Admiral's War Part One

by Wachter, Luke Sky

  “Admiral?” Hammer asked looking over at me sharply.

  “Not now, Captain. I have a few things to say to the enemy—for the record,” I explained, baring my teeth.

  “Channel open, Sir,” Comm. Officer Steiner said.

  Captain Hammer gave me a frustrated look before turning and barking the orders to Brightenbauc.

  I straightened in my chair and glared at the screen. “This is Vice Admiral Jason Montagne of the Confederation Fleet. You are in violation of Sovereign territory and your assembly exceeds the mandatory limits on fleet size for ships operating outside their home province territory. Strike your fusion generators and prepare to be boarded for, may Saint Murphy guard your souls, I most assuredly will not,” I said, speaking in a clipped voice. I then paused and allowed a wild look to enter my eye, deliberately hamming it up for the holo-pick up, “And just on the off-chance that this illegal pirate force of yours is headed by a man known to the galaxy as Arnold Janeski, I’ve got just one thing to say to you: come on out and fight, you backstabbing butcher! Or have you added ‘craven’ to your list of accolades since last we met?”

  I motioned for the Lieutenant to cut the com-channel, and as soon as she’d done so I wiped my expression clean. I quickly resumed the role of competent and self-assured Flag Officer—an act which, truth be told, was becoming decreasingly difficult the longer I practiced it.

  There was silence on the bridge and I could feel the sense of hesitation from our newest Confederation bridge officers and crew.

  “Are you sure that provoking the enemy like that was wise, Admiral?” Hammer asked. “A legal argument against a superior foe, followed by an…off-balanced demand that they come out and fight, along with a direct insult to their potential leader?”

  “I came across as unbalanced?” I asked, feeling quite pleased at her evaluation of my performance. “That’s good. I can only hope they think the same. But,” I frowned, determined to make a point, “as far as provoking the enemy, why exactly should I care? I want to provoke them. I want to make him or her angry; angry people make mistakes. Don’t worry, it’s all part of the plan.”

  “So you do have a plan, other than charging into the middle of a superior force and hoping things go our way when the dice fall?” Hammer remarked sharply.

  I felt a stab of anger. “This is a barren system with no civilian targets to worry about, and it’s not exactly like we’re out here for tea and crumpets, Lieutenant Commander,” I said harshly. “We are here to stop these Reclamationists from conquering yet another key world of this Sector. So yes, personally I hope the enemy commander gets angry. I hope he gets furious and so worked up that he can’t think straight. Enemy officers are much easier to deal with when they are not calm and calculating. And, as I already said, angry people also have a tendency to make genocidal attacks on civilian targets—as the man I referenced has done—but we don’t have to fear that here,” I finished, more than happy to smear Janeski in front of my new crew and at the same time build up the image of a man they wouldn’t like but would actively fear allowing within orbital range of an inhabited world. It would almost certainly make things easier on me not if, but when, the new crew started to have serious concerns about my leadership.

  I mean, I hoped deep down in my heart that this new crew would not attempt to follow the path of their predecessors under my command and not actually turn against me. But if there was one thing I’d learned in my time as a Fleet Commander, it was that hard decisions had to be made and someone was always unhappy with either the results or the method used to get those results. As such, someone else—probably someone they knew and sympathized with deeply—would greatly desire to put a knife in my back or throw me in the brig. Or possibly both.

  As such, it was my duty to make the job of any such would be mutineers as hard as it could possibly be. All of which did nothing to negate the fact that as far as I was concerned Arnold Janeski really was a right blighter on the personal level. This in addition to being an officer who willingly—perhaps even eagerly—slaughtered thousands when he attacked my home world from orbit.

  I finally realized I was being stared at by a furiously red-faced Leonora Hammer.

  “You, Sir, go too far,” she said harshly. “I formally request a private channel.”

  “Do I?” I asked, lifting my eyebrows and activating the private channel. I waited until it was active on both sides before looking at her and nodded, “Feel free to speak your mind.”

