Flagship Victory Read online

  The top looked clear of obstacles, about ten meters wide, and dead flat. As long as it was dry concrete, and not, say, coated with slick paint, he might be able to grab its edge at the end of a jump.

  But could he make the distance? He stepped up on the low parapet and tried to get a feeling for it. If he sprinted and used the step to launch himself across…

  He imagined his leap and his trajectory arc, and concluded it was very unlikely. Even if he jumped perfectly and aimed to catch the edge of the wall with his hands, he probably wouldn’t make it. There was nothing below to grasp, either—no ladder, no projections, nothing but a smooth concrete wall.

  If he’d had climbing claws or a rope with a grappling hook, he’d have a much better chance, but where could he get such things? Even if he broke into apartments and robbed residents, would they be likely to own devices like that?

  No.

  Straker ran from side to side on the roof. He surveyed nearby buildings, trying to see if any were higher, or closer to the wall, or situated in any way that might give him an advantage and get him over. Something with a tower or antenna, perhaps with extra altitude and guy wires he could commandeer, or maybe even topple over to form a bridge, would be perfect.

  But there were no structures atop buildings near the wall, perhaps deliberately so. Everything seemed designed to make sure nobody crossed into a new diz without permission.

  This left his long-shot inspiration.

  The bike.

  It was a desperate, insane idea. He considered it only because he knew his own capabilities, his strength, his speed, his balance. If he could grasp something on the wall with even one hand, he could lift himself. He could ride the bike faster than he could run, and so launch himself across the gap he couldn’t jump.

  The hard part would be arcing across at the correct angle to hit the top of the wall—not fall short, not fly over. A hundred-meter drop would leave him a broken wreck on the pavement, even if it didn’t kill him outright.

  As he turned to survey the roof, with its usual collection of vents, air conditioning machinery and other unknown devices, he saw three air vehicles traveling in formation, approaching from over the city. Had they not been flying together and symmetrically, he might not have noticed them.

  He ran to the edge of the roof and swore at what he saw. Security force ground cars were approaching his building, their emergency lights spinning and flashing. No time. No time!

  Only one chance. Straker ran to the small structure housing the stair’s roof access and pried the metal door off its hinges, using a combination of the kitchen knife and the metal strut he’d taken from Doris. He then carried the flat rectangle to the edge of the roof and set it against the parapet, at the corner, to form a ramp.

  He chose the corner because he wanted to give himself a forty-five degree angle, the better to reach the top of the wall as he landed. Aiming straight at it would make for less room for error.

  Straker ran for the bicycle and carried it to a spot with a clear path to the ramp. The air vehicles were close, and he could hear the shouts of those on the ground as they piled out of their vehicles.

  Now or never, Assault Captain Straker, he told himself sternly as he jumped on the bike and gathered speed. He’d done far more lethal and dangerous things in a mechsuit, but now he felt naked, with nothing between him and impact, a fall, and capture.

  The screaming of turbines told him the air-cars were close, decelerating to hover or land on the roof. He hoped they weren’t allowed to cross the wall. If they were, maybe there was terrain on the other side he could lose himself in.

  The ramp—the ramp—

  His tires slammed into it and he shot upward. Going airborne reminded him of a combat drop. His mind kicked into overdrive and the world seemed to slow as he flew above the gap.

  Slugs ricocheted off the wall as he landed—a generous term for his sprawling fall—atop the barrier. His front tire came down flat, but his back tire didn’t make it, and the bike bucked him over the handlebars.

  Desperately, he flattened himself and reached for the concrete surface, hoping it wasn’t covered in years of bird shit and dust. Did they bother to clean it?

  Skin ripped from his palms and forearms as he skidded. He somersaulted to his feet, finding the roof of the wall clean enough for traction. More shots struck near him as the bicycle fell back onto the Glasgow side. There was no cover, and only one place to go.

