Only the Brave Read online

 “I’m afraid so, ma’am. The message ended at that point, cut off at the source. No slow drop in the feed, it’s as though somebody threw a switch.” Tapping a control, she added, “I’ve identified the origin point as Van Maanan’s Star, Captain, but I didn’t have enough time to work out just where in the system they were.”

   Walking over to them, Commander Kirkland, Lincoln’s Executive Officer, said, “There’s only one inhabited point in the system. A labor camp orbiting a gas giant, a chemical extraction plant. Pretty deep inside Guild territory, but I think we could punch our way through, ma’am. Do you want me to start working out a course?”

   Shaking her head, Forrest replied, “You heard Lieutenant Romano.”

   “But if there’s even a chance that we can retrieve him...”

   “I think we’ve got bigger problems, Commander.” She looked down at Roberts again, and said, “I need to speak to General Markova, right away. Secure, encrypted channel. And I want the commanders of every ship in the task force to report to Lincoln on the double, command conference in thirty minutes.” Glancing at her watch, she asked, “When is Komarov due back?”

   “Any time now, ma’am.”

   “Good. I’ll want Commander Flynn and Major Volkov at the meeting as well. Make the arrangements to bring them home as fast as you can.”

   “Aye, ma’am,” Roberts said. She paused, then added, “I’ve been checking the intelligence assessments every day, Captain, and there’s no sign of any fleet concentration so far. Everything we’ve seen suggests that they’ve adopted a defensive posture, not an offensive one, that they are waiting for us to make the first move.” A frown spread across her face, and she said, “There’s the possibility that this is all some sort of a trap.”

   “Lieutenant Romano would never….,” Forrest said.

   “He could have been fed faulty intelligence, Captain.”

   “Not a chance,” Kirkland replied. “Tony Romano is no fool, and neither is Raul Tanaka.”

   “Was,” Roberts said, mournfully.

   “Is, Lieutenant,” Kirkland snapped. “We do not write anyone as dead in this fleet until we’ve been to the damned funeral! Is that understood?” Turning to Forrest, she said, “He wouldn’t have taken such a risk unless he was certain of his facts, ma’am, and unless he was convinced that passing his message was extremely important. I’d say you can be sure of that.”

   “I agree,” Forrest said. “Commander, I want all hands recalled from the surface at once. And pass the word to the rest of the fleet that I intend to break orbit in one hour.”

   “Even if Commander Flynn hasn’t made it back?”

   “Wait a minute, Captain,” Roberts said, turning to look at her. “We’re pulling out?”

   “Have you raised the General, Lieutenant?”

   “We’re handshaking systems now, ma’am.”

   “Then you’ll have to wait to find out my plans with the rest of them.” She paused, then said, “We’ll do our duty, Lieutenant, and one way or another, we’re going to beat those bastards. You have my guarantee on that.”

   “Aye, Captain,” she replied, as Forrest walked into her office, and as the doors closed behind her, she reached for a glass of water, wishing that it was something stronger. She was still uncertain of Kirkland as a permanent choice for Executive Officer, but she’d certainly mastered the paperwork brief in a hurry, easily catching up with the backlog of work. That there was nobody left to file any of the administrative trivia with was something that didn’t seem to have occurred to her, even if the rest of the department heads had started to slacken up on the details.

   That was a bad sign, and one that she could do nothing about. They were lost, centuries out of their own time, fighting a war against a ruthless, tyrannical enemy with almost overwhelming superior force. She turned to the viewport, looking at the rest of the ships in her makeshift task force holding their formation close to Old Abe, hovering over Zemlya. It didn’t amount to much. A hybrid cruiser-carrier, two destroyer-escorts and a recently arrived scout cruiser. The primary offensive formation of the Free Worlds.

