The Long-Range War Read online

  The Long-Range War

  (A Learning Experience, Book V)

  Book One: A Learning Experience

  Book Two: Hard Lessons

  Book Three: The Black Sheep

  Book Four: The Long Road Home

  Book Five: The Long-Range War

  Christopher G. Nuttall

  Cover by Alexander Chau

  (www.alexanderchau.co.uk)

  http://www.chrishanger.net

  http://chrishanger.wordpress.com/

  http://www.facebook.com/ChristopherGNuttall

  All Comments Welcome!

  Cover Blurb

  The gloves have finally come off ...

  The Tokomak, the unquestioned masters of the galaxy, have dispatched a massive fleet to crush the Solar Union - and the fledgling Galactic Alliance - before the human race and its alien allies can tear the galactic order asunder. Hundreds of thousands of starships under the command of an alien tactical genius, bent on exterminating the entire human race ... the darkest hour is truly at hand.

  Admiral Hoshiko Stuart has a plan. The Solar Union will dispatch a fleet of its own, with the objective of smashing the alien fleet before it reaches Sol. But, as human technology clashes with alien treachery, experience and sheer numbers, it becomes clear that there can be only one victor ...

  ... And whoever loses will lose everything.

  Author’s Note

  The Long-Range War features characters from Hard Lessons and The Black Sheep and takes place roughly five months after The Long Road Home. A recap of the previous four books has been included as an appendix at the back of this book.

  As always, if you enjoyed reading, please leave a review.

  CGN.

  Prologue

  “Signal the fleet,” Empress Neola ordered. “The first divisions are to begin the attack.”

  She ignored her flunkies as they scurried to do her bidding, instead lifting her eyes to the massive display. Hundreds of thousands of starships were floating near the gravity point, slowly readying themselves to jump the hundreds of light years to Hudson in a single second. Five-mile-long superdreadnaughts and battleships to tiny destroyers and frigates, the latter crewed by client races ... ready to go to war. As she watched, the first flotillas moved forward and into the gravity point, flickering out of existence and vanishing. Neola tensed, despite herself. She was all too aware, despite the optimistic reports from her scouts, that the advance elements might well meet a hostile reception. There had been human ships based at Hudson until recently.

  But it doesn't matter, she told herself. The humans had superior firepower, but she had superior numbers. Vastly superior numbers. That’s why I sent the potentially disloyal elements into the fire first.

  She kept her face completely expressionless as the second and third divisions rumbled towards the gravity point. It had taken years, far longer than she would have liked, to start reactivating the reserve. The gerontocrats who’d ruled the Tokomak for thousands of years couldn’t react quickly to anything, even a threat to their existence. They’d refused to believe that a race as young as humanity could threaten their enforcers, let alone themselves; they’d found it easier to blame Neola for incompetence than stretch their minds to encompass a younger race that posed a real threat. She supposed she should be grateful. They hadn't had the imagination to comprehend that she might pose a threat too. They’d expected her to sit tight and wait, for years if necessary, until they decided how they were going to slap her wrist. She was only a handful of centuries old, after all. There was no need for any real punishment.

  And now they’re safely restrained, she thought, feeling a flicker of glee. They really hadn't thought she could launch a coup. The idea was unthinkable until she’d actually done it. They can't stand in the way any longer.

  Neola sobered as the third division of starships blinked and vanished. The gerontocrats hadn't bothered to keep the reserve up to date. It hadn't mattered, not when the pace of innovation had slowed down to a trickle. A starship built a thousand years ago was no less capable than one that had been completed only last week. But things were different now. The humans had proved themselves to be revoltingly ingenious and some of the other younger races were starting to follow in their footsteps. It was vitally important, if Tokomak supremacy was to be maintained, that the humans be enslaved or exterminated as quickly as possible. They were giving the other races ideas.

  Her eyes found a cluster of icons moving into attack position and narrowed sharply. The squadron commanders were young, only a few hundred years old. They’d had nothing to look forward to, but a long slow climb up the ladder ... until now. She’d shown them that someone could overthrow the established order and take power for themselves, she’d shown them - inadvertently - how she herself could be overthrown. She wondered, grimly, which one would have the imagination to make a bid for power. The gerontocrats would take years to plan a coup, more than long enough for her to nip it in the bud, but someone from her own generation might move faster. No, would move faster. Neola knew she wasn't the only one to have been impatient, over the last few centuries. The people she’d promoted - for having a certain level of imagination, for being able to think outside the rules and regulations they’d enforced on the known galaxy - were the ones most likely to be dangerous to her. Their ambitions would not be satisfied with anything less than absolute power.

  It was, she acknowledged privately, a deadly balancing act. She needed people who could think outside the box ... and there were very few of them, even amongst the young. Fleet operations had been so bound by formality over the last thousand years or so that too many officers simply didn't know how to cope, when presented with an emergency. Their fleet exercises had been carefully scripted, with the winners and losers known in advance. But she couldn't expect the humans to be conventional. Unconventional tactics were their only hope of surviving long enough to win the day.

