Our operations against the FEU and its collaborators are a siege, too. We see our weaknesses. We see their strengths. We must not lose heart. Victory will go to the stubborn. Our victory is certain, the victory of our unyielding will over their unseen weaknesses."
Kapitan Mors (Captain Death), Orders of the Day to the Popular Army, July 4, 2038
LARGE WARSHIP BELLEROPHON
DOCKING PORT 37
CLARKSBURG WARP POINT
November 25, 2174, 11:14 AM FNT
"Bay will open in 20 seconds," the servile announced in Kalinin and Wolverson's earbugs. The two men faced the featureless nickel-plated steel of the 12x12' external service port, each taking a posture that was not quite parade rest. The States of Lincoln Planetary Self-Defense Fleet had consciously rejected the ornate boarding protocols of the monarchist imperialist sail navies of the last millennium, but some guests were certainly more important than others.
The port swept open. Hector Sher-Jin Molitor, dressed in black silk trousers and jacket, a sun-bronze opera cape across his shoulders, strode into the Bellerophon. He was flanked by two members of the Women's Popular Forces, both in vacuum--combat--grade power armour. Following at a discrete distance came of a herd of servots with Molitor's luggage.
"Pyotr! Hector! Good to see both of you!" Warm handclasps with Kalinin and Wolverson followed. "To say it one more time, congratulations on your totally brilliant victory over the Europeans. They had tactical surprise, technical surprise--I never thought I would actually read that a neutron cannon was used as a weapon--but in the end their cleverness availed them not at all, and we won an unprecedented victory."
"That is most kind of you, Senator," Kalinin agreed. "We did win, though I can always wish that the butcher's bill had been a bit smaller.
"Thanks to the two of you, it was not many times as large. Thanks also to Abigail Hyde, who I allow will be at the Task Force dinner tonight?" The two men nodded. "You have not spoiled our surprise, I hope?" The two men shook their heads. Abigail Hyde was now Senior Captain Hyde, her missile barge development program having come to successful fruition, but announcement of her promotion was on the evening's list of events.
"Senator Meyer sent me the list," Kalinin said. "They will be there."
"On to your debriefing then, I allow," Molitor announced. "And while I am confident that word has already gotten around, the Committee does have absolutely complete confidence in your reporting. It's just that so many strange things were seen. They want me to sit here and listen to tone of voice and catch the reactions behind the words."
"Thank you," Kalinin said. "Everyone will be available at your discretion for more private meetings. I should qualify that. The Manzikert Squadron CO, Senior Captain St. James, was seriously injured while transferring his flag to Jerusalem, just as Manzikert blew up, and is still being reconstructed. He will I gather make a full recovery, but at the moment he is being kept asleep."
"Lucky man," Molitor said. "His second in command and crew were less fortunate." Manzikert had been lost with all other hands. Molitor's words about the crew were not quite atonal. "When he recovers, the Antietam Space Guard will I gather be promoting him to Junior Commodore, Third Class. Curiously, the Joint Committee did not concur, leaving us with that rara avis, an officer with two rather different ranks. We will, of course, listen carefully to any protests you wish to raise on this matter, should you as is your prerogative raise any privately. We are entirely aware of the complications that double ranking can create." Molitor pointedly paused.
"I have complete confidence in the Committee's decision," Kalinin announced, "and complete confidence in the privilege of any lower rank to raise the issue privately with the Committee, should they choose to do so." And if you think, Kalinin thought, that I have any complaint, it is that you did not return the man to full time service in the ASG, where his services are undoubtedly vitally needed. For example, he might be effective as a clothes display dummy. However, Manzikert really did lose its Primary Squadron Signals Room early on, and it was then within St. James' prerogative as to whether to stay with one of the three identical backup facilities, or shift flags to a ship that was not being pounded to pieces. But next time, if there is one, I will be much more careful about scanning St. James' Squadron Operation Plans for ratholes into which he might bolt. "The Task Force Intelligence Officer and Chief Scientist await the pleasure of your company."
