by M. D. Cooper
The office of the man who ruled the single largest swath of human space—roughly two billion stars—was unimpressive to say the least. Barely fifteen by twenty meters, it was filled with made, but simple furniture. Wooden chairs and leather couches sat against one wall, a bookshelf lined the other.
A mid-sized wooden desk rested near the wall-to-wall windows on the far side of the room where Kirkland stood, hands clasped behind his back as he stared out over his domain.
It’s like they’re all cut from a template, Garza thought, shaking his head. Hegemon Uriel, President Sera—the Airthan one, at least, he couldn’t speak for the degenerate one—the Trisilieds king, Constantine, a dozen others he’d met…they all loved their view, loved to survey their holdings.
Which was patently ridiculous. Their ‘views’ barely covered a few thousand kilometers at best, while their territories stretched over trillions.
A dark room with a massive holodisplay; that was the way to survey one’s empire.
“General Garza,” Kirkland said without turning, as Garza approached his desk.
“Praetor,” Garza replied.
He was tempted to bluntly ask Kirkland why the man summoned him. There was little need for in-person meetings. Especially when it involved a three-day trip. What was more annoying was that he’d wanted to journey to Nietzschea to learn from Constantine how his inroads into Septhia were going. But the praetor liked to play his little games, behaving as though this were just a casual chat.
Ultimately, Garza had sent a clone to meet with the Nietzschean emperor. When the clone returned, Garza would gain the memories and experiences as though they were his own—but it still wasn’t the same as going himself.
And even without the advantage of clones, there was always work to be done at his division’s headquarters at Karaske. Taking a week to meet with the man who thought he was running the Orion Freedom Alliance was just a monumental pain in the ass.
I should have sent a clone here, and gone to see Constantine myself.
Garza continued to stand before the praetor’s desk, which he’d been told was some ancient relic that the man had brought from Sol when he left millennia ago. The idea of wasting this much mass allocation on a wooden desk baffled Garza.
But then again, Kirkland was a man more driven by convictions than logic. Unfathomable behavior was his norm.
After almost a minute, Kirkland turned, regarding Garza evenly from behind his bushy eyebrows. “Tell me of your latest plans to attack New Canaan.”
The words stunned Garza. “Sir? I have no plans to attack New Canaan. There’s no reason to do so anymore.”
“No reason?” Kirkland’s brows lowered, half obscuring his eyes. “That is the heart of the infestation. Cut it out, and we’ll be well on our way to purging their damaging ‘advances’ from humanity.”
“It’s too late,” Garza countered. “They’ve shared much with the Khardine government, and Tanis Richards now leads a fleet that is moving around the Inner Stars with impunity. This has all been in my reports, I—”
Kirkland cut him off with a wave of his hand. “All this because you failed to destroy them two years ago.”
Garza clenched his jaw. The praetor brought up the defeat as though he expected there to be no losses against an enemy that outclassed them in every way but sheer volume of forces—and even that advantage was diminishing.
“No one could have expected them to summon Exaldi. That is a weapon we have no counter for. Our only hope is to take more and more of the Inner Stars and convert the populace to our way of thinking. Tanis Richards will not use her weapons of mass destruction against an innocent star system’s population.”
Garza had made the argument before. Orion’s primary advantage was a massive home population that could field fleets to seize and occupy hundreds of thousands of star systems. They would starve Tanis Richards both of resources and of a populace willing to fight alongside her.
At least, that was the plan he had been pushing with Kirkland.
The problem with Garza’s proposed plan was that there was no endgame. If they cornered Tanis, she would unleash her picobombs, or summon the Exaldi once more. She may not win, but she could decimate any attacking force, and then simply leave. The galaxy was too big…she could hide anywhere.
“So we’re to play a game of cat and mouse for the next century?” Kirkland asked. “That’s your plan?”
Garza drew himself up, locking his eyes on Kirkland’s. “Praetor, correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t our ultimate goal to bring the Inner Stars into the OFA, and to wear down the Transcend? We are achieving these goals. We’ve secured over half of the largest political entities in the Inner Stars, and, even better, through Tanis’s unwitting help, the Hegemony and Scipio are entering into all-out war. That’s exactly what we want.”
Kirkland gave a slow nod. “True, seeing those two destroy each other will be a great victory. Once they’re sufficiently weakened, we’ll sweep in and take both their capitals.”
“Which is the plan that is in the works,” Garza replied. “We’re building a fleet just for that task—though it’s caused us to remove most of our forces from the Expansion Districts.”
“I know you feel that is unwise,” Kirkland said with a heavy sigh. “However, I believe that the PED is well-enough in hand that we don’t need the active threat of the Orion Guard looming over them for the people to operate within our strictures.”
“Are you certain about that?” Garza asked, still holding Kirkland’s gaze. “After the incident at Costa Station with that Sabrina ship, we have to assume that the Khardine Government knows we’ve decreased our presence in the Expansion Districts. They could easily make inroads there.”
