by Steve White
Suggested in a cordial diplomatic memo submitted jointly by Terran Republic admirals Li-Trevayne Magda and Ian Trevayne (Miriam’s past lover, in what could only be described as Ian’s first life), the recommendation called out and lauded Miriam Ortega’s many singular qualifications for the post. It cited her proximity to the war with the Arduans and subsequent exchanges with them, her demonstrated ability as an excellent interspecies liaison, and her qualifications as the Federation’s consummate and elder stateswoman. Who was now, unexpectedly, free of her judiciary responsibilities. No other candidate existed with either her credentials or her sudden availability. And so Miriam’s retirement had, instead, become the start of a new career.
Of course, it had been anticipated that this would be a fairly leisurely post. Human-Adruan relations were good, Amunsit’s Zarzuelan fleet was fenced in beyond any chance of escape, and the primary purpose of the presence of the Consulate on Xanadu was to ensure that the increasing modus vivendi between Arduans and humans (much of which was being brokered unseen by Ankaht and Captain Ossian Wethermere of PSU Naval Intelligence) existed and proceeded under an official aegis. And so it had been a perfect career-end occupation for Miriam Ortega: low stress, flexible hours, self-crafted agenda, occasional strategizing, and state dinners.
That had changed abruptly and dramatically in the last two weeks as Admiral Amunsit’s Zarzuelan fleet had come charging out of the Orion border systems, even as news was pouring in from every corner of PSU space about the relativistic kinetic kill vehicles that were devastating installations, worlds, even whole systems. The old day-to-day routines were beyond recollection, given the horrors that now surrounded them.
But all this seemed not to have perturbed Miriam Ortega in the least. So far. But Watanabe suspected even her composure would be sorely tried by the news he came bearing. “I’m afraid I do not have good news, Madame Consul—er, Miriam.”
“I expected that, Admiral. You have come to tell me in person. That’s a great deal more inconvenient than simply sending me a message. So I am presuming that this is news that needs to be kept out of any electronic transmission system—since, ultimately, all such systems can be compromised. And that usually means bad news.”
“I’m afraid that’s correct, ma’am. And that explains why I’ve brought Ms. Silverman with me.”
“Indeed? I already have the Council of Twenty’s First Councilor, Amunherh’peshef, here on-planet, should I need to communicate with any of the new Arduan—intruders.”
“True, Madam Consul—but who shall help you communicate with Amunherh’peshef? The vocoder is a fine device, but trust me: it is crude and obliterates nuance. And you will need a skilled sensitive like Ms. Silverman to be sure you are able to detect—and impart—the kinds of subtleties that might be crucial during negotiations for our possible—” Watanabe could not bring himself to speak the word “surrender.”
“For the possible cessation of hostilities?” Ortega furnished.
Yoshi felt his face grow suddenly hot: somehow, it felt worse that Ortega had had to save him by finding a palatable euphemism. “Yes, Madam Consul.” He hadn’t meant to become more formal, but instinct—and the somber direction of the conversation—made it feel unavoidably appropriate.
Miriam seemed to concur. “Do you mean to imply that all hope is lost, Admiral? Already?”
Watanabe looked up sharply. “Absolutely not, Madam Consul. But the news, as you surmised, is not good, and we had best provide for all eventualities.” And I will be damned if I get Hildy Silverman killed. But I can’t be sure how this battle will turn out, and she has a daughter and a husband back on Bellerophon—“So it seemed best to handle your introductions to Ms. Silverman first, which more or less reflects preparations for a worst case-scenario. Be assured, I am not here because I expect to be defeated, but because my staff and I do have doubts regarding a decisive victory against the approaching fleet from Zarzuela.”
“Very well. I am ready to hear your news, Admiral.”
“Yes, Madam Consul. The most important item is our report from the pickets monitoring conditions in the New India systems, which is too sensitive to put even on coded lascom: the morale implications are too profound to risk it being intercepted or discovered in comm records later on.”
For the first time, Miriam Ortega’s face fell into lines that suggested her true age. “So the conditions there are as bad as suspected.”
