaking; a second later, the internal compensators failed.  Greg felt his chest spinning crazily as the shuttle lurched from side to side, like a insect trying desperately to avoid being swatted by a man.  A final crash, hard enough to convince him that the shuttle’s armoured hull had been breached, shook the craft, before the flight levelled out.  Below them, the remaining chunks of space debris burned away in the upper atmosphere.

“We’re holed,” the pilot said, with a string of curses that would have shocked Greg’s mother.  “We’re going down...”

The shuttle heeled over sharply, sending them all tumbling backwards, and then levelled out, seconds before it span again.  Greg heard at least two of the Marines being noisily sick, despite all the enhancements they’d had inserted into their bodies.  The spinning compensator field, flickering in and out of existence, was pushing them beyond anything they’d experienced in a simulator, or even in a training exercise.  Part of Greg’s mind starting taking notes for an improved training course when they returned home; the remainder was concentrating on not being sick himself.  God help them if the Theocracy happened to spot them...

“I can't keep her together much longer,” the pilot said.  There was a hard edge in his voice that betrayed his stress, even though he tried to keep his voice calm and level.  “I suggest that the time has come to abandon ship.”

Greg nodded.  “It doesn't matter where we land, as long as we’re together,” he said.  He raised his voice.  “All right; get into position and stand by to drop out of the ship!”

He leaned back to the pilot.  “Blow all the remaining decoys,” he ordered.  “And then jump yourself; leave the shuttle on autopilot...”

The shuttle lurched again, violently.  “Understood,” the pilot said.  He keyed the autopilot and then jumped up.  Unlike the rest of the Marines, he wore a light suit of combat armour, barely suitable for any form of combat.  “Blowout in three, two, one...”

Greg swore aloud as the shuttle’s hatches opened and the Marines streamed out into the open air.  Gravity asserted itself a moment later and they began to fall, heading down towards a forest far below.  Brilliant flashes of light could be seen in the sky as his suit tumbled over and over, the remaining pieces of space junk meeting their fiery end.  The antigravity unit cut in a second later, slowing their fall just enough to ensure they would survive the landing.  A wave of greenery washed up and at him, followed by a hideous crashing noise as he hit the forest canopy and fell through to the ground below.  The antigravity unit breathed its last, just as he fell into swampy ground.  He cursed again as the combat suit started to slip, its weight seeming to make his struggles to extract himself almost impossible.  It took everything he had just to get onto firmer ground.

“Sound off,” he ordered, using a low-power microburst transmission.  The combat support detachments swore blind that the transmissions were undetectable by any known enemy sensor, at least at anything beyond minimum range, but he wasn't too keen about using them anyway.  An invading force would be likely to deploy drones to sniff out even the merest hint of a transmission...and then call in fire from orbit to annihilate the imprudent survivors of the fall.  “Who’s left?”

“Leggy is hurt bad, sir,” Sergeant Boyce reported.  The solid Sergeant had been in the Marine Corps since before Greg had been born.  Rumour had it that he’d served in one of the predecessor units, before the human race had even reached into space.  “Her suit’s busted and her arm is pretty torn up.”

Greg winced.  One hundred Marines in a company; fifty of them in a shuttle.  The other shuttle hadn’t been hit badly, apparently, but they were already out of contact.  His scowl only deepened as the rest of the roll call came in; four combat suits were broken beyond immediate repair – they had no logistics train with them – and two Marines were hurt.  And there was no way of getting them to a secure medical centre, let alone a hospital.  He checked his suit’s maps and scowled.  They’d come down on the wrong side of New Barcelona, away from the spaceport.  It was a ten mile hike to the nearest piece of habitation.  

You’ve been required to run ten miles – more – in your training, he mocked himself.  Of course, back then they hadn't been hacking their way through the undergrowth.  It could easily take hours to get out of the forest and by then...the Theocracy would have landed its troops.  They’d just have to dig in and prepare an insurgency of their own, at least until the Navy came back for them.  If he knew Kat – and they’d been lovers, back when the universe had been a simpler place – she would move mountains to recover the Marines she’d sent into the fire.  

On the other hand, combat suits didn't last forever and hacking their way through an almost-impenetrable forest would drain their power cells at an alarming rate.  And without combat suits, they couldn’t hope to match their enemy...

“Come on, ladies,” he said, once they’d made what provisions they could for the wounded, “only ten miles to go.  Move out.”

***
The President’s Mansion – now used by Admiral Williams and his cronies – was under attack.  Insurgents had taken up firing positions just outside the secure zone and were pouring fire into the defenders, while mortars and other heavy weapons – carefully hoarded for just this moment – were bombarding the mansion from a safe distance.  The occupying forces had deployed laser point defence systems to protect themselves from incoming shells, but it drained their power.  And the mansion wasn't the only building under attack.  Every building that had served or supported the occupying power – and their collaborators – was under attack.

Vanessa watched from the top of one of the tallest buildings in the city as the insurgents pressed in on the mansion.  The defenders seemed to be in some disarray; understandable, as the insurgents had announced their arrival by driving a truck loaded with high explosives up to the checkpoint – with all the right paperwork – and detonating it right in their face.  Their strongpoint was now nothing more than a burning crater, while the insurgents were pressing closer and closer.  Vanessa could see tracers as some of the defenders fired from the mansion itself; the Admiral and his subordinates, perhaps, suddenly aware that their valuable lives were under threat.  They didn’t seem to be thinking very tactically, but perhaps their shock excused them; they hadn’t thought to open fire on the taller buildings.  It would have shattered the insurgent command and control network, at least for a few vital minutes.  

“Order the trucks into the rear of the secure zone,” she ordered.  Their benefactors had warned them not to use the secure transmitters until the battle had finally begun, but they were certainly proving their worth.  She wasn't quite sure whose fleet had emerged from nowhere and smashed the orbital defences, but the streaks of fire in the sky and the absence of KEW strikes proved that the Commonwealth’s stranglehold had been broken.  “The defenders are trying to rally; deal with them before they can launch a counterattack.”

Advanced weapons from outside or no, the defenders still packed a punch.  They had training and discipline, something that the insurgents generally lacked, although they seemed to be having problems serving as a coordinated force.  Their combat suits allowed them to take risks the insurgents couldn’t dare, yet even they were valuable.  Insurgents saw combat suits ripped open, saw the red blood inside splashing across the tarmac, and took heart.  The enemy was not invincible.  They were winning.

She didn't hear the engines as the first of the trucks drove forward, the insurgents silently allowing them to enter the secure zone without challenge.  Hopefully, the enemy would be equally distracted; the insurgents had nailed all of their spying drones with HVMs in the opening seconds of the battle.  If they were lucky...her mouth twisted into a bitter smile as the lead truck made it up against the wall.  It could go no closer, but it hardly mattered.  She shielded her eyes as hundreds of tons of high explosive detonated, shattering the wall and smashing effortlessly through buildings that had stood for a hundred years, buildings that served the occupying force as barracks and supply houses.  The remaining trucks drove forward, driven by grim-faced men who had seen their families killed by the occupiers, trying to get as close to the remaining buildings as they could before they were killed.  Unsurprisingly, the enemy had realised the danger, but their soldiers were still stunned.  Only one truck was nailed short of its intended target and its cargo, detonated by remote control, still hurt the enemy.

“Send in the final set of trucks,” she ordered, coldly.  There was no point in rushing the remaining defenders, not now.  If their explosives experts, forced to experiment hundreds of miles away in the isolated mountains, where the occupiers rarely went, were right, they should be able to shatter the secure zone completely.  “Now.”

She allowed herself a moment to dwell on the future.  She’d never really considered what sort of world might replace the Commonwealth occupation.  The pre-war Cadiz hadn't been the most stable of societies, but now – after the insurgency – she found it impossible to believe that her people would fragment into factions again.  Theirs was a society shaped by violent resistance to an outside power.  And her?  Would she return to the life expected of a young girl of Cadiz?  Maybe not; after tasting power, would she want to give it up?

Her lips curved into a smile.  There would be time to worry about that later.

It was time to put an end to the fighting, forever.

***
Admiral Williams sat at his desk.  He’d sent away all his aides, all the sycophants and hangers on, all the people he’d promoted and added to his personal staff because they happened to be well-connected at Court.  He was alone...and, he was coming to realise, he’d been alone for a very long time.  His wife’s ambitions, his children’s greed and hunger for social status – and his own – had shaped his life.  He’d allowed himself to be used as a tool, only to discover that his value as a tool was almost nothing.  And Cadiz was burning down around him.

He’d turned off the terminal.  His subordinates could handle the defence, without him; there was little left to defend in any case.  The soldiers guarding the mansion would do their best, of course, but he knew enough to know that their best wouldn't be enough.  What could they do once the Theocracy had taken the high orbitals?  And how could he have been so stupid?  He'd shirked his duty in the worst possible way.

A distant rumble, like thunder, caught his attention, followed by a rattle of gunfire.  It was close, too close.  Time was running out.  Quickly, almost desperately, he scrabbled in his desk drawer, recovering the fine pistol he’d been presented with by one of his aides, a few years ago.  What had happened to the fellow, he asked himself; what had he earned through his sycophancy?  He’d been assigned to one of the orbital stations, he reminded himself; he would almost certainly be dead now.

Quite calmly, he put the pistol to his temple.  It felt cold against his head.  He found himself trying to think of acceptable last words, as if his death would somehow expiate his shame.  No RAN officer had ever lost an entire planet, until now.  His finger squeezed on the trigger...

An explosion shook the building.  The shockwave threw him off his chair and sent him crashing against the wall.  Part of his mind registered the pistol going off and wondered if he'd been hit, just before darkness overcame him.  And then there was nothing, but pain.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Flames billowed up from all over New Barcelona as the Janissary shuttle flew over the city, suggesting that the city was far from pacified.  The central government had fallen, according to the reports from the forward agents embedded with the insurgents, but individual units of Commonwealth soldiers were fighting with savage bravery.  They would all be eventually exterminated, of course, but in the meantime they were inflicting heavy losses upon the Janissaries – and the insurgents.  The spaceport, which had been marked down for capture rather than destruction, had been held by a force of Commonwealth Marines who had held out for nearly three hours, leaving a wreaked spaceport in the aftermath of their last stand.

Admiral Junayd watched from the porthole as the shuttle banked and headed down towards the Governor’s Mansion.  The defences the Commonwealth occupation forces had painstakingly constructed around their governing centre were shattered, a handful of stumps all that remained of walls that could have once stopped a missile.  He’d known that the newly-appointed governor – already on his way from the Theocracy, along with five divisions of reserve-eulachon troops – had intended to move into the mansion, but it didn’t look as if it would be possible.  The building was intact, but every window had been shattered and it looked as if it had suffered severe structural damage.  It looked to be permanently on the verge of collapsing into rubble.

The shuttle grounded itself just outside the mansion and a line of Janissaries ran forward, rapidly securing the shuttle before any watching enemy soldiers could take a crack at the Theocracy force’s ultimate CO.  Admiral Junayd felt the planet’s gravity – slightly higher than Abdullah’s gravity – take hold of him as the shuttle’s drive fields faded away, leaving him feeling slightly heavier.  It wouldn’t have bothered the Janissaries; they were specially engineered for service in far higher gravity fields, a legacy of their punishing training regime on a world with a gravity field twice Earth-norm.  Even the weakest of the Janissary Corps was far stronger than any of his fellow dwellers in the Theocracy, an advantage that allowed them to switch from spearheading an assault into enemy territory to crushing dissent and unbelief at the Caliph’s command.  They were feared throughout the Theocracy.  Soon, they would be feared throughout the Commonwealth as well.

Colonel Ali met him as he stepped out of the shuttle and breathed his first breath of Cadiz’s atmosphere.  It stank of fire and blood and burning human flesh; in the distance, he could hear the steady rattle of gunshots.  The Colonel, a tall man wearing the black uniform and silver skull badge of a Janissary, didn’t look too pleased to be reporting to a naval officer, but rivalries between the ground and space components of interstellar military forces were a fact of life.  Even the Janissaries were not immune to questioning the worth of starship officers in their comfortable ships when they were slugging their way through a muddy field down below, exposed to enemy fire that would kill them – or leave them so badly wounded that they would never make a full recovery.  It hardly mattered; the Caliph had placed the Navy in command of the assault and no one would argue, at least if they liked breathing.

“Admiral,” the Colonel said.  The Admiral saluted, one fist pounding against his chest.  The Colonel didn’t return it; in a combat zone, the junior officers never saluted their superiors.  There was too great a chance of an enemy sniper lurking nearby, ready to pick off the superior officers and plunge the attack into chaos.  “Welcome to Cadiz.”

The Admiral smiled.  “Report,” he ordered.  Another distant rattle of gunfire underlined his words.  “What is the current situation?”

“We’re dropping most of my unit around the city now,” Ali said.  He’d led the attack in person, as it should be; his unit had dropped right onto the Governor’s Mansion.  Any resistance, already weakened fatally by the insurgency, had been quickly and brutally crushed.  “The roads leading out into the countryside are being secured and civilians are being turned back, by force if necessary.  Most of the infidel military units have been shattered by the sudden attack and the insurgency; the remainder are being hunted down as we speak.  Some of them have melted into the countryside and vanished, for the moment, but those that have tried to hide in the city are being tracked down.”

They shared a smile.  After the long occupation, any remaining Commonwealth soldiers who tried to hide in the city would be betrayed by their neighbours quickly, before the natives had a chance to realise what Theocratic rule meant for their world.  The lucky ones would be those that surrendered to the Theocracy’s forces, for there were strict orders to take prisoners where possible.  And the unlucky ones would be tortured and killed by the insurgents.

“Broadcast an offer to accept surrender,” the Admiral ordered, simply.  “And what about our own forces?”

“Two hundred men were lost when their shuttles were picked off by rogue SAM units with HVM missiles,” Ali said, grimly.  “Nearly forty more have been killed or wounded in action when we stormed the spaceport.  And I’m afraid that eight men have been put aside for service in a penal battalion.”

Admiral Junayd scowled  Even the Janissaries, the most brutally disciplined of the Theocracy’s forces, had their weaknesses – and the vast honours granted to them in peacetime sometimes went to their heads.  Misbehaving with locals outside of combat operations was often winked at, even by the Clerics, but in combat it could prove fatal.

“I see,” he said.  “And what were their offences?”

The Colonel’s eyes narrowed, suspecting that his authority was being tested.  “One case of friendly fire, three cases of shooting enemy soldiers who were trying to surrender and four cases of rape or molestation,” he said.  “They will spend at least a month in the penal battalion before being returned to their original unit – if they survive.”

“Good,” the Admiral said.  The penal soldiers were disarmed, forced to wear orange uniforms that shamed them in front of their brethren and forced to perform the most difficult and dangerous tasks in the army.  They could be used to clear minefields, test for clear air and anything else that might have killed a perfectly good infantryman – and, if they survived, returned to their units suitably punished.  The survival rate was around one in ten, often less in wartime.  “How many prisoners did we take?”

The Colonel led him over towards one of the few remaining sections of intact war.  Three dozen men and women knelt there, their hands on their heads, watched carefully by armed Janissaries.  They didn’t look very dangerous to the Admiral, but no one would risk relaxing their guard, at least until detention camps could be established and they could start working their way through the prisoners, trying to discover if they’d caught anyone worth conditioning into an obedient servant of the Caliph.  A number of the prisoners were wounded, at least two of them badly enough to warrant immediate medical attention.  The Admiral shrugged; they’d receive treatment once the Theocracy’s medics had finished with their own wounded, if there were supplies left.  A soldier who surrendered had no honour, but then most of the prisoners were clearly not soldiers.  They looked more like the clerks and beueaaccats who’d helped run the planet, while the Commonwealth had ruled.

“Make sure that they are kept away from the insurgents,” Admiral Junayd ordered, flatly.  “I don’t want to lose any prisoners before they can be interrogated.”

The Colonel’s radio buzzed.  He listened for a long moment.  “Admiral,” he said, “they’ve found the Admiral.”

Admiral Junayd looked up sharply.  “Is he alive?”

“They think so,” the Colonel said.  He was already striding towards the mansion, his long legs eating up the distance.  The Admiral followed him, his mind racing with possible options for an alive and conditioned Admiral Williams.  Up close, the mansion looked stronger than he’d thought, although it was clearly quite badly damaged.  Hundreds of dead bodies littered the floors, most of them Commonwealth soldiers making a desperate last stand when the attackers had stormed the building.  Others were civilians; his stomach twisted in his chest when he realised that some of them were children, cut down before they could grow into adults.  The Theocracy’s counter-insurgency techniques might be based around the theory that nits bred lice, but it still disgusted him to see the small and broken bodies.  They could have been shipped back to Abdullah and placed with good families, raised in the faith.

The Admiral’s office was a mess.  It had clearly taken a heavy blow, probably from one of the truck bombs the insurgents had driven into the gardens once the walls had been knocked down.  The Admiral himself lay on the floor, blood leaking from a nasty scar on his forehead, two medics attending to him.  Someone was clearly thinking, Admiral Junayd noted with approval; a live enemy commander was worth the loss of a few wounded soldiers.  They’d called the medics away from the hastily-established infirmary.

He caught sight of an antique pistol on the ground and realised, with a thrill of contempt, what the Admiral had been trying to do.  He couldn’t even commit suicide properly!  Shaking his head, he turned back to look down at the enemy commander.  The Theocracy couldn’t have asked for a better gift from God.

Enjoy your treatment, he thought, coldly.  By the time you die, you’ll have betrayed your Commonwealth a thousand times over.

***
Vanessa had walked down to the mansion when the black shuttles had started to land, disgorging troops in powered combat armour.  At first, she’d feared that the Commonwealth had won the battle in orbit and were sending down Marines to even the odds for the garrison, but her embedded officer had reassured her that they were friendly.  It didn’t quite reassure her; the newcomers, once they’d secured the area, had snatched, disarmed and captured her insurgents with just as much brutality as they’d shown to the surviving garrison troops.

Up close, there seemed to be more reason to worry that something was badly wrong.  The newcomers were swaggering around as if they owned the city, their forces slowly fanning out and clearing civilians from every building within a mile of the mansion.  Even the Commonwealth had not cracked down so hard, although the Commonwealth had never had to look for the remains of another military force.  She could still hear crackles of gunfire in the distance as survivors fought to get out of the city, or perhaps to go underground – or perhaps to surrender to the newcomers.  Her insurgents had too many grudges to pay off to accept surrenders and she knew better than to try to make them.  The old rule about never giving an order one knows won’t be obeyed was never truer than in an irregular force, without any real discipline or hierarchy.

“Over there,” the embedded officer said, pointing to a pair of officers who had just emerged from the mansion.  One of them was wearing a black set of combat armour; the other was wearing a dark red shirt with a set of golden rank badges.  It struck her, a moment too late, that the shirt was the colour of blood.  “The Admiral will be pleased to see you.”

Vanessa kept her face as still as she could as she met the eyes of the Admiral.  He was a tall man, with an air of authority that contrasted oddly with his apparent youthfulness; a rejuvenated person, she realised, like so many from the Commonwealth.  And yet there was a strange air of…intensity around him that reminded her of the more fanatical insurgents, the ones who had knowingly volunteered for their own deaths.  His eyes flickered over her tight shirt and then locked onto her face.  The armoured man didn’t even try to conceal his distaste.

“Admiral, this is Vanessa,” the embedded officer reported.  “She is the leader of the local insurgent cells.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Vanessa said.  Something was badly wrong; it struck her, then, that they might have been wrong to believe the honeyed promises of a Commonwealth-wide resistance movement.  She pushed forward, chillingly aware of the abyss opening just beneath her feet; they might have made a terrible mistake.  “When can my forces take over the security of the city?”

There was a long pause.  “You will tell your forces to disarm and report to our people,” the Admiral said, flatly.  “We will take over control of your planet.”

The bare-faced effrontery of it caught her by surprise.  “We’re your allies,” she protested, shocked.  It might have been safer to play along until she was out of range of their guns, but she couldn’t help herself.  “This is our planet…”

A silent signal must have passed between them, because the armoured man lifted a gauntlet and shot her with a blue-white pulse of light.  The jangler pulse struck the body armour she was wearing below her shirt, deflecting just enough of the blast to stop her from dropping into unconsciousness, but not enough to keep her nerves from jangling and her body collapsing to the ground.  Her entire body seemed to be crawling with static electricity; no matter how much she struggled, she couldn’t force her body to move.  She even seemed to have lost control of her breathing.  Dark spots teetered on the edge of her vision.

She was barely aware of strong hands rolling her over, pulling her hands behind her and tying them with a plastic cuff.  Someone picked her up effortlessly, carried her to a vehicle, and tossed her inside.  Vanessa landed badly, cracking her head against the metal side of the lorry, and collapsed into darkness.  Her final thought was that they had defeated the Commonwealth only to find a far worse set of masters.

***
 “Still nothing?”

“Still nothing,” Sergeant Boyce confirmed.  He’d spent a few months in a signals and intelligence unit, the only one of them with even marginal skills in intelligence gathering.  Not that it had come in very handy; all Commonwealth signals seemed to have faded away, to be replaced by signals from Theocratic forces as they roared down to the distant city.  Greg and his men had tracked nearly a hundred heavy-lift shuttles heading for the spaceport and they’d tried to estimate how long it would take for the Theocracy to ship in enough troops to allow them to start patrolling the countryside, but the truth was they simply didn’t have enough data to make any proper estimates.  “If there’s anyone else out there on our side, they’re being very quiet about it.”

Greg nodded.  The locals had never bothered to build a proper road network linking their cities together, for reasons that made little sense to him.  It had been the occupying forces that had constructed the massive Highway One – the ring road that ran from city to city – in the hopes of breathing new economic life into the planet.  Instead, it seemed to have worked as a place for insurgents to plant their bombs and snipe at passing vehicles.  They’d finally hacked their way out of the forest to discover that there was no traffic at all, in either direction.  But then, the farms that fed New Barcelona were on the other side of the city.  Any would-be refugees would head there.

And there was the minor detail that they’d watched enemy shuttles landing to the east, on empty land.  What were they doing there?

He winced as a shuttle flashed by overhead, heading down towards the city.  The Theocracy would have total control of the air by now.  They’d picked up an HVM unit using active sensors, just before firing on a group of shuttles – and being smashed from orbit before they’d realised that they’d actually brought a pair of shuttles down.  Anyone else would definitely be quiet, if only because of the certain knowledge that a single betraying emission would mean death.

“Captain,” one of the watchers hissed, “we have company.”

Greg narrowed his eyes, allowing his enhancements to sharpen his vision.  Four trucks were making their way along the highway, heading east.  One of them was a low boxy vehicle, bristling with guns; the other three appeared to be cattle trucks, carrying humans.  Prisoners, he knew; men and women who’d been captured by the Theocracy.  Even the most optimistic reports had made it clear that no one wanted to be captured alive.  The Theocracy didn’t care for its own soldiers and would hardly care about the enemy.

