by Moshe Ben-Or
The harder the Zin pressed Miranda, the more capital units Seventh Fleet had been forced to give up to reinforce the Sixth. The more Zin warships appeared on the Xing-Tiantiju axis, the more freshly-mobilized units the General Staff had fed into Fifth Fleet.
Worse still, Haven and the Serpent Swarm didn’t have that many reserve capital units to begin with.
Haven’s gigantic clipper fleet was well suited to support long-range commerce raiding, and the belters had the best small craft pilots in the universe. The way everything was positioned, every major war in the past two hundred years had gone more-or-less the same way. New Israel and Sparta would fight a bunch of big-gun opening engagements and suck the enemy into a trap. Then the Havenites and belters would swing around and cut his supply lines to shreds. Then there’d be a general counterattack by the combined Fleet, and then the baddies would sue for peace. So, of course, Spartan and Israeli reserves were stacked to the gills with big, slow, fuel-hungry capital ships, and the Havenites and the belters owned lots and lots of fleet-footed, fuel-efficient light and medium combatants.
It had all worked like a charm at first, to be sure. The Zin got one hell of a bloody nose at Miranda. The defense had been a bloodbath, but it had served its purpose. When the enemy had come sniffing at Tienchen, they got a bloody nose again. Ultimately, the place couldn’t be held. But everyone had known that from the beginning. The emergency-transport-slash-robbery of Imperial stockpiles had gone off as planned. Megatons of supplies, whole factories full of key equipment and numerous skilled civilians had been transported to New Helena and Volantis and put to use without delay. The Zin were repelled at the gates of New Helena, the forces deployed to Miranda had retreated in good order, and the enemy's half-hearted knock at the gates of Hadassah had likewise ended in apparent failure.
The active force had been horribly mauled, but the reserves were mobilizing. At D-plus twelve weeks, the Fleet would be at force parity with the enemy. At D-plus twenty-four weeks, once the Category Four Reserve joined the fray, the Fleet would outnumber Zin forces committed against it two to one in big-gun ships, four to one in carriers and cruisers, and as much as six to one in frigates and destroyers.
The Cat Four reservists would be rusty as heck even after their hasty train-up, and their ships were by no means the latest-and-greatest, but none of that would matter. Their sheer numbers would win the day. The enemy’s supply lines would be severed, his heavy forces would be crushed in pitched battle, and the war would be speedily won. The Deep Reserve would save the League once again. That’s why it existed in the first place.
By the time the Zin had set off from Miranda toward Volantis, they were all backslapping each other over here on the General Staff. Marveling at their own fucking alleged cleverness in a gigantic circle-jerk of overconfident euphoria. Not a one of them, not the Chief of Intelligence, not the Chief of Operations and Plans and not the Admiral of the Fleet, had paid serious attention to the composition of the enemy force before them. No one had asked the hard questions. No one had paid attention to the damned details.
Like the small matter of where the enemy had gotten the ships that set out for Volantis in the first place. The Zin had lost over three hundred capital ships at Miranda, another hundred or so at Tienchen, and a good four dozen on the Hadassah axis. Yet, despite all that, they’d still had almost a thousand to commit to the Volantis expedition, all while maintaining continuous heavy pressure against both Hadassah and New Helena.
But not a one of them here on the General Staff, great war-winning geniuses that they all were, had asked the obvious fucking question: “Where had all those new ships come from?” Never mind that the Zin had already committed more ships than anyone had seen in six centuries, was the sum of forces before them the true limit of their power? Was this really their entire Fleet?
All right, so they ultimately had asked the question, thought Admiral Freeman. But they had asked it too damned late. And they had spent way too much time playing with the wrong answers to it.
Maybe the new units had been redeployed from the Imperial Front? That made sense, right?
No, came back the Imperial answer, we’ve never seen most of these drive signatures. There are a couple-three that were active against us, but that’s about it.
