Three he wrote off from the get-go. They were so gung-ho happy in the CSF there was no opportunity there at all. Two were so-so, and allowed as how it hadn't been all it cracked up to be, but they were pretty much resigned to it. And three were full-fledged chip-on-their-shoulder types, convinced they were being discriminated against compared to native-born Commonwealth citizens. Miller was very sympathetic. He could be really charming when he wanted to be.
He fostered relationships with his five. The data on their families came back in response to Miller's request. The embassy offered them information on their families, with whom most had lost touch, at least with some family members. This was always through the Brunswick Citizen Services Office, never through the naval attaché, which was almost universally a synonym for intelligence officer. They offered Miller's possibles the use of the embassy's courier service to contact family members for free, rather than pay exorbitant inter-planetary message rates.
Of course, Miller read every one of those messages, despite the Citizens Services officer's assurances they were private and secure.
Also of course, some of them talked too much, especially during the recurring social nights.
When one mentioned a new ship class, it was a simple "Wow. That sounds cool." that elicited more information. Subsequently, to the others, he just acted like he knew all about it already, and they talked out of school and gave him more information without realizing it.
For his chip-on-the-shoulder types, he threw in the occasional "That's really unfair. You know, to treat you that way." He fostered their resentment simply through his sympathy, which usually got them griping, and he learned more. He also got them questioning their leadership, with comments like, "Do you think it's individual officers, or do you think it comes from the top? I only ask because leadership normally infuses the whole system with their attitudes."
He was aware one or more of his contacts could be triple-teaming him, pretending to be sympathetic while working for CSF intelligence. That was the way the game was played, after all. It came down to a simple question of would they figure out what he was up to first, or would he be able to pull it off first, which made the game more interesting. Especially because he had so little to lose. If he was found out, he had diplomatic immunity, and all they could do was declare him persona non grata and send him home.
So Miller was happy. All in all, things were progressing pretty well. And he still had lots of time.
Better Than Expected
"What are we learning from the exercises?" Jan asked.
Tien Jessen's team had staged several exercises in which they had warned the task force on a Commonwealth planet via the courier drones that a red team attack was coming, and to set their beam weapons to one-half-percent power. A couple of hours later, two of the new ships would 'attack' the planet. The game of flashlight tag was played out, and the ships' logs were analyzed by Jessen's team.
"One thing we learned is the new ships are as devastatingly effective as we thought, if not more so," Jessen said. "In the attacks, they were able to completely wipe out the defenders without ever being successfully fired on."
"At what odds?"
"It doesn't seem to matter. The one scenario where the size of the attacking force matters, it was if the defending force decided to make a run for it. If they scatter, and run for the system limit, some will escape at odds of sixteen-to-one or higher. Less than that, and nobody makes it out."
"Really. That's amazing. What makes the difference?" Jan asked.
"The number of weapons platforms. With those beam weapon drones racing around, they just mow everything down. But each ship only carries four of them, and the drones just run out of time to chase all the ships down and destroy them before some escape. But two ships fielding eight of those drones are a match for fleets up to about four squadrons, at least if they're in division formations or better."
"So four squadrons is thirty-two ships. With eight drones –"
"The drones each only need to shoot four times. They run out of targets in the division or squadron they're attacking, and have to go running after another. They plain just run out of time. It actually gets worse if the defender is deeper into the system. They're stuck in the barrel with those drones, and there's no getting out," Jessen said.
"And they never scored on the attackers?"
"Not once. The attacking ships never got within range of them. The attackers sent out the drones and then sat back and watched. They never fired a shot with their own guns."
"What about the drones?" Jan asked.
"We generally lose one or two. Lucky hits on such small targets. Those were in cases where the drones approached within range of their targets. If they stay out of range, we don't lose any. The drones' own range is twelve light-seconds, and the heaviest combatants for the Outer Colonies are heavy cruisers. If the drones stay more than seven light-seconds away from them, we won't lose any."
"What changes are we making to the Fleet Book of Maneuvers?"
"Several," Jessen said. "One is don't get within range of the enemy. Another is don't let the drones get within range of the enemy. There's no need for it. Another is to suck the enemy in, get them deeper into the system, away from the hyperspace limit, before you engage, so they can't escape. There are also some guidelines about how to deploy the drones against various formations. The overall rule is to spread out the drones, however thin it may seem. They're incredibly effective".
"Any changes at the strategic level to our plans?"
"One major one. We had been planning on responding to an attack with a single section, so we could respond to four near-simultaneous attacks with our one squadron. I think this shows we would be better off to respond with two sections, and have one drop their drones and return to reload. We can still respond to four near-simultaneous attacks, but against a large-scale attack, we'll get better kill percentages with sixteen drones rather than eight.
"Of course, that's if we choose to respond with ships at all."
"Explain," Jan said.
"We now have several hundred of the interstellar beam weapon drones we asked for. If we responded to an attack with, say, thirty of those, they could clean out an attack by a hundred warships without us sending any ships at all. With our current stock, we could defeat ten attacks at once, without spacing a single ship. We can hold the ships in reserve."
