Warp Marine Corps- The Complete Series

by C. J. Carella

  On paper, Seventh Fleet looked pretty good, with enough firepower to save the day. On paper. When the chips were down, Tyson knew the green, untrained formations would be lucky to perform half as well as they should.

  “Well?” Hewer said when Carruthers took too long to answer.

  “Even if we lose Parthenon, the war is far from lost, Mister President. We could still fall back into a defensive posture. Trade space for time.” From the look on his face, Carruthers found that proposition barely more palatable than suing for unconditionally surrender.

  Going defensive was the smart play: abandon Parthenon System and have Sixth and Seventh Fleets make their stand at Wolf 1061. Doing so meant giving up over a dozen other systems down the other ley lines emanating from Parthenon. Most of those were smaller colonies which wouldn’t be able to defend themselves from even a single enemy cruiser. None of the larger colonies were as heavily fortified as P-3; the aliens would have them for breakfast. There would be no way to evacuate those planets. A hundred million Americans would be left out in the cold. The smart play involved trading those lives for time.

  “Abandoning Parthenon is not acceptable,” Hewer said. “The American people won’t stand for it. I won’t stand for it. What are our chances if we send everything that is ready this minute to support Sixth Fleet?”

  “Lower than fifty percent, Mister President. And our losses even if we win are likely to be severe. Perhaps even catastrophic. We would likely lose all the worlds we’d be trying to protect, and weaken Seventh Fleet enough that we couldn’t guarantee the safety of Wolf 1061 against further attack. Even Sol System wouldn’t be safe in the aftermath.”

  “As I see it, and please correct me if I’m wrong, we have three choices,” the President went on. “First, order Sixth Fleet to fall back to Libertas System and protect the warp chain leading to Wolf 1061, abandoning the other chains to the Vipers, while we finish readying Seventh Fleet. Which will take… how long?”

  DuPont began to speak, but Carruthers interrupted him. “Two more months, Mister President.”

  The latest estimate claimed five weeks, but Carruthers knew better than blow smoke up the Prez’s ass.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Two months, plenty of time for the Vipers to depopulate all the systems along the other four warp chains leading out of Parthenon.”

  Nobody had anything to say to that.

  “Second option, throw every ship that’s combat-ready into the fray, and hope the reinforcements are enough to make a difference. That, as you said, has a fifty-fifty chance to succeed, maybe less, because the Vipers are likely being reinforced even as we speak.”

  Carruthers nodded.

  “And finally, divert enough support to the carrier task force to make it operational, and send it forward to reinforce Sixth Fleet along with anything else we can send. Which will increase the timetable to ready Seventh Fleet by how long?”

  “At least another two weeks. Maybe three,” Admiral DuPont said. “And it would reduce the number of conventional reinforcements we can send immediately by two battlecruiser squadrons, nearly half the ready force. If the carriers don’t work as advertised, the odds of success go from fifty-fifty to about one in ten.”

  “We’d be betting everything on those carriers making the difference,” Carruthers concluded.

  “It’s better than abandoning a hundred million Americans,” Tyson said. Nobody was happy to have the President’s Chief of Staff at the meeting, let alone having him pipe in with his opinion. He didn’t care. The ghosts of the dead wouldn’t let him stay quiet. Too many had died by his hand, simply because they had been obstructing the steps they’d had to take to keep humanity alive, in many cases with the best of intentions. He’d be damned if he allowed millions of innocents to die because it was too risky to save them.

  “Even if Sixth Fleet is defeated and wiped out, it will buy us time,” he went on. “The Vipers’ losses will be severe as well. Send the goddamn carriers, send whatever else you’ve got. Admiral Givens knows the score. She’ll make the Vipers bleed at Parthenon.”

  Maybe. Shoulda coulda woulda. Wars were uncertain affairs; that was why it was best to avoid them if possible. But there was no need to say that. They all knew it.

