Michelle had come aboard the ship alongside Captain Novak and had barely managed to pick up the executive officer’s name, let alone get to know him.
“Can I help you, Commander?” she asked. She and the Senior Fleet Commander were both O-6s, splitting command authority over the supercarrier’s Naval and Space Force crew between them.
“Probably,” Yi admitted. “Eternal Stars know that all of this is hitting like a ton of angry bricks. A week ago, I was running space trials on our girl and carefully ignoring the betting pool over who’d end up in command.
“Now we’re shipping out in less than a day as part of a Void-cursed fleet that’s pretending to be a convoy, and nobody seems to know just what our actual mission is going to be,” he continued. “You’ve served with the Fox, right? You were with him at Istanbul and that mess, right?”
“And Tranquility too, if you were wondering,” Michelle said slowly. “I wouldn’t count on knowing much more than you do about the old man, though, Commander. There’s always been a few links in the chain of command between him and me.”
“You know more than I do,” Yi told her. “Only time I was even in the same system as him, a couple of billion people died.”
“Kematian.”
“Kematian,” he agreed. “No one is going to miss the son of the Void he blew away for that, but…Void knows if any of us were the same afterwards.”
“I wasn’t there,” Michelle said. “But I doubt it. Our counselors are good, but that kind of thing changes you.”
Her own trauma had been more personal and extended, but the Navy’s doctors had pulled her through it. Pulled her through well enough that she was married now, much as the thought terrified her.
“The Fox…some say he’s a glory hound. Even a loose cannon,” the XO finally admitted. “I mean, Void, he rammed a battleship. Made a tactical alliance with a Commonwealth officer. He’s…he’s something else.”
“He’s something else, all right,” Michelle agreed carefully. “The last damn thing the Commonwealth ever sees coming. He earned his rep, Commander Yi—the good and the bad alike. Earned it the only way you end up a hero: by being the last man standing when all your enemies are dead.”
“I find being a hero usually involves a bunch of people being stupid,” Yi retorted. “Including the poor bastard who rushes in and ends up with the medal.”
Michelle laughed.
“That’s fair enough, Commander. But I can assure you that Roberts isn’t setting out for glory. He’s setting out to win—which is a different thing entirely, isn’t it?”
Yi snorted.
“Fair, I suppose,” he echoed. “Thanks, CAG. I…needed to talk to someone who knew him, and it pretty much had to be you.”
Anyone junior and he’d have been asking whoever he spoke to to speak ill of a superior. There was always a special case between XO and CAG, though. They needed to be able to be utterly honest.
“If Roberts is dragging us into something secretive, it’s something big,” Michelle told him. “And he’ll need our best…and he’ll get it. Because he’s the Stellar Fox.
“And like I said: the Commonwealth is never going to see him coming.”
9
Niagara System
23:00 August 7, 2737 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
BB-285 Saint Michael
“I hope, sir, that you weren’t expecting to find anything useful here,” Vice Admiral Lindsay Tasker said bluntly over the q-com link. “They blew the repair yards, the storage depots, everything. Void, sir, they did a better job wrecking the base than we did when we left Via Somnia.”
“That, Admiral Tasker, is because the Alliance realized there was a possibility of losing the fleet base,” Fleet Admiral James Calvin Walkingstick, Marshal of the Rimward Marches for the Terran Commonwealth, observed acidly. “Something that our own compatriots apparently failed at.”
The big bronze-skinned Marshal adjusted his long braid in a practiced gesture that appeared random but was actually a calming meditation.
“We don’t expect to lose,” Tasker agreed. “An idea that both the Alliance and the League have happily disabused us of, of late. Speaking of Via Somnia…”
James shrugged with a cold smile.
“You could retake it, I suppose, but my intelligence suggests that Midori’s defenders retreated there,” he pointed out. “We may have ground their Seventh Fleet down to something that doesn’t deserve the title anymore, but with Rothenberg’s ships and the defenses they moved in, it would be an even fight.
