Drifter's Folly (Peacekeepers of Sol Book 4) Read online

  “One Crichton-class carrier, a Corvid-class and a Jaguar-class battlecruiser, eight destroyers,” the officer reported. “Destroyers are all Significance-class.”

  “As expected,” Cheung confirmed. He looked at Sylvia. “Command is sending us the best,” he told her. “Between the Initiative and our fleet, I think we’re going to have every Significance- and Cataphract-class destroyer in the UPSF.”

  “There’s not much demand back home, I would hope,” Sylvia said.

  “No,” he agreed. “Plus, well…” He sighed. “They’re decommissioning the Tyrannosaurs pretty quickly. Funding is getting tight.”

  Sylvia nodded wordlessly. The war had been over for three years. Even the current situation was officially classified as a “security deployment,” though at least one with a specific budget provided by the Assembly.

  The UPSF had seen their budget slashed by almost fifty percent. The only salvation was that the Peacekeeper Initiative, despite falling under UPSF command, had an entirely separate budget—and Sylvia had fought hard for that.

  The Initiative’s budget had stayed relatively steady, but it wasn’t enough to absorb major fleets. It was set up to pay for the operations costs of two battlecruisers and twelve destroyers, plus a support infrastructure.

  “Admiral Rex will almost certainly want to meet with you, Ambassador,” Cheung told her. “This is your war, after all.”

  “I thought it was only a security deployment?” Sylvia asked drily.

  “We’re on the front lines, Ambassador,” the Admiral said. “There can be no euphemisms here. We are here to fight the Drifters. That’s a war, so far as I’m concerned.”

  Sylvia’s chief of staff, Felix Leitz, was waiting for her when she returned to the shuttle deck. He was a heavyset man with short black hair and a neatly groomed beard—and, these days, a perpetually frustrated set to his eyes.

  “If we’re transferring to Aeryn, why did we even come aboard Scorpius?” he asked her, falling in by her side.

  “Because we owed Admiral Cheung and Commodore Barrie that much,” Sylvia replied. “Military officers are people, Felix, and I know you have people skills.”

  Leitz snorted, gesturing for her to slow up as the figure of Scorpius’s Captain approached. Commodore Peter Barrie was a sparsely built, athletic man, slightly more gray than his ex-husband, with the white turtleneck collar of a starship Captain.

  “Military officers are fine,” he conceded. “I just don’t like warships.”

  That was a telling admission, one that Sylvia would have to investigate later. For now, she acknowledged Barrie with a firm nod and handshake as the Commodore intercepted them.

  “My apologies for not making time for you sooner, Ambassador, Em Leitz,” he told them. “My work is rarely slow.”

  Commodore Peter Barrie was the captain of a fleet carrier, one of the most powerful capital ships in existence and one carrying a crew of almost five thousand—and also her boyfriend’s ex-husband. Sylvia doubted he even knew what slow looked like anymore.

  “I appreciate you making the time at all, Captain,” she told him. “I know how badly command of even a battlecruiser consumes an officer’s time.” She gestured around the flight deck, busily swarming with UPSF FighterDiv personnel checking on the starfighters.

  “I can’t begin to imagine how much work a carrier takes.”

  Barrie chuckled.

  “I have a good team, but yes,” he told her. “We’ll be attending the meeting aboard Aeryn virtually, so I wouldn’t have a chance to greet you there. One does hope that the locals have provided acceptable lodgings.”

  Sylvia arched an eyebrow.

  “La-Tar had quarters for visiting Kenmorad that have been repurposed to serve as diplomatic embassies,” she replied. “They’re…almost disgustingly comfortable. I do wonder if they took the cushions out of the one they lent the Kozun, though.”

  “I would have,” Barrie muttered. “This alliance…itches, Ambassador.”

  “Many alliances do,” she warned. “We cannot only talk with the people we like, Captain Barrie.”

  “I understand. But the thought of fighting alongside the Kozun again, like nothing ever happened…”

  “Would you rather not have their warships?”

  “No, I’ll take Kozun escorts over no escorts,” he conceded. “But after the last few years, the only people I think my hands would be twitchier about would be the Kenmiri themselves.”

