EMPIRE: Warlord (EMPIRE SERIES Book 5)

by Richard F. Weyand

  “With regard to their mustering points and disposition of forces, I have complete trust in Rear Admiral Conroy’s organization. I won’t discuss methods and sources, but that intelligence will be near a hundred percent when it comes in.”

  Leicester, who had a history of being more than a little skeptical about intelligence appraisals – and not without cause – drew some raised eyebrows with that. He nodded to them before he went on.

  “I know, I know. That doesn’t sound like me, but I haven’t been co-opted by the spooks,” Leicester said, eliciting chuckles. “I have complete visibility into Admiral Conroy’s organization, into her sources and methods, which I am not prepared to share, and you can take her assessments to the bank.”

  “Sir, will the picket ships be authorized to use ECM in the opening engagements?” Admiral Jorge Sandoval asked

  “Yes, Admiral. You should incorporate that into your planning. In the Garland incident, it is clear from a study of the sensor recordings they had re-targeted to the ship’s body rather than the nose cone. Once we disclose the ECM capability, it will be widely known very quickly, so if we are going to use it anywhere, we might as well use it everywhere.”

  “And after the first wave, Sir, what are your preferences for force utilization?”

  “Let’s use the converted warships for cleanup attacks. Let’s see if we can keep our new construction under wraps a while longer.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “There is mention in your orders of other attacks, against military assets, Sir, but no other detail,” Admiral Celeste Chisholm said.

  “Those targets will not come from Admiral Conroy. The identification and targeting of those Alliance assets will come from you people, using existing intelligence. I want to stay away from primarily commercial targets, even if there is a military component to their activities. We are also going to stay away from planet-based assets. I want space-based assets whose activities are majority military.”

  “Understood, Sir. Weapons choice for those targets?”

  “Picket ships in total-fission mode if the geometry allows, Admiral. Otherwise, picket ships in standard attack mode.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Any other questions? All right. See you next week.”

  To the extent the Sintaran Empire had a leadership council, it was Sunday brunch with Dunham, Peters, Saaret, and Suzanne, Saaret’s wife.

  “They’ve actually voted to go to war with Sintar, Bobby?” Suzanne asked.

  “Yes, Suzanne,” Dunham said.

  “And we’re not going to wait for a declaration of war once they’ve gotten all ready to attack us?”

  “No. We’re not.”

  “Good.”

  Saaret raised an eyebrow at his wife.

  “Geoffrey, if someone attacks you, and you haven’t provoked it, particularly if they outmass you, once they’ve made their intentions clear, you take them down if you can. No rules. No mercy. You kill them, if you can. They don’t get a free punch.”

  “I guess I’m surprised to hear you say that,” Saaret said.

  “Well, you shouldn’t be. Honestly, Geoffrey. It’s something every woman knows. Probably because we are so often the victim, and so often outmassed by our attackers.”

  Dunham looked at Peters, and she nodded.

  “The proverbial kick to the nuts,” Peters said.

  “Exactly,” Suzanne said. “Followed up with several to the kidneys or the face once he’s down. We’re minding our own business, and these people are going to come here and kill our people? For no reason? Kill them, Bobby. Kill them all.”

  That got both Saaret’s eyebrows up, and he looked at his wife, after over fifty years of marriage, as if he were seeing her for the first time.

  Dunham just nodded.

  “That’s a rather succinct statement of our war plan, Suzanne,” Dunham said.

  “Good, Bobby. Very good,” Suzanne said. “And don’t let anyone talk you out of it.”

  Saaret seemed to recover somewhat.

  “I worry about the reaction of the DP,” he said. “Particularly about the lack of a declaration of war.”

  “I don’t, Geoffrey,” Dunham said. “Oh, they’ll complain, but they won’t do anything about it. They’ll want a look-see first. See how things are going to go. And then they’re going to be appalled by the carnage of the first wave of encounters. Only after things start to quiet down will they get involved, thinking us weakened.”

  “And we won’t be?” Peters asked.

