The Oncoming Storm (4 page)

She shook her head as they flew away from the planet, the twinkling lights blurring into the ever-present stars, then turned her attention to the files her father had given her. Much of the data was, as she’d expected, drawn from naval databases, but some came from independent civilian analysts. Naval officers tended to scorn; Kat, who had seen some of the analysts who worked for her father, knew better. Civilians often had a different—and sometimes illuminating—way of looking at the universe. It was, at the very least, an alternate point of view.

The first file tabulated shipping losses along the border. Kat worked her way through it and slowly realized that her father had, if anything, underestimated the situation. The losses were tiny in absolute terms, but they were steadily gnawing away at the Commonwealth’s merchant marine. It would be years before the big corporations were undermined fatally by their losses, yet the smaller companies and the independents were in big trouble. She was astonished that the problem hadn’t made the mainstream media, no matter what the bigger corporations said. But then, it would be a brave editor who went against the will of his ultimate superior.

If the losses are made public, insurance rates will soar, Kat thought. She could see why her father and the other CEOs wanted the matter to remain quiet. But sooner or later, someone is going to notice anyway. Or are we compensating the colonies for destroyed ships out of our own pockets?

The next file detailed other problems along the border. It wasn’t easy to mine large tracts of hyperspace—energy storms and gravity waves ensured the mines wouldn’t stay in place for very long—but the Theocracy had been doing it, showing an astonishing persistence and a great deal of paranoia. Kat couldn’t help agreeing with the analyst’s conclusion: no one, not even the most bloody-minded state in human history, would expend so many resources on mining hyperspace unless they had something to hide.

Or perhaps they don’t want us to spread ideas about freedom into their space, Kat thought, remembering a handful of refugees she’d met during border patrol. They’d stolen a starship and made it out of the Theocracy, placing their lives in the Commonwealth’s hands rather than stay one moment longer under oppressive rule. Their stories had been horrifying. The Theocracy gave lip service to the idea of religious freedom, but those who didn’t accept the True Faith suffered all kinds of legal penalties. It was, apparently, incentive to convert.

The third file consisted of a detailed political briefing, written by yet another independent analyst. Kat felt her eyes glazing over as she tried to follow the jargon—it seemed that jargon changed every year, depending on who was sitting in the houses of Parliament—and eventually skipped to the executive summary. Kat had to read through it twice to understand what her father had been trying to tell her. The Commonwealth was enduring a political deadlock; the War Hawks demanding preparations for war, perhaps even a first strike, while the Doves were skeptical of any real threat from the Theocracy. After all, the Commonwealth was much larger than any other state the Theocracy had overwhelmed.

“Captain,” the pilot said, “we’re entering final approach now.”

Kat nodded, returned the datachip to her uniform pocket, and then scrambled forward into the empty co-pilot’s chair. Outside, a cluster of lights was slowly coming into view, a mobile spacedock surrounding a starship. She leaned forward, her breath catching in her throat, as HMS Lightning took shape and form. Her command, she told herself, forgetting her anger at her father for pulling strings on her behalf. Lightning was her command.

The vessel was longer than Kat had expected, she noted, although she’d reviewed the files on the Uncanny-class heavy cruisers when she’d received the first notification. Lightning resembled a flattened cone, her white hull bristling with shield generators, missile tubes, weapons mounts, and sensor blisters. Her name was prominently blazed on her hull, drawing Kat’s attention to the drives at the rear of the ship. If the files were to be believed, Lightning enjoyed a higher realspace velocity than anything larger than a destroyer or frigate.

But she still won’t have a hope of outrunning a gunboat swarm, she thought. A gunboat was tiny, able to outrace almost anything. And they were hard to hit. Or a missile.

The thought was chilling. No one had fought a real conflict since the Breakaway Wars—and that hadn’t really included formal fleet actions. Who knew how well doctrine would hold up when the Navy was tested in a real fight? Like it or not, she knew, there would be a steep learning curve as soon as the war began. If the war began . . .