It should have been obvious after that, with twenty-twenty hindsight. But at the time the working assumption on the General Staff had become that if the extra capital ships hadn’t come from the Imperial Front, they must have been drawn from the force that was facing off against the Archduchy.
Eli Levinson was a thorough fellow, though. He intensely disliked unsupported assumptions. That’s what made him such a good Chief of Intelligence. The moment the Imperials had answered in the negative, he’d started making inquiries, in a roundabout way.
The Omicronians were a sworn enemy, genocidal to the core. There could never be true peace with them, not until the very last one of their accursed race was shoveled into a shallow grave. But there were still ways to get information out of them, and to pass information back.
It had taken time. Time that they couldn’t afford, in retrospect. But ultimately an answer had come back.
No, said the Aryans, we haven’t seen any of these drives, ever. And go fuck yourselves, you subhuman bastards.
Right around the time the Archduchy’s answer had hit all their desks, the Zin armada had turned back toward Miranda. And another report had come in, though none of them had paid the least attention to it. The Zin had been busy little bees at Paradise, it seemed. Building all kinds of stuff down in the inner system. Big, modular industrial stuff they’d brought in by ultra-heavy freighter. Nobody could figure out what it was, but they sure seemed intent on assembling it quickly, and it was really well-protected.
And the lot of them were still blind as a bunch of drunken bats.
The Battle of the Badlands was a great victory! The enemy had lost more than half of his light combatants and was now slinking back whence he had come, blind and deaf, out of ammo and out of steam! Why, the Zin had even scuttled a couple of beat-up battlecruisers and a damaged battleship! Surely it was for lack of fuel and parts! Nobody just blew up their own capital units!
They were all a bunch of infallible, war-winning geniuses! The Dream Team, victorious yet again! Huzzah, huzzah, break out the fucking champagne!
Shimon had seen it first. That preternatural intuition of his; the uncanny ability to step right into the mind of his enemy that had rightfully made him Chief. That's what had almost saved the day.
Eli had reported casually at the morning battle update briefing that his people had finally put their finger on what the Zin were doing in the Paradise system. They were building fuel and shield matter factories, so they didn’t have to haul as much stuff from wherever it is they’d come from. The transit they were making from wherever to Paradise was obviously ugly and expensive. This was their way to defray a lot of the cost. Modular factories prepared in advance, loaded onto custom-modified freighters and shipped in behind the invasion force. Fleet Intelligence had even estimated production capacities. Ho-hum.
The same afternoon, just after lunch, Shimon had stormed into Ops, looking grim as a thunderhead, and ordered damned near three quarters of the Fleet to Hadassah. But the very next day the scouts had reported that about half of the main enemy force had transited right through Miranda without stopping.
The Zin had the head start. They were running along the Highway, while the Fleet was meandering through the Badlands. They were the ones operating on interior lines.
And then, while three quarters of the Fleet was still in the middle of nowhere, dashing madly toward Hadassah without any semblance of order, the rest of the Zin navy had shown up. Along with the allegedly-battered, supposedly-dispirited, thought-to-be-worn-out mess of enemy capital units that had just “retreated” right past Miranda.
Three thousand Zin battleships and battlecruisers. Over a thousand medium combatants. Eleven thousand light units. A
combined task force more powerful than the entire Fleet, including the mostly-mobilized Category Four reserve. A force larger than the one the Zin had committed at the outset of hostilities against all three human Powers combined.
Still, if the Fleet had been ready, if the defenses at Hadassah and Bretogne had been backed by sufficient capital ships…
But they were not.
The light combatants had rushed into place on time, just barely. Men had literally died of jump sickness aboard the frigates and destroyers, but the tin cans were there to meet the enemy’s charge, and their crews had fought to the last missile and the last shell. They had died in their thousands, and if the order to retreat had not been given they would have perished to the very last one, cursing the enemy with their final breath.
