“Why not just build ships in the same mass ranges as the enemy?” asked Jennifer, a confused expression on her face.
“The Fleet believes that staying with the current designations gives us greater flexibility, your Grace,” said McCullom, her holo image looking toward the newly elevated Duchess. “While a six hundred thousand ton destroyer of course has more capabilities, much like that of a small cruiser, we feel that being able to deploy almost two and a half smaller vessels gives us the flexibility to deploy them in mass, or cover a larger area for scouting or strike missions.”
“Plus,” said Sean, turning toward his fiancé’, “a six hundred thousand ton ship shatters just as easily from a direct missile hit a two hundred and fifty thousand ton ship. But it takes two and a half direct hits to take the same mass of small warship out of action.”
“I know it’s a silly question,” said Jennifer, blushing.
“No. It isn’t,” said Sean, patting her forearm. “And it’s one reason I like having you sit in on these sessions. You are intelligent, while still coming from a non-military background. You might see things that we are unaware of, thanks to our background blinders.”
He looked back at McCullom. “Go ahead and get as many of those ships as you can in the pipeline, prioritizing the missile defense versions. I would really like some of those at Congreeve, but I guess that’s too much to ask.”
“Not at all, your Majesty,” said the beaming woman. “We already have a dozen test prototypes, and can fit some of our new construction to these specs in the allotted time. Maybe not exactly the same as these, but close.”
“You’re a miracle worker, Sondra. Go ahead and get me any you can.” Sean checked the time on his implant. “Is there any other business we need to deal with?”
“There’s been a complaint registered with the Fleet from the council of Reformed Catholic Bishops,” said the Prime Minister, a frown on her face.
“What the Hell could we have done to piss them off?” said the holo image of Grand Marshal Mishori Yamakuri, the frown on his almost never smiling face growing deeper.
Not that I can blame him for feeling morose, thought the Emperor, nodding at the Chief of Staff of the Imperial Army. His forces had been taking a beating on the planets the Empire had been contesting with the Cacas. That they had also been causing a lot of enemy casualties was besides the point to the head soldier. His people were dying, many on his orders.
“They are protesting the work we are doing on Congreeve IV,” said the Prime Minister. “They are not positive what we are up to, but they know it’s something, and they believe it’s something that will harm the native sophonts.”
Sean went into link and looked up what he knew about that planet. He cursed under his breath as he saw the mention of fungoid intelligences, the only one discovered so far by humankind. “How in the Hell did that world get chosen?” he asked, knowing that it was much too late to change plans.
“It was approved by the Strategic Planning Staff,” said McCullom, dropping her eyes. “I approved it without realizing there was a population of singular sophonts on the planet.”
Sean cursed again, shaking his head. It was Imperial Policy to protect primitive sophonts that were restricted to a single world, while at the same time bootstrapping them up to modern tech, so they wouldn’t suffer from all the ills and diseases of non-tech people. Putting them on a bull’s-eye sure isn’t protecting them. He sat there for a moment, thinking, then came to his decision.
“We invoke the Official Secrets Acts on this one. No explanations to the bishops. Just let them know that there is an Imperial Gag Order on this one. And get a judge to write out that order.”
“We can do that,” said the Prime Minister.
“And get a breeding population of those sophonts off that planet, in case it comes to a worst case there.”
“Yes, your Majesty.”
“So, some other pleasant surprises before we adjourn?”
“Oh,” said McCullom, looking up with a smile on her face. “Someone you worked with on the Sergiov was found, alive and well, on Massadara.”
“Gorbachev?” said Sean, knowing immediately that was who they were talking about. “How?” He glanced over at Jennifer and saw a flash of jealousy on her face, gone in an instant and replaced with a slight smile. He had told her about his crush on the pretty CPO, thinking that she was gone for good. So much for honesty.
“She has been a prisoner of the Cacas since the battle,” said McCullom, consulting her link. “And she escaped. Right now Intelligence is questioning her, getting everything she knows about the enemy.”
“I want her here, on this ship,” said Sean, glancing over at Jennifer and seeing the disapproval on her face. “I want to talk with her myself.”
“Intelligence is still questioning her, your Majesty. So far she has been a wealth of information.”
“Let them have her for another couple of weeks,” said Sean, torn between letting Naval Intelligence mine her for what must be a depth of information. “Then I want her here. After that, the intelligence people can talk with her some more.”
“Yours to command, your Majesty,” said McCullom with a grimace.
Jennifer was silent all the way back to their quarters. She threw herself on the couch as soon as she entered the living area, ignoring Killer as the cat jumped up on the furniture and tried to snuggle with her.
“It was nothing but a crush,” said Sean, sitting down beside her and putting his arm around her shoulder. She tried to shrug him off, but he held on tight. She didn’t have a chance against his enhanced strength, though he was careful to not hurt her. “She worked with me. I was in charge of the B ring of the battleship, and she was my chief NCO. And that’s all there is to it.”
“And you’re happy she’s back?” said Jennifer, looking at him with tear misted eyes.
