The Service of Mars Read online

  “Assuming it exists.”

  She shook her head at the map of the system as one of her drones disappeared.

  “They’re getting better at watching for us, but they’re not going to catch us this time,” she told her people. “Once we’re out of here, we’ll want to go over everything they did—so we can make sure they don’t catch us next time.”

  9

  Grim-faced Protectorate Secret Service agents in clean-cut suits flanked the door as Mage-Admiral Alexander waited for her “guests.” Roslyn, standing at the Admiral’s left hand, was intimidated by the deadly bodyguards, and she knew the men and women around her.

  It probably didn’t hurt that she knew how terrifyingly deadly the sleek-looking carbines the agents carried were. She didn’t know how anyone had managed to compress the energy of an exosuit-carried battle rifle down into a man-portable carbine, but she wouldn’t want to be on the wrong end of the discarding-sabot tungsten penetrator rounds the carbines fired.

  They were designed to take down people in two-meter suits of armor, after all.

  Durendal wasn’t really designed for this kind of event, but few ships were. They’d created a reasonable approximation of a royal court, and Marines escorted the uniformed Republic commander across the floor of the shuttle bay to Mage-Admiral Alexander.

  He was a heavyset man with heavy jowls and a thick epicanthic fold to his eyes—and he was clearly exhausted as he stopped a precise ten feet from her and saluted crisply.

  “Admiral Alexander, I am Admiral Emerson Wang of the Republic Interstellar Navy,” he introduced himself quietly. “I am here to offer the unconditional surrender of the RIN forces in this system.”

  That wasn’t much at this point. The carrier survived as a crippled hulk, but every battleship had been destroyed before Wang had finally ordered his ships to stand down.

  “But not, I see, of the system itself,” Alexander said flatly.

  “Technically, Admiral, I have no authority to even surrender the orbital forts,” Wang admitted. “Their commanders were inclined to follow my lead, thankfully, rather than suffer unnecessary deaths.”

  “The fact that those forts are incomplete and have no offensive weapons likely contributed to their common sense, yes?” the Admiral asked.

  “Yes,” the Republican officer agreed. “My duty was to stop you here, Admiral Alexander. I did my best. I failed…but I have no authority over this system’s government or local forces.”

  “And if I were to proceed to bombard the surface to reduce their resistance?”

  The room was silent. Roslyn was reasonably sure the Admiral wouldn’t do that—but she was also sure that most of the Marines securing the room weren’t. The small cluster of Republican officers with Wang definitely didn’t know the Admiral that well.

  “By what limited rules this war has been fought under, I suppose that is your right,” Wang allowed. “From my encounter with your Lord Regent, however, I suspect that even royal blood would not protect you from Damien Montgomery’s wrath if you did not do everything within your power to avoid that.”

  “You are not incorrect there,” Alexander said, Roslyn spotting the tiniest crack of a smile. “I had not made the connection. You were the Admiral who attempted to stop Montgomery’s relief expedition at Kormar?”

  “I was,” Wang conceded. “A set of orders I found objectionable then and haven’t seen any justification for since.” He shrugged. “I have done worse things since, I suppose.”

  “You know what drives your starships,” Alexander said flatly.

  “And I know that your bloodline represents the ultimate victory of the enemy both our ancestors strove against,” the Admiral told her. “I am a prisoner of war and I recognize both defeat and the reprehensible actions of my nation, but do not expect me to concede that I am on the wrong side here, Your Highness.”

  The room was very quiet now. Even Roslyn was holding her breath.

  “Regardless of wrong or right, Admiral Wang, your knowledge and assistance could ease the surrender of Sucre’s government and avoid further bloodshed,” Alexander told him.

  “You overestimate what is left to me,” Wang said. “And while I may be a prisoner, I am no traitor. You will get nothing from me.”

  “Very well,” Alexander said flatly. “You and your officers and the rest of the prisoners will be interviewed as appropriate, but you will be treated fairly, as prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions.”