He knew they should do nothing, but he wanted to hit back at the Theocracy.  Whatever the cost…

“Get ready,” he hissed.  The Marines scrambled into ambush positions, watching the oncoming convoy.  It was clear that they had no fear of attack; they weren’t taking any precautions at all.  They drove right into the kill-box without even a hint of concern.  “Now!”

The Marines opened fire.  A plasma burst could be detected from orbit, but a suit-launched HVM was impossible to detect except at very close range.  The armoured vehicle exploded into a fireball, killing its crew before they could get off a distress call, and the Marines ran forward, breaking open the cattle trucks.  There was no time to be gentle; they yanked the prisoners out and pushed them towards the forest.  It wouldn’t be long before the Theocracy realised that something had gone very wrong.

A girl caught his eye as he pulled her out.  She was young, with aged eyes that watched him without apparent interest.  Something about her nagged at his mind, but there was no time to solve the mystery.  Time was not on their side.  He picked her up – even without her hands bound, it was clear that she could barely walk – and raced towards the forest.  Behind them, the four vehicles went up in fire.  

Two helicopters raced overhead, too late.  Greg watched them from the safety of the forest, knowing that even the best sensors would have difficulty tracking them within the canopy of trees.  For a long moment, they waited, and then they headed back to the city.  There was too much to do for them to spare troops to search for the escaped prisoners.  He found himself chuckling as he put the girl down, deployed the knife from his suit and cut her bonds.  They’d singed the Caliph’s beard and escaped!

Enjoy it, a voice whispered in his head.  It will get harder from here.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Bristol Deep was an odd system.  A freakish chance had prevented a massive gas giant, larger than King Jupiter himself, from collapsing, igniting and becoming a star.  The twisting gravity field within the system had prevented the formation of any planets, allowing thousands of asteroids to orbit the sun in splendid isolation.  Bristol Deep might have been useless for those seeking a life-bearing world to serve as a home, but the corporations had found it a great investment.  And, given enough time, it might support a population in the billions.  It was far from the only star system with no habitable world.

“Captain,” Roach said, “I’m picking up a squadron of battleships and escorts – IFF signals mark them as friendly.”

Kat allowed herself a brief moment of relief, and then she tensed again.  It had taken two days – two entire days – to reach Bristol Deep, two days when Greg Bone and his Marines were trapped on Cadiz.  They could have been captured, or killed, or...her imagination supplied any number of possible scenarios, each one worse than the last.  The uncertainty was worse than the knowledge that her lover – her former lover, she told herself sternly – was dead.  At least she’d know...

“Send a burst transmission; Code Red,” she ordered.  There was a good chance that the squadron at Bristol Deep didn't know that the war had begun, giving the Theocracy a chance to take them out before they were ready to repel an invasion.  The StarCom link to Cadiz had been broken – would they assume the worst?  “And then get a direct link through the StarCom – we need to flash a message to Avalon.”

There was a long chilling pause, seemingly lasting for hours, before they got a response.  “Commodore Christian’s squadron sends its compliments and an acknowledgement of a Code Red,” Roach reported.  “The StarCom has prioritised our message to Avalon.”

Kat sensed, more than felt, the XO shifting beside her.  “Commodore Christian is a good officer,” he said, on their private channel.  The remainder of the crew wouldn’t hear his words.  “Very stiff, very formal, but always the first one into a fight.  His crews always respected him more than loved him, yet they knew that he would never let them down.”

Very different from Admiral Williams, Kat thought.  “Send the Code Red, then dump every sensor record we took from their staging post and Cadiz into the link,” she ordered, sharply.  The Theocracy might be listening in, but they already knew that Lightning had spied on their fleet.  A brief flash of guilt crossed her mind as she wondered if she bore personal responsibility for the war.  It faded almost as soon as it had formed as she remembered that the enemy fleet had been preparing to depart.  The chances were good that they’d only brought the attack forward by a few days or even hours.  “And then inform them that Cadiz has almost certainly fallen.”

She’d had plenty of time, in the privacy of her cabin, to endlessly play and replay the battle out in her mind.  It took no simulators to know that 6th Fleet had been badly outmatched, even without its criminal lack of training and preparation for war.  The Admiral had crippled the entire fleet, and without it, Cadiz would have fallen like an overripe plum.  Another flash of guilt tore at her heart – she’d abandoned her lover to his near-certain death – but she pushed it away ruthlessly.  She had to be hard now – and forever.  There were many terrible days to come.

“Message transmitted,” Roach reported.  The message would have reached Avalon almost before he’d finished speaking, slipped instantly through the entangled singularities that made up the StarCom network.  They’d know, for all the good it would do.  The existence of a small squadron at Bristol Deep wouldn't change the balance of power, although she was sure that fingers would be pointed at Naval HQ.  Why hadn't they deployed the squadron to Cadiz, they’d be asked; why hadn't they concentrated their force in orbit around the most important world in the sector?

Her lips twitched.  Victory had a thousand fathers, one of her tutors had said, but defeat was an orphan.  The King, the Assembly, the media...and even Naval HQ itself would be looking for scapegoats.  Who was in command?  Admiral Williams.  Why was he in command?  Who put him in command?  All of his supporters would desperately try to paint themselves as innocent, trying to pass the buck upwards to the Naval Promotions Board or the King himself.  They’d signed off on the decision to send Admiral Williams to Cadiz.  She knew enough, just from living far too near to the true corridors of power, just how badly the political infighting could become.    It might make any coordinated response to the invasion impossible.

“Captain,” Roach said, “I’ve picked up a message from Commodore Christian.  You are ordered to report to him onboard the Bombardment in one hour.”

Kat nodded.  “Link us into the system defence network,” she ordered.  Apart from the gas giant mining stations and the Navy base, the remainder of the system was spread out over a wide area.  It would be nearly impossible to defend the asteroid mining stations, something that would no doubt have occurred to those charged with protecting the system.  Indeed, the automated defence platforms orbiting the small moon that housed the main facilities in the system had already come to full alert, sweeping space for hostile signatures.  The contrast to Cadiz was staggering.  If only they had the firepower to stand off a determined assault.

“Aye, Captain,” Roach said.  “They’re assigning us to an outer patrol position, at least for the moment.  No further orders, but they’re requesting a full data dump themselves.”

“Give it to them,” Kat said, firmly.  There was no time for her own lingering doubts and uncertainties, not when they were at war.  “Have we picked up any message from Avalon?”

“None, Captain,” Roach said.  “They acknowledged the Code Red, and then said nothing.”

“We wouldn't expect a response from them so quickly,” the XO commented, through their private link.  “I’d expect there to be a great deal more panicking and rushing around in circles before they actually get back to us, let alone alert the Assembly that we’re at war.”

“Let me know the moment they respond,” Kat ordered.  She stood up.  “Have my shuttle prepared for transfer to the bombardment.  Mr. XO, you have the bridge.”

***
Bombardment was brutally impressive, lacking the sleek lines that had been built into Lightning’s powerful form.  Rumour had it that the Admiral Ransom-class of battleships had been designated, privately, as the Blunt Instrument-class and Kat had no difficulty believing the tale.  It – it was hard to think of a battleship as feminine – was a blocky mass, bristling with guns, missile tubes and drive nodes.  Bombardment was designed for service right in the midst of battle, both giving and receiving horrific punishment that would break the back of a cruiser like Lightning.  Kat knew some of her former friends at Piker’s Peak who had felt more comfortable with a few million tons of battleship wrapped around them, but she’d never agreed.  Besides, it was easier to make one’s mark on a smaller ship.

An alarm shrilled as new hyperspace vortexes began to flare into existence within the Bristol Deep System.  Kat felt her blood run cold as she lived every CO’s worst nightmare; being trapped between ships with an enemy fleet bearing down on her position.  A moment later, she relaxed as IFF codes were exchanged and the newcomers were confirmed as friendly.  6th Fleet – or what was left of it – had arrived at Bristol Deep.  Kat ran a quick count and swallowed a curse as she saw how few ships had survived without damage, or had survived at all.  Sixty-seven ships, led by thirteen battleships...had the remainder been destroyed, or lost somewhere within hyperspace?  There was no way to know.

“Get us down as quickly as you can,” she instructed the pilot.  There was no time to spend woolgathering when the system might be attacked at any moment.  “Hurry.”

Bombardment swelled in the porthole as the pilot took them directly towards the shuttlebay, then served as Bombardment’s small boats operator directed them to an airlock.  Point defence weapons swivelled to track them as they slipped up to the massive starship and docked at the hull, a warning that the fleet was at battlestations and there would be little time to separate friend from foe.  If the IFF failed...but it didn't fail; the shuttle quivered as it docked with the battleship.  The hatch opened automatically and a pair of armed Marines, wearing light combat armour, beckoned for her to come out.  They looked on edge; Kat was careful to keep her hands in view at all times.  The last thing she needed was to be accidentally gunned down by her own side.

They checked Kat’s identification, searched her quickly and efficiently, and then escorted her down a long passageway, illuminated by the flickering red lights of Condition One.  Bombardment was at battlestations, with every man at his post; armed Marines guarded hatches with live weapons, ready to kill.  Commodore Christian and his subordinates ran a tight ship, Kat decided, something she would commend if she ever had the chance.  A hatch opened and there was a second check of her identity, and then she was pushed into the Commodore’s office.  He had a larger office, part of her mind noted irrelevantly, than her suite on Lightning.

She stood to attention and saluted as Commodore Christian rose from his desk.  He was a tall man, with short grey hair, penetrating grey eyes and a pinched face, as if he’d deliberately starved himself of human emotion.  There was no mistaking the power in his body, or the assumption of authority that surrounded him like a uniform; there was no doubt in his mind that he was in charge.  Kat shook his hand firmly and winced inwardly as he studied her, with cold eyes that were somehow much worse than the lusty looks she'd endured as a teenage girl within High Society.  This man cared nothing for her body, only the steel within her...and he had clearly found it wanting.

“Welcome onboard,” he said, in a voice that betrayed nothing of its origins.  It was almost too perfectly Avalon to be from Avalon, suggesting that Commodore Christian hadn't been born on Kat’s homeworld.  That actually fitted with his slow rise through the ranks, compared with Admiral Williams; Avalon-native officers, the ones known by High Society, tended to receive the plum assignments.  “I have orders from the King and Naval HQ to assume command of the remains of 6th Fleet.  I assume that you have no problems accepting my authority?”

There was a bluntness in his speech that indicated that he, at least, knew that Kat had tried to blow the whistle on Admiral Williams.  “Yes, sir,” Kat said.  “Lightning was attached to 6th Fleet.”

“And you’ve been a busy bee over the last week or so,” the Commodore said.  There was no trace of approval or disapproval in his voice.  “I have read your report, the one you forwarded to me.  You have served in the best tradition of the service.”

Kat felt herself wince again.  She didn't feel as if she’d served in the best tradition of the Royal Avalon Navy.  Lightning had fled Cadiz, leaving her Marines – and 6th Fleet – behind to fight and die against overwhelming force.  And even though cold logic told her differently, part of her would always wonder if she could have made a difference.

“Of course you could have made a difference,” Commodore Christian said.  “You could have added another destroyed ship and lost crew to the death toll.”

His voice had no room for doubt, or self-pity.  “I have summoned the remaining senior officers from 6th Fleet to Bombardment,” he added.  “I have deployed scouts in hyperspace.  We will have enough warning of an enemy advance to be prepared to meet it, or to retreat.”

“Yes, sir,” Kat agreed.  Admiral Williams had relied on the watch posts – and they’d clearly failed.  Or they’d simply been taken out by the Theocracy’s agents before they’d detected the incoming fleet.  She didn't want to ask the question, but there was really no other choice.  “Commodore...can we retake Cadiz?”

The Commodore considered the question seriously.  “Maybe,” he said, finally.  “I think that we will know more after the briefing.”

***
6th Fleet’s command structure had been shattered, Kat realised, as the surviving senior officers took their places in the briefing compartment.  The senior surviving officers were Commanders, with a handful of Lieutenant-Commanders and Lieutenants among them.  One light cruiser had been hit so badly – a fluke hit with a bomb-pumped laser – that her senior surviving officer was an Ensign, twelfth in the chain of command.  Kat had never even commanded a watch while a junior Ensign!  

“Attention on deck,” the Commodore said.  He’d sent Kat to the briefing compartment and then vanished, presumably to commune with Naval HQ over the StarCom.  “Be seated.  We don’t have much time to waste with formalities.”

His cold gaze swept the compartment.  “As you are aware, we are at war with the Theocracy,” he said.  “Cadiz must be assumed lost.  As yet, we have no contact with mining stations, outposts and stage-one colonies along the borderline, but we must assume that in the absence of evidence against it that they too have fallen.  I have dispatched a squadron of destroyers to scout the sector, however we lack StarCom links to any of those worlds.  Our information will be out of date.

“I have spoke with Naval HQ.  They have confirmed me as a brevet Admiral and CO of 6th Fleet,” he continued.  “My staff have barely begun to consider moving officers around to fill in holes, so with the exception of a few starships I think you may as well assume that you will be holding your commands for the foreseeable future.  Don’t get too comfortable.  We’ve got a major problem on our hands and we may die delaying the juggernaut from crunching its way into the heart of the Commonwealth.”

There was a long pause.  “The Navy base here is capable of handling repairs for a handful of starships, so we will start doing what work we can right now, but any ship that is too badly damaged to be repaired within the next few days will be returned to the Commonwealth for repair at one of the major shipyards.  We must assume that the Theocracy is aware of the existence of this base – they will certainly be able to track the StarCom – and that their fleet will come looking for us.  I do not intend to face their juggernaut here.  If need be, I will abandon this system and carry out a mobile war of attrition against the enemy.  Preserving the remains of this fleet is far more important than protecting and holding this system.”

For a moment, his cold eyes met Kat’s – and then moved away.  “I want to be very clear on this point,” he concluded.  “We have taken a heavy blow and our morale is in the crapper.  Too many fine ships and crew have been lost at Cadiz.  We’re hiding here, aware that the enemy may come down on our heads at any moment.  The war seems to be lost before it had even fairly begun...”

He smiled.  “It isn't lost,” he said.  There was an edge in his voice, a confidence that made his words seem louder, even though he spoke quietly.  “The Commonwealth is vast.  We will hold the line, build up our forces, and then take the offensive.  We will drive the Theocracy out of our space and we will press forward, hammering away at them until our ships appear in the skies of Abdullah herself.  And if they refuse to surrender, if they believe that their God will protect them, we will create a desert of their world and call it peace.

“This is not the end of the war.  The war has only just begun.  It will last for years, with millions of deaths on both sides, but we will emerge victorious.  The Theocracy and all its evil will be stricken from history.”

There was a long pause.  “Good,” the Commodore – the Admiral – said, finally.  “Now; specific assignments...”

Kat watched from her seat as he issued orders, sometimes directing a reluctant commander to take their starship back to the Commonwealth – after off-loading most of the ship’s crew.  Experienced officers were in short supply, as were Marines; the battleships hadn’t been sent out with a separate Marine component.  Units were mixed and matched, crews spliced together and forced to train desperately, for who knew when the enemy would invade Bristol Deep?  The new Admiral had a zest, a drive, that she admired, even as she found herself wondering where his ambition would take him, after the war.  He would hardly be the first RAN officer to seek power in the Assembly...

She shook her head, dismissing the absurd thought.  The Admiral might not survive the war...and who knew what would happen, in the future?  Despite his words, Kat worried; worried that everything the Commonwealth had built over the years would be destroyed.  Her father’s commercial empire, the mighty corporations that exerted invisible power over the government, the RAN itself...it all might be destroyed by war, or forever changed by the inevitable tide of years.  She found herself so wrapped in her thoughts that she found herself surprised when the Admiral cleared his throat.

“I have a specific task for you,” he said.  “Someone needs to report to me on what is happening at Cadiz.”

Kat leaned forward.  “So we can retake the system?”

The Admiral frowned.  “So we can decide what to do with whatever opportunities open up in front of us,” he said.  “The Theocracy has us knocked off-balance.”

His gaze sharpened, suggesting an implacable will.  Kat realised, for the first time, why her XO had commented that the Admiral’s crews respected rather than loved him.  This was a man who would send his fleets into a meatgrinder if he believed that it would accomplish his objectives.  And perhaps, she realised, he was exactly what they needed.  She barely heard his next words.

“I intend to return the favour.”

Chapter Thirty-Seven

“I apologise for dragging you out of bed,” the Caliph said.  “I’m afraid it is quite urgent.”

Ambassador Gavin Hastings rubbed his eyes.  In his experience, summons that arrived at the dead of night – as if someone had planned the timing with malice aforethought – were always bad news.  Good news could wait; bad news had to be faced at once.  The booster he’d taken when his staff had woken him roared through his body, flushing out the tiredness that threatened to send him yawning in front of the Caliph, yet he still felt on edge.  Everyone knew that the drugs had side effects – and they could be very dangerous.

“I am at your service,” he said, finally.  “What do you wish of me?”

“I am afraid that matters between our two governments have reached an impossible position,” the Caliph said.  His voice was even, but Gavin – an experienced diplomat – detected a hint of something behind his voice.  Anticipation, perhaps, or amusement?  “If holding my sister prisoner was not bad enough, there was a second…incident.  One of your starships was caught trespassing in my space.  It is an insult that I cannot let go unanswered.”

Gavin thought rapidly.  He knew nothing about any official spy mission – but he would not have been informed anyway, just in case the message was intercepted or one of the embassy’s personnel was compromised.  Besides, he had the odd feeling that the Caliph was speaking by rote, playing reluctant when he was eager to move ahead.

“I know nothing about any starship in your space,” he said, finally.  “If I can consult with my government…”

“We are forced to respond to this, the latest provocation from the Commonwealth,” the Caliph said.  There was no mistaking his amusement now.  “It is my sad duty to inform you that a state of war exists between your government and mine.”

“Your Supremacy,” Gavin said, carefully.  It took all of his diplomatic experience to keep the shock from his face.  “I do not know what has happened in your space, but there are ways to find a diplomatic solution…”

“We have stated our legitimate demands and they have been rejected,” the Caliph said, enjoying himself.  “You have refused to return my sister.  You have refused to respect our space.  We now move ahead to determine the issue by war.”

Gavin held himself under tight control.  “In that case, I must communicate with my government…”

“Of course,” the Caliph said.  “The legalities must be observed.”  His face twisted into a smile and Gavin knew the truth.  By the time he returned to the embassy and contacted his government – if he was allowed to use the orbiting StarCom – the Caliph’s attack fleets would already have savaged their targets.  “But I asked you here to pass on another message.”

He leaned forward.  “I wish you to inform your government of my terms for their surrender,” he said.  “They are to disband their military forces and cede Cadiz and the adjourning sectors to us.  If they make that concession, I will grant them peace.”

Until it pleases you to break it, Gavin thought, coldly.  A Commonwealth without the RAN would be an exposed target for the Theocracy, when it had finished digesting its conquests.

“I will pass on your message,” he said, rising.  “If there is nothing else…?”

“You will receive safe conduct to return to the Commonwealth,” the Caliph said.  “I trust that your government will do the same for my Ambassador.

***
By long tradition, the Assembly was never summoned at night.  It had always been opened in the late morning and closed by twilight.  Prime Minster Bruno Lombardi could not help, but feel a twinge of unease at the message that had brought him from his bed and summoned him to the Assembly Hall, an elegant building on the other side of Camelot from the palace.  The King himself had called the Assembly – and that boded ill.  He was only entitled to call the Assembly in a state of planetary or interstellar emergency.

There were armed guards on the gates, he realised, as he strode across the courtyard and up to the fence isolating the Assembly Hall from the remainder of the city.  The ceremonial guards were gone, replaced by grim-faced Marines carrying live weaponry and wearing light combat armour.  A set of men wearing heavy combat armour – enough firepower to devastate a city – were positioned just out of view from the street, watching from behind their masks as the Assemblymen headed to the Assembly.  Everyone’s ID was checked, even the Prime Minister’s.  Something had gone very badly wrong.  He glanced up into the air and saw nothing; no cars flying through the sky, or media drones looking for politicians to watch from a distance.  Every year, the Assemblymen swore that they would outlaw that practice, but they never did.  No one could resist the thought of so large an audience.

The air of tension only grew stronger as he walked into the Assembly Hall itself and headed towards his seat.  The room was rectangular, with two rows of seats facing the central dais, with seats allocated by constituency.  An observer who was unaware of political realities might assume that there were no party blocs, or that the Assemblymen spoke only for their constituents, but Bruno knew better.  The real business was done elsewhere, behind closed doors, where politicians would hammer out compromises that would be presented before the Assembly for a final vote.  He listened, keeping his expression blank, as nervous Assemblymen filled the air with chatter.  No one seemed to know what was going on, but speculation raged from a Theocratic invasion to a coup.  The absence of air traffic over Camelot certainly seemed to suggest that someone was taking precautions to secure the city.

He swallowed a hint of irritation before it had a chance to blossom into life.  As a member of the King’s Privy Cabinet, he should have been informed before the Assembly was summoned by the King.  Instead, he’d been summoned like any other representative and it galled him, even though he understood the King’s reasoning.  He couldn’t show overt favour, even to the Royalist faction at Court.  In some ways, he lacked the devious mind of his father, but in others he was definitely his father’s son.  

The big doors that allowed the Assemblymen to enter the Hall slammed closed.  His implants detected privacy shields flickering into existence, ensuring that no one could eavesdrop on the Assembly, not even the media.  If there were any Assemblymen who had been delayed, or had chosen to ignore the summons, they would not be able to gain entry.  The summons had been quite urgent and very specific; if you were on your deathbed, bring your deathbed with you.

On cue, the Speaker stepped forward.  He was an old man, over one hundred years old, and he had been in politics longer than Bruno had been alive.  Everyone trusted him to be impartial; he hated everyone evenly, at least as far as Bruno had been able to determine.  Precisely what would happen when the grey-bearded old politician died was the subject of some ardent speculation among the younger Assemblymen, although the truth was that there was no easy choice as a replacement.  It would become the subject of a bitter political battle.

“Honoured Assemblymen,” he said, his voice still strong despite his age, “I present to you His Majesty the King.”

Bruno rose automatically as the second set of doors swung open, followed by the rest of the Assemblymen, even the liberals who wanted an end to the monarchy.  Normally, the King would have to beg entry to the Assembly Hall, a reminder that while the King possessed considerable power the Assembly – when united – matched him.  The Assembly could dispose the King if necessary and order his replacement with one of his brothers – or sons, if King Thomas V ever got round to marrying and producing offspring.  It was one of the prime duties of a monarch – and the only one the young King had not yet fulfilled.

The King, he realised as the young man strode down to the dais, wasn't wearing his robes or the black and gold suit he wore for daily business.  Instead, he was wearing a military uniform, without rank badges or service emblems.  And that, Bruno knew, meant only one thing.  The King was asserting his powers as commander-in-chief of the Royal Avalon Navy and that meant war.  He shivered as the King reached the dais, accepted a bow from a man old enough to remember the time when his grandfather sat on the Throne, and turned to face the Assembly.

