by George Olney
She turned and watched the approaching Jacobs squadron in the main screen for a moment and added, "What if they didn't want to take those losses? They didn't have anything on us, and they didn't have any captured ships that we could detect. Suppose we just blew up their tidy little operation in this system as it was getting started? Running would be a pretty good option in that case."
Jimmy nodded. "I suppose so, Skipper, but that tells me they're being cautious with those frigates. I wonder if they only have a limited amount of them."
Alice nodded. That was also what she was thinking. A limited number of their best ships. Pirating resources from other systems. Was the Empire already badly stretched?
Alice went back to her cabin and thought hard as she began to mentally compose her report. She was wondering if this whole episode was bad news about the frigates or good news about the state of the Empire.
CHAPTER 13
CLUSTER MILITARY HEADQUARTERS
NIAD
"This is the take from the Wahoo's intercept of those frigates two months ago, edited down for time," said Commander Claude Ancel, now Intelligence Liaison Officer for the Command Staff. "The actual attack took five hours from start to finish. Once the recording is over, we can discuss these events and their implications. We think the implications are major, by the way."
His audience turned to study the holo of Wahoo's engagement with rapt attention. The S-boats were new and different enough that even Commander, Battleships, was willing to put up with the slow progress of the action. That told Claude quite a lot, when all was said and done. Startlingly beautiful blonde Vice Admiral Roberta Detrik was a high energy battleship spacer and not normally into slow, but she was very, very serious about the frigates of the Emperor's Guard.
While the senior officers around the conference table studied Claude's presentation, he studied them in turn. The Command Staff was originally an ad hoc grouping of previously independent commands. Now they were formally organized into an army, a corps, and a fleet, all under an overall command. Organization was necessary since the Central campaign was being planned at a level unseen for centuries.
There was plenty of rank present at the table, Claude thought. The CNO and head of the Staff was at the head of the table, Admiral Lane Mackinnie. The Corps of Gladius officers were on one side, including Senior Officer of the Corps Shyranne Garua and newly promoted Corps Legate Khev Garua. The Commanders and Legates of the Legions ran down the table from them, including the Garuas' replacements: the new Commander and Legate of the Valeria. The sole missing Legion Commander was that of the Victrix, which would not have a Commander until a senior female officer could come up through the ranks and take the position. Legate Athan had his acting Support Command Commander, Major Sharon Ariel, with him instead. The real Support Command Commander, Claude recalled, was on motherhood furlough for the next twenty months. The Corps classified pregnant women as nondeployable and extended the status for eighteen months after birth to allow a solid nurturing basis for the child.
Claude thought that was an excellent policy since his Gladius wife, Captain Carlita Ancel, was also on limited duty with headquarters Combat Information Technology due to impending motherhood and would remain so throughout the projected period of the Central attack. At least she and their child would be out of it, he thought grimly. He had no illusions about the blood the attack would spill. After their Virgin Mission, Gladius women were no longer in combat positions, but that didn't mean they were safe. Support Command went down after the main battle was over. Shit happened. For that matter, every ship in the attacking fleet was in danger on this one. That included troop carriers and supply ships.
Across the table from the Corps, the Frontier Cluster Fleet was represented by the Commanders of Battleships, S-boats, and Conventional Forces, and they'd brought along newly minted Commodore Imin Webster as the senior fighter officer. Webster was the former commander of the Cauldwell Planetary Guard, an entirely fighter force and a good one. He'd inherited the top fighter position simply because nobody else had ever commanded at least two wings of fighters within memory and word had it they were still thinking up a name for his position.
For his part, Commodore Webster seemed a bit bemused to be surrounded by an active and growing military structure he hadn't known existed a year ago. The fact he now found himself a senior officer in that structure only compounded his bemusement.
Cluster Army Chief of Staff General Jon Malcom, sitting further down the table with his seven division commanders, had his own problems. Prior to the Valeria landing on Tactine that crushed - destroyed - an occupation by Imperial New Forces, he'd been a Colonel in the not all that active Tactine militia. Fortunately, he'd also been an avid hobbyist in military strategy games and student of military history. That put him one up on any other Tactine militia senior officer and earned him the overall command of the Cluster Army. Below him were seven provisional division commanders. Every rank above platoon leader in the Army was provisional simply because nobody knew who was up to the job. The Army was organized on the basic principle of someone getting a shot at command, then being replaced if they muffed it. There had already been a few replacements after the Labatt operation. The policy brought a certain degree of uncertainty, Claude thought, but it did wonders for motivation.
As the recorded sensor imagery ceased, Claude stood up and said, "There are two glaring features of this report. First is that the Empire has apparently begun hijacking shipments in breakaway systems. None of our other S-boats reported this, but that doesn't mean it isn't happening. Our feeling is that we simply haven't caught it elsewhere yet.
"The other feature is that the frigates chose to run rather than engage what we feel was a much less capable force from the Jacobs Fleet. This could have been to maintain operational security, but we think it also reflects a marked desire to avoid risk to the frigates wherever possible. In turn, this policy implies that the frigates are regarded as a valuable but limited resource."
