“Eyes on your screen,” the commodore snapped, catching Zulu’s eye. He was a big boor of a man, who boasted of his service in the Imperial Navy before returning to Wakanda, claiming to have commanded superdreadnaughts and participated in hundreds of engagements with rebel forces. Zulu privately suspected that the truth was that he hadn’t commanded anything more advanced than a garbage scow. He certainly seemed to have no idea of the capabilities and limitations of the men under his command. “We want to know the minute anything enters the system!”
Sure we do, Zulu thought, trying to convince himself that the commodore was merely being bombastic. The advance of Admiral Wilhelm and the fall of the Imperial Navy base at Hawthorn had caused the government to panic, all-too-aware that their own people would prefer Admiral Wilhelm to their rule. They’d put the Space Navy on alert and tried desperately to build up the defences, only to run into funding problems at once. Wakanda was not regarded as a good credit risk and richer worlds, intent on improving their own defences, had little to spare. They didn’t even have sensors capable of tracking ships in the outer solar system. If Admiral Wilhelm’s forces flickered in only a few AU away, they would be completely missed until they opened fire. Zulu’s awareness of what was around the orbital defence fort was almost completely non-existent.
“And the rest of you, look lively,” the commodore continued. Zulu sighed as the berating continued. He’d served under a handful of officers who had been sadists and tyrants, but at least they’d known what they were doing. The commodore’s only qualification for his post had been that he was a relative of the current head of government, the United Clan. “I don’t want to see even one of you slacking off…”
Zulu tuned it off and entertained himself with a mild fantasy of rolling a fragmentation grenade into the commodore’s quarters one night. He hadn’t ever attempted to turn fantasy into reality — if he was caught, his entire family would suffer — but it kept him warm at night. besides, the commodore believed that a man should be known by the scale of his appetites and was therefore awesomely fat, causing some of his subordinates to take bets on when he would pass away from a heart attack. It said something about his general indolence that he hadn’t even bothered to use cosmetic surgery to reform his body, although he was always bragging about his enhanced penis, something that was well outside Zulu’s funds. If the Wakanda Space Navy had allowed women to serve the commodore would have been unstoppable…
He snapped back to attention as an alarm sounded, calling everyone to attend. “I have a contact,” he said, pushing as much excitement into his voice as he could. So few craft visited the system that he barely had time to run proper tracking exercises on them all. The only regular arrivals were a bare of dingy freighters belonging to the government that seemed rather less space-worthy than something from the early days of space travel. “One starship, flickering out above the gravity shadow.”
The commodore waddled over to his station. “I see,” he said, his breath stinking of something Zulu would prefer not to think about. When the remainder of the crew struggled to live on rations, packed by government-owned factories and tasting of very little, if they were lucky, the commodore had the services of a private chef and as much food as he could stomach. “Hostile?”
“Unknown, sir,” Zulu said, carefully not allowing any scorn into his voice. The commodore had a long memory for slights and insults from those he considered his inferiors. “I think it’s a destroyer, but it’s hard to tell with these sensors and they could be jamming us…”
“Or maybe you’re just incompetent,” the commodore sneered. His eyes fell on the red icon as it twisted and vanished in a flicker of light. “Have they gone?”
“Yes, sir,” Zulu said. He pushed as much concern into his voice as he dared. “I think that was a reconnaissance flight, sir. We have to put the defences on alert.”
“Oh, really?” The commodore asked. His voice didn’t bother to hide anything. “Do you think, a person who has never served off-world, that Admiral Wilhelm would not take one look at our defences and choose to leave us alone?”
It would be more likely that he would die laughing and his successor would order the attack, Zulu thought. Whatever the commodore, and his family, thought about the defences, Zulu himself had no such illusions. They wouldn’t stand up to a concentrated attack from a pair of battlecruiser squadrons, let alone the might of Admiral Wilhelm’s fleet. The government had tried to bury the warnings from the Provisional Government on Earth, but Zulu had seen enough to know just how little hope Wakanda actually had.
He was still trying to find a way to explain that to the commodore, without an automatic death sentence, when the alarms started to chime again. Seven massive starships had emerged outside the designated emergence zone, far too close to the planet for comfort. The sensors still couldn’t pick up sufficient detail, but it was clear that they were superdreadnaughts. Nothing smaller could have produced such a signature. The display kept updating, revealing the presence of more starships spreading out to escort the larger capital ships, but Zulu didn’t know why they were bothering. If they had bothered to read their copy of Jane’s Fighting Starships, they would know just how weak the defences actually were. Seven superdreadnaughts — let alone the two additional superdreadnaughts that appeared a moment later — were overkill.
“We have multiple emergences,” he said, calmly. Part of him was proud by how calm his voice was, in contrast to the Commodore, who had gone so pale that Zulu wondered if he were about to collapse, while the remainder of him saw certain death in the very near future. Wakanda’s never-to-be-sufficiently-damned government wouldn’t see sense and surrender at once. “I am reading approximately forty-two starships forming up on attack vectors.”
The commodore seized on the key word. “Approximately?” He demanded. Zulu wondered why he was even bothering to pretend to be surprised. The commodore’s real knowledge of space warfare and technology was almost non-existent. “how do you not have an exact count?”
“Because they are using their ECM to spoof our sensors and I only have accurate tracks on forty-two of them,” Zulu replied, patiently. “I count two minutes before they enter engagement range of the starships.”
The Wakanda Space Navy was slowly assembling. The Cottbus Fleet could have charged right into the gravity shadow and engaged some of the ships at once, but instead they were waiting, lurking right on the edge of the shadow. It took Zulu only a second to understand why. If the defenders were kind enough to line up to be slaughtered, Admiral Wilhelm — if he were actually present — would be happy to accept the favour.
Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake, he thought, sourly. It was an Imperial Navy saying, one of the many trite sayings that passed for wisdom from time to time, but it had a core of solid truth. He looked up at the commodore and took in his pale and shaking face. There would be no inspiring leadership from a man whose only normal decisions involved eating and sleeping. He was utterly unsuited to his role.
“Sir,” he said, more gently than he would have believed possible, “you have to warn them?”