It was thus not a humanitarian impulse that stayed the Ajaxian application of weapons of mass destruction as a matter of policy, but fear of reprisal. The attempted use of the neutron emitters against Arles had been a clear breach of the Accords, but that had been approved nonetheless by Admiral Ronner because the operation allowed Ajax plausible deniability. Aquitaine and the Republic both had whined about the rad weapons, but they lacked the substantive proof to tie them to the Domain Navy beyond a reasonable doubt for the rest of the Great Sphere’s satisfaction. Imperial authorities had denied everything, of course, calling it a Halifaxian smear, and no Spherewide action was forthcoming.
A chime woke Stahl from the intense concentration to which he had been giving to the simulations. It was Heddrik. His blue-white holo arose in front of Stahl like an unwelcome poltergeist. His face was alight. Stahl had never seen the man so happy. He must have good news.
“Admiral Ronner has approved my idea!” Heddrik beamed.
“Your idea?”
“Yes. He believes as I do that we must take more forceful measures to eliminate the threat to our supply lines. Arles is the linchpin in the enemy’s raiding strategy. If we take it out we will be able to concentrate more resources on the ground war on Pessac. You are to draw up the necessary operational plan and deliver it to me within twenty-four hours. Am I clear?”
“Yes, Captain Heddrik. Very clear.”
“Oh, yes. Bear in mind that Admiral Ronner has been adamant about one point. We must have those reactors that power the orbital intact. We must not endanger them in any way. The station itself is not to be attacked. All weapons must be directed at the enemy ships. Not at the station.”
In his sims, Stahl had aimed numerous missiles armed with conventional, non-nuclear plasma warheads against Arles to compel the defending warships to stay rooted to the orbital’s environs out of a need to intercept them. Above all, he wanted to avoid allowing the RHN ships any freedom of movement to move about and close with his own ships. This new restriction would free the RHN of that burden, and make things more difficult for the DN in the upcoming attack.
“Are even particle weapons disallowed?” he asked. Stahl thought that a few thousand shots of plasma at the station would be enough to collapse the old orbital’s shield. When that had been pulled down, he would send a squadron of corvettes to make a very high speed strafing passes, which would further force the outnumbered RHN ships to stay beside Arles to protect it. All the while he would be lobbing fusion missiles at those ships, degrading them with nuclear fire.
Heddrik frowned, his impatience with his subordinate palpable. “The admiral was very clear. The use of weapons against the station itself is prohibited.”
“It is a large station. Surely a few hits here and there with particle cannons would not harm the reactors inside it,” Stahl said.
“You have your orders. Obey them.”
“Aye, captain.”
Heddrik’s holo winked out, leaving Stahl alone in his quarters. He returned to his simulations. He updated the list of the ships he would need, taking into account the new targeting strictures. Two dozen would be enough, he was sure, but it was critical that he confirm his intuition. He ran the simulation again and again and again. . .
. . . Hours later, and bleary-eyed, Stahl had drafted a complete operational plan that would allow the DN to drive off the RHN warships defending the station while incurring only minimal losses to its own force. He had found the optimal solution after running the simulation over one hundred times, and then running it another hundred or so to verify his findings. Stahl was very pleased with himself. Civilian shipping did not, he had researched, come within the protections of the Accords that concerned weapons of mass destruction. A remarkable oversight, so they were fair game. Instead of attacking the station proper, he would hit the civilian evacuation transports! The RHN warships would have to protect them from his nuclear-tipped Firebird missiles. With the RHN vessels tied down in defense while the civilians completed their evacuation, they could not chase the Ajaxian ships if they stood off at a distance and fought a long-range gunnery and missile duel, as Stahl had wished. The Halifaxians would be like sheepdogs that had to protect the flock against wolves. They could not roam too far, lest other wolves get behind them. The DN would have many more ships, and thus more missiles. Eventually, the RHN warships would run low, and have to depart, leaving the station and its reactors to the DN.
Stahl sent the carefully-crafted operational plan, together with the supporting simulation data, to Heddrik. Arles would be in Ajaxian hands within a week.
Chapter Nine
Aboard RHS Albacore, Aquitaine system
“We have detected a massing of DN ships in high orbit above Pessac, admiral,” Hu reported. She pushed the tablet across the table to More in the Albacore’s Combat Information Center. “Twenty-three ships. Four destroyers, seven corvettes, and twelve sloops.”
“Arles Station must be the target,” More said, scanning the datapad displaying the names, classes, and mass tonnages of the warships assembling above Pessac. “This is no mere hunter-killer squadron.”
“I agree. It is too big for that,” said Kim. “It could be an invasion force, but it lacks the transports necessary to seize a space station. Are they coming to Arles to draw us into a battle we can’t refuse to fight?”
“That would seem to be the case. I am surprised that they haven’t sought us out earlier. We have been allowed to harry their shipping for weeks without an attack on our base.”
“The Ajaxians likely believed that they would have curtailed out activities before now,” Kim said. “With their strategy failing to bring the desired results, they have altered it, and bring the fight to us.”