“Worse, ma’am. Due to the high-velocity collisions and the generation of extremely energetic secondary and tertiary impact debris showers, the system is currently impassable for a fleet, and will be for some time.”
“Really? Even if a fleet avoided maneuvering directly across the system, but followed the edge of the heliopause from the ingress warp point to the egress warp point?”
Watanabe shook his head. “Madam Consul, we can only track the large debris with any precision. We know where there are other, smaller objects, but we can’t keep a fix on all of them. Worst of all, they are spreading throughout the system, generating more collisions and debris all the time. And as I’m sure you’re aware, the variations in vector and velocity of every piece of that secondary impact debris makes any general navigation plots almost useless.”
“Admiral, I am no military or space expert, but I was under the impression that your ships, in order to operate at subrelativistic pseudovelocities, must still be able to detect—and either destroy or deflect—navigational hazards smaller than a marble. If that is true, then why are they not functioning in New India?”
“Oh, they are functioning, ma’am, but their tracking capacities are completely overwhelmed. What you are referring to—collision mitigation systems—are designed with very occasional debris encounters in mind. One object per minute at most, and those are isolated in deep space: tracking and destruction is fairly straightforward under those conditions. But in New India—Ma’am, the number of contacts are hundreds of times that amount, and they can be closing on us at high speed from almost every facing. Most are coming from starward, and along the plane of the ecliptic, but even that trend is diminishing. As a result of the very first impacts, some debris shot outward and struck bodies in the local limit—or Kuiper—belt and Oort cloud. And now, some fragments from those secondary collisions are coming back in-system.
“The Bellerophon couriers which were trying to reach us last week sent in some of their fastest, nimblest scout ships. Three made it into the inner system. One was hit—and vaporized—by extremely high-velocity junk. The other two had to turn back when they detected several new relativistic kinetic kill vehicles in bound at a range of four light-minutes.”
“A second set of attacks?” Ortega’s voice was admirably calm and collected.
“No, ma’am: just a few purposeful stragglers.”
“I’m sorry, Admiral: could you explain how ‘stragglers’ would also be ‘purposeful’?”
“My apologies for that confusing turn of phrase, Madam Consul. We project that after the inbound Dispersates were done redirecting the paths of their colony arks, but before they broke them up into immense clouds of lethally fast junk, they probably detached some parts and decelerated them, slowing each subsequent package a little bit more than the one before it. That way, the wreckage of those objects would arrive in dribs and drabs after the big deluge smacked the system.”
Ortega nodded. “So that, in addition to the increasing amounts of post-impact debris flinging itself around the New India system, there will be periodic arrivals of new relativistic kinetic kill vehicles, adding an additional level of unpredictability to an already chaotic navigational environment.”
“Precisely so, Madam Consul. Consequently, all we were able to get from the scouts by lascom was that, even without the conditions in New India, there would have been quite a delay back at Bellerophon, anyhow. Much of the fleet was still returning from the just-concluded wargames. Many of the further detachments are still in transit back to their primary duty stations. That me
ans the fleet will not be gathered for many weeks. Their estimates are that it would take at least a month for even seventy percent of the total capital ship tonnage to be ready in Bellerophon itself.”
“Which means it will be at least three weeks too late to help us here.”
“Yes, ma’am. I would say that, between what the barrage by the approaching Dispersates did to New India and the bad luck of having our main fleet still recollecting itself in the Bellerophon Arm, we are entirely on our own.”
Ortega nodded. “I take it you have other news.”
Yoshi straightened his shoulders. “I must update my estimate on how outnumbered we are likely to be. My analysts are now running estimates from three-to-one to five-to-one.”
Ortega studied him for a moment. “And you think those estimates are still low, don’t you, Admiral?”
Watanabe did not want to, but he nodded. “I do not fault my analysts: they were working with the best numbers we had available when we started running the inferential data algorithms, twelve days ago. But we started the exercise with significant handicaps. Our sources—both military recon units and civilian witnesses—invariably had to flee before they could get complete data on the numbers and types of ships they saw. And the reports we’ve had since then, of apparent enemy actions deep in Orion space, suggest that the Dispersates have sent their fleets to systems other than those they bombarded. Consequently, there might be a second, larger fleet following on behind Amunsit’s. And even if there isn’t, the reports from Orion space suggest that Amunsit’s fleet may not have any need to cover its rear or flanks.”
