Opening Moves (32 page)

“
Our pleasure
,” Captain Natara replied.

The Republics' society was matriarchal, a fact also owing to the reality of females outnumbering the male Érenni population by a factor of two. Tarek hadn't been surprised to hear their savior was a female officer. “
You helped evacuate refugees from the planet; it was an honor to assist you
.”

The PERISAI's warp field vanished from the MAIDEN's sensors. They were the last friendly ship to have come from this vector. The next vessels expected to enter this system were the fleets of the Ashani.

It was a chilling thought, and for Tarek not something he wanted to stick around for. The defense grid around Akvô was incredibly powerful, dwarfing even the frontier defenses at Senfina. But after witnessing how quickly the Ashani had broken through there, Tarek and his crew took no comfort or security behind the walls of guns and mines. “Once again Captain, you have our thanks,” he said sincerely, then ended the transmission. “All right Alexej , take us into orbit. We'll dock at the main spaceport and unload our passengers. Llyr, could you tell them to be ready to leave?”

The Tuathaan translator nodded and then made his way back to the passenger compartments tell the Érenni refugees in their own language that they were now home. Tarek praised God that the damage to that part of the MAIDEN had been minimal. The last thing he had wanted was to ferry around the corpses of two thousand women and children, knowing he had failed them.

“So we drop the passengers and go?” Rául wondered.

Alexej chuckled mirthlessly. “No way, mate. We need to fix the engines and the M-O generators
and
stock up on reaction mass, and preferably in that order.”

“
What's the bad news?” Tarek sighed, knowing it would be unpleasant.

Repairs to the ship were taken from a fund pooled by the whole crews' profits. Running the ship was extremely expensive and usually accounted for half the cost of a standard job. They were probably lucky the fees the Érenni had been paying were much greater than their usual fare, but even so the costs today were going to be substantial.

“Engine controls are fried, and two of the four M-O compensators are burnt out,” Alexej said. “We've lost the primary portside sensors and got damage to the spinal ones, too. Aside from that we've got holes in the hull you could swim through and I've probably got to re-torque every single screw on this rust bucket just to be on the safe side.”

“
Give me some numbers.”

“
We need a full replacement of the engine control module plus replacement parts for the thrusters. Three million if we're lucky, five if we're not. Getting Malenkov-Okudas that fit in our hull this far off human space will be the tricky part. Ten million if we find the right parts, six or seven if we've got to cobble something together from off the shelf stuff, which'll take us longer. Add another million for hull and sensors and a checkup on internal integrity. So, ten million on the lower end, sixteen when we go for the premium.”

“
What?” Rául exclaimed with bulging eyes. “We could buy a new ship for that!”

“
But it wouldn't be as good,” Annie shrugged quietly. “It wouldn't be the MAIDEN.”

“
This ship's soldiered on for almost thirty years. We go and fix it,” Tarek nodded. “Everyone pays an equal stake in the cost.”

“
No way!” Rául shouted in protest. “That's like two and a half million creds each, man! That's almost all of our profits!”

“
We signed a deal, Rául: the ship comes first!”

“
I say we scrap it and walk away with the cash.”

Tarek grabbed the younger man tightly by the shoulder. “This ship saved our lives, you ungrateful little fuck! There isn't another ship in the galaxy that could've done the same things this little freighter has. We
will
fix her, because we are still a long way from home and this ship is still our only chance of living through this invasion.
Am I clear
?”

Rául held Tarek's gaze with a frown, then nodded in acknowledgment of the dire situation. “The Érenni should fix us for free,” he muttered sourly.

“Yeah, well, I hate to break it to you but they've got a war to fund now. I doubt they're in the mood to hand ten million creds to a bunch of aliens,” Tarek shrugged. “How long do we think it will take, Alexej?”

“
To do it right?” the MAIDEN'S tall pilot scowled. “Three months. To get us patched up enough for a home journey, about a fortnight. But that means only the Malenkov-Okudas will have seen any work. We'll be down to about forty percent of our normal max speed in normal space, and I wouldn't advise to push us into higher bands in the fold either.”

“
But we don't have even a day!” Rául cried. “The Dominion's going to sweep in here like they did before, and this time we are trapped!”

“
Damn it, quit whining, just this once,” Tarek frowned. “We'll patch the engines enough to get us out of the war zone, then we'll take some time to get our ship back to new. This isn't a debate.”

“
We should catch the first transport home,” Rául sulked.

“
There aren't going to be any transports home,” Annie pointed out in her usual calm demeanor. “Anyone with half a working brain will be long gone by now. Only a complete fool would come here on the eve of an invasion.”

“
Or someone really greedy, like us,” Tarek sighed with a weary smile. “In hindsight, we should've just stuck to shifting industrial parts to Kepler in Proxima.”

“
Well, at least even after repairs we'll still be fairly rich,” Alexej pointed out. “Enough to make this still profitable. And on the plus side, we ain't dead yet.”

“
Always a positive,” Annie agreed.

Tarek leaned back in his chair as Alexej slowly had the MAIDEN decelerate towards the planet. It'd still be hours until they arrived. He closed his eyes and...

...a shudder running through the ship had him fully awake again. Blinking his eyes, trying to find his bearings again his gaze shot back and forth across the bridge before his heart beat slowly calmed down again. The time on the chronometer on the console right in front of him had jumped hours ahead. Outside the blue orb of Akvô filled the viewports. The ship moved into position above the planet and closed on a spaceport, the huge, sprawling orbital structure extending for kilometers in all directions. Slowly the freighter aligned with an extended docking tube and clamped on. A light switched to green on the control panel, indicating they had a secure seal.

