We need support from the Royal Navy, he thought grimly. But the navy can’t hope to cover every potential target.
“Right,” Barrington said. “Captain, you are to do everything within your power to prepare to defend our world. And . . . if they do attack in force, I expect you to make them pay as high a price as possible before you withdraw.”
Tanya gasped. “Withdraw?”
“A pair of light cruisers were destroyed at Judd,” Barrington said sharply. “And what do we have? Two destroyers.”
William scowled. He didn’t like the thought of abandoning Asher Dales to the Theocrats, not when it was all too clear that everything Barrington and his people had built would be destroyed from orbit. Asher Dales didn’t have a refugee problem, thankfully. There were no POW camps for the enemy to raid. But Barrington was right. The two destroyers, four if the remainder of the squadron arrived before the enemy, wouldn’t stand a chance if the Theocracy attacked. The vessels of Asher Dales might be able to land a blow or two—William was already starting to turn his vague ideas into something usable—but the outcome was inevitable.
“We will do what we can,” he promised. “And I already have a couple of ideas.”
“Good luck,” Barrington said. “I’ll be dispersing the population down here. Hopefully, they’ll blast empty cities rather than crowded farms.”
William winced. Hebrides had followed a similar strategy, back when the pirate attacks had begun. It had worked, to some extent, but hadn’t kept the pirates from extorting food, drink, and women from the planetary population. And Asher Dales was facing the Theocracy. A pirate ship might give up and go away. The Theocracy wouldn’t leave unless they encountered superior force.
They’d be fools to allow themselves to be pinned down so easily, he told himself. They might just make one pass through the system, blast anything that looks important, then retreat at once.
“Perhaps we should set up decoys on the surface,” he said. “A handful of ECM pods, perhaps. If we configure them to look like they’re industrial nodes, they might bomb them and miss the real targets.”
Barrington smiled, wanly. “And rig explosives underneath them to make it look like they went up with a bang,” he added. “Let them think they hurt us.”
William’s lips twitched humorlessly as he recalled an old joke. One side of a war had set up a dummy airfield, complete with dummy hangars and dummy aircraft. The enemy had promptly bombed it, with dummy bombs. It might work, he told himself. If the explosions were spectacular enough, the Theocrats wouldn’t want to look any closer. They wouldn’t want to think that they’d been tricked.
Except this lot seem alarmingly smart, he thought. They might be more careful.
“It should work,” he said. They had nothing to lose by trying. “If nothing else, we might just manage to give them a bloody nose.”
“Then get right on it,” Barrington ordered. “I’ll talk to you two later.”
His image vanished. William looked at Tanya. “He’s taking it remarkably well.”
“Father has always been . . . somewhat phlegmatic,” Tanya said. “The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune are a part of his life, he says.”
William nodded in wry approval. “Primrose will be back soon,” he said. “Once she’s in position, we can start our planning.”
Tanya met his eyes. “Can you really hurt them?”
“We will try,” William said. The firepower disparity was going to hurt his little squadron. “Like I said, we should be able to give them a bloody nose. A little deception, and they might not even push us to the wall.”
And if someone proposed this as a solution to a naval problem, he added in the privacy of his own thoughts, they’d be lucky not to be hauled in front of a court-martial and charged with gross stupidity.
She rose. “I’ll leave you to get on with it,” she said. “Dinner tonight, at the usual time?”
“Perhaps not,” William said. “I’ll have to meet Captain Descartes for dinner. We need to do some advanced planning.”
He looked down at the desk. “Perhaps we should have escorted the freighter directly here after all.”
“We’d still be in transit,” Tanya said. “Wouldn’t we?”
She walked through the hatch, which hissed closed behind her. William smiled ruefully, then keyed his terminal. They’d crammed the destroyers with supplies, but the shortage of internal volume had really limited what they could bring. The local industry could make up some of the shortfall, but other items would need to wait until the other ships arrived. Unless, of course, he requested help from the Royal Navy. Kat would understand the need, he was sure.
But not everyone will, he thought. There had always been a pervasive anti-colonial sentiment in the upper ranks, something that had only been made worse by the mutiny on Uncanny. It was funny how colonial officers and men seemed to be the first selected for involuntary discharges. Some of them will decide we can look after ourselves.
He shook his head as he keyed his terminal. “Communications, ask the courier boat to wait for five more minutes,” he said. It wasn’t something he could order, not anymore. “I have a message I need them to take to Ahura Mazda.”
“Aye, sir.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
AHURA MAZDA
“Your shuttle is ready, Admiral,” Captain Rosslyn said. “We are cleared to depart.”
Kat barely moved from her chair. The flight back to Ahura Mazda had been uneventful, although she’d hoped in vain that they’d stumble across the enemy fleet. She’d detached two of her superdreadnoughts to cover Judd, all too aware that she was taking a serious risk by breaking up the squadron. It had been easy, during the five days she’d spent in transit, to second-guess herself time and time again. The Theocrats weren’t going to return to Judd . . . were they?
They might, just to make us look like fools, she thought. And if they do, we’ll be ready for them.
She stood, slowly. She’d spent the voyage trying to find a way
