Raven's Peace Read online

“Saunt probably does have it, but…” He shook his head. “Someone just shot the shit out of their battleship. They’re writing the whole mess off. They were prepared to take Isis by force…and if the Gathering is a mess, Saunt probably thinks it’s easier to just activate that plan.”

  “What do we do, ser?” Ihejirika asked, echoing Bazzoli’s earlier question.

  “We complete the mission,” Henry repeated. “If the Londu think they’re fine, let’s stop playing babysitter. Is our shuttle at Gathering Station yet?”

  “Still half an hour out,” the tactical officer reported. “Without the subspace link, I don’t have decent data on what’s going on there—and what I’ve got is a minute and a half old.”

  “Bazzoli, get us moving,” Henry ordered. “Let’s get at least four fighters out for perimeter escort and to expand our view. We’re so damn used to live data, it’s going to take some adjusting, but let’s get as good a look as we can.”

  “What happens if they start shooting, ser?” Ihejirika asked. “Loss of the subspace network is going to leave a lot of those captains with itchy trigger fingers.”

  “We have the gravity shield,” the Captain pointed out. “We can take someone else’s sucker punch and we will, if needed. But no one shoots at us twice; am I clear, Commander?”

  “Yes, ser.” He paused. “What if they’re shooting at each other?”

  Henry nodded.

  “We deal with that then, depending on who’s shooting at whom,” he told Ihejirika. “In a perfect world, we’ll have the Ambassador aboard by then…because that, Commander, is a political decision.”

  And thank God he had an Ambassador nearby to dump it on!

  Henry had trained for tactical analysis in a lightspeed sensor situation. He’d used that training to one degree or another in most of his battles, in fact. Subspace communicator–equipped drones were a handy tool, but you needed to get them closer than was usually practical to have real-time data.

  Since over ninety-five percent of battles took place at less than a light-second, lightspeed sensors weren’t that much of a limitation once battle was joined. It was the getting to the fight where it mattered, where learning of a maneuver two minutes after it happened could make it impossible to close to combat range or intercept an enemy.

  Here in Resta, though, he’d left a probe behind at Gathering Station and had been relying on having real-time data on the fate of the Gathering the whole time.

  Three and a half hours out, as the grav-shielded shuttle finally docked with the station, he was silently arguing with himself about the decision to sustain standard acceleration. Tanking up and going to maximum thrust would get him to the station in barely over an hour…but would inevitably be seen as a hostile maneuver.

  “That’s…not good,” Moon said slowly. She was eavesdropping on the radio chatter coming back from Gathering Station.

  “Commander?”

  “One of the Set Sector factions is arguing with the Resta. They want to pick up their Ambassador aboard one of their escorts.”

  “And the Restan are insisting they use a shuttle,” Henry guessed.

  “Exactly, ser,” Moon confirmed. “It’s the Kron, ser. Are you familiar with them?”

  “Yes,” he confirmed, racking his memory of their tour in Set for the species. The Kron weren’t Ashall. They were an odd race, four-legged creatures with thick rocky skin who could use tools only while sitting. That limitation made them…well, paranoid.

  “That’s not going to go over well,” he said aloud. “If the Kron are feeling that twitchy, they’re not shuttling their Ambassador around in a shuttle. They’re going to…”

  “I have engine light-up on two escorts,” Ihejirika barked. “I think they’re the Kron ships.”

  “That would be a very Kron thing to do,” Henry agreed. “What are they doing?”

  “Accelerating toward Gathering Station at half a KPS squared,” the tactical officer said. “I can’t tell from this distance if their weapons are online.”

  Henry didn’t need to ask if the Restan battleship playing guard dog for the station had her weapons online. There was no way she didn’t. The Restan wouldn’t let their responsibility to protect the station lapse enough to leave the battleship cold as everything went to hell around them.

  “I have multiple other ships bringing engines online, and our drone is telling me that there is a lot of targeting radar active in the area,” Ihejirika reported.

