The Lost Earth (Lost Starship Series Book 7) Read online

  The microphone came on, and Mary O’Hara spoke quietly to the democratically elected officials who ran Star Watch. She spoke about Ancient Rome and one of its terrible times of trouble. That had been in 458 B.C. An implacable enemy had threatened the new republic with annihilation. In their combined worry, the Roman Senate turned to a respected warrior by the name of L. Quinctius Cincinnatus. Representatives of the Senate had found him at his plow. Once Cincinnatus reached the Senate, the senators offered to make him dictator with full authority over everyone. The senators believed Rome needed a strong hand to end their bickering so they could concentrate on the enemy. The key to such a decision was in choosing the right man. He needed wisdom and the courage to lead them to victory. What made L. Quinctius Cincinnatus so interesting was that he gave up his dictatorship earlier than the law required. He had led Rome to victory. And afterward, Cincinnatus returned to his farm and plow, content to become a normal citizen of Rome once again.

  Mary O’Hara paused, searching the one thousand and ten electors. Most of them watched her on big screens sprinkled throughout the auditorium.

  “We have such a respected warrior among us in our time of trouble,” O’Hara said. “He is a man who loves the Commonwealth and has never attempted to acquire power for the sake of ruling over others. I refer, of course, to Lord High Admiral Cook. I suggest, my dear electors, that you beg the Lord High Admiral to take the post of dictator for as long as the Swarm Fleet exists. The bugs threaten our existence. If they win, not just the Commonwealth will die but the entire human race. This is the moment, my dear electors, for us to unite under one mind and will. But it must be a man we all trust. I ask you, is there anyone more qualified to lead us at a time like this than Admiral Cook?”

  The great auditorium became deathly silent.

  “We have proof of his abilities,” O’Hara said. “Admiral Cook saved us from the New Men. He helped overthrow the androids. His brilliance and foresight has readied us for the Swarm. Even now, our best starship and captain search for secret weapons to aid us in this fight.”

  If Mary O’Hara had expected her speech to rouse them to instant action, she was proven gravely wrong.

  Twenty-eight different speakers debated the issue that day after she departed the podium. It took three weeks and four days for the electors to vote on the issue. The assembly voted 611 to 481 with 8 abstentions to give the Lord High Admiral temporary dictatorship over the Commonwealth.

  The wisdom of the decision was proven when Lord High Admiral Cook highhandedly demanded and got a fleet of the largest space haulers. He had the haulers begin moving the Tau Ceti population to neighboring star systems. Unfortunately, that caused vast unrest, riots and confusion in said systems. It meant those systems tottered politically. Twelve of the electors from those systems retroactively changed their votes.

  What the move allowed, however, was legions of technicians and workers a free hand in changing the Tau Ceti System into a fortress.

  The exodus of the general population and the work in the system continued even as the Swarm ships reached the outer Tau Ceti Oort cloud.

  “All the scenarios are clear,” Cook told his assembled war leaders at the main Luna Base war-room. “We’re going to lose Tau Ceti. We should be clear about that. But we’re going to start whittling down the Swarm advantage at Tau Ceti.”

  “A mere ten percent loss will hardly cripple the bugs,” Lord Drakos declared.

  Cook turned his white-haired head, facing the golden-skinned New Man across the conference table from him.

  “A twenty percent loss won’t cripple them,” Cook said. “But we have to start somewhere. Do you have a better idea?”

  Drakos stiffened at the question. The other New Men at the table watched him.

  Ural knew Drakos thought of Cook as a chatty sub-man, little better than a chimpanzee hooting about this or that.

  “I do have a better idea,” Drakos said. “It is madness to use our ships in the system. At this juncture, we dare not risk their loss. We must fill the system with missiles as you’re already doing. Only, we must move in more missiles and do it even faster now that the bugs have entered the Oort cloud.”

  Cook spread his big hands. “We are filling the system with hundreds of thousands of missiles. We also have vast automated laser batteries. If we don’t back that up with our battlefleets, the Swarm will swat our missiles and lasers aside. We have to at least threaten them with our fleets so the bugs won’t concentrate everything on the missiles. That will give the majority of our missiles time to reach their targets.”