  She smiled thinly.

  “A better treatment, I think we both know, than even civilian Mages received at the hands of your fleets.”

  “What’s the status of the planetary defenses?” Alexander asked as she and Roslyn returned to the flag bridge. “Has the local government said anything yet?”

  “Does launching surface-to-orbit missiles count?” Kulkarni replied. “We had a few of the destroyers head in close to make sure we disabled the fortresses, and they were fired on. More of a warning shot than an actual attempt to take down the ships, but they were making a point.”

  “Wonderful,” the Admiral replied as she took her seat.

  Roslyn wouldn’t have wanted Alexander’s tone addressed to her. It was acidic enough to etch glass.

  Her own console was giving her much the same update as the Admiral would be looking at. Second Fleet was trailing Sucre’s orbit by eight light-seconds, inside long range for lasers and amplified magic from the starships but well outside the range of any planet-based weapons.

  “Do we know what kind of defenses we’re looking at?” Alexander asked after a moment.

  They’d managed to neutralize Wang’s fleet without losing any ships, but Roslyn knew over half of the fleet had taken some level of damage. The only badly damaged ships were the two cruisers hammered in the opening salvos, but a lot of ships were suffering various degrees of minor damage.

  “What they fired at our destroyers were standard single-drive fusion surface-to-orbit weapons,” Kulkarni said. “They wouldn’t be a threat at long range, but if we get close enough, we don’t have the time to really counter them.”

  “And I presume we don’t have anything resembling a complete listing of their launch sites,” the Admiral guessed.

  “No, sir. We have three dialed in from their warning shots, but…”

  “I’d also presume those are too close to population centers for long-range bombardment?”

  “Yes, sir,” Kulkarni confirmed. “If we take the time, we can locate probably ninety to ninety-five percent of their launch sites, but it will take several days to be certain we’ve got most of them.”

  “And even then, the Republic used population centers to cover their launch sites on Legatus,” Alexander noted. “I doubt they’ll have hesitated to do the same on somewhere that wasn’t their capital.”

  The flag deck was silent for an extended period, then Alexander sighed.

  “Start the search, Kulkarni,” she ordered. “If it comes to it, I will deal with any platforms too close to cities. If they think the Protectorate is limited to our conventional arsenals to deal with their use of human shields, we will teach them the error of their ways.”

  “Of course, Mage-Admiral.”

  “Chambers.”

  Roslyn started and turned to face the Admiral.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Work with Durendal’s communications team,” Alexander ordered. “I want you to set up a call between myself and whoever is in charge down there. You talk to the staff yourself, get me a face-to-face video.

  “I doubt it’s going to work, but I will be damned if I embrace invasion or bombardment without at least talking to these idiots.”

  It took Roslyn over an hour of trying just to finally manage to get a member of the Governor’s staff on a channel. The middle-aged man on the feed didn’t appear able to decide between ogling her chest and looking down his nose at her.

  “I am Silvius Gražina Gallo,” he informed her, “deputy chief of staff to Governor Hans So
uth Isle. Anything your ‘fleet’ needs to say to the Governor can be said to me, and I will pass it on if necessary.”

  If necessary.

  Roslyn forced a smile. It was probably obviously fake and that didn’t bother her in the slightest.

  “Mr. Gallo, my Admiral is going to speak to Governor South Isle,” she told him. “There is, in fact, only one set of circumstances under which Her Highness will not be speaking to the Governor, and that is one we should both be hoping to avoid.”

  “Governor South Isle will not legitimize the unlawful use of force by the thugs of a government that has no authority here,” Gallo explained, slowly, as if speaking to a child. Roslyn bit her tongue, since the sixteen-second time delay meant she couldn’t shut him up, anyway.

  “He has no intention of speaking to anyone from your fleet. Nueva Bolivia does not acknowledge the authority of Mars.”

  “No one is asking you to, Mr. Gallo,” Roslyn said, her own tone equally slow. “What you must do is acknowledge that it is within the capacity of Second Fleet not only to reduce your remaining defenses to rubble but to literally destroy your world.

