by Steve White
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 battle-cruisers 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—ummm, 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 snake-like 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."
* * *
Commodore Petrovna looked very calm in her new uniform, but she knew every officer of the new Republican Navy could see her on the all-ships hookup, and her warm voice was hushed with a sense of history.
"Ladies and Gentlemen of the Fleet, I introduce to you the President of the Republic of Free Terrans, Ladislaus Skjorning."
She vanished, and Ladislaus Skjorning appeared on the screen. His face was composed, but his blue eyes were bright—and hard. He sat behind a plain desk, and the crossed flags of the newborn Terran Republic covered the wall behind him.
"Ladies and gentlemen," his deep voice was measured, his famed Beaufort accent in complete abeyance, "fourteen years ago, I, too, was a serving officer in the Fleet of the Terran Federation. As one who once wore that uniform, I know what it has cost each of you to stand where you now stand, and I share your anguish. But I also share your determination and outrage. We have not come here lightly, but we have taken our stand, and we cannot and shall not retreat from it."
He paused, picturing the officers and ratings watching his image, hearing his voice, and for just a moment it seemed that he stood or sat beside each and every one of them. It was a moment of empathic awareness such as he had never imagined, and it showed in his voice when he continued.
"Ladies and gentlemen, it is you who will fight for our new nation; many of you will die for it. It is not necessary for me to say more on that head, for whatever else history may say of you, it will record that you were men and women who understood the concept of duty and served that concept to the very best of your ability. However, since it is you who will bear the shock of combat, it is only just that you know and understand exactly why we are fighting and what we are fighting for. It is for this reason I asked Admiral Ashigara for this all-ships hookup tonight.
"I am about to record our first official message to the Federation's Assembly, and I wish you to witness this communication as it is recorded. I suppose—" he permitted himself a bleak smile "—that this is an historic moment, but that is not why I wish to share it with you. I wish to share it because of who you are and what you will shortly be called upon to do.
"We represent many worlds and many ways of life. We spring from a single planet, but the diversity among us is great. We do not even agree upon the nature of God or the ultimate ends of our ongoing evolution. Yet we agree upon this: what has been done to us is intolerable, the systematic looting and manipulation of our economies and ways of life by others is not to be endured, and no government has the right to abuse its citizens as the government of the Federation has abused us. And if that agreement is all we share, it is enough. It is more than enough—as your presence in your ships, as your willingness to wear the uniform you wear, demonstrates. We may not share the same view of God, but before whatever God there is, I am proud to speak these words for you, and humbled by the commitment you and your worlds have made to support them."
He looked down at the concealed terminal built into his desk—not that he needed it; wha
t he was to say was written in his heart and mind as surely as in the memory of his computer—then glanced up once more.
"Some of you will recognize the source of these words. Many may not, but, I think, no one has ever said it better—and their use may help the Federation's citizens to understand our motives despite their present government's self-serving misrepresentation."
He drew a deep breath and faced the pickup squarely, forcing his shoulders to relax. When he spoke once more, he appeared completely calm. Only those who knew him well saw the anguish which possessed him.
"To the Legislative Assembly of the Terran Federation," he began calmly, "from Ladislaus Skjorning, President of the Republic of Free Terrans, for and in the name of the Congress of the Republic of Free Terrans.
"When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the Galaxy the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and the usages of justice entitle them, a decent respect for the opinion of all races requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."
He drew another deep breath, his voice rumbling up out of his chest, powerful and proud and defiant, yet somehow reverent as he spoke the fierce old words, newly adapted to changing circumstances.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all sentient beings are created equal, that they are endowed with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. . . ."
The survivors of the coming battles might see that recording many times in the course of their lives, yet never again would they see and hear it as it was made. They were joined with Ladislaus Skjorning, floating in the heart of a crystal moment, temporarily outside the bounds of space and time. Never before had so many men and women so intimately charged with the defense of a cause been joined in the moment of its annunciation; perhaps it would never happen again. Yet for all that they shared it as it happened, few could ever recall hearing the exact words Ladislaus spoke. What they remembered was the strength of his deep voice, the emotional communion as he forged words to hold their anger and frustration and their inarticulate love for the government they could no longer obey. They heard the list of abuses not with their ears, but with their souls—and they knew, knew now in their very bones, that the breach was forever. They could not return to what they had been, and in that instant of unbearable loss and political birth, the Terran Republic's Navy was forged on the anvil of history as few military organizations have ever been.
". . . We must, therefore," Ladislaus went on, drawing to the close of his message, "acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our separation, and hold you, as we hold the whole of the sentient races of the Galaxy, enemies in war, in peace friends.
"Now, therefore, the representatives of the Republic of Free Terrans, in general congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the Universe for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name and authority of the good people of these worlds, solemnly publish and declare that these united worlds are, and of right ought to be, a free and independent nation; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the Legislative Assembly of the Terran Federation, and that all political connection between them and the Terran Federation is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as a free and independent state, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do."
He stared into the pickup, his face carved from stone, and behind his eyes he saw the crumpled body of Fionna MacTaggart—the final, unforgivable indignity to which the Fringe Worlds had been subjected—and the closing words rumbled and crashed from his thick throat like denouncing thunder.
