The Com-Officer had his head cocked.
He turned to me.
“I’m getting a series of increasingly urgent calls from Squadron Commanders to Admirals demanding their right to be in on the kill, Sire,” he informed me, not looking nearly as stressed as I would have imagined him to be.
In the background, I saw Commander Lisa Steiner nodding with approval.
It appeared her training regimen was paying off. In the past, I’d had to deal with untrained or partially-trained com-operators and technicians. Even the so-called officers hadn’t been used to dealing with ships’ captains by themselves, let alone Admirals and the like.
“Good work, Coms,” I said.
I ruminated for half a minute and then came to a decision.
“I have new orders,” I said and instructed the Sector Guard and Capital SDF fleet to tighten up and close in on the flagship’s position. I was going to take them in closer to the bug Swarm. Much closer.
In the meantime….
“Open a channel to Captain Starborn,” I instructed.
“On it,” said the Officer.
Seconds later, the Captain was on the channel.
I cocked an eyebrow.
“What can I do for you, Admiral Montagne?” asked the Flag Captain.
“I’m attaching the odds and sods of the independent squadrons to your command. You’re to take your forces around the outside of the bug Swarm and clean up stragglers,” I said.
“You mean follow along behind your destroyer wings and do clean-up,” the Captain said, his face neutral.
“This Swarm is like an onion. We’re going to peel it layer by layer,” I instructed.
“And the fact they’ll be under a Confederation Commander will hopefully side-step any chain of command issues that might arise from attaching them to, say, Sector Commandant?” he asked.
“Miller appears a fine and steady officer, I’m sure he could have maintained control of an additional formation from within his sector in addition to his Guard,” I dismissed, “but he already has sufficient warships, as does the Capital SDF. Your flotilla, on the other hand, seems to have left you decidedly short of warships.”
Starborn’s face tightened.
“I disagree with that assessment,” he said loyally.
“As you should,” I inclined my head, “that’s your prerogative as a subordinate officer. As the head of a fleet and one that doesn’t have to bow to the winds of politics, I only have to concern myself with military strategy.”
“Be careful,” warned Starborn, “I’m not saying you’re wrong, but a little diplomacy now may save you a great deal of trouble down the road.”
“Diplomacy,” I said, rolling the word around in my mouth like a strange and potentially unpalatable wine, “can only get you so far and is a weak reed to rest our chances of victory upon.” It also hadn’t done me as much good as it should have. I’d bent over backward to do the right thing, help the people, even tried to work with the local politician types both on the planetary and sector levels and got my hands badly burned each time. Could things have turned out infinitely worse? Without a doubt!
Unfortunately for Captain Starborn’s peace of mind, I wasn’t here to manage my downside. I was here to win.
At the same time, I hesitated… there was no need to throw over the table in a fit of pique.
“That said, I am not immune to the necessity for smooth interpersonal interactions. Why exactly did you think I selected yourself to head up the merged forces?” I said in reply, “I may be focused on winning and with a few more freedoms than a loyal officer of the Confederation such as yourself can manage, but at the same time, I’m more interested in plain speak than running roughshod over the sensibilities of my fellow officers.”
Starborn looked momentarily mutinous at the mention of freedoms but held himself back.
“Good hunting out there, Captain,” I said.
“Thank you, Your Majesty,” he said, cutting the channel.
I’d gone from Admiral back to ‘Your Majesty’ I noted with a chuckle. If that was the worst I had to deal with, this was going to be a piece of cake.
The bugs never having heard of cake or the word easy, decided to make things as difficult as they could.
Rear Admiral Druid was forced to transfer two battalions of lancers from his battleship to help a beleaguered heavy cruiser and though they saved the ship, it had lost one of its shield generators and taken enough damage so I decided not to risk it again unless the situation was dire.
If it weren’t for the jump spindles I would have already sent it on the long journey back home. As it was they were looking at a long boring stint of duty on Spindle Defense as the next best thing to starting home immediately, unless the whole Capital Defense Campaign went sour. Then it was anyone’s guess.
Always possible.
Over the next half hour, the Wall recovered from its skirmish right though the center of the bug Swarm and the lighter units continued to circle the Swarm, cutting down a marauder here and a dozen wandering bug scouts there.
The Lucky Clover, my cruisers, and our allies moved in to add our weight of fire to the attack. The added weight of more than one hundred and fifty warships cleared whole swathes of bugs out of the star system.
Eventually, all good things must come to an end and the bugs stopped killing each other. While a good two hundred bug ships scattered in all direction, nearly three hundred bugs formed back into a fighting force and stopped shooting each other.
Thirty-five harvesters grouped together around the largest heavy in the Swarm and pointed themselves straight at the Lucky Clover.
They must have decided to go after the biggest ship on the human side of the battle. Not a bad decision really.
Not that it was going to do them much good.
“Fire,” I ordered as soon as the main cannon had a lock.
