Moon Dreams

by M.A. Harris

Attacked

  “...Also in the news this Monday the Departments of Defense, State and Justice continue to stonewall on the so called Space Raiders and the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and others are suing to open up the records. There have been a series of high level secret briefings to Congress but no general announcements. Aristide Industries, the suspected source of the technology, has been declared bankrupt and is now operating under special inter-governmental agreement. No one knows where the hundreds of employees at Ship Plateau in Utah are, some believe them to be entombed under the shattered mountain.....”

  Paul tapped his tablet and rubbed his eyes, “OK, two weeks since the jig was up, and five days since we decided to be players rather than played and the world hasn’t come apart. I don’t think our luck’s going to hold much longer. So now back to the latest wonderful surprise.”

  Helena and Major Tien exchanged guilty looks, “In the crush we just forgot about it Mr. President. The Command Platform’s no threat on its own, it doesn’t even have much in the way of sensors beyond local defense, it depends on the observation platforms.”

  The image on the screen was replaced by something that looked like an oil barrel, stiffening hoops and all, set adrift in space. With nothing to scale the image the eye tended to belittle it but the construct was all of eighty feet tall and thirty feet in diameter. The image didn’t show the huge and complex umbrella like shield that hid the cylinder from observation from Earth.

  Helena flipped a small orbital track graphic up, “It’s geostationary over the mid Pacific, but it’s powered by two Stacks so it can maneuver, if not very fast. The watch crew is changed every two weeks. On the shield side, there are racks for two fighters and a ready room with sleeping slings for four. They can keep a quick reaction force up, though it hasn’t been done as far as I know. It also mounts a single laser with twin directors for local defense.”

  “What happens if it’s knocked out?”

  Major Tien, the Garrison’s communications and sensors expert fielded this one, “There’s one operational control nexus, there was one at the Hollow as well, but the principle one is New Town on Palalo Sadong. The orbital platform is a secure communications hub and backup control station. Most communications go through the platform so it’s a bottleneck in the system. They probably want to set up a groundside backup but the General’s low on staff. He’s asked the Colonel to send me and some techs down to help out but the Colonel has been stalling.”

  Paul nodded, leaned back trying to think things through. “So, Howard and the Admiral General have forty bombardment platforms, the MoonDream, MoonBeam and thirteen fighters. We have the Alexis, six fighters, two of the moon tanks, one fixed mount laser and three rapid fire cannon mounts.” Helena and Tien nodded.

  Paul continued, “The impactors depend on the Earth orbiting GPS satellites and aerodynamics, one isn’t terribly accurate out this far and no air means no steering. Unfortunately, they’ll probably just drop tons of quarry scraps on us, thousands of ragged pieces of granite and the defensive systems can do nothing about rocks falling in at near orbital speed.”

  This got another round of nods and a lot of grim expressions. Julia who’d been working with Helena spoke up, “The bombardment platforms use GPS for navigation in Earth orbit. Not accurate out here. So they will need help from earth or an escort. To keep the impact pattern tight they’ll need to drop from a hundred miles or less and from overhead not over the horizon. Command guidance from Earth requires a radar ping off the platforms that will give us warning. If they escort the platforms we should get the opportunity to intercept them at least outbound if that makes sense.”

  Paul sighed, “What about other methods of attack, standoff laser attack, a fighter sweep?”

  It was Julia who answered again, “Their best long term solution is blockade. But if they want to do something pointed but not too risky they could mount one of the heavy lasers in a Moonship and snipe at us; kill people on the surface, take down domes, damage stores in the open. But it would put them in range of our laser and the fighters and unless they hit and run we’d win that duel. The fighters can carry out harassing attacks, but at some risk to themselves. They can hit us with lasers but it puts them in range of our more powerful laser. An attack with bombs or spin stabilized rockets is possible but again they have to get close enough for us to hit back and the effects would be painful but no more.”