The defense of Bretogne and Hadassah had been heroic. It had been magnificent. And it had been utterly tragic in its disorganized futility. For the very first time in his naval career, Shimon had panicked. And he, Flag Admiral Duke Reginald Freeman, the icy, steel heart of the supposed all-conquering Dream Team, the man who had always turned Shimon’s brilliant intuitions into flawless, detailed, coldly-calculated plans, had panicked right along with him.
The defenses could not have held. It was simply impossible. By themselves, the tin cans just weren’t enough, and they could never have been enough. Most of the light cruisers and all of the big-gun ships were still stuck in the Badlands when the Zin had hit Hadassah and Bretogne. And, no matter what, they would have always been stuck there, given the timing and the astrography. Heroics could not trump physics.
As any rationally-computed correlation of forces would have predicted, heroics or no heroics, the Zin had stormed right over the fortresses and the minefields and the utterly inadequate naval forces that had backed them, crushing everything in their path by sheer massed firepower and naked force of numbers. And the momentum had carried the furry bastards all the way to Haven. Which had clearly been their plan all along.
Never mind Volantis and New Helena and the great value of Tienchen and the supposed strategic threat to New Israel. Haven's mines and shipyards and the Bretogne/Normann Belt manufacturing complexes together accounted for nearly a third of the nation's industrial capacity! Together with Hadassah, they accounted for almost forty-seven percent of the national population!
Glorious General Staff Dream Team indeed! The Zin had played them all for saps. With twenty-twenty hindsight, they should have economized force on the Miranda axis and attacked from Hadassah toward Paradise.
The loss of Miranda, and even of Volantis and New Helena, in the first weeks of the war, would not have raised up the very real prospect of general catastrophe. It would have simply been painful, and grossly humiliating. If anything, it would have benefited the general war effort, by sucking huge Zin forces into a gigantic trap.
Paradise was key. It was key to the Zin, it was key to the League, it was key to the whole damned war. And because Paradise was key to everything, the League’s demonstration of its military prowess at Miranda had guaranteed that the Ahmirrat would drop all other priorities in order to subdue it. Because only the League could still threaten Paradise.
It didn’t really matter when the Zin had come to this realization. It didn’t really matter when they’d decided to forget about taking Tiantiju or conquering Omicronia and instead concentrate the bulk of their forces against the League. It didn’t really matter when their leadership had settled on committing their entire strategic reserve to the Paradise-Hadassah-Haven axis. What mattered was that the League Combined General Staff had not figured out that the Zin plan had changed until it was too damned late. And that the Fleet had not been there to parry the Ahmirrat’s blow.
The Normann Belt was completely wrecked. Orbital habitats were just too damned fragile. As a small saving grace, the Fleet had bought time enough to evacuate about half the population. Most of the women and children had been saved, and all of the critical defense workers were still available.
Bretogne's industrial enterprises were also a mess, but much of the most critical stuff had been buried under the ice of the Cold Side to begin with. Everything else had been relocated, and well camouflaged, before the first Zin battleship had ever hit the jump points. Haven, too, had made preparations for the worst.
The system governors weren’t fools, and neither were the three men and one woman who made up the Council of Four. They’d all known full well that their ever-victorious General Staff Dream Team had royally screwed the pooch and the defenses would probably collapse. In the very same call Shimon had used to inform the Council of the impending disaster, he had offered his immediate resignation. Which the Honored Councilors had instantly rejected.
But all of the defensive measures taken by the various planetary governments and army garrisons were nothing but temporary palliatives.
Given time enough and complete control of the space around Hadassah, Bretogne and Haven, the Zin would surely kill everyone and wreck everything. They had the high ground, after all. And if Haven fell, the Serpent Swarm would fall also. The belters’ habitats were never self-sufficient to begin with, and over the past few centuries they had all but established a closed loop system with Haven, exchanging waste organics for food and supplies. With the massive wave of refugees from the wrecked habitats of the Normann Belt straining their life support and the loss of the critical organics trade with Haven adding to the problem, the belters’ situation was already nothing short of critical.
If Haven fell, the war was as good as lost. It was that simple.