She shook her head. She knew that was wishful thinking.

“Take us in,” Kat ordered, unable to hide the excitement in her voice. “Put us down as quickly as possible.”

William watched, keeping his face impassive, as the shuttle passed through the force field holding the atmosphere inside the shuttlebay and settled down on the deck with an audible clunk. He’d known captains who would be annoyed with the pilot for such a rough landing, which he suspected proved the captains had never been in actual combat. Landing in a combat zone was always far rougher than landing onboard a peaceful starship. But he pushed the thought aside as the hatch opened with a hiss, revealing his new commanding officer.

She was young, he realized, the part of him that had been raised on a world without rejuvenation technology mentally classing Captain Falcone as a teenager. Even knowing she was twenty-nine, almost thirty, it was hard to escape the emotional reaction to her apparent age. He knew there were midshipwomen on Lightning who looked about the same age, and indeed were the same age, but they certainly didn’t have pretensions to command.

He kept his face under strict control as Captain Falcone stepped onto the deck, then saluted the flag painted on the bulkhead. By tradition, he couldn’t formally greet her until after she had made her salute.

He drew in a breath as she turned to face him. She was pretty, he had to admit, too pretty to be quite natural. Cosmetic surgery and genetic programming had been nonexistent on Hebrides until after the Commonwealth had rediscovered his homeworld, but Tyre had never lost the technology. His captain looked like a perfectly proportioned young woman, attractive enough to set hormones raging throughout the ship. Even her uniform was perfectly tailored to draw attention to her beauty. He had to call on all of his years of discipline to remember that she was his captain, as well as a fellow officer.

And if that doesn’t prove that the Commonwealth is decadent, he thought sourly, what will?

She lifted her elegant eyebrows. “Permission to come aboard?”

“Permission granted,” he said, and then saluted. “I’m Commander McElney, your XO.”

“Thank you,” she said, returning his salute and then extending her hand for him to shake. “I’m Captain Falcone.”

William nodded as he shook her hand. Her voice seemed to lack an aristocratic accent, although four years at Piker’s Peak and then several more years as a serving officer would have probably helped it to fade away. And her salute was perfect, something that really shouldn’t have been a surprise. Young cadets were drilled in saluting until they could do it in their sleep. She still looked absurdly young, but she was a graduate of Piker’s Peak. It was only experience she lacked.

“I took the liberty of preparing a tour of the vessel,” William said. “We’re still working up for departure, but most of the officers and crew are in place.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Most of the officers and crew?”

William was mildly impressed. He’d known captains who wouldn’t have picked up on his words. But then, she’d served as an XO too. And being an XO was good experience for understanding the difference between what someone said and what they actually meant.

“Yes, Captain,” he said. “We’re short around forty crewmen. The Admiralty needed to assign additional crew to Thundercloud and tapped the men who were supposed to be assigned to us. We’ve been promised replacements within a week.”

“Failing that, we might have to draft some of the Yard Dogs,” Captain Falcone said. She didn’t sound as though she was joking. “Overall, Commander, what is our status?”

William smiled. He’d taken the liberty of preparing a set of detailed briefing notes too.

“We ran full-power tests last week, then replaced several components and ran the tests again,” he said. “Drives, life support, shields, and weapons are all at optimal readiness, apart from long-range shipkiller missiles. The Admiralty has promised us a resupply within the week. Overall, we’re at roughly ninety percent readiness right now. I expect we will meet our scheduled departure date.”

“Unless they choose to move it forward,” Captain Falcone said.

“Yes, Captain,” William said. He’d been expecting a message telling him precisely that for several weeks, ever since Lightning had been formally commissioned into the Navy. Ninety percent readiness was hardly bad. They could fly, fight, and generally give a good account of themselves if they ran into hostiles. “It’s a very real possibility.”