  Helena nodded, “Captain Chisholm is right and if Micah and Howard are in command they’ll avoid the possibility of taking losses like that. Neither side can replace losses right now and they have more to lose than we do if their space arm is crippled.”

  Paul rubbed his eyes again, now for the decision this meeting was about. He glanced at Arkan and Sunil who had been standing at the back of the room, “Colonel, Major, you’ve been the one communicating with and monitoring Conrad, the Crimson Staff and the Admiral General, what is our status there?”

  Arkan grimaced, “My instincts tell me that Conrad suspects I am playing games with him. But he is not sure what I am up to.”

  Sunil nodded, “I think General Conrad believes the Colonel is playing for a bigger payoff. The Crimson Staff network has gone deep, every military and civilian intelligence service on earth knows they’re involved and is chasing leads for information. The Admiral General is still playing offended victim, no one believes him but no one has figured out his game yet.”

  Paul sighed, “Major Tien, Helena what do we know of the enemy forces.”

  Tien tapped his tablet, the screen showed a series of icons, “We have passive sensor arrays set up, they’re good at finding things that aren’t trying to hide or tracking quite stealthy targets they are pointed at. We know where the surviving earth orbiting satellites are as well as the command platform and the space fighters as long as they are in view, on this side of the planet. We cannot track the bombardment platforms or Moonships unless the sensor stack spots them first, fortunately the sensor stack is giving us reliable spots.”

  Paul and Tien had come up with a way of making the stack better at tracking small objects though in this mode it didn’t provide stunning 3D images. The system now ‘focused’ on a series of essentially immense two dimensional planes instead of 3D volumes. This made processing much quicker and if the planes were stacked a few miles apart they gave a very good ‘track’ of small objects, however stealthy.

  “There hasn’t been anything in transluna space for a couple of days except our fighters and the Alexis,” Helena finished up the report.

  “How soon till we have the second sensor stack up Major Tien?”

  “Two days at least, more like three.”

  “And how long to move the sensor stack from Cooper’s lab to the bunker and have it communicating with the defense coordination center?”

  “Six hours.”

  Paul rubbed his face, “Get it started right away.” Tien tapped his heals and bowed as he saluted then almost literally in the Luna gravity, jumped for the door, he’d wanted to do it days ago.

  A couple of minutes later the conference room was empty except for Paul and Julia. She came to him, slipped her arms around him and they shared a lingering kiss. Then she pulled back and shook her head at him, “Paul, no one can see the future, we didn’t know that we’d have this much time.”

  He smiled tiredly, “I know but it doesn’t keep me from wishing I could. I have a bad feeling that we’re not seeing the whole picture. I don’t see how things could be this good.”

  She stroked his cheek, “You sir, are a pessimist.”

  “The engineer’s patron saint is Murphy, whose principle tenet is that everything that can go wrong will, at the worst possible time.”

  Then they kissed again and he felt a lot better for a while at least.

  -o-

  Paul was roused from a deep sleep by a tone, after a moment of confusion the lingering dream of Julia vanished and he rolled over, “Richards?” />
  His tablet iSec replied, “Mr. President, Major Sukala would like a word.”

  “Yes Sunil?”

  “We have a problem Mr. President; we’re going to red alert.” The ex guerilla said without preamble.

  “Why?” Paul yelled as he moved to the closet.

  “We had an event when we took down the stack, one of the techs ‘accidently’ opened a vacuum seal in the stack, as you know a normal one would have burnt out, this one just shut down. At first we thought it was just stupidity but an hour ago a sweep of the communication log found a data package that didn’t belong. A mil grade encrypted message we cannot decrypt. It went out a few minutes after the stack went off line.”

  “Where is that tech?”

  “Somewhere in the Garrison, we’re looking for him.”

  “Shit!”

  “Agreed, we’re in the command center, sir.”

