Rich Man's War (48 page)

“Commands confirmed, Admiral,” reported a young officer at ops. Yeoh glanced over at him. He was young and darkly tanned like so many of the people of Michael, with something of a babyface that gave him that much more to contend with as an ensign. Blair, she remembered. A newer addition to her staff. She didn’t know much about him yet.

“Thank you,
Ensign Blair,” Yeoh said, making eye contact and nodding. At some point, she accepted that people looked up to her. Just being acknowledged by someone of her station could mean a lot to a young person like Blair. She saw him do a double-take, but like any good officer, he set his surprise aside and continued on with his job. It still seemed a little absurd that her approval could mean so much, but it was more a matter of the rank and the uniform than the person wearing it. She told herself that all the time.

At almost every step in her career, she wondered when they’d all figure out she was just faking it. She faked being an adult, being an officer, being a leader. A good wife. A mother. Then she accepted that planets turned on the actions of people who felt like they were faking it. Men and women on the bridge called out orders and updates, drew up course corrections and targeting data, driving into the biggest battle their home system had ever seen, and many of them probably still felt like they were faking it. The b
est would learn to accept that.

She only truly came to any sort of peace with the turmoil when she accepted that these things would happen anyway. She couldn’t affect the politics—she’d
understood that back when Aguirre and his advisors first made it plain that they would be on a collision course with the biggest powers in the Union. The only way Yeoh could have altered that course was to ensure that the Navy was too weak to even consider it… but that was unacceptable. So she built instead, as quickly and effectively as she could.

She also accepted that she would have to see the destruction of a great deal of all she’d built today. In defiance of centuries of naval tradition, Yeoh never got sentimental about ships—a secret she told no one but her husband—but she cared a great deal about the people she’d built up for this fight.

Yeoh never considered accepting defeat or conquest, but she accepted the fight. That acceptance brought her peace.

The
umbrella of chaff explosions between her battle group and the enemy also blocked line of sight between
Los Angeles
and the corvette wing, but relay drones launched in a chain that followed the corvettes carried back a clear picture. The corvettes continued on in their swing around to the enemy’s rear. The invading fleet opted to hold firm and re-form, clearly guessing the direction taken by the corvettes. They would know she was behind the umbrella, but not how close to its edge. In truth, Archangel’s battle group drew closer and closer, putting themselves nearly within the outer limits of effective weapons range. The corvettes kept their distance from the enemy.

The
invaders couldn’t expect the real purpose of the feint. No one had tried anything like this before. If the enemy saw this coming, they would pull the escorts in closer, perhaps recall the three corvettes they’d sent out against
Guillotine
. Yet in their current formation, the enemy could still defend itself effectively. Yeoh’s ploy might fall completely apart. Success would still involve ugly losses.

No one on the flag bridge could read her pensive emotions. Though officers and
enlisteds mindfully kept to their duties, everyone waited on her. They saw only her famed, endless patience. Even now, she was still only faking it. She watched the corvettes curve under the screening cloud of chaff, moving at all possible speed, and decided it was time.

“Ensign
Blair,” she called out calmly, “instruct our guild volunteers to cease fire and withdraw on my mark. Tell them to get clear, with my thanks. Commander Santos, signal the battle group: attack speed and full energy weapons volley on my mark. That’ll be one moment after I give Blair his order,” she added for Santos’s benefit. “We probably won’t hit much at first, but it’s always better to come out shooting.”

* * *

Archangel’s battle group emerged from the cloud of sparkling chaff and electromagnetic disruption in a close formation. Against beam weapons that remained lethally accurate over a hundred thousand kilometers and missiles that erupted with a hundred-kilometer blast radius, a “tight” formation still left the group spread out over a wide area. An unaided human eye on one ship could only barely make out the closest neighbor. Yet by the standards of the modern interstellar navy,
Los Angeles
and her companions—five frigates, ten destroyers and a handful of corvettes—represented a concentrated force. They emerged from concealment grouped up in a wedge shape with the sole cruiser at the center behind the destroyer
Monaco
.

The invaders left one full expeditionary group lagging behind, cutting out two large and formidable assault carriers and their six escort ships from the main body of the fleet.
Argent’s
vicious ambush and her risky, aggressive tactics destroyed three ships and crippled two more. Even now, she kept another of the invading destroyers busy.
Guillotine
managed to bleed off three of the enemy’s corvettes in a wild chase toward Raphael’s moon.

When Yeoh gave the order to engage, she still brought her forces into a two-to-one fight. NorthStar fielded f
ive cruisers to her one, along with three battleships for which she had no match at all.

The opening exchanges of beam weapons did no appreciable damage to either side. No one had time to acquire accurate speeds and headings of their opponents before the red streaks of light flashed across the space between opposing forces. Every ship then took advantage of the uncrowded nature of their formations to go into evasive maneuvers, making it harder to draw a bead.

NorthStar’s fleet accelerated. Archangel’s defenders continued on their way. Exchanges of laser fire intensified as the distances between opponents narrowed. Within barely a minute, the first ships of both sides scored early hits.

* * *

They told her she owed thirty-six thousand credits. She’d studied hard, doing everything she could in preparation for the Test, but Rose McCoy wasn’t especially gifted. She wanted to go on to university. It wasn’t a pipe dream; she had what it took for higher education. She knew that the day she took the Test on Gabriel and found that dream drawing further away despite knowing she was good enough. Ten years later, working on the bridge of the frigate
ANS Gallant
, Operations Specialist Second Class Rose McCoy knew it still.

She had the talent. Maybe not stellar talent, but enough to make it happen. She just never had the money.

