by David Weber
"My orders came through sooner than expected," Stanislaus said, hugging back. He clapped his older brother on the back, then stood back, hands on Ladislaus' shoulder and examined his face carefully.
"You're to be looking more worn than I'm liking, Lad," he said quietly.
"Aye?" Ladislaus' smile went crooked, and he shrugged. "I've the hearing there's to be a lot of that going about these days. And will be, for quite a while, I'm to be thinking."
He started to say something else, then changed his mind with another shrug and turned Stanislaus to face the other two guests sitting at the table. "Stanislaus, be known to President Li Kai-lun of Hangchow and to Ms. Tatiana Illyushina, President of the Duma. Kai-lun, Tatiana, this is to be my baby brother."
"It must be something in the Beaufort water," President Li murmured, gazing up at Stanislaus' towering centimeters as he shook hands. "But how do you all avoid nosebleeds at that altitude, Ladislaus?"
"Pay no attention to him, Lieutenant Skjorning," Illyushina said sternly as she shook hands in turn. "He's been making sizeist remarks ever since he arrived."
"Has he, now?" Stanislaus' smile broadened as he took in the Duma president's blue-eyed beauty. "Well, it's used to it we are, the both of us. I've the thinking that envy can be an ugly thing."
Li laughed, and Ladislaus shook a finger at his brother.
"You'll not be setting my diplomatic efforts back that way, Stanislaus. Even if it is to be truthful you are!"
"That's all right, Lad," Li said, dark eyes glinting wickedly. "I know something the lieutenant doesn't. And, secure in my secret information, I intend to await his well-deserved comeuppance with gleeful anticipation."
"You do, do you?" Illyushina looked at Li speculatively. "And what sort of 'secret information' would that be?"
"If I told you, it wouldn't be secret anymore, would it?" Li said smugly.
"I tried, Lieutenant!" she told Stanislaus with a chuckle, "but I'm afraid he was too smart for us."
"Well, as to that," the corners of Stanislaus' eyes crinkled with amusement as he smiled down at her, "I wouldn't be so very sure he really is to know something I'm not." He shook his head, then looked back at Li. "I've already gotten my orders, Mr. President," he said, Beaufort accent vanishing completely.
"Drat," Li said comfortably.
"Orders?" Ladislaus repeated, looking at Stanislaus speculatively as he waved his brother into a chair between his own and Illyushina's.
"Aye." Stanislaus settled a bit carefully into the chair. Furniture on most worlds wasn't built with the bulk of a Skjorning in mind . . . as he had already rather abruptly discovered since his arrival on Novaya Rodina.
"What President Li meant," he continued as the chair creaked but stood up manfully to the strain, "is that I've been assigned to the Marine detachment aboard Longbow."
"You have?" Illyushina frowned. "But you just got here, didn't you?"
"This morning," Stanislaus agreed, unfolding his napkin and draping it across his lap. "From what they tell me, though, the Navy's been raiding the crews which came over more or less intact for cadre for other units. Which means they have to find replacements for the transfers somewhere."
"Then I'm thinking they'll just have to be making do with such as you, and a sad thing it's to be, too," Ladislaus sighed, but there was a twinkle in his eye.
In fact, Stanislaus had held a captain's commission in the Beaufort Peaceforce, and one of his few trips off world had been to spend eighteen months on active duty as a Federation Marine as part of his training. Where, as Laidislaus knew perfectly well, he had received glowing evaluations from all of his superiors and promises of rapid promotion if he would accept a regular Marine commission.
"Aye," Stanislaus agreed mournfully. "Still," he brightened visibly, "I understand Captain Li runs a taut ship. She won't let anyone pick on me, I'm sure."
"Oh, of course not!" President Li agreed.
"Well, if it's assigned so quickly you're to be, the more reason for us to be snatching what time together we can," Ladislaus said more seriously. "How long are you to be having before reporting?"
"Longbow's out on maneuvers at the moment," Stanislaus said. "I understand she's due back in sometime the day after tomorrow, and I'm to report on board when she enters orbit again."
"That isn't very long," Illyushina observed. Stanislaus looked at her, and she shrugged. "I mean, you won't have time to see much of my planet before they drag you back off it again, Lieutenant."
