“Fighters, form up to shield the Vultures,” Ozolinsh ordered, the simulation slowing as he began to adjust his formation. They’d brought exactly the same numbers of fighters as Forty-First Fleet to the exercise, as a test.
Russell also knew that Roberts himself was just an observer, not giving orders or getting involved. Knowing the Admiral, he suspected that Roberts had seen exactly how his people had screwed up and was busy biting his tongue.
“Missiles salvoing,” Hu announced. “Looks like someone could go for a damn walk out there.”
Two thousand-odd starfighters put a lot of missiles into space, but that was still an exaggeration. The missiles weren’t Russell’s concern, though. He’d leave the defensive ECM and lasers to his engineer.
No, his eyes were on the vectors and ranges for his starfighters’ lances. None of the Chevaliers with their heavier weapons were in play today. This was just Falcons and Arrows, both carrying identical deflectors and positron lances.
“And…here we go.”
At starfighter engagement velocities, lance range lasted seconds at most. The simulator could draw it out, much as it had accelerated time before, but it wouldn’t. The point was to practice as close to reality as possible without wasting time “in flight”.
Of the almost nine hundred starfighters in Forty-First Fleet’s formation, barely a hundred and fifty were in range as Seventh Fleet’s fighters flashed through. None of those ships survived, and they only took forty of Ozolinsh’s starfighters with them—and none of the bombers.
“Coming up on Forty-First Fleet,” Ozolinsh said calmly. “We’re clear of the fighters; let’s do this nice and easy. Bombers, salvo torpedoes at one-point-five-million kilometers. Everyone, salvo starfighter missiles at seven hundred thousand klicks.
“We’ll hit anything left with lances…”
KYLE WATCHED SILENTLY as Seventh Fleet’s fighters swarmed over the icons representing his own fleet. Genghis Khan died first. Then Avalon. Then Elysium. Carolus Rex survived the torpedo strike only to fall to the missiles along with all three Righteous-class carriers.
The three battleships somehow survived every single torpedo and missile, but over half of Seventh Fleet’s starfighters remained when they swarmed over the ships, and five hundred positron lances were too much even for the Federation’s mighty superbattleships.
“Well.”
He let the single word hang in the silence of his flag deck.
“Well,” he repeated, studying the sequence of events in his implant, “it appears that I owe Vice Commodore Rokos some beer. A lot of beer.” He paused thoughtfully and glanced over at Sterling.
“Archie, how much beer does it to take to make three thousand fighter jocks stop bragging?” he asked with a degree of false plaintiveness in his voice.
“I’m not sure your salary stretches to that, sir,” his chief of staff told him.
“Damn. Well, then, we’re just going to have to do better next time, aren’t we?” Kyle asked aloud, glancing around his staff. They were all very distinctly busy.
“CAG debrief in one hour,” he told them. “And Archie?”
“Sir?”
“Get in touch with Seventh Fleet’s canteens. Beer for the fighter jocks is on Forty-First Fleet’s tab tonight.” He grinned. “Gods know they’ve earned it, but you’re right—I can’t pay for it. I also don’t have to.
“I have a budget for this.”
FORTY-FIRST FLEET’S CAGs were present aboard Elysium in person. The CAGs from Seventh Fleet’s carriers were present by virtual link. Everyone from the exercise was linked in, as were Admiral Rutherford and both flag officers’ staffs.
“Well,” Kyle said brightly, “it appears that Commodore Ozolinsh and his people have demonstrated something of what happens when we epically fuck up.”
His tone was still bright and cheerful, but the emphasis on the last three words had every one of his CAG’s recoiling.
Well, every one of them except Michelle Williams-Alvarez, who looked about ready to deliver the same lecture he was going to lay on them. She was his most junior Vice Commodore, however, which meant she wasn’t fleet CAG despite being the flagship’s CAG…and, he guessed, that his other CAGs weren’t giving her comments the weight they might deserve.
