The Fleet 01

by David Drake (ed)

  Agberea sputtered, but passed on the orders quite efficiently.

  Twenty minutes later the last of the Tripean ships, having been pursued half of the way across the solar system by four Fleet scouts, wavered and escaped into FTL. Agberea was grinding his teeth as he reported its departure.

  Abe Meier walked casually over to the communications officer. “Please connect me to the Tripean planetary commander.”

  When the connection was made the Commodore found himself speaking to the first live Tripean he had seen. The trilateral orientation was disconcerting, but not unpleasant. His muscles were knotted and he moved with agitated grace. The creature’s skin shifted colors as he spoke, changing from a flat gray to an ominous black tinged with green.

  “You have no right to be here.” Anger was evident in all nine of the alien’s deep gray eyes. Small flecks of gold speckled the skin over his eyelids. Meier decided he liked the way Tripeans looked.

  “This is Tripean space and you are ordered to depart.” The alien hesitated, awaiting some reaction. Meier continued to silently study the image on the screen. Finally he spoke calmly, still watching the monitor.

  “As you can tell from your sensors all of your ships have fled,” Meier pointed out in patient tones. “In one hour the bombardment vessel Janus will arrive. I must insist you evacuate all personnel from your three main bases by then as we are going to destroy them. The one ship will complete her mission in less than fifteen minutes. At this time we will temporarily depart, allowing your forces to be picked up and returned to a planet where you have a right to be.

  “This may be considered as our response to any invasion of Alliance space.”

  “You have no right,” the Tripean began to protest weakly.

  His skin was now a bright shade of violet.

  “One hour, beginning now,” Meier repeated and then cut off the channel with a satisfying click.

  Turning to Agberea he ordered a single missile to be launched from a scout into a desert area five miles west of where the Tripean commander’s signal had originated. Finding this command more to his liking, the tall combat officer rattled off a series of commands and a brown splotch, visible even from space, quickly appeared on the surface of the planet below.

  It actually took an hour and a half before the Castigator’s sensors showed that all three of the Tripean bases had been cleared. Commodore Meier gave an order and the first of the bombardment vessels accelerated out from behind the planet’s moon.

  “The Tripes are monitoring the vessel on visual and related sensor levels,” the communications officer intoned in what he hoped was a neutral voice. “Shall I jam?”

  “Certainly not,” the Commodore admonished him. ”That would be impolite.”

  Everyone on the bridge suddenly felt the intense need to study the instruments in front of them.

  The Vilhelm Ranier whiplashed through a nearly full orbit at top acceleration and so was traveling at a considerable speed when she launched her missiles at the first of the Tripean bases. Having just fired off over half its total weight, the lightened bombardment ship surged forward and disappeared behind the moon. Out of sight of the planet she jumped immediately to FTL and began the two-day trip to McCauley.

  The planet erupted as dozens of massive plasma charges tore a ten-mile crater along the edge of one of the purple seas. Dust was thrown into the stratosphere, and the sound of the explosions echoed loudly a thousand miles away. To the closest Tripeans, manning a monitoring station thirty miles from the blast, it appeared the entire horizon flashed white and then was filled with smoke. They barely made it to a secure shelter before the shockwave leveled their small dome. Their carefully protected monitoring equipment continued to take readings on all of the Fleet ships as they hovered overhead.

  On board the Castigator every crewman watched the ship’s main monitor. On it was the view from a recon drone hovering near the target sight. In the force of the blast the Tripean base’s walls first crumbled and then shattered into dust. The ground below the base changed from rock to gas too quickly to follow and joined the walls in the upper atmosphere. Metal, where exposed, glinted painfully, even over a monitor, then seemed to melt. The shiny drops boiled away before the reached the charred ground.

  The monitor flashed brighter and then went black. Either the navigator had maneuvered it too close to the blast zone or a wild shot had strayed. Very much a quartermaster, Meier frowned at the waste of equipment. The navigator and the gunner’s mate exchanged guilty glances. Then the navigator had the sense to trip in the shipboard sensors and the screen was filled with Harlan and its moon. A large brown blot was visible along the planers equator.

  A few seconds later a second bombardment ship appeared on the moon’s far side from where the Ranier had disappeared. To the Tripean sensors this was the same ship. The ship’s color and outline were the same and she appeared where the Ranier would have been if she had drifted in safety behind the moon. The second ship’s engine’s electronic signature was identical to the first, even to a desperate need for a tune-up.

  Three minutes later this ship launched a salvo of missiles slightly greater than the first one. These completely obliterated the largest Tripean base on the planet. Lost in the explosion was the planetary commander’s collection of First Empire artwork, including a rare Disney. He allowed himself one minute of personal rage and returned to dispassionately watching the data analysis as it poured in from numerous stations too small to attract the Alliance ship’s attention.

  The second ship, following the same orbit as the first, disappeared behind the moon and also ducked into FTL space.

  The third ship repeated the process exactly, eliminating the last base on Harlan’s World, but then slowed to join the globe of silver and green scouts hovering far behind the moon. Not a single life, Tripean or Alliance, was lost.