  “Believe me, Commodore, if I ever get the Kenmiri to work with us on something, that will be the crown jewel of my career,” Sylvia said.

  “Even above arranging the failure of the Drifter’s treachery and negotiating a peace treaty while trapped in a lifepod?” Barrie asked with a chuckle.

  “That one will probably always be up there, but I don’t think anyone really gets how much the Kenmiri really, specifically, hate humanity these days. Golden Lancelot was us, after all.”

  That sent a visible chill rippling across Barrie’s face, and she winced. Even to Sylvia, Golden Lancelot and the slow genocide humanity had inflicted on their enemy was a sore spot, but it was still distant to her.

  Over half of all serving UPSF captains and above had been involved in the operation: lied to and ordered to commit genocide. It wasn’t a sore spot for the UPSF. It was still a weeping open wound.

  “You need to get going,” Barrie said after a moment. “Pass on my regards to Henry when you see him next, will you?”

  “Always,” Sylvia promised. The two men’s marriage had self-destructed on the altar of the war, but there was still enough warmth there for her to feel it was worth preserving.

  Someday, they might even manage to be friends again. If Sylvia pulled that off, it would rank up with the lifepod negotiations, at least in her own mind.

  Chapter Six

  Sylvia’s shuttle gently tucked itself to the deck on Aeryn with a final jet of thrusters. The ship’s artificial gravity field held the spacecraft in place as she and Leitz headed down the ramp onto the deck.

  Safety barriers retracted to reveal a gathered assembly of dozens of officers and spacers. There was a podium with its back to them, with clear seats for them—and an eager GroundDiv officer seemed to appear out of nowhere.

  “If you’ll come with me, Ambassador, we’re about to start the ceremony,” the young Lieutenant told her, his expression cheerful and his words quick.

  “Lead on, Lieutenant Eaton,” Sylvia said with a chuckle, pulling his name from her internal network. No one had warned her that there would be a ceremony—she was there for a briefing—but she was used to adapting to things like this.

  Lieutenant Eaton led her and Leitz to chairs next to the podium, where a lectern waited in empty silence—presumably for Admiral Cody Rex. Sylvia would have words for the Admiral later about not warning her, but for now she’d play along with the theatrics.

  There were at least five hundred people formed up in neat rows. A glance at their uniforms marked the split between SpaceDiv, FighterDiv, and GroundDiv personnel—and unless Sylvia missed her guess, the assembly was exactly ten percent of each division’s crew aboard Aeryn.

  A moment after she and Leitz took their seats, the traditional electronic bugle of a flag officer coming aboard rang out, and Rex emerged from a hatch onto the deck, approaching the podium alone.

  Cody Rex was a tall, clean-shaven man with sharp features and a high-and-tight flat-top haircut, gone gray with age. He wore the same black jacket over turtlenecked shipsuit as everyone else, but his collar bore three silver stars on the left side. The only other decoration he wore was a pair of silver pilot’s wings.

  He traded a nod with Sylvia as he stepped up to the lectern and spread out a piece of archaic parchment.

  “Thank you, everyone,” he told them. “With two carrier groups in position here in the La-Tar System, I have formal orders to activate Twelfth Fleet. Attention, please!”

  He made a show of flattening the parchment.

&nb
sp; “To: Admiral Cody Rex. From: Admiral Lee Saren, United Planets Space Force Command, Base Halo, Sol.

  “Upon receipt of these orders, you are to proceed to the La-Tar System aboard the carrier UPSV Aeryn. There, upon assemblage of sufficient forces as per your judgment, you are to activate and assume command of the United Planets Alliance Twelfth Fleet, flying your flag from Aeryn or another vessel as you see fit. You are charged to carry the duties and responsibilities of Admiral and commander of Twelfth Fleet to the highest and best standards and traditions of the United Planets Space Force.

  “We charge you with the memory of those who came before and the fate of those yet to come.

  “Signed: Admiral Lee Saren. Space Division. United Planets Space Force.”

