by Damon Alan
“I know, Eislen.” She paused. “Do you find Eislen to be sufficient when I refer to you? Do you prefer a title as leader of this colony?”
“Eislen is fine. What could I possibly help you with that you cannot take care of?”
“I’ve discovered an anomaly. One that is not related to my mission functions. I am receiving a signal of alien origin from within the Andromeda galaxy.”
“A what?”
“I am receiving a signal, it is like a conversation, but with light in this case. The message is a simple count, and I believe is intended to serve as a locating beacon.”
“So we can get there?” Eislen asked. “Like a lighthouse?”
“Precisely,” Gaia answered. “But we can’t go there. You are an adept, and the Andromeda galaxy is rife with even more gravity waves than the Milky Way. You would be destroyed, as would any adepts in cold sleep if they were awakened.” She paused again. “And possibly even if they are not awakened. I do not know.”
“What can we do then?”
“You can relay the information to Alarin Sur’batti, and he can let Admiral Dayson know what we’ve discovered.”
“I’m still not clear on what we’ve discovered,” Eislen replied. “Are these people sending the message trying to tell us something?”
“Yes,” Gaia replied. “They are saying, we are here, come see us, I believe. Of all the possibilities, that is the highest probability result.”
Eislen nodded. “Then we should waste no time.”
He closed his eyes for a moment, then looked at the nearest spider drone. “It’s done.”
“Then I will return you to sleep.”
Chapter 18 - Planning
27 Jand 15332
Peter was surrounded by the people that mattered most to him.
He was conducting a meeting of minds, one designed to facilitate a raid on Mindari, specifically at two locations. The Alliance shipyard in low orbit, and Strick Isle. They had to be on location and out again, so fast that the Komi Syndicate, whoever they were, couldn’t put up any organized resistance.
The meeting was large. Admiral Dayson. Captain Heinrich. Captain Tulgor, the new captain of the Yascurra. Major Dobornik from the Fyurigan, their lead engineer.
The ground troops were represented by Lieutenant Hamden.
Of course Eris was there, as were Alarin and Emille.
And the two highest ranking Komi defectors.
It was quite the list.
The room was on the middle floor of Eris’s research institute, a large meeting room designed solely for brainstorming. Peter blacked out the windows to keep the ocean view from distracting the attendees.
“Everyone comfortable?” Peter asked.
Nobody complained, so he got to it.
He cleared his throat. “Okay, we are here to plan a raid on Mindari, which is something I never thought I’d be saying. But we will land combat insertion shuttles at Strick Island, as well as convey two boarding shuttles to the shipyard to select and steal the best ships available. Major Dobornik will command that team, he will make the final call on which ships to take. That process should be simple, we use the two marine ship insertion shuttles on the Yascurra to launch boarding pods and make contact with the vessels chosen, then the adept on board the attached pod will contact Emille. The transference to Oasis will be at a predetermined location, where the Entalia, Kurig, and EF-2358 as well as a swarm of fighters will be waiting to demand the surrender of the vessel. Should they fail to comply, they will be disarmed and immobilized. Rather than boarding and risking combat, we will then damage and deny them life support until they surrender.”
Emille asked the first question. “Where will Alarin and I be during all of this?”
“You’ll be on the Stennis, in deep space several hundred AU from Mindari Prime,” Peter answered. “It’s imperative we keep our most powerful warship out of this conflict, we’ll have enough work to do on the recovered ships without adding any more.”
“What types of ships are we prioritizing?” Dobornik asked. “Should we try to acquire an FTL cruiser?”
Peter was glad to see Dobornik questioning the priorities. “If that is a reasonable choice for firepower, by all means. But the FTL capability will be a distant priority on our needs list,” Peter answered. “What we need are heavy cruisers, anti-missile and escort frigates or destroyers, any carriers present, and we could honestly use a large bulk freighter of some kind or another. Or a starliner, although that wouldn’t be part of the 31st Battlegroup parked at the repair yards.”