  “And no one actually respected the Restan’s order to move to one light-second away from each other, did they?” Raven’s Captain asked.

  “Only a few, ser,” Ihejirika confirmed. “The Trintar have moved well away from everyone else and sent a shuttle in to retrieve their Ambassador. Everyone is busy pointing targeting sensors and plasma cannon at each other.” He shook his head. “What happens now, ser?”

  “I don’t know,” Henry admitted. “Squadron-Voice Ta Callah is in command of the defenses. She’s brave and competent, but her orders are what they are.”

  “She’ll fire,” Iyotake said, the XO’s voice very soft. “A warning shot, but that might be enough.”

  Twenty-five minutes for the Kron to make rendezvous with the station, but it would only take five minutes for them to be in range to blast it to pieces with an escort’s heavy lasers.

  Ninety-second time delay. Everything Henry was seeing was out of date.

  The entire Vesheron alliance might have already blown up, and all he was able to do was watch.

  The first shot wasn’t what anyone had been expecting. With every eye in the star system on the pair of escorts making their approach toward the Resta’s red line, no one was watching the rest of the escort fleets.

  It was one of the handful of Kenmiri dreadnoughts in the mess, one from a faction Henry had never interacted with in his life. Six heavy plasma guns targeted the Kron escorts and opened fire.

  The range was still short, less than fifty thousand kilometers. No one had a chance to react before massive bursts of plasma tore into the ships heading toward the station. The expected next step had been a warning shot from the Restan, and the Kron ships’ evasive maneuvers had been focused on the Restan battleship.

  Both came apart into balls of fire that kept hurtling toward the station. Moments later, engines and weapons came alive across the collection of escorts, targeting scanners acquiring final lock as dozens of commanders tried to find the right answer.

  The Drifter guardian and another dreadnought fired first, massive plasma cannon blasts lighting up Henry’s scanners as they opened fire on the instigator.

  With engines running at maximum power, it would still be several minutes before the ships were separated enough for Raven to sort out much now that the shooting had started.

  Henry closed his eyes for one eternal second.

  “Battle stations and acceleration stations,” he ordered softly. “All hands to the acceleration tanks and hooked for juice. Emergency acceleration once all hands are in position, Commander Bazzoli.”

  “Are we respecting the Restan limit around Gathering Station, ser?” Bazzoli asked.

  “No. The Gathering is over. We will retrieve Ambassador Todorovich and her staff by any means necessary.”

  Henry’s harsh words hung in the air of the bridge as he could faintly hear klaxons sounding in the rest of the ship. Other icons flickered across both his seat and his internal network as his own acceleration-tank system activated.

  A panel in the floor in front of his seat slid open. A stand with a mask and hose rose up from the ground, and softly glowing marks on the floor told him where to stand.

  Similar panels were opening all around him as Henry stepped onto the footprints and took the mask. Taking one last breath of regular ship’s air, he closed the mask over his face. His network flashed up a warning to close his eyes…and then the floor beneath him sank away as he dropped into the acceleration tank directly beneath his command seat.

  Warm gel closed around him,
viscosity increasing as he settled into it. He knew the space would be lit up, but at this point, he needed to run the ship through his internal network. He kept his eyes closed as he activated the virtual bridge software.

  It wasn’t a perfect facsimile of his bridge, but it would let him see what his people were doing just as well as if they were at their regular stations.

  A display told him how many of his crew were in their battle-station acceleration tanks. It was already over sixty percent and skyrocketing. It hit a hundred and he checked the timer with a chuckle.

  “Sixty-seven seconds,” he said aloud. “Even Panther couldn’t make it that fast.”

  “Everyone was basically at their stations,” Iyotake told him. “They knew this was coming.”

  “Commander Bazzoli, final check, please,” Henry ordered.

  “All hands report in the acceleration tanks. System reports all crew secured. All animals secured. All items of record secure. We are prepared for full acceleration.”