The issue now, thought Duke Freeman, was how to recover from this accursed mess. Crying woe and beating breasts, tempting as that may be, would not help matters in the least. Besides, he’d be damned if he’d wimp out and leave Shimon and Eli in the lurch. They’d been together since the Second Imperial War, one way or another. And Eli was from Haven. His whole family was down in the tunnels somewhere beneath Kiryas Yoel. Even his wife. She’d gone home to her Civil Defense Force Reserve field hospital when the balloon had gone up, to join her two daughters.
Admiral Freeman glanced at the framed hologram that hovered menacingly over the far right corner of his desk.
The most disconcerting thing about this war had been the not knowing. The absence of a face, a name, a service history, a psychological profile, a record of command. A character.
But this was the case no longer. Eli's people had brought them, finally, the face and name of their enemy.
Admiral of the Fleet Sayf-al-Tawhid al-Majid al-Masrikh, also called Abu Jihad, Mace of Battle and Strong Right Arm of the Ahmirr. The supreme military commander of the enemy’s armed forces, Shimon’s opposite number among the Zin, was personally orchestrating operations against the League.
A grim, grizzled, obsidian-eyed beast glared back from the photograph. Bristly, yellowish whiskers. Touches of gray around the muzzle spoiling the vigor of his black-striped orange fur. Lips curled ever so slightly, always ready to snarl. And a mess of claw marks across his face; one continuous swipe from forehead to the corner of the jaw.
Surely, thought Duke Freeman, that great clawed blow had taken out the eye. He’d had the eye restored, but he had kept the scars. A telling thing, that. A very telling thing.
“You are a tough enemy, Sayf al-Masrikh,” thought Admiral Freeman. “A brilliant tactician, a wily strategist, a master of deception and surprise. You are a great leader. You inspire warriors to fanatical devotion. You lead from the front. You take initiative and you personally plunge into battle when the situation calls for it. You risk your own neck at the drop of a mark.
“You are aptly named indeed. A merry chase you have led us, and a hard fight you give.
“But you are not perfect, Sword of Darkness. You are a commoner with a chip on his shoulder. A low-born spear-carrier raised to uppermost heights by dint of sheer talent; trusted and promoted precisely because you lack any legitimate right or path to the throne. Your king has elevated you, at his pleasure,
from the lowermost depths of your society to the uppermost reaches of your people’s noble stratosphere. And at your king’s pleasure you may, at any moment, plunge irreversibly back into the mud whence you came. Knowledge of this truth sits, ever-present, just behind those beady, obsidian eyes.
“We have watched you and we have tested you, Sayf al-Masrikh. And we have learned your weaknesses.
“You are a tyrant, Sayf al-Masrikh. You brook no objection, no opposition, no countervailing counsel. Your command is a reign of terror. There is in it only one who dares think, only one whose view of a matter may count. The initiative that you feel free to exercise yourself, you deny to others. Below you, none may dare question or disobey. Below you, all must only execute.
“You plan alone, Sayf al-Masrikh. You think alone. It is your mind, and your mind only, whence spring all plans. It is your will and your will alone from which flow all orders. It is you and no one but you who lays out every detail, from the grandest to the most minute. Your staff are mere clerks, not partners.
“But no one man, no one cat, can do all things alone. You miss things, Sword of Darkness. You miss things. But that is not your greatest weakness.
“Your greatest weakness, Sayf al-Masrikh, is how you react to missing things. How you react to surprises and disappointments, to the inescapable evidence of your own, mere mortal, fallibility.
“You become angry, Sayf al-Masrikh. You become angry, and your rage gives poor counsel. You become careless with the lives of your warriors. You throw ships away to no purpose. Your first instinct, your first reaction to any surprise, is to roar and then to leap.
“Three times you invaded Miranda, though you could have readily isolated the system's sole habitable planet, and finished it later, at your leisure. When the Mirandans had unleashed their Royal Treasures, you could have simply locked them up on their world, and kept the jump points. The jump points, not the planet, were the thing that truly mattered at this stage of the game.