"OK, Frances, what would you have me do?"
"There is no question here that something major is up. No, we don't know what, but something is happening."
"And?"
"And, you need to accept that as a fact, or, at least, a very high probability, and act like you believe it!"
"Fine. You all think this is a prelude to some kind of all-out attack?"
"Well, sir," Ron said, ignoring the previous exchange, "that would perhaps be the worst case. But we believe that defenses should be strengthened at all three planets and both starbases."
"And what about the offensive?"
Ann looked up from her tablet. "The purpose of the offensive, sir, is to reduce the enemy's fleet, their supplies, their ability to resist, is it not?"
"Yes, of course."
"Is that goal not achieved just as well by letting them come to us? Let them come into a trap of their own making?"
"What if they don't show? Or don't arrive when we think they will?"
"Then there will still be time for us to move forward and strike."
"Actually, Admiral," Ron said, "we could still hit all the Sigma Spheres, the Enemy Station, on a particular date. That would only take a handful of ships."
"To what end?"
"If nothing else, it will put them on notice that we know about these assets. If we're lucky, it will make them pull back."
Ann again consulted her tablet. "Cobra is due at Enemy Station in a few days. Another week and they'll be at Alpha Mensae."
"Your point?"
"Let's hold off on any commitments until we hear from them."
"You're talking three weeks, Lieutenant. If what you say is true, we might not have that kind of time."
Ron leaned back in his chair. "Let's get a message to Barker, see what he thinks. My own feeling is that we immediately reinforce ourselves at the five points I mentioned, then see what Cobra can tell us."
"And then strike the enemy facilities when we want?"
"Yes, and I would say the sooner, the better."
"Very well. Send a message to Barker describing this intercept and what you make of it. I'll get with Cook and work out the reinforcements and then let Barker decide when and how to strike."
As they returned to the Intel section, Ron turned to his most senior civilian.
"Frances, what the hell was that? Getting yourself fired doesn’t help!"
She smiled shyly. "Connor wouldn't dare."
She walked confidently to her office, closing the door behind her.
Ann Cooper shared a perplexed look with Ron, then went on with her duties. Whatever Frances had on Connor Davenport was pretty strong leverage. Ron had never seen her use that tone with anyone before, let along the Fleet Commander.
Whatever it was, Ron was pretty sure it was a one-time-only thing.
Cobra
Enroute Enemy Station
Saturday, January 24, 2079, 0600 UTC
As Cobra approached its appointment with Enemy Station, David and Jack Ballard spent time looking over the new Operations Center, buried deep within the ship, fifty meters aft of the bridge. The rectangular room was nine meters wide and eighteen long. The lateral walls were lined with workstations, six on each side, which could access whatever sensor its operator required, be it IR, UV, RF, radar, or visual. In the center of the room was a large U-shaped raised island, Center Console, in which sat the shift boss. The technical analyst at Center was essentially the Officer in Tactical Command of Cobra and could monitor incoming data, direct operations, and assign resources as necessary to collect whatever data they were after. Forward of Center Console was another small raised platform, with seats meant for the Captain, XO, or another observer to monitor the operation. Aft of Center was a large work table, where references could be accessed and charts displayed.
The room was just large enough for the dozen operators and backup analysts it required. The sound-deadening walls and ceiling made it feel subdued, which helped each analyst focus on the task at hand. The aft wall contained the visual observation complex, with several oversized monitors and controls for the large telescopes mounted back in what would otherwise be the magazine.
In a pause in the discussion of the workstation assignments for the Enemy Station encounter, David looked over at his new supervisor.
"Listen, Jack, I just...well...while I have a chance...I know what your support meant to Carol while Sigma was missing."
"Yeah, she was pretty busted up there for a while. It was hard to watch."
"Like I said, your support meant a lot to her, and I just wanted to say thanks for being there."
Jack folded his arms across himself and leaned back against the Center Console. "She's a great person, David, and a fine, fine officer. I was glad to be able to be a friend when she needed one." When David didn't respond, Jack continued. "Everyone on board loved that girl, David, and they were all praying you'd somehow turn up alive."
David smiled. "Thanks, Jack, I owe you."
"I don't think so, not really. We do the right things, David, because they are the right things. She would have been there for me if the roles had been switched. I'm pretty sure you would, too. So, no, you don't owe me a thing."
They went back to the minutia of assignments, looking to put the right people on the right source data feeds.
Later that day, David pulled out his journal.
Dear Carol,
I had a talk with Jack Ballard today. I thanked him for being there for you — it seems like that's just natural for him.
They think the world of you over there, but I guess you probably know that.
I do, too, and I'm real sure you know that.
This is going to be another long trip. More chapters for the journal, more memories of you that keep me awake when I really should be sleeping. Thanks!
—David
Cobra
Enemy Station
Sunday, January 25, 2079, 0600 UTC
Cobra fell out of FTL well away from Enemy Station. Chaffee had given them a good location, well within a few thousand kilometers. As they cruised towards it, at first nothing appeared on any of their surveillance displays.
Ray Salazar was sitting the Center position, with David and Jack Ballard observing.