  Henry took a deep breath and brought up the display of the space around Gathering Station. Multiple ships were dead or dying now, but they were no longer his concern. The consequences of the explosion would be his concern in the future, but right now he needed to get Sylvia Todorovich out.

  “Message to Ambassador Todorovich,” he dictated. “We are coming to you at maximum speed, ETA two point five hours. Get aboard the shuttle and be prepared to come out to meet us. It’ll make life a lot easier if you can rendezvous with Raven, but I will do whatever is necessary to retrieve you.

  “Captain Wong out.”

  He blinked the message away and turned his attention back to Bazzoli.

  “Commander Bazzoli.”

  “Ser?”

  “Engage.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  The tanks were designed to make sure a human could survive twenty pseudogravities of thrust. The gel itself had a carefully adjustable viscosity to help the fragile human at its core absorb the thrust without blood ending up in the wrong places. Drugs were fed in via the air coming down the hose. Even the air itself was pressurized specifically to allow function in this circumstance.

  With all of that, the human would survive. They couldn’t function or physically act. Control of the ship, the drones that moved around trying to keep it intact at this thrust, all of that was exerted via a virtual-reality space linked to the internal networks of Raven’s nine hundred SpaceDiv crew.

  This was the only way a starfighter pilot operated, so Henry was more used to it than most of his crew. The starfighters flying escort on his ship certainly weren’t going to have any problems keeping up with his battlecruiser.

  The ETA on his network changed the moment the acceleration hammered him into immobile uselessness. At 0.5 KPS2, their ETA had been three hours and twenty minutes. Now it was two hours and thirty minutes.

  It wasn’t much. It might not even be enough—but it was all the time that Henry could gain by pushing his crew to their absolute limits.

  “Most of the ships have now managed to get out of suicide range, at least,” Ihejirika reported. “I’m still seeing multiple exchanges of fire going on, but it seems to be quieting down…for now.”

  “How bad, Commander?”

  “At least fifteen ships are just gone,” the tactical officer said grimly. “I’m not even sure who. Everyone is shifting IFF protocols. It’s a damn mess over there, ser.”

  “We’re flying right into it. What about Gathering Station?”

  “So far, the Restan have managed to stay out of the mess and everyone is more than a light-second away. I guess the question now is, how long until someone starts ignoring that?”

  “And whether anyone out there is still going to try and pick a fight with us,” Henry said. “Where are the Kozun and the Drifters?”

  New icons flickered across his network as Ihejirika tried to ID ships.

  “I can’t confirm the Kozun either way,” he finally admitted. “They showed up with a dreadnought and a pair of escorts, and there’s enough ships still in play that I can’t confirm IDs until I’ve managed to flag more of the beacons.

  “The Drifter guardian would stand out more…but she’s gone.”

  Henry swallowed.

  “Gone?”

  “Two dreadnoughts and the guardian blew each other to dust bunnies before everyone got separated. Somebody is going to lose trade privileges when that report gets back to the convoys,” the tactical officer noted. “But there’s only four dreadnoughts left in this mess, and they’re opening up distance from each other like there’s no tomorrow.”

  “What about the Restan capital ships at Ost?” he asked.

  “They’ve definitely gone active, but they aren’t moving anywhere. I guess their job is to make sure this doesn’t spill over onto the planet.”

  “And they’re doing a fine job,” Henry noted with an attempt at a shake of his head. The motion hurt and he quickly stopped. He might be mostly living in his brain and network right now, but his body was still very much getting crushed.

  “Watch those dreadnoughts, Ihejirika,” he ordered. “Those vectors might be away from each other, but they look like they’re going to come far too close to us for my comfort.”

  “I’ll watch them and try to ID them, ser,” his officer replied. “But…one thing I can be sure of?”

  “Yes?”

  “The Kozun’s dreadnought wasn’t one of the ones that got wrecked,” Ihejirika warned him. “If, say, your assassin friend is looking to notch up a battlecruiser and has some of the anti-grav-shield weaponry that’s been thrown around…they could be one of the ones heading our way.”

