by Dietmar Wehr
Romanov looked skeptical. “I don’t know, General. Convincing troops that we have to attack Earth to save the people from the corruption and incompetence of the Federation leadership is one thing, but for the false-flag raid to look believable, our troops are going to have to fire on loyal Federation citizens. I don’t know if they’re willing to do that. I’m not sure I could.”
Trojan shook his head. “I’m not worried about that at all. My Elite Guards will do it if I tell them to. All you have to do is escort their transports to the target planet and make sure they can land safely. Will you do that?”
Romanov closed his eyes and sighed. “Yes…I’ll do that, General.”
Trojan walked over to Romanov and put his right hand on Romanov’s shoulder. “We knew we’d very likely have to do something like this, but it’ll save billions of lives down the road. Just keep that in mind.”
Romanov opened his eyes and nodded. Maybe he could keep fatalities down to a minimum. At the very least he would make it clear to the Guard Commander that his troops were not to kill children. That resolution did not make him feel any better. Damn the Union for proposing a cease fire!
Day 288/2548
Romanov entered Trojan’s office and sat down in the chair opposite his boss’s desk. “I hear another courier arrived from Earth,” said Romanov.
Trojan looked up and nodded. “The Chiefs of Staff are keeping me informed of the ‘progress’ that’s being made in the negotiations. Apparently our side had put forward a proposal for a new peace treaty, and the Union negotiator’s reaction was cautiously optimistic, whatever the hell that means. He told our people that he would send it back to Sparta for consideration by the SSU leadership but cautioned that a reply might take as long as five or six months if consultation with other SSU member Heads of State are required. HQ’s so-called experts are interpreting this as a sign that an agreement may be close, so I think it’s time that we executed Operation Backstep.”
Romanov sighed. He’d been hoping that a false flag attack on Federation citizens wouldn’t be necessary. “Has Majestic picked a target yet?” he asked.
“Yes, and a very interesting one too. It’s a relatively small colony, only about a million people. The planet’s called Midgard. Here’s why I consider it an interesting choice. Apparently investors on Earth have put up billions of credits to build an impressive mining, refining, manufacturing and shipbuilding complex on Midgard’s moon, which seems to be almost as rich in industrial metals as Makassar is. This complex has been in operation for over a year and a half. The fact that its eventual goal is to support First Fleet/Army Force makes it a legitimate target for the SSU. It gives us the perfect excuse to conduct Backstep. The population is small enough that 5,000 Guard infantry supported by a couple of tank companies should have no trouble creating havoc there. The first stealthy cruiser, Undaunted, will be ready for her shakedown cruise in a week. Let’s combine those two missions into one. You take Undaunted plus two light cruisers and two troop transports to the Midgard system. I want that shipyard complex on Midgard’s moon smashed, along with any partially completed ships. Then you make sure my troops land safely, and you let them do their thing. When the Guard Commander says they’re done, you bring them back here. Any questions, Commodore?”
Romanov thought fast. He knew from past experience that you had to take just the right tone with the General if you wanted him to be open-minded about something. “May I ask what limits, if any, the troops will be given in terms of how they behave towards the civilians?”
Trojan leaned back. He suspected he knew what Romanov was leading up to. “The whole purpose of Operation Backstep is to generate outrage back on Earth. The worse the attacking troops behave, the greater the outrage. I’m inclined to give my Guard Unit a blank check on this one. Do you have a problem with that, Commodore?”
“I would just point out that I think massive destruction of property with modest casualties that could be described as collateral damage would probably still generate sufficient outrage. If we tell those troops that the normal rules regarding treatment of civilians don’t apply here, how much more difficult will it be to rein them in later when we use them to conquer Earth and the other Core planets? That’s one concern I have. The other concern is our…yours and mine…legacy. Nobody blames a military leader if a few of his troops behave badly. Even the best military units usually have a few rotten apples, but it’ll be very hard for historians to overlook the fact that we arranged for a whole division of supposed elite troops to deliberately commit atrocities on a mass scale, even if we save billions of others from centuries of anarchy and chaos. All other things being equal, I’d rather not go down in history as the Butcher of Midgard, General.”
Trojan didn’t respond right away. He was disappointed by Romanov’s attack of conscience. He himself had long ago accepted that he had to give terrible orders, ones he normally would not even consider giving, in order to achieve the long term salvation of Humanity, regardless of what the verdict of historians would be. But maybe there was a less…vicious path that would still get him to where he wanted to be.
“I’m willing to consider some limitations on the troops’ behaviour. What did you have in mind, Commodore?”
Romanov relaxed just a little. “No rape, no deliberate killing of children.”
After a slight pause, Trojan nodded. “Okay, I’ll agree to that but only because of your first argument. If troops get a taste of that kind of thing, they’re more likely to do it again later, even if I order them not to, and when we attack Earth, I WILL care about treatment of civilians. Is your conscience satisfied now, Commodore Romanov?”
