Launch Sequence (Genesis Book 2)

by Travis Hill

  Meyer froze his arm halfway to his comm unit while staring daggers at her, but nodded for her to go on.

  “Admiral Huang, Captain Meyer, by Executive Order of the United Coalition Strategic Forces, Initiative #21-NC44L, otherwise known as Operation Nightfall, I must hereby take command of Silver Fleet—”

  “This is bullshit!” Huang cried, springing out of his chair to tower over the spook. “The fuck you will! Meyer, call Security. Now!”

  Irina glanced over at the captain, who still had the comm halfway to his mouth. She shook her head, her face blank.

  “Sir,” Meyer said, feeling the helplessness of being caught between a rock and a hard place, “we have to listen to her.”

  “No fucking way,” Huang ranted. “I knew when the brass assigned me to this fleet that there was something fishy. Why the fuck even bother to put me in charge if they’re just going to wait until we’re under way to do whatever Special Ops wants to do? Why not just make her the admiral?”

  “Are you done, Sir?” Irina asked as politely as she could.

  Huang was an extremely competent officer and was even a pleasant person to be around, but she understood his outburst perfectly well. There wasn’t an officer alive who enjoyed having their command usurped, especially by a lower-ranking officer. Especially by a spook from a branch of the military that was more rumor than reality.

  “Fuck you, Drazek,” Huang said, careful to keep his temper in check and maintain his professionalism. “We’re on a combat tour. I don’t have time for your goddamn games. Go tell that to your commanders.”

  “Listen carefully to me, Admiral Huang,” Irina said, standing up, her face inches from the admiral’s. “Here are your choices. Either you relinquish control of this fleet and let me brief you and the captain on Nightfall, or you have me arrested and we’ll deal with this when we make it back to port. While I’m down in the brig, you’ll have time to write up your report to the Core Admirals as to why you allowed twenty thousand human colonists to be slaughtered.”

  “No offense, Commander,” Huang said through gritted teeth, “but I don’t give a shit about twenty thousand colonists. We’re headed to Baltari where the Kai have already killed at least fifteen million citizens. Our mission is to help evacuate and provide cover for the millions left who are trying to escape, while kicking the enemy out of the system.”

  “Admiral, I’ll only say this once. These twenty thousand colonists are far more important than the sixteen billion humans left spread throughout the remains of the Coalition. Possibly more important than the nine billion humans still in our home system. Make your choice. Now.”

  Irina thought the man would punch her. She wasn’t worried, confident she’d be able to break both of his arms before he knew what had happened, but she hoped he wouldn’t let his pride and his fury override his indoctrination to follow the chain of command.

  “This is bullshit,” he growled before sitting down in the chair opposite hers. “Fine. Command is officially yours, Captain Meyer is our witness.” He glanced at the captain. “I assume you’ve verified that initiative’s authorization codes?”

  “Yes, Sir,” Meyer said, extremely interested in what was about to be said. He’d been able to verify the auth codes, but not the content of the message. “They check out, straight from Core Admiral Karlsson himself.”

  “Great,” Huang said, turning back to Irina. “Then tell us what the fuck this is about so I can go find a game of poker while you command this little expedition.”

  “Admiral, I appreciate that you’re pissed off. However, cut the shit and pay attention. This is eyes-only, need-to-know. Right now, that’s the three of us and SF Command back home. In a few hours, we’ll have to let the fleet COs and XOs in on it, but for the moment, until you digest it and we work out the logistics, it’s not to leave this room.”

  Meyer leaned forward, a sudden fluttering in his stomach alerting him that whatever the woman was about to reveal, it would be far more dangerous than the Kai fleet waiting for them at Baltari. Huang’s anger was replaced by a mix of curiosity and concern.

  “As of an hour ago, UCSF Command ordered the initiation of Operation Nightfall.” She looked at each of them to be sure they were paying attention. “As you know, the Coalition is now losing the war. Badly. We’ve taken far too many critical losses, and some of the territories we’ve had to cede were primary mining centers and zero-G fabrication hubs. The UCSF brass have drawn up two strategic plans to deal with the eventual collapse of our species.”

