"And how does the estimable Fleet Captain fit into this?" Rohan asked.
"She looked at the peculiar photograph of the American soldier in that bathing costume, not for more that a few instants, and announced that the combat bathing costume is impossible," Beyerlein said.
"Impossible?" Rohan asked.
"It would fall off." Beyerlein explained. "For example, if the woman in the photograph exhaled."
"There was so little of it. You would scarcely notice if it fell off," Rohan said. In particular, now that he thought about it, there was not enough of it to create an aura of mystery, nor enough to protect her backside if she sat down in the sand. So why was the young lady wearing it?
"But we had a computer search. Of observed bathing costumes. They vary a great deal. But there is nothing like that." Beyerlein explained, gesturing at the wall display.
"And then she asked us to count sea bathers, now and in years past. We had the counts by type of bathing suit. We only had to total them," Beyerlein said. "So we did. Either Americans are afraid of the water, or the population of the United States has plummeted, especially in the last half-century." A graph appeared on the wall.
"No one has mentioned this before," Rohan said. "I knew their population was falling, but I thought slowly."
"No one noticed before. We are doing more of these. The Fleet Captain has friends interested in the history of popular culture. She persuaded them to study American pop culture. Of course, we are largely limited to satellite pictures with a hundredth-inch resolution, but historians are now hard at work, assembling those pictures into a coherent whole," Beyerlein said. "Also, the Chinese disturbances haven't yet reached the press, but they must, rather soon, or too many questions will be asked. Even so, news that there has been fighting on the American border will inflame the fears of many elsewise sensible Europeans. Stories of the American Plagues remain fresh in too many minds.'
"That is the less serious border skirmishing," Rohan noted, "Or will be soon. Our Gisbures allies have just informed me -- a message at home this morning -- that in a few weeks they will be advancing though the Alpha Centauri warp point. They are sending a force adequate to crush the American defenses. Apparently they intend to follow through with landings against American-held planets."
"The territory is rightfully theirs," said Beyerlein. "One could wish that they were not to get the opportunity to establish such a large base so close to Earth. Is their landing force of an appropriate scale to subdue a population so extravagantly armed as the American?"
"Curiously," Rohan said, "Admiral T'renrensen did not ask me if the Americans follow the usual rational social compacts on private ownership of arms, and I neglected to correct his thinking with respect to a topic about which he did not reveal his thoughts, but on which he undoubtedly made the obvious assumptions. Of course, if the Gisbures manage to lose their ground battle, and must ask us for ground support, why that puts an entirely different perspective on basing rights in the Centauri system, doesn’t it?"
Chapter 21
"....No State shall, without consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with any State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay..."
The Constitution of the United States, Article I, Section 10 [Citizen's Handbook, 2172 Edition, Lumina Press of Beta Virginis, bold face added by publisher]
"The Imminent Danger clause is among the most important of the Constitution. Under conditions of modern warfare, it is difficult to conceive of circumstances in which a State would not confront multiple imminent dangers that would not admit of delay. Therefore, applying to the Imminent Danger clause the same expansive interpretation that was historically applied to the now-moribund Interstate Commerce Clause, it is now almost universally agreed that States may freely invoke their powers under the Imminent Danger clause."
Theodore Gilbert, Principles of Constitutional Law, Beacon Hill-Harvard School of Law Press, 2096
LARGE WARSHIP BELLEROPHON
MAIN BRIEFING ROOM
CLARKSBURG WARP POINT
November 10, 2174, 10:00 AM LST
The Commander’s Bell tolled three times. "Good morning," Kalinin said. "I allow you’ve had adequate time to do something you would otherwise not have time to do, namely eat, courtesy of Captain Wolverson and his most excellent servots. You have also had a chance to think about the questions that I have raised. We need to consider our circumstances. To do that, we take into account strategy and tactics. Strategy first." He turned to Josephine Wilmot, whose Lincoln War College lectures drew rave reviews and large sales across America.