Silence fell, broken only by shuffling as the Assemblymen waited to hear him speak.  Tension hung in the air, so thick that it could almost have been cut by a knife.  The King seemed to be hesitating, his dark eyes shadowy and tired.  He’d been woken up himself, Bruno realised, woken up and confronted by bad news.  And yet, was there a hint of relief around his features?  Waiting for the war might have been more nerve-wracking than fighting it.

“My People,” the King said.  The Assembly would be televised; the entire world would see the King speaking, as if he were speaking to them personally.  It would go out on air just after the Assembly was closed.  Bruno checked the report from his researchers before he’d entered the privacy fields; the entire planet was slowly coming to realise that something was badly wrong.  “My people; we are at war.”

A great gasp came from some of the benches, where politicians who had believed – or claimed to believe – that war was not inevitable reacted to the shock.  The smarter ones would already be considering ways to shift the blame onto the more radical members of the party – or, if the war went badly, to form a peace bloc in the Assembly.  Several of the more radical members looked as if they wanted to call the King a liar, but didn’t quite dare.  

“Two days ago, Theocratic forces entered the Cadiz System and attacked 6th Fleet,” the King continued.  “I am forced to report that losses were very heavy and 6th Fleet was badly damaged, forced to retreat by the invaders.  At last report, Cadiz was being bombarded, there was fighting in the streets and enemy shuttles were being launched to convey troops down to the surface.  We must assume the worst; Cadiz has fallen and our garrison had been killed, taken prisoner, or scattered into the countryside.  We are at war.

“Information is still coming in, but we have received notification of a number of minor assaults on Navy Bases and industrial stations scattered across the Commonwealth.  Most of the attacks appear to have been devised to hamper our response; many attacks succeeded, others were beaten off before it was too late.  We may discover that other worlds, lacking any form of FTL communicator, were also attacked and occupied.  This is no mere border skirmish; this is war.

“We received a declaration of war from the Theocracy barely an hour after the attack on Cadiz.  They have claimed that we provoked the war – first by given sanctuary to refugees and then by trespassing in their space.  And yet – and yet – their attack was jumped off bare hours after the so-called trespass!  Their assault plan was prepared for years and the fleet was prepared to move, quite literally, at a moment’s notice.  We knew that this day would come.  We are at war.”

His gaze sharpened.  “We are at war.

“The Theocracy has graciously told us what we can do to save ourselves from their juggernaut,” he said.  “We can surrender; we can cede them vast amounts of territory…and we can scrap the Royal Avalon Navy.  Such terms would win us peace, but for how long?  Without the Navy, how long would it be before the Theocracy decided to renegotiate the terms and send an unstoppable fleet into orbit around Avalon, ready to crush us if we refuse to prostrate ourselves before them?  The peace they propose is the peace of submission, the peace of the grave.  We will have to accept their faith, their way of living, their leadership…permanently.  Everything that makes Avalon work will be lost.

“I say you nay,” he thundered.  “We all knew this day would come.  We knew the nature of the lurking beast towards the Rim.  We have been attacked; treacherously, as an ambusher might jump upon a stronger target from the shadow.  The damage is extensive, but we can rebuild; we can construct a far more formidable fleet and make them pay for what they’ve done to us in this war.  We will smash their fleets, tear apart their religious tyranny and ensure that this monstrous beast is slain for all time!  We will not sacrifice everything that makes us what we are for a little illusionary safety.  We will endure, rebuild, and smash them into the dust!”

His voice lowered, just slightly.  “It will be a long hard war,” he admitted.  “Many of us will die in the coming weeks, and months, and years. There will be times when surrender will look better than continuing to bear the burden of fighting.  There will be many victories, but also many defeats.  And yet we will not give in!  I ask the Assembly, now, for a declaration of war against the Theocracy.  I ask the Assembly to declare a state of emergency within the Commonwealth, to activate the plans for rapid mobilisation.  And I ask the Assembly to select members from its ranks to serve on a War Cabinet.  It is time to fight.

There was a long pause as he stepped back from the dais.  “It is time to vote,” the Speaker said.  By law, there were no debates over a declaration of war; it was either granted or refused.  “All Assemblymen; place your hands on the panel and prepare to register your vote.”

Bruno looked down at the panel, and then pressed his hand against it.  It lit up, once it had checked and rechecked his identity, revealing two buttons.  If someone else had attempted to use it to enter a vote for him, even another Assemblyman, the system would have locked up instantly, sounding an alarm.  There had been times when the system had sounded the alert when someone was touching the panel instantly, but there was no point in taking chances.

“Enter your vote,” the Speaker ordered.  Bruno pushed down on AYE.  Any Assemblyman who didn’t vote within the minute would be counted as an abstention.  As the voting rolls were public, some of them might wind up having to explain their votes to their constituents.  “Ten seconds…time’s up.”

The lights vanished from the panel.  “Two hundred and seventy-nine Assemblymen have voted,” the Speaker reported.  There were three hundred Assemblymen in all, representing the twenty-four major star systems within the Commonwealth.  Avalon, as the founding world, had considerably more weight than it should have, under a purely democratic system.  The remaining twenty-one Assemblymen had either missed the summons, or had chosen to abstain.  “Two hundred and thirty-four have voted in favour.  The motion is passed.”

Bruno smiled, even though it wasn't really funny.  They’d voted to declare war, but the war would have come with or without their votes.  And those who had voted against the war would have to explain themselves to their fellow Assemblymen, or to their constituents.  That, too, was going to have shattering long-term political effects.  And then there was the King himself.  The Assembly had just voted him a hell of a lot of power…

And what would he do with it?

***
It was a question that was still bothering him an hour later, when the Privy Council gathered in the underground bunker.  With some careful manipulation, the War Cabinet – when it was formed – would be effectively a continuation of the Privy Council, although with some new faces.  The King would still hold a majority of the votes, as long as he was careful.

“I think there is one question we have to face,” he said, firmly.  “Can we win the war?”

“It’s early days yet,” Grand Admiral Constance Cinnabar said.  “Admiral Christian is confident; he has the remains of 6th Fleet under his command and he has several other ships that have been detached from their regular formations and sent on patrol.  However, a lot depends on what the enemy have in mind.  If they don’t mind absorbing a few risks, they could crush Bristol Deep and then drive inwards towards Columbus or Kuala Aisha.  We have powerful fleet elements in both systems, but they’re not concentrated.”

Bruno nodded.  He’d been reading up on interstellar logistics and the reality had confused him.  They could send messages instantly to any planet with an orbiting StarCom, but any world without a FTL transmitter could only be contacted by a starship.  The warning would still be on its way to worlds that might be threatened by the oncoming storm.  Some of them might be attacked before they knew that there was a war on.

“The Admiral has also recommended that we dispatch all available mobile fleet support units to join him,” Constance continued.  “I have confirmed this on my own authority; the Admiral is operating under the assumption that we will lose Bristol Deep and he will need supply ships.  He’s currently working on ways to take the attack back to the enemy.”

Bruno was no expert, but it still seemed wrong to him.  “Admiral, what happens if he moves to hit them and they hit us at the same time?”

“Then everyone gets very confused,” Constance said, briskly.  “Right now…it may not be politically palatable, but we have space to trade for time.  Their offensive will slow down, giving us an opportunity to mass our forces against it and then smash their fleet – and then take the war into the Theocracy.  We can win this war.”

“Sure,” one of the other Assemblymen said, “as long as we don’t lose our nerve.”

Chapter Thirty-Eight

“Piss-poor place,” Sergeant Boyce muttered.  “You want to bet we all catch something nasty?”

“Now, Sergeant,” Greg said lightly.  “How do you think that that is going to help the morale of our civilian comrades?”

The Sergeant had a point, he had to admit.  Setting up the insurgent camp – he refused to admit that it was a refugee camp – had taken considerable ingenuity in the pouring downfall that had followed their attack on the enemy convoy, four days ago.   They’d had to use their fission blades to cut through trees to produce wood and cut down massive leaves to provide a kind of cover.  They didn’t dare risk a fire, even after the rain finally stopped falling; they’d had to use the heating elements in their emergency supplies to boil water.  And they were very short on food.  Cadiz did have the full package of Earth-origin plants and animals, but only a few of them were hardy enough to survive in the native forest.

Some of the local growth could be eaten and – thankfully – some of the natives they’d liberated had been able to help them find food, but the taste was appallingly bad.  It wasn't even up to the standards of the muck they’d been served at Boot Camp, while feeding it to prisoners would have triggered off complaints about cruel and unusual punishment.  At least the locals had been helpful; the prisoners who’d worked at the governor’s mansion before the invasion had largely been in shock, apart from the few soldiers.  They’d joined the Marines with gusto.

Greg had been thinking ever since they’d established the base camp – a fancy word for a primitive camp that risked disease outbreaks, quite apart from enemy hunting parties – about what they were going to do in the long run.  He had no doubt that the RAN would return to Cadiz; the handful of contingency plans he’d seen had promised that the planet would be recovered as soon as possible – whenever that was.   It was quite possible that Cadiz wouldn't be liberated for a year, or longer, and that meant that his duty was to lead his Marines in harassing the enemy.  He had no illusions about their ability to drive the Theocracy off Cadiz, but they could sting – and, when the locals had realised that Theocracy rule meant the end of the world, there would be other recruits for a resistance movement.  

He looked back at the listless civilians and scowled.  They should have been treated with respect by their captors, but it had been brutally obvious that the Theocracy didn't intend to honour any of the conventions.  Three of the women had been slapped around; several of the men had been brutally beaten.  One of them had reported that her friend had been raped, before other soldiers had arrived, torn the rapist off her and taken his victim away – no one knew where.  Greg would have liked to tell her that her friend had been taken to a medical centre, but the truth was likely to be less pleasant.  No, he told himself; the civilians were unlikely to be treated well if they surrendered.  They’d have to hide out in the countryside...

His implant contained a complete set of files on Cadiz and he reviewed them, considering possible options.  The Theocracy couldn't even begin to occupy the entire planet, any more than the Commonwealth; it should be possible to find a quiet and isolated spot for the civilians, before the Marines returned to the fight.  But if they were discovered by the locals, they might be betrayed or killed by their neighbours – or handed over to the Theocracy.  A great many locals would have grudges to pay off against their world’s former occupiers.  

“Heads up,” Boyce muttered, breaking into his thoughts.  “That girl is looking at you again.”

Greg shrugged.  The girl he’d pulled from the enemy truck had been watching him over the last four days, her gaze often on his back when he turned away, or looking almost past him, as if she was a sniper not looking directly at her target until the last minute.  It wasn't a lusty gaze, or the desperate neediness showed by some of the other refugee women; she appeared to be assessing him, although he couldn't think for what.  She was pretty and young, with the hardened eyes of someone who had been forced to grow up too quickly, yet there was something about her that puzzled him.  Besides, she seemed more composed than the others, as if she was used to privations.

“Never mind,” he said.  He looked over at the tiny intelligence station they’d managed to establish, a fancy name for a handful of components from various suits plugged together and powered from a tiny generator.  They’d had to remove the suits and hide them, at least until they could recover enough power cells to recharge their batteries.  “Have you picked up anything else?”

“Just the same broadcast on all channels,” Boyce admitted.  “They’re telling everyone to report to the new authorities, to register with them and to hand over all weapons – or else.  Fucked if I know how they’re taking it, sir; we don't have any intelligence out of New Barcelona.”

Greg looked westwards, towards the city.  It would be at least a twenty-mile hike – much of it through forest – to reach New Barcelona, if there was any point in making the trip.  The last reports they’d received suggested that the Theocracy had sealed the roads leading out of the city; they’d certainly not seen so many refugees in the last couple of days.  Inside, the Theocracy would be settle up its occupation government, disarming the insurgents and probably detaining them as well.  They might not have the numbers to garrison the entire planet, but they could certainly make clear who was boss.

“We need intelligence, Sergeant,” he said, finally.  There was no help for it.  One of them would have to go scout the area, perhaps establish links with the locals nearer the city.  Some of the locals they’d liberated from the prisoner trucks might be more convincing than armed Commonwealth soldiers.  “I think that we’d better start preparing to move back towards the city...”

“Civilians won’t like that,” the Sergeant pointed out, gruffly.

“Fuck them,” Greg said, shaking his head.  Perhaps they could blend the civilians into the local population; it wasn't as if anyone had ever managed to conduct a complete census of the wretched planet.  “We’re at war.”

He looked around, just in time to see the girl rising to her feet and coming towards him.  There was something about her steady gait that reminded him of Kat; the sheer determination to do what was best, whatever the cost.  And, perhaps, the underlying doubts about her own competency.  Her long brown hair made her seem younger than she really was, but up close he could sense her personality.  If she’d been born in the Commonwealth, she might have reached the Assembly, or even joined the Marines.

“We need to talk,” she said, in Standard.  It was almost unaccented, without the lilt that affected many of the planet’s local residents.  “I think we can help each other.”

***
It had taken most of the day to work up the nerve to just talk to one of the hated occupiers – former occupiers.  Vanessa had watched them carefully, noting how they’d cared for her fellow residents of Cadiz as much as they’d cared for their own people.  Of course, they were all on the run now, but they could have simply shot the locals and dumped their bodies in one of the swamps.  They would not have been found for hundreds of years.  

“I used to work for the resistance,” she said.  She stopped short of admitting how high up she’d been.  Besides, most of the men who’d followed her were probably dead by now, or trapped in a detention camp.  The Theocracy – and she cursed her own mistake in accepting their help – would have had plenty of time to mark down her people for elimination.  “You need ways to get information out of the city.  I can help you get the information.”

There was a long discussion as the two Marines questioned her extensively.  Vanessa was reluctant to talk about precise details, but she did manage to convince them that she knew enough about the resistance to prove her credentials.  Finally, their leader agreed to hike with her to meet a resistance contact near the city, while the remainder of the small band would start heading towards the mountains.  They’d meet up again five days later, where they would decide their next step.

They left two hours later.  The Marine – he’d told her to call him Greg – was alarmingly fit, crunching his way through the jungle as if he’d been born wearing a loincloth and swinging from tall branches.  Vanessa watched the muscles rippling between his shirt and felt an odd tingle between her legs, one she ruthlessly squashed at once.  The resistance fighters had treated her as a semi-divine being, the kind of status normally conferred upon aged grandmothers; she’d certainly never thought of any of them as boyfriend material.  And some of the criminals she’d encountered had tried to rape her, only to find themselves sliced open by her trusty knife.  She didn't want to admit to herself that part of the reason she’d insisted on travelling alone with him was to test him, to see if he was a genuinely decent man.  

At first, as they pushed their way through the foliage, they talked and shared their life stories, but as the going got harder she found herself fighting for breath.  The heat was almost overpowering; the brief shower of rain brought no refreshment.  They paused for ten minutes under a massive tree before they moved on, constantly heading towards the city.  Or so she hoped; she knew the city like the back of her hand, but in the countryside she was out of her depth.  By the time they reached one of the smaller roadways, she was exhausted and sore all over.  

The sound of a powerful engine – no, multiple engines - sent them both diving into cover, ending up lying together under a bush that, she hoped, might save them from being spotted by the approaching vehicles.  She caught a glimpse of him peering forward as the small convoy came into view, a pair of boxy armoured cars, followed by two open trucks and a smaller armoured vehicle.  The trucks had once been used to transport livestock, but like the vehicle that the Marines had rescued her from, they had been converted into prisoner transports.  Around fifty men, mostly young men with a smattering of young women, stood in the first vehicle, their hands cuffed to the metal railings.  She wondered, as anger grew in her breast, what they’d done to deserve being arrested.

She heard a grunt from Greg as the second vehicle came into view.  It carried prisoners too, but these prisoners were alarmingly familiar.  They wore the black garments of priests; at a guess, they were the priests sent out from the city to minister to the smaller communities.  Some priests had disapproved of a woman leading the resistance, others had been welcoming, even though they could take no overt part in the fighting.  The priests had remained neutral, trusted by all...and the Theocracy had rounded them up like animals.  She thought about Greg’s brief comments on what conquest by the Theocracy actually meant and ground her teeth together in rage.  How long would it be, she wondered, before the schoolchildren were taught the rudiments of the Theocracy’s poisoned faith?

And how many of them would believe?

Once the vehicles were gone, they continued hiking inwards towards the city, watching carefully for roadblocks.  Greg had a passive sensor block that – he said – should allow them to detect any drones before they got into position to see them, but the Theocracy might well have devices that hadn’t been shown to the Commonwealth before the war.  Another hour passed slowly – the roads were almost deserted, even the ones nearer the city – before they turned off the road and started hiking through cornfields towards a small farmhouse that was isolated from any nearby community.  The owner kept himself to himself; his closest relation was fifty miles away, on the other side of the city.  He was the resistance’s main contact between the city-resistance and the fighters in the countryside.  He could have no hostages to fortune.

“Stay here,” Greg muttered, as he surveyed the house.  Everything looked normal, Vanessa told herself, but the world had turned upside down.  She caught sight of a plant pot on one windowsill, signalling that it was safe to approach.  Greg crawled back to meet her from his brief circuit of the house.  “It looks clear.”

Vanessa nodded.  Taking her heart in her hands, she stepped out of the cornfields and headed up to the farmhouse door.  She knocked twice, waited ten seconds, and then knocked again, a simple code that the farmer would recognise and understand.  Fine minutes later, the door opened and a grim-faced man peered out.  At least he hadn't recognised Greg as belonging to the hated Commonwealth, Vanessa thought; the shotgun in his hand would probably have crippled the Marine if he'd pulled the trigger.

“They came to the farm this morning,” the farmer rasped.  He’d never told her his name and she had studiously refrained from looking it up.  “Searched the place; wanted a full assessment of my animals and crops; didn't believe that I was out here on my own.  Bunch of creepy people; never once looked at me, just looked around as if they didn't believe that I lived her all along.”

“Abdullah’s population is very poor,” Greg said.  “You would look like a millionaire to them.”

The farmer spat into the fire.  “They said that they would be taxing me half of my produce and I could sell the rest for myself, once I’d registered it,” he continued.  “Gave me an ID card and everything; said I’d need it, that anyone without one would be arrested and detained.  Heard from other farms; their kids acted up, the bastards took the kids away.  Little Sanchez from down the road had his head nearly staved in by one of them; they didn't bother taking him away.  Bet they think he’s dead.”

“Social control,” Greg said.  “Pretty soon, you won't be able to do anything without their permission.  It’s just one way of keeping the entire population in line.”

Vanessa cleared her throat.  “I need to check the link into the city,” she said.  The Theocracy hadn't bothered to question her – or perhaps they’d intended to, if she hadn't been rescued first – but they’d had other prisoners.  Only a handful knew the real secret of the farm, yet...what if one of them had been captured?  “Is it still working?”

The farmer laughed.  “It’s as active as ever,” he said.  “They didn't even go close to it.”

He removed a rug from the floor and opened a concealed hatch.  It was incredibly hard to spot even without the rug.  Down below the farm, there was a hidden bunker, created by the planet’s original settlers and lost somewhere in the files.  Vanessa liked to think that they'd been prepared for the future resistance, but the truth would never be known for sure.  It was enough that it had remained hidden and useable, linked to the city by an underground cable so old-tech that it was almost completely undetectable.  And the computers attached to it, so primitive as to be laughable, were perfectly capable of exchanging messages.

She smiled as she heard Greg suck in his breath, before she turned her attention to the computers and keyed in a password.  They could probably be cracked by the Commonwealth – or the Theocracy – assuming they ever found an expert in old-tech to work it.  Even Cadiz had moved beyond this level of technology years before the annexation.  

“Not good,” she said, slowly.  A number of messages had arrived.  They moved from hopeful stories about liberation to grim reports of resistance fighters being rounded up, a dusk-till-dawn curfew and strict orders from the occupiers that women were not to go out unless escorted by a male relative.  Anyone not holding an ID card when stopped and searched was taken away and not seen again, at least not yet.  The invaders had crushed overt resistance with brutal efficiency.  “Some of the cells are still active, but that won’t last.”

“Not for long,” Greg agreed.  He leaned over her shoulder, studying the screen.  She was suddenly very aware of his physical presence.  “How many of your people do you think you can meet outside the city?”

“Not many,” Vanessa admitted.  Her area of operations had been inside the city.  She hadn't known many outside the city, if only to ensure that she couldn't betray them if she was captured and injected with truth drugs.  “We might have to try to slip into the city.”

“Not likely,” Greg said.  He shook his head firmly.  “We’ll scout around, perhaps see if we can make contact with other Commonwealth forces, but I doubt we can get into the city.  Their ID cards will all be registered at a central database; we couldn't simply jump a couple of their officers and take their cards.”

“Then perhaps we should take out their database,” Vanessa said.  She wanted to impress him, even if she didn't really want to admit it to herself.  “Couldn't we cripple it somehow?”

“They’d have backups,” Greg said, slowly.  “Or maybe...if we were to find a few allies, perhaps we could do something clever.”

He shook his head.  “Or perhaps we should just wait for the Navy to return and drive the bastards out of the system,” he added.  “As long as they control the high orbitals, they can simply hammer any revolution flat before it gets off the ground.”

Vanessa laughed.  “Swell,” she said.  “Now you know how we felt all the time.”

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Governor Walid, the Caliph’s personal choice for Governor of Cadiz, chose to land in a high-powered shuttle that had once been a Janissary landing craft.  Admiral Junayd kept his opinion to himself as the Governor’s vessel landed in front of the damaged mansion and his personal bodyguard marched out, followed by the hugely corpulent governor.  He was a distant relation of the Caliph – a few steps closer to the throne and he would have been purged along with the other possible claimants – and had to be treated carefully.  No one was quite sure if the Governor’s assignation was a reward or a punishment and no one wanted to find out the hard way.

“Welcome to Cadiz,” Admiral Junayd said, with a bow.  They shook hands and exchanged the mock-kisses that formed an essential part of social interaction in the Theocracy.  It felt insincere to the Admiral and he was fairly sure that the Governor felt the same way, if only because his arrival automatically cut into the Admiral’s authority on Cadiz.  “I trust that you had a pleasant trip?”

“It was acceptable,” the Governor rumbled.  As a gourmand with a taste for the finer things in life – and social connections that protected him from the attention of the Clerics – Governor Walid liked to travel in style.  His transport, a converted heavy cruiser, was renowned for luxury and its personal staff of cooks and assistants.  “I am looking forward to taking up my position here.”

Admiral Junayd nodded and turned to lead the way into the mansion.  A number of locals had been rounded up at gunpoint, shackled and put to work clearing up the remains of the Commonwealth garrison, while a team of engineers had studied the mansion and pronounced that it was remarkably stable, considering its condition.  The underground bunkers that had served as the true heart of Commonwealth government were intact, although someone – less complacent than Admiral Williams – had had the time and authority to purge and destroy most of the computers.  He hadn’t expected anything else.

