Barbarians at the Gates (61 page)

“It seems he refused to surrender, admiral,” Williams said. The Political Commissioner sounded as if he were terrified, but was trying to hide it. “I thought you promised that he would surrender.”

Marius bit down the response that came to mind. It wouldn’t have helped the situation to swear at the commissioner.

“I know,” he said finally. “He can’t win. Even if he closes to energy range without getting his ships shot from under him, he still can’t win. So why is he throwing his life away?”

He keyed his console as the enemy superdreadnaughts came into range. “Open fire,” he ordered.

“Aye, aye, sir,” the tactical officer said.

Magnificent
shuddered as she flushed her external racks, followed by the slightly heavier sound of the first barrage from her internal tubes. Combined with the other ships in the Grand Fleet, hundreds of thousands of missiles were roaring toward their targets.

Admiral Justinian’s barrage—launched at the same moment—was pitiful in comparison. He’d selected a couple of Marius’s superdreadnaughts for special attention...which was odd. He was leaving the remainder of Marius’s superdreadnaughts unattended.

“Admiral, twelve new ships just lit off their drives,” the tactical officer reported.

Marius felt his blood run cold. Had he just led his men into a trap?

“They read out as medium freighters, pulling military-grade acceleration,” the tactical officer continued. “They’re heading right towards the edge of our formation.”

Marius blinked, puzzled. Freighters were not warships, no matter how many weapons and defense systems were crammed into their hulls. They couldn’t maneuver worth a damn and a single hit could be devastating. It seemed a pointless exercise, except Admiral Justinian wasn’t stupid. Using the freighters suggested that Justinian had more in mind than just distracting Marius from the battle.

“Order the
Longsword
to switch her fire to the lead freighter,” Marius said. From the sensor readings, it was evident that someone had also crammed a military-grade shield generator and fusion core into the freighters. No one would waste those resources if they didn’t think they could get something out of it. “I want...”

The display flashed white, just for a second.

“Sir, the lead freighter blew up,” Raistlin reported. He sounded astonished.

Marius didn’t blame him for a second.

“Sir...she was crammed with antimatter. If she’d hit a superdreadnaught, or if the starfighters had engaged her...”

“They would have been blown to dust,” Marius concluded.
Kamikazes
! In hindsight, an obvious trick. “Order the destroyer screen to engage the freighters at long range; take them out before they take us out.”

There was another benefit from the antimatter-crammed freighters, he realized quickly, feeling numb. As soon as they exploded, they disrupted the datanet that bound his ships together. In the seconds it took to repair the datanet, enemy missiles were able to slip through the point defense. They slammed against his ships.

Two superdreadnaughts vanished in balls of fire, followed by a battlecruiser that had been targeted for some unknown reason. Admiral Justinian’s force was being torn apart, and yet he was still continuing the offensive. He was mad.

He had to be mad.

“Switch to rapid fire,” Marius ordered, as the enemy ships came closer. They were still fighting savagely, even though Justinian was down to four superdreadnaughts and only a handful of smaller craft. All of his ships had taken heavy damage. “Take them out!”

* * *

“The freighters have all been destroyed, admiral,” the tactical officer reported.

“A shame it wasn’t Parkinson in command,” Admiral Justinian commented.

Caitlin barely heard him. Her training had been thorough, but she’d never seen such a savage battle in her entire career, even during a direct Asimov Point assault. There was no rhyme or reason any longer, just sheer pointless slaughter. Caitlin looked over at the admiral’s daughter and realized that Henrietta was terrified. The poor girl had never been in a real battle.

“Parkinson would have let us get the freighters into ramming position before he opened fire,” Justinian concluded amiably, as if there was nothing wrong at all in his corner of the universe.

“Yes, sir,” Caitlin agreed automatically. She recalled herself to duty. “Sir, this is madness!”

“I know,” Admiral Justinian said. “What other choice do we have?”

The entire superdreadnaught shuddered as a missile slammed against her hull. The damage control teams had effectively given up on repairing the outer compartments, knowing that they would all be blown to atoms before too long. She was still firing, but Caitlin doubted that they would be able to maintain a solid rate of fire for much longer. “What other choice do we have?”

“Surrender to a bunch of murderers?” He waved a hand at the display.

Caitlin opened her mouth, and then closed it again without speaking. The admiral was right. They couldn’t surrender, not when it meant their certain deaths. The only thing they could do was keep firing, and pray for a miracle.

“Father,” Henrietta said, “they saved my life...”

“Be quiet,” Justinian snapped.

Caitlin watched numbly as one of their remaining superdreadnaughts vanished from the display, followed quickly by one of the smaller ships. The enemy switched their fire to other targets and, suddenly, the admiral’s ship was targeted heavily. New damage started to mount as enemy missiles slashed into the hull. The shields were failing...

“Admiral...” she began.

And then the hammer of God struck the ship. There was a brief moment of fire and pain, and then nothing.

* * *

“Admiral, the last of the enemy ships is trying to surrender,” Raistlin reported.

Marius stared at him.

“They’ve cut weapons and drives, sir,” he told him. “They’re only maintaining their shields.”

“Hold fire,” Marius ordered. The darker part of his mind told him to finish the job, to obliterate the madmen who’d fought an impossible battle and lost. But he refused to listen to it. “Toby, launch a Marine Recon unit to secure the damaged ship.”

“Aye, sir,” Vaughn said.

“And send a message to Harmony,” Marius added. “Inform them that we have won the battle and that we require their immediate surrender in order to end further bloodshed.”

“Aye, sir,” Raistlin said.

