First Strike (38 page)

“Because you might need their help,” he said, tiredly. If Earth hadn't already disowned him, it would have done so once news of the slaughter reached home. “They might be willing to help you now that you have freed yourself.”

“I wouldn't have bet money on that,” Xinchub said. “The Galactics simply don’t care. There is no justice in the universe, or even any agreement on shared ethics and morals. How long will it be until everyone realises that there is no common law?”

“Not long,” Joshua said. The brushfire wars had started the process, but humanity’s war against the Hegemony had probably accelerated it. Laws had no power unless they were enforced and no-one was interested in serving as the enforcer. The Cats didn't have the will and no one else had the power. Anyone who tried would probably force several other powers to unite against them. “I don't think it will be very long at all.”

* * *

“
Blackbeard
 
will be a week in the yard,” Karla said, an hour later. “The Gobbles seem pretty sure that they can rebuild her faster than we estimated.”

“We’ll see,” Joshua said, slowly. He felt tired; not physically tired, but mentally tired. The war had turned savage and it was partly his fault. “And the orbital fortifications?”

“Repaired,” Karla said. “They’ve improvised a number of systems that will give them a few unexpected surprises when the Funks return. The defences are maybe not as deep as we would like, but the Funks will definitely know that they’ve been kissed.”

She smiled. “I’m afraid a number of pirates want their loot and then out of here before the Funks come back,” she added. “The rebels are more interested in turning this system into a permanent base. They have families who need somewhere to live where the Funks can’t threaten them.”

“Maybe they can find a home here,” Joshua said. “God knows there’s plenty of room for them now.”

Karla reached over and shook him, firmly. “What exactly do you think the Funks expected?” She demanded. “You know how they treated anyone who even dared to question their orders. They might be able to integrate their own race into society after a few generations of slavery, but how could they do that when they couldn't even breed with the non-Funk slaves? The Gobbles were doomed to permanent servitude until we came along and helped them to be free.”

She snorted, loudly. “The Hegemony wasn't
 
innocent
 
before they encountered us,” she reminded him. “You should know exactly how they treat their own people – and what happens when the masters lose control. How much worse is it on a planet populated by aliens who cannot even claim to own their world?”

“And it
 
will
 
solve the problem of what to do with the Funk population,” Kang added. “They would have been a major issue if they’d been left alive…”

“And now millions of them are dead,” Joshua snapped. “Try as I might, I cannot see that as a victory. The blood on our hands will never wash off.”

“You don’t need to be dramatic about it,” Kang said, dryly. “Look; the Funks treated everyone on the planet below like shit. They got exactly what they deserved when they lost control. It wasn't your fault that the Funks built up such a reservoir of hatred and anger among the locals. You couldn't be blamed for not realising that the teddy bears would turn on their masters as soon as their masters lost the ability to keep them under control.”

He stood up and headed to the hatch. “I think that we have more important problems,” he added. “You need to prepare this system for the inevitable counterattack.”

“He’s right,” Karla said, as the hatch closed behind him. “Hey, do you want to go to bed and celebrate again?”

“I don't feel like celebrating,” Joshua said. The thought of the dead chilled him to the bone, even though part of his anatomy was insisting that he take her up on her offer. “We won today – but I feel as if I lost. What does that say about me?”

Karla didn't try to answer.
 

“Come and take a look at this.”

Trader captain William O’Hare smiled to himself as his youngest son looked up from the sensor console. A warship would have had a trained and experienced officer, but
 
Mother’s Milk
 
was no warship. She was a freighter that was officially older than five hundred years, purchased on the open market by human investors and leased out to William and his family as long as they brought in the goods. His son had yet to lose the certainty that each voyage would bring in a new and remarkable discovery, even though all he’d discovered was a handful of comets and an asteroid that would have been worth something if there hadn't been millions more like it in the asteroid belt. Clarke was not a particularly well-travelled system, yet anything really interesting would have been noted long before the human race learned about the community that existed across the stars.

He looked down at the sensor console and frowned. There should have been nothing between them and the quantum gate, their only way of entering quantum space. But there was something… it looked almost like turbulence from a cloaked ship. Space wasn't as empty as the average civilian thought, and there were frequent energy discharges that could be mistaken for a cloaked starship, yet this pattern looked too regular to be natural. Someone seemed to be trying to sneak up on Clarke…

“Send an emergency signal to the planet,” he snapped. “Cloaked ship – or ships – operating near the quantum gate!”

He hoped – prayed – that the unknown ship wasn't intent on wiping out the human presence within the system. The freighter couldn't run or hide if the enemy wanted to kill them; there was no way she could even get into the quantum gate before being obliterated if the enemy ship opened fire. His action might have doomed them all, but he knew his duty. Humanity had to be warned, even if it cost him his ship and family…

“I’m picking up a change in energy readings,” his son said. “I think they’re decloaking...”

