Sword of Mars

by Glynn Stewart

  “I need to get back up to speed on the briefing,” Roslyn replied. “We have a lot of work to do.”

  “We do,” Sinclair confirmed. “Which is why I’m going to brief you while we walk to the mess and you are going to eat while I finish.”

  Roslyn opened her mouth to argue, and the Chief shook her head with a smile.

  “Kulkarni got the Admiral up to speed. You eat breakfast while I talk, then we catch up with the rest of the staff. Her Highness’s orders.”

  That was an override that the Mage-Lieutenant couldn’t argue with.

  “Lead the way, Chief,” she allowed.

  “Kulkarni and I went through your checklist,” Sinclair told her as she proceeded toward the mess. “Everyone has confirmed their arrival times, and I got that information to the boat bay. Scheduling of the arrivals has been delegated to the deck officer, so that’s entirely under control.”

  “What about space?” Roslyn asked. Fitting in enough shuttles to get sixty-six Captains and eleven flag officers aboard Righteous Shield had been one of her biggest concerns.

  “Delegated,” Sinclair said cheerfully. “Neither you or I is really qualified to sort out that problem, but Master Chief Intaglio most definitely is. Trying to handle that yourself was…”

  The Chief trailed off, clearly trying to work out how to phrase that Roslyn had been an idiot politely.

  “A mistake,” the young woman finished for her older-but-subordinate NCO. “I’ll add it to the list.”

  “Nah, your only actual mistake was not calling me the moment you had a concern,” Sinclair replied. “First rule of being a fledgling, sir: always talk to the Chiefs.”

  “I learned that in Tactical,” Roslyn admitted as they reached the officers’ mess. “Keep forgetting that it applies to being a staff officer, too.”

  Technically, Chief Sinclair wasn’t supposed to be in the mess except as specifically invited. The stewards had clearly been informed that she was coming—and informed of just what Mage-Admiral Alexander figured needed to happen to her Flag Lieutenant.

  The two of them were quickly seated in a corner of the mess, and a tray of food was brought out for Roslyn.

  “Eat,” Sinclair instructed. “Everything for the briefing is handled except for a tiny handful of final details that Kulkarni can take care of if you’re late. We need you to backstop the Admiral as she speaks and make sure you’re catching everyone’s questions for her.”

  Sinclair grinned at her.

  “We also need to make sure you remember to ask for help next time!”

  “Officers. We are ready.”

  The three simple words hung in the massive briefing room like the Sword of Damocles.

  Roslyn, feeling refreshed and far more on top of things now that her superiors and juniors alike had forced her to take a breath and rest, knew that those words were all that really needed to be said.

  They’d go over the battle plan and the targeting and deployment sequences and the rest in detail again, but Mage-Admiral Alexander’s statement was the important part of this briefing.

  Even if those details were why they’d hauled over seventy officers aboard Righteous Shield.

  “I am officially activating Operation Bluebell as of this moment,” Alexander continued. “A cruiser squadron of the Tau Ceti Security Fleet will arrive in forty-eight hours to provide additional security to the Ardennes System, but Second Fleet will move out at oh eight hundred hours Olympus Mons Time tomorrow.

  “We now represent the single largest force the Protectorate has ever deployed, with half of the battleships and over half of the cruisers currently in commission. Until new construction comes online, we are the only offensive force the Protectorate can afford to deploy.”

  That caused a stir amongst the officers, though Roslyn doubted it was a surprise to any of them. To pull together Second Fleet, they’d stripped the Protectorate’s defenses bare. If the Republic resumed their offensive, there might well not be enough ships left to stop them.

  “Operation Bluebell, however, represents a strategic strike that the enemy must counter. We are twelve days’ flight from Legatus. There, this fleet will challenge one of humanity’s oldest worlds and the heart of our enemy.

  “We cannot afford to fail.”

  Alexander smiled broadly at her people.