  “Commander,” Huang scoffed. “I hardly see our entire species being exterminated, regardless of what a single Kai cruiser might have broadcast forty years ago. Have your people already given up?”

  “Admiral, grow the fuck up.” The shock on Huang’s face was almost comical. “I know the Navy brass and the Marine brass are full of piss and vinegar, but if you think the Kai aren’t serious about their promise to completely annihilate our species, then you haven’t been paying attention and you need to be relieved of your command and stripped of your rank. We’re losing this war, Admiral. The Seven are gone, the Hanura are gone, and we’re next. They’ve driven us back almost a thousand light-years since The Seven folded a decade ago.”

  “I still do not—”

  “—No, you do not,” she said, interrupting him with a raised hand. “If you aren’t prepared to accept that we’re on our way out, then you’ll be useless to me, and I’ll have Captain Meyer call for an escort to the brig so he and I can get to work. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” Huang said without a trace of sarcasm.

  “Thank you, Admiral. Now, as I was saying, SF Command has drawn up two end-game directives. The first involves Silver Fleet. Captain Meyer, I need you to order the fleet’s connection to the Wire severed. We’ll use our local nets, but we cannot risk communications over the standard Wire channels.”

  Meyer stared at her for almost half a minute before she asked, “Captain Meyer, did you hear me?”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” he said quietly. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, Captain. It is imperative that we sever all connections with the Coalition while on this mission.”

  “What the fuck?” Huang asked, his anger back. “How the hell are we supposed to communicate with Fleet Ops, pull intel updates, or even sync with the jump calibration relays? We’ll be in the dark and jumping blind, and without intel, we’ll probably jump right into a Kai invasion force.”

  “I am well aware of that, Admiral,” Irina said, her voice smooth, unperturbed. “But the order still stands. I cannot reveal any more of the directive until the Wire is cut.”

  Meyer tapped on his desk surface, bringing up the interface for fleet-wide Command & Control. “What should I tell the others?” he asked, looking up from his screen.

  “Tell them we’re on a temporary blackout, local net only, then coordinate all ship commanders and XOs to meet here on Raiden at 1800 hours.”

  “Shall I disperse the fleet?” Meyer asked, worried that the Kai might drop in on the fleet while they were bunched together.

  “Negative. We’ll be jumping to coordinates I provide after I’ve briefed you, then we’ll disperse. The Kai might still pop in for a visit, but without our connection to the Wire, it should take them a lot more time to pin us down by our FTL drive signatures.”

  “We’re going to cut the Wire then start jumping around?” Huang asked.

  “Yes.” Irina turned back to the captain. “Cut it.”

  Meyer tapped on the screen, sending out a short flash message to the fleet letting them know Raiden was taking control of the fleet’s comm systems and shutting down the Wire. He was sure he’d get an earful from the COs when they arrived. Crew members weren’t keen on losing their nearly real-time access to loved ones, news, movies, and music from back home.

  “Thank you,” she said after checking her wrist comm to verify that all external Wire links were down. “Now for the hard part. Gentlemen, I’m afra
id we won’t be connecting to the Wire ever again.”

  “What?” both men asked in unison.

  “Before you scream at me, hear me out,” Irina said, holding up a hand. “Operation Nightfall is the first directive, and we must complete it without fail. The reason we’ve cut our Wire access is to make sure the Kai have as difficult a time as possible trying to locate us.”

  “This isn’t about twenty thousand colonists, is it, Commander?” Meyer asked, scratching his cheek.

  “Actually, Captain, it is about twenty thousand colonists. We’ll rendezvous with five Coalition seedships. Genesis-1 through Genesis-5, each carrying four thousand ordinary, average human volunteers. We’ve scoured the databases to make sure we have the most diverse genetic pool possible, along with millions of unique DNA samples to ensure we don’t resort to inbreeding.”

  “Bullshit,” Huang breathed, staring through Irina as he thought about what she’d said.

