David Weber - Honor17 - Shadow of Saganami

by Shadow of Saganami(lit)

  He paused for a moment, his eyes sweeping around the table, and there was no need for him to elaborate on just which "outside elements" Khumalo's general instructions might refer to.

  "Fourth," he continued, "we're to assist local authorities in the suppression of any extralegal resistance to the annexation. Apparently the people who lost the vote are becoming increasingly vocal, and there are indications at least a few of them are about to step beyond mere verbal expressions of displeasure.

  "Fifth, we already know our local charts are seriously inaccurate. The Admiral's assigned a high priority to updating our astrogation databases, both by collecting information from local pilots and merchant skippers and by conducting regular survey activities of our own.

  "And, sixth and finally, we're to 'show the flag,' not simply inside the Cluster, but along its outer fringes, as well. Piracy here in the Cluster has never been as serious as in, say, Silesia, but there's always been some. The Admiral desires his ships to make their presence known along the arcs Nuncio-Celebrant-Pequod-Scarlet and Lynx-Montana-Tillerman, where he's set up standing patrol lines. On the one hand, we should serve as an advertisement of the advantages of membership in the Star Kingdom, and on the other, remind any larcenously inclined souls from outside it that Her Majesty would take their little pranks amiss."

  He smiled thinly at their expressions.

  "As you can see, this won't exactly be a relaxing pleasure cruise."

  "That's one way to put it, Sir," Ginger Lewis observed after a moment. "Since you're discussing the Admiral's general instructions, may I assume we don't have any specific movement orders just yet?"

  "You assume correctly, Ginger," Terekhov agreed with a nod. "When we do receive orders, however, I imagine we'll find ourselves moving around quite a bit. Looking over the ship list, it's obvious Hexapuma is the most powerful modern unit assigned to the Station. I don't see any way the Admiral can afford not to work us hard."

  "I can see that, Sir," FitzGerald put in. "Still, if you'll pardon my saying so, I didn't hear anything in that specifically about the security of the terminus."

  "No, you didn't," Terekhov agreed. "We have two separate problems. One is the security of the terminus; the other is the security of the rest of the Cluster. The fact that the terminus is an eight-day trip from Split, the closest system in the Cluster proper, even for a warship, doesn't make reconciling those responsibilities any easier."

  His tone was level, his expression calm, yet for just a moment, FitzGerald thought he saw something else behind those blue eyes. Whatever it was, it disappeared as quickly as it had come-assuming it had ever been there in the first place-and Terekhov continued in the same dispassionate voice.

  "From the economic, astrographic, and military perspectives, Lynx is the real strategic chokepoint of the cluster, as far as the Star Kingdom is concerned. But from the immediate political perspective, Spindle, where the Constitutional Convention is meeting, is at least equally critical. And, the need to maintain a visible presence in the Cluster's inhabited star systems is yet another magnet drawing our available strength away from Lynx. Under the circumstances, and bearing in mind that Lynx can be reinforced on short notice by Home Fleet, Admiral Khumalo's decided his short-term emphasis must be placed on supporting the political processes of the Constitutional Convention and assisting the local planetary governments."

  But what do you think he should be doing? FitzGerald wondered. Not that he even considered asking the question aloud.

  "I can see why you wanted Naomi and Tad sitting in on this, Sir," Lewis said after a moment. "I'm not too clear on why I'm here, though."

  "First, because you're my senior officer, after Ansten," Terekhov replied. "And, second, because unless I miss my guess, we're going to be pushing the ship's systems hard, without much in the way of outside support. Admiral Khumalo has three depot ships-four, counting the one stationed here-to support all of his units. At the moment, the others are assigned to Prairie, Montana, and Scarlet, to provide the maximum coverage for his patrol units. There are also ammunition ships at Montana and Prairie. Aside from that, however, we'll be essentially on our own for both maintenance and general logistics.

  "Naomi is obviously going to be deeply involved if-or perhaps I should say when-we encounter pirates or slavers. And Tadislaw's Marines are going to be at least as busy, even assuming we weren't going to run into any need to deploy planet-side detachments. Which, I might add, I'm quite certain we are going to find ourselves doing. But the bottom line is that everyone else aboard the ship depends on Engineering. If we suffer a major maintenance casualty, it's going to make a huge hole in Admiral Khumalo's available strength. So," he smiled suddenly, "I basically wanted you sitting in on this so I could tighten the screws on your sense of responsibility!"

  "Gee, thanks, Sir," Lewis retorted with a smile of her own.

  "Don't mention it. It's known as motivation enhancement." Several people chuckled, and Terekhov let his chair come fully back upright.

  "It's obviously too early to be thinking in anything but the most general terms," he said in a more serious tone. "The one thing we can depend on is that Murphy will surprise us, no matter how much effort we put into preparing for his inevitable appearance. When that happens, our ability to cope with the surprise is going to depend on our agility and flexibility. That's one of the primary reasons I asked all of you to attend this meeting. I intend to conduct a general briefing for all department heads within the next day or so. But you people's departments are going to carry the largest share of the burden, so I wanted to give each of you an early heads-up and take the opportunity for all of us to try bouncing some preliminary ideas off of one another.

