by Sam Schal
“But?” Watchman prompted, his voice soft, his eyes glinting dangerously.
“Fuercon knows about the invasion. Whether the courier got word out or they found out through their own intelligence network, we don’t know. But they are taking steps to not only keep their home system safe from another attack but to take the fight to the Callusians.”
“We know that there is a taskforce comprised of ships from Fuercon’s Second Fleet that has taken up a defensive picket near the Cassius System,” Boniface said. “Third Fleet has moved closer to Callusian space and joined forces with the Badenberg Confederacy. Unless I miss my guess, they will soon be launching an all-out attack on the Callusian home system.”
Waterman leaned back, his expression thoughtful. Federov and Boniface hadn’t told him anything he didn’t already know or suspect. Still, it would have been nice to have received some good news for a change. This entire operation had seemed cursed from the start. But they were too deep into it now to call it off. If they withdrew their support, both in military advisors and in money, the Callusians would be quick to betray them. Worse, if the Callusians decided to attack, Midlothian would fall. Its military was too small, despite a technological advantage. So they had to at least stay the course. Besides, they would make their own luck. It was how he’d risen to the position he now held and how he’d managed to stay alive as long as he had.
It was time to apply that to their mission.
“Federov, contact our operatives on Fuercon, specifically in the capital. They are to work their contacts and get us all the information they can about what FleetCom is planning. Moreau is to understand that she will be terminated if she fails us again. Make an example of someone she’s been working with, someone she assumes we don’t know about. She’s a good operative but she’s gotten sloppy this mission.
“Boniface, tell our allies that they are to keep the pressure on. Phase Two is to begin just as soon as possible.”
“Understood,” the admiral assured him.
“Then, gentlemen, to success.” Watchman raised his glass in a toast.
“Success!”
Federov and Boniface repeated and downed their drinks. If they also said a quick prayer for protection, that was fine with Watchman. He didn’t care if they were scared as long as they did their jobs. Besides, he knew something they didn’t. Halstrom’s Landing had already been attacked. The Callusians were doing exactly what he wanted. All he had to do was make sure Fuercon didn’t realize what was happening until it was too late.
* * *
The sound of ice cubes clinking against the sides of the crystal high ball glass broke the silence of the apartment. Frowning, not remembering draining the whiskey, Evan Moreau walked across the thick carpet to the bar and reached for the matching crystal decanter. She shouldn’t have a second drink. Or was it the third? Whatever, she didn’t care. Just then, she needed the whiskey even more than she needed to be clear-headed. After all, she had more than an hour before her next appointment. That was more than enough time to have another drink and still pop the necessary pills to counteract the effects of the alcohol.
Unfortunately, an hour wasn’t enough to figure out how to deal with what was bothering her. She wasn’t sure there was enough time in the world to deal with her concerns. All her carefully laid plans seemed to be unravelling. Damn it, she’d known when she first accepted this mission that it was rife with risk. That had been part of its appeal. The other part had been the opportunity to strike back at not only Ashlyn Shaw and her family but at so many of those who had denied her her due. But now, one by one, those she’d had to use in order to carry out her mission were being swept up by either local security or FleetCom. Sooner or later one of them would talk in an attempt to save their own skin. Even though she’d taken precautions to make sure nothing could lead back to her, no plan was foolproof. That meant she had to take precautions, not only to protect herself but to make sure her mission was successfully concluded. If she failed to do the latter, nothing would keep her safe in the long run. Her employers were notorious for their swift and very permanent solutions for those who failed them.
Damn it! She was so close to completing the mission. It wasn’t her fault that the idiot mercs she’d hired to run the attack on the capital had failed miserably. Not only had they failed to take out their targets, they’d managed to let FleetCom recover several of their fighters. The only good thing that happened was that none of the mercs themselves had survived. Most had been killed in the fighting. Others had died “as a result of their injuries.” She had made sure her contact would never be able to broker another deal. So far, his body had yet to be found and, unless she’d lost her touch, it never would be.
Not that it had satisfied her employers. Fortunately, not only were they on another planet, there was also a vast expanse of space between them. She’d not hesitated one moment to point out in her report on the attack that she’d used people they had recommended. She knew that had been all that had kept her alive just as she knew her time was limited and another failure would mean death – or worse.
Now this. Another failure to jeopardize her mission.
Damn it, did she have to do everything herself?
CHAPTER FOUR
ASHLYN REACHED FOR HER MUG as the lights in the conference room came up. From her place at the head of the table, she waited as her companions processed what they had just seen. She had certainly needed a few moments after viewing the vid-feed the first time. Even after reviewing it several times, the contents of the vid still affected her. How could it not, when it presented incontrovertible proof of the sadism of their enemy?
Not that that was anything new.
Looking at the ten men and women seated around the conference table, she saw the same horror and anger – no, the same fury. Anger was much too mild a word. – she had felt when she first watched the vid. It wasn’t as if they’d never witnessed such cruelty from their enemy. Far from it, in fact. Most of them, herself included, had seen it firsthand too many times to count during the previous war.