  Straker dove for the opposite far edge and slid over, hanging by his right-hand fingers and right toe in order to minimize his profile. Below, on the other side, he could faintly see a forested landscape, with no lights. As this world had no moon, he didn’t even have reflected shine to help him. Directly below him, he got the impression of trees.

  The slugs sought his exposed hand and foot, shattering concrete spray from the top of the wall. He had no choice. He twisted and braced, and then let go, shoving off the wall to ensure he fell into the trees. If they were tall and thick with branches, he might survive without breaking bones.

  If not, he might live, only to be crippled.

  He pulled his arms tight to his torso and rolled in the air to present his back to the branches, as he’d been taught for parachuting. This kept vulnerable parts of his body—his throat, his armpits and inner thighs, where the large arteries were—away from puncture. He closed his eyes, covered his face with his hands, and tried to relax. Stiffening up would only make it worse.

  He crashed through ever-increasing branch sizes, which flayed his clothes and the skin of his back, until he finally impacted one that wouldn’t yield to his momentum. It struck him across his legs, spinning him to slam into the next, and the next. Now he flailed, trying to regain control. He bounced from a big limb, face-first, and he could feel ribs crack before he slid off.

  Straker pinballed off two more, bruising himself painfully, before he crashed into the ground, knocking the wind out of him. He struggled to breathe as his diaphragm spasmed and his cracked ribs protested.

  Staring upward into the branches, he tried to tell if the air-cars were coming over the wall. He didn’t see lights, didn’t hear their turbines searching for him.

  Despite the battering he’d suffered, he counted it as a win. If the security troops were local to Glasgow, or if this diz was protected from interference, at least he might get away. Straker was still hazy on the capricious rules the controllers used, but some chance was better than no chance at all.

  Once he could breathe, rolled to his knees and stumbled to his feet. He still had the hand-light in his pocket, but he thought it better to try to let his eyes adjust to the darkness. The light would pinpoint him for searchers or any hostile denizens of this place.

  On the other hand, if there was predatory animal life, it might not need sight to find and kill him.

  Moving slowly, he headed away from the looming wall. He didn’t want to take the chance there were sensors or doors where, despite whatever rules were in play, his hunters might pop out and grab him. If he were in charge of the cops of this world, he might not always follow the rules, especially if the stakes were high.

  Of course, he didn’t know what they thought he was—a Facet gone mad, a Miskor agent among the Sarmok, a spy for the real humans? Or maybe they were just going by a script for when anything deviated from their weird programmed scenarios.

  After several hundred meters of slow, cautious travel, Straker broke out of the woods to see a small clearing. At least, he thought it was a clearing, until he stepped ankle-deep into the water and realized it was not flat ground, but a large pond.

  Thirst seized him then, and a desire to wash his oozing injuries. After taking a long look around for dangers, he sank to his knees and smelled the water. It seemed fresh. Besides, his biotech and his genetically engineered immune system should keep him safe from all ordinary diseases.

  He drank and washed on the tiny, sandy beach. The chill water soothed his scrapes, and he tore his tattered tunic and the b
ottoms of his trousers off to wrap his hands and arms in makeshift bandages, leaving him in nothing but crude shorts and boots. He used strips of cloth to bind up his ribs tight, making his breathing less painful.

  Then he took the strut in one hand as a club and circled the pond.

  A faint trail beckoned him, a slash in the vegetation he could barely see as his eyes adjusted. He followed it, wary, for several kilometers. Night creatures rustled, birds called. Other noises passed that he couldn’t identify. He was no woodsman, and his outdoor survival training was long behind him.

  Then came an unmistakable sound.

  A scream.

  A woman’s scream.

  Straker increased his pace, seeing a glow ahead. The scream sounded again. He burst out of the woods to a hellish scene.

  Four enormous crimson men stood near a bonfire. Its light revealed the figure of a proportionally large woman, her hands bound above her head to a tree limb, her feet barely touching the ground. One man, laughing, brushed the woman with a burning torch, and she screamed again and kicked out in fear and rage.