“I hate even fights. Besides, why bother?” He shrugged. “It’s not like Via Somnia has anything there other than the fleet base. We advance onwards and cut off its supply chain. They will have to abandon the base eventually as we take systems behind them. It is useless without something to defend, after all.”
“Speaking of things other than the fleet base, we’re going to need more troops,” Tasker told him. “Lieutenant General Pék apparently underestimated the locals’ willingness to fight. It…didn’t end well.”
“How bad?” the Marshal asked levelly. Blago Pék had eight transports’ worth of power-armored Marines, each carrying an entire division. The man had an entire Marine Expeditionary Group under his command. He shouldn’t need reinforcements.
“He opened his landings with two divisions,” Tasker replied. “They…no longer exist, to all intents and purposes. Something like seven thousand dead, half again that wounded.”
James concealed a wince. Sixteen thousand–plus casualties was eighty percent losses of two divisions. Tasker was right: those units were functionally gone.
“I’m sure Pék has reported this up his chain of command, but it may not have made its way back down to you,” his Admiral continued. “Most of the MEG is tied up securing Midori. I don’t think we’re going to be breaking any of Pék’s troops free for further operations anytime soon—and frankly, I want a new Marine CO!”
Pék, James suspected, was spinning his reports to his own superiors to blame a lack of Navy fire support for his failings. That his fire support was supposed to come from his own transports could easily be obfuscated when Tasker had eighteen capital ships in orbit.
“If I need to dig up another Expeditionary Group, that will delay things,” he warned. “Are you capable of proceeding?”
“My Lexingtons are shuttling new starfighter crews back and forth as we speak,” Tasker told him. “Even with the logistics helping out, it’ll be another week before I have my wings back up to strength.” She shook her head.
“I need more carriers, sir,” she admitted. “Eight battleships looked impressive as hell on paper, but we didn’t have enough starfighters to blunt their bomber strike. With Vesuvius gone, I really don’t have enough Katanas to go up against anything resembling a comparable Alliance fleet.”
“The rest of the Volcanos are with Gabor,” James pointed out. “And the Alliance hasn’t seen him coming yet. I’ll see what I can pull free from our other positions, but it’ll be Lexingtons and Assassins.”
The only sixty-million-cubic ship he had sitting in his reserve was Saint Michael, and while he could send her forward, his superiors would explode if he went with her.
“None of the new ships, huh?”
“Most of them went after the League,” James reminded Tasker. “We have what we need, Admiral. I’ll have replacement starships and a new MEG out to you within two weeks. After that, well, I’m going to have work for you.”
“Only reward for a job well done,” Tasker agreed brightly. “Lay it on me, boss.”
10
Via Somnia System
08:00 August 19, 2737 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
DSC-062 Normandy
“So, uh, did anybody else not know we were expecting a battle fleet?” Russell asked quietly over the tactical feed as the Alcubierre-Stetson emergences died down.
“It seems Admiral Rothenberg had enough of a heads-up to make sure that nobody accidentally
went over the top when they showed up,” Herrera pointed out. “But still. That’s an Imperial fleet. Even with the Alliance, I always kinda half-figured I’d end up on the wrong side of one of those sooner or later.”
The CAG just nodded. He was sitting in his office right now but was linked into a virtual conference of Normandy’s senior officers that Herrera had called as soon as the sensors started reporting emergence signatures.
“We’ve broken it down,” Commander Tyrik Vang, Normandy’s tactical officer, reported. “Confirmed with the rest of the fleet, too.
“We’re looking at sixteen ships but only ten are warships,” he continued. “Three Righteous-class carriers, three Defender-class battle cruisers, two Majesty-class strike cruisers and two Rameses-class strike cruisers. Eight modern ships, forty- to-fifty-million-cubics, and two older units.”