The heavy harvester that appeared to have taken command took a shot right in the bow and the front half of the ship imploded.
For a second and final time, the bug Swarm turned on it and this time, I gave the order to advance.
Within minutes, the remaining bugs were surrounded by our now numerically superior forces and hammered into space debris. Thousands of lasers struck again and again until nothing was left.
“Turn the Clover around and return to the Spindles,” I ordered.
The Tactical Officer turned to me.
“Are you sure you want to do that, Sire?” he asked in a respectful voice, “there’s every chance that more than a few stealth ships survived. Not to mention hundreds or thousands of boarding bugs.”
“While a threat of boarding bugs and boring beetles can be handled by the local army and marines with the judicious assistance of their orbital defenses,” I said with a shrug, “I admit the odds of civilian casualties go up significantly if we assume the locals are incompetent, but there are still several waves of bugs to deal with. The locals are just going to have to step things up.”
“Even a few ships—” began the Tactical Officer.
I looked at him crossly.
“There’s very little even a few ships can do against hundreds of stealth targets. The SDF will already have our warning and the sensor reading from their own SDF warships to help them try to spot the bugs before they hit their worlds. Again there’s very little we could do for them even if they are totally incompetent except draw down our own forces of marines and lancers, leaving our ships at the mercy of any bug boarders. No,” I said with finality, “this battle requires everyone to do their part.”
“Aye-aye, Sir,” said Tactical.
Returning to the Spindles, the Multi-Sector Patrol Fleet spent the next day and a half making good on battle damage. Light as it was in most cases, facing off against the better portion of a thousand bugs didn’t leave much room for errors.
“What’s the tally?” I asked in a neutral voice.
“We l
ost two destroyers. The crew of the ship was overwhelmed and before reinforcements could arrive, the survivors were forced to abandon ship. The locals had it worse. Three destroyers and a light cruiser were lost with all hands,” reported my First Officer.
“Unfortunate,” I said with a sigh.
Unsurprisingly, the ships we’d lost, at least in the MSP, had been captained and crewed by a majority of my native Caprians. Looking up the numbers, I was surprised to see something like three quarters of the crew from two of the destroyers made it out safely, along with all of their officers, while the other surviving destroyer only had something like half. That one also lost more than half her officers and her Captain had to be literally dragged off his ship by his own crew as he continued to fight bugs until the last escape pod made it off the ship.
That he was tanked as soon as he was rescued was another good point in his favor. I made a note to look into the after-action reports of his surviving officers and top petty officers to be sure, but he sounded a lot more like the sort of man I wanted in command of my warships than his two compatriots.
Living to fight another day was all well and good, but that many survivors gave the lie to their ‘spirited but ultimately futile defense’ story.
I was afraid my fellow Caprians had experienced too many soft and easy years lately, if two out of three captains and their crews had decided to cut their losses early rather than continue to fight for their ship.
Again, the after-action reports and battle footage would be key but I was already making notes. They fought and didn’t run, I had to concede, but any captain who lost his ship was going to face some hard questions, even in a fleet as unorthodox as the MSP.
While we rested, the next bug wave continued creeping into the outer edges of the star system.
Once again, I sent out the fleet.
This time the leading wave was eleven hundred bug ships strong.
“I’m seeing one Mothership, two hundred harvesters and nine-hundred-odd scouts and marauders,” reported Sensors.
“Excellent work,” I said, leaning forward to scan the next bug wave with interest.
This Mothership was an estimated thirteen hundred and fifty-seven meters long and this one was surrounded by all three hundred of its harvesters.
“Same tactic as last time, Admiral?” Sector Commandant Miller asked, taking this chance while we were on the link to try and pry some information out of me.
I shook my head.
“What makes you say that?” I asked.
“Then we’re doing something different?” he asked eyes brightening.
“I didn’t say that either,” I said, unable to help myself.
“Are you toying with me, Admiral?” Commandant Miller asked suspiciously.
“Would I do that?” I asked and immediately shifted the topic back where it belonged, “this time, we’re going to take the entire fleet and circle around the outer perimeter of the Swarm. We won’t be sending the Wall under Rear Admiral Druid until after these bugs have been cut down to size.”
“We’ll peel them like an orange for you, Admiral Montagne,” Miller said with satisfaction, “this will be another one for the history books by the time we’re done with them,” his eyes narrowed into a suddenly speculative look, “there might even be a book deal in it.”
“A book deal?” I asked, putting on a stern face to hide the sudden sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach. This Sector Commandant, while surprisingly non-hostile, was beginning to sound more like a wartime profiteer and less the hardened military officer.
“Don’t knock it, Sir. The truth is, you’re quite famous in certain circles,” he said.
“I find that hard to believe. Now if you’d said infamous, I’d probably have believed you,” I said.
“Any number of officers could take their future retirement from modest to comfortable just by serving under you,” he replied seriously.