“Of course I am. I’m happy she’s alive. I’m very happy that she’s no longer a prisoner of those cruel bastards we are fighting. And she might have some insights that will help me make better decisions where fighting this enemy is concerned.” He put a hand on her cheek and moved her head up till her eyes were looking into his. “Look. She would have boxed my ears if I had ever told her I lusted after her. Hell, she would probably still box my ears if I told her today. So you have nothing to worry about.”
“Promise?”
“I promise,” said Sean, meeting her lips with his and melting into a long kiss. Killer meowed at the door to their bedroom for quite a while, but neither one paid attention.
Chapter Five
FENRI SPACE, AUGUST 30TH, 1001.
The assault shuttle shook once again from the blast generated turbulence that raged through the atmosphere. Brigadier General Samuel Baggett sat in his heavy combat armor and cursed again. I really hate this shit, he thought, watching the ongoing battle on the surface of the world they had come to take away from the Fenri.
At least on the command ship I can watch the fight in comfort, he thought, knowing that such was really a bad idea as far as morale was concerned. The boys and girls deserved to know that their brigade and division commanders were in the mess with them. And at least on the surface I don’t have to worry about buying it because some lucky missile tracked and hit my conveyance.
He looked over the feed from the command ship once again, at the take of the planetary surface as seen from orbit. What had once been cities were still burning in places. Mostly they were scarcely seen piles of rubble through obscuring dust. To the north a trio of mushroom clouds were climbing into the sky, the signatures of kinetic strikes. And, almost beyond belief, were the beams of lasers and particle beams connecting ground projectors with aerial and orbital targets.
So, Fleet didn’t know what they were talking about, again, thought the General, cringing a bit in his armor as a particle beam barely missed the shuttle, striking one slightly further up in a flash of molten metal. Fleet had promised them that there would be almost no resistance
to the landing, based on the amount of bombardment they had placed on the obvious targets. Of course, no planetary defense worth anything was built around obvious emplacements. There were enough hidden emplacements to still make a fight of it. Which should have been obvious, given that this was a Fenri Fleet base.
The shuttle dropped beneath the high atmospheric dust and below the horizon, shielding them from most of the enemy anti-air emplacements. The shuttle banked to the right, heading toward the positions of the General’s brigade, highlighted on his HUD. They were not occupying as much area as had been planned, and a visual scan showed intense firefights to the east and south.
“Prepare for drop, sir,” said the voice of the shuttle’s pilot over the com. “Drop in ten seconds.”
Baggett sent back his acknowledgement and did the only thing he could do, wait. The shuttle straightened out, banked once again in a dodge, then flew level over the drop zone. The drop light on the HUD went green, the hatch underneath opened, and Baggett found himself in the air encased in his one ton heavy suit of battle armor, his grabbers slowing his motion and lowering him toward the ground in a least time trajectory. Around him dropped another twenty soldiers from his brigade, along with ten cylinders containing supplies.
The shuttle climbed immediately, disappearing back into the overhead dust cloud. And back into the firing envelop of the Fenri who were trying to shoot down all air traffic, inbound or outbound.
“Glad to see you made it, sir,” called a familiar voice over the com, and Baggett turned to see the blurred image of a command suit flying low over the ground in his direction.
“Glad to have made it, Captain,” said the Brigadier, recognizing the voice of an officer with brigade HQ. “Come to take me to the command post.”
“Yes, sir,” said the officer, her suit coming to a soft landing in front of the General’s.
The suit was set to stealth, bending the light around it to make it all but invisible, at least in the visible spectrum. It was still very noticeable by its heat signature, though the light bending field did its best to smudge that image, hopefully making identification more difficult. There were many suits in view that were not in stealth, the soldiers conserving energy while they took advantage of the terrain around them to hide.
“Well, let’s not keep the Colonel waiting,” said Baggett, motioning for the Captain to lead the way. He had no doubt that Colonel Dagni Thorwaldsdottir had everything under control. She had been his senior battalion commander on the Lasharan Operation, and had replaced Colonel Johansson when he was blown to shit when the Lasharan Temple blew up in their faces. Two operations in this war, and neither have been against the Cacas, thought the General with a scowl. They had been handy for the operation against the Lasharans, smashing their home system and most of their deployable military power. Then, they had been handy when operations against the Fenri intensified. And so we don’t get to strike a blow at the foe we want to hit, but instead deal with the smaller threats.
“Incoming,” yelled a strident voice over the com, and the General’s HUD lit with arrows pointing in the direction of the threat. As Baggett turned the arrows morphed into blinking cursors that expanded to show a trio of ground attack craft coming in for an attack.
Baggett went to a knee and raised his particle beam rifle to his shoulder, sighting in on one of the attack craft and letting the advanced sight lead it. Several heavy weapons suits, twice the size of a normal combat rig, turned toward the craft as launchers on their backs rose up and swiveled onto the targets. A quartet of hyper velocity missiles took off for the incoming at thousands of gravities accel, while scores of particle beams reached out for the craft.