  “The only way Admiral Alexander is not going to speak to Governor South Isle is if Governor South Isle is dead,” she said flatly, noting that Gallo was trying to interrupt her—sixteen seconds too late. “Either you and I can set up a meeting now that will permit at least some hope of a nonviolent resolution to this conflict, or this will end in fire from on high and the deaths of, at a minimum, thousands of your soldiers.”

  “We will not be threatened!” Gallo was responding barely halfway through Roslyn’s spiel, so she calmly waited for her full threat to register.

  “You may be barbarians,” he finally concluded, “but we remain modern citizens of a modern world. We acknowledge nothing.”

  “Are you so certain, Mr. Gallo, that your Governor is willing to sacrifice his life and the lives of the citizens he is sworn to protect, that you will refuse to even let him make his own decisions?” Roslyn asked. “Just as I do not fully speak for Her Highness Mage-Admiral Alexander, you do not fully speak for Governor South Isle.

  “Shouldn’t the choice of whether or not to speak to the Admiral be his?”

  “He has made his decision,” Gallo proclaimed.

  “I suggest you double-check with him,” Roslyn said. “Not everyone, after all, fully realizes that a single antimatter warhead would crack a planetary crust like an egg. Reflection can often change people’s minds.”

  She could see the moment her metaphor struck home as Gallo’s sun-darkened skin paled and he finally fully stopped eyeing her breasts.

  “Ask the Governor, Mr. Gallo, if he will speak with Her Highness the Mage-Admiral,” she suggested softly. “I believe that is your job, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t recall authorizing you to threaten world-cracking,” Alexander said mildly as she settled behind her desk, waiting for the call with Governor South Isle to start.

  “I didn’t,” Roslyn, standing one step to the left and back from the Admiral’s chair, replied. “I simply pointed out that most civilians don’t consider the fact that any warship has that capability when deciding to be stubborn.”

  The Mage-Admiral checked the indicators on her desk and shook her head.

  “It worked, so I won’t complain, but perhaps we should be handling the enemy civilians a bit more gently?” she suggested. “Though from the replay of the call I rushed through, I’m not sure anything less would have sufficed.”

  “The dirty old man wouldn’t stop staring at my tits until I shocked him out of it,” Roslyn grumbled under her breath.

  “He wasn’t taking you seriously, I know,” Alexander agreed. “And I didn’t leave you with anyone to escalate to, because I half-figured that was the kind of shit they’d pull. Well done, Chambers…but let’s try and find a shock threat somewhere below breaking worlds like eggs for next time, shall we?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The screen flickered to life with the crossed cannons over alpaca rampant coat of arms of Nueva Bolivia. The coat of arms filled the screen for several seconds and then was replaced with a formal office with a massive stone desk, behind which sat a tall man in his late thirties with a thick shock of blond hair.

  “I am Governor Hans South Isle,” he announced. Two suited women stood immediately behind him, much as Roslyn and Kulkarni flanked Mage-Admiral Alexander, and a fancily uniformed guard stood at each side of the desk.

  “I am the democratically elected leader of the Nueva Bolivia System under the constitutions of both Nueva Bolivia and the Republic of Faith and Reason. We do not acknowledge the authority of the Mountain of Mars to dictate here.

  “The presence of your vessels here is unlawful and unwelcome. You will withdraw.”

  “That’s a nice position to take, Governor,” Alexander replied, letting the man say his full piece before she replied. “But it fails to recognize that the Republic of Faith and Reason launched an unprovoked and unannounced war on the Protectorate of Mars. I claim no authority here by right of fealty, South Isle. We freely concede the Secession of Nueva Bolivia.

  “But in that secession, Nueva Bolivia joined a state with which we are at war. And under the Geneva Conventions, I am required to refrain from the use of weapons of mass destruction and to do all within my power to seek your surrender before proceeding with a planetary invasion.”

