Starfarer's Dream (Kinsella Universe Book 4)

by Gina Marie Wylie

“We went to Snow Dance; I hate to use the phrase ‘We saved the colony’ to describe our sojourn there because we didn’t -- Nihon did all by herself. Donner and Blitzen provided counter battery only, in defense of the colony. Nihon destroyed twelve attacking ships, including some that were huge. You will be glad to know that now Black Rock is armed with eight of the new “blues” -- the new generation lasers -- ourselves.

  “Now, if you would, introduce yourselves.”

  There was the Exec, then Terry Morrison, the Engineering officer, then the Navigation, Sensor, Communications officers. The last department head introduced was Bethany. She simply rose and stated her name and that the only Fleet ship she had previously served on, Starfarer’s Dream.

  When the introductions were finished, Captain Heisenberg added a clarification. “Hastings is the most decorated ship in the Fleet. Second on the list is Nihon. I would like to tell you that Donner and Blitzen were third and fourth -- but they aren’t. The honor of third place goes to Starfarer’s Dream, the ship that Lieutenant Commander Morrison and Lieutenant Booth last served on. You all need to read about Starfarer’s Dream’s history if you haven’t already.

  “It’s true; Nihon has destroyed eighteen capital ships of the enemy and Starfarer’s Dream only four. However, you have to consider that Nihon was armed nearly as we are -- a cruiser, with eight blues. Nihon had six. Starfarer’s Dream was an unarmed cargo hauler and they built their one and only blue from parts with a teenage woman supervising Marines to build and install it in a matter of days.

  “Now, ladies and gentlemen, Rear Admiral Ibn Saud.” Everyone in the room stood as the admiral entered the compartment.

  He was tall and dark, an enormous nose with quite a break. His black eyes flashed when he stood in front of them. He hadn't seemed that fearsome the first time Bethany had met him. Now, he did.

  “I am Ibn Saud. Five months ago, I was a ship commander, smug on my bridge, approaching Medina where I was to be promoted captain.

  “The aliens were there first. We intervened; we saved Medina. We did not save Sulieman, the Fleet Base.” He was silent for a moment, staring in his mind at a picture that still resided on his desk, of his wife and his children -- all of whom had been killed when Sulieman had been destroyed.

  “We are ordered to Tannenbaum. What I am to say, you will not take from this room. Earlier, Captain Heisenberg mentioned Starfarer’s Dream. Dream passed through Tannenbaum, en route to Earth, on Paul Revere. Dream was the second ship in the Federation to go Paul Revere -- it was bravery of the highest water, the greatest sacrifice. That ship did more than kill our enemies -- they assisted in alerting the Federation that we had been attacked.

  “At Tannenbaum they were obstructed and obfuscated; not only by the Port admiral there, but the Fleet Aloft commander as well. They were ordered to divert from Paul Revere, and they were threatened with force if they failed to comply. Force that was unavailable. Another ship, the Java, also on Paul Revere, appeared insystem and Java was also ordered to intercept Starfarer’s Dream by the local commanders; her captain given all sorts of orders that had nothing to do with Paul Revere. Both ships ignored those commands; the civilian government of Tannenbaum ignored the orders of both the Fleet Aloft and Port commanders. Both ship commanders and the local authorities have been tried and vindicated by Special Boards.

  “I have orders from the Federation Council, orders that state that the Fleet Aloft and Port commanders at Tannenbaum violated their oaths; that they obstructed or attempted to obstruct the defense of the human race. This is the new thing they are calling ‘race treason.’ I am ordered there, to execute the two admirals and their staffs.”

  Bethany had been listening, paying attention, but not sure where the admiral was going. The last sentence, while logical, hadn’t been on her mental map of places where the conversation would go. Her world lurched and spun.

  The admiral picked up a piece of paper from the desk in front of him, wadded it up, and tossed it across the room towards a waste receptacle. “No.”

  Bethany’s eyes followed the white ball as it sailed across the room, where it slammed into a bulkhead and rolled across the floor.

  “I am a hard man; a prince, among my people,” the admiral told them. “I do what I must. My wife and my five children died at Sulieman. I harbor not the least forgiveness for that in my soul towards those responsible for that. None.