"Aye," Stanislaus said, and sighed gustily. "Still and all, I'm to be thinking as how, with time to be so short and all, it might be more of it I could be seeing with a local guide to be showing it to me." He looked earnestly at the head of Novaya Rodina's government. "Would you be knowing where I might be finding such, Ms. Illyushina?"
"Well, Chang?" Commodore Li Han tipped back her chair in Longbow's briefing room as she regarded her chief of staff. Commander Robert Tomanaga, her new battlegroup operations officer, sat beside Tsing, and the pair of them were flanked by Lieutenant Commander Esther Kane and Lieutenant David Reznick, Han's staff astrogator and electronics officer.
"Commander Tomanaga and I have gone over the Fleet ops plan, sir," Tsing replied. "We'll know better after we run it on the tac simulator, but for now, it looks solid."
"You agree, Commander?" Han turned her eyes to Tomanaga.
"Yes, sir. Oh, we could use more weight of metal, but quality counts more than quantity." He grinned, and Han frowned mentally, bothered by his brashness and wondering if her worry was justified. Tomanaga was certainly qualified on paper; but all of her staff officers were qualified "on paper," with no real experience in their new positions. Nor did she have any, and with an inexperienced staff under a commodore who was herself as green as grass . . . She hid a shudder and nodded calmly.
"Run it down for us, Commander," she said.
"Yes, sir. First, I'd like to put our own operation in perspective to the overall situation. Our operational problems are complicated enough, but we think the Rump's are worse. So far, about seventy percent of Frontier Fleet has come over or been taken by our units, and it looks like we've got about twenty percent of Battle Fleet, too, but our forces are scattered all over the Fringe. With only drones for communication, concentrating them for operations is going to take time and, for the immediate future, our units here at Novaya Rodina constitute Admiral Ashigara's full disposable strength."
Han stifled an urge to hurry him up. There was time, and it was better to be sure her entire staff understood Fleet HQ's viewpoint.
"Admiral Ashigara's intelligence people estimate that the Rump has suffered losses we don't know about, and that fighter losses have probably been extremely high because so many fighter jocks were Fringers. That's a bit speculative, sir, but it matches our own experience. At any rate, the Rump is undoubtedly strapped for striking forces, but has the advantage of an intact command, better communications, and the interior position; they can move what they have from point to point faster than we can shift around the periphery.
"Our own immediate strategic need is to secure our frontiers before the Rump begins to recover, for which purpose Fleet plans a series of attacks on choke points. Our own operation against Cimmaron will cut off four separate Rump axes of attack,"
He touched his panel, and the briefing room lights died. A hologram appeared over the table, and light from the tangled warp lines glittered briefly in his eyes as he picked up a pointer.
"Here's Cimmaron," he touched a tiny light dot. "Only two transits away via Redwing, but Redwing's covered by The Line. The forts are cut off now, but Fleet prefers to isolate them rather than attack them."
Han felt a mental nod circle the table. No one wanted to tangle with those forts.
"So," Tomanaga went on, "we'll go from Novaya Rodina to Donwaltz-" his pointer hopped from star to star as he spoke "-to MXL-23 to Lassa to Aklumar to Cimmaron-a much longer route, but one we own as far as Aklumar. Because of its length, we're going in with only ca
rriers, battlecruisers, and light units, since battle-line units would slow us by thirty percent. On the other hand, there are no fortifications at Aklumar-thanks to the Treaty of Tycho-and they won't know we're coming, so we ought to retain the advantage of surprise until the moment we hit Cimmaron."
He laid the pointer aside and brought the light back up.
"Our best analysis of the defense is a guess," he admitted, showing an edge of concern at last. "The Fleet base's fixed defenses are negligible, but Cimmaron Skywatch is quite heavy: eleven type-four orbital forts, three covering the Aklumar warp point. Before the mutinies, there was also a strong OWP-based fighter force, and despite Fleet's estimate, there's no guarantee they haven't brought their fighter strength back up. They must be as aware of Cimmaron's strategic value as we are, so the system undoubtedly has priority for reinforcements."
He paused to let the numbers sink in, then went on.
"What we have, after essential detachments, is two battlecruiser groups (ours and Commodore Petrovna's) and four carrier groups with approximately three hundred fighters embarked, plus escorts. The balance of force should be with us, but our edge is slim and we don't have any superdreadnoughts or monitors. Without them, the battlecruisers will have to keep Skywatch occupied until the carriers can stabilize their catapults and launch."
