by Darold Higa
Captain Skoboev began a mission briefing to the entire wing, her face projected into the datatanks of every single fighter of the Relentless wing.
“The enemy fleet has taken advantage of our short refit period to redeploy themselves.” The image in the datatank now projected Kilimanjaro Fleet. Kilimanjaro Fleet no longer stood in the space between Linodan Fleet and the gate. Instead, the fleet had repositioned itself in a solid wall next to the HyNet gate. So close, that it appeared that a missile or beam weapon barrage would probably do damage to the gate. The briefing continued. “To make matters worse, Banner Blue Arctic Circle Fleet, Equator Fleet and Tropic of Cancer Fleet are now approximately an hour and a half away. Captain Linodan has tasked us with smashing Kilimanjaro Fleet before enemy reinforcements arrive. Because the enemy has placed himself right at the gate, we will be unable to launch a missile barrage or bombard the target with beam weapons. Luckily Kilimanjaro only has a few carriers, so the fighter defense screen will be fairly light.” Captain Skoboev updated the datatank for the entire wing. “Our wing has been tasked with destroying the following Destroyer groups: DDTF Bearing Straits, DDTF Straits of Malacca and the DDTF Singapore Straits. Secondary targets will be…”
Alicia paced back and forth in her office. She had grown used to be the one setting the terms of battle. The commander of the Northern Task Force, Admiral Tseng, her datatank told her, had taken advantage of her order to halt the attack and eliminated all of her options. Her only choice now was to order a direct frontal attack. There were no tricks or clever deceptions possible. While Linodan Fleet could leave the system via bubbledrive, the transports she was escorting could not. She had to clear those ships from the HyNet gate. She glanced at the diploma on the wall from the Spincoran Royal Naval Academy. At the graduation ceremony, Alicia remembered the sober graduation speech given by Admiral Kanolev. All of the cadets, about to graduate, had been buzzing with excitement and pleasure that their naiveté afforded them. Being one of the few survivors of the bloody 2nd Ladera Marginal War between Spincora and Renspa, “Madman” Vassili Kanolev was invited to give the commencement speech. Not one to mince words, he delivered a commencement speech to the new academy graduates the same way he delivered battle orders to his marines.
“All of you will be receiving your commissions and be spread to the far edges of the Queendom. You will be entering a world full of freshly pressed parade uniforms, fancy titles and shiny ships. But that is garbage! That is not what command is all about. All of you have been given the tools of command. We have trained you how to think about the enemy, how to deploy your troops and how to accomplish your mission objectives. However, there is one thing that we cannot teach you or prepare you for. You will hold the lives of those you command and of those you protect in your hands. This is an absolute responsibility! This is what makes the call of a warrior so different from other professions. War is not about making clever strategies or deploying novel weapons. War is about making tough choices. Women and men under your command will die. They will die if you make the wrong choices. More importantly, they will die if you make the right choices. You will always carry the responsibility of their deaths with you. What you must do, what you must always remember, is that you and you alone carry the responsibility for those decisions. If you are not prepared to make those tough choices, get the hell out of my Navy now, because you will be utterly useless!” The speech was burned into Alicia’s mind, since during the entire speech she was convinced that Kanolev was staring directly at her.
Now she was faced with one of those tough choices. Without a missile barrage, and without the ability to bombard the enemy with heavy beam weapons, the burden would fall solely on the attack fighters to clear enough of the enemy away to get the transports through the gate. That would mean heavy pilot casualties. Taking a deep breath, she put on a determined face. Fortified, she walked towards the hatch that separated her office from the main CIC. She wasn’t going to give the ghost of Kanolev the pleasure of seeing her tremble.
“Kish, split east and cover, I have a lock!” Natalenko pushed her Hurricane forward, firing a Hawk missile at the Cavalier. “Fox three! Hawk away!” The Hawk missile streaked in a lazy arc from her Hurricane. At first Amy thought she had missed, but the Hawk curved ever so slightly, making contact with the Cavalier, causing a bright fireball to cast bright light into her cockpit. “Scratch one Cavalier!” She could feel herself shouting into the commlink. Natalenko fought to keep the adrenaline under control. Since the Relentless wing was on ship attack duty she hadn’t been expecting a dogfight.
The lead wings of the attack had destroyed most of the fighter screen, but a few defenders of the Kilimanjaro fleet managed to hide, only making their presence known by harassing the attack fighters as they made their attack runs on the capital ships. With the defender gone, Amy turned her attention back to the destroyer in front of her, the Banner Green DD Lake Baikal. Romani had been hit during the attack run on the Straits of Malacca and was forced to bail out. Now, she was down to 3 fighters. Womack’s flight had already begun their attack run on the Baikal. The Hurricanes closed in on the Narthian destroyer. The Lake Baikal was an older ship, and it still featured mechanical turrets instead of the new opto-gravitic portals. This made it easier for the fighters to target the little bumps protruding from the sleek surface of the destroyer. As Womack’s flight strafed the Baikal, three of the laser turrets exploded, carving chunks out of the destroyer.
“Natalenko, you are clear for a run!” came the voice of Womack, still filled with the adrenaline of her strafing run.
