If We Turn To Dust
- Chapter 7 -[]
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Conference between Peers[]
LYRAN WARSHIP ATHENA, NADIR POINT
SOL STAR SYSTEM, COMSTAR SPACE
OCTOBER 18TH, 3027
Invincible had been the first to jump, this time, and Athena tail-end charlie. With Thresher's jump drive downchecked and Vespasian eighteen hours behind on its charging schedule, eighteen warships were already waiting when we arrived - by far the largest concentration of active ships since the First Succession War.
And the largest fleet action.
Predictably, the geometry had four separate clusters, based on the exact coordinates used by the three arriving forces and the way Comstar's commander had arrayed his ships within mutual defensive range. We'd arrived in one cluster, the Federated Suns contingent in another, and the Free Worlds League jumpships in a third.
I nodded to Admiral Vargas and stuck my head in the privacy hood as the links to Pleiades and Kestros opened up.
One half of the screen projected a woman I'd met once, young, and beautiful with thoroughly asiatic features. While the other showed a man I'd only seen pictures of, also young but with a prominently bulbous nose and a black hedgehog of a beard that did a remarkable job hiding the unfortunately receding double chin.
(("Warden,")) Duggan Marik said, inclining his head politely to the camera pickup. (("Duchess. Thank you for agreeing to speak with me so quickly."))
There was a half-second of transmission delay, and then Candace Liao said, <("By all means, Minister Marik. It would be pointless to have invited you to join us today and then decline to hear you.")>
"If it needs dealt with before the battle, we should move fast, Minister," I said. "What do you need?"
(("The Suns and Commonwealth have obviously been coordinating this operation ahead of time - so what is your policy on nuclear release?")) Marik asked, obviously shuffling ahead in his head to find the right cue card.
"Second strike only," I said, overlapping slightly with Candace in the process - and then I said, "Go ahead, Duchess." as we both stopped.
<("At no point will we initiate a nuclear first strike,")> she repeated, going on, <("but if Comstar chooses to use one of their own, the launching vessel and only the launching vessel should be subjected to maximum-force strikes in return.")>
Marik grimaced. (("That's hard on the first target.")) he said.
"We've spent fifteen years digging up every Star League anti-missile targeting suite we could find," I said. "It's not enough for the fighters and the dropships, but… the [[<(warships]] will be much harder targets than they expect."
<("Given the numbers of fighters already available," Candace said, "We were intending to launch only at a three-to-one ratio.")>
He laughed blackly. (("'Only',")) he said.
"Pleiades, Athena, Alexander, and Beowulf all individually carry more fighters than all of their warships put together," I said. "And for that matter, you've got nearly as many."
What the Free Worlds League had managed to scrape up on what was basically no notice was every single Vengeance Battlegroup they had - seven Star Lord jumpships each carrying a Vengeance and three Leopard CV fighter carrier dropships, and a pair of Avenger assault dropships for escort duty. Their ground elements would take longer to show up, but they had a regiment of vacuum-specialized infantry in a scatter of small dropships, mostly Furys.
Rather later, I'd see confirmation that ComStar had seen the command circuits rushing them into position as proof that the Commonwealth was about to trigger a rush on Terra, and that that was why their warships had been ready to fly on a moment's notice.
(("Somewhat less,")) Marik demurred. A spark of mischief was in his eyes as he said, (("We brought the weapons for extensive anti-shipping work; I propose that my people will put our heavy strike packages into the air for that second-strike capability you mentioned."))
"That works." I said. "We brought a strike mix ourselves, so it's just shuffling who's in the slot." I glanced at my displays. "Looks like we'll want bang-on four regiments in space superiority. The Dantes are capable of four-gee burns, fighters won't be able to keep up, so we had them tagged as the priority targets for the warships and Munins."
(("And boarding actions to neutralize the battlecruisers.")) Marik said, brushing past any private disappointment that I hadn't shown the surprise he expected.
<("Which were to be split between the original treaty partners.")> Candace Liao noted. Or, in the subtextual mode, 'You're not getting the Suns' ship with this trick.' Which I could hardly blame her for.
"If those planned attempts fail, then you're welcome to try your luck, and keep the proceeds." I said.
Marik looked mulish, which well he might, since... (("You know that I can't accept being cut out of access to their warships after seeing what I have,")) he said. ...That would leave his country even more screwed than they thought.
"That's an argument that'll take longer than we have right now," I said. The actual jump arrivals were separated by several minutes flight time at the rate the Comstar fleet was accelerating - it was hard to get exactly on target from thirty light-years away, which was one of the reasons Pirate Points weren't the standard way to do things - but not that many.