  “If the orders given at Tannenbaum had been obeyed, countless millions -- perhaps billions -- of additional lives would have been snuffed out. As were lives that meant everything to me. As were lives that meant everything to others.

  “Even so... no. I won’t do this.”

  There was silence in the room.

  “The commanders at Tannenbaum were fools -- simple fools. If we start killing people because they make foolish mistakes it would include all of us. This is not favoritism; this isn’t anything but low justice. The commanders at Tannenbaum will be stripped of all ranks and titles; everyone else loses a grade and henceforth will have the minimum passing grade on their current certificates.

  “There are, undoubtedly, good people amongst those I shall punish. We need those people, as we need all of you.

  “However, there is another, more important problem. The aliens have now struck some fifty-two percent of the systems of the Federation. Within two or three months, that number could well reach a hundred percent. The systems we were not able to defend adequately will be gone. Something like two-thirds of the human race.

  “Then, the only rational course open to the enemy is to start revisiting systems, looking for weakly defended targets, probably with heavier attacks. We think they are short on ships now, but that is only supposition. It would be chilling to learn that the aliens expected this level of casualties and had factored it in. Far more likely, they simply set the wheels in motion, waiting to see the results.

  “Tannenbaum was weakly held. Only one ship acted in the system’s defense and that was a freighter, Starfarer’s Dream. It is Fleet Aloft’s thought that Tannenbaum will be one of the first systems revisited. Until we have any better idea that will be the assumption we will operate under.

  “Aloft Command says that the follow-on attacks won’t start until the basic attacks against all systems have been complete. I don’t know -- their argument is certainly a reasonable one. Except, it isn’t what I would do. So, we will be ready. How ready, in what fashion we will be ready...”

  He gestured to Bethany Booth. “Operations. That’s what this is about. We need the highest quality analysis in operations until further notice.”

  There was silence in the room. “Lieutenant, the meeting is yours.”

  Bethany hadn’t been expecting to be called upon, but the unexpected had happened often enough to her over the last few months so that she simply stood and walked around to stand next to where the admiral and captain were.

  “In case you were wondering, the answer is yes. My battle and command experience is entirely with sims -- kid’s games to some people. Some of you know Kriegspiel and Fleet Command. They are not entirely kid’s games.

  “On the trip to New Texas we experimented with the new Fleet Aloft scenarios that Fleet wanted to work on later this year. Fleet war scenarios.

  “One scenario we did as Black Force was a raid on a Fleet base and planet. In spite of the fact that my father, Kriegspiel Grand Admiral of the Rim Dennis Booth, commanded the defenders, in spite of the fact that we had numerical parity with the defenders... we blew past them and scratched the base -- and burned the planet. Our commander was -- is -- one of the most capable ship commanders in the Federation. He’s my age.”

  There were a few movements, soft stirrings. No one said a thing. “The second scenario, Admiral Booth conducted a raid in turn on our base.” She looked levelly around the room. “His force had been augmented, ours had not. Stalemate anyway.”

  There were mutters, none openly directed at her. “The method we used to defend our base was inade
quate to defend an inhabited system. We simply let them blow out the base, because it would only take a few weeks to build a new one. We saved the warships and all of the base personnel. It sufficed for our purposes, but it is unacceptable in defense of a populated system.

  “I have gone over every single attack the aliens have conducted that we have data on. Where they surprised us and where we surprised them -- looking for patterns, looking for clues.

  “We have too few ships. Blues are in production, and being installed as rapidly as possible. Regrettably, Tannenbaum has no major moon. We will have to get some rocks under fan, and then move them into orbit around the planet. At two light seconds we will need a dozen rocks, preferably two dozen rocks, each armed with hundreds to thousands of blues -- and that is going to take six months, perhaps a year. It had better not be a year -- or they will likely no longer be needed.

  “Starfarer’s Dream left logistics for a Class II base at one of the habitats at Tannenbaum. The manager there has done his job -- that base is in and installed, right down to seven blues, and now they are about a month away from producing their own blues.

