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

  He was the second-ranked officer of the Initiative, which gave him blanket authority over all deployed Initiative ships. Admiral Sonia Hamilton had yet to move forward from the central Initiative base in the Zion System, on the edge of the UPA, which left him acting as her field commander. That hadn’t changed since he was commanding one of the Initiative’s battlecruisers. Then he’d “just” been the senior Colonel.

  All of which made his relationship with Admiral Rex…complex. It would take some careful dancing to show proper respect to a dramatically senior officer while making sure Rex didn’t attempt to order around the Peacekeeper ships.

  Henry was hunting down the Drifter Convoy for both of them—but the Initiative had a far broader mission out there than Twelfth Fleet did.

  “Thank you for joining me, Commodore,” Admiral Rex greeted Henry as the boarding ceremony began to dissolve. “I appreciate the Peacekeeper Initiative’s assistance in Twelfth Fleet’s mission out here.”

  “Your mission is aligned with ours,” Henry said calmly. “Shall we speak in private?”

  “Of course; my office is waiting,” Rex told him. “You know your way around a Crichton-class?”

  “Enough to find the Admiral’s office and not much more,” Henry admitted with a thin smile. “Panther escorted D’Argo on one mission, but I’ve never actually served on one of them. My time in FighterDiv was aboard Lancelot-class ships.”

  The premier fleet carrier of the UPSF when the Kenmiri had arrived, none of the Lancelots had survived the war. Of the pilots serving on them when the first invasion had begun, only twenty-six had survived the so-called Red Wing Campaign.

  All of them had painted the center of their pilot’s wings red to mark the sacrifice of their fellow pilots—and immediately transferred out of the forward-combat starfighter groups. Henry and Peter Barrie had been the only survivors from their carrier.

  Only eleven were left and only four were still in uniform. Half of the people who’d wear red-centered pilot’s wings were currently in the La-Tar System.

  “Those were good ships,” Rex said grimly. His glance at the single insignia on Henry’s uniform jacket showed his thoughts had gone the same place as Henry’s. “I conned a destroyer at Procyon, Commodore Wong. I’m still breathing because of pilots with that damned red dot.”

  “Not many of us left who were there at the beginning, ser,” Henry said quietly. The war had lasted seventeen years. Outside of the flag ranks and a handful of senior Colonels and noncoms, most of the people who’d started the war were retired, medically discharged, or dead.

  “Some of us have to be, though,” Rex told him. “Some of the younger crew and officers…they never served in combat in their own space. It shows, too often, in my opinion.”

  They reached the door of the Admiral’s office, which slid open to a command from Rex’s internal network.

  “That’s what Twelfth Fleet is about,” Rex said as he gestured Henry in. “Your Peacekeeper Initiative is about helping the people out here. My job, Commodore, is to make sure we never again see enemy warships in the United Planets.”

  It took the office system a minute or so to produce coffee for both flag officers, time Henry took to subtly inspect Admiral Rex’s office. The space was designed on much the same principles as his office aboard Paladin, except for being four times the size.

  Fleet carriers had a lot more space to spare than destroyers, after all.

  The desk and automatic drink equipment were the same, as were the wallscreen and the powered bulkhead that would open to reveal the breakout meeting room. One wall was covered with a bookshelf split into unitized display cases, each of which held a detailed model of a ship.

  Henry recognized several of them, including Aeryn herself, and realized that the models were of each ship that Rex had commanded or flown his flag from. The top left box, however, was for the first portion of Admiral Rex’s career and held…

  Henry had to swallow an outright laugh. The top corner, celebrating Rex’s early days as a GroundDiv officer before becoming a GroundDiv assault transport XO and then a destroyer skipper, held three highly detailed five-centimeter-tall figurines of UPSF power armor—and roughly a dozen simplistic green plastic army men.

  Rex laid the coffees on the desk and grinned broadly.

  “I see you spotted the army men,” he noted. “They were a gift from my last platoon sergeant when I accepted the posting on Bernadette. He said I’d always have backup this way. They’re something of a good luck charm now.”

