"Prepped!" his com officer acknowledged. Then, "Update locked!"
"Launch!"
The captain turned back to his own display, teeth locked in a death's-head grin. There was no way his ship could survive, but he'd gotten the message out. HQ would know everything he knew, for the enemy could never intercept his drone and its sensor data.
The drone snaked away, racing directly ahead of the corvette, hidden by her own and Poltava's drives until it was beyond effective energy weapon range. But Ortiz's scan teams picked up its gravity signature as it began to climb across the ecliptic, and they were ready.
The battle-cruisers com officer transmitted a complicated code, and Herme's skipper gaped in horror as his drone obeyed the command-the proper, authenticated Fleet override-and self-destructed.
He knew, then. Knew who his enemies were and whence they came … and how utterly he had been betrayed. Something snapped deep inside him, and he barked new helm orders as the battle-cruiser's Fasset drive loomed up close astern. His drive's side shields dropped, and his ship began to turn.
Hermes was in her enemy's blind zone, riding the arc where the battle-cruiser's own drive blocked her sensors. It was a matter of seconds before she spun to clear the drive mass and bring her weapons to bear, but seconds were all the corvette's skipper needed. All in the universe he wanted, now.
Poltava began her swing, and not even her AI had time to realize Hermes had already swung and redlined her drive on an intercept course.
Commodore Howell swore vilely as both Fasset drives vanished, and the fact that he'd seen it coming only made it worse. That idiot! To blow it all after the bravura brilliance of his initial strike! A second-year middy knew better than to get that close to an enemy's drive mass, for God's sake, especially when the disparity in firepower meant that enemy was doomed anyway.
But there'd been nothing Howell could do. The rest of his squadron was still fifteen light-minutes from Elysium, far too distant for any com to reach Ortiz in time. And so he'd had to sit and watch helplessly as a quarter of his battle-cruiser strength vanished before his eyes.
He sucked in a deep breath and forced himself back under control. He couldn't pour the milk back into the bottle, and he had other things to worry about-like what the planetary governor did with his emergency SLAM drone.
That drone was the only thing in this system which still threatened Howell's ships. It couldn't hurt them now, but it would tell Fleet far too much if it got out with a record of Poltava's emission signature. If Ortiz hadn't gotten his stupid ass killed, the threat would be minimal; even if the governor realized how the corvette's drone had been killed and locked out the self-destruct command, Poltava's weapons would have been more than capable of killing it as it broke atmosphere. His own ships couldn't. Just catching it with a com beam before it wormholed would be hard enough from this distance.
"Think they got a clean reading on us?" he asked Alexsov hopefully, but the chief of staffs shrug was discouraging.
"The forts certainly did. If they kept groundside advised, and we have to assume they did, the planet knows we're Fleet units. More to the point, Control says their port has enough sensor capability to've gotten a good read on Poltava-certainly enough for Fleet's data base to fingerprint her."
"Shit." Howell tugged unhappily at an earlobe. This was what he'd most feared about the entire Elysium operation. The actual attack hadn't worried him, given their inside information, but if the identity of his ships got out, their true objective would be lost. He and his people would
become in truth what everyone now assumed they were: plain and simple pirates.
"Maybe I shouldn't've argued against two ships," Alexsov said sourly.
"Don't blame yourself. Ortiz blew it, and you were right. Control's cover story only allowed for one 'legitimate' ship. We couldn't know he'd-"
The commodore broke off with a curse. His light-speed sensors hadn't been able to see the SLAM drone rise from the planet on counter-grav, but the blue spark of its lighting Fasset drive was glaringly obvious.
"Send the code," he rasped, and the ops officer nodded.
"Sending now," Commander Rendlemann replied, and Howell sat back in his command chair to wait. His light-speed destruct command would require thirty-one minutes to overtake the drone; by the time he knew whether or not it had succeeded, his ships would be within assault range of the planet.
Chapter Ten
Sirens continued to wail as the raiders decelerated towards Elysium. There had been no communication from the "Fleet" ships, and that, in light of what had just occurred, was more than sufficient proof of their purpose.
The governor sat in his communications center and watched his staff coordinate Elysium's mobilization. His militia were marshaling with gratifying speed, but he'd created them purely as a morale-booster to prove he was Doing Something; he'd never anticipated they might actually be called upon, and the rest of his careful plans were a shambles. The evacuation centers were already madhouses, and the background crackle of reports from their managers grew more frantic with every second.
A dedicated screen lit, and Major von Hamel, Elysium's senior Marine, looked out of it and saluted. His eyes were level despite the strain in them, and he already wore his combat armor.
"Governor. My people are heading for their initial positions. We should be at full readiness well before the bandits launch their shuttles."
"Good." The governor tried to put some enthusiasm into his voice, but he knew as well as von Hamel just how little chance the Marines had.
"Militia Colonel Ivanov tells me his people are running a bit behind schedule, but I anticipate they'll be ready by the time anyone hits their local perimeters." This time the governor simply nodded. Even von Hamel, who had supported the militia concept strongly from the beginning, had trouble sounding confident over that, and he leaned closer to his pickup.
"Sir, I've heard some strange reports on that battle-cruiser, and-"
"They're true." The governor cut him off grimly and von Hamel's face went even tighter. "Orbit Command confirmed she was Fleet-built, and we caught a last-minute transmission from Hermes just before she rammed. They definitely identified her as HMS Poltava. According to the records, she went to the breakers twenty-two months ago; apparently the records are wrong."
"Shit." The governor, normally a stickler for decorum, didn't even frown at von Hamel's expletive. "That means these other bastards are probably real Fleet designs … with a real ground element." The major was thinking aloud, his eyes darker than ever. "We can't hold the capital against that kind of attack, and they've got the orbital firepower to take out any fixed position. I'm afraid Thermopylae's our only option, sir."
"Agreed. We're trying to evacuate now, but we expected at least six hours of lead time. We're not going to get many of them out."
"I'll buy you all the time I can, sir, but it won't be much," von Hamel warned, and the governor nodded his thanks.
"Understood, Major. God bless."
"And you, sir. We're both going to need it."
Commodore Howell watched his plot, eyes glued to the fleeing SLAM drone, as his ships slid into assault orbit, their energy batteries busy systematically eliminating every orbital installation to eradicate any record of their identity. A backwash of assault shuttle readiness reports murmured in the back of his brain, relayed from Rendlemann's cyber synth link, but Howell wasn't concerned about this phase of the operation. He knew all about Elysium's militia, and he and Alexsov had anticipated from the start that the defenders would be forced back on Thermopylae. It was the only one of their contingency plans that made any sense.