  “Captain Kulkarni had prepared a presentation to update everyone on our planned operations and how we will take advantage of the weakness of the Legatus System. Before that, however, I’m sure some of you have higher-level concerns. Let’s get them out of the way.”

  There was a long moment of silence.

  “What about the Militia ships?” Mage-Admiral Medici asked slowly. “They basically carried the Battle of Ardennes. Why aren’t we reinforcing Second Fleet with them?”

  “Because the Militia that fought and died for Ardennes died,” Alexander replied. “It is not—it has never been—the purpose of the System Militias to fight Mars’s battles for us. They stood with us at Ardennes because no one had a choice, and they paid heavily for that stand.

  “The Militia ships that fought here were mostly sent home for badly needed repairs. They aren’t here for us to call upon again, and I would rather not call on wounded ships to volunteer a second time.

  “Most importantly, however, the Militia ships have too few Mages aboard,” the Mage-Admiral concluded. “There are certainly systems that are secure enough with powerful-enough Militias that they could assist us, but they have two or three Mages per ship at most. They can’t keep up with the Fleet.

  “If we are to strike as deeply and quickly as we must, we are left with only Navy ships—and we now have enough Navy ships to carry the day.”

  Alexander surveyed the room.

  “Does that answer your question, Admiral Medici?”

  “It does,” Medici confirmed instantly…leaving Roslyn to wonder if the question had been prearranged.

  That was something to think about for the next time she organized one of these. It would always be useful to have someone softball a question to the Admiral, she figured. Especially if it was a question that needed to be asked.

  “Anyone else?”

  21

  Captain Maata regarded Rhapsody in Purple with undisguised envy.

  “Heat sinks, radar-absorbing hulls, antimatter power?” she asked as she looked over her scan results and glanced back at Damien. “I knew you could use magic for stealth, but everyone in the Republic assumed your technological solutions were behind us.”

  “The Protectorate is, in the grand scheme of things, technologically stagnant,” Damien admitted. “Incremental improvements on existing technologies. On the other hand, the Protectorate contains a hundred star systems and over a hundred billion human beings.”

  He shrugged.

  “Even with magic available to solve many problems, someone is always going to come up with a clever idea. It’s hard to stagnate entirely with that many clever humans running around.”

  Niska snorted.

  “I think you might be the first person I’ve ever seen admit that the Protectorate was stagnant,” he pointed out.

  “Magic stagnated our technological development,” Damien said. “The Protectorate government has been aware of that for at least, oh, fifty years. And has been working on it for most of that time.”

  And if the Republic had assumed that the Protectorate hadn’t been aware of that weakness and working to counteract it, they were going to have some ugly surprises coming.

  “How long have you had those?” Maata asked. “I might have switched sides sooner if I’d known that was on the table!”

  “Long enough that the answer is classified,” Damien told her with a chuckle. The people sharing Starlight’s bridge with him would have been the last people the Protectorate wanted to discover that the Rhapsodies existed.

  Time had changed that, it seemed, but he was still glad Rhapsody in Purple had been a surprise. Now the two starships floated in dee
p space, two light-years from the Arsenault System.

  “Now that no one is being kept secret, let’s pull Captain LaMonte into the planning for our next stop,” he continued. “We’ll probably want to follow much the same pattern regardless, but if everyone knows we have backup, that does give us options.”

  “Kelly LaMonte?” Niska asked, arching an eyebrow at him. “Wasn’t she aboard Blue Jay?”

  “She was,” Damien confirmed. “And yes, we were an item then. Now she’s married to her Ship’s Mage and her First Pilot. Does that satisfy your gossip urge?”

  The cyborg laughed.

  “I don’t have much of one of those,” he told Damien. “I do like to know where I stand with people, though. How far are we from Nueva Bolivia?”

  “Twelve days with one Jump Mage aboard,” Maata replied. “If we can borrow an extra Mage from Captain LaMonte…?”

  “We’ll talk about it,” Damien said. He didn’t want to commit any of the other Mages from Rhapsody in Purple to coming aboard a Legatan ship, however defected and friendly.

