Admiral Zaskar took his seat. “Status report?”
“The fleet datanet is coming online, Admiral,” the tactical officer reported. He sounded frightened, although he was trying to hide it. “Our ships are linking in now.”
Too slow, Zaskar thought. Keeping the datanet down was another mistake, although it hadn’t been unjustified at the time. The risk of a stray emission being picked up by a prowling enemy scout ship was too great. They have us dead in their sights.
“Order the freighters to start moving away from the fleet,” he said. He was kicking and screaming on the way to the gallows, and he knew it, but something in him refused to give up. “And bring Sword of Righteousness into the battle line.”
The tactical officer glanced at him. “Admiral?”
“Do it,” Admiral Zaskar snapped. The superdreadnought’s skeleton crew would have to use her maneuvering jets to get her into position, but there was no choice. She might absorb a handful of missiles that would otherwise strike his battle-worthy ships. “And stand by to deploy our remaining ECM drones. All of them.”
“God is with us, my son,” Moses said. “We will prevail.”
Zaskar didn’t bother to look at him. There was no escape, unless Askew’s mystery backers chose to step in. And he had no idea if they could step in. And even if they could, why would they? None of the Great Powers would risk war with the Commonwealth over the pitiful remnants of the Theocratic Navy. Better to let Admiral Zaskar and his fleet die in fire, taking the evidence of outside involvement with them, than start a war.
“Admiral,” the communications officer said, “I’m picking up a wide-band transmission on an open channel. They’re signaling us!”
“They’re signaling everyone,” Admiral Zaskar said. The entire system would hear the message. “Put it through.”
A voice, a woman’s voice, echoed through the air. “This is Admiral Katherine Falcone of the Royal Tyre Navy,” she said. “You are outnumbered and outgunned.”
Admiral Zaskar stared, torn between horror and a grim awareness that God had brought the Theocracy’s most dangerous enemy within striking range. If he killed Admiral Falcone, if he . . . He shook his head tiredly. Killing Kat Falcone would not bring the Theocracy back to life, let alone reverse the outcome of the war. Besides, he had no idea which ship was her flagship. His sensor systems appeared to believe that the message was coming from every enemy ship.
“If you surrender now, and make no attempt to kill prisoners, destroy your datacores, or otherwise cripple your vessels, we will spare your lives,” Kat Falcone continued. “You will be returned to Ahura Mazda, where you will spend the rest of your days. But if you refuse to surrender, there will be no second chance. You and your ships will be utterly destroyed.”
“Silence that woman,” Moses hissed. “She will lure our men into sin!”
For once, you might have a point, Admiral Zaskar thought. Everyone could hear the enemy message. The fanatics would fight to the last, of course, but the less-committed spacers might be glad of a chance to surrender and return home. How many of our men will decide that surrender is the best option?
He considered it, briefly, before dismissing the thought. His spacers might be allowed to return home, but he’d be lucky if he was merely dumped into a penal colony. He’d committed war crimes, at least by their standards. Kat Falcone might be willing to let bygones be bygones, but very few others would agree. She certainly wouldn’t be deciding his destiny. Admiral Zaskar and his senior officers would be marched to the airlock and thrown into space. There was little to be gained from surrendering his ships.
But my people would live, he thought. My crew would survive.
“I will address her,” Moses said. He strode forward. “Give me the microphone.”
“And stand by point defense,” Admiral Zaskar added. The enemy was already in missile range. “They’ll open fire at any moment.”
Moses shot him a sharp look, then took the mike. “We are the custodians of the True Faith . . .”
Well, Kat thought, at least we know we found the right people.
“Prepare to fire,” she ordered, ignoring the misogyny. Still, the enemy CO, or whoever was speaking, was unusually polite for a Theocrat. She’d heard a great deal worse on Ahura Mazda. “Bring up tactical sensors to full power. Let them know they’re being targeted.”
“Aye, Admiral,” Kitty said.
Kat nodded, studying the live feed from the stealth drones. The enemy didn’t seem to have spotted them, even though they were quite close to their hulls. They’d kept their drives and sensors powered down to minimize the odds of detection, something that had come back to bite them hard. Their sensors were powering up now, but her drones had already gone dark and silent. The Theocrats would have real trouble spotting them.
One of their superdreadnoughts is in a very bad state, she thought. But is it for real?
Her eyes narrowed. The enemy ship wasn’t even trying to power up her drive. Was she nothing more than a shipyard queen, used only as a source of spare parts? Kat tapped a command into her console, ordering the tactical crews to regard the enemy ship as a potential threat anyway. There was no reason to assume she couldn’t fire missiles, even if her drives were offline. A Royal Navy superdreadnought was designed to continue fighting till the very end, with so many redundancies built into her command systems that it would take one hell of a battering to put her out of commission. She was sure the Theocrats had followed the same philosophy.
She frowned as her eyes moved to the freighters and, beyond them, to the asteroid base. It clearly hadn’t been built by the Theocrats, at least not as a