Romanov wanted to say no. But he felt certain that if he asked for more, he’d be pushing his luck. At least I tried, he thought to himself. “Yes, General.”
Trojan smiled. “Fine. I’m glad we got that cleared up. Make the necessary preparations for your ships, and I’ll take care of getting the troops ready. You’re dismissed, Commodore.”
Chapter Seventeen:
Day 290/2548
Drake walked into Janicot’s office and stood at attention in front of the CSO’s desk. Janicot looked up from his data tablet and said, “Stand easy, Commodore. I’m not going to offer you a chair, because this will be a very short meeting. What’s the status of your five light carriers?”
“Lexington is on her shakedown cruise now, Admiral. The other four are ready for operational missions. Lexington should be back within 72 hours.”
“Good. When she gets back, I want you to prepare all five to carry 60 boats to Durendal shipyard for transfer to Coral Sea and Midway. You’ll also be carrying the crews for all five heavy carriers, so it’ll be a little crowded. Your orders are to deliver the crews to their new ships and then to conduct training exercises with the first two carriers somewhere in that star system far enough from Midgard that the locals won’t see you. Your carriers will take alternate aggressor and defender roles with half the boats. The other half go to Coral Sea and Midway. All five carrier crews will take turns operating the first two carriers during the training. When the other three carriers are ready, you leave all the boats there and bring your light carriers back here. Commodore Palmgren will be in command of the heavy carrier force, and he’ll have his own orders. As far as the training goes, he’s in overall command, so I expect you to co-operate.”
“Yessir.” Drake tried to hide his disappointment. He had let Janicot know that he would gladly trade his Commodore’s rank for command of one of the new heavy carriers, but the Old Man had apparently decided to reject his request.
Janicot leaned back and said, “I know you asked for a heavy carrier command. I rejected your request but not because of any doubts about your command ability. Just the opposite in fact. I think your combat experience makes you too valuable to be a mere ship CO. I’m now convinced that you can make a greater contribution to the war effort as a flag officer. Up to now your rank has been temporary. I’m now making it permanent.”
“Thank you, sir. The only thing better than commanding a heavy carrier is commanding more than one of them at the same time. I still have hopes of doing that someday.”
“I’d think there was something wrong with you if you didn’t feel that way, but I hope you understand that I can’t promise you anything. We’ll just have to wait and see how things go.”
“Yessir, I do understand that,” said Drake.
“Fine, then we’re done here, and you’re dismissed, Commodore.”
Day 005/2549
Romanov frowned as he checked the 3D tactical display, which had just updated itself after the Task Force emerged from its final micro-jump. He was puzzled by the fact that there were military-grade radar emissions coming from Midgard’s moon. His Task Force was too far away to be detected, but that was beside the point. The shipyard complex on the moon was a privately-owned, commercial venture. How the hell had it gotten its hands on military-grade radar equipment, and why would it need it? He noticed that the radar pulses were reflecting off five objects clustered together in a high orbit around the moon. A quick check confirmed two things. Those objects were high enough to be in a stationary orbit so that they were always above the same spot on the moon, and they seemed to be rather large.
“Can we tell what those five objects are yet?” he asked.
His Weapons Officer replied. “I can’t be certain, Sir, but if they’re ships, they have a diameter of at least 500 meters.”
“Hmm. Pretty damn large for transports or freighters wouldn’t you say, Lieutenant?”
The WO nodded. “Yessir, cargo-carrying ships that large would have trouble landing on a planet.” After a short pause he said, “They might be warships, sir.”
Romanov’s first impulse was to dismiss that suggestion out of hand. By decree from the Federation Council, no less, all warship construction was to be done on Makassar. Freighters and transports could be built elsewhere. If a Federation-chartered company was building warships, they were doing it clandestinely.
“Well, if those are warships, they’re certainly not ours, and therefore the question is whose are they?” He contemplated the implications of that thought for a while and then said, “Romanov to Task Force COs. There’s something unusual going on around Midgard’s moon, and therefore I’m going to alter our attack plan. Undaunted will move closer to recon the situation. I want the rest of the Task Force to hold position here. When I’m confident that the coast is clear, I’ll give the signal to move in. Romanov out.” With that out of the way, he turned to the Helm Station and said, “Okay, Sara, give me a parabolic trajectory that will bring us up behind those five objects to within 100 kilometers of the furthest one back. Are you clear on what I want?”
The Helm Officer smiled as she started manipulating her controls. “Clear, sir. You do realize that coming in that slowly will take a while.”
“Yes, I do, and that’s okay. Let it take a while. That’s the nice thing about having an invisible ship. We can take our time and get a good look before we unleash hell.” He heard a few chuckles from some of the Bridge personnel. They had practiced exactly this kind of maneuver in the simulators, and not having to worry about the enemy shooting back at them was a lot of fun.
