She scowled, then looked at General Garth Sampan, USMC and overall landing force commander. The Americans had contributed the largest marine force to the fleet and thus exercised their right to name the ground commander. Sampan was big and beefy, with a military record longer than Susan’s arm. He was deep in conversation with Admiral Li, a Chinese officer who was second-in-command of the fleet. Susan cursed the politicians under her breath. She would sooner have had an American or French officer as her second. As it was ... it was unlikely anyone would be particularly happy if Li succeeded to overall command. She could only hope they’d hang together long enough to avoid hanging separately.
Her lips quirked at the thought as her eyes wandered over the junior officers. Captain Hammond and Captain Campbell were talking to the other captains, carefully keeping their distance from each other. It was a shame, Susan reflected, that they were so different there was little common ground. As a team, a combination of aggression and common sense, they would have been unbeatable. And yet, their personalities made it harder for them to get along. They were just too different. Thankfully, they had enough sense to shelve their personality conflicts for the duration.
She smiled, then picked up her fork and tapped it against her glass. Silence fell, so quickly one might think it had been rehearsed. She’d chosen many of her officers for their determination to win, not for their love of ceremony. They didn’t want to waste their time eating and drinking as the fleet steadily crawled towards enemy territory. She was fairly sure that at least two-thirds of her guests were counting down until the time they could head back to their ships without giving offense.
“Our first exercise, as a fleet, could have gone better,” she said, with studied understatement. She’d gone to some trouble to make it as difficult as possible, with as many plausible command mistakes as she could devise. It was easy to do something stupid, but harder to do something that looked reasonable until the shit hit the fan. “We will be spending the rest of the voyage working on our tactics, analysing what we did wrong and correcting our mistakes before we run into the enemy. It is just a matter of time until we do.”
She paused, long enough to let her meaning sink in. The flicker network was only a decade old, more or less. Many of the officers under her command had done their training in the days when it took weeks or months for messages to travel from Earth to the edge of the Human Sphere and back again. They’d been lucky no one had accidentally recreated the Battle of New Orleans, which had been fought - unintentionally - shortly after the peace treaty had been signed. It would have been very embarrassing, Susan had thought, if the British had won. Keeping the city would have been a breach of the treaty, and certainly restarted the war, but withdrawing would have caused political problems of its own. Susan liked to think she would have accepted the orders without protest, yet ... she wasn’t sure. A victory was something that should never be thrown away.
And the virus may already know we’re coming, she thought. Where does it think we’re going?
“We will be deploying scouts, once we pass through the New Washington defence line,” she continued. “Assuming we have a clear path to the target star, we will make our way there as quickly as possible. There will be no time for more than a cursory examination of the sensor records, when we meet up with the scouts once again. The enemy may already have us under observation. They will not be in any doubt of our intentions when we alter course and head down the chain to the catapults. We must assume they will do everything in their power to stop us.”
She looked from face to face. “This fleet is the largest, the most powerful force ever deployed from Earth,” she concluded. “We must not fail. We will not fail.”
A rustle ran through the compartment. Susan spotted the reporters in the rear, a handful of men and women brought along by the promise of a scoop ... when the operation was completed and the reporters were free to tell the story. She grimaced inwardly, all too aware it was just a matter of time until she’d have to sit down with them for a background interview. God knew the bastards had done enough digging into her past, when her exploits on Vanguard had become public knowledge. She wasn’t sure there was anything they didn’t know. She’d never really had time for anything but her duty.
I should have come up with something more dramatic to say, she thought. Or hired a scriptwriter to think of something for me.
Instead, she leaned forward. “I have confidence in each and every one of you,” she said. “And I know that, when we encounter the enemy, we will be ready.”
She stood. The senior officers would join her in the antechamber for coffee and a final discussion, before they returned to their ships. The junior officers would remain the dining compartment, slowly heading back to their shuttles ... her lips quirked in irritation. It would be so much simpler to handle everything via holocommunications. The idea of something going wrong, or an enemy fleet appearing out of nowhere, refused to go away. She’d read countless jokes about senior officers being killed - and unit efficiency doubling - but they weren’t funny. Confusion over who was in command could be lethal. She’d worked out as many contingency plans as she could, but ... she shook her head as she headed for the hatch. They’d just have to hope their plans worked when the enemy started lobbing missiles at the fleet. Losing too many nodes in the communications network could be just as disastrous, even if the senior officers remained alive.
And that’s always the problem with emergency drills, she thought. She stepped into the antechamber, where stewards were waiting with tea and coffee. The drills always leave out the emergency.
***
It was a truism, Thomas had been taught by his governess, that certain events were public even if they seemed private. It was impossible not to invite everyone who was anyone to the events, not unless one wanted to give offense and make enemies. He’d often thought it was silly, but he understood the underlying logic. Opponents were one thing, deadly enemies who felt slighted were quite another. Better to put up with one’s rivals for a few hours than risk starting a feud.
