The attack itself—some torpedoes fired off in a rather desultory fashion, and a few packets of ground-bombardment charges sprinkled over the main Haslar cosmodrome—resulted in nothing more than two ships damaged; none of the bombs destroyed anything important. An officer’s club took a direct hit, but it was empty. (The rank and file thought that was too bad—much better if it had been packed to the walls.) Even so, the magnitude of the failure was scarcely conceivable.
And worse yet was to come. As the Halith leadership grappled with the awful ramifications of Yeager’s raid, messages began to arrive that the invasion of Miranda had failed. How exactly this happened did not become apparent until Kerberos Fleet’s CARDIV II limped back into port at Zhian, having stopped in Rho Ceti to briefly refurbish and drop off most of their casualties along with those they’d accepted from BATDIV I and Duke Albrecht’s Center Force. (CENFOR had been reunited with the rest of its fleet at Kepler; BATDIV I was licking its wounds at Asylum.) Tactically, they could claim a victory, but that was gloss. Strategically, they had failed, and the Kerberos Fleet had lost the use of two prime divisions. The insult icing this injury was that the outcome appeared to be the result of another intelligence failure.
Everything had been going according to plan, reported Vice Admiral Vitaliy Tomashevich, CO of CARDIV II, right up until TF 34 appeared where it absolutely had no right to be: on CARDIV II’s flank. The Imperial Research & Intelligence Service (IRIS) had stated flatly that TF 34 had been returned to Third Fleet in the Pleiades. (GS5.4, working with both sectors’ intelligence groups, had done a masterful job convincing IRIS of that, while Lo Gai was off in the backlands of Karelia launching starclippers.)
Again, the losses sustained were minor compared to the intelligence failure that had enabled them. Admiral Vansant’s aggressiveness in attacking Seventh Fleet’s TF 72 might have been lauded if IRIS had not let him down. As it was, he appeared recklessly irresponsible. Adenauer himself had been furious that he’d lost the use of half his carrier force and a third of his battleships. This, however, was a miniscule matter compared to how it affected opinions regarding what their next operation should be.
All now agreed—the Proconsul Jerome most especially—that they no longer had time for raiding, whittling, or attritional warfare. There was an absolute need to strike the League a crushing blow that would force it to the negotiating table. With Vansant’s blundering and the losses they had sustained at Miranda, there was only one possible place such a blow could now be struck: Wogan’s Reef.
* * *
“But the Proconsul will have his victory,” Adenauer wrote, addressing himself to his dairy again, “before his term ends—you well know his pretensions, my dear, I will not repeat them—so that he might have another feather in this peacock’s tail he fashions to impress the masses. I cannot but think it will be costly feather, and I am sorry for our people who must pay this premium.” Stopping once more, he tapped the stylus on the edge of the pad.
It was not that Adenauer disagreed with the strategic calculus that had driven the decision or that he disregarded the political aspect. He had a full measure of the professional military man’s profound distrust of politicians—especially when they were as self-serving as Jerome—but even so, he accepted that the timing must suit the political as well as military ends, for to be wrong about the one risked victory, while to be wrong about the other could render a victory hollow.
The real issue was that all the rush was allowing politics to corrupt the detailed analysis such an undertaking deserved. The recent wargames, for instance, had been hastily conducted and sloppily run. At one point, a referee—one of Heydrich’s staff—had actually reversed casualties sustained when the captain playing the part of the CEF admiral had deviated from the given plan to appear a day early, before the Bannermans could arrive. The referee ruled that PrenTalien could not possibly do this without forewarning, which (despite the recent experience at Miranda) was judged impossible.
Adenauer had no such illusions, and he believed some of the Supreme Staff’s officers were cutting corners dangerously in other areas, such as fueling requirements, and being entirely too sanguine about the effectiveness of their surveillance assets. These were failings that he might yet address, if allowed the opportunity to do so, but the political pressure to adopt the current roseate view was severe.
