“I’m flattered,” Jackson deadpanned. “Are you going to escort us all the way back?”
“You should be able to beat me back,” Pike reminded him.
“The whole squadron is pretty banged up,” Jackson shook his head. “We won’t be setting any records this flight. How about I forward you some files for the admiral and you get back to New Sierra and warn them that we’ll need at least two full-service berths.”
“Aye aye, Cap’n,” Pike said with a crooked salute. “Anything else?”
“Just tell me we’re clear all the way back to Terran space and that will be enough.”
“Nothing simpler,” Pike shrugged. “You’ll have a nice boring flight all the way back. See you there.” The channel closed abruptly and Jackson couldn’t help the chuckle that escaped his lips. Under any normal circumstances a personality like Pike’s would have grated on his nerves like a nuclear-powered belt sander, but after all their interactions he had to admit that he considered the quirky agent a friend.
The rest of the Ninth made it through the jump point and out to the Xi’an jump point in a sad, battered procession without incident. Jackson was just happy they were able to make it in a straight shot and the Ares was able to simply maintain velocity and not limp along ahead of the rest of the formation.
It was with a great sigh of relief from almost everyone aboard that they transitioned out of the Xi’an System and onto the last leg, albeit the longest one, before they would find safe harbor and be able to lick their wounds and properly mourn their comrades. Jackson stared at a live video feed of the stasis cube as the warp drive engaged, hoping the cost they had paid so far was worth the price of admission when the time came to use it.
****
“Ares, departing!”
Jackson walked down the gangway that had been attached to his ship after she’d been dragged into a fully enclosed maintenance dock by the harbor tugs. He felt much older than his forty-two years and a strong sense of dread as the reality of the coming campaign stretched out in front of him. The location of the core mind had been discovered, and it would take the Terran fleet nearly six months of hard flying to get there. It was so much further than their longest reaching exploration efforts had gone, and this wasn’t some tireless automated probe. This would be an entire armada made up of dissimilar warships, supply vessels, and over a hundred thousand spacers that would be exhausted from the journey before the fight even started.
“Senior Captain,” Admiral Marcum returned Jackson’s salute and stuck out his hand. “Welcome back and well done.”
“Thank you, Admiral,” Jackson shook the proffered hand. “It’s certainly good to be back. You got the data I sent ahead?”
“I did,” Marcum nodded. “Along with your report. A terrible tragedy, losing the Artemis like that, but it wasn’t your fault. The strategy was sound.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m serious, Wolfe,” Marcum said as the pair turned to talk along the docking arm and out of earshot of the others filing off the destroyer. “Forrest knew the risks when she went along with the plan. I need you to move past this and be completely focused on what’s ahead of us.”
“I am, Admiral,” Jackson said. “But I must admit to having some misgivings about this. The simple logistics of it are—” He trailed off, trying to couch it as least offensively as possible.
“Impossible?” Marcum provided. “Absurd? Suicidal? Trust me, Captain … I’ve been hearing it from my advisory staff since you came back from Vruahn space. However, time is not on our side with this one. Yes, we could simply amass our fleet facing the direction of the Phage core mind and deploy a detection grid along the Frontier.
“Then we could wait. And wait. And wait. Now how long do you think we’d be able to maintain wartime footing like that? A year? Ten? Twenty? What does time mean to a species like the Phage? They’ll sit and watch, and wait, and when we let our guard down they’ll hit us so hard there won’t be any coming back from it. You know I’m right.”
“I do,” Jackson spit out. He wanted desperately to disagree with the admiral’s assessment, but the proof was in orbit right over his head. Complacency had led to a human martial force that was a military in name only. Black Fleet was supposed to be exactly what Marcum was referring to, and in the span of two generations it had turned into a dumping ground for worn-out people and equipment.
“I’m onboard, sir. It’s just been a long mission.”
“Understood,” Marcum nodded. “Let the crews here on facility get the Ares ready to fight again. I want your crew to take as much time off as they need.”
“Thank you, Admiral,” Jackson said. “I’ll see that they’re well-rested, but I also don’t want them sitting around reflecting too much on what’s happened. I need to keep them busy and focused.”
“They’re your people. Do what you need to do, but make sure you’re all ready when the time comes. The Ninth will be the pointy end of the stick on this one … that means you will be the very tip of the spear. I need you at your best.”
Jackson watched the admiral walk away and felt sick to his stomach all over again. That there wasn’t anyone else far more qualified than he for the job in all of humanity scared the shit out of him. How many more times could he possibly get lucky and manage not to fail as completely as he knew he inevitably must? He felt that the admiral was rolling the dice one too many times by tossing him out in front and hoping that it would work out again.
****
The repairs to the Ares were accomplished at an astonishing speed. A lot of that had to do with Tsuyo having a large technical staff stationed permanently at the New Sierra Shipyards which included a group of engineers familiar with the particulars of the Starwolf-class ships. The main engines were actually fairly simple pieces of equipment, and a replacement had been manufactured and tested by the time the aft pylon had been repaired and the intricate, layered material of the hull had been fabricated to patch up the breaches caused by the original engine exploding.