  If the dreadnought headed toward them wasn’t trying to intercept them, they were doing an unusually poor job of it.

  “Commander Moon, warn them off,” Henry ordered grimly. “Though…are we getting any coms from anyone?”

  “Most of our Vesheron com protocols were subspace-based,” his coms officer told him. “We didn’t have any radio protocols for the Londu. We just received a radio transmission from them, but my people are having a hard time deciphering it.”

  “Probably took Kahlmor that long to realize he didn’t have a protocol,” Raven’s Captain noted. “Well, hit that dreadnought with every Vesheron radio protocol we’ve got. If they don’t break off before they enter one light-second of us, I will have no choice but to consider them hostile.”

  Enough people had died today that he couldn’t risk his people.

  “If they’re Kozun, we do have a radio protocol,” Moon said. “Same if they’re Resta. We should have protocols loaded for anyone who had a dreadnought.”

  The massed Vesheron factions only had fourteen captured Kenmiri dreadnoughts, after all. Several of those were already debris today. An ignoble part of him hoped that Kal Rojan’s dreadnought was one of them and that the assassin had been aboard.

  The universe was never so helpful, in his experience.

  “Ser, we have a transmission from the Ambassador,” Moon reported. “No response so far from the dreadnought.”

  “Play me Todorovich’s message,” he ordered.

  The video feed lit up his network a moment later, showing him Sylvia Todorovich in the cockpit of the heavy shuttle he’d sent in.

  “Captain, be advised that the Restan are in full panic mode,” she said bluntly. “They are refusing to let any shuttles leave Gathering Station until the ‘situation among your escorts has calmed down.’

  “Of course, this is going to actively make the situation among the escorts worse, I’m sure. This shuttle’s sensors are giving me better data than the Restan are providing, and it does not look good out there.”

  She swallowed hard, a momentary break in the mask visible only to Henry himself.

  “The Gathering is over,” she said firmly. “Without subspace communications, none of these people can engage in useful negotiations. I… I am specifically not ordering you to use force to extract us from Gathering Statio
n. If you believe you can calm the situation out there enough to ease the Restan’s paranoia, that would be preferable.

  “That said, you have the better eyes on the mess out there. I am authorizing you to do whatever you judge necessary to retrieve the diplomatic party from Gathering Station. I take full responsibility for whatever is required.

  “Ambassador Sylvia Todorovich…out.”

  Apparently, he’d grown on the Ambassador even more than he’d thought. That was a blank check, one that would cover him up to and including boarding and taking Gathering Station by force.

  He wasn’t sure Thompson’s people could pull that off, but it was something he’d have to keep in mind.

  “Let me know the moment that dreadnought responds to us or crosses the five-hundred-thousand-kilometer mark,” he ordered calmly. “Or if anyone else starts shooting or the Restan make a move.”

  “No response or course adjustment from the dreadnought,” Ihejirika confirmed. “Range is one million kilometers and dropping rapidly. I am detecting charged capacitors.”

  An hour left before they reached Gathering Station. That was still over six million kilometers away, barely a factor in the current problem.

  The dreadnought was closing at just over fifteen hundred kilometers per second, burning at one KPS2. Their vector wasn’t directly opposite to Raven’s identical deceleration, which meant the potential hostile had a net acceleration of about a tenth of a kilometer per second squared.

  They were already in missile range. Of course, a multi-minute flight time didn’t leave much opportunity for surprise.

  “Bazzoli,” he said softly. “Can we adjust our course to line the grav-driver up on that big bastard?”

  “Not without cutting our deceleration, hugely increasing our intercept time with Gathering Station and being damn obvious,” she replied. “We’d have to flip again, and I can only get maybe a twentieth of a KPS2 without the main engines.”

  “And they know it,” he murmured. “Maintain course, Commander Bazzoli,” he ordered more clearly. “Commander Ihejirika?”