Candace tapped one forefinger to her lips thoughtfully, then smiled. <("What if we guaranteed you first selection of the battlecruiser-weight ships in their mothball yards?")> she suggested.
I laughed, which made both of them flinch ever so slightly. "We saw at least one Black Lion at Luyten," I said. "That's a nastier customer than any Cameron; maybe not enough to make up for the refit and rebuild work they'll need, but close." And her specifying a battlecruiser avoided mentioning what to do with the freakin' McKenna we'd seen there, too.
(("I'll hold you to that,")) he said, with a flash of the humor my briefings said was more typical of the man - even if it receded quickly. "How much inter-operation should we expect?"
I glanced at Candace's image, and saw her mirror the motion on the other end of the lightspeed delay. She made a little 'go ahead' gesture at the bottom of the pickup. "We were planning to keep our formations and firing solutions separate," I said, and glanced through the privacy screen as I went on, "because there hasn't been time for cooperative training, and so our people would trip over each other if they were in the same space trying to do the same thing in at least slightly different ways. The Commonwealth fleet will put itself on the vector between the Robes and your jumpships, but we can't promise there won't be leakers."
"We appreciate your generosity," Marik said, looking like he was consciously trying not to look the gift horse in the mouth.
<("Whatever else has passed between us as nations or individuals,")> Candace said, <("today we are allies.")>
Duggan Marik nodded slowly. (("So we are and the terms for our enemies?"))
"Unconditional surrender," I said flatly. "'Why' is a long story and we'll have an information packet for you to verify after the battle, but for now the short version is: The Lyran Commonwealth has uncovered evidence that ComStar deliberately incited both widespread loss of technology and both the Second and Third Succession Wars, and has continued to act to perpetuate conflict and prevent even medical and humanitarian recovery up to the present day. We can also prove that our units were nowhere near the HPG station they claim was attacked."
(("Having a united front makes that message and narrative easier to sell and more intimidating to the First Circuit.")) he replied, nodding.
"It also has the incidental advantage of being true," I said dryly, "but yes, it's a useful narrative."
(("Of course it is.")) Marik said, in a teasingly agreeable tone that made me want to break his nose.
<("In any case,")> Candace said, clearly trying to head off the potential argument, <("The Comstar Militia admiral doesn't seem inclined to spend time blustering.")>
I checked. "Not even a text ward-away. No, he certainly isn't."
<("We have a prepared message.")> Candace said, and my console blipped and threw it up on a secondary monitor. I skimmed it, just to confirm that the text was more or less what had been agreed to.
Having discovered proof that the inner circles of the ComStar Order have betrayed their sworn oaths of neutrality, their humanitarian duty, and the sacred trusts reposed in them by Jerome Blake and the people of the Human Race, we the undersigned hereby require the unconditional surrender of the First Circuit of the ComStar Order and all their agents, that their misdeeds be brought to light and the knowledge they have hoarded be made the rightful inheritance of all mankind.
All members of the ComStar Guards and Militia are hereby charged to lay down their arms and maintain their vessels in place or on their current vectors, to be taken in charge by legitimate authorities.
Candace Liao, Duchess of Sian, for the Federated Suns
A moment later, another signature appeared on the document.
Duggan Marik, Minister of Trade, for the Free Worlds League
I fitted my thumb into the verifier, letting it get my fingerprint and the little sting of the blood sampler for the DNA test.
<{Asha Blackwing, Warden of the Rift Approaches, for the Lyran Commonwealth}>
[]
Of course the Com Guards fleet did no such thing whatsoever, aside from finally bring up their transponders to admit their flag of origin.
They formed up, a square wall of warships like the five pips of a die's face, with two dropships the warbooks were calling Elephants in the empty spots between StarSword and Montpellier and between Bordeaux and Invisible Truth. A third meaty dropship, this one a Titan, flew between StarSword and Bordeaux, while the remaining empty spot in the three-by-three grid held a close-packed cluster of a Union and a pair of Leopard CVs, vastly outmatched in this environment.
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Leopard CV Light Fighter Carrier DropShip
Admiral Vargas's explanation went thus: "It's not a bad approach formation, really. It keeps their forces together for mutual support that they'll badly need, makes certain we can't isolate a single ship and concentrate on it without taking fire from their others. Given the difference in performance between a Cameron and everything else they have, it will come apart the instant we reach weapons range - there's simply too much maneuverability for their faster ships to lose by sticking with the sluggards - but it will put them in as good a position at the start of the clash as they can expect."
We were still on the Flag Bridge, but he'd clearly evaluated things as having reached the stage where most of his job became sitting around looking confident, so he'd clearly decided that resuming the role of the Nagelring tactics lecturer he'd once been was a good demonstration.
