Milor!

by Thomas DePrima

  "Congratulations on your appointment, Admiral. You're now one of the top sixty-seven officers in Space Command.

  "Richard E. Moore, Admiral of the Fleet, Space Command Supreme Headquarters, Earth, message complete."

  Jenetta just sat staring at the Space Commend HQ logo that replaced Admiral Moore's image on the screen when the message ended, without really seeing it. It couldn't be. She had to be asleep. Why else would she be having this nightmare? She pinched herself hard and it hurt. No, she wasn't dreaming.

  Jenetta stood and walked to her bathroom. Perhaps a hot shower would make her feel better.

  Fifteen minutes later, Jenetta was getting dressed, but she was still in shock. She fed her cats, skipped breakfast for herself, and walked to the bridge. Captain Gavin was usually in his briefing room at this hour. After calling out 'As you were' in response to the 'Admiral on the bridge', she walked to the briefing room. The door opened and Gavin stood up behind his desk.

  "You're out of uniform, Admiral," he said, smiling, as she entered.

  Jenetta looked down at her uniform. Everything looked in place.

  "I mean your shoulders. You're wearing your old rank. I can arrange for the proper insignia for you. It'll just take a minute."

  "Larry, what am I going to do?"

  "Do?"

  "About this appointment. We talked about this a few weeks ago. Remember?"

  "Ahh, yes, I do."

  "I can't accept this promotion. For one thing, I don't deserve it. For another, I don't want it."

  "Well, as far as deserving it, you deserve it a lot more than others that I could name who've received it in the past. As far as wanting it, you're only getting the pay and recognition for the job that you've been doing since capturing Stewart."

  "I didn't want that either."

  "Well, the only solution that I can see is to resign your commission. But would you do that in time of war?"

  "No, of course not. I couldn't resign with the threat of another Milori invasion force facing us out here."

  "They're probably counting on that. My message says that they've reassigned sixty-five more warships to your command. With support vessels, the total ship count will be over two-hundred. That constitutes a real fleet. They had to give you another star, or assign someone over you; and we both know that they don't want to do that."

  "I feel like I'm being led around like a prize cow. They yank on the chain and I follow."

  "That's part of being in the service. We all give up a measure of our freedom when we elect to serve. But you're hardly like a prize cow. You're holding your own chain, and a lot of others. There are tens of thousands of people depending on you. With the new ships, there will be hundreds of thousands depending on you."

  "Larry, you're not making me feel better."

  He chuckled. "Sorry. I'm just trying to show you that you're doing the leading. This promotion doesn't mean that you're stuck behind a desk, anymore than the last one did. From the way the message I received was worded, I'd say that your appointment didn't come from the Galactic Alliance Council?"

  "No, it's a brevet appointment, like the last."

  "So, then there's no problem. They had to give you a second star because they've assigned an enormous fleet of ships to your command. After things have settled down out here, most of the ships will probably return to their old patrol routes, you'll return to Stewart to finish your tour, and then you'll move on to your next posting, which should include getting your own ship; probably a battleship."

  "I hope you're right. I just keep seeing myself stuck behind a desk for years, when all I've ever wanted was to be in space."

  "You're in space right now."

  Jenetta smiled for the first time since receiving the message. "I mean as an officer in a ship."

  "You are an officer in a ship. You're the senior-most officer in this ship. You're the senior-most officer in this task force. You're the senior-most officer for four-hundred light-years. The only higher ranking officers are all on Earth. And right now, you're more important to us than them, and all the admirals that have ever held the rank, put together. We're counting on what you always call your luck, to give us an edge in the days ahead. I'm really glad that you're out here, Jen."

  Jenetta smiled again. "Thanks, Larry."

  "For?"

  "For giving me a place to vent my frustration. For listening to my rants. For giving me the benefit of your sage advice. And— for bolstering my ego."

  "Anytime, Jen."

  "I think maybe I could eat something now."

  As she turned to leave, Gavin said, "And Admiral, you're still out of uniform."

  Jenetta looked at him, smiled, and nodded.

  After breakfast, Jenetta added a second star to each shoulder of her tunic by removing them from another uniform. Normally, the rank insignia have the two stars positioned on one supporting piece, but this was acceptable under battlefield conditions. She'd arrange for the proper insignia later from the uniform storeroom. They might even have to fabricate them, as they wouldn't get much call for admiral insignia aboard ship. As she entered her conference room office, Lt. Commander Ashraf jumped up.

  "Good morning, Admiral. And congratulations."

  "Thank you, Lori. It's only temporary."

  "Of course, Admiral," she said. The tone of her voice suggested that she didn't believe it for a second. "Everyone is excited about the sixty-five warships coming to support this sector."

  "They know already?"

  "I understand that each captain was notified about your promotion and the increase in command size with their regular daily traffic. Naturally, they informed their First Officers, who informed their bridge crews, who informed everyone else. There are probably a few people who haven't heard yet; a lot of the third watch personnel are probably sleeping."

  "Those ships won't be here for a long time, perhaps as long as two years. We'll have to get by as best we can until they arrive."