The captain smiled. It was sweet, but he thought he detected an air of cool calculation behind it. “I think you’d better give me the tour now, before I formally assume command on the bridge,” she said. “I want to see everything for myself.”

“Certainly,” William said, with the private thought that it spoke well of her. “If you’ll follow me . . . ?”

He half expected her to grow bored within minutes of the tour beginning, but Captain Falcone managed to surprise him by keeping herself awake and attentive as they moved from department to department. Sickbay, Main Engineering, and Tactical were all at full readiness, thankfully. The captain listened to the various departmental heads as they outlined their current status, then watched a tactical simulation as the crews worked on their consoles, trying to practice for every conceivable encounter with the enemy. But far too much of it, William knew, was guesswork. There was little hard data on the warships developed and deployed by the Theocracy.

“We’ve seen destroyers and frigates, but nothing heavier,” he explained when the captain finally asked. “Some of the ships have even been UN designs, probably refugees from the Breakaway Wars. All extensively modified and refitted, of course, but nothing to show us the cutting edge of their technology. But then, they wouldn’t need to be more advanced than the UN to overwhelm the worlds closest to Ahura Mazda.”

The thought was a bitter one. If the Commonwealth had been a hair less expansionist, Hebrides might have been discovered by the Theocracy and brought under its rule. There would have been resistance, of course, but with an enemy controlling the high orbitals the outcome would never have been in doubt. If all the horror stories were true, the Theocracy was quite prepared to engage in mass slaughter as well as shipping in hundreds of thousands of settlers to ensure the demographic balance turned in their favor. The Commonwealth might be biased in favor of Tyre, but its member worlds still had local independence. There was no way the Theocracy would offer the same deal to its captive worlds.

“So we need to try to project what they might have developed on their own,” Captain Falcone mused, bringing him back to the here and now. “Or stolen from us.”

“They had an industrial plant with them when they were booted off Earth,” William reminded her. The UN had been fond of exiling small groups from Earth, officially for their own good, although it also made it easier to work towards total planetary unity. “They should have been as advanced as the UN before the Breakaway Wars.”

“We’ve advanced,” the captain said. “Have they?”

William said nothing. Instead, he led her into Main Engineering, where they were greeted by Chief Engineer Zack Lynn. Like William himself, he wasn’t a native of Tyre, although he had followed the engineering track rather than command track. It was, William suspected, rather more fulfilling than command track, at least for the moment. A good engineer couldn’t be passed over for someone with poorer qualifications but the right birthplace.

“Captain,” Zack said, gruffly. If he had any doubts about the captain’s appearance, he kept them to himself. “It’s a pleasure to meet you at last.”

“Thank you,” Captain Falcone said. “And are we ready for departure?”

“We can leave whenever you give the order,” Lynn said. He nodded towards the large status display in front of Fusion One. “Our stockpile of spare parts has been badly reduced, thanks to the components that failed during full-power tests, but we should have them replaced within the week. Overall, however, we have had far fewer problems than Uncanny.”

William saw the captain wince and nodded in agreement. HMS Uncanny had been intended to serve as the first starship in her class, but her construction and commissioning had been plagued by design faults and problems that had delayed her completion for nearly a year. By the time she had finally entered service, she had gained a reputation as an unlucky starship—wags even called her HMS Unlucky—and hardly anyone wanted to serve onboard her. Hell, her first CO had even died in an accident when an airlock seal broke at the worst possible time.

“I’m glad to hear it,” she said. “Please keep me informed of your status.”

“Full reports are in the message buffer in your office,” William said. “I have reviewed them and believe they are suitable.”

The captain looked briefly embarrassed. She’d been an XO until her promotion, William knew, and it would take time to break her of the habits of being an XO, including reviewing status reports in order to save the captain from having to do it herself. But at least she was well aware of her responsibilities to the crew.

“Thank you,” the captain said finally. “And now I believe I should see the bridge.”