  Rex folded the parchment and placed it inside his jacket, surveying the assembly.

  “I hereby activate the Twelfth Fleet of the United Planets Space Force,” he said formally. He let a beat hang in the air before continuing.

  “There has never been a Twelfth Fleet before,” he told them. “We are a new fleet assembled for a new mission, of a type the UPA has not fought before. For a new mission, UPSF Command felt we required a new formation.

  “There are details of the mission that will remain confidential for now, but the situation is very straightforward. The Peacekeeper Initiative attempted to negotiate a peaceful settlement between the La-Tar Cluster and the Kozun Hierarchy.

  “The peace summit was betrayed and attacked by warships of the Blue Stripe Green Stripe Orange Stripe Drifter Convoy—warships asked to act as neutral guarantors to the peace summit.

  “It is the task of Twelfth Fleet to neutralize the military threat of the Blue Stripe Green Stripe Orange Stripe Drifter Convoy by whatever means necessary, to secure the safety of our allies in the La-Tar Cluster, and to secure a greater peace in the Ra Sector.

  “The Drifters were our allies. Other Convoys may still be, but Blue Stripe Green Stripe Orange Stripe have proven themselves our enemies.”

  Rex smiled thinly, clearly visible to his audience.

  “The Drifters will learn that it is folly to challenge the United Planets Alliance!”

  It took longer to dismantle the assembly and get into the planned briefing than Sylvia liked, which meant she didn’t have a chance to yank on Admiral Rex’s ears for surprising her with the ceremony.

  Instead, she and Leitz joined him and Commodore Usman Angus in a conference room as dozens of people virtually linked in from the other ships of the newly activated fleet.

  The last arrival in the room was the black-haired and -skinned Colonel in command of Aeryn’s starfighter group. Opeyemi Botha crisply saluted the Admiral in apology before taking her seat.

  “One more moment, please,” Rex told everyone. “Take a seat, take a breath. We’re in no rush yet.”

  He was seated on the edge of his own chair, facing a recorder sending his three-dimensional image to every ship in his fleet.

  “We are still waiting on Carrier Group Chiana before our preferred operational start date,” he told everyone. “Depending on what information we get from the Initiative, it may be necessary for us to move sooner, but currently there is only one point of concern in the Ra Sector.”

  He gestured to Sylvia.

  “If Ambassador Todorovich could summarize that for me? I presume you have more updated information on the situation with the Hierarchy and the homeworlds?”

  Sylvia added another item to the list of things Rex should have warned her about before doing, leveling a sharp gaze on the Admiral as she marshaled her thoughts.

  “The Kozun Hierarchy has been extremely successful in their campaign of conquest,” she said bluntly. “They also overextended themselves quite badly, which was part of why they were prepared to negotiate with La-Tar.”

  She shook her head.

  “The other part was that we were standing behind La-Tar with a very large club,” she noted. “The problem is that between us and the Drifters, the Hierarchy no longer has a deployable capital-ship strength.

  “Commodore Wong wrecked one of their dreadnoughts at the Great Gathering and took out one of their new cruisers here in La-Tar,” she reminded everyone.

  The Great Gathering had been the attempt by the various Vesheron groups, including the external El-Vesheron allies like the UPA, to lay the groundwork for a post-Kenmiri galactic order. Unfortunately, the instantaneous subspace coms they’d all relied on had turned out to be a Kenmiri product—relying on a section of subspace artificially stabilized by systems concealed somewhere in the heart of the Kenmiri Empire.

  Systems the Kenmiri had turned off at the worst time they could find. The loss of communications had turned the Great Gathering from a conference on the future into a multi-way melee, one that Wong had barely extracted Sylvia and her people from.

  “The Drifters wiped out the last three Kozun cruisers at the peace conference,” Sylvia said. “They have another four under construction, but they won’t be ready for months. Their sole remaining dreadnought, Mal Toranis, is covering the Kozun homeworld.

  “This limits Hierarchy forces to Kenmiri-style escorts and gunships and a scattering of new corvettes,” she concluded. Her audience knew what those names meant better than she did, she hoped.