   The Guild had stepped into a power vacuum. That much was evident at first glance. Long ago, interstellar civilization had bloodily collapsed in a succession of civil wars and conflicts, and the result had been catastrophic chaos. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of worlds were no longer inhabited, their populations wiped out for the lack of some vital resource that could only be found somewhere light-years distant, and most of the rest had regressed into near-savagery.

   A handful had survived, at least to some degree. Had even prospered. Zemlya, Lemuria, Columbia, a collection of worlds that had managed to either hold onto the secrets of starflight or rediscover them over the course of time. It was conceivable that they would reach out into the stars once more, carve out new pocket empires of their own, perhaps bring the rest of humanity back from the brink.

   All that prevented that from happening was the Guild, the last holdover from the old days of interstellar hegemony. Originally a collection of free traders and merchant princes, the lawless reaches of endless space had forced them to arm their ships, to construct military bases and establish treaties with the few surviving interstellar governments that amounted to little more than protection rackets. When it began, it had been benign enough, even welcomed by some hoping to see the restoration of interstellar trade, but now they held a death-grip on mankind, planning to take all of known space under its hegemonic tyranny.

   And only the USS Abraham Lincoln, the last starship in the United States Space Fleet, had a chance of stopping them. That much was evident. No single world had managed to put together any significant military space fleet, few of them even able to defend their own system. Together, they had a chance, albeit a slender one, of assembling a force of sufficient strength to defeat the enemy. Except that centuries of mistrust had crept among the Free Worlds, preventing any of them from working together.

   She looked up at the flag, and smiled. Perhaps it was little more than cloth now, but it still had a value in this nightmare future. It represented neutrality, a force that was independent of all the rest, and military strength sufficient to lead a fleet into battle against the enemy. Glancing down at the datapad again, her face dropped as she scanned the repair reports. Her ship had taken a serious pounding during the last battle, suffered far too many casualties. Zemlya could conduct repairs, at least after a fashion, her engineering teams working one miracle after another, but there were two problems they could do nothing about.

   There were no crew replacements. Not in a practical sense, anyway. None of her allies had any capacity in their training pipeline, not with new ships under construction all across space, and even if they did, it would take months to train even a veteran technician to use the equipment on Lincoln. Even the engineering teams were struggling, working under the supervision of her own experts, barely above the ‘pass me this tool’ level. A squadron of Lemurian fighters had found a permanent home on Lincoln’s flight deck, but that was as far as she could go, at least for the present. That meant that her ship was an expendable resource, and that every battle might be her last.

   The other problem was simply age. Even before the temporal displacement, Lincoln was an old ship, past her half-century. She’d been destined for the scrapyards, and while her people were working around to the clock to mitigate all the problems they were facing, the ship was simply wearing out, old armor plating reluctant to take repairs, electrical systems burning out. If she could put her ship into refit for a year, they might be able to make good the problems, but they didn’t even have a day to spare, still less a year.

   She looked at her workstation, a light finally winking to indicate a call in progress, and collected her thoughts for a brief moment before taking her place behind the desk, reaching to a control to bring General Markova’s image onto the viewer.

   “General, I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news,”
she began.

   “Captain, I’ve just been informed…”

   “Zemlya is to be attacked by a Guild fleet. A large one. In two days, according to our information.” She paused, then added, “From what we’ve learned, the force is large enough that every ship we have cannot stop it.”

   Taking a deep breath, Markova replied, “Are you sure about this, Captain? Our intelligence shows nothing of the kind.”

   “The officers who provided this information died transmitting it back to Lincoln, General. I think we need to take it extremely seriously. I don’t think we have any alternative other than to assume the worst possible situation.” Taking a deep breath, she added, “I was expecting something like this, though I’d thought we’d have longer to prepare for it.”

   “I take it that you have already decided that my homeworld cannot be saved.” She paused, sighed, and said, “Unfortunately, you are probably right. I want a full security blackout, and I will make arrangements to transfer a potential Presidential successor on board within the hour. The President herself will want to remain at her post, I assume. Hell, they all will, but I think Secretary Kozlova can be talked into it.”

