IronStar

by Hallman, Grant

  “So basically, Ma’am, what they were able to do, is get us from this…” the view shifted and zoomed down onto the planet, closing in on the southern shore of a large lake in the northern hemisphere. Three nearly-parallel brown rivers crossed a mottled green plain and emptied into the lake from the south. Patches of brown and beige dappled the yellow-green land from the narrow cream strip of shoreline and partway up the rivers. As the view reeled down to maximum magnification, the image quality deteriorated into vague blurs.

  “…to this,” the Lieutenant said, as dramatically and proudly as though he had done it all himself. The view cleared somewhat, oval patches of blur turning into long narrow streaks. “err, sorry, Ma’am, Captain, that was before reapplying the transFourier enhancement, ahh, here…” And the view cleared, not to perfection, but quite adequately to resolve the brown patches into squares and rectangles with lines running between them, varicolored fields surrounding the, the city, that was the only word for it. Lucinda’s eyes widened and she felt her jaw just barely stop itself from sagging open.

  “…and this!” And the view swept dizzyingly north, down the rivers and across the plains to the edge of the lake, where another brown patch was revealed as an extension of the first city, or perhaps a separate city. Buildings and streets surrounded an inlet of the lake, on which small shapes could be seen, no, not just shapes, Luce realized as her mind performed a double-take behind her straining eyes. You are looking down on ships in a harbor.

  “Ah, Lieutenant Maurais, what is the scale and resolution we’re looking at right now?”

  “Er, just a moment…” keys tapped, figures danced in the corner of the display, then a grid of fine black lines snapped over the image. “That’s a kilometer grid, there… resolution is about three meters, the largest of those objects on the water are just about forty to fifty meters long. Ma’am.” Lucinda looked across the top of the Lieutenant’s bowed head and locked eyes with her Captain. They stared at one another for a few seconds, minds running down a hundred different tracks. Then they seemed to reach the same point at the same time.

  “Was there any…”

  “There was noth… sorry, Admiral - you were saying?”

  “Was there any word with this mailtube of later data arriving at Trailway? From the Arvida-Yee? When did this mail leave Trailway?”

  “It left three days after we did, Admiral,” Captain DaCosta replied. “…and there was nothing further from Arvida-Yee by that time.” A sanguinary silence filled the space between the officers as they reflected on life, service and mortality. The Admiral’s eyes hardened, and the fine lines around her mouth deepened. A muscle on either side of her jaw bunched and unbunched.

  “Anything else?” she asked quietly. Captain DaCosta replied:

  “We have a few more views of apparent habitation on the planet, Admiral. According to the accompanying written analysis, best estimate is pre-industrial tech - sailing ships and cities but no power production. Certainly nothing making large plumes of smoke or showing up on any EM or neutrino scans, so no power grid and no nuclear power. And there was a cypherpak for you, from Admiral McBain.” At the Captain’s nod, the remaining member of their group, a comm yeoman, opened a sealed wristpack and handed over a standard wafer bearing the black and white stripes of an official NavInt message, and a red-and-gold ‘eyes only’ icon.

  “Let’s see the other images, then I’ll review the Admiral’s message in my quarters. I’ll want a conference tomorrow, flag briefing room, all captains and XO’s. When the task force unTubes for the next nav fix, have our shuttles ready and pass the word for an immediate personnel transfer. I know this is without warning to the captains’ schedules, but I want this meeting soonest. And schedule a return four hours later, and get us back upTube as soon as they’re all on board. I want the task force sub-c as briefly as possible. Continue, Lieutenant Maurais.”

  More images, somewhat blurry: spattered here and there across the same continent, clinging to shorelines and rivers, half a dozen cities from one to six kilometers in size; a score of smaller villages and hamlets, some few connected by - at the very limit of resolution - what might be roads; some obvious agriculture; more ships on the big inland sea, and one vessel barely visible under the edge of cloud cover in the ocean far to the east. A few towns in mountain valleys in between, more possible under the scattered clouds. As far west across the land mass as the ocean and the sunrise terminator, a scatter of obvious habitation. Lucinda felt a small sense of awe. Another home for sentience.

