Empire from the Ashes Read online

  Empire from the Ashes

  David Weber

  David Weber

  Empire from the Ashes

  MUTINEERS' MOON

  BOOK ONE

  Chapter One

  The huge command deck was as calm, as peacefully dim, as ever, silent but for the small background sounds of environmental recordings. The bulkheads were invisible beyond the projection of star-specked space and the blue-white shape of a life-bearing world. It was exactly as it ought to be, exactly as it always had been—tranquil, well-ordered, as divorced from chaos as any setting could possibly be.

  But Captain Druaga's face was grim as he stood beside his command chair and data flowed through his neural feeds. He felt the whickering lightning of energy weapons like heated irons, Engineering no longer responded—not surprisingly—and he'd lost both Bio-Control One and Three. The hangar decks belonged to no one; he'd sealed them against the mutineers, but Anu's butchers had blocked the transit shafts with grab fields covered by heavy weapons. He still held Fire Control and most of the external systems, but Communications had been the mutineers' primary target. The first explosion had taken it out, and even an Utu-class ship mounted only a single hypercom. He could neither move the ship nor report what had happened, and his loyalists were losing.

  Druaga deliberately relaxed his jaw before his teeth could grind together. In the seven thousand years since the Fourth Imperium crawled back into space from the last surviving world of the Third, there had never been a mutiny aboard a capital ship of Battle Fleet. At best, he would go down in history as the captain whose crew had turned against him and been savagely suppressed. At worst, he would not go down in history at all.

  The status report ended, and he sighed and shook himself.

  The mutineers were hugely outnumbered, but they had the priceless advantage of surprise, and Anu had planned with care. Druaga snorted; no doubt the Academy teachers would have been proud of his tactics. But at least—and thank the Maker for it!—he was only the chief engineer, not a bridge officer. There were command codes of which he had no knowledge.

  "Dahak," Druaga said.

  "Yes, Captain?" The calm, mellow voice came from everywhere and nowhere, filling the command deck.

  "How long before the mutineers reach Command One?"

  "Three standard hours, Captain, plus or minus fifteen percent."

  "They can't be stopped?"

  "Negative, Captain. They control all approaches to Command One and they are pushing back loyal personnel at almost all points of contact."

  Of course they were, Druaga thought bitterly. They had combat armor and heavy weapons; the vast majority of his loyalists did not.

  He looked around the deserted command deck once more. Gunnery was unmanned, and Plotting, Engineering, Battle Comp, Astrogation... . When the alarms went, only he had managed to reach his post before the mutineers cut power to the transit shafts. Just him. And to get here he'd had to kill two subverted members of his own staff when they pounced on him like assassins.

  "All right, Dahak," he told the all-surrounding voice grimly, "if all we still hold is Bio Two and the weapon systems, we'll use them. Cut Bio One and Three out of the circuit."

  "Executed," the voice said instantly. "But it will take the mutineers no more than an hour to put them back on line under manual."

  "Granted. But it's long enough. Go to Condition Red Two, Internal."

  There was a momentary pause, and Druaga suppressed a bitter smile.

  "You have no suit, Captain," the voice said unemotionally. "If you set Condition Red Two, you will die."

  "I know." Druaga wished he was as calm as he sounded, but he knew Dahak's bio read-outs gave him the lie. Yet it was the only chance he—or, rather, the Imperium—had.

  "You will give a ten-minute warning count," he continued, sitting down in his command chair. "That should give everyone time to reach a lifeboat. Once everyone's evacuated, our external weapons will become effective. You will carry out immediate decon, but you will allow only loyal personnel to re-enter until you receive orders to the contrary from... your new captain. Any mutinous personnel who approach within five thousand kilometers before loyal officers have reasserted control will be destroyed in space."

  "Understood." Druaga could have sworn the voice spoke more softly. "Comp Cent core programs require authentication of this order, however."

  "Alpha-Eight-Sigma-Niner-Niner-Seven-Delta-Four-Alpha," he said flatly.