"There are four plausible attack axes," Wilmot said. "They can go for broke -- attack Lincoln. They could grab bunkerage; Harding is their best target. Other outer planets are way out; atmospheres are frozen. That's bad for refueling. They may try an industrial raid -- wreck Coolidge. Finally, they might run through our other warp points and look for a way home. That's the dangerous move; if it works, we have to picket several warp points at the same time. Our forces would be divided. We're reasonably sure the original d'Enghien expedition did not map warp points. If we're lucky, they exit via the Porcupine warp point. The other end appears to be the core of a star. Is there any new discussion?"
Senior Captain Herbert Parlegrecco, his Flag newly transferred to the CA Hattin, gestured and waited for recognition. Wilmot nodded politely, not quite gritting her teeth. Parlegrecco had a talent for identifying unexpected unpleasant-for-Lincoln consequences of odd strategies. What would it be this time? "The FEU might attack in waves," he noted, "for timing or logistics or whatever reasons. First fleet through withdraws to the outer system, or even Centauri B, lurks, plays fleet in being games. When time comes for their next fleet to pass the warp point, the first fleet plays missile barge, doing fast inboard runs at four thousand miles per second. Our defenses tolerate this better than theirs, we think, but it's a threat. And they rebunker in Centauri B, daring us to move off-center to stop them. A weak American force can't. Sending a strong American force to pursue divides us. They can then play in-system raider while we're the slower ships." The other officers looked at their neighbors. Once again Parlegrecco had found a strategem that left American plans in disarray.
Wilmot looked thoughtfully at Parlegrecco. "I will want to see your analyses," she answered. And I wish you would speak up sooner, rather than trying to score debating points on me, thought Wilmot, though your records will undoubtedly prove you cooked up this approach at dawn today. "Superficially, the best response appears to be destroying the FEU forces at the warp point. We're already deployed to stop isolated raiders for precisely this reason. However, unless there are multiple attack waves, this strategy isolates their forces. So long as we hold the warp point, this strategy poses to them a severe logistical challenge, namely we block their supply line." Wilmot waited for other remarks.
"But which strategy do we expect them to use?" Captain Jane Duty Henderson's golden soprano came clearly from the back of the room. Kalinin smiled in her direction. At 56, Henderson was the youngest and most demanding of his squadron commanders; Second Kabul's squadron was the sharpest in the fleet. Junior officers who expected that her short, heavyset frame connoted a lack of energy, and that her schoolgirl smile connoted a tolerance for their failings, very rapidly learned the errors of their ways.
Pedro El-Rifai stood, his tall, almost pudgy frame and rounded face dominating his corner of the room. "I believe that's next on the presentation," he announced. "Both on capabilities and on likely plans."
"Unfortunately," Rifai continued, "real information on capabilities is limited. A reasonable starter is that they have 2% of our GNP, take half in taxes, perhaps face higher costs, and therefore can field 300 million tons a year of ships, including 500 or so DeGaulle and Villars classes each year. Visible construction effort is a tenth of that. We actually
see closer to 30 million tons a year being completed, though in the last few years that number has fallen, to be replaced by a new class -- their FEU designation is unknown -- with estimated hullweight of one million tons. We think none of these have yet been completed. Their Sol construction is mostly in Earth and Mars orbit. We regularly get image data. Their construction efforts are, let us say, lackadaisical.
"We have no good data on how long they retain ships in service. For several decades, we've observed a large number of hulls being towed back for major repairs. The repair effort uses a large part of their construction facilities. It is supposed that FEU hyperdrives blow with considerable regularity, just as ours do, but they have found a way to limit the damage to 'put big holes in ship' rather than 'ship disappears without a trace'. We don't know why they've started having this problem, which was not observed prior to 2140. We don't know why the holes aren't in consistent places; perhaps the ship designs are more individualized than we thought.