“Does anyone want to try and defend themselves before I explain exactly how you managed to accidentally wipe out an entire ten-ship battle fleet?” he continued. “Anyone?”
The fact that his CAGs were all in the room with him meant he was quite certain there wasn’t anything on the floor, despite their simultaneous study of it.
“We got fancy and clever,” he said after a moment. “Too fancy, too clever.”
“…it usually works for you,” someone muttered. Kyle carefully didn’t note which officer had spoken.
“The trick, people, is to get exactly fancy enough,” he told them. “Ozolinsh’s people hadn’t settled on an attack plan yet. They hadn’t done anything to suggest their course or their plan, but instead of holding position, we got fancy…and we committed to that fancy.
“Isaac Newton is the deadliest son of a bitch in space, and sometimes that’s because he says you can’t change course on a dime,” Kyle continued. “You may have five hundred gees of acceleration, but every second you’re pointed in the wrong direction is an extra second you have to spend accelerating to get back to the right one.
“So, when you commit first—and do it in a way your enemy can see—you put Sir Newton on their side. If you have to commit like that, commit with a hammer they can’t stop. Two kilos of aggression can be worth three of sleight of hand.”
He grinned.
“The best stack, however, is a kilo of both.” He lit up a holoprojector. “Now, this is what we all did.”
The recording played through rapidly, showing an hour-long exercise—that would have been a twelve-hour real-life battle—in roughly a minute.
“Vice Commodore Rokos spotted your mistake and Commodore Ozolinsh rammed a thousand starfighters through it,” he told them. “I took the liberty, however, of running a simulated scenario of how you could have countered Ozolinsh’s maneuver.”
A new scenario played out. This time, as Seventh Fleet’s fighters began their hard charge toward the gap in the defending fighter’s formation, hundreds of ECM drones flashed out from Forty-First Fleet’s formation.
In the original scenario, they’d been held for missile defense. In this one, Kyle used them to create a mass of confusion over just where his starfighters were. It looked like they were still on their wide course—but in reality, they were using the cover of the drones to close up their formation.
This time, Seventh Fleet’s strike ran into a solid wall of missiles and a closed-up starfighter formation. With AIs pretending to be pilots, the resulting fight was even more of a mutual massacre than it probably would be in reality…but far too few fighters made it through to threaten Forty-First Fleet.
“We screwed up,” he told his people, stressing the “we” to make sure they realized he was including himself. “We can do better. We have to do better—Walkingstick is going to send his best after us, and if we muck up like this in a real fight, the Commonwealth will be sending us home in boxes.
“And I don’t know about you lot, but I have a kid and a fiancée I’d rather go home to in one piece!”
13
Via Somnia System
08:00 August 28, 2737 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
DSC-080 Elysium
“ADMIRAL ON DECK!”
Kyle shook his head at Sterling’s booming voice and grinned impishly at his assembled starship Captains and staff as he stepped up to the head of the conference table next to the flag bridge.
There were only five people physically in the room, but even the nine attending virtually were at least making an effort at standing to attention as he waved them all back to their seats.
“At ease, people,” he told them. “We officially do not have time for
Academy spit and polish today.”
He took his own seat and grabbed the cup of coffee a steward had left waiting for him, studying his officers as he took a sip.
It was an eclectic bunch. Six Castle Federation Captains, three Coraline Imperial Lord Captains and one Renaissance Trade Factor Captain for starship commanders, plus the four Federation Senior Fleet Commanders of his staff.
Captain Bai’al of Magellan stood out the most. The Trade Factor Captain was one of the most obvious transhumans Kyle had ever met, with visible circuitry across their shaved head and a pair of mechanical tentacles mounted on their shoulders.
Right now, the tentacles were relaxed, hanging down the Captain’s torso like silver suspenders over their breasts, but they still marked them as unique even in this crowd.
Novak sat at Kyle’s right hand, Elysium’s Captain one of the physically present officers.
Captain Elijah Hammond, Avalon’s new Captain, sat to his left. Hammond’s holographic image could have been Mira Solace’s sibling, with the same dark skin and tall, slim build as the Admiral’s fiancée.