She took out loans and worked her ass off in two low-paying jobs to take the edge off her debt. Family helped as best they could. Rose passed on fun nights out and lived with her parents and put off longevity treatments because she wanted to wait for a better deal. Instead, she suffered a loan penalty based on recalculations of her expected lifespan. She turned to the Navy as a path toward stability, at least, if not progress.

Basic was tough. Maybe not like the “new guard” program, but it was tough. Specialist’s school was tougher in an academic and mental sense, but she made it through with high marks. Sixteen weeks of military training taught her more than she would have learned in a two-year program at most colleges. Adjusting to military life was also a challenge, but she made good on it and even thrived.
Second class within eight years was an impressive rate of advancement by the “old guard” standards. The expansion of the last two years brought further advancement within reach.

Lai
Wa still had her on the hook for nineteen thousand credits. It was low enough now that she’d qualify for tuition loans, but the most financially advantageous loans were only available if she enrolled in a Lai Wa-owned university. She’d have to give more of her money to the people who’d kept her in debt all of her short adult life.

And now she knew, beyond any doubt, that she never owed them a god damned thing.

Her battle station assignment put her on
Gallant’s
bridge, focusing mostly on astrogation. Rose had a clear view of the entire battle from her screens, some of which offered high-resolution visuals of ships and other contacts thousands of kilometers out. She saw
Gallant’s
primary targets. She could see which of the enemy ships offered threats, which of them would likely ignore the frigate based on position, and she saw incoming and outgoing ordnance.

Rose did her job well. She routed alerts. She prioritized targets. She kept the ship’s computers from chasing false leads or splitting their attention. And she knew that
Gallant
would not be able to dodge, deflect or intercept all the weapons coming toward her. Chief Armstrong at fire control saw it, too, and hit the impact alarm with only a heartbeat to spare. Rose braced for impact just as she’d been trained.

Gallant
fired a full barrage of chaff missiles, turned hard to starboard and gunned her thrusters. Her hull shook with the detonation of so much ordnance so close by, but it was the beam weapons that got her. A laser turret from one of those cruisers cut straight into her chaff missile tubes, setting off a massive explosion to the fore of the thrusters. Another beam stabbed straight through the hull at the right angle to cut into sick bay. Yet the fatal blow came from a full-powered cannon that blasted
Gallant’s
hull, including her bridge, wide open to space. The exploding missiles, in the end, served only to keep
Gallant
off-balance.

The comms system filled Rose’s ears with screams. Gravity went out along with the atmosphere and much of the power. Rose saw friends and shipmates blown out into space, and not all of them were in one piece
when they tumbled into the void. The captain reflexively clung to the command table as it flew away.

She didn’t need anyone of higher rank to tell her the ship was lost. From the looks of it, hardly anyone of higher rank was on the bridge anymore. Rose slapped the emergency release on her chair
’s straps, activated the magnetizing relays in her vac suit’s joints, and hauled herself over to the alarm panel.

Even after such catastrophic damage, she found that the “abandon ship” signal worked fine. The lights came on wherever they remained intact. The alarm tones rang in her helmet. A new holo screen lit up just ahead of her helmet lenses directing her to the nearest surviving escape pod.

Her station at the bridge sparked and burst. It meant little to her. The man seated beside her, though, meant something. Hernandez had a beautiful young son back on Michael. He had a wife. Family. Rose shoved herself toward her shipmate, who slumped over one side of his seat. She only needed to take three plodding steps to make it to him, having to alternately fight against and then rely upon the attraction of her magnetized boot heels to the deck to cover the distance.

He was still alive. The indicators on his helmet said so. Rose released him from the straps and pulled him out, taking advantage of the lack of gravity to fling his weightless body around. His greater mass and the motion of the ship still strained her muscles, but she got the job done.

Hernandez almost made it back to consciousness before she handed him off to another bridge crewman who’d already made it into the escape pod. Rose didn’t see who it was. She let go of Hernandez, saw the faceless crewman tug her friend inside, and then turned back to see who else she could grab.

Hernandez had a wife and kid. Other people here had family, too. Rose just had some dreams about going to school someday. That consideration, already at the forefront of her mind when she saw the flashing alarms at the fire control station, dictated her last actions. She wouldn’t get into the escape pod in time.

She had just enough time to turn back and hit the manual launch button on the outside of the pod, which shot away in time to save its occupants.

T
he final barrage of incoming missiles struck, killing
Gallant
and the last woman standing on board.

* * *

Every year, someone told Chief Gunner’s Mate Marcus Keever of the destroyer
ANS Madrid
that he’d soon be out of a job. Starship weaponry relied heavily on computers. It always had. But someday soon, according to “experts” and a slew of corporate-funded engineers and whatever egghead at Annapolis or some other military academy coughed up a paper this year, Marcus’s rating would go largely obsolete. Ships’ guns would go completely automated. A ship’s captain would just key in a couple of priority protocols and let the computer handle everything.

In over forty years in his rating, Marcus never once saw such a claim advanced by an actual starship captain, or anyone who’d had more than a cursory brush with space combat.

“Concentrate forward!” he yelled into the comm connection with the defensive guns. “Oh-one-five to oh-three-five! Spiral pattern! Fill it with lead!”

He turned from that to his own systems. His team knew what he wanted from them. Marcus left the defensive sweep to junior gunner’s mates so
he could find a good target. He jabbed his finger against an enemy frigate on his touchscreen, directing the computer to handle the complex calculations for targeting and then let the blast from
Madrid’s
main cannon fly.