  “Lieutenant, thank you for your assistance. If we’ve seen everything you have to show me, would you please bring up that system schematic again? Thank you, that will be all.”

  At a touch from Lieutenant Maurais, the tank reset to the schematic of the solar system. The small group exchanged salutes and people went about their various duties. Alone for a few minutes in the corner of the dim room, Lucinda stared into the tank as though for answers. What else did you run into, Captain Leitch? And where did you go after you dropped that clever mailtube, and why haven’t we heard from you since? And where are you now, and your ship and crew?

  Fifteen minutes later, Lucinda settled herself at the command desk in her personal quarters, and inserted the data wafer into a reader. After a few formalities, the reader and wafer determined she was indeed Rear Admiral Lucinda Dunning, the intended recipient of the cypherpak’s contents. On the 3V imager, the gruff, slightly shaggy, lean-bulldog face of Admiral Sir Josiah McBain, Chief of Naval Operations, CINC Trailway, looked out at her.

  “Luce, if you’re reading this, I assume you’ve already seen the enhanced scan data from Arvida-Yee’s sensors. I have to tell you, I don’t have a good feeling about this as far as our scout’s fortunes are concerned. I cannot conceive them missing close-up what we were able to reconstruct from their remote scans, and I can even less imagine a Survey captain who found what you’ve just seen, and not notifying us immediately by followup tube. And yes, the ship status report appended to the scan data shows seven mailtubes still inventoried.

  “This new data changes my mind in several ways. One, that system is not a want-to-have any more, it’s a must-have. I’m sending you reinforcements under Rear Admiral Carl Mattison. I believe you two have served together. He’ll be carrying your field promotion to Vice Admiral, don’t let it go to your head…” was that a wink? “…but you’re my line commander on this.

  “I think you’ll like what he’s bringing. Carl is almost as good as you are at squeezing blood from a turnip, and he’s been pretty enthusiastic about supporting you in this. So, when he arrives you’ll have another ‘Wagon, three heavy cruisers and six more destroyers.” Luce’s eyes widened, and she sat back in her chair, mind racing with new alternatives. “You’ll find the details in the attached folder. They should be weighing out in about five days and rendezvous with you just out-system. Meantime, I’m sending you some options.

  “I’m detaching two of our new Impaler-class FTB’s. They’re almost as fast as a Scout and better armed, and the more eyes you have out there, the better. They’re all on patrol at the moment, we’ll turn the next two around as soon as they return tomorrow. They’ll catch up about the day after you get this. We’re also sending three of Carl’s escorts on ahead, they should find you en-route in about another five or six days. I know that thins his screen, but knowing the extra tin cans are on the way, you’ll have the choices I want you to have.

  “Luce, your first reaction was to sprint into this, and I know I opposed it, but now I’m not so sure. That’s why the three destroyers are joining you early - if you want to send some of your own escorts ahead, you'll have replacements before your main force gets there. Your discretion.

  “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to see about getting some pickets deployed. Those Kruss got out there right past us, and I’m damned if I’m going to assume that was the first one, or the only one. If they’re coming through our sector, I will know where.” The Admiral’s gray-gre
en eyes were already on another screen as he spoke, but they swung back to connect with hers, virtual to flesh.

  “Nail this one for me, Admiral. Good hunting, and Godspeed.” The image flickered off. Luce replayed the message, then sat silently absorbing the information in the attachments. The trouble with working for Joe McBain was that he could read her mind with eerie precision. And had just done so. Again. She didn’t know whether to kiss him or run in screaming circles. Three more destroyers sent early. Perfect… and two Fast Torpedo Boats. That would make a big difference in deployment once she arrived, and drastically cut the time to scan the system, and allow much more efficient picket deployment, and…

  The next ship-morning, a sober and slightly harried-looking group of five captains and their executive officers arrived for the meeting Lucinda had ordered. She waited until the last person was seated, then filled the viewtank in the center of the conference table with a view of their destination planet from above its north pole. As she spoke, the view gradually zoomed down towards the lake. The room became very quiet.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, first my apologies for rousting you all out of your routines with no notice today. But as you will see, we have a different situation than any of us expected. This intel arrived with yesterday’s mailtube. Look, you’ll see what I’m talking about.” On the viewtank, the lake, the harbor, and then the sailing ships were just swimming into resolution. A few sharp breaths were audible. The view panned south up the river to the larger city.