It took an hour to receive Harmony’s unconditional surrender. Marius spent the time checking on his ships. The savage battle had inflicted far more damage than it should have, leaving too many of his ships out of commission for the time being. At least they’d have access to Harmony’s shipyards, once the surrender had been finalized.

He was still mulling over the possibilities when Vaughn called him and informed him that he had sent a file to his private database. Marius opened the file and watched in horror as Bester was purged of unreliable elements, men and women who had surrendered—along with their families. He’d promised them safety—and now they were dead.

Gritting his teeth, he looked over at Williams, who was surveying the reports from the teams that had been dispatched to secure the shipyards, and felt cold rage pouring through his heart. No wonder Admiral Justinian had refused to surrender. He had had good reason not to trust Marius’s promises...

Damn you
, he thought angrily. He wasn’t sure if he was angry at the commissioner, at the Senate, or at himself for not realizing that leaving someone like Scudder in charge was asking for trouble in the first place.
What are you going to do next
?

Messages from the Senate have absolute priority on the Interstellar Communications Network. Everyone else has to pay. The advantages this gives the Senate in reacting to events on the Rim cannot be underestimated
.

-
An Irreverent Guide to the Federation,
4000 A.D.

Earth/Harmony System, 4098

The war had disrupted parts of the ICN. Some sections were delayed because the message had to be conveyed across the interstellar gulf by a starship. But Earth received news of the Battle of Harmony and the death of Admiral Justinian within three weeks of the battle, just in time for New Year’s Day.

Grand Senator Rupert McGillivray found himself considering it as the Senate Committee met at his mansion for the seventh time since the war began. President Yang had made a brief speech to the Senate—and Earth’s news networks—about the end of the war, but everyone knew that his speech had been little more than platitudes. The
real
decisions would be made in private, well away from the media and the cheering crowds. They did so love a hero, Rupert told himself dryly, yet their cheers wouldn’t last. The mob was always fickle and heedless of any long-term concerns. The Senators couldn’t allow themselves that luxury.

He poured wine into three glasses, passed one to each of his guests. “Lady and Gentlemen, I give you the New Year,” he said, holding his glass high. They echoed him and sipped their wine, the finest champagne from Gaul. “May it be long and peaceful.”

“One would hope so,” Grand Senator The Honorable Carlton Brockington said. He put his glass down and frowned. “There’s no point in dissembling, not here. The war is won. We no longer need Admiral Drake.”

“We may need him to deal with the remaining warlords,” Rupert pointed out mildly. “None of them pose a threat on the same scale as Admiral Justinian, but they do need to be crushed before their example spreads any further.”

“They’re small fry,” Brockington said disdainfully. “Now that we have assured ourselves of the loyalty of the Federation Navy, we can crush them one by one without his help. Let’s face it; he has a fleet that is loyal to him, and a reputation with the mob.” He snorted. “He’s a threat merely by existing. We need to remove him now.”

“We have our contingency plans,” Grand Senator Alison Wallisch said, nodding in agreement. “We can activate them now.”

Rupert kept his face expressionless.

“There is no need to hurry,” he reminded them. “He is going to spend months repairing his ships and securing the remains of Admiral Justinian’s little empire. We don’t need to order his death now.”

“This is
precisely
the time to order his death,” Brockington said firmly. “The longer we leave him alive, the greater the chance he will decide to act independently.”

“And there was the little matter of his formal complaint,” Alison added. “I don’t know how that got out into the public sphere, but the mob is up in arms about it. The man is
dangerous
.”

Rupert shrugged. He
did
know how Admiral Drake’s formal complaint had reached the media; the Brotherhood had slipped it to one of the better reporters in the system. Admiral Drake had demanded that the people responsible for the Bester Massacre be relieved of command and tried for mass murder, reminding the Senate that they’d given their word that there would be no recriminations or retributions. If they were punished harshly, he’d added, it might put the brakes on the insurgency developing within the sector. The Senators had not appreciated his candor, not least because the people responsible for the slaughter had been appointed by the Senate. It had been, Rupert considered, a brilliant public relations move.

“Very well,” he said finally. “May I offer a suggestion?”

They looked at him warily.

“If we send the execution order through the ICN, there is a good chance that the message will be intercepted and decrypted by someone loyal to Admiral Drake,” Rupert pointed out. “I suggest sending the message on a courier boat, one of the fast pickets we use to scout new systems. That would maintain security, and there would be no warning to the target.”

“We need to move fast,” Brockington said. “Besides, the codewords for authorizing the operation are...not likely to arouse suspicion. The ICN will get the message there faster than any starship.”

“And besides, we will be able to deny all knowledge of an ICN message,” Alison added, nodding. “A starship is far more likely to raise eyebrows.”

Rupert wondered, absently, what planet she was actually on, before pushing the matter aside. They’d refused his advice, which meant that he had to act quickly before all hell broke loose.

Once they’d settled in for the night, he accessed his private communications channel and ordered his personal starship prepared for immediate departure. He’d been telling everyone that he intended to take a long vacation once the war was over, so no one would question his departure, at least not quickly enough to do any good. And once he’d left the Solar System, he would run for Harmony. He wouldn’t beat the message there unless he was very lucky, but at least he’d be able to make contact with Admiral Drake.

If the admiral survived...

It was a gamble, he knew, but there was no other choice. The Federation was in a state of flux, where everything could be changed and rebuilt. Once the window of opportunity closed, however, the Senate would rule unchecked. The Brotherhood had been planning for this moment for a very long time. Everything rested on him now.