The bodies had been briefly checked and then carted outside, where a laser had been used to reduce them to ash.  Bodies were normally cremated in the Theocracy and it was something of a gesture of respect, although there was also no time to transport them out the city and bury them in a mass grave.  The locals seemed inclined to be sullen and through they’d been quick to round up the local insurgent leadership, a number of insurgents were still out there, turning their attention from one set of occupiers to the next.  So far, the Janissaries had responded to any attack with massive retaliation, but there was a limit to how far that could go without slaughtering the workforce they so desperately needed.

He shook his head as he led the way into the plotting room.  Cadiz was a difficult case, to be sure, but it wouldn’t be able to stand up to the Theocracy for long.  The Governor had brought nine divisions of troops – and a whole parcel of Clerics who would begin the task of obliterating all traces of the local religion and replacing it with the faith.  There would be resistance, of course, but the occupiers would reward those who converted and crush those who resisted.  It had worked before and it would work again.

“The planet was taken with acceptable losses,” he said, once they were seated.  A steward poured them both a glass of coffee and then left them alone.  “Unfortunately, a sizable component of the enemy 6th fleet escaped our trap.”

The Governor blanched.  “I was under the impression,” he said, sourly, “that the plan called for its complete destruction.”

“Indeed it did,” Admiral Junayd said.  “The enemy had plans of his own.  That’s why he’s called the enemy.”

“And if the fleet isn’t destroyed, the second stage of the plan becomes impossible,” the Governor continued, ignoring the light attempt at humour.  “We cannot drive into the Commonwealth with 6th Fleet at our rear.”

“No, we can’t,” Admiral Junayd agreed, mildly.  “We will have to turn and deal with 6th Fleet before it gets reinforcements from the Commonwealth and launches a counterattack of its own.  Many of its commanding officers were captured or killed on the surface of Cadiz, but the reports suggest that their absence will not hamper the fleet.  Indeed, one may assume that unit efficiency has doubled.  However…”

He tapped the table, sharply.  “We have a rough idea of their contingency planning, such as it was,” he continued.  “We believe that they will have fallen back on the naval base at Bristol Deep.  Among other facilities, Bristol Deep has a StarCom – which will ensure that the remainder of the Commonwealth has been alerted.  They know they’re at war.”

“But this is terrible,” the Governor protested.  “We planned to fall upon their core worlds before they even knew that they were at war.”

Admiral Junayd scowled, inwardly.  The Governor was quite right; the original plan had indeed called for a simultaneous set of thrusts that would have slashed into the Commonwealth, scattering their fleets and destroying them before the RAN could concentrate its forces and repel the invasion.  However, that plan had had to be modified when Princess Jasmine had fled Abdullah and then scrapped altogether when the enemy cruiser had penetrated Theocratic space and discovered the fleet’s staging zone.  In some ways, they were lucky; the original plan had looked good on the display, but he was less confident about how it would have worked out in practice.  And yet, with the Commonwealth alerted to the war, the next set of targets wouldn’t fall so easily.

“Plans change,” he said, finally.  “The Caliph has expressed confidence in me and the modified plan.”

He smiled as the holographic projector activated.  “I have scouts already on their way to Bristol Deep,” he said, seriously.  “Our most pessimistic estimates suggest that they will need at least two weeks to gird their loins for battle.  Once we have confirmed their presence at Bristol Deep, we will move on Bristol Deep with three of my battle squadrons and screening units.  We will crush them and destroy or capture their supporting base at Bristol Deep.”

“But you have overwhelming firepower,” the Governor pointed out.  “What’s to stop the infidels from retreating once again?”

Admiral Junayd had to smile.  Trust the Governor to come up with the most pertinent question, one born of knowing a very little about naval operations.  A little knowledge could be a most dangerous thing.

“Why, nothing,” he said.  “They may decide to retreat back into hyperspace and force us to give chase.  But if they do that, we’ll take out their supporting bases and force them to retreat back to Commonwealth space.  They won’t be able to get back on their feet for several months, at the very least, and by then all of our forces will be in place.  We will drive into the heart of the Commonwealth and crush their bases before they can bring their industrial might to bear.  And then the Commonwealth will be ours.”

He made a show of glancing down at the chronometer on his wrist.  “I’m expecting the scouts back in four days,” he concluded.  “If their report is positive, I will be staging from here an hour after they return.  By then, I advise you to have your forces and support elements deployed to the planet’s surface.  The locals will not remain quiet for much longer.”

***
It was very quiet on Lightning’s bridge.

Kat found herself lost in thought as the cruiser drifted in towards Cadiz, hidden behind the most capable cloaking field the Commonwealth could produce.  Weeks ago – it seemed like years – Cadiz had been a Commonwealth world and the system had been humming with life.  Even if the locals had shown little interest in bettering their lot, the corporations had invested in gas giant mines, local asteroid mining and even a handful of industrial plants.  Given a few more years, Cadiz would have had quite a healthy balance in interstellar trade, even if most of the system’s population hadn’t contributed.  Barely four days after the Theocracy had arrived, everything had changed.

There were only a handful of automated ore freighters – incapable of interstellar flight – moving through the gulf of interstellar space.  A squadron of Theocracy light cruisers were patrolling the space around the largest gas giant, suggesting that the gas giant mining stations had been occupied by the Theocracy, probably intact.  They’d be fuelling the Theocracy’s efforts in the system now, Kat knew, cursing under her breath.  If Admiral Williams had been thinking straight, they’d have rigged the platforms to blow and evacuated the crews long before the Theocratic Navy had arrived to occupy the system.  There seemed to be little sign of life among the asteroids, but she hoped that first impressions were misleading; asteroid miners tended to be stubborn bastards who would hold out until the bitter end.  She cursed Admiral Williams again as she studied the tracks of a pair of Theocratic destroyers, searching carefully through the asteroid field.  They should have worked up contingency plans for slipping in supplies and weapons to the asteroid miners, if only so they could harass the Theocracy until the Commonwealth could return and reclaim the system.

She scowled down at the display as the handful of shielded sensor drones headed away from her ship, heading down towards the planet.  They were almost impossible to detect, she’d been assured, and indeed Lightning hadn’t been able to track them without the whisker-thin laser beams that linked them to her ship.  And yet, no one knew just how capable the Theocracy actually was.  The reports suggested that their sensor suites were inferior to those deployed by the RAN, but she wasn't going to risk her ship based on a hazy guess by ONI analysts.  Besides, Lightning was down one reactor and was in no state for a fight.

If she’d had any doubt about the Theocracy having invaded the planet, they would have been dispelled by the handful of heavy troop transports in low orbit, surrounded by a protective force of cruisers and a squadron of battleships.  The remainder of the battleships orbited in high orbit, their sensors constantly scanning for possible threats.  Kat abandoned any half-formed thoughts she might have had of trying to slip much closer.  There was no way that any cloaking device could compensate for such heavy active scanning.  

“I’m picking up twenty-one ships,” the newly-assigned sensor officer reported.  Kat couldn’t look at Lieutenant Joe Montclair without being reminded of Rachael, who’d died – or been captured – in the mission to the Theocracy’s staging post.  “I think, judging from their general displacement, that they’re all troopships.  That gives them roughly the lift required for nine or ten divisions of troops on the planet.”

Kat nodded, sourly.  There was no way to know without slipping closer – and that she would not allow.  If it wasn't for the fact that they desperately needed hard data, she would have refused to go so close at all.  The screen kept updating, showing newly-emplaced orbital weapons platforms, sensor buoys and other nasty surprises.  It was clear that the Theocracy intended to keep Cadiz as long as possible.  She frowned, considering the possibilities.  They might just hold onto Cadiz, but in doing so they would tie down their fleet.  And that would give the Commonwealth time to muster its forces and counterattack.

She shook her head.  No, they’d go after Bristol Deep, she told herself.  It was their only logical move.  

The XO looked up at her.  Kat was mildly surprised that he hadn’t been hijacked by the Admiral for a post on one of the desperately undermanned ships from Cadiz, but she was grateful that he’d left her command team alone.  She’d learned how to work with her crew and newcomers would only have limited her options when there was no time to waste.  

“I think we’d better launch the communications beacons now,” he said.  “And trust that Major Bone and his Marines are still alive down there…”

“Picking up a signal,” Roach said, sharply.  “Captain, they’re transmitting a wide-beam signal, all over the system.  It’s in clear.”

Kat frowned, puzzled.  “Put it through,” she ordered.  “And trace the source.”

“…Is Admiral Williams,” a voice said.  Roach ran an analysis without even being asked; it was definitely the Admiral’s voice, even if he had never quite sounded so…dead.  “All Commonwealth forces are ordered to surrender themselves to the Theocracy.  All civilian installations are ordered to reveal themselves to the new authorities in Cadiz.  I have been given assurances of good treatment from the new Governor.  I say again; this is Admiral Williams…”

“Cut that off,” Kat said, sharply.  She’d assumed that the Admiral was dead.  After all he’d done to weaken 6th Fleet, after all he’d done to ensure that they weren’t ready for the storm when it finally broke over their heads…he hadn’t even had the grace to kill himself.  Or perhaps he was simply a traitor; perhaps he’d always been a traitor.  “Analysis?”

“He’s been conditioned,” the XO said, flatly.  “The deadness in his voice gives it away; my guess is that he tried to fight the conditioning process and it damaged his mind.  They can make him swear that black is white, up is down and he’s a stripper called Shirley and he’ll believe every word.”

Kat scowled.  “And how many people received that broadcast?”

“It’s in clear, Captain,” Roach reminded her.  “The entire system will hear it.”

Greg won’t surrender, Kat told herself, firmly.  If he was still alive…no, she had to hope that he was still alive.  The Marines were expects in getting down to a planet with an enemy fleet in orbit trying to kill them – and they hadn’t even been the prime targets.  She refused to think about how badly such exercises tended to go wrong, or how many Marines died – simulated – deaths in training.  And once they were down on the surface, they could avoid enemy contact for weeks, or months, or even years.  It wasn't as if Cadiz was anything like as well developed as Avalon, or Old Earth before the Breakaway Wars.  There was plenty of undeveloped wilderness to use for cover.

“Begin launching the communications drones,” she ordered.  “Tactical; keep a sharp eye out for any sign that we’ve been detected.  Helm; jump us out of here if they light us up.”

“Aye, Captain,” Roach said.  “Launching carrier drones…now.”

Kat settled back into her command chair and tried to remain calm.  The carrier drones would take the communications buoys into orbit slowly, very slowly.  They emitted almost nothing, navigating by the stars rather than anything involving active sensors.  The only link to Lightning was another set of communications lasers, which would eventually be relayed through a network of stealthed platforms.  She cursed the Admiral – again – as the network slowly began to deploy; they could have created the network long before the system had fallen and had it – and a set of contingency plans – in place for an invasion.  And instead, they had to improvise.  At least Marines were good at improvising.

“The first drone is reporting that it is in position,” Roach said, finally.  There was a long pause.  “The second and third drones are in position.”

“Good,” Kat said.  Here was where it became very dangerous.  The Theocracy had pushed most of the debris in orbit into the planet’s atmosphere, a rough and ready way of ensuring a safe orbital station for their ships.  Now, the first drone would draw attention to itself – and if they realised that it wasn't just one of the few remaining pieces of debris suddenly finding itself energised and squawking like mad, they would know that someone was watching them.  “Activate the drone.”

The signal was little more than garbage, at least to anyone who didn’t know what the code groups represented.  It would appear to be just a random burst of signal, but the Marines below – assuming that they were following procedure and keeping a listening watch – would detect it and deduce the location of the other two communications drones.  If luck was with them, it would allow the Marines to establish a laser link with the drones and through them to the Lightning.  And if luck wasn’t with them, the drones would have to be tipped into the planet’s atmosphere.  They didn’t dare risk allowing the Theocracy a chance to examine them in a research lab…

“Signal sent,” Roach said.  There was a pause.  “They’re onto the drone…that was quick.”

Kat nodded.  One of the new orbital weapons platforms had just opened fire, launching a single missile towards the drone.  The drone didn’t attempt to evade – it was playing a dumb piece of junk – and exploded when the missile struck home.  Kat found her lips moving in silent prayer.  If they were really lucky, they might just have gotten away with it completely…

“Drone destroyed,” Roach said.  “As far as I can tell, they didn’t have any idea that it was anything other than a piece of space junk.”

“They’ll be paranoid anyway,” the XO pointed out.  “They might just start running patrols up here, looking for someone sneaking around.”

“Keep laying the stealth platforms as we take our leave,” Kat ordered, calmly.  Inside, she was worried.  What was happening down on the planet?  Were the Marines alive, or prisoners, or…there were too many possibilities.  “We’ll have to wait.”

She thought, grimly, about the Admiral’s sealed orders.  He’d told her to open them just before they left the Cadiz System – and they had no more than a week before they had to leave.  If they didn’t hear from the Marines by then…they would have to be assumed dead and abandoned, at least until the RAN gathered the forces to return to Cadiz and retake the system.  But then, they might not bother reoccupying the planet.  Merely destroying the space-based facilities would be enough to keep the Theocratic Garrison from causing trouble elsewhere.  

Come on Greg, she thought, desperately.  I’m not going to abandon you again.

Chapter Forty

“So what is going to happen to us?”

Vanessa kept her voice calm, even though she was nervous.  The reports from New Barcelona had made it clear that the new occupation force was – if anything – even worse than the old occupation force.  “Here comes the new boss, same as the old boss,” one of the Marines had cracked, and Vanessa had to admit that he had a point.  It didn’t seem fair that Cadiz was going to be permanently occupied, but life was not exactly brimming over with fairness.  Her life seemed to illustrate that nicely.

“I wish I knew,” Captain Bone said.  A month ago, the thought of liking one of the occupiers would have seemed unbelievable.  Now, after a week of sharing meals and tips on insurgency warfare, they were almost friends.  “Once the Theocracy is defeated...”

Vanessa sighed.  She’d grown up on a single world, without any space industry worth mentioning – apart from what the Commonwealth had created.  She had no instinctive understanding that her world was a very minor world in the grand scheme of things, or that planners on both sides might see her world as little more than a headache, particularly if the war front swept onwards into the Commonwealth.  The idea that a planner hundreds of light years away might put her world at the bottom of his list of problems was hard for her to accept.  And what if the Theocracy wasn’t defeated?

The reports from New Barcelona were growing darker and darker.  With the arrival of reinforcements, the Theocracy was settling in for the long haul.  New bases and detention camps had sprung up, almost as if by magic, allowing them to deploy their forces over the entire continent.  Indeed, every city now had plenty of troops ringing its  position, keeping the population – those who hadn't already fled – from fleeing into the countryside.  And those trapped inside were slowly being registered by the enemy, and then assigned to work details.  Failure to report for work duty, she’d been told, meant immediate arrest and dispatch to one of the detention camps.  No one – so far, at least – had returned from one of the camps.  The insurgents were already calling them the death camps.

And it grew worse.  The Theocracy had rounded up all the priests they could find and transported them outside the city, where they’d been executed and their bodies reduced to ash by funeral lasers.  Churches and nunneries had been razed to the ground, with protesting parishioners gassed and then transported out to the camps.  Children had been separated from their parents, husbands from wives...and for what?  They hadn't managed to deter the Theocracy at all.  And if they were so ruthless, so bent on reshaping Cadiz into their own image now, what would they be like if they won the war?

She looked over at the insurgent camp and shook her head.  Only a few hundred insurgents from the pre-invasion cells had survived to make contact with her.  There had once been thousands of insurgents in the area surrounding the city, but the Theocracy had scattered the cells and arrested many of the leaders.  They’d walked right down a damn checklist, she told herself angrily, cursing the embedded officers who’d helped them learn to use the weapons the Theocracy had provided for the insurgency.  The bastards had betrayed them all to their masters.

“They’re pulling the noose around our necks,” she said.  “Is there nothing we can do to prevent them from taking stock of the farms?”

Greg Bone considered, stroking his chin thoughtfully.  The Theocracy’s representatives had moved swiftly to take control of the farms, registering the farmers and warning them that failure to produce sufficient food each year would result in their farms being confiscated and forcible resettlement somewhere else.  They’d checked all of the fields and made calculations as to how much food the farms should be able to produce, rendering it difficult for the farmers to hide food for themselves, let alone feed the insurgents.  It crossed her mind that they could probably take the food by force – or allow the farmers to claim that they’d taken the food by force – but the Theocracy probably wouldn't accept any excuses.  Bone had pointed out that the veneer of legality was typical of the Theocracy; it was quite possible that the farmers wouldn't be able to produce enough food, even without the insurgents taking what they needed.  And then they’d have an excuse to kick the farmers off their land and resettle their own people on Cadiz.

The thought made her grit her teeth.  Sure, Cadiz had been in the midst of a civil war when the Commonwealth had arrived, but they’d all shared a certain basic understanding, hadn't they?  The Commonwealth had imposed one new elite on them and now the Theocracy would introduce a second.  They’d already started collecting orphan children and transporting them somewhere into the hinterlands.  Her imagination had told her that the children would be used as sexual slaves, but Greg Bone had suggested a far worse possibility.  The children would be indoctrinated and turned into an army to support the Theocracy.  It seemed only too possible to her.

“Maybe,” he said, finally.  “The problem is that they go after any insurgent attacks with a hammer.  Bit hard on the people caught in the crossfire.”

Vanessa shuddered.  Only a day ago, a farmer had opened fire on a Theocracy team intent on registering his farm and laying down the law.  The Theocracy had called in helicopter gunships, shot up the farm and then sent in their troops.  They’d hung the farmer from one of his own trees, taken his younger children away and enjoyed themselves with his older daughters and wife before mercifully putting them out of their misery with a single bullet to the head.  The entire countryside was seething with discontent and rage, yet what could they do?  Any attack on the Theocracy would be punished a thousand times over – and the broken and battered bodies of the farmer’s wife and elder daughters were a chilling reminder of the fate of anyone taken alive.

“Terror works,” Bone said, slowly.  “We would need to slip an offensive into one of the areas without a civilian population.”

“Or perhaps we should attack in the midst of the city,” Vanessa suggested.  “It might force the civilians to rise up and attack the oppressor...”

“And get duly slaughtered,” Bone pointed out, dryly.  “How many of your own people do you want to get killed?”

Vanessa flushed.  “Don’t you get it?”  She demanded.  “They’re turning us into them!”

It was true.  In New Barcelona, the new Governor had laid down the law.  Civilian women had been told that they had to remain inside at all times, unless escorted by a male member of their family.  A handful of women who had defied the new laws had been snatched off the streets, brutally raped and then unceremoniously dumped into their homes.  Their male relatives had been fined – and as few locals had any Theocracy currency, the new debts had to be paid off by hard work in the labour gangs.  Once, women had walked the streets as equals to men; now, they were almost entirely absent from the public sphere.  How long would it be, she asked herself, before the new became normal?

It wasn't the only change, either.  Girls had been barred from going to school, holding any position outside the home and a whole host of other minor regulations that completely reshaped their lives.  The boys didn't have it much easier.  They’d been sent to compulsory construction in the faith and woe betide the boy who attempted to cling to the old faith of his parents in the face of teachers willing to whip – or worse – any boy who dared show any defiance.  A week of occupation and Cadiz had been changed forever.

“I think that we might be better preparing for the day of liberation,” Greg Bone said.  “Right now, the bastards are prepared for insurgency; they’re ready to crush the shit out of anyone they don’t like.  Give them time to relax; give them time to get lazy...hell, give us time to locate a few weak-willed among the faithful.  There’s always someone who can be bribed or otherwise induced to betray his friends...”

He stopped, sharply.  “Captain,” one of his Marines said, suddenly.  “I’m picking up a signal from orbit.”

Vanessa blinked.  “From whom?”

“Someone from the Commonwealth,” the Marine said.  Bone took the small unit the Marine passed to him and studied it quickly.  “They’re using the old one-step signalling trick.”

“Set up the portable laser,” Bone ordered, sharply.  He looked up into the clear blue sky.  “Let’s see if we can make contact.” 

“But what if they detect us?”  Vanessa asked.  They’d already lost friends to Theocracy strikes when they detected radio transmissions from places where no radios should be located.  “Can’t they track us down?”

“Not unless we get real unlucky,” the Marine grunted.  “Line-of-sight laser; they’d have to physically intercept the signal to detect us.  And that would block the signal and we’d know that something had happened...”

“Got it,” Greg said.  He pulled a datachip from his pocket.  “I’m sending them a tactical SITREP.”

“And then what?”  Vanessa asked.

“And then they will let us know what they’re doing up there,” Bone said.  He smiled at her.  Vanessa felt an odd fluttering in her stomach and angrily told it to go away.  This wasn't the time for romance.  “If we’re really lucky, they might even be able to tell us when they’re going to counterattack.”

***
“Got them,” Roach said.  “They’re relayed through five stealthed relay drones.  The Theocracy shouldn't be able to locate us.”

Kat frowned, unconvinced.  The Theocracy had launched several wings of starfighters into space and deployed them on a search pattern, although none of them were projected to come anywhere near Lightning.  There was no way to know if the enemy CO was simply being paranoid, or if it was just a training mission for the enemy pilots.  After all, Commonwealth regulations said that starfighter pilots had to have at least five hours in space a day and the Theocracy, if anything, was even more hard-arsed about the whole issue of training.  She was reluctant to assume anything when it came to the enemy’s plans and capabilities.

“Dump them a brief update and then download theirs into my console,” she ordered.  “And then tell them that we haven’t given up.”

She skimmed through the SITREP as it appeared in front of her.  Captain Bone and his team were alive!  They’d made it down to the surface and actually managed to rescue prisoners, including important local contacts, before the Theocracy really clamped down on their new population.  The remainder of the SITREP warned that the Theocracy had effectively decapitated much of the local insurgency and the remainder was too weak or too scared to act.  It ended with a warning that Admiral Williams was in enemy hands, apparently conditioned; the status of his wife and children was unknown.  Kat, who couldn't have cared less what happened to the Admiral’s brats, snorted as she reached the end of the section.  And then there was the request for help.

The display updated slowly as new information was uncompressed from the burst transmission.  Theocratic ground bases were marked, as if Lightning was about to fly right into their midst and launch a series of KEW strikes against targets on the planet’s surface.  Kat wished she could – it was clear that the Marines were in a desperate position – but she knew that her ship would be destroyed before she got within attack range of the planet.  All she could do was wish her former lover good luck and pray for his safety.

Lightning did carry heavy weapons and power packs for Marine combat suits, but she couldn't think of a way of getting the supplies down to the surface without being detected.  The Theocracy might not blow an incoming asteroid out of space before it entered the atmosphere – although all planetary defences, at least in the Commonwealth, were designed to target space junk automatically – but they’d certainly be suspicious of a rock that just happened to touch down just outside the city.  A stealth shuttle might be able to get through, yet Kat wouldn't have bet her life on it, let alone anyone else’s life.  No, getting supplies to the Marines would have to wait until the Theocracy’s fleet was driven out of the system, whereupon they could destroy most of the targets on the ground from orbit.