Vice Admiral Detrik spoke up. "I see something else here. The frigates in the report were all operating in tight divisions of three. To me, that confirms they were designed to function that way. In our original confrontation, efficiency dropped as soon as that triad was broken. Besides the TF 16.2 engagement, is there any more information about that?"
The battle between TF 16.2 and Imperial frigates was the first of its kind and the pocket battleship task force had gotten bloodied. In fact, the battleships had been unable to kill all of the frigates despite having them outnumbered, which would have meant the Cluster's existence being exposed to the Empire, but one of the first trial S boats had killed the last frigate with a torpedo. The battle rankled everyone in the battleship structure and Claude diplomatically decided to let further discussion on that subject pass. Battleship spacers regarded the battle as a failure of their beloved little ships and were very sensitive about it. Detrik hugely outranked him and she was reputed to have quite a temper. "The Orzel and the U-47 ambushed frigate formations in Imperial space. In both cases, they didn't get all of them. The Orzel killed one and the U-47 got two. After the attacks, the survivors immediately cracked on speed and took off on a least time course for Middle Empire. They made no attempt to fight."
"Now that's very interesting," she said softly.
"Don't make too much of it, Bobbie," Admiral Mackinnie rumbled. "Those frigates didn't have to stand and fight. Central will be different."
"It's still a weakness," she shot back. "One we can exploit. Kill one of a division and it loses major effectiveness. A single frigate isn't as effective as one of our ships. That tells me we ought to be making partial kills on frigate divisions instead of trying for all three."
Bobbie Detrik had come up through pocket battleships, so she was extremely interested in frigate vs. battleship tactics. The first confrontation between TF 16.2 and Imperial Guard frigates hadn't come off too well for the little battlewagons (the words "bloody debacle" came to mind) and she badly wanted
to change the situation.
Pocket battleships were the Frontier Fleet's primary warship. They were designed fifty years ago to overcome the twin problems of manpower and material shortages that existed out on the Empire's borders. They were only possible because of the development of a new generation of AI on Malthus, reducing crew requirements to three persons. They fell between a corvette and a destroyer in size, but were heavily armored and carried much more powerful protective screens, guns, and engines than any other warship its size. Their primary armament of four 35 centimeasure guns mounted in their bow was the key to battleship tactics. A 35 CM gun was actually a dreadnought weapon, which made the little ships deadly in any confrontation. Battleship spacers lived literally surrounded by their heavy guns and called the low clunk-twang noise of the guns firing "making music". The in-your-face attitude of battleship spacers turned them from deadly to savage. Bobbie fully shared the aggressive attitude of her crews. As far as she was concerned, any threat to the dominance of her beloved peewee battlewagons boded ill for that threat once she turned her attention to it.
Lane Mackinnie nodded slowly. "A point. Put your people to work on exploiting that and brief me when you have solid recommendations.
"Meanwhile," he said, turning to the group at large, "there are other points. If the Empire is hurting enough to turn to hijacking, they're already weaker than we thought. In a way, the Tactine raid was already a signal of weakness, but this program of hijacking or piracy, or whatever you want to call it, is confirmation. I think we have to discuss firming up a date to move on Central soon. I know we wanted things to get tight in Middle Empire, but they may be worse than we imagined."
Vice Admiral Fields, Commander, S-boats, commented, "Admiral, we can speculate all we want, but we don't have confirmation. I recommend that we start reconnaissance of Central and other key systems in Middle Empire. I want to assign some of my boats to go in and do just that. The S-boats were built with that capability in mind."
SOC Garua turned to Fields and asked, "Alan, could they drop our scouts? If it's time for us to start looking at Central closely, we may as well get people on the ground, too." She gave no hint of the fact that her son was one of those scouts.
Alan nodded. "I think so. Historically, submarines were used to deliver special operations teams as well as attack enemy shipping and perform reconnaissance. We'll have to run some trials, but I think the idea is solid."
"Run your trials," Lane said slowly. "If they work out, the scouts will go in with S-boats when they go. If not, we'll use other means."
Lane Mackinnie slowly scanned the room, looking each person in the eye. "We have to start moving before Central collapses completely. Letting them collapse may be the safest thing for us, but there are nine billion people on Central and trillions in what's left of Middle Empire. We've already done enough damage to innocents. We won't do any more.
"It's time to begin our campaign against Central."
THE WAHOO
ALPHA CENTAURI SPACE
She was prepared for slow and careful when she volunteered for S-boats, Alice thought, but the tension during operations was a bit of a surprise. Her previous kills had required a patient tense stalk, but that was something implied in the job. This time, they were cruising in space just off Central and the familiar nervous feeling was cranking back up again. Added to that was the additional worry that they were light on armament. No S-boat skipper was happy shipping out with only six torpedoes, but the space normally occupied by reloads was needed for the six scouts, plus equipment, the Wahoo was transporting.
Alice snorted. Tension or not, this was a real S-boat mission, just like in the ancient movies. Besides, she thought proudly, only an S-boat could get this close to Central without coming up on the scanners they were catching constantly on passive.