One attack craft blew up before it could fire. The other two released a quartet of missiles each, then fired their own particle beams on passing. One suit took a direct hit, the beam burning through the armor and vaporizing the torso of the soldier inside. Most of the other shots were either near misses or strikes of limited duration, unable to penetrate the tough suit armor. Particle beams buzzed through the air in return, and one craft lost all of its forward grabber units and dropped toward the ground, to finally hit in a ball of fire beyond the brigade perimeter.
Five of the eight missiles were destroyed before they could deploy their loads, from hyper-v missiles or particle beams. The other three released their submunitions, a hundred each, to fall through the air as they oriented to their targets, then boosted ahead.
“Countermeasures,” yelled Baggett into the com, knowing as he did that his well-trained men were already deploying what was needed. On a hundred suits, including his own, drones launched into the air, while the soldiers fired spreads of particle beams toward the incoming submunitions. Over a hundred were blasted out of the air by the beams, while a hundred more fell prey to the drones. The remaining hundred odd tried to acquire targets that were using advanced countermeasures to prevent them from locking on. Most ran into the ground, to explode with popping explosions. A dozen hit targets, ten suits and two supply containers. Five men died, their signatures coming up on the General’s HUD for a second before dropping off.
“She’s coming back,” called out a soldier on the circuit. Baggett followed the arrows on his HUD and zeroed in on the last attack craft, low to the ground and lining up for another run. The image flashed for a moment, then exploded as a particle beam came from the heavens to strike dead center on the craft.
“That had to be a shot from orbit,” said the Captain, standing up beside the General.
“And we can thank God that our tech is still better than theirs,” said Baggett, grateful for the light casualties they had sustained from that attack. Not as far ahead as it is from the Lasharans, he thought. But still good enough. The Lasharans were, on average, twenty years behind the humans in tech, while the Fenri were only five at most. But even a couple of years difference could be enough.
“Good to see you made it, sir,” said Dagni as he entered the prefab command bunker. She looked over the holo table, her helmet visor up, a strand of her blond hair stuck to her sweat streaked forehead.
Baggett nodded, then returned the salutes of the other gathered personnel. In a culture where genetics had made most people beautiful, Dagni was an exceptionally lovely woman. If she hadn’t become a soldier, she could have made a living as a model or vid star. But it was the Imperial Army’s win that she had decided to become that soldier. And she’s as strong as a steel blade, thought Baggett, recalling some of his many sparring sessions with the woman. While not as strong as the muscular General, she was fast and limber, and the heavy armor suit made her the equal to any male in pure physical strength.
“How are we set?” he asked, walking up to the holo table and looking at the terrain his brigade was holding. Two of the battalions were dug in around four fifths of the perimeter, using the hills to the best advantage. The first battalion, reinforced with a company each of the other two, occupied the last sliver of the pie, along with four of the five companies of his armored battalion. That was the fist, to be used in the attack planned for the next morning.
“The Fenri didn’t want to cooperate, but we taught them to sit up and beg,” said the Colonel with a smile.
“Casualties?” Baggett already knew the figures, but was asking to see what his XO’s take was on the battle.
“More than I like. But relatively light, considering.”
“You run the battle,” said Baggett after a moment’s thought. “Your set up is tight. Good job. I’ll just kick back and observe.”
The woman smiled back, and Baggett knew that she wasn’t very comfortable with the praise. But that’s why she’s an assistant brigade commander, so she can learn how to command a brigade in combat. And what better way to learn.
Baggett patrolled the inside of the perimeter for a couple of hours after the sun went down. The sky was totally obscured by dust and clouds, though flashes through that cover showed that the battle was still raging in the upper atmosphere. There was cons
tant fighting going on along the perimeter as well, as both sides took shots at any target that presented itself, or just fired for the hell of it. Shuttles came down at regular intervals and dropped supply cylinders, containing the energy and munitions the unit would need through the next day of heavy fighting.
At midnight the General decided to turn in, to get some needed rest before the start of the attack. Finding a quiet spot in a bunker, Baggett lay down in his suit, then commanded his reticular activating system to place him in a state of deep slumber. The dreamless sleep passed as it always did, without the sensation of passing time. The night was still upon them, dawn still some hours away, as he walked from the quarters and headed toward the command post.
There was what looked like chaotic commotion in the command bunker as he walked in, an appearance that was deceiving to those not familiar with military operations. Everyone was doing what they were supposed to be doing, like a well oiled machine. The extra motion was the result of the normal desire to burn off steam before the start of a battle.
“We go in forty minutes,” said Dagni, walking up in her battle armor, faceplate retracted to show her smiling face. “With the General’s permission, of course.”
“Yours to run, Colonel,” said Baggett with a grin. “I’m just an observer.”
Dagni’s return smile let him know that she didn’t believe that shit. She would be in charge as long as everything was going well. And he would take over if it went to shit.
“Shall we?” asked the Colonel, gesturing toward the entrance to the bunker.
Exodus: Empires at War: Book 06 - The Day of Battle Page 7