Hawk Flight (Flight of the Hawk Book 3)

by Robert Little

  Chapter 52

  Admiral Shin Ho Lee, Fleet Base Jupiter

  Admiral Lee stepped onto a shuttle and settled into a worn seat. His aide followed, along with a contingent of Marines,

  He had been summarily ordered to Haifa, there to report in person to the Prime Minister.

  From the shuttle he transferred to one of a handful of fourth gen destroyers and before reaching the bridge, the ship was accelerating, heading toward Earth.

  A Marine sentry announced, “Admiral on the Bridge.” He acknowledged the salutes and shook the hand of Captain Soh, an actual captain. He was a little senior for this ship, but on the other hand, six months ago he probably felt fortunate to have one.

  In response to his question, the captain said, “Sir, once we reach Earth we’ll transfer you to a Navy shuttle that will transfer you directly to Haifa.”

  Admiral Lee asked for a tour of the ship and spent an awkward hour inspecting it. It was highly polished, but even now, it’s software was not up to date and he knew that the ship had performed relatively poorly during it’s last twice-yearly gunnery exercises.

  This ship, had it been under his command and not in 1st Fleet, would long ago have been sent to Lubya, but he had been unable to pry loose nearly as many units as he requested.

  In his quarters he sat with his aide and she brought him up to date, “Sir, EarthGov is nearly paralyzed. A significant percentage is lobbying for your removal, a nearly equal portion wants you lionized. I have a list of those parties that we....” He interrupted her, not unkindly, “I am more interested in your analysis of the alien force structure, and of ours.”

  She said, “Sir, you have my reports.”

  He nodded, “Please put together a briefing that details the deterioration of my mobile fleet, and any and all studies that demonstrate its expected destruction in a major conflict. I want included an estimate of how long it will take to replenish and repair those ships, with a firm date for our return to the Void.”

  She asked, “Sir, you...?” He smiled and moved his chin an inch and his eyes flickered to the ceiling. Her eyes widened and she said, “Yes sir.” He added, “Also, include Captains Padilla and Turner’s briefing on a combined Dresden-Hawk-Kestrel attack on their main force. I want an estimate of the number of missiles required for the assault, as well as the number currently in inventory, with an estimate of how long it will take to construct the quantity needed.”

  She knew that between the missiles aboard the ships under his control and the number recently transported to Fleet Base Jupiter, he already had enough, but no Navy in human history would be willing to shoot itself entirely dry, not when the consequences would mean its destruction if the attack failed.

  Chapter 53

  A sturdy door opened and he entered the huge space, currently jammed with highly agitated people, seemingly all of them loudly talking.

  He was shown to a seat and settled, his aide still with him, his Marine escort nearby.

  The vast space seethed with tension, and the moment he entered everyone seemed to focus on him.

  The chair didn’t waste a moment, and called on him to provide a report on the status of the Federal Navy and the ‘war effort’.

  Admiral Lee stood and walked up to stand in front of the mass of men and women. This time, instead of slowly looking around he immediately began speaking, “Three days ago I brought nearly the entire mobile force back to Jupiter Base. After many months of continuous operation, most of our ships were badly in need of refit, maintenance and upgrades. Nearly ever single Federal warship in space is older than the men and women who crew it, most have just returned from mothballs and breakdowns were soaring. Worse, far worse, fleet strategists determined that any direct contact with this sixth incursion would lead to the total destruction of our ships, leaving our colonies in dire threat of annihilation. We left behind two fleet carriers, the Brezhnev and the Gresham, along with nearly our entire complement of our latest generation stealthy fighters. We have sanitized the debris field of all traces of Federation ships, and this sixth group is now investigating the remains of hundreds of ships and hundreds of thousands of dead beings – all of them their own species.”

  Hundreds of legislators were signaling their desire to interrupt him but he stolidly continued, “We have expended considerable resources to determine who these people are, where they came from, and why they have come. We believe, and all evidence to date supports this belief, that this sixth incursion was originally two separate fleets, which came from the races’ home planet. For approximately two thousand years it has been pursuing what where originally eight separate efforts by their one colony world to escape a final genocide. Three colony fleets were either lost or destroyed, and the two pursuers came together approximately fifty years ago. Four of the colony fleets gathered together, we believe, to attack their pursuers in an attempt to allow the fifth to finally escape. Unfortunately for them, and for us, they chose to make their stand in our territory. There are many things that we know about these beings, and many things we believe. We know that this fleet consists of three mother ships and at least seven hundred fighters, almost certainly many more, but we have observed seven hundred in space at one time. Their technology is superior to that displayed by the first five groups, and their fighters are superior in numbers and power to ours. Every single scenario we’ve run comes to the same conclusion: our fleet would be overwhelmed and utterly destroyed in a direct fleet action.”