  “Nonetheless, the Hierarchy controls the Kozun homeworld, the Tak homeworld, the Sana homeworld, and three full dependency clusters like La-Tar,” she noted. “In the long run, if they can hang on to all of that, they will be the dominant player in the Ra Sector.

  “It’s in our interests to either dismantle or ally with the Hierarchy,” she told the military officers. “For now, we are allied with them, thanks to the Drifters’ treachery, and have secured the independence of the La-Tar Cluster. At the same time as they sued for peace with us, they made separate treaties with two former Kenmiri colonies and a fifth dependency cluster.

  “That leaves them with two remaining conflicts: first, against the Drifters, in alliance with us and the La-Tar Cluster,” she continued. Everyone knew that one. “That conflict is currently quiet, as the Drifters are running dark.

  “Without knowing what their plan is, we cannot simply leave the Drifters be,” she admitted. She wanted to, in some ways, but she agreed with the military assessment that the threat needed to be explicitly ended.

  “That leaves us with one ongoing crisis in the Ra Sector that we are aware of,” she said. “There may be others. Our communications through the Cluster are still limited.”

  Their communications consisted of a series of semi-jokingly named “post stations.” Small space stations with crews of fifty or so, the prefab structures maintained a continuous link of automated skip-capable drones that carried messages back to UPA space.

  Well, to the larger station in La-Tar. The exact location of the United Planets Alliance wasn’t well known in the former Kenmiri stars…and the UPA wanted to keep it that way.

  “We do now have a communications link with the Kozun homeworld, so we are aware of the war with the Enteni and the Eerdish,” she said. “Those two homeworlds have formed a defensive alliance, combined with a dependency cluster between them, and have claimed some twenty-five stars.

  “They don’t have the industrial strength to stand against the Hierarchy forever, not once the Kozun get up to speed, but they have the ships and firepower to frustrate Mal Dakis so far.”

  She raised a hand before anyone asked any questions.

  “The decision has already been made that the UPA will not take a side in that war,” she noted. “So far as we are concerned, both the Eerdish-Enteni Alliance and the Kozun Hierarchy are friends. And frankly? While we haven’t yet restored contact with the Alliance’s worlds, we suspect we’re going to like them better than we do the Hierarchy!”

  And they already had an alliance with the Hierarchy.

  Nodding his thanks to her, Rex brought the focus of the virtual conference back to her.

  “The conflict between the Kozun and the Eerdish-Enteni
Alliance is of concern to us,” he reminded his officers. “It is unlikely to spill over onto us, but what information we have received from Initiative scouting efforts suggests that our target is fully aware of the conflict and is heading into E…” Rex snorted. “E-Two space,” he concluded, shortening the name of the alliance.

  “The Drifters wish to use our desire to make peace all around against us. We need to be careful. We also need to be careful not to draw the United Planets Alliance into unnecessary conflict.

  “For the moment, we will remain in La-Tar space while the Peacekeeper Initiative’s ships and communications network attempt to locate our target. A third carrier group is on their way, with a full load of the new GMS fighters for all of our carriers and cruisers.”

  He spread his hands.

  “We will make good use of this time,” he told them firmly. “We will run through exercises and we will use our simulators to train our pilots on the new fighters.”

  “Ser, should we be planning for joint exercises with the Cluster forces?” Cheung asked, Scorpius’s Rear Admiral clearly studying something outside the virtual conference—probably a map of the system.

  “Yes, but on a limited basis,” Rex replied. “We want to give the locals a hand up, but we don’t want to risk revealing too many of our secrets while working with them.” He smiled thinly. “The Cluster are friends, not family.”

  He turned his head, studying each of the twenty-odd officers commanding his ships and starfighter wings, wearing that same thin smile.

  “We have a mission, officers,” he told them. “That mission is the destruction of a clear and present military threat to the UPA. We have been given more than enough resources to complete that mission, regardless of who in the Ra Sector tries to stop us.

  “We will complete our mission. You will be receiving training packages on a task group and squadron level that my staff and I have been working on since we left Sol, to work up your ships for the tactics enabled by the new Lancers.