  “I’ll be there in a few, Richards out.” He glanced at a clock, five hours since the stack was taken offline, another one to four to get it back up, and if Conrad had been waiting for a message it was possible a strike force was nearly here already.

  He dressed in his new ‘working clothes,’ what he wore in his presidential persona, jeans, white shirt and jean jacket, with the disaster collar of course.

  As he stepped out of the door of the lower level apartment he’d been assigned when he was first banished to the moon he heard someone call his name sharply. He turned towards the feminine voice and as he did he heard a shot and then the movie like sound of a ricochet.

  Paul felt like he was trapped in treacle as he dived in Luna’s low gravity slow motion. As he went down he twisted to see a dark figure maybe fifty feet away in the classic combat pistol shooting stance. As Paul went to ground he heard a second and third shot, though no ricochets.

  Then came a heard a sharper stutter of gunfire from the other direction. Puffs of concrete dust and sparks showed rounds hitting near the gunman. Numbly Paul saw the assassin shifting, bringing his aim point down compensating for Luna’s lower gravity. The gunman’s pistol jerked twice in quick succession, but the sound was overwhelmed by the stutter of the other weapon, and the pistol man twitched as rounds hit, a puff of red came off his head and he was falling in slow motion.

  “Paul, Paul, are you hit?” Julia was running for him, a machine carbine at her shoulder.

  “No, no, I think I’m fine.” Paul pushed himself upright. Nothing hurt, he didn’t feel shocky or any wetness of blood. She was next to him, her gun still pointing at the dark sprawl, “You’re sure?”

  “All good, he looks like he’s down.”

  There was the sound of yells and running, the first to appear were a pair of dark clad figures with their weapons drawn, pointed at the assassin, who didn’t show any signs of life.

  As Julia let her gun come off point Paul touched her arm, “Let’s go before the civilians arrive and realize what just happened.” She turned to follow as he strode away, in a moment they were at the connector and in his presidential limousine, a two seat electric cart.

  “You know, you almost got killed by a couple of dirty minds,” Julia was white but grinning tightly.

  “What?”

  “Sunil and Arkan assumed we were sleeping together, and they know I usually have a gun around. Thankfully Helena knows better, when she realized what the pair of them had done she called me.” She patted the carbine, “Luckily I had this in my room.”

  Paul was aghast, “I’m sorry Julia!”

  She blinked, “About what?”

  “That they’d think that we were uh... we, uh.”

  “Sleeping together?” She laughed easily, “Their problem, not mine.”

  A minute later they were at the entrance to the Garrison and ran for the control room buried in the rock. Men and women in both civilian and Garrison garb sat and stood in front of the displays or worked on the cabinets racked against the walls.

  Colonel Tien stood at one of the displays, speaking into his earboom, “Colonel we lost them again, they passed over the sensors horizon heading for the observatory. If they continue on the same vector and acceleration we’ll see them again soon.”

  One of the operators spoke sharply and Tien nodded, “Climbing away, they’re blowing out a lot of smoke chaff to degrade the track; all we see is a cluster.” He looked around and saw Paul, “Colonel, the President is here with me. Secure seven Mr. President.”

  Paul fumbled his comm selector, “Arkan?”

  “You probably know almost as much as I do Mr. President, they almost caught us by surprise. We were lucky; our new sensor system picked them up a couple of minutes ago, as they fell in towards the Observatory.”

  There was a curse nearby, Paul looked up, a woman at one of the consoles tried to keep her voice steady, “Reports coming over the fiber optic line from the Observatory, hits on the domes and habitat sections, no word about casualties, yet.”

  “What are we seeing?” The big display hadn’t started making sense to Paul’s eyes yet.

  Tien pointed, “Sir one group so far, one fighter and four bombardment platforms…” He jerked as his headset squawked, “What, wait!” Tien tapped his mute button, a young woman, Paul was a bit startled to realize it was Becky, was talking into her headset as she stared intently at a screen. Tien went to stand at her shoulder as she pointed at her screen. Tien leaned forward intently, then nodded, tapping his comm pad again, “Looks like stationing the Tank at the observatory paid off General, the fighter and one of the platforms didn’t come back up.”