  “They appear to be doing their job well,” Henry observed. To his knowledge, Rex had never lost a ship in combat.

  “That they are,” Rex agreed. He took a sip of his coffee. “I know you don’t report to me, Commodore, but I was hoping you’d be able to give me a report on what you ran into chasing the Drifters rather than making me wait for the formal papers.”

  “I can do that,” Henry said. He’d expected as much. “It wasn’t a particularly fruitful expedition in a lot of ways. The Drifters were avoiding anywhere we know to be inhabited, and trying every trick in the book to lose us.”

  “Which they failed at,” Rex noted. “That’s impressive, Commodore.”

  “The Cataphracts have an improved sensor suite over even the Significances, ser,” Henry pointed out. “I don’t think the Drifters expected us to have the resolution or patience that we did. We held their trail until they hit Eerdish space, as per the standing orders regarding the Eerdish-Enteni Alliance.”

  “Starting to call them the E-Two around here,” Rex said. “But that makes sense. The Drifters guessed we’d tread lightly around the E-Two, though?”

  “Not really guessing,” Henry said. “They know us. Better than anyone, I think. We relied on Drifter support through the entire war. Research, tech, fuel, munitions—all of it came from Drifter Convoys for a lot of our operations.

  “We didn’t work much with Blue Stripe Green Stripe Orange Stripe, but they were all of a one when we had subspace coms.” He shrugged. “I think the loss of the subspace network hurt them more than anyone else.”

  “So, they have a detailed psych profile on the UPA, you figure,” Rex said.

  “Basically. They knew we wouldn’t risk an incident with the E-Two,” Henry said. “In hindsight, we should have figured they’d use that against us and gone out with a diplomatic contingent.”

  He shrugged.

  “By the time I hit La-Tar again, we knew we were too damn far behind them to waste more time,” he admitted. “Hindsight is twenty-twenty, but I think if I’d stopped to pick up a Cluster diplomatic team, I might have lost the trail entirely.”

  “Not my place to judge your choices, Commodore,” Rex noted. “That’s on Admiral Hamilton—and God help you.”

  Henry chuckled.

  “The Admiral and I go a long way back,” he said. “It won’t be the first strip of skin she’s torn off me if she decides I was wrong.”

  He doubted it would go that far. It was a question of judgment, always, and he’d made a call. It had made sense at the time, and he knew that would be enough for Hamilton.

  “What may be relevant to Twelfth Fleet is that we ran into something interesting,” Henry told Rex. He transferred the files on the Drifter scout ship from his internal network to the Admiral’s network.

  “The Drifters seem to have at least one Kenmiri ship of a style that’s not in our files,” he said. “I’d almost say she was built as a commerce raider, except the pre-Fall Kenmiri would never have needed one of those.

  “She makes a good sentinel and scout, as we saw, though they underestimated both the speed and the sensor range of my Cataphracts. We ran her down and disabled her, but her crew self-destructed her before we could capture her.”

  A hologram of the ship appeared above Rex’s desk and the Admiral studied it in silence for a few moments.

  “Self-destructing is outside of normal Drifter protocols,” he noted.

  “They’ve been known to do
it,” Henry countered. “During the war, I saw it happen at least once when they were determined to make sure the Kenmiri didn’t connect them back to their Convoy.

  “They needed to make sure the Kenmiri thought they were neutral.”

  “While they were stabbing the Empire in the back,” Rex said quietly. “Golden Lancelot would have been impossible without the Drifters. They were the only people who saw enough of what was going on to realize what we were doing.

  “The rest of the Vesheron were like us field officers: they knew the part they were involved in. But the Drifters…they knew we were committing genocide. And they made it possible.

  “Against people who thought they were reliable allies.”

  “It’s a bit damning when you look at it that way, isn’t it?” Henry asked. He shook his head. “It’s easy to accept treachery when it’s against something as clearly monstrous as the Kenmiri Empire was to us, but then I have to worry about what they’re doing now.”

