by Danny Loomis
“Brita wants us to have our gear ready by the time we break out, which is exactly twenty-four hours from now,” Pointy said. “She saw all the swabbies getting things ready, and it seems to’ve given her another reason to pick on us.”
“I heard that, Sergeant.” Brita’s voice floated through the opened door.
Pointy winced in mock pain. “Shit. Now I’ll probably be her dummy for the next martial arts trainin’.”
“Better than me being the dummy,” Ian said, pulling on his coveralls, the normal work uniform while in space.
Pointy finished fastening his coveralls. “C’mon, Irish. We got to go through every case of ammo and load it on one of the shuttles before we can go to chow.”
“Every case?” Ian asked. “We must have more than five per person.”
“Sixty-five, but who’s countin’?” Pointy said. “After chow she has us loadin’ up everythin’ else except our weapons and what we’re wearin’. Makes for quite a load, what with all the trainin’ stuff we brought.”
“I smell a rat here,” Ian said. “Somebody wants us combat loaded during break-out.”
“You got it, man,” Pointy said, scratching his nose. “I think her’n Boudreau want to impress some high-rankin’ swabbie with how ready the LRS always is.”
“What’s with this ‘swabbie’ bit?” Ian asked.
“We had a class with some of the Space Marines, and that’s what they kept callin’ the navy types. Seemed to piss ’em off pretty good, so I added it to our vocabulary.”
“Sounds like I didn’t miss much,” Ian said.
“Nope. Just the usual horseshit.” Pointy moved towards the door. “We’d better scoot. I don’t want to be countin’ bullets after lights out tonight.”
EDO STAR SYSTEM, ALLIANCE FORCES (DAY +26):
“Admiral Haven, you have another call from First Speaker Albright.” William glared at the offending comm unit that interrupted his work. “Do you wish to speak to him, or shall I ask him to call another time?”
William sighed in resignation and keyed the comm. “Patch him through to me, please.” The First Speaker had been working hard to become a sharp thorn in his side over the past few days. Maybe this time he could get him to talk sense.
An image formed on his screen. “First Speaker, how good of you to call.”
The dark haired First Speaker nodded perfunctorily, no sign of a smile on his face. “Grand Admiral, I must again protest the behavior of your invading forces.”
It was getting harder for William to keep from scowling. His patience was stretched to the breaking point by the constant whining of this man. He’d bent over backwards to reach a smoother relationship, but nothing seemed to work. “What’s happened, First Speaker?”
“Your so-called ‘governmental liaison’ forces are breaking in to every home in our city. Tempers are short, and I cannot guarantee there won’t be an incident if this keeps up.”
“Sir, they merely search for some of the criminal element who’ve caused mischief with our troops around the space port. Have there been any cases of looting or mistreatment?”
Speaker Albright reluctantly shook his head. “No, Admiral, not yet at least. But the citizens of this planet are not used to having others force themselves on their privacy. It’s alien and repugnant to all of us. I’ve managed to convince them to temper their reactions up to this point, but I’m afraid I can’t guarantee their peaceful behavior for much longer.”
“Is that what you call their actions? Peaceful behavior?” Admiral Haven asked. “None of them show up for work, no shops are open, in fact the streets are almost deserted. No one has obeyed any order given them, and when we try to make them do something, they sit down and refuse to move.”
“Pistol whippings, beatings, even a handful of deaths. Is that the way you make citizens on your own planets obey you? We will never give in to tyranny,” Speaker Albright said.
William felt his control slipping. “You have little choice, sir. If you don’t accept us, it will go very hard on your people. I don’t want that, as I’m sure you don’t.”
“Admiral, I must once again protest in the strongest possible terms your invasion of our peaceful planet. You had no right to do so.”
“And again, Sir, I must remind you it has already happened. Accept it or suffer the consequences.” William felt his hands clenching, and made a conscious effort to relax. “I’ll give you twenty-four hours for your government to officially recognize us, or we will have to resort to more extreme measures.”