Kirkland pulled out his chair and sat, giving a derisive shake of his head in the process. “I thought you were just telling me about how we have them on the ropes, with all the alliances you’ve forged in the Inner Stars. At best, Khardine holds a quarter the strength of the Transcend, and—so far as we can tell—they’re the ones supporting the fronts on our borders. They’re engaged in conflicts clear across known space. The last thing they’ll do is hit us in the Expansion Districts. Even if they did, what end would it serve? There are few strategic targets in the PED.”
“Very well,” Garza allowed.
By and large, he agreed with Kirkland, but he wanted to be on record as advising caution so that the praetor couldn’t throw it in his face later. Though it probably wouldn’t stop him.
“Now then,” Kirkland placed his elbows on his desk and folded his hands together. “Tell me about how we’ll finally put an end to the blight that is New Canaan. I believe that without her base of operations, Tanis Richards will become a much smaller threat. Perhaps we can even draw her back into her home system, and kill two birds with one stone.”
Garza sighed as he sat and pulled up a holodisplay of deployment options. He’d appease Kirkland with a battle plan, but he’d kill himself and all his clones before he even considered enacting it.
Perhaps it’s time for the praetor to be replaced….
As he laid out options for drawing a fleet together that could crush New Canaan, Garza considered the options the Airthan Sera had presented him with when he met with them.
Of course, they’d tried to take over his mind, but all they’d done was subsume a clone.
That didn’t mean he wouldn’t work with them—just that he wasn’t going to form an alliance yet. First he needed the degenerate version of Sera to whittle down her doppelganger and abomination of a mother.
Then he’d strike. A taskforce of Lisas were already training for the operation.
OPTIONS
STELLAR DATE: 08.30.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Capitol Complex, Keren Station
REGION: Khardine System, Transcend Interstellar Alliance
Sera settled into her seat in the briefing room, nodding to the admirals, generals, and assorted staffers. Next to her sat Carl, her secretary of
the interior, and Hanso the transportation secretary.
Over seventy other people were present, and Sera realized she only knew half of them. She supposed that was a good thing; as more systems sided with Khardine, the mass of representatives increased—as did the number of complications.
At the front of the room, Admiral Greer waited for everyone to settle down, which happened within a few seconds of him raising his right hand.
“OK, everyone,” Greer began. “We’re here to review assault options on Airtha. President Sera has tasked us with formulating a plan, and we have three options, each with different strategic profiles.”
A holo appeared to his right, showing a graph that started at zero on the left, and rose to just over five-hundred million on the right.
“These are the TSF casualty rates for the different strategies we’ve worked up. Plan Full-Auto has a projected zero casualty rate for our forces, while Plan Alameda has a massive casualty rate. It also has the lowest chance of success.”
On Greer’s left, a holo appeared displaying the all-too familiar Huygens System where Airtha lay.
“We can see here the various defensive emplacements in the system, as well as where we expect the forces Airtha has gathered to position themselves. Most of this comes from standard TSF defensive doctrine for the Huygens System, updated to include the number of ships she has likely amassed.
“With plan ‘Full-Auto’, none of this matters. All that we care about is hitting Airtha with a few shots.”
“A few shots of what?” Admiral Rellan asked from a few seats to Sera’s left.
“This one would require assistance from New Canaan, but it should be feasible. The ‘shots’ would be one-ton neutron slugs, but at stellar compression levels. They would be housed in stasis fields and fired at relativistic speeds into the system.”
A wave of murmurs swept through the room, and Sera spoke up. “Can you elaborate on how we make these slugs?”
“I can provide the full workup, but the technology is based on what Jessica and her team observed at Star City in the Perseus Arm. The city’s weapons fired coherent beams of neutrons that were really held in stasis bubbles. This meant that they retained their highly compressed mass until right before impact, when the field drops, and a relativistic shrapnel blast hits the target.”
Admiral Svetlana let out a low whistle. “That’ll do it—if they can reach the target. Airtha has interdictors, so we can’t use gates to jump the bullets insystem.
Greer nodded. “You’re right. Airtha interdicts unplanned gate jumps a thousand AU from the star. That gives their forces roughly one hundred and forty hours to intercept. However, their reaction time is greatly compressed as the bullets will be travelling at nearly the same speed as the message that an interdiction occurred. In reality, they’ll have less than ten hours to react.”
“That still seems like plenty,” Rellan said.
Greer’s eyes narrowed as he regarded Rellan, clearly annoyed at the interruptions. “That’s why we send a million.”
Sera laughed. “I guess I know why you named it ‘Plan Full-Auto’.”
“Is that even feasible?” Hanso asked.
“It is, if New Canaan can retrofit their stasis pods to the task,” Greer replied. “They have millions of them left over from their refit of the I2.”
“A million bullets against half a million ships,” Sera mused. “They’d still stand a chance of stopping them.”
“We only need a dozen to reach Airtha,” Svetlana said. “And since they’re in stasis, they can’t be stopped or destroyed, only shoved aside. The defenders would need to fire lateral shots at the bullets to move them off course.”
Sera glanced back at the attendees, many of whom were nodding in appreciation—even Rellan, who spoke up once more.
“Any chance we can convince the ISF to supply stealth tech for these?”