LARGE WARSHIP BELLEROPHON
DINING HALL C
CLARKSBURG WARP POINT
November 25, 2174, 1:37 PM FNT
Hector Molitor peered around the table. Silver plate and brilliantly painted china, white wherever food would be placed, were in sharp contrast to a white linen tablecloth. He had delicately sampled each of the seven courses Captain Wolverson had provided, enough to confirm that Bellerophon's kitchens were not misfeeding the ship's men and women, but his attention riveted on the presentations. Each of the four men had spoken in turn. A holographic display on the wall opposite each chair insured that graphics could be seen without turning or craning the head. Most of his fellow Senators doubtless viewed this feature as meaning that they could continue to eat while listening to remarks. He viewed it as meaning that he could watch the looks on the audience's faces without being obvious about it.
Doctor Markovian's report came to its precisely phrased closing, ending the presentations. First, Kalinin had described the battle itself. He had not said one word of criticism of the Joint Committee, but had made it glaringly obvious that simply using a ship's captain as Squadron Commander had been unworkable. Some Committee members might miss the point, but Molitor's friends in the AWA could be counted on to take up their clue-by-fours in editorial support. Wolverson's description of Bellerophon's handling in combat had been most interesting. The Fleet had two Large Warships in something resembling battle-ready condition, Monstrator being about a tenth of Bellerophon's mass though much closer to Bellerophon's firepower. Debate about the utility of the conversions still raged. Perhaps someday warships would routinely mass a billion tons, but a hundred trillion or quadrillion dollars needed for one ship was still excessive by Molitor's standards. Debate about testing the conversions adequately even though it was a bit expensive was about to experience the ritual casting of gasoline on the flames. The plasma mains failures probably could not have been predicted computationally, but would have been found with adequate tests. It was not so apparent that resources were available to fix whatever deficiencies were now revealed, but that question could wait.
Molitor decided he was going to invoke the confidential personnel discussion rule and have a private chat with the Committee about El-Rifai. The man was a beautiful teacher, knew American Solar Navy intelligence conclusions to the last jot and tittle, but limited his creativity to presentation. God only knew, the observations Markovian presented gave vast opportunities for creativity, and El-Rifai had not been creative. What in Hades was happening in the unseen extrasolar FEU? Something odd. Fortunately, it definitely appeared that training programs for intelligence officers were about to expand. El-Rifai might be just the right man to lead up the foundation factual courses.
It was Molitor's turn to speak. He had certainly had enough chance to read the draft reports with support material.
"I am not certain where to begin," Molitor said, "there being so much, so-well-presented material here. I believe I see an AWA Prize Competition, namely the one the Grand Commodore proposed: Find a warp point defense against which those sloops made sense as an attack. I certainly have not found one off-hand, but this is a contest in which ignorance of current weapons and doctrine is likely an advantage." He elicited several smiles.
"It seems that we were able to trace the withdrawing FEU ships until they gated again, and therefore we do not need to map an entire star system very carefully to find that system's interesting warp point. One of the Astronomical Institutes is now designing a servile/servot mapping system for Clarksburg, though in light of the failure
of decades of work to give us a warp drive that is as safe as, say, Tsarist Russian roulette, we are not sending people through. We may, however, get ourselves a more distant warning system, albeit an extremely expensive one unless someone wants to put a complex fabber system through to build torpedoes on the far side.
"I believe that the Joint Committee may well take note of issues involved with command structure. I am reminded that, several wars ago, some land combat forces carefully equipped their platoon leaders only with a pistol, on the grounds that the only way to keep an officer from fighting the enemy when he was supposed to be planning how they were to be killed was to eliminate the officer's ability to fight. I understand that Bellerophon has a variety of flaws in its conversion, despite the entirely able work of Captain Wolverson and his crew, but there is a resource competition between fixing ships now deployed and deploying more ships." Wolverson stiffened slightly. Molitor hoped Wolverson would not take criticism of his ship too personally.