  “I assure you, Admiral, that this is very serious. The fact that I am now the commander of this mission and I have just cut our Wire link is proof that this is serious. We’ll be making multiple stops. Our goal is to launch Genesis-1 and -2 from the far end of Veridian space toward the Sagittarius Arm, then Genesis-3 and -4 from the edge of Rathala territory across the Perseus Transit into the Perseus Arm. We’ll launch Genesis-5 from Alpha Point in hopes it reaches the Cygnus Arm.”

  “Alpha Point?” Meyer asked, eyes shifting between his two commanders.

  “Yes.”

  “We’ve never been beyond that. There’s nothing out there for at least two thousand light-years, maybe ten depending on where you’re at.”

  “Nothing we’ve sent into the deep black has ever returned,” Huang said. “Why the hell would we send a last-ditch seedship through it? Might as well fly it into a star or black hole and be done with it.”

  “It’s a chance we have to take, unfortunately,” Irina said. “The other four will be launched from within easy reach of the Kai, but we don’t have much choice on that. Everyone else has shut us out and expelled our people to appease the Kai. The Veridians aren’t likely to actively help the Kai, though I can guarantee they’ll do their best to engage our ships to show the Kai that they’re not assisting us.

  “The Rathala have no love for the Kai, and only slightly more love for us. They’ll do their part and attempt to engage us if they can, but they’ve tangled with the Kai before and aren’t afraid of getting their guns dirty as long as it doesn’t escalate into full-scale war. Since we’ll be inside Rathalan territory, the Kai will be fair game—the same as we are.”

  “So…” Meyer said, leaning back in his chair. “Genesis-1 through -4 are really just decoys?”

  “Yes,” Irina confirmed. “The ultimate hope is that they somehow make it far beyond the Orion Spur and deep into the Perseus and Sagittarius Arms, but SF Intel doesn’t hold much hope for them. The Kai are nothing if not efficient at rooting out their enemies.”

  “And yet,” Huang countered, “this Genesis-5 seedship is supposed to survive a trip through the deep black to the Outer Arm?”

  “We’ll be launching at the edge of the deep black, so they’ll survive long enough to at least leave the Spur, something we aren’t holding much hope for with the others. We’re sure the Kai won’t pursue them.”

  “And if they do?” Meyer asked.

  “Then we’ll have to hope the fusion drives on the ship gets them up to speed so the Kai have no way of catching them.”

  “What if they just jump ahead with their FTL?” Huang asked.

  “Not in the deep black, they won’t, unless they have technology even greater than what we’ve been shown. Even if they attempted to jump blind through that area, they’d have to have technology capable of seeing through the relativistic distortion to even spot the ship. Assuming they could do that, then it’s not impossible to believe they would be able to get close enough to launch a weapon that could burn long enough to reach the target. But nothing we’ve seen from them so far suggests they have such capabilities.”

  “This sounds like a lot of guessing and paper math,” Huang grunted.

  “It truly is, Sir,” Irina said with a grin, letting the Admiral know she had a sense of humor, even if it was a bit dark and morbid. “Consider that if the unthinkable happens—and again, unless we somehow build an STD or are granted a miracle from God, it’s going to happen—then all that guessing and paper math will have hopefully helped one or more of these ships to eventually reach a destination where humans can survive and rebuild. One far enough away from the Kai that they’ll never bother looking. The ultimate goal is to launch these seedships without the Kai ever knowing.”

  “And yet,” Admiral Huang said, “we’re expecting contact with the Kai at one or more of these launch points?”

  “Correct,” Irina answered.

  “So what’s the plan, then?”

  “Admiral, Captain, this is where it is imperative that you believe I am not your enemy. The reason you were assigned to this fleet, the reason all of your captains and executive officers were assigned to these specific ships, is because you are the Navy’s best. We’ve had to fight tooth and nail to get each and every one of you off the front lines and into this task force.”

  “That’s a pretty compliment,” Huang said. “But that can’t be all of it.”