“It is an intelligent move, in that it forces us to defend Arles. They must presume that we will have to deploy ships to guard it, and reduce those committed to attacking their shipping.” More exhaled slowly. “They are correct.”
“A reduction in our presence around Pessac will make their job easier,” said Kim.
Hu stood by in silence. It was not fitting for an ensign to offer her own opinions to her commanding officer and an admiral. If she did, she worried also that they might sound hopelessly naive. Her experience in an actual war environment, after all, was approximately four weeks, ever since Albacore had displaced into the Aquitaine system. The rest of her not-quite abundant knowledge had come from books, simulations, and classroom learning. All of it had been theoretical. She had taken to weighing her words very carefully around the admiral, her professor at Cold Bay only five weeks beforehand. Usually, by the time that she had come up with a cogent, well-reasoned, and non-stupid thing to say, the conversation with the always-busy More had moved on.
She mentally reviewed what she knew of the Ajaxians. They were a rough bunch and were roundly disliked by every other state in the Great Sphere. Tartarus, for all of its imperialism, had never evoked such strong feelings of disgust as the Ajax Domain. Their willingness to use terror as a weapon and engage in the mass slaughter of non-combatants had earned them a horrendous reputation. She remembered the images out of Leiden after the Ajaxian fleet had bombarded the world from orbit with infernium canisters. She had only been a child at the time, when the holovids arrived on Halifax from the Gato system. They had made an impression on her. She had never forgotten the images of the charred bodies that littered the streets of the cities of Leiden. No one really could.
Corinth Station, Leiden, Cawnpore, and Miramar - they comprised a vile quartet of Ajaxian atrocities. Hu hadn’t joined the naval service because of what she had seen of them, but they had been factors in causing her to apply for admission to Cold Bay. She came from a resolutely civilian family. Her parents were both artists, free spirits living bohemian lifestyles before settling down in Hamilton where they opened an art gallery. Her decision had shocked them both, but had not dismayed them. They had simply not expected such a course for their daughter. Cooper Hu had been a dreamy child,
a lover of poetry and the theater. Her admission to any one of the leading conservatories in the capital was all but assured.
Something had changed in Cooper over the years. She had developed an interest in politics and interstellar relations that puzzled her parents. She herself saw no dissonance in having varied interests.
When it came time for her to make a decision about her university education, Cold Bay beckoned. She could make a difference as an officer in the RHN. A civilian career would not be nearly as rewarding, and she would not be able to have any influence for a long time, not until she had advanced slowly up the ladder at one institution or another.
The Navy also appealed to her sense of romance and adventure. She felt callow, looking back, knowing that the lot of a low-ranking naval officer was mostly one of boredom and drudgery. Yet even there she had some good fortune, if she was right in calling it that. Instead of being assigned to a dreary post on a second-line ship, she had, because of the pressure of the war with Tartarus, had been put aboard a combatant vessel straight out of the accelerated program of study at the Academy. Albacore was not a glamorous ship. At times she worried that it was held together by staples, and not much else, but it was going into the war immediately. That was where she wanted to be. She had asked for the assignment, and gotten it.
She hadn’t known that More would be flying his flag on Albacore until after she’d received notice. His presence was the only source of disquiet she felt when she reported to the Albacore for duty. She still had her doubts about the admiral, none of which she dared voice to anyone else. He was a national hero, and immune to criticism. She’d thought that she might have gone too far when she had asked him to explain his decision to attack Victory Base. It had been an honest question that she later worried made her sound as if she didn’t trust More’s judgment. She hadn’t intended it that way, but several other students had chided her for simply asking.
So she kept her qualms to herself. She had no desire to antagonize anyone needlessly, least of all her fellow cadets who would become her peers in the service.
The further she thought about the Victory Base scenario, however, the more her worries grew. Andrew More the warship captain had not followed the teachings that he had later imparted to his cadets as a professor. Hu laughed inwardly at discovering someone else’s hypocrisy. So what if the admiral hadn’t lived up to his own words in deed? What was he supposed to tell his cadets? Do whatever you think best and let the chips fall where they may? Go ahead and disregard the chain of command if you think it is the right thing to do? That would be a prescription for anarchy in the Navy.
The pragmatic side of her could be forgiving, but her pragmatism did nothing to allay her fears. She had run dozens of simulations of the Strike on Victory Base while she was still at the Academy. Each time, she saw that prospects for the success of the attack rose above that of failure only if she could take into account the superior capabilities of the Cordelia. So he had undertaken a major assault on the word of an AI warship without first running it by High Command!
More had thereby contravened every tenet of proper action that he had laid out for his students. He had almost certainly hastily decided to undertake the mission so that, once in hyperspace, he could not be recalled by the Navy’s brass. He had staked his squadron on the less-than-likely chance that he would beat the AT fleet returning from Memnon to their home system. More had been freelancing, that had to be it, and the only unanswered question that Hu had left over was whether More had truly known of Cordelia’s capability beforehand or had only discovered it at the very end. Luckily, everything had worked out for him.