"The Joint Committee is most interested in detailed reports on issues relating to ships that were taken out of ordinary. Exact dating of undocumented changes and other related features of ships as deployed will be most important for the Committee to learn. I gather Captain Parlegrecco has a substantially complete automated process for documenting everything, and this process should in my opinion be applied to every ship in a timely way. I believe I anticipate that Senator Meyer will be more to the point on this matter, since the Capital Construction Committee's representations to us about the availability of warships within their storage facilities are of detailed interest.
"I realize you have all been extremely busy, but have any of you had a chance to read the Solar Navy reports? Other than you, Captain Soames, and I am indeed most grateful both that you could be here and that those reports could be forwarded so quickly," Molitor ended his remarks, fastening his gaze first on Markovian.
"At Sol, nothing happened," Markovian said. "We went to high alert, they noticed, and that was that. Or is that your point?"
"There is a forthcoming report," El-Rifai noted, "On the FEU alert sequence, which somewhat lets us sort between local initiative and command from Brussels. This is extremely interesting as it reveals command structure and doctrine, and squadrons with officers who take an initiative, but that report will take a while to complete."
"I shall plead guilty as implied," Wolverson announced. "I have been busy getting my ship fixed. My technical people told me that no additional new weapons were seen at Sol, just the old ones we were already worried about, and I accepted the report."
"I have the highest of respects for your staff," Molitor said. I'd better, he thought to himself, since my Committee appointed them. "Having read the same reports, with less distraction, I agree that your description contains no errors." Kalinin's skyward glance was unmistakable. Molitor turned to Kalinin.
"The report is from the Solar Navy. I should let Senior Captain Soames speak to it. He has presented it to us and to you," Kalinin said.
"I am primarily tasked as an observer," Jubilation Soames said. "The anomalies, the strange ships, were all here. The attack was all here. The Europeans may think we need a year to find out what happens at Lincoln, in which case an FEU attack in the Solar System could be staged without the Solar Navy being warned, so long as the attack happened within the next three or six months. The Solar Navy is at elevated readiness, subject to a discussion between the President and the Federal Senate as to which level of readiness we want. The Solar Navy's alert level has been changed several times. We have finer details about what happens when we act and the FEU reacts. I'm not sure if those details do anything. We're not planning on startling them. Last month's reports on FEU tech in the Solar System are up to date."
Kalinin cleared his throat. "Hector, it is the dog that did not bark, actually the dogs, that are interesting. And the dog that barked for no reason. The Solar Navy went to Red Two when my message reached them. That's instant full alert, notice via Pontefract tube. To a European, we went to full alert everywhere at exactly the same time. Either they know about Tubes, or they are puzzled. The consequent changes in alert level, all also ordered via Tubes at noon New Washington time, may calm them down. They may well conclude that we are running alert drills on a clock basis, using a pre-prepared plan. At some point, some bright girl discovers that we went to alert exactly when they attacked here, and her ears perk up." Kalinin took a sip of coffee. "That's not good. And it's my second point. Solar went to full alert because we were attacked here. The FEU there sat on their backsides. They did ship and squadron alerts locally, sometimes, showing us their brighter commanders. They then did radio alert from Paris to across the system, heads up to what we had already done. That's really bad staff work by them. They weren't on heightened alert at the moment their attack went home here. If we'd responded in Sol with a spasm attack, a poor choice in my book, they'd have been flatfooted. They might think we need a year to pass along the news, but a cautious Commodore would have taken some precautions in case we have the mythical instantaneous communicator. FEU is many things, and cautious is one of them.
"My third point is that the rest of you are exactly right. Solar Navy saw not a trace of new technology. Here they showed jammers, xrasers, 20,000 bevasteinmetz radar, torpedo defenses, fusactors, all sorts of new stuff, but not a trace there. Some wouldn't have shown to the Solar Navy; we didn't get to shooting on Earth. But they went to high alert when we startled them. That new radar is good. Why not at least a few units at Sol, just in case? In any event, the ships we saw were radically different from historical European design practice, and without any prior examples seen other than here. Furthermore, we saw not a new ship but two families of new ship.
