The Jovian Sweep (Asteroid Scrabble Book 1)

by Martin Bourne

  Courage looked nonplussed. “Yes but that was some time ago, when Amethyst was under a different captain.”

  Charest’s voice turned soft. “I can assure you Admiral, that all of us who were serving on board Sapphire at the time remember and treasure the association most clearly. I am sure we will soon strike up a very good working relationship.”

  “Yes, yes, well, I’m sure you will.” Charest’s oily attempt at ingratiation sickened him, but what else could he say? Courage checked his notes again. “However, at this precise point in time we are still relatively unknown to each other.” A light appeared on his perscomp - a message from Cromarty. “Of course,” he continued, reading quickly and as unobtrusively as possible, “I am confident that unfamiliarity will not be a bar to the professionalism of anyone here. Ha-hum.”

  One or two of the captains were frowning. He hurried on quickly. “This is all a minor concern anyway. We have a more pertinent technical problem. The acceleration rates of our ships vary widely. In order to minimise the effects of this, I have decided we will operate in two separate divisions.”

  He could tell that the reaction to that pronouncement was very positive. It was a logical move after all. Courage motioned and Prince brought up the fleet dispositions on the Holotank. “The Fast Division will be under my direct command. It will consist of Valiant and the two 3rd generation Depot Ships Amethyst and Sapphire, the light Depot Ship Belofte, the escort Depot Ships of Commodore De Bos’ 23rd Cruiser Flotilla and about half of the auxiliaries. Captain Peal’s Genie, which has similar characteristics to the “Mythos” class escorts in the 23rd Cruiser Flotilla, will be temporarily attached to it. The Slow Division will be under the command of Rear-Admiral Vanderkolk and will consist of his own 15th Battle squadron, the light Depot Ship Eendracht and the remaining escorts and auxiliaries.

  Everyone seemed to be nodding in agreement with this, apart from Rear-Admiral Vanderkolk, who was impassive. Well so far everything had been straightforward and relatively uncontroversial. It would get more difficult later on.

  Prince switched the holotank display to map mode. “Here are our current positions,” Courage continued pointing out the symbols on the gently spiralling display. “As you can see, we are currently well spread out, so our first priority is to concentrate. The Fast Division will gather at Persephone, the Slow Division at Ganymede. Our auxiliaries will proceed to whichever base is closest to their current position and take on provisions. Priority for fuel and reequipping at Ganymede is to be given to the four Depot Ships of the 15th battle squadron. As soon as all adjustments are complete they are to take up positions here.” He pointed out the location on the holotank. It was right in the path a Triangle League would probably take if it intended to attack Ganymede. “The remaining elements of the Slow Division will join them as soon as possible.”

  “The Fast Division will sail as soon as they complete reequipping and move to one of two positions. If there is time they will deploy here,” Courage marked a position ahead of the icons of the 15th battle squadron. “If the Triangle force is detected before we can reach that position, then the Fast Division will instead deploy here,” he pointed at a position about fifty spatials corewards of Persephone, then put down his pointer and faced his audience.

  “I’m very much afraid our auxiliaries will have their work cut out. Sixteen would struggle to support a fleet this size even under normal operations, but we will not be conducting normal operations." He turned to the images of the auxiliary captains, conspicuously grouped together to one side and looking very uncomfortable, as befitted their lowly status. “I'm afraid you Ladies and Gentlemen are going to be earning your pay. There will be a lot of equipment and personnel to ferry as well as fuel.” The group looked even more uncomfortable. Cromarty stepped forward.

  “With your permission Admiral?” she said. Courage looked at her, and she continued immediately. “The auxiliaries will have to support the Depot ships in their forward positions for long periods of time. Naturally, the admiral will try to keep both Divisions as close to our supply sources as possible for as long as possible, but as the tactical situation develops that may not be possible.”

  A light glowed under Rear-Admiral Vanderkolk’s image. Courage pressed accept and the picture of the commander of the fifteenth battle squadron expanded.