  “No. We’re adding two million warships and two million picket ships every single year. The longer they wait, the better off we are.”

  “And you think they’ll wait?” Saaret asked.

  “Yes. They’ll hesitate. They never do anything in a hurry. When they do come in, it will be all lumbering and massive.”

  “And we’ll still be able to defeat them?” Peters asked.

  “Yes. We will have more and more experienced crews as the war proceeds, and we are going to be hiding our new construction as long as we can.”

  “We’ve heard they have new construction as well,” Saaret said. “We don’t know what it is yet. We haven’t been able to get a look. They’ve been hiding it as well.”

  “Of course,” Dunham said. “But it won’t matter what it is.”

  “Why not?” Peters asked.

  “Because they’re still running crewed vessels.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because they’ve been recruiting heavily. Ads for joining the navy on VR. Bonuses for enlistment and re-enlistment. That sort of thing. Which means they’re still running crewed vessels. Which means we will beat them.”

  “I don’t understand, Bobby,” Suzanne said.

  “There’s only so much that can be done within the design envelope of a crewed vessel, Suzanne. Unless they have some radical new technology – which we haven’t heard about, and there we have pretty good intelligence – then they’re stuck within the same four corners of what’s possible. And we’re not.”

  “Because we don’t run crewed vessels.”

  “Correct. Theirs will be a variation on a theme. Ours, from their point of view, will be a radical departure.”

  “I see,” Suzanne said, and sighed.

  She looked down at her folded hands, then looked up to Dunham, looked him in the eye.

  “Well, you just make them pay, Bobby. Make them pay for starting all this.”

  “The DP or the Alliance, Suzanne?”

  “All of them, Bobby. Make them all pay.”

  “I’ll do my best, Suzanne.”

  Democracy of Planets Prime Minster Harold Pinter was meeting with his foreign minister, Jules Morel, and his Defense minister, Pavel Isaev.

  “You said you had news for me, Jules, and you didn’t sound happy about it. Out with it.”

  Morel gave a sidelong glance at Pavel Isaev, and then shrugged.

  “The independent star nations have formed an alliance, and have voted to go to war with Sintar,” Morel said.

  “What! All of them?” Pinter asked.

  “All but Estvia. They withdrew from this alliance after the war vote.”

  “They’ve tangled with Sintar before,” Isaev said. “With this emperor, as a matter of fact.”

  “Yes,” Morel said. “King Michael of Estvia spoke against the measure before the vote. Reminded the assembled rulers this Emperor ended the throne’s historic battle with the bureaucracy by executing the top three layers of his own bureaucracy – all five thousand of them – on his first day on the throne.”

  “A man after my own heart,” Pinter said wistfully. “And no one listened to King Michael?”

  “King James of Garland said he wasn’t afraid of Sintar and called the vote. It went for war, and Estvia withdrew.”

  “How solid is this intelligence, Jules?” Isaev asked.

  “I got it directly from the prime minister of Annalia, Konrad Wolff. Like the other prime ministers, he
was in the room for the whole thing.”

  “That sounds pretty solid,” Pinter said. “Now what are they going to do?”

  “They’ve named a war council, of the defense ministers and their navies’ chief operations officers, to put a war plan together and carry it out.”

  “Who did they put in charge?” Isaev asked.

  “Darrell Dunning, the Phalian defense minister,” Morel said.

  Isaev grunted.

  “Solid choice.”

  Pinter looked back and forth between his ministers.

  “So what does this mean for us?”

  “Nothing yet,” Morel said. “Our treaty with Annalia says we will defend them from attack, it doesn’t say we will follow them into a war of choice. And they voted for the war resolution. Wolff was clear about that. So this war is on their credit, not ours. At the same time, it gives us an excuse to get involved if we want to, at some point.”

  “Best of both worlds,” Pinter said.

  “Well, if we do get involved, the longer we wait, the better off we are.”

  “Why do you say that, Pavel?” Pinter asked.