All of them knew what that meant. Type-four OWPs were big and powerful, stronger than most superdreadnoughts. It was statistically certain some of the battlecruisers wouldn't be around to see the fighters launch.
"That's the bare bones of the plan," Tomanaga continued after a moment. "We're transporting several hundred crated fighters to hold the system once we have it, because half the carriers will have to pull out for Bonaparte and the Zephrain operation while the rest move on Gastenhowe. Other attacks should clear up additional choke points at the same time, but Cimmaron and Zephrain are the really critical ones. We need more depth to protect Novaya Rodina, and Fleet wants to deal with the research station as soon as possible."
"Thank you Commander," Han said quietly as he finished, then looked around once more, evaluating reactions.
Captain Tsing looked merely thoughtful, but he was a bulky, impassive man, virtually incapable of revealing much emotion. He was always simply Tsing-unreadable, phlegmatic, and utterly reliable.
Tomanaga looked confident. It was, after all, an ops officer's job to exude confidence, and certainly one could not dispute the neatness of the plan . . . assuming one could subordinate one's own survival to the other objectives. It seemed Tomanaga could do that-which could be a flaw in an ops officer. Best to keep an eye on him.
Lieutenant Commander Kane's eyes were intent, her lips pursed as she toyed with a lock of short-cut chestnut hair. Han had watched her jotting notes as Tomanaga spoke; now her stylus ran down the pad, underscoring or striking through as she rechecked them. Han put a mental question mark beside Kane's name, but she was inclined to approve.
She turned finally to Lieutenant (junior grade) David Reznick, by far the youngest member of her staff, and perhaps the most brilliant of them all. At the moment, he was frowning.
"You have found a difficulty, Lieutenant?"
"Excuse me?" Reznick looked up and blinked, then flushed. "Could you repeat the question please, Commodore?"
Han hid a smile. It was difficult not to feel maternal towards the young man. "I asked if you'd found a difficulty,"
"Not with the ops plan, no, sir, but I'm a little worried about the electronics."
"Ah?" She regarded him thoughtfully.
"Er, yes, sir. Longbow wasn't designed as a command ship. We squeezed everything in by pulling those two heavy launchers, but the whole datalink setup is jury-rigged. It's put together with spit, prayers, and a lot of civilian components, sir, and we're spilling out of the electronics section. If we have to slam the pressure doors, we'll lose peripherals right and left."
"But the system does work?"
"Uh, well, yes, sir. Works fine. The thing is, if we start taking hits the whole shebang could go straight to shi-um, that is, the system could go down, sir."
Han couldn't quite hide her smile, and Reznick flamed brick red before his sense of humor rescued him. Then he grinned back, and Han's last real concern vanished as a chuckle ran around the table. The chemistry was good.
"Very well, David." She drew a pad and stylus toward her. "Give me a worst-case estimate and let's come up with ways around it."
"Yes, sir." He opened a thick ring binder and flipped pages. "First of all Commodore . . ."
"But, Lad, you got your Constitution adopted, and we're adopting your Declaration," Li Kai-lun said reproachfully. "The least you can do is endorse the flag you asked me to design for you!"
Ladislaus looked sourly at the sinuous, blood-red form coiled about the ebon banner's golden starburst. Except for the star-and the wings on the snakelike doomwhale-it looked remarkably like the Beaufort planetary flag.
"I'm thinking it won't be so very popular with the others," he rumbled.
"You round-eyes are always seeing difficulties," Kai-lun teased. "It's really childish of you. Why not just learn to accept your karma?"
"Because my 'karma's' probably to be a short rope when they see this, you old racist!"
"No, no!" Kai-lun disagreed. "It's only right that the symbol of Beaufort should adorn our banner, Ladislaus-the committee was unanimous on that. And for those who need a little symbolism, we've added the star and wings to indicate the sweep and power of our new star nation. You see?"
"Were you ever being a used-skimmer salesman?" Ladislaus asked his small ally suspiciously.
"Never."
"Ah. I had the wondering." He thought for a moment, then grinned. "All right. It's glad I'll be to be seeing the old doomwhale, anyway."