“Fuelers?” Dobornik pressed.
“That thought hadn’t occurred to me,” Admiral Dayson said, “but my first impression is that a fueler would be useful. We don’t need the fuel for FTL travel, which would free it up for missile payloads. The strategic value of antimatter warheads against the Hive would be quite high.”
“Then we’ll put fueler on the priority list,” Peter agreed. “The situation will be very fluid, Major, you’ll need to make your selections quickly, procrastination will allow time for the station defenders to act against you. Our goal here is zero losses in the starship raid.”
“Got it,” Dobornik said. “I know the ships of this battlegroup. I’ll snare some good ones.”
“Lieutenant Hamden, the ground raid is a different story. We’ll be attacking the ground with two bulk troop shuttles, four grapplers rigged for full ECM/ECCM combat, and 4 combat insertion shuttles. The last are for your troops, each can carry a dozen men and a tank, or sixty men. You’ll have two tanks available. I’ll leave it to you to decide the priorities for allocating armaments for your troops, but Strick Isle could easily have several thousand defenders. The grapplers will be jamming all comms in and out, so they won’t be able to call for reinforcements. But you’ll have surprise on your side, as well as air superiority, which is why you’ll go in before the starship raid. We don’t want to take away any of your advantages.”
“What are our weapons choices?” Hamden asked.
“The grapplers will be fully loaded for ground attack, and we plan to nuke the airport first thing. Ruling the air will let the grapplers hover and use their railguns most effectively,” Peter said.
Hamden looked at the admiral, who nodded her agreement to him. As that subtle exchange happened, Peter realized he wasn’t the only one that thought of her as the matriarch. Everyone wanted her approval, even if somebody else said the plan, in detail, to their face. It didn’t offend him. He understood it. He’d ran the entire plan past her last night.
“Lieutenant, the bulk troop shuttles are to carry the prisoners. If you stack people like cattle, you can probably get four hundred on each.”
“Four hundred each!” Hamden protested, “there might be twenty thousand of our people down there. We’ll never get a second chance to save them.”
“He’s right,” Heinrich said. “We should pick our course of action carefully, how we do this will matter because surprise won’t be on our side to this degree ever again.”
“Do you have another suggestion?” Admiral Dayson asked.
“I’d use the Palino,” Heinrich said. “Sure, it’s big, but what if we create a diversion and draw attention away from Strick until they don’t have time to respond while we’re there?”
“What sort of diversion?” Peter asked.
“We drop a few sensor drones into the system, and wait for them to report on orbital stations over Mindari. With the FTL nukes we have on hand, we hit the defensive stations in unison, or if we don’t have enough FTL nukes, we use the fighters. The EMP will take a lot of the enemy’s sensor infrastructure down since many of the detonations will be inside Mindari’s magnetic field. The Komi will scramble their ships, and send an alert out to the squadrons in system, expecting a system-wide attack.” Heinrich paused to take a breath, but clearly intended to continue, so everyone waited to jump in. “The majority of the squadrons will be sublight like the Kurig’s squadron, so they’ll be a long time
getting anywhere. We nuke Strick’s airport, and the Komi might not even care if they believe that other points in the system are under attack as well. While we’re hitting a few dozen locations in system, we drop the attack squadron dedicated to Strick on top of the atmosphere and let them settle into their mission, then we follow up with the Palino. It descends right into the heart of the prison complex and lands, lowering the ground loading ramps. Prisoners get on board. I bet it could hold twenty-thousand, if, as you say, we stack them like cattle.”
Admiral Dayson laughed. “Sounds like Inez thought you said what’s the plan instead of what sort of diversion, Peter.”
“That’s not without cost,” Eris commented. “Even with the nukes only hitting orbital stations, people will die. Innocent people taking their lifter home from work. Transports will be falling out of the sky.”
“Acceptable losses,” Heinrich said.