“With Righteous Fire, that’s half of the Imperium’s Righteous-class carriers,” Herrera noted. “They’ve got two Imperator-class ships that just commissioned—Sanctuaries with the serial numbers filed off—but that’s still forty percent of Coraline’s modern carrier force.”
“What the hell is going on?” Russell demanded.
“I don’t know,” the Captain replied. “What I do know is that I just got pinged by the Vice Admiral. Captains, CAGs, and XOs to report aboard Righteous Fire for what sounds like a fancy meet ’n’ greet. Dress uniforms, gentlemen,” she concluded with a grin Russell could feel through the link.
“This is more capital ships than the Alliance has concentrated since Fourth Fleet hammered the Commonwealth back to the frontier. Something is going down, people, and when it does, Normandy will not be found wanting.
“You get me?!”
Righteous Fire turned out to have a massive open space that was easily repurposed as a ballroom. Or, quite possibly, was a ballroom that was easily repurposed for other uses.
Russell would have called the latter an extravagant waste of space, but Federation warships all carried an atrium, roughly an acre in size, as “part of the life support system.” Warships didn’t have a lot of excess space, but despite his own dislike of established nobilities, he couldn’t complain about the ballroom.
He liked having an atrium on his own ships, after all.
Right now, however, Vice Admiral Rothenberg had gathered the senior officers of twenty-four Alliance capital ships into that room, along with five flag officers—two Imperial and three from different Allied powers—and their staffs.
Rothenberg had taken the time to greet each of the hundred-plus officers as they’d entered and directed them all toward the buffet, where Russell had discovered that, if nothing else, aristocracy could feed people.
His wife’s pastries were better—but these had been baked this morning. He was sure the rest of the buffet was perfectly fine, but he happily settled in next to the dessert table, watching the swirl of officers.
The party was the first time since the war began that he’d been in a room that wasn’t dominated by Federation officers. The Imperium was the Alliance’s second-largest military power, but the Federation’s stronger economy meant that while they’d have identical active fleets, the Federation had twice as many reserved ships—and had been able to build new ships faster as well.
The Federation hadn’t spearheaded every major fleet action of the war—but they had led every formation Russell had served in. With fifteen Coraline capital ships and two flag officers in Via Somnia, however, the Imperials weren’t only the largest contingent at the party, they were the majority.
Since it was also their ship, the party was definitely tuned to their taste, which was ever so slightly…off to Russell. A Federation party would have had subtle incense, several punch bowls, an entirely self-serve buffet…
With an Imperial party, there were several stewards along the line of the buffet, preparing specific dishes or carving meat, and there was no drinks section at all. There was no incense wafting through the room, but there were uniformed stewards drifting through the crowd, collecting drink orders and using their implants to unerringly deliver them on request.
Or…perhaps even before request, the Vice Commodore realized as one of the stewards materialized at his right arm with a long-stemmed flute.
“Orange juice and sparkling water, Vice Commodore Rokos?” the middle-aged man in a Chief Petty Officer’s dress uniform with steward tabs asked politely.
Russell chuckled and shook his head.
“I see the Admiral has files on us all,” he noted. The only time he ever drank alcohol on ship was when beer was being handed out as celebration, and that was more for the principle of the thing than anything else.
“More accurately, his head steward,” the steward replied as Russell took the drink. “That would, after all, be our job, Vice Commodore.” He smiled. “The beef pasties on table three might also be to your taste,” he noted. “The Coraline pasty is a solid evolution of the Cornish original, if I say so myself.”
Russell laughed again.
“All right, Chief, I’ll try those,” he promised. “Thank you.”
The man inclined his head and drifted away, three more drinks, likely each as uniquely tailored to the intended recipient as Russell’s.
“Imperials,” Captain Herrera muttered in his other ear. “They know how to make you feel pampered, but I’ll be damned if it isn’t vaguely creepy at times.”
“They can fight,” Russell pointed out.
“They can,” his Captain agreed. “But some days, I swear we have more in common with the Commonwealth than with many of our allies.”