   “That won’t be necessary, General.”

   “In exchange,” Markova said, as though she hadn’t heard Forrest, “You may keep command of Titov, and Komarov when it returns, and I’ll see that...” She paused, then said, “What do you mean, Captain? You aren’t planning on surrender?”

   “Not a chance in hell, General. We’re here to do a job, to win the war against the Guild, and that’s precisely what I intend to do. This is a setback, but it is also an opportunity, and one that I intend to take the fullest possible advantage of.” A smile spread across her face, and she added, “We’ve forced their hand. They’re moving faster than they had intended, and that means that they have left themselves vulnerable.”

   “Vulnerable?” Markova replied. “Captain, our defenses cannot hold out against the sort of major assault that we are talking about, and I think you know that. I’m not going to demand that you throw away the lives of your crew for a hopeless battle...”

   “And I have no intention of fighting a hopeless battle, General. Hopefully you know that well enough.” She paused, then added, “There are representatives of a dozen worlds in our fleet now, even if not all of them have sent actual ships into the battle. I know that their governments will be pushing like hell for them to be recalled, brought home. I need you to prevent that from happening. Whatever it takes.”

   “Just what exactly do you have in mind, Captain?” Markova asked. “It’d be nice to have at least some idea what I was talking the ambassadors of a dozen nations into.”

   “I can’t tell you that right now, General. Not even over an encrypted channel.”

   “I get the feeling that I wouldn’t like it, whatever it was.” There was a pause, and she continued, “You are in command of all deep space operations, Captain, and I see no reason to change that at this time. I’ll do what I can to keep your fleet together. Just make sure you find a way to use it effectively. You won’t get a second chance. And neither will we. Markova out.”

   Taking a deep breath, Forrest looked at the blank viewscreen, and replied, “I know that, General. I’ll make this work. Somehow. Somehow.”

  Chapter 3

   Flynn guided his fighter smoothly into the hangar deck, sliding through the elevator airlock as the mechanism brought him home, a sequence of flickering lights heralding his arrival. His canopy clicked open and he climbed out of his ship, Chief Wong walking up to him with a dress uniform carefully nestled in his hands, a cluster of technicians racing towards him to begin post-flight checks.

   “Captain wants you in the Briefing Room on the double, along with the data you’re carrying. In dress blues. We’re putting on a show, apparently. I’ve reserved an elevator for you, and someone will be waiting at the top to pick up your flight suit.”

   “If someone interrupts the mechanism, they really will get a show,” Flynn replied, tugging his helmet free and tossing it back into the cockpit. “What’s the urgency, Chief?”

   “Don’t ask me. The Captain’s calling the shots. I just do what I’m told.” He paused, then added, “Though we’re on immediate notice for departure. I know that much. All fighters to be ready for immediate launch as soon as we get wherever it is we’re going.” Cracking a rare smile, Wong continued, “I think you’d better move, Commander. She didn’t want to be kept waiting.”

   “Thanks, Chief,” Flynn replied, carefully taking the proffered uniform and running for the elevator, the doors slamming shut as soon as he stepped inside. He quickly pulled off his flight suit, jacket and pants dropped to the deck, and donned his dress uniform, careful to maintain the crease, tugging the shirt into position as he fumbled with the buttons.

   He began to curse the designer, then paused. Whoever had come up with this outfit had died centuries ago. He looked down at the medals on his chest, a dozen pieces of colored cloth, and frowned. More and more, he felt like he was wearing a costume, not a uniform. He reached into the pocket of his discarded flight suit, pulling out the datapad and opening the first file.

   An offer direct from the President of Zemlya, through the Minister of Defense. One that would make him a full Colonel in the Zemlyan Space Force, with responsibility for setting up a new Flight School, to essentially build a fighter component in the local defense forces from scratch. It didn’t take much guesswork to determine that many of the other senior officers would have received similar letters. Lieutenant Benedetti had strongly hinted that Lemuria was interested in his services.