"And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor."
OFFENSIVE
"A man can die but once; we owe God a death . . ."
William Shakespeare,
Henry IV, Part II
TRNS Longbow was five hours out of Novaya Rodina orbit as Commodore Li Han stood beside Captain Tsing Chang in the intraship car, her face tranquil, and worried over what she was about to discover about her crew.
The new Republican Navy was desperately short of veterans. Of the sixty percent of the Fleet which had been Fringer, roughly ninety percent had favored mutiny, but the furious fighting had produced casualties so severe the Republican Navy found itself with less than half the trained personnel to man its captured ships.
Figures were even worse among the senior officers. Admiral Ashigara was, so far at least, the most senior officer to come over to the Republic. Others might have joined her, but the carnage on most of the flag decks had been so extreme none of them had survived. Which explained Han's indecently rapid promotion . . . and also why she found herself wearing two hats. She might be a commodore, but experienced Battle Fleet skippers were at such a premium that she had to double as CO of the Longbow—not that she minded that!
Fortunately, they'd picked up a few unexpected bonuses, as well, such as Commodore Magda Petrovna. Han didn't know her as well as she would have liked, for Petrovna had been indecently busy on Novaya Rodina, splitting her time between the Convention and her new command, but the prematurely graying woman had certainly proved herself at the Battle of Novaya Rodina. Her choice of Jason Windrider as her chief of staff only strengthened Han's respect for her. She felt no qualms about going into action with Commodore Petrovna on her flank.
The car stopped on the command bridge, and the officer of the deck stood as they stepped out. The other watch-keepers stayed seated as per her standing orders. Some captains preferred for their bridge crews to indulge in all the ceremonial rituals whenever they came on the bridge; Han preferred for them to get on with their jobs.
"Good afternoon, Exec," she said to Commander Sung.
"Good afternoon, sir. Commodore Tsing."
Han shook her head mentally at the titles. She was commodore of BG 12, but also Longbow's captain. For squadron purposes, she was properly addressed as "Commodore," but when acting as Longbow's CO, she was properly addressed as "Captain." Just to complicate matters further, Tsing was now a captain—but there could be only one "Captain" aboard a warship, so Tsing was properly addressed as "Commodore," since courtesy promotions were, by definition, upward. Thus there were occasions on which they would both properly be addressed as "Commodore," but only Han would ever be addressed as "Captain," which meant that from time to time a "captain" outranked a "commodore" aboard Longbow. Not surprisingly, Sung, like most of her crew, took the easy out and addressed her only as "Sir" unless there was absolutely no alternative or it was completely clear which hat she was wearing.
"I have the con, Exec," she told Sung, sliding into the command chair.
"Aye, aye, sir." The short, slender commander stepped quickly back behind the chair, waiting.
"Mister Chu, how long to warp?"
"Approximately forty-three standard hours, sir."
"Very good." She swung her chair toward the exec. "Commander Sung."
"Yes, sir?" He looked nervous. That was a good sign.
"It's been a while since our last comprehensive drills," she said calmly. "Don't you think we might spend a few hours brushing the rust off?"
Sung Chung-hui had dreaded this moment. Longbow's casualties had been the lowest of any ship in TF 17, but the new Republican Admiralty had raided her ruthlessly for experienced cadre. He'd managed to hang onto barely half of her original bridge crew, and losses below decks had been worse. He'd done his best to fit the many replacements into his team, but all too many were on "makee-learnee," and he shuddered to think of the next few days.
He glanced at Tsing, but the former exec seemed thoroughly fascinated by the display on the main plot. No help there. He drew a deep breath.
"Whenever you wish, sir."
"Then sound general quarters, Exec," Han said, and Sung breathed a silent prayer as he pressed the button.
* * *
The word, Han thought as she worked up lather, was "horrible." She raised her face to the shower spray and the water dragged at her long hair. It really wasn't all that bad, considering, but war left no room for "considering." With nukes flying around your ears, there were only adequate crews—or dead ones. She remembered the fine-tuned instrument she and Tsing had made of Longbow before the mutiny and shook her head, but the present arthritic uncertainty wasn't Sung's fault. He hadn't had time to work up the new drafts, and he'd actually done quite well in the time he'd been given.
She finished rinsing and reached for a towel.
She and Sung were going to be unpopular over the next few days. At least she'd managed to hang on to most of her point defense crews—that was about the only department which had performed with a flourish—but damage control was terrible and engineering was no better. She couldn't fault Sung's initial concentration on gunnery and maneuvering, but gunners and coxswains alone couldn't make Longbow an effective fighting machine.
She wrapped the towel around herself sarong fashion and sat before her terminal. It was Sung's job to bring the crew up to her standards. Under the iron-bound traditions of the service, her ability, even her right, to interfere with his handling of the problem was limited. But she was also the captain. The ultimate responsibility was hers, and she and Sung both knew how new to his duties he was. She could stretch the point a bit, she decided, without convincing him he'd lost her trust.
She punched up the intraship memo system slowly, considering how to begin. Her fingers poised over the keys, then moved.