Previous war.
Ashlyn almost snorted aloud. What a farce. Oh, there had been a truce, on paper at least. But every one of her companions knew different. The fact there had been no formal declaration of war and no major incursion into Fuerconese or allied space meant nothing. The only difference between what had been happening during the truce and a war was that the Callusians had run their operations under the guise of piracy and smuggling. Shipping lines had been disrupted, usually to such an extent that the ships and their crews were never heard from again. Even so, former President Markham had allowed the farce to continue. He’d refused to do anything to protect Fuerconese interests outside the home system, much less that of their allies. That decision had come back to bite all of them.
Not that it surprised Ash any. The previous war had been marked by politicians pushing their own personal agendas, no matter what the cost to those who trusted them to take any and all action necessary to protect Fuercon and her allies. Worse, there had been a few members of the military who had used the war to line their own pockets. That was something Ashlyn knew all too well. Good people, Marines and civilians alike, had died due to greed and incompetence. It very well could have continued had those same politicians and corrupt members of the military hadn’t tried to make scapegoats out of Ash and the surviving members of her unit.
Fortunately, the public, tired of a war the politicians weren’t trying to win, had finally had enough. When the elections came around, Markham and most of his cronies had been voted out of office. The new administration, led by President Derek Harper, had immediately put plans into action to not only free Ash and her people but to clear them of all charges leveled against them.
That had been just the first step in a long-range plan by the president to finally end hostilities with the Callusians once and for all.
After two years in the hellhole on Tarsus, Ash had suddenly found herself back on the planet wher
e she’d been born and where she’d grown up. There had been no explanation and now warning. One day she’d been escorted from her cell and placed on a transport to Fuercon. But Fate was a fickle bitch and she wasn’t about to let Ash’s homecoming be an easy one. Without warning, the Callusians had launched a limited attack on the capital. At the time, FleetCom hadn’t realized the significance of the attack. But now they knew. The vid had confirmed their suspicions. The attack on Fuercon had been a feint, designed to keep the Fuerconese military close to home while the enemy moved into position to attack Cassius Prime.
It was video of that initial attack on Cassius Prime that Ash and her senior advisors had been watching. If anything about the attack could be called good, it was the fact one of Fuercon’s courier ships had entered the Cassius System just moments after the attack had begun. The ship’s commanding officer, Lt. Commander Julia Sykes, had done what she was supposed to do. Instead of ordering her ship to retreat before it could be detected by the Callusian fleet, she’d ordered probes launched. Then she’d instructed her tactical officer to grab as much data on the invaders and their attack as possible. Ash had no doubts Sykes knew it was suicide for her ship to remain in-system. But Sykes and her crew had managed to not only get word back to Fuercon and its allies about the attack but had managed to get the video feed of the invasion, including video of the groundside fighting, and its immediate aftermath back as well.
Unfortunately, it had taken almost two months for the data to get back to Fuercon. Then FleetCom’s intelligence experts had combed over it, trying to glean everything possible from the feed. While the video confirmed their preliminary reports about the invasion, it didn’t tell them what the current situation in the system might be. Not that it would be good, at least not for those living there before the invasion.
“What about the Tarrant, Major?” Adamson asked from down the table. The blonde’s eyes flashed as she studied the final image sent back by the probes Sykes and her crew had dropped.
“All contact with the Tarrant was lost shortly after Lt. Commander Sykes broadcast her warning. FleetCom dispatched ships to the area but search and rescue never happened. By the time we had ships in the area, the Cassius System had been interdicted by the Callusians. Task Force 227 did send a fighter squadron in-system but they were forced to pull out after picking up readings of Callusian LACs as well as a carrier on an intercept course. The task force commander determined, and rightly so, that they needed to exercise caution until reinforcements arrived.”
As she spoke, Ash punched up a new image and waited as it appeared on the holo plot over the table. “Here is the latest intel we have from the system. It is, at best, three weeks old. But you can see that the Callusian fleet holding the system has taken up standard orbital placement. It’s nothing we haven’t seen before.” Another quick command sequence and half a dozen lights appeared on the plot, all shining green.
“The best information we have is that the Callusian attack force was comprised of three destroyers, two heavy destroyers and a single cruiser, along with lighter elements. Orbital defenses were taken down and then they lay siege to the capital. FleetCom is assuming they managed to somehow get someone inside the defense ministry or were able to hack into the defense platforms because they were offline and the capital was being bombarded before an SOS could get out and before ships in a parking orbit could respond or groundside defenses could get online.”
“That has pretty much been the enemy pattern from the beginning.” Ortega commented thoughtfully.
“But?” Ash prompted. She recognized Ortega’s tone of voice. It meant something was bothering her XO and past experience had taught her to pay attention.
“Have the Callusians made any sort of announcement that they’ve liberated the system?”