"We can often identify individual ships. We rarely see ships more than 30-40 years old. We don't know if they're scrapped, used for long-range exploration, or totally rebuilt. We don't see many ships that we didn't watch being built. Their outsystem production is unknown and never comes home. Well, it never came home until recently. In the past two decades, there has been a marked reduction in FEU warships in Sol system. Previously they kept most ships in system. Now under 10% of production remains in system. The disposition of the remainder is unknown.
"The FEU fleet that we have seen includes 1500 DeGaulle and Villars classes, tonnage of other classes being about twice the mass, for a total of 800 million tons of ship. That's the iceberg's tip; the total FEU fleet is believed to mass 6 billion tons, about one-tenth the mass of the American Solar Navy and its support forces. Alas, we have in-system only the Lincoln Fleet, a large part of which is not yet mobilized, which can deploy at most 12 billion tons. If the FEU concentrates its entire forces against us, either the Federal Senate invokes the Shell Option or we have at best a 2-l hullweight advantage. I need not emphasize that at 2-1 advantage in hullweight our position is extremely tenuous.
"The FEU has recently made outrageous territorial demands against our Republic. Those plans were backed by a threat of force that used most of the visible FEU fleet. They must have spent a year preparing for the threatened attack on North America. Whatever they do against us starts flatfooted, because they didn't know we were here.
"In my opinion, if hostilities arise the bulk of the visible FEU fleet will engage at Sol. We will face a moderate fraction of the remainder, some tens of millions of tons of ship, plus whatever is below the iceberg's waterline. At this time, not counting Bellerophon, an FEU attack through Clarksburg will have mass parity. Either Bellerophon works -- as we hope -- or Task Force Clarksburg is tasked with channelizing the enemy attack, forcing them to reveal their objectives, but not with stopping them." The assembled Captains and Vice Commodores shifted uncomfortably. None of this was new information, but the reminder of the difficulty of the current situation was unsettling. El-Rifai's calm negativism was more compelling than ever.
"Based on experience at Charon, and observations of FEU fleet exercises, we expect their operations against any world will be in two parts, namely neutralizing or destroying our warships and orbital defenses, followed by penetration of our atmospheric defenses and large scale troop landings to root out ground defenses. We do not believe the FEU can deploy adequate ship-based firepower to neutralize the planetary defense screens on Lincoln, Markoff, or Coolidge over more than a small area. The situation for Versailles is less clear. Other locations are vulnerable if the FEU gains fleet superiority. We believe the FEU has painful memories of the Ceres Clash. We expect raiding efforts to concentrate against shipping and orbital facilities and ignore all but the smallest planetary and asteroidal units.
"With respect to technology, there have been no significant changes in the situation -- other than those revealed here -- in the last year. Individual FEU units are expected to maintain a substantial qualitative superiority over matching American units in every respect. The FEU had complete technical surprise in deploying the Chimera and related classes, TrillaSteinmetz radar, and boron cycle fusactors. They may well have additional surprises waiting for us." El-Rifai returned to his seat, wondering what his job had been like in previous centuries, back when you actually could know something about enemy intentions.
"Additional remarks not covered in pre-meeting messages?" Kalinin asked. Sometimes people did have new, good ideas. Prior rehearsals had made clear that rehashes of prior statements, unless extremely strongly felt, went over very poorly with the Fleet Commander. "In that case, we move to the plan we've already prepared. Let's take a few moments to look first."
A new set of images appeared on the holodisplay. The core of the warp point was a slightly prolate ellipsoid 10,000 leagues, slightly more than 30,000 miles, in radius. An outer shell 20,000 leagues thick wrapped around the warp point, marking a region in which ships could perhaps enter or leave, at least if their crews were not too worried about disappearing forever. Points of light at display apexes marked the stellar cardinal directions: sunwards and starwards, north and south perpendicular to the Lincoln orbital plane, and east and west tangent to a circular solar orbit, west being the direction of Lincoln's motion.
