The Oncoming Storm (38 page)

“Aye, Captain,” Roach said.

Kat forced herself to relax. She’d done all she could. All they could do now was keep running to Cadiz—and pray to God they got there in time.

She accessed her implants, then linked directly to Davidson. “I want you to carry a message to the CO on the ground,” she subvocalized. “He needs to be informed that his garrison may come under heavy attack.”

“Understood,” Davidson said. There was a pause. “Do you want to disembark my company?”

“I don’t know,” Kat said, honestly. If Cadiz was about to come under attack, the defenders would need all the help they could get. But unless the situation was better than she thought, she would be sending Davidson and his men to certain death. “Do you believe it’s necessary?”

“They’ll need support, Captain,” Davidson said. He sounded solidly confident, although he rarely sounded excited or nervous. “And there is a Planetary Defense Center on the surface. The bastards couldn’t just flatten the planet from orbit.”

Not all of it, Kat thought. But the insurgents would probably tip the scales against the Commonwealth garrison. Poor bastards.

“Leave one platoon of Marines on the ship,” Kat ordered. “You may deploy the remainder of your force to the surface.”

She hoped, as she closed the channel, that she hadn’t made a deadly mistake.

Admiral Junayd listened absently as the cleric harangued his men, telling them of the virtues of fighting the infidel and the rewards each man could expect if he died in combat against the Theocracy’s deadliest foe. Thankfully, the cleric was smart enough not to insist the men drop everything to listen, particularly as the fleet was readying itself for departure. He merely spoke through the communications network, trusting that those who had no immediate tasks would listen.

Junayd allowed himself a tight smile. They might have been caught by surprise, but the crews had responded very well. It had been barely fifty minutes since the enemy craft had vanished into hyperspace, but his ships and crews were ready to depart already. He’d sent messages to the homeworld, warning of the outbreak of war, and messages into the Commonwealth, activating sleeper cells that had been waiting for the command to move. By the time his fleet entered enemy territory, they would already have given the Commonwealth a bloody nose.

And then there would be the declaration of war . . .

The Commonwealth would have some warning, he knew. Their spy ship had made certain of that. But it wouldn’t be enough to make a difference. The hammer was about to come down hard.

“Admiral,” his ops officer said, “the fleet is ready to depart.”

Junayd smiled again. “Then open the vortex,” he ordered. There was no longer any time for doubt and uncertainty, merely victory. “And set course for Cadiz.”

Lieutenant Jacob Moorland was shaking so hard as he walked into the StarCom Control Center that he was surprised the security officers didn’t pull him aside for questioning. It was his fault, he knew, and he would have deserved nothing less than arrest and imprisonment for being so weak, but he didn’t have the nerve to turn himself in and confess everything. Instead . . . he knew he would do as he’d been told, one final time.

He’d been bored on Cadiz. He’d moved between the giant StarCom and the spaceport, seeing nothing of the planet outside the walls and seeking what solace he could in the facilities on the ground. They’d managed to get their hooks into him there, he recalled; first, they’d helped get him into debt, then manipulated him into doing small tasks for them in exchange for payment. And then it had been too late to back out, confess all, and escape unscathed. He’d been too deeply committed for surrender.

The giant control center held over a dozen operators, each of them responsible for checking and vetting messages sent from Cadiz to Tyre and the rest of the Commonwealth. He sat down at his console, then pressed his hand against the scanner, allowing it to identify him and confirm his access permissions. There was a long pause, just long enough for him to hope the system had developed problems, then a line of messages streamed up in front of him. He couldn’t help noticing that most of the messages were civilian. Military traffic was handled by another section.

He reached into his pocket and removed the datachip. It looked absurdly common, just like any other commercial datachip capable of storing a billion terabytes of data. There were trillions in existence, he knew, so many that no one would think anything of an officer carrying one or two in his pocket. It could have held anything from personal messages from home to his private collection of porn. But instead . . . it had come from his masters, from the men who had ruined his life. Whatever it held, he was sure, it wasn’t something as unremarkable as porn.

“You will insert the chip into the command system,” his contact had said. They’d met in one of the more extreme brothels, where the more exotic tastes were satisfied. “And then you will activate the chip.”

Jacob swallowed, wondering if he dared accidentally lose the chip. But he knew it would result in his betrayal—or death. He’d crossed too many lines already. No one would ever look the same way at him if they knew what he’d done. He would be lucky if he was only dishonorably discharged, then dispatched to Nightmare as an involuntary exile. Bracing himself, he took the chip and pushed it into the console. A screen popped up, requesting permission to run the chip. Jacob hesitated, knowing there was no going back now, then keyed his command code into the console. The chip activated without further delay.

Nothing happened for nearly an hour as far as he could tell, then all hell broke loose. The StarCom pulsed signals across space with the assistance of a singularity, held within powerful force fields at the center of the massive structure. Now, with terrifying speed, the singularity destabilized and then fell back into the quantum foam as safety systems activated, trying to prevent a disaster. Alarms howled in the control center as datalinks to Tyre, Marigold, and the other worlds that made up the Commonwealth collapsed, isolating Cadiz from the remainder of the network. It would take weeks, Jacob realized numbly, to purge the command and control system of the rogue software and then generate another singularity. Until then, Cadiz was cut off from the network.