  “Tea and crumpets? Acting as if every valid concern that is raised in your presence is only done so because of an inherently timorous nature—if not outright cowardice in the face of the enemy by the officers who raise the issue?!” Hammer ranted. “Blast it, Admiral, you insult me as an Officer, as a woman, and as a citizen of this Confederation when you all but call me a coward and insinuate that I’d rather spend my time with pursuits such as taking tea with the other non-combatant women when we’re still in the middle of a battle! And I’m not the only one you’ve treated this way. Are you purposely trying to alienate the rest of your command team in the middle of a warzone?”

  “Said what you needed to?” I asked strictly.

  “For now,” she replied hotly.

  “Alright then. First off, I’d like to apologize for failing to invite you over for my weekly spot of tea and crumpets. If I had, perhaps this specific issue wouldn’t have come up. I wasn’t aware that taking tea was a gender specific pastime with negative connotations as it pertains to warfare. You see, back on my home world of Capria tea is a gender neutral pastime. As you may have deduced from the fact I take tea even in the height of a battle to help instill confidence in and among the crew, my people have a tradition of maintaining the social amenities—even while under fire. Furthermore—” I continued only to be cut off.

  “Respectfully: blast the tea, Sir,” Hammer cut in, “we don’t have time for a discourse on comparative sociology right now!”

  “Then lock it down and prepare for what you are about receive, Captain,” I snapped and pointed at the screen which clearly showed we were moments away from our attack run.

  “Yes, Sir,” she said in frustration.

  “Are you ready to give a performance that our latest guests inside this star system won’t soon forget, Ms. Blythe?” I asked calmly.

  “Ready to knock their socks off on your command, Sir,” Blythe said the faintest hint of a smile.

  “Tell the Chief Gunner the time is now, and that he is to be grateful for what he is about to receive, Mr. Hart,” I instructed the ship’s Tactical Officer.

  “Done, Sir,” the Senior Lieutenant said, and then added after he’d relayed the message, “and the Chief said to tell you that he loves a target rich environment.”

  “Mr. DuPont, you’ve done this before; I’ll be counting on you to pick the right moment,” I said, reaching down to strap myself in and then take a good hold of the arms of my chair.

  “Not a problem, Admiral. We’ll show this latest batch of pirates why you don’t mess with the MSP!” he replied.

  “Give the order, Comm.!” I exclaimed as it looked like we were almost on top of the enemy battleships. “And tell the Droids to strafe the enemy battleships as they pass and then when they’re free to do whatever they feel like so long as it’s toward the confusion and ruination of our mutual enemy!”

  “Shields up to one hundred and ten percent, Admiral,” Longbottom cried.

  “That’s where it’s supposed to be, Ensign,” Blythe said, projecting the aura of an unnaturally calm oasis in the midst of a stormy sea.

  “Enemy ships have turned to present broadsides and are opening fire!” reported Lieutenant Hart.

  “Admiral, I’m not liking the fluctuations I’m seeing the shield generators and hyper dish; it’s not too late to cancel this and continue on with a standard attack run,” Hammer urged. “Remember that the last ship to use this maneuver almost blew out her shield generators and splattered the crew against the bulkheads whe
n the grav-plates fluctuated,” she added rapidly. “Thank you for that particular bit of morale-building, Captain, but I was there when the last ship used this Maneuver—I even read the after action reports,” I bit out. “We carry on.”

  Looking at the screen, I didn’t remember getting this close to the enemy battleships before activating the Montagne Maneuver. A second after that realization I was sure we’d gone too far.

  “Now, Mr. DuPont!” I barked, unwilling to wait to find out just what exactly he thought he was doing. We were going too far, too fast. Had the Helmsman caught whatever was afflicting the Confederals among us?

  “Just a bit longer,” DuPont said.

  “Blast it, man, I’m giving you an order,” I shouted.

  “Spalding made some adjustments before he—” DuPont started and then slapped a button on his console causing, the ship to lurch beneath us.

  I held onto the arms of my chair and suppressed a yelp as the Royal Rage bucked and writhed underneath us and the lights dimmed.

