“Thank you, Lieutenant,” I said evenly, before rounding back on the Aegis Admiral with a great deal of heat. “Sorry for ignoring you, Admiral Silverback, but it seems there have been a few new developments,” I paused for a beat as more information started to come up on my screen. It looked like our old friends in Task Force 3 were back for a rematch, “I believe you were busy saying how I had no business keeping this fleet together and concentrated when I should have properly split off our lighter units for what now clearly looks like a suicide run straight into an enemy trap? I dare say that if we had launched our Corvettes the moment we could—as you, among others, had insisted—instead of holding them together as I have done, they would have almost certainly been annihilated by enemy Cruisers and Battleships at close range!”
Silverback started to sweat.
“You were lucky! No one could have predicted this!” he protested, but I could tell his heart wasn’t as in it as it could have been. He might be a politically-minded hack, but he was Admiral enough to recognize reality when it stared him in the face.
“And yet I have,” I said scornfully. “In the future you should focus on the prompt carrying out of orders relayed to you by high command—that would be me—and confine your suggestions to matters regarding resupply and military bureaucracy.”
Any indecision he might have felt disappeared behind hot and angry eyes, and he opened his mouth to retort but I cut him off.
“I’ve no more time to discuss splitting the fleet; doing so now would clearly be suicide. Good day, Admiral,” I said, reaching over to cut the connection. In the background I could hear someone reporting to Silverback that our entire discussion was over an open com-channel. “And let’s endeavor not to have anymore,” I wanted to call it what it really was but had to be more politic that I cared for, “‘confusion,’ I think is the best word—let’s have no more confusion in the chain of command.”
“I may have been wrong about sending forward the Corvettes for a faster chase, but you’ll rue the day you broadcast our conversation over an open channel to try and make a fool out of me!” Silverback said right before I managed to cut the channel.
I blinked down at the now-black screen. I hadn’t made a fool out of him; he’d done that all on his own. Or perhaps I was being too hard on the man. It was possible he’d had very strict and specific orders from Aegis that forced him to act in the manner he had. Either way, he was a tosspot for getting belligerent with the Grand Commander while the enemy was in sight.
“You’ll rue the day you saved those Corvettes, Montagne,” I mimed in a low, childish, singsong voice and then snorted loudly, “better they die than your pride be pricked? Is that it, Silverback?!”
I had no use for such fellows. Maybe it wasn’t good politics to humiliate the man in front of the entire fleet, but realistically he was never going to be one of my loyal supporters. Better the rest of the fleet found this out now and decided where they stood. Case in point: the very Corvettes he was so infuriated about. Was it really better they be destroyed than taken from him in a way that lowered his combat power? I’d say not.
‘Confusion in the chain of command,’ my hairy right foot. His actions were mutiny in the face of the enemy, plain and simple. Only the fact that he controlled a third of the current Grand Fleet’s makeup, and I couldn’t easily remove him from command without losing a handful of battleships along with him, made me stop from bringing him up on charges.
My silent fuming was interrupted by the Captain of the Royal Rage when she opened a private channel. “Are you sure that was wise?” Leonora Hammer asked, using the sort of outwardly respectful words and tone of voice that all of my subordinates used when what they really meant was, ‘are you off your flaming rocker, Admiral?!’
“Although we were never going to be on the same page in the first place, I decided to go easy on him in the name of politics and not bring Admiral Silverback up on charges of mutiny,” I drawled, only bothering to look over at her half way through my little monologue. Then I met her eyes, “I understand if you are outraged at allowing a potential mutineer to run wild—especially one at the top of our command structure—and am prepared for any scolding or lecture you might think appropriate in that regard. But, in my defense, I felt that losing a good third of our combat power was too great a risk at this juncture.”
Hammer turned red, and the withering look in her eye while I spoke made her feelings clear: she obviously felt the exact opposite of what I’d said but, after a moment, a considering light entered her eye.
“I believe Silverback’s lawyers would dispute your claims. But, having decided upon your chosen course of preserving ‘a third of this fleet’s combat power,’ why did you think the wisest course was to beard the man over a com-channel in front of the entire fleet?” she asked with a combination of suppressed frustration and the desire to actually know if I had a plan while I’d insulted Silverback.
“You know…it’s amazing,” I sighed.
“What is…Sir?” she asked with long suffering.
I looked over and met her eyes, suddenly feeling weary of always being the one forced to push the boulder up hill. “When people like Admiral Silverback try to trample on us, that’s simply par for the course. When I quite rightly point out that not only were they wrong to do so, but that if we’d all followed their plan we would have been crushed or seriously damaged and reestablish my authority,” I looked over at her with patent disappointment, “why I can’t even count on the support of my own closest subordinates?”
The Flag Captain looked taken aback.