“Tell them that we will be back as soon as we can,” she said.  Admiral Christian had had something in mind, hadn't he?  The question was simple; would he commit his undermanned, undertrained and severely damaged fleet against Cadiz?  Kat rather suspected the answer would be ‘no.’  Cadiz just wasn't that important compared to the Commonwealth’s core worlds and at least two of them were likely to be targeted within the next two weeks.  “And tell him that we are thinking of him.”

The thought was a bitter one, but what else could she do?

“Keep the stealthed platforms in position,” she added.  The Admiral would send ships – either Lightning or a lighter unit – back into the system and they’d be able to link back into the stealthed relay chain.  It was possible that the Theocracy would stumble across one of the platforms, but they’d just have to gamble.  “Helm...start pulling us out of the zone.  We’ll return to hyperspace in the asteroid belt.”

“Aye, Captain,” the helmsman said.

The XO gave her a concerned glance, but said nothing.  Kat silently thanked him as she concentrated, trying to push her feelings for a certain Marine to the back of her mind.  She had no choice; she had to leave him – and pray that he survived until the Cadiz System could be liberated.  And he was a Marine.  It would be just like him to do something stupid and heroic that would get him killed during the planet’s battle of liberation.  

“Start preparing to upload everything we have to the Admiral,” she ordered, thinking of the sealed packet she’d left in her office.  “I want to turn around in time to get back here before they realise we’ve gone.”

***
“So they’re leaving us?”

Greg winced at Vanessa’s tone.  “A single ship can’t break the blockade on her own,” he said, thinking of Kat.  If there had been the slightest chance of success, he knew that she would have tried – but she knew that it would have failed, spectacularly.  “They will be back, with help.”

Vanessa snorted.  “And what will happen then?”

“I think that things will be different,” Greg admitted.  He knew what she meant; Cadiz’s future was uncertain.  It was quite possible that the Commonwealth would be prepared to recognise its independence, certainly if the Theocracy was crushed, leaving Cadiz worthless as a strategic assert.  At least pre-occupation Cadiz hadn't been as bad as Terra Nova, in the years before the Breakaway Wars.  “But we don’t really have time to worry about it now.  We need to find a way of hitting back.”

An hour later, he watched her leading the way through the foliage as they hacked their way back towards Highway Three.  The highway led up towards the grasslands and then through the mountains, but if the reports were accurate they wouldn't need to walk so far before they uncovered the Theocracy’s base.  They’d intercepted enough radio signals to know that something pretty big was up there and most of the prisoner transports had headed in that direction.  At the very least, the Theocracy was spending a great deal of effort in creating a trap for insurgents who might not even be able to pick up on the hints.

He caught sight of her tight trousers and cursed himself as he felt a rush of sudden desire.  It always happened in the moments before combat, a sudden desperate attempt by his body to perpetuate its genes – or so he'd been told.  Onboard ship, it could be handled with a simple feedback pulse from his implants, but the combat suit he needed had been stowed away at the camp, waiting for the final battle.  He thought she was interested in him and perhaps...all he'd have to do was reach for her...

Angrily, he pushed the thought aside.  There wasn't time for anything, but the mission – and she was an asset, nothing more.  Or so he tried to tell himself.  And then there was Kat, who had been his lover before she’d been promoted and become untouchable...she’d understand if he slept with Vanessa, wouldn't she?  Or maybe she wouldn’t understand...and maybe Vanessa wasn't interested...and maybe...

The thoughts haunted him as he took the lead and set a harsh pace through the foliage, just before they reached Highway Three.  Checking for enemy transports, they began to head upwards, towards the mountains.  They should locate the enemy base long before they entered the foothills.  The constant stream of shuttles overhead suggested as much.  She turned and winked at him, her face suddenly lighting up with a smile that transformed her features.  It struck him that she knew what he was feeling and was teasing him...

He shook his head and kept his eyes on the road.  There wasn't time for romance.

***
Kat frowned down at the slip of paper the Admiral had given her inside the sealed envelope.  The note was clear; the meaning rather less so.  Lightning was to proceed to a location only two light-years away from Cadiz and wait.  If the Admiral didn't contact her in two weeks, she was to return to Bristol Deep and make contact with the Admiral.  The orders made no sense, unless she assumed that the Admiral had a plan.

She keyed her wristcom.  “Mr. XO, I’ve read the sealed orders,” she said.  “I’m uploading new destination coordinates for us now.  Take us there, best possible speed.”

And then there was nothing she could do, but wait.  And pray.

Chapter Forty-One

“Well,” Admiral Christian observed, “that was certainly an...interesting disaster.”

Captain Fran Higgins winced at his acidic tone.  It wasn't fair, damn it!  Defiant hadn't been in good shape even before the Battle of Cadiz.  And then a quarter of her crew had been stripped away and replaced by strangers from other starships, crew that her original crew didn't know and didn't trust.  And then...she shook her head.  Hadn't she told herself that she could do a far better job than Defiant’s former commander, who was now – if he was lucky – a POW on Cadiz?  She was getting the chance to prove it.

“Yes, sir,” she said.  There was no point in dissembling, or denying it. “The drill could have gone a great deal better.”

The Admiral nodded.  Fran had wondered why he’d chosen to transfer his flag to Defiant – along with his tactical staff – before realising that it was a gesture of confidence in 6th Fleet.  It was hard to believe that 6th Fleet deserved the vote of confidence, unless their escape from Cadiz was being turned into a morale-boosting story back on Avalon.  There had been no time to check the media updates and see how the home front was responding to the war, not with the hasty repair efforts and the desperate determination to get ready for the coming fight.  Everyone knew that it would only be a matter of time before Bristol Deep was targeted for invasion – and 6th Fleet wasn’t ready to defend the system.  If the enemy came after them with the fleet that had invaded Cadiz, they couldn’t defend the system.

But they couldn’t just do nothing either.

“Work on it,” the Admiral ordered, absently.  They’d had the entire fleet exercising almost continuously, even in the midst of the desperate repair efforts.  Fran had personally supervised the transfer of some of the system’s engineers from the asteroids to the ships, even if there was a danger that they might be caught up in a battle when the enemy fleet arrived.  “Put your crew through endless simulations.  We can’t stay here much longer.”

Fran’s eyes strayed to the display showing Bristol Deep.  Forty-seven destroyers, almost the entire flanking element deployed to the system – including a handful of ships that had been on patrol before being summoned to concentrate with 6th Fleet – were running patrols, flying endless patterns around 6th Fleet and out towards the asteroids.  They’d been useful for tracking exercises, but the Admiral clearly had something else in mind.  The Theocracy – unless its stealth systems were far superior to anything the Commonwealth had developed – wouldn’t be able to slip a scouting ship within close range of the fleet.  It would be impossible for them to gather any up-to-date information on the fleet’s condition.

Not that it really matters, she thought, sourly.  The Theocracy’s analysts would study the records of the Battle of Cadiz as closely as the Admiral’s tactical staff; they’d know, at least roughly, just how badly the fleet had been hammered before Fran had ordered the retreat.  And they’d be able to estimate just how long it would be before the fleet was ready to take the offensive, although that was far more variable.  Fran would not have cared to serve the Theocracy – if they would have let a woman serve on a starship – as an intelligence analyst, not when a slight variable meant that all of her calculations would be thrown off.  If the Theocratic Navy and the RAN had one thing in common, it was a shared distrust of the intelligence services.  They could take the blame if matters didn’t work out as well as they had promised.

“Yes, Admiral,” she agreed.  They couldn’t stay in the Bristol Deep System much longer, not without pinning themselves for the enemy fleet.  This time, the Theocracy would deploy starships into hyperspace as well, making it impossible for them to retreat.  For all she knew, the Theocracy already had the system under covert observation.  She started to order the crew to the exercise chambers and then hesitated.  “You intend for us to leave now?”

“Within the hour,” the Admiral said.  He’d been playing his cards close to his chest, but he clearly had some idea in mind.  “I’ll upload the coordinates once we’re in hyperspace; there’s no immediate hurry.”

Fran nodded, wincing.  The Admiral had a point.  No one knew if the Theocracy had any sleeper agents within 6th Fleet, or had managed to subvert some of the fleet’s personnel.  The StarCom was under strict supervision – the Admiral had even ordered it deactivated after sending a heavily-encrypted communications packet to Avalon – and there was no other way to get a message out of the system, unless it was beamed via laser to a lurking starship hiding under cloak.  The Admiral would keep his plan to himself until they were already halfway to their destination.  

The thought was a chilling one.  How could she rely on her crew?  Already, she found herself questioning everything, from the estimated repair time to the missile loads transferred to Defiant from the massive naval deport in orbit around the system’s primary.  If someone was working for the Theocracy – and in a sufficiently powerful position – they could wreck the battleship quite easily or at least delay their departure until the Theocratic Navy arrived to complete the destruction of 6th Fleet.  The Admiral had ordered Marines stationed at all access points and ordered the crews into lockdown when they were not on duty, but it was damaging the crew’s already fragile morale.  There seemed to be no solution to Defiant’s woes.

“No, Admiral,” she agreed.  “There’s no hurry.”

The next hour passed quickly.  She’d been designing simulated exercises for the past six months, ever since she’d been warned that they might be going to war sooner than expected.  Now, she ran her crew through exercise after exercise, checking and rechecking every part of the mighty ship’s sensors, weapons and drives.  The crew – even with the newcomers – was already showing a considerable improvement over their performance at Cadiz, although the only real test would be active combat operations.  With the war underway, she was grimly confident that they’d be tested in fire soon enough.

“Order all ships to open their sealed orders, apart from those with special instructions,” the Admiral ordered, calmly.  Fran nodded and opened the envelope he’d passed her, blinking in surprise at the contents.  “And then order all ships to proceed through the fixed hyperspace vortex and into hyperspace, best possible speed.”

Fran issued orders to her crew, puzzled.  There was no point in using the fixed vortex, not when even the merest destroyer could have opened up a gateway into hyperspace.  And then it struck her; anyone watching the system from the outskirts would have problems telling which starships had left the system and which were still there, waiting for the Theocracy.  

The vortex blossomed open in front of her and she felt the familiar sensation of falling back into hyperspace.  It was joined by a new and unfamiliar sensation, the anticipation that her ship and crew were about to go back into harm’s way.  This time, she was the Old Lady, the woman who bore the ultimate responsibility for her ship and crew.  Even if the Admiral’s plan – and she had only a glimmering of what it could be – worked, they were risking almost all of 6th Fleet.  If they lost…she banished the thought, angrily.  They would not lose.

She keyed her intercom as the battleship and its escorts roared further into hyperspace.  “All hands, return to simulations,” she ordered.  “We will be testing ourselves against the enemy soon.”

***
Captain Stewart watched as dispassionately as he could as 6th Fleet passed through the fixed gateway and vanished into hyperspace.  It wasn't easy to remain calm knowing that an enemy juggernaut was bearing down on his location – and that all he had to stand it off were four squadrons of destroyers.  The Admiral was determined to ensure that his plan worked, even if it meant stripping his screening elements to the bone.  He studied the plot thoughtfully, knowing that half of the icons on the display weren’t truly there.  The mighty battleships, sleek battlecruisers and solid heavy cruisers marked on the display were nothing more than ECM drones, projecting a false image to anyone close enough to detect their presence.

“General signal to the squadron,” he ordered, flatly.  As the senior commander, he’d been appointed overall CO of Bristol Deep.  It wasn't exactly a honour any longer.  Everything that could be moved, including the StarCom, had been dragged into hyperspace, while the platforms and orbital stations had been evacuated and rigged to blow.  “All ships are to maintain their patrol routes until I issue further orders.”

“Aye, Captain,” the tactical officer said.  There was a pause while the signal was relayed out to the destroyers and responses started to flow back to the Jennifer Nettles.  “All ships acknowledge, sir.  They will comply.”

Stewart sat back in his chair.  To anyone brave enough to slip into the system – and if the Theocracy was prepared to send spy ships over the border before the war, they’d certainly be brave enough now – it would appear that 6th Fleet was still attempting to repair itself following the disaster off Cadiz.  They wouldn’t be able to get close enough to realise that the ships they could see were nothing more than ECM drones because the destroyers were actively scanning for cloaked ships and would vector their comrades in on any suspect emission that might indicate the presence of a cloaked ship.  And that meant that 6th Fleet would be off doing their unexpected while the enemy prepared themselves to fall upon Bristol Deep and smash the fleet before it could receive reinforcements.  Or so the Admiral hoped.  Everything depended upon the enemy taking the bait.

“Sensor reports are clear, Captain,” the sensor officer reported.  Stewart had standing orders to detach a destroyer to warn the Admiral when – if – they picked up any trace of an enemy spy ship.  It was quite possible that they’d miss it altogether; Lightning had slipped into Cadiz and escaped without being detected, after all.  “There are no signs of any uninvited guests.”

“Keep scanning,” Stewart ordered.  It was impossible to relax on the bridge, yet what else could he do.  The enemy hadn’t bothered to call ahead and inform the RAN when they were planning to arrive and scout the system.  “Let me know the instant you pick up anything, anything at all.”

***
“Emergence complete, Captain,” the helmsman reported.

“There are no enemy starships within passive detection range,” the sensor officer added.  His voice was tense; they all knew what was at stake for them if they failed.  The Theocracy was not a very forgiving master and they’d already failed once.  A second failure would rebound upon the entire crew.  “I can pick up some low-power transmissions from the rough location of the industrial stations, but nothing else.”

Captain Zaid gritted his teeth.  The mission was no honour, no reward for years of loyal and dedicated service to the Theocracy.  If he hadn’t lost the Princess Jasmine…but he’d had no choice; he’d had to break off or his entire ship would have been destroyed.  Someone higher up clearly agreed with him, or he would have been handed over to the Clerics and their Inquisition for scourging before they executed him to encourage the others.  Or maybe they would enslave him instead, assigning him to one of the barely-habitable worlds that served as the Theocracy’s dumping grounds for its unwanted human trash.  No one returned from one of those worlds, dead or alive.

“Take us in, slowly,” he ordered.  It was all the fault of the Commonwealth’s harlot!  He still remembered her face on the display, her mere presence a mocking refutation of everything the Theocracy stood for…and vowed angry revenge.  If he pulled off this mission successfully, perhaps he could petition his superior for an assignment that might put him within weapons range of the bitch.  How dare she damage his career through her misplaced charity?  “Keep watching for any sign of the Commonwealth Navy.”

The hours crept by slowly as he brooded, watching the screens for any sign of enemy starships.  Bristol Deep hadn’t been regarded as a target in the early version of the invasion plans and their intelligence was sadly lacking, leaving a question mark hanging over whatever the RAN might have moved into the star system.  At least the spies had managed to discover that Bristol Deep was marked as a rendezvous point for 6th Fleet if anything happened to Cadiz, allowing the Theocracy a chance to crush them before they could escape and retreat back into the Commonwealth.  If they managed to shatter the remains of the fleet, they would be able to secure Cadiz and the remainder of the sector without trouble – and if he managed to bring back the word that would allow the Admiral to crush them, he would be rewarded and any black marks on his record would disappear.

He skimmed the latest letter from his second wife and smiled to himself.  His wives were all educated, something unusual in the Theocracy, but it was nice to receive letters from them rather than the video messages that were always bland and boring.  The senior wife was expecting again – she’d become pregnant after his last visit to Abdullah – and was nearing the end of her term.  His brother-in-law – who just happened to work directly for one of the Emirs, who in turn served the Caliph – had told her that he was sure that there was a chance for promotion, provided all went well.  Captain Zaid smiled at the thought.  The Theocracy ran on hidden networks of family kinship and patronage; it was expected that family members would support one another.  All he had to do was succeed.

“I’m picking up active sensor pulses now,” the sensor officer said.  Captain Zaid leaned forward, feeling excitement thrilling through his blood.  Now they would see what they had found!  “There’s no hope of them detecting us at this distance, but I’ve got a lock on them; there are at least thirty destroyers in the system, maintaining steady patrol patterns.”

Captain Zaid frowned, stroking his beard.  So many destroyers almost certainly meant that the enemy was up to something, for no commander in his right mind would separate his lighter units from his battleships.  He studied the live sensor feed as it trickled into the display and frowned again, uncertain what he was seeing.  There was so much input that vital sections of data were being blurred out by stray emissions.  

“Interesting,” he said, finally.  He leaned forward.  The sensor officer was supposed to be the best in the service, or so he’d been told when he’d accepted the younger man onto his ship.  He was also married to one of the Captain’s near relations.  “What do you make of it?”

There was a pause.  “I’m picking up power curves consistent with enemy battleships,” the sensor officer reported.  “They’re odd, Captain; I think that some of the ships are badly damaged.  They’re not putting out as much power as they should.”

“The infidels did flee from Cadiz,” the Cleric said.  He had been even more dour than usual over the past weeks, ever since the Faithful Companion had almost been destroyed – and had lost the Princess Jasmine.  “They were heavily damaged as they fled.”

Captain Zaid nodded.  “And they’re here, trying to repair themselves,” he said.  He ran through the tactical situation in his mind, considering.  A few hours to get out of the system beyond sensor range, two days to Cadiz…and then the Admiral would know precisely where to find the enemy.  He looked back down at the display and smiled.  Even if the infidels chose to run rather than fight – and even if they escaped – they would lose the repair yards at Bristol Deep.  Any large ship required at least a day in maintenance for every day it spent on active service and they would have to fall back to the Commonwealth to find succour.  “They won’t escape us this time.”

He turned and issued orders to the helmsman.  “Slip us out of the system, as quietly as you can,” he ordered.  “I don’t want them to have a clue that we were here.”

“Understood, Captain,” the helmsman said.  The destroyer shivered as the main drive came online, taking the small ship around and away from the local star.  “Three hours to hyperspace, barring accidents or enemy contact.”

The Cleric scowled.  “Should we not proceed into hyperspace at once?”

Captain Zaid hesitated.  Clerical questions could easily become orders – and when the Cleric in question failed to understand the realities of naval operations, their orders could become disastrous.  He had no intention of losing his ship because of a poorly-conceived order from a Cleric who was unworthy of the title, but there was no forceful argument he could use.  The only way to deal with such a Cleric was through careful explanation of the relevant details, even if they should have been obvious to anyone on the ship.

“If we open a gateway, they will detect us,” he said, calmly.  “If they realise that we know they’re there, they will abandon the system before the Admiral arrives to smash them flat.”

He didn’t point out that that would ensure that both of their careers were ruined, but he didn’t have to.  Even a Cleric wasn't immune to the weight of official displeasure that could be brought to bear on anyone who failed the Theocracy.  And Admiral Junayd was known for coming down hard on subordinates who failed him…

The Faithful Companion quivered slightly as she picked up speed, heading out of the system and into interstellar space.  Captain Zaid allowed himself a tight smile as they left the battered infidel fleet behind.  They’d be back soon, with enough firepower to destroy the rogue fleet…and then the rear would be secure.  

And then they could plunge into the heart of the Commonwealth.

Chapter Forty-Two

They smelled the detention camp a long time before they finally made it through the foliage and up to the edge of the forest.  Greg knelt low in the underbrush and peered through his enhanced eyesight, cursing the Theocracy under his breath.  A great cage of wire had been established in the scrublands – a shuttle’s drive had been used to clear the ground, he suspected – and thousands of prisoners were languishing inside the cage.  No, several cages; the Theocracy had divided them up by occupation.  One cage held prisoners from the Commonwealth; a second held locals and a third held women, separated from the men.  They’d all been stripped of their uniforms and dressed in simple prison garments, ones that would make them instantly recognisable if they happened to escape.  

“Those bastards,” Vanessa breathed, as she pushed up beside him.  Her eyes weren’t enhanced, but it didn’t seem to slow her down.  “How many people do they have prisoner here?”

Greg attempted to count.  There were at least seven huge cages, each one holding upwards of five hundred prisoners.  Others seemed to be glimmering in the distance, while armed guards and dogs patrolled the outskirts of the cages, sometimes pausing to shout insults at the prisoners.  A gang of men were being marched out of one of the cages, their legs chained together to make it impossible for them to escape, with guards shouting at them and applying the whip to make them move faster.  They looked like locals to Greg, probably men who’d been rounded up and pressed into work parties.  Or maybe they were former insurgents.  There was no way to tell.

“Thousands,” he said, finally.  How many Commonwealth citizens had been on the ground when the shit hit the fan?  Cadiz had had hundreds of thousands of expatriates, all of whom might have been taken prisoner, or caught up in the crossfire and killed.  And then there was the question of local resistance.  There was no doubt in his mind that the Theocracy wouldn’t hesitate to kill as many locals as necessary to make sure that the survivors obeyed orders without question.  “Look at that!”

A line of children, all boys of around the age of ten to twelve, were being marched past the cages.  The boys were being encouraged to spit and shout curses at the prisoners, who seemed reluctant to shout back, let alone attempt to escape.  They looked so listless that Greg guessed that they’d been drugged by their captors, probably with something nasty and addictive.  It was a neat way of keeping the prisoners penned up, he had to admit; get them addicted to a drug that only the Theocracy could supply and they’d be unable to leave even if the cage wire was torn down.  Perhaps they could be treated back home, but not on Cadiz.  The local medical facilities had never been very good, even prior to the occupation.

“Bastards,” Vanessa said, again.  She sounded angry.  None of the children would be from the Commonwealth – at least, Greg hoped that none of the children would be from the Commonwealth.  The Admiral had had his brats…but they’d all been adult, at least physically.  “Why the hell are they doing that?”

“Give me the child and I will shape his world,” Greg misquoted.  “They’re being taught that they’re better than those behind the wire; soon, they won’t consider themselves part of your society.  They will belong to the Theocracy, body and soul.  God help them.”

He winced as one of the male prisoners began to shout to one of the children.  A young boy broke free and ran towards the cage, shouting for his father.  Seconds later, a jangler pulse sent him flying to the ground, stunned.  Greg wondered if the troopers who picked him up and took him away from the rest of the group would ever let him wake up.  He clearly hadn’t surrendered to their brainwashing technique.

“We need to stage a prison break,” Vanessa said, firmly.  “We have to get them out of there.”

Greg couldn’t disagree, but it would be difficult, almost impossible.  The camp was well-guarded, with armed guards everywhere, drones on the lookout overhead and helicopters flying around the perimeter.  Even if he dressed his Marines in their armoured suits and risked burning up their remaining powered suits, it would still be almost impossible to get the prisoners out before the enemy commander called in KEW strikes from orbit or simply shipped his armoured troopers down to the planet.  He looked towards a set of prefabricated buildings and scowled.  It looked as if they had stumbled upon a major enemy base.

“We’d have to plan it carefully,” he said, finally.  He didn’t want to let her down, somehow.  Besides, she had plenty of experience in fighting an underground war, more than anyone else in the insurgency.  “We’ll have to find a way of hacking into the central database they’re using to store their registration records – or we’d end up being caught because of bad paperwork.”