  The planetary commander’s report caused a stir on Tripea.

  There had been a good deal of blustering about how defenseless the Alliance was. Now it had struck the first blow. All three advance bases had been completely destroyed. The war faction of the council found this more than embarrassing. The peace faction, primarily the merchants, seized on every detail to frustrate the other side’s future plans. At first the reports were considered exaggerations, particularly in view of the total lack of casualties. Aerial photos showed three craters where the bases had stood.

  Later the data on the bombardment ships was considered to be an error understandably made while under fire. A complete analysis of the telemetry still showed that one ship had somehow launched 150% of its own weight in missiles; reconfirmation was requested. After this was received, the peace party was able to force a cancellation of the imminent attack on McCauley.

  As the debate continued, the peace faction was able to gain a delay in all hostile activities until more could be learned about the forces they were facing. Even the military had to agree with the wisdom of that tactic. It was decided a delegation, supposedly to discuss peace terms and in reality intended to evaluate the Fleet’s potential, was to be sent to McCauley’s World instead. It would be comprised of two intelligence officers and four members of the council, two from each faction.

  A week later, Commodore Meier received the Tripean offer of a high-level meeting on McCauley as if he had been expecting it, which he was. Harlan Kramer exploded at the concept of the intelligence problems this would create. Captain Agberea, getting into the spirit of things, smiled knowingly at the outburst and kept his doubts to himself.

  For the next week Meier busied himself with details. It kept him from wondering if the suspicions of virtually everyone on the base were correct and he was insane. He hoped not, but at times wouldn’t have bet against it. Outwardly he tried very hard to look confident. Occasionally he allowed himself the luxury of muttering vehemently, “tradition,” which was quickly becoming his favorite expletive.

&n
bsp; Three days later Commodore Meier was taken on a personal tour of the building he had designed. The construction officers hung on his every word, hoping for some insight into the purpose of what they had just built. It was referred to by those constructing it as the Fun House. It had taken the total efforts of every construction worker on the base to complete on schedule. Leaving the building, Abe Meier was amused at the reaction of the officers commanding construction when he ordered the walls dirtied and roughened until their shiny new building appeared to have suffered from several years of use and abuse.

  Commodore Meier spent almost all of the next day underground, supervising the completion and capping of the ten tunnels he had ordered dug. That evening he ordered triangles large enough for a cruiser to land in painted on the tarmac, one triangle to stem from the camouflaged manhole at the end of every tunnel. This confused everyone but the marine lieutenant in charge of the base honor guard with whom Meier had spent an hour explaining what he intended. Sworn to secrecy, the marine spent the rest of the week dodging his mates’ questions and chuckling to himself. Finally he took to hanging around the surface craft service area, where he busied himself modifying one of the smaller troop carriers.

  When Commodore Meier ordered every ship on the base to be repainted red, and in a new pattern, he earned himself the nickname among the enlisted men of “the Brush.” For three days they sweated, clinging to scaffolding hanging against the hulls as they scraped and repainted the ships. One scoutship pilot made the mistake of pointing out that it was against tradition for a ship to change colors while under the same command. His lone figure scraping the hundred yard long hull served as an object lesson. No other protests or awkward questions were voiced at the next Monthly Mess.

  When personnel received an order to make a search for one set of identical male triplets among the populations of worlds within a week’s travel time, it was simply done. They turned out, to everyone’s pleasure, to be three very attractive young ladies. They were members of a music act and several of the crewmen recognized them from Omni discs of their performances. The girls arrived the day before the Tripeans, confused as to what they could do, but willing to help.

  Councillor Ar’arnaas was a nervous shade of orange as they approached the enemy planet. More than anyone else in the council he had been the advocate of a quick and decisive attack on the Alliance. Because of this, no one was contesting his claim to act as coordinator in the upcoming war. His council speeches had invariably ended up as exhortations to attack this Alliance base without any further hesitation. Approaching in an unarmed ship the object of SQ much of his venom made him feel vulnerable. Spread out below them was a base large enough to hold ten times their entire fleet. He was relieved to notice barely a dozen ships, all trimmed in red, were visible below.

  “They must be fools to allow us to learn so much about them,” he announced confidently to the other councillors. “They even gave us the option of where to land, in any of the triangles. See how they are already trying to curry our favor.”

  “The ships which destroyed our advanced bases were green and they were in constant communications with unknown forces at the edge of the system,” one of the intelligence officers reminded him dryly. His skin was a neutral gray.

  “So they have two forces, neither is a tenth the size of ours. We can crush them in one attack. The war will be over by Plestinfing Fair,” Ar’anaas insisted.

  If asked in just the right way the councillor would admit he had always been driven by a lifelong need to dominate those around him. If this included a new race called humans, so much the better.

  “And will cost a fortune,” Krener‘n, leader of the peace faction protested. He too was tinted orange with anticipation.