He seemed very aware that he commanded the Admiral’s old ship, too.
Both of Kyle’s Federation battleship Captains were cut from the same mold, older women with sharp features and pure white hair. Both Captain Edmonda Blue and Captain Lara MacLeod were veterans of the last war with the Commonwealth, junior officers who’d spent the peace calmly accumulating experience and rank.
His battlecruiser Captains, however, were a study in contrast. Captain Augusta Pekkanen of Carolus Rex was a squat woman with a short golden braid and a seemingly squashed face, where Captain Simon Tanaka of Genghis Khan was an almost eerily skinny and tall man with dark skin and folded eyes who towered easily ten centimeters over his immense Admiral.
The three Imperial Captains were equally varied. Lord Captain Josiane Vass of Righteous Light had almost luminescent gold hair that clashed dramatically with her pitch-black skin, where Lord Captain the Elector Maria von Kita of Righteous Sword looked like her family had left Japan last month instead of four hundred years earlier, and Lord Captain Pino Mihailović of Righteous Voice was as swarthy and dark-haired as his Russian last name suggested.
“We’ve had a week,” Kyle noted. None of the officers he’d been given were weak links. Few of the Alliance’s less-capable Captains were in uniform, with the Commonwealth having taken care of many that the Alliance’s member fleets hadn’t caught in time.
“Does anyone have any immediate concerns?” he asked. “Our mission profile calls for us to move out at midnight ESMDT, but I have a lot of discretion on that if we have a problem.”
That was the advantage of his part of Operation Medusa. The deep-strike fleets had to leave at particular times to make sure the final attack went down simultaneously. His own distraction effort was more flexible.
“Our starfighters have improved their coordination dramatically over that week,” von Kita noted. “We still have occasional issues with senior officers from the Federation or Imperium requesting support that the other’s fighters can’t provide.” She shook her head. “We should have standardized our fighters as well as our missiles.”
“It’s being done,” Kyle reminded her. “But we have the fighters we have. Have your CAGs focus on that concern, people. I’d suggest virtual exercises in each other’s starfighters—have our Falcon pilots fly virtual Arrows and vice versa.”
He smiled wickedly.
“In fact, let’s make sure that all of our starfighter pilots get at least two or three sim hours in a Vulture bomber. We need them to keep the bombers alive, and having a solid understanding of what a Vulture can and can’t do won’t hurt.”
Nods carried around the room.
“Our starship coordination is still rusty,” Bai’al noted in their oddly pitched voice. “The battleships are maneuvering well together, but if we end up in a capital ship action, the battlecruisers need to work with us…and the carriers need to do a better job of hiding behind us.”
Tanaka looked like he was about to say something, but Kyle held up a hand to cut him off.
“The cruiser and carrier crews aren’t as used to the idea of capital ship actions as the battlewagons’ people,” he pointed out. “We can drill that in transit—or are we that bad off, Captain?”
Bai’al shook their head.
“No,” they replied. “We’re just rusty. As you say, we’re not used to formation flying with capital ships. Virtual drills for the shiphandlers while in transit should suffice to shake off the rust.”
Kyle nodded.
“Anyone else?” he asked. He glanced around, giving them a moment to raise their concerns, then nodded firmly and mentally issued a command to the conference software.
A three-dimensional representation of the frontier between the Alliance and the Commonwealth appeared in the middle of the conference. The Alliance itself was highlighted in blue and Terran space in red—and the occupied systems were blue circled in red.
“This is our area of operations,” he said brightly. “As we speak, we have reason to believe that at least one, and more likely two or three, Terran fleets are moving against key targets along the front. Walkingstick is taking his time to set things up, but we are quite certain the hammer is about to drop.
“For reasons I can’t get into, we need him to hold off for about eight weeks. Convincing the good Marshal to chase us instead of hammering his way towards our homeworlds is now our job.”
He let that sink in, waiting for the inevitable question.
