The incursions of the Khalia were the reason why Confederation marines existed. Mostly, anyway. Freeborn supplies what amounted to a reinforced division, plus some special battalions, to the Confederacy. Liberated put up an understrength division as well. Verge, being different, supplies Verge Rangers. That regiment is a crack one, even if there is always rivalry, shall we say, between them and the marines, worse rivalry than between grunts from Freeborn and those from our other sister planet, Liberated.
When Weasel attacks in our sector became more regular than ever, we fed everything to Intelligence and they told us to start looking for a base nearby. In a few months we located the place the Khalia were using. There was a dead star between us and the Alliance’s sectors, an out of the way place, actually, and not on the usual in or out spots for blinking from FTL to normal space drive. Look on your charts for Dead Star 31; you’ll see it. There is a hydrogen cloud nearby and lots of asteroidlike debris in the vicinity. Naturally it was a place to be avoided, so it was just as natural for the Weasels to set up shop there. We spied on those alien buggers for a long, long time, and they never caught wise. The cutter nearest to their “secret” base actually used ancient signaling techniques to relay its messages. Would you believe a low-powered laser? It worked. Another disguised-as-an-asteroid cutter then radio-relayed on tight beam, and a series of courier boats took it from there. The chiefs of staff actually planned to hit the Khalian base, but then the Weasels sent in the big boys.
The Weasels never had big starships. Now they did. The Fleet calls these new Khalian ships dreadnoughts. They’re bigger and more heavily gunned than the battleships of the Tau Ceti bunch. I’d be willing to bet that Retaliation could handle any one of the Weasels’ new heavies, but not two. The Dead Star base suddenly sported a half-dozen of the huge warships. Our plans went out the window. Now we were really careful about our observation post. A score of Khalian warships within fifty light years of our three inadequately defended systems was grim. The Fleet wouldn’t come to our aid. All we could do was hope the Weasels were where they were for some other purpose than making the Confederation part of history.
We’d already broken the Fleet codes, at least the older ones. They used tight-beam radio too, of course, to relay information from planetside to waiting couriers, vessels positioned to gather the intelligence messages and go into FTL immediately. Because of this, we picked up a good bit of their stuff. Now we were getting information from the Khalians too. It was credited to sheer luck when we managed to discover their cipher pattern and break their codes so quickly. I think it was a combination of what makes the folk of our confederacy so successful and the hand of some greater being. Who can say? In any event, the chiefs back at Patrick Henry on Freeborn were really placed between the rock and the proverbial hard place. The Weasels were about to fry far bigger fish than us. They were out to trap the whole of the Fleet in the sector!
In the great days of sail, enemy fleets groped about the seas, trying to find the other ships and fight. Actions were thus usually fought off some port city. Later, when aircraft and radio came into being, fleet actions were fought in more open waters, often without the combatants seeing each other’s ships except via airplane or radar. Now we are back to the former situation. Spaceships travel faster than light, so communications are uncertain. Reports come in stating when and where the enemy has been spotted, and in what numbers. Then a squadron or task force, or whatever, is sent off in the direction which seems the most likely place the enemy will be. The alternative is for you to lie outside an enemy starport and wait for his ships to come home.
The Weasels had worked it out pretty carefully. They became active in the general area of the Confederation. They don’t know that we aren’t a part of the Alliance. Khalian raids upon Alliance territory were sufficient to draw larger and larger number of vessels from Tau Ceti Fleet Base anyway. Then they allowed intelligence to fall into the hands of the Fleet. That bit of information revealed the number of warships the Weasels had gathered in the area, where they were going, and what they planned to do. The bait was a fair sized one: three of the new dreadnoughts, a dozen of their big armored cruisers, and the usual school of smaller craft. It was to be a full-scale attack on a major planet of the Alliance as far as the Fleet knew. Of course they took the bait and were putting together a force to engage and destroy the Khalian vessels. Because of our own information gathering, we knew that the Fleet force was composed of nine battleships, two of the new battlecruisers just out of the spaceyards, and sufficient cruisers, destroyers and scouts to manage their counterparts in the Weasels’ armada. They were really anxious to knock out those new Khalian heavies. The Fleet wasn’t worried, and I personally think that they could have pulled it off. All except for the Weasels’ ambushing force, that is.
The squadrons at the Dead Star 31 base were their ace in the hole. As soon as the Tau Ceti boys started grappling and moving for position, the Weasels would spring the trap. The other dreadnoughts, plus a few light vessels, would come in by surprise. Then there would be one of the bigger Khalian dreadnoughts for each of the Fleet’s battleships, with enough armored cruisers left to handle the rest of the Alliance’s navy there, and to spare a heavy cruiser to assist each of their main starships. It would be a debacle, and the whole sector would be laid open to whatever the Weasels cared to do for the next few months ... or forever!
* * *
The comm buzzed. “Another urgent message for you, General.”
“Put it through, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, sir. Scrambler omni line, General.”
“I see ...” I hastened to switch from memory to incoming on my unit. There was my old friend Colonel General Downing. Under the circumstances I forgot about old times and greeted him formally as commandant and my direct superior. He didn’t bother with such trappings.