What chewed up most of Jackson’s days in the beginning of the process were the Tsuyo reps wanting to rehash every detail of the engine failure that caused all the hull breaches. This was the first engagement that had really tested the new ships and there were mountains of data to pore through. Jackson appreciated that they at least pretended to be as concerned as he that the ship seemed have a glass jaw. They explained to him, again, that the hull was built to be able to absorb and dissipate the incredible heat of a Phage plasma blast, not shrug off kinetic strikes like the old Raptor-class destroyers. Jackson told them, again, that he fully understood that but a warship had to be able to handle debris impacts as well. It was the same conversation he’d had with them when the Starwolf-class was first coming out of development and into production, and in the end he was given the same patronizing nods and empty promises that they’d “look into it.”
“Fucking idiots,” he mumbled as he walked out of the last meeting, not caring a bit if the Tsuyo and Fleet bureaucrats heard him.
After realizing that he was neither needed nor wanted in the area while the crews were fitting the new engine to the pylons and shipyard personnel crawled through every part of his ship with abandon, Jackson sequestered himself in the plush visiting dignitaries’ quarters in the upper part of the orbital platform. There he called up a secure connection and began going through the entire list of ships in the formations flying past the small porthole in his room. He cataloged the class, type, and origin of each ship and went so far as to pull up the service records of their commanding officers. The results of his research were not encouraging.
For all their bluster it seemed First and Fourth Fleet had let their ships fall into the same state of disrepair that Black Fleet had, and their crews displayed the same lack of readiness. The ships that had filtered in from the Warsaw Alliance were an utter disaster, six of which Jackson seriously considered recommending for decommission, and the Asianic Union had a lot of ships, but none that p
acked much of a punch.
It was these particular ships that Jackson was most concerned about. They were small, lacked any serious armor, and had short legs so they would need replenishing from the supply convoys much more often. Their lack of any serious armament also made them more of a liability than a help. He knew Marcum was looking at the raw numbers, but he recognized these ships for what they were: cannon fodder. Without anything to offer other than the ability to fill out their ranks, Marcum would have little choice but to either order these ships to stay back out of the way or advance them into the line of fire and get thousands of brave AU spacers needlessly killed.
After he compared their raw numbers to what the Phage were just suspected to have in the system they had dubbed the “Hive” Jackson had to suppress the urge to vomit.
“There is no way we can win,” he said to the empty room. “I’m going to get them all killed.” He shut down his tile and tossed it on the table, leaning back to rub his temples. What was he missing?”
Chapter 19
“Come in!”
“Do you have a moment, Captain?”
“Colonel, come on in and grab a seat.” Jackson waved Blake into the room. “I didn’t know you were aboard.”
“I just docked about twenty minutes ago,” Blake said. “After convincing the Tsuyo techs that they would be killed if they attempted to force their way onto my ship I came looking for you.”
“Something important?” Jackson frowned.
“Maybe.” Blake was evasive. “Let’s just call it a curiosity for now. I don’t want to taint your interpretation of what I’m about to show you.”
“Let’s see it.” Jackson slid his drink on the desk with a slightly embarrassed look on his face.
For the next five hours straight the two looked over the raw sensor feeds from Blake’s ship, discussed it, argued over it, and tried to pick apart each other’s analysis just as an intellectual exercise. Even after the marathon session, however, Jackson was more certain of what he was seeing than he had been about anything else in his life. The elegance of the solution made complete sense, and once the initial shock of it wore off he was convinced that this was the only answer that made sense.
“Grab your shit,” Jackson stood up. “We need to see the admiral.”
“It’s 0330 ship’s time,” Blake pointed out.
“Then grab your shit. We’re going to hit the mess deck for coffee and some decent food and then wake his ass up.”
“Right behind you, sir,” Blake said with enthusiasm.
****
“We have the wrong target,” Jackson said without preamble when Marcum’s bleary-eyed face appeared at the door.
“Wolfe,” he growled. “Have you been fucking drinking?”
“A little, sir,” Jackson admitted. “But that’s not the point.”
“I see you have the colonel with you.” Marcum stepped aside and let them in. “Let’s hope for your sake that this isn’t a waste of my time. I’m trying to keep myself on Amsterdam’s time and I just got to sleep. Now what in the hell are you babbling about.”
“Admiral,” Blake stepped in smoothly, “I’d like to show you some sensor footage from my ship I recorded while we were searching for the core mind. At the time the significance of the anomaly I was seeing didn’t quite sink in, but now, combined with the collated data from my ship, I believe we’ve stumbled upon the actual location of the target.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Marcum waved his hands in front of his face as if waving off something rancid. “Your goddamn people gave us a target package that your Vruahn handlers have assured us is the core mind. They gave us a ninety-nine percent probability. What the hell could you have found that disputes that?”
“Let me show you.” Blake spun a strange-looking device around to show the admiral. It looked like a tile display that had a mechanical keyboard attached to it by a hinge. The more Jackson saw the colonel using it the more he liked the idea.
“When I was sitting in this system there was nothing of note, but I kept receiving a blip on what we’ve identified as the carrier signal for the Phage networked consciousness.”