“I’m sorry if I came across as unsupportive. I simply don’t understand the logic,” she hesitated, pressing her lips together and giving a half nod before continuing, “By that I mean the logic of antagonizing the man. I mean, yes, Admiral Silverback was way out of line. But, as you yourself rightly pointed out, he has three battleships under his direct command. Can we really afford to be playing games right before a major battle? Would it really cost that much to deal with this situation later? I’m not disputing that the aegis Admiral was playing games, but…”
“But would it really be so hard on my pride to swallow yet another in a long series of insults?” I continued for her. “No…no, it wouldn’t. But I can’t save this Fleet if we start making bad decisions in the name of expediency or political correctness. Besides, by airing the conversation and highlighting his borderline incompetence and failed attempt to leverage me, I may not have made us any friends from Aegis. Then again, that wasn’t likely to happen anytime soon anyway. It did allow me to solidify my hold over the independents in this fleet, and that’s got to be worth something.”
Hammer didn’t look entirely convinced. “And if we lose this battle because of one Admiral’s injured pride?” she asked.
Now my gaze hardened. “It’s a tough calculation, Captain. But do you really want a commander that ignores his own best judgment and sends people into what he thinks might be a trap, purely in the name of politics so that he can make nice with the others at the top?” I asked critically. “Just how long would you follow a man who sent Corvettes up against Cruisers and Battleships because he was too weak to stand up to his own sub-commanders?”
“When you put it that way…” Hammer said looking defeated and not happy about it.
“Capria and the Confederation made me an Admiral, and the Sector Government put me in charge of a fleet tasked with and defending this Sector. I was a Prince and now I am essentially a co-head of state and commander in chief of a planetary nation state. I’m the only one able to reach space in a system that’s already been invaded three times.”
Something in her visage changed as I spoke, which only fueled my desire to try to reach her as I continued.
“It’s easy to second-guess after the fact, and almost as easy to tell others what they should be doing when you’re not the one responsible—just like Admiral Silverback is doing right now. But if you think commanding one ship and being respo
nsible for everyone onboard her is bad enough, wait until you have a whole fleet of them and a few populated planets looking to you for protection,” I said wryly. “I don’t always like the decisions I have to make, and like most of the decisions I’ve made this one is a judgment call. I can certainly use all the advice I can get, but at the end of the day I have to make the hard call. And, in my opinion, we can’t run a war by committee. So unless or until I’m removed, or it’s well and truly destroyed, I am the commander of this fleet. Now let’s try to get back on task.”
“Yes, Sir,” Hammer acknowledged. Although she still wasn’t happy, I could tell that after our short conversation there was a new gleam of respect in her eyes for the catapulted-far-beyond-his-abilities Vice Admiral, and his ragtag fleet of Spineward defenders.
Time would tell if I’d made the right call with Silverback, but ultimately what he was going to do was up to him and not me. Frankly, what I could have added to what I’d told Hammer but didn’t, was that as far as I was concerned the only notable difference between us was that I was in command and he was not. And as far as Aegis was concerned, they were a Core World and a sovereign provincial government. But so was Tracto.
I was a Prince, and essentially married to a Queen that ruled, not reigned—although she did that as well. This meant I was a Sovereign individual in my own right, above and beyond my duties as an Admiral. Sure, technically I had to answer to Akantha as my ‘Hold Mistress,’ but everything I’d learned said that pretty much only applied to defending her, Messene and our kids. Protectors and Warlords pretty much acted as their own Commanders-in-Chief of whatever military forces they laid claim to.
But when Silverback and Aegis called me a tyrant and tried to usurp the Grand Fleet, they weren’t far wrong. I didn’t like to think about being a Head of State any more than I liked to contemplate Akantha’s slave-taking tendencies. So when Aegis insulted me, they were insulting a head of state because and while Tracto and Gambit might not match the industry of Aegis, our combat power sure as blazes did. Would they do this to the King of Capria, the Governor of the Sector, or the President of the Confederation Assembly?
I don’t think they would. I also don’t think they’d let anyone talk to the President of Aegis…or King, or whatever they had over there, without a major incident and possibly a declaration of war. Did I get the respect of a President or King? Did I even get the respect of a First Lady? Nope. And I was closer to a Vice President that ran the military.
Well, let them rot. I wasn’t going to get mad at being called a tyrant because, frankly, even though I didn’t want them, I had the powers of a tyrant if I ever decided to exercise. Also, pretty much no matter what they said I still would do my best to save us from Janeski and defeat him. But it was telling to see how they treated one of the few people with the actual ability—let alone the willingness—to go out on the proverbial limb and try to save them.
“The new escorts, the remains of Reclamation Fleet Task Force 3, are burning hard to match course and speed with the rest of the convoy, Admiral Montagne,” Captain Hammer reported. “They’re moving inside the hyper limit and entering the star system as well, Sir.” She added, needlessly in my opinion.
“Thank you, Captain,” I replied. It was time to get my head back in the game, “We’ll keep the fleet together and continue to follow them into the star system.”
I stopped and looked at the screen with narrowed eyes. The twenty odd warships making up the battered remnants of Task Force Three—thirty odd if you counted in the Corvettes—didn’t worry me. Three Battleships, ten Cruisers and ten Destroyers weren’t going to stop us now that their cunning little ambush had failed.
It was rather cute, in its own way. Send in the freighters and, assuming they don’t land on top of an enemy force, you follow it up with your most powerful warships whose arrivals are delayed just long enough that they would arrive in plenty of time to totally annihilate anything that could cycle its engines faster than a Destroyer.