  “Are we so sure the attack will come in at Ganymede?” he said.

  Courage shifted. “There is no guarantee of course, but Ganymede is the most important and populous of the Jovian satellites; it has the biggest military garrison; and it is likely to be the closest to Triangle League bases over the period we are expecting the attack. It is bound to be a target, even if it turns out to not be their main target.” He activated the zoom feature on the holotank, bringing the larger Jovian satellites into relief. “In any case, our concentration zone will enable us to shift quickly to support Persephone, Europa or even Callisto if the attack comes in against them.”

  Vanderkolk shifted in his chair. "Our ability to support the other colonies assumes that we can detect the Triangle strike force far enough out.”

  Courage smiled tightly. “Yes Admiral. It does.”

  Vanderkolk merely pursed his lips and nodded. His image receded. Of course he knew just how stretched the reconnaissance units of the fleet were. There wasn’t much to be gained by emphasising the point any further. Courage's estimation of Vanderkolk went up another notch. As a commander he was stolid rather than inspired, but he was no fool.

  Another light interrupted his reverie. He pressed accept and the image of a Commander Shavel grew. Courage recalled him as commander of one of the auxiliaries, the supply ship Florentine. He was an earnest young man, whippet thin, and he had a political pin attached to the lapel of his uniform. Courage couldn’t quite make out which one.

  “Sir, I recall that you stated that there would be personnel and equipment adjustments being made?” The words rattled out like an accusation. “May I ask what you meant by that?”

  Courage drew a deep breath. “Our current inventory of war drones is hardly ideal for the mission we have been tasked with. There’s not much we can do about that. However, we can redeploy those drones to maximise their effectiveness.”

  The eyes of every one of the Depot ship captains immediately dropped. He paused, thinking he had lost their attention. He could see their upper arms working. Of course - they were checking what the changes in drone allocation and personnel would mean for them. Cromarty had warned him that would happen. He pressed on.

  “Naturally we do not have the time to make full use of our assets – the ideal is impossible and setting it all up would be too disruptive anyway – but I firmly believe these changes will increase our fighting efficiency considerably.”

  Nobody seemed to be taking much notice. He wondered if he should continue, and then one, two, three, a veritable flood of signals all calling to be allowed to speak. He selected one at random. It was Captain Peal of the Escort Depot Ship Genie. The man leapt into action immediately.

  “Sir, I feel I must protest! The two squadrons on board Genie are being replaced with three larger squadrons!”

  “Many squadrons are being reallocated. And the replacements are of smaller drones."

  The fellow pressed on. “The mass might be alright, but that’s nearly a 100% increase in the numbers of drones, not to mention more link warriors! How can I physically fit them in?”

  “Oh, there’s a guide in the appendix as to how to do that.”

  That got the man scurrying to the back of the report, and hence out of the discussion.

  He pressed accept on another query. A very strange image was brought face forward, an officer with slicked back hair and earrings within earrings. He looked very relaxed. Courage did a double-take. Of course, Captain Varsh of the New Hope Admiralty escort Depot Ship Three Roses. No Courage Admiralty officer would be so laid back.

  "I see I am losing two of my squadrons here Admiral."

  “They are no
t exactly ‘your’ squadrons, captain,” Courage said shortly, "and you will be receiving replacements.”

  “Yes sir, but those replacements are in no way equivalent. I am losing two experienced squadrons, two experienced New Hope squadrons, and receiving rookie units in return - one of them a colonial unit.”

  "The Confederation requires the New Hope squadrons elsewhere."

  "Umm, the Confederation sir, or Courage Admiralty?"

  Courage gritted his teeth. "The Confederation, captain, in the person of myself."

  He shut the man off before he could reply, and randomly pressed accept on another query. It turned out to be Captain Haddad of Amethyst, one of his major units.

  “Sir, these orders are very extensive. It’s going to be extremely difficult to achieve these alterations in the time span allotted!”