William had wondered, briefly, if the ship was a Federation Navy starship running through its final trials. But the decloaking ship was clearly not of human design. The battlecruiser that wobbled into view was Galactic, almost certainly belonging to the Hegemony. William cursed their ill-luck as the battlecruiser locked weapons on their hull, ripping their ship apart with a single burst of phase cannon fire.

He barely had time to hug his son before the ship exploded around them and they fell into darkness.

* * *

Calling Clarke a habitable world required stretching the definition of ‘habitable’ about as far as it would go. Clarke possessed a breathable atmosphere for humans – and most other humanoid races – but its surface was completely infested by foliage that might actually be a sentient life form in its own right. The first settlements on the planetary surface had been destroyed by the local plant life, which had moved with stunning speed to repel the invaders. Later research had discovered that the plant life actually hunted fish and seemed to have domesticated several species of animal. There were even reports that a handful of human survivors had been domesticated and allowed to live in harmony with the plants.

The main human settlements on the planet had been established on small islands, the largest barely the size of Nantucket. They’d had to use firebombs to sweep the islands clean of native life and replant with seeds from Earth before they could support a growing population, something that couldn't really be applied to the larger continents. It said something about how useless the system was that the Hegemony had never attempted to claim it, which might have been a mistake on their part. Clarke had plenty of surprises on its surface and some of them were potentially very profitable.

Governor Mountbatten had been in office for two years when researchers had discovered that the strange plant life could be harvested to produce a surprising number of vaccines and pleasure drugs. Some of them were useless – even poisonous – for humans, but they promised to be a gold mine when they were sold to the Galactics, assuming that the Hegemony didn't simply grab the planet as soon as they realised that it was turning a profit. Mountbatten had been devising a cunning plan to prevent the Funks from discovering the truth when the war began. Since then, he’d prayed for victory. If Clarke became a gold mine, the world he’d come to love might grow into a proper human community – and his career would be boosted into the stratosphere.

He looked up as the door opened and his aide ran in without knocking. “Governor,” he said, “we’re picking up a very disturbing report from the deep-space tracking network. I think you’d better come see this at once.”

Mountbatten nodded and followed his aide through the corridors of Government House to System Control. Clarke just didn't have the room for massive sprawling mansions, or separate installations; everything was jammed together in Government House. The Marines had a small training base nearby, shared with the local militia and national contingents from Earth, but apart from them Clarke was almost defenceless. A handful of third-hand automated weapons platforms weren't going to slow any serious attacker down for long.

A single red icon glowed on the display as it came closer to the planet. “One battlecruiser, almost certainly Hegemony,” the operator reported. Mountbatten felt his chest turn to ice. “It destroyed a freighter near the quantum gate before advancing on us...”

“Send out the alert,” Mountbatten ordered. The local militia would muster, for all the good it would do. There weren't any Federation Marines on Clarke apart from the training cadre. A battalion from the French Foreign Legion, part of the 10
th
 
Mountain Division and a handful of SAS soldiers were running exercises on the mainland, but they’d never be able to get back to the settlements before it was too late. “And then we’d better put the evacuation plan into operation. Now.”

Clarke had never expected to be attacked, not when the world was generally believed to be almost worthless. Mountbatten had developed a plan to defend the settlement, but no one knew better than him that any determined attacker could take the planet or exterminate the human population without much trouble. The only drill they’d held had been a disaster, which had at least concentrated a few minds. By now, the schools would be ordering their children to head to the shelters while the entire planet went dark. Most of the fishing boats didn't normally bother with radio transmissions, thankfully. They might be missed if the enemy didn't look closely.

“Enemy ship entering firing range of the platforms,” the operator said. “Am I authorized to open fire?”

“For God’s sake,
 
yes
,” Mountbatten snapped at him. The enemy ship was already firing on the platforms. Two of them were gone before they even managed to fire back. “See if you can hurt the bastard!”

He took one last look around the command center, and then led the way to the door and out into the small town. Government House would surely be targeted first if the enemy intended to invade and occupy the planet and he could do no more good by remaining in the mansion. Once outside, he could put on his militia hat and take command of his forces, such as they were. The Federation had encouraged the development of a militia and even supplied weapons, but the population was too low to put up a real fight. And their enemy could bombard them from orbit anyway.

* * *

“All right, listen up,” Sergeant Tommy Hawkins bellowed. He’d been in 3 Para before First Contact, a line on his resume that had ensured his current rank in the militia when he retired and emigrated to Clarke. “We have incoming assault shuttles and they’re going to be coming in hot.”