  “We can’t tell until we get there, but our best analysis is that we’re looking at a pre-industrial culture, and based on this scan data, we’re assuming until proven otherwise that it’s a human culture. We know the Kruss know about it. We know they had a light cruiser near the system, because Captain Leitch nailed it. We think they have or had something else in-system, because we haven’t heard anything more from our Scout. Which we’re now presuming lost to enemy action.

  “Trailway NavInt has been giving a lot of thought to the implications of a ‘lost colony’ this far out, and the consequences of it becoming a Kruss dependency. Also the possibility that this planet is somehow peopled with Kruss, or a new sapient species. Determining who the actual inhabitants are, how they got there, and whom they may be related to, is not our primary job. Making sure this is not, and does not become a Kruss outpost just outside the Regnum’s back door, is. The strategic consequences of such an outcome would be very …undesirable.” Eyes shifted uncomfortably at the thought, and her ironic understatement. Lucinda could almost see the calculations running behind her Captains’ faces… if we don’t stop this now, others will have to stop it later, and perhaps at a higher price in ships and lives than this entire task force.

  “Our first priority is to get there. We urgently need to know what assets the Kruss have in-system, how long they’ve been on-planet, and whether they’ve made any inroads with the natives. We can now do this with an expendable force, which we know we can replace from reinforcements before our main group arrives, in case it turns out the Kruss are there in force. We should arrive with as much as possible as quickly as possible, and that’s straight line logic to sending our three destroyers ahead at flank speed. We can cut forty-three days off the trip, and still leave Admiral Mattison with a sizeable force for follow-up.”

  “Excuse me, Admiral, did you say ‘leave Admiral Mattison’?”

  “Yes I did, Captain Graham. I plan to travel with the destroyers, with Sandra Wallace aboard the Argosy, in fact.” Uncomfortable shiftings and looks circled the room. “People, look at the options, tell me what I’m missing:

  “One - carrying on as we are, this task force, designated TT1, travelling at the Belleville’s max 1050 cees, will arrive one hundred eleven days after Day Zero, the day we weighed out.

  “Two - if we detach the three destroyers and move ahead today, call that TT2, we will immediately step up to 1725 cee. That’ll put us - the destroyers - on station in another sixty-two days. Adding our six days already en route, that will be day sixty-eight, a full forty-three days early.

  “Three - if we wait for the two FTB’s, they should be here in another day, that delays our arrival one day but with no benefit, because they can catch up to us in TT2 even if we leave now.

  “Four - if we wait for the three tin cans Admiral McBain was nice enough to send forward, that doubles our forces but delays us another six days, at a minimum. And the only benefit is that on arrival we can then deal with any threats six destroyers can handle but three can’t. Which is a pretty narrow threat range, if I remember my Tac classes.” Heads nodded reluctantly around the room.

  “Nothing I’ve thought of beats three destroyers and two FTB’s on station at day sixty-eight. Anyone see a better option, speak up now, or when you think of it, as long as it’s before thirteen hundred hours today.” More thoughtful looks, and more silence.

  “Very well then, here’s how we’ll proceed. I shall transfer my flag to TT2 aboard the Argosy, leaving Belleville in command of TT1 under Captain DaCosta. He will proceed to this point,” the viewtank cleared to a schematic of S22041 and surrounding space, “…about a lightyear, eight hours’ run from the system, and wait for the reinforcements coming under Admiral Mattison, hereby designated TT3. When you rendezvous, you will combine forces under the designation TT1 and place yourself under Mattison’s command. Unless you have good reason to the contrary, you will then immediately come in-system and signal us. While you’re waiting, you will be available to assist TT2 in case we need you. I also want you to maintain sensor watch. You’ll be in a position to intercept gravtrace from Kruss presence a year ago, and if you see them, I want to know. We’ll set up coordinates for ballistic exchange of maildrops, but let’s keep it to a minimum, no point announcing ourselves.