  "Authentication code acknowledged and accepted," the voice responded. "Please specify time for implementation."

  "Immediately," Druaga said, and wondered if he spoke so quickly to avoid losing his nerve.

  "Acknowledged. Do you wish to listen to the ten-count, Captain?"

  "No, Dahak," Druaga said very softly.

  "Understood," the voice replied, and Druaga closed his eyes.

  It was a draconian solution... if it could be called a "solution" at all. Red Two, Internal, was the next-to-final defense against hostile incursion. It opened every ventilation trunk—something which could be done only on the express, authenticated order of the ship's commander—to flood the entire volume of the stupendous starship with chemical and radioactive agents. By its very nature, Red Two exempted no compartment... including this one. The ship would become uninhabitable, a literal death trap, and only the central computer, which he controlled, could decontaminate.

  The system had never been intended for this contingency, but it would work. Mutineers and loyalists alike would be forced to flee, and no lifeboat ever built could stand up to Dahak's weaponry. Of course, Druaga wouldn't be alive to see the end, but at least his command would be held for the Imperium.

  And if Red Two failed, there was always Red One.

  "Dahak," he said suddenly, never opening his eyes.

  "Yes, Captain?"

  "Category One order," Druaga said formally.

  "Recording," the voice said.

  "I, Senior Fleet Captain Druaga, commanding officer Imperial Fleet Vessel Dahak, Hull Number One-Seven-Two-Two-Nine-One," Druaga said even more formally, "having determined to my satisfaction that a Class One Threat to the Imperium exists aboard my vessel, do now issue, pursuant to Fleet Regulation Seven-One, Section One-Nine-Three, Subsection Seven-One, a Category One order to Dahak Computer Central. Authentication code Alpha-Eight-Delta-Sigma-Niner-Niner-Seven-Delta-Four-Omega."

  "Authentication code acknowledged and accepted," the voice said coolly. "Standing by to accept Category One orders. Please specify."

  "Primary mission of this unit now becomes suppression of mutinous personnel in accordance with instructions already issued," Druaga said crisply. "If previously specified measures fail to restore control to loyal personnel, said mutinous elements will be destroyed by any practicable means, including, if necessary, the setting of Condition Red One, Internal, and total destruction of this vessel. These orders carry Priority Alpha."

  "Acknowledged," the voice said, and Druaga let his head rest upon the cushioned back of his chair. It was done. Even if Anu somehow managed to reach Command One, he could not abort the order Dahak had just acknowledged.

  The captain relaxed. At least, he thought, it should be fairly painless.

  * * *

  "... nine minutes and counting," the computer voice said, and Fleet Captain (E) Anu, Chief Engineer of the ship-of-the-line Dahak cursed. Damn Druaga! He hadn't expected the captain to reach his bridge alive, much less counted on this. Druaga had always seemed such an unimaginative, rote-bound, dutiful automaton.

  "What shall we do, Anu?"

  Commander Inanna's eyes were anxious through her armor's visor, and he did not blame her.

  "Fall back to Bay Ninety-One," he grated furiously.
>
  "But that's—"

  "I know. I know! We'll just have to use them ourselves. Now get our people moving, Commander!"

  "Yes, sir," Commander Inanna said, and Anu threw himself into the central transit shaft. The shaft walls screamed past him, though he felt no subjective sense of motion, and his lips drew back in an ugly snarl. His first attempt had failed, but he had a trick or two of his own. Tricks even Druaga didn't know about, Breaker take him!

  * * *

  Copper minnows exploded away from Dahak. Lifeboats crowded with loyal crew members fanned out over the glaciated surface of the alien planet, seeking refuge, and scattered among them were other, larger shapes. Still only motes compared to the ship itself, their masses were measured in thousands upon thousands of tons, and they plummeted together, outspeeding the smaller lifeboats. Anu had no intention of remaining in space where Druaga—assuming he was still alive—might recognize that he and his followers had not abandoned ship in lifeboats and use Dahak's weapons to pick off his sublight parasites as easily as a child swatting flies.