  She watched another set of icons vanish and smiled to herself. The humans were good, but they weren’t gods. They’d be crushed by overwhelming firepower, even if her trap failed completely. If she had to fly her fleet all the way to Earth and turn the planet into a radioactive wasteland, she could do it. She would do it. If worse came to worst, she told herself time and time again, the Tokomak could trade hundreds of starships for a single human ship. She would still come out ahead.

  A blue icon appeared, near the gravity point. Neola allowed her smile to widen. Local space on the other side was clear, then. Very few races would challenge a Tokomak ship, even one that was completely alone, but it was well to be sure. Her intelligence staff had reported all sorts of rumours making their way through the empire, from vast defeats that had never happened to talk of mutiny and revolution. She was all too aware that the staff might not be picking up everything, no matter what they claimed. The underground knew how to hide itself. It would have been exterminated by now otherwise.

  “Hudson has been secured, Your Excellency,” the communications officer reported. “There was little resistance.”

  “Very good,” Neola said. She hadn't expected resistance, but who knew? The humans had been making inroads on Hudson - and hundreds of other worlds - for years. “Take the remainder of the fleet through the gravity point.”

  “As you command, Your Excellency.”

  ***

  “It’s like a bloody nightmare.”

  “Keep your eyes on your console,” Captain-Commodore Jenny Longlegs advised, dryly. Lieutenant Fraser had served long enough to remain calm, even if hell itself was pouring out of the gravity point. “Do we have an accurate ship count yet?”

  “No, Captain,” Lieutenant Fraser said. “But definitely upwards of five thousand starships.”

 
; Jenny sucked in her breath as more and more icons appeared on the display. The gravity point was disgorging a veritable river of starships. SUS Schlieffen, her cruiser, was more advanced than any of the superdreadnaughts and battleships forming into rows and advancing towards the planet, but Jenny doubted they’d survive long against such firepower. She prayed, silently, that the cloaking device held. The Tokomak weren’t trying to hide. Their sensors were sweeping space so thoroughly that they’d probably know the exact location of every speck of dust by the time they headed to the next gravity point. She might have to order her ship to back off before the Tokomak had a chance to spot her. They’d risked everything to grab SUS Odyssey. She was fairly sure they’d be just as interested in grabbing Schlieffen.

  “They’re forming up,” Fraser reported. “One flotilla is headed directly for the planet, another is heading for Point Four.”

  The shortest route to Earth, Jenny thought. It would still take months for the enemy fleet to reach the planet, and she had her doubts about their logistics, but there was no doubting the Tokomak’s willingness to expend starships to crush their enemies. Half the ships on the display would be crewed by client races, utterly expendable as far as their masters were concerned. They’re on their way.

  She studied the display for a long moment, noting just how many ships had started to blur together into a haze of sensor distortion. Tokomak ECM was inferior to its human counterpart - the Tokomak hadn’t faced any pressure to improve or die for thousands of years - but quantity had a quality all of its own. Her passive sensors were having fits trying to keep track of each and every enemy starship. She had the nasty feeling that there were more enemy ships in the system than her sensors could detect. They might well be using their own ECM - and cloaking devices - to hide part of their fleet.

  Although they’d be taking a risk, she thought. With so many ships in such a confined region of space, the odds of a collision are non-zero.

  She dismissed the thought with a flicker of irritation. The Tokomak probably wouldn’t care if two of their ships collided, even if they were battleships. They had thousands of active starships and tens of thousands of starships in the reserves. Schlieffen could expend all her missiles, with each hit a guaranteed kill, and still lose. Quantity definitely had a quality all of its own.

  “Captain,” Lieutenant Hammond said. “I have a direct laser link to Sweden. She’s requesting instructions.”

  Jenny nodded, slowly. “Copy our sensor records to her,” she said. Sweden had held her position close to Point Four, ready to nip through before the Tokomak arrived and sealed the gravity point. Schlieffen would continue to monitor the enemy fleet from a safe distance, if indeed there was such a thing. “And then inform her CO that he is to run straight to Earth. Tell him ...”

  She sucked in her breath as she looked back at the display. The torrent of starships hadn't stopped. Hundreds of superdreadnaughts were gliding through the gravity point, their weapons charged and their sensors searching for trouble. Whoever was in charge over there was no slouch. Normally, the Tokomak were careful not to put too much strain on their sensor systems. But then, who would dare to attack them? Their defeat in the Battle of Earth, seven years ago, had been the first battle they’d lost in nearly a thousand years.

  And every ship they lost represented less than a percentage point of a percentage point of their overall numbers, she reminded herself. They could lose a thousand starships and never notice the loss.

  “Tell him to warn everyone,” she finished. “The Tokomak are coming.”