Jan just stared at him. Jessen sat and smiled, letting it sink in for a bit.
"Why risk our spacers if we don't have to?" he said with a shrug.
"Let's run some exercises with drones only. Let's see what happens, if it turns out the way we think. Is it safe to use them for flashlight tag?"
"Oh, sure. I can send one ship along ahead, tell the blue team it's an observer and out of the action. But it will be able to shut down the drones if there are any problems."
"OK. Let's do that."
The exercises came up at her next monthly meeting with Durand and Bill, his chief of staff.
"So how are your exercises going?" Durand asked.
"Much better than we anticipated" Jan said.
"I thought you expected them to go well."
"We did. They went much better even than that. If the Outer Colonies attack us, they aren't going to get hurt, they're going to get massacred."
"What will our losses be?" Durand asked.
"I hate to be a jinx, but we don't anticipate any losses. None."
"No losses."
"No. We aren't even going to risk our ships. We'll IS drone them from here. Won't even get our hands dirty," Jan said.
"Sounds too good to be true."
"I'm just glad we have it, and they don't. At least as far as we know."
"No, they don't have it. They are still up to no good, though," Durand said.
"What's going on?"
"We've spotted multi-squadron exercises working on the edge of the inner system envelope. Some pretty involved maneuvers. They're trying to keep it quiet, but the sensors o
n our commercial ships are probably a bit better than they think they are."
"Have you integrated those sensor readings into system views with one of your intelligence suites?" Jan asked.
"Yes, of course."
"Can you forward them on to Jessen?"
"Sure," Durand said.
He looked over to Bill, who made a note on his to-do list.
"So they're still working up," Durand said. "And we're also picking up some troubling activity here."
"Here? On Jablonka?"
"Yes. There's a new naval attaché in the Brunswick embassy. Came on a little over a year ago. We don't know anything at all about him, which is unusual in itself. We usually have a little background on their military people. But since he's come on, the embassy has been making outreach to our spacers who are Brunswick-born. Letting them use the diplomatic message service to communicate with their families, that sort of thing. Strengthening their ties to Brunswick. We haven't caught them doing anything we can sanction – yet – but we're keeping an eye on it."
"That sounds like trouble brewing," Jan said.
"Yes, it does. And that raises an issue with regard to you. Jan, I think you should limit your exposure. Go to ground. Be less accessible a target."
"No."
"You are a natural target for them as a kick-off to action. If you–" Durand began.
"Jake, the answer is 'No.' For several reasons. First, I am the Chief of Naval Operations. I ask people to risk their lives in the name of this nation every single day. And they do, willingly, among other reasons because they know I'm willing to do the same. I've hung myself out there with them any number of times, and they know it. I won't stop now. It runs against everything I stand for, everything I believe."
"But you're so important to us –"
"And they're not? No. Bad argument," Jan said. "They're just as important to their families, their children, their loved ones, as I am to mine. As far as my importance to the Navy, Tien Jessen is running the show internally within the NOC now as it is. He won't fail the CSF if it comes to that."
"What about your importance as a symbol?"
"I can give you historical examples of why my assassination could backfire on them, all the way back to ancient history. 'Remember the Maine.' 'Remember the Alamo.' 'Remember Pearl Harbor.' 'Viva Zapata.' El Cid. Julius Caesar. In fact, I might be even more valuable as a dead symbol than a live one.
"But my second reason is, if there's going to be an attempt on me, by going to ground I make it worse. Last recourse, if they're really serious about it, and they can't get to me any other way, they can blow up the house in the middle of the night. Not just kill me, but kill my husband, kill my children. Going to ground doesn't make me any safer, but it seriously increases the risk to the people I love. I won't do it."
Durand sighed.
"I had to ask, but you're probably right. You're the strategist, after all. I just don't like what we're picking up."
"I understand. And there are some things I can do. I'll do them, but I won't live in a box, Jake."
The Plan Comes Together
"We're actually getting some intelligence out of our naval attaché on Jablonka now," Brunswick Foreign Minister Dwight Andrews said.
"I still don't like calling that weasel a naval attaché," Brunswick Defense Minister Jeremy Malone said.
"Yes, he's a weasel, but he's our weasel."
"Your weasel, you mean."
"As may be. Nevertheless, he is very good at what he does, and we are getting intelligence again. The Commonwealth has a new ship class, just coming into service," Andrews said.
"That could be bad. Do we have any details?"
Andrews consulted his notes.
"Hull designation CD, called a cruiser destroyer. Crew of 600. Weapons have twenty percent greater range than previous, and maximum acceleration is 2.6g."
"OK. Well, that I'm not worried about," Malone said.
"In truth?"
"Yeah, that's not a problem. They're fielding a beefed up destroyer. Bigger than a normal destroyer, and a bit faster. Twenty percent more range would boost a destroyer's weapons from about three light-seconds to about three-point-six light-seconds. Still shorter than a light cruiser, though they could give our destroyers problems. Do we know how many they have?"