Hu corrected herself. No, not everything. Cordelia had been lost. Taken together with the destruction of the Lady of the Lake, the RHN had been hurt grievously. Now the calculus of naval power, minus the two ancient warships, would be made mostly on the basis of numbers of hulls and not the sophistication of the ships themselves, as the margin of technical superiority of Halifaxian ships over those of the Armada of Tartarus was slender, and decreasing with each passing year.
What had driven More so? Hu could not help but wonder if More was, at root, a loose cannon, despite his outward veneer of judicious probity. Such commanders often succeeded where more circumspect commanders dared not act, but they might also get themselves and their crews killed for no gain.
She scolded herself for having such thoughts. She worried that she was nothing more than a precocious ensign, foolishly daring to question the judgment of her superior. She had been on active duty for only a little more than a standard month. Who was she to challenge More’s decisions?
That had always been her problem, she thought. She could never keep the wheels of her mind from spinning. “You’re always thinking, Coop,” her friends would say when she wasn’t paying attention to them, instead concentrating on something else, which was usually a weightier topic than whatever her pals were discussing.
She was consoled by the presence on Albacore of her captain, Ariana Kim. Kim appeared to be handling the awkwardness of having an admiral aboard her ship well. It certainly must have helped that they knew each other and had served together, with Kim having been More’s executive officer on Steadfast. She was competent and a steady presence on Albacore. She didn’t seem the type to engage in foolhardy ops. Then again, she had gone along with More on the Victory Base raid and might share his unorthodox and unhealthy notions.
There was no way of avoiding it. She was troubled by More. She had ever right to worry, she believed. No one could tell her not to. In the meantime she would have to be the best ensign she could, and hope things turned out well.
Hu found herself speaking. She was shocked by her own words, uncertain what had made her speak as she did. It was as if she were watching herself talk, not entirely in charge of her own mouth.
“Can we win this, admiral?” she blurted.
More and Kim looked up from the screen that they had been bent over, pondering their next move. Kim was surely annoyed. More’s face betrayed only weariness.
“Why do you ask that question?” he asked.
“I. . . I’ve been thinking, recalling what I learned at the Bay and. . . what’s the endgame here?”
Captain Kim frowned. “That’s ‘admiral,’ Ensign Hu. What’s the endgame here, ‘admiral’?”
“Uh, uh, I’m sorry. Admiral.”
More folded his arms. “Not a bad question, ensign. One that I’ve been posing to myself often of late. Truth is, I don’t know. No one does. We are fighting a low-budget war in a tertiary theater and no more assistance looks to be forthcoming. We fight on until we can’t anymore. That's all I can say for now. Keep that to yourself, if you don’t mind. Crew morale is a big concern of mine.”
Chagrined, Hu drew herself to attention. “Sorry for my outburst, admiral. I am out of line.”
“Such things happen. I was young once too.” He turned back to the screen where he and Kim continued to plan. He looked over his shoulder back to Hu. The ensign, face flushed a bright crimson, was still at attention. “Dismissed,” he said.
Chapter Ten
Aboard RHS Albacore, Aquitaine system
Howell was exhausted. He had been working twenty hours and could barely see straight. His eyes were dry and painful. He was of a mind to eject the reactor altogether. That would upset his cousin and result in a court martial, but it would be good for his own mental health.
The fusion reactor at the heart of Albacore was a commercial model. ‘Off the shelf,’ in Navy-speak. It was a solid design as far as commercial powerplants went, but it was not up to the needs and standards of a military vessel. There was no surprise in that. Howell had been at Cardiff Yard when the specifications for the Garnet sub-class had arrived from the Admiralty. After doing his best not to throw up, Howell, together with his boss, Cormac Grimard, had set about turning the ship plans into real ships. They'd had to cut so many corners! Despite their dismay, they had done the best they could. It was no fault of thei
r own that the Navy had demanded ships made with a welter of non-military spec parts.
His workload might have been more bearable had he been blessed with a full engineering staff. He wasn’t. Most of the experienced engineers in the fleet were being sent to other ships heading to more important theaters. He was shorthanded and several of the officers he did have had zero experience. Albacore and the rest of the 34th Strike Squadron were fighting a low priority war, badly under-resourced by a strapped RHN. That there was a small squadron of ships in the Aquitaine system at all was due more to happenstance than deliberate policy. Admiral More’s mission was to keep the Ajaxians tied down as much as possible until more assets could be directed to reversing the Domain’s gains in the future, however far off that might be.
Howell spent most of his time ensuring that the newbies didn’t blow up the reactor, or accidentally initiate a displacement that left them spinning in hyperspace for an eternity. His biggest headache was the smart and enthusiastic but dangerous-to-leave-unattended Ensign Gregorio Stewart. Stewart was fresh out of Cold Bay, like so many other of the junior officers aboard the ship, and had no real-world experience. The theoretical training he had received concerning powerplants and displacement drives didn’t mesh well with the practical ins and outs of service equipment. The commercial-grade reactor on the Albacore was not as robust as the military specimens that he had trained on, and had to be treated with more care.
Much more care. Military plants were built to be extremely robust and take a beating without failing. Civilian equipment was not nearly as forgiving. Stewart would often want to push the delicate reactor to do more than what it ought to be allowed, forgetting that it was not comparable to what he’d seen at the Academy.
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