He also had a considerable degree of personal pique, because politics had saddled him with his current second-in-command, Vice Admiral Arvind Shima. Shima was a diffident, colorless man: an over-promoted academic who had written volumes on how war ought to be conducted, but knew little about how it was conducted.
Shima had been foisted off on him because the insistence on conducting this operation now allowed Shima’s influential connections to maneuver him into this assignment. Shima had not yet held a command in a fleet action; this was a serious stumbling block to his advancement and he longed to do away with it. All through the last war he and his friends had peppered the Supreme Staff and the War Ministry with demands for a fleet command, but in vain—Adenauer’s opinion of him was by no means uncommon—but finally hurry, influence, and a dearth of other available officers of comparable seniority got him his wish.
The irritation Adenauer felt was all the more pointed because Shima, as his Second, would be commander of his right-flank division, so that in action Adenauer would find himself with the touchy and possibly unreliable Bannermans holding his left, while the bookish, hesitant Shima anchored his right. His plan was to tuck Shima firmly into a secure position where the possible axes of attack were heavily constrained and give him a formidable division, well suited to defense. But if bold action was called for—that is, if things went wrong—he was not confidant Shima could be relied on to supply it.
But these were thoughts he could not record, not even in so private a record—thinking treason against the Proconsul was one thing, against a fellow officer was quite another—and in any event, Captain Seidler was requesting entrance to his quarters.
“Now, I must close. Seidler is here, no doubt with news, and I must hope it is not of another delay.” He closed the diary, code-locked and ghosted it, and only then pressed the button that would admit his chief of staff—and his news.
Z-Day minus 28
LSS Aquitaine, docked;
Rigel Kent, Terran Space
While Admiral Adenauer was receiving from his chief of staff the news that IHS Orlan was to join company, Fleet Admiral Westover, his three most senior commanders-in-chief, their key staff officers, and two utterly reliable batmen (who were there to act as gophers and keep the officers in coffee, tea and sandwiches) were gathered the day cabin of Admiral Lian Narses, CinC SOLCOM, aboard the dreadnought LSS Aquitaine. A dapper man of surprisingly youthful appearance, with silvery gray hair shading elegantly to white at the temples and an immaculately groomed moustache, John Carlos Westover had taken a long march to arrive at his present position.
During the last war, Westover had been commander in chief of SOLCOM and Fleet Admiral Jasmine Kasena’s principle deputy, where even his considerable charm and political gifts had been sorely tried by the famously acerbic CNO, whose brilliance was coupled with serious want of tact, verging at times on outright intolerance. So it was not without some relief that when Kasena resigned over the disaster at Novaya Zemlya, Westover had stepped in to make the best of an unfavorable situation. In the aftermath, however, public opinion soured: having endured fifteen years of grueling warfare, the League was on the verge of a crushing victory before Novaya Zemlya, and the negotiated settlement that followed, which once would have been viewed as a stunning success, came to be seen as not far from defeat.
Denied confirmation by the Grand Senate for the position he’d inherited, Westover had been consigned to professional obscurity until four years ago, when Speaker Huron, who had maintained a lively appreciation for his old friend’s talents, resurrected him from the elephant’s graveyard of the Admiralty’s General Advisory Board (w
ith its unfortunate acronym GAB), and nominated him for CNO. There was no difficulty about the confirmation this time, although the talents Huron Sr. recognized—a clear, incisive mind immune to panic and the ability to reason cogently and act decisively no matter how great the pressure—were less important to the Grand Senate than the perception that he was a careful (or diffident) and prudent (or risk-adverse) commander, who could be relied on to remain loyal, not rock the boat and, above all, keep his two fire-breathing sector CinCs, Joss PrenTalien and Devlin Zahir, on the shortest of short leashes during this time of increasing tension with Halith.
The first year of the war, and most especially the first months, had confirmed most people in the belief that Westover was a fine caretaker, but no fighting admiral. It was fortunate this belief had not gained more political traction, because beneath all the obscuring froth the early stages of the war had stirred up, Westover had in fact achieved several critical things.