  Without pausing he continued, “We believe there is a significant possibility that this final remnant of an entire world may decide that with the destruction of their colony fleets its task has been completed. We believe that they may decide to return home. If they do not, if they choose to seek us out, to attack us, we will have no recourse but to destroy or be destroyed, but we believe it serves our best purposes to give them time, the more the better. First, it provides us with more time to design and build new ships that can stand up to their fighters, their principal offensive weapon, and it allows us more time to develop tactics to defeat them. For those reasons, our primary mobile fleet is now in orbit around Jupiter.”

  He stopped and looked around the room. Every delegation was frantically signaling for the right to speak.

  The first question had to do with his failure to attack the sixth fleet. He stolidly said, “This sixth incursion holds perhaps ten times the firepower of the fifth colony fleet. As stated already, every single scenario we ran came to the same conclusion: if our ships are discovered, we would be attacked in overwhelming numbers and destroyed.”

  A follow-on question was asked, “Admiral Lee, how is it then that our Navy so easily defeated five fleets? If we could do that, it ought to be a simple matter to destroy this one fleet, so why have you not attacked?”

  The admiral had been very careful to frame his remarks in terms of the mobile fleet. He answered, “In every battle where our ships were attacked, they were destroyed. Beyond the simple fact that nearly all of our ships are as old or older than anyone present in this space, the simple fact remains that if we remained on station we would eventually be discovered, and we would learn about that discovery when they attacked.”

  Another follow-on question, virtually a repeat, “Admiral if that is so, how do you explain the fact that all five bug fleets were destroyed?” He said, “We have one great advantage – FTL. I have been told that simply revealing the technology to this race would quite possibly lead to their development of it. It would take many years, but we did it and there is no technical reason barring them from duplicating that breakthrough. Additionally, we were able to attack them at times and places of our own choosing, and for the most part, defeated their forces piecemeal rather than in one set piece battle. The sixth incursion has been operating and training up together for fifty years, possibly longer. We have gone to great pains to prevent it from learning anything about our technology, but there is no way to hide the fact of our existence. In their place, I would wonder how the
colony ships were defeated, and I would wonder at the location of those battles.”

  He answered question after question, hammering home the dire condition of his fleet, of its near impotency in comparison to the ‘sixth incursion’ – he never used the term ‘enemy’.

  Finally, as he knew it must, someone asked, “Admiral Lee, if we are to believe you, and I am not saying that I do, then are you saying that there is no possibility of defeating this enemy?”

  Instead of immediately answering, he looked around the room. After a seemingly long fifteen seconds he said, “I did not say that.”

  After a moment his questioner demanded, “Are you saying then that you can defeat this enemy? Which is it?”

  He said, “I have a detailed plan which could potentially kill every single member of this species, possibly without suffering one single human loss.”

  The room erupted in a volcano of noise. He waited it out and looked down at his questioner, a woman he personally knew and intensely disliked. She almost screamed, “Then why in hell haven’t you gone ahead and followed through? What plan? Why have you kept us in the dark?”

  He quietly spoke, “Utilizing the small number of stealthy ships we have available to us, we could possibly approach their fleet unobserved, and in three separate attacks, first take out their fleet carriers, which house their fighters; then their mother ships and finally their remaining large combat craft. It would require three separate attacks and would exhaust our entire stock of missiles, leaving us with no means to defend ourselves if we were unsuccessful.” Before she could react, he added, “And, it would kill every remaining member of that species.”

  There was so much noise her shouted question couldn’t be heard, but eventually the tsunami of sound diminished to the point that he was able to explain, “We have a small number of stealthy ships, and those are the only ones able to get close to their fleet without discovery. Their combined missile strength might be enough to take out the incursion’s carriers – we don’t know but we believe it possible. Following that, our ships would leave, rearm, return and take out the three mother ships. That attack would, if we simply waited a few days, allow their remaining fighters to exhaust their supply of fuel. If our estimates are incorrect, we would provide the sixth incursion a great deal of information about our technology and weapons, and eventually our fleet, or a colony world would be found. On the other hand, if our estimates are correct, we would have completed the utter destruction of a species.”

  He was finally released but told to remain in Haifa.

  Three days later he returned to the chamber where he was asked for an estimate of the number of missiles required. He calmly said, “Approximately thirteen hundred missiles per assault, or four thousand total.”

  The next question was inevitable, “Admiral Lee, how many missiles does our Navy currently have in inventory?”

  He said, “Our mobile fleet has approximately one thousand; Fleet Base Jupiter currently has about the same number, and in various other depots we possess about twelve hundred. Here on Earth, the single factory has a store of approximately seven hundred, with the ability to manufacture the remaining number within three months. However, many of the missiles in inventory are old and have not been given the updates necessary to penetrate even the presumably weaker and technologically less advanced colony defenses; additionally, using all of them means we would have virtually no means of attacking their fleet, defending our own or our worlds.”