  “And because your psyche profiles suggested those we picked to be the least likely to react negatively when you are told that if we successfully reach the mission’s conclusion, none of us will be going home again.”

  Meyer’s face fell into a sickly pallor. “What do you mean? We’re all expected to commit suicide? Fly the fleet into a star?”

  “No, Captain,” Irina chuckled darkly. “Nothing dramatic like that. Command Ops has given us a twelve percent chance to successfully complete the mission and have survivors.”

  “So we’re all expected to die?” Huang asked, his face completely neutral. Like a good flag officer’s face should be, Irina thought.

  “More or less, yes. You’ve fought the Kai before. You know they have the numbers and the tech to eventually destroy our naval forces down to the very last ship even if we could get double the number of factories and mining ops back online tomorrow. They command the stars and there’s very little we can do about it. The same as we command the ground, and there seems to be nothing the Kai can do about it. The problem with this equation is that one must travel through space to arrive at a location to fight on the ground.”

  “Thank you for the condensed lesson in warfare, Commander,” Huang said. “But you haven’t answered the question.”

  Irina sighed. “In the event units with a working FTL drive survive after Genesis-5 is launched, the ship or ships will then proceed to refuel, rearm if possible, and begin a series of jumps that will take us into the Sagittarius Arm in the opposite direction of Genesis-1 and -2. We will not be reconnecting to the Wire under any circumstance, and we will not be returning to within fourteen thousand light-years of either human or Kai borders.”

  “And where the hell are we supposed to go?” Huang asked.

  “Our destination will be the Centaurus Arm,” Irina said quietly.

  “Jesus Christ! That’s on the other side of the galaxy!”

  “I know.”

  “How the fuck are we supposed to travel fifty thousand light-years while jumping blind into regions no one has ever charted?”

  “How the fuck are we supposed to let the Kai wipe us out completely without doing everything we can to make sure enough of our species survives to go on, and far enough away the Kai won’t or can’t reach us?” Irina countered.

  “It sounds like some admiral shit this plan out, sniffed it, and decided it wasn’t as rank as some of the others,” Captain Meyer said with a straight face.

  “I’m sure it was born as excrement, Captain,” Irina said, a small smile on her lips. “However, over the last decade, Nightfall and All-Stop are the only two plans studied out
of thousands that have any chance of success. We cannot rely on or endanger the races within our local region. Most are afraid of the Kai. Those who aren’t afraid are smart enough to not engage in warfare with them. Our only options at this point are to fold or hold the enemy off as long as possible to give us this chance. Once All-Stop is initiated, there won’t be another opportunity.”

  “So, what’s this All-Stop?” Huang asked.

  “I’m afraid I cannot divulge that information at this time, Admiral,” Irina said.

  “Of course not,” he said. “Why should I be surprised? Fine, Commander. Tell me and Captain Meyer what we have to do and why we shouldn’t spend the entire mission fantasizing about stomping your guts out while doing it.”

  Irina smiled. “Imagine all you want, Admiral. Captain. If you’d like to try your hand at it beyond your imagination, you know my comm code and where my quarters are.”

  Both men looked away. They knew the unassuming woman could more than likely best an entire Security detail while unarmed.

  “No? The offer always stands, gentlemen, as long as you leave your rank at the door. Now, as to why you shouldn’t hate me? You won’t have time for petty emotions. I need you to draw up a plan for the launch sequence and get us and the seedships to each destination, as well as provide defense should we encounter hostiles.”

  “You show up and take command, tell us some general bullshit like ‘jump to these areas and launch some ships via fusion drive, then jump to the next,’ and you don’t even have a detailed plan of action?” Huang shook his head in disgust.

  “Admiral, I will provide you and ALVIN with enough tactical details to make your job easier, but your job, after all, is to draw up action plans for your fleet, is it not?” Huang glared at her while nodding in agreement. “Again, the reason you were chosen is that you were judged to be the best strategists, navigators, combat engineers, tacticians, and carrier wings in the entire Coalition.”

  “That’s a lot of confidence for a plan that isn’t even a plan,” Huang said, shaking his head again.