  “Risking our fleets at this point is senseless,” Drakos said. “First you must whittle the Swarm down. Only at that point do you unleash your heaviest squadrons.”

  Maybe the words stung Cook. He looked tired, and he’d been working tirelessly for over a year and a half. He wasn’t a young man anymore.

  “Do New Men dislike risks?” Cook asked in a heavy voice.

  Drakos stared flat-faced at the Lord High Admiral as his eyes narrowed.

  Ural spoke before Drakos could utter a sound. “We accept calculated risks, sir. Drakos must simply be wondering how calculated this risk is.”

  “Very,” Cook told Ural. “I plan to save every ship we have.”

  “That’s flatly impossible,” Drakos said. “If you engage our combined fleet against the bug masses, we will not only take losses but heavy ones.”

  “I agree that we will take losses,” Cook said. “Hopefully, we won’t take too many.”

  “Hopefully?” Drakos asked in scorn. “One must calculate, not merely hope.”

  “That is why I’m talking to you, sir,” Cook said. “I seek your battle wisdom.”

  Drakos might have said more, but Ural intervened with smooth words.

  It meant that Ural had to work harder later to soothe hardliner feathers. But it was much too early to let the alliance break apart due to Drakos’ temper. The breakage would come later. Ural had realized months ago that his task was making sure a greater percentage of star cruisers survived than Star Watch vessels. At that point, it might be possible to win everything they had lost in the Thebes System several years ago.

  -8-

  The Tau Ceti System was in the Constellation Cetus. The star was spectrally similar to the Sun, although it only had 78 percent of the Sun’s mass. It was also rather deficient in metals. Tau Ceti was the closest solitary G-class star to Earth. The system had five planets, two of them in the inhabitable zone.

  Tau Ceti had ten times as much dust orbiting the star as the Sun possessed. Because of the greater debris disc, more stellar objects struck the planets, satellites and in-system spaceships. That meant spaceships had to move more carefully here than elsewhere. Carefully meant slower than ordinary. That hurt during the present crisis, as giant haulers brought more and more missiles to the system and took more people elsewhere.

  The greater debris had its pluses, however. Those would show up later when the Swarm ships actually began to leave the Oort cloud for the Outer System. It meant the Swarm vessels would be unlikely to move through the system at high speeds. Logically, the Swarm ships would have to slow down first, which would give the defenders a little more time to get ready.

  The entire Commonwealth’s industrial might had churned out munitions for the coming battles, working nonstop for months upon months upon months.

  As Napoleon might have walked over a possible site for battle, the Lord High Admiral and his staff moved through the Tau Ceti System.

  Every larger piece of debris could conceal a certain number of missiles. The bigger pieces of debris also sheltered laser satellites. For months on end, for over a year, the Alliance members prepared Tau Ceti for the massed might of the Swarm Imperium.

  It should have been a simple mathematical formula. The Swarm ships had a certain mass and speed—but it wasn’t that easy. The enemy fleet had four hundred saucer-shaped vessels. According to Captain Maddox’s data collected at the Builder Dyson Sphere, tho
se ships had the ability to jump independently of Laumer Points. That meant four hundred enemy ships could conceivably attack at any time and at any point. Those four hundred ships could seriously harm the overall plan.

  “The question is,” the Lord High Admiral said during a strategy session on Tau Ceti Prime. “How will the Swarm use those jump-capable vessels?”

  No one knew the answer. Oh, almost everyone had a theory. Those theories had always been worked out in exacting detail by the person or persons propounding them. But at the end of the day, no one knew how Imperium bugs would use those ships.

  Because of that and the existence of a sly creature named Mr. Murphy, no one really knew how the first battle for survival would go. Worst of all, no one knew which Laumer Points the bugs would attempt to use after the battle. That would decide… well, just about everything.