  “While we are working up a couple of dozen rocks with blues to defend the planet, we need to put a couple of hundred into wider orbits. I want the aliens to find lasers on every rock they turn over. I want them to have to shoot at every rock in the system, or risk getting zapped when they least expect it.

  “There practically has to be an alien observer someplace in-system. There has to be. They always attack at the best moment: they drop close to ships under fan in the outer system. Looking through a system for a dark base is going to take skill and luck to be successful. And we can’t afford to use a lot of assets to do it either, because even if we find it, even if all we do is confirm what we already know. We will have no way of knowing if there is more than one such outpost.”

  She stopped, looked at the admiral. “Anything more is going to be free association, Admiral.”

  He grinned. “Lieutenant Booth, your brief was disjointed, uncoordinated and not terribly well planned. Not bad for a no-notice task. I am curious, though. You mentioned an earlier analysis of the enemy attacks. You did not mention any results.”

  Bethany shrugged. “I have a full set of the combat reports, as well as the after action reports. Nothing about analysis. I would prefer to confirm my analysis with those done by the Fleet before I speak to the subject. That is why I went to see Admiral Cloud -- I thought he was the most likely officer to have full access to the current thinking.”

  The admiral’s eyes flashed angry. “Lieutenant, either you have an analysis or not. I don’t care what anyone else has -- you are my asset.” There was considerable emphasis on the pronoun.

  Bethany closed her eyes and then started repeating what she’d told Duncan Cloud and how that had led to the insight about detecting ships on High Fan. The room was silent, everyone leaning forward, intent on her words.

  When Bethany finished Admiral Ibn Saud smiled thinly. “Now, that is what I will consider as a minimum standard for analysis, Lieutenant Booth. I’m not sure that anyone else aboard can match it, however. Thank you, Lieutenant.”

  He looked around. “Fleet has established a set of priorities. They have already completed a preliminary design for a detector for ships on High Fan. It works out to a few light seconds. I’m not sure as that counts as good news, but the bulletin also says that it’s preliminary and that we are to use our best people to experiment to add sensitivity. Right now, we could detect a ship approaching the Black Rock on High Fan about fifteen thousandths of a second before they could drop from High Fan on our position.

  “We will install the device, and then we will lift for the shipyard at Grissom base, where we’re going to be painted. Our enemies use radar to detect ships. We will be painted with a radar-absorbent coating, which will also make us more difficult to detect by lidar. That will take a day. In thirty-six hours, the formation will be en route to Tannenbaum. The Fleet wants the news of what happens at Tannebaum abroad as soon as possible, to make it clear that this sort of thing won’t be tolerated.

  II

  The message chime woke Admiral Sergei Larimov. He glared at the screen in frustration, even as he moved to answer the call. There had been too many late night alarms since the war started! Probably he would have to get used to it, he thought idly. He flipped the switch.

  “Admiral, this is Commander Ghosi, the staff duty officer. Sir, a Fleet cruiser has dropped from fans at two light minutes. The flag officer aboard, Rear Admiral Ibn Saud, left this message.”

  The screen blinked and a tall, dark, hawk-beaked man looked out from the screen. “I am Ibn Saud, Prince of Arabia, Rear Admiral of the Fleet. Admirals Sergei Larimov and Benjamin Emmanuel and their staffs shall make themselves available as soon my shuttle lands. My flag navigator says that will be 02:30 local time, 2217, GMT.” The screen flipped back to the staff duty officer.

  Admiral Larimov paused, racking his brain, trying to remember an Admiral Ibn Saud; he couldn’t.

  Sergei spoke to the duty officer, “Please message Admiral Ibn Saud and tell him that it’s the middle of the local night, and that we’ve spent a long day meeting with local authorities about the war effort. Tell him we can meet at 0900 local. Put whatever Greenwich time that would be in the message.”

  The admiral was surprised to see the staff duty officer in the screen stare at him for a moment, followed by a small, contemptuous smile. “By your command, Admiral. I will however, alert Admiral Emmanuel.”

  “You needn’t bother,” Admiral Larimov said with his own grin. “Waking up one of us in the middle of the night was bad enough. I understood the message.”

