by Kali Altsoba
She tries to reach into the Void with her mind and broken feelings, but the Void is silent about her and Jan, about life and fate. She gazes out a port scuttle, looking for familiar stars. All the stars are lonely, dark and deep.
Two directions.
Two solitudes.
One fate?
***
The local shōshō in charge of all Kaigun assets in Genève system was embarrassed by losing a cruiser two months back, with two light cruisers and several escorts badly damaged by the Toruń batteries when he tried orbital bombardment. Then he heard two days ago from RSU agents that a prisoner is talking about an escape plan. He knew it was his chance to make good, so relying on the RSU report he sent out every ship to defend the Lagrange points.
“No one is jumping out, by the Black Faith!”
He’s culturally and politically badly out of touch. All younger officers swear by Purity, the rising faith, not the old Oetkert and Broderbund religion. Whether they mean it or not.
The shōshō expects General Constance to be on board Alpha and to try for the LPs that link to Aral, not run to the most-difficult-to-reach in the gassy Wasp umbra. He says to his staff: “I will concentrate in face of the enemy. To divide one’s forces is to invite defeat.” He read that once. He also says “he who defends everything defends nothing.” He read that, too.
He has no idea what either ancient aphorism really means, or that they mean the same thing. It doesn’t matter that he’s an admiral. That’s due merely to his high birth and caste within the Imperium elite. He’s so dull-witted and incompetent he could have been a screw-up in any other chosen profession or career. It’s his one real talent, doing the wrong thing every time.
So he divides his assets across all the wrong places, defending everything and nothing at the same time, only to hurriedly concentrate when he should patrol widely instead. He leaves too many ships on the wrong side of the home star, at the L3. He’s led there by false intel from a tortured prisoner and planted sigint from KRA Main HQ in Toruń. He sends only lesser units to concentrate at the outer system Greek and Trojan LPs. Too far to give chase or intersect.
He lost too many frigates in the battle for Genève’s moons, deploying too far forward to screen his capital ships. It was his bombardment plan that got several big ships severely hurt by Toruń’s ground batteries. He’s the one who approved the close-orbit patrol scheme that let the Alpha prize slip past at high speed, instead of standing-off with his big-gun cruisers and faster Zerstörers to play the angles like a mercury ball safety. Insisted on a close-orbit patrol, actually. Now this jumped-up amateur makes yet another unforced error. This one will cost him dearly.
He vectors just about everything he has left to chase after the nine small ships that boosted away, busting through what he thought of until then as a tight and well-conceived orbital patrol. All his senior aides assured him it was so.
‘They’re responsible for this escape, not me.’
In his defense, many of his ships are away in other Krevan systems, pulled from what’s essentially a ground battle for Genève that’s all but won. After the Genève Obliteration there’s no real KRN presence, but there are bigger naval fights underway at other worlds with a tough Krevan navy that’s effective and persistent, despite its dwindling numbers and poor prospects. Most of his invasion fleet is gone, deemed by Kestino to be of greater use in ongoing heavy naval fighting around the ice moons of Aral or in fresh invasions of other Krevan worlds.
So there’s intense excitement and confusion on his flagship when Alpha bolts on the wrong day and heads in the wrong direction. Then the wreck of Magni smacks hard into rural Southland, just after Alpha makes its bold break and run for the Wasp farside.
‘I can blame all this on not having enough ships left. I’ll tell Pyotr himself that senior command took my ships from me too soon. It’s not my fault! Besides, I might still catch them!’
Back in Genève orbit, it takes time for lightspeed messages to reach him from the outer system detailing the truth of the direction and intention of Alpha’s run. In a rage as towering as the skyline of Toruń he sends all ships already in the outer system chasing uselessly after Alpha, which is already beyond intersect range in Wasp 2B’s long planetary umbra. Beyond all pickets posted at the ‘Greek camp’ L4 as well as the ‘Trojan camp’ L5, each 60˚ astride the cold giant.
He sends six cruisers and 18 older Zerstörers racing to “concentrate at the L1 in front of the cold blue giant,” thence to curve fast around to the leeward L2 where he thinks the whole nine-ship Krevan group will be held up by pickets already in place. That’s why there are none waiting when Beta arrives at the Greek LP, and finds it has no need to fight its way out.
He doesn’t know that Alpha hived off a Beta strike force that’s operating independently on the windward side. Nor does he understand that his L4 and L5 flotillas can’t possibly arrive in time to affect the outcome at the L2. Not even the seven Zerstörers that disappeared around Wasp 2B can get there in time. He’s angry about them, too. They’re oddly out of contact.
When his Greek and Trojan squadrons are halfway to the L1 under total information blackout, to the consternation of his staff the shōshō exclaims that four ‘new’ destroyers have suddenly appeared this side of the cold planet. He casts blame all around, saying pickets should never have left the flank LPs open, then sends the bewildered warships back to their start lines.
No one on his staff says anything. He’s connected, politically. It’s rumored that he’s yet another distant Oetkert cousin, as arrogant as he is dense. He certainly acts like a royal brat in uniform, playing with ships he treats like toys, only losing real ones and thousands of lives.