He picked out one light code in the holotank. "The amount of radiation leakage in Invisible Truth's exhaust stream suggests that her fusion torch is having timing and containment issues."
"Hyperspace punch-throughs surviving to decay outside the thruster bell rather than serving as a reaction surface for the plasma stream," I said, and got the startled look I half-expected. "My degree is actually in fusion engineering."
"I thought I recalled as much, but I had thought your focus was on smaller reactors." he said.
I managed to giggle rather than cackling. "It is. I could build a municipal plant or ground combat engine without more than the usual manual checking any sane technician uses, but not an aerospace torch. That doesn't mean I don't know how they work in principle, just that I'm not so familiar with the finer details. But in this case, the upside is that Invisible Truth has reduced maximum acceleration, right?"
"Correct," Vargas said, despite the way I saw his chief of staff unconsciously mouth 'up side?'. "Their formation is at eight meters per second squared, and she's showing more strain to hold that than I'd accept in any vessel under my command."
"That's… Interesting," I said musingly. "Because what few sniffs we'd gotten of their warship program suggested that they were very close to scrapping one of the Camerons to get the other back to full working order… And that it was Invisible Truth that was considered the better prospect."
"And we saw that StarSword's drives were in close to full working order at Luyten." Vargas concluded. He'd probably seen summaries that matched what I was saying already, but by the sound of his voice, he was thinking the implications over afresh.
So what was wrong with StarSword, if Invisible Truth's engines were crippled?
We'd be finding out soon enough. Our own formation wasn't what anyone would call quick - both Alexander and Athena topped out at one and a half gravities, even after leaving Locura, Mars, and Loxley behind - but with the Com Guards shackled to Invisible Truth, even I could tell that we were having an easy time closing the distance while still staying between them and the vulnerable League jumpships. Both of the FedSuns ships were faster still, but they were timing their approach to ours. The League's strike fighter squadrons were coasting up behind us; their carriers had made a shorter burn at their maximum acceleration then kicked them out the door before braking to keep themselves clear.
"Give me a bearings launch on the Titan," Vargas said, almost absently. His eyes were still on the display, and he'd spoken fairly quietly, but the communications ratings swung into motion to spread the order through the fleet and coordinate a time on target shot.
"Bearing-only launch count three Killer Whale, ten White Shark, two Barracuda, aye aye," the leader of that team reported. "Time on target barrage arrival in twenty seconds from… mark."
Vargas hissed between his teeth as the missiles flew… but when a disappointed groan rose from the crew, he was nodding in satisfaction, instead. A flurry of new icons surrounded the Comstar warships and the cluster of Leopards, while the Titan had fallen out of formation, tumbling rapidly. While it brought itself back under control, Vargas turned to me and explained: "We did that for two reasons. First, the Com Guards commander had left his deployment of his fighter assets very late, so there was a small chance to destroy one of his carriers before he came to his senses. Second, I wanted to know what kind of decision loop and reaction time they had.
"We weren't lucky with the hits, but fifteen seconds to begin evasive maneuvers with every crewman at his station means that his ships almost certainly don't - or at least didn't - have the authority to begin maneuvering on their own - they're being ordered from the flagship."
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Cameron Class Battlecruiser
A moment later, gravity began to slew and shift as Athena went to flank and began evasive maneuvers. A dusting of eight missile icons had separated from the two Camerons and raced across the distance separating our formations. The Muninn squadrons closed in on the threat vector, diving across it in a weaving pattern that let them apply their point-defense guns against the incoming missiles without keeping any of them in place for long enough to eat more than a single of the ballistic warheads.
One of them did catch a Killer Whale - though fortunately, not the Lieutenant Asima Brigham - but its heavy armor stood it in good stead and it kept flying.
This was more of an achievement than the usual method of comparing capital missiles would have you think, since, barring the nuclear variants, their warheads aren't there to destroy targets. In fact, capital missiles carry warheads to destroy themselves, at a time of their own choosing and in a way calculated to scatter their own substantial and very fast-moving mass across a targeted area. The Killer Whales the Com Guards had just fired weighed fifty tons each, and unlike an aerospace fighter of equivalent weight they had no need for safety systems, cockpit, life support, or extended reaction mass reserves for matching velocities at the end of their run. Running into a finely spread mass of o-rings and debris fragments at speed could easily destroy a fighter, which was the entire point.
Warship armor was made of thin layers, widely spaced from each other, to deal with exactly that kind of threat, because even for warships, a meteoroid strike near the turnover point of planet-jump point transit was still the nightmare one-shot-one-kill threat, and converting that threat mass into plasma and giving it time to scatter and expand was the best way to deal with the problem.