  Arkan replied gruffly, “I’ll congratulate the commander. What’s their course now?”

  Paul saw something on the screen and punched his override, “Alexis, this is President Richards. Get. Up. Now! Straight out fast as you can go.”

  “Sir the CAP’s not in position.” Someone called in protest.

  Tien had spun, looked like he was going to join in, Paul shook his head and gave the order, “Don’t care, if she’s far enough out and fast enough they’ll never catch her, down she’s a target, one they may already have pinpointed.”

  “This is Alexis we are go,” it was Patsy’s voice, on a screen he saw the sun shield flip out of the way, the Moonship leapt up and away, vanishing into the black in an instant.

  “Alexis is up and accelerating at six gee, no sign of enemy combatants. Alexis should be out of risk in a minute or less.” Someone called out.

  “This is Combat Patrol lead; we are tracking targets coming in on Luna Haven. Classify as fighters,” Helena’s voice was calm.

  An anonymous woman’s voice called out, “Main array is tracking inbounds overhead, many inbound, rock fall, rock fall, four maneuvering bodies behind the rock fall. System has hard tracks.” Somewhere in the background Paul heard alarms go from a gentle hooting to the full throated scream of imminent impact.

  “Laser one has a track and is engaging.” A male voice with an eastern European accent crooned.

  “Brace.” Someone yelled and Paul grabbed a desk.

  Nothing, then a faint rumble from far away. One of the big screens showed a section of the container park erupt in dust and flying debris fragments and whole containers spinning every which way. Another showed a dome rippling and bouncing, fire and flying debris inside, outside a cluster of symmetrical dust cones rising and mingling to hide the dome. Another showed the dust and debris cones erupting across a line of buried hab modules.

  Alarms sounded and people began barking questions then orders this way and that. It was chaos but controlled chaos, Tien seemed to have his crew in hand..

  One part of Paul wanted to scream in rage and pain but he forced his mind to analyze the situation calmly, he tapped the mic button, “Arkan, this is a demonstration, it’s a small force split three ways, they want to sting, not obliterate.”

  “Agreed,” Arkan sounded tense and distracted.

  A set of red icons appeared; four heading straight for Luna Haven,
vectors showed they were in powered orbits, moving much faster and lower than was possible otherwise. Helena’s two ship combat patrol was accelerating hard to get a shot at them. The fighters’ laser optics gave them a limited engagement range, still a hundred miles, but short in space combat.

  Overlapping lavender ovals appeared around Helena’s patrol and the enemy formation. Both sets of fighters began to dance, twist while spewing laser and radar degrading chaff. The ovals swept over the icons, “Engagement range!”

  One of the Luna Haven fighters thrust vector vanished and the icon changed to blue X falling across the map. An enemy fighter also went dumb and started to fall upwards, an instant later its icon changed to a tiny red skull and crossbones.

  Another one seemed to stagger then rise away though it was still dancing furiously, more furiously as it fell away from Luna’s dangerous surface. Instantly three icons spaced around Luna Haven snapped from green to blue and emitted dotted lines in the direction of the rising fighter.

  The remaining three fighters danced and sparred. Then one of the enemy fighters faded off the track, an instant later the ovals were past each other. “Fighters out of range,” intoned the combat caller.

  The enemy fighter that had broken up to escape was desperately trying to reverse; before it could it intercepted the dotted lines, which had expanded into overlapping cones. It stopped maneuvering then fragmented, the expanding cluster designated with another skull and crossbones.

  The surviving enemy fighter snapped across the very edge of the engagement circle around Luna Haven and was away. “Enemy formation is clear of our engagement zone.”