  Straker charged.

  Chapter 13

  Engels, aboard Indomitable, Calypso System

  “I’m still waiting for the other shoe to drop,” said Admiral Braga to Admiral Engels as they ate off fine china in Indomitable’s flag dining room.

  The two admirals faced each other at one end of the long table. Verdura and Zholin, Dexon and Zaxby and several other senior officers from both sides ranged down the rest of it.

  This formal dinner was also an important meeting. For the last three days, Braga’s surrounded fleet had hung in space, awaiting annihilation. Time had run out. He had to commit to a decision: fight, surrender—or defect.

  Braga went on, “You’ve spent three days showing me around your fleet, and all the evidence supports your claims, but…”

  Engels smiled at her stiff-necked old commander. “But it’s hard to accept that something you’ve believed your whole life is false. It’s human nature to cling to preconceived notions, even when confronted with overwhelming evidence to the contrary, if it doesn’t fit your worldview. At least you didn’t have to be sent to a prison camp and be beaten half to death.”

  “If you weren’t sitting in front of me in an admiral’s uniform, obviously in command, I’d wonder if they’d broken your mind and reprogrammed you. It’s easy enough if your brainchips get hacked. But this whole fleet, this whole situation, can’t be some kind of theatre—and I’ve run all the usual tests to make sure I’m not inside a VR sim. So, I have to believe you.”

  “But you don’t want to.”

  “I didn’t… but if I accept your bizarre tale, I find myself wanting to believe it all.”

  Engels sipped her caff. “What’s stopping you?”

  “Loyalty to the Hundred Worlds, I suppose. I swore an oath.”

  “To what?”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “Specifically to what did you swear that oath?”

  Braga frowned and straightened his silverware next to his half-eaten meal, not meeting her eyes. “I understand your point, young lady. I swore an oath to the Constitution, the citizens, and the duly elected and appointed officials of the Hundred Worlds, in that order. You’re going to argue my duty to the Constitution means I have a higher duty—to the truth, to the law that’s obviously been violated at many levels, and to the long-term interests of the citizenry.”

  “Sounds like you’re making your own argument.”

  “But if it were that simple, military people would be changing sides every time their own government got out of line. We can’t ignore Parliament and the chain of command just because we don’t like what they’re doing. I need to know the Constitution’s being violated so thoroughly and irretrievably that the concept of treason becomes moot.”

  “I’ve studied the Hundred Worlds Constitution,” Engels said earnestly. “Part of Article 1 states, ‘The government shall in all things be truthful and forthright,’ with the usual exceptions for military necessity and classified information. Do you think the government has been truthful and forthright?”

  “An argument could be made that—”

  “Come on, Lucas! You know the answer. You simply need to decide if all the lies they told you rise to the level of unjustly abrogating the Constitution. If so, the politicians committed treason, not you—and you’re free of your oath. You can’t be faithful to a lie.”

  “I can be faithful to the spirit of truth.” Braga folded his hands and lifted his gaze to Engels. “That’s why I’ve decided to surrender.”

  “Not defect?”

  “You’ll have our ships. You mousetrapped us fair and square. I’ve ordered no sabotage. That’s the payment for my people’s lives. But I can’t turn around and fight against the Hundred Worlds. It’s a personal decision, and it’s final.”

  Engels sighed. “I’m sorry to hear that—but I understand.”

  “Since my decision was a personal one,” Braga continued, “I’ll make an announcement to my captains and crews, giving them leave to make the same decision. They can be interned with me, or they may choose to join your Republic. I’ve allowed them to see records of all the evidence.”

  “That’s very fair of you—though of course, you could hardly stop them from defecting.”

  “This way their consciences are clear if they do.”

  “And in your heart of hearts, you want us to win?”

  Braga sat stiffly and lowered his eyes again. “I didn’t say that.”

