The Oncoming Storm Read Online Free PDF Page A

met during border patrol. They’d stolen a starship and made it out of the Theocracy, placing their lives in the Commonwealth’s hands rather than stay one moment longer under oppressive rule. Their stories had been horrifying. The Theocracy gave lip service to the idea of religious freedom, but those who didn’t accept the True Faith suffered all kinds of legal penalties. It was, apparently, incentive to convert.
    The third file consisted of a detailed political briefing, written by yet another independent analyst. Kat felt her eyes glazing over as she tried to follow the jargon—it seemed that jargon changed every year, depending on who was sitting in the houses of Parliament—and eventually skipped to the executive summary. Kat had to read through it twice to understand what her father had been trying to tell her. The Commonwealth was enduring a political deadlock; the War Hawks demanding preparations for war, perhaps even a first strike, while the Doves were skeptical of any real threat from the Theocracy. After all, the Commonwealth was much larger than any other state the Theocracy had overwhelmed.
    “Captain,” the pilot said, “we’re entering final approach now.”
    Kat nodded, returned the datachip to her uniform pocket, and then scrambled forward into the empty co-pilot’s chair. Outside, a cluster of lights was slowly coming into view, a mobile spacedock surrounding a starship. She leaned forward, her breath catching in her throat, as HMS Lightning took shape and form. Her command, she told herself, forgetting her anger at her father for pulling strings on her behalf. Lightning was her command.
    The vessel was longer than Kat had expected, she noted, although she’d reviewed the files on the Uncanny-class heavy cruisers when she’d received the first notification. Lightning resembled a flattened cone, her white hull bristling with shield generators, missile tubes, weapons mounts, and sensor blisters. Her name was prominently blazed on her hull, drawing Kat’s attention to the drives at the rear of the ship. If the files were to be believed, Lightning enjoyed a higher realspace velocity than anything larger than a destroyer or frigate.
    But she still won’t have a hope of outrunning a gunboat swarm, she thought. A gunboat was tiny, able to outrace almost anything. And they were hard to hit. Or a missile.
    The thought was chilling. No one had fought a real conflict since the Breakaway Wars—and that hadn’t really included formal fleet actions. Who knew how well doctrine would hold up when the Navy was tested in a real fight? Like it or not, she knew, there would be a steep learning curve as soon as the war began. If the war began . . .
    She shook her head. She knew that was wishful thinking.
    “Take us in,” Kat ordered, unable to hide the excitement in her voice. “Put us down as quickly as possible.”

Chapter Three
    William watched, keeping his face impassive, as the shuttle passed through the force field holding the atmosphere inside the shuttlebay and settled down on the deck with an audible clunk. He’d known captains who would be annoyed with the pilot for such a rough landing, which he suspected proved the captains had never been in actual combat. Landing in a combat zone was always far rougher than landing onboard a peaceful starship. But he pushed the thought aside as the hatch opened with a hiss, revealing his new commanding officer.
    She was young, he realized, the part of him that had been raised on a world without rejuvenation technology mentally classing Captain Falcone as a teenager. Even knowing she was twenty-nine, almost thirty, it was hard to escape the emotional reaction to her apparent age. He knew there were midshipwomen on Lightning who looked about the same age, and indeed were the same age, but they certainly didn’t have pretensions to command.
    He kept his face under strict control as Captain Falcone stepped onto the deck, then saluted the flag painted on the