It actually took almost six more hours before Undaunted was in position. The ship’s powerful optics were able to give Romanov a good look at the closest of the five ships. Son-of-a-bitch! Those are warships alright and damned big ones too. Six hundred meters diameter with neutron armor. Those things are Goddamned battleships for Christsake! No commercial company would be so stupid as to commit billions of credits to building warships for sale to the Federation without a guarantee that the Navy would buy them (with the subsequent risk of having them confiscated instead), and building them for their own use was an even more bizarre thought. What the hell have we stumbled onto here?
“They’re still scanning, Commodore!” said the Weapons Officer somewhat nervously. Romanov looked at him and smiled. If Undaunted hadn’t been detected approaching the moon, which it hadn’t, then there was no reason to suppose that radar would detect them now. As long as the Helm made sure that the ship’s orientation would continue to deflect radar energy away from the moon and the planet, the ship would not show up on anyone’s radar screens, and her jet black exterior made optical detection also highly unlikely.
“Is it possible that this is a rebel shipyard operation posing as a Federation-chartered company, Commodore?” asked the Helm Officer.
“My God, that has to be it!” Romanov shook his head at the audacity of the SSU building a Makassar-type operation right in the middle of Federation territory and right under everyone’s nose. Those five ships had to be destroyed. They were too close to being completed to leave them in orbit even if he did destroy the industrial and shipyard complexes on the moon’s surface. For all he knew, they might already have the capability of maneuvering and hyper-jumping. If he didn’t take them out first, they might get away to a Union planet to be completed. The problem was that armor. Undaunted carried a dozen Mark 1 warhead-equipped missiles that had been intended for use on the moon itself.
“Can our Mark 1s punch through that armor, Weps?” asked Romanov.
The WO shook his head. “I seriously doubt it, sir. If we can tell from this distance that those ships have neutron armor, then it’ll be thick enough to shrug off our Mark 1s. It does appear that they haven’t finished completely covering the hull with armor. If we swing around so that we can target their remaining unarmored hull sections, then we should be able to at least cripple them.”
Romanov turned back to the Helm Officer. “Let’s do that, Sara. Keep us at least 100 klicks from the nearest ship. As soon as we fire, let’s shift position so that they don’t track our missile trajectories back to us”
“Roger that, sir.” It didn’t take long to move to a position over the middle ship. Romanov looked at his Weapons Officer who nodded, which meant that the five ships had been targeted with a missile each.
“Fire,” said Romanov. The tactical display was zoomed in to very close range. Five new icons representing the five missiles appeared and diverged on different paths. The nearest target would be hit in less than 10 seconds. The two furthest targets would be hit in almost 16 seconds. Romanov held his breath. Ships still under construction typically didn’t have active anti-missile defenses manned by crew, but if this really was a rebel shipbuilding operation, then they just might take that precaution. The time from missile launch reached 10 seconds.
Midgard Industries Tower/Midgard:
Murphy looked over at the chronometer. He saw that it was almost two hours past midnight, but he wasn’t even close to feeling he could go to sleep any time soon. With a sigh of resignation, he got out of bed and shuffled over to the glass doors leading out to the balcony. It was a pleasantly warm night, and the sky was cloudless. He looked up at the crescent-shaped moon. He could just barely make out the lights of the shipyard complex on the dark side. Just as he was about to look away, he saw a bright light appear off to the side of the moon. It disappeared quickly to be replaced by another flash and two seconds later a third flash. Murphy didn’t wait to see if there were any more. Flashes that could be seen with the naked eye from this distance meant that he had just witnessed three powerful explosions. He ran back inside to the communications equipment beside his bed. He activated the unit.
“Murphy to Ops!”
“Ops here, sir. Can’t sleep?” The voice of the officer on duty at the Operations Center was so calm that Murphy was caught off guard for half a second.
“Are you in contact with Durendal?”
“Ahh…yessir. Everything appears to be…hold it! They’re signalling a red alert! HOLY SHIT! THEY SAY THEY’RE UNDER MISSILE ATTACK!”
“Sound red alert for the tower! I’ll be in Ops as fast as I can!” Without waiting for a reply, Murphy shut off the unit and scrambled to put on some clothes. The red alert tone sounded half a second later. Murphy knew
that everyone in the tower at this time of night was part of the clandestine operation. Off duty SSU personnel lived in the tower and would hear the alert too. Murphy got dressed as quickly as he could, but he was confident that he’d have time to get to the Ops Center deep in the sub-basement. If the FEDs were attacking the moon, it was unlikely that they would land troops on the planet that quickly. What he couldn’t understand was how FED ships had gotten close enough to launch a surprise missile attack without being detected.