  What that meant in practical terms was more work for everyone and months of endless handwringing and worry about what was going to happen. It also meant various simulations about what would happen if the bugs used that Laumer Point instead of this one. At the terminus of each Laumer Point waited vast numbers of thermonuclear warheads.

  Cook had decided to use standard war theory in regard to the Laumer Points. Star Watch would hammer Swarm ships exiting the various Laumer Points. Yet, given enemy numbers, the warheads would not stop such an advance. Cook had seen from the beginning that endless attrition to whittle down bug numbers was the only way he could eventually get to a set-piece battle that might win the war for survival.

  Almost everyone else thought Cook was overly optimistic about facing the Swarm in a set-piece battle. Cook was counting on luck, and on getting his hands on some Destroyers. If Maddox could return with three Destroyers, the Alliance Fleet just might be able to pull this off.

  What Cook didn’t want to think about was the possibility that Maddox would fail. The captain had always come through in the end. Yet the question remained, what in the Hell had happened to Victory, and why couldn’t the Builder Scanner find the elusive vessel?

  The weeks lengthened into months. In two months’ time, maybe a little more, the first Swarm warships would leave Tau Ceti’s Oort cloud and enter the Outer System. Then the feces would hit the proverbial fan.

  -9-

  Thrax had endured his low position for almost two years now. That was galling, as he’d thought his moment had come at the Assault Master’s grisly death.

  Reliving the moment in his memory was one of the few ways Thrax relieved the tedium and worry of his existence. He’d plotted for almost two years for a way onto a jump ship. If he could reach there, he would implement his long-term strategy. He was so sick of his low station that anything would be better than this. Maybe the Swarm would win. It no longer mattered to Thrax as a menial, a highly glorified worker.

  He’d had little contact with his fellow hybrids. He—

  The hatch to his general work area slid up. Three armored soldiers scuttled in. They glared at him.

  Thrax quailed inside. Was this it? Had the Reigning Supreme discovered his deception? The thought of that—

  “Come,” the biggest soldier said.

  “Where?” asked Thrax.

  “Now,” the soldier said, clicking his oversized pincers. Those could cut him in half with hardly an effort. The soldiers were not only bigger and more heavily armored than he was, but they were faster. The only thing he had on them was brains.

  “Bring him,” the soldier said.

  “Wait,” Thrax pleaded.

  The other two soldiers rushed in, grabbing him. Thrax tensed for a killing cut, but it didn’t come. Instead, the two soldiers carried him unceremoniously, following the biggest soldier through the ship corridors.

  Thrax looked around. He realized the soldiers were taking him to the hallowed area of the ship where the Reigning Supreme held her strategy sessions.

  “I can walk,” Thrax said.

  The soldiers paid him no heed.

  “Why don’t you set me down?” Thrax suggested.

  “You had your chance,” the big soldier said.

  “I’ve reconsidered.”

  The trio ignored him. They followed orders. They always followed orders. They could do no less, no more.

  Ten minutes later, a big hatch slid up. The trio moved into a vast area. AX-29 faced four others smaller than her. They watched a holograph of the approaching star.

  The fleet was in the Oort cloud. In this instance, that was still a long way out from the system’s major planets.

  The soldiers approached the Reigning Supreme, stopping short and waiting.

  One of the assault leaders motioned to the soldier.

  “What is it?” AX-29 asked, unable to see the soldiers and Thrax because they were respectfully behind her.

  “The soldier has brought the Assistant Technician,” the chief Assault Leader said.

  None of the assault leaders had been elevated into Assault Master status yet. If they found that galling, none of them had ever dared complain.

  “Thrax,” the Reigning Supreme called.

  The head soldier made clicking noises. The two carrying Thrax brought him before the Reigning Supreme and dumped him onto the spongy floor.

  Thrax scrambled to his feet with what dignity he could muster.

  “Why did you carry him here?” AX-29 asked.

  “He would not come immediately,” the big soldier said.

  “Are you that incorrigible?” AX-29 asked Thrax.

  “I misunderstood the soldier’s meaning,” Thrax said.

  The soldier said nothing to that.