  There was a crackle, then, “This is Yarina, Combat Patrol Lead, I lost Alejandro, I’ve taken damage but nothing critical. Maneuvering for a trail intercept, Ready Patrol form on me as soon as possible.” Paul let his breath out with a whoosh, before he realized he’d been holding his breath.

  A voice Paul recognized as that of the man in charge of the Farside Observatory was speaking over the command circuit, “…first casualty report. We have nine known dead, twenty-five unaccounted for, we think they’re out of communication, not dead. The tank was right under the main cluster of hits, we can see the wreckage from one of the view ports, we’ve had no communication since the strike but we see some movement at the wreckage so there are survivors.”

  Arkan snarled something in what Paul assumed was his native tongue, “…luck. Tien, what are the attackers doing?”

  Tien glanced around, “The survivors are all outbound. The observatory strike force is out of view. Their trajectory takes them over the moons pole, then probably a loop back to Earth.”

  “They’re out of bullets, they hit us and are on their way home,” Arkan sighed, “I’d love to pursue but it’s not worth it, your orders Mr. President?”

  Paul glanced at the track, feeling the impact of all the eyes and expectations focused on him, “Agreed Colonel, they hit us but we burnt them badly.”

  -o-

  Helena wished she could mop her brow, could stop the tumult of emotions fueled by hope. Her radar had a solid lock and she was overhauling the target quickly. Too quickly now, she applied a little reverse thrust, was pressed against the restraints a little. She slaved the optical tracking system of the laser, a high precision telescope to the radar track. On the screen flashed an odd dark and white tangle that her brain took a moment to define as a tumbling space suited figure. A hundred miles, sixty, forty, thirty, she was suddenly in the single digits and she applied a lot more reverse thrust. Suddenly a blue light lit up, “Alejandro?”

  After a pause, “Hey Major, funny meeting you out here!” the Brazilian tried to sound macho, but there was a hitch in his voice.

  “You meet all sorts out here, sorry about the delay.”

  “Hey, no problem, no problem at all.”

  She could see him out of the transparency, he waved, she waved back, “Alexis, Defense central my radar reports zero relative to Captain Murphy.”

  “We are vectoring the Alexis to you Major.” Tien said with a happy lilt to his voice.

  “About five behind you Helena.” Patsy added calmly.

  -o-

  Julia looked around the small auditorium, “I’ve been asked to provide an after action brief ladies and gentlemen.” There were a lot of civilians as well as good half of the whole garrison.

  A big map snapped into focus behind her, “The enemy came at us in a coordinated three pronged attack, depending on surprise and knowledge of our sensor and weapons positioning. Apparently they had a ready force waiting for a message from the spy. This force was mainly bombardment platforms with a heavy load of simple kinetic masses, hundreds of roughly fifty pound boulders that the platforms dispersed into space at a pre defined point and velocity. They used fighters as navigational lead ships.”

  “There was no lead ship with the group that dropped on Luna Haven.” One of the civilians pointed out.

  “They were escorted by the four ship fighter formation that came in low; they separated well below our horizon but were on a parallel track.” Julia answered crisply.

  There were no more questions and she went on, “The strike on the observatory was four platforms and a fighter, it was a very precise strike, we are lucky or they were unlucky, the spread of rocks is essentially random and a lot of them simply missed by random luck, statistically not only the connector and dome should have been destroyed but all of the main dormitory wing. It was ill luck that the fall that hit the storage area also hit the Tank.”

  She took a steadying breath, “Of the twenty five people at the observatory we lost six including two of the Tank’s four crew,” that got grim silence, most had already known. She went on, “The enemy lost one fighter and one platform to the Tank. Both impacted the surface a hundred kilometers clear of the facility.” There were a couple of claps at that but it was poor recompense for the deaths.

  “The strike on Luna Have was much less precise; they did not have precision navigation on the last part of the run and dropped further out with a more dispersed pattern. They destroyed one dome, damaged two others and got a penetration through an unoccupied corridor. They also trashed forty empty containers and one storing exercise equipment. There were no fatalities.”