Admiral Dayson looked at Heinrich, the laughter gone. She paused before she commented, seemingly ready to override her XO, but then changed her mind and turned back to the group. “Inez is right. There is a bigger picture here. People are going to die, this is war. Sometimes that decision has to be made.”
“With Emille on our side moving our ships without fear of detection, we might always win whether we have surprise or not,” Heinrich affirmed, gesturing toward Peter’s pupil. “But we won’t win if we allow them to coordinate a defense against a known attack. And when we strike, people are going to suffer. If we don’t take down the orbitals, our people die. Some Mindari civilians are a better trade-off, to be honest.”
The room was in stunned silence for several seconds, until Hozz broke in.
“You mean to tell me this primitive is in charge of whatever FTL system it is you’re using?” he asked.
That would have been funny if he wasn’t so disdainful. And, in one sentence, he’d made everyone forget Heinrich’s cold analysis.
“They’re not primitives,” Peter said, his voice echoing his desire to punch Hozz’s face.
Emille stood up, and for a moment it looked like the admiral and Alarin were going to have to keep her from killing Hozz. Instead, the young adept closed her eyes.
Oh, crap, Peter thought.
“What the he—” Adriat Markus said as his chair rose from the ground. It and he floated upward toward the ceiling, then over Hozz’s chair. The Kurig’s former XO gripped the armrests as if that would save him if she dropped him from his floating position.
“Would you like this primitive to show you how heavy your friend is, Mr. Hozz?” Emille asked, her eyes still closed.
Hozz’s skin was almost as white as Emille’s, he was so mortified by what he was seeing. While Markus was less affected, he sat in his chair, eyes closed, mumbling something.
“I asked you a question,” Emille said, her voice unforgiving.
“No,” Hozz answered shakily. “No, I wouldn’t. I’m sorry.”
As Emille sat Markus back down in his former position, Admiral Dayson sighed loudly.
“I had no plans to reveal your abilities to these men anytime soon,” the admiral scolded. “They do not need to know about the adepts.”
“A-a-adepts?” Markus stammered.
“We will explain later,” the admiral responded. “This crap has completely screwed up my meeting. Hozz, the next time you insult my friends, I’ll have you in a cell. Markus, you did nothing wrong, but remember, you’re a guest here.”
Both nodded, a bead of sweat ran down Markus’s forehead.
Admiral Dayson’s head snapped toward the young adept. “Emille, you need to learn some control. I will not have that again.”
Emille’s face flushed with red. It took her a moment to answer, but when she did it was simple and polite. “Of course, Sarah. I apologize.”
Peter was sure that smooth response was at Alarin’s direction. He wasn’t certain Emille wouldn’t be far more likely to kill Hozz than apologize otherwise.
“Okay,” the admiral said, “how many adepts can you bring to the fight who can transfer?”
“Twenty-seven,” Emille answered.
“Excellent.” Sarah gestured toward everyone else. “Since you all screwed this meeting up, here’s the plan. Major Dobornik, your part will go as we just discussed. I trust you to select and recover the best ships in the best repair.”
The major smiled uncomfortably and nodded his agreement.
“Lieutenant Hamden, you will command the ground assault. We will use Captain Heinrich’s plan prior to that, in order to keep you from being shot down. I have one change I’d like to put in place.”
“What’s that?” Peter asked.
“Alarin, I want at least half a dozen of your best military adepts for Hamden’s crew. I can tell you right now that his few tanks and a hundred men are no match for a garrison of several thousand without the kind of help you can bring,” the admiral said to Alarin in answer to Peter.
Hamden looked a bit confused by the admiral’s assessment, but his emotions quickly disappeared.
“This won’t be a problem,” Alarin said. “I’ll talk to Master Edolhirr about bringing some of his best along. Mine are still in the countryside of Zeffult keeping order.”
“However you do it, that’s fine,” she responded. “Get all this together. We strike in exactly thirty days.”
“Why did you show us these plans?” Hozz asked.