A capital missile that didn't scatter itself, though, was slower and much more massive than most meteoroid strikes. Like a ramming or run-over aerospace fighter, it would crash through multiple armor layers and wreak far more havok with its mass and speed than it ever would with its puny warhead.
Anyway, once the Muninns had made their attempt to hose down the incoming salvo with their own machine guns, it was the turn of the anti-missile systems mounted to the warships. They were the same physical gun mounts as the dropships had, more or less, but married to far better computer aiming and control systems - far more precise. The dropships had only been able to kill one of the unarmored weapons, versus the three taken out by Alexander's own defenses. One more, thanks to the long range and the fact that the Killer Whale didn't have the fuel to remain under thrust across the entire distance, missed entirely.
Two hit.
Alexander was a large, tough ship. There was no rush of escaping air, no change in her maneuvers. But the SLDF-standard damage-coding that ringed her icon in the display were exactly the same as would have been used for a damaged battlemech, and I could read that two missiles in the same place had nearly shattered her forward-starboard armor zone.
Vargas didn't say a word, and I was sure that no one else was close enough to see his lips tighten - but he nodded slightly in approval as Alexander's crew twisted their vessel in a half-spiral that obscured the damaged facing from further fire. That changed their base course, of course, but Darius stuck next to her. "Sir…" said one of the comm ratings, as the murmuring from that section grew more intense.
"Darius is to maintain company with Alexander," he said. "Attach the Seventh to them as well."
Half of the Muninns split off to screen the two slowly separating warships, as the three warship squadrons closed.
"Another missile salvo?" his chief of staff suggested.
"By no means," he replied, even while Invisible Truth and StarSword were firing another volley. "We'll conserve our ammunition until we're close enough for powered flight." Again, the escorts crisscrossed along the vector of the incoming missiles, though without taking any hits of their own this time. Again, Alexander's own defenses reaped a far greater total. This time, Darius was close enough to the vector to add her own AMS, and only one missile hit, ripping a long glancing gash along the cruiser's broadside armor.
Moments after that, a salvo of missiles from the FedSuns formation peppered one of the Dantes, two of the six Killer Whales striking home on opposite sides of the frigate's nose and one Barracuda slashing along the bottom of the ship's bow.
The third salvo of missiles from the ComStar battlecruisers was hastier, not as well aimed - over half of them missed outright without any help from Alexander or her escorts, and the rest were chewed up or deflected before they could hit.
There was no fourth long-range salvo; rather than be caught with their launchers reloading, the Com Guards held their fire for the extra twenty seconds before Vargas turned his head slightly. "Engage with fire plan Dora, if you please. Begin with Narbonne."
The long range fire reached out, PPC blasts and missile trails flashing by the ComStar frigate's hull and cratering her armor. She fired back, picking Alexander as her target along with the rest of her fellows - and had a harder time as the big cruiser twisted along its base vector, fighting to slide out of the way.
"Barracudas," Vargas murmured in satisfaction as the Camerons split their fire, their own naval PPCs joining the fusillade at Alexander and their missile batteries while the missile salvo raced out and distributed itself across our escorting fighters. I could feel my own expression tighten as an interceptor squadron vanished, the missile's guidance systems bracketing its danger zone perfectly into the middle of the formation of fragile Seydlitz fighters and wiping them out in one go, but I understood his reaction, also. Cameron-class battlecruisers carried the Star League Defense Force's standard AR-10 multipurpose missile launcher, capable of feeding and firing any missile loaded into a rotating ten-round drum. The three salvos of Killer Whale anti-ship missiles they'd fired were probably all they'd loaded, leaving them down to however many Barracuda Aerospace Defense missiles, and…
"Plus any Peacemakers or Santa Anas," I said, carefully quiet enough that only he could hear.
"You really think they're that mad?" he replied
"I think that they're crazier than any of us have yet realized, even now." I said.
"Approaching Point Bruno." one of the ratings in the tracking section announced.
Vargas' attention snapped back to the battle. "Execute as planned," he ordered, technically a redundant statement but one that was important enough to bear repeating.
In the holotank, the cloud of fighters that had been braking slowly towards the zero-zero intercept flipped and opened their throttles, lunging into close range. The warships turned away from each other like an opening flower, six different vectors an equal distance from each other and all at ninety degrees from the one we'd been approaching on - which meant that residual velocity would leave our fleet enveloping the Comstar 'wall of battle'.
The two FedSuns ships, coming in from a slightly different angle, just cut all the way back to only evasive action, and rolled to present their broadsides.