"At least one full squadron. It could be two," Andrews said.
"Sixteen new destroyers? Doesn't concern me at all."
"So no reason to change any of our plans?"
"No. Not at all," Malone said.
"How is our military cooperation going?"
"We've made contact with most of the planets now, gotten some mutual visits in, and we've practiced maneuvers with several of them. We're all working off the Commonwealth's Fleet Book of Maneuvers, so we have an operations standard going in. It's more a need of practicing together than anything, and I think that's going pretty well."
"Are we on schedule with it?" Andrews asked.
"Yes, amazingly enough. You set the schedule up pretty realistically, all things considered. We're if anything a little ahead of schedule."
"Excellent. So we'll marshal the attack forces in...?"
"Four months," Malone said.
Back in his office, Andrews reviewed the plans again, looking for the hidden flaw. He had been worried about the new Commonwealth ship class, but Malone's unconcern put him at ease.
Participating in this round of attacks on the Commonwealth would be no fewer than twenty of the Outer Colonies: Alpen, Arramond, Brunswick, Coronet, Epsley, Ferrano, Grocny, Lautada, Melody, Mon Mari, New Carolina, Nymph, Oerwoud, Paradiso, Refugio, Samara, Svobodo, Tenerife, Villam, and Wolsey. Other systems had wanted to see some initial successes to join the alliance. They had had no luck whatsoever in convincing Feirm to join them, however, either now or later. Feirm had had their navy virtually wiped out by the Commonwealth – by Jan Childers, in particular – only a dozen years before, and they wanted no part of any action against the Commonwealth.
The alliance would be fielding over three hundred ships in these initial attacks – thirty-eight squadrons, divided about equally among heavy cruisers, light cruisers, and destroyers.
The question then became how many of the Commonwealth planets could you attack and be assured of success? The goal was not to take the planet, but to destroy its space-based infrastructure and key space-related infrastructure on the ground, to knock out some of the Commonwealth's ability to compete with the Outer Colonies in trade. Given that, a succession of attacks would be possible.
But which Commonwealth planets to attack, and in which order? All of the twenty participants were asked for candidates, and it came down to the commercial and shipping powerhouses you would expect: Kodu, Bahay, Parchman, Anders, Waldheim, Bliss, and Jablonka itself. There was no question to save Jablonka until last. If they created enough trouble with the others, the CSF might disperse some of the strength that tended to cluster around Jablonka, by cutting back planet leave for rotating crews. But do you attack the other six planets two at a time, or three at a time?
If you attacked them three at a time, that was still a hundred ships per attack. The CSF normally maintained a task force on station of at least one squadron each of battleships, heavy cruisers, light cruisers, and destroyers on these important planets. That was only thirty-two ships, but eight of them would be those big battleships, which had a lot of firepower even if they were slow, and the alliance didn't have any battleships. Still, a hundred ships, call it twelve squadrons, four of each class, was an awful lot of ships. They should be able to box the battleships into a corner where they could get them within range of their own guns and pound them.
Kodu and Bahay would be the hardest targets. Sometimes the Commonwealth had an extra squadron of destroyers or light cruisers assigned to those key planets. They had decided to take on only one of them in each round, assigning fourteen squadrons to the bigger target and twelve each to the smaller two in each round.
Kodu, Pa
rchman, and Waldheim in the first round, Bahay, Anders, and Bliss in the second, and they would muster all the surviving combat-capable ships against Jablonka for the final round.
The military figured on losses of a third from all three rounds. Andrews figured it might be more like half surviving the first two rounds as combat-capable, but one hundred and fifty ships would be enough for the attack on Jablonka against a weakened CSF.
Before he went home that night, he sent a message to 'Lieutenant Commander Stuart Miller' on Jablonka. It simply said: "Four months."
Secondary Targets
The second squadron of the new cruiser destroyers was delivered six months after the first. The CSF got four ships delivered to Jablonka, while the other four were delivered to the Earth Space Navy on Earth. Where the CSF continued naming their new ships after gods and goddesses, the ESN named its new ships after famous warships from its Age of Sail, with each section from a different country.
The eight new ships were: CSS Tian, CSS Shangdi, CSS Enki, CSS Ninhursag, ESN Victory, ESN Golden Hind, ESN Constitution, and ESN Bonhomme Richard.
The ESN also got a mixed shipment of the drone weapons.
Jan, Xi, and Jessen did their staffing as before, using the materials they had collected for the first squadron of ships. Rear Admiral Robert Birkovsky was selected to be promoted to vice admiral and take Squadron 202, with his flag captain Senior Captain Marzena Chen promoted to rear admiral of the second division. There would be only two ships in both the first and second division for six months, until the third squadron of ships was delivered, half to CSF and half to ESN.
Birkovsky and Chen started working up their ships, taking quick runs in concert with ships from Admiral Zhang's Squadron 201.
"We're starting to see ships go missing in the Outer Colonies," Durand said.
"What do you mean, missing?" Jan asked.
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