  Again there was the briefest of pauses, and then the duty officer on the screen shook his head. “I'm sorry, sir. Admiral Ibn Saud directly ordered me to alert both of you.” The screen carrier dropped and Admiral Larimov was staring at a blank screen.

  The admiral walked back to his bed, shaking his head. Since the war had started, it seemed like everyone wanted to be a Monday morning quarterback. He hadn’t had time to sit down on his bed before the screen chimed again. With a muffled curse, he returned. The staff duty officer simply said, “Incoming priority message, eyes only to you, sir.”

  The screen blinked with the same Fleet Admiral as before, this time, obviously not a recording. “Admiral Larimov? This is Rear Admiral Ibn Saud.”

  Admiral Larimov nodded.

  “Sir, you and your officer staff, as well as Admiral Emmanuel and his staff, are requested and required to report to Pine Tree auditorium, no later than 2230 GMT, today. If you or any other officer so requested are not present, I will send Marines to fetch whoever under close arrest.”

  “How dare you!”

  The admiral on the screen nodded to someone not in the view. A second later a page of orders appeared, easy to read as it filled the entire screen. The signature of the Federation President, at the bottom, filled nearly half the screen.

  “Admiral, my orders are direct from President van de Veere and the Federation Council, with concurrence by the Chief of Fleet Operations. You, sir, will have your people at the appointed place, at the appointed time, in the appropriate uniform. As well as yourself.” The screen went black; no staff duty officer this time.

  For the first time, Sergei felt a tremor of fear. “Computer, who is this Admiral Ibn Saud?”

  The blank screen lit, showing a photograph of Admiral Ibn Saud, and a computer-generated voice said in the background, “Downloaded data from cruiser Black Rock reports that Commander Ibn Saud successfully defended the planet Medina with just Black Rock, against a three ship attack on June 2nd. He destroyed two of the aliens. On July 8th, he was promoted captain. On August 2nd, he was recalled to Earth, promoted rear admiral, and has been dispatched as Military Governor, Region 22, which includes Tannenbaum.”

  Admiral Larimov shook his head. A jumped up commander was ordering him around? Like a scruffy child in a schoolyard? A
man who’d had an admiral’s star for less than two months? A man who had a captain’s wavy stripe for less than a month? Why hadn’t he or Benjamin been picked for the post of military governor of the region?

  He screened Benjamin, finding that the other was already awake, pulling on a uniform. “Benjamin, what is this? What do you think is going on?” he asked.

  The other rolled his eyes. “You thought we would get away with it?”

  “Get away with what?” Sergei asked, confused.

  “Starfarer’s Dream. Java.”

  “What do those ships have to do with this uppity, jumped-up commander?”

  The other admiral laughed bitterly. “Oh, I’m sure we’ll find out. Look, I want to spend a little time with my wife and the kids. You might think about how you want to go out.”

  Again Sergei once again found himself staring at a blank screen. How he wanted to go out? What was that crazy fool talking about? Sure, they’d made mistakes at the beginning of the war, but it had been a mistake -- and nothing had come of it! Tannenbaum had been defended! That was what was important! That was all that mattered!

  He told the computer to connect him with his chief of staff. “Harriet, something’s come up. I need everyone at Pine Tree Auditorium, at 0200.”

  The other blinked away sleep. “Sir?”

  “Sorry, some flag officer from Fleet HQ just jumped in from Earth. I told him it could wait until morning, but he’s insisted. 0200, Captain. He has orders from the Federation Council.”

  The other’s jaw worked, but no words came out of her mouth. Then came a primal scream of pain. “You fucking moron! How many times are you going to kill us? You stupid fucking bastard!” She paused, swallowed, obviously controlling her rage. “I’ll see that everyone is there, Admiral.” Her voice for the last was even, but you could still hear her rage, just beneath the surface of her voice. The screen went blank again; she hadn’t waited for dismissal.

  He’d recoiled at her anger and venom, shocked. Harriet Graham might have red hair, but he’d never seen any temper from her at all, before now. A perfect chief of staff, perfect! Never once had he seen her lose her temper, never!