  Engels nodded sharply. “Of course not.”

  “I’ll stay with you,” Captain Verdura said, reaching out to lay her palm on Braga’s arm.

  “Thank you, Lydia, but that won’t be necessary.”

  “I think it is. You made it a personal decision for everyone under your command, no?”

  “So I did.” Braga concentrated on finishing his meal and said no more.

  Later, in his amazingly spacious assigned quarters aboard Indomitable, he held his sidearm in his hands and stared at it for long minutes. He was surprised when Engels allowed him to keep it, fully charged, though an honor guard of four marines attended him everywhere. She must be still hoping he’d change his mind, and was treating him like a guest instead of a prisoner.

  But there was no guard here, only he and his weapon. Less than a kilogram, but it could end his life—and his shame—with one easy pull of the trigger.

  Is that what his life had come to? Thirty-three years of distinguished service capped by a military disaster, and then he didn’t even have the guts to ask his people to die with him in a blaze of glory.

  Yet he couldn’t do it. If he thought a final stand would change the course of the war, would inspire a victory of right and righteousness, he’d have done it. Fighting to the death merely that Admiral Lucas Braga not have to face another personal defeat… that would be the true coward’s way.

  And he didn’t know which side was right. He used to be sure, but now he saw those at the top of the Hundred Worlds had supplied fake certainty. Not only had they figuratively demonized the enemy—common propaganda during most wars throughout history—they’d done it more literally, twisting the truth until everyone believed the Hok shock troops were demonic alien invaders instead of dissidents and criminals turned into soulless war-slaves.

  Why? Did his leaders believe people would work or fight less hard against humans? Or was it simply about keeping control, pumping up war fever and blind hatred?

  But there were alien invaders. The Opters.

  A dozen races of aliens lived in relative peace with humans. Some, like the Ruxins, even integrated themselves into the forces of both sides, but these insectoids… if Zaxby’s briefings were accurate, they’d been perverting human history for centuries.

  Those were the ones humans should be angry with. Even if there were some good Opters, their regime had attacked humans unprovoked, murdering millions. Worse, they’d perpetuated a civil war that ha
d killed billions and kept humanity divided and weakened.

  And that was, ultimately, why Braga didn’t put the muzzle of his pistol in his mouth and let a beam of coherent light boil his brain. He couldn’t bring himself to lead others against the Hundred Worlds, but if the time ever came to go to war against the Opters, perhaps he’d be needed.

  * * *

  Admiral Engels busied herself with the overwhelming detail of reorganizing her fleet. She’d triaged her forces, sending severely damaged ships that nevertheless had working sidespace drives straight to Murmorsk for repair and refit.

  Before they left, she cannibalized all their supplies and filled them with prisoners of war, those who hadn’t wished to defect, including Braga, Verdura and all of the Hun ship captains. Those likely were swayed by Braga’s example, but she didn’t let it worry her. None of them would have been trusted with command of a ship anyway.

  The split between defectors and internees turned out to be about fifty-fifty, once the lower ranking detainees had been processed and given free choice. That gave her thousands of trained and experienced spacers to sprinkle throughout her fleet.

  Her two new carriers she filled to bursting with extra stocks of everything and designated them as fleet auxiliaries. She ordered each of her ships to give up a small craft or two and transfer them to the carriers as well.

  By this method she created a true expeditionary force, a fleet-in-being to give her enemies pause. Hun spy drones were no doubt even now tunneling through sidespace with reports of the loss of Braga’s Tenth Fleet, but she’d been careful to keep an assembled Indomitable hidden in the gas. When the battleship emerged, she would be seen as sixteen oddly shaped superdreadnoughts, and Engels had also taken deception measures to hide how many of Braga’s ships she’d taken intact.

  All told, she now had more than three hundred warships, over one hundred of them of capital grade, one of the largest armadas ever assembled in one place. Indomitable herself was worth roughly another fifty, if she could get into the fight.