He took a sip of his wine, carefully gauging how much he’d drunk. The aristocracy might not say anything, out loud, if he drank himself into a stupor, but everyone would remember. The days when he’d sown his wild oats were gone, if indeed they’d ever been; the days when he’d had the excuse of being young had never truly been at all. His family had drilled proper conduct into him from birth, making it abundantly clear that the slightest misstep could result in social disgrace - or worse. He was fairly sure it was true of naval dinners too, although a good two-thirds of the attendees were foreigners. The Admiralty would make sure he never saw promotion again if he made a fool of himself in public.
As opposed to making a fool of myself in private, he thought, sourly. That’s a great deal easier to cover up.
His thoughts mocked him as he stood and followed his admiral through the hatch. He wasn’t the youngest officer amongst the fleet commanders, but he was certainly the junior one. He wouldn’t even have been invited, if the admiral hadn’t asked him to serve as her second. And yet ... it was hard not to see how little she cared for the dinner party. She regarded it as a waste of time, as a distraction from her duties. Thomas knew better. The more the fleet commanders knew and trusted each other, the more they’d be able to work together when all hell broke loose. They all knew it wouldn’t be long before the fleet was put to the test.
He caught sight of Captain Campbell, talking animatedly to a destroyer captain. It looked as if they were getting along like a house on fire. Thomas felt a flicker of irritation. Campbell had constantly proposed the most aggressive tactics, tactics that offered the prospect of total victory or total defeat. Thomas understood the situation was dire, that the human race was steadily being ground down, but ... he tried not to scowl as the two junior captains glanced at him. Perhaps they were planning to make their way to the privacy tubes. He wouldn’t put it past Campbell. The man clearly didn’t have the discretion God gave a fly.
It isn’t as if they’re in the same chain of command, Thomas reminded himself. It would be a great deal more problematic if one of them was superior to the other.
He dismissed the thought as unworthy of him as he stepped through the hatch. A steward came forward, offering a mug of tea. Thomas took it, nodding gratefully. He’d drunk enough coffee, over the course of the day, to feel as if it was sloshing around his insides. It would make him look bad if he had to visit the washroom in the middle of the debate, although a handful of officers were already heading to the facilities. He smiled in amusement. Some of them had probably crossed their legs rather than show any signs of humanity in front of their juniors.
Just like school, he thought, dryly. He’d done well at boarding school, but he didn’t remember it with any fondness. How could anyone be allowed to believe the staff were actually human?
He mingled with the other officers, memorising names and faces for later consideration. The admiral would want his impressions, he was sure. She’d presumably know some of the foreigners from her earlier command - he’d looked her career up, when he’d been assigned to her command - but others would be strangers. They all seemed competent, he supposed; they all had good records. And yet, there was no way to know how they would react when the missiles started flying. The fleet had never been tested in battle.
“The exercise could have gone better,” the admiral said, drawing their attention to her. “What did we do wrong?”
“We lost our datanet midway through the battle,” Admiral Li said. “And by the time we got it back up again, it was too late.”
Thomas kept his face impassive. The Royal Navy trained on the assumption the fleet command network was unreliable. Any opponent worthy of the name would do their level best to knock it down as quickly as possible, forcing each ship to fall back on its own resources. The exercise had ended in disaster, at least in part, because the virus had wiped out most of the escort ships while the fleet struggled to get the network back on line, stripping the capital ships of their cover. If the engagement had been real, it would have been the biggest disaster since the Battle of New Russia. And that had been one of the most one-sided battles in human history.
“Your ships aren’t trained to reboot the network themselves,” Admiral Vermeulen pointed out, dryly. “Too much top-down command, that’s your problem.”
Li’s eyes narrowed. “And too many ships trying to reboot the network individually,” he countered, “made it impossible to get the network back up in time.”
“We’ll be working on that,” Admiral Onarina said. “But we also have to prepare for the moments when the network is effectively beyond repair.”
Which isn’t going to be easy, Thomas admitted. As much as he cordially disliked Captain Campbell, he couldn’t deny the man had the nerve to act without orders. The Chinese and Russian officers didn’t have the same freedom. If his briefing notes were accurate, it was rare for Chinese officers to act without orders. They’d be punished even if they did the right thing at the right time. We’re going to have to train them to act without fear of punishment.
“What else?” Admiral Onarina’s eyes swept the room. “What went wrong?”
“We overcommitted the gunboats,” Thomas said. He’d hoped Lion and her gunboats would demonstrate their value, but instead the gunboats had been wiped out without so much as scratching the enemy’s paint. “Our plan to hit the enemy with a massive missile barrage was a total failure.”