“Because she may have recently-arrived friends back there, destroying any of our units which could have moved in behind her.”
Watanabe considered Ortega narrowly. “Madam Consul, for a woman who professes ignorance of military matters, you seem a surprisingly quick study.”
She smiled slightly. “Yes, Admiral Trevayne often made the same observation. So, Amunsit needs hold nothing back for rear-area security: she can put everything up front in attacking us.”
“Precisely. And there’s another variable that problematizes our estimates. From the reports we have of the fleet that emerged from Zarzuela, we do know the Arduans have abandoned their former decision to field a very limited number of ship classes. They have now shown us an equivalent of almost every combat class we have in our own formations: monitors, dreadnoughts, cruisers, frigates—but none of our three largest classes, the supermonitors, devastators, and superdevastators. And no large carriers, although they have produced an immense number of special light carriers that don’t seem to so much support flight operations as they simply dump their combat wings as soon as they arrive in-system. And the collective size of those wings is—enormous.”
“Again, no precise numbers, just that they are enormous?”
Watanabe tried to keep his face from becoming grim. “Collectively, the Arduans have been deploying thousands of fighters in every engagement. How many thousands remains unclear. Any ship that stays around long enough to perform a nose-count gets swarmed by them. Their weapons are not as advanced as ours: they apparently did not get enough technical intelligence to copy our sustained-fire energy torpedo systems for either their main hulls or their fighters. But with their numbers, that hardly matters. Whether they use hetlasers, force beams, or missiles, they are like army ants attacking an elephant: the elephant can destroy hordes of its attackers, but that doesn’t even begin to touch the vast numbers arrayed against it. Or change the inevitable outcome.”
“I see.” Miriam leaned back against her desk: a young woman’s posture that still seemed to suit her and did not detract one bit from the gravitas of her advanced age. “So tell me, Admiral: do you have any good news?”
“Well, ma’am, if we stay in deep space, where the Desai drive operates, the fighters of both sides lose most of their advantages. They are too small to mount Desai drives and so cannot keep up with the other ships, which virtually double their speed once they are outside the Desai limit of any given planet or star. That will force the Arduans to come at us with their capital ships alone. They’ll try to bring up their fighters, but if we give ground at the right pace, the fighters will fall behind the line of battle while the comparatively smaller Arduan capital ships get hammered to pieces by our devastators and superdevastators. We’ll take a lot of damage, but we’re big enough to handle it. Their ships, even the monitors, will get pounded into rubbish pretty quickly if they stand toe to toe with us.”
“But they have an immense numerical advantage in capital ships as well.”
“Which is why they’ll actually hurt us. Otherwise, we’d blow them to dust before they could score any significant hits against us. This way, Madam Consul, we’ll know we’ve been in a fight, but I believe we’ll win it. However, if they show up with another fleet equal to the size of the one we expect that Amunsit is bringing…”
“Understood, Admiral. I only ask that you perform miracles, not the impossible.”
“Thanks, ma’am. That will certainly help morale, I’m sure.”
Miriam laughed at Watanabe’s deadpan quip. “I do not wish to keep you any longer from your duties, Admiral. Indeed, it sounds like you have a fleet to put in order.”
“It’s already in order; it’s just awaiting the word. And today, the word must be given.”
“Then I wish you Godspeed, Admiral. And be assured that I shall certainly see that Ms. Silverman is given the opportunity to help us, should the necessity arise.” And Watanabe saw the look in her eyes which added, almost as clearly as if she had whispered it in his ear, And I shall see to her safety.
Watanabe nodded his professional respects and personal thanks, saluted, stepped back, and shut the old-style manual doors in his own face.
