Chapter 11: The Plans of Admirals and Generals
On Mother, the capital of the Republic of the Stars, Admiral Raytheon, the invasion fleet commander and General Wren, the commander of the invasions ground force met in the war department’s situation room to discuss the invasion of Trena. The secretary of war was sitting in on a war game of the invasion. Something the new secretary of war was demanding. He wanted to see a simulation of the invasion of Trena. In the past when the republic had attempted to attack this world, they had been mauled before they had gotten much pass the system boundaries. He needed to be convinced that their plan could work.
The invasion started off simply enough. Division one of the invasion fleet ghosted into the asteroid belt and went completely silent as the fleet floated with the asteroids towards Trena. The fleet infiltrated the asteroids a few weeks before they fell on Trena. A couple of weeks before the asteroids fell on Trena; they swarmed out of the asteroid field overwhelming the Trena Space Defense Forces, the Thonian Fleet, and the Terran Imperial fleet. Assuming that the foreign fleets would have by this time mostly abandoned Trena, the invasion planners felt that the remaining foreign war ship would be easy prey for the first division. To make sure that the fleets were destroyed, the second division would come out of Faster Than Light on the other side of the fleets and act as the anvil for the first division’s hammer. With the Trenan Defense establishment tied up defending their off world assets, the rest of the invasion fleet enters the Trenan System. They make their landing with some opposition. In less than thirty hours the Republican forces defeat the Trenan Militia and occupy the Trena home world, with the Queen surrendering the kingdom. The whole invasion was marginally successful as far as, Secretary of War was concerned. He saw one big glaring problem, McKay, the capital world’s moon, where the Queen of Trena’s heir resided.
“This looks well planned,” the Secretary replied after watching the result of the latest simulation. “But you need to deal with McKay. You not only have to neutralize McKay’s weapons, which has a great ability to bombard the planet with their standoff weapons, which will impact the invasion and occupation, but even if the Queen surrenders the kingdom, her heir may decide to fight on. You have to do something about McKay, and you can’t destroy it as you will need someplace off Trena as you try to salvage the planet.”
Both flag officers nodded, they agreed with the secretary. They discussed this for a few minutes and broke up. The flag officers went and talked with their covert operations department. They discussed infiltrating McKay, and assassinating Duke Horton, and destroying the weapons that could defeat the occupation of Trena.
The covert action departments of the navy came back with their plan for infiltrating Trena, McKay and a couple off world bases and facilities. When they ran the simulation again, the secretary gave his whole hearted support of the invasion of Trena.
Book 9: Things Move On
Every Last Mother's Child Page 126