  “Guess we’ll have to go to twenty four hour shifts at the gym,” one wag said getting a few laughs and a lightening of the atmosphere.

  Julia smiled, then went on, “It’s our guess, based on the pattern of the drops, that they may have had a systematic navigation error,” a map of Luna Haven showing the oval drop patterns blinked up, “If you shift the drops north and east,” ghost images appeared, “The drops would have fallen across the uncompleted end of the new corridor, the garrison and the staging area including the moonship landing zone. In the end it was probably a wash as to the effect but it does tell us that hitting targets with dumb weapons is not as easy in practice as it sounds in planning meetings”

  She paused and went on, “The enemy lost all four platforms to Major Skojecks laser.” She waved at the Hungarian who got a round of applause.

  “The third strike was a low level fighter sweep; we believe to have been aimed at destroying or disabling the Alexis. Two of the enemy fighters were destroyed and one is known to have escaped. It’s probable the fourth also escaped though it was first thought it had unintentionally hit the surface. A scan of the impact zone shows no sign of impact and a detailed review of the topography shows a natural corridor on the path the pilot would have needed to escape, apparently he or she was good, and very lucky.”

  She sat down and others stood to give reports on the damage to the observatory, then Luna Haven. The news was bad, it couldn’t be otherwise, but it was far from catastrophic and there was a grim determination from everyone to fix and move on, and also to make the bastards pay for the unprovoked attack.

  -o-

  Paul looked up from his tablet at the tweedle of an incoming call, “Mr.
President!”

  “Colonel?”

  “I have a contact request from Howard Conrad, scheduled in ten minutes.”

  Paul glanced at the time, “Bit slow off the mark, more than twelve hours?”

  “My guess is that he had to think over how badly we hurt him and what we’re likely to be thinking. Also waiting to see if he gets another report from his spy, he has to suspect we burned him.”

  “Any luck with the decrypt, any more messages in the archives?”

  “It looks like there were but they were erased by a little piece of spyware in the archiving system. We were lucky we’d just updated the log sniffer and it spotted the message before it was archived. The new sniffer had some new patterns programmed in and the spy hadn’t had a chance to update yet. And no we have no decrypt; Tien doesn’t think we ever will unless we can find some more messages with the same key.”

  It hadn’t been likely, but Paul would have liked to know, he shrugged “I’ll be at your place in a few Arkan.”

  “See you then Paul.”

  Right on time the video feed started, Paul, with Sunil and Conti, watched the pale eyed image, the thin almost cadaverous face was, as usual, emotionless. The room behind him was anonymous but Howard was wearing a military uniform not a suit.

  “So good of you to receive my call Colonel,” Conrad could only see Olarik but had to know others were watching,

  “Good of you to call Howard.” Arkan replied, “I hope you have an explanation of the rather ill mannered actions of your space forces yesterday?”

  This caused a faint twitch of one eyebrow, “I would have thought it rather obvious, Colonel, I have had enough of your insubordination and wanted to make the point that you are extremely vulnerable up there, making your defense preparations pointless. That scientific side show should have been reigned in long ago anyway.”

  “Insubordination General?” Arkan asked sweetly.

  “Your refusal to return the moonship Alexis Aurora to the control of the only remaining part of the company that owns it. Your stonewalling regarding information on Paaly’s new stack design and returning Paaly and Richards to Earth where they can be more productive. And you have not returned the criminals Richards illegally liberated. Need I go on, Colonel?”

  “No Howard, I’m quite aware of what I have and have not done in the last few weeks, I just didn’t consider them insubordination, not yet anyway. Are you aware that your pet spy tried to kill Paul Richards, and that he destroyed a working prototype of the new Stack? Also Dr. Cooper Paaly finally succumbed to the illness that he has been fighting.”