  “When the FTB’s arrive tomorrow or later, send them on ahead, straight to the system. No point having them rendezvous with us unless they’re carrying new intel. They can be in-system in another forty-seven days, call it Day Fifty-one or Fifty-two, sixteen days ahead of us. That will give them time to set up a series of overlapping passive ballistic fly-throughs with sensor drones, and retrieve them from the other side of the system. I don’t want any of our Tubedrives active within 30 light-hours of the primary, except in extreme emergency.

  “They can send a mailtube, and give us updates here and here enroute, and rendezvous with us here if there’s Kruss activity, or here farther in, if the system is clean to sensor scan.” A series of numbered cursors in the tank punctuated Lucinda’s words. “Any questions? Suggestions?” A deafening silence filled the room. Finally Angelo Krepescue, Captain of the destroyer Utterson, spoke:

  “Permission to speak freely, Admiral?”

  “Absolutely, Angelo. And don’t pull any punches. If there’s a problem, this room is the cheapest place to find it.”

  “Ma’am, your analysis of times and distances looks flawless. However we have no idea what we’re running into here, and you are not only dividing your forces, you are placing your task force’s command with the weaker part. Why don’t you let your destroyers do the job? With all due respect, Ma’am, I am uncomfortable with this plan at a gut level. It reminds me of the start of a bad day in the Tac simulators. With respect.”

  “Don’t worry, Angelo, I won’t bite your head off for critiquing this …scheme. If it’s any consolation, you’re being a good deal more tactful than Captain DaCosta was, when I first broached it to him.” Lucinda and her flag captain exchanged rueful nods.

  “You are technically correct, of course, and for all I know, we are walking straight into a beartrap. However there’re a few good reasons to do it anyway. The smaller reason is that the Arvida-Yee’s sensor logs gave no indication of any other gravtracks in the system, even when their drone entered stealthed and ballistic. Plus they got as far as the point where they dropped their mailtube. So whatever’s going on there, at least for those hours, it did not involve any Kruss fleet elements maneuvering in the system.
/>
  “Second and more critically, we have to go in fast precisely because we have no idea what’s going on there. Now that we know the system’s inhabited, and that the Kruss knew it before we did, we can only assume that they’ll be there with as much as they can, as fast as they can. One thing we’ve got going for us, is their extraordinarily long transit times.” Indeed, every officer around the table knew the inexorable math of voyage time from the nearest Kruss outpost - twice the Regnum’s for a Kruss Wolfram-class Patrol Cruiser, and almost three times for one of their much heavier war-fort vessels.

  “We also have no idea what’s been happening on-planet, and no matter how inconvenient the Regnum generally, and the Navy in particular, would find a Kruss presence in that area, we cannot simply run roughshod over natives’ wishes, especially if they’re human natives. The Regnum would be seriously isolated in the greater Civilium, possibly even sanctioned, for any such actions. Which could be as rewarding to the Kruss as keeping the system themselves. So, I can’t ‘let my destroyers do the job’, even though I value their capabilities and have confidence in their skippers, because I don’t know what the job is, and we won’t, until we get there.

  “At least,” said Captain DaCosta, “Can we agree to send those three extra destroyers ahead after you, as soon as they reach us? It would double your forces within five days of arriving in-system.”

  “I thought of that, Alexi, but that leaves TT1 with no screen at all. If I’m in trouble, or worse, with three destroyers, there’s just no point sending in another three five days later. I want the next caller to be the combined force of TT1. It’ll be forty-some days behind, but then you can give them the hell I’d want you to. Comes to that, you can tell Mattison I said so.