  “We’ll know more when this is over, one way or another,” Rex promised. “My orders are to neutralize the BGO Convoy as a threat by whatever means necessary. This ends with GroundDiv troopers on BGO ships, Commodore—because while God knows I will not be involved in another genocide, I also trust these people as far as I can throw this carrier!”

  “I can’t argue that point, ser,” Henry agreed. “What does our next step look like?”

  “The plan hasn’t changed, Commodore. We need to locate the Convoy and then we take Twelfth Fleet against them.” Rex shook his head grimly. “The assessments I’ve seen of the E-Two tell me that Twelfth Fleet can take them—and Ambassador Todorovich’s reports suggest that if it comes to that, the Kozun will gladly work with us.”

  “That is not the plan,” Henry said. Starting a war with the Eerdish-Enteni Alliance—the E-Two—would be directly counter to the Peacekeeper Initiative’s goals.

  “No, it’s not,” Rex agreed. “But if it comes down to it, Commodore Wong, my orders are clear. The betrayal of a diplomatic summit and the attack on our ambassador must be punished. We want to be friends with the E-Two.

  “But if they refuse to allow us to pursue the people who attacked Raven and Ambassador Todorovich into their space, they will be brushed aside with whatever force is necessary.”

  Chapter Eleven

  The Peacekeeper Initiative Compound on La-Tar was a fortified camp roughly thirty kilometers outside the city limits of La-Tar. When Henry and Commander Alex Thompson had selected the location, there had been exactly two criteria: firstly, to put it far enough away that they weren’t imposing on the sovereignty of their ally—and secondly, to make very certain that the city of five million souls was under the protective umbrella of the surface-to-space missile batteries that guarded the Compound.

  The prefabricated defensive installations still loomed over the rest of the compound. Adding to the loom factor was one of the Kozun Guardian platforms that the locals had captured and loaned to the Initiative. The surface-to-space laser on the platform had proven capable of burning through even the gravity shield of a UPSF battlecruiser that dared to enter planetary orbit.

  Henry had vivid memories of that particular experience. He was delighted to see one of the big mobile guns on his side.

  The area between the two sets of surface-to-space weaponry was filled with a walled compound. The walls were nanocrete, preprogrammed forms assembled from local materials and compressed to withstand nukes. There were no weapons visible on the walls or the corner towers, but Henry knew they were there.

  The UPSF Ground Division was still only lightly supplied with energy weapons. While most of the former Kenmiri slave worlds could manufacture energy sidearms and rifles, humanity was barely able to get their energy weapons down to man-portable sizes.

  Still, the antiaircraft cannon that tracked the approach of Henry’s shuttle were energy weapons, pulsed lasers that would shred the atmospheric craft’s armor in seconds, and the guards that met him on the surface were equipped with plasma carbines.

  Drifter-manufactured plasma carbines. Bought, in fact, from the BGO Convoy before the summit they’d betrayed.

  Henry hoped the guns had been inspected very closely before being issued. Shoving that aside, however, he returned the soldiers’ salutes and gave Lieutenant Colonel Alex Thompson a firm handshake.

  “Welcome to the La-Tar Peacekeeper Initiative Compound,” Thompson told him. The big blond trooper could have stepped out of a recruiting poster. He was also directly involved in saving Sylvia Todorovich’s life after the Drifters had destroyed the ship they’d both been aboard.

  Henry had a lot of warm feelings for the man who’d commanded his GroundDiv contingent aboard Raven.

  “That’s a mouthful,” he noted. “It came together pretty quickly in the end, I see.”

  “GroundDiv can throw together a forward logistics depot in under twelve hours,” Thompson pointed out as he gestured for Henry to follow him. “Minimal fortified fire base in three. You gave us a week, ser.”

  Henry chuckled as he looked around. Prefabricated buildings were set up in neat rows, subdivided into streets and blocks by a clear grid pattern. There were even street signs.

  “I’m guessing the troopers don’t call it the La-Tar Peacekeeper Initiative Compound?” he asked.