  “We’re adding a million and a half warships a year. We don’t think Sintar is doing anywhere near that much. They’re also heavily outnumbered in hulls by this alliance. Given their likely losses, our position against them only gets better with time.”

  “And those are all of the new design?” Pinter asked.

  “Yes. All our new construction is of the new design.”

  “Has that design leaked yet?”

  “We don’t think so. We haven’t heard anything back about it, anyway. We’ve been keeping it pretty close, keeping it under wraps.”

  “Good,” Pinter said. “Good. I don’t know that we want to get involved in this fracas at all. How the hell did it get to this point, anyway, Jules? I thought it was quieting down out there.”

  “As did I,” Morel said. “That was a false impression. Our propaganda about robot ships was much more effective than we had anticipated. It looks like robot ships are something of a boogeyman out there. Every time Sintar ran one of their remotely piloted escort ships into a system, it ate at the local rulers like acid.”

  “Well, let’s keep a close eye on what’s going on. And, Pavel, keep an extra eye on our borders. We don’t want this war leaking over into the DP. If we enter this war, I want it to be our decision, at a time of our choosing.”

  “I agree wholeheartedly, Harold. We’ll keep an eye on it.”

  War Plans

  “We have settled on a plan for the opening stages of the war, Your Highness,” Darrell Dunning said to his ruler, Queen Anne of Phalia.

  “Are you prepared to brief me on this plan, Mr. Dunning?”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  “Very well. You may proceed.”

  “Thank you, Ma’am.”

  They were in a VR meeting room rather than in the same physical room. Dunning was in the Defense Headquarters as the plans for war came together, and a VR meeting room had excellent display and visualization capabilities by its nature.

  Dunning stood, and the wall behind him was replaced with a three-dimensional projection of human space, with the various polities shown as tinted volumes in various colors.

  “The initial plan is to have nine primary mustering sites, in which we will gather approximately three million of our warships. These will almost exclusively be the warships we all purchased from the DP. There are some shortages there, but not many, that will be made up with homegrown ships.

  “The mustering sites will be hosted by the nine bigger polities: Annalia, Cascade, Nederling, Preston, and Terre Autre on the side of Sintar toward Earth, and Doria, Phalia, the Rim, and Wingard on the side away from Earth.

  “These forces will sortie against one neighboring Sintaran sector each, five toward Earth, and four away, and split the Empire’s ability to respond to the attacks.”

  “You’re giving them a war on two fronts, Mr. Dunning,” Queen Anne said.

  “Yes, Ma’am. We are also selecting sectors adjacent to each other, to minimize the area of our front – and of Sintar’s approach – for the volume occupied.

  “Sintar’s normal deployment of fleet assets per sector is approximately twenty-five thousand ships of all types, including picket ships. We don’t believe these forces have been substantially reinforced, as the Empire seeks to keep its new construction under wraps. The forces entering each Sintaran sector – approximately three hundred thousand ships spread across five thousand planets – will thus outnumber the Sintar deployed forces by something like ten to one.

  “This presents Sintar with an insoluble problem. To deploy their new construction against us, they must pry us off each planet one at a time, five thousand planets per sector, across nine sectors, at opposite ends of the Empire. We believe at that time we can approach Sintar for a more satisfactory resolution of our current issues than they have entertained thus far.”

  “And if they refuse, Mr. Dunning?”

  “We will be in possession of some forty-five thousand planets, Your Highness. We will be in a position to destroy all the orbital and space-based infrastructure in thirty percent of the Sintaran Empire. And then leave and do it again somewhere else. I don’t think the Emperor will be able to refuse to deal in that situation, Ma’am.”

  “Was there an alternate plan proposed, Mr. Dunning?”

  “Yes, Ma’am. It was basically a go-in-all-guns-blazing sort of thing, from the people one might suppose. It failed to achieve the necessary support in council. One reason is it made no provision for defense.”

  “And your plan does make provision for defense, Mr. Dunning?”