"Good." Kai-lun rose and headed for the door, then stopped to smile over his shoulder. "Actually, you know, that-" he waved at the banner "-is a symbol of good fortune."
"Eh? I've never had the hearing of the doomwhale being that!"
"Ah, but when you put wings on it, it's not a doomwhale."
"No?" Ladislaus' suspicions surged afresh. "What's it to be, then?"
"Any child of Hangchow knows that, Lad." Kai-lun smiled. "It's a dragon, of course."
"Lieutenant Skjorning, reporting for duty, sir!"
Stanislaus Skjorning braced to attention-mindful of the overhead-in the tiny shipboard office assigned to Major Wang Chung-hui, CO of TRNS Longbow's Marine detachment.
"Stand easy, Mr. Skjorning," Wang said, and tipped his chair back as he contemplated the towering giant who had strayed into his office. Wang was tall for a Hangchowese, but he doubted his head would have reached as high as Skjorning's shoulder if they'd both been standing.
Stanislaus dropped into a stand easy position, hands folded behind him, and returned the major's scrutiny levelly. He'd already noticed that, despite the new Admiralty's raids on Longbow's crew, non-Oriental faces remained in a distinct minority in her company. And even without that, or his relationship to the Republic's President, his size would have made him a marked man aboard her. He was accustomed to that, but he wondered exactly how Wang was going to approach it.
"So, Lieutenant," Wang said after a moment, "you're our new platoon leader."
"Yes, sir," Stanislaus replied crisply.
"And I see from your records that you served eighteen months with the Five Three Ninety-Eighth. That would have been Colonel Howell, wouldn't it?"
"No, sir. Colonel Howell took the regiment just after I left. Colonel Jouvet had the command while I was with it."
"Charles Jouvet?" Wang asked. "From New Zurich?"
"Yes, sir."
"My, my." Wang smiled crookedly. "And how did you and the Colonel get along, Lieutenant?"
"As well as any Fringer got along with him, sir." Stanislaus gave a thin smile of his own. "I don't think he much cared for any of us, and it showed. But he had the same standards for everyone-Fringer, Corporate Worlder, or Hear
t Worlder."
"Yes, he did," Wang agreed. "And he apparently thought rather well of you, despite your origins. I see here that it was strongly recommended that you be offered a transfer to the Regulars. Which wouldn't have happened if your CO hadn't endorsed the notion."
"Colonel Jouvet did mention that he thought a regular commission would be a good opportunity for me, sir," Stanislaus replied. "I thanked him, but they needed me back on Beaufort."
He did not add that his decision to return home had been influenced by his oldest brother's death in action and his father's determination to give no more of his children's lives to the Federation.
"Well, if Martinet Charlie thought that highly of a Fringer, you must have been something else, Lieutenant," Wang observed. "So I suppose we should be glad to have you."
"I'll certainly try to pull my weight, sir," Stanislaus said, "but I've spent over ten years as a reservist. There are bound to be some rusty spots. And just looking over the manuals, I've already noticed several equipment mods and upgrades that never made it out to Beaufort."
"It's like riding a bicycle, Mr. Skjorning," Wang told him. "I'm sure it will all come back to you quickly. And if it doesn't, I'm positive we can find someone to, ah . . . mentor you until it does."
Stanislaus managed not to wince. From what he'd already seen of Wang, he was sure the major's confidence wasn't misplaced. Which, given the number of "rusty spots" he knew needed buffing up, meant his next few weeks were going to be interesting ones.
Wang smiled again, as if he'd read the thoughts passing through Stanislaus' mind, and pressed a button on his com.
"Sir?" a voice responded almost instantly.
"Sergeant, Third Platoon's new CO has graced us with his presence. Would you ask Captain Ju to join us in my office?"
"Aye, sir," the voice replied.
No more than forty seconds passed, and then the office hatch slid open once more and a compact, immaculately uniformed Marine stepped through it.
"You wanted me, sir?" he said to Wang, and the major nodded.
"Ju Chang, meet Stanislaus Skjorning. He's Lieutenant Shang's replacement. Lieutenant Skjorning, Ju Chang. He has Able Company, but we're shorthanded enough that he's wearing two hats. He's commanding First Platoon, as well as the Company, and he's been holding down Third, too, pending your arrival. Which makes him the man to get you settled in and up to speed ASAP. Yes?"