  "I realise there are a lot of changes," Courage said, "but I am relying on your competence to meet the deadlines."

  Commander Prince moved smoothly in. “How you run your own ship is your own concern of course captain, but I think you will find that the Admiral’s suggestions in the addendum will help a lot.”

  Haddad looked doubtful, but Courage cut him off too. There were many more lights demanding attention. He was reaching toward one when Cromarty interrupted.

  "I'm sorry sir, but you do have another appointment scheduled in five minutes."

  Courage looked nonplussed. He couldn't remember having another meeting, but any excuse to avoid the horror of the one he was having was to be seized upon.

  "I'm sorry Ladies and Gentlemen, but I'm afraid I have to wind this up. If you have any further queries, please can you contact Lieutenant-Commanders Cromarty or Prince. I will endeavour to respond as quickly as I can."

  That didn't go down too well, but fortunately the sound was off. He hurried quickly to the door.

  Chapter 19.

  Light Depot Ship Belofte, approaching Persephone, Jovian System.

  It didn’t take long for the members of Training Class 502 to become very unhappy with Admiral Courage’s ‘rearrangement’ of the fleet. They were not part of a fighting squadron and the emergency redeployment had caused their training to be suspended. They were therefore surplus to requirements - effectively unemployed. They were also young and fit, and therefore perfect candidates to help realise the rearrangement at its most basic level. It was quite astonishing how much equipment needed to be moved. It was even more astounding how heavy some of it was.

  Packer, one of the more forthright of their number, voiced the collective opinion of Training Class 502 succinctly. “I’d like to rearrange Admiral ‘No-Courage’,” he said darkly, stretching his arms to try and ease the kinks in his muscles, “into a pretzel.”

  There was a chorus of agreement to this. As far as the cadets were concerned the intense movement of personnel and equipment was a thorough waste of time. It appeared to be an ever-increasing level of chaotic and counterproductive movement, for which Belofte appeared to have been especially singled out. For two weeks every work shift had included a long list of duties that involved the hauling of supplies and machinery into, off or simply around the Depot Ship. The most soul-destroying job was moving equipment back to its original location, sometimes after only a few days.

  Then, just as things seemed to be settling down, their training programs had been restarted, and with a vengeance. Their instructors, long beached from active duty, were thoroughly delighted at being back on a functioning Depot ship again. They expressed their reinvigoration by delving ever deeper into drone theory, and devising tests more cunning and stringent than ever before. All the time the cadets extra duties as make-do porters still crowded their theoretical “stand down” shifts.

  The result had been a month of stressful and backbreaking days that had left everyone physically and psychologically drained. The occasionally riotous after duty parties had quietly stopped. Everyone was too tired.

  It was hardly surprising that the scapegoat for their aching muscles, tautened hamstrings and overstressed neurones was the man who had specifically ordered it, to their minds an obscure and discredited admiral that stayed in a plush little office, well away from the consequences of his actions. It didn’t help that it soon became common knowledge that their opinion was shared by a great many senior officers.

  “I hate all of this,” said Ben morosely, draping himself over a couch. Being a piece of furniture on Belolfte it promptly bent at an alarming angle. “I didn’t sign up to be a labourer.”

  “Well, you’re very good at it,” said Packer. “Maybe you missed your calling.”

  “Yah, you might be able to get a ‘Gold Bicep’ Ben!” called out Lilybeth.

  That got a general laugh. Ben’s face wrinkled, but he ploughed on. “The only good thing is that we’re bound to get reassigned soon.”

  Packer grimaced. “How do you reckon that?”

  “Well, it stands to reason. Admiral ‘No-Courage’ is shuffling everyone and everything all over the place. We’re hardly going to be immune are we? Right now they need us here because we’re the idiots providing the muscle for all this lifting and carrying, but what happens when that’s finished?”

  That got everyone thinking. And then it got everyone talking.