"D'ya suppose they moved it?" David asked quietly.
"I wonder if maybe they did. After Henderson creamed them at Beta Hydri, maybe they decided to pull back?"
"Sure, but Cooper made the point in her report from the Marines' observations that the enemy never stepped back once engaged, not even to regroup. They stood where they were, even if that meant they all died."
"Fatally stubborn?"
"Well, I think more like unable to cope with opposition."
An hour later, Marge Nixon, watching the radio frequency scanners as she listened intently to her earphones, called out to Salazar. The 180 MHz constant wave signal was up. The 'Dinner Plate,' as the fifty-meter dish had been nicknamed, had proven its worth. The facility was there, and they were on the right course.
There was a long silence as they waited impatiently for the IR and other sensor displays to register.
Finally, David saw something. "Hey, Jack, take a look at that!"
Jack followed David's eye to the IR display, where a large series of spherical shadows were beginning to reveal themselves.
"Hot damn, there it is!"
Jack looked at the ship's status monitor for their exact location.
"Right where it's supposed to be after all."
They moved silently past the enemy facility, at a distance of a thousand kilometers, much closer than Chaffee had dared. They could easily see the three enemy ships docked there.
Nothing moved in or out in the thirty-six hours they were gliding by. But, looking back at Chaffee's images, there had been a complete turnover in docked ships. They could clearly see six ships of various types in the Chaffee pictures. Some of the ships Chaffee saw may have been those smoked by Intrepid a few
weeks later, but there were no markings that would allow them to uniquely identify individual ships.
Once well past Enemy Station, Cobra pulled away and headed for Alpha Mensae, the suspected enemy homeworld. What they would find there, no one had any idea. At a speed of 1.3 light years per day, they'd be there in six days and twenty hours.
It was good to be the fastest ship in the fleet.
February 2079
Cobra
Alpha Mensae
Thursday, February 2, 2079, 0600 UTC
As they approached Alpha Mensae, the Intel crew made preparations for the Fleet's most important, and riskiest, intelligence operation yet. They arrived at 6 AU from the star. Astrophysicists had calculated the habitable zone to be slightly closer to the star than that around the Sun, but Evans wanted to be a safe distance out so they could assess the system and find the enemy homeworld from a safe distance. That is, if it was actually here.
Jack Ballard assigned himself to Center Console for the initial contact, placing David on the main visual observation post with a young tech to assist. Ray Salazar took the RF task, side-by-side with Gregg Browning. Margie Nixon was assigned the IR data station. On Cobra, the Surveillance Officer could access all the same data, but Myra Rodgers' job was to assist the Navigator and look for threats to the ship itself, not collect the intelligence they were there to find.
Ray Salazar deployed his full selection of antennas in the direction of the star, looking for the radio waves that would be evidence of modern civilization. Each frequency band displayed on its own 'waterfall' display on Salazar's workstation. The darkened room was quiet, each analyst focused on their individual task. Except for the whirr of cooling fans and the low whisper of the ventilation, the only sound was the rustle of uniforms as they shifted in their seats.
Rich Evans strolled around the room, making small jokes, and encouraging the analysts as they struggled to detect the enemy. He stopped at David's visual station and pulled up a chair.
"So, Powell, what do we have?"
"Well, sir, survey telescope already sees three gas giants, but small for giants, kinda Neptune-ish, all outside four AU. There's no close-in giant like we've seen elsewhere. We're still looking for an Earth-analog in the HZ but nothing yet. There's a pretty big asteroid belt somewhere around three AU. We'll need more time to pin all that down."
"Understood. Keep it up."
David nodded in response and went back to looking at the time-trail displays they were accumulating. If there was a rocky planet down there somewhere, it should be showing up as a small streak on the display.
David turned to look at Salazar, intently watching the RF displays.
"They've never done much to hide themselves, sir. I thought they'd be obvious once we got here."
Evans followed David's eye.
"Unless, of course, they're beyond radio as a primary communications method."
"Sure, for terrestrial comms, sure, they might have moved on to fiber or laser or something else. But out here, except for SLIP, radio is the most reliable long-range method."
David's head snapped back around as a tone sounded from the survey telescope. His fingers worked the keyboard, calling up the data the computer had found so interesting.
"OK, sir, here we are. Enemy tech signature." He switched to the high-aperture telescope and aimed it at the target. By now, Jack Ballard was out of the Center position and looking over Powell's shoulder.
"Oh my God," was all David could say when the image appeared. It was an enemy ship factory, located on a large asteroid just off their course in the outer part of Alpha Mensae's asteroid belt. The distance was still being calculated, but it was at least several AU away. It was enormous. There were three ships lined up outside the long, cylindrical structure, apparently docked. They could see the forward part of an enemy ship emerging from the factory.
"Well, Powell," Evans said, "that settles whether or not we're in the right place."
Two more alarms followed. One revealed another enemy facility elsewhere in the asteroid belt, this time with a long, connected string of spherical objects.
"They're making fuel, don't you think?" Ballard asked.
"Maybe," David responded.