Good. Ortega had caught it as well. That had been something bothering Ashlyn since she first learned of the invasion. Fortunately, it had been bothering those higher up the chain of command as well, and not just the military chain of command. President Harper had studied the previous war, as well as the events leading up to it. He probably understood how the Callusians operated better than all of the former administration’s military strategists put together. That was fine with Ashlyn. She knew Fuercon and its allies needed politicians who understood the enemy just as they needed military leaders who weren’t afraid to do what was necessary to put an end to the war once and for all.
“They have not and that bothers not only me but FleetCom as well.” She waited, letting that sink in. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a situation where we have a number of unanswered questions. Of those, there are several we have to pay special attention to. First, why did the enemy suddenly attack the Cassius System? Until then, it had apparently been satisfied using the ruse of the cease fire agreement to raid commerce shipping and conduct their slave trade. So what changed?
“The second question is why hasn’t the enemy announced that it has, as Captain Ortega put it, liberated Cassius Prime? The so-called liberation of territories from the hands of the oppressors has been their justification for invasion since before any of us were born. I’ll be honest. The failure to make such a pronouncement now worries me more than the fact that they openly violated the terms of the cease fire agreement. There are too many possible explanations and none of them make me happy.
“Whether the attack on Cassius Prime represents a change in tactical thinking or just something they did for this particular mission I don’t know and that bothers me. For longer than any of us have been alive, the Callusians have followed one basic plan of attack. That’s why it has been relatively easy to defeat them whenever we’ve engaged and have had similar force sizes – and if we had good intelligence.”
She didn’t try to hide the bite in her voice. Every man and woman in the room knew what had happened back on Arterus. They knew the basic details of how she and the rest of her team were set up. They’d been given incomplete intelligence information and had walked into a trap as a result. Worse, once the few survivors made it back to the ship, those responsible had done their best to not only alter the orders Ash had received but had intercepted her communiqués back to her own commanders. O’Brien and Sorkowski had done their best to hide their own illegal activities while setting up Ash and the others.
And it had worked, for a while at least. Not that she could let herself dwell on it just then. There would be time for that later, when the two were finally brought up on charges and made to pay for the deaths of her people.
Ash glanced at her now empty mug and gathered her thoughts before continuing. “The fact that the attack on Cassius Prime followed a different order of battle from before is something we have to assume is a signal of a change in Callusian tactics. Other than the brief attack on the capital, this is the first time they have struck so close to our home system. It is also the first time they have attacked such a close ally, both in distance and in economic and political ties to Fuercon.
“And let’s not forget that they also ran a limited attack on our own capital. We were lucky that it was only a feint, a diversion meant to keep our attention focused on the home system instead of what was happening in neighboring space. They might not have launched a full-scale attack but they managed to plant the seed of doubt into the minds of some of our people. The belief that we would never come under attack here, in our own space, has forever been shattered.
“In a way, that is a good thing because it means home system security will be increased. Our leaders aren’t going to risk a full-scale attack taking place.”
“Is all this leading up to something, Major?” one of the officers down the table drawled.
Ash frowned, her eyes quickly seeking out the speaker. There had been more to the question than simple interest or even the relief to know they might finally get their orders to ship out. While she wouldn’t say anything to the speaker about his attitude just yet, she would make a mental note to discuss it with her staff later.
For a momen
t, Ashlyn didn’t reply. Instead, she remembered the coded message she had received late last night. It had been short and sweet and it had confirmed at least part of what she had suspected after the events of the previous day.
“As I was about to say, FirstBatt has been put on alert. I expect to receive our orders within the next day or two. Until we do, I am not going to speculate on what those orders might be and I expect each of you to follow my example. What I will do is remind you that we are Devil Dogs. We are Fuercon’s elite SpecOps battalion. That means we don’t get the simple missions. So get your people ready for immediate departure. Expect all training to be stepped up. We will be prepared for any eventuality.”
“Any idea what our destination will be, ma’am?” Talbot asked.
“That I can’t say, not yet at any rate, Master Guns.” She held up a hand to forestall the protests she saw forming. “It’s not that I don’t want to. It’s because I can’t. I haven’t been told anything more than to get the battalion ready.”
“Did the brass give you any indication as to whether the entire battalion will be heading out or only part of it, ma’am?” Lt. Aron Mitchell asked.
“Again, I don’t know. I would assume the entire battalion and so should you. Remember, FleetCom, as well as President Harper, is determined to show the Callusians that they will no longer be allowed to run rough shod over this sector of space. So, while we wait for our orders, we prepare. We prepare mentally and we prepare physically. We make sure our equipment is ready and we do what Devil Dogs always do. We protect our homes and our people.”
She waited, giving them time to process what she’d said. Seeing how several of them made quick notations into their datapads, she nodded slightly in approval. Unfortunately, that approval was tempered by the fact that three made no notes. Two were from the same company. The third was the one company CO she didn’t personally know. Reaching for her own datapad, she made a quick note to talk to Ortega and Talbot about the three. But that would have to wait until later, after the briefing was over.