He glared at his troop until they stopped looking so nervous. A handful had had military experience on Earth, but most of them were youngsters who had been raised on Clarke by their parents and had never seen anything more dangerous than hunting expeditions and rescue missions. Some had declared their intention to join the Federation Marines, but in Tommy’s rather less than humble opinion few of them had the dedication to join and remain in service for the ten year period. It might not matter in the long run. Many of his men were going to die today.

“You’ve trained on the Super-Stinger,” he continued. The Super-Stinger was an antiaircraft HVM built using Galactic technology, capable of shooting down anything that flew within range. And yet they’d never been tested in combat. “You know how to handle it. Anything that comes close is a target, understand?”

He caught sight of a nervous-looking blonde farm girl holding a rifle and rolled his eyes. She didn't look particularly dangerous at all. Rumour had it that her father had ordered her into the militia for political reasons, rather than any desire on her part to serve. But she did her part, which was more than could be said for some of the others with political ambitions. Some of them seemed to think that all they needed to do was be on the rolls, without training and exercising with the others. Tommy had worked hard to expel those layabouts from the militia, but he hadn’t been completely successful.

The training had been makeshift compared to what pre-Contact soldiers had been offered, but at least they’d been able to hammer proper rifle skills into their heads. Some of the youngsters had picked up bad habits from hunting rifles they kept on their farms. The riflemen would provide limited protection to the missile crews, or so Tommy had explained. They didn't need to worry about the enemy bombing them from high overhead, if only because there was nothing they could do if the Funks simply decided to kill everybody.

“Once we run out of missiles, we get back to the RV point as we practiced,” he concluded. “And I will personally kick any slowcoach up the ass, you got me?”

He could hear the sound of shuttles in the distance as the team scattered, the missile crews picking up their weapons while the riflemen took up guard positions. Tommy had picked their firing location with malice aforethought. The enemy should have problems locating them under the small forest of trees, at least until they landed ground troops to flush out the resistance. At least the Funks weren't likely to be as unpleasant as certain human forces, although they wouldn't hesitate to kill insurgents.

There were nine large settled islands on Clarke and a hundred smaller ones, some housing no more than a dock and a few fishermen’s shacks. Logically, the enemy would land on Colchester Island first and take the spaceport, using it as a place to land their forces and deploy out to seize Wells City. His position should give them a clear shot at a handful of enemy shuttles before they had to cut and run, unless the enemy had their own plans for landing. It was just possible that the Funks might drop into the sea and attempt an amphibious landing, if they really wanted to outflank the defenders.

“Here they come,” he said. “Take aim and...fire!”

The HVM blasted out of his launcher and roared for the sky, tracking its target at terrifying speed. They were too close for most countermeasures, although the Funks did what they could by throwing their shuttles into evasive patterns. Two missiles had tracked the same target, part of Tommy’s mind noted, blowing the Funk shuttle into a pile of falling debris. The remaining shuttles followed, save one which rocketed away over the ocean. Tommy tried to form a mental picture of it trailing smoke and crashing into the water, but he had to admit that it was unlikely. Besides, the native seawater life would eat the Funks for dinner and probably get even more hostile to land-dwelling life forms.

“Grab your weapons and run,” he barked. The Funks knew where they were now; active HVM launchers would show up on every orbital sensor. “Run, now!”

The militiamen turned and ran for their lives. They’d practiced often enough, once Tommy and his fellow trainers had managed to convince them that retreat wasn't always a cowardly act. He heard the scream seconds before the missile plunged down and detonated where they’d been, blowing a colossal fireball into the air. The shockwave picked him up and threw him forward, sending him crashing down into a prickly bush.

He’d been one of the lucky ones. The blonde militiawoman was less lucky. She’d been blown right into a tree and her head had almost been severed from her body. One glance was all it took to confirm that there was no point in calling for a medic. Tommy dropped a small grenade beside her body, booby-trapping it to surprise any Funk troopers who found her, and then led the remains of the platoon into the untamed wilderness. They could hide out there until the Funks retreated or the Federation Navy organised a relief mission.

He shook his head tiredly as they headed further onwards. At least they’d hurt the bastards, even if they hadn't hurt them badly enough to make them think twice about invading Clarke. Raid or occupation, a lot of people were about to die – and all he could do was hide and await the opportunity to strike back. There was nothing else he could do.

* * *

Jeanette saw the shuttle fall out of the sky and hit the ground, sending up a massive fireball that could be seen for miles around. She hadn't bothered to go to the shelters, even though she knew that she should; her general store was about to be destroyed by the Funks and without it, what would become of her? She’d seen the indentured workers on the mainland, the men and women who hadn't been able to repay their settlement loans and ended up working as virtual slaves for the development corporation, and she had no intention of ending up like them.