Violet points marked Lincoln PSDF ships. Sixteen armored cruisers, the Hattin and Manzikert squadrons, hovered in two distorted cubes, englobing the northwards and southwards halves of the warp core. Typical ship-to ship distances were near 20,000 leagues. Two squadrons of monitors in tight cubes lay perhaps 15,000 leagues east and west from the warp center. The cubes were the 'fighting boxes' beloved of the Senate War Committee. The FEU was believed to be fond of closing to missile range and using superior acceleration to withdraw. Ships in a tight formation -- a modest fraction of a light-second across -- were much more effective at coordinating defensive fires than ships more widely spaced.
Backing the forces at the warp point were substantial reserves. 120,000 leagues to sunwards, roughly on axes towards Lincoln and Harding, were the Second Kabul and Mogadishu and their accompanying armored cruiser squadrons, supported by a third squadron of monitors. Isandhlwana was back at Lincoln, selected to be Flag for another armored cruiser squadron now forming up. Midway between the Second Kabul and Mogadishu, two demi-squadrons of battlecruisers led by the New York hovered above and below the plane of the ecliptic. If the warp point was the base of a shallow cone, the battleships and reserve armored cruiser squadrons being the sides, the apex was occupied by the Bellerophon. A trio of electronic warfare cruisers parked in front of the Bellerophon, tasked to screen Bellerophon from hostile view.
A lattice of tiny points across the warp point marked observation buoys, carefully masked from detection. Another dozen points spread well away from the warp point were reconnaissance cruisers, passivated, waiting to track an FEU breakthrough that did not advance on its expected axes. Missile barges off-screen were represented by direction cursors.
"We all see the picture," Kalinin said. "We have on-point squadrons to quash any small incursions. We have very large reserves to deal with a major attack. One could properly say that reserves do not usually make sense in naval engagements. However, one can anticipate the possibility of a FEU attack in such numbers that any force on-point would very likely be destroyed. There is also the hypothetical possibility of an FEU weapon that destroys any forces we deploy in the immediate proximity of the warp point. It remains true that the Joint War Committee is seriously concerned, sufficiently so that they have debated orders that would cause us to withdraw from the point, and make our stand at Markoff, Lincoln, and Coolidge. We remain here. Each squadron has already received and drilled through its orders. We are ready to proceed with the allowed variations on our basic plan.
"Recalling that the enemy does not always co-operate with our plans to kill them -- that's why they're called 'the enemy' -- I will now review w
ithdrawal and regrouping," said Kalinin. He rose and marched to the side of the main display. "I get to give the unhappy side of our plans. Withdrawal is anticipated under three conditions, namely one the FEU shows up with so much force that we roach out, two the FEU shows up someplace else in the system and we are off-center, and three we are losing and reposition in-system to the fixed defenses.
"Case One: Overwhelming force would require -- counting Bellerophon with us -- a half-billion plus tons of FEU warships. That would be 1500 Villars battleships and matching supports. That's almost their whole visible fleet -- or a tenth of their total fleet counting these ships we never see. While they are attacking us, Grand Commodore Jacobsen will be pounding them flat in Sol system. Besides, they have set up to attack Sol. Switching balance to attack here takes time. We don't expect case one," Kalinin said.
"Case Two: We have current data for all warp points except Porcupine -- which we think is impassable -- and Clarksburg. There's no FEU fleet beyond them. We see nothing incoming in real space from Sol or elsewhere. Hypermapping continues to find no new warp points. Ergo, 'someplace else' will be a total surprise. We don't expect case two.
"On three, we've lost battles before. If the Bellerophon conversion disappoints, and our special weapons lose to their special weapons, we may need to withdraw." Kalinin noted Wolverson's wince at the suggestion that his Bellerophon would not cut the mustard in battle. "Recall the operative issues. They have bunkerage limits; best estimate is a typical 20,000 mile-seconds for realspace drives. Their shields and weapons draw on the same fuel. We mostly don't have bunkerage issues. We think their rapidity drives are slower than ours. We think it's risky for either side to use rapidity drive in-system in combat, except for a rout, where it's moderately risky. We exploit these differences by IDing their axis of attack. We withdraw perpendicular to it, especially out of the ecliptic plane. We reinforce the point under attack.
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