“OK, team, form on me. Kish take my left, Radek, my right. We are targeting these turrets.” Amy tagged two turrets on the belly of the destroyer in her datatank. “Go in fast, the spinal turrets will have a clear shot at us during the run.” She accelerated again, diving towards the destroyer. Anti-fighter turrets on the destroyer lit up, hurling deadly beams in the direction of her flight. She glanced over at the mission timer, half an hour had passed since the battle had begun.
Alicia was worried. Her fighters were tearing apart the Kilimanjaro Fleet, but without the added firepower of her capital ships, the battle was taking too long. Numerically, she had depleted the Narthians of most of their support and auxiliary ships. The few hundred ships that remained, however were the heavier cruisers, battlecruisers and battleships that were heavily armored against fighter attacks. So far casualties had been moderate, but every loss of a fighter slowed down the attack. According to her calculations, in about 5 minutes she would have to start ordering the transports through the gate, risking them being exposed to heavy weapons fire from the Kilimanjaro battleships and battlecruisers. If she didn’t, then she would have to defeat all of the Narthian reinforcements now approaching the gate. Her forces were tired, and her fighters had been fighting without any break. She decided it was time to consult with Admiral Caldwell.
“Hello Ellen.” The face that nodded back to Alicia looked tired. It was an appearance that she assumed was mirrored on her own face. “It appears the fighters were not capable of pulling of the miracle we had hoped for.”
“Admiral, we have formed a plan to insure that we can clear the remaining ships and get the transports through the gate. Once the transports are through the gates, we can mine the gates and use bubblespace drives to meet up with them at New Boston. The 10th Fleet is already enroute to New Boston, so we should have enough firepower to defeat any forces that show up in pursuit.”
Alicia perked up. She was starting to think the situation was hopeless. “What is the plan?”
Grim faced, Caldwell transmitted the plan into Alicia’s datatank. Immediately Alicia understood and protested violently. “No! I refuse. We will pull in our fleet to point blank range and use e-mag cannons to finish off those capital ships. The chance of missing at that range is low, and the e-mags can’t do enough damage to knock the gate out of commission.”
Commodore Cadwell stood her ground. “Admiral Linodan, with all due re
spect, you are an ally, but you cannot give us orders. You know that we will take far more casualties closing to e-mag range with those capital ships. Also, the time it would take to use e-mags to finish off those capital ships would endanger the entire transport fleet. Our mission is that the civilian leadership must survive this attack, and this is the only solution. The captains and crews of the ships involved have already agreed. Be prepared to bubblespace out of system, Admiral. We have minelayer ships and viral codes already in place to mine the gate. We will rendezvous at New Boston to defeat the pursuing Banner Blue Arctic Circle Fleet, Equator Fleet and Tropic of Cancer Fleets. That is all.”
Alicia sat, staring at the blank area in the datatank that once held Caldwell’s face. Weakly she saluted the datatank and ordered the recall of the fighters, and had the course to New Boston charted. She felt what little energy she had left drain out of her. She could see the ghostly face of Kanolev staring straight at her.
Amy Natalenko couldn’t understand why the recall order had been given. The fighter wing of the Relentless was about to join up with another wing to make another pass on the battlecruiser Khyber Pass, when the call to return immediately to the Relentless was issued. As she sped away from the Khyber Pass, she noticed that the Renspan destroyer RFSP Bakersfield was accelerating towards the Narthian battlecruiser. The Khyber began opening up with all of its remaining beam weapons, attempting to destroy the Bakersfield. At first, she didn’t understand exactly what was going on. Everything went into slow motion as she watched in horror as the burning hulk of the Bakersfield, absorbing hit after hit plowed into the Khyber Pass. After a horrible second, both ships were engulfed in a giant ball of flame as the enormous amount of kinetic energy contained in the hull of the Bakersfield was transmitted into the Khyber Pass. Other balls of flame erupted as more Renspan Space Patrol ships rammed into the Narthian capital ships guarding the gate. Completely numb, Amy engaged her autopilot and approached the Relentless.
Skoboev, whose voice was noticeably softer than usual, broke the silence. “All units initiate combat recovery. Secure for maximum bubblespace drive speed.” During her entire final approach, Amy watched every bright flash reflected in her cockpit.
Alicia watched the datatank silently as a path was cut through the Kilimanjaro Fleet. Small groups of transports began disappearing through the gate. Amidst the wreckage of Admiral Tseng’s fleet were the ruined hulls of several hundred of the 7th Fleet, along with the wreckage of nearly a thousand Hurricane fighters.
Largo quietly announced to Alicia, “Sokolov Fleet has been told to rendezvous with us at New Boston.” Alicia nodded blankly.
“Admiral, all fighters recovered. 7th Fleet has begun HyGate mining operation. Fleet clear to depart.” Largo’s voice was dry and humorless.
“Set course for New Boston. Fleet, clear to depart.”