“I repeat, for clarification: your orders to me are to intercept four unidentified KRA destroyers picked up on passive area-sensors on the windward side of the Wasp, now heading for the Greek camp. Confirm.”
Seventeen minutes light-speed delay.
“Confirmed. Now get your damned Greek Squadron back to that open LP.”
Seventeen point two minutes light-speed delay.
“But sir, we’re over 40 million klics away. We can’t possibly inter...”
Seventeen point seven minutes light-speed delay.
“I don’t need to hear your excuses, daisa. You should have left sufficient forces in place to handle this additional mission. I shouldn’t have to correct your errors like this.”
Sixteen point nine minutes light-speed delay. The flotilla captain has turned around and is closing distance at flank speed to the Greek LP, picking up angled distance to Genève as well.
“Yes, shōshō,” the captain replies, holding up as a shield the royal buffoon’s formal title as a Kaigun Vice Admiral. “Deepest apologies, your highness and excellency.”
What the daisa really thinks is: ‘Why you hedge-born, milk-witted fool! It was you who gave the order that let the Krevans escape to the L2, And now you’re doing it again.’
Sixteen point four minutes light-speed delay.
“The unidentified ships must have jumped in from out-of-system in your absence from the Greek station. Don’t let them leave, or there’ll be dire consequences, captain.”
Fifteen point nine minutes light-speed delay.
“Aye admiral, on my way back to the L4 now.” The same conversation repeats with the Trojan Squadron commander, sent scuttling back to the L5 from whence his ships first came.
The result is that François Archambault leads his compact Beta strike force straight into the wide open Greek L4 without meeting any of the powerful opposition he expects. Beta makes a smooth glide-in and bohrs-out of Genève system unmolested, leaving a few surprises behind.
When he hears that Beta is gone the high born shōshō blinks twice and sits down, hard. Even his political connections will have a hard time covering up this fiasco. After all, there’s a digital record of the last thing the sensors relayed: an image of four Krevan destroyers calmly wrecking all Kaigun satellites and
coms at the LP relay, blowing apart a brand new field station.
Then comes a flash of brilliant light from aft of Triomphant. Seconds later a streaking missile gets bigger and bigger until it impacts the sensor array and the signal is cut. It’s three more hours before the departure of Beta is confirmed by the Greek Squadron, only then pulling into the LP and firing a ship-borne communications laser directly back to Genève. It has to use ship’s com, since the giant array built at great cost to Pyotr is free-floating debris.
There’s more. With the sensor array destroyed, Archambault and the Beta captains seed the bohr-zone and approach vectors with hundreds of stealthy anti-ship hunter mines. Over the next two weeks this minefield will cost an utterly incompetent shōshō another badly damaged cruiser, four older frigates, two totally disintegrated Zerstörers, his naval career and his life.
Distant cousin or not, Pyotr will deny him his Kaigun uniform and all hereditary lands and titles, including a vast and rich commandery on Tohoku given to him during the Red Purge of the Broderbund by the Dowager Empress, mother of the emperor and Oetkert matriarch.
Stripped naked in his obesity, publicly humiliated, Pyotr will have him hogtied to a carbyne-pillar in the dungeons of SAC HQ in Novaya Uda on Kestino and whipped. Then he’ll be dragged to the great square in front of the Waldstätte Palast, stood upright and shot. That’s how Pyotr Shaka repays defeat of his generals, related or not. The lesson is not lost on the rest.
It’s the beginning of another Grün purge, this one a necessary and ruthless cleansing of the military high commands. A purge that will strengthen the Kaigun and Rikugun, not weaken it, by scraping off thick rust of prewar assumptions, lethargy and incompetence. The purge will be deep and bloody, but it will steel both services for a wider and more desperate Orion War.
Émile
Magda Aklyan is more than anxious as her little flotilla finishes a long, graceful curve around the cold blue giant and heads for the L2 in the leeward umbra. Alpha is just half-a-day from lift-off from Genève and already she’s down to five ships out of nine. Her own flagship Resolve, the frigates Asimov and Tyco Brae, and two slow and overfull troopships, Warsaw and Jutlandia.
The mood onboard is gloomy and tense. Bad enough that Alpha flotilla is divided and still not home-free of pursuit and danger. Much worse is what’s outside its Main Scuttles and on a thousand viewscreens across all five ships. For Alpha is sailing overtop an immense oblong graveyard of the Genève flotilla as it skirts the last two and outermost moons of the gas giant.
Distorted clouds of flotsam orbit between the moons, streams of bodies and debris that clump here and there where the bulk of some dead ship came apart or a hulk exerts just enough gravity on its own to keep smaller pieces and dead sailors floating alongside. Large slabs of ship’s plating and chunks of smashed bulkheads mingle and dance with many thousands of frozen bodies and shattered parts, whipping around the moons in a repeated figure-eight pattern that’s getting ever longer as they pull away from each other. Soon the thin center of the strings will snap and each of the two moons will acquire its own host of small satellites.
“The bâtards in the Kaigun never bothered to clean this up.”