The other alarm was a planet. They had come in behind it, but their position above the plane of the system gave them just enough reflected light that the computer could recognize a living planet.
"OK, drop the factory and put the large-aperture on the planet," Jack directed.
"In progress," David called back.
Ray Salazar slid Cobra sideways to point the Dinner Plate at the new planet, hoping to pick up something useful.
Soon more alarms were sounding on the visual workstation, and David was able to identify six enemy ships near the planet, which they could now see was near the inner edge of the habitable zone for this star.
Margie Nixon pointed her high-resolution IR detector to the planet. As she zoomed in on the nighttime side, she could identify several hot spots scattered about a generally cool surface.
Jack was watching her work. "So, Nixon, what's your interpretation?"
"Not sure yet, Lieutenant. The hot spots are well defined, so, some kind of tech there, but the rest is not well resolved yet. We'll get there."
Rich Evans was now moving from position to position, watching the gradual revelation of data on their opponents. He stood for a long time behind Ray Salazar, watching with him the radio frequency detection scan display. As they watched, the green dots that represented any signal above the noise level began slowly to coalesce. Salazar smiled as he watched three lines pull themselves together over a half hour.
"OK, Center, I have three decent signals. One is the same 180 seen at Enemy Station. There's another at 242 and one at 248."
"All CW?"
"Yes, so far, just the continuous wave carrier."
Evans took a seat across the island from Ballard. "Rotten luck coming in behind the planet."
"Yes, sir, sure is. You thinking about hurrying around to the other side? It'll be a while at this rate."
"Thinking, yes. Deciding, no."
Evans decided to hold course and get a better assessment of the system before pushing in closer.
The IR detectors were busy. There were six large ship arrivals in the first twelve hours of surveillance, all near the planet. Four ships were seen departing.
As the planet rotated, Margie could see new heat sources appearing on the night side. She was beginning to get a picture of the planet, able now to differentiate sea from land as well as populated regions from not-so-populated. She combined her minute-by-minute images to create a pseudo-movie. The rotation of the planet was obvious in this presentation, and she now estimated the length of a day to be twenty hours.
Cobra
Alpha Mensae
Saturday, February 4, 2079, 1330 UTC
After two full days of observations, they could now tell that there were oceans over about 40 percent of the planet, less than Earth and much less than Big Blue. There were two large irregular continents with a long, narrow sea between them. There were only a few small islands in the ocean.
Ships kept arriving, about one every two hours. They all landed in the same flat plain near the coast. Ships left at about the same rate, lifting off the planet then heading off under the Drive.
The RF board remained the same, just the three signals, all believed to be intrusion detectors. David's visual surveillance revealed no other ships on guard duty, no pickets like back home. There were the two ship factories, and plenty of ships on or around the planet. Otherwise, nothing.
Evans brought this topic up for discussion in the next day's status meeting.
"So, no pickets, only very basic detection gear. Anyone have an explanation?"
Jack had one theory. "Well, Captain, Powell and I had a discussion about that before we got here. I wonder if maybe they just haven't ever been competently opposed."
"Meaning?"
"Meani
ng that it doesn't occur to them that they need to plan for defense."
"That would be a serious weakness, Jack. I mean, a fatal flaw."
"Yes, sir, it would. But that thinking would explain their ship design, even the behavior of their ground forces."
"You mean Intrepid's report on how they never move backward?"
"Yes. It's like they don't know how to handle any kind of real opposition."
"If that's true, then how do we handle them?"
David leaned forward. "We strike quickly, sir, before they learn that lesson. They're well organized, with powerful ships and decent weapons. If we let them understand they need to defend themselves, we'll lose a huge advantage."
Evans didn't respond directly but instead moved on to the next question on his mind. "So, what do we think of this parade of incoming ships?"
Ray Salazar spoke for the analysts. "We've talked about that a lot, sir. We need to see more before we can say. I mean, we can't even tell if their delivering, picking up, or some of both."
"OK."
"If they're delivering, I would suspect that there are colonies or subject worlds from which they're bringing some kind of material."
"Right," David agreed, "Why conquer a planet if you can't exploit it in some way for the folks back home."
"Exactly, Lieutenant."
Evans looked around the table. "So, am I hearing that in order to tell what's going on, we need to be on the lighted side of the planet?"
Jack answered. "Yes, sir, we need to get around to where we can see what they're doing. The IR is just insufficient from this distance."
Evans nodded. "OK, I agree. Let's go one more day where we are, then we'll move."
Cobra
Alpha Mensae
Monday, February 6, 2079, 0845 UTC
The difference in perspective after the move to the lighted side of the planet was amazing to Ray Salazar. It was as if he'd taken his sunglasses off. They could now see the long row of ships on the ground, fifteen of the nearly half-mile long ships were lined up for unloading. The first few hours were lost to some unfortunate overcast, but once that moved on, they could watch the operation for several hours until the planet turned it out of their view. One end of the ships opened up, and vehicles moved in and out repeatedly, removing some kind of covered cargo and placing it in a nearby storage yard. From there, other vehicles took the packaged cargo and moved it away.
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