First, he had consolidated the CEF’s scattered and demoralized forces, establishing a firm defensive sphere, even though it meant letting go Crucis and the Outworlds, two regions the overstretched CEF could not hope to hold. Next, he had quelled the hysteria after the defeat at Kepler, when the politicians howled for a wholesale purge, thus preserving a great many good and capable officers. Third, he’d prevented a serious rift in his senior command when the ineffective Admiral Sir Norman Rhodes, commander in chief of Meridies Sector, was replaced by the undeniably brilliant but aloof Lord Admiral Sir Malcolm Hawkes, a Hesperian aristocrat who considered practically everyone else (Westover not excepted) to be a strategic illiterate, and at times seemed to evince greater admiration for his Halith adversaries than his League compatriots.
Calming Sir Malcolm’s ruffled feathers over a policy he thought consigned him to a backwater was a major accomplishment, and Westover pulled off another by soothing the Sublime Porte’s jangled nerves, thus securing continued access to the strategically vital antimatter fields which the Porte controlled. It had cost him the services of the Tuffs (as the Trifid Frontier Force liked to be known) and their commander, Vice Admiral Sanjay Sansar, who were now on semi-permanent loan to shore up the Sultanate’s shaky military, but Sansar had the necessary political instincts to fit into the Sultan’s court and the tactical acumen to handle this very sensitive independent command.
Thus, to a degree most did not appreciate, the League was in much better shape than it had been only a few months ago. Furthermore, in defiance of the settled opinions of both friends and enemies, Westover was spoiling for a fight, and now, illuminated by the soft glow of the large cabin’s omnisynth, he and his senior commanders were busy trying to find it.
“The Andamans still represent the strategy center of gravity,” Admiral Narses was saying. “The Doms are as well aware of that as we are. And the way things are going, they certainly appreciate the position in which opening another front on that axis would put us.”
“That’s true, Lian,” Admiral PrenTalien agreed, shifting his heavily muscled frame in the inadequate chair. “No one denies it. But I think Commander Wesselby has a good point. The indications are that the Porte is already leaning their way. But the Sultan is a touchy prick—he may well balk if they try to force his hand.”
“There’s also the question of the Emir, ma’am,” Trin Wesselby added. “He’s fixated on independence. If the Porte jumps one way, he’ll jump the other. So neither side wants to jump first. He’s been quietly building up his position, and holding Winnecke IV gives him a lot of leverage.”
“Yes, I believe we’re aware of that, Commander.” The admiral spoke with a touch of her well-known acerbity. “Perhaps that would be all the more motivation to put an end to all the shilly-shallying. The Doms don’t care which of them comes out on top, as long as they themselves do.”
Trin could see she was not articulating her point at all clearly. Halith didn’t need to put an end to all the shilly-shallying—as long as the situation remained in flux, the League had to devote extra resources to the region to safeguard their access to the fuel fields there. Halith did not. The mere threat, by itself, was almost as good as another front. Settling back, she cast a quick glance at her boss. She was drained—exhausted, actually—and this was one time she doubted she could muster the energy to go once more into the breach.
Instead, Admiral Zahir spoke up. “Karelia remains a viable option. They took their whack and got a bloody nose out of it. But they have the forces at hand, and there’s little risk to their supply lines or their avenue of retreat.”
Allowing that with a nod, PrenTalien looked to his staff operations officer, Captain Raven. “Russ, you haven’t said much. Time to weigh in?”
Captain Raven stroked his smooth, round chin. “Well, sir, Karelia certainly deserves consideration, but given the balance of available forces, I’ll go with Commander Wesselby’s assessment. Wogan’s Reef being the objective makes a lot of sense. They’ve got the Kerberos Fleet right there, so they can launch from a standing start. They can make good their losses as far as battleships go, and while they’re still short a carrier division, that doesn’t hurt them much since fighters can hardly operate in Wogan’s Reef anyway. And they have the possibility of Bannerman support.”
Captain Wicklow, Narses’ chief of staff, raised his head.
