Christopher Nuttall - Democracy's Light

The starships were falling into formation now. It was easy to loose track of starships, even entire fleets, in the gulf between the stars; it wouldn’t have been possible to hop directly from Wakanda to Earth, or at least arrive in fighting shape. The fleet was gathering slowly at the designated waypoint, exchanging brief confirmations of their status as they powered up their weapons and sensors, preparing for war. One way or the other, it would all be over soon.

He allowed his gaze to sweep across the superdreadnaughts. “Look at it,” he said, watching as the display updated yet again as a squadron of light cruisers were slotted into their appointed positions. “Eighty-one superdreadnaughts, ninety battlecruisers and over two hundred other starships, working together as a perfect force, the largest force that anyone has ever assembled since the Fall of Earth. Doesn’t it seem irresistible?”

“Yes, sir,” Captain Keene agreed. His voice softened slightly. “We drilled them until they were performing manoeuvres in their sleep. They’re ready.”

Admiral Wilhelm smiled. “And Earth is not,” he said. “Even if they have anticipated our arrival, how could they have prepared for such strength? We wrecked enough of their deployable forces at Cottbus to make defending Earth and all the other vital targets difficult, if not impossible.” He shook his head. “I love it when a plan comes together.”

He looked up again towards the sun. It had worked almost exactly as he had planned it, although the loss of the supply dump had tipped his hand. He had known — even if he hadn’t told the two silly bitches from the Thousand Families — that the Provisional Government would send out a fleet to extract retribution for the destruction of the cruisers, a fleet that expected to encounter only one Sector Fleet. It’s near-destruction had forced them to concentrate on defending Earth, but they couldn’t mass enough firepower to stop him, he hoped. The Nerds had assured him of that. They would be unable to stop his fleet. He almost pitied them.

A chime sounded as the final ships linked into the command network. “We’re ready,” sir,” Captain Keene said. “The final starships have arrived.”

“I see no reason to delay,” Admiral Wilhelm said, calmly. He looked down at the display, watching his fleet settling into a formation a civilian would have thought of as untidy. It was, in a sense, but rigid fleet formations were only useable in displays or propaganda videos intended to impress the largely ignorant masses. “Signal the fleet. Inform them… that it is time to advance.”

He glanced at his timepiece. “Launch marks, five minutes,” he ordered. “Select coordinates; Plan Three. Upload them into the fleet network and prepare to flicker.”

“Aye, sir,” the tactical officer said, as he took his seat. He always felt nervous before flickering into combat, but this time, at least, they could be fairly certain that they wouldn’t be jumping straight into a combat zone. Earth presented almost-unique defence problems for anyone holding the system. The defenders would be concentrated around Earth. He had no intention of going there, yet. “Plan Three uploaded.”

The final seconds ticked down quickly. “Flicker,” he ordered. “Take us into battle.”

He winced as his stomach twisted. The shock was worse than normal, but he could tolerate it, although it wasn’t as if he had a choice. There were those that claimed that the flicker-shock was purely psychometric, but they were people who’d never experienced it. The flicker-shock was real. He knew it in his bones.

The starships burst back into normal space. “Emergence, sir,” the tactical officer said. “We are within predicted range of the planet Mars.”

“Excellent,” Admiral Wilhelm said. It was excellent, well within his expected arrival range and, with the flicker-drive being what it was, lucky as well. “Confirm that there are no starships within engagement range and bring the fleet to battle stations. They’ll know we’re here by now.”

Admiral Arun Prabhu found himself jerking awake as the alarm screamed a warning. No military force could remain on alert constantly, despite the delusions of politicians and civilians who thought of military men and women as barely a grade above robots, and he’d been trying to sleep when the alarm had woken him. The superdreadnaught General Grant , Colin’s former flagship and the Shadow Fleet’s current command ship, had been waiting for the attack everyone knew was coming, but the crew still had to rest, even their Admiral.

He hit the intercom as he dressed rapidly. One advantage of orbiting deep within the gravity shadow was that the enemy couldn’t appear out of nowhere, not unless they were very lucky. Earth’s defence system was the most advanced and sensitive in the entire Empire, with the possible exception of whatever the Geeks and Nerds had defending their secret bases, and he would have sworn blind that no one could have slipped a cloaked ship through without being detected. Even the best cloaking devices could only compensate for so much before they overloaded and started missing details that alert watchers could use to track the ship.

“Report,” he snapped. He was just glad that Colin had agreed, finally, to remain on one of the command fortresses, rather than the starship. Arun had been following events on the ground with mounting concern and Colin’s death would have ruined everything, including Arun’s private motive for joining the rebellion. Hindustan, the world that had given birth to the young Arun, was an offence against humanity, a world where caste was absolute, part of the genetic code. His pale skin and dark eyes marked him as a Brahmin, one of the rulers, free to use the lesser castes as he liked. He hated it. “I need a sit-rep, now!”

“We’re picking up a major emergence signature, looks to be at least two hundred ships, near Mars,” the tactical officer reported. Arun knew relief — they were not about to be attacked at once from cloak — and then fear. The enemy should have gone directly for Earth. The fact that they had attacked Mars instead suggested that they had something else up their sleeve. “The fleet is going to alert now and your presence is requested on the flag bridge.”

Arun forgot his jacket, scooped up his terminal in one hand and his cap in the other, and ran for the door. The flag bridge was only a few meters from his cabin, but he forced himself to walk calmly just before the hatch hissed open, allowing him access to the heart of the defences. The holographic display caught his eye at once. A mass of red light, icons blurring together into one contagious mass, hovered near Mars. It was, he realised numbly, far more than just four superdreadnaught squadrons.

“Why Mars?” He asked, cursing the time delay under his breath as he took his command chair. Mars was far enough from Earth to make intervention almost impossible, unless he took the fleet out of Earth’s gravity shadow and flickered out to engage the enemy. It might be what the enemy wanted. If they intended to lure the Shadow Fleet away from the defences, they’d picked a neat way of doing so. “What’s on Mars that is so important?”

He called up tactical data and swore again. Mars had only limited defences, compared to Earth; a handful of outdated fortresses, some ground-based planetary defence systems and a dozen or so gunboats. The orbiting moons and asteroids that had been converted into industrial centres and habitats were effectively naked. The enemy could send down a pair of superdreadnaught squadrons and Mars’s orbit would be swept clean of life.

“Send a pair of recon destroyers to Mars to obtain an accurate count on those starships,” he ordered, cursing the long-range sensors. Drive fields might send out gravimetric pulses that travelled faster than light, but the enemy fleet was bunched together so tightly that they couldn’t pick out each individual ship at such range. He called up the records from their emergence, but they’d come into the system together, bunched up to make reading out individual ships difficult. He’d seen that trick worked before, mainly at Macore when it had been used to slip a superdreadnaught squadron into engagement range of the Shadow Fleet, but here it was being used to far more effect. The enemy commander, whoever it was, had guts.