Admiral Dayson laughed. “Because you’re coming along, of course. You’ll be my guests and you’ll let me know of any Komi tactics I might not be aware of as this all happens.”
Both men seemed unphased by that, as if they expected it.
“This meeting is over,” the admiral ordered. “And the next one better run a damned sight smoother.”
Everyone stood as she stood, then as she walked out with Alarin and Emille in tow.
Heinrich looked at Hozz after the admiral left.
“You’re an idiot,” she said.
Hozz frowned his displeasure as Peter rolled his eyes.
Admiral Dayson was right. This meeting was a disaster.
But at least they had a plan.
Chapter 19 - Placement
29 Jand 15332
Sarah pushed her way through the floor hatch onto the Stennis’s bridge, then over to her command console.
“Admiral on the bridge,” Heinrich said.
“Mind your stations,” Sarah said as she strapped into her webbing. “Do we have this thing in order?” she asked Heinrich. “After the way we began the planning stage I was starting to wonder if we were going to get it together.”
“Our ships are in place in our hangars, the troops are on the shuttles, the Palino and Yascurra are in formation, Emille’s transfer adepts are where they need to be,” Heinrich answered, her voice unemotional. “We captured enough FTL missiles from the Kurig to execute the assault on Mindari.”
“Well done,” Sarah said, complimenting her. Heinrich really was an efficient XO, if a bit… cold at times. “What’s the count?”
“Five minutes until the transfer,” Algiss answered. “We’ll be at a point I visited a long time ago in a frigate squadron. There is an outer system object nearby, it shouldn’t have moved far since I last saw it.”
“Excellent,” Sarah said.
She looked at Heinrich, who was grinning as she interfaced with her console.
Sarah shrugged. She’d wanted someone competent. She’d gotten it. What Franklin had been for the ground troops, Heinrich was turning out to be for the naval forces. The crew of the Stennis seemed to like her direct command style.
And it was good, because with the price set at the extinction of humanity, failure wasn’t an option.
Sarah, it’s Alarin.
Who did he think she was going to think it was?
I heard that. I was contacted by Eislen. Gaia has awakened him because she has received signals she regards as peculiar.
“In system with them?” Sarah said aloud. She looked around to see i
f anyone noticed, but they must have assumed she was speaking through her earpiece.
No. From the Small Tapestry.
Great. Another complication.
It will wait until we return from this mission, Sarah answered. Tell Eislen, Vander, and Gaia to expect our visit as soon as we can make it.
Why not go when she had time? This wasn’t that moment, of course, but after the battle she could go. Not many people could say they’d gone to another galaxy.
Will do, Alarin replied.
“How long?” Sarah asked.
“One minute… mark,” Algiss answered.
The Stennis hummed as fusion reactors fired up to maximum output. Crews stood at the ready across the ship, from gun crews to damage control to science and engineering. She listened to the air systems, the whoosh of distant valves opening and closing… the clang of airtight doors sealing.
The final ready lights went green on her personal display. Ten seconds before transfer she looked up at Oasis, glowing bright orange on the main screen.
Thank you for sheltering us, she thought to herself before realizing that was superstitious. Alarin better not hear that…
Hear what? he asked.
“By the stars,” she spat out as the ship shifted twenty-thousand light-years.
“Report,” she snapped.
“Passive sensors, no targets,” Harmeen responded. “Large orbital body at two point three million kilometers, zero-eight-one mark one-one-five.”
“Good job, Mister Algiss,” Sarah said. “Decel to match our speed with Mindari and give me an ETA.”
“Seven hours, sir,” Algiss replied. “With our momentum from Oasis, we’re really moving. But we can gently decel into position with your approval, we have time during the first phases of the attack on Mindari.”
“Approved,” Sarah replied. “Decel at your discretion. Mister Harmeen, launch our hounds. Once they report in, we’ll attack. Then, once we match our speed with Mindari, we’ll launch our shuttles,” Sarah ordered. “Do we have anything hostile on the passive sensors?”