He scowled to himself as he led her away from the camp, his implants silently filing away everything he’d seen for upload to Lightning or whichever ship returned to Cadiz.  The information might just help Admiral Christian – now, there was a commanding officer who deserved loyalty – in plotting his counter-strike, whatever he had in mind.  His implants posed a difficulty of their own; if the Theocracy’s forces scanned his body, they’d have no difficulty in realising that he wasn't an ordinary native of Cadiz.  The planet had never possessed any medical centre capable of providing even the most basic implants, unlike Avalon.  A single scan would reveal his true nature – and then he’d wind up a POW, or dead.  

The hour passed slowly as they hiked back down towards the city.  There was no sign of anyone else, not even the routine traffic that Vanessa assured him was normal around this part of the countryside.  The Theocracy had probably slowed down traffic or forbidden it altogether, if only to prevent the population from moving out of its control.  Greg had studied previous invasions and counterinsurgency operations and they’d all claimed that there were only two ways to perform a successful counterinsurgency; make friends with the locals, or control them so completely that insurgents couldn't flourish among them.  The Theocracy clearly preferred the latter tactic.

A rumble of engines alerted them, too late.  Greg stopped dead as a camouflaged vehicle roared out of hiding, an APC that looked to have been designed back in the days of the Wrecker Wars.  It wasn't too surprising; the RAMC believed that simple was better when it came to deploying military technology and the Theocracy evidently agreed.  After hundreds of years of development, the technology had effectively reached as close to perfection as possible.  The vehicle was armoured against anything short of a missile or plasma cannon, the weapons it carried were capable of scything them to bloody shreds within seconds and the troopers riding inside were ready to dismount and support their transport on the ground.  They were already piling out of the vehicle, guns pointed directly at Greg’s head.  Greg froze, studying them carefully.  They didn't seem to be paying any attention to Vanessa.

There were five troopers in all, carrying weapons part of Greg’s mind identified as a direct copy of the UN’s Standard Issue Assault Rifle during the Breakaway Wars.  The uniforms they wore had an undeniable element of sloppiness about them, suggesting that they were a reserve unit rather than Janissaries or another elite formation.  On the other hand, they were clearly alert and ready for trouble – and they were taking Greg seriously.  The guns pointed at his head weren't just for show.

“Keep your hands where I can see them,” the leader barked.  His voice was oddly accented, as if he’d been forced to learn Standard through a hypnotic course rather than practice and more practice.  The chances were that he was the only one in the small unit who could speak Standard, although Greg reminded himself not to take that for granted.  Their superiors wouldn't want them being contaminated by other beliefs and ways of living, but they’d also want the troops to be flexible with the locals.  It was a little hard to interrogate a person if the interrogator couldn't speak his language.  “Identity card; now!”

Greg forced himself to stammer, as if he were terrified.  “I...I don’t have one,” he said, desperately.  “I’ve been camping with my girlfriend and we saw the lights in the sky and...what’s going on?”

The leader didn't look as if he believed Greg’s story.  It was unlikely that anyone on Cadiz was unaware of what was going on, unless they’d been out away from civilisation and only ever seen the lights in the sky.  Greg braced himself, prepared for the worst; he didn't dare let himself be captured.  If worst came to worse, he would have to trigger the suicide protocol in his implants and hope that Vanessa was caught in the blast.  The looks some of the troopers were exchanging behind their leader’s back suggested that they had something rather unholy in mind.

“This world belongs to us now,” the leader said, finally.  “You have heard none of our broadcasts?”

“No, sir,” Greg said.  The leader looked a little more convinced, or perhaps he was just not inclined to waste time.  “What’s going on?”

“You will wait here until a transport arrives to take you to the registration camp,” the leader decided.  His gaze fell on Vanessa.  “And you will have to cover her so that her gaze does not incite the lusts of men.”

He barked an order to his men in Arabic.  “Shackle them,” he ordered.  Clearly, he was taking no chances – and he had no idea Greg spoke Arabic, although with an odd accent of his own.  “We’ll hold them here until the transport arrives.  They can explain themselves to the occupation authorities.”

Greg braced himself, triggering silent commands to his implants.  His body began to prepare itself for a fight.  New drugs flowed into his bloodstream, quickening his reflexes and heightening his awareness of his surroundings.  The Marines were warned not to abuse their implanted drug glands and other systems, all highly classified, but some still pushed their bodies too far every year.  It was hard to return to humanity when one had been a god.  The movement of the enemy soldiers seemed to slow to a crawl.  He silently prayed that Vanessa would have the sense to stay still when the fun began.

“Put your hands behind you,” one of the troopers ordered.  “Now, infidel...”

He broke off as Greg slammed a palm into his neck.  It would have crushed his throat with merely human strength; the force of his enhanced muscles snapped his neck, killing him before he realised that he was under attack.  Greg snatched his sidearm as he picked up the body and threw it at a second soldier, while diving out of the path of a spray of bullets from a third.  The blocky firearm felt cumbersome in his hand, but he managed to fire twice, taking down both the leader and the third soldier.  Vanessa let out a yell and lunged at the fourth, who had seemingly ignored her – after all, she was only a mere woman.  The knife she drove into his chest ensured that he would never be interested in anyone again.

Greg hurled himself forward as the mounted guns on the APC began to traverse.  If they were only reservists, they might have made a crucial mistake...they had; they’d left the upper hatch open.  Normally, that wouldn't be a problem, but Greg was through the hatch before the two remaining occupants had a chance to seal it and call for help.  One of them was killed by a bullet to the head; the second was luckier, dodging in the confined quarters of the vehicle so that the bullet only went into his arm.  Greg slammed a fist into his chest, putting him out of commission for a few minutes, and twisted around to check the console.  Like the equipment designed for Avalon’s ground-forces, it was idiot-proof.  It was easy to work out how to dismantle the communications panel and cut the vehicle off from the communications net.

“Come on,” he snapped, hauling the sole survivor to his feet.  “Out; now!”

The lower hatch opened and he kicked the survivor out, snatching up a plastic tie to bind his hands once they were out of the vehicle.  He barked a command for Vanessa to take one of the grenades, toss it into the vehicle and start running while he concentrated on dragging their prisoner into the undergrowth.  The APC exploded behind them into a fireball, suggesting that there had been more grenades inside the vehicle.  It was careless of them; normally, tanks and APCs required a great deal more killing before they went up in smoke.  

His body started to shake minutes later as the drug was flushed from his bloodstream, leaving him feeling weak and shaky.  How long would it be before the Theocracy realised that they’d lost contact with one of their patrols?  How long would it be before they investigated?  And would they respond by destroying every civilian habitation near the incident scene?  In hindsight, it might have been better to throw the bodies into the APC and destroy them.  It might have been taken for an accident, the result of sending reservists into combat without proper training and preparation.

“Keep an eye on him,” he grunted, and staggered into the nearest tree.  A well of vomit welled up inside him and he was violently sick, cursing the drugs as he hacked and coughed, trying to spew out the last of the disgusting taste.  There was a price for everything, he’d been told when he’d enlisted; somehow, no one had mentioned the vomiting and motion sickness in the recruitment videos.  It was easy to see why some chose to keep injecting themselves with the drugs, pushing their bodies to the brink of collapse, seeking the perfect never-ending high.  

Vanessa was watching him, clearly worried.  “Are you all right?”

“Pass me some water and I’ll be fine,” he said.  He took a look at their captive and winced again.  The man looked terrified, hardly an all-conquering hero.  Maybe he could be interrogated, but first they’d have to see to their security.  “Cut off his clothes and leave everything here, now.  God alone knows what he might have had attached to him by their security officers.”

The thought didn't please him.  It wouldn't be hard to create a simple tracker so tiny that it couldn't be seen by the naked eye, configured to remain silent until it received a ping from a search unit.  The Theocracy would probably want to keep a covert eye on its recruits, if only because they might be tempted into sin by the luxuries all around them, even on Cadiz.  

He shook his head.  This trooper was never going to have the chance.  He was going to be interrogated, and then – unless there was a reason to keep him alive – his throat was going to be cut.  It was going to be a long hard war.

***
There was something about the vastness of interstellar space that made Kat feel cold, and alone.  Lightning drifted two light years from Cadiz, waiting for the Admiral’s messenger to arrive – or for the Admiral himself.  They were an unimaginable distance from any inhabitable world, she knew; they could not hope to return to any life-bearing star without opening a gateway and moving through hyperspace.  There were tales of starships that had made an interstellar journey without hyperspace, but none of those tales had any foundation.  Humanity’s plans to travel through interstellar space on giant interstellar arks had come to an end when hyperspace had been discovered and the first starships set out on their interstellar voyages.

She stood in the observation blister and stared out into space.  Somewhere out there, Cadiz’s primary was glowing in the darkness, shining down on Captain Bone and his Marines.  Kat was relieved to know that they were alive, but somehow the thought that he was still in deadly danger bothered her more than she had expected.  And unless the Admiral pulled a miracle out of his hat, it might be years before Cadiz was liberated.  If it ever was...”

Her wristcom chirped.  “Captain, we are detecting hyperspace gateways opening,” Roach said.  Kat didn't feel alarmed; the only person who knew to find them in interstellar space was the Admiral.  “They’re coming through now.”

Kat turned her gaze back into space just in time to see the first vortex shimmering into life, followed by a second and a third.  Space itself was rent asunder, flashes of light heralding the arrival of battleships, battlecruisers and heavy cruisers, with only a handful of screening units.  The entire 6th Fleet – and the battleship squadron the Admiral had commanded – had arrived, save only a number of destroyers.  Kat stared at them in disbelief.  If the Admiral had ordered them to gather here, it meant that he intended to attack Cadiz.

“Captain,” Roach said, “the Admiral would like to speak with you.”

“Put him through,” Kat ordered.  “Upload our sensor readings from Cadiz to the command datanet.”

The Admiral’s voice cut into the wristcom.  “Captain,” he said, formally.  “I trust that you are surprised to see the fleet?”

“Yes, sir,” Kat said, honestly.  “Sir...Cadiz is too strongly held for us to retake it.”

“Now,” the Admiral agreed.  “I will dispatch four destroyers to picket the system.  If the Theocracy takes the bait, we can give them a very nasty surprise.”

Kat nodded, understanding forming in her mind.  There was only one target that might draw the enemy battleships away from Cadiz – 6th Fleet itself.  

“I see,” she said.  “And now we wait?”

“Yes,” the Admiral confirmed.  “We wait.”

Chapter Forty-Three

Admiral Junayd allowed himself one of his tight smiles.

“They’re there, waiting for us,” he said, coldly.  “Like lambs for the slaughter.”

Governor Walid didn't look so convinced.  “Are you sure that they will remain there long enough for you to hit them?”

“They don't know they’ve been discovered,” Admiral Junayd said.  “Think about it; that fleet is the only significant threat remaining in this sector.  As long as it is in our rear, we cannot advance against the Commonwealth – which gives them time to mobilise and launch counterattacks of their own.  We crush it and we have time to move up our own forces and continue the drive into the Commonwealth.”

He grinned, unpleasantly.  The Governor wasn't having an easy time of it.  Sure, most of the planet was under control, but there had been a handful of nasty incidents out in the countryside and the locals were proving uncooperative.  They’d had to use mass reprisal several times in the cities just to keep them under control, while any locals who sought to sign up with the occupiers found themselves isolated by their fellows.  Given time, the Admiral was sure that the planet would be pacified and brought into the faith – it had worked before, after all – but until then the occupation wasn’t going to be easy.  The Commonwealth had killed the stupid insurgents a long time before the Theocracy had invaded.  Those that remained were tough, smart and dedicated.  

Not that it really mattered, of course.  The Commonwealth had successfully managed to lock down most local factories that produced war material, although there were a vast number of primitive production plants hidden away in the countryside.  Their only source of heavy weapons had been the Theocracy and that particular source of supply wouldn’t be forthcoming any longer.  The insurgency would slowly die away for want of weapons and supplies, while the occupation force would register every last citizen on the planet and then begin the long task of preparing them for the faith.

“The facilities we’ve captured here are valuable,” the Governor objected.  Admiral Junayd concealed a smile, aware that the Governor’s real interest lay with the industrial combines that provided support and funding in exchange for first crack at front-line Commonwealth technology.  The Theocracy could match the Commonwealth in military technology, but it was becoming alarmingly clear that their general technological base was at least a decade behind their opponent’s technological base.  “They have to be protected.”

“Of course,” the Admiral agreed, mildly.  “I will assign a squadron of battleships and flanking units to protect Cadiz, should enemy raiders attempt to return to the system and harass the mining facilities.  Once we have crushed the remains of their 6th Fleet, we can re-concentrate our forces for the drive into the Commonwealth.”

He looked up at the holographic chart, frowning.  Like every offensive in history, matters had begun to slip almost as soon as the first units had been set into motion.  Some of his smaller squadrons, assigned to other targets in the sector, had not returned, let alone reported back.  It would be several days before he had to assume the worst – if only because they didn’t send a courier boat to report – but it still left him feeling uneasy.  The long fleet train was already in motion, bringing the supplies from the Theocracy that would allow him to kick off a mighty offensive into the heart of the Commonwealth, yet if they were delayed – or enemy raiders took them out – the offensive would stall, at least until replacements arrived.  How long would it be before the enemy launched a counter-attack of their own?

”I will pray for your success,” the Governor said.  “May God go with you.”

His image vanished from the display.  Admiral Junayd considered the blank screen for a long moment, and then turned to issue orders to his men.  They had a window of opportunity, one that could not be refused for fear of losing the war; the risk, if risk there was, was minimal.  And besides, the enemy were already demoralised.  One final push and 6th Fleet would disintegrate.  How could the Commonwealth, a society based around freedom and self-determination, survive when challenged by a united society, following its Caliph to death or glory?

And yet he still felt uneasy.  God never gave anyone victory, unless they deserved it.  And the only way the Theocracy would deserve it was through working to make it happen.  God helped those who helped themselves…and so much of their advantage had come from Commonwealth weaknesses, not their own strengths.  And any Theocrat knew that gifts from God didn’t last.  One had always to be worthy of them.

Cheer up, he told himself, firmly.  These are the problems of victory.  You could have been defeated instead.

An hour later, three battleship squadrons and flanking units opened a vortex into hyperspace and vanished, bound for Bristol Deep.

***
“They’re gone.”

“It looks that way,” Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Robin Summers agreed.  “We have orders to wait for six hours, remember?”

Invisible Hand wasn’t a RAN craft, not even in name.  The intelligence boat had been designed by the Commonwealth Intelligence Service and built secretly – along with her sisters – in a hidden compound orbiting an otherwise useless star.  She was almost completely invisible to passive sensors even without a cloaking device or masking field – and active sensors would be lucky to pick up on her unless she was at very close range.  The boat had been on manoeuvres out along the borderline when the shit had hit the fan and Robin – the boat’s commanding officer – had promptly announced her presence to Admiral Christian and requested orders.  Admiral Christian had ordered them into the Cadiz System, relieving one of his lighter units from scout duties.

She stood up and walked over to the small food processor, producing a glass of water.  The interior of her command was cramped, with barely enough room for her four crewmembers and some of the most advanced sensor systems to exist in known space.  Robin and her crew had all been fitted with suicide implants that would prevent them falling into enemy hands, a risk they’d accepted back when they’d signed up with the CIS.  The boat itself seemed primitive, as if it was from a bygone era.  There were no wireless systems onboard, not even standard implant access processor nodes.  A single stray emission could betray their presence.

Drinking her water, she looked back towards the main display.  Cadiz was surrounded by enemy facilities – including a new halo of orbital weapons platforms, some of which they’d monitored firing down on the planet – and a single squadron of enemy battleships.  Two of them appeared to be damaged, although it was impossible to tell just how badly – or indeed if the effects were anything more than cosmetic.  Some of the interstellar powers liked having their ships marked, even though it made little sense to her.  They’d have to warn Admiral Christian that the ships might not be seriously damaged at all.  

The time ticked by slowly.  By long agreement among the crew – they would have torn themselves apart in the cramped confines if they hadn’t been able to get along – two of the crew slept under the influence of their implants while the other two continued to monitor local space.  The enemy battleships resolutely refused to reappear.  Robin studied the sensor readings of the hyperspace vortex they’d used to enter hyperspace and frowned; the enemy ships were on a rough course for Bristol Deep, but it was impossible to be sure.  Besides, the enemy ships could have easily altered course while in hyperspace and returned to lie in wait.  There was no certainty in wartime.

She rubbed her eyes as the timer ticked down to zero.  They’d intercepted enough traffic from the planet below to know that the local population was being prepared for integration into the Theocracy, regardless of their own wishes and desires.  Those who adopted the true faith would be rewarded and promoted; those who refused to convert would be sidelined, marginalised and eventually enslaved.  Their children would be taken away and raised by the faithful.  In the end, there would be no trace of any other religion on the planet.  The crew had intercepted radio messages – in clear – that reported the destruction of thousands of churches and other religious buildings.  They would all be raised to the ground.

“That’s six hours,” her partner said, finally.  “They’re not coming back.”

Robin nodded and keyed a series of commands into her console.  The first one brought the reactor up from standby and started to flush power into the ship’s heavily-shielded drive systems.  Once they were mobile, they could start creeping out towards the outer edge of the system, where they would enter hyperspace without being detected.  The second command transmitted a single codeword into the network of stealth platforms Lightning had left behind; the third transmitted a laser pulse to a courier boat lurking on the very edge of the system.  By the time Invisible Hand was on its way out of the system, the courier boat would already be halfway to the rendezvous point.  The Admiral would know that his deception had worked.  Cadiz was uncovered.

Her eyes strayed back to the enemy ships orbiting Cadiz as the drive came up to full power and they began to withdraw from the system.  They looked fat and happy to her, confident that they would not be attacked by the Commonwealth’s depleted forces.  Her mouth twisted into a unpleasant smile as the stealth ship picked up speed.  They were in for an unpleasant shock.

***
The buzz of the transmitted brought Greg to wakefulness instantly; he grabbed for his sidearm automatically, concerned that someone nearby would hear the noise and summon the enemy troops.  They’d already had to move camp further away from the city after a small army of enemy troops had headed up the Highway and launched a search-and-destroy mission, clearly looking for the insurgents who had wiped out a small patrol and destroyed their vehicle.  The search hadn’t been very efficient, at least in Greg’s view, but it had thoroughly terrorised the locals near the detainment centre.  They wouldn’t be giving any help to the insurgency in future.  

He grabbed the portable terminal as the other Marines came awake, snatching up their weapons to repel attack.  The sentry motioned quickly; there was no attack.  Most of the Marines returned to sleep, apart from a handful who remained quietly on alert.  It was supposed to be impossible for an enemy force to sneak up on them, but none of them would take that for granted.  An enemy force would be trying to surprise them.  He looked over at the locals, who were also stirring, and frowned.  How long would it be before the Theocracy arrested their families and brought pressure on them to betray their uneasy allies?

Shaking his head, he glanced down at the terminal.  The message seemed to blast a wakefulness pulse into his skull, a memory of his time spent at Boot Camp.  He glanced over at Vanessa, who was looking at him with wide eyes, and nodded to her.  She pulled herself up from her sleeping bag and headed over to join him.  He forced himself to look away as she squatted down next to him, half-astonished at his own diversion.  They didn’t have time for romance, or even outright lust.

“They sent us a warning message,” he said.  No one else would have received the message, at least as far as he knew.  If there were other rogue bands of Commonwealth soldiers out there, they hadn’t made contact with the Marines.  God alone knew how many others were out there, helpless, lost and alone.  “The system is about to be attacked.”

Vanessa looked up, sharply.  “They’re going to liberate us?”

Greg winced.  He hadn’t been looking forward to this part of the conversation.  “I don’t think so,” he admitted.  “They don’t have the firepower to take and hold Cadiz; I think that this is just going to be a massive raid, perhaps a chance to trap and destroy a number of enemy ships when the odds favour us.”

“Damn,” Vanessa said.  She frowned.  “They didn’t give you any details?”

“No,” Greg said.  “They wouldn’t tell me anything, for fear that the enemy might intercept and be put on alert.  I think we’re going to have to spot targets for them, once they arrive and take the high orbitals.  However…”

He looked down at her.  She wasn't going to like this.  “I want you to pass the word to the insurgent cells you’re still in contact with,” he said.  Insurgents didn’t have formal chains of command, he knew; they tended to be far less hierarchical than the Marine Corps.  But then, any insurgency with a clear chain of command was just asking to be rounded up by the enemy.  “You have to tell them to keep their heads down and stay out of the fighting.”

“This is our planet,” Vanessa said, stubbornly.  “We will fight for it.”

“They can’t hold the planet indefinitely,” Greg reminded her.  “The Theocracy will return and take control of the population again – and when they do, their leader will be twice as ruthless and unpleasant if he thinks that your forces aided ours.  You have to keep your people out of the fight until we can make a stab at liberating Cadiz permanently.”

He watched her face twisting in the light of the early-morning sun.  The birds were carolling out in the distance; he could almost believe that it was little more than an adventure trip with a pretty girl and a handful of buddies.  But as Sergeant Boyce prepared the Marines for their morning duties, he knew that the illusion couldn’t last.  It would soon be time to make war again, on an enemy renowned for its ruthlessness.  The normal laws of reprisal simply didn’t deter the Theocracy, if only because its population were trained to regard themselves as completely expendable.  Those who died in the course of a holy war believed that they went straight into God’s merciful arms.  The leaders, he suspected, would know better, but anyone who sought to use faith to motivate his armies was riding a tiger.  It was quite possible that if the council of hypocrites and monsters at the head of the Theocracy were to be killed off, they’d be replaced by true believers.

“Fine,” she said, finally.  “But one thing…”

Greg scowled.  “Go one,” he said.  “What can we do for you?”

“I want to take part personally,” Vanessa said.  “I’ve been in the shadows too long.”

Greg bit down the comment that came to mind and nodded.  “Very well,” he said.  “We’ll be heading back to the detention centre within the hour.  You can march with us.”

He turned and watched as Sergeant Boyce started to bark orders to the Marines.  The handful who were still sleeping jumped up and started to stow their kit away in their rucksacks, while the sentries started to fan out, checking to ensure that there was no sign of enemy forces anywhere near their position.  A quick scan for radio transmissions reported nothing closer than a pair of known enemy positions – they’d taken over a couple of farms in strategic locations and kicked out the farmers when they complained – although the city was blazing with radio transmissions.  There was no way to know if they had any inkling that an attack was coming, or that their positions were about to be shattered.

“Seems to be business as usual, sir,” Rifleman Jones reported.  He’d taken over the listening watch for the night.  “They’re not alert for anything.”

“Yeah,” Greg said.  He caught Vanessa’s eyes and nodded to her.  She was already ready to depart, carrying one of the Marine-issue weapons that they’d signed over to her.  “Let’s hope it stays that way.”