  Howard was visibly taken aback by some of what Olarik said, but his cold mask quickly returned, “I take it that Richards is alive?”

  “Julia Chisholm saved his life by killing your spy.”

  “Ark....Colonel, you’ve let her loose with a gun?”

  “Why not, she’s a US Air Force officer and a markswoman.”

  Howard seemed to interpret Arkan’s comment about Julia as a sign of intent, “Trying to suck up to the US won’t do you any good Arkan, just like sucking up to the civilian population is pointless. We control access to near Earth space and Luna, and your lifeline.”

  “Who exactly is this we you mention, Howard?” Arkan asked with a cocked eyebrow.

  “You know damn well who Arkan, Palalo Sadong and Aristide Industries, which is now based in Mindow City.” Howard snarled, losing a lot of his cool.

  “My advisors have been following the news we can pick up and while that claim is out there, international law does not back it up.”

  Howard’s snarl had turned into something like a smile, “Colonel, international law is a public relations concept not a fact as you well know.” Then he shook his head fiercely, “You’re not helping yourself with this silliness. All we are bargaining about is how much it will cost us to keep Luna Haven out of our hair. The Admiral General wants to obliterate the whole operation and start again with a clean slate; I’ve restrained him till now.”

  Olarik took his time answering this, “I don’t think either of you want to do that Howard, this place is a modern day wonder worth more than the whole of PS. If managed well the far side observatory alone could make more per year than the current Sadongese economy does.”

  “If that is what you want to believe I cannot change your mind Colonel. What will it take to keep you out of my hair; you have to know it’s in your personal interest?”

  “I’ll have to think about it Howard.”

  The cold pale eyes narrowed, “Why are you stalling Colonel?”

  “Am I General? I will get back with you, thank you for the call.” Arkan cut his end of the link. The feed from the other side stayed up for several seconds showing Howard’s outrage fading to thought before he cut the video.

  Arkan swung to look at his audience, “He still thinks this is about money?” the big man looked surprised.

  Paul shrugged, “He knows you as a mercenary Arkan, and he’s a mercenary, all he cares about are power and money in the end. I don’t think he has a truly ethical bone in his body.”

  Sunil was looking at his fingers, “I think you were right on the economic front Arkan, neither Howard nor the Admiral General is likely to obliterate Luna Haven from simple frustration.”

  “What triggered the attack then?”

  “What did the spy know about the situation, and how did he interpret it and report it.” Julia asked thoughtfully? “Single spies can be worse than useless if they misunderstand the situation.”

  Tien, standing in the corner snapped his fingers, “A brilliant insight Captain! The civilian and garrison sides don’t mix much, all the political information and discussion are over the secure servers and the Garrison has been watch on watch since well before the turnover.”

  “And no one on the military side knew much about the sensor Stack till the Turnover. So the spy may not have had any idea what it was. As far as we can tell he didn’t have a highly technical background, in fact he was barely competent as a tech, which was why nobody suspected anything when he botched disconnecting the lab stack.” Julia pointed out, Tien nodding in agreement.

  “Howard knew I was co-opting to the civilian side and that Paul was working with me and that we were setting up a defense center. And that’s what triggered the attack.” Arkan looked thoughtful.

  “Triggered, he had been planning it for some time. The load outs on the platforms wouldn’t have made sense against a target on Earth.” Paul pointed out, his mind already racing onwards. It took him some time to realize that the room had fallen silent and everyone was looking at him with various expressions, from amused affection to irritation. “Uh sorry, did I miss something?”

  Arkan’s broad hands were spread over his flat stomach as he lounged in his big chair, “No but we all know that expression Mr. President, we were waiting for the result?”

  “We can’t fight this war alone; Howard was wrong, we do need to suck up to the US, or at least, make our peace. I don’t think any of us would trust any of the other significant military powers, and the other powers we might trust either don’t have the political will or the military stock piles we will need access to.”