  "Aye, Admiral. But you can bring us through. Everyone knows that."

  Jenetta looked at her aide for a few seconds without saying anything. "I'll do my best."

  "I made copies of the first news reports on the battle. Would you like to view them?"

  "Sure. Just let me grab some coffee and we can take a look at what the people back home are seeing."

  Jenetta prepared a steaming mug of Colombian and sat down, swiveling her chair to face the large monitor on the wall. Ashraf started a replay of the news reports received on the entertainment channels aboard the ship. For the first story, an image of the reporter placed aboard the Prometheus appeared.

  "This is Neil Russo, reporting to you from aboard the GSC Battleship Prometheus, somewhere in the Frontier Zone beyond Stewart Space Command Base. For more than a month, I've been aboard this gigantic ship as it waited for an enemy to arrive. The face on the enemy is Milora. They've invaded Galactic Alliance territory and ordered Space Command to withdraw permanently from our own territory. In an interview with a senior officer, I learned that the Milori Empire has issued a proclamation that purports to void the Galactic Alliance territorial ownership rights while annexing our space to their empire. A group of ships, believed to be sixteen in number, has pursued a GSC Destroyer, the Ottawa, all the way from the Elurra system, to the area where we've been waiting. That system is located one hundred light-years inside our outer border, so there has been no doubt from the beginning that this was a deliberate incursion.

  "Several days ago, this Space Command Task Force of fourteen ships, under the command of Admiral Jenetta A. Carver, came face to face with the Milori. What follows is actual footage of the meeting and subsequent battle. You'll see exactly what I saw from the bridge of the Prometheus. The other ships comprising this task force are the Chiron, Bellona, Thor, Song, Plantaganet, Romanov, Mentuhotep, Asuncion, Geneva, Beijing, St. Petersburg, Buenos Aires, and Cairo. Other Extragalactic News Service reporters were on the bridges of the other ships and most will be reporting their stories
shortly. I regret to say that two will not. I dedicate this report to their memory.

  "I'll limit my narration during the battle, as much as possible. We begin with the scenes on the bridge as the Milori are about to reach our location. The two Space Command officers centered in much of the footage are Admiral Jenetta Carver and Captain Lawrence Gavin. Here now is that footage."

  The image changed from one showing the reporter to one showing the bridge just prior to the battle. Jenetta heard the reporter say quietly, "Admiral Carver is about to spring her trap. There it is. The Admiral has ordered the energy cage erected around the Milori ships. We've trapped their ships inside. Their FTL drive systems have shut down, and they are powerless to escape. Should they use their thrusters to maneuver, and happen to touch the sides of the trap, their ship will suffer an explosion similar to that of a torpedo strike at that point."

  The lieutenant at the tactical console was heard saying, "Got 'em" and then there were the remarks about the size of the fleet. The reporter stopped talking while Jenetta hailed the Milori and demanded Gulqulk's surrender, only to have the Milora commander let loose with his tirade. There was a tight closeup of Jenetta as she set her jaw, stared icily at the leader of the Milori fleet, and said, "You've brought this upon yourselves."

  The scene changed from one of the bridge officers to an image of what the large, main monitor was showing as the battle began. From then on there were no more narration interruptions until the battle ended. The scene cut back briefly several times, to show a grim faced, but determined, Admiral Carver as she clung to the arm of Gavin's chair for support during the battle and stared at the enormous monitor at the front of the bridge. Ashraf could be seen standing beside her, hanging onto the XO's chair. The image zoomed slowly and dramatically to a tight closeup of Jenetta's face before switching to an image of the reporter again.

  "Those large explosions that you witnessed after the ships had all completed their passes were made by secret, nearly invisible bombs that Space Command developed a decade ago. This was the first real use of that highly classified weapon, and Admiral Carver decided to use only the smallest size available in her arsenal, hoping not to kill any more Milora than necessary. Her goal was only to stop their invasion and prevent them from firing on our ships. Information about the bomb is still classified but I was able to learn that they are self-guiding. Ordnance specialists seeded them throughout the cage area long before the Milori arrived. Once the Milori had stopped, the bombs were issued a command to locate the largest concentrations of enemy ships and intersperse themselves among them, where they would wait for a signal to detonate.

  "All one-hundred-three ships of the invasion force have been destroyed, but Space Marines have rescued hundreds of Milori survivors from the wrecked ships. The estimated enemy death toll is over two-hundred-thousand. Laser fire or torpedoes struck most of the ships in the Space Command task force during the engagement, but only one ship was sufficiently damaged that repairs may have to wait until the task force can return to Stewart. Although outnumbered seven to one, Space Command has clearly demonstrated that its ships and weapons are superior to anything that the Milori have.

  "This is Neil Russo, with ENS On the Scene, reporting from aboard the Prometheus, a very long way from Earth. Good day."

  Jenetta looked at Ashraf. "That was a rather interesting way that he talked about the grid and the WOLaR torpedoes; especially since he had been aboard ship while we were deploying the mines."

  Lori smiled. "Well, I sort of convinced him to describe it that way. I took the idea from the Milora that we reached by the com when we were with the prisoner."