   And the war was still raging, the Guild undefeated. Everyone was already positioning themselves for best advantage, and the worst part was that he was almost tempted to accept the offer. It had been three months since they’d left their own timeline, more than a year – in his temporal context – since he’d seen Earth, the homeworld to which he could never return. Sooner or later, they were all going to have to face up to that reality, find somewhere new to settle.

   The door opened, and he quickly slid into his uniform jacket as a hangar technician scooped up his flight suit, stepping into the vacated elevator. He walked down the corridor to the double doors at the far end, a babel of conversation already filling the air. Stepping inside, he nodded at Commander Kirkland, sitting alone at the head of the table next to an empty chair, and took a seat next to Benedetti, representing the Lemurian fighter force, Commander Garcia next to her.

   “Welcome home,” Benedetti said with a smile. “Major Volkov seemed pleased in the after-action report. Did you get everything you wanted?”

   “Just about,” he replied, placing his datapad on the table. “Nothing we didn’t know already.”

   Turning to him, Garcia asked, “Do you know what this meeting is about, Commander?”

   Shaking his head, he replied, “I don’t know any more than you do, sir. How did Major Kozlov manage?”

   “Titov struck out. Missed her convoy. She got back yesterday,” Benedetti said. “We took down a chemical tanker and her escort, everything just as advertised. They’re running scared.”

   “At least for the moment,” Garcia added. “I don’t know how long that will last for, though. I can understand why the Captain wants to make a move. I just wish I knew where.”

   Volkov raced into the room, dropping down next to Flynn and wiping the sweat from his forehead, asking, “Did I miss anything?”

   “We’re still waiting for Captain Forrest,” Flynn replied. “How the hell did you get here so fast?”

   “Borrowed Poulson’s fighter, flew over on automatic control from the bridge. Don’t worry, I didn’t even scratch the paintwork. Orders from the fleet commander.”

   “Attention!” Kirkland barked, and the officers rose as Captain Forrest walked into the room, taking her place at the head of the table. She looked at each of them, locking
eyes with Flynn for a brief moment, then nodded.

   “Commander Flynn,” Forrest said, “I think we can start with the information you gathered over the course of your mission. I’ve already taken a look at the precis, but I think the news might be better coming from you.”

   Nodding, Flynn rose to his feet, and said, “The Guild is pulling out of this area. All their trading routes in this region have been suspended. The freighter we hit was carrying essential equipment, emptying stockpiles. According to our electronic warfare team, that’s the last ship scheduled for at least a month.”

   “Then we’re making progress,” Garcia said with a smile. “If we’ve got them running scared...”

   “No, Commander, I don’t think that is the case. They’ve got enough ships to provide escorts for convoy duty. It seems more likely to me that they’re pulling in their reserves for a major engagement, or to counter any attack we attempt.” Turning to Forrest, he said, “I presume that’s the purpose of this meeting, Captain. To outline our attack plans.”

   “That is a part of it, Commander, but I’m afraid, not the whole of it.” As Flynn sat down, she continued, “We had a signal from Lieutenant Romano a little under an hour ago, informing us that the Guild was planning to launch a full-scale attack on Zemlya in two days. One of sufficient strength that we would have no realistic chance of countering it, even if we expended every ship in the fleet.”

   The eyes of Commander Lotsawa, commanding the latest addition to that fleet, replied, “I take it you are planning to disperse our forces? My government did not send my ship in for a suicide mission. I suspect that they would be willing to discuss providing refuge for a government-in-exile, but if the Guild has committed a fleet of this scale...”

   “Exactly,” Forrest said. “A fleet larger than any they have committed to battle before. There’s only one reason for that, ladies and gentlemen, and right now, you are sitting in her. They’re running scared. Scared of what this ship might do if it gets loose. What this attack tells me is that we might have overestimated their offensive capabilities.”