  “L-Pick,” Thompson said instantly. “The locals are lucky the troops like them. No one has come up with anything scatological for La-Tar or the Cluster itself yet. Not that I’ve heard, anyway.”

  “I’m hoping this will be a boring deployment,” Henry said. “And they have lots of time to change that.”

  “So far, the Cluster seems to have all of their planets well in hand,” the GroundDiv officer told him. “We were asked to provide some drones to round up the last stragglers of the Kozun special ops on Tano so we could send the buggers home. That’s…it.”

  “Quiet. I like quiet,” Henry replied. “If only the SpaceDiv side was looking that way.”

  “Rumor has it the Kozun are playing games with their promise to reinforce Twelfth Fleet,” Thompson said. “Any truth to that?”

  “Nothing that anyone has included in formal reports,” Henry said. “I’ll probably get an earful from Em Todorovich in our meetings later if that is the case, though.”

  It probably was. His first independent command had been supporting the Kozun Vesheron as they fought for their homeworld’s freedom. He knew the Kozun—and he knew Mal Dakis, their leader.

  The only Kozun he would have trusted without question was dead. The Drifters were going to pay for that…but even with that, he wasn’t going to trust Mal Dakis or Mal Dakis’s government further than he could throw their planet.

  “My people are running security at the embassy, so we’ve had a few brushes with the Kozun embassy security,” Thompson said after a moment. “They’re on their best behavior, but those commandos still think they own the place.”

  “Any problems?”

  “Nothing that made it to my ears, so it’s been dealt with by my Chiefs and theirs.” Thompson grunted. “Whatever they call their Chiefs, anyway.”

  “We need to be on our best behavior with them, too,” Henry noted. “Consider it a project, Colonel.”

  “I already do,” his subordinate replied. “Sooner or later, we get everyone talking to each other and having dance parties, right?”

  “Something like that,” Henry chuckled.

  “As for the other project, everything’s ready,” Thompson told him.

  “Oh?”

  “You have a car and driver waiting for you,” the GroundDiv officer said. “The driver has the locations of three top-tier florists in her GPS, and I already made a reservation with the best restaurant in town.”

  He coughed delicately.

  “My officers and I tested it out a few days ago; they live up to their reputation,” he noted. “They understand the security parameters and were decent at coordinating with our detail. Once you’re done with your meetings,
we’ll try and keep security quiet.”

  Henry nodded and sighed.

  “That’s the best you can do, I know,” he said. “Arranging a date in these circumstances takes effort and help. Which I appreciate tremendously. Thank you, Alex.”

  “You and the Ambassador are good for each other, ser,” Thompson replied as they reached the armored car waiting for Henry. “I’m glad to see you both happy.”

  With one final salute, Henry was on his way into the city.

  Chapter Twelve

  If Henry had entertained any doubts about the mix of respect and affection that the assorted UPSF personnel assigned to him held him in, their near-unanimous support and assistance with his dating Ambassador Sylvia Todorovich would have laid them to rest.

  The driver, a GroundDiv Petty Officer Second Class, not only had the location of a florist included in the car’s route to the embassy, she’d also looked up flower color meanings both locally and in Russian culture.

  With the able assistance of both PO Hailie De Angelis and the local florist—who Henry was certain had undercharged him for the flowers—he’d assembled a bouquet of thirteen deep red local flowers.

  La-Tar apparently had quite the tradition of flower-gifting, as detailed as any he’d encountered on Earth, and the florist had insisted on layering the red roses with a local white wildflower that set off the crimson gloriously.

  Henry wasn’t even sure that Sylvia Todorovich liked flowers. It had been an instinctive thought on his part—one that had been reinforced when De Angelis had spent the drive to the flower shop filling him in on Russian traditions and rules around flower-gifting.

  As the car pulled into the embassy, he reflected that even if she didn’t like flowers, it was still hard to go wrong with a gift. He was surprised, though, by how nervous he felt. He’d taken a single battlecruiser into the teeth of a Kenmiri dreadnought squadron with more calm than he felt facing his girlfriend after several weeks apart.