Christopher Nuttall - Barbarians at the Gates

“Launch a shell of recon drones,” he ordered without taking his eyes off the display. “I want a second shell launched ten minutes after the first shell, and then I want recon fighters moved up in random patrol patterns. Someone’s out there, and I mean to find him before he finds us.”

Marius stroked his chin. Someone a very long time ago—probably as far back as the Roman legions—had said that wars were ninety-nine percent boredom and one percent sheer terror. He’d reached the battlestation and the enemy starfighters had been beaten off, but now he had to wait and see what happened. Unless random terror was the objective, there had to be an enemy fleet out there, heading towards Earth. And if they were expecting Home Fleet to sit on the sidelines until the fighting was over, he might have a chance to give them a nasty surprise.

“Sir,” Fallon announced, “Federation Intelligence has confirmed that they have a StarCom in the Earth-Luna Sphere. I don’t think they’re too happy with you.”

“Fuck them,” Marius said. This was no time for games. “Tell them to hold the unit at readiness once they send the first set of orders. We may not have time to power it up again…”

The display flashed a new icon, and then zeroed in on the escaping freighters. The icons representing intact ships had vanished, to be replaced by four expanding spheres of destruction. Marius swallowed a curse as the starfighters broke off, heading back to their parent fortresses, while gunboats closed in to investigate the remains of the freighters. The enemy, knowing they couldn’t escape, had triggered the self-destruct systems—or someone, hiding under cloak, had sent a destruct command to their ships. There was no way to know for sure.

“The fighters didn’t fire, sir,” Fallon said. He sounded as if he was expecting to be blamed for bringing bad news. “The ships just blew up as soon as the fighters came within engagement range.”

“We have a ruthless enemy,” Marius agreed gravely. “Recall one half of the duty fighters”—he trusted the fighter controllers to issue the correct orders—”and give their pilots a chance to rest and rearm.”

The enemy commander was ruthless , he noted in the privacy of his own thoughts. The enemy starfighters were doomed, unless they reached a cloaked carrier. He watched the shell of recon drones spreading outwards and asked himself again, where would he put a force advancing on Earth? How would he position his ships for best advantage?

He keyed his console and linked into the Marine channel.

“Toby, I need a report on the silent fortresses as soon as possible.”

“They’re crippled by chaos software,” Vaughn said. His old friend sounded reassuringly competent, as always. “My engineers don’t think there’s anything fundamentally wrong with the hardware, but the main codes have to be purged and then rebooted—and if the chaos software remains in place, we’ll have to strip out the cores and replace them.”

“Purge the systems,” Marius ordered tightly. They needed those fortresses. If the purge failed, they wouldn’t be any worse off. “I’ll assemble a scratch crew and have them sent over to replace the prior crewmen. Once the crew is aboard, you can start shipping the old crew down to Earth. We can’t trust them, not until we find out who uploaded the chaos software in the first place.”

“Understood,” Vaughn replied. Marius knew that he would carry out his orders, or die trying. “Good luck, sir.”

The connection broke. Marius leaned back in his command chair and made a show of looking up at the overhead bulkhead, trying to suggest a sense of unconcern about the whole situation.

“Have coffee and snack packs brought in for the duty staff,” he ordered absently. They would have warning of the enemy’s approach, unless the enemy’s cloaking technology was far superior to the Federation’s—and in that case, the war was lost anyway. “The remainder can get some sleep.”

“Yes, sir,” Fallon said. “Sir…shouldn’t you get some rest, too?”

“Not at the moment,” Marius said. It hadn’t been that long since he’d served on the command deck of a battleship, hunting down pirates. And besides, he didn’t know who he could trust to leave on watch. “It will all be over by the time I need rest.”

He grinned while looking down at the communications display. It was surprising that there were only a handful of demands for information from the Senate, but procedures for dealing with such requests dated all the way back to the First Interstellar War—a time when a direct attack on the Solar System seemed alarmingly likely. The Senate would have to sit in a bunker under Federation City, waiting for news of victory or defeat, while the military fought its battle. His lips twisted into a droll sneer. The Senators were probably cowering, wondering which of their sins had returned to haunt them. After all, what else had the Inheritance Wars been about?

Time ticked by slowly as duty officers were replaced, given short breaks to rest and use the head. Others were assigned to emergency deployments and sent to the three damaged stations, two of which were back in the fight once their computers had been purged. Marius wasn’t inclined to take chances, so he ordered additional security on the datanet—if the chaos software broke into the main computer network, the defense of Earth would fall apart—but he was too grateful for the additional firepower to be too paranoid. After the fighting was over, they’d have to pull the chips and go through the network with a fine-toothed comb. Someone with that level of access almost certainly had had the time to set up a few additional surprises for the defenders…

“ Contact ,” the sensor officer snapped. New red icons blinked into existence on the display. “Sir, I have multiple contacts, bearing…they’re heading towards Earth!”

“Understood, son,” Drake said with a smile. The sensor officer was so young that Marius wondered if he’d even begun to shave. “Give me a list of contacts, calmly if possible.”

The sensor officer flushed darkly. “At least forty contacts, sir, some definitely superdreadnaught-sized,” he said. “They’re cloaked, so it is impossible to get a proper reading without launching additional probes…”

“And giving away that we’ve seen them,” Marius concluded thoughtfully. He juggled the tactical situation in his head for a long moment. The enemy wasn’t trying to be particularly subtle. He had aimed himself directly at Earth, with the clear intention of breaking through the remaining defenses and taking the planet. “Commander Fallon?”

“Yes, sir,” Fallon said. He’d managed to get a bite to eat and some coffee before returning to the command center. Marius had thought about relieving him, but there was no one to take Fallon’s place. It wasn’t like serving out on the Rim, where Drake had been able to count on multiple trained and experienced officers to fill holes. The most experienced men in the system—apart from himself—were with Home Fleet. “They’re here, sir.”

“Yes,” Marius said. “You are to contact Home Fleet and order them to follow this vector to Earth.” He keyed his console, bringing up one of the contingency plans he’d considered while waiting for the enemy to show his face. It only required a slight adjustment to fit the actual situation, much to his relief. “They are to remain under cloak until they advance upon the enemy.”

He studied the console for another long moment. “I also want Titan Base to prepare to launch a set of decoy drones heading on this course.” The second course was a direct path to Earth, the kind of course a desperate or inexperienced commanding officer might attempt if he believed there was no other option. “They are to launch the drones at the exact time specified unless I countermand the orders personally. Do you understand?”