A sailor blurts it out to his friends as he watches distant and filtered sunlight reflect poorly off a twisted and twisting bulkhead on a magnifying viewscreen.
“They’ve left all our people out there, floating unshrouded in the umbra dark!”
“The bloody, fucking...”
“It’s worse than that,” Émile reports to Magda Aklyan. “I think they’ve been using the debris and wrecks as targets, to practice naval gunnery.”
“All ships hands, attention!”
It’s the captain on the multi-ship com link.
“All tools down. All duty hands, cleave to your stations. All off-duty hands, find a scuttle, port side. You have five minutes to relocate to port. At 0:715 all ships’ hands will observe two minutes absolute silence to honor the fallen of Genève Squadron. KRA personnel are invited to join as well.”
On all ships, jacks and jennies stand rigid and silent, remembering old shipmates with a long-held salute or with arms stiff at their sides. KRA on board stay silent, too, wherever they stand when the captain gives the signal to the flotilla. They leave the port-side scuttles to off-duty sailors. Others pay respect as they can while forced to lie their turn on hard wooden bunks.
After two minutes the ships start to work again. Many of those without an immediate task find they still can’t speak. They stay silent at the scuttles until the images along with the debris fall behind Alpha and thoughts of the living necessarily return to dangers still ahead.
***
The flotilla carries 153,000 fighters and over 3,000 sailors. Magda left four escorts with 12,000 fighters and 2,800 jacks and jennies on the windward side of the cold blue giant, to delay pursing Zerstörers. A pack of hounds baying at the blood scent of Alpha’s two pregnant foxes.
She doesn’t know what’s happened to Beta. She does know warship captains will sacrifice their ships if necessary to allow the two troopships to escape. That was the logic of her last order, although she explicitly said only to “delay and disengage.” She knows her old friend François Archambault will ram if needs be. So will all the other captains. It has come to this.
‘I will assume François succeeded, since the Zerstörers are not yet on our tail. But at what price? How many more Genèven youth have we just lost?’
Long-range chase detectors and all coms are blocked by Alpha’s repositioning behind the blue giant. Normally that wouldn’t be a problem, but System Position Relay sats used before the war to see around it, all the way back to Genève, were recoded by Kaigun warships months ago. Without the SPRs, looking back in that direction Magda is as good as blind.
Since she prefers her foes to be the blind as well, as Alpha passes down a line of leeside sats she takes them out with precision laser-fire one after the other. Now the Kaigun shōshō in orbit around Genève is as cut off from the L2 as she is from home. So are any of his picket ships waiting there. It’s down to Alpha and whatever lies ahead in the dark shadow of the Wasp.
She needs to know what’s out there before making the desperate run down to the L2. She leans her long torso forward to open a general com-link, shifting her weight slightly in the fitted cup of the command chair. Her tone as she speaks to Resolve’s crew is urgent, yet calm.
“Maximum range on forward scanners: thermals, motion, light and mass. I want to know what’s hiding in the umbra. And people, I want your ideas on what to do once we find out. No rank. No ceremony. No hesitation. I need to hear your best thinking, and to hear it now.”
First Officer Émile Fontaine is studying a virtual composite scan of the space ahead, merging reads from all detectors. The resulting holo rises two meters above a flat screen that forms the Chart House floor. It’s his main station, a compact alcove of its own yet connected directly to the Bridge. At the moment, he’s standing inside the holo, lit up in reds and greens and yellows like a Solstice Festival window display. Lost in his own thoughts, as he so often is.
It smells just like him, too. As if a piece of old electrical wiring is running a little too hot inside a console, warming surrounding lead and tin solder, threatening to short out any moment. Except there is no copper or wiring anywhere near. Hasn’t been any wiring in ship’s systems for centuries. It’s all liquid crystal-laser optics, hooked directly into DNA data storage banks. But he tinkers with solder and wires in his quarters. It’s one of his hobbies. Maybe that’s the smell?
Émile is one of those rare people who always deliver, whatever the ask, whatever the task. He has a natural gift for tactics, too. When it comes down to it, his captain relies on him for far more than his youth or prewar training should afford her. That’s good, because this fight will be his third battle in twice as many months. He’s been beside her for every one.
Now, in Wasp’s umbra, he’s standing inside the traditional holo
map but listening as well to the only ‘sonar’ in Orion, which he jury-rigged to the Chart House station before liftoff. It’s his own invention and not KRN-approved, but back in Toruń Shipyard his captain agreed that he could move it into the Chart House on Resolve, after he explained to her what it did.
“I’m not suggesting replacing any detectors we use now, but I think it could help us in a pinch, especially against phantoms. If they use any as pickets at the LPs, which I would do.”
That’s what he dubbed it, ‘sonar.’ A term he enjoyed adapting from ancient naval history, a lost subject that really tickles his fancy. It’s the kind of thing that endears Émile to navy life, and endears him to Magda Aklyan. She’s been his commanding officer since he left the Academy.
“Officially, except it’s not exactly official, it’s called Sub-lightspeed Object Navigation And Ranging. That’s what I was going to call it, anyway, when I submitted to the KRN for tek approval. But then the war started and, well...”