  On the other hand, the itch at the back of his neck suggested that the sooner they found the answer they were chasing, the fewer people were likely to die.

  For the first time since the mission had begun, Damien had all of his people in one conference. Most of them were aboard Starlight, with Kelly LaMonte, her spouses, and Captain Charmchi linked in via a video channel from Rhapsody in Purple.

  “Captain LaMonte,” Niska greeted her. “Time has treated you well, I see.”

  Damien’s ex-girlfriend looked good, he had to admit. Her thirties and command suited her, and neither had prevented her from continuing to change her hair on a whim. Currently, Rhapsody’s Captain had neon-yellow hair, unusual even for her.

  “Major Niska,” she responded. “I see time has treated you like shit.”

  He winced as Damien swallowed a chuckle.

  “I probably deserve that,” he admitted. “It’s been an odd few years for us all.”

  “Kelly, you and your people were briefed on Starlight’s officers?” Damien asked.

  “Aye. They’re trouble,” she pointed out. “But we’re pretty deep in their home territory, so I guess we should keep them.”

  Maata snorted.

  “So, half of this call knows the other half. Introductions?” she asked.

  “Captain Maata, be known to Captain Kelly LaMonte, commander of one of the Protectorate’s stealth ships,” Damien replied. “With her are her spouses, Ship’s Mage Xi Wu and First Pilot Mike Kelzin, and Captain Jalil Charmchi of the Protectorate Special Operations Command.”

  He wasn’t going to specify things like Rhapsody in Purple’s name or which branch of PSOC Charmchi reported to. He needed Niska and Maata, but they didn’t need to know everything about his little branch of the Protectorate’s intelligence apparatus.

  Names were already more than dangerous enough, he supposed.

  “It’s a pleasure,” Niska told them all. “Six months ago, we were all enemies,” he continued. “Now it seems there may well be a cancer at the heart of the Republic I helped birth that is our mutual enemy.

  “I don’t know what my Director discovered, but I do know that he was a founding father of the Republic and they killed him for it.” Niska shook his head. “What we found in Arsenault suggests that it has something to do with the young Mages by Right who were still in the Republic at the time of the Secession.”

  “We know Arsenault’s Mages were shipped to Nueva Bolivia,” Damien concluded. “We’ve identified the ship—Sounds in the Shining Morning—the flight registry, everything. Once we’re in Nueva Bolivia, we should be able to ID where Shining Morning dropped them off.”

  “There’s still one question, though, that’s going to impact a lot,” Romanov said grimly, the Marine sitting to Damien’s right. “There shouldn’t have been any way that the Directorate could have traced the encounter at the Academy all the way back to Starlight in the time they had.

  “It was maybe four hours from us teleporting away from the Academy to them challenging Starlight. They made that connection too damned quickly.”

  Niska sighed.

  “That’s because that isn’t the connection they made,” he said quietly. “I had Augment Nichols trying to dig up some of our old contacts on Manchester. They didn’t catch us. They caught her.”

  “And Nichols came back aboard with us,” Damien concluded grimly. “And just what was Ms. Nichols looking for that was so secret, Niska? I thought we were trying to keep each other informed of things that would at least threaten the mission.”

  “And you had a stealth ship tailing us,” Niska replied. “We each have our own damn secrets, Montgomery. In this case…” He sighed. “I had Nichols trying to get her hands on a Link. The ability to eavesdrop on even the general news updates that they’re sending out for RIN and RID ears only would give us a valuable tool.

  “But I wanted to control that tool, Montgomery. There’s a limit to what I can give up just yet.”

  Damien sighed.

  “And that desire for secrecy nearly killed us all,” he pointed out. “Can you safely use your authentications and so forth in Bolivia now?”

  “I think so,” Niska said after a pause. “Hopefully, only Nichols’s IDs and clearances were flagged. Even if they cast a broader net, I have clearances hidden in the system that they won’t know about.”