  "For example, Major Kaczmarczyk, it's occurred to me that the nature of the developing political situation here in the Cluster is likely to require intervention by the Station's Marines. That means you and your people, as far as Hexapuma is concerned."

  "Yes, Sir." Kaczmarczyk was a short, solid, compact man in his late thirties with brown, bristle-cut hair and a neatly groomed mustache. He seemed just a little detached from the naval officers seated around the table with him, but his oddly colored amber-green eyes were very direct as he looked back at his captain.

  "I foresee a very broad spectrum of missions for you, Major," Terekhov continued, "and the nature of the political equation is going to require a certain deftness. There may very well be situations in which a hammer is what will be required, although I'm sure everyone would prefer to avoid that. But there will also be situations in which your people are going to be required to perform more as policemen than as combat troops. I realize it's difficult to switch back and forth between those roles, and that the training and mindsets they require are to some extent mutually contradictory. There's nothing we can do about that, unfortunately, so I want you to concentrate on prepping your people to operate in small, independent units at need. I'll try to avoid chopping you up into penny-packets, but I can't promise that you won't find yourself detaching individual squads."

  "I've got good noncoms, Sir," Kaczmarczyk said. "But I don't have a whole lot of warm bodies, and some of those I do have are pretty green."

  "Point taken," Terekhov agreed.

  The renewed war and the sudden huge increase in the Star Kingdom's territory had combined with the Navy's new construction policies to force changes in the size of the Marine detachments which Manticoran warships embarked. Traditionally, the RMN had assigned companies to light cruisers, and full battalions-including their attached heavy weapons companies-to capital ships. Heavy cruisers and battlecruisers had embarked "short" battalions: regular battalions with the heavy weapons companies detached.

  Other navies had embarked far smaller detachments, but prior to the Havenite Wars, the Manticoran Navy's primary responsibilities had been piracy suppression and peacekeeping operations. Blowing pirate cruisers out of space was a straightforward proposition, but the Navy had found that recapturing merchantmen which had been taken by
pirates without killing off any surviving members of their original crews required something a bit more delicate than a laser head or a graser. The boarding parties tasked to go over and retake those ships were composed of Marines. So were the boarding parties sent to support Navy inspections of suspected slavers or smugglers. And so were the landing parties sent down in places like Silesia to deal with planet-side riots, attacks on Manticoran nationals, and natural disasters.

  Unlike most other navies-including both the SLN and the Star Kingdom's own Grayson ally-Manticoran Marines were also integrated into damage control parties and assigned to man broadside weapons aboard the ships in which they served. Aboard Hexapuma, for example, Kaczmarczyk's personnel crewed half a dozen of the ship's grasers. RMN ships had been able to carry so many Marines because they weren't displacing naval ratings; they were performing the same functions as naval ratings.

  But that practice required additional cross-training of the Marines. It took time to produce people who could proficiently perform the multiple tasks assigned to them, and it wasn't cheap. Which was one of the reasons even the RMN had been forced to rethink things a bit.

  The increased automation which had allowed the Navy to drastically reduce its manpower (and life support) requirements and pack in additional firepower and defensive systems had been another. Maintaining the traditional size of the Marine detachments would have defeated much of that advantage. Which didn't even consider the fact that the Star Kingdom's sudden expansion required additional garrisons and peacekeeping forces which, particularly so close on the heels of major "peacetime" reductions in the roster strength of both the Navy and the Marines, had stretched the available supply of Marines to the breaking point. The troop strength of both the Marines and the Army was being increased as rapidly as possible, but manpower, not money or industrial capacity, had always been the Star Kingdom's Achilles' heel.

  All of which explained why, instead of the four hundred and fifty-four men and women, in three companies, commanded by a major, assigned to a heavy cruiser under the "old" establishment, Captain Kaczmarczyk (who received the "courtesy promotion" to major aboard ship-since a warship could afford no confusion over who one meant when one said "Captain") had barely a hundred and forty in his single company. Even at that, they represented almost half of Hexapuma's total complement of three hundred and fifty-five.

  "We'll just have to do the best we can," Terekhov continued. "I'm hoping that, for the most part, the local governments will be able to deal with their own internal problems. For one thing, if we get involved, we run the risk, as 'imperialist outsiders,' of escalating whatever ill feeling produced the problem in the first place. If they need to call on us at all, I'm hoping it will be either for intelligence support, using our recon systems, or for quick, hard, in-and-out strikes on specific targets.

  "In line with that, Major, I'd like you and your intelligence officer to go over these briefs from Commander Chandler." He handed over a slim folio of record chips. "They're planet-by-planet analyses, based on the most recent data available from local law enforcement types. Of course, a lot of that data is probably out of date by now, given transit times, but it's still the best information available. I'd especially like you to look for-"

  * * *

  "Well, Loretta. What do you think of him?"

  "I beg your pardon, Sir?" Captain Shoupe looked up from the data chips she'd been sliding into slots in a folio. She and the rest of the staff had just finished their regular daily report on the station's status, and it was early afternoon, shipboard time. Rear Admiral Khumalo always preferred to catch a short nap before dinner, and the other staffers had already departed.