  The engineer sat in the command chair of the parasite Osir, watching the gargantuan bulk of the camouflaged mother ship dwindle with distance, and his smile was ugly. He needed that ship to claim his destiny, but he could still have it. Once the programs he'd buried in the engineering computers did their job, every power room aboard Dahak would be so much rubble. Emergency power would keep Comp Cent going for a time, but when it faded, Comp Cent would die.

  And with its death, Dahak's hulk would be his.

  "Entering atmosphere, sir," Commander Inanna said from the first officer's couch.

  Chapter Two

  "Papa-Mike Control, this is Papa-Mike One-X-Ray, do you copy?"

  Lieutenant Commander Colin MacIntyre's radar pinged softly as the Copernicus mass driver hurled another few tons of lunar rock towards the catcher ships of the Eden Three habitat, and he watched its out-going trace on the scope as he waited, reveling in the joy of solo flight, for secondary mission control at Tereshkova to respond.

  "One-X-Ray, Papa-Mike Control," a deep voice acknowledged. "Proceed."

  "Papa-Mike Control, One-X-Ray orbital insertion burn complete. It looks good from here. Over."

  "One-X-Ray, that's affirmative. Do you want a couple of orbits to settle in before initiating?"

  "Negative, Control. The whole idea's to do this on my own, right?"

  "Affirmative, One-X-Ray."

  "Let's do it, then. I show a green board, Pasha—do you confirm?"

  "That's an affirmative, One-X-Ray. And we also show you approaching our transmission horizon, Colin. Communications loss in twenty seconds. You are cleared to initiate the exercise."

  "Papa-Mike Control, One-X-Ray copies. See you guys in a little while."

  "Roger, One-X-Ray. Your turn to buy, anyway."

  "Like hell it is," MacIntyre laughed, but whatever Papa-Mike Control might have replied was cut off as One-X-Ray swept beyond the lunar horizon and lost signal.

  MacIntyre ran down his final check list with extra care. It had been surprisingly hard for the test mission's planners to pick an orbit that would keep him clear of Nearside's traffic and cover a totally unexplored portion of the moon's surface. But Farside was populated only by a handful of observatories and deep-system radio arrays, and the routing required to find virgin territory combined with the close orbit the survey instruments needed would put him out of touch with the rest of the human race for the next little bit, which was a novel experience even for an astronaut these days.

  He finished his list and activated his instruments, then sat back and hummed, drumming on the arms of his acceleration couch to keep time, as his on-board computers flickered through the mission programs. It was always possible to hit a glitch, but there was little he could do about it if it happened. He was a pilot, thoroughly familiar with the electronic gizzards of his one-man Beagle Three survey vehicle, but he had only the vaguest idea about how this particular instrument package functioned.

  The rate of technical progress in the seventy years since Armstrong was enough to leave any non-specialist hopelessly behind outside his own field, and the Geo Sciences team back at Shepard Center had wandered down some peculiar paths to produce their current generation of esoteric peekers and pryers. "Gravitonic resonance" was a marvelous term... and MacIntyre often wished he knew exactly what it meant. But not enough to spend another six or eight years tacking on extra degrees, so he contented himself with understanding what the "planetary proctoscope" (as some anonymous wag had christened it) did rather than how it did it.

  Maneuvering thrusters nudged his Beagle into precisely the proper attitude, and MacIntyre bent a sapient gaze upon the read-outs. Those, at least, he understood. Which was just as well, since he was slated as primary survey pilot for the Prometheus Mission, and—

  His humming paused suddenly, dying in mid-note, and his eyebrows crooked. Now that was odd. A malfunction?

  He punched keys, and his crooked eyebrows became a frown. According to the diagnostics, everything was functioning perfectly, but whatever else the moon might be, it wasn't hollow.

  He tugged on his prominent nose, watching the preposterous data appear on the displays. The printer beside him hummed, producing a hard-copy graphic representation of the raw numbers, and he tugged harder. According to his demented instruments, someone must have been a busy little beaver down there. It looked for all the world as if a vast labyrinth of tunnels, passages, and God knew what had been carved out under eighty kilometers of solid lunar rock!