She checked the repeater screens next to her command seat. The Wahoo was just about in the right position, just outside Central's atmosphere. Time to go to work. "Pilot," she commanded, "put us into orbit. Engines to ten percent. I want to do a complete scan of Central before we start dropping scouts.
"Send Lieutenant Arvin to the bridge," she added. She continued to watch as the boat crept, ever so slowly and carefully, into orbit.
It was only a few moments before the Gladius officer arrived. "Use the jump seat, Lieutenant," she said. "I want you to start picking out drop points for your people."
His response was a laconic, "Aye."
Strange, Alice thought, the rest of the bridge was silent and tense, but the Gladius was simply sitting in the jump seat, watching the scans calmly, showing nothing but professional interest and occasionally making notes on his memo pad. Once again, she decided Gladii were just weird.
The information they were picking up was revealing. Imperial City, sliding into evening below, was its usual colossal self, apparently unchanged from before the Empire began to sunder. However, the troop installations on the second continent were new. She supposed that the New Forces had to be based somewhere and Shangnaman wanted them under his beady eye, but not too close to the palace complex. In fact, one of the six massive orbital defensive installations was in stationary orbit over the troop encampments. Given Shangnaman's paranoia, that was to guarantee loyalty. Be loyal, or your beloved Emperor drops a load of crap on your head. She noted there were no fleet bases on the planet any longer. Ships were too hard to catch if they decided to rebel. One of the other boats assigned to scout the system would find them, then. Her job was Central itself.
The pilot was occasionally shifting the boat's slow orbit, avoiding contact with merchant traffic or giving the orbital defense installations a wide berth. As they passed one of the defense installations, Sensors spoke up, "Captain, I'm not detecting any indication of life on those orbital defense installations."
Were they all robotic? If they were, she was willing to bet that their control points were inside the Palace itself, probably constantly within the Emperor's reach. That would fit with Shangnaman's paranoid personality. Everything that could possibly be a danger to him was either neutralized or completely in his grasp. The notion of robotic defense installations was worth verifying. "Sensors, I want a close read on each of those installations, as close as we can get on passives, anyhow. Report any life signs at all."
Things were quiet for a little longer, then Lieutenant Arvin asked quietly, "Captain, how long before we return to the terminator?"
Alice checked her status repeater then said, "About six hours. We're in an eight hour orbit."
He looked at his notepad for a moment, then up at her decisively. "If you could launch us once we cross the terminator that will work out beautifully. Given what our target is and the time I'd like for final preparation prior to launch, I'd prefer that we not be dropped on the next orbit but on the one after that, if at all possible."
Alice didn't bother to ask about the target. No need for her to know. Likewise, Lieutenant Arvin didn't know every aspect of her mission, or the fact that there were more S-boats in the system, although the latter was obvious to both of them. Neither one knew how many boats were here or their missions. Looking at the Gladius officer, Alice decided this operation was so compartmented that he probably didn't know how many scout drops were being made.
For that matter, she didn't bother to mention that every additional orbit brought more chance of discovery to the Wahoo. That sort of thing went with the job, and dropping scouts was one of her missions on this cruise. For a moment, she thought about what the scouts were supposed to do and decided she preferred taking her chances in her boat. More power to those guys, she thought. They can have their job. She didn't want it.
Twelve hours later, the ship's weapons techs were preparing for the launch in the forward torpedo room. The ancient method of launching special operations types out the torpedo tubes had once again proved practical, with a number of adaptations for the types involved.
The scouts' one man sleds, for instance, were now configured as long rods, with c
ontrols at one end and drives at the other. The scout would lie along the rod with the suppresser field generator under his belly, followed slightly further back by the antigravity generator and an atmosphere field to allow for launch in vacuum. A largish pod attached to the back of the sled contained all of his supplies and equipment. All of this would now fit in a torpedo tube. Carefully, the techs went over all of the sled's equipment, testing the suppresser, atmosphere field generator, and antigravity generators twice. One antigravity generator failed its second test and was immediately replaced. Finally, the equipment was ready.
At launch minus 30 minutes, the scouts appeared, fully armored, and boarded their sleds to be loaded in the tube. On the bridge, Alice was already looking at the drop points. Weapons had the locations dialed in, so there was nothing for her to do but give the word if she decided everything was good.
Tension in the Wahoo had settled a bit by the time the drop approached. Everyone was still on high alert, but meals and rest periods had dulled the worry a good bit. Humans could get used to anything with enough time, Alice decided, even the very real possibility of destruction at any moment. The drop points were approaching. "Weapons, confirm scouts ready to drop."
The reply was immediate. "Aye, Captain. Scouts are in the tubes and prepared for ballistic drop. All tubes ready."
Watching her repeater, Alice saw the drop point crawl towards the boat. "Initiate automatic drop sequence."
"Initiating automatic drop sequence," Weapons responded.
A few long, tense minutes later, "Sequence active, drop commencing."
They all felt the sequenced slight rumble as the tubes belched their loads of men and equipment. "Drop complete," Weapons announced. "All tubes clear. Outer doors closed."
"Understood clear and outer doors closed," Alice responded. "Pilot, begin to ease us out of orbit. We've done what we came to do. Let's go home."