"Too late, you damned fool," Vargas murmured to the Com Guards' admiral, a moment before, finally broadside on and in range, Alexander cut loose with a full naval autocannon broadside. Invincible and Athena followed, ripping great air-bleeding wounds from the depths where Alexander's Class 350s had blown apart every layer of armor that faced them.
Narbonne's captain didn't wait for permission to maneuver away from that threat, twisting his ship on her axis to bring fresh armor into play and running her massive drive all the way up to the stops. Unfortunately for him, that brought her newly wounded quarter around into Nelson's sights.
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Lola III Class Destroyer
The Lola III fired at almost exactly the same instant as FSS Arjuna, and Narbonne shuddered under their guns, first sloughing off a great eruption of blue-white gas as her helium coolant was breached and boiled off, and then folding under the stress of her own acceleration as battle damage compromised her spine's ability to handle the vast stress of two point four million tons of apparent weight.
Safety systems cut the fusion torch almost instantly, but the damage was done - Narbonne would need an incredible amount of drydock work if she ever hoped to fly again, and her crew had far bigger problems than the outcome of the battle. Even if they'd wanted to keep firing, her power grid would have been trashed by the structural damage and the crash-cutoff.
The Comstar formation came apart as each captain picked his own target, maneuvers, and fire. Montpellier stood on her tail to go after Nelson, ignoring the flood of fighter craft that rippled past, parting their courses around her exhaust plume but pouring all their fire into her rear quarter. Flashes of radiation would have told the effect they were having even if we hadn't been able to see her acceleration drop from the damage done to her reaction drives. Only one of her batteries found its target, but they blew right through Nelson's armor and opened a gush of oxygenated 'blood' into the void.
Bordeaux's captain kept his sights locked doggedly on Alexander, though he did a better job of evading the flood of Lucifers filling his general vicinity. The damage was quickly starting to tell on the cruiser's armor - Dante-class frigates had distinct flaws, but lack of gun power was not one of them, and Aegis-class cruisers didn't have the protection to match their formidable bite. That was why the Com Guards had singled Alexander out from the beginning, after all.
StarSword and Invisible Truth both picked the same array of targets, lashing out in every direction from above and below the main 'plane' of the battle. Beowulf lost almost all the armor on her nearer facing and rolled frantically, vanishingly lucky not to have taken structure damage, while I could hear the howl of alarms outside the flag bridge as more concentrated shots found the same sectors of Athena's armor and drew blood. Pleiades, too, was rolling to protect a suddenly vulnerable facing, and the straps of my acceleration seat dug into my side as Athena did the same.
Even as StarSword's guns were firing, though, her engine guttered out - along with her tracking radars, her coded communications with the other ComStar ships, even her IFF beacon. One second, she was dealing death on all sides - and the next she was a brick, hurtling helplessly through space.
"Son of a bitch," Vargas breathed, then shook off his shock and snapped, "Tell Force Dora to redirect to Montpellier! And then have the flyboys get me another chunk of her drive!"
"Should we relay to Pleiades, sir?" a rating asked.
"No, Invisible Truth is still active," he replied. "New squadron target is Bordeaux."
Even as he was speaking, the shoals of ASFs were eddying around, burning hard to catch up to Montpellier's maneuvers enough to stage further slashing attacks on her drives - and occasionally taking passing potshots at the enemy dropships or fighters that had so far survived the attentions of the Federated Suns' contribution to the fighter tide. New dropships were ducking out of Athena and Invincible's lees, the Seeker-class troopships that had been brought, and conserved, for just this moment.
They were almost perfect spheres, their north poles ringed by newly installed grappling mechanisms and their south poles fusion drives powerful enough to outrun even a fully functional Dante by at least half a G. With Montpellier slowed, they were on her in what seemed like a flash, as a much larger number of smaller aerodynes with Federated Suns transponders - Fury-class dropships - swarmed over Invisible Truth's lumbering bulk like flies over carrion.
Frigate and battlecruiser alike clearly saw their danger, turning their heavy guns on the hunting dropships - the latter wiping out half a dozen attackers and accomplishing absolutely nothing useful by the doing. The former fired three bursts from her bearing autocannon and missed with every one.
Whether Bordeaux's captain had deduced his ship's coming fate or just lost his nerve, I couldn't tell, then or ever, but the frigate raced past Alexander's stern, firing its autocannon bays in sequence as it passed, at a rate that had to have strained every system it had. One burst raked through the ragged remnants of the cruiser's flank armor and scattered the shattered wreckage of a dropship collar away into space, while the others tore deep into the plating packed around her main drives' thruster bells.
The world heaved as Athena maneuvered in response, swinging her vulnerable broadside away and fighting to track the smaller and more agile ship with her 'good' facing, and Alexander spun, too, turning onto the same vector as Bordeaux. Pleiades and Arjuna, Darius, Nelson and Beowulf - all of them turned as well, heaving themselves into the best position they could manage.