“Except for the whole ‘trying to conquer us’ business,” the CAG agreed.
Herrera laughed. “Fair enough,” he conceded. “Looks like our newest Imperial friend is about to speak. Find yourself a seat or a wall, Vice-Com. Looks like it might be time to work.”
The tiny Admiral with Rothenberg tapped a spoon on her wine glass as she stood on the dais at the end of the ballroom. The room’s acoustics were impressive—the gentle noise carried through the entire space, over conversations and the sound of eating.
A lot of people had noticed her getting up and turned their attention to her, but the room’s design allowed her gesture to gather everyone’s attention.
“Officers of the Alliance,” she greeted them all. “A toast.”
She raised her glass.
“Spacers of the free stars, I give you liberty and the Alliance!”
“Liberty and the Alliance!” the crowd echoed back, the loyalty toast forged in the fires of the first war against the Commonwealth before many of these officers were born.
“For those of you who don’t know me,” she continued after a moment, “I am Rear Admiral the Elector Yong Ju von Song. I was the passage commander for convoy X-73, the warships and transports that arrived this morning.
“I am charged today to speak for my master, Imperator John Erasmus Michael Albrecht von Coral,” she reeled off crisply. “I bear his Writ and, in this, speak with his voice.”
She smiled.
“Vice Admiral Rothenberg, stand up, please,” she instructed her superior.
Rothenberg rose. The Vice Admiral was darker-skinned than the Asiatic von Song, taller and less graceful than the petite woman currently speaking for his ruler.
“For any who will wonder,” von Song continued, “I was dispatched with my master’s Writ before the Battle of Midori, but I have confirmed his will with him.
“Parth Rothenberg, it is my honor and privilege to inform you that you are promoted to the rank of Fleet Admiral,” she told the tall man, passing him a new set of insignia. “His Majesty sends his congratulations and his certainty of your continued loyal and skilled service.”
Rothenberg took the insignia and carefully replaced the two gold stars on each side of his collar with the sets of three von Song had given him.
“He does me too much credit,” he said slowly. “My life is the Imperium’s.”
“And he call
s upon you to serve the Imperium,” von Song replied. “As he called upon us all. Good luck, old friend.”
They traded smiles, but then von Song returned to her seat—and Vice Admiral Conners rose.
“I have my own communications from Alliance Commander,” she told Rothenberg and everyone else in the room. “As of this evening, Fleet Admiral Rothenberg is now the commanding officer of Seventh Fleet, absorbing both Task Force Midori and convoy X-73’s escort into that formation.”
She saluted him crisply.
Rothenberg shook his head but returned the salute.
“I relieve you, Vice Admiral Conners,” he told the red-headed Trade Factor officer. “Thank you.”
“I stand relieved. Or sit, as the case may be,” Conners concluded with a grin as she retook her seat.
Still shaking his head, Rothenberg faced the crowd.
“It’s not every day you get ambushed like this,” he said dryly. “I should have guessed when I was asked to host this little affair.
“It will take us a few days to sort out the exact chain of command and division of ships and authority,” he continued with a smile.
“I doubt the Alliance has assembled this large a fleet for decorative purposes, but for the moment, our primary purpose is to protect Via Somnia. Many of these ships are supposed to be somewhere else, which means we hope the Commonwealth will underestimate our defenses here.
“If they do, they’re going to get an ugly shock. An even uglier one if they wait a few days.”
Russell leaned forward to hear what the Admiral was suggesting, and he doubted he was the only one.
“The Imperium isn’t the only one to have sent reinforcements. An entire Alliance battle fleet is on its way as well—under Vice Admiral Roberts. My understanding is that the Fox himself won’t be joining Seventh Fleet, which means the Alliance has other work for him.”
Rothenberg grinned evilly.
“I won’t pretend I wouldn’t rather take the offensive myself, but between myself and the Stellar Fox, I don’t think Walkingstick’s going to enjoy the next stage of his plans!”
Operation Medusa Page 7
