EMPIRE: Warlord (EMPIRE SERIES Book 5)

by Richard F. Weyand

  Books in the EMPIRE Series

  by Richard F. Weyand:

  EMPIRE: Reformer

  EMPIRE: Usurper

  EMPIRE: Tyrant

  EMPIRE: Commander

  EMPIRE: Warlord

  EMPIRE: Conqueror

  Books in the Childers Universe

  by Richard F. Weyand:

  Childers

  Childers: Absurd Proposals

  Galactic Mail: Revolution

  A Charter For The Commonwealth

  Campbell: The Problem With Bliss

  by Stephanie Osborn:

  Campbell: The Sigurdsen Incident

  EMPIRE

  Warlord

  by

  RICHARD F. WEYAND

  Copyright 2019 by Richard F. Weyand

  All Rights Reserved

  ISBN 978-1-7321280-9-5

  Printed in the United States of America

  Cover Credits

  Cover Art: James Lewis-Vines

  Back Cover Photo: Oleg Volk

  Published by Weyand Associates, Inc.

  Bloomington, Indiana, USA

  September 2019

  CONTENTS

  Initial Conditions

  Initial Meetings

  War Councils

  War Plans

  The Empire Prepares

  The Alliance Prepares

  The Calm Before The Storm

  The First-Wave Attacks Earthside

  The First-Wave Attacks Farside

  First Reactions

  The Second-Wave Attacks

  Second-Wave Aftermath

  The Third-Wave Attacks

  Accommodations

  Reactions

  A Chance Encounter

  Preparation For Estvia

  The Battle of Estvia

  Decisions

  Phalia And The Rim

  Operation Hadrian

  Reactions To Hadrian

  The Future of Garland

  Salvage And Memorial

  Dominoes

  Flanking Maneuver

  More Dominoes

  The Battle of Jasmine

  The Aftermath Of Jasmine

  Disturbing Conclusions

  Initial Conditions

  By the time the Alliance of independent star nations voted to wage war on the Sintaran Empire, the Emperor Trajan had been on the throne for six years. Dunham’s and Peters’s twin children Sean and Dee had just turned two years old. It had been almost six years since Admiral Kuznetsov had first presented the concept of unmanned, remotely piloted warships to the new Emperor, after he had ordered the Chief of Naval Operations, Imperial Admiral Howard Leicester, to seek out good ideas that had been set aside for political reasons.

  More importantly, after prototype trials, RFPs for new warship designs, and detailed design of the winning concepts, the Imperial Navy was almost three years into its ten year rebuilding program. Originally aimed at a total of eighteen million new warships and two million new picket ships, the program was actually running ahead of schedule. Given the planetary protection and attack roles of the new picket ships, their proposed numbers had been vastly increased. Their complete construction in ground-based automated factories freed up spacedock time for warship construction, which, due to the modular design, was running at almost two million ships per year.

  The Imperial Navy had also halted the scheduled retirement of existing ships, instead converting them to the unmanned format. Sintar thus entered the war with over fifteen million ships, over thirteen million of which were the new designs. Eight million of those were picket ships, which gave them almost seven million warships.

  Unknown to the Alliance, the Imperial Navy had three hole cards. One was the availability of its super-weapon, the total-fission device. A ship loaded with heavy metals that down-transitioned within the near proximity of a planet created a massive release of directed energy in its direction of travel due to the instability of heavy atoms down-transitioning into a gravitational well. Heavy nuclei shattered into pieces toward the bottom of the nucleon energy curve, and gave up the mass difference as energy.

  Second, the Imperial Navy had a limited capability to confuse the point-defense systems of opposing warships, long enough to cut the effective engagement time against incoming missiles in half. These systems had been mounted on one in every eight Imperial Navy missiles in place of warheads, with a similar system being mounted on new picket ships. These systems had been deployed but not yet used in combat, because they could be countered relatively easily once they were understood. It was estimated it would only be six months to a year after first use before the opposing navies could have countermeasures in place. The Imperial Navy was thus saving the use of these systems for the outbreak of major hostilities.

  Third, the Imperial Navy had clandestinely deployed picket ship sensor platforms throughout human space, including in other nations’ volumes, and generated a real-time hyperspace map of military fleet movements everywhere in human space. The hyperspace map had been in place for over a year at the time the Alliance war vote was taken, and the Imperial Navy thus had a year’s data on what peacetime military traffic looked like. Changes to that traffic flow would be obvious to the commanding officer of Project Far Sight, Rear Admiral Dorothy Conroy, and her hand-picked staff.

  For their part, the Alliance had also been building up their navies. They had already been buying some retiring warships from the Democracy of Planets for about six months when Sintar’s naval buildup began. The pace of that purchasing increased dramatically when Sintar once again began building warships. In addition, they had also halted the scheduled retirement of existing ships.