  AX-29 studied the soldier and then Thrax. She spoke to the assault leaders. “Have I erred in summoning the technical expert?”

  None of the assault leaders answered.

  Thrax covertly eyed them. He understood then that each one of them hated him. They must hold him personally responsible for the Assault Master’s death. In that, they were correct. If they weren’t careful, Thrax would engineer their deaths as well.

  “He schemes, Reigning Supreme,” the chief Assault Leader said. “I can see the cunning in his eyes.”

  Thrax opened his mouth to retort. He happened to glance at the big soldier. He understood something in that moment. The soldier had gained the Reigning Supreme’s respect because he’d acted in the accepted manner. Thrax now waited.

  That seemed to surprise AX-29. “Do you plot against the fleet?” she asked suddenly.

  “No,” Thrax said.

  “Do you wish to accuse the Assault Leader who spoke against you?”

  “No,” Thrax said.

  “Is he wrong?”

  “Yes,” Thrax said.

  The Reigning Supreme fixed her eyes on the Assault Leader who had spoken. “What do you make of his answers?”

  “He is clever, as I said,” the Assault Leader replied. “He is learning our ways.”

  “Our ways?” the Reigning Supreme asked.

  “He is a hybrid. He is not truly like us.”

  “Perhaps that is why he fills me with disgust,” AX-29 said.

  “Yes,” the Assault Leader said.

  Thrax couldn’t hold his tongue at that. It pleased him to be different while it also terrified him. He was a Swarm creature. How could the Assault Leader speak otherwise? He had brought the Imperium great gifts. Yet, the royalty had treated him like trash. That was wrong.

  “Reigning Supreme,” Thrax said boldly. “Perhaps it is true I am different. But maybe that is exactly what the fleet needs at a moment like this.”

  “Heresy,” the chief Assault Leader said. “Now is the time to follow accepted Imperial procedure. That is how the fleet shall gain victory over the mammals.”

  “How could your villainy possibly help us?” AX-29 asked Thrax.

  “I see problems and possible solutions that you, in your accepted normality, might miss.”

  “Vile thing,” the chief Assault Leader said in horror. “I beg you, Reigning Supreme, destroy the th
ing before his wickedness destroys us all.”

  “Did I in my wickedness give the Imperium wonderful advantages?” asked Thrax.

  “Assault Leader,” AX-29 said, “outline the approaching problem to the hybrid.”

  The chief Assault Leader hesitated only a moment before saying, “I obey.”

  For the next hour, the Assault Leader tediously showed Thrax the Tau Ceti System, the debris cloud, the planets, the spaceships and the obviously half-hidden missiles waiting behind a thousand rocky objects. The Assault Leader used the holograph to pinpoint possible enemy spaceship concentrations.

  “Should I go on, Reigning Supreme?” the Assault Leader asked at the end of the hour.

  “Yes,” AX-29 said.

  “According to our calculations,” the Assault Leader said, “we shall receive eleven percent casualties in the coming battle.”

  The number staggered Thrax. That was incredibly high against such a small number of enemy ships.

  “Take a moment,” AX-29 told Thrax. “Think about what you’ve seen. Do you have any technical suggestions that could lower the eleven percent rate of our coming casualties?”

  “May I ask a question, Reigning Supreme?” Thrax asked.

  “You may,” she said.

  “Although high, I believe eleven percent casualties are within the Imperial norms,” Thrax said.

  “Answer him,” AX-29 said.

  “If we had normal resupply routes,” the chief Assault Leader said, “we could accept even fifty percent casualties as normative. Not that we would accept such a loss with the low enemy numbers. But we lack any resupply. Thus, to conquer the entirety of Human Space, we need to keep our ship numbers high until we build resupply centers.”

  “I understand,” Thrax said.

  “Conjugate on possibilities,” AX-29 said.

  Thrax stood respectfully silent for three-quarters of an hour.

  “Well?” AX-29 asked. “Haven’t you thought of anything yet?”

  Thrax bobbed his head. “I have a suggestion. I was still mulling over its ramifications.”