“
Let's get the passengers off, people. I'm sure they're as glad to be here as we are,” Tarek rubbed his eyes. “And then we'd better do something about those repairs.”

“
And quickly,” Rául pressed. “I don't wanna have to go through all that escaping again.”

Chicago, Capital of the North American Union

3
rd
Week of July 2797 C.E.

Weighing the tablet in her hands President Jennifer Solwyn took her time with the report on the developing situation on the other side of the galactic arm. She had these kinds of meetings appraising the interstellar situation every day. When things were quiet in the neighborhood they usually consisted of nothing but a list of bullet points about domestic developments in nations or star systems the Union had diplomatic missions or economic designs in, each point linked to actions – send a greeting on some holiday as was expected by a friendly head of state – in turn. To streamline the process and lessen the administrative workload the President conducted this daily business on a secure comm with the Secretary of State.

This was no such occasion. The outbreak of war between multi-system powers demanded a different appraisal; and besides the SECSTATE and the head of the Union's intelligence service, the highest serving officer of the Union's military had joined her in person. “That's some rather specific data your sources have been able to gather. Well done, Mr. Campbell.”

The head of the NAU's
Central Security Directorate
nodded in acknowledgment. “Our sources in Érenni space are pretty effective, Madam President. One of our best field agents is out there now, plus we receive a lot of data from civilian ships selling their flight data.”

“
People actually do that?” Secretary of State Randolph asked, his eyebrows skeptically raised. “I always thought that was something only found in those 'secret agent' feeds on the net.”

“
You'd be surprised how much Reuters or any other newsfeed agency would pay for good combat footage,” Campbell smiled slyly. “And it seems this battle was the biggest thing in a century or two. Given that this time period includes such things like the Ukhuri Rebellion and that big war the Rasenni fought, well...” He left if to each of them to reach their own conclusions.

“
I've got some of our best analysts looking over the footage.” The chairman of the Union's Joint Chiefs of Staff and senior officer of all branches of the Union's military, General James Alistair Ulysses, spoke up. “We're looking for weaknesses in the Dominion's tactics and technologies, observing their firepower and investigating whether or not they can be considered a likely threat to us.”

“
Our position is one of caution,” the CSD's director looked at the President. “We know they're highly aggressive, and while we're still trying to ascertain what actually happened to the colony, the preliminary results don't look good. In general, we've got limited data and are still looking at an incomplete picture.”

“
Planetary annihilation,” Randolph observed darkly, pointing at the holographic representation of the Érenni colony at Senfina. “They've killed every living thing down there."

“
As I indicated, we are still working on the specifics, Madam President.” Campbell glared at Randolph. The two men came from opposite ends of the political and professional spectrum.

Campbell looked back on six decades as a spook
. He was a cold and analytical man who wouldn't make any statement until he was utterly sure it was correct. For him, information was the only real medium. Emotions and opinions were irrelevant, especially where decisions playing with the lives of others were concerned. Quite frankly, if it didn't have cold hard facts behind it, it wasn't worth talking about, not to the national leadership.

Randolph on the other hand was a man of beliefs and convictions, a typical political animal. He looked at a larger picture and tried to gauge what the thoughts and emotions behind the actions he saw were. Humanitarian interventions, grand gestures to encourage foreign and domestic goodwill, holding the moral high ground against alien species; these points came as easy to him as breathing air.

To Jennifer Solwyn these two opposite views had turned out to be quite useful, with each using very different methods to come to a conclusion, sometimes even the same one. In this case it was to agree that the Ashani Dominion would, ultimately, be a strategic threat to Earth and the Union. “Anything from the Érenni government?”

“
Nothing, Madam President. They're still in utter turmoil. Their ambassador was barely coherent when I asked her for a statement. It's hit her pretty hard,” Randolph reported. “From what we understand they're trying to invoke the Pact's mutual defense treaty, but it seems their fellow worlds are less than willing to help.”

“
Are you kidding?” Solwyn said with a hint of shocked disbelief. “The Pact isn't going to protect the Érenni? But they're a founding member!”

Randolph shrugged uncomfortably. “The Tuathaan Clanholds might, but no one else has offered to send ships, at least not yet.”

“But I thought they were supposed to be an alliance, right? I mean, if one Pact world is attacked all the others respond. Isn't that the point of having a damn system like the Pact in the first place?!”

“
That's the general theory, but it seems the facts are a little bit more complicated,” Campbell answered this time. “The way we understand the legal ramifications, the common defense clause in the Pact's charter is geared against the Rasenni Empire. They've historically been the great territorial threat the members of the Pact have faced. Nobody's bothered to update the charter because nobody's wanted to relinquish any degree of sovereignty. Despite what the treaties say, we don't predict the Pact will unite, at least not until it's potentially too late for the Érenni. Some are overconfident and think the Dominion won't try to tackle them. Others are just plain scared and hope to remain unnoticed. It comes down to none of them wanting a war, and certainly not with a committed opponent like the Ashani.
Especially
not after they've shown what they can do in this opening round.”

“
The Dominion's hit the Pact and broken it into its component pieces,” SECSTATE Randolph pointed out with distaste. “It was to be expected without a strong, guiding force behind them. They just don't have the same moral fiber we humans do. They lack the sense of working for a better future and the greater good.”