  “Shield generators are going critical—they can’t take the strain,” shouted Longbottom, while at the same time the Motherships alongside us seemed to move forward increasingly faster. I knew it was only our own pace starting to slow that caused the illusion, but it sure seemed like they began to leap ahead.

  Moments later the Motherships opened fire on the first line of enemy battleships and promptly adjusted course as if to try and move aside from them.

  An elephant jumped on my chest and then grew gorilla arms and tried to tear me out of the chair and break me in two as, for a single instant, the ceiling suddenly became the floor and then went right back to being the ceiling again.

  “We’ve got to shut it off!” shouted Brightenbauc.

  “No! The grav-fluctuations would kill us all,” cried Blythe as the Motherships on the screen started to take more and more fire from the enemy. A trio of turbo-laser beams seemed to punch right through the side of a beleaguered Mothership as the trio of droid-controlled ships made their closest pass to the enemy before starting to pull away.

  “As soon as we have a target, order the Chief Gunner to fire as she bears,” I commanded in an increasingly strangled voice.

  The Tactical officer grabbed his microphone and started relaying my orders while holding on for dear life.

  “Making final adjustment now,” DuPont yelled in an increasingly tense voice.

  ****************************************************

  The image of the upstart little Admiral finally disappeared from the screen.

  “The hubris of those living in this region of space is quite staggering. Wouldn’t you agree, Jenner?” Wessex asked, his face rigid as he wondered if the little brown monkey yapping on the screen had really believed what he had said or had simply done so in an attempt to provoke a response. Well, the cretin would get a response alright—just not the one he had so obviously been attempting to illicit.

  “Communication from Commodore Bruneswitch for the Admiral,” interrupted the Comm. officer, saving Jenner from a response.

  Wessex scowled, “Put it through.”

  “Admiral, I hope that you are about to treat this Spineward cur the way he deserves,” the Commodore said, his face so red he looked practically apoplectic. “Not only have they attacked us from ambush but now they have the temerity to malign the Admiral? Such gall is not to be born lightly!”

  The screen cleared at that. “That was the message, Admiral,” reported the Comm. Officer.

  “Recorded, I see,” Wessex fumed. If Bruneswitch had channeled a mere tithe of that outrage into defending the fleet’s emergence point from these rubes then Wessex wouldn’t have arrived to see half his fleet in ruins! And yet the Commodore continued to speak as if he were not at fault—and, what’s more, he carried on about the Admiral as if there were only one in the Reclamation Fleet.

  Not that the other man was incorrect; Arnold Janeski was the head of the organization and the only one that had the backing of the Senate—or at least the key elements in it that backed the Spineward reclamation plan—but even so! Openly saying such a thing in the hearing of your commanding officer simply wasn’t done.

  “Yes sir,” the Comm. Officer replied.

  “Send a text only message informing the Commodore that I will be sure to treat the upstart the way he deserves, and that I expect his after action report in my inbox one hour after the conclusion of this battle!” he growled.

  “Relaying message, sir,” replied the Officer.

  “Of all the pigheaded, stubborn officers I’ve had to work with…” Wessex cursed under his breath.

  In the middle of venting his anger at not only Bruneswitch, but the entire situation he had arrived to find himself in, he looked up at the screen and his brow quickly furrowed. It seemed that not only did these local Confederation idiots think they could freely insult their betters, but they also failed to understand the reality of the modern battlefield. Their course and speed plainly showed they were now attacking a vastly superior force with an inferior one.

  “What do those fools think they’re doing by charging a superior force? We have the numbers and weight of metal on our side, to say nothing of the tech advantage,” Admiral Wessex shook his head in bewilderment at the screen, “and look, they’re not even trying to slow down.”

  “Even if they’ve heard about our better shields and lasers, they might not believe it,” Jenner pointed out far too rationally. “They probably intend a high-speed pass to do what damage they can and test both our beams and defenses. It’s not a bad call, just not a winning one. With the throw weight so heavily in our favor I don’t know that there is anything better they could try to do. If I were them, I wouldn’t be coming in this fast; I’d at least try to punch a few shots through our shields if possible, even if I couldn’t do any real damage.”