They closed with an echo that sounded like the first footstep of approaching fate.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Yoshi Watanabe stared at the holoplot. For the fourth time in the last hour, he studied the dense clusters of green specks denoting the ships of his fleet and tried to take comfort in that impressive array.
And it was an impressive array. Not up to the gargantuan standards of the three main battle fleets of the PSU, the two of the Terran Republic, or the Federation’s Bellerophon Arm Fleet, admittedly, but a vast array of firepower, nonetheless. No fewer than three superdevastators and seven devastators formed the core of a vast swarm of smaller capital ships, although no one seeing those accompanying monitors, dreadnoughts, and battleships of both regular and heavy marks would have ever thought to apply the adjective “small” to any of them.
Arrayed in support positions behind the thirty-eight forts which enclosed the warp point to Rehfrak like a great bowl of high tech weaponry, armor, and shields, the capital ships of Watanabe’s Home Fleet waited in several groups that would be able to converge firepower upon entering forces from a number of angles, and yet make good time carrying out an orderly withdrawal that was also an evolution into a single van. Behind these mammoth ships, carriers lurked like prowling pumas, ready to deploy fighters if and when it became feasible to provide close support or add to the anti-missile counterfire possessed by the ships of the line. Supporting both categories of ship were the smaller cruisers and destroyers, rarities in this epoch of the titanic hulls which had dwarfed them into both strategic and tactical obsolescence. Now, they largely existed as converted special function craft which either provided additional bases of defensive fire against both missiles and smaller enemy ships, or as redundant relays, in the event that the fire-coordinating datalinks were jeopardized by losses among the capital ships. The cruisers and destroyers were large enough to house computer suites capable of maintaining net integrity until direct links between the remaining heavyweights could be rerouted.
It all looked quite impressive, Watanabe allowed, but would it be impressive enough? Judging from the intermittent trickle of enemy recon drones now coming through the warp point from the other side, the Ar
duans were certainly not the tactically simplistic foes they’d been six years ago. Having spent years fighting against inventive human defenders and monomaniacally reembracing their military roots, Amunsit’s Destoshaz-as-sulhaji-driven war machine had clearly adopted a number of defensive protocols from their recent antagonists. They had also innovated a number of their own new systems that capitalized upon their greatest single advantage: selnarmic control and communication links.
In the last war, the Arduans typically initiated a barrage of recon drones that ultimately saturated the defenders so badly that one of the drones was sure to survive the punishment long enough to return with a snapshot of what existed on the other side of the warp point. This time, however, the Arduans sent in waves of pinnaces sowing bottle-sized microsensors, closely followed by a mix of both automated and crewed survey escorts that gathered the readings from the sensors. Since the data was harvested instantaneously by selnarm, the escorts had only one task: after entering the system, they immediately performed a 180-degree tumble and then accelerated to get back out as quickly as possible. Perhaps four out of five did not make the transition fast enough: Watanabe’s hundreds of energy-torpedo banks—the new standard weapon throughout all the modern formations of the Federation, as well as the Republic and the PSU—kept the warp point drenched in a steady stream of withering fire. But the overlapping plasma discharges and exploding ships often interfered with targeting sensors just long enough for an occasional enemy escort to escape once again. Which meant that Amunsit would have a pretty fair idea of what she was facing when she finally brought her formations through.
It also meant that she had seen the absence of point-blank defenses near the warp point. Whereas, at the start of the last war, Watanabe would have seeded the area with virtual thickets of laser buoys and sleeper missiles, the Arduans of the First Dispersate had demonstrated an ingenious way to quickly annihilate those defenses. Their specially designed Urret-fah’ah minesweepers (called “stick-hives” by their human adversaries until their proper name was learned after the war) were fundamentally a cluster of clearing charges that swept clean immense swathes of space around the warp point less than a second after entering it. This had the net effect of eliminating the great majority of area denial ordnance the humans used to block egress from a contested warp point. Consequently, Yoshi had placed his mines and buoys further back, distributing them as a smaller bowl arrayed around the warp point. Their firepower was now an impediment to any enemy ships attempting to rush the forts, particularly those which tried to close and launch their fighters—for suicide runs, if nothing else.