  As they landed, the intelligence officer was busy memorizing the shapes of the hulls for later comparison. No one said anything until the whine of the grave turbines had faded. Rising from their pods, each delegate hurried to be first through the hatch.

  “I suggest we settle our colors,” Ar’arnaas commented loudly as they hurried down the corridor. As leader of the majority faction, he was to be spokesman for the delegation. The Tripean councillor had already noticed that the two intelligence officers had stayed a placid gray. In a few moments all of the politicians matched them and the hatch was opened.

  Two humans stood at the base of the stairs which had extended from the ship. One was recognizable from the recordings of the bombardment. He was the commander of the fleet that had bombarded their bases.

  “Welcome,” Commodore Meier intoned, bowing slightly in the absence of any idea what the proper Tripean protocol might be. The small translator on his collar repeated the words in Tripean.

  “Greetings from the Mighty Empire of the People,” Ar’arnaas answered in his most pompous voice. The humans and Tripeans were of about the same mass, with the humans all taller by a third than their visitors and the Tripeans nearly twice as wide.

  “If you wait for a moment, a suitable Honor Guard will arrive. We were not sure where you would choose to land,” the Commodore explained. “This is Marine Lieutenant Anders.”

  A few seconds later a small ground effect vehicle arrived accompanied by the scream of strained fans. It was completely closed with mirrors for windows and ornately decorated. A reasonable vehicle for a hot climate, the intelligence man decided. They all noted that the craft was large enough to hold only a handful of humans.

  “They insult us with the size of the Honor Guard,” Ar’arnaas murmured under his breath. He was disturbed when the small translator on the humans’ shoulders seemed to repeat his comment, but both men continued to display their teeth in what the councillors had decided must be a sign of approval.

  The vehicle had barely settled to the ground when ten men in dark green uniforms poured out of its single door. They formed a short double line on both sides of the doorway.

  The Tripeans were about to begin walking the long empty distance to the line when a second squad of ten emerged. These were followed quickly by a third ten and then a fourth. The councillors began to shift colors toward pale lavender.

  The aliens’ color grew brighter and redder as men continued to emerge until at least two hundred lined their entire path to the seemingly tiny aircar. A livid purple Ar’arnaas led the group toward the car. It was empty when they entered it and seemed no larger than it appeared from the outside.

  “Telemetry error,” Jard’de, a peace faction councillor and the nephew of the now disgraced planetary commander, commented just loud enough to be heard.

  Ar‘arnaas turned a darker shade of purple, but said nothing. “This vehicle is programmed to travel by itself to ensure your privacy,” the marine lieutenant explained, sticking his head inside the door. “My men will escort you to your quarters.”

  Saluting, he pulled his head back outside of the hatch and it closed silently. A moment later the craft rose to the murmur of fan blades and began to drift very slowly toward a distant building. The Honor Guard, all two hundred and forty marines, marched alongside. Adding to the aliens’ confusion was the panorama of every ship on the field rising silently and disappearing into the cloudless sky. One of the Tripean intelligence officers spoke into a “decoration” on his harness and then looked up.

  “They went FTL a few diameters out,” he advised the councillors. ”Slightly different electronic signatures than any we have on record. Definitely a second force.”

  The six Tripeans felt cramped in the small groundcar. As their color returned to gray, each searched the car but found nothing suspicious. All had tinges of blue when the car finally arrived at a building in a remote corner of the base. Ar’arnaas noted that there was only one other building nearby, a one-story structure with only one entrance. It appeared to be heavily guarded.

  “Blue! Now he wants blue ships. He’s stark raving mad!”

  Gunner’s Mate Simpkins complained loudly as he
scraped the last of the red paint off the hull of the Fleet cruiser Adelaide. A week earlier he had sweated to scrape green off the same surface under the hot McCauley sun and thought no job could be more miserable. He discovered now that he had been wrong. Doing the same job while the ship orbited just beyond the last, frozen member of McCauley’s solar system was an even more undesirable task. The spaceman was stiff and was sore from the effort of working in a spacesuit. Worse yet, he couldn’t scratch the spot on his back that itched and it was three more hours until the end of his shift. His curses grew eloquent and imaginative.

  The normally ground-based repair crews who were busy a few feet away changing a perfectly good atmospheric stabilizer fin for a slightly different one agreed with every syllable. The day before they had switched the latest model of sensor dish for the unit the new one had replaced six months earlier. They were also getting very tired of sleeping in hallways and being resented by the crews of the overcrowded ships. They could not even send messages home as the main turbines of every ship in the fleet were shut down for recalibration.

  The first five days of “peace” talks had so far consisted almost entirely of long-winded speeches by Ar’arnaas. If he had not pacified his own delegation, explaining that he was stalling for time to allow them to study the humans better, it was likely he would have been assassinated by his own side. The human Commodore seemed quite willing to sit patiently and listen to the drivel the councillor spouted.

  The distant blue sun had set and it was nearly dark when Te’eecam, the other War party councillor, burst into the room.

  “Another fleet is landing,” he announced breathlessly.