“I take that to mean you will escalate your violence once more. In that case, I must once again warn you that Article Twenty-Two has been formally declared, and we’ll push for its implementation with the civilized governments of human-held space once we have thrown off your yoke of oppression.” With that his image disappeared from the screen, leaving William to glower at it once more. He stood up and began to pace about his office, in an attempt to work off his anger and frustration.
Tomorrow he’d have General Lambert begin to move his ground forces throughout the city. Take over all the vital functions such as water processing, power plant, and food distribution. They’d soon bow to his wishes. If not, he’d find some citizens more amenable to his policies and put them in charge. He’d never seen a government yet that didn’t have a group of dissidents willing to take over the reins of power.
Shrugging off his annoyance at the Edoan government he seated himself once more, called up a holo view of the Edoan solar system and continued his inspection of the present deployment of ships.
Two light cruisers and one battlecruiser were stationed within three light minutes of the nexus point which was used to travel to Alliance-controlled space. One battleship on the far side of the sun away from Edo pulled guard on any back door possibilities, and two battlecruisers kept Ragnarok company in high orbit over Edo. A single battleship was in low orbit as a platform for thirty vipers. One of the drive nodes of the ship had gone bad, and until a replacement showed up with the supply ships scheduled to arrive in three weeks it could only be used in a limited capacity. It would also be able to bombard the planet at select points if it became necessary. The other fifty-four Vipers worked off the planet’s surface at the captured spaceport, as ground support.
Seven battlecruisers and one battleship were spread out between the planet and most likely nexus to be used by any Confederation ships. They were twenty light-minutes from the nexus, and seventeen from Edo. Three battleships were stationed on top of the Confederation nexus. Each ship was within three hundred kilometers of the other two, making for a very tight fit.
Anything inside two light seconds stood the danger of being in the same space as an emerging ship. The resulting explosion would destroy them. Therefore Commodore Jarold held them just outside of two light seconds. The concentrated firepower would guarantee fatal results of unwary ships emerging into Edo space.
In total, William had eighteen ships under his command. Since the Confederation usually sent no more than one superdreadnought, three dreadnoughts and a couple of cruisers on their tours of the frontier, his force would outweigh them in tonnage over four to one, not counting the Ragnarok.
He nodded his head in satisfaction. Overall a good deployment. He felt uncomfortable about having three battleships packed so tightly together at one location, but he’d ultimately agreed with Commodore Jarold. More than likely the rest of them would be bystanders in the fireworks to come.
There was a knock at his cabin door. “Come.”
Major Vogel entered, a slight smile on his narrow face. “Admiral, I’m afraid I’ve got some disquieting news. Commodore Givens managed to kill himself. Two of my subordinates went to his cell this morning, and found he’d managed to cut himself bad enough to bleed to death.”
The fact his throat had been slit ear to ear had meant a sealed body bag was all anyone saw of the Commodore before he was taken from his cell and unceremoniously spaced.
William was unable
to keep the relief out of his voice at the news. “Too bad. It would have been best if he’d been brought before an Admiral’s Mast, but under the circumstances it’s probably better for morale that he had the courage to do away with himself.”
“I agree, Sir. If there’s nothing else, I’d better write a report about this.” With a half-bow he was gone. William looked after him for a long moment, a bit perplexed. Over the past few days it seemed Major Vogel had begun to act differently around him. Almost a warming of his demeanor. He shook off the thought and concentrated once more on the tactical deployment of his ships.
Eight hours later his comm chimed. “Admiral, we’ve received an alert signal. Ships are emerging from the Confederation nexus.”
“Be right there,” the Admiral said. Within seconds he entered the Flag tactical room, an identical command center to the main one Captain Winters presided over two levels down, except the Admiral’s controlled the strategic flow of the battle. As he walked in, the central plotting hologram was being brought up. Eighteen green blips were positioned on the screen, with no sign of the enemy. It would take an hour for that information to reach them, since visual sensor information was limited to the speed of light. Only the footprint of an emerging ship could be detected without that limitation.