4563 July 05
Central Station Express Maglev
Aurora
Renspa Federal Republic
Peter Harrington looked out of a window of the high-speed maglev as it moved silently across the surface of Aurora. Outside the window of the specially chartered train, he could see the endless agricultural fields that covered most of the planet. Strict environmental laws meant any kind of transatmospheric transportation was outlawed, so Aurora was crisscrossed with an extensive network of environmentally friendly magnetic tracks. It was a sunny day, and the complex tangle of polyculture had a wild beauty to it. Still, the light seemed too bright, too vivid. He was reminded of Van Gogh's Wheatfield with Crows.
"It is absolutely beautiful here, sir." A woman sitting next to the president broke the silence.
Disappointed that the moment was interrupted, Peter could only return a nod. Brenda Sorenson was the Chief of Staff in the Harrington administration. She had been such a long-standing fixture in Harrington's meteoric rise to power that Peter had almost forgotten that she didn't come from Aurora.
"I'm very sorry about Wesley's death. He was a very good man."
He was only a kid, Peter thought to himself. He continued to sit in silence.
"Mr. President, I know this is an awkward time, but unfortunately, we only have an hour before we reach the skyhook. The Narthians have been putting a lot of pressure on the Ladera Marginals, and it looks like they might attempt to pull the same trick they did with the Anticori Marginal on us again. There have been cries for appeasement. I think we will need to take a harder political line against the Narthians, and do so quickly to prevent them from making more political ground with the Five Star Cluster and the Northwind Territories. Since we are so close to the border, I strongly suggest making a public statement before reboarding Federal One."
Politics, Wesley had never wanted to be involved in any of it. The whole family was either involved in politics or engineering. Wesley was different. He wanted to be an artist. Nobody in the family discouraged it, and in fact everyone was happy that someone else in the family would take up the brush like aunt Sarah. But maybe, he thought to himself, none of us really understood him.
"He is...he was...a very good painter. You know, today at the service that was the first time I had seen most of his paintings. I, I really should have seen those paintings sooner. I am the President of the Renspan Federation, after all, you think I could have made some time to visit my nephew." Peter continued to stare blankly out the window.
Brenda, who was a 20 year veteran of politics, and had spent the last decade with Peter Harrington, had never seen him quite like this. He had lost other family members before, but somehow this time it was different. The chief presidential physician had warned her that suicides had a very different effect on people than death by illness. She decided to remain silent.
A few moments later Brenda heard a commotion going on outside the cabin. She looked at her personal comm and it had nearly 250 calls queue up in the past 20 minutes. Something was obviously wrong. She stood up and went to the door.
One of the senior aides to the president was virtually in tears, trying to get past the Federal Protection Service Agent standing stoically at the door. "Linda, calm down. What's going on?"
"Oh Gaia, dear Gaia. Brenda, the Narthians have launched an attack against Newport. We lost all regular communications about 20 minutes ago. The military managed to get out a secure and authenticated message out to Aurora base for the President." The aide was clutching a datapack.
Brenda pried the datapack from the crying aide's hand. "Don't worry, I'm sure everyone is fine. I have confidence in the Federal Space Patrol. Once communications have been restored, I'm sure we'll find out that everything is alright. Go back to your seat, OK? If we really are at war, Peter is going to need all of us to be ready, OK?" The teary eyed aide nodded her head and turned away.
Brenda turned back to face the President. Silently she wished he could give the man a few minutes to himself, but she knew that would be impossible now. He was the President of a nation at war.
4563 July 05
Casetta dell’Orso
Newport City
Renspa Federal Republic
Lindsey Devon had been sitting in a restaurant surrounded by good friends when a Federal Ground Force officer flanked by two soldiers came to her table. In fact, she had a mouthful of beef stew when the officer stood in front of her.
“Sorry to interrupt your dinner ma’am, but we have a national emergency that demands your immediate attention.”
The Renspan Federation’s Secretary of Agriculture swallowed and stared at the officer blankly. While her position was an important government post, her job usually involved lobbyists, angry farm conglomerates, corporate CEOs or consumer advocate groups, not the military. Unsure of how to respond, she could only ask the obvious question, “I’m sorry, I would very much like to finish my dinner. Perhaps you could come back in half an hour?”
The officer looked agitated. “Ma’am, have you turned off your personal communicator? The Joint Chiefs of Staff have been attempting to contact you for the
past half an hour. We have been instructed to bring you immediately,” he paused for a moment, “ah, by force if necessary.”
This last statement set off alarm bells in Lindsey’s mind. A military coup? In this day and age?
Again the officer looked at the other people sitting at the table nervously. “Ma’am, operation Clausewitz.”
Lindsey froze. That was the name of the secret plan for the evacuation of the Federal Government in case of a catastrophic disaster. There were a handful of secret codewords that all of the members of the cabinet were supposed to remember in case of national crisis. She had laughed when she had read the document, which she had discarded as cloak and dagger paranoia. She figured that she would let the Secretary of Defense, Secretary of Intelligence and the Secretary of State worry about playing spy.
Barely saying goodbye to her friends she mechanically stood up and walked away with the soldiers. She was immediately taken to a vector thrust transport and hastened inside. Within a minute Admiral Raleigh was on a communicator with Secretary Lindsey.