  Because of the occasional brush wars between Alliance members prior to their coalescing against Sintar, and the greater extent of the frontiers enclosing their smaller volumes, the Alliance members collectively had historically had many more warship hulls than Sintar. The Alliance also made more sparing use of picket ships than Sintar, and had fewer than a million picket ships. Their collective naval complement at the beginning of hostilities was, in rough numbers, eight hundred thousand picket ships, six million four hundred thousand pre-existing warships, and three million six hundred thousand ‘new’ warships purchased from the Democracy of Planets.

  Most Alliance members had the advantage that they did not need to use warships to defend their claimed planets outside their capitals and major hubs. Their priority was the preservation of the monarch, the regime, and the elites. Almost all their fighting force was therefore available for offensive operations. The Emperor of Sintar, by contrast, was sworn to the defense of all the people of the Empire, and much of its fighting power would be required to ensure their security during hostilities.

  There was also a huge staffing difference. Alliance members had to scramble to crew their greatly expanded navies. Going from six million four hundred thousand warships to ten million warships had strained their abilities to staff their navies. While the Sintaran Empire, by contrast, was using remotely piloted ships, it only had enough crews to staff about one quarter of its ships at any given time. Given the amount of time warships spent in hyperspace, that was usually not a problem. Sintar’s ability to mount simultaneous operations, however, was severely limited by crew availability. Instantaneous communications among Alliance members via QE radio meant military commanders throughout the Alliance would know of any attack as soon as it happened, so sequential operations would not be a surprise after the initial operation kicked off.

  The Democracy of Planets, while not a party to the initial hostilities, had taken advantage of the availability of a ready market for its used ships to upgrade its navy. After years of reduced mili
tary spending, they increased their new warship construction from approximately two hundred fifty thousand hulls per year to almost six times that. When hostilities began between Sintar and the Alliance, they had four million new-design warships in addition to one and a half million remaining ships of the older design, and were turning out new ships at the rate of a one and a half million ships per year.

  Initial Meetings

  “Good morning, Michael,” Robert Allen Dunham said when he arrived in the VR meeting room.

  “Good morning, Robert,” King Michael of Estvia said. “Thank you for responding so quickly to my call.

  Dunham noted King Michael looked agitated this morning, like he would vibrate out of his skin. He waved toward the two club chairs, and they both sat, facing each other.

  “Well, you did say it was an emergency.”

  “Indeed it is. I just left a meeting of the independent star nations. They’ve voted for war, the fools.”

  “They have?”

  “Yes. I can’t believe it. I mean, I know we’ve been expecting it, but on such a stupid–“

  King Michael threw his hands up in the air and shook his head.

  “All right. Tell me what happened.”

  “Queen Anne called the meeting to discuss what she described as your counterproposal to renegotiate the commercial shipping treaty. This prompted King James to provoke an incident in Garland in which two squadrons of his battleships attempted to stop one of your escort ships from entering the system.”

  Dunham nodded. He had reviewed the sensor recordings of the incident.

  “They fired on the Sintaran vessels,” Dunham said.

  “Yes. James said they only fired on the picket ship. The destruction of the freighter was a mistake. I think some of the missiles must have lost lock on the escort and reacquired on the freighter. In any case, the escort evaded the missiles and attacked the battleships. They destroyed it with concentrated and coordinated defensive fire. And then a hundred more of those little escort ships showed up and destroyed all sixteen battleships.”

  “Yes, they fired on the Sintaran vessels, in violation of their treaty obligations. The commander on the scene interpreted her orders to authorize the destruction of the attacking force. Correctly, I might add.”

  “I understand. But James showed up at the meeting screaming about the sixteen battleships and thirty thousand spacers lost, and Sintar didn’t lose anybody.”

  King Michael raised his brows at Dunham.

  “That’s not correct,” Dunham said. “We lost two dozen civilian spacers, who had not signed up to be pawns in James’s war-mongering.”

  King Michael waved a hand, conceding the point.

  “So then what happened?” Dunham asked.

  “James had to concede Queen Anne’s point that they fired first, but he called the destruction of the sixteen battleships a ‘disproportionate response’ and called for war. King Peter of Berinia seconded.”

  “Yes, he doesn’t like me much either. Hasn’t since we destroyed six squadrons of his ships in Pannia five years ago.”

  “Yes, but that put the motion on the floor. I spoke against it, told them you were not to be messed with, and that, if they were to proceed against you, the destruction of sixteen battleships would be as nothing. Then James said he wasn’t afraid of you, and called the question.”

  “And they voted for war?”

  “Yes. It looked like two-thirds or so were for war. Queen Anne and King Albert for sure voted against it.”

  “And Annalia?”

  “For.”

  “Then what happened?” Dunham asked.

  “I don’t know. I said I would have nothing to do with war against Sintar and withdrew from the council. I came straight here.”

  Having calmed down through the conversation, King Michael had become agitated again with this last statement.

  “Robert. Your Majesty. Please tell me you remain committed to our agreement. To annex Estvia. To protect my people from this insanity.”

  “Yes, Sector Governor Roberts, the Throne of Sintar will stand behind its pledge.”

