Christopher Nuttall - Barbarians at the Gates

“It seems to me that you have the choice between accepting their help or not,” Vaughn said, breaking into Marius’s train of thought. “And what might they be able to do for you?”

Marius shook his head. “Let’s concentrate on surviving the next few months first, shall we?”

“All right,” Vaughn said. “But you’re going to be escorted by armed guards whenever you leave the ship. I don’t think this fleet can afford to lose you.”

Marius opened his mouth to argue, and then realized that Vaughn was right. Admiral Justinian’s strike on Navy HQ had killed most of the Navy’s high-ranking officers, at least the ones assigned to Earth. The officers stationed away from Earth seemed to have incurred the Senate’s suspicion merely because they hadn’t been on Earth or in the Core Worlds when the attack took place. And the remaining officers in the fleet, the Commodores who commanded the squadrons that had been assigned to the Retribution Force, were hopelessly junior to Parkinson.

“At least I convinced him to use recon drones first before we enter the Asimov Points closer to the Harmony Sector,” he said bitterly, hoping Vaughn would understand. Recon drones that were capable of transiting through an Asimov Point were expensive, and the bean counters complained heavily whenever they were deployed. The Senate would not be amused when the Federation Navy presented them with a bill for a few hundred recon drones to replace the lost ones. “We might not be caught on the Asimov Point.”

For a bare second, he was back on the Matterhorn , back when the superdreadnaught had flown right into a point-blank ambush. Admiral Parkinson wouldn’t make that mistake, thankfully, but what was running through Admiral Justinian’s head? It didn’t take a tactical genius to deduce the Retribution Force’s planned advance, not given the topography of the Asimov Points. Hell, Justinian could just keep his fleet in Jefferson and wait until his scouts revealed that the Retribution Fleet was advancing, and then move forward to meet the Senate’s counterstroke.

“We both know that if your plan is going perfectly, you’re about to lose,” Vaughn pointed out. “I think you’d better be prepared to relieve Parkinson, if necessary.”

Marius blinked at him. Vaughn was plain-spoken, but he was rarely that blunt.

“Think about it,” Vaughn said. “Whatever criteria the Senate used to pick him, it wasn’t tactical skill or imagination. He doesn’t even have the imagination to make you do all the work and take all the credit. And I’ve met Justinian. He’ll run rings around the poor political appointee and his noble benefactors.”

He looked out at the unblinking stars. “I think you’d better be prepared for the worst,” Vaughn added. “Someone has to be thinking about what could go wrong.”

FNS Enterprise/Magnificent , Sol System/In Transit, 4092

There was nothing to see as Enterprise approached the Asimov Point. There was no swirling wormhole of bright light and twisted colors, no sense they were approaching a gravitationally-distorted region of space. The stars seemed motionless, despite the fact that the carrier was travelling at one-tenth of the speed of light.

It was small wonder, Roman thought from a seat at the rear of the bridge, that primitive space travelers had been so reluctant to believe in the Asimov Points. They wanted something more impressive than an invisible hole in space.

He looked around, trying not to gawk like a civilian. Enterprise had no less than three command centers—the main bridge, the flag bridge and the secondary bridge—but the main bridge was impressive. The captain’s chair—almost a throne—dominated the compartment, which was crammed with consoles and occupied by the best crew in the fleet. It was hard to imagine that they would ever meet their match.

“Now hear this,” Commander Duggan said, her words echoing throughout the ship. “All hands prepare for transit. I say again, all hands prepare for transit.”

Roman settled back into his seat and winked at Sultana. For once, neither of the two newcomers had anything to do onboard Enterprise . The captain, for reasons that hadn’t been shared with his junior officers, had decreed that they could watch from the bridge as Enterprise went through the Asimov Point. Granted, doing so was nothing new for either of them, as they’d had to go through at least one Asimov Point to get to Luna Academy in the first place, but it was their first transit as commissioned officers.

“Humanity’s gateway to the stars,” Sultana said, so quietly that only Roman could hear.

Roman nodded. Back during the First Expansion Era, so long ago that far too much had faded into legend, a brilliant researcher into gravitational oddities—Irene Asimov—had theorised that wormhole links ran between objects with vast gravity fields, such as stars. Her research had allowed her to deduce that lines of gravitational force should have endpoints within the Solar System and, eventually, to pinpoint the Dead End. It had taken another year to develop the gravitational pulse generator that allowed a starship to transit through the Asimov Point, but once the first ship had made it through, there was no shortage of resources to pinpoint the Gateway. The Dead End might have been a colossal disappointment, yet the Gateway had given humanity the stars.

“All stations report ready, sir,” Commander Duggan said. She looked over at the captain. “We are ready for transit.”

Roman looked up at the holographic display, shaking his head in awe. The Gateway was surrounded by enough fortresses to give anyone who tried to poke his nose into the Sol System a very bad day. During the First Interstellar War, every Asimov Point humanity had discovered was then heavily fortified—allowing them to be used as choke points to bleed the Snakes white—and the Federation had never relaxed its defense of Earth. Other Asimov Points in the Core Worlds might be unfortified—and barely charted Asimov Points along the Rim might not even be included in the Federation Navy’s database—but Earth itself would be protected. The logic hadn’t changed, even when the stardrive had opened inaccessible territories to human expansion. Asimov Points were still the quickest way to hop from star system to star system.

“Gateway Command confirms that we are clear to pass through the Gateway,” the communications officer, Lieutenant Nicolas, injected. Nicolas had served on one of the fortresses defending Earth before she’d been transferred to Enterprise as part of the Retribution Force. Roman rather liked her, although their paths rarely crossed outside of the mess. “They’re wishing us good luck.”

The captain settled back in his command chair. “Take us into the Gateway,” he ordered. “Spin up the transit drive and jump us out on my command.”

“Aye, captain,” the helmsman said. “We are within the Gateway.”

On the display, Enterprise crawled past the armored fortresses and entered the sphere they guarded. It crossed Roman’s mind—very briefly—that if the fortresses opened fire at effectively point-blank range, there would be nothing left of the massive carrier apart from free-floating atoms in space.