"I did find a precedent for those strange ship designs, 250 years ago,” Kalinin continued. “Until, oh, after World War 2, when the Air Force bought new planes, they ordered a high tech version, and a low tech version. So they built the B-29 and the Dominator. And explored the B-52 and the B-60. High-tech cutting edge, low tech for-sure-can-build. Two very different planes for one mission, inside one service force. The FEU floated two entire families of new ships, with no design overlap, and are still building their old ones, which are much inferior to their new ones. Why? What you see at Sol in FEU shipmaking is the opposite, total unity, down to we think one country does the shipbuilding, another seems to train all the Marines, and so on. Their new approach? It makes no sense. I repeat what I said to the Grand Commodore. Out in a small boat at night, every so often the waves change. Suddenly. And you something is there. Something you cannot see or hear. But the waves know. Here and now, the waves have changed, and I do not know why.
"Finally, the Joint Senates spend a great deal of money on intelligence corporations. So do many other people. I understand we cannot intercept FEU operational plans, but I would not have complained at some warning that they had a new warship with 20 times the mass of a Villars, xrasers three or ten times more powerful as anything they ever deployed before, ultrawave radar, and the like. Technical intelligence is not availing us.
"Hector, it is your Committee that gets to tell me what is happening. I hope you do. Soon." Kalinin, his remarks completed, picked up a wine glass.
"I can speak to Intelligence," Soames said. "Corporations differ in their analysis. Almost all raw data is shared. If you ask the fancy uniform of the year in Brussels, you will get the same picture from everyone. If you ask manufacturing capacity, interpretation, that's much more subject to interpretation. It is no secret that at the end of the Incursion both sides did have agents and sleepers on the other side of the border. Screens meant that signals were poor. On their side of the border, all of our people grew old and died, and lacked resources to recruit new people. On our side of the border--the Great Migrations of the Teens and Twenties established the habit that you moved to where you were more comfortable. Most people did, and most Globalists went global outside America when the Incursion was finished. There are still sear
ches but no sign of any active FEU agents within the Republic. I gather IonEU has repeatedly tried to plant people in Africa and elsewhere, and equally regularly they have had to suicide or be terminated to avoid capture. In an omniscient police state, that's hard to avoid. Our border defenses were supposed to prevent secret entry, which makes the Chinese Border events so frightening in many circles.
"For a closing happy thought, this time the FEU deployed one Dracula and a half-dozen Dragon," Kalinin said. "If they had showed up with a hundred million tons of them, instead of ten million tons, we would have had an interesting battle. Too interesting. If there is another battle, and you want me to win, you need to get me very substantial reinforcements. Very soon. And time to train."
SUPREME HEADQUARTERS, STARFLEET EUROPA
PARIS, FRANCE, FEDERAL EUROPEAN UNION
1358 HOURS ET 29 NOVEMBER 2174
"Good afternoon, my Admiral." Captain Villiers was her ever-cheery self.
"Good afternoon, Genevieve," he answered. "We are having an early winter, it seems, though the rain is at least not freezing."
Villiers waited while Rohan stacked his umbrella, separated himself from his raincoat, and scuffed his shoes on the drying pad. "Beyerlein, I fear, is waiting for you," she said. "I did prepare chocolate--with just a little orange brandy--for your return. And I have a modest question." She waited demurely.
"A question?" Rohan asked. "What sort of a question?"
"An oddity for you to explain. It is a matter of a coincidence. There was the evening, 9 days ago, when the Americans went to full alert. All across the Solar System, all at once. And we woke you from a sound sleep, while you were so sadly only sleeping. We said it was a textbook drill. But that was also the last day on which our good friends who disapprove of eating crayfish would talk about their plans for Alpha Centauri. You may, naturally, already have worked through this in far more detail than I could." Villiers said.
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