“Haul ass over here, Franz.” Still the same old Chauncy after all.
It was evident that he wasn’t in his own office. “Where’s here?” I asked with a smile.
“Oh, sorry! I’m at the Grand Pavilion. Get here immediately.”
A quarter of an hour later I was there. So were a lot of others. The chiefs of staff, commandants of marines and planetary guard, and minister of defense were seated round a long table. In a few minutes a dozen admirals and generals joined the throng.
“Gentlemen, this is an official meeting,” Minister of Defense Rudilsky said. “I am here to preside, but the matter is up to you. Each of you has been fully briefed on the situation. What is the Confederation going to do?”
That’s the way things operate here. Once a course of action is decided upon, superior rank and reporting come into play. Until then, though, each of us is an equal citizen. Even as a mere general, I could vote along with any other officer at the table. The various officers spoke in turn. Soon it became evident that there was a strong current of anti-Alliance feeling running through the group. When Khalians fought the Fleet, the opinions went, then the Independent Confederation of Planets could only prosper. Admiral Schley objected, pointing out that the Alliance at worst left us on our own, while the Weasels were aggressively involved in all manner of things which brought grief to us.
“There won’t be enough of either side to bother anyone for a long time after they get into action,” opined Marshal Evereaux. Indefensible logic, but shared by Liberated and Verge alike. Finally it was my turn to speak.
“My boys just sort of go along for the ride, I guess,” I quipped, “and I’m no expert on warships and naval tactics ...” Laughter and a couple of jibes interrupted me there, for everyone at the table knew damned well that I had written a number of papers for the institute and was at work on a volume dealing with spacepower and its influence on events. “Okay,” I continued after the room quieted down. “It isn’t much of a matter either way. The only question we have before us is whether or not the Confederation jumps into the fight.”
“Risk our only means of defense to pull the Fleet’s fat out of the fire? Not bloody likely!” That was from Admiral Cunningham of Liberated. He got a murmur of approval from that.
“Your point is well taken, Ted,” I said slowly. “There is something wrong with your logic, though. If the Tau Ceti bunch isn’t around to counterbalance the Weasels, our navy just isn’t big enough and strong enough to defend us. The Khalia can come in and gobble us up, one system at a time.”
“Shotgun is ready if the Weasels try that,” Ted Cunningham said with pride. He was commander of that vessel.
“Fat lot of good one launcher, even a supership such as yours, Admiral, will be against a dozen capital ships.”
“You don’t know that! I say that she’ll be able to get in and deal with that many easily.”
We were about to get into hypothetical stuff now. “Shotgun” was code name for the Confederation’s secret weapon, the torpedo craft launcher Hydra. It was a huge starship designed to launch and recover a swarm of little boats while defending herself from enemy fire. The concept was certainly not new; it was that of Terra’s ancient aircraft carrier moved ahead a few centuries with hyped-up FTL engines. Hydra launched her vessels while dropping back from FTL. The boats were then theoretically so close to their targets that it would be impossible for the enemy to react in time. Mines, missiles, and torpedoes fired off the little craft would hightail it back to the mother ship, be taken in quickly, and in minutes the launcher would drop back into FTL, jockeying for another pass. In tight situations, the launcher could get back into FTL sans boats, then come back for them later. The whole process relied on a refinement of the detectors used while in FTL drive. Moving thus, a vessel was blind to what was around it, but mass detectors prevented annihilation by impacting some planet or sun. Our scientists had worked up a version of this standard equipment which could give a readout on something as small as a destroyer, for instance, at a range long enough to be able to blink into normal space no more than five million kilometers from it, tops. At sublight speed of 200,000 kps, the launcher would match course with the enemy, the boats would be away, and the attack made in less than sixty seconds. Even the best of computer-operated defense systems, whether Khalian or Fleet, wasn’t able to cope with such an unexpected attack as that. Later, maybe, after exposure and knowledge, there would be developments to counter our new weapon, but defense is always a game of catch-up.
“With all due respect, sir,” I said slowly, “a hundred of the best attack boats can’t manage more than four, possibly five, capital starships. That was pretty clear from the computer simulations. It takes from twenty to twenty-five of them against a single battleship to ensure they stop it.”
“Simulation, hypothetical, worst case ... Nine are sufficient. My own staff has run countless exercises and checked them out—”
“And you always used best case,” I countered.
Now Admiral Vandervoort chimed in. “So what is your point, General Hohenstein?”
“There are several, and one conclusion. The points are: One, we have to make certain that the Khalia don’t win, because the Weasels will then hit our systems. Two, we can’t take on a whole fleet of dreadnoughts, and we know that if the aliens win, they’ll do space repairs and come in again for seconds. Three, we have the golden opportunity to hit the Weasels by surprise while they’re lying in ambush for the Fleet, and taking out just four of the Khalian dreadnoughts will balance the contest between them and the Alliance’s navy. Four, with a fairly even battle it won’t matter which side wins, for it will be a Pyrrhic victory—won’t matter that is, except that it’s fellow humans against those bloody bastard Khalia. Five, we have to help other humans, even if it is the Fleet. Six, the Confederation will pick up invaluable prizes in the action, and we all know that even one salvageable dreadnought hull would bring us into position to convert it into a launcher. Think of three or four such prizes in tow! Seven, my men, and the marines and rangers under General Flaherty, and Colonel Arlove too, of course, can board and take those Weasel ships if the navy gives them the opportunity to.”