“Your few campaigns have been studied intensively. You are on the curriculum in Sector military academies as well as our top-performing university ROTC programs,” he advised, “the truth is, several books studying the Multi-Sector Patrol Fleet as well as the Rise and Fall of Jason Montagne are considered required reading for the young officers and cadets of tomorrow.”
“I’d like to say I’m flabbergasted but that would be lying. In truth, I’m taken aback,” I admitted.
But none of that was important. I needed to bring the focus back on the current military campaign and ignore some author’s self-aggrandizing attempt at a cover title. The Rise and Fall of Jason Montagne indeed!
“All of that’s beside the point,” I said flatly, “right now, the plan is to peel these bugs like an onion, layer by layer. What I need to know is, are you with me?” I asked.
Sector Commandant Miller nodded firmly.
“Of course. You’ve got the biggest fleet in the Star System and the reputation to match. I only wish I’d been with you in the last war.”
I looked at the Sector Commandant skeptically.
“We could have used you,” I said. We could have used anyone with the will to fight and a spaceship—even just the will to fight and the right skill set, honestly.
After a few more rounds of pleasantries, I pled urgent business and logged off.
Chapter 49
The Order is Given
In a star system on the edge of known space, a spymaster had been waiting for word on an active operation in the Spineward Sectors. That word had finally come.
Agent Simpers looked at the latest data and smiled. Everything was coming together perfectly.
To any outside observer, the latest operation looked like either a natural occurrence or the instinctive lashing out of an angry empire determined to punish those who had stood against it and killed an imperial senator.
If they believed the last, they wouldn’t be entirely wrong but they wouldn’t be entirely right either.
The Imperial Senate had effectively banned any further action in the Spine after the latest series of blunders and miscalculations that had blown up in the Empire’s collective faces. Imperial prestige couldn’t weather another open fiasco.
Which was why between them, Simpers and Admiral Davenport had concocted a plan, one that would strike at the very heart of the biggest local to take action against the Empire and—if everything lined up properly—secure a strategic asset of incalculable wealth for the Empire or see it denied to their enemies and destroyed.
Now word that the operation had entered its final phase had reached him and the enemy had placed himself exactly where he was, as expected. It was time to act.
“Operation Swift Fingers is a go,” said Simpers, queuing up the orders and activating the Com-stat network.
Now it was up to the agent on scene and the black-ops forces added to that agent’s portfolio; the exact timing was up to them.
Agent Simpers rubbed his hands together, just imagining what his black operations forces would be capable of with a device that would allow an operation to jump ‘inside’ a star system’s boundaries, and all the glory and resulting promotions that would naturally follow once the Admiralty of the Imperial Navy finally got wind and finally succeeded in ‘appropriating’ the device.
He wouldn’t hand it over easily but, in the end, whichever way he sliced the dice, the Empire would benefit.
Regardless, such a device was too powerful to leave in the hands of one rogue warlord living just beyond the rim of civilized space.
The operation would also provide a nice diversion for his current mission.
He turned his head; it was time to leave the long reach of the imperial Com-stat network and pioneer directly into black space.
“I.P!” he shouted. It was time to verify and retrieve the fragment.
Chapter 50
Bug Campaign: the Next Wave
The fleet assembled all four hundred and twenty-five fully operational warships, repaired and r
eady for combat. Our less lucky brethren were still in space dock being repaired, like my heavy cruiser stuck on guard duty.
Speaking of guard duty, I finally found a job for all of those merchant cruisers.
With the rest of the fleet busy taking on the next Swarm, that left no one back on clean-up—no one except the merchant ‘cruisers’ of the Sector Governor, that is, I thought with a chuckle. After the pointed reminders I’d had about how everything behind me was being left open or on the shoulders of the army and orbital defenses, it occurred to me we had an untapped resource.
The merchant cruisers had been re-tasked post-haste. Not only would they have the chance to do some good, they could do in front of an audience, the planets and space stations they were now defending as they patrolled for stealth space bugs. Either they would be everything the Sector Governor had said they were, or a certain politician was about to get some serious egg on his face. I think you could tell which one I was hoping for. For their own sakes, I wanted the crews of those merchant ships to prove me wrong in my assessment of their combat power.
As the Capital Fleet set course for the outer system and pulled away from the inner system, the merchant cruisers and their fate were out of my hands.
They would rise and fall on their own merits. I, on the other hand, needed a nap. Transit times being what they were, I would arrive at the end of my day just in time for the battle.
As it wouldn’t do for the Little Admiral to appear red-eyed and sleep deprived at the beginning of battle, I went back to my quarters.
A brief but intense encounter with Akantha later, where she pumped me for information on the likelihood of hand-to-hand combat, something I very much hoped was unlikely, and I lay flat on the bed, exhausted and rapidly heading off to dreamland.
I awoke to the chime of my data-slate.
“Montagne here,” I said.
“You wanted me to wake you, Sire,” said Commander Steiner.
“Is it that time already?” I asked rhetorically, blinking sleep from my eyes.
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