Bordeaux's acceleration cut off, her main drives shut down with brutal suddenness that I knew would have meant a complete overhaul before they could ever be trusted again, and the iconography ringing her icon in the holo tank moved outward a step as she grew a thick, vivid pink ring.
Jump warning.
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Tharkad Class Battlecruiser, LCS Invincible
The fleet fired first, each ship's gunnery chief almost coincidentally firing in the same sequence. Capital missiles and autocannon shells smashed through layer after layer of armor; particle beams burned like the searing wrath of god, lasers like the pitiless light of a Mercurian noon. Invincible's naval gauss rifles made the defining statement, blowing straight through the ship and out the other side like a butterfly on a pin, but by the time twenty seconds had passed from the jump warning, Bordeaux had been reduced to a tattered debris field whose only sign of life was the weak electronic cry of spacesuit distress beacons, drifting amid the wreckage.
Everyone on the flag bridge stared silently for longer than we should have, before Vargas shook himself out of it. "Get me a report on StarSword, Montpellier, and Invisible Truth," he ordered. "And somebody clear those dropships out of my sky."
Fateful Decision[]
COMSTAR HEADQUARTERS, HILTON HEAD
TERRA, SOL
OCTOBER 26th, 3027
The First Circuit of the ComStar Order met in a three-story conference room near the top of the tallest tower in the Hilton Head complex. Walking in, I was looking past the low table set with five not-quite-thrones at three tall, narrow stained glass windows that filled the full width and height of the far wall. The flanking ones had mirrored designs of dropships lifting above fruited plains to jumpships amidst the stars at the top, while the central one was a single vast and intricate rendition of ComStar's logo.
In the center of the table, Julian Tiepelo, Primus of Comstar, sat, his robes' hood low over his eyes and his fingers laced in a classic Gendo Pose. Tojo Jarlath, Precentor ROM, stood, hands folded into his long and trailing sleeves, just behind and to his right.
At the table on Tiepelo's right, past Jarlath, an asian woman had her hood down; she'd have been gorgeous if not for the fact she was trying to murder us all with her eyes. Myndo Waterly, Precentor Dieron.
Past her, the aged and worn features of Pedrigor Aliz, Precentor Atreus, looked not merely concerned but ill. He was wearing a nasal cannula, though between the robes and the table, I couldn't see if it went to a tank or a concentrator, and had slumped in his chair as though he could barely hold up his own weight.
On the other side from Waterly, UIthan Everson was the only member of the First Circuit I'd actually met in person; he'd attended my wedding in full persona as Precentor Tharkad, only a few months after attaining his current post. At the time, he'd been a vigorous forty-something, but he looked thirty years older today rather than the ten it had actually been. He was doing a pretty good job holding his poker face, but I could see how white his knuckles were where he had his hands clasped on the blotter in front of him.
Finally, at the far end past Everson, Villius Tejh, Precentor New Avalon, was the only person there who actually looked calm. Not surprising; he'd survived not just the hell-sent snakepit of high-level politics on Sian under Maximilian Liao, but also what had to be a vicious fight to supplant the previous Precentor New Avalon and stay on the First Circuit.
In contrast to the First Circuit's unified front of flowing mystic robes, none of we three plenipotentiaries matched. In the center, Candace Liao glittered, her classical Sianese robes growing more intricately dyed and embroidered the closer you looked at them, trailing her own height behind her on the immaculately clean floor and somehow managing not to overwhelm the lean grace of her carriage and stride.
I was to her left, in the same cloak and not-quite-uniform that I'd made my trademark for years - a figure-hugging double-breasted white jacket over a fitted white miniskirt and black dress shirt, high heeled white boots over black thigh-high stockings, and a sweeping white cloak with dark blue lining over it all, all in fabrics whose price I didn't like to think about that positively glowed in any kind of light and made a vivid contrast with the deliberately plain Comstar robes.
On her right, Duggan Marik's subdued Atrean business suit should have seemed like a functionary's outfit, but despite the restraint of its cut and material the quality of his tailoring showed in the way his presence seemed stripped down to the raw elements of business, of power.
Tiepelo let the silence stretch out. "What madness has possessed you?" he said eventually, voice soft and disappointed. "That Lyran arrogance would demand this self-destructive course rather than admitting error is tragic, but how, why would the Free Worlds League and Federated Suns follow into the night? You know what we must do now, and how untouched our real strength is."
"Holy Shroud," Candace Liao said, her voice no louder - but much harder.