The authorities caught up with Jacob within an hour, but by then it was far too late.

“Transmit the signal,” Kat ordered as Lightning burst back into normal space. They’d jumped out of hyperspace far too close to the planet for comfort, but she’d seen no other choice. “And then get me a secure link to the admiral.”

There was a long pause. “Captain,” Ross said, “the StarCom network is down.”

Kat blinked. “Locked out?”

“No, Captain,” Ross said. “They’ve lost the singularity.”

“Shit,” the XO said. “It could take weeks to recreate the singularity.”

Kat couldn’t disagree. Everything she’d been taught about singularities said that creating one was an incredibly finicky task. First, they had to produce the gravity well itself, then set it to resonate with the rest of the interstellar communications network. The XO was right. It could take weeks of fine-tuning before Cadiz was back in touch with the rest of the Commonwealth. By then, the Theocracy would have hammered 7th Fleet into the ground.

“Find a courier boat,” she ordered. There were always one or two commercial couriers in the system, even though their owners should have had access to the StarCom. Some information was just too sensitive to be placed on the network. “Hire him, then transmit a copy of our records and order him to fly directly to the next working StarCom.”

The XO gave her a look. “Captain,” he said slowly, “what if the entire network is down?”

Kat swallowed. It took three weeks for a starship to travel from Cadiz to Tyre. If the entire network was down, the war was within shouting distance of being lost before it had even fairly begun. The Theocracy’s commanders would be able to exercise a degree of command and control the Commonwealth’s officers would not be able to match. But she knew enough about the network to be fairly sure it couldn’t just be taken down as easily as a commercial datanet. The system had multiple redundancies built in everywhere.

“Then we’re in trouble,” she said grimly. She rose. “Contact your friends and warn them of the oncoming storm. I’ll speak to the admiral in my Ready Room.”

“Aye, Captain,” the XO said.

Kat took a breath as she stepped through the hatch and sat down at her desk, then waited for Admiral Morrison to answer the call. She’d hoped they could reach Cadiz ahead of any enemy force and it seemed likely they’d succeeded, but she hadn’t anticipated losing the StarCom. And yet, in hindsight, it was the obvious move. The Theocracy could have sent their own signal ahead of Lightning, warning their operatives to move at once. And they’d succeeded magnificently.

She keyed her wristcom. “Patrick,” she said, “the StarCom is down. Do you still want to go to the surface?”

“Yes, Captain,” Davidson said. “Someone has to warn General Eastside.”

Kat nodded, impatiently. The admiral still hadn’t responded to her call.

“Then good luck,” she said. Was the admiral occupied? Or was something more sinister going on? “Watch your back.”

The terminal bleeped, informing her that the admiral had finally responded. Kat braced herself, then keyed the switch. Morrison’s face appeared in front of her, looking tired and worn. Had they just woken him up? She checked local time and fought down the temptation to swear out loud. It was local night, just past midnight. She’d forgotten that detail in her desperate rush to return to Cadiz.

“Captain,” the admiral said. He didn’t sound happy. “I was at a party. My daughter is being introduced to Lord Percy. What is the meaning of this?”

“The system is about to be attacked,” Kat said, flatly. She tapped a switch, transmitting the records her ship had collected. Her tactical department’s analysts had been working their way through them, but hadn’t drawn any useful conclusions yet. “The Theocracy has an attack fleet within range, which may be less than an hour from Cadiz.”

She glanced at a message that blinked up on her display. The vast majority of the fleet’s commanding officers were down on the surface, either at the spaceport or enjoying themselves at the admiral’s estate. Kat had to fight to keep her face impassive. Had they learned nothing from the previous attack? The StarCom was down, the victim of sabotage, and yet they were partying? She clenched her jaw. The theory about the admiral being in the Theocracy’s pay was starting to seem a great deal more plausible.

“Your ship provoked them, Captain,” the admiral said.

Kat said a word she knew her mother would have slapped her for saying, at least in front of her social inferiors. But it caught the admiral’s attention.

“Admiral,” she said, “it doesn’t matter if they thought they were provoked or not. They have already started their campaign. The loss of the StarCom cannot be coincidence. Their attack fleet is already advancing towards Cadiz. I implore you, Admiral, to sound the alert and ready 7th Fleet for action. Time is running out.”

“Captain,” the admiral said, “I . . .”

His image vanished from the display. Kat stared, then reached for her wristcom. It bleeped before she could touch it, just as alerts flashed up through her implants. The entire planetary command and control network had just crashed, violently. Each and every starship, orbital defense platform, and automated tracking system was now isolated from everyone else.

“Captain,” the XO said, “the spaceport is under attack. So is Government House.”

“Red Alert,” Kat ordered. “Pat . . . ah, Davidson. Where is he?”

“His shuttle was heading towards the spaceport,” the XO said.

“Recall him,” Kat snapped. Newer alerts were flashing up as the command and control system struggled to rebuild itself. The spaceport wasn’t the only place under attack. It looked as though insurgents were striking everywhere, from forward operating bases to medical centers and even economic assistance facilities. There were so many attacks that the garrison commander would be unable to decide which one was the key, which one to deal with first. “We need him back onboard.”