  As the vortex of argument and attitude swirled around, Josie carefully and discreetly eased herself into a corner. Unconsciously twirling her hair with one finger she reflected on how everyday life aboard Belofte had now taken a definite and very marked turn to the trivial. It wasn’t the comedic responses to the hard physical labour or the reintroduction of training. It especially was not the collapse of the various off-duty recreation activities. Indeed, most people had come around to her way of thinking about Belofte’s tawdry party scene. It wasn’t even the surge in complaining about the food, a traditional military activity she had never been keen on, but at least one entirely justified by the introduction of self-heating sausages. No, as far as she was concerned the decline was mostly because of the new and pernicious social activity of speculating.

  The speculating craze had started gradually, fuelled by all the unusual onboard activity and the lack of official explanations for it. It found a ready home in the social vacuum created by Belofte’s limited facilities and from there it grew suddenly and spectacularly. A group of link warriors would gather round a drinks machine, or one of the dorm clusters, or even a link console, and after a few cursory greetings launch into a flurry of speculation, most of it unfounded and much of it frankly illogical.

  The beauty of speculation was that it had no social limitations. Anyone could do it and it covered just about everything, from assignments, to politics, to the state of the ship’s laundry. It also had a kind of inbuilt justification. After all, they were link warriors considering military matters, and what could be more reasonable than that? The initial obvious topics were where they were going, what they would be doing when they got there, and why they were being deployed there in the first place. From these simple basics speculation moved on to what the Trigs were planning; and how effective the countermoves their own useless naval authorities would make would be. Spiralling further on, speculation debated the dubious attractions of the Jovian satellites and the chances of getting shore leave when they did eventually arrive.

  The old hands at first tried to remain aloof from these impromptu gatherings. After all, they were veterans. They had seen it all before. Speculating implied nerves and an unseemly excitement. Their detachment did not last long. The attractions of speculating were far too enticing. In less than a day their tendency to tattle as much as the newest and greenest recruit destroyed their veteran credentials. The ability of the speculation craze to break down social boundaries. It was a relief to discover that the high and mighty veterans were just as human as any cadet.

  At first Josie had found herself drawn in by the speculation craze, in spite of her personal distaste. It hadn’t taken her long to peg it as nothing more than a particularly juicy form of gossi
ping, but the attractions of the craze had by then pervaded the whole ship, making it impossible to ignore. The problem was that they were now in the Jovian system and it was common knowledge she had been born on Callisto. Josie found that her origins, for once, worked to give her an advantage. Being from Jupiter gave her social currency, at least for a while. It was all a new experience, and curiously she didn’t like it very much. The problem was that her new social standing was not based on her as a person, but only as a source of information. She quickly found that if she stuck to only saying what she knew for certain (which wasn’t very much) she soon got left alone.

  At the very least the speculation phenomenon was highly detrimental to shipboard efficiency. A more forceful commander than Captain Hutton would have taken steps to suppress it, ideally by forestalling the whole thing with hard facts. If information was in short supply, then even a hard application of discipline would have been preferable to the chaos. But Hutton had been in the rut of easy second line duty for too long to be able to do anything like that now, if he had ever been capable of it. He released only a few announcements, and they were so vague and short on fact they only served to fuel the speculation, not to stop it. Every word in the few official pronouncements he made was picked apart mercilessly. The conclusions reached sometimes defied all logic and rationality. It really was incredible just how much could be made of so very little.

  Ben's predictions turned out to be no more accurate than anyone else’s. The ‘rearrangements’ did not just continue, they intensified. Even the most moderate and laid back link warriors were getting frustrated. There were few apologists now for Admiral Jack Courage.

  Lifting, moving, rearranging, rewiring – hour after hour, day after day. The greatest atrocity came eight days after they finally arrived at Persephone. They were awoken an hour before the start of their shipboard “day” and informed that they had to pack all of their issued kit and personal items. They were to move out of their dorm clusters and report to room 618, and it had to be done now, immediately, straight away, and why were they all still standing around?