Aziz tried to suck in a sharp breath, then collapsed into a frankly worrying coughing fit. Jarlath's jaw tightened, and Everson closed his eyes. Waterly looked like she'd been slapped, and it took a critical second or so for Tejh to start looking properly confused.
Tiepelo didn't move a muscle, his glasses shining from the spotlight shining down on him.
"Divine Intervention, and with it, the entire Second Succession War - and after it, the Third. The Federated Suns has all of the records kept by New Avalon and Sian of the war of assassins before and through the Second Succession War, and the Lyran Commonwealth has added their own." she went on grimly.
"We know," I said, "exactly how many deaths were ordered and carried out by three of the six Successor States between each other. And we know how many were actually suffered. We have fourteen cases where we can confirm that orders received by assassins before their capture were not the ones actually sent, and hundreds more with circumstantial evidence."
"We know your conspiracies, your sins, and your ambitions." Duggan Marik said. "We know every time your secret assassins have struck at us, and every time you have hidden from the consequences. And we have had enough of you."
"Brave words from a pack of warmongers! Not a one of you is innocent!" Myndo Waterly hissed, coming to her feet with hands braced on the table and glaring even harder. "Even now your armies march across the Inner Sphere, destroying cities, lives, technology! You have the unmitigated arrogance to walk in here mere months after your own armies have desecrated one of our compounds in a brutal and unprovoked assault that left hundreds dead! Hours after your agents have deployed nuclear weapons all across your border!"
"Nuclear weapons?" I said, blinking in confusion.
"Not you," Waterly sneered, and pointed at Candace Liao. "Her! Clearing the way for the rebellion of Davion's puppet, Grieg Samsonov."
Candace Liao… smiled. "From what I have heard of Warlord Galedon's character," she said lightly, "I don't imagine that anything so crude as puppetry would be needed to inspire Samsonov to rebellion - simple flattery of his ego would loosen the bounds on his ambition. And it would certainly be foolish to provide him with atomic arms, even if in retrospect it should have been expected that he would avail himself of those Takashi Kurita was so unwise as to distribute to his most headlong agents by forming the Swords of the Dragon."
"And for the Commonwealth's part," I said, after a few moments of grappling with the revelation that the entire Galedon Military District had apparently rebelled against Luthien, "I know for a personal fact that the nearest Lyran battlemech to the Vega compound was three hundred kilometers away."
"As though your word could be trusted!" she snapped venomously. "I will any day rely on video evidence and the word of Adept Mori over a Periphery butcher."
Adept Mori. I threw my head back and laughed out loud. "Would you? Let me let you all in on a secret, Mothers of War-" as close as the sect Mama Blackwing had raised her daughter in had to a demonic figure, "-Sharilar Mori's name is known to LIC. As an active agent of the Order of Five Pillars. You've thrown away your Order's last protection in a vain bid to save a cultural cancer that's never deserved it, and on the grounds of one of their own false flags."
Waterly went brick red, her mouth working soundlessly.
"Hardly our last protection." Primus Tiepelo said, before she could recover from her apoplexy, straightening. "Without interstellar communication, there is no interstellar society. Without us, you are nothing."
Candace Liao smirked, and said, "Leftenant?"
I turned slightly, looking over my shoulder, and made a beckoning gesture at one of the other dress-uniformed flunkies waiting by the door.
The two young men split on either side of the three of us and laid their suitcase-sized burdens on the ground to undo the latches and then open in eerily perfect unison, revealing a pair of portable holoprojectors, which began to display progress bars as their bearers returned to the rear.
"And what will those do?" Tejh asked calmly.
"Wait for it." I told him.
Tojo Jarlath hadn't exactly been slouching as he stood behind Tiepelo, but he straightened visibly and raised a hand under his hood, touching the hidden earbud.
"Confirm that," he ordered, almost inaudibly despite the silence of the room.
"Yes," I said loudly. "You heard that correctly."
The bars finished, a translucent blue image of Archon Katrina Steiner standing in free space between me and the First Circuit's table appearing a few moments before the gold-tinged simulacra of Hanse Davion joined her.
"Athena is equipped with a portable hyperpulse generator built not by ComStar, but by the University of Donegal," I said. "Archon Katrina Steiner and First Prince Hanse Davion, allow me to present the First Circuit of the ComStar Order."
"WHAT TREASON IS THIS?!" Waterly shrieked, on her feet again. "What blasphemer traded our secrets to the filth of the Scavenger Lords?!"
"Myndo, that is enough!" Tiepelo tried to interrupt her.
"How were you permitted to profane the tools of our sacred order?! Where did you-" Waterly's ranting cut off as Jarlath stepped up behind her and seized the crown of her head in one hand, then used the other to press a jet injector against the side of her neck. She stiffened and started to shriek some new imprecation, then slumped bonelessly back into her chair.