The glow of emerging ships was hidden by the ciphers of three battleships.
“Damn,” William breathed, “It looks as if Jarold’s drifted in closer than usual…”
CONFEDERATION TASK FORCE (3 hours earlier):
With a surgeon’s gentle precision, Ian inserted the tip of a cleaning wand into the breech of his Webley Mark IV heavy needler. After carefully rotating it several times he removed it, looking for signs of corrosion. Rust hadn’t been a problem with the Mark IV’s. But over a period of time, corrosion could build up in the breech due to the steel slivers made from a softer metal.
At a half centimeter in diameter and five centimeters long, the slivers seemed too small to cause a maintenance problem, until several thousand of them were fired through the barrel. There was also an off-chance some of the chemicals held inside the battery in each magazine might be carried to the breech. Thus a wise grunt gave his rifle and other tools of war constant attention.
He telescoped the wand and inserted it the full length of the barrel in a cursory inspection. Not a mark. Good for another fifty thousand rounds. He rubbed each part of the rifle with a clean cloth, and reassembled it within seconds. All his other gear had already been inspected. As usual he was the last one finished. This time he had an audience, something he wasn’t used to.
“Jeez, it looks like you’re gonna make love to that thing,” Pointy said, rubbing his nose.
“Yeah, but it’ll never let me down,” Ian said, coming to his feet. “Let’s move it, we’re supposed to be at the briefing in a couple minutes.”
The squad was settled in at the meeting room/mess hall when Warrant Boudreau seated himself at the head of the table, coffee cup in hand. He placed a data cube into the table’s information center. A hologram appeared, with several white ciphers spread across it.
“When we began our transit, this was the formation of our task force. There are twelve ships ahead of the York, which means a lot of tonnage between us and whatever we might face when we break out into normal space. This depiction shows all seventeen ships in formation, all within two thousand kilometers of each other. Quite a feat in hyper.”
J.C. raised his hand. “Sir, how do they stay in formation? And how are they able to keep in communications with each other? I thought that was impossible when we’re in bubble space.”
“It is if you don’t enter together and already linked up by whisker lasers. This is something the Confederation discovered two years ago. We don’t think the Alliance can do it yet. It also takes constant vigilance by our computers to keep each ship linked. This helps the task force commander readjust the formation if he needs to, just before we break out. Lets us enter real space in a tight, tactical formation. Not easy to surprise us that way.” He touched the keypad and the holo enlarged.
“When we enter real space, the four destroyers go in hot. Within two seconds the task force will be through, since the entire formation is only twelve hundred klicks deep and a thousand wide. Allows us to fit through the nexus at the other end all at once rather than several seconds apart as was normal in the past.”
“Where’ll we be during this, Sir?” Brita asked.
“Tucked away inside two attack shuttles. We weren’t able to get all our gear into one, so they gave us two. Which means Irish gets to sit in the driver’s seat of one of them.”
Ian looked stunned. “Me? But Sir, I’m not certified… I mean, I’m a team leader, not a pilot.”
Warrant Boudreau nodded agreement. “That’s right, Irish. But you’ll be certified by the time we reach Bifrost, according to the York’s flight leader, Lieutenant Commander Searles. He said you’re a natural, and he’s going to allow you to act as second seat in an attack shuttle during our stay in the Edoan system. Better’n being on liaison duty with the rest of us, wouldn’t you say?”
“Oh, shit,” Pointy groaned. “Not dress blues duty! I thought we had enough Marines in the task force to handle that.”
“The task force commander is so impressed to have real fighting soldiers along that he wants to put us on display,” Boudreau said. “So once we’ve gone through the breakout drill we’ve got to break out our blues and practice walking in a straight line. Something none of us has had to do for a few years. Right, Staff?”
Brita gave him a sour look. “Right. And I suppose it’ll be up to me to get these off-footed jackasses to look like prima donnas in twenty-four hours.”