***
Commodore Amadadodi relaxed on the bridge of the Hammer of Faith as his ship’s boy brought him his morning cup of coffee.  It was strong enough to blister the ship’s hull, just the way he liked it.  The battleship was quietly preparing for its next deployment, once the Admiral returned victorious from Bristol Deep, leaving her commander feeling deprived of the chance to win glory.  It had taken a whole series of favours and family connections to obtain his command and he was damned if he was going to sit in orbit around Cadiz for the entire war.  They could be halfway to Avalon by now if they’d just pressed on after taking Cadiz.

Part of him knew that that wasn’t true, but he found it hard to care.  Two ships in his squadron had been battered quite badly during the Battle of Cadiz, even though the damage was already under control and nearly repaired.  The Admiral was merely expressing his irritation at having so many ships damaged – or perhaps he was concerned about allowing a man with such family connections a chance to win glory that would earn him promotion.  He scowled down at Cadiz, thinking angry thoughts about the infidels on the surface.  If they would just accept the true faith and submit to their rightful overlords, he could take his ship to win glory and…

His thoughts were interrupted by an alert from the tactical console.  “Report,” he barked.  The tactical officer was competent; he’d proved that in the endless drills they’d endured before receiving their final orders.  “What’s happening?”

The tactical officer seemed shaken.  “Commodore, we have multiple hyperspace vortexes opening up,” he said.  New icons sprang to life on the display.  The Commodore stared in disbelief.  This couldn’t be happening, not to him.  “I’m readying….twenty-seven enemy battleships, plus flanking units…”

He cleared his throat.  “Commodore,” he said, more formally.  “The Cadiz System is under attack.”

“I can see that,” Amadadodi snarled.  “All hands to battle stations!”

Chapter Forty-Four

“Emergence complete, Admiral,” Fran reported.  Defiant had roared out of the hyperspace vortex she’d created, heading down towards Cadiz – and a suddenly badly outnumbered enemy fleet.  “We are launching tactical probes now.”

Admiral Christian didn’t hesitate.  “Launch all fighters,” he ordered.  The carriers were making their way out of the vortex behind the battle line, ready to launch their remaining fighters into the battle.  “Order them to attack the enemy, attack pattern alpha-delta-sierra.”

“Aye, sir,” the CAG said.  The attack patterns had been discussed previously; the starfighters, assuming that the enemy had no fighters of their own with their picket, would concentrate on taking out the enemy ships.  Fran nodded to herself as a pair of enemy freighters revealed themselves to be makeshift carriers, launching four wings of enemy fighters into space.  “Lead fighters are requesting permission to engage the enemy.”

“Permission granted,” the Admiral said, with equal formality.  “Retain two squadrons for CSP; deploy the remainder as you see fit.”

He turned and looked down at Fran and her crew.  “The battleships will advance to engage the enemy,” he ordered.  “All ships are ordered to open fire as soon as they enter range.  Program the command network for multiple target selection; we have a three-to-one advantage and I don’t mean to waste it.”

“Aye, sir,” Fran said.  “All ships will advance to engage the enemy.”

A cloud of fighters roared out ahead of the battleships as they advanced down towards Cadiz.  The enemy seemed confused, but they were rapidly concentrating their force and starting to advance outwards, away from the planet.  Their tactics made little sense to Fran – in their position, she would have ordered a retreat – but there were hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of enemy soldiers on the planet below.  The enemy commander might not want to risk abandoning them.  Besides, the Theocracy would need a scapegoat for the disaster and who better than the system’s CO?

“Interesting,” Admiral Christian observed.  If he was feeling the same tension that had turned Fran’s blood to ice, it didn’t show in his voice.  Indeed, he sounded as calm as if he were ordering dinner.  “The enemy commander has decided to engage us rather than retreat.  And what does that mean, I wonder?”

He smiled.  “Either we’ve just walked into an enemy trap, or they believe that we will not risk heavy losses ourselves,” he said.  “Let’s see which one is right, shall we?”

The seconds ticked away as the battleships lumbered closer and closer, until they reached engagement range.  Defiant shuddered as she unleashed her first broadside, hundreds of missiles fired as one.  The other battleships fired simultaneously, unleashing a massive broadside that roared down on the enemy ships.  Part of Fran’s mind noted that the endless drills had paid off, with most of the gunnery stations showing a mark improvement from their performance in the first Battle of Cadiz; the remainder watched the wall of missiles, horrified by the sheer weight of firepower she’d unleashed.  It was enough firepower to casually wreck several worlds.

A moment later, new alarms sounded as the enemy returned fire.  The point defence was already online, launching drones and decoys to draw off as many of the enemy missiles as possible.  Hundreds of bolts of plasma fire and rail-gun pullets flashed into space, each one destroying an enemy missile…but there were hundreds more incoming.  Defiant shuddered angrily as a missile detonated against her hull, followed by a second and then a third.  Red alarms flashed up on her display, reporting that the ship had been hulled.  

“Our firepower gives us the advantage,” the Admiral mused.  Four enemy ships were steaming atmosphere, badly damaged.  One was sliding out of position, suggesting that it had been completely disabled.  “Send the signal to Sapper.   She can move now.”

***
Commodore Amadadodi cursed, heedless of the Cleric’s warning presence on his bridge, as missiles slammed into his battleship.  His force had a slight edge in lighter craft, but it wasn’t enough to keep them from taking hideous damage at the hands of the enemy ships.  The pounding was rapidly growing unsubstainable, suggesting that his entire force was on the verge of being wiped out.

“Incoming starfighters,” the tactical officer warned, suddenly.  The infidels didn;lt just have the advantage in ships of the line; they had the advantage in starfighters too!  If the Admiral had kept his task force at Cadiz...but no, the infidels had clearly been waiting for their moment.  They’d picked their time well and his force was about to be hammered.  The prospect of leaving a battered enemy fleet in possession of Cadiz was unthinkable; after all, the Caliph had already appointed a Governor and word of the victory had been sent throughout the Theocracy.  “They’re coming in on attack vector.”

“Shift our point defence fire to cover,” Amadadodi ordered, harshly.  Another icon vanished from his display, a light cruiser that had no place in this battle of the titans.  Its absence opened up a gap in the point defence datanet, allowing the enemy to hammer another of his battleships and put it out of commission.  A missile smashed through the armour plating, detonated inside the hull...and a chain of explosions blew the battleship into flaming plasma.  There had been no time for the crew to get to the lifepods.  The ship had gone down with all hands.

He looked over at the Cleric.  “We have to retreat,” he snapped.  Another impact shook his starship.  The enemy starfighters were launching their missiles at close range, picking off his weapons, drives and sensors.  His ship was on the verge of being blinded.  It was intolerable that such gnats would threaten his ship, yet there was nothing he could do about it.  Most of the fleet’s starfighter carriers had departed for Bristol Deep along with the Admiral.  “We can't stay here.”

The Cleric stared at him.  “The Caliph has ordered that this world be held,” he thundered.  He didn't seem disconcerted by the thunder on the hull, or the periodic shockwaves that ran through the ship.  Clerics were simply too ignorant to be afraid.  “We cannot deny him!”

“If we stay here, we will be destroyed,” Amadadodi thundered back.  Having an argument on his bridge in front of his crew was the last thing he wanted, but he needed the Cleric’s permission to cover himself.  It wouldn't look good on his service record if he retreated in the face of the enemy – assuming that he was permitted to survive.  The Caliph wasn't known for blaming his favourites, like the good Admiral.  Someone would have to take the blame for the disaster and that would almost certainly be him.  “We have to leave, now!”

“Commodore,” the tactical officer snapped.  “I have new hyperspace vortexes opening behind our lines, near the planet!”

For a moment, Amadadodi knew hope.  The Commonwealth and the Theocracy agreed on one point; complex operations were just asking to fail spectacularly.  If someone new was arriving, it might be the reinforcements from the Theocracy or even the Admiral himself, along with his task force.  Why would the Commonwealth RAN send in a second attack force...?

And then the red icons appeared, flowing out of the vortex.  A second Commonwealth force had arrived...

And Cadiz was almost undefended, ripe for the plucking.  His career was lost, along with his life.  And his family would suffer for his failure.  The only thing left was a glorious death.  And he’d wished for glory!

“Helm,” he ordered, in a voice like death.  “Take us right into the teeth of the enemy fleet.  All guns are to continue firing until...they can fire no more.”

***
“Sapper has entered hyperspace,” Roach reported.  “The Admiral has given us clearance to proceed.”

Kat nodded, feeling the lump of tension in her breast slowly draining away.  “Take us out of hyperspace,” she ordered.  “And alert the other ships to follow us in.”

A dark vortex materialised in front of Lightning and the starship plunged back into the Cadiz System.  Kat took in the situation in an instant.  The Admiral’s battleships had successfully drawn off the enemy battleships, leaving Lightning and her consorts to deal with the fixed defences.  Red icons flared up on the display as orbital weapons platforms went active, locking their weapons on Lightning and her consorts.  They were about to come under heavy attack.

“Fire at will,” she ordered.  Behind Lightning, the single assault carrier that had survived the disaster of First Cadiz was launching her starfighters, providing cover for Lightning and the handful of other ships.  The enemy were already rerouting starfighters of their own to tackle the small squadron, correctly deducing that they wouldn’t be able to turn their battleships away from the Admiral’s fleet without having their heads handed to them.  “Take out as many of the orbital defences as you can.”

She tensed as the enemy fighters roared down on Lightning.  Individually, fighters posed little threat, but collectively they were incredibly dangerous, even if they hadn’t made capital ships as obsolete as some had predicted, back when they’d first been put into production.  They could carry out precise targeting, slamming missiles into Lightning’s drives or weaponry, crippling her ship.  The RAN starfighters fanned out around Lightning, providing what protection they could.  One by one, enemy starfighters began to die, but not before unleashing their missiles into Lightning.  The point defence killed most of them, yet a handful survived to strike home.  Lightning shuddered as five missiles slammed into her armour.  Kat felt the impacts deep in her soul, even as she gritted her teeth.  They had to remain where they were.

“Keep firing,” she ordered.  The orbital defences were shooting now, launching missiles towards the small squadron.  Ahead of Lightning, two squadrons of RAN starfighters were flashing towards the orbital weapons, picking them off before they could keep launching missiles.  Brilliant explosions lit the skies of Cadiz – again – as the Theocracy’s orbital defences were blasted out of orbit, sending debris falling down into the planet’s atmosphere.  The remaining enemy starfighters altered course, seeming to hesitate for a long second, and then they drove towards their targets.  Kat barely had a second to realise that they were attempting to ram the capital ships before one slammed into Lightning.  The ship shook violently.

“Direct impact, secondary shuttlebay,” the Chief Engineer said.  He sounded unshaken, much to Kat’s relief.  They’d been lucky enough to keep their full complement of damage control officers, but they’d lost half of their spare parts to the rest of 6th Fleet.  “Two shuttles destroyed; minor structural damage.  The secondary layer of armour held.”

“Good,” Kat said.  If the secondary layer of armour had broken, the explosion would have inflicted far more damage on her ship.  It might have crippled Lightning, or broken her back.  “And the rest of the squadron?”

“Petticoat took a kamikaze to the drives and is falling back to the RV point,” Roach reported.  “All other ships report minimal damage, Captain; local space is clear of enemy units and installations.”

Kat nodded.  The Theocracy hadn’t had the time to construct orbital fortresses or other heavy defences, choosing instead to rely on automated orbital weapons platforms and their starships.  It wasn't a bad tactic, but it ensured that they could never really uncover Cadiz, at least not without risking the RAN arriving to smash the occupation force.  Her lips twisted into a smile as the small squadron moved forward, already linking in to the Marines on the ground.  The enemy was about to discover the weakness in their planning.

“Move the two monitors up ahead,” she ordered, as Lightning started to settle into high orbit.  It would allow them to run, if necessary.  The enemy fleet might realise that they’d been tricked and come racing back to Cadiz with blood in their eyes.  “Tell them that they are authorised to open fire.”

Monitors were rarely used in space combat, at least according to pre-war doctrine.  They were designed for rapid, overwhelming and precise bombardment of hundreds of targets on the ground, targets that might be capable of shooting back.  Compared to Lighting, they were ugly blocky craft, but they’d be worth their weight in gold today.  Unlike any other ship in the fleet, they could launch thousands of KEW projectiles if necessary, utterly shattering the enemy positions on the ground.  And thanks to Captain Bone and his Marines – she allowed herself a tight smile on her former lover’s behalf – they had excellent targeting data.  No enemy units would survive within a hundred kilometres of New Barcelona.

“The monitors copy, Captain,” Roach reported.  He’d had to serve as a fleet coordination officer as well as her tactical officer, but he’d adapted well.  “They’re opening fire now.”

Kat’s imagination allowed her to fill in the picture.  KEW projectiles were really little more than rocks, dropped from orbit and precisely targeted on enemy positions.  All over Cadiz, enemy troops would be fleeing their vehicles and bases, trying to get away before the rocks slammed down and obliterated their targets.  Anything broadcasting on enemy frequencies was marked for destruction; within ten minutes, thousands of KEWs had fallen on the planet below.  It was simply impossible to maintain any degree of coherent coordination in the face of such a barrage; that had been proven in countless wars and skirmishes since the human race had first turned space into a war zone.  The optical sensors on the monitors were the best in the Commonwealth, capable of tracking even individual enemy vehicles and assigning them a targeting priority.  It helped that the Commonwealth had lost every armoured vehicle on Cadiz, ensuring that there was little danger of hitting a friendly unit.

The reports from the ground had said that the Theocracy was moving rapidly to establish control of the civilian population.  Right now, the civilian population – which had been firmly opposed to the Commonwealth – would be very aware of just what conquest by the Theocracy actually meant.  They’d take this opportunity to scatter into the countryside, or take up arms and fight when the Theocracy returned to Cadiz...or maybe even settle scores with those who had supported the new occupying force.  Who knew?  After Cadiz had been liberated permanently, the survivors might even want to join the Commonwealth.

But that was a long way off.  “General message to all ships,” she ordered.  The updates had come in from the Marines, allowing them to prepare the next stage of the mission.  “Land the landing force; I say again, land the landing force.”

***
 “Update from Lightning, sir,” Fran said.  Defiant was taking a pounding, but there were only four enemy battleships left in the maelstrom.  Five RAN battleships had been forced to fall back to the RV point with severe damage, yet it could all be repaired.  “They’re landing the Marines now.”

“Good,” the Admiral said.  Defiant shuddered again as another missile slipped through the datanet and slammed into the ship’s heavy armour plating.  “Continue firing.”

Fran felt cold terror trickling down the back of her spine.  Any moderately sane opponent would have cut and run, escaped into hyperspace and skulked around the edge of the system until reinforcements arrived.  Instead, the Theocratic ships were trying to close the range between their position and their enemy, as if they intended to turn entire battleships into kamikaze units.  She banished the feeling angrily; the Theocracy might be led by religious fanatics, but they wouldn't sacrifice entire ships...

Or perhaps they would.  The remaining enemy battleships just kept coming, even though they were taking an immense pounding from the RAN units.  Two of them had lost speed and the others had slowed to accommodate it, needing the lamed vessel as additional point defence platforms.  Their drones were distracting missiles from their hulls, trying to preserve their lives as long as possible.  And they could have made it out, even now.  They could have opened up a vortex and escaped into hyperspace...

One of the enemy ships exploded, violently.  The others kept coming, firing constantly towards their targets.  They’d reached a shorter range and switched their missiles to sprint mode, making it harder to intercept them before they reached their targets.  Explosions rocked the RAN ships as a battleship died, followed rapidly by a second ship...and still the enemy kept coming.  One of their ships fell out of line and then exploded, vanishing within an immense cloud of radioactive plasma.  The final ships continued their mad charge until they entered energy range.  In a final savage duel, they crippled two more RAN battleships in exchange for their utter obliteration.  It looked as if they hadn't even launched any lifepods.

Fran wiped her forehead with a rather sweaty hand.  The battle had been won, yet none of them had anticipated the cost.  6th Fleet had been battered again, even though they’d won.  It would take weeks of work to repair their ships and Bristol Deep would no longer be of use as an anchorage.  She wondered what the Admiral had in mind.  They could link up with the repair ships that had escaped Bristol Deep and make repairs in interstellar space, or maybe head back into the Commonwealth and link up with reinforcements.  The war wouldn't be won or lost at Cadiz...

“Keep us here,” the Admiral ordered.  “Have all ships report their statuses to me personally.  I’ll want any cripples to return to the RV point for later...”

He broke off as an alarm chimed.  “Report!”

“Hyperspace vortexes opening,” the tactical officer reported.  Fran knew what he was about to say before he could speak.  There was no hope of any more friendly forces arriving in Cadiz.  “Admiral...I am picking up nine enemy battleships, twelve battlecruisers and two carriers.”

The Admiral’s voice showed no hint of concern.  “Belay my previous orders,” he said, calmly.  Fran wondered at his calm.  Even though they outnumbered the newcomers, they were in no state for a fight.  “Prepare to fight a delaying action.  We must win time for Captain Falcone.”

Chapter Forty-Five

The shuttles screamed overhead, racing towards the detention centre.  As they closed, they launched missiles towards any remaining enemy positions, positions too close to the prisoners to be bombarded from orbit.  Vanessa watched in awe as the prison camp was rapidly dismantled, hundreds of armoured Marines falling from the shuttles to secure the camp and eliminate any remaining enemy soldiers.  Beside her, Bone seemed somehow unconcerned, concentrating on the terminal in his hand.  The shuttles grounded rapidly and Bone sprang to his feet, running out of the undergrowth towards the Marines.

“Start loading up the former prisoners,” he ordered, as he located the Marine CO.  Vanessa had been surprised to discover that he’d jumped with his men, although she’d heard that it was part of the Marine ethos.  No one reached command rank without serving as an infantry grunt first.  “We have to get them out of here now.”

Most of the prisoners looked terrible, Vanessa saw, as armoured Marines tore down the metal wiring and beckoned them to start filing their way onto the nearest shuttle.  Many were emancipated, as if they’d spent years in prison; some had been beaten by their captors and then denied medical attention.  She felt sick as she saw a pair of young girls who’d clearly been raped by the new occupiers before they’d been dumped in the detention centre, again without any medical attention.  The Theocracy would be worse occupiers than the Commonwealth had ever been. But it didn’t seem fair – couldn’t they remain on their own?

She shook her head bitterly.  Cadiz’s fate wouldn’t be decided on tiny insignificant Cadiz.  Her homeworld’s fate would be determined on Avalon and Abdullah, or perhaps a third world if other interstellar powers got involved in the war.  No matter how hard they fought – if they could mount and sustain an insurgency against the Theocracy – they would never win without outside help.  They could never be independent, even with light-years between them and the nearest inhabited world.  It was the Commonwealth or the Theocracy.  There were no other choices.

“The enemy didn’t seem to be entirely fooled by our trick,” Bone observed, grimly.  “Or maybe we just got very unlucky.”

He raised his voice.  “Hurry things along,” he bellowed.  “We have to be off the ground in ten minutes!”

The prisoners started to panic, scrambling for the shuttles.  A handful of Marines had to use jangler pulses to take them down, picking the stunned bodies up and depositing them in the nearest shuttle.  She saw a handful of enemy prisoners transported as well, back to the Commonwealth for interrogation, even though their last prisoner had known nothing useful.  The Theocracy believed in leaving its people ignorant, a wise precaution when they might fall into enemy hands.  Or maybe they’d captured the prison camp’s CO.  They could hold him accountable for everything the prisoners had suffered over the last two weeks.

“There’s another enemy fleet in the system,” Bone explained, grimly.  “There isn’t time to think, I’m afraid.  Do you want to come with us, or stay here?”

Vanessa considered it briefly.  The thought of leaving was tempting, but Cadiz was her home and she had responsibilities to the men who followed her.  And, as far as she knew, she was the only senior figure in the pre-Theocracy resistance to remain alive and free.  She couldn’t abandon the responsibilities she’d assumed.  Not now and not ever.  With or without the Marines, the fight would go on.

“No,” she said, firmly.  He didn’t look surprised at her declaration.  “I’m not going to leave my world.”

***
“The enemy fleet is shaping its course towards Cadiz,” Roach reported.  “They will be in engagement range in twelve minutes.”

Kat nodded, grimly.  Admiral Christian had decided not to engage the enemy if possible, even though he had a numerical advantage.  It would be countered by the fact that the enemy had intact crews and undamaged ships – and full weapons loads.  No, a battle could go alarmingly wrong; it was time to cut their losses and escape with as many prisoners as the Marines could pull off the surface.  Besides, they’d smashed the Theocracy’s occupation force.  They’d have to divert troops from their other conquests just to hold Cadiz.

“Contact the Marines,” she ordered, finally.  “Tell them to expedite.”

“Captain, I have Major Bone on a private channel,” Roach said.  “He wants to talk with you.”

Kat blinked.  They’d kept their former relationship secret from the crew, hadn’t they?  And it wasn’t as if they’d violated regulations since she’d found that her former lover was now under her command.  Why would he want to talk with her, privately?

“Put him through,” she ordered, picking up her headset.  “Greg?”

“Kat, I’m going to be staying on the planet,” Bone said, firmly.  Kat felt, just for a second, as if someone had punched her in the gut.  “There’s no time to argue; we won’t be able to get everyone off before the enemy fleet arrives and that’s when you have to be gone.  I’m staying here, along with several dozen volunteers from the Marines.  We can make the Theocracy regret that they ever landed on Cadiz.”

“Greg…”

“You have to leave us,” Bone continued, as if she hadn’t spoken.  “Don’t worry; we’ll be fine and we’ll make the Commonwealth proud.”

Kat gathered herself, slowly.  She didn’t want to leave him on the surface, but a quick glance at the status board showed that he was right.  The transports leaving the surface couldn’t return in time to pick up the remaining Marines, not without exposing themselves to enemy fire from the incoming fleet.  And besides, the Commonwealth would need allies on the surface when the RAN returned to liberate the system permanently.  Who knew?  Perhaps after they’d tasted the Theocracy’s domination of their minds and souls, the locals would choose to join the Commonwealth.  The massive investment in the system might even begin to show a return.

“Understood,” she said.  The words felt like ashes in her mouth.  They couldn’t re-supply the Marines; even maintaining contact through stealth ships would be hard.  “Good luck, Greg.”

I love you.  The words rose unbidden to her lips, but she suppressed them before she could say it out loud.  Had she ever loved him?  Had she ever thought that they would have more together than just casual sex?  Had she thought that he would make an ideal husband and father to her children?  She’d been immature when she’d first fallen for him and now…he was right; she had to leave him behind.  They had different responsibilities now.

She cleared her throat and returned her gaze to the main display.  The enemy force was angling in towards Lightning and her consorts, shaping their course so that they could swing around and challenge Admiral Christian if he decided to intercept them.  Kat already knew that the Admiral’s force would do nothing more than pose a threat to the enemy flank, unless the situation changed drastically.  And it wouldn’t unless whoever had sent Admiral Christian out had also sent the 5th Fleet to reinforce the 6th.  