“Seven points well spoken,” the commandant said. That could be expected, after all, but there was similar agreement from most of the others present, including the minister of defense. He asked, “And that brings up your conclusion, General Hohenstein—”
“What if the Tau Ceti boys decide to attack us afterward?” interjected the florid-faced Admiral Vandervoort. He was definitely a liner man, with little faith in the capabilities of a launch vessel. “They may just decide to get rid of another threat, especially if the torpedo craft are as effective as you seem to think!”
Ted Cunningham spoke up then. “If we do as Franz suggests and hit four of the Khalian heavies, that leaves the Weasels with a bigger force than the Fleet’s. Pretty fair superiority. The Tau Ceti boys won’t be in any position to do more than limp home, if they win. More likely, the Fleet’ll have to break off the action and retreat. It’ll be the Weasels we’ll have to worry about then.”
“My conclusion exactly, gentlemen. Ted is right. That’s why I think our whole navy will have to engage the Khalia as soon as the torpedo craft have done their work. Retaliation and one of the frigates have to take on one of the remaining dreadnoughts; three frigates alone on the other, and the remaining frigate and the corvettes keep the light stuff of the Weasels busy until the bigger Khalian ships are wasted.” I paused, and there was an unkind comment about grunt generals writing space tactics for the navy. “I went to the same academy you did, Admiral. I get refresher courses, study, and have been on fighting bridges during the heat of action.”
“Only you don’t command,” Vandervoort said loudly.
“Not the vessel, only the men aboard who have to go out and take the enemy where they are—starship or planetside. If we want to be rid of Weasels, help humans to survive, and come out of it all with prizes in tow, there is only one course to chart.” That was all there was for me to say, and I sat down.
After the rest had their say, we put it to a vote. Nineteen were present. Nine were for, nine against. The minister of defense cast the deciding vote in favor of my plan. Naturally, once it was decided, all present were fully committed to developing it into a successful one. Staffs were assembled, and work on a formal plan was begun immediately. We had only a few weeks to put it all together and strike. Estimated collision time between the Fleet task force and the Khalia was between three and five weeks away. We had to be ready to move the moment the Tau Ceti ships disappeared in search of their foe.
As the plan was being drafted and refined, all leave was cancelled, and reservists were called up to bring every vessel in the Confederation’s fleet to full complement, Freeborn’s and Liberated’s, too. They took off for the vicinity of the Ito system where they would rendezvous to form a united fleet. Hydra, with me and a bunch of my own boys inside her bulbous hull, was lead starship.
“Welcome aboard, General.”
“Compliments, Admiral,” I replied.
Ted Cunningham grinned. “You got your way, and I got mine, too, sort of.”
“That’s true, and it gives my troops a chance to show their mettle in a new way.” I was referring to the company of torpedo vessel pilots and crews aboard, marine pilots and crews, that is. Pilot, defensive systems, man and weapons chief were all the crew that an STC carried. The admiral had talked up things so much that the chiefs had decided to allow him to launch twice. There were twenty back-up craft aboard. The Hydra would come in, launch, and then drop back into FTL while it readied its second force. Cunningham would bring the big starship back again just as the rest of the ships were closing on the Khalian vessels. The extra twenty STCs would be launched into the fray, and then Hydra would sit around waiting for its hornets to come back to the hive, so to speak.
“How about a bet between us on which pilots get a better hits ratio, mine or yours?”
“Too grim,
Ted. Both are nothing but green kids. I want ’em all to get back alive.”
“I take your point, Franz,” the dark-skinned starman said, “but you and I both know there’ll be losses. If those young men do their duty, the enemy will suffer, but a lot of STCs won’t be coming back here. I just thought a little competition might help us both take our minds off that and put them where good officers’ thoughts should be—engaging and destroying the enemy.”
I cocked an eyebrow and gave my head a little shake. “History & Mission briefing comes next ... You’re right, though, you space buzzard. A month’s pay on my boys, even odds?”
“You’ve got it.”
* * *
Two days later we were on a station a few million kilometers from the secret Khalian force. Now it was all a matter of timing and good aim. Our cutters would come soon, carrying word that the Fleet task force had left in FTL mode to seek out the Weasels. We were faster than they were, so that would give us the time we needed to get ready for battle ourselves. We knew where the Khalia were heading, and it was necessary for us to arrive there at just about the same time. If we were early, then there’d be no launching of STCs—and the Confederation’s navy would be no more! If we came too late, the Weasels would be mixing it up with the Fleet’s ships, and we’d be unable to carry out an effective attack. In strictly ship-to-ship terms, our little navy wouldn’t have much effect, I supposed. Perhaps our being there would enable the Fleet to withdraw without crippling losses, but our own ships would take a beating in the process. That we certainly couldn’t afford, not just to save some star admiral’s bacon.
The Fleet Book Three: Break Through Page 11