Boudreau nodded, a hint of a smile showing. He touched a key, bringing another picture up. “As you can see, our equipment’s been loaded. All we have to do is load ourselves and personal weapons on board. Any other questions? Okay, see you back here at 1030 hours. We’ll load up then.”
* * *
“Five minutes to breakout, Sir,” the Operations Officer said. Admiral Carver acknowledged with a wave of his hand, focusing on the tactical display. All ships looked to be properly lined up for a “hot” exit from bubble space. This large a force had never attempted to travel between jump points in formation before. It was a thrill to see near perfection in the formation, thanks to hundreds of hours of simulation training prior to leaving Alamo. He felt a touch of pride and satisfaction, knowing he was re-writing the tactical and strategic manuals.
“Alright, Captain. Inform all ships to arm weapons systems.”
After passing on word, Captain Sandor, flag captain of Camelot turned to the Admiral with a questioning look. “Going in hot is new, Sir. Any specific reason why?”
“We need to test theory, Captain. The scientific types tell me it’s safe, theoretically, to have all weapons systems on line when we emerge. But it hasn’t been part of our protocol before now. Time to change that, I think.”
* * *
“One minute to Breakout.” Captain Brin, commander of the division of Confederation destroyers, gave his status board one last scan. “Give me an update on all weapons systems, Guns.”
“Green board, skipper,” said Lieutenant VanByrne, his weapons officer.
Captain Brin snugged his safety straps tighter, and gave one last look around the bridge of his ship, the Kerios. Three years in command, and he still felt goosebumps in situations like this. His navigator flicked a switch. “Dropping from transit—now.”
Alarms shrilled as near space appeared on the tactical screen. Red blips were magnified to show three battleships less than one light second from their break-out point. “Firing solution!” shouted VanByrne, hands moving across his console so fast his fingers were a blur.
Brin sat up straight, forcing a calmness he didn’t feel into his voice. “All ships, fire as you bear. Are we near enough for our energy weapons?”
“Yes, sir,” Van Byrne said, eagerness showing in
his every move. Brin shook his head. To be so young again, unaware of the horrors battle could bring.
“Once missiles impact, begin laser fire,” Brin said. “I think we’ve caught them napping, gentlemen. No sign of any weapons on line. I don’t even think their screens… Ah! There we go. Their screens are now up. Seems they noticed us.”
Eight missiles tore through space, two from each destroyer. Flight time was less than five seconds, due to the closeness of the battleships. Enemy screens sprang into being only microseconds before the missiles made impact. All missiles had been aimed at the middle battleship, and its screens were tested to their utmost by simultaneous explosions. Most of the energy was shunted aside, but enough leaked through to blow a gaping hole just below the bridge, killing everyone there as well as badly damaging the primary laser.
Before the Alliance ships could respond, four primary lasers, each ten megajoule in size, ripped through the weakened screens and sliced deeply into the battleship’s bowels. Commodore Jarold died even as he gave the order to attack. Badly wounded, the battleship turned broadside to the attackers and interposed still-functioning shields between it and the destroyers.
Now it was the turn of the battleships. It was too close for missile fire, but perfect range for each of the two undamaged ships to fire their thirty megajoule primary lasers. At that range destroyer’s shields were like tissue paper. Two ships turned into balls of expanding gas.
“Home in on the wounded one,” snarled Captain Brin. “Full speed. Rip through ’em!”
The third destroyer became a floating wreck as laser beams sliced it apart. Captain Brin felt his ship shuddering with multiple hits. Air streamed from its starboard side. By now the rest of the task force should be through the nexus, he thought. Sitting ducks for three battleships. He leaned forward, teeth bared in the stress and fury of combat.
* * *
The flagship Camelot entered normal space, and was greeted with the view of two destroyers exploding before his eyes. “Full battle speed,” snapped Admiral Carver. “Inform task force plan Alpha is in effect.” His eyes narrowed as he watched another destroyer veer to the side, nothing more than a pile of junk. The last one, though—Jesus, it was going to ram!