  “That they shouldn’t know about,” Maata said quietly. “What if they do?”

  “I don’t know,” he confessed. “But we don’t have a lot of options, do we? Unless anyone here thinks we’re going to walk away from the mysterious disappearance of over two hundred teenagers at the hands of my government?”

  22

  Two days into the slow process of moving nearly eighty warships across over a hundred light-years of space, Roslyn finally began to start feeling like she had her feet under herself.

  It was a small moment, in the middle of a videoconference between Admiral Alexander and four other Mage-Admirals with regards to anti-gunship tactics. Alexander made an unthinking gesture toward Roslyn and asked her a question they hadn’t discussed in advance.

  “Lieutenant, do we have any estimates on where the Republic is manufacturing gunships?” she asked.

  “We’re not entirely sure,” Roslyn replied instantly. “Current estimates from MISS have sixty to seventy percent of the manufacturing going on in Legatus, with another twenty percent in Nueva Bolivia and the rest scattered across half a dozen other systems.”

  As she was answering the question off the cuff, she was digging through her file structure and grabbing the most recent relevant report and flipping its summary page onto Alexander’s screen.

  The Mage-Admiral gave her an approving nod and turned back to her peers.

  “As Lieutenant Chambers’s data suggests, we’re not going to eliminate gunship production by besieging Legatus,” she told the Admirals. “That’s something we need to keep in mind.”

  “That raises the question of whether the RIN command is ruthless enough to keep building new gunships, loading them into carriers, and flinging them at our siege force,” Medici said grimly. “That’s probably the most effective thing they can do, at least in terms of wearing us down over time.”

  “It depends how many carriers they lose trying to dislodge us initially,” Admiral Marangoz noted. He was checking something with his own staff as they spoke. “We still don’t have solid numbers on how many of the damn things they have.”

  “Only how many they’ve lost,” Medici said with a wicked grin. “Though that number isn’t nearly as high as I’d like.”

  “And the price for them has been too damned high,” Alexander replied. “Officers, we cannot underestimate our enemy. Our entire strategy in Legatus is to try and avoid engagement with the fixed defenses. As far as the gunships go, defeat in detail is the name of the game.

  “We can engage the gunship forces from Legatus, or Centurion, or the ent
ire mobile force in the system. We cannot allow them to concentrate those three forces. Our mobility advantage and control of the space between the two planets is the key to this.”

  “What happens if they start jumping ships out and arming them out-system?” another Admiral asked. Roslyn quickly checked the system to ID Admiral Arline Pender.

  “The current assumption from MISS is that the jump drives are being installed at Centurion,” Alexander replied. “That’s why my intent is to lock down Centurion primarily. We will have some leakage from Legatus under the deployment plan. We can’t avoid that.

  “The priority is to make sure that no new jump ships are deployed, and that means we must keep jump-capable hulls from leaving the facilities at Centurion.”

  Roslyn hid a shiver. Their entire plan was hinging on assumptions and intelligence of mixed value. Even if it worked, the Republic was going to move everything in their power to dislodge Second Fleet.

  She trusted Mage-Admiral Alexander and was starting to feel confident in her own tiny contribution to the machine Alexander had built—but she was terrified of what they were about to try and do.

  The conference closed up several minutes later, and Roslyn already had Alexander’s coffee ready the way the Admiral liked it. Alexander took a sip and gestured the Lieutenant to a chair.

  “I didn’t think we’d need that production data,” she admitted. “Solid catch, Lieutenant. Well done.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “You’re doing okay,” Alexander said with a smile. “I haven’t had many Flag Lieutenants over the years, Chambers. They have, to a one, been young Mages without the political connections to rise far in the Fleet. Young officers, all Mages by Right except you, that people I trust told me needed a leg up to get where the Protectorate needed them to be.”

  “So, we’re all terrible political appointees?” Roslyn asked.

  The Admiral laughed with coffee in her mouth, managing to spray steaming liquid across her immaculate dress uniform and desk.