  “First they think that guessing our Fleet Commander’s name and insulting him will in some way cause us to abandon these Sectors to the sort of barbarism, tyranny and suppression of human rights we’ve observed in the other Sectors we’ve reclaimed. Now they attempt to prove their complete and utter ineffectiveness with a high-speed pass doomed to failure—unless failure and an escape past the hyper limit is their intent,” Wessex sneered.

  “If they truly believe they are a Confederation fleet, perhaps they feel it is their duty,” said his Flag Captain.

  “The Confederation has been nothing more than a paper panther for the past three decades,” Wessex scoffed, “anyone who believes otherwise either sits on the Grand Assembly and dreams of days gone past, or is a fool.”

  Looking at the screen the Admiral judged it was about time to open their gun-ports.

  “Message to both squadrons: present sides and shoot those backstabbing rustics out of my skies,” he said coldly. “Start with the Cruisers and finish with those Battleships. A two day furlough to any ship that bags me one of those ships. They might not be in engagement range for very long, but I want them to know the touch of the Servants of Man!”

  In an aside, he turned to the Captain.

  “If they’ll only refrain from running away, we should be able to make short work of them,” he said.

  “Never underestimate the enemy, sir,” Jenner warned mildly. “That said, you’re probably right about a quick run to the hyper limit. Maybe they want to assuage their honor by being able to say they not only hit us hard, but that their battleships exchanged blow for blow with ours before withdrawing?”

  “Who can fathom the mind of such rustics,” Rear Admiral Wessex mocked bitterly. Why had he stopped to dress the ranks of his ships for a controlled short jump? If he hadn’t done it this time, the Battleships would have been the first to arrive on the scene and not the last after all of his lighter ships had been attacked!

  “Certainly not I, Sir,” Jenner replied evenly.

  “Let them have their clash of arms and high-speed pass. We’ll chase them to Hart’s World and route them there at a place they have to
hold. If they continue to run all the way to the local Sector Capitol—this ‘Central’ of theirs—and even so far as all the way around Orion’s Belt if we have to. No one hammers my fleet like this and gets away with it,” Wessex said, his eyes burning and the thought of what the losses his Task Force had taken could do to his career unless he put the finish on these rustics and the ‘Core World’ they were fighting so hard to defend.

  Calling Hart’s World a Core World was like calling the wife of a Senator a member of the Imperial Senate. Such an entity might just possibly be able to affect Senate policy by borrowing the power of another, but did not possess such standing on the entity’s own merits. They were close to such power true, and could effect it but were not yet, if ever, of such a station. In the same fashion it was simple aggrandizement of those out here in the middle of nowhere, with an overinflated sense of self-importance that dared lay claim to Core World status when they clearly fell far short of such.

  “If they’re playing the part of a Confederation Fleet, they might let Hart’s World burn rather than face our righteous and well justified….” Jenner stopped mid-sentence, his head craning around as he turned to look at the screen.

  Wessex started to snap his fingers under the nose of the Flag Captain when Jenner failed to report on whatever it was that had taken his attention. Then the Admiral paused and squinted for himself at the screen depicting the enemy Battleships.

  “Why are the cruisers picking up speed?” he asked with surprise.

  “The cruisers aren’t speeding up; the Battleships are slowing down,” Jenner replied. “But I see no indications they are using their engines to do it.”

  The Admiral frowned and then came back to himself.

  “It doesn’t appear to be a significant speed reduction,” he rolled his eyes, “stay focused on the moment at hand, man. We’re only going to have a short window here.”

  “I apologize, Sir,” Jenner said, appropriately shame-faced.

  “Think nothing of it,” Wessex said with a faint smile, unable to help the small part inside him that was gloating at the line officer’s discomfort. It was nice to see his subordinate lose his composure every once in a while. It helped to make him seem more human.