We’d been wise enough to evade the trap, and now all they could do was run into the star system. Before, there was no way any of the freighters could get away from my fleet what with our three to one advantage in hulls and faster speed. But now it started to make sense.
With Task Force 3 there to delay us, it was just possible that a number of Janeski’s supply freighters could get away and resupply the Imperial Admiral’s main fleet. You’d have to be desperate or insane to trade even the battered remnants of Task Force 3 for a few freighters, but if your warships were caught up on the wrong side of a jump cycle time then saving what you could save was the right call. It all made sense.
So why was I still feeling uneasy?
The enemy was on the run, and with these new additions the Grand Fleet of Sector 25 under my command easily outnumbered and outgunned the combination of the convoy and task force.
I didn’t have any idea what could go wrong…and that scared me.
A lot.
“Stay on course, Captain,” I said unnecessarily.
“Of course, Sir,” Hammer acknowledged, giving me an odd look but wise enough not to pursue the matter.
Sitting back in my command chair I hoped we could finish these Reclamationists quickly and deprive Janeski of a critically needed supply run.
But could it possibly be that easy?
Chapter Thirty-nine: Sucking Them In
Commodore Bruneswitch glared at the screen in frustration. The screen itself was fine: a top model in excellent condition as was to be expected. It was what was being displayed on the screen that caused him to feel anger.
“Enemy force still shows no sign of sending forth its faster elements, Commodore,” reported Lieutenant Commander Jeeves.
“Thank you, Jeeves,” he said turned back to the screen and then cursed silently.
For the better part of a month, Bruneswitch and his detached Destroyer flotilla had flirted with death. That incompetent Wessex had dispatched a force without a single FTL communicator to hunt and track down a mobile, hyper-capable opponent. Forget the fact that even with FTL capability, and a long-range array, he would have had too few ships to systematically hit every possible star system. And yet, despite the enormous handicap he had still managed to succeed.
It had been an educated guess, true. But to his mind there were only three possibilities: Wolf-9, Tracto, or one of the Core Worlds in Sector 25. Given that if they’d done the last he never would have the forces to find them, Bruneswitch had split his chase force between Tracto and Wolf-9 and struck gold.
Even better, he’d made sure to keep a log of the actual physical location of at least one ComStat buoy near each of the two target systems. So as soon as he’d managed to track down the missing local fleet, instead of randomly jumping to fallback positions or rally points, he’d instead simply jumped to the FTL-buoy, hard docked, and physically uploaded the message to the network and waited for a response.
The result had been a commendation and assignment as the new temporary commander of Task Force 3—what little remained of it after Wessex had mangled it.
Now, here he was in command and in yet another empty benighted star system in the armpit of nowhere.
The High Admiral had given him his orders and, if everything had gone well, the survivors of Task Force 3 would be able to get a measure of revenge for what had been done to them by the locals.
Except things had not gone well—or, rather, they hadn’t gone badly, just not as well as the Commodore would have liked. True, the locals hadn’t been stupid enough to throw away their screening force of lighter units by splitting them off in an eager rush to hit the freighters. Not that this bit of caution would ultimately help them, as they were still following the slow-moving convoy his Task Force was protecting further and further beyond the hyper limit.
“The Imperial Fleet is not treated this way by local rubes, no matter how cunning or clever they turn out to be,” Bruneswitch said with a glower. He studiously ignored that they weren�
�t technically a part of the Imperial Fleet, but were officially a rogue force. All of the core officers and crew were on detached duty or beached at half pay and free to pursue whatever folly they individually decided on. Not that this would fool anyone with half a brain cell to rub against itself, but it made for a polite fiction.
“Like lambs to the slaughter, Sir,” said his flagship’s Tactical Officer with a thirst for revenge over what the locals had done to them burning in the younger woman’s eyes.
“The thing you have to remember, Lieutenant,” Bruneswitch said, deciding that this was the opportune time for what was known as a teachable moment, “and what the local’s will discover to their great dismay very soon, is that no matter how wise or clever you think you are, there is always someone out there who is smarter.”
“The High Admiral will put the finish on them, Commodore,” she said with certainty in her voice, “just you wait and see.”
He didn’t correct her, or caution that by following the maxim he’d just relayed there was bound to be someone even smarter than the High Admiral out there. He didn’t do so because thus far the locals, having spotted the obvious initial trap, didn’t appear to have any clue as to exactly what was awaiting them.
“I’m sure he will, though I’d like to think that we won’t have to rely on the High Admiral for all of our revenge,” Commodore Bruneswitch said with bared teeth.
Not just the eager young Tactical Officer, but all of the other officers on the bridge laughed—and it was far from a nice sound.
The moment the locals crossed the hyper limit, Bruneswitch smiled. “Come to papa,” he said while leaning back in his chair.
Chapter Forty: Mouse Trapped
The Grand Fleet, burning for all it was worth, passed the hyper limit after nearly one hour and continued its pursuit of the fleeing enemy convoy. Every minute brought the fleet closer and closer to the sluggishly moving convoy.
Admiral's War Part One Page 27