  “Yes, Ma’am. Three million vessels are planned for the initial operations, leaving seven million vessels for defense of the Alliance home systems. This is actually more warships than we had five years ago, and still outnumbers the high estimates for Sintar’s Imperial Navy.”

  “Very well, Mr. Dunning. I approve of this plan. I assume all the other rulers are being asked to do the same?”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  “And once their approval is obtained, Mr. Dunning?”

  “We will begin mustering our forces, Your Highness.”

  Dunham, Saaret, and Peters were meeting with Imperial Admiral Leicester and his head of tactical, Fleet Admiral Stepan Cernik. They were meeting in VR to take advantage of the display capabilities.

  “Go ahead, Admiral Leicester,” Dunham said.

  “Yes, Your Majesty. Fleet Admiral Cernik,” Leicester said, nodding to Cernik.

  “Thank you, Imperial Admiral Leicester. Your Majesty, we anticipate the Alliance forces will muster in several large groups – perhaps a dozen – before getting under way to attack Sintar. This will present us with a vulnerability we can exploit.”

  “If it presents us with a vulnerability, Admiral Cernik, why would they do it? Why not just space directly to the attack?”

  “A good question, Sire. Several reasons, I think. The first is they don’t expect us to be able to know they are mustering, or where. While I have not been told how she will know this, I am assured Rear Admiral Conroy will be able to identify those locations.

  “The second is they are trying to coordinate the actions of large forces comprised of ships from multiple star nations. We have the advantage there, in that we are under unified command, and have been all along. There are senior people over there who will be new to each other, however, and a closer level of coordination is required.

  “The third is it is logistically easier to service a large number of vessels in one place. Refueling, restock and resupply, that sort of thing. One large freighter can handle perhaps thirty or forty vessels at a time. But it is easier still if one freighter is all reaction mass, another all ship’s stores, another all ammunition. Easier both on the loading end, where the freighters originate, and on the destination end, when they restock the ships.

  “The fourth and final reason I suspect is
habit, Sire. Senior commanders like to look at their sensor displays and see all those ships out there, see their fleet arrayed in anticipation of their orders. With the move toward remotely piloted vessels, we have spent the last several years training our senior commanders not to think that way. To think of the assets under their command as more flexible, more responsive, and more adaptive to circumstances if they are not all gathered in one place. It takes some time to adjust to that sort of thinking, but we’ve made good progress.”

  “I see, Admiral Cernik. Carry on.”

  “Thank you, Sire.”

  Cernik turned to the wall behind him and it dissolved into a three-dimensional map display of the human-settled portion of the Milky Way. It was, in fact, the same three-dimensional map Rear Admiral Dorothy Conroy and Jared Denny of Sintar Specialty Services had used as the base map for their scanner map of hyperspace.

  “We see here, Sire, all of human space. I have selected for purposes of example twelve mustering locations. You will notice all these locations are outside the range of our picket ship detection system within the Empire. They are also arranged with six on one side of Sintar, toward Earth, and six on the other, farside from Earth, because I believe they will try to confound us with a two-front war.”

  “Not a feint from one side to draw us out of position and then a punch from the other to take advantage, Admiral Cernik?”

  “No, Sire. Berinia and Celestia, at least, know that strategy did not serve them well in Pannia five years ago. We were watching for it. I think they will advise the group we are unlikely to fall for it now. The next good option is to push a two-front war.”

  “I see. Carry on, Admiral Cernik.”

  “Thank you, Sire. Our plan is to strike them at the opportune moment, when their ships are mustered and preparing for operations. The first step is to run a large number – perhaps fifty thousand – picket ships into each of their mustering locations. This is likely to be much smaller than the number of ships at the mustering location, which we estimate to be more like two hundred and fifty thousand.

  “The first wave of picket ships will stir everything up and cause confusion, but the other thing it will do is allow us to map the mustering location for the next wave of picket ships. That wave will be much larger, and come from several nearby locations. As many as three hundred thousand picket ships will swarm into the system simultaneously, directly on top of the enemy vessels. The picket ships will all be running ECM, and should fare well against their point-defense lasers.”