“We don’t have stealth tech for the majority of our ships,” Svetlana countered. “Let’s not waste it on bullets.”
Rellan began to respond, when Greer held up his hands. “Stealth and stasis are not mutually compatible, unless you build a shell around the item in stasis, which is feasible, but introduces issues with acceleration and transition of the bullets through the jump gates.”
“I assume we’d use a swarm technique, like we did at Albany?” Sera asked. “Send the bullets through from a large number of locations.”
Greer nodded. “That’s the idea. We really wouldn’t need a million, either. It’s possible that we could still destroy Airtha with half that number.”
Sera leant back in her seat, tapping her finger against her chin. “Still need to fire them. Do we even have the ability to do this?”
“Honestly,” Rellan interrupted. “We could do it with rail-fired slugs. Enough of them in stasis at relativistic speeds…stars, even without stasis shields. A few million, and the system would be destroyed.”
“Use the DL,” another voice spoke up. “Launch them into space near Airtha, then transition them into the DL. They can bypass the interdictors and make it much further insystem.”
“The Exaldi will get them,” Svetlana countered.
“Maybe,” Rellan mused. “But some would get through. We’ve done drone tests like this, and often, two percent make it through to the inner system, I—”
“Won’t work,” Sera returned the favor of interruption to Rellan, and included a stern glare. “Airtha is surrounded by a higher density of Exaldi than normal—that was a key part of its selection.”
“OK, everyone,” Greer held up a hand once more. “Believe it or not, we’ve considered the options you’re presenting. They’re in the full data packet, along with the assessments of their effectiveness.” He paused and gestured at the casualty estimate chart once more. “The other option is much like the bullets, but instead, we simply send in every ship we have. It would require pulling them from all theatres—but if we did, we could put together a force that would outnumber the defenders over two to one.”
“And the losses?” Sera asked.
“We’d lose every ship without stasis shields. However, the analysis shows that we could take the ring intact.”
“I thought that wasn’t a goal?” Svetlana glanced at Sera. “There was concern that everyone on it could be irreparably subverted.”
Sera nodded. “I did say I wanted an option that did not take into account civilian lives, but a conversation with someone recently has changed my mind about that. We all know people on Airtha. We at least owe it to them to try a solution that does not involve their wholesale destruction.”
“That’s where the middle ground plan comes in,” Greer replied. “We fire the bullets, but at secondary targets: at fleet groups, defensive emplacements, everything but Airtha.” He pointed at a casualty estimate of twenty million. “We’ll lose at least that many, but I believe we’d take the day.”
Rellan shook his head. “On top of those civilian casualties, we’d lose half our fleets, and then Orion will walk all over us. This doesn’t sound like a great solution.”
Greer nodded slowly. “I’m not in disagreement. It may be that waiting to sway more of the districts to Khardine’s side is advisable.”
“I’ve heard rumors that the Sagittarian districts are considering separating and forming their own alliance,” Carl said. “I don’t know how many more we’ll pull in to our side.”
Rellan folded his arms and looked like he was going to spit. “I thought we were better than this. Thirty percent of the Transcend is with us, maybe twenty with her. The rest are waffling or declaring for themselves.”
“OK,” Sera said as she rose and stepped up beside Admiral Greer. “This is excellent information. I’m open to more suggestions. But for now, we’re going to continue to see how things play out in the Vela cluster—see if Krissy can gather more resources. If we can manage for another year, then New Canaan can
have nearly a hundred thousand ships for us, and double the number of ships we currently have with stasis shields. That changes the outcome of a full assault greatly.”
“A year’s a long time,” Svetlana said in a quiet voice.
Sera agreed, but she didn’t have any other options at the moment. “In a year, Tanis will have put down the Nietzscheans and the Trisilieds, and Scipio will have taken out the Hegemony. That will take the wind out of Orion’s sails in the Inner Stars. We’ll have a lot more options at that point.”
“There are still seventeen more empires and alliances in the Inner Stars that are leaning toward Orion—ones at least as big as the Nietzscheans,” a colonel pointed out.
Sera nodded. “You’re right, there are. But we have many tools at our disposal. Over sixty percent of the Hand’s regional directors are with us, and we have missions underway to affect the decisions of those considering alliances with Orion.”
There were slow nods following her words, and no one else spoke up to voice an opinion. Sera nodded to Greer and returned to her seat.
“OK,” Greer said as he surveyed the room. “We still have the two Hoplite Fleets to ready, as well as planning for Sera’s other key endeavor. Let’s move like we’re out of time.”
Sera rose and watched the brass file out before approaching Greer. “A bit dour on your endnote, there.”
Greer nodded. “I suppose. I think some of them are treating this war like something we’ll win if we just do our jobs like normal. I guess it’s the result of no one suffering a defeat in so long. They need to remember that this is a fight for our lives, and for everything we believe in.”
“You’re not wrong there,” Sera said as she watched the last of the TSF’s leadership file out. “Though I wish you were.”
A REFLECTIVE WALK
STELLAR DATE: 08.30.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Ol’ Sam, ISS I2
REGION: Pyra, Albany System, Thebes, Septhian Alliance