"I'd known that she was the least stable member of the First Circuit," Katrina observed, "but I had honestly thought that she had more self control than that."
"Regardless, it is now time for the adults to talk," Hanse said. "Minister Marik, I apologise for not arranging for your father's presence as well, but the creation of our own HPGs is as yet challenging."
Duggan Marik stepped forward to stand next to the two holograms. "And the ones you do have are needed elsewhere," he said. "It is understood." Most of the negotiating and agreements for that little speech had been done with him expected to share it with Candace and I, but he'd taken the last-minute warning of the real plan with good grace.
"...Archon. First Prince." Tiepelo sounded like the world had turned to ashes in his mouth. "May I ask where you are calling from?"
"I remain at this moment on the world of Summer," Katrina said. "Though the chain we built to allow this conversation in fact reaches as far as Tharkad."
"I am at present on Tikonov," Hanse said. "NAIS got a later start on our own HPG projects than the Commonwealth enjoyed."
I could see Tiepelo calculate his options. Comstar's most damning secrets had come out. Its military hole cards had been neutralized. The keystone of its economic and political power, its monopoly of HPG technology, was if not gone then crumbling.
He bowed his head. "We will lift the Interdiction of the Lyran Commonwealth immediately." he said.
"You know that it is far too late for that." Katrina said.
Tiepelo said nothing.
"What do you want, then?" the oldest member of the First Circuit wheezed. Where the other members of the council had seemed to fold in on themselves as the magnitude of their disaster became clear, he had straightened, diggin into some deeper well of strength. Pedrigor Aliz might be old and unwell, but it was clear why he'd survived so long as Precentor Atreus.
"Unconditional surrender." Katrina pronounced it like a sentence of death.
"Unconditional surrender." Hanse agreed.
Duggan Marik hesitated only a moment or two before he laid the final stone. "Unconditional surrender."
"All records and facilities will be surrendered to the nearest Successor State immediately," Katrina said. "All members of the ComStar Order will enter custody while those records are examined. Those who have committed murder or other crimes under the Order's aegis will be tried for them under the laws of the world in question. Those who have not been so accused, or who are found innocent in fair trial, will be forbidden from mutual association save in the presence of agents of the Lyran Commonwealth, Federated Suns, or Free Worlds League."
"Terra, and the other worlds of the Sol system, will be subject to the governance and occupation of a joint multinational force, charged with the maintenance of humanity's universal cultural heritage and the custodianship of the industries present there for the benefit of all mankind." Hanse continued.
"ComStar, as an organization, will be dismantled, its legacy ended. You have gone from the guarantors of the survival of interstellar civilization to its worst opponents, and that will not be tolerated." Marik finished.
There was a long, singing silence. Julian Tiepelo pulled his glasses off and laid them on the table before him. The click of their frames on the table was loud in the still room, as was the rustle as he pushed his hood back.
"Members of the First Circuit," he said, "I hereby call a formal voice vote on the matter of… of formal, unconditional surrender to the coalition forces of the Lyran Commonwealth, Federated Suns, and Free Worlds League. 'Aye' shall stand for surrender, and 'nay' shall stand for continued resistance by whatever means available and appropriate. Precentor Atreus, how will you vote?"
"They don't have anything like the force needed to occupy Terra available," Aliz said. "To give up now would be to betray Blake's holy vision. Nay."
"Precentor Tharkad, how will you vote?"
"Our collective sins have come home to roost," Everson said. "Acting… responsibly… now will give the greatest chance of the innocent among the Order being permitted to continue in their good works. Aye."
"Precentor New Avalon, how will you vote?"
"What choice do we have, in the end? Aye."
"Precentor ROM, is Precentor Dieron capable of voting?"
Jarlath bowed. "She is aware of matters around her. A moment, while I administer the antagonist to the agent I used." He produced and applied a new injector - then took several quick sidesteps to the other side of Tiepelo's chair, safely out of Waterly's immediate reach.
Several seconds passed as her limp form started to twitch, then sway drunkenly in her seat as she attempted to regain her dignity. "Hisshh… herehi'au…" she mumbled, then stopped and gave Jarlath a look of pure murder before she managed to enunciate: "Nnn… ay!"
Tiepelo closed his eyes, cheeks glittering with tears. "I… find that I must… recognize that… we have failed," he said, choking past the obvious knot in his throat. "Failed Blake's vision… and failed humanity. Lords of the Inner Sphere… I can only… implore you… to show better judgement… than any of our predecessors."
There was a moment of obvious internal struggle across his face. "Aye. The… the ayes have it. The Order… will surrender."