“You don’t believe Admiral Hollis can hold the blockade at Callindra?” He plied the question pointedly. Rear Admiral Wayne Hollis was tasked with keeping the Bannerman Fleet at Callindra 69 bottled up. He and Commodore Tomas Rhimer, who commanded what was loosely termed the ‘inshore squadron’ that did the actual blockading, were First Fleet officers, and the fact that First had been allowed to ‘poach’ this way on what Third Fleet considered its preserve had been something of a sore spot.
Raven, newly promoted, sensitive to this and also sensitive to being needled, felt the heat rise in his round pale face. “I said possible. Meaning they will consider it in their calculus.”
Wicklow turned a hand palm up, tacitly conceding the point.
Slightly mollified, Raven continued. “Then there’s the fact that if they keep things in the Hydra, Adenauer commands. If they go back at Karelia, it’ll be under Admiral—ah—”
“Vansant,” Trin murmured. “Reginald Vansant.”
“That’s right, Vansant. Intel’s not my bailiwick, but I’d guess that the Supreme Staff would back away from doubling down on failure.”
“They could detail the Prince Vorland Fleet instead,” suggested Captain Wicklow.
“Have we seen any indications of that, Commander?” PrenTalien asked Trin.
She blinked. “Ah—no, sir. Nothing that suggests that. In fact—” Halting abruptly, she brought her hand to her face to cover the beginnings of a sneeze. The impulse died and she shook her head.
“In fact—what?” asked Wicklow, with a sharp look.
“Nothing.” Trin rubbed her right eye. “Anything’s possible, of course.” Which struck all present as a most un-Trin-like rejoinder—so much so that it stilled the conversation for a moment.
“The one thing that is clear,” Admiral Westover said when that moment had elapsed, “is if we wait until the Doms tip their hand, the game is up. Either we secure the initiative, or we’ll find ourselves in kneepads, paying the devil. We all understand the trade-offs they face. What we need is an idea of their thinking—how they weigh the options. Has anyone a suggestion on that?”
Several beats of silence, then Trin Wesselby spoke up with a queer, reluctant edge to her voice. “Well, sir. I have given it some thought.” She said nothing further and Westover exchanged a glance with PrenTalien, who said nothing either.
The CNO gestured to the other staff officers in the room. “Gentleman, excuse us please.”
Wearing bewildered expressions, the men stood. When Captain Raven hesitated briefly, PrenTalien gave him a private nod. Accepting the dismissal, he filed out with the others. When the five of them were alone in the huge compartment, Narses an
d Zahir regarded Trin with singular intensity.
“What was that all about?” Narses asked the room in general.
“A moment, Lian.” Westover nodded to the commander. “What is it you have, Trin?”
“We send a message, sir,” she answered, avoiding the CinC of SOLCOM’s eye. “Something the Supreme Staff can’t ignore that pins down a specific option. Then we wait for their reaction.”
“How does waiting—” Narses began, impatient and irked at being put off. Westover silenced her with a raised forefinger.
“Such as?” he asked mildly, eyes on Trin. Zahir was also shifting forward in her chair.
“That depends, sir. Maybe we could say that the refueling facilities at Outbound are down for some reason. We send it in Admiralty B, so the fleet commands are notified per usual, then—”
“Carlos! What the hell’s going on?” Narses had reached the end of her patience—never a long journey. “Admiralty B? What’s this about?” Admiralty B was the CEF interservice encryption system used to coordinate operations with field commands.
At last, Westover turned to address her. “The Halith Supreme Staff has broken Admiralty B.”
“They’ve what!? How do we know that?”
“Because we’ve partly broken their Morganatic channels.” Those were the Supreme Staff’s ultra-secured command networks.
Narses slumped back in her seat, seamed face registering shock and no small amount of pique. “Why wasn’t I informed?”
“You just have been, Lian,” Westover told her, brusquely. “There are—ramifications. This isn’t the time to go into them.”
“You’re the focal point in all this, I take it, Commander?” The question sounded uncomfortably like an accusation, as if Trin had pulled off this remarkable coup just to highlight the incapacity of her superiors.
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