“Go on.” Marcum assumed a defensive posture while looking at the display.
“At first they didn’t mean anything,” Blake continued. “As I said: anomalies. But the longer I observed, the more of them were detected. I had the ship run a full spectrum passive scan, which is a massive amount of raw information, and then process it as resources became available. To get to the point, each time there were one of these blips, look at what showed up at the edge of the system.” Blake hit the long, thin key at the bottom of his device and a grainy thermal image showed up that made Marcum suck in his breath.
“An Alpha,” he said.
“A Super Alpha,” Jackson corrected. “The Vruahn have the ability to differentiate between the two even on passives. The point is that the signal originated from somewhere in the system, and each time there was a Super Alpha lurking along the perimeter to receive it. On two occasions there were burst broadcasts from the Alpha back into the system.”
“You’re not exactly blowing my dress up, Wolfe,” Marcum said.
“Think about it, sir,” Blake stepped back in. “The core mind sits isolated in a system that holds zero strategic or logistic value. Why would anyone search there? It can sit silently and pass specific instructions out to the Alphas via these burst transmissions and allow them to propagate the orders out to the rest of the Phage.”
“I still think this is a steaming load, Colonel.” Marcum’s jaw set. “Let’s be objective about this, boys. You’ve captured something … interesting, yes. But you expect me to divert the entire fleet to this bit of nowhere on something so thin? Wolfe, I expected better of you.”
“Not the whole fleet, sir,” Jackson shook his head. “Just the Ares and—”
“Absolutely not!” Marcum said. “That destroyer will be leading the charge, along with the giblets you yanked out of that other Alpha, flying the flag for all the rest of the fleet to see. This attack falls apart without at least some measure of blind faith, Senior Captain, and that is you. For some reason God has decided that you need to survive every desperate situation you get into and I want my other COs thinking that some of that can rub off on them.”
“Sir, if we could just—”
“We’re done discussing this, gentlemen,” Marcum said. “While I am dutifully impressed with your enthusiasm, I cannot ignore the mountain of evidence provided by Colonel Blake’s people that the core mind is sitting behind an impenetrable wall of Phage ships. The attack goes on as planned, and if you try to pull any of your usual shit when you don’t get your way, Wolfe, so help me God I will have you keelhauled. I’m not even sure how the hell that will work on a starship but I will find a way. Dismissed.”
“Well that could have gone better,” Blake said in the corridor after Marcum had slammed the door to his quarters.
“It actually went about as I expected,” Jackson said. “The admiral has an obligation to pick the course that has the greatest chance of success, and all the information he has is pointing big flashing arrows at the system your wingman found. I can’t say I’d have made a different call if I was in his position.”
“Then why the hell did we bother coming down here?” Blake asked.
“Due diligence,” Jackson said. “We had to at least give him the chance to make the call before we struck out on our own.”
“You can’t be serious,” Blake whispered. “You heard him, didn’t you?”
“Loud and clear,” Jackson said confidently. “I also know how to read between the lines.”
“Oh, shit.”
****
“Have you ever had real Kentucky bourbon before, Specialist?” Jackson asked, pouring the amber liquid into a glass.
“N-n-no, sir,” Accari said, his eyes as big as the glass bottom.
“You nervous?” Pike asked him. “You get used to it after the first sip.”
<
br /> “It’s not that—”
“Just Pike.”
“It’s not that, Pike,” Accari said. “I’m just wondering why I’m in the captain’s office being offered a drink along with the XO and a CIS agent. Is this about—”
“No,” Jackson held up his hand. “And I’m certain I don’t want to know what you were about to confess to. Here’s the thing, Specialist … I need your help with something. It’s something big, something that could have vast implications for the war and whether we win or lose, but if I’m wrong it could cost you your career and probably your freedom. If you want to leave right now, I’ll understand.”
“I trust you, sir,” Accari said after taking a deep breath and accepting the glass from Pike. “I’ll at least stay and listen.”
“Good man,” Pike nodded.
Over the next ninety minutes Jackson made his case to the young enlisted spacer and explained to him how vital his role would be. Accari agreed almost immediately, despite the three officers warning him how much trouble he would be in if they were wrong, and possibly even if they were right. Jackson was more than a little disturbed by the shining hero worship evident in Accari’s eyes, and he hated himself for using that to get what he needed, but he’d done far worse for much less.
After stressing to the young spacer the need for absolute and utter secrecy, Jackson and his cohorts got down to the business of working out the details of the rest of their plan and whom they would have to bring on board to make it happen.
“So what about that Phage swarm in the other system?” Davis asked as they were wrapping things up. “What is that for if not to protect the core mind?”
“My gut tells me it’s being staged for something,” Jackson said. “Maybe even one huge push into Terran space given the composition of the swarm. Either way, one destroyer won’t make a difference one way or the other if we’re wrong. But if I’m right—” He left it hanging as the other two shared a meaningful look.
“I better get back to my ship,” Blake stood up. “I’ve got a lot to do.”
Counterstrike (Black Fleet Trilogy, Book 3) Page 19