  He was released and Congress went into recess while the members returned to their home worlds.

  He’d deliberately tried to hang up the government, but already a strong minority wanted to remove him from office and bring him to trial. The only thing preventing that was his reputation for following orders. He had repeatedly stated that if the government ordered him to destroy the sixth incursion, he would attempt to do so, but every time he answered that question, he raised the issues of a potential failure, and of genocide.

  One question made him so visibly angry that he couldn’t speak for long seconds. He’d been asked, “Admiral Lee, you have easily destroyed five fleets, why are you suddenly so afraid of one more?”

  He said, “Sir, in those ‘easy’ battles, I led many thousands of men and women, nearly all of them serving in ancient ships that should have been replaced decades ago. Thousands of them died, protecting the people in this room, on this world, in this system, in all human space. They died for the most part because their government failed to provide them with ships and weapons that could have easily been built. Easily. Instead, our Navy was gutted. Now, when we are confronted with the worst threat to our existence in our entire history, you speak as if all I have to do is wave my hand and another few hundred thousand living beings are killed. Easy? The colony mother ships shrugged off nuclear missiles. Our single new piece of technology – the Dash 6 fighter - was nearly completely ineffective against the colony fighters, which are in turn inferior to this latest fleet. Easy? If you lived on Lubya, the closest human system to this incursion, you would know better, would know that the very fate of that system hung in the balance. You would know of the corruption and ineptitude that riddle the businesses that were supposed to provide us with the tools to do the job EarthGov assigned us. Men and women died as a result of that corruption, people who were simply obeying my orders. Easy? Where were you when your Navy requested new ships, new weapons? How did you vote then? Is there just one solution, total and complete genocide, with the only question being which species disappears?”

  He paused, took a breath and asked, “I am asking for a little time. We are observing this group, we have stealth ships in the vicinity. It is our belief that they know nothing about us, and we, your Navy, badly wants this species to continue being ignorant of just how vulnerable we are. Time, your Navy needs time to build new ships, new fighters, better train our crews, we need new missiles, we need everything.”

  In the deafening silence, the Prime Minister, sitting right behind him, asked, “Admiral Lee, those studies you mentioned, what were the odds or percentages?”

  He said, “Prime Minister, we ran four different scenarios, and three gave us a best of 35% success, with two of those including the annihilation of our entire fleet. The fourth gave us 65%. To answer your next question, in that scenario we achieved complete surprise, and we destroyed every single ship, every fighter, every single living being.”

  He was dismissed. As he left, he could feel the tension. It was ugly, ugly, and he was the bearer of the bad tidings.

  He flew back to Jupiter, leaving behind a message that he had a fleet to prepare. He hadn’t been given specific permission, but he hadn’t been told he couldn’t go either.

  He had a message waiting for him. Eloise Spinoza simply wrote, “What can I do to help you?”

  He didn’t dare tell her the truth – she would have to either pass on what he’d told her, or put her head on the chopping block, right next to his.

  He commed her and simply said, “I’m tap dancing. I need time, I need as much time as I can get. We have several years, but the moment they turn toward Lubya, that is the moment the clock starts ticking.”

  She said, “How confident are you of that one scenario?” Here, he couldn’t lie, “We can do it.” She hesitated, “So...it’s because you can kill them that you are asking for time.”

  He waffled, “Partly. We still need time. For example, we have no idea what else is out there. We believe we can accomplish their complete and total destruction, but we don’t know, and the odds, while in our favor, give us a one out of three chance of failure. Sir, if you want to help me, get me more time.”

  She said, “Why the hell didn’t you speak to me a week ago?” He said, “I’m going, one way or the other, I’m going to get sacked. I need you to push someone you want into my seat.”

  She said, “Working on it. Admiral, I still don’t like you, but I admire the hell out of you. May God have mercy on your soul.”

  That afternoo
n, a courier arrived from the Void. It held Professor Leung.

  He entered Admiral Lee’s office, and practically fell over himself he was moving so quickly.

  He said, “They believe in God! Admiral Lee, they believe in God and we have an interim treaty.” Shin Ho shivered with suppressed tension, “Tell me.”

  Professor remained standing, “During negotiations, I said something about religion, and our translator had trouble with the term, so they asked. Come to find out their religion controlled virtually every facet of their lives. Inevitably, their colony began drifting apart, leading to war, to absolute war. They ended up dropping rocks on each other, destroying their planets. Admiral, the conditions on their ships are nearly impossible, and not merely from a physical standpoint. I mean, they are suffering suicides in huge numbers, riots, the whole gamut. When I left, they were managing to retain control, but it was a close thing. They need help, and I – we – have promised we will help them return home.”

  Admiral Lee asked, “Home, not that planet the colonies were heading for?” He nodded, “They want to return to their birth planet, but their ships are wrecks. We have promised to help them.”