“How?” Tanaka asked softly. “Forty-First Fleet is a powerful formation, yes, but we can’t take on Walkingstick’s reserves or fortifications at Niagara.”
“No, we can’t,” Kyle agreed. The Niagara System flashed onto the display. Home to the Commonwealth’s biggest fleet base on this frontier, it anchored Walkingstick’s campaigns and was home to enough defenses to laugh at half a dozen capital ships on their own—and a defensive fleet more powerful than his own.
“But.” Four systems near Niagara flashed, bright green carets appearing around them. “Niagara is a relatively lightly inhabited system in its own right and, perhaps most importantly, has never had a large surplus of food.
“The industrial plant that came with the fleet base can do a lot of things, but all it can do for food is recycled protein.” A grimace ran around the room and Kyle grinned again. “Exactly. Even the most willing of crews start losing their enthusiasm when they know they’re eating protein bars made of their own waste.
“These four systems are key to Niagara’s logistics pipeline,” he explained. “They provide food, raw materials, replacement small-tech components…the works. The fleet base doesn’t need them…but without them, their morale and efficiency are going to plummet.
“That said, if we just fly in and level the orbital infrastructure of those systems, they’ll know we knew exactly what to hit. They’ll know what systems to defend, and they can secure them with, say, a dozen capital ships apiece.”
“How much of Walkingstick’s force do we need to draw down?” Bai’al asked, sounding curious as they studied the astrographic chart.
“All of it,” Kyle told them all.
“To do that, we can’t be obvious. We need to keep Walkingstick and his people jumping, and we need to hit the good Marshal in the only weak spot the bastard seems to have: his political superiors.”
A new flashing caret appeared on the display, locking on to an entirely different system.
“I also want to test this Fleet out against an easy target and send a message to the Commonwealth that while we are playing by the rules of war, we aren’t playing by their rules anymore,” he concluded grimly. “Which brings us to the Aswiri System.
“Twenty-five light-years from here, almost thirty light-years into Commonwealth space.” Via Somnia, of course, was already well into Terran space. “Aswiri is a system of almost no importance to anyone. Minimal exportable surpluses, a small C
ommonwealth Navy refueling facility.
“Defenses at last record were two fighter stations mothering a hundred Scimitar-type fighters apiece and half a dozen gunships. We should be able to secure the system without losses of our own, at which point we will give them forty-eight hours to evacuate all non-residential spaceborne platforms.”
Kyle sighed. He did not like this part of his mission, even though he’d written the recommendation himself.
“And then we will blow their entire industrial plant to dust bunnies,” he told his people, his voice quiet. “We will minimize civilian casualties—to zero, if we can!—and scrupulously adhere not merely to the letter but the spirit of interstellar law.
“This will not be Hessian.” The system where Kyle had suffered NSIID and where the new war had begun had seen its infrastructure crushed by a retreating Commonwealth fleet…with its civilian workforce still aboard. “I will neither order nor permit atrocities.
“But the destruction of Aswiri’s orbital industry will add to the political pressure on Marshal Walkingstick to come after us, and the raid on a minor system will leave them guessing where we’re going to hit next.
“Two or three raids of this nature should force him to pull back the lion’s share of his fleet to try and intercept us, which is exactly what the Alliance needs. We’re playing matador, people, and we need to make sure the bull doesn’t gore us.”
He grimaced, looking around to test the resolve and understanding of his officers.
“At the end of the day, though,” he said quietly, “Forty-First Fleet is expendable so long as we do our job. The Alliance needs Walkingstick watching us. Sooner or later, that means we’re going to get hammered. Our job is to minimize the losses we take when that happens.
“I want you to be clear on that and make sure your juniors understand as well,” he told them. “We will have objectives and targets for each raid, but absolutely nothing we are going after is an all-costs target. I have every intention of abandoning attacks if the defenses are too heavy and of outright flight if a heavy force arrives while we are mid-operation.
Operation Medusa (Castle Federation Book 6) Page 9