  Roslyn could see the mirror of Alexander’s cold smile on the screen showing Hans South Isle.

  “I’ll admit that’s an interpretation, but it is one the Royal Martian Navy holds dear, one that we feel honors the spirit of that agreement,” she told him. “I claim no authority but that of a victorious enemy, Governor. I now control the Nueva Bolivia System.

  “The only question that remains is how much damage will be inflicted on Sucre and her people before I control Sucre as well. I would vastly prefer to negotiate the peaceful surrender of your defenses and your world.

  “Sucre will be occupied by units of the newly formed Protectorate Guard and disarmed until such time as the Republic of Faith and Reason surrenders and ends this war,” Alexander told him. “This is not negotiable. Nueva Bolivia will play no further part in this damned war, one way or another.”

  South Isle waited patiently to hear her full spiel in turn, then sighed and squared his shoulders to face the camera.

  “You can claim whatever you wish,” he told her, “but I will not bow to Mars. There will be no surrender, Admiral. Sucre is out of this war now, we both know it, but I will not yield the world I am sworn to defend to you.

  “Do what you must, Admiral Alexander, but know that the people of Nueva Bolivia will never surrender.”

  10

  It was a quiet meeting of flag officers that Roslyn served coffee to several hours later. Only two of the Mage-Admirals were actually aboard Durendal, as Mage-Admiral Marangoz’s battleship flagship was in easy flying distance of the dreadnought.

  The other Mage-Admirals were on their ships, linked in by radio communication in near-real-time. The other people Roslyn was serving coffee to included Mage-Captain Sahar Jamshidi, Durendal’s commanding officer, and General Prasert Bunnag, the senior Guard officer with Second Fleet.

  “The Governor will not surrender,” Alexander said flatly. “Which means we need to consider our options. I am not, in case anyone thought this was an option, prepared to consider mass bombardment to force Sucre’s surrender.

  “Mage-Captain Kulkarni, we now have a scan process in place to locate the surface defences?” she asked.

  Roslyn knew Alexander knew the answer to that question—but the rest of the officers did not.

  “We do,” Kulkarni confirmed. “We have deployed two squadrons of destroyers and forty-eight drones in a sphere around Sucre. Interlacing their scans, we are searching for signs of energy generation and similar evidence of concealed facilities.

  “Unfortunately, we can’t guarantee that any concealed facility we locate is actua
lly a weapons station,” she said levelly. “We can be reasonably certain of detecting as many as ninety percent of the enemy defensive positions, but we are also likely to see as high as a ten percent rate of false positives.

  “In addition to the false positives, we also have seen that Republic doctrine calls for installing a portion of their defenses in or near populated areas,” she continued. “This ended up not being a factor at Legatus, as the Lord Protector’s flight undermined morale sufficiently to lead to the planet’s surrender.

  “Here, it seems we aren’t going to get that lucky.”

  “It is possible that a sufficient reduction in their defenses may result in a change of mind on Governor South Isle’s part,” Alexander noted. “The old phrasing was a practical breach. Once we have opened a gap in the defenses, one that we can safely launch an invasion through, that may focus some minds.”

  “We will need that gap regardless,” General Bunnag said. He was a small and dark-skinned man from Earth itself. “Any attempt to land major forces in the face of anti-orbital defenses will be a disaster.”

  “I agree,” the Admiral said. “There will be no attempt to land the Guard before we have cleared a practical landing zone. As we continue to identify enemy defensive positions, our focus will be on locating an area where we can remove enough defenses to land the Guard Army Groups without opposition.”

  Silence swept over the room again as every eye focused on General Bunnag. As recently as six weeks before, as Roslyn understood it, Prasert Bunnag had been a general in the Unified Security Forces of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations on Earth.

  “General, I think you and I may be the only people here completely familiar with the structure and nature of the Protectorate Guard,” Alexander said into that silence. “Could you brief my flag officers on what the Guard is—and how many soldiers we’re likely to be able to deploy to secure Sucre?”