  "I asked what you think of him," Khumalo replied. The rear admiral stood with his back to her, gazing into the cool, glowing depths of one of his holo tapestries. "Captain Terekhov, of course."

  "I haven't really had the opportunity to form an opinion of him, Sir," she said after a moment. "He seems pleasant enough."

  "Yes, he does, doesn't he?" Khumalo said in a rather distant tone. "Still, he's not quite what I'd expected."

  Shoupe said nothing. She simply stood there, waiting patiently. She'd been with Khumalo ever since the rear admiral had been sent out to Talbott, and, almost despite herself, she'd actually grown fond of him. He could be frustrating, vacillating, and vain, and he was definitely one of the Navy's "political" admirals. But he also worked long hours-one of the reasons he liked to catch naps in the afternoon-and whatever his other faults, he was truly determined to bring the annexation of the Cluster to a successful conclusion.

  "I've read the reports on the Battle of Hyacinth, you know," the rear admiral continued after a moment. "It must have been terrible." He turned to look at her. "Have you read the reports, Loretta?"

  "No, Sir. I can't say I have."

  "Hyacinth was supposed to be in our possession," Khumalo said, walking slowly back over to his desk and sitting behind it. "In fact, it was when Terekhov's convoy was dispatched there. It was supposed to be turned into one of Eighth Fleet's forward supply depots, but the picket force covering it was hit by a Peep counterattack. The picket didn't have any of the new ship types, and the Peeps were in overwhelming strength. The picket commander had no choice but to withdraw, and when Terekhov arrived, he sailed straight into an ambush."

  The rear admiral paused for a moment, one hand toying with a richly ornamented dagger he used as a paperweight.

  "The Peeps called on him to surrender, you know," he went on after a few seconds. "He refused. He didn't have any of the pod technology, but he did have all of the new electronics, including the latest generations of ECM and the FTL com, and the freighters in his convoy were loaded with all the latest technology, including spare parts and MDMs intended to reammunition Eighth Fleet. He couldn't let that fall into enemy hands, so he tried to fight his way out, at least get the merchantmen back out across the hyper limit.

  "He did get two of them out. But he lost six, and his entire division of light cruisers, and three-quarters of his personnel. Most of the merchie crewmen survived, after they set their scuttling charges and took to the boats. But his own people were massacred."

  He stared down at the jewel-hilted dagger and drew it from its sheath. Light glittered on its keenly honed edge, and he turned it slowly, watching the reflection.

  "What would you have done in his place, Loretta?" he asked softly, and she stiffened. She said nothing for a moment, and he looked up.

  "That's not a trick question," he said. "I suppose what I should have asked is what's your opinion of the decision he actually made."

  "I think it took a lot of courage, Sir," she said after a moment, her tone still a bit stiff.

  "Oh, there's no question of that," Khumalo agreed. "But is courage enough?" She looked a silent question at him, and he shrugged slightly. "The war was almost over, Loretta. By the time he was ambushed at Hyacinth, it was pretty clear nothing the Peeps had was going to stop Eighth Fleet whatever happened. So was it a case of good judgment, or bad? Should he have surrendered his ships, let the Peeps have the technology, knowing they wouldn't have time to take advantage of it?"

  "Sir," Shoupe said in a very careful tone, "you're talking about cowardice in the face of the enemy."

  "Am I?" He looked at her levelly. "Cowardice, or good sense?"

  "Sir," Shoupe began, then paused. Khumalo's career had been primarily that of a military administrator. He'd commanded several fairly important bases and support stations, some quite close to the front in the First Havenite War, but he himself had never commanded in combat. Was it possible he felt threatened by Terekhov's reputation?

  "Sir," she resumed after a moment, "neither you nor I were there. Anything we may think is a case of second-guessing the man who was there. I don't know what the best decision was. But I do know Captain Terekhov was the man who had to make the decision in a very narrow time window. And, with all due respect, Sir, I have to say it's far more obvious now that the Peeps were about to los
e it all than it was at the time. And I suppose it's also fair to add that if he had surrendered, and if the Peeps had gotten their hands on his ships and the freighters, with their systems and cargoes intact, we'd probably be in even worse shape vis-a-vis the Peep navy than we are now."

  "So you're saying you think he was right, at least given the limitations of what he knew at the time?"

  "I suppose I am, Sir. I pray to God I'll never have to make a similar decision. And I'm sure Terekhov prays to God that he'll never have to make another one like it. But I think that, given the choices he had to select between, he probably picked the right one."

  Khumalo looked troubled. He sheathed the dagger and laid it on his desk, then sat gazing down at it. For just a moment, his face looked worn and old, and Shoupe felt a powerful pang of sympathy. She knew he wondered why he hadn't been recalled when the Janecek Admiralty collapsed, taking his patrons with it. Was it simply because no one had gotten around to it yet? Were his recall orders already on board a dispatch boat en route to Spindle? Or had someone decided to leave him here as a suitable scapegoat if something went wrong? It was like having a double-ended Sword of Damocles hanging over his head, and now, obviously, something about Terekhov bothered him deeply.