He sighed, inwardly. The concept had looked good on paper. The fleet’s fifteen battleships were crammed to the gunwales with missiles. They just lacked effective long-range targeting, something he’d hoped the gunboats would provide. It would have worked, if the planners hadn’t fucked around with the simulation ... he shook his head in annoyance. He’d been lucky he and his crew had a chance to learn from their mistakes. They wouldn’t have that chance in a real fight. There was no way they could push the reset switch and start again.
“It should have worked,” an officer he didn’t recognise pointed out. “We could have wiped out their entire fleet.”
“We would have, if the missiles had had proper targeting data,” Thomas said. “But they didn’t.”
He kept his face under tight control. Long-range missiles were no longer as ineffective as they’d been, with the recent improvements in drives and targeting systems, but they still had their weaknesses. Any missile that brought up an active seeker head would be revealing its position to the enemy, allowing them to target the missile and destroy it well before it entered attack range. And ... they simply didn’t have enough missiles to fire more than two or three massive barrages before they shot themselves dry. The combined navies couldn’t produce anything like enough to meet demand.
“We’ll work on that,” Admiral Onarina said. “General?”
The American cleared his throat. “Preliminary reports indicate the landing parties know their stuff,” he said. “However, there is a certain degree of uncertainty about what we’ll face once we land on the catapults. The long-range sensor images we obtained tell us nothing about their close-range defences or their interiors. We’re not even entirely sure where their command and control systems are.”
“And they could be decentralised, because the virus doesn’t need command centres,” Admiral Onarina observed. “Can you take the catapults?”
“We can board them, yes,” General Sampan said. “It’s taking them in a usable condition that might be difficult.”
“At the very least, we’ll take them out,” Li said. “That must slow them down.”
“We don’t know enough to be sure,” Admiral Onarina said. “For all we know, the catapults represent a tiny percentage of their GNP.”
And the virus doesn’t need to spend its resources on anything else, Thomas added, silently. It was hard to believe, but it was true. There’s no way we can win a war of attrition.
He stayed quiet as the admirals discussed the exercise, then started to lay plans for the remainder of the voyage. He could understand why Admiral Onarina and her fellows wanted to take the catapults and turn them against their creators, but ... if they failed, the cost would be unbearably high. The fleet would be lost and the war would be lost with it. And yet, did they have a choice?
If we succeed, we might just win the war, he thought. But is it worth the risk?
Chapter Thirteen
“I was starting to think you weren’t coming,” Colin said. He stood in the shooting range, holding a half-dismantled rifle in one hand. “And that I’d reserved the range for nothing.”
“It’s been a long week,” Tobias said. Six months ago, the idea of being so close to Colin would have given him the shakes. Now ... it was different, he supposed. “I was surprised you got the day off.”
“It’s more like an hour or two,” Colin said. He sounded almost apologetic. “The platoon leader decided we needed some downtime.”
Tobias frowned. “Aren’t you the platoon leader?”
Colin laughed. “I’ll speak to myself very sharply later,” he promised. “More seriously” - he shrugged - “we pushed ourselves pretty hard, with no hope of relief. We needed a couple of hours to relax, even if it’s just lying back with a good book or wanking or whatever.”
“I hope you don’t get in trouble for it,” Tobias said. There were things no one should think about and wanking was one of them. The idea of Colin ... he pushed the thought out of his head so hard his thoughts spun in circles. “Where do you think we should start?”
“Right here,” Colin said. He placed the rifle carefully on the table, then picked up a box and pressed his thumb against the reader. “Didn’t they teach you how to shoot when you were at the academy?”
“Only the very basics,” Tobias said. He’d never joined the CCF or one of the shooting clubs in the city. The idea had never been tempting. “I don’t have a shooting permit.”
“You do,” Colin corrected. “As long as you’re in the military, y
ou have an open permit to carry a weapon anywhere they’re not explicitly banned. Didn’t they explain that to you?”
Tobias shook his head. He hadn’t paid that much attention. He’d always assumed he’d be in his gunboat, when the shit hit the fan; he’d never cared for the idea of fighting off a boarding party or landing on a hostile world. And he’d certainly never believed he could defend himself. He could carry a gun, yet ... he was sure he’d simply have it taken away and turned against him. He was one of nature’s wimps. He could no more fight to defend himself than he could defend his girlfriend.
And they sensed it in you, a nasty little voice whispered at the back of his head. Why do you think they kept picking on you?
“Fuck,” he muttered.
“You’d better look up the rules,” Colin said. “For the moment” - he opened the box - “we’ll be working with a standard naval-issue handgun. There’s a bunch of technical detail you can read later, if you wish, but all you really need to know right now is that it’s an automatic pistol. It’s designed for simplicity, allowing the owner to reload the clip manually if they don’t want to use a machine. There are variants on the design that take rifle ammunition, but we’re not going to be worrying about them today. They’re pretty rare outside the military.”
Fighting For The Crown (Ark Royal Book 16) Page 12