  Chapter One

  Hameeda walked down the long corridor, alone.

  It felt as if she was walking for miles, even though she knew the corridor was only a few short metres from one airlock to the other. She couldn't help feeling nervous as she made her slow way towards the second airlock, despite all her preparations. It felt as if she was on the cusp of apotheosis or nemesis, the crowning height of her career or a disaster that would ensure she never served in space again. Her heart thumped so loudly in her chest that she was glad she was alone. Anyone escorting her wouldn’t need enhanced hearing to pick out her heartbeat.

  She stopped outside the second airlock and took a long breath. Her CO had told her, an hour ago, that it wasn’t too late to back out. She didn’t have to go through with the bonding. No one would fault her for changing her mind, even now. The vast resources that had been expended on preparing her for the process would be better wasted, then expended on someone who didn’t want to go through with it. Hameeda understood their concerns - and her mother’s fears, during their last call - but she had no intention of backing out. The old fogies, the ones so old they remembered living on Earth, simply didn’t have the imagination of the spaceborn. They feared technology even as it had given them a chance to reshape both their former homeworld and the galaxy itself. Hameeda and her generation embraced the promise of technology, without fear. The future was within their grasp.

  And we must make sure we have a future, she thought. Because there are always those ready to take it from us.

  It wasn’t a pleasant thought. Her mother had been a refugee from Afghanistan, from a life so alien that Hameeda had problems grasping that it had ever existed. The mere concept of being forced into eternal servitude, simply for being born female, was difficult to grasp. How could someone be so uncivilised? And yet, after her mother had told her yet another horror story, Hameeda had looked it up. If anything, her mother had understated the case. Earth was an uncivilised world. They fought over nothing, even when they could reach out and claim the stars themselves. Their mere existence was a reminder that the human race could sink back into the mud.

  Her reflection looked back at her. Hameeda had kept her mother’s dark hair, darker eyes and tinted skin, even as she’d spliced more and more enhancements into her genome. She was stronger, faster and fitter than any groundpounder, more than capable of holding her own in a fight. But she felt hesitant now. If something went wrong, if one of the doubters had been right all along ... she’d be dead before she knew it. But life was risk. Safety was an illusion. And she knew better than to feel otherwise.

  Hameeda took another breath, then pressed her hand against the sensor. There was a long moment as the security systems checked and rechecked her identity, then the airlock hissed open, revealing a vast hanger. Hameeda suddenly felt very small indeed. The LinkShip floated in the centre of the chamber, dwarfing her. It was tiny, compared to a regular starship; it was barely sixty metres from bow to stern. And yet, it was also the most advanced starship in the galaxy. Her FTL and realspace drives were the fastest known to exist, faster even than a courier boat. It had taken years to turn the concept into reality. Hameeda had spent almost as long training to serve as its - her - commanding officer.

  She drank in the sight for a long moment, her eyes wandering over the dark hull. The LinkShip looked like a giant almond, its weapons and defences carefully worked into the material so they didn’t spoil the ship’s lines. Hameeda wasn't sure how she felt about that, even though she admired the elegance. An observer would not have to look inside the ship to know she was a distinctly non-standard vessel. And yet, it was a step towards a human aesthetic that was obviously different from the galactic standard. Too many races, even the ones that had been walking the stars when humanity had been crawling in the mud, used modified Tokomak designs. Humanity had to be different.

  Bracing herself, she activated her command implants and sent a command into the computer network. The world seemed to shimmer around her. Hameeda closed her eyes for a long moment as the teleport field made her entire body tingle, then opened them again. She was standing in the LinkShip’s command centre, alone. Her lips curved into a smile. The old fogies distrusted teleporters, asking all sorts of questions about souls and other unquantifiable issues none of the spaceborn understood. To them, teleporting was normal. Hameeda had been having her molecules broken down into energy and put back together again since she was a child. I
t was normally very safe.

  Unless there’s a jamming field, she reminded herself, as she rested her hands on her hips. Or a delay that causes the energy pattern to start to degrade.

  She pushed the thought out of her head as she surveyed the command centre. It looked bland and boring, compared to a starship’s bridge, but it was hers. A single chair, sited in the exact centre of the chamber; a helmet, primed to make the first connection between Hameeda and the ship’s datanet. There were no consoles, no display ... there were emergency control systems, in another compartment, but very little effort had been wasted on them. Anything that broke through the LinkShip’s defences would almost certainly be enough to destroy the ship, or - at the very least - render it completely beyond repair. Hameeda had been told, time and time again, that there would be very little hope of long-term survival. Once the Tokomak realised what the LinkShips were, they would do everything in their power to destroy them. Their mere existence was an affront to the laws the Tokomak had written for the entire galaxy.

  And they may have had good reason to ban direct organic-computer interaction, Hameeda thought, as she sat down on the chair. We simply don’t know their reasoning.