  King Michael visibly relaxed on being called Sector Governor Roberts. What might have been lèse-majesté under other circumstances was the strongest possible assurance now.

  “Now,” Dunham – Emperor Trajan, the Emperor of Sintar – continued, “let’s talk about how best to use it to our advantage.”

  “Order! Order!” Queen Anne of Phalia called out as she rapped a gavel on its striking block. She hadn’t had one before, but in VR, one could call up things as needed.

  She was trying to call the meeting back to order after the council of rulers of the independent star nations had voted for war and King Michael of Estvia had withdrawn from the council.

  “Order!”

  Gradually people quieted down. King James of Garland sat in his chair and looked smug at winning the war vote.

  “Having voted to go to war with Sintar, we are now left to decide just how we are going to do that. The floor is open for motions.”

  “Well, I think we don’t actually declare war until we are prepared to do so,” King Albert of the Rim said.

  “Obviously,” James said.

  “All right, then. What do we need to do first?” Queen Anne asked.

  “We should probably have a war council of our defense ministers and our operational chiefs,” Regent Gerald Monroe of Preston said.

  “Seconded,” Queen Catherine of Nederling said.

  “We are voting on the war council motion. Hands, please. Ayes? Nays? The Ayes have it. We will call a war council of defense ministers and our operational chiefs.”

  “I move we suspend this meeting until the war council meets and presents us a plan for prosecuting the war,” King James said.

  “Seconded,” Captain Mark Roberts of Midlothia said.

  “We are voting on the motion to suspend pending a war plan. Hands, please. Ayes? Nays? The Ayes have it. This council is in recess.”

  Queen Anne rapped the gavel once and disappeared from the VR.

  Queen Anne and Bruce Mallory, her prime minister, met with Darrell Dunning, her defense minister, and Admiral of the Navy Frank Keller, her naval commander.

  “The eighteen independent star nations have voted to go to war with Sintar,” Queen Anne told Dunning and Keller.

  “Eighteen, Ma’am? Aren’t there twenty?” Keller asked.

  “There are only nineteen of us since Pannia was annexed to Sintar, Admiral Keller, and Estvia dropped out of the group once the war vote was taken.”

  “I see, Ma’am.”

  “We are convening a war council of our defense ministers and military commanders. You will be my representatives.”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” Keller said.

  “What will be Boris Gorsky’s role, Ma’am?” Dunning asked.

  “Mr. Gorsky has given me his resignation as foreign minister, Mr. Dunning. He was wrong about allowing those commerce raiders to operate in our space, which is what led to this whole mess. He also dropped the ball in communicating effectively with Sintar to avoid all of this, to the extent I myself had to meet with the Emperor of Sintar. This is his war, but he will not be around to interfere with your prosecution of it.”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” Dunning said with obvious satisfaction. He had argued against letting the commerce raiders operate in Phalian space.

  “As to the prosecution of this war, I want to scrupulously avoid any violation of the Treaty of Earth. If we do, I believe the Emperor of Sintar will as well. What I really want is to bloody his nose a bit, and use that as leverage both with him and our allies to negotiate a peace. We need to avoid turning this into an existential war for any of the parties.”

  Dunning looked at Keller, and Keller nodded.

  “We understand, Ma’am,” Dunning said.

  “With regard to that, I need to ask you gentlemen about our prospects.”

  Dunning nodded to Keller.

  “Well, Ma’am,
taken together, our navies vastly outnumber Sintar’s. If my current appraisals are correct, we now have some ten million warships. Six and a half million of them are our traditional strength. The reason for so many is the minor brush wars that seemed so common among ourselves prior to the current crisis with Sintar. In the last four years, we have collectively added some three and a half million modern warships obtained from the Democracy of Planets.

  “Sintar, by contrast, has traditionally maintained a navy of perhaps one and a half million warships, which was more than enough to keep any one of us, or any small alliance of us, from challenging them. We’re not sure exactly how many new ships they have added in their current buildup, but the highest estimates are perhaps as many as two million more. We have a large advantage in platforms, Ma’am. Even in the worst case, more than twice as many.”

  “So you think carrying out my goals will not be a problem, Admiral?”

  “No, Ma’am.”

  “The bigger issue, Ma’am, may be restraining the scope and nature of the war as carried out by our allies,” Dunning said. “Some of the more bellicose of our friends may push harder than or act differently from the optimal path your goals would imply.”

  “Which is to say King James,” Queen Anne said.

  “Garland, yes, Ma’am. But Annalia, Berinia, Terre Autre, and some others as well.”

  “To better carry out my goals, let’s see if we can’t support one of the more moderate defense ministers for head of this war council, gentlemen.”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” Dunning answered.

  “What about our people, Admiral Keller? Are you going to be able to restrain the more aggressive commanders of our own forces?”

  “Yes, Ma’am. Some of them are more than a little annoyed with Sintar, but they will follow orders.”

  “Good, Admiral. See that they do. Because if we push on this Emperor too hard – if we make this an existential war for Sintar – I think we’re going to regret it.”