  He allowed himself a muttered imprecation. Less than a year from mission date, and one of their primary survey systems—and a NASA design, at that!—had decided to go gaga. But the thing had worked perfectly in atmospheric tests over Nevada and Siberia, so what the hell had happened now?

  He was still tugging on his nose when the proximity alarm jerked him up in his couch. Damnation! He was all alone back here, so what the hell was that?

  "That" was a blip less than a hundred kilometers astern and closing fast. How had something that big gotten this close before his radar caught it? According to his instruments, it was at least the size of one of the old Saturn V boosters!

  His jaw dropped as the bogie made a crisp, clean, instantaneous ninety-degree turn. Apparently the laws of motion had been repealed on behalf of whatever it was! But whatever else it was doing, it was also maneuvering to match his orbit. Even as he watched, the stranger was slowing to pace him.

  Colin MacIntyre's level-headedness was one reason he'd been selected for the first joint US-Soviet interstellar flight crew, but the hair on the back of his neck stood on end as his craft suddenly shuddered. It was as if something had touched the Beagle's hull—something massive enough to shake a hundred-ton, atmosphere-capable, variable-geometry spacecraft.

  That shook him out of his momentary state of shock. Whatever this was, no one had told him to expect it, and that meant it belonged to neither NASA nor the Russians. His hands flew over his maneuvering console, waking flaring thrusters, and the Beagle quivered. She quivered, but she didn't budge, and cold sweat beaded MacIntyre's face as she continued serenely along her orbital path, attitude unchanged. That couldn't possibly be happening—but, then, none of this could be happening, could it?

  He chopped that thought off and punched more keys. One thing he had was plenty of maneuvering mass—Beagles were designed for lengthy deployments, and he'd tanked from the Russkies' Gagarin Platform before departure on his trans-lunar flight plan—and the ship shuddered wildly as her main engines came alive.

  The full-power burn should have slammed him back in his couch and sent the survey ship hurtling forward, but the thundering engines had no more effect than his maneuvering thrusters, and he sagged in his seat. Then his jaw clenched as the Beagle finally started to move—not away from the stranger, but towards it! Whatever that thing on his radar was, it was no figment of his imagination.

  His mind raced. The only possible expla
nation was that the blip had stuck him with some sort of... of tractor beam, and that represented more than any mere quantum leap in applied physics, which meant the blip did not come from any Terran technology. He did not indulge himself with any more dirty words like "impossible" or "incredible," for it was all too evident that it was possible. By some unimaginable quirk of fate, Somebody Else had come calling just as Mankind was about to reach out to the stars.

  But whoever They were, he couldn't believe they'd just happened to turn up while he was Farside with blacked-out communications. They'd been waiting for him, or someone like him, so they must have been observing Earth for quite some time. But if they had, they'd had time to make their presence known—and to monitor Terrestrial communication systems. Presumably, then, they knew how to contact him but had chosen not to do so, and that suggested a lot of things, none particularly pleasant. The salient point, however, was that they obviously intended to collect him, Beagle and all, for purposes of their own, and Colin MacIntyre did not intend to be collected if he could help it.

  The exhaustive Prometheus Mission briefings on first contact flowed through his mind, complete with all the injunctions to refrain from hostile acts, but it was one thing to consider yourself expendable in pursuit of communication with aliens you might have gone calling on. It was quite another when they dropped in on you and started hauling you in like a fish!

  His face hardened, and he flipped up the plastic shield over the fire control panel. There'd been wrung hands at the notion of arming a "peaceful" interstellar probe, but the military, which provided so many of the pilots, had enjoyed the final word, and MacIntyre breathed a silent breath of thanks that this was a full-dress training mission as weapon systems came alive. He fed targeting data from his radar and reached for the firing keys, then paused. They hadn't tried talking to him, but neither had he tried talking to them.