They were running out of time.  The final shuttles were already rising from the surface, jam-packed with former prisoners, both from the Commonwealth and Cadiz itself.  Greg had insisted – and besides, those prisoners might form part of an Army of Liberation.  They could be trained to Commonwealth standards and then slipped back down to the planet, or sent in as part of the first wave of liberators when the planet was finally liberated for good.  And all she had to do now was worry about getting the shuttles docked before the enemy arrived and opened fire.  

***
A thunderous roar shook the ground as the final shuttles lifted up from the former detention centre and grabbed for sky.   Greg watched with some alarm as the overburdened shuttles tipped backwards and forwards, before finally gaining height and clawing for orbit.  A single Theocracy soldier with a shoulder-launched HVM or an insurgent who hadn’t realised that the shuttles were friendly would find it easy to pick off one or more of the shuttles, he knew, and prayed that any remaining enemy forces were too badly stunned to react.  The monitors were still watching for any signs of enemy targets on the ground – and any they saw would stop existing soon afterwards.  

“Come on,” he bellowed.  Apart from the Marines who had volunteered to stay, over a thousand locals – almost all men – had also refused transport away from Cadiz.  They’d decided to join the insurgency instead, which created both an opportunity and a headache for the beleaguered fighters.  The Marines had brought what supplies they could to Cadiz, but they hadn’t been able to transport enough to make a real difference, not by the time the Theocracy returned in force.  “Get into the undergrowth – now!”

Vanessa had anticipated that, at least, and they’d stationed coordinators nearby with orders to direct the former prisoners into hidden camps, deep in the jungle.  There, they would sort out the fighters from the prisoners and feed them into the resistance, while pushing the wounded and non-fighters up to the mountains.  Given time, the Theocracy would probably start tracking them down, but if they were lucky the Theocracy would have its hands full elsewhere.  Admiral Christian had just served notice on them that the war would be long and hard, and God wouldn’t allow them to simply claim victory.  They would have to fight their way through the Commonwealth to win…and by then, they’d find themselves dreadfully overstretched.  And who knew what would happen to them then?

“Time to go,” Vanessa said.  She caught his arm and pulled him with her, back up towards the edges of the jungle.  Greg looked down at her, felt the flush of admiration and desire he’d felt before, and smiled to himself.  “Come on!”

Greg took one last look at the burning remains of the detention centre, and the plumes of smoke rising up from the direction of New Barcelona and a dozen enemy bases, and smiled as he ran.  The Theocracy could be beaten.  And that knowledge would inspire a generation born to luxury to fight, if only because they had their backs against the wall.

And who knew?  Perhaps failure and defeat would put the first cracks in the edifice the Theocracy called the true faith.  It had happened before, in far too many wars.  He grinned at his own optimism.  Maybe the horse would learn to sing after all.

***
The shuttles were rising now, too slowly.  Kat had already ordered most of the transports to divert themselves to the Marine Assault Carriers and the freighters, but some wouldn’t be in orbit by the time the enemy ships entered missile range.  She stared down at the display, hoping for a flash of tactical genius that would allow her to think of an easy solution to the problem.  Nothing came to mind, unless…

“Contact the other ships,” Kat ordered.  “They are to pick up the shuttles in orbit and then return to hyperspace.  We’ll pick up the final four shuttles ourselves.”

The XO looked over at her, surprised.  “Captain…”

Kat grinned at him.  Risking everything on a single throw of the dice wouldn’t have pleased her father, but her father wasn't in command of a starship at war.  “Helm, take us down,” she ordered, as the freighters started vanishing into hyperspace.  “Take us into the atmosphere if necessary, but get us close enough to pick up those shuttles!”

“Aye, Captain,” the helmsman said.  He sounded as if he was surprised at her command, but was still willing to obey, trusting that she knew what she was doing.  “Going down now.”

Lightning shivered as she moved lower, down towards the planet’s atmosphere.  Kat silently prayed that she was right; that she hadn’t just ordered her entire crew to commit suicide.  No one in their right mind would risk coming out of hyperspace so close to a planet – a single error of navigation could slam them right into the planet – but it was possible to open up a vortex and escape, at least in theory.  There had been a shortage of volunteers to test the theories, Kat knew.  Piker’s Peak had discussed the theory, and then warned that risking opening a vortex so close to a massive gravity well risked overloading the generator and burning out the jump nodes.  And without those, the ship couldn’t open a vortex.  

“Have the shuttles make contact with the hull,” she ordered.  Life support was low on the shuttles – they’d never been designed to carry so many warm bodies, even with the RAN’s customary over-engineering – but they’d last long enough for Lightning to get into hyperspace without having to worry about them docking at the remaining shuttlebay.  “We’ll evacuate them once we’re in hyperspace.”

The hull shuddered again as Lightning made contact with the upper atmosphere.  A dull thrumming, different from the normal background hum of the drives, started to echo through the ship, accompanied by a rumbling that seemed to shake the deck and send trembles up her spine.  Lightning had never been designed for flight within a planetary atmosphere and while she might make it down to the surface in one piece, she would never be able to get back into orbit.  Every so often, designers proposed starships that would be able to land and take off again, but their designs had never been practical.  It was far easier to use shuttles to land troops while keeping the ship in orbit.

“Enemy ships are locking weapons on us,” Roach warned.  Kat winced; the enemy had ordered their light cruisers to run forwards, targeting Lightning before she could escape.  Even if Admiral Christian wanted to act, the time was past.  Lightning would have to survive or die on her own.  “They’re preparing to fire.”

Kat glanced at the display.  A thump ran through the ship as one of the shuttles docked with the hull, but there were still three more shuttles fighting for attitude.  The enemy ships were entering firing range…seconds later, enemy missiles appeared on the display, roaring towards her position.  She cursed under her breath as the missiles closed in rapidly, slipping into point defence engagement range within seconds.  A single mistake on their part and a missile would slam into Cadiz at a reasonable percentage of the speed of light.  The results would be devastating.  Cadiz would end up looking like Old Earth after the Breakaway Wars.

“Point defence is engaging the enemy missiles,” Roach reported.  “Nine down; ten…”

A missile detonated, alarmingly close to Lightning.  In space, it would have been harmless; in the atmosphere, shockwaves slammed into the starship’s hull, sending it careening through the sky.  Somehow, the helmsman regained control, only to nearly lose it again as a second missile detonated.  This time, a bomb-pumped laser stabbed deep into Lightning’s heart.  

Kat hung onto her command chair for dear life as the entire ship screamed around her.  The consoles blinked out for a second, only to come back moments later as emergency power came online.  A dozen different alarms sounded – hull breach, reactor failure, computer nodes lost… - suggesting that her ship had been badly injured.  The damage control panel was a mass of solid red icons, each one reporting major damage to her command.  A handful blinked out moments later as the systems rebooted, but the damage was still shockingly high.  One of their reactors was completely gone, along with three jump nodes.  Losing any more would make it impossible to escape.  

And if she surrendered to the Theocracy, she knew exactly how they would treat her crew.

“Report,” she gasped.  The alarms, mercifully, quietened, just enough to let her hear herself think.  “Damage report…”

The intercom was a blast of static.  It cleared, just barely.  “Major damage to drive sections,” the Chief Engineer reported.  He sounded as if he had been badly injured.  “We’ve only got one reactor running at full capacity, Captain.  Another hit like that will kill us.”

“Understood,” Kat said.  Another rumbling burst of thunder ran through the ship.  She glanced at the console and winced.  None of the damage was fatal individually, but collectively it was devastating.  Her ship was on the verge of coming apart.  “Can we open a vortex?”

“Maybe,” the Chief Engineer said.  “If we have any other choice…?”

A new wave of enemy missiles were already lancing towards Lightning.  “We don’t,” Kat said.  One more shuttle had docked, but the third had been caught in one of the missile blasts and blown to atoms.  Nearly four hundred men and women had died with it.  “Helm, open a vortex – now!”

She heard the ship’s drives screaming in protest, winced as creaks ran through her once-proud ship, just before the vortex roared to life in front of them.  The final shuttle altered course, racing for the vortex; Kat allowed herself a smile just before a final shockwave slammed into her ship.  Ahead of them, the vortex began to waver, spinning out of existence.  There were bare seconds left…

“Take us in,” she snapped.  It was crazy, but it was their only hope of escape.  The jump nodes started to fail, one after the other, yet they lasted just long enough for Lightning to make it through the vortex and into hyperspace.  Moments later, the Admiral’s ships opened their own vortexes and joined Lightning in hyperspace.  “Take us towards the RV point, best possible speed.”

She sagged back into her command chair.  Three shuttles out of four had survived, even though her ship would require months of repair work before she was fit for anything other than scrap metal.  Not that there was any danger of Lightning being sent to the breakers; even a badly damaged hull was worth far more to the RAN than just scrap metal.  They’d need every hull they could scrape up to fight the war.

“And add a general message to the entire crew,” she added.  They’d escaped Cadiz and poked a finger in the enemy’s eye.  The Theocracy could be beaten.  “Well done.”

Chapter Forty-Six

It was very cold in the holding cell.

Captain Zaid sat on a bench, his arms shackled behind him and his legs chained to the floor.  His clothes had been removed when he’d been taken from the bridge of his ship and transported to the clerical vessel, leaving him naked and alone.  No one had come to visit him, not even one of the Clerics who were supposed to tend to their flock’s souls.  A failure had no friends or family, for fear it might be contagious.  His family would rush to disown him, if they hadn’t already been rounded up merely for being related to a failure.  He thought, briefly, of his wives and shuddered.  What had they done to deserve the punishment that would be heaped upon them?

He’d failed, he knew.  It had been his report that had sent the vast majority of the active battle fleet to Bristol Deep, where they’d discovered that the 6th Fleet was gone and all they could destroy were a handful of ECM drones and sensor buoys.  They hadn’t even been able to capture the mining facilities or asteroid miners; the former had been rigged to blow when the Janissaries landed and the latter had vanished into the darkness of interstellar space.  Like in Cadiz, they would hide, harass the invaders where possible and bide their time.  

And he’d been marked out as the scapegoat.  His punishment would save the Admiral and his political patrons from disgrace.  Well, it wouldn’t work, he told himself firmly.  If he had nothing more to lose – and if the lives of his family were already forfeit – he could tell them exactly how the Admiral had been tricked.  No amount of propaganda would convince the Commonwealth that they’d lost, not after they’d slipped in, blown hell out of the occupation force and then vanished again.  The Commonwealth bitch who’d defied him before had even managed to escape just before her infidel life could be destroyed by the relief force.  He cursed her under his breath as he rattled his shackles, staring at the hatch in front of him.  Even without the shackles, it would be impossible to escape.  He looked down at the cold metal deck and felt despair welling through him.  He’d done his best, he’d served the Theocracy as best as he knew how…and now he was being tossed away, as if his years of faithful service had all counted for nothing, in the wake of a single overwhelming failure…

And it hadn’t even been his failure!

He looked up sharply as the hatch hissed open, revealing four figures.  Two wore the black and white garments of Senior Clerics, but it was the two men behind them who caught and held his attention.  They wore the all-concealing red robes of the Inquisition, the men who ferreted out disbelief and apostasy throughout the Theocracy and beyond.  Even the Caliph feared them, it was whispered, even though they swore to serve him with all their might and wisdom.  The Inquisition had a terrifying reputation for finding sinners where all would have sworn that none resided.

“Be at peace, my son,” the lead Cleric said.  He stepped aside to allow the Inquisitors to walk forward, their gloved hands holding savage-looking devices.  “It is time for you to pay for your failures.  For is it not truly said – failure represents a punishment from God?  You must be cleansed of your failure before you are fit to serve the Theocracy again.”

Captain Zaid found his voice, somehow.  “But Your Holiness, I beg of you…”

“Be at peace,” the Cleric whispered.  He placed one hand on Captain Zaid’s forehead.  “Your sins will soon be purged.”

***
The StarCom transmission was as static-filled as ever, but it was clear enough for Admiral Junayd to tell that his young master was not happy.  Losing an entire squadron of battleships was bad enough, yet that hadn’t even been the worst of it.  They’d also lost hundreds of thousands of troopers on Cadiz, while the enemy had clearly been able to slip additional troops down to the surface – and show the local population that the Theocracy could be beaten.  

“It is a setback,” Admiral Junayd agreed, when the Caliph had finished expressing his displeasure.  He was mildly surprised that he hadn’t been ordered to place himself under arrest and report for execution, but the Caliph had enough sense not to throw away a useful tool until it had become truly useless.  Besides, they already had a human sacrifice to blame for the debacle.  “However, it is not a complete disaster.”

He ticked off points on his fingers.  “First, 6th Fleet no longer has a secure base within the sector,” he said.  “We wreaked their facilities at Bristol Deep before we departed the system and Cadiz, of course, is back in our hands.  They will have to fall back for repairs, which will take them several months, at least.  The meantime is ours.  Once we move the reinforcements up to Cadiz, we can open a new offensive and hit them right where it hurts – the heart of the Commonwealth itself.  They will be forced to listen to their people and go onto the defensive.”

The thought made him smile.  A political system where the governors had to listen to the governed was alien to him.  The mere thought of consulting any of the rabble in the slums below the palace was absurd.  And yet, it represented a strength as well as a weakness.  The Theocracy’s attack had angered a population that was used to making itself heard and it would demand blood.  Coming to any agreements might be harder than projected.  

“The war is far from lost,” he concluded.  “We still have formidable advantages and we have the help of a fifth column in their ranks.  By the time they harness their formidable industrial power to help them win the war, it will be far too late.”

He wondered, idly, what the Caliph made of it all.  He was a young man, more used to sudden decisiveness than long careful plotting, and yet he’d grown up in the harem, a formidable political school for a young nobleman.  Or maybe he knew that there was little other choice.  A defeat or two, a lost war...and others would start considering unseating the Caliph and placing their own behinds on the Peacock Throne.  The Caliph had no choice, but to fight the war to the bitter end.  He wondered if the Caliph understood that, before dismissing the thought.  The Caliph was a careful student of his own Court.  It was one of the skills that had allowed him to assume the throne with only a small amount of bloodshed.

“Watch your back, Admiral,” the Caliph said, finally.  “And don’t allow the infidels a second victory.”

“Of course, Your Excellency,” Admiral Junayd said.  It hardly mattered that the Theocracy had recovered Cadiz before it had been completely purged of Theocratic troops, or that the enemy fleet was in some disarray.  The infidels could portray it as a victory – and the Caliph’s internal enemies would portray it as a defeat.  “We will not allow them a second opportunity to reverse the course of the war.”

***
“She’s magnificent,” Jeremy breathed.

The light cruiser HMS Cadiz floated in the midst of a network of shipyard framework and industrial modules.  Worker teams were buzzing over her hull, making the final alterations required before Cadiz could depart from Avalon and head out into open space.  She’d been altered twice as the Naval Design Board analysed the reports from the first battles of the war, but now she was finalised; a light cruiser suitable for both independent and squadron missions.  Her hull, a brilliant pearly white, seemed to perfectly complement her sleek arrow-shaped lines, broken only by weapons and sensor blisters.

And she was all his.  The Promotion Board had been overworked following the disaster at Cadiz, with too many commanding officers pushed into early retirement as a long-overdue purge took place.  It was a shame that so many fine ships had been destroyed in the process, but the media had picked up on the true reason for the disaster and the response had been savage.  Admiral Williams had had political allies who suddenly found themselves in a very cold dark place – and they’d responded by leading the demand for an open enquiry and a mass purge of incompetent political commanders.  It probably wouldn't be enough to save many of their seats in the Assembly, but at least it meant a few competent officers who’d been held back would now be promoted.

He looked down, towards the blue-green sphere of Avalon.  Lightning had vanished into the shipyards as soon as she’d returned home, suffering the final indignity of having to be towed out of hyperspace by a destroyer from 6th Fleet.  Most of her crew had rapidly been reassigned to other ships in the desperate attempt to mobilise the RAN for war, with her commanding officer still in a bureaucratic limbo.  They wouldn't keep her there forever, Jeremy was sure; the media had been making a terrible fuss over how the brave commander of Lightning had been the only one prepared for the coming war – and how her ship had been badly damaged in the heroic rescue of POWs from Cadiz.  And she deserved it.  He’d had his doubts about her, and her inexperience had been almost painfully obvious, but Kat Falcone had proved herself more than worthy to wear her uniform.  

Smiling, he started to walk towards the gangplank connecting Cadiz to the shipyard, which would allow him access to his ship.  His official orders hadn't been cut yet, but he’d been tipped off by a friend in Naval HQ that he might be heading out back to the war front.  No one believed that the Theocracy would remain quiet for long, not when they had a chance to take the offensive deeper into the Commonwealth.  By then, Jeremy and his ship would be there to meet them.  Or so he hoped.  

The Marine standing at the hatch connecting the ship to the shipyard snapped to attention as Jeremy approached, although his implant reported that it was being checked out carefully before the hatch opened to allow him access to his ship.  It was a wise precaution.  The Theocracy had scattered action groups throughout the Commonwealth and some of them had proven very deadly.  And there were spies and traitors everywhere.  No one knew who they could trust.

He smiled again as the hatch opened and a blast of warm air – the indefinable, but instantly recognisable atmosphere of a newly-launched ship – struck him in the face.  The officer waiting to greet him snapped to attention and saluted; Jeremy, as was proper, saluted the flag first before returning the salute.

“Captain,” the officer said.  “Welcome onboard.”

“Thank you,” Jeremy replied.  “It’s good to be here.”

***
“Well,” Kat said.  “Here we are again.”

Her father didn't smile.  He seemed to have aged in the past six months, ever since their last meeting at the Majestic Hotel.  The armed and augmented bodyguards behind him were a constant reminder that they were at war; even Kat, who had grown up surrounded by bodyguards until she had learned to give them the slip, was slightly aghast at their presence.  They were sitting in the Empire Suite rather than a private room, an odd decision for her father.  Unless, of course, he had something he would prefer to do in public.

“I’m proud of you,” he said, once the menus had been studied and orders placed.  Kat had resisted the temptation to order fish and chips again and had settled for roast beef, potatoes and gravy.  It was possible to imagine that the city was at peace and the war nothing more than a distant memory.  “You did far better than I had dreamed.”

Kat scowled at him.  “I could have done more,” she said.  “I could have assassinated Admiral Williams...”

Her father snorted.  “I don’t think that assassinating your superior officer would have looked good on your service record,” he said, dryly.  “It’s the kind of thing the military mindset tends to frown upon.”

“True,” Kat agreed.

She shook her head.  The trip home to Avalon had been nightmarish, even with the assistance of other badly damaged ships from 6th Fleet.  Admiral Christian was still out there, using the remains of 6th Fleet to raid and harass the Theocracy, hoping to win time for the Commonwealth to mobilise and launch a massive counteroffensive.  And Greg was still down on Cadiz, along with hundreds of other Marines, fighting a hopeless underground war against overwhelming odds.  Kat felt a bitter twist in her heart at the thought, silently vowing to return to Cadiz as soon as possible.  If, of course, they gave her a ship.  Naval HQ had been stalling on assigning her to a new ship, all the while using her as a recruiting tool.  Reading some of the media stories, she got the impression that she’d stood off the entire Theocratic Navy with nothing more than a baseball bat and a bad sense of humour.  One cartoonist had even drawn a picture of her – with muscles on her muscles and breasts the size of her head – wearing an eye patch, a reference to a popular space opera series that had been distributed for public entertainment.  She’d wanted to challenge the cartoonist to a duel, but the local PR staff had insisted that it was all good publicity – and something that would help stiffen civilian spines.  Besides, they had to maintain good relations with the media.  Even with Admiral Williams a known enemy pawn – if he hadn't been killed during the bombardment of Cadiz – there were enough problems within the naval hierarchy to ensure that the RAN would be embarrassed, if the media turned a gimlet eye upon murky waters.

Her father seemed to understand her thoughts.  “I’m sure you’ll get a new command soon enough,” he said.  Kat scowled at him.  She hadn't forgotten his role in her last assignment, although she had to admit that she had forgiven him.  “Until then...why not enjoy being the media darling?”

“If I had wanted to be the darling of the media,” Kat reminded him, pointedly, “I would have stayed in High Society.  I could have had four boyfriends like Candy, or maybe deliberately exposed myself to the peeking voyeurs of the media...”

“True,” her father said, “but you earned these plaudits.  You weren’t born into command of a starship – and mere birth alone isn't enough to ensure that you will be good at command.  You did the right thing at the right time – and you were very lucky.  Never underestimate the value of good luck.”

Kat sighed.  The private update she’d received from the family had told her that, among other things, her father had been appointed the Grand Coordinator of Military Production.  It was a political decision, of course – the big corporations would hardly allow someone not of their choosing to take such a powerful post – but it was one that would eventually force him to give up his position as CEO.  The King had – apparently – assured him of his full support, yet everyone knew that it had limits.  And if the Assembly suspected that he was using his position to further his own aims...

“Thank you,” she said, tightly.  “And when can I expect to resume taking advantage of my good fortune?”

“When the time comes,” her father said.  “But you may have changed things in a different way, Katherine.  And you know how many people just hate the idea of change.”

Kat had no patience for word games, or her father’s mental manipulation.  “What have I changed?”

Her father looked at her for a long moment, and then inclined one hand towards the window.  Kat followed his gaze and blinked in surprise.  There was a single small table set up there, against the transparent barrier, with two people seated together, sharing a glass of wine while they waited for their dinner.  It took her a moment to recognise one of them, but the other was instantly identifiable.  She’d brought Princess Jasmine to the Commonwealth, after all.  And the person she was dining with was the King.

“The security here isn't all for us,” her father said, when Kat turned back to face him.  The Princess looked well, for someone who had been forced to flee her own society and dumped into a universe that operated by very different rules.  And the King...looked charmed.  “Aren’t they quite the pretty couple?”

Kat stared at him.  Her mother had hoped and prayed and schemed for one of her daughters to attract the royal eye – and so had every other mother in High Society, all hoping to find themselves in the position of Queen Mother.  It would have done wonders for anyone’s social position, but the King had never showed any sign of being attracted to anyone, male or female.  The most eligible bachelor in the Commonwealth had seemed doomed to permanent solitude.  And now he was courting the Princess Jasmine.

She remembered her mother’s lessons, back when she’d hoped that Kat would be just another blushing society beauty.  If the King had married anyone from High Society, as they’d expected, it would offend far too many grand dames.  But if he married Jasmine...it would ensure that none of the grand dames won the game, wouldn't it?  And yet...she remembered the odd feeling of dislike that had affected her when she’d met Jasmine, back on Lightning, back before the war.  How would the general population react to the King marrying a Princess from the Theocracy?

And what would happen if they lost the war?

She looked down at her plate of food and shrugged.  Whatever passed between the King and Jasmine wasn’t her concern.  She would eat, she would be the darling of the media...at least until they gave her another command and a mission.  They couldn't keep her out of space forever, not if they intended to keep using her to overawe the media.  She would be given a command soon.

And then she would go back to the war.  

The End

Kat Falcone Will Return

Soon.