  "Sort of convinced him?"

  "I happened to mention that there might be a lot more action to occur and that it would help him get a front row seat. I also explained that it might help to perpetuate those myths in case the information got back to the Milori. It didn't change the real news in any way."

  "Is that all?"

  "Well, I also told him that if he got the other reporters to go along and report it the same way, you'd give him a full half-hour interview, free from disturbances, once we got back to Stewart. But I think that it was his patriotism that won out."

  "I'm sure," Jenetta said, in the same disbelieving tone that Ashraf had used earlier when Jenetta said that her promotion wasn't permanent. "I'm beginning to see that you're even more devious than I gave you credit for."

  "Why thank you, Admiral," she said smiling.

  Jenetta smiled. "Let's have a look at the rest."

  * * *

  The repairs to the ships continued at a frantic pace. Everyone knew what was at stake and put everything they had into the effort. Supervising officers practically had to have their engineers dragged back to their quarters at the end of each sixteen-hour work shift. But once there they collapsed in exhaustion on their beds. Even non-engineers had been recruited to assist in the effort. It didn't require specialized knowledge to fetch and carry, although bots did most of that work.

  Security people interviewed every single prisoner. They didn't get very much information that wasn't already known, but they had to compile a list of survivors for the records anyway. Space Marines had the grisly job of gathering the dead bodies of the Milori aboard the wrecked ships and collecting their identity disks. They placed the desiccated and frozen bodies, and sometimes just body parts, into whatever large containers were available. In one case, an empty cargo bay, once a part of a Milori battleship, held some of the dead.

  The work continued like that around the clock. People lost track of time as they only concentrated on the uncompleted tasks. They were either working, eating, or sleeping; and occasionally some fell asleep as they were eating. Jenetta was grateful for each day that passed without word of the Milori fleet. She would have liked to think that they had turned around and headed for home, but that would only be wishful thinking. She knew they were coming.

  * * *

  With the lifting of the ban on personal communications, an avalanche of electronic mail arrived at the ship. Jenetta received her share of course and spent some time each evening responding. With the announcement of her latest promotion, on the heels of the announcement about the victory, she received thousands of congratulatory messages. She created a sort of personalized response message to send to most people, and then just added a very personal sentence or two at the end of each message for the closest of her friends. She exceeded the normal outgoing message limit by a factor of ten, but everyone got a reply. Special individuals, such as the King and Queen of Nordakia, naturally received messages composed especially for them. Her message queue contained dozens of messages from Hugh, now out of stasis, and she delighted in viewing those over and over, responding to each one chronologically.

  Before responding to her mother's latest message, she viewed it again.

  "Hi, honey. Your face is all over the news again. I enjoy seeing it, because it means that you're alive and well, but I worry about you. I think you're taking on too much responsibility. I'm proud that you're the first two-star Admiral in the family, but you looked so unhappy when you had to give that order to attack, and then afterwards. I know that it has to be taking its toll on you. Now you're going to be responsible for all those people in the fleet also. It just seems like it's too much, and I don't know how you do it. I could never have that many people relying on me. You must get it from you father's side of the family.

  "Your father's ship has been reassigned to a different patrol area. He's not coming out your way, but he'll be much closer to home, and our messages will reach each other quicker now. I know that he's very proud of you because most of his message time is spent talking about you. Mine is also, but it's because I'm so concerned about you. I know that you don't like talking about very personal things in a vid mail, but please tell me what you're feeling.

  "There's the timer so I have to finish up. I keep hoping that your time at Stewart will go quicker so that you can come home for a visit. Take care of yo
urself. I love you and miss you.

  "Annette Carver, Officer Housing, Potomac SC base. End of message."

  The months of stress had taken their toll on Jenetta. Since entering the Academy, she had done her best to hide her emotions and always display a look of imperturbability. She firmly believed that a leader should appear to know what they were doing, even when personally filled with doubts. Jenetta was usually far less sure of her actions than subordinates believed. With each new layer of responsibility laid upon her shoulders, she prayed that she was up to the challenge, and then resolved again that nobody should ever see what she was really feeling, not even family. But she needed a release from the stress of the past weeks. She decided to be completely open with her mother for once.

  Jenetta tapped the record button on her com unit.

  "Message to Annette Carver, Officer Housing, Potomac SC base, Earth. Begin message."

  "Hi, Momma. You want to know what I'm feeling so I shall tell you, but I ask that you not show this to, or talk about it with, anyone else. I cannot afford to have either our own forces or our enemies perceive any sign of weakness.

  "I wake up each day filled with dread. I know what's yet to come and fear that I won't measure up to people's expectations of me. I fear that I'll make an error in judgment and someone else will pay a terrible price. I worry about all the lives that I hold in my hands. Not just the lives of my crews, but also the lives of the billions that are depending on me to protect them. If I falter, or make a wrong move, the enemy might get past us and wreck havoc throughout Galactic Alliance space.

  "In December of 1776, Thomas Paine began publishing a series of pamphlets called The American Crises. His opening paragraph in the series was, 'THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.'