  “The will and stock piles to do what?”

  “To fight a war with the Admiral General,” Paul waved at Conti, “I’ve looked at the plans for New Port, and it’s a fortress designed to stand off anything short of a full scale nuclear or space to ground kinetic strike. And it can make either of those utterly self defeating by using the bombardment platforms to deliver revenge strikes. We know there have to be some other rearming sites across the world.”

  “If you took out the Command Platform and seized the bombardment platforms you could prevent that, use them to hit New Port.” Sunil pointed out.

  Tien and Julia shook their heads in unison, Tien spoke first, “You’d never be able to seize all the platforms, the main command point’s at New Port, you might get half. And then you’d l
ose the CP to a fighter strike.”

  Paul nodded grimly, “But with half the platforms we’d have a strike force that could smash New Port and they’d have to attack us across three hundred thousand kilometers, with the sensor stack to provide us warning.”

  Tien was shaking his head, “The bombardment platforms take time to program and get into position. Long after the CP was blown to dust, with it gone we couldn’t hit New Port for days, and without the CP we might well lose control of some or all.”

  Julia nodded, “And, they would strike back in hours not days. Even with equal numbers of platforms, ten fighters to five, two moonships, one an armed merchant cruiser, against one. While we’d be defending we’d be at a heavy disadvantage.”

  “I don’t think it’s that bad, but we’d have no advantages,” Paul conceded, “And unless New Port was out of the picture we’d be in a world of hurt.

  “And we can’t just blanket bomb New Port Paul, they have more than half of the Villages population as hostages, people we all know, friends even family,” Conti protested.

  Julia was looking at the image of New Port frowning in thought. Helena spoke up now, “Now who has that certain expression? Spill it Julia.”

  “In the old days, a few weeks ago, the US had a solution for this sort of thing, some people call it Spook, Spot, Blot, you spook the defenses with an attack of some sort, with a bunch of spotters doing nothing but plotting defense location, then you send in a precision strike team with the right weapons to blast them into scrap. The reserve B2 unit I work for trains in that sort of op.”

  The colonel smiled bitterly, “Unfortunately this is not a few weeks ago and even if it were New Port was designed to defeat that sort of attack. The defenses are in steep terrain, in hardened bunkers and can be shifted from bunker to bunker in a few minutes. It might work if you had satellite coverage with two massive strike waves right on top of each other but not today.”

  “The Alexis can carry several times what a B2 can and she can hover over the same spot for hours at a time.” Julia replied, “The modern small diameter bomb can be reprogrammed by radio link just before it’s dropped. The thing is that you need something to Spook the defenses and someone to Spot and feed the precision data to the bombs.”

  Paul looked at Helena, “The fighters have very good threat receivers can they locate with enough precision for one or two small bombs to kill a laser or missile site?”

  “Helena smiled savagely, “They’re not great but they don’t need to be even good, we have the location of every structure in New Port all we have to know is which one is a threat vs. which one is somebody’s bungalow.” She grimaced, “But with the antenna pointed at the enemy they will spot us from a long way out and we’ll give the game away or get shot down before we start.”

  Paul looked at Arkan, “We can’t give them time to think, we have to hit them in quick succession, take the CP, hit New Port and probably Mindow city with missiles, break the defenses of New Port and get a landing force on shore before they have time to think. To do that we need the US not as a passive ally but one willing to put its neck on the line.”

  “We’d need public support as well as military and political backing.” Julia said firmly, Conti, Sunil and Arkan all nodded.

  “Declare independence publicly you mean,” Paul said thoughtfully.

  “Wouldn’t that provoke a full out attack?” Sunil asked in disbelief.

  “Not right away, Howard will think it’s just part of my plan to extort a better ‘deal.’”

  Paul frowned, “It sounds like a plan that would work. But we won’t have any margin.”

  Arkan smiled grimly, “None at all Mr. President, none at all.”