  “It is a risk,” General Forsythe said. “But it provides some hope for Parthenon and doesn’t abandon the rest of the warp chains.”

  There was some more arguing about the particulars before the President said he would announce his decision the next day and called the meeting to an end.

  “They really don’t think the fighters are going to make a difference,” Al Hewer said when they were alone.

  “’Not Invented Here Syndrome,’” Tyler said. “The Navy rejected the whole idea and the Marines ran with the ball, and even on a shoestring budget they’ve done some amazing stuff. I’ve made sure nobody’s padding the performance reports, Al. Unless I’m missing something, those little flying cannon are going to be as decisive as warp catapults were.”

  “Yeah, I read the reports too. The actual reports, not the summaries. Cost me a good deal of sleep, but sleep hasn’t come easy for a long time. What worries me are the psych evals, the reports of ESP, telepathy, the sort of bizarre crap we’ve been assured by our Starfarer friends is the stuff of fantasy. Half of it sounds like mystic mumbo-jumbo, and the other half is like something from a horror movie. Did you read the brief explaining why the Imperium decided to pick a fight with us? They think we are warp demons, or demon-summoning sorcerers.”

  Tyson nodded. “It’s an economy-size witch hunt. Or a crusade. And we’re the Great Satan. Not exactly the first time we’ve been called that.”

  “What if in this case it turns out to be the literal truth? Those reports jive a little too closely to some of the weirder Starfarer legends out there. Warp demons. Save our bodies, lose our souls.”

  “Kinda late to worry about your soul, Al, or mine for that matter,” Tyson said. “We’ve been baptized in the blood of innocents, you and I. All to save humanity, and America. If it turns out we’re calling forth the Dark Side of the Force, we’ll have to hope our descendants fix that. As long as there are descendants, there’s hope.”

  “Heh. I hated Star Wars just as much as Star Trek. Lucas was a moral imbecile.”

  “Maybe. The thing is, the dead don’t have moral agency. Survival trumps just about everything else. And I may not have much of a soul left, but I can’t have a hundred million deaths on my conscience.”

  “Neither can I. There are lines that can’t be crossed. And I suppose the Langley Project isn’t one of them. The final reports indicate they have a handle on the pseudo-telepathy and the pseudo-demonic possession, and the last set of fleet exercises went off without a hitch. I suppose that’ll have to be enough.”

  “Made up your mind, then?”

  Al nodded. “I did when I said I wouldn’t allow Parthenon to be abandoned without a fight. We’ll go with the carriers, and if they bring pandemonium to the galaxy, too damn bad. We’ll send them and everything else we’ve got to give Sixth Fleet a chance at victory, or at worst to give the Vipers a Pyrrhic victory. Should take a week if we drop everything and rush those ships out, maybe five days if everything works perfectly. Hopefully Parthenon-Three can hold on that long. It’s all moot otherwise.”

  “They will.”

  Thirteen

  Groom Base, 165 AFC

  “We probably should bring back the Air Force,” Fernando Verdi said. “Although we’d have to change the name. Space Force, maybe? Star Force?”

  Lisbeth Zhang was feeling pretty agreeable; Fernando had taken her to what he referred to as ‘the heights of ecstasy’ and was now following up their lovemaking with a very thorough back massage. But there were some things she just couldn’t agree with.

  “Nope. Just nope.”

  “I’m just not sure keeping the fighters in the Corps is a good idea, though. Much as I love the gun club, they might need their own branch of service.”
<
br />   “Anything’s better than bringing back the Air Farce,” Lisbeth said. “Now, turning the fighters over to the Navy makes some sense, and that’s probably what will end up happening. They are going to deploy from Navy ships, after all. But so do the Marines, either from shuttles or warp catapults, shudder, groan,” she finished mock-grimly.

  Fernando’ laugh at her last comment was a bit shaky. They’d all experienced more warp jumps in training than most Marines did in their entire careers, and the experience hadn’t improved one iota with practice, even with the newest batch of Mélange keeping them sane and alive through the process.

  “So anyways,” she went on. “Given that Marines are meant to conduct offensive operations off naval vessels, I would argue that there should have never been a Naval Air Force in the first place; it should have been the Marines’ show from the get-go. Well, except maybe for Search and Rescue or flying big wigs around or whatever. But the fighters and bombers should have always been under Marine control. Screw the bubbleheads.”

  “That’s funny, coming from a former bubblehead.”

  “Bah, I say. The Navy didn’t want me, and being a Marine suits me fine. Well, being a Marine pilot, that is. I did my share of ground-pounding shit, and the 03s can keep that job. But I like being the skipper of my own little warship. If I screw up, the only one who pays the price will be little old me, instead of…”

  They appeared around her from one heartbeat to the next, the dead crewmembers and passengers of the Wildcat and the Bengal Tiger, and she was able to see each of their faces as they started mutely at her.

  “Oh, shit. I see them,” Fernando said.

  That had been happening with growing frequency. Shared flashbacks. Most of the pilots weren’t reporting the increasing number of incidents, and the stories from those who did had been dismissed as the product of ‘highly suggestive states.’ They weren’t affecting anyone’s performance, and at the moment that was all that mattered.

  “Yeah. Not a pretty sight, are they?” Lisbeth said. The dead didn’t scare her anymore. She mostly felt sad. And guilty. She was past being afraid of ghosts.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Fernando told her. He turned to the staring dead. “It wasn’t her fault.”

  One by one, the ghosts nodded and vanished.

  “Did you see that?” Lisbeth gasped. That was new, getting a reaction from the spirits.

  “They heard me. You saw that, didn’t you? They heard me.”

  “And they agreed with you. I think. Pretty fucking responsive, for a shared hallucination.”

  “Ave Maria,” Fernando said. He crossed himself. “Makes me wish I’d paid more attention during Sunday school.”

  “You’re Catholic, aren’t you?”

  “Yep. You?”

  “Nothing. Not really an atheist. Just don’t give a crap either way. You live and you die, and whether or not there’s some big old beardo watching you from on high doesn’t matter until after you’re dead. In my humble opinion. At least, that’s what I used to believe.”

  “Yeah. Well, maybe you should start praying.”

  “Yeah.”

  The next morning, they heard the news. They were going to war. Just a few weeks after qualifying, without even a shakedown cruise under their belt, and they were going to war. Things were so bad they were throwing them into the fray, fresh out of R&D. She thought she was ready for the real thing, but it would have been nice to get a little more practice before rolling hot.

  Maybe she should start praying.

  * * *

  Rear Admiral Leroy Burke watched the ships of Carrier Strike Group One and was nearly overwhelmed by a disturbing mixture of pride and terror.

  Born in the rough streets of Chicago, Leroy had managed to claw his way out, helped along by his implacable mother, who had made all kinds of sacrifices to provide him with an education at a charter school. He’d made it to college and become a naval officer and eventually a Navy pilot. He’d flown missions all over the world, survived through several close calls, and risen through the ranks. It’d been a long road, from Tailhook to US Central Command, with even a stint with the Blue Angels along the way. He’d killed and watched good men die, had learned many harsh lessons, and taught many more.

  The day the aliens had come he’d been the captain of the USS Nimitz, cruising alongside the rest of CSG-11 in the Indian Ocean when the impossible news began to pour in. His fleet had gone to DEFCON-TWO just before cities all over the world began to burn. The supercarrier and the rest of the group had scrambled their fighters, but there was no enemy to engage, nothing anybody could do as half the world was massacred by an enemy only glimpsed through telescopes and the doomed International Space Station in the brief moments before it was contemptuously swatted from orbit by the unknown attackers.

  The shock of discovering that the most formidable surface force on the planet was utterly helpless had been bad enough. The disjointed reports of death and destruction that filtered in as the fleet wandered around aimlessly and waited for orders had been much worse. Leroy’s wife and children had survived – Kitsap Base was spared from the horror of the fire domes – but his mother and everyone in Chicago had not. Those losses, combined with witnessing the darkest period in the planet’s history, had scarred him for life.

  America had survived, for some values of America. Leroy, like most men and women in uniform, had followed the new President’s lead. CSG-11 had headed back to North America, to help the survivors of the attack. Less than half of the US pre-Contact population had survived, and millions more perished in the aftermath, particularly the elderly and infirm. Disease and civil unrest had been almost as deadly, and Leroy had the dubious honor of being the first US carrier commander in history to order air strikes over American soil, targeted at fellow Americans.

  Eventually, the nation pulled itself together, although it was a different country in many ways. Leroy and most of the military were too busy to dwell on the political changes, however. The enemy that had nearly exterminated humanity was still out there, and the US Armed Forces had to undergo a systematic transformation to deal with it. The Navy ceased to exist as a seaborne service, and became the Space Navy. The change affected everyone, from the lowest Seamen – soon to be renamed Spacers – to the topmost admirals.

  Most people believed the slang term for Navy personnel – bubblehead – came from the NASA-designed helmets that became part of their uniform during the early phases of the post-Contact space program, and to some degree that belief was true. But the term had existed before then, and was used among military circles long before the general public saw the first generation of Navy spacers. Submarine crews were called bubbleheads, and sub commanders quickly dominated the early Space Navy. It made perfect sense: submariners were used to dealing with self-contained vessels surrounded on all sides by a hostile environment. When the first American starships were built, the highly-coveted command assignments went to bubbleheads.

  The Old Navy balked, but President Hewer had no patience for what he considered petty concerns. Seniority be dammed; the admirals who didn’t get with the program were encouraged to retire, their only other option being to be fired outright. Most realized the wisdom in letting the bubbleheads lead the way, and changed with the times.

  Leroy managed. He spent years without a ship of his own, after the heartbreaking task of overseeing the breaking up of the Nimitz, her power plant and other parts used for crude spaceships that went to other captains. His first space command, well over a decade later, was the USS Whipple, a cheap, light frigate that later would be reclassified as a corvette, tiny compared to the Nimitz, let alone the ships of the line the Space Navy was beginning to sail. Those were tough times: the Puppies’ technical advice notwithstanding, they’d all had to learn by doing, and the inevitable mistakes that ensued cost lives.

  His tenure on the Whipple taught him a great deal as he was faced with hazards and complications he’d never encountered at sea. And by the time he lear
ned how to handle them, new technologies came into play: warp shields, something other Starfarers had never used in recorded history. Like all new things, they came with their share of unintended consequences.

  Over half of Leroy’s pre-Contact fellow captains were even less fortunate and died in combat, fell prey to accidents, or vanished in warp transit, never to be heard of again. The Navy’s old guard was essentially wiped out during Earth’s first interstellar conflict. The bubbleheads, to the surprise of no one, had the highest survival rates. After the Risshah were dealt with, he retired, spent thirty-five rather boring years in the private sector, and rejoined the service for another war, this time against the so-called Gremlins.

  He’d always regretted the realities that spelled the end of small craft in combat. Against weapons that could span tens of thousands of miles in a fraction of a second, only mass and armor provided security. Fighters had gone the way of the horse-borne warrior, relics with no place in the present. Until now.

  Twenty-six ships prepared for departure. Five light carriers that were little more than refitted Marine Assault Ships, each fielding two squadrons of twelve War Eagles each. Their pilots averaged a hundred hours and forty warp jumps. The guidelines he’d helped craft required at least two hundred and fifty hours and a hundred jumps before being considered fit for combat operations, but circumstances had forced everyone to cut corners. Besides the carriers, the group consisted of eight Aegis-class destroyers, most of their armament dedicated to